Bend the Bracket 9
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16
-- -- --
Dean slept. Sam was relatively sure that it was the best thing for him, after water and a couple bites of a cookie Arthur had floating around in his bag of tricks. After that, the painkillers and the blood loss were too much and Dean fell asleep shirtless and half-draped in a sheet, a little feverish but nothing Arthur had not said to expect. Still, keeping Dean plied with fluids and sugar and iron was going to be a big deal for the next couple of days.
When Arthur left, Sam finally took the time to have a look at his own injuries. His forehead sported a three inch gash over his left eye, a couple of terrible bruises on his cheekbones, nothing that wouldn't heal with a little water and some time. There was what amounted to road rash on the side of his right arm, which he did not remember receiving. The worst was his ribs, likely cracked. They throbbed in general and shot daggers of pain through his whole body when he lifted his arms or breathed deeply, looked purple and angry in the yellowish bathroom light. It was going to be a very long night trying to sleep on them.
The mattress that night was not the most comfortable in the world by any stretch of the imagination. The instant he was spread out on the blankets, a number of alarms set to be sure that he checked Dean, he knew that as exhausting as the day had been, sleep would be slow in coming. He could feel it, that little bit of light in his chest. He could feel the cold and the loneliness, and the drained well of grace he'd embraced. That was enough to keep him awake. The fact that it didn't try to hurt him or heal him or even do anything made him want to reach out and give it something to respond to.
He knew it was connected to Lucifer. He knew that if he closed his eyes and tried hard enough, he could tap that power and maybe, maybe, do something with it, but not as it was, weakened from healing Dean. And on top of that, he didn't want to.
When the bed dipped just a little, Sam didn't move, though he did open his eyes to look at the Devil, now sitting by his right hip. Lucifer's eyes were too downcast, his mouth too much of a neutral line. There was no malice in him, not even the deceptive kind he had always seemed so fond of.
"How do you do it?" Lucifer asked him, and just barely caught the back of Sam's pinky with his own, like an accident, only it couldn't have been one.
"Do what?"
The Devil wouldn't meet his gaze. "Forgive like that? Feel like that? How do you give up everything I've done to you, everything I've caused, and offer me things I was never-" He stopped himself, visibly shaken.
This hadn't been the conversation Sam had imagined having with Satan. But he was going to do it, here, now, half-awake. "You think I know what makes me tick, Lucifer? Because I don't. None of us do." He sighed, because all of this was like some strange dream that he'd wake up from in the morning, and Lucifer would still be evil, and the world would still be hopelessly at war. Because good things did not happen, not on their own. He didn't want that. He didn't even know what he wanted. "There's rage in me, too, you know, not just forgiveness. I'm not a saint."
"You don't have to be. You are what you are, Sam, and it's..." Lucifer was speechless. He had never seemed speechless before.
Sam let the Devil stare at him, perplexed by the light in his eyes, the subtle warmth of his expression. When Lucifer shifted he knew what was coming and he didn't even flinch. He stayed as he was, spread out on the mattress, waiting for something. He watched Lucifer lean toward him. He felt the jolt in his chest when they were just inches apart, felt the Devil's nervousness, excitement, anxiety, like it was physically taking up space inside of him.
Maybe having a pinch of grace was going to be all sorts of confusing.
"I am going to kiss you, Sam. Will you let me?"
It wasn't like before, because Sam didn't feel pity for the Devil. He couldn't say what he felt, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that Lucifer asked. "Yes."
The kiss was slow and innocent, more what the hunter had intended when he'd drunk far too much accidentally, gentle. It deepened naturally, gradually. Lucifer gained courage. The pinky finger that rested on Sam's moved, twitched, became a hand on his. The briefest touch of a palm on the side of his face, a thumb on his jaw, and Sam really didn't know if he should be thinking or feeling or just accepting that this was all desperation, between the two of them. It hadn't even really occurred to him that he should worry about his own feelings in the whole mixture until he realized, too late now, that Lucifer had already told him.
Forgiveness. He felt like the cruel wanting twined around the Devil's grace was too much for anything to feel. He'd brought the Devil's grace in an held it like a cold, starving kitten, because that was what it had needed.
There were multiple kisses now, he noticed, and heat and tension that was swiftly becoming awkward. There were too many questions and problems, and Dean was still sleeping not three feet away in the other bed.
Lucifer's mouth pulled away and he moved again, curled in on himself, pressed the side of his face to Sam's throat. That was more intimate, almost too intimate. And Lucifer knew it. He stayed there, as stiff as a statue, and wrapped a his hand in Sam's shirt like he thought the hunter was going to roll away from him and leave him there, kick him out. It was that thought that kept Sam from moving despite his sudden tickle of discomfort.
Dean had been right. Maybe he was alright with making-out with the Devil.
"You're hurt," Lucifer spread his right hand on Sam's chest, along the curve of his ribcage.
"It's been worse," Sam whispered.
"And you're exhausted."
"Should I start calling you Captain Obvious?"
Lucifer's lips were almost touching skin when he spoke. "You should go to sleep, Sam. It's fine. I've got enough mojo to keep the dreams out for a year, if you want me to."
Sam rolled onto his side and Lucifer fell into place behind him, their legs curled together, an arm draped over his chest. It should have been awkward and reminiscent of things Sam had no intention of thinking about, but the press of the Devil's face to his shoulder and the gentle tug of fingers in his shirt made him feel warm and somehow, despite everything, like things were going to be alright. He was aware that this was Lucifer curled around him, in the form of a dead man, mostly not physically there. But it didn't change much. Not in the long run.
"Sleep, Sammy," Lucifer whispered.
"You're just going to lie there and spoon me?"
There was a vibration like a laugh, but the sound was almost too quiet. "Yep."
- - -
Dean became increasingly irritated with Sam waking him up every couple of hours to drink water and juice and whatever else he could get out of the vending machines around the motel. Everything hurt, to start with. Eating, breathing, sitting up. Sam helped him with the last one the first couple times, because his stomach muscles just were not happy about moving. The cast that ran the length of his forearm and up around his right thumb made holding a glass in that hand almost impossible. He felt useless the whole night, and even more so when he almost collapsed from dizziness on his way to the bathroom.
Eventually, Sam let him sleep for more than two hours. Dean was a little disappointed that he didn't dream.
When morning came he felt better, though he did not immediately pack up the car and say goodbye to Amphitrite-ville. He wanted to. Forget whatever reason Bobby had sent them out into a college town in California - there had been four Leviathans around in under three days, Sam had converted into a Devil worshiper, and twenty-six people had been murdered. It wasn't a place they needed to be hanging around. They needed to be as far out of dodge as they could be as fast as they could be, he just didn't feel good enough to get there.
Which didn't stop him from trying to get out of bed, put on clean clothes, and wash up while Sam was out getting them breakfast. He had to clean everything left handed which slowed him down. He had to lean on the counter while he brushed his teeth. Mostly, the whole situation was really, really irritating.
Looking at the bag of pills Arthur had left him, he decided the iron supplement and multivitamin was a good bet, but left the painkillers. If he was going to pretend to be ready for travel, he'd need to pretend to be ready for travel without being high.
Sam came in while he was failing at tying his bootlaces and almost dropped the bag of takeout he'd bought someplace. Instead, Sam put the food thoughtlessly on the table and came forward to put a hand on Dean's forehead, checking him for any lingering fever, before he bent down and silently helped with the knot and bow. The laces had refused to do that for Dean. And now that they had, he sat back a little further on the bed and sighed, already tired. But he couldn't let that show. He needed to be ready to drive for a least a couple of hours before he offered Sam the keys.
"Where are you going? I brought you pie, so don't you give me crap about real breakfast," Sam plopped himself down on the ridiculously unstable wicker chair and started to go through the things in the bag like that had been his plan all along - not his plan assuming Dean wasn't feverish and tying his shoes when he came in.
"Away. We both are. Shit has hit the fan and blasted all over both of us; time to skip town and never look back." Dean didn't get up to get the little clear plastic box that had what looked like lemon meringue in it. He didn't trust himself to get up, pick it up, and get back to the bed without giving himself away. First he had to convince his brother that they were leaving, then he could worry about actually doing it.
Sam frowned at him. "You realize that Bobby sent us here to help Nichole, right? She can't fight this war on her own."
"And we can't fight it for her. We're in the way if we stay here, Sam. We're just going to get our asses handed to us over and over until one of us doesn't have any ass to hand anymore."
"And that's different than hunting things, how exactly?"
Dean frowned right back, irritation sparking in his chest. "It's different because we're not making a difference. We're just sitting here, getting punched, while someone else does the dirty work."
His brother's expression turned somehow apologetic and Dean remembered that they hadn't talked about anything important yet, but that was fine, they could talk in the car. Sam crossed his feet and uncrossed them, his legs too long to stay that way. "Dean, this is bigger than that. What if... what if Nichole has some secret weapon she can give us, some..." Sam waved his hands like a wand or a sword or any other melee-type weapon, "I don't know, a thing that she can give us that will help us fight them. We need to talk to her before we just run away to hunt whatever we can find." He looked down then, away from Dean's eyes, and payed attention to a fraying bit of thread on his jeans. "And we need to talk about what happened before. Because I know you've got all the right ideas and you think I've got all the wrong reasons."
That made Dean's mouth go dry. The car. They were supposed to talk about it in the car. But he was too tired and in too much pain to put it off if it meant he could casually manipulate Sam into driving away into the sunset before the sun started setting in California. "You talking about the magical, psychic, healing trick you pulled when my insides were spilling all over the car?"
The slow way Sam pulled in air was answer enough, but he opened his big mouth anyway. "Yeah. That. It was kind of... all that matters is that I was right, so you can't be mad at me."
"You let Lucifer save me, didn't you?"
Sam didn't answer. He just looked at his hands.
"What'd you give him? Your soul? Your life? C'mon, Sammy, we both know the Devil doesn't do free deals. What'd he get from you?"
When Sam's eyes met his they were crystalline and full of too many emotions, too many thoughts, and his shoulders trembled like he wasn't the hulking man he was, like he was small like a leaf in the wind. His breath came in uneven gusts. "You wouldn't believe me," Sam whispered, and there was something in expression that said he didn't expected to be trusted.
Dean didn't want to know, but he had to. He had to know because whatever Sam had given up to save him, he was going to fight for. Tooth and nail, knife and gun. Lucifer would give it back if Dean died trying.
"Nothing, Dean." Sam said evenly, and knitted his worries between his eyebrows like they might make the world's warmest sock, someday. "But I can forgive him for what he's done, all of it. And he... he understands. He didn't even ask for anything."
"Oh," Dean heard himself say, stunned beyond anything further.
Logically, he could understand. What he couldn't wrap his head around where the hows and whys. Or why Sam expected him to angry about it. He was at a loss for what to say, completely and utterly flabbergasted by Satan's seeming lack of investment in the whole situation. Sure, he got to keep looking through Sam and seeing the world, but there had to be more to it. There were still demons, even if they weren't a current problem. Lucifer had eyes and ears that weren't Sam, so what, exactly, did he get from helping?
Sam waved his hands like he could sculpt something out of the air, some idea, some tangible representation of what he was trying to say. It didn't work. In the end his hands ended up pooled in his lap, lifeless and unnecessary. "He just offered. He said it was because I wouldn't be able to live without you."
Dean pursed his lips and clenched his fists. He didn't know if that was true or not, but he wanted it to be, in some selfish, twisted part of himself. His Heaven had had Sam in it - the day they'd shot off fireworks, to start - but he hadn't remembered Sam having a younger version of Dean in his Heaven. It had made him feel like a one-sided soulmate, where the mate part of the relationship was unrequited.
"So you made a deal?"
Sam still wasn't looking at him. "Sort of."
"And you kissed."
"Not just then," Sam corrected him.
"And he used whatever mojo he had to stitch me up."
"Grace. He used his grace."
Dean bit his lower lip to keep from screaming at Sam, from blowing a gasket, from doing any number of things he would regret. In the end, he was standing, even though it took energy he didn't have and demanded that his blood flow against gravity to get to his brain. He couldn't pace. Instead, he rubbed at his cast and rocked back and forth awkwardly on his toes, glaring down his nose at his brother. "I don't care what he called it, I don't care that he didn't ask for anything, I don't even care that his stupid Enochian spell worked - you absolutely cannot be talking about trusting Satan, Sam. He knows you. He knows that if he does enough good, you'll open the Cage again without him even suggesting it to you, because that's how you are. It doesn't matter who he saves or what he does, Lucifer is still the Goddamn-"
The light-bulb in the lamp on the desk cut him off with a shower of sparks and an angry pop when the glass went. Dean didn't even jump. He just looked at Sam's wide eyes and waited.
Maybe Lucifer was ranting right back at him. It seemed pretty likely, considering the way Sam couldn't look away from the empty space in front of Dean's face.
"He knows I can't hear him, right?"
Sam focused on Dean for the briefest moment before he nodded. "Yeah."
"What's he saying?"
"Oh..." Sam looked down again, at his boots this time, and his voice fell to a nearly inaudible whisper. "That you should show a little thankfulness and you would have done the same thing. That you're the biggest hypocrite in the universe, so it's no wonder Michael wanted you as his vessel. That there isn't one thing he can do to make you trust him because you're..." He cleared his throat. "An overprotective douche and unwilling to broaden your horizons when faced with something you don't understand."
Dean wished he hadn't asked. "Yeah, and he's the Devil. Can't beat that, can I?"
Sam lifted his hands and looked at the ceiling, like a silent plea for Heavenly assistance.
"We're leaving. End of story. I don't care if Lucifer wants us to stay here," Dean insisted.
"And what if Dick Roman shows up tomorrow and Nichole needs help ganking him?"
"She can call us."
"Dean-"
"No, Sam." He hadn't used that tone in a long while, the tone that he'd learned from his father. It was the tone for giving orders, and he knew that Sam hated it.
Apparently, Lucifer hated it, too.
Sam was on his feet even before Dean hit the mattress, but he didn't get there in time to stop his brother's knees from slamming into the carpet, or his head from jerking up with the collision of an invisible fist. There was rage in Sam's eyes, bright like fire. His expression contorted like he might get in there and punch Dean a couple of times, too.
He got about two feet from Dean and stopped, calming himself. His arms hung loosely at his sides. With exaggerated care, Sam offered his left hand to Dean, his slightly off-green eyes promising nothing.
Dean took the hand and hauled himself to his feet with a groan. That had to be the icing on the proverbial cake, if ever the cake had had icing. Lucifer had been mad enough to throw punches and he could throw punches. So why hadn't he done that before? Why hadn't he smothered Dean in his sleep the night before?
"He can hit me?" Dean asked, instead of admitting where his thoughts were going, checked that his lip wasn't bleeding.
"Because he's strong enough to, now."
"Do I even want to know how that happened?"
Sam turned away and took a step before he turned back again and held his hands out defenselessly. "No, you don't. I'm still going to tell you so you can have your freak out and then decide that you can't stop me." Sam went on, completely indifferent to how Dean leaned on his bed to keep from teetering over. "You were dying, you said so yourself. Lucifer helped me with the little bit of grace that came out of Hell with me. I gave it everything it wanted and it was enough juice to heal you. I don't know how it works, really. I just know that yeah, I let Lucifer touch my soul, and I don't feel one bit more damned than I felt before."
"Touch your soul?"
"Yes, Dean. Touch my soul. I was kind of out of options."
Someone needed to write a book on the proper way to deal with situations that involved his younger brother making stupid decisions to save him, then he could just flip it open and read the correct response, rather than staring and having no idea what to do. As it was, Dean just blinked. There was really only one question he could ask, now, and the answer frightened him.
"What did it want? The grace, I mean."
Sam didn't look like he wanted to tell him, but he worked up to it, with his anger spent he didn't have the drive to be courageous. Still, just before he spoke, an awkward little chuckle came out of his mouth. "A hug, I guess? I don't know. It's... he's alone, and angry."
"And you made Lucifer feel less alone?" Dean finished for him.
"Yeah. I did."
With a sigh, Dean gave up. He wasn't going to stop Sam from having a fling with Lucifer, not today, and he wasn't going to drag them out to the car physically. Which meant he could sink sideways on the pillows and close his eyes for a minute, if he wanted to. He wanted to. "I feel like my whole body is a bruise," he mumbled half into the pillowcase after a half a minute's silence.
Sam let out an understanding sound that took all of the tension out of the room and the floor creaked when he walked closer, the opposite bed protested softly when he sat on it. "Another reason we aren't going anywhere. You're a mess."
"Shut up."
"You first."
Dean never admitted that he was wrong, that just wasn't something he could do, not in so many words, and not when it involved Satan. Instead, he forced himself to open his eyes and felt himself smirk. "Did you say there was pie?"
-- -- --
Dean slept. Sam was relatively sure that it was the best thing for him, after water and a couple bites of a cookie Arthur had floating around in his bag of tricks. After that, the painkillers and the blood loss were too much and Dean fell asleep shirtless and half-draped in a sheet, a little feverish but nothing Arthur had not said to expect. Still, keeping Dean plied with fluids and sugar and iron was going to be a big deal for the next couple of days.
When Arthur left, Sam finally took the time to have a look at his own injuries. His forehead sported a three inch gash over his left eye, a couple of terrible bruises on his cheekbones, nothing that wouldn't heal with a little water and some time. There was what amounted to road rash on the side of his right arm, which he did not remember receiving. The worst was his ribs, likely cracked. They throbbed in general and shot daggers of pain through his whole body when he lifted his arms or breathed deeply, looked purple and angry in the yellowish bathroom light. It was going to be a very long night trying to sleep on them.
The mattress that night was not the most comfortable in the world by any stretch of the imagination. The instant he was spread out on the blankets, a number of alarms set to be sure that he checked Dean, he knew that as exhausting as the day had been, sleep would be slow in coming. He could feel it, that little bit of light in his chest. He could feel the cold and the loneliness, and the drained well of grace he'd embraced. That was enough to keep him awake. The fact that it didn't try to hurt him or heal him or even do anything made him want to reach out and give it something to respond to.
He knew it was connected to Lucifer. He knew that if he closed his eyes and tried hard enough, he could tap that power and maybe, maybe, do something with it, but not as it was, weakened from healing Dean. And on top of that, he didn't want to.
When the bed dipped just a little, Sam didn't move, though he did open his eyes to look at the Devil, now sitting by his right hip. Lucifer's eyes were too downcast, his mouth too much of a neutral line. There was no malice in him, not even the deceptive kind he had always seemed so fond of.
"How do you do it?" Lucifer asked him, and just barely caught the back of Sam's pinky with his own, like an accident, only it couldn't have been one.
"Do what?"
The Devil wouldn't meet his gaze. "Forgive like that? Feel like that? How do you give up everything I've done to you, everything I've caused, and offer me things I was never-" He stopped himself, visibly shaken.
This hadn't been the conversation Sam had imagined having with Satan. But he was going to do it, here, now, half-awake. "You think I know what makes me tick, Lucifer? Because I don't. None of us do." He sighed, because all of this was like some strange dream that he'd wake up from in the morning, and Lucifer would still be evil, and the world would still be hopelessly at war. Because good things did not happen, not on their own. He didn't want that. He didn't even know what he wanted. "There's rage in me, too, you know, not just forgiveness. I'm not a saint."
"You don't have to be. You are what you are, Sam, and it's..." Lucifer was speechless. He had never seemed speechless before.
Sam let the Devil stare at him, perplexed by the light in his eyes, the subtle warmth of his expression. When Lucifer shifted he knew what was coming and he didn't even flinch. He stayed as he was, spread out on the mattress, waiting for something. He watched Lucifer lean toward him. He felt the jolt in his chest when they were just inches apart, felt the Devil's nervousness, excitement, anxiety, like it was physically taking up space inside of him.
Maybe having a pinch of grace was going to be all sorts of confusing.
"I am going to kiss you, Sam. Will you let me?"
It wasn't like before, because Sam didn't feel pity for the Devil. He couldn't say what he felt, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that Lucifer asked. "Yes."
The kiss was slow and innocent, more what the hunter had intended when he'd drunk far too much accidentally, gentle. It deepened naturally, gradually. Lucifer gained courage. The pinky finger that rested on Sam's moved, twitched, became a hand on his. The briefest touch of a palm on the side of his face, a thumb on his jaw, and Sam really didn't know if he should be thinking or feeling or just accepting that this was all desperation, between the two of them. It hadn't even really occurred to him that he should worry about his own feelings in the whole mixture until he realized, too late now, that Lucifer had already told him.
Forgiveness. He felt like the cruel wanting twined around the Devil's grace was too much for anything to feel. He'd brought the Devil's grace in an held it like a cold, starving kitten, because that was what it had needed.
There were multiple kisses now, he noticed, and heat and tension that was swiftly becoming awkward. There were too many questions and problems, and Dean was still sleeping not three feet away in the other bed.
Lucifer's mouth pulled away and he moved again, curled in on himself, pressed the side of his face to Sam's throat. That was more intimate, almost too intimate. And Lucifer knew it. He stayed there, as stiff as a statue, and wrapped a his hand in Sam's shirt like he thought the hunter was going to roll away from him and leave him there, kick him out. It was that thought that kept Sam from moving despite his sudden tickle of discomfort.
Dean had been right. Maybe he was alright with making-out with the Devil.
"You're hurt," Lucifer spread his right hand on Sam's chest, along the curve of his ribcage.
"It's been worse," Sam whispered.
"And you're exhausted."
"Should I start calling you Captain Obvious?"
Lucifer's lips were almost touching skin when he spoke. "You should go to sleep, Sam. It's fine. I've got enough mojo to keep the dreams out for a year, if you want me to."
Sam rolled onto his side and Lucifer fell into place behind him, their legs curled together, an arm draped over his chest. It should have been awkward and reminiscent of things Sam had no intention of thinking about, but the press of the Devil's face to his shoulder and the gentle tug of fingers in his shirt made him feel warm and somehow, despite everything, like things were going to be alright. He was aware that this was Lucifer curled around him, in the form of a dead man, mostly not physically there. But it didn't change much. Not in the long run.
"Sleep, Sammy," Lucifer whispered.
"You're just going to lie there and spoon me?"
There was a vibration like a laugh, but the sound was almost too quiet. "Yep."
- - -
Dean became increasingly irritated with Sam waking him up every couple of hours to drink water and juice and whatever else he could get out of the vending machines around the motel. Everything hurt, to start with. Eating, breathing, sitting up. Sam helped him with the last one the first couple times, because his stomach muscles just were not happy about moving. The cast that ran the length of his forearm and up around his right thumb made holding a glass in that hand almost impossible. He felt useless the whole night, and even more so when he almost collapsed from dizziness on his way to the bathroom.
Eventually, Sam let him sleep for more than two hours. Dean was a little disappointed that he didn't dream.
When morning came he felt better, though he did not immediately pack up the car and say goodbye to Amphitrite-ville. He wanted to. Forget whatever reason Bobby had sent them out into a college town in California - there had been four Leviathans around in under three days, Sam had converted into a Devil worshiper, and twenty-six people had been murdered. It wasn't a place they needed to be hanging around. They needed to be as far out of dodge as they could be as fast as they could be, he just didn't feel good enough to get there.
Which didn't stop him from trying to get out of bed, put on clean clothes, and wash up while Sam was out getting them breakfast. He had to clean everything left handed which slowed him down. He had to lean on the counter while he brushed his teeth. Mostly, the whole situation was really, really irritating.
Looking at the bag of pills Arthur had left him, he decided the iron supplement and multivitamin was a good bet, but left the painkillers. If he was going to pretend to be ready for travel, he'd need to pretend to be ready for travel without being high.
Sam came in while he was failing at tying his bootlaces and almost dropped the bag of takeout he'd bought someplace. Instead, Sam put the food thoughtlessly on the table and came forward to put a hand on Dean's forehead, checking him for any lingering fever, before he bent down and silently helped with the knot and bow. The laces had refused to do that for Dean. And now that they had, he sat back a little further on the bed and sighed, already tired. But he couldn't let that show. He needed to be ready to drive for a least a couple of hours before he offered Sam the keys.
"Where are you going? I brought you pie, so don't you give me crap about real breakfast," Sam plopped himself down on the ridiculously unstable wicker chair and started to go through the things in the bag like that had been his plan all along - not his plan assuming Dean wasn't feverish and tying his shoes when he came in.
"Away. We both are. Shit has hit the fan and blasted all over both of us; time to skip town and never look back." Dean didn't get up to get the little clear plastic box that had what looked like lemon meringue in it. He didn't trust himself to get up, pick it up, and get back to the bed without giving himself away. First he had to convince his brother that they were leaving, then he could worry about actually doing it.
Sam frowned at him. "You realize that Bobby sent us here to help Nichole, right? She can't fight this war on her own."
"And we can't fight it for her. We're in the way if we stay here, Sam. We're just going to get our asses handed to us over and over until one of us doesn't have any ass to hand anymore."
"And that's different than hunting things, how exactly?"
Dean frowned right back, irritation sparking in his chest. "It's different because we're not making a difference. We're just sitting here, getting punched, while someone else does the dirty work."
His brother's expression turned somehow apologetic and Dean remembered that they hadn't talked about anything important yet, but that was fine, they could talk in the car. Sam crossed his feet and uncrossed them, his legs too long to stay that way. "Dean, this is bigger than that. What if... what if Nichole has some secret weapon she can give us, some..." Sam waved his hands like a wand or a sword or any other melee-type weapon, "I don't know, a thing that she can give us that will help us fight them. We need to talk to her before we just run away to hunt whatever we can find." He looked down then, away from Dean's eyes, and payed attention to a fraying bit of thread on his jeans. "And we need to talk about what happened before. Because I know you've got all the right ideas and you think I've got all the wrong reasons."
That made Dean's mouth go dry. The car. They were supposed to talk about it in the car. But he was too tired and in too much pain to put it off if it meant he could casually manipulate Sam into driving away into the sunset before the sun started setting in California. "You talking about the magical, psychic, healing trick you pulled when my insides were spilling all over the car?"
The slow way Sam pulled in air was answer enough, but he opened his big mouth anyway. "Yeah. That. It was kind of... all that matters is that I was right, so you can't be mad at me."
"You let Lucifer save me, didn't you?"
Sam didn't answer. He just looked at his hands.
"What'd you give him? Your soul? Your life? C'mon, Sammy, we both know the Devil doesn't do free deals. What'd he get from you?"
When Sam's eyes met his they were crystalline and full of too many emotions, too many thoughts, and his shoulders trembled like he wasn't the hulking man he was, like he was small like a leaf in the wind. His breath came in uneven gusts. "You wouldn't believe me," Sam whispered, and there was something in expression that said he didn't expected to be trusted.
Dean didn't want to know, but he had to. He had to know because whatever Sam had given up to save him, he was going to fight for. Tooth and nail, knife and gun. Lucifer would give it back if Dean died trying.
"Nothing, Dean." Sam said evenly, and knitted his worries between his eyebrows like they might make the world's warmest sock, someday. "But I can forgive him for what he's done, all of it. And he... he understands. He didn't even ask for anything."
"Oh," Dean heard himself say, stunned beyond anything further.
Logically, he could understand. What he couldn't wrap his head around where the hows and whys. Or why Sam expected him to angry about it. He was at a loss for what to say, completely and utterly flabbergasted by Satan's seeming lack of investment in the whole situation. Sure, he got to keep looking through Sam and seeing the world, but there had to be more to it. There were still demons, even if they weren't a current problem. Lucifer had eyes and ears that weren't Sam, so what, exactly, did he get from helping?
Sam waved his hands like he could sculpt something out of the air, some idea, some tangible representation of what he was trying to say. It didn't work. In the end his hands ended up pooled in his lap, lifeless and unnecessary. "He just offered. He said it was because I wouldn't be able to live without you."
Dean pursed his lips and clenched his fists. He didn't know if that was true or not, but he wanted it to be, in some selfish, twisted part of himself. His Heaven had had Sam in it - the day they'd shot off fireworks, to start - but he hadn't remembered Sam having a younger version of Dean in his Heaven. It had made him feel like a one-sided soulmate, where the mate part of the relationship was unrequited.
"So you made a deal?"
Sam still wasn't looking at him. "Sort of."
"And you kissed."
"Not just then," Sam corrected him.
"And he used whatever mojo he had to stitch me up."
"Grace. He used his grace."
Dean bit his lower lip to keep from screaming at Sam, from blowing a gasket, from doing any number of things he would regret. In the end, he was standing, even though it took energy he didn't have and demanded that his blood flow against gravity to get to his brain. He couldn't pace. Instead, he rubbed at his cast and rocked back and forth awkwardly on his toes, glaring down his nose at his brother. "I don't care what he called it, I don't care that he didn't ask for anything, I don't even care that his stupid Enochian spell worked - you absolutely cannot be talking about trusting Satan, Sam. He knows you. He knows that if he does enough good, you'll open the Cage again without him even suggesting it to you, because that's how you are. It doesn't matter who he saves or what he does, Lucifer is still the Goddamn-"
The light-bulb in the lamp on the desk cut him off with a shower of sparks and an angry pop when the glass went. Dean didn't even jump. He just looked at Sam's wide eyes and waited.
Maybe Lucifer was ranting right back at him. It seemed pretty likely, considering the way Sam couldn't look away from the empty space in front of Dean's face.
"He knows I can't hear him, right?"
Sam focused on Dean for the briefest moment before he nodded. "Yeah."
"What's he saying?"
"Oh..." Sam looked down again, at his boots this time, and his voice fell to a nearly inaudible whisper. "That you should show a little thankfulness and you would have done the same thing. That you're the biggest hypocrite in the universe, so it's no wonder Michael wanted you as his vessel. That there isn't one thing he can do to make you trust him because you're..." He cleared his throat. "An overprotective douche and unwilling to broaden your horizons when faced with something you don't understand."
Dean wished he hadn't asked. "Yeah, and he's the Devil. Can't beat that, can I?"
Sam lifted his hands and looked at the ceiling, like a silent plea for Heavenly assistance.
"We're leaving. End of story. I don't care if Lucifer wants us to stay here," Dean insisted.
"And what if Dick Roman shows up tomorrow and Nichole needs help ganking him?"
"She can call us."
"Dean-"
"No, Sam." He hadn't used that tone in a long while, the tone that he'd learned from his father. It was the tone for giving orders, and he knew that Sam hated it.
Apparently, Lucifer hated it, too.
Sam was on his feet even before Dean hit the mattress, but he didn't get there in time to stop his brother's knees from slamming into the carpet, or his head from jerking up with the collision of an invisible fist. There was rage in Sam's eyes, bright like fire. His expression contorted like he might get in there and punch Dean a couple of times, too.
He got about two feet from Dean and stopped, calming himself. His arms hung loosely at his sides. With exaggerated care, Sam offered his left hand to Dean, his slightly off-green eyes promising nothing.
Dean took the hand and hauled himself to his feet with a groan. That had to be the icing on the proverbial cake, if ever the cake had had icing. Lucifer had been mad enough to throw punches and he could throw punches. So why hadn't he done that before? Why hadn't he smothered Dean in his sleep the night before?
"He can hit me?" Dean asked, instead of admitting where his thoughts were going, checked that his lip wasn't bleeding.
"Because he's strong enough to, now."
"Do I even want to know how that happened?"
Sam turned away and took a step before he turned back again and held his hands out defenselessly. "No, you don't. I'm still going to tell you so you can have your freak out and then decide that you can't stop me." Sam went on, completely indifferent to how Dean leaned on his bed to keep from teetering over. "You were dying, you said so yourself. Lucifer helped me with the little bit of grace that came out of Hell with me. I gave it everything it wanted and it was enough juice to heal you. I don't know how it works, really. I just know that yeah, I let Lucifer touch my soul, and I don't feel one bit more damned than I felt before."
"Touch your soul?"
"Yes, Dean. Touch my soul. I was kind of out of options."
Someone needed to write a book on the proper way to deal with situations that involved his younger brother making stupid decisions to save him, then he could just flip it open and read the correct response, rather than staring and having no idea what to do. As it was, Dean just blinked. There was really only one question he could ask, now, and the answer frightened him.
"What did it want? The grace, I mean."
Sam didn't look like he wanted to tell him, but he worked up to it, with his anger spent he didn't have the drive to be courageous. Still, just before he spoke, an awkward little chuckle came out of his mouth. "A hug, I guess? I don't know. It's... he's alone, and angry."
"And you made Lucifer feel less alone?" Dean finished for him.
"Yeah. I did."
With a sigh, Dean gave up. He wasn't going to stop Sam from having a fling with Lucifer, not today, and he wasn't going to drag them out to the car physically. Which meant he could sink sideways on the pillows and close his eyes for a minute, if he wanted to. He wanted to. "I feel like my whole body is a bruise," he mumbled half into the pillowcase after a half a minute's silence.
Sam let out an understanding sound that took all of the tension out of the room and the floor creaked when he walked closer, the opposite bed protested softly when he sat on it. "Another reason we aren't going anywhere. You're a mess."
"Shut up."
"You first."
Dean never admitted that he was wrong, that just wasn't something he could do, not in so many words, and not when it involved Satan. Instead, he forced himself to open his eyes and felt himself smirk. "Did you say there was pie?"