Fic: Tell the Devil I Said Hey (When You Get Back)
Title: Tell the Devil I Said Hey (When You Get Back)
Author: mummyluvr314
Rating: PG
Pairing: Dean/Lucifer, mentions of Sam/Castiel
Summary: Sam couldn’t have seen what he thought he’d seen. Dean was dead. Dean was not living in suburbia. Slight AU for the end of season five.
A/N: Title is from Grenade by Bruno Mars. It’s a song about Lucifer. Really. It’s all about getting shot in the head and set on fire and rejected. Don’t mock my world turtle.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not the characters. Not the show. And certainly not Sera Gamble’s soul.
As far as Sam could tell, the little house was empty. The lights were off, the street was quiet, and the sliding glass door that opened onto the living room was ridiculously easy to unlock.
He’d left a note on the apartment’s refrigerator for Cas, trusting the former angel to be able to fend for himself after the daily job hunt. When Sam was done with his reconnaissance work, he’d go back to the little hole-in-the-wall they’d been sharing since the Apocalypse That Wasn’t, have a beer, eat some pizza, and try to forget what he could have sworn he’d seen the night before.
It seemed like a good plan. Until he rounded a corner and found himself staring directly into the barrel of a gun.
“Sam?”
He knew that voice. It sent shivers down his spine, broke him out into a cold sweat, made his heart start to trip-hammer in his chest. Lucifer lowered the gun and stared at him for a long time. A little too long for Sam’s liking. It reminded him of the way Cas stared sometimes, late at night, blue eyes shining through the dark like beacons. Unblinking. Creepy.
Finally, Lucifer closed his eyes. Sighed. Set the gun down on a nearby end table and frowned at the hunter. “You need to leave, Sam.”
Sam, to his credit, didn’t move. He stayed still, eyes fixed on the heavily scarred man that stood before him. Because he had to be a man, and nothing more. Dean had promised him that much, a last-ditch effort to end the Apocalypse with minimal casualties. Old magic. Grace twisted and torn and remade into a human soul.
Dean had said he would kill the man that had been an angel. Put another bullet right through his brain. Burn the body. Save the world.
He hadn’t let Sam tag along. And now Sam knew why.
“You’re not dead.”
“Intelligent early in the morning, aren’t you?” Heavy hands fell on the hunter’s shoulders, turning him back toward the door. “Go home, Sam.”
Sam didn’t move. Lucifer wasn’t as strong as he’d once been. “You’re human?”
“Leave.”
“No.” He spun back around, facing the thing that had haunted his nightmares for over a year. Funny, without the hidden wings, the God-given Grace, and the aura of power, he wasn’t so scary.
“Please.”
And he begged.
It should have been satisfying, seeing the monster that had tried to take his body and end the world so worried. So scared. Eyes wider the longer Sam refused to budge. Teeth chewing at lips. Hands clenching in the fabric of a jacket he knew he’d seen on his brother before.
The jacket reminded Sam why he was there. “Where is he?”
Lucifer blinked up at him, contorted his face in a way made comical by the deep grooves of healed scars criss-crossing the skin. “Who?”
“Dean. What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything to him,” the former angel said with a shake of his head. “But you need to leave before he gets back.”
Oh. Sam hadn’t been expecting that. “What?”
“He can’t see us together.”
The hunter blinked. There was something disconnected in his brain, and he was trying hard to get the ends back together. It didn’t add up. What had happened and what the angel was saying just didn’t fit.
Lucifer sighed. It sounded an awful lot like an ‘I’m-surrounded-by-idiots’ sigh. Sam knew because he’d practically invented it. “I need a drink,” the Devil said, brushing past the hunter. Sam managed to scramble to his feet, his brain trying desperately to keep up with what was happening, and followed him into what turned out to be the kitchen. The angel was standing at the counter, pouring something in to a glass. He turned to face the hunter and sighed again. “He really didn’t tell you, huh?”
“Tell me what?” Sam asked, everything still fuzzy. His heart was pounding in his chest and his sight was getting blurry and there was something warm and wet behind his eyes and he was scared.
Because Dean was dead. He’d gone off with a book and a spell and instructions for Sam and a newly-human Castiel to stay put. He’d gone off to beat the Devil and he’d never come back. Sam and Cas had stayed put, but he hadn’t come back. It had been nearly six months, and Dean hadn’t come back.
He was dead. He had to be.
Lucifer sat himself down on the edge of the table, ignoring the two folding chairs that flanked it. “I stalked you,” he said, apparently tuning out Sam’s emotional distress. “For over a year. Now, how’s it gonna look if he walks through the door and sees that I found you again?”
“You didn’t find me. I found you. How are you not dead?” He refused to ask about his brother again, too conscious of tricks.
The former angel rolled his eyes. “Obviously, he didn’t kill me.” But someone died.
“You’re human.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
Lucifer shrugged, ice clinking in his glass. “I don’t know. Maybe he felt sorry for me. Maybe he just couldn’t. Maybe he’s smarter than you give him credit for.” Off of Sam’s confused look, he explained. “Think about it. Punish the thing that hates humans by making it human and then not killing it. Making it live the life. Making it be human.”
“Are you gonna kill him?” Because as much as Sam didn’t want to believe it, believe that Dean had run away to live with Devil, that he had just abandoned them, the way that Lucifer was talking made it seem like a very real possibility.
The Devil laughed, a surprisingly normal sound. Happy, still unaware of the way Sam’s pulse was racing. It looked good on him. “No. I’m not going to kill your brother.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
That earned him a frown. “I’m not sure.” He shrugged. “It’s a roof. Food. A warm bed. I hear humans need those things.”
“And he’s just providing?” Because that didn’t seem like Dean. He could have felt pity or anger when it came time to deliver the killing blow, could have backed down from the responsibility he’d given himself, but he wouldn’t have taken the Devil in. He wouldn’t have left his family.
“I think he likes it,” Lucifer ventured. “The house and the yard and the knickknacks. Someone to come home to.”
That did seem like Dean. Maybe not the Dean he knew, or the one that Lucifer seemed to know, but the Dean he’d always wanted to see. It was everything he’d ever wanted for his brother, everything Dean had never let himself want. Domesticity.
It was a nice idea, Dean not being dead. Settling down. Even if it was with the Devil. Even if Sam wasn’t invited.
“He loved him, you know,” Lucifer said, staring at the hunter with narrowed eyes and pulling Sam out of his thoughts.
“Who?”
“Dean. Castiel.”
Sam flinched at the mispronunciation of the angel’s name. “What are you talking about?”
“They had a profound bond. You took him. He’s human now, too, right? And you took him.”
“I didn’t take anyone,” Sam argued. “And how would you know any of that?”
“Dean told me. Granted, I was lying on the bed, eyes closed, bleeding profusely from the face. I think he thought I was unconscious. Stitching is a long and painful process. I should have passed out.” He shrugged and finished whatever had been in the glass, moving to lean up against the counter. “It was an interesting look into an interesting psyche, anyway.” He looked out the little window that Sam had been looking in the night before, eyes fixed on a broken streetlamp. “He left me for dead out there. The moment my Grace changed, everything just kind of split open. It wasn’t pretty. He came back the next day. He fixed me up. Helped me through fever and infections and all sorts of nasty things.”
“Why?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “He went back to you, he said. He went back and saw you with his angel and he didn’t want to intrude. He hadn’t thought he’d make it back, and he’d given you all he could. A house and the promise of nobody being around to hijack your body.” He looked back at the streetlight. “He hadn’t meant to give you Castiel, though.”
“Call him Cas.”
“Cas, then. Do you love him? Cas?”
Sam opened his mouth, closed it. Good question. They hadn’t been together that long, had hooked up the first time because they’d figured Dean wasn’t going to come back. It was a last hoorah, mostly because someone had promised the angel he wouldn’t die a virgin. And he wouldn’t.
It had become a bit more permanent after that. A bit more involved. More about actual emotion than the fact that Dean would probably fail and the end would inevitably come.
The thought that Dean might have had some sort of investment in Cas hadn’t even occurred to him. They were friends, was all. And Dean was straight.
It felt good to refer to his brother in the present tense again, like slipping on a favorite glove he’d thought he’d lost. It took a weight off of his shoulder.
That weight was promptly replaced by another one.
Dean had seen them doing something. He’d gotten upset. He’d saved the Devil. He had a fallen angel of his own.
Dread settled in his chest. “He’s using you.”
Lucifer turned around, leaning his back against the counter and leveling the hunter with a chilling gaze. “No.”
“He is. You’re his replacement.” Sam pushed himself away from the doorframe he’d been leaning in and stalked toward his former tormentor. “I bet he doesn’t even let you leave the house.”
“I can leave whenever I want.”
“But do you?”
Lucifer’s jaw twitched. “Sometimes. It’s a hard world out there, Sam. People aren’t so welcoming toward freaks without faces.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“You need to leave.”
Sam felt his heart skip a beat, even as he pulled himself to his full height and glared down at the angel, refusing to back down and run away. “He actually told you that?”
Lucifer groaned and shoved off the counter, pushing into Sam and actually managing to get him to stumble back a few steps. “It’s the truth. And it’ll take a lot more than that to bruise my ego. But Dean cannot find you here.”
Sam countered by grabbing the former angel’s shoulders and staring down into blue eyes. “We need to leave. We need to get you out of here.”
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, past those two little cables that were still trying to get themselves hooked up so that rational thought would return, Sam knew it was a bad idea. He knew it was a stupid idea. He knew that he was probably in shock. Dean was alive. So was Lucifer. Those two facts were still not computing with what he was hearing.
As far as Sam was concerned, he needed to get the Devil away from his brother. Dean was alive. Dean was in danger.
“I can’t leave,” Lucifer said, breaking himself out of the hunter’s deathgrip. “I can’t.”
“Why not? Because he told you?”
“Because it did something to him.”
Sam felt himself deflate. The fight went out of him. Those two wires connected.
Something had gone wrong. Of course. It explained Dean not coming back, or coming back and running away. It explained the living, breathing ex-angel in front of him. It explained almost everything.
“What happened?” Sam asked, though he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know.
The Devil took a step back and fixed him with a sorrowful stare. “Old magic. It’s strong and it comes with a price. You can’t just turn an angel human, even with what he found. He knew that.” The last sentence was a whisper, soft, unbearably sad. He sighed and went on. “Grace can’t just become a soul. But it can be grafted onto one. It mutates. Almost like stem cells, I guess. If you know the right words, you can make it anything. But it needs that base.”
“You took his soul?” Sam asked, and that sharp pain was back behind his eyes. Dean had sold his soul before - to save him - and if he’d done it again, because of some stupid quest for vengeance, Sam wasn’t sure he could forgive himself.
“No,” Lucifer said. “Just part of it. Little bit. Just enough to do some damage.”
“What happened to him?”
“A soul is like an onion,” the angel said, appearing not to hear him. “It has layers. Layers of thought and emotion and control. The spell took the top few layers, that’s all.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, to a normal person, it would mean certain death. But your brother’s different. Forty years in Hell, thirty of being a soldier. The top layers were a barrier to keep things hidden. Now that they’re gone…” He made a vague motion with his hand, swirling it around in the air, hoping that Sam would get the point.
“That’s why he left? That’s why you won’t leave?”
“It scraped him raw, Sam. Everything hurts. He wasn’t supposed to survive it. I don’t know why he came back for me. Maybe he thought I’d kill him. But I can’t. The way he looks at me sometimes…” he sighed, running a hand through his hair in an action that so Dean that Sam’s heart actually ached. “You have a good brother. Better than mine.” Lucifer quirked a small smile. “I think I might be jealous.”
Sam managed to grin in reply, but his heart wasn’t in it. His brain was working overtime now that the connection had been made. Dean with no defenses, after everything that had happened in their lives, was bound to be a train wreck. And with everything that had happened with him and Cas since the Apocalypse That Wasn’t, he could see how his brother would have run.
“I shouldn’t come back, should I?” Sam asked.
“No. You shouldn’t.”
It didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought it would. He’d gotten so used to the idea of a world without Dean - a world so different than those horrible four months, a world where love could exist and jobs could be found and life could go on - that it almost didn’t register. It was hard to believe that Dean could really be alive after that passing glance he’d caught through the window the night before. Maybe he could live with it.
“Ok.”
Lucifer let out a breath Sam hadn’t known he’d been holding. “Let me show you out.” He put a hand on the hunter’s elbow and steered him back through the living room and to the front door. “I’d say thanks for stopping by -”
“I get it,” Sam said. He took one more look around the little house and smiled. Dean had done well for himself. He guessed his brother deserved something close to a happy ending, saving the world and all. Then he heard the car.
He heard the car and everything came rushing home because it was Dean’s car and Dean was the only one allowed to drive it and Dean was alive and Sam had been willing to listen to the Devil and leave him and what was he thinking?
“Dean?” It came out soft and breathy and not like Sam’s voice at all. He could hear the engine cut off and the door slam and heavy footfalls and his brother was coming home. He was going to get to see Dean. He was going to -
Lucifer shoved him in a closet. The door slammed shut as the front door was opening. There was a pause, and then Sam heard his brother’s voice for the first time in months.
“Going somewhere?” Dean asked, and if Sam hadn’t known better, he’d have thought that Dean sounded scared. But he did know better, and Dean was probably terrified.
“No,” Lucifer said. “Just waiting.”
“At the door?”
“Well, I was going to make a trail to the surprise, but you came back early.”
“You got me a surprise?”
Something prickled up behind Sam’s eyes again, but this time he didn’t try to fight it. There was no one there to see, just a couple of coats and a scarf.
It was real. More real than that glimpse through the window or the sound of the car. This was Dean, and he sounded so different. Younger, somehow. Scared and trusting and so easily excited. Emotional.
“I went to the store today. Picked up the Die Hard movies for your collection.”
“Really?” Dean asked, voice getting softer. Farther away. They were moving, leaving the modest entryway and walking into the kitchen.
Sam needed to leave. He needed to get out of that closet and sneak out while Lucifer had Dean distracted.
But he had to see his brother. Up close. Just one more time, then he’d be done. That was all he needed for closure. Just one more look.
He slipped out of the closet and followed the sound of muffled voices to the kitchen.
Lucifer was leaning back against the table, nodding and smiling as Dean told him about his trip to the grocery store.
“I got pizza,” Dean was saying, gesturing toward the box sitting on the counter. “I know you like it.”
He didn’t look all that different on first inspection. He looked like the same old Dean. Maybe his hair was a little longer and his clothes fit a little looser, but he had the same build, same scars, same freckles.
His eyes, though. They were wide and shining, threatening to brim over with something. Happiness or anger or sorrow. They were bright, bigger than Sam could ever remember seeing them. They looked innocent, stripped of all the armor that had kept his brother’s inner workings hidden away.
“You know I like whatever you give me,” Lucifer said. “I’m a glutton like that.”
Dean smiled in a way that Sam had rarely seen him smile and slid closer to the other man, hands falling to the Devil’s shoulders and sliding around until they rested lightly on his back. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”
“What’s wrong?” Sam could hear the frown in Lucifer’s voice.
Dean bit his lip and dropped those bright eyes to the floor. “What time did Sam leave?”
The Devil must have felt Sam’s wide-eyed gaze on his back, because he wrapped his hands around Dean’s hips and somehow managed to flip them, lifting the hunter up onto the table with his back to his nosy brother. “What are you talking about?”
Dean shrugged. “You don’t drink alone and there’s a glass in the sink.” He sniffed - it could have been a laugh. “There are muddy footprints in the living room. They’re, like, size twenty.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“It’s ok,” Dean said, and there was something wrong with his voice. Something about it was shaky and watery and Sam had never thought he’d hear his brother sound like that. It was like a knife straight through his heart. “I want you to be happy.”
The knife twisted.
“I am happy,” Lucifer said, moving his hands to frame the hunter’s face, running ruined thumbs over his cheeks. “Right here, with you.”
“Everyone leaves.” It was a choked whisper, but Sam still managed to hear it. The knife jerked.
“I won’t. I’m different, remember? We’re soulmates, Dean. You’re stuck with me.”
Dean sniffed. “Sam left.”
“I’m not Sam,” Lucifer said, leaning down until their foreheads were touching. “You made sure of that.”
“We have this conversation, like, every week.”
“We do.”
“Something’s wrong with me.”
Lucifer sighed. “There is nothing wrong with you, Dean.”
“You should have… not this. So you can go.” His voice broke when he said it. Sam closed his eyes.
“I’m not going anywhere.” There was silence for a long time, long enough that Sam dared to open his eyes and look. They hadn’t moved. Dean was still seated on the table, and Lucifer was still standing in front of him, hands bracketing his face. Dean’s hands had fallen from the Devil’s shoulders to rest on his hips, pulling them closer as they kissed.
Sam should have been disgusted. He knew that, logically. Not because of what they were, but because of who they were. Satan himself and the man responsible for stopping the Apocalypse. His brother and the Devil. Lucifer and Dean.
He couldn’t bring himself to look away. There was a tenderness there he’d never thought he’d see in his brother, a mixture of caution and passion that caused that knife to twist again.
Finally, Sam turned away. He’d seen what he needed to see. He didn’t want to leave, but maybe it was best. Maybe they all just needed a little time, a little TLC. He swiped a hand across his face as he snuck back down the hall. He was on his way out the door when he heard Lucifer’s soft “I love you.”
The door was closed before he could hear Dean return the sentiment with fervor.
Author: mummyluvr314
Rating: PG
Pairing: Dean/Lucifer, mentions of Sam/Castiel
Summary: Sam couldn’t have seen what he thought he’d seen. Dean was dead. Dean was not living in suburbia. Slight AU for the end of season five.
A/N: Title is from Grenade by Bruno Mars. It’s a song about Lucifer. Really. It’s all about getting shot in the head and set on fire and rejected. Don’t mock my world turtle.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not the characters. Not the show. And certainly not Sera Gamble’s soul.
As far as Sam could tell, the little house was empty. The lights were off, the street was quiet, and the sliding glass door that opened onto the living room was ridiculously easy to unlock.
He’d left a note on the apartment’s refrigerator for Cas, trusting the former angel to be able to fend for himself after the daily job hunt. When Sam was done with his reconnaissance work, he’d go back to the little hole-in-the-wall they’d been sharing since the Apocalypse That Wasn’t, have a beer, eat some pizza, and try to forget what he could have sworn he’d seen the night before.
It seemed like a good plan. Until he rounded a corner and found himself staring directly into the barrel of a gun.
“Sam?”
He knew that voice. It sent shivers down his spine, broke him out into a cold sweat, made his heart start to trip-hammer in his chest. Lucifer lowered the gun and stared at him for a long time. A little too long for Sam’s liking. It reminded him of the way Cas stared sometimes, late at night, blue eyes shining through the dark like beacons. Unblinking. Creepy.
Finally, Lucifer closed his eyes. Sighed. Set the gun down on a nearby end table and frowned at the hunter. “You need to leave, Sam.”
Sam, to his credit, didn’t move. He stayed still, eyes fixed on the heavily scarred man that stood before him. Because he had to be a man, and nothing more. Dean had promised him that much, a last-ditch effort to end the Apocalypse with minimal casualties. Old magic. Grace twisted and torn and remade into a human soul.
Dean had said he would kill the man that had been an angel. Put another bullet right through his brain. Burn the body. Save the world.
He hadn’t let Sam tag along. And now Sam knew why.
“You’re not dead.”
“Intelligent early in the morning, aren’t you?” Heavy hands fell on the hunter’s shoulders, turning him back toward the door. “Go home, Sam.”
Sam didn’t move. Lucifer wasn’t as strong as he’d once been. “You’re human?”
“Leave.”
“No.” He spun back around, facing the thing that had haunted his nightmares for over a year. Funny, without the hidden wings, the God-given Grace, and the aura of power, he wasn’t so scary.
“Please.”
And he begged.
It should have been satisfying, seeing the monster that had tried to take his body and end the world so worried. So scared. Eyes wider the longer Sam refused to budge. Teeth chewing at lips. Hands clenching in the fabric of a jacket he knew he’d seen on his brother before.
The jacket reminded Sam why he was there. “Where is he?”
Lucifer blinked up at him, contorted his face in a way made comical by the deep grooves of healed scars criss-crossing the skin. “Who?”
“Dean. What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything to him,” the former angel said with a shake of his head. “But you need to leave before he gets back.”
Oh. Sam hadn’t been expecting that. “What?”
“He can’t see us together.”
The hunter blinked. There was something disconnected in his brain, and he was trying hard to get the ends back together. It didn’t add up. What had happened and what the angel was saying just didn’t fit.
Lucifer sighed. It sounded an awful lot like an ‘I’m-surrounded-by-idiots’ sigh. Sam knew because he’d practically invented it. “I need a drink,” the Devil said, brushing past the hunter. Sam managed to scramble to his feet, his brain trying desperately to keep up with what was happening, and followed him into what turned out to be the kitchen. The angel was standing at the counter, pouring something in to a glass. He turned to face the hunter and sighed again. “He really didn’t tell you, huh?”
“Tell me what?” Sam asked, everything still fuzzy. His heart was pounding in his chest and his sight was getting blurry and there was something warm and wet behind his eyes and he was scared.
Because Dean was dead. He’d gone off with a book and a spell and instructions for Sam and a newly-human Castiel to stay put. He’d gone off to beat the Devil and he’d never come back. Sam and Cas had stayed put, but he hadn’t come back. It had been nearly six months, and Dean hadn’t come back.
He was dead. He had to be.
Lucifer sat himself down on the edge of the table, ignoring the two folding chairs that flanked it. “I stalked you,” he said, apparently tuning out Sam’s emotional distress. “For over a year. Now, how’s it gonna look if he walks through the door and sees that I found you again?”
“You didn’t find me. I found you. How are you not dead?” He refused to ask about his brother again, too conscious of tricks.
The former angel rolled his eyes. “Obviously, he didn’t kill me.” But someone died.
“You’re human.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
Lucifer shrugged, ice clinking in his glass. “I don’t know. Maybe he felt sorry for me. Maybe he just couldn’t. Maybe he’s smarter than you give him credit for.” Off of Sam’s confused look, he explained. “Think about it. Punish the thing that hates humans by making it human and then not killing it. Making it live the life. Making it be human.”
“Are you gonna kill him?” Because as much as Sam didn’t want to believe it, believe that Dean had run away to live with Devil, that he had just abandoned them, the way that Lucifer was talking made it seem like a very real possibility.
The Devil laughed, a surprisingly normal sound. Happy, still unaware of the way Sam’s pulse was racing. It looked good on him. “No. I’m not going to kill your brother.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
That earned him a frown. “I’m not sure.” He shrugged. “It’s a roof. Food. A warm bed. I hear humans need those things.”
“And he’s just providing?” Because that didn’t seem like Dean. He could have felt pity or anger when it came time to deliver the killing blow, could have backed down from the responsibility he’d given himself, but he wouldn’t have taken the Devil in. He wouldn’t have left his family.
“I think he likes it,” Lucifer ventured. “The house and the yard and the knickknacks. Someone to come home to.”
That did seem like Dean. Maybe not the Dean he knew, or the one that Lucifer seemed to know, but the Dean he’d always wanted to see. It was everything he’d ever wanted for his brother, everything Dean had never let himself want. Domesticity.
It was a nice idea, Dean not being dead. Settling down. Even if it was with the Devil. Even if Sam wasn’t invited.
“He loved him, you know,” Lucifer said, staring at the hunter with narrowed eyes and pulling Sam out of his thoughts.
“Who?”
“Dean. Castiel.”
Sam flinched at the mispronunciation of the angel’s name. “What are you talking about?”
“They had a profound bond. You took him. He’s human now, too, right? And you took him.”
“I didn’t take anyone,” Sam argued. “And how would you know any of that?”
“Dean told me. Granted, I was lying on the bed, eyes closed, bleeding profusely from the face. I think he thought I was unconscious. Stitching is a long and painful process. I should have passed out.” He shrugged and finished whatever had been in the glass, moving to lean up against the counter. “It was an interesting look into an interesting psyche, anyway.” He looked out the little window that Sam had been looking in the night before, eyes fixed on a broken streetlamp. “He left me for dead out there. The moment my Grace changed, everything just kind of split open. It wasn’t pretty. He came back the next day. He fixed me up. Helped me through fever and infections and all sorts of nasty things.”
“Why?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “He went back to you, he said. He went back and saw you with his angel and he didn’t want to intrude. He hadn’t thought he’d make it back, and he’d given you all he could. A house and the promise of nobody being around to hijack your body.” He looked back at the streetlight. “He hadn’t meant to give you Castiel, though.”
“Call him Cas.”
“Cas, then. Do you love him? Cas?”
Sam opened his mouth, closed it. Good question. They hadn’t been together that long, had hooked up the first time because they’d figured Dean wasn’t going to come back. It was a last hoorah, mostly because someone had promised the angel he wouldn’t die a virgin. And he wouldn’t.
It had become a bit more permanent after that. A bit more involved. More about actual emotion than the fact that Dean would probably fail and the end would inevitably come.
The thought that Dean might have had some sort of investment in Cas hadn’t even occurred to him. They were friends, was all. And Dean was straight.
It felt good to refer to his brother in the present tense again, like slipping on a favorite glove he’d thought he’d lost. It took a weight off of his shoulder.
That weight was promptly replaced by another one.
Dean had seen them doing something. He’d gotten upset. He’d saved the Devil. He had a fallen angel of his own.
Dread settled in his chest. “He’s using you.”
Lucifer turned around, leaning his back against the counter and leveling the hunter with a chilling gaze. “No.”
“He is. You’re his replacement.” Sam pushed himself away from the doorframe he’d been leaning in and stalked toward his former tormentor. “I bet he doesn’t even let you leave the house.”
“I can leave whenever I want.”
“But do you?”
Lucifer’s jaw twitched. “Sometimes. It’s a hard world out there, Sam. People aren’t so welcoming toward freaks without faces.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“You need to leave.”
Sam felt his heart skip a beat, even as he pulled himself to his full height and glared down at the angel, refusing to back down and run away. “He actually told you that?”
Lucifer groaned and shoved off the counter, pushing into Sam and actually managing to get him to stumble back a few steps. “It’s the truth. And it’ll take a lot more than that to bruise my ego. But Dean cannot find you here.”
Sam countered by grabbing the former angel’s shoulders and staring down into blue eyes. “We need to leave. We need to get you out of here.”
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, past those two little cables that were still trying to get themselves hooked up so that rational thought would return, Sam knew it was a bad idea. He knew it was a stupid idea. He knew that he was probably in shock. Dean was alive. So was Lucifer. Those two facts were still not computing with what he was hearing.
As far as Sam was concerned, he needed to get the Devil away from his brother. Dean was alive. Dean was in danger.
“I can’t leave,” Lucifer said, breaking himself out of the hunter’s deathgrip. “I can’t.”
“Why not? Because he told you?”
“Because it did something to him.”
Sam felt himself deflate. The fight went out of him. Those two wires connected.
Something had gone wrong. Of course. It explained Dean not coming back, or coming back and running away. It explained the living, breathing ex-angel in front of him. It explained almost everything.
“What happened?” Sam asked, though he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know.
The Devil took a step back and fixed him with a sorrowful stare. “Old magic. It’s strong and it comes with a price. You can’t just turn an angel human, even with what he found. He knew that.” The last sentence was a whisper, soft, unbearably sad. He sighed and went on. “Grace can’t just become a soul. But it can be grafted onto one. It mutates. Almost like stem cells, I guess. If you know the right words, you can make it anything. But it needs that base.”
“You took his soul?” Sam asked, and that sharp pain was back behind his eyes. Dean had sold his soul before - to save him - and if he’d done it again, because of some stupid quest for vengeance, Sam wasn’t sure he could forgive himself.
“No,” Lucifer said. “Just part of it. Little bit. Just enough to do some damage.”
“What happened to him?”
“A soul is like an onion,” the angel said, appearing not to hear him. “It has layers. Layers of thought and emotion and control. The spell took the top few layers, that’s all.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, to a normal person, it would mean certain death. But your brother’s different. Forty years in Hell, thirty of being a soldier. The top layers were a barrier to keep things hidden. Now that they’re gone…” He made a vague motion with his hand, swirling it around in the air, hoping that Sam would get the point.
“That’s why he left? That’s why you won’t leave?”
“It scraped him raw, Sam. Everything hurts. He wasn’t supposed to survive it. I don’t know why he came back for me. Maybe he thought I’d kill him. But I can’t. The way he looks at me sometimes…” he sighed, running a hand through his hair in an action that so Dean that Sam’s heart actually ached. “You have a good brother. Better than mine.” Lucifer quirked a small smile. “I think I might be jealous.”
Sam managed to grin in reply, but his heart wasn’t in it. His brain was working overtime now that the connection had been made. Dean with no defenses, after everything that had happened in their lives, was bound to be a train wreck. And with everything that had happened with him and Cas since the Apocalypse That Wasn’t, he could see how his brother would have run.
“I shouldn’t come back, should I?” Sam asked.
“No. You shouldn’t.”
It didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought it would. He’d gotten so used to the idea of a world without Dean - a world so different than those horrible four months, a world where love could exist and jobs could be found and life could go on - that it almost didn’t register. It was hard to believe that Dean could really be alive after that passing glance he’d caught through the window the night before. Maybe he could live with it.
“Ok.”
Lucifer let out a breath Sam hadn’t known he’d been holding. “Let me show you out.” He put a hand on the hunter’s elbow and steered him back through the living room and to the front door. “I’d say thanks for stopping by -”
“I get it,” Sam said. He took one more look around the little house and smiled. Dean had done well for himself. He guessed his brother deserved something close to a happy ending, saving the world and all. Then he heard the car.
He heard the car and everything came rushing home because it was Dean’s car and Dean was the only one allowed to drive it and Dean was alive and Sam had been willing to listen to the Devil and leave him and what was he thinking?
“Dean?” It came out soft and breathy and not like Sam’s voice at all. He could hear the engine cut off and the door slam and heavy footfalls and his brother was coming home. He was going to get to see Dean. He was going to -
Lucifer shoved him in a closet. The door slammed shut as the front door was opening. There was a pause, and then Sam heard his brother’s voice for the first time in months.
“Going somewhere?” Dean asked, and if Sam hadn’t known better, he’d have thought that Dean sounded scared. But he did know better, and Dean was probably terrified.
“No,” Lucifer said. “Just waiting.”
“At the door?”
“Well, I was going to make a trail to the surprise, but you came back early.”
“You got me a surprise?”
Something prickled up behind Sam’s eyes again, but this time he didn’t try to fight it. There was no one there to see, just a couple of coats and a scarf.
It was real. More real than that glimpse through the window or the sound of the car. This was Dean, and he sounded so different. Younger, somehow. Scared and trusting and so easily excited. Emotional.
“I went to the store today. Picked up the Die Hard movies for your collection.”
“Really?” Dean asked, voice getting softer. Farther away. They were moving, leaving the modest entryway and walking into the kitchen.
Sam needed to leave. He needed to get out of that closet and sneak out while Lucifer had Dean distracted.
But he had to see his brother. Up close. Just one more time, then he’d be done. That was all he needed for closure. Just one more look.
He slipped out of the closet and followed the sound of muffled voices to the kitchen.
Lucifer was leaning back against the table, nodding and smiling as Dean told him about his trip to the grocery store.
“I got pizza,” Dean was saying, gesturing toward the box sitting on the counter. “I know you like it.”
He didn’t look all that different on first inspection. He looked like the same old Dean. Maybe his hair was a little longer and his clothes fit a little looser, but he had the same build, same scars, same freckles.
His eyes, though. They were wide and shining, threatening to brim over with something. Happiness or anger or sorrow. They were bright, bigger than Sam could ever remember seeing them. They looked innocent, stripped of all the armor that had kept his brother’s inner workings hidden away.
“You know I like whatever you give me,” Lucifer said. “I’m a glutton like that.”
Dean smiled in a way that Sam had rarely seen him smile and slid closer to the other man, hands falling to the Devil’s shoulders and sliding around until they rested lightly on his back. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”
“What’s wrong?” Sam could hear the frown in Lucifer’s voice.
Dean bit his lip and dropped those bright eyes to the floor. “What time did Sam leave?”
The Devil must have felt Sam’s wide-eyed gaze on his back, because he wrapped his hands around Dean’s hips and somehow managed to flip them, lifting the hunter up onto the table with his back to his nosy brother. “What are you talking about?”
Dean shrugged. “You don’t drink alone and there’s a glass in the sink.” He sniffed - it could have been a laugh. “There are muddy footprints in the living room. They’re, like, size twenty.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“It’s ok,” Dean said, and there was something wrong with his voice. Something about it was shaky and watery and Sam had never thought he’d hear his brother sound like that. It was like a knife straight through his heart. “I want you to be happy.”
The knife twisted.
“I am happy,” Lucifer said, moving his hands to frame the hunter’s face, running ruined thumbs over his cheeks. “Right here, with you.”
“Everyone leaves.” It was a choked whisper, but Sam still managed to hear it. The knife jerked.
“I won’t. I’m different, remember? We’re soulmates, Dean. You’re stuck with me.”
Dean sniffed. “Sam left.”
“I’m not Sam,” Lucifer said, leaning down until their foreheads were touching. “You made sure of that.”
“We have this conversation, like, every week.”
“We do.”
“Something’s wrong with me.”
Lucifer sighed. “There is nothing wrong with you, Dean.”
“You should have… not this. So you can go.” His voice broke when he said it. Sam closed his eyes.
“I’m not going anywhere.” There was silence for a long time, long enough that Sam dared to open his eyes and look. They hadn’t moved. Dean was still seated on the table, and Lucifer was still standing in front of him, hands bracketing his face. Dean’s hands had fallen from the Devil’s shoulders to rest on his hips, pulling them closer as they kissed.
Sam should have been disgusted. He knew that, logically. Not because of what they were, but because of who they were. Satan himself and the man responsible for stopping the Apocalypse. His brother and the Devil. Lucifer and Dean.
He couldn’t bring himself to look away. There was a tenderness there he’d never thought he’d see in his brother, a mixture of caution and passion that caused that knife to twist again.
Finally, Sam turned away. He’d seen what he needed to see. He didn’t want to leave, but maybe it was best. Maybe they all just needed a little time, a little TLC. He swiped a hand across his face as he snuck back down the hall. He was on his way out the door when he heard Lucifer’s soft “I love you.”
The door was closed before he could hear Dean return the sentiment with fervor.