A/N This was the best that I could do. This year has been really fucking long. Sorry for the wait. Thanks to everyone that's still here. Sorry for the quality. Hope it's enough. Leave a review, say whatever, might make me feel something. Enjoy I guess.
Ch. 26
The call from Sheriff Mills couldn't have come at a better time. For almost a month the world had been suspiciously quiet as far as supernatural occurrences were concerned. Aside from a few dead angels and random miracle healings there was a whole lot of nothing. Which was good, Dean supposed. It's not like he wanted people to die at the hands of monsters. No. That would be selfish and backward, even if staying cooped up in the bunker made them restless and irritable, even if he couldn't completely ignore the simmering blood lust that seemed to hum from the burning mark on his forearm.
No. He wasn't thrilled that they finally had a case. That there were four missing people seemingly whisked away by a burning white light. That he would finally be able to go and kill something. He wasn't relieved. He wasn't.
When they were getting ready to leave, Avery tossed a packed bag into the Impala's trunk and situated herself in the back seat. Sam had shot Dean a questioning look at that which he ignored completely. Dean was…not glad necessarily, no, that wasn't it. All he could think was that he preferred it. He'd rather she was there with them then at the bunker—alone.
When they finally got to South Dakota and met Jody at the diner where the girl had gone missing, it was like taking a breath of fresh air. She was warm, and welcoming, and looked…well happy. There was a second of hesitation, confusion, when she went to greet Avery. Avery, who, looking thin and pale and tired with the dark purple shadows under her eyes and the hollow darkness of her cheeks, stood off to the side and let Dean and Sam reconnect with an old ally, a friend.
"Sheriff Jody Mills," Jody held out a hand with a smile while still looking stern and protective.
"Avery," she answered and took her hand smiling in way that made it look painful and foreign. Almost as if the muscles in her face had quite forgotten how exactly to arrange themselves.
There was a silent pause after their hands fell in which Jody shot the boys a look, a look which said essentially, "You can (will) explain all this later."
"So what," Sam finally said after Jody caught them up, "you think it might be angels?"
Jody shrugged, "Can't say for sure. I'm still pretty new to this."
"You sure you want to jump back into the fray?" Dean asked. The revelation that Jody was participating in a church group, an obvious blind reach into the dark for meaning after her brush with Crowley, made Dean hesitant to keep her involved. Made him hesitant to encourage her to continue getting involved, no matter how slightly. Hadn't enough people died.
She shrugged, "It's out there boys. I mean, I could stick my head in the sand and it ignore it, but what good will it do? I'll know it when I see it and ignoring it won't make it go away. Besides, I'm a sheriff. It's my job to protect people."
"Fair enough," Sam said.
"We have an eye witness," Jody said after it was all said and done.
After interviewing Slim, the homeless man that had watched the girl get abducted, it was clear that the next place to go was the church group. It couldn't have been a coincidence that they all came from the same place. Before she knew it, Avery had been roped into Sam's obscenely stupid scheme to become born again virgins. Virgins.
Worse than that, Dean's erroneous assertion to the flaming redhead who ran the chastity group that Avery was still a virgin and then the rather loud silence that followed when she corrected him was almost as punishing as the conversation that followed when they walked out with their freshly signed chastity pledges.
"I didn't know you weren't— I mean I figured since you—" Dean stumbled until Avery cut him off.
"Since I what? I'm hundreds if not thousands of years old. You didn't think I'd ever had sex in all that time? That in the hundreds of different universes or timelines or lives that I've lived, I haven't been dicked down even once?"
Dean grimaced at her turn of phrase and Sam choked on the nervous snort that issued from his mouth seemingly against his will.
"I mean, ignoring all that, you do know I was dating Tom for three months before you guys found me. What do you think we did all that time? Hold hands in the park?"
It was the first time she'd managed to say his name in front of the boys without wincing but none of them noticed, very much preoccupied with how uncomfortable they were, in the boys' case, and indignant, in Avery's.
Truthfully, she didn't know why it bothered her so, for either of them to think she'd never had sex before. It was almost vain of her. She wasn't unattractive. Lots of people would want to have sex with her. Lots of people did want to have sex with her. She'd been hit on at bars and catcalled in the street just as much as any other girl. What's more, she hated how her perceived virginity made her look innocent, naïve, pure.
Gah. Pure.
It felt like a dirty word. Both by how it made her feel weak and by how undeserving she was to be described as such.
In the interest of ditching that line of questioning as quickly as possible, Sam guided the conversation back to what could possibly be responsible for abducting the parishioners. Dragons was their first thought but none of them had ever heard of dragons targeting non-female virgins and both the priest and the fiancé had disappeared along with the two women.
"Maybe the pickings are slim?" Dean offered.
"Slim?" Avery repeated, "If the dragon is in the chastity group then it would know it has more than enough female virgins to pick from. There's like, what, six? Seven, other women?"
"Okay so not dragons," Sam amended.
"Well, I didn't say that," Avery shook her head, "we still don't know if dragons discriminate by gender."
"Next meeting is in what, two days?" Dean asked. "We can find out more about who or what done it then."
Gadreel was not impressed with Metatron's plan for the reunification of the angels under his banner. A fabricated war? Pitting the factions against each other, encouraging Castiel to rise up against them, all so he could be the hero of the story?
Why?
Perhaps it was just an artifact of being imprisoned in heaven for so long. Maybe he just didn't understand how the dynamic amongst angels had evolved since his absence. Perhaps, like humans, they needed a story to help properly motivate them to act with a single purpose.
But, Gadreel still wasn't sure. Heavens numbers had greatly diminished after years of civil war and the fall. Could they really afford more casualties? As far as he knew, and while the word of God had given Metatron immense power, Metatron wasn't able to make new angels. That ability remained the in the sole possession of their father.
When Gadreel had expressed his concerns to Metatron about the diminished Host, Metatron waved them off.
"You're still thinking about this in pre-apocalypse terms. We needed an army then, to fight the hordes of hell. We don't need an army now."
"What I want Gadreel," Metatron said looking up at him over his typewriter, "is to restore heaven to its place as our home. Family. That's what the angels need. And there can be no brotherhood of angels without a father to guide them. That's what I'm here for."
"But—"
Metatron slammed his fists against the desk, "No 'buts', Gadreel. For too long heaven has suffered waves of political machinations and authoritarian mindlessness without any purpose. There can be no love, no narrative, from those who are programmed to exist for a purpose that no longer matters."
"It's boring," Metatron clicked his tongue with disgust.
"God grew bored of us, abandoned us, and in our stead created something special. Humans. God loved them because they had free will. Casting the angels down to earth, letting them act out free will by picking sides and learning what moves them is the only way that they can grow."
Metatron looked back down at his typewriter and clacked the keys a few times, "Only then can they enjoy our new heaven. And only I can teach them."
It sounded so ideal when Metatron had put it like that. Gadreel wanted desperately to understand Metatron's vision for their kind.
But.
How was what Metatron doing any different than those that came before them? Was he himself not another of the angels he so disdained? Giving the angels a fake choice was the same as giving them no choice at all, no? So why was performing free will when there really wasn't any free will at all going to change the angels in any meaningful way? And what did the death of the Winchesters have anything to do with any of Metatron's plans for heaven?
It was in those moments of doubt that Gadreel came to the happy realization that Metatron's philosophy had merit. This was the very skill Metatron wanted to teach the angels. Doubt. If they could doubt they could choose. But they had to be careful not to let the other choose wrong. That was his role here. That was Metatron's goal. Give them the tools to develop into something more but not damn them by letting them pick wrong at the end. After all, he wanted every angel to enjoy the new heaven, right?
"Why don't we hear from our new friends? Avery, what drove you to reclaim your virginity?"
Avery looked up from her hands which hand remained folded in her lap from the brief moment of silence for 'their missing friends' which of course was a diplomatic description for the people who had vanished in bursts of burning blue light.
Dean shot her what could almost be called an amused smirk had it not be marred by the ever-present distantly grim and angry tightness of his face since touching the first blade post Mark of Cain.
She floundered mentally for a moment, not having expected anyone to interrogate her for deciding to join a chastity group.
"Avery?"
"Uh, yeah. Um… I gave it up for a guy, um— you know when I was young— thinking I… I guess loved him, or whatever, and wanted to…um…reclaim it for marriage…"
The blonde woman leading the group, fuck what was her name? The blonde woman smiled encouragingly and Avery finished with, "Yeah for my wedding, my fiancé, I mean."
"Oh!" She said, before glancing at Sam and Dean, "With—?"
"No—"
"Yes—"
Sam and Dean looked at each other and then froze uncomfortably. Avery gaped at Dean before shooting him a coy smile.
"That's amazing," the blonde woman smiled.
"So you two are reclaiming your virginities for each other then?" She looked at Dean and he cleared his throat.
"Well uh…exactly. Yeah. Sex has always felt - I don't know - good, you know? I mean, really, really good…."
The women exchanged slightly scandalized glances and Dean stuttered before changing gears.
"Uh…But, uh... Sometimes, it just makes you feel bad, you know? You're drunk. You shack up. Then, it's the whole morning thing. You know, "Hey, that was fun." And then, "adios," you know? Always the "adios"…"
Sam started shaking his head slowly in abject horror and Avery stared Dean down with that same challenging smile as if to say, "oh yeah? What about the adios?"
Dean's lips pulled up in a sneer at the challenge, "But, you know, when you get down to it, what's the big deal, right? I mean, sure, there's the touching and the feeling all of each other, my hands everywhere, tracing every inch of her body, the two of us moving together, pressing and pulling... Grinding."
She stared him down and quirked up an eyebrow even as the virgins shifted in their seats pressing their thighs together trying desperately to ignore the arousal ignited by this stunning man describing what sex with him was like.
Dean paid them no attention except only as a benchmark for how Avery should be reacting and wasn't, the conversation about her sex life rushing back to him, "Then you hit that sweet spot, and everything just builds and builds and builds until it all just…"
Sam coughed loudly and Dean cleared his throat again, "But yeah, wasn't special, you know? Not like marriage…sex."
Marriage sex. Avery mouthed at him from across the circle and Dean scowled.
"I'm glad you two had fun," Sam hissed after the meeting ended, the other women lingered around the refreshments table nibbling on brownies and donuts held with thin paper napkins.
"What, you wanted to listen to Tammy's poem, Sam?" Avery snorted.
"Hey, she look familiar to you?" Dean asked looking at the blonde woman again.
"Suzy?"
Dean nodded, "I swear I've seen her before."
Sam' s face twisted into a bitch face, "Really Dean? How do you think that's gonna work? Chasing after the head of a chastity group after announcing that you're engaged to one of the members?"
"I'm just saying she looks—"
"Yeah yeah, I'll go talk to her. You two talk to the others." Sam huffed before walking towards Suzy.
Dean rolled his eyes. Avery shrugged and gave him a pat on the back, "Better luck next time, champ."
"I don't do prudes anyway. Too much hand-holding."
"Oh sure, that's exactly it. It's not that the prudes won't do you or anything."
"Shut up," Dean said without conviction.
Avery cocked her head to the side when that woman, the redhead who ran the group whose name she couldn't remember for the life of her, walked into the room and spoke quietly with Tammy by the refreshment table.
Avery sniffed.
"What?" Dean asked following her gaze.
"Sit tight," she said and meandered over feigning interest in the dark chocolate almond brownies.
The redhead perked up when Avery lingered and said, "I had no idea about you and Dean! Very good of you two, purifying yourselves before your union."
Avery smiled, knowing it appeared not at all as stiff or uncomfortable as she felt. "Ah yes, well we recently went through a trying time and found our faith again, you know. It seemed only right."
"Of course, we all have our vocations," she sniffed and the two women regarded each other in much the same way. For anyone that ought to know, the redheaded woman smelled of seawater, cypress ash (sort of pine-like and fresh but also like and extinguished fire) strong red wine, and cooked pork. Avery smelled of palm oil, fresh green eucalyptus like, dates, the sour smell of malted barley, and the sweet, pungent, electrical scent of ozone.
"But purity," she continued in a knowing way, "so important. So much that I wonder if giving it up to consummate the marriage merits its loss."
Avery leaned in so that she could avoid being overheard by the inquisitive ears around them, "We're a long way from Athens, aren't we, goddess? Surely your ancestral hearth would provide more warmth than the facsimiles of virginity you feed from here."
Avery felt Vesta stiffen before her harshly whispered response tickled Avery's ear.
"It can't be helped, I'm afraid. Christendom reached quite far and extinguished most," she spat the word,"pagan hearths, as you well with no one to tend the flames, it falls upon me to do the work."
"Now now, dear goddess. Is there no way we could come to an understanding? Release the parishioners and I'll help you find some devotees eager to tend your hearth."
Vesta leaned away and sneered, "Whatever you could offer pales to the worship I used to receive. Whole countries made offerings to their hearths, my hearth for every hearth belongs to me, could you ever give me my due?"
"Oh yes, because the alternative is much better. Born again virgins breaking their vows of chastity. You—"
"Hey, ladies, hell of a meeting right?" Dean slung his arm around Avery's shoulder jostling her enough to make her fumble the unknowingly crushed brownie in her fist.
"You'll have to excuse me. I have an appointment," Vesta smiled without it reaching her eyes and walked away.
"What the hell was that?" Dean asked inhaling a powdered donut.
"It depends," Avery muttered.
Back at the hotel room after a long explanation, made much longer by repeated interruptions from both brothers and Jodie asking question after question, Avery managed to catch them up to speed on the situation. The method of Avery discerning Vesta's identity through smell was the chief confusion that they all seemed to be circling back to despite Avery's lack of interest in that fact.
"Beings of power emit an essence that can be felt, tasted, smelled. It's not that interesting," Avery insisted.
"It's not," Sam agreed, "what's interesting is why you can smell it now. Why at the meeting and not the we signed up to have our virginities renewed?"
Avery shrugged, "She probably just got back from a sacrifice. We're probably down a parishioner."
"So somebody's dead. Great. No need to feel too pressed about it," Dean scoffed, "what the hell are we waiting for? Let's go kill the bitch."
Avery frowned, "There's no need for that. I was in the middle of negotiating a peace when you interrupted. Devotees to tend her hearth in exchange for the captives."
Sam and Dean both stared at her in disbelief for two different reasons.
"She's killed people," Dean barked.
"You want to find different people to take the current captives' place?" Sam asked.
"People die all the time," She snapped at Dean, "and no, dumb ass. They'd be willing worshipers," she told Sam.
"Fuck that," Dean said, "You kill innocent people, you get ganked. It ain't rocket science."
Avery rolled her eyes, "Whatever, I don't give a shit either way. Just thought my plan might spare more lives seeing as she already knows she's been made."
"What are you saying?" Sam asked.
"I'm not saying anything. Just wondering if she'll even show her face again after knowing that I know who she is. Then again, as far as she knows we're still in treaty negotiations."
Sam sighed, "I'm heading to the library to see if I can find anything about how to kill a roman goddess. Try not to mess this up anymore, if you can?"
"Suck a fat one why don't you," Avery hissed at his retreating back before the door closed behind him.
She crossed her arms and glanced at Dean, "What's his deal?"
"Well you're in a mood," Dean said flatly and Jodie winced before announcing she had to get back to the precinct.
"You're one to talk. How's the mark treating you, you murder fiend?"
Jodie slipped out of the room and the door clicked behind her deafeningly in the silence.
"Fuck you."
"Sounds good."
Dean balked, "…what?"
"Oh please," Avery groaned. "You've been lusting over me for who knows how long. The fucking looks, and the jealousy, and the pretending to be engaged, fuck. Just rail me already and get it out of your fucking system. It's exhausting," she snapped, "It's exhausting watching you pine after me like a goddamn puppy and wallowing in your murdery-blue-balled-angst—!"
Her diatribe was cut off in a startled choke as Dean's fist closed around her throat and slammed her back into the wall.
She smirked and used the last of her breath to whisper, "Do it, take it you little bitch."
Dean closed his fist tighter around her neck till her skin flushed purple before letting go and staggering back.
She slumped against the wall and dragged in a ragged breath, finger fluttering to the bruised skin.
"What are you so fucking afraid of?" She hissed tears welling up in her eyes.
"We're not doing this," Dean said.
"Why the fuck not!"
"I don't know what kind of backwards shit is going through your head right now, but I'm not gonna—"
Avery threw herself at him and pressed her lips against his, ripping his shirt open so that the buttons flew across the room in every direction. Dean groaned, wrapped his fingers in her hair, and yanked her head back so that he could suck on her neck.
The pained moan that came from her lips sent shivers down Dean's spine and he felt heat rush up through his body all the way to his face. Avery's eyes flew open and with a single tug, she spun him around until he was flush against the bed and pushed him down backward. Her hands fumbled with his belt buckle and Dean lifted his hips so that she could pull it from the belt loops.
Dean ignored the heaving sobs that started to shake her torso as he pulled her shirt off and buried her face in the crook of his neck. He flipped them over so he was on top and she shimmied out of her jeans as he did the same.
The sex was rough and desperate and greedy. Both of them taking what they wanted, what they needed, until the earth-shattering pleasure consumed them totally. Bruised and exhausted they laid there, silent.
"What—" Dean started to ask before Avery cut him off.
"Put your pants on. We're about to be abducted."
"We're—?"
Avery had only just managed to hook her bra back on before a burst of blue light flooded the room and their vision went black.