Is crazy contagious?
Dean took Seth’s sneakers and socks off. For comfort. Then the uniform. Because of the sewer water. Because who in their right mind would wanna sleep in all that filth? His hands didn’t linger anywhere; he wasn’t a pervert, he had morals. But he also had a God given right to ogle so he did. And the kid was fucking gorgeous. From head to toe perfect, like someone had fucking sculpted him. Temper, sharp tongue, strong stomach, one hell of a body. Dean’s type down to a T. And wasn’t just another wonderful joke on the part of the all mighty universe. Someone upstairs must get some serious laughs from fucking with him.
He piled as many blankets on the kid as he could find then went back downstairs. Cleaned up. Checked all the traps and salt lines. Went back to the Impala and loaded his duffle bag with guns. It was past time to do some cleaning. He’d had so little time to do anything lately. The Impala could use a wash too but that would wait until he was out of NY state. Besides, cleaning the guns was a soothing process. There was something about the smell of Hoppe’s, the soft scrape of the bronze brush down the barrel that always calmed him down, focused him. And he needed focus now, with that kid upstairs, half naked and sprawled out on the bed.
Seth’s fucking hands on his skin, the needle going in and out, his breath on Dean’s spine, on his neck, the quiet little mutters. His hair so fucking soft, the skin of his neck warm, smooth, his voice all breathless and rough.
Dean slammed the trunk closed with more force than was necessary and stomped back to the house. This was a stupid idea. Seth thought he was crazy and Dean was starting to have some doubts himself. What the fuck did he think was gonna happen? Some sort of a mutual hormone explosion? Wild bloody sex on the kitchen floor? He could hear Bobby’s exasperated voice, reminding him again that real life was not a porn movie.
By the time he got back inside he was winded and the pressure in his chest was back in full force. Fuck. He dug through the first response bag and found nothing but first aid supplies and over the counter bottle of Advil tucked into the far corner. He had a feeling that the Advil wasn’t a protocol item but he took the bottle out and swallowed three pills.
He’d planned on setting up at the kitchen table. Everything was already bloody and stained anyway. Instead he found himself going back upstairs. Just to check on the kid, of course. To make sure he wasn’t throwing up eggs all over the place. Once he was back in the room though, the mop of Seth’s hair barely visible above the pile of blankets, he decided to stay. He’d just set up in the corner and clean his guns there. In the case kid woke up and was disoriented.
Good plan.
Except he spent more time looking at Seth’s face than he did cleaning the guns.
Yeah, he’d definitely shot himself in the foot with this one.
--
Seth woke up to the nauseating stench of bathroom cleaner and rotten bananas. His head felt like a balloon. His mouth tasted like ass. His left arm was tucked somewhere underneath him and dead to the world. He groaned.
“Well good morning sunshine.”
He flinched and opened his eyes.
Dean was sitting behind the desk across the room, guns laid out on the wood surface, small grin on his face.
“Fuck,” Seth said, “I thought it was all a nightmare.”
“Sorry.”
Yeah, he was sorry. Great.
Seth struggled to sit up in bed and noticed he’d been stripped down to teeshirt and boxers.
“Did you take my clothes off?”
Dean had the decency to look embarrassed,
“You smelled like the sewer.”
“I smelled like the sewer? The whole room reeks. It’s like you brutally murdered a loaf of banana bread. By drowning it in the toilet!”
Dean chuckled, a deep raspy sound. It smacked Seth right in the middle of his stomach and then twisted it viciously until he wanted to squirm. Holy hell. If that what a chuckle sounded like, what would it be like if the guy full out laughed? No. Seth didn’t wanna now. He looked away and focused on the windows. It was pitch black outside, no lights, not even moonlight.
“What time is it?”
“About ten o’clock. You slept fifteen hours. Must’ve been exhausted.”
Seth blushed. He remembered Dean leading him up the stairs, Dean’s hand on the base of his spine, on his upper arm, holding him up, steering him down the hallway, then nothing. He couldn’t remember actually lying down. He definitely hadn’t been conscious for the whole undressing thing. He looked down at his teeshirt and boxers, the full force of it hitting him. Dean had undressed him.
Dean had undressed him.
“You didn’t...”
Dean blinked at him then his face hardened,
“Don’t flatter yourself sweetheart. You’re not my type. And I like my sex consensual.”
Now Seth’s face was in actual flames. He could feel his fucking neck and torso turning red.
He looked away,
“I’d like some clothes please.”
“At the foot of the bed. The jeans might be a little short.”
He dressed quickly and sat back down, his head pounding.
“So tomorrow,” Dean said, his voice decidedly on the cool side now,
“you should know I’m not bringing you back to the city. There’s no way in hell I’m going anywhere near it now. It’s a random highway gas station for you. They’ll let you use a phone and call the cops.”
“Right,” Seth said, rubbing the back of his neck,
“You’re gonna drop me off at some gas station so I can call the cops. Then I can just go on with my life.”
Dean tilted his head slightly and Seth decided that he was getting pretty fucking tired of that expression on his face.
“Why don’t we cut the crap, huh? You’re not just gonna ‘let me go.’ Why would I fucking believe it? I’m not the crazy one here. I find you surrounded by headless torsos but you insist that you don’t kill people. And,” he barked a hysterical laugh, “you believe it too! You’re not lying! You honestly believe that you didn’t murder anyone and that’s great, good for you, but when you tell me you’re gonna let me go tomorrow, sorry if I can’t just eat that. Whether you think you’re just gonna let me walk is irrelevant when I’m gonna end up buried under one of those oak trees in the back yard. So quit fucking spewing your delusions my way, ok? Keep them to your fucking self. I’d like the last few hours of my life to be free from bullshit.”
Dean stared at him for a long moment. His head was still tilted and Seth hoped to God that the voices in his head weren’t telling him that he should probably kill Seth now instead of later.
When he unfolded from the chair, he made no sound at all. He grabbed a gun from the table without looking down to see what he was grabbing. Seth felt his heart climb into his throat. Maybe he’d been a little hasty with that rant.
“Um, hey, you know, I didn’t mean--“
Dean shushed him with a hand motion, his head still cocked, his gaze now locked on the room door.
Great. Seth had set off another psychotic episode. Good going Seth. Two years and an associates degree in psych were really paying off here.
Dean turned so quickly that Seth almost yelped. He dropped the gun on the floor and snatched a knife out of his boot. Seth had time for a genuine what the fuck moment then the door exploded in a shower of splinters. He covered his face out of instinct. An arm grabbed him and tried to yank him off the bed. He though it was Dean. He looked up and froze. His mind stuttered, some wheels just skipped out on their usual rotation, stuff was running but there was no one home to flip the switches.
Teeth. That was a lot of fucking teeth. He’d watched a documentary on shark teeth once and these looked an awful lot like those. Except that he was not in an ocean. This was a person. A man. Two arms, two legs, head and teeth. A hand clamped around his throat and lifted him off the bed, just kept lifting and lifting, and shit, he could hear the bones in his own neck grinding like chewing popcorn, he was standing on his fucking tip toes now and was still being lifted, and another half an inch and his fucking neck would snap. He kicked out wildly and his leg connected with the guy’s groin. The pressure on his neck disappeared and he gasped, trying to swallow air. A disconnected thought streaked through his head, really more of an observation, that there are really only so many times a man can almost die by strangulation in twenty four hours. The teeth guy had bent over his groin and now Seth could see three more, three more fucking guys with those teeth, Dean backed into the corner of the room, his knife flashing, and Seth was going insane. He was definitely already insane. Whatever the fuck Dean has must be catching. A pair of hands bunched in his shirt and then he was fucking flying through the air, slamming against the wall, his head bouncing off of it with a smack. He hit the ground with hands and knees, the impact jarring his spine, his vision swimming. Glass shattered, there was a crack of broken wood, things rolling on the floor, screaming, a gunshot echoed, then another. A hand grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back and it was the same guy, all those teeth, Seth wasn’t fucking dreaming this, it was really fucking happening. And he had no clue what was going on or what the fuck was up with the teeth but he was suddenly fucking furious. He’d been fucking pushed around and yanked and nearly strangled and he’d crawled through sewers and had a gun pointed at him and he was fucking done. He was so fucking done.
He grabbed the hand tangled in his hair, yanked on it, his other fist slamming into the guys throat. As soon as he was free he threw himself at the gun that Dean had dropped on the floor. Managed to grab it, turn around and shot the guy in the chest. The guy stumbled back a step, looked down at the hole the bullet had made, then looked back up and grinned with those fucking teeth, the sight of it sickening, terrifying. Seth shot him again and again. Four bullets, two in the heart, two in the stomach. He might as well have poked him with a stick.
“Behind you!”
Later on Seth would think that the logical thing to do would have been to crouch. But he didn’t. He turned around directly into an oncoming fist. His nose made a sickening crunch. He stumbled backwards, hot blood gushing over his mouth, his eyes watering from the pain. An elbow locked around his throat and brought him down to his knees. Someone let out a blood curdling scream and Seth found himself terrified that it was Dean. That it was Dean’s scream. Something warm splattered across his front, across his shirt and arms. He was yanked backwards. The arm around his throat tightened.
“Let him go.”
That was was Dean. That was Dean’s voice. Seth blinked furiously so he could see. He was struggling to breathe, copper taste flooding his tongue, his nose and mouth full of blood.
“Back off or I kill him,” the voice next to his head hissed.
A stench of rotten meat and decay bathed Seth’s face and he gagged on the blood.
“Let him go and I won’t kill you.”
For a few seconds or hours or years nothing happened. Complete silence.
Then he was pushed forward and he caught himself on his palms, one of them sliding in blood. Sound of running feet on the stairs, then a different pair of hands grabbing his upper arms, helping him up.
“Seth?”
Dean. Dean’s voice. He’d never been happier to hear a voice of of a lunatic and a killer.
“Hey, you okay? You with me? Look at me.”
There was an edge of panic in his voice and Seth didn’t know what to make of it, couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything. He latched on to Dean’s shirt and let himself be led to the bed. Once he was sitting down, he actually saw the rest of the room. Blood everywhere. Pools of it on the floor, streaks on the walls, splatter across the ceiling. One fully beheaded guy, torso next to the door, the head nowhere to be seen. Two others, their neck severed so savagely and throughly that only some skin and bone was still holding their skulls attached. No sign of those teeth. Just regular looking guys. Regular looking, nearly headless guys. He was gonna throw up.
“Hey,” Dean’s hand tightened on his arm,
“Look at me.”
It was almost a relief to focus an a familiar face. Dean was splattered with blood too, his teeshirt ripped and saturated again, his hands coated in it.
“Is anything broken?” he asked.
Seth studied the rips in Dean’s shirt, the torn skin underneath. He’d just stitched all that up.
“I think-- I think my nose is broken.”
“I think so too. Anything else?”
“I think I’m going insane.”
Dean snorted.
“No. I’m sure you’ll wish you were, but you’re as sane as I am.”
Seth wanted to laugh. Was that supposed to be comforting?
“We need to leave here now,” Dean said, glancing around the room, “can you walk?”
Seth could barely think. He could barely breathe. He felt like his fucking mind was disintegrating. But he was pretty sure he could walk. Hell, he could run.
Chapter 6 →