Cirque de Céline - Ch. 2
Title: Cirque De Céline, Chapter 2/Spanish Web
Author: big_pink
Rating: NC-17 - swearing in two languages, explicit sexual content of the het variety, and a certain Québecoise singer who warrants a special DangerDanger rating all on her own.
Summary: Response to the spn_north challenge (Outaouais region, Québec). The boys keep secrets from each other while battling a demon at a Cirque casino extravaganza. Sin, pleasure, poutine, joual and...the voice that sank a really big ship! WIP, will be 8 chapters.
Chapter one can be found on my memories page: Chapter One/North, He Said
The new, really really long chapter is here:
Disclamations: Dear God: Please don’t allow various large entertainment conglomerations such as the CW, Cirque du Soleil, and Team Céline to sue me for borrowing their media personas and making them have sex with each other. I’m going to hell, aren’t I? God?
a/n: Mucho thanks to my amazing betas, jmm0001 and lemmypie, who just make it all so much better than I could on my own. Special thanks to jmm, who obliquely led me back to the ‘lucky bullet’ that features much more prominently in Old Rebel Yeller (you can read that one in my memories page). All you really need to know is that Dean has a good luck charm on his keychain. It’s fairly inconsequential here.
--
By the time Sam recovered from the shock of coming face-to-face with a twenty-foot Céline, his brother had vanished. The main casino was big, vaulted up at least five levels, festively enlivened by sparkling lights and palm trees, long narrow windows revealing the single spire-like fountain and the city beyond. Sam realized he didn’t even know what city he was looking at. Gatineau, maybe? Didn’t that mean cake in French? They had rarely been so completely unprepared.
Amend that: Sam had rarely been so unprepared.
In those intervening years when he’d been at Stanford and Dean had been doing whatever he’d been doing, alone or with their father, Sam wondered if Dean had used a map, even once. He somehow doubted it; left on his own, Sam could well imagine Dean just following his nose, not paying much attention to where he was, other than to figure out coordinates and identify the thing he was there to kill. Sam was the map collector, the one who knew how to fold one properly, who would spread it across his knees, pointing out what lake they were passing, what mountain range, whether they’d just crossed a state line. Hell, a county line. Sam kept track.
Even now, he grabbed a floor plan of the casino from the rack where it nestled uncritically next to a brochure about gambling addictions: Avez-vous un problème? He flipped the map open and scanned it as he walked into the central gaming area, knowing that Dean would probably head for tables before slots, cards before roulette wheels, blackjack before poker. He’d watch first, before playing.
And he’d said he was hungry, they both were, which might - just might - take precedence over winning money. Funny, how Sam had no doubt that winning money would be involved.
Which brought up another point, and Sam knew exactly where Dean would be. He looked down at the floor plan, glanced up, found the Keno section, above which hung the mirror ball and the balcony where the band was just winding up a surprisingly spry version of Takin’ Care of Business. Beside the Keno - which Sam considered something one rung up from bingo - was the bureau de change.
Unprepared: they had no Canadian money.
Dean was examining his new bills when Sam caught up with him. Dean’s mouth quirked, a mix of chagrin and annoyance. “Man, the queen’s looking pretty harsh.” Glanced at Sam, but Sam couldn’t tell if he was finished being mad. Sam knew that Dean had figured out what had brought them here. His stupid superpowers. Made Dean madder more quickly and more irrationally than almost anything Sam could think of. “Their rates are criminal.”
“Bank always wins, Dean.”
Dean slid his wallet into his back pocket and took out his keys, weighed them in his hand automatically and rubbed the misshapen fob for a moment before replacing them. The lucky bullet there was now completely understood, worrisome object that it was. Sam didn’t like the concept of ‘luck’, didn’t believe in it, certainly didn’t trust it. Dean’s absent touching of the bullet was an older, known ritual: Sam recognized the gesture from countless entrances into bars with pool tables in the back. Dean was out to make some money.
Dean cocked his head to one side, attention on the gaming floor. “We’ll see about that.”
The glint in his eyes was coming back and Sam knew to both be heartened and to be wary. I’m sorry, he thought apropos of nothing. I didn’t mean for this. This not being the casino - shit, that was a gift - but the dreams and what he thought they probably meant. The fact that they seemed to be connected to the bus they’d followed and in flames and ancient beasts running on a dark plain. Sam had no idea how it tied together.
“Food first, please,” Sam stated, glancing down at the floor plan before Dean plucked it from his fingers as though it was a used Kleenex and pointed to Bar 777, right in the center of the gaming area. Sam held the stare, practiced. “I mean real food, not fries and peanuts.”
“It’s all protein, Sam. Rounded out with a beer, it’s all a body really needs.”
Actually, they were able to get sandwiches, which were fine, though they paid a stupid amount of money for them. Coffee carts rolled around, dispensing free caffeine, which Sam opted for. Dean had a beer, ordered the only one on the menu Sam thought he could pronounce. The server, a tall slender woman with an arched brow that telegraphed no nonsense, glanced between them. Her English was almost accentless, as far as Sam could tell, but she flipped between French and English with the bartender.
“Hey,” Sam asked her as she brought the plates of club sandwiches, “what’s the deal with the Inferno show? Is it on right now?”
She sighed, rolled her eyes and smiled tightly. She’d been all business before, but this seemed a bone of contention. “Oh yeah. It’s a big deal. Céline’s people have designed the whole show, she’s singing for the first week, then they get in some other singer. Completely sold out months ago for the entire week. Two shows a day. The Cirque people arrived a few days ago, but I think Céline just arrives today.” The bus, Sam thought. “Probably rehearsing now. First show’s tonight at eight.” Like she couldn’t end her shift fast enough to get the hell out of town.
“You don’t like Céline?” Dean asked, and Sam could see the effort he was making not to start laughing in the middle of it.
The server gave him a blank stare, the same temperature as tundra. The moment stretched out awkwardly. Then Dean gave her that honey-slow smile he had in his arsenal and Sam watched the arctic ice melt a little. “Guess not,” he murmured, sliding out the toothpick holding his sandwich triangles together and inserting it in his mouth.
“The Cirque’s great, don’t get me wrong,” the server continued, depositing a bowl of peanuts on their table with a swift hand. “But the Céline fans? They’re a little...bizarre.” Said that in French, which was understandable enough.
Dean ate his meal in under thirty seconds. Sam eyed him carefully, unsure what he meant to do next, given the previous conversation. Obviously, Dean had put together the bus, Sam’s stupid superpowers, and Inferno as a general starting point and wasn’t pleased about it. Sam could hardly blame him.
“Sold out for months,” Sam said, offering his brother a way out.
For a minute Dean looked like he might take it, twirling the toothpick between his fingertips. “We’ll need some money, then,” Dean finally returned, sizing up the tables behind the bar.
Dean’s theory (stated once on a particularly long road trip across the worst Nevada could offer) was that the longer you played, the more you’d lose. Consequently, he moved from table to table, never overstaying his welcome. At first, scoping things out, he lost about five hundred dollars at blackjack, a small fortune to them. Dean didn’t look worried at all and Sam remembered that they’d spent that one summer in Reno when Dean was almost twenty; he’d dated a series of dealers and bargirls. Although he always said he liked the track more than a card table, he wasn’t adverse and he wasn’t a rookie. So Dean circled back, bet more strategically, got out when his luck was still running hot.
This wasn’t like hustling pool. Hustling was theatre and psychology mixed with skill. As Dean slowly won back what he’d lost, then more, Sam was forced to admit that this might just be luck and good judgment. Self-restraint, of all things. After the next few games, Dean was up two hundred dollars. Sam hovered behind his brother as Dean bought chips, set them down, alternately tapped the table for more cards, or waved two fingers to indicate he’d hold.
Then Dean switched to ‘Poker Grand Prix’, which Sam understood to be the same as ‘let it ride’ poker. The dealer announced ‘Rien ne va plus’ and Dean trusted his luck. No more than five quick hands, a hundred dollars apiece, three won, two lost, then he nodded to the croupier and collected his chips.
Between tables, Dean grinned and handed Sam some of their winnings. “So, you getting any...” and circled his hand vaguely around his ears.
Sam stopped, which meant Dean did too. “What?”
Dean looked off to the high balcony where the band was playing again. Then back to Sam, grin only half mocking. “Any impressions about where to play next?”
He had to be kidding. He wasn’t. “You are such an asshole,” Sam shook his head. Then smiled, jerking a thumb to the Caribbean Stud Poker table. “That one.” But that was exactly what he’d said about the bus and it made Dean’s expression slide from sly to wary.
It shut him up, though.
Sam left Dean to win or lose as he might, lucky charm or not. He was getting bored. Wandering between the busy slot machines, he pushed in a quarter and was surprised and somewhat embarrassed when a gush of money came pouring out. Damn. Immediately, he was taken under the wing of a nice older lady who spoke no English whatsoever, and within an hour, had accumulated over seven hundred dollars and a lot of French swear words. On a quarter.
“The longer you play, the more you’ll lose.” Sam didn’t turn his head from the blinking fruit. “How much are you in for?” Dean continued, a smile in his voice. Indulgent.
Sam grinned. “Up seven hundred and twelve dollars, I think,” and pivoted on the stool to watch Dean blink uncertainly. “You?”
“Get up, Sam, and say goodbye to your new friend.”
Sam saw what was on Dean’s face: this freaked him out. A lucky bullet? No problem. Sam’s superpowers causing slot machines to put out? Something else. Dean was always his protector, and it was one thing for Sam to direct Dean as though he was a weapon, but quite another for Sam to do it himself.
If this was Dean’s reaction to Sam playing hinky with the slots, there was no way Sam was going to tell him about the dream of dying in flames, or of falling off a cliff with terrified animals.
An hour later, after a somewhat productive stint at the poker tables, Dean asked, “What the fuck do the letters mean?” They’d left the cards behind now, were leaning against a row of touch bet roulette machines hooked up via video camera to the tables across the floor. Sam glanced at the screen. How lazy did you have to be not to stand at the table as the wheel was spun?
“What?” Sam asked, sipping an ill-considered third coffee. No way he was sleeping tonight, not with this much caffeine in his system. Might not be a bad thing.
Dean flipped his chips in his hands, moved one through his fingers, back and forth. “Well, Fucking Observant Boy, didn’t you notice the face cards? The king - an R. The queen, a D. The jack, a V. Must be French, I guess. Shit, better keep your eyes peeled for other...anomalies.”
“You know,” Sam called after him, peeved. “Sarcasm is the refuge of the emotionally stunted.”
By the time they were up a thousand, Dean had switched to craps and Sam had found out what the letters meant. He was having a conversation with three students from the Université d’Ottawa, which he was told was just across the river, when Dean collected his chips and gestured with a jerk of his chin. The girls waved goodbye and he caught one of them staring admiringly at Dean’s departing figure and heard her say chek moélédon, and he had some idea what that meant, but he just smiled back and allowed himself to be led to another section of the casino, this one full of slot machines.
“Roi, dame, and valet,” Sam announced proudly, the seven hundred dollars burning a damn hole in his pocket. Four cups of coffee, maybe five or six o’clock and he was starting to feel good. As good as he could in a Québec casino, knowing next to no French and with dreams of flame and death plaguing him. Oh, and don’t forget Céline.
Dean stared at him as though he’d grown a second head. Didn’t care, Sam realized. Had even forgotten that he had wondered about the letters. The cards were a means to an end, and beyond that, Dean didn’t really care. Avez-vous un problème? Evidently not.
“I’m going to cash out,” Dean explained as though Sam was a mewling infant or a dense old granny. “And then we’re going to find a motel,” he waved a finger. “Not the Hilton,” as though Sam had suggested it. Despite the fact that the money was all scammed, Dean was notoriously stingy. A lifetime of not knowing exactly when and where the next meal was coming, Sam supposed.
“And, after that?” Narrowed eyes, not offering him a way out a second time. Shit, they had enough money to do this.
Dean, however, would make Sam work for it. “Don’t know. Might check out a few bars, grab a bite...”
Sam hitched his shoulder, tried to keep the pained smile from his face. “And after that?”
“Fuck, Sam, it’s been a long day,” not looking at him, heading towards the doors, past the tall palms and huge banner alarming as an Amber Alert. Stopped, raised both brows, looked as though he’d rather staple his mouth shut than suggest it.
“Dean.” Asking without a question mark. Begging to go see Céline. It was, on every level Sam could think of, pathetic. Change tactics. “Okay. Guess I’ll just have to take my winnings and buy my own way in. See ya.” And that, he knew, clinched it.
--
Dean knew there was always a back door, especially through the kitchens, which could be negotiated at speed and, combined with a dazzling smile, that was usually enough. That and two hundred of Sam’s stupid dollars.
Worked in El Paso, in Bangor, in Dubuque, and it worked here. Wherever the fuck they were, Québec.
One of the dishwashers even scouted ahead for them, made sure they could safely enter the back staircase between the casino kitchen and the backstage area of the theatre. The kitchen staff was so happy to help, in fact, that they gave Sam a Inferno program brochure, pushed it into his hands in a flurry of French that neither of them understood. Dean raised his eyebrows at Sam, and they followed the white-clad dishwasher through a maze of passages, down stairs, then up again.
“Excuse me,” Sam stopped him. The smaller man looked as though he was from north Africa, was difficult to see in the gloomy corridor they’d just entered, filled with stacking chairs and the scent of tobacco.
“Oui?” the man asked, stopping.
“Any...strange things happened since the Cirque came?” Silence, and Dean had no idea if the man even understood what Sam was saying.
“Chtedi, la Céline, that one is strange her, non?”
“I guess,” Sam agreed, sounding sincere.
“You stay,” the man said, waving them down and heading down a dark hallway. While they waited, Sam moved into a lit area so he could better read the program. Dean studied the gloom of the corridor, unable to see where the man had gone, which always made him nervous.
Behind him, Sam gave a surprised grunt.
“What?” Dean demanded, but softly, not looking at him. He could just hear the sound of people, restless, a little music. They must be close to the theatre.
Sam sighed loudly, then read out: “In the beginning, man shared the earth with ancient powers. Losing his innocence through knowledge, man emerged from the flame ascendant, but flawed. Inferno recaptures the magic of the wild darkness within us all, the beast that rages within. It gives voice to primal urges and the power of love to open the doors of passion and fire, to elevate us to a greater plane. Welcome to the magic of Inferno.” Sam looked up. “Exclamation point.”
Dean glanced over his shoulder at Sam’s bemused face, then back at the corridor. “What a load of shit.”
No more time than that, for the dishwasher reappeared, this time holding two red lanyards with tags on them, which he slipped over their heads. Press passes, of all things. My god, maybe my luck is still holding. Sam had to bend down, looked like he was receiving an Olympic medal. “There,” the man said, grinning. “I like America,” he added hopefully.
Dean took the hint and gestured for Sam to give him another hundred bucks. Tickets were apparently going for four hundred apiece, so this was - literally - a steal. “Two new chairs, in front. Khaled shows you.”
Right in front, he meant.
Dean had always made a point of never sitting in front of anything. A dangerous, exposed spot, but he supposed that they had no choice and it was a fucking circus, wasn’t it? What was the worst that could happen? Maybe Sam would get stepped on by an elephant.
The stage was large and circular, an apparatus of smooth steel arcing over it and the audience at a height of at least fifty feet at its apex. The audience was seated around the stage in close, raked rows. Dean and Sam were seated in hastily erected folding chairs, almost blocking one aisle in front of the stage. The man beside Dean gave them a disgruntled look. Maybe he thought he had the aisle, Dean thought.
Dean had only been to a circus once in his life, and that had been enough. The trapeze artists and the tumbling and even the bare-back rider - hell, especially the bare-back rider - had been good, but the animals had left him feeling trapped, claustrophobic. He’d been ten, maybe, invited as part of a class birthday party, the new kid, an unknown quantity, odd man out, minutely observed by children and adults alike. Uneasy in his own skin. And then the caged lions, pacing around, snapped at by the whip, looked as though they could easily have ripped anyone apart, hate shining in their eyes like new pennies.
Beside him, Sam said his name and Dean thought he might have been repeating it, because there was an edge to it. “What’s the matter?” Sam asked.
“Nothing,” Dean answered, but no more, because announcements came on, first in French, then in English, stating that the show was about to start, no flash photography.
It was like nothing either of them had ever seen in their lives and they’d seen a number of things that no one, anywhere, had any business seeing. It started with a clown, but he was a trickster more than a clown, dressed in a purple suit with a little flipped up flat top cut and red gloves. He had a cunning grin that hinted at mayhem and demanded you take him seriously. Through mime, he moved both across the stage and back in time. Once at his appointed spot on the stage, he was joined by small dancers in fantastic costumes who flipped easily as Sunday morning pancakes, soft and perfect.
The first act left them literally gape-jawed: a muscled acrobat in a large steel ring like a huge gerbil let loose with his wheel, rolling across the stage, dangerously close to the edge, lifting himself up and through the rungs, sliding, circling and rolling. He was followed by a quartet of tiny exquisite Chinese plate-spinners.
By the third act, Dean had forgotten completely about Céline, and Sam’s dreams and the bus. He was mesmerized. Behind the stage, which also turned slowly or quickly, depending on the act, a live band set everything to an ethereal, wailing music that would have put his nerves on end at any other time. Not now.
The trickster came center stage again, a flower in his gloved hand, eyes sweeping the audience, came up to the stage’s edge, smiled into the crowd, holding the flower out. Instinctively, Dean leaned back in his chair. The trouble with sitting in front was this, exactly.
Pretending he wasn’t there did him no good. The trickster grinned, waved to him and Dean felt his heart fall to his stomach, bounce back up to his throat. His entire body buzzed electrically, and it was a sensation that made him feel like both running and throwing up at the same time. But the audience was clapping, was cheering, and the trickster gestured for him to stand and if Dean could have looked at Sam he might have, but he felt all the blood rush from his head and he thought for one sickening moment he might pass out.
Nothing like audience participation to make you swear off theatre for life.
The flower wasn’t real. It was made of silk and it was attached to a small clip-on monitor, the sort that they sometimes used in hospitals and with which Dean was entirely conversant. As he stood, the trickster, who came up to his chin, whispered, “Pas de problème, monsieur. You are the lucky one tonight. C’est okay, n’est-ce pas? D’accord?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He detached the false flower from the clip, pushed the flower into Dean’s hands, and snapped the clip securely onto Dean’s ear.
Dean glanced quickly at Sam, stricken, and was appalled - appalled - to see Sam convulsing with laughter. In fact, Sam was laughing so hard tears were rolling down his cheeks. The rest of the audience was cheering and hooting. The trickster clapped Dean on the shoulder, jumped back onto the stage and lifted his arms: the lights dimmed a little, and the audience stilled.
The clip wasn’t painful, but it was present, and Dean slowly sank to his chair, eyes on the smiling trickster, and as he watched, the clown who was so far from being a clown snapped his fingers and the theatre filled with a loud, rhythmic boom. It floated around them, concussive, percussive, and silent figures in red came out from behind the band, dragging their toes, slowly twirling every two beats.
Dean schooled his face to calm, though his heart was thudding like he’d been running uphill...
And realized.
Realized that the sound, the loud booming noise that was like drums but was not, the beat that the acrobats in red were starting to move in rhythm to was his own heart.
Sam wasn’t laughing anymore. He smiled weakly, but even as Dean watched, he could see the levity in Sam’s dark eyes replaced with concern, then real fear. Nothing ever happened to them by chance and this was public, exposed them in every sense of the word.
Dean felt a swooping sense of danger and knew his luck had run out, right here.
--
At first, despite his sudden chill, Sam remained hopeful. This will be something to hold over him later, something to bring up when we’ve had a few beers. Remember that time when we were at the circus and they amplified your heartbeat so Céline could sing to it? Sam tried to think about how sweet that would be. It was almost impossible to think about it, though, when Dean’s heartbeat was echoing around a huge theatre and ten figures in red were doing back flips to it. A little distracting, to say the least.
Then, one of the dancers skipped back to where the band was starting to play -- his brother’s life rhythm as its pulse -- and pulled a long piece of fabric onto the stage. The enormous swath was attached to the overhead arc by a sliding connector, and the material was red and gold silk, striped and sinuous and it looked like nothing so much as it looked like a huge flame.
At the top of it, hidden in the folds at the connection twenty feet, then thirty feet, then all the way up to the full height of the theatre, was a small female figure. She might as well have been naked, for her bodysuit was flesh-colored and as she emerged from her entanglement with the fabric, Sam could see every etched muscle in her lithe body. She looped the fabric round her torso, bent backwards so one foot touched her forehead, a perfect circle, one toe pointing to the ground. Bent, folded, unfolded. Twisted back, looped fabric around, seemed to be playing in flames at the height of a vast ceiling, and the only thing touching her other than the flames was the sound of Dean’s heart, which she moved to.
Sam listened as Dean’s heartbeat sped up then, knew his own was doing the same because this was a young woman on the ceiling, surrounded by flames and it was an affront. This felt like someone, something, was throwing down a gauntlet. Sam had entered the theatre simply to investigate, to get the lay of the land, hadn’t meant for things to get so dangerous so quickly, and not - definitely not - with Dean in the middle.
Sam then heard a new sound, achingly familiar, which was a note held and held and held and he ripped his glance away from the aerialist to the stage, where a circular hole had dropped away and a figure in white was rising up, the lights on her, and on the girl high above the stage.
--
Dean didn’t know whether to run or stay put, but he wasn’t going to leave Sam here alone, not with a woman on the ceiling, no matter that the flames weren’t real.
Between the girl in the silk high above his head, and his own heartbeat booming deafeningly for everyone to hear, Dean didn’t even notice when Céline appeared on stage. Didn’t even notice how her song meshed with his pulse, scarcely was aware of anything, including the small hitch to Sam’s breath as the note held for an insanely long time and the crowd went berserk.
Breathe, he cautioned himself. Breathing is good. Came back into awareness; he of all people could afford nothing less in this situation. Take fucking stock, Winchester, he counseled harshly. He was surprised that his heart sounded so steady - fast, but steady - given that he couldn’t actually feel his extremities. Then the contortionist, about the size of a twelve year old boy -- as skinny as Sam had ever been, but with more muscles and a dainty Arabian mare length to her neck -- dropped.
Dropped suddenly and Dean realized that she was directly over him, had been slowly positioned there by whatever mechanism was operating the arc. And was now tumbling to earth, the note hanging in the air, a sudden burst of red silk blossoming around her twisting body like blood in water, or a sudden blast of flame, one he felt in the deepest recesses of his soul, but that he could scarcely remember on a cognizant level. On her blurred face, one known expression he’d seen over and over. Terror.
If he’d been listening to his heartbeat in that moment, he would have heard it skip, as the rest of the audience did, and a collective breath was taken like the suck of tide sliding back from a pebble beach.
And she stopped.
A pale face with short dark hair, fear dissolving into a sudden smile, maybe one yard from Dean’s face, hanging in mid-air, foot and leg twisted in the silk, holding her like a mouse by the tail. The smile lingered a moment as the audience applauded the drop, and Dean’s heartbeat filled the auditorium again, steady.
She flipped over, and he saw a cloud of rosin or chalk from her surprisingly small hands - small for such sudden, extreme work - grasping the fabric and going head over ass, back up the long fall of silk, right back to the top.
--
Sam couldn’t breathe properly until the song was over.
As soon as the last note sounded, his brother snatched the clip from his ear and jammed it into Sam’s hand. Céline came forward, chatting into the microphone, sliding French words together like the cards out on the baccarat tables, turning up an English phrase every so often. Welcoming them. She sang a few more songs, but Sam wasn’t paying any attention, was shooting worried looks at Dean, who was pale and shaking. When he bent to whisper in his ear, Dean shook his head vehemently - I’m okay, back off.
La Céline bowed to the audience and disappeared back down the hole from which she’d come.
Lights flurried across the stage and the trickster rode a small scooter out to the edge, jumped off and pointed amusingly at Dean, who looked like he was considering punching his lights out. Sam got to his feet, handed over the clip. The trickster smiled again, gestured to the flower still in Dean’s slack grip, unnoticed. Sam, anxious to have this over with, grabbed it, and extended it back to the trickster, who took it, kissed Sam’s hand and threw the flower back onto Dean’s lap, bowing to him. Oh, god, leave him alone, Sam thought, angry.
For whatever reason, staging or Sam’s glower, the trickster jumped back on the scooter, waved to the audience and wheeled back into the darkness and applause.
By the time the large Russian acrobats returned and pulled out the ropes for five aerialists to perform a Spanish web, Sam was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of that theatre. The Russians, however, appeared in shaggy furs, huge costumed heads rubbing back and forth against the ropes they began to rotate, eyes glowing red when the light caught them from the right angle. Bison, Sam thought, recognizing them in an elemental way. Above the Russian men, shimmying up the ropes with the ease of monkeys, were densely muscled aerialists dressed in pale ambers and taupe, make-up snatching imagery from Lascaux cave paintings and pueblo designs, a mish-mash of pseudo ‘ethnic’.
This scared Sam shitless, all of it. Could they leave? Was that even possible?
The Spanish web was performed high above their heads, five rope aerialists rotated by five acrobats on the stage, using smaller ropes to attach hands and feet to the main ropes, twirling like spiders on speed. It was beautiful and daring, but Sam was so wrung out by what had happened that he wanted nothing more than to crawl into the Impala and get the hell as far away from here as possible. Had he been fucking crazy? What sane person would lead them into this? He’d wanted Dean for company, for moral support, not as a lure or a casualty. This was a demon’s work, and though Sam was scared for his own life, in this moment he was more worried for Dean.
Sam knew more curses than prayers, and he had never been the praying sort for all the Latin he knew. It was a curse he felt like using now, because this wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair on Dean, after all they’d been through. This was his stupid dream, his fucking quest, and he needed Dean to be safe. The demon, wherever it was, was after him, not Dean, of that he was completely certain.
The show ended in a blur. Sam scanned the Cirque players as they came out to take their final bows - the keychain-cute Chinese plate-spinners, the buffalo Russians, the trickster. The girl who’d almost dropped on top of them was wreathed in red silk, and was on the other side of the circle, angled away from them. The trickster, however, was right in front of him and Sam noticed how he wouldn’t meet their eyes.
The lights came up, and they both sat there for a long while, allowing others to sidle past them in low murmurs of excusez-moi, and pardon. Sam studied Dean’s profile, worried, waiting for him to say something.
Which eventually was, “I need a drink.”
--
He left Sam to investigate, to talk to the performers. Reporters, that was their cover. Normally, he would have wanted to check it out, but it was all he could do not to run out into the parking lot, jump into the car and drive at a hundred miles an hour along the freeway. Except he didn’t have a clue where he was, and he wasn’t about to abandon Sam, and he certainly wasn’t going to make it very far without something to steady him.
The whole thing had unnerved him in a way that he found difficult to describe. He wasn’t going to even try, which was part of the reason he needed a little bit of distance from Sam - just needed to get his thoughts in order.
A different server at Bar 777. He ordered a whiskey in loud American English, without even a pleasantry to break the ice. Sat for a long moment resting his forehead on his open palm. The silk flower and the program he’d wanted to throw in the trash, but Sam had stopped him, said either might come in useful. Using his head. Both items lay next to the whiskey, which Dean had rashly asked for neat, nothing between him and it. He glared at the flower, some kind of daisy-like thing.
Finished the whiskey in three gulps. Waited for Sam, willed the server to come back to the table. Sam was onto something here, something inherently evil, with this Inferno show. He didn’t know exactly what it was yet, but even beyond the flames on the ceiling and the invasiveness of the heart monitor, he’d seen the look on Sam’s face at the held note and the drop, and those fucking buffalo. Maybe now he’d tell him what he was dreaming about. And they were over a thousand dollars up, with a motel room paid for a week. Not altogether awful. At least this fucking evening was nearly done.
Or not.
“’Allo? I can sit here?” Not so much a question, and Dean lifted his head. A small woman was climbing onto the tall chair at his cocktail table, dark hair streaked with deep red, unevenly cut in asymmetrical tufts that made her look like she taken a pair of kindergarten scissors to her own head in a darkened movie theatre. Large brown eyes considered him over the table, her hands folded under her chin. “Okay. You’re easy.”
The server was back and his new companion smiled at her and Dean knew the smile. “La Maudite,” she said. “Deux.” With another smile.
Her hands were small, right enough, but callused and hard looking. A spray of freckles across her French nose, no makeup whatsoever, and slightly uneven teeth in a brilliant grin.
“Easy?” Dean asked, alert, maybe suspicious. Felt a pleasant stir. Maybe something else.
“Bien sûr,” she said, picking up the flower. “Easy to find you. And definitely La Maudite.” The server was back with two bottles and glasses, which she deposited succinctly before leaving them alone. Dean’s uninvited companion held up one bottle and showed him the label: a flying canoe under the auspices of a grinning winged devil, the word Maudite above. Her brows - severe and arched - quirked a little. “’La Maudite’. It means, ‘damn fine’ I think. Sur lie, so use a glass.” She poured them both, and tapped her glass to his.
It was damn fine, everything, suddenly. She was dressed in black from neck to toe, a dancer’s stretch jersey, bright red slippers and a matching bracelet and Dean needed the beer right then, looking at her. “You know me?” she asked, maybe because he was staring.
He nodded. “You almost killed me.”
She laughed, a low chuckle in her throat. “I did not kill you.”
You might, he thought, but not without pleasure. “I’m Dean.”
She slid off the stool, flipped open the program to a page with a photograph of the red silk, and the flesh-colored costume, with her bent backwards, head touching her ass. Suddenly, beside him, she lifted one leg, bent it behind her head, smiled pure feline.
For the second time in the space of an hour, Dean was fairly sure he was going to pass out.
“C’est moi,” she explained unnecessarily, pointing to her name inscribed at the bottom of the photo. She hopped back up on the stool, sipped her beer again as Dean collected himself, tried to control the blood suddenly rushing around his body in unexpected ways.
“Beatrice...Vo?”
She laughed and he knew he’d mangled it hopelessly. Charmingly, he hoped. Because he was capable of those two things, more or less simultaneously: mangling and charm. Brought out his slow smile, matching hers.
“Béatrice Viau,” she said quietly, like a caress, mindful, utterly, of her own slow smile. “Répétez après moi : BAY-a-treece VEE-o.”
He repeated her name, just to watch what she did with it, felt like he was stroking a cat from head to tail with mere words.
“You ‘ungry?” she asked, tipping the last of her beer into her wide, laughing mouth.
He nodded, and followed her to the glass elevators on the far side of the Keno section, where they slid silently two stories above the gaming floor, the glitter of lights, the hectic rush of gambling and desperation and exultation. He didn’t know where they were going, suspected it didn’t involve food. He didn’t care, was suddenly so in the moment that things like food, demons, brothers, didn’t factor at all.
Almost as soon as they were in the elevator cubicle and the brass doors closed, Béatrice crushed herself to the glass wall and Dean stepped in behind her, close, and she reached back and pulled him against her. He dropped his head to her shoulder, eased aside the slender strap of her knit top with a single finger and rubbed his tongue and his teeth against her warm skin. She tasted of dust and leather and butter. He moved further up her neck, felt the muscles and sinew move against his lips as she turned into his arms.
The bell rang. They’d arrived, wherever they were.
Her hand was hard and sharp in his, but she seemed, thankfully, to know exactly where she was going. On this level, the restaurants were to the left, open to the huge gaming space, and the noise of the slots and the murmur of a thousand voices wasn’t any louder than the thump of blood in Dean’s ears.
Weirder things have happened, he thought, pulling her to a stop because he really didn’t want to take another step without verifying that she had the same thing in mind he had. His hand, hard in its own way, slid down her back as he kissed her, guided her into him, felt every vertebra as he made progress to her ass. Her sudden intake of breath and he hoped that wherever they were going wasn’t far.
A gaggle of older folks waited for the elevator, and Béatrice smiled at them, but not before Dean saw himself reflected in her dark eyes. Good, this was all good. His skin prickled in a familiar way, suddenly and sharply, more intensely than was usual.
Away from the restaurants - thank god, because Dean thought he’d have to fuck her on top of a table if she’d even suggested it - and down a darker passageway, narrow, but still open to the gaming floor below. Under a velvet rope with a small sign ‘accès interdit’, and to the empty band stage, where hours before he’d heard Pina Colada and Takin’ Care of Business. A word floated unbidden into his head: bizarre.
Maybe he said it out loud, because Béatrice licked her lips, tugged him to his knees and he realized the band shell had a barrier that prevented the musicians from haphazardly falling two stories onto the Keno players. A barrier that would - probably, if they didn’t get up off their knees - prevent the entire casino from getting a really hot live sex show.
Because that’s exactly what this was gearing up to be and Dean didn’t know if he was going to last thirty seconds or half an hour, but he was going to see how long and how weird he could make it.
“You know,” Béatrice whispered in his ear as she slipped one strong hand down the front of his jeans while the other grappled with the top most button, “I’m very flexible. All over.” And laughed hot into his ear. Dean swallowed, backed off for a moment. He held up one hand.
Just a minute, that said, but he smiled. Both hands up now. Stay where you are. Don’t move. She was on her knees, right near the drum kit. One false move and it would be noisy on top of embarrassing. Béatrice glanced over her shoulder as if contemplating it. Dean shook his head, still smiling at the tease. Your shirt, he mouthed, though he didn’t have to be completely silent, given the hollow din of slot machines and distant music. It was better this way, somehow.
She took off her shirt in a slow steady motion, breasts small and high and slightly different from each other, reminding Dean of those almond tarts with white icing and a maraschino cherry in the center. Good. Slower, he grinned at her. All bone and muscle and sinew. He didn’t have a type, he knew. Never had. All of them were great.
You, she mouthed back, an open hand and dimples. Fair enough, he supposed, peeling off his t-shirt. He watched her watch him, and that was okay too. Slower. Jeans, at her direction, saw her register his scars, including the most recent one on his thigh. She nodded approvingly and he saw the way one hand drifted down to her waist. Lower. Looked up from under a fringe of hair, pushed her hand under the waistband of her skirt. Found herself, closed her eyes for a long moment. His knees went to water. She opened her eyes, left her hand where it was, mouthed, underwear. Okay, however you want to play this, sweetheart. He was keeping track of where their clothes were, though. No need to be reckless.
And just about started laughing hysterically at the thought.
The laughter didn’t last, because the space between them became so loaded and so unsupportable that Dean held out one hand, asking her to come closer. Shit, at this rate he wasn’t going to last five minutes. Béatrice shuffled towards him on her knees, her hands, kneeled directly in front of him as he touched her, pulling down her dancer’s leggings and skirt, a black thong underneath and Dean wondered which god he’d pleased to find himself here with her. Maybe the heartbeat thing had been a test, but he didn’t want to think about that, because that might ruin the whole thing.
He’d been at this game, this old old game, long enough to know that there was no point in ruining anything right now. Plenty of time for that later.
He laid down beside her on the short industrial carpet, stroked her from breast to belly, slid his hand between her knees, all the while watching her face for the changes he loved to notice first time out: flush, shimmer of sweat, startle, eyes wide. Eyes shut. Mouth parted, lick of lips, pressed together.
Apart, together. Found what he was looking for, the same hand he’d tapped for more, waved for hold. He was holding and he was wanting more and he didn’t exactly know what hand signal there was for that. Except what he was doing, and that seemed to suit Béatrice just fine. Her mouth grazed his neck, one of her rough hands pulling him down, French hot in his ear now, and his body did something crazy with that combination of breath and tongue and teeth. Don’t hold back, she whispered, in English, her strong legs parting to allow -- jesus, accès -- their two hands together for a glancing moment before finding more useful work. Finding the fit.
Together and together again, and togethertogethertogether.
Skin sliding against skin, slick with everything that smelled suddenly of the sea at low tide, and she curved against him, all sharp angles. He turned, she on top now, hands to either side of his shoulders. She was weightless, a bird, but moved sinuously, every muscle defined and used. He put one hand on her hip, let the other roam peripatetically up to her mouth, distracted by detours to breast and shoulder and collarbone and neck. Then pulled her down to him. Hell, Dean thought, this isn’t going slowly at all.
Her breath hissed out against his shoulder and she bit him hard, but he didn’t mind, knew why she did it, and found her neck, knew he’d leave a mark, but that was also part of whatever deal they were sealing right now. Right now. Right --
And everything blew apart, piñata bright, same sense of wonder and the unreasonable joy of release. To let go, an unnatural desire for him in almost every other arena, but here just going and going and going. Then lingering, then fading, then gone.
Le petit mort, he thought, immediately and out of nowhere. Nothing like orgasm to improve your French.
As he lay there, Béatrice resting on top of him, both breathing hard, he could see the huge mirror ball high in the ceiling above them, and wondered if his eyesight was good enough what he’d be able to see reflected there: people losing their reputations, hearts breaking, fortunes won, compacts aligned, friendships ruined. Two people knotted together for whatever reason, spent and not quite so scared as before.
Because he’d seen that in the instant of her fall: fear.
They dressed slowly, enjoying themselves, Béatrice running a finger over the spot where she’d bitten him so hard it had come up in a red welt. He caught her fingers and brought them to his lips, smelling them both there. Took them in his mouth, and ran his tongue over her rough calluses. As he drew his shirt over his head he glanced beyond the edge of the barrier, wondered what the Keno players would see if they ever managed to tear their eyes away from their obsession. A pair of furry heads, not much more.
He grinned, then spotted Sam hovering by Bar 777. Shit. He’d be worried. Actually started laughing.
“Quoi?” Béatrice asked, wrapping her arms around his waist.
“My brother, Sam,” he said. “He’s waiting for me.”
“Ah,” she breathed, resting her cheek against his back, right between his shoulder blades. “Introduce me, eh?” And meant to get to her feet. Dean, hand still in hers, dragged her down so that they were both sitting in with their backs to the barrier. He kissed her lightly on the lips, pushed a strand of hair from her eyes.
“Nah,” he said softly. “Our secret, okay?” Sam would probably have a fit if he knew that Dean had just fucked one of the Cirque performers, would have nineteen different reasons as to why that was a Bad Idea. And besides, Dean thought with a thin shearing stab of malicious intent, he’s not telling me everything, either, is he?
Béatrice’s eyes glowed. “A secret, eh?” Ran one hand up the inside of his thigh. “I’m good at that.” Then suspicion. “I’ll see you again?” And that was definitely a question.
So he kissed her again, not softly, not the kind of kiss that you gave when you were saying goodbye. “You’ll be seeing me,” he said. Sam could wait.
TBC
Additional note: Shit, are you guys still here? I just wanted to say that what happened to Dean with the clip on the ear - that actually happened to my utterly hapless brother-in-law, except it was at a dance performance of La La La Human Steps and was at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto. He just about died. We still, of course, mock him relentlessly about it.
Author: big_pink
Rating: NC-17 - swearing in two languages, explicit sexual content of the het variety, and a certain Québecoise singer who warrants a special DangerDanger rating all on her own.
Summary: Response to the spn_north challenge (Outaouais region, Québec). The boys keep secrets from each other while battling a demon at a Cirque casino extravaganza. Sin, pleasure, poutine, joual and...the voice that sank a really big ship! WIP, will be 8 chapters.
Chapter one can be found on my memories page: Chapter One/North, He Said
The new, really really long chapter is here:
Disclamations: Dear God: Please don’t allow various large entertainment conglomerations such as the CW, Cirque du Soleil, and Team Céline to sue me for borrowing their media personas and making them have sex with each other. I’m going to hell, aren’t I? God?
a/n: Mucho thanks to my amazing betas, jmm0001 and lemmypie, who just make it all so much better than I could on my own. Special thanks to jmm, who obliquely led me back to the ‘lucky bullet’ that features much more prominently in Old Rebel Yeller (you can read that one in my memories page). All you really need to know is that Dean has a good luck charm on his keychain. It’s fairly inconsequential here.
--
By the time Sam recovered from the shock of coming face-to-face with a twenty-foot Céline, his brother had vanished. The main casino was big, vaulted up at least five levels, festively enlivened by sparkling lights and palm trees, long narrow windows revealing the single spire-like fountain and the city beyond. Sam realized he didn’t even know what city he was looking at. Gatineau, maybe? Didn’t that mean cake in French? They had rarely been so completely unprepared.
Amend that: Sam had rarely been so unprepared.
In those intervening years when he’d been at Stanford and Dean had been doing whatever he’d been doing, alone or with their father, Sam wondered if Dean had used a map, even once. He somehow doubted it; left on his own, Sam could well imagine Dean just following his nose, not paying much attention to where he was, other than to figure out coordinates and identify the thing he was there to kill. Sam was the map collector, the one who knew how to fold one properly, who would spread it across his knees, pointing out what lake they were passing, what mountain range, whether they’d just crossed a state line. Hell, a county line. Sam kept track.
Even now, he grabbed a floor plan of the casino from the rack where it nestled uncritically next to a brochure about gambling addictions: Avez-vous un problème? He flipped the map open and scanned it as he walked into the central gaming area, knowing that Dean would probably head for tables before slots, cards before roulette wheels, blackjack before poker. He’d watch first, before playing.
And he’d said he was hungry, they both were, which might - just might - take precedence over winning money. Funny, how Sam had no doubt that winning money would be involved.
Which brought up another point, and Sam knew exactly where Dean would be. He looked down at the floor plan, glanced up, found the Keno section, above which hung the mirror ball and the balcony where the band was just winding up a surprisingly spry version of Takin’ Care of Business. Beside the Keno - which Sam considered something one rung up from bingo - was the bureau de change.
Unprepared: they had no Canadian money.
Dean was examining his new bills when Sam caught up with him. Dean’s mouth quirked, a mix of chagrin and annoyance. “Man, the queen’s looking pretty harsh.” Glanced at Sam, but Sam couldn’t tell if he was finished being mad. Sam knew that Dean had figured out what had brought them here. His stupid superpowers. Made Dean madder more quickly and more irrationally than almost anything Sam could think of. “Their rates are criminal.”
“Bank always wins, Dean.”
Dean slid his wallet into his back pocket and took out his keys, weighed them in his hand automatically and rubbed the misshapen fob for a moment before replacing them. The lucky bullet there was now completely understood, worrisome object that it was. Sam didn’t like the concept of ‘luck’, didn’t believe in it, certainly didn’t trust it. Dean’s absent touching of the bullet was an older, known ritual: Sam recognized the gesture from countless entrances into bars with pool tables in the back. Dean was out to make some money.
Dean cocked his head to one side, attention on the gaming floor. “We’ll see about that.”
The glint in his eyes was coming back and Sam knew to both be heartened and to be wary. I’m sorry, he thought apropos of nothing. I didn’t mean for this. This not being the casino - shit, that was a gift - but the dreams and what he thought they probably meant. The fact that they seemed to be connected to the bus they’d followed and in flames and ancient beasts running on a dark plain. Sam had no idea how it tied together.
“Food first, please,” Sam stated, glancing down at the floor plan before Dean plucked it from his fingers as though it was a used Kleenex and pointed to Bar 777, right in the center of the gaming area. Sam held the stare, practiced. “I mean real food, not fries and peanuts.”
“It’s all protein, Sam. Rounded out with a beer, it’s all a body really needs.”
Actually, they were able to get sandwiches, which were fine, though they paid a stupid amount of money for them. Coffee carts rolled around, dispensing free caffeine, which Sam opted for. Dean had a beer, ordered the only one on the menu Sam thought he could pronounce. The server, a tall slender woman with an arched brow that telegraphed no nonsense, glanced between them. Her English was almost accentless, as far as Sam could tell, but she flipped between French and English with the bartender.
“Hey,” Sam asked her as she brought the plates of club sandwiches, “what’s the deal with the Inferno show? Is it on right now?”
She sighed, rolled her eyes and smiled tightly. She’d been all business before, but this seemed a bone of contention. “Oh yeah. It’s a big deal. Céline’s people have designed the whole show, she’s singing for the first week, then they get in some other singer. Completely sold out months ago for the entire week. Two shows a day. The Cirque people arrived a few days ago, but I think Céline just arrives today.” The bus, Sam thought. “Probably rehearsing now. First show’s tonight at eight.” Like she couldn’t end her shift fast enough to get the hell out of town.
“You don’t like Céline?” Dean asked, and Sam could see the effort he was making not to start laughing in the middle of it.
The server gave him a blank stare, the same temperature as tundra. The moment stretched out awkwardly. Then Dean gave her that honey-slow smile he had in his arsenal and Sam watched the arctic ice melt a little. “Guess not,” he murmured, sliding out the toothpick holding his sandwich triangles together and inserting it in his mouth.
“The Cirque’s great, don’t get me wrong,” the server continued, depositing a bowl of peanuts on their table with a swift hand. “But the Céline fans? They’re a little...bizarre.” Said that in French, which was understandable enough.
Dean ate his meal in under thirty seconds. Sam eyed him carefully, unsure what he meant to do next, given the previous conversation. Obviously, Dean had put together the bus, Sam’s stupid superpowers, and Inferno as a general starting point and wasn’t pleased about it. Sam could hardly blame him.
“Sold out for months,” Sam said, offering his brother a way out.
For a minute Dean looked like he might take it, twirling the toothpick between his fingertips. “We’ll need some money, then,” Dean finally returned, sizing up the tables behind the bar.
Dean’s theory (stated once on a particularly long road trip across the worst Nevada could offer) was that the longer you played, the more you’d lose. Consequently, he moved from table to table, never overstaying his welcome. At first, scoping things out, he lost about five hundred dollars at blackjack, a small fortune to them. Dean didn’t look worried at all and Sam remembered that they’d spent that one summer in Reno when Dean was almost twenty; he’d dated a series of dealers and bargirls. Although he always said he liked the track more than a card table, he wasn’t adverse and he wasn’t a rookie. So Dean circled back, bet more strategically, got out when his luck was still running hot.
This wasn’t like hustling pool. Hustling was theatre and psychology mixed with skill. As Dean slowly won back what he’d lost, then more, Sam was forced to admit that this might just be luck and good judgment. Self-restraint, of all things. After the next few games, Dean was up two hundred dollars. Sam hovered behind his brother as Dean bought chips, set them down, alternately tapped the table for more cards, or waved two fingers to indicate he’d hold.
Then Dean switched to ‘Poker Grand Prix’, which Sam understood to be the same as ‘let it ride’ poker. The dealer announced ‘Rien ne va plus’ and Dean trusted his luck. No more than five quick hands, a hundred dollars apiece, three won, two lost, then he nodded to the croupier and collected his chips.
Between tables, Dean grinned and handed Sam some of their winnings. “So, you getting any...” and circled his hand vaguely around his ears.
Sam stopped, which meant Dean did too. “What?”
Dean looked off to the high balcony where the band was playing again. Then back to Sam, grin only half mocking. “Any impressions about where to play next?”
He had to be kidding. He wasn’t. “You are such an asshole,” Sam shook his head. Then smiled, jerking a thumb to the Caribbean Stud Poker table. “That one.” But that was exactly what he’d said about the bus and it made Dean’s expression slide from sly to wary.
It shut him up, though.
Sam left Dean to win or lose as he might, lucky charm or not. He was getting bored. Wandering between the busy slot machines, he pushed in a quarter and was surprised and somewhat embarrassed when a gush of money came pouring out. Damn. Immediately, he was taken under the wing of a nice older lady who spoke no English whatsoever, and within an hour, had accumulated over seven hundred dollars and a lot of French swear words. On a quarter.
“The longer you play, the more you’ll lose.” Sam didn’t turn his head from the blinking fruit. “How much are you in for?” Dean continued, a smile in his voice. Indulgent.
Sam grinned. “Up seven hundred and twelve dollars, I think,” and pivoted on the stool to watch Dean blink uncertainly. “You?”
“Get up, Sam, and say goodbye to your new friend.”
Sam saw what was on Dean’s face: this freaked him out. A lucky bullet? No problem. Sam’s superpowers causing slot machines to put out? Something else. Dean was always his protector, and it was one thing for Sam to direct Dean as though he was a weapon, but quite another for Sam to do it himself.
If this was Dean’s reaction to Sam playing hinky with the slots, there was no way Sam was going to tell him about the dream of dying in flames, or of falling off a cliff with terrified animals.
An hour later, after a somewhat productive stint at the poker tables, Dean asked, “What the fuck do the letters mean?” They’d left the cards behind now, were leaning against a row of touch bet roulette machines hooked up via video camera to the tables across the floor. Sam glanced at the screen. How lazy did you have to be not to stand at the table as the wheel was spun?
“What?” Sam asked, sipping an ill-considered third coffee. No way he was sleeping tonight, not with this much caffeine in his system. Might not be a bad thing.
Dean flipped his chips in his hands, moved one through his fingers, back and forth. “Well, Fucking Observant Boy, didn’t you notice the face cards? The king - an R. The queen, a D. The jack, a V. Must be French, I guess. Shit, better keep your eyes peeled for other...anomalies.”
“You know,” Sam called after him, peeved. “Sarcasm is the refuge of the emotionally stunted.”
By the time they were up a thousand, Dean had switched to craps and Sam had found out what the letters meant. He was having a conversation with three students from the Université d’Ottawa, which he was told was just across the river, when Dean collected his chips and gestured with a jerk of his chin. The girls waved goodbye and he caught one of them staring admiringly at Dean’s departing figure and heard her say chek moélédon, and he had some idea what that meant, but he just smiled back and allowed himself to be led to another section of the casino, this one full of slot machines.
“Roi, dame, and valet,” Sam announced proudly, the seven hundred dollars burning a damn hole in his pocket. Four cups of coffee, maybe five or six o’clock and he was starting to feel good. As good as he could in a Québec casino, knowing next to no French and with dreams of flame and death plaguing him. Oh, and don’t forget Céline.
Dean stared at him as though he’d grown a second head. Didn’t care, Sam realized. Had even forgotten that he had wondered about the letters. The cards were a means to an end, and beyond that, Dean didn’t really care. Avez-vous un problème? Evidently not.
“I’m going to cash out,” Dean explained as though Sam was a mewling infant or a dense old granny. “And then we’re going to find a motel,” he waved a finger. “Not the Hilton,” as though Sam had suggested it. Despite the fact that the money was all scammed, Dean was notoriously stingy. A lifetime of not knowing exactly when and where the next meal was coming, Sam supposed.
“And, after that?” Narrowed eyes, not offering him a way out a second time. Shit, they had enough money to do this.
Dean, however, would make Sam work for it. “Don’t know. Might check out a few bars, grab a bite...”
Sam hitched his shoulder, tried to keep the pained smile from his face. “And after that?”
“Fuck, Sam, it’s been a long day,” not looking at him, heading towards the doors, past the tall palms and huge banner alarming as an Amber Alert. Stopped, raised both brows, looked as though he’d rather staple his mouth shut than suggest it.
“Dean.” Asking without a question mark. Begging to go see Céline. It was, on every level Sam could think of, pathetic. Change tactics. “Okay. Guess I’ll just have to take my winnings and buy my own way in. See ya.” And that, he knew, clinched it.
--
Dean knew there was always a back door, especially through the kitchens, which could be negotiated at speed and, combined with a dazzling smile, that was usually enough. That and two hundred of Sam’s stupid dollars.
Worked in El Paso, in Bangor, in Dubuque, and it worked here. Wherever the fuck they were, Québec.
One of the dishwashers even scouted ahead for them, made sure they could safely enter the back staircase between the casino kitchen and the backstage area of the theatre. The kitchen staff was so happy to help, in fact, that they gave Sam a Inferno program brochure, pushed it into his hands in a flurry of French that neither of them understood. Dean raised his eyebrows at Sam, and they followed the white-clad dishwasher through a maze of passages, down stairs, then up again.
“Excuse me,” Sam stopped him. The smaller man looked as though he was from north Africa, was difficult to see in the gloomy corridor they’d just entered, filled with stacking chairs and the scent of tobacco.
“Oui?” the man asked, stopping.
“Any...strange things happened since the Cirque came?” Silence, and Dean had no idea if the man even understood what Sam was saying.
“Chtedi, la Céline, that one is strange her, non?”
“I guess,” Sam agreed, sounding sincere.
“You stay,” the man said, waving them down and heading down a dark hallway. While they waited, Sam moved into a lit area so he could better read the program. Dean studied the gloom of the corridor, unable to see where the man had gone, which always made him nervous.
Behind him, Sam gave a surprised grunt.
“What?” Dean demanded, but softly, not looking at him. He could just hear the sound of people, restless, a little music. They must be close to the theatre.
Sam sighed loudly, then read out: “In the beginning, man shared the earth with ancient powers. Losing his innocence through knowledge, man emerged from the flame ascendant, but flawed. Inferno recaptures the magic of the wild darkness within us all, the beast that rages within. It gives voice to primal urges and the power of love to open the doors of passion and fire, to elevate us to a greater plane. Welcome to the magic of Inferno.” Sam looked up. “Exclamation point.”
Dean glanced over his shoulder at Sam’s bemused face, then back at the corridor. “What a load of shit.”
No more time than that, for the dishwasher reappeared, this time holding two red lanyards with tags on them, which he slipped over their heads. Press passes, of all things. My god, maybe my luck is still holding. Sam had to bend down, looked like he was receiving an Olympic medal. “There,” the man said, grinning. “I like America,” he added hopefully.
Dean took the hint and gestured for Sam to give him another hundred bucks. Tickets were apparently going for four hundred apiece, so this was - literally - a steal. “Two new chairs, in front. Khaled shows you.”
Right in front, he meant.
Dean had always made a point of never sitting in front of anything. A dangerous, exposed spot, but he supposed that they had no choice and it was a fucking circus, wasn’t it? What was the worst that could happen? Maybe Sam would get stepped on by an elephant.
The stage was large and circular, an apparatus of smooth steel arcing over it and the audience at a height of at least fifty feet at its apex. The audience was seated around the stage in close, raked rows. Dean and Sam were seated in hastily erected folding chairs, almost blocking one aisle in front of the stage. The man beside Dean gave them a disgruntled look. Maybe he thought he had the aisle, Dean thought.
Dean had only been to a circus once in his life, and that had been enough. The trapeze artists and the tumbling and even the bare-back rider - hell, especially the bare-back rider - had been good, but the animals had left him feeling trapped, claustrophobic. He’d been ten, maybe, invited as part of a class birthday party, the new kid, an unknown quantity, odd man out, minutely observed by children and adults alike. Uneasy in his own skin. And then the caged lions, pacing around, snapped at by the whip, looked as though they could easily have ripped anyone apart, hate shining in their eyes like new pennies.
Beside him, Sam said his name and Dean thought he might have been repeating it, because there was an edge to it. “What’s the matter?” Sam asked.
“Nothing,” Dean answered, but no more, because announcements came on, first in French, then in English, stating that the show was about to start, no flash photography.
It was like nothing either of them had ever seen in their lives and they’d seen a number of things that no one, anywhere, had any business seeing. It started with a clown, but he was a trickster more than a clown, dressed in a purple suit with a little flipped up flat top cut and red gloves. He had a cunning grin that hinted at mayhem and demanded you take him seriously. Through mime, he moved both across the stage and back in time. Once at his appointed spot on the stage, he was joined by small dancers in fantastic costumes who flipped easily as Sunday morning pancakes, soft and perfect.
The first act left them literally gape-jawed: a muscled acrobat in a large steel ring like a huge gerbil let loose with his wheel, rolling across the stage, dangerously close to the edge, lifting himself up and through the rungs, sliding, circling and rolling. He was followed by a quartet of tiny exquisite Chinese plate-spinners.
By the third act, Dean had forgotten completely about Céline, and Sam’s dreams and the bus. He was mesmerized. Behind the stage, which also turned slowly or quickly, depending on the act, a live band set everything to an ethereal, wailing music that would have put his nerves on end at any other time. Not now.
The trickster came center stage again, a flower in his gloved hand, eyes sweeping the audience, came up to the stage’s edge, smiled into the crowd, holding the flower out. Instinctively, Dean leaned back in his chair. The trouble with sitting in front was this, exactly.
Pretending he wasn’t there did him no good. The trickster grinned, waved to him and Dean felt his heart fall to his stomach, bounce back up to his throat. His entire body buzzed electrically, and it was a sensation that made him feel like both running and throwing up at the same time. But the audience was clapping, was cheering, and the trickster gestured for him to stand and if Dean could have looked at Sam he might have, but he felt all the blood rush from his head and he thought for one sickening moment he might pass out.
Nothing like audience participation to make you swear off theatre for life.
The flower wasn’t real. It was made of silk and it was attached to a small clip-on monitor, the sort that they sometimes used in hospitals and with which Dean was entirely conversant. As he stood, the trickster, who came up to his chin, whispered, “Pas de problème, monsieur. You are the lucky one tonight. C’est okay, n’est-ce pas? D’accord?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He detached the false flower from the clip, pushed the flower into Dean’s hands, and snapped the clip securely onto Dean’s ear.
Dean glanced quickly at Sam, stricken, and was appalled - appalled - to see Sam convulsing with laughter. In fact, Sam was laughing so hard tears were rolling down his cheeks. The rest of the audience was cheering and hooting. The trickster clapped Dean on the shoulder, jumped back onto the stage and lifted his arms: the lights dimmed a little, and the audience stilled.
The clip wasn’t painful, but it was present, and Dean slowly sank to his chair, eyes on the smiling trickster, and as he watched, the clown who was so far from being a clown snapped his fingers and the theatre filled with a loud, rhythmic boom. It floated around them, concussive, percussive, and silent figures in red came out from behind the band, dragging their toes, slowly twirling every two beats.
Dean schooled his face to calm, though his heart was thudding like he’d been running uphill...
And realized.
Realized that the sound, the loud booming noise that was like drums but was not, the beat that the acrobats in red were starting to move in rhythm to was his own heart.
Sam wasn’t laughing anymore. He smiled weakly, but even as Dean watched, he could see the levity in Sam’s dark eyes replaced with concern, then real fear. Nothing ever happened to them by chance and this was public, exposed them in every sense of the word.
Dean felt a swooping sense of danger and knew his luck had run out, right here.
--
At first, despite his sudden chill, Sam remained hopeful. This will be something to hold over him later, something to bring up when we’ve had a few beers. Remember that time when we were at the circus and they amplified your heartbeat so Céline could sing to it? Sam tried to think about how sweet that would be. It was almost impossible to think about it, though, when Dean’s heartbeat was echoing around a huge theatre and ten figures in red were doing back flips to it. A little distracting, to say the least.
Then, one of the dancers skipped back to where the band was starting to play -- his brother’s life rhythm as its pulse -- and pulled a long piece of fabric onto the stage. The enormous swath was attached to the overhead arc by a sliding connector, and the material was red and gold silk, striped and sinuous and it looked like nothing so much as it looked like a huge flame.
At the top of it, hidden in the folds at the connection twenty feet, then thirty feet, then all the way up to the full height of the theatre, was a small female figure. She might as well have been naked, for her bodysuit was flesh-colored and as she emerged from her entanglement with the fabric, Sam could see every etched muscle in her lithe body. She looped the fabric round her torso, bent backwards so one foot touched her forehead, a perfect circle, one toe pointing to the ground. Bent, folded, unfolded. Twisted back, looped fabric around, seemed to be playing in flames at the height of a vast ceiling, and the only thing touching her other than the flames was the sound of Dean’s heart, which she moved to.
Sam listened as Dean’s heartbeat sped up then, knew his own was doing the same because this was a young woman on the ceiling, surrounded by flames and it was an affront. This felt like someone, something, was throwing down a gauntlet. Sam had entered the theatre simply to investigate, to get the lay of the land, hadn’t meant for things to get so dangerous so quickly, and not - definitely not - with Dean in the middle.
Sam then heard a new sound, achingly familiar, which was a note held and held and held and he ripped his glance away from the aerialist to the stage, where a circular hole had dropped away and a figure in white was rising up, the lights on her, and on the girl high above the stage.
--
Dean didn’t know whether to run or stay put, but he wasn’t going to leave Sam here alone, not with a woman on the ceiling, no matter that the flames weren’t real.
Between the girl in the silk high above his head, and his own heartbeat booming deafeningly for everyone to hear, Dean didn’t even notice when Céline appeared on stage. Didn’t even notice how her song meshed with his pulse, scarcely was aware of anything, including the small hitch to Sam’s breath as the note held for an insanely long time and the crowd went berserk.
Breathe, he cautioned himself. Breathing is good. Came back into awareness; he of all people could afford nothing less in this situation. Take fucking stock, Winchester, he counseled harshly. He was surprised that his heart sounded so steady - fast, but steady - given that he couldn’t actually feel his extremities. Then the contortionist, about the size of a twelve year old boy -- as skinny as Sam had ever been, but with more muscles and a dainty Arabian mare length to her neck -- dropped.
Dropped suddenly and Dean realized that she was directly over him, had been slowly positioned there by whatever mechanism was operating the arc. And was now tumbling to earth, the note hanging in the air, a sudden burst of red silk blossoming around her twisting body like blood in water, or a sudden blast of flame, one he felt in the deepest recesses of his soul, but that he could scarcely remember on a cognizant level. On her blurred face, one known expression he’d seen over and over. Terror.
If he’d been listening to his heartbeat in that moment, he would have heard it skip, as the rest of the audience did, and a collective breath was taken like the suck of tide sliding back from a pebble beach.
And she stopped.
A pale face with short dark hair, fear dissolving into a sudden smile, maybe one yard from Dean’s face, hanging in mid-air, foot and leg twisted in the silk, holding her like a mouse by the tail. The smile lingered a moment as the audience applauded the drop, and Dean’s heartbeat filled the auditorium again, steady.
She flipped over, and he saw a cloud of rosin or chalk from her surprisingly small hands - small for such sudden, extreme work - grasping the fabric and going head over ass, back up the long fall of silk, right back to the top.
--
Sam couldn’t breathe properly until the song was over.
As soon as the last note sounded, his brother snatched the clip from his ear and jammed it into Sam’s hand. Céline came forward, chatting into the microphone, sliding French words together like the cards out on the baccarat tables, turning up an English phrase every so often. Welcoming them. She sang a few more songs, but Sam wasn’t paying any attention, was shooting worried looks at Dean, who was pale and shaking. When he bent to whisper in his ear, Dean shook his head vehemently - I’m okay, back off.
La Céline bowed to the audience and disappeared back down the hole from which she’d come.
Lights flurried across the stage and the trickster rode a small scooter out to the edge, jumped off and pointed amusingly at Dean, who looked like he was considering punching his lights out. Sam got to his feet, handed over the clip. The trickster smiled again, gestured to the flower still in Dean’s slack grip, unnoticed. Sam, anxious to have this over with, grabbed it, and extended it back to the trickster, who took it, kissed Sam’s hand and threw the flower back onto Dean’s lap, bowing to him. Oh, god, leave him alone, Sam thought, angry.
For whatever reason, staging or Sam’s glower, the trickster jumped back on the scooter, waved to the audience and wheeled back into the darkness and applause.
By the time the large Russian acrobats returned and pulled out the ropes for five aerialists to perform a Spanish web, Sam was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of that theatre. The Russians, however, appeared in shaggy furs, huge costumed heads rubbing back and forth against the ropes they began to rotate, eyes glowing red when the light caught them from the right angle. Bison, Sam thought, recognizing them in an elemental way. Above the Russian men, shimmying up the ropes with the ease of monkeys, were densely muscled aerialists dressed in pale ambers and taupe, make-up snatching imagery from Lascaux cave paintings and pueblo designs, a mish-mash of pseudo ‘ethnic’.
This scared Sam shitless, all of it. Could they leave? Was that even possible?
The Spanish web was performed high above their heads, five rope aerialists rotated by five acrobats on the stage, using smaller ropes to attach hands and feet to the main ropes, twirling like spiders on speed. It was beautiful and daring, but Sam was so wrung out by what had happened that he wanted nothing more than to crawl into the Impala and get the hell as far away from here as possible. Had he been fucking crazy? What sane person would lead them into this? He’d wanted Dean for company, for moral support, not as a lure or a casualty. This was a demon’s work, and though Sam was scared for his own life, in this moment he was more worried for Dean.
Sam knew more curses than prayers, and he had never been the praying sort for all the Latin he knew. It was a curse he felt like using now, because this wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair on Dean, after all they’d been through. This was his stupid dream, his fucking quest, and he needed Dean to be safe. The demon, wherever it was, was after him, not Dean, of that he was completely certain.
The show ended in a blur. Sam scanned the Cirque players as they came out to take their final bows - the keychain-cute Chinese plate-spinners, the buffalo Russians, the trickster. The girl who’d almost dropped on top of them was wreathed in red silk, and was on the other side of the circle, angled away from them. The trickster, however, was right in front of him and Sam noticed how he wouldn’t meet their eyes.
The lights came up, and they both sat there for a long while, allowing others to sidle past them in low murmurs of excusez-moi, and pardon. Sam studied Dean’s profile, worried, waiting for him to say something.
Which eventually was, “I need a drink.”
--
He left Sam to investigate, to talk to the performers. Reporters, that was their cover. Normally, he would have wanted to check it out, but it was all he could do not to run out into the parking lot, jump into the car and drive at a hundred miles an hour along the freeway. Except he didn’t have a clue where he was, and he wasn’t about to abandon Sam, and he certainly wasn’t going to make it very far without something to steady him.
The whole thing had unnerved him in a way that he found difficult to describe. He wasn’t going to even try, which was part of the reason he needed a little bit of distance from Sam - just needed to get his thoughts in order.
A different server at Bar 777. He ordered a whiskey in loud American English, without even a pleasantry to break the ice. Sat for a long moment resting his forehead on his open palm. The silk flower and the program he’d wanted to throw in the trash, but Sam had stopped him, said either might come in useful. Using his head. Both items lay next to the whiskey, which Dean had rashly asked for neat, nothing between him and it. He glared at the flower, some kind of daisy-like thing.
Finished the whiskey in three gulps. Waited for Sam, willed the server to come back to the table. Sam was onto something here, something inherently evil, with this Inferno show. He didn’t know exactly what it was yet, but even beyond the flames on the ceiling and the invasiveness of the heart monitor, he’d seen the look on Sam’s face at the held note and the drop, and those fucking buffalo. Maybe now he’d tell him what he was dreaming about. And they were over a thousand dollars up, with a motel room paid for a week. Not altogether awful. At least this fucking evening was nearly done.
Or not.
“’Allo? I can sit here?” Not so much a question, and Dean lifted his head. A small woman was climbing onto the tall chair at his cocktail table, dark hair streaked with deep red, unevenly cut in asymmetrical tufts that made her look like she taken a pair of kindergarten scissors to her own head in a darkened movie theatre. Large brown eyes considered him over the table, her hands folded under her chin. “Okay. You’re easy.”
The server was back and his new companion smiled at her and Dean knew the smile. “La Maudite,” she said. “Deux.” With another smile.
Her hands were small, right enough, but callused and hard looking. A spray of freckles across her French nose, no makeup whatsoever, and slightly uneven teeth in a brilliant grin.
“Easy?” Dean asked, alert, maybe suspicious. Felt a pleasant stir. Maybe something else.
“Bien sûr,” she said, picking up the flower. “Easy to find you. And definitely La Maudite.” The server was back with two bottles and glasses, which she deposited succinctly before leaving them alone. Dean’s uninvited companion held up one bottle and showed him the label: a flying canoe under the auspices of a grinning winged devil, the word Maudite above. Her brows - severe and arched - quirked a little. “’La Maudite’. It means, ‘damn fine’ I think. Sur lie, so use a glass.” She poured them both, and tapped her glass to his.
It was damn fine, everything, suddenly. She was dressed in black from neck to toe, a dancer’s stretch jersey, bright red slippers and a matching bracelet and Dean needed the beer right then, looking at her. “You know me?” she asked, maybe because he was staring.
He nodded. “You almost killed me.”
She laughed, a low chuckle in her throat. “I did not kill you.”
You might, he thought, but not without pleasure. “I’m Dean.”
She slid off the stool, flipped open the program to a page with a photograph of the red silk, and the flesh-colored costume, with her bent backwards, head touching her ass. Suddenly, beside him, she lifted one leg, bent it behind her head, smiled pure feline.
For the second time in the space of an hour, Dean was fairly sure he was going to pass out.
“C’est moi,” she explained unnecessarily, pointing to her name inscribed at the bottom of the photo. She hopped back up on the stool, sipped her beer again as Dean collected himself, tried to control the blood suddenly rushing around his body in unexpected ways.
“Beatrice...Vo?”
She laughed and he knew he’d mangled it hopelessly. Charmingly, he hoped. Because he was capable of those two things, more or less simultaneously: mangling and charm. Brought out his slow smile, matching hers.
“Béatrice Viau,” she said quietly, like a caress, mindful, utterly, of her own slow smile. “Répétez après moi : BAY-a-treece VEE-o.”
He repeated her name, just to watch what she did with it, felt like he was stroking a cat from head to tail with mere words.
“You ‘ungry?” she asked, tipping the last of her beer into her wide, laughing mouth.
He nodded, and followed her to the glass elevators on the far side of the Keno section, where they slid silently two stories above the gaming floor, the glitter of lights, the hectic rush of gambling and desperation and exultation. He didn’t know where they were going, suspected it didn’t involve food. He didn’t care, was suddenly so in the moment that things like food, demons, brothers, didn’t factor at all.
Almost as soon as they were in the elevator cubicle and the brass doors closed, Béatrice crushed herself to the glass wall and Dean stepped in behind her, close, and she reached back and pulled him against her. He dropped his head to her shoulder, eased aside the slender strap of her knit top with a single finger and rubbed his tongue and his teeth against her warm skin. She tasted of dust and leather and butter. He moved further up her neck, felt the muscles and sinew move against his lips as she turned into his arms.
The bell rang. They’d arrived, wherever they were.
Her hand was hard and sharp in his, but she seemed, thankfully, to know exactly where she was going. On this level, the restaurants were to the left, open to the huge gaming space, and the noise of the slots and the murmur of a thousand voices wasn’t any louder than the thump of blood in Dean’s ears.
Weirder things have happened, he thought, pulling her to a stop because he really didn’t want to take another step without verifying that she had the same thing in mind he had. His hand, hard in its own way, slid down her back as he kissed her, guided her into him, felt every vertebra as he made progress to her ass. Her sudden intake of breath and he hoped that wherever they were going wasn’t far.
A gaggle of older folks waited for the elevator, and Béatrice smiled at them, but not before Dean saw himself reflected in her dark eyes. Good, this was all good. His skin prickled in a familiar way, suddenly and sharply, more intensely than was usual.
Away from the restaurants - thank god, because Dean thought he’d have to fuck her on top of a table if she’d even suggested it - and down a darker passageway, narrow, but still open to the gaming floor below. Under a velvet rope with a small sign ‘accès interdit’, and to the empty band stage, where hours before he’d heard Pina Colada and Takin’ Care of Business. A word floated unbidden into his head: bizarre.
Maybe he said it out loud, because Béatrice licked her lips, tugged him to his knees and he realized the band shell had a barrier that prevented the musicians from haphazardly falling two stories onto the Keno players. A barrier that would - probably, if they didn’t get up off their knees - prevent the entire casino from getting a really hot live sex show.
Because that’s exactly what this was gearing up to be and Dean didn’t know if he was going to last thirty seconds or half an hour, but he was going to see how long and how weird he could make it.
“You know,” Béatrice whispered in his ear as she slipped one strong hand down the front of his jeans while the other grappled with the top most button, “I’m very flexible. All over.” And laughed hot into his ear. Dean swallowed, backed off for a moment. He held up one hand.
Just a minute, that said, but he smiled. Both hands up now. Stay where you are. Don’t move. She was on her knees, right near the drum kit. One false move and it would be noisy on top of embarrassing. Béatrice glanced over her shoulder as if contemplating it. Dean shook his head, still smiling at the tease. Your shirt, he mouthed, though he didn’t have to be completely silent, given the hollow din of slot machines and distant music. It was better this way, somehow.
She took off her shirt in a slow steady motion, breasts small and high and slightly different from each other, reminding Dean of those almond tarts with white icing and a maraschino cherry in the center. Good. Slower, he grinned at her. All bone and muscle and sinew. He didn’t have a type, he knew. Never had. All of them were great.
You, she mouthed back, an open hand and dimples. Fair enough, he supposed, peeling off his t-shirt. He watched her watch him, and that was okay too. Slower. Jeans, at her direction, saw her register his scars, including the most recent one on his thigh. She nodded approvingly and he saw the way one hand drifted down to her waist. Lower. Looked up from under a fringe of hair, pushed her hand under the waistband of her skirt. Found herself, closed her eyes for a long moment. His knees went to water. She opened her eyes, left her hand where it was, mouthed, underwear. Okay, however you want to play this, sweetheart. He was keeping track of where their clothes were, though. No need to be reckless.
And just about started laughing hysterically at the thought.
The laughter didn’t last, because the space between them became so loaded and so unsupportable that Dean held out one hand, asking her to come closer. Shit, at this rate he wasn’t going to last five minutes. Béatrice shuffled towards him on her knees, her hands, kneeled directly in front of him as he touched her, pulling down her dancer’s leggings and skirt, a black thong underneath and Dean wondered which god he’d pleased to find himself here with her. Maybe the heartbeat thing had been a test, but he didn’t want to think about that, because that might ruin the whole thing.
He’d been at this game, this old old game, long enough to know that there was no point in ruining anything right now. Plenty of time for that later.
He laid down beside her on the short industrial carpet, stroked her from breast to belly, slid his hand between her knees, all the while watching her face for the changes he loved to notice first time out: flush, shimmer of sweat, startle, eyes wide. Eyes shut. Mouth parted, lick of lips, pressed together.
Apart, together. Found what he was looking for, the same hand he’d tapped for more, waved for hold. He was holding and he was wanting more and he didn’t exactly know what hand signal there was for that. Except what he was doing, and that seemed to suit Béatrice just fine. Her mouth grazed his neck, one of her rough hands pulling him down, French hot in his ear now, and his body did something crazy with that combination of breath and tongue and teeth. Don’t hold back, she whispered, in English, her strong legs parting to allow -- jesus, accès -- their two hands together for a glancing moment before finding more useful work. Finding the fit.
Together and together again, and togethertogethertogether.
Skin sliding against skin, slick with everything that smelled suddenly of the sea at low tide, and she curved against him, all sharp angles. He turned, she on top now, hands to either side of his shoulders. She was weightless, a bird, but moved sinuously, every muscle defined and used. He put one hand on her hip, let the other roam peripatetically up to her mouth, distracted by detours to breast and shoulder and collarbone and neck. Then pulled her down to him. Hell, Dean thought, this isn’t going slowly at all.
Her breath hissed out against his shoulder and she bit him hard, but he didn’t mind, knew why she did it, and found her neck, knew he’d leave a mark, but that was also part of whatever deal they were sealing right now. Right now. Right --
And everything blew apart, piñata bright, same sense of wonder and the unreasonable joy of release. To let go, an unnatural desire for him in almost every other arena, but here just going and going and going. Then lingering, then fading, then gone.
Le petit mort, he thought, immediately and out of nowhere. Nothing like orgasm to improve your French.
As he lay there, Béatrice resting on top of him, both breathing hard, he could see the huge mirror ball high in the ceiling above them, and wondered if his eyesight was good enough what he’d be able to see reflected there: people losing their reputations, hearts breaking, fortunes won, compacts aligned, friendships ruined. Two people knotted together for whatever reason, spent and not quite so scared as before.
Because he’d seen that in the instant of her fall: fear.
They dressed slowly, enjoying themselves, Béatrice running a finger over the spot where she’d bitten him so hard it had come up in a red welt. He caught her fingers and brought them to his lips, smelling them both there. Took them in his mouth, and ran his tongue over her rough calluses. As he drew his shirt over his head he glanced beyond the edge of the barrier, wondered what the Keno players would see if they ever managed to tear their eyes away from their obsession. A pair of furry heads, not much more.
He grinned, then spotted Sam hovering by Bar 777. Shit. He’d be worried. Actually started laughing.
“Quoi?” Béatrice asked, wrapping her arms around his waist.
“My brother, Sam,” he said. “He’s waiting for me.”
“Ah,” she breathed, resting her cheek against his back, right between his shoulder blades. “Introduce me, eh?” And meant to get to her feet. Dean, hand still in hers, dragged her down so that they were both sitting in with their backs to the barrier. He kissed her lightly on the lips, pushed a strand of hair from her eyes.
“Nah,” he said softly. “Our secret, okay?” Sam would probably have a fit if he knew that Dean had just fucked one of the Cirque performers, would have nineteen different reasons as to why that was a Bad Idea. And besides, Dean thought with a thin shearing stab of malicious intent, he’s not telling me everything, either, is he?
Béatrice’s eyes glowed. “A secret, eh?” Ran one hand up the inside of his thigh. “I’m good at that.” Then suspicion. “I’ll see you again?” And that was definitely a question.
So he kissed her again, not softly, not the kind of kiss that you gave when you were saying goodbye. “You’ll be seeing me,” he said. Sam could wait.
TBC
Additional note: Shit, are you guys still here? I just wanted to say that what happened to Dean with the clip on the ear - that actually happened to my utterly hapless brother-in-law, except it was at a dance performance of La La La Human Steps and was at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto. He just about died. We still, of course, mock him relentlessly about it.