June 21st. They both called in sick to work. They talked about going to lunch, but didn't. They talked about going to dinner, but ordered in pizza. Dean had enough beer and lube to withstand the Apocalypse, so they were set.

They'd both slept for hours that afternoon. Cas felt relaxed, alert, a light mist of euphoria making even the pizza taste better. He was wearing his pants and his shirt, unbuttoned; Dean was wearing only jeans, and Cas was trying to think if there was anything more sensual than watching a shirtless Greek god lick pizza sauce off of his fingertips.

"So what do you like to do in your spare time?"

The question took Cas by surprise. "Ah – Well, I jog in the mornings. I watch TV, do crossword puzzles. Uh, I went to the Legacy Flight Museum last year."

"Not a lot to do in good ol' Rexburg."

"Well, there's the Christmas concert at BYU-Idaho."

Dean chuckled. "You Mormon?"

"No." He didn't even bother asking about Dean. "I think that makes about seven of us in town."

"Maybe ten. You know, in some ways it's great – the town's so neat and clean, if you're raising kids it's safe, and all that. But finding a place to get a drink is a whole project. And those poor guys – " Dean shook his head. "They're so deep in the closet they're standin' on shoeboxes. No way anything can work out with them."

"You don't have any – difficulties with your neighbors?"

"Hey, I can be low-profile when I want to. You know, actually, I don't see them much. We wave at each other mowing our lawns, that kind of thing. Other than that, I'm either inside the house – " Dean looked around – "which I really like – or I'm in Idaho Falls. Which ain't exactly Vegas either, but it's – "

"Livelier."

"Livelier. I can't figure out how we never met before. Two gay non-Mormons in Rexburg?"

"Well, my work schedule just changed two months ago."

"Which was about the time I moved here. I had an apartment in Idaho Falls, but I really wanted to rent a house, and this was the one I liked and could afford."

Cas smiled. "So we were fated to meet. Oh, books."

"Hm?"

"I read books in my spare time. History especially."

"My brother Sam likes history. You two should talk sometime." Dean lifted his beer glass and studied it as he asked, "You ever write, paint, anything like that?"

"No." Cas gave a short laugh. "You may have noticed that I lack imagination."

"Bull. Everyone has imagination. Some people just squash it when they get older. When you were a kid, though, I bet you played cops and robbers or pretended to be a knight slaying a dragon, something like that."

There was a moment's silence. "I used to pretend that I lived in a boarding school."

Dean blinked. "Boarding school."

"Yes, with lots of other students. I named some of them." Cas' gaze was distant, a little smile on his face. "I haven't thought about this in years. Roger and Bob and – Jim and Formula Jim."

Dean smiled a little, obviously trying to quell it. "Formula Jim?"

"Two of my friends were named Jim. One of them was very interested in science, so we called him Formula Jim to avoid confusion." Cas smiled again. "I was very young, obviously."

"Formula Jim, I like it."

"I knew exactly what my room in the imaginary school looked like. Mrs. Malone." Cas chuckled, shaking his head. "How did this all leave my head for so long? Mrs. Malone was the kindest teacher at school. When life was shit, I mean real life, I'd go to Mrs. Malone in my head and tell her my troubles, and she'd tell me – how smart and good I was, how successful I would be." He met Dean's gaze with a wry look. "I don't ever recall her telling me I'd be assistant manager at a convenience store."

Dean grinned. "You ever have a run at Mrs. Malone?"

"I told you, I was very young. But – at night I would imagine that my roommate Roger and I would lie on the same bed – fully dressed, you know – just holding each other. It helped me get to sleep. I used to wonder why that made me feel better than anything else." Cas shook his head. "I'll be damned. I guess I do have an imagination."

"A good one, it sounds like."

Cas sat silent, memories flooding through him and emotions, he wasn't sure, some kind of sensation.

"So was your mom dead? That was the reason for Mrs. Malone?"

Dean's mother died. The thought laid itself neatly into Cas' head. But he hadn't talked about himself in so long, he was feeling an almost drunken release of inhibitions. "No, she wasn't dead. She just wasn't present."

"She traveled a lot?"

"No, she just wasn't – there. Emotionally. Either her or Dad." Cas sat back. "To this day I wonder why she and Dad had three children. It must have been clear to them after Michael that they just weren't – interested."

Dean narrowed his eyes as if trying to understand.

"They kept us fed and clothed, of course. Well fed and clothed. Nice place to live, we couldn't really have any complaints. But they just didn't want to listen to kids whining. They had a lot of activities outside the home. We – " he chuckled – "We tormented a lot of babysitters. If we asked for something we usually got it, especially if we wanted some kind of activity outside the house, but they didn't come to watch the activity. They'd get another parent or a taxi to take us there and back. They ate dinner in a separate room –"

"What?"

"Adults' table and a kids' table, you know."

"That's for big family gatherings!" Dean looked and sounded indignant.

"Well, at our house it was for every night. We were –"

He felt as though he'd retreated into himself, talking to himself, was only half-aware of Dean. "A few years ago I was working in an office. We'd had a couple of birthday parties before – you know, cake and everyone sings 'Happy Birthday' off-key, and then everyone stands around eating cake and talking until too many phones are ringing and everyone goes back to work. Mine came around, and I had to step out into the hall after the singing. One of the secretaries brought me a piece of cake and asked if I was OK. I told her it was the first birthday party I'd ever had."

Dean shook his head very slightly, but the movement brought Cas back to the present.

"She teared up, but she also looked at me like she was understanding something, like she understood why I'm unusual."

"Unusual?" Dean sounded like he wanted to hit someone. "How are you not royally fucked up?"

"Well, maybe I am. You don't know." Cas smiled a little, but Dean failed to see the humor. "My older brother, Michael, he started out badly – got into fights, too much drinking, ran away. When he joined the Army, that made all the difference. Gave him discipline, gave him a sense of mission. A family, in a way. My sister Anna, she's younger than I am, she got pregnant at seventeen, had an abortion, started college, dropped out, ran off with a guy, got pregnant again and he dumped her. She kept the baby and she works cleaning houses. She's on her – fifth or sixth boyfriend now, I think. We don't keep in very good touch, any of us."

Dean shook his head again.

"My apologies," Cas said. "You asked about hobbies, and I gave you my childhood history. I promise it won't happen again."

"No, it – " Dean leaned back, and a little of his ferocious humor was returning to his eyes. "You actually just won a prize. You're the first person I've ever known that I'd rather have my background than yours."

"Tell me."

"No way. I don't feel like talking about it. I feel like something enjoyable."

"I could go for something enjoyable." Cas was fully back in the present, looking at Dean's chest.

Which was actually moving a little fast. He was breathing as if he were on edge, looking across the room, his eyes slightly crinkled. He looked as though he was deciding something.

Then he looked back at Cas. "Want to know what I do in my spare time?"

"Of course."

"I tell stories."

"You mean, you write?"

"No, I tell stories. Sometimes just to myself. Sometimes to someone else. You want to hear a story?"

"Absolutely."

Dean stood, taking his beer, and gave a quick wave of his hand, heading for the kitchen. Cas grabbed his glass and followed.

Dean opened a door in the kitchen, flipped on a light over the staircase, and headed down. Cas followed him.

They walked into a finished basement with dark gray wall-to-wall carpet. The light was on in a small lavatory to Cas' right. Beyond that, shelves stacked with boxes took up the rest of the wall. Across the room to the left, there was a somewhat beat-up but comfortable looking sofa facing a TV set that sat on a long set of two shelves of DVDs, and next to that was a small refrigerator. Between the TV and the sofa was a coffee table that bore a flat, lidded box and a stack of magazines. Behind the sofa, at the wall directly across from the door, was a bed with a nightstand and lamp next to it. Maybe someplace for guests to stay.

Maybe. But there were touches that disconcerted him. The bed was king-size, unusual for a guest room, with a headboard of criss-cross black metal bars. The bedspread was blood red, and so was the lampshade. In the middle of the room, backed up against a gray metal support pillar, was a plain wooden chair with two belts coiled on the seat. And on the wall to his left was a bulletin board covered with pictures of faces, most of which had big red Xs marked through them.

For a wild moment Cas thought maybe Dean really was a mad killer, and then he took a closer look at the pictures. Most of them were printed from some website, or torn from magazines and clearly ads with the text cut off. A couple of the pictures were celebrities who, Cas knew, were alive and well.

Dean, on his way to the sofa, paused and looked back at Cas.

"What – do you call this place?" Cas asked delicately.

Dean furrowed his brow. "Uh – the basement?"

"Of course," Cas said, and sat on the sofa with Dean.

Dean put the black box from the coffee table on his lap and opened it. There were more pictures of people in it, some clearly cut from the stack of magazines on the table. One or two looked like they might have been the photos that come in new picture frames, others he couldn't identify the source.

Dean pulled out an arty black-and-white ad of a youngish, beautifully groomed guy who looked rich and superior. His coiled hand rested against his chin, thereby showing his obviously expensive watch to best advantage. "Yeah. I've been wanting to do this guy for a while."

He put the box back on the table and looked at the watch model for a couple of moments with a smile. Then he looked back up at Cas.

"OK. Once upon a – now. There's a group of people all over the country – all over the world really, a network. We're called hunters. We kill monsters."

"Monsters like – "

"You ever seen a horror movie?"

"Yes."

"Like that." Dean turned the picture so Cas could see it. "This guy is – was – a werewolf. And a real asshole. Most werewolves, you know, they're innocent people who got bitten. Once they realize what they are, they're horrified. They try all kinds of things to keep from killing when a full moon comes around. You've got to kill them anyway, of course, because nothing's going to work forever, they're gonna kill an innocent person – or turn them – someday. But those werewolves you try to make it fast and painless. This guy, though – psychopath. He uses his downtime between full moons to pick out his next victim and stalk them."

He settled back on the sofa and smiled at Cas, the story rolling now. "He'd kidnapped a gal and was holding her prisoner somewhere until the full moon came around and he could do – whatever he was planning, make her into his mate or his next meal. Whatever it was, it wasn't gonna happen.

"I waited for him at his condo. Really nice place, by the way. He had some expensive German beer, I put a bottle in my duffel bag for later.

"When he got home I jumped out from behind the door and threw a bag over his head. He started punching and while I was getting the cuffs on one of his wrists he pulled the bag off and went for my eyes. I used his own momentum against him and he hit the floor. I finished cuffing him, stood up, flipped him over, and stomped on his solar plexus. That gave him something to think about while I went back to the duffel bag and got the syringe. I made sure he was good and drugged, then I uncuffed him and sat him in the wheelchair I'd brought in. Put a blanket over him and took a – And then I noticed some fancy little needlepoint pillow on his sofa and put that behind his head. I thought that was a nice touch."

Cas chuckled.

"One more thing out of the duffel bag, a white jacket that made me look like some kind of health care worker, and we were good to go. I just rolled him to the elevator and out the door. Got him all carefully sitting up in the backseat and drove – and put the wheelchair in the trunk. Drove around the corner, pushed him over and cuffed him to the metal ring bolted to the floor."

"Um – " Cas wasn't sure if he should interrupt, but Dean seemed to welcome questions. "Yes?"

"Aren't people unnerved when they see a metal ring bolted to the floor of your car?"

Dean thought for a moment. "You know, anyone in the back seat of my car, they're either cuffed to that ring, or they're feeling too good to worry about my auto accessories."

Cas laughed, a little breathlessly.

"I got him to my little hideaway, way out of town, no one hears a thing that happens there. Took off his shirt and tie and jacket, then – and his fancy watch – then I chained one wrist to the wall. He came around while I was doing that, struggling. I forced him back against the wall with my body – "

A tiny moan broke from Cas' throat. Dean looked pleased.

"Forced his other arm up and into the shackle. He roared like – well, like a trapped wolf, and he thrashed around, but he wasn't getting out of those chains. I got a knife I have, it has a silver blade, and just stood and watched the guy thrash around for a minute. For such a metrosexual-lookin' dude, he was in good shape."

"The silver – " Cas began.

"Question?"

"Is silver especially – bothersome to werewolves even if they're human at the time?"

Dean looked like he hadn't anticipated that. "Good question!" He thought. "Yes."

"Ah."

"So after I told him he wasn't getting out of there, I pulled off the rest of his clothes. He fought, of course, but there wasn't a lot he could do. I got the knife, put it flat against his neck, and just ran the flat side all the way down his chest to his dick. Didn't cut him, but it left a streak like burning all the way down."

Cas' eyes closed without his willing it, and he gave another broken moan.

Dean swallowed hard. "Yeah, he – that was kind of like the sound he made. Not as sexy. I told him, you tell me where the girl is and you can live as long as it takes for me to go get her. Who knows, maybe you'll break out of those chains. But he didn't – He said, 'I'll never tell you where she is. She'll starve to death and it'll be your fault.' So I said, 'Well, we'll just have to keep that from happening,' and I started running the knife edge down the burned skin. Then I got artistic for a while.

"He howled and yelled. I told him, 'Now, you want to hold still for this one, don't want to jostle my hand.' I put the knife high up inside his leg, right next to the nut sack, and burned his thigh. He screamed and I said, 'What do you say, we could do this all day!'" His voice had a buoyant, cheerful brutality. "'Or you can just tell me where the girl is.' He started struggling again, and I gotta tell you the sight of his cock wiggling around was pretty distracting. So – "

Cas' hand shot out and clutched Dean's wrist. His vision was obscured somehow, and he was having a hard time catching his breath. Dean looked as if he didn't know whether he should be alarmed.

"The belts. On the chair." The words were floating out of Cas' mouth without his processing them mentally. "Do you use those. For binding monsters? Or beating them?"

Dean put the picture down. "What do you think?"

"I think. Both."

There was a moment of silence.

Then Dean said, "You don't believe a word of it, do you?"

"I – "

Dean jumped up, pulled Cas to his feet, and spun him. He yanked Cas' unbuttoned shirt down to his wrists, gathering the fabric in one hand so that it pulled Cas' wrists together. "I try to tell you the truth about my work, Detective. Life-saving work. But you don't want to believe it, right? You want to think I'm some kind of psycho killer."

"Turn yourself in, Winchester," Cas said shakily. "We'll get you the help you need."

The remark surprised Dean, and he laughed. "Nice! But no."

He dragged Cas to the bed, pushed him face-down onto it and pulled the shirt off Cas' arms. Lying on top of Cas, he tied one sleeve around Cas' wrist and stuffed the shirt through one of the gaps in the criss-cross bars of the headboard, looping it over and tying it clumsily. Then he stood.

Cas looked over his shoulder and saw Dean going to the chair, picking up the belts. A shiver ran down his spine from neck to tailbone. As Dean returned, Cas began to pick at the sleeve tied around his wrist as though he were trying to free himself.

"Oh, no," Dean said, dropping one of the belts and using the other to bind Cas' other wrist to the headboard. The buckle actually hurt, but that was just one in a flood of sensations – helplessness and surrender, his erection trying to gouge the mattress, his own breath pulsing warmly around his face, Dean's weight on the skin of his back.

Dean said quickly, resting his forearms on Cas' shoulders, "I should tell you, I don't do the safe-word thing. You really need me to knock it off, you tell me. What kind of idiot can't tell the difference between real and play-acting?"

Turning his head so that Dean could see his smile, Cas nodded.

"All right!" The cheerful-brutal tone was back in Dean's voice. "Let's get this show on the road!"

He fumbled under Cas, unfastening his pants. The feel of Dean's hands – even though he was very familiar with it after the last twenty-four hours – was intense, and Cas shuddered and bucked. Dean stood and dragged Cas' pants off, another rough but pleasurable sensation.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean bend over to pick up the second belt from the floor. Then leather cracked across his shoulder blades. He uttered only a short gasp at the shock of the blow; then the burn of pain made him grunt loudly, clenching his fists.

Dean paused for a moment, then slapped the belt down again, and the burn redoubled. After a series of blows Cas was bellowing wordlessly, his whole body rippling from numbed wrists to ankles. Then there was another pause, and Cas heard Dean's jeans unzip.

"Doesa matta – " Cas managed.

Dean climbed onto Cas again, nude this time, settling himself comfortably between Cas' buttocks, taking him over. "What was that, Detective?"

Cas tried to retain control of his mouth. "Doesn't matter what – you do to me. It'll all just add on – to the – to your prison term."

"Maybe so." Dean's arm reached to the nightstand. He pulled open the drawer and brought out a tube of lubricant. He murmured in Cas' ear, "But I'm going to have some – delicious memories of you when I'm in prison, Detective."