If you think this is gonna be your average college AU, think again. Nothing with Samifer in it can be a average or conventional love story, anyway. Also, I'm currently two chapters in to writing the whole fic, but I don't want to upload any chapter until I finish the one directly after it. I want to create a long, successful Samifer story and this is the route I'm taking. Once I'm finished with the whole thing, I plan to post it all together on AO3 as an extremely long one-shot. So some details are liable to change once the whole thing is done.

I also don't want to give too many warnings so as to not spoil anything, but just be aware that there will be mentions of drug use, violence, and sex. If you think you'll get triggered then don't read.

This is a new start, Sam told himself when he first began the term at his new college. It's a start, and that's what I need.

It wasn't Stanford, though. That was the main thing irking him. Although if he had been in this situation four years ago when he should have been first going to college, it would be doing far more than irking him. If his options had suddenly shrunk from Ivy League to state universities back then, when his ambition had been at its peak, Sam would likely have gone insane. And hell, it might have driven him to do what got him in the position he was currently in, anyway.

All throughout high school, it had been a dream to go study law at Stanford. He was one of those rare few at genius level—and then in the rare fewer at genius level who also had enough street smarts to know how to not stress himself to death and thus get the right opportunities. And of course, with his family's financial situation (or lack of one at all, really), it was easier to get in. Everyone always jumped to help the poor kid.

But Sam supposed he could pinpoint the moment that all those dreams of success had quite literally been shattered: with the loss of his high school girlfriend, Jess. Academics may have been extremely important to him, but Jess had been his life. He'd loved her, and she'd been the only thing he cared about more than his own life. And then a freaking house-fire had taken that away, just like it had taken away his mother before he was old enough to remember.

That had simply been too much. Sam theoretically could have continued on to Stanford and turned off his grieving long enough to study—but he actually had emotions, and strong ones at that, and so he simply couldn't. The only good thing for him had been to get away, to put law school on hold and go away for a while. And so he'd taken a road trip with his brother, Dean.

Things had gone relatively well for a while. He'd met some girls, started to move on. But they were all one-night stands or weekend-long girlfriends, not really that much attachment involved. Until he'd met Ruby, who didn't turn out to be what she'd seemed at first.

She was poisonous. Sam still didn't know how he'd ever managed to be lured in—perhaps he was attracted to danger like that all along, and it was only then that he could express it? Regardless, he'd let her poison him. He had let her shoot him up, fully aware that she had become less of a girlfriend and more of a dealer with benefits. And man, did she shoot him up. Right before sex, too. It had become just so addicting—he'd known he was hurting himself while he was doing it. He'd think, This is wrong, what would Dean think of me, I'm not this kind of person, right as he was sticking the needle in his vein.

Now, Sam remembered back to those nights in dark, dingy motels and sometimes even warehouses, evil in the dust and dark all around them, and evil in Ruby's eyes and her very being—and then himself, despite everything he'd ever been taught, accepting it willingly. He'd seen it in front of him, recognized it, and still let it all happen. Several times. And he'd think after every time he slept with Ruby that his body would be fucked up in the future. He'd lazily think it, which a sense of indifference, and then fall asleep.

It had taken a huge slap from reality across the face to make Sam realize that he really had to pull the plug on everything he had with Ruby. No more drugs, no more sex, no more mind games. And it had taken Dean, as well as extra help from his brother's boyfriend, Cas. The addiction had become so consuming that only his brother's harsh words and harsher punches had been able to drag him out of the mindset.

Truth was, it had partially been Ruby dying from overdose, weeks after Dean discovered everything and held an intervention, that kept him from going to her any longer. If she had lived, he wouldn't have been surprised at himself for craving it all over again. But luckily she hadn't, and Dean had sent him off to rehab for a year. Rehab had been good for him—he'd regained his sanity, overcome the addiction, and gotten over all the health complications. Well, he'd gotten over them for the most part. Though he still didn't sleep for several days straight sometimes.

Once he'd gotten out of that place, Sam had finally had an opportunity to get his life around. There was no roadtrip to continue—Dean was living with Cas, now. They'd let Sam live with them just long enough to get back on his feet, get a job, go to college.

But when he'd looked for readmissions, he'd discovered (well, he'd guessed beforehand, so—officially confirmed) that his history with hard drugs had made him ineligible for Stanford or any other big-deal colleges. And that was what had led him here, to Kansas University. It wasn't bad—it was just average. Sam Winchester didn't like to be considered average; though he supposed what with all the drug issues, he was on an even playing field now.

Besides, Stanford was a mere disappointment in the past and wasn't his dream anymore.

Right now, Sam's dream was to just have a normal life, after everything that he'd gone through. Average wasn't too bad—really, it was a good start.

Although walking past all these people made Sam start to feel self-conscious, as though all the drugs and other horrible things that he'd done were plain as day, the outer layers of his skin and clothes transparent to show everything underneath. He felt like he was just his past walking around. And then he stepped inside his Law & Criminology classroom and felt grounded, and suddenly it was easier to see that any prolonged stares directed at him were due to his height. After all, he was practically the size of the door.

The discomfort in his stomach gradually dissipated as he waited for the professor to begin the class, and as reality took true hold of everything, Sam felt that he had a grip on things. It was so much easier to feel separated from the life he used to live when he focused on the board, the professor, and his notes. There were no vague voices in his head or jittering feelings in his arm. It felt so refreshing to have control again.

In spite of the drugs he'd taken between then and now, Sam still even remembered quite a few law terms. Enough that he was able to answer a great deal of the professor's "Let's just see what you know so far" questions and impress half of the class—and make the other half jealous. He already heard a couple people muttering "class genius" under their breath, and the epithet made him feel like he was back in high school again, like nothing had ever happened. Being admired on some level was rather important to him.

"I see you've already studied up, Mr. Winchester," said Professor Mills after Sam raised his hand briefly and answered for the sixth time, smiling and just as impressed as the rest. "Do you really even need this class?" There was a soft laugh of assent across the classroom as well as a bit of a collective groan from those who were likely jealous.

And now he was on the spotlight. Sam liked attention, but not necessarily this much—he could handle it, though. "Well, I studied a lot of Law in high school, but I still need this class to major in it."

Sam's confidence seemed to make him even more of the class star, for he noticed that a couple girls in the classroom were hiding smiles under their hands and glancing to him now.

"Fair enough," Professor Mills said, and she resumed going over the basics with everyone else.

When the class ended two and a half hours later, those girls were still staring and smiling, and all Sam could do was smile back. He didn't know if pursuing a romantic relationship would be good for him at the moment—it seemed like a good idea just to stay single and dependent only on himself and his grades for a while, just as his therapists in rehab had said. If he wanted to live as normally as possible, he needed to keep from becoming even slightly bent to the will of anyone who wasn't a legitimate authority. Even the shyest girl possible would indirectly impose on him to adhere to her needs, and Sam didn't want to subject himself to control that wasn't his own, nor did he want anyone else to have to deal with him. He couldn't unleash his inner demons on anyone else when he was still dealing with them himself.

But a friend… just a normal friend would be nice. So far his roommate, Adam Milligan, seemed like a good guy, but perhaps he could find a friend who was actually in one of his classes.

As though drawn in by Sam's thought, he felt a tap on the back of his arm as he walked out of the classroom and turned around to see one of the boys who had sat near him. He was a bit on the chubby side but looked all-around friendly and like the sort of person he'd have hung around in high school. In fact, Sam might have guessed by his face that the boy was still in high school.

"Hey—for real, man, why do you know so much about Law already?" he asked conversationally and with a hint of real curiosity. "You sound like you've taken this exact course before. And judging by your age, I'd say you did."

Okay, not so conversationally and more real curiosity. Sam almost started panicking, as he felt that someone was getting to know who he really was already. He certainly wasn't going to tell this guy any more than he felt the need to. So he gripped his backpack more tightly and glanced over to him.

"Yeah, I did take a couple years of Law before," he finally told the guy. "But several credits don't really count for me anymore for personal reasons, so I have to re-take a lot of shit."

Apparently satisfied with that answer, the guy simply nodded and returned his gaze to the ground, not planning on asking him more personal questions—for which Sam was glad. But then he quickly looked up, as though remembering something, and then turning and stopping to hold his hand out and say, "I'm Gary. And—your name's…?"

"Sam," he told him, grasping Gary's hand and shaking it firmly. When he let go, the younger boy grimaced and had to shake his hand out, which made Sam smirk in amusement that his handshakes could still do that. And, well, that it looked like he was making a friend. As they continued walking, it occurred to him—"Hey, how could you tell that I was older? Is it really that obvious?"

Gary just shrugged. "You look too worn to be someone who just got out of high school, I guess."

With that, Sam told Gary that he was going to head out to the cafeteria, and on the way, he tried to keep that sinking feeling of his own transparency take over.

The non-incident with Gary was forgotten as Sam proceeded to have what felt at first like it was going to be very good first day of term. When he took his seat to eat in the hour he had before his next class, several girls seemed keen to sit near him, and though his interest in any of them was restrained and not necessarily romantic (though one of them reminded him a little of Jess, and he told himself that perhaps she would be worth going after once he'd sorted his own head out), he felt relaxed and like he didn't have sixteen bats in the belfry.

Sane human interaction was good. It was development. His rehab therapists would be proud.

But Sam still felt a sort of separation from the rest of the room as the girls talked to him and he talked back, as though he wasn't entirely there. His body and his mind functioned fine, and none of the girls were tipped off that he wasn't all there, but he felt a foot or two above his physical body. This had been a problem way back when after Ruby died and he'd first been admitted into the rehabilitation center—he'd had to tether his mind to his body sometimes, to keep it from floating away entirely.

It wasn't that Sam was suddenly itching for another fix or going through withdrawal after all this time, but rather that he was in a somewhat unfamiliar situation and he supposed it was difficult not to drift away with his scarred state of mind. He couldn't remember the last time he'd held a normal conversation with more than two normal people at once.

"I really like the long-hair look," the one who reminded him of Jess said with a laugh, gesturing like she really wanted to touch it. Sam was used to it—a lot of girls did. "Most guys grow out their hair and either look like a fedora-douchebag or Jesus, but you actually pull it off."

"You do kind of look like Jesus, though," her friend giggled, and Sam fought the urge to laugh out loud and tell them how wrong they were. Sure, he was better now, but he was significantly closer to being the Devil than the son of God.

When his awkward smile twitched and faltered, the girl looked alarmed and said, "Oh—sorry, are you religious? I didn't mean to be offensive, I just—"

"No, it's fine," he reassured her, briefly hiding his expression under a sip of the coke he'd gotten from a vending machine. "I'm really not. I mean—I believe in a higher power and everything, I just don't… worship it, I guess."

With that, he only felt more awkward and sunk slightly into his seat. His religious beliefs weren't relevant to the conversation and yet he'd gone and explained them like he wanted attention or something, just like he'd always ended up doing even in high school—"

"Oh, cool—me too, pretty much." The one who reminded him of Jess smiled and leaned forward over the table, and Sam recognized it as a subtle flirting tactic. "I always explain it that it's like how I believe in unicorns, but that doesn't mean I worship them."

Sam let out a genuine laugh at that, and it felt nice. But with the warmness that bubbled up in his chest, rather than feeling more grounded, it was as though he felt himself get pulled back to the ground for one moment before being let go and drifting away again. He couldn't get the rope out far enough to tether himself and draw himself back again before the girls got up and left to go to one of their classes.

Once they were gone, Sam inhaled like it was his first breath in several minutes, and he was on the ground again. He looked down and saw a slip of paper slightly tucked under his lunch tray, which turned out to be a phone number.

On the top read "Amelia"—Now the one who reminded him of Jess had a name. The paper felt crisp in his hand, the means to two very different futures in mind, and something he hadn't seen in a long time. Not just the phone number itself, but the symbol of interest and the potential of a relationship.

There had been a pale sense of affection between them moments before, and Sam had even looked forward to getting to know her. But now that this girl who reminded him—only vaguely, now that he thought about it—of Jess and whom he'd only met less than an hour ago had left him a definite means to pursue that… he couldn't feel sure of anything. The whole conversation just felt stale now.

It was his past talking, he was sure. It was whatever was left of the drugs—not the chemicals, obviously, since those were all gone—no, nothing physical. But all the baggage that stuff had left behind in his brain and all the memories with Ruby and his old life, that year on the road… yeah, it was all that. Sam knew it, and he knew he could never get rid of that part of his life permanently. It wasn't good, and he knew he should have been trying to block it out, but it would always be there.

He stared at the phone number that suddenly held a heavy weight in his hands, a very clear yes or no ringing out in his mind. Trash it or slip it into your pocket to save for the day that you feel mentally healthy enough to not be a burden to anyone.

The part of him that was still grounded made him check his phone for the time, and in his rush to the next class that he had forgotten began in fifteen minutes, he barely even thought as he balled up the paper between three fingers and tossed it in the trashcan. As he left the cafeteria, Amelia seemed to fade until she wasn't even a name in his mind anymore, but rather the one who actually wasn't like Jess at all, now that he thought about it even more.

Lessons kept him grounded, it seemed. Individual people, however, didn't necessarily. Or at least not ones who held romantic interest in him. Because Sam did just fine with his English 101 class and speaking to the professor as well as other students, and he only felt like briefly slipping away once or twice.

The only sense of his old normality he couldn't hold was anything to do with relationships. The mere idea of it scared him—of what he might do to the other person, and what he might do to himself. That was why he needed to remain disinterested. As if he really needed to control that anymore.

There was only a half-hour break in between English 101 and his last lesson of the day, and Sam decided to use that time to just head straight to the class. It would take him over ten minutes anyway, considering the size of the university, and he didn't really have much to do with his time so far. No real friends to mill about with yet. He tried to think of whether or not he even really wanted that and couldn't come up with an answer.

Frankly, Sam decided as he took a seat on one of the higher tiers of the Greek Mythology classroom, today had actually been more peaceful than expected. It felt remarkably normal compared to what could have happened; and he would know, since he'd spent the night before uncontrollably envisioning all the worst-case scenarios. And normal, as he'd thought many times so far today, was what he wanted, now. So important that he nearly scribbled that on the right-hand corner of his paper rather than his name, which he habitually wrote on every paper he used for anything school-related. That was something he was taught in middle school and never ended up forgetting. It was one of those small things that would stick with him forever despite it not really mattering anymore.

Sam remembered how he'd get shit simply for being the sort of student to write his name on everything. Once in high school, when things got difficult and people around him really began slacking off, it was suddenly socially unacceptable to care about your grades enough to put your name on everything. He'd actually forgotten if it had been like that the first time he went to college, too. So he didn't know if people still cared. It was a stupid, small thing to worry about, but he wasn't even worrying. It was just dumb curiosity over something that didn't even matter more than to remind him of the time before his life had gone to shit.

In his musings over the social implications behind involuntarily writing your name on every paper you wrote on, Sam almost didn't notice someone sit right next to him and shortly glance to smile in slight greeting to him. At once, his eyes scanned the room to see it was full. Barely—there were only about three others so far.

"There are plenty of other spaces to sit," said Sam, feeling as though his voice wasn't under his own control. He hadn't meant to say that—he wouldn't want to sound rude, but it just annoyed him when something like this happened. But before he could apologize, the other man simply leaned back and smiled, his eyes dark and his soul behind them looking bruised, and shrugged.

"I like this seat," he explained, looking amused at the question. His voice came out more demanding than Sam expected.

"Oh." Fair enough. Sam's eyes raked over the man's hair which wasn't all that different than Dean's besides that it was blonde and then flicked back to his face. "How many years have you been at KU?"

"This is my first day." The man spoke like he was taking a low drag of a cigarette as he talked, and even as he frowned in confusion, Sam felt himself physically drawn in just slightly, as though to the smoke that wasn't even there.

"Then… how do you know that you like this seat?" he asked slowly.

"Because you're sitting in the one next to it."

It was almost more of a question, with how the guy shrugged again. But then he winked and bent down to rummage through his bag for paper. And Sam couldn't tell for the life of him whether that was real flirting or a joke, so he just stared. His confusion boiled down until he was pretty much checking the guy out, actually thinking of him as a valid option in spite of his promise to himself to stay out of a relationship. Sam had never fancied himself attracted to guys, nor had he ever really experimented, but he wasn't afraid of the possibility of it. He wasn't going to have a huge sexuality crisis like his brother had.

If Sam was told to describe the way this guy looked, he would have said smoke and rough edges. His facial structure wasn't as strong as that normally would have implied, but he simply just seemed rough. His stubble was slight, like it was smoke grazing the bottom of his face. And when he sat back up and looked at Sam again, a smirk twitching on his lips, he noticed the fluidity with which his expression changed and how everything seemed simultaneously natural and deliberate.

It might not have been flirting—maybe the guy was just messing with him. Sam didn't want to get his hopes up. But in the next second he remembered that he wasn't even supposed to be pursuing this sort of thing in the first place.

I'm not pursuing it, though, part of him thought—an old, wicked part that he'd thought he'd stowed away back when he'd quit the drugs. It came to me.

Shut up, you don't even know the guy's name.

As though the part of him that seemed to be an escaped convict from the confines of his past had willed it, it was right then that Sam noticed the other man scribbling his name down in the corner of his paper. Just like he had done, minutes ago. He briefly forgot all about the possible flirtation and was simply amused that this man still had the same habit, even after high school, like him.

And then the man noticed him noticing, and Sam felt he needed to say something to make it less awkward—though it didn't seem any less like he had just been looking at this other guy's paper and reading his name.

"So—Luc, is that French?" he wondered, actually somewhat interested. The last name Morgan seemed kind of French, too, so he figured.

"No, it's short for Lucifer," the other man said indifferently, though quirking his eyebrow and smirking slightly, "so I guess you could say it's Latin." His look didn't so much dare Sam to say "And Satanic," but rather said that he hoped Sam was impressed.

"Woah—uh, so, did your parents purposely name you after Satan, or…?"

"Or were they just oblivious?" Luc laughed, and there was something about it that threw Sam off—it wasn't that the laugh didn't reach his eyes, but that the laugh did reach his eyes. He hadn't expected it to, what with the dullness that had been in the man's eyes before. "Nah, my mom knew. She was raised religious, even. I guess it was a sort of a rebellion thing, to be a little Satanist and not like her parents. S'not like there's a law against it…. Granted, she was sixteen, and sixteen year-olds tend to be stupid."

It was surprising how willing Luc was to share all that with him, only having just met him—surprising until Sam found himself completely willing to tell him personal things as well. Like there was already no wall between them. And then he almost tried to tug himself back to the ground when he realized he wasn't even floating away at all.

"I guess it's still a pretty cool name, though," Sam offered, a laugh that was more like a brief exhale reaching the air as he spoke. "Must freak most people out when you tell them."

At that, Luc grinned and his eyes darted to the left, as though he was remembering. "My elementary school years were great. All the kids with religious parents weren't allowed to be my friend—seriously, some of them actually thought I was the Devil. Teachers insisted I go by my middle name, Nick…. And a lot of them ended up calling my mom just to see what my home life was like—I guess they assumed anyone who named their child after Satan couldn't be a good parent."

He stopped there and stared at the desk, his eyes looking as though they had come to a point in the memories that he couldn't go past. Like the record was stuck.

Sam recognized that look as one of pensive sadness and figured he should leave it alone, but still ended up shifting himself in his seat and asking, "Was she?"

Luc sighed, but didn't seem all that reluctant to answer—for which Sam was relieved. "Not really. She did a lot of drugs and died of overdose when I was a teenager."

His face read apathetic at first, but then he looked to Sam with dull eyes again and raised both eyebrows, his eyes suddenly boring into Sam's like he knew. Like he knew that Sam had a past with drugs and right now he was remembering a dealer/girlfriend/whatever-she'd-been dying of overdose. He wasn't going to acknowledge it out loud. It wasn't even as though he felt uncomfortable sharing that (despite the fact he'd only just met the guy), but rather that he didn't feel it needed to be said.

"So, uh, how did you get on without your mom? Fostercare, or—?"

"Nah, just lived on my own. Wasn't that hard." Luc's voice had its original quality back, which for some reason had Sam relieved. Though he nodded sympathetically, understanding what it was like to pretty much be all on your own. Both of his parents were dead, and Dean was hundreds of miles away with his husband. All of his old friends wanted nothing to do with him anymore.

By then the classroom was pretty much full, and it wasn't long until the professor walked in and wrote his name on the board to start the lesson. It gave Sam an excuse to not carry on with the same conversation and instead just steal glances at Luc while still paying attention to what the professor was saying.

From the exact side, Luc looked peaceful and fairly normal. But with a tilt of his head and a slight mussing up of his hair, he looked like he could be an escaped convict. And God, every time he ran a hand through his hair, Sam had to look away for fear of staring for too long or reaching forward himself. And then his peripheral vision would catch Luc's slight turn of head to notice him noticing, and Sam knew that he knew.

Smoke and rough edges, Sam thought, confirming his earlier impression to himself. It made Luc's face dynamic. And it made Sam want to stare.

It was such a consuming urge that it overrode the surprise he should have felt that he was attracted to a man, that he was actually attracted to anyone right now—and that he felt perfectly intact and not at all like he was floating away. He could barely even remember what that had felt like earlier with the one who sort of reminded him of Jess but then didn't. He was grounded every time Luc said anything to him and he felt like he always had been.

Luc would lean to the left and mutter a clever comment about what the professor was saying, and Sam would feel like grinning and letting out a single, loud laugh. But he contained it for the sake of not drawing attention to himself and instead simply let out more breath than usual as a silent giggle.

The class had nearly passed entirely when he felt Luc's fingers lightly tap on his forearm. Before anything else, it made Sam's muscles seize up as though those fingers had injected something into him. And he was fairly sure that it was noticeable, considering how large his muscles were and how easily his sleeves got tight when they strained, but he turned to look at Luc as though he hadn't reacted strangely at all, ignoring the look of recognition in the man's eyes.

He was pointing to the other end of their tier of desks, where a guy was practically all the way hunched over his desk, sleeping, and very obviously drooling. When Sam saw, he snickered, and Lucifer's wicked gaze caught him like a trap.

"And on the first day, too. I'm gonna take a picture," he said, pulling out his phone. Sam was briefly reminded of high school and felt that sense of old normality for a second.

"D'you think we should wake him up?" Sam suggested. "He looks pretty out of it."

"Nah—what you do in this situation is let everyone leave the room and turn the lights off, so when he wakes up he'll think he slept all day and no one's on the campus anymore."

While Sam was generally more of a decent person than that, the idea made him laugh again, his expression matching Luc's. Something twisted in his brain, and he could practically feel his view on the matter being genuinely changed—if Luc thought it was funny, then yeah, it was definitely funny. That guy deserved it for sleeping in class, not to mention so ridiculously.

There was something about the way Luc looked at him then that got Sam nearly reeling. He'd noticed, throughout the couple hours of the Greek Mythology lesson, that there was a difference between what he felt when Luc talked to him and when he'd impressed everyone in his Law class earlier. Hours ago, he'd felt like he weighed enough to safely stay on the ground, like he didn't have to pull himself back. Now, he felt as though Luc had grabbed him by a rope that was fused to his chest and pulled him down forcibly. He still didn't feel he weighed enough, but it wasn't Sam tying himself down. It was Luc.

Lucifer had control of whether he stayed on the ground or not. And he could tug him along everywhere.

But really, finally thought Sam as he and everyone else (but for the guy who was still asleep) left the classroom, why for a guy I just met? And then he wondered why it had only just occurred to him, and he was silently answered by the vague awareness of the hold that Luc's eyes alone had on him, the way a simple touch had made him feel.

"See you Thursday," was all Sam thought to say as they parted ways outside the classroom, lighting hitting his arm as he did.

He was answered with a smile that stood out sharply on Luc's face and shimmered in his eyes before he turned around and Sam could only see the back of his head.

I hope you've enjoyed it so far, and if you have anything to say about the chapter, please do so in a review! I live off feedback.