#also extremely funny to me if sam's body temp is something that should Literally Be Killing Him its so low

[quietwingsinthesky]

actually, no, back to this again. sam should have zero concept of heat post-cage/lucifer possession. he can put as many layers on as he wants, go out in the middle of a summer day, wrap himself in a blanket, stand next to a fire, stand in the fire, and he's still cold. he's always cold.

which leads to problems when he keeps accidentally grabbing things that are hot enough to burn him and not noticing until the damage is already done. he learns to always hesitate before touching anything just in case, eventually. before that, he spends a lot of time with his palms bandaged around re-aggravated burns, nearly healed but for how he tried to cook something the other day and couldn't feel the heat from the stove, didn't pull his hand away until dean shouted at him.

he's cold. he's cold. his body temperature is several degrees lower than it should be, but the one time it gets to 97.6°, outcome of an experiment with castiel to see if they could fix it, he felt like he was having a fever so bad it might kill him. dean never gets used to feeling the chill under his skin whenever he hugs sam. sometimes his breath fogs in front of him. he shies away from spending the night with anyone because they might feel like they're caressing a ghost. he's walking hypothermia, but that's the way his body likes it now.

the thing is, the cold's not a leftover of lucifer's grace. not really. that's not how cold works. it's an absence. (so the cage freezes, so lucifer freezes, because it, because he, is cut off from God.)

one day, sam is finally standing across from lucifer again. and he feels warm.