Chapter Text
Even by their standards it had been a hell of a week, and a hell of a month before that. Once they had finally found the tin box containing Old Man Jackson's bones in the twelfth hole they dug, and once Sam had used up all the rocksalt shooting at the pissy old bastard while Dean salted and burned his remains, they both agreed that they deserved to take the weekend off and relax.
LA was Dean's idea. The City of Angels.
Later on he agreed that a name like that was pretty much asking for trouble.
The bar was just this side of sleazy. Dean felt at home as soon as they stepped through the door. The music was loud, there were several pool tables, the alcohol was plentiful and varied, and the women were hotter than a volcano in hell.
"We have died and gone to babe heaven, bro," said Dean, his face lighting up with the glee of a kid in an unmanned candy store as he surveyed the room. "Man, I love LA. Go get me a beer, will you, Sammy?" he added, his eyes darting to each of the pool tables in turn and weighing up the players. He ducked automatically to avoid Sam's irritable swipe, never taking his eyes off the target, and grinned as the hand skated through the air where the back of his head had been an instant earlier.
"It's Sam," said Sam evenly, more out of habit than real annoyance.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever, Chuckles. Beer. Some of us have an honest living to make." He heard Sam's snort of derision as he strolled over to the pool tables, but ignored it. Hustling pool was as close as he got to earning an honest living; and until his baby brother learned how to magic dollar bills our of thin air, or people started rewarding the Winchester family's work with something more substantial than a few words of shell-shocked gratitude, this was the way it was going to be for quite some time. Sure as hell beat working in an office.
Two games later Dean was looking at a tidy stack of bills and had acquired a new best friend called Dainty Sinclair, whose enormous green eyes followed his every movement admiringly. Since Dainty was a strikingly pretty little blonde actress who seemed to think that he was the coolest thing in the history of ever, Dean figured he was two for two. He grinned across at Sam, and was pleased to see that his little brother was now talking to a cute brunette. Dean raised his beer in a victory salute, and Sam smiled back, looking slightly less stiff-necked than usual. The kid really, really needed to get laid, reflected Dean fondly.
"So you about done here, champ? Or d'you think you're good enough to play with me?"
It was a girl's voice, and the inflection she gave to the last phrase got his attention straight away. Dean pulled his gaze back from the bar and gave a startled hiss of appreciation. LA really was a great city, and no mistake.
"Hell yes," he replied fervently, taking in the low slung black jeans, the tight red T shirt that hugged every sweet curve and revealed a tantalising flash of flat belly, the unapologetically unfeminine boots and the glossy tumble of brown curls that fell about her shoulders. He could play with this one all night, and then some. At his side Dainty made a petulant sound and Dean slung an arm around her waist in a quick squeeze of reassurance without taking his eyes of the brunette in front of him.
"Double or nothing?" she suggested, she tip of her tongue darting out to wet her lips. Dean wondered what his chances might be of talking both girls into bed with him; from the way that this one was smiling at both him and Dainty, he kinda thought they might be pretty damn good.
He loved LA. It was official.
"Sounds good to me," he said, treating her to his most irresistible smile and reaching out to shake her hand, because he really wanted a reason to touch her. "I'm Dean." Her hand was cool and her grip was surprisingly strong.
"Charity," said the brunette, with an unreadable quirk of her mouth. She took a slug of beer straight from the bottle, tipping her head back so that the shiny tangle of her hair swung out behind her. Dean watched the way her throat moved while she gulped down her drink and shifted slightly, feeling his pants growing noticeably tighter.
"Well all right," said Dean when she put down her bottle. He watched her wipe the back of her hand across her wet lips and felt something hungry and delighted uncurling in his belly. "I hope you're ready to put your money where your mouth is, sweetheart, because I am on a roll tonight."
"Fighting words," said Charity with a throaty chuckle and a gleam in her eye. "Let's see if you're half as good as you think you are."
The final ball rolled into place with a profoundly satisfying thunk and Dean grinned across the table like a shark.
"Well, shit," said Charity, a dimple quivering roguishly at the corner of her mouth. "I guess you actually are almost as good as you think you are, Tiger."
"Damn straight," agreed Dean, high on victory and beer and the bright unspoken promise of hot monkey sex with at least one beautiful woman. "Now I do hate to take money from a lady, but I believe we said double or nothing?"
"You've got me," said Charity ruefully, with a pout. Dean had a powerful urge to bite her lower lip, which he ignored with some difficulty. She dug her fingers into the back pocket of her jeans, tilting her pelvis a little and arching her back as she felt for the money, her gorgeous brown eyes fixed on him while she wriggled. Dean made a small strangled sound in the back of his throat and then tried to turn it into a cough. In an effort not to stare at her gloriously bra-free breasts Dean glanced around for Dainty, and was a little disappointed to see her wrapped around some guy with a stupid beard over on the other side of the room. They were heading for the back door, unless he was very much mistaken. Dean had been pretty sure that Charity was flirting with Dainty too, from all the attention she was paying to the blonde and the way she ran her fingertips over her bare throat and down to tug at the neck of her T shirt like it was too hot, and then glanced coyly at Dainty through her lowered lashes...now that had been all kinds of fun to watch. But evidently Dainty had lost interest, damn it. Women, Dean reflected sadly, were fickle creatures. He mentally bid a reluctant farewell to the notion of a threesome.
Charity followed his gaze and her mouth tightened a little, although whether through jealousy or disappointment he couldn't begin to say.
"Here you go, Champ," she said, pressing the money into his hands. She was standing very close now, and she smelled - well, okay, she smelled a little like beer and cigarettes, but an awful lot like sex, and that was definitely working for Dean. "Count it?"
"No need, sweetheart. I trust you." He pulled his wallet out of his jacket pocket, stuffed her handful of bills in without looking at them and then tucked the wallet back into his jacket. "You're not a sore loser?" he asked, his voice pitched a little deeper than usual. Charity was still only half a step away, and she had quite the most stunning smile he had ever seen.
"I've always had a weakness for a man who knows how to handle his, ah, cue," she breathed, glancing up at him through her eyelashes. "But I seem to have scared away your little friend. So - no hard feelings?"
Dean's eyes widened at her wicked expression, and he laughed out loud. "Well, I don't think that's exactly how I'd put it," he admitted, licking his lips.
"Good," said Charity, and the next thing he knew she was plastered up against him, her hands sliding around to his back, her wonderful breasts crushing into his chest and her firm flat belly pressed close enough to know precisely what kind of hard feelings he had. She kissed like it was a competitive sport, all hungry teeth and sweet wet tongue, and she tasted like beer and hard candy.
He almost felt guilty about having taken her money.
Almost.
When they came up for air, Charity gave a delighted gurgle of laughter and dug into her back pocket again. This time they were standing so close that her breasts brushed against his chest and Dean swallowed hard. He felt like a fucking school kid around this girl.
"Here you are, Tiger. You go get us a couple more beers, 'kay? My shout - it's the least I can do for scaring off your girlfriend. I'm just going to the little girls' room," she said, glancing around the bar searchingly and then looking back at Dean with that dazzling smile.
"Okay," agreed Dean, feeling almost dizzy with his great good luck, and he headed over to the bar clutching the bill she had just handed him and trying not to look obnoxiously self satisfied.
"You're on a real winning streak tonight," said Sam, looking mightily amused. He seemed to have managed to lose his girl already, Dean noticed. Typical.
"What can I tell you, Sammy? When you're hot, you're hot. And I, brother of mine, am on fire."
"Modesty has always been one of your strengths," Sam said solemnly. "I really admire that about you."
"Screw modesty! I am a god of pool and chicks dig me. AND I'm the fucking breadwinner in this family, so a little more respect would be in order," he added smugly, patting the pocket containing his bulging wallet. A moment later his face fell. "What the - oh fuck. Oh, no fucking way, man!" Dean rummaged in both his jacket pockets and then plunged his hands into the pockets of his jeans with an increasingly panicked expression. "Oh, you are fucking kidding me!" He spun around on his heel and scanned the bar with an expression of incredulous fury.
"She picked your pocket?" Sam looked even more entertained by this turn of events, which was really fucking irritating, considering the boy wonder wasn't making any attempt to bolster the family fortunes himself. "Dude. She totally played you!"
"Fuck off," snarled Dean, refusing to meet Sam's eyes.
"Oh, wow. That is hilarious!"
"What part of all our money being stolen is hilarious, braintrust?" snapped Dean. "This is not fucking hilarious at all. This sucks!" He strode back towards the pool tables, practically vibrating with anger, and Sam loped along behind him, grinning. "Hey, you see a hot brunette in a tight red T shirt?" Dean asked a skinny guy who had been drinking next to the pool table.
"The one you just beat?"
"Yeah. You see where she went?"
"Out the back door, I think, man," said the guy, pointing.
"You're a prince," said Dean, darting off in the direction of the backdoor. He wove between the tables with a thoroughly grim expression on his face, and Sam followed along behind him, still grinning.
Outside the air felt blessedly cool after the bar's stuffy interior. They found themselves in an alley full of shadows and trash cans and the acrid stench of stale piss.
"What the hell?" exclaimed Dean a split second later, reflexively reaching for a gun that wasn't there. The smile slid off Sam's face at once. They appeared to have walked right into the mother of all fights, although it was kind of difficult to make out who was kicking whose ass in the shadows. "Hello?"
"Dean! Dean, help me!" Dainty sounded terrified as she ran towards him out of the darkness, and Dean reached out to catch her automatically. "Please help me? She's completely insane! She knocked Alex out cold, and she's trying to steal my purse!"
"Oh, you are a piece of work, lady," said Dean, pushing the blonde behind him and stepping deeper into the alley. He was damned if he was going to let Charity get away with this shit.
"Fucking interfering amateurs," Charity spat, sounding totally disgusted, and strode towards them with a spring in her step. She was holding what looked, bafflingly, like half a pool cue. "Get away from them, bitch."
Dean stared, keeping himself between the two women. "What, robbery not enough for you? You looking to pick a fight? Honey, you need to back off right now. And you need to give me my wallet back," said Dean. He really didn't want to hit her, because at the end of the day she was a girl. A hot girl. Whom he had, until a few minutes ago, been cherishing some rather fond expectations of fucking. And, anyway, you definitely weren't supposed to hit girls. Monsters shaped like girls were more of a grey area, but he was pretty sure that didn't apply in this case.
"Dean!" Sam's warning came just a hair's breadth too late, and then Dean found himself, to his utter astonishment, with his arm twisted up behind his back and his head yanked to one side by someone small and quite astonishingly strong. "What the fuck?" exclaimed Sam, and that was just exactly what Dean was thinking himself.
"I'll rip his throat right out," said dainty little Dainty, her mouth very close to his ear. She sounded like she meant it.
Charity didn't look particularly surprised, or particularly impressed. She tossed the piece of wood from one hand to the other, looking almost bored. "Honey, you're assuming that I actually give a shit what you do to him. Not smart."
"Okay, well this sucks," said Dean, discovering that it was possible to be even more pissed after all. "Next time we go to Disneyland. And you're paying, Sammy."
Dean was braced for Sam's attack, and he wrenched himself out of Dainty's grip at the moment when she was distracted, rolling as soon as he hit the ground and then bouncing up onto the balls of his feet and grabbing a length of pipe out of the gutter.
"What the fuck are you, then, Blondie?" he asked; but even as the words were leaving his mouth Charity was closing the distance towards Dainty and slamming the wooden stick into her back.
And then Dainty exploded into a shower of dust, and Sam was left grappling air, and the momentum carried him right into Charity's arms.
"Huh," said Dean, looking down at the dust and then back up at Charity and Sam. "Didn't see that coming." He watched Sam untangle himself from Charity, his blush visible even in the shadows, and after a moment Dean dropped the pipe onto the ground, concluding it was no longer needed. "Just what the hell was that thing?"
"Vampire," replied Charity matter-of-factly, brushing the dust off her clothes. Dean's eyes were drawn helplessly to the fascinating movement of her red T shirt as she slapped the dust away, and he swallowed hard. When he managed to look up at her face again, he was distinctly embarrassed to find her looking right at him with a knowing grin.
"Hang on," he said, as his brain caught up with the conversation. "Vampire? Bullshit."
Charity sighed. She looked suddenly tired. "Hi, welcome to the world. Vampires are real. Werewolves are real. Monsters and ghosties and goulies are..."
"I know that," snapped Dean. "But there's no fucking way that was a vampire. We've killed vampires before, and they sure as hell don't do that."
"The only way you can kill them is decapitation," agreed Sam. "Not a stake through the heart. Which is what you did just then, right?"
"Really?" Charity looked fascinated. "No shit? Huh. Well, I'm not from around here. That's how it works back home - stake, fire, decapitation, direct sunlight - it's all good." She stared at Dean, her expression thoughtful. "So you two - that was pretty amateurish. You aren't Slayers, are you? I mean, this isn't some kind of wacky universe where the Slayer is a guy, right?" She looked from one to another and raised her eyebrows ruefully. "...aaand you have no idea what I'm talking about, so I guess that's a no. Fine. So what are you, then? Because I've only been here a few weeks, but most people here don't know about all," she waved her hands in a gesture that tried to encompass the alleyway and the dust of a slain vampire and the whole conversation, "all this."
"Look, Little Miss Twenty Questions, how about you give me back my wallet and then maybe we'll talk?" said Dean, carefully. He was still pissed, although it was kind of difficult to remember it with Charity pushing her hair out of her face like that to give him all her attention, and with the memory of how she tasted still fresh in his mind...
"Easy, Tiger! A girl's got to eat, you know! Nothing personal." She ducked her head like a naughty kid and looked up at him through those ridiculously thick eyelashes as she groped in her pocket for the wallet, and the smile she was casting at him made it just about impossible to stay pissed. He wasn't at all sure how he felt about it being 'nothing personal'.
"Thanks," he said gruffly as she handed over his wallet.
"You're welcome," she said, hooking her arm deftly around his and then linking her other arm with Sam. Dean shot Sam a helpless look, but Sam looked pretty much like he'd been hit by a steam roller and kind of enjoyed it. Which was about where Dean was at right now. "So you going to buy me another beer, then? 'Cause I think we need to talk. And I totally saved your asses just then."
"I - right. I guess - okay," said Dean, burningly conscious of her proximity and trying to process everything that had happened in the last five minutes. "Yeah. Beer would be good."
"And you must be Dean's boyfriend? Cousin? Brother? Best friend in all the world?"
"I'm Sam," said Sam, sounding slightly shell shocked. "I'm his brother."
"Cool. Oh - my name's Faith, by the way. I'm a vampire slayer. Or maybe The Vampire Slayer in this universe. Since we're being all honest and shit."
Dean's head was spinning as they stepped back into the bar. Oh, he was in some serious trouble here, he realised, and it was far too late to do a damned thing about it.