Samantha-dean, Thru Terry Eyes, Starliteyes17, ephiny63 and everyone else who has decided to see where this little rabbit hole leads... Thank You!

Like before, betaed by the ever-delightful wild wolf free17. Everyone should give her cookies.

Angst? What angst? Do you mean the cross with the loopy bit on top?
No, sirree, never seen one. Honestly!
:D

Vicissitudes:
Vacillation
by Sade Lyrate

Yellow eyes flash at him from amidst the crowd they pass, incoherency bleeding out of the Impala's stereo, strumming words as he turns to follow the man with an insane grin plastered on his face.

"But the war's still going on, dear, and there's no end that I know
And I can't say if we're ever...
I can't say if we're ever gonna be free"

But the eyes are gone, and he turns to Dean, except that it's Dad who's driving the Impala. Dad who glances at him, scorn scarring the smile, dark eyes boring into him, pinning him into place with force he hasn't known since...

There's wood under his fingers, splinters threatening to skin him alive even as Dad tears his eldest apart. (No, not Dad. Demon.)

"Keep telling yourself that, Sammy, one day it might even be true."

The voice is like gravel, Dad (Demon) leaning closer, hot breath against the side of his face. (This isn't happening.)

He can't deny the touches covering his body. There's too many hands, too much fire, scorching along his body, burning through his skin, eating at the festering wounds.

He bats at the flames, but his body won't move, and there's nothing but the hands that won't leave his skin, lips without a body whispering along his nerves in a way no one has, not since Jess...face on fire, pale eyes blistering with blame above him.

This, he knew. This is familiar.
It gouged his heart out with grief, but the nightmares of Jessica he knew how to deal with. All he needed to do was wake up.

The dreams spat him out, light tearing through his cornea, body seeking solace from the memory-pain, longing to curl up, throat dry, muscles aching. The dull throb ruled his whole body, cottoned his mouth with the stale residue of crimson and malt, something sweet.

Bedding beneath him, body frozen and the shock searing in a shower of sensations. He twisted, turned, tried to dodge further torture, his body rebelling against every move, headache spiking, stomach senseless.

No longer bound, crippled. But just as helpless in his weakness and disorientation.

Warm hands grabbed him, pulled him, harsh, uncompromising, instincts rearing up to fight and flee. Cacophony of commands, demands, unintelligible save for the timbre and tone, the hold leaving the moment he felt something hard against his back, sheets strangling him from the waist down.

He blinked hard, blind from brightness, hand raised to shelter.

"Sam?"

One word flew over the clamorous noises.

A hand grabbed his, curled his fingers around something cool.

"Drink."

Low, rough, calm before a storm.
Still familiar.

Relief fell through the daze in his head like rain, burying a flock of fears.

Dean.

Closing his eyes, Sam relaxed against the headboard, raised the glass to his lips, took a tentative sip. Water flowed easily down his throat, smoothed over the soreness, burned on his tongue, in his belly with its coldness. It washed away some of the foulness in his mouth, helped clear the heavy clouds in his head. Blinking brought the world back into focus slowly, ears filtered the sounds gradually into coherency. Car passed outside, sunlight pushed through the curtains.

Dark eyes watched him, the lines of Dean's face hard, purple starflower spread over the left side of his face, body tense as he sat in a chair, elbows on knees, hands clasped together, lips rigid.
Sam swallowed, uneasiness arising to pace along with pain. He'd rarely been on the receiving end of the vibe Dean was giving off now: dangerous, threatening, angry.

...looks as bad as it feels?
Or...

The recollections rode happily forward making him feel worse. He tried to ignore them, to prop himself up better, queasiness stirring with even the slightest moves.
Dean's hands tightened their hold, eyes intent.

His feelings turned to winter as he placed the look in the green eyes, his head complaining of thinking. It was a familiar look, death in its wake.

The same look Sam had espied in so many occasions, hardly ever directed at him.

Dead eyes. Halfway in Hell.

He shivered against his will, pulling his legs up, resting his arms on his knees, testing his tongue tentatively. It still felt swollen, but not as bad as it could have been, sugar succeeding the stains of blood and alcohol.
Dean's fingers moved momentarily, something sighing between them.

Rosary?

"How're you feelin'?"

The words caught him off guard, smooth and easy, dark and deadly.

"I'll live."

Dean nodded curtly at the half-whispered words.

"You remember any of it?"

His mouth felt dry. Sure he could. The blow-out. Storming off, angry as hell and feeling fouler the further he got. Some bar. Black eyes, wanting, Duane's mouth on his own. The ropes. The bed. The candles. Number of nightmares, half-real, half-lies.
He bit his lip. Between the beers he remembered and getting knocked out, it felt insane to try and guess what set fact apart from fiction.

Still, leaning his head to his hand, he opened his mouth, voice hoarse, tongue stumbling over phonetics.

"I remember...Thinking drinking was a good idea. Duane Tanner. You barging in. Everything beyond that...I mean, I'm pretty sure the pink elephants weren't really there."

There wasn't laughter, no smart-ass comments, no jovially swept up lips. Dean remained hard and cold, scary like never before, tension pervading the air between them.

"Dean, please...tell me. What happened?"

Dean stared at him for a moment more, stock-still save for the minute murmur of the beads in his hand.

"You really don't remember, do you?" Softly, half to himself, expression losing the sharpest edge, pose slackening if just a smidgen.

"I don't even know how we got out," Sam answered quietly. "What happened, Dean? Where's Duane, or Meg, or...?"

He shook his head slightly, trailing off.

Sighing, the elder Winchester straightened, laid the dark rosary on the table beside two guns, the thick leather-bound journal, refusing to meet Sam's eyes. A moment's thoughtfulness, easy hand resting on the beads.
A glance at him from under brows.

"It can wait 'til you feel better. There's a shower if you think you're up for it. Some food. Water."

Maybe he was just imagining it. Maybe Dean was just worried.
Maybe cows had figured how to fly.

Sam ran a tentative hand through his hair. His last shower had been...what? Week ago? Sure feels like it.

He aimed for a chuckle, but that must have come out wrong, because Dean's fingers twitched, tenseness back in full force.
Sam sighed, laid the now-empty glass on the nightstand.

"Yeah, shower sounds good. About as good as a bottleful of aspirin and lifelong sobriety..."

Mirthless smile touched Dean's lips at that, far cry from the sun-shaming smirk, and he rose as the younger man sought his way out of the sheets.

"Need help?"

"A shower is probably something I'm old enough to tackle on my own, thanks," Sam answered, rising warily, expecting the vertigo. A deep breath, and he braved his way to the bathroom, concentrated enough on keeping the world still that he missed the way Dean's hand caressed the pearly grip on the table, jaw taut, eyes hard as he followed the disheveled form until the door cut the connection.

He leaned against the door, eyes closed to make believe the world wasn't tilting and twisting around him, already regretting the decision. But turning back would mean walking back to the bed, grime and all, suffer either an elder-brother-Dean who wouldn't stop fussing or hurt-like-hell-Dean who wouldn't tell him what was wrong.

As if that was needed...

Gingerly, he stripped out of his jeans and undies, avoided the mirror. He didn't want to see the marks; feeling them, knowing they were there, dotting his torso was enough.

He bit his lip against the dizziness, swallowed back the sickness as he stepped under the shower. The water turned from cool to warm, coughing out as he leaned on his arms against the wall, let the drizzle fall on his back, the hum lull his thoughts.

He would never drink again. But the gruff voice still shivered in the shadows of his skull, murmuring madness and mayhem.
There had to be better ways to deal with that.

Cautiously he reached, touched the scabbed over bump at the back of his head. He hissed at the memory as much as at the soreness, willing himself to just let it go. It didn't matter anymore, anyway. He was safe, and Duane, Meg, whatever...
Hell, he didn't know.

He couldn't be certain.

He remembered reciting an exorcism out of memory.
The great success it had been before all he could think about became pain.

He raised his face to the downpour, failing to stand still as the warm water travelled over his chest, stomach, kissed hotly the burns on his skin.

"If I wanted to fuck a priest, I'd have found one."

Gasping, knees hitting the wet tiles, the shock jolting him back to his senses, to the present, Sam braced himself against the wall, swallowing away the unease. He still didn't understand how any of it was possible.

The Demon's probably laughing its ass off at how easy it was to trap John-fucking-Winchester's son.

His own fault, really.
But he'd been so angry. He shouldn't have, he'd known it was wrong and stupid above all else, but he hadn't been able to stop it. Hadn't really even wanted to stop it for a moment, not with what Dean had said. And the suggestions of the voice had merely grown after he'd...left. Dean.
Again.

And why? Because Dad decided to try and fuck us up one last time?

But Dean believed those words.

Tentatively he got up to his feet, wiped a hand over his face, disregarded the reminders of his little escapade.

That what this is about?
That's why he's so on edge?

Try as he might, he couldn't remember.
Duane on top of him, hands and teeth and candles, Dean, face terrible, the shock shattering any sense of time, freed...bottomless eyes, the Abyss in all its glory in front of him. All that, not really a problem. Twisted, sick, wrong, but too easy to recall. Dean pinned to the wall in cruel imitation of the cabin.
But nothing but dreams and bad feelings after that.

If 'Duane' had kept up his act with Dean, there was no way to tell what had been said or done.
Sam suspected he'd drawn the longest straw by blacking out.

Because demons lied. And the more they lied, the more Dean believed them.

Movements swift, the slight steam inflaming his already questionable balance, Sam turned the shower off, dried himself brusquely in his hurry to get out, try and set things straight between the remaining Winchesters.
The key to that, he felt, laid somewhere in the time he'd spent stumbling towards the Gates of Horn and Ivory.

Author's Notes:
The lyrics in Sam's dream are a (very small) part of Blue Oyster Cult's song "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" (Album: Fire Of Unknown Origin). Which, you know, is my own personal favourite for Dean's Theme Song during the second season. I highly recommend finding and listening it. Or just locating the lyrics and reading them. ;)
Incidentally, I'm irrationally pleased that I got Sam into a shower...
The Bunny's letting me use all sorts of nice images in this tale that I haven't been able to implement in any other storylet!
:D