Trust Me or Lie to Me

[winchester_lost]

"Oh, hey, can I get a bacon cheeseburger? Extra onions," Dean requested with a smug smile and a single raised eyebrow as the man that had been riding him left. Their attempted 'interrogation' wasn't going well, needless to say. He leaned back in his chair, careless of the fact that one of his hands was handcuffed to the table. Sammy had gotten

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[facs_lightman]

There it was, regret. But nothing else. Not guilt, nothing he could come to the FBI with that would close the case on his supposed guilt. Something was off about this, the whole thing. Cal had read the files, seen the videos, but unlike the FBI he wasn't blind to bouts of the unexplained. Cal had encountered things that couldn't easily be explained. His office had worked with a man who had seen aliens, who believed it without a shadow of a doubt. There had been footage. Though Cal hadn't worked that case personally, he reviewed everything, had a hand in every decision that left the door. His feeling regarding it was that there was more than could be explained. Possibly aliens. Possibly some government project. What was going on now with Dean? He didn't know. What the FBI saw lead them to think he was guilty, what Cal saw suggested he wasn't… but what was it then? Cal was open to believing the improbable, provided everything else was shown to be untrue.

"So, break it down for me… you're talking about dopplegangers, real life horror flicks, saving the world… if you're not some bat-shit robbing, murdering sociopath… if you're 'saving our worthless asses,' mind filling me in about what you're savin' us all from?"

His tone, stance, and demeanor were aggressive, planned to put Dean on edge. The best read came when it wasn't just microexpressions that escaped through the cracks, but full blown concealed emotion. If Cal could lean on just the right spot he could see an exaggerated response. It was one of his favorite methods for getting at the truth, using an amped up triggering version of himself to draw it out.

[winchester_lost]

"I wouldn't go so far as saving the world -- saving people. Even then, I can't save everyone, but if I save even a few, I figure it's worth this bullshit."

I can't save everyone. The expression was more pronounced there, lingered for a second or two, that earlier regret. Regret that the FBI would very much have liked Cal to proclaim made him clearly guilty of the charges. Truth was that it had more to do with a sense of responsibility. Dean, while he didn't style himself any sort of hero, still fought to save people, and failing that filled him with regret. Not so much guilt, because he did his best, he tried.

"You're not gonna believe me. People never do until they're scared. But, for the record, pretty much everything. Ghosts, werewolves, vampires, shapeshifters, demons... Really, the only things I professionally disbelieve in are God, Santa Claus and fairies -- you know, Tinkerbell, not the men with wings you find in San Francisco."

Dean didn't seem on edge by Cal's body language, the increased aggression toward him. Of course, in Dean's line of work, aggression usually translated into something trying to kill him, and Cal didn't read like that was the case. So, Dean was less than concerned. And, even if it did get to that point, it wasn't like it would be the first time. Given the length of his rap sheet it made a pretty good excuse to rough him up.

[facs_lightman]

Cal was still staring at him, working to read the sincere emotions that leaked out from that cocky mask he wore. There was regret again... which didn't make sense. He regretted that he couldn't save everyone. Not the kind of regret that a killer might show. And then he had to go and preface his list of lunacy with 'you're not gonna believe me.' And Cal wouldn't have, if he was any other person that Dean had come into contact with in his interrogations. He'd say ghosts and werewolves didn't exist, that these things were the stuff of horror movies. But Dean very clearly believed they were real, he was absolutely not lying. Was he insane? That would certainly explain it.

One thing he did know for sure, Dean hadn't killed that girl, the one at the bank. He narrowed his eyes, and was silent a little longer than was strictly normal.

"Are you guilty of any of the charges against you? Mail fraud, credit card fraud, identity fraud, impersonating federal agents? I'll just assume the grave desecration is valid... you know, what with dealing with vampires and the like." It was clear that Cal didn't buy the vampire thing, but he was trying to throw the ridiculousness of the claim that vampires were real back into Dean's face.

[winchester_lost]

That question caught Dean by surprise, enough so that his eyes went wide, that cocky smug smile wiped off his face for a few seconds. That stuff was all pretty cut and dry, after all. In his defense, he worked the identities (and credit ratings) of dead folks as much as he could. It wasn't like he was getting rich off it, anyhow. Just enough to get by, supplemented with what he could scam out of the local pool hall, or a poker game, if he was lucky. It wasn't like it was in the movies. It wasn't like they got to save a rich young heiress who was oh-so-thankful, and after a weekend of skin-melding, kinky sex in every possible position decided they needed a sponsor. Or was that just in his fantasies? Hunh. Either way.

He might have admitted to it, save for the fact that Cal asking made him suspicious. It was off base. He knew that they were trying to pressure him into admitting to murdering the girl at the bank. They didn't want to get him for credit fraud or identity theft, they things that admittedly were pretty cut and dry. And that meant that this tied into something else. There was something off about Cal that he couldn't quite put his finger on just yet. He didn't strike him like any of the others, which made him both interested and suspicious.

And not about to give a confession to anything.

He tried to make his face neutral as he answered. Deception was part of what he did, after all, and Dean had gotten good at it. There wasn't a week that went by that he wasn't lying to someone, whether it was a mark at the pool table, or a grieving husband he was convincing to tell him about his wife's death. "No. Largely a case of wrong place wrong time, sadly."