The motel room is too quiet, the kind of quiet that makes Sam painfully aware of everything he’s trying not to think about.

The buzzing neon sign outside bleeds through the thin curtains, casting a sickly red glow across the walls, across the scars on his hands, across the Bible sitting open on the table where he left it hours ago. He hasn’t been reading it—just staring at the margins, at passages about temptation and punishment and forgiveness, wondering which ones still apply to him.

Every time he blinks, he sees the seal breaking again: the warmth of light, freeing Lucifer from his cage, the absolute wrongness of realizing too late that he had been a means to an end. Sam Winchester, smart enough to see traps everywhere, still walking straight into the biggest one of all.

Dean is asleep a few feet away, back turned, breathing heavy with exhaustion. Sam can’t bring himself to wake him because Dean carries enough already and Sam won’t add this weight, not tonight, not when the guilt feels like it might crack his ribs open if he speaks it aloud.

He sits on the edge of the bed instead; elbows on his knees, head bowed, fingers laced together so tightly his knuckles ache. The apocalypse didn’t start all at once; it started with choices, with faith twisted into arrogance, with Sam believing he could handle it. Now the world is ending in pieces, and every piece feels like it has his fingerprints on it.

His phone is warm in his palm, like it’s been waiting for him.

He doesn’t need to unlock it to know where his thumb will land. Your name is muscle memory. Emergency contact. The person he never had to explain himself to, not really. You were there before the blood and the prophecies swallowed everything—late-night calls from library parking lots, quiet jokes whispered over motel static, the way you listened without trying to fix him.

You saw him as Sam first, not the vessel, not the weapon, not the problem that needed solving. That’s what scares him most now. That wanting you, needing you, feels like another sin to add to the list.

He remembers the almosts: almost saying something when your shoulder brushed his, almost admitting how his chest tightened when you smiled like you believed in him. He chose silence every time, told himself it was safer; for you, for him, for the mission.

Feelings are liabilities in the apocalypse. But tonight, with the weight of Lucifer’s freedom pressing down on him and the future looking like a long line of graves, silence feels unbearable. If there’s one place he’s allowed to fall apart, it’s with you.

The call connects, and Sam leans back against the wall, eyes shut, jaw clenched like he’s bracing for impact. His voice comes out low and raw, stripped of the careful strength he wears for everyone else.

“Hey, it’s me—sorry, I know it’s late.” He swallows hard, thumb rubbing at the edge of the phone. “I just… I didn’t know who else to call.” A breath shudders out of him before he can stop it.

“I needed to hear your voice.”