Don't Feed After Midnight
Chapter 29: Will you go away if I Give you a Sock?
Dean winced as he tried to wash his back. His bad shoulder ached like a sonofabitch, thanks to Abbadon half wrenching it out of it's socket during the ambush she'd baited with Irv Franklin and Tracy Bell.
He forced his arm higher to get the hard to reach patch between his shoulder blades, rubbed the cheap motel soap there until he'd worked up a good lather, for a second time.
The coordinates of Abbadon's meet up spot had led to Eugene, Oregon. Smack dab in the middle of an area evacuated years ago, when the local chemical plant sprung a leak.
It'd been a trap on two levels.
The thought of being covered by invisible, toxic shit made his skin crawl, even as he rinsed himself off for the second time.
As he soaped up and scrubbed his junk an extra, third time, for good measure, Little Dean didn't so much as twitch at all the attention. Just hung there like it was sulking at him.
Staring down at his favourite asset, Dean felt a faint twinge of worry. How was he supposed to know if he was actually clean?
Sammy might laugh, but he'd heard stories; last thing he wanted was to get some kinda ball cancer and end up having to have his nuts chopped off.
Wouldn't that be just his luck. All the years of hunting monsters, throwing himself at the things that went bump in the night; only to be done in by some cancer, sparked by shit leaked from a skevey chemical plant, years ago.
It was all right for Sam, he had an Angel riding shotgun; not that he knew it of course. But if Ezekial could fix whatever the trials did to Sam, exposure to some random chemicals wouldn't screw the pooch.
Thank god Zeke had been riding shotgun! A shudder with little relation to the lukewarm water sluicing over his body, ran icy fingers down Dean's spine.
Zeke had really saved their bacon, without an Angel in their corner, it wouldn't have just been Irv in the Lane County Medical Examiner's morg draws.
Those hijacked navy seal demons had been trained to fight, armed with assault rifles and dressed in Kevlar. If Abbadon hadn't been after Crowley, and Zeke hadn't been doing his ride along, things would have ended way different.
Abbadon just swatted him aside like he was nothing when he went at her with an Angel blade. Near dislocated his damn arm, forced him to his knees. Bitch had looked at him like he was a piece of meat, a piece of ass. Talked of peeling off his anti possession tat and using him as her meatsuit…
'I've loved this body since the moment I first saw it. You're the perfect vessel, Dean. You give a girl all sorts of nasty ideas...Have you ever felt an infant's blood drip down your chin? Or listened to a girl scream as you rip her guts out? Because you will. You and me, lover. We'll have a grand old time—'
Abbadon's words echoed in his mind, bringing back blood soaked memories of the things he'd done in Hell.
Pushing those memories aside forcibly, Dean shuddered and shut off the water.
Stepped out of the shower and scrubbed himself roughly dry with one of the too small motel towels.
Wondered if they needed to burn the clothes they'd worn in Eugene, while he fumbled inside his duffle for a clean t-shirt, boxers and socks.
Found only the t-shirt and boxers, despite distinctly remembering having tossed three pair in his duffle before leaving the bunker.
"Hey Sammy, did you—" he began, pushing open the bathroom door. Only to see Sam sprawled out on the twin bed furthest from the door, his gigantic, naked feet looking almost obscene, with their knuckley longass monkey toes; "—swipe my socks," he finished though the words were obviously redundant.
Sam rolled over and blinked at him with a blariness that spoke of being knocked out cold less than an hour ago, Angel on board or not.
"Was gonna ask you the same thing. Could've sworn I packed five pair."
"Same, well not five pair... but, you know— some.
Gonna guess it was that gremlin asshole screwin' with us again."
Sam huffed. "Yeah, gremlin's stealing socks must be an actual thing.
Wonder what they do with them."
Sometimes Sam walked straight into things.
"Maybe they use them for the same thing you did as a dweeb, back before you realised you could use T.P and Kleenex."
Sam chucked his pillow at him in response.
"Wasn't me who spent the last twenty minutes in the shower," he snarked.
"Yeah, well, what can I say, saving your ass is a dirty job." He jabbed callously, catching the pillow.
Then felt the inevitable guilt, at misleading his brother into thinking that he'd been the one that killed all Abbadon's goons, and forced her to flee; rather than it being an undercover angel puppeting Sam's unconscious body.
He dropped Sam's confiscated pillow on top of his own, stretched out on top of both and tucked his hands behind his head. Closed his eyes with a groan. "Gimme like 4 hours shut eye and we'll head out, to get Brennan's grandmother's book."
"Dean, I tried calling Kevin while you were in there—" Sam cleared his throat bitchily, "taking care of business.
He didn't answer."
Dean opened one eye to peer at his brother again. "Kid's fine, Sam. You know how he gets working on the tablets, probably forgot to charge his phone again."
Sam grunted in reluctant agreement, but the way the springs on his mattress protested as he shifted about on his own bed, made Dean think his brother wasn't entirely convinced.
…ooo0ooo…
Kevin didn't know how long he'd been curled there, the meagre space of his room crowded out by the too loud sound of his frantic sobbing. He was only abstractly aware he'd been crying so long his eyes had run out of tears, and were swollen and gritty with evaporated salt. A disgusting trail of snot was spread under his nose and down his chin, starting to go crusty.
His chest seared and burned from the violence of his endless spasm-like sobs, and his head pounded dully from it.
He didn't even know why he was crying exactly.
Maybe it was a kind of adrenaline induced shock. He'd never done anything like that before, never even been in a school yard fight.
Certainly hadn't dreamed he was capable of doing what he'd just done to Crowley.
Was he crying because it hadn't worked? that, for all the shattered bones and pulverised flesh, Crowley had seemed as unfazed as always.
Was it a horror, or a relief to imagine his Mother might be alive, and that Crowley had lied about killing her?
He didn't know, he didn't know, he didn't know!
Instead he cried, like he hadn't cried since he was ten, stood between his Mom and his uncle Steven, by his grandparent's grave.
Who knew how long he would have kept on crying, if it hadn't been for the gremlin.
One moment his door was shut and he was caught in the endless cycle of racking, hyperventilating sobs. The next, his door was open and something silver, a hip flask, thudded onto the comforter next to him.
It startled him out of the cycle as effectively as a slap. Though, he was still so dazed that the connection between cause and effect barely registered.
For the first time since Sam and Dean brought Crowley back to the bunker, terror of the King of Hell wasn't Kevin's first knee jerk reaction. Instead, he just stared dully at the flask in a kind of bemused puzzlement.
"You look as though you need it." The gremlin's acerbic voice came from a patch of floor somewhere over by the desk. But Kevin couldn't bring himself to fumble for the weight of the Hag stone hanging round his neck. Or care.
A moment later a full water bottle hit his foot. "Drink the flask first, then chase it with that."
Kevin stared at the flask and the water bottle without the will to do more.
"At least drink the water." The gremlin demanded querulously as if it was being put upon.
A weary sigh. "It's still sealed, Lad. I'm not trying to poison you."
"Right." The word fell in a croak from between his dry crusty lips.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
The silence stretched before Kevin dredged up the impetus to force another word out.
"No."
"Perhaps you ought to. Talk about it." The gremlin demurred. "Not just about what you did in there, with that sledgehammer. But all of it. Everything the demon did to you. The pitiful state it left your mother in, after possessing her… How you felt being told she was dead, and then, again, hearing she might be alive."
"Might?" Kevin swung to stare at the place where the voice came from and fumbled inside his shirt for his Hag stone.
He needed to see the creature's face, to try and interpret truth or lie from the twist of it's features.
Before he could raise the Hag stone to his eye, the gremlin resolved into visibility without its aid.
"Might," it agreed, sharp teeth bared, bat ears laid back, huge golden eyes narrowed to slits. The gremlin began to pace back and forth, it's clawed hands hidden behind it's back.
Kevin watched it in frustration. If he couldn't tell truth or lies from the look on Crowley's face, what hope did he have with the alien creature before him. He let the hag stone drop from his hand.
"Where—" he began.
"That, I can't tell you. Just like I can't tell you for certain that your mother is, in fact, alive."
"Course not. You're just here to torment me, and laugh." He said bitterly.
"You're a strange creature, Kevin Tran. But what you are, isn't particularly laughter worthy."
Kevin dropped his head into his hands, if the gremlin didn't know the truth about his Mom, he wished it would just go away, and leave him alone.
"Will you go away if I give you a sock?" He asked plaintively.
The gremlin stopped it's pacing and gave a bark of something like laughter.
"I take it back! Despite your current somewhat pitiful circumstances, you can raise a chuckle.
I'm not a brownie, nor am I a house elf from that book, Chamber of Secrets, that Sam Winchester has hidden under his mattress, Lad."
"No, you're a gremlin, which comes from the old English word meaning to vex." Kevin fired back sarcastically.
The gremlin ran it's pink tongue over pointed fangs, a ripple going through the fur on it's shoulders as it laid it's ears back again, like an affronted cat.
"I'll admit, on occasion I find it fun to pull something apart and see how it ticks, but, well— flesh and blood creatures aren't machines. You pull them to bits and they never run right after.
Take that man the demon's been roaming round in, probably for years. The poor bugger's mind was soup, even before you cracked his skull open with a sledgehammer."
Kevin stared at the gremlin in horror.
"He wasn't dead?"
The gremlin's fur sleeked back down and it's ears swivelled to point outwards. "Pushed down into a tiny box, so deep in the darkness it was like being buried alive. Trust me, you did the poor smuck a kindness. You set him free."
"Fuck!"
"He's never gonna do that again, no.
But if you're looking for humour, sex gets my vote on humanity's top five chuckle worthy activities, every time.
Incidentally, the demon, it thinks it did you a favour with the girl."
Kevin tensed in horror. Sophie! One of his greatest secrets, and most miserable shames, and the gremlin dragged it out into the light, like it was… what? A conversation starter?
At least Crowley knew what he was doing when he brought Sophie up. Twisting the knife with his taunts, raking his guilts over the coals. The gremlin seemed utterly clueless.
"Crowley doesn't labour under your definition of morality. Your average demon sees humans more as— a complex objects, a means to an end. They divorce themselves from the notion that they were likewise once human," the gremlin continued blithely. "I have grown to suspect, from many observations, that it is a survival mechanism which most, if not all, adopt during their creation. Like masochisim."
Kevin unscrewed the cap of the hip flask and took a gulp of what ever alcohol it contained.
It burned all the way down.
Hurriedly he drained half the flask, hoping if he did what the creature had asked, then maybe, it would go away and leave him alone.
"…While I don't fully understand the moral hoops humans make themselves leap through over reproduction. I could postulate, that what happened with the girl, wasn't your fault.
You didn't know. How could you know?"
Kevin had spent so many nights thinking about that one. He closed his eyes in misery. Mouth twisting up as though he was gagging on poison. But, he forced the word out, "Christo!" Choked it up like phlegm. "Why didn't I say it?… I should have said it! I should have known!"
"Hindsight is 20/20 vision, Lad. You can't think of everything."
"Shut up! Just, shut up!"
"Keeping it all inside, punishing yourself, it changes nothing. You made a mistake. A lack of information and foresight. Somehow you need to move past it."
"I can't! Damn it, and now you're telling me the person Crowley's wearing —was alive, and I…" he sucked a breath as it hit him. "I killed him!" He was a murderer. Kevin looked down at his hands and noticed the blood on them. He wanted to be horrified by it, he expected to drown in the guilt, but the emotion seemed to slip sideways out of his grasp and he was left gazing at them numbly. Lifting his eyes, he stared at the gremlin again.
The gremlin tipped it's head to one side, then turned in a tight circle and sat down on the floor, leaned back against the desk, and clasped it's clawed hands, or paws, over it's furry knees.
"Ahhh feelings, they truly are one of humanity's greatest burdens.
The demon wanted you to hurt it, wanted you to punish it, and send that man it was inhabiting off to his next phase."
Why didn't that surprise him? Kevin thought. Of course Crowley had found a way to make him into a murderer too.
Because Crowley always got what he wanted in the end. He'd even been freaking tempted to let the bastard out of the dungeon… But he hadn't! Kevin finished off the hip-flask in a dull kind of celebration, then cracked open the water bottle.
The alcohol was starting to make his head fuzzy.
He took a mouthful of water, looked back up to see those enormous amber eyes fixed on him.
It looked like a monkey-cat, Kevin thought fuzzily, those big eyes were like a cat's eyes. Looked at you the same way, like it knew all your secrets, but it found those secrets barely interesting.
Aloof, that was the word, yeah, aloof…
He wondered if gremlins liked being scratched behind the ears like Channing's Mom's Siamese cat, Sagwa…
The gremlin's ears flicked back and forth like it was listening to something. Kevin frowned and took another few mouthfuls of water. Did he ask the question out loud?
It occurred to him that he didn't even know the gremlins name.
Did gremlins have names…
"What—" His tongue felt thick and weirdly numb.
"Just drink your water, Lad.
Names have power. My kind are like cats, according to T.S Elliot. We wear and shed names as easily as you humans do clothing. But my true name, that is the one I will share with no-one else."
Kevin blinked back at the gremlin, his thoughts moving sluggishly, like Mom's homemade Hoisin sauce inside a glass bottle.
"Is your name Rumplestilskin?" He asked.
The gremlin sniggered, and Kevin found himself giggling along with it.
After a moment his parched, abused body objected, cutting him off with a bout of raspy coughing. He took a few more gulps of water from the bottle in his hand. Frowned, as he realised all the water was gone.
The gremlin's eyes gleamed like two brilliant gemstones in the low light.
Suddenly, he was confused. Why'd he been laughing?
That wasn't right. Something was wrong. His eyes fell on the empty flask. And it dawned on him.
"You-only-said-the-water-wasn't-poisoned…" The words came out as a run-on slur as the empty water bottle tumbled from his nerveless fingers, and he slumped backwards onto the bed, and into darkness.
-/-/-/-/-
Authors Note:
Hi guys, thanks for reading.
I'd love to hear from you if you get a chance, even an emoji makes me smile and let's me know I'm not just yelling into the void.
Concrit is always welcome.