He couldn't sleep. Then again, he wasn't even sure if he was trying to sleep. Could he sleep? He didn't know whether sleep was possible in Hell, nor whether being just a soul made it both possible and necessary. He seemed to have blacked out before, but perhaps that had been just his mind shutting down on itself. Perhaps that had been him losing touch with himself. Suddenly, sleep didn't seem all that appealing.
He opened his eyes, wondering if the surrounding area might have changed, but he found himself looking at the same gloomy motel wall as before.
"Lucifer?" The word spilled from his lips without thinking, and he flushed, but there was nothing he could do to take it back.
"Here," Lucifer's voice came, sounding slightly surprised and almost elated that Sam had called out for him.
The archangel soon appeared in Sam's line of vision, and the hunter sat up properly, feeling uncomfortable lying down while Lucifer stood. He suddenly felt stupid for being in the bed. He knew how Lucifer felt about humans, about how inadequate they were. Did Lucifer think him pathetic for needing to- or at least wanting to- sleep?
He abruptly recalled that he shouldn't really care what the devil, of all people, thought of him, and Sam cleared his throat awkwardly, swinging his legs down onto the floor so he was sat upright.
"What..." Sam really didn't like asking him questions, but the silence was unbearable. "What have you been doing?"
"Watching you."
Sam knew he should feel unnerved by that, but the feeling was distinctly absent.
"I meant, what the hell do you plan to do down here? You know... forever. There must be... something..." He was aware he was starting to freak out. The idea of eternity, in all it massiveness was starting to get to him. This was Hell. There wasn't so much as a book to read. All he had was this great cavernous space, his own dark thoughts. And Lucifer.
"I hate to break it you, Sammy. But there's not a secret games room down here I'm hiding from you."
Sam sighed, but the corner of his lips quirked into something akin to an amused smile. "I know."
Lucifer looked him over briefly, before sitting down on the edge of the bed beside him, studying Sam's expression out of the corner of his eyes, as if looking to see his reaction.
Sam was all too aware of his reaction, and that it was not the one he probably should have.
He sighed, looking vaguely the other way. "Will I go crazy down here?" he asked. "Is that inevitable?"
"I don't know." Lucifer's voice was sincere. "This place wasn't meant for a human, nor have any been in here before. I simply can't tell you, Sam."
"Right." He looked around at the illusion of the motel room. "Would it be possible to dream up another landscape? Like one of with something to do? You know, a movie theatre maybe? Or a library?" He was only half-joking.
"Technically," Lucifer said. "But everything within it you would know already. You can only see what's already in your own mind. You can't go anywhere new, just all the places you've already been."
Sam sighed. It was exactly as he'd been fearing. "Right." He glanced at Lucifer. "Can we go places you've been? I mean, it works for both of us, right?"
"Yes," Lucifer said, though he sounded hesitant. "You would have to summon the memories yourself, though. It can be hard to focus on the place you want. You need a strong memory for it to work."
"You... got this motel room to work."
For a few long moments, Lucifer was silent, before he sighed, tilting his head back slightly and staring upward as if he could see the sky. "Do you want me to say it?" He said blandly, seeming almost frustrated, as if he believe Sam were purposefully feigning ignorance.
"Say what?" Sam's voice was barely more than a whisper.
"How much you mean to me. That you're the only thing I had to look forward to for so long. That I l-"
"Stop," Sam cut in, frowning uncomfortably. "Don't," he said, voice quieter now. "Just don't." He sighed, clenching his hands in his lap. "Why do you have to say stuff like that?"
Lucifer turned to him, raising an eyebrow. "You would rather I lie?"
Sam hunched his shoulder, looking away. "I'd rather you didn't say that stuff," he reaffirmed. "I'd rather you didn't feel like that. I... I'd rather not be stuck down here with you."
Lucifer said nothing, expression melting into one of quiet contemplation, though Sam couldn't help but note he didn't look happy.
A few long moments of silence passed, before Lucifer spoke up again. "Do you want me to teach you? How to create such landscapes, I mean."
Sam thought about it. His memories of this motel room were... well, uncomfortable. Besides, he would rather not be staring at the four same walls for the next few centuries. He nodded.
Lucifer, surprisingly, shuffled round on the bed, swinging his legs up onto the mattress. He tucked them underneath him so he was kneeling up, gesturing for Sam to adopt a similar position.
With a little reluctance, the hunter did so, sitting cross-legged so he was facing Lucifer.
The archangel held his hands out, and Sam shifted uncomfortably, but took them nonetheless.
"This will require a lot of concentration," Lucifer said, voice soft. "It's not something you can do half-hearted. For some humans, it may even be beyond them. But you are special, Sam."
Sam ducked his head a little, again uncomfortable at such compliments, but he said nothing, and merely nodded to Lucifer's words instead.
"Alright," the archangel said firmly. "Do you have a place in mind?"
"I was thinking, this school I went to when I was eleven," Sam said. "I really enjoyed it there. We actually stayed long enough for me to make friends and-"
"Not strong enough," Lucifer cut in. "And too vague. Narrow it down. Where we are now is only a room, Sam. Think of a room you'd be genuinely happy enough to spend eternity in."
Sam thought. One place did come to mind. "Okay, erm, maybe my room at Stanford? I really loved university, and I was happy there, with Jess, my..." He trailed off, remembering how Lucifer had first appeared to him. "You know."
"We can try it," Lucifer said. "Think about that place, Sam."
Sam nodded, closing his eyes and delving back in his mind to before Dean had broken in that one night.
"You have to really think, Sam," Lucifer's voice continued. "Not just what it looked like; what it smelt like, the feel of things, how you felt there."
How had he felt there? Happy, surely. With his lovely Jessica. They watched DVDs together on weekends. That had been nice. Normal. Jess had always laughed at how he only ever knew about old movies from the eighties and seventies. He and Dean only ever watched old tapes you could rent at motels when they were kids, or Bobby's old videos...
He opened his eyes. He had done it! He was sat in his room at Stanford. This was the bed he'd shared with Jess. He ran his hands over the covers. Something red dripped onto his hand.
"No!"
Though he wanted nothing more than to not see, he looked up on instinct. He saw the flash of fire, but before he could make out much more, some seemed to pull him back. He briefly lost semblance of which way was up. It was like falling through a vortex. He screamed and clawed at the air, but within a few moments it was over, and he landed with a jolt back into himself, sat cross-legged once more on the motel room bed opposite Lucifer, whose hands had tightened on his, as if he'd just pulled him up from the edge of a cliff.
"You're supposed to think of somewhere happy," Lucifer said blandly.
Sam frowned, roughly pulling his hands away. "That was a happy place. Until it got ruined. Jess and I could have had a really good life together and-"
"Could you?" Lucifer sounded genuinely curious.
Sam looked over at him.
"I could feel your memories in that place, Sam. It didn't feel so happy to me. Even before that... instance. You need somewhere you were genuinely happy."
"I was genuinely happy with Jess," Sam snapped.
Lucifer tilted his head curiously. "Were you? Let me rephrase: were you honestly happy? To yourself and to her. Because I felt fear, paranoia. You lived in worry that she would find out."
"No," Sam said, but it was barely more than a weak whisper.
"Hell knows when you're lying, Sam," Lucifer said. "It has to be genuine happiness to fight back."
Sam sighed, exhaling sharply from between barely parted lips. Grudgingly conceding his own arguments were not as strong as he hoped, he ventured to move on before Lucifer hit on anymore uncomfortable truths. He supposed the only real genuine feeling he could show had always been only with Dean, or perhaps Bobby. Though even then there had been times when he had not been entirely honest.
The thoughts made Sam uncomfortable. Was that really how his life had been? One bout of pretending after another? Had he always been lying somehow?
"Try again," Lucifer coaxed him gently.
Sam was hardly in a happy mindset, but having never been one to quit easily, he shook his head to try and rid himself of the thoughts, shuffling back round and taking Lucifer's hands once more.
"You have to find genuine happiness, Sam. Somewhere you were at ease."
He nodded, letting his eyes slip shut once more as he searched his memory banks. At ease? Okay, somewhere with Dean or Bobby then. Yes, Bobby's house maybe. He liked Bobby's house. Surely it was as close to a home as he'd ever had.
"You need a specific instance, Sam. You need to freeze frame that moment. Focus."
He remembered one night. There hadn't even really been anything special about it. Dean and Bobby had been downstairs, their voices a soft, but comforting murmur. They'd searched the paper, but no cases had come up. So they'd simply hung around the house for a bit. They'd got takeaway pizza. It had been nice. A moment of peace. It was a cliche phrase, but that was the best way he could think to describe it.
Sucking in a deep breath, he dared to open his eyes.
The wall behind Lucifer was lined with a large bookcase, full of slightly battered, but endlessly useful old volumes. To the left, there was the door, though he didn't dare think about opening it. A slightly wobbly chest of drawers where he kept some of the clothes he didn't travel with. Twisting his head to the right, he found the wooden desk, covered in papers. The wall above was tacked with photographs, diagrams, and newspaper articles. He could even smell whisky and Old Spice in the air.
"Well done, Sam," Lucifer said.
"I really did it," Sam muttered, looking around in awe. He was briefly worried he was going to see flames, or some other horrid sight, but none came. He went to stand up, realising with slightly embarrassment that he still held Lucifer's hands. He pulled away, clenching his fists in a nervous gesture he quickly regretted. Feeling a blush creeping onto his face, he turned away under the pretence of studying the details of the room.
"This should hold," Lucifer said, moving languidly to stand beside him. He slowly gazed around the room, though his face betrayed nothing of what he thought.
Sam wondered sometimes, what angels thought. He had no idea where to even begin guessing with how old Lucifer was, but he knew well that it was at least several thousand times the length over of a human life. Sam often found himself amazed by things, events that happened to him. Surely they would only bore Lucifer. This room probably seemed quaint and uninteresting to him, at best.
Trying not to focus too hard on his bizarre companion, Sam studied the shelves, finding that- as Lucifer had said- they were all book titles he knew. He knew everything in this room and that was what bought it into existence. He knew the empty glass sat on the corner of the desk, the slightly threadbare army blanket thrown over the duvet, even the contents of the drawers he found contained everything he remembered.
There wasn't much. A hairbrush, a few pens, his phone charger (though God only knew where his actual phone was right now), a pad of sticky notes, and the old pack of playing cards Bobby had given him when he was ten.
He lifted them out. Well, there was something to do, at least. He knew every card that was in a full deck, so he saw no reason why they shouldn't work. He could practice Solitaire, or...
Attempting to not make too big a deal of it, he turned and faced Lucifer, who was merely stood watching him. He held up the pack, giving a small, half-shrug. "You wanna play?"
Lucifer frowned, brown creasing in apparent confusion. "Play what?"
Sam shrugged. "Blackjack, Poker, anything really. Bobby taught me and Dean a load of games when we were kids."
"With these?" Lucifer asked, nodding to the deck of cards, watching as Sam took the stack out of the cardboard packaging. "How do these games work?"
"I'll teach you," Sam said.
He sat down on the bed, gesturing for Lucifer to sit opposite him, much as they had been before.
This was simply something to do, he insisted to himself. They were stuck here forever, so they might as well find a way to keep entertained. He was simply showing Lucifer a few card games, making use of what few supplies they had. It was a simple and practical way of spending time. It could have been any two people.
Drawing in a deep breath, Sam hardened his resolve and nodded. He could do this. Hell, okay. Eternity, he could handle. Lucifer for company, no problem. Though perhaps that lack of issue was an issue in itself...
Deciding not to think to hard on it, Sam shuffled the deck.