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"Close," Alastair murmurs. "Very close. But no cigar."
And then he takes Dean's hand, the one holding the blade, and Alastair guides it to his own chest. "Like this," he says, and pushes, and Dean watches the knife sink into demon flesh, or what passes for flesh in Hell, where the corporeal is nothing more than convenient shorthand. "Yes," Alastair hisses as Dean drags the blade down, splitting him open.
"Yes," says Alastair. "Just like that."
And then Dean wakes up.
Darkness, quiet. The sour musty smell of cheap motels. Sam is sleeping in the next bed, and the clock says 3:13 AM. Dean sits up in bed, rubs his face. Stares blankly at the wall for a minute, waiting for what, he doesn't know.
At around 3:30, Sam finds him out sitting on the trunk of the Impala and smoking his third cigarette. He stopped smoking when Sam came back from Stanford, but there had been a pack of Camels in the glove compartment of the car he hotwired to get to Bobby's and, well, fuck it. Sam doesn't say anything - ran out of ways to say "those are bad for you", maybe - and just leans back against the trunk next to Dean. When Dean offers him the pack, more for the gesture than anything, Sam surprises him by taking one. Dean flicks his zippo open and Sam leans forward, cupping his palms against the wind, puffing, puffing, and then his cigarette is lit. He looks up at Dean, and the zippo's flame is reflected in his eyes, and for a moment Dean is mesmerized by its flickering. It dances brightly, mimicking lightning.
"Hey," says Sam, and Dean flicks the zippo close.
+
He's never sure that they're just dreams until he wakes up.
"Don't be afraid to get creative, kiddo," Alastair had said, and Dean remembers all too clearly the first drive from Pontiac to Sioux Falls after he escaped the grave. The mundane shit on the radio and the blueness of the sky, the aching thrill in his heart at the thought of seeing Bobby again. Every time the song changed or he hit a pothole, every time he thought about Sam so hard that his chest hurt, Dean had expected the world to disappear. It was too good to be true. He expected the land and sky to melt back into Hell, and for Alastair to appear in the passenger side with a wink and a made you look, holding that familiar blade.
"Oh, my boy," he might say. "Did you really think I'd let you go so easily?"
+
Now that Alastair is on earth, he could be anywhere.
"You okay, man?" Sam asks, and Dean tears his eyes away from the shadows. There had been something about the way the branches interrupted the light. There was some coincidence with the howling wind that brought to mind half a bloodied face saying please.
Dean answers, "Yeah." But he's been twitchy since the Anna incident, and they both know it.
He glances back at the trees, and this time they're just trees.
You miss me? he imagines Alastair saying, imagines him smirking and slavering with his true demon face. The thousand teeth. The glittering eyes. The black smoke winding around Dean's body, constricting. Do you? Go on, you can tell me. I'm bored of all your old secrets. Make me a new one.
"You sure?" Sam asks.
Dean says yeah again.
+
Dad used to tell him stories about old war buddies who got sharpened bamboo shoved under their fingernails, and that was what Dean was thinking of the first time he did it to someone on the rack. He didn't have bamboo, but he did have his knives. Even better, he had patience, and all the time in the world.
"How sweet," Alastair said. "How inspiring! Thirty years in hell, my boy, and you are still your father's son."
And then Dean felt Alastair's tendrils of black smoke touch the nape of his neck and slide around his throat. He felt them slide down his back like drops of cool water as he angled another blade against a finger and pushed.
Alastair liked to watch. Every so often he would slither into Dean's space, curious and smug, incorporeal like he preferred to be. He would be nothing but black smoke or some creature of fire and knives, wrapping around Dean and inside him too, watching with Dean's eyes; sliding himself into Dean's hands to feel the viscera slip between his fingers. The fire burned and the knives still cut into Dean's skin, but he was inured by now, or at least expecting the pain. It occurred to him to wonder what they must look like to the soul on the rack, the sight of Alastair twined around him. Would it know it was looking at two separate creatures?
"Now," Alastair said, "do something you learned from me."
Dean ignored him.
"Oh, come on. Thirty years in my hands and you're telling me you learned nothing from it?"
"You gonna let me work or what?" Dean spat out, and Alastair's grip tightened. Wicked things bit into his skin, holding him in place.
"Some things don't change," Alastair murmured, and a tongue of flame licked against Dean's cheek, bestowing the gentlest agony. "That mouth is one of my favorite things about you, Dean. You want to make it work, I can make it work. I may have let you off the rack, boy, but that's not to say the rack don't miss you. So yes, fight me, fight me all you want! Tell me no and it'll be like the old days. Tell me no--" Alastair sank his claws deep into Dean's stomach, "--and we'll cut the yes out of you all over again."
"Fuck you--" Dean gasped.
"Show me," Alastair barked. "Show me what you've learned. Show me what I taught you!"
"You fucking--"
And then Alastair surrounded him completely, consumed him in darkness and pain. When Dean opened his mouth to scream, Alastair sent hellfire down his throat.
"Do it," Alastair hissed.
And he didn't let up even as Dean did so. Dean burned inside and out, torn to pieces by the same creature holding him together, but thirty years on earth and thirty more in Hell have taught him nothing if not the discipline to work through the pain. He was the dying embers of a man, but the bright flame of a new and more twisted beast.
"Show me!" Alastair demanded, and Dean raised his knife to the soul on the rack, who gibbered and pleaded no no no, but Dean knew from personal experience not to listen to the words of the damned. He cut into the chest, cracked open the ribcage, and Alastair purred, "Yes," in his ear as Dean cut out the heart.
"To your health," Dean said, a parody of a toast, then - not knowing whom he hated more - he bit into the still-beating heart as Alastair laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
+
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, Dean should've been paying attention, he should've been faster, he should've known, but by the time Dean catches up with Sam, the werewolf is already all over him. Dean can barely distinguish one silhouette from the other.
"Sam!" he yells, and the werewolf looks up. That moment of distraction is all Dean needs. He fires as he runs, sloppy, desperate, and the bullet lodges itself in the werewolf's shoulder.
"Dean--" Sam chokes out, but doesn't finish because Dean throws himself at the werewolf, and the two of them go rolling on the forest floor.
The werewolf scratches at him, but Dean already has his knife out, and it's one two three, werewolf with a slit throat, a stab to the chest, a long cut across the belly. And Dean. Can't. Stop. A werewolf dies from a silver bullet to the heart, but it'll die of multiple lacerations too, given enough lacerations. Dean has had forty years to learn how to cut into a body. He knows how to channel hate and fear and revenge into precise incisions of the blade, and how dare this beast even try, how dare it try to take Sam, to be in this world and take Sam.
"Dean."
Like Dean didn't spend all his life and his death keeping Sam alive in him, in his thoughts and what was left of his heart. Alastair tried to take that away, always desecrated that piece of him with words that Dean hoped to fucking god weren't true, and now--
"Dean, stop!"
--and now the nightmares are bleeding over to reality, or maybe he's still in a nightmare, or back in Hell, he's not sure. Maybe it doesn't matter. He hasn't felt this way for a long time; he hasn't had the chance to.
Someone touches his shoulder, and Dean whirls around. It's a good thing Sam has quick reflexes, or else the werewolf wouldn't be the only one with a gash in the gut. Even with the forest canopy blocking out the moonlight, Dean can see the shock in Sam's eyes. (The disgust? The loathing? Regret?)
"It's dead," Sam says.
And it is. Dean drops the knife. He stumbles back, scuttles back until he feels himself pressed against a tree trunk, and tries to breathe slower, deeper.
"Jesus christ, Dean," Sam says. He's by Dean's side suddenly, like Dean still deserves that. We're monsters, both of us monsters, but Sam doesn't seem to give a shit. He's checking Dean for wounds and broken bones, and Dean is too wrecked to shoo him away, so he just listens to Sam tell him what a fucking idiot he is, listens to a half-crazed echo of a voice inside his head saying, That's my boy. That's my good boy.
+
Dean is back on the rack. He was never raised from the dead. He never said yes to Alastair, and the realization washes over him in a wave of relief. Yes, of course he didn't say yes. He's better than that.
"You know, this is how I like you best," Alastair says, sliding a tendril of something hot and wet up Dean's neck. Dean can't see; his eyes have been gouged out. "It'd be almost a shame to rip you apart."
Dean spits out imprecations as fast as he can think them, but Alastair just chuckles and slides his hand down Dean's chest, whole for now, and down his belly, down to his naked thigh, where he sinks his claws in deep and draws three parallel lines of blood across the skin. This is nothing, Dean tells himself. This is nothing, he's been through much worse, but he cries out anyway. A tentacle of black smoke forces its way into Dean's mouth, foul-smelling and acrid. It works its way down Dean's throat and Dean can't breathe, but what does it matter? You can't die here. You don't get that reprieve.
"Your blood's as sweet as ever, Dean," Alastair says, and he hears the sound of smacking lips. "How do you manage to get that dash of self-righteousness just so?"
And then he feels Alastair's forked tongue on his leg, lapping along his wounds, inserting the length of it into the cuts. Dean jerks at the shock of it, but the smoke is burning him from within and he can't make a sound. Alastair climbs atop his body, and Dean is glad he doesn't have his eyes, that he can only feel the demon wrap around him, the wet warm touch dragging from his thigh to his waist. He slides a hand over Dean's shoulder and moves up until Dean can smell him, he's right there, he's so close.
The black smoke dissipates from inside him, and Dean gasps for breath.
"You simply must try it," Alastair says. "It tastes divine," and covers Dean's mouth with his. He tastes his own blood. Not the first time he does. Won't be the last. Dean jerks his head, and screams so loud he wakes himself up.
Tacoma. Black Bear Motel, room 12, and Sam's got his arms around him, telling him to wake up, telling him it's okay, oh god shut the fuck up people are going to complain, Dean, Dean, Dean. Reality sinks in, and Dean shoves Sam away, who refuses to be shoved away. Don't fucking touch me and Dean, this is serious, and no shit, Sherlock. Dean stumbles to his feet and into the bathroom, slamming the door in Sam's face.
"Dean!" Sam exclaims, indignant.
Dean catches sight of himself in the bathroom mirror and can't stand the sight of it. He leans against the door and slides down, fervently ignoring his erection. When he gets tired of telling Sam to fuck off, Dean just sits silently while Sam yammers on about whatever the fuck. Eventually the yammering fades too.
He doesn't know how long he sits there.
"Sam," he says eventually, and his throat is so dry.
"Yeah?" Sam says from the other side from about the same height, like Sam's been sitting out there too all this time.
"Get the whiskey, wouldja?"
"Only if you come out of the bathroom like a good boy."
Dean splashes water on his face, and again, and again. His gaze lingers on Castiel's handprint on his shoulder, the supposed reassurance that he's been saved. What does that mean, to be saved? From what? For whom?
He unlocks the door and opens it.
"Can't find any glasses," Sam says, and Dean tells him that's fine.
+
"Don't you go getting lung cancer before we stop the Apocalypse," says Sam.
"Who made you the vice patrol?" Dean shoots back.
"If you run slow because you're out of breath, I will let the monsters eat you, so help me god."
"Deal, and right back atcha."
Every inhalation is deja vu, foul-smelling and acrid, but Dean still smokes them down. He tells himself it's the nicotine addiction. It's the stress. It's last night's dream, and Alastair telling him, "This has all been well and good, but I do miss the real you. I'll see you soon, Dean."
"What the hell kind of name is Greybull for a town anyway?" Dean asks, a little too loud.
Sam shrugs. "I don't know, what should you call a town where the dead don't stay dead?"
"Home, I guess," he mutters, and Sam even laughs a little.