SPN: Mot Juste [1/1]
Title: Mot Juste
SPN | PG | Dean/Bela | Up to 4x10, AU | Not mine, but the story.
Written for iluvroadrunner6 at spn_het_love Holiday Hetfic Exchange
01
"Charming. Of all the people in hell."
A surge of heat flowed through his body. He tried to swallow back the sour taste in the back of his throat. Hell. And all those that came with it.
"Likewise." He lifted his gun, shot.
Except, he missed. Bela ducked, rolled and was now striding into the house. He followed, gun leading his way as she removed the magazine and placed them both on a table. She raised her hands.
"You're it?" Dean remained unmoved. "For the Key. They said someone would come." His gun lowered.
"They got you too." Laughter escaped his mouth, and once he started, he couldn't stop. The Key flew and he caught it.
"Stones and glass houses, Dean. You should know better."
02
Apparently, she wasn't a team player either.
The tattooed skin was a time bomb; it had to be destroyed rightly within 66 minutes from its removal or the brand would transfer to the next nearest to it. It was a map to a gateway to the Underworld, and its willing takers were currently chasing them through the woods.
She wasn't out when he did. By minute ten, he had the skin burned with frankincense, and still no Bela. He'd left but she had the tracing. The cries got closer. His shotgun cocked and readied, he sawed off three demon-hosts before he heard the squeal of tires in the background.
He heard her laughter in the wind, a jubilant 'Ta!'. Not that he was that surprised.
03
Gus Harding had called in a favor, an old fashioned cease-and-desist of a family friend's vacation house. He hadn't count on a tiny blonde leading him with her hips.
"Hey! Snap out of it!" Bela swung into his view unexpectedly. No matter, those hips can't lie.
Sunrise found him tied to a column, and a red-eyed Bela removing her ear plugs. She was the furthest thing in his mind.
"Siren, huh?"
"Odysseus, you're not."
"More like you can't get enough of me."
She paused, her next actions angry. "You don't remember." He couldn't get anything from her afterwards.
When Dean asked about the jobs thereafter, They never obliged. Uriel had laughed once, his next words rang repeatedly at him since: "Missing your old playmate, Winchester?"
04
Her blond hair was a shock to him, especially in the black of all else.
She turned, not caring if he followed, and stepped sideways at a table ahead. In her offered hand was a tied-up pouch, nudged forward when he refused to take it.
"Necklace of Harmonia?" She rolled her eyes. Dean snatched the bag up, but not before pulling her close with his other. "Cat got your tongue?"
Bela flinched. Her left arm curled across her waist as he touched the ends of her hair, lightly tracing the finger-marks circling her neck.
"You took more time for this," he stated, making answers when she didn't. Her fingers reached up, seized his and returned them to his side. Moving away, her steps sounded hollow.
05
When the cops started coming their way for explanations, he shrugged and pointed them to her. Bela had repeated her story five times now. He flipped his ID when prompted, grunted appropriately. Her back slumped when the fire department arrived, her shoulder brushed his left.
"Tell me you smell it."
"Patience, a virtue. It hasn't fed lately. That helps."
"Never liked fires, even before." She felt his stare and corrected herself. "Unpredictable and slow. Prehistoric."
"Only way for the Keeper to die. This one had to smell like roses though."
She walked to the driver's side of the car and climbed in.
His eyes started to burn, and he blinked the grit away. Try as he might, he couldn't make his eyes see any further.
06
Bela's breaths warm on his neck, he trudged his way through the room and lay her down on the bed.
Her shirt rid up, revealing a five-fingered raised mark on the right side. Checking the rest of her, he found another set of reddened skin, trailed in five coarse lines across her lower back from her left hip, as though someone had tried to retain her and failed.
He pressed his hand on her temple, the blood long staunched. Dean was hoarse on the fourth Empusa when she arrived unannounced. A misplaced backhand and she'd blanked out.
He found a map stashed in her car. It took him a while before he realized his past year's movements were rivered in blue and red lines, dated.
07
He sat in his car, the Impala on idle.
"I have nothing for you."
"I know." She leaned back before him, watched the sun set.
The thought of getting her help this way had previously crossed his mind, but he was wary of the costs involved, the unspoken price. Worse, if They provide the answer instead.
"I should go."
"Tell me why you're really here."
"The kid left. Split up so we could cover twice the seals." Dean looked away. "I haven't heard from him lately. Wonder if he's still top-side--"
"We wouldn't be here alive if he wasn't." She took in a deep breath, bent to his window. "I could ask around. No promises."
Her hand reached in and turned off the engine.
08
He should have known better but he was all wrong; alive, unyielding, impossible. She pulled back her fist and punched him, him bending backward from the hit.
"Go away! You're not needed here."
From where he lay, he saw her rise, her limbs languidly pulled by unseen hands before she was dropped suddenly, the water closing over her head. He reached for her arm, dragged her closer to the shore as he unwrapped the rope around her chest.
"There is a better way for this. One where you live."
Unbidden, warm tears rolled down her face, lost amidst others. He held her tighter, her hand slipped and tugged again upwards.
"An oceanful of salt, Dean," she whispered. "They want me back, they better make me."
09
He flipped the crossbow to its side, looked over the spring mechanism.
"Watch where you aim that." Bela came over, reached over his shoulder and pulled the lever with his hand. He resisted the urge to let the army of arrows fly. "Hefty. I'll leave this in a heartbeat."
"Not your first."
He didn't trust his memories of names and unmatched faces. She was as familiar as a stranger. There'd been blankness, nowhere but red, and then only her.
"I wish I remember all I'd done. Or didn't."
She lifted her shoulders, a mask and he could no longer see her. "Hell has no morals. Don't assume I got some since."
He hefted the weapon, smelled the new oil on wood. For you, she'd said.
10
He slouched before her, her feet hinged on the arms of his chair. Earlier, she'd motioned him down, handed him a martini of coffee and ice-cream, and propped herself on the counter. His shirt, unbuttoned, gaped pleasantly over her. Unlike other girls, Bela hadn't said much, after.
"Amazing."
"The Affogato?"
"Martini glasses in Fucking, Nowhere."
Her lips lifted at a corner as she slid her right foot to his seat. Propping her chin on her hand, she stared, her expression cool and expectant.
"You drooled on me." Her gaze wandered lower. "Men are dogs."
"You're not picky either." He shied away at the last second, her outreached toes meeting air. Mirth bubbled from their lips, foreign and serendipitously welcomed.
"So. Would you like seconds, Dean?"
11
"Tell me. All of it."
She stood apart from him and he kept the same distance.
"I waited for you, you would've found a way out. You hated me on sight, as if I had anything to do with you being in Hell. You hated them more though, until well, you didn't."
Turning to him at the last moment, she smiled. "The Prince of Darkness, and you were recruiting. Oh, the places we'd gone, there was fun done." Then her face hardened as the smile stayed.
"But you were taken away, and I didn't want to stay. So I made a deal."
"All of it, Bela."
"Keep you here or be back underground. This wasn't meant for me, Dean. I'm only here when you are."
12
The door clicked, an unhinged treble to Whitesnake.
Bela passed him, left her bag by his feet and sat next to him. She waited until the song ended, something about a woman named trouble. She struggled to feel offended, failed. "I wasn't worried."
Dean thought of lives uncommon and lived. He put his arm around her and she leaned on his shoulder, sucked in a breath at the contact.
"You're hurt."
"No," he lied, sipping his drink. They watched the fire licked the sky, smoke billowed like entranced dancers.
"Good pyre," she said as his lips reached her hair. They sat quietly till they had no reason to. Then they got up, and Bela held out her hand.
"Come. I'll help you finish the job."
13
As with the beginning, there was no end.
They gone for months with little contact, but he was alive and so should she. He thought of her, more than he liked, not that he missed her. Sam wondered; celibacy for Dean was as likely as a vacation for them. But he made a turn, then another, and left Sam to books and questions.
He guessed right and coaxed her to leave her car by the airport parking lot.
“You’re confident.”
“You were late. Again.”
“Raising the dead. Or did you miss me?”
He shrugged. “Just making sure we’re not hauling our asses in that tin can.”
Smiling, she let him take her bag.
“Where are we heading?”
“A long road. If you’re up for it.”
FINI
Thanks for reading. Feedback is pie.
Originally posted here.