Driver Picks the Music

It's been a long day and an even longer night.

And since the night looks like it's gonna stretch out until mid-morning, Dean's got himself set up on the couch with a bottle of Jack, a paper bag, and some newspapers.

Too bad the newspapers don't really mop up the last of the spilled booze when Dean's hand relaxes in sleep.

Well. 'Sleep'.

Passing out is really all the rage for him, these days. It's the only thing that works.

He wakes up with the smell of alcohol sharp in his nostrils, and -- is that a string of drool on his chin?

No. Obviously not. Nothing to see --

Wait a second. The fireplace should be over to his left, so what's the source of the brightness off to his right? Is it someone backlit by . . . something?

There are words ringing in his ears.

Righteous man.

Step off the rack.

It's all his fault. Everything. All of it.

Had to be weak, didn't you, Dean?

Had to be afraid. Had to want it all to be over.

(Had to want vengeance.)

What's left? What the hell can he do about any of it? Nothing. It's too fucking late, is what.

It's too --

He tries to turn over, wants to yank the pillow up over his head and fall back asleep, but he's SoL.

Fucking mornings.

Well, someone on Team Angel's got some clue on how to get the maximum amount of pain with the minimum amount of equipment.

Practicing behind God's back, maybe?

Dean's lip curls in a sneer, but whether it's directed at himself or this whole clusterfuck is -- well, it's probably clear to the goddamn angels, but he doesn't have to think about it.

He's got other things to turn his imagination toward. High on that list is how he's gonna make Alastair hurt. Screams'd be great. What's even better is what comes after the screams, when the vocal chords have gone raw and broken, there's blood in their lungs, and all they can do is whimper. It tastes so goddamn sweet, and to get Alastair like that? Nothing better in this world or the next. Dean can swear to that, reservation-free.

Something churns low in his gut. He can only hope it's nausea and disgust, but he's got a feeling --

All right. Game face on.

He's got work to do.

****

"They sent you?" Alastair, strung up on a pentagram, Enochian symbols circling his feet, sneers when Dean comes in. "To torture me?"

Dean stays stone-faced, eyes cold and hard, lip curled in disgust. It helps hide the smile, really. Even if he'd rather feel the disgust.

Buying himself some time, Dean starts running his hands over his implements -- syringes, knives, wire, holy water, pincers, a vise -- the works, really.

"I'll give you one shot. One. Tell me what you know, and we all get to walk out of here as healthy and freakin' happy as we walked in. Or got dragged, in your case."

The offer doesn't change a goddamn thing. Neither of them expect it to, really. But maybe the last fading embers of Dean's humanity needed to make the ol' college try.

"Oh, that's a good one, Dean. But if you really want to get under my skin, you'll have to do better than that."

Yeah, that sing-song is gettin' real old, real fast.

Dean closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. Alastair's still talking, and what comes next is gonna hurt.

"Here, I'll start. I had your pop up on the rack for one hundred years, doing the same things to him that I did to you. You remember those days, Dean my boy? The slicing and the cutting and all that screaming?"

Dean's never gonna forget.

"John Winchester. He made quite a name for himself, let me tell you. Never wavered, never accepted my offer -- never even thought about it, it seemed. The stuff of heroes, really and truly."

The mockery burns. The holy water Dean's dipping his hands in doesn't, though.

Not yet.

"And then there was you, Dean. I thought you'd be just like your Daddy, so stubborn, so sure, so determined to hold on to your humanity, be just like all the good little boys and girls that get to go upstairs."

If John were here now --

No. There's no point to thinking like that. Not now. Not --

"But Daddy's little girl, he broke. He broke at thirty. You're just not the man your Daddy would have wanted you to be, are you, Dean?"

Dean opens his eyes, and looks up.

"I don't know, Alastair." He picks up a knife -- a small, thin-bladed thing -- turning it over and over in his hands. His very, very damp hands.

"Why don't you tell me?"

Then he drives the knife home. Right through Alastair's eye.

Soft starts only work with humans, after all.

****

There's blood all over. On Dean, on the floor, defintely on Alastair. Might even be some on the ceiling.

Good thing the supply keeps getting replenished, otherwise this'd be no fun at all.

The only downside to Alastair being all tied up with nowhere to go is that he keeps talking.

"Oh, you have no idea, do you, Dean? Why Lilith really wanted you there."

Dean raises an eyebrow, stuffing a rosary into Alastair's mouth and holding it closed. The muffled screaming's not his favorite -- everyone knows that -- but they say a change is as good as a rest. He's prepared to test that theory.











Looks like they were wrong. Pity.

He pulls the rosary back out, dumping it back into the pitcher of water. Next thing he picks up is Ruby's knife.

Alastair spends a couple-ten seconds gasping for breath. Or maybe he's waiting for the burns on his tongue to heal up. Huh. Who'd have thought?

"Oh Dean. Dean. Didn't they tell you? The minute you got off that rack, the second you picked up that razor, the very instant you started slicing into that weeping bitch -- "

Dean feels a shiver go down his spine. Later, he'll want to think it had nothing to do with the pleasure of sense-memory, that it was only a result of knowing what came out of Alastair's mouth was gonna hit home. (That will always be a lie.)

" -- that, my boy, was the first seal. I should really be thanking you. We all should."

No.

God, no.

What the torture couldn't do, this revelation is about to. Only --

Dean cannot lose the upper hand here. (If he ever had it).

"You're lying."

Part of him -- that part that loves this, the part that grew a taste for blood a long, long time ago -- knows it's the truth. But the rest --

"And it is written that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in hell. As he breaks, so shall it break. And you're broken, Dean. Aren't you?"

Nothing shows on Dean's face. So what if he is? It just means more jagged pieces to do damage to anything that gets in his way, doesn't it? That's one lesson he definitely took to heart.

"Just think. When the horsemen of the apocalypse go out riding, when all of mankind is destroyed in fire and ash and blood, when we burn this earth down to the bedrock -- we'll owe it all to you. Dean Winchester. So let me be the first to say 'thanks'."

Dean's hand clenches hard around the hilt of Ruby's knife. Fuck this shit. Fuck all of it -- the angels, the seals, saving the world, doing the right thing. None of it's gonna make a difference in what's happening right here, right now.

"You're welcome," Dean spits out, turning to plunge the blade into Alastair's --







Oh fuck.

Alastair's gotten free.

"You should talk to your plumber about the pipes."

His fist hits Dean's face once. Twice. Ten times over.

Now it's even more like old home week, and all Dean can feel is relief.

He's gonna die in here.

Maybe there really is a God.

The motel room is dark. Anyone without a functional sense of hearing might be excused for thinking it's empty.

But guess what?

It's not.

Dean's seated in the shitty orange-upholstered chair, a three-quarters empty bottle of Jim Beam dangling down between his hands.

The expression on his face is one that could melt glass.

He's waiting for Sam to get back.

It ain't gonna end well.

Where would a crazy (or not-so-crazy) religious girl go when demons've been hunting her down?

A church, obviously.

But with the way things have been going these past couple days, the silence as the Winchesters open the door and head inside is pretty damn unnerving.

Guns drawn (sensibly), it's not gonna take them too long to make their way through a metric ton of empty rooms, leaving only the topmost floors to still check out.

It's always the last place you look, isn't it?

Watchin' Gumby was pretty dumb, but havin' to cope with a dead sheriff on the floor is making its way toward one thing that Dean is not gonna be able to stand.

Every time he takes a step toward the guy to try and move his carcass to somewhere a little less obvious --

He could almost swear the guy was still breathing.

Maybe --

Maybe he's gonna turn into a zombie, just jump right up and rip Dean's throat out.

He can feel the panic spreading, just like the itch under his forearm. Fuck.

Fuck.

He's not gonna be able to make it, he's gonna just crack up right here and --

"Seriously, Sammy. An iPod? Didn't I teach you anything?"

Of all the ways Dean imagined this could go, bitching about a freaky techno-modification to his baby was never one of them.

Hell, the raspy voice was a surprise, too.

But you've gotta roll with it, right?






Right?

Dean falls into wakefulness, heart racing and breath short in his throat.

He hadn't meant to sleep.

Did he --

Is --

But there's nothing on the floor that doesn't belong there, no blood under his nails, no smell of --

It's all right. He breathes, then goes into the bathroom to wash his hands, anyway.

Three times.

When he comes back out he notices a box set just inside the door. He'll never be able to explain just why it takes him so long to go over to it.

But it does.

* * *

He doesn't listen to any of the music at first, not even Zeppelin. But the books, those he does take out and flip through. Then he puts down Cat's Cradle and picks up Slaughterhouse Five.

He gets to the part about the firebombing of Dresden and puts the book down pretty quickly after that.

It doesn't get picked up again.

* * *

He opens the pack of cards and tries a half-hearted game of solitaire.

Twenty minutes later he eats a handful of M&Ms.

Then a second handful.

He finds the Motor Trend issues not long after that. And those --

Okay, so all the cars are boxy and godawful, caught halfway between classic and modern, but they have engine specs and nostalgia for those days ain't as painful as it could be, so he keeps reading.

And when he's gotten through all those --

knock knock knock

Dean wipes his hands on a pristine white towel, the better to give visual contrast when he places it very directly in his current assignment's field of view. It's a soft start, but sometimes those are the best.

This assignment came down special, so he really wants to take his time and do it up right. Pride's a virtue down here -- within reason.

And Dean has all sorts of reasons.

"Hold your horses there, fella. No sense tryin' to get away now, right? You're just gonna rough up your wrists, ruin all my planning, and then I'll have to go back to the drawing board. You really want me to have to do that? Really?"

Dean's got at least one foolproof way to feel better when everything's kind of shitty, and that's getting his hands dirty working on cars. And since his baby doesn't really have too much wrong with her right now --

He makes do with second best and heads to Milliways to mess around with as many different kinds of engines as there are planets.

But after a couple hours of that any guy'd be damn hungry, so he heads back up to the main bar, wiping his hands on a rag as he goes.