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This is like premeditated murder.
-
She comes back to him, and she looks just like she did eight months ago, singing leave you when the summer comes along under her breath. They’d been driving away from an exorcism and the boy hadn’t made it, his body collapsing at their feet; Dean drove like the boy’s ghost was going to chase them down and demand bloody retribution, the wind fast, the car faster and the music drumming harder. Singing I can hear it callin' me back home, pale under her freckles and her fingers tight on the wheel because she only had two months left and Sam could only stare at her, feeling doomed.
She comes back to him with her eyes like molten glass in her face and her dark blonde hair with the razor-ragged tips because she likes to take a knife to it occasionally.
Fuck, he’s using the present tense as she walks up to him, hands in her pockets like any other day. Her jeans and shirt covered in dirt, smudges on her cheekbone and jaw and high on her forehead.
‘Who are you,’ he says.
‘Sammy, it’s me,’ the condemned dead girl says.
And she looks so much like his sister, he might let her do violence against him, bleed him dry.
-
He says, ‘Christo,’ and she flinches, but she doesn’t look away and he’s got the demon-killing knife in his hand at her throat before she can blink again.
But she doesn’t look away.
‘Sam,’ she says and he grits out, ‘Who the fuck are you.’
Her eyes. His sister’s eyes staring at him, a sheen like she can’t believe it, and he can’t believe it because he’s done everything, everything he can to get her back, and she. She’s here. Tormenting him.
‘Baby boy,’ she says, and Sam’s teeth come down hard on his tongue. Her voice, the cadence, years and years of saying it, just that way, how Sam’s heard it all his life. Her mouth moves again, no sound, baby boy.
He pushes the knife against her skin, watching the edge of the blade press a line against her fragile windpipe and she’s real, not a ghost, nothing like what he usually sees. She says, ‘You were six. Riding some kid’s bike we found on a lawn. Yellow. With a basket, of all things. You hit a broken curb and went headfirst over the handlebars. Got that scar on your elbow. You didn’t cry, so I told you to get back on it.’ She smirks a little, a tiny curve of mouth. ‘And you kicked the bike.’
He swallows and it’s as if he’s put the knife to his own neck, he can feel it.
‘You were fifteen when I caught you watching me change clothes, you little perv.’ Now she smiles and it’s Dean’s smile, the one for him, all for him, only for him, his. ‘So I showed you how to unhook a girl’s bra. First time you’d touched a pair of tits. That time I thought you really were gonna cry.’
His palm around the knife is slick, sweaty, but he doesn’t let go, and she watches him with a whirlwind expression on her face he’s seen maybe three times in his adult life.
That desperate, falling-heart, killing kind of love. Strikes right down to his bones where his sister’s name is carved.
‘I’ve been gone too long,’ she says, ‘you’ve gotten uglier. I told you to keep up on your beauty sleep. Didn’t I tell you.’
She smells like fresh earth, like she’s crawled out of the ground, and oh shit, shit shit shit, he can picture it, her grave with the wooden cross, where he buried her (and him, a family plot), he can picture her clawing her way out to find him. Because that’s what he’d do. Fight like wildfire to get to her. (That’s what he’s been doing, that’s what he’s been doing, and.) She smells like dirt, but underneath it, she smells like Dean, that complicated scent of her skin that used to piss him off because it drove him crazy before he even understood why.
Sam steps back and says, ‘I don’t believe you.’
She huffs, exasperated, dragging a hand over her face, around to the back of her neck, such a Dean movement, her hands falling to her hips like she’s ready to fight, fuck, Sam’s hallucinating, but this won’t be the first time, he can survive.
‘Look, the silver won’t work on me. I’ll fucking prove that,’ she says, pointing at him, ‘but the holy water might be a problem.’
‘Why,’ he says because he knew it, son of a bitch, he knew it.
Those green eyes, the shade he’d been clinging to in his head, he wasn’t going to forget the color of her eyes, those green eyes bleed black and she says, ‘Sammy, I tried.’ Quick tears shine in the black, slippery liquid oil, burning, but she holds them back, like his sister would, she holds them back. She never wants to cry in front of him (what kind of big sister would I be).
‘I tried so hard. They. They kept telling me that, that you.’ She shakes her head, swipes angrily at her cheeks and now she won’t look at him, jaw clenched. ‘They’d laugh and tell me you were dead. They’d pretend to be you. Fucking bastards. You have. No idea.’
‘Dean,’ he says before he can stop himself, muttering, Fuckin’ A.
‘You think I’m not real. A demon for a sister. Well, maybe you’re not real,’ she spits, giving a bitter laugh (like a hunt gone so very wrong), ‘maybe this is another happy little slice of Hell.’
He keeps the knife handy and says stupidly, ‘I need to make a call,’ and she nods, messy hair falling, framing her freckled face, her black eyes, like glory and sin. He chalks out a devil’s trap and if he had a heart, it would break when the living dead demon girl steps into it without a word.
‘I’ll just wait here,’ she says, kinda cocky. Like Dean.
She glances at him, the black dissolves away, like mud washed from a stone, and the green is left behind clear, crystal.
-
Sam summons Ruby and she doesn’t knock on the motel door, just waltzes in with an all-around irritating what’d-you-do-now smile on her face.
‘What’d you do now,’ she even says it and Sam clenches his fists, this isn’t a fucking game. But he doesn’t have time for this, so he simply steps aside to reveal the girl in the trap behind him, picking lint and clods of dirt out of her pockets.
‘Holy shit, Dean,’ Ruby breathes. ‘How’d you get her out? And in her own skin. That’s a neat parlor trick; I’d like to know the next time some psycho exorcises me.’ She glares at him, like it’s going to wound his pride, but then she’s back to staring at the other demon, sizing her up.
‘Ruby,’ the girl says, crossing her arms, rolling her eyes, ‘I dragged myself out. Didn’t take a miracle.’
‘Oh, shut the hell up, Dean, like you even –“
“Ruby, is it really her,’ Sam asks; it, that demon, her, because he’s not going to make the mistake of saying his sister’s name again. ‘She’s. She’s a demon.’
The girl smirks (the hard challenging smirk, come-right-at-me, Sam’s catalogued them all, one at a time) and lets her gaze go black and as if Ruby can’t help it, her eyes blacken too. She laughs, a hitched acrid sound.
‘Isn’t that rich. Like some sorta cosmic joke. Dean Winchester, hunter and demon. You oughta have business cards made. Something elegant and classy. Bone white with a red border.’
Grabbing Ruby’s arm, Sam forces her close to the edge of the trap and demands to know, ‘Is it really her.’
‘Yes, it’s her, you dumb fuck,’ Ruby hisses, yanking out of his grasp and it hits him like a bullet to the base of his skull that that’s the truest answer he’ll get. He has to accept what he can, even if Ruby’s lying, even if this demon (Dean Dean Dean) is lying.
What’s he got to lose.
He thought he’d died that night Dean did (for him) and he might be certain of it now because he’s kneeling to scratch away at the devil’s trap, let his sister the demon out, let her stretch like she’s been in the Impala driving for nine hours straight.
He’s (dead) numb, his sister’s a demon and Ruby looks like revenge thwarted because she’s staring at them both with utter hatred.
Dean fists her hands in his shirt and she pulls him down, murmuring against his chest, I missed you, and he holds her carefully, still unsure, until he nuzzles her hair and every switch in his brain flips, Dean, and he picks her up without thought, like so many times in their lives when he got big enough, her legs going around his waist, cradling her body to his and Sam decides if this is a lie, he’ll close his eyes and take it. Dean’s wrapped warm around him and nothing will ever be the same.
‘I don’t need to be here for this,’ Ruby says scornfully, flapping a hand, ‘whatever this is. Something disgusting, I’m sure, knowing you two.’
He feels Dean’s palm slide down his back to his waistband, finding the knife and he sets her on her feet because whatever’s coming, he wants to see it. She pats his side, fingers curling to give him a little tickle (like always, past, present, future), then she says, ‘No, you don’t need to be here.’
Fast, just a flash of light off the blade, and Dean’s buried the knife in Ruby’s belly. A crackle of power, Ruby starting to glow and Dean says, ‘You’ve done enough,’ and slits her open up to her breastbone.
Sam doesn’t flinch. He saw Dean do that once to a wendigo before setting it on fire. It’s possible when Dean went to Hell, he became as much demon as she is now.
She gives a little push and Ruby’s body falls, expression stunned, her hands giving one last flare. Dean turns to him, black-eyed, blood spattered over her face, like her freckles. She drops the knife, clattering, and she smiles, wry.
‘Been waiting to do that.’
‘Dean,’ he says, because it’s his sister, his hunter sister, regardless of the darkness watching him, ‘Dean.’ He snags her wrist and she raises her chin, like he might fight her, but he shakes his head. ‘You came back.’
‘Damn straight I did,’ she says, ‘knew you’d screw something up without me.’
‘Dean,’ is all he can say, now he can say it and it looks as if a piece inside her cracks, her smile tipping.
‘Sammy.’
She kisses him and now he knows, he knows, she tastes the same, her tongue sliding along his, she tastes the same, like the first time they did this, when he was sixteen, and then so many kisses-miles-years later the night before she died, when she kissed him as if it would be the last time.
(He ignores the faint taste of sulfur.)
She’s kissing him, sucking on his bottom lip and saying against his mouth, baby boy, and this is all he needs.
Her red mouth is swollen, bruised and she’s rubbed blood on his face, but he smiles when she tangles her fingers in his hair and whispers, ‘We’ve got work to do.’
-
Dean croons when she sees the car again, her hands out to run along its lines and curves, and Sam smiles as he tosses his gear in the trunk, he hears her whisper, There’s my girl, he better’ve treated you right.
He has to make two trips; Ruby’s corpse is wrapped in a comforter so it won’t bleed on the backseat. Sam’s behind the wheel, turning the ignition before he realizes: Dean’s back. She doesn’t say anything, just gets in shotgun and purses her lips, uncertain.
‘Drive, Sam.’
There’s an abandoned house nearby; he knows because he took out three demons there the day before Dean knocked on his door, trilling strip-o-gram!, and his sister’s sense of humor, sense of how to embarrass her little brother, she’s here, with him, leaning her head against the window.
She sighs and it punches into his chest and he almost drives them off the road.
The demons’ corpses are still there; the hosts didn’t live long and Sam hadn’t wasted time on clean up. He’d had a date with a whiskey bottle and it wasn’t good to keep his date waiting; sometimes she didn’t give him oblivion like he wanted.
Dean glances around, stepping carefully. ‘You’ve been busy.’
-
They burn Ruby and the bodies and the house. Sam lets Dean throw the matches.
They watch the flames, to make sure the walls catch, and Sam watches the fire reflected in Dean’s (green) eyes.
‘Dean, you.’ He needs to tell her. ‘Ruby and I, she – there was this one night—‘
‘I don’t need to hear about how you were lonely and grieving.’
When she turns to him, her face is lost in the dark, her hair lit up by the inferno behind her. ‘It’d make me a hypocrite, so I don’t care. I was dead. You were alone. I left you alone, y’know, with the dying, so you can sure as shit blame me for—’
‘I tried to kill myself,’ he says, more to divert her than anything, but shit, that was the absolute wrong thing to tell her because he can’t see her expression now, but he knows when she’s furious, her shoulders shaking.
‘What. The fuck.’
‘You tried to get out, Dean, and I dunno what they did to you, but I was trying to get to you, I tried everything I could – I went to a crossroads. But. You got out. And I didn’t get to you –‘
Teeth set sharp in his lip, she bites down on him until he’s bleeding, copper spread shared between them, her fingers digging into his arms, they kiss like this is something reckless and precarious, they might fall over the edge into desolation, it might be a cliffside fight, it might be a kiss, but he’s holding her as tight as he can, his hand in her hair yanking her head back, his teeth set against her throat so he’ll see the mark later, hard and purple, because this is all he knows now. This is real.
She says, ‘Sam, fuck, yes,’ in her honey sunshine voice.
-
Her knuckles are torn and bruised.
‘I had to get outta that box you put me in,’ she says, without accusation, but Sam still grimaces and she points to the road, drags her hair up with her hands into a messy ponytail. ‘Motel. Shower, gigantor, I gotta get this dirt offa me. Then I’ll be a real girl.’
Elbows splayed, chest open, she looks vulnerable. Except for her smile.
Sam feels the hole in his chest squeeze and all he wants to do is explain, apologize, he wasn’t there for her like she’s been for him, but she taps the roof of the car like this is a taxi cab.
‘Let’s go. Vamoose.’
He’s behind the wheel again because Dean said, Nah, you drive, I’ve had a long day, since I kinda came back from Hell and all. It’s not the journey, it’s the destination.
He wants to ask her, as she rubs awkwardly at her hands, curling her fingers, he wants to ask – she’s a demon, what does that mean, she’s his sister, a demon, a hunter. What does she want now.
He remembers her fears of being in Hell, holding her in the dark, shivering, and they never talked about it; what was she leaving behind (him, her little brother, a Sam-shaped shell) and what she would turn into (the hunted darkest); he remembers what Ruby (ashes to ashes) told her.
Hell burns you and presses you and strips you until there’s nothing left, and then does it all over again. And again. And again. You don’t come out a diamond. You come out as horror, blood seeking blood seeking blood.
His sister has black (demon) eyes. She might not have a heartbeat. He isn’t sure.
It doesn’t matter, none of it matters.
Four towns over and he pulls into the first motel he sees.
He says, ‘I wasn’t ever gonna salt and burn you.’
She opens the door to go get them a room and says, ‘I know, Sammy.’
-
This is like a crime of passion.
-
In the trunk, Sam’s kept her duffel alongside the ammo; it seemed fitting. Every time he needed bullets, he’d see it. His sister like the bullet he’ll commit suicide with. He bought her the bag two years ago. It’s pink camo and the look of disgusted annoyance on her face when he gave it to her was beyond what he’d imagined. It almost led to a legendary prank war, one for the record books, but then things had started going to hell, no pun fucking intended, and the prank war got lost in the fray.
Pink camo and Dean stenciled her name in military capitals on the sides with black spray paint. Some of the pink blobs have drawings on them, done in Sharpie, from when she’d be on the phone with Bobby or Sam was busy on the laptop or she was simply waiting for him to get out of the shower, you’re worse than a damn girl and I oughta know, Sammy, I am one.
Latin curses and his name and her name and fantastic, impossible swords and gun-crossbow combinations and runes and symbols and mythological creatures terrorizing tiny villages of stick people with their houses on fire.
He brings it in with his duffel and she smiles, just like ol’ times, boyo, and it’s the two of them again.
All of her clothes are in there and a few of Sam’s shirts she continued to steal (her face hot with denial). Her favorite gun. A bottle of black nail polish. The candy-apple red pair of satin panties, trimmed with bows and lace and not much else Sam bought for her one birthday (like I’m that kind of girl and she was, wearing them under her loose jeans so he’d see them when she bent over, letting him palm her ass in them until they were both aching and out of breath).
It’s like the time after Broward County. He’ll remember his days (weeks, months) alone, but maybe if he tries hard enough, he’ll remember it as not being real.
-
When she goes to shower, she steps out of her clothes as she walks, leaving them in her wake. He watches her ass, the sway of her hips, the lean lines of her back, the easy flex of her body and he’s missed her so much.
She’s not tiny, five foot six in her stocking feet, but she takes up all of his space.
She leaves the bathroom door open and Sam licks his lips, the remnants of her mouth on his, and he’s yanking his shirt over his head before he realizes it.
He steps in behind her, the water too hot like Dean’s always preferred it, and she doesn’t turn around, just leans into him, slippery and naked against him, a cocktease when she wants to be and he slides his arm around her waist, fingers sinking to find her, in the vee of her legs and she gasps, like every other time he’s stroked her.
‘Dean, you can’t – you don’t get to leave again,’ Sam says, and she arches into his touch, baring her neck and as she looks at him, her eyes black and swimming deep, she says, ‘Then you need to stop dying on me.’
Fingers inside her then, he can almost see his reflection in the black as she squeezes so hot around him and maybe they’re both demonic. Diabolical.
She comes on his hand with the water running over them, over her smooth unbroken skin, and diabolical, fucking devilish, he picks her up as she’s still shaking, his name rising high from her mouth and she slaps at the shower knob, the water going to a trickle as he carries her out to the bed, wet and dripping.
Dean spread out for him, he settles between her legs, like the past months don’t exist, like the two of them haven’t been apart, between earth and Hell. He bites everywhere he can see, her shoulder, the tattoo at the swell of her breast, her belly, her hipbones.
Sam noses at her thigh, then licks her open, he has to taste her, long sloppy slides of his tongue, but too soon she’s dragging him up for a kiss and he lets her taste cover the vague sulfur at the back of his throat.
One long thrust splitting her and she stops breathing.
He fucks her slow until they’re almost distraught, and she tilts her hips, and then he fucks her deep and if Sam isn’t dead, he might be dying as she begs by repeating his name.
Sam Sammy Sam Sam.
Baby boy.
-
She presses her mouth to his ribs and says, ‘I think that belongs to me.’
The black cord around his neck, her amulet resting on his chest. He takes it off, settles it on her, lifting her hair out of the circle of the cord.
It swings between them like a divining plumb as she leans up and pinches his chin. ‘You take to wearing my things all the time? Maybe you got a panty fetish I should know about?’
He laughs and she rolls over to watch TV, the amulet gold (warm from his skin) set in the valley of her breasts like the heart he’s trying to find.
-
Whenever they played poker growing up, Dean would shuffle the cards, shuffle bridge shuffle bridge, then after cutting the deck, Sam would fan out the cards. They would each pick one, just one, to see what their future was. Then an extra card: them together, Dean and Sam.
Dean pulled the ace of diamonds or the ace of hearts, consistently. She liked to joke she got all the money and all the love, yeah, I know how to hustle, baby, for love or money, she’d smirk.
Sam pulled a spade, always a spade until he turned thirteen and then the jack of spades chased him through the deck. At seventeen, his fingers started finding the king of spades, irrevocably, and when he left for college, he burned it.
The last card, their card, was the two of hearts, without fail.
It wasn’t card counting, it wasn’t a curse, it wasn’t a blessing. It was their life.
Dean’s wearing Sam’s hoodie and nothing else, the curve of her hip showing every time she moves where she’s propped against the headboard. There’s a red handprint on her ass; she leaned over to fish out their deck of cards (a new-old deck, complete with the king of spades, worn from the last few years) and Sam couldn’t keep his hands off her, spanking her and he’s got a bruise on his bicep where she punched him.
She’s made Sam stay naked, ‘you’re gonna wear your dimples,’ she says, and she shuffles the cards, bridges them between her hands, shuffle bridge shuffle bridge and knocks the deck with her still-swollen knuckles for Sam to cut.
Cut, fan, and Sam inhales, exhales as Dean skims her fingertips over the face-down cards.
It isn’t the future, it isn’t anything, it’s just something they do. But. She chooses and the card snaps as she flicks it over onto the damp sheets (like baptism).
No red. No diamonds, no hearts.
Queen of spades. The armed queen.
She gives a little chuckle under her breath. ‘Sam, you think yours will be,’ she says, tilting her head (the bruises from his teeth on her neck shifting with her), ‘well, you wanna bet on yours?’
He shakes his head because he knows. He doesn’t keep the suspense, just picks and pulls.
King of spades. The king and his queen.
‘Looks like it’s us against them,’ he says and she laughs. Her eyes (green) close as they twine fingers and he looks at the ceiling and whichever card feels right…they stop.
‘Ready?’
Their card.
Ace of hearts.
‘Us against them,’ Dean says, laughing, the same laugh, nothing smoky like she’s been burning for months.
Sam couldn’t be happier.
-
Sam doesn’t dream. The first time since he watched Dean die, screaming his name, he sleeps for more than two hours.
He wakes to Dean’s fingers in his hair and she’s singing, didn’t leave nobody but the baby, low and sweet, like a country lullaby.
‘What. What’s that from.’
‘Dunno. Heard it on the radio. Got it stuck in my head.’
He’s resting in her lap, cheek against her hip and he smells the two of them on the soft skin of her inner thighs and he’s suddenly furious. He didn’t save her. She clawed her way out. Tooth and nail and it’s possible the fight turned her into what she is now. Fuck fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
His hand finds her knee, gripping, because she’s his sister, that’s what she is now because that’s what she’s been since he was born and that’s fucking it.
She scratches at his scalp, as if she knows something’s wrong, but all she says is, ‘So, you got a hunt for me, big boy?’
‘I, uh,’ Sam says, momentarily derailed, he hadn’t thought about it, curious if she would want to swing into the saddle of hunting, but he should’ve known better, it’s Dean and if she doesn’t have something to shoot, she gets jittery. And he just got her back, he’s getting used to that, having her here after months of absolute black-hole nothing, because he’d faced the world with a darker fatalism than they’d either one experienced alive. He’s getting used to her, what she talks about in her sleep, knives and torn flesh like ripping a seam and blood. He’s getting used to her, she has some new power he can feel, throbbing like a second heartbeat. ‘I can find one. I aim to please.’
She fetches food and eats ravenously with the slickshine of grease on her lips and when he looks at her, he sees green and steals her fries and she grabs his wrists with her strong little hands, fuck off, sasquatch, these are mine. She hums as he searches for a hunt, she hums and reads (a book she found in her bag, an empty matchbook as her bookmark and she picked up where she left off when she died), she hums and it’s like any other Thursday.
Nothing out of the ordinary, though something, maybe, three-four hours away and it sounds like demons.
Sam winces. Demons. Exorcisms. Dean. He can’t, he might send her on a return trip to Hell, he can’t.
She appears like smoke, her hair tickling his face. ‘You look constipated. Which, normally you look constipated, but this looks especially bad. Like maybe –‘
‘Dean.’
‘What’s up,’ she says.
‘Demons?’ Sam asks, hiding how he’s lost all oxygen, and she laughs.
‘Sounds like a party. I think we should crash. BYOB.’
-
Dean drives. And it’s like a morbid fantasy, something Sam could’ve jerked off to while she was gone, remembering how she’d be driving and he’d sprawl out, legs wide, and unzip his jeans with a lazy hand, pulling himself out to stroke slow and her breathing would pick up, her cheeks flushing, Sammy, I’m driving, what, what’re you, you tryin’ to kill us both, your dick is gonna be the death of me, keep that lethal weapon in your pants.
She drives and he slips his fingers into her pocket and who cares if they’re headed to kill some demons, he’s got her behind the wheel again and he curls his fingers to tickle at her.
‘Sam.’
He sits like that, his arm starting to cramp, but he’s not going to move, because he can do this.
They pull into town and Sam’s ready to set up home base at the motel, to see how they can find these fuckers, but Dean zones out at a stoplight and when people start honking, she flips them off, like a sleepwalker.
‘I know where they are.’
She grins, pitch-black eyes, and Sam feels the rush of that power, that drumbeat inside her, like the thick flow of blood.
Sure enough, she drives blind, turning as if her hands are dowsing rods and it’s a brick house with off-white siding and a birdhouse-shaped mailbox. A neighborhood with a garage sale starting tomorrow and a team booster-painted sign shaped like a football (BRANDON #42 GO BIG RED) and the sound of a weed trimmer a few houses away.
She parks out front underneath a maple and says, ‘Better’n a GPS,’ smirking, but to Sam, she looks a little shaken and unhappy.
‘You got a built-in EMF too?’ he says to irritate her, settle her and she shoves at him to get out of the car, ‘you shut your fucking trap.’
There are two demons (in love, possessing a married couple) and Sam remembers Dean talking about the demon couple back in Ohio (lovers for centuries, beyond time and planes of existence), the demons Sam shot to save her.
These demons in front of them smile and invite them in, a welcome mat at the front door, a table in the front hall for their mail and keys, and lemonade (lemon slices) in a pitcher.
‘The Winchesters,’ the man says and the woman’s smile grows bigger. ‘Oh, Dean, look at you. You’re topside. And looking so healthy.’
‘New and improved! A nice, pretty glow to your cheeks,’ the man says and the woman clicks her tongue, ‘Bet you’re glad to be back with your brother.’
They look at Sam, their eyes flooding black, and the woman flips her hair over her shoulder. ‘It’s so nice to meet you, Sam. We hear all kinds of great things about you.’
‘Oh yes, and now that you’ve got your sister, especially with how she is now,’ the man says, putting an arm around his wife, ‘you’ll really get along nicely. They tell us you’re the one, the king.’ He shakes a fist (like triumph). ‘So we’re waiting. You just holler when you’re ready for us.’
And Sam’s so fucking tired of that bullshit, not again, sure he’s stuck with weird powers and a sort of electrical crawling feeling, but he’s so fucking done.
But Dean steps in fast, her eyes still black, no attempt to hide. ‘You don’t get to fucking have him. Got it? Go find yourself another ‘king’.’ She makes sarcastic air quotes, hip cocked out.
‘Oh, sweetheart, you’re so new. He doesn’t have a choice,’ the woman hisses, grabbing Dean by the arm and now, now, now, Sam would do the exorcism now, but he can’t, it’ll dispel Dean too, banish her.
Holy fuck.
The fight turns nasty in the blink of an eye because the demons try to throw them around (like the old days when Sam and Dean were both human), but Dean can match them now (her power pounding in her veins, Sam feels it like a speaker vibration).
The demon lovers scream and Sam hears the woman say to Dean, ‘You love your brother like I love my husband? We can love. And you should want what's best for him.’
Sam kills them with the knife.
There’s blood in the lemonade as it puddles from the smashed pitcher. The chocolate mohair couch is painted with dark red spatters. The rug soaks everything up (lemon slices like polka dots).
He had to kill them, hosts and all.
Dean stares at him and gently wipes blood off his hands.
-
Her tattoo (black ink overlapping a rushed red hickey) is broken. The circle is snapped, like another memory of sacrifice and pain. Like another memento of death. There isn’t a scar, just the black circle left open as if it was unfinished, shifted.
She can be possessed-dispossessed and Sam traces over it with a finger.
‘You need a binding link,’ he says, ‘it’ll keep you in your body,’ and Dean fake-smiles, more like she bares her teeth.
‘Oh joy. Just what I always wanted.’
‘I thought you always wanted a unicorn.’
Dean scowls, sticks her tongue out, blehhh. ‘Geez, Sam, no, that’d be you. I wasn’t gone so long that you can’t tell us apart, right.’
Oh, first chance he gets, he’s finding her a stuffed unicorn. He smirks. ‘You’re the short one.’
Her (green) eyes narrow. ‘I’m the short one, ha fucking ha. No, actually, you’re just abnormally freakish and unwieldy.’
‘Unwieldy, uh-huh. So where do you want the link.’
‘Bite me.’
‘So I get to choose,’ Sam says, and this is like the good ol’ days, maybe they’re making a comeback.
‘Fuck you.’
‘We can try that.’
Dean chokes on her beer and Sam smiles innocently and flags down the bartender for a round of shots to get his sister good and drunk, for fuck’s sake (she always gets horny and a little slush-eyed).
They have to make the brand (to burn her in, scar her in her body): just a circle with a line. It’s simple and terrifying because this will keep Dean in her bones and skin forever (amen) and she won’t disappear or die.
The same isn’t true for Sam, and Dean watches him with a fear he’s never seen before, but he doesn’t acknowledge it and lets her try to hide (smother) it.
Down low on her hip, a seared white scar like a tattoo, and Sam almost turns violent at the smell of her skin smoking because this would be only a fraction, a tiny decimal of what Hell was like.
She won’t go through it again. She’s with Sam until the world ends or he dies, whichever comes first.
(Maybe they’ll find a way to keep him, immortal, so they can sit on the hood of the car and watch storms come and go, the stars explode one by one, but right now, Dean’s taking his hand, cupping it to her breast, his thumb finding her nipple and she covers his eyes with her palms.)
She climbs on top of him, knees squeezing his hips, and she guides him into her, gasping as she sinks down. He fucks up into her, her hands falling away, and he watches her ride him with her head thrown back, his name in her throat and her eyes don’t change color.
He comes hard and she screams and he loves his sister.
Dean cleans them up, cleaning in rhythm, her voice low under the buzz of the television, you and me and devil makes three, don’t need no other lovin’ baby.
-
‘They wanna use you to bring Hell on earth,’ she says, inspecting the guns. ‘I think we can manage that on our own.’
Sam smiles until his face hurts. ‘Yeah, we’re Winchesters.’
-
This is like a suicide pact.
-
After that, they hunt exclusively for demons. There are other things out in the dark that are killing people and they know it, but they also know there are other hunters who can get the job done and if the hunting community’s distracted by the rising swell of dead-and-depraved, then the hunting community will ignore the rumors about Dean Winchester’s return and how she’s not quite the same.
(Dean laughs. ‘Yeah, I’m the bitch from Hell, pun so very fucking intended, so y’know, don’t mess with me.’ She waves her gun in a witch’s face who doesn’t know any better, but the witch needs to learn a lesson: don’t fuck with things you don’t even remotely understand.)
It’s not a democratic decision; Dean’s out for revenge, pure and simple, because demons have fucked up their whole lives, their very existence, from before Sam was even born. Sam thinks she gets a thrill from hunting demons (like herself) because his sister’s always liked knowing the enemy, predicting their moves, and then blasting the hell outta them, pun quite possibly fucking intended. She loves hunting and the demons, they think she’ll be on their side. That tickles her pink. And watching Dean laugh is the highlight of Sam’s days.
Sam switches to demons as protection. They’re a gossipy bunch and word doesn’t need to get around about Dean. Sooner or later, everyone will know. The binding link saves Dean, the tattoo shields Sam, but a demon war is starting with Sam held up as some sort of banner and that shit needs to stop. Getting rid of everyone else grinds things to a halt.
Like wiping troops off a map. You can’t fight if you don’t have an army.
It becomes messy. Sam tries an exorcism (one demon in a college coed; she likes margaritas, the color peach, and Waylon Jennings), and while the demon shakes and sweats and curses, out of the corner of his eye, he can see Dean doing the same, teeth chewing at her mouth until she’s bleeding, so he puts the knife through the girl’s heart.
He does a rare thing: he can feel each demon (soul) and he thinks he can cage it, squeeze it, make it disappear, so he tries in an apartment in Omaha, but he can’t control it and Dean’s caught in the whirlpool of power (the steady beat of her own fighting back) and the top of his head has been chopped off, so Dean takes the knife and he closes his eyes; when he opens them, she’s holding out a bottle of aspirin and her clothes are soaked red.
(‘No more of that shit,’ Dean says, ‘freaky mojo stuff.’ She makes a horrible, crumpled face and strikes a distorted pose, hand out like she’s trying to stop a bus or something, ‘just drop it, sparky, I don’t need to watch you blow your brains out with your mind.’ Then she pauses and points her beer at him. ‘Actually, that just blew my mind.’ Later, Dean drags him into the filthy bar bathroom and blows him and his legs almost give out after he comes down her throat and she winks, wiping her mouth. ‘That’s better.’)
There isn’t much left to do. Either Dean has to get out of earshot, which means leaving Sam alone with shifty, motherfucking demons or they have to kill them. Hosts and all.
Everyone has to sacrifice something sometime.
-
Bobby notices the pattern and calls Sam. He calls Sam only because he doesn’t know about Dean.
She’s startled black-eyed and it makes Sam laugh as he answers, so for a second he forgets to say anything and Bobby’s saying, ‘Sam? Sam? You okay?’
‘Oh, yeah, sorry, Bobby.’
‘You huntin’ demons, kid?’ Bobby asks and he sounds cautious on his end. Sam pictures him in his kitchen, fiddling with his cap, pacing. The last time he saw Bobby, the man had been drunk and brokenhearted. Bobby loved Dean like his own (a daughter, his tomboy little girl), but he could live without Dean; Sam couldn’t, wouldn’t, and didn’t want to try. He’d left because that was one time misery didn’t love company.
‘Yeah, we – I am. They’ve fucked our – my life over and enough is fucking enough. I’m taking ‘em out. Every last one of ‘em,’ he says.
Bobby’s silent and Dean’s watching him with her mouth open (eyes shining green) and Sam hears the phone crack in his grip.
‘Think I’m becoming an expert, Bobby,’ he says lightly and there’s a staticky push over the line as Bobby lets out a breath.
‘Sam, you can’t get revenge on all of ‘em. It’s Hell. That’ s like, like fightin’ water or somethin’, there’s too much of it and you’ll drown. They’ve got evil on tap. Your sister –‘
‘My sister,’ Sam interrupts, ‘doesn’t exactly give a fuck.’ It comes out as if Dean’s still dead; it comes out harder than he expected, like gunshots, and he didn’t even realize how fucking angry he is, vindictive, a ruthless sonuvabitch.
Dean frowns, drawing her knees to her chest and he knows he’s hurt her because Bobby is family and he’s being an ass to the only other person who mourned Dean.
‘You got anything that might help?’ he asks, hoping to soften whatever the fuck is raging inside him and let this conversation off the hook.
‘Uh, yeah, kid, yeah,’ Bobby says hastily, ‘why don’t you swing by. Demons are my specialty or did you forget.’
Bobby’s wife. Sam glances at Dean; she’s puffing air in her cheeks, squeaking it through her mouth as she plays solitaire, cheating. ‘Yeah, should be up there tomorrow morning.’
She punches Sam in the belly later before they get on the road. ‘And how exactly do you think this is gonna go down, huh, genius?’ Her cheeks flush, her jaw tightening, and she stares at her boots. ‘We shoulda told him. It’s not like he’s gonna exorcise me or disown me or anything.’
Sam hunches in on himself because she’s right (fuck), but he’s been so worried, so wrapped up in Dean, he can’t see anything else (her green-black eyes).
‘Fine. You tell him,’ he says and Dean squints at him as if he’s insane, then she throws her hands in the air.
‘Dammit, yeah, okay, I’ll tell him. Just don’t fucking let him douse me with holy water. That stuff fucking hurts like a motherfucker,’ she retorts and when Dean uses her salty language, he knows she’s not happy, but it’s a plan and she’ll do it.
She hugs Bobby before he can do anything else and then Sam gets between them, yeah, it’s really her, he knows, they went through the whole drill, but Bobby keeps shooting Sam looks like he doesn’t need another deal on his hands, he doesn’t need the Winchesters to keep dying on him or he’ll kill them both.
Sam understands the feeling; they need to stop dying, period.
He snags Dean’s beer (just in case) and conversation turns stilted because Dean isn’t ready to answer Bobby’s questions and it all comes to a head when Dean won’t walk into Bobby’s living room under the expansive devil’s trap.
‘Dean?’ Sam can’t stand to see that expression on Bobby’s face, but he nods at her and she floods her eyes and Bobby looks like death came early.
‘It’s her,’ Sam says quickly, ‘it’s her, she was down there too long, everything I tried didn’t work, Bobby, I couldn’t get to her, and she was down there too damn long, I, I, but she –‘
‘Shit.’
‘I’m a bit of a demon expert,’ Dean says, cheeky, blowing on her nails, shining them on her shirt, hot stuff, and Bobby shakes his head.
‘You Winchesters,’ is all he says and the two words are so cracked, Sam thinks he can see daylight between them.
‘Now you know why we’re hunting demons,’ Sam says as Dean rocks on her feet, back and forth, failing to hide her concern for Bobby (surrogate father).
Bobby nods and grabs a bottle of bourbon from his desk.
He drinks and they lay it out for him: Sam’s still got his tattoo, Dean’s got a shiny new binding link, they have Ruby’s demon-ganking knife and the demons want Sam for their own fucking party.
They mean business now; Dean can find them, Sam can kill them, and everyone goes home with a consolation prize (maybe a juicer).
‘One by one,’ Sam says, cracking his knuckles and Dean smirks.
‘Like bowling. We set ‘em up and knock ‘em down.’ She makes a bowling swing motion, arm out like she’s watching the ball and then she forms a little explosion (must be a strike), whoooosh.
‘Calm down, Michael Bay.’
‘Fuck you, Roland Emmerich.’
Bobby says, ‘You’re sure,’ the first words in over an hour and they shut up, Dean looking almost shy.
Sam says, ‘Yeah.’
When they leave, Bobby doesn’t hesitate to hug Dean and he says something to her, then he hugs Sam and says, ‘I hope you know what you’re doin’. What the other hunters don’t know won’t hurt ‘em.’
He sends them demon omens from then on. Demonic activity becomes their reason to tune in every week.
-
Sam’s naked and sweaty and staring at the ceiling because he just woke from a dream (Jess and a sunny day and a picnic under a tree that started dropping knives on them and as Jess ran away, the sky opened up with a split of lightning, and out crawled every monster known-unknown to man and they were all after Dean who stood there with her guns out, screaming words he couldn’t understand as her teeth fell out of her mouth) and this is his life. He won’t go back, even though yesterday, Dean was squishing the mustard and mayo out the sides of her burger and saying, Maybe we should set up shop somewhere.
The bed shifts, a leg sliding across his lap and she’s humming again, wah-wahing guitar riffs, maybe AC/DC (or Bob Seger, he caught her once singing Mötley Crüe and she threatened to beat him senseless). Her toes curl against his thigh and he captures her ankle (bird bones) and runs a fingertip up the sole of her foot before she jerks away.
‘Asshole,’ she laughs, balancing something in her fingers, a bottle of nail polish; she turns and sets it down, and he plays with her hair (it’s getting longer, maybe she’s alive). Dean rubs at his tattoo to get his attention, then smacks him, ‘hey, you, bitch, lookit.’
‘Jerk, what.’
She fans her hands around her face, fluttering her eyelashes and her eyes go green to black and she says, ‘My nails match.’
Black on black.
He laughs and says, ‘I’m sure they’ll appreciate you looking so pretty.’
‘Asshole,’ she says again because him calling her pretty is surefire embarrassment, from the time she was thirteen, getting her boobs and hips, all compact curves Sam wanted to lick when he was fifteen and horny constantly (when the breezes blew just right) and the first night he fumbled his giant alien hands on her perfect stomach and said, please, Dean, so pretty, so pretty for me, and she said, Sammy, baby boy, let me.
-
Demons say all kinds of things.
Dean, baby, you lookin’ fine, you came to the right side, baby, mmm, how ‘bout we do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight. Sam can watch. We’ll paint the town red.
Sam, look at you, all grown up and my my my, so kingly. Your sister’s a denizen of Hell now, don’t you want to rule so your sister will be safe? Family first, boy. Family first.
Dying for your brother didn’t make you a demon, Dean. Fucking your brother did. And you’re gonna turn him into one too.
All you two need is to let go and let it happen. Just take over. Give him some blood and he’ll be raring to go. And then we can all rejoice. I bet you know how to throw a killer party, Dean, a real motherfucking celebration. You’ve got skills. They still tell stories about you down below.
Fuck you and you and your knife, Ruby was setting you up, you stupid fucking dickhead, and just you wait, Sammy boy, we’re gonna get you, strip your flesh inch by inch until you’re nothing but muscle and bone and we’ll make sure you’re alive to feel every fucking second. And Dean, we’ll take them pretty eyes and make you watch ‘cause you know we’ll take your brother apart, then put him back together just to do it all over again. So fuck you, I can’t wait to get my hands on –
We’ll make sure you drown in your own blood, Sam. You’re gonna lose. And Dean will be our little bitch; she’d look good with a collar and a leash. So you can take that happy news and shove it up your ass.
Demons say all kinds of things, in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of bodies, all ages, shapes, sizes.
Sam kills them. Dean watches. Sometimes her eyes are green, sometimes they’re black.
Sam doesn’t really care.
They aren’t keeping count, but he knows they’re getting deep in the double digits. At this rate, they’ll be in the triples soon.
He kisses Dean every single time.
-
Dean’s power is growing, the beat thicker in Sam’s head, or maybe something within him is growing and Dean smiles at him from behind the wheel, he’s trying to sleep in the shotgun seat and he thinks maybe, just maybe, he could snap his fingers and Hell would bow, then break.
She says, ‘Assface, asshat, asshole, dumbass, dickface, bitch, sasquatch, you huge piece of dumb muscular meat, stop staring at me.’
She’s his big sister alright.
Dean smiles, her hair in a ponytail whipping in the wind, her freckles he’s lost count of (more numerous than demons), her eyes; she turns up the music and belts out the chorus.
She’s what revenge was made for.
(His heart grew three sizes that day.)
-
Word gets around.
-
The TV’s playing Alien (Dean saying, ‘Game over, man, game over’ and Sam saying, ‘That’s Aliens,’ and Dean’s palm smacks loud on his chest, she leaves a small red print) and Sam falls asleep to the sound of the Nostromo crew’s screams.
He wakes (no dreams) and Dean’s messing about with the guns. She's singing let's do some living after we die, swaying naked, breasts bouncing a little to the beat, her knifed hair brushing her shoulders.
They say you get the demon you deserve.
This is the demon he got, the one he wants (his heart). The devil that he knows and loves.
This is his sister. These are her eyes.