Supernatural/VampireDiaries: Where the Night Begins 2/2
Title: Where the Night Begins
Author: Desiree
Rating: Somewhere between PG 13 and NC17
Spoilers: Vampire Diaries: none, Supernatural: up to season 5
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Damon Salvatore
Pairings: Sam/Damon
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine. Unfortunately.
Summary: It was a chance meeting that had let Sam Winchester make the acquaintance of Damon Salvatore, and it wouldn't be until about a year later that Sam would learn of Damon's true nature.
A/N: Back in 2011 I signed up for the Supernatural Big Bang challenge, but then RL happened, and I had to beg out. This isn't that story (mainly because this was just supposed to be the first chapter), but I feel it's as close as I could get while leaving it where it is now.
A few pieces of dialogue are taken verbatim from SN 'Shadows' and 'Bloodlust'.
“What do we know about Emma Mulray?”
Dean's head snapped up, gaze flying across the room to meet Sam's over the case file that was spread out across the bed on which the older Winchester was sitting.
“What?”
Sam put his hands up in a plea for patience. “Just humor me for a moment, Dean. What do we really know about her?”
The room was filled with the sound of rustling paper as Dean sorted through the print-outs.
“Emma Mulray,” he began to rattle off, “came into town five weeks ago, current residence Jacksonville, Florida; single; employed at the same bar where you reacquainted yourself with your creepy one-night-stand just this afternoon...”
Sam shot him a glare, but didn't otherwise acknowledge the jibe. “No, I mean like DOB. Where was she born? Who are her parents? Anything before she came to Jacksonville.”
Frowning, Dean canvassed the controlled chaos of print-outs, newspaper articles and handwritten notes in front of him. Coming up blank, as Sam had known he would.
“There's nothing!” Dean stated, stumped. He looked up to search Sam's eyes. “How come we know so little about her?”
Sighing, Sam ran a hand through his hair, going for the table where their father's journal had unceremoniously been dumped a few hours ago. “Because we considered her another victim, and I didn't dig any deeper yet because I thought her colleague would give us more to go on. But I bet you anything, if I tried, I wouldn't find a trace of her.”
He leafed through the battered, leather bound journal in his hands, careful not to displace any of the haphazardly added notes and pictures and articles, until he found the entry he was looking for.
“Why?” Dean wanted to know.
Keeping the page open, Sam wordlessly proffered the book to his brother who took it and scanned the writing with open curiosity.
“There used to be a bog where this city was built, wasn't there?”
“Yeah,” his brother answered flatly, expression darkening as he read through the entry. “It was drained to gain building sites. It's common practice.” Sam anticipated his next question, when Dean looked up at him again. “How - ?”
“I only just saw her.”
Raised eyebrows, an incredulous jerk of Dean's head, and Sam laughed humorlessly. “Yeah. Dressed in a nightgown, a lantern in her hand. She's a will-o-wisp.”
“They're rare.” Dean tapped the book in his hands thoughtfully. “Even Dad couldn't find much on them. Just the most common legends, not even enough to count as lore.”
Will of the Wisps; Jack o' Lantern; all variations of the same theme: a poor soul tethered to this realm, leading others to their doom. In some versions of the legend, the ember in the lantern came straight out of the fires of hell.
“They're also called ghost-lights,” Dean went on, perusing the entry a second time. “Dad speculated they might be spirit phenomenons, like a woman-in-white, where some circumstances have to come to pass to become one. Like maybe getting lost in a bog and dying there. If that's the case, though, looking for the body is going to be a bitch. And it still doesn't explain the bite-wounds, does it?”
“The creature I just saw wasn't a ghost, Dean,” Sam informed his brother. “When it tried to attack, it - it changed into something...” Shuddering at the mere thought of it, all Sam was clearly able to recall was a snout full of needle-sharp teeth and glowing, orange eyes.
“It attacked you?”
Waving away Dean's concern, Sam assured, “I'm fine. Anyway. It's probably been here since before the city was built, but there weren't any suspicious deaths until now, or else it would have drawn attention long ago. Why now? What made it surface all of a sudden?”
Almost a minute of deep silence followed. Then, pointing a finger at his younger brother in sudden inspiration, Dean asked, “Haven't I seen a billboard outside of town, advertising a new apartment complex that's set to be built once the remaining wetland's been drained?”
“Huh.” Sam cocked his head. “Could be. The legends tell us will-o-wisps dwell in marshland. They wouldn't be the first creatures to react badly if their territory is threatened.”
“The question remains: how do we kill it?”
Contemplatively, Sam rocked his head back and forth. There were several things he could think of, but he had little to no proof any of them would actually work.
“I have an idea or two, but we should probably check with Bobby first, see if he knows anything at all that could help us.”
“Yeah.”
Sam went to order the mess on Dean's bed, collecting the loose pages into neat stacks when he became aware of Dean watching him speculatively, lips pursed in thought.
“What?” he asked.
Sheepishly, Dean shrugged. “You were right,” he admitted, and for a second Sam had no idea what he was talking about. “About how I was fixating on your little friend and not taking any other explanation into consideration.”
Ducking his head, Sam opened his mouth just to close it again. He sighed, sat down on his bed and met Dean's gaze. “Yeah, well. You were right too. About Damon.”
“What do you mean?”
“I, uh - I kind of ran into him. Outside. He says he's a vampire, but...”
“But what?”
“Oh, he's definitely not human. He just doesn't look like any vampire we've ever tussled with.”
“Did you let him walk?”
“What was I supposed to do, Dean? I only had a gun on me, and we both know they don't work!”
Dean stared at him incredulously. “You're just assuming the rules are the same, if he's really so different as you say?”
“Yes, I'm assuming!” Sam exclaimed in aggravation. “That's pretty much all I can do at this point! And anyway, he managed to scare off Emma, so I guess I owe him.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Sam knew it was the wrong thing to say. Dean's expression turned to stone. Sighing once again, Sam entreated, “He's not hurting anyone, Dean.”
A mirthless smile on his face, his brother replied, gesturing, “And you're just taking his word for it.”
“No, I'm not just taking his word for it! There haven't been any animal attacks, suspicious unsolved murders or missing persons listed, save for those we came here for!”
“And how exactly do you know -“
“How many times, Dean? The bite-marks -“
“ - don't match. Yeah, you said.”
Running a hand through his short hair, Dean grimaced and turned to pace the length of floor at the feet of their beds. Sam wondered if he was thinking of Lenore, too; the one vampire and her clan they had let walk because they were surviving on cow's blood and the brothers hadn't been able to deny her claim for a right to live because they weren't hurting anyone, they were just trying to get by.
Still. Dean wasn't wrong. No matter how... alluring Damon seemed, he was dangerous, never even tried to deny it. Sam had to remind himself it wouldn't pay to let his guard down.
“Look,” Sam cajoled. “Let's deal with Emma first.” Reaching into his back pocket to grab his cellphone, he held it out to his brother. “Why don't you call Bobby, and I see what else I can find on the 'net?”
Grudgingly, Dean snatched the cell out of Sam's hand, and a few minutes later, they found themselves up to their armpits in research again. Business as usual, really.
oOo
“Dean!”
The way this night had been going up until then, they should have known it would culminate in one of the usual disasters. Hurrying over to where his brother lay sprawled on the pavement from the hit he'd just taken, Sam allowed himself a small sigh of relief when he saw Dean's chest rising and falling. Unconscious then, not dead. Not dead...
“You humans!” the will-o-wisp to his right snarled, Emma's girl-next-door face distorted by hatred, the lantern held in a white-knuckled grip.
“Always going where you're not wanted, never content with what you've already taken!”
Behind her, Sam glimpsed a shadow stalking closer, a dark outline in the black of night, barely there outside the circle of deep orange light cast by the ember in the lantern.
“Killing us won't save your marsh!” he tried to reason, kneeling down next to his brother, focusing Emma's attention firmly on him.
“No,” Emma agreed. “But if I am going to die, I'm taking as many of you with me as I can!”
Sam hadn't really expected her to listen. They rarely did. As her words sunk in, he whispered in realization, “You'll die once the marsh dries up!”
He should have thought of this before. It wasn't unusual that nature spirits were tied to the ground they called home. Not that it mattered.
The will-o-wisp, however, never got to reply. Out of the dark, a hand shot to her chin and her head was yanked to the side and back. Sam heard the unmistakable sound of a neck snapping, and then Emma's petite body crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, and Sam's gaze landed on the figure standing behind her.
“Well, that was disappointing,” a by now familiar voice complained.
“Damon!”
“Who did you expect, the cops?”
The vampire made to stand next to him, but Sam quickly protested.
“No. The lantern! The ember has to be extinguished, or she'll come back!”
Fallen from its owner's grasp, the lantern had rolled a small way away, but the coal inside was still glowing a sinister red-orange. A few short strides took Damon over there, and while Sam checked on his brother, trying to bring him around, the vampire brought his foot down on the iron frame.
“You don't have a bottle of water handy, by any chance?”
Sam smiled, going for the inner pocket of his jacket. “Holy water, as a matter of fact,” he answered smugly.
There was a shuffling in his back, and Damon's warning call of “Hunter!”
Sam jerked around, expecting to come face to face with a seriously pissed off and homicidal creature. What he found instead was Emma slowly rising to her feet, her dirty-white, gossamer nightgown torn and fluttering in the wind that had picked up in the last few minutes, standing off against the dark-haired vampire.
“You are taking their side, vampire?” she asked angrily. “You're on their side when they would kill you as soon as look at you?”
“I'm not on anyone's side!”
Studying him with unblinking eyes for what felt like a small eternity, she finally decided, “No matter.”
She started flickering like an old cinema tape, her appearance changing back and forth. One moment, her eyes were molten lava, the next not; one moment, Sam saw a snout with razor-sharp teeth and a vaguely human-shaped figure with the shriveled, discolored skin of a bog-body; blink, and she was human again. It hurt his eyes.
“If you come in my way, I'll kill you like anyone else,” she promised Damon, but Damon merely scoffed contemptuously. “I'd like to see you try!”
The next second, he was thrown against the wall in his back. It was over so fast, Sam hadn't even seen it happen. Sounds like twigs breaking echoed unnaturally loud off the alley walls.
“You are but a child,” the will-o-wisp was saying, her face mere inches from Damon's flared nose. “You're not strong enough to fight me.”
Damon's gaze flickered over the broken lantern, and up to catch Sam's eyes. Sam gripped the bottle in his hand tighter.
“Watch me!” the vampire hissed, and once again, things happened so fast Sam saw nothing but blurs. When the ember landed in front of him, though, he didn't hesitate.
The red-hot coal hissed and creaked and shrieked - or maybe that was Emma - the water vaporizing almost before it touched its surface until finally all that was left was a shriveled looking bit of dark gray cinder, crumbling to ashes in a gust of wind.
Only then did the smells register; wood-smoke and burnt flesh and the iron tang of blood, something cloying, decaying underneath.
Sam looked up to find Damon leaning against the alley wall, breath coming in short gasps, burnt hand held gingerly against his chest. Blood was splattered across his face, dripped down his hair, and his eyes were clouded with it. To the vampire's feet lay what was left of Emma Mulray - or rather the creature she had been. Her ripped off head had come to rest several feet into the alley, still rocking back and forth in a macabre denial of her defeat.
Something wet ran down Sam's forehead, and he brought his fingers up to wipe it away. They came away a dark, rusty red. Sam stared at the blood as if hypnotized. It still sang to him, a siren's call of power and invincibility. It would be so easy...
“And here I thought the bloodsucker was me.”
Damon's amused voice shook him out of his trance, and Sam came back to himself, hand inches away from his lips. Decisively, he let it drop and pushed himself up to his feet, sparing a glance at Dean to make sure he wasn't worse off than before, before approaching his unlikely ally.
“Are you alright?”
Curiosity sparked bright in once again pale eyes, but Damon let it slide, settling on, “I'll be fine.”
He brought his injured hand up in front of his eyes, inspecting it with an odd expression on his face. Before Sam's startled eyes, raw flesh knitted itself back together ever so slowly, and the angry red faded little by little into the pale pink of freshly healed skin. “I don't think I've kept any normal wound this long since I turned,” Damon stated bemusedly.
He pushed off the wall to toe the disgusting corpse with detached interest. Emma had died in her true form; there was nothing human about her anymore. They still would have to get rid of the body somehow.
As if reading his mind, Damon bent down to take a hold of bony shoulders, seemingly uncaring of the still mostly raw palm of his hand or the revolting texture of the lifeless, mummified flesh, ordering, “Give me a hand, will you?”
Together, they heaved the carcass into a dumpster at the back end of the alley. The sad truth was that it wasn't likely to be discovered unless someone was actively searching the garbage. Nonchalantly Damon threw the head in after, not bothered in the least by what he was doing. Getting rid of the evidence obviously wasn't new to the vampire any more than it was for Sam. The thought tied his stomach in knots.
For a long moment, Sam contemplated the supernatural creature at his side, until he finally voiced the question chasing itself around in his head. “Why did you help me?”
Damon's eyes snapped to his, looking up at him from underneath long lashes, starkly black against pale skin.
“Why not?” he smirked. “There's not much fun to be found around here anymore, and you, Sam Winchester, are the most riveting human being I've come across in decades!”
Sam huffed. “You really expect me to believe you did all of this just for the heck of it?”
Shrugging, Damon retorted, “I don't particularly care what you believe, Sam.”
This time when the vampire stalked closer Sam held his ground. In a further deviance from their usual dance, it was Sam who let his eyes travel up and down that dark, lithe frame, for once allowing himself to appreciate the predator's grace which Damon showed off so effortlessly. There was no trace of broken bones despite Sam's earlier suspicions, only the knowing, annoying smirk on his lips that the hunter had already come to expect of him.
“Now the more interesting question would be,” Damon all but purred, deliberately, provocatively sniffing at Sam's collarbone, “why a human like you, a hunter nonetheless, would be so tempted by that vile-smelling blood over there?”
His addiction to demon blood was not something... there were only two people in Sam's life he owed any sort of explanation, and the vampire wasn't among them. Before he could tell Damon to keep his nose out of other people's business, however, a pained groan sounded from behind them. About time, Sam thought, relief flooding through him, and, aggravating vampire momentarily forgotten, he hurried back to his brother's side to crouch down beside him. Carefully he helped Dean sit up. The older Winchester had gotten away with a cracked rib and a knock to his thick skull, and, while undoubtedly painful, Sam knew he would be fine. A hand to his sore head, Dean croaked, “What did I miss?”
Another question Sam was reluctant to answer. A glance over his shoulder told him that Damon was gone. That the vampire had been standing on the wrong side of a dead end alleyway didn't warrant more than the quirk of an eyebrow anymore.
“Only the demise of the latest fugly,” Sam joked weakly. Catching Dean's arm over his shoulder, hauling him to his feet, Sam suggested, “Come one, let's get out of here. I'll fill you in on the way.”
oOo
Dean wasn't happy about Damon's involvement, but Dean hadn't been happy about a lot of things for a while now, and Sam couldn't bring himself to regret his lack of action concerning the vampire when said vampire had most likely just saved both their lives. Either way, he had a feeling they hadn't seen the last of the cocky bastard.
What Sam didn't expect was to see Damon again that very same night, lounging on Sam's bed in the brothers' motel room as if he had a right to be there, flicking through the pages of their father's journal with obvious interest. All traces of the fight had been washed off, Damon's hair still gleaming wet. Steam was billowing out of the open door to the bathroom. Stunned by the sheer audacity of his behavior, both brothers Winchester, frozen just inside the threshold, had to take a long moment to stop and stare.
“I don't believe it!” Dean cursed viciously behind him, just as Sam himself had worked up the presence of mind to demand, “What the hell are you doing here?”
As if only just noticing them when Sam damn well knew he'd heard them coming, Damon abandoned his reading to arch a patronizing brow at them. “You really shouldn't leave your doors unlocked. Anybody could come in.”
“We didn't!” Sam snapped over Dean's scathing, “That's real funny, coming from you!”
As if he hadn't even heard them, the vampire went on, “It might not be the worst idea to rent your motel rooms under your real names, either. On the other hand, from what I've picked up that's not really an option for you, is it?”
Scrunching up his face, Damon dropped the entire issue with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders, holding up John Winchester's hunting journal instead.
“Your father wrote one hell of a cookbook. I mean, granted, it's crazy, and not terribly organized, but impressive all the same.”
“Cookbook?” Dean's expression went from murderous to confused in two seconds flat as he closed the door behind him.
“Grimoire, Book of Shadows, supernatural almanac. Call it what you will.”
Clearly not caring one way or the other, Damon waved his hand about. Sam glared at him.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he repeated, carefully pronouncing each word.
(A lifetime ago, those very same words spoken to your brother had started - everything.)
“What?” Damon huffed, swinging his long legs off the bed to sit up. “After a night like this, a guy can't be concerned about his friend's well-being?”
“I'm sorry, I must have missed something.” Imitating Damon's convincingly sincere tone, Sam asked, “When exactly have we become friends?”
A second later, he let out a pained yelp. Dean's punch in the ribs had taken Sam completely by surprise.
“You are not allowed to hook up with anybody ever again, Sam!” his older brother told him. “You hear me?” Not that Sam blamed him. At the moment, he couldn't agree more.
“Is this the thanks I get for saving your butts?” The hurt in Damon's demeanor seemed almost genuine. Almost. Dean, of course, was unable to resist the bait and threatened, “If I weren't still seeing double, you'd be riddled with holes by now!”
“Unless your bullets are made out of wood, it wouldn't do you much good, I'm afraid.”
Maliciously Dean replied, “I bet it'd still hurt like hell!” Damon's grimace was confirmation enough.
Memorizing the information the vampire had just revealed to them for future use only came natural after all his years on the hunt, even while Sam wondered why Damon would let his vulnerabilities slip like that; was he really that arrogant, or did he assume they already knew?
At any rate, Sam felt the makings of a headache starting to throb in his temples at the prospect of his two tetchy companions locked in this verbal sparring match. Enough was enough!
When the vampire opened his mouth, a witty comeback no doubt at the tip of his tongue, Sam immediately cut him short. “Knock it off, you two! You're not kindergarteners anymore!”
Suddenly the center of attention, for an unnerving second two of the most intense pairs of eyes Sam had ever come across fixed on him. Then, his gaze breaking away, Dean huffed and went to collapse on his bed, one hand once again going for his sore head.
“Damon.” Sam held out his right hand. “Give me Dad's journal.” To his surprise, the vampire complied without any further stalling.
“If he kills me, Sammy, I'm haunting your ass until Kingdom come!”
Taking into account recent developments (Lilith, the demon you have been so hellbent on killing, has been the last seal to fall - played by both sides, how could you have been so stupid?), that wasn't much of a deadline anymore.
Damon denied affronted, “I'm not going to kill you!” Like so many times before, Sam couldn't honestly tell if the emotion, laced with none-too-subtle derision as it was, was genuine or if the vampire just liked to play his games with them.
There they go again. Sam sighed as Dean lifted up his head to glare at the vampire still sitting on Sam's bed. “Oh, so Sam here got you all wrong, and you're not a bloodsucking fiend who eats people for dinner?”
Damon gave him one of those looks of his, and Sam had to snort back an inappropriate laugh.
“Do I feed on humans?” Damon's question sounded rhetorical at best, but he answered it all the same, “Of course. More than occasionally. Let's face it, you humans are food.” Making a face at the brothers' incredulous expressions, the vampire grudgingly corrected himself, “Your blood is, anyway. But I don't drain them dry. I'm not stupid enough to leave a trail any amateur hunter could follow. Mostly, they're returned home safe and - well, slightly anemic, with only the memory of a good time.”
Damon's gaze, for once not cynical but genuinely intrigued, rested on Sam as he came to the end of his explanation. Trying not to squirm in discomfort with memories he should have...
“Forget.”
Phantom pain tingled in his neck.
Sam's eyes went wide, his head snapping to the dark-haired creature in their room in realization.
Without the benefit of resurfacing memories, it took Dean a moment longer to catch the implication, but despite frequent evidence to the contrary, Sam's brother wasn't stupid. As he got there, his expression darkened dangerously, and, steel in his eyes, he sat up again to confront the vampire sitting across from him. “Are you saying you - what? Obi-Wan-ed my brother into having sex with you?”
Damon snorted. “Like I had to.” Sam's face burned, but Damon already went on. “No,” he shook his head, and for once his sincerity felt, well, sincere, “I just compelled him to forget the feeding.” Eyes cutting back to Sam, he stated, “But you remember, don't you?”
“Vaguely,” Sam admitted. And honestly, he couldn't tell how much of that was down to the effects of the booze or the receding veil Damon's... power had spread over his mind.
In the back of his mind, he worried how little they knew about Damon's particular brand of supernatural - not to mention that neither of them had even been aware of the existence of a wholly different species of vampires. For all they knew - what was the word Damon had used? - compelling people to do their bidding was only the tip of the iceberg.
He didn't realize Damon and he had been staring at each other until Dean flopped back onto his mattress, a pained groan not far behind as both his ribs and head protested the foolhardy action, announcing, “Whatever. If there's not going to be imminent violence, I'm going to catch some shut-eye. I'm beat. Take your boyfriend outside, will you, Sam?”
Rolling his eyes, Sam tossed their father's book squarely on Dean's chest, eliciting another, completely played up moan of agony from his brother, and went outside sans further ado.
Their uninvited guest chose to follow without any more prompting.
Door closed, Sam leaned his long frame against the wall and stated, “You know, you still haven't told me why you came here in the first place.”
Those damn pale eyes again, glacier blue and darkly promising, looking up at him through dark lashes. Coy (and anything but). His belly coiled in sudden (not so sudden) want.
Damon - not unlike a certain angel of the Winchesters' acquaintance - didn't seem to believe in personal space. Already well within reach, it was easy for him to take that one step closer and tug Sam's head down for a kiss with one insistent hand in Sam's long hair.
He should have pushed him away. He wanted to push him away. He'd been down that road before, he knew where it led.
Sam had never been good with temptation.
Instead, his hands slid underneath the short tails of Damon's black dress shirt, gripping bare, warm skin, expensive leather jacket heavy against his knuckles. Bringing them flush together from foot to groin to chest, Sam turned them around to crowd Damon's smaller form against the wall.
Deceptive frailty. (Now you know why.)
Fingers tugged at his hair, on his neck, the threat of fangs against his lips sent thrills of excitement straight to his cock. The vampire let himself be manhandled, but not for long. In the blink of an eye, their positions were reversed again. Sam gasped for breath as their kiss broke. The hand on his chest a solid, burning anchor in stark relief to the retreating heat of a body, and Sam looked down to watch as the darkness washed away from Damon's eyes, as his fangs receded to their original size.
“Maybe,” Damon teased, “I just wanted to get your number.”
Sam held no illusions about what it meant, inviting a predator like him to play - and not even Sam could pretend his behavior until now had been anything else.
The last point of contact vanished as Damon's hand fell away with a step backward. Smirking, Damon took another step back before turning on his heels. Huffing in frustration, Sam watched him saunter off into the twilit darkness before true dawn.
The night was almost over.
With a heavy sigh he let his head fall back against the wall behind him, concentrating on the brief flare of pain. It didn't help much.
What he really needed right now was a cold shower.
The End