A/N: Thanks muchly to CastielLovesDean for beta-ing. If y'all have a chance, you should check out her Dean/Cas fics too, especially 'Cas's Logical Suggestion' *grins*
Summary: Teenage-Sam gets mauled by a succubus on a hunt. Dean is the older brother hell-bent on getting revenge. He gets into a spot of trouble, and then runs into S6 Castiel who's time-travelling and also happens to be doing shady deals with succubi. Misunderstandings and awkward sex ensues. DEAN/CAS, SLASH, TIME-TRAVEL.
Dean was flicking through TV channels absently. He was in that half state between 'bored' and 'bored enough to sleep', so the thundering of boots up the motel stairs didn't register until his dad had kicked the door down.
There wasn't any room to react; all Dean caught were flashes of red and towels – there was someone lying in the towels – and his Dad was carrying them all bridal style to one of the bedrooms. Bobby was following sharp on his Dad's heels.
It only took a moment for the adrenaline to kick in.
"What's happened to Sammy?" Dean's yelled, running after his dad.
Bobby was blocking the door, crowding over the bedposts and blocking every part of Dean's view except for the briefest glimpse of one floppy hand. There were patches of blood smeared across his palms, in the grooves of his nails, and in the nail beds. There were fingernail indents. Dean thought of Sam clenching his fists in pain until his body gave up, too exhausted to hold his hands up, and his heart stuttered.
"Idjit went after the succubus. Thralls got to him first," Bobby answered Dean. He got the first aid kit open in the space of two minutes, and now both men were rummaging through the contents.
Dean drew in a quick breath. "How bad is it?"
His dad grunted and didn't answer. One of his hands was scrabbling backwards, reaching for the hotel's landline telephone. He found the cord and pulled it – a little too hard – the handset clattered onto the floor.
Bobby was swearing as the phone up. He punched a number in one-handed and gave it back to Dean's dad. That was when Dean saw that John Winchester was using his other hand to press down on an open chest wound. His fingers were barely holding the sides of the wound together.
"Relax Dean," Bobby said.
John was talking tersely into the phone and pulling on the cord – there was a car accident, my kid got caught, abdominal injuries, he needs to get airlifted now, we're at –
That was freaking impossible. Dean had eyes – he could tell that both his dad and Bobby were as tense as wooden boards, no matter how uncharacteristically gentle Bobby's tone was.
The towels weren't enough to absorb all the blood flow. It was leaking from the edges and dripping onto the floor. The blood was splattering onto Dean's boots. One of his hands went around his stomach. It wasn't Dean liver that had been ripped open, but his body was reacting like it anyway. Sympathetic pain, maybe. Nausea. His heart rate was picking up.
He couldn't bring himself to look back up.
"It's okay. Looks worse than it is. He just needs to rest up a bit. Copter's coming, we're gonna look after him. He'll be fine," Bobby was saying, and not particularly convincingly, but his dad was nodding – he's been put on hold, the operator's putting him through.
The stain on the floor was getting bigger – enough that the carpet made squelching noises whenever Dad and Bobby were moving around. They're fucked. The cleaning bill's fucked. No way anyone's gonna get this blood off the carpet.
Dean wasn't breathing very well.
"Dean, get out of here."
What? "No wait, Dad, I can help, Sam needs help, I can wash the bandages, hold things -" Fuck, he's eighteen, he's practically a man, not some little sissy boy who can't handle a little blood! It wasn't like he hadn't sewn up his brother's gashes before, or popped a shoulder back into place, what the fuck was up with him?
"No, you get the fuck out of here, God, you can't do much for him. Sam made a mistake. He thought the bitch was just sucking her conquests dry. He didn't think she'd mesmerised some of them."
"Didn't know they could do that."
"The older ones can. This one might have enough energy to turn one or two of them as well. Might be an incubus out there. It's a mess."
His dad sighed. Ran his hand through his hair, pressed down hard on his forehead with the hand that wasn't holding the phone.
"Go and get Sam some of those cheese sticks he likes. He'll want them in the hospital. We'll call you, tell you when we get there and where we are."
In all honesty: Dean would rather have been crawling on broken glass than leave when Sam was bleeding out, but – you don't say 'no' to daddy.
"Gotcha," he said instead. He grabbed his backpack, toed on his shoes. He closed the hotel door behind him and stopped, wondering if he should've left it open for the paramedics.
His dad was back on the phone.
" –no, he lost consciousness when we picked him up, no, I KNOW YOU SHOULDN'T MOVE GODDAMN INJURED PEOPLE FROM THE SCENE, I WOULDN'T DO IT IF HE WAS SAFE THERE –"
The was some more yelling in the background – muffled, Dean couldn't hear it over the noise in his head.
"Okay, okay, I'm calm, tell me what to do –" Bobby's voice. "How soon can we call someone? Bitch is still out there, gotta let someone fix it."
"Don't go now. Check airways, check breathing. "
That's when Dean realised that he'd been standing there for too long. He got moving; there's a bitch that needs ganking, right now, and Dean wasn't going to suffer another minute where this monster was living it up when Sam was pouring blood all over the floor.
:::
Dean knew the details of this case intimately. It was meant to be his – Dean would've, should've been the one lying in bed right now with his insides showing – but everyone knew that Dean was a sucker for a pretty face, so Dad made a judgement call. Sam took the case, so it was really Dean's own fucking fault that his brother's leaking all over the duvets.
Dean was going to make up for that. He was going to make up for that so hard, or he was going to kill himself trying. They'll share the same hospital room; Dad wouldn't mind, it'd make visiting the both of them easier.
The succubus worked in an old but fairly large building. If you walk straight in, you find a pub. Two doors to the right and one down, you find an elevator. An 'escort service' runs off the fifth level – it rented out rooms from level two to eight. Dean was going to have to go through all eight floors, but hey, it wasn't as if there was something else to do with his day. No, really: nowadays, his life was research, Dr. Sexy, hunt, rinse and repeat.
Whereas Sammy had to take a day off school. Another reason Dean should've taken this case from the start.
Slip in through the door, flash a smile at the skimpy girls, walk off before they can strut up to him. The elevator was there. He pressed the button for the eighth floor – in case it all went to shit, Dean would rather be jumping from the second floor and not the eighth.
He was going through the fifth floor, rooting through the empty rooms and opening the doors of the occupied rooms by just a sliver. Just to check who was inside before leaving. Most of them didn't even notice the doors were opened and closed again. Halfway through the fifth floor – Dean felt eyes on the back of his head.
This was a hunter thing. If you hunted for long enough, you developed this sixth sense that said to you 'hey, someone's watching me.' There was another sense that developed, the 'someone is about to attack me,' sense. It was semantically different, but felt very, eerily similar.
Dean knew better than to turn around and confront them there and then; he turned the corner, mimed getting into the elevator, and then waited. There was a moment of hesitance, and then there were footsteps moving down the corridor. It was almost too easy.
The person went around the corner. Dean turned and pulled the guy into a headlock, before turning, spinning and pointing his hand-gun at the man's head.
"Freeze! You move, you scream, you'll regret it."
:::
Dean's breathing was echoing loudly down the corridor. In contrast, the man he had pressed up against the wall said nothing at all. He didn't make any kind of noise.
Brown trench-coat, slightly dirty. He froze very well. If Dean hadn't known any better, he would've said the guy wasn't breaking. As it was, Dean had a hand pressed up against Mr Trench-coat's neck, and he could feel the man's heartbeat pick up several dozen beats a minute.
Dean waited for the shriek of inhuman rage. He waited for slitted eyes to flash, for him to get spun and thrown into a wall… but none of that happened.
Still. To be sure.
"Okay, so you tell me, what are you doing here, and why are you following me?"
The stranger swallowed and answered. "I wasn't following you, and I mean you no harm."
Dean breathed a sigh – the thralls of the succubus that he was hunting were usually mindless. They comprehended just enough to follow the succubi's instructions. They didn't have the capacity to reason, or form words, blind to everyone but their lover.
"Will you release me?"
Dean thought for a moment. It was a little difficult to have a conversation as they were.
"If you try and make a run for it, I promise I won't miss," Dean said as he loosened his chokehold. He spun them around so that they were face-to-face, and he'd made sure to keep the man crowded between Dean's body and the wall so that he couldn't run.
The stranger met his eyes straight away. They widened – fear, or something else. Its Dean's habit to inspect a person's eyes – sometimes it was the only way to tell if something wasn't human. Succubi and kitsune had slitted eyes. Shape-shifters had more white in their eyes than normal – and their eyes were completely white in mirrors and on film. And if a person's eyes changed to black, you shot them first and then asked questions later.
The stranger's eyes were blue. Round irises, dilated, but that was normal, given the situation. There were specks of other colours.
Besides the baby blues he was flashing around, there wasn't much else about the stranger that was particularly memorable. But… there was just something about the quality of the stranger's faze that was strange; too heavy, too steady… and there was something else in the stranger's eyes that Dean couldn't make out.
But that could also be because Dean's been staring for far too long, and that was making everything extremely awkward.
"Was there something you wanted?"
Okay, so probably not a thrall. Dean jumped some poor guy who was looking for some fun and got Dean instead. Ha. Damage control.
Dean looked away, coughed to break the tension and rummaged through his pocket for his dad's fake FBI badge. He's never tried this before, but it seemed to work fine for his dad.
"Apologies. I'm from the FBI, I'm investigating some people here. So why were you looking at me?"
The guy smiled a little, and his smile was warm.
"You reminded me of someone I know," he said gently. "I am far away and I think of him often. But I should leave you to your work. I have every respect for you."
Dean was simply grateful that this guy was taking being held at gunpoint so well. "Yeah, thanks. Any chance you could forget that you saw me here?"
"I will, if you will do the same. I would rather not let anyone know that I was here. The iniquity in this hovel befouls the air."
Iniquity. Dean smirked in spite of himself. "Deal."
Trench-coat guy nodded, gave him one last look, and walked to the elevator. Dean shoved the gun back down his pants. He watched the elevator doors close, before he went back to searching the rest of the floor.
:::
Everything was going so smoothly, Dean doesn't expect it when he gets caught. One moment, he was walking by a doorway. The next, some huge thing in the corner of his eye has broken his nose.
Dean tried to back out of the room. He pulled the gun out, and got clubbed on the back of the head before he could even make a shot.
Figures.
:::
He came to, lying down and chained up in a soft, pillowy bed that reeked of rosewater. In any other circumstances, this might've been something to cheer about.
As it was, Dean was licking at the blood in his mouth and furiously trying to work out how long backup would take to arrive. His heart sank as he remembered: 'oh yeah, I didn't tell Dad or Bobby, because I was thinking of them looking at me all proud when I brought back the bitch's head in my backpack.'
Fuck.
Dad had taught him about situations like this. Hostage situations. Dean had never been in one, but he knows who James Bond is, and he's watched a lot of spy movies. The first thing he needed to do was to assess the situation. Above all, he shouldn't ever let them know that he was awake.
Without opening his eyes, he could tell that there was at least one person in the room, talking into a phone. Female. Could the succubus, or it could be an ordinary working girl. There was also maybe two bodyguards, judging from the heavy footsteps on the floor. Someone was tapping their fingers against a plastic table.
Dean very slowly, very subtly, tested the chains. They were stainless-steel. The succubi wasn't even using police handcuffs; they were using old-school manacles. Who even had manacles nowadays?
One of the links made a very tiny click sound. It then dropped to the ground, pulling the rest of the chain with it.
The girl stopped talking on the phone.
A hand slapped him hard across the face. It caught him across his nose.
Dean tried not to react, but his eyebrows furrowed together. Blood was dripping from his nose.
"We can tell you're awake!" A sing-song voice says. "You don't really want me to get the hedge clippers out, do you?"
There was no point in trying to hide, then. He opened his eyes reluctantly.
As expected, the succubus had noticed someone running around in her territory and investigated. She was glamorous, dressed in understated designer clothes, but she was missing a certain something, that x-factor that some girls had walking down the street. Her humanity, maybe.
Her lips were bright red. It helped take attention away from her unnatural eyes, and the eight other men standing, propped up like store mannequins inside the room.
"Think you could make this quick?" Dean grinned, completely incorrigible. "I gotta get back in time for dinner."
She sighed, ended the conversation on the phone and threw her hands up in the air.
"Boys these days! You'd think after I sent one bloody boy back, they'd know to leave me alone!"
"Well, if you unlock these chains, I could get going right away. What d'ya think?"
"Oh no, it doesn't work that way," the succubus said, sitting by his bedside.
"You see, that first one, it was a warning. He's still alive isn't he? I didn't even do anything to him. It was all Larry and Jack here."
She ran a finger down his inseam. Dean still had the gun tucked into his jeans – if he could free a hand, it would be game over.
The succubus knew. She preferred it that way.
"If they don't listen to my warnings… They'll never take me seriously if I send you back like this, will they? All I wanted was to have been left alone."
Dean seethed. He thought about holding it in, because he could yell all he wanted, and it wouldn't have done anything about his situation, but then he reconsidered.
If he could delay her long enough, someone might work out that he was missing and where he went. He didn't know how much time had passed.
"Yeah well, if you had wanted that, you should've buried the bones a little bit deeper into the sand. Or even better yet, not killed anyone at all. How many lives have you ruined now? Five dead and these eight as good as?"
"It's actually something closer to twenty-three," she replied, bored. "But I'll keep your first little tip in mind."
"Now. What to do with you? What to do…"
If it was just sex with a girl, Dean wouldn't have minded. He knows succubi needed sex, but he wasn't sure if it was the act itself, or the semen or the men's life energy that the monster needed. But obviously, she's been doing a bit more than sexing if the lifeguards have been finding skulls and femurs washed up on the shore every week.
"I know!" she said, beaming and jumping up. "I've got a great idea."
"Sure," Dean says. "Tell me about it."
"I don't often get to indulge like this, I'm really excited." She gestured a few of the heavily-built men over. It's enough to give Dean a really bad feeling.
"How to say this… I like eating meat that's a little bit tender, you could say."
Eating meat? Dean suddenly remembered the corpses that were dug up. It was one thing to be a succubus, and another thing to be a cannibalistic succubus. It was the first time he'd ever run into anything like that. Which went to show; you got all types.
As if on cue, the men picked up the bed. They moved it to the middle of the room, where there's space for all of them to move around it. Dean started to struggle and yell. He bit down on a hand when it moved to cover his mouth. One of them took off a sock and wadded it into Dean's mouth.
"I worked really hard on the very first one I had, and you know, by the end of it, he was willing to let me do anything."
The centre light was really freaking bright and shining directly into his eyes. The sock tasted absolutely disgusting.
"But then at the end of it, I had a bit too much fun, and what was left, well. It was really messy. And I had all this energy, but we hadn't stopped for food or anything the last few days."
Dean managed to hit one of the skinheads in the eye with all his thrashing, but the skinhead moved on steadily, like he didn't even notice the black ooze dripping from his eyeball.
"You know, us monsters? It's a secret, but we have to eat too. I can't just live off sex forever. I mean, I have to do it to live, but it's not everything that keeps me living."
The first hit came from a brown-skinned man. A construction worker. He still had his orange work vest on. His elbow caught Dean in the stomach.
Someone picked up a golf club. Another person had a wooden bat.
:::
There was a knock at the door: three sharps raps. It interrupted Dean's thought processes; it interrupted the men. They stop in their positions and look at the succubus for further instructions.
She only sighed in disappointment. "That would be my nine o'clock."
The succubus looked at Dean then, what was left of him, and kissed his nose.
"I'd hate to keep you waiting, but you know, business before pleasure."
Then she threw the sheets over him and then opened the door.
Dean can only just make him out, with his one remaining good eye, but it was enough to see that the newcomer is the guy from before. The man with the trench coat who thought that Dean was FBI.
Dean's eyes shuttered. The man had absolutely no hope against eight men, and the last thing Dean needed was another victim. Dean's gone, but that didn't mean this man had to go too. He tried to struggle, he made muffled I'm here noises, but it was pretty difficult to thrash when you're sure that half the bones in your thorax are cracked —
"My greetings to you, Eisheth."
"And hello to you too, mister," Eisheth purred, strutting up to the man, playing with his tie. He only gently tugged it back out of her hands.
"I am not interested in talking."
"Oh, shall we get straight down to business then? Fine by me," she shrugged.
Dean's chains dropped to the ground again. It was perfect – it drew the man's eyes to the bed, and because the succubus wasn't looking in Dean's direction, it got past her completely.
Or, it would've been perfect, if not for people's general stupidity.
"Do you have someone under the covers?" the man asked, like a complete idiot. "Did I not say that I required complete secrecy in my dealings?"
"Oh," the succubus twitters. "I'm just having a late dinner. Won't you join me, angel?"
"I am not interested in any of your leavings either."
"But this one is quite the specimen," Eisheth continues. "He sounds like he definitely wants your attention." And with that, she drew the sheets back.
Dean got another opportunity to stare deep into this stranger's eyes, wide, dilated again, almost shell-shocked. They really are quite blue.
"You cannot take this one," Blue-Eyes says, sharp and sure.
"He's dinner. Dinner. I don't often get dinner this good." Why would you tell a client that? Dean doesn't know what the fuck is going on anymore.
"I am serious about this. This is non-negotiable."
"He was here to kill me. He lost. It's my right to kill him in return, considering what he was going to do to me."
"Consider this. That man is also a hunter! If he dies, they won't stop at anything to get their vengeance, and you will never have peace!"
"That may be true," Eisheth says, considering. "But why would you care?" She looked at the stranger for a moment, two moments, three, then laughs. It sounded very feminine, tinkling like wind-chimes and water bubbling down a brook.
"Are you interested? You are, aren't you, you pretty little thing!"
The man growled. It's the first indication he's shown of anything resembling aggression.
Interested in what? Dean thought.
Eisheth continued. She sounded absolutely delighted, as though Spring has come early.
"Normally, I would tell you, not during your lifetime. But it is so rare to see you display a special interest!"
She bit down on her lip. "It was dinner though. Now I'd have to settle for two-minute noodles again. And as fun as it has been to see you fall so far, that really does not appeal. It'll cost you, darling."
He replied in an instant. "Name your price."
"One of your feathers. A mere trifle."
:::
The man hesitated. "I can't do that. If it was only a feather… but I cannot leave any evidence that I was here. Ask for something else."
The succubus shrugged again. "Okay, no deal," and tugged Dean's gun from Dean's jeans.
Trench-coat dude surprises both Dean and her by moving in front of the bed, obscuring her view.
"Wait. I could find you a replacement. It would take me minutes."
Because of the way the man's positioned, Dean misses the look on the succubus's face.
"Two weeks ago, you weren't even willing to put an old granny out of her misery. Dinner must be downright holy."
"For a given value of holy," Trench-coat dude agreed.
"In that case, definitely a feather or nothing."
Dean wasn't particularly happy at being bartered over like groceries. But if he had to choose between being eaten or … something else? He didn't know. It depended on what the something else was.
He wasn't thinking about it. Either way, Dean could've told trench-coat dude that it wasn't the best idea to tip your hand so early.
There's a moment where the man stood completely straight. Dean recognised that he was thinking about doing it, handing over a 'feather' or whatever. The succubus can tell; she pushes her advantage.
"One feather. You can definitely do one feather. Think about your brother; fallen as he is, he needs it more than you."
"Eisheth, you do not realise what you might do. There is only a certain amount of flexibility allowed in my actions; as it is, exposing more than two people to the reality of my existence is stretching it. I can't use all of my abilities here. He will remember everything."
"Then you should let me eat him. That would fix your problems."
"He needs to live. I cannot say more than that."
A movement, and the whole side cabinet hits the wall. "You and your secrets! Shall I tell the hunter about your misdeeds? Your friend here is very talented. He comes a long way—"
"Stop that. Right there."
"We had a deal, angel, so what if I tell some boy-toy about your pretty boy face, I got you the holy oil you wanted, we had a deal, Cas-"
It was about as far as the succubus got. In the next instant, her head detached from her shoulders, a silver blade arcing through the space between. The arterial spray splattered across Dean's cheekbone.
"We had a deal. And the deal was complete secrecy!"
The eight thralls went beserk. It's a tornado inside the room as the man tried to throw off five men at once. The silver blade moves again – and it slices through the group of steel links that were holding Dean down like butter.
He fell off the bed. Dean wasted no time at all rolling underneath it, despite the fact that his whole body felt as though it was on fire.
The succubus is headless, but she dropped Dean's gun when she was attacked. Dean grabbed it, inwardly wincing at the sound of a body flying through a window. Thank something that no one walks into alleyways after dark.
Another one flew into the cupboard, and that was it. It was all over.
"Linearity. She almost destroyed it."
All Dean needed was one shot. He rolled out from the other side underneath the bed and aimed.
:::
"How much of that did you hear?" the man asked, as casual as you please, as if there wasn't a gun waving in his face.
"Enough to know that you're not human."
Of course trench-coat dude isn't normal. Dean should've realised from the onset – what sort of normal human being used words like iniquity?
"I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anyone. Please, just forget about me," it said slowly, hands in the air. "I have no weapons."
"You didn't need weapons to play 'smoosh the monkeys.' And you're not human, unless you're hiding a camera crew somewhere behind the curtains, in which case: ha, you got me." It'd be the best joke he'd ever seen, that's for sure. "What are you?"
"I can't tell you what I am."
His dad's words came back to him – succubi work in pairs.
Incubus. Dean had never seen one before. But it had to be. There was no way that thing was normal.
"Incubus," Dean says softly.
The stranger's eyebrows shot up, in a remarkably accurate semblance of human behaviour. "Incu – I'm not – No, no, I shouldn't be interfering. I shouldn't have even talked to you."
"Yeah, you wanted me to forget all about you, the last time you talked to me. Too late, what did she call you? Too late, Cas."
Cas runs his hands through his hair, looking extremely frustrated. "So we are at a standstill. Eisheth is dead, her thralls are dead. If I fix up your injuries, will you agree to drop this?" It's tempting. Dean's half-dead on his feet.
"No. Job's not finished until all the monsters are dead. I can't leave something going round, munching on people."
Cas sighed.
"Usually, succubi do not eat their prey. The act of fornication is enough to generate the energy needed for their survival." He followed up in a lower, softer tone of voice, mixed with regret and anger. Almost human.
"Eisheth was greedy."
"Also, you cannot kill me. You will only hurt yourself trying."
Now this statement Dean scoffed at. As it was, Dean would need to take at least three months to recover anyway.
"You will only exacerbate your injuries," the guy amended, watching Dean's blood dripping onto the floor with something like concern.
Dean thinks shut the fuck up, and blows a hole in the doorway next to Cas's head.
It only made Cas look tired.
"You're bleeding, Dean. Let me fix that."
The incubus knew his name. It was not a good sign.
"Back the fuck off!" Dean gestured with his gun, pointing at the dude. "Hands in the air!"
"I'm not going to hurt you."
"Too late."
"And I'll say I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to get hurt. Stop being stubborn, and let me fix that." The incubus began to walk in his direction.
"I said don't get closer."
It ignored him. As grateful as Dean was for the save, as compassionate and kind as Cas seemed to be, Dean still remembered Cas breaking one of the thralls's neck, Cas offering to find a 'replacement.' Sorry, but I can't risk it.
Dean squinted his eyes and fired. He braced for the recoil, the spray of blood and bone matter. He listened for the thump, the sound of flesh hitting the ground, but he only hears footsteps -
Dean emptied the barrel. With only a few metres between them, all his shots hit their targets – heart, stomach, knees, forehead.
Cas kept walking towards him.
Run.
He threw the covers over the incubus. He jumped over the bed and ran to the exit, but there was something sprained, or something broken in his system.
Dean wasn't fast enough. It got there first. It only took the smallest amount of effort before Dean was facedown with his arms twisted behind his back.
He braced for the deathblow.
There's the slightest touch of fingers to his forehead.
:::
Dean threw the guy off his back. The gun went back up on reflex, but then Dean lowered it. There's no point.
"How did you do that?" Dean asked, conversationally, leaning up against the wall. He'd been pretty sure his ribs were cracked, or broken outright. His kneecaps as well. Dean does a quick check inside his t-shirt, and the blood-stains are still there, but there wasn't any sign of bruising anywhere. "Since when could incubi heal people?"
The guy hesitated. The trench-coat shifts with him.
"Theoretically, incubi sustain themselves by converting sexual energy into life force. If they chose to, it is possible to channel this life force energy into beings other than themselves."
It made Dean introspective. There's a situation here.
It was John Winchester's policy to not leave any of the monsters behind. And Cas – was very clearly dangerous. He had the capacity to kill – the succubus, the thralls, the 'replacement.' Dean had tried to kill him, and there must've been some special condition that he needed, iron instead of silver, some detail like that, because the incubus wasn't dead. It was pointless to think about ganking him now.
But then, he might not need to. Cas very clearly didn't want to be bothered by anyone, and that wasn't going to happen if Cas started killing. That's something Dean could use. Apparently, it's possible for succubi and incubi to live off 'fornicating' alone, and the succubus has said that Cas hasn't killed anyone yet. It's a lot of trust to put into a monster, but –
Cas could've killed me, but he didn't. He's saved my life, and then helped me out. That's two debts I already owe him.
He thought back to what his Dad might say, and then the memory of another broken body lying on a bed hits Dean with all the force of a sledgehammer. Sammy. If he helps Sam, I'll let him go.
"You don't want me to tell anyone about you. I'll do that on one condition. Heal my brother."
"What?" Cas asked, like he's surprised, like he's concerned for someone he can't possibly have met. "Is he hurt?"
"Yeah, you bastards beat him to within an inch of his life. He'll be breathing through a tube."
"I used a lot of energy getting here to begin with, and then some more to heal you. I don't have much left. It would take the whole night and all morning for me to recharge."
The whole night and all morning? That would be the longest sex marathon Dean has ever had.
Dean took the time to really look Cas over. What he could see of Cas is attractive, which made sense if you put that into context; it would be impossible for incubi to seduce their prey if they weren't. Now that he was looking, he sees it – that little air of otherworldliness that marks him as something different, a little bit untouchable, a little bit ethereal.
He's thought about being with guys before, even if he'd never done it, and Dean's thought about it enough to acknowledge that he wasn't a hundred percent straight. He'd still place himself at somewhere about eighty. It was all fucking Cas's fault anyway, because now he's put the idea into Dean's head, Dean's thinking about what Cas's collarbones might taste like, thinking about slipping those fingers into his mouth, checking if there's anything to indicate that Cas's hands are different, exotic, fae, those hands with the power to harm and heal.
It wasn't anything special. Biological imperative; incubi were designed to evoke those responses.
Yeah, he'll take one for the team. It's for a worthwhile cause.
"Ok then." Dean shucks his jacket, and rolls his t-shirt up off his chest. It's only when he's unzipping his jeans and stepping out of them that Cas frowns.
"Dean, what are you doing?" He gets ignored. "Do you often undress in front of others?"
"Dean." Dean doesn't talk again until he's done; he'd lose his nerve.
"Okay, you said the whole night and morning, right?" Dean takes a deep breath and pulls off his boxers in one go. "So let's get rolling... Here's dinner."
:::
Instead of the instant pouncing that Dean's expecting, there is a very long silence.
"I do not understand what you mean for me to do," Cas finally responds.
"Oh come on," Dean yells, folding his arms over his chest. "There's a bed here, do I need to make it even more obvious?"
The expression on Cas's face could only have been described as completely bewildered.
"'It's so rare for you to display a special interest?' Is that ringing a bell? Don't tell me you've lost interest already!"
Cas still looks completely bewildered, but he can respond to the upset on Dean's face. "Dean, I will always be interested in you."
"Okay, great." And with that, Dean catches him by the tie and pulls him in. Cas lets Dean lick inside his mouth, over his teeth and behind, but he makes no move to respond. It's like kissing a dead fish.
Dean steps away to judge Cas's reaction, and sees that Cas's eyebrows are furrowed, his whole body asking 'why on Earth did you do that?'
"Dean, I understand that this falls under inappropriate conduct."
Inappropriate conduct? Yes, there are a few corpses lying around, and this isn't exactly the best atmosphere. It's funny how Dean's forgotten that.
Dean grabs his clothes with one hand, throws on the backpack he had before, grabs Cas's hand and with a bright-red face, walks them out of the room. Fortunately, it looks like this whole floor is empty. Dean picks the room furthest from the elevator, pushes Cas back on the bed, and goes for round two.
Still nothing.
"When someone kisses you," Dean begins slowly, "it would be helpful if you kiss back."
One side of Cas's mouth twists; confused and agitated, Dean reads. "I think I have misunderstood the nature of these affairs." Great, we actually have to talk about this.
"What is there to misunderstand? It's an easy trade, you eat, I sex, Sam spends six months less in the hospital. Everybody goes home happy."
Dean can almost see the lightbulb on top of Cas's head. "I don't require –congress –in order to help you out," he replies, which is clearly a lie.
"What, am I not good enough? Go on, tell me you don't want this."
Have I just been reading this guy wrong this whole time? It was as though there was an invisible connection between them, tendrils of something that could be fate, could be destiny. Dean wasn't imagining that. No way. It can't be just me.
But if he says 'no', I can't force it. I can't force him to do anything.
On the other hand, the guy's out of energy – not enough to heal Sam at any rate. He'll be hungry.
"Tell me to my face, and I'll leave right here, right now."
The guy hesitates. That's good enough for Dean.
"I thought so," Dean says, hiding his relief, sliding back into Cas's personal space.
It goes much better the third time.
"Not so nice, going hungry is it?" Dean says. "I get it, I really do. You do a good job, and I'm even going to let you walk free after this."
Cas confirms. "And you won't say a word about this to anyone."
"I won't tell a soul."
:::
"You wouldn't believe the night I had," Dean said, opening the door. He's waiting for his Dad or Bobby to answer.
Dean's more than a bit pissed off to see that Sam is still lying in Dad's bedroom. What happened to the helicopter that was supposed to be air-lifting him? Too much air traffic? He's ever more pissed off that the bedside chair is empty, and looks like it's been empty for a while, because Dad was meant to be minding Sam. What if something had attacked in the middle of the night or something? Sam wasn't going to up and defend himself.
Dean practically sprints over to Sam's side, and does a quick check-up. The first thing he notices is Sam's chest moving up and down. Dean moves his hand over Sam's mouth to be sure, and yep, he can feel Sam's little breaths warming his palm. Dean throws off the covers – someone's attached wide areas of plastic coverings to Sam's chest and stomach; coverings that are now bright red with no trace of their original light blue. Dean remembers one of these holding Sam's intestines inside. Now, he peels them off, and true to form, there is no trace of any kind of opening, gash or injury. Not even a scar.
Cas did it. Cas came through for him. Dean has to bite down hard to stop a smile from breaking out.
Maybe he can join the team. Dean would feel a whole lot better with Sam hunting, with Dad and Bobby hunting if he knew that there was a way to recover from even the really serious injuries.
And Cas is a fighter. He's proved that he can take care of himself. He's not going to be a liability like any of Dean's girlfriends, and he already knows all about the supernatural scene, so he's not going to flip. The more Dean thinks about it, the better it sounds.
I don't need to tell them that he's an incubus. Just a person with abilities. Like Sam. We can keep everything else to ourselves.
The sheets are all bloodied still; no one's bothered to change them. It's strange how Dean can recall how petrified he was, when Sam was bleeding all over the place, and now the sheets only evoke a small sense of irritation. Sam grunts a little in sleepy protest as Dean pulls the whole bloodied sheet out from under his body, but he doesn't wake up. Dean trashes it and then inspects the room. The mattress is a goner, but if Dean replaces the sheets with ones from his room, turns the pillows around, then the hotel staff might not notice the blood until long after Dad and Bobby are gone.
He'll call Dad when he's done. Dean doesn't particularly feel like talking to either Dad or Bobby right now. Cas is still cuffed up, but he's had breakfast, and besides, he offered so he can't have much to do throughout the whole day. And besides, Dean needs the time to think of something really, really good for Cas.
:::
It takes him a little over an hour to artfully arrange the furniture over the blood stains on the carpet, and another hour to swap the sheets around. Sammy's sleeping it off on the sofa.
Dean's got it. He's going to try novelty condoms; the kind that are flavoured maybe, or the ones that glow in the dark. Something different enough that Cas might be intrigued, but not so different that it'll scare Cas off. He's going to get new underwear. Wear the green shirt that his ex said made him look like 'sex on sticks.' He's got a pair of black leather pants that he only ever takes out for a special occasion.
Then they'll get lunch. There's this place that Sam's been telling Dean about – it's a bit pricy, but Cas's just saved Dad from a whole bunch of hospital bills anyway, it won't cost as much as that.
I'll ask him if he wants to join us, hunting. We'll work out a way to make it work.
Dean's mobile is exactly where he's put it; under the bed and recharging. He picks it up to call Dad, and there are a few dozen missed calls on his phone, some from his dad, most of them from Bobby. Good thing it was on silent.
"Dean, you stupid little shit," and the way Dad slurs his words tells Dean that Dad's been drinking, "Where were you last night?"
"I was going off getting help for Sam!" Dean yells back, cranking his fingers around the phone. "Where are you this morning?" How come you're not sitting here protecting him, anything could happen to him - Why aren't you sitting by your kid, what if he gets worse in the middle of the night or something? Instead, you're getting drunk first thing in the morning. Dean wishes he could say he was surprised, but Dad's been irresponsible for a long time now. Ever since Mom's died.
"I come back and he's lying on the bed all alone in the room, any goddamn thing could've happened to him!"
Bobby's voice echoes in the back ground. He don't know yet—
"Dean, Dean, I'm so sorry," his dad begins, voice hitching into the phone, and damn if that doesn't ring half a dozen warning bells in his head, "I'm so sorry."
"Your mom, she would've killed me," he continues. There's a sound of a scuffle, plastic – the phone – dropping to the ground. "This is it. This is the last ditch in the road."
Bobby takes over. "Your daddy ain't in much of a state for much."
"Look, everything's peachy," it isn't really, but Sam's okay now and Dean's never known what to do with crying girls, let alone crying family members, "Don't get so caught up about it. I found him a doctor. A really good one. He's all okay now."
"Dean, I'm sorry."
"No, I'm not kidding, he's okay. One hundred percent functioning. He's in the living room. Can't you hear him breathing over the mike?"
There's a silence over the phone. "Dear God," Dad whispers. You'd think he'd sound pleased, but his dad sounds more horrified than anything. Isn't this good news?
Bobby takes the phone.
"You stay right there, Dean," Bobby continues, with a degree of urgency in his voice. "Get the salt out, make a line between you and the bed. Make sure it's got no gaps. Get the hexbags out, get the Dead Man's Blood out, get the shot-gun. Barricade yourself behind this line, got it? And don't move. We're coming for ya," which Dean thinks is overkill, it's not like he's an idiot. He can also tell the difference between living people and vampires, thank you very much, he doesn't need the Dead Man's Blood.
"I know miraculous healing doesn't happen very often, but that doesn't mean Sam's a monster," Dean begins—
- but the line goes dead.
:::
Bobby and his dad walk into the room, and they don't even spare Dean a glance. They go right up to Sam's sleeping body, and they slap him across the face, hard.
"What the fuck," Dean yells. "You shouldn't be doing that!"
Sam makes a half-asleep cry of distress, burrows his face into his blankets, and their faces go white.
"You get into the bedroom Dean, and don't you come out until I say so," John Winchester orders. Bobby's already pulling bag after bag out of their hunting kit. His Dad pulls out a flask, dribbles a little into Sam's mouth and waits. No reaction. Dad pulls out another set – leaves of some sort – presses it into Sam's palm. Still no reaction.
"Dean! If you stay in here another minute, I'll lock you into the room myself!" Dean goes. He's up against the door the whole time, listening to everything Dad's putting Sam through.
The door opens after an hour.
"He's all normal," Dad says, monotonously.
"If you had let me talk, I could've told you that." Dean's going to miss his lunch date with Cas. Who is still handcuffed to the head-rails. Dean's going to be making up for that for a week.
"It's impossible."
"I found him a doctor. It's supernatural healing, but it's legit. You can get water from Soap Lake that heals if you bless it right, this isn't any different."
"No, you don't know how impossible that is. He was declared dead at 2 a.m. this morning. Massive head trauma. We tried to call you. The pastor was coming to cremate him later." Dean's face turns as white as his dad's.
"And I don't know of any force in this entire world and the spheres around it that can bring back someone who's dead."
:::
Dean doesn't say a word. He only shoves his Dad aside, and starts to run. Dean still hasn't had a shower yet; he was going to after he cleaned up all the blood, but between the phone call and now, he hasn't had the chance, and so a whole street of people sees him run down to the brothel in rumpled clothes, smelling like sweat and sex.
Dean's not thinking about them though. How'd you do it, Cas? The door's locked, he can't have gone anywhere. Dean jiggles the lock, slams open the door.
The bed's empty. The handcuffs are lying on the bed, glinting with the subtle shine of silver metal and as twisted as a pretzel. The steel's been bent almost ninety degrees.
Dean's blood goes cold. His throat is dry and his jeans are still wet.
His dad runs in after him and takes a look at the destruction. Dean hadn't even noticed his dad was running in after him. The curtains, the condoms, the handcuffs. It's hard not to miss the pervasive smell of sex in the air.
"Dean," he says. "Dean, what did you do?"
::
END.