The Passenger (Big Bang, NC-17, Dean/Victor)
Title: The Passenger (4/6)
Author: hansbekhart
Artist: evalens
Rating: NC-17 (Dean/Victor, Dean/Castiel)
Summary: Victor Henriksen survives Lilith’s attack only to be a plunged into a world beyond his experience and understanding, full of demons, angels and trickster gods. War is coming. He turns to the Winchesters for help, but Dean’s year is running out and Sam is desperate to find a way to save his brother. An outsider in their war, Victor finds himself caught up between good, evil and sheer chaos. He and the Winchester’s newfound allies must scramble to save a world that has already been destroyed by Armageddon. Slash. (Character death, horrific imagery, violence)
Grave desecration, Victor finds, is a surprisingly matter-of-fact operation. He had imagined it as something the Winchesters did for fun - necrophilia, drunken sacrifice, maybe a little incest under the full moon - the usual psychopathic bullshit. The reality is he follows Dean up and down rows of tombstones, looking for fresh graves. It’s cold and damp and threatening to rain, and the flashlights they’ve brought don’t do shit to make the headstones legible. Half of them are marble, which only reflects the light; they have to stop for each likely candidate and peer closely at the writing on the stone to see if it could be their girl.
It’s a big cemetery for a small town, Victor thinks, but they got there at dusk and he hasn’t even seen the town; he’s not sure if he will, if they’ll stop and stay the night or keep on driving. They’ve got a room at the motel a mile up the road, but Dean is tense and animated and just as likely to push them on to the next town. Sam’s been gone just shy of three weeks, and Victor never asked just what the fuck kind of deadline he was talking about in Bobby Singer’s back field. It occurs to him now and then to ask, and every time he remembers how neatly he’d been cut out of the equation that night. He doesn’t understand why Dean has taken him under his wing, taken those ominously mentioned three weeks to drive around and show Victor how to be a hunter. He knows twenty different poker cheats and a dozens of easy frauds, and it’s even easier to fake an official ID than Victor knew.
They take a break underneath the wide branches of an old tree. Victor squints up at it; the branches are black against black, and it’s probably Victor’s imagination filling in the blanks as he listens to the wind rustle through the season’s first leaves above his head. Dean hands him a flask; his fingers are wet and clumsy against Victor’s. He’s shivering even harder than Victor is, but when Victor catches his eye, Dean grins and flashes him a thumbs up.
“It’s cool,” Dean says. “It really, really is. I’m fine.”
“What?” Victor asks.
“Nothing,” Dean says, and tips his head up towards the tree and the sky above them. Victor’s looking right at Dean when the whole sky lights up - thunder rumbles a few seconds after, and they look at each other. “Let’s pop your cherry and get someplace warm and dry, cool?”
“Cool,” Victor agrees, hitching the duffel up on his shoulder.
They find the grave pretty quickly after that, and Victor’s quick to learn that digging up a grave isn’t really anybody’s idea of fun. The shovel that Dean gives him is cheap and rough, and three feet down he gives himself one hell of a splinter in his palm. “Shit,” he mutters, jamming the heel of his hand into his mouth, and Dean laughs. “Fuck you,” Victor tells him, but it is kind of funny. He knocks an elbow into Dean’s side, and Dean jabs him back, and somehow it ends with Victor’s back against the wet side of the grave, Dean pressed against him from knees to chest. He’s laughing breathlessly; they both are. He feels like he’s standing at the edge of the world. He can’t catch his breath. He drops the shovel and pushes his hands down underneath Dean’s collar, looking for skin and heat and something to ground him.
Dean’s shaking again, his whole body, and something in the tremor of his hands, the knuckles just brushing Victor’s chin where he’s got them fisted into the front of Victor’s jacket - it’s terrifying.
Victor pulls back. Turns Dean deliberately so their positions are reversed. Dean watches him with dark, open eyes. Like he’s waiting for Victor to put him on his knees in the grave dirt. Victor kisses Dean - holds him in place and just breathes with him for long minutes until Dean stops shaking like a frightened animal. It’s hard do to it; Dean presses his hips forward in long, smooth movements, each one lined up so fucking perfectly, pushing his dick against Victor’s. It crosses his mind that this is more like what he thought grave desecration would be like.
“Dean,” Victor says, “What the fuck is going on?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean mutters into Victor’s neck, teeth a sharp curve against skin. Dean’s nose is icy cold and Victor shudders, leans into the bite.
“Don’t mess with me,” Victor warns, and pulls Dean’s head back, his fingers curled tight into the short hairs at the back of Dean’s skull. Dean whimpers and it shocks Victor, that frantic vulnerability. He could do anything to Dean.
“Not,” Dean pants. “I’m not - fuck - ”
“What’s gonna happen?” Victor pushes. Dean’s sliding in the wet ground; he hooks an elbow into the sod, fighting gravity, and Victor pushes his fingers up under Dean’s jacket, palm against the scarred, hot skin of Dean’s stomach. Lets Dean feel the promise implicit. “Three weeks is up tomorrow night. What’s gonna happen?”
“The end of the world,” Dean says. It’s a joke, but he’s not even smiling.
“Fuck you,” Victor tells him, and Dean grins hard and sharp.
“Promise?” he asks, and that’s when the earth moves under their feet.
There’s a second where they only look down at the ground, then at each other, then down at the ground again where the first raindrops are washing away the dirt from a rotted hand. It’s on Victor’s tongue that he thought she’d at least be in a fucking coffin, and then the hand moves. They’re out of the grave like it’s just caught fire, and that’s when Victor looks around and sees the earth humping up around them, bits of hair and teeth and shoulders pushing through.
“What the fuck,” Dean breathes, and Victor laughs in spite of himself.
“I thought you’d know,” he says.
“Uh,” Dean says. “Nope. I mean, I’ve seen Night of the Living Dead like thirty times but this is kinda - ”
A woman in a no-color taffeta dress, stained with body fluids and mud, wiggles and shoves until she’s got one arm free of her own grave. She waves it vaguely in their direction, grumbling. Her hair is flattened over her face but Victor can tell she was buried in a bouffant. “Braaaaaains,” Dean supplies, and Victor elbows him hard in the side.
“What the hell do we do?”
“Removing the head or destroying the brain works pretty well in the movies,” Dean says, grinning, and lets out a savage, joyful whoop. Every single zombie turns to look at them.
**
“Look,” Dean says, “I might’ve gotten a little carried away, but seriously. Seriously, do you know how often I’ve fought a horde of zombies? Never, Victor. I have never fought a horde of zombies. I’ve been waiting all my life to fight a horde of zombies and I’m kinda sorry you had to see that but what a fucking bang that was. Right?”
He’s got one hand fisted in Victor’s jacket, right at the shoulder, his other hand brushing gore off his own face. There’s a chunk of something, mud or brains or meat, buried in Dean’s hair and Victor pulls it out before he lets himself really think about it, tosses it somewhere on the floor of their motel room. He sags against Dean, lets himself be held up and walked across the room and put down on the bed. His hands hang between his knees. He can’t stop grinning.
Because it was amazing. Running through a horde of zombies, who shambled and stumbled and moaned their way slowly across the graveyard. And maybe later Victor will think about the way the sharp end of the shovel split that woman’s head in half like a rotted melon. Every one of them had been dressed so neatly that he thinks he could drive himself crazy imagining the hands that straightened their father’s tie, that arranged their daughter’s necklace just so.
“Simple,” Victor says, drawing each word out, “salt. And. Burn.”
“Horde of zombies,” Dean says. “Cross that one off the to-do list, stick a fork in me, I’m done.”
“Fuck,” Victor says. He reaches up for Dean, just wanting to grab something warm and hold onto it for a little while, but his hands find Dean’s jacket and pull it down his shoulders, bunching at his elbows where Dean’s still hanging on to Victor. Dean goes still and taut and it’s only when Victor glances up and actually looks at Dean that he remembers everything he wanted to do to Dean in that graveyard. He stands up on shaky legs and Dean takes a step backwards, looking lost in his filthy, too-large jacket. Victor pulls it the rest of the way off, lets it drop to the carpet. It makes the same noise that the shovel did, hitting the bottom of the grave.
When he reaches forward, wraps a hand around the back of Dean’s neck and tugs, Dean comes to him easily, lets Victor turn him around, sink his teeth down into the ridge of spine and nerves, fumble with his belt. The buckle clinks, loud in the empty room. Dean’s panting open-mouthed, his chin tipped up towards the ceiling. Eyes closed. Swaying on his feet.
He’s clumsy with Dean. Uncertain. Every part of his body is jumpy with adrenaline. He drags Dean’s zipper down, strokes the back of his hand over Dean’s underwear. The material is thin and hot and Dean shivers.
Victor walks Dean forward until they hit the door, reaches down for one hand and then the other, holding them up against the wall long enough that Dean gets the point and leaves them there. He nudges Dean’s legs open, wraps both hands around Dean’s hips and digs his thumbs into the muscle above Dean’s ass. Dean writhes against the door, a surprised noise escaping him. He looks over his shoulder at Victor, and Victor kisses him before he can say anything, shuts him right the fuck up as he bites and sucks his way down the hard line of Dean’s jaw, his throat.
He pushes Dean’s jeans down as far as he can, which isn’t that far. The waistband has cut a thin red line into Dean’s skin and Victor passes a finger over the mark absently. Dean pushes his hips back into Victor’s, trapping Victor’s hand between their bodies.
“Dean,” Victor says, purposelessly, just to say it. “Fuck.”
It’s rough - there’s nothing that resembles lubricant in a dirty, worn out motel room and even if there was this is new to Victor and he feels stupid and shy, rubbing wet fingers around Dean’s hole, trying not to hurt him when he pushes them in. Dean reaches back and cups the back of Victor’s skull, holding him close, twisted around so far that their mouths are almost touching. The heater clunks, turning itself on and neither of them notice. It takes a long time to open Dean up, to stretch him on nothing but spit and the slick from Victor’s dick. Long enough that Victor’s panting raggedly as he holds Dean still and pushes in. His hands shake on Dean’s hipbones. Dean presses his mouth to Victor’s forehead, his ear, anything he can get to.
He can feel that edge underneath his feet, opening wide as he fucks Dean Winchester, and this time he lets himself fall right over the rim.
**
“It was the kind of day that makes you feel like you’re suffocating in your skin,” Victor says. “Middle of summer. My brother was three years older than me, so he was nine and I’d turned six about half a week before. It was his job to watch me during the summer when we were out of school, and I’d been ragging on him all day that I wanted a soda.”
Later. Much later. Some sort of nameless time between midnight and dawn, and they’ve been talking for hours. It’s aimless conversation, the kind that only happens at this hour of night. Victor feels like he’s been drinking for days, his body wrung out and hurting. They’re passing a cigarette back and forth, Dean’s palm rubbing circles up and down Victor’s side. He knew all along that he would tell Dean Winchester this secret.
“So Anthony finally just gives up and walks me down to the store. It was about a mile from where we were living at the time, out in the suburbs. We had this big old back yard, bigger than anybody else in the neighborhood. Anthony had a lot of friends there and I just liked tagging along. Everywhere he went, I’d be right there too. But that day it was just him and me, and when we got to the store he made me wait outside while he bought the sodas. He didn’t have any money, he was gonna steal the sodas for me. I had to sit outside so it would be less suspicious.”
Dean exhales a long stream of smoke from his nose. His chin is tucked towards his chest. His hair is snarled and fluffed high on his head. There’s hair gel on Victor’s fingers. “I’d make Sam stand guard when we had to dumpster dive,” he offers. “Didn’t want him to see me doing stuff like that.”
Victor shakes his head. Their fingers brush as Dean gives him the cigarette and he runs the backs of his fingers down Dean’s wrist before drawing back. Their legs are tangled together. He can feel the weight and shape of Dean’s dick against his thigh. Flaccid now, after up against the wall and in the shower and on the bed.
“We’d watched this movie the night before that scared the pants off of me,” Victor says, after a long time. He sucks in a lungful of smoke, lets it drift out of his mouth towards the ceiling. Takes another one to steady himself. It’s still hard to say the words out loud. “Some monster movie. So he told me to sit my butt down and wait for him, otherwise the monster would come and get me. It was a werewolf, some stupid thing like that. So I waited for him. I remember that it was so hot that my shoes melted a little into the tar on the road. It just got hotter and hotter, but I didn’t want to get up, cuz then the monster would come and get me, you know?”
“Yeah,” Dean says. “I know the feeling.”
“He never came out,” Victor says. He stares out over the room, seeing nothing. He can still smell the melted rubber, feel the particular weight of his soles peeling off the tar. “He just never came back out. I waited for three hours until the owner of the store noticed me out there and came out to see what was wrong. He never even saw Anthony come in.”
Dean is silent. He takes the cigarette back from Victor and sits up, hunting for an ashtray. It’s over on the table, and he has to get up to stub the cigarette out. He sits on the edge of the bed when he comes back, watching Victor closely. “Come here,” Victor says, and Dean does.
“They found Anthony six weeks later,” Victor says into Dean’s hair. It smells like gel and shampoo and smoke. “In a clearing a few miles away from our home. He’d been moved there post-mortem.” He hesitates. The words crowd up in his throat and he makes himself say each one. “The animals had destroyed most of the, most of the body. There wasn’t all that much left, just enough to tell that he’d only been dead about a week. That they’d kept him alive for. For - for five weeks. When I joined the Bureau I looked up his file. They never even had any suspects.”
“You joined cuz of your brother,” Dean says.
Victor smiles tightly. “Course I did. I wanted to fight monsters.”
“I wondered,” Dean says slowly. “You always - I mean, every time we ran into you, you said a lot of stuff about …” He trails off uncertainly. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well,” Victor says, his eyes slipping closed. “Everyone’s got a sob story.”
He feels Dean shift, roll up on his elbows so they’re chest to chest. Victor’s hands are lax and open on the pillow above his head. Dean presses a kiss to Victor’s forehead, to the corner of each eye, to Victor’s mouth. He doesn’t say anything, and when Victor slides into sleep it’s painless and quiet, Dean wrapped around him, keeping the world away.
**
He hears plates clattering. Voices. The hiss and bubble of a deep fryer. He looks up and she has her notepad out, pen tapping onto it like she’d rather be anywhere else than here. “You really,” Coyote says, “oughta try the French toast. It’s fantastic. Isn’t it, Sally?”
Sally pops her gum and offers him a bleak, dead-eyed smile. “Sure is, mister. You want me to come back when you’re ready?”
“Um,” Victor says. “French toast is fine.”
Coyote pushes a cup of coffee across the table at him. “You can leave the bottle,” he tells Sally as she goes to walk away. “I think my friend here’s gonna need it.” She rolls her eyes and sets the carafe of coffee on the table. It’s as she’s walking away that Victor realizes she’s dead, the backs of her legs criss-crossed with open sores, a chunk of her thigh taken out right where the hem of her uniform hits. Out the window is a wasteland of dust and unending sky.
“Where the fuck am I?” Victor asks, low. His fingers curl around the coffee cup, ready to smash it into Coyote’s smug, round face.
Coyote shrugs. “Thought you’d appreciate the local color. Look, I’m not here to fuck around with you, I promise. If you’re not comfortable -” He waves a hand and the diner dissolves. They’re in the D.C. office, the office he hardly ever saw. Coyote leaning back in Reidy’s chair, his feet kicked up on the desk. Victor looks at his own desk, looks up in time to watch Sally slam a plate of French toast in front of him.
“Dig in,” Coyote offers.
“I don’t want to be here either,” Victor says quietly. “Get the fuck out of my partner’s chair. Get the fuck out of my head.”
Coyote sighs. “Oh, fine. Be a party pooper.”
The office is gone in a blink of an eye. Victor is sitting a few feet away from an enormous fire. The smoke smells of clean, sweet herbs. The plate of French toast is in front of Victor’s crossed legs. The cup of coffee is by his knee. Victor picks up the cup and sniffs at it. Plain old diner coffee.
He looks around himself; he’s sitting in a clearing surrounded by tall rocks and red earth. The air is as dry as bleached bones. It’s nighttime, and it’s cold. Victor takes a bite of the French toast. As promised, it’s delicious.
“Why did you save me?” Victor asks. Coyote is laying on his back, looking up at the stars.
“I didn’t,” Coyote says. “You like the blueberries in that French toast? That’s what makes it extra special.”
Victor finds himself taking another bite, and then another. The taste of the berries mingles with the smoke. He sets the plate down and walks over to Coyote’s side, dropping to his knees in the dust. Coyote looks up at him with bright, curious eyes.
“Why did you do that to Sam Winchester?”
“Do what?” Coyote asks. “I tell you, that kid has no sense of humor. Or perspective, but I guess that’s kind of a given with those Winchesters, ain’t it?”
The firelight flickers over his cheekbones, hollowing them out, sharpening his nose. He shifts up and matches Victor’s posture, legs crossed, elbows resting on his knees. “Look,” he says, “if you really want to know, I’ll tell you, but it’s not gonna make a lick of sense.”
Victor waits. Coyote sighs. “I swear, it’s like a disease with you people. You just can’t leave well enough alone. I was curious, okay? I wanted to see what Sam would do, without his brother. And I wanted to see what they would do. Sam and Dean, they’re pretty major players, you know? I dipped my toe in the water and neither side said a damn word. I wanted to know if I was safe.”
Victor traces circles in the dirt. “You’re right,” he admits. “That doesn’t make much sense.”
“Told you,” Coyote tells him. “But you’re not the kind of person who can just sit back and eat his breakfast. That’s why I like you. I think you’ll do well.”
“In what?” Victor asks. He’s almost too afraid to ask.
“There’s a war coming,” Coyote says. He reaches over and lays his fingers over the circles at Victor’s feet. Victor can feel the earth shake underneath him for just a second and then it’s gone. He can feel the tremors in his bones, like he’s bracing for the aftershock.
“It’s been a long time since anybody sang my songs,” Coyote says sadly. “Long, long time. Sure, every once in a while I’ll get a pyre, some kind of offering, but no one tells Old Coyote’s stories anymore. Only hunters, who think that knowledge is power - the more who know about me, the easier it’d be to stop me, you know what I mean?”
“Are you,” Victor says, and licks his lips. “Are you really a god?” He should feel humbled, he thinks. He stares at Coyote and sees soft skin and wide open eyes. He doesn’t look like a god. He looks like a janitor, like somebody’s assistant.
“You’re not asking the right questions,” Coyote says, a crooked smile on his face.
“Why did you save me?” Victor asks, and Coyote shakes his head.
“I already told you. I didn’t.”
“You did,” Victor insists, “You came for me at my house, you saved me from the demons.”
“Oh,” Coyote says. “That. I thought you meant before.”
Victor is still and silent. “You were in the hospital,” he says slowly.
“Yeah,” Coyote says, “but I wasn’t at the police station. Whoa boy, no fucking way. She’s not a bitch to tangle with, I’ll tell you what.”
Victor looks up to the sky. The darkness is an enormous bowl of stars above his head, clustered thick and unsettlingly close. He’s never seen so many stars in his life. The fire smells of good meat and lays shadows on the ground, stretching long fingers toward where he sits with Coyote. Victor watches them flicker, waiting to catch a glimpse of the real world. He gropes for the right questions.
“What do you want from me?” he asks.
Coyote grins broadly. “Better! You’re a quick learner. I want someone on my side. You seemed uniquely suited. The white hats and black hats picked their champions ages ago, but I’m a spur of the moment kind of guy, you know?”
“What is your side?”
The grin widens even further. Coyote rolls his eyes towards the heavens, considering. “When man was made out of clay and lived in fear of the gods,” he says, after a long while, “Prometheus took pity and brought them fire. And ever after, you guys have been so much more fun. Sometimes I win, sometimes you win, we all go home happy. But that’s not what the generalissimos have in mind, it’s go large or go home, end of the world sort of thing. That’s not what I want.”
“What am I supposed to do?” The fire creeps closer. Coyote doesn’t even seem to notice, pulling up handfuls of dirt and letting it run through his fingers. The whole world trembles, waiting for Coyote’s answer.
“Nothing special,” Coyote says. “Do that voodoo that you do. It’ll work out. That’s the best part, man - you just toss in that monkey wrench and let the machine do its job. But that’s not the right question. And you know it.”
Victor is quiet for a long time. Coyote leans back on his hands. They twitch at his sides, like he wants to be up on his feet and dancing in the fire. “Why,” Victor says. He hesitates. He’s not sure he really wants to know. “Why me? Why did you pick me? Why did I - why did I survive?”
Coyote’s eyes crease in the barest hint of a smile. “Now you’re getting it. I didn’t pick you. There’s no greater purpose, nothing watching out for you. Nothing but random chaos that took your brother, scooped out your mother’s brains like rotted fruit, put you smack in the path of the biggest fiend to walk the earth in a thousand years. And nothing saved you. Think of it like a, you know, a happy accident.” He grins broadly, waves his hands like Bob Fosse.
Victor stares at his hands, at the fire. He can’t really deny it. He feels the truth of it in his bones, that dead certainty.
“There’s no future for you except what you’re going to make yourself,” Coyote says. “That’s why I picked you. You’re going to remake the world.”
**
The bed next to him is still warm. He surfaces slowly, taking easy, animal comfort in the sound of Dean’s voice. There’s a stretch of sunlight on the other pillow, reaching all the way across the floor. A shadow crosses in front of it and Victor flinches as it moves away, pouring light back onto his face.
Dean looks over his shoulder, hesitates. “Call you back,” he says, and snaps the phone closed. The bed dips when he sits down, and gravity rolls Victor closer.
“Hey,” Dean says. The sunlight makes him look pinched and tired. It lights up every wrinkle around his eyes, every hair on his chin and cheeks. “Hey, go back to sleep.”
“You leaving?” Victor asks. He arches his back. Dean traces two fingers over the curve of Victor’s ear, down the line of his throat. It takes Dean a long time to reply, long enough that Victor opens his eyes again, focuses blearily on Dean’s face. Dean rubs his thumb over Victor’s bottom lip. He clears his throat.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “I gotta - Sam needs me. It’s a weird, it’s this thing -”
Victor opens his mouth, sucks Dean’s thumb in and rolls his tongue against the broad, calloused pad. “Oh,” Dean says, surprised, and then shakes himself. He pulls back and Victor lets him go, leans into the touch as Dean strokes the backs of his fingers over Victor’s cheek.
“I’m sorry I have to go,” Dean says hesitantly. “I don’t want to. I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“Don’t go, then,” Victor says, simple, like he can’t see the look on Dean’s face that says it’s anything but. He hears an echo in his mind - you’re going to remake the world - and he thinks of fire, of heat and clean smoke.
“I have to,” Dean says, and smiles. “I’ll - I’ll be back soon. Look, why don’t you give Bobby a call, tell him about the zombies. That was pretty weird, he’ll wanna hear about it. I put a bunch of numbers into your phone. I’ll be back soon.”
Victor looks at Dean for a long time. Dean tries to smile again, but it slips off his face quickly. He takes Dean’s hand, wraps his fingers around Dean’s and rubs his thumb against the hard center of Dean’s palm. Dean glances down, watches him do it. There’s something in his eyes that Victor can’t place. “Hey,” Dean says. “Hey, um. Thanks for letting me be myself, these last couple weeks. It was awesome.”
“What’s going on?” Victor asks. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
Dean tucks his lower lip between his teeth and drops his gaze, but when he looks up his eyes are clear. “No,” he says. “This should’ve happened years ago. It’s okay, Victor. Everything’s fine. I’ll be back tomorrow, okay? You get some rest.” He squeezes Victor’s hand and then lets it go. Places a kiss on Victor’s forehead, tilts his chin up to kiss him on the mouth. He smells like leather and warm skin and before he pulls back he kisses Victor quickly, one last time.
“See you on the flip side,” Dean says, and this time his grin almost looks real. He doesn’t look back as he shuts the door behind himself.
The room falls quiet. Victor stares up at the ceiling and wonders if he should go after Dean. He hears the deep rumble of the Chevy’s engine, the thump of rock music. And then silence. Victor rolls onto his side, tucks his elbow underneath his body, contemplates the wall. It’s easier than he thought it would be to fall back asleep.
Victor drifts. The sun rises and becomes early afternoon before his stomach forces him out of bed. He wanders the hotel room naked, fingernails scratching at his stomach, wondering if Dean is really going to come back. He flips his phone open, discovers that his address book has multiplied in his sleep. He recognizes only a quarter of the names. He eats two snack bars out of the duffle that holds his new clothes - bought on Dean’s dollar, winnings from a pool tournament. It’s barely half full. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to stay awake, so he doesn’t.
He wakes up again in late afternoon, calls Bobby Singer. There’s no answer, so he leaves a message advising zombie hordes. He notices that Dean has left his laptop behind, and decides that Dean is coming back. There are three tabs of porn and twelve tabs of mysterious articles, from local rags in the neighboring states. Victor reads through two of them and starts making notes on the third without really thinking about it, scrounging through the desk for the motel notepaper.
He stumbles when he stands up from the table and has to put a hand down to catch himself. He’s dizzy - he feels drunk. He goes back to bed and pulls the covers over his head. The material is scratchy on his cheeks. He can still see light through the blanket.
It’s like he’s taken a deep breath and is waiting to let it out, waiting for things to make sense again. As if each new revelation has been built on the horror of the last. He thought that he could look evil in the face and maybe he can, but random, purposeless chaos is a brand fucking new idea. A happy accident, he thinks, and feels something loosen in his chest. It’s almost a comfort.
When he wakes up, it’s not quite morning. The sunlight through the window is as weak as gas station coffee and Victor pours himself into the bathroom, resting his forehead against the wall as the shower heats up.
Their room is at the end of a long row, and the shower’s got a tiny window, almost above Victor’s head. There’s no shampoo, only a bar of something labeled Face Soap that smells like nothing at all, but Victor makes do. He lathers up his whole body, curls of white foam almost achingly bright against his skin. He passes a hand over his arm, wiping them away. Stares at the sunlight on his skin, picking out a strand of hair here and there, and for the first time in a long, long while, feels some sort of recognition.
He doesn’t notice the first few drops of rain. They hit the window with a dull sort of sound that he barely hears and doesn’t pay any attention to. The soap sluicing off of his arm turns red, and he stares at it for a long moment, watches white suds slide off and land on the tub, before looking up. There’s blood on the window.
It takes him a while before he starts to believe what he’s seeing. Each drop has a spray of smaller drops around it. Here and there are traces that have slid down the window, leaving behind some kind of unidentifiable chunks, meat or brains or clotting. He backs up and his calves hit the edge of the tub. He shuts off the water without looking behind him, without even looking down to see if he’s missed any soap. He doesn’t look behind himself as he dries off. The room is quiet enough that he can hear rain hitting the motel roof.
The room is streaked with red. It looks like a stained glass window, striping the carpet and the beds and the walls. The window is covered in so much blood that Victor can’t see through it. It’s raining harder now and he dresses quickly. He drops his pants twice before he can pull them up, his fingers fumbling over the zipper. He looks around the room - Dean left his duffel bag tucked almost underneath the dresser and even now it makes Victor hesitate uncertainly, seeing it left behind. But he can see the handle of a machete tucked into the bag and that’s better than nothing.
He can’t hear anything except for the sound of the rain, thudding heavy as hail above him. He hefts the machete in one hand, digs blindly for some other weapon, pulls out an ancient revolver with a pentagram etched into the handle. There’s salt ground into the windowsill. He watched Dean shake out dark powder in a line across the doorway. He saw it with his own eyes, he saw frustrated demons pacing outside the police station, and tries to believe that these things will protect him.
He waits long enough that his muscles start to scream with tension, adrenaline like acid poured over his bones. He shifts to the bed, sits stiffly on the edge. The rain is tapering off. Then, eventually, silence.
Victor eases up off of the bed. His thumb twitches on the hammer of the gun. He slides one foot forward. He can’t hear anything. He sets the blade down long enough to dig the flask out of Dean’s bag - the holy water - then digs out the other one and takes a long swallow of whiskey. It helps, a little bit.
His fingers wrap around the doorknob. He turns it and his heart thuds painfully in his chest twice before he can force himself to actually open the door.
The smell is what hits him first. He’s back in the police station again, watching that little girl paint the walls, listening to three people gasp wetly behind him, strewn carelessly on the floor like toys. The air is hot and as soon as he breathes in his lungs fill with copper. He chokes and spins back into the room, dropping the machete as his knees hit the carpet. There’s a long moment where his back is to the door and anything in the world could come through it, but nothing does. He gets back up on his feet. The ground - the cars - everything is coated and streaked in blood. Broken glass crunches under his feet. There’s a dead body in the parking lot.
He tucks the revolver into the back of his jeans, inches along the walkway, a T-shirt tied around his face, bandit-style. The walkway is covered and the only blood is splatter from the parking lot. He knocks on his neighbor’s doors, listens closely. “Hello?” he calls. “Is anybody still here?”
The body in the parking lot is a woman. There’s not a speck of blood on her. She’s barely twenty feet from the motel. Her whole body is pointed at Victor’s door. She’s too still to be anything but dead, but he reaches for her anyway, turns her over by the shoulder. He’s flinching back even before he sees the seared meat that used to be her face. Before he even really registers the black, burnt holes where her eyes used to be. Her hair spreads out in a corona around her face. He can’t even tell what she used to look like.
There’s nobody else. He checks every room, the front desk and finally paces back around to her. He makes himself look at her while he fishes the car keys out of the front pocket of her jeans. After that, it’s easy to check cars, his fingers sliding greasily over the metal. He gags - more reflex than anything - but strikes lucky on the third try, an old Pontiac Sunbird. He locks the car back up carefully and goes back to the motel room. He packs his duffel and Dean’s mechanically, throws the laptop into the case and carries everything out on one trip. It’s only when the car doors are locked that he pulls the T-shirt down over his nose and pulls his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Come on, come on,” he chants under his breath. The phone rings twice and voicemail picks up.
This is Dean Winchester. If you’re in trouble, go to these coordinates. 43.4916. -96.7592. Ask for Bobby Singer and Sam Winchester. They’ll help.
Beep. Victor takes the phone away from his ear and stares at it in disbelief. He calls again. No answer. He scrolls through his phone book for Sam’s number. No answer there either. No answer for Singer. Ellen’s number has been disconnected.
Victor looks over his shoulder. He can barely see the woman through the blood smeared glass of his back mirror. She’s close enough to the car that he thinks he’ll have to back up over her to get out. He drives through the hedge in front of him instead.
He points the car towards South Dakota and drives. The whole world looks like a slaughterhouse. He sees dead bodies, cars and buildings and people on fire. Nobody comes to help them. The radio is nothing but static and the road is as slippery as if he was driving in a storm. The smell is so bad that he keeps the T-shirt tied over his mouth as he drives.
He stops three hours in. A nothing gas station by the side of the road, the only thing he’s seen for miles. He has to smash a window to get in. The alarm goes off and he looks over his shoulders, hoping for some kind of response. He’s called Dean at least twenty times. Nothing. He called his father, no response there either. He’s driving blind into a bloody wasteland.
He grabs bags of energy bars and a whole case of water, bags of coffee, toilet paper. He’s heading back for all the maps that they stock when he hears a small, thin sound. There’s a girl behind the counter, whimpering. She scrambles further back when she realizes he’s heard her; her tennis shoes scuffle almost soundlessly on the tile.
“It’s okay,” Victor says softly. She freezes. He can see her fingertips over the counter. He puts a hand on the revolver tucked into his waistband. “You’re all right. I’m not here to hurt you. Come on out, honey.”
“No,” she says. Her voice is disconcertingly light; she’s probably still in high school. “You’re one of them.”
“Who?” he asks. Creeps closer soundlessly. She hesitates - probably still thinks the words sound crazy even though the eaves out there are still dripping clotting blood - and he’s over the counter in a second, his belly digging into the edge, dragging her out screaming and kicking at him.
“You’re okay, you’re okay,” he chants, and lets her go. She backs into a display of potato chips trying to get away from him and they spill onto the ground together. Victor steps forward and she scrambles backwards.
“Stay away from me,” she hisses. She’s still got her uniform on, a dismal polyester top, a nametag pinned to the breast. Victor puts his hands up.
“You really wanna stay here?” he asks. She says nothing, so he hunkers down. Doesn’t try to approach any closer. “My name’s Victor. What’s yours?”
“You’re that FBI guy,” she says, her eyes wide. “I saw you on TV. I thought you were dead.”
“No,” Victor says. “No, I got lucky.”
She watches him for a long second before she pulls herself to her feet. He stays where he is, looking up at her. “Maria,” she says. “It’s Maria.”
“Maria,” Victor repeats. “Nice to meet you. You know what happened here?”
She shakes her head, wrapping her arms around herself. “After - after the rain stopped - I saw the black smoke. I thought - I - I called the cops but nobody came - I thought it was the end of the world.”
She flinches again when he stands up, so he lets her cry it out, gathering up his maps and stuffing his pockets full of lighters. “I’m going to South Dakota,” he says over his shoulder. “There are people there who can help.”
“What about my family?” she asks, sniffling.
Chapter Three * Chapter Five
Author: hansbekhart
Artist: evalens
Rating: NC-17 (Dean/Victor, Dean/Castiel)
Summary: Victor Henriksen survives Lilith’s attack only to be a plunged into a world beyond his experience and understanding, full of demons, angels and trickster gods. War is coming. He turns to the Winchesters for help, but Dean’s year is running out and Sam is desperate to find a way to save his brother. An outsider in their war, Victor finds himself caught up between good, evil and sheer chaos. He and the Winchester’s newfound allies must scramble to save a world that has already been destroyed by Armageddon. Slash. (Character death, horrific imagery, violence)
Grave desecration, Victor finds, is a surprisingly matter-of-fact operation. He had imagined it as something the Winchesters did for fun - necrophilia, drunken sacrifice, maybe a little incest under the full moon - the usual psychopathic bullshit. The reality is he follows Dean up and down rows of tombstones, looking for fresh graves. It’s cold and damp and threatening to rain, and the flashlights they’ve brought don’t do shit to make the headstones legible. Half of them are marble, which only reflects the light; they have to stop for each likely candidate and peer closely at the writing on the stone to see if it could be their girl.
It’s a big cemetery for a small town, Victor thinks, but they got there at dusk and he hasn’t even seen the town; he’s not sure if he will, if they’ll stop and stay the night or keep on driving. They’ve got a room at the motel a mile up the road, but Dean is tense and animated and just as likely to push them on to the next town. Sam’s been gone just shy of three weeks, and Victor never asked just what the fuck kind of deadline he was talking about in Bobby Singer’s back field. It occurs to him now and then to ask, and every time he remembers how neatly he’d been cut out of the equation that night. He doesn’t understand why Dean has taken him under his wing, taken those ominously mentioned three weeks to drive around and show Victor how to be a hunter. He knows twenty different poker cheats and a dozens of easy frauds, and it’s even easier to fake an official ID than Victor knew.
They take a break underneath the wide branches of an old tree. Victor squints up at it; the branches are black against black, and it’s probably Victor’s imagination filling in the blanks as he listens to the wind rustle through the season’s first leaves above his head. Dean hands him a flask; his fingers are wet and clumsy against Victor’s. He’s shivering even harder than Victor is, but when Victor catches his eye, Dean grins and flashes him a thumbs up.
“It’s cool,” Dean says. “It really, really is. I’m fine.”
“What?” Victor asks.
“Nothing,” Dean says, and tips his head up towards the tree and the sky above them. Victor’s looking right at Dean when the whole sky lights up - thunder rumbles a few seconds after, and they look at each other. “Let’s pop your cherry and get someplace warm and dry, cool?”
“Cool,” Victor agrees, hitching the duffel up on his shoulder.
They find the grave pretty quickly after that, and Victor’s quick to learn that digging up a grave isn’t really anybody’s idea of fun. The shovel that Dean gives him is cheap and rough, and three feet down he gives himself one hell of a splinter in his palm. “Shit,” he mutters, jamming the heel of his hand into his mouth, and Dean laughs. “Fuck you,” Victor tells him, but it is kind of funny. He knocks an elbow into Dean’s side, and Dean jabs him back, and somehow it ends with Victor’s back against the wet side of the grave, Dean pressed against him from knees to chest. He’s laughing breathlessly; they both are. He feels like he’s standing at the edge of the world. He can’t catch his breath. He drops the shovel and pushes his hands down underneath Dean’s collar, looking for skin and heat and something to ground him.
Dean’s shaking again, his whole body, and something in the tremor of his hands, the knuckles just brushing Victor’s chin where he’s got them fisted into the front of Victor’s jacket - it’s terrifying.
Victor pulls back. Turns Dean deliberately so their positions are reversed. Dean watches him with dark, open eyes. Like he’s waiting for Victor to put him on his knees in the grave dirt. Victor kisses Dean - holds him in place and just breathes with him for long minutes until Dean stops shaking like a frightened animal. It’s hard do to it; Dean presses his hips forward in long, smooth movements, each one lined up so fucking perfectly, pushing his dick against Victor’s. It crosses his mind that this is more like what he thought grave desecration would be like.
“Dean,” Victor says, “What the fuck is going on?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean mutters into Victor’s neck, teeth a sharp curve against skin. Dean’s nose is icy cold and Victor shudders, leans into the bite.
“Don’t mess with me,” Victor warns, and pulls Dean’s head back, his fingers curled tight into the short hairs at the back of Dean’s skull. Dean whimpers and it shocks Victor, that frantic vulnerability. He could do anything to Dean.
“Not,” Dean pants. “I’m not - fuck - ”
“What’s gonna happen?” Victor pushes. Dean’s sliding in the wet ground; he hooks an elbow into the sod, fighting gravity, and Victor pushes his fingers up under Dean’s jacket, palm against the scarred, hot skin of Dean’s stomach. Lets Dean feel the promise implicit. “Three weeks is up tomorrow night. What’s gonna happen?”
“The end of the world,” Dean says. It’s a joke, but he’s not even smiling.
“Fuck you,” Victor tells him, and Dean grins hard and sharp.
“Promise?” he asks, and that’s when the earth moves under their feet.
There’s a second where they only look down at the ground, then at each other, then down at the ground again where the first raindrops are washing away the dirt from a rotted hand. It’s on Victor’s tongue that he thought she’d at least be in a fucking coffin, and then the hand moves. They’re out of the grave like it’s just caught fire, and that’s when Victor looks around and sees the earth humping up around them, bits of hair and teeth and shoulders pushing through.
“What the fuck,” Dean breathes, and Victor laughs in spite of himself.
“I thought you’d know,” he says.
“Uh,” Dean says. “Nope. I mean, I’ve seen Night of the Living Dead like thirty times but this is kinda - ”
A woman in a no-color taffeta dress, stained with body fluids and mud, wiggles and shoves until she’s got one arm free of her own grave. She waves it vaguely in their direction, grumbling. Her hair is flattened over her face but Victor can tell she was buried in a bouffant. “Braaaaaains,” Dean supplies, and Victor elbows him hard in the side.
“What the hell do we do?”
“Removing the head or destroying the brain works pretty well in the movies,” Dean says, grinning, and lets out a savage, joyful whoop. Every single zombie turns to look at them.
**
“Look,” Dean says, “I might’ve gotten a little carried away, but seriously. Seriously, do you know how often I’ve fought a horde of zombies? Never, Victor. I have never fought a horde of zombies. I’ve been waiting all my life to fight a horde of zombies and I’m kinda sorry you had to see that but what a fucking bang that was. Right?”
He’s got one hand fisted in Victor’s jacket, right at the shoulder, his other hand brushing gore off his own face. There’s a chunk of something, mud or brains or meat, buried in Dean’s hair and Victor pulls it out before he lets himself really think about it, tosses it somewhere on the floor of their motel room. He sags against Dean, lets himself be held up and walked across the room and put down on the bed. His hands hang between his knees. He can’t stop grinning.
Because it was amazing. Running through a horde of zombies, who shambled and stumbled and moaned their way slowly across the graveyard. And maybe later Victor will think about the way the sharp end of the shovel split that woman’s head in half like a rotted melon. Every one of them had been dressed so neatly that he thinks he could drive himself crazy imagining the hands that straightened their father’s tie, that arranged their daughter’s necklace just so.
“Simple,” Victor says, drawing each word out, “salt. And. Burn.”
“Horde of zombies,” Dean says. “Cross that one off the to-do list, stick a fork in me, I’m done.”
“Fuck,” Victor says. He reaches up for Dean, just wanting to grab something warm and hold onto it for a little while, but his hands find Dean’s jacket and pull it down his shoulders, bunching at his elbows where Dean’s still hanging on to Victor. Dean goes still and taut and it’s only when Victor glances up and actually looks at Dean that he remembers everything he wanted to do to Dean in that graveyard. He stands up on shaky legs and Dean takes a step backwards, looking lost in his filthy, too-large jacket. Victor pulls it the rest of the way off, lets it drop to the carpet. It makes the same noise that the shovel did, hitting the bottom of the grave.
When he reaches forward, wraps a hand around the back of Dean’s neck and tugs, Dean comes to him easily, lets Victor turn him around, sink his teeth down into the ridge of spine and nerves, fumble with his belt. The buckle clinks, loud in the empty room. Dean’s panting open-mouthed, his chin tipped up towards the ceiling. Eyes closed. Swaying on his feet.
He’s clumsy with Dean. Uncertain. Every part of his body is jumpy with adrenaline. He drags Dean’s zipper down, strokes the back of his hand over Dean’s underwear. The material is thin and hot and Dean shivers.
Victor walks Dean forward until they hit the door, reaches down for one hand and then the other, holding them up against the wall long enough that Dean gets the point and leaves them there. He nudges Dean’s legs open, wraps both hands around Dean’s hips and digs his thumbs into the muscle above Dean’s ass. Dean writhes against the door, a surprised noise escaping him. He looks over his shoulder at Victor, and Victor kisses him before he can say anything, shuts him right the fuck up as he bites and sucks his way down the hard line of Dean’s jaw, his throat.
He pushes Dean’s jeans down as far as he can, which isn’t that far. The waistband has cut a thin red line into Dean’s skin and Victor passes a finger over the mark absently. Dean pushes his hips back into Victor’s, trapping Victor’s hand between their bodies.
“Dean,” Victor says, purposelessly, just to say it. “Fuck.”
It’s rough - there’s nothing that resembles lubricant in a dirty, worn out motel room and even if there was this is new to Victor and he feels stupid and shy, rubbing wet fingers around Dean’s hole, trying not to hurt him when he pushes them in. Dean reaches back and cups the back of Victor’s skull, holding him close, twisted around so far that their mouths are almost touching. The heater clunks, turning itself on and neither of them notice. It takes a long time to open Dean up, to stretch him on nothing but spit and the slick from Victor’s dick. Long enough that Victor’s panting raggedly as he holds Dean still and pushes in. His hands shake on Dean’s hipbones. Dean presses his mouth to Victor’s forehead, his ear, anything he can get to.
He can feel that edge underneath his feet, opening wide as he fucks Dean Winchester, and this time he lets himself fall right over the rim.
**
“It was the kind of day that makes you feel like you’re suffocating in your skin,” Victor says. “Middle of summer. My brother was three years older than me, so he was nine and I’d turned six about half a week before. It was his job to watch me during the summer when we were out of school, and I’d been ragging on him all day that I wanted a soda.”
Later. Much later. Some sort of nameless time between midnight and dawn, and they’ve been talking for hours. It’s aimless conversation, the kind that only happens at this hour of night. Victor feels like he’s been drinking for days, his body wrung out and hurting. They’re passing a cigarette back and forth, Dean’s palm rubbing circles up and down Victor’s side. He knew all along that he would tell Dean Winchester this secret.
“So Anthony finally just gives up and walks me down to the store. It was about a mile from where we were living at the time, out in the suburbs. We had this big old back yard, bigger than anybody else in the neighborhood. Anthony had a lot of friends there and I just liked tagging along. Everywhere he went, I’d be right there too. But that day it was just him and me, and when we got to the store he made me wait outside while he bought the sodas. He didn’t have any money, he was gonna steal the sodas for me. I had to sit outside so it would be less suspicious.”
Dean exhales a long stream of smoke from his nose. His chin is tucked towards his chest. His hair is snarled and fluffed high on his head. There’s hair gel on Victor’s fingers. “I’d make Sam stand guard when we had to dumpster dive,” he offers. “Didn’t want him to see me doing stuff like that.”
Victor shakes his head. Their fingers brush as Dean gives him the cigarette and he runs the backs of his fingers down Dean’s wrist before drawing back. Their legs are tangled together. He can feel the weight and shape of Dean’s dick against his thigh. Flaccid now, after up against the wall and in the shower and on the bed.
“We’d watched this movie the night before that scared the pants off of me,” Victor says, after a long time. He sucks in a lungful of smoke, lets it drift out of his mouth towards the ceiling. Takes another one to steady himself. It’s still hard to say the words out loud. “Some monster movie. So he told me to sit my butt down and wait for him, otherwise the monster would come and get me. It was a werewolf, some stupid thing like that. So I waited for him. I remember that it was so hot that my shoes melted a little into the tar on the road. It just got hotter and hotter, but I didn’t want to get up, cuz then the monster would come and get me, you know?”
“Yeah,” Dean says. “I know the feeling.”
“He never came out,” Victor says. He stares out over the room, seeing nothing. He can still smell the melted rubber, feel the particular weight of his soles peeling off the tar. “He just never came back out. I waited for three hours until the owner of the store noticed me out there and came out to see what was wrong. He never even saw Anthony come in.”
Dean is silent. He takes the cigarette back from Victor and sits up, hunting for an ashtray. It’s over on the table, and he has to get up to stub the cigarette out. He sits on the edge of the bed when he comes back, watching Victor closely. “Come here,” Victor says, and Dean does.
“They found Anthony six weeks later,” Victor says into Dean’s hair. It smells like gel and shampoo and smoke. “In a clearing a few miles away from our home. He’d been moved there post-mortem.” He hesitates. The words crowd up in his throat and he makes himself say each one. “The animals had destroyed most of the, most of the body. There wasn’t all that much left, just enough to tell that he’d only been dead about a week. That they’d kept him alive for. For - for five weeks. When I joined the Bureau I looked up his file. They never even had any suspects.”
“You joined cuz of your brother,” Dean says.
Victor smiles tightly. “Course I did. I wanted to fight monsters.”
“I wondered,” Dean says slowly. “You always - I mean, every time we ran into you, you said a lot of stuff about …” He trails off uncertainly. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well,” Victor says, his eyes slipping closed. “Everyone’s got a sob story.”
He feels Dean shift, roll up on his elbows so they’re chest to chest. Victor’s hands are lax and open on the pillow above his head. Dean presses a kiss to Victor’s forehead, to the corner of each eye, to Victor’s mouth. He doesn’t say anything, and when Victor slides into sleep it’s painless and quiet, Dean wrapped around him, keeping the world away.
**
He hears plates clattering. Voices. The hiss and bubble of a deep fryer. He looks up and she has her notepad out, pen tapping onto it like she’d rather be anywhere else than here. “You really,” Coyote says, “oughta try the French toast. It’s fantastic. Isn’t it, Sally?”
Sally pops her gum and offers him a bleak, dead-eyed smile. “Sure is, mister. You want me to come back when you’re ready?”
“Um,” Victor says. “French toast is fine.”
Coyote pushes a cup of coffee across the table at him. “You can leave the bottle,” he tells Sally as she goes to walk away. “I think my friend here’s gonna need it.” She rolls her eyes and sets the carafe of coffee on the table. It’s as she’s walking away that Victor realizes she’s dead, the backs of her legs criss-crossed with open sores, a chunk of her thigh taken out right where the hem of her uniform hits. Out the window is a wasteland of dust and unending sky.
“Where the fuck am I?” Victor asks, low. His fingers curl around the coffee cup, ready to smash it into Coyote’s smug, round face.
Coyote shrugs. “Thought you’d appreciate the local color. Look, I’m not here to fuck around with you, I promise. If you’re not comfortable -” He waves a hand and the diner dissolves. They’re in the D.C. office, the office he hardly ever saw. Coyote leaning back in Reidy’s chair, his feet kicked up on the desk. Victor looks at his own desk, looks up in time to watch Sally slam a plate of French toast in front of him.
“Dig in,” Coyote offers.
“I don’t want to be here either,” Victor says quietly. “Get the fuck out of my partner’s chair. Get the fuck out of my head.”
Coyote sighs. “Oh, fine. Be a party pooper.”
The office is gone in a blink of an eye. Victor is sitting a few feet away from an enormous fire. The smoke smells of clean, sweet herbs. The plate of French toast is in front of Victor’s crossed legs. The cup of coffee is by his knee. Victor picks up the cup and sniffs at it. Plain old diner coffee.
He looks around himself; he’s sitting in a clearing surrounded by tall rocks and red earth. The air is as dry as bleached bones. It’s nighttime, and it’s cold. Victor takes a bite of the French toast. As promised, it’s delicious.
“Why did you save me?” Victor asks. Coyote is laying on his back, looking up at the stars.
“I didn’t,” Coyote says. “You like the blueberries in that French toast? That’s what makes it extra special.”
Victor finds himself taking another bite, and then another. The taste of the berries mingles with the smoke. He sets the plate down and walks over to Coyote’s side, dropping to his knees in the dust. Coyote looks up at him with bright, curious eyes.
“Why did you do that to Sam Winchester?”
“Do what?” Coyote asks. “I tell you, that kid has no sense of humor. Or perspective, but I guess that’s kind of a given with those Winchesters, ain’t it?”
The firelight flickers over his cheekbones, hollowing them out, sharpening his nose. He shifts up and matches Victor’s posture, legs crossed, elbows resting on his knees. “Look,” he says, “if you really want to know, I’ll tell you, but it’s not gonna make a lick of sense.”
Victor waits. Coyote sighs. “I swear, it’s like a disease with you people. You just can’t leave well enough alone. I was curious, okay? I wanted to see what Sam would do, without his brother. And I wanted to see what they would do. Sam and Dean, they’re pretty major players, you know? I dipped my toe in the water and neither side said a damn word. I wanted to know if I was safe.”
Victor traces circles in the dirt. “You’re right,” he admits. “That doesn’t make much sense.”
“Told you,” Coyote tells him. “But you’re not the kind of person who can just sit back and eat his breakfast. That’s why I like you. I think you’ll do well.”
“In what?” Victor asks. He’s almost too afraid to ask.
“There’s a war coming,” Coyote says. He reaches over and lays his fingers over the circles at Victor’s feet. Victor can feel the earth shake underneath him for just a second and then it’s gone. He can feel the tremors in his bones, like he’s bracing for the aftershock.
“It’s been a long time since anybody sang my songs,” Coyote says sadly. “Long, long time. Sure, every once in a while I’ll get a pyre, some kind of offering, but no one tells Old Coyote’s stories anymore. Only hunters, who think that knowledge is power - the more who know about me, the easier it’d be to stop me, you know what I mean?”
“Are you,” Victor says, and licks his lips. “Are you really a god?” He should feel humbled, he thinks. He stares at Coyote and sees soft skin and wide open eyes. He doesn’t look like a god. He looks like a janitor, like somebody’s assistant.
“You’re not asking the right questions,” Coyote says, a crooked smile on his face.
“Why did you save me?” Victor asks, and Coyote shakes his head.
“I already told you. I didn’t.”
“You did,” Victor insists, “You came for me at my house, you saved me from the demons.”
“Oh,” Coyote says. “That. I thought you meant before.”
Victor is still and silent. “You were in the hospital,” he says slowly.
“Yeah,” Coyote says, “but I wasn’t at the police station. Whoa boy, no fucking way. She’s not a bitch to tangle with, I’ll tell you what.”
Victor looks up to the sky. The darkness is an enormous bowl of stars above his head, clustered thick and unsettlingly close. He’s never seen so many stars in his life. The fire smells of good meat and lays shadows on the ground, stretching long fingers toward where he sits with Coyote. Victor watches them flicker, waiting to catch a glimpse of the real world. He gropes for the right questions.
“What do you want from me?” he asks.
Coyote grins broadly. “Better! You’re a quick learner. I want someone on my side. You seemed uniquely suited. The white hats and black hats picked their champions ages ago, but I’m a spur of the moment kind of guy, you know?”
“What is your side?”
The grin widens even further. Coyote rolls his eyes towards the heavens, considering. “When man was made out of clay and lived in fear of the gods,” he says, after a long while, “Prometheus took pity and brought them fire. And ever after, you guys have been so much more fun. Sometimes I win, sometimes you win, we all go home happy. But that’s not what the generalissimos have in mind, it’s go large or go home, end of the world sort of thing. That’s not what I want.”
“What am I supposed to do?” The fire creeps closer. Coyote doesn’t even seem to notice, pulling up handfuls of dirt and letting it run through his fingers. The whole world trembles, waiting for Coyote’s answer.
“Nothing special,” Coyote says. “Do that voodoo that you do. It’ll work out. That’s the best part, man - you just toss in that monkey wrench and let the machine do its job. But that’s not the right question. And you know it.”
Victor is quiet for a long time. Coyote leans back on his hands. They twitch at his sides, like he wants to be up on his feet and dancing in the fire. “Why,” Victor says. He hesitates. He’s not sure he really wants to know. “Why me? Why did you pick me? Why did I - why did I survive?”
Coyote’s eyes crease in the barest hint of a smile. “Now you’re getting it. I didn’t pick you. There’s no greater purpose, nothing watching out for you. Nothing but random chaos that took your brother, scooped out your mother’s brains like rotted fruit, put you smack in the path of the biggest fiend to walk the earth in a thousand years. And nothing saved you. Think of it like a, you know, a happy accident.” He grins broadly, waves his hands like Bob Fosse.
Victor stares at his hands, at the fire. He can’t really deny it. He feels the truth of it in his bones, that dead certainty.
“There’s no future for you except what you’re going to make yourself,” Coyote says. “That’s why I picked you. You’re going to remake the world.”
**
The bed next to him is still warm. He surfaces slowly, taking easy, animal comfort in the sound of Dean’s voice. There’s a stretch of sunlight on the other pillow, reaching all the way across the floor. A shadow crosses in front of it and Victor flinches as it moves away, pouring light back onto his face.
Dean looks over his shoulder, hesitates. “Call you back,” he says, and snaps the phone closed. The bed dips when he sits down, and gravity rolls Victor closer.
“Hey,” Dean says. The sunlight makes him look pinched and tired. It lights up every wrinkle around his eyes, every hair on his chin and cheeks. “Hey, go back to sleep.”
“You leaving?” Victor asks. He arches his back. Dean traces two fingers over the curve of Victor’s ear, down the line of his throat. It takes Dean a long time to reply, long enough that Victor opens his eyes again, focuses blearily on Dean’s face. Dean rubs his thumb over Victor’s bottom lip. He clears his throat.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “I gotta - Sam needs me. It’s a weird, it’s this thing -”
Victor opens his mouth, sucks Dean’s thumb in and rolls his tongue against the broad, calloused pad. “Oh,” Dean says, surprised, and then shakes himself. He pulls back and Victor lets him go, leans into the touch as Dean strokes the backs of his fingers over Victor’s cheek.
“I’m sorry I have to go,” Dean says hesitantly. “I don’t want to. I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“Don’t go, then,” Victor says, simple, like he can’t see the look on Dean’s face that says it’s anything but. He hears an echo in his mind - you’re going to remake the world - and he thinks of fire, of heat and clean smoke.
“I have to,” Dean says, and smiles. “I’ll - I’ll be back soon. Look, why don’t you give Bobby a call, tell him about the zombies. That was pretty weird, he’ll wanna hear about it. I put a bunch of numbers into your phone. I’ll be back soon.”
Victor looks at Dean for a long time. Dean tries to smile again, but it slips off his face quickly. He takes Dean’s hand, wraps his fingers around Dean’s and rubs his thumb against the hard center of Dean’s palm. Dean glances down, watches him do it. There’s something in his eyes that Victor can’t place. “Hey,” Dean says. “Hey, um. Thanks for letting me be myself, these last couple weeks. It was awesome.”
“What’s going on?” Victor asks. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
Dean tucks his lower lip between his teeth and drops his gaze, but when he looks up his eyes are clear. “No,” he says. “This should’ve happened years ago. It’s okay, Victor. Everything’s fine. I’ll be back tomorrow, okay? You get some rest.” He squeezes Victor’s hand and then lets it go. Places a kiss on Victor’s forehead, tilts his chin up to kiss him on the mouth. He smells like leather and warm skin and before he pulls back he kisses Victor quickly, one last time.
“See you on the flip side,” Dean says, and this time his grin almost looks real. He doesn’t look back as he shuts the door behind himself.
The room falls quiet. Victor stares up at the ceiling and wonders if he should go after Dean. He hears the deep rumble of the Chevy’s engine, the thump of rock music. And then silence. Victor rolls onto his side, tucks his elbow underneath his body, contemplates the wall. It’s easier than he thought it would be to fall back asleep.
Victor drifts. The sun rises and becomes early afternoon before his stomach forces him out of bed. He wanders the hotel room naked, fingernails scratching at his stomach, wondering if Dean is really going to come back. He flips his phone open, discovers that his address book has multiplied in his sleep. He recognizes only a quarter of the names. He eats two snack bars out of the duffle that holds his new clothes - bought on Dean’s dollar, winnings from a pool tournament. It’s barely half full. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to stay awake, so he doesn’t.
He wakes up again in late afternoon, calls Bobby Singer. There’s no answer, so he leaves a message advising zombie hordes. He notices that Dean has left his laptop behind, and decides that Dean is coming back. There are three tabs of porn and twelve tabs of mysterious articles, from local rags in the neighboring states. Victor reads through two of them and starts making notes on the third without really thinking about it, scrounging through the desk for the motel notepaper.
He stumbles when he stands up from the table and has to put a hand down to catch himself. He’s dizzy - he feels drunk. He goes back to bed and pulls the covers over his head. The material is scratchy on his cheeks. He can still see light through the blanket.
It’s like he’s taken a deep breath and is waiting to let it out, waiting for things to make sense again. As if each new revelation has been built on the horror of the last. He thought that he could look evil in the face and maybe he can, but random, purposeless chaos is a brand fucking new idea. A happy accident, he thinks, and feels something loosen in his chest. It’s almost a comfort.
When he wakes up, it’s not quite morning. The sunlight through the window is as weak as gas station coffee and Victor pours himself into the bathroom, resting his forehead against the wall as the shower heats up.
Their room is at the end of a long row, and the shower’s got a tiny window, almost above Victor’s head. There’s no shampoo, only a bar of something labeled Face Soap that smells like nothing at all, but Victor makes do. He lathers up his whole body, curls of white foam almost achingly bright against his skin. He passes a hand over his arm, wiping them away. Stares at the sunlight on his skin, picking out a strand of hair here and there, and for the first time in a long, long while, feels some sort of recognition.
He doesn’t notice the first few drops of rain. They hit the window with a dull sort of sound that he barely hears and doesn’t pay any attention to. The soap sluicing off of his arm turns red, and he stares at it for a long moment, watches white suds slide off and land on the tub, before looking up. There’s blood on the window.
It takes him a while before he starts to believe what he’s seeing. Each drop has a spray of smaller drops around it. Here and there are traces that have slid down the window, leaving behind some kind of unidentifiable chunks, meat or brains or clotting. He backs up and his calves hit the edge of the tub. He shuts off the water without looking behind him, without even looking down to see if he’s missed any soap. He doesn’t look behind himself as he dries off. The room is quiet enough that he can hear rain hitting the motel roof.
The room is streaked with red. It looks like a stained glass window, striping the carpet and the beds and the walls. The window is covered in so much blood that Victor can’t see through it. It’s raining harder now and he dresses quickly. He drops his pants twice before he can pull them up, his fingers fumbling over the zipper. He looks around the room - Dean left his duffel bag tucked almost underneath the dresser and even now it makes Victor hesitate uncertainly, seeing it left behind. But he can see the handle of a machete tucked into the bag and that’s better than nothing.
He can’t hear anything except for the sound of the rain, thudding heavy as hail above him. He hefts the machete in one hand, digs blindly for some other weapon, pulls out an ancient revolver with a pentagram etched into the handle. There’s salt ground into the windowsill. He watched Dean shake out dark powder in a line across the doorway. He saw it with his own eyes, he saw frustrated demons pacing outside the police station, and tries to believe that these things will protect him.
He waits long enough that his muscles start to scream with tension, adrenaline like acid poured over his bones. He shifts to the bed, sits stiffly on the edge. The rain is tapering off. Then, eventually, silence.
Victor eases up off of the bed. His thumb twitches on the hammer of the gun. He slides one foot forward. He can’t hear anything. He sets the blade down long enough to dig the flask out of Dean’s bag - the holy water - then digs out the other one and takes a long swallow of whiskey. It helps, a little bit.
His fingers wrap around the doorknob. He turns it and his heart thuds painfully in his chest twice before he can force himself to actually open the door.
The smell is what hits him first. He’s back in the police station again, watching that little girl paint the walls, listening to three people gasp wetly behind him, strewn carelessly on the floor like toys. The air is hot and as soon as he breathes in his lungs fill with copper. He chokes and spins back into the room, dropping the machete as his knees hit the carpet. There’s a long moment where his back is to the door and anything in the world could come through it, but nothing does. He gets back up on his feet. The ground - the cars - everything is coated and streaked in blood. Broken glass crunches under his feet. There’s a dead body in the parking lot.
He tucks the revolver into the back of his jeans, inches along the walkway, a T-shirt tied around his face, bandit-style. The walkway is covered and the only blood is splatter from the parking lot. He knocks on his neighbor’s doors, listens closely. “Hello?” he calls. “Is anybody still here?”
The body in the parking lot is a woman. There’s not a speck of blood on her. She’s barely twenty feet from the motel. Her whole body is pointed at Victor’s door. She’s too still to be anything but dead, but he reaches for her anyway, turns her over by the shoulder. He’s flinching back even before he sees the seared meat that used to be her face. Before he even really registers the black, burnt holes where her eyes used to be. Her hair spreads out in a corona around her face. He can’t even tell what she used to look like.
There’s nobody else. He checks every room, the front desk and finally paces back around to her. He makes himself look at her while he fishes the car keys out of the front pocket of her jeans. After that, it’s easy to check cars, his fingers sliding greasily over the metal. He gags - more reflex than anything - but strikes lucky on the third try, an old Pontiac Sunbird. He locks the car back up carefully and goes back to the motel room. He packs his duffel and Dean’s mechanically, throws the laptop into the case and carries everything out on one trip. It’s only when the car doors are locked that he pulls the T-shirt down over his nose and pulls his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Come on, come on,” he chants under his breath. The phone rings twice and voicemail picks up.
This is Dean Winchester. If you’re in trouble, go to these coordinates. 43.4916. -96.7592. Ask for Bobby Singer and Sam Winchester. They’ll help.
Beep. Victor takes the phone away from his ear and stares at it in disbelief. He calls again. No answer. He scrolls through his phone book for Sam’s number. No answer there either. No answer for Singer. Ellen’s number has been disconnected.
Victor looks over his shoulder. He can barely see the woman through the blood smeared glass of his back mirror. She’s close enough to the car that he thinks he’ll have to back up over her to get out. He drives through the hedge in front of him instead.
He points the car towards South Dakota and drives. The whole world looks like a slaughterhouse. He sees dead bodies, cars and buildings and people on fire. Nobody comes to help them. The radio is nothing but static and the road is as slippery as if he was driving in a storm. The smell is so bad that he keeps the T-shirt tied over his mouth as he drives.
He stops three hours in. A nothing gas station by the side of the road, the only thing he’s seen for miles. He has to smash a window to get in. The alarm goes off and he looks over his shoulders, hoping for some kind of response. He’s called Dean at least twenty times. Nothing. He called his father, no response there either. He’s driving blind into a bloody wasteland.
He grabs bags of energy bars and a whole case of water, bags of coffee, toilet paper. He’s heading back for all the maps that they stock when he hears a small, thin sound. There’s a girl behind the counter, whimpering. She scrambles further back when she realizes he’s heard her; her tennis shoes scuffle almost soundlessly on the tile.
“It’s okay,” Victor says softly. She freezes. He can see her fingertips over the counter. He puts a hand on the revolver tucked into his waistband. “You’re all right. I’m not here to hurt you. Come on out, honey.”
“No,” she says. Her voice is disconcertingly light; she’s probably still in high school. “You’re one of them.”
“Who?” he asks. Creeps closer soundlessly. She hesitates - probably still thinks the words sound crazy even though the eaves out there are still dripping clotting blood - and he’s over the counter in a second, his belly digging into the edge, dragging her out screaming and kicking at him.
“You’re okay, you’re okay,” he chants, and lets her go. She backs into a display of potato chips trying to get away from him and they spill onto the ground together. Victor steps forward and she scrambles backwards.
“Stay away from me,” she hisses. She’s still got her uniform on, a dismal polyester top, a nametag pinned to the breast. Victor puts his hands up.
“You really wanna stay here?” he asks. She says nothing, so he hunkers down. Doesn’t try to approach any closer. “My name’s Victor. What’s yours?”
“You’re that FBI guy,” she says, her eyes wide. “I saw you on TV. I thought you were dead.”
“No,” Victor says. “No, I got lucky.”
She watches him for a long second before she pulls herself to her feet. He stays where he is, looking up at her. “Maria,” she says. “It’s Maria.”
“Maria,” Victor repeats. “Nice to meet you. You know what happened here?”
She shakes her head, wrapping her arms around herself. “After - after the rain stopped - I saw the black smoke. I thought - I - I called the cops but nobody came - I thought it was the end of the world.”
She flinches again when he stands up, so he lets her cry it out, gathering up his maps and stuffing his pockets full of lighters. “I’m going to South Dakota,” he says over his shoulder. “There are people there who can help.”
“What about my family?” she asks, sniffling.
Chapter Three * Chapter Five