Chapter 7
A smoke will get your head right
Pretty demon
You're gorgeous in the right light
Pretty demon
Stop tryna fuck with my life
And pretty demon
There'll never be a right time
Yeah
Here's why
You keep watching all my stories
Stop it
Your face is getting kinda boring
It's shit
I probably shouldn't tell your new guy
But I did
And now you're missing my soul
And you won't find it
Yeah
Now that we're offline
My souls found a place that you'll never find
And yours is outside
Pacing up and down and drinking that wine
And since there's no sign
You stuck posters up and not posts up online
Yeah
But the drawing style was quite nice
Pretty demon
You're gorgeous in the red light
Pretty demon
Stop tryna fuck with my life
And pretty demon
There'll never be a right time ~Cameron Sanderson, Missing my soul
Sam collapsed onto the couch after swallowing the pills Bobby gave him. He suppressed a few moaning sobs, not wanting to seem weak or less of a man. His head felt like it was splitting open and burning fire spilling into his noodle. He gripped the couch with his left hand and tried to ignore the wave of anguish that shuddered through him. His hand shook a little and he could feel disgusting sweat dripping down his forehead.
He looked over at Dean and Bobby, who were both anxiously watching Sam. Sam felt so grateful that they didn't lock him in the panic room this time. Sam anxiously brings his arms to his face, and he sees ugly blackness in his veins. It looks like his skin is cracking. He is not sure if this is a hallucination or if it is the demon blood swirling around in his veins, turning him into a demon. No, Sam thought with a shudder. I don't want to be a demon.
The thought made him doubt everything, again, but he didn't want to quit, not yet. He knew that he would have to, eventually, but not yet. He wanted to drink the sweet, hot red liquid. Hot darkness dripping down his throat. His body craved it more than his mind craved it. He wondered if he would ever truly be over it. Sam forced himself up into a seated position, trying not to panic and assume the worst. He leans his back against the not-that-comfortable couch and looks at Dean, trying to give him a look that read, I'm okay, stop worrying.
"You alright little brother?" Dean asks.
Sam shakes his head.
"Um. Not. Really. Not. At. All." Sam says.
He stares at the fan in the living room. He stares at the dust and hair on the carpet, and at old stains that Bobby had never manage to clean up. All of Sam's sense were heightened, and he was very alert. He felt like there really was a demon inside of him, although he had the protection tattoo on his chest that made it impossible for a demon to ever possess him. So the monster is me, Sam ponders. It feels like there is a monster inside him, clawing to get out. It was clawing to climb its way out of Sam's clammy skin and throw Dean and Bobby at the wall and make them hurt the way that he did. Grip their bodies, and then toss them on the ground.
NOOO, I would never do that, Sam screams to himself. The impulse was not his own, just remnants of the demons he drank and the evil that was holding onto him, not allowing him to breathe.
Dean sits down next to Sam and puts a cautious hand on Sam's shoulder. He sits their awkwardly, knowing his Sammy is in pain and Dean was wanting to alleviate as much of Sam's pain as he could.
"It will be alright," Dean assures Sam, starting to rub circles on Sam's upper back.
As Dean does this, Sam realizes he was holding his breath. He realized that he was holding tension inside. Deans hand on Sam's back made some of that tension fall away. Sam closes his eyes and allows himself to drift off as Dean massages his back. A small part of Sam's mind wonders if this was more than it was, something that was so wrong. But no, it wasn't that; it was just the way when Sam and Dean were kids and when Sam had the flu Dean would rub his back and tell him stories until Sam felt better. There was nothing twisted - nothing dirty, nothing sexual - about it. For a millisecond Sam wishes that there was, but that was so wrong, Sam wasn't gay and they were brothers. Though, where do you draw the line? Drinking demon blood and accidentally fantasizing about hurting people, or at wanting to fuck your brother? Sam quickly pushes the thought down; assumes it's just another symptom of the detox.
It had been too fucking long, of course, since Sam has had any of the demon blood. Not since the drive to Bobby's house, so it was what, three and half days now? It would get so much worse. The pills Bobby forced Sam to take would do nothing. Sam leans against Dean's shoulder and closes his eyes. The anti-seizure pills are at least making him drowsy, so he lets himself drift off to sleep and into nightmare-land.
Sam dreams of Lucifer grinning and laughing, Thank you for letting me out, Sammy boy. I will reward you. Sam is in a dream, and in his dream he clutches onto the dreamscape. It isn't real, it's a lucid dream, it fucking isn't real. He tells himself that, yells at himself. He started the apocalypse and now the devil was in his head.
I'll fucking kill you, Lucifer, Sam says in his dream body, although he knows that at least right now Lucifer is a dream character and not the real Lucifer. Sam figures he might as well practice killing the devil. It's a dream, Sammy, he tells himself. He reaches with his mind and pulls at Lucifer until he becomes thick black smoke that twirls into the ground and then vanishes. This is a dream; a lucid dream; Sam is in control.
Almost two seconds later, the monster is back. At first Lucifer looks like a pale, sickly blonde man. But then the monster shape-shifts, and looks just like Sam. The monster looks like Sam, and it is engulfed with flames. Sam can almost feel the flames, burning him, sickening him. Then the dream shifts scenes, and Sam loses lucidity. He lets the dream take him away, until the sleep finally allows him to rest. It will be okay in the morning.
Later...
Dean and Bobby are hunting while Sam is sleeping off the detox chills. They have been doing re-con to both stop a few demons that have been terrorizing Bobby's town in South Dakota. However instead of just killing the demons, they are torturing information out of the demons about where Lucifer is held up. They also are collecting some blood in order to have some to wean Sam off of the poison. They fill up two jugs of the stuff and then when the bloody, bruised and tied up demons refuse to give up their information, Dean stabs the demons with the demon killing knife. There had been three demons, and none of them had broke.
However, even though they were demons, if cops came it would look like someone had tortured and murdered three innocent humans. So, Bobby and Dean have to clean up the mess. After burning the bodies that the demons had been in - after, realizing they hadn't even tried to save the possessed humans, so focused on torturing information out of the demons - Dean and Bobby took the jugs of demon blood and headed back to Bobby's house.
When they got back, they noticed that Sam was still asleep. Every now and then Sam's body would shake and be pulled into a slight convulsion, and then his body would calm down and be still.
Bobby took the jugs of blood and locked it up so Sam would not be able to get to it, because Bobby knew a little bit about addiction, and he would. They would give him a little bit, if they absolutely had to, in order to wean Sam off of the stuff. But they would keep it locked up. They weren't sure if Sam would be able to smell that the stuff was around.
Bobby was doing research on demon blood addiction. There was no lore on it, and Bobby figured that demon blood addiction didn't follow the same rules as heroin or cocaine or, well, alcohol. It wasn't a drug, it was a supernatural substance. It was blood, it was darkness, it was destroying Sam.
Even later...
Sam was dreaming about Ruby. The seductive demon twisting in his mind, taking advantage of Sam and starting the addiction. Sam awakens with a gasp, pushing Ruby's dark, attractive body out of his mind. He had been laying on the couch, asleep. He sits up and his whole-body aches, probably from convulsions that Bobby's pills had failed to prevent. Sam pushes that thought out of his mind and clenches his teeth. He focuses on how he will stop Lucifer. He had set the devil free, so it is his responsibility to stop him... kill him, lock him up, prevent the apocalypse.
The second thing that hits Sam is a wave of desire, a dull wanting in him. He desires blood, to drink it from pretty demons, from Ruby. Sam had killed Ruby, sent the bitch back to hell. Ruby was not a she. Ruby was an it. Ruby had taken advantage of how badly Sam missed Dean, how it was his fault Dean was in hell. And Sam had been willing to do anything to get him back. In the end, though, it had been Castiel who had saved Dean from hell, and all Sam had done with the powers that Ruby had helped him hone was start the apocalypse. Although, Sam at the time had no way of knowing that killing Lilith was the final seal and that doing so would release the devil from it's cage. He hadn't known, but that was no excuse. It was still his fault.
Ruby was dead again, in hell. Her dark curly hair, her seductive eyes, the way she had pretended to save Sam. It had all been a guise. Now she was gone, suffering in hell. A quiet whisper in Sam spoke, no one deserves to suffer in hell, or suffer at all. But he shoved that thought away. Ruby deserved to suffer in hell. The apocalypse was really her fault, Sam reasoned, her fault and Castiel's fault for letting Sam out of the panic room just because Heaven had ordered him to. It seemed like both sides wanted the apocalypse to happen, and that Sam and Dean had no free will, and that they had been pulled to make it happen no matter how much they had tried to do the opposite. Oh well. That thought, however, didn't take away the guilt and the pain.
"How are you doing, Sam?" Bobby's voice broke Sam from his quiet reverie.
"Better, I guess," Sam lies. His body hurts, and he feels so guilty and wrong. He feels like his insides are twisting and screaming, and that a dark shadow has taken a hold of him. It was the darkness that had always been inside, even before the demon blood. There had always been a dark rage inside of Sam, although Sam had been pretty good at controlling it and keeping it locked up inside. He remembers when he and Dean had gone undercover in a mental hospital to stop a monster, and about how much rage had been inside Sam that the monster had enhanced. He remembers throwing the hospital staff around, thinking they were the monster he and Dean were hunting, but he had been so angry.
Bobby knew that Sam was lying, but he let it go.
"You hungry?" Bobby asked.
For blood, Sam thought, but pushed the thought. I have to stop; I have to stop wanting this.
"Not really," Sam said.
"Well, you should eat. Dean is cooking burgers; they'll be ready soon. You want some coffee?" Bobby asks.
Maybe the coffee would help. It would give him energy, help the pain fade.
"Sure, Bobby," Sam says.
Bobby wheels away to get the coffee, and brings it to Sam.
Sam chugs the coffee and sits still on the couch. A tremble rocks through his body and he holds on for his life. He thinks about the horsemen that they had hunted. They had their rings and would collect the remaining two. They did not yet know that the rings would be the key to throw Lucifer back inside of his cage. Even though they did not know that they still figured ganking all four of the horsemen would help stop the apocalypse. After all, hunters tended to have good intuition, most of the time.
Sam places the almost empty mug of coffee on the little table that is by the couch he is sitting on. Bobby is drinking coffee as well; Sam wonders in Bobby had put Bourbon in his coffee. It would be just like Bobby.
Soon Dean comes into the room with plates filled with home-cooked burgers. The three hunters eat the comfort food that Dean had prepared and cooked. The delicious food distracts them, and for a moment they are ordinary men eating and watching TV. But they are not ordinary men; they are hunters, and they had to save the world.
Sam wants to ask them if they had gotten any demon blood for him. He knows they said they would ween him off, and right now he wants it so badly. He physically aches, and his mind is fascinating about it. He thinks about asking for just a little bit, but he suppresses the thought for now. He shoves the empty plate away and closes his eyes, trying to will the ache in his body and mind away. He wants to curl up in a fetal position and scream, hold himself and squeeze his eyes shut. He resists, though, tries to be strong, on the surface anyways.
And a quiet strength in Sam says, I am going to quit, I can do it. He knows that later another voice in Sam will whisper, I'll never stop, the stuff is good, it makes me stronger, how is power evil? It's not like I'm drinking the stuff for kicks. There are two desires in Sam waging a war: one side wants to drown in demon blood, the other side wants to quit the stuff forever, suppress his powers, this other voice screams, you are becoming exactly like the monsters - evil things - that you hunt, and soon Dean will kill you, just like he promised on the voicemail right before you went and killed Lilith.
His brother would never kill him, right? But he would become a monster, and monsters deserved to be killed. Monsters were to be killed, even if they weren't doing any killing. Shoot first, ask questions later. You always kill monsters. Even if the monsters are kind, even if the monsters fight their nature, even if they don't kill. Sam has only killed monsters, things; he had never killed humans. But monsters are monsters, and Dean and Bobby and Sam killed monsters. Hell, he would do it himself if he was strong enough. At least, if he really became a monster. Having powers isn't what makes something a monster. Doing things that are evil makes something a monster. And Sam does not want to be a monster...he just wants the powers that the monsters have.
Sometimes, all a monster needs is a friend, a smiling face, someone's shoulder to hold onto.
Right, because monsters are so good at making friends.
Sometimes, all you could do was close your eyes, fight and hold on.
to be continued...