A/N: sincerest apologies, apparently i'm a fucking mess lately. i finished this story months ago and forgot i didn't upload the last three chapters. legitimately just forgot. so i'm gonna do that now, before i forget again. cuz i'm a mess.

They eliminated two of the three remaining warehouses with a few drive-bys and a peek in the windows, which left them with one final possibility. It was smaller than the others, which was why it had been their last choice; Djinn tended to prefer larger, more open spaces, but apparently this one had more conservative tastes. Or, Dean thought, it was just smart enough to know not to conform to the stereotypes when it had hunters on its ass.

The sun was just starting to set, rays slanting down over the rooftops to cast the walkways between buildings in steadily growing shade. The Impala was already in shadow, tucked between another warehouse and an empty dumpster across an open loading area from their mark and with a clear view of the front entrance.

Stiles was in the passenger seat, still for once where he was usually full of restless energy. He had been staring through the windshield for a solid half hour, knuckle of his right index finger caught between his teeth.

He hadn't said anything to Dean since they'd dropped Sam and Allison off on the other side of the complex, hadn't teased or needled at him or even tried to start a conversation. He'd hardly said anything at all since the talk they'd had back at the motel, looking pale and drawn all the way through the strategy session. As they were heading out to scout the other locations, Sam had stopped him with a hand on the shoulder and asked if he was feeling okay.

Stiles had faked a smile and said, "Fine. Headache is all. Just worn out from earlier. Something of that scale can really take it out of you."

He had still looked a little peaky when they'd all split up to go to their various positions, but he hadn't complained, not even playfully so. He was all business, very professional, and honestly it was kind of weirding Dean out.

Now Dean was the one feeling restless. He'd never had trouble staying still on a stakeout before, but his knee was jiggling and there was a prickle on the back of his neck that he couldn't seem to shake. The warehouse wasn't holding his attention the way it should, his eyes skating sideways every few seconds to scan Stiles' profile.

He shouldn't be this comfortable with the guy. Well, no, not comfortable, per se. He wasn't sure he'd ever been more uncomfortable in his life, but that was all it was. He was pretty sure he should be concerned by the...the spark alone in the car with him. He shouldn't be willing to put his back to Stiles with what he knew about the guy.

With everything he knew about supernatural creatures and their abilities, he was certain that he shouldn't trust Stiles. But he did. And that was what bothered him.

He'd known the guy for less than two days, for god's sake, and Dean was already willing to overlook the fact that he could fry brains with his mind. That wasn't logical, wasn't wise, wasn't the way his dad had raised him. Caution was always best when dealing with things that could potentially kill you, that was what he had been taught and that was how he strove to live his life. The vast majority of times, those people who practiced magic were dangerous.

But Stiles had saved him. Stiles had had his back when Dean had needed him to, had used those otherworldly abilities of his to keep Dean from being a Djinn's blood smoothie. And he had done so openly, even though he knew doing that could put him in Dean's crosshairs later on.

It didn't fit with anything Dean had seen or been taught. In his experience, people didn't just do that kind of thing unless there was something in it for them. All Stiles had done was protect him, risking his own safety in the process, and Dean didn't know what to do about that. Or about the magic. Everything was mixed up in his brain and nothing quite made sense and there were too many questions without answers.

And none of that changed the fact that his lunch sat like a heavy lump in his stomach just because Stiles hadn't smirked at him once in hours.

Dean cleared his throat for probably the fourth time since they'd parked here, shifting lower in his seat. Stiles didn't react, like the last four times. He just stared dully out the windshield and Dean hated it.

"So why Japanese?"

Dean flinched when his voice came out much louder in the silence than he'd anticipated. It took a minute for Stiles to pull himself out of whatever stake-out-haze he'd fallen into and process the question.

"What?" he asked, confused.

Dean waved a hand in Stiles' general direction; he already regretted asking, but it was better than the strained silence.

"The tattoos," he said. "You told us most of it was in Japanese. I'm pretty sure you're not Japanese, and when I talked to Bobby he said sparks weren't a culturally specific thing, so why'd you use so much of it?"

Stiles didn't answer immediately. He looked sidelong at Dean for a long time, long enough that Dean wasn't sure he was gonna answer at all, and there was no hint of his usual smugness or good humor on his face. Dean didn't meet his eye, just kept his own on the warehouse they were supposed to be monitoring, waiting to see if the Djinn left to hunt for the new victim it would need to replace Chris when he was sucked dry.

"You said before that there was probably a story behind a piece like mine," Stiles said eventually, his voice a low grumble in the quiet of the evening. "You were right. It's a hell of a story, though. You sure you wanna hear it?"

Dean licked his lips, hands tightening on the steering wheel even though the car wasn't even turned on. Flames leapt up in his memory, baby Sam's wailing in his ears as his dad screamed his mother's name. He swallowed hard against the tightness in his throat, the dark feeling in his chest that made it a little hard to breathe.

He said: "Everybody's got a story."

Silence reigned again for long enough that the last rays of evening sun petered out, the shadows darkening around them until Dean could hardly make out Stiles' features. His voice came across loud and clear though, low as it was when he spoke again.

"Demons aren't only of the Christian persuasion," he said. "Every culture, every religion has them, and they're not too picky about their hosts. I had the great misfortune of attracting a Japanese chaos demon."

"Let me guess," Dean said. "It wore your meatsuit to the prom?"

Stiles huffed out a weak laugh.

"That's a colorful way of putting it," he said wryly. "It took my body for a joyride that decimated a good percentage of the town's population is what it did. I've seen a lot of things I can never unsee, done a lot of shit that can't be undone. There's more blood on my hands than will ever wash off, and it's no less red for the fact that I didn't put it there through my own choice."

Dean shivered hard, chilled through and through by how haunted he sounded, how hollow his tone was. He had seen his fair share of demons of late, though almost all of them had been of the black-eyed, Hell-bound variety, so he knew well how much destruction they were capable of. He'd seen the hosts too, the empty shells they left behind when the sons of bitches smoked out, and the picture they painted was rarely pretty.

"You're right," he said hoarsely. "That's a doozy of a story. At least you came out the other side alive."

"Very nearly didn't," Stiles told him. "The whole ordeal almost killed me. Almost killed Allison too, actually. She's got a hell of a scar from it. Won't wear bikinis in public anymore."

"Shame," Dean said, and Stiles huffed again. "So those tattoos. The symbols, they're all to guard against possession then? To keep it from happening again?"

Stiles' silhouette nodded. "Call me paranoid if you want," he said, "but nothing's getting inside me that I don't want there."

Dean was very glad for the dark when his face went red and hot. He would've wondered if Stiles realized exactly how suggestive that sentence was if not for the low chuckle that reached his ears. Dean shifted in his seat, cleared his throat again.

"And all the rest of them," he went on, manfully choosing to ignore the innuendo and his own completely ridiculous reaction to it. "Those are for the spark thing? Do they really...you know, help?"

"Yeah, they do," Stiles said simply.

He didn't elaborate or offer up anything else, and Dean found himself disappointed. He'd never encountered someone like Stiles before and on some level, despite his many misgivings, he was curious. He couldn't bring himself to own up to it though, not just yet. This whole thing was still too weird to him, too foreign to wrap his head around.

As the silence stretched, he cast around for something else to say and came up empty. He chewed on his tongue a bit, tapped out a rhythm on the steering wheel, and tried to keep his eyes from straying back to Stiles every time they failed to focus properly on their mark.

"I'm not a thing, you know," Stiles said suddenly, moving for the first time in ages. He ran his palms down his thighs, shifting his feet in the wheelwell, but he still didn't look at Dean. "I'm not a creature, o-or a monster. I'm still human."

He didn't just sound human. He sounded young and small and a little bit hurt. He sounded like a kid who was playing at being brave and something in Dean's chest loosened and gave way, the tension in his shoulders falling away just a bit.

It was back in an instant when Stiles straightened up abruptly, leaning forward to peer more intently through the windshield. Dean hurriedly scanned the warehouse's front to see what had caught the kid's notice, cursing himself for getting so damn distracted when he had a job to do. He almost missed the woman just slipping around the edge of the building, hands deep in her pockets and a blue hood pulled up over her head to hide her face.

Dean shot off a text to Sam—hidden around the back in case the Djinn left that way, all set to trail the thing and intervene if it looked set to target someone new—and to Allison, perched on a nearby roof to provide cover fire if they needed to run. It was Dean and Stiles' job to get in, find Chris, and get him out of there. Chris' safety was paramount right now, which was why they had waited for the Djinn to leave the building before making their move.

Stiles fell in step behind him as Dean slid out of the car and made for the warehouse's front entrance. The heavy metal door was knocked askew, roller wheels out of their track and wedged at an angle to leave a sizeable gap at the bottom. Dean exchanged a quick cautioning look with a grim-looking Stiles, made sure he had his silver knife firmly in hand, and squeezed himself through.

It was dark in the interior, but not as dark as Dean had anticipated. There was a bare bulb casting a weak glow over the middle of the cavernous chamber, throwing shadows from every crate and box left over from whenever the place had last been used. They were stacked up over his head in some places, high enough to block his view, but there were no other obstacles that he could see from where he was.

Stiles tripped on something on his way through and knocked into Dean from behind, muttering curses and apologies as he tried to steady them both by latching onto Dean as if that would help. Dean shushed him, batting Stiles' hands off his shoulders when they threatened to just pull him over instead. Stiles held the hands up in surrender as he stabilized himself, grimacing, and Dean rolled his eyes.

"Get your knife!" he mouthed at the clumsy idiot, a little professionally offended that anyone could get this far into a mission unarmed.

Stiles fumbled for the knife he'd had tucked down into the side of his boot, but he once he got it out he hefted it with the familiarity of someone who'd wielded one plenty of times before. He nodded when Dean signaled for him to go around the far side of the nearest row of crates and his steps were light as he disappeared from sight.

Dean took a moment to breathe, deep and slow, and get his head on straight. Even though they'd seen the Djinn leave—or at least a person they assumed to be the Djinn they were looking for—the warehouse still felt like a scene out of a horror movie. To be honest though, a good two thirds of Dean's life felt that way, whether there were any actual monsters present or not, so that wasn't an unusual feeling. It still made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end to be in the metaphorical lion's den, always had and always would, and he wanted all his wits about him. Just in case.

He kept his weapon at the ready as he crept through the stacks, knees bent and eyes scanning for any movement. There was nothing but dimness and dust, the occasional soft sound of Stiles moving around on the other side of the space. So far, so good.

Then he rounded a corner and found himself at the edge of a large open space, cleared of boxes. And there in the middle, strung up with rope to a low-hanging support beam, was a man.

He was a well-aged forty-something, a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and the kind of wrinkles that come as much from laughter as from frowning. He wasn't looking so good at the moment, pallid and limp and thin enough that his thick canvas jacket hung off his shoulders like a burlap sack. He was also unconscious, or at least so deep in his venom-induced fantasy world that he might as well have been.

Dean heaved a sigh of relief; all reassurances to Allison aside, he had been braced to find a body. A weaker man would never have lasted this long, but even now they were cutting it close. They needed to get Chris out of here and fast.

Dean had just left the shadow of the crates, his only goal cutting Chris down and making a break for the exit, when something came down hard on the back of his head and everything went black.