Sam tries.
Again references to the Mark of Cain but Sam doesn't know what's going on so no major spoilers.
6th
Sam's POV
In retrospect asking two Archangel's to prove their love to him wasn't Sam's best idea. This was due to the fact that angels and archangels especially were made of love and so felt it differently to humans, as had been explained to him by a smirking Gabriel, therefore Sam asking them to prove that they loved him was taken as a challenge. A challenge that they needed to out compete the other in.
This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. True to their word the signs of the apocalypse had slowly died off and demon level returned to its pre-apocalypse level, the angels hadn't all returned to Heaven but weren't causing more than the occasional problem, mostly with the demons, so they had counted it as a win. There had been drawbacks, Lucifer hadn't miraculously got over his hatred for humanity overnight and hadn't given up one of his pastimes of complaining to Sam about his own species. The same week that the apocalypse had been called off there had been a rise in so called experts claiming that climate change was a hoax, politicians and preachers pushing anti-education and extremist beliefs and generally causing problems for the future. Sam had asked about it the next time Lucifer had shown up and received a lazy smirk in return.
"As much as it pains me to admit it." Lucifer had started, stretching out on the bed and grinning at Sam's shifting as he tried to sternly gaze down at the angel spread out below him. "Your brother has a point. The only thing pushing Michael and I to fight is each other, I don't want to kill him but as long as he's determined to protect humanity from me we'll have to. The Mud Monkey's aren't worth killing Michael and losing you and Gabriel."
"I'm a Mud Monkey." Sam reminded him and Lucifer scoffed.
"You're one in a hundred billion. Just because the human race made one good human doesn't mean that humanity as a whole is worth saving." Lucifer rolled his eyes and out of the corner of his eye Sam could see his wings puffing up like he was a stray cat wanting food but not willing to accept it.
"But it took from the beginning of human history until now for me to be born and that wouldn't have happened without the hundred billion humans before me." Sam sometimes wondered where he gained the patience to deal with archangels and if it came as part of the True Vessel package because he didn't understand how they hadn't driven him mad.
"Which I took into consideration when deciding if they were worth killing Michael and decided that they weren't. One in a hundred billion however proves I'm right and that humanity isn't worth it, just because I'm not actively destroying the stain upon the Earth they bring doesn't mean I can't help them make themselves extinct and honestly the way humanity is going I won't have to do much." Lucifer smiled like he was doing Sam a great service and Sam swallowed down the horror that threatened to bubble up his throat and the vastness of the Archangel that made him dizzy whenever Lucifer spoke like the eradication of an entire species was nothing, not that humanity was much better but Sam felt there was a personal difference between humans and tigers. Instead he focused on the small things that showed that Lucifer at least cared more about his brother than he pretended, the little spasm in his little finger whenever he mentioned killing Michael, the empty tone he used when he thought about it too much, because he didn't know what he'd do if this person he was supposed to perfectly mirror could so callously murder his older brother.
"But you're not going to destroy humanity." Sam pushed and Lucifer rolled his eyes before sitting up and taking his hand, threading their fingers together.
"No Sam." He stared into his eyes to convey how serious he was. "For you and for my brothers I won't destroy humanity." At Sam's tentative nod he smirked and tugged them closer together. "Now let me show you how much better at wooing I am than my brother." Sam let out the laughter that bubbled up his chest.
Michael wasn't much better, he mostly left Sam's dreams to Lucifer and concentrated his efforts on proving his love in the real world. This ranged from using his considerable power over Heaven to get the angels to at least clean up the apocalypse mess, this usually ended with a bigger problem than they started with and after the first few times he'd thankfully stopped. Afterwards, he'd moved onto using his religious influence to sue for World Peace, three visits to religious leaders later and a lot more people were pushing for peaceful religious interaction a lot more loudly, adding to the din Lucifer had created with his final anti-human push. Apocalypse averted on both sides Michael had also turned to proving to Sam that he was better at wooing than his brother.
He did this the more traditional way of sending lots of gifts, from rare books to fine wine to powerful or unique weapons, and love letters and poems. The gifts and the letters weren't the problem; indeed the gifts came in handy very often and the poems were very good, better than excepted from God's first eternal solider. The problem came with the location of the gifts and letters. As Sam and Dean moved around so much and with the rib warding's in place Michael couldn't find Sam to give him his gifts in person so had sent them to the one place he knew Sam would visit sooner or later.
Bobby's house.
While Bobby was delighted they'd stopped the apocalypse 'through the power of love', and Sam had had to endure several grilling talks from both him and Dean about keeping his secret Archangel boyfriends secret and falling into the wrong crowd, something Gabriel just happened to be around for, he was less pleased that his house was becoming a drop off point for 'lovesick romancing archangel Idjits'. The simplest solution to this turned out to be the easiest; they stayed at Bobby's and Sam prayed and told Michael to stop sending so many gifts at once because 43 bottles of 1700's French wine was a little too much even for three hunters who weren't strangers to alcohol.
The problems, however, came when Michael finished whatever it was he was doing in Heaven and came down to visit Sam's dreams. They had a few times alone but inadvertently whenever Michael visited Lucifer also visited and as much as they loved each other and as much as they cared about Sam they couldn't just get over a human history worth of issues with each other.
Which is how Sam ended up lying on a king-sized bed, his arm over his face trying to block out the sound of two Archangels spitting insults at each other. Since Sam had banned any big important topics unless they were actually going to talk to each other the first time they'd shown up at once they had started arguing about which of them was better qualified in taking care of Sam based on the most inane, banal thing they could think of at the time.
This week being fruit.
"The orange in vastly superior to the apple; it contains more vitamins, minerals and fibre as well as calories which are very important to Sam in his job as a hunter as he needs to be as healthy as possible." Michael stated firmly, pacing along and end of the bed where Lucifer was sitting with his arms crossed.
"Healthiness is important but not everything." Lucifer counter-argued. "For humans taste and convenience are also important and are something the apple wins hands down, it's easy to carry and has minimal waste which is good for the environment as you can eat more of it. It's bigger and more filling and taste wise, well even Dad can agree with me there or He wouldn't have made the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge an apple."
"Okay!" Sam interrupted loudly, sitting up, because nothing got Michael riled up like bringing up God in conversation. "We get it, you both want what's best for me. Maybe the best person to decide what's best for me is me."
"What fruit do you think is better then?" Lucifer asked snidely.
"Grapefruit." Sam retorted and both Archangels made the same face before humming in acquiescence then promptly looked at each other in horror. "You do both know you love each other right?" Sam snapped, gaining their attention again. "Because the way you act it's like you're waiting for the other to stab you in the back the moment I look away so you can keep me all to yourself."
"It's not like it wouldn't be the first time." Lucifer said testily. Michael snorted.
"You stabbed me in the back first."
"You didn't listen to me!"
"You didn't say anything worth listening to!" There was a moment's pause when Michael realised what he just said and span around to face away from his brother. Sam couldn't see Lucifer's face but if Michael's expression was anything to go by it was bad. "I couldn't tell where you ended and the Mark began, anything you said was meaningless."
"Then you should have helped me." Lucifer's voice was so quiet that Sam sitting just behind him could barely hear him.
"You don't think I don't know that? You don't think I regret not doing anything until it was too late? You don't think I blame myself for not noticing earlier?" Lucifer stood up slowly and hovered behind Michael like he wasn't sure what to do with his hands.
"I was hiding it. I don't blame you for not noticing until then, nobody else did." Lucifer hesitated and gave Sam a panicked look. Sam gave him a 'go on' motion with his hands because they might have finally made a break through and no way was Sam letting them stop. "I'm sorry for hiding it and letting it get so bad." Michael's shoulders slumped and he turned back to Lucifer incredulously like he'd never heard him apologise before. Sam wondered for a moment if he ever had.
"I'm sorry for not doing anything when I realised." Michael swallowed. "And I'm sorry that it happened in the first place." Lucifer made a choked off noise before pulling his brother into a hug.
Sam sat behind them dumbfounded because after weeks of arguing, months of horror stories about arguments between them from angels and demons alike and millennia of estrangement between the two he hadn't expected it to be that easy.
"You're an idiot." Lucifer whispered.
"I will break your face." Michael hissed back and Sam sighed. They both turned to look at him, then each other then they parted and walked around the bed to sit either side of him. "We owe you an apology too Sam, we should not have used you in our fight against each other."
"It probably didn't make you feel very close to either of us." Lucifer added. Sam looked between the two of them before nodding, honesty seemed like the best choice.
"It wasn't very nice." He said gently. "But you needed to focus on each other, I can understand that. I do it with Dean." He smiled.
"Yes, but we shouldn't have done it over you." Michael threaded their fingers together and smiled at him, for a second his wings were visible as they arched outwards and shifted to pull him into an approximation of a hug. Even when they vanished Sam could still feel the warmth that threaded through his soul and made him relax, a second later he was melting into the embrace as Lucifer joined him and something in him just clicked.
"Made for each other." Lucifer breathed by his ear. "That's a soulbond you're feeling there Sammy."
"The feeling of being complete." Michael hummed. "I suppose that if you won't choose between us, I know you couldn't." He brushed a hair out of Sam's face to see his sheepish expression better and smiled. "Then we can share." Lucifer made a noise.
"At once?"
"No. Not at once." Michael sounded exasperated. "We can time share."
"What? I get Monday through Thursday and you get Friday to Sunday."
"Lucifer."
"I find that very unfair, we won't get to see each other much due to our duties and Sam's hunting."
"Lucifer."
"Also, you're not taking Dean into consideration-."
"Lucifer!"
"What?" Lucifer snapped back.
"If we visit Sam when we are able and if we see each other away from Sam and talk about our issues, then we should be able to fall into a system that works for all of us." Michael explained patiently.
"You don't have a vessel." Lucifer pointed out. "Mine is falling to pieces."
"Isn't being a vessel the original reason you're here anyway?" Sam blinked back the haze that filled his mind since the Archangel's had, for lack of a better term, started hugging him. Sam wouldn't deny that having his body stolen again was still a definite fear and was something that was going to come up a lot because really it was half his worth to these Archangels and as much as he cared about them there was a very real possibility that they only cared for him as long as a vessel was in the equation. It was one of the reasons he was glad that he had to choose between the two, his poor judgement skills had time to be honed and he could ask Dean. "You can't be on Earth without one."
"We can ask Gabriel about his strengthening of the one he's got." Michael had obviously been thinking about it. "It would only be a temporary fix, but it would give us time for a long term system and in the end it won't make a difference if we're all in Heaven and Sam can just give permission to use his body when we need to come to Earth. We just need to wait his lifetime out at minimum." They stared at him and Michael shifted under their gaze.
"Sounds good." Lucifer kept his tone neutral. "Except I can't go to Heaven."
"You can if I let you in." Michael seemed very interested in Sam's hair suddenly. "I cast you out so I can accept you back. If we come to agreement in our talks away from Sam."
"This sounds like the best idea." Sam said before Lucifer could formulate whatever was on the tip of his tongue. "Temporary fix to see where this goes." Lucifer looked down at him and softened.
"Okay." He agreed. "Okay. Beside's you're worth it." He leant down and kissed his forehead.
"Definitely." Michael agreed, kissing his cheek. "We can work on your self-worth next because Samuel you are worth all of this."
"What?" Sam sat up a little straighter.
"It's written all over your soul." Lucifer said softly. "Don't worry we're going to make you feel better even if it takes the rest of your very long life."
"That goes for you to." Sam made eye contact with both of them. "And at some point you're going to have to tell me about this mark."
Lucifer laughed then he pulled Sam towards him and did something with his wings so that Sam was half draped over him allowing Michael to shift so that he was covering Sam and Sam ended up in a cocoon between them.
It was a position they were in three months later when Dean came into their motel room with dinner rolling his eyes at their unexpected guests and collapsing on his own bed.
"You guys are unbelievable." He muttered. "Don't have sex when I'm here." Sam could almost see his bright orange and red soul light up at the sight of Sam safe and happy behind his green eyes.
"Of course not." Lucifer replied primly. "Gabriel's coming over, he said something about Lord of the Rings Extended Edition." Dean groaned and Sam laughed into Lucifer's chest, Michael paused his drawing of Enochian along his back to kiss him softly and Sam relaxed into the hold of his family.
This ended up being more about Michael and Lucifer than Sam but they really needed to talk.
So this is the end. Most things tied up in a little bow and fluff to show where it's going. As this is still shorter than I planed there will be sequels focusing on events and outtakes etc. because I really need more of this but here's the main part. You can use your imagination for the rest.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed this. ;)
UPDATE AUG 2020 attempt 2: sequel is up. Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. It's about Raphael's side of the story and what happened to Zachariah.