A/N: Sorry about taking a bit to post this. I had most of it written but I started my new job before I could finish. Thanks to all the readers and reviewers, for all the favorites and follows. You make my day.
Chapter 4:
Grapefruit.
I opened my eyes and wasn't surprised to see Jess. She always smelled the same. Of grapefruit and sunshine and the electrified edge of lightning right around the corner. She was golden and hazy like any self-respecting dream should be, but I could recognize her by scent alone. I smiled at her and her blue eyes smiled back, her fingers lightly dancing across my chest. The burning started almost immediately.
I'd forgotten about this part.
Jessica's forked tongue slid into my ear, tickling it. But I was past caring about such a minor annoyance. My back was arched in agony off the bed, the same one we'd shared in our apartment together before she was killed. The pain rioted across my nerve endings, up and down my body. Up and down and up and down.
"I love you, Sam," Jess breathed in the ear she was licking. "So much, I don't know what I'd do without you." She giggled lightly, a parody of her real laugh.
"Stop. Please." I couldn't help but beg as the torture only got more intense. I could feel my fingers melting, but when I brought them up to push at Jess, they looked solid.
"All mine," my girlfriend whispered. "I can do anything I want with you, for as long as I want to." She stroked a cool hand down my thigh, almost a relief against the flames that were taking over the room. Almost. "And there's nothing you can do about it."
The scene changed, but the pain continued. Now I was in the Impala chained to the steering wheel, Jess in the backseat with her soft hands caressing my shoulders. My muscles were liquefying, my blood boiling, but I smiled. She'd made a mistake.
Summoning a memory wasn't hard when I was sitting in my home.
Instead of Jess, instead of flames, I saw Dean. The Dean that smiled. The Dean that whistled on the way to the bathroom, that threw Cheetos at my head when I was too engrossed in a book to listen to his snarky comments, that insisted on playing the same damn Led Zeppelin song fifty times in a row just because he knew it got on my nerves. The Dean that always made me stand and fight when I most wanted to flee.
Jess howled in rage and both she and the image of the Impala faded away, back into the stark image of Lucifer and the Cage. "Well played, Sammy boy." He stood in all of his angelic glory, but I could still see his serpent form behind the glowing wings, like an imprint left by too bright a light.
I knew my Dean's image wouldn't last long, not if Lucifer sent me back to what he liked to call Solitary, an entirely ironic name. The success was still sweet, though, no matter how short-lived.
Lucifer flicked a wing, a tail, and I was back in Solitary. As the darkness closed in and the sounds of waking monsters grew louder, I clung to my big brother, my happy brother, and he kept me safe as long as he could. But the beasts woke up and the blackness writhed and I understood that my brother wasn't there.
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I jerked awake, slapping at my limbs that were strangely whole. Trying to understand, I laid there gasping. Bobby's couch. Why was I on Bobby's couch?
It came back to me slowly. The snow, the truck, Dean. Oh God, Dean.
Showing him my scars was a mistake, I knew that now. It was only because I had been so stunned to actually see my brother again. I didn't think about how he'd react until I was about to take off my shirt. For the barest moment in Bobby's room, I'd felt normal. With Dean by my side, taking care of me like he hadn't done since I was a kid, I forgot that I'd spent a couple lifetimes as Lucifer's chew toy.
But he'd seen my hesitation in the bathroom and looked too closely. In typical Dean fashion, he ordered me to reveal what I desperately wanted to hide. He saw the mutilation of my body, the mutilation that I hardly thought of anymore, and I saw what it did to him.
His frown, his glare, his shoulders tightening, all signs of the sudden weight I had just put back onto him. I hated the way the levity had faded from his eyes as he stared. If he hadn't burst out of the house and found me so unexpectedly, I probably would have let him live his life without me dragging him down like I always do.
But he'd seen me, and now I had to try and fix the damage my appearance caused.
Hearing low voices from the kitchen, I sat up. The window behind me revealed the sun, still high in the sky. The nightmare hadn't let me sleep long.
No, not a nightmare. It was a memory. I ran my fingers through my hair, still damp from my scalding shower where I'd tried to scrub off my scars for an hour, and thought back to one of my only victories in the pit. I could count them on one hand.
The devil rarely made mistakes, and he never made them more than once.
That particular victory was bittersweet. It was my first, my only, for so many years, and I had been punished for it so severely that I didn't remember that I had a brother until Lucifer saw fit to remind me.
I shuddered and tried to blank my mind. None of that mattered now. I was out. Somehow, some way, I was out and Lucifer couldn't touch me anymore. The only thing that mattered was Dean. He couldn't find out, or I'd never see my Dean again, the old Dean from before the world went nuts and took me down with it.
I stood up and stretched, feeling resolved.
He can't find out how broken I really am.
*******************************SPN*******************************
"You gotta eat something," Bobby said gruffly. He pushed a plate of eggs towards Dean before digging into his own pile.
Dean absently started eating, but he didn't taste it. Nor did he see the old hunter's concerned look in between bites. All he could see were the hideous markings on his brother's too thin body. He'd imagined so many scenarios of what his little brother was suffering in the pit, but he hadn't been prepared to see the evidence so clearly on Sam's skin.
"I don't know what you saw up there," Bobby said, interrupting Dean's thoughts. "But you—"
"He's scarred. From neck down, scars." Dean choked on his mouthful of eggs as remembered. "Lucifer played tic-tac-toe on his fucking stomach, carved it into his fucking skin," he growled.
Bobby blanched and Dean wanted to take satisfaction in making the old hunter understand, but he wouldn't be satisfied until he could kill the devil himself. Which he couldn't do. Not now, not ever. He stabbed at his breakfast with his fork as if it were Lucifer's throat.
"You're acting like you expected Sam to come out of the Cage with roses sprouting out of his ears," Bobby shrugged. "Sam doesn't need your anger, Dean. He needs to know he's safe. That he's out and that you," he gestured with his fork for emphasis, "Are here for him. Are you?"
"Of course I am, Bobby, you know that," Dean muttered, feeling chastised.
"I do, but does Sam?"
"Do I know what?" Sam asked walking in from the living room. He scraped the remainder of the eggs out of the skillet on a plate. "Mind if I finish?"
Neither of the other hunters moved, so Sam started eating as if they weren't staring at him. Dean couldn't help much imagine the scars that were hidden by the sleeves of Sam's shirt. Couldn't stop replaying Sam pulling his shirt off and revealing them.
Bobby cleared his throat and stood up, breaking the silence. "Well, I gotta check something outside, so I'll just let you boys finish up."
Sam nodded and continued munching. Once Bobby left, he rinsed his plate in the sink. "I'm fine, Dean, seriously."
Smirking, because his brother was so not fine, but it was like him to insist that he was. Dean scoffed. "Yeah, Sammy. You're fine. You just got out of Hell and you're completely recovered. How long did you sleep? An hour?"
"I wasn't tired," Sam answered, not looking at his brother to see if he accepted the lie. He didn't.
"Sam," Dean sighed, standing up and bringing his own plate to the sink. Sam made room and looked his brother in the eye.
"I am fine," he enunciated and left the room in one of his characteristic huffs.
"No you're not, Sammy," Dean said to the empty room. "But I don't know how to help."