a lingering fringe--chapter 10 (Supernatural, Dean/Castiel, Sam, Bobby, rated PG-13)
Title: A Lingering Fringe
Author: pink_bagels
Chapter: ten
Rating: R (for swearing, sexual talk, crack!fic-ishness)
Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam/omc that looks like Hugh Dillon (w00t!), genderswap, Trickster, Alberta, Meg, angel molestation, TMI embittered health care professionals, etc.
Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke. Not even if he had a sex change), it would hover somewhere in the middle of an AU season five.
Summary: The boys who were boys are girls who can still be boys. You can't deny an advantage when you see one. Just ask Jimmy's opinion on the matter. What happened in Vegas wants to hunt you down and kill you. Too bad you gave that freaky chick Sam Winchester your cell number.
Note: Feedback is love! Even if you're telling me you hate it!
PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:
one // two // three // four // five // six // seven // eight // nine
a lingering fringe--chapter ten
The two beers were poured into filthy glasses, each earning a good amount of spit which a half dozen demons contributed to before the drinks were finally handed to Sam and Dean. To Sam's horror, Dean actually considered taking a sip anyway, but seeing as how corpse hork kind of took the thrill off the alcohol, he set the drink down on a nearby table instead.
"So, what's with the party?" Dean said, hands in the pockets of his jeans, a smug smile on his face. "I'm guessing it's on account of one of two things. They've brought back Tab soda, or hell truly has frozen over. 'Course, just one of those things could mean the existence of the other. Kind of goes hand in hand."
The blackly clad demons murmured over the slippery appearance of Meg as she crept closer to Sam and Dean, her black eyes unmoving as she kept them in her predator sight. She licked the top row of her teeth as she stood close to Sam, who flinched at her invasive proximity. "I almost didn't recognize you," she said to him, her head cocked to one side in mock sweetness. She twined her thin fingers suggestively into the buttons of his shirt. "I heard you had a little incident down in Vegas and got your freak on. Good for you, Sammy baby. It's about time you got in touch with your feminine side." She cast a wicked glance at Dean. "You too, buttercup. Don't forget, Sammy already got a taste of the wild side, thanks to me. It's about time you caught up."
Sam pushed her roughly off and she staggered back, a hand held up to keep the retaliation of her henchmen at bay. "It's all right, boys," she said. "Sammy *likes* it rough."
Dean was getting more than a little fed up with the tense standoff. The bar was cold, the tips of his fingers were turning blue and if they didn't get some answers and get moving there was a damn good chance they'd die of hypothermia before the night was finished. "You got some nerve, waltzing in here," the big, dirty bartender snorted at him. "There's a lot of us here who haven't forgotten you. Forty years is a long time in hell."
"What can I say?" Dean said. "I figured I'd play catch up. See how the old gang was doing, but I guess it's all same old, same old. I see you're still hovering where you don't belong, causing torment and strife wherever you go. Even now, you're stuck in a dingy bar, in a minus 3 on the border of some nothing at all town in the middle of less than nothing." With a quick movement, Dean reached behind the bar and snatched up a couple of fresh bottles of beer. He tossed one to Sam, who caught it with one hand. There was a mutual twist and sigh of released carbonated courage. Dean took a long swig and gratefully swallowed. "For a bunch of assholes hell bent on destroying the Earth, you bastards have a real hankering for living in a rut."
"Once you get used to hellfire, the cold is a nice change," Meg replied, her expression churlish as she circled them. Dean didn't give her the satisfaction of his anger, and instead continued to coolly drink his beer, despite the fact it was only adding to his already chilled to the bone discomfort. Considering that every movement he made caused the demons surrounding him to hiss and gnash their teeth, parting like a zombie Dead Sea as he walked past them, Dean figured bravado in a bottle came at a cheap enough price.
Meg hooked her thumbs into the loops of her tight fitting, highway dusted jeans. "So tell me, what's so important up here that you had to crash our little party? Oh wait, let me guess." She pressed against Sam and stood on tiptoe, to whisper and bite at his ear. "You got a friend here. A real special one."
Dean didn't miss the flickering hate that passed over Sam's features. Sam took a swig from his own bottle of beer, his attention riveted to some point far beyond the crooked, neon Budweiser sign over the bar. "That depends on just how 'special' he is," Sam said.
"No, Sammy baby. You need to tell *me*." She pulled a small cell phone out of her jeans jacket pocket and waved it with teasing purpose in front of Sam's face. She pressed a button on the side, releasing the sounds of what was some serious passion digitally captured in mp3. She upped the volume, and Dean could hear a familiar voice shouting, becoming higher and higher pitched while a deeper toned voice offered his swearing encouragement.
"What's your name, baby? Come on, tell me your name..."
The answer was moaning and whimpering, which only increased the more the question was asked, until it culminated into something aurally pornographic. Sam grabbed the cell phone out of Meg's hand and smashed it on the bar counter. The cell phone shouted "Harder!"
Sam slammed the phone again. It broke in half. "Oh fuck, harder!"
This time he dropped it to the floor and stomped on it like it was a cinder ready to ignite his matchstick mansion. No call was ever going to go out on that sucker again.
Dean crossed his arms over his chest, the neck of his bottle of beer dangling between his fingertips.
"You had sex with Paul?"
"It wasn't exactly planned," Sam sheepishly admitted.
A clearer picture of what was going on suddenly crystallized into Dean's understanding. He downed his beer in three steady gulps and tossed the empty bottle to the floor, where it shattered. The demons in the bar gazed expectantly at the Winchester brothers, revelling in the ire that had suddenly erupted between them. "When, exactly, where you planning on telling me about this?"
"Um, never," Sam said, defensive. "It was none of your business, and frankly, it isn't relevant to why we're here."
"Like hell it isn't," Dean shot back. He pointed an accusing finger in Sam's face. "I didn't drag us out into the middle of nowhere just for some otherworld booty call!"
"You got no right to be judging me, Dean! Come on, how many times have you slunk back to the motel room with a piece, huh? So I got a little carried away, so what?"
"So what? Dammit, Sam, this is different! You were a *chick*! I'm the first to jump on the man-whore wagon, but for fuck's sake, *I'm* not the one spreading my knees for whatever passing demon happens to buy me a coffee!"
"You can cut the judgement day shit, Dean. You're the one who let an angel of the Lord cop a feel!"
"That is so not the same thing!" Dean shouted. "Nothing happened, not like you and your journey to uncover the myth of the multiple female orgasm!"
Sam's eyes narrowed. "Oh, it's no myth," he said.
Dean's fury faltered. He shrugged inward as he noted that the demons in the bar had gathered around himself and his brother, fixing them into a circular ring, like they were the headlining entertainment. "Seriously?" Dean asked.
"Three times," Sam said, holding up three fingers as if Dean couldn't count. Then, almost wistful. "It finished off into the home run."
Dean thought about this for a long moment. He wanted to be angry. Real angry. But Sam had hit a sore spot in his porn addled id, and it was smarting like a bitch with a too-tight strap-on. "Damn," he said, acknowledging his jealousy.
"I didn't know about him when that happened," Sam said, embarrassment and sadness competing in his apology. "You and Cas both proved he was just human, so how was I supposed to know any different?"
Meg entered their dysfunctional ring, a coy tilt to her chin invading the sudden truce that had sprouted between Sam and Dean. "I don't know how you two got this far," she said, her black eyes steeped deep with contempt. "It doesn't matter how hard he stuck it to you. You all would have ended up here, you wouldn't have been able to resist." She stood nose to nose with Dean, a stand-off she wasn't about to back down from. "You're attracted to this place, just like the rest of us. You got more hell in you than you realize."
"If you mean by 'this place' the town of Esther, then why aren't you all just walking in and doing your usual apocalypse now routine?" Dean pushed Meg back into the crowd that surrounded them. "You got a whole army here, after all. What's the hold up?"
It was Sam who understood it best. "They can't go in because they're afraid," he said. His jaw worked over this puzzle. "Paul Nash is as much a mystery to them as he is to us. They aren't killing us because they know where we're going. They think they'll get answers if we go in."
The bartender spat on the counter. "You shut your mouth! You don't say that meatsuit's name in these parts!"
Silently, Dean and Sam made their way out of the bar, the demons parting with slow, deliberate movements, giving the brothers a wide berth as they passed through. Hundreds of black eyes watched them wordlessly as they slid into the seats of Impala, Castiel expectant and worried in the back. "You were able to leave without injury," he observed. "Perhaps they intend to follow us into the town of Esther."
Meg stood at the entrance of the bar, her jaw jutted forward in defiance as she glared at them. Dean turned on the ignition, flashing his high beams on her, purifying her into brilliant yellow light until only the dark matter of her eyes remained.
"Getting in won't be the problem," Dean observed. "It's leaving that'll be a pain the ass."
///
According to Sam's calculations, Esther was only a twenty minute drive from the demon infested motel. Dean kept his attention riveted to the abandoned, icy highway ahead, its isolation broken by the occasional road sign proclaiming the insane speed limit of 100km/hr. The silence within the Impala was as muffling as the snowstorm that threatened to overtake them, the thick flakes increasing in density the closer they crawled to their destination. Dean's thumb teased the play button on the car's tape deck, only to rethink the action, his hand curling into a cold fist. AC/DC's 'Sink The Pink' suddenly had a whole slew of uncomfortable imagery attached.
Sam cleared his throat, his fist lightly tapped against his lips. "Out with it, Dean," he said.
"What?" Dean said, feigning innocence.
"Just spit it out. I know you're dying to ask."
Dean allowed exactly two heartbeats to pump before talking. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.
"Is the sex better as a guy or a girl?"
Castiel groaned in the back seat, the heel of his palm against his forehead as he rubbed Jimmy's continued grudge away. "I don't understand why humans are so obsessed with procreation," he said. "If I'm not being assailed by your thoughts, Dean, it's Jimmy's imagined needs which I can't properly interpret other than to know they give him both exceptional guilt and pleasure, neither of which I can fully appreciate."
"It depends on the circumstances," Sam said, ignoring Castiel remarks and answering Dean's question.
"I can't see the point in carnal lust," Castiel continued. "In heaven, every action has a specific, ordained purpose. There is no room for this strange, emotional see-sawing that confuses physical necessity and companionship." He winced, the heel of his hand pressed tighter against the side of his skull. "This ache is unbearable."
"Come on, Jimmy, lay off him," Dean said. He turned to his brother. "So it was, you know...Good?"
"What was?"
"The sex, dude! The *sex*!"
"I don't really want to talk about this with you, Dean. It's kind of, well, private."
"Oh grow up, Sam," Dean replied, annoyed. "If there's one thing a decade or two of watching porno has taught me, it's that sex is never private!"
"Sorry. I never did get a chance to enrol in the Dean Winchester School Of Skank."
"There's nothing skanky about having a conversation about sex."
"There is when you're asking your brother how many times she got off with her boyfriend when she was your sister."
"Chuck is going to have a field day with this one. I get a headache just thinking about how he's going to get his rocks off next."
"Why is Chuck even in this conversation?"
"Because he's a pervert, Sam. An unwashed, malnourished peeping tom who should be minding his own damned business. I really hope he writes this down. In red ink, for emphasis."
"My head hurts," Castiel complained.
"Whine, whine, whine, that's all I ever hear," Dean bitched. They passed the homemade sign proclaiming 'Welcome to Esther, population 2,023. Put Some Roots In Our Fertile Soil'. Clearly, with a population that low there was little else to do other than be 'fertile' during the long winter months. He was about to make a crack about how they harvested babies in the spring, only to be stopped short by Sam's sudden panic.
"Castiel?" Dean's view was obscured by Sam's sudden twisting at an awkward angle in his seat to get a better look at their passenger. "Oh my God. Dean, pull over, something's wrong!"
Dean pulled over to the side of the road, leaving the engine running as he came to a full stop. He leapt out of the driver's seat, gale force winds tearing at him the second he left the car. He pulled open the passenger door with effort, his fists grabbing tight onto the lapels of Castiel's beige trenchcoat. The angel's eyes had rolled back, the usual strong white light that was his essence shorting out like a damaged incandescent bulb. Tiny, white lightning flashes shimmered across the bridge of his nose, his body shaking in violent convulsions. The interior of the Impala was filled with the scent of a spent electrical current. The remnants of ozone.
"He's having a seizure," Sam said. "Has he ever done this before?"
"Never," Dean said, shaking his head. Cold winds bit at him, invading the interior with a violence that suggested it had something against them. He bid Sam to take his place, his brother quickly obliging as he crawled over the gear shift and into the back seat. "We need to get to a hospital, pronto."
"They won't know what to do," Sam said, but Dean wasn't listening. He was going on instinct, and what it told him was that Cas was in a human body and it was acting humanly sick. Angels, demons or plain old Bob, people went to hospitals when they were sick. Heck of a no-brainer.
Dean peeled down the highway, the wheels skidding at intervals on the ice. The back end of the Impala fishtailed, but he damn well didn't care. He had no trouble getting the car up to one hundred clicks. Hell, he was ready to push her to 140 if that's what it took.
"Dean?"
"Cas? What's going on?"
"Not Cas...It's Jimmy." He grimaced as his body tensed, his eyes lolling, out of focus. "Something's wrong. With Cas. I think. I think..."
"Relax, pal," Dean said, forcing his voice to stay calm, cool, in control. Even though he felt like his heart was about to leap out of his mouth and start beating the crap out of the rest of him. "We're taking you to a hospital."
"What's wrong with Cas?" Sam asked, his palm firm on Jimmy's forehead, holding him in place in case he started flailing again.
Jimmy's mouth was dry. A tiny stream of blood seeped from his nose, to drip against his grimacing mouth, staining his teeth red. "I think he's dying."
///
"I'm not the usual ER doctor," the clean cut, grinning Doctor Nigel Nash proudly proclaimed, his cheerful manner irritating Dean no end. "You see, every February, the essential staff gets their holiday and this year they all opted to go to the Dominican together because the head nurse, Shirley Parker, she's getting married to the hospital pathologist, Doctor Ralph Noyse. She's keeping her name, so she'll be known around here as Nurse Shirley Noyse-Parker. I advised her against it, but hey, some people have no common sense." His big blue eyes stared dreamily into space. "Ah, the Dominican. Lovely this time of year. I would have gone, too, but you see I got the short straw and got stuck doing the emergency duty for the week, even though we haven't seen an emergency in February at Sacred Heart General for the past, oh, hundred or so years. So it didn't really matter that my specialty doesn't cover emergency room issues, but hey, a hundred or so years is a lot of precedent to go by and February in Esther is a real bitch. So, I gave the Noyse-Parkers my blessing, fool that I am, and here we now are--breaking what was, in my view, one heck of a great dry run." He smiled blankly over the medical chart the harried nurse had handed him. "Seizure. Sudden, profuse bleeding from the nose. Difficulty breathing. Erratic heart-rate. Extremely low blood pressure, as in corpse low blood pressure. 23/47. Nurse Algernon, please get me another stethoscope, that can't be right." He sighed as he went over the fictional history Sam and Dean had given him for his patient. "Even my son got to go to Las Vegas," Dr. Nigel Nash complained. "I'm the only one stuck in this shit-hole." He slapped the clipboard shut and hung it at its slot beside the bed. "Your friend is stabilized now, but since we don't know how or why this happened, we'll have to keep him here under observation for a couple of days. He's lucky he's got such a nice room. It used to be the chapel until we converted it for the extra bed space."
"Nigel Nash," Dean said, mulling over the harried doctor's age and physical attributes. He couldn't see a hint of their prey in him, but he simply had to ask. "Any relation to Paul Nash?"
"My son," Dr. Nash replied, proudly. "He's the town Sheriff. Just him and Deputy Greg Crowfoot and that's all the legal leeway we need around here." He glanced at the admittance sheet, frowning over the name at the top. "Says here your sickly little buddy was brought in by a Sam Winchester." Dean felt his heart sink at this, and he gave his brother a subtle but hard kick on the ankle. Using his real name...What the hell was he thinking?
"You must be her brothers!" Dr. Nigel Nash proclaimed, grinning from ear to ear. He patted them both on the shoulders with a cheery familiarity that was irksome. "Well, well, isn't this nice, you folks coming up all this way and here my boy Paul was all heartsore for nothing." He gave them both a sickeningly goofy, Fred Rogers styled grin. "Just wait 'till I tell him. He'll run through the snow barefoot, the stupid jackass."
Sam was clearly more confused than flattered. "I'm sure that's not necessary."
"Oh, but it *is*!" Dr. Nash's overblown, false enthusiasm belied a hidden family drama, one that had made Sam's feminine side the central theme. "For the past two weeks, all I ever heard was 'Why won't Sam call'." He wrung his hands in mock woeful frustration. "'I hope her brother didn't get to her. Her family is nuts'. 'I didn't meet Sam outside a meth clinic, I swear.' 'No, Dad, Sam has never been to jail. Yes, I checked Interpol.' 'No Mom, I swear, Sam is not the usual, track mark armed skank I tend to bring home'. 'Tell my sisters to mind their goddamned business, I'm not sending them Sam's blood sample.' 'Sam is so pretty.' 'Sam is so beautiful.' 'Sam is my intellectual light.' 'Sam is my equal'. 'Fuck me, Sam is so smart and beautiful and I can't live without Sam.' 'I'm gonna slit my fucking wrists like some big, bald emo baby because life is a big pile of steaming hot dogshit without Sam'. Of course, that meant I had slip him lorazipan in his coffee, and when that didn't work I coupled it with 80 milligrams of Zoloft, and then he starts bitching about how I should buy the Folgers and not the Maxwell House, because the Maxwell House suddenly tastes like sweaty monkey feet, and why the *hell* is he so tired all the time. Oh yes, and would I *please* tell his sisters Monica and Mona to stop calling him at three am to bitch him out about ruining his life with needy relationships. On and on and on, Jesus." He glanced nervously over his shoulder, as though sure said object of Paul Nash's obsession was about to come into view. "I hope she's not here to dump him. That's happened a couple of times before. One was a drugged up whore, wiped out his bank account, stole his furniture. His mother and I had to foot the mortgage on his house for two months. Our trip to Jamaica to celebrate our forty-second anniversary, gone in a quick fix of methamphetamines for some slut he met in Maine whose last name he couldn't even remember." Dr. Nigel Nash sighed, and scratched at his temple with the blue pen he held in his hand, leaving blue lines just above his ear. "He's such a smart boy in so many other ways. With women, he's always on some stupid rescue mission. I better call Frank, our bank manager. See if I can lock his account for a few days." He grabbed Dean's limp hand and shook it firmly. "Nice meeting you fellas. No offence, I hope. You just can't be too careful."
Distracted by pressing family financial and emotional problems, Dr. Nash left them alone in the room with Castiel, Dean's fury at Sam instantly unleashed. "You gave them your real name, you idiot!"
"It was a high pressure situation, and the nurse wouldn't accept any of our usual ID. They're real sticklers up here. She'd only take my birth certificate, and she said it had to be government issue." Sam placed his nervous hands on his hips. "She studied the date of birth like she was head of birth certificate forensics or something. I had to give her the real one, she would have found me out otherwise." Dr. Nash walked past the room's window, and Sam closed the blinds, giving them some proper privacy. His emotions were deeply guarded, but his surface uneasiness was evident. "I never would have thought Paul had any hang-ups. He didn't give any hints he had enabling issues."
"Dammit," Dean said, his hand massaging an unhappy kink out of his neck. He flexed a highly unfamiliar muscle, feeling the smoother bone structure slowly ebb into shape, like a close fitting coat. Her centre of gravity was instantly off, and she had to stretch her arms long above her head to right her spine's alignment. She could feel her shoulder sockets click into their new place. Like some damned intersex Transformer. No matter how easy the process was, it didn't mean Dean had to like it. "Paul Nash knows us as women, Sam," Dean explained. "You heard his dad, he's got a soft spot for girls in trouble. I'd say being stuck in a two cop town with a sick angel and a few hundred demons ready to rip us limb from limb when we leave is the definition of troubled souls." She shrugged off her jacket and draped it at the foot of the bed, warming Castiel's feet. "Besides, if he checked Interpol it would list us as two Winchester *males*, so being chicks gets us off the hook."
Sam's doubt at this was tempered by concern. He nodded at the prone form of Castiel, pale and uncommunicative on the bed between them. "Do you think he's going to be okay?" Sam asked.
Dean pulled a chair up alongside the bed and sank into it, her hand reaching out and adjusting the oxygen tubes affixed to his nose, ensuring the long lines weren't pinching Cas's ear. Castiel stirred at the touch, and Dean's hand rested on the pillow, beside his cheek. "I don't know," Dean said, worried. "He really scared me back there. Jimmy said Cas was dying, and he wasn't doing too bad of that job himself." Dean pressed her palm deep against Castiel's pillow, the weight of her concern a physical expression. Castiel was pale and near lifeless on the bed, his skin cold to the touch. She tried to warm his hand by clasping it in her own, the angel returning the gesture with a shockingly weak grip.
"Dean?" Castiel's voice was weak, his eyes forced open into thin slits that were clearly having trouble focusing. They were bloodshot, his pupils dilated as he gave Dean's current appearance a wavering once over. "Am I in heaven?" he asked.
"No, Jimmy," Dean said, her face hovering close to his, a vain effort to keep his mind cleared. "I need to speak to Cas. You need to push him to the surface."
"I can't," Jimmy replied, his eyes closing in exhausted effort. "He's so sick. Like his power got sucked out of him." Jimmy grimaced, his hand tightening around Dean's. "My back hurts."
He tried to roll onto his side on his own, but he was too weak for even this and Dean obliged by giving Jimmy a gentle nudge on his shoulder and hip, his blue hospital gown gaping open at the back. She paused, her hand still on Jimmy's hip, her eyes clearly playing tricks on her. Because, dammit, there was no way she was seeing this, not when there'd been anything other than just a *hint* of it before. Like the rush of kissed air. Like a fighting sparrow's flight.
Castiel had fucking wings. Large, clearly visible, grey tinted, man-sized, goddamned wings. Dean cursed under her breath, some insane part of her understanding trying to figure out if these appendages had always been there, or if they were something new. Reason dictated the former, especially since the shadow of them had been visible enough, but not this solid, corporeal, feathery weirdness that she could plainly see and, if she wanted to, touch. "Sam, what the hell is this? Am I really seeing this?"
But Sam was no longer in the room, a further point of worry for Dean considering her brother was capable of heading for Paul Nash's home and performing an impromptu enabler exorcism/intervention, a rash decision that could land them both in jail for murder and Castiel dead. Dean snatched her cell phone out of her jeans and tried to dial out. The white noise of blinking arial font text on a dark blue background was the only response. No Signal Available.
She swore and clapped the cell phone shut with her palm. She couldn't leave Castiel here like this, not without knowing for sure if this was a private viewing or a public one. She moved her shaking hand off of Castiel's hip, fingertips teasing the tips of the feathers that tapered nearby. They were black on the edges, curled into ragged strips. Dean dared to rub a tiny portion of the feather between her forefinger and thumb, a smeared line of grey staining her touch. Soot. He'd been singed when he flew into hell to rescue me, Dean realized. His wings still held the damage of that ill-conceived act.
Poor stupid angel, Dean thought, a pang of sympathy overwhelming her. She caressed the folded softness of his wings, their silky texture a strange mixture of angora down and crow toughness. An equally odd, but not unpleasant, scent emitted from them with the soft caress of her fingers, and she pressed her face against the outside of his wing, breathing in what was, to her reference, a scent not unlike freshly cut pine.
Castiel rolled onto his back, his wings tucked tightly beneath him. Weird, Dean thought. He doesn't look very happy.
A point well taken thanks to the sudden, resounding slap Castiel's open palm whipped across Dean's face.
"You disgusting pervert!" the furious angel shouted at her.
Author: pink_bagels
Chapter: ten
Rating: R (for swearing, sexual talk, crack!fic-ishness)
Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam/omc that looks like Hugh Dillon (w00t!), genderswap, Trickster, Alberta, Meg, angel molestation, TMI embittered health care professionals, etc.
Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke. Not even if he had a sex change), it would hover somewhere in the middle of an AU season five.
Summary: The boys who were boys are girls who can still be boys. You can't deny an advantage when you see one. Just ask Jimmy's opinion on the matter. What happened in Vegas wants to hunt you down and kill you. Too bad you gave that freaky chick Sam Winchester your cell number.
Note: Feedback is love! Even if you're telling me you hate it!
PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:
one // two // three // four // five // six // seven // eight // nine
a lingering fringe--chapter ten
The two beers were poured into filthy glasses, each earning a good amount of spit which a half dozen demons contributed to before the drinks were finally handed to Sam and Dean. To Sam's horror, Dean actually considered taking a sip anyway, but seeing as how corpse hork kind of took the thrill off the alcohol, he set the drink down on a nearby table instead.
"So, what's with the party?" Dean said, hands in the pockets of his jeans, a smug smile on his face. "I'm guessing it's on account of one of two things. They've brought back Tab soda, or hell truly has frozen over. 'Course, just one of those things could mean the existence of the other. Kind of goes hand in hand."
The blackly clad demons murmured over the slippery appearance of Meg as she crept closer to Sam and Dean, her black eyes unmoving as she kept them in her predator sight. She licked the top row of her teeth as she stood close to Sam, who flinched at her invasive proximity. "I almost didn't recognize you," she said to him, her head cocked to one side in mock sweetness. She twined her thin fingers suggestively into the buttons of his shirt. "I heard you had a little incident down in Vegas and got your freak on. Good for you, Sammy baby. It's about time you got in touch with your feminine side." She cast a wicked glance at Dean. "You too, buttercup. Don't forget, Sammy already got a taste of the wild side, thanks to me. It's about time you caught up."
Sam pushed her roughly off and she staggered back, a hand held up to keep the retaliation of her henchmen at bay. "It's all right, boys," she said. "Sammy *likes* it rough."
Dean was getting more than a little fed up with the tense standoff. The bar was cold, the tips of his fingers were turning blue and if they didn't get some answers and get moving there was a damn good chance they'd die of hypothermia before the night was finished. "You got some nerve, waltzing in here," the big, dirty bartender snorted at him. "There's a lot of us here who haven't forgotten you. Forty years is a long time in hell."
"What can I say?" Dean said. "I figured I'd play catch up. See how the old gang was doing, but I guess it's all same old, same old. I see you're still hovering where you don't belong, causing torment and strife wherever you go. Even now, you're stuck in a dingy bar, in a minus 3 on the border of some nothing at all town in the middle of less than nothing." With a quick movement, Dean reached behind the bar and snatched up a couple of fresh bottles of beer. He tossed one to Sam, who caught it with one hand. There was a mutual twist and sigh of released carbonated courage. Dean took a long swig and gratefully swallowed. "For a bunch of assholes hell bent on destroying the Earth, you bastards have a real hankering for living in a rut."
"Once you get used to hellfire, the cold is a nice change," Meg replied, her expression churlish as she circled them. Dean didn't give her the satisfaction of his anger, and instead continued to coolly drink his beer, despite the fact it was only adding to his already chilled to the bone discomfort. Considering that every movement he made caused the demons surrounding him to hiss and gnash their teeth, parting like a zombie Dead Sea as he walked past them, Dean figured bravado in a bottle came at a cheap enough price.
Meg hooked her thumbs into the loops of her tight fitting, highway dusted jeans. "So tell me, what's so important up here that you had to crash our little party? Oh wait, let me guess." She pressed against Sam and stood on tiptoe, to whisper and bite at his ear. "You got a friend here. A real special one."
Dean didn't miss the flickering hate that passed over Sam's features. Sam took a swig from his own bottle of beer, his attention riveted to some point far beyond the crooked, neon Budweiser sign over the bar. "That depends on just how 'special' he is," Sam said.
"No, Sammy baby. You need to tell *me*." She pulled a small cell phone out of her jeans jacket pocket and waved it with teasing purpose in front of Sam's face. She pressed a button on the side, releasing the sounds of what was some serious passion digitally captured in mp3. She upped the volume, and Dean could hear a familiar voice shouting, becoming higher and higher pitched while a deeper toned voice offered his swearing encouragement.
"What's your name, baby? Come on, tell me your name..."
The answer was moaning and whimpering, which only increased the more the question was asked, until it culminated into something aurally pornographic. Sam grabbed the cell phone out of Meg's hand and smashed it on the bar counter. The cell phone shouted "Harder!"
Sam slammed the phone again. It broke in half. "Oh fuck, harder!"
This time he dropped it to the floor and stomped on it like it was a cinder ready to ignite his matchstick mansion. No call was ever going to go out on that sucker again.
Dean crossed his arms over his chest, the neck of his bottle of beer dangling between his fingertips.
"You had sex with Paul?"
"It wasn't exactly planned," Sam sheepishly admitted.
A clearer picture of what was going on suddenly crystallized into Dean's understanding. He downed his beer in three steady gulps and tossed the empty bottle to the floor, where it shattered. The demons in the bar gazed expectantly at the Winchester brothers, revelling in the ire that had suddenly erupted between them. "When, exactly, where you planning on telling me about this?"
"Um, never," Sam said, defensive. "It was none of your business, and frankly, it isn't relevant to why we're here."
"Like hell it isn't," Dean shot back. He pointed an accusing finger in Sam's face. "I didn't drag us out into the middle of nowhere just for some otherworld booty call!"
"You got no right to be judging me, Dean! Come on, how many times have you slunk back to the motel room with a piece, huh? So I got a little carried away, so what?"
"So what? Dammit, Sam, this is different! You were a *chick*! I'm the first to jump on the man-whore wagon, but for fuck's sake, *I'm* not the one spreading my knees for whatever passing demon happens to buy me a coffee!"
"You can cut the judgement day shit, Dean. You're the one who let an angel of the Lord cop a feel!"
"That is so not the same thing!" Dean shouted. "Nothing happened, not like you and your journey to uncover the myth of the multiple female orgasm!"
Sam's eyes narrowed. "Oh, it's no myth," he said.
Dean's fury faltered. He shrugged inward as he noted that the demons in the bar had gathered around himself and his brother, fixing them into a circular ring, like they were the headlining entertainment. "Seriously?" Dean asked.
"Three times," Sam said, holding up three fingers as if Dean couldn't count. Then, almost wistful. "It finished off into the home run."
Dean thought about this for a long moment. He wanted to be angry. Real angry. But Sam had hit a sore spot in his porn addled id, and it was smarting like a bitch with a too-tight strap-on. "Damn," he said, acknowledging his jealousy.
"I didn't know about him when that happened," Sam said, embarrassment and sadness competing in his apology. "You and Cas both proved he was just human, so how was I supposed to know any different?"
Meg entered their dysfunctional ring, a coy tilt to her chin invading the sudden truce that had sprouted between Sam and Dean. "I don't know how you two got this far," she said, her black eyes steeped deep with contempt. "It doesn't matter how hard he stuck it to you. You all would have ended up here, you wouldn't have been able to resist." She stood nose to nose with Dean, a stand-off she wasn't about to back down from. "You're attracted to this place, just like the rest of us. You got more hell in you than you realize."
"If you mean by 'this place' the town of Esther, then why aren't you all just walking in and doing your usual apocalypse now routine?" Dean pushed Meg back into the crowd that surrounded them. "You got a whole army here, after all. What's the hold up?"
It was Sam who understood it best. "They can't go in because they're afraid," he said. His jaw worked over this puzzle. "Paul Nash is as much a mystery to them as he is to us. They aren't killing us because they know where we're going. They think they'll get answers if we go in."
The bartender spat on the counter. "You shut your mouth! You don't say that meatsuit's name in these parts!"
Silently, Dean and Sam made their way out of the bar, the demons parting with slow, deliberate movements, giving the brothers a wide berth as they passed through. Hundreds of black eyes watched them wordlessly as they slid into the seats of Impala, Castiel expectant and worried in the back. "You were able to leave without injury," he observed. "Perhaps they intend to follow us into the town of Esther."
Meg stood at the entrance of the bar, her jaw jutted forward in defiance as she glared at them. Dean turned on the ignition, flashing his high beams on her, purifying her into brilliant yellow light until only the dark matter of her eyes remained.
"Getting in won't be the problem," Dean observed. "It's leaving that'll be a pain the ass."
///
According to Sam's calculations, Esther was only a twenty minute drive from the demon infested motel. Dean kept his attention riveted to the abandoned, icy highway ahead, its isolation broken by the occasional road sign proclaiming the insane speed limit of 100km/hr. The silence within the Impala was as muffling as the snowstorm that threatened to overtake them, the thick flakes increasing in density the closer they crawled to their destination. Dean's thumb teased the play button on the car's tape deck, only to rethink the action, his hand curling into a cold fist. AC/DC's 'Sink The Pink' suddenly had a whole slew of uncomfortable imagery attached.
Sam cleared his throat, his fist lightly tapped against his lips. "Out with it, Dean," he said.
"What?" Dean said, feigning innocence.
"Just spit it out. I know you're dying to ask."
Dean allowed exactly two heartbeats to pump before talking. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.
"Is the sex better as a guy or a girl?"
Castiel groaned in the back seat, the heel of his palm against his forehead as he rubbed Jimmy's continued grudge away. "I don't understand why humans are so obsessed with procreation," he said. "If I'm not being assailed by your thoughts, Dean, it's Jimmy's imagined needs which I can't properly interpret other than to know they give him both exceptional guilt and pleasure, neither of which I can fully appreciate."
"It depends on the circumstances," Sam said, ignoring Castiel remarks and answering Dean's question.
"I can't see the point in carnal lust," Castiel continued. "In heaven, every action has a specific, ordained purpose. There is no room for this strange, emotional see-sawing that confuses physical necessity and companionship." He winced, the heel of his hand pressed tighter against the side of his skull. "This ache is unbearable."
"Come on, Jimmy, lay off him," Dean said. He turned to his brother. "So it was, you know...Good?"
"What was?"
"The sex, dude! The *sex*!"
"I don't really want to talk about this with you, Dean. It's kind of, well, private."
"Oh grow up, Sam," Dean replied, annoyed. "If there's one thing a decade or two of watching porno has taught me, it's that sex is never private!"
"Sorry. I never did get a chance to enrol in the Dean Winchester School Of Skank."
"There's nothing skanky about having a conversation about sex."
"There is when you're asking your brother how many times she got off with her boyfriend when she was your sister."
"Chuck is going to have a field day with this one. I get a headache just thinking about how he's going to get his rocks off next."
"Why is Chuck even in this conversation?"
"Because he's a pervert, Sam. An unwashed, malnourished peeping tom who should be minding his own damned business. I really hope he writes this down. In red ink, for emphasis."
"My head hurts," Castiel complained.
"Whine, whine, whine, that's all I ever hear," Dean bitched. They passed the homemade sign proclaiming 'Welcome to Esther, population 2,023. Put Some Roots In Our Fertile Soil'. Clearly, with a population that low there was little else to do other than be 'fertile' during the long winter months. He was about to make a crack about how they harvested babies in the spring, only to be stopped short by Sam's sudden panic.
"Castiel?" Dean's view was obscured by Sam's sudden twisting at an awkward angle in his seat to get a better look at their passenger. "Oh my God. Dean, pull over, something's wrong!"
Dean pulled over to the side of the road, leaving the engine running as he came to a full stop. He leapt out of the driver's seat, gale force winds tearing at him the second he left the car. He pulled open the passenger door with effort, his fists grabbing tight onto the lapels of Castiel's beige trenchcoat. The angel's eyes had rolled back, the usual strong white light that was his essence shorting out like a damaged incandescent bulb. Tiny, white lightning flashes shimmered across the bridge of his nose, his body shaking in violent convulsions. The interior of the Impala was filled with the scent of a spent electrical current. The remnants of ozone.
"He's having a seizure," Sam said. "Has he ever done this before?"
"Never," Dean said, shaking his head. Cold winds bit at him, invading the interior with a violence that suggested it had something against them. He bid Sam to take his place, his brother quickly obliging as he crawled over the gear shift and into the back seat. "We need to get to a hospital, pronto."
"They won't know what to do," Sam said, but Dean wasn't listening. He was going on instinct, and what it told him was that Cas was in a human body and it was acting humanly sick. Angels, demons or plain old Bob, people went to hospitals when they were sick. Heck of a no-brainer.
Dean peeled down the highway, the wheels skidding at intervals on the ice. The back end of the Impala fishtailed, but he damn well didn't care. He had no trouble getting the car up to one hundred clicks. Hell, he was ready to push her to 140 if that's what it took.
"Dean?"
"Cas? What's going on?"
"Not Cas...It's Jimmy." He grimaced as his body tensed, his eyes lolling, out of focus. "Something's wrong. With Cas. I think. I think..."
"Relax, pal," Dean said, forcing his voice to stay calm, cool, in control. Even though he felt like his heart was about to leap out of his mouth and start beating the crap out of the rest of him. "We're taking you to a hospital."
"What's wrong with Cas?" Sam asked, his palm firm on Jimmy's forehead, holding him in place in case he started flailing again.
Jimmy's mouth was dry. A tiny stream of blood seeped from his nose, to drip against his grimacing mouth, staining his teeth red. "I think he's dying."
///
"I'm not the usual ER doctor," the clean cut, grinning Doctor Nigel Nash proudly proclaimed, his cheerful manner irritating Dean no end. "You see, every February, the essential staff gets their holiday and this year they all opted to go to the Dominican together because the head nurse, Shirley Parker, she's getting married to the hospital pathologist, Doctor Ralph Noyse. She's keeping her name, so she'll be known around here as Nurse Shirley Noyse-Parker. I advised her against it, but hey, some people have no common sense." His big blue eyes stared dreamily into space. "Ah, the Dominican. Lovely this time of year. I would have gone, too, but you see I got the short straw and got stuck doing the emergency duty for the week, even though we haven't seen an emergency in February at Sacred Heart General for the past, oh, hundred or so years. So it didn't really matter that my specialty doesn't cover emergency room issues, but hey, a hundred or so years is a lot of precedent to go by and February in Esther is a real bitch. So, I gave the Noyse-Parkers my blessing, fool that I am, and here we now are--breaking what was, in my view, one heck of a great dry run." He smiled blankly over the medical chart the harried nurse had handed him. "Seizure. Sudden, profuse bleeding from the nose. Difficulty breathing. Erratic heart-rate. Extremely low blood pressure, as in corpse low blood pressure. 23/47. Nurse Algernon, please get me another stethoscope, that can't be right." He sighed as he went over the fictional history Sam and Dean had given him for his patient. "Even my son got to go to Las Vegas," Dr. Nigel Nash complained. "I'm the only one stuck in this shit-hole." He slapped the clipboard shut and hung it at its slot beside the bed. "Your friend is stabilized now, but since we don't know how or why this happened, we'll have to keep him here under observation for a couple of days. He's lucky he's got such a nice room. It used to be the chapel until we converted it for the extra bed space."
"Nigel Nash," Dean said, mulling over the harried doctor's age and physical attributes. He couldn't see a hint of their prey in him, but he simply had to ask. "Any relation to Paul Nash?"
"My son," Dr. Nash replied, proudly. "He's the town Sheriff. Just him and Deputy Greg Crowfoot and that's all the legal leeway we need around here." He glanced at the admittance sheet, frowning over the name at the top. "Says here your sickly little buddy was brought in by a Sam Winchester." Dean felt his heart sink at this, and he gave his brother a subtle but hard kick on the ankle. Using his real name...What the hell was he thinking?
"You must be her brothers!" Dr. Nigel Nash proclaimed, grinning from ear to ear. He patted them both on the shoulders with a cheery familiarity that was irksome. "Well, well, isn't this nice, you folks coming up all this way and here my boy Paul was all heartsore for nothing." He gave them both a sickeningly goofy, Fred Rogers styled grin. "Just wait 'till I tell him. He'll run through the snow barefoot, the stupid jackass."
Sam was clearly more confused than flattered. "I'm sure that's not necessary."
"Oh, but it *is*!" Dr. Nash's overblown, false enthusiasm belied a hidden family drama, one that had made Sam's feminine side the central theme. "For the past two weeks, all I ever heard was 'Why won't Sam call'." He wrung his hands in mock woeful frustration. "'I hope her brother didn't get to her. Her family is nuts'. 'I didn't meet Sam outside a meth clinic, I swear.' 'No, Dad, Sam has never been to jail. Yes, I checked Interpol.' 'No Mom, I swear, Sam is not the usual, track mark armed skank I tend to bring home'. 'Tell my sisters to mind their goddamned business, I'm not sending them Sam's blood sample.' 'Sam is so pretty.' 'Sam is so beautiful.' 'Sam is my intellectual light.' 'Sam is my equal'. 'Fuck me, Sam is so smart and beautiful and I can't live without Sam.' 'I'm gonna slit my fucking wrists like some big, bald emo baby because life is a big pile of steaming hot dogshit without Sam'. Of course, that meant I had slip him lorazipan in his coffee, and when that didn't work I coupled it with 80 milligrams of Zoloft, and then he starts bitching about how I should buy the Folgers and not the Maxwell House, because the Maxwell House suddenly tastes like sweaty monkey feet, and why the *hell* is he so tired all the time. Oh yes, and would I *please* tell his sisters Monica and Mona to stop calling him at three am to bitch him out about ruining his life with needy relationships. On and on and on, Jesus." He glanced nervously over his shoulder, as though sure said object of Paul Nash's obsession was about to come into view. "I hope she's not here to dump him. That's happened a couple of times before. One was a drugged up whore, wiped out his bank account, stole his furniture. His mother and I had to foot the mortgage on his house for two months. Our trip to Jamaica to celebrate our forty-second anniversary, gone in a quick fix of methamphetamines for some slut he met in Maine whose last name he couldn't even remember." Dr. Nigel Nash sighed, and scratched at his temple with the blue pen he held in his hand, leaving blue lines just above his ear. "He's such a smart boy in so many other ways. With women, he's always on some stupid rescue mission. I better call Frank, our bank manager. See if I can lock his account for a few days." He grabbed Dean's limp hand and shook it firmly. "Nice meeting you fellas. No offence, I hope. You just can't be too careful."
Distracted by pressing family financial and emotional problems, Dr. Nash left them alone in the room with Castiel, Dean's fury at Sam instantly unleashed. "You gave them your real name, you idiot!"
"It was a high pressure situation, and the nurse wouldn't accept any of our usual ID. They're real sticklers up here. She'd only take my birth certificate, and she said it had to be government issue." Sam placed his nervous hands on his hips. "She studied the date of birth like she was head of birth certificate forensics or something. I had to give her the real one, she would have found me out otherwise." Dr. Nash walked past the room's window, and Sam closed the blinds, giving them some proper privacy. His emotions were deeply guarded, but his surface uneasiness was evident. "I never would have thought Paul had any hang-ups. He didn't give any hints he had enabling issues."
"Dammit," Dean said, his hand massaging an unhappy kink out of his neck. He flexed a highly unfamiliar muscle, feeling the smoother bone structure slowly ebb into shape, like a close fitting coat. Her centre of gravity was instantly off, and she had to stretch her arms long above her head to right her spine's alignment. She could feel her shoulder sockets click into their new place. Like some damned intersex Transformer. No matter how easy the process was, it didn't mean Dean had to like it. "Paul Nash knows us as women, Sam," Dean explained. "You heard his dad, he's got a soft spot for girls in trouble. I'd say being stuck in a two cop town with a sick angel and a few hundred demons ready to rip us limb from limb when we leave is the definition of troubled souls." She shrugged off her jacket and draped it at the foot of the bed, warming Castiel's feet. "Besides, if he checked Interpol it would list us as two Winchester *males*, so being chicks gets us off the hook."
Sam's doubt at this was tempered by concern. He nodded at the prone form of Castiel, pale and uncommunicative on the bed between them. "Do you think he's going to be okay?" Sam asked.
Dean pulled a chair up alongside the bed and sank into it, her hand reaching out and adjusting the oxygen tubes affixed to his nose, ensuring the long lines weren't pinching Cas's ear. Castiel stirred at the touch, and Dean's hand rested on the pillow, beside his cheek. "I don't know," Dean said, worried. "He really scared me back there. Jimmy said Cas was dying, and he wasn't doing too bad of that job himself." Dean pressed her palm deep against Castiel's pillow, the weight of her concern a physical expression. Castiel was pale and near lifeless on the bed, his skin cold to the touch. She tried to warm his hand by clasping it in her own, the angel returning the gesture with a shockingly weak grip.
"Dean?" Castiel's voice was weak, his eyes forced open into thin slits that were clearly having trouble focusing. They were bloodshot, his pupils dilated as he gave Dean's current appearance a wavering once over. "Am I in heaven?" he asked.
"No, Jimmy," Dean said, her face hovering close to his, a vain effort to keep his mind cleared. "I need to speak to Cas. You need to push him to the surface."
"I can't," Jimmy replied, his eyes closing in exhausted effort. "He's so sick. Like his power got sucked out of him." Jimmy grimaced, his hand tightening around Dean's. "My back hurts."
He tried to roll onto his side on his own, but he was too weak for even this and Dean obliged by giving Jimmy a gentle nudge on his shoulder and hip, his blue hospital gown gaping open at the back. She paused, her hand still on Jimmy's hip, her eyes clearly playing tricks on her. Because, dammit, there was no way she was seeing this, not when there'd been anything other than just a *hint* of it before. Like the rush of kissed air. Like a fighting sparrow's flight.
Castiel had fucking wings. Large, clearly visible, grey tinted, man-sized, goddamned wings. Dean cursed under her breath, some insane part of her understanding trying to figure out if these appendages had always been there, or if they were something new. Reason dictated the former, especially since the shadow of them had been visible enough, but not this solid, corporeal, feathery weirdness that she could plainly see and, if she wanted to, touch. "Sam, what the hell is this? Am I really seeing this?"
But Sam was no longer in the room, a further point of worry for Dean considering her brother was capable of heading for Paul Nash's home and performing an impromptu enabler exorcism/intervention, a rash decision that could land them both in jail for murder and Castiel dead. Dean snatched her cell phone out of her jeans and tried to dial out. The white noise of blinking arial font text on a dark blue background was the only response. No Signal Available.
She swore and clapped the cell phone shut with her palm. She couldn't leave Castiel here like this, not without knowing for sure if this was a private viewing or a public one. She moved her shaking hand off of Castiel's hip, fingertips teasing the tips of the feathers that tapered nearby. They were black on the edges, curled into ragged strips. Dean dared to rub a tiny portion of the feather between her forefinger and thumb, a smeared line of grey staining her touch. Soot. He'd been singed when he flew into hell to rescue me, Dean realized. His wings still held the damage of that ill-conceived act.
Poor stupid angel, Dean thought, a pang of sympathy overwhelming her. She caressed the folded softness of his wings, their silky texture a strange mixture of angora down and crow toughness. An equally odd, but not unpleasant, scent emitted from them with the soft caress of her fingers, and she pressed her face against the outside of his wing, breathing in what was, to her reference, a scent not unlike freshly cut pine.
Castiel rolled onto his back, his wings tucked tightly beneath him. Weird, Dean thought. He doesn't look very happy.
A point well taken thanks to the sudden, resounding slap Castiel's open palm whipped across Dean's face.
"You disgusting pervert!" the furious angel shouted at her.