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There is an important distinction that must be drawn between the words dissection and vivisection. A distinction that would appear to be lost on you. Your purpose was to listen and yet at every turn you have pried, you have prodded and you have interfered. Have you not been paying attention? Did it not occur to you that as an organism existing within a greater organism, your intrusion would be felt? And still you harass. And now, like the wayward spider who witlessly settled on a sleeper's tongue, you will be swallowed. Because the truth is this: when a house is both hungry and awake, every room becomes a mouth.
-Anatomy, Kitty Horrorshow
The sound of Jimmy Novak’s voice makes Sam flinch.
It’s not that he isn’t expecting to hear it. Rowena had been perfectly clear about what exactly the spell was going to do when he cast it. A soul for a soul, she’d said, or the closest approximation thereof. A temporary swap, Castiel had said. A temporary borrowing, Sam had suggested instead, which had earned him an appraising nod from Rowena. They’d called her to the bunker in a rush, asking for any possible way to get Castiel back into Heaven undetected, and Sam had mostly been expecting some kind of cloaking spell. Maybe transfiguration, if there was one that could even touch Cas’ true-form. He hadn’t been expecting her to eye up Castiel like a dress on a rack and ask if his vessel was as empty as it looked.
The spell itself was simple. Just a little twist on a body-swap curse, Rowena had said casually, fluttering her hands around her head as she dug through the old Men Of Letters’ storage room. Normally they can’t reach past the Veil, but since Castiel is an angel, he exists beyond it anyway. The spell required an “intimate bond” between souls, which had raised Sam’s eyebrows, but Cas had just nodded gravely. Possession, Sam figured, created an intimate bond innately, although this thought dawned on him at the same time it hit him that there was a reason Cas and Rowena weren’t saying this out loud, and the reason was still casting its horned shadow over Sam’s form. The vessel should be fine, Rowena had promised. Dodgy memory, missing some of what's happened since his death, but nothing worse than a little confusion.
Rowena had placed the ingredients into Sam’s hands, written down the incantation for him on the back of a page ripped from an old journal, and promptly excused herself to wherever it was they’d pulled her away from for one of their silly little spy missions, although when she looked Sam in the eye and wished him luck, he believed she meant it. Getting Cas into Heaven was risky, but if there was any intel on Michael — on Dean — then that was the place to find it.
Sam and Castiel had found themselves in Sam’s room in the bunker as quickly as possible, an unspoken agreement that Sam would attempt to keep Jimmy Novak as calm and quiet as possible so as to not worry the other hunters in the bunker while Castiel explored the halls of Heaven, although they hadn’t given Sam any time to think about what, exactly, he was expected to say to the guy. Would he know where he was? Would he know where he’d been? Would he awake exactly like he did in 2009, with a blurry rage against the angel who had taken him from his family and a demand to be taken home? Sam had allowed himself the selfish hope that maybe Jimmy wouldn’t wake at all, and that Sam would only be charged with watching over Cas’ body for an hour instead. Jimmy’s body. Cas’ and Jimmy’s body. It was already getting confusing.
Of course, it doesn’t surprise Sam that he had no such luck. It wasn’t more than thirty seconds after Sam had recited the incantation and Castiel had closed his eyes where he lay back on the bed when suddenly his body was outlined in a hazy golden glow that faded as quickly as it appeared. His eyes had opened again, looking scared and confused and, somehow, a little less blue than they had minutes ago.
“What,” Jimmy says, voice high and thin and breaking, and Sam flinches.
His whole body shakes with the force of it. I don’t need you anymore, he hears booming through his skull. Maybe it’s because you’re like the girl who kept turning me down at the prom, he hears, while Jimmy sits up, shaking. “What’s happening,” he asks, and Sam forces himself to breathe. It’s different. Already it’s different. Jimmy’s voice is clearer. Cleaner. Human.
“Jimmy,” Sam says, his own voice sounding reedy in his ringing ears. “Do you know who I am?”
Jimmy looks over at Sam, spinning his head so fast there’s almost no time to register the movement. Sam’s reminded of the few times Bobby had taken him out hunting — real hunting — and he’d clumsily snap a twig or a branch under his feet in earshot of a deer. The sight of Sam seems to calm him down, if the way his breathing backs off from the edge of hyperventilation is anything to go by. “Sam? What is... I’m supposed to be in Heaven,” he says, eyebrows pulling together, and the expression is familiar but already more elastic and emotive than any other time Sam had seen Castiel express a similar emotion. Except for when— when he was—
Sam cuts off his own train of thought. “Yeah,” he says, trying to inject confidence in his voice. “You are. In Heaven. Uh, not right at this moment exactly, but in general. You are. With Amelia.”
Jimmy glances around the room, eyes darting, and Sam feels almost nauseous watching him. Something that’s not Castiel is in Castiel’s body, Sam’s mind supplies in a panic, but another part of him corrects that thought. Castiel is the something. The body is back in its proper state. “Then where am I at this moment exactly?” Jimmy asks, flexing his fingers uselessly as he surveys the room.
“Lebanon, Kansas,” Sam replies. He realizes he’s flexing his fingers in a mirror of Jimmy, and folds his hands together in his lap instead. “In, um, an underground bunker. It’s not really… it’s not that important. Cas needed to get into Heaven, so we swapped you out. It’s, it’s temporary. So don’t worry.”
Jimmy turns to stare at Sam, wide-eyed and incredulous, and the expression looks so wrong on his features that Sam almost laughs. “Don’t worry?” Jimmy asks, voice rising, and Sam can’t help but note every unfamiliar dip and rise in cadence, every new expression, every motion and sound and all the body language that marks him as different. As wrong— as right? Sam feels light-headed. He suddenly wants to catalog every piece of Jimmy, record him and write him down so he can’t be forgotten again, and the thought hits Sam so hard he almost reels with it.
Sam thinks he may be forgetting to breathe.
Jimmy doesn’t find his silence satisfactory, and continues. “It’s not important? You rip me out of Heaven, you’re telling me that Cas,” Jimmy spits the nickname out with venom, “is taking my spot in the one place he wasn’t allowed to touch, and it’s not important? I’m alive, and in my own fucking body, but it’s temporary, so don’t worry about it? What the fuck?”
“I,” Sam starts, and then stops. They hadn’t considered any of this. Sam hadn’t considered any of this. That Jimmy was a person, not a temporary obstacle in Sam’s holy quest to get his brother back. That Jimmy would have some conflicting feelings on his body being used as another prop for the great Winchester storyline. If anyone should’ve been thinking about how it feels to have your body ripped from you to help deal with someone else’s family drama, Sam thinks, it should probably have been him. “I’m sorry,” he settles on weakly, and Jimmy seems about as enthused with hearing that as Sam is with saying it. He rolls his eyes sharply and stands up from the bed.
“Well, that’s great,” Jimmy says coldly, and as he starts walking towards the door, Sam stands up from his chair so fast the noise of the legs on the floor makes them both flinch. “I want to see my daughter.”
“She’s not here,” Sam says, fighting the urge to physically put himself between Jimmy and the door. “Claire— she lives with a family friend in North Dakota. She’s going to college. She’s not here.”
Jimmy blinks, and all the anger Sam had read in his body language drains. “She’s not… here? You brought me back and didn’t— she didn’t come?”
Sam’s stomach drops with the weight of more guilt. He and Castiel had barely given the implications of this spell time to form in their minds before Sam was crushing animal bones to dust in the bowl, and now Jimmy stands in front of him, a man who prayed to serve Heaven and died for his daughter being denied access to either of them. “We didn’t tell her,” Sam answers gingerly. “The spell is only good for an hour. She couldn’t get here in time.” It’s true, but Sam knows he’s still lying. Claire had never been a consideration. Another Novak let down by the Winchesters. Sam can’t quite hold eye contact with Jimmy.
Jimmy’s face falls. “Can I call her?”
“I’m not going to stop you,” Sam answers truthfully. “I’ll, look, you can have my phone if you want to. I just don’t know if that’s what’s best for Claire.”
Jimmy laughs, dry and humorless, so loud it startles Sam into flinching again. “And you know what’s best for Claire,” he says, voice like a knife edge. “Have you been filling in for me since I’ve been gone, Sam? Teaching my daughter valuable lessons about hunting monsters, killing people, drinking demon blood?”
Sam stammers around an empty breath. He has nothing to say, no penance to offer, so he offers what he can instead. He pulls his phone out wordlessly, scrolling to NOVAK, CLAIRE and holding it out to Jimmy with the same reverence he might’ve once reached out to Castiel, angel of the lord, looking down stonily at Sam and denying him the salvation he was praying for. Sam doesn’t know how he stops himself dropping to his knees, but for once his backbone doesn’t fail him, and he remains upright.
Jimmy stares at the phone in Sam’s hand, and it’s not unlike the first time Sam held his hand out for Castiel at all. Sam realizes the contact photo taking up most of the screen is a Claire that Jimmy’s never seen — it’s her sitting next to Jody, grinning big, stitches visible in a cut on her temple. To Sam, Claire’s always looked impossibly young, but he sees her suddenly as if he was inside Jimmy’s head. An adult. Heavy makeup, undercut growing out, tattoo on her wrist, piercings in her ear. Stitches, bruises, mostly-healed cuts. Mostly-healed, Sam thinks, might be the best overall description of Claire he’s got. It’s pretty much how Sam would describe himself, too, but he doesn’t think that would be a reassuring train of thought to let Jimmy board. Jimmy didn’t ask Cas to keep his daughter mostly-healed. He wanted Claire safe. Sam swallows heavily, not registering Jimmy doing exactly the same across from him. Jimmy doesn’t reach for the phone. Sam doesn’t pull his hand back in.
“Is she… good? Healthy, and, and happy?” Jimmy asks eventually.
“You’d be proud of her,” Sam says instead of answering. “She’s doing her best.”
“Would she forgive me?” Jimmy says, and the air drains out of the room. Sam’s almost surprised the bunker’s red emergency lights don’t kick on, alarm blaring. He brings his phone back towards his chest, clutching it there like it could steady his heartbeat. Jimmy’s eyes are burning into his, a duller color but sharper in focus than he’s ever seen Castiel look at him, and Sam has no idea how to answer. The thing about angelic possession, Sam thinks, is that you might have no control over the last ninety-nine horrible mistakes your body made, but you’ll always know you had control over the very first. Jimmy said yes. Sam can’t bring himself to.
“She forgave Castiel,” Sam offers instead, “and she likes him a lot less than you.”
It’s not really a joke, but Jimmy’s face cracks into a smile anyway. Sam smiles back instinctively, and before he can register it, they’re both laughing. Jimmy’s laugh is unexpected and bright, a sweet sound, like a kid’s. Like Claire’s. Sam wonders if Claire knows she laughs like her dad. Sam wonders if Castiel hears it echoing inside the skull he borrows whenever Claire loses it at something Alex says, or when Jody asks Dean what hentai means, or when she looks into her father’s eyes and finds a deadpan angel who just missed her pop culture reference, just like a middle-aged AM radio ad salesman might.
Sam wants, suddenly, like a fire being lit in his gut, to make Jimmy laugh again, to break out his phone to record the sound like a ringtone. He knows somewhere deep in his bones that if he doesn’t, this’ll be the last time that sound is ever heard. Everything that happens in this room will be the last of Jimmy Novak, and Sam doesn’t know how to process being the catalyst for that. He doesn’t know what to savor, what to prompt, what to catalog. How do you finalize a person’s memory when they’re standing across from you? What do you offer them that won’t be taken away by the invading force?
This isn’t a question Sam has to ponder very long.
“And who would this be?” a voice from the doorway asks, and Sam has to close his eyes to steel himself before he turns to face the source. Nick leans casually against the doorframe, tossing an apple lightly from hand to hand. He’s got the same pleasantly neutral sheepish expression on his face he always does, and Sam’s stomach lurches forward heavily like it always does. “That’s not Castiel. His vessel?”
Sam nods tightly. He shouldn’t be surprised that the difference is so obvious, especially for Nick, but Sam’s still a little shocked he caught on so fast. He could only have been standing there a few seconds. Jimmy is staring at Nick like a deer caught in the headlights, so Sam says, “Jimmy, this is Nick. Nick, Jimmy.”
Nick gives Jimmy a little half-nod. Jimmy doesn’t respond. The tension in the room bubbles up, thick and cloying, but Sam feels like that most of the time he talks to Nick, so he tries not to read too much into it. “I thought Castiel’s vessel was dead,” Nick says easily, eyes moving from Jimmy to Sam in a smooth motion that reminds Sam of documentaries he’d watched about predatory birds. Sam swallows that thought down. He owes Nick the same fairness he owes Jimmy. It’s not Nick’s fault the devil chose to use his idle hands as playthings.
“He was. Er, is,” Sam forces himself to speak. “Temporary body-swap spell.”
Nick raises his eyebrows. “Huh,” he replies, lifting the apple to his mouth to take one loud bite, the sound echoing off the walls of the room and making Sam flinch. “Cool.”
“You’re Lucifer’s vessel,” Jimmy blurts out, breaking his stare at Nick to turn to aim it at Sam. What is he doing here, Sam hears unspoken. Sam’s had months to get used to that unspoken question from all of the other hunters in the bunker and he still doesn’t quite have an answer. He'll figure it out one of these days. Probably. He assumes. He's trying not to think about it too much.
“So are you,” Nick replies around a mouthful of apple. “And so is he,” he adds, jerking his head in Sam’s direction. “Look at us. Maybe the support group can meet every Wednesday.” Neither Jimmy or Sam respond, so Nick continues to fill the silence. “Orrr maybe not. We almost have enough for a band. Anyone here play bass?”
“Nick,” Sam says in warning, and Nick raises his hands up in apology. Sam has a second to think that he was pretty sure the door had been shut before Nick walked by.
“So am I?” Jimmy asks, and now they’re both looking at Sam, and Sam’s skin feels too tight. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. “What does that mean? Sam?”
Nick pulls a cartoonishly exaggerated grimace and the familiarity of the expression has Sam dropping eye contact, but he can’t bring himself to look at Jimmy either. He feels his eyes unfocus, the room going blurry around him, like he can just recoil himself out of this situation entirely. “Oops,” Nick over-enunciates. “My bad. I guess I’ll leave you to it.” It almost looks like he’s smiling as he pushes himself off the door frame and heads back out into the hall, but Sam still can’t bring himself to look at his face directly, so he can’t be sure. No, he’s positive Nick wasn’t. Why would he have been? And the door must have been left open. Why would Nick have been trying to get into Sam’s closed room? It’s pretty clear to Sam that Jimmy doesn’t have the same opinion on everything as Castiel does, and Sam sure as hell can’t assume Nick would— that he might—
That would be in bad faith. Sam’s pretty sure everyone involved has had enough bad faith to last them a lifetime.
“What does that mean, Sam?” Jimmy asks again, voice rising higher, and Sam forces himself back into the body. His body. He blinks until his vision clears and forces himself to look at Jimmy, who’s staring at him with wide-eyed panic.
“Castiel, he—” Sam starts, and has to swallow around the sudden urge to cry. He realizes, vaguely, that he might be having an anxiety attack. But that’s a problem for him to deal with later. “A few years ago we were in a tough situation. He thought Lucifer could help us. So he let Lucifer possess him.”
“He let Lucifer possess… him?” Jimmy blinks at Sam in confusion. “Possess me? He can do that?”
Sam shrugs. He’s not exactly sure of the details himself. He’s never been able to bring himself to ask Castiel about it, even though sometimes he’s felt the questions burn so hotly in his brain when he’s trying to sleep that he’s sure it’s broadcasting directly in Castiel’s ears as clearly as if Sam was praying. In Sam’s experience, How could you do this to me? is a prayer no matter who it’s directed at. He wonders if Castiel’s ears are burning twice as much as usual right now.
“He let the— the devil was inside me?” Jimmy sounds frantic, looks nauseous, and Sam bites down a sympathetic gag of his own. Sam knows Jimmy’s waiting for something helpful — you’ll get over it, it’s not so bad, it was worth it — but he can’t bring himself to lie. And what else could he say? Did you know, Sam imagines himself saying suddenly, beyond his control, grinning big and blank and dead-eyed, that angels leave their grace inside you after they’re gone? You carry a piece of them around with you forever. It’s so deep in you it would kill you to take it out. Did you know, in Sam’s imagination, he’s looming over Jimmy now, big and imposing in the way Sam never is when he’s alone in his body, eyes flashing black or blue or red or yellow or maybe some new color, some new horror, that angels don’t need your consent a second time, if they plan ahead? They can leave a back door open. They can make a copy of the key. Did you know that, Jimmy? We’re both beachfront properties just waiting for cottage season. Three angels, two demons, countless Leviathan, and one horny teenager between us, and those are just the things we know about. God knows what’s crawled in through our mouths when we’re asleep. We’re the town bicycles, Jim. What does your church say about possession before marriage?
Sam imagines Jimmy’s face below his crumbling, frown pulling deeper than even a dying Castiel has managed before, because Jimmy is supposed to be in his body and he knows how it works while Cas is still fumbling around with the instruction manual. Sam imagines Jimmy’s chest getting tighter the more Sam talks, and he can feel it, he can feel Jimmy’s heartbeat speed up, he can hear the sharp ringing Sam gets in his skull when he thinks about this stuff too long, and he can’t talk about it with anyone but Jimmy would get it, Jimmy would feel the fear that Sam feels, and then Sam would feel it, like he was in Jimmy’s body too. He could be in Jimmy’s body too. Sam could be the invader. Sam could be in control of the body. His body. It could be his body now. All he has to do is take it. He could take it, right now, if he just pushed forward— if he just reached out—
Sam gasps and reels back like he’d been slapped. Jimmy is still across the room, pacing, still panicked but not looking at Sam. Not seeing whatever must have been flashing across his face. “I had the devil inside me,” Jimmy is saying, and it’s not directed at Sam, but Sam needs to respond, Sam needs to get himself back in his own body and in this room and in this moment before he fades out completely.
“Not you,” Sam says, and his voice cracks. Jimmy swivels his head to stare at Sam like he forgot he was there entirely. “Not, if it helps, not you. Not really. This body, your body, it’s not the same one you lived in.”
“Oh, what, that every seven years all your cells have been replaced, you’re a whole new you crap?” Jimmy rolls his eyes, but stops his nervous pacing to look at Sam hopefully. Sam can’t bear the desperation in his eyes, can’t handle recognizing the burning need to have someone tell you what you want to hear. Sam knows what he has to say isn’t that, but he can’t stop himself from saying it anyway.
“No,” Sam shakes his head, feeling light-headed. “I mean, when you died. Lucifer killed Castiel, and your body was disintegrated. God brought Castiel back, and you were gone, but he still looked like you. That’s the body he had, when Lucifer possessed him. And then,” Sam swallows, seeing Jimmy’s eyes widen, but the words pour out of him, “Castiel died again, later. We burned his body. Jack brought him back, and he still looked like you. So the body you lived in didn’t hold the devil and the body you’re in right now didn’t, either. Rebuilt twice from the ground up.”
Jimmy’s holding himself so still that Sam wonders for a second if he’s still there at all, but then he asks, plaintive like a child, “Why did they keep giving him my body? Why would they bring him back and still give him me?”
Sam has no answer. The body is a prison, he thinks, and some prisons are haunted. “God made man in his own image,” he settles on eventually, “and then he made Castiel in yours.”
Jimmy moves to the bed again as if pulled by strings and drops down onto it, hands covering his knees in a move Sam can recognize as an attempt to stop them from shaking. “What about you?” he asks, and Sam shakes his head on instinct. “What about your body? You died and came back.”
Sam’s breath catches. “Castiel pulled my body out of Hell and left my soul behind,” he says, sitting down next to Jimmy. “I didn’t get rebuilt. Same body I’ve always had. Same blood.”
“Which is better?” Jimmy asks, breath shaky. “Is it better to be a Frankenstein’s monster made out of your own parts? Or is it better to be some kids’ replacement when he breaks his favorite toy, fresh out of the box?”
Sam considers it. “I’m not sure there’s a better. I think we’re both just worse.”
He’s not sure what compels him, but on instinct Sam reaches out and covers one of Jimmy’s hands with his own. Just as easily, Jimmy opens his fingers to allow Sam’s to curl around them. Sam can feel the coolness of Jimmy’s hand and the warmth from his thigh beneath bleeding into him, and it’s comforting somehow. It’s sensation, and it’s grounding Sam, even if it’s not Sam’s body providing it. You are here, the feeling says. You are both here, in your bodies. They sit side by side in silence until Jimmy’s breathing evens out and he speaks again.
“The second time he possessed me, before I died, it wasn’t so bad,” Jimmy’s voice is low, confessional. “I knew what I was getting into. We were on the same team. He— we talked a lot. Asked questions, gave answers. Less like being chained to a comet, more like living with the north star.”
Sam has pictured it more than once. A mutual possession, a sharing of consciousness. Sometimes he imagines it’s Castiel too, and it’s a thought exercise in healing, in saying yes and then saying no and having both matter. Sometimes it’s a self-destructive spiral, and he imagines being the boy king Lucifer had wanted him to be, blood on their teeth and bones crushed beneath their feet. Usually though, for whatever reason, when Sam imagines it, he imagines Gadreel. Not healing, not harming. Just two fuck ups learning how to be in his body at the same time. Less comet, more north star. Sam makes a humming sound, which is all he can manage.
“I liked him. Hell, I probably even loved him,” Jimmy continues. “He was trying to do right by God. He’s weird, and too earnest, and he’s got no filter, but…” Jimmy trails off for a minute, and Sam can’t help but laugh. That’s definitely Cas. It strikes Sam, suddenly, that even despite Jimmy’s death a decade ago, Jimmy knows Cas better than Sam does. Better than Sam ever will. Sam tries not to think about any implications from that. “I knew him. I trusted him. Everything since I’ve died… Everything with Amelia, and Claire. It’s felt like a betrayal. Hurting people and failing my family and using my body to do it.”
Sam understands. Privately, he thinks it might be nice to not have to deal with the consequences of your body, but out loud he says, “There’s worse people who could be piloting you around.”
“Like the devil?” Jimmy asks wryly, and Sam tilts his head in acknowledgement.
“Like the devil. Nick was possessed for years, and he—,” Sam pauses for breath and realizes he’s shaking. He glances at the empty doorway, feeling like Nick might hear him even though he must be halfway across the bunker by now. Sam powers through, “I was possessed by a demon for a while. I was possessed by Lucifer too. Dean let a different angel possess me without my consent to save my life and I’d just… wake up, missing time, Dean telling me I was imagining things,” listing it all out like that leaves a bad taste in Sam’s mouth and he can’t stand the pity he’s imagining in Jimmy’s eyes, so he pushes forward. “Cas has made mistakes. I’m sure he’d be the first one to admit it. But he’s never been malicious. He’s only ever done what he thought was right. By God, by the world, by you. And in the past few years, by Claire too.”
Jimmy shakes his head, but Sam knows he’s not disagreeing, not really. “It’s bad enough to get usurped in your own life,” he says quietly. “Let alone by someone who’s doing it with good intentions. Like, what did my life mean to anyone? Who was Jimmy Novak that Castiel couldn’t be? Is the world better off with him in my body than it would’ve been with me?”
Sam blinks against the sudden burning in his eyes, breathes in against the sudden tightness of his throat. He wants so badly to reassure Jimmy, but it’s not like he’s unfamiliar with the idea that sometimes, God designed people with all the thought a tailor puts into a custom suit. Your life, your motivations, thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams, just details sewn into the hemlines. He knows what it’s like to feel like you’re stealing your own body. “Castiel can’t be Jimmy Novak,” Sam says.
“Well, neither can Jimmy Novak,” Jimmy replies, sounding resigned and tired and more like Castiel than he has since he first opened his eyes.
I’d let you possess me, if I could, Sam thinks, unbidden. Castiel can be Jimmy Novak, and Jimmy Novak can be Sam Winchester, and I don’t have to be anyone at all. Sam was wrong before, when he thought he could invade Jimmy’s body. He was thinking about it from the wrong angle. He didn’t need more body to worry about, more empty space tempting anyone around to come fill up. If Jimmy invaded him, he wouldn’t have any body left to worry about at all. No more ducking through doorways, slouching to seem less imposing, always angling his face upwards to look soft, friendly, harmless. No more calorie counting or morning runs or green smoothies to keep the body primed for war. No more temptation to bend the bones and tear the muscles so it would be less powerful if handed over, so it would look less inviting for all the dead kings looking for shiny crowns. Sam’s full of hollow space. It was foolish of him to think he could spare any part of himself to possess someone else when every inch of his body, every twist of DNA, every red drop of blood with a speck of black smoke rot in the center of it was primed and begging to hold onto more, more, more.
“Sam?” Jimmy sounds far away, but he flips his hand over so his fingers slide up between Sam’s, squeezing gently. Sam blinks, and pulls himself out of his head towards that feeling instead. You are here.
“Sorry,” Sam’s voice sounds shaky to his own ears, but he doubts Jimmy knows him well enough to catch it. “Possession is… tricky. For me. I can get kind of lost in my head about it.”
“Checking for stragglers?” Jimmy asks, and Sam nods with a tight smile. “I can feel Castiel still. Like a persistent tugging in the back of my skull. Getting stronger every minute. Must be the spell.”
“Probably,” Sam agrees. He thinks, privately, that the spell doesn’t create an elastic band to tie two people together, but relies on the band that already exists. An intimate bond between souls, Rowena had said. Sam thinks the only reason he doesn’t feel the thrum of tension along the rubber inside his own skull is because everyone else who’s been inside his body is dead. Severed at the root. “Time’s almost up.”
Jimmy makes a soft humming noise. “I wonder if I’ll remember this when I’m back in Heaven.”
Sam hopes he doesn’t. “Do you want to?” he asks, quietly. He can almost feel it, he thinks. Jimmy getting further away without moving an inch, like falling into quicksand.
“I don’t think it matters what I want,” Jimmy says, but he’s smiling. “I already said yes, didn’t I?”
“I’ll remember this,” Sam promises, almost too soft to hear. “I’ll remember you.” He’s not just trying to offer some kind of twisted deathbed comfort. He thinks he’ll hear Jimmy every time Claire laughs. Someone should.
Jimmy turns his head to look at Sam, and Sam had been avoiding eye contact the whole time but he can’t resist now, can’t deny Jimmy the last look. Jimmy’s eyes are wet, and Sam realizes belatedly that his are too. “Try and remember yourself too, all right?” Jimmy suggests gently. Sam nods, but the hazy golden glow is already fading in around the edges of Jimmy’s body, and he doesn’t think Jimmy can see him anymore. His eyes shut anyway.
It feels like an eternity before they open again, long after the glow has faded. Sam holds his breath until they do, burning so bright blue Sam flinches at the sight. “Sam?” the body asks, and the voice is deep, raspy, like someone who never bothered to learn how to use it right. It looks down at their hands joined together, eyebrows furrowing, and Sam pulls his hand back in a recoil, swallowing disgust. “Is everything okay?” it asks.
He asks.
Castiel asks.
Sam swallows again. “Sure,” he says, standing up off the bed so quickly his head spins. “How– how was Heaven? Did they find you?”
Castiel rises slowly, face still pulled downward in concern, and Sam thinks it looks like a mockery, a parody, an insult. “I wasn’t caught. I overheard some speculation, but I’m not sure how helpful the information will be.”
Sam can barely remember what information they sent him for. This is the longest he’s gone without thinking of Dean since Michael vanished with him from the church in the first place. “Right,” he says, stilted. “Well, any information is better than none. I, uh, you should go and tell the others. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Sam,” Cas says, and he takes a step towards Sam. Sam takes a step back. “Was everything with Jimmy–”
Sam can’t take the sound of his name in that voice. “Cas,” he says, holding up his hands. “It’ll be fine. I just need a minute. Thank you.”
Cas nods, clearly unhappy, but heads towards the door. Already he’s starting to settle into the skin, and Sam doesn’t want to be looking at him when his mind fills in the blanks and colors Castiel over all the empty spaces where Jimmy should be. “Please come find me when you’re ready, Sam,” Cas says, and has the grace to close the door behind him when he leaves, not that a shut door has ever stopped an angel before.
Sam will, when he’s ready. He’ll go out and find Cas in the war room, and go over everything Cas heard in Heaven. He’ll tell Cas that Jimmy was a little freaked out, but okay, and that Claire has his laugh. He won’t mention Lucifer, and Cas won’t even consider it, like he never seems to consider it anymore. It’ll be like every other time someone’s gone in and re-arranged Sam’s soul — Sam walks out of the room different, but nobody needs to notice.
Sam just needs a minute to remember himself first.