A/N - Just something I've been cooking up since Sam's soul has been in the cage (I'm on season 6 now ;)) Couldn't help myself. Triggers for rape by the way. Very M. Enjoy.

The Pit

The pit couldn't steal his memories, but it made it harder to recall the good times. Sam could still recall Dean's face, but his voice was fading. Bobby's voice was still there, but Sam couldn't remember the colour of his hat. His life was passing away, dissolving into the routine of the cage.

His breath fogged on the filthy windowpane that overlooked a pit of frozen tar where damned souls, seized in rictus poses, fought to break their casing and escape the indiscriminate field of pain that afflicted everything outside the cage. The air stank of their piss and puke. Overhead lines hummed against ashy skies. The dying sun finally mounted the skyline.

The air electrified. Sam's breathing grew shallow, his palms damp; the first signs of familiar anxiety, as welcome as a friendly mutt with rabies. Then they came. The beetle-shell hovercraft thrummed through ash fall, engines singing a bass note that made his stomach roll. Lines and pipes erupted from their pitted underbellies like spilled intestines splashed with nitrogen. They extruded gelatinous arms and detonated a glowing orb that turned the frozen tar to instant lava. Sam smelled singeing hair and undercooked pork and retched into the dirt.

Windowpane ice sublimated, filling the cage with steam. The back of Sam's neck sensitized, atavistic fear scaling his frayed vertebrae. He twisted, gasping a lungful of heat. Lucifer crouched, holding pliers. He smiled, teeth as crooked as his malformed fingers. Bile filled Sam's mouth, his heart deafening.

'No!' Sam threw up an automatic hand as Lucifer lifted swan feathers clear of the dirt. Lucifer's avatar, Sam's body was long gone. The grotesque, twisted corpse left behind was an albino nightmare with hot-coal eyes.

'Sammy,' he said, his pity sickening and false. 'It doesn't work that way. You know me better by now.'

Lucifer thrust the pliers under Sam's nose. Sam smelled warm steel and started to shake. He hid his trembling hands under his ass. He wondered how long he'd last before he pissed himself from the pain this time.

'Kiss it,' Lucifer commanded.

'No,' Sam shook his head, feeling far away. 'Don't do this. Please.'

'Begging won't help. But I suppose it'll be entertaining.'

'I'm not going to beg,' Sam lied, his breath sour in his throat.

'You don't want to?' Lucifer waved the pliers. 'I have all the time in the world to help you change your mind.'

Panic clawed at his ribs, tightening his chest until he was gasping in the heat. He was going to lose the battle, and he knew it. Then the steam that hung under the low cage roof started to glow. Lucifer looked up as Sam's belly filled with a queasy cocktail of relief and dread.

'It seems we've run out of time early tonight.'

'Too bad for you,' Sam managed a cocky smile as the air ignited. Searing pain thrust into his lungs. He tried to hold his breath but his body took the reins, opening his throat as Lucifer's clothes turned to ash and his skin caught fire. Sam scrambled into the corner, kicking up dirt as Lucifer's flaming wing hit the wall over his head. Burning debris wriggled down his shirt back to scald his spine. Eyes clenched shut, nerves screaming, throat closing as the heat climbed-

'Michael!' he gasped.

The fire billowed away, retreating like a malicious predator from Michael's grace. Sam clutched his throat in the archangel's shadow. He wasn't hurt. He was never hurt. The cage wasn't supposed to kill you.

Michael had lost his human vessel too. He filled the chicken wire space like an oversized pit bull, bulging muscles and round belly, taller than Lucifer by a head and much broader, with thick wings that mantled like an angry goose whenever Lucifer came close.

'Holy fire doesn't burn the righteous, Samuel.'

'Lucky for you you're still in his good books,' Sam wheezed.

'Lucky for you,' the angel countered.

Through Michael's feathers, Sam could see the fire. Lucifer clawed at his own skin, thrashing, claws gouging the ceiling, flapping like a trapped bird. Never ending torture, Sam thought, as Dean's face surged up to wrap around his guts and squeeze. Sam dug fingernails into his thighs, willing his panic down. A huge hand rubbed reassuring circles into his shoulders. He wanted to shuck out his own organs in protest as the feeling of helpless entrapment subsided.

'Don't touch me.'

'You'd rather burn, then?' Michael asked evenly, his black, sloe eyes full of sickening amusement.

'I don't get it. You don't know one way to open the door?'

'Not from the inside. Eternity is a long time, even for an angel. Now. Our deal.'

'Ask your brother.'

'I'm asking you, Samuel.'

A blast of agonising heat washed over Sam's legs, reminding him that outside the bubble of Michael's protection the fire would eat his skin too. His stomach knotted up, every muscle screaming with tension and visceral disgust.

'I thought torture wasn't your bag, Michael. Looks like I was wrong.'

'I prefer to think of it as distraction.'

'For you maybe.'

'You know the old phase, I'm sure. One pain can override another.'

'I'm going to kill you,' Sam said involuntarily. Michael laughed at him. Sam felt his cheeks go hot with shame. 'Not right now. No. But one day, when I find out how. I'll hunt you down.'

'But until that day, you're mine.'

Sam buckled in Michael's powerful hands, pushed face-first onto a table. Haunting the back of his head like a revenant was the realisation that Michael was right. Pain was distracting. He clung to that feeling, hoping it would soothe the open, festering wound in his chest that reopened every time he let the angel "protect" him.

Sam's worn jeans tangled around his ankles, belt caught on his safety boot hooks. Hot pain sliced into his arse. Michael gripped metal in one hand and Sam's hip in the other, shoving Sam forwards as he pleased with his wings spread like a raptor on the kill. Sam chewed his cheek until he tasted blood, failing to fight the archangels strength. Finally, Michael grunted, sheathed himself to the hilt and stopped moving. Sam wriggled away, thick fluid sticky on his thighs. Spitting up blood, aching, Sam groaned in dread as Michael righted him like a dead doll.

'It will hurt if you go out there.'

Michael settled on his back with his wings relaxed over soot-blackened sacking. Behind the partial chicken wire wall, Lucifer keened in agony. Sam squirmed uncomfortably, his backside burning and pride in shreds. Acid tears clawed at the back of his throat. He swallowed them like razorblades with whisky.

'What? You want to cuddle?'

'Yes,' Michael agreed.

Sam swallowed blood. 'Are you going to keep the fire out if I do?'

'Of course.'

Sam laid his head on Michael's thick shoulder, feeling stained. His guts burned with shame.

'If you're good, I will make sure it hurts less tomorrow.'

Sam forced his eyes to close. There was no sleep in the pit. No rest, and no respite, but he could pretend.