Sam couldn't breathe.

His eyes widened to round disks and his fingers pulled desperately at the hands tightening, closing around his throat.

It hurt, it screamed, it blocked out every thought from his head except STOP. AIR. PLEASE. Black spots crawled into his vision. His lungs heaved at nothing. He was going to die. The certainty filled him. With hardly any conscious thought, his mouth formed the words, the words that reduced his defiance to abject begging: please.

Stop. Please.

There, all right? He was begging.

In an instant, beautiful, free, wonderful air flooded his lungs and he choked, gasping, with his hands clasped protectively around his windpipe. As Lucifer released him, Sam crumbled to his knees and put down a hand to steady himself. His breath came in harsh, jagged heaves. He looked up at his captor, shame warring with hatred as oxygen filtered back into his starved cells.

"Now that, you see, Sam," said Lucifer with that sweet, not-quite-mocking half-smile, "that is my gift to you. That air you're breathing."

Sam dropped his eyes, still breathing hard, still aching. Lucifer crouched down in front of him and grasped Sam's jaw, forcing him to meet his gaze. Sam fought for a moment and then gave up, relented, lost himself in Lucifer's intent, piercing stare. "And all you had to do was ask!"

Sam gritted his teeth but said nothing. Dean. Willfully, he conjured an image of his brother's face in his mind's eye, smiling back at him at some shared joke, punching his shoulder, sitting silent beside him in the warm, familiar smell of the Impala. Dean. It almost felt like it was all he had left of himself to hold on to.

Lucifer's smile widened and he let go of Sam's face, patting him condescendingly on the cheek. "Okay, then," he said. "We good? I'm not just asking, Sam, I really do need to know. It's important to me. You're important to me."

Go to hell. The words flashed in Sam's mind, and his mouth tightened, keeping them inside. He refused to give Lucifer anything else.

Lucifer stood up, languidly, casually. "I'm just gonna go –" he gestured to the door with both thumbs—"get a sandwich. Sound good? You want anything? No?" He laughed at his own joke. Sam watched him, his eyes flashing, saying nothing, as the devil chuckled and made his way to the only exit from the small, rundown hotel room. "Don't you go anywhere until I get back, Sammy." He stopped, and put a finger to his lips as if it had just occurred to him. "Oh but that's right! You're sort of stuck here. With me."

The door closed with a click of finality and Sam dropped back to sit on his heels, turning over option after dead-end option for escape until the despair threatened to drown him. Dean. He felt tears prick the back of his eyes and then mentally shook himself. No. Dammit, stop it. Dean wouldn't give up.

In the hallway outside the room, he could hear the faint echo of Lucifer laughing.

.*.*.*.

His simpering smile was almost worse than the pain. "Just ask me, Sammy! It's really all you have to do. You know I'm here for you."

The agony in his shoulder, of his arm being forced upward behind his back, the terrifying wrongness of the angle, wrenched another cry of pain from Sam. He hated himself for being weak. Hated Lucifer, hated himself, it was all tangled up in his head in a mess of pain and confusion, anger, need, weakness, fear. Fuck. You. His mind said it as the pain and threat of breaking bone thrummed through him, but he bit back the words. It was what Lucifer wanted, to hear him lashing out from a place of weakness.

"What was that, Sam?" he asked softly, bending close in a mocking way. "Was that a please?"

Dean, Sam thought forcefully. Dean smiling, Dean confident, Dean with a plan, Dean safe and alive and uninjured and not this.

Without pretext, Lucifer pressed his boot firmly against Sam's spine and yanked his shoulder out of joint. A terrible wave of pain crashed over Sam. He screamed into the carpeted hotel room floor, fibers rough against his forehead, hair and sweat and tears in his eyes. "Please stop," he cried. "Ah God, please!"

Distantly, he was aware of the pressure lifting off his back and Lucifer releasing his arm. Sam writhed and curled in on himself, grasping his useless, injured shoulder. He knew tears were flowing freely down his face but he didn't care, couldn't remember what it had felt like to care, or to feel anything but this awful, nausea-inducing pain.

The toe of Lucifer's boot nudged oh-so gently against Sam's side, rolling him over onto his back. "There now," he said in a parody of caring. "Was that really so hard?"

Sam's head dropped back against the floor. "Why… why are you… doing this?" he managed.

"Sammy." Lucifer knelt to a crouch and tousled Sam's hair almost playfully. "Don't you know?"

Sam looked at him, eyes tight with pain.

Lucifer shook his head slowly, as if the answer were so obvious. "Sammy. I'm surprised at you. You're ordinarily such a bright boy. But not to worry, we've got all the time in the world."

.*.*.*.

Sam screwed his eyes shut and tried to focus on his own breathing, to make it slow and steady and stop the tide of panic from overtaking him. He tried to disappear into his own thoughts, to escape for a few moments, but the physical sensations brought him back to this room. The musty smell of the hotel curtains. The scratching ropes against his forearms, flesh pressed hard against the unyielding wooden arms of the chair he was tied to. Lucifer's grip on his right hand as he firmly grasped Sam's index finger.

He tried to think of Dean. Dean. Where was Dean? His heart was hammering frantically in his chest, anticipating the snap of bone that he knew was coming.

Dean. Dean. Dean. Please, no. Don't. God. Dean.

Lucifer exhaled impatiently, like a huff. "Sam," he said chidingly. "You know it hurts me that you won't talk to me. It doesn't have to be this way."

Fuck you, Sam said in his head, setting his jaw with a determination he wasn't sure he actually felt anymore. He wanted to crawl inside himself, curl up in a fetal position inside his own mind, escape from this, from Lucifer.

"Just ask me to stop, Sammy. And I will. It's that simple. I really do want what's best for you. I care about you."

A flutter of doubt brushed against Sam's mind. Was he lying? Was this all for nothing? Did it matter if he gave in? If he let himself be weak? What difference did it make? Lucifer would only keep at him and at him until he cracked, until he was so worn down that all it would take was a sideways glance from him to drop Sam onto his knees weeping and begging, groveling, pleading with this monster for mercy? It was pointless to keep pretending he had any hope of holding on. And anyway, who was there to judge him?

The answer slammed into him with such certainty that it turned his stomach. Dean. Without question, Dean. Dean expected more from him. Dean would never give in. Neither would he. He clamped his lips into a thin line and tried to steel himself.

"G-go to hell," he said, cursing at the tremor in his voice.

He felt Lucifer's cold fingers tighten on his almost imperceptibly.

Crack. Sam seized against the ropes holding him, his head jerking back as he bit back a cry. In his mind, he screamed, swore, yelled, begged, but out loud he said nothing. Sam didn't say a word.

It wasn't until the fourth finger that Sam let out a tortured scream and sobbingly cried out please, no more, no more, please.

You only had to ask, he said, caressing the back of Sam's wrecked hand.

Dean. An image of Dean, his eyebrows knit together in a look of stern disapproval, pushed its way into Sam's mind.

Sam let his head fall forward to his chest in defeat as he sobbed brokenly.