Notes: Apparently there's character developent hidden somewhere in here.
"Envy." Castiel murmurs the word right into Dean's ear. A quick glance at the wall. Dean knew what he was talking about.
"Gluttony. Sloth. Greed." Dean ticks the cardinal sins off one by one, pressing a fingertip into the pillow for each. "Regular little sinner, isn't she?"
"Lust," Castiel replies, something oddly enticing in his voice.
"Just pride and wrath left," Sam's voice rumbles sleepily from Dean's other side, close enough on the relatively small bed that the brothers are sharing a blanket of body heat. "Don't you dare screw him while I'm in the bed, Dean. Some of us need sleep."
Dean rolls his eyes. "You wouldn't be so pissy if you weren't waiting for your brat to make the first move."
"Screw you."
"Prissy little bitch. Ow!"
-
Ruby is the accidental witness of a blowjob by the wood shed when she makes the mistake of looking out the window. She's so frustrated that she nearly screams. It's ten in the freakin' morning, why couldn't they keep out of sight like normal people instead of performing sexual acts in the middle of the back yard?
Ruby turns away from the window, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at the wall. To be fair, she supposes they weren't to know that she was going to look out the window at that exact time. It's still enough to make her want to pull her hair out.
She paces back and forth across the length of the tiny living room.
It wasn't fair! It's so not fair that it hurts. She can't stop thinking about it now, about the last time she was intimate with anyone, the last time anyone touched her like that. The unsettling answer uncurls in the pit of her stomach as she recalls fumbling hands and men who were only interested in themselves. Nobody had ever shown her that kind of physical adoration.
A vibrator would have given her more intimacy than she'd received in all of her previous sexual encounters.
The thought is depressing, and maddening.
Ruby is in the open bedroom before she can stop to think about her actions, one leg on either side of Sam's waist as he looks up at her with a slightly confused expression. She kisses away the confusion. His hands slide up her thighs, huge and unbearably hot against her skin. He sits up and she slides down into his lap, her hands sliding around his neck, holding on for dear life as he suddenly stands, holding her up with his hands under her upper thighs.
Ruby doesn't have to wonder where they're going. She can almost feel it when Sam opens the door to her bedroom with nothing more than a thought. Then the door is slamming shut behind them and Ruby is dumped on the bed.
Clothes disappear fast, at one point she swears she can hear something rip. Neither of them says a word, the only sounds in the air come from Ruby; Choked little noises like moans that he drags from her with fingers and teeth.
Afterwards she wonders why they didn't do that sooner.
-
"We've got a lead."
Castiel tilts his head slightly to the side, raising a hand slowly to pull on the small plastic stick in his mouth. The candy on the end comes free with a small pop, and Dean is momentarily distracted by the red-stained lips and tongue. "You're leaving," Castiel says.
Dean reaches out and swipes the other man's lips with his thumb, then licks residual cherry-flavour from his skin. "Just for a couple of days," he says finally. He looks up, leaning heavily against the pine tree behind him and ignoring the knots and twists in the bark that push against his jacket. "There's a little town a few hour's drive with this collector..."
"You want me to look after the brat."
Dean looks back at his companion, sees the utter disgust hidden in his blue eyes. "Come on, Cas. She's not that bad."
"She's spoiled."
"So you can push her around a bit," Dean pushes away from the pine tree and saunters over to the other man. He slides an arm around Castiel's waist and yanks the lollipop out of his hand. "Just don't kill her or make her bleed or we'll have Sam at our throats before you can say 'demonic hissy-fit'."
Dean licks the lollipop, wetting the red round of candy until it shines. He presses the candy against Castiel's lips, painting them red in sugar. "Don't sweat it, angelface," he says, pushing the lollipop against Castiel's lips until they part and a tongue flicks delicately at the cherry-flavoured treat. "We'll be back before you know it."
"Can I lock her in the shed?" Castiel asks.
"Sure. Why not?"
"Do I have to feed her?"
Dean chuckles, watching Castiel's tongue flick out and sweep over the lollipop again. "You've got an incurable cruel streak... And perfect fuck-me lips," he murmurs, leaning in to lick the red away.
-
Ruby wakes up alone for the first time in a week, curled into a ball around one of Sam's shirts. Most of his things are still there, where they'd been dragged into her room. A few things are not. A change or two of clothes, all the more obvious for Sam's very small wardrobe, his wallet, phone, and the hunting knife that he told her never to touch.
The cabin seems unusually quiet. Light spills through the few cracks in the walls between boards, a phenomenon singular to morning. Normally there would be some noise, some sound from the other rooms or from outside. All Ruby can hear is her own breathing, and the sounds of distant bird calls.
Ruby dresses in the silence, shrugging into Sam's shirt over the top of her tank. She opens the bedroom door to an empty cabin that smells faintly of cinnamon and sugar, something warm and welcoming that makes the emptiness seem even more bizarre. The smell is coming from a pot sitting on top of the stove - oatmeal spiced and seasoned into a concoction that makes her mouth water. She helps herself without a second thought, using one of the mismatched china bowls in the cupboards and a wooden spoon that looks as if it might have been hand made.
As she eats she wanders around the inside of the cabin, poking her head into the other bedroom (bed neatly made, things put away, only Dean's favourite revolver seems to be missing), the bathroom, and finally taking the time to peer outside. The car is gone.
For a moment Ruby thinks she might actually have been left alone.
The illusion lasts for a full minute. Then she notices a figure walking up the driveway, carrying two dead rabbits in one hand and a machete in the other. Ruby recognises the way the man walks before he even gets close enough for her to see his face. She gives a melodramatic sigh and disappears back into the cabin to dump her bowl and spoon into the sink.
She's been left with Castiel.
Ruby slumps down on the couch just as Castiel shoulders the door open. He walks past her and into the kitchen, something about his posture giving her the impression of disapproval when he looks at the minor mess she's made.
"I didn't do it," Ruby tells him snottily, crossing her arms.
He doesn't call her out on the lie, simply takes out a cutting board and lays the rabbits out on the wooden block. "They're gone," he says, digging out a very sharp knife to start cutting away skin and fur. "Two, maybe three days."
"Where did they go?" Ruby asks, uncrossing her arms and turning on the couch to face him. She wants information, can't help but feel both curious and left out at the same time.
"Away." A few simple cuts and skin peels away from flesh almost entirely in one go. Another long slice, a chop to get the head off, and the first set of entrails is swept off the cutting board and into a plastic bag.
"Did they tell you where they were going?"
"Yes."
Ruby pouts. "Why didn't they tell me?"
"Because you're a brat," Castiel replies simply, peeling off the fur from the second rabbit.
"That's not fair!"
"Life isn't fair."
"Your face isn't fair," Ruby mutters, aware that she was taking the low road as far as insults went. She pokes out her tongue and ignores the way he quarters the first rabbit like he wishes it was her face.
"It would be best," Castiel says, voice perfectly measured while the blade in his hand flashes, slicing meat from bone; "If you stayed out of my way until Sam and Dean return."
"Why?" Ruby demands. "You're not the boss of me."
The blade slams down, cleaving deep into the cutting board. Blue eyes flash dangerously in an otherwise impassive face and Ruby begins to rethink the impulse to be difficult. A few moments pass in complete silence before Castiel begins slicing again. "That was one," he says. "Get to three and you sleep in the wood shed."
Ruby gets to number two at quarter to twelve when she plaintively demands that Castiel cure her boredom. For her pains, and her muttered 'Sam would be nice to me', she gets a book thrown at her head and the word 'two' hissed from across the room. The book is a supernatural thriller. She reads the entire thing in three hours and is soon back to feeling bored.
She avoids Castiel as much as possible until her stomach demands that she pay attention to it. It's just after dinner that she gets to number three. Ruby throws the mug without thinking, only knowing that she's sick of not getting her way and having to play by Castiel's stupid rules. The cup misses his head by just a few inches, smashing against the wall and sending ceramic pieces all over the kitchen.
Ruby freezes when he turns, caught like a deer in the headlights at the look of murder in his eyes. Then she scrambles away, vaulting over the couch to try and get to her bedroom before he gets to her.
She knows she's failed when a grip like a vice closes over her arm and yanks her back. Arms wrap around her torso from behind, lifting her off the ground enough for Castiel to start carrying her outside. Ruby kicks out, screaming and shouting just to be difficult. She's certain he wont kill her, but there are plenty of things he could do that were almost as unpleasant.
Somehow, with a lot of struggling, he manages to get the wood shed open without letting her get away. Then Ruby is thrown inside. The door slams shut behind her. She can hear it as he wraps a length of chain around the handle to lock the door, a padlock added as an extra precaution. The one tiny window is too high and too small to think about escaping through.
Ruby picks herself up from where she's fallen.
It's dark, and cold, and she can hear tiny things skittering around in the corners. She counts to two hundred before the window is jimmied open from the outside and an old blanket sails in, followed by a small battery-operated lamp and an almost-empty bottle of bug spray.
"Enjoy your night," Castiel says, then shuts the window on her again.
"I hate you!" Ruby shouts, tears forming in her eyes as she realises that this is not an idle threat. She'll have to stay the entire night in the wood shed.
She falls into an exhausted sleep sometime near dawn after a night of fretting and crying and willing the bugs and mice away. Cold and damp, she lies wrapped in the old blanket like a cocoon and sleeps like the dead.
When Ruby wakes up it takes her a moment to realise what's different. She's still cocooned in the scratchy old blanket, but now she's lying on a surface much softer than the pile of wood in the shed. She sits up and notices that she's back in her room. The door is open, and Castiel is watching her from the couch, a silent and wary sentinel.
She made it until three in the afternoon before she succeeded in getting him pissed off again. Like before she found herself carried out to the wood shed and thrown inside, left there to stew until long after she was done pouting and crying.
It's long after dark when Castiel finally opens up the door to let her out. He leads her back to the house, ignoring her sniffles, and sits her down to dinner.
Ruby's back in the shed within the hour.
-
The black beauty rumbles to a stop outside the cabin early in the morning with Dean behind the wheel. The mood is pretty light, considering that the lead had turned out to be nothing more than a false trail and a man spreading gossip to make his business look more interesting to his fellow collectors. Considering how they had left him, the man's collection would be passing on to others soon enough.
At least if it's hard for them to find, they decide, it's definitely hard for anyone else to find too.
Sam enters the cabin and immediately knows that something is wrong. He looks around, finding everything in place and spotlessly clean. The tv is off, and their guardian angel is standing in the bedroom door as if he'd been waiting there since he heard the engine. Sam looks around again, his eyes narrowing suspiciously as he searches for evidence of bloodshed, a patch of wood scrubbed too clean or fabric laundered too bright. He sees nothing, and it doesn't make him any less suspicious.
"Where's Ruby?"
Castiel shrugs, the action deliberate. It's a casual admission of guilt, not an 'I don't know'. "Wood shed," he says.
"She better not be..." Sam lets the sentence taper off into an unspoken threat, one hand clenching into a fist as he begins to contemplate what would make for an appropriate punishment if Castiel had succeeded in killing Ruby.
"She's alive. She just... annoyed me." Something much like a pout creeps into the blue-eyed man's voice, though his face doesn't so much as twitch. "She wouldn't stop talking."
"So you put her in the wood shed?" Sam asks, somewhere between amusement and annoyance. Amusement wins out when Dean ads his two cents;
"The woodshed, Cas? She pissed you off, so you gave her a time out? You're so fucking middle-aged sometimes. Next thing you know she's going to start calling you 'dad'."
The look of absolute disgust was enough to send both brothers into fits of laughter.
-
Ruby hears the engine only as it dies, wood clattering around her as she jerks awake. She's cold and feels stiff all over, muscles cramped from lying curled up on a pile of wood all night. It takes her a moment to wake up enough to realise that the Winchesters must be back, which means that Sam is back, which means...
"I want out of the shed!" Ruby wails, then curls up again to hide her face against her knees.
It feels like an awfully long time before she hears boots shuffling through the grass. The footsteps stop outside, replaced by the rattling sound of a chain. The door swings open and Ruby looks up, miserable and sore, to see Sam blocking the entire doorway. She launches herself at him, tripping over her own feet and caught by his arms before she can hit the ground. Ruby latches onto his shirt, pulling herself close and burying her face against his shirt. "I'm cold," she sobbed, "and I'm sore, and I was in here all night and I didn't even do anything wrong!"
A huge, warm hand rubs her back soothingly. "Shh," Sam coos, "my poor little Ruby. I'm sorry, baby. I thought Cas would play nice."
Ruby slides her arms around his neck and lets him carry her back to the cabin. She feels she deserves some coddling, deserves for Sam to make it all better again. Somewhere, distantly, she remembers that she's an adult. A woman. She doesn't need anyone to make things alright because she's independent and strong. She's a strong, independent young woman who wants nothing more than a hot shower and a bed and for Sam to make it all better. She also wants candy. And maybe a teddybear. Or a big mallet that she can use to hit Castiel in the face.
"Where did you go?" Ruby asks, her voice muffled by Sam's neck. He smells vaguely of sulphur, but for some reason it's not as unpleasant as it should be.
"Nowhere important," Sam replies.
"Is Castiel going to get in trouble?" The question is more like a demand. Ruby wants him in trouble.
"Dean's taking care of him," Sam assures her. As he carries her to the bathroom she catches a glimpse of Castiel and Dean in the open bedroom, the 'angel' stripped naked and spread out on the bed, trembling under the strap of Dean's belt.
By the time she figures out that it's not any kind of punnishment the brothers are already talking about leaving the cabin. Sam picks the destination with a careful eye, muttering something about hunters and distractions.