WARNING: TORTURE. And CRACK. Torture crack! Blood, gore, making light of bloody gory situations. Intestines. And language.
Spoilers: Hell-related plot points.

Written for a pic-prompt at spn_rambleon, by GI-Ace ( deviantart). Gleeful!torturer!Dean FTW!

Amateur Night at the Apollo

Okay, so with the way things are going at the moment Dean's maybe starting to agree with Sam's opinion that he's really not qualified to work as a hunter anymore. It's been a point of contention between them for a while now, but with the immediate situation being what it is and all, Dean's thinking that his brother's possibly on to something. After all, Sam's not the one currently bound and gagged in a reeking hole with a handful of other jokers, Dean is. And Dean's beginning to think it was his own sloppiness that landed him here. Not watching the shadows and not noticing the thing sneaking up behind him with a blunt object is the type of silly mistake that kinda makes Sam's point for him, in giant screaming capital letters a hundred feet high. The fact that Dean hasn't yet been transformed into a small pile of bone fragments and squishy morsels in no way makes him feel better about the situation. Instead, he's beginning to seriously rethink his chosen path in life.

Shame, really, because he's actually sorta been enjoying the work since he got back—at least the parts that let him chop things into little bitty bits and spray blood everywhere.

It's lucky, then, that while he's forty years out of practice on hunting, his resume's all up-to-date when it comes to dealing with bloodthirsty maniacs who want to tickle his innards with pointy bits until he cracks his throat screaming.

All that time in Hell had to be good for something, right?

The main problem, as he sees it at the moment, is that there's a whole lot of crying and whimpering going on in the cell he's currently sharing, and it's starting to really grate on Dean's nerves.

He can't actually say, "Shut the fuck up, Jesus Christ," because the first thing the demon bitch that nabbed him did was stuff what feels like half a nasty unwashed t-shirt in his mouth, even before she tied him up. He's thinking maybe his reputation has preceded him. It'd be flattering, if it wasn't so damn disgusting. When he'd first woken up to the not-unfamiliar experience of being swiftly gagged and then trussed, he'd spent a few irritated moments gnawing fruitlessly at the sweat sock-tasting material and trying out a few piercing glares on his captor. This earned him nothing more than a backhand with a bony fist and a new taste sensation from the thing in his mouth. After the ringing in his ears died down, the noise of human distress in the room became suddenly obvious.

He thinks, Shut the fuck up, Jesus Christ, as hard as he can in the general direction of the noises, on the off chance that the recent blow to the head has knocked loose some latent psychic abilities. Apparently, though, head-injury-induced spooky powers are not in the stars for Dean, as the whimpering not only continues but, if anything, increases slightly.

Fuckin' amateurs, he snarls to himself, gnawing at the soggy shirt some more. He's surrounded by morons. What do they think is going to happen? If they whimper and cry enough, the demon'll come by and take pity on them? Kick 'em out into the world and maybe chip in a couple bucks for cab fare? He wants to say, Save your breath, and for that matter add, Nobody likes a crybaby, and maybe You're makin' us all look bad, but there's no way he's going to be able to gnaw through this shirt anytime soon. He feels like the only sane man in a ward full of lunatics.

There's only one demon, far as Dean can tell. It's a female, and she's nabbed a couple of people (himself included) for some nefarious purpose that she hasn't deigned to drop by and monologue about yet. He's settled in as comfortably as he can to his chains, though he's having flashbacks to lederhosen and balsawood doors that're making him a little nauseous. Or maybe it's the absent chewing on residual man-musk from the makeshift gag giving him the growlies. Whatever. Point is, he's a little nauseous and, what's worse, starting to get kinda bored.

The whimpering from one corner of the room escalates into out-and-out crying. Dean rolls his eyes.

"Ngggh!" he points out, as helpfully as he can, and the crying person gives a fluttery little gasp and falls silent for a few blessed moments.

When she starts up again, Dean shuts his eyes in despair.

It's amateur night at the fucking Apollo. He's fallen into some bizarre netherworld where captives don't know the first thing about torture etiquette and even the villains can't monologue for shit. It's the only explanation. He wants to smack somebody—several somebodies— in the head but he knows if he starts he won't be able to stop. Plus his hands have been chained above his head to one of two makeshift racks in the converted cellar-cum-torture-chamber, which is kind of putting a crimp in his plan.

"Look," he grumps, when the shirt is out of his mouth and he's worked some saliva around in the hopes it'll rinse away some of the taste (it doesn't). "You're kinda stinkin' up the joint here, okay, lady?"

"Shut up." Low-rent Mistress-of-the-dark says irritably, waving a knife around clumsily so the light flashes all over the place like something from J.J. Abrams' wet dream. Dean squints away when the lens flare stabs into his eyes.

"You didn't do too well with that girl, did you? I could hear her screaming for hours and you didn't get a single coherent word from her. Pathetic, kid. Fuckin' lame."

"I didn't ungag you so we could have a chat about my technique, Winchester," she snarls, running the knife point up the inside of his bare arm, not even drawing blood. He stares down at it in disbelief, than looks back at her face.

"Well?" he demands, when the moment stretches.

"I want to know—" she begins, and Dean rolls his eyes so hard it hurts.

"Oh Jesus Christ—"

"I want to know," she repeats, finally digging the knife point in below his elbow and seriously? There isn't even a nerve cluster there! "About the seal in Pomona."

What?

"What?"

"The seal. In Pomona."

Oh, well that clears that up.

"I don't have any ideaaaaaRRRGGHH!"

Okay, that was a nerve cluster. Fucking finally.

"You know," he tells her, not unkindly, when he can talk again and his heart's slowed down to a respectable trot, "I can tell it's been a while since you worked the rack. Been topside a few years?"

"Quiet."

"Sorry? Did you want me to answer your questions with my mouth shut? Because I'm pretty talented but I don't think—"

"Tell me about Pomona," she reiterates, and this time she's making a little bit of an effort, childish as it is, slipping the knife into his armpit and questing around for things that cause strange squeaks and gasps to spill out of Dean's mouth.

"You're…adorable," he gasps, somewhere between a squelching wheeze and something like a giggled scream, "I just wanna pinch your little—"

"Pomona," she repeats, and this time gets the knife in far enough to scrape bone, and Dean is relieved enough to genuinely scream for the first time in a long time.

Her name is Abigail and she trained under Vargas, which just fucking figures.

"Look," he says, when she's slumped on the floor twiddling the knife dejectedly and his blood is running down his legs and spattering next to her like warm rain, "Sometimes you can't get the job done with brute force, okay? You've gotta understand about people."

"Oh, and of course you understand them so well," she snarks, and he'd shrug if he could move his shoulders at all.

"I understand that I don't know jack about the seal in Pomona and you just wasted forty-five minutes being completely unproductive." He waggles his eyebrows at her when she looks up at him through a mess of frizzy red hair, and he tries on a smile. After a moment, she returns it, hesitantly.

"It's psychology, okay?" he goes on. "You know I trained with Alastair, you know that's what he does best. It's important, being able to get inside someone's head. Knowing their history, what makes 'em tick. It's the key that makes the physical torture work at all—without it you're just making a lot of pretty pictures." He shifts a little in his bonds, then continues, "Tell me about the other one. The screamy girl. The one who sounds like she's auditioning for Erotic Nights of the Living Dead."

"Libby. Her brother's a hunter out of Ojai."

"Okay. Good. That's good, you know her background, her name. Did you get anything out of her when she was on your rack?"

Abigail hesitates, bites her lip. When she shakes her head Dean suppresses a sigh.

"She just…she cried a lot," Abigail murmurs, ashamed, working the knife back and forth between her palms. "And…screamed."

"Okay," Dean says patiently, "Look, why don't you get her in here again and let me have a look at your technique, alright? You've been topside longer than I have at this point. Maybe I know a few things you don't."

The maybe isn't really in question, as far as Dean's concerned, but he's trying to be nice about it.

Abigail considers her knife. When she looks up at him, her expression is hopeful.

"No," Dean says impatiently, when Libby descends into incoherency again, and Abigail yanks the knife out of her ribs and looks over her shoulder at him. Her eyes are big and her chin wobbles a little, and fuck fucking Vargas and his 'solid and dependable' technique and his dull grey accountant's mind. Some people shouldn't be let near a rack, much less allowed to train up-and-coming demons. There's no technique here at all, no flair, no artistry. This poor girl needs to go back to remedial. She needs to spend about another six years strapped to the rack, if Dean is any judge.

He's got his work cut out for him.

"Put down the knife," he tells her, as gently as he can over the noise of Libby blithering and sobbing. "Just…look, you're going to have to unhook me from this thing, I can't help you from all the way over here anyway."

Abigail looks down at the knife in her hand, than at the tray of tools beside her. She sets the knife down hesitantly and brushes her fingers over the pliers and razors and what-all. Dean waits, patiently.

"All you did was make her cry," he presses, when her inactivity starts to grate, "That's, like, playground-level bullying. You could call her names and push her off the swings to get the same effect. Abigail, come on."

"Oh, fine!" she snaps, and flounces over, brandishing a key. The manacles unsnap and he slides to the floor almost bonelessly, only managing to stop himself collapsing into an undignified heap by clinging to the rack's splintery surface. He pulls in a few deep breaths and manages to corral his shaking legs. Abigail watches with an entirely annoying expression of deep amusement. Dean scowls.

"Do you want my help or not?" he snarls, and she rolls her eyes but gets a firm hand around his bicep and heaves him upright. His legs are still bleeding and they itch. He ignores them.

Sometimes having a body is a pain in the ass.

Libby's face is a mess of snot and tears and some blood, and she bobs her head up and down and fixes bleary, confused eyes on Dean's face. He smiles at her a little, wipes away some of her tears with his thumb.

"Okay, hey, shhh, shh," he soothes. It's a damn shame, he thinks, in a distant sort of way. She really shouldn't be here at all.

But then again, that's what they always say.

"Libby," he says gently, "It's Libby, right?"

She nods, gulps. Dean feels the grin spread across his face, like a drop of blood in seawater.

"Okay, sweetie. My friend Abigail here just has a few questions for you. You can answer a few questions, can't you?"

She thunks her head back against the wooden rack with a sob, exposing a pale, undamaged throat. Dean makes a tiny noise of appreciation at the sight. He's smiling so hard his face aches.

"That's all right," he whispers, and beckons Abigail closer. "That's just fine."

Abigail regards the girl with distaste, picking up the knife again and waving it vaguely at the girl's blood-marred and snot-shiny face. "She's gross."

"No," Dean croons, running his thumb across Libby's eyebrow, watching a tear creep from the corner of her eye. "She's beautiful."

It's messy, of course, and blood gets everywhere. They all wind up sprayed in red and with no real answers about Abigail's mysterious seal. Dean wonders once or twice if maybe Libby shouldn't be here at all, as much as she seems made to be taken apart on the rack. She just doesn't have that much to tell and after about two hours Dean's pretty sure she really hasn't seen her hunter bro in five years and doesn't know jack about any seals that aren't adorable and currently residing at the Santa Barbara Zoo.

Abigail should let her go, some voice inside whispers, and it's out-of-place and annoying and he squashes it mercilessly. If he's got to be a shitty hunter then he's going to do so to the best of his ability. Not-saving-people and not-hunting-things. Besides, he's great at taking human beings to pieces.

It's what he should be doing, after all.

"This one's a bust," he says, watching Abigail desultorily trace a kinda nifty but pointless pattern in Libby's bare shoulder. The demon slumps.

"I know," she says. "I guess I should kill her now, huh?"

"Doesn't matter." He waves a hand. "Get one of the other ones in here. Someone you haven't started on yet." The 'Someone you haven't managed to screw up with yet' goes without saying, as far as Dean's concerned.

She hauls Libby back into the dark room. Dean follows the trail of blood she leaves with his eyes. He's not sure if she's alive or dead. She stopped making noises about twenty minutes ago.

He darts a tongue across his bottom lip. There's blood there, too, and most of it isn't his.

He waits impatiently. It takes Abigail another seven or eight minutes to reappear, roughly frog-marching a smallish, balding and visibly trembling man in the direction of the rack. Dean sighs a little. Wormy little guys are never very much fun.

"Really?" he asks, and can't keep his lip from curling slightly.

"We work with what we got, okay?" Abigail returns sharply, and if this were a normal situation and Dean her superior, he'd break a few bones in her hands just for talking to him that way.

This isn't a normal situation, though, so he'll just have to put up with it. For now.

"Alright, look," he says, laying a hand on her arm as she reaches immediately for her favored knife. He shakes his head and guides her fingers to rest on the smaller razor. "This isn't a race. I want to know a little bit about the guy, okay?"

"He's—" she begins, and he shakes his head again.

"Not from you." He nods at the guy, who's sweaty and trembling.

"Wh-who are you?" he squeaks.

"Just a coupla folks with inquisitive habits," Dean informs him cheerfully. "The real question here is, who are you?"

Abigail works on him for a while, Dean giving quiet pointers and asking questions. This guy, strange as it seems, does seem to know a little bit about the seal, so at least that means there's something to know. Unfortunately, Abigail neglected to discover something sort of essential during the kidnapping process, and it puts a stop to the entire affair after just forty minutes.

Dean hurls a pair of pliers to the floor. They make a delightful little tingling noise.

"Really, Abigail? Really?"

"I didn't know! How was I supposed to know?"

"You didn't think to maybe, I dunno, check at some point to see if the guy had a potentially fatal heart condition?"

"How was I supposed to find that out?"

"Ask him! You mor—" He breaks off, takes a deep breath. "Okay." He spreads his hands. "Okay. Enough. This is not working, Abigail. Do you understand that this is not working?"

She flails a little. "Well what am I supposed to do?"

"There's only one thing you can do at this point." He picks up the long and slender razor from the worktable. The one he's been eyeing all day. Runs his thumb up and down the smooth, polished blade.

"You're going to have to get back on the rack," he tells her.

She stomps her host's tiny foot.

"Dean!"

He shakes the razor in her face. "Don't you take that tone of voice with me, missy. This is for your own good."

"You—oooh!"

He waves a hand at the body slumped on the rack. "Clean that up and get it outta here. And get rid of Libby, too," he adds, bending over to pick up the pliers. They haven't gone far. When he looks back up, she's gaping at him.

"Oh," he snaps his fingers, "And find me an apron, too. This shirt's a loss but I think I can still save the pants."

It turns out that, while she's absolutely hopeless behind the knife, Abigail is a virtuoso under it. It gives Dean hope. And she smiles when Dean praises her, and screams until the walls vibrate.

It feels like coming home.

By the time Sam finally bursts in, Ruby's knife in hand and furious expression firmly in place, Dean's up to his elbows in Abigail's host's guts. Intestines trail on the floor in pinkish loopy swirls and he's got ahold of something squishy behind her liver.

"Okay," he says, "What happens when I do thi—Oh, hi Sam!"

Sam makes a choked, gurgling noise and staggers into a corner of the room, where he's promptly sick all over the floor. Dean looks back at Abigail and grins. She drools blood from her open mouth and he wipes a string of it away with one finger. Sam's still retching, so Dean goes over and plucks the demon-killing knife from his unresisting hand.

"Oh, sweetie," he purrs, sidling up to Abigail and floating a hand over her face, her red-streaked throat, before settling it lightly just above her clavicle. "You are in for a treat."

Abigail moans. Sam makes a gagging noise and thumps the wall beside him.

Amateur.

The End

Notes:

In conclusion: A WORLD OF FACEPALM.

Incidentally, I don't think it was the demon blood that made Sam sick, as much as it was the sight of his brother standing in a puddle of intestines. And, y'know, the implications thereof. *evil grin*

"Erotic Nights of the Living Dead" is apparently a real movie. I googled 'top ten worst horror movies' and that was # 5. Along with "Cannibal! The Musical" and "A Night to Dismember."

I'm not making this up. I wish to god I was.