Chapter Text
The cage itself was hot.
And not just hot. It was scalding. It was standing on the surface of a sun one billion times hotter than Earth’s. The air shimmered and warped with heat, frying Sam’s skin and cooking his eyes in his skull until they were hard. The cage warped and discolored, but never melted. The chains steamed and burned to touch. The hooks that pierced his skin and hung him from the ceiling were molten white and cauterized the wounds they created, sizzling and smoking against his raw, ripped flesh. It was burning alive. It was being cooked slowly like a frog in boiling water. It was every molecule in his body rapidly colliding against each other until they exploded apart, only to be put back together again before he could appreciate the relief of being dead. It was hot.
But Lucifer was cold.
The air around him steamed with the sudden change in temperature, and it made Sam’s breath fog, his lungs constrict and burn as they were suffocated in a perpetual cycle of air too hot and so cold it condensed into water inside him. Lucifer’s skin had the icy touch of a corpse. His hands in Sam’s chest made his exposed muscles shiver and spasm, made patches of frostbite bloom across his organs. His frigid tongue left a trail of frost across his skin, his bones. He pressed Sam against the metal bars of the cage, searing him like a steak (and he’d eat him like one, too) while he stood flush against him, his skin freezing until it was brittle and cracking. The bone marrow on one side of his body boiling while the rest of it froze solid.
He would break off pieces of Sam and lift them to his lips, savoring them like truffles, licking the blood off his fingers. He’d cut Sam open to drink from his veins, watch him bleed past death, and never let him die. He’d tie him to the bars by the tendons in his wrists to keep him still whenever Sam resisted. And when he didn’t, when he couldn’t summon the strength to fight Lucifer’s rough hands and sharp teeth and icy tongue, he would whisper in his ear with breath so cold it popped his eardrums. Sometimes in English. Sometimes in Enochian.
“There are some things I can’t do without a ‘yes’, being an angel and all,” he’d say. “I might not be able to possess your body, Sam, but I can own it. I can have it. I can enter it.”
He would taunt him. Peel his melted skin off of the floor of the cage and lay it back over Sam’s wounds gingerly, like a bandage. He’d laugh when Sam cried. He’d hurt him slowly, gingerly, with faux-affection so sickly sweet it made Sam’s teeth ache. “You love it,” he would tell him. “You love this almost as much as I do, look at you. You’re softer than clay in my hands.” Then he’d pull Sam apart and mold his flesh in his hands. Force it past Sam’s lips. Or drink it from his own palm.
Sam could feel him. Everywhere.
“You asked for this,” he’d purr into Sam’s ear. “You begged for it. If you’d only been this enthusiastic when we met, Sam. We could’ve avoided all this.” It wasn’t a lie. Just a taunt. It was almost a relief when the chill of him overwhelmed the heat of the cage, like a balm applied to a burn. Almost. “Even now, you dream about it.”
The chill became cold became frostbite. Sam could feel his insides beginning to freeze. The raging fire replaced with a stinging numbness that reached the deepest ventricles of his heart and infiltrated his mind. Panic. Heavy and solid and creeping down his spine like a glacier. Lucifer cooed.
“Don’t worry, Sam,” he said, and he was smiling. First with Nick’s face, then Cas’. Then Sam’s. And then his own. His horrible, glorious, mind bending face. It made Sam’s brain swell in the confines of his skull and leak from his eyes. He was beautiful, it was the most horrific thing Sam had ever seen. “This isn’t just a dream. It’s a vision. It’s your future.”
He pulled Sam away from the bars, ripping some of the skin off his back as he did. Sam felt his organs shift inside his body, tethered by nothing. His liver was pressed uncomfortably against his intestines. He screamed. Lucifer swallowed it.
“I promise.”
Sam felt the fight flood back into his muscles— what little was left of them, anyway. He pushed Lucifer off of him and crawled, broken and bloody and disfigured, to the other end of the cage. Every movement was torment, every step exhausting. But not fruitless. Not like it used to be. Sam’s dreams had the unfortunate condition of being true. But he could still wake up from them.
He screamed and cried and threw himself against the bars. He pushed past the pain and the heat and the cold at his back and pressed the full force of his shredded body against the metal. Lucifer mocked him, whining and crying out his brother’s name, and it made Sam want to rip his tongue out of his mouth and shove it up his—
He was falling. He thought, anyway. He could still hear Lucifer’s screams, but the cage was far above him. He had pushed his way through the bars of the cage and now he was plummeting into nothingness. It was the opposite of the cage. Not hot or cold. No pain and no peace. No light, not even dark, really. Just… nothing. And then he hit the ground.
Sam gasped and spluttered for air, his lungs knocked empty by the impact. He didn’t know how far he had fallen, or where he was now. But it was dark. Not nothing. Just dark. There were forms hiding in the shadows: vague shapes and outlines his pain and panic-addled brain couldn’t make sense of.
Sam wailed, his throat raw and voice dead. Tears poured from his eyes in fat drops and ran through the blood on his face, leaving clean-ish trails in their wake. He didn’t know where he was, or if Lucifer was there too. He just wanted to wake up. He should’ve been able to wake up.
Sam scrambled for cover, crawling under a bed in the center of the room. He was a big guy, but he was so broken and misshapen at this point that he should be able to fit. He curled himself up into a ball, tucking his head and knees into his chest and covering himself with his arms. Maybe if he could hide, just for a second, he could get a reprieve.
“Sammy?” Sam gasped and curled up tighter on himself, his chest heaving with panicked breaths, his shoulders shaking with sobs. “There you are. Sammy—,”
“No,” Sam curled himself up tighter. “No I can’t take it anymore, I can’t… please, please—,”
“Alright, alright, Sammy,” said Lucifer. And his voice was so soft and warm and concerned it almost convinced Sam to lift his head.
“Please, just leave me alone,” Sam sobbed. There was blood running from his nose and eyes and everything was hot but he was shivering. It was like he’d never left the cage. Maybe he hadn’t.
“Sam,” said Lucifer. “I can’t understand what you’re asking for, kiddo.”
Sam couldn’t respond. His mind was a whirlwind of fear and hate and any rational thought he had was caught in the eye of the storm. But kiddo broke through. Not as a word with a meaning and a person attached to it, but as a sound. Syllables. Kid-doh. It wasn’t a sound that Sam heard in the cage. As incoherent as this thought process was, all he could manage was a congested grunt, choking on his own blood as it flowed down the back of his throat and into his lungs.
“Hey, hey,” said the voice. Was it Lucifer? It didn’t sound like him. Something about it sounded wrong in that it didn’t sound wrong. There was no mistake in the inflection or condescension in the tone that were usually present when Lucifer imitated a voice Sam knew. If he could just place it. Just push through the wind and debris of his hysteria a little further to the clear skies. “Breathe, kiddo. Nice and slow.”
Dean.
The truth didn’t hit Sam or wash over him. It was just suddenly there, like he’d opened his eyes to it. It wasn’t all clear or apparent to him. His mind was torn between trusting his gut and trusting the sliver of common sense breaking through the clouds. But he knew where he was, now. He was in the Men of Letter’s Bunker. If he thought really hard, he was sure he could remember where that was, too. He was in his room, under his bed. The voice, the only thing he was certain of in the entire universe, was Dean. His big brother.
Sam pulled his head slowly out from under his arms, only enough for his eyes to peak over the crest of his shoulder. And there he was. Fuzzy and confusing in the dark, crouched awkwardly beside Sam’s bed to peer beneath it. His feet were bare, his toes poking out from the edges of his pajama bottoms. His pendant was clutched in the hand that wasn’t stabilizing him against the bed to stop it from swinging into his face. When his eyes met Sam’s, a tentative smile broke over his face that Lucifer couldn’t replicate in a thousand creations.
“Dean?”
“Hi,” Dean said. He groaned as he shifted position to lie down on his back, still beyond the imaginary barrier created by the bedframe. Allowing Sam his space. He turned his head against the cold concrete— cold, the floor was cold— and met Sam’s eyes again. He didn’t smile this time. He studied. His eyes roved over Sam’s entire body methodically, like a parent who had learned all of their kids' common injuries and knew where to look. “Where are you?”
It wasn’t relief that overcame Sam then, but an intense, burning embarrassment. He became suddenly aware of his choking, hiccuping sobs. That it was snot dripping from his nose and sweat running down his back, not blood. His legs weren’t broken, they were still tangled in his bedsheets. He buried his face in his arms again, trying to hide the shameful rouge dusting his cheeks. He could feel it burning on his ears and behind his eyelids. The sensation only made him cry harder.
“I–I don’t— don’t,” he gasped, choking on the mucus in the back of his throat when he tried to quell his sobs. They punched out of him in a wet cough.
“Okay, Sammy, it’s okay,” Dean soothed, and Sam peaked through his arms in response. Dean raised his hand, as if to reach out, but let it fall to his chest instead. His fingers wrapped around the pendant at his collarbone. His thumb rubbed across his knuckles in a back and forth motion that Sam knew would be caressing his nape if it weren’t out of reach. Dean had always gravitated to Sam’s face and neck when it came to touch.
So did Lucifer.
Sam curled tighter around himself, another pained cry ripping itself from his throat as he tried to separate them in his mind: Dean and Lucifer. Their touch, their words, their voices. He knew that Dean was not Lucifer, that he would never hurt him as Lucifer had. But it all felt the same. It all felt like a threat.
Sam could feel his heart pounding beneath his chest, trying to escape his ribs just as he had escaped the cage. Beating against his sternum with the ferocity of a trapped animal, savage and afraid. He wanted to help it. He wanted to reach into his chest, break through the porcelain-gilded cage that lay beneath the skin and muscle and sinew and rip his heart free of its vascular restraints. He just wanted to be free of it.
“I know, Sammy. I know,” came Dean’s voice. It sounded wet. Dean cleared his throat. “But you are free. You’re here, in the bunker. Not in the cage.” Another wet sob came unbidden from deep in Sam’s chest, barely restrained despite his best efforts, and Dean sighed.
“You know what always used to calm you down when you were little?” He said. Sam whimpered. “I would, uhm… well, Mom used to sing me ‘Hey, Jude’, right? But I used to sing you ‘Hey, Dude’.” He chuckled to himself, quiet in volume but loud in its genuineness. Sam couldn’t see Dean, but he thought he could hear the absence of his smile, the next time he spoke.
“I don’t know… I’m afraid to help you, anymore,” he whispered. “I don’t know what’s still between… still between us. And what that bastard used against you in the cage.” Sam coughed, choking on the humidity of the recycled air in the little alcove he’d made under his arms. His face was wet with tears and perspiration and mucus. He felt disgusting. Dean continued, “I hate thinking about all of the things he… perverted. All of the ways that I…”
Sam had never been incredibly open with Dean about the torture he’d experienced in the cage. Why would he be? It wouldn’t do either of them any good to relive it, so Sam had figured it was best to let sleeping hellhounds lie. But he knew what Dean meant. Everyday felt like tip-toeing through a minefield, never sure what familiar ground they might tread, only to discover a bomb had been laid beneath their feet.
“Did he ever sing ‘Hey, Jude’?” Dean asked, tentatively. He never asked about Sam’s time in the cage, just like Sam never asked Dean about his time in hell. The question, as innocuous as it was, made a shiver run up Sam’s spine. But he shook his head. “Good… okay. Okay, good.”
It was quiet for a beat, aside from Sam’s infantile cries. No matter how hard he tried, he could not stop them from coming. It didn’t matter that his mind became clearer with each passing moment. His body was still asleep, still dreaming. Still afraid. And no amount of reason or discipline would calm it.
And then another noise made it through the tears. A breathy drone— humming. Quiet and a little unsure, raspy with the last dregs of sleep clinging to his throat, Dean was humming. He was humming ‘Hey, Jude’.
The humming was only loud enough to reach the darkest corners of the room. It seemed to chase away the last echoes of Sam’s nightmare: Lucifer’s laughter, the rattling of chains, the sizzling of skin. It gave Sam something other than the beating of his heart or his trembling body to focus on. Something other than his humiliation or fear. Over the course of what felt both like several hours and just a few minutes, Sam’s body began to catch up with his mind. His muscles relaxed. Broken wails calmed into hiccuping sobs ebbed into the occasional whimper. His breath stuttered in and out of his lungs unevenly, but at least he was breathing again.
Dean stayed.
Without the motivation of abject horror, Sam was unable to stand the stifling humidity any longer and pulled his arms away from his head, sighing shakily when he felt the cool night air flow over his skin and dry the wetness on his face. He let his head rest against the hard floor (unaware until that moment that he’d been holding it up off the ground) and opened his eyes, meeting Dean’s gaze.
Dean had stopped humming in favor of watching Sam open up to the world as a gardener might watch his flowers bloom: full of hope and pride. If he had any energy left in him, the paternal expression would’ve made Sam squirm. But as it was, all the adrenaline had drained from him and he couldn’t summon the will to feel anything at all.
“Hey,” Dean said quietly. Sam frustratedly swallowed back a fresh wave of tears (what on earth was setting him off now?) and nodded in response. “Where are you?”
“Here,” Sam croaked. Dean nodded, as if Sam’s one word answer had given him all the information he needed.
“Good,” Dean said. “That’s, that’s good.”
“Sorry for… for waking you up,” Sam mumbled, his ears burning again. Dean made a face of agreement, but it only lasted for a second, and was quickly overtaken by something almost like regret.
“You… that’s okay, Sammy,” he said, softly. “Of course it’s okay.”
Suddenly overcome with exhaustion, Sam wanted nothing more than to let his heavy eyes slip closed. But he knew that if he did, he’d see fire behind his eyelids. And as fresh as the image of the cage was in his head, he didn’t think he could handle a refresher yet.
“Tired?” Dean asked. Sam blinked.
“I— I don’t think I can sleep,” he whispered. Dean hummed.
“Right,” he said. “Well—,” he groaned as he lifted himself into a sitting position, then onto his knees. Sam felt panic begin to rise in him and dug his thumb into his palm, an old and useless habit. “The least we should do is get you out from under the bed. Whaddya think?”
As childish as it was, Sam felt an intense urge to refuse. He didn’t want to be witnessed in the state he was in. Didn’t want anyone to see him crawl out from where he’d scurried in fear. Didn’t want the ambient light of the bunker to reveal his puffy red eyes or the wet sheen on his face. He didn’t want to be watched as he struggled to untangle his legs from his bedsheets. Didn’t want to be seen drenched in cold sweat and tears and his own drool, probably. He wanted to hide. From Lucifer. From the world.
“Let me help you, little brother,” said Dean. Sam saw that he had knelt so he could see under the bed again, meet Sam’s eyes. His hand extended toward Sam, slowly and smoothly, like one might try to touch a frightened animal. “Please.”
That was all Dean wanted. All he had ever wanted. All he had ever asked for.
Sam reached out to take Dean’s hand, his rough and calloused palm familiar to him. Warm and solid. Dean’s thumb brushed firmly over the old scar on Sam’s hand, now pale and faded, and Sam wondered if he’d done it on purpose. If he even remembered how he’d saved Sam that day.
Before he could think about it too long, Dean was pulling him out from under the bed. Sam tried his best to help, but his legs were too constricted to be of any use, and he was pretty sure he just made it more difficult. When he was free, Dean crouched in front of him and leaned him back against the bedframe, so he was sitting up straight.
Sam looked down, avoiding Dean’s searching eyes in favor of picking at his bedsheets. As he expected, the first thing Dean did was touch his face, his hand coming up to wrap firmly around the nape of his neck, his thumb swiping at the tears under Sam’s eyes. With the same thumb, he tilted Sam’s chin upward. Not to force him to make eye contact, but just so he could more easily examine his face.
“Alright,” Dean breathed. “I’ll be right back, okay?” He didn’t go anywhere, though. Just looked at Sam some more. Sam’s breath stuttered again and he turned to hide his whimper in Dean’s palm, leaning into the calluses there. Callused like dad’s hands. “Be right back,” Dean said again, steeling himself more than Sam, it seemed, before he stood to make his way to the bathroom connected to Sam’s bedroom.
Without his big brother there, the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to bend and stretch toward Sam like ugly, bony fingers. Shame expanded in his chest like a balloon as he squeezed his eyes shut against the creeping shapes, creating a tickling static wherever it rubbed up against his insides. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, trying to contain the balloon at the same time as he tried to convince himself that what he was seeing wasn’t real. The shadows weren’t moving, the darkness wasn’t coming for him. No demons were in the bunker waiting to drag him back down to the cage like Lucifer had told him would happen. Like he’d shown him. It wasn’t real.
When a hand landed on his arm, Sam only barely had enough sense left not to throw a punch at its owner. As it was, he startled hard, thwacking his head on the bedframe at his back hard enough for the ring to echo around the small room. He winced and sucked air through his teeth, and when he reached up for the back of his head, he found Dean had beaten him to it, his hand gently cradling his sore crown as if to guard it from further damage.
“Oh, shit!” Dean whispered, giggling boyishly. He tried valiantly to school the smile threatening to break across his face, but Sam could see it tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Are you okay?”
It was as if the bump had lifted the weight that was laying over the room. Except Sam knew it wasn’t the bump. It was Dean. Dean’s sudden childishness. His presence as a parent and again a brother, a childhood friend. It was Dean’s bravery to feel joy in such a tense moment that allowed Sam to feel his.
He broke down in giggles. A little manic, sure. Still timid, certainly. But as Dean began to wipe down his face with the damp cloth he’d retrieved from the bathroom, Sam could barely catch his breath. The washcloth was warm and a little rough as it passed over his skin. But it tickled when it brushed under his jaw, and it wiped away all the wetness that clung to the creases in his neck. It made him clean.
After Dean had finished wiping down his face, he gently untangled Sam’s bedsheets from his legs. Sam’s knees felt like jelly and his hips ached from squeezing himself into the small space under the bed, but with Dean’s help he was able to rise to his feet. Dean walked him back to the mattress and sat him down slowly, rolling his eyes when Sam groaned.
“Sore knees, grandpa?” he teased. Sam scoffed.
“You’re older than me, dumbass,” he said, his eyes following Dean as he crossed the room to Sam’s dresser, rooting through the drawers until he found whatever he was looking for and tucked it beneath his arm.
When he came back to Sam’s bedside, he looked pointedly down at Sam's shirt, soaked through with sweat, and Sam followed suit. With a small huff, Dean unfolded the thing from beneath his arm— a ratty old shirt Sam had been sleeping in since college— and bunched it up by the hem, holding it out between them.
“Arms up,” he whispered. Sam could have refused without ruining the moment. On another night Sam would have chuckled and taken the shirt from Dean. Treated the whole thing like a joke and put it on himself. Or he could have reached out for the shirt with an appreciative nod, maybe a mumbled thanks. Dean would have clapped Sam on the shoulder and squeezed the back of his neck affectionately.
But on this night, Sam’s hands were shaking too much to grasp the hem of his shirt. The texture of it, the heavy dampness against his skin, felt too much like blood. And Dean was right in front of him, his eyes furrowed softly in an expression of concern Sam was sure he must’ve learned from their mother.
Sam lifted his arms above his head, allowing Dean to loop his fingers under the hem of his T-shirt. In as smooth a motion as he could, aside from when it got caught on Sam’s ear, he lifted the shirt over Sam’s head. Sam closed his eyes against the damp and the darkness but it was over as soon as it started, then Dean tossed the shirt onto the mattress beside him.
The night air made Sam shiver when it hit his clammy skin, raising gooseflesh up and down his arms and torso. Dean avoided his eyes, pretending to fumble with the shirt as he guided the sleeves over Sam's arms. Sam recognized this, all of it. A hazy, dusty relic of his childhood that hadn't been acknowledged since he was too small to really remember, but still flickered to life at the corners of his memory. Buried somewhere not too deep, listening to his Pati sing a silly rendition of their mom’s favorite song while he changed Sam's shirt and cleaned his face, then tucked him back into bed with a spell and a ruffle of his hair. Not forgotten, just tucked away somewhere safe. With the part of Sam that was still the little boy Dean had cared so much for.
That he cared for now, Sam realized as his big brother tugged the shirt down over his head.
“Thanks,” Sam mumbled when Dean adjusted his sleeves. He waved it off with furrowed brows, looking over Sam once more. And maybe Sam would have let him move on, but not tonight. Not anymore.
He leaned forward until his forehead could rest against Dean which, with Sam sitting and Dean standing, was right around his stomach. He felt Dean’s hand slide from his shoulders up to his head, probably more reflex than conscious choice, and sighed at the sensation. He loved when people played with his hair, not that he’d ever admit it. Not that Dean didn’t already know.
“Thank you,” he said again, firmer this time. Dean’s hand trembled lightly against his scalp. His grip tightened ever so slightly. “For everything. Not… not just tonight.” Sam swallowed.
“Sam.”
“Thank you for raising me,” Sam could feel his gratitude welling up in his throat, behind his eyes. He closed them against the burn. “Not just for, for protecting me. From Dad and bullies at school and-and the world, but… for actually raising me. For being gentle. And kind. And forgiving. Even when no one taught you how to be.”
“I had Mom—,”
“Don’t,” Sam shook his head. He felt Dean shudder, the way your muscles do when you’re trying to hold something back. “Don’t put it all on her, Dean. You were four. You were four and you lost Mom and… and, you lost Dad too. And you could have let that make you bitter and-and mean like it made him but you didn’t. For me.”
“I know there’s a lot you think I don’t know about,” Sam cried. It wasn’t panicked and desperate like it had been just a few minutes earlier. It was relieving. A release of things left unsaid for decades. “Things you’ve done. Things you’ve sacrificed. Things you resent. And I need you to hear— need you to know— that I’m so sorry and so, so grateful.”
Dean’s arms wrapped fully around Sam then, one arm looped around his shoulders while the other curled around the back of his head. He pulled Sam into him as if he were trying to quiet him, stop him from saying something he’d regret. But it wasn’t the words Sam regretted, it was all the time they’d been left unsaid. All the years when gratitude had been an unspoken truth between them. Even now, the silence felt impenetrable. It tried to break them apart and fill the space between them. So Sam wrapped his arms around Dean and held him fast.
Time passed, just like that, though Sam had no idea how much. He was eventually roused, unaware he’d even fallen asleep, when Dean cleared his throat and pulled away from the embrace. “Alright, it’s bedtime,” he said, sniffing with feigned nonchalance. Sam huffed sleepily, barely resisting the urge to rub his eyes.
“I’m not a child.”
“No, but I’m still older than you—,”
“Four years.”
“And you have to do what I say.” Sam sighed but did what he was told, climbing back onto his mattress while Dean went into his closet to grab a spare blanket (one that wasn’t soaked in sweat). He tossed it unceremoniously at Sam’s feet, any lingering sentimentality seemingly gone, and watched Sam shakily unfold it.
Dean looked Sam up and down one last time, maybe scanning for anything he might have missed the numerous times he’d already checked. When he found nothing, he grabbed the bottom corners of the blanket and covered Sam’s feet with a sigh almost like resignation. Then without another glance in Sam’s direction he headed for the door.
“Goodnight, Dean,” Sam said, feeling stupid and childish.
Dean didn’t turn around or stop or even pause at the door. He just pulled the door shut behind him and, at the last second before it closed, whispered back:
“Goodnight, little brother.”