Fic: Angels at the Door

[brightly_lit]

Title: Angels at the Door
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG for language, minor violence, threatened violence of all kinds
Genre: gen, outsider pov
Characters: Sam, Dean, OCs
Word Count: ~10,200

Summary: 17-year-old Dorothy believed she would spend her life under the protective wing of her family and then her husband, but on her way to her private religious school one morning, she's whisked away by two terrible men who claim they're trying to protect her from a vampire stalker. She will never be the same again.

"Truly, she hadn’t known there were men this bad. Her intuition told her that of all the bad things that could be done in this world, these men had done almost all of them and hadn’t thought a thing of it."



Two creepy guys sat on a park bench, looking at her as she made to walk past them on the path on her way to school. The only word she was sure she heard as they exchanged a quick glance was “virgin.” Then one of them gave her a winning grin--more like a leer--and said, “How’s it goin’?”

This was not the first time guys had made fun of her in her prim school uniform (long dark skirt, white button-down shirt, buttoned all the way up), but usually it was ne’er-do-wells from the public high school, not grown men. Dorothy quickly averted her eyes and held her head high, marching past them, not allowing them to see the sheer terror that had consumed her at the interaction. Once she was safely past, she breathed a sigh of relief ... until they got up and followed her.

She quickened her step. They did, too. She glanced back over her shoulder at them. They looked away, pretending they weren’t following her. She couldn’t run in her dress shoes; just walking in them was difficult enough. She wondered wildly what to do. One day--probably soon--she would be married and then she would always be protected by her husband. Until then, she was supposed to be safe at school and in the embrace of her family, but she had to get home or to school first. Mom was right--it was a bad world full of dangerous people. She was right to try to keep Dorothy away from it all. Dorothy whispered a prayed apology for any time she’d allowed herself to feel any resentment about the way she was raised.

She ducked into an alley once they got past the park to the street, only to hear their footsteps pounding the cement, and the one who’d leered at her lunged at her and grabbed her wrist, saying dispassionately, “You don’t want to go in there.” She screamed--or tried, but he saw her intention and spun her around, grabbing her from behind, covering her mouth, shouting instructions to the other one. “I’ll stay with her.” The other one nodded and darted down the alley, while her captor pulled her a little deeper into the alley, out of sight of any passersby so they wouldn’t see what he was doing to her. “It’s okay,” he said, sinisterly quietly. “This’ll all be over soon, and you can forget I ever existed.”

The other one--who had to be the hugest, tallest, most terrifying person she’d ever seen in her life--returned shortly, shaking his head. At least she thought it was short; she lost track of time, dissociating. “He knows we’re on his tail,” he said. “I’m sure he’s back to his usual m.o.--hide and strike.”

The one holding her let out a terrible word like it was nothing. “When are we gonna get this bastard?! We have to get him this time, Sam; there’s already been too many ....” He trailed off, and judging by the tall one’s expression, they must have exchanged a significant look. He cursed again. “Then what do we do with her?”

“Bring her with us, I guess.”

“Trust me, Sam, she doesn’t want to come.”

The tall, scary one--Sam--leaned down and smiled at her. She recoiled, but once she realized her recoil only pressed her harder against the other one, she flinched away from him, too. Trapped on all sides, no escape. Somehow, that seemed to be the state in which she’d lived her whole life. “It’s okay,” he said soothingly, but his attempt to soothe was the most horrifying thing yet. “We’re the good guys. There’s someone after you, and once we get him, you can go back to your life, okay? It should only be a couple more hours, and this’ll be over.”

“Yeah, I told her that. I don’t think she’s really hearing anything.”

“Maybe we could let her go to school.”

“What?! We can’t let her lure him to a school! Guy like him wouldn’t hesitate with the collateral damage. Here; you take ’er, Sam; I’ll get the car.”

He handed her off to the even bigger one and disappeared. This one didn’t cover her mouth. He didn’t even touch her, until she tried to make a break for it and promptly stumbled; he caught her and held her up, murmuring more creepy reassurances. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t get any volume. Sam only seemed to take it for some sort of anxious whining and kept talking like that.

A car pulled up. If she’d ever seen a car she could characterize as evil, it would be this one. It looked like the kind of car the devil would drive. She balked as Sam led her to it, and she tried to run again, but she was shaking too hard to accomplish it. “Stay back there with ’er,” the driver barked.

“Um ... I’m pretty sure she wants to be as far away from me as she can get, Dean.”

“She’ll probably try to run at a light.”

“She’s not running.”

“She just tried to run just now!”

Sam seemed bewildered. “That’s not what that was.”

“Yeah it was, only she’s too weak or scared or something to get anywhere. Sam, quit arguing and do it! We need to find his nest now. That’s gotta be where he is, now that the sun’s up.” Sam got in beside her in the backseat and pulled the door shut behind them.

Dorothy couldn’t have said what all happened to her that day. The biggest monster guy sat beside her most of the time. One of them stayed with her in the car while the other got out to poke around some abandoned places--houses, factories, barns--except that a couple of times, one of them came back from one of these scouting trips excited and said he wanted the other with him.

The driver--Dean--looked at her the third time this happened and said, “I’d tell you to stay put, but looks like you got that down, so if the bad guys come--run.” He turned away, muttering, “If you can.” As they walked away, she heard Dean talking to Sam: “I dunno; there’s something wrong with her. We’ve left her in there three times, and she never makes a break for it.”

Sam shrugged. “She knows we’d just find her again. Or maybe she’s realized we’re the good guys!” he suggested brightly.

Dean glanced back at her, and looked away when he saw her looking back at him, lowering his voice. “Actually, I think she thinks we’ll kill her if she tries.”

Dorothy did think that. She thought all kinds of things--or rather, she didn’t think, couldn’t think, dozens of ideas and impressions all simmering uselessly in her mind, never coalescing into any course of action. She’d spent her life obeying her parents and her teachers. That was all that had ever been required of her. Of all her parents’ rules, that was first and foremost. Once she was married, it would be her duty to obey her husband instead. Only bad women were the kinds of women who made their own decisions and acted on them; everyone knew that--everyone Dorothy knew, anyway--classmates, teachers .... Invariably, it got these bad women into trouble, into drugs or crime or out-of-wedlock pregnancy. The worst thing that could ever happen to her--even worse than these bad men and their plans--was becoming a bad woman, because that would land her in hell, and there was no cure for that. Death would be better.

Upon their return, Dean uttered that terrible word again, and Dorothy flinched. He stood just outside the car, looked around, and sighed. “Almost sunset, and we still haven’t found the bastard.” He peered in at her for a second, then lowered his voice, but either he wasn’t good at volume control, or he didn’t think she was processing anything he was saying. “You know if we let her go now, she’s toast.” Their jargon meant nothing to her; what did ‘toast’ mean? Toasty warm and cozy back home with her family? She wished more than anything that she could be toast right now.

Sam kicked around beside him. “So, what then?”

Dean shrugged, and they turned away a little, like they were talking about the weather, but in fact Dorothy was listening closely right now through the open car windows, since they were discussing her fate. “She’s easy enough to wrangle,” Dean murmured. “It’s not like she’s giving us any trouble. Keep her ’til we get ’im, I guess.”

“She’ll go to the cops when we let her go,” Sam said.

“She would have, anyway. Just one more night for her parents to get real glad she’s safe and sound. Maybe she’ll even come around and not turn us in. Ya think?” He said this last sentence at regular volume, like he thought it was generic enough that she wouldn’t know they were talking about her. He wrenched open the car door.

Sam did the same and got in beside her. “Doubt it.”

They picked up some food and then checked into a cruddy hotel room on the bad side of town. They urged her to eat, but she only sat in a chair as far from the beds as she could get, not making eye contact, staring at the floor. The beds ... the last thing she wanted to think about was what they intended to do with her there, but no matter what she said or tried to do, they were bigger, stronger, and meaner than her. There was nothing she could do if things went that way. It was better not to think.

They had a quiet conversation at the other end of the room, after which Sam went into bathroom and Dean came about halfway back, keeping a good distance from her, and said, “Sam’s in the shower, then we’re gonna take turns sleeping while the other keeps watch, so you should get some sleep. Seems like it’s been a big day for you, even if it’s been ... kinda boring by our standards. Sorry we haven’t caught ’im yet, but mark my words, that son of a bitch is dead tomorrow.” Always with the curse words with this one.

Truly, she hadn’t known there were men this bad. Her parents didn’t let her watch most t.v., but the worst men she’d seen were on t.v., and they still didn’t hold a candle to these rough, dirty men who had no manners and no decency. She didn’t know anything about bad men and what they were capable of except rumors at school among her friends and some fundamental intuitive sense of these things. To whatever degree thought penetrated her mental haze, her intuition told her that of all the bad things that could be done in this world, these men had done almost all of them and hadn’t thought a thing of it.

She glanced up at him only long enough to see him gesture her to a bed. She shook her head and hunkered down harder in her chair, resisting as much as she dared.

“Aw, come on!” Dean burst out irritably. “If we were gonna do anything, don’t you think we would have by now?! Just relax!”

That did it. She’d stayed numb all day, but something about the combination of just beginning to feel like something terrible wasn’t actually imminent, and being yelled at, broke the dam. She burst into sobs. She didn’t want to cry for fear of enraging him, but the harder she tried to stop, the worse it got--bad sobs, like she was going crazy. Dean took a step back, then another, trying to talk her down, then ran to the bathroom door and started pounding on it. “Sam! Sammy! We’ve got a situation here! I need you to work your magic!”

Sam burst out of the bathroom within seconds, wearing only a towel. Dorothy saw and screamed. Sam ducked into the bathroom again instantly as Dean rushed toward her, causing her to jump out of her chair and back against the wall. “Look, I know my brother isn’t nearly as easy on the eyes as me, but that’s no reason to--” Her sobs were turning to wails. All she wanted in the whole world was to be away from this place and these bad people. She knew she would cry until she was. “Sam, how long does it take you to put on some freakin’ pants?!”

Sam dashed out of the bathroom again, wearing only pants, pulling a shirt over his head as he came, and stopped five or six feet away from her, hunkering down to sit on the edge of a bed. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said in that soothing voice that made her feel like he was buttering her up for something terrible. The sobbing got worse.

“Jesus; what’s wrong with her?” Dean said.

“Dean, you’re not helping!” Sam shouted, then turned back to Dorothy. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Dean and I--Dean’s my big brother--we help people. That’s our job. I know it may not look like it right now, but we’re helping you. It’ll all be over soon.”

“God, Sam, you make it sound like we’re about to put ’er out of her misery.” Dean stepped up and tried a different tack. “Look, there’s a vamp after you, you’ve probably seen him stalking you--”

Wasn’t a ‘vamp’ a promiscuous woman? At Dorothy’s blank look, Sam murmured, “Doesn’t seem like she’s generally too aware of her surroundings.”

“What the fuck; who taught her to--”

That terrible word again! Why would he court the lord’s wrath for no reason?! “Would you stop saying that?!” she cried.

“Oh, so she can talk. What the fuck is she upset about now, Sam?”

“THAT!” she shrieked. “Stop it, just stop it!!” Everything about this place and these people was wrong, so wrong. Just being here felt like she was being poisoned with badness and sin, like it was slowly seeping inside of her: the sleazy hotel room, the unwholesome fast food, trapped in the roaring fume-spewing evil car all day, seeing so much of the tall one’s naked body, and there this one was, cursing at her so casually, everything bombarding her with its wickedness. It was the final straw.

Dean looked at Sam, bewildered. “The--the ... ‘f’ word,” Sam said delicately.

Dean frowned at her, and she shrank against the wall. What was she thinking, yelling at him?! How dare she?! He would kill her now for sure. She hoped it would be quick. She started whispering the lord’s prayer, the only prayer that came effortlessly to her lips in these, her final moments. Of all the ways she thought her life would ever go, dying at 17 in a sleazy hotel room on the bad side of town at the hands of some creep was the last, and with only three weeks to go before graduating from high school. She tried to keep herself from dwelling on the irony, for the lord worked in mysterious ways.

Dean stepped up close to her, and she cringed, holding her hands in front of her face, whispering apologies. He got right in her face. When he put his hand on her shoulder, she flinched so hard she bruised her shoulder blades against the wall behind her. He stared intently into her eyes. “Listen to me. I’m sorry about the swearing; it’s a habit of mine. I’ll try not to, but you--you’ve gotta calm down or you’re gonna hurt yourself. C’mon, look into my eyes. Do I look like a bad guy?”

She did look into his eyes, deep, and it came out before she could stop it: “You are evil.”

She didn’t cringe again, too riveted by how he might react to look away. She had to know what his limits were, because she couldn’t live like this, afraid to say or do anything, so she stared into his eyes, waiting to see his expression. If she had to die, it would be better sooner than later. She expected him to be enraged, or at least insulted. His reaction wasn’t anything she could have imagined. He made a humorous, rueful face and shrugged. “Well, there ya have it,” he said, and walked back to the table, where he grabbed another bite of the burger he seemed to like so much. “Seriously, though,” he told her, mouth full, quirking up at the corners, “you should get some rest. You might actually have to do some running away or something tomorrow, something besides cowering in the car. You look beat. I’m beat.”

Dorothy had stopped crying. Dean getting in her face like that forced all her fears right to the surface. When he didn’t kill her, the worst of them dissipated in that moment. She still didn’t exactly have any thoughts, but it wasn’t numbness anymore, it was a total lack of information. She had no idea who these people were or why she was here or what the future held. All she knew was that these two terrible men seemed less likely to suddenly kill her than she’d feared. The way they were now casually chatting as Sam got in one of the beds did imply that maybe they would really just let her lie in the other bed and sleep, but it seemed so unlikely; didn’t all bad men do every bad thing there was? If they already knew they were going to hell anyway, what was to stop them? She would stay awake sitting in the chair if they let her, but she could only stay awake for so long. She was glad the scarier one was going to sleep now himself. Did she trust Dean enough to lie down while he watched her from the chair, munching his fries? Never.

After three attempts to get her to go to bed, Dean shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, nudging her untouched burger toward her. She wondered what her mother would say. Of all the exhortations she’d received in her life about how to act around men, how to respond to an offer of bad food from a bad man who might very well kill you was never covered; for the first time in her life, she was entirely without a roadmap. She was hungry, and she knew they hadn’t put anything in her food, so she took a nibble, and then another, and she and Dean sat there as the night deepened, eating together in silence.

Sam got up in the middle of the night and traded places with Dean. Dorothy sat in the chair all night, never saying a word to either of them, not moving. She must have fallen asleep near dawn with her head pillowed on the thick curtains, because when she woke with a gasp it was light out, there was a laptop on the table, and Sam was busily typing on it. Sam glanced at her over the laptop, then went back to his research. “You can shower if you want,” he said, not looking at her. It made her slightly less terrified that he wasn’t looking at her, but surely that wasn’t why he was doing it; it must be because she mattered so little in his estimation ... or because he figured she’d be dead soon, anyway.

She really had to go to the bathroom. She’d gone once the night before, when they first arrived at the hotel, but she’d been too scared since, because she’d have to walk past one or the other of them to get to it. At this point, she had to risk it. When he seemed deeply absorbed in his computer, she dashed past him, into the bathroom, locked the door, and slumped against it, shaking. It was day. Day had come again, and she was still alive. She wept a little in the shower, but it wasn’t the violent explosion of the previous night; this was a soft, hopeless sorrow that flowed from her continually. Whatever they might say, she knew she would never get to go home again. She could feel it.

By the time she finally, reluctantly finished her shower and got dressed in all the same clothes, she felt cleaned out and far more ready to face the day, despite being exhausted. These were her last hours, unless the lord provided a miracle, and life seemed suddenly so sweet. The ugly, filthy bathroom even seemed beautiful in a way. Everything did, because it would be the last time she ever saw and experienced the particulars of this human life.

Besides, she had a plan. They believed she was good at staying put and not trying to escape. This could work to her advantage. Perhaps she could convince them to leave her in the hotel room alone, even for a couple of minutes, and she could call her parents or the police. If she was going to die anyway, it was worth it to risk the wrath of her captors to attempt to escape.

She crept out of the bathroom and sat gingerly on the bed she hadn’t used. Dean was awake by now, and he and Sam were planning their day. Her chance came sooner than she expected, as Sam packed the car while Dean showered. The second Sam walked outside, she slammed the door behind him and locked it, then ran to the phone.

Her parents were worried sick. She told them she’d been abducted by bad people and where she was. She was just about to give them a description of Sam and Dean when she heard the shower go off, and the imminent consequences of her actions suddenly struck her: she’d locked Sam out (he was pounding on the door), and she was locked in with Dean, trying to turn them in. She was sure they would not be forgiving, although a beating seemed more likely at this point than murder. “Please come soon!” she was screaming into the phone as Dean came out of the bathroom, took in the situation, and came at her. “Please don’t let me die here!”

Dean grabbed the phone out of her hand and slammed it back on the base, then went and let Sam in. “Time to roll,” Dean said casually, like they kept women captive every day. “She made a call.”

Somehow they were ready to go instantly, hustling her out to the car and peeling out of the parking lot in less than a minute. Sure enough, Dean was mad, but all she got for her wanton betrayal was a guilt-trippy lecture. “We’re trying to help you here!” he said, frustrated. “How many times do we have to tell you that before you’ll believe us?! No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.”

‘Good deed.’ As if these monsters knew anything about good deeds.

“Maybe we should take her home,” Sam suggested. Dorothy’s heart leapt into her throat, her hope suddenly so high it choked her.

“What, use her as bait?”

Sam shrugged. “You know wherever she is, that vamp’s gonna be sooner or later.”

“And endanger her whole family?”

“Dean, we’ve been chasing this thing for three weeks, and he’s always one step ahead of us. It’s probably our best chance of finally catching him and putting an end to this, once and for all.”

“So many virgins,” Dean said with an out-of-place smirk, shaking his head. “What a waste. How can he always tell, anyway?”

“I dunno; I think he’s picking a type and hoping he’s right--always young, dressed demurely, usually Christian private schools.”

“Maybe sometimes he guessed wrong. I hope so. Serves him right. Because you know what they say about Catholic schoolgirls--” he began gustily.

Sam cut him off with a sound, nodding his head urgently back toward Dorothy. Dean glanced back at her in his rearview mirror and subsided. “Well ... thing is, her family’s safe as long as she isn’t there. He always takes his victim and leaves everyone else in the family alone. We should at least try to find him again today while she’s with us, since seems like things can’t get any worse with Agnes of God back there, anyway. But if you’re right and we haven’t caught him by sunset ....” He sounded uncomfortable with the idea. “... Maybe.”

This was the first time she’d really processed any of their conversation about this ‘vamp’ that was supposedly ‘stalking’ her. She listened closely to everything they said as they drove around checking out abandoned places just as they had yesterday. She never did figure out what kind of thing they were talking about, but she came away with the impression they really believed what they said. She mulled this over silently as they ate lunch in the car, which Sam took from a restaurant as Dean guarded her. To her surprise, Sam handed her something healthy as he got back in the car.

“What’s a ‘vamp’?” she asked into the silence of their meal, which was broken only by Dean’s happy grunting noises as he ate.

Sam and Dean looked at each other quickly, a small smile on Sam’s face. They seemed happy she’d spoken, rather than angry, which was a great relief. “Vampire,” Dean said. “And we’re not talking hot sparkly Twilight here; they’re bad motherf-- uh, really bad dudes, not cool.”

“I believe you,” she said softly.

Sam and Dean exchanged another quick look. “You do?” Dean said, surprised.

She nodded. “Demons walk the Earth,” she said soberly.

“Got that right,” Dean said calmly, dipping a fry in some ketchup. “Well, that’s one thing down, huh, Sam? She doesn’t need much convincing. Not just demons, though. Vampires, werewolves ... all kinds of monsters.”

“You believe a vampire is ... after me?”

“Yep. Virgin blood is a delicacy to vampires, and this freak stalks girls he thinks are virgins and doesn’t give up ’til he gets ’em. You were next. No offense if you’re not really a virgin.”

“I’m a virgin!” she gasped, horrified and humiliated at the suggestion. “Of course I am! I’m not married yet, am I?!”

Sam and Dean exchanged an uneasy look. “No offense if you are, either,” Dean said gingerly, quickly returning to the subject. “We’ve been hunting him for weeks--that’s what me and Sam do, is hunt monsters--and we still haven’t caught him yet, wily bastard. But we will, though. Don’t worry.” Yet he looked worried as he and Sam didn’t quite meet each other’s eye.

“Vampires usually live in covens,” Sam spoke up, “oh, uh, which is like a group of vampires that live together, like vampire bats in caves. This one’s different, though. He’s a nomad, and way more careless about letting humans know what he is than vampires usually are.”

“Yeah, he’s fucking nuts, is what he is,” Dean said, not even noticing that he’d said that word again. How bad did you have to be not only to use it, but not even to notice when you did? “Worse than Gordon. I kept thinking other vampires would off him for us, to keep their secret, but I guess we’ve hunted them pretty much to extinction.”

“You hunt monsters?” she said, more quietly. If that was true, then weren’t Sam and Dean good guys? But everything about the way they looked and dressed and acted were exactly what she’d been taught was bad. From the moment she first laid eyes on them, everything stopped making sense.

“Since we were kids,” said Dean.

“Our dad was a hunter,” Sam offered. “He taught us how.”

She contemplated this a little. “Is it hard?”

Maybe this was the wrong question to ask; there was a brief, awkward silence. “It’s dangerous,” Dean finally said. “I mean, we risk our lives every day. We get beat up a lot by the sons of bitches. It doesn’t pay. It’s pretty much the worst job there is, tell you the truth.”

“So why do you do it?”

“Because people need saving,” Dean said, meeting her eyes steadily in the rearview mirror. “Like you. We know how to do this. I couldn’t sleep at night, knowing I was letting girls like you die when I knew I could stop it.”

Dorothy looked down, suddenly ashamed. Were Sam and Dean like the angels at the door in the guise of strangers, and she’d not only tried to turn them away but called them evil to their faces? She’d lost her roadmap before; now her internal map of the whole world blew away in its wake. She didn’t know up from down anymore, right from wrong. “I’m sorry, lord,” she whispered. “If I’ve done wrong, I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to. Please show me the path.”

Sam and Dean were talking again, and seemed to come to a decision. Dean turned around in his seat to address her. “Okay, I guess we’re gonna take you home; no sense dragging you around with us anymore. But if you see us outside your house, please don’t call the cops; we’re trying to catch that vamp, okay?”

“Didn’t you say my family would be in danger if I went home before it’s dead?” she said sharply.

Dean eyed Sam. “Well ... uh ... yeah. It likes to distract us by killing anyone around whenever we get close. That’s why we keep trying to get it somewhere far from civilization.”

“I can’t endanger my family,” she said, aghast. This, at least, she knew. She didn’t even have to think this one through; long ago she’d decided she had to do the heroic thing if it ever came down to a decision like this. Doing the selfish thing, even to save your own life, could send you straight to hell. If others’ lives were at stake, you had to offer your own; there was no other option.

“I thought you were scared to death of us,” Dean said wryly.

She lifted her chin slightly and looked away, but not before she saw a look in Dean’s eyes she would have to characterize as admiration. She couldn’t deny they terrified her, but it didn’t change anything. Were courage and righteousness the kinds of things he admired? Maybe they really did do the work of the lord. “Works for me,” he said with a little grin. “Let’s go.”

Two days became three, and then four, and they still hadn’t caught the vampire. It lured them to a town fifty miles away, then another town two hundred miles away, but they knew if they returned her home, it would undoubtedly come for her. On the morning of the fourth day, as she emerged from the bathroom after handwashing her bra in the sink (she washed her one pair of underwear daily) and then spending half an hour blow-drying it, Dean handed her an unopened pack of men’s undershirts, not looking her in the eye. “Here,” he said awkwardly, “these should fit you, ’cos they make’em really tight. You know. You can, uh, wear it like a shirt.”

She just stared at the package, mortified. They couldn’t have somehow guessed she was washing her unmentionables; could they?! The flush on her cheeks suddenly spread across her whole body as she contemplated the possibility. She’d learned over the past two days how observant they were--and had to be, to catch the monsters. It hadn’t occurred to her their observations would include her, but of course they must. “We’ll, uh ... stop by a thrift store, and ... pick you up another skirt, too. If you want.”

She took the package, feeling numb. Men’s undershirts. Just like those hoochie tanktops the public-school girls wore, only less attractive. “Thanks,” she whispered, unable to forget her manners even under circumstances like these, and went back into the bathroom to put one on, because her shirt was embarrassingly ripe, which they also must have noticed, leading to this offer of other shirts. Her humiliation knew no bounds, especially once she got a look at herself in the undershirt--it was indecent. Not see-through, just slutty. It didn’t fully cover her bra, either. Yet what other option did she have?

She washed her school uniform shirt in the sink morosely, but it would never dry before they had to leave. She had already delayed them, working so hard to blow-dry her bra (which was still damp in spots). She emerged from the bathroom as soon as she could, covering her front with her wet shirt, to find them, as she expected, standing by the door, ready to go. She saw Dean’s eyes travel down to her wet shirt. He made a little smile that looked more like a sympathetic grimace, but he blustered on in that practiced way he had. “Great, we can hang it on the oh-shit handle and it can dry while we hunt today.” He grabbed it out of her hand and quickly slung it over a hanger he nabbed from the closet, evidently not noticing her gasp of horror as she covered herself with her hands, but Sam definitely noticed.

“Here,” Sam said, slipping off his jacket quicker than she would have thought possible and tucking it around her shoulders. It was so big, it certainly covered everything, and then some.

It was already tenting her as Dean turned around again, to take in the sight. “She’s cold?” he said, confused.

“Uh ... yeah, kinda,” Sam said diplomatically, doing his best to hold together her shredded dignity, and held open the door for her to glumly exit. Sam had seemed like the scarier one from the beginning. For the first time, she was able to see something beneath his reticence: kindness. He was kind. This surprised her more than anything else she had learned about them ’til now, which was a lot. There wasn’t much to do in the car, driving around looking for potential vampire hidey holes, so they just talked, learning about each other, but she learned more about them from watching the way they behaved, the way they interacted with her and each other, their habits and little things they said without thinking. Mom was right; actions did speak louder than words. Despite their coarseness and bad language, they were polite in other ways, asking what she wanted to eat, even which bed she preferred, never forgetting her needs. After the disaster of seeing Sam mostly naked that first night, they were always careful to fully dress in the bathroom before coming out, sleeping fully clothed, as well.

She was too exhausted by the second night to resist getting in bed to sleep, praying to the angels to watch over her. In the morning, she awoke to see Sam looking through various nationwide newspapers on his laptop just like the previous morning, Dean asleep in the other bed. No harm had come to her, and in time, she came to trust them in this area, at least. If anything, they seemed to feel protective toward “civilians,” especially the young and old and helpless. She gradually came to think of herself as safer because they were near, rather than in more danger.

In fact, they went to the thrift store first thing that fourth morning. They seemed as eager to shop for themselves as for her, making a beeline for the jeans. Dean came over to help her, once he saw that she needed it, never having shopped in a place like this before. “Everything’s one of a kind,” he explained, trying to put a positive spin on it. “So you just look through the rack until you find something you like. Here,” he said, grabbing a shirt off the rack and holding it up to her. She recoiled; it was extremely low-cut. She shook her head wordlessly. “No?” he said, looking it over as if he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it, but agreeably, he put it back. “Uh ... how ’bout this?” he suggested, taking out a shirt much more like the one she’d been wearing all this time ... only it didn’t have a top button. She shook her head again. “Well ... you know what you like. Have a look around. Get a skirt, too. Or, you know what would be better ....” He kind of petered out, as if already sure she’d nix the idea, but she listened respectfully, as she always did, to everyone. “Have you considered jeans? They’re way better than skirts when you’re, you know, roughing it. Just whatever,” he said--that kindness again. She was becoming able to recognize it, even in them. “Get whatever you want.” He hurried off to the men’s section again, eager to get away from all the girl stuff, if she judged the flash of frenzy in his eyes correctly before he put on his stoic expression and booked it away from her.

Keeping an eye on them to make sure she didn’t take too long, she picked out some clothes to try on ... even some jeans. The fact was, she’d always wanted jeans, and mom would never buy her any. This was her golden opportunity. Whispering an apology to the lord for indulging this whim, she found a pair that fit, and found Dean by the button-down shirts with some clothes laid over her arm.

His face lit up to see this--it was one of the things she liked best about Dean, that his feelings were so raw and obvious. Not like Sam, whose true motives she’d never been able to divine. She didn’t trust Dean, but she trusted Sam even less. “Let’s see what you got,” he said, grabbing them off her arm, and she noticed the smile of approval to see the jeans. “Cool. I think me and Sam are just about ready, too. Let’s get out of here and kill this sucker. We get him today and these can be your souvenirs of your time stuck with the creepy dudes who scared you half to death.”

She couldn’t help it; a grin came over her face. Dean looked as startled as she was to see this, then he just grinned back, patted her roughly, and went and found Sam.

They did not find it that day; rather, it crossed state lines, heading south. They offered again to take her home; again she declined. She was beginning to think of this as a test of faith, a period of hardship. Even Jesus had had to be in bad, wrong places in his lifetime. He’d been born into one, the son of God, who came into this world in a barn. She’d come to think of all the wrongness that surrounded her as a noble sort of suffering, and she no longer complained, even to herself.

It could be much worse. She was always warm and had enough to eat. She even had protectors from this evil that stalked her. Besides, life with Sam and Dean, despite the hardships of constant travel and lack and uncertainty, was in another way easy. There were no expectations of her behavior. At home, beyond all her responsibilities of schoolwork and domestic chores, were the much heavier expectations of attitude and action, having to be so careful never to display any unpleasant attitudes or feelings, but there were no such rules with Sam and Dean. Dean especially loudly expressed every unpleasant attitude and feeling that passed through him. Somehow, no bad ever seemed to come of it. Sam allowed this without comment--even apparently without judgment or displeasure, though he didn’t indulge himself the same way--it ran its course, and life went on just like before. The world didn’t end, as she’d somehow been given to believe it might. Nothing happened at all. It gave her pause when she became aware that on some level she liked it when Dean had some kind of outburst, because at least she knew exactly where things stood and how everyone was feeling, based on his very blunt statements and Sam’s more measured responses.

Still, as she became aware how much more she and Sam had in common and she became able to see past his stoicism, she gravitated more toward him. He said he was glad to have another healthy-food fan in his corner, and while Dean ate his burgers, she and Sam often went somewhere together to get better food, and they talked when they did. She was surprised to learn he’d been to college and had a normal life once, that he believed in God and prayed sometimes, that he didn’t share Dean’s glowing views on promiscuity and excessive alcohol consumption. She was especially startled to learn he himself hadn’t liked this lifestyle he was born into at first, that it was hard for him to get used to, that he still had doubts. Once she knew this, she felt like she had an ally, maybe even a friend, and she preferred his company to Dean’s.

She was beginning to relax just a little. She was growing used to the Impala and its loud grumble. At first, when she was still afraid to sleep in their presence, she would sleep in the backseat as they drove around, because as long as the car was moving and she could hear them talking in the front seat, she knew they weren’t planning to do anything to her, so the roar of the engine had come to represent a sort of safety. Besides, Dean’s childlike, unabashed adoration for that car was her first inkling these men were capable of loving something. The worst things, like her fear for her life and Sam’s naked body, didn’t happen anymore. Dean tried to curb his cursing, and it did still grate on her, but that was between him and God; she was not the one saying these things. She usually wore her school shirt over the tank tops, but even when she couldn’t as she waited for the shirt to dry after washing it again in the hotel bathroom, despite watching closely for some kind of adverse reaction from Sam and Dean, she never discerned any. She was homesick, but that was tempered by knowing she was keeping her parents safe and alive. She didn’t mind the travel or eating out all the time.

The only thing that still continually troubled her was being in the presence of wayward men--less their behavior than their manliness. It wasn’t proper for a girl to spend so much time around young, (handsome), unmarried, virile men--even sleeping in the adjacent bed! Whenever she thought of it, she burned with shame, wondering what her parents and friends and teachers would think if they could see her now. Even if it wasn’t her fault she was in this situation, it seemed like somehow she must have manifested it. She wanted more than anything, when she finally got back home, to lie and claim it hadn’t been like this, but she wouldn’t commit that sin of deceiving everyone. She would have to tell them everything. Her parents would feel vicarious shame, and they would tell their pastor, and they would try never to tell anyone else, and they would always know there was this taint that was now inextricably a part of her, however faint and undesired.

So it brought up fears nearly as bad as the first night when the Impala ‘crapped out’ (as Dean put it) in the middle of nowhere in a forest one evening, and Dean declared they’d have to spend the night in the car because he couldn’t see in the failing light to fix it. They ate cold sandwiches out of the cooler for dinner, then got their one blanket out of the trunk and handed it to her, saying they’d sleep with the sun and get an early start.

Somehow it seemed infinitely more intimate to have them so close, within touching distance there in the front seat, every little noise and breath and shift anyone made so loud in the enclosed space. Dorothy had by necessity grown very sensitive to displeasure in others, in order to figure out how to keep her parents satisfied. She sensed an unspoken, slight displeasure in Sam and Dean. Presently, as she watched them tuck their hands into their armpits under their jackets and try to get comfortable, Dean bitching about kicking the pedals at his feet, she realized under normal circumstances they’d be sharing the blanket, probably in the back seat where they could stretch out a little. It was their customary and unexpected kindness and chivalry that made them give up these comforts for her without a word.

This made her all the more determined not to complain, but even under the one (rough, wool) blanket, no matter how tightly she wrapped it around her, she could not get warm as the cold night air seeped through the closed windows. Before long, her teeth were chattering. She tried to hide the sound inside the blanket lest it wake them up, but evidently they weren’t asleep yet despite appearing to be laying there peacefully, because Dean said loudly into the silence of the car, “I can’t sleep through all that clacking.”

Sam just said disapprovingly, “Dean.”

“What? I can’t.”

Sam looked over the back of his seat at her and smiled nicely. “Still cold?”

She nodded reluctantly. After only a moment’s hesitation, he took off his own jacket and handed it to her. “Sam,” Dean said warningly. “Come on.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said mildly, still trying to give her his jacket, but she couldn’t take it. As cold as she was, if he had to sit there all night in just his button-down shirt, he would surely freeze. She shook her head. He held it closer to her. She pushed it away, back toward him. He laid it on her lap.

“No, Sam,” she said, handing it back to him. “I’m fine.”

They understood each other, because they were exactly the same in this way: stoic, polite, ever willing to sacrifice their own comfort for the well-being of someone else. She could see his eyes in the moonlight, saw that he knew exactly what she was really feeling, why she was doing this, all these things unspoken, as he contemplated how to respond.

Dean didn’t appreciate their awkward dance of courtesy. “You know, there is a solution,” he complained, annoyed. “We could all share the blanket. She doesn’t have a jacket, but with us on either side, she’d probably be warm enough.”

Dorothy froze in terror. Sam saw and tried to protest, but Dean was already out of the car, slamming the door and opening the back door beside Dorothy, flopping unceremoniously into the seat next to her. “C’mon, Sam.”

“I don’t think we should--”

“The sooner we get some freakin’ sleep, the sooner this’ll be over and we can get my baby running and get back to hunting the son of a bitch! I don’t know what the big deal is!”

Sam looked at Dorothy, concerned. He seemed to have some sense what the big deal was. He also seemed able to sense that if she had to be shoulder-to-shoulder with Dean, she would feel infinitely safer if Sam was right there, too. When Dorothy didn’t voice any objection, he got out of the car and reluctantly got back there with them. “All right! Now you can stop clacking and we can get some damn rest. God knows we all need it,” Dean said, still irritable. Courtesy seemed to annoy him.

It was a tight squeeze there in the back seat. Sam smiled at her apologetically and tried to give her as much space as he could. Dean spread the blanket over the three of them, talking gratefully about how now they’d all be comfortable, turned his back to Dorothy, and promptly went to sleep. She could feel Sam’s self-consciousness as a palpable presence in the car as he tried to be as still and nonthreatening as possible. If she could feel Sam’s self-consciousness, she wondered what her overpowering self-consciousness felt like to him. If it bothered him, he never let on, and within fifteen minutes, even his breathing became long and even, his head against the upholstery.

Dorothy lay awake, gulping with shame and fear and ... she didn’t know what. She’d tried to be a good girl. She really had. She’d done everything in her power to always be good. How had she ended up here, the smell of these men and this sleazy old car filling her nostrils, the denim of Dean’s jacket rubbing against her arm with his every breath, Sam’s hair brushing her cheek? Everything she’d always tried to be, somehow coming unraveled here, in the very dark night in the wild under the eerie light of the moon, in the midst of all this strangeness, this everything-that-wasn’t-her. She couldn’t fight it anymore, couldn’t resist it. That sense of all this badness oozing through her pores and becoming part of her was complete; it was in her now, inextricable. She was no longer who she had been. Tears ran silently down her cheeks as she tried to pray for forgiveness, for salvation, for grace, and it all seemed to fall on deaf ears, as if the lord was saying, “There is no need to pray apologies for being what you are.”

“But this is not who I meant to be!” she cried silently. Her only comfort was Sam, laying still there in the innocence of sleep--Sam, who was also someone he hadn’t meant to be. She wasn’t the only one.

She awoke toasty warm, feeling an unexpected sweetness, dashed as she realized Sam was pressed with his burly chest flush against her back, accounting for the warmth. Dean leaned away from her, eyes closed, against the side of the Impala, and her hand was tucked up Dean’s jacket sleeve for warmth! Frantically, she tried to extricate it without waking him, but apparently, he was already awake. “Finally,” he said, acting like he didn’t notice her hysteria. “God, I’ve gotta pee.” He got out of the car unconcernedly, slamming the door behind him, and disappeared into the woods.

The door slamming woke Sam, who likewise flinched away from her once he realized where he was. “I’m sorry,” he said, still lost in the confusion of sleep. “Sorry, Dorothy.”

He had nothing to apologize for; she had, after all, similarly made use of Dean in her sleep. “It’s okay,” she tried, but nothing came out, so she tried again until she got a little volume.

Extremely awkwardly, Sam got out of the car and went another direction into the forest, leaving Dorothy there alone in her private mortification, which had become so common since she met Sam and Dean that she scarcely noticed it anymore.

When they both returned, Dean built a little fire, which they stood around talking, evidently believing she couldn’t hear them through the closed windows. Sam was taking Dean to task for forcing such proximity on Dorothy the night before, feeling guilty about how they’d woken up.

“She didn’t complain. Anyway, I don’t see what the big freakin’ deal is.”

“It’s a big deal to her,” Sam said. He really did understand her. “She’s scared of men. She was petrified. She was probably too scared to complain.”

“She needs to get over that; it’s bullshit. She was fine, it was fine, everything’s fine! Everything’s perfectly normal. I don’t see what you’re freaking out about.”

“I don’t think she was fine,” Sam mumbled. Their conversation abruptly broke off as Dorothy emerged from the car. Sam smiled nicely at her. “You okay?”

Dorothy nodded blankly, not sure how to answer. She waited to feel something terrible, but nothing came. Was she really okay? Maybe somehow she was. She went out into the forest herself. When she got back, Sam handed her a hot dog to roast over the fire. Dean was already working on the car. They were back on the road by noon, the sun high overhead as summer came on, the wind through the open windows blowing her hair back, Dean singing along with the radio, and she was okay. Everything was okay.

Dorothy sat by the open window of the hotel, helping Sam with his research, looking for signs of the vampire, or of another case in the area. It was too hot here in the southern states to wear layers, so she wore only her jeans and a tank top. It didn’t matter; Sam and Dean didn’t care.

Sam was in the shower. Dean handed her a microwaved burrito for breakfast, which she took and dug into without thinking about it. Twelve days on the road with them, their daily routines had become her new normal.

They never made her self-conscious. It wasn’t like they weren’t aware of her; they just never watched her or commented on anything she did, so it got her attention when Dean kept on standing there after he gave her the burrito, looking at her. She looked up at him and quirked an eyebrow. “What?”

“Just, I dunno, you seem ... relaxed.”

She glanced around, confused. Was there something wrong with that?

“It’s nothing. Just ... it’s good. That’s good. Here.” He handed her an apple. “Swiped it from the continental breakfast.” He nodded, pleased with himself.

“’Swiped’?”

“We’re allowed!” he said defensively. “We’re staying here, aren’t we?”

She just grinned and took the apple, thanking him.

“You can go over there and get something else, if you want. Just, I want to be on the road by eleven.”

She got up and headed in the direction Dean pointed her. Some cereal sounded great. She would collect some of whatever fruit they had for her and Sam to share all day. This late in the morning, there was only one other person in the dining room. Twelve days ago, if she’d walked in to see a young man alone in there, she’d have turned right around and gone back to her room, but that seemed silly now ... until he said, “Hello, Dorothy. I’ve been trying to find you.”

Dorothy whirled around to face him. The man pushed off from the wall with a sick smile, bags under his eyes. Sam and Dean had said vampires could be out during the day, they just didn’t like to be. Twelve days with no sightings must have made them all careless. She ran for the door, but he got there first. She screamed, but as with many continental breakfast rooms (she was discovering), they were intentionally located far from guest rooms and sometimes the lobby. This one connected only to the laundry and cleaning-supply rooms, and evidently no maids were there right now, so late; they were already all cleaning rooms. They scuffled, knocking chairs and tables to the floor, but still no one came. He was just so much stronger than her. She remembered that feeling she’d had from the beginning, that she wouldn’t be able to go home. She always knew she was right.

Once he had her pinned on the floor, he beamed down at her, looking joyous, anticipatory, almost grateful, and in that moment, she knew right from wrong again, found her roadmap, now, when it was too late. Whatever Sam and Dean were and weren’t, whatever social graces or limits or even morality they might lack, they were good, because looking into this man’s eyes, she saw the evil Sam and Dean spent their lives attempting to eradicate, saw it so plainly that it flooded her own spirit with light. She was able to see that all these things she’d once feared were bad in herself were nothing, nothing at all, in the eyes of the lord. There was no evil in her to compare. She was okay, just the way she came. She always had been.

She didn’t pray. She knew she where she would go when she died. She thought more of her parents, her friends, Sam and Dean, and their sorrow upon finding her dead, knowing they’d failed to save another virgin, despite their best efforts. She smiled at herself. How funny. Letting go of wanting to be good had made her even better. Her last thoughts weren’t for her own soul; they were for the others still struggling on Earth.

“This’ll be so much better than continental breakfast,” he breathed, his mouth drawing close to her neck, holding her down.

“They’ll get you, sooner or later, you son of a bitch,” she told him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he murmured sensually, biting in as she gasped sharply. “In the meantime, I dine on the nectar of the gods.”

“Yeah? Well, the gods are pissed,” said another voice. The vampire twisted his head back to see who stood over him just in time for it to get cut off by Dean, holding a machete. The head bounced across the room. Dean grinned victoriously down at her, as she became aware that in the face of real danger, she hadn’t felt half as scared as she had of Sam and Dean at first, which was so strange and bewildering, she could only grin back at Dean, lying there on the floor of the dining room in yet another hotel, morning spring sunlight streaming in through the windows, alive. She was alive, and life was so beautiful. Life wasn’t for playing it safe and worrying about being proper. Life was for living. “Sorry ’bout that,” he said, kicking the vampire’s body off her and handing her up. “The continental breakfast here really fucking sucks, huh?”

She laughed with relief, and cried a little, too, as she helped him hide the body in a closet, mop up the floors with some of those cleaning supplies, then hurry out of there to tell Sam the good news and get as far away from there as they could before someone found the corpse.

Sam and Dean felt uncommonly celebratory, so they splurged on a really good lunch, bragging joyfully about having finally ganked this vamp. They were in such a good mood because, they said, vampires never gave them this much trouble, and they knew they’d saved the lives of countless young girls. “And now, you can finally go back to your life!” Sam said to her, so happy for her.

She smiled as they kept up their banter, but the smile gradually faded from her face. Back to her old life, with her strict parents and all their harsh, stringent expectations of her behavior, their requirements for her future. Back to the judgment of her teachers and her peers, who would characterize this as a shameful, horrifying interlude in her life instead of the great spiritual awakening it had been, something they could never understand. Back to a future of early marriage and babies and acting right, acting proper, acting good and decent, of acting. Acting like someone other than herself. Back to her tiny life. Would she even be able to fit back into it, now that her world had suddenly grown so large? Wouldn’t going back to the act be like lying to God?

“I can’t,” she suddenly burst out, and Sam and Dean stopped talking, looking at her. “I can’t go back.”

Sam and Dean looked at each other. “What do you mean?” said Dean.

“I don’t think I can go back there. It’s just ... it’s not ... me, now.”

Dean looked sort of stricken, even guilty, like he knew it was because of him and Sam, but like he didn’t realize it was a good thing. “Then ... what’re you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I guess live the life I really want to.” She couldn’t help grinning at the idea. She’d had all kinds of dreams and fantasies that she’d spent her life telling herself she would never have, but maybe she could. Maybe she really could. It wouldn’t hurt, at least, to find out. “You can take me home, so I can get my stuff and tell my parents what I have to do. They need to know I’m all right.”

A grin slowly grew across Dean’s face, that admiration again. He shook his head, eyeing Sam. “Girl, you got brass balls.”

Dorothy grinned, too, a real, whole-hearted grin. For the first time in her life, she felt ... free.

As they stood up from the table, about to head home, she addressed them seriously. “Thank you,” she said. They seemed to sense that she felt like what she wanted to say was important, and they stopped what they were doing to look at her. “Thank you guys, for everything.”

“Don’t know what we did, ’cept steal you away from your life, scare you half to death, and almost get you killed,” Dean said, passing it off.

“You saved my life,” she corrected, somewhat sternly, and saw Dean kick around awkwardly. He couldn’t take a compliment, but she would make him, because he deserved it. They had saved her life in every possible way. “You really were the angels at the door.”

~ The End ~

Notes:

- This story is dear to my heart, because it's kind of my story. I, like Dorothy, was raised to be respectful, fearful, obedient, and afraid of men/sex (though without the religious factor), and I was very fortunate to have been introduced to a different path by a couple people in my life--one of whom was as gorgeous as Sam and Dean (for real!), and most of this awakening took place on the road during my road-tripping phase, so all of the emotions and settings in the story feel very familiar and precious to me.

- I love outsider pov, and I wanted to get to how truly evil Sam and Dean could seem to someone who had no way of appreciating some of their better qualities.

- The story is long because I wanted my main character to have a really big transformation. That was the most fun thing for me, writing this, along with imagining how awesome it would be to get so much Sam-and-Dean time! ... even if she isn't able to appreciate it as much as many of us would. ;-)