Fic: Copper and Ash
Title: Copper and Ash
Fandom/Pairing: Supernatural (Dean/Sam)
Author: casey679
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Bloodplay, D/s
Length: 3.7k words
Series: Wild Times at the Impala
Community: Saturday Night Specials
Summary: There were no rules that governed waking up with the coppery taste of blood coating your tongue, and more of it dried and flaking down your jaw. No hard-and-fast rules for realizing that the gash in your side that you thought might just kill you was now pink and scarred like a few days had passed with a few short hours of sleep, even the holes around the small, neat row of stitches looking healthy and healed. And there were definitely no guidelines for handling the foggy memory of a man writhing above and underneath you, his hands and mouth sticky and red, hot and passionate, almost too pretty to be real and too wild to be human.
One of the first things John Winchester taught his son was that life could generally be divided into two categories: times when you could wing it, and times when you needed to follow the rules – not necessarily the law, mind you, just the rules to a particular situation. The key, John said, was figuring out which category applied to a given situation before you got too deep in the shit to dig yourself back out. Dean was two years into his deployment before he understood the biggest flaw with that philosophy: sometimes you didn't know the rules you needed to worry about until you were already waist deep in the shit without a shovel.
There were no rules that governed waking up with the coppery taste of blood coating your tongue, and more of it dried and flaking down your jaw. No hard-and-fast rules for realizing that the gash in your side that you thought might just kill you was now pink and scarred like a few days had passed with a few short hours of sleep, even the holes around the small, neat row of stitches looking healthy and healed. And there were definitely no guidelines for handling the foggy memory of a man writhing above and underneath you, his hands and mouth sticky and red, hot and passionate, almost too pretty to be real and too wild to be human.
A smart man would write the whole thing off as a wacky emo-vampire-Peter Pan-wannabe hallucination brought on by blood loss and the last bit of lucy working its way out of his system and high-tail it the fuck out of there. And Dean was a smart man. Usually, anyway.
If anyone asked him later why he hadn't done exactly that, why he'd instead stood and staggered further down the creepy and dark halls looking for a man who might or might not be a hallucination, he decided to blame it on the blood loss.
Walking through the place was an experience. He'd had no idea what the place was when he found it yesterday, just happened along the dirt path by accident when a tugging in his gut told him he could find a place to lick his wounds if he veered off the main road. At first he thought it was some kind of hospital, or maybe an asylum – it was the best explanation for the locks on the doors and the stains on the floors. Then he found the rooms full of tiny desks and beds and blackboards and didn't know what to think.
Whatever this place was, it wasn't good.
Dean had crashed – even hid out – in condemned buildings before. They were always dirty, unloved, forgotten places, decrepit and gutted out, like a weeks-old corpse carved down to tattered flesh and bones by animals and the weather. There was no soul left in places like that, just walls and a roof and busted up furniture.
This place, though, wasn't like that at all. It was a fucking crime scene. Closets with chains in them, and little tally marks carved in the wall, a foot off the floor. Dried brown stains on mattresses that had soaked through to the underside. A fucking pair of grates in the floor in one room, each with a busted padlock on top and a four-by-four fucking hole underneath. The atrocities just went on and on.
And ludicrously, right in the middle of it, there was a wall with a bunch of hatch marks like you'd see in any happy family home – Scott 2'10", Ava 3'2", Gina 3'2", Sam 3'3", Lily 4'11", Jake 4'7, Ruby 4'8", Max 5'1", Jake 5'8", Sam 6' – years of growth marked off. The names went on and on, 16 years' worth of names… only not all the names kept going.
Which one, he wondered, was his mysterious benefactor, and why was he the only one still here?
Dean cleared his throat. "Hey man, you here?" He had his gun out, cradled close to his stomach and pointed down in an attempt at being non-threatening. He didn't want to freak the guy out – assuming he existed – but there was no way in hell he was going to walk around this shithole unarmed. "That whole blood thing's not really my scene, but I got a feeling I oughta be thanking you for that, y'know?"
He nudged a door open and slipped inside, back to the wall. One quick glance told him it was the kitchen. There was an overly large refrigerator, the fridge side empty, freezer full of TV dinners and popsicles. The sink was clean, with a few dirty dishes in it, another argument for the man actually existing here. On the other side of the kitchen there was an oven, microwave, pantry, butcher's block – and oh yeah, a pair of fucking meat hooks on chains hanging down against the far wall, with a fucking drain underneath. Like it was totally normal and not something out of a nightmare.
Two doors down from that, he found what was left of the library. Someone had set all the books on fire, or tried to, anyway. Most of the titles were ruined, but about a third of them… weren't. They were sooty and smelled a bit like gas, like someone had tried to light 'em up and then changed their mind. Or maybe, like the books themselves had refused to burn.
He leaned forward, entranced, reaching out to pluck the nearest intact book off the shelf. It was some kind of strange leather, mottled peach-tan and weathered like it had spent too many days in the sun, with strange glyphs running down its spine. He needed to open it, needed to find out what was inside. He could almost feel it vibrate with excitement as his fingers neared, and then –
– and then he heard the sound of his motorcycle turning over outside.
"Motherfucker."
Dean sprinted back the way he came, book forgotten. "I don't care who you are. Steal my bike and I will hunt you down to the bowels of hell itself and end you!"
If Ruby and Meg were still there, Sam would never have lived down his behavior that morning. Letting the man stay in the orphanage – hell, letting the man live in the first place instead of slitting his throat – that was all bad enough. But avoiding the man, hiding out like a coward until he had wandered off down the hall simply because his heart started beating faster every time he looked at him… that was just embarrassing.
He pressed his hand down comfortingly on the bandana the man had wrapped around his left wrist. His skin itself was long healed, rendering it utterly unnecessary as a bandage. It wasn't even that comfortable, stiff and scratchy from the blood that had soaked through, more purple than blue from it all. But despite all that, he couldn't bear to take it off. It felt right there, knot sitting tightly over the place where the man's teeth had sunk into his skin.
One step away from a collar, Samuel, he imagined Lilith's smug voice in his head. He felt himself stiffen in his jeans at the concept.
Lilith wouldn't have judged him for it, though; all of his brothers and sisters were quite aware of Sam's proclivities. The Sisters had made sure that their education on the flesh and all of its vagaries was more than complete. Some were born to control and others were born to – be useful. It was the natural order of things. Submitting to another's will didn't make you less powerful in the slightest.
It made you a weapon.
If Father had loved all of his children equally… if Sam had not seen their graves… if Lily had not died… Sam would have been his weapon, willingly, happily. He know, objectively, he should care about the rest of the world, if only because Father and the Sisters had tried so hard to grind all of that out of them. And maybe if he'd actually gone out and seen the world, he would. For all of his life, though, his orphanage had been his world. Sam cared about the people who were his – his brothers and sisters. He'd foolishly included Father in that as well. All of the tests, all of the trials, the things that were endured rather than enjoyed… they were meant to make him stronger, and they had.
They'd made him strong enough to turn the weapon that he was against Father in the end.
He didn't need a new yoke around his neck now. It was just the blood talking, it had to be. Better to let time and distance sever the bond before it could solidify.
He grabbed the man's bloody shirt and jacket and slipped outdoors, stalking back to the shed where he'd hidden the bike. He rolled it back around to the front, stuffing the clothes into the leather bag on the back. Then he tilted his head.
He'd never ridden a motorcycle before. He swung a leg over it and rested on it, putting his hands on the handlebars. Imagined it thrumming between his legs, speeding down the highway, arms around-
That was enough of that. He found the key and turned the engine over, only fumbling it twice before it roared to life. And then he waited, enjoying the way the engine's roar echoed through the forest.
He was ready with a smirk when the man came bursting out of the orphanage, an outraged look on his face. And when the punch came, he didn't dodge.
It was better this way.
Dean couldn't figure the guy out. It wasn't like he hadn't seen him or his fist coming from yards away. He hadn't even tried to swerve out of the way, just shut the engine down and let the momentum from the blow knock him off balance, toppling him off the bike.
Dean grabbed the bike to stabilize it, glaring at the kid as he smirked at him from the ground where he'd landed. Something didn't add up, something about the kid's posture…
Damn, he needed to get his engine tuned up. There was a hitch in it, something rattling like- Keeping his eyes on the kid, he reached his hand towards the ignition to turn the bike off so he could think.
Wait-
Everything happened at once then. Dean realized that his bike was already off, and Sam's head whipped to the side, eyes growing big as they both realized they were hearing a second motorcycle, and a gravelly voice roared out with malice, "DEAN WINCHESTER!"
The kid was on his feet instantaneously. He looked at Dean, then at the bike, and mouthed the word, "Go."
"Fuck no," Dean said calmly. "That's the guy I threw down with last night. This is my fight. You go."
The kid – man – snarled at him and made some complicated gesture that Dean was pretty sure meant "Fuck no yourself and fuck you for not fucking listening because blah blah-" and Dean stopped paying attention at that point, turning away to rummage in his saddlebag for more ammo. This was his fight and matter what freaky things had gone down between them last night (the taste of copper warm and wet in his mouth) he wasn't going to run.
"Look this guy's bad news and a fucking card cheat but I can take him." He reloaded quickly, keeping watch on the direction the cycle sounded like it would appear. "He got the jump on me last night because I got cocky and didn't take him seriously, but-" he took a stance, gun stabilized in both hands, and thumbed the safety off- "that ain't gonna be a problem this time."
The kid dove to the side when the cycle burst through the trees, riderless, but Dean stood still. Another reason to take the guy down, treating his bike like that. Guy oughta be ashamed.
"I WANT MY MONEY WINCHESTER!"
Dean knew a guy like Clark wouldn't have jumped until the last second – the fucker loved playing things right up to the edge – so the moment he knew the bike wasn't going to him, he ignored it and kept his eye on the trees, looking for signs of something man-sized moving through them.
There.
Fool me once, Dean thought, remembering the lancing pain as he'd walked out of the men's room, straight into a knife sliding deep into his abdomen. The moment the trees parted, he lined up the shot, aimed, and…
Three clean shots – forehead, neck, chest – just like his dad had taught him. He could see the blood spray behind the guy as the bullets hit home.
And then the fucker kept on coming.
Behind Dean, Sam rolled his eyes as the bullets punched right through the man. He'd tried to tell Dean. Then again, Sam had smelled him coming and known that bullets weren't going to do much.
He let Ruby's knife fall into his hand and waited, running his fingers over the runes she'd painstakingly carved into it.
The demon wearing this Clark dude stopped when he got about 20 yards away from them and chuckled.
"Well, shit, Winchester, I just wanted my money back, but you just won me the jackpot." He kept his eyes firmly on Sam. "Samael, as I live and breathe. Where's your daddy, boy? Not like him to let the riff-raff in." He nodded his head at Dean. "Or is he just a snack?"
Sam gave him the finger.
"Whoops, sorry," the demon said, not sorry in the least, his eyes homing in on Sam's neck. "Nice necklace you got there, Sammy. Daddy got tired of you talking back?"
Another shot rang out, Dean's bullet piercing cleanly through the back of his mouth and on out the other side.
"All right, that one pissed me off." The demon threw his hand forward, and Dean went flying backward with a startled, "What the-"
Sam risked a glance to make sure that Dean was okay, which was exactly the wrong thing to do, because when he looked back, Clark was right in front of him, grabbing him by the wrist and twisting it until it cracked.
The knife fell from his suddenly numb fingers.
Pitch black eyes bored into his. "Oh, I see how it is. Daddy ain't home, is he? Devils away and the freaks will play." He twisted Sam's wrist again, smirking as another boned cracked. "You wanna play, I know all kinds of games to share with you." He clenched his jaw and grimaced, opening his mouth to show his tongue half-bitten through, and spit a mouthful of blood at Sam, who turned his face away just in time.
Ignoring the red rivulets dripping down his cheek, Sam leaned forward and whispered, "Daddy's dead. We drank him dry." And then he slammed his forehead into him, wrenching his wrist free and sweeping the demon's feet out from under him.
He raised his shoulder and rubbed his cheek against it, careful not to get any of the blood in his mouth. It smelled delicious, mouth-wateringly good – but not as good as Dean's.
He kicked the knife back towards Dean and held his left hand out, willing the power to come. His "special gift," as Father liked to call it. It had been months since he'd bothered using it – months since he'd needed to – but it curled up to his command like a cat wanting to be petted, lifting the man to his feet and holding him there, immobilized.
"I'm not going to be the last, you know," the demon said, his bitten tongue slowly seaming itself back together. "Anyone could find this place now – it's laid wide open."
Sam gestured with his hand and sent the demon flying sideways, slamming him into the closest wall. He felt something give behind his eyes, and blood trickled out of his nose. Okay, so maybe more like an angry cat resentful about being ignored.
He opened up his mouth to respond and-
"Fine by me," Dean said, stepping forward and plunging Ruby's knife into the man's side. "This place is a shithole anyway."
-eh, that was better than anything Sam was going to come up with.
The blade glowed white as smoke erupted out of the demon, trying to flee into the ground, but Sam was ready. He grabbed onto it and pulled, letting his powers shred it tuft by tuft until there was nothing left but ashes. Then he swayed once, twice, and fell back onto his ass.
Dean stared down numbly at the knife in his hand, trying to figure out what just happened. Then he pulled it out of Clark slowly and watched as the body slid to the ground, lifeless. A second later, holes opened up in his forehead and chest as the bullet holes Dean knew had to have been there seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
He realized his mouth was hanging open, and shut it with a clack. Clean-up first, freak out later.
Right. First things first. He leaned down and wiped the bloody knife against the man's jeans and went to toss it back to the kid but thought better of it and slipped it through his belt for the moment. Then he walked over to the man's motorcycle and turned it off, enjoying the sudden quiet.
The man – what had the guy called him, Samael? – was sitting on the ground, breathing heavily and clenching his right arm. It didn't look good – he wasn't sure but maybe that was bone sticking through? "Yeah, okay, let's get you upright. I don't make a habit of sitting around by dead guys as a matter of course."
He glanced over at the dead body, which was remarkably just getting deader by the minute. The throat was a mess of bloody tissue, and there were stains showing up all over his torso.
Sam looked up at him, grinning. His skin was worryingly pale, and his eyes were a little unfocused, like maybe he'd concussed himself – probably from that wicked headbutt he'd gotten in earlier. That was probably also the reason for the nosebleed, he reasoned. It had dripped down over his mouth and throat, making him look a little bit of a horror show vampire.
Memories of the night before surfaced at the sight, Sam pressing his wrist to Dean's mouth, Sam – fuck, now was not the time to be getting an erection, Dean thought – Sam perched on top of him, Dean's wrist to his mouth–
He wanted to lick it off Sam's jaw, wanted to run his tongue over every bright red drop and lap it up like it was wine. Wanted to smear it down his chest with his mouth, paint his cock with it and lap it up–
Well, if he was a vampire, maybe Dean was too.
It wasn't normal, this thing with the blood and the sex and all. It had never done anything for Dean before Sam, and some small part of Dean knew he should be freaking out about it, but he just – wasn't.
Instead, he stared back at the body, eying it suspiciously. "That guy ain't gonna stand back up again, is he?"
Sam shook his head and whispered, "No. He's gone."
"So you do talk." Dean smiled. It had seemed like the guy was having a conversation earlier, but Dean hadn't been able to hear any of it.
Sam held out his good hand and wobbled it in the universal symbol for eh, a little. "Hurts, sometimes."
"Then you can whisper in my ear and I'll do the talking for ya." He took Sam's good left hand in his and led him back toward the orphanage. "Let's get you patched up." He held the door open for Sam to pass through. "I wasn't lying, though. This place is a shithole. We're not staying here any longer than we gotta."
Dean looked up from the bandages he was wrapping around Sam's hand. "Don't think this gets you outta telling me what the fuck was up with all that smoke and shit." He taped the edge of the bandage into place. "I'm okay with us being far away from here before we have that talk, though. This place gives me the creeps. "
Sam thought of the way Father had forbidden them to talk about anything they learned, even with the other demons that came through sometimes. Then he thought about how nice it had felt fighting side-by-side with Dean. Thought about how willing Dean was to offer him up his blood, not even knowing what it would do if it meant that Sam would be in less pain. Answering his questions was the least Sam could do… and it wasn't like Father was around anymore to punish him if he did.
"Sure," he said lowly. "But… later."
Dean slapped the desk lightly. "Okay, you're good. You grab whatever you need, and I'm gonna go find a place to stash Clark's bike – you can't steer it until we can fix your wrist up better, but we can come back for it later. Not sure what to do about Clark, though."
Sam stood up and staggered to the kitchen, digging messily through the spices until he found the cannister of salt. He tossed it to Dean. "Salt it, then torch it."
Dean raised an eyebrow.
Sam shrugged. "Less ghosts."
Dean snorted and left – but he took the salt.
Sam sat down heavily, staring pensively at his wrists. The blue bandana was still tied around the left one, and brand new bandages were now wrapped securely around the right. both tied in place by Dean. One step away, Lilith's imaginary voice teased.
So? Sam mentally shrugged right back.
Dean had said Us. We. Like it was already a given that where he went, Sam would follow.
We. Sam leaned back, liking the sound of it. He thought of Meg and Andy meeting Dean. They'd like him. Max would bitch, but he'd like him too.
"Yeah," he whispered to himself. "Let's go."
The bond between them flared even brighter, wrapping itself a little tighter around his heart.
It felt right.
~fin~
Fandom/Pairing: Supernatural (Dean/Sam)
Author: casey679
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Bloodplay, D/s
Length: 3.7k words
Series: Wild Times at the Impala
Community: Saturday Night Specials
Summary: There were no rules that governed waking up with the coppery taste of blood coating your tongue, and more of it dried and flaking down your jaw. No hard-and-fast rules for realizing that the gash in your side that you thought might just kill you was now pink and scarred like a few days had passed with a few short hours of sleep, even the holes around the small, neat row of stitches looking healthy and healed. And there were definitely no guidelines for handling the foggy memory of a man writhing above and underneath you, his hands and mouth sticky and red, hot and passionate, almost too pretty to be real and too wild to be human.
One of the first things John Winchester taught his son was that life could generally be divided into two categories: times when you could wing it, and times when you needed to follow the rules – not necessarily the law, mind you, just the rules to a particular situation. The key, John said, was figuring out which category applied to a given situation before you got too deep in the shit to dig yourself back out. Dean was two years into his deployment before he understood the biggest flaw with that philosophy: sometimes you didn't know the rules you needed to worry about until you were already waist deep in the shit without a shovel.
There were no rules that governed waking up with the coppery taste of blood coating your tongue, and more of it dried and flaking down your jaw. No hard-and-fast rules for realizing that the gash in your side that you thought might just kill you was now pink and scarred like a few days had passed with a few short hours of sleep, even the holes around the small, neat row of stitches looking healthy and healed. And there were definitely no guidelines for handling the foggy memory of a man writhing above and underneath you, his hands and mouth sticky and red, hot and passionate, almost too pretty to be real and too wild to be human.
A smart man would write the whole thing off as a wacky emo-vampire-Peter Pan-wannabe hallucination brought on by blood loss and the last bit of lucy working its way out of his system and high-tail it the fuck out of there. And Dean was a smart man. Usually, anyway.
If anyone asked him later why he hadn't done exactly that, why he'd instead stood and staggered further down the creepy and dark halls looking for a man who might or might not be a hallucination, he decided to blame it on the blood loss.
Walking through the place was an experience. He'd had no idea what the place was when he found it yesterday, just happened along the dirt path by accident when a tugging in his gut told him he could find a place to lick his wounds if he veered off the main road. At first he thought it was some kind of hospital, or maybe an asylum – it was the best explanation for the locks on the doors and the stains on the floors. Then he found the rooms full of tiny desks and beds and blackboards and didn't know what to think.
Whatever this place was, it wasn't good.
Dean had crashed – even hid out – in condemned buildings before. They were always dirty, unloved, forgotten places, decrepit and gutted out, like a weeks-old corpse carved down to tattered flesh and bones by animals and the weather. There was no soul left in places like that, just walls and a roof and busted up furniture.
This place, though, wasn't like that at all. It was a fucking crime scene. Closets with chains in them, and little tally marks carved in the wall, a foot off the floor. Dried brown stains on mattresses that had soaked through to the underside. A fucking pair of grates in the floor in one room, each with a busted padlock on top and a four-by-four fucking hole underneath. The atrocities just went on and on.
And ludicrously, right in the middle of it, there was a wall with a bunch of hatch marks like you'd see in any happy family home – Scott 2'10", Ava 3'2", Gina 3'2", Sam 3'3", Lily 4'11", Jake 4'7, Ruby 4'8", Max 5'1", Jake 5'8", Sam 6' – years of growth marked off. The names went on and on, 16 years' worth of names… only not all the names kept going.
Which one, he wondered, was his mysterious benefactor, and why was he the only one still here?
Dean cleared his throat. "Hey man, you here?" He had his gun out, cradled close to his stomach and pointed down in an attempt at being non-threatening. He didn't want to freak the guy out – assuming he existed – but there was no way in hell he was going to walk around this shithole unarmed. "That whole blood thing's not really my scene, but I got a feeling I oughta be thanking you for that, y'know?"
He nudged a door open and slipped inside, back to the wall. One quick glance told him it was the kitchen. There was an overly large refrigerator, the fridge side empty, freezer full of TV dinners and popsicles. The sink was clean, with a few dirty dishes in it, another argument for the man actually existing here. On the other side of the kitchen there was an oven, microwave, pantry, butcher's block – and oh yeah, a pair of fucking meat hooks on chains hanging down against the far wall, with a fucking drain underneath. Like it was totally normal and not something out of a nightmare.
Two doors down from that, he found what was left of the library. Someone had set all the books on fire, or tried to, anyway. Most of the titles were ruined, but about a third of them… weren't. They were sooty and smelled a bit like gas, like someone had tried to light 'em up and then changed their mind. Or maybe, like the books themselves had refused to burn.
He leaned forward, entranced, reaching out to pluck the nearest intact book off the shelf. It was some kind of strange leather, mottled peach-tan and weathered like it had spent too many days in the sun, with strange glyphs running down its spine. He needed to open it, needed to find out what was inside. He could almost feel it vibrate with excitement as his fingers neared, and then –
– and then he heard the sound of his motorcycle turning over outside.
"Motherfucker."
Dean sprinted back the way he came, book forgotten. "I don't care who you are. Steal my bike and I will hunt you down to the bowels of hell itself and end you!"
* * *
If Ruby and Meg were still there, Sam would never have lived down his behavior that morning. Letting the man stay in the orphanage – hell, letting the man live in the first place instead of slitting his throat – that was all bad enough. But avoiding the man, hiding out like a coward until he had wandered off down the hall simply because his heart started beating faster every time he looked at him… that was just embarrassing.
He pressed his hand down comfortingly on the bandana the man had wrapped around his left wrist. His skin itself was long healed, rendering it utterly unnecessary as a bandage. It wasn't even that comfortable, stiff and scratchy from the blood that had soaked through, more purple than blue from it all. But despite all that, he couldn't bear to take it off. It felt right there, knot sitting tightly over the place where the man's teeth had sunk into his skin.
One step away from a collar, Samuel, he imagined Lilith's smug voice in his head. He felt himself stiffen in his jeans at the concept.
Lilith wouldn't have judged him for it, though; all of his brothers and sisters were quite aware of Sam's proclivities. The Sisters had made sure that their education on the flesh and all of its vagaries was more than complete. Some were born to control and others were born to – be useful. It was the natural order of things. Submitting to another's will didn't make you less powerful in the slightest.
It made you a weapon.
If Father had loved all of his children equally… if Sam had not seen their graves… if Lily had not died… Sam would have been his weapon, willingly, happily. He know, objectively, he should care about the rest of the world, if only because Father and the Sisters had tried so hard to grind all of that out of them. And maybe if he'd actually gone out and seen the world, he would. For all of his life, though, his orphanage had been his world. Sam cared about the people who were his – his brothers and sisters. He'd foolishly included Father in that as well. All of the tests, all of the trials, the things that were endured rather than enjoyed… they were meant to make him stronger, and they had.
They'd made him strong enough to turn the weapon that he was against Father in the end.
He didn't need a new yoke around his neck now. It was just the blood talking, it had to be. Better to let time and distance sever the bond before it could solidify.
He grabbed the man's bloody shirt and jacket and slipped outdoors, stalking back to the shed where he'd hidden the bike. He rolled it back around to the front, stuffing the clothes into the leather bag on the back. Then he tilted his head.
He'd never ridden a motorcycle before. He swung a leg over it and rested on it, putting his hands on the handlebars. Imagined it thrumming between his legs, speeding down the highway, arms around-
That was enough of that. He found the key and turned the engine over, only fumbling it twice before it roared to life. And then he waited, enjoying the way the engine's roar echoed through the forest.
He was ready with a smirk when the man came bursting out of the orphanage, an outraged look on his face. And when the punch came, he didn't dodge.
It was better this way.
* * *
Dean couldn't figure the guy out. It wasn't like he hadn't seen him or his fist coming from yards away. He hadn't even tried to swerve out of the way, just shut the engine down and let the momentum from the blow knock him off balance, toppling him off the bike.
Dean grabbed the bike to stabilize it, glaring at the kid as he smirked at him from the ground where he'd landed. Something didn't add up, something about the kid's posture…
Damn, he needed to get his engine tuned up. There was a hitch in it, something rattling like- Keeping his eyes on the kid, he reached his hand towards the ignition to turn the bike off so he could think.
Wait-
Everything happened at once then. Dean realized that his bike was already off, and Sam's head whipped to the side, eyes growing big as they both realized they were hearing a second motorcycle, and a gravelly voice roared out with malice, "DEAN WINCHESTER!"
The kid was on his feet instantaneously. He looked at Dean, then at the bike, and mouthed the word, "Go."
"Fuck no," Dean said calmly. "That's the guy I threw down with last night. This is my fight. You go."
The kid – man – snarled at him and made some complicated gesture that Dean was pretty sure meant "Fuck no yourself and fuck you for not fucking listening because blah blah-" and Dean stopped paying attention at that point, turning away to rummage in his saddlebag for more ammo. This was his fight and matter what freaky things had gone down between them last night (the taste of copper warm and wet in his mouth) he wasn't going to run.
"Look this guy's bad news and a fucking card cheat but I can take him." He reloaded quickly, keeping watch on the direction the cycle sounded like it would appear. "He got the jump on me last night because I got cocky and didn't take him seriously, but-" he took a stance, gun stabilized in both hands, and thumbed the safety off- "that ain't gonna be a problem this time."
The kid dove to the side when the cycle burst through the trees, riderless, but Dean stood still. Another reason to take the guy down, treating his bike like that. Guy oughta be ashamed.
"I WANT MY MONEY WINCHESTER!"
Dean knew a guy like Clark wouldn't have jumped until the last second – the fucker loved playing things right up to the edge – so the moment he knew the bike wasn't going to him, he ignored it and kept his eye on the trees, looking for signs of something man-sized moving through them.
There.
Fool me once, Dean thought, remembering the lancing pain as he'd walked out of the men's room, straight into a knife sliding deep into his abdomen. The moment the trees parted, he lined up the shot, aimed, and…
Three clean shots – forehead, neck, chest – just like his dad had taught him. He could see the blood spray behind the guy as the bullets hit home.
And then the fucker kept on coming.
* * *
Behind Dean, Sam rolled his eyes as the bullets punched right through the man. He'd tried to tell Dean. Then again, Sam had smelled him coming and known that bullets weren't going to do much.
He let Ruby's knife fall into his hand and waited, running his fingers over the runes she'd painstakingly carved into it.
The demon wearing this Clark dude stopped when he got about 20 yards away from them and chuckled.
"Well, shit, Winchester, I just wanted my money back, but you just won me the jackpot." He kept his eyes firmly on Sam. "Samael, as I live and breathe. Where's your daddy, boy? Not like him to let the riff-raff in." He nodded his head at Dean. "Or is he just a snack?"
Sam gave him the finger.
"Whoops, sorry," the demon said, not sorry in the least, his eyes homing in on Sam's neck. "Nice necklace you got there, Sammy. Daddy got tired of you talking back?"
Another shot rang out, Dean's bullet piercing cleanly through the back of his mouth and on out the other side.
"All right, that one pissed me off." The demon threw his hand forward, and Dean went flying backward with a startled, "What the-"
Sam risked a glance to make sure that Dean was okay, which was exactly the wrong thing to do, because when he looked back, Clark was right in front of him, grabbing him by the wrist and twisting it until it cracked.
The knife fell from his suddenly numb fingers.
Pitch black eyes bored into his. "Oh, I see how it is. Daddy ain't home, is he? Devils away and the freaks will play." He twisted Sam's wrist again, smirking as another boned cracked. "You wanna play, I know all kinds of games to share with you." He clenched his jaw and grimaced, opening his mouth to show his tongue half-bitten through, and spit a mouthful of blood at Sam, who turned his face away just in time.
Ignoring the red rivulets dripping down his cheek, Sam leaned forward and whispered, "Daddy's dead. We drank him dry." And then he slammed his forehead into him, wrenching his wrist free and sweeping the demon's feet out from under him.
He raised his shoulder and rubbed his cheek against it, careful not to get any of the blood in his mouth. It smelled delicious, mouth-wateringly good – but not as good as Dean's.
He kicked the knife back towards Dean and held his left hand out, willing the power to come. His "special gift," as Father liked to call it. It had been months since he'd bothered using it – months since he'd needed to – but it curled up to his command like a cat wanting to be petted, lifting the man to his feet and holding him there, immobilized.
"I'm not going to be the last, you know," the demon said, his bitten tongue slowly seaming itself back together. "Anyone could find this place now – it's laid wide open."
Sam gestured with his hand and sent the demon flying sideways, slamming him into the closest wall. He felt something give behind his eyes, and blood trickled out of his nose. Okay, so maybe more like an angry cat resentful about being ignored.
He opened up his mouth to respond and-
"Fine by me," Dean said, stepping forward and plunging Ruby's knife into the man's side. "This place is a shithole anyway."
-eh, that was better than anything Sam was going to come up with.
The blade glowed white as smoke erupted out of the demon, trying to flee into the ground, but Sam was ready. He grabbed onto it and pulled, letting his powers shred it tuft by tuft until there was nothing left but ashes. Then he swayed once, twice, and fell back onto his ass.
* * *
Dean stared down numbly at the knife in his hand, trying to figure out what just happened. Then he pulled it out of Clark slowly and watched as the body slid to the ground, lifeless. A second later, holes opened up in his forehead and chest as the bullet holes Dean knew had to have been there seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
He realized his mouth was hanging open, and shut it with a clack. Clean-up first, freak out later.
Right. First things first. He leaned down and wiped the bloody knife against the man's jeans and went to toss it back to the kid but thought better of it and slipped it through his belt for the moment. Then he walked over to the man's motorcycle and turned it off, enjoying the sudden quiet.
The man – what had the guy called him, Samael? – was sitting on the ground, breathing heavily and clenching his right arm. It didn't look good – he wasn't sure but maybe that was bone sticking through? "Yeah, okay, let's get you upright. I don't make a habit of sitting around by dead guys as a matter of course."
He glanced over at the dead body, which was remarkably just getting deader by the minute. The throat was a mess of bloody tissue, and there were stains showing up all over his torso.
Sam looked up at him, grinning. His skin was worryingly pale, and his eyes were a little unfocused, like maybe he'd concussed himself – probably from that wicked headbutt he'd gotten in earlier. That was probably also the reason for the nosebleed, he reasoned. It had dripped down over his mouth and throat, making him look a little bit of a horror show vampire.
Memories of the night before surfaced at the sight, Sam pressing his wrist to Dean's mouth, Sam – fuck, now was not the time to be getting an erection, Dean thought – Sam perched on top of him, Dean's wrist to his mouth–
He wanted to lick it off Sam's jaw, wanted to run his tongue over every bright red drop and lap it up like it was wine. Wanted to smear it down his chest with his mouth, paint his cock with it and lap it up–
Well, if he was a vampire, maybe Dean was too.
It wasn't normal, this thing with the blood and the sex and all. It had never done anything for Dean before Sam, and some small part of Dean knew he should be freaking out about it, but he just – wasn't.
Instead, he stared back at the body, eying it suspiciously. "That guy ain't gonna stand back up again, is he?"
Sam shook his head and whispered, "No. He's gone."
"So you do talk." Dean smiled. It had seemed like the guy was having a conversation earlier, but Dean hadn't been able to hear any of it.
Sam held out his good hand and wobbled it in the universal symbol for eh, a little. "Hurts, sometimes."
"Then you can whisper in my ear and I'll do the talking for ya." He took Sam's good left hand in his and led him back toward the orphanage. "Let's get you patched up." He held the door open for Sam to pass through. "I wasn't lying, though. This place is a shithole. We're not staying here any longer than we gotta."
* * *
Dean looked up from the bandages he was wrapping around Sam's hand. "Don't think this gets you outta telling me what the fuck was up with all that smoke and shit." He taped the edge of the bandage into place. "I'm okay with us being far away from here before we have that talk, though. This place gives me the creeps. "
Sam thought of the way Father had forbidden them to talk about anything they learned, even with the other demons that came through sometimes. Then he thought about how nice it had felt fighting side-by-side with Dean. Thought about how willing Dean was to offer him up his blood, not even knowing what it would do if it meant that Sam would be in less pain. Answering his questions was the least Sam could do… and it wasn't like Father was around anymore to punish him if he did.
"Sure," he said lowly. "But… later."
Dean slapped the desk lightly. "Okay, you're good. You grab whatever you need, and I'm gonna go find a place to stash Clark's bike – you can't steer it until we can fix your wrist up better, but we can come back for it later. Not sure what to do about Clark, though."
Sam stood up and staggered to the kitchen, digging messily through the spices until he found the cannister of salt. He tossed it to Dean. "Salt it, then torch it."
Dean raised an eyebrow.
Sam shrugged. "Less ghosts."
Dean snorted and left – but he took the salt.
Sam sat down heavily, staring pensively at his wrists. The blue bandana was still tied around the left one, and brand new bandages were now wrapped securely around the right. both tied in place by Dean. One step away, Lilith's imaginary voice teased.
So? Sam mentally shrugged right back.
Dean had said Us. We. Like it was already a given that where he went, Sam would follow.
We. Sam leaned back, liking the sound of it. He thought of Meg and Andy meeting Dean. They'd like him. Max would bitch, but he'd like him too.
"Yeah," he whispered to himself. "Let's go."
The bond between them flared even brighter, wrapping itself a little tighter around his heart.
It felt right.
~fin~