Chapter Text
you're always cold to the touch, at first, but you warm, pressing your face into the join where my neck meets my shoulder and breathing in deep like a prayer. you whisper my name and I wriggle a bit, your breath chilling my neck.
"you're always so cold," I say, with a laugh, but you don't smile back, just nod sadly against my skin and mumble, lips brushing over my pulse, "you warm me."
you like to touch me, like to press yourself into my arms touching me with every bit of you, until it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, and when you lie across from me on my bed and whisper tales of ancient darkness they always end with "and then there was light, and you."
I think that you love me, but I still haven't touched you outside of the aching sweetness of dreams, I don't tell you where I am because I still have some sense and I don't want the world to end, even if I get to spend eternity with you.
selfishly I also have no wish to share a body because then I wouldn't be able to feel your cool skin pressed into my shirt in a trust made all the sweeter by being given by the ancient liar.
and there's my brother.
dean cannot enter these early-morning-chill-and-sunrise dreams, and I'll admit that I'm glad to have a place where he doesn't intrude and clutch in blood and darkness, because blood and darkness have no place here (ironic) and maybe that's why I don't push you away when you curl into my arms and close your eyes like you have everything anyone could ever want, why I let you lie beside me in the chilly drowsiness of my dreams until we're both warm and sleepy and you put your head on my chest as you tell stories to the steady thrum of my heartbeat, until dean shakes me awake with a scoff about how only weak men get eight hours of sleep but I can tell that there's a looseness in his shoulders when he looks at me and the circles under my eyes are nearly gone, because you keep the nightmares away and make sleeping something to look forward to every night.
castiel knows about your visits, I think, but says nothing, except to tell me over and over why I cannot say yes, eyes aching with an age-old pain, until even dean mouths the words along with him and rolls his eyes and breaks the angel's heart a little more.
I told you about the heart in castiel's eyes once and you smiled a little ruefully and said that winchesters had their own allure, and then you brushed a rare kiss along my brow and lay silent until I awoke.
this is something like a love letter and something like a prayer because I'm always on the brink of telling you where I am and the balance has tipped and there are dirty cloths pressed into our mouths and a throng of demons chanting words to remove the concealment on our bones and they want vengeance, are planning to force me to accept you by threatening dean and I think you were wise in the way you went about it because the only emotion I feel is regret for our struggling little world and regret for my brother and regret for your cool skin on mine and they're taking away the gag now--
"Lucifer."
Sam breathes the word with more love and reverence than the demons could muster, and they look askance at each other as their Lord appears with a flap of wings and a cool, even expression as he looks upon them with a fury like cold fire.
"Well," he says, quiet but sharp enough that the silence bleeds. "What have we here? I hope you didn't hurt my Sam."
The demons are silent and trembling, with awe or fear, but Lucifer's expression never changes as he begins to glow--
"Lucifer, remember Dean," says Sam, and the glow stops. Lucifer casts a thoughtful glance over his shoulder at Dean, who glares at him in mute horror, and then at Sam.
"Mmm," he hums in assent and then holds out a hand in a mimicry of the way Sam used to use his darkness-begotten gifts, as the demons rush from their vessels and coalesce in a cloud of smoke which implodes on itself with a grating scream and falls to the ground as ash. He's still looking at Sam, and asks, genuinely curious,
"What should I do with the vessels, beloved?"
Dean makes a gut-wrenching sound of betrayal, and Sam avoids his eyes as he says
"Heal them, wipe their memories starting at their possession, and transport them home."
It's a challenge, almost, a test, and Lucifer nods. He flicks his wrist and Sam's bindings fall to the floor. There are ugly, painful-looking lesions on Lucifer's face and spotted down his throat that never show up in dreams, and Sam winces in sympathy, as Lucifer goes from person to person, sending them home. The last is lucid enough to look up at Lucifer and whisper thank you before her eyes close and she disappears. Dean's bindings fall finally, and he stands and lunges at Lucifer, who stands stiffly and lets him break his knuckles on his face. Dean whimpers, and Lucifer considers the bleeding mess of a hand for a moment before closing his hand just above the break and healing it.
"You love your brother," he says, softly. "You love him and you will protect him to your dying breath, even if your father orders you to kill him." He pauses, and looks at Sam, his cold, impassive face going tender and his lips quirking in a half-smile. "In those ways, Dean Winchester, you are nothing like Michael."
He drops Dean's wrist, and Dean draws it to himself, shuddering in repugnance and fear.
"Sam," he says. "Beloved. I know you can't accept me yet."
"I'm sorry," Sam says, roughly, in the back of his throat, and his eyes are glassy.
"No."
It's a simply stated word, that means so many things. No, you have nothing to be sorry for. No, you're not sorry. No, don't make your brother resent you anymore.
Lucifer presses two clinical fingers to Dean's forehead and shields him from the angels once more, and Dean grunts. He turns his back on the hunter and moves towards kneeling Sam. He offers a hand, and Sam takes it, letting himself be pulled to his feet. Lucifer wraps his arms around Sam and very lightly lets his nose rest on the pulse point for a second, carving words into Sam's bones with far more care than he had Dean's and adding embellishments of love. He stops to ask,
"Can I find you?" and when Sam hesitates but shakes his head very slightly, he doesn't add the loophole allowing him to find his beloved anywhere, though it pains him. He tilts Sam's head down to kiss his brow before he steps back and leaves with his wings fluttering. Sam closes his eyes with a sharp pang of loss before he turns miserably to look at Dean.
"Beloved?" Dean spits, and there's so much hurt in his eyes.
"He loves me," Sam says. "But I won't end the world for him, and he knows it. He's better than your angel, at any rate."
Dean frowns.
"Cas--" he begins, and Sam blinks, and almost smiles.
"I meant Michael, actually," he says, carefully, and watches Dean scowl darkly. "Perhaps Lucifer is to me as Cas would be to you if he and Michael were the same person."
He watches the thought play behind his brother's eyes and smiles sadly when Dean's gaze drops.
"You would still say no, but it would be hard, wouldn't it," Sam says. "He would visit your dreams and keep the nightmares away and beg you to say yes until he realized that wouldn't work and instead began to talk to you until you knew how important you are. Don't you dare judge me for this, Dean. Ruby was a mistake, using my powers was a mistake, but I have never had someone look at me the way he does and I don't know how to hate him."
Dean opens his mouth and closes it and nods as Sam turns away and begins to walk towards where the Impala is parked, feeling old and tired.
Maybe he should take a nap and hope for dreams.