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He’ll never admit it to Dean, God he couldn’t, not when they have so much hanging over their heads already. It wasn’t an edge they could use to their advantage and it wasn’t a weakness others could exploit so what the Hell would be the point? But there it was. When they were close enough Sam could smell them — rancid sulphur curdling his stomach, yes, the sickly-sweet char of flesh boiled in liquid flame, but most of all the copper bite of blood.
By the time a demon’s close enough to tell they’re in range of Ruby’s knife; and when it slides hard and quick through the meat of its host that smell crackles in his veins and sets his mind on fire. Every. Fucking. Time they gank a demon and let the human it was riding die he can feel it prickling on the underside of his skin. It’s sickness, guilt, disgust, regret as thick as a mouthful of ash but he can smell them spilling out onto the ground and as much as it might damn him Sam still misses the rush of power as much as he misses being able to spare so many lives.
Tonight they’ve been fighting. Not so much the poltergeist that cropped up right in their path — in a city, no less, not just some small town — as each other. Tonight they’ve been careless. Glenwood Springs is too fresh in their minds, the Harvelles’ deaths too heavy on their shoulders, and they’re taking it out on each other as siblings are wont to do. He knows they didn’t mean it but they’re both too proud to be the first one to say so. Dean had his damned car and the road to disappear into. Sam had a laptop, and a world of self-loathing to blind him.
It occurs to him about the time that he’s losing consciousness from lack of air thanks to the iron grip of a demon’s hand clamped over his nose and mouth that they really need to be more careful about arguing in public. Hell has so many, many eyes.
And so much blood.
His vision bursts red and bleeds black.
.
The mother of all headaches greets him when he swims back into consciousness. Details come filtering in as Sam’s vision clears: he isn’t bound, which honestly comes as a surprise; he’s seated in an armchair in a dark room across from a bed flanked by bookshelves full of personal effects; to the right, moonlight (or perhaps just street lamps) shifting through a bay window; to the left, a pair of doors on opposite sides of the wall. A house, then, or maybe an apartment. It’s cold, though not cold enough to see his breath. And of course he isn’t alone.
Even before he registers the forms in his peripheral vision he feels their body heat, smells the brimstone and the blood. Directly ahead, perched on the bed — and he could have sworn there was no one there when he’d first opened his eyes — is a figure that has him scrambling up and back in the chair on pure animal instinct, a crushing panic that turns his gut into a knot of barbs and ice. Mid-40s, he estimates, deep-set eyes, tousled blond hair cropped short, and the easy, patient smile of a carnivore. He’s seen the man before in dreams and knows he’s the furthest thing from a man.
“Lucifer,” he breathes.
Sam blinks and there are fingertips pressed into his forehead — his sight is clear in an instant, headache gone, along with the injuries sustained when the demons jumped him. Far more important and fore in his mind is the fact that Lucifer’s right there, braced on the chair with a knee between Sam’s and a hand on an armrest, crouched at eye level. Sam isn’t proud of the noise he makes or the fact that he sends the chair toppling over backwards but under the circumstances he figures both are excusable.
“Get away! —Get off me!” No sooner has he toppled to the floor than the two of the demons that were standing by like mafia goons (out of four, he notes, and he recognises the ones who’d jumped him and beaten him down) seize him under both arms to haul him back to his feet. For all his struggling they’re stronger, and he goes nowhere they don’t want him to.
But the Devil flicks a glance at his minions and says, “You heard him,” and they stand down, leaving Sam to stand there — boxed in more than ever now — heaving for breath. This close he can make out burns and cracks riddling the vessel’s skin as if the Grace folded up beneath it was starting to boil through the human meat. Thinking back to their first conversation, that’s probably exactly what’s going on. “Sam, so good to see you in the flesh. Seems to be my lucky day.”
“Don’t count on it,” he spits back.
Lucifer quirks his eyebrows. In contrast to Sam and demons alike he stands at ease, hands half-stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans. For all he looks like an Average Joe there’s a sense of majesty and power and wrongness that rolls off him like smoke, belying his appearance. Sam’s never seen an angel so comfortable in human skin— no, he takes that back. There was one. Another archangel.
“Oh it is, though.” His smirk widens as he rocks back on his heels and resettles his weight, shoulders shifting; Sam can’t help but think of a ruffling bird. “Here I’ve been searching high and low for you and thanks to a tiff with Big Brother of all things you just…fall into my lap.” Lucifer makes an indicative gesture at Sam and the chair.
Dean. Oh God. Now he’s gauging his chances if he makes a run for it. Over a chair, past four demons and an archangel, through the door, probably past more demons outside and he doesn’t know where he is— yeah he might be a little fucked.
Still, he looks Lucifer in the eye and demands, “Where’s Dean? If you’ve hurt him I swear I will make you wish you were back in that Cage.”
The demons beside him crack up and Lucifer looks at him like he’s a puppy that just did something particularly adorable. To his credit Sam only deflates a little.
“Ohh, Dean’s a couple of towns over losing his mind looking for you, he’ll be fine. No need to be so dramatic. Have a seat.” Offhand as anything, he snaps his fingers (such a horribly familiar gesture) and not only is the chair upright again but Sam’s sitting in it again, blinking through his disorientation and white-knuckling the armrests. Rather than stand over Sam, the Devil sinks into a crouch before him. He rests his elbows on his knees and laces his fingers together before him.
“It’s getting kinda stuffy in here,” he continues, and the hunter can only figure he means the deteriorating vessel, “but I’ll only bother asking this once tonight. Say yes to me, Sam, we can save a lot of time and hassle. Let’s skip to the good part. You and me.”
God, he looks so earnest, so hopeful, it only makes the whole situation more horrible. If it were anyone or anything else Sam would have felt a pang of guilt about answering with, “Screw you.”
“Not exactly the way I want to be inside you, Sam.” Lucifer manages to look repulsed and condescending all at once. Sam doesn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted. “That’s okay. Tonight’s not the night. It’ll come. So, that leaves us with another quandary.”
Sam’s lips tauten. “Lemme guess. What to do with me now.”
“Not hardly. Perhaps I should have said that leaves you with another quandary. Big Brother isn’t the only one looking for you. When they find you, or else find a way around not being able to find you, things are gonna get messy.”
“What, they who?” He has a sinking feeling he knows already.
Lucifer confirms that worry. “Other angels. Mostly younger ones, little mal’akhim, but still powerful and infinitely less concerned with your continued well-being than I am. You can’t take them on your own. Yet.”
Well if that isn’t the most ominous damned thing he’s heard in months. Still, emboldened by whatever preternatural force of stupid that keeps Winchesters both alive (usually) and in trouble (always), Sam bites. “Yet?”
He regrets it almost the moment the word’s out of his mouth.
”I want to help,” Lucifer purrs. ”Call it a gift.”
”Stuff it, I don’t want your help,” Sam spits back. He glares daggers down at the Devil, who actually looks wounded. Daggers— Sam finally becomes aware of a familiar weight on the inside of his jacket. Why the Hell would they leave Ruby’s knife on him? The entire scenario just took a turn for the surreal.
”Nevertheless, you’ll accept it. It won’t hurt, won’t cost you anything.” The first time he tears his gaze away from Sam’s face since he first crouched down (and a human would have grown stiff-legged many minutes ago in that pose) it’s to watch the hunter’s hand slipping into his jacket. The demons around them shift uneasily but Lucifer only seeks eye contact again. “I even think you’ll enjoy it.”
About the last thing Sam wants right now is a friendly chat about favours. He breaks eye contact just as quickly as the Devil catches it. Talk is a bad idea, he’s learned his lesson hasn’t he, just look how it’s turned out every damned time he’s tried to reason with monsters — no, he needs a plan here. What would Dean do? (Think, think, seconds ticking away.) Boot Satan in the face, vault-turn, catch a demon in the chest with the knife, use its momentum to knock the next one down, slash its throat on the back-swing, take his chances jumping out the window duck roll RUN find a phone and lay low. It’s as good a plan as any.
“Uh oh, looks like he’s got the gears turning,” Lucifer smirks, and Sam knows even as his foot is snapping out things aren’t going to go his way. He’s fast, faster than Sam can blink, and some delirious part of the hunter’s mind expects to find himself back in time decades before his own birth. Maybe he would have preferred that: instead he finds himself pinned down with Lucifer’s legs flanking his on either side, arms stretched out to grip the back of the chair. Don’t panic don’t panic don’t panic—
Sam panics.
The next thing he knows the tip of Ruby’s knife is slipping through skin, slicing borrowed flesh and scraping down cartilage til it slips between two ribs. Liver, stomach, diaphragm, bottom of a lung. It’s a blow that would’ve killed a human in minutes — horribly so, choking on blood and suffocating from a collapsing lung bubbling red froth from the wound. There’s no flame-glow spark beneath the surface heralding a demon’s death, of course. Not so much as a grunt of pain. He can hear his own heart pounding in his ears as he stares at the ricasso and guard stopped against an olive shirt, to his own fingers white-knuckled around the handle, then up at the unperturbed-but-not-particularly-impressed face of The Goddamn Devil Himself and all Sam can think to say is a strangled little “Um.”
“And what exactly did you hope to accomplish with that?” he asks, deadpan. Lucifer wraps his fingers over Sam’s (and Jesus they’re cold) and pulls the blade back out of his solar plexus just as casual-as-you-please. Red smears warp, collect, and split apart again across the metal’s surface, pooling into the etchings Sam’s never been able to fully translate. The sharp sweetness of it hits his nostrils and there’s no sulphur hit to it, none of the revolting allure he’s come to expect of demons, and of course, of course, the Prince of Hell was never a demon and he isn’t one now. It’s a close thing that Sam doesn’t drop the knife; as it is, the hand holding it falls, nerveless-dull, into his lap.
“Just kinda happened.” It’s a ridiculous answer and his own voice is distant and small. He’s still staring at the red splotch where the blade had sunk in.
Lucifer follows his gaze, leaning back onto Sam’s knees, and sniffs, “It’s okay, we’re just cutting to the chase. Really, though, Sam? A knife?” He arches his eyebrows before shrugging off his shirts; the hunter’s eyes widen and he’s panicking again, trying to shrink back into the chair, but the Devil might as well be a granite block. “Tactics like that are why you need my help.”
Nothing jogs a Winchester’s mind quite like a blow to his pride. “We’ve been holding our own against angels pretty good so far,” he snaps.
“Running and hiding. You can’t do either one forever. My brothers are swift and thorough. You couldn’t hope to go toe-to-toe with a mal’akh, much less Michael. Not without me.”
“I already said no,” Sam growls, but he falters when he notices Lucifer carefully dragging a middle finger up through the the line of blood that welled up from the stab wound — which hasn’t been healed out of existence and it can’t possibly be because he can’t. It isn’t til that finger’s stretching out towards him that he starts edging back towards hysteria. “What’re you doing— no—”
“It pains me when you fight me, Sam, it really does. None of this is easy for you but you’re only making it harder on yourself.” The Devil lets go of the chair to hold Sam’s jaw instead, effortlessly pinching his jaw open and holding him still. The blood-coated digit dips into his mouth, rests against his tongue. He gags but neither hand is going anywhere and caught in such an implacable grip neither is Sam.
The taste is a gut-punch. He’s often imagined his addiction as a monster coiled around his brainstem, all claws and teeth and barbs and poison whispers, and when it slithers back from the dark corners he’d banished it to Sam’s breath hitches miserably even as his tongue’s wrapping around Lucifer’s finger. But the taste — it’s not like demon blood at all, not beyond the simple blood component, and God knows he’s tasted his own often enough. It’s copper and hot steel and wormwood. It’s ice and it’s light. He swallows, and it tastes like song. It crackles under his skin like holy fire.
That’s all it takes. He’s trapped with nowhere to go and he’d be lying if he said he’s never looked at the sigils Castiel’s painted on walls and wondered how it would taste, how much power there was to be had from it. Not that he’d ever admit. He’d sooner die than admit hearing that monster whisper how good it would be to seize a sliced-up arm and just take….
A groan brings him back to the here and now. It’s his own. His tongue’s writhing against the digit, he’s sucking to get at the blood hiding in the tiny creases of Lucifer’s knuckles and fingerprint. It would be nothing short of pornographic even if the archangel weren’t pushing his finger in and out of Sam’s mouth in subtle thrusts and tracing his lower lip and chin with a thumb. The iron grip on his jaw shifts to the back of his head, fingers sinking into his hair.
Shame coils in his gut but he can feel a radiance flaring under the Devil’s stolen skin. He can hear his own heart’s hammering and under that, a pulse of music, something dissonant that must have been a Heavenly chord long ago. He can hear the grumbling of smoke and flame to either side of them and below, he can smell the sulphur and rot — he can feel the demons guarding the house like heavy black splotches of cancer on a lung. He can feel tiny crawling things between the walls, plants half-slumbering and dreaming of the sun just outside, the grit and stench and acrid grease of the city, God it’s almost too much—
But he still chases when Lucifer withdraws his finger (and that’s an unfriendly bite he snaps down on it along the way, thank you very much). A few drops isn’t enough and he’s whimpering as it fades and his awareness narrows down to himself, Lucifer, and the demons in the bedroom. The Devil presses his fingertips to the underside of Sam’s chin and jaw to draw him in — and now he understands why he hasn’t healed the would. It’s an offering. It’s a command. It’s a gift from Hell and he knows where this sort of thing leads. Sam grits out, “No, I can’t, I don’t” as he follows along. Maybe it was only a token protest. They both know full well he’s damned.
“You can, because it’s mine, and so are you,” Lucifer purrs. “For anyone else it’d be like…drinking lava. Angel blood is a different kick from what you’re used to, hmm? But so much better.”
The helpless noise Sam makes may as well be agreement. He laves at the cooling smears trailing up to the knife wound while twisting fistfuls of denim atop his own thighs. Lucifer keeps one arm draped over the hunter’s shoulder; the other steadies himself against the back of the armchair again. It’s the hissing intake of breath when Sam’s tongue finds the edge of the hole in his torso and delves in to lap out dark, rich blood that’s the hunter’s undoing. Screw the denim, he grabs a hip in each hand and pulls, and there’s only a sliver left conscious enough to hate himself by the time it takes hold again.
Just in time for the wound to disappear. The hunter mewls at the loss until he’s tugged back by the hair, and Sam watches (panting, eyes half-lidded) as Lucifer takes up the knife and drags its edge in a line beneath his navel. Now Sam does hesitate. It’s only a second, and in that span he’s flicking his eyes up to meet the Devil’s, but he does hesitate. It isn’t enough to stop. It’s fresh this time and it’s running sticky-sweet down flesh a good twenty degrees cooler and Sam’s manhandling and squirming to get them both into a better position. Were anyone to walk in right now…. Fuck it. No. Fuck it, he doesn’t give a shit how it looks and how could he with that discordant blaze singing in his veins and filling him with glory — and that’s exactly it, isn’t it, the terrible glory of an archangel rolling over his tongue and sliding down his throat in bittersweet sips.
The brimstone stink of the demons still watching this display becomes more and more offensive with every drop he sucks down from the cut. As if reading his mind (which Sam wouldn’t put past him) Lucifer smirks, “Six is a crowd, don’t you think, Sam?” The demons glance at each other and start for the door but their master stops them short. “Ah-ah…let him decide.”
Finally Sam looks up — up at Lucifer first, and what he sees makes his jaw drop: transposed and faint over the blond man’s form is a glowing, barely-comprehensible thing that hurts to looks at but leaves him with the impression of wings and shattered glass and pomegranate eyes, and it’s terrifying enough he has to look away — and he rakes his eyes over the demons, sees them, and not just as they are now.
The man the closest one wears as a meatsuit was tired. Sam sees the boy he was and the old man he would have been. He sees the cancer crouching in his liver, broken bones, fluid-filled ears and lungs from sickness long past and yet to come. Golden gossamer threads wind through and around him: it hits Sam like a truck that he’s seeing time. And beyond his face is another, twisted, hideous, a creature of soot and black-peeled flesh like a carapace split over softer, festering things that glow yellow and reek of rotting eggs: the demon. Hate flares in Sam’s chest, righteous and consuming. He reaches out the way Ruby taught him to drive it out and he can feel — something clutch the demon like a hand and pull — but instead of ripping the Hellspawn out of its human puppet, cold white light spills out and burns it to nothing.
Not just the closest. Amid an otherworldly chorus of screams fills the room as one by one the demons die in succession as if caught in a wave of holy flame. The bodies crumple to the ground like hollowed-out shells. Sam blinks hard and stares around. All four of them. He can do better than exorcise.
He can kill again.
Regardless of the disorientation and fear it brings him Sam turns wild eyes up to Lucifer again (and God, he’s magnificent, so bright and immense Sam could fall to his knees and weep, but he forces himself to focus on the man instead). “What the Hell was that?” he whispers. “That man…I, I saw him — saw him grow up and grow old and — and the demons….”
“That’s your problem, Sam, you only exist in three dimensions,” Lucifer says indulgently. There’s an undercurrent of song there too and it makes the blood in Sam’s stomach call back til his whole body is singing Glory, glory, glory! The fingers raking through his hair feel like a benediction. “Four, I suppose, but you’re only aware of a fraction of that at any given point. As for the demons…I think the term you’re looking for here is you smote them.” He shrugs.
Sam shivers. What he’s been offered…there has to be another endgame but this feels so clean. Natural. The things he could do with this power. A-thrill now, he seeks out the other demons in the house, counts them (six more, quite the entourage), reaches out, and scorches them from existence. All of them. The incredulous laughter he hears cracking out into the dark is his own. And the Devil doesn’t look upset at all; if anything, the smile he casts down at Sam is proud.
“Half a dozen at once. That was good.” Good. Good. He could do so much good. Everything is so good. The rush has him hard against his jeans and his hands are full of the sharp arcs of hips and he’s being praised in song and it’s so very good. Light must be streaming out of his pores, wholesome and clean, if only he could look past the minor-key strangeness of the music flowing from Lucifer into him. “Imagine what you could do with more.”
Sam tears his eyes away from the archangel and lets his head loll back against the chair’s back. There’s no mistaking the clink-and-shuffle of a belt coming open, of a fly coming down. He knows what’s coming. He knows he won’t stop it. Right now he can see the threads between them — no, it’s so thick and tangled, clotted with dark slickness and streaming light as it is, that it may as well be called a tow cable — and he can rifle through all the likeliest possibilities for how this is going to go. Sam blows out a sigh; he’s okay with this, really, because he’s so damned high on that power he’d do almost anything to keep it going. When he opens his eyes it’s to the sight of Lucifer scoring another cut into the palm of one hand.
“And you do want more, don’t you Sam?”
He does, God he does. Enough to let him stare resolutely as the Devil tugs out a half-mast erection mere inches from Sam’s face and uses the slit palm to coat it in blood. Enough to nod an affirmative in spite of it.
“You’ll need it for what’s to come,” Lucifer rumbles. He reaches down to cover one of Sam’s hands — still on his hips — with his own, arching like a cat. “And this? This is just a taste of what it’ll be like.”
When you say yes to me. Sam doesn’t have to ask. Enough is implied and he’d rather not hear the words. That blood will only stay fresh for so long, especially on skin as cold as Lucifer’s. Shit. There’s no earthly way he should be this calm. There’s no way he should be so okay with this. Such is the way of addiction, says a grim 50s documentary voiceover in his head, and he gives in.
Sam’s tongue stretches out along the underside to catch droplets before they can fall, and it’s sparking through him again, and before he knows it he’s abandoned vain notions of remaining matter-of-fact about it, though he’s doing his damnedest to ignore the pleasured sighs above him as he sucks at the sides. It isn’t as cold as he’d expected, nor as unpleasant; the skin is soft and delicate where his teeth catch. At first he expects he can get away with just this, with licking Lucifer clean. The greedy curl of bloodthirst insists otherwise. The Devil squeezes his fist to spill a few more drops onto the head (engorged and near-purple, God he has to stop himself from thinking about the fact that it’s all blood making it so rigid). The wet patter draws Sam’s gaze there, and his shoulders heave with the sharp breath he huffs out because he knows (he sees) how this is gonna go, too. His fingers spread and knead at Lucifer’s hips; the archangel cards his own through Sam’s hair, mouth open, though he still hasn’t said a word. That at least does make it easier — easier to wrap his lips around another man’s glans and suck, delicately at first, then with more confidence as the magnificent glow of angel blood surges through him.
They form a pattern of this: Lucifer offers a trickle of bittersweet crimson drug at a time, and Sam chases with tongue and hollowed-out cheeks. The hand still fisted in his hair alternates between guiding the bob of his head and holding him still for the Devil to rock into his throat and he allows it. He’d allow just about anything to stay this high. The world is clear and pure and crisp though he’s only marginally aware of the way he’s shivering. Each drop makes the room seem brighter, as if the sun were rising, but it isn’t — he’s seeing more and more of Lucifer himself. Wisps and tendrils of light float in his peripheral vision. When he tries to follow them they dance away like feathers on the wind but it leads his gaze back up to the blond’s face. The man had been broken by something, Sam realises, and had welcomed the oblivion offered in exchange for the use of his body. But he isn’t really looking at Nick. No. Ill-advised as it might be he can’t help but keep trying to steal glances at what’s folded up inside him.
Wings and shattered glass and pomegranate eyes. Wolf’s teeth stained black, downy arms that glisten, the frantic angry snap of an eagle’s beak, gleaming feathers and drapery and steel. Holy words perverted into blasphemies, written in flame and hanging impossibly in the air. A weeping core as black and cold as a dead star. This is the Son of the Morning, the Lightbringer: how he shines. How he shines.
It hurts to look. It burns his eyes, just like it burns his ears to listen to the archangel’s song, the corrupted-divine vibrations that form another aspect of his being. Sam’s everything is on fire from so much as trying to comprehend the entity astride him and he’s shaking harder now, whimpering, pulling back to stare down at their thighs and gasp for air. But for all that he’s calm still — filled with a serenity that would itself be unnerving were he not breathing in so much glory and light.
“I see you,” he whispers into the nest of sandy hair coiled just above Lucifer’s cock, “I can see you.” The angel nods understanding but still pulls Sam’s head around by his hair til his lips are pressed against the tip again, and again he accepts.
“That part will pass,” Lucifer hums. “It really isn’t good for you to look that close anyway. Much the same as you shouldn’t stare directly at the sun.” Despite the warning he sounds pleased — proud. Whether it’s pride for Sam being able to see or vanity for being seen, Sam neither knows nor cares. At some point the blood-trail incentive dries up but he’s still going, still accepting the turgid length of flesh being fed into his mouth, still sucking after the taste of copper and salt. Still blissfully, bracingly aware of every inch of the house around him, the life forms within and around it, and the inexorable gleaming threads binding them together.
He slides a hand back to cup the curve of Lucifer’s ass; somehow the flex of muscle under his grip is gratifying. The other slips down to unfasten his own belt and fly and God he should have done that sooner, stiff as he is in his own palm, far gone enough on the high that there’s a dribble of precum there to slick himself down.
Sam strains up into his fist. Splitting his attention proves awkward until he settles into a rhythm that has his stroking timed to Lucifer fucking his mouth. No more words pass between them. None need to; none save the occasional soft sigh above him that sounds like his name. He doesn’t need to be told the Devil’s close to release when he can feel the cock slipping past his lips strain and taste the salt of his pre. The little gasps and murmurs of pleasure ringing out over his head come faster, harder. The grip on his hair forces him as far down on the shaft as he can swallow and holds him there — his fingernails bite into the meat of Lucifer’s ass — and he has only a few heartbeats’ time to brace himself before thick liquid heat floods his mouth. Not enough time to be revolted, no, he swallows and swallows and sucks until it’s clean of that, too, with the sound of Lucifer calling out his name in pleasure ringing in his ears. The archangel slides down his body as though he were pouring himself down onto his knees. Damned if Sam can figure out he manages to feel more exposed this way than he did before — but that’s a secondary thought at best with Lucifer knocking his hand away from his cock and—
His teeth sink hard into his lower lip to muffled whatever the Hell that noise is he just made, he’s not even sure. The Devil’s mouth is all wet heat and suction. Almost too much of it. The lightest rake of teeth across his skin has Sam writhing, groaning disbelief.
It takes three tries — three long, slow bobs of his head, and in the meantime he has Sam impaled in his gaze — but Lucifer takes him to the hilt, and more or less remains there with his throat working around him. If he breaks eye contact it’s only because the broad, warm hands sliding into his hair and clenching tight make his eyes flutter shut for a moment. He strokes the hunter’s thighs and knees and balls. Here and there he lets out a hum but Sam isn’t going to last. His Boy King’s panting makes that much clear.
The music throbs in Sam’s veins. When he groans he finds himself trying to match notes and chords or harmonise and he’s not about to analyse why when he’s ten miles high above the earth getting sucked back down through bedrock, crushed by the black-hole gravity of an angel with a dead star for a heart and a mouth that’s surely about to suck his brains out through his cock. The blood inside him — his own and what he drank — is singing again, calling out to its origin and his end: every heartbeat is a measure, every cell is a note. And as he drowns in shattering pressure and song his lips form words of praise: O glory, glory, glory Lucifer.
The Devil swallows for him and he shines.
Oh, God, he never wants to come down.
“Focus, Sam,” Lucifer murmurs. He delivers a nip to the skin just left of his cock and Sam startles, tucking himself away. Focus. It’s either that or melt into everything around him so focus, yes. “Remember that this wasn’t just for fun. You’re going to need it soon.”
His throat feels like he’s swallowed a ball of static. So what if that isn’t technically possible. It takes him two tries to ask, “What’m I supposed to do with it?”
Lucifer reaches up to pat his cheek. “You did pretty good earlier. You were made to hold me, Sam; I’m confident you’ll figure it out.” He pauses, rocks back on his heels much as he was before. “You don’t know what I’d do to keep you here with me.”
“But tonight’s not the night,” Sam finishes with a smirk. He can see it now (the willof it, even if he can’t imagine the why). There are infinite paths and infinite points along the lines between them and the point of tangency is always the same. They haven’t reached it yet.
“Tonight’s not the night,” the archangel nods back — he smirks as well. “I’ll see you in Detroit.”
Fingertips press into his forehead and for just an instant he can see them: six massive wings, all golden feathers singed by Hellfire and arcs of lightning, drawing back and beating as one to send him lurching through space, and Sam is somewhere else.
.
He’s still high when he finds a payphone and has to hold it away from his ear for how loud Dean gets when he’s this frantic. The elder Winchester only slows his tirade of accusations (which Sam knows are his way of saying I’ve been worried half to death and I’m floored with relief that you called) at the terse explanation of “I was jumped by half a dozen demons”, and only halts his demands for elaboration when Sam adds, “I was drugged.”
Between the time they hang up and the time the Impala’s familiar rumble echoes down the street Sam has entirely too much time to sit on the curb and think. His awareness has collapsed back in again for the most part but at least he still feels clear and strong and ready for whatever threat is coming their way. The slam of a car door cuts through his thoughts but he’s still not quite prepared for the impact of his brother’s bear hug. It’s his “I’ve missed you and mortal peril may have been involved” hug, though, so by rights he ought to’ve anticipated that.
“I looked freaking everywhere, Sammy, where the Hell were you?!” Dean’s voice is low, thick, and tightly-controlled. He’s never been one to allow panic to show in front of the younger Winchester if he could help it.
“I don’t know.” Sam shakes his head and shrugs. “A, a house, I was out when they took me and drugged when I was there.” A pang of guilt rings through him for how much he has to omit — but it’s a distant thing. Keeping things from each other has become far too rote.
“So, so you got roofied, what for? What’d they want, they tried to get you to say yes?” (His head swims. He looks away but Dean only steps into his field of vision again — more and more agitated as he works himself up in response to the silence.) “Sam? Look at me — what happened?”
And now he’s staring at the stretch of pavement between their shoes. How could he possibly— “Can…can we not talk about it.”
The change in Dean is instantaneous. Frustration only creases his brow for a moment as he’s straightening, taken aback. It’s soon by widening eyes, bloodless cheeks, and his chin tilting up as he searches for words: a look of sickened realisation Sam hopes to never see pointed his way again. “Sammy—”
“Dean,” he cuts back through gritted teeth, biting out each word, “I said. Can we. Not. Talk about it.”
The horror on his brother’s face resolves into the sort of quiet, volatile rage that leads to body counts and property damage. He swipes a hand over his mouth, nods a little, and turns to get back in the car. “These, uh, these demons, the ones who jumped you. Any idea where they are now?”
“Dead,” Sam answers dully as he climbs in shotgun, and he could swear Dean looks disappointed to hear it.
.
He’s still high when his brother wakes fast enough to snap Sam awake, too. Not a nightmare this time, but a message. And when he hears who it’s from his eyes widen in the dark but he keeps his mouth shut. Anna had been their ally; she’d saved them, killed for them. Then again, Ruby had done the same and more, and look how well that turned out for them…and it fits perfectly what Lucifer had predicted.
Sam shakes his head. Whether it turns out to be her or not, he’ll be ready when the time comes.
The song is still with him. Inside, deep in his blood, it shines.