I know that I really shouldn't feel guilty when this happens. It's not like it's really my fault, and it's something that I've got to be prepared to do when I bring these things into my home. They're dangerous, and I expose myself to them every single day. I make myself vulnerable. Thinking about it, I might actually put myself in harm's way more than a normal hunter ever does, considering that most of them don't come face-to-face with more than one monster on a daily basis.
My biggest mistake is probably that I start getting a lot closer to them than I should, if I've got them for more than a week or so. I get attached to them, start thinking of them almost like they're my friends. Most of them can act so human that it's really hard not to. Even out in the real world, no one will send you to jail for ramming a knife into your friend's chest if he goes for your throat, but you're gonna feel bad no matter what. Confused. Shaken.
I'm just defending myself, when they turn on me. I have to kill them - otherwise, I'll wind up as either a meal or another monster. This is a lot like the torture and the experiments, I guess. I know that it's necessary, but I still beat myself up over it. It keeps me up at night and I ask myself way too many questions. Every time that I have to take one of them out before I'm ready to.
Did I do something to make them hate me? Did I miss something in their diet that made them desperate enough to attack me to get it? Are they as much a victim of their natural instincts as I am? Do they despise me for doing what I had to protect myself?
Just what the hell happens to monsters when they die, anyway?
- Personal journal of Sam Winchester
Sam dragged the fingers of one hand through the wet Medusa locks of his dark hair, working out snags and knots when he found them. He stared at himself in the mirror, resting all of his weight on his other hand where it was spread on the counter. The skin around his eyes, discolored by dark circles he'd long ago accepted were permanent, twitched at every tugging sting on his scalp. After a few minutes of that, he decided that what he'd done was good enough. There weren't very many tangles left. Exhaling deeply through his nose, he wiped his hand dry on the towel that hung next to the mirror, then shook it clean of all the chocolate-colored hairs that were wrapped around his fingers, with the weird elasticity that water gave them.
He'd showered. He'd shaved. He'd brushed his teeth. He'd gotten dressed (he unconsciously reached down to tug his jeans a little higher on his hips as he mentally checked off that box). He'd fixed his hair. There was nothing else he could do in the bathroom. Unfortunately.
Taking a deep breath as he faced the closed door, Sam steeled himself, then reached for the cheap knob and opened it. It didn't make any sound that he could hear, but he was human. His hearing sucked.
"Oh, well, hey, would you look at that." Sam's jaw locked shut, teeth gritting with an ugly grinding sound. If this kept up, then he'd have to get Garth to drive him into town so the local dentist could fit him for dentures. "Finally. Look, I can understand long showers better than anybody. The monkey needs spanking every once in a while, right? But, jeez, you were in there a long time." Chains clinked against each other in the demon cell as Sam quickly crossed the short distance between the bathroom and his bedroom. "Which kinda makes me curious: just what is it that gets you off, huh? You really seemed to like that poker you used on me the other day. Maybe you fantasize about - "
Sam, having made it to his room, firmly closed the door. The voice was immediately muffled to the point where he couldn't make out any individual words. He groaned tiredly in the back of his throat, leaning against the door with his hand still on the knob. His body sank slightly into the heavy foam, taken from the shed, that he'd padded his door with yesterday morning. The walls were pretty thick, but sound had still come easily through the door until he'd taken steps to fix that.
The demon had regained his voice.
His throat must have healed beneath the bandages on it. Not that Sam would know, since he hadn't been in to check since the day when he'd managed his first word. His voice had been steadily growing stronger, clearer, over the few days that it'd been since then, and much like his appearance, it hadn't been what Sam had been expecting.
Given how fine the vessel's features were, he'd unconsciously put his faith in something even and melodic but still masculine. A singer's voice, for lack of a better explanation. But it was deep, deeper than his own, and as rough and gravelly as if he'd been smoking an unfiltered pack a day for years. (That last thing might be partially due to the damage to his throat, though. And the fact that he hadn't had any water since God only knew when - demonic energy couldn't provide everything for a vessel.) He had a twang that sounded vaguely Midwestern to Sam, and which came out strongly sometimes and hid itself others. He suspected that that was the demon wrestling with his vessel's natural speech patterns.
And, Jesus, he was loud. And as foul-mouthed as every pissed off hunter Sam had ever had to deal with. He couldn't so much as crack the door of whatever room he was in without receiving a barrage of insults. Every time he wanted to get something to eat, he had to endure the Knight's abuse. He wondered if Nadia could hear what he'd been saying, then realized that she probably could.
At least he hadn't replied yet. He'd been exercising his iron will (which other people had frequently called "pigheadedness") by ignoring everything the demon threw at him. It didn't seem to be making much of a difference.
Sam pushed off of the door, turning to look at his bed. He'd already set his laptop up on it, with all his notes spread out on the blankets. His sketchbook and the journal he'd been using to record his observations regarding Elspeth the banshee. He'd made a lot of progress on the book - pretty much the only good thing that had come out of being basically trapped in his room for the past few days.
He picked up the journal, nearly full, flipped through it, and snorted. Nadia had been right the other day, when she'd accused him of being a coward because he let the demon control him. He'd allowed himself to be driven into his room, into the bathroom, into Elspeth's cell because he couldn't stand to listen to him for more than a few minutes at a time. He'd basically handed most of his house over to the thing that sat bound in his Circle of Solomon.
He'd been trying to convince himself, lately, that he was only in here because he wanted to finish the book and convert everything in it into online articles. And, y'know, he'd come pretty close. He'd gotten almost everything he needed to know from Elspeth. The only thing left to figure out was how to kill or neutralize a banshee - which was all most of his readers wanted from him, anyway.
Sam lowered himself onto his bed and swung his aching leg up onto it. There were a few things he needed to do before he hit the books for anything about killing banshees, and it actually wasn't stalling. He had e-mails to answer, from people who needed his advice. There was routine maintenance to perform on the site. Formats needed to be set up for the new articles that he'd be posting soon, sketches needed to be scanned, everything that he was finished with needed to be sent to Ellen...he was soon absorbed with the work, just a bunch of little things mashed together. He decided to skip lunch, telling himself he'd had a big breakfast (a bowl of cereal and an English muffin), and ignored the hunger gnawing at his stomach lining. When he looked at the clock again, it was time to feed Nadia and Vaughn.
"Pets're getting hungry, huh?" the demon called to Sam as he left his bedroom and limped across the cabin. His leg was stiff and unresponsive after he'd spent most of the day sitting on his bed. "How come I never get to see 'em? Sure they'd appreciate it if you led 'em out here so I could take a look at 'em." He stepped into his boots and opened the door. "Especially your djinn. Boy, bet she's a sight in a collar and leash. But tell me this - she got nice tits or not?"
Sam left the cabin and headed for his shed, wondering, briefly, how the demon knew that he had a female djinn. Then he realized that he'd probably felt her, just like she and Vaughn had been feeling him since he entered the house. Sam's own senses were blunted, but monsters reacted to power, no matter how slight.
After retrieving a brain and some blood from the freezer, Sam brought them inside and dumped them into pots to thaw. The demon's voice was his constant companion as he moved around the kitchen, commenting on his hair, speculating about what he'd been doing in his room for six and a half hours, and, of course, taking frequent shots at his leg and the way that he walked. Sam realized now that he never should have reacted the way that he had to the first word the demon spoke to him. He might as well have shoved his wasted left calf in his face and told him, "Here. Right here - this is my weak spot."
He was still going strong half an hour in, when the contents of the pots had gotten warm enough to steam. Sam ignored him, dumping them into their various containers and scrubbing the pots with bleach. He ducked into his bedroom to grab about a dozen comic books out of a cardboard box in his closet (the supply was running low; he'd have to add that to the list that Garth and Charlie used when they shopped for him), then made his way over to Vaughn's cell with them in one hand and the bowl of brain juice in the other. He juggled them as he unlocked and opened the door.
Vaughn was laying on his cot with his eyes closed, apparently napping, but he got up as soon as Sam stepped into the small room. Sam frowned.
"You feeling okay?" he asked, as Vaughn took the bowl from him and attacked its contents.
"Yeah, of course I am," he replied, licking his lips and making eye contact with Sam as he looked up from his meal. "I'm just bored."
"Well, I can fix that," Sam replied. He held out the comic books, which Vaughn apparently hadn't noticed with a brain in the room, and watched his blue eyes light up.
"Awesome!" He quickly set the bowl aside on his TV tray nightstand, then snatched the books away from Sam. He dropped onto his bed and sorted through them, scanning titles and covers, separating them into three different plies that looked completely random to Sam after a few minutes of that. When he was apparently finished, he looked up at him and gave him a huge smile. "Thanks. These'll last me a while."
Sam laughed. "I'm glad. I really hate seeing you sulk." He nodded to the bowl on the nightstand and added, "I'll be back for that in a little while. Don't forget to eat."
"Mm-hm." Vaughn nodded absentmindedly, already engrossed in a book. Sam smirked and left him to it, closing his door.
Nadia was next. He picked her bottle up off of the counter and padded over to her cell. He really hoped that she wasn't naked today. The demon would probably be able to pick up on it, and he wasn't sure that he could handle being teased about his nonexistent sex life.
He knew that something was wrong as soon as he opened the door. The light on the ceiling, which Nadia had kept on at all times since she'd come to him, was off, which meant the tiny cell was filled with complete darkness. Sam himself was block most of the light coming from the room behind him, so he couldn't even make out the shape of the cot. Frowning, he stepped inside. Maybe the batteries in the light had burned out or something.
"Nadia?" he asked. He didn't bother calling, since the cell was so small. "Hey. Nadia."
He raised the sports bottle, planning on shaking it in an effort to draw her out, even though he was becoming increasingly worried that she was sick or injured and didn't even know that he was in the room. He never actually got the chance, though. A cannonball of compact muscle launched itself at him from the direction of the cot he couldn't see, hands and arms slamming into his chest before he could react. The momentum carried him to the floor. The back of his skull cracked against the hardwood boards, and for a second, all he could see were flashes of red and black as a spike of nauseating pain drilled through him.
"Nadia," Sam gasped. Or, rather, gurgled. He must have bitten his tongue or his cheek, because his mouth was full of blood and phlegm.
"This was too easy." That was her answer. She was gloating. "How could you be so stupid?" A hand latched onto his face, soft and feminine, and fingernails dug maroon crescents into the edges. "Working with something like me...it's just like I told you a few days ago. You're weak, Sam. You're prey."
Sam's skin tingled against her palm and fingers. She was poisonous, her venom contained within the red tattoos that covered her body. She could get enough of it into his bloodstream to knock him out for hours just by touching his bare skin once. And she'd had direct contact with him - with his face - for the past twenty seconds or so.
He forced his hand up, moving past the agony in his head. He probably had a concussion, but he'd have to deal with that later, once the more pressing issues were dealt with. His fingers wrapped around Nadia's forearm as he coaxed his other hand into a fist. He ripped her hand off of his face at the same moment he swung, able to put strength behind it only because he knew that his life depended on getting her away from him. His aim was off (probably because his vision was just about as distorted right now as it would be if he'd been drunk), but he still connected, most of his knuckles smacking into Nadia's left eye and cheekbone with a satisfying give of flesh. She'd been straddling his waist, but the blow knocked her off and sent her tumbling to the floor with a very human cry of pain.
"Not weak," Sam ground out, getting the hand he'd hit Nadia with underneath himself and managing to sit up, which sent a wave of crippling nausea rolling through him. He wasn't weak physically, at least. He realized that Nadia's slender wrist was still in his other hand, and it occurred to him that, maybe, he should try to break it. Just to slow her down. But she yanked her hand away before he could.
Her hair had fallen in a dark curtain over her face, but she swept it out of the way now, throwing it over her shoulder. She glared murderously at Sam, the left side of her face already starting to swell up.
"I'm sure it made you feel good, to hit me," she spat at him. "But it doesn't make a difference. I'm already in your system. You can't fight it off for more than a few minutes, and then you'll be moaning on the floor, totally helpless." Her eyes narrowed, glittering. "And then I'll bleed you dry. My first real meal in months."
"No," Sam said tiredly, wondering if he was going to throw up. He would've shaken his head, but that would have made vomiting a certainty. Nadia laughed at him, climbing back on top of him and learing down.
"I'm sorry, Sam, but you don't really have a say in this," she said, giving him a winning smile. He dragged the hand that he wasn't using to support himself across the floor, wincing at all the grit he found, and to his hip. His wrist brushed against something cool and metallic there, but before he could figure out what it was, Nadia grabbed two handfuls of his hair and slammed his head back to the ground.
He must have screamed. He didn't know for sure, because he blacked out when he hit. But the next thing he knew, his head was tipped to the side, and he was staring at the open door to Vaughn's cell. He'd forgotten to lock it when he left. Vaughn was standing in the doorway, mouth open and eyes wide with fear and shock. What little color he usually had in his face had drained away. As Sam watched him with his skewed, blurred vision, he began to tremble violently, and closed his mouth in order to swallow. He took a step forward, weakly starting, "Sam - "
"Vaughn, close the door," Sam interrupted, surprising himself with the strength of his own voice. "Get back in your room. Close the door, and stay there." When Vaughn froze, showing no signs of moving, he yelled in an effort to shock him into action. "Now! Right now! Get back in your room!"
Vaughn did, with a frightened squeak accompanying him slamming his door. A hand grabbed Sam's chin and jerked his head straight so that the weight of it was resting on the painful, sticky knot on the back of it, just in time for him to see Nadia roll her eyes.
"He's a wraith, so I don't think I'd be able to drink him," she said. "But I want to kill him anyway. Just because he's your pet."
"Don't even think about it, bitch," Sam snarled with leftover heat, voice rough and husky with the effort of (he suddenly realized) not passing out. He wasn't sure if he was struggling against Nadia's venom, the concussion she'd just irritated, or a combination of the two. "Listen, Nadia. This is the one and only chance I'm gonna give you. Grab your blood, get back in your cell, and we'll just forget about this whole thing."
Nadia laughed, sounding genuinely amused. "Sam," she said with a grin, "do you really think that you're in any position to be offering me mercy?" She put her hands on his chest, cupping the shallow swells of his pectorals like they were in bed. At least he was wearing a T-shirt, so she wasn't going to give him another dose of her venom, which he wasn't sure he could've withstood. "You're not going to last much longer. I can see it in your eyes." She blew a strand of hair out of his face in a parody of tenderness. "Close them, and let go. You'll never wake up. You'll never want to."
She was right, Sam realized. Not about that last part - he could never believe that last part, or admit to it. But that he wouldn't last much longer. Every time his heart beat, it sent the crap that she had dumped into him deeper and deeper. He felt heavy, clumsy, and that wasn't entirely due to his head. His breathing was fast and fluttery. She'd put her hand on his face, which meant that the venom was probably already in his brain, and he could feel it, pressing down on his consciousness.
And he was half-hard. Given what Nadia was, it had to be because of what she'd done to him.
Sam's wrist was still pressed against the metal thing at his hip, the thing that couldn't be something as mundane as a belt buckle or a rivet on his jeans. Nadia was fixated on his face, seemingly fascinated, and he held her dark gaze as he fumbled with his hand. Her venoms tattoos were glowing slightly, he realized. Probably with excitement. The glow, a bright and energetic red, had extended to her eyes. His breath hitched with something that he couldn't let her know was fear, and his hand wrapped around the blade of a knife. A silver knife. The one that he kept in the top drawer of his bedside table and stuck in his belt every day as more of a force of habit than a safety precaution, even though silver could kill Vaughn, as a shapeshifter...and Nadia, too.
His wrist flicked as he pulled the knife free. Nadia was too intent on him to notice.
Sam could taste something familiar in his mouth, something he couldn't associate with anyplace but the bedroom. He didn't dare close his eyes, afraid of slipping completely into whatever fantasy Nadia's venom was digging out of the folds of his brain. He had to get rid of her - that was his very first priority. He was about to bring the knife up and ram it into her, but then he remembered that, in order to kill a djinn with a silver knife, that knife needed to be coated in lamb's blood.
Sam could have sobbed with frustration and despair. He wasn't even sure he had lamb's blood in the house right now, and even if there was, he had no hope of getting to it. He dragged the blade of his knife aimlessly across the floor, and his arm bumped into the plastic bottle that he'd dropped when Nadia tackled him, making its contents slosh back and forth. Its contents. If the situation hadn't been so serious, Sam probably would've smacked himself in the face.
Nadia finally noticed that he had the knife when he lifted it (it felt like someone had tied a few of his heavier weights to his arms) and stabbed the blade down through the flexible plastic of the sports bottle with a popping noise. Sam's chest heaved with the effort, and his vision darkened to bedroom lighting. Nadia stared at the knife in the bottle, perplexed, then turned back to look at him and raised the eyebrow that he hadn't punched.
"Was that supposed to be symbolic?" she asked dryly.
"Hardly," Sam replied, right before he stabbed her in the heart.
It took less than a second, muscle memory taking over where his strength had failed. But it didn't feel that way to him. He had to lift the knife and wait for the bottle to slide off of it, pulled down by its own weight. He had to swing the knife over to Nadia, trailing sticky scarlet drops, some of which managed to land on his face. And then he had to actually put it in her. He couldn't remember if he could hit her anywhere or if the blow had to be to her heart, and he decided that he was better off safe than sorry. So he worked the knife past muscle, between bones, up underneath Nadia's left breast, and into her heart. And that was hard, too.
Nadia screamed. Sam was sure she tried to, at least. It came out as a choked gurgle, as her tattoos and her eyes flared brilliantly, and then all the light in them died away. Sam felt a plush mattress beneath him instead of the hardwood floor when her body toppled bonelessly off of him, knife still wedged under her breast. He didn't hear it when she hit the floor. He must be too far gone for that.
Sam realized, all of a sudden, that the demon hadn't said a word during his whole struggle with Nadia. That was only because his voice, mocking, cut through the haze that Sam was floating in now: "Just look at that. Straight through the heart - so precise Either you've had a lot of practice with ganking pretty girls, or you're a natural at it."
He couldn't even tell him to shut up. His eyes must have fallen closed, because he had to open them in order to see Vaughn. The wraith's terrified, nauseated expression didn't belong in the dark, luxurious bedroom setting that surrounded them.
"S-Sam - " he began, looking like he was holding back tears. Or vomit. Or both.
"Bathroom," Sam interrupted him, just like the last time they'd spoken. "Under the sink. Wooden box. There are a bunch of different vials in there. Find the one labeled 'lust djinn,' load a hypodermic with it, and inject it into me. Doesn't matter how much or where."
Vaughn shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. "You killed Nadia," he said. "I c - "
"You're gonna have to, or else she's gonna end up killing me," Sam cut in fiercely. "You're scared. I get it. But I'm not gonna hurt you, and we'll talk about this as soon as…" Sam trailed off. "As soon as…" He glanced around the room. He could move his head now, because it didn't hurt anymore. "...Vaughn?"
He'd vanished. Now there was nothing but thick drapes and lush wallpaper. And the light from around a dozen candles, rosy and romantic.
Djinn were vampiric, and fed from their victims after placing them in a venom-induced trance. The most common variety had a poison that would grant your deepest desire, build a complex dream-world for you to keep you happy. There were some who cursed you with horrifying hallucinations and fed once you'd collapsed from exhaustion. Others, partial to the taste of fear in the blood, plunged you straight into your worst nightmare. Nadia's kind preferred the flavor that all the hormones of lust, arousal, and sex offered. And that was why Sam was hard, naked on a huge bed, and - he shook his wrists, above his head - handcuffed to a headboard.
"Who the hell," purred a sickeningly-familiar voice, "is Vaughn?"
Sam's eyes widened. He tugged frantically at the manacles around his wrists, but all that did was rattle the chain between them. Much like what the owner of that voice had done incessantly for several days after arriving. At least they didn't bite; the edges were lined with something that felt like velvet.
"Oh, hell, no," Sam muttered under his breath, drawing his legs up in an effort to cover himself. He felt a hand on one of his thighs, big and callused, and it took everything he had not to shudder with fear. "No, no, no, no. I did not want this."
"Uh...okay?" Now the voice sounded much more confused than seductive, and Sam made the mistake of opening his eyes. The Knight of Hell, whom he knew for a fact was still chained, locked, and bound in his demon cell, was looking down at him with mild concern on his face. He wasn't all beat up anymore, or dirty, or bloody. He was just blond hair and creamy skin and freckles. Jeez, a lot of freckles. His vessel must have spent plenty of time in the sun before he took him. "Is this your way of telling me that you want the cuffs off? 'Cause it'd be a cinch to get rid of them."
"No!" Sam blurted, before he could think it through. He rocked his pelvis to the side, twisting his body and taking his folded legs away from the demon's deceptively-warm touch. "Uh...I-I mean…" None of this was real. He was trapped in a sick fantasy of his own making. The demon couldn't hurt him. "Don't touch me."
He ground his teeth in frustration. Apparently, his fear of the damn thing was so huge, after spending a little over a week with him, that he couldn't even handle this harmless, djinn-conjured version of him. He was pathetic.
The demon rolled his green eyes. Impossibly green - they froze Sam's heart in his chest with desire he hated himself for feeling.
"At least I know that being backed up makes you completely crazy now," he said with a dry smirk. He was kneeling on the soft mattress (maybe a pillowtop?) next to Sam, equally naked, and he was...impressive. That realization made Sam swallow past a suddenly-dry throat, distracted as the demon pulled his legs back over to himself. Gently. "C'mon, Sammy." He stroked one of Sam's thighs, and Sam stiffened as his blunt fingernails passed uncomfortably close to his femoral artery. "It's been years, hasn't it?" He planted a lingering kiss on Sam's kneecap before smiling at him, slow and lazy and sensual. "Don't you think you deserve for me to make you feel good?"
Sam shook his head, hard, and fought past the rising waves of arousal and want. Venom. Venom. It was all because of Nadia's venom. "Don't need you."
The demon chuckled, a throaty sound that finally got Sam shuddering - but not with fear. "That's, uh, not what you said about five minutes ago, darlin'." He was somehow managing to ease Sam's legs straight, with patient and gentle touches. "Have you really changed your mind so fast?"
"Yep," Sam managed through gritted teeth. Maybe, if he just kept rejecting the fake demon's advances, it would stop him from being sucked into the fantasy. He just had to wait it out until...what was he waiting for, again? "Just - just leave."
There was another chuckle. Sam clamped his eyes shut and whined in the back of his throat. He wasn't here right now and none of this was real. The mattress wasn't shifting beneath him as the demon moved to kneel between his spread legs, the cuffs weren't holding his hands in place so that he couldn't even protect himself, and he wasn't so hard and swollen that it was painful. Though, actually...that last one probably was real, unfortunately.
"Whatever you say," the demon promised, amused. "But I don't think that this agrees with you." On "this," he tapped the precome-slick head of Sam's cock with one finger. Lightning bolts wracked his body, and he thought he might have screamed.
Need to figure out how to separate the aphrodisiac from the hallucinogen in this damn venom, Sam thought fuzzily. If I could sell it, I'd be rich.
He returned to himself, just barely, with a heroic mental wrench. The demon loomed over him, candlelight playing over his skin and gleaming in his eyes. The lines between Sam's emotions had blurred, and he wasn't sure if he was afraid anymore, or just desperately horny.
"My subconscious latched onto you," Sam said. His lips felt oddly numb as he spoke. "I've had a dry spell since I was seventeen, when my leg got ruined."
The demon arched an eyebrow, like he didn't know what Sam was talking about, but Sam ignored him and continued.
"Something in me thinks you're attractive," he said. "Which, y'know, I guess I can see...I can't believe you're seriously the best candidate in my life right now, though. It's gotta be completely physical. Whatever part of me wants to have sex with you is only interested because you're pretty."
He was rambling, and he was doing it on purpose. But he'd momentarily run out of things to say. As he scrambled for a new topic, the demon blinked slowly at him, then ran a hand through his short, stiff hair.
"Okay, I have no idea what you just said," he admitted. "Especially about your leg." Interest involuntarily piqued by that statement, Sam raised his head and looked at his legs. To his shock, both of his calves were identically rounded, smooth with undamaged muscle and flawless skin. But that made sense. What reason could there possibly be for him to be crippled in his own fantasy? "But I think you called me pretty, and that sounded a lot like a compliment." Sam quite literally stopped breathing when a hand wrapped around his twitching shaft. The demon winked coyly at him. "So how 'bout I show you how grateful I am for that?"
A wholly pathetic whimper fell out of Sam's open mouth. He was about to shake his head no, or at least try to, but then there was a hideous, stinging pain in the side of his neck. He cried out, and the demon's green eyes widened, before they turned a pale blue and his form dissolved into Vaughn, leaning over Sam. His hand was out of sight, probably wrapped around the hypodermic needle that he'd just sunk into Sam's neck. His red hair was limp with sweat, and his face was carefully blank, like he was feeling too much right now to choose just one emotion to express.
"Uhhhh…" Sam groaned as pain flooded back. His head, his leg...everywhere else. At least the cloying fog of Nadia's venom was rapidly lifting, since Vaughn seemed to have shot the antivenon straight into his carotid artery. He could feel the hard floor underneath himself, and the bedroom was gone, replaced by his cabin.
"Are y-you okay?" Right. Vaughn stuttered when he was freaked out. Sam had forgotten, because Vaughn hadn't been freaked out since he'd first been delivered to him. "Oh, g-god." He let go of the needle, leaving it in Sam's neck, and rocked backward to sit down with a heavy thud. "You were d-dying. Y-you were moaning."
Vaughn obviously didn't know what Nadia's venom did. Sam decided that he didn't need to tell him.
"Had to do it," he said tiredly, very aware of Nadia's body lying limply next to him. She had bled, a pool spreading underneath her, and he was pretty sure that some of it had soaked into his clothes. "She wanted to kill me. She told me she was gonna kill you."
"She h-hurt y-you," Vaughn said shakily. Sam slowly pulled himself up into a sitting position and managed not to vomit in his own lap while he did so, which was reassuring. He reached up and plucked the hypodermic out of his neck. He wasn't feeling nearly as bad, physically, as he should if he had a concussion, so maybe he'd just hit his head really hard.
"Oh, sure, she hurt him, but I'm pretty sure she made up for it," the demon called from within his cell, voice raucous and smug and feeling a whole lot like a railroad spike being rammed through the bloody goose egg on the back of Sam's head. "Heard you moaning, Sammy. Did she pop herself into your head? Were you fucking her before or after you stabbed her?"
Sam glanced at Vaughn, whose mouth had fallen open in obvious shock and mortification. He reached forward and grabbed the doorframe of Nadia's cell, using it to steady himself as he got to his feet. Blood dripped off of him. The hypodermic that Vaughn had retrieved from the bathroom was still in his hand. He had to look like some sort of crazy murderer.
"Did you finish eating, Vaughn?" he asked softly. Vaughn shook his head.
"I d-don't want to," he said miserably. Sam nodded, able to understand that.
"All right," he said. "I think you should go back to your room now. Just put your brain outside and I'll clean it up."
Vaughn nodded, eyes distant. He got up, and though his legs looked too weak to support him at first, he managed. As he slipped into his room, Sam reached for him, putting a hand on his shoulder. Something inside of him warmed when the wraith didn't flinch away from his touch.
"Thank you," he said quietly. Vaughn nodded, looking impossibly tired all of a sudden, then pulled away and closed the door.
Sam had a huge mess to clean up. Nadia's blood, her body, her cell, the damaged bottle on the floor, and his own injuries. It was almost overwhelming, so he decided to focus on one thing at a time. And the first thing he chose to focus on was the hypodermic in his hand. He crossed the floor to throw it away in the kitchen trash can, leg aching worse than usual with stress and exertion, and unwittingly walked into the demon's field of sight.
"There's not a whole lotta difference between you and me, y'know." He sounded sly, and Sam didn't look at him as he dropped the empty needle into the trash. "Both of us are killers. Stone-cold." Sam opened one of his cabinets and brought down a stack of rags, worn and stained white by bleach. "You liked it, didn't you? Stabbing her? You don't have to lie, I felt it - your pleasure. You were just looking for an excuse, and she finally gave you one." Sam picked up two of the rags. "I bet you're already fantasizing about the wraith kid. How to do him in."
Sam balled the rags up in one of his hands and dug his keyring out of the pocket of his bloody jeans with the other. He limped across the floor, feeling his face settle into an expressionless mask before he reached the gate to the demon cell. The Knight grinned at him with black eyes.
"You do what you do because you like the pain," he told Sam while he was unlocking the door. "You like the death. You're a demon - only thing you're missing is the eyes."
Sam pushed the door open and walked in. The demon regarded him, and didn't look very impressed by what he saw. Reaching him, Sam grabbed his jaw and yanked it open, and then he looked surprised. Even when he'd burned him with the poker, Sam hadn't been quite this rough with him.
Sam stuffed one of his rags, the smaller of the two, into the demon's open mouth, his movements businesslike as he crammed the fabric down into his throat. The demon made a shocked, violated sound (which came out muffled, of course), and jerked back, glaring up at Sam with blank eyes. HIs mouth and throat worked, trying to push the rag out, and Sam leaned forward in order to bind the other rag around his mouth. He tightly knotted it behind his head, then stepped back. The demon violently shook his head and tried to scream past the gag.
"'M not like you," Sam murmured, turning away and slowly leaving the cell. "And it's really about time you shut up."