Chapter 6

The siren melted into the crowd, waiting for the next loose tentacle of desire to lend him a shape for a while. With much time and practice Nick had learned to block out all but the strongest lust or emotional need in his environment, but he vaguely remembered a long-ago past in which he'd been completely subject to the fantasies of each person who walked by. This quick succession of bodies with just the right come-on phrases welling to their lips had been terribly confusing, and he was sure that if he did have a personal history, it was fractured and lost during this period of madness in which he had been more prey than predator.

Today, Nicanor could retain the last form he had assumed with someone for several hours if he concentrated. Thus, he had been able to carry the shape of Dean's desire to his meeting with Crowley. Being talked to like someone with a brain for the first time in ages had the siren analyzing that last interesting tryst with the demon and comparing it to the previous occasion on which he had talked with Crowley, right after reeling in Dean with the FBI agent form. He supposed that as the hunter was treating his more like a person, Nick was beginning to pass muster as a human.

Crowley had proved himself to want very little in the way of pyrotechnics when they coupled. A few "yeah babys" and whimpers of pleasure on his part had done it. But Nick had noticed that the demon leader was sniffing something avidly, which he assumed was the remnants of eau de Winchester that had rubbed off after spending an evening with Dean.

But no. It must have been the illusion of a soul. Demons could smell them.

Of course, demons were covetous of souls because they represented wealth for their domain. But Nicanor, the perfect lay, had learned a new trick: reflecting the soul that demons found so arousing. He wondered what Dean would say if this proved a reliable skill. "Treating a monster like a person may be very useful for your apocalypse"?

He'd better not tell him, Nick reflected. Dean was liable to become self-conscious of their friendship (the siren used that word sometimes privately to himself and he didn't want the man to dismiss it as his own fantasy) and stop enjoying their beer and strategy sessions. The best way Nick knew to keep spending time with the Winchester man was to keep being useful. And he was curious to see if he could replicate his success with more demons.

Thinking it a bad idea to make the Nick Monroe figure more well known in demonic circles, the siren went off to find more demons by reverting into a generalized shadow-shape, one that drew no attention from passersby until the crucial moment. There was no sense in getting drawn into some lonely man's geisha fantasy when he had a mission to do. A smile played around his almost-transparent lips. He wasn't kidding when he told Dean there was nothing left of him now, nothing but what appeared to be a smudge when he walked by the display windows in downtown Philadelphia.

What he had learned from his instructive roll in the hay with the Demon Crowley led him to some of the area churches, but since it wasn't a Sunday there weren't too many people about. His steps wandered to a more run-down section of town where there was a storefront that had been taken over as a a church-run charity store. Pure-looking young women were taking turns staffing a bake sale/rummage sale or minding a pen of children, while other passed out pious literature to the occasional person who wandered in looking for a deal on a used pair of shoes.

Of course. This was not consecrated ground, but it was crawling with young mothers and virgins wearing floral dresses and their hair in a long, gleaming cascade down their backs. Seventh-Day Adventists? Nick couldn't keep track of how many sects he'd seen through the years, but he couldn't remember whether he'd ever become one of these Noxzema-pure girls that he now saw reflected back at himself through the shop window. He turned when he felt the knife in his back.

"Shouldn't have wandered off in his neighborhood, sweetie," the demon's nose was poking into his hair as insistently as the knife. "Let's say we have our own little prayer circle in private."

Nick was allowing himself to be led into a network of alleyways while the requisite protests came out of his creamy white throat.

"You lured one out! And thought you could have her all to yourself?" Another demon popped up. "I was the one who found that dump with all the chicks."

"This one looks like she's so starved for it she wouldn't mind getting a crash course," the first demon said. "But I get the first go."

To the rising crescendo of protests from Nick, the events were taking their course, with the second demon and soon a third sniffing his provisional soul all the while. Since the siren had spent centuries on his back, his mind was free to analyze why things were going so well.

He'd seen demons in the past, but they'd always been hard to fix on. But now that he was engaging with more than one, he understood why. It was rare for anyone to have similar fantasies, hence the siren had embodied what Dean truly wanted and Agent Nick Monroe only registered as friend material for his brother. But the demons were content with so little. Someone in a Sunday dress and a rather plain, freckled face that they could draw into the alley and make scream while they assaulted her again and again, not even considering why she wouldn't try to get away—they didn't even need Nick to say any of the affectionate phrases even the most basic human required. Nicanor's demonic assailants were one-note and happy to share with each other. "Let's try this! Maybe she'll do it like that!'

It was positively easy to affect a swarm of these lower-echelon types, although the siren imagined that someone like Crowley was far to worldly to be taken in that easily, he was sure. Nevertheless, it was a success, and he couldn't wait to tell Dean so.

He didn't think about what Dean might be doing at this moment, though the siren had started tracing a parallel path to the hunter's as the latter followed the call of his work. It felt so wonderful to have a reason to be in one place rather than anyplace, to have someone to meet up with, to have news that he was sure would make someone happy—that the siren didn't think how odd it would be to surprise Dean with a new face.

"Dean! It went like clockwork!"

Dean barely alighted the church-lady features of the person distracting him. "I'm sorry ma'am, I don't think we know each other, but I have this previous engagement." The hunter's eyes were busy scanning one of several outlets to a network of warehouses, heedless of the flush that the siren's presence was causing him. "This is not a safe neighborhood, trust me." He made to dash off.

"Dean," Nick said, grabbing his arm. "It's me," his sunshiney young girl's voice said as if it hadn't been screaming during an assault a short while before.

"Oh crap, don't sneak up on me like that," Dean turned. "And I'm a little busy."

"I thought you wanted me to be a woman," Nick said, somewhat disappointed by the cold shoulder.

"Sorry, I don't have a Laura Ingalls Wilder fetish. I can't lust after someone who makes me think missionary and not even missionary position in the sack. This is really not the greatest time, Nick, can we explore my sexual issues when I'm not hunting a mean ghost?"

As they fell into the conversational rhythm the two were developing together, Nick found himself morphing most naturally into the FBI agent form he usually wore around Dean. "Better?"

Dean's head snapped back from the loading docks he was surveilling. "Why are Holly Hobby and all-American gay hero the only two choices I have to work with?" he grumbled. "I have something to take care of, besides."

"I'll come with you," Nicanor had volunteered, and then crashing sounds had come from inside one of the abandoned buildings and Dean was too distracted to tell him no.

It was a nasty ghost that had taken up residence in the warehouse district long ago. The information Dean relayed as they ran through the empty structures told the siren that the spirit had gotten a recent influx of juice and ideas from some teenagers who had taken to creating their own pseudo-Satanic rituals with dismembered baby dolls and other toys, black candles and the like.

"This ghost thing has more or less free passage through any warehouse in the area from the sewers, and it's decided to get its kicks sabotaging shipments going out through the working warehouses." Dean grunted as the two cleared some capsized boxes. "I've heard about kids getting razor blades in their candy or metal objects in their toys, but nobody figured out that everything had been stored in a facility in this part of Philadelphia."

"Why would a ghost go to all this trouble?" Nick asked.

"You should know better than anyone, man. What people want makes no sense sometimes. See if you can short-circuit our target with your mojo."

They discovered there wasn't much that a siren, specifically, could do in a haunting. But with him wearing an FBI agent suit, Nick was able to help out making salt lines and even using the rock salt shot gun.

"You're pretty good at that," Dean said in approval. "Were you some kind of shotgun toting babe a la Lara Croft?" he asked hopefully.

"I've been on a few hunting trips," Nicanor answered. Dean groaned. "And don't discount how much a soldier fantasizes while in battle."

"I get the idea. You think you can handle covering that door while I—"

Dean vaulted into action after the ghost began knocking over boxes in all directions.

Nick was merely being what Dean what he wanted—a reliable partner —but the siren was finding it especially easy to be an excellent backup. He was already so in sync with the hunter after their previous contact and with the toxin reactivated in Dean's blood. He caught a smile playing at the corner of the Winchester man's lips at points while they were taking out the ghost and his nest.

"You were pretty impressive back there," Dean panted. "Having your siren juice nearby made me not afraid or something. I actually had a good time."

It was an early summer day that was turning into a warm night, so Dean stripped off his shirt and wiped his face with it. "Don't know what you like to do after a fight, but I like to get fed, get plastered and get laid, not necessarily in that order."

Nick had taken his shirt off as well. He merely smiled and shook his head. "I'm game for whatever."

He followed Dean to the Impala. "You were pretty good yourself. I liked how you planned out how all those boxes were going to fall. And watching you stomp on all those baby doll parts he'd been collecting was sick, man."

The two laughed and got in the car. They sat there with the doors open so they could take turns pouring bottled water over their heads to wash off the dust and grime, Dean talking nonstop about the higher points of Nick's contributions to that evening's hunt.

"Where to? Did you leave a car around here?" Dean asked.

"I can't believe you managed to get anything done with you watching me so closely," the siren risked.

"Come on. We already said nothing means anything because it's your juice affecting me. Let's get a beer." They closed the doors.

"That's what a lot of men have to tell themselves," Nick's comfortable voice said.

"Put your damn shirt on," his companions returned, laughing. "If you're going to hunt with me, you can't psychoanalyze me. That's why Sam and I fought."

After a silence, Nicanor said, "Those tattoos look lighter."

"I need to get them touched up or done for good. I've been holding out hope that you would turn into a chick." Then Dean said eagerly. "If you could hold on to someone's purity ring fantasy from earlier today, what if you came back from being a stripper?"

"It won't end well," Nick grimaced. "Besides, these topless bars are very difficult for me to keep my focus in."

As they drove, he gave Dean a summary of his time playing an extra in a horror movie starring several demons. Dean was enthusiastic, but the siren could tell he was more focused on other matters.

They found a strip club and in no time at all, Nick took on one of the fantasies floating in the air—bosom spilling out of a too-small white halter top, a tiny white miniskirt with a fringe, white fringed boots.

"You've got a tramp stamp," Dean hissed. The man whose fantasy Nick had taken on was ogling him and moving in for the cheesy pick up line.

The siren had to focus on ignoring Dean's desire burning next to him, but of course the middle-aged man who'd created this buxom lady would have no eyes for anyone else.

"Can I, do you want a, I mean, what's your name?" the mark stammered.

"Serena," the word came out of his mouth without his having to think, as Nick had gotten by mostly without thought for so many years. The guy grabbed the siren's hand and pressed his lips to the back of the hand in an unexpected show of gallantry.

"Back off, man, she's my date for the night," Dean snapped.

"You back off, jerk, I saw her first."

Both men were intoxicated by Nicanor's venom, so it was a more even match than perhaps the hunter expected. Still, Dean threw some punches and overpowered the other man, dragging out the siren, who appreciated this show of gallantry even more.

They ran into a dark shadow. Nicanor melted into the hunter's arms. His lips parted to meet the human's avid mouth. His fingers tugged open Dean's fly and were working hard to excite him as quickly as possible while the man groaned in the way that Nick longed to hear.

"Oh oh oh." Men didn't tend to last long in his arms, Nick thought ruefully, but still he would remember this little tryst for a long time.

As would Dean.

"Ah man," he panted. "Can't you hold onto Barbie instead of turning back into Ken at exactly the wrong time?" he swore. "Another 60 seconds and I wouldn't ever have felt stubble scraping across my cheek while I came."

"I've got a few things going on that Ken doesn't," Nick said softly into Dean's ear as he zipped the man back up.

Dean wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand. "The clothes and everything?"

"Yes. Otherwise going from lover boy in there to meeting a guy like you would have me in this body and a miniskirt. Not a good look."

"Whatever." Dean didn't want to take on the "guy like you" crack. "I'm tired. Let's get a room. Not like that."

"I can get us two rooms if you like," the siren whispered, still flush from his stolen moment of pseudo-intimacy.

"Nah. I really did appreciate having someone with me today. When Sam and I decided to part ways I didn't think about how hard it is to hunt by yourself. If you wouldn't mind hanging around while I got some shut-eye, I could sure use the rest without having one eye opened all the time."

"Of course." Nick would feel useful in any way Dean needed, he decided as he charmed them into takeout food and a room for the night, no plastic necessary.

Dean fell asleep in the other bed. It was all the contentment that the siren could ask for.

Eventually Nick did start to feel cooped up in the motel room, so he decided to get some air. He carefully stepped over the ring of salt and other precautions he'd watched the hunter lay down before sleep, and stepped out into the night.

He walked a little farther than planned when he was surprised to hear, "Dean?"

Nicanor scanned his surroundings, looking for the sleeping hunter he'd just abandoned, when his body turned on its own towards the irresistible call of someone's desire.

"Dean, I thought you were asleep," the man in the raincoat with his tie all askew said in a gravelly voice.

Except he wasn't a man.

"I was, but you know I'm no choir boy, Cas: sleep doesn't come or stay easy these days," Dean's voice came out of the siren's mouth.

His instincts took over, mouthing the banter that Cas would expect to come from Dean, while Nicanor considered that he had somehow managed to mirror an angel's desires. And that Dean needn't have worried—he had an angel watching over his sleep.

"Are you sure you're not tired?" Cas asked anxiously, peering at the human.

"I don't need beauty sleep," Dean said with the smallest trace of flirtation.

The angel fussed with his tie. "Then would you like to go on an excursion with me?" He took Dean's silence to be misgiving. "I thought you would be interested in a piece of my past, so to speak."

The next thing Nick knew, he was in the Sistine Chapel in the early morning hours. Having never been snatched up by an angel before, he was thrown of his stride, but this Cas that Dean had described to him as almost monosyllabic seemed happy to describe the various scenes decorating the surfaces.

Suddenly the two of them were floating up at the ceiling, the angel keeping the human aloft with the support of one finger.

"Damn, Cas, give a shout before you yank the ground out from underneath me," Dean complained. "What am I looking at?"

The angel pointed to a face in the background of one of the frescoes. "That's me." He hastened to add, "That's not the face you've seen me wear, but my vessel at the time."

"Really? That's so cool," Nick's enthusiasm added to the automatic interest Dean was displaying. "You just met up with Michelangelo and he said, 'You seem pretty cool. Let me put you on my ceiling'?"

"He did that quite often. Many of the faces you see are workmen and other humble persons he enlisted. But Heaven decided that his work deserved our support, and so some of us were sent to put ourselves in line for being models. It was thought that having real angels as subjects added something to his already considerable talents for envisioning the otherworldly."

"Wasn't Michelangelo into dudes?" Dean's mouth asked.

Cas stopped. "I suppose he had certain interests. We angels never cared about that sort of thing. I could go into the history behind that understanding, but—'

They were now back on the ground. "People will be coming in soon," Cas said. "Would you like me to take you back?"

"Other than the apocalypse, I don't have any hot dates," Dean said, and Nick noted again the touch of nerves from the angel. "What's good for breakfast in this town?"

Cas walked Dean through the still mostly deserted streets, where they scattered pigeons and the occasional clergy with their steps. They sat down at a small streetside café and Dean moaned over the fresh bread and complained about the small size of the coffee until he tasted it.

"So they just sent you to pose for Michelangelo and that was it?" Nick had no trouble making Dean's voice say.

The angel's eyes turned opaque. "I was on a—mission."

The two of them watched the streets coming alive around them for some time in silence. "It's beautiful here, Cas. Thanks. I get mostly ugly in my line of work, but it's nice to remember there's still good in the world," both the angel and the human he was standing in for said the line sincerely. Nick wasn't sure that Dean would have been able to see the light come into the angel's eyes at the idea that he had done something to please the irascible man, that they had shared something, but the siren saw it quite clearly.

Cas returned the human to his car parked outside the motel. It was a nice trip they'd had together. The angel had an ambivalent history with the section of the world that housed the Sistine Chapel, but he merely wanted to show Dean what it was to be a part of history—not just through the angel who was his (Cas used the word friend to himself, though he would never voice it aloud in any language) charge, but by virtue of the role Dean Winchester was to play in the apocalypse.

What that role was, Castiel was no longer sure of. Dean wasn't making all of his predicted moves, and Heaven was divided over whether that meant Michael's intended vessel was moving closer to his assigned role or not.

The angel couldn't resist one last look, and sure enough he saw the man stirring in his bed and heard him utter the syllable, "Nick?"

Just then the loathsome siren came through the door with coffee. "'Morning, sleeping beauty. What's on the agenda for today?" the easy voice drawled.

The angel watched Dean fall into easy banter with the monster dressed as a man. At some point Dean would need to see exactly what kind of a lowly being he'd been bedding, but from what he could tell, the human hadn't fallen in love with his seducer yet, and Castiel's orders had been unmistakable: "When the man has surrendered body and soul, Michael will step in and inhabit his vessel."

Cas watched the two figures discussing hunting strategies for a little while longer. Dean missed Sam, even he could see that. Whether this siren was taking the right tack by trying to fill that void, he wasn't sure. The human, at least, seemed able to forget that he had been ravished by this thing whose calculating glances seemed totally lost on the hunter, though the angel saw them very well.

At least they had their beautiful morning in the square with the pigeons, Cas consoled himself. There were some things that a debased entity like a siren could never understand.

Nick sat in the passenger's seat and used only a small part of attention to keep up his end of a conversation about Dean's beloved music. He'd been trying to be himself, as much of a self as he had, with Dean. He wanted his time with the human to be real usually, but Nicanor needed time to think.

How long would it be before Castiel realized his visit to the Sistine Chapel had not been with Dean Winchester? Would the angel be able to assimilate the concept that he desired Dean with something more than professional zeal? And would he decide to exterminate the siren his angel powers could discover readily once he looked beyond the illusion of a soul Nick reflected?

These were extremely pressing concerns, ones that should have had Nick's well-honed self-preservation instinct clanging at his attention.

But instead, the siren thought of 16th century Rome.