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When Cas met them back home, Sam took him in his arms and held him close. He attributed Cas’s stiffness as residual shock and exhaustion from what they’d just gone through.
“Are you…” Cas cleared his throat. “Are you alright?”
Sam hesitated. “No,” he said, drawing away. “Seeing him again, it– it brought back a lot of stuff I thought I’d gotten over. Bad memories.”
“If there’s anything I can do to help you…”
Sam smiled a little and closed the distance between them, pressing a feather-light kiss to Cas’s lips. Cas’s mouth tasted bloody and decadent.
“Can you stay the night?” Sam asked. “I just– I need you.”
Something dark flickered through Cas’s eyes, almost too quick for Sam to catch it. He was on edge; it made sense that he was imagining things.
“Of course,” Cas finally said.
He took Cas by the hand and they trailed down the hall to Sam’s bedroom. As soon as the door shut behind them, Sam stripped Cas of his coat and guided him to the bed with one hand around Cas’s necktie. Sam lay back, allowing Cas to fill the space between his spread legs.
Cas kissed him like he’d been starving for it. He’d never kissed like that before. But Sam, so wound up from the memories Lucifer had shown him, from being beaten, from watching Dean and Cas suffer at Lucifer’s hand, just kissed him back. When Cas knotted his fingers in Sam’s hair and pulled, Sam felt nothing but relief. When Cas left bruises along Sam’s neck, he went so dizzy with arousal he thought he might faint.
He didn’t need tenderness. He needed a violence to replace Lucifer’s.
“God, Cas–” It was fucking unbearable. Sam needed him now. “I want you, I want you–”
“You want me?”
“Yes.”
Sam’s eyes were closed. He didn’t see the way Cas grinned as he undid his belt.
—
The next couple weeks were chaotic, so Sam didn’t have another night like that with Cas for a while. Sometimes they would make out while watching bad TV, but it never went further than that. Sam told himself it was because things were stressful right now, and it was killing his libido.
The truth was that Sam felt weird. Cas felt weird. Things seemed just slightly off-kilter since they came back from Hell. Cas looked at Sam differently, touched him differently– like Sam was new and foreign to him, a delicate artifact, a holy relic.
Sam touched Cas on the hip one morning in the kitchen as a silent good morning, and Cas jumped.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Sam said, and leaned down to kiss Cas’s neck.
“That’s alright,” Cas said.
Apparently it was more than alright, because Cas backed Sam up against the kitchen island and brought their lips together. More and more often, Cas would act with a demanding nature, a primal hunger, and Sam hadn’t seen that color on him before. But he went along with it. Maybe he had been hoping against all hope that it really was nothing.
But it was never nothing.
It all came crashing down when Sam offered up his soul with an “I trust you” tied around it in a neat little bow.
Cas had laughed in a voice that wasn’t quite his, and Sam’s brain refused to put it together, kept saying no no no, until he was forced to reconcile himself with reality.
“You’re like the girl who kept turning me down at the prom.”
As his back hit the concrete pillar, Sam thought it was ironic– because he hadn’t turned him down. The past few weeks had been full of yeses. Sam just hadn’t known who he’d been saying yes to.
Lucifer plunged his hand, Cas’s hand, into Sam’s thoracic cavity, and Sam’s vision went white with pain.
The rest of it was a blur. When he looked back on it, he remembered Cas fighting Lucifer off for a few minutes, long enough to explain his reasoning behind his supremely stupid idea. Then Dean had blinked into existence and Cas– Lucifer– had thrown Dean against the wall.
Sam’s ears rang, too loud for him to hear whatever shitty villainous monologue Lucifer was spouting. He dug his knife into his palm and drew a sigil with trembling fingers, oddly thankful that Lucifer was so vain he didn’t notice. Sam forced Lucifer, and subsequently Cas, out of the bunker with a flash of light.
He glanced over to Dean, who was panting and covered in sweat. He didn’t get up. He gave into the insatiable need to break and curled up on the hardwood floor.
“Sammy, hey, hey–” Dean was at his side, shaking him gently by the shoulder. “How bad did he hurt you?”
Sam didn’t know how to quantify it. This was so much bigger than the Winchester scale of one to ten. This wasn’t even a twenty, or a fifty. How do you measure rape? How do you count betrayal?
Sam covered his face with his bloodied hands and cried.
—
There wasn’t much time after Cas’s return for them to officially reunite; that’s probably what would have happened had Sam not been shot and kidnapped by Toni Bevel, because Sam had been neck-deep in grief for his brother and needed the comfort.
But the more Sam thought about it, the more he realized how disastrous it would have been.
It was hard to look Cas in the eye. Sam found himself avoiding interaction with him as much as he could; he’d skip meals, he’d go on long runs, he’d even sleep in other bedrooms. He had scrubbed Lucifer’s touch out of his skin and out of his sheets, but it never felt clean enough.
All Sam could think about was that disgusting devilish smirk that had been plastered on Cas’s beautiful mouth, horrifically out of place. It made him sick to his stomach.
“Sam?”
Cas caught him in the archives; Sam hid there a lot. It was more sheltered than the library.
“Hey, Cas.” Sam tried to present as casual, normal. He’d tried to be that way his whole life and it hadn’t worked out.
“I wanted to ask if you’d like to watch a movie tonight,” Cas said.
Sam knew that code. He knew exactly what Cas was asking for.
“I, uh– I dunno.” Sam turned back to the shelves and resumed organizing. His hands trembled. “I’m pretty swamped.”
“Then maybe we don’t have to watch it.”
Cas’s hand grazed the small of Sam’s back, and Cas stood on his toes to kiss Sam’s neck.
Sam’s mind exploded into panic.
“I can’t,” he stuttered. The files slipped from his hands and papers flew everywhere. “I can’t, I can’t, I–”
He felt like he could pass out, or vomit, or both. He shoved past Cas and made a beeline for the door, hoping Cas would have the sense not to follow.
Sam locked himself in his room and immediately laid down on his bed, trying to stifle the tremors wracking his body.
It was Cas, he told himself, it was Cas and Cas loved him, and would never hurt him.
But that wasn’t true. Cas had said yes to the devil, and it felt like one hell of a double-cross.
Sam put his pillow over his head and sobbed into the welcoming cotton.
-
“Hey, Sammy? It’s me, can you let me in?”
Sam dragged himself to the door to unlock it and was met with Dean’s classic gruff expression of concern. He turned away without saying anything and went back to his bed to sit down. He flipped the pillow over so Dean wouldn’t see the tear stains, even though it was clear Sam had been crying regardless of that.
“So, I had an interesting talk with Cas.”
Sam ducked his head. He and Cas hadn’t told Dean about their hookups. He supposed his breakdown was reason enough for Cas to go to Dean for guidance.
“He told you,” Sam mumbled.
“… Yeah. But that’s not why I’m here.” Dean seemed so desperate to understand, and to help. Sam didn’t know how to let him. “He said you got pretty upset. He’s worried about you.”
Sam’s eyes welled with fresh tears and he clenched his jaw to fight them back.
“He wasn’t sure if you wanted to see him,” Dean went on. “So I told him I’d come check on you.”
Sam sniffed and wiped his nose on the cuff of his sleeve. “I’m okay,” he croaked.
Dean snorted. “Yeah, I’m not gonna act like that was believable.”
“Leave me alone,” Sam said. “Please, just– just get out.”
“Sam–”
“I said get the hell out!” Sam snapped. Memory swept him up and took him back to a couple years ago, when yet another angel had disregarded his consent and used his body. It happened way too fucking often.
Dean remained firm. “Sammy, you’re hurting,” he said. “And Cas and I, we don’t know what to do. You gotta talk to us.”
Sam’s lower lip wobbled. “No,” he whispered. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Dean insisted. “What are you afraid of?”
Everything, Sam wanted to say. “I don’t want you to make fun of me,” he half-wept, throwing any dignity he had left out the window.
“You think I’d do that?”
“You do do that,” Sam protested. “Like when you called me a teen mom. Or how you always talked about angel condoms, or–”
“Okay, okay.” Dean smoothed Sam’s shoulders down. “Take it easy, there’s no use getting worked up like this.”
Sam inhaled shakily to try and calm himself down. “I just… it makes me feel dumb. And like you don’t care.”
Dean was silent for a while.
“Of course I care,” he said finally, a resilience in his eyes that only came to life when he needed Sam to believe in him. He thumbed away the tears on Sam’s cheeks. “I hadn’t thought of it that way before, and I’m sorry.”
Sam nodded to himself and sniffed again. Dean took the blanket at the foot of the bed and draped it over Sam’s back.
“I won’t do it anymore,” Dean promised. “Whatever it is that’s got you feeling so bad, I swear I won’t joke.”
Sam took a deep breath, and told him.
“When Cas was possessed, we…” He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. “I thought maybe I was just imagining that it felt different. I didn’t know.”
Dean didn’t say anything. Sam didn’t blame him.
“The night we came back from Hell, I– I confided in him, I told him how scared I had been.” Sam covered his face with his hands. “And he heard all of it. And I let him comfort me, and touch me, and…” He swallowed the taste of bile in his throat. “I can barely look at Cas anymore without thinking about it.”
When Sam looked up, all the blood had drained from Dean’s face.
“That’s so fucked,” Dean said, his voice broken. “Sammy, I’m so fucking sorry. C’mere.”
Dean pulled him into his arms and Sam trembled against his chest, burying his face in Dean’s shoulder and caving into the need to cry.
“You gotta tell him,” Dean said. “He’s just as clueless as I was. He wasn’t there when Lucifer did those things, he doesn’t know.”
“I can’t, I– I can’t hurt him like that.”
“Look at me.” Dean drew back and took Sam’s face in his hands, forcing eye contact. “You have to say something. It’s not about him– and even if it was, guess what? He wants to know. That way he can fix it.”
“That’s the thing,” Sam said. “I don’t know if he can fix it.”
-
After a few hours of being left alone to gather his thoughts, Sam decided to venture out of his room. The idea of sleeping that night was laughable, so caffeine was a necessity. No sleep meant no nightmares.
Sam came into the kitchen, set on brewing a pot of black coffee to keep himself awake, but his heart sank when he realized Dean and Cas were in there. They had been in the middle of a conversation, speaking to each other in hushed whispers, but they both stopped when they saw Sam in the doorway. It was too late to turn back now.
“Hey, Sam,” Dean greeted, casual as anything. Some of Sam’s anxiety ebbed. “I just put dinner away, but I can reheat something for you, if you want.”
“That’s okay. I just came for some coffee.” Sam felt Cas’s eyes on him, deep blue and lovesick, and it neutralized any comfort that Dean’s presence provided.
Sam wasn’t afraid of Cas. Sam was afraid of Lucifer. Unfortunately, Lucifer had worn Cas’s face for weeks without Sam knowing. That made things a bit complicated.
Dean checked a watch that was not on his wrist. “Damn, uh, you know what? I got a, uh. A thing. Somewhere else.” Dean got up from the table and clapped Sam on the shoulder on his way out. “You got this,” he muttered, quiet enough for only Sam to hear.
Then Dean was gone, and Sam and Cas were left facing each other in the empty kitchen. Sam wondered if he could call on Billie right now; you couldn’t confront people if you were dead.
“How are you feeling?” Cas broke the silence first. He looked about as nervous as Sam felt.
“I’m alright,” Sam said, although he was hugging his arms to his chest and caving in his shoulders, dying to make himself smaller. “Do you– do you want coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
It was the most anxiety-inducing pot of coffee Sam had ever made in his life. By the time the coffee maker was filled with water and the grounds were in the filter, Sam’s heart rate was so high he didn’t think he needed the caffeine at all.
He sat down across from Cas, and he hated how small the kitchen table was. He wished there was more space to separate them. He wished he didn’t wish things like that in the first place.
“I’m sorry I worried you,” he said. He wondered if Dean would count this as talking to Cas even though he was speaking to the wood grain patterns in the table.
“That’s ridiculous,” Cas said, not hesitating for a second. “Caring about you is not an inconvenience.”
Sam lifted his gaze. “I’m guessing you’re not gonna just let this one go?”
“Maybe I would,” Cas admitted, “if it was just this one.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been avoiding me for a while,” Cas said. “At first I thought you were simply recovering from that experience with the British Men of Letters, and I let that go. But then it went on, and on. And I started to wonder if it was me that was the problem.”
Guilt threatened to swallow Sam whole. He hated worrying people. “It’s not you,” he said, and then realized that it was, a little. “I mean, it’s… it’s complicated.”
“Is it because–” Cas ducked his head, clearly ashamed. “I remember when Lucifer hurt you. I was awake.”
Sam would have loved for it to only be that, for his only problem to be that the devil had tried to rip his soul directly from his chest. He considered lying, but then thought about how he would feel if Cas lied to him about something like this. It wouldn’t be fair, not to Cas and not to himself. Sometimes taking care of yourself meant ripping off a couple bandaids now and then.
“When you were possessed, we, um. We were together.”
Cas’s head shot up. “What?”
Sam felt so humiliated that he thought he would melt into the floor. “I was really shaken up after seeing Lucifer again, and I… I guess I wanted the comfort and the release of– of being with you, and… it wasn’t you at all.”
Cas was close to tears.
“I’m sorry,” Sam whispered.
“No, no.” Cas rounded the table and sat beside Sam. “I’m sorry.” He reached out, but then hesitated. “Can I touch you?”
Sam nodded, and Cas hugged him tight. Sam hadn’t expected to feel so much relief at finally giving into touch, hadn’t thought that all the tension in him would seep out and disappear between the kitchen tiles. He’d forgotten what it was like with Cas– the real Cas. He held Sam with a kind of familiarity that Lucifer hadn’t perfected; that cold divine distance didn’t exist in Cas anymore.
“I never thought about the possibility of him hurting you,” Cas said. “Especially not in… that way. It was a terrible mistake, one I can’t amend. And I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“Cas…” Sam pulled away. He wanted to comfort him, even though allowing Lucifer to possess him had been a conscious decision Cas made. Sam remembered what Cas had said in those few minutes he had fought Lucifer back, and he understood how Cas had felt; hopeless in the face of adversity, dying to be of any help and willing to do anything.
“Don’t beat yourself up about this,” Sam said. “You didn’t know.”
“But it’s my responsibility–”
“No. He was controlling you, too.”
“He was able to hurt you because of my actions. And I swore to myself I would never let him lay a hand on you.” A tear fell down Cas’s cheek. “I’ve failed you.”
“No.” Sam palmed Cas’s cheek. “You have to believe me when I say I’m not angry, and I don’t blame you.”
“You should.”
“What good would that do?” Sam stroked Cas’s cheekbone with his thumb. “It would kill me not to have this anymore because of something he did. That wasn’t you.”
Cas leaned forward until his forehead touched Sam’s, and Sam caught Cas’s lips in his own. His heart pounded enough to make his ribs ache, but that feeling of wrongness wasn’t there. This was Cas; this was real.
“I– I want you,” Sam breathed. He could taste Cas’s sea-salt tears. “I just need time.”
“I understand.”
The coffee pot hummed and gurgled in the corner as it finished its brew, breaking up the silence. He kissed Cas again to quiet the laughter of the devil in the back of his head.