Head over Hills
First off, a big thank you to all of you that replied to my B-day meme *hugs you all tightly*. To amber1960 , thank you for the lovely banner! And to xwacky , I loved the balons!! You guys are amazing!
Written for scarletsherlock , in the spn_summergen event this year. Her promp asked for Sam, Dean and Jo hunting the Headless Horseman. What came out was... somewhat in the vicinity of that. Enjoy!
HEAD OVER HILLS
Dean had been nursing the same toothache since Idaho Falls. By the time they reached Nevada, Sam was ready to go old school on his brother's ass and just tie one end of a string to the car's door, the other to Dean's tooth and hit the gas pedal until he no longer could see his brother's lemon-pinched face.
"You do realize that your frigging tooth isn't gonna stop aching just because you ignore it, right?" Sam tried one more time. "Dude, one quick stop at a free clinic and-"
"I said no, Sam," Dean cut in. "How hard is it to grasp the damn concept? I'm not gonna spend a bunch of hours with my mouth hanging open while some dude drills holes into my teeth."
Sam just stared at him, one eyebrow raised at the nonsense coming out of his brother's mouth. Maybe if he punched Dean real hard...
"Besides," Dean added, "Bobby's waiting for us in Flagstaff."
"Whatever man," Sam mumbled, leaning against the leather upholstery and giving up on the matter for the time being. There was no point when Dean was being stubborn as a mule. "Just don't come whining when you can't eat you cheeseburger... again."
"I don't whine..." Dean muttered, ignoring the smirk on Sam's face. "Besides, I remember perfectly well what happened last time I let someone mess with my teeth... lame-assed broth, through a straw, for three frigging days!"
Sam was considering pointing out to his whining brother that, one, he was whining, and two, that he was twelve when the broth incident had happened, when the glare of six strong headlights sprung to life a mile down the road, on the top of a small hill.
They'd just passed the exit sign for Bunkerville and the road had been so deserted so far that even streetlights were few and far in between.
In the dead of a dark night, where even the moon was shy on showing up from behind heavy clouds, the sudden light was blinding.
"What the fu-" Dean let out. Thoughts of strangling his younger brother flew out the window as he looked at the harsh lights, lined up ahead.
"What is that?" Sam asked in the same breath, body leaning forward, trying to catch a better glimpse of whatever was attached to those headlights. Dean's foot on the gas had started easing up, his body posture similar to Sam's.
The bulbs of white, artificial spotlights were too close to one another to belong to any model of car they could think of.
Sam and Dean didn't have to work all that hard at figuring out what sort of thing those lights belonged to.
Even from a distance, the simultaneous roar of too many engines starting at the exact same time felt like a sonic wave against their lungs; multiple gas pumping pedals sped up on the same spot, pulsing into the ground like raging bulls preparing for attack.
Motorcycles. Big ones, if the sound of those engines were anything to go by.
"What is this? A Sturgis Rally meet up ?" Dean mumbled unimpressed, slowly steering the Impala to the right side of the road. The lights were getting closer, taking nearly all of the road's width. "Damn freaks think the road's all theirs or something?"
"Dean… hum… I don't think they're gonna stop," Sam whispered, eyes turning wide and arms spreading to the side, already bracing himself for the head-on impact. "Or make room for us!"
True enough, Dean could hear the roar of the bikes' engines actually speeding up, see the headlights growing bigger and bigger until his front windshield was as bright as daytime and he couldn't see a damn thing.
There was no time to reverse, there was no room to pull the car to the side and get out of their way. Neither would have mattered anyway.
The group of bikers just headed straight for them, whoops and shouts of excitement howling in the night as they gained momentum. Sam and Dean could do little more than brace themselves for impact.
Instead of the collision that seemed impossible to avoid, something much worse happened. Something that would forever give the older Winchester nightmares.
They couldn't see the bikes, but they sure felt it well enough when one of them climbed on to the Impala's front hood, rubber wheels rubbing and grating against steel.
One huge race tire filled the front windshield just before the entire bike disappeared over the roof of the car.
"Son of a bitch!" Dean cringed as the heavy motorcycle ran the Impala's carriage from front to back, the car's frame cringing right alongside with him with the added weight.
And then, just like that, the road was empty once again, silent, with nothing but distant red lights shrinking into tiny dots in the rear view mirror to prove that anything at all had happened.
"What the hell was that?" Sam whispered, his voice divided in between surprise and the end tail of the adrenaline rush.
Dean didn't answer him, white knuckled fingers wrapped around the car's steering wheel, not even pausing for breath as he turned the car around, pulling a sharp U-turn made of screeching tires, burned rubber and anger.
"Dean… what are you doing?" Sam asked, because stuff like this… he needed to be sure. There was no way Dean was doing what Sam thought Dean was doing. That would just be insane. "Dean, come on, slow down, this road has seen better days, you don't wanna be breaking the speed of light in here," Sam reminded his speeding brother, keeping a white-knuckle grip of his own on the frame of the passenger's door.
Sam's words had some effect. It just wasn't the outcome that Sam had hoped for. He could actually feel his body sinking into the leather seat at his back as Dean's foot sunk deeper into the gas pedal, eating up the distance between them and the bikers.
The loss of contact between his ass and the car seat every time Dean went over every small indentation on the road, literally sending the car flying through the air, was making Sam's stomach crawl up his spine. Enough was enough.
"Dean, this is stupi-" the younger Winchester managed to press out before being shot down by a pointed look from Dean.
"Stupid? Are you kidding me?" Dean exploded, tearing his gaze from Sam and going back to look at his prey. "Were you here just a minute ago when they attacked us?"
Sam shrugged, braving into a potentially violent reaction from his brother with his lack of concern over the matter. "I think you're over reacting. They're just punks," he started, measuring how far he could go by how red Dean's face was turning. "We're okay… the car's oka-"
"OKAY!" Dean cut in, vein pulsing menacingly on his forehead and proverbial steam coming off his ears. "Does that look OKAY to you?" he yelled, pointing at the greasy skid marks decorating the front windshield glass. Even in the faint moonlight, it was easy to see the matching tracks covering the Impala's hood, so clear that an expert could probably name the brand of the tire just by looking at it. "Punks are just punks until someone teaches them a lesson," Dean all but growled, gripping the wheel tighter.
"Oh... so this is just you, making sure that they learn a lesson, is that it!" Sam asked, sounding less then convinced. "It has nothing to do with the fact that you're cranky because of your toothache... or the fact that they messed up your car, right?"
"Damn straight it's because they messed up my car! Those pricks are gonna learn that there are some things that you just DON'T DO!"
"There were six of them, Dean," Sam pointed out quietly. "And that's not counting any extra passenger any of them could have riding in the back."
"You scared of some biker delinquents, Sammy?" Dean goaded. "Afraid to mess up your nail polish?"
Whatever retort might've come out with the pissed off look that Sam threw at his older brother, was rendered pointless as the front seat was once again flooded in bright light.
The bikers had stopped, forming another straight line across the road, their potent headlights aimed at the speeding car.
Dean hit the breaks with all of his weight, jumping off the car even before the smoke of the burned tires had cleared off.
Sam had no choice but to follow his crazy brother out.
"Hey, assholes... wanna try that neat trick one more time?"
Even in the dark, Sam could see the glint of Dean's gun, tucked into the back of Dean's waistband. It was just a precaution, Sam knew that, just the same as the gun he could feel pressed against the small of his back was; still, those were precautions that always left Sam uneasy when dealing with humans.
Sam knew for sure that Dean had no intention of shooting the bikers, but whenever firearms were involved, things always tended to turn more ugly than necessary.
Now that he was out of the car and standing, Sam could see a little more of the bikers without being blinded by the headlights. Mostly shadows, though, but enough to gather that none of them were carrying passengers. So, six of them, all guys from what he could make out.
The bikers' leader, a guy with long hair drifting in the wind, had his left leg braced against the asphalt, like an anchor, and twisted his wrist on the gas handle, coercing a loud vrruummvruumm out of his bike. It was the only answer that Dean got out of him.
"What do you say we solve this like grown ups, instead of kids with toys?" Dean offered with a menacing smirk as he pulled his gun out. In the same fast movement, he aimed it at the front tire of the leader's bike and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed through the darkness.
Sam had figured that Dean's lesson mostly consisted of messing with the bikers' rides, like they'd done with his. The shot was mostly for show, and Sam hoped that it was enough to scare the bikers away.
The sound of a exploding tire that would be expected after the deafening blast of Dean's gun, was absent.
Any other man behind the gun, and Sam would assume that the bullet had missed the target. But this was Dean. Dean never missed.
"What the hell-"
Wasting no time, Sam pulled out his gun too and joined Dean in a second round of shots at the gang's tires. Again, nothing happened, except for the dull metallic echo of their empty bullet shells hitting the asphalt.
Well, nothing happened might be a tad inaccurate. The bikers jumped to action, letting go of the brakes and leaped towards Sam and Dean.
"What the fuck are these guys ridding?" Dean shouted over the roar of the speeding motors as the both of them backed away instinctively, towards the relative safety of his car.
He got his answer seconds after that.
The biker and his pack all let go of the handles of his bike, each raising both hands to the head and giving it a sharp pull. For half a moment, Dean thought that the biker group was panicking or something. Which was ridiculous, because he and Sam were the ones staring at a six doses of four hundred pound attack weapons, speeding straight at them.
And then he saw it. The bikers weren't grabbing their heads in despair; they were taking them off.
Before Dean could make the switch in his brain from 'punk bikers' to 'supernatural headless bikers', something heavy and hard impacted with his chest, sending Dean crashing backwards. His head collided with the Impala's frame in a explosion of white light.
The last thing Dean saw before the world dropped in to a well of blackness, was the missile that had hit him. Right there beside him on the floor, was the lead-biker's head, smiling and winking at him.
~o~
Sam knew something was very wrong even before he opened his eyes. For one, there was the fact that he was opening his eyes, when the last thing he remembered was a flying head and yelling Dean's name as he saw his brother go down with a loud thud against the car; second, it was the warmth. No, make that the scalding heat.
Sam felt like he was baking in a hot oven. He could feel hot asphalt under him, burning his skin; and he could feel a whole lot more skin in contact with the road than it should ever be.
Sam jerked up, all senses returning at the same time, impacting against his skull like a tidal wave. His eyes zeroed on Dean's bare foot on the other side of the car. "Dean?"
Gingerly getting to his feet, Sam took a grim moment to realize that a) he was clad only in a pair of black boxers and b) there was a gigantic bruise blossoming to life in his chest.
Using the car as a crutch, Sam made his way to Dean's side. Like him, Dean hadn't faired all that good in the clothing department. Crouching down next to him, Sam tentatively put a hand on Dean's shoulder.
Dean woke up with a start, flying fist moving wildly to hit something. Sam's been around long enough to know when to duck.
"Easy man... it's just me," Sam reassured his brother, waiting for Dean's eyes to properly open up and see for himself. "You okay?"
Dean's eyes finally focused. There was a dark bruise taking shape in his chest that matched Sam's, as well as a faint trail of blood coming from the back of Dean's head, from where he'd hit the car. When Dean opened his mouth to answer Sam, he gagged before spitting something out.
Both brothers stared at the black tarmac where a glob of spit and blood surrounded a white tooth.
"Well, how about that... the undead motherfuckers spared me the dental work..." Dean started, trailing off as his eyes landed on the Impala's back wheel, the one that was inches away from his face.
Where a sturdy black rubber tire used to be, there was nothing but a silver shiny rim looking at him.
It took Sam a whole of two seconds to realize why Dean was hyperventilating like he was about to go into labor. Now that he actually took a moment to look at the car, Sam could see that it wasn't just their clothes that had gone AWOL. All four of the Impala's tires were missing, leaving the car to sit low and pathetic in its rims.
"Calm down, Dean... you're gonna pass out," Sam tried, but ultimately knew it was pointless. The car was Dean's sanctuary and no one messed it up like that and walked away unpunished. Whoever... whatever those guys were-
Dean wasn't even listening to a word he said. "Those motherfucking," he gulped air into his lungs, "headless sonsofbitches, cocksucking undead pricks..."
Sam figured it was gonna take awhile for Dean to reach the end of his list of foul names for those responsible for what had happened there. "We should call Bobby, see if he can come pick us up," Sam started, more to himself than to his mumbling brother. "In the mean time, we should get some clothes, get in the shade and wait for him."
As it turned out, none of those things were very easy to achieve. Their phones, tucked into pockets of their jackets, were just as gone as their clothing; the keys to the car were missing as well, and when he tried each handle, Sam found all of the Impala's doors locked, including the trunk, where the rest of their clothes were. This wasn't looking good.
In between the both of them and the surrounding dry landscape, Sam knew he wouldn't be able to find a single wire capable of breaking into car, so he went to sit next to Dean.
"They took everything," he confessed, trying his best to not make it sound like a whine. "Except the car."
It was weird in fact, now that Sam thought about it. Though he wouldn't have want to see Dean's reaction if they'd woken to find the car taken. It was bad enough the missing tires and the ugly skid marks on the hood. And the boots. Dean actually loved the boots he'd been wearing when the bikers robbed them "What were those things?"
"Fuglies who have their days numbered," Dean muttered. "And they didn't take the car because they couldn't."
Sam stared at his brother. Some of the initial anger had ebbed away, enough to try a normal talk again. "They seemed very corporeal for ghosts," Sam pointed out. In fact, they were corporeal enough to leave ugly bruises in his and Dean's chests, where the flying heads had hit them. "And, despite what you think, the Impala can't actually fight off ghosts."
"The car's warded against any sort of supernatural creature," Dean explained with a roll of his eyes at Sam's words. "I made sure of that when I rebuilt her, after dad d-... anyway, the frame is iron plated, there's salt in the glass, a bunch of sigils etched under the paint job... you get the idea."
Sam nodded in appreciation. That was actually a very smart idea. "So, what's your best guess? Ghosts, revenants or zombies?"
Dean eyed the gray Toyota coming their way, the first car in the whole frigging morning that he'd seen drive by in that dead end out of I-15. "My best guess is that, if you shake your ass hard enough, you'll convince whoever is behind the wheel of that car to stop," Dean said with a wiggle of his brows. "And pray that they have a working phone and a damn paper clip."
~o~
Sam didn't needed to shake his ass, but it was a close call. The two women behind the wheel actually rubbed at their eyes when Sam waved at them, not quite believing the sight of a mostly naked man standing by the side of the road with his thumb out. They stopped the car with a screech of protesting breaks and offered their assistance without further prompting.
The phone call to Bobby was short and scarce on the details, but enough for the older hunter to realize that they were not pulling his leg and the Impala seriously needed to be towed to the nearest town. Sam figured it was mostly the giggling women in the background of the call that made Bobby initially think that it was all just a prank.
Neither of the women in the Toyota had a paper clip, but one of them was wearing a hairpin that she gladly shared with Dean in exchange for a nice long look at his tanned legs.
All things considered, the hard part was actually convincing the two kind women that they'll be fine on their own and that no, they don't need a ride back. The women leave their phone numbers, just in case, finally driving away after one last, lascivious look at them. It wasn't a surprise that both Sam and Dean felt slightly dirty after the aiding car sped away.
Armed with the hairpin, Dean offered a silent apology to his car and broke into the trunk, finally getting them something other than boxers to wear.
Bobby arrived two hours after that and by that time, Dean's hatred for the biker gang had managed to triple in size.
~o~
"Here it is," Sam announced from his place at the small kitchen table. "I'm actually surprised no hunter has ever stumbled across them before. There's like ten different reports of people being robbed in that stretch of the Interstate by a-" he paused, finger reaching out for the screen of the laptop to track the line he was reading "'group of six or eight bikers that come out of no where and attack them' "
"Any mention of flying heads?" Bobby asked, opened book in his hands as he paced the small room they'd rented by the side of the road.
"Nope," Sam said with a shake of his head. "You really think these guys are like the headless horseman? I mean, the actual Hessian mercenary?"
"The Hessian has the fame and the movie rights," the older hunter said with a puff of air, showing what he thought about Hollywood's romantic notions of evil creatures. "But he's hardly the only one. There's all kinds of headless horsemen lore around, like the El Muerto, in south Texas," Bobby said, closing his book. "Whenever there's a tale of a violent man losing his head, one of these suckers has every chance of coming to life."
"Like the woman in white legend," Sam pitched in.
"Exactly," Bobby agreed, looking out the window. Dean wasn't back yet, and, if he'd had any luck in his search, he was the one who could confirm it. If this was really a case of headless riders, it should be simple enough to put them to rest. "How pissed is your brother?"
Sam closed his laptop, taking a long breath. "You saw the car, Bobby," he said with a sigh. "I don't think pissed is enough to do justice to how vengefully bloodthirsty Dean is right now."
"It's not like you guys don't have bigger fish to fry," Bobby went on, hand scratching his beard. "And unless you tell me that six dead bikers robbing peoples' boots on the highway is one of the 66 seals on Lucifer's cage, I say we let this one go and focus on what really matters."
"Mind your tongue, heathen," Dean's voice whispered from across the room, pulling the door open with his back, hands full with the loaded box he was carrying. "Those mothers committed their last act of vandalism, Bobby. This ends now," he punctuated by dumping his burden on the nearest bed.
"What's all that?"
"Criminal files on our gang friends," Dean explained. "Turns out, these guys didn't wait until they were dead to rob people on that stretch of road. They were a well known gang back in the seventies, known as Los Muertos."
Sam rolled his eyes, trading a glance with Bobby.
"What is it?" Dean asked, taking off his coat and dumping it on top of the box. "Name mean something to you?"
"Lemme guess... they died by decapitation," Sam ventured.
Dean stared at him. "Actually, smart ass, that's what the files are for," he said, picking one from the top to toss it at Sam. "The whole gang was close to thirty riders, which is why the police took so long to catch up with all of them. So, read up, bitch."
~o~
By the end of the day there were three piles on top of the bed: the gang members who'd died violently; the gang members who'd died of natural causes and the ones still alive.
"So, this really is a bunch of headless horsemen we're dealing with," Dean concluded, closing the last file and rubbing his hands. "I can't wait to salt and burn these suckers."
Six members had died bloody, escaping from the police, including the gang's leader, a Mortimer Estevez, also known as Muerto. According to the police report, the State troopers had chased the six bikers down that same stretch of the I-15, back when it was still called US route 91, until the fugitives' path had been cut short by a semi loaded with butane gas. The bikers had tried to slip the cops by driving beneath the semi, but they had judged the distance between the truck and the asphalt wrongly. Ended up losing their heads when they had tried made the pass underneath anyway.
"All six of them lost their head?" Sam asked.
"Yup."
"Does it say where they're buried?" Bobby asked, eager to get this one done and just move on.
"They weren't buried," Sam pitched in, reading from his own file and ignoring the disappointed look in his brother's face. "The semi they collided with crashed. They went out in a blaze of flames."
"Great," Dean let out, sounding anything but pleased at the turn of events. "So how do we smoke these bastards?"
"Well, there has to be something left behind, some other sort of remains that are keeping them here."
"Maybe a lock of hair, some piece of clothing..." Sam suggested. "Though, it's going to take forever to track all of their remaining family members and see if-"
Bobby was shaking his head even before Sam could finish. "Guys like these aren't the lock of hair type," he said, eyes landing on the single file that made the whole of the 'still alive' pile on the bed. "Their gang was their family, so I bet you that if anyone knows about any remains, it's that fella over there."
Dean opened the file. The guy's name was Jose Rendell, and he was one of the oldest 'tenants' at the High Desert State Prison, a maximum-security facility just outside Indian Springs.
"Great... that just... great," Dean let out in frustration.
~o~
A sane hunter would see this as the dead end that it was and move on towards the next hunt. The bikers weren't causing harm to anyone and none of the robberies had been bigger than some clothing and a couple of wallets.
Dean, returned to the room with a bundle of orange clothing and a proud and accomplished smile on his face. "We can use these," he said, throwing a pair of orange coveralls to his brother.
Sam unfolded the ugly piece of clothing and stared at his brother. "If you think for one second that I'm going back to prison because you're obsessed with getting back at these guys... you can think again!"
"Come on, Sam," Dean countered. "Quick in and out. Cas can drop us in the yard, we exchange a few packs of cigarettes, talk to the guy, find out what sort of weird possessions his gang member friends left behind and be back before dinnertime. No biggie."
Sam was not convinced. He sat heavily on bed next to the bathroom, arms crossed over his chest. "Need I remind you of what almost happened last time we were in? All the leering and staring at our asses? Are you really this insane?"
"Ten minutes, Sam, I swear to you. Fifteen, tops."
"You said on the phone that these men had incurred in grave sins," Castiel's voice boomed out of the nowhere, the angel making himself visible with a flutter of invisible wings. "What grave sins might those be?"
Bobby, who was content with sitting back and enjoying the show of Dean trying to convince his brother that it was a good idea to break in to a maximum-security prison again, nearly jumped from his chair when he saw the angel.
Dean looked outside, where only the front hood of the Impala was visible. It would need a whole new paint job to hide the hideous marks left by the tire tracks of the bikers. Not to mention a realignment of the frame and the new tires. "The most appalling sins you can imagine. I need you to help u-"
"I am not your personal transportation vehicle," Cas pointed out. "And these ghosts are causing no harm."
Sam's hands, waving madly in the air, signaling Castiel to not go there, were too late and completely wasted on the clueless angel.
"NO HARM?" Dean yelled. "They're robbing people, leaving them naked and helpless in the middle of the Interstate. How's that harmless?"
"Is that the reason why you chose to hunt them?" Castiel asked sternly.
"And the fact that they messed up his car's paint job..." Sam couldn't help to add. It wasn't nice to lie to an angel of the Lord.
"That's not the poi-" Dean started.
"And they stole his boots," Bobby added.
Castiel was gone before Dean could even explain his reasons.
Mouth opened mid sentence, Dean's shoulders slumped in almost defeat. It wasn't over yet, though. He turned his angry glare at the two 'very helpful' men left in the room.
"You better wipe those smiles off your faces," Dean menaced, finger pointing first at his brother and then at Bobby. "And come up with a damn good alternative plan now that you've scared Cas away... or tomorrow, I swear to God, one of you is waking up bald and the other wishing he was bald."
~o~
It was Sam who comes up with Jo as an alternative even if it was Dean who ended up making the call. Send her in to talk to the locked up guy, peddle some crap story that she's doing research for a book, and get the guy to tell her all the secrets of his gang life days.
Show enough flesh and, for a guy that's been seeing nothing but ugly men and faded pictures of women on skeevy magazines for close to thirty years, Dean was sure that Rendell would tell her anything she would want to hear.
He lied to her, of course. There was no possible way that even Dean could put together in the same sentence 'dress like a tramp' and 'it's because they messed with my car' without sounding like a five year old with a grudge. Instead, he ended up telling her that the gang had killed a couple of newly weds on their way to their honeymoon and hoped that she would buy it.
The fact that Jo actually said yes kind of surprised him. The fact that her help came with a condition, didn't.
As if she could smell the deceit all the way from the phone receiver -damn female intuition- Jo agreed to do it, if Dean accepted that he owed her one and agreed that said debt would be paid in any way that Jo saw fit.
Dean, ignoring all the hunter's instincts that told him that this was a trap, agreed with her terms with a sly smile on his lips, imagining that the 'worst' that could happen was one night of some very kinky sex-a-thon with a hot body of the female persuasion.
Bobby actually patted him on the back in sympathy when Dean told them of the deal he'd made with Jo. Sam just shook his head and said nothing.
Dean knew that there was no way this was going to end well. But his car was his car, and she deserved vengeance.
~o~
Jo was efficient and thorough. She was also pissed when she called Dean back with the information he needed.
"Well, that was a lovely experience, Deano" she whispered sweetly into Dean's ear over the phone, sarcasm vinaigretteing her honey covered words. "Always wanted to be eye-fucked by a room full of horny convicts that haven't seen a woman since the Dark Ages."
Dean actually smirked at the thought, enjoying himself with the image of a Jo, clad in a revealing outfit, trying to waddle through a river of drool. It was a good thing that there wasn't image on their phone call, or Jo might've actually found a way to smack him over the connection.
"Sorry about that," Dean said, sounding not sorry at all. "Did the guy tell you anything useful?"
Jo paused, and Dean could practically hear the smile in her lips. "Oh, he told me everything," she announced, sounding way too pleased with herself. Somehow, Dean was sure the guy had told her more than what Dean wanted her to know.
After passing along the information they needed to put the headless riders to rest, Jo declared that the price Dean would have to pay was a date with her. And she left it at that.
She would pick the place, she would pick the time and she would pick him up. Dean could do little else but to nod numbly at the phone, even after Jo had long hung up.
~o~
Turned out, the bikers had died instantly, but their bikes weren't a total waste. Whatever was left of them, had been shipped to a scrape yard near Clark County where, according to a Rendell who had kept a close tab on his friends' possessions, they still were.
Bikers and their bikes. They should've known that if there was one thing keeping any of those ghosts trapped on this plane of existence, it would be their rides.
Dean dragged both Sam and Bobby to the place Jo pointed out as soon as he was off the phone. They took Bobby's car, the three of them huddling up in the small Chevelle like sardines in a can, all because Dean refused to risk the Impala's integrity one more time. They had, after all, to drive right through the Los Muertos territory to get to their haunted bikes.
In the end, Sam almost felt bad at how easy it was to locate the gangs' wasted rides and torched them. Before the first bike ignited under the gasoline, Sam could swear he'd heard a faint vruummvrummm coming from the top of the hills that surrounded the scrap yard, but when he looked, there was nothing there but fog and the occasional blare of a passing car on the road.
No bikers, no flying heads. It was like the riders were ready to hang up their boots and had just be waiting for someone to help them to rest.
Sam supposed that some hunts were just meant to be. Now it was just a matter of ignoring the lovingly and comforting pats that Dean offered the Impala's damaged paint when they returned to the motel room, like he was somehow assuring the car that he had avenged her honor, sit back and enjoy whatever Jo had in stored for his lying and deceiving brother.
Bobby had a bet that it would involve a dance salon; Sam was hoping for something much, much more worse.
~o~
"You ready yet, honey?" Jo called out from outside. Her tone was overly sweet and sarcastic, making Dean's alarm bells blare even louder at him. This was all a set up; he knew that. He'd known it ever since the first satisfied smirk that Jo had on her face when he agreed to her terms. It felt like selling his soul all over again.
Behind the wheel of a blue Ford, she sat, waiting for him. Dean cast one last look at the motel room door and at his car, parked peacefully in the space in front of it and joined Jo in her car.
Jo refused to tell him where she was taking him for their date. Just 'dress nicely' she'd told him.
Dean, who never liked being bossed around, decided to wear his rattiest jeans, the ones with a hole above his knee so big that they could pass as shorts; and a Henley shirt that had once been brown, but that after a lifetime of hard washes, had turned a faint tan tone.
Instead of the disappointed look that he'd hoped to elicit from the blond woman for having ignored her request, Jo's smirk only widened and Dean got a very, very bad feeling about the whole thing.
He should've known that she'd planned some sort of revenge after the whole 'dress as a tramp and visit a prison filled with horny cons' thingy. He'd just never expected Jo to be the cruel type.
The bar she'd taken them to looked ordinary enough. Wooden doors, red neon light above the entrance with two Queens of Hearts flashing in all of their red light glory. The fact that the bar might actually be called Queens didn't even register until Dean stepped inside.
There was something by George Michael playing on the jukebox, mixing nicely with the normal sound of clinging glass and pool cues hitting balls on the tables at the back of the bar. It could be any other bar that he'd been in his life, and Dean could almost relax in the familiar sounds and smells.
And then he got the punch line.
Like a freight train coming to stop right in his face, Dean got why, despite the fact that he was standing next to a pretty blond chick, who was wearing a pair of low cut jeans and a string strapped tank top that did little to cover her curves, all eyes were trained on him.
Every male's eye was trained on him.
"I'm gonna kill you," Dean whispered in Jo's ear, ignoring the wink from the bartender and the raised beer bottle from the mustached guy at the counter. "A very slow, very messy death... mark my words, Joanna Beth."
Jo, not even one bit intimidated by either the snarl or the threat in Dean's words, just winked at him, smiled like the cat who'd gotten the canary and dragged him to one of the tables. Center stage, of course, because she was evil like that.
Dean could feel the number of eyes burning at his back. He couldn't believe that she had actually dragged him into a gay bar. On purpose.
When it became evident that, despite the hungry looks, no one was actually going to come and bite him, Dean actually managed to allow himself to relax and enjoy the good, cold beer that the place had and the nice music selection on the jukebox.
But Jo, apparently, wasn't done with her revenge, even after Dean had recognized that it had been dickish of them -of him, he corrected after seeing her pointed glare- to ask her to parade as fresh meat in that prison visitation room and having lied to her about the reasons why Dean wanted that gang put to rest.
Jo accepted his apology in the same breath that she used to announce that she was going to the ladies' room. Leaving him all. The fuck. Alone.
It took the crowd of hot-blooded, not-blind, gay men in the bar two minutes before the first one took his chances with the lonely, cute guy in the center table.
His name was Bob, a middle aged man who announced as he sat down that Dean was perfectly safe there, amongst equals, and that it was okay to come out of the closet, that he didn't need to bring his little sister along to disguise his sexual choices. Dean was just too stunned to even say 'Hi' back at Bob. The deer in the flashlights look was, apparently, endearing on him. Another tidbit of information that Bob shared with Dean.
By the time Bob gave up on getting a phone number out of Dean and 'Stef' took his seat, the Winchester was already figuring out the best ways of disposing of Jo's body.
She took a long time in that bathroom.
The end
My biggest thank you to immortal_jedi and jackfan2 , who in the midst of posting their Big Bang fics this year, still found the time to beta this for me. Big hugs for those two lovely ladies <3