The day had been uneventful until Dean started cooking dinner, the only sound in the cabin as he worked diligently over the stove. Dean, working at a stove and wearing an apron...Sam had never thought he would see that.
The cabin was...nice. Peaceful, though that was hardly the word Sam might have used to describe its owner, were Rufus still living.
Uneventful, meaning that Lucifer had left him alone until the smell of sizzling meat filled the air. Steak, Dean said happily, when Sam asked, and Sam didn't have the heart to ask if he could make something else, not with that childlike excitement radiating from his brother. Did not ask if he could throw out that horrible stuff before...
Lucifer was very much acquainted with sizzling meat, in Hell. So was Sam, but both for very different reasons.
"So, Sammy, I never got the chance to thank you for letting me out," Lucifer whispered suddenly, the vulgar stench of his breath against Sam's ear causing the younger Winchester to jump. "I was going to, when you said 'yes,' but I guess I just never found the time."
"Shut up," Sam hissed, and Dean glanced up from the laptop he was bent over worriedly, just a few feet away.
"You okay, Sammy?" he asked in concern, and Sam gave him a breathless nod, squeezing the healing wound on his palm until he could see the faint pricks of blood popping up on his smooth skin.
The world spun for a moment, and, for a moment, he thought it had worked, that Lucifer was gone, and he breathed a loud sigh of relief into the armrest of the frayed old couch.
He supposed he should have known better.
Lucifer let out a loud laugh, plopping down onto the couch beside Sam, throwing his feet up and onto Sam's lap. Sam flinched and attempted to push them off, but found that they would not budge.
"That ain't gonna work this time, Sammy-boy," Lucifer grinned, picking pretend lint off his shirt. "But it's fun to play that game. Maybe you'll pass out from bloodloss when that cut reopens and we'll have another dream about fire." He winked then, waggling his eyebrows as suggestively as his words sounded.
Sam rolled his eyes, biting down hard on his tongue in the hopes that it would get rid of the hallucination.
"Oh, now I'm the hallucination?" Lucifer gave Sam a look of mock-hurt. "Sammy, I'm wounded. And here I thought you knew it was Dean, by now."
Sam faltered, glanced at Dean who, before his very eyes, seemed to flicker and fade before going still once more. He was staring at Sam now, no doubt having come to the conclusion that Sam had zoned out again. His lips were moving, but, if any sound came out of them, Sam couldn't hear it.
The cabin lights flickered. Sam could hear the sound of a woman screaming from just outside the screen door, but, when he looked, there was nothing but the darkness of the night. It was hardly a comfort, the darkness crowding around the forest outside, hiding untold dangers.
"See, I told ya, Sammy," Lucifer taunted. "It's what I've been trying to tell ya all along. Dean isn't real. None of this-" he gestured around the room- "is real. But it was fun while it lasted, right?"
Sam swallowed, didn't respond.
"I think we're both getting a bit sick of it though, aren't we, Sam?" Lucifer asked then, and his voice was surprisingly kind, almost gentle. When Sam didn't answer, it failed to discourage him, and he leaned forward, bare heels digging into Sam's thighs. "Why don't you come back to me? I'll think up some other way to entertain us, and I promise it won't be quite so cruel."
Sam shook his head, teeth set in determination. "Go to hell," he whispered hoarsely.
Lucifer snorted. "In retrospect, not the best thing you could have said just there. I'm already there; and so are you."
"Sam!" he could hear his brother's voice, but from a great distance, too far. "Sam, you with me?"
"All right," Lucifer sighed dramatically, giving Sam a kick. "So I'm not real. But you're a smart boy, and you already knew that, right?"
Sam answered him with silence, turning towards Dean helplessly.
Lucifer was sitting in the chair Dean had previously occupied, typing away furiously. Sam blinked, gulped.
No, no, no...
"But here's my gift: I can make this real. This false reality, with your precious big brother, with hunting and with the Wall, it'll all be real, and the only thing you'll have to deal with is me, popping in every once in a while, like I do now, to tease you a bit. Doesn't sound so bad, does it?"
Sam swallowed. "That is what's already happening," he said finally, enunciating each word slowly, when he realized Lucifer wasn't going to stop staring at him like that. And perhaps because a part of him wanted to know the truth.
Lucifer shrugged. "But at least you'll know that this is real. Really know."
Sam stared at him for a few minutes before he saw the flaw in that reasoning. "How can you make it real? You can't even leave the Cage."
He heard another voice then, afar off in the distance, shouting, "Sammy! This isn't real! You have to snap out of it. Sam!"
Lucifer smirked, swatting Dean's voice away like a fly. "Can't I? I've been visiting you this whole time, haven't I?"
Sam faltered then, unsure. Dean said this wasn't real. Dean said you weren't real. So you're not. "You're not real."
Lucifer laughed, throwing his head back in genuine mirth. "Come on, Sammy, can't you think for yourself? Just because Dean said it doesn't make it so." And then his breath was in Sam's ear again, so close and terrifying, and Sam hunched instinctively. "What matters here is what you believe."
And that was just the problem. Sam didn't know what he believed.
There were two voices at a constant in Sam's life, both telling him that they were real and the other was not. And a few weeks ago, he knew beyond a doubt that Dean was real, that Lucifer was just a hallucination...now, though, he wasn't quite so sure.
"What would I have to do?" he asked finally, hesitantly, because he knew that the answer to his reality hinged on that answer. Whatever Lucifer said next would prove to him whether or not the hallucinations were real. Would prove to him whether or not Dean was real, whether or not he could be trusted.
Lucifer snorted, pulling back again. "Look how easily you believe me, Sammy-O. Clearly, you know, deep down, that I'm right and that Dean is lying to you."
Sam gulped. "Just tell me," he snapped through gritted teeth, and this only seemed to amuse Lucifer further.
"Fine...you wanna get rid of this uncertainty, this doubt...you say, 'Yes,' Sam." And Sam recoiled in horror at the words, shrinking back as far as he could agains the couch. Lucifer smirked. "Just like last time. Say yes, and I'll make it worth your while. I'll make it all real. Forever."
"Sam!" that was Dean now, Dean, not Lucifer, leaning over him in the exact space where Lucifer had been only a moment before. His face was etched in concern that Lucifer couldn't fake, both arms holding Sam down on the couch, shaking him back to reality. "Sam, are you with me? Sam."
Sam gulped, turning wide, frightened eyes towards Dean. "I...uh, yeah. I'm with you."
Dean would never lie to him, he knew that. He could trust Dean over Lucifer. Surely he knew that.
The wound on his palm opened up that night, blood staining the couch as he slumped against it, buried in a troubled sleep.