I Think I Know Enough of Hate (Perish Twice 3/5)
Title: I Think I Know Enough of Hate (3/5)
Author: secondplatypus
Pairing: Sam/Lucifer
Rating: PG
Warning: a little schmoop (your eyes aren't deceiving you, that's a schmoop warning on a Sam/Lucifer fic), angst
Spoilers: none. This is a mild AU set between episodes in mid Season 5
Word Count: 1672 (total thus far: 4678)
Disclaimer:Supernatural and all characters therein are the property of Eric Kripke and the WB/CW, I'm just borrowing them for my own nefarious purposes.
Summary: Sam's sudden silence draws Lucifer to him, and when he finds the flame-warm soul he needs guttering out, the Devil shows some sympathy.
Author's notes: I wasn't going to take this chapter on for at least another week, and yesterday was supposed to be a day off from fic, but I sat down and started talking to my best friend and boom! I don't know why all this plot has been showing up in my fics lately, but it's making me nervous. :)
- T-minus one chapter til the shit hits the big, sexy, angry, NC-17-with-all-the-trimmings, angsty fan in part four. In the meantime, this is where it all falls down. I pinky promise that I'm building to something. Just bear with me.
- The scar/wound mentioned here wasn't something I made up. There are two potential sources - the first is the classic story of Michael throwing Lucifer out of Heaven, which I'm not entirely comfortable basing this on because I couldn't find any direct reference to Michael physically wounding Lucifer.
The second is found in the battle of Heaven in Paradise Lost, in which Abdiel cleaves Satan's body with a sword; he cannot die, but it is the first time the archangel has ever felt pain. Paradise Lost isn't canon, but since the book is cited as a reputable source of angel lore, I thought it couldn't hurt to use this story.
I never meant for the scar to have any significance at all when I first wrote it into chapter two, it just happened.
- for those unfamiliar with the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is a great king and hero who is 1/3 divine, 2/3 mortal, and completely out of control; the gods send him Enkidu, his friend/soulmate/companion/lover to temper, challenge, and complete him (The Epic of Gilgamesh, first tablet).
- the nephilim were an order/race of angels who bred with the daughters of men and were destroyed for it (a simplistic rendering of the story, but it'll do for now)
Previous Chapter:
part two - What I've Tasted of Desire
but if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate
The next time Lucifer saw Sam, he wasn't drawn to the man by lust or need or want or the seeds he'd planted deep within Sam finally bursting forth.
He was drawn by silence.
For three weeks now, Sam hadn't been able to get Lucifer out of his head. The Devil had grown accustomed to Sam involuntarily calling to him; the sounds and tugs were a near-constant companion, a quiet-loud background noise. In his day-to-day life, Lucifer didn't pay them much mind, but when they abruptly disappeared, the silence was overwhelming.
His first thought was that Sam might be dead, and after nearly five hundred years without experiencing panic, the sensation practically knocked him to the floor. For the thousandth time, he cursed the angel who had carved those damn sigils into Sam's ribcage, keeping him from knowing exactly where his perfect vessel was. Lucifer tried locking on to the echoes of his grace that should still have clung to Sam; there wasn't much left, scraps of shreds of remnants, but there was enough, and Lucifer silently thanked a God he no longer believed in as he blinked into the familiar room in Sam's subconscious.
At first, he thought he'd popped into the wrong head. Sam's soft glow, like sunlight against Lucifer's skin, was absent, and when Lucifer closed his eyes he couldn't see Sam's soul anywhere.
A body lay on the bed, all too-long legs and arms haphazardly piled on top of one another. Were it not for the movement of its head in Lucifer's direction, accompanied by a small groan, Lucifer would have thought it was lifeless. Its lips -- Sam's lips -- parted as it shifted, and something swirled around it, revealing a tiny sliver of near-blinding light.
This was Sam, all right, a listless, cold Sam with something obscuring and choking his soul.
Lucifer needed to bring the fire in Sam's heart back and clear that foul, clinging darkness; without it, Lucifer had no hope, and without it, Sam had no hope, either.
When he slipped into Sam's head, the despair he found there reminded him of Hell. Dean had left Sam - maybe for a while, maybe forever, Sam wasn't optimistic - and their angel was gone, too. Sam was all alone with nothing to keep him company but the self-loathing and misery that had been building in him for more than half a decade; his thoughts were an unbroken chain of hopelessness and pain and the loss of his brother on endless loop, Dean and come back and sorry and hurt.
How could my father let this poor creature suffer so?
A soul as glorious as Sam's was meant to be treasured, not battered.
Even the distant archangels were invested in the safety and well-being of their vessels, giving them protection and an angelic semblance of nurturing. By his own admittance, Lucifer hated his father, but there were lows Lucifer thought even He wouldn't stoop to. The humans were precious enough to God to compel him to sacrifice his most beloved archangel, so Lucifer had expected him to treat them as such, to take care of them and confer some sort of compassion and justice. It was beyond Lucifer how God could be so disinterested in his own creations, especially one as bright and beautiful as Sam.
Sam, with a soul like moonlight shining through leaves and deep, smooth water.
Sam craved love and comfort, needed them like Lucifer needed his warmth. He was starving for affection, for someone to tell him that he wasn't worthless and the worst screw-up that had ever walked the earth, to tell him that things were going to be okay, to tell him that even if things weren't okay they would still be there because they loved him.
The ones who had gone dark before Sam had gone willingly, and they deserved all they got. This, though, this was different. This poor man had withstood more than most angels could have before he gave in, and he had honestly believed that he was stopping the Apocalypse, but he was being punished anyways, a fact that made bitter, sick anger build in Lucifer's chest.
Sam could sense the Devil's rage, and Lucifer saw fear join the host of negative emotions swirling around in Sam's skull. Lucifer closed his eyes, quieting his fury; there wasn't enough violence and vengeance in the world to dispel the pain unravelling Sam's soul, and he needed his vessel strong.
"I will never hurt you, Sam," Lucifer said as he lay down on the bed next to Sam and gathered the man's body into his arms, "never."
Instead of Lucifer taking advantage of his weakened state -- grace blazing through him, hands and lips and teeth playing the lust Sam didn't have the energy to deny -- all Sam felt was the solid, reassuring pressure of Lucifer's chest, stomach, legs against his, the stretch-curl of Lucifer's arm beneath his head and a hand that lightly brushed along his spine.
This is a goddamn trick, Sam told himself, this is Lucifer, but no matter how many times he repeated the words in his head, it didn't seem to matter. Sam needed... he didn't know what he needed right then, but he wasn't getting comfort anywhere else.
Everyone's deserted me but the Devil, Sam thought bitterly to himself before he felt cool skin on his forehead, easing the tension that furrowed his brow.
Fuck it,, Sam thought as his resistance fell away, after everything that's happened, I don't see how cuddling is going to make much of a difference.
Lucifer thought their shirts away, knowing how soothing the touch of bare skin on skin was to humans; a little murr of contentment escaped Sam's lips as he relaxed, nuzzling into the silk-soft contours of Lucifer's chest. As Sam lay against him, Lucifer could feel the haze dimming his soul begin to lift and his warmth return; the maelstrom in his head slowing and calming.
Lucifer felt fingertips against his skin and looked down to see Sam gazing intently at the scar that marred his upper body, running his fingers over the raised line; stark white against the soft gold of Lucifer's skin.
There was a raw, gentle need in the way Sam touched him, a tenderness he hadn't felt since his brothers' wings brushed against his own so many thousands of years before. He hadn't been touched in a way that wasn't born of torture or manipulation since the moment he fell; Lucifer had taken lovers, but he was always the one stroking, caressing, and pleasuring.
"That scar didn't belong to this vessel, you know."
At the sound of Lucifer's voice, Sam's fingers froze just below the place where the thin, raised flesh crossed over Lucifer's heart.
"It's mine, burned into my grace; every vessel I take is marked with it when I enter them for the first time, and their souls carry it for eternity."
"Where did it come from," Sam asked, looking up at Lucifer's too-neutral face.
"Before the battle of Heaven, one of the angels who was meant to side with us betrayed me, alerting God to our attack. When the two sides met on the field, that same little angel -- Abdiel -- was the only one who had the courage to stand forward and set the clash in motion. My brother, my own little brother, raised his sword against me and split me from my shoulder to my belly."
Lucifer was silent for a long, long moment.
"It was the first time I ever felt pain, and no wound has blemished my grace since."
Sam pressed a soft kiss to the tip of the scar, right above Lucifer's nipple, before his eyelashes fluttered shut like little whispers against Lucifer's skin.
With strokes of a thumb against a cheek and the steady cadence of his vessel's heartbeat, Lucifer lulled Sam back to sleep. The stain obscuring Sam's soul when Lucifer had arrived was gone; Sam's essence had returned to its usual soft ebb and flow, edges lapping against and gently twining with the outer fringe of Lucifer's grace. When Sam had slipped into the peaceful limbo of a deep, dreamless sleep, Lucifer untangled long limbs from his own and withdrew; Lucifer's body lamenting the loss of the touch as soon as skin slid away from skin and the first chilly tingles made their way into the fractures at the juncture of grace and vessel. The more time he spent with Sam, the less he seemed to notice the cold, and the weaker its its effect on him became.
Lucifer looked at the sleeping figure, lips curling into a smile. He could give Sam much more than a simple "thank you" and a snuggle in return for allowing Lucifer close to him.
He closed his eyes, concentrating on the flow of his grace, breaking off a tiny bead to give to Sam's soul to help shield it from despair and keep it safe. When the ball of light had collected in his hand, a sharp flash of shock razed through him.
The piece of grace should have looked like a perfect, white pearl; instead, the sphere floating above his palm was the deep, rich yellow of candle-light.
Lucifer knew this color well, from the brief time he had spent free of the cage after he fell; he'd seen it playing over the souls of Adam and Eve, watched it spark between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and had caught infinitesimal glimpses of it when Gabriel looked at him that, try as he might, the arch-herald couldn't conceal.
It was the beginnings of love.
Humans weren't made to be loved, not by archangels or any other creatures in Heaven, as the nephilim had learned the hard way.
An angel could have feelings for a vessel, but they were limited to protectiveness and gratitude; Lucifer couldn't care for his vessel, he needed to own him.
But his forsaken-Father help him, Lucifer was falling in love with Sam Winchester.
Want more? On to part four!
Author: secondplatypus
Pairing: Sam/Lucifer
Rating: PG
Warning: a little schmoop (your eyes aren't deceiving you, that's a schmoop warning on a Sam/Lucifer fic), angst
Spoilers: none. This is a mild AU set between episodes in mid Season 5
Word Count: 1672 (total thus far: 4678)
Disclaimer:Supernatural and all characters therein are the property of Eric Kripke and the WB/CW, I'm just borrowing them for my own nefarious purposes.
Summary: Sam's sudden silence draws Lucifer to him, and when he finds the flame-warm soul he needs guttering out, the Devil shows some sympathy.
Author's notes: I wasn't going to take this chapter on for at least another week, and yesterday was supposed to be a day off from fic, but I sat down and started talking to my best friend and boom! I don't know why all this plot has been showing up in my fics lately, but it's making me nervous. :)
- T-minus one chapter til the shit hits the big, sexy, angry, NC-17-with-all-the-trimmings, angsty fan in part four. In the meantime, this is where it all falls down. I pinky promise that I'm building to something. Just bear with me.
- The scar/wound mentioned here wasn't something I made up. There are two potential sources - the first is the classic story of Michael throwing Lucifer out of Heaven, which I'm not entirely comfortable basing this on because I couldn't find any direct reference to Michael physically wounding Lucifer.
The second is found in the battle of Heaven in Paradise Lost, in which Abdiel cleaves Satan's body with a sword; he cannot die, but it is the first time the archangel has ever felt pain. Paradise Lost isn't canon, but since the book is cited as a reputable source of angel lore, I thought it couldn't hurt to use this story.
I never meant for the scar to have any significance at all when I first wrote it into chapter two, it just happened.
- for those unfamiliar with the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is a great king and hero who is 1/3 divine, 2/3 mortal, and completely out of control; the gods send him Enkidu, his friend/soulmate/companion/lover to temper, challenge, and complete him (The Epic of Gilgamesh, first tablet).
- the nephilim were an order/race of angels who bred with the daughters of men and were destroyed for it (a simplistic rendering of the story, but it'll do for now)
Previous Chapter:
part two - What I've Tasted of Desire
but if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate
The next time Lucifer saw Sam, he wasn't drawn to the man by lust or need or want or the seeds he'd planted deep within Sam finally bursting forth.
He was drawn by silence.
For three weeks now, Sam hadn't been able to get Lucifer out of his head. The Devil had grown accustomed to Sam involuntarily calling to him; the sounds and tugs were a near-constant companion, a quiet-loud background noise. In his day-to-day life, Lucifer didn't pay them much mind, but when they abruptly disappeared, the silence was overwhelming.
His first thought was that Sam might be dead, and after nearly five hundred years without experiencing panic, the sensation practically knocked him to the floor. For the thousandth time, he cursed the angel who had carved those damn sigils into Sam's ribcage, keeping him from knowing exactly where his perfect vessel was. Lucifer tried locking on to the echoes of his grace that should still have clung to Sam; there wasn't much left, scraps of shreds of remnants, but there was enough, and Lucifer silently thanked a God he no longer believed in as he blinked into the familiar room in Sam's subconscious.
At first, he thought he'd popped into the wrong head. Sam's soft glow, like sunlight against Lucifer's skin, was absent, and when Lucifer closed his eyes he couldn't see Sam's soul anywhere.
A body lay on the bed, all too-long legs and arms haphazardly piled on top of one another. Were it not for the movement of its head in Lucifer's direction, accompanied by a small groan, Lucifer would have thought it was lifeless. Its lips -- Sam's lips -- parted as it shifted, and something swirled around it, revealing a tiny sliver of near-blinding light.
This was Sam, all right, a listless, cold Sam with something obscuring and choking his soul.
Lucifer needed to bring the fire in Sam's heart back and clear that foul, clinging darkness; without it, Lucifer had no hope, and without it, Sam had no hope, either.
When he slipped into Sam's head, the despair he found there reminded him of Hell. Dean had left Sam - maybe for a while, maybe forever, Sam wasn't optimistic - and their angel was gone, too. Sam was all alone with nothing to keep him company but the self-loathing and misery that had been building in him for more than half a decade; his thoughts were an unbroken chain of hopelessness and pain and the loss of his brother on endless loop, Dean and come back and sorry and hurt.
How could my father let this poor creature suffer so?
A soul as glorious as Sam's was meant to be treasured, not battered.
Even the distant archangels were invested in the safety and well-being of their vessels, giving them protection and an angelic semblance of nurturing. By his own admittance, Lucifer hated his father, but there were lows Lucifer thought even He wouldn't stoop to. The humans were precious enough to God to compel him to sacrifice his most beloved archangel, so Lucifer had expected him to treat them as such, to take care of them and confer some sort of compassion and justice. It was beyond Lucifer how God could be so disinterested in his own creations, especially one as bright and beautiful as Sam.
Sam, with a soul like moonlight shining through leaves and deep, smooth water.
Sam craved love and comfort, needed them like Lucifer needed his warmth. He was starving for affection, for someone to tell him that he wasn't worthless and the worst screw-up that had ever walked the earth, to tell him that things were going to be okay, to tell him that even if things weren't okay they would still be there because they loved him.
The ones who had gone dark before Sam had gone willingly, and they deserved all they got. This, though, this was different. This poor man had withstood more than most angels could have before he gave in, and he had honestly believed that he was stopping the Apocalypse, but he was being punished anyways, a fact that made bitter, sick anger build in Lucifer's chest.
Sam could sense the Devil's rage, and Lucifer saw fear join the host of negative emotions swirling around in Sam's skull. Lucifer closed his eyes, quieting his fury; there wasn't enough violence and vengeance in the world to dispel the pain unravelling Sam's soul, and he needed his vessel strong.
"I will never hurt you, Sam," Lucifer said as he lay down on the bed next to Sam and gathered the man's body into his arms, "never."
Instead of Lucifer taking advantage of his weakened state -- grace blazing through him, hands and lips and teeth playing the lust Sam didn't have the energy to deny -- all Sam felt was the solid, reassuring pressure of Lucifer's chest, stomach, legs against his, the stretch-curl of Lucifer's arm beneath his head and a hand that lightly brushed along his spine.
This is a goddamn trick, Sam told himself, this is Lucifer, but no matter how many times he repeated the words in his head, it didn't seem to matter. Sam needed... he didn't know what he needed right then, but he wasn't getting comfort anywhere else.
Everyone's deserted me but the Devil, Sam thought bitterly to himself before he felt cool skin on his forehead, easing the tension that furrowed his brow.
Fuck it,, Sam thought as his resistance fell away, after everything that's happened, I don't see how cuddling is going to make much of a difference.
Lucifer thought their shirts away, knowing how soothing the touch of bare skin on skin was to humans; a little murr of contentment escaped Sam's lips as he relaxed, nuzzling into the silk-soft contours of Lucifer's chest. As Sam lay against him, Lucifer could feel the haze dimming his soul begin to lift and his warmth return; the maelstrom in his head slowing and calming.
Lucifer felt fingertips against his skin and looked down to see Sam gazing intently at the scar that marred his upper body, running his fingers over the raised line; stark white against the soft gold of Lucifer's skin.
There was a raw, gentle need in the way Sam touched him, a tenderness he hadn't felt since his brothers' wings brushed against his own so many thousands of years before. He hadn't been touched in a way that wasn't born of torture or manipulation since the moment he fell; Lucifer had taken lovers, but he was always the one stroking, caressing, and pleasuring.
"That scar didn't belong to this vessel, you know."
At the sound of Lucifer's voice, Sam's fingers froze just below the place where the thin, raised flesh crossed over Lucifer's heart.
"It's mine, burned into my grace; every vessel I take is marked with it when I enter them for the first time, and their souls carry it for eternity."
"Where did it come from," Sam asked, looking up at Lucifer's too-neutral face.
"Before the battle of Heaven, one of the angels who was meant to side with us betrayed me, alerting God to our attack. When the two sides met on the field, that same little angel -- Abdiel -- was the only one who had the courage to stand forward and set the clash in motion. My brother, my own little brother, raised his sword against me and split me from my shoulder to my belly."
Lucifer was silent for a long, long moment.
"It was the first time I ever felt pain, and no wound has blemished my grace since."
Sam pressed a soft kiss to the tip of the scar, right above Lucifer's nipple, before his eyelashes fluttered shut like little whispers against Lucifer's skin.
With strokes of a thumb against a cheek and the steady cadence of his vessel's heartbeat, Lucifer lulled Sam back to sleep. The stain obscuring Sam's soul when Lucifer had arrived was gone; Sam's essence had returned to its usual soft ebb and flow, edges lapping against and gently twining with the outer fringe of Lucifer's grace. When Sam had slipped into the peaceful limbo of a deep, dreamless sleep, Lucifer untangled long limbs from his own and withdrew; Lucifer's body lamenting the loss of the touch as soon as skin slid away from skin and the first chilly tingles made their way into the fractures at the juncture of grace and vessel. The more time he spent with Sam, the less he seemed to notice the cold, and the weaker its its effect on him became.
Lucifer looked at the sleeping figure, lips curling into a smile. He could give Sam much more than a simple "thank you" and a snuggle in return for allowing Lucifer close to him.
He closed his eyes, concentrating on the flow of his grace, breaking off a tiny bead to give to Sam's soul to help shield it from despair and keep it safe. When the ball of light had collected in his hand, a sharp flash of shock razed through him.
The piece of grace should have looked like a perfect, white pearl; instead, the sphere floating above his palm was the deep, rich yellow of candle-light.
Lucifer knew this color well, from the brief time he had spent free of the cage after he fell; he'd seen it playing over the souls of Adam and Eve, watched it spark between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and had caught infinitesimal glimpses of it when Gabriel looked at him that, try as he might, the arch-herald couldn't conceal.
It was the beginnings of love.
Humans weren't made to be loved, not by archangels or any other creatures in Heaven, as the nephilim had learned the hard way.
An angel could have feelings for a vessel, but they were limited to protectiveness and gratitude; Lucifer couldn't care for his vessel, he needed to own him.
But his forsaken-Father help him, Lucifer was falling in love with Sam Winchester.
Want more? On to part four!