Fic: Erosion
Title: Erosion
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Nick, Sam/Lucifer
Rating: R
Spoilers: 5x10
Warnings: AU, Implied non-con
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: The world doesn't end. But Sam is never going to be ordinary.
AN: Written for aeon_entwined who put the idea in my head and then encouraged it.
The world doesn't end. But it comes close. It comes so fucking close. Because they decide to fight it out. They both know there's a chance they'll lose everything. But it's the only thing that makes sense any more. The world doesn't end. But the battle does. It ends in fire and light and pain and Sam thinks he's going to dream about it every night for the rest of his life. About the way the sky was on fire, the way the ground covered in ash. The soft, messy remnants of people. Because people didn't die so much as unravel at the seams at ground zero.
In the presence of angels.
Sam never said yes. He thinks he burned inside and out. Lucifer's hands, his skin, the fury of him tried to force him, tried to tear him open at the end. But he never said yes. And Lucifer went back to hell.
They won. All of them. They all got to live.
They got to stay.
But all Sam is ever going to dream about is the fire.
He's awake in the darkness, heart beating too fast, confused and disoriented. For three breaths he has no idea where he is. Until it comes together, slow and in pieces. The memory of it. The end of it. He's sprawled out on a couch, too short for his frame, too soft, thin in places. He's not used to houses. Not used to the wide echo of empty rooms and stairs. To the house noises at night, the strange, creeping weight of them. He doesn't know them well enough to trust them and it hasn't been long enough for his brain to settle back into a groove that isn't constantly fighting for its life.
Dean's not here, he's five hundred miles away. Trying to work up the nerve to ask Castiel to stay, to stay for him.
Sam's half afraid he won't be able to do it. More than a little afraid he's going to regret it for the rest of his life. That his brother will mess up the one decision that's all about him. The decision that's just for him. Because he's afraid, or because it makes him uncomfortable, or maybe because he just doesn't know what to do with it. Because he's been protecting people his whole life. Even if it means protecting them from him.
Sam wants to call him, wants to tell him to just do it. To say yes to Castiel, to just go with his gut for once when it tells him what it wants. But they promised, they promised a month. There are no demons anywhere, either they're in hiding, or they all died, all went back to hell. They won't know til the dust settles. Until the world decides how it's going to go from here. Either way him and Dean are taking the space to breathe, to take a step back. The apocalypse has scoured them both raw, mentally, physically, emotionally. Sam thinks maybe they both need time to grow a new layer of skin. Before they can crash back against each other again.
He's pretty sure that Dean thinks he's going to want to start planning for the future. Education, job, house, kids. That he thinks Sam has a lingering desire to be people.
They're both way too fucked up for that. This isn't a life you paint over and forget about. He learnt that lesson a long time ago. From every hunter they ever met. Even if he didn't believe it at he time. Didn't want to believe it. But he's always going to be Sam Winchester. No matter where he goes or what he does.
"Sam?"
He stiffens, hand shifting under the pillow for the knife that isn't there. He drags his fingers into a fist because his name is soft, questioning, an air of roughness and caution. The messy uncertainty that he's trying to get used to.
He shifts, turns, faces the darkness of the doorway.
The shape there is solid, familiar in a way that makes his hand twitch again, nails dragging in the cushions. He forces them still. Makes them slide back out to rest on his thigh.
Because it's not Lucifer, it's not Lucifer. It's not Lucifer any more, and he's going to keep repeating that until it sticks.
His skin is unmarked and unburned from the fury of the angel that burned inside him. Sam doesn't know how, he doesn't know why. They all should have been ripped apart. The vessels all should have died. Or at least, of all the ones that should have been saved, Sam never expected -
It's not Lucifer.
But there's still an ugly tension in Sam's gut that won't go away.
"Nick," Sam manages. The name's still strange in his mouth, even after a week.
Sam doesn't even know why he's here. Has no clue why he's here at all. But he'd had nowhere else to go. He'd had nowhere to go, no purpose, and Nick had been - Nick had been more than a little broken. They'd always been good at dealing with other people's problems before their own. So Sam had taken him home.
He'd taken him home to Pike Creek.
Sam just hasn't - he hasn't left yet.
Nick still looks like crap. He's had his body back just over a week and Sam doesn't think he's slept since. Eyes hollow in a way that looks a lot like fear, looks a little like horror. Some complicated, shifting tapestry that says he's seen hell and it's an image that's never going to fade or go away. It's an expression Sam is getting used to on his face. It's messed up how that makes him feel better. How that makes him different. Because he never saw that expression on Lucifer's face. Not once. He's holding on to the differences so tightly his metaphorical fingers are bleeding.
"Do want anything, coffee?" Nick shifts, slowly, carefully. He knows by now that Sam has trouble telling the difference in the dark, has trouble not seeing him. "Beer?"
It wouldn’t be the first time Sam's drank beer at three in the morning. Not even the first time he's done it here, with the vessel Lucifer used to wear. Sharing the cold and the dark. But not quite comfortable enough to talk, to say more than a few words. Nothing important, nothing that's still raw. Not in the dark.
He nods, firmly, tiredly and Nick doesn't even have to ask which one he's agreeing to.
Sam will only have one though. He doesn't want to - can't - get drunk, here, with Nick. Because it's too easy to forget, too easy to get confused.
Because he doesn’t know what he'd do. Something bad.
~~~~~
The house is cold.
The fact that it's been empty for months probably doesn't help and it's not like they're adding any warmth between them. It's all tension, awkwardness and quiet.
Still, Sam knows this is a house that's had people ripped out of it. The boxes stacked against the walls...the cot. Sam knows why Nick said yes. He knows why he had nothing left, why he tried to get out the only way that was offered to him.
It doesn't make it better. It makes him real, in some way Sam's not sure he knows how to deal with. It's getting easier to separate the two. And that just makes it worse, somehow. Two sets that overlap, like an optical illusion. Different enough to be sharp. But the same enough to leave him feeling - not angry, not afraid, he doesn't even know. But Sam's getting used to being here. To drifting through Nick's empty house with him. There's coffee and a shower that doesn't run out of hot water and somewhere to sleep and no monsters, no angels, no demons. Just the leaky tap in the kitchen and the tree in the yard that brushes the wall. It's close enough to normal, close enough.
And no matter how many time he thinks about calling Dean, he doesn't. Which is a good thing. It feels like he's - God it sounds stupid in his own head but it feels like he's accomplishing something. That he's dealing with his own shit.
He stares into his coffee, watching it steam. It's still early, the light through the kitchen windows still new enough to be orange. The bare trees twist in the wind, thin and strange.
"Sam -"
Something touches his shoulder, the light press of fingers that curve round his skin, leave ice crawling there. Sam's not thinking - not thinking at all - when he lashes out.
The cup hits the floor and smashes.
Sam slams him back into the wall, hears the cupboard rattle when his body hits too hard. His skin gives under Sam's fingers, body tense, wary, and human.
His face is pale and too close.
"I'm sorry," Nick says, quick and quiet. Instinctive, because this isn't the first time. Not even close to the first time. "Sam -"
Sam exhales and lets him go, steps back, disgusted with himself.
"I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry," he says thickly. Thin edge of biting chastisement in the words.
"It's ok." The words come out slow and awkward. Nick, stretching in his skin, stretching carefully and wincing - which Sam doesn't miss - and there are white marks on his forearms from Sam's fingers, fading slowly. Deep enough to leave bruises. "It's ok, I shouldn’t have touched you, I shouldn’t have -"
Sam shakes off the words, shakes off the suggestion, the creeping edge of a memory. Pretends it's that easy.
"You're not him, he's gone. He's gone and he's not coming back," Sam says, through his teeth. Like if he says it enough times it'll be true. It'll be real and he can stop expecting - bad things.
"I don't expect it to be ok," Nick says roughly. He goes down on one knee, starts picking the shattered pieces of mug off of the floor. He's not wearing boots, feet bare, the ends of his jeans stained with white paint and spots of coffee. Looking more human that he ever has.
Sam's hands are shaking. He clenches them tight and makes it stop.
~~~~~
Some nights are worse than others. Some nights, Sam can't sit in the dark and he'll get up and go out for a walk, find something to do. Anything at all. Anything not to leave his brain in that grinding silence. The silence that leaves room for memories he doesn't want.
Tonight, he finds himself upstairs. He doesn't even know why. Standing at the top of the stairs in the dark, listening to the pop and creak of the wood in the house. Sam thinks maybe he wants company, needs company. But he doesn't even know how to ask. Doesn't - Nick's door clicks open. They stare at each other for too long. Then Nick leaves the door open, turns his back on him and sits in the untidy jumble of sheets.
Sam can tell he hasn't been sleeping. He probably hasn't even been trying. Maybe he's the one that's going to go mad before Sam does. Lost somewhere in the mess of his own head. Sam wonders if that would be an appropriate definition of irony. He doesn't even want to think what Lucifer left in there.
The sheets make quiet noises when Sam crushes them under his own weight.
Nick goes very still.
"I never said yes," Sam says. He never means to, it just comes out. It's an accusation. Though he's damned if he knows whether that's intentional or not. It hurts to say, hurts in a way that feels like an excuse. Like that makes all the other things he did ok. He never said yes, no matter what Lucifer did.
"I know," Nick says, quiet and uncomfortable.
Sam doesn't even know what he's doing here. It's two in the morning and he's still trying to bleed off the adrenaline from the last nightmare he had. But it's dark enough that Nick is all angles and shadows.
He shouldn't be here.
"I'm sorry," Nick says. Just when Sam thought the quiet would drag on forever. "I'm sorry for what he did to you."
"Nothing I didn't let him do," Sam says stiffly. But it's a lie, they both know it's a lie.
"I was there," Nick says. It's just a fact, it's not a protest, or a push. "Sometimes, sometimes I was there."
Sam knows, or at least he'd worked out enough to suspect as much. It still leaves his throat shut tight though. Still leaves him dragging his fingertips on his jeans like he can tear the denim all the way open.
Nick looks down, but Sam can still see the edges of his expression. The sharp angles of it under the roughness of his jaw. He knows, he understands, that this wasn't something Nick did to him. This was something they went through together. He understands it in a purely rational way.
But Sam wishes Nick would shave, wishes he would be different. Wishes he'd be more different.
When Nick looks up again his face is just tired - no, not tired, haunted. Sam's been looking at that expression for years. He should know it by now.
"Are you waiting for me to punish you?" Sam asks quietly. Because he's been wondering that for a while.
Nick flinches, something dark and still raw in his face. He swallows, stretches a hand in the sheet. Sam catches the low muted glint of a wedding ring.
"Do you want to?" he asks. Flat, careful.
Sam thinks about lying.
"Sometimes," he says. Before he can decide which would be better, which would be easier for them both. "But I know you're not him, I know it wasn't you, that you didn't - it still looks like you in my dreams though."
Sam swallows, swallows again.
"I shouldn't be here," he says desperately. Because he thinks he knows why now. He thinks he knows and he doesn't know how to feel about that. Doesn't even know if he can. Because that's too messed up for words, too messed up to understand.
He shifts his weight, sets a hand down to push himself up - Nick's fingers are on his wrist, one slow catch.
Sam takes a breath, doesn't shake him off. Cold fingers pressed into his knuckles.
"You can be here if you want," Nick says. The words come out slow and tense.
"I don't want to -" Sam doesn't know how to end that. Doesn't know if he wants to end that. It's too early and he's too close to fucked up to make it sound right. And he doesn’t know what Nick thinks he wants. Doesn't know what Nick expects. Judging by the unhappy tension he's expecting something bad. "I don't want to hurt you."
Nick shakes his head and Sam doesn't even know what that means.
But he doesn't even realise he's touching until he is.
Nick's cold under his t-shirt. Lucifer was never cold, he was always burning, fingers always a flare of heat wherever they touched him, wherever they held him - held him down.
It's weird and it's wrong and that, strangely, makes it ok.
"Sam -"
"Don't," Sam says sharply. A thread of angry panic sliding up his throat. Nick can't talk, he can't talk because to Sam he sounds too much the same.
Nick swallows and shuts his mouth. Sam can see the clench of his teeth.
It takes him three tries to lay his hand on the back of Nick's neck. But it's easy after that, easier than he expected - fingers moving on skin, pulling just a little. He's leant in close enough to feel the slow audible inhale. But Nick stays, he stays there and lets Sam's fingers drag and pull in his hair.
Nick doesn't kiss like him. He barely kisses at all, just lets Sam take what he wants, in slow testing pushes. The roughness of his jaw grates against a memory. But Nick's just a man, all breakable bones and skin. Breakable, breakable in a way Lucifer wasn't - in a way Lucifer could never have been.
Sam could leave bruises, he could leave marks, could leave worse than marks. There's a low, steady flare of want and Sam hates himself for it. Hates himself for the slow but very real wave of arousal that's going to leave him hard if he keeps touching.
He hates that he wants this. Doesn't know how to deal with wanting this, or what it means.
He opens his mouth, and Nick does open under him this time. One slow shuddering exhale that leaves him softer and easier than before. It's some sort of messy permission. Wavering and uncertain but willing. Like he still thinks Sam will crack, that this will turn into something brittle and vicious.
Sam eases away.
"I don't know if you want this?" Sam's voice is too low and too dark. Impossible to hide the fact that he does want this now. "Nick, please - God - say no if you don't."
Sam's hand is already sliding his shirt up his back and Nick says nothing, he says nothing at all. He just leans forward so Sam can strip the material over his head.
Sam slides into the middle of the bed, catches Nick's arms and pulls. There's a low creak of springs and Sam's easing him back into the sheets, pillows shoved out of the way. Sam can't help the noise he makes when he presses into the utterly human collection of warm curves and hard edges of Nick's body. The way the other man shifts to take Sam's weight.
Nick's hands are loose on the bed, twitching in the sheets like he's afraid to touch him. Which isn't really a surprise. Sam thinks Nick understands more than he does sometimes. Because Sam's not sure how he'd feel about him touching. Lucifer had been far too attached to touching, pushing, holding, every movement a reminder of his physical power over him. Sam knows how heavy Nick is, knows what he feels like pressing down and into him.
Sam drags a breath and stills under the sense memory. Heartbeat too fast. It doesn't kill his arousal, doesn't - but probably should and maybe that means he's broken in some way, some important way. He's the stronger one now, and the thought frightens him.
"Sam -"
Sam's pulse, quick and fierce, slams in his throat and he slides a hand up, over the rough edge of Nick's jaw, covers his mouth.
"Don't," he says again and his voice shakes. "Nick, please, just don't talk. I can't -"
The sound that comes out of Nick's throat is something hard and broken, but he doesn't try and push his hand away. Sam lets it slide free anyway, holds his waist, pushes down where Nick is a blatant line of hardness too. Which Sam isn't going to blame him for, can't blame him for. He gives one cautious slide-push against him that leaves Nick's mouth open on a gasp, strangled and held in. Like he doesn't think he's allowed, doesn't think this is about him.
Which is wrong, so fucking wrong, because this is about both of them. Please, God, Sam needs this to be about both of them.
He's dropping his hands before he's finished the thought, tugging Nick's pants over his hips and ass, dragging them all the way down his legs. Nick goes very still, air sucked in between his teeth.
Sam can feel him swallowing, not resisting but not sure where they're going. Where Sam wants to take them.
Sam murmurs something which he fucking hopes is reassuring. Pushing with his free hand at the waist of his own pants.
He wants - there are so many things he wants, all messed up and angry and helpless. Things he doesn't have the right to, things he won't take. But he can do this, just this. He drags his fingers through the hair at Nick's groin, fingers spread to catch the soft-hard length of him, to curl his fingers round it.
There's a low gasp and Nick's head tilts back, mouth so close. Sam's not sure which one of them kisses first. But it turns into a wet mess of teeth and tongues too quickly for it to matter. The warmth of Nick's mouth is desperate, and there's a catch somewhere in his breathing like this hurts.
Sam's hand tightens and catches and pulls, one rough movement after another. He drags hard, cut-off noises out of Nick's throat and pretends he doesn't want them. Sam lets the kiss turn into something just a little rougher. Chasing his own orgasm with loose, stilted pushes of his hips. Thinking about nothing at all when his brain wants to skitter off into the tight catch of Nick's fingers, the way his mouth is slow and wet and the tight clench and tense of his thighs. The way Nick would be so fucking good. The way Sam knows he'd let him do whatever the fuck he wanted. The way he owes Sam this, owes him whatever he wants. Until his brain is a mess of right and wrong and so fucking wrong.
Nick's making low, stunned noises, teeth dug into his lip, like he's ashamed. Pushing into Sam's hand in short, broken, greedy shoves until he's spilling warmth over Sam's fingers and the sliding edge of his palm. Nick's groaning, teeth clenched around Sam's name and Sam's not ready, not ready at all, for that to leave him pushing, desperately, into the naked, slippery skin of Nick's groin - two, three thrusts just a fraction too hard, before he's breaking open and leaving the curve of his stomach wet, crushed to a stop with Nick's hands in his hair and no clear idea of how they got there. Groaning his way through an orgasm that's so sharp and unexpected it's almost painful.
"Sam," Nick says, slow and desperate like he thinks Sam will tell him to stop again. "Sam."
"Yeah," Sam agrees. He has no idea what he's agreeing to. But Nick breathes out shaky relief that sounds somewhere between laugh and sob. Sam lets Nick hold him there for a long time, long enough to threaten to leave them stuck together forever.
Sam finds his t-shirt and wipes them both off. Sits in the dark wondering what the fuck he's supposed to say, if he's supposed to apologise. How he can even start when he still feels like the ground he's standing on keeps trying to drag him under.
Nick's gone still in the dark and it takes Sam a second to realise he's asleep. For the first time in a fucking week, and Sam's left with a strange ache in his chest that feels like guilt. But there's something else there, something tight and hard that's come loose and he feels like he can breathe again.
Sam doesn’t think he should fall asleep here, doesn't think he should wake up to Nick's face.
But it's so fucking warm and Sam just needs to not be alone. Because, for maybe the first time, he doesn't feel like he's been hollowed out.
He thinks they're messed up, but maybe they can be messed up together.
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Nick, Sam/Lucifer
Rating: R
Spoilers: 5x10
Warnings: AU, Implied non-con
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: The world doesn't end. But Sam is never going to be ordinary.
AN: Written for aeon_entwined who put the idea in my head and then encouraged it.
The world doesn't end. But it comes close. It comes so fucking close. Because they decide to fight it out. They both know there's a chance they'll lose everything. But it's the only thing that makes sense any more. The world doesn't end. But the battle does. It ends in fire and light and pain and Sam thinks he's going to dream about it every night for the rest of his life. About the way the sky was on fire, the way the ground covered in ash. The soft, messy remnants of people. Because people didn't die so much as unravel at the seams at ground zero.
In the presence of angels.
Sam never said yes. He thinks he burned inside and out. Lucifer's hands, his skin, the fury of him tried to force him, tried to tear him open at the end. But he never said yes. And Lucifer went back to hell.
They won. All of them. They all got to live.
They got to stay.
But all Sam is ever going to dream about is the fire.
He's awake in the darkness, heart beating too fast, confused and disoriented. For three breaths he has no idea where he is. Until it comes together, slow and in pieces. The memory of it. The end of it. He's sprawled out on a couch, too short for his frame, too soft, thin in places. He's not used to houses. Not used to the wide echo of empty rooms and stairs. To the house noises at night, the strange, creeping weight of them. He doesn't know them well enough to trust them and it hasn't been long enough for his brain to settle back into a groove that isn't constantly fighting for its life.
Dean's not here, he's five hundred miles away. Trying to work up the nerve to ask Castiel to stay, to stay for him.
Sam's half afraid he won't be able to do it. More than a little afraid he's going to regret it for the rest of his life. That his brother will mess up the one decision that's all about him. The decision that's just for him. Because he's afraid, or because it makes him uncomfortable, or maybe because he just doesn't know what to do with it. Because he's been protecting people his whole life. Even if it means protecting them from him.
Sam wants to call him, wants to tell him to just do it. To say yes to Castiel, to just go with his gut for once when it tells him what it wants. But they promised, they promised a month. There are no demons anywhere, either they're in hiding, or they all died, all went back to hell. They won't know til the dust settles. Until the world decides how it's going to go from here. Either way him and Dean are taking the space to breathe, to take a step back. The apocalypse has scoured them both raw, mentally, physically, emotionally. Sam thinks maybe they both need time to grow a new layer of skin. Before they can crash back against each other again.
He's pretty sure that Dean thinks he's going to want to start planning for the future. Education, job, house, kids. That he thinks Sam has a lingering desire to be people.
They're both way too fucked up for that. This isn't a life you paint over and forget about. He learnt that lesson a long time ago. From every hunter they ever met. Even if he didn't believe it at he time. Didn't want to believe it. But he's always going to be Sam Winchester. No matter where he goes or what he does.
"Sam?"
He stiffens, hand shifting under the pillow for the knife that isn't there. He drags his fingers into a fist because his name is soft, questioning, an air of roughness and caution. The messy uncertainty that he's trying to get used to.
He shifts, turns, faces the darkness of the doorway.
The shape there is solid, familiar in a way that makes his hand twitch again, nails dragging in the cushions. He forces them still. Makes them slide back out to rest on his thigh.
Because it's not Lucifer, it's not Lucifer. It's not Lucifer any more, and he's going to keep repeating that until it sticks.
His skin is unmarked and unburned from the fury of the angel that burned inside him. Sam doesn't know how, he doesn't know why. They all should have been ripped apart. The vessels all should have died. Or at least, of all the ones that should have been saved, Sam never expected -
It's not Lucifer.
But there's still an ugly tension in Sam's gut that won't go away.
"Nick," Sam manages. The name's still strange in his mouth, even after a week.
Sam doesn't even know why he's here. Has no clue why he's here at all. But he'd had nowhere else to go. He'd had nowhere to go, no purpose, and Nick had been - Nick had been more than a little broken. They'd always been good at dealing with other people's problems before their own. So Sam had taken him home.
He'd taken him home to Pike Creek.
Sam just hasn't - he hasn't left yet.
Nick still looks like crap. He's had his body back just over a week and Sam doesn't think he's slept since. Eyes hollow in a way that looks a lot like fear, looks a little like horror. Some complicated, shifting tapestry that says he's seen hell and it's an image that's never going to fade or go away. It's an expression Sam is getting used to on his face. It's messed up how that makes him feel better. How that makes him different. Because he never saw that expression on Lucifer's face. Not once. He's holding on to the differences so tightly his metaphorical fingers are bleeding.
"Do want anything, coffee?" Nick shifts, slowly, carefully. He knows by now that Sam has trouble telling the difference in the dark, has trouble not seeing him. "Beer?"
It wouldn’t be the first time Sam's drank beer at three in the morning. Not even the first time he's done it here, with the vessel Lucifer used to wear. Sharing the cold and the dark. But not quite comfortable enough to talk, to say more than a few words. Nothing important, nothing that's still raw. Not in the dark.
He nods, firmly, tiredly and Nick doesn't even have to ask which one he's agreeing to.
Sam will only have one though. He doesn't want to - can't - get drunk, here, with Nick. Because it's too easy to forget, too easy to get confused.
Because he doesn’t know what he'd do. Something bad.
~~~~~
The house is cold.
The fact that it's been empty for months probably doesn't help and it's not like they're adding any warmth between them. It's all tension, awkwardness and quiet.
Still, Sam knows this is a house that's had people ripped out of it. The boxes stacked against the walls...the cot. Sam knows why Nick said yes. He knows why he had nothing left, why he tried to get out the only way that was offered to him.
It doesn't make it better. It makes him real, in some way Sam's not sure he knows how to deal with. It's getting easier to separate the two. And that just makes it worse, somehow. Two sets that overlap, like an optical illusion. Different enough to be sharp. But the same enough to leave him feeling - not angry, not afraid, he doesn't even know. But Sam's getting used to being here. To drifting through Nick's empty house with him. There's coffee and a shower that doesn't run out of hot water and somewhere to sleep and no monsters, no angels, no demons. Just the leaky tap in the kitchen and the tree in the yard that brushes the wall. It's close enough to normal, close enough.
And no matter how many time he thinks about calling Dean, he doesn't. Which is a good thing. It feels like he's - God it sounds stupid in his own head but it feels like he's accomplishing something. That he's dealing with his own shit.
He stares into his coffee, watching it steam. It's still early, the light through the kitchen windows still new enough to be orange. The bare trees twist in the wind, thin and strange.
"Sam -"
Something touches his shoulder, the light press of fingers that curve round his skin, leave ice crawling there. Sam's not thinking - not thinking at all - when he lashes out.
The cup hits the floor and smashes.
Sam slams him back into the wall, hears the cupboard rattle when his body hits too hard. His skin gives under Sam's fingers, body tense, wary, and human.
His face is pale and too close.
"I'm sorry," Nick says, quick and quiet. Instinctive, because this isn't the first time. Not even close to the first time. "Sam -"
Sam exhales and lets him go, steps back, disgusted with himself.
"I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry," he says thickly. Thin edge of biting chastisement in the words.
"It's ok." The words come out slow and awkward. Nick, stretching in his skin, stretching carefully and wincing - which Sam doesn't miss - and there are white marks on his forearms from Sam's fingers, fading slowly. Deep enough to leave bruises. "It's ok, I shouldn’t have touched you, I shouldn’t have -"
Sam shakes off the words, shakes off the suggestion, the creeping edge of a memory. Pretends it's that easy.
"You're not him, he's gone. He's gone and he's not coming back," Sam says, through his teeth. Like if he says it enough times it'll be true. It'll be real and he can stop expecting - bad things.
"I don't expect it to be ok," Nick says roughly. He goes down on one knee, starts picking the shattered pieces of mug off of the floor. He's not wearing boots, feet bare, the ends of his jeans stained with white paint and spots of coffee. Looking more human that he ever has.
Sam's hands are shaking. He clenches them tight and makes it stop.
~~~~~
Some nights are worse than others. Some nights, Sam can't sit in the dark and he'll get up and go out for a walk, find something to do. Anything at all. Anything not to leave his brain in that grinding silence. The silence that leaves room for memories he doesn't want.
Tonight, he finds himself upstairs. He doesn't even know why. Standing at the top of the stairs in the dark, listening to the pop and creak of the wood in the house. Sam thinks maybe he wants company, needs company. But he doesn't even know how to ask. Doesn't - Nick's door clicks open. They stare at each other for too long. Then Nick leaves the door open, turns his back on him and sits in the untidy jumble of sheets.
Sam can tell he hasn't been sleeping. He probably hasn't even been trying. Maybe he's the one that's going to go mad before Sam does. Lost somewhere in the mess of his own head. Sam wonders if that would be an appropriate definition of irony. He doesn't even want to think what Lucifer left in there.
The sheets make quiet noises when Sam crushes them under his own weight.
Nick goes very still.
"I never said yes," Sam says. He never means to, it just comes out. It's an accusation. Though he's damned if he knows whether that's intentional or not. It hurts to say, hurts in a way that feels like an excuse. Like that makes all the other things he did ok. He never said yes, no matter what Lucifer did.
"I know," Nick says, quiet and uncomfortable.
Sam doesn't even know what he's doing here. It's two in the morning and he's still trying to bleed off the adrenaline from the last nightmare he had. But it's dark enough that Nick is all angles and shadows.
He shouldn't be here.
"I'm sorry," Nick says. Just when Sam thought the quiet would drag on forever. "I'm sorry for what he did to you."
"Nothing I didn't let him do," Sam says stiffly. But it's a lie, they both know it's a lie.
"I was there," Nick says. It's just a fact, it's not a protest, or a push. "Sometimes, sometimes I was there."
Sam knows, or at least he'd worked out enough to suspect as much. It still leaves his throat shut tight though. Still leaves him dragging his fingertips on his jeans like he can tear the denim all the way open.
Nick looks down, but Sam can still see the edges of his expression. The sharp angles of it under the roughness of his jaw. He knows, he understands, that this wasn't something Nick did to him. This was something they went through together. He understands it in a purely rational way.
But Sam wishes Nick would shave, wishes he would be different. Wishes he'd be more different.
When Nick looks up again his face is just tired - no, not tired, haunted. Sam's been looking at that expression for years. He should know it by now.
"Are you waiting for me to punish you?" Sam asks quietly. Because he's been wondering that for a while.
Nick flinches, something dark and still raw in his face. He swallows, stretches a hand in the sheet. Sam catches the low muted glint of a wedding ring.
"Do you want to?" he asks. Flat, careful.
Sam thinks about lying.
"Sometimes," he says. Before he can decide which would be better, which would be easier for them both. "But I know you're not him, I know it wasn't you, that you didn't - it still looks like you in my dreams though."
Sam swallows, swallows again.
"I shouldn't be here," he says desperately. Because he thinks he knows why now. He thinks he knows and he doesn't know how to feel about that. Doesn't even know if he can. Because that's too messed up for words, too messed up to understand.
He shifts his weight, sets a hand down to push himself up - Nick's fingers are on his wrist, one slow catch.
Sam takes a breath, doesn't shake him off. Cold fingers pressed into his knuckles.
"You can be here if you want," Nick says. The words come out slow and tense.
"I don't want to -" Sam doesn't know how to end that. Doesn't know if he wants to end that. It's too early and he's too close to fucked up to make it sound right. And he doesn’t know what Nick thinks he wants. Doesn't know what Nick expects. Judging by the unhappy tension he's expecting something bad. "I don't want to hurt you."
Nick shakes his head and Sam doesn't even know what that means.
But he doesn't even realise he's touching until he is.
Nick's cold under his t-shirt. Lucifer was never cold, he was always burning, fingers always a flare of heat wherever they touched him, wherever they held him - held him down.
It's weird and it's wrong and that, strangely, makes it ok.
"Sam -"
"Don't," Sam says sharply. A thread of angry panic sliding up his throat. Nick can't talk, he can't talk because to Sam he sounds too much the same.
Nick swallows and shuts his mouth. Sam can see the clench of his teeth.
It takes him three tries to lay his hand on the back of Nick's neck. But it's easy after that, easier than he expected - fingers moving on skin, pulling just a little. He's leant in close enough to feel the slow audible inhale. But Nick stays, he stays there and lets Sam's fingers drag and pull in his hair.
Nick doesn't kiss like him. He barely kisses at all, just lets Sam take what he wants, in slow testing pushes. The roughness of his jaw grates against a memory. But Nick's just a man, all breakable bones and skin. Breakable, breakable in a way Lucifer wasn't - in a way Lucifer could never have been.
Sam could leave bruises, he could leave marks, could leave worse than marks. There's a low, steady flare of want and Sam hates himself for it. Hates himself for the slow but very real wave of arousal that's going to leave him hard if he keeps touching.
He hates that he wants this. Doesn't know how to deal with wanting this, or what it means.
He opens his mouth, and Nick does open under him this time. One slow shuddering exhale that leaves him softer and easier than before. It's some sort of messy permission. Wavering and uncertain but willing. Like he still thinks Sam will crack, that this will turn into something brittle and vicious.
Sam eases away.
"I don't know if you want this?" Sam's voice is too low and too dark. Impossible to hide the fact that he does want this now. "Nick, please - God - say no if you don't."
Sam's hand is already sliding his shirt up his back and Nick says nothing, he says nothing at all. He just leans forward so Sam can strip the material over his head.
Sam slides into the middle of the bed, catches Nick's arms and pulls. There's a low creak of springs and Sam's easing him back into the sheets, pillows shoved out of the way. Sam can't help the noise he makes when he presses into the utterly human collection of warm curves and hard edges of Nick's body. The way the other man shifts to take Sam's weight.
Nick's hands are loose on the bed, twitching in the sheets like he's afraid to touch him. Which isn't really a surprise. Sam thinks Nick understands more than he does sometimes. Because Sam's not sure how he'd feel about him touching. Lucifer had been far too attached to touching, pushing, holding, every movement a reminder of his physical power over him. Sam knows how heavy Nick is, knows what he feels like pressing down and into him.
Sam drags a breath and stills under the sense memory. Heartbeat too fast. It doesn't kill his arousal, doesn't - but probably should and maybe that means he's broken in some way, some important way. He's the stronger one now, and the thought frightens him.
"Sam -"
Sam's pulse, quick and fierce, slams in his throat and he slides a hand up, over the rough edge of Nick's jaw, covers his mouth.
"Don't," he says again and his voice shakes. "Nick, please, just don't talk. I can't -"
The sound that comes out of Nick's throat is something hard and broken, but he doesn't try and push his hand away. Sam lets it slide free anyway, holds his waist, pushes down where Nick is a blatant line of hardness too. Which Sam isn't going to blame him for, can't blame him for. He gives one cautious slide-push against him that leaves Nick's mouth open on a gasp, strangled and held in. Like he doesn't think he's allowed, doesn't think this is about him.
Which is wrong, so fucking wrong, because this is about both of them. Please, God, Sam needs this to be about both of them.
He's dropping his hands before he's finished the thought, tugging Nick's pants over his hips and ass, dragging them all the way down his legs. Nick goes very still, air sucked in between his teeth.
Sam can feel him swallowing, not resisting but not sure where they're going. Where Sam wants to take them.
Sam murmurs something which he fucking hopes is reassuring. Pushing with his free hand at the waist of his own pants.
He wants - there are so many things he wants, all messed up and angry and helpless. Things he doesn't have the right to, things he won't take. But he can do this, just this. He drags his fingers through the hair at Nick's groin, fingers spread to catch the soft-hard length of him, to curl his fingers round it.
There's a low gasp and Nick's head tilts back, mouth so close. Sam's not sure which one of them kisses first. But it turns into a wet mess of teeth and tongues too quickly for it to matter. The warmth of Nick's mouth is desperate, and there's a catch somewhere in his breathing like this hurts.
Sam's hand tightens and catches and pulls, one rough movement after another. He drags hard, cut-off noises out of Nick's throat and pretends he doesn't want them. Sam lets the kiss turn into something just a little rougher. Chasing his own orgasm with loose, stilted pushes of his hips. Thinking about nothing at all when his brain wants to skitter off into the tight catch of Nick's fingers, the way his mouth is slow and wet and the tight clench and tense of his thighs. The way Nick would be so fucking good. The way Sam knows he'd let him do whatever the fuck he wanted. The way he owes Sam this, owes him whatever he wants. Until his brain is a mess of right and wrong and so fucking wrong.
Nick's making low, stunned noises, teeth dug into his lip, like he's ashamed. Pushing into Sam's hand in short, broken, greedy shoves until he's spilling warmth over Sam's fingers and the sliding edge of his palm. Nick's groaning, teeth clenched around Sam's name and Sam's not ready, not ready at all, for that to leave him pushing, desperately, into the naked, slippery skin of Nick's groin - two, three thrusts just a fraction too hard, before he's breaking open and leaving the curve of his stomach wet, crushed to a stop with Nick's hands in his hair and no clear idea of how they got there. Groaning his way through an orgasm that's so sharp and unexpected it's almost painful.
"Sam," Nick says, slow and desperate like he thinks Sam will tell him to stop again. "Sam."
"Yeah," Sam agrees. He has no idea what he's agreeing to. But Nick breathes out shaky relief that sounds somewhere between laugh and sob. Sam lets Nick hold him there for a long time, long enough to threaten to leave them stuck together forever.
Sam finds his t-shirt and wipes them both off. Sits in the dark wondering what the fuck he's supposed to say, if he's supposed to apologise. How he can even start when he still feels like the ground he's standing on keeps trying to drag him under.
Nick's gone still in the dark and it takes Sam a second to realise he's asleep. For the first time in a fucking week, and Sam's left with a strange ache in his chest that feels like guilt. But there's something else there, something tight and hard that's come loose and he feels like he can breathe again.
Sam doesn’t think he should fall asleep here, doesn't think he should wake up to Nick's face.
But it's so fucking warm and Sam just needs to not be alone. Because, for maybe the first time, he doesn't feel like he's been hollowed out.
He thinks they're messed up, but maybe they can be messed up together.