Title: Let the Sparks Fly
Author: HigherMagic
Artist: dahliasheng
Pairing(s): Dean/Cas
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~23k
Warnings: kidnapping references, violence, graphic bodily harm
Summary: Dean is a wizard who specializes in searching magic. Normally his cases in league with Officer Henricksen involve missing persons cases or stolen credit cards, but when Dean gets word of an underground familiar ring bust ending in a dragon on the loose, he can't help but pitch in to find the wayward beast. Contains dragon!familiar!Castiel and half-dragon!familiar!Sam.
Notes: Written for the reversebang over on LiveJournal. Dahlia, of course, made the wonderful art that inspired this and I'm so lucky to have had such a talented artist for my first RBB. This whole thing was super fun to write, and I hope you guys have half as much fun reading it.
Please go to 1602 to see the art post!
Dean frowned down at his desk, rubbing weary hands over his eyes. Every part of him was cramped and stiff – he didn't even know thumbs could cramp – and he would be glad when this all was over. On his desk, a broad map of the four-hundred acre woods was spread out. Bright red pins marked the entrance and exit points into the hiking trails and public areas, and there were thin golden lines traced into the map to show back routes and routes only known to park rangers and the specially nature-savvy.
"Sammy," he called out, his nails running over his scalp as he heaved a breath. He waited until the looming shadow of his brother blocked the trace amounts of sunlight slanting across the forest map, before he raised his head and held out a hand. "I need a boost."
Sam's touch was always fire-hot, his skin warmed by the fiery stone set into his chest. Immediately Dean felt his exhaustion and anxiety melt away, replaced with the kind of frantic energy only fire could inspire inside of him – fear mixed with adrenaline mixed with anticipation.
Dean had always hated fire, since he was a child. But Sammy was an exception.
He held out his other hand over the map, his eyes closing as he focused.
Most of the kidnapping victims were kept alive for twenty-four hours before being found on one of the entrance or exit routes for tourists. With four hundred acres to cover it was simply too large an area for the rangers and police to find the latest victim, and they were fast running out of time.
Technically, Dean wasn't meant to be helping, but if the police received an anonymous tip and his believer, Henricksen, happened to find the missing person then that was okay. Dean would settle for a cut of the reward money by the family or another five hundred in his bank account from the police department as an 'outside source'.
Dean didn't charge much, especially for cases like this.
He ran his hand along one of the golden routes by sheer memory, breathing deeply, his other hand holding Sam's tightly. "Sammy, more," he ordered softly, breathing in deeply when more of Sam's fire surged into him, filling his nostrils with the scent of burning wood and coating the back of his throat as though he was breathing in smoke.
His hand stuttered across one of the ridges. He knew this area – there were cabins here. He could see them, clear as day, flashing in pieces across his mind.
Abruptly reality fell away from Dean as he stepped into the aether, drawn by the urgent, frantic tug he felt on his consciousness. As soon as he did he heard a scream. The voice was too distorted for him to sense a gender, as most things were in the aether. Dean himself chose a human shape in the aether, but very few others did.
He was in a forest, the trees arcing up high and proud over his head, brilliantly green despite the fact that it was winter and all of their leaves should have been gone or red. The souls of trees didn't believe in the fact that they died every year.
He fought the urge to call out – the aether was a dangerous place for a wizard, especially one with his kind of gift, and he would need to tread carefully.
"Help! Help me, please!"
His head turned, his ear catching the call again. His only weapon in the aether were his hands and he could hear other things, other predators drawn to the frantic cry of their prey animal. He would have to get to them first. The aether melted around him, clawing at his clothes and his skin as he moved, pulling, tugging, pinching in three parts exploration and one part desire to rip and maim.
"Help me!"
When Dean blinked, he was suddenly in a cage. He was not alone in the cage, but surrounded by a roiling mass of what he could only name as pure evil. He did not believe in God, but if he had to press for a name to call the thing, he'd say it was a demon.
He shrank away from it and collided with the consciousness of another person. It was a brilliant, white ball of light, curled up and hard with fear. The demon rolled and writhed, trying to touch the whiteness, only to shrink back whenever it pulsed.
Dean clenched his fist, his power tightening his chest. He couldn't do anything here, of course – this was the demon's domain. He had to find out where they were.
He reached out, his hand glowing softly with his power. "It'll be okay," he whispered. Even after doing this for years he was never quite used to the way a soul looked when it was threaded with pure fear. The soul didn't hear him, of course, because he wasn't really there. Dean supposed this was how guardian familiars felt: never seen, never heard, but reassuring as much as they could until their wizard or witch found the power to see them.
At the sound of his voice, the demon blinked its giant grey eyes, fixing on him very suddenly. The first shots of paranoia flashed through its essence and it opened its mouth wide and roared at Dean. Its teeth were yellow and jagged like a wolf, its tongue forked.
It was looking right at him, and Dean gritted his teeth as he felt the first probing touch of the aether's power at his mind. Sometimes a man could go crazy seeing the kind of things lurking in human shape.
He raised his hand in threat. "Get back!" he yelled. He needed to leave.
The demon howled, reaching for him, its eyes turning a brilliant and glowing red color. Dean swallowed, feeling his heart start to beat faster out of fear. He stepped back, brightening the power in his hand in a threat attempt, but the demon kept howling, writhing in its corner of the room, hissing and glaring at him with the kind of special hatred only truly evil, weak things had.
"Get away!" Dean ordered again.
The demon gathered itself, growling. Fuck.
Dean shot out his power between the thing's eyes, then turned and did his best to shield the white consciousness with his body as the thing lunged for them. Dean's power was not meant for fighting, though he could hold his own against most things. He was a wanderer, a searching wizard, not one meant for battle.
Abruptly, the cage buckled, and Dean was surrounded by bright, hot, orange light. The cage lit up with fire and the demon shrieked.
Dean turned, shielding his eyes when the first thing he saw was the brilliant glow of a fire stone. It was a dragon, its scales a beautiful golden color and ringed with black on the edges. The dragon had a fierce-looking head, spiked with wicked-looking horns at the top of its head, facing forward. It opened his mouth wide enough that Dean would have been able to step into it comfortably, and spat another jet of bright flame at the demon.
The demon shrieked, writhing in pain at the dragon fire burning its soul.
Dean stood, one hand carefully shielding his eyes. "Sammy!" he yelled. "Get me outta here!"
Then, with a yank, Dean was hauled from the aether and back into reality. He had to brace one hand against the desk to stop himself falling over, and his hand forced the map at an angle that made it rip straight through the middle.
Sam was next to him, his throat still glowing with fire, and he wrapped strong arms around Dean's shoulders. "You were yelling," he said, his voice holding no apology. "I had to."
Dean sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. He was slick and gross with sweat, his skin hot in response to being buried in fire. "You saw it, too," he said softly. If Sam had been there in the aether with him, he'd seen it.
Sam nodded, his shaggy head resting on the back of Dean's neck as they both tried to catch their breath. Dean's underarms were sticky with sweat, and it kept prickling up where Sam's hands were resting on his arms and shoulders, but the comforting weight of the familiar and the real was something they both needed after the stark unreality of the aether.
"We don't have a lot of time," Sam murmured.
Dean looked down at the map. The rip had gone straight through, intersecting with a single golden route drawn into the mass of green.
He smiled, and reached for the phone. "It doesn't matter. We found the sick son of a bitch."
Dean never liked to know the details of the case. Even down the gender of his missing person, he didn't want to know. The more details he knew the harder it was to keep his distance within the aether, the harder it was not to become emotionally invested – emotions were like a blood call to the predators in the aether. They fed off of the feelings and minds of the souls that had wandered their hopeless way in, and Dean couldn't afford to risk his life and his mind like that.
He had to take care of Sam. He had to save people.
They managed to find the missing person. Dean didn't know the details, of course, but Henricksen had called him to say it was a success and that there'd be a fresh deposit in his bank account by the end of the night.
Which was good. The rent was coming out tomorrow.
Henricksen was a good guy – really, once Dean had explained that he wasn't crazy or involved in the crimes but had just been overwhelmed with visions in the aether of Henricksen's current missing person and that he knew where to find them, Henricksen had become the closest thing to a human ally in the real world that Dean had ever had.
He didn't know about Sam. No one did. Of course, they knew Sam existed, but those that knew Sam as a person didn't know what he was, and those that knew what Sam was, exactly, thought he was just a familiar and that Dean was a lucky sonuvabitch for it.
Dean was trying to give Sam a normal life. He made sure Sam wore lots of layers so that his fire stone didn't show through when he went to school, and until Sam had started law school Dean had helped him with his homework as best he could (no way was he touching law with a ten-foot pole when half of Dean's life barely toed the line of legality and the other half ignored it altogether).
Giving Sam a normal life meant Dean had to take little jobs from humans and the wizarding world alike. Wizards paid better, but humans paid him in ways that humans then needed back if Dean was going to do things like get his brother through college and pay taxes and own a car.
It was exhausting, but Dean was happy. He didn't mind being one of the only wizards his age without a familiar – Sam was the next best thing, and their familial bond meant Dean was powerful because he had his blood inside of a dragon, and together he and Sam were damn near immortal when it came to magic.
Yes, sometimes the ache in his soul that yearned for a familiar was too much, but when that happened Dean found companionship in bars or bottles or in dumb movie nights with his brother. He had a good life.
The phone rang, startling Dean awake from one such night. There was a warm body pressed against his own – a pretty skinwalker named Lisa he'd been friends and sleeping with on and off for a few years. She was wild, bendy, and best of all, kind and understanding. She didn't want what Dean couldn't give her and never asked for anything because she didn't need anything from Dean.
"'lo?" Dean grunted, wiping the sleep from his eye. Behind him, Lisa rolled onto her side, her mane of black hair spread out behind her and one shoulder bared from the sheet. Dean laid back down with another sigh, holding his arm out and tucking it around her when she rolled back over and happily rested against his side.
"Winchester," Henricksen's familiar voice barked at him through the phone. "You busy?"
Dean blinked, frowning at his cheap-ass alarm clock on the side table. It was six in the morning on a friggin' Saturday. "I guess not," he admitted. He needed another case soon anyway, because that last one had paid the rent but Sammy ate like a freakin' machine and Dean needed to get more food soon. "What you got for me?"
Henricksen made a short, impatient sound. "Can you come down to the station?"
Dean blinked again, rubbing his hand over his eyes. "Ugh, fine," he said. "Gimme an hour."
"Alright, Winchester. Hurry up."
The phone went dead with a 'click' and Dean huffed, setting it down. "Hey, Lisa," he said softly, kissing the top of her head and nudging her until she gave a sleepy hum. "I gotta go. There's food in the fridge if you want. Would you mind makin' sure Sam's awake before you leave?"
Lisa sighed, rolling away from Dean and snuggling into his spare pillow. "Alright," she said, the word more of a yawn than anything else. "Be safe."
With another groan of protest, Dean rolled himself out of bed and tried his best not to fall into his shower. It was a close thing. He wasn't hungover, exactly, but the case had exhausted him beyond what it should have – extending his power in the aether was always tiring – and then Lisa was far from a passive lover and he was feeling worn and sleepy and in desperate need of a hot bath or a massage or something.
The hot shower beating down on his shoulders helped, and Dean sighed, scrubbing the last remnants of last night from his body. His fingers ran through his hair, thick with shampoo, and he cleaned his fingers before wiping his eyes of sleep.
Normally in the morning shower he'd taken a little personal time, but he was in a hurry and Lisa had thoroughly wrung him dry last night. He rinsed his hair clean and shoved the shower water to off, wiping a towel cursorily over his body and through his hair before throwing it on the floor.
When he came back into his bedroom Lisa was still there, curled up in her animal form which was a sleek, pretty lab mix. When Dean had first starting fucking her he'd been a little weirded out by the dog thing, especially when she liked to change partway through in the middle of sex to mess with him, but after a few trips to the aether and a few years with a half-dragon brother a man could become somewhat numb to the weirder sides of the wizarding world.
"You shed on the bed, I'm kicking your ass," he called amiably, pulling jeans up around his hips and working a shirt over his head. Lisa barked at him, her black tail wagging. "Yeah, you laugh now. Remember my brother breathes fire."
Lisa barked again but set her head down with a decidedly tired huff of breath, and Dean rolled his eyes, shrugging on a button-down over his shirt and wrapping a belt around his waist through the belt loops. He grabbed his keys, his phone, and rubbed Lisa once behind the ears just because it always made her snap at him, and he grinned before going downstairs.
Normally on a Saturday he'd make a big breakfast for him and Sammy, but he was in a hurry. There wasn't even coffee, so Dean pulled his jacket on and shoved his feet into his shoes before stepping outside and towards the big black beast of a car that was his baby.
Most wizards of Dean and Sam's prowess were rich, and lived the high life on the Ritz or whatever that phrase was. Hell, when he'd told Henricksen that he had just bought a small house on the edge of town instead of one of the fancy apartments with all those amenities, the man had just looked at him strangely. Everyone wanted luxury, he'd said. Everyone wanted to be important and rich.
Dean thought that was a very human way to look at things.
He liked his little house and his giant car that had been paid off before Sam was even born. He liked having to work on her himself instead of going to a mechanic. He liked having to work to pay rent and he liked what he did.
Maybe when Sam started law school for real Dean would cash in on the higher offers out there, but for now he was content.
Besides, the city fucking sucked.
The police headquarters were just as depressing as they'd always been. Dean had spent a grand total of fourteen nights in various drunk tanks and one weekend for assault charges that ended up getting dropped.
At the time, of course, he had been fifteen and just coming into his powers, and had no idea that the things that he was seeing were real and that thing crawling towards him had actually been human-shaped and had meant him no real harm, fangs and fun or not.
Now that thing he'd attacked was one of his best friends, Benny Lafitte, vampire and owner of a quaint Louisiana-style restaurant just down the road from the police station.
He parked the Impala just outside of the police station and the scents of biscuits and jambalaya wafted down towards him from the other side of the grey street. His stomach rumbled loudly and Dean huffed, making a mental note to try and sweet-talk some of Benny's cooking from him for lunch.
The police station was a grey building with a skirt of brick around the bottom, and big, thick pillars of grey stone on either side of the grand, see-through wooden doors. Dean's shoulders were tucked in against the early-morning cold and he shouldered his way into the door.
There was a reception desk and a small security gate barring the way to the main offices. Dean emptied his pockets into the little grey tray and let it get scanned, before walking through the gate and picking his stuff back up.
Henricksen was waiting for him on the other side, a distressed frown on his handsome face. "Winchester," he greeted when Dean approached him. "This way, please."
The station was small in their little corner of the city, barely enough to warrant the search procedure to enter, but they had far too many magical entities living here that there was a constant risk of shit hitting the fan at a moment's notice.
The magical population was petty and powerful: a dangerous combination.
Dean followed Henricksen to his office, ducking in when Henricksen gestured for him to enter. The office was just as drab and depressing as the rest of the place and Dean fought the urge to put splashes of color on the walls with his mind. He'd learned the trick when Sammy was a baby and it had stuck with him for a long time. When he'd first met Henricksen he'd made the man's entire office basically explode and then rearrange itself to prove that he wasn't crazy, and that he was the real deal.
"We have a problem," Henricksen said by way of greeting, and took his seat on the other side of his desk. On his desk there was a single manila envelope and he pushed it towards Dean. "I know you don't like case details," he said when Dean was about to protest. "There's just information there. No names, no faces."
Dean frowned at the officer for a moment, before he carefully slid the envelope towards himself with a single finger, and spun it around and flipped it open. True to his word, there were no names or faces inside, but a single sheet of paper with bullet points detailing the case.
Dean raised an eyebrow, his gaze skeptical as he looked up. "You lost a dragon," he said plainly.
Henricksen didn't seem to share the sentiment. "We recently busted up an underground familiar black market," he said, and Dean sat back, his hands in the pockets of his jacket and fiddling with his keys. He'd heard the news on the ley-line radio over breakfast with Sam before he'd driven him to school – Henricksen had led the case. "We were holding the familiars for a while, trying to match them up with witches until the bigwigs from Springfield came to take them to a temp home."
Dean nodded.
Henricksen sighed, rubbing one hand over his face. "One of them got out," he said, his voice hard and angry. "Melted the bars right out of his transport van and escaped."
"Did you know he was a drake?" Dean asked.
Henricksen shook his head. "He told us he was an owl, you know, we saw no reason to think otherwise. There was no reason for him to lie to us, right?"
"Except," Dean said, stressing the word, "that drakes are possibly some of the most powerful and prized familiars out there. Hell, people have killed for these suckers. Anyone in the magical world would have known that."
Henricksen fixed him a look that very plainly said what Dean could do with his magical world knowledge and where he could shove it. "Regardless, he's escaped, and we need you to find him. His name is -."
"Stop." Dean held up a hand. "You've already told me gender, which is gonna fuck me up enough. I don't need a name." He looked down at the file again, lips pursing as he looked over the brief bullets of the case. "He disappeared on main, huh? Headed west?"
"From our intel, yeah," Henricksen replied.
Dean nodded to himself. "What color was his fire?"
"What?"
"It's important." Dean waved a hand. "There are different kinds of drakes, and they have different behaviors and patterns to fit. I'll have to do more research but if I have a general idea I'll know where to start looking for him."
"I'll have to ask the officer who was in charge of transport," Henricksen said, looking decidedly unhappy about it. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he asked; "Why can't I give you a name? Aren't familiars bound by it, or something?"
Dean shook his head. "If I gotta go aether-side for this, the less I know about him, the better."
"But it might not even have been his real name," Henricksen protested. "Surely it'd be useful, if you're going to have to start asking questions. He faked his type, he'd probably lied about his name too, right?"
Dean frowned, drawing his lower lip between his teeth and biting down. "I suppose," he said hesitantly. He carefully closed the manila envelope. "What name did he give you?" he asked, phrasing it deliberately in his head to distance himself from whatever the answer was.
Henricksen smiled. "Castiel," he said. "His name is Castiel."
Benny's jambalaya was fucking heavenly, of course. Dean would be lying if he hadn't thought of taking Benny home just so that he'd have the vampire cooking for him the next morning. It was downright unfair that the burly man had basically no taste buds but still managed to make food that had Dean making noises a pornstar would be proud of over his bowl.
"Good God, Benny, just marry me," Dean said around a mouthful of fresh biscuit, warm and oozing butter. A little escaped down his thumb and Dean caught it with his tongue. "Let's stop flirting like this and get hitched."
Benny's warm laugh came from the other side of the counter. "You'd eat me outta house and home," he replied with a wink. "And if you stuffing your face is flirting, well…"
"I've been told it gives people ideas," Dean said with a cocked eyebrow and a grin, letting his tongue run along his bottom lip for good measure. It was all for fun, of course – Benny was happily mated, not to mention straight, but Dean was kind of a slut for flirting anyway, even with his friends. Everyone except Henricksen because the first time he'd tried the man had pointed a gun at him and told him to shut his fucking mouth.
In Dean's opinion, Henricksen needed to get laid most of all, but that was just him.
With a shrug, Dean returned to his food, scooping the last of it into his mouth with another appreciative hum. "I should go," he said with a sigh, shoving his plate away regretfully when it looked like Andrea was going to scoop some more for him. "Got a big, ah, time-sensitive case."
Benny raised an eyebrow. "Really?" he asked, his voice caught between genuine curiosity and skepticism. Even in the most pressured situations, Dean didn't turn down more free food. "Anythin' we should be worried about?"
Dean hesitated for a moment. He really shouldn't talk about it, and the more he tied his emotions into the case by involving his friends and family, the worse it would be for him if he had to take a few trips aether-side, but -. "Maybe invest in some iron, for the doors," he said. "And bless a sword or two."
Drakes weren't inherently violent, of course, or dangerous in that kind of respect. They didn't simply sweep in and strike to kill, but it never hurt to protect oneself. Dean had a sword in the Impala's trunk for the very purpose, just in case.
Both of Benny's eyebrows shot up at that, but he didn't comment. There were humans in his restaurant, after all.
"It'd be another interesting decoration piece," Andrea said brightly, dispelling the tension as Dean laughed. Thinking about having a giant blessed sword amidst the plastic novelty fish and anchors and netting that was the restaurant's loosely naval theme was a laughable one.
"Be safe, brother," Benny called when Dean turned to leave, and Dean waved at him as he headed out of the door and walked towards his car. His phone rang just as he was getting in, shivering at her winter-chilled leather seats.
"Yeah?" he asked, flipping the phone open.
"Blue fire," Henricksen said. "The fire was blue, and white."
Dean sucks in an involuntary breath, his eyes widening. "Shit," he breathed before he could stop himself.
"That mean somethin' to you?"
"Yeah," Dean said, hurriedly grabbing his keys and twisting them into the ignition until the car rumbled to life and her old heaters started kicking into gear. "Yeah, that means somethin'. Something really bad. You'd better brace for the worst winter of your life, Henricksen. A storm's comin'."
Dean had only heard of Blue Fire once in his life – it had been the kind of fire that had swallowed up his home and his mother with it when he was a child. He and Sam had survived and their father had been seriously wounded, landing him disability and food stamps. Dean and Sam had almost been taken away several times, saved only by extenuating circumstances that, when Dean was older, he came to realize had been him exerting his will to keep him and Sam together. It was little things – lost paperwork, fudged applications, bureaucratic shit that was the universe extending his desire to stop him and Sam getting taken away.
John Winchester had died of smoke damage to his lungs when Dean was eighteen. Stubborn old bastard had held on long enough for Dean to get his footing and be able to legally take care of his baby brother – and damn if Dean didn't know it, and was grateful for it every single day of his life.
He couldn't imagine his life without Sam.
"Sammy!" he called out when he got home, tossing his keys and phone in a little clay bowl that Sam had managed to make in shop at high school three years ago, which was resting just inside of the door on an old wooden cabinet. It was ugly as sin but Dean loved it. Sam had made it with his own fire.
"In here, Dean!" Sam called back, his mouth sounding full. When Dean got to the kitchen Sam was hunched over a stack of pancakes bigger than his head, and Dean raised an eyebrow, grinning at the sight of Sam's crumb-covered mouth. He was wearing just a thin t-shirt and his fire stone was glowing in happy satisfaction at being fed. "Lisa just left." Sam swallowed, his nose wrinkling. "She made chocolate chip for you."
Ah, bless Lisa Braeden. Dean ruffled Sam's hair as he walked to the microwave and pulled out a much more conservative helping of chocolate chip pancakes. They were fluffy and golden and smelled fantastic, and Dean pushed the plate back in, warming it for thirty seconds.
"They're not as good as yours," Sam commented, forking another giant mouthful of pancakes into his mouth. "But at least she made me blueberry."
The microwave beeped and Dean took the pancakes back out and brought it to their little kitchen table. It was another ugly thing Dean had found at a junk sale on one of his cases, with a bright red top and metal legs curved into the shapes of what were either dogs or dragons. Sam had loved it, of course, and Dean didn't care enough to want to get rid of it or change it.
He snagged the syrup and poured it over the pancakes and began to eat. "So what did you need to go do?" Sam asked after a few bites. His fire stone had begun to glow more dully, his fire heating up his belly to help him digest the inordinate amounts of food he needed to keep himself running.
Dean's eyes were drawn to it, and he swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. "Ah, I'm not supposed to talk about it," he said, hedging. Sam's eyes narrowed and flickered yellow briefly, revealing his real eye – golden, with a slitted pupil like a lizard. Normally Sam could disguise his eyes so that they looked normal and human, even though sometimes he forgot what color they were meant to be and sometimes they changed when he wasn't thinking about it.
"But you're gonna," Sam simply said, taking another bite of pancakes. Dean rolled his eyes at Sam's prissy tone. "You know me askin' is just a formality."
Dean knew. Sam was a drake, which meant he could get into someone's head a lot easier than most. The fact that Sam and Dean were blood-bonded meant it was that much easier. Sam was polite about it most of the time, though, and didn't actively go searching through Dean's head (Dean was trained to resist unwanted intrusions anyway), but he liked to remind Dean of it every now and again like the little shit he was.
He sighed, setting his fork down, appetite abruptly gone. "A drake escaped from an underground familiar trader ring that the cops broke up. He's got Blue Fire."
Sam's eyes widened, flickering yellow again in surprise. "Fuck," he breathed, his fire stone brightening briefly in shock.
Blue Fire drakes were one of the rarest drake types out there. The familiar would have fetched millions on the black market, probably more zeroes attached to his price tag than Dean could shake a stick at. They were powerful, and sly, but they were also horrible, destructive things. Dean had seen Blue Fire once in his life but every now and again there were whispers through the grapevine of them being seen in other places. It never ended well, especially for the wizards and witches that tried to tame them. Dean had never even heard of one being bonded successfully.
He shuddered, taking another bite of pancakes, stabbing his fork through them with a particular viciousness. "This is gonna suck," he said.
Technically, Blue Fire drakes had a name, but Dean couldn't remember what it was. He'd have to hit the library. Ugh. His nose wrinkled in distaste – he hated the old Magic Library. It was creepy and the books tended to bite. Literally.
Sam, of course, knew what he was thinking. "It's a Saturday," he said offhandedly. "And I wanted to go visit Jess at the library soon anyway. You want me to go?"
Dean fought to hide a smile. Jessica was another familiar, a cute little kite that Dean had seen around the library whenever he'd got to visit. She was bonded to the librarian's youngest daughter, who was too young to be a witch yet, and so Jess helped Missouri out around the library while they waited for Rosanna to grow up and get strong like her mama. Dean had met Missouri once and been so unsettled by her psychic energy that he'd never wanted to get on her bad side again, but Jessica was nice enough and Sammy seemed to like her.
"You're savin' my ass," he said warmly, clapping his hand on Sam's shoulder. Sam grinned at him, a purr rumbling in his chest. Then, Dean stood. "Make sure you take your phone. I gotta clean this place up and pay our bills and shit. You want the rest of my food?"
Sam blinked at him, before he pulled Dean's plate over. "Thanks, Dean!" he chirped. Dean grinned, remembering when Sam was younger and not quite so good at disguising himself. He had acted like an overgrown kitten that could breathe fire, and Dean remembered the way his tail would twitch in excitement or happiness.
"I'm gonna be in the basement if anything comes up. Text me when you get somethin'."
He left Sam in the kitchen and headed through their small kitchen area to the door underneath the stairs that led to the basement. Their house was small and cramped, but it meant that there was literally nowhere for an intruder to hide. Dean had this place warded to all Hell against pretty much everything that tried to come in without explicit permission.
Another reason Dean loved this house was the basement.
The house was built across ley-lines, which were hotspots for psychic and ethereal energy. If Dean really wanted to and had a death wish, he could build a permanent entrance to the aether in his basement for beings to come and go as they pleased. Combined with Sam's power, Dean's ability to come and go from the aether was pretty much the same as a natural-born Fey.
The basement itself was a normal-looking basement, he supposed. The walls were grey cement and the floor was slightly angled to allow a drain in the bottom corner in case water came in (or probably for washing any other fluids that might happen to get in the basement, Dean tried not to think about that too much). There were shelves on the high-side he'd put up himself for his and Sam's crap that didn't have any place in the house proper.
In the center of the room Dean had carved a deep furrow in the shape of an oval. It was just large enough that he could comfortably sit in the middle with his legs crossed, and even roll onto his side without crossing the lines. It was long enough that he could also stretch out and the furrow would wrap around his head and the bottom of his feet. If he didn't roll when he laid down, he could stay within the oval with relative ease.
Dean sighed, shaking his hands out, before he stretched his hands over his head and took another deep breath, until he felt the little knots in the small of his back pop and stretch. Then, he bent down and unlaced his boots, kicking them off to their place by the stairs.
He shrugged off his button-down and undid his belt, letting those clothes fall as well, and toed off his socks.
Around his neck, the amulet that Sam had given him was starting to pulse with familiarity. Dean had spent so many hours down here that the energy in the room was tangible, like a taste in his mouth. His soul started to pulse, his power glowing as slightly pink light in his hands as he stepped over the oval edge and fell to his knees in the middle of it.
He shifted until he was sitting cross-legged, and breathed out another steady breath. He waited a few seconds before breathing in again, then out. The amulet was starting to burn, and the pain would center him and yank him back in Sam's absence – it was infused with his fire and would keep Dean's connection to the aether stable without Sam around to ground him or yank him out of the proverbial fire.
He took another deep breath, and held it until his lungs started to burn and his mouth kept twitching, wanting to open and breathe out. Reality started to melt around him, and he opened his eyes and breathed out as the cement walls started to burn, melting away into sludge that was tinged purple and black.
Dean leaned back quickly, positioning his body within the oval so that he was lying down and not at risk of crossing away from the oval. If anything got into his body while he was gone, he would need to make sure it couldn't leave the oval without him.
Heat slammed into the back of his neck and Dean turned from his body, separating himself from the physical world and cementing himself firmly into the aether. Things in the aether were more of a mere suggestion of reality. He was still in a house, of course, but it wasn't his house. Some houses had consciences, had souls just the same as every living thing. Dean's house was one such building, but its soul was old and grand. Dean had taken many walks through the giant mansion that his house had turned into in the aether, infused with Dean and Sam's combined power and feeding off of it to add to its own presence within the aether.
He ran a hand across the familiar wooden walls and gave the house a greeting pat. He didn't say anything, but the house knew he was here and gave a small creak of greeting. The rules of the aether still applied, even in Dean's house – any and all noise brought attention to him in the aether and he was not powerful enough to fight off anything here, especially without Sam to protect him.
He hurried up the steps and into the large, overgrown jungle that was his house's ground floor. The earth had wound itself into the beams and the pillars that made the house, making it look grand and wild. What little parts of the house that was visible gave him flashes of brilliant gold and marble and rich mahogany wood.
Dean loved his house, and his house loved him. As he passed, some brightly-colored flowers tilted towards him, and a large oak tree bowed its great head in greeting to him. He ran his hand over the bark, his power glowing in his hands and sending a spark of energy through the tree.
The leaves rustled in a happy shiver of pleasure and Dean smiled.
He stepped out of the house and out the back door. Dean's real house had once had a garden, but neither Dean nor Sam had any kind of green thumb and they had sold whatever plants could be salvaged to one of the potions ladies in town. The rest had been buried in their soil long ago and now all that grew were weeds and some grass in the small patch of lawn.
In the aether, though, the garden flourished. There was no sense of smell in the aether, nothing rich and warm to tell him that this was real. The sun beat down on him in the aether, the sun still present despite the fact that it was the middle of winter and more likely to be raining or snowing than warm and bright with sunlight.
There was another gigantic tree in the middle of the luscious garden and Dean frowned, pausing at the threshold of the door.
That tree had not been there before. Granted, Dean was used to sudden changes in the aether but they were usually expected and made sense. There was no reason to be a new tree, especially one that did not fit in with the rest of the bright and verdant growth in the rest of the garden. This tree was yellowy and pale – if Dean could describe it, he would have called it sick. It looked sickly.
A low rumble caught his attention and Dean turned his head, his eyes still on the tree, and listened. The garden stretched on almost too far for him to see the edge, and melted into forest beyond. The rumble cut off abruptly with a loud, hacking sound, and abruptly Dean turned his head when a loud crack whipped through the air. It sounded as though someone was trying to pull the house apart with their bare hands, but when he looked it was to see another sick, yellow tree sprouting up at the edge of the forest.
"What the Hell," he whispered, so quietly that he hoped he wouldn't be heard.
The house gave a groan. It sounded worried.
Another sickly tree sprouted up, and then another. Dean took a step back, grabbing the amulet around his neck, ready to flee at a moment's notice. He had never seen this before.
The air in the aether was usually a slightly purple or green haze, but now with each new tree it came with a burst of gross, yellowy brown. He took another step back, swallowing hard when a third tree spouted up on the edge of the garden. From their roots he could see them spreading into the garden, each colorful flower seizing up and turning black as though…
…Charred.
"Fuck," Dean growled, and turned back into the house. There were no weapons in the aether, but there was something in or around his house and if it was powerful enough to be touching his house's old, powerful soul, then it had to have a physical presence.
He ran back to his body and stopped. Fuck, he was far too charged up to safely melt back into reality like this. If he did it right now he'd release enough energy to set off a mini explosion in the middle of his basement.
"Fuck, fuck," he growled, grabbing the amulet again and worrying it between his fingers. Sam's fire warmed his fingertips, slightly tingly and familiar, and Dean closed his eyes and took another deep, steadying breath.
He stepped over the oval and sat down, before he laid back in a mimic of his body's lax position. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his head.
When he opened his eyes, the walls were grey and cement again, and he breathed out a sigh of relief. Coming back was always more difficult and more risky than going in.
He rolled to his feet and hauled himself out of the basement, power glowing in his hands. Set into the tiny cabinet supporting Sam's ugly clay bowl were several magical weapons and Dean ran to it, kneeling down and hauling out his dad's old pistol, modified and charmed so that it could take down pretty much any b-rated monster.
He also had his staff. He hadn't had to use the thing in years – it was an old, outdated practice to use the staff, and they were usually solely for warfare or aggressive magic, which Dean had never wanted to partake in. Still, something nudged his hands towards it and he yanked it out with a small grunt of effort. It was heavy in his hand, pure metal with a warped head in the shape of a roaring dragon holding a pink, clear gem in its mouth.
As Dean stood, his power lit the staff until the gem in the dragon's mouth started to glow, and the rest of the rod extended from its condensed shape until it grew from the length of Dean's forearm and extended all the way down to the floor in a thick, heavy metal staff.
Dean supposed that even if his magic wasn't strong enough, you could hurt someone with a good hit from this thing anyway.
Gun in one hand, staff in the other, Dean took another deep breath and headed towards the back door again.
The garden was much smaller in reality and surrounded by a small fence. The fence used to be white, but with years of neglect and wind under its belt it was now brown from mud in places, and completely greyed-out in others. Every time Dean saw it he felt a pang of guilt for the house's sake, but the house had never complained about it. Perhaps it felt that the fence fit its aesthetic, looking more weathered and mystical that way.
He stepped out, his staff held loosely in his left hand, gun in his right lifted and ready. He couldn't see anything, but visibility was compromised with the fence in the way, and unlike the aether the forest behind Dean's house had crept up that it was, at times, at full risk of overtaking the house completely. There were a lot of places to hide in a forest like this.
"I know you're here," Dean called, forcing his voice to stay light. "Show yourself!"
For a moment there was silence, and Dean narrowed his eyes, fully prepared to call his magic and cast an exposure spell over the area, forcing everything to reveal itself to him, but then he heard the sound of a wet, hacking cough. It was quiet but fierce, as though it was taking all of the thing's energy to simply cough.
Dean frowned, lowering his gun just slightly. "Show yourself!" he said again, his voice amplifying with the power he put into it. It wouldn't compel anything stronger than a normal monster, which Dean was pretty certain the thing wasn't, but it was good to say he'd at least warned the thing.
Dean heard another cough, and then a hand became visible on the edge of the fence. It was strong enough that the grey wood buckled under the grip, collapsing, and the hand disappeared briefly again. The hollow thunk of falling wood just barely covered up the sound of more coughing.
Dean lowered his gun with another frown, tucking it into the back of his jeans. It was freezing outside and his bare feet immediately complained at the cold stone as he stepped over the threshold, but it was a negligible irritation.
"One last time," he said, more gently. The coughing abruptly stopped and Dean heard heavy, labored breathing. "Look, rap twice on the fence if you're gonna die or something, alright?"
There was no knocking, but the hand reappeared. It was tan, masculine, large, and this time at least it didn't try ripping Dean's fence off. Then, another hand came up. Then one arm, hooked over the edge of the fence as the thing attempted to haul itself to its feet.
There were scars around its wrists, fresh and bloody, and Dean frowned and took the final few steps forward as the thing looked like it was going to fall.
"Easy now," he said, reaching out to grab the thing's bare forearm. "Let me -."
As soon as their skin connected, Dean was thrown back into the aether. The air burst into life in a thick pink hue, bright with white lightning as though he was standing in the middle of a storm. Dean gasped, his hand tightening around the thing's arm – not just the thing, the familiar, his familiar, shit – and he blinked when the arm he was holding abruptly changed.
When a witch and familiar met, the effect was nuclear. Everything changed, their two souls racing towards each other in an attempt to bond and wrap up together to seal the bond. Dean's body felt like it was wrapped in fire, his very being thrown into the midst of the brightest, hottest thing he'd ever felt.
He was surrounded with Blue Fire, and Dean had a brief moment to think that this could not be his fucking life before the familiar changed right in front of him, and he thought, very resignedly, that of course this was his fucking life.