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srs2012_r1Word Count: 2,808
Characters: Castiel, Gabriel, Lucifer, Michael, (others briefly mentioned)
Pairings: Castiel/Lucifer
Tags: Character death, Incest, Suicide
Cas wakes to yellow light streaming through the window and for a second, he forgets where he is. If he concentrates, he's back at home and any minute now, Lucifer is going to nuzzle the back of his neck and wake him up with cool lips pressed to the skin just behind his ear. He does feel that kiss (pressure lighter than usual) and, still half-asleep, presses into it.
But then there are hands shaking him awake and the sensation is gone. He's fully awake now, and knows where he is. He's not in his own bed at home, with both sides of it warm from body heat. He's in a psychiatric facility. And Lucifer isn't going to pad into the room, always the early riser, and kiss him into consciousness. Because Lucifer is dead, died a few months ago in a fire. Except he's not gone, not really.
The doctors tell him that he is suffering from survivor's guilt and PTSD and that's why he's seeing his dead brother. As far as Cas is concerned, he thinks that Lucifer's heart-too much of it, both of them-has kept him with Cas even after death. The doctors don't know that Cas and Lucifer were in a romantic relationship and he doesn't plan on ever telling them. As far as Cas knows, neither does his family. Although, he suspects Michael knows more than he should judging by the looks he gave Cas at the funeral. He's not surprised; Lucifer and Michael were always pretty close.
Cas walks out for breakfast and morning meds. The breakfast is prison-grade, and the meds taste chalky. They don't do much besides stop the panic attacks. They keep Lucifer away for only about a half-hour or so and then he comes back. He can always tell when that happens because the temperature in the room drops. As he eats, he absentmindedly rubs at the bracelet on his right wrist. It was a one year anniversary present from Lucifer. Since his family is rich and they're paying for Cas to be here, the nurses are slack about him wearing it and he's never been told to take it off.
A hand on his shoulder shakes him out of his daze. It’s time for group therapy. He's in a medium-term facility, which means that he's here to be watched while they dose him up with different drugs and see what makes him normal again. If they believe that the drugs are working, he gets to rejoin the real word. If not, back to the drawing board. The meds that stop the panic attacks do make getting through the day easier, but what really helps is learning to deal with Lucifer. When he first started seeing him, he'd thought that he was insane and for the next month and a half, he had had panic attacks every time Lucifer appeared. Now, though, he's used to his brother's presence.
As they sit down to group, Lucifer appears again, plopping himself to the ground at Cas's feet. Group is always easier to deal with when Lucifer is with him, making snide comments into his ear. Sure enough, as Amy (a paranoid schizophrenic) begins to speak, Lucifer is off. "The voices in your head sure are dumb. It wasn't aliens who took your clothes and hid them, it was me."
Cas quickly learned not to outwardly react to Lucifer's comments, but sometimes it's a damn near thing. Lucifer was always the wittiest and snarkiest of them all, even worse than Gabriel, and Cas smiles as he remembers when he was five and Lucifer was thirteen and Cas had broken his arm. There had been an apple tree near the front of the estate and Cas had spotted a nice, juicy apple right near the top. He had just gotten the apple in his hand when he suddenly wobbled and fell, landing on his arm. He had felt something snap and had screamed in pain. His cries had Lucifer, coming home late from school, running towards him. His brother had lifted him into his lap, looked at the smashed apple next to him, and said, "Well, at least you got applesauce out of it." Cas had smiled through his tears and the two of them went to Michael, who had just gotten his license, and the three of them had raced to the emergency room. The whole time, Lucifer did not once leave his little brother's side.
He is snapped out of his reverie by Lucifer poking him in the thigh, "Hey sweetheart, listen to this." Lucifer only calls Cas sweetheart when he was being mischievous and Cas tuned back in just to hear Bill (an obsessive-compulsive) speak, "And no matter how many times I did it, the blanket just wouldn't stay even. It was like something kept pulling it just as I got it perfect." Cas looks down at Lucifer, seeing him grinning and pointing at himself smugly. Lucifer had gotten bored of following Cas around and started playing tricks on the other residents, despite Cas begging him not to.
Group ends and Cas returns to his room. They are given breaks in between therapies, supposedly to recover, and when Cas walks in Lucifer is perched on top of the little dresser on the opposite wall. Cas takes a minute to look at him. He looks just as he did when he was alive and the sight makes Cas's heart ache. Lucifer was the most beautiful of them all by far and everyone knew it.
The Milton family was generally estranged, due to the fact that their father was rich and doled out money as apologies. Plus, there were significant age gaps between the four eldest and the six younger. This was because of a difference in mothers. Michael, Lucifer, Gabriel, and Raphael all had a maximum of three years (Michael and Lucifer) between them and one mother who died when Lucifer was five. Their father had quickly remarried and Cas's mother had gotten pregnant with his sister Anna and then had, in order: Uriel, Hester, Rachel, Balthazar, and Castiel. Almost a year after Cas's birth, she had divorced their father and left, never to be seen again.
The rest of the day passes in a blur of shitty food and feelings. It seems normal until Cas is walking back from his shower and decides to take the long way back to his room. He walks by the propped open door across from the room where group takes place and is immediately assaulted by the scent of smoke in his nose. He freezes and drops his bundle of clothes, transported back to the worst night of his life.
Lucifer had come over, like he usually did after work instead of going to his apartment. They had spent a quiet evening in, freshly made pasta for dinner and a movie. After that, Cas had gone to get something from his car and that's when it happened. Later, the cops will blame the age of the stove for why his home went up in flames, but Cas still finds a way to blame himself. He's coming back up the stairs when he smells the smoke. Cas rushes into his apartment, face buried in the crook of his elbow as he struggled to see through the thick cloud of smoke. He remembers screaming his brother's name over and over again and not hearing anything in return. Afterwards, the cops tell him that Lucifer had probably been dizzy at this point and if he had heard Cas, his replies wouldn't have been audible over the roar of the flames. All he remembers next is a flash of red, the room spinning, and everything going black as he dimly hears the words "I love you, Castiel."
Less than twenty-four hours later, Cas had awoken in the hospital to see all of his siblings surrounding him, stony-faced except for Michael and Gabriel, who had red eyes with deep smudges under them. It was then that Cas knew that Lucifer was dead. A month later was when Cas first started noticing strange things happening; objects not where he left them, or simply missing altogether. He had ignored it until one morning he felt his hair rustle lightly, like someone was running their fingers through it. A month and a half later after the fire, Cas walked into the kitchen to see Lucifer there, looking proud of himself. After his first appearance, he never left Cas alone, always keeping up a steady stream of dialogue wherever Cas went. Two months after the fire, Cas had cracked, thrown things at Lucifer, begged to be left alone. One of Cas's neighbors had called the cops and they sedated him. He woke up in a psych ward with Lucifer standing over him silently, staring down at him sadly.
Cas comes back to himself, only to realize that he's sitting in the middle of the hallway and that there's a nurse talking to him, telling him to take deep breaths and to focus on the sound of her voice. It takes a minute or two, but he does. She leads him gently to his room and leaves him sitting on the bed. Cas sighs and feels Lucifer sit behind him. He looks out of the corner of his eye to see Lucifer sitting on the bed cross-legged as he looks at Cas with concern written all over his face. Cas sighs again and puts his head in Lucifer's lap, ice cold fingers running through his hair. The familiar sensation makes him close his eyes and he feels Lucifer's lips pressed against his temple as he murmurs, "I love you, Castiel."
The next day is more of the same except that in individual therapy, he has to talk about what happened last night. He tells his therapist how the flashbacks sneak up on him and that he forgets all about his surroundings when they happen. He's never had a flashback that long before, they usually just come in brief spurts that leave him coughing and his chest aching for an entirely different reason.
He talks about growing up with Lucifer, how he out of all of his siblings had cared about Cas the most. Gabriel and Anna were great, but they didn't usually have time to listen to his problems, as they always had huge amounts of schoolwork to do. His other siblings were either too busy with their love lives or with other things, not particularly interested in sibling bonding. In fact, the only two who were as close as Cas and Lucifer were Michael and Lucifer. He then has to explain that, before some of the youngest were born, Michael and Lucifer hated each other. Their fights would echo throughout the house and more than one piece of furniture had been exposed to their wrath. But then, for some reason no one else knew, the fighting stopped and the two eldest Milton boys were then as close as brothers should be. Cas remembers asking Lucifer a few months into their relationship what had changed, but Lucifer had just smiled enigmatically and changed the subject.
He makes a mental note as he's leaving to try to ask Lucifer about it again. The man never shows up when Cas is in individual therapy. He really only shows up when Cas is alone, or when he's trying to tune something out. Another thing Cas has noticed is that Lucifer (the fragmented, ghostly version) is a lot more touchy-feely. Having not grown up in an affectionate household, neither of them was much for touching. This pale, sad figure is different. Whenever he and Cas are alone, Lucifer always has a hand on his hip or his fingers through his hair. Cas can't say he's complaining.
The rest of the week isn’t any better. Every night, Cas has terrible nightmares about the fire, and each one ends with Lucifer saying, "You failed me, Cas. You're the reason I'm dead. I never loved you. Our relationship was disgusting. It should never have happened." And every morning, Cas would wake in a cold sweat. He refuses to tell Lucifer and anyone else what he had nightmares about. Finally, on Friday, when Cas gets back from therapy, Lucifer appears and sits down in front of Cas, grabs him by the wrists (his hands were ice cold, as they had been when he was alive), and demands, "Castiel, goddammit! You have to tell me what the hell is going on with you. You haven't spoken to me all week and you haven't eaten. What's wrong?" Cas looks at him for a long moment before saying brokenly, "I don't think that you would really care."
Lucifer is at his side faster than Cas can blink, "What do you mean by that?" Cas sighs and tells his brother about the nightmares he had been having. He is sobbing quietly by the time he’s done and Lucifer pulls him into his arms, the touch light, "Cas I love you more than anything. What happened was an accident, you know that. And as for us? What we had? That was never a mistake. Far from it." Cas relaxes into Lucifer's arms and continued to cry. After a half-hour or so, his sobs subside and Cas can feel himself falling asleep. In a hoarse voice, he says, "I'm falling apart without you." As sleep claims him, he thinks he hears Lucifer say, "I miss you too."
By the next day, Cas has made up his mind. He is going to do something that before Lucifer had been killed, he would never have. Cas is going to take his own life. It was simple, he decided. He didn't want to live without Lucifer by his side and since everyone around him was convinced that Lucifer was a delusion, their current relationship could not continue. It was only a matter of figuring out how. He doesn't want to hang himself, too noisy. It would draw too much attention to him too quickly. There was nothing sharp here, so that rules bleeding himself out as an option. He decides on pills.
He watches the nurses guarding the place where the meds were kept and studies the nurses on the shift. He discovers that the nurse on the midnight shift often leaves for approximately an hour at 12:30. He followed him once only to find him hooking up with one of the cleaning ladies, so he should be too preoccupied to notice if Cas makes too much noise. A week after Cas makes his decision, he finally sees his opportunity and takes it. One of the few prolonged moments he had spent with Gabriel was when his brother had taught him how to pick locks. It is a skill that Cas utilizes now as he took two bobby pins that he had found in the hallway out and slowly picks the lock.
Cas gets inside and swipes an entire bottle of Xanax, which he knows several of the patients were taking. He wishes he knew more about medicine, wishes he knew if this would be enough. He grabs several more bottles. Surely if he mixes enough things, he can go in peace. He then steals the coffee that the nurse had left and snuck back to his room. When he gets there, Lucifer is pacing at the foot of the bed. When he sees Cas, he stops pacing and walks over to Cas, grabbing him by his upper arms and shaking slightly, "Cas, why are you doing this? You have so much of your life left ahead of you, so many new things to experience." Cas shakes his head sadly, "I don't want to experience anything without you."
Lucifer stops shaking him and studies the other man for a long moment, He sighs and let go of Cas, turning away from him, "There's nothing I can do to change your mind, is there?" Again, Cas shakes his head. He sits on the bed, opens the bottle of pills, and dumps out a handful. He pours them all in his mouth, taking a big swig of the coffee and swallowing. He repeats this until he’s gone through more drugs than he cares to count. He lies down and looks at Lucifer, who had turned his back to Cas throughout this whole process. Lucifer seems to feel Cas's gaze on him and turns back around.
Lucifer walks over to the bed and looks down at Cas. He could already feel the drugs kicking in and his words were slurred, "Stay with me?" Lucifer takes in a deep breath and lies down, wrapping himself around his brother. Cas closes his eyes, and as the drugs work through his system, he swears he could feel Lucifer's grip on him growing stronger.
I love you, Castiel.
