Title: Broken Thread

Pairing: Sam/Lucifer

Rating: PG13 for slash

Dedicated: folkhore, who brings all the Lucifers to Sam's yard.

Summary: Lucifer had not been imprisoned in one form alone.

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Sam should have known; Lucifer took many forms, though only a handful of vessels could contain him. Lucifer had not been bound by those restrictions in Hell, and he wasn't in dreams either.

"Sam," Lucifer said, wearing Joseph's battered and bruised skin, his fingers gentle where they rested against Sam's chest. "Why do you refuse to be comforted? You accepted it before."

"I didn't know who you were," Sam spat, throwing back the bedsheets and getting up, feet unsteady and not from fatigue; not quite from fear either.

"I was Joseph," Lucifer said, stretching his arms out before propping himself up on them, his gaze still calm, still soft. "And Amy, locked away all alone for centuries, always thirsty, never dying - and Benjamin. An angel isn't easily hidden, even in Hell. Not all in one piece." A thoughtful little smile then, his focus drifting. "I didn't know who I was then anymore than you did, Sam. Not really. Part of me knew, but I was scattered across more than a few tattered souls."

"You're lying."

"Never," Lucifer moved to stand, wincing as if Joseph's wounds were his own and not an illusion, the split in his side and ruins of his left arm sick mimicry of tortures they had both endured. "Not to you. I said I didn't want you to remember Hell, and I meant it. I wouldn't have given these memories back to you, but your refusal to accept me rendered it necessary."

"Stop it," Sam said, voice cracking as he backed away, swearing when his back hit the room's wall and willing his dream to let the wall shift into something less solid, something he could use to escape.

"No," Lucifer said. "I will never lie, and I will never leave you. I made more than one wish when we were side by side on that rack." Lucifer's fingers, Joseph's, came up as if to touch his face and hesitated before dropping to brush against Sam's, the slight touch - barely even there - a reminder of all they had managed with their arms bound in place back in Hell.

"Stop," Sam repeated, the word losing all meaning and leaving a sour taste in his mouth. "This isn't real, it can't -"

"I wanted you to be happy," Lucifer said. "I want revenge. For you, for the fathers who abandoned you, for the angels who let your mother die, for the brother who would control your every move if he could." Sam should have dodged out of the way but instead froze still at the first touch of lips to his jaw. "Months, we spent on that rack," Lucifer continued. "I felt the pain of my torture as much as you did yours."

"You deserved it."

"Bitter," Lucifer's lips moved lower, pressing against the pulse point on Sam's neck and lingering a moment. It wasn't Joseph's body when he pulled back, and Sam wasn't sure if that was a comfort or if it made things worse. "You spent months in Hell because your parents' love for each other was too strong. I spent aeons because my love for my father was too strong." His hands were warm where they settled at Sam's waist, strong in their grip.

"I'm nothing like you," Sam argued weakly, Lucifer's lips trailing back up again, more a brush of skin against skin than a kiss.

"You say your prayers, Sam. What have they brought you so far?"

Sam wouldn't agree. He would never agree, no matter the truth in Lucifer's words. But when Lucifer's lips hovered over his own, it wasn't Lucifer who mouthed 'Nothing'.

"I'm not here to steal your body," Lucifer said before pressing his lips to Sam's in a light, strange, borderline chaste kiss. "I want you. It isn't just your skin that was made perfect for me - you had to be intelligent, faithful, capable of so much love and so much hate. I needed your mind."

"And soul?" Sam countered, hating himself for having started to lean in.

Lucifer's mouth quirked into a smile for a split second. "No one owns that but you."

The next kiss was not so chaste, Lucifer catching Sam's lower lip between his teeth for a moment before letting go. "You're not used to hearing 'No' for an answer."

"On the contrary. I hear 'No' all the time. I just know that patience is a virtue."

"It's not patience if I'll never say yes."

Lucifer sighed, rolling his eyes; Sam ought to have expected the shock of arousal when Lucifer dropped a hand to palm him through his shorts, but gasped despite himself. "You will say yes, Sam. It's not a choice, it's a fact." And a squeeze, drawing Sam's breath ragged out of him. "There's only one thing I'd like to change about all this inevitable mess."

Sam didn't dignify the statement with an answer, even if his body seemed determined to carry on a conversation of its own with Lucifer's, heat flooding through him as he felt Lucifer's fingers flicking open the buttons of his shorts, slipping inside with undisguised intent.

Lucifer wasn't smiling now but self-satisfaction was written all over his expression when he pulled away from nipping lightly at Sam's jaw, the stroking of his fingers just as teasing. "When you say yes, I'm hoping you'll say please."

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The End