#cagefic

The Cage is silent.

That might be what breaks him.

Michael has felt the low ache of abandonment. It has carved its way into the core of his grace, and in turn, he has built himself upon its shaky foundations. Every facet of him, every action and dedication, all to fill that hole. He can withstand being left. It’s what he deserves, failure that he is, dragged into Hell by a human.

(By his own fatal need to reach for Lucifer. How could he let him go? He was right there, as beautiful and terrible as Michael remembered, and he wanted Lucifer to die in his arms, where he could hold his body as his life drained away. Sam Winchester tried to take Lucifer away from him, and Michael couldn’t let him.

So, they fell together. Whatever test that was, Michael knows he failed.)

He knows abandonment. He does not know loneliness. Heaven had grown cold and stiff as a corpse, but his siblings still whispered to each other. Funerals are not silent. Graves are. The Cage is a tomb. Michael can’t bear it.

Desperation strikes madness in him. He tries to restrain himself. He prays, but only hearing himself in the emptiness is worse than nothing. He knows the prayers reach no one, not his siblings, not his Father. He knows that all he has left to ask for is forgiveness, and he’s not going to be granted it. He had one purpose. One. It rings through his grace so many times that he can almost fool himself into hearing the accusations like they come from anywhere but his own mind.

And then. Then. He begins to panic.

He can’t explain it. He knows it isn’t possible. He was there when the Cage was built, and he knows how it functions. But still. It’s getting smaller. He can see it getting smaller. The bars are caving inwards, and when he retreats, he only finds another wall, cold and unrelenting. It heaves in towards him as well, and Michael launches himself in another hopeless direction.

He doesn’t stop to think about how, if the Cage was getting smaller, then Lucifer would be close enough to see, to touch.

He doesn’t think at all.

For the first time in his existence, Michael learns helplessness. The lesson sears itself into his being. He knows he will die if he stays in here. He’ll be crushed. He needs to get out.

Without hesitation, Michael throws himself against his prison. It burns him back with every thrash of his wings against the cruel metal. He barely registers it, beating himself harder and harder against the wall. He claws at it, scratching deep grooves into the bars. Every time he attacks, he has to make new tears, the old ones vanishing the moment he pulls back to swing. If there was any way to leave lasting scars on the Cage, maybe he’d be able to see that he isn’t the first to try and fight his way out. Maybe that would drag him to his senses, knowing how useless his struggle is. But the Cage has no marks on any surface, and so he keeps going.

Even when he starts to feel the pain, he can’t stop. His wings grow tattered, threatening to break under the force they hit the wall with. His grace begins to rend, the Cage lashing back out and dealing back the damage he’s tried to do to it. By the time he wants to stop, he can’t. He fights against his own will, throwing himself into the bars again and again and again and again...

Lucifer is only strong enough to make him stop because Michael’s beaten himself half to death. His brother seems to come from nowhere, swooping in on Michael’s broken form as Michael weakly fights an opponent that cannot even be dented. Michael doesn’t even have the energy to be afraid that Lucifer is taking the opportunity to kill him. He’s in so much pain, and he can’t stop, and at least, if Lucifer ends it, it won’t hurt anymore. Instead, Lucifer pulls him back from the wall and further into the Cage.

Michael struggles but not for very long. Whatever wild drive he had to escape abandons him when Lucifer flattens his wings over Michael’s owns to keep them still. Michael collapses.

“Michael-”

That’s all Lucifer manages to say. His name, and nothing more, and Michael, subsumed in silence for seconds-years-eternities, twists towards him with newfound energy. Lucifer immediately tries to release him and get away. In the brief contact of grace they share, Michael can feel fear spike in him. He’s afraid of Michael, even in this state. Michael has no intention of hurting him (if he still has the power to).

He presses into Lucifer, grace open and receptive in contrast to Lucifer’s as he tries to freeze Michael out. Michael only insinuates himself closer, searching for minute fractures in Lucifer’s defense that have always existed. They’re still there, and Michael’s grace seeps through until he can feel his brother and knows him to be real, not another trick of the Cage.

“Speak,” Michael begs him.

Lucifer falters.

Cautiously, he comes back. His wings (mangled as Michael's own, now that he can see them clearly, though his scars are long since healed over) fall back over Michael’s. He tests how much pressure he can apply, and Michael folds under him, anything to keep him here, to have the chance to hear his voice again. Michael can’t go back to silence. He would rather Lucifer let him continue in his suicidal attempt to break free than go back. Lucifer draws him in until they’re tangled in an embrace.

“There’s no way out,” Lucifer says. “Don’t you think I would have found it if there was?” Michael shudders as his brother’s voice washes over him. His grasp of Enochian is archaic and some words are almost incomprehensible, but Michael understands him. Theirs is a language beyond the one shared by all angels, born when they were the first and only two beings to be created, back when Lucifer was as much a part of Michael as he was his own being. Lucifer could whisper complete nonsense to him, and Michael would still understand every word.

Lucifer’s feathers brush against his own. The pain is dulling, slowly. Lucifer’s presence soothes it, or at least, keeps Michael distracted enough that he doesn’t notice how much it hurts anymore.

“You aren’t allowed to die,” Lucifer says, quieter. “You aren’t allowed to leave me here alone again.” In response, Michael digs into Lucifer’s grace, rougher than he should given how gentle Lucifer is holding him but he needs Lucifer to understand. That promise has to go both ways, if he’s to make it. Lucifer winces, but then Michael feels him bite into his grace in return, harder and harder until there's a new, sharp pain that Michael relishes because it came from Lucifer. Closer, they tangle themselves, like Lucifer isn’t so broken he doesn’t fit anymore, like Michael belongs to Lucifer before their Father.

Soon, Michael can barely tell where he ends and Lucifer begins. The wounds Michael inflicted on himself trying to escape bleed into Lucifer's grace. Lucifer hasn’t stopped talking to him, though his words (demanding, possessive, hungry) betray that Michael hasn’t been suffering alone in here. And Lucifer purrs with pleasure every time he insists that they will be left to rot down here and Michael only answers with, “Together. Left to rot down here together.”

No more silence.

If he cannot have freedom, he will have Lucifer.

Michael tilted his head in that odd way he had. In the first few years, that question, the nickname (which Adam couldn’t remember when he’d started to use) would have been met with derision. Now, all it provoked was a shrug and a quiet, “I suppose.” Michael rarely talked much, he had learned. He had assumed, at first, that it was simply because Michael didn’t see fit to speak to a human, but it was seeming that the Viceroy of Heaven was just a quiet person. 

Still, Adam heard something off in his voice as Michael sat down next to him, a...stiffness that made him turn his head to look at the archangel. Michael gazed back coolly, but there was something in his face, the set of his shoulders, that seemed wrong. Adam bit his lip. Would it be okay, to ask? Michael was proud, probably even more so than Lucifer. He didn’t think that Michael would hurt him, even when they’d hated each other he’d still only sneered and snarled and left (although that had been enough, being alone-), but he still didn’t know if it was okay. Everything felt so new and uncertain now, their agreement (to really talk, to try and understand, to try and get along so their imprisonment wasn't any harder than it had to be) still so fresh.

Adam swallowed, and took the easy route instead. “Do you want to hear a story?”

At some point they’d started saying that first. Adam wasn’t sure why, they hadn’t bothered back at the start, when they’d been telling each other things (or rather, Adam had told Michael things) in between long silences and biting words simply to pass the time. Neither of them were going to say no, but it still seemed important to say.

Sure enough, Michael leaned back, whatever shadow had been on his face before disappearing under a look of interest. “Sure, kid.”

That was new too, and it made Adam grin, some of his tension dissipating. “Alright, old man. When I was twelve...”

This was a comforting routine. Adam felt himself relax as he went through a story about the trip he’d taken here, the cake his mother had let him order at the place where they’d stayed, the first time he’d been far enough away from a city to see the real night sky and the way the vast shining expanse of it all had stolen his breath away (’it’s easy to not see how big everything is in a little town...I think that was the first time I even understood that a tiny bit.”), the walk they’d taken and the way his head had been filled with the sound of rushing water and the green smell of the forest. 

“How can a smell be green?” Michael asked. The stiffness in his demeanor hadn’t quite fled, but he was giving every indication of enjoying the story. Perhaps someone who hadn’t known him for so long wouldn’t be able to tell, but Adam could see his interest.

 “It’s...” Adam fumbled for an explanation. Before he might have just brushed Michael off with a “Don’t worry about it”, but in truth it was sort of fun to try and explain. “Obviously it isn’t, not really, but I guess...it’s because it wasn’t any specific thing, right? I’m sure you could find all the different plants or whatever -” he nudged Michael lightly “-But it was just because it was all the different smells of the trees and grass and bushes, all together, all those different growing things. Sure, a lot of plants aren’t green, but enough are that it’s kind of how we think about them. So it’s like...saying that it was green...that just means it’s the smell of new things, of stuff growing altogether. Of life - does that make sense?” 

“It does,” Michael allowed. “Or it doesn’t, not really, but I think I understand how it would for you.” His voice was contemplative. “I think...do you want to hear a story?”

“Oh - sure.” It was stupid to feel like something unexpected had happened. Michael had shared stories before, frequently, but it was Adam who had started this off and still often Adam who was the storyteller. Presumably eventually they would run out of stories from Adam, Adam who only had nineteen years of them as opposed to Michael’s untold eons - but they hadn’t yet. Adam settled back, crossing his legs. “Go ahead, halo.”

Michael nodded, shifting so he was sitting cross-legged just like Adam. He was a bit of a copycat in truth, though Adam wasn’t sure if he knew how much. 

Michael had been a terrible storyteller at the start, ironically because he took a more logical approach - to say just what happened. He still did that, but now he tended to add more details - how he had felt, what he had wanted to say but didn’t, what he thought about what had happened. When he let himself, he could even be quite funny, in a very dry sort of way. Adam had grown to enjoy their storytelling more and more as the years (centuries) went on, as it felt more and more like he was talking to Michael and less like he was reading a list of facts online.

 (It fit, though, in a terrible sort of way with the stories Michael told of Heaven - which seemed rife with work reports, and scarce of anyone who would ask Michael his opinion on anything.)

This story was about a star. There was a limit to how much Michael could describe the process of its creation (”I’m not sure a human can fully understand,” and at least his voice was apologetic now and not arrogant), but he did his best, describing the feeling of shaping the energy, the power that radiated out of it, the way the light cut through the darkness like a knife (Michael, Adam had noticed, seemed to like comparing things to weapons). He grew more animated as he spoke, gesturing with his hands like he wanted to paint in the air. 

“Do you want to show me?” Adam asked, before Michael could get into his next sentence.

Michael blinked. “Hm?”

“You know -” Adam waved his hands. “Archangel magic up a picture, or something, I want to see this star too.”

 He was expecting Michael to either comply or brush it off, that or tease him for saying archangel magic, but instead the archangel drew inward, his shoulders stiffening again. “Maybe later,” he said, his voice too tight, too controlled.

Adam frowned. “Okay, sorry but - are you okay?”

He leaned forward. Michael looked away, down at the expanse of fake forest with fake trees that were just green blobs until you looked directly at them. He wore Adam’s face so differently, it was striking. Sure, technically they looked the same - but the graceful way he moved, how he smiled, the way he tilted his head, the way he gestured as he spoke came together to make a picture of a completely different person. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Michael’s face was technically also his. “I’m...I’m fine,” Michael said, his voice tight with concealed strain. 

Adam bit his lip. He didn’t want to press, didn’t want to do anything that could strain their new accord, but...”Halo,” he said, pitching his voice as gentle as he could. “Tell me? Maybe I can help.”

Years and years ago, that would have provoked anger; now, Michael gave him a quiet, pained smile. “I don’t...you don’t have to,” he said carefully. “I can handle it fine, it’s just right now, it’s a little...”

“Halo, you’re the first thing ever made,” Adam said. “You’re the toughest angel there is, I know you can handle it.” He leaned forward, close enough that he could touch Michael. He didn’t - aside from getting pushed around a bit at the start, Michael had never touched him and he had never returned the favor. Not even after their agreement. “Do you want to handle it?”

He wouldn’t push it. Not if Michael didn’t want him to. 

Michael swallowed, looking hesitant. It was a strange look on him, on the eternal soldier. Eventually he shook his head, short and jerkily. “I’m...you know that Lucifer is of ice,” he began.

Adam flinched at the mention of the Adversary. “Sure do,” he muttered. Of the few times he’d been Out, one of them had been when Lucifer had shoved a gigantic spike of ice right through their body. Even without that, the frosty aura of his presence was like standing in Antarctica in midwinter. Although it was nothing compared to the Cage itself -- he looked at Michael, burning Michael, fiery Michael, and thought he felt understanding dawn. “Is it an...elemental thing? The Cage is hurting you because it’s built for Lucifer, not you? Because it’s too cold for you?”

Michael looked genuinely impressed, an expression Adam suspected few had ever seen. “Yes, that’s it. It’s -” He shifted, moving his hands in a way that Adam knew he had learned from him as he tried to figure out what to say. “Energy, life, the fire of creation...these aren’t here,” he said eventually. “It’s...it’s too cold.” He shivered, unconsciously. “It’s too cold.”

Adam nodded. “Sometimes I can still feel the cold around the edges. It’s...” But what words were there, for a space that had never seen any sun? He’s sure without Michael the cold would have driven him mad. “How can I help you?”

“You don’t have to,” Michael said again. “You’re my vessel, it’s my job to protect you. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I know I don’t need to,” Adam snorted, and quietly filed the “it’s my job to protect you” away under ‘interesting’ in his mind. That had not been part of the vessel discussion all those years ago. That was a new sentiment from Michael. Adam wasn’t sure what it meant, yet.

 He looked Michael in those strange, pale eyes and said, “I want to.”

Michael sucked in a breath, a quick, sharp intake of false air. “I...”

Adam smiled, wryly. “I say yes.”

Michael was very still, for a moment. He could be much stiller than Adam was, without all those little residual instincts that said move this way, shift, fidget. Than he smiled, and if it was a little sad, a little sardonic, Adam wouldn’t mention it. “Alright, then.”

 “What do I have to do?”

Michael squirmed. That was the only word for it. It was sort of funny, to see Viceroy Michael looking so uncomfortable. “Can I...you know souls are powerful,” he started, “They have a lot of energy. May I...”

Adam looked up at the false, too-blue sky. When he thought he had mastered himself enough to not do anything stupid, like burst out laughing, he looked back down and held out his arms. “C’mere.”

Michael blinked, going still again. “You don’t know what I was going to say,” he said, a bit petulantly.

 “Was it not going to be, “Let’s cuddle for warmth like we’re in a Christmas-themed romance novel?”

Michael didn’t laugh - Adam hadn’t figured out how to get him to, not yet - but he looked like he wanted to, his smile torn between embarrassed and amused. “Not quite like that, no.” The smile slipped from his face. “Are you sure this is okay?”

Adam tilted his head. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Michael’s mouth twisted. “I don’t...you’re so small,” he said, a bit helplessly. His hands fluttered nervously by his side. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

 Adam couldn’t quite hold back a smile at that. His chest felt full of real warmth. “I appreciate that,” he told him. “But I’m not quite as small as that. It would probably be good, actually, humans are supposed to get physical contact from people.”

Michael looked alarmed. “Really? How often?”

Adam tried not to wince. “You’re supposed to get a hug at least eight times a day, ideally twelve.”

There was a pause while they considered the amount of time they had both been down, down in the dark, occupying the same body but refusing to let Grace and soul touch.

“Is it too late,” Michael said eventually. “To apologize again?”

He didn’t say for what. There were a lot of options, after all. 

“Why don’t you give me a hug instead?” Adam offered. He was still sitting cross-legged; he shifted around so he could more easily lean into Michael and held out his arms. “Come here.” Michael shifted forward slowly. Had he ever tried to touch someone before, outside of combat? One of his brothers maybe, at the start of things. So...at minimum, a few billion...oh dear.

 He paused when he was almost within Adam’s grasp and looked at him. Adam put on his most encouraging face and tried to project “this is totally okay and everything is fine” at him. Michael’s barriers between them were up, so he didn’t mind when the archangel made no sign of having heard and just shifted closer, reaching out to pull Adam to him as well.

 As soon as their hands made contact with each other, they both yelped and pulled back, staring at each other with wide eyes.

Adam was the first one to break and laugh. “So, maybe a little more intense than we expected,” he said, grinning.

Adam laughing seemed to relax Michael. “Perhaps we should have guessed,” he said. “It’s been a little while, after all.”

“Oh yeah, just a little while,” Adam agreed. “Try again or stop?”

“Try again.”

It wasn’t that it hurt, of course. It didn’t, although Adam’s underused nerves almost thought it did. It was like sticking a hand in an oven, like his veins were full of lightning and electricity. What of this was from touching an angel’s Grace construct and what was from simply being very, very touch-starved, he didn’t know, although he was sure the few times they’d touched in the first few years it hadn’t been nearly this intense. So maybe it was all him.

Michael seemed to be similarly overwhelmed by the first warmth he’d felt in many, many years. His hands fluttered over Adam’s shoulders, like he didn’t know where to put them, like Adam was almost too hot to touch. So Adam rolled his eyes and leaned his weight on him fully. He wasn’t so breakable as all that.

Michael caught him, easily, and the contact seemed to have worn down their barriers somewhat. Adam felt the angel’s true form shift and writhe on some adjacent plane, and for a moment, the jacket under his fingers felt like feathers. He could hear Michael’s surprise, his high-pitched nervousness, the way what passed for his nerves were singing in comfort at the warmth. It helped him relax, oddly. The knowledge that it wasn’t just him who was out of his depth was welcome. Michael blinked, and Adam knew that he heard that thought and didn’t mind.

 They ended up with Adam half on-top of Michael, Adam's arms around Michael's body and Adam’s head tucked under Michael’s chin. Michael’s hands were still fluttering, trying to figure out where was okay to hold.

“You live in my body, halo, you’re technically touching all of me already,” Adam grumbled. It takes effort to focus enough to make that sentence, when he wants to just sink into the warmth and close his eyes. He felt like a man who’d been given water after years in the desert. He wasn’t sure he was ever going to let go.

“It’s your soul, though,” Michael argued, because of course he did. The nervous whine even faded when he did - Michael liked to argue.

“Hugs work better if you actually grab me.”

That worked. Michael huffed, but he eventually settled on one hand on Adam’s shoulder and the other on his back, like a brand through his shirt. “You’re so warm,” he marveled.

 “Haven’t you touched the souls of other people you’ve possessed?” Adam pointed out. Michael's tone made his face feel warm. “I can’t be that unusual.” 

“No, it...” Michael huffed. “It seemed weird. I didn’t touch them.”

“Hm, fair enough,” Adam allowed. “You are still very much touching me - my body is me - but fair enough. Is this helping? Because I don’t mind getting up if you want, but I may not ever if you don’t mind.” 

Michael still doesn’t laugh, but the huff he made this time had the shape of one. “Our beings can still touch without these extensions needing to,” he said. “Technically we don’t have to stop.”

“Fine. You wanna try for the world’s longest hug or something?” He looked up at Michael and grinned. Michael smiled back. He seemed calmer, now that the chill had receded. Adam could feel him shifting his wings, just like a man shaking his hands to try and get the circulation going.

“I don’t have blood,” Michael reminded him. “And sure. Because of the cold.”

“Because of the cold,” Adam echoed, and carefully did not wonder why, if their bodies didn’t need to touch for their beings to, if Michael didn’t actually need to hold him, why the Archangel Michael, Viceroy of Heaven, wanted to hold him at all.

You know what the worst part of it was? Looking Sam in the face and telling him I trusted him to see it through. No, that doesn’t really cover it. He’s my brother, I know him, every face he’s ever made. It’s all stored away, just in case I need it, if he’s mad enough for the silent treatment or worse, keeping a secret that’ll get him hurt. He was always stubborn. You could see when you’d lose an argument or… or a fight. You could read the outcome by the set of his jaw, the sharp slant of his mouth, before the first punch was thrown. There was never any other way it was going to go. He knew he was right, and he knew I saw it, too. He wanted me to put the world on his shoulders and let it crush him, so the rest of us could live on doing…

You don’t give a shit what humans do when they’re alive. They all burn the same, don’t they?

We. We all-

We all float down here. Ha. See, that’s why I couldn’t let Sam throw himself into the pit. Did you know there’s clowns down here? Demon clowns. Nasty sons of bitches. I couldn’t let Sam ride out eternity locked up somewhere he’d be terrified. Though he probably wouldn’t be that scared by the end. You adapt. However you can. It’s about survival.

There’s an end, right? There’s got to be. The sun goes kaboom in a few hundred thousand years, and that’s got to wipe everyone’s slates clean. You, me… Maybe even that sulking douchebag in the corner over there.

Don’t tell me if that graveyard showdown was the really how it was supposed to end and there's no other one planned, if you know. I don’t want to.

He looks like shit from here. Probably worse up close. At least he’s used to it. You’re not. I can tell. It’s wearing on you.

You could talk back. It won’t kill you.

God, I’m off-

Huh.

Don’t want me invoking your Dad’s name?

Buddy, I think we’re damned for a lot worse than a little blasphemy. Attempted fratricide’s higher on the list, no matter how pre-ordained you call it.

Insult me to my face. And get more creative with it. I already know I disappointed my Dad. I’ve got a lot of experience. New to the club?

You aren’t, are you? No, because I know what someone sounds like when they’ve been calling for days and Dad’s not picking up. I know what it feels like when you might die because he won’t come to the phone. This is a two-way street. Can’t lie to the guy whose head you’re inside any more than I can to you.

If your Dad was anything like mine, he probably listened to you begging for help and still thought you’d be better off on your own.

Good job with that. Who’s worse, the guy who lied to his dad about even finishing high school or the archangel who got his ass whooped by the drop-out?

Yeah, fuck you. I’d keep talking even if you weren’t forced to listen.

But you are. And we don’t have shit else to do.

I told Sam I’d trust him with this. I think I just didn’t want to spend my last days alive-

Hold on, am I still alive? What’s the call on that? Heart’s still pumping, nerves still scream at me, so what gives? Can you die in Hell?

I don’t know why I ask you anything.

I didn’t want his last memories of me to be a fight. I think I was even ready to go through with it until I was looking at those empty jugs. There were people in those demons- Fucking- Demons. In those people. Good people. We’d already killed enough of those, and sure as hell never added any more to the world.

Maybe Sam will now. Who knows.

He better not name that kid after me. Can you imagine? The world’s had enough of Dean Winchester. So much it spat me into the devil’s asshole.

Jesus Christ.

Hey, if you’ve got any power in you at all, you make sure he never laughs again. I think my soul just got sliced open by that sound.

So, I’m standing there, staring at the trunk, all those empty jugs and bad blood dragging Sam down and I couldn’t take it. Not one more. I wasn’t killing them, and I wasn’t going to let Sam take that blood on his hands either. So, I packed up. I left.

Cas was… probably still is out of juice, so I wasn’t scared of being caught this time.

I hope he’s doing okay. Glad he didn’t see me like this. Glad none of them did.

I couldn’t look Sam in the face like this. He’d think I didn’t believe in him.

Maybe I don’t. That’s not on him, damnit. That’s on your brother- Yeah, you! Stop eavesdropping! No, I didn’t think Sam could wrestle with you and win! I shot you in the head, and you didn’t go down. I wasn’t going to let my brother be the next wasted bullet.

Talk to me like you know Sam better. Screw you, douchebag. You didn’t know anything about him.

Now, you, on the other hand… I had no chance, no plan, nothing except the fact that you already thought I was ready to roll over. Your big mistake? You underestimated me. If you want to talk about pride, you’ve got your brother beat. One yes, and you came charging in. Felt like swallowing the sun. While it’s exploding. You got in my head and I got in yours. That’s the deal.

Second mistake was pissing me off.

Look at him. Goddamnit, look at him, Michael!

Shut up!

He’s your little brother! I don’t care how far off the beaten path he goes, you don’t ever hurt him! Maybe the rest of the world has got a devil to deal with, but you only ever have a brother! That’s what’s supposed to matter to you!

You held him when he was a baby, and you took care of him, and you were his first word and the first thing he walked towards and the first one he trusted when he started thinking this life didn’t fit right. And you fucked up! Do you hear me? You fucked up, and the last thing you ever did was cut him down when he tried to end this fight!

Because- because you could have walked away. I wouldn’t have done this if you’d walked away.

I wanted you to. I hate him more than any evil son of a bitch I’ve ever hunted, and I still wanted you to walk across that cemetery and-

Never trusted our little brothers when we should have. Maybe there was a way out of this mess a long time ago, too, but we weren’t any smarter back then. Just had more people around us to lose.

He’s gonna be okay. Sam, I mean.

He has to be.

I don’t think I could live with myself if he’s not. Not that I get the choice anymore.

Your brother’s right there. He might look bad, but you’re doing worse. Ask him how he stands it.

It won’t kill you to say something.

Lucifer coils around Sam in endless loops of affectionate teeth, needling them on his soul until the sensitive hurts and self-loathing rise to the surface. Then gentle, lapping tongues to soothe the pain he's unearthed; he purrs, "I love you, I love you, even as you betray me, I love you," in a voice that travels across Sam's skin up to kiss him.

In the dark of the Cage, Sam shivers under the devil's praise.

The first crack resounds like thunder.

Michael stirs for the first time in a decade or two, lifting his stiff wings from the floor of the Cage. Adam was talking, but he’s silent now. Michael sweeps his vessel’s soul and body close and hides them beneath his brittle feathers. He watched Death take Sam away and how it destroyed Lucifer to lose him. He won’t let the same happen to Adam. It’s selfish, he knows that, but Adam is all he has.

The second crack is harsh enough on their ears that even Lucifer, despondent and curled in his corner, is forced to acknowledge it. Michael sees him raise his head and peer at the same widening gap that Michael is. The bars cling to each other like suffocating vines, but the metal is being pried apart slowly, stubbornly.

Maybe-

“It isn’t Him,” Lucifer says, and it’s more tired than cruel but still enough that Michael snarls at him. Lucifer barely reacts. His wings twitch and that’s all, as though he’s reached a point where he’s suffered so much that its all banal to him. The idea that Michael could attack Lucifer right now and he wouldn’t fight back is so disturbing that Michael flinches away. He turns his gaze back to the widening break in the bars.

It’ll be large enough soon for Michael to slip through. It’ll hurt, the metal tearing into his sides, slicking the bars with blood as he drags himself out, but there’s the cost of freedom. He wraps Adam up securely in the depths of his grace where he won’t be harmed.

He shouldn’t look back at Lucifer. This is where his brother belongs.

But he does. He looks back.

Lucifer has curled back up, ignoring the cracks again. He’s in a worse state than Michael, the brief freedom of the Apocalypse doing him no favors, the early days of fury that he and Michael directed at each other before they realized there was no point to it still scarred across his grace.

Michael, Adam says, come on, the hole’s big enough. Let’s go. Michael takes a step towards the gap, but his gaze is still on Lucifer. He’s not coming. He won’t even look. Michael! Adam isn’t prone to panic, but Michael understands its appearance now. Adam’s hopelessness is a different beast than Lucifer’s, more spiteful, more alive, compared the the way his brother allowed himself to decay in this new — what they’d both thought of as his final — imprisonment. Adam wants out with every fiber of his being, vibrating at a pitch that rivals Michael’s own true voice out of sheer willpower.

Michael touches the broken bars.

He looks back again.

It’s not what Lucifer deserves. Michael was supposed to grant him the dignity of death. If he can’t do that…

Adam tries to wriggle out of his grasp to leap through the bars himself when Michael turns away from them, as if he could survive on his own as a soul crawling out of the depths of Hell. Michael holds on tighter to him, humming reassurance. He will free Adam, but he owes Lucifer this, too. Whether Lucifer wants it or not doesn’t matter.

He goes still as Michael approaches. A very old part of Michael, one he’s well-versed in ignoring, pangs with heartache. All his brother expects of him is violence.

Michael bends down and grabs onto Lucifer. He won’t budge at first, but Michael flaps his wings furiously and drags him across the Cage. Lucifer twists in his grip, hissing and spitting at him like an animal. Michael doesn’t let go, though his brother’s grace burns his grip, biting through him with sheer cold. He pulls them both to the hole in the Cage. Lucifer screeches at him, a horrible wordless cry that is every grievance he has with Michael rolled into one, all of the anger and betrayal and heartbreak. It hurts, and Michael still won’t let him go. He climbs out of the Cage with Lucifer fighting him every step on the way. He claws into Michael’s grace, and all Michael does is harden the layers around Adam to keep him safe from Lucifer’s senseless struggle.

The Cage groans as though it wants to collapse in on them as they crawl out. It threatens to, wicked juts of broken metal pointed at their throats, straining against whatever power is holding them open. Michael can feel it in the air. He hates that Lucifer is right. God has still abandoned them. This is something else, something that sets Michael’s teeth on edge. Lucifer can recognize it too. He freezes in Michael’s grasp, breathing in the power that surrounds them.

Michael pulls them out. He lifts Lucifer higher, carrying his dead weight along with Adam’s soul. Halfway up their climb, Lucifer starts to struggle again. He tears into Michael, and Michael-

Michael drops him. He falls. And this time, Michael does not look back.

They don’t make it all the way out of Hell. Michael’s following the path of that power now. Whatever it is will need to be dealt with sooner or later, and right now, he just wants to hurt someone. Every ungrateful wound Lucifer left on him aches.

He bursts into their presence. He lacks the radiance he carried before the Cage. All of him is tarnished with ash and neglect, but if Lucifer made a fearsome sight as the devil, than Michael’s sure he can be just as terrifying. He spreads his wings wide, the fire of his grace at his fingertips to destroy whoever was strong enough to break the Cage before they dared to kill him first.

He falters.

The only one there is Raphael.

Michael’s wings fold. His grace flickers back to calm again. He’s barely stepped forward before he’s racing to Raphael’s side and wrapping his brother up in his wings. It strikes him that he can’t remember the last time he did that, not even before his stint in the Cage. They still fit in his arms like the first time he held their grace, his baby brother, the only one Michael has left, the one who came to set him free. Raphael is burning hot like a hundred suns, and Michael pulls them closer. They cauterize the lingering injuries of Lucifer’s tantrum.

“What have you done, Raphael?” Michael says. He can’t be angry with them, whatever it is. There’s a tremor in their wings, an alien pulse within their grace.

“I had no other choice,” they whisper. It’s unlike them. For all of their existence, Raphael has been a thunderstorm. If they inherited anything from their Father, it was his voice. “You were gone, Michael.” Raphael clings tightly to him. “You were gone,” they repeat, the same lost and desperate tone that they had used when they looked up at Michael, standing at the foot of his Father’s throne with no idea what to do about the void He’d left, and asked when God was coming back.

Michael cups their face in his hands. There’s something wrong inside of them. He feels it eating them, chewing on their grace and laying eggs where the holes are to make more of itself. Raphael is keeping a tight hold on whatever it is, but it's burning through them and their vessel despite that, an inevitable unraveling down to their cells, discord tossing their form into chaotic waves that will unmake Raphael as he knows them. Angry lumps rise under their vessel’s skin, prying at it like they might tear free and ooze into the world.

Black blood drips from the inner corner of their right eye. It rolls down to their lip, staining them as it goes. It bubbles like it's still alive. Raphael tries to duck their head, but Michael doesn’t let them, staring in horror as another corrupted tear leaks from their other eye, dragging down along their cheek. Michael wipes his finger through the first one, only succeeding in smearing the mess further over their face.

“I thought I could control them,” Raphael says. “I did. Long enough to free you.” They shake, and softer than anything else they’ve said to him yet, “Michael, it hurts.” Michael pulls them close again. The leviathans writhe inside their grace, hungry. They can smell Michael. If they know he’s afraid, then so will Raphael, and Michael won’t let them believe he can’t save them.

Adam, he says. He touches his vessel’s soul gently, apologetic. Adam’s been quiet for his reunion with Raphael, half out of respect and half out of curiosity. He’s never seen Michael acting as a brother, not really. Memories didn’t count, and his interactions with Lucifer… But with Raphael, Michael has to be their older brother, and he has to protect them right now. He abandoned them once already.

I get it, Adam says. Big slimy monsters with too many teeth. You don’t do this, and they’ll get out and eat everybody. Michael’s grace half-heartedly thrums with humor. Really, he hadn’t even been thinking about the rest of the world.

I will need you to be very quiet, he tells Adam.

Not good at that.

Adam.

Okay. Don’t let them eat me. Michael redoubles his defenses around Adam’s soul. His body… Michael will have to fix that later. He turns his attention back to Raphael. They cough up leviathan’s blood onto his chest. Burns ring around their throat, stretching further down their back, reaching for their wings.

“Let me take some,” Michael says. “We can bear it together, Raphael.” They don’t want to, and he can tell. They curl in on themselves, grace compressing around the souls within them, the disgusting monsters gnawing on their insides. Michael turns their gaze up to face his again and says it more firmly now, “Raphael, give them to me.”

He wonders how long ago he made Raphael believe they had to carry the world and more on their own. Did he even notice? Could he have?

He’ll take it now. It’s not their burden to carry alone. He won’t let them burn out.

He won’t lose them as they lost him.

Michael wipes away more blood from their face. Their lips are covered in it, but that doesn’t stop him from leaning down to press their mouths together. The awful taste is only a precursor as the control Raphael has kept over the souls inside them fails. Michael holds them tightly as the flood comes, power racing from their vessel into his, and with it, the dark and hungry denizens of Purgatory. Raphael convulses as some souls tear themselves out to burrow into Michael instead, but they keep their pain silent, only betrayed by the way their nails dig into the flesh of Michael’s vessel. His throat burns as he swallows down souls. Half of his focus remains on Adam, hiding him and keeping him safe. The leviathans can’t seem to smell his soul out from the countless others struggling inside Michael.

Raphael collapses into him, their mouths sliding apart. Michael takes a deep breath and feels the leviathans everywhere, in his lungs, in his stomach, in his blood. He has no idea how Raphael managed to survive this long and wrangle them to tear the Cage open.

He never should have put them in a position where they had to. Guilt isn't something Michael has let himself feel in a very long time, but it spreads through his grace in the wake of Purgatory’s souls as Raphael leans into him.

“I’m going to make this right, little brother,” Michael tells them. He presses a kiss to Raphael’s temple. He doesn’t know if they can fly, or even stand, but he doesn’t ask that of them. They still hold half the souls, fighting to keep them in check. Michael will do the rest. It’s his responsibility. He gathers them up in his arms. They still fit. They don’t struggle against him, even though Michael will have to take them deeper into Hell, down into Purgatory.

Michael stands at the edge of a drop. The Cage is so far below that the darkness hides it from Michael’s view. He clutches Raphael tight, and he falls.

Lucifer has very little left, but he has Sam and in some ways, that's all that's ever mattered to him. It is all that matters now, since there will be no more Apocalypse, no more freedom, no more future. Only the Cage, its frozen isolation broken by his brother and the humans they both hold close. Lucifer adjusts to Michael's presence faster than he expected. There isn't much room for fighting.

He curls himself around Sam's soul. His body, half Lucifer's own by the time of their fall, is gone. He doesn't know when it happened. The first... Measures of time mean little in Hell, but when they fell, there was a period of confusion and anger and chaos that Lucifer can't remember very clearly. The evidence of it mostly laid in scars along his now calm brother's wings or ones Michael gave him in return. Sam's body was there and then it wasn't. Lucifer keeps his soul tucked even closer than Michael does Adam's because of it, for Sam's own protection. 

He nuzzles against Sam's soul, wings raised over him to keep him hidden from view and near the heart of Lucifer's grace. Sam has long since gotten used to Lucifer's true form, regarding it as familiar, even beautiful, rather than horrifying. Hell has done the best it can to tear him apart, but under Lucifer's constant watch, it never hurts him more than Lucifer can heal. He stitches Sam back together with his own grace, singing softly to him to soothe his pain.

He's scared that he won't be able to keep Sam safe forever.

It's Hell that he's frightened of losing Sam to. He never even considered that there were other forces working overhead to take him away.

He thought he might be allowed some peace, at least, if not his freedom.

Michael rouses first. His movement sends a shockwave through Lucifer's grace. He rises, tucking Sam's soul tighter into himself as he turns to face the being approaching the Cage. The bars obscure their view. Lucifer snarls at Michael for the first time in ages as his brother twists and bumps into him to try and get a better view, only making it harder for Lucifer to see. Michael doesn't even bother to return it. 

A moment later, and Lucifer is as silent as he is, pulling himself back from the bars as the being reaches them. There's nowhere for him to go. Michael presses close to his side. Lucifer feels the strangest urge to hide under his wing, even though he knows Michael wouldn't let him, not anymore. Instead, he reassures Sam with a deep hum, hiding him deeper in his own grace to keep him from feeling Lucifer's own fear.

Because Death has come to the Cage, and It and Lucifer did not part on good terms. 

"Did your vessel-" Lucifer begins to ask, but before he can finish his sentence, Michael cuts him off sharply.

"No." In that, Lucifer can hear how terrified he is. He isn't bothering to hide it. They're staring down the same barrel: an eternity without the only creature in the universe who is meant to understand them. Lucifer can't see Adam. Michael is keeping him away from Death, too.

There is a prison out there that could hold Death. Lucifer broke it with a resounding, bloody crack. The bars of Lucifer's Cage don't stop Its approach. It pauses. Lucifer wonders if It indulges in petty delights like the taste of an archangel's fear. He has never understood It, no matter how well It served his cause. However warped he has become, the core of Lucifer has always been light and creation. That might have been his undoing, wielding Death like an attack dog against humanity when It was much more dangerous to the angel holding Its leash.

"Why are you here?"

"I made a deal with Dean Winchester for his brother's soul," Death tells Lucifer, "and I find him marginally less annoying than I do you." Lucifer can feel Michael bristle beside him with instinctive, unnecessary fury. 

Lucifer has seen Sam's memories a thousand times. He's lived them through Sam's eyes, felt everything Sam did. He knows what it was like to feel Dean's arms around him as he collapsed into the mud and died for the first time. He knows what it felt like to wake up afterwards and have Dean hovering over him, his soul already bargained away. He remembers what it was to have a brother who would do anything to save him.

Dean Winchester would only make a deal with a being like Death for one person, and that's not the half-brother he barely knew.

"You can't have him," Lucifer says. He tries to back away further, but the freezing bars send pain lancing through his grace for getting too close. Sam's soul chirps in concern. Lucifer's grace thrums through every inch of his soul, holding him together. "You can't. He won't survive without me." 

"Dean made the deal knowing that risk. Let him go, Lucifer." Lucifer hisses. He wants to tear Dean apart himself, and he doesn't know if it's for Sam's sake or his own. If keeping Sam is selfish, then he doesn't care. He belongs with Lucifer now. Taking him away will shatter them both. Death watches without much sympathy. "I will take him from you if I have to," It says with the cadence of a weary adult confiscating a toy from a spoiled child.

"Try," Lucifer says, as though he can do anything to stop It.

Lucifer isn't strong enough for Death to bother fighting him. Lucifer is prepared for one, not for Death to reach forward, reach through Lucifer, and pluck Sam out of his grace as easily as one might pull a fruit off a tree branch. It hurts more than anything Lucifer has ever felt before. Sam panics as he's torn from Lucifer's grasp. Lucifer clings on tighter until he hears Sam crying out in pain and feels his grace pulling Sam apart from the inside to try and keep him. If he holds on, then Lucifer will be the one to destroy him. 

He lets go.

"Please," he begs. Death doesn't even look at him once he's not an obstacle anymore. It turns away from Lucifer, and he screams. "No! Give him back!" It's all impotent rage, and it goes as ignored as any of Lucifer's tantrums. Death leaves, taking Sam's soul with It, and Lucifer can't let It. He can't. He charges after Death, straight in to the bars that imprison him. He bashes his grace against them again and again, "Sam! Sam! Sam!" They burn cold against his grace each time, leaving scars each time he rams his entire being against them. If he can only make a crack, he can slip a little of his grace through to go with Sam and keep him safe. He slams himself into the bars harder. 

He can't stop. Sam is fading away. Lucifer can barely hear a whisper of him beyond the bars. He grows more frantic, crashing against the sides of the Cage like a trapped animal, snarling and clawing at the bars as they burn him back, embedding shards of the Cage deep into his grace in an attempt to sedate him. Lucifer batters his wings against the ceiling until broken feathers begin to litter the ground. He can feel his wings ripping apart the harder he lashes out, but he has to get out, he has to get Sam back, he has to-

Lucifer loses himself, blinded by fear and anger, fed by his own pain as it grows worse and worse until he collapses. His grace breaks before the Cage does. He shivers, curling in on himself and whimpering as he's forced to feel the damage he did to himself in horrible clarity as the fight bleeds out of him.

He didn't even make a dent.

Michael comes closer. Lucifer tries to lash out at him. It's not fair. He gets to keep Adam. It's not fair! He can't do much more than weakly beat him back. Michael pushes through it until he's able to wrap himself around Lucifer, pressing his own grace into Lucifer's wounds. Lucifer refuses to acknowledge it.

Michael covers Lucifer with a wing. It feels like an apology. Lucifer doesn't want it. He just wants Sam back.

The spell calls for a few lines of Enochian chanting.

The logical thing in this situation is to call Cas, see if he’s up for doing it. It’s his language, and he’s the one least likely to fuck it up. Dean’s out, because even with the words written out phonetically, he can’t get them to sound quite right. Sam...

“I’ll do it,” he says, just as Dean is about to pass off the role to Castiel. They both glance at him, Dean with a raised eyebrow and Cas’s brow furrowing. Sam’s read and reread the lines over a dozen times now. He can practically feel the words vibrating from where he’s keeping them under his tongue. Dean shrugs.

“Hey, let Sam show off his nerd brain,” he tells Cas. Castiel’s brow furrows even more, if that’s possible.

“Are you sure you know the pronunciation, Sam?” Sam nods. Pronunciation? That was the first lesson, the very basics. Sam could hold a conversation. Sam could recite entire prayers and verses in Enochian. Sam knows the language like he was born speaking it, and sometimes he still talks to himself in it. It brings him back to before.

(“Are you sure this is how it sounds?” Sam asked in English. Lucifer looked annoyed.

“Yes, Sam, I’m sure.”

“It’s just...” Sam licked his lips, turning the words over in his mind, the way they had rolled so easily off of Lucifer’s tongue. “I think I learned some Enochian topside. It didn’t sound like this.”

“Do you really think any human understands our language better than I could? None of you heard it for centuries.” He smiles at Sam, sweet, almost indulgent. “Except for you, now. Don’t you feel special.” It’s only teasing, but Sam focuses, gets his words in order.

“Yes, I do.” He speaks the Enochian the way Lucifer taught him this time. (Because of course, the first thing Lucifer ever taught him to say was yes, even if that can’t mean what it once did anymore.) It doesn’t sound anything like the books he once read said it would, but it sounds right in his mouth the same way it does in Lucifer’s. Lucifer’s smile widens.

“Oh, Sam.” He sounds delighted. Sam finds himself smiling back.)

“I’m sure.” A few hundred, or a thousand years, or an eternity later, because time never really worked in Hell, and Sam forgets more words in English now than he ever does in Enochian. He can even see where whoever translated this spell did it wrong, and he’s already fixing the Enochian in his own head, replacing a few words and changing the sentence structure. He’s not sure how Cas didn’t catch it, but maybe it wasn’t incorrect enough to matter. It matters to Sam.

They go through the motions of setting up the spell, and all the while, those words are buzzing in Sam’s head. It’s the opportunity of it that excites him, a chance to speak aloud a language he’s confined to his own whispers, a chance to show that Lucifer’s lessons were still useful, could still help Sam even when he wasn’t there to talk to anymore. Sam’s thought about asking Castiel to converse with him in Enochian before, briefly. That would invite too many questions, how Sam knows the language beyond spellwork, when he learned, who taught him, and then he’d be staring down the barrel of pity or distrust again. He’s not sure which is worse at this point.

This is an acceptable middle ground. Castiel and Dean won’t question him knowing this. He can say the words out loud, feel the thrum of them in his throat again. Sam wants to hear himself say them. He wants to close his eyes and hear the words echo and pretend, for a moment, that someone will speak back.

(“Tell me something,” Sam said. Lucifer was rearranging a sky that did not really exist above them. He was frowning as the stars darted and flickered in and out. Sam couldn’t tell how close he was getting to the real night sky, but some of it must have been off or Lucifer wouldn’t look so tense. Sam leaned back further into Lucifer, and Lucifer looked at him. The frustration melted away.

“Like what?” His hand came up to stroke Sam’s hair. Sam remembered being scared the first time Lucifer touched him here, not just because it was Lucifer, although, yes, but because it had felt like no physical touch he’d ever experienced. Sam could remember freaking out, but he couldn’t recall what he compared this against, what being touched felt like when you were only flesh and bone and not soul and grace.

“Anything. For practice. I want to see if I can understand it without context.” Lucifer tilted his head. His eyes were nothing like the stars twinkling far away above them. They were closer to supernovas, a never-ending explosion at the core of him, terrifying and glorious.

“The language of angels was made for your tongue,” Lucifer said. “My siblings never made it sound so perfect.” Sam swallowed.

“I was thinking more of a fun fact or something.” Lucifer leaned down to kiss his forehead.

“That is a fact.”)

“Ready?” Dean asks. Sam and Cas both nod. Sam can feel his heart beating faster. A few more seconds. For a moment, he can almost hear Lucifer’s voice, and he worries he’s hallucinating again.

(“Sam.” Lucifer was perched on his bed. Lucifer was still in the Cage. “Talk to me. You’ll forget how otherwise.” Sam glanced towards the motel bathroom. Dean’s shower was loud enough that he wasn’t too worried about being heard, as long as he kept his voice low.

“And if I make a mistake, you’re not going to be able to correct me,” Sam pointed out, “because you are me.” His hallucination inclined his head, accepting the rebuttal. There was a subtle wrongness in the way he moved. Every time Sam saw this version of Lucifer, the gap between him and the real thing grew wider, but Sam couldn’t bring himself to shut this out yet, not when it was all he had, a walking talking memory.

“Do it anyway. It’ll make you feel better.” Sam’s chest ached. It needed to remind him every now and then that there was a hole there that would never be filled back up. That Lucifer was right, and they were the missing pieces of each other, and the moment the puzzle came together, the universe came along and pulled Sam’s piece back out.

“What do I even talk about?”

“Whatever you want. Tell me about your day.” Sam snorted humorlessly.

“You weren’t there. It sucked. Same song-”

“Different verse,” Lucifer finished. Sam knew he goaded the hallucination into it on purpose, if that was even something you could do with a figment of your imagination, but it was just close enough to something the real Lucifer said to ease the hurt a little. Sam bent down to get a change of clothes out of his bag. “I miss you,” Lucifer said, quietly.

“I-” Sam responded.

“What did you say?” Dean interrupted. Sam hadn’t heard his shower end. He shut his mouth. Lucifer was gone.

“Nothing.” It took him a moment too long to translate Dean’s words, find the right response in English. The look Dean was giving him let Sam know exactly how little he believed him.

“Sam, you know you can talk to me...” Dean pushed. Sam straightened, holding his clothing close to his chest.

“You better not have used all the hot water,” he said and fled the scene.)

Sam runs a hand through his hair. Dean gives him the go signal.

He opens his mouth, and the words spill out, and they’re perfect and right and he missed them-

He speaks for about twelve seconds before Cas shouts at him to stop, and he falters in surprise. Cas looks horrified, as though Sam has been slaughtering babies with his bare hands and not simply talking.

“Cas, what’s wrong?” Dean asks, reaching out to put a hand on the angel’s shoulder. Cas startles badly, eyes still locked on Sam. Sam feels himself shrink back from that gaze.

“Where,” Castiel demands, and though his voice is hard as iron, his face is a cascade of expressions, all of them ruled by a combination of horror and confusion, “did you learn that?” Sam can’t breathe.

“From-” He struggles for something, for the right word, and it’s there in Enochian, from another hunter, from a book, anywhere but from Lucifer himself, but he can’t translate any of those thoughts into English fast enough.

“So he mispronounced a few things, Cas, calm down. We’ll start over, and you can say the magic words this time.” Cas shakes his head.

“No. This wasn’t a mispronunciation. It was far too consistent. And... archaic.” Cas almost sounds angry when he continues. “Who taught you this? It’s wrong.” He spits the word out.

“I don’t understand,” Sam says.

“The way you speak hurts. Enochian is harmonious, it’s... beautiful. I can barely stand to hear what you’re saying, Sam.” Dean is giving Sam a weird look now. Sam can’t see a way out of this.

“I can explain.”

“It feels... defiled. I’m not even sure how someone could twist our language like that.” Cas continues.

“Lucifer,” Sam says, "he taught me.” Dean’s mouth twists angrily. Cas looks... less so.

“So, what, that son of a bitch shoved a cursed version of Enochian in Sam’s head?” It’s not cursed or defiled, Sam wants to protest, it was his, it’s ours, it’s the only part of him left in me. He doesn’t say any of that. Castiel and Dean don’t know what happened in the Cage. They know Sam came back with damage, a fuckton of damage, and they’d assumed Lucifer was a part of it, if not the sole cause. Sam’s pretty sure any attempt to defend Lucifer at this point will lead to accusations of Stockholm Syndrome or worse, so he’s keeping quiet.

Castiel is watching him. He still looks shaken, but there’s something else there. Something sad.

“No, Dean,” he says. He takes a deep breath. “Sam, Lucifer was alone for a very long time.”

“So?” Sam knows. Sam was there. Sam was the reason he wasn’t alone anymore, until Dean and Cas tore them apart.

“What you’re speaking is not Enochian.” Cas sounds like he’s trying for gentle and missing by a mile. “Not anymore.”

(“Thank you,” Lucifer said as he trailed a hand down Sam’s bare chest, a tease that may or may not lead to sex.

“For what?” Sam reached down to take his hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing along Lucifer’s fingers and palm and wrist. Lucifer watched him, pleased.

“Many things,” he murmured, “but right now, for talking with me.” He stroked Sam’s cheek, back down his neck and his chest again, fingers tracing the tattoo that had done nothing at all to ever keep him out. “It’s one of the last connections I have to them.” He looked so tired, Sam realized. “They cast me out, Sam. Michael destroyed my wings beyond any hope of healing. They condemned me to silence outside of the revelations of the Host. But they could not make me forget my own tongue.” Sam reached up, pulled Lucifer closer, and the angel came without much protest, laying in Sam’s arms. “I spoke it to myself for centuries, and now, here you are, willing to learn and converse with me.”

“Of course I would. I love you,” Sam said before kissing him. Lucifer sighed happily.

“Beautiful,” he said.)