He Who Fights Monsters - Chapter Three
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CHAPTER THREE
She stands in the doorway of the bathroom, watching him sleep. He’s gotten bigger since this afternoon, what with the extra doses she’d had to give him to keep him functional after the stunt he’d pulled with ripping his arm out of his socket. Not to mention the new bruises and contusions he’d gained during tonight’s fight. His face is swollen with fluid retention and she can tell from the careful way he’s lying - partly on his back, partly on his side, the spare pillow hugged to his front - that his ribs are bothering him again. She hopes his arm is aching too; it’d serve him right.
He’d begged, pleaded with her for a hit, a drop to take the edge off when he’d finally come around on that cot in the storage closet that does double-duty as a medic center during the moonlit matches. She’d refused and helped him sit, waiting out the dizziness and nausea. He hadn’t dropped the matter, unable to accept her rejection, imploring for relief. He'd earned it after all, he said. Won the fight. And she'd had to explain, then, that no, he hadn't won, that matches Level Four and higher were to the death. He hadn't killed Bela; he'd just deposed her. He'd defaulted on a fight, which disqualified him from competing for a week.
Even after he’d submitted to the fact that he'd lost, he’d asked for a taste of her, saying he'd used every last drop pulling Bela out. It was true, too.
She’d rebuffed him and he’d cried then, sniveled like some kind of pathetic junkie or the toddler she never had the desire to bear, all messy tears and snot, but he hadn’t been shaking, hadn’t been undone - just driven weak by basic exhaustion and pain. Instead, she’d given him four Advils and helped him hobble to the hotel three blocks away. The walk, even with breaks, had taken almost everything out of him and she’d had to practically carry him up the stairs to their room. When she’d finally laid Sam out on the bed and got him settled, the boy nearly wept with relief at being horizontal again.
Sleep was a far better cure right now than her blood, for as much as he believed otherwise, at his core, Sam Winchester was human.
She exhales, scrubs the small hand towel through her hair one last time, squeezing out the excess water, and slips back into the bathroom, hangs up the towels on the metal rack, and shuts off the light. Padding in bare feet over the crunchy, gritty carpet, she makes her way to the bed, not caring if anyone sees her naked form through the open window, and slides in between the hot, sticky covers, spooning up behind Sam.
He shudders, stirs, at her contact, but doesn’t wake. She slides her arms around his middle, grateful her meatsuit is actually a corpse because the arm pinned under Sam would be numb in seconds, and squeezes his narrow waist. She presses her lips against the nasty, thick, celluloid scar in the center of his back and pretends to sleep.
::: ::: :::
The world is too bright, and his heavy eyelids don't want to stay open anyway. He's in far too much pain to keep sleeping, though, drifting in and out of an uneasy half-doze.
He can smell Ruby before he sees her; the sulfur scent of her blood and the ache inside of him grows stronger. He tries to call out to her but his voice cracks and all he can do is croak.
Please, he thinks, hoping she'll somehow hear him, read his mind. He reaches for the glass of water on the nightstand and knocks it over. The crash gets her attention and she’s at his side almost instantly. When she pushes his sweat-soaked hair out of his face, he tries to nuzzle at her wrist, but only succeeds in rubbing his nose against her hand briefly.
"Not yet," she says, withdrawing. She leaves his side and he feels even worse. She’s back in a moment, though, bearing a fresh glass of water and Tylenol. He wants to throw them against the wall, wants to scream, but he can't because he just doesn't have the energy. Angry, hurt tears threaten to spill out of his eyes as he closes them and wordlessly takes the pills, knowing they will do shit. Ruby holds the glass of water to his lips and he swallows, washing down the pills, and with the scent of her so close he can almost pretend that it's something else. But it isn't, its just water and there's no relief. Not for him.
::: ::: :::
Sam wakes up alone and restless. He downs the pitcher of water Ruby left for him and after pacing the small room for a minute decides he needs to go for a run. The room smells too much like Ruby.
He slips into a pair of running shorts and a relatively clean t-shirt and heads down the stairs, out into the brisk early-morning air. It must be a workday, because he has the sidewalks to himself. He runs aimlessly, the rhythm of his feet against the pavement numbing his thoughts. He turns down a side street and another and, minutes later, finds himself heading towards The Abyss, drawn there on autopilot. He slows as he approaches the back entrance, and heads towards the locker rooms.
The old man's sitting where he always is, behind the Plexiglas of his booth, nose buried in a newspaper. He doesn't look up until Sam raps his knuckles against the window.
"Ja?" Lars narrows his eyes when he sees Sam, gives him an once-over, eyes resting briefly on his sweat-stained collar. "Ah, the Boy Wonder. You're not looking so good. Where's Funny Girl?"
Sam's teeth grind. "Not being very funny at the moment."
Lars purses his lips. He sets his paper down and stands, propping his hands against the peeling countertop. "How can I help you?"
Sam feels oddly short. The man is about his own height, maybe even a little taller, but the booth gives him another good three inches. "I have some questions."
"Don't we all." He picks up his cigarette and takes a long drag, taps it over the ashtray. Waits.
"About the- the levels."
"Mm?"
Sam exhales, doesn’t meet the burly Scandinavian’s eyes. "I know why I signed up for this, but the demons I'm fighting…” He looks up. “Why… How do they end up here?"
Lars cocks an eyebrow. "Why do you care?"
"Motivation makes a difference."
"Debatable. Put a man in a cage with a starving bear, does it matter why the man wants to escape?"
Sam blinks. "Of course."
"Not to the bear." Lars sucks on his cigarette, exhales a smoke ring above his head. He stubs out the ashes, fixes his gaze on Sam. "Some of them volunteer. Death is no cure for stupidity." He shrugs. "But most of them are here because they have to be. Punishment decreed by the Queen of Hell.”
"Demons love violence." Sam shakes out his tingling right hand, trying to get the pins and needles to stop. "Not much of a punishment."
"They do. But the cage makes that violence a weapon. Every punch, every kick makes another dent in their souls. The fights chip away at them piece by piece. Here, they can kill each other."
Sam wonders what the cage is doing to his soul. He knows he's missing pieces, but that's been the case since Dean died. Sometimes Ruby makes him feel a little less empty. But right now, strung out and tensed with a physical need he can't ignore, his insides feel jagged. He imagines waterfalls of red running down the juts of stone that don’t fit together anymore and smoothing them out, filling him until there's no more room for that sharp ache.
"But you," Lars says thoughtfully. "You can kill them a different way, can't you?"
Sam shifts his eyes down to the ancient computer in the back of the booth. "Do you know who I'm up against next week?"
"Ja."
"Can you tell me?"
"That would be against the rules."
Sam frowns. Count on him to pick the one guy who's a stickler for policy. "What do you think my chances are?"
Lars coughs out a laugh. "That all depends on how motivated you are, Little Bear."
Sam cracks his knuckles instead of punching the glass. "And if I win, do I really get to claim a soul?"
"If you make it through all of the opponents in all of the levels, ja."
"How many others have done it?"
The skin around Lars' eyes crinkles as he smiles. "Only one."
"Who?"
"A son who loved his father, a father who loved his daughter."
"What's his name?"
"None of your business."
"Come on, man-"
"I'll tell you what. You make it through Level Four. Come back and see me and maybe I'll tell you his name."
"Maybe?"
Lars’ smile fades. "Maybe. My stories are all I have. I don't share them with the undeserving." He sits back down in his chair. "Go back to Funny Girl before she worries about you."
Sam scoffs. Ruby's not worried about him. If she were, she wouldn't be holding out on him like this. His fingers tighten at the thought of her and he feels his pulse speed up, his throat tense. He can practically taste her blood on his tongue and just the thought of it makes his mouth dry. The locker room door clatters a few feet away and Sam's head whips towards the demon walking out into the hall. He can smell its blood.
Without another glance at the old man, Sam heads back out the door, and runs back to the hotel.
::: ::: :::
Sam quiets, becomes more restless, as the day goes on and she knows he has to be hurting. When he tells her he’s going for a run, his third since she’s returned from a coffee run to find him gone, she sees a tremor run through his frame. Later, when he returns, sweat-slick and panting, he doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t ask for reprieve. He strips naked without showering and curls up on the bed, drawing up his legs and clinging desperately to one of their pillows as though it’s a rock in a stormy sea. For all she knows, it’s probably the one thing that isn’t pitching like a tilt-a-whirl. After a while, she sees him tense, squeeze his knees together. She watches and there’s a regular, rhythmic pattern to his movements, the way he goes rigid, holds, and relaxes. Cramps. He ruts his hips against the mattress, squirming, and when she goes to him, he snarls at her, all wounded animal wanting to be left alone.
She stretches out on the floor beside the queen-sized bed, naked as the day she was born, fully aware of her curves, her breasts. Sam groans, buries his face into the pillow, and there’s a roll to his body that she recognizes as him trying to resist his own base needs… or jerking off. It’s hard to tell the difference, sometimes. She huffs out a breath, rolls onto her stomach and hears Sam moan softly. She isn’t sure if it’s relief or pain. She slides into the downward-dog yoga pose, slipping into the upward-dog, then dipping back down to curl into the child.
With a grunt, Sam suddenly shoves the pillow from him, stumbles past her, and she hears him crash to his knees in the bathroom. Then there’s the sound of retching.
She rises, snagging the wad of fabric from the foot of the bed, shaking it out as she takes the few steps to the still-open door. She slips on Sam’s sleeveless white MMA muscle shirt she’d altered to fit her and leans against the jamb, watching him sweat and shudder and heave, veins ridging in his hands and arms from the strain of holding himself over the toilet. His knuckles whiten as he grips the porcelain. He lets out a grunting moan, rises higher on his knees, spreading his legs, and she can see his erection pushing against the thin fabric of his briefs. She smiles to herself, allowing a private, slight upturn of her lips, before settling her face into a scowl.
He vomits again, his growing-out hair hanging in sweaty, lank strands around his face, the ends dangling over the bowl.
She closes the gap between them, but doesn’t offer her touch or any words of reassurance. After a moment of watching him grope himself for relief, his shallow breathing loud in the silence, she reaches for the handle and flushes the sick down the toilet.
“Now are you ready to listen to me?”
::: ::: :::
"Yes," Sam grits out as he slings his arm over shoulder. She walks him back to the bed and drops him onto the sheets. He tries to make himself comfortable, settling onto his left side, which hurts only slightly less than his right. Ruby perches on the couch on the far side of the room and draws up her knees, so her shirt slips up to her hips. She isn’t wearing underwear.
Sam's cock twitches at the sight of the velvety darkness between her legs and if he could just keep the room from tilting all around him, he'd go to the couch, drop between her legs, and then, maybe, she'd give him what he needs. Or at the very least give him a moment of pleasure to make it easier. Miserably, he pushes himself further up onto the mattress with shaking legs and pulls the sweated-through covers over him. He shivers.
He hates this. Hates this awful need inside of him, the craving that overwhelms him and overpowers everything else, leaving him strung-out and sick to his stomach. He's a pitiful excuse for a human being. A junkie. Because he knows what's inside her veins, knows that if he just does whatever it is she wants him to do, she'll give him some. She's never held out on him like this before, but, then again, he's never pissed her off this badly. He remembers when Dean used to get mad at him, and how he'd let Sam suffer through hours of the cold shoulder treatment. With Dean, he’d known what to expect. This is worse. Foreign territory.
She's dressed in just a white tank top, long enough that it skims the middle of her thighs and he’s pretty sure it once belonged to him. She comes to sit next to him and her smell, god the smell of her blood makes his heart pound in his chest. He clenches his eyes shut, forcing his hunger back, as she peels the wet sheet from his body.
His paper-thin control is slipping. He fell past the point of craving and into a desperate pit of need hours ago. He should leave, should go for one more run and never turn back.
But even that wouldn't help. It’d be worse because what he needs is out there too, in every vein of every man, woman or child possessed by a demon. With Ruby at least he knows he isn't hurting anyone else. There’s no one gagged and bound beneath the swirling darkness that is Ruby. If he steps out of the hotel now, his whole body trembling with hunger, then it'll only be a matter of minutes before his resolve breaks.
So he'll play whatever game she's playing and he'll get what he needs. He just doesn't know what she wants from him. Not yet.
She reaches for his shoulder, and rakes her fingernails along them, tracing them down his arms. The sensation, coupled with the cool air-conditioned breeze from the window unit, is more irritating than relaxing, nearly pushing him over the edge. He's far too high- strung, his nerve-endings attuned to pain, not pleasure. Nothing will feel good until he gets what he needs. He fights the urge to bite down on her lips and watches as she pulls away, sits back on her heels, and reaches into the drawer of the nightstand, grabbing her blade. She runs it across her wrist, and brings the wound to his lips and it's heaven. The taste alone is enough to make him hard and he thrusts against her hip as she turns into him, making pleased little noises as he drinks more hungrily. He feels her other hand brush up against his erection, slide through the fabric of his briefs, her thumb teasing the damp tip.
His brain buzzes, little sparks of pleasure gathering, building, and shooting right down his spine with every swallow. Relief floods through his whole body - all the pain, all the tension, dissipate and his mind finally, finally quiets and then stills.
"That's right," says Dean's voice. "Feels good, doesn't it?"
Sam stills, Ruby's blood pooling in his mouth as he strains to hear more of his brother's voice. "Don't fight it," Dean says, and Sam swallows another mouthful of sulfur, copper and power. There's a scream then, but it isn't Dean's and it isn't Ruby's. A woman's high-pitched cry sounds out again, right in the back of Sam's brain. Whoever she is, wherever she is, she's in agony.
And Dean is laughing, happier than Sam’s heard him in the whole last year.
One last swallow, and Sam pulls away, pressing his fingers over Ruby's wound to stem the bleeding.
Dean's malicious joy echoes in Sam's ears and he remembers Bela's words from the day before. "Dean got off the rack," Sam says, the words spilling out of him.
Ruby stares at him, cocks her head thoughtfully. "Bela tell you that?"
Sam nods and asks, "How?" knowing he'll hate the answer.
"He agreed to torture souls," Ruby says, shifting her onto her knees. She pulls her arm away from Sam, brings her thumb to her mouth and then runs it over the nearly healed cut by her wrist.
Sam forces his eyes away from her reddened thumb. "Dean wouldn't do that," he says. "Not him." But I heard him. I heard him make someone scream.
"Everyone breaks in Hell, Sam." And damn if her voice doesn’t sound sad.
“No," Sam protests more loudly. "Demons lie. Bela was lying."
"She wasn't."
A flare of anger surges through Sam. "You knew- you knew this would happen? Why didn't you tell me?"
"What good would it do?" she snaps. "You're already too obsessed with saving him to take care of yourself- to listen to me. If I'd told you, you would've never made it out of that fight in one piece."
Sam takes hold of Ruby's hand, and looks into her eyes. He feels steady again, almost whole, for the first time in days. "I'll listen to you. I promise, I'll do whatever you say. I'll do anything." He means it, too. She's the only way out of this, for him and for Dean. He just has to play along, do every drill, win every fight and then- then he'll be able to save Dean. He doesn't care anymore if he loses himself in the process. There's so little left to lose.
::: ::: :::
Ruby doesn’t leave Sam’s side until she knows he’s sleeping, when she hears the deep, slow breathing that only exhaustion and relief can bring. She remains seated on the edge of the bed until the moon rises - all big and bright and white and full - and then stands. She changes into jeans and a t-shirt, pulling on her leather jacket as she slips out, careful not to make a sound, to not wake Sam. Once she hits the sidewalk, it’s all speed and single-minded mission. She hears someone catcall her, a low “hello, doll,” and ignores it. She’s tempted to snap the speaker’s neck, to teach him a lesson, but she doesn’t. Not tonight. She cuts across the neon-lit red-light district where she and Sam live, and heads east, towards the suburban edge of town with the cookie-cutter box houses and manicured front lawns. She crosses a deserted four-lane road that must be backed up with cars during the daytime, ignoring the crosswalk, slicing her way diagonally, and enters a deserted playground.
She beelines for the swings and sits on one of the curved black rubber seats besides a young girl who looks to be about eight or nine years old and dressed in a pale pink party dress with puffed cap sleeves and a white grosgrain ribbon sash. Ruby sways to-and-fro in silence for a long moment, pacing herself in time with the girl, until:
“Push me.”
It’s an order, not a request. The girl’s eyes roll back milky-white.
Ruby stands, goes behind the girl, and gives her a push. She pushes the swing in silence, waiting. The girl doesn’t pump her legs, forcing Ruby to propel her. After a long stillness, Ruby finally speaks. “Isn’t it a bit late for you to be out like this?” A pause. “I mean, what with the kid-suit and all?”
Lilith shrugs. “I like this one best. I get candy.” She pauses, pumps her legs a couple of times. “So how’s Sam coming along? I heard you got him in time-out.”
“He’s got to learn.” She exhales. “Getting there, though. He’ll be ready soon.”
“I like you,” says Lilith in a high, affected little-girl voice and Ruby cringes. Lilith drops the simpering tone. “Level Seven’s all set. Alastair’s on the docket and he’s bringing Dean's soul. Sam just needs to bring the meat.” A few pumps of her legs and the skirt of her pink party dress billows out, bright against the dark sky. “And I get to be the referee. It’s going to be so much fun!” A pause. “Okay. I’m done now.”
At her words, Ruby steps back, watches the Lilith pump her legs, soaring higher. Now that she’s really looking, seeing past the skin and façade, the fact that this tiny blonde thing with the gap in her front teeth is host to one of the oldest and most powerful demons who’d ever existed, one who’d been around since God created Adam is glaringly obvious - at least to her. The girl jumps from the swing, becomes airborne for a couple of seconds, and lands on her feet. She straightens, turns to Ruby, the vacated swing separating them.
Lilith steps closer, catches the swaying swing, and kneels on it. Even though Lilith’s invading her personal space, Ruby doesn’t step back, watching as Lilith lays her small hand on Ruby's arm. Ruby struggles not to flinch. "The wards are holding?” Lilith’s eyes roll white.
Ruby nods.
The little's girl's face scrunches up thoughtfully as Lilith's white eyes look through Ruby's skin. “Barely, though. He's been practicing on you."
"Yes."
"Dangerous." Lilith's face is stern, and Ruby worries she's about to be reprimanded, painfully. Instead, the girl smiles, “But smart. How else can he trust you completely?" The child's small fingers glow briefly as Lilith reinforces the layers upon layers of wards on Ruby's soul. Sam can't see inside her thoughts. If he does, it's all over.
“Well,” Lilith says, eyes flipping blue once again. “I’d better go before they start worrying too much. Past my bedtime and all. And you probably should go too. Before he wakes.” She turns on her heel and flounces up the incline and passes through the gate.
::: ::: :::
on to chapter four