The Trick of the Trade, for sunriserose1023
Title: The Trick of the Trade
Recipient: sunriserose1023
Rating: R
Word Count: ~2k
Warnings: canon typical violence
Summary: Two demons walk into a bar. One's really tall and the other one's a jerk.
In the dimly lit bar, they pour each other a glass of expensive whiskey they didn't pay for. Dean wants to suggest a toast, but they've long since moved past such unnecessary gestures.
He tips his glass towards his younger brother instead, and they both down the drink.
“So, how was your week, Sammy? Sorry, brother?”
///
Sam had quite the week. On Monday, he ran into a girl who somehow, miraculously, knew that he was, well, not exactly human, and decided that he would be her dinner. They spent a lovely evening together in a barn just outside of Toledo.
Lovely in that he was strapped to a chair, couldn't move an inch, and she kept glaring at him and threatening him with a knife. Then, of course, he moved an inch, then a couple more, but because she looked at him with such personal hurt in her eyes, he didn't take her soul.
He very, very gently squeezed her neck until she ran out of breath and her eyes fluttered closed, and then he walked away.
It was kind of a thrilling thought, that he let her live and she might still be after him. He liked her; her blonde locks framed her face like a tired halo and her soul looked so angry.
Then, on Tuesday, he proved to be a man (demon? yup, demon) of really immense self-restraint. He met up with Crowley and didn't even punch him - or attempt to stab his ass and send him smoking right back to Hell.
Wednesday he spent with Ruby. Her locks were, as always, raven-black and they didn't look anything like a halo, of any kind. Which he liked. He realizes now that they usually meet up on Wednesdays, so maybe that's another part of his life that's more of a routine than actual desire, but to Hell with that, and many other things.
He visited the hellhounds on Thursday, and their owner. He accepted the leash and took them for a walk, and when he got back, Hell was heavier by a few more souls.
Sam's always liked collecting souls - there's something very pure about it. Hell usually sends their regards with just the hellhounds because crossroad demons, Dean included, think this is below them - to see the filth of the human soul and deliver it home, where it belongs. Not Sam. Sam always saw that as noble.
The humans, they tremble in such a soft way. They plead in such soft voices. But their souls are always big: big thundering and beating and pulsing things, and Sam's always liked keeping those in his pocket for at least a little while.
Besides, the hellhounds are beasts. Someone needs to hold them back, and Sam, for some reason, always liked dogs. He never really questioned it - it was just something that was. Dean liked to steal whiskey; Sam liked dogs.
Demons are ridiculously human sometimes.
Anyway, Friday brought him another encounter with a few hunters. He nearly didn't get out of that one - they had a lot of salt and a gallon of holy water. And they had him surrounded. He remembered bits and pieces - the man's longish hair and badly kept beard, the wrinkle on the woman's forehead when she frowned, the ridiculous sheriff star on the other woman's clothes.
He actually ran before he realized he could just smoke away. There was a red-haired girl running after him like a tiny ninja, and for a second, it frightened him.
///
“We'll find them and mess them up,” Dean says after another gulp of the whiskey. “This stuff is exquisite,” he says, using the word mockingly.
“They're not that far away,” Sam responds with a smirk. He's still got their scent memorized, their souls. In fact, the scent is still strong in his memory, especially in this enclosed space, that he still feels it with intensity. If he walked into a diner and ordered french fries, he would know instantly if the waitress was or wasn't one of the people that tried to carve him out of this world. “Are you proud of me for not killing Crowley?”
Dean snorts. “As ever. How's Ruby?”
“I think she managed to bring down a few more witches recently, so, pretty happy on that front. Anyway, how was your week?”
///
Dean's week pretty much mirrored Sam's, except it involved much less routine. He did meet up with Crowley as well, though he's not sure which day of the week it was, and they both talked jokingly about Samantha's demon-cidal tendencies when it came to the King of Hell.
They probably went for drinks after that, which is why Dean doesn't remember much of it.
Anyway, on Monday, he woke up in a bed under a blanket with a soft-blue daisy pattern. Next to him was a very pretty, very human girl with curves in all the right places, and he felt absolutely nothing for her. However, his other parts felt a lot, so he nudged her awake. He didn't leave the cocoon of the soft-blue blanket until late that night, and then only to go to a different bar.
Tuesday was cold motel room sheets and whoever he had been with the night before. They left without leaving a message. Just as well.
Then it was time to go back to his responsibilities, which, sadly, involved less alcohol and more answering calls from desperate humans who wished to have their soul taken in exchange for a few happy years. Dean gets that, sure he does. He thinks that, were he human, he might be tempted to do the same thing - it's a sweet deal, and often, meeting these humans, he smirks knowing that some of them are his future colleagues.
He likes the crossroad work - this is the oldest profession in the world, not whores selling themselves. It's smiling, it's saying, “Sure, pal, I can set you up with a pretty sweet deal, all it takes is a kiss and, y'know, your soul in ten years.” It's feeling that pure thrill when the kiss happens. The oblivious person's thoughts that go ten years is a thousand years away. Illogical, desperate humans.
Dean loves them.
He spent most of his week doing this, showing up in Montana and Ohio and Oklahoma. He sneaked one short trip over the ocean, flying his smoke over the salty mass, and kissed a really pretty Scottish boy so he could have that gallery opening he always wanted. He flew back and kissed a girl with awful adult acne, but her lips were so soft he smiled into it.
He slept all through Friday in the deepest cavern of Hell you can imagine because he was very, very tired. There was a call, from an older man with a beard and a ridiculous filthy cap, who tried to lure him to a crossroads just outside of Sioux Falls. Come out here, you sonofabitch, but Dean was, as was said, very tired.
So he didn't go. He felt nothing about that either.
///
“I don't understand your infatuation with humans,” Sam comments, rolling his empty glass of whiskey over the surface of the bar, toying with it. “They're annoying and they want us dead.”
“Can you blame them?” Dean asks, his eyebrow arching up. “We want them dead as well. They just don't know - they don't know there's more.”
“I don't know, is there?”
“Ugh, you're annoying.” Dean wraps the conversation up and pours himself another drink. The bottle is almost empty - they've been pouring it down their throats without remorse, but they don't feel much. You don't feel much as a demon in general, but it takes an exceptional amount of alcohol to really get to you. You have to find a liquor store and drink it, Dean thinks for some reason, the words inexplicable to him, not knowing where they came from. But he laughs at them.
“I'd better run,” Sam says suddenly, hopping off the bar stool and grabbing his dark-brown jacket. He throws it over his shoulders. “There's a coven that knows their stuff too well, Ruby wanted me to help her out.”
“She admitted to needing help? Wow.”
“Shocking, I know. Anyway, more souls for us, your King of Hell friend will be pleased,” Sam says as he taps Dean's shoulder once, then twice for good measure.
“He's not my friend, I just tolerate him so he doesn't bug me with those hellhounds. You know I fucking hate those things.”
Sam shakes his head, Dean's distaste of the beasts an unfathomable thing. “I'll see you in a week,” he says instead of continuing on with the banter. He's already running late.
“Yeah. See ya, Sammy,” Dean says just over the edge of Sam's closing the door behind him. He's suddenly alone in the bar, which now seems dusty and old and abandoned. He finishes the whiskey out of the bottle, then smashes it over the bar because he can. Little pieces of glass catch in his plaid shirt and he shakes them out.
He gets up. There's work to do. The old man from Sioux Falls might call again, and Dean can't say he's all that excited to kiss him.
///
Every week, Dean drives an old Honda right into central Nebraska and parks in front of an old abandoned bar. The sign reads Harvelle's Roadhouse and it must have been at least semi-pretty once upon a time, when it was lit up in neon and the lights inside were on, people buzzing it into life.
His Honda is never the only one in the parking lot. There's an even older car parked a few spots away, a '67 Chevrolet Impala. Dean kind of wants to steal it, because it sure is a pretty car, but for some reason, he feels like it used to belong to someone important. Besides, it kind of adds to the whole thing. He once looked through the window - there were old burger wrappers and cassettes on the passenger seat, and a bunch of old clothes, mostly plaid and jackets and torn jeans, on the backseat. He spotted some blood in there as well.
That's a car with a history, he thought, and left it alone.
Anyway, every week, Dean drives here and Sam walks. Together, they walk into the bar, which stands unguarded and empty. The only thing here is dust. And them, when they visit.
They don't really know why they do this. Why it's always this place, every single week, why it's here that they always reconnect after a week apart. Such a stupid habit, with no explanation at all. Dean doesn't even remember when it started, and he's sure Sam doesn't either. They've been like this for a pretty long time, or at least it feels that way.
Hell and crossroads and hounds and all that.
They walk into the Roadhouse, and sometimes they chat about who Harvelle was and where he (she?) is now. They found a picture once, one that someone cut in half. The one half that remained showed a guy with a mullet - which Dean kind of digs - a woman with a wrinkle between her eyebrows, and a young girl with blond locks framing her face. That was a long time ago; they tossed the picture after discussing who might have been on the other half. There was a hand, reaching around the blonde girl's shoulders, wearing a plaid shirt. Maybe it was the guy who owned the fancy car outside. Who knows.
They sit on the barstools that feel so damn familiar, almost like home, if demons knew of such a thing.
In the dimly lit bar, they pour each other a glass of expensive whiskey they didn't pay for. Dean wants to suggest a toast, but they've long since moved past such unnecessary gestures.
Recipient: sunriserose1023
Rating: R
Word Count: ~2k
Warnings: canon typical violence
Summary: Two demons walk into a bar. One's really tall and the other one's a jerk.
In the dimly lit bar, they pour each other a glass of expensive whiskey they didn't pay for. Dean wants to suggest a toast, but they've long since moved past such unnecessary gestures.
He tips his glass towards his younger brother instead, and they both down the drink.
“So, how was your week, Sammy? Sorry, brother?”
///
Sam had quite the week. On Monday, he ran into a girl who somehow, miraculously, knew that he was, well, not exactly human, and decided that he would be her dinner. They spent a lovely evening together in a barn just outside of Toledo.
Lovely in that he was strapped to a chair, couldn't move an inch, and she kept glaring at him and threatening him with a knife. Then, of course, he moved an inch, then a couple more, but because she looked at him with such personal hurt in her eyes, he didn't take her soul.
He very, very gently squeezed her neck until she ran out of breath and her eyes fluttered closed, and then he walked away.
It was kind of a thrilling thought, that he let her live and she might still be after him. He liked her; her blonde locks framed her face like a tired halo and her soul looked so angry.
Then, on Tuesday, he proved to be a man (demon? yup, demon) of really immense self-restraint. He met up with Crowley and didn't even punch him - or attempt to stab his ass and send him smoking right back to Hell.
Wednesday he spent with Ruby. Her locks were, as always, raven-black and they didn't look anything like a halo, of any kind. Which he liked. He realizes now that they usually meet up on Wednesdays, so maybe that's another part of his life that's more of a routine than actual desire, but to Hell with that, and many other things.
He visited the hellhounds on Thursday, and their owner. He accepted the leash and took them for a walk, and when he got back, Hell was heavier by a few more souls.
Sam's always liked collecting souls - there's something very pure about it. Hell usually sends their regards with just the hellhounds because crossroad demons, Dean included, think this is below them - to see the filth of the human soul and deliver it home, where it belongs. Not Sam. Sam always saw that as noble.
The humans, they tremble in such a soft way. They plead in such soft voices. But their souls are always big: big thundering and beating and pulsing things, and Sam's always liked keeping those in his pocket for at least a little while.
Besides, the hellhounds are beasts. Someone needs to hold them back, and Sam, for some reason, always liked dogs. He never really questioned it - it was just something that was. Dean liked to steal whiskey; Sam liked dogs.
Demons are ridiculously human sometimes.
Anyway, Friday brought him another encounter with a few hunters. He nearly didn't get out of that one - they had a lot of salt and a gallon of holy water. And they had him surrounded. He remembered bits and pieces - the man's longish hair and badly kept beard, the wrinkle on the woman's forehead when she frowned, the ridiculous sheriff star on the other woman's clothes.
He actually ran before he realized he could just smoke away. There was a red-haired girl running after him like a tiny ninja, and for a second, it frightened him.
///
“We'll find them and mess them up,” Dean says after another gulp of the whiskey. “This stuff is exquisite,” he says, using the word mockingly.
“They're not that far away,” Sam responds with a smirk. He's still got their scent memorized, their souls. In fact, the scent is still strong in his memory, especially in this enclosed space, that he still feels it with intensity. If he walked into a diner and ordered french fries, he would know instantly if the waitress was or wasn't one of the people that tried to carve him out of this world. “Are you proud of me for not killing Crowley?”
Dean snorts. “As ever. How's Ruby?”
“I think she managed to bring down a few more witches recently, so, pretty happy on that front. Anyway, how was your week?”
///
Dean's week pretty much mirrored Sam's, except it involved much less routine. He did meet up with Crowley as well, though he's not sure which day of the week it was, and they both talked jokingly about Samantha's demon-cidal tendencies when it came to the King of Hell.
They probably went for drinks after that, which is why Dean doesn't remember much of it.
Anyway, on Monday, he woke up in a bed under a blanket with a soft-blue daisy pattern. Next to him was a very pretty, very human girl with curves in all the right places, and he felt absolutely nothing for her. However, his other parts felt a lot, so he nudged her awake. He didn't leave the cocoon of the soft-blue blanket until late that night, and then only to go to a different bar.
Tuesday was cold motel room sheets and whoever he had been with the night before. They left without leaving a message. Just as well.
Then it was time to go back to his responsibilities, which, sadly, involved less alcohol and more answering calls from desperate humans who wished to have their soul taken in exchange for a few happy years. Dean gets that, sure he does. He thinks that, were he human, he might be tempted to do the same thing - it's a sweet deal, and often, meeting these humans, he smirks knowing that some of them are his future colleagues.
He likes the crossroad work - this is the oldest profession in the world, not whores selling themselves. It's smiling, it's saying, “Sure, pal, I can set you up with a pretty sweet deal, all it takes is a kiss and, y'know, your soul in ten years.” It's feeling that pure thrill when the kiss happens. The oblivious person's thoughts that go ten years is a thousand years away. Illogical, desperate humans.
Dean loves them.
He spent most of his week doing this, showing up in Montana and Ohio and Oklahoma. He sneaked one short trip over the ocean, flying his smoke over the salty mass, and kissed a really pretty Scottish boy so he could have that gallery opening he always wanted. He flew back and kissed a girl with awful adult acne, but her lips were so soft he smiled into it.
He slept all through Friday in the deepest cavern of Hell you can imagine because he was very, very tired. There was a call, from an older man with a beard and a ridiculous filthy cap, who tried to lure him to a crossroads just outside of Sioux Falls. Come out here, you sonofabitch, but Dean was, as was said, very tired.
So he didn't go. He felt nothing about that either.
///
“I don't understand your infatuation with humans,” Sam comments, rolling his empty glass of whiskey over the surface of the bar, toying with it. “They're annoying and they want us dead.”
“Can you blame them?” Dean asks, his eyebrow arching up. “We want them dead as well. They just don't know - they don't know there's more.”
“I don't know, is there?”
“Ugh, you're annoying.” Dean wraps the conversation up and pours himself another drink. The bottle is almost empty - they've been pouring it down their throats without remorse, but they don't feel much. You don't feel much as a demon in general, but it takes an exceptional amount of alcohol to really get to you. You have to find a liquor store and drink it, Dean thinks for some reason, the words inexplicable to him, not knowing where they came from. But he laughs at them.
“I'd better run,” Sam says suddenly, hopping off the bar stool and grabbing his dark-brown jacket. He throws it over his shoulders. “There's a coven that knows their stuff too well, Ruby wanted me to help her out.”
“She admitted to needing help? Wow.”
“Shocking, I know. Anyway, more souls for us, your King of Hell friend will be pleased,” Sam says as he taps Dean's shoulder once, then twice for good measure.
“He's not my friend, I just tolerate him so he doesn't bug me with those hellhounds. You know I fucking hate those things.”
Sam shakes his head, Dean's distaste of the beasts an unfathomable thing. “I'll see you in a week,” he says instead of continuing on with the banter. He's already running late.
“Yeah. See ya, Sammy,” Dean says just over the edge of Sam's closing the door behind him. He's suddenly alone in the bar, which now seems dusty and old and abandoned. He finishes the whiskey out of the bottle, then smashes it over the bar because he can. Little pieces of glass catch in his plaid shirt and he shakes them out.
He gets up. There's work to do. The old man from Sioux Falls might call again, and Dean can't say he's all that excited to kiss him.
///
Every week, Dean drives an old Honda right into central Nebraska and parks in front of an old abandoned bar. The sign reads Harvelle's Roadhouse and it must have been at least semi-pretty once upon a time, when it was lit up in neon and the lights inside were on, people buzzing it into life.
His Honda is never the only one in the parking lot. There's an even older car parked a few spots away, a '67 Chevrolet Impala. Dean kind of wants to steal it, because it sure is a pretty car, but for some reason, he feels like it used to belong to someone important. Besides, it kind of adds to the whole thing. He once looked through the window - there were old burger wrappers and cassettes on the passenger seat, and a bunch of old clothes, mostly plaid and jackets and torn jeans, on the backseat. He spotted some blood in there as well.
That's a car with a history, he thought, and left it alone.
Anyway, every week, Dean drives here and Sam walks. Together, they walk into the bar, which stands unguarded and empty. The only thing here is dust. And them, when they visit.
They don't really know why they do this. Why it's always this place, every single week, why it's here that they always reconnect after a week apart. Such a stupid habit, with no explanation at all. Dean doesn't even remember when it started, and he's sure Sam doesn't either. They've been like this for a pretty long time, or at least it feels that way.
Hell and crossroads and hounds and all that.
They walk into the Roadhouse, and sometimes they chat about who Harvelle was and where he (she?) is now. They found a picture once, one that someone cut in half. The one half that remained showed a guy with a mullet - which Dean kind of digs - a woman with a wrinkle between her eyebrows, and a young girl with blond locks framing her face. That was a long time ago; they tossed the picture after discussing who might have been on the other half. There was a hand, reaching around the blonde girl's shoulders, wearing a plaid shirt. Maybe it was the guy who owned the fancy car outside. Who knows.
They sit on the barstools that feel so damn familiar, almost like home, if demons knew of such a thing.
In the dimly lit bar, they pour each other a glass of expensive whiskey they didn't pay for. Dean wants to suggest a toast, but they've long since moved past such unnecessary gestures.