Sam is on a hunt, alone, and it's unquestionably night even though the abandoned house he's prowling through has no windows or doors. He doesn't know what he's looking for, but does know he's unarmed, not even a folding knife in his pocket. Both of these things seem perfectly normal to him.
His boots make no sound at all on the dusty, churned-up carpet. It's perfect. He hears it clearly when Dean calls out to him.
"Sammy!"
Sam turns with a smile, watching Dean melt out of the shadows that drape the edges of the house. He's happy to see him until he notices his eyes: solid jet, as if all pupil. A chill jitters through Sam but he resolves to act normally. Dean will not hurt him just so long as Sam doesn't let on he knows he's a demon, that's a fact.
It'll be okay. Sam's good at lying to his brother.
But he doesn't even get a chance to try it out before it stops working. As soon as he's close enough, Dean grabs him by the throat and lifts him one-handed, like Sam weighs no more than his duffel bag. Sam chokes, unable to draw any air past the fingers clamped around his neck. His hands are weak when he tries to pry Dean's grip loose, his nails blunt as he tries to claw painful furrows across his knuckles.
Dean smiles up at him, beatific.
"You got no idea how long I've wanted to do this," he tells Sam in a conversational tone.
A second later, Dean abruptly drops him. There's no strength in Sam, so he collapses the second his feet touch the floor. The pressure is gone but Sam finds himself still choking for oxygen, a full breath far out of reach. He's been strangled so many times, and panic over a suffocation death always rears up sharp and ugly in him; he wonders occasionally if it isn't on its way to becoming a phobia. Now is no different.
Soon, though, he is focused on tearing agony in his scalp when Dean takes a brimming handful of his hair and drags him down the hall.
"I ever tell you how much I fuckin' hate this?" Dean gives Sam hair and, by extension, his head and neck a painful shake. "You don't even know how stupid you look. And guess you don't care how much danger you put both of us in every case, hunting with a head full of brown Farrah Fawcett hair."
There is a staircase now, separated from the hallway by a decaying railing. Dean doesn't hesitate before hurling Sam through it.
The height he falls from feels obscene. It must be an abandoned skyscraper, not a house. Sam can't seem to scream on the way down, but if he could, what difference would it make?
His legs break violently under him when he lands. He doesn't even try to get up, knows already he can't. The long limbs are twisted and full of irregular shapes. Blood seeps in dark blotches through his jeans. It doesn't hurt, but Sam can feel the pain looming, bearing down on him. And he would not say he's afraid of pain, not anymore, but the idea of this reaching him is terrifying.
Dean is there all of a sudden, strolling loosely towards Sam on bowed legs. Sam wants to start an exorcism even though he's not sure it would even work, with Dean using his own body as a vessel. Or at least get a one-second flinch out of him with Christo. Sam still can't make a sound, though.
Dean crouches, smiles. Then he grabs Sam's face with both hands. His right thumb sinks purposely into Sam's left eye, which bursts almost immediately. Fluid gushes down his face, his socket aches dully, and gristly noises squish and grind inside his head as Dean digs at nerve and muscle.
Now Sam can scream.
As soon as his mouth opens, Dean grabs his jaw and begins to pull down. Sam distantly catalogues the dislocation, the stretching of tendons, the skin at the corners of his mouth beginning to tear.
"I'm gonna rip you apart, Sammy," Dean says pleasantly. "Slow. With my bare hands. And I'm gonna enjoy every second 'cause all this, everything? It's your fault." He lets go of Sam's jaw, and it dangles. "You know you gotta pay." He goes back to Sam's throat. "You deserve everything I feel like throwing at you, all the way up 'til I dig your heart outta your chest and eat it."
Sam woke up the same way he had hundreds of times in the past few weeks: sweaty, terrified, and exhausted. The sheets were hot and rubbery with moisture under him, and his pulse pounded hard enough under his jaw to hurt. He felt less like he'd slept and more like he'd spent all night sneaking through a haunted forest.
Bringing his knees up with a groan, he rested his chest on them and draped an arm down the length of his (unbroken, whole) legs, running a hand through hair acrid sweat had matted to his scalp. The skin underneath itched. He scratched for a second, hard, then made himself stop, afraid of drawing blood.
He was used to nightmares. He'd had them most nights for as long as he could remember, respites few and far between. But there was something...different about these.
The closest thing he could compare it to was the time when Castiel had knocked down the wall sealing off his memories of Hell, and let a version of Lucifer spill over into Sam's everyday perception. But it wasn't quite the same. Nothing could be as bad as that.
He tended to wake himself up in the middle of the night, but he was pleasantly surprised to see that it was morning when he glanced at the clock on his bedside table. Might as well get up, even if it was a couple hours earlier than usual.
Sam showered off the sweat and the clinging remnants of last night's dreams. He was feeling better by the time he got dressed, although not good enough to get rid of a childish compulsion to turn all the lights on.
He made sure the kitchen was well-lit, too, when he got started on making a pot of coffee. He went with the high-caffeine blend he'd ordered online recently. It was probably proof of how badly he needed it, that he didn't hear the boots coming down the stairs and hallway until Dean was already there.
"You're up early," he noted. Sam flinched so hard it made the muscles in his back twinge, already sore after a night of tension, and dropped the box of filters. "Sorry, sorry." Dean picked the filters up and tossed them back to Sam. He caught them, mostly on reflex. "You okay?"
"Yeah." Sam forced half a smile and turned his back on Dean. "Fine."
"Okay." There was a shrug in Dean's voice. Sam heard him grab a mug, and then he came over to the counter, where the coffeemaker was just starting to percolate. Sam drew in a breath and held it. He could feel Dean studying him. "Dude. You look awful." Sam rubbed at his eyes, burning with lack of sleep. Especially the left one. "You aren't comin' down with something, are you?"
"Uh, I don't think so." The sleeves of Dean's flannel were rolled up almost to his elbows, and Sam's eyes were sucked straight to the Mark. The brilliant red against the pale skin of Dean's forearm reminded Sam of lividity on a corpse. After a second, Dean shifted, Mark turning out of sight and pressing against the counter.
"Good. Just try not to give it to me if you are."
Four or so feet away from Sam, Dean settled in to watch the coffee drizzle into the pot, sin-black. Sam held himself firmly still so he wouldn't twitch. It was like he was being torn raggedly into two separate pieces, one ready to cry with how badly it wanted comfort from the man who was the best source of it Sam had ever found, and the other...
For the other piece of Sam, it was still night. It was always night.
He couldn't be next to Dean anymore. The smell of him, his warmth, even from this distance they did things to Sam he couldn't stand. As casually as he could manage, he went to the table and pulled out his phone, so it would at least look like he was doing something other than staring into space.
He knew Dean was still looking at him, and he knew he was still worried. But neither of them said anything else as the coffeepot steadily filled.
They hadn't had sex since Dean had been cured. Honestly, it'd been a while even before he left the bunker in Crowley's company, Sam buried in drunken sleep and still believing he was dead. With what the Mark had been doing to him, even kissing seemed like too much of a risk.
Things were better now, marginally. And when Castiel was around, Sam could feel him wondering why they hadn't fallen into bed with each other as soon as Dean's eyes cleared. Sam had been confused about that, too. But a gaping distance had come to light, a cavernous fear of intimacy that Sam didn't think either of them could navigate or even properly identify. They definitely weren't about to talk through it.
Dean poured himself a cup of coffee, then broke the silence as he brought one over to Sam. He hadn't bothered putting anything in it, apparently noticing he drank it black lately.
"Think I'm gonna swing by the grocery store later. You need anything?"
"No." Sam didn't relax until Dean was back over by the counter, and even then, it was only a little bit. "I'm good."
