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Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
“Anything I can do for you?” Henry asked, politely.
Dean bared his teeth. “You can tell the goon with the tattoos on his arms to take off the fucking amulet.” He turned and stretched his collar, wincing at the pain it caused, to show off the burns on his upper back. “Looks like someone used me for an ashtray. These’re gonna scar, decrease the value of your investment.”
Henry frowned. “Erik kept the amulet on when he sampled your charms. I’m surprised.”
“Your thug’s fucked in the head, what a shock.” It actually had been. Dean didn’t get how the guy could want to know Dean wasn’t into it more than he could want what Dean could give him. Some people were demons already, black-eyed or not, that was the only explanation.
The really disturbing thing about Erik’s sicko games was that the guards had wrestled Dean into cuffs first, which aside from everything else stung like a motherfucker; cold metal on new burns was no fucking picnic. If Dean’d been wearing boots, or if there’d been just one less of them, he could’ve avoided being strapped down, but then again if Dean didn’t have incubus woven through him like worms in graveyard dirt he could’ve avoided being strapped down, so maybe what-ifs weren’t all that helpful. Dean hadn’t understood why there’d been restraints set up in his cell in the first place—the whole point of keeping Dean on tap was that ‘no’ wasn’t in his vocabulary any more—until he’d figured out that the cuffs weren’t supposed to be for him.
So far, they hadn’t been used on anybody else. But Dean knew this wasn’t the kind of setup you put together just in case. Especially not with the unblinking eye of the video camera in the corner, waiting for new opportunities. Strap a guy–or a woman—down, shove Dean inside, then remove the cuffs once the victim was deep in it, and you’d have some powerful blackmail. Or just a way to destroy someone’s life, if that was more profitable.
Henry clapped his hands together, startling Dean out of his speculation. “I’ll tell Erik he’s not to repeat the experiment. I hope that will be satisfactory.”
Dean rolled his eyes, disgusted even though he hadn’t hoped for better. “Now you’re just being an asshole.” Satisfactory would be Erik tied down and—Dean forced the thought away, because too many of his ideas on that score came from experience down below, and thinking about that was never smart.
Henry smiled at him, that same tolerant politeness that was worse than a fuck-you. “Fair enough. I’ll still tell him. You can have a good life here, Dean. Safer than hunting.”
Dean wasn’t stupid enough to tell Henry how very little he knew about Dean, but he expected that his expression was saying a lot for him.
****
Kelty’s computer produced a client list that, because it was based on nicknames, would have been completely useless had Bobby not also managed to snag Kelty’s journal—like a hunter’s journal, except kept by a supernaturally inclined pimp. The information linking nicknames to actual identity was in Aramaic, which probably would have stymied most vice cops but was not particularly problematic for Sam.
It took them five torturous weeks to eliminate all Dean’s customers as suspects, one by one. When Sam managed to snatch a couple hours of sleep in between phases of the investigation, they always ended in nightmares, Dean tied up and back in that room where this installment of the horror series had begun. Kelty at least—and it killed Sam to think this, but it was still true—had an incentive to keep Dean in good working order. Someone else, someone who’d kill to get Dean for himself (or, herself, but when it came to fucking the unwilling Sam was going to go with statistics) might not care about anything but the demon glamor, and Dean would exude that no matter how broken he was.
Sam had to restrain himself from beating the shit out of each and every one of the clients. He wanted to jump out and grab them, scream in their faces that Dean hadn’t wanted it (well, maybe he’d have done the women, but still), make them see that they were exploiting an illness, a vulnerability, no better than piling on a drunk girl at a party. He wanted to smack them around until they admitted to everything they’d made Dean do. But the person he wanted to hurt was the one whose knuckles would be bleeding at the end of that process, and he was self-aware enough to understand that. Also, getting arrested for assault would cramp his style a fair amount and he didn’t have that kind of time to lose.
If it wasn’t one of the clients, though, they were well and truly shafted, because Kelty could have told anyone. He almost wished that Bela was still around to give them entrée into the world of assholes who made money off the supernatural instead of protecting other people. Bela would have made them pay, and probably would have warned their target that someone was looking for Dean. But she could have given Sam hope, and right now he needed that much more than he needed safety.
****
Erik wrapped the amulet in silk the next time, which meant there were no burns. Hunh. Learn something new every day, Dean thought.
“I know why you keep that thing on,” Dean told him the time after that, fighting reflexively against Jim and the other guy whose name he’d never learned --Douchebag No. 3 -- as they worked to secure him. “You’re scared that if you do it like everybody else, I’m the one on top.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Erik said, far from eloquent even by Dean’s standards.
“What?” Dean asked. “You know, the incubus mojo means sex. Doesn’t fix what kind it’s gonna be. That’s all you and your freaky little desires. So what are you afraid of?”
Erik smacked him, hard enough that Dean felt a stab of heat as something tore in his neck. Dean put up with a lot of bull—a whole state’s worth, if you asked him, and maybe the state was Texas—point being, he was used to being kicked in the teeth, but when the kicker was a fellow human there were usually rules.
Dean was fucking sick of rules. Jim and No. 3 had paused in their efforts to watch Erik work on his hard-on, and Dean twisted so that he was the one grabbing them and got his feet under him on the mattress just as he pulled them towards each other, managing to make their foreheads crack together satisfyingly. He shoved them back as he kicked out, wishing more than ever for his boots as he landed a heel in Erik’s side. Erik stumbled back; Dean launched himself off the bed, putting his elbow in No. 3’s nose as he went.
He split his knuckles open on Erik’s face before Jim figured out that all he needed to do was take off the fucking amulet. Dean couldn’t fight after that, and fortunately No. 3 was not so much of a douchebag that he would interrupt. Or at least he was a douchebag who understood that his employer vastly preferred him dragging Erik to safety to him getting revenge.
After that, Erik wasn’t allowed to play his little game—Henry figured out that the merchandise was actually at risk—and Erik’s nose had a permanent kink in it, so all in all it was a win, relatively speaking.
****
“Still nothing,” Bobby said grimly, ten days after they’d tracked down the last client. Sam didn’t want to know how many favors Bobby had called in. But hunters tended more towards the Gordon Walker side of morality, and it was just unlikely that they’d know about someone running a supernatural brothel. Bobby’s own connection to Kelty (and Sam kept a careful ledger in his head about Bobby’s lies on that count) had been almost accidental, competing over the same book at some occult auction.
Sam’s latest tracking spell had fizzled as well. (Sam knew Bobby kept a mental ledger of his own, little boxes ticked off for each use of magic, extra when the magic was even arguably a darker shade. Like Sam, Bobby wasn’t going to say anything while they had more pressing business. Didn’t make him a hypocrite, just a practical man.)
“It’s like Dean’s disappeared,” he said. “Even if—there’d be traces.” That was, after all, how they’d been raised: putting the traces of the dead to rest. Dean wasn’t a ghost because Dean wasn’t dead. But he had to be behind wards more powerful than any they’d encountered before, which said disturbing things about the difficulty of extracting him once he’d been found.
Bobby frowned. “These spells, they track essence—soul, right?”
Sam did not like where this was going. Ten years in Hell or not, Dean’s soul had still been good enough for Heaven, or at least the upper management in God’s absence.
“I’m just sayin’,” Bobby continued, sensing Sam’s reluctance, “that psychic said that the incubus whatever was entwined with Dean’s soul. What if he’s been changed so much that his—signature, I guess—is different? Then the tracking spells wouldn’t have anything to grab a hold of.”
Sam had been using Dean’s leftover clothing, pieces from the car a couple of times when a ritual was a long shot and he needed something that was tied to Dean with blood, sweat and tears. He thought about it, and nothing he’d used postdated Dean’s affliction. They hadn’t exactly had time for shopping trips afterwards.
“We’d need to track a mixture of incubus and Dean,” he said, already considering which of the spells could be modified. “There’s a charm that’s used to locate missing children, you take something from the father and something from the mother—”
“Where are we gonna get a chunk of incubus?” Bobby asked, following his thoughts.
Sam grinned, and knew it was one of the smiles that made humans nervous. “That’s the easy part.”
****
The next time Dean saw Henry, Henry was holding Jim’s gun. Dean sighed internally. He’d been working pretty hard on Jim, whispering in the guy’s ear while he rutted. Dean could force himself to talk through the drunken fog flowing through him during sex, but it hadn’t been easy. Bring your gun in next time. I want your gun. Just bring in the gun. I’ll be so good, just bring me your gun. Now he’d wasted all that effort, and Henry was going to be wise to the strategy in the future.
“Were you going to try to kill me, or just yourself?” Henry asked. He held the gun with the ease of an expert. Dean would have preferred some showmanship, but Henry was too practical to do something stupid like running the muzzle down Dean’s cheek.
Dean didn’t answer; didn’t see the point.
Henry smiled, but this time there was more of an edge to it. Dean expected that, in a couple more months, he’d have wiped the smile right off the fucker’s face. “Very well. I’ve learned a lesson, and now you will as well.”
In the event, it was more like a refresher course: Pain sucks just as much the thousandth time around. Time had blurred the edges of past tortures, making what Henry’s guys did seem pretty bad, even though it was all non-disfiguring stuff. Jim was especially creative. Dean presumed he felt humiliated. Well, he could join the fucking club.
Thing was, ‘I’ve seen worse in Hell’ really wasn’t a giant comfort, however much of a badass it made Dean.
There were only two things that had gone right since Kelty died. First, nobody here had mentioned Sam, which he had to hope meant that they weren’t thinking about him. And second, so far, his only customers hadn’t needed to be forced into his room. He was even pretty sure that most of them had no clue about the terms of Dean’s employment. On average, they were kinkier than the folks Kelty had found, but nothing Dean couldn’t handle—anything that could get a person off worked on him, after all. Soon, though, he was going to have to choose: he could bite through his wrists, go back on and then off the rack, and be black-eyed before he deliberately raped anybody. Or he could get started aboveground, while he still looked human.
There was no right thing to do. But he knew what he ought to do. He was just too much of a coward to take charge before anything too bad had actually happened. So all he did was wait, and hope that Sam was being careful.
****
Bobby left Sam alone for the summoning. “I like you better when I don’t see you work,” was all he said. That was an improvement on being lied to, Sam guessed. Nor was he thrilled with the idea of Bobby watching him extract blood from a demon. Not that he was going to do anything with it other than what they’d discussed. He didn’t even know whether incubus blood would offer the same hit, though if they came from Hell there was every reason to expect—anyway, it was irrelevant.
He’d have to put himself in the Devil’s Trap to get the blood. There was some risk that Bobby was going to leave him inside if he couldn’t get out of his own volition, but it was a chance he was willing to take.
Because Dean was at stake, it was easy to be careful. He performed the steps of the ritual with precision—Dad used to say ‘it takes as long as it takes,’ Zen hunter bullshit that Sam had never accepted. He got the point now, though.
As soon as the incubus materialized, Sam punched it, snapping its head to the side. He caught it as it folded and shoved it into the chair, binding it extra-tight but leaving a stretch of arm exposed so that he could get what he needed.
It bled just like a human. He had to massage the vein at the crook of its elbow to get a full cup, skin reddening under his fingers because of the proximity of his amulet. He didn’t kill it yet, in case he needed more.
He had one of Dean’s overshirts. In case the handprint made a difference too, he had one of Castiel’s feathers, a grisly souvenir from the last battle. He’d never shown Dean, who’d have wanted to burn it, but you never knew when angelic remains would prove useful. He cut a square from the shirt, ragged red threads whisper-soft against his skin, and put it in the copper bowl along with a hunk of the vane, stiff and unyielding as Castiel himself had been. Then he added the blood, streaking down the sides of the bowl like rain.
There was a red dot on the second joint of his thumb, just a bit of splatter. It was almost automatic to raise his hand towards his mouth—
No.
No.
Dean needed him a hundred percent, not strung out and puffed full of power that only wanted to be used and didn’t care how. (Oh fuck what if Dean’s blood—no.)
Sam snarled at the unconscious body of the incubus and wiped his hand off on his pants.
This was simple witchcraft, no demonic powers required. He started the chant, sprinkled in the herbs, lit the candles. The smell was liniment-sharp in his nostrils, masking the metal and burnt hair underneath.
When the mixture was ready, he spread the map out. Someday someone really ought to update these for the internet age, he thought. It would be a lot faster to do this with Google Maps. Maybe that could be his research project next summer.
Yes, Sam was aware that he was mentally babbling in order to control his fears. It worked, so the imaginary Dean mocking him could shut the fuck up.
He coated his fingers in the liquid, turned greasy and nauseating, black as melted tar and nearly as sticky, and flicked them over the map.
A blot landed on Virginia, a quivering dome. The other drops quickly dragged themselves over to the same spot, leaving what looked like a daisy drawn in charcoal on the map.
Sam hurried to grab the more detailed maps before the spell ran out of juice. He managed to get down to street level before the spell liquid quivered and went thin and rotten, all in an instant.
He called Bobby to let him know it was done. Then there was the incubus, still unconscious. He could pull it out of its body like he’d done with the succubus, but he had the feeling that would make getting out of the Devil’s Trap a tad harder, reminding the universe at large exactly how much demon was left in him.
In the end, he banished it back to Hell. Knowing that he could rid the world of demons, but chose only to cage them, was a familiar itch. It wasn’t like he was sending them to get rehabilitated, just making them some other hunter’s potential problem. But Bobby would be happier, and he very much needed Bobby on his side at present.
The Devil’s Trap hurt some, like charging through an electric current. Sam was just glad to have made it through.
Bobby returned within minutes. Sam was already checking the weapons. “Most likely, we’re going after humans,” he said, not looking up from his shotgun. “How much of a problem are you gonna have with that?”
Bobby cleared his throat. “Not much,” he said, and no matter how angry he sounded, Sam believed him. Bobby was the one who’d had to deal with Kelty’s corpse, and with the knowledge that it was his plan that had lost them Dean. Bobby might have been willing to kill Dean to save him, but having him enslaved was different. Anyone complicit in that horror had voluntarily withdrawn from the human race.
At least Sam could agree with him that far.
****
Yeah, so the waiting for Sammy thing was good in theory, but the only thing Dean was worse at than research was waiting. Dean lasted all of a week before he knocked Douchebag No. 3 out and went looking for the exit. He was pretty sure he was underground again—it made sense, easier to ward and keep him away from nonpaying eyes—and he saw a stairway at the end of the hall when he came out of his room.
Henry was waiting at the top, arms crossed over his chest. “This is getting to be a bad habit, Dean.”
“You should see me with a pack of cigarettes,” Dean told him, weighing his chances. The amulet would fry him up good, given how narrow the stairway was, but if he put Henry down quick he’d be okay.
“Did you know,” Henry asked, and paused for dramatic effect—Dean fucking hated him more for that than for being locked up, almost—“it’s not that difficult to get a hitman on retainer, even when he’d have to go to South Dakota to carry out the job?”
Dean forced himself still. “Easy thing to say.”
“Hard to ignore, though. You Winchester boys, you’re famous, among other things for the high regard you have for each other’s well-being. So you walk back down those stairs, behave yourself, and maybe in a month or so I’ll let you call your brother and tell him you’re fine, as long as he stays away.”
Sometimes Dean wondered whether he’d ever really gotten out of Hell. He wanted to throw up, and he wanted to say ‘fuck it’ and beat Henry until he looked like raw meat, and he wanted to—
He wanted to stop, but he couldn’t. So he took a careful breath. “Let me ask you something, Hank. You say you know about Sam. He faced down Lucifer and the Host of heaven, so what d’you think you’ve got they didn’t?”
Henry’s lips quirked. “Why, you, of course.”
So there was nothing to do but turn around and go back to his pathetic little cell.
There was a bright side, he guessed. No way was Sam still in South Dakota, not the way they’d left things, and not with Bobby walking into Kelty’s place to find only the wrong corpse. So Henry couldn’t be tracking Sam all that closely.
****
They watched the houses on the block for nearly forty-eight hours before they were sure which was the one entertaining visitors. There were no obvious surveillance cameras or other defenses. The house belonged to one Henry Parker, a good citizen if you looked at the public records; not even behind on his mortgage. Parker made a lot of money as an independent consultant.
Bobby in a suit and tie looked ridiculous to Sam, but objectively he made a perfectly respectable detective. They had a long debate over whether the people holding Dean would be likely to have investigated Dean’s history, in which case they’d be on the lookout for any tall, dark and part-demonic visitors, but in the end Sam just told Bobby flat-out that they were both making the approach. Bobby grumbled, something about planning to haunt the Winchesters if Sam got him killed, but Sam put on his suit too, plus a long coat to hide the shotgun.
Sam rang the doorbell, and he and Bobby raised their fake badges in perfect synchronicity when the door opened. The man inside wasn’t Henry Parker.
“How can I help you?” he asked, even as his eyes flicked to the door at the end of the hallway.
“Have you seen this man?” Sam asked pleasantly, holding up one of his few pictures of Dean.
Again with the eye-flick. “No, I’m sorry. Should I be looking out for him?”
“No,” Sam said, and punched him in the throat. Bobby made a peeved noise but stepped forward to give him another whack, just for luck, and shove him to the side as he crumpled. Sam tucked his picture away and followed.
****
Dean was with one of the clients when a commotion broke out, loud enough that Dean could hear it through the door. Erik charged in and dragged the guy off, ignoring his needy screams. Getting interrupted was like having his dick scrubbed with steel wool; Dean made some noise himself. Then Jim was there with a needle, stabbed into his bicep. Dean fought it as hard as he could, but the world just slipped away, wrapped in layers of fog.
****
Leaving Bobby behind to guard the stairs, Sam headed into the basement, which was a warren of little storerooms. He kicked open four doors and shot two men before—
For a sunstruck moment, the only thing he could see was Dean: twice as beautiful as he remembered, turning his head to Sam like always.
Dean was on his knees in front of Parker, his eyes wide, pupils mere pixels. Drugged, Sam thought. He was shirtless, gleaming with sweat, wearing nothing but thin white cotton boxers. Parker had a gun jammed deeply into the soft flesh of Dean’s throat, his other hand caressing Dean’s cheek. “Sam Winchester,” Parker said, sleek and relaxed.
Sam didn’t suppose that greeting Parker with ‘Dead man walking’ in return would win him much goodwill. “I’d like you to let my brother go now,” he said instead, his voice as flat and still as a pool of blood.
“We seem to be at an impasse.”
“I can be reasonable,” Sam suggested. Half a second, and his knife could be in Parker’s eye. “Let him go and I give you my word you’ll live.”
“Your word,” Parker repeated, as if the sound of his own voice was savory. “I’m sorry, but given what I know about you, your word is not your bond.” Dean twitched a fraction, trying to turn his head away from the gun. The motion looked almost involuntary. Parker stuck his thumb in Dean’s eye anyway, and Dean whimpered. His skin was turning red on his cheek and down his jaw where Parker’s gun rested.
“So make me a counteroffer,” Sam suggested. Parker wasn’t wearing anything around his neck, not visibly, but there was a gleam of silver at the wrist of his gun hand. Sam reached out with his mind, gently, and started picking at the weld where the amulet was joined to the rest of the bracelet.
“You create a binding circle around the three of us that will only let me out. I walk away.”
“Or you step outside and shoot me, then come back for Dean.” He had to be careful not to break any metal on the inward-facing side, where Parker might feel the sharp edges pressing into his skin.
“Surely you can create a circle that will deflect a little thing like a bullet,” Parker said reasonably.
Parker was substantially overestimating the extent of Sam’s remaining powers, but saying that seemed likely to be neither credible nor, if believed, helpful. “Or you throw a gas grenade into the room, come in and kill me while I’m unconscious, then grab Dean before he dies.”
“Then our negotiations have come to a halt. Unless you’re prepared to live to fight another day.” Dean’s skin was blistering now where it was too close to Parker’s amulet, and he let out a hurt little whine and slumped down.
“Dean,” Sam said.
Dean’s eyes fluttered, huge and grass-green. He made a halfway attempt to rise up, and Parker pistol-whipped him across the jaw, snake-quick.
“Walk away now, Sam, and I’ll entertain an offer for an exchange. I’m sure a man like you can think of something I might appreciate.”
Sam fought down the sneer. “Dean,” he repeated. “Look at me.”
Dean whimpered but obeyed, and even through the drugs, Sam could tell that he felt the danger, the fact that at least one person was not going to leave this room alive. Dean hissed as Parker’s left hand fisted in his hair.
Using Dean was unfortunate, but Dean knew better than anyone besides Sam how stupid it was to ignore a weapon just because it was painful to wield it. Sam released Parker’s amulet and whipped it away, careful to arrest its motion before it slammed into the wall and made noise.
Parker stiffened, looking down at Dean with a new intensity.
Dean tried to push himself to his feet, shaking with the drugs. Parker let the gun fall away and cupped his other hand around Dean’s chin, tugging him upwards.
Sam shot him in the throat.
Dean made a high-pitched, wounded sound as the corpse fell backwards. Sam hurried forward, forgetting about the amulet around his neck until Dean flinched. Sam could see Dean’s cock tenting his shorts; the incubus glamor had been triggered, and now Dean was hurting to finish it.
“Boys!” Bobby yelled. “You in there?”
“Yeah,” Sam yelled back. Probably they should have thought of some code word, but they didn’t usually deal with people and he hadn’t considered all the possibilities.
“Give us a minute, okay?”
That produced a dubious silence. There were a lot of things Bobby might not prefer to see, though, and he could just pick one to imagine that he liked better than the alternatives. Sam fought the amulet out from under his shirt, nearly ripping his tie off in the process, and slung it into the same corner as Parker’s.
It hit him like a tidal wave, stronger than he remembered. Every cell in him felt like it would explode if he didn’t touch Dean right then. He scooped Dean off the floor and shoved him against the wall, right next to the blood spatter; he sneered at it, triumphant, as he shoved his hand into Dean’s boxers and jacked him roughly. Sam swallowed Dean’s moans, exulting in the taste of him, like a cold beer after a long day’s labor except a thousand times better. Dean shuddered and gave it up, heat streaking over Sam’s hand, and Sam barely managed to rip his own pants open and stroke once, twice, before he came all over Dean’s stomach.
Sanity returned in time for Sam to ease Dean down until he was sitting against the wall, head turned away from Parker’s corpse. Sam ignored the delicious, floating feeling that he wanted to indulge in for hours. Instead, he put himself back together and grabbed the amulet.
“Bobby?” he yelled, wondering how much noise they’d made.
“Yeah?” Wary, but not disgusted.
“Can you—Dean needs some clothes.” Sam searched his pockets and came up with a couple of crumpled napkins, enough to clean the worst of the spunk off of Dean, who twitched under Sam’s hand but didn’t fight.
Bobby came through the door, his gun still out, a bundle of fabric under his other arm. He inspected Parker’s body, then tossed the shirt and pants towards Dean.
Sam bit his lip and did his best to stuff Dean into the clothes without touching him. With the drugs, Dean was unable to control his grimaces, but he was also in no condition to dress himself, so Sam had to live with with the pain he was causing. It seemed so literal compared to all the other things he’d done to Dean, he thought and wanted to laugh, his brain loose from its moorings with all that had just happened.
Finally Dean was decent, or as close to decent as he could get, wavering on his bare feet. “The car’s just outside,” Sam told him, and even through the haze Dean’s eyes brightened.
“Dean. It’s good to see you, boy.” Bobby’s voice was thick with regrets Sam knew too well himself.
But there were some things on which they’d never see eye to eye. “You’ll be wanting to leave now,” Sam suggested, turning to him.
Dean slurred something like “What?” but Sam ignored him.
“Sam—” Bobby looked half-broken.
Sam put his hand to his gun. “I know you were only doing what Dean asked, what he thought was best. And you’ve always been a good friend to Dean, even when it cost you. I appreciate your help finding him. But you came out here in the first place to put a bullet through my brother’s brain, and I can’t see you right now.”
Dean stared at them, blinking hard. Sam was almost glad Dean was in no condition to participate, because the conversation he was going to have with Dean about the same issue needed to be one-on-one.
“What’s your plan?” Bobby asked, wearily.
Sam shook his head. “Not that damned Colt. I’m not giving up.”
Bobby tugged at his cap. “I didn’t—I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. But if you don’t have any real ideas, you’re only making it harder.”
Sam huffed, because that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard Bobby say. “It doesn’t get harder than Dean dying! You didn’t give me a real chance. I’m going to fix this.”
Bobby sighed. “I’m not—there’s a place you can go. Just for a while. But Sam, Dean’s not gonna thank you.”
Sam took another look at Dean, punch-drunk and irreplaceable, staring back at Sam like Sam was a mirage. He nodded, acknowledging Bobby’s point, because ‘ask me if I care’ was kind of implicit in his stance. “Dean,” he said, and Dean wobbled forwards, following him to freedom, or as close as Dean could get.
Part Six
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
“Anything I can do for you?” Henry asked, politely.
Dean bared his teeth. “You can tell the goon with the tattoos on his arms to take off the fucking amulet.” He turned and stretched his collar, wincing at the pain it caused, to show off the burns on his upper back. “Looks like someone used me for an ashtray. These’re gonna scar, decrease the value of your investment.”
Henry frowned. “Erik kept the amulet on when he sampled your charms. I’m surprised.”
“Your thug’s fucked in the head, what a shock.” It actually had been. Dean didn’t get how the guy could want to know Dean wasn’t into it more than he could want what Dean could give him. Some people were demons already, black-eyed or not, that was the only explanation.
The really disturbing thing about Erik’s sicko games was that the guards had wrestled Dean into cuffs first, which aside from everything else stung like a motherfucker; cold metal on new burns was no fucking picnic. If Dean’d been wearing boots, or if there’d been just one less of them, he could’ve avoided being strapped down, but then again if Dean didn’t have incubus woven through him like worms in graveyard dirt he could’ve avoided being strapped down, so maybe what-ifs weren’t all that helpful. Dean hadn’t understood why there’d been restraints set up in his cell in the first place—the whole point of keeping Dean on tap was that ‘no’ wasn’t in his vocabulary any more—until he’d figured out that the cuffs weren’t supposed to be for him.
So far, they hadn’t been used on anybody else. But Dean knew this wasn’t the kind of setup you put together just in case. Especially not with the unblinking eye of the video camera in the corner, waiting for new opportunities. Strap a guy–or a woman—down, shove Dean inside, then remove the cuffs once the victim was deep in it, and you’d have some powerful blackmail. Or just a way to destroy someone’s life, if that was more profitable.
Henry clapped his hands together, startling Dean out of his speculation. “I’ll tell Erik he’s not to repeat the experiment. I hope that will be satisfactory.”
Dean rolled his eyes, disgusted even though he hadn’t hoped for better. “Now you’re just being an asshole.” Satisfactory would be Erik tied down and—Dean forced the thought away, because too many of his ideas on that score came from experience down below, and thinking about that was never smart.
Henry smiled at him, that same tolerant politeness that was worse than a fuck-you. “Fair enough. I’ll still tell him. You can have a good life here, Dean. Safer than hunting.”
Dean wasn’t stupid enough to tell Henry how very little he knew about Dean, but he expected that his expression was saying a lot for him.
****
Kelty’s computer produced a client list that, because it was based on nicknames, would have been completely useless had Bobby not also managed to snag Kelty’s journal—like a hunter’s journal, except kept by a supernaturally inclined pimp. The information linking nicknames to actual identity was in Aramaic, which probably would have stymied most vice cops but was not particularly problematic for Sam.
It took them five torturous weeks to eliminate all Dean’s customers as suspects, one by one. When Sam managed to snatch a couple hours of sleep in between phases of the investigation, they always ended in nightmares, Dean tied up and back in that room where this installment of the horror series had begun. Kelty at least—and it killed Sam to think this, but it was still true—had an incentive to keep Dean in good working order. Someone else, someone who’d kill to get Dean for himself (or, herself, but when it came to fucking the unwilling Sam was going to go with statistics) might not care about anything but the demon glamor, and Dean would exude that no matter how broken he was.
Sam had to restrain himself from beating the shit out of each and every one of the clients. He wanted to jump out and grab them, scream in their faces that Dean hadn’t wanted it (well, maybe he’d have done the women, but still), make them see that they were exploiting an illness, a vulnerability, no better than piling on a drunk girl at a party. He wanted to smack them around until they admitted to everything they’d made Dean do. But the person he wanted to hurt was the one whose knuckles would be bleeding at the end of that process, and he was self-aware enough to understand that. Also, getting arrested for assault would cramp his style a fair amount and he didn’t have that kind of time to lose.
If it wasn’t one of the clients, though, they were well and truly shafted, because Kelty could have told anyone. He almost wished that Bela was still around to give them entrée into the world of assholes who made money off the supernatural instead of protecting other people. Bela would have made them pay, and probably would have warned their target that someone was looking for Dean. But she could have given Sam hope, and right now he needed that much more than he needed safety.
****
Erik wrapped the amulet in silk the next time, which meant there were no burns. Hunh. Learn something new every day, Dean thought.
“I know why you keep that thing on,” Dean told him the time after that, fighting reflexively against Jim and the other guy whose name he’d never learned --Douchebag No. 3 -- as they worked to secure him. “You’re scared that if you do it like everybody else, I’m the one on top.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Erik said, far from eloquent even by Dean’s standards.
“What?” Dean asked. “You know, the incubus mojo means sex. Doesn’t fix what kind it’s gonna be. That’s all you and your freaky little desires. So what are you afraid of?”
Erik smacked him, hard enough that Dean felt a stab of heat as something tore in his neck. Dean put up with a lot of bull—a whole state’s worth, if you asked him, and maybe the state was Texas—point being, he was used to being kicked in the teeth, but when the kicker was a fellow human there were usually rules.
Dean was fucking sick of rules. Jim and No. 3 had paused in their efforts to watch Erik work on his hard-on, and Dean twisted so that he was the one grabbing them and got his feet under him on the mattress just as he pulled them towards each other, managing to make their foreheads crack together satisfyingly. He shoved them back as he kicked out, wishing more than ever for his boots as he landed a heel in Erik’s side. Erik stumbled back; Dean launched himself off the bed, putting his elbow in No. 3’s nose as he went.
He split his knuckles open on Erik’s face before Jim figured out that all he needed to do was take off the fucking amulet. Dean couldn’t fight after that, and fortunately No. 3 was not so much of a douchebag that he would interrupt. Or at least he was a douchebag who understood that his employer vastly preferred him dragging Erik to safety to him getting revenge.
After that, Erik wasn’t allowed to play his little game—Henry figured out that the merchandise was actually at risk—and Erik’s nose had a permanent kink in it, so all in all it was a win, relatively speaking.
****
“Still nothing,” Bobby said grimly, ten days after they’d tracked down the last client. Sam didn’t want to know how many favors Bobby had called in. But hunters tended more towards the Gordon Walker side of morality, and it was just unlikely that they’d know about someone running a supernatural brothel. Bobby’s own connection to Kelty (and Sam kept a careful ledger in his head about Bobby’s lies on that count) had been almost accidental, competing over the same book at some occult auction.
Sam’s latest tracking spell had fizzled as well. (Sam knew Bobby kept a mental ledger of his own, little boxes ticked off for each use of magic, extra when the magic was even arguably a darker shade. Like Sam, Bobby wasn’t going to say anything while they had more pressing business. Didn’t make him a hypocrite, just a practical man.)
“It’s like Dean’s disappeared,” he said. “Even if—there’d be traces.” That was, after all, how they’d been raised: putting the traces of the dead to rest. Dean wasn’t a ghost because Dean wasn’t dead. But he had to be behind wards more powerful than any they’d encountered before, which said disturbing things about the difficulty of extracting him once he’d been found.
Bobby frowned. “These spells, they track essence—soul, right?”
Sam did not like where this was going. Ten years in Hell or not, Dean’s soul had still been good enough for Heaven, or at least the upper management in God’s absence.
“I’m just sayin’,” Bobby continued, sensing Sam’s reluctance, “that psychic said that the incubus whatever was entwined with Dean’s soul. What if he’s been changed so much that his—signature, I guess—is different? Then the tracking spells wouldn’t have anything to grab a hold of.”
Sam had been using Dean’s leftover clothing, pieces from the car a couple of times when a ritual was a long shot and he needed something that was tied to Dean with blood, sweat and tears. He thought about it, and nothing he’d used postdated Dean’s affliction. They hadn’t exactly had time for shopping trips afterwards.
“We’d need to track a mixture of incubus and Dean,” he said, already considering which of the spells could be modified. “There’s a charm that’s used to locate missing children, you take something from the father and something from the mother—”
“Where are we gonna get a chunk of incubus?” Bobby asked, following his thoughts.
Sam grinned, and knew it was one of the smiles that made humans nervous. “That’s the easy part.”
****
The next time Dean saw Henry, Henry was holding Jim’s gun. Dean sighed internally. He’d been working pretty hard on Jim, whispering in the guy’s ear while he rutted. Dean could force himself to talk through the drunken fog flowing through him during sex, but it hadn’t been easy. Bring your gun in next time. I want your gun. Just bring in the gun. I’ll be so good, just bring me your gun. Now he’d wasted all that effort, and Henry was going to be wise to the strategy in the future.
“Were you going to try to kill me, or just yourself?” Henry asked. He held the gun with the ease of an expert. Dean would have preferred some showmanship, but Henry was too practical to do something stupid like running the muzzle down Dean’s cheek.
Dean didn’t answer; didn’t see the point.
Henry smiled, but this time there was more of an edge to it. Dean expected that, in a couple more months, he’d have wiped the smile right off the fucker’s face. “Very well. I’ve learned a lesson, and now you will as well.”
In the event, it was more like a refresher course: Pain sucks just as much the thousandth time around. Time had blurred the edges of past tortures, making what Henry’s guys did seem pretty bad, even though it was all non-disfiguring stuff. Jim was especially creative. Dean presumed he felt humiliated. Well, he could join the fucking club.
Thing was, ‘I’ve seen worse in Hell’ really wasn’t a giant comfort, however much of a badass it made Dean.
There were only two things that had gone right since Kelty died. First, nobody here had mentioned Sam, which he had to hope meant that they weren’t thinking about him. And second, so far, his only customers hadn’t needed to be forced into his room. He was even pretty sure that most of them had no clue about the terms of Dean’s employment. On average, they were kinkier than the folks Kelty had found, but nothing Dean couldn’t handle—anything that could get a person off worked on him, after all. Soon, though, he was going to have to choose: he could bite through his wrists, go back on and then off the rack, and be black-eyed before he deliberately raped anybody. Or he could get started aboveground, while he still looked human.
There was no right thing to do. But he knew what he ought to do. He was just too much of a coward to take charge before anything too bad had actually happened. So all he did was wait, and hope that Sam was being careful.
****
Bobby left Sam alone for the summoning. “I like you better when I don’t see you work,” was all he said. That was an improvement on being lied to, Sam guessed. Nor was he thrilled with the idea of Bobby watching him extract blood from a demon. Not that he was going to do anything with it other than what they’d discussed. He didn’t even know whether incubus blood would offer the same hit, though if they came from Hell there was every reason to expect—anyway, it was irrelevant.
He’d have to put himself in the Devil’s Trap to get the blood. There was some risk that Bobby was going to leave him inside if he couldn’t get out of his own volition, but it was a chance he was willing to take.
Because Dean was at stake, it was easy to be careful. He performed the steps of the ritual with precision—Dad used to say ‘it takes as long as it takes,’ Zen hunter bullshit that Sam had never accepted. He got the point now, though.
As soon as the incubus materialized, Sam punched it, snapping its head to the side. He caught it as it folded and shoved it into the chair, binding it extra-tight but leaving a stretch of arm exposed so that he could get what he needed.
It bled just like a human. He had to massage the vein at the crook of its elbow to get a full cup, skin reddening under his fingers because of the proximity of his amulet. He didn’t kill it yet, in case he needed more.
He had one of Dean’s overshirts. In case the handprint made a difference too, he had one of Castiel’s feathers, a grisly souvenir from the last battle. He’d never shown Dean, who’d have wanted to burn it, but you never knew when angelic remains would prove useful. He cut a square from the shirt, ragged red threads whisper-soft against his skin, and put it in the copper bowl along with a hunk of the vane, stiff and unyielding as Castiel himself had been. Then he added the blood, streaking down the sides of the bowl like rain.
There was a red dot on the second joint of his thumb, just a bit of splatter. It was almost automatic to raise his hand towards his mouth—
No.
No.
Dean needed him a hundred percent, not strung out and puffed full of power that only wanted to be used and didn’t care how. (Oh fuck what if Dean’s blood—no.)
Sam snarled at the unconscious body of the incubus and wiped his hand off on his pants.
This was simple witchcraft, no demonic powers required. He started the chant, sprinkled in the herbs, lit the candles. The smell was liniment-sharp in his nostrils, masking the metal and burnt hair underneath.
When the mixture was ready, he spread the map out. Someday someone really ought to update these for the internet age, he thought. It would be a lot faster to do this with Google Maps. Maybe that could be his research project next summer.
Yes, Sam was aware that he was mentally babbling in order to control his fears. It worked, so the imaginary Dean mocking him could shut the fuck up.
He coated his fingers in the liquid, turned greasy and nauseating, black as melted tar and nearly as sticky, and flicked them over the map.
A blot landed on Virginia, a quivering dome. The other drops quickly dragged themselves over to the same spot, leaving what looked like a daisy drawn in charcoal on the map.
Sam hurried to grab the more detailed maps before the spell ran out of juice. He managed to get down to street level before the spell liquid quivered and went thin and rotten, all in an instant.
He called Bobby to let him know it was done. Then there was the incubus, still unconscious. He could pull it out of its body like he’d done with the succubus, but he had the feeling that would make getting out of the Devil’s Trap a tad harder, reminding the universe at large exactly how much demon was left in him.
In the end, he banished it back to Hell. Knowing that he could rid the world of demons, but chose only to cage them, was a familiar itch. It wasn’t like he was sending them to get rehabilitated, just making them some other hunter’s potential problem. But Bobby would be happier, and he very much needed Bobby on his side at present.
The Devil’s Trap hurt some, like charging through an electric current. Sam was just glad to have made it through.
Bobby returned within minutes. Sam was already checking the weapons. “Most likely, we’re going after humans,” he said, not looking up from his shotgun. “How much of a problem are you gonna have with that?”
Bobby cleared his throat. “Not much,” he said, and no matter how angry he sounded, Sam believed him. Bobby was the one who’d had to deal with Kelty’s corpse, and with the knowledge that it was his plan that had lost them Dean. Bobby might have been willing to kill Dean to save him, but having him enslaved was different. Anyone complicit in that horror had voluntarily withdrawn from the human race.
At least Sam could agree with him that far.
****
Yeah, so the waiting for Sammy thing was good in theory, but the only thing Dean was worse at than research was waiting. Dean lasted all of a week before he knocked Douchebag No. 3 out and went looking for the exit. He was pretty sure he was underground again—it made sense, easier to ward and keep him away from nonpaying eyes—and he saw a stairway at the end of the hall when he came out of his room.
Henry was waiting at the top, arms crossed over his chest. “This is getting to be a bad habit, Dean.”
“You should see me with a pack of cigarettes,” Dean told him, weighing his chances. The amulet would fry him up good, given how narrow the stairway was, but if he put Henry down quick he’d be okay.
“Did you know,” Henry asked, and paused for dramatic effect—Dean fucking hated him more for that than for being locked up, almost—“it’s not that difficult to get a hitman on retainer, even when he’d have to go to South Dakota to carry out the job?”
Dean forced himself still. “Easy thing to say.”
“Hard to ignore, though. You Winchester boys, you’re famous, among other things for the high regard you have for each other’s well-being. So you walk back down those stairs, behave yourself, and maybe in a month or so I’ll let you call your brother and tell him you’re fine, as long as he stays away.”
Sometimes Dean wondered whether he’d ever really gotten out of Hell. He wanted to throw up, and he wanted to say ‘fuck it’ and beat Henry until he looked like raw meat, and he wanted to—
He wanted to stop, but he couldn’t. So he took a careful breath. “Let me ask you something, Hank. You say you know about Sam. He faced down Lucifer and the Host of heaven, so what d’you think you’ve got they didn’t?”
Henry’s lips quirked. “Why, you, of course.”
So there was nothing to do but turn around and go back to his pathetic little cell.
There was a bright side, he guessed. No way was Sam still in South Dakota, not the way they’d left things, and not with Bobby walking into Kelty’s place to find only the wrong corpse. So Henry couldn’t be tracking Sam all that closely.
****
They watched the houses on the block for nearly forty-eight hours before they were sure which was the one entertaining visitors. There were no obvious surveillance cameras or other defenses. The house belonged to one Henry Parker, a good citizen if you looked at the public records; not even behind on his mortgage. Parker made a lot of money as an independent consultant.
Bobby in a suit and tie looked ridiculous to Sam, but objectively he made a perfectly respectable detective. They had a long debate over whether the people holding Dean would be likely to have investigated Dean’s history, in which case they’d be on the lookout for any tall, dark and part-demonic visitors, but in the end Sam just told Bobby flat-out that they were both making the approach. Bobby grumbled, something about planning to haunt the Winchesters if Sam got him killed, but Sam put on his suit too, plus a long coat to hide the shotgun.
Sam rang the doorbell, and he and Bobby raised their fake badges in perfect synchronicity when the door opened. The man inside wasn’t Henry Parker.
“How can I help you?” he asked, even as his eyes flicked to the door at the end of the hallway.
“Have you seen this man?” Sam asked pleasantly, holding up one of his few pictures of Dean.
Again with the eye-flick. “No, I’m sorry. Should I be looking out for him?”
“No,” Sam said, and punched him in the throat. Bobby made a peeved noise but stepped forward to give him another whack, just for luck, and shove him to the side as he crumpled. Sam tucked his picture away and followed.
****
Dean was with one of the clients when a commotion broke out, loud enough that Dean could hear it through the door. Erik charged in and dragged the guy off, ignoring his needy screams. Getting interrupted was like having his dick scrubbed with steel wool; Dean made some noise himself. Then Jim was there with a needle, stabbed into his bicep. Dean fought it as hard as he could, but the world just slipped away, wrapped in layers of fog.
****
Leaving Bobby behind to guard the stairs, Sam headed into the basement, which was a warren of little storerooms. He kicked open four doors and shot two men before—
For a sunstruck moment, the only thing he could see was Dean: twice as beautiful as he remembered, turning his head to Sam like always.
Dean was on his knees in front of Parker, his eyes wide, pupils mere pixels. Drugged, Sam thought. He was shirtless, gleaming with sweat, wearing nothing but thin white cotton boxers. Parker had a gun jammed deeply into the soft flesh of Dean’s throat, his other hand caressing Dean’s cheek. “Sam Winchester,” Parker said, sleek and relaxed.
Sam didn’t suppose that greeting Parker with ‘Dead man walking’ in return would win him much goodwill. “I’d like you to let my brother go now,” he said instead, his voice as flat and still as a pool of blood.
“We seem to be at an impasse.”
“I can be reasonable,” Sam suggested. Half a second, and his knife could be in Parker’s eye. “Let him go and I give you my word you’ll live.”
“Your word,” Parker repeated, as if the sound of his own voice was savory. “I’m sorry, but given what I know about you, your word is not your bond.” Dean twitched a fraction, trying to turn his head away from the gun. The motion looked almost involuntary. Parker stuck his thumb in Dean’s eye anyway, and Dean whimpered. His skin was turning red on his cheek and down his jaw where Parker’s gun rested.
“So make me a counteroffer,” Sam suggested. Parker wasn’t wearing anything around his neck, not visibly, but there was a gleam of silver at the wrist of his gun hand. Sam reached out with his mind, gently, and started picking at the weld where the amulet was joined to the rest of the bracelet.
“You create a binding circle around the three of us that will only let me out. I walk away.”
“Or you step outside and shoot me, then come back for Dean.” He had to be careful not to break any metal on the inward-facing side, where Parker might feel the sharp edges pressing into his skin.
“Surely you can create a circle that will deflect a little thing like a bullet,” Parker said reasonably.
Parker was substantially overestimating the extent of Sam’s remaining powers, but saying that seemed likely to be neither credible nor, if believed, helpful. “Or you throw a gas grenade into the room, come in and kill me while I’m unconscious, then grab Dean before he dies.”
“Then our negotiations have come to a halt. Unless you’re prepared to live to fight another day.” Dean’s skin was blistering now where it was too close to Parker’s amulet, and he let out a hurt little whine and slumped down.
“Dean,” Sam said.
Dean’s eyes fluttered, huge and grass-green. He made a halfway attempt to rise up, and Parker pistol-whipped him across the jaw, snake-quick.
“Walk away now, Sam, and I’ll entertain an offer for an exchange. I’m sure a man like you can think of something I might appreciate.”
Sam fought down the sneer. “Dean,” he repeated. “Look at me.”
Dean whimpered but obeyed, and even through the drugs, Sam could tell that he felt the danger, the fact that at least one person was not going to leave this room alive. Dean hissed as Parker’s left hand fisted in his hair.
Using Dean was unfortunate, but Dean knew better than anyone besides Sam how stupid it was to ignore a weapon just because it was painful to wield it. Sam released Parker’s amulet and whipped it away, careful to arrest its motion before it slammed into the wall and made noise.
Parker stiffened, looking down at Dean with a new intensity.
Dean tried to push himself to his feet, shaking with the drugs. Parker let the gun fall away and cupped his other hand around Dean’s chin, tugging him upwards.
Sam shot him in the throat.
Dean made a high-pitched, wounded sound as the corpse fell backwards. Sam hurried forward, forgetting about the amulet around his neck until Dean flinched. Sam could see Dean’s cock tenting his shorts; the incubus glamor had been triggered, and now Dean was hurting to finish it.
“Boys!” Bobby yelled. “You in there?”
“Yeah,” Sam yelled back. Probably they should have thought of some code word, but they didn’t usually deal with people and he hadn’t considered all the possibilities.
“Give us a minute, okay?”
That produced a dubious silence. There were a lot of things Bobby might not prefer to see, though, and he could just pick one to imagine that he liked better than the alternatives. Sam fought the amulet out from under his shirt, nearly ripping his tie off in the process, and slung it into the same corner as Parker’s.
It hit him like a tidal wave, stronger than he remembered. Every cell in him felt like it would explode if he didn’t touch Dean right then. He scooped Dean off the floor and shoved him against the wall, right next to the blood spatter; he sneered at it, triumphant, as he shoved his hand into Dean’s boxers and jacked him roughly. Sam swallowed Dean’s moans, exulting in the taste of him, like a cold beer after a long day’s labor except a thousand times better. Dean shuddered and gave it up, heat streaking over Sam’s hand, and Sam barely managed to rip his own pants open and stroke once, twice, before he came all over Dean’s stomach.
Sanity returned in time for Sam to ease Dean down until he was sitting against the wall, head turned away from Parker’s corpse. Sam ignored the delicious, floating feeling that he wanted to indulge in for hours. Instead, he put himself back together and grabbed the amulet.
“Bobby?” he yelled, wondering how much noise they’d made.
“Yeah?” Wary, but not disgusted.
“Can you—Dean needs some clothes.” Sam searched his pockets and came up with a couple of crumpled napkins, enough to clean the worst of the spunk off of Dean, who twitched under Sam’s hand but didn’t fight.
Bobby came through the door, his gun still out, a bundle of fabric under his other arm. He inspected Parker’s body, then tossed the shirt and pants towards Dean.
Sam bit his lip and did his best to stuff Dean into the clothes without touching him. With the drugs, Dean was unable to control his grimaces, but he was also in no condition to dress himself, so Sam had to live with with the pain he was causing. It seemed so literal compared to all the other things he’d done to Dean, he thought and wanted to laugh, his brain loose from its moorings with all that had just happened.
Finally Dean was decent, or as close to decent as he could get, wavering on his bare feet. “The car’s just outside,” Sam told him, and even through the haze Dean’s eyes brightened.
“Dean. It’s good to see you, boy.” Bobby’s voice was thick with regrets Sam knew too well himself.
But there were some things on which they’d never see eye to eye. “You’ll be wanting to leave now,” Sam suggested, turning to him.
Dean slurred something like “What?” but Sam ignored him.
“Sam—” Bobby looked half-broken.
Sam put his hand to his gun. “I know you were only doing what Dean asked, what he thought was best. And you’ve always been a good friend to Dean, even when it cost you. I appreciate your help finding him. But you came out here in the first place to put a bullet through my brother’s brain, and I can’t see you right now.”
Dean stared at them, blinking hard. Sam was almost glad Dean was in no condition to participate, because the conversation he was going to have with Dean about the same issue needed to be one-on-one.
“What’s your plan?” Bobby asked, wearily.
Sam shook his head. “Not that damned Colt. I’m not giving up.”
Bobby tugged at his cap. “I didn’t—I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. But if you don’t have any real ideas, you’re only making it harder.”
Sam huffed, because that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard Bobby say. “It doesn’t get harder than Dean dying! You didn’t give me a real chance. I’m going to fix this.”
Bobby sighed. “I’m not—there’s a place you can go. Just for a while. But Sam, Dean’s not gonna thank you.”
Sam took another look at Dean, punch-drunk and irreplaceable, staring back at Sam like Sam was a mirage. He nodded, acknowledging Bobby’s point, because ‘ask me if I care’ was kind of implicit in his stance. “Dean,” he said, and Dean wobbled forwards, following him to freedom, or as close as Dean could get.
Part Six
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Damn
I love it when writing makes me all preverbal.
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Soon, though, he was going to have to choose: he could bite through his wrists, go back on and then off the rack, and be black-eyed before he deliberately raped anybody. Or he could get started aboveground, while he still looked human.
Chilling!
Sam took another look at Dean, punch-drunk and irreplaceable, staring back at Sam like Sam was a mirage.
Another LOVELY image. You have a wonderful way with words, hon!
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