A retelling of Season 4 Episode 14: Sex and Violence
Bobby burst into the motel room. "Where is it? Where's the siren?" His arm wielding the bronze dagger sank down to his side. "Fellas? You don't know what I went through to get this sailor blood, and I was kind of looking forward to slamming it into one of these creatures. Boys?"
Sam and Dean certainly looked the worse for wear, which wasn't that unusual, but something else seemed to have taken a beating besides the Winchesters' hides. Starting with the unusual silence, and the fact that the brothers were looking anywhere but at each other.
"What? This fake FBI agent routine the siren hit upon was pretty smart, so no need to feel bad he had you going. All it took was a phone call to figure it out, though." Bobby clapped Dean on the shoulder and the hunter winced.
"Yeah, Bobby, you're right. We're not used to the things we hunt being so personable, is all. At least I'm not used to getting chummy with the enemy," Dean said. The reflexive accusation hurled at Sam for consorting with the demon Ruby fell flat, even to his own ears.
Sam finally shook himself out of some paralysis that had him stopped where the siren had disappeared. "We don't like anybody pitting us against each other is all, Bobby. We'd rather have a spat on our own account."
Sam put his arm around Dean and helped his brother limp across to his bag so they could hastily pack up, both of them sneaking a glance at the beds with their identical coverlets pulled up.
Bobby was surveying the surroundings with a practiced eye. "Looks like you did more damage to each other than the room. He was relying on those mind tricks they're so good at, I bet."
"You got that right," Sam said resolutely while throwing clothes and weapons in his carryall. "It had a heart to heart with me and I was ready to name my first-born after it. Everybody needs that kind of understanding, and Dean and I don't get to stop and let it all out often enough."
Dean picked up his own packed bag and hissed, grabbing his back. "Thanks, Bobby." He handed the pack off to his uncle. "I think I wrenched something good trying to wriggle away from that thing."
The older man was dying to share how he happened to come upon the solution to the siren that had been mostly inhabiting strippers and inducing men to kill the most important person in their lives. He treated them to a diner meal and a play-by-play of how he acquired the blood of a drowned sailor that was supposedly key to defeating the nearly immortal siren and its hold over any human it had infected. In between, Sam took the lead in filling in on the case and how they had happened to scare the creature off.
"I think it overestimated its ability to get between two brothers," Sam said.
"He, I mean it, could never take the place of Sam," Dean said, following the example of his brother's casual tone. Together, they told their uncle that they'd managed to half snap out of the spell that had both of them convinced that the fake FBI agent was their best friend. A battle had ensued when the two Winchester's fought for exclusive rights to the siren's comradeship.
Dean
There truly was nothing like Sam's brotherly backup, Dean reflected as he shoveled in some pie that tasted off to him.
Sam had seen Dean in flagrante with a guy, and that, more than the fact that the person he'd been all over had technically been something far worse, had the older brother totally freaked. And his younger brother was letting him know in every indirect way he could that the secret would never go any farther than the two of them.
How a hunt that took place mostly in strip clubs could have ended on such a non-heterosexual note, Dean couldn't begin to understand.
The two brothers, well, mostly Dean, had spent a lot of time scrutinizing the ladies gyrating at the poles and serving drinks in the club they'd identified as the most likely hunting ground for the siren. The other FBI agent who insinuated himself into the case had been an annoyance and then a source of manly companionship—first for Sam, who was much less titillated by the scantily clad ladies than Dean.
Why that meant that Dean was also the one to end up doing the horizontal tango with the so-called Agent Nick Monroe, he had no idea.
"Look at that one," Dean indicated a be-tasseled girl in thigh-high boots currently on the stage one day during their investigation.
"I can think of several regulations I'd like to break with her," Agent Monroe said, sipping a beer.
He smiled broadly and Dean smiled back. "This is what I'm always trying to tell my partner. It's okay to enjoy yourself as long as you still get the job done."
"What job was that?" Nick asked sagely, following Dean's attention as it was totally absorbed in a voluptuous redhead in a sailor outfit. He chuckled. "It's okay, man. The job will be here. Go on and take a little time off with the distraction of your choice. That's what partners are for."
Dean's survival instinct kicked in. "Nah. No telling what you'll pick up in a place like this," he said, thinking how much it would suck if he got slathered over with some siren-juice while kissing any pair of those red-painted lips smiling at him from every direction. Except that brunette with the navel ring made him want to make an exception…. He tore himself away with a great effort.
"Shit," Dean swore as he knocked over his beer. His own hunter's instincts had him grabbing the bottle before it rolled off the table, but he was surprised to find his companion's reflexes almost as fast as the other man's hand grazed his.
"You're quick on the uptake. Quantico only lets in the best," Dean laughed easily.
"You have no idea," Agent Monroe agreed, laughing as well.
That must have been the moment Dean was infected. But the veteran hunter, trained to sense when things really went off the rails, had noticed nothing, and that was truly worrisome. It had all seemed so natural.
"I need to hit the head," Dean said a moment later, feeling like drinking that early in the day, though at a slow rate as a method of fitting in among the general debauchery, maybe had been a bad idea.
"Me too," the agent had said, rising and throwing some bills on the table. "Then let's go outside and see if we can scope out the likely targets on the way in. Every man looks the same when you see what he really wants come to the forefront of his eyes."
The piped-in tunes had gotten less strident at some point, so that Dean was able to hear some unexpected music in the other man's voice. Agent Monroe must have gone to college—well, all real FBI agents did. Dean liked listening to the rare smart person who didn't shove their learning down his GED-level throat, and Nick Monroe was proving to be that perfect combination of down-home country (a Carolina boy, the agent had confided in his comfortable drawl) and a sharp investigator. With no awareness of the supernatural whatsoever, the FBI guy had managed to piece together the stripper connection that lay underneath the murders committed by men who exhibited an unusual level of remorse.
Finally they had managed to weave their way to the bathroom and the line moved up to the point that the real agent and the pseudo-agent ended up in the two-stall room together.
With one hand on his fly, Dean stumbled on the way into his stall. "Hey man, take it slow, I got you," Agent Monroe said into his ear. "Are you sick? You don't look like yourself."
The man turned Dean so he could look at himself in the small grubby mirror. Dean saw a man shaking with arousal clinging much more closely than strictly necessary to a larger man whose face was just out of frame. The unprecedented situation made Dean press even more closely into the man to hide an arousal that he couldn't fathom, except that Agent Nick Monroe looked much more gorgeous in the harsh bathroom light than he'd been aware of until that moment.
"It's okay, Dean," Nick said in that crooning voice. "No one will be able to come in here until we've had our moment. We're meant to be, baby."
The agent had scarcely finished these words when Dean launched his mouth upon the lips hovering just above his. They groped and staggered and ended up with Dean pressed against the grimy tiled wall, his head turning back and his mouth still clamped upon the one belonging to the larger man who was grinding in a very businesslike manner into his back.
"No, don't stop. Don't stop," Dean heard himself panting when the man backed up to survey at arm's length the hunter he'd managed to deconstruct in the space of 60 seconds.
"Don't worry, Dean. We can have that always, but I think there's a riot forming on the other side of the door. Do you feel up to taking a whizz on your own, or do you need my help?"
Dean's mouth dropped open, not at the idea of Nick easing him out of his own pants, but that he wanted it so much.
Agent Monroe plunged his tongue in the open mouth once more and then shut Dean's lips with his hands. "I'll be right over here if you need me."
Dean's brain was just capable of handling the task of relieving himself. Soon, Nick had a hand on his back and was propelling the smaller man first through a crowd whose irritated tenor seemed to melt away in their path. Dean looked back and saw the smiling, confident agent and wondered that anyone ever believed that he and Sam were really FBI. This guy was in charge, not a trace of improv. This assurance had Dean's crotch feeling pressure again, and this time he couldn't blame it on needing to take a piss.
The hunter had been steered out of the door and he took deep, grateful breaths of the evening air. "What time is it? I guess I have been drinking for a long time."
Agent Monroe seemed totally sober as he unlocked his car. "Are you coming?" was all he asked of the Dean paralyzed before the car door.
"Almost," Dean could have answered truthfully on the entire ride back to his motel, during which the hotel directions were the only words he could manage with the weight of Nick's hand resting naturally on his thigh.
Meanwhile, the federal agent was talking smoothly about some partner he had somewhere who didn't appreciate his loyalty—that's right, FBI always came partnered up, wonder why the partner wasn't there on this one? Dean couldn't pursue the thought any further because he was much, much, too grateful to have this agent all to himself.
"I take my work real serious—I sign up to back you up, I'll take one for you, that's my philosophy. What about you?" Monroe asked as they pulled into the motel parking lot. "Will you take one for the team?"
The man's beefy hand caressed Dean's hip, who made a move to divest himself of the jeans that were suddenly in the way.
"Easy there, cowboy," the FBI man said. "We've got a lot of time."
Dean walked on jelly legs to the room, which he was vaguely aware would be vacant because Sam was out getting his with a probable siren. "There's no way that whatever this is could be worse than what Sam's doing," Dean gave himself one last reassurance and rushed to take his shirt off.
During the interminable diner meal, Dean sipped his soda and listened to his brother and uncle talk about the likelihood of tracking down the siren to finish it off for good. If he thought that was at all likely, he would be very concerned. But Agent Monroe was neither that easy to hunt, nor was he going to leave Dean alone again.
The guy had promised in the most intimate situation a man could be in.
"Do you know why you let this happen?" Nick said, and Dean knew he meant, other than the fact that the hunter was immobilized by each of their pairs of handcuffs tethering him to the headboard.
Dean shook his head mutely and inched backwards onto the member that was now almost all the way in the space he realized he had been saving for this moment.
"Because we're the same. Because I know you: I know what you need so you don't have to say it," he thrust a little and Dean bit the pillow. "After seeing all the men in that dive checking you out today, I can tell you, it's not because you never had the opportunity." He nipped Dean's shoulder and growled. "What I'm doing is a freaking privilege, that's what it is." Dean couldn't suppress the moan at the idea that others had wanted him, and Nick had watched him being considered as a piece of tail.
"This feels too right for you to not have thought of it many times before. I know a slut when I see one. You took to this like a duck to water," the agent said, driving his point home.
"Yes, more," were the words still coming out of his throat when Sam walked in the door.
The younger Winchester liked a challenging woman. Which may be another way of saying that a taboo-breaking liaison with the demon Ruby was not only an easy line to cross, but also exactly what he needed to get off.
Sam was smart enough to know that the lady doctor he hooked up with was a possible siren candidate. The abstraction Dean often faulted him for had simply decided that the best course of action was to get together with her. This would either eliminate the doctor as a suspect or get him infected with her venom so he could use it to kill her. An affected person's blood was the best source for the poison that the siren was oddly not immune to itself.
The woman doctor also scratched that itch of his that was increasingly inflamed these days now that he was skirting the dark side. Sam rode her with the abandon that the combination of death and the other-than-human allowed him to exhibit.
"You take a lady places," the woman panted to him when they were all scratched up on the floor of her office afterwards.
Not caring very much whether she turned out to be a lady or not, Sam kissed her and extricated himself. "I'm sorry to run, I really am," he stammered as he yanked on his pants. Normally he gave himself a little bit more credit than to leave a woman seconds after having sex with her, but Sam had someplace he had to be:
He needed to see Agent Monroe.
Sam had spent some surveillance time in the car with the genuine FBI article and found him very likable. So likable the hunter felt kind of bad about besmirching the reputation of the guy's profession by his repeated impersonations.
"I might need to go in and tear Dean off of one of the girls if he doesn't check in soon," Sam remarked in the car.
"They usually do this to people, don't they? Partner up exact opposites, I mean," Monroe replied.
"Huh, I don't think of Dean as my opposite, exactly. We get the job done, and he knows me better than anyone else, for better or for worse."
"I mean the FBI puts together id and ego, like you guys," the agent pursued. "They want someone who won't hesitate to take the shot, who will use instinct to get inside the head of a serial-killing monster, like Dean. But you can't claim that he brings the same kind of brainpower to the table."
"Oh," Sam laughed. "We're more complementary than opposites. Dean's instincts are way beyond me, most times. I've learned to go with it."
"And what about your instincts. Does he understand those?" came the quiet question.
And so Sam had found himself talking—not about anything incriminating or overtly supernatural—he was too smart for that. But about the things he couldn't discuss with his brother: how fractured his sense of right and wrong had gotten along the way, and his increasing willingness to take big risks in the face of big danger. He even talked for a long time about the sexual side of his life with Ruby, which Dean would never want to hear about, employing euphemism to discuss that pairing in all its hot-and-wrong fascination.
"Man, sorry I unloaded on you like that," Sam shook himself when he was done, realizing he had been gazing unseeing at the strip club parking lot, almost deserted at that hour. "Guess I had more bottled up than I thought."
"Any time, brother," Agent Monroe had said in a friendly tone. "It's a lonely job, made worse because they teach you not to let anyone, especially your colleagues, know what you really think. I had a good partner, a real partner sometime back that I could talk to like this. Can't seem to gel with whoever they've stuck me with since I lost him, which is why they have me flying solo. They'd never match us up together, for instance," Monroe laughed ruefully. "We're too much alike. But Sam, if you ever feel like listening or talking, I want you to keep in touch. I mean it. The job is ten times tougher when you don't have someone to truly rely upon. I know from bitter experience."
The agent extended his hand, and Sam did think at the time that he met it with his own that they were a great deal alike physically—exactly the same height, big hands, wide shoulders, but lean. They were also more contemplative than the average hunter— or FBI agent, he imagined.
"I'd like that," Sam said, shaking the hand sincerely.
Ever since that moment, Sam had been entertaining various scenarios that would put him on the road next to the sane, reliable Agent Monroe, and leave his needy older brother behind once and for all. Hell, with Nick he stood a much greater chance of figuring out this apocalypse thing. Sam ached to talk about it with someone who had an attention span. Sam also considered that he would have been less willing to bed that random doctor if he hadn't done the whole thing with a voice in his mind, thinking of how he would explain it to his new FBI friend.
The whole experience of taking the doctor across her desk was much more arousing, knowing he could explain what riding the edge of the forbidden was like to someone who wasn't afraid to hear. Sam had the Impala so he rushed from the doctor's office to find the agent where he thought he would be: in another protracted stakeout in front of the strip bar that Sam suddenly cared little about. When neither the agent nor his brother were there, on an impulse Sam drove up to their motel. He was surprised that the fed's car was in the lot.
Feeling an irrational jealousy that Dean had spent all day drooling over exotic dancers next to the only intelligent, trustworthy guy for miles, Sam opened the door.
Some truth that had been the pillar of his life crumpled into something just as quivering as his older brother, who being screwed by a corn-fed specimen of the Bureau's finest.
What happened after that, Sam couldn't be sure. He knew he fought, but wasn't able to discern whether he was trying to get the man to stop sexually assaulting his brother, whom he was sure must have been drugged or beaten into submission. Or if he was furious that his needy older brother had done the unthinkable—putting his ass between Sam and his newfound comrade—in order to stand in the way of Sam finally moving on in his life.
Fists were flying and, in at least two cases, privates were out and bouncing, during what Sam had to admit were an engrossing couple of minutes. "This is what it would be like to go on the road with this Nick," was the thought that kept coming to Sam as he fought with an unusual relish.
"Your partner begged me for it until I felt too bad to refuse," Agent Monroe confided reasonably between blows.
Sam was strangely gratified to find the other man was an equal match in a fight. "That doesn't surprise me for some reason. He's kind of a basket case. You can understand why I'd give anything for a change of scenery."
The agent seemed to understand what he was proposing. "The bureau would actually be glad to pair me off, but I think you're talking freelance. I might not mind, to tell the truth. I'm game, if you're ready to leave Dean."
"I'm already gone, man. This is where we part ways, Dean, sorry," Sam forced himself to look at his older brother, who had never looked more vulnerable in the middle of a fight.
Dean was wailing on whoever he could reach. "No, don't leave me!" he cried, not sure which man he was talking to, or why he his first move hadn't been to grab some pants and some explanation, any explanation, for his being with the guy whose body still had him half-hard even as confused as he was.
Nick Monroe ducked away from a punch from Sam, and whispered in Dean's ear. "Don't worry, baby, I'm not going to leave you. See you later on down the road. Scout's honor."
Agent Nick Monroe disappeared, Sam's left hook follow-up finding nothing to land on, he ended up falling into the dresser.
The two brothers stared at each other, and Sam took it all back. The best kind of companion is someone that you didn't NEED to talk about things with. In the silence, the two brothers established:
They had both been had by the siren
The fact that Dean had actually been HAD was something that could have easily gone the other way, and Sam would have been the naked one; and
The two brothers would take this incident with them to the grave.
Sam picked up Dean's pants from the floor and threw them at his brother. The older Winchester snapped out of his paralysis in time to catch the trousers and scramble into his clothes and shoes while Sam obscured the post-sex rumples on the bedding.
Bobby stepped into the room. "Where is it? Where's the siren?"
The story Sam had woven for their uncle was still echoing in Dean's ears when they stepped into the Impala, the two brothers back on the job together once more. "If I feel light-headed and queasy, you must have gotten a lot more venom than me and feel ten times worse," Sam said in that wonderful, nonchalant tone Dean knew was one-in-a-million in a guy who had just seen you being screwed by a man.
The siren had gotten both of them to renounce the company of their brother for a promise of companionship. He—it, Sam persisted in saying—had them fighting so hard to be first in its affections it had been unprepared for the combined forces of two hunters. "It turned tail and left," Sam concluded. "Sorry for the bother you went through with the sailor blood. We'll keep it on hand the next time we cross paths with the thing."
"You boys must've put up one hell of a catfight," their uncle said as they parted ways. "I suppose they're used to drugging civilians and plucking the low-hanging fruit."
"That we ain't, Bobby," Sam said naturally, his brotherly antennae sensing the well-hidden flinch behind Dean's smile.
But there was no denying it: Dean had been plucked. That much the brothers knew. But forbidden fruit hanging from any altitude had become a new, tantalizing threat—and Dean was alone in sensing this as he slipped into a bruised and tender sleep in the passenger seat.
—
The woman strode across the graveyard, her stiletto-heeled thigh-high boots sinking into the night-moist earth. The only other sound for long moments was the creaking of her pink pleather miniskirt and bustier.
She stopped at the signaled spot with her hand on her hip and tossed her long ponytail impatiently. "I guess I technically do have all the time in the world, theoretically, but I'm missing my turn on the pole for this meeting."
A man stepped out from behind a monument. "Far be it from me to question the methods of such an efficient operative, but I must know—why didn't you use a visage like this to reel him in?"
The woman slid her pink-polished fingers down her body of the evening. It was a bumpy ride. "I don't decide—it's merely me responding to the desire that is already present in them."
"In Hell, everything comes out in the wash, so I know a great deal about what floats Dean Winchester's boat," the man purred. "But still, this is very interesting, topside. And useful. As I'm sure you will find our arrangement—" He unfurled a long scroll. "When Hell does indeed begin to freeze over and things get a bit frosty—" the man's eyes raked down her abundant bare skin, goosebumped in the night air, "especially for more tropical temperaments such a siren's."
"This was surprisingly entertaining; he's more interesting than you sold him as, Crowley," the girl said. "He gave in much faster than I would have thought, but watching his macho self-concept try to wrap itself around my dick—quite enticing. I don't mind riding my way into a privileged spot in the post-apocalyptic world on that ass."
"I told you that you wouldn't regret it," the Hell-operative known as Crowley said, furling up the scroll upon which he had marked off a check for the first installment in the buy-in plan he had set up with the siren. "When the population is decimated by the Croatoan virus and assorted unpleasantness, all of those creatures competing with you on your level of the food chain will find it a dog eat dog world without the soon-to-be overlord's protection." He gave an obsequious bow.
"I'll wait for your word about the next phase then," the siren said, reaching into her cleavage to extract a small compact. By the time she had finished touching up her makeup, the man was gone. She left, her ponytail swinging in anticipation of another evening on the hunt for vulnerable men.
—
Castiel stood at attention as the Archangel Michael listened to a report on his progress.
"Did you expect it to be quite this easy?" Michael asked him, releasing the other angel from his scrutiny.
"Before his trip to Hell, I sense it would have been another matter entirely," Castiel said flatly. "As it stands, it would probably be simple enough to convince Dean to do almost anything, provided it involved some of the self-debasement he believes he deserves. That, packaged with the promise of affection, proved irresistible, as I told you it would."
"Well done, Castiel," Michael said with a rare nod to a lower angel. "With our troops spread so thin, it was inspired of you to find a way to piggy-back on this plan of Hell's that you discovered. This investment of your time in the Winchester man paid off."
"The demons have no idea the favor they are doing us," Castiel replied.
"Continue to monitor the situation, brother, and thanks," the archangel said and left the other angel alone with his thoughts.
Castiel's mind ranged from various types of favors and assorted reasons that they must remain hidden, all of them discovered by close observation of Dean Winchester.