Fic: For With The Heart | Sam/Dean | NC17
Title: For With The Heart | PDF
Author: sowell
Artist: alice_and_emma
Art Masterpost: Here
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~11,000
Credits: 1) A heartfelt thanks to alice_and_emma for being kind, talented, and friendly. It was a pleasure to work with them and to write for their beautiful art. Make sure you go and leave feedback at the art masterpost! 2) I can't give enough credit to tsubasalove87 and girlygothic for their beta work. This fic would be hopelessly incoherent without them.
A/N: 1) Written for the 2012 spn_reversebang challenge 2) This takes place post-Purgatory, and I've made the assumption here that Cas gets out. 3) Title is taken from Romans 10:10: "For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved."
ETA: Now witha shiny new PDF! Thanks to deadflowers5!
In life, Carolyn Cutter was probably a loving wife and mother. In death, she’s a gigantic pain in the ass, and Dean was sick of this job two days ago.
“The guns have rock salt, not bullets,” Sam says, all reasonable. Like you can reason with a ghost. “It won’t kill us.”
Carolyn just gives that crazy-ass spirit cackle and cocks the gun without lifting a finger.
“Sam,” Dean growls from the side of his mouth. “Not helping.”
“If you have any better ideas, now would be a good time,” Sam hisses, imploring expression dropping away from his face. Jesus, Sam is scary sometimes.
"You don’t understand. My family needs me.” Her lips part in a smile. It’s ghastly on her wasted face. Dean flashes back to the old photograph her husband had produced. She’d been smiling in the picture, sparkling green eyes and honey hair and an infant balanced on her hip. Nothing to suggest she’d been practicing witchcraft on her own time. No indication that she’d hold on and not let go when a traffic accident took her life two years ago.
She’d written love notes in blood on the bathroom mirror, cooked breakfast overnight and left it cold and congealed on the kitchen counter. Her husband had looked decades older than his fifty years, and her son had been too shaky to even lift a glass of water. It had been too much like Bobby, too close a reminder of Bobby’s ghost going pale and vengeful. Dean feels his anger surge all over again.
“Even if you kill us,” Dean says, “it won’t help you get your family back. You think you’re doing them a favor by sticking around? They’re terrified of you.”
“Dean,” Sam says, alarmed. A round hits him square in the chest, slamming him against the ground before he even realizes he’s falling. Carolyn’s wasted face looms over him, layers of sorrow and fury blanketing the insanity.
“You don’t know,” she moans, ghostly fingers on Dean’s cheek. Her other hand wraps around his throat, lifting his shoulders clear off the ground. “To leave what you love. To be parted. It’s the worst pain.”
The things Dean knows about loss could fill this crazy bitch’s skull five times over. “Quit. Whining,” he forces out through the pressure around his throat.
She trails fingers down his jaw, over his shoulders, and down his sternum. “It’s terrible,” she whispers. “It’s like having your heart ripped out.” A sharp pressure pierces him, slipping between his ribs. Cold fingers slide around the meat of his heart and squeeze, and everything whites out for a second. He can feel her cool breath against his ear, a low hiss. He can’t make out her words, but the tone writhes up his spine, sinuous in the way it circles his brain.
“Sam,” he chokes out through the agony. Just as he thinks his insides are about to explode, Carolyn rears back. Flames lick at her feet, roaring upward.
She grabs at her hair, churning eyes never leaving Dean’s. “You’ll find out,” she wails. “You’ll understand.” The last bit of her flares out, and Dean loses consciousness.
*
It takes Sam an hour straight to clean all the rock salt out of Dean’s chest, and by then Dean is so far sunk in Jack Daniels he barely feels the pain. He shares his good fortune with Sam, grand and slurred.
“Don’t worry,” Sam tells him, smiling slightly. “You’ll have plenty of pain to make up for it tomorrow.”
“Killjoy,” Dean says promptly, but he can’t wipe the goofy smile off his face. One less witch to stain the world. One more Winchester victory. Sometimes he thinks he and Sam are really goddamn awesome. Really the best team in the whole goddamn world.
“Uh huh,” Sam says, and Dean realizes he’s said the whole thing out loud. Sam is barely paying attention to him, stretched out now between two motel chairs. His laptop is glowing in the dim room, perched on miles of denim-covered legs.
“Sammy? Job’s done. Time to sleep.”
Sam looks at him, subdued in the blue light.
“I will. Soon.”
“Nothing to research,” Dean says, face half-mushed against the pillows. “Ding dong the bitch is dead.”
“She put her fingers into you,” Sam says, which sounds dirty enough that Dean leers out of habit. Sam gives him an exasperated look. “We don’t know what she was doing. I just want to make sure she didn’t…I don’t know. Mess with you.”
“I feel fine,” Dean says, the line between Sam’s eyebrows sobering him up more than he’d like. Sam waves him off.
“Go to sleep. I’ll just look for a little bit.”
Dean’s never been good at falling asleep while Sam’s still awake, but the exhaustion and alcohol are doing him in.
“Mmm. Go get ‘em tiger,” Dean mumbles into his pillow. Through lowered eyelashes, he can see Sam shaking his head, mouth curving. Dean inhales the cheap motel detergent and sleeps.
*
Pain wakes him, agony knifing through his chest and back, He shoots upright in bed, gasping and reaching blindly for his gun. “Fuck fuck…Sam!” he bellows. They missed something, they didn’t kill Carolyn after all, she found a way past the salt lines…
Through the haze of pain, he sees Sam slumped against the door jamb of the bathroom, face leeched of color. His fists are pressed over his chest, mirroring the spot where Dean’s own heart is threatening to explode.
Sam’s right wrist is circled in gold, shimmering unnaturally. There’s a thin chain stretching between him and Dean, delicate and mesmerizing. Dean looks down and sees the other end of the chain, latched to a cuff around his left wrist.
Sam stumbles back toward him and, ever so gradually, the pain lessens. It leaves a dull, echoing ache, like the soreness after a cramp.
“Goddammit,” Dean says hoarsely. “What now?”
*
It takes them a while to puzzle it out. The cuffs shine like gold, inscribed with indecipherable swirls. The chain stretches like spider silk, lengthening as they move away from each other. They manage to put ten feet of space between them before the pain returns, sharp and burning. The further they pull apart, the worse it gets, until Dean can barely breathe, barely see, can only fold in on himself and gasp.
They figure out they can get from the near bed to the doorway, but not all the way to the parking lot. It stretches from bathroom to table, but not far enough for one of them to sit on the bed while the other takes a dump. It’s a problem, because Dean is hung over enough to puke three times in the next hour, nearly dragging Sam into the bathroom with him.
“Oh my god, I’m gonna be sick,” Sam says, face turned away from Dean’s sprawled figure. He’s a little green.
“Wuss,” Dean says, and throws up again.
*
“Got to be a spell,” Sam mutters. “What did she say to you?”
“Christ, I don’t know. Something about the pain of being parted, maybe?”
“That’s it?”
Dean gives him a baleful look. “I was a little distracted, what with chest full of rock salt and the cavity search.”
“Great,” Sam says. “You had to go and say that thing about her family.”
“I had to do something,” Dean snaps. “Your brilliant plan was getting us nowhere.”
Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay. If it’s a spell, there has to be a way to reverse it. We just need to figure it out.”
It’s times like these that Dean feels Bobby's loss the most keenly. He didn’t realize until Bobby was gone how much they depended on him.
They try everything they can think of to break the chain or remove the cuffs. A silver knife, coated in salt and holy water. Shooting the chain with salt rounds. Every incantation they know. Even just breaking the chain with their own strength. Nothing works. The damned thing just glows with an otherworldly light, mocking them.
They find that anything attached to them - clothes, weapons, whatever junk food Dean happens to be shoving in his mouth at the moment - passes through the chain like mist. Anything else - walls, doorways, furniture - stops them short. They manage to knock over every lamp in the room and send each other sprawling at least twice before Dean gets fed up.
“Screw it,” he says, frustrated. “I’m starving. I saw a diner a few miles back.”
He’s halfway to the door before he realizes. The pain makes him stumble to his knees, deep and burning, pressing from the inside out.
“Shit,” he mumbles, crawling back toward Sam. Blackness dots the edge of his vision.
Sam is sweating, curled up on his side like he might hurl. “Just…quit moving,” Sam manages. “Before you kill us both.”
*
The car is a challenge; they both have to crawl in the passenger side of the Impala, and Dean almost unmans himself on the gearshift. The chain drapes lazily across their laps as they drive, glinting in the autumn sun.
“So what’s our cover?” Sam asks, peering out at the restaurant. Suzie Q’s, the sign reads, lit up in neon blue.
“Well, I was thinking we’d tell them we’re hungry, so we decided to go out for lunch. Plausible enough?”
“I mean the chain, Dean,” Sam snaps. “Don’t you think our server might wonder why we’re chained together?”
“Don’t sweat it,” Dean tells him. “I’ll just say you’re my idiot little brother and I have to keep you on a leash so you don’t get lost.”
He ignores Sam’s clenched jaw and swings his way out the driver side, dragging Sam with him.
It’s midmorning on a Tuesday, and the only other customers are three hollow-eyed truckers and a white-haired grandpa in a cardigan. None of them so much as glances at them when Sam and Dean walk in. Their waitress shows them to a booth and leaves the menu without a backwards look.
Dean figures they’re all too weary to be fazed by two chain-linked brothers, but Sam leans forward. “Dean,” he says, hushed. “I don’t think anyone else can see it.”
Their waitress returns with their coffees, and Dean flashes her a megawatt smile. “Thanks…Doris,” he reads off her nametag, and lays his forearm along the edge of the table. The chain drags brightly against the chipped plastic, gleaming in plain sight.
“Sure thing,” she says with a wan smile and poises her pen over her order book.
“Okay,” Dean says after she’s gone. “So it’s invisible.”
They trade theories over coffee and toast and get absolutely nowhere. Their dad’s journal has a hundred examples of curses - blindness, lovesickness, fear, wrath, extra limbs, invisibility - but nothing about a golden chain.
“What now?” Sam asks glumly. A little too glumly for Dean’s mood.
“My god, perk up, grumpy,” Dean says. “Have you seen some of the curses in there? We got off easy.” Sam’s mouth turns down, and he looks away.
*
The first night Dean forgets and makes it halfway to the bathroom before Sam rockets upright, grabbing his chest in pain.
The second night Sam somehow gets the chain looped around the headboard and yanks Dean clear off the bed.
The third night they settle onto the same bed, curled toward each other warily. They’ve slept in close quarters before, but this feels different. It feels intimate, sharing a bed when there’s a free one just feet away.
“No cuddling,” Dean warns, and Sam rolls his eyes.
*
They exhaust all their contacts, most of whom either laugh at them or refuse to pick up the phone. Between the apocalypse and the whole Purgatory deal, they’re pretty much persona non grata in the hunting community.
They call Cas, who’s equally useless.
“This is the work of a human, not a demon,” Castiel says, studying the glowing links with curious eyes. “You’ll need to find a human to undo it.”
Sam finds a psychic on the Internet. The real deal by all accounts, although they’ve both heard that before.
“Essie?” Dean says. “What is she, a chihuahua?”
It’s a two-day drive to Essie Mae Johnson’s home. They don’t call ahead; nevertheless, Essie Mae is waiting for them when Dean pulls the Impala down her long gravel driveway. She has a hand lifted to shade her eyes from the sun, and Dean can see she’s short and rail-thin with graying hair curling around her ears. She’s dressed in jeans and a flannel and looks like the grandmother Dean never wanted.
She lets out a low whistle as he and Sam approach, wary and slow. “You boys got yourself in a pickle for sure,” she says. “Come on in.”
They file through her front hall, so narrow and slanted that Dean has to turn his shoulders to avoid knocking pictures clear off the wall. The hall opens up into a dusty sitting room, crammed with shelves, knickknacks, and piles of old books. The whole place is covered in faded green wallpaper, geometric designs curling every which way.
Essie moves toward an overstuffed armchair and gestures towards the matching one opposite it, across from a small table.
”Sit,” she orders.
Sam gets there first, throwing his lanky frame into it, and Dean is left standing. The next nearest seat is clear across the room, and he’s not about to risk another bout of agony just to take a load off. He plants his feet and tries to look slightly less awkward than he feels.
“So I take it you can see this?” he asks, lifting his wrist.
She sinks down in response, reaching out to touch the chain. Her eyes are ice blue, clear and sharp in the dim light of her house.
“Isn’t that something?” she says under her breath.
“What?” Dean asks, heart skittering. “What’s something?”
“Never seen the like of it. Something got you good.”
“Ghost,” Sam supplies, leaning forward. “What can we do about it?”
“First things first,” she says. Her eyes flick sideways to a splintered board tacked to the wall behind them. It’s painted white and scrawled over with words and numbers. It takes Dean a second to realize he’s looking at a list of services and prices.
“Oh for the love of - ” Dean starts, and then stops when she raises an eyebrow.
“Curses,” she says. “Seventy-five.”
“Fine,” Sam says impatiently. “Just, how the hell do we break it?”
She leaves to fetch three glasses of sweet tea, and when Dean’s sure she’s out of earshot, he whacks Sam upside the head.
“What was that for?” Sam asks, turning to glare.
“She’s a hack,” Dean whispers furiously. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“She can see the chain,” Sam reminds him. “If you’ve got any other bright ideas, I’m listening.”
Dean sighs in displeasure and leans his shoulders back against the wall. The cuff is a little warmer than usual, like it’s absorbed the heat of his anger and turned it back against him. He wonders if Sam feels it too.
She comes back in carrying a tray, which Sam jumps to his feet to take from her. Sam is the boy that every girl wants to take home to mom and dad, Dean thinks. Polite and steady and strong. Dean’s still not sure if he should be pleased or bitter that he’s the only one who gets to see the batshit underneath.
Essie Mae gets to work while they drink their tea, testing the strength of the chain, dousing it in oil, throwing her cards. “Hmm,” she says when it stretches.
“And when you walk away from each other?” she asks, looking right up at Dean.
“Like knives,” he says. “Not fun.”
“Hmmm,” she says again.
She finally rises again, sighing. “Well,” she says. “You were right. You’ve got a curse on your hands.”
“Yeah, we got that,” Dean says. “What do we do about it?”
The corners of her mouth twitch the slightest bit. “Nothing.”
“Excuse me?” Dean says, pushing off the wall.
“What do you mean, nothing?” Sam asks, outrage and disbelief warring in his voice. “It’s a curse. There has to be a way to break it.”
She shrugs. “Not this one,” she says. “It’s strong. It was either done out of great love or great anger. You said you vanquished the spirit?”
Dean’s not sure why all the questions are being directed at him, but he nods. “Uh…yeah.”
Essie Mae’s face breaks into a smile, stretching age lines into her pale skin. “That’s good news. It will fade. A curse can’t continue to exist once its source is gone.”
Dean’s muscles relax under a flood of relief. He hadn’t even realized he was clenching so hard.
“Great,” Sam says. “When?”
Essie Mae shrugs again, still smiling. “Maybe a month,” she says. “Maybe a year. Maybe five years.”
Dean stares at her for a beat, unsure he heard her right.
“Wait,” Sam says. “Five years?”
She turns to Sam, eyes amused. “Maybe ten,” she says. “There’s no way to tell. It will fade eventually. The when depends on you and the strength of the curse.”
Dean takes a step forward, feeling the tug of metal on his wrist. “What does that mean? Jesus, lady. Just tell us what to do and we’ll do it.”
She looks entirely unimpressed by his rage. “Curses are alive,” she says. “They’re like a storm, not a solid structure. There’s no way to predict what will happen, how you and the curse will affect each other. You must let it play out.”
He turns to look at Sam, at the dismay in his hazel eyes. Ten years, Dean thinks. Chained together, never alone. They’ll kill each other, or at least Sam will kill him. Even now, Sam’s face is pinching shut, mouth pressed tight, eyes growing murderous. He shoves a wad of cash into Essie Mae’s hand.
“Thanks,” he says shortly, then strides toward the door.
Dean turns to follow him, mute underneath his whirling thoughts. Ten years.
Essie Mae catches him by the arm before he’s taken two steps. He looks, and Sam is waiting for him at the door, fingers drumming in an agitated rhythm.
“The when depends on you,” she says, and Dean’s jaw clenches. “You mentioned,” he says. She shakes her head. “Not the two of you. You.” Her voice is low, for him only. On his arm, her slim, strong fingers curl. He freezes, caught by her fervent gaze.
“The curse,” she says. “It doesn’t have the power to keep him.”
Sam, Dean thinks, and can’t force down his jolt of panic. In his mind, Sam boards the bus for Stanford, shoulders broad and uncompromising.
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. She’s watching him, steady and knowing. Her face is freckled and slim, youthful despite the age lines. She’s a weird blend of young and old, human and spirit, and Dean feels trapped under her touch.
“What does that mean? What…” he stumbles a little, but it’s useless. He can’t stop the words. “What will?” he asks numbly.
She smiles again, wreathed in wrinkles. She pats his cheek with a papery palm, then slides the cash back into his limp fingers.
“I decided not to charge you after all,” she says. “Good luck.”
“Wait a second,” he says hoarsely.
“Dean,” Sam calls sharply. “Let’s go.”
Dean trails out the door after Sam, fingers clenched around the wad of cash. He stands outside the passenger door for long seconds, staring down at the key in his hand. Sam has to shove him through the door to get him moving.
“Sorry,” Sam says as Dean’s starting the car. “You were right. She wasn’t the real deal.”
Dean tosses the cash into Sam’s lap, and Sam looks down at it, surprised. “You lifted it?”
“She gave it back,” Dean says. He stares straight ahead, not moving. In the rearview mirror he can see her, watching them from the open doorway.
“What did she say to you back there?” Sam asks curiously, and Dean’s heart pounds too quickly in his chest.
“Nothing,” he says, and puts the car in gear.
*
It’s not like the curse changes much. They’ve always lived in each other’s pockets anyway, stood a little too close, dogged each other’s footsteps. The only difference now is they don’t have a choice. The pain of separation is more than metaphorical now. They can’t move away from each other without that knifelike pain, and the further they separate the worse it becomes. Without fail he’s pulled back to Sam, no physical force dragging him, but magnet-strong all the same. It’s only when they’re in touching distance that Dean can really breathe.
Dean figured it out right away, but fucking Sam needed to push it, of course. The first days are a hazy memory of pain, of Sam pulling further and further away, his face growing strained and white. Once, he made it a full fifteen feet before he collapsed. Dean had to crawl to him before they could both climb back to their feet. It’s like a hook in both their hearts, Dean thinks, tugging deeper and bloodier with each step.
It’s not all bad. His little brother can’t hide from him, and as much as that pisses Sam off, it fills Dean with an almost constant flood of well-being. He only wishes it had happened years ago, when he was sixteen and Sam was twelve and had a bad habit of skulking off alone. He could have done with a leash back then.
Still, better late than never. There won’t be any more demon fuck buddies, no more kidnappings, no more secret college applications. There’s nothing Sam can do that Dean can’t see, and he stops pretending to respect Sam’s privacy a week in.
“Dean,” Sam says through clenched teeth. “Back. Off.”
Dean squints at the computer screen. “What is that, a message board?”
“It’s research,” Sam bites out. “And if you don’t stop breathing down my neck…”
“What?” Dean taunts. “Gonna take a walk? Too stuffy in here for you?”
Sam slams his hand down on the table like he’s about to stalk away. Problem is, there’s nowhere to go.
“You know, this is perfect,” Sam seethes. He pulls jerkily at the cuff around his wrist. “If Lucifer wanted me in hell, he could’ve just chained me to you. No pit needed.”
It knocks the breath out of Dean for a few seconds. When he finally manages to find his voice, it sounds a little rough to his own ears.
“Good to know,” he says. “I’ll remember that for next time.”
*
Sam is a grabby sleeper, long limbs shifting restlessly until he finds something to latch onto. Dean half-wonders how Jessica put up with it. Dean fights it for the first couple of nights, extracting himself from heavy limbs and rolling Sam away when he can. The fifth or sixth time he wakes up pinned under Sam, he gives up. It’s weird - more than a little gay - but he can’t pretend it’s not comfortable. He wakes up tucked into Sam’s side, two sets of legs tangled together. Dean’s a pretty simple creature, and this - Sam alive and furnace-hot and clutching in his sleep - is enough to stave off the nightmares most of the time.
Sometimes he wakes with Sam hard against his hip. Dean has to ignore his first instinct, which demands move flee fight. Instead, he lies still and focuses on Sam’s beating heart, ignoring the answering heat between his own legs.
They perch on the floor outside the bathroom when the other is showering, far enough away to afford some privacy, but close enough to stave off the pain of separation.
Sometimes Sam takes too long, and Dean tries not to imagine what he’s doing, tries to ignore the hitch of breath and the busy splashing of the shower. Not much has changed, except there’s no way out now, not even an inch of space.
*
They spend two weeks getting used to their new situation, and then they start chasing cases again. The first time they try to hunt is a disaster, pure and unmitigated. It’s probably Sam’s fault, or maybe Dean’s, because Dean knows better than to let Sam get all…organized.
Sam drafts up a plan of attack, and there are sketches and matrices and contingency plans and possibly code names.
“It’s simple, really,” Sam explains, hands moving in sweeping gestures. “We just have to mirror each other. If we watch each other’s feet, make sure to stay within ten steps, it won’t be a problem.” He smiles at Dean, happy with purpose, and Dean has to work to keep his face impassive. Sam’s open smile is a little addictive.
“No, really,” Sam says. “It might even make us better. You know, more efficient?”
What they fail to take into account is that the demon can spot the damned chain at a hundred paces. When it sends Dean telekinetically flying into a tree, Sam is dragged along, too.
In addition to his arm nearly ripping out of its socket, Dean has to deal with every bit of his breath pointing inward and stabbing him in the heart. He keens without meaning to, and from the corner of his eye he can see Sam, writhing and gasping in the dirt. The chain is pulled taut between them, a glinting trip wire.
The demon uses it to yank Dean up, and Dean’s limbs flop uselessly. All his oxygen is caught somewhere in his throat.
“Stupid,” the demon smirks at him, black eyes in a pale, pert face. “I’ve heard stories, but you Winchesters are really…. How you made it this far is a mystery.”
It puts a hand around Dean’s throat and lifts, and Dean feels the chain tug as he’s pulled away from Sam.
“Averted the apocalypse,” the demon sneers, “only to die in Minnesota. Daddy would be so proud.”
Then Sam’s reciting the Rituale Romanum and the demon is spewing out in a rush of black smoke, leaving a dead shell in a miniskirt on the ground.
“Great plan. Super,” Dean says, dragging himself weakly back toward Sam. Sam is on his back, chest heaving. “It would have worked if you’d followed my lead,” Sam replies without opening his eyes. Dean doesn’t bother to argue. His shoulder is funky and his legs feel all rubbery. He thinks he might never be able to breathe properly again. He probes at the shallow cut on Sam’s forehead, and Sam’s eyes open, muzzy and unfocused. “No more demons until we figure this out,” Dean says. Sam’s eyes fall shut again. “Yeah. Deal.”
*
They stick to hunting monster-type things: vampires, werewolves, shifters, wendigos. Things that are still partly human, things that can’t see the chain to use it against them. They almost die a few more times, but that’s par for the course. It wouldn’t feel right if they weren’t dodging death on a weekly basis. It takes a few jobs, but they figure it out. Dean learns the sound of Sam’s sneaker sliding in the dirt. He learns to judge Sam’s stride with his ears and the prickle on the back of his neck, and he starts to match Sam’s movements with his own. He swings left when Sam swings right, perfect mirrors of each other. At every job they leave arced tracks in the dust, a protective circle from guarding each other’s backs.
Dean tries to shove that synchronicity into the rest of their lives, but the curse stops him every time. Sam has never done well in crowds, and now he looks at Dean like he’s being crowded all the time - resentful and cornered and itching for space.
Dean ignores him at first, then takes to agitating him on purpose. Because if Sam’s going to be bitchy anyway, why not? And Sam is alarmingly easy to agitate these days. A well-timed tug on their leash earns Dean a glare; turning up Metallica over Sam’s complaints results in four straight hours of stony silence.
Once, Dean drags them both into the back room of a club for a lap dance, and Sam glares, red-faced, at the ceiling the entire time.
“Like a freakin’ virgin,” Dean chuckles on the way out, but Sam doesn’t rise to the bait. He crawls into his side of the car without a word, then slams the door so hard the whole car shakes.
“No need to take it out on the car,” Dean mutters, and he sees Sam’s fingers clench around the seatbelt.
*
In Arizona, their waitress’s name is Alyssa. Her name fits, he thinks. She’s Alyssa Milano-ish, with a broader face and a bigger rack.
“How come all the waitresses are so pretty here?” he asks as she sets a heaping slice of pie in front of him.
“All of us?” she asks archly.
“I don’t know,” Dean tells her. “You’re the only one I’ve been looking at all night.”
She rolls her eyes, but her mouth is full and smiling.
Sam kicks him under the table when she walks away. “What are you doing?” he hisses.
“What does it look like?” Dean answers. The cuff sears his skin, so scorching that Dean’s surprised it isn’t glowing red.
“You can’t take her home,” Sam says witheringly. He shakes his own cuffed wrist. “You’re occupied.”
And Dean hadn’t really been considering taking her anywhere, but Sam’s sour face is making him reconsider.
“Watch me,” he says.
“Dean,” Sam warns through clenched teeth, and then Alyssa is back with the check. She lays it right in front of Dean, painted nails pinning it to the tabletop.
“Have a nice night,” she says. Dean glances down and sees her number scrawled across the bottom. She looks back at him as she walks away, hips swaying.
“Dude,” Sam says. “I don’t care if we’re living in each other’s pockets. I draw the line at watching one of your sleazy hookups.”
“Better close your eyes then,” Dean advises, and pushes his way out of the booth. He’s resolved now, decided as much by the churning panic in Sam’s eyes as by the girl herself. He half-expects Sam to stay put, treat them both to a little dinnertime agony, but Sam scrambles after him.
“Hey,” he says to Alyssa, and she swings around. “What time are you free?”
To the rest...