Written for the 2013 Team Free Love Secret Lovers' Exchange for pinkyapples. The prompt was "There were three in his head..."

Thanks to whit_merule who offered to beta :)

Spoilers for 7.17

Angel on My Shoulder

Sam's head was crowded.

He wondered, in those rare moments when Lucifer wasn't acting like a hyperactive five year old and no other figments of his imagination were vying for his attention, if this was how Castiel had felt when the Leviathans took over his body. On a much larger scale, of course – a human mind was tiny compared to that of an angel and there were so, so many Leviathans.

So far, there were only three in his head. Maybe that was lucky. Maybe someone else was going to join them as Sam's fragile grip on his own sanity slipped away.

A hunter and two archangels share a room in the mental ward. At least one of them probably preferred it if they had walked into a bar.

Castiel had taken down Sam's wall, and it had broken him.

Sam had had to re-build himself and get all the pieces of his fractured mind back together. There had been three in his head then as well – three aspects of himself that Sam had to confront in order to be whole again.

His victory was short-lived: he had been too late to stop Castiel and their angel had fallen prey to the forces of Purgatory. The Leviathans had taken over - and Sam was getting to know the feeling of having your mind invaded quite intimately.
Lucifer had been at his side ever since, taunting him with memories from the Cage. Hell, it felt like he had never left.

It took pain to block Lucifer out of his head. Pain, and Dean's solid presence. Sam had grounded himself in Dean's reality and defined his own by it. Lucifer had still been there in his head, teasing and prodding, but with a bit of effort and a bit of pain, Sam had found that he could silence him. For a while at least.

Then he'd slipped. One moment of weakness was all it had taken to allow the devil to sink his claws back into Sam's mind. And when that happened, there was no escape. He was aware he wasn't back in the Cage, that Lucifer was a construct of his fractured mind over which he had frustratingly little control, if any. It didn't matter.

There was no escape in Sam's dreams. Losing control over his consciousness only gave Lucifer more power and insight. Just like in the Cage, Sam's mind was his worst enemy.

Coffee had never been a better friend.

The first time Gabriel showed up, Sam had been awake for three days and was on the seventh coffee of the last 24 hours. Lucifer was doing the Macarena across the table from him and Sam was already used to seeing things that weren't really there by now.

He flickered in and out of existence in the blink of an eye.

The next time, he was there in the back alley when Sam was trying to run away from the devil inside his head. When Sam agreed to the dealer's offer, the former Trickster spoke up for the first time.

"Kid, don't!"

Sam was trying to rebuild his tolerance to the figments of his imagination, regardless of what shape they took.

Gabriel wasn't really a surprise.

Honestly, there was so much material to work with in Sam's subconscious that he was having a hard time understanding why it was only now that Lucifer was using it on him. He'd used everyone else in Sam's life in the Cage.

Years ago, there had been that one janitor who had turned out to be a trickster and whose death Sam kind of regretted. Aside from the just desserts and horrible sense of humor aside (which had rivaled Dean's, so Sam was sort of used to it anyway), the Trickster had been fun and charming and Sam really wished things had gone differently. And maybe, just maybe, he occasionally guest-starred in Sam's dreams in scenarios where things actually had.

Then had come the Mystery Spot and the endless Tuesday. Once Sam had worked out who was behind it and Dean had died that final time, his dreams had focused on the Trickster again, but this time the only thing he had wanted to drive into him was a wooden stake. And then he'd shown mercy (unless that had been his plan all along) and Sam had been… not sure what to think anymore.

And there was that Casa Erotica original that Gabriel had planted into Sam's head after their adventure in TV Land, which Sam was never talking about. Really, obvious how that dream had come to be and Sam was entirely blaming the archangel for it.

Of course, things had gone to hell after that.

At the hospital, they'd pumped him full of meds. Apparently, Sam hadn't been as subtle in his discreet attempts to get Lucifer to fuck off as he'd thought, and it had landed him in the Psychiatric ward under supervision and even more meds.

There was an archangel perched at the foot of his bed. Seeing as it wasn't the one that landed him in this mess to begin with and he didn't seem to want anything from Sam at the moment, he ignored him.

Agonizing hours later, Gabriel still hadn't left Sam's side. He was still quiet, watching Sam with the kind of worried expression that Sam had never expected to see on him.

What was surprising (unless Sam just needed some more coffee to get his brain going again) was that Lucifer didn't seem to notice the new addition to Sam's increasingly crowded mindscape. At the moment, the Devil was too busy looking up antiquated profanities to notice that Sam's attention was divided. Then again, being a constant distraction seemed to be one of his reasons for being there in the first place.

Gabriel was looking more and more solid. Sam had been too busy ignoring him before to notice how insubstantial he'd been, the first few times he'd shown up. A ghost. It made sense in a way.

Sam had been awake for too long. His body was probably a couple of days away from collapse. Maybe more.

He really couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd last slept properly. He'd told the doctor it had been five when he'd been brought in, but that had been Lucifer keeping count. It might have been six.

"You haven't slept in almost seven days," Gabriel said, sitting on the edge of his bed. He looked worried.

Lucifer was bouncing a ball against the window, letting it shatter on random hits. "Seven days, Sam. How much longer will it be before you fall apart? Four? Five days?" His concern was as real as the window exploding into shards, punctuating his words.

Sam took in a deep breath and ignored both of them.

But when Gabriel tentatively touched his hand, Sam didn't pull away.

Dean was out of his mind! Off to find a healer that could help. Ha! They knew better than most what the chances of that were. At least it gave him something to do and it meant he wasn't going to just sit there while Sam continued to spiral out of his own mind.

By now, Gabriel had claimed the right side of the room - or of Sam - and made himself comfortable against the headboard, ostensibly browsing through an old issue of Busty Asian Beauties with running commentary. He was particularly talkative when Lucifer was acting out, which led Sam to think it was a weird self defense thing his brain was doing, or something. It wasn't helping.

It probably meant that Gabriel was more aware of Lucifer's presence than the other way around. He'd ask, but Sam didn't want to alert Lucifer to his presence.

Great, now he was keeping the Trickster/angel in his head a secret from the fallen archangel. At least the shrinks were going to have fun.

"Saaaaaaaaaaaaaam!" the Devil whined, "You can't ignore me for ever!"

Gabriel nudged his shoulder gently. "You just have to hang in there until Deano gets back." He sounded more optimistic about it than Sam. Considering Sam's hopes for Dean to work something out in time were in the negative numbers, it wasn't really that hard.

There was nothing around him that Sam could be certain was real anymore. Lucifer had impersonated his doctor, was placing incredibly realistic illusions on his food that Sam really didn't want to test, and anything involving sound felt real enough. By now, Sam couldn't sleep even if he wanted to.

The other archangel had given up on the porn, at least. As if to compensate for his brother's obnoxiousness, Gabriel was on his best behavior.

Even if Sam ignored both of them, Gabriel didn't go unnoticed by the other resident of Sam's mind for long.

"Well, well, well," Lucifer chuckled after he abandoned the doctor's features in favor of Nick's familiar face. "I didn't expect to see you again, brother."

Gabriel's face was suddenly harder to read than it had ever been. It was clearly a surprise to him as well, but what it meant, Sam couldn't be sure. When he spoke, the archangel's voice was tight, but he kept up a flippant air. "Me either, bro." He was carefully getting up from Sam's bedside and walking around to what Sam had thought of unofficially as Lucifer's side of the room.

The two figments of Sam's imagination were now aware of each other. Exactly what he needed, really.

"You killed me!" Gabriel accused, poking the Devil in the chest. There was hint of surprise and accusation in his voice. If this wasn't a sign that his mind was getting even more fucked up, Sam might have found the sight amusing.

Lucifer waved him away and shrugged. "You were gonna do the same. Besides, the moose dragged my ass back into the Cage, so we're even."

Sam blinked. Gabriel didn't look at all happy to meet his brother again. Maybe it was just Sam having a hard time keeping up with who stabbed whom in the back.

Marin needed help. Despite what the doctors thought, she was as sane as he was. (Well, the doctors did think she was as sane as Sam, probably. They just didn't realize that the voices in their heads could actually be real. It just wouldn't do.) She was being nice to him - a complete stranger who, as far as she knew, might as well be a dangerous madman. And there was something about her that felt familiar, something in the way she carried herself.

She was encouraging him to eat and get some sleep. Gabriel was echoing her suggestions.

"Listen to the kid, Samsquatch! You don't want your insides turning to mush!" he insisted; and Sam carefully sat himself on the edge of his bed, candy bar still unwrapped in his hand because he didn't have the strength to rip the wrapping.

Lucifer just chuckled.

Gabriel had taken to messing with Lucifer. Fire crackers turned into stuffed toys rather than exploding, "The Best of Queen" turned into relaxation tapes and, a very short time later, the angel and devil on his shoulder were engaged in an occasionally muted prank war.

At least neither of their efforts were focused on him anymore.

Sam really didn't want to talk about the elephant in the room. He didn't even want to know which one of them snapped it into existence. A bright pink pigmy elephant was staring at him, trumpeting in confusion.

It could have been a hallucination brought about by lack of sleep, but he glared at Gabriel for good measure, hoping to make himself understood.

The elephant vanished.

Prank wars aside, Gabriel was being unnaturally quiet. He was giving off the impression that he was studying Sam – he was probably trying to be discreet, but Sam had never known him to excel at that and was probably why it wasn't working.

The longer Sam had been awake, the more frail the archangel looked. The opposite of Lucifer's growing strength. Sam didn't have to dig too deep to draw his conclusions about that.

"You know, brother," Lucifer mused, sitting chin in hands on the side table. "Imagine how great things would have turned out if Sam here had said yes sooner! You know I don't mind sharing when it comes to you."

Gabriel's jaw was clenched so tight, Sam could see a muscle twitch.

"Maybe we could have even played pretend."

Sam shuddered at the idea. Lucifer had had possession of his body for longer than he would have ever liked (which would have preferably been not at all) and imagining that situation with Gabriel in the picture seemed even more wrong somehow.

Gabriel carefully moved off the bedside and started pacing quietly, not looking at Sam.

Lucifer's burst of laughter startled Sam.

It was weird to watch Gabriel and Lucifer act like offended cats around each other. They were territorial – and Sam suspected he was the territory in question – but it was the kind of possessive display polite house cats put on. There was hissing and spitting, sure – usually in the form of double entendres at Sam's expense – but they were being very careful not to tear up the living room, so to speak.

And Sam was comparing himself to the living room carpet. Great progress there!

Sam was treating his dinner with suspicion. Lucifer could have turned it into maggots again. Gabriel was helping, but his help didn't get very far when the images were already rooted in Sam's head.

When Marin showed up with a stolen candy bar, it brought a new spark of life to the unusually somber archangel.

Gabriel was busy keeping Lucifer quiet long enough for Sam to appear less distressing around the girl. "A girl after my own heart!" he chimed in, a bit more like himself, before devoting his attention to his brother again.

Marin's problem was simple – her brother's ghost was haunting her. On a good day, Sam could handle that with his eyes close. Too bad he hadn't had one in a while.

At least he had Marin's attention, if not her trust, and he could work out what to do from there. She was like a frightened bird, turning to fly away the moment he'd changed the topic to her own predicament – Sam had wanted to assure her that she was right and the doctors didn't know what they were talking about.

Though she didn't seem to convinced it was a ghost, she was desperate enough to let Sam help her, no matter how crazy the plan seemed.

"That was uncalled for!" Lucifer protested the moment he was un-muted, but no one was paying attention.

"It's just a haunting, you can solve it in your sleep," Gabriel assured Sam.

"Since when are you so eager to play guardian angel, brother?" Lucifer pried, maybe as a distraction. It didn't work.

Sam hesitated before coming to a decision. If this was all a product of his mind, it was probably the sanest choice. If the archangels were actually somehow in his head, Sam hoped this would tip the scales in favor of the one that wasn't traditionally the origin of evil. For whatever it was worth, it was time to choose.

"Gabriel?" he called. His voice was shaky. He still didn't believe this would make much of a difference, but it's what had given his visions of Hell and Lucifer a hold on him all those weeks ago. Hopefully, it would work on the newer addition.

There was a moment of startled tension and then Gabriel's features eased into something more relaxed. "Yeah?"

"If this ghost business goes wrong," he said and it felt so wrong to acknowledge his presence after using up so much energy over the past weeks on pretending they weren't there. "I know I'm not in the best shape to handle this. Just… keep an eye out for me."

Gabriel nodded.

Lucifer, as expected, started making a fuss again. "I thought we had something special," and "What does he have that I don't?" came up several times afterwards as the Devil paced around the room listing off all the fond memories he had of torturing Sam in the Cage.

Gabriel didn't try to silence him. Instead, he sat by Sam's side, humming a lullaby that didn't really help. Sam was exhausted beyond sleep.

Marin returned with salt and a lighter she'd nicked off one of the nurses. Sam was a bad influence on her and he knew it, but it was going to keep her alive, so he was probably forgiven.

Asking Gabriel to keep an extra eye out for him turned out to be the best decision he'd taken lately. Lucifer started playing with his perception again, but Sam had Gabriel talk him through what he was doing so he wouldn't end up curled in on himself half-way through drawing a damn salt circle. He couldn't let his weakness show now that he was this close to fixing something again.

Once the circle was drawn, it was as good as over. Sam clung to Marin while the ghost raged – he needed the physical support, while she needed the emotional. Once her bracelet, the last physical remnant of the boy, went up in smoke, it was done. She was out of danger.

Alarms went off.

There were nurses, and doctors, and drugs and they did nothing, because Sam couldn't focus and he still couldn't sleep. Gabriel was dancing in and out of sight and Sam had no idea what he was doing, but it probably had something to do with Lucifer, because the Devil was absent and Sam's head was quiet for once.

"I think they're demons," Gabriel whispered into Sam's ear.

It was dark and Sam wasn't sure where exactly he was, or who 'they' were. Or why Gabriel was perched on the bed next to him, unless it was an old dream.

"Mmhmmh?" he managed to mumble.

Gabriel put a hand on Sam's shoulder to shake him awake, but there was no substance to it beyond the ghostly touch.

Sam remembered and sat bolt upright. "What?"

"It took me a while to work it out – Hello? Not functioning at full, awesome archangel power here!" Gabriel pointed out. "I can't see beyond their vessels, but it finally clicked: your nurse is a demon."

"Which one?"

Sam couldn't remember falling asleep at any point, but he was feeling groggy and dazed. The meds hadn't worn off completely.

He shrugged. "The one coming over right now."

Indeed, a nurse came right on cue to take Sam to electroshock therapy. That was when he remembered Lucifer was around and heard him clap his hands gleefully. Sam tried to struggle out of his restraints, but he didn't have the strength or the energy for it, and he could read on Gabriel's face that this wasn't going to end well.

The lights overhead flickered as the nurse was pushing him out of the room. For a moment, both Gabriel and Lucifer vanished and were replaced by two Gabriels, walking on either side of the bed. As always, Lucifer had picked the worse moment to play tricks on him.

"You got to trust me," one of the Gabriels said, his fingers working loose the buckle of the restrains on one of his arms. It came undone and Sam kept still so the demon wouldn't notice.

"You broke him!" Sam heard Lucifer cheerfully proclaim. He was just out of Sam's peripheral vision, but the satisfied smirk permeated his voice.

Sam couldn't really make out Gabriel's reply, but he sounded panicked.

"Sasquatch, look at me!" Gabriel snapped his fingers in from of Sam to catch his attention. And Sam tried to focus, he really did, but it was hard to remember which hand actually belonged to Gabriel and which Gabriel was the real one. He wasn't even sure how many of him there were.

"Kid!" he snapped again, alarm in his voice. "Nod if you can hear me!"

Sam nodded. Maybe.

Lucifer was chuckling. "I have to admit you-"

"Shut it!"

Sam's head was pounding. He wished they'd both shut up and leave him alone to suffer in peace. It felt like there were electrical charges running through his brain, sparking occasionally, but slowly fizzling down.

"Can you sit up?" Gabriel asked him and he was looking so worried, it was surreal.

He tried. He was immediately hit by a wave of dizziness and lay back down.

He was on the floor of a room he didn't recognize. He was still in the hospital, but he couldn't tell how he's gotten there.

The nurse was apparently gone, too.

Lucifer appeared in his line of sight, standing by his shoulder and looming over him. "I am impressed."

Sam squeezed his eyes shut, but he knew the devil was still there.

"I'm sorry, kid," Gabriel said softly. Sam felt his hair being brushed out of his face, but the touch was so insubstantial, that it couldn't be real.

"I mean, you're not even a proper angel anymore!" Lucifer continued. "And you, Sam!"

Gabriel made a threatening, growling sound in the back of his throat, but it didn't impress Lucifer. "I'm just saying, I haven't seen Sammy here as fired up since he decided to drag me back to hell."

When Sam opened his eyes again, there were only one Gabriel and one Lucifer above him.

"What happened?" It came out slurred even to his ears.

"I am so glad you asked." Lucifer folded his arms. "You see… it wasn't me."

"Not helping."

"Just hang in there," Gabriel tried to reassure him. "It's been crazy around here, but Dean's on his way…"

He was tired.

And then Castiel popped into Sam's head. It was turning into a refuge for dead angels. None of them looked happy to be there.

It was quiet in Sam's head now. Lucifer was gone and so was Gabriel. Castiel was still there, broken and silent in Sam's place.

Dean had tried talking to him, but Castiel was unresponsive. Sam didn't really expect a response, but he couldn't just walk away.

He sat in the chair by his bedside and waited for Dean to get back from fixing the paperwork.

It was too quiet, but he couldn't bear to break the silence.

Apparently, someone had exorcised the nurse before he'd got Sam to the electro-shock room. Dean and Castiel had found the guy unconscious in the hallway before they got to Sam. Sam couldn't explain what happened. He suspected that Gabriel had something to do with it.