Seven bodies makes for a massacre.
Despite injuries and bloodstained clothes the brothers make sure they're back on the road before the end of the night, not bothering to check out of the hotel. Ruby drives with Sam in the front seat to keep a close watch on her. She's the only one of them without any lingering injuries, no bruises marring the pale perfection of her skin and the only sign that her nose had once been broken were a few flakes of blood still crusted around her nostrils.
Sam's shoulder aches and he can't get comfortable in the confines of the car. The best he can do is down one of the vicodin from their first aid kit and wait for it to kick in. He doesn't envy his brother in the back seat. If Dean were alone he would have been able to stretch his legs. Instead he has to keep an obviously sprained ankle still wrapped snug in layers of socks and leather and stay seated straight to accommodate the other body in the back seat.
Despite the look of discomfort on his face every time he shifts, Dean doesn't seem to mind. He just lets Castiel lean against him, the uninjured side of his face pressing against his lover's shirt. Together they look like the perfect poster for domestic abuse. Bruised, bloody, and content.
The Colt is still sitting on the seat in the tiny space between their bodies.
Sam closes his eyes and leans his head back as he listens to the radio and the Whorehouse Blues.
The next time he opens his eyes the sun is so far up in the sky that it must be close to noon and his lower back has decided to cramp. He shifts with a groan and looks for signs or landmarks to make sure that Ruby is still headed in the right direction. He has to wait five minutes before the next road sign, sitting in silence with Ruby behind the wheel. She doesn't look away from the road.
The inside of the car is starting to smell, a mix of sweat and dried blood that makes him wrinkle his nose and wish for soap and hot water to soak the grime from his skin.
He shifts and relaxes a little when the sign reads for the right direction. "Do you need a rest?"
Ruby shakes her head, her hands firm on the wheel. She's travelling twenty over the speed limit and looks as comfortable as if she were on a scenic drive. "Travelling by car is slow," she tells him. "But it doesn't take a whole lot of energy. Unlike you, I don't have to have to sleep. You look very vulnerable when you sleep, Sam, all cute and cuddly like a fuzzy little bear."
He can't help but smirk at her patronising tone. "Humanity has its setbacks," he admits. "You should get used to it, you're travelling with humans now."
"You're not human. Sam."
"If you want me to be something else you're going to be disappointed. Don't fool yourself, Ruby." He stretches as much as he can while in the confines of the black beauty's front passenger seat, rearranges himself so he can watch her face as she drives. "I'm only half demon," he tells her, "and I couldn't give a fuck what that means."
Ruby lapses into silence again, string straight ahead at the road. Sam shifts on the seat, unbuckling his seatbelt and curling onto his side so he can rest his head against her thigh. His back protests the movement but settles down into a bearable throbbing ache as he stays still.
It's only after a long, awkward silence that the demon moves. She places one of her hands on his hair and deliberately strokes it back from his forehead. There's no real affection in the gesture.
Sam thinks about his brother and Castiel in the back seat, still sleeping somehow, smushed together in a tangle of body parts that somehow doesn't look uncomfortable. He sighs.
The place they're going to is different from their usual haunts. It's a small seaside town situated just a few minutes from the beach, a tourist haven that sees so many new faces come and go in a week that it's almost a surety that they won t be noticed.
They pick a cabin owned by a company and make the arrangements over the phone while sitting in the parking lot of a motel they'd used only to shower and dress in clothes that weren't crusted in blood and sweat. Keys are picked up on the way and in just a short time they're parking the car outside a cosy two bedroom double storey house.
It's decorated in shades of brown and green with a surfer-kitsch motif, the kind of bland holiday location that nobody expects to spend much time in. The brothers spread out their maps on the dining room table that evening, fighting for room with pizza boxes and beer bottles.
"If we move north from here," Dean says, following the route on the map with his index finger, "we can stop in at this town for a few months, get some honest work and a decent house for a while."
"Do some petty crime to keep ourselves sharp," Sam agrees, frowning at the map. "We've been there before," he says after a moment, "back when I was thirteen, remember? There's this church on the outskirts of town with this funky little graveyard. Some of the stones dated back to the 1800s."
"So we bring shovels," Dean nods to himself and grabs another slice of pizza from the open box. "And dig us up some wealthy corpses."
"I was thinking we could replenish our supply of teeth and finger bones. Last I checked we didn't have much left in the emergency box."
"Thinking of doing some black magic, Sammy?"
The younger Winchester shrugs, still frowning down at the map. "I just think it's a good idea to be prepared."
"You're just a regular little boy scout aren't you, baby brother?"
"Shut up, Dean."
"Make me," Dean says around a mouthful of pizza, smirking.
Sam pulls a face at his brother and pushes himself away from the table. He retrieves an unopened beer from the fridge and cracks it open as he leans against the counter. His back still twinges when he bends too far in any one direction. "I don't think I'm going to be around much while we're here," he confesses, glancing up at the ceiling where he knows Ruby is sequestered away in the bathroom. "I want to keep a close eye on her. I need to know we can trust her."
"I know, Sam."
"If she's staying... Dean," Sam sighs. "I want what you have with Cas. If that's not going to happen then at least I have to trust her."
"I know. Go do some bonding," Dean suggests quietly, casual like it's not a big deal that his baby brother just confessed a need for a different level of companionship. "Take her out and kill some college kids or something. Whatever it is demon girls do for fun these days. Just don't -"
"Get caught," Sam finishes with him, rolling his eyes. "Jesus, Dean. Talk about a broken record."
-
-
Blood red nails tap idly against the countertop. Ruby smiles as she wraps her lips around the straw in her orange juice. It makes Sam wonder if she's ever had one before, or if she's just indulging him by ordering a juice and a garden salad; Secretly bored out of her skull and disgusted by the human body's need of food.
She didn't need to eat, of course. The demon could keep her body alive and well through sheer force of will for years if she wanted. Ruby either ate because she liked it or because it made her appear more normal, more like him.
"Do you like to eat?" Sam asks, realising that for all that they've been travelling together for weeks now he knows almost nothing about her.
Ruby looks up at him, an odd expression on her face that might have been surprise. Her lips quirk into a wry little smirk. "I like the disgusting perversions," she tells him, poking at her leafy green salad with her fork, "fried, fatty foods stuffed with grease and sugar. They're a testament to human ingeniuity." The smirk grows. "It makes them slower and easier to catch."
"So you order a salad?"
The fork stabs viciously at a piece of lettuce. "I'm an enigma. Maybe I like to keep you off balance."
"Maybe you just don't want to get fat." Purposefully antagonising, he takes a long sip of his cream-topped iced chocolate. He keeps his eyes on her face as he licks cream off his bottom lip.
"Demons don't get fat."
"But you still ordered a salad."
Ruby purses her lips into an odd sort of smile as she looks at him. "You caught me," she says after a moment. "I like the way it crunches. If we were alone we could move faster."
The change in topic took a moment to register. Ruby's tone had been practically the same for both statements, no indication of any shift in her mood. She was still looking at Sam the same way, odd little smile still on her face.
He frowns, for a moment not sure what she was getting at. "What?"
"Alone," Ruby repeats, and elaborates with a casual smile. "If it was just the two of us on the road, Sam. We could move faster, do more. You could reach your full potential without anything or anyone holding you back. Wouldn't you like to be free? To not worry about being caught? You and I could carve a bloody swathe across this dirt-mound country, nothing would stand in our way."
"Are you trying to tell me I should leave Dean behind?"
"Don't you want to be your own person, Sam?"
"You want me to travel the country with you alone. You want me to leave my family behind and follow you God knows where." Sam stares at her across the table and under the fluorescent lighting in the cafe his eyes seem to flicker between yellow and brown as he thinks. "Ask me again," he says eventually, watching her reaction, "when you love me."
The answer is clearly not what she was expecting. Ruby stiffens, her expression going cold. She looks offended, as if the concept of love is cause for disgust, as if it's asking too much. Her chair scrapes against the floor as she stands, and within moments she's gone from the cafe, leaving no trace, no way to follow, and Sam still sitting at the table with his hands clenched into fists.
-
-
The playground is the perfect slice of beachside heaven. Close enough to the beach to view the water but far enough away that there's far more grass than sand underfoot. A jungle of climbing toys dominates the landscape, monkey bars and swing set and slides; benches for mothers or passers-by to sit on, barbecue pits and picnic tables in a surrounding circle.
Dean sits at one of those tables, dividing his attention between watching the waves lapping at the beach and looking at the children playing nearby. He does it from the corner of his eye, far too aware of the talk-show warning signs of a paedophile to risk openly watching the playground.
Dean isn't a paedophile. He doesn't want to touch the kids or lure them off with promises of fun and candy.
No. He watches them and he envies their parents. He thinks about playing in parks with Sam when they were kids, their dad watching from the car to make sure they were safe. It's a weird feeling, but Dean wishes that he could do that. He wishes he could be one of those parents, sitting on the benches while his kid made instant friends with total strangers for an afternoon.
He pictures a kid in the back seat of the black beauty, napping on long trips like he and Sam used to, going to school when they settled into a town for a few months or a year. He imagines teaching the kid how to shoot, how to handle a blade, all of the life skills that he ever found the most useful. He misses the teaching.
Cas returns to his side with hotdogs and soda from a vendor up the road - classic beach fare on a warm day. Dean takes one of the hotdogs and switches to watching his angel-faced lover licking ketchup from his lips and fingers. He can't help but smirk a little when he thinks that after close to three years this might just be their first official date.
Dean cracks open his can of soda and thinks about his relationship with Castiel. "You have any kids, Cas?"
Cas looks at him, momentarily startled. "You should know," he says after a pause, guarded as he tries to gauge Dean's intentions.
"You had at least one. A little blonde girl in school. You could've had others we didn't see. Toddlers too young to leave mommy's apron strings."
Castiel's face closes off further. For a moment he's totally unreadable even to Dean. "There was just the one. Claire."
"How old?"
"She'd be thirteen now."
"Started young, huh?" Dean lets the silence stretch on, taking the time to appreciate the taste of cheap hotdogs on a sunny afternoon. He lets the taste of mustard fade on his tongue until the tartness is all his own. "You ever miss her, angelface?"
Cas' eyes flash and go cold. "I don't think about her."
"Think she misses you?"
Dean is needling. He knows it, purposefully pushing to see which spots are still tender. He spreads his legs under the table until his knee brushes against Castiel's, waiting for the reaction.
"She misses her father," Cas says stiffly.
"You mean you?"
"No."
"You mean Novak then? The Sunday school teacher who'd never hurt a fly."
"Dean..."
"The guy you fucked sideways with a broom handle and shoved into the trash with your past."
"Please." Cas sounds cold, distant; but his eyes give him away. Dean has caught him red-handed in regret. "Don't."
"I want a kid, Cas." Dean sighs. "I wish we could have some of that old life you had. Forget the suburban sweetness, Sunday school bullshit. Just give me the doe-eyed sweetheart calling me 'dad'. I always kind of wanted kids, you know. I figured I'd wind up with one eventually, get myself a girlfriend for as long as it took for her to pop out a kid and disappear with it as soon as it was old enough."
Cas was silent for a full minute. Dean was back to watching the playground when Castiel spoke. "That sounds impractical."
"Yeah."
"I wouldn't trust Ruby around a child," Cas elaborates calmly, a steely edge to the blue of his eyes. "It's better to wait and choose a child when we are prepared for it."
Dean takes a moment to catch up. He gives Castiel an odd kind of look, not sure he caught the right intonations and the look in his eye. The green eyed murderer grins. "Did you just tell me we should kidnap a kid?"
"How else would we get one? Neither of us," Castiel points out, dry as dust, "is equipped for childbirth."
"What did I do to deserve an angel like you?"
A rare, small smile makes the corners of Castiel's mouth turn up. "You kidnapped and tortured me. Fortune must favour the wicked." Cas toys idly with his soda can, running his fingers along the folded lip. "I am," he adds, quiet and serious just a moment later. "Happy with you. I love you, Dean. I love it when you pull the trigger, watching you kill. The sunset and blood like fire. I started falling in love with you the first time I saw you splatter a woman's brains on the concrete."
Dean smiles. He takes hold of Cas' hand and squeezes his fingers. "Kidnap a kid with me, Cas?"
"One day," Cas agrees, looking out at the ocean. "We'll pick one that looks like you."