Summary: Dean is a demon. Demons kill people. Set somewhere between the season 9 finale and the beginning of season 10. Rated T for language and the general misbehavior of demons.
A/N: This was written because the marvelous MarvelLuvver wouldn't stop asking for more demon!Dean, so that's what you get—demon!Dean. Enjoy!
The bar stank. The smell wafting around the place was truly something awful—a mixture of cigarette smoke, vomit, and hopelessness. The smell of the bar alone would have been more than enough to give it the air of a sleazy, dangerous-looking place, but its appearance certainly didn't do anything to assist in the business of "looking nice." The walls sagged, the windows were so filthy they were nearly opaque, and the roof looked as if it hadn't seen a new shingle since the 1790s.
The customers were another story entirely. They ranged from late teens to late sixties and their opinions and fashions of dressing were as varied as they come, yet there was one thing in common among them. They were always ready for a fight.
However, on this particular night, a customer arrived and was more than ready for a figh. In fact, he was actively seeking one.
"Give me your best stuff," the man growled as he slid onto one of the stools in front of the counter, his voice deep and menacing.
The bartender, a young blonde girl in her mid-twenties, nodded and turned her attention to the assortment of bottles and pitchers behind her.
The man admired the view this new angle presented.
When the bartender turned back around and caught him staring, she just huffed and slammed the order down with a little more force than was entirely necessary. A bit of the drink slipped over the lip of the glass and onto the man's dried-blood red shirt.
He blew an amused puff of air out through his nose and glanced down at his now stained shirt. "Aww, honey," he drawled, "Don't be like that."
The bartender bit her tongue and tried to take the next customer's order.
But the man was undeterred. "You got a name, sweet thing?"
The bartender gritted her teeth. "Devlin," she responded, her back still to the man.
The man nodded thoughtfully and downed half the glass. "Devlin," he mused. "Good for you. I used to know a guy called the Devil…"
Devlin glanced over at him curiously, wondering if he was somehow already drunk. Surely the alcohol wouldn't have done its work that quickly? "What happened to him?" she asked, her tone more patronizing than anything else.
The man shrugged and downed the remainder of his glass. "I killed him."
Devlin stared at him for another moment, but he seemed absorbed in his own possibly drunken thoughts, so she served the next customer, then disappeared into the back room. When she got there, she found her co-worker, Michelle, splayed on one of the many boxes, busy smoking a cigarette.
Devlin's expression soured even farther, if that were at all possible. "Those things'll kill you," she reminded her friend as she plopped down on another one of the storage containers.
Michelle shrugged and blew out a cloud of smoke. "Just 'cause you got yourself one of them fancy college edumacations doesn't mean you gotta act like a little a know-it-all," she retorted.
Devlin rolled her eyes and worked her hair-tie off of her wrist. "I only got halfway through. It's not like I'm a genius." The hair-tie snapped off of her fingers and went soaring across the store-room. Devlin sighed. It was just going to be one of those nights, wasn't it?
Michelle smiled sympathetically and handed Devlin a new hair-tie from her own wrist. "You would've gotten all the way through, I'm sure of it," she said.
Devlin took the hair-tie gratefully and went to work tying her hair into a ponytail. "I'll go back as soon as I've got the money," she promised. Her tone was such that it suggested that this wasn't the first time the two of them had had this conversation. "I'm nearly done saving now. Only a few more months."
Michelle smiled proudly. "Just you wait and see," she went on. "Someday, you're gon' be the best dang lawyer this town has ever put their eyes on. I guarantee it."
Devlin would have said something in reply, but it was at that particular moment that there was a shout followed by a loud and somewhat worrying crash from the main room.
The two girls looked at the door then at each other, stare-down in progress. Eventually, a wordless mutual agreement was reached and Michelle pulled her cellphone from her pocket and put in the number for the cops, her finger on the dial button.
Devlin hauled herself to her feet and headed back to the main room. "You owe me for this one," she muttered on her way out.
The sight that awaited Devlin when she stepped out of the store-room was one that she wasn't unused to. Two men were locked together on the floor, just a few feet away from an overturned table—the source of the crash, no doubt.
"I'll take you out for a pedicure sometime," Michelle promised, poking her head out the door to watch the scene.
It didn't take more than a few seconds to see who was winning the fight—the leather-clad man from table 8 was very clearly having his ass handed to him by the red-shirted man from the counter.
If not for the fact that this was practically an everyday event for her, Devlin may have been alarmed by the rate at which the red-shirted man was pounding away at the other, but this was nearly an everyday event for her, and she knew that people could take a surprisingly good beating before any serious damage was done.
"Hey!" Devlin hollered, following the exclamation closely with a taxi-cab whistle that would have made any New Yorker proud. "Cut the shit!"
Though her voice was by no means intimidating, it seemed to get the red-shirted man's attention. His eyes roved her greedily—once, twice. "Okay," he said easily.
"Okay?" Devlin repeated. She'd been expecting to need to phone the police.
The red-shirted man rose to his feet and pulled the other man up beside him. "You can have it your way," he said.
Devlin didn't know what to do at this point. She had witty retorts, threats, and "your mom" jokes prepared for any situation her job could possibly throw at her—but this? A full grown man in the middle of a bar fight simply standing up and saying, "okay?" What on Earth was she supposed to do with that? "Good," she finally said.
The crowd seemed just as confused by the man's actions. Where was their fight?
Devlin glanced around. She felt the tension building. Something was coming. Something big.
"What do you want me to do next?" the red-shirted man inquired, tightening his grip on his adversary. "Sit? Roll over? Beg?" he taunted her, spreading his free arm wide in a mocking invitation.
This was a conversation Devlin was ready for. "I want you to get the hell out here," she demanded, crossing her arms for extra emphasis.
The red-shirted man lost no time in imitating her command in a high-pitched, squeaky voice. "I want you to get the hell out of here," he repeated her, then in his normal tone, "Sorry, sweetie. No can do."
Devlin scowled. "Then we'll make you."
But the banter was over. "Oh yeah?" he asked. Devlin noticed him finger some sort of tattoo on the inside of his arm. "You and whose army?"
Devlin moved to go back into store-room to tell Michelle that, yes, the cops would be necessary, but she found herself suddenly unable to move her limbs. Was this what it felt like when people said they were paralyzed by fear?
"I don't think that's a good idea," the red-shirted man said when he noticed her struggle against the invisible barrier. "Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself."
Devlin's eyes went wide. "Are you doing this?" she demanded, her voice somewhere between awe and terror.
And with a flick of the man's hand, everyone except Devlin, the man from table 8, and himself were thrown against the walls.
Devlin's jaw dropped as she took in the sight around her. The men and women that had previously been standing around watching the confrontation or making out in the corner were now hanging against the wall by what seemed to be their necks, yet no rope or any other material was visible.
The man appeared to get an immense amount of pleasure from watching them suffer and let his eyes dance across them each in turn. When he was satisfied that the people on the walls weren't going anywhere, the red-shirted man returned his attention to the man from table 8. "It's been nice beating you up," he told him.
Then he snapped his neck.
The body hit the floor.
Devlin screamed.
The man drank in the sight of his lifeless victim.
Devlin's eyes were rolling. The room was spinning. Had the window always been on the floor? "What's going on?" She wasn't sure how she had found a way to speak, but she had. Her own voice brought Devlin back to her senses enough that she was to struggle more violently.
The red-shirted man tore his gaze away from the dead man and sauntered closer to her until he was barely more than a few inches from her. Then he grinned. On another face, in other circumstances, it might have been attractive. Here, it just looked psychotic. "Not much," the man answered her in the sort of voice one discusses the weather in. It certainly wasn't the voice of a person who had just murdered an innocent. He gave an exaggeratedly obvious shrug. "Just messing around while I wait for my boss to get back from his business trip."
"Your boss?" she squeaked, trying unsuccessfully to crane her neck away from the man.
He winked at her. "The King of Hell," he clarified. The deranged grin was still there. He found her struggles amusing.
"Right," Devlin murmured disbelievingly, "The King of Hell is your boss. You killed the Devil. Okay, sure, why not?"
The man just stood there and regarded her through narrowed eyes. "Any more questions?" he inquired. He was enjoying seeing her tremble and shake.
Devlin felt her heart rate increase and her gaze slipped over each of the prisoners now gagging and gasping for air where they hung on the walls. Something. Anything. She had to ask something. Stall for time. Isn't that what they did in the movies? "What are you?"
"Ah," the man said, "Now we get to the fun part." He paused and slowly bowed his knees until his line of sight was perfectly alined with Devlin's. A dark, shiny black slid quickly over his eyes, straight across like a blind over a window. "I'm a demon."
Devlin screamed again and the force holding her up disappeared, allowing her to drop to the floor. The second her hands hit the ground, the fight rushed out of her like air from a tire. She was doomed.
A sword of some sort, made of what looked to be bone-colored wood, slid from the man's sleeve. He seemed to relish in the sensation it being in his hand gave him for a moment, then returned his attention to Devlin. "One more question," he informed her. "Then I kill you."
Devlin opened and closed her mouth. She wondered if she was hyperventilating. How was she supposed to think of a question if she couldn't even think straight? "How…" She couldn't talk. She couldn't breathe. "What—" She was definitely hyperventilating now. Definitely panicking. Wh—Who are you?"
The demon grinned that psychotic grin and bent over her, holding her head back by her hair. "I'm Dean Winchester," he said. "And you're dead."