Archive of Our Own ^beta

At least, in the end, the angel had given Dean his meat suit back.

It felt like a consolation prize. Sorry we didn’t move fast enough to save your humanity but hey, we’ll let you possess your own dead body. That’s what was happening here; no point in getting frilly about it. Dean wore himself like a pair of old jeans that had been in storage too long. So no, it wasn’t the same. Demons just didn’t meld to the walls of a vessel like a soul did. Too much grease.

And yet. Dean had been stupidly, blindingly grateful to open his eyes, look down at himself, and find familiar proportions. Distant in memory, but still familiar. Climbing out of the coffin had been easy. So had walking across enough of the country to find Bobby’s place.The whole yeah I’m a demon but I’m also still Dean and I don’t have any urge to wear your intestines like jewelry conversation had been long, painful, and best forgotten.

The important part was that Bobby had come around in the end.

Sam had too. Eventually. Reluctantly.

It took a visit from the angel—Castiel—for Dean to realize exactly how off-book the rescue mission had gone.

“We were supposed to have saved the Righteous Man before he turned,” the angel had said. He’d sounded deeply irritated. “We were too late, obviously, but we had our orders. So we brought what was left of Dean Winchester and put it in his body.”

Dean hadn’t appreciated the phrase “what was left.” Sure, he wasn’t human anymore, but he was still rooted in it. He could still look at himself and recognize the parts that belonged to Dean, and only to Dean.

“You can’t change him back?” Sam had demanded.

He had looked different, Dean managed to note in a vague way during this conversation. Maybe he’d matured in the year Dean had missed. There was a fresh confidence to him, a glow to his features.

“Angels are powerful. We’re not Gods.” The angel had turned to Dean. “You’re still of use. You can still prevent the rest of the seals from breaking.”

Because surprise, Dean had accidently kick started the Apocalypse.

But the breaking seals thing came later.

Before that, Sam and Dean had to figure out what it meant that Dean’s soul had gone irredeemably black. That he’d filleted more human souls than he could remember. That his few hundred years had somehow fit into Sam’s one year, so they ended up stooping and stumbling to try and get anywhere near the same level.

It sucked.

It really, really sucked.

***

The first few days were a new version of hell. Sam was still twitchy, torn between the fact that Dean was back and that Dean sometimes smelled like sulfur. Things were too tense for fart jokes; that’s how bad it was.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise for either of them that they didn’t so much fall back on hunting as scramble to it while tripping over their own feet. They needed any kind of scaffold.

So. On the day after Castiel admitted that the angels had screwed up with their grand plan of saving the Righteous Man, Dean and Sam found themselves on the fast track to Vermont, chasing the tail end of something that cracked its victims’ skulls open, picked out their brains, and left the rest of the body for some poor schmuck to discover, if the reports were to be believed.

They talked a little. Innocent things, like what Dean had missed in his year’s absence from Earth—only a year; Dean still didn’t quite believe it—and whether an iPod deck for the Impala was “practical” or “desecrating my Baby.”

And there had been a funny pause at the word “desecrating” but it was skipped over in silent agreement.

Things got really sticky when they stopped at a gas station and Dean went to the cashier with as much junk food as he could fit in two arms. They didn’t have M&Ms in Hell.

The cashier was a pimply kid with a body that bowed like a sapling. Sam had had that body, once upon a time.

While the cashier bagged his items, Dean sneezed once or twice. The cashier glanced over, started saying “Bless you,” then froze. Dean gave him a bland smile even as his heart fluttered somewhere at the base of his throat.

The kid let a bag of Doritos sink to the counter.

Dean’s smile dropped too.

That’s when Sam ambled up to the counter, then paused. His face paled. He grabbed at Dean’s upper arm and hauled him out of the gas station. Though Dean technically had super strength now, he didn’t offer an ounce of resistance. They were in the car and squealing back onto the interstate before the kid could wonder if this is what people mean when they talk about LSD flashbacks.

“What?” Dean demanded from the passenger seat. “Sam, what?”

“Eyes,” Sam bit out.

Dean slapped down the visor and peered at the dingy little mirror. His eyes were liquid pools.

“How do I turn them off?” Dean demanded.

“I don’t know!” Sam’s voice was high-pitched. Almost a squeak. “Why don’t you know?”

“I don’t…” Dean trailed off and stared into his reflection. “Fuck off,” he ordered. Ordered the demon. Ordered himself.

Sam stared down the road, and Dean didn’t think he was letting himself look in Dean’s direction, which was fair enough. Dean closed his eyes briefly, exhaled, and then opened them to try again.

Green eyes looked back.

“Oh,” Dean mouthed. He turned to Sam. “Sam,” he said. Sam inched his head in Dean’s direction. His chest deflated.

“That wasn’t good,” he said in a low voice.

“No kidding.”

“That can’t happen again, Dean.”

“Yeah okay.”

“I’m serious.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Dean stared out the passenger window and bit hard at his bottom lip. It drew blood that tasted like sulfur.

***

Here’s the thing.

Dean remembered passing out of humanity and into demonhood. It happened slowly, sure, but at some point he looked down and realized that his soul had crossed some threshold. It didn’t smell the same, didn’t taste the same. What used to be his hands looked more like claws and his face’s structure had altered so drastically that Dean didn’t think anyone would be able to look at it and think “human.” Maybe something more along the lines of “eldritch horror.” And the fact that Dean did not, in fact, actually have hands or a face, that this was literally a projection of his true self, made things that much more squeamish.

Here’s the second thing.

Dean knew exactly how he’d gotten there. If he’d had the mind, Dean could have listed each soul he’d sliced apart, with illustrated diagrams of where he’d cut and how. He’d have been proud of them too, in his own way. Alistair said Dean had an artistry to his work; a real flair. And Dean suspected that he’d been ready to come into his own, when Castiel and his gang appeared.

Dean wasn’t angry with the angel for that, necessarily. Because artist or not, Hell was still Hell. And even after a hundred years Dean had never really forgotten that he had a brother up top whose grin made Dean feel like he’d swallowed a sun. So Dean welcomed the change. He folded up a few hundred years of racks and soul screams, tucked it away, and rooted around for the afterimage of his humanity instead. It worked well enough. Dean just needed to practice.

And here’s the third thing.

No, Dean didn’t have some innate drive to maim and torture the living.

But he couldn’t find any guilt for torturing and maiming Hell souls either. He seemed to have left it behind.

***

“Duck!” Dean roared.

Sam dropped out of pure instinct and Dean buried rock salt in the chest of whatever sailed over Sam’s bowed head. The thing yipped and tumbled to the side. It landed in the undergrowth, snarling and scrabbling. Dean bounded over and dropped the shotgun in favor of hauling out his machete. He’d rather cut off this thing’s head than experiment with finding its kryptonite.

He spotted the eyes for a split second before it leapt up and buried its teeth into Dean’s throat. Dean’s body reacted like it still had a soul inside of it. Fight or flight, a blinding stretch of panic. And for a moment, Dean was sure that he was going to die and head back to Hell.

But that was dumb and that made no sense.

Dean grappled with the writhing body attached to him, even as its clawed back legs pummeled at his belly and thighs. He found the back of the thick neck, then brought his machete down on the spinal cord. The thing wailed, but just dug its teeth in harder. Dean couldn’t blame it. He’d do the same in its situation. The second hack severed the thing’s head completely. The machete had enough force behind it and the angle was such that the blade ended up buried halfway in Dean’s chest.

The thing’s body hit the leaf litter with a subdued thump-krsh.

When Dean turned to Sam, he had the thing’s head still hanging from his throat and the machete looking like a prop for a Halloween costume. Must have been a sight. When Dean opened his mouth to say something, he got a thin, ragged whistling instead. Damn thing severed his vocal cords.

Dean reached up and grappled the dead jaws apart. He sliced his fingers on the teeth, but in the end the jaw muscles snapped and the head landed a few paces away from the body. Dean pulled out the machete with a slick sound. He felt cool forest air seep into his body cavity.

Sam stared. Of course he did.

Told you I was Batman, Dean would have said. That would be just him enough to assure Sam that the torn throat and gaping wound didn’t really mean anything. Then again, the way Sam was looking at him, maybe it wouldn’t have helped.

Dean turned his attention to the decapitated thing and nudged it with his boot. He raised his eyebrows at Sam.

This what we were looking for?

“You okay?” Sam asked. Wasn’t even looking at the monster, the dingus.

“Eah,” Dean managed. He sounded all wet and whistling. Dean tried clearing his throat and a little gush of blood seeped from the remains of his throat. Dean made a face and touched at the meat there. It was wet and hanging and heavy.

Sam didn’t seem capable of looking away. A total rubbernecker at a car crash.

“That going to heal at all?” he asked.

Dean shrugged and kicked at the monster again.

“What?” Sam asked.

“Hnng,” Dean gestured at the body and made his eyes wider. Sam gave the monster a cursory glance.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he said. Dean huffed and crouched over the body, because he for one needed to see the creature that people unironically called a glawackus. Not too exciting, as it turned out. Not huge, and it had some feline traits to the muzzle and ears. The skull was broad, more like a bear. Dean wondered which branch of the evolutionary tree this thing had come from.

“Dean.” Sam stepped closer. He crouched next to Dean, stuck his flashlight in his mouth, and reached out to tilt Dean’s head up. Dean went with it. He stared at the canopy; a few stars peered through the foliage. They didn’t have stars in Hell.

Sam’s hand touched at the throat, then the hole in Dean’s chest.

“You should be dead,” Sam said after he pulled one hand away to grab the flashlight from his mouth. The other hand lingered.

“D’mon,” Dean gurgled. More blood seeped from his throat.

“Ew,” Sam scrunched up his nose like he was seven again. “Don’t do that.” He pulled his other hands away and stood. Dean went with him. Sam started shucking his jacket.

“Aghh?” Dean asked.

“Don’t want things falling out.” Sam wriggled out of his undershirt, then tore it into two strips. The larger went around Dean’s chest to cover the machete wound. The second ended up around Dean’s neck. It should have been tighter, but Sam was assuming that Dean needed to breathe, and Dean left it alone for Sam’s benefit.

The fabric was stained black by the time Dean and Sam stumbled from the woods and found the Impala where they’d parked it. After an argument in which Dean flailed a lot and made muffled noises, Sam bullied him into lying in the back seat in case another driver glimpsed them.

Dean kicked the back of Sam’s seat periodically as they drove back to the motel. Sam used the stupid iPod deck to blast some godforsaken boy band.

As soon as they entered the motel room, Dean made a beeline for the bathroom. He untied the cloth and examined the ragged mess of his throat. He tried sticking his finger in there but then pulled it out because it tickled and he felt like a little kid poking at road kill.

When Dean shifted his gaze across his reflection, he realized that his eyes were black. Damn it.

Something moved in Dean’s periphery. Sam stood at the doorway with John’s battered med kit. If he was bothered by the black eyes, he didn’t say anything about it. Instead he lifted the med it slightly.

Dean tilted his head.

Really?

“Let me,” Sam said.

That was that, really. Dean sat on the closed toilet seat and let Sam tend to him like in the old days. Sam still made stiches so neat that they could be in a textbook, and he made twenty of them across Dean’s chest so that Dean couldn’t feel the air on his ribs anymore. The throat was trickier, but in the end Sam patched up what he could and bound the whole thing with gauze.

The kicker was when Sam poured alcohol over the wounds. Dean sorely wanted to ask whether Sam really thought that infection would kill a demon where aortal bleeding wouldn’t.

But Sam looked so damn at peace with the action that Dean didn’t even try a groan. In fact, Dean was a model patient through the whole thing; didn’t wriggle or hiss or jerk away in pain.

When he’d finished, Sam straightened, packed up the med kit, and said “Thanks.” His hands were covered in Dean’s blood.

Dean felt at his throat as Sam went back into the main room, where the lights were still off. He’d probably forgotten that Dean could see things in the dark now. That was probably why, when he moved out of the light of the bathroom, Sam stuck one bloody finger into his mouth, closed his eyes, and exhaled.

***

Demons talked a whole lot of shit.

Dean knew that. Had heard enough trash talking when he’d hunted them as a human, and had to hear even more of it in Hell. So maybe Dean and Sam could have been forgiven for not listening to the demon when it screeched abuses with a thin, little boy voice, trying to be heard over Sam’s exorcism.

“You’re coming right back with me asshole! Think the big bad Righteous Man can just ignore the Holy Word? Huh? Fuck you! Fuck you and the angel you rode in on!”

“Such language for a kid—“ and then Dean had stopped.

Because they’d fucked up.

They’d fucked up so bad.

Rewind 48 hours.

Cue Sam Winchester unfolding from the passenger seat of the Impala, straightening his tie and squinting into the noon sun. Dean exited on the other side of the car, locked it then followed Sam up to an apartment building that was not decrepit, but not new anymore.

Dean’s scars from the glawackus were still visible but faded and silvering by now. Once Dean’s body had (probably confusedly) realized that it wasn’t dead, it had gone about healing things as best it could. Dean appreciated it; god only knew his body had every right to act like the corpse it had been for a whole year. Now here it was ambling about, getting ripped apart, captained by an oily cloud of black smoke. Sometimes Dean swore he could feel his body trembling with the sense that it housed something impure. Nothing like another mind; Dean was the only tenant. But perhaps human consciousness sans its soul still knew enough.

But then, Dean could bump against this body-sense with a little word of remembering, and it would relax again. So maybe it didn’t mind too much, if its current captain had derived from the previous one.

“They said his nose had been torn off?” Sam asked.

“Ah, yeah,” Dean peered at the name registry. “Nothing else. Just his nose.”

“Weird,” Sam stuck his hands into his pockets and squinted up at the apartment while Dean pressed the button next to Heather Wu’s name.

Ten minutes later, they were sitting in Heather’s tiny living room and listening to her explain that her boyfriend had been acting odd for the last few days. How he’d been downright secretive, not answering his phone, not showing up to work. And how yesterday he’d stumbled into the hospital, weeping, babbling that he’d lost his memories, and asking if anyone knew where his nose had gone.

Sam straightened as soon as Heather explained that part, and the look he threw Dean was so heavy with meaning that Dean nearly flinched.

“We’re going to ask someone else to take this case,” Sam said as soon as they gave Heather a business card and stepped into the hall.

“Why?” Dean had to hurry to keep up with Sam, because the kid was speeding down the hall like he had a vendetta.

“Demon?” Sam hissed. “This is obviously demon? We shouldn’t work it.”

“Why?” Dean asked again. That got Sam to halt, round on Dean, and squint.

“You’re being obtuse, even for you,” he said then started walking again.

“You’re being…obtuse.” Dean nearly tripped after him.

When they reentered the parking lot and slid into the car, Dean didn’t start the engine.

“You think I’m going to get in the same room as another demon, get inspired, and start possessing people?”

Sam stared out the window.

“It’s not a hive mind,” Dean continued.

“I know that.”

“Then we’re doing the case.” Dean started the engine. “Listen, it’s probably ideal. Takes one of Hell’s bitches to find one of Hell’s bitches. We’re fine.”

There was some truth to that because if Dean paid attention, be could practically taste this demon’s essence on the air. It smelled like hundreds of years of overcooked meat.

When they finally caught it, it was in an eight-year-old’s body. The boy had smooth brown skin and scabby knees, and his body didn’t look maimed, not yet. Dean could see the demon wearing the boy. That threw him off for a split second. It roiled through the fabric of the boy’s body like a pot of bubbling tar. Its face, leering and doglike, hung behind the boy’s face like the opposite of a Halloween mask. Sometimes Dean caught flashes of brilliant light, and he knew that the demon had the boy’s soul smothered in there somewhere. It left a sour taste in Dean’s mouth; a child didn’t belong anywhere near Hell or its progeny.

Thank god it wasn’t a very smart demon. Trapping it took a little bait and switch in an abandoned house and not much else.

After that, it was all annoying chatter.

“You are. You are Alistair’s boy,” it said in a high, needling voice, sprawled in the center of the devil’s trap while Sam pulled out the exorcism. “You were such a pretty thing on that rack, Aleph. I watched Alistair carve your lungs out once, you remember that?” The demon uses the boy’s face to smile big and bright, like the kid had just woken up on Christmas morning. “You squealed.”

Sam glanced over at Dean, and Dean shrugged. He’d had his lungs cut out enough times. No reason to think the demon was lying. It didn’t make any difference.

“You’re a dirty traitor, Aleph,” the demon stood and strained the edges of its trap. “Standing there all cool and collected, as if you’re somehow better than me. You remember the soul you turned inside out through one cut? Demons were talking about that one for months.”

Sam, who had been flipping through his book, slowed his movements. Dean tilted his head up.

“Why you calling me Aleph?” he asks.

The demon grinned again, and this time nothing about it looked boyish.

“You don’t know,” it chittered. “You got out too early to hear the good news. Alistair wasn’t done with you yet and now you’re still human-messy-bloody-raw-living-meat in the middle. You needed a few more years to cook.”

“If you’re not gonna give a straight answer, then don’t bother,” Dean said.

“Aleph is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet,” Sam said in a low voice.

Dean pursed his lips, then cocked his head at the demon. “You guys giving me a letter as a nickname? Not very creative.”

The demon giggled…well, demonically.

Sam huffed, like he was done with the whole thing, and started the exorcism. And Dean stood right in hearing distance like the massive, thundering idiot he was and didn’t even think about it until he felt Sam’s voice pierce him and yank.

It came together pretty quick in Dean’s head, and he bolted from the room in sheer, bloody terror. A few seconds later, he had to stumble to a halt because he could feel himself peeling open and the pain didn’t leave space for anything as coordinated as running. The sensation tore him to his core, and Dean had many words to describe it but Sam and euphoric came most readily. He pounded with the sense of Sam. Sam ordering him away. Tearing him apart like so much wet flesh. Sam as a tsunami of intent and Dean was a fool to think he could so much as stand up in its sweep.

“Dean?” Sam shouted.

“Finish!” Dean roared, because yeah he was a fool who thought maybe he could hold himself inside, maybe he was strong enough—

Dean careened out of his own mouth and twisted toward Hell before he could hear Sam call his name a second time.

***

Dean did make it back. All on his own, too, because he landed on the outer border of the first circle and no one really lived out there except the most miserable, sickly of demons. So it wasn’t too hard to haul himself back upstairs before anyone noticed his arrival. Nasty, long, hard work, sure. But he managed it.

He arrived in his body 48 hours after leaving it, Earth time.

When he opened his eyes he knew they were black, but Sam still barreled over from the other side of the room to tackle him in a bear hug. Dean hugged back because that was what they did, but he also allowed some small part of his brain to analyze the body beneath his hands. Trying to find clues that explained how his kid brother had made Dean feel…well.

When they pulled apart, Dean told Sam that they needed to be a whole lot more careful, or at least less of dumbasses.

“I forget,” Sam admitted. They were still in the abandoned house. Evidence of Sam’s camping there could be found in the duffel thrown in the corner and the dirty, battered look on Sam’s face. The boy was gone; Sam had probably gotten him back to his family.

“My eyes turn black and I smell like rotten eggs,” Dean told him. “How do you forget?”

“You still act like yourself.”

Dean got a pleased little thump in his chest when he heard that.

***

(Here’s something Dean noticed. When Sam had hugged him, he had a fresh demon scent clinging to him. Not Dean’s but someone else. It smelled a little like sulfur and a little like copper and a little like french fries.)

***

Dean got nervous around churches these days. It wasn’t anything tangible, he just felt especially oily whenever they drove past them. But at least most churches didn’t outright hurt him. The same could not be said for other religious paraphernalia. After enough incidents, Sam had to put any and all blessed items in their own bag, which Dean kept in a specific corner of the trunk and tried not to touch.

Of course, that hadn’t stopped Sam from once leaving a blessed rosary floating around in the trunk’s bottom. Dean’s hand brushed it when he was looking for a rifle and in the end, Dean got a shiny, red burn and Sam got a dressing down.

The worst time, though, was a few weeks after they accidently exorcised Dean. They’d just come back in from a long, hot, ugly scrabble with the ghost of a serial killer. Sam called the shower, so Dean sat himself on one of the yellow duvets and stared into nothing. He wasn’t supposed to be human anymore, but he still felt wrung out and shaking with adrenaline, which he found neither fair nor logical.

He spotted the flask sticking out of Sam’s duffel. Whiskey sounded like a grand idea, so Dean leaned over and snagged the flask. Screwed it open, tilted it back, and got a big ‘ole mouthful of liquid fire.

No, literally, it felt like liquid fire.

Sam pulled open the bathroom door—still in his muddied clothes—when Dean began hacking and retching. The flask was at Dean’s feet, the clear water trickling into the carpet.

“Pete’s sake,” Sam said, and Dean heard him cross the room and sit on the bed beside him. A big hand came up to thump at his back. Dean couldn’t straighten, because the holy water was currently eating through his insides and his hacking was starting to sound bloody.

Sam smoothed his hand across Dean’s back and waited for him to settle down. It took nearly five minutes; way too long. By the time Dean lifted his head, his throat was ragged, his eyes were puffy, and his abdominal muscles ached.

“We okay?” Sam asked. “Sorry, I forgot I had that in there.”

“Jerk.”

“It was an accident.”

“Being a demon sucks,” Dean rasped.

“I know.”

“No you don’t. It really sucks.”

Sam sighed and kept patting Dean’s back and eventually mopped up the holy water while Dean curled up on the bed and sulked.

***

The Impala’s standard demon ward had become an intolerable nuisance, for obvious reasons. But Dean hated driving around with the broken ward on the roof of Baby’s trunk; made him feel itchy and vulnerable. So Sam did some digging and cobbled together a ward that essentially still said “no demons” but included the addendum, “except for that one exceptionally handsome, charming demon. He’s cool.”

“Right,” Sam snorted. “You’re not like regular demons, you’re a cool demon.”

Dean smacked the back of his head for that one.

Dean donated a few drops of his blood when they painted the new ward. Now when he opened the Impala’s trunk he felt a mild tingle when the ward searched him over and agreed that he could pass.

Bobby’s house, on the other hand, would be a bit of a nightmare as far as devil traps and wards were concerned.

Dean and Sam meandered in that direction after finishing up a harpy case the next state over. Dean might have had the radio on too loud the last few hours of the drive and he might have been a little more snippy than usual, but he didn’t think anyone could blamehim.

“Yes I can, I can blame you,” Sam reached out for the umpteenth time to twist the volume knob. “If you don’t want to go to Bobby’s then turn around.”

“He’s apparently making dinner,” Dean grumbled. “Don’t wanna…” he pulled at his mouth before slapping his hand on the steering wheel again. Sam shifted in his seat.

“We’ve given him time to let it sink in,” Sam offered.

“Mm hm. Three whole months to let a crusty old man change his kneejerk reactions.”

Sam sighed.

“I mean, he knows…” he finished up with a vague hand wave.

Dean huffed and pressed on the gas pedal.

When they pulled up in front of the scrapyard, it was fast approaching evening and the windows in Bobby’s house shone crayon-yellow. Something knee-high and black barreled up to them when they stepped out of the Impala.

“Shit,” Dean pressed himself up against the side of the car. The dog’s black fur otherwise blended into the dim lawn, but Dean could pick out a vibrantly pink tongue and white teeth. An insistent muzzle nosed at his leg. Hot breath hit his jeans.

“Hey, Bobby got a new dog,” Sam appeared from the other side of the car and crouched down. The dog, sensing a sucker, abandoned Dean to snuffle and lick at Sam’s proffered hand and, a second later, his face.

“Shouldn’t let them do that,” Dean peeled himself away from the car. “Unsanitary. Bet it eats poop and…dead things.”

“You’re jealous,” Sam stood and ruffled the dog’s floppy ears. It bounded ahead of them as they strode across the lawn to the house.

Bobby opened the door a few seconds after Sam knocked. He looked between the two of them, like he was searching for something, then stepped back.

“Hope you’re in the mood for chili,” he said.

Sam entered the bright yellow of the house. Dean hesitated. He looked at Bobby and tried to say something, tried to explain himself, but the words got caught somewhere in his throat.

“I broke the main traps,” Bobby touched the brim of his cap. “Else you woulda had a nasty shock about midway down the driveway.”

“You had a trap in the driveway?” Dean asked.

“Boy, it surrounds the whole damn property.”

“That figures,” Dean nodded and entered the house.

Things were…surprisingly normal after that. They ate chili. They drank beer. Sam and Dean told Bobby about what they’d been up to the last three months. Bobby complained about new hunters who thought they knew what they were doing and really didn’t. The dog wandered around the table a few times and begged for scraps.

“Where you find him?” Sam asked as he let the fifth or sixth chunk of meat drop to the floor.

“Her,” Bobby was leaned back in his chair. “Someone in town was getting rid of their pups and this one had some spunk.”

“Pup?” Dean eyed the black dog as it nosed hopefully at Sam’s thigh.

“Yeah, lookit her paws,” Sam said. “She’s gonna be huge.”

Probably nearly hellhound sized, Dean thought. He didn’t say it out loud.

***

They hung around Bobby’s place for a solid week. It was maybe a little longer than their usual visits, but Sam found a set of new monster tomes and convinced Dean to let them stay a few extra days so he could peruse them. Dean didn’t think it had as much to do with books as with the fact that it was damn nice to slow down for once. Which was why Dean never quite found it in himself to call Sam out, and instead buried himself in old engines that needed some fixing.

He enjoyed the humanity of the task. Cars didn’t scream when you took them apart, and they were a hell of a lot easier to put back together. No one judged him for the calming action of picking things apart and examining the components.

Sometimes Sam brought food out to Dean. Sometimes it was Bobby. The dog hung around regardless.

“Your dog needs to learn to bark at demons, not beg their sandwiches off of them,” Dean told Bobby on the fourth day. They were seated on a few tires. The dog stared at Dean’s food with ropes of saliva hanging from her mouth.

“She don’t know any better,” Bobby leaned back. “She’ll learn eventually.”

Dean grunted and relinquished a scrap of turkey.

“I gotta ask you something,” Bobby said, his eyes trained on the dog as she wolfed the food down. Dean straightened.

“C’n you eat salty foods?” Bobby asked.

“What?”

“Potato chips and all that. Pretzels.”

“Yeah. I uh. Turns out I can.”

“Iodized salt, yeah,” Bobby grunts. “But it don’t affect you at all? No tingle?”

“No, don’t think so.”

Bobby shrugged. “Always wondered,” he said. “You know human bodies are pretty damn salty.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh point four percent. That’s seawater.”

Dean realized he was grinning slightly. He tossed a scrap of crust to the dog.

“Anything else?” Dean asked. “What my crap looks like? Can I still get drunk?”

“Can you?”

“Absolutely, with a bonus of no hangovers.”

“Then that should just about cover it,” Bobby slapped his thighs and stood up with a small grunt. “You bring that plate in when you’re done, kid. I don’t need more getting lost out here.”

“Yeah boss,” Dean said, and let the dog take the last fourth of his sandwich from his hand.

***

On the sixth day, the day before they planned on leaving, Dean was out in one of the back sheds rooting around for a spare part. He discovered the devil’s trap when he took a step and hit an invisible wall.

“The hell?” Dean pressed forward, and got nowhere.

It took a few seconds for Dean to get the bright idea to look up. And yeah, there it was, spray painted on the ceiling. The red had faded to pink, but it was apparently still viable enough to keep Dean’s ass where it was.

“Super.” Dean looked around the musty shed. “This is fantastic.” A beat. “SAM! BOBBY!” And of course no one heard him, because the house was a solid few minutes’ walk away and unless Dean was mistaken, Bobby had planned to drive into town today. He wouldn’t be surprised if Sam tagged along.

Dean puttered his lips and analyzed the devil’s trap again. Maybe, he mused, if he threw something hard enough he could chip the paint. Which would be a grand idea if anything lay with reach. Not even a wrench stuck in his back pocket, and the odds and ends of the shed were lined up against the wall, while Dean stood in the middle of the floor.

Dean rubbed at his eyes. Someone would come looking for him eventually; he’d just have to wait.

The first hour wasn’t so terrible. Dean hummed to himself and tried to imagine the situation that led to Bobby sticking a devil’s trap in this particular location. Maybe it was an ambush. Maybe Bobby was just paranoid. Who could tell?

The second hour was boring.

The third was antsy.

By the fourth hour, Dean was about ready try ripping up some floorboards and seeing if he could scrape the paint off that way.

A sound like rustling paper made Dean snap his head up and then freeze when he saw the holy tax accountant that had screwed up his rescue mission.

“Hello Dean,” the angel said. He studied Dean for several moments then looked around the shed with polite interest, like he stood in a museum.

“Hey.” Dean slowly stood and failed at ignoring the way every instinct in him screamed “danger!” and “that thing could smite you without breaking a sweat!” But then again, a more cerebral part recognized that the angel hadn’t abandoned Dean when he saw what Dean’s soul had become, but had chosen to go ahead and drag it topside. If nothing else, it made Dean think that Castiel wouldn’t put all that effort into saving him just to kill him a few months later.

“You um…just wanting to say hi?” Dean asked.

“You’re trapped,” Castiel observed.

“Yeah I’m an idiot,” Dean shrugged.

Castiel cocked his head, then lifted on hand. When Dean peered up, the trap had disappeared.

“Awesome, man,” he bobbed his head. “Thanks.” He didn’t actually move from his spot.

“You remember what I said last time we spoke?” Castiel asked.

Well. The guy didn’t beat around the bush.

“Something about having God’s work to do and stopping the Apocalypse,” Dean settled back on his heels and crossed his arms. “Which I have to admit, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“Considering your demonhood,” Castiel supplied.

“Considering my demonhood,” Dean agreed.

“You’re correct,” Castiel sighed and rubbed at his forehead, which made him look remarkably human. “There was a plan. You were the Righteous Man, and we expected the enemy to make its first move after you were saved, because you marked the beginning of the end.”

“And…they haven’t made a move?”

“Correct. The heavenly host is in some disarray trying to find out what our enemies are doing.”

“Huh.” Dean shrugged. “Maybe they decided the end of the world wouldn’t be such a swell idea.”

 Castiel squinted at him.

“It’s the Plan,” he said. Dean could hear the capitalization.

“Well guess what,” Dean leaned forward. “You and your friends screwed up the plan when you got to me a few decades late.” He spread his arms. “Sorry bud, the Righteous Man died back in Hell.”

“I’m deeply aware of our mistake,” Castiel huffed. “Believe me when I say that my superiors have made their displeasure more than known.” He paused. “But the Righteous Man is not dead at all. He’s standing right in front of me.”

Dean barked a laugh.

“I’m not a man anymore,” Dean could tell that the grin he gave Castiel showed a little too many teeth, but he couldn’t quite regret it.

“Your human soul was not replaced Dean,” Castiel tilted his head. “It was transmuted. It’s the same raw material, only rearranged. And that transmutation was not completely finished when we rescued you.”

“Okay?” Dean uncrossed his arms.

“Meaning you still have some sheer humanity in you. And overall, you are absolutely still the Righteous Man. Even as a demon you show it.” Castiel hesitated. “That is why I’m here. I’ve been assigned to…assess your condition and determine how Heaven should proceed with you.”

“Okay,” Dean held up one hand. “Okay. Wow. No. Like hell you’re assessing me. I mean, I appreciate that you guys dragged me out of there. I’m serious about that. But I’m also serious when I say that I want nothing to do with you or God or whatever other crazy prophesy shit you’ve got.”

Castiel’s back straightened and Dean got the inkling that he’d pushed too hard.

“This isn’t a decision you or I can make,” Castiel said, and something in his voice rang like the echoes of a cathedral bell. “I can’t say how you or your brother will be involved in events, but rest assured, you will be involved. No amount of running will change that.”

“You threatening us?” Dean growled.

“I’m informing you. You’d do well to be prepared.” Castiel shifted, his agitation clear, and Dean suddenly imagined massive wings ruffling. “On that note,” he bit out. “Your brother should know that he’s going down a dangerous path. You should keep a better eye on him.”

“What?” Dean demanded.

“Expect to see me again soon.”

And with that, the angel was gone.

Dean blinked at the empty shed.

“Well then,” he said nonetheless. “Fuck you too.”

***

Dean didn’t tell Sam and Bobby about the conversation immediately. Instead, he donated a vial of blood that night so Bobby could redo his traps with the Dean-friendly addendum. (Sam watched the blood dribble into its vial the entire time. Dean didn’t know whether Sam had any idea he was doing it.)

That night, Dean thought about what Castiel had said. About the demon calling him Aleph, the first Hebrew letter. About the beginning of the end. About his soul transmutating. How he’d almost been ready to come into his own when Castiel had nabbed him. About this idea that Dean still had something inside him that the hellfire and the scalpel hadn’t quite reached.

Dean thought about Sam going down a dangerous path. He thought about sulfur, copper, and French fries. He thought about a quiet exhale into a dark motel room.

***

“We’re not brothers.”

“Dean—“

“No. You’ve crossed the line, Sam. We’re done.”

Sam tilted his head in Dean’s direction, mouth pursed. Ten seconds passed in silence.

“If you’d just give them a listen, their lyrics are actually really well done.”

“Keep this up and that dumb iPod deck is finally coming out.”

Sam huffed a laugh and leaned back in his seat, gazing out at the twilight of Illinois farm country. He’d slither his boy band crap in somehow; Dean knew the kid too well to doubt that.

Two hours later, they drove through one of the first towns with more than a handful of buildings and agreed to stop there for the night.

“I’m heading to that bar we passed,” Dean told Sam as he tossed his duffel on a bed. “We’re getting low on funds.”

“Will you be okay going solo?” Sam asked, and extra lilt of seriousness in his voice that made something inside Dean shifting and resentful. Sometimes Dean suspected that Sam was still waiting for the day when he’d be left with a building of mutilated bodies. Sometimes Dean wondered if he should be worried about that too.

“Not to worry, Sammy boy,” Dean winked at his brother and snatched up one of the keys. “I know how to be my own wingman.”

The exasperated expression Dean glimpsed just before he closed the hotel door was so classically Sam that Dean got hit with a flush of fondness that felt altogether human. From that bloody, uncooked center, no doubt.

Or maybe it was just the effect Sam had on people like Dean.

***

Dean could have bitched all day long about the pits of being a demon, but this night provided proof for the opposite.

One thing Dean would never have anticipated about demonhood was the sense of smell. He’d always vaguely understood that humans were at the bottom of the pile when it came to their olfactory senses, but he’d never understood just how crappy they were at it.

Hunched over the pool table, Dean could tell that the bearded dude in the blue checker shirt had forgotten deodorant and that his buddy had just done something intimate with the woman sitting a few tables away. More usefully, he could smell the trace chemicals that gave clues to the men’s emotions: the sourness of fear, the fug of frustration, the bitterness of anger. The blond man a few tables behind Dean had a tumor; the woman tapping her foot to the rhythm of the music was pregnant though she didn’t show it. Dean wondered whether this was what animals experienced, or just something about demon physiology.

Sam, Dean was sure, would have a field day trying to answer that one.

Maybe that trace thought of his brother was what led Dean to take his winnings and call it a night before anyone could get pissed enough to start a fight, even though Dean could have taken on all of them without breaking a sweat. Maybe thoughts of smelling things reminded him of foreign, salt-laced sulfur.

In any case, Dean left the bar a good two hours earlier than he usually would have.

So he got hit with that foreign demon smell as soon as he slid out of his car.

Dean paused, then walked across the parking lot and edged along until he could peer inside. The lights were off but that didn’t mean anything.

The woman was small and dark-haired, and initially Dean had no idea who he was looking at. Then her scent snaked out through the window again, stiff and strong, and something in Dean’s brain finally clicked.

He rolled in his lips, walked back to the car, and slid inside. He drove to the Indiana-Illinois border and back again.

When he returned at three in the morning, Sammy lay on his bed reeking of blood, sulfur, and sex.

***

“That’s a dumb idea.”

“Really? I feel like it’s a pretty smart idea.”

Dean leaned his head back against the booth’s back.

“Ughhh.”

“Wow,” Sam smirked around a potato wedge. “We’re reverting to five-year-old behavior. Nice.”

“Shut your whoring mouth Samuel.”

“Eh,” Sam reached across the table and nabbed another potato wedge. Dean tried to slap him away, but the kid had this maneuver down to an art form, and the potato wedge ended up in his mouth a few seconds later.

“I’m just saying,” Sam said, “it’d be a good tool to have in the arsenal. What if you get exorcised again, huh? Somewhere deeper than the first circle?”

Dean grunted.

“Or if we’re separated?” Sam egged on.

“I’m not gonna become some…dog on a leash,” Dean said.

“Dude, that’s not the point,” Sam shoved his plate aside and leaned forward. “It’s just…you know, why can’t we work with what we have? Take advantage of it?”

Dean squinted at his brother.

“Awfully progressive-minded of you.”

Sam leaned back in his seat.

“What d’you mean by that?”

“You weren’t so gung ho about my condition a few months ago, that’s all,” Dean shrugged.

Sam mirrored the shrug, then rubbed at the side of his neck.

“I’m developing my opinion,” he said.

“Uh huh.” Dean spread his arms across the top of the booth seat and watched Sam for a few seconds. His attention caught on a dab of ketchup sitting in the corner of Sam’s lip. Red as a poppy.

“So?” Sam prompted.

“So what?”

“We going to try this?”

Dean sighed and dropped his arms.

“Whatever makes you happy, Sammy.”

He’d always had a hard time saying no to his brother, but this was getting out of hand.

***

They found a practice site somewhere in southern Wisconsin. The house looked like it was waiting for a strong storm to do it in, and the property, which probably once held cornfields and cattle, was vast and empty. Dean imagined that the land belonged to some relative who didn’t know what to do with a few acres of Wisconsin soil.

But it would serve Sam and Dean for a few days, so they scoped out the old house, picked the room least likely to have rotten floorboards, and set up camp.

Morning had edged into midday when Sam pulled out the demonology book that John had once borrowed from Bobby and never quite returned. It was a common read in the hunter community, and this copy showed its wear in the sheer number of dog-eared pages and notes scribbled in the margins. Some in John’s handwriting, more recently in Sam’s.

“So,” Sam said from where he was sprawled against the far wall. “Usually if you want to summon a specific demon you have to find their true demonic name.” Sam glanced up. “You got one of those?”

“If I do, no one told me,” Dean shrugged, and slid the whetstone along his knife’s length for the umpteenth time. The familiar rasp soothes his nerves. “Maybe it’s Aleph.”

“Worth a shot,” Sam shrugged and glanced down at the book again. “It’s either the name, or a description so specific that it could only mean one demon. We’ll try that too.” He slapped the book shut and stood.

“That’s it?” Dean looked up, the whetstone poised above his blade. “We’re just going to dive in?”

“Got a better method?” Sam asked. He pulled a stick of chalk from his jacket pocket, scuffed at the hardwood floor. When he found a space he liked, Sam bent down and started building the summoning circle.

Dean ran the whetstone down the blade again.

“Why Aleph?” he asked suddenly.

“I mean, like I said, it’s the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Stands for ‘first.’ First seal broken, I guess.” Sam’s voice came carefully neutral, like he was worried about hurting someone’s feelings. Dean would have told him not to worry. Dean wasn’t wracked with guilt over taking up the blade and inadvertently starting the end of days. Annoyed would have been a better term for it. His home turf was potentially under threat, and that that irked Dean. He liked this planet. It was still his home. The idea of demons and angels trampling it in their glorified pissing contest made him scrape his whetting stone with extra fervor.

“Want me to go stand outside?” Dean asked. “Count to ten?”

“Har har,” Sam kept his eyes on the developing sigil. Dean did not move immediately. Instead he watched his little brother built a pretty darn perfect summoning circle. He wondered how many times Sam had done this to summon Ruby.

(Now that he knew what to look for, he found that she left her scent so thick-heavy on everything that Dean had a hard time believing that she thought she went unnoticed. Maybe she assumed Dean didn’t have the abilities of a bona fide demon.)

“Okay,” Sam straightened and flicked his hair from his eyes. He turned slightly. “You were going to stand outside?”

“Yup, roger,” Dean tossed his knife and whet stone on the duffel and made the floorboards shriek as he walked across them.

The air pricked at his bare skin when he swung open the creaking door. The sky looked appropriately heavy and gray. Nothing like a forbidding late autumn day to practice summoning your demon brother. Dean ambled a few paces from the front door to the rough outline of a flowerbed. He stopped there, dug the heel of his boot into the clayey soil topped by hanks of gray and yellow grasses. I reminded him of human heads when their skulls were crushed and they were left to rot for too long afterward.

Dean’s shoulders twitched a little and he twisted around to look back at the house.

“We doing this or what?” he hollered.

“Hang on!” Sam’s voice filtered out.

Dean groaned to the sky in general and turned back to the abandoned flowerbed. He imagined some farmer’s wife keeping up this plot of land. Maybe they grew tomat—

AD CONSTRUGENDUM, AD LIGANDUM EOS, PARITER ET SOLVENDUM, ET AD, CONGREGANTUM EOS, CORAM ME.

Sam’s voice ripped into Dean’s consciousness like a hatchet through wet tissue. It tore apart any sense of coherent thought, any line of logical thinking. All he could hear was the command behind the Latin, the strength of Sam’s will that hinted at oceans more of it, the sensation of being dragged somewhere by a force like a nebula and moreover, enjoying it. Enjoying it way too much.

Dean saw the gray Wisconsin sky spin above him, the blur of wood, the scent of the candles, and suddenly Dean stumbled as he landed in the center of the summoning circle.

“You need to work on your entrance,” Sam told him. Dean got his feet under him, braced his hands on his knees, and peered up at Sam through his eyelashes.

“Fuck you,” he gasped. His skin tingled.

***

Sam made them practice the summoning three more times, having Dean stand farther and farther away until, by the third time, Sam left him in the center of a soybean field a half hour’s drive away. Dean tolerated it because.

It didn’t matter why. Because. He was an awesome brother.

“It’ll be useful, you have to admit,” Sam said later that night as they experimented with the kitchen equipment and found that one of the stoves still worked well enough for them to heat up cans of soup.

“Sure.” Dean sat braced against the wall and watched the light of the electric lantern turn Sam’s face into a work of shadow and browned skin. Dean tried to sense something in Sam’s stance that would hint at…

It was just that Dean thought the psychic crap had gone when Azazel’s little death camp stunt had petered out. He thought Sam could sink back into some version of normality. And maybe Dean was overthinking things; maybe all demons experienced that rush of glory and mindless euphoria when they were summoned. Maybe it was just one more part of the package. Maybe Dean needed to get used to it.

Maybe Dean’s life was more fucked up than previously thought.

“You okay?”

Dean lifted his gaze at Sam standing over the stove, one hand thrust in his hoodie pocket because it was autumn in Wisconsin and they were shacking up in an abandoned, run-down house. Dean had turned off his sense of the cold a few hours ago. Damn it.

“You going to be warm enough?” Dean asked.

Sam side-eyed Dean.

“I’ve got layers on,” he said. He clinked his spoon in the can as he stirred. “Did that drain you too much though? I guess we could have left it at three trials but—“

“Fine, Sammy, lay off,” Dean straightened his legs across the dusty floorboards. He could feel Sam analyzing him. “It’s weird,” Dean relented. “Y’know, demons get the fancy perks like superman strength and all that, but the rules start to be a drag.”

“Yeah?” The clinking of the spoon against tin continued steadily.

“Humans suck at a lot of things,” Dean continued in a low voice. “And they do messed up shit all the time. But the species never signed into any old pacts or agreements that lost them their free will. Can’t trap a human with salt or horseshoes. They were smart to do that much.”

“Demons sign into pacts?” Sam asked.

“It’s kind of implied when you start going dark side,” Dean grunted. Signed and sealed in blood and guts and screams of hell souls.

Dean waited a few moments, but Sam didn’t push the topic. He just tapped his spoon against the can’s rim and announced that he was getting the first can because his hunger was a thing of necessity and Dean’s was just indulgence of a habit. Dean asked if they could arm wrestle for it. Sam responded by taking the can off the stove and shoveling several spoonfuls into his mouth like the brat he was.

***

Several hours passed. At the tail end of them, Sam was finally conked out in a sheltered corner of the living room with three layers of shirts plus a sleeping bag plus a blanket. Sam didn’t know about the blanket. Dean was sneaky like that.

Dean crouched in the opposite corner of the room and watched his brother sleep like it was the most normal fucking thing in the world. Usually Dean refrained from this because he still liked to play pretend he was passably human, someone who followed standard human codes of conduct and that meant not impersonating stalkers in relation to one’s brother.

Sam mumbled something and buried his nose into the sleeping bag. God. He looked so human, wrapped up like a burrito. Didn’t matter that he was a hunter, he still had skin—just a membrane—that protected blood vessels and organs and tearing him open would be so easy it made Dean twitch.

Sam should have looked like something soft and helpless to Dean at that moment. He didn’t.

Instead Dean stared at Sam and wondered whether he looked at a god wrapped in a fleshy, deceiving cloak. He wondered how much power Sam had simmering inside him and why Dean hadn’t picked up on it until he touched it firsthand.

(It had been like chains of flowers that were still snarling enough to draw blood.)

That was Dean’s cue to push himself into a stand and walk down the short hall to the front porch. He let the door bump gently closed behind him. He surveyed the mass of shadows that represented the fields they’d driven past earlier and arched his back. Vertebrate popped.

Then Dean trotted down the steps, went to the dirt road, picked a direction, and started walking.

He was not escaping, not really. He was not trying to protect himself from Sam or protect Sam from himself because that wasn’t how they should work. Dean just didn’t sleep these days and walking settled something in the part of him that still reacted like a human.

Dean walked casually, scared a few cows that smelled him for what he was, sent more than one dog barking.

He had just crossed the county line when he heard a something like a flock of pigeons taking off. The man in the center of the dirt road flicked into existence.

“Shit,” Dean stumbled to a stop and, out of some old habit, clutched his hand to his chest. Castiel continued to impersonate a freaky scarecrow, and Dean had firsthand experience with freaky scarecrows.

“Dean,” the angel intoned.

“Were you stalking me?” Dean insisted.

“Even through the shroud of your demonhood, the Righteous Man burns bright enough for any angel to see,” Castiel informed him.

Right. This was probably creepier in some ways than the apple orchard scarecrow.

“Nice. Nice to know,” Dean said slowly. “You got something to say, angel?”

Castiel’s head tilted like he was trying to decipher that ‘angel’ as an insult and thus a reason to smite Dean.

“I do,” Castiel finally said. “We need to discuss further the progression of the Apoca—“

“Hey, no, I already said I wasn’t going to be involved in that.” Dean heard a growl in his voice. “We don’t need it.”

“You were involved long before now,” Castiel shifted, sending the moonlight splashing across him in new ways. “I came to inform you that the second seal has been broken. War has been declared. We must begin in earnest to stop the rest.”

“Still a demon,” Demon half laughed. “You don’t think that’s not relevant?”

“You are still the Righteous Man, as I have said,” Castiel said. “My superiors have determined that you can still work for us—“

“You just not listening to me or something?” Dean threw up his hands. “No. Not happening. It—“

Dean could tell he’d gotten spoiled with being a demon among humans. He didn’t even register Castiel flitting across the space that separated them and seizing Dean by the throat. Not just his corporeal throat, but the essence of Dean, the roiling smoke of his non-soul.

Dean wriggled and made noises like a small animal right before its neck gets snapped.

“You have greatly mistaken the nature of your relationship with us,” Castiel’s voice reverberated through Dean and would theoretically have made him shit his pants. “Dean Winchester, I can toss you back into Hell like so much detritus. You were rescued for a reason and you’d do well not to act flippant about it.”

“Nice to know what you really think of me,” Dean wheezed. Castiel responded by digging claws of Grace into Dean and eliciting the sensation of burning away into nothing at all.

Dean stared up at the star-littered sky, hands arched into painful claws that better represented his form in Hell, his breathing short and pained, rattling around his trachea.

He found the part of his brain not shrieking with animal fear and anger. He discovered this part was laughing. It was cracking up. It had tears streaming down cheeks and abdomen doubled over. Dean studied this and understood where it came from. Getting tossed around like this within a few hours of the last incident was fucking hilarious. Understanding that this angel saw him as Heaven’s personal attack dog? Even moreso.

“Do you understand?” Castiel growled like a bank of thunderclouds.

“Yes,” Dean gasped.

The next second, he crumpled to the dust and trampled grass of the dirt road.

“You need to understand,” Castiel said from somewhere far away and high above. “You and your brother both have preordained roles to play in this. You cannot simply walk away from that.”

“Even though I’m not even human anymore.”

“Human enough for your purpose,” Castiel snapped. Dean might have called it embarrassed. “You must fight for Heaven despite any barriers. Just as Sam is destined to fight for Hell.”

Oh.

That made sense, then.

“Okay,” Dean hacked into the ground. “Okay.”

Castiel shuffled.

“I will be back soon with orders.”

A rustle of feathers.

Dean lifted his head and saw a rosy tint of dawn above the cornfields and empty road and scattered farmhouses.

New day in America.

***

 When Dean took another several hours to trudge back to the abandoned house, he half expected to be yanked there by another summoning, courtesy of a panicked brother. Dean wouldn’t have minded, sick fuck that he was.

At first Dean came into the house and thought he had found Sam still asleep in his pile of blanket and clothing. Another few seconds, and Dean caught a thick whiff of her. She wasn’t even trying to be subtle about this.

That part of Dean that had been cracking up earlier started snickering again. How could it not?

Dean ambled across the room and listened to the way that Sam’s breathing came too short and suppressed, like the kid had run out of breath a short time ago and was still trying to keep it under control. Dean recognized the sound. Sometimes when Sammy got himself off across the hotel room his muffled exhales and forcefully deep inhales were almost comical.

Dean let a grin split his face. He crouched beside his brother, all hopped up on Castiel nearly killing him and Sam having roiling seas of power inside him. He chucked Sam’s chin.

“You crazy kids have fun?” he asked.

He watched Sam stiffen. For a few seconds Sam didn’t move in case he could get by with it.

“You need to tell her that she is not subtle. At all. I’ve been smelling her for months now.”

Sam’s eyelids peeled open and he inched his face up to look at Dean. Dean bared his teeth back.

“You going to kill her?” Sam asked after a stretch of silence.

Dean considered this. He’d get some satisfaction from it. He could practice some of his skills without feeling bad about it. Then again Ruby could prove useful. She definitely saw what Sam had inside him; probably explained why she’d cozied up to them in the first place. She probably worshipped it a little because she was a demon and how was she not supposed to worship the Moses of her nation of withered and crooked souls?

Dean understood.

“We’ll see,” Dean said.

“Going to kill me?” Sam pushed. He stared up at Dean properly now, those fey eyes stripped by a bar of bright Wisconsin sunshine.

“Now why would I do that?” Dean cocked his head.

A long pause.

“You know what we’re doing?” Sam asked.

“Can guess.”

Silence, and Dean realized that Sam was waiting for him to elaborate. He reached for his pocketknife, flipped it open, and saw Sam flinch back.

Dean slid the blade along his own forearm.

He recognized that his fully human self would have been a lot less okay with this. But that sense of things, while present, was now dulled and confused. Drugged on the greasy smoke of Hell’s progeny. It didn’t have a chance to stop Dean from offering his arm to his brother.

Sam sat up properly and his eyes fixed on the beads of blood that slithered down the frog-belly-white of Dean’s underarm. Dean heard Sam’s heart rate pick up, smelled his endocrine system release a fresh burst of chemicals that resembled what Dean smelled on the drug addicts they’d seen on the streets of Chicago a few weeks ago.

Sam finally tore his eyes away from the blood.

“Why?” he asked.

“The angels think I’m their little hellhound attack dog they can send on their work,” Dean said without thinking much about the words themselves. “There’s a war right on top of us, Sammy, and we’re supposed to be their weapons. The pawns.”

Sam swallowed visibly. Dean didn’t even need his demon senses to see it.

“Ruby playing you. Castiel directing me. It’s what they want.” Dean’s grin grew larger. “Fuck that.”

“What?” Sam’s eyes squinted and he better resembled the Sammy Dean understood. The one who enjoyed research and bitched about inane things. “No, Ruby…it’s to stop the Apocalypse. We’re trying to—“

“Maybe,” Dean shrugged casually. “Maybe not. We’ll still stop the Apocalypse; I know what Hell’s like and I don’t want it coming here.”—Still human enough to want to save the world. Dean wondered what that meant—“I’m just saying. We can do it our own way. Keep this in the family.” He bobbed his forearm.

Sam covered his face briefly with one hand.

“I was expecting more blowback,” he said.

“I’m a demon,” Dean said.

Sam side-eyed him then glanced again at the blood that now made a rippling pool on the floor. Dean felt the rising swell of need for Sam to take the offer. Dean needed to rediscover that well of intent and force living inside his brother. He needed to get drunk on it. If he could, he intended to disappear inside it completely.

Sam lifted his hand and brushed the tip of a finger against the spring of Dean’s blood. Dean nearly shuddered.

“What will we be?” Sam asked.

Dean sighed and grinned. A demon with a scrap of human still bleeding inside. A human with demon smoke and godly power starting to cloud behind his eyes.

“Something new,” Dean said. “Something they never saw coming.”

Sam’s mouth curled; those fox eyes crinkled at their edges. He bent his head.