Sam and Dean got comfortable, but took nothing out. Sherlock looked at them in confusion—Sherlock had a feeling that Dean was quite happy to see Sherlock look confused.

"I thought we were 'figuring this out'," Sherlock enquired.

"We are," Sam said. "I'm thinking."

"Thinking?" Sherlock scoffed.

"What did you expect?"

"Computers. Journals. Something along the lines of research."

"That's when you saw us hunting for monsters," Dean said. "All monsters are different. But now you're calling us for a demon."

"We're kind of demon experts," Sam said. "There isn't much else to research. This is just gonna take some problem-solving."

Sherlock had to try not to laugh out loud. These men were good at what they did, and Sam wasn't completely brain-dead, Sherlock admitted both those things. But experts? On anything? It seemed unlikely. "I seriously doubt you are—" Sherlock began.

"The way a demon deal works is that you go to a crossroad," Dean said, "and bring a package of black cat bone, graveyard dirt, and a picture of yourself. Then you bury it and some demon shows up, makes a deal with you, probably makes it sounds better than it is. You usually get ten years, unless you're really valuable or they really don't like you. Then, if all goes according to their plan, you go to hell and get tortured. Well, until you become the torturer."

Dean became silent and Sherlock watched him. Sherlock had never seen Dean look so… vulnerable. Like he was remembering something he desperately wanted to forget.

"Why'd you make the deal?" Sherlock asked.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Do you have to be a know-it-all all the time?"

"You made it rather obvious."

Dean crossed his arms and looked at the ceiling—just so he didn't have to look at Sherlock, probably. "Sam died. I wanted to bring him back, so I sold my soul. I only got a year."

"How did you get out of it?" Sherlock asked, but he had a bad feeling that he knew the answer.

"I didn't," Dean replied. "I was in hell for four months. Except there, a month is ten years." He had a feeling Dean hadn't gotten out of it. There was always something about him, something dark, hidden just beneath the exterior. This explained what that was. A trip to hell was enough to make a man apathetic, hardened to life. And he was there for almost half a century.

Sherlock considered being at a place like that for forty years. Being tortured, constantly. He had been trying hard not to think on it too much, what it might be like when he was taken to hell, because he knew it made him nervous, but he was having trouble not thinking about it now. It made his palms start to sweat.

"You've been to hell? And you're here now?" They were mostly questions out of courtesy. Sherlock didn't care in the slightest that Dean thought he was a know-it-all—because it was true, of course—but he hadn't actually intended to open up a difficult past and almost felt a tiny bit guilty about it.

"That's why I don't like when you pretend that you know shit about me. Because you don't," Dean growled, looking suddenly far off and solemn as he remembered his experiences in hell.

Sam came over and put his hand on Dean's shoulder. It seemed like a casual action, but it made Dean shake his head and look at Sam. Sherlock looked at the boys for a moment. It was interesting, because they were so much more than brothers. It was closer to them being two parts of the same whole. They were just one person and they couldn't function without the other because they weren't complete when they were apart. Brain and brawn, emotion and apathy. But both very, very damaged. That they had in common. Sherlock used to have difficulty understanding bonds like that. Honestly, people worked better apart than together. People were distractions from what was really important… but since he met John, he understood it. He and John met for a reason. They were better together than apart. Brain and brawn, apathy and emotion. And both very, very damaged. He and John had that in common too.

"How did you get out of hell?" Sherlock asked, but he thought he knew this one too. How else did they meet an angel?

"Castiel. He's the one who, what did he call it, 'raised me from perdition'," Dean said with a fond smile.

"And you," Sherlock said to Sam. "How did you get out of hell?"

Sam blinked. "I don't think I ever said anything about going to hell."

Sherlock didn't feel like explaining how obvious it had been by Sam's body language that the thought of hell made him uncomfortable. He started stabbing his thumb into his hand in a subconscious sort of way, then looked down and realised he was doing it and stopped. Actually, Sam looked both furious and petrified at the mention of hell, in a way that Dean hadn't, which made Sherlock assume he was either more emotionally fragile—which might have been true, but Sherlock doubted that because Dean wasn't nearly as tough as he pretended—or, more likely, he was in hell for much longer and had a much more traumatizing experience.

"Are you still questioning how I know things?" Sherlock asked.

Sam was always more understanding about Sherlock's deductive skills than his brother, but now even he looked a little peeved.

"Anyway," Sherlock said, not wanting to start some pointless argument that would just get the Winchester boys emotional, "so basically you have no idea how me out of this."

"We didn't say that," Sam said.

"See, we know the demon who holds your contract. He holds all the contracts now," Dean continued.

"You know him personally?" Sherlock asked.

"Oh yeah, we go way back," Dean said with a smirk. "His name's Crowley, The King of Hell."

"The King of Hell? Wouldn't that be Satan?" Sherlock asked.

"Yeah, you'd think, but Lucifer is stuck in a cage in hell with Michael."

"Michael? The arch-angel?"

"I know, it's crazy," Dean said. "I don't know why people bother with day-time TV when real life is this insane all the time."

"So what do we do?" Sherlock finally asked, irritated that he didn't already know.

"Once we threatened to burn Crowley's bones," Sam said, "It got our friend Bobby out of a deal."

"That probably won't work again," Dean continued, "but either way, we're going to have to call him."

"Call him? Call the King of Hell and invite him into the flat?"

Dean smiled. "You scared, Holmes?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Not in the slightest. Call him."