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The very first thing that Sam says to him is that he’s sorry, and Dean, working tirelessly to control his anger in the Post Mark of Cain Era of his life, doesn’t punch Sam. Sam looks fucking green and Dean can’t punch the Devil and he’s still feeling like he’s living out some kind of nightmare and he’ll wake up and be in the bunker and then he and Sam will have an argument about Sam staying back because Dean wouldn’t know what to do if Sam died over here.
“Are you good?” It’s more pointed than Dean would normally start with, but since Sam stumbled into camp he hasn’t met his eyes, and Dean can’t take his eyes off of Sam, off the black-dark blood dried across Sam’s cheek and neck and chest, flaking when he moves, off the tears in his coat that make Dean pray that Sam died quickly, even though Sam kept calling out after the vamps dragged him away. Can’t stop looking at the smooth skin on Sam’s neck where he saw blood spurt out at an angle Dean would have thought cheap for the cheesiest of horror flicks, but turns his stomach when he thinks about Sam trying to staunch the flow of his own blood with his own hands, hands which are fumbling with his phone, turning it over and over and over in his palms.
“I’m alive,” Sam answers, trying to meet his eyes, which isn’t the same as being okay, but it’s also a start.
“Then you have nothing to apologize for,” Dean says, which isn’t right, it isn’t what he wants to say. He wants to take Sam’s face in his hands and scream. But to say what? To start this conversation over — to say, I’ve noticed how jumpy you are when Lucifer is around, how right now you’ve got 80% of your focus on him, and you died, Sam, you died. I should be apologizing to you. All of it’s an old, old dance. They’ve done it too many times. And he just needs to wake up from this nightmare before it loops back to the beginning, and they’re back in that cave and Sam’s pinned down by vamps and covered in his own blood, and Dean is too far away and too late and Sam is dead and the world always feels worse with Sam not in it.
He pulls Sam in by his shoulders, stretches a little to rest his chin on Sam’s shoulder, feels Sam do the same, hesitant. Sam’s trembling, so Dean clutches tighter, feels Sam’s heart beat, the warmth of Sam’s breath against his neck, the unsteady rise and fall of Sam’s chest, the way Sam lets himself relax for just a second. Sam alive. Dean didn’t even have to do anything stupid this time.
He only lets go because Sam is starting to retreat. Dean would be perfectly happy to stay like this for the rest of time, feeling his brother alive against him.
Sam is insistent on dealing with Lucifer like this is somehow his responsibility, like it’s his fault. When he held him, he could feel Sam’s taught muscles under his grip, keeping it together so precariously, so Dean lets it go. Maybe Sam does need it, maybe if Sam is able to deal with Lucifer, finally, actually deal with him so he doesn’t have to spend eternity trapped with him somewhere, or Lucifer doesn’t end up somehow walking the earth again, they can both put Hell behind them. It’s wishful thinking and Dean doesn’t want Sam to have to deal with it, but fine - Sam’s alive, if a little shaky on his Bambi legs, and this is what Sam wants. He wants to be the one to finally put an end to the Devil, he wants Mom to come back home with them and to be safe. Fine. What Dean wants is for Sam to not have had his throat ripped out by vampires and not look like ash gray, chewing on his cheek and not meeting Dean’s eye like he’s somehow to blame for the Devil being a dick. Fine.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Dean says instead of picking a fight with Sam, who is startled by the question and keeps casting sideways glances to where Cas is watching Lucifer, where Lucifer is trying to weasel his way under Cas’s skin and where it’s likely working.
Sam makes a face , that twisted face he makes all the time now, like he’s trying to smirk or he’s preparing to give Dean a long-suffering sigh, but he doesn’t really have it in him. “No, Dean, come on,” he says, looking between Dean and the Literal Devil. Dean doesn’t think about this morning — fuck, just this morning — and Sam’s bright smile. A world away was enough space between him and the devil. “We’re kinda…in the middle of something, you know.”
“Sammy, you’re — you’re covered in your own blood,” Dean points out, like maybe Sam doesn’t know, although of course Sam knows. They’ve both been bloodied enough to know that when it’s that much blood it’s sticky and itchy, and besides, Dean can’t look at it. Can’t look at Sam with all that blood on his face and on his shirt and his jacket. “Sam, please.” He says it softly, like maybe Sam will get it. Dean needs to get him out of those clothes just so he doesn’t have a fucking heart attack every time he glances his way.
Sam nods. Maybe he gets that this isn’t about him, it’s about Dean, Lucifer looks over at them, waves to Sam just to see him flinch. Wolf-whistles when Sam shrugs out of his jacket. Sam grows somehow paler and Dean doesn’t exactly have a death wish so he just turns Sam around, clinging to his shirt and guides him out of sight. It calms him down, thinking of the ways he could skin Lucifer alive, calm enough to sit Sam down somewhere quiet and removed from everyone else, some kind of medical hut, Sam hunched and withdrawn on the edge of the world’s most uncomfortable cot, and unbutton Sam’s flannel (ruined), until Sam smacks his hands away to do it himself.
Dean turns his back on Sam to find some rags, a change of clothes. He finds a sweatshirt and a camo jacket that look like they might fit, surely surrendered by some poor dead fucker long ago a little shorter than Sam. When he turns back, Sam’s sitting there shivering in the cold, staring at the countdown on his phone.
“Aright.” Dean tosses the clothes at Sam, and drags a metal chair to sit across from Sam, opens his canteen to wet the rag, and starts where there’s the most blood, just so he doesn’t have to look at it anymore. He presses the rag into the dip of Sam’s collar bone where the blood pooled while he was still alive, and Sam tenses for a second, so brief that if Dean didn’t have two hands on Sam, he probably wouldn’t have noticed. As it is — Sam’s sitting in front of him, shirt off, and Dean’s got one hand scrubbing dutifully at the blood on Sam’s neck, and the other gripping his shoulder. Sam’s hands are in his lap, playing with the zipper of the jacket, and he’s not saying anything. He’s not looking at Dean, he’s not arguing, not telling Dean that he can do this himself. He looks like he’s collapsing in on himself, a million miles away. “This is so fucked up,” Dean hisses, barely realizes he’s saying it out loud until Sam flinches again, away from Dean’s hands, out of Dean’s grip. At first Dean thinks maybe Lucifer did a shitty job patching Sam up, and he’s hurt, and he’s about to start bleeding out again, but Sam’s fine. Dean’s hands come away clean of any fresh blood.
“I gotta find Jack.” Sam’s pulling the sweatshirt over his head, stretching out his long, lean torso. Dean’s always startled by how skinny Sam is — not that he hasn’t always been lean, but the last few years he’s just all limbs again like after he hit his first growth spurt right before he left for college. Makes alarm bells go off in Dean’s head like he hasn’t been watching Sam close enough to make sure he’s doing basic survival things, sleeping, eating, shitting, even though Sam’s too old to have Dean watching him like that and Dean’s been pretty preoccupied with the continuous shit show of their lives. Still.
He stops Sam from getting dressed with a hand over his heart, warm skin and heart beating, still beating. “We’ve got people looking for Jack,” Dean tells him, anchoring Sam to the spot, resuming the scrubbing a little more gently, in case he is bruised somewhere Dean can’t see, and then Dean lets Sam put the sweatshirt on. It’s cold and Sam’s sitting topless in this open air hospital, and it will let them both believe that the reason Sam hasn’t stopped shaking is about the cold and not about the Devil and the dying and the day and a half walk Sam made without any company except for the Devil.
“We’re done?” Sam’s voice is flat. He looks back down at his phone, the countdown didn’t stop in the time it took to clean Sam’s neck and chest. He’s still got blood on his hands and under his fingernails and on his face, and Dean wants them so badly to be done, wants to erase all of this in an instant.
Dean doesn’t say anything, just tosses the rag to the side and wets a clean one. Tries to make this better, watches Sam’s pulse jump in his neck. He wipes the blood from Sam’s face. Sam closes his eyes, eyelashes flutter against his cheek, tilts his head so his bangs fall in his face. He looks so much like Sammy, his baby brother who he carried out of that fire, who he dragged out of the one that killed his girlfriend — who he knelt in the mud with and watched jump into Hell and pulled from the church. Who, in less dire circumstances, sat in the backseat of the car and did his summer reading assignments even when Dad had already told him he didn’t know where they’d be come September, and Sam would put his muddy sneakers on the seat just to piss him off and if Dad was in a bad mood he’d tell Sam to cut the attitude and if he was in a good mood he’d ignore it, which would rile Sammy up until he was nearly in tears, and when they stopped, finally, Sam would look up at Dean with those stupid sad eyes. Why doesn’t Dad ever give you grief? I just want to be normal and I don’t know why I can’t be.
Dean’s nearly in tears over it, the kinds of things they’ve lost. Not just Dad and everyone, but themselves. Sam leaning into Dean’s touch a little more than he’d admit to, pulling at the sleeves of the sweatshirt because it’s not quite long enough for his freakishly long arms, a tear tracing its way down Sam’s hollow cheeks, when they should both be so relieved, because they’re both alive and there were no deals made — just Lucifer getting the best of them like they knew he would, and all he wants is the chance to be a father, and it’s not Sam’s fault and it’s not Sam’s doing.
What do you say to the guy who would rather be dead than have the Devil try to forge a connection with his miracle son?
The same thing you always say when the blood won’t come all the way out. “It’s okay, Sammy.” Dean wipes away the tear with his thumb, brushes Sam’s hair from his face. “Hm? Good as new.”
Sam clears his throat, wipes his face, looks at Dean, trying to compose his expression before they go and face Mom and the others. He pulls on the jacket, stands, but he waits for Dean to lead the way out.