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At the last minute they change the plan. It’s decided that sending both Winchesters into Carthage in the same car would be silly and reckless. Instead, Jo goes with Dean while Sam rides with Ellen and Castiel.
In hindsight, it was the worst decision they’d ever made.
Castiel sees reapers, everywhere, as soon as they pull into Carthage. Sam sends Ellen on to meet Jo and Dean and follows Castiel.
‘We’ll split up,’ Castiel decides as Sam follows him through the empty streets.
Sam shakes his head. ‘No, Cas, it’s too dangerous.’
Castiel sighs, but nods his acquiescence. He squints up at a nearby building, where Sam can see a shadowy figure silhouetted in the window.
The hand around his wrist warns Sam and he braces before Castiel takes off, landing them in the same building Castiel had been staring at.
The angel vanishes in a flash of light that has Sam covering his face.
'Cas?’ Sam hisses into the dark room, blinking away the spots in his eyes.
Castiel doesn’t answer. Someone else does, though.
'Hello, Sam. I’ve been waiting for you.’
Lucifer in reality is nothing like Lucifer in Sam’s dreams. In the dreams there had never been the burns on his face and hands, or the oppressive, cold aura that felt like it was weighing Sam down, pinning him in place.
In his dreams, Lucifer somehow hadn’t seemed half as magnetic to Sam, but now, it felt like his soul was trying to push him towards Lucifer, compel him further into the trap he’d walked into.
Sam takes a step back. It costs him real effort.
'I won’t say yes,’ he warns Lucifer.
The Devil moves closer, slowly, carefully, but with an expression on his face that makes Sam think Lucifer feels the pull towards him just as surely as Sam feels it towards Lucifer.
It isn’t a comforting thought.
'I know you won’t, Sam. You’re not ready.’
'What is this, then?’ the hunter snaps.
'I can’t let you run around down there, getting torn up by hellhounds and demons, Sam. You’re far too precious for that. This is for your own safety.’
'Really. You’re protecting me?’
'Is that so hard to believe?’
Sam has to bite back the reflexive 'yes’ that he almost spits out at Lucifer. Wrong context, sure, but it’s not like Sam has any idea if details like that really matter.
'It is,’ he says instead after a moment.
Lucifer smirks at Sam like he knows exactly what the human was just thinking- and he probably does. 'Sit down, Sammy. We’re going to be here a while.’
Sam grits his teeth and stays resolutely on his feet.
Lucifer rolls his eyes at him. 'Whatever you want, then.’
The angel conjures a long, comfortable looking lounge and coffee table with a snap of his fingers and sits down. He looks carefully away from Sam as if the Hunter in the room is the furthest thing from his mind, which Sam knows must be an act.
Sam absently thinks that if sitting didn’t mean sitting next to Lucifer on the same couch, he might think about it and between one blink and the next there’s an armchair in the room and Lucifer has moved to it.
'Get out of my head,’ Sam glares at Lucifer.
'I’m not in your head, Sam.’ Lucifer looks at him again, almost wistful. 'Sadly.'
Sam rolls his eyes at the devil. Pretending to ignore Lucifer, he crosses the room to sit on the recently vacated lounge chair.
'Sure you’re not.’
Lucifer doesn’t reply. The silence stretches on and on until Sam can’t take it anymore.
'Shouldn't you be, I don’t know, trying to change my mind? Make me consent?’
Lucifer looks surprised, and amused. 'I don’t need to, Sam. You will come to me in your own time. And not tonight. I only have a short time with you for now, and I’d rather not spend it arguing.’
It isn’t even close to the answer Sam had been expecting. 'You’re letting me go?'
Lucifer nods. 'Of course, Sam. I’m just keeping you safe and out of the way until my work here is complete. Then you’re free to collect your brother and your angel friend and leave.’
Sam frowned at him. 'And our other friends?’
The archangel waves a hand absently. 'Anyone you brought with you may leave unharmed. In exchange for giving me a chance to see you in person.'
Sam wasn’t at all sure he liked that deal; but it was too late to avoid his meeting with Lucifer and if it bought Ellen, Jo, Dean and Castiel protection, he’d live with it. So he nods and returns to fiddling with a thread he’s picked loose on Lucifer’s couch.
After a few minutes of polite, determined looking away from each other, Sam can feel Lucifer’s gaze on him. It’s nowhere near as unwelcome as he would have thought.
Every time Sam glances up from then on, Lucifer is staring at him. It's too much.
It takes almost an hour for Sam to relax, to forget himself and stop forcing his brain onto high alert in Lucifer's presence. By the time Sam realizes he's no longer acting afraid of the archangel in the room, it's too late and the ruse is over.
The rest of the evening is more bearable for it.
Eventually, Lucifer has to leave, telling Sam as he goes that the door will unlock itself just after midnight. Sam pretends not to feel Lucifer lean over him and press his lips to the top of Sam’s head before he departs with the familiar sound of wings unfurling.
Castiel finds him shortly afterwards, apparently much bolder now that Lucifer has moved away. Sam pretends he’s not disappointed to be “rescued” from the devil and returns to Dean’s accusing silences and suspicious glaring. Castiel has healed Jo of hellhound-inflicted wounds that had almost killed her and zapped her and Ellen out of town, Dean informs him when Sam asks after the Harvelles.
It’s down to just them.
Sam goes through with his part of the plan, trying to ignore the way his heart rips apart at the thought of Lucifer dying, of Colt’s magic bullets destroying the one being who still treated Sam as someone worth protecting. He was being stupid. Lucifer had been protecting his vessel from hellhounds. Not wanting to see Sam for his own sake. It was a stupid lie and Sam was a desperate fool for believing it.
Maybe Lucifer read the conflict on Sam’s face, or maybe he heard Dean approaching, but either way, his head starts to turn a fraction of a second before the barrel of the gun was pressed against it.
'Well, I’d hurt you,’ Dean snarls, replying to Lucifer’s earlier speech.
The gunshot echoes in Sam’s ears as he watches Lucifer fall to the ground, lifeless. He feels… Nothing. None of the heart-rending pain, the agony of a supernatural bond being severed that he’d expected after their talk in the dark attic a few hours ago.
Maybe it had really all been Lucifer influencing him. Maybe Sam wasn’t condemned after all.
Part of Sam, the logical part, was rejecting that already, pointing out the lack of ashes from the wings he’d heard Lucifer use earlier, the fact that the demons gathered around hadn’t moved a muscle.
And then Lucifer breathes, and all Sam can feel is relief.
He misses what Lucifer says to Dean, preoccupied with horror at his own reaction to the devil being alive. He doesn’t miss the backhand, or Dean’s body flying through the air.
Lucifer doesn’t acknowledge their earlier conversation when he starts to talk again to Sam, justifying himself, justifying the slaughter of the town. Neither does Sam when he answers. The Hunter feels sick to his stomach, because he can’t deny their connection anymore, not to himself or to Lucifer. And the devil knows it, Sam knows as their eyes meet.
Castiel finally comes to evacuate them, and it’s over.
Sam doesn’t know how he’ll resist Lucifer next time. But when Bobby suggests a hunt in Michigan Sam shuts him down almost as loudly as Dean.
If he fakes it long enough maybe he won’t want Lucifer anymore.
He knows it’s a lie.