Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s difficult to keep memory and imagery sealed in their tombs. It’s toxic pearl treasures, an enemy to remember, and it traps Sam in dreams. Sam can’t stop seeing it flashing when he closes his eyes. It’s not always gore. There’s too much in his head. But every part of it makes him feel unsafe.

There’s irradiated light and Lucifer’s face and dandelion eclipses that burn Sam’s eyes outside his head. It’s drowning in darkness, the pressure, or being split open and organs replaced with glowing Christmas bulb lights and silly putty. Sometimes Lucifer’s ethos was punishment, sometimes pain or utter degradation, or whatever would hurt or confuse Sam the most, but often it was all, wrapped in glittery bows of whatever he found funniest.

Lucifer is being so nice to him.

Lucifer is being so nice to him.

There are so many sensations, convoluted and layered, too many, too torturous, too much for Sam’s brain. And they’re layering over the top of each other in disastrous amalgamations. 

Lucifer will tell Sam how smart and impressive he thinks Sam is. He’ll text Sam giving him reminders about how the world they’re in is real, that he’s actually with Dean right now, even if he deserves better than however Dean is treating him. And Sam and Dean get a case, before Sam has to (has to)-- Sam and Dean get a case, and Lucifer (forces Sam, tells Sam to tell him--) asks about the details of it, gets back vital information, cuts off what could potentially have hurt another person.

Sam remembers how his mind ended up truly breaking before, when he was hallucinating, how he let Lucifer in. Except this isn’t his subconscious and this isn’t a manifestation of his shame. This is Lucifer, even in digits, and Sam is going to have to face him again.

Sam’s so scared he’s not going to be able to do it. He doesn’t think he’s that selfish, but Lucifer is being so nice to him. That never lasts. And sometimes Lucifer likes tricks and sometimes Lucifer likes to mock Sam’s blooming affections, but very often Lucifer just likes the contrasts. 

Sam can’t do it. He can’t do it he can’t do it he can’t do it. 

But as nice as Lucifer is being to him, he doesn’t let Sam stop. Sam barely sleeps, doesn’t at all when he’s out on the case, and he has to make excuses, get out of the room when Lucifer demands to video call when he’s around Dean. And Sam wants to retract, completely, but he knows Dean will push it more and more then, and the thought of Dean hacking his phone, Dean finding out in any way. It’s utterly unfathomable.

Sam tries to mass delete photos from his phone, panics and sees what he’s sent and can’t stop hyperventilating. Lucifer wants more. The process repeats. Does it even matter how nice he’s being?

Lucifer’s being so nice to him.

--

Sam feels utterly numb, when he drives to the location Lucifer has given him. He’s borrowing one of the spare cars, to Dean’s dismay, and lies about where he’s going. He wonders if Dean will track him. He wonders if Lucifer will kill someone for it. He wonders if Lucifer will kill--

Sam’s hands feel literally numb on the steering wheel. Like maybe he has some type of nerve damage. It’s mostly flat and he can move them when he needs to, some pressure to the side or another, but he’s terrified. He half wonders if someone stuck a needle in them if he’d feel anything. His mind is blank and stormy. He almost feels like he blacks out through it.

But eventually, he arrives, a hotel off the highway in Oklahoma, and checks into the honeymoon suite. He must look as wrecked as he feels, because the hotel clerk asks him if he needs help. And he rarely gets that since he was a kid.

The place is fancy, considering the awkward location. The light fixtures are intricate and the carpet is thick and clean. Sam feels dizzy. They’re on the top floor, but he takes the stairs. 

After six flights, he’s feeling even more lightheaded, but he doesn’t think it was the steps. When he gets to the room, it’s at the end of the hall. It’s disorienting, the length of the space between him and the door stretched like a tube. He crosses it, and it feels like crawling up an arm.

He knocks, despite having the key, two minutes early and heart thudding so much he thinks he’s going to throw up. The door ends up opening to a large room with a nice window looking out at a parking lot which stretches into open fields. Two men are standing beside it, and Lucifer is lounging on a white bed with a million pillows. It’s covered in rose petals.

Sam isn’t sure how he justifies what he does next.

In the Cage, it didn’t take him long to shut down certain fear responses. Maybe it’s something about the fact he’s been out a while since, and there are ways you have to respond on hunts, in life, that were incongruent. And now the wires crossed something horrible in his head.

It doesn’t matter, why, or how he should try to justify or explain it.

It comes down to: he’s a coward and an idiot.

He sprints away, in the opposite direction, runs as fast as he fucking can. Gets lucky with the elevator, and pulse racing and waiting for the drop to switch his mind, but at the bottom, he still can’t stop. He races across the lobby, embarrassed and terrified, and it takes him until he’s halfway through the parking lot before he starts violently remembering the last time Lucifer let him run.

It’s so fucking selfish, that that’s what stops him first. He should be thinking of who Lucifer will hurt, and he does, too scared to even look at his phone, look at the threats. He imagines Amelia’s corpse, but it’s impossible to see through the thick sensory overlap of what Lucifer did to him the last time he tried to run.

He wants to hide. The daylight, white and bright, is too much with the memory overlapping it. He wants to walk to his car and breath and breath and wait for the storm to pass. He wants to drink until he can’t remember his own name and maybe, just maybe, then he won’t think of Lucifer. 

But people’s lives are at stake. And he might have just. Someone (he can’t think of her, he can’t think of who, someone-- ) might have just been murdered because of his cowardice.

He walks back, buzzing, memories fritzing and flashing and convoluted now too. His vision feels distorted. It’s irrelevant. He walks back humiliated, ignores any concerned looks, and makes his way to Lucifer again.

And hopes Lucifer will let him beg for forgiveness.

--

He uses his key card this time. Lucifer hasn’t moved, glances at him with Jess’s uncle’s body, discerning. The mannerisms are the same though. He may as well be wearing Nick. The two men, presumably demons, are also still standing by the window. Lucifer tilts his head at Sam.

“Forget something, now did you?” Lucifer asks. Sam’s aware he’s being mocked, but it’s jovial.  

“I--”

“See, I told you guys he’d show up! He’s always been a bit, you know, inconsiderate about other’s time, so that’s why he’s late, right Sam?”

The fucking rose petals.

“Yeah,” Sam says numbly. “I’m, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no you can apologise better than that now,” Lucifer says, and he slides over to the left, opposing the men and the window, side of the bed, and stands up, takes a step towards Sam. It takes everything in Sam not to recoil. “Get in,” Lucifer demands, and it’s harder, colder, and Sam follows immediately, walks a couple feet in front of Lucifer. 

“You didn’t, you didn-- I know I was late, and I’m... I’m sorry,” Sam tries, and Lucifer is looking at him in a way that’s almost endearing. Sam thinks maybe that’s his new favourite form of mockery.

“Don’t worry, Sammy, I knew you’d come. Wasn’t I just saying how he’d come back? That there was no use fetching after ya?” Lucifer asks.

“Yes, you were right.”

“These guys, well, they offered to go see what the problem was, you know? See if you needed, well, anything to get you here. But I told them that you didn’t. Because I know you, don’t I, Sam?”

“Yes,” Sam says, mind and body on autopilot. Last time he was in the same room as Lucifer without a plan or protection, Lucifer was wearing Cas, and his hand, his hand was inside Sam. It was agonising. Sam trembles.

“Apologise for your manners properly, won’t you? Get on your knees,” Lucifer says, and he smirks a little. Sam darts his eyes towards what, considering the mild smell of sulfur, are probably demons, standing watching him, must be inferring.

He doesn’t as much get to his knees as fall to them. The carpet helps cushion it, but he absentmindedly wonders if he’ll bruise.

“I’m sorry,” Sam slurs, his words feeling lost and dreamy. Sam blandly thinks perhaps the sharp hook in his chest is because of the audience. It makes the unreality jagged. 

Sam can’t make Lucifer’s gaze, doesn’t think he’s supposed to. Tries not to think about what this looks like to the demons. Tries to not let that derail him. 

“Are you going to hurt someone?” Sam asks, eventually, the quietness threatening to devour him with spiky acid in his torso. Lucifer takes a step towards him, and Sam remembers too clearly, what Lucifer’s favourite thing to do is when he is facing Sam like this, while Sam is on his knees.

Lucifer grabs Sam’s jaw, and that first touch, ricochetting painful, after all the pictures and messages and silly errands Lucifer’s forced Sam on become hyperreal. It’s electric and nauseating, and Sam wants to scream. Lucifer drags Sam’s gaze up to meet his, stares directly at Sam, before swinging his hand back and hitting Sam extremely hard across the face. 

Sam goes down, hard, the impact purposeful and painful. But it was open-handed, and it was generous. Sam calms down a bit, righting himself back on his knees again looking up at Lucifer. Lucifer is still in a good mood. Lucifer is still being so nice to him.

“Pay attention to me,” Lucifer says, and even though the violence was relatively nothing compared to what Lucifer has done to him, Sam’s mind is starting to overlay again. He doesn’t like being in the same room as Lucifer, doesn’t like what Lucifer hurting him at all does to his brain. “I’m not hurting anyone. This time is for us. But you wasted some of it, and you have nothing to show for it, so get down lower. I don’t believe you’re sorry enough.”

Sam feels his body, weak, barely in his control, automatically following the command like it’s all it knows how to do. He’s humiliated by it, by the fact they’re not alone, by the fact he doesn’t even feel like he’s obeying Lucifer as a choice in this fucking trap Lucifer’s put him in, but rather just by the fact Lucifer’s asking. Maybe that’s always what he’s doing.

But his head is soft and disoriented, and he’s also somehow glad, that it’s so easy, to debase himself now, when the threat could be so high.

But there’s terror beneath it, so loud and surreal Sam feels his veins bend, twist into something else while his limbs remain still and numb while he stays prone. He imagines Lucifer behind him, hot pokers, marking and pushing in and caustic fiery agony. He starts to hyperventilate, the softness in his brain overtaken by layered imagery, all over again. He doesn’t know where he is. The pain was so severe.

Lucifer isn’t chatty, for once, probably just taking time to appreciate Sam degrading himself for him, terrified. But time makes the fear build, and Sam is suffocating inside himself, refusing to move while remembering, smelling, feeling the way his flesh burns. It doesn’t stop on contact, it goes going and going, tissue layers deep, so deep and stinging and agonising. No way to protect himself. No way to. No way.

He wonders if Lucifer’s smiling. This must be so entertaining. He wishes this had been enough to keep Lucifer’s interest in the Cage. But it’s not fun enough if Sam isn’t completely out of his mind with graphic memories suffocating him while he is the picture of submission at Lucifer’s feet. Ideas of what Lucifer could do to him, they don’t stop coming.

“Sam, what do you say? For wasting my time like that?”

Sam knows how to plead. He knows how to play into twisted games neither of them believes and exist within those frameworks for decades. He feels it too. He’s so so fucking sorry.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry Lucifer, Lucifer, I shouldn’t, I’m,” Sam’s mind is blank and spiralling, and he doesn’t think he’s been this lost inside himself for a long time. He’s sliding, he’s sliding into something he thought he’d escaped. “Selfish, inconsiderate, you deserve better, I’m sorry, shouldn’t have, please, I’m sorry. I’m--”

“Sammy,” Lucifer says, cutting him off. But Sam’s not in the room. He can’t make sense of the soft tone. It’s not one that sparks the jagged re-entry.

“So sorry, I’m, worth nothing, worth, couldn’t, was, couldn’t even do one thing right, you, you gave me days to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Please, I’m--”

“Sam,” Lucifer says over the top, and it’s harsher. This time it does the trick. Sam’s words are cut off as abruptly as his train of thought. He remembers the demons in the room, and he feels nausea churn so badly in his stomach, he’s afraid he’ll throw up, and that Lucifer, Lucifer will, Lucifer--

It’s not that he’s capable of thinking of the consequences, of if this gets out to anyone, of who it will reach. That’s an icy reflection, all frost overloaded. He just can’t handle it, the fact he’s being witnessed.

“I believe you,” Lucifer says. Sam’s shoulders relax backwards. He doesn’t move otherwise, still tense. “You’re going to stay, another hour, because you want a full day with me, right Sammy?”

“Yes, yes of course,” Sam says. He’s disgusted by how his voice trembles, disgusted by how he could do all of this and still maintain some level of defiance. Disgusted by what he can’t stop himself from being reduced to.

“Okay, I forgive you,” Lucifer says. It unspools in his chest, almost euphoric, blossoming inside himself in warm, soft colours. “You can get up.”

Sam takes the suggestion as an order, and stands up fast enough to make his vision go black. His head pounds. The disgust is sitting in his chest. This is going to catch up with him. He looks at Lucifer, sizing him up, and Lucifer’s really there. Really in front of him. It’s a nightmare, an impossibility. He wants to dig his nail into his palm, but he’s too scared to move.

“Do you think Dean followed you here?” Lucifer asks. Sam feels his vision blur.

“I didn’t, told him to stay back,” Sam answers, honestly. “I don’t, I don’t--”

“Cool your jets, kiddo. I trust you. And he isn’t here watching, if you’re worried about that,” Lucifer says. The thought hadn’t crossed Sam’s mind, and even in retrospect, it grips him in horror. “But I really don’t want to risk him tracking us down, you know? So don’t worry, we’ll be back here in less than 25 hours,” Lucifer says, and he grabs Sam’s shoulder, and everything momentarily goes dark.

--

Sam can’t think, can’t worry, can’t observe, because Lucifer’s hand is on his shoulder, and he can’t breathe. Lucifer can touch him. Lucifer has his, has him in some unknown place, and is touching him. Lucifer’s going to hurt him.

Lucifer doesn’t let go, though, leaves his hand on Sam’s shoulder like it’s supposed to help Sam’s skyrocketing pulse. Eventually, Sam can conceive of what’s happening, of the new hotel room with the same rose petals, same layout, same demons by the window, but it’s raining outside, drizzling something awful. Sam wishes a simple touch didn’t make him feel so helpless and trapped.

“It’s warmer in here,” Lucifer says. Smiles at Sam, drops his hand; the crawling sensation lingers. “Strip for me?”

There’s a cessation in sparkling distortion. The sickness twists and twists and twists. Sam doesn’t notice until after he does it that he’s shaking his head no, that his eyes dart to the demons, one of which is smirking. There are flashes of light, where the demons stand, camera flashes.

It should be routine. 

“Come on, Sam. Take off your jacket. You are right. I’m dressing you too formal, desperately trying to counter your tastelessness. We don’t want you looking like Crowley now. Anyways. Take it off.”

It’s nicer, Sam thinks. It’s nicer than Lucifer should be reacting to him shaking his head, at his reluctance. It’s nicer.

Lucifer’s niceness was all Sam craved in Hell. Right now, naive and sick and terrified, Sam wonders if Lucifer’s niceness is really buying Sam anything.

Sam’s hands tremble, but he takes off the jacket. Lucifer is right. It is warm. Sam’s sweating. He takes it off, peels it from his skin. It’s fancy, white, furlined, has nice seams. He holds it confused for a second, before dropping it onto the floor.

“Have you been working out?” Lucifer asks. Sam bites his lip, infuriated, upset. It’s pure torment, what Lucifer is doing. There’s no fucking point, but to make Sam feel how he does, feel this helpless, this trapped and sick and violated. Lucifer knows what Sam’s body looks like right now. Has gotten detailed pictures, measurements, has gotten all Sam’s daily activities noted to almost the minute. The shirt Sam’s wearing being a bit tight in his chest and arms, well, that was just a stylistic choice Lucifer made. 

Sam doesn’t want to respond, doesn’t want to weave through what renewed fury and intense consequences this situation holds. He unbuttons the shirt holding back a scowl, sick inside and angry at the ravenous way Lucifer watches him.

Sometimes, it’s easier to pretend Lucifer is simply being vain. It’s easier, sometimes, in a way that after the fact makes it perhaps all worse, to pretend that his body isn’t his. That Lucifer is simply that narcissistic. That what Lucifer desires isn’t him.

It’s stupid, considering neither of them had a real body Lucifer didn’t create in the Cage.

Sam goes to the black belt on the pair of slacks he’s wearing. His hands are really shaking now, vision blurring. He’s fumbling at the buckle. It takes him a second, to pull down the zipper. He doesn’t notice he’s crying until he’s flinching away from Lucifer wiping a tear off his face. The trace of touch feels like vermin.

“Sam,” Lucifer says, and he sounds sad. He puts his hands over Sam’s, whose are still at his fly. They steady him. He moves Sam’s hands back to his sides, and Sam lets them hang there, fly undone, buttons on his shirt undone, and tears on his face.

He knew what Lucifer was going to do to him, when he said there’d be no torture. He knew, regardless, with who Lucifer is, how he’s been acting. He just doesn’t want to survive it.

“It’s okay,” Lucifer says, and it sucks, because it calms Sam down. Because Sam’s world is based around Lucifer, and if Lucifer says it’s okay, then Sam supposes it is.

Lucifer wipes more tears from Sam’s face, cradles it. It’s still that helpless terror, that crawling sensation, that revulsion. Sam almost wishes Lucifer would take his reactions away again, just let him feel calm. But Sam also knows there’s a reason why he never did that in the Cage. It’s not fun that way.

But he’s still acting so gentle, and Sam feels the gratitude, knows so viscerally what it would be like if he wasn’t. 

And when Lucifer kisses him, and Sam doesn’t run, or push, or fight, or pull away, or kiss him back, Sam wants to pretend it’s the smartest form of defiance. That he isn’t giving in, but he isn’t a coward, weak enough to risk someone’s life.

But the truth is, he’s just frozen.

--

“Told you!” a triumphant voice says, distractingly. Lucifer is still kissing the corner of Sam’s mouth. “Told you that he fucked Sam. Told you one of the Winchesters was the devil’s whore.”

Lucifer pulls away, for a second, while Sam’s eyes feel tight and twisting, and the way worlds collide is swung back and forth before a volcanic crash. 

“Quiet,” Lucifer says. “Busy here?”

Lucifer kisses Sam more, sucks on Sam’s neck in a way that’s neither erotic nor lacking pain, and there becomes a point where no amount of slipping back into previous forms of himself or complete and utter dissociation can stave off Sam’s panic attack.

It’s all too real.

Lucifer is running his hand up and down Sam’s chest, in time with slowing his breaths, to try to calm him down, but Sam’s failing, failing so badly because it’s sparks of adrenaline rushing every time he remembers who’s touching him.

“Get dinner,” Lucifer says, presumably to the demons, but Sam’s pretty sure he’s just taking away the audience. It helps calm down Sam more, for sure, until Sam finds himself sobbing. Lucifer’s going to punish him so so badly for this. He’s failed so so badly.

“Sam, baby, here, lay down,” Lucifer says, guiding him to the bed. It makes Sam panic more. He’s so dizzy. He doesn’t understand why Lucifer isn’t hurting him more, why Lucifer is being so patient.

It’s not until he realises what’s going on, that he’s lying on this plush, soft, soft bed, red petals, Lucifer looking at him and waiting for him to regain his breaths in a stable fashion, that he wonders if Lucifer would care, if he framed it right. If he could.

“Didn’t you say,” Sam says, and Lucifer seems uplifted by Sam’s pathetic attempts at communication. “Didn’t you say just us?”

Something blooms in Lucifer’s expression. The realisation dawns, and Sam feels in some ways, that maybe, through the panic and hysteria, that Sam is trying to manipulate him.

“Just us?” Lucifer asks, but he sounds almost excited. It makes Sam feel so so sick.

“You just let those, the--”

“Those demons?”

“Yes, you, you said it was just for us.”

“You want to be alone with me?” Lucifer asks. Sam doesn’t know how to respond to that. He nods, the contradictions eating him alive. It’s almost the last thing he wants, to be alone with Lucifer. It’s all his worst fears concentrated. But yes, right now, he just wants them to be alone.

“Just us.”

“Alright, Sammy. I got you.”

When the demons come back, they have a platter, wheeled in, push it beside the bed, and once it’s all in place, Lucifer pushes them both against the wall. A flash of white light consumes the room, quickly, and then they’re both gone, save for the sound of a phone hitting the ground.

“What, what did you do?” Sam asks, a little overwhelmed by the entire situation.

“I killed them. Did it less graphically because I don’t think you need any guts or gore right now. PJ was taking some pictures though, so I left his phone. Just us, right?”

Sam nods mutely. There’s something novel, about this. Lucifer is caring about him in a way he hasn’t since the deepest recesses of the Cage, since a mockery twisted mold that Sam refuses to ever belong to. He wonders how much is an act. He wonders how far he can push, if he can manipulate it. It’s going to ruin him, somehow, some fundamental way, even more. He craves it.

Lucifer shifts his body on top of Sam’s again, and Sam’s head is so viscous, but he still can see, hazy and terrified. Tyler, he feels, Lucifer is touching him, Tyler is--

“Lucifer,” Sam says, quietly, in between a breath. Lucifer pulls away. He looks predatory, menacing. He looks so much like himself Sam can barely make sense of the fact there’s an innocent person locked away, beneath this skin. “Tyler,” Sam says. Lucifer knows his brain. Lucifer knows what’s going on. Sam doesn’t need to elaborate. He shouldn’t be slipping into the fragmented patterns, but he can’t, he can’t stop. Not now. He’ll come back to himself. But--

“What? You want me to slip inside some hot blonde? Come on, Sam, I’ve been inside your brain. One of your first thoughts upon meeting Tyler was how hot he was.”

Sam actually didn’t remember that, not until Lucifer said it. Back then, his attraction towards men was nebulous, shifted away from in his mind. Layered in guilt. And he was with Jess. She’d fill up any room.

“That’s--”

“Castiel? Vincente? Tyler? What, would you rather I make myself look like Nick? I can alter your perception to--”

“No!” Sam says hurriedly. Lucifer scoffs. 

“Jess?”

“You know that’s not, Tyler’s.. You said, just us.”

“Don’t worry, Sammy. Tyler’s mush.”

“That doesn’t justify --” Sam’s breath accelerates again, and he’s so so scared. He wants Lucifer to read him and give him what he wants, but Lucifer will twist everything he sees. “He’s still there. You’re touching me but so is he. Guess you just want to get inside me, really, right? Possess me, so that’s irrelevant. But in lieu of that, well, he’s there. He’s there, Lucifer.”

Lucifer is looking at him so curiously. Maybe Sam can still surprise him. But if that’s the case, it’s because Lucifer’s so blinded by his own perception.

Lucifer pulls away, a bit, sits back, weight still on Sam. Sam feels so so sick.

“Okay,” Lucifer concedes, and he shrugs. “I’m listening. What do you suggest, then? Instead?”

He’s, he’s negotiating. Like Sam, like Sam would want this, like Sam consented--

Sam tries to slow down, catch his breath, stakes are too high right now to care about that. Of course Lucifer’s doing that. Of course.

But that’s not important right now. It’s so, so pertinent that Tyler is not a part of this. Even if he’s locked away in his brain, even if Lucifer’s got some sores on his face, and the process well, Tyler’s not going to be around much longer. Sam could save him, save whoever Lucifer possesses next. He could. But he’s not going to. Least he can do is not involve them in this.

“Project yourself. Like you did when we first met.”

“Not the same, especially when you’ve got all that warding on you.”

“You projected yourself into my mind just fine this year. All the way from the Cage.”

“Time. Effort. Sam, I’m trying to meet you halfway here--”

“What about dreams?” It’s getting away from him. Boulders, hills, crashes of neon green violet-hued grass in a twilight land spiralling. “You’re always upset by how much time I spend sleeping. We both know you can make my dreams feel like reality. Like the Cage.”

“Hm. There are upsides and downsides there. Here, how about this,” Lucifer says, and he leans in close again, and bargains in Sam’s ear. 

About just what Sam must do for that type of deal.

“And if I, if I can’t, literally--” Sam tries, through the details, through the cotton in his mind.

“Just meet up with me. I’ll give you hand. Back to square one!” Lucifer says, obvious veiled threat. “But that won’t be a problem. Trust me.”

Lucifer runs the back of Tyler’s fingers on Sam’s face. Sam nods to the plan in acquiescence. 

Lucifer always did like finding new ways to make Sam say yes.

--

Lucifer does move off him. He doesn’t kiss him, just keeps his legs touching Sam’s enough to send waves of disgust and terror through Sam. He makes them watch episodes of “I Love Lucy” while he has Sam eat dinner.

“You know, I always knew your memories of this show weren’t that accurate, but damn, you weren’t kidding,” Lucifer says. He smirks, turns off the television for a second. “You’re barely eating? Sam I catered this especially for you.”

“Feel sick,” Sam says. Lucifer frowns at him.

“Maybe that polyp on your gallbladder is something. Here, baby, I was supposed to heal you earlier. I got so caught up.”

The false affection routine is eating Sam alive. Sam isn’t sure why Lucifer’s doing this. But it’s painful and disorienting, and maybe that’s reason enough.

Lucifer touches Sam’s chest, and Sam starts panicking, instantly, that Lucifer’s going to shove his hand into Sam’s chest, but Lucifer doesn’t. Instead, he just sends his grace, glowing into Sam, and it lifts the nausea, the little aches and pains in his fingers, ribs, back, head. His face from where Lucifer hit him. It has been a while since someone healed him this thoroughly, Sam thinks. Because he feels higher, better, healthier, than he has in years.

“Thank you,” he says, before he realises what he’s saying. He wants his clinical detachment back. He’s still being swallowed up. 

It does make eating easier. He’s still so nauseous, Lucifer’s hand on his leg, his snarky commentary on the show, his impression of Lucille Ball. Sam finishes it anyways, feels dizzy and soft as he leans back onto the pillows and watches the screen with the dusk dooming them into absolution outside the window. 

“You want me to try some of her methods on your hair?” Lucifer asks. “Get my hands up in that glorious mane of yours, try to help prevent you from losing it?”

Sam absentmindedly shakes his head, as they watch the scene, and Lucifer scooches even closer beside him.

It’s all a mockery. All a facsimile. Sam’s brain is blurry, and his thoughts are convoluted, and he tries to drink some more water, but his arms almost feel too heavy.

Sam’s having trouble figuring it out. Why Lucifer’s running so hard with this domestic act. Is it funny? Is he that bored? Is torture not as fun when Sam’s going to die again and again from anything Lucifer’d attempt to do? So it’s better to mess with his brain like this?

Everything’s swimming in his mind, so tiring and consuming, and Lucifer’s hand, he wishes it wasn’t so high on his thigh. He’s not pushing his luck, he thinks, but also, his thoughts are blurry. Everything doesn’t feel as scary though, or terrifying. It’s soft. And Lucifer’s being soft. Soft soft soft soft soft.

And dark.

--

Sam’s fast asleep.

He never was going to escape this, was he?

--

Sam wakes up disoriented. The world is soft, confusing. Memories of what transpired are distant, wrapped up in bubble wrap. Lucifer’s laying beside him, watching him like a hawk. Sam feels a shallow flood of subdued rage.

“You fucking roofied me?” he says, angry and accusatory, but also so so tired. He wants to sleep more. But he’s terrified of falling back asleep.

“Hardly. You kept having panic attacks, and I gave you some antihistamines. Don’t you feel calmer?”

“You wanted to help me? With my fucking PTSD? From the shit you did to me?” as angry as Sam’s words are, it comes off more like an absent laugh. 

“Sam, you were acting hysterical. I removed stressors from your environment, then helped you with pharmaceuticals.”

“Against my consent.”

“It seemed wisest.”

“Yeah right,” Sam says. He looks up at the ceiling, feels like he could almost see bugs crawling around that aren’t there. “I think, you know, you know what I think?” Sam says, and it’s bitter and empty and stolen down in numbness and fatigue. “I think you just couldn’t wait to get off.”

He knows he’s right. Lucifer may have spent millennia locked in a cage, biding his time, and he might be older than Sam could possibly comprehend, but also, he’s impulsive and impatient and easily bored.

“I could knock you out with a fingertip, Samuel, come on, you’re better than this.”

Lucifer sounds genuinely distressed. What? Did he expect a better reaction, Sam waking up beside him now?

“You think I’m genuinely going to buy that you wanted to help me by knocking me out so you could--” as blurry as Sam’s head is, he can’t. He just can’t. “Fuck you, Lucifer.”

“I did.”

“Why are you doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Torturing me like this .”

“Torturing you?” Lucifer scoffs. “Have I done one thing to genuinely hurt you?”

Sam is at a loss for words.

Lucifer touches Sam’s cheek, where he’d hit him earlier.

“This? Sam, I know you enough to know that’s the only way I could have calmed you down after disobeying me like that.”

“Shut up you know that’s not what I mean.”

Everything is so empty and meaningless in his head, like all the fear is swallowed up in nihilism. All he is is a bitter holly bush in January.

“I have healed you, fed you, cared for you, killed for you. Do you really think any affection you receive must be a weapon? Don’t you understand you’re deserving of it? Is that oversized brain of yours incapable of computing the love of someone else?”

“Love? Lucifer why are you doing this? You hate me.”

“Do I?” Lucifer asks. Sam is drowning.

“Why now. The Stockholm routine was usually something to humiliate and trick me by. Is it funnier when we’re on Earth? Are you that incapable of letting me go?”

Lucifer laughs.

“Stockholm Syndrome? Oh Sammy, how sweet of you.” It’s like Lucifer’s mask slips, back into more familiar territory, before it goes dark all over. “You know that’s not real.”

Some confused part of Sam’s disoriented and still somewhat-sedated brain wishes Lucifer would just start lashing out at him again, just so the cognitive dissonance would go away. Just to make things clear again. It’s illogical and insane, and Sam knows it, because he also knows Lucifer angry is way worse than any level of mental confusion. But his fear responses are dim, and he just wants to escape this.

“I hate you.”

He means it with everything he has.

Lucifer smiles.

“Yes. More than anyone.”

Sam hates how much he keeps giving Lucifer the satisfaction.

Lucifer continues, eating up the space like acid. “I’m more than you can comprehend.”

“Yet you drug me with allergy pills. Do you really think any of this makes you unique?”

The lights in the room flicker, abruptly to the late morning glare through the black-out curtains. Sam knows he’s gone too far, tested Lucifer’s patience enough. But he’s sleepy and angry and doesn’t really comprehend what fear feels like beyond insignificance.

He hates that Lucifer fucked with his brain again.

And he doubts it’s just what Lucifer says it is.

“Take it away.”

“What?”

“The, drugs, sober me up.”

“That isn’t wise. If I suddenly take awake the effects of the medication, you’re going to have a rush of panic. You don’t want that.”

“Like seeing a terrifying rush of panic and horror on me isn’t literally your definition of Heaven,” Sam says. Lucifer strokes his shoulder. It doesn’t feel as bad, right now. But this is all grotesque. 

“I told you that I wouldn’t torture you. That feels close.”

“Do it.”

“Okay,” Lucifer concedes. Sam isn’t sure why he can suddenly win all these battles he’s picking. 

Of course, Lucifer’s right. Sharp agony to his chest hits him all at once, hyperventilating, memories flooding, terror unmatched. He has a panic attack, a bad one, tears in his eyes, just like Lucifer said he would, slammed back into reality from a dream-like state. 

Lucifer is trying to help him even his breaths, but it’s about then Sam realises how angry he was acting at Lucifer. And that makes everything inside of him shut down completely, and his body goes tense and still and caustically numb.

But he still feels it, now, clearer, feels the reality of his own body and existence.

“Do I have to...” Sam’s voice shakes. “You said, that when I wake up--”

He can’t he can’t he can’t.

“Don’t worry. I’m here. Just relax,” Lucifer says. 

Lucifer moves his hand under the covers Sam is under now, hovering just brushing Sam’s pants, and Sam’s panicking even more intensely, before Sam can feel his body being abruptly cleaned and Lucifer removing his arm.

“Relax,” Lucifer repeats. Shame is blistering.

“Are you angry at me?” Sam asks.

“No,” Lucifer answers, and how pleased he sounds at the question actually makes Sam feel reassured, calmer, instead of just sick.

Sam hates how the sudden onslaught of fear does just crave Lucifer’s kindness and affection. How, against his conscious will, he hopes so dearly he didn’t ruin it.

“So, breakfast. Order in or go out?”

They order in.

And Lucifer spends a good hour explaining in great detail different applications of gravity, of how it works. What it means.

And why planets are round.

--

Later on, they play chess, and while Sam never in a million years could beat Lucifer, for the first time ever, Lucifer doesn’t torture him for it. It’s riding a high Sam never thought he could.

He knows that Lucifer’s manipulating him. It’s not on accident; it’s not real. You don’t spend hundreds of years being incapable of changing a situation just to have it flip on a dime. There’s nothing the real world offers to make Lucifer treat him well. And it also doesn’t matter, if there was. 

It wasn’t Lucifer’s favourite tactic, in the Cage, but it’s also so familiar it’s like being swallowed up by the sunrise tide. It’s wild and violent and the sand rubs Sam’s skin raw.

Sam feels fucking euphoric.

He should be cowering and hiding and throwing up, after all that’s happened. But his brain splits and compartmentalises, and he’s pretty sure the insane horror is what makes it so easy for him to fall back into grasping at slivers of light like this now. 

Lucifer is playing him. They watch some documentary, and Lucifer keeps his hand still on Sam’s leg. Playing innocent and pushing the bounds of their deal. Frying Sam’s mind as Sam’s fear desperately clings to Lucifer’s affection.

Sam hates him so much. He knows this. But it’s layered at the bottom of some chasm, something between where he is now and what happened last night and who he’s been. He wants Lucifer gone, to suffer for everything he’s done and doing, but those thoughts are sacrilege and Lucifer’s smiling at him and talking about different types of evolution.

Lucifer offers to go places with him too, out to lunch, out to a museum, even just out for a walk. But Sam can’t be witnessed like this. They stay in bed all day, and Sam’s chest is a glowing baby star.

The choices he’s being given aren’t real. All he really wants is to be free of Lucifer. But that’s never an option, and every part of him is made up of trying to survive Lucifer to the best of his extent. It doesn’t go away. He’s buttons for Lucifer to push. It’s nothing different.

It’s sickening.

But also, Sam doesn’t want it to end.

--

“It’s almost been 25 hours,” Lucifer notes, absently. He sounds a little sad, which doesn’t really bode well for Sam because if Lucifer thinks he wants something, he’ll get it, in the end. “You know I wouldn’t lie.”

It should be good, that Sam survived this, that Sam can try to resume his life again now. Lucifer didn’t hurt him, at all. Not in any real way. Sam should count his fucking blessings and run.

But there’s going to be a crash.

Sam knows that, intimately. He’s going to leave and have to process what’s happened. He’s going to become real again, face Dean with this lurking dangerously beneath his chest. It’s terrifying, how scary the idea is of leaving right now. Sam can’t face reintegration.

And Lucifer, he’s being so soothing, and sweet. It’s a twisted high Sam would spend months craving. It’s sickening and Sam’s brain is twisted, and he doesn’t know if he can recover from all of this. But he can’t go back. Not right this second.

“You paid for two days, right? Since we’re well past check-out,” Sam says. Lucifer nods, infinitely curious. “I could stay, just a little longer.”

Usually, the smile on Lucifer’s face, that satisifaction, it’d make Sam sick and dizzy. Right now it feels like relief. Like clawing success.

“You don’t have to,” Lucifer says. It makes it worse, Sam thinks. It makes it so much worse. Sam nods. 

Because sitting beside Lucifer right now, his proximity, his pushing-casual touch? It doesn’t disgust Sam, right now, in whatever fucked up mind state he’s lost in. But it will. It will, the second he goes.

It takes almost two hours for Sam to be able to convince himself to leave.

And when he does, Lucifer takes him back immediately.

--

It hits Sam like a freight train in the hotel hallway.

Oh my God, what has he done?

His hands start shaking. He’s been lost, lost in a surreal dream, a spell, even if Lucifer fully sobered him up. Fear tricked him. He was delirious. None of it could be real. It can’t be.

He tries to get numb, tries to become nothing. Drops off his key card without saying a word. Gets in his car and wonders how much easier it’d be to process this all if he were dead. He doesn’t want to return to himself. Doesn’t want to think of what has transpired. It’s sickening.

He was so vulnerable.

Through dreams and reality, Lucifer was so careful. Even when he was hitting Sam or touching him. He was so careful.

Sam can’t accept this. Can’t accept the slide into facing this part of his history. It’s not real. It’s unspoken. It’s gone. It’s under his skin and stuck in his throat and destroying him. He screams on the open highway.

He’s terrified, of all the questions Dean’s going to ask him, when he gets back.

But when he reaches the bunker, and Dean shows up to start his invasive deep dive into Sam’s whereabouts, he points to Sam’s neck and says he understands and he’s glad Sam’s getting lucky again, he deserves it.

Sam tries to grin, grimaces, then throws up in their communal bathroom. Of course, Lucifer would heal everything except that.

Dean would never forgive him, if he knew. The clarity tastes like bile.

--

Sam finally gets it, sitting shell-shocked in his room, terrified of falling asleep. He finally gets why Lucifer was so nice to him.

It was revenge.

He thinks of last year, thinks of being trapped in the Cage, with Lucifer all over again, knowing what that entailed, knowing what would happen, wanting to slide into Lucifer’s twisted logic like a desperate survival mechanism manipulated by someone who knows him inside and out. 

But he didn’t.

He said no.

He stood up for want he wanted, who he was, what he believed in, and defied Lucifer in a way he knew would ruin him.

Of course, Lucifer got out anyways. Sam couldn’t prevent that. And it was only a matter of time before Lucifer showed Sam what Sam really is.

His bitch.

It’s easier to deny when it’s blackmail, coercion, force. But regardless of the other factors at play, Sam did stay with Lucifer. He can call it cowardice and he can call it a trauma response as much as he likes, but in the end, it’s just another way Lucifer is ruining him.

He had a choice. His first fucking choice he made in this entire ordeal, really, because of course, Sam’s never going to let someone else suffer in his place. And he chose Lucifer.

Does that make everything else just an excuse?

He has no defences left.

And Lucifer, well Lucifer is never actually nice to him.