Like an Eagle in a Sunbeam

T. Rex » Ride A White Swan

Ride it on out like a bird in the sky ways
Ride it on out like you were a bird
Fly it all out like an eagle in a sunbeam
Ride it on out like you were a bird

This serves as an alternative arch set after The Rapture. My guilty little pleasure, another of the good night stories I tell myself.
As I'm wont to do, this little piece takes its title from a song, see above.
This time, I'm pretty sure the rating MA is serious, we do have both language and sex. Sorry if I may have been wrong before, but being European, I find the rating criteria rather puzzling as a rule…

Scian is pronounced lightly diphthongized as [skiən].

Chapter 1

Dean had been drinking solid for days.
He wasn't even doing the hair of the dog anymore; he had swallowed the whole fucking mutt whole, as it were.
Through swollen eyes, he watched the dawn's first rays.
Sam was yelling his head off in Bobby's panic room.
Dean couldn't take it anymore.
He wasn't fucking Sisyphus, but he sure as hell got piled one fucked up job after the other on his plate and the more shit he shoveled, the more the powers that be laid on. He was tired and worn and coming apart at the seams.
Dean motherfucking first seal breaker Winchester, bringer of the apocalypse.
Dean, the bloody boy wonder singled out to stop Lucifer from rising.
Come on, dudes, there was only so much one person could carry.
He hit the wall with his fist until his knuckles looked like minced meat. The pain felt good. Clean, real.

Bobby walked into the room. He took one look at the empty bottles, then at Dean.
Didn't say a word, had stopped saying anything about that when the yelling started.
"Bobby, found anything new?" Dean said, enunciating carefully.
Too carefully.
Bad sign, that.
Demon detox 101 was the thing they were researching, only there wasn't a goddamn snippet of information to be found anywhere and Pamela was dead, so no tapping the other channels, either.
"Found us another seer, maybe. There's a woman in Tucson, Louise Alnutt. Might be the real deal."
Dean scrambled to his feet.
Tucson, then.
"Dean, you can't drive like that. You're fucking shit-faced."
Bobby looked like he had approximately another 1500 words lined up, aching to get out, but left it at that, because you didn't open fucking Pandora's box, not with the apocalypse looming, not with anything you had ever fought to keep safe locked up in the fucking basement, howling his ass off.
"And I think a little DUI is the absolute least of our worries," he snapped. He was beyond caring.
He could drive the Impala in his sleep, if needs be.
Hell, he HAD driven his baby in his sleep, truth be told.

Dean checked himself in the rearview mirror before getting out of the car.
He looked like death warmed over.
His stubble was three days past being stylish and there were dark purple circles under his eyes the size of saucers.
He usually didn't even notice he had freckles, but his skin was so chalk white that they stood out like beacons.
He was rumpled, dirty and probably smelled like some cheap roadside bar, too.
It would take a major miracle for the seer to open her fucking lily-white suburban door to him at all.
He got out of the car and walked past immaculate lawn to the said door.
It opened before he could knock.
A white-haired, grandmotherly woman smiled at him, the blue eyes behind her glasses kind.
"Good morning, Mr. Winchester. Come on in, coffee's ready."
Six o'clock in the goddamned morning - how could anyone possibly be this cheerful?
Dean walked into a flowery-ruffly nightmare of a doll's house.
"Now, you sit yourself down here and while I fetch the coffee, you will kindly leave that flask of yours just where it is, sweetie." the woman twittered.
Dean guiltily pulled his hand out of the inside pocket of his jacket again.
The old lady came back, carrying a tray.
She put a plate with a ham sandwich in front of Dean and a steaming mug of black coffee.
"I, uh, I'm not hungry, thank you."
The woman looked at him sternly over the rim of her glasses.
"Sweetie, you will eat that sandwich. You can go on a liquid diet when you're my age and don't have teeth that sleep in the same bed as you anymore, but at your age and with your job, you most assuredly should and will eat!"

Dean finished off the last bite of the sandwich, then drank some more coffee.
"Well, my boy, to business then, shall we?" chirped his host.
"Now there, you need to cleanse your brother from demon blood. I have found a spirit with some knowledge of the right procedure."
You had to hand it to granny there; she was the real McCoy with a vengeance.
She handed him a slip of paper with a symbol drawn on it and an incantation in neat old-lady writing.
"The ingredients needed for the spell are listed on the back. All but one are common and easy to come by."
"And the one that ain't?"
The woman sighed.
"You need the blood of a mythical creature, willingly given."
"A mythical creature? What the f… funk would that be?"
"Well, you know, mythical, as in dragon, unicorn, elf…?"
Dean laughed. He couldn't stop; his whole body was racked with hysterical, helpless laughter. Laughter that sounded and felt more like sobs, tearing his chest apart.
So close, so goddamn close, only to have his hope dashed again.
"Lady," he gasped when the hysterics receded,"thanks for the big steamin' pile o' nothin'. There are no such things as fucking unicorns."
"Mind your language, boy."
"Sorry."
"Well, I am indeed not so certain that unicorns exist and the last dragon, well, that is another story entirely, but elves do exist and I think I can even help you find one."
"You got to be kidding me."
"On the contrary, Dean Winchester. On the contrary. Now pay attention!"

Dean drove into the small town Miss Alnutt had pointed him towards.
The old lady had given him very detailed instructions. And a long lecture on his drinking.
He had taken both instructions and lecture in stride, but neither had done anything much to convince him.
An elf.
Held captive by a nest of vampires.
Because his blood was the ultimate dope to them.
Yeah right.
And he was swatting tiny flying piglets away as he spoke and Satan was skating to work that day.
Still, he opened the trunk's weapon compartment and geared up for a vamp hunt.
Better safe than sorry, the cardinal rule of Hunting.
As he crept into what the old lady had said was the vamps' lair, he was glad that she at least had been right about the tooth fairies, even if the elf would surely turn out to be a total washout.
They were there all right, a good dozen of vamps.
He carefully made his way through the sleeping vampires. At the back of the cavernous room, shrouded in darkness, Dean could just make out the figure of a man, chained to the walls.

As he came closer, he saw the man was naked, bleeding from countless bite marks all over his body. The blood was very red against his white skin.
There was a strange flutter in the pit of Dean's stomach at the sight of his lean body.
The man was tall and very slim, yet perfectly muscled all over.
He was slumped into the chains that bound him and looked more dead than alive.
His hair was unbelievably long, black and extremely tangled and matted.
Dean put two fingers on the spot where the neck vein should be. There was a faint pulse, but the man didn't stir at all at the touch.

Well, even if the hair freak was no elf for sure, Dean wouldn't just leave him there. He checked the chains and picked the lock that held them tightly in place.
As quietly as he could, Dean lowered the man to the ground and unwound the chains. Underneath the chains, the man had angry, open sores that almost looked like the chains had eaten into him.
Dean hoisted him over his shoulders fireman fashion and carried him to the condemned building's entrance. He put the man down again and walked back around the room, liberally sprinkling the vamps' lair with gasoline in strategic spots. There was so much old junk in there that the whole thing would light up like a torch.
From the door, he flicked a lit match into the room and then ran off as quickly as he could with an unconscious man slung over his shoulder.
The old building went up in flames instantly.
Dean turned to watch for a brief moment.
He wrapped the guy in a blanket and stuffed him in the backseat of the Impala.
His hand skimmed over the man's chest by mistake, brushing a nipple.
Dean pulled his hand back instantly as if it had been burned.
What the hell was wrong with him?