The gospels of John Winchester, and rule number 24,601 playing on repeat in Dean’s head, telling him how he should act and who he should be. First problem: he doesn’t want to be that man anymore, wants to be his own. His own, and maybe Cas’s too.
Second problem: he can’t tell if it’s sweat or if they are tears falling down his cheeks. He is nestled beneath Cas, and they’ve taken to lazily rutting against each other, both spent at day’s end. Lips tenderly seek out lips, almost desperate as if to say please don’t go . If ‘never let them see you sweat’ means never to be vulnerable, he’d thrown that one out the window the second he’d laid eyes on the love of his life.
His eyes make a rival of the color blue. They shame the summer skies, make him think of the smell of fresh cut grass and lazy Saturdays. They recall to Dean’s memory billowy clouds and their shapes, naming each one passing overhead like it were its own constellation.
In Castiel’s eyes, he can almost taste seawater, blue and turquoise swirled, salty and thick; can hear the sound that they say is the ocean, held to one’s ear in form of a conch shell. They’re prettier than travel brochures laid out at the dime a dozen highway motels. His eyes are not a tourist trap, but they’ve captured Dean within them. They make him think of summer, of warmth. It’s the closest thing to homehe’s ever had.
They look at him in passing as though he is a ghost haunting their holy place: their church, their sacred pews, lined with Bibles and faith. They whisper words in harsh judgment. He doesn’t look the praying type, he knows that. It’s just that there’s so little left of him to care about who he was before purgatory.
So he’s learned to pray. Pray, as everyone does, to something that they hope exists. They pray for an answer, pray for a sign, pray for God. Dean Winchester prays for Castiel, although the church is not the first place that he’s looked. He’s kissed the pillow where Castiel had laid beside him, has fitted his fingers into the dulled scar against his arm. He has shed tears, and shed whatever is left of his soul upon every place that was sacred to he and the angel. None of them have brought him back. And so he prays with everyone else. The faithless with the faithful, the one with the many. Cas…Castiel… can you hear me? Can you hear me?
There are seagulls overhead, singing their off-key melodies. The ocean swells and reaches its crest, white foamed and infinite. Bare toes wiggle and sink into sand, and Dean discovers only as he bounds toward infinity that he cannot run. The sand is different here than in the desert, moist and thick, teeming with life.
He finally catches up to Cas, wraps his arms him as lukewarm water rushes to greet him. It’s up to their ankles now, and like all things, it comes and goes in turn. Dean chuckles, planting a soft kiss against the back of the angel’s nape, “What was the point of me goin’ through all that effort to roll up your pants and make you take your shoes off,” another kiss, “if you were gonna forget to take off the coat.”
If one could see this tender moment from further upshore, they would glimpse silhouettes melting into the sunset, both figures turning to embrace, and then… simply being .
for@profoundnet‘s 100 word challenge Content Warnings: Deals with the aftermath of 15x18 and Dean’s grief after losing Castiel.
Without Castiel, the world gives off a black and white vibe. It’s that old-fashioned Mayberry kind of ordeal. The world is righted of its injustices, it keeps spinning. Dean’s been given the chance to live the life he’s always wanted. Retirementwith a white picket fence and an apple pie in the window: it’s always been his end goal. Right?
Except now, he realizes that within his heart, that ending also bore ocean-blue eyes, and an old ratty trenchcoat. More than the comfort of a white picket fence, maybe it had always been about the idea of two arms around him at his worst. ‘I love you’ was a prelude. How can he live a life in gray when he’s beheld a spectrum of color that he only just learned bore the name ‘love’?
Humans are fallible creatures. They are stacked with good intentions that ultimately crumble beneath the weight of the human condition. It cannot be helped. Castiel’s father had given them free will, a radical choice that would prove to be both blessing and curse.
And Dean Winchester now asks for what he calls ‘a gesture of good faith’, a notion that goes against everything that Castiel has ever known. Something stirs in his chest, some misplaced remnant of his human vessel. And he cannot understand it, cannot fathom the recklessness of his decision, but regardless of it, he affirms his consent. He does not know that what is now trust is a stepping stone to what might later be called ‘love’.
Dean Winchester is trapped in a corner, the place where two conflicting roads meet to create an equally conflicted man. A moment is not enough time for love. And still, they are momentsthat flash before him: a handprint, first on his shoulder, then squeezing down on his heart. Green trapped in blue, and the moments are passing by too quickly. Don’t do this, he thinks, uncertain if the words are spoken into the too-thick air. Not now. Not like this.
Me too, his heart screams, with every act of carefully placed defiance, every moment spent mourning loss and equally rejoicing return. Me too, he wants to scream, as though love can save them, as though love can do anything at all.
Dean’s running out of excuses for how much he likes this.
James hooks his hands under Dean’s thighs, hefts him up like he weighs nothing, and half-tosses him onto the bed. He crawls up Dean’s body, smirking in the low light.
Dean picked James because he’s pretty. Maybe with the long hair and the long lashes, he could even be considered feminine in the right light — or that’s what Dean told himself.
He had to take a minute, back in the bar, before he could work up the nerve to ask James if he was ready to get out of there. He went to the bathroom to give himself a little pep talk in the mirror: “Doesn’t have to mean anything.”
In other words: “Don’t think about the fact that he’s a guy.”
Now, though, James is shirtless, and there’s nothing remotely feminine about the muscles rolling and shifting in his shoulders, or the way his scraping stubble leaves Dean’s neck tingling and raw with each hungry kiss.
Even with Dean’s eyes shut tight, there’s no mistaking the fact that he’s in bed with a man, and he’s already so damn hard he can barely see straight.
Or. Y’know. Not so straight.
James peels him out of his boxers and ducks to run his tongue all the way up the underside of Dean’s cock. When he tilts his chin to look up at Dean through those long lashes, Dean moans, then bites down on his own knuckles so he doesn’t start begging.
Maybe it’s time to admit to himself that he’s definitely into guys.
It doesn’t even make him panic as badly as he anticipated. If he focuses on that, he doesn’t have to acknowledge the resemblance he sees in the sharp jut of James’s jawline and the bright, inquisitive flash of his icy blue eyes.
Summary:You’re always waiting. Waiting on something or someone else to decide how you’re going to feel, what you’re going to do. Fuck, you’re so sick of waiting.
Rating:15+
Pairing:Dean x Reader // Dean x Jo
Tags:Cheating, affair, major angst, age gap, mentions of smut, heartbreak, break up
A/Ns:I’ve once again written a fic based on the song Illicit Affairs by Taylor Swift because it’s a stunning song and it gives me endless inspiration for angsty fics! Hope you enjoy the heartache!
This fic was posted 4 weeks ago on my website and Patreon - link in my bio to find out more!
“What the actual fuck am I doing?” You slam on the brakes of your car, stopping still in the middle of the country back road, your headlights pooling in front of you, illuminating the empty path ahead and trees surrounding you. You’d not been expecting to come to this realisation right here and now, almost at your destination. “What the actual fuck am I doing?!” You repeat out loud to yourself, looking around your car.
It’s almost two A.M. You’d previously been wrapped up in bed, a hot water bottle strapped to your stomach as you willed your period to arrive so you could get it over with. But just like everything else in your life it has been keeping you waiting. You’re always waiting. Waiting on something or someone else to decide how you’re going to feel, what you’re going to do. Fuck, you’re so sick of waiting.And your period hadn’t been the only thing you’d been waiting on. You’re ashamed to admit it, but it’s true. You’d laid there, constantly lifting your phone off of the nightstand, tilting the bright screen towards you to check you’d not missed the sound of a notification.
Summary:Since her Mom walked out on them, Jared has been losing control of his bratty, promiscuous daughter, Y/N. When she fails her senior year and can’t graduate high school, Jared’s best friend, Jensen, offers Y/N a place at his private all girls boarding school, promising her father he’ll discipline her and improve her grades. But Y/N doesn’t go down without a fight, and Jensen’s methods of getting Y/N’s grades up take an interesting turn.
Pairing:Principal!Jensen x Bratty Student!Reader || With scenes of… JDM x Reader // JJ Julius Son x Reader // Reader x Other
Series Warnings/Tags: Age gap (Reader will be 18/19, Jensen will be 43), inappropriate relationship, teasing, flirting, seduction, daddy kink, spanking, caning, smut, role playing, taboo relationship – each chapter will be tagged individually
A/Ns:The aim of this game is to overload you with smut, pull you back from the edge with a healthy dollop of angst, drop in some taboo and teacher kink, and finish you off with a nice helping of the visual of Jensen Ackles in a suit, putting a bratty school girl in her place… enjoy…
Summary: During their semester abroad in Costa Rica, Sam and Dean finally give Jess what she’s been begging for, in exchange for consenting to something they want.
Series Tags: fluff, angst, smut, age difference, sugar daddy/baby relationship, vacations, family dinners, hospitalizations, breakups, etc.
Summary: [Y/N] is a grad student who was having trouble coping with expenses. John is the CEO of HunterCorp who needed someone to talk to. They came to a mutually beneficial agreement that’s been working very well. Until she gets asked on a date by someone her own age.
A/N: HUGE SHOUTOUT TO MY TUMBLR WIFE @writercole FOR ENCOURAGING ME AND SUPPORTING ME THROUGHOUT THIS SELF-INDULGENT SERIES. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH AND THIS SERIES WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT YOU.
For the lovely & talented @dualityofcastiel’ celebration & the prompt “love”. Read below or on ao3(2k)
“Cas, just sleep with me.”
The angel stops in his tracks, his hand frozen over the door handle. He couldn’t have heard that right. There’s just no way.
“Uh, I mean, not like-I didn’t mean to say-”
Cas turns back to face Dean who is now sitting bolt upright on the couch, their shared movie blanket pushed to the floor and his hands held in front of him defensively.
Cas walks back to him in silence, afraid that if he opens his mouth, he’ll beg Dean to mean it the way it sounds. To mean it exactly the way it sounds.
Title – The Men Who Hunted Her Pairings – DeanxY/N, Sam and Y/N friendship Word Count – 5,453 Warnings – Violence, non-con, cursing, being drugged SPNMixedBingo Square filled – Kidnapping
“Who’s calling you at this hour?” Sam questioned, looking up from his laptop. Dean picked up his phone and looked at the caller ID. He saw the name across the screen and rolled his eyes.
“Fucking Y/N,” he growled savagely. Sam instantly frowned.
When Dean and Y/N got together, Sam was nervous. It was like watching fire and gasoline join and when it was good, they were quite the pair to watch. They were an unbeatable force on the hunt or in the bar, and the unbridled passion they had for each other was unlike anything he’d ever seen.
But when they fought, it was just as bad. The hoarse shouting, the uncontrollable fury, sometimes even the thrown punches. There were things said that was downright unforgivable to many but for them, it was just who they were. They were as furious as they were passionate.
The last fight between Dean and Y/N was a vicious one. The screaming went on for hours. It got to the point where they didn’t even know what they were fighting about anymore. Sam didn’t know what they were fighting about anymore. And when Dean bluntly told her to get out, she left without saying a word. That was weeks ago. Sam and Y/N kept in touch behind Dean’s back, but Dean was miserable. He knew Dean regretted throwing Y/N out of the bunker, but his stubborn pride was in the way of asking her to come back.
The radio silence between Dean and Y/N had been hard on Sam, but at least Y/N was still speaking to him. Or was until four days ago. That’s when she went off the radar. If she was calling now and calling Dean, something was wrong. Before he could say so, Dean already had the phone to his ear.
“The fuck do you want?” he growled fiercely into the phone.
“Don’t hang up!” Y/N’s whispered voice begged as soon as he picked up the call. “Please, please, pleasedon’t hang up!”
“Y/N?” Dean asked, evident anger vanishing instantly. Her hushed begging suddenly confused him.
“Please,” she sobbed uncontrollably. “I know you’re mad at me, but please don’t hang up. Please. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know who else to call. Please don’t hang up. Please.”
“Hey, hey, hey, calm down. Talk to me. What’s wrong? What’s going on?” Dean asked worriedly. Sam stood up and walked closer to his brother so he could hear the call. Something was most certainly wrong. “Baby, slow down, I can’t understand you.”
“… grabbed me from behind, I didn’t even see them…supposed to be hunting a ghoul…hit me in the head, knocked me unconscious,” Y/N got out between strangled sobs. Dean stood up and promptly went for his keys; Sam followed closely behind, grabbing his laptop along the way.
“Who has you? Who are they?” he demanded impatiently.
“I don’t know… I don’t… They keep drugging me…” Y/N said, trailing off.
“Baby, I need you to take a deep breath for me,” Dean said desperately. Y/N nodded despite Dean not being able to see her.
“I’m so tired,” she whispered fearfully, wearily leaning her head into the heel of her palm.
“Y/N, listen to me. Where are you?” Dean asked forcefully.
“I don’t know! I don’t know where I am!” she sobbed. “They had me in the trunk when they brought me here! I… I was able to… to fight… to hide… I knocked one of them out… I grabbed his cell phone, and I’m hiding, but they are looking for me… They…”
Y/N’s anxious voice was cut off when a loud banging was heard along with two or three male voices shouting furiously. Y/N covered her mouth to muffle the harsh sound of her breathing, making herself as small and as quiet as she could. She hugged the cell phone to her chest to hide the light as well. After a few minutes, the sound went away, and she pulled the phone back to her ear only to hear Dean shouting for her.
“De….” Y/N whispered. The profound relief Sam saw in Dean’s face when he heard Y/N’s whisper would be something he’d remember forever.
“How many are there?” Sam asked eagerly when Dean couldn’t speak.
“Five…. No, si…six. six of them,” Y/N whispered. Sam cursed under his breath.
“Well, that’s how they got her. No way she can take on six guys by herself. Y/N… Are you on a cell phone?” Sam asked while Dean gathered his raw emotions together.
“Ye… yeah. I stole it from one of them… I had to get to you… I had to get help…” Y/N said quietly. Sam nodded.
“Do you remember how to turn on the GPS?” Sam asked, flipping his laptop open.
“Ye…yeah,” she answered. Within minutes, Sam saw the blip show up on the screen.
“Perfect. We have it. Keep the phone with you, okay? We’re coming.”
“There you are!” an agitated voice bellowed behind her as she slipped out of the cracked window. Wide eyes looked back, and she dropped just as a gun went off above her head. Without wasting any time, Y/N took off running through the long grass and into the trees that surrounded what she now saw was a cabin inside the woods.
“Did you get her, Jackie?” a rough male voice frantically asked. A third male cursed as he saw her running in between trees.
“Bitch is in the woods. We got to stop her before someone finds her and she starts talking,” a younger male voice said. A sinister laugh echoed in the opening.
“Butch! Mikey! Marlo! Gear up! Looks like we’re going hunting…”
“Keep going straight, then at the third left, take it,” Sam said. His eyes kept bouncing between the map in his hands and the blip on the screen in front of him. They had been driving for roughly 45 minutes, and they were already out of Kansas and into Oklahoma. Dean was going 20 over the speed limit just to get to her as fast as possible.
“I never should have thrown her out,” he muttered fiercely under his breath, gently shaking his head. Sam dared an apprehensive glance up at his older brother, taking in the clenched jaw and the raw emotion he normally saw hidden from his eyes.
“You didn’t know this was going to happen, Dean,” Sam commented quietly. Dean’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“If anything happens to her, I will never forgive myself,” Dean growled furiously.
“We’re gonna find her, and we’re gonna destroy the assholes who took her,” Sam said, his voice so dangerous Dean had to glance at him.
“Damn straight.”
Y/N ran as fast as her bare feet would let her go on the floor of the woods. She ignored the torn skin and puncture wounds she was getting from the sticks and stones stepped on along the way. She used her arms to help launch herself over a dead tree that had fallen and continued running. Having not eaten in over a week, she had no idea where the energy was coming from, but she knew she couldn’t stop.
If she stopped, she’d inevitably die.
She heard an apparent gunshot in the distance and paused her running to look around at her surroundings. Nothing looked familiar; it was all trees and underbrush. Y/N nervously looked at the phone and was relieved to see it still had service. She couldn’t be that far from modern civilization if the mobile phone had service.
The faint sounds of someone shouting met her ears. She darted a look behind her in fear then started looking for something she could use as a weapon. Spotting a length of wood, she followed it with her eyes to see it was embedded into the carcass of a dead animal. Moving carefully, she slid over to it and pulled the old arrow out of the decaying corpse. Thankfully, the flinty tip was still sharp. Breaking the used arrow in half, she tossed the worthless half aside.
Then she climbed up the closest tree and hid.
“Splitting up was a bad idea, Jackie,” the rough voice of Marlo grunted out. He held the double-barrel loosely in his hands and frowned as he walked by the trampled ferns, kicking at them as he went.
“Oh, shut up, Marlo. If you can’t take down one bitch, then there’s something wrong with you,” Jack said, using his pistol as an extension of his arm to lift up some low-hanging branches out of his way. Jack bristled at the direct insult.
“It ain’t that and you know it! This ain’t just some bitch!” Marlo growled. “This a hunter! An’ she ain’t all drugged up like you been keepin’ her!”
“Whatever, man, she’s just like the rest of them. Just a toy we can dispose of when we’re done with her,” Jack said gleefully, looking back at Marlo with a lewd grin. When Jack turned back around to face front, Y/N dropped down on his plump shoulders and brutally stabbed the arrow into his throat.
Marlo shouted frantically in surprise as he watched blood spurt from the ragged wound in Jack’s throat, the two tumbling to the ground. Y/N snatched up Jack’s pistol and raised it, but Marlo was faster, shooting off a round from his shotgun.
Buckshot scattered and Y/N cried out as some of it embedded itself into her battered body. As Marlo racked another shot ready, Y/N fired off two shots of her own. The hoarse cries from the burly man in front of her echoed off the trees. Somehow, he was still standing. Shoving Jack’s now dead body away from her, she got herself in a better position and with wide eyes on the wounded man, she fired again. She hit her mark as Marlo’s body dropped hard onto the wooded ground.
Panting hard, Y/N remained frozen, listening anxiously for any sounds of the other men who were after her. Hearing nothing, she slowly stood up, a sore arm covering her chest. Little red spots started to show up across her dirty white shirt from the buckshot that caught her. She hissed as she moved, looking down at herself to see at least six spots where there was now embedded metal in her skin.
“Dammit,” she muttered savagely.
Moving gingerly over to where Marlo lay, she pulled the shotgun toward her and patted down his shallow pockets for more ammo. She was able to find six more shells. With shaking hands, she slid them into the pocket of her now torn and stained jeans before turning away. Making her way back to where Jack lay, she dug around in his pockets next. Nothing.
Y/N took a moment to swallow back the abject despair threatening to overwhelm her. She was aching all over, desperately tired, hungry, so very thirsty, and four of her captors were still in the woods looking for her. She pulled the phone out of her back pocket. Still had four bars of service, still transmitting the information. Shoving it back into her pocket, she stood uneasily from her crouched position and heaved a sigh.
“Where are you, Dean?”
“We’re close. Turn into this park,” Sam said, pointing to a side road on the left. Dean took the turn at speed, leaving tread marks on the road behind them. The brothers looked around carefully at the drive, noting the hunting lodge motif that seemed to engulf the area.
“They took her to a hunting ground, where no one would be bothered by the sounds of gunfire,” Dean growled impatiently. Sam opened the glove box and started digging through their fake IDs until he found their Ranger ones as Dean proceeded up to the security stop. Handing Dean his, Sam took control of the worsening situation to cover for Dean’s uncontrolled rage.
“Evening, boys. Can I help you?” the security officer politely asked. Sam lifted his ID, nudging Dean to do the same.
“Yes, Sir, we’re looking for a group of men who may be staying on your property who may be hunting outside the limits set for the active season. Tell me, have you seen any groups of say five or six men come in and rent out a private cabin?” Sam asked. The officer frowned slightly, turning to pull a clipboard off the side of the wall of his hut.
“Well, Ranger, now that you mention it… We did have a group of six guys coming up here in the middle of the night about four or five days ago. Thought it was odd they came in so late. A couple of them were acting kind of nervous, constantly looking over their shoulder and whatnot,” the officer said. Sam nodded and glanced stealthily at Dean, undoubtedly noticing his eyes narrowing.
“Yeah, those might be our guys. What cabin are they in? We’re going to pay them a surprise visit,” he asked. The officer flipped up the papers and read the paperwork in hand.
“Looks like they are staying at the Ravenwood Cabin. It’s the one that’s farthest back in the woods. Just follow the yellow trail all the way to the back, and then the black diamonds to get to the drive,” he said, promptly handing the boys a map. Sam took it and nodded.
“Thanks, Officer…” he started.
“Thoroughbred. Good luck in there, and be safe,” he said, punching a button to lift the gate. Dean forced himself to drive slowly through the gate but once he was out of sight of the security office, he picked up speed.
“Of course, they would pick the cabin farthest out,” Dean ground out through gritted teeth. Sam glanced at his laptop and saw the red dot had stopped moving. He compared it to where they were, then looked up and pointed eagerly.
“Keep going straight and keep your ears open.”
Y/N limped to a stop and leaned back against an overgrown tree, reached into her pocket, and pulled out the stolen cell phone. She was down to two bars of service. She prayed it was enough to send out a GPS signal to Sam. She stuffed the cell back into her pocket and looked down at her feet. They were torn up, bleeding heavily in some places. If those guys who took her had dogs, they would certainly be able to find her. She had to keep moving.
She desperately needed a break, though. Y/N was exhausted, and her last bit of energy was tapped. She could feel her battered body starting to shut down involuntarily. Y/N knew if she didn’t find a safe space to hide soon, she could be in real trouble.
Shoving away from the tree, she relentlessly pushed through the wooded area, desperately trying to find anything that looked familiar. Nothing but trees, brush, and branches surrounded her. She had walked for another fifteen minutes before she heard it. Freezing in place, she listened intently. Footsteps, and not in a cadence she recognized. With a terrified look behind her, she started to run frantically.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are…” she heard a maniacal voice shout. It only made her run faster and harder in the opposite direction. Glancing nervously behind her to see if she could spot the man chasing her, she stumbled awkwardly and as she tried to right herself – a strong hand lashed out and viciously grabbed her arm. She felt a sharp pain a second later in her neck.
“Gotcha,” a different male’s hateful voice said in her ear. Without rational thought, Y/N thrust the butt of the shotgun into the man’s face, shattering his nose. He cursed loudly, dropping her arm, and frantically grabbing his broken face with both hands. Y/N then spun on him and fired indiscriminately in his direction. She heard the man cry out as dark spots danced in front of her eyes. She fired again for good measure and heard a hoarse grunt before she turned uneasily and blindly started to stumble away, inadvertently dropping the shotgun in the process.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck fuck FUCK she thought anxiously. Okay, we’ve dealt with this already. Take deep slow breaths. Slow your heart down. Control your movements. We can handle this. We beat the drugs once; we can beat them again.
Only this time, she wasn’t as positive.
“Wait, did you hear that?” Sam asked impatiently. Dean slowed the Impala down and listened intently through the open windows. Pulling the car off to the side of the road, he shut the engine down. The brothers listened intently to the world around them, hearing the wind blowing through the leaves and the odd cricket when suddenly
BANG! BANGBANG!
Dean’s furious eyes narrowed.
“They’re hunting something out in those woods,” Sam said, critical eyes on the tree line. He leaned back, vainly trying to see what was there.
“What are the chances it’s her?” Dean asked stonily. Sam turned to look back at the laptop, shrugging.
“It’s possible. She’s in the woods somewhere,” he responded. “Her signal is moving slowly, but I can’t pinpoint an exact location in the woods here.”
“Then we’re going in,” Dean said impatiently, opening his car door. Sam slapped his laptop shut and shoved it under his seat before following suit. When he got to the trunk of the car, Dean already had it open and a shotgun pulled out. He reached in and grabbed his own sawed-off, shoving shells into his pockets. Dean grabbed his pistol and shoved it into the back of his jeans along with a throwing knife. Sam grabbed his own pistol, then reached over to grab one of their empty backpacks and shoved a canteen and the first aid kit inside it. Dean looked at his brother with a raised brow.
“We don’t know what shape she is in. We should be prepared,” Sam explained gently. Dean’s eyes narrowed as he studied his brother, then he reached over and grabbed the other empty backpack and did the same. Dean added a blanket to his pack, while Sam added extra ammunition and a flare gun to his.
BANG! BANGBANG! BANG!
Gunshots rang out again, causing the brothers to look at the woods sharply. Dean slammed the trunk to the impala hard and racked the first shot in the shotgun.
“Let’s go, Sammy,” Dean snapped viciously as he led the way in.
Y/N blinked rapidly, desperately trying to clear her vision as she forced herself to move. She tripped and stumbled awkwardly into a nearby tree, scraping the skin off her arm in the process. A whimper escaped her as she forcefully pushed off the tree and forced her legs to keep moving. She had to keep going, she had to keep moving. She refused to die out here in the woods; she had to get back to Dean.
She wiped a hand across her neck and felt a small trickle of blood. She knew they injected her with whatever illegal drug they had been doping her with. She wiped her hand on her jeans, then reached behind her to grab the stolen pistol from the back of her pants. She didn’t know how many bullets she had left in it, but it made her feel comfortable having it in her hand.
She pressed on then, shoving away from the tree and moving slower than before as she made her way into the woods.
I can’t… I CAN’T…she thought miserably. A strangled sob got stuck in her parched throat as she stopped moving and leaned against a tree. Her breathing started growing ragged, almost like she couldn’t get enough air. She started yanking at her shirt, vainly trying to pull it away from her neck.
“I can’t… I can’t breathe,” she whispered brokenly to no one in particular. She pushed off the tree she leaned wearily against and attempted to walk again. She stumbled awkwardly with every few steps she took. The blurred vision and the dizziness told her the drugs were almost at full effect. It wouldn’t be long before she blacked out completely.
She felt an unknown hand grab her shirt to stop her, and with quick maneuvers made on instinct, she had it off her exhausted body in moments. With the remaining energy she had, she thrust her hand upward and felt the heel of her hand connect roughly with the nose of the person behind her. The sickening crunch and following yowl of pain was music to her ears. Y/N fought through the blurry vision and dizziness to grab the man’s head and forcibly bring it down sharply to her uplifted knee. She cried out herself at the violent contact, her entire leg aching terribly from the hit, but the man was unconscious and wouldn’t be bothering her anymore.
Four down. Two left.
Dean held up a hand with a closed fist when he heard the shrill cry of pain. He recognized that sound anywhere. He and Sam locked eyes, and Dean moved his fingers toward the direction he heard the sound coming from. Sam nodded and turned toward it. Slowly and silently, the two hunters crept forward until a gunshot had them running.
The following scream had Dean seeing red.
Fiery pain tore savagely through Y/N’s abdomen, ripping an agonized scream from her burning throat. She staggered her steps, colliding into a tree before collapsing into the brittle leaves on the dirt floor of the forest.
“Y/N!!!!” She heard someone shout frantically. Pulling on all the strength she had left, she yelled back.
“I’m here!!” her hoarse voice cried out. Y/N put both hands on her stomach and pressed, feeling lightning hot pain race through her, riding her veins down to her leg. She felt something warm and sticky there. When she lifted a hand to see what it was, she was mildly surprised to see something red on her fingertips.
She dropped her hand back to the bleeding wound, a hoarse groan ripped from her as complete exhaustion finally took hold. Her stinging, blurry eyes slowly drifted shut, tears making tracks through the dirt and blood on her face.
“She’s over here!” a gruff voice close to her shouted frantically. She listened carefully for the footsteps to come closer to her, but instead, she heard another gunshot. Shouting. Angry voices and crashing foliage. Flesh hitting flesh and another gunshot.
Y/N tried to hang on but felt herself start to drift. Between the drugs and now the gunshot wound, her desperate grip on reality was slipping fast. She felt her head fell back and her mouth open, which was helpful. It made breathing a little easier.
“Y/N. Y/N can you hear me? Y/N!!” she scarcely heard someone say, gently grabbing her face. She tried opening her eyes, but they wouldn’t listen to her. Her harsh breathing started to come in painful little gasps.
“I’m here,” she desperately tried to whisper. Everything sounded so distant, so far away from where she was right then.
“Dean!!” the voice shouted, fear lacing the word. Sam, then, she thought wearily. Her arms were getting heavier, numb even. Even the unbearable pain was going away. She hoped this was just the drugs making her feel this way. She didn’t want to die.
“You’re not gonna die, Y/N. Just hang on. DEAN!!” Sam shouted. That’s nice, she thought distractedly. She heard the distant rustling then the pain was back, sharp and engulfing her. She gasped, her eyes flying open to stare right into the brilliant green of Dean’s frantic ones as he relentessly pushed on her stomach wound.
“C’mon baby, you gotta stay awake for me,” Dean said, his voice filled with anguish and fear. Over his shoulder, Sam was on his phone. No doubt he was calling for help. Y/N’s eyes drooped.
“De…. Dru…gg…ed…” she got out through a pant, then grimaced as a violent wave of pain ran through her body, causing her to shiver violently. Dean’s eyes instantly started looking over her face and neck, before spotting the pinprick on her neck that was bleeding slightly.
“Drugged? They drugged you?” he asked frantically, but she was already out. “Babe? Y/N!? Y/N!!”
Dean started to panic, pushing two fingers into her neck to find your pulse. He found your pulse beating too slowly, but at least it was beating. He had no clue what kind of drug they gave her. Sam hung up the phone and turned back to his big brother.
“We need to get her to the road. They can’t land life flight in the woods,” he said, looking down at Y/N.
“They drugged her, Sammy. See if any of them have any drugs or syringes on them. I’ll start taking her to the car,” Dean demanded, moving to pick Y/N up bridal style so he could carry her. Sam nodded and started going through the pockets of the men around them.
Minutes later, Sam ran up to him with a syringe in his hand. Together they got Y/N to the car, then made it to the main road just as Rescue was pulling up.
The first thing she was aware of was the beeping of the heart rate monitor. The second was the heavy warmth around her hand. She could tell it had been there a while, that she had been there a while, simply by the ache in her joints and muscles. What she wouldn’t give to just stretch and instantly feel everything pop and move back into place like they were naturally supposed to be.
Instead, she tried opening her very heavy eyelids to see where exactly she was.
The hospital room she was in was dimly lit, just a lamp in the corner on the lowest setting. It looked dark outside the window, so it was either really late or really early. When her tired eyes caught the sleeping man in the chair next to her, a contented smile played on her face.
Dean looked tired. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his clothes were rumpled. He was sleeping soundly on his folded arms, one eager hand wrapped around hers in a very tight grip. Suddenly, whatever they were arguing about before seemed so unimportant. She couldn’t even remember what it was about. All she really wanted more than anything right then was to see his gorgeous eyes and his charming smile.
Gently squeezing the hand he had a secure grip on, she tried to call his name with no success. Her throat was dry and scratchy, so any sound came out sounding broken and crackly. Thankfully, the door to her private room opened then and Sam walked in with a cup of coffee. When he realized she was awake, he smiled fondly at her with wet eyes.
“Hey, Y/N,” he said quietly, walking over to the opposite side of the hospital bed that Dean was resting on. He leaned down and gently kissed her on the top of the head, knowingly causing her to close her eyes and grin at him. “Welcome back.”
Sam then walked around the hospital bed to where Dean was and set his coffee down on one of the tables in the room. He put his hands on each one of Dean’s shoulders, squeezing slightly.
“Dean… Hey, I need you to wake up for me,” Sam said soothingly, rubbing his arms to gently wake him up. The older Winchester still woke with a jolt and a slight groan. Y/N watched him, eagerly waiting for him to look up at her.
“Look who’s awake, Dean,” Sam said softly. Dean immediately looked up at Y/N and his eager face broke into a relieved smile when he saw her pretty eyes looking back at him. He carefully moved from the chair to the side of her bed and gently pressed a chaste kiss to her mouth. Y/N pressed her hands to his face, needing to feel him, his skin on hers.
“Hey, baby,” Dean whispered tenderly. Y/N sniffled in response, carefully slipping her hands to his flannel shirt, and fisting it tightly. Sam had taken a step back, pouring some water into a cup with a straw for Y/N. He willingly handed it over to Dean who then took it and carefully held it out to Y/N. She took a few long sips of the water and attempted to clear her sore throat of the crude clogging it.
“Are they dead?” she asked, her pleasant voice sounding raw and painful. Dean nodded.
“Yeah, they’re all dead. You’re safe now,” Dean said, running his hand over her hair. “And I am so sorry…”
“No apologies,” Y/N mumbled, gently interrupting him. “You didn’t hang up the phone and got me away from them. That’s more than enough.” Dean shook his head, intentionally avoiding her eyes.
“If I never told you to leave, you would never have been in that position,” he said regretfully. Y/N couldn’t argue that one. Instead, she just took his hand and interlaced her fingers with his.
“Lesson one in learning how to fight correctly: don’t kick each other out of the bunker,” she whispered tenderly, a gentle smile playing on her lips. Dean simply shook his head, swallowing hard. Y/N carefully studied his face. “Hey,”
Dean looked up at her, taking in the cuts and bruises scattered across her face. The guilt in his heart weighed down heavily on him and she could see it in his eyes. She pulled his face back down to hers and eagerly pressed their lips together again.
“I don’t blame you, Winchester,” she whispered fiercely against his lips. “But if it makes you feel better, I forgive you.”
Sam watched from the far side of the hospital room as his big brother and Y/N took the time to thank whoever listens to them that she made it out of this horrible ordeal alive. The drugs that those men kept pumping her full of took three full days to get out of her system. Thankfully, there should be no lasting damage to her. The gunshot wound was superficial, but thanks to the drugs, bled a lot. She’ll have an ugly scar, but she’ll live to talk about it.
It was the rape kit they had to do on her that infuriated the brothers. The doctors inadvertently discovered the need for it when they were prepping her for surgery. It took everything Sam could do to control Dean and his relentless fury. He was on the receiving end of a few punches before he invariably got Dean in a hold that stopped the violent attacks.
“Listen to me. HEY! LISTEN to me!” Sam shouted furiously at his brother once Dean was pressed up against the wall with his arms pinned. “Stop. You’re going to get kicked out of the hospital if you keep this up. The guys who kidnapped her are to blame for this. Not you, not me, and not the medical staff, alright?”
Dean stormed out of the hospital with Sam and Y/N’s doctor watching with frowns on their faces.
“Is he going to be okay?” they asked Sam. He didn’t know how to answer that, so Sam just shrugged. He told the doctors to do what they had to do for Y/N and he’d sign whatever paperwork was needed. Sam ended up sitting with Y/N for almost two days before Dean made his way back. When he arrived, he looked like he hadn’t slept and reeked of smoke and gasoline.
“They won’t be able to hurt her again,” he said as he stared at Y/N from the foot of her bed. Sam simply shook his head and sent Dean to the hotel room he rented to get a hot shower and some sleep.
Sam knew this was going to be new nightmare material for both his brother and Y/N. Dean’s overwhelming guilt would be enough to inevitably create new scenarios in his head that wouldn’t be real. He’ll wake up screaming horribly in the middle of the night thinking he didn’t save Y/N in time. And since Y/N had the Winchester habit of not talking about things, she’d be reliving this in her dreams as well. All Sam could do is be prepared to help them as best he could from the sidelines and remind them how to avoid getting to this place again.
Which does, in fact, start with not kicking each other out of the bunker during a fight.
Warnings:graphic depictions of violence, physical torture, psychological torture, major character death, major character reincarnation, blood, gore, throat-slitting, water torture, serious injury, cursing
Summary:When Dean denies his baby brother the redemption he begs for after learning he is Lucifer’s true vessel, Sam gives up and gets sloppy. “Hunters” take him with revenge on their minds, but when they learn he can’t die, the torture escalates.
An email shows up at Bobby’s with a video clip of Sam getting his throat cut, prompting him to call Dean. He learns that the older Winchester has no clue where his brother is and is forced to explain what happened. Together with Castiel and the help from another angel, they discover who really has Sam… and why.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: written for the 2021 SPN Eldritch Bang - MY FIRST BANG! I hope you enjoy the damage, terror, and torture. It’s my first time, be gentle. ;)
Art done by the amazing QuickReaver. You can view the beautiful pieces here - and I have to say that she is an amazing person, artist, and human being for working so well with a newbie to the Bang world. I am so lucky to have met her and her art is WONDERFUL (and totally spoiler alert for the story) THANK YOU for being amazing and incredible. I’m so glad we met!
Beta’d by jdl71 and HMCyre
“Look, Sam… It doesn’t matter. Whatever we do. I mean, it turns out that you and me, we’re the fire and the oil of the Armageddon. You know, on that basis alone, we should just pick a hemisphere. Stay away from each other for good,” Dean said. Sam froze, his heart beating wildly in his chest.
“Dean it doesn’t have to be like this. We can fight it,” he pleaded.
“Yeah, you’re right. We can. But not together. We’re not stronger when we’re together, Sam. I think we’re weaker. Because whatever we have between us – love, family, whatever it is – they are always gonna use it against us. And you know that. Yeah, we’re better off apart. We got a better chance of dodging Lucifer and Michael and this whole damn thing, if we just go our own ways,” Dean said. Sam was shaking his head, standing between the two beds in his hotel room. He still gets a double, he’ll always get the double.
“Dean, don’t do this,” Sam begged.
“Bye, Sam,” Dean said, hanging up.
At that moment, Sam’s whole world stops. The very last lifeline he was hanging on to had given up on him. The crushing weight he felt in his chest forced the air out of his lungs, and he can’t breathe but the numbness that is filling him doesn’t care. He lets his arm fall from his ear, the phone tumbling out of his hand and drops to the floor. He felt cold suddenly like there was ice water flowing through his veins, and soon his entire body was chilled. He wasn’t sure if he’s inhaled yet, the crushing weight in his chest getting worse, but he’s had to right? He hasn’t passed out yet.
First the voicemail.
Now, this.
I lost my brother.
No,Sam tells himself fiercely. We’re not brothers anymore.You quit being Dean’s brother the moment you choose Ruby over him. Slowly, Sam sinks down to sit on one of the beds as his mind starts running a mile a minute.
Dean doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore, and you shouldn’t be surprised. You’re a monster and hunters kill monsters, remember? He made that clear with the voicemail. Not only did you release Lucifer, but now you’re his vessel? You’re evil, Sam, the kind of evil that never gets redeemed. When Dean does find you, he’s going to kill you and it’s nothing less than you deserve.
The voice in Sam’s head wasn’t wrong. Sam had let his brother down time and again prior to this epic fail and now there was no turning back. He was a monster and Dean would never forgive him for the wrongs he had done. How do you forgive the man who ended the world?
Sam sat there holding his head in his hands. He felt wetness on his face and wondered when he started to cry. His breath hitched slightly through the weight on his chest when a new thought came to him.
Moving robotically, Sam walked over to where his duffle was sitting on the small table in the room and dug out his Taurus. He pulled the slide back to make sure it’s loaded and saw a bullet in the chamber. He put the barrel of the gun against his temple and pulled the trigger. Blood and brain matter explode from the opposite side of his head, painting the ugly carpet and wallpaper a Rorschach painting. Sam’s body crumbled in a heap on the floor, the handgun still clutched in his right hand, and blood seeped into the carpet from the left side of his head that was missing.
Sam stood in a dark void, surrounded by nothingness. He was dressed in the same clothing he was wearing that day, moments before he shot himself in the head. Hearing footsteps coming up behind him, he turned to see Lucifer walking up to him, his arms clasped behind his back casually. A sardonic smirk danced across his lips as he watched his vessel with dancing eyes.
“I told you, Samuel. I’m not going to let you die,” Lucifer said, walking up to Sam. Lucifer presses two fingers to his forehead.
With a heaving inhale, Sam woke up covered in his own blood on the ugly carpet floor of his hotel room. The left side of his face was covered in blood and brain matter, his hair matted, and skin smeared with it. His head and skull, however, were intact… as if nothing happened. A shaky hand raises and feels along the right side of his head, and just under his hairline Sam feels a small scar. A parting gift from the Devil, reminding him of his power.
A sob rose in Sam’s throat as he realized that Lucifer had brought him back to life, but he swallowed it down and pushed himself to a standing position.
He reached back into his bag and pulled out a silver hunting knife. Turning the knife in on himself, he plunged the blade into his stomach. A grunt of pain was pulled from him as he fell back; warm, sticky blood rushing past his fingers. The pain was unbearable, radiating from his abdomen and pulsing up into his chest.
“Dean…” he whimpered pathetically, hating himself for calling out to a man who no longer cared if he lived or died. After a few minutes, he started to grow cold, and his vision started to darken. It was then that he saw the figure of Lucifer walking up to him in the hotel room, his head tilted as he studied the wound.
“Silver blades don’t bother me, Sam,” he said, smiling and entertained. “But that’s a nice try.”
Sam didn’t know how long he was out for this time, but when he opened his eyes, the hunting knife rested in his left hand. It gleamed in the light of the motel, cleaned of all the blood. His shirt and jeans, however, were tacky and clinging to him in places with his blood. Sam’s head dropped back and he blinked away tears.
Maybe something that will do more significant damage to my body, he thought, pushing himself up to a standing position. He brought the knife with him into the bathroom and he set it on the sink as he dug into his bathroom kit. Finding what he was looking for, he pulled out the bottle of prescription painkillers. He stared at it for a long moment, then filled up one of the disposable glasses with water. He started to take the pills three at a time until the bottle was empty.
He didn’t know how long it would take for the drugs to start destroying his organs. When he looked at the bathtub, he grabbed the knife before climbing in it. Very carefully, he placed the tip of the knife against the delicate skin of his wrist and followed the scar left behind from the ghouls so many years ago. A pained grunt escaped him as he watched dark red blood start to pulse out of the wound. He quickly switched hands and did the other wrist as sickness started to swirl in his stomach. He noticed his breathing was getting labored as well.
Sam scrunched his body down in the tub so he could let his head fall back against the cool porcelain, suddenly feeling very hot. His eyes drifted away from the blood pumping out of his wrists and lazily looked out of the bathroom door and into the bedroom where his vision was starting to get blurry. There, he swore he saw a figure sitting on the bed. He was bent over, elbows resting on his knees, staring at him with disappointment.
“If you think I can’t purify your blood of that Vicodin, Sammy, you really have underestimated me,” Lucifer said with a frown. Slowly, Sam’s eyes slid shut on the blurred image of the Devil watching him die in a motel bathtub.
Yet again, Sam opened his eyes sometime later. Still covered in his own blood and all that remained of his attempt this time was the scars on his wrists. As Sam went to pull himself out of the tub, he spotted a small orange bottle on the counter near the sink. He pulled his shirt off and let it splat on the porcelain before making his way over to see what it was.
He was both furious and frustrated when he picked up a full bottle of Vicodin with his bloodstained hand.
After that, Sam tried a variety of other ways to kill himself with no success: electrocution, drowning, setting himself on fire behind the motel, hanging himself from the ceiling. Each time, Lucifer greeted him just before he died and called him out on his attempt. Each time Sam opened his eyes, he was put back together completely, but left with scars.
He must have killed himself a dozen times since his last phone call with his brother… no, not your brother. You don’t have a family. You don’t get to have family. Sam lay on the filthy carpet in the room and stared at the ceiling.
“You’re really not gonna let me die, are you?” he asked pathetically. Somewhere in the distance, he heard his cell phone ringing, but couldn’t be bothered to pick it up. At that point, he couldn’t be bothered to do much of anything.
“That’s pretty nice timing, Cas,” Dean said with a relieved smile.
“We had an appointment,” Castiel replied. Dean smirked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t ever change,” he replied.
“How did Zachariah find you?” Castiel asked. Dean sighed as he reached into his pocket for his phone.
“Long story. Let’s just stay away from Jehovah’s Witnesses for now on, okay?” he says opening his phone and dialing Sam’s number.
“What are you doing?” Castiel questioned.
“Something I should have done in the first place,” Dean said, listening to the other line ringing. When it went to voicemail, Dean got a confused look on his face. He pulled the phone away from his ear and redialed the number. Again, voicemail.
“What is it?” Castiel asked as Dean pulled the phone away and shoved it back in his pocket.
“Sam’s not answering,” he said, concern touching his voice but not enough for Castiel’s liking. “He’s probably pissed at me and ignoring my calls.”
“What did you do?” Castiel asked. Dean side-eyed him this time. The two turned and started walking.
“What’s with the twenty questions, Cas?” Dean questioned. “I… said some things I shouldn’t have. Said a lot of things I shouldn’t have. Things we need to hash out together so we can get back on the same page.”
“It would be nice to see you actually caring about your brother again, Dean,” Castiel said, an air of arrogance in his tone. Dean chose to ignore that comment on the grounds that he didn’t want to look too closely at what that meant.
“Whatever.”
Sam sat at the rickety table in his hotel room tapping on his laptop, searching for ways to stay dead permanently. Through websites and chat rooms, he was able to eliminate some of the suggested ways to die. Frustrated, he slapped the lid shut and leaned back against the chair.
Why is it so hard to figure out how to die and stay dead? He thought, looking out the window of his room. Maybe looking online wasn’t the right way to do this. Frowning, he opened the laptop again and searched for the closest library. Finding the address, he wrote it down on a piece of paper, tore it off the notepad and stuffed it into his pocket as he stood to leave the room.
Opening the door to step out of the room, a burst of stars exploded in front of his eyes and he stumbled back into his room. Sam felt hands on his arms, and he lashed out. At least two of his hits landed, but he still ended up on his back with a knee on his throat. Moments later, he felt the cold metal of a gun pressed to his temple, causing him to freeze. By the time his vision cleared, he saw four faces staring down at him.
“Hey there, demon boy,” one of the faces said. Sam eyed them warily.
“I’m not going to fight you,” he said quietly. One of the men snickered.
“You mean any more than you already did?” a different one said.
“That’s a shame, really. Because we really want to fight you,” the third one said. Sam looked at him with a frown.
“I don’t have much money,” Sam said, pointing at the table. “You can take what I do have. The laptop too. My gun is under the pillow on the bed.”
“Oh, Sammy, we don’t want your shit,” the skinny one said. Sam’s eyes narrowed, instantly realizing the men in front of him were hunters. Two of the men hauled him up, twisting his arms behind him. The gun at his temple moved to the front of him, aimed at his heart. “We want your head on a spike, demon boy.”
A swift hit to the back of the head and Sam slipped into unconsciousness, unaware that he was being dragged away from the security of his motel room and thrown into the trunk of a car.
When Sam woke up, he found himself tied to a rusted metal chair. There were straps holding him down: his chest; his biceps; his forearms; his head; his lap; his thighs; his shins. The restraint chair was old but effective. He tried to move but found himself unable to do anything. This made him nervous. What made him more nervous was he didn’t have a shirt or any shoes on. He tried to look around as much as he could with his head restrained but was unable to move much. That might have been a blessing in disguise given how badly his head hurt.
“Look who’s finally awake! I was starting to think that Paul hit you too hard,” a male voice said cheerily. Sam glared as best he could, refusing to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how much he hurt. The man walked in front of him and looked Sam in the eye with a wide, sadistic smile. “How are you enjoying your chair? I hope it’s comfortable because you ain’t leaving it for a while.”
“Where the hell are we?” Sam asked. The man laughed.
"Some place no one will ever hear you scream, demon boy,” the man said, standing in front of Sam. “Rumor has it we have you to thank for this insanity happening all over the world. You! You were the one who let good old Lucifer out of his cage. What the hell were you thinking, boy?” the man sneered. When the man said Lucifer’s name, worry started to grow in the pit of his stomach.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam said shakily. The man in front of him dropped his smile and swung at him. The punch hit Sam squarely in the jaw, and he felt something crunch from the hit. Stars danced in front of his eyes for a few seconds, and when Sam opened his eyes once more, the man was smiling again.
“Now, don’t you lie to me. We know the truth about you. An old friend of yours filled us in. Told us you’ve been sucking down demon blood like a damn vampire at an all-you-can-eat buffet, that you got these magical powers that let you kill demons and see the future… oh and YOU LET THE FUCKING DEVIL OUT!” the man shouted at him. Sam flinched away; who told him? Whoever it was, they told him everything.
“Looks like you started having fun without us, Carl,” a different voice called out. The man in front of Sam stepped back to give the newcomer space. When he stepped into the light and Sam got a look at him, he blanched. Billy placed a foot on the lower part of the restraint chair and leaned his weight on it, bending down to look Sam in the face.
“What, no hello for your old friend?” Billy asked with a tilt of his head. “Devil got your tongue?”
Sam remained silent, refusing to give the man the satisfaction of a response. Billy snorted and shook his head standing up straight.
“We kill evil, Sam,” Billy said, looking down at the man strapped to the chair. “And you are one evil son of a bitch. You and that so-called brother of yours, Dean. Once we get your brother here, we’re gonna take the both of you out for ending the world.”
“Dean had nothing to do with this. I’m the one who did it, leave him out of this,” Sam growled. Billy raised a brow.
“You would defend your brother,” he scoffed. Sam shook his head.
“Dean was trying to stop me when I let Lucifer out. He didn’t even know what I was doing. He had nothing to do with this. You have me, do whatever you want to me, but leave him out of this,” Sam said defiantly. He glared at Billy, daring him to challenge him again. The two men stared at each other. Finally, Billy smirked.
“Well, we did find you all by yourself,” Billy said thoughtfully. Sam refused to look away.
“Deans not involved in any of this. I failed him, and he gave up on me,” Sam said quietly. Billy stared at Sam, trying to tell if he was lying.
“Dean wants nothing more to do with me. One of the last things he said to me was he wanted to kill me, so,” Sam muttered quietly, his voice catching at the end. Billy smirked at him. Weakness,he thought. Still a weakness for you.
“Big brother finally realized what a burden you really are,” Billy said appreciatively. The other men in the room chuckled. Sam swallowed, his eyes twitching. “You’re a waste of life, Samuel. Pathetic. You ruin everything you touch, including your brother.” Sam swallowed hard.
“So, you really are on your own. Giving up on a monster like you was the best thing Dean could have done.” The two stared at each other, Billy with malice in his gray eyes and a sinister smile on his face.
“Well, boys, you heard the man. We can do whatever we want to him,” Billy said, looking at the others. Sam swallowed deeply then, glancing at the other three men in the room. Fear settled in his belly. “Let’s see just how demonic Sam really is.”
He didn’t even see the first punch coming. The hit came from the right, a hand with brass knuckles slammed into the side of Sam’s face. The strap holding his head in place caused his chin to take the full force of the hit at once. A cry escaped his lips as he felt the blow shatter his cheekbone. Another hit came from the opposite side, this one just a fist but feeling just as harshly. The crunch he felt in his jaw from the very first hit happened again, and a sharp pain raced from his jaw up through his temple. Tears of pain leaked from his eyes.
“Baby’s crying? Why are you crying, Sammy? This is what you deserve,” Carl said, swinging a fist at him again, this one colliding with his abdomen. All the air rushed out of his lungs, and Sam started to cough. The chair kept him strapped upright, so he couldn’t bend over like his muscles wanted him to do. Another fist with those brass knuckles clocked him in the face, causing him to shout out. The skin near his eye split and he whimpered. Blood dripped from the split skin there, a bruise already starting to bloom. Another punch followed; this one from the opposite side without the brass knuckles. Both blows were enough to cause Sam to see stars in front of his eyes.
“Where’s all that magical power now, demon boy?” Billy shouted. Sam couldn’t answer, coughing with his eyes clenched closed and his breathing coming harsh through his nose.
“I asked you a question!” Billy shouted, slapping Sam across the face. A whimper escaped his lips as the sting went across his broken cheekbone. Sam refused to answer, turning narrowed hazel eyes toward Billy. Billy chuckled. “Not gonna answer? That’s fine.”
Billy swung again, an uppercut that broke his nose. The punch was hard enough to tip the chair Sam was in, sending it crashing to the floor. The metal chair jarred Sam roughly. Between the hit and the fall, Sam was gasping for breath through whimpers. Billy pulled off the brass knuckles and tossed them onto a rolling tray nearby, shaking out his hand. Billy glanced at the guys and one of them stepped forward with a baseball bat in his hand. Before Sam could recover enough, the man swung the bat and brought it down hard on Sam’s abdomen.
All the air rushed out of Sam’s lungs once again in a hoarse shout, then he broke into a sob as pain radiated through his belly and to his back. The man swung and hit Sam again, only this time in his chest. The echoing crack told of Sam’s ribs breaking. A third hit left Sam gasping for breath. The hits after that had Sam crying out sharply each time the bat made a connection with his chest. Not soon enough, Billy grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him back.
“We don’t want to kill him too quickly, Carl,” he said. Billy nodded his head behind him, as if telling the guy to stand down. Carl turned to stare at Sam for a long moment, watching as the man breathed in short, harsh pants, before finally turning away. Billy watched him throw the bat on the rusted medical table and storm out of the decaying room with a frown.
“Matt. Skip. Grab the pliers and break his fingers,” Billy said quietly.
“You got it, boss,” Matt said before Billy stepped away. One of the men grabbed two pairs of pliers. He tossed one pair to the other and the two chuckled as they clicked them a few times.
“Please,” Sam begged in a whimper, tears running from his eyes. Billy heard it and looked down at the younger brother with a raised brow before walking over and staring down at him.
“This is because of your blood drinkin’ ways, Sam. Monsters get punished before they die,” he said cruelly. Sam blinked at him, tears breaking free and running back to his hair. He would be shaking his head if he could.
“I didn’t know,” he whispered brokenly. Billy scoffed.
“Right,” he answered before turning and walking out of the room. Matt and Skip broke Sam’s pinky fingers simultaneously. He only released a whimper when they broke his ring fingers simultaneously. But by the time they got to his middle fingers, he couldn’t help but release shouts of pain, no matter how much his head told him he deserved the punishment they were dealing him.
By the time they were done breaking all his fingers, Sam was officially crying. His chest hurt, his face hurt, and now his fingers hurt. He knew he wasn’t going to survive this, so why wouldn’t they just kill him already?
“Get this asshole up,” Billy said. Matt and Skip hauled the restraint chair he was sitting in back to a seated position. The shift left Sam lightheaded for a few moments. It was just long enough for Billy to step forward, grab a fist full of his hair to pull his head back and press a knife against his throat. Sam froze instantly.
“Let’s see what kind of things work on the demon boy, shall we?” Billy said. The blade bit into the soft skin at his throat, drawing blood from a very thin cut. Sam tried to control his breathing so the blade wouldn’t cut deeper than necessary. Sam swallowed nervously.
“I’m not a demon,” Sam defended weakly. Billy smirked.
“You sure as hell drink demon blood, and that shit ain’t human,” a voice said. Sam glanced at where the men were standing, getting nervous.
“One way to find out,” Billy said, pulling the blade from Sam’s neck. Placing the tip of the blade in the soft part of the muscle of Sam’s left bicep, Billy very slowly started to push the blade into his arm. A sadistic smirk played on Billy’s lips as he watched Sam clench his teeth to keep from yelling.
“Go ahead and scream Sam. No one is coming to save you,” Billy said before shoving the knife all the way through his arm. A short, rough scream escapes Sam followed by a series of grunts as he tries to control the pain. Billy reached a hand behind him and snapped his fingers. Another silver knife was placed in his open palm. Billy set it against Sam’s right bicep and slowly started to push the blade in once again. Sam grunted his way through the pain until Billy shoved the knife through the muscle. Another scream ripped from his throat. A ragged sob escaped him.
“Dean,” he muttered quietly. Billy’s sadistic smirk turned cruel.
“Dean ain’t coming to save you now, demon boy. He gave up on you. Something he should have done a long time ago,” he said. “Dean never loved you, Sammy. You were never his family. You were a waste of space and I can’t wait to rid the planet of you.”
Sam squeezed his eyes shut, silently agreeing with everything Billy said.
“Hey, Carl! Go get the salt,” Billy called out. Laughter came from the men behind him while the smallest of the group, the man who greeted him when he first woke up, stood up and walked over to one of the rusted cabinets. Opening the door with a screech, he pulled out a cylinder container and carried it over to where Sam lay strapped to the chair. Billy looked over at Carl with a smile.
“Would you like to do the honors?” he asked. Carl glared at Sam.
“With pleasure,” Carl muttered, opening the container. “You know, my sister was killed in one of those crazy ambushes that occurred when you released the Devil from his cage. They tore her apart in front of her two kids. Mauled her. We couldn’t even have a funeral for her.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam whispered, tears in his eyes. Carl shook his head.
“Not as sorry as you’re gonna be,” he growled. Carl poured some of the salt into his hand, then shoved it into Sam’s face, burying it into the open wounds from the beating he had taken earlier. Sam hissed at the burn that came from the salt hitting the open wounds then started to shout as Carl rubbed the salt further into the wounds, using his fingernails to dig it in and tear at the cuts. Carl even went as far as to dump some of the salt into Sam’s mouth.
Soon, he flipped the salt canister closed and turned away. Sam panted as the salt burned into his cuts, the heavy breathing sucking more granules deeper into the wounds. Carl walked over to the rusty rolling tray, set down the canister, and picked up the pliers that were used to break his fingers. Sam watched as Carl walked back toward him and started shaking his head. Instead of breaking his toes, however, Carl proceeded to tear off each one of Sam’s toenails.
Blood dripped down Sam’s toes. Just as Carl pulled the last one, a crack was heard, and a hoarse scream of pain erupted from Sam. Matt had taken a baseball bat to his ankle, no doubt shattering the bones there. A sob followed Sam’s scream, having not been able to move and his bones taking the full brunt of the attack. Carl looked over his shoulder at Matt, a smirk on his face. He reached over and moved Sam’s foot attached to the shattered ankle, causing him to scream again.
“Do the other ankle,” a voice said quietly. Matt and Carl looked over at Billy, who turned to look at the man who walked into the room. Paul, an older man with a stoic expression, slowly stepped into the room staring Billy down. Billy and Paul glared at each other for a long moment, then Billy nodded his agreement. The other two men shrugged, and Carl moved to the other side. Sam shook his head, a sob escaping his throat. Matt moved in front of Sam and swung. CRACK!
Sam’s blood-curdling scream echoed through the entire hall of the abandoned hospital, the acute agony that was piercing his legs causing him to blackout in the end. Billy sat watching the men hurt him without remorse. Matt and Carl looked up when they heard the back door open, causing Billy to look over his shoulder. Before Billy could speak, Paul did.
“Is the room ready?” Paul asked. Skip nodded. “Excellent. Get him up and out of that chair. We have somewhere to be.”
Matt and Skip men dropped Sam in a heap atop the old mattress before turning and walking out, locking the door to the small hospital room behind them. Sam moaned weakly as he tried to shift into a more comfortable position, but it was hard when his hands were practically useless. After a while, he was able to shift himself onto his shoulder at least and used his elbow to push himself up into a seated position.
Taking stock of his injuries, he realized they wrapped his arms where the knives were. His face felt swollen and warm, and he could only open one eye. Looking down at his feet, his ankles looked horrific, and he knew he wasn’t walking anywhere any time soon. He dropped his head against the wall and let out a weak sob as he thought about his predicament.
Once he was feeling stable, Sam opened his one eye and looked around the decaying room to see where he was. They had cleaned the room out, leaving him with the old, moldy mattress they dropped him on, an itchy blanket if you could call it that, and a bucket in the corner. No food, no water. No light of any kind.
He used his elbows to push himself into a kneeling position, and he crawled his way over to the door, trying to open it. Locked, as expected, but he had to try. He shuffled himself back to the mattress and settled himself as best he could.
Alone in that room, trapped with kidnappers who wanted nothing good for him, he let himself feel the emotions overwhelming him and gave in to the tears pressing against his eyes.
Sam woke up with a jolt when the metal door to the room he was locked in was suddenly kicked open. He didn’t even remember falling asleep. He started coughing almost immediately, causing the pain to ricochet through his body. A light moan escaped him.
“Wakey, wakey, demon boy…” he heard a voice say before one of them kicked him in the chest. He curled in on himself, trying to protect his already injured ribs. Even that small movement amped the pain up through his body.
“Get him up,” he heard Carl say. “Billy wants him in the showers.”
Sam felt arms grab him and start dragging him away from the mattress, cries of pain escaping his lips involuntarily when his broken ankles dropped and hit the floor. A hand slapped the back of his head.
“Shut the fuck up, demon,” one of them said. Opening the one good eye he had, he forced his head up to look around and see who had him. Matt and Skip. Sam did his best to try and remember where they were going in the abandoned hospital, but the pain he was in made him dizzy and he lost his way three turns in.
Matt and Skip dragged Sam through the halls of the decaying building to a locker room that had an old shower in it. In the shower was a large bucket filled to the rim with water. Matt and Skip forced Sam to his knees, ignoring his cries of pain. Billy stepped up and smiled at him.
“I always wondered if demons reacted to water torture, Sammy,” he said with an air of confidence. Billy held out a rosary made from red and black crystals, the crucifix on the end silver and well-loved. He held it in front of Sam’s face for a long moment, then dropped it into the bucket. “Especially if it’s an entire drum of holy water. Want to find out?”
“The name is Sam,” Sam gasped out defiantly. Billy simply laughed.
“Still mouthy till the end. Just like your brother,” Billy replied. Sam’s heart clenched painfully at the mention of his brother. Billy bent over to get eye to eye with Sam. “You know, he never really loved you, right Sammy? How could he love a monster like you? You ruined his life.”
Sam stared at Billy for a long moment before his eyes dropped, accepting the words. He already knew them. Billy saying them didn’t make them any less true.
“Maybe we should call him, see if he wants to come by and participate in this religious testing we’re doing,” he shouted, holding his hands out. Pulling out a cell phone, he held it in front of Sam’s face. Sam recognized it as his own.
“No calls from big bro, Sammy. He’s given up on you. He should have killed you when he had the chance,” Billy said, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “No worries. I’ll make sure we take care of that for him.”
Sam’s heart clenched in his chest with every word Billy said, knowing they were true. Billy smirked as he stood up straight, watching how Sam wilted at his words. He wasn’t about to tell Sam his brother actually did call him – twice in fact. It just meant they needed to get their work done and get out of there before Dean started looking for his brother.
“Dunk him,” he ordered. Matt and Skip shoved Sam’s head under the water and held it there as he thrashed, trying to get himself out of the water. Soon, Sam ended up inhaling some of the water and slowly stopped thrashing around.
“Pull him out,” Billy said, and the men yanked Sam out of the water, shoving him to the ground. They watched as he coughed and gasped, trying to get air back into his lungs. Once he was able to take a breath of air uninhibited, Billy nodded at him. The men grabbed him and yanked him back up.
“No. No, please,” Sam begged quietly.
“Again,” Billy said, and the men shoved Sam’s head back under the water. Sam thrashed again, desperately trying to find relief from the cold water that his head was shoved into, desperately trying not to inhale the water into his lungs. Sooner than he liked, his body started to respond despite what his mind was telling him, and he inhaled water again.
Yanked out of the water and cast aside once again, Sam coughed hard and expelled whatever water he could from his lungs. Billy squatted down in front of him and watched with narrowed eyes.
“If your brother killed you when he should have, none of this would be happening right now,” he muttered. Sam’s eyes filled with tears, knowing how true Billy’s words were.
“I’ll say this, he ain’t smokin,” Matt said, glancing at Billy. Skip shook his head.
“Either your holy water ain’t worth a shit, or he’s a different kind of demon,” Skip replied, leaning against the wall. Billy gave the two men a look that he hoped would silence them. Skip simply smirked and shrugged. “Just saying.”
“Pick him up again,” Billy growled. Matt and Skip chuckled as they grabbed Sam again. They manhandled Sam back up to his knees, ignoring his cries of pain. Billy grabbed a fist full of Sam’s hair and lifted his head. Sam looked up at him with fear and resignation in his eyes. Billy simply stared at him for a few long moments then shoved his head away. “Dunk him.”
The men dunked Sam’s head back under the water, and Sam reflexively fought back but his heart simply wasn’t in it anymore. After all, he had nothing to live for now that Dean had given up on him.
The two dragged an unconscious Sam by his wrists through the halls of the hospital, laughing maniacally. Kicking the door open to the room that had become his cell, they dropped him unceremoniously onto the mattress. His body made a squelching sound when it landed, which caused the guys to laugh harder.
“You guys don’t feel even a little guilty about what we’re doing here?” they heard a voice say. Matt and Skip turned to see Paul leaning against the door jam, arms crossed over his chest. The dark look in his eyes made the two men stop laughing.
“C’mon, Paul,” Skip said with a shrug of his shoulders. “He started the fucking apocalypse. He was drinking demon blood.”
“Not to mention letting Lucifer out,” Matt said. Paul eyed the two men judgmentally.
“My point was you shouldn’t be enjoying it so much. We have a job to do, and we’ll get it done. But we don’t get to act like Neanderthals while doing it,” Paul said critically, studying the two men harshly. He raised a brow. “We’re taking a big risk here doing this, coming after Sam Winchester. Maybe you should remember that while you are celebrating.” The two had the decency to look chastised.
“Sorry, boss,” Skip said.
“Yeah, sorry, boss,” Matt agreed. Paul nodded thoughtfully.
“Go check the perimeter and make sure we haven’t been compromised,” he ordered quietly. The two men nodded and slipped from the room as silently as possible. While walking away, Skip looked back at Paul standing in the doorway, watching over Sam.
“I always forget that Paul is actually the one running this thing, not Billy,” he said with a shake of his head. Matt snorted.
“Billy only wishes he was as smart as Paul. I’d follow Paul anywhere. I’d just as well shoot Billy as work with him. Billy will be the one to get us killed,” Matt said. Skip nodded his head as they walked out the side door they used as their entrance.
“You ain’t kidding.”
Paul stood in the doorway and watched the unconscious man. It was hard to believe what he had done, what his brothers and sisters were able to manipulate him into doing with the help of the demons. It infuriated him, this civil war they had going on. All parties involved with the start of the apocalypse would be punished, including the human Sam Winchester, the vessel of Lucifer. He and his little band of outlawed misfits would prove that it wasn’t necessary to start something as drastic as the end of the world.
Carl walked up to where Paul was, looking into the room where Sam lay unconscious before turning his glowing blue eyes to his leader.
“We’re going to have to do something about Qaphsiel,” he said, voice monotone and emotionless. “He’s starting to get a little out of hand.”
“What do you mean?” Paul asked, his own glowing blue eyes looking at the vessel his partner had taken over.
“He just needs to be reminded where he stands in this line-up. Seraphim like him are not allowed to be ordering anyone around, making decisions, or changing plans,” Carl growled. Paul turned his eyes back to Sam and sighed heavily.
“Are you sure it wasn’t the vessel?” Paul asked.
“No, it was Qaphsiel. No one speaks that way other than him,” Carl retorted.
“It wasn’t my idea to bring him on in the first place, Gadiel,” he said pointedly. Carl’s glowing eyes narrowed slightly in indignation. “I’ll have a word with him, remind him of his place. Will that suffice?”
“Yes, for now,” Carl said. “What is it that you want me to do?”
“Prepare the chair for him,” Paul said, a head tilt toward Sam. “It’s time to finish this.”
An electrical buzzing sound roused Sam. He jolted, instantly aware of the ache in his body. The electrical buzzing sound happened again, causing Sam to lift his head and look around, only to see Paul standing next to him with a long metal rod. That was also when he realized he was attached to a metal chair, strapped down tightly with leather straps across his chest, legs, and arms. He eyed the man warily.
“You destroyed this planet, letting Lucifer out of his box. You know that, right?” Paul said quietly. Sam watched him apprehensively. “You damned the entire world.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Sam whispered softly. “I didn’t know what…”
“Don’t give me that shit!” Paul yelled suddenly, moving forward. Sam startled slightly, and his eyes widened as he eyed the cattle prod coming toward him.
“No, no, wait,” Sam begged, then a ragged scream ripped through his throat as Paul pushed the cattle prod into his hip and turned the power on. Electricity burned through his body, fire running through his nerves as his muscles jumped and spasmed for the seconds the cattle prod was active against his skin. Paul pulled the cattle prod away, leaving Sam panting and sweating harshly.
“You are the reason we’re all gonna die,” Paul said viciously, stabbing him again with the cattle prod, lighting up Sam’s body again. Sam’s body convulsed in the chair, his voice screaming in pain as electricity ran through him. Billy and Carl walked up on the duo, watching with narrowed eyes. When Paul pulled the electrical stick back again, Sam sobbed. Blood started to seep from his ears.
“Please,” Sam sobbed. Paul glanced at Carl who approached with a bucket of water and dumped it on Sam. The cold water startled him, seeping into his jeans and the leather straps holding him in place. Wide, scared eyes looked over at the men standing nearby and watching.
“Rot in hell,” Paul growled, before stabbing Sam a third time with the cattle prod, this time longer than the previous. Electricity arced over Sam and the metal chair he was tied to, the water steaming off his body. The scream he let out was loud and harsh, his muscles so tight they looked close to snapping. Against his broken bones, the pain had to be excruciating, but no one would stop Paul from his actions.
When Paul finally pulled the cattle prod away from Sam, the men in the room watched as water and blood dripped off his body. Paul was breathing heavily, lifting a hand to wipe at the sweat under his nose. Billy stared wide-eyed at Paul, shocked at the extreme measure he had just taken. Paul shot Carl a look, and Carl quickly moved forward to press two fingers to the pulse point in Sam’s neck. He waited a few seconds before looking at Paul and shaking his head.
“Start packing up your shit. We’re out of here before dark,” Paul breathed, throwing the cattle prod onto the metal counter. The clang echoed in the room.
When Sam opened his eyes again, he was standing on the beach. The sand felt warm between his toes, the ocean air tasted salty on his tongue.
“I can make it stop, you know,” Lucifer said. Sam looked to the right of himself and saw the Devil walking up to him. He had his pants rolled up to his calves, his hands in his pockets. Lucifer was looking out the ocean waves, his expression peaceful. Content. “You could stay here, be at peace.”
“No.”
“Dean can’t save you, Sammy. He won’t. He has abandoned you. Forgotten you. I’m here. I can save you, but I can’t find you with the ruins on your ribs; I can’t stop them unless you tell me where you are. If you won’t say yes, at least tell me where you are so I can stop them from hurting you.”
“No,” Sam said, shaking his head with fear in his eyes. Lucifer shook his head in sadness, placing a hand on the younger Winchester’s shoulder.
“You don’t have to say yes, Sam. Just let me protect you,” Lucifer all but begged.
“I said no! No!” Sam said, stepping away from Lucifer. The Devil frowned as he watched Sam for a moment. He then stepped forward, clamping his hands down on Sam’s shoulders.
“Sam, when I resurrect you, you’ll be back in their clutches. It will start all over again,” Lucifer said. He shook his head. “Why can’t you believe that I care about you? I wish you’d believe me,” Lucifer said with a sigh.
“Perhaps next time, you’ll have changed your mind.”
Sam was about to respond but didn’t have a chance. He suddenly felt as if he was falling, plummeting through space. When he felt himself land, he was back in his body. He opened his eyes and gasped a lungful of air, scaring the man in the room with him.
“What the fuck!?” Carl shouted, looking at a gasping Sam. Sam’s eyes darted all over the room, trying to figure out what was going on. He realized he had been untied from the chair and shoved into the corner of the room “How the hell are you still alive?”
Sam started coughing, trying to clear his throat. Carl ran out of the room and called out to the other guys, who came running in a flash. Paul, who was in front of the group, stalked up to Sam and held a knife to his throat. Sam pressed himself against the wall as tightly as he could to get away from the blade cutting into the sensitive skin of his throat.
“How are you breathing?” Paul asked coldly.
“Lucifer,” Sam gasped. “Lucifer refuses to let me die.”
“Lucifer won’t let you die?” Paul repeated, his tone questioning Sam’s sanity. Sam started to shake his head then stopped when he felt the knife dig deeper into his skin.
“Nn…no. Said I can’t say yes if I’m dead, so..” Sam said, his eyes lifting to look into Paul’s.
“Well, then,” Billy said, a malicious grin playing on his lips. “That changes everything.”
“Gentlemen,” Paul said, his voice low and even. “This just became a whole new thing.” The rest of the men looked at each other in surprise and uncertainty.
“If you want out, now is the time,” Paul said, turning his head to look at the small group of men.
“What the fuck? No, none of us are leaving,” Billy started. Paul interrupted him.
“You don’t have a say in how this goes. This is my op, Billy. Not yours. You work for me, so shut the fuck up,” Paul sneered, the first real bit of emotion he had shown since Sam had been taken. Carl had a look of satisfaction on his face while Billy held up his hands in a surrender motion and took a step back. Sam simply watched everything in silence, a knife still pressed solidly against his throat.
“I don’t know about this,” Matt said quietly. “How much penance does one need to make for starting the apocalypse?” That made Paul’s eyes narrow minutely.
“Well, I’m staying. I can’t wait to get my hands on him again,” Billy said gleefully. That made most of the men roll their eyes.
“I’m here till you call it,” Carl said to Paul.
“I’ll stay if you stay,” Skip said to Matt. “We always work together. You want to do this? We’ll do it together.” Matt then nodded.
“So, we’re all in then,” Paul said, a sadistic smirk coming to his lips. Sam suddenly got very nervous. “Excellent. Let’s see how many ways we can kill a traitor.”
Billy stepped forward first, a fist to Sam’s face knocking him to the side. The rest of the men took a step back to watch as Billy beat Sam: punching him in the face, swiftly kicking him in the chest, stomping on his hand. Skip shoved Billy out of the way a few minutes later, finding the courage to participate. Kicking Sam’s knee, he ignored the man’s screams as he destroyed Sam’s leg. Carl walked up and kicked Sam in the face, breaking his jaw. Paul stomped on Sam’s chest, breaking his ribs, and puncturing his lung. As Sam rolled over to try and protect his chest, another kick to his head snapped his neck, killing him instantly.
“Back again, I see,” Lucifer said, watching Sam reappear at the beach. He smirked watching Sam look around confused. When Sam finally looked at the Devil, his eyes grew sad.
“They killed me again?” he asked. Lucifer nodded.
“Are you ready to tell me where you are now?” the Devil asked. Sam shook his head.
“No. Never,” he answered quickly. Lucifer shrugged.
“You must enjoy the pain, Samuel. If that’s what you want, I could give it to you instead of these… people,” Lucifer said, snapping his fingers.
Sam opened his eyes to find himself being drug down one of the dirty hallways by his wrists. He turned his head to look around, then thrashed a bit to try and get loose. Skip and Matt looked over at him.
“Look who’s back with us!” Skip exclaimed, pinning Sam’s arm behind him. Sam cried out as he tried to get free but instead found himself hauled up to a standing position. “C’mon, demon boy. Time for you to walk for yourself.”
“Where are you taking me?” Sam demanded. The men laughed at him as they guided him to the kitchen on the first floor of the abandoned hospital. Finding the old refrigerator unit, Matt opened the door while Skip shoved him in there.
“Have a nice night!” he sang before Matt shut the door. Sam launched himself at the door only to find that there was no handle to get out from inside the refrigerator unit. If he remembered correctly, it was also an air-tight unit as well. With no power, it was pitch black in the small room. Sam started to panic, banging on the refrigerator door.
“Let me out of here! Let me out!!” he shouted. He tried to shove the door open, run his fingers along the walls to find a weakness, and even find a vent somewhere that he could possibly break through. Nothing. He was alone in a room with limited air supply and no light. It was only a matter of time before the oxygen would run out and he would suffocate. His panic only grew.
“God, Dean, I’m so sorry. Please. Please find me,” he begged, tears forming in his eyes again as he panted. His panic attack was short-lived though, as he felt himself grow tired.
Sam sat on the grass near a lake in the woods. Birds chirped in the woods around him, the breeze rustling the leaves. The water rippled slightly as fish came to the surface and ate the bugs that danced across the top of the water. When Sam ran his fingers over the grass, he felt the individual blades. They were sun-warmed and smelled fresh.
“How did you end up here this time, Sam?” Lucifer asked, sitting down next to him. Sam immediately stiffened. The two men looked over the water until Lucifer turned and looked at Sam. Sam avoided his eyes.
“I asked you a question,” the Devil said, his voice sharpening slightly. Sam swallowed.
“They locked me in a refrigerator,” he said softly. Lucifer chuckled.
“Those guys are creative, I’ll give them that,” he said. They sat quietly for a moment together. “I’m betting if I send you back right now, you’d still be in that refrigerator. Care to find out?”
Sam was about to answer when Lucifer touched his head with two fingers.
Sam opened his eyes and gasped but didn’t see anything but darkness. He felt his lungs tighten in his chest, desperate for air that wasn’t there. Slowly, he felt himself drift off once again, his heart thudding hard in his chest.
“And again, so quickly. So, it was the fridge then?” Lucifer said with a frown. Sam looked at his hands then at Lucifer with wide, scared eyes.
“And you haven’t figured out who really has you yet, have you?” he said with a smirk and a cocked eyebrow. Sam’s expression turned confused.
“What?” he breathed. Lucifer shook his head.
“Nope, I’m not giving you any clues. That would ruin the game. You have to figure it out yourself,” he said, holding a hand up. Sam suddenly got angry.
“This isn’t a game! This is… This is torture!” he shouted. Lucifer suddenly glared at Sam.
“Yes,” he said stonily. “It’s absolutely torture. It’s not something you should be dealing with and if you told me where you were, Samuel, I would be there to stop it and you wouldn’t be in pain anymore. I’ve already told you how much I care about you. What more do I have to do?”
Sam swallowed nervously, eyeing Lucifer with fear.
“You are my one true vessel, Samuel. I can protect you if you tell me where you are,” Lucifer reiterated. Sam shook his head.
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know where I am,” he replied quietly. Lucifer sighed disappointedly.
“Well, then,” the Devil said. He snapped his fingers and Sam went back.
Sam gritted his teeth and clenched his eyes shut when he came to, trying to hold his breath. He knew there was no air in the fridge he was in, and he didn’t want to die right away. He wanted to see if he could find an emergency exit button or something before he passed out again. He crawled toward the door and felt once again for a handle. It was only a minute later that he was unconscious on the ground.
It went on like that for hours: waking, gasping for air and suffocating inside the refrigerator. Until one time when he woke up the door was open. When he gasped, he inhaled air and his lungs expanded painfully. Sam panted, his hands clawing at his chest as four men stared down at him. He barely followed what was being said above him.
“What did I tell ya?” Billy asked, staring down at Sam.
“What the actual fuck, dude,” another voice said. “How in the hell did you get Sam Winchester away from his brother?”
“Dean gave up on him. Left him out on his own, so we plucked him up and have been keeping him here for a few weeks now,” Billy responded. Sam started coughing, rolling on his side.
“And you’re telling me he can’t die? Like, at all?” a woman’s voice said.
“Nope. Every time we’ve killed him, he’s come back. Said Lucifer doesn’t want him dead. How fucked up is that?” Billy said. Sam had started to push himself up on all fours when Billy pushed the barrel of his gun to the side of his head. “Get up slowly, demon boy, and put your hands behind your back.”
Sam frowned, doing what he said. Once his hands were behind his back, he felt the cold of metal handcuffs being snapped tightly around his wrists. The gun was moved from the side of his head to the base of his skull.
“Walk,” Billy said, shoving the gun against him. Sam darted a glance at the other people with Billy, realizing the two men and a woman who were with him were not the people who were there before. “I said, walk demon boy!”
Sam started walking, following one of the men to a wing of the hospital he hadn’t been to before. His nerves started to get the best of him, realizing this couldn’t be a good thing. Once they entered a room, he realized there was a chair in the middle of it with chains to hold him and a tray of items he was sure were going to be used against him. He tried to back out of the room. He got a gunshot to the thigh for his effort.
Sam collapsed with a shout of pain, blood seeping through his jeans from the gunshot wound.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Billy? You wanna wake the others up?” the female shouted at him, looking over her shoulder in a panic. The two men he didn’t know came over and dragged Sam over to the chair.
“They are asleep on the other side of the hospital, they didn’t hear a thing,” Billy said with a laugh. The woman watched as Sam was chained to the chair.
“So, who wants to go first?” Billy asked, waving a hand over the items. One of the men walked over and grabbed a metal rod. He tested the weight of it against his opposite hand as he walked over to where Sam was now sitting. Sam eyed the man warily. With a sadistic smile, he swung the rod at Sam’s chest. A loud crack was heard throughout the room. Billy laughed as Sam gasped for breath. He set his gun aside and walked over to Sam, punching him in the face. Billy and one man then took turns hitting Sam, leaving the woman and a third man standing by to watch. They shared a look of concern.
“You two don’t want to take a turn?” Billy asked.
“Oh, no. This is all you two,” the woman said, holding her hands up. “I’m perfectly good watching.”
“What about him?” Billy said, nodding to the other person in the room who had yet to speak a word. The woman turned and looked at the man standing near her. He stared stoically at Billy and the other man.
“I’m gonna go with no. Jackson’s gonna watch too,” the woman said with a smirk. Billy shook his head with a smirk.
“What, he doesn’t talk?” Billy asked.
“No… not so much,” the woman said.
“Suit yourself,” Billy shrugged, walking back over to the table of tools. Billy picked up the silver blade and tested its weight in his hand. The other man walked over and threw the rod down. Sam gasped for breath as he rested his chin on his chest.
“Watch this,” Billy said, walking back over to Sam. The woman moved to stand in front of Jackson.
“Y’all ready for this?” he asked. Billy grabbed a handful of hair, then pulled the blade clean through the strands. His laugh echoed through the room as he sprinkled the cut hair over Sam’s body. Billy continued to cut Sam’s hair off until most of the long locks were gone. The haphazard haircut left Sam crying silent tears.
“And now for the grand finale,” Billy said, grabbing Sam’s head and pulling it back. The motion exposed Sam’s throat to the room. Sam’s one eye that wasn’t swollen shut widened as he realized what was about to happen
“This is how we take care of traitors,” the man said, taking the knife and slicing it across Sam’s throat, blood spurting forward in a spray. Sam choked on his own blood, his mouth gaping. The blood spilled down his front, coating himself in the dark blood.
“What the fuck is going on here!?” Carl shouted as he walked into the room, Paul hot on his heels. Billy smirked over at Carl and Paul, the sounds of Sam still choking echoing in the room.
“I’m showing my friends what’s up with the demon boy,” Billy said proudly, his hands displaying the now twitching corpse of Sam Winchester. The blood from his throat glistened in the low light as it continued its slow descent from his slit throat to the floor. With a growl of frustration, Paul stormed up to him and punched him in the face with inhuman force. Billy staggered back in surprise, a hand cupping his now bleeding nose. He looked up at Paul with shock in his wide eyes.
“You have put us in a great deal of danger bringing outsiders into our operation,” Paul said, his voice low and controlled, his eyes glowing a violently bright blue. Billy’s eyes narrowed suddenly, and he straightened. It was like another force had taken over his body.
“I did no such thing,” his voice thundered angrily, echoing loudly through the room. “These people are like us and want judgement for the wrongs Samuel has committed against us.” The room crackled with ethereal energy as the men stood up to each other. The other hunters in the room moved away from the men, eyeing them warily.
“Take the demon boy and hang him in his room by his wrists and watch him. Make sure no one else goes into the room,” Carl demanded of Billy. Billy’s bright blue eyes narrowed on the man.
“It is not you who is my superior, therefore you are not giving me any orders,” Billy seethed.
“He is my second in command, and you will do as he says,” Paul growled.
“Is that so?” Billy growled. Paul stepped forward.
“Do it now, Qaphsiel,” he said firmly. The group watched as Billy touched Sam’s body, the ties instantly falling away from his body with a sizzle of a blue-green glow. Billy then grabbed Sam by what was left of his hair and dragged his body away from the room, a trail of blood being left behind.
“I…I thought his name was Billy,” the man who had beaten Sam said weakly. Carl and Paul turned and looked at the others standing in the room. Carl looked at the two standing there and narrowed his eyes.
“Wasn’t there three of you?” he questioned. The woman shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest.
“No. It was always just the two of us,” she said with disdain. Paul and Carl shared a look with each other. “Why? What happens now?”
Bobby walked over to his computer and turned the machine on, sitting back and sipping on his coffee while the thing booted up. He was still adamantly against using this kind of technology, but if he wanted to be more involved with the rest of the world, he had to step it up and get with it. So, he went and got one and he used it for some research and to keep up with email.
Once the machine was fully up and running, Bobby opened his internet browser and went to his email. Most of what he got was junk mail anyway, and he didn’t think he’d get much different that morning until he spotted an unusual-looking subject line. You should know about this Curious, he clicked on the email. Attached to it was a video clip. The body of the email was short and concise: “They’ve got Sam.”
Bobby clicked on the video clip, and it was obvious it was taken in secret. Inside the room was a group of men laughing and carrying on, surrounding someone who was tied to a chair. The one in the chair looked awful: emaciated and beaten up badly.
“Y’all ready for this?” the man behind the restrained guy asked. He received cheers from the group. The man grabbed a handful of hair and yanked the restrained guy’s head up and Bobby gasped as he recognized Sam’s face covered in swollen bruises and obviously infected cuts.
“This is how we take care of traitors,” the man said. Then he took a knife and sliced it across Sam’s throat, blood spurting forward in a spray that reached where the camera was. Bobby immediately turned and vomited into the trash can next to his desk, heaving up the coffee he had just been sipping on. Soon, his vomiting turned into dry heaves, his heart and his chest hurting with the amount of grief that overcame him as he realized that he just witnessed Sam’s death.
Turning away from his desk and computer, Bobby stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed his phone. As soon as Dean answered, Bobby was all but begging.
“Tell me Sam is with you,” Bobby pleaded in a sob.
“Bobby?” Dean questioned.
“Tell me!!” Bobby shouted.
“No. Sam and I haven’t been together in weeks, you know this. Why, what’s going…”
“Get your ass to my place. Now.”
Hours later, Dean put the car in park in front of Bobby’s place, a puff of dust surrounding the Impala from the gravel. He climbed out of the car and stretched his back out before slamming the door shut behind him. Climbing the stairs to the front door, Bobby met him on the porch.
“Where the hell is Sam?” Bobby ground out, grabbing Dean by the arm. Dean looked at the older man confused.
“What’s going on Bobby?” Dean asked. Bobby shook Dean.
“Where the hell is he?!” Bobby shouted. Dean swallowed, putting his hands on his hips. Bobby dropped his hand, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know, Bobby. I haven’t spoken to him in weeks. Last time I talked to him, he wanted to get back together, and I told him we were better off working apart,” Dean explained, turning, and looking away.
Title: The Thunder Rolls Pairings: Jared/Jensen/Y/N Friendship Word Count: 3,704 Warnings: None unless you count evil hurricanes and thunderstorms. Cursing? SPNMixedBingo Square filled – Fear of Thunder
“Hey, have you heard from Y/N lately? I know she went home to Florida for a vacation since she was off for a few weeks, but she hasn’t been answering any of my texts lately,” Jared asked as he stepped inside Jensen’s trailer after a long day of shooting. Jensen smirked at his friend as he scrubbed his freshly washed hair down with a towel.
“She’s probably ignoring you after that last prank you did before she left,” he said with a chuckle. Jared frowned at Jensen, dropping on his couch with a frustrated huff.
“How was I supposed to know she was scared of thunder and lightning? I mean, she’s a mature adult. People usually grow out of that once they hit double digits,” Jared muttered under his breath. He stuffed his hands inside the front pocket of his hoodie and pouted, leaning his head back against the couch so he could stare at the ceiling. Jensen threw the damp towel over the door to his small bathroom then joined him on the couch.
“Speaking of thunder and lightning,” Jensen muttered as a low rumble of continuous thunder echoed in the distance. “I’m glad they canceled the rest of tonight’s shooting. It would have been a bitch to try and deal with this storm on top of everything else we had to do.”
Jared hummed his mutual agreement. Jensen looked thoughtfully at him and recognized the look in his eyes. Jared was feeling guilty for unintentionally hurting Y/N and was starting to take her radio silence a little too personally. Jensen sighed. When Jared got this way, it could go dark fast.
“Alright, Jay,” Jensen said, affectionately patting the big guy on the chest with a big hand. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Jared asked, watching as Jensen started to put on his tennis shoes.
“We’re gonna go head over to Y/N’s and see if she’s back yet,” Jensen said. Jared looked at him like he was crazy.
“What? Why?” Jared asked. Jensen reached over to grab his wallet and keys.
“One, because she should have been back by now anyway. Two, because you are getting all broody and that shit is best left to Sam… Not you. And three, because I said so. Now, get up. Let’s go,” Jensen said, slapping Jared’s knee. Jared made a keening sound, shaking his head. “Hey. Don’t make me treat you like one of my kids. Get your ass up.”
With a frustrated huff, Jared hauled himself to his feet and obediently followed Jensen out the door. The two made it to Jensen’s truck just as the rain started to come down. The frequent lightning was bright enough to light up the sky, the arcs dancing between the overhead clouds in sharp angles. Jared stared out the passenger window morosely as Jensen carefully drove down the dreary streets of Vancouver to the small apartment that Y/N rented, hoping she was there and they could talk.
The next flash of lightning had Y/N gripping the armrests even tighter than before. It seemed impossibly bright even with the shades drawn. The thunder seems so much louder up here, she thought miserably, squeezing her eyes shut and forcing herself to take a slow deep breath.
“The storms are so much scarier when we’re flying,” she heard the passenger behind her whisper. No shit, she thought harshly. She reluctantly opened her eyes and glanced around herself; thanking God once again, she willingly paid the money for a first-class seat back to Vancouver from Florida. The extra room made her feel less claustrophobic, the attendants were more tactful on how to handle her, and there was free alcohol.
A lot of free alcohol.
She reached over, picked up the glass of vodka and soda with a shaking hand, and brought it to her lips, taking a giant sip. The female attendant chose then to come to check on her.
“Another vodka soda, ma’am?” she asked politely. Y/N finished the one she had and carefully held it out to the attendant.
“With lime, please,” she said quietly. Undoubtedly hearing the twinge of genuine fear in Y/N’s soft voice, the attendant knelt down beside her. Concern colored her pleasant expression when she got close.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Just then, another hearty round of thunder echoed through the plane, causing Y/N to jump slightly.
“Just… not a big fan of storms is all,” she said nervously with a tight smile. The attendant nodded, undoubtedly understanding.
“I’ll get you another drink then,” she said soothingly. Y/N mumbled a thank you before leaning back in her plush leather seat and desperately trying to calm her racing heart. The attendant returned with her drink, gently pressing it in her hand. The cold glass grounded Y/N a bit.
“We’re landing in twenty minutes,” the attendant said. “We’re almost there.”
Y/N nodded her thanks and took a heavy sip from her glass. Less soda, more vodka. God bless the attendant. The alcohol burned fiercely down her throat but hopefully would calm her frayed nerves. Just then, the plane bounced around through a mess of turbulence. Y/N cursed under her breath and prayed to just be on the damn ground already.
“She’s not home yet,” Jensen said. “Which is weird because I thought her flight got in at three.”
“It’s seven now,” Jared said, looking at his watch. He turned and looked out the window of the building. The rain was coming down in sheets, and the storm was starting to rage on. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know, grab dinner I guess?” Jensen said with a shrug. “We’re over here on the east side, might as well take advantage of it.”
“So, what you’re saying is you wanna go hit that taco place,” Jared said with a wry grin. Jensen smiled indulgently.
“There was a reason Y/N picked this place, and it wasn’t just because of the cheap rent,” he said, turning away from the front door and heading back toward the private elevator. Jared followed, shaking his head.
“Plus, it’s Thursday, which means pitchers of margaritas are half off!” Jensen said cheerfully.
“This is the real reason you wanted to come out this way, isn’t it? It had nothing to do with checking on Y/N at all,” Jared said with a pout. The two entered the elevator, and Jared pushed the button for the first floor.
“No, I do want to find out how she’s doing. Tacos and margaritas are a welcome bonus,” Jensen said seriously. “She shouldn’t be ignoring your calls.”
The plane bounced on the landing, finally out of the sky and on the ground. The shaky breath that Y/N released took all the tension in her shoulders with it. Between being on the ground and those extra drinks the attendant got her, she felt much calmer.
That was until the thunder snapped outside the plane and rumbled deep in her chest.
I swear to God, I can’t fucking win today, she thought bitterly to herself as rubbed her forehead. She was getting in late because she missed her connection. She missed her connection because her first flight was severely delayed. Her first flight was severely delayed because there were geese on the runway.
Geese.
Fucking Geese.
Welcome to Florida.
If she had made her first connecting fight, she would have been in her apartment and not in a plane when the storm hit. Which meant she would have been able to take one of her meds, go to sleep and wake up the next day and never even know about the terrible storm. Instead, she was a little drunk on a plane that just landed in the middle of the storm.
Once the plane was finally at the gate, she unbuckled her seatbelt and stood to get her things. Whoa,she thought as she swayed a little. She blinked her eyes a few times to get the world to stop spinning before reaching up into the bin to grab her backpack. Looks like I need to add getting home safely to my list as well.
“Thank you for flying with us, have a safe trip home,” the attendant said as she walked by her. Y/N looked at her with a meaningful expression.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. The attendant smiled knowingly and nodded her head in understanding again. Y/N turned and walked slowly up the walkway, jumping and cringing every time the thunder rolled. Off to find her luggage.
“Hour wait time,” Jared said grimly, as he walked back to Jensen with a small disc in his hand. Jensen frowned.
“An hour?” he questioned. Jared merely nodded.
“Apparently those half-off pitchers are quite popular,” Jared said with a smirk. Jensen sighed and looked at his watch.
“Okay. We can wait a bit and see if it moves faster,” he said. The two sat down on a bench and waited.
Y/N grabbed her luggage and walked outside to where the serviceman pointed. Eagerly reading the signs, she saw the section where taxi pick up was located happened to be ahead of her… and she had to cross three driveways to get to it. The fierce wind was whipping the rain around, cold droplets seeping into her jeans and sweatshirt. Just then, a brilliant flash of lightning streaked across the sky, and moments later a loud crash of thunder struck.
Y/N found herself frozen in place, eyes clenched closed and breath held. Once she could breathe again, she shook her head. Nope, she thought miserably. She turned right around and walked back into the airport. Finding a bench as far away from the front doors as she could, she set her damp things down and sat next to them.
Then she pulled out her phone.
Jared and Jensen were chatting when Jensen’s phone rang. Jensen pulled it out of his pocket and looked surprised.
“It’s Y/N,” he said. Jared’s eyebrows when up.
“Hey! We were just at your place looking for you,” Jensen said as he answered his phone.
“Yeah, I’m not there,” Y/N answered. Jensen chuckled.
“Where’s she at?” Jared asked. Jensen glanced at him.
“Yeah, we figured that out ourselves. Where are you?” he asked.
“At the airport. It’s a long story. Are you on set right now?” Y/N asked. A loud clap of thunder hit and Y/N jumped, almost cursing out loud.
“She’s at the airport,” Jensen answered Jared. “No, they shut us down because of this crazy storm. Jay and I are at Abuela’s, waiting for a table.” Y/N did curse out loud then.
“Does she need a ride?” Jared asked. Jensen impatiently waved his hand at him, while Jared made a gesture encouraging him to ask Y/N.
“I don’t want to interrupt your dinner. You guys go eat,” Y/N said.
“It’s cool, we’re still waiting. It’s like an hour wait. Do you need a ride? We can come to get you,” Jensen asked. Jared was already walking the pager back up to the hostess stand and explaining they had to leave. Jensen stood and instantly pulled his keys out of his pocket. “You know what? We’re already on our way. Give us like, twenty minutes. We can meet you at arriving flights.”
“Thank you,” Y/N breathed. Once she hung up her phone, she stuffed it in her pocket. She then pulled her suitcase close to her, bent her arms on top of it, and lay her head down. She hid her face from view. She wasn’t worried about people recognizing her so much as her not being able to control her emotions given the situation.
Approximately 22 minutes later, she felt someone gently rubbing her arm. She looked up and saw Jared crouched in front of her with a gentle smile on his face.
“Hey bug,” he said. A relieved sigh escaped her as she went to stand.
“Oh, thank God,” she breathed, wobbling on her feet. Jared steadied her.
“You okay there?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Heavy on the vodka, light on the soda while flying home,” she replied meekly, readjusting her backpack. Jared grabbed the handle of her suitcase and wrapped an arm around her to help her to the car. It was a good thing their families were so close, or she’d be overly worried about someone snapping a photo of them in such an intimate position and printing it. Then again, she didn’t really care at the moment. She just wanted to get somewhere safe.
“Jensen’s right on the curb,” Jared said. Y/N nodded her head in silence. As they stepped through the automatic doors to the pick-up area, another clap of thunder hit. This time, Y/N couldn’t swallow the whimper that crawled up her constricted throat as she involuntarily stepped backward. Jared heard it and hushed her, gently encouraging her to walk toward the SUV. Jared put her suitcase in the back while she climbed into the back seat.
Jared climbed in after her. Once they were in, Jensen pulled away and headed toward her apartment. Sensing Y/N was not okay at that moment, he remained silent. Y/N had bent forward, resting her head on her knees, and wrapped her arms over her head. Jensen watched through the rear-view mirror as Jared gently lifted her from that position and moved her head to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, to shield her from the storm.
“Jen, you got a blanket or something back here?” Jared asked quietly.
“Under the passenger seat,” Jensen answered just as quietly. Jared reached down and grabbed it, opened it, and wrapped it around Y/N to hide her from the storm. He felt her tremble slightly in his arms but didn’t know how to comfort her.
By the time they got to her apartment building, the storm had finally been starting to move away. Jensen pulled her suitcase while Jared escorted her up to the apartment with his arm around her shoulders, her backpack over one shoulder. It took Y/N a few times to unlock her door thanks to her shaking hands, but once she did, she invited the guys in.
“I’ll order Door Dash, get us some tacos from Abuela’s. It can be here in twenty minutes or so,” she said quietly. “Just… give me a second.” Y/N grabbed her stuff from the guys and took it into her bedroom. Jared watched from where he stood as she set her backpack on a chair she had in the corner of the room, opening it, and pulling out her phone. The guys then got comfortable.
Y/N walked back out a few minutes later, dressed in a fresh sweatshirt. Her face was scrubbed clean and her hair was in a messy ponytail. She walked over to the small bookshelf she used as a bar, pulled a bottle of vodka out, and poured two fingers into a glass. She threw a pill in her mouth then chased it with a sip of the vodka.
“You guys know where everything is, so make yourselves at home. I ordered our usual, so it should be here shortly,” Y/N said with a smile. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
“Anytime, sweetheart,” Jensen said with a grin, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Just a few questions first.”
“Why am I scared of thunder and lighting, and what pill did I just take with vodka?” Y/N just asked sardonically, a raised brow and smirk playing on her lips.
“Uh…. Yeah,” Jensen said with a nod. “To start.” Y/N curled up in her oversized chair, the guys taking over her couch. She got herself comfortable, pulling the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands.
“Growing up in Florida, you’d think I’d get over the storms eventually. I mean, during the summer you literally have a thunderstorm daily. Between 3 or 4 in the afternoon, it never fails. Crash, boom, bang, bad lightning, loud thunder, torrential downpour, done in thirty, back to the sunshine,” she explained. “But it’s not the normal storms that really mess with you. It’s getting caught in a hurricane that screws with you.”
Understanding dawned on Jared. Y/N wasn’t scared of the storms themselves.
“You’re not actually scared of thunder and lightning,” Jared said, shaking his head. Y/N shook hers.
“Not exactly,” she answered. “But the storms remind me a little too much of a few brutal hurricanes I’ve lived through where I lost damn near everything. Including one time when I almost died. Sometimes when I’m really tired or I’m not in the right headspace…”
“You can’t tell the difference,” Jared finished. Y/N nodded.
“Exactly. When I know it’s coming, I take something for anxiety, go to sleep, and wake up as if nothing happened. But it’s not always like that. When I’m caught off guard with it like with the prank or am delayed and get caught flying in a storm like today… the anxiety wins. It sucks because logically I know I’m not in a hurricane. My body and my emotions can’t tell the difference though.”
The three sat in silence for a few minutes, digesting the new information. The boys weren’t strangers to hurricanes themselves, being from Texas. Florida, however, was the state that was known for getting hit with them.
“What storms have you been through?” Jared asked. Y/N laughed at the question at first, thinking back.
“Oh, God, um…” she started. “So many. I can tell you the bad ones?” Jared shrugged and she took a few minutes to think back on it. “Let’s see…. Andrew was bad. That was a Cat 5. Ivan and Jeanne were back to back in 2004. Those two sucked. We were in hiatus for Matthew and then I was home for Irma…”
Y/N was looking off in the distance and didn’t realize that both Jared and Jensen were staring at her wide-eyed and in awe. They didn’t realize that she had been through such intense hurricanes during her time in Florida, let alone during her time with the show.
“Wait, you were back on set for Irma weren’t you?” Jensen interrupted her.
“For a few weeks, yeah, but then they sent me home for a month while you guys shot those three episodes without me,” she said with a smile. “Irma took out the entire state. Jacksonville was underwater completely.”
“I’ll be damned,” Jensen said, turning to look at Jared.
“I’m really sorry, Jared. I shouldn’t have gone off like I did when you pranked me. I’m really sorry about that. It had been a knee-jerk reaction to something I went through a few years ago before I got here and worked on the show. When I walked into the trailer and just saw flashes of light and heard the thunder machine, I was taken back to when…” she paused to take a breath. “…trees were being ripped up to take out power lines, transformers were blowing up, floodwaters were rising and… well… you get the idea.”
Just then, the doorbell rang. Y/N smiled at the guys.
“Tacos are here,” she said standing up. The guys rose with her. Jensen elbowed Jared, making a gesture that said “go help her, talk to her” and Jared made a vulgar one back. Jensen walked into the kitchen to get them drinks, plates, and napkins with a smirk on his face. Jared took the bags from Y/N’s hands so she could sign the slip held out to her.
“Kitchen table or coffee table?” Jared asked. Y/N shrugged.
“Whichever is easiest,” she answered. Jared took the food to the kitchen and started to unpack the bags onto the kitchen table. Jensen then set out the plates and drinks: beers for him and Jared, water for Y/N. When she walked in, he pointed a finger at her.
“You’re cut off,” he said. She laughed.
“Fair enough,” she responded.
“How much did you buy?” Jared asked, pulling out container after container of food.
“Each taco meal comes with rice and beans. I eat three. Jensen eats three to six. You? You could probably eat ten. I just made it simple and got two family packs, so we should have twenty tacos, two sides of rice, two sides of refried beans, two sides of black beans, two things of chips and queso, two bowls of salsa and two orders of those churros. Oh, and a side of sour cream because I’m out,” Y/N answered with wide eyes. Jared simply stared at her, which made her chuckle. “What? I like Mexican food.”
“Clearly,” Jared said. Jensen ignored them, sat down, and started to dig in. The other two took their seats as well.
“Well, now I have leftovers for the next day or two until my grocery delivery comes in,” Y/N said, grabbing three tacos and putting them on her plate. Jared was busy fixing his own plate.
“You think you’ll have leftovers?” Jensen asked after a swallow from his beer.
“You think you’ll eat four take-out containers full of beans?” Y/N countered. Jensen snorted.
“I won’t, but he might,” he said, pointing at Jared who was busy dumping a healthy serving of refried beans onto his plate. Y/N watched him, then grabbed a container of black beans and stood.
“Good point,” she said as she walked to her refrigerator, putting them in there. Jensen laughed. The three caught up as they ate their taco dinner, enjoying each other’s company after being separated for two weeks. It was late when the two men got ready to leave.
“Thanks for everything tonight, guys,” Y/N said as she gave each one a hug. Jensen kissed the side of her head.
“Gotta keep the demon happy,” he said, causing Y/N to roll her eyes. Jared gave her a big hug, lifting her feet off the ground. Her laughter echoed in the hallway.
“I’m sorry for the prank,” he said earnestly. Y/N waved it off.
“I’m sorry for overreacting,” she replied. “Now, get out of here. Get some sleep.” The guys made their way to Jensen’s SUV silently. It wasn’t until Jensen was pulling back onto the road that he spoke.
“Feel better now?” he asked. Jared took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Title – Of Nightmares and Sandalwood Pairings – Y/N & Dean Word Count – 3,928 Warnings – Do Nightmares count? Cursing, arguing SPNMixedBingo Square filled – Early Morning, Touch Starvation, Bed Sharing Prompt: “I don’t sleep. My mind has the scary capability of being dark and demented.” “you are afraid of your dreams?” “Yes,” he said quietly.
She doesn’t know what wakes her up, only that something was off, and she couldn’t sleep until she fixed whatever it was. Rolling over and looking at the clock, Y/N realized that it was just before three in the morning.
With a sleepy groan, Y/N climbed out of her warm bed. She reached for a flannel (undoubtedly stolen from one of the brothers, she’s certain) to pull over her tank top and shorts. She slipped on her flip-flops before wandering out of her room to see what was out of the ordinary.
The kitchen was dark, the dishes sitting in the drying rack, so it wasn’t that. Sam’s bedroom door was closed, and she could hear his gentle snores behind it, so she knew it wasn’t him. The bathroom light was off and the door was open, so no one was there.
Dean’s bedroom door, however, was open. Curiously, Y/N walked toward his room and looked inside to find his bed unmade and empty. Frowning, she walked down the hall to the library in search of the older Winchester. The expansive room designated as the ‘Dean Cave’ was dark and empty, as was the library. It wasn’t until she heard familiar music coming from the garage that she got the idea to check there.
Opening the door quietly, she spotted him. He was standing barefooted in the garage with the hood of Baby up, dressed in dirty jeans and a black t-shirt that fit snugly over his chest and shoulders. His expression held a world of unspeakable pain that he couldn’t seem to hide as he focused on some invisible problem with the classic car, his mind a million miles away.
Y/N frowned as she stared thoughtfully at him, knowing something wasn’t right.
Gently closing the door behind her, she walked up to the cooler Dean had a beer sweating on. She picked up the bottle and took a long pull from it, switching off the music with her other hand. The entire garage instantly plunged into silence, causing Dean to startle. He turned on her quickly, pulling his loaded gun from the small of his back and pointing it at her chest in less than a second. His fierce eyes narrowed, a controlled fury there she hadn’t seen in over a decade.
She swallowed the hoppy beer, carefully set the bottle back down, and gently leaned against one of the older cars that were parked in the garage.
“Morning, stranger,” she muttered, a tired frown on her face. Dean grunted at her as he pulled the loaded gun away from her direction, uncocking it and carefully putting it back where it came from.
“Dammit, Y/N. I could have killed you,” he muttered gloomily. Y/N simply raised a brow at him. “And quit drinking my beer!”
“Why are you armed inside the bunker? You know it’s safe here, Dee,” she answered instead. Dean intentionally threw her a dirty look before leaning against the car again, looking down into the engine block. He willfully refused to properly answer her. She tried again.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she asked gently. Dean tried to ignore her once again. Y/N frowned at him. She looked at the Impala, remaining quiet for a few minutes. Dean didn’t move. After a while, Y/N started to shiver, so she pulled the flannel she had on around herself tighter.
“It’s really late. Or early, depending on how you look at it. Why are you awake right now?” she asked. Dean snapped and slapped the side of the car, causing a loud sound to echo in the garage and Y/N to jump.
“What’s with the twenty questions, Y/N? Can’t you tell I want to be left alone? Can’t you get the hint?” Dean shouted furiously at her. Y/N looked down and away, away from his angry face. She felt her emotions start to overwhelm her again, but she swallowed down her frustration. She refused to be deterred. His deflection wasn’t going to work this time. She started picking at the sleeves of the flannel she wore
“No,” she said quietly.
“What?!” Dean snapped at her. Y/N carefully lifted her eyes and stared thoughtfully at Dean, her face not giving away her emotions.
“I said, no,” she repeated herself. “I can’t just go back inside and act like I don’t know that you are out here hurting. I want to give you your space and let you take out your frustration or whatever it is you are feeling on Baby, but I just can’t walk away this time.” She shrugged, looking away.
“Sorry,” she said distantly, as she diligently studied the car she was leaning on. Dean stared at her, his hands on his hips. He undoubtedly knew he was being cruel. But it was his typical reaction to lash out and push people away. After a long minute, he released a long, heavy sigh.
“I had a nightmare,” he said quietly. Y/N looked over at him silently, encouraging him to continue speaking. She watched as Dean walked over to the Impala and rested his hands on the end of the car, leaning over the engine block yet again.
“What was it about?” Y/N asked, her voice soft in the large room. Dean gently shook his head, staring down at the car once again. “Must have been pretty bad if it’s keeping you awake right now.”
“I’m fine, Y/N,” Dean growled impatiently. Y/N bit her tongue. Yeah, you look terrific. Instead, she just watched as he stared sightlessly at the engine again.
“Why don’t we go inside? I’ll make us something to eat, or maybe we can just grab a few drinks,” she politely suggested. Anything to get that icy cold look off his face. “We don’t even have to talk about the nightmare unless you want to.” Dean remained silent, but the twitch in his jaw showed her that the man heard her. After a few minutes of silence and Y/N sighed.
“Dean, come on. Work with me here,” Y/N started, standing up straight to face the older brother. That’s when Dean snapped again. He reached up and slammed the hood of the Impala, much rougher than he typically would. He turned toward her and growled.
“I’ve about had it with you, Y/N, and your feel-good bullshit. I just said I didn’t want to talk to you, and I don’t want to talk about it,” he shouted. Y/N wasn’t even sure what he was saying anymore, only that she was done with him and with his bullshit.
“Stop fucking yelling at me!” Y/N finally shouted back, causing Dean to shut his mouth with an audible click. “Jesus Christ, Dean. What the hell is your problem? Not everyone is your fucking enemy or is trying to hurt you. I’m not trying to fucking hurt you!”
Dean stared at her, his breathing harsh through his nose as he tried to control his temper and his raging emotions as he watched Y/N finally lose her temper with him.
“I woke up, and I didn’t know why. I was merely checking on you and Sam and noticed you were missing. I’m so sorry that my checking on you was such a fucking inconvenience to you, Dean!” she bellowed snidely. The two glared defiantly at each other for a long minute. Finally, Y/N held her hands up in a surrender motion.
“You know what,” she started, her voice low and monotone. “Forget I said anything. You want to stay out here and wallow in self-pity and whatever bullshit you got rolling around in that head of yours instead of talking to me about it, be my guest. I’m done.” Y/N turned on her heel and walked toward the door out of the garage and back into the main part of the bunker.
For reasons Dean didn’t understand, he instantly started to panic.
“Y/N,” he said cautiously to get her attention.
“Go fuck yourself,” she muttered fiercely, simply waving her hand at him. She swung open the door, moments away from crossing the threshold. His panic grew, and he intuitively knew if he didn’t get her attention back now, he would be doing irrevocable damage to their relationship.
“Y/N!!”
That stopped her. Dean’s voice sounded agonized, hurt, and broken down. But at this point, so was Y/N. She turned back to look at him, one foot inside the pleasant warmth of the bunker and ready to forget this even happened.
“What?!” she snapped at him; her kind eyes narrowed and glassy.
“I don’t sleep,” Dean said. Y/N’s expression changed from one of hurt and anger to one of confusion.
“What?” she bit out, confusion coloring her tone this time.
“I don’t sleep. After my nightmares, I don’t sleep. My subconscious mind has the scary capability of being dark and demented,” he gently explained, his eyes anywhere but on her face. “Once it starts, I can’t seem to stop it, so it’s just safer to… not sleep.”
“You’re afraid of your dreams?” Y/N asked softly, her heartbreaking for him.
“Yeah. Sure,” he said quietly. His weight subtly shifted between his bare feet.
Y/N watched him for a long moment, then walked back into the garage. The door slammed shut behind her, but she ignored it. Dean noticed she was walking toward him and shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling incredibly vulnerable now. Once she was next to him, Y/N carefully wrapped her hand around his arm, slid it down his soft skin, and held onto his wrist. She gently rested her head against his shoulder as she pulled his left hand out of his pocket and intertwined their fingers together.
Dean turned his head to look cautiously at her, his mask sliding into place so she couldn’t read what he was thinking. She didn’t need to see his face to feel his trepidation, his worry, his comfort at her closeness, or his self-loathing for feeling he didn’t deserve it. Y/N lifted her Y/C/E to Dean’s green ones.
“Do you trust me?” she asked quietly.
“You know I do,” Dean answered just as softly. Y/N offered a tiny smile before gently pulling him with her toward the direction of the door inside.
“Come on,” she whispered, tilting her head toward the door. Y/N squeezed his hand, then took a step back, away from the Impala. “Come on, Dean.”
Dean watched her try to pull him away from the car, the garage, his sanctuary, with pain-filled eyes before he closed them and sighed brokenly. It was then he finally moved and let Y/N pull him toward the door back inside the bunker. She turned away from him to see where she was going, but once they were down the stairs, she turned and looked back at him. When she looked back at Dean, he had his eyes fixed on the ground.
Y/N stepped closer to him, still leading them through the bunker, carefully wrapping his arm around her waist. She felt more than heard his breath catch as his fingers brushed against the bare skin of her belly from where her tank top rode up a little. He naturally tried pulling away, but she wouldn’t let him. He genuinely needed comfort, and she wasn’t going to let him deny himself that. Once they were in front of his room, she turned to look at him.
“I’m going to run to my room for a moment to grab some things. Be in bed by the time I get back,” she explained softly to him. Dean shook his head and instantly started to protest, which caused Y/N to hold up a dainty finger to his lips. His eyes opened fractionally at her soft touch.
“I wasn’t asking,” she said knowingly. She stared resolutely into Dean’s eyes until she saw when he relented, then nodded her head. She squeezed his hand before she turned and walked across the hall and down a few doors to where her room was. Once inside, she moved quickly. She grabbed her sandalwood and vanilla lotion, tucked her pillow under her arm, and turned off her diffuser. She emptied the water and oils she had in the machine already, wiping it out with a microfiber cloth.
Opening the small wooden case of oils, she chose a few scents she thought Dean would find calming: Sandalwood, Cinnamon, and Caramel. She put drops of the oils in the diffuser and grabbed a bottle of water to fill it with once she got back into Dean’s room. She grabbed her sound machine then left her room, using her elbow to flip off her light.
Walking into Dean’s room, she was pleased to see he had done what she had asked. He was lying on his back. His thick blanket was pulled to his waist, and he was staring wistfully at the ceiling. The room was dim and cool, the only light coming from a lamp on his nightstand. Y/N walked over to the bed and dropped the pillow from under her arm onto his bed. Dean turned his head to watch her.
Without saying a word, she went over to where his desk was and set all her items down. The first thing she did was plug in the diffuser. She set the machine on his desk, removed the lid, and opened the bottle of water in her hand. Filling the basin to the top of the waterline, she put the lid back on it. She then set it to run steadily throughout the next 8 hours. Sealing the water bottle once again, she moved to her next task.
She then turned her noise machine on to the sound of white noise. Typically, she’d fall asleep to the sound of ocean waves or rainfall, but this was for Dean. White noise was the easiest thing to choose. She set the volume to low: loud enough to be heard over the noise of the diffuser but quiet enough to be in the background and not keep them awake. She picked up her lotion and turned to face Dean.
“Take your shirt off and turn over on your belly,” she said softly, walking over to the bed. Dean stared at her for a long moment, wanting to argue. “Just trust me, Dean.”
With a huff, he sat up and pulled his t-shirt over his head. He tossed it aside and rolled over onto his belly, and settled down on his bed. Y/N grabbed her pillow and put it up next to Dean, so she had something to lay on, pulled off her flannel and tossed it over the chair, climbed up onto the bed, and straddled his hips. She felt Dean stiffen as her body touched his, and she instantly hushed him.
“It’s okay, Dean. Close your eyes and take deep breaths,” Y/N quietly said. Dean heard a soft ‘click’ of the lotion bottle opening, then silence. Slowly, Dean willingly let his eyes drift shut. He inhaled slowly, and the spicy scent that filled his senses started calming him almost instantly. When he exhaled, he felt Y/N’s soft hands run over his tense shoulders.
“That’s it,” he heard her say, her voice almost melodic. “Take some deep breaths. Inhale slowly, exhale just as slow. Let the sandalwood and cinnamon fill your senses, calm your mind, ease your spirits.”
Her hands started out gentle as they ran over his shoulders and up to his neck, slowly growing in pressure. Her hands would find a knot in his muscles and spend some extra time there, focusing on the spot and adding some careful pressure there to ease the tension. The entire time he continued his deep breaths, focusing on keeping them even and steady.
“I want you to think about something good, something that brings you joy,” Y/N said as her hands ran up and down his spine. “Think about a moment when you remember being completely at ease and relaxed. Who was there with you, where you were, what you were doing…”
Dean immediately thought of the evening a few nights ago, when the three of them were sitting around the library just hanging out and chatting. They were sharing a bottle of whiskey they found created by Metallica. When Dean found out about it, he was so excited he bought four bottles. They opened one immediately when they got home and just sat around the table and talked about music while passing the bottle around. He found out just how much music they all actually had in common that same night.
“Now take a deep breath, nice and slow…”
He inhaled, and the scent of vanilla filled his nose with the spicy scent of wood and cinnamon. He felt pressure on the base of his skull now, easing tension he didn’t even know he had there. He took a deep breath and released a soft moan of pleasure as he exhaled, turning his head so that Y/N had easy access to his neck and skull.
“Just breathe easy and let the tension go… Focus on the good and release the tension in your body…”
Her warm hands felt so good sliding across his skin, putting pressure on different parts of his body that were sore. He was feeling peaceful with the warmth of her body close to his, and he felt himself drifting…
“Take a deep breath, Dean. In through your nose and release slowly out through your mouth,” he heard her soft voice say next to his ear. He inhaled slowly, and when he exhaled, he felt her warm hands put solid pressure on the muscles next to his spine, moving slowly upward. He felt the vertebra give, popping deeply and releasing tension as her hands moved their way from his lower back upward to his shoulders. It pulled a deep moan from him as his muscles gave a slight twitch before relaxing under her touch. Once she had finished the pressure trail up to his neck, she ran her hands gently up and down his spine.
“There you go,” he heard her soft voice mumble gently to him. “Just breathe deeply, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Let the scent of sandalwood and vanilla calm you. Clear your mind of any thoughts and rest.”
Dean felt the pressure again, but this time against his neck and skull. Y/N pressed her thumbs at the base of his skull, pushing down against the soft spot at the center and brushing outward to where the occipital nerve rests on each side. At first, he tensed up again, but remembering what she said about breathing, he forced himself to relax and continue the deep breathing. Soon, the soft touches grew deeper and harder, gently pressing the tension away.
With everything that was happening all at once, he caught himself slowly growing tired, and sleep danced on the edges of his consciousness. He fought the urge to slip away until he heard Y/N start humming above him. Just as he floated off to sleep, he realized she was humming Hey Jude.
When Y/N realized that he was asleep, she intentionally slowed her hands against his skin until she stopped moving altogether. Moving as slow as she possibly could, she gracefully slid off Dean’s body and reached over to turn off the light. The room instantly dropped into complete darkness, and Y/N used her hands to guide her to the opposite side of Dean’s bed. With careful movements, she slid under the covers and curled up next to Dean.
She ran her fingers through his short hair, running her fingers down his back to where the sheet and blanket rested at his waist. Using careful and slow movements, she gently pulled them up over them both. Once they were properly covered, she leaned over and tenderly kissed Dean on the temple.
“Good night, Dee,” she whispered almost silently into his ear before snuggling up against him. With a deep sigh, Y/N felt herself relax off to sleep herself.
The next time he became aware of his surroundings, he felt a pleasant warmth pressed up against him. It was in his arms. He took a deep breath, and the spicy scent that calmed him the night before was still lingering nearby. He realized, quite suddenly, that he had slept soundly the rest of the night after a horrific nightmare.
He slowly opened his eyes, looking down to find Y/N wrapped in his arms. Her head rested peacefully on her pillow, her back pressed against his chest, his arm wrapped around her waist. Dean stared at her, uncertain what to think.
“Stop thinking so hard, it’s still too early,” Y/N muttered, her voice rough with sleep. She snuggled down into her pillow, her body pressing closer against Dean’s.
“I slept through the night last night,” he said softly. Y/N smiled; eyes still closed.
“Yes, you did,” she said.
“I haven’t slept through the night after a nightmare. Ever,” Dean said thoughtfully. “How did you do that?”
“Hmmm?” Y/N hummed sleepily, rolling over and gently pushing at Dean. He promptly turned onto his back and let Y/N curl up on his chest; her hand curled up next to her face, her head resting comfortably on his shoulder. Dean wrapped his arm around her, running his fingers up and down her arm. Y/N smiled gently at his touch.
“I said, how did you get me to sleep through the night after a nightmare?” he asked softly, tilting his head toward hers. Y/N pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Is the diffuser still running?” she questioned. When Dean didn’t respond, she repeated herself. Dean lifted his head and looked around his room until his eyes fell on a small machine shooting a mist into the air on his desk. When he asked if that was it, he confirmed it was still going.
“Then it’s not time to get up yet. Go back to sleep, I’ll explain it later,” Y/N said. Dean looked down at the woman in his arms and let a smile play on his lips. He carefully brushed a kiss on her forehead then snuggled down under the blankets and closed his eyes.
Maybe he should have nightmares more often if it meant he got to wake up with Y/N in his arms, asleep in his bed. Maybe he could have this after all, and it would be okay. Maybe there was something more here than he originally thought. Maybe… Dean felt a hand against his cheek, causing his eyes to open, then slip shut as he felt Y/N’s soft lips press against his in a tender kiss.
Their mouths moved against each other gently, cautiously feeling each other’s lips against each other sweetly. Just as Dean was about to deepen the chaste kiss, Y/N pulled away and slowly opened her eyes to stare at him.
“You’re thinking too much. Go back to sleep,” she whispered, gently brushing a delicate fingertip over his mouth. “I’ll answer all of your questions in a few hours. Then maybe we can try this again.”
Dean watched as Y/N shot him a sleepy grin, then settled back down against him. He blinked once, then twice, then broke into a huge smile. Tightening his arms around the extraordinary woman in his bed, he buried himself into her and the delicious warmth of her skin. There was a promise of something exciting and new waiting for him after they woke up once again.
If all his nightmares had this kind of outcome, he’d take all the night terrors he could get.
Title:Here’s to us Pairings: Misha, Jared, Jensen, OC Word Count: 3,881 Warnings: Cursing, verbal fight SPNMixedBingo Square filled – Halloween
When Y/N joined the show, she fit in like a piece to the puzzle they didn’t even know was missing. But after a while, Jared started to feel anxious. Everywhere he turned, Y/N was standing right there. She was laughing with Jensen, hanging all over Misha, she even showed up to their dinners. He started to worry she was taking his place in their lives. It all comes out in a burst of angry words when they were trying to finish a scene before the Halloween party, leaving hurt feelings and triggered habits in its wake.
Y/N puts Jared in his place the only way she knows how, but not before Jensen and Misha reassure him of his place in their lives. After all, they are family… right?
Music selections are Uncomfortable and Here’s to Us, both by Halestorm
AN: I don’t know what this is. I wrote it and rewrote it a bunch of times with a specific direction in mind, and it might become a series. I’ve hinted at the direction it may be going in. I haven’t written any smut stories, and the direction this would take would be diving into a particular pool of smut that would fit in the taboo category for some. But maybe you’d like that. It’d be fun to write. Tell me if that’s something you’d read, taboo smut.
The Supernatural crew decided this year for Halloween, they were going to go all out and throw a costume party, complete with a band-slash-DJ, catering, a bar, the works. Everyone was required to be there and be in costume, including the newest member of the show, Y/N.
Y/N joined the cast mid-season as Sam’s guardian angel, much like how Castiel was Dean’s. She played Sarah, this misfit renegade who invariably tended to rebel more than follow the rules. The talented actress genuinely seemed to fit into the key role perfectly with her carefree attitude and sharp tongue. She gave as good as she got, had just as dirty of a mind as the rest of them, and had a wicked sense of humor that kept all of them on their toes.
When Misha suggested his close friend Y/N for the role, she resisted a little bit. Every female actress on Supernatural had been killed off in some dramatic way and she was looking for a bit more stability than a frequent guest appearance. But when the directors met her and she read lines with Jared, there was chemistry there. Misha knew his friend was going to be around for more than just a season.
But, throwing her into the mix of the already established friendships between Jared, Jensen, and Misha caused some unintended jealousy and friction, and those emotions played on camera. Particularly with Jared.
Not that he had anything to worry about; his friendships with Jensen and Misha were solid. Yet, every time he saw Y/N laughing and goofing around with Jensen or flirting with Misha with her head on his shoulder, an irrational fury boiled in his gut and he found himself becoming territorial. He didn’t understand it. Why am I reacting this way? He thought.
It all came to a head on the day of the party. He and Y/N were with a skeleton crew on the bunker set with trying to finish filming a scene. Sarah was supposed to console Sam after yet another argument with Dean. They just couldn’t get the right tone. Sam continued to come off defensive instead of melancholy, and it was starting to frustrate the crew who were eager to get changed and get to the party. Dennis, the director for that episode, called for a five-minute break to give everyone a moment to breathe.
Y/N sat down on top of one of the tables in the library and watched Jared pace the small room as the crew reset the lights. She frowned as she watched Jared quietly, trying to decide how to approach this with him. He seemed really agitated right then.
“Is there something wrong? We don’t usually have problems getting through scenes together,” Y/N asked gently, kind eyes following Jared. She saw his shoulders tense at her question. Jared shot her a fierce glare, not answering her question.
“Okay… Is it me? Do you need me to say the lines differently?” she asked, trying a different tactic.
“It’s fine, Y/N,” he said sharply. Y/N’s eyes narrowed a little, not appreciating being snapped at.
“Hey, I’m just trying to help, Jared,” Y/N said.
“Well, I don’t need your help, Y/N,” Jared growled.
“What the fuck? Why are you biting my head off, what’s the problem, Jared?” Y/N asked; her own voice sharpening. Jared ignored her again. “Seriously, what’s your malfunction?”
“YOU, okay, Y/N? You are my problem. You come in here, and you just take over everything and suddenly it’s all about you,” Jared snapped, turning, and glaring at you. Y/N blinked at the viciousness in his voice.
“What are you talking about?” she questioned, confusion etched across her face.
“Guys, c’mon,” the director, Dennis, said, but Y/N waved him off.
“No, I want to know what he’s talking about,” Y/N said, her eyes never leaving Jared. “What do you mean it’s all about me? What’s all about me?”
“Everything!”Jared shouted, holding his arms open wide. Y/N was startled at his outburst. “Every time I turn around, you’re hanging all over Jensen or making eyes at Misha. You’re always around, butting your way into everything we do, everywhere we go. I go to wardrobe. You’re there. I go to make up. You’re there. Hell, I went out to dinner the other night with the guys, and you were there!!”
“I was invited,” Y/N said quietly.
“I don’t care!” Jared yelled. Y/N closed her eyes at his raised voice before opening her watery eyes and looking at him as he carried on. Swallowing hard around the lump that had lodged itself in her throat, she slowly stood from her seated position atop the table.
“I think we’re done for tonight, everyone,” Y/N said quietly, her voice strained as she forced herself not to give away her emotions.
“That’s not your call to make,” Jared snapped. Y/N clenched her jaw.
“No, but it is mine, and I think you’ve done enough, Jared. Get out of here,” Dennis said, his hands on his hips. Jared opened his mouth to say something, but the director cut him off. “Say something. I dare you. If you don’t want me to call Kim, I suggest you do what I said and get the fuck out of here. Now.”
Jared glared at him for a moment before storming off, slamming the door behind him. Y/N jumped at the sound of the door slam, then let out a shaky breath she didn’t even realize she had been holding. She looked up at the crew who was whispering amongst themselves. Scarlet covered her cheeks as she eyed them with worried eyes.
“No one is to talk about what happened in here just now, am I clear?” Dennis said to the small crew that was still around. “You talk about it, and you’re off the show. Understood?” Murmurs of agreement echoed through the room and Dennis nodded.
“Go get ready for the party tonight,” he said dejectedly. Slowly, the room emptied and the only two people left there were Dennis and Y/N. Y/N had moved back to the table and leaned against it, staring off into the distance. Dennis walked over and stood next to her.
“You gonna be okay?” he asked her.
“Not exactly the best time to learn your co-worker hates you,” Y/N answered with a chuckle that had zero humor in it.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Dennis said. “He’s just…”
“Jealous. He thinks I’m stealing his longtime friends away,” Y/N responded. She smiled gently in a self-deprecating way and shook her head. “Not the first time I’ve had to deal with it.”
“Jared’s complicated, Y/N. He’s more sensitive than most guys I know, and sometimes he takes things to heart without knowing the whole story. Just give him some space; he’ll work it out on his own,” Dennis said, bumping shoulders with her. Y/N nodded her head slowly.
“Think I’m gonna skip the Halloween party tonight, though,” she said. “No point in going somewhere I’m not wanted.”
“That’s up to you, but I know there will be some people who will be disappointed you won’t be there,” Dennis said. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “C’mon. I’ll walk you to your trailer.”
Once Y/N was inside her trailer, she collapsed on her couch and blew out a heavy breath. The argument with Jared brought up a lot of old feelings that she didn’t want to deal with and made her want to reach for her old methods of dealing with stress and trauma. She promised Misha that she would contact him before she would do anything stupid, though, and the last thing she wanted was to ruin his night. So, she did the next best thing.
Throwing her hair up into a tight bun at the base of her neck, she stood and walked over to the cabinet over the small sink that was supposed to be part of the kitchen. Opening the top cabinet, she pulled out a shot glass and a bottle of Fireball. She poured herself a shot and threw it back, letting it burn all the way down to her belly.
“If I’m gonna do this, then I’m gonna do it right,” she said out loud to herself as she poured another shot. This one she carried with her to the dinette set and sipped it as she slid into the chair and opened her old school Caboodle to get to her make-up. A smirk danced across her lips as she eyed her favorites before flipping the mirror up and started on her eyes.
It was twenty minutes later that a chirp from her phone interrupted the silence. Looking over to the couch, she reached over to grab the cellular device and opened it to her unread texts.
*What’s the verdict? You in or you out?* it read. She looked up at her reflection, looking at her perfect smokey eyes, and added lashes to make them stand out. A little bit of red glitter lined her bottom lashes so every time she blinked; a shimmer sparkled. She carefully put her red gem nose ring back in and carefully lined her lips with her favorite Lime Crime lipstick – Blood Moon.
*I’m in. And I have some additions to make* she responded. Grabbing her blush, she added a bit to her cheeks before the pale pink shimmer on top of it. When she was done, she got her reply.
*Be there in 10. We can change the list up then* it read. Y/N nodded, then grabbed her setting spray. A few sprits on her face and she closed her kit up and stood. She stripped off her shirt as she made her way to the bedroom at the back of the trailer and opened the small closet there. Inside sat a black wardrobe bag with a red lightning bolt on it. Throwing her shirt on the bed, she unzipped the bag and proceeded to get dressed before the rest of her crew showed up.
Jared walked into the party with his cowboy hat low on his head, carefully hiding his eyes. He didn’t want to be there. He was still angry about the situation on set, though he also felt embarrassed about losing his cool as well. He never should have lashed out at Y/N just because he was feeling insecure and jealous. That was his problem, not hers.
“Jay!” he heard someone shout his name over the loud music, causing him to look up. Jensen was making his way over to him through the crowded bar area with two beers in his hand. He handed one of the sweating bottles to his friend, which Jared accepted gratefully.
“You okay?” Jensen asked. Jared eyed him and frowned.
“You know?” he asked. Jensen nodded with a chuckle.
“Yeah. Everyone here knows to comes find me and fill me in when you lose your shit like that. What happened?” Jensen asked. Jared sighed and shook his head, taking another long pull from his beer.
“It was stupid, man,” Jared said grimly after a bit. Jensen merely nodded.
“Most of the time it is. But that doesn’t make it any less important. We’ve talked about this, dude. If it’s enough to make you do that, it’s important enough to talk about. What. Happened?” Jensen asked again. Jared deflated, his shoulders slumping forward, causing Jensen to reach out and put a hand on the back of Jared’s neck for support. Jensen then spotted Misha moving towards them.
When Misha heard what happened between Jared and Y/N, he instantly got angry with Jared. Y/N was one of his closest friends and he’d be damned if Jared would lay into her like that without provocation. It was a conversation with Jensen that reminded him that Jared’s depression had been messing with him lately. Chances are, that’s where this is all stemming from. It was that comment that made Misha call Y/N to make sure she was okay, considering her own battles with the mental disease.
“I’m okay, Dimitri,” she said quietly, invariably knowing the use of his real name was their code for yes, I’m really okay. No, I’m not lying to you. “I genuinely thought about it, but I didn’t want to bother you, so I intentionally chose a different direction.”
“Fireball,” Misha said gratefully with a smirk. Y/N chuckled.
“Fireball.”
“Okay, well. You know it doesn’t matter what’s going on, you can always call me. You are never a burden to me. I will always come when you call me, no matter what I’m doing,” he said soothingly. He could hear Y/N smile on the other end.
“I know. That’s why I don’t take it for granted,” Y/N said.
When Misha saw Jensen consoling Jared, he changed direction so he could walk over. While he wasn’t as close to the two men as he was to Y/N, he wanted to make sure Jared knew everything was okay. Y/N wasn’t going to hold any grudges against him. But Jensen gently shook his head when he caught Misha’s eye, silently asking for distance. Misha frowned but agreed and detoured away from the two.
Jared explained to Jensen what happened on set earlier that evening. Occasionally, Jensen would gently squeeze his neck reassuringly. At some point, the two made their way to a table and sat down next to each other, away from the thumping speakers and the loud music. It seemed obvious to everyone that they needed to be left alone. When Jared finished, he felt tired and miserable.
“Okay, I’m going to say some things. I just need you to listen to me. Okay?” Jensen asked, looking at Jared intently. Jared nodded his head, his eyes still looking down. Jensen gently squeezed his neck. “Gonna have to have you look at me for this, Jay.”
Jared took a deep breath and adjusted himself in his chair so he could look at Jensen. The fierce frown on his face and considerable pain in his eyes showed just how much all of this was undoubtedly hurting him.
“Number one,” Jensen started, holding up a finger. “No one, ever, is going to come between you and me. You are my brother, man, and I don’t just mean on tv. So, you need to put that out of your mind. Y/N is amazing, and I genuinely like her a lot, but she isn’t you.”
Jared blinked his eyes a few times to clear the wetness that instantly started to gather there and looked down, nodding understandingly.
“Number two,” Jensen continued gently. “Misha has known Y/N for over a decade, and they have a thing going on.” Jared cautiously lifted his head to look at Jensen with a raised brow, and he shook his head.
“I don’t know, he’s married… But they… you know what? It doesn’t matter, it’s between them. The point is – they have a history,” Jensen properly said. “But just because they have a history and are really close, doesn’t mean that Misha doesn’t love you too. And dude, you know he would do anything for you. The two of you are dangerous together.”
Jared chuckled at that part, thinking back to all the pranks they got together on to pull on Jensen. He still hasn’t heard the end of it when they filled Jensen’s trailer full of packing peanuts. Misha helped him with that one and the photos were hanging up in his room still.
“And number three,” Jensen started. “Next time you have concerns about stuff like this, come talk to us about it. Had I known that you were feeling doubtful or concerned? We could have handled this differently. It needed to be handled differently…”
“What do you mean?” Jared asked when Jensen trailed off.
“Let’s just say I learned some essential things about Y/N that I would never have guessed were a worsening problem. Kind of like how we learned about your depression,” Jensen said pointedly. Jared’s face dropped as slight panic encompassed his eyes.
“Oh, God, Jen. What did she do?” Jared asked, his voice shaking slightly. Jensen was already shaking his head.
“She didn’t do anything. According to Misha, she ended up shooting some Fireball and got ready for the party. But she has some unfortunate habits that Misha has made her swear to call him about, as well as a few other things he keeps an eye on. The reason I’m telling you this is not to make you feel bad. I’m serious Jay. I’m telling you this because if anyone is going to understand what you are feeling, it’s going to be Y/N,” Jensen explained gently. Jared studied him for a long moment, then nodded.
“I’m not telling you to not come to me, because if you stop coming to me, imma be pissed,” Jensen said with a kind smile, one Jared couldn’t help but return. “I want you to come to me. I need to know what’s going on with you. I’m just saying, she might be able to help you understand why you feel the way you do sometimes. She’s been battling with it since she was a teen. She may have some better insight than I do.”
Jared nodded again, lost in his own thoughts until the music died down and the sound of a guitar being tuned was heard through the sound stage. This got both men’s attention, and they turned to look at the stage. Misha suddenly appeared nearby and waved at them to come with, a brilliant smile on his face.
“You aren’t gonna want to miss this,” Misha said mysteriously. Jared and Jensen looked at each other confused then followed him to the stage. Most of the band was men dressed in black pants, concert tees, and boots. The one who was tuning the guitar had a red mohawk down the center of his head. The drummer had neon green dreadlocks on his head. But the one person who captured their attention was the single woman on the makeshift stage.
She had her back to the growing audience, but that didn’t stop them from staring. She had these knee-high platform boots on with buckles all the way to the top, with torn fishnet stockings hugging very sexy legs. A short, black peasant-style skirt fell mid-thigh, and it was accented with tulle at the bottom to make it poof out around her. The halter top she wore left her back exposed, and they could see the tattoo of wings covering her shoulders.
When she turned around, they realized the black halter top had red threading in it, glistening in the light from time to time. The black and red of the outfit matched the black and red hair on the woman’s head, bangs swept over her eyes. On her wrists, she had a multitude of leather bracelets… some even with studs. The skull earrings she had in glistened in the light, and occasionally, they caught the glint of a red gemstone in her nose.
Her eyes danced across the crowd as the band started to play, landing on Misha. A devilish smirk suddenly appeared on her face as she eyed Jared and Jensen.
I did it ‘cause I wanna and I did it 'cause I’m gonna And I did it just because I can I did it 'cause it makes me feel so good And I did it because fuck “the man” I did it 'cause I’m crazy and no one’s gonna save me And I did it just to cut the noise I did it 'cause I’m drunk and I did it yeah, so what? 'Cause baby you’re just one of the boys
“Holy shit,” Jensen muttered under his breath.
“Is that…?” Jared asked. Misha nodded with a devious smirk on his own face.
“Yep.”
I do it 'cause you hate me and I do it for the ladies And with all my good time friends I do it 'cause the whole damn worlds gone crazy And fuck it man This is the end
I did it all, to break every single preconceived notion that you have I did it all to rape every single one of your emotions And just to make you
Uncomfortable
The two of them watched in awe as Y/N continued to rock out, only recognizing her by the sound of her voice. Misha rocked along with the song, knowing that she had been working on that one for a while now. He was thrilled that she opened with it, showing her confidence in her voice work. When the song was over, the entire room erupted with cheers.
“She’s amazing!” Jensen exclaimed with a delighted laugh as the band started up a second song. Misha nodded his head in agreeance.
“Make sure you tell her that. She needs the boost in confidence. She genuinely thinks she sounds like shit,” Misha shouted in his friend’s ear. Jensen’s jaw dropped.
“Are you fucking kidding me? She sounds just like Lizzy!” Jensen said. Misha just shrugged and looked back at the stage. Jared simply listened and eagerly watched the girl rock out. After three songs, Y/N stepped away from the microphone to grab a bottle of water. The red mohawk guy said something to her that made her throw her head back and laugh. Jared glanced cautiously at Misha and noticed he was smiling too. Jared gently nudged him.
“You mad at me?” he bent over and asked in his ear. Misha shrugged.
“I was, but she can be reactive too. I get it,” Misha said into his ear as the band started up again. This song was slower and more mellow compared to the three previous hard rock songs.
“Just remember, we aren’t going anywhere. We’re family,” Misha said, squeezing Jared’s arm. Jared pulled back, averting his eyes as he nodded. When he looked up, he realized Y/N was looking at him as she was singing.
Here’s to us, here’s to love All the times, that we messed up Here’s to you, fill the glass 'Cause the last few nights have kicked my ass If they give ya hell Tell em to go fuck themselves, here’s to us, here’s to us
Jared smiled gently at her, nodding his head slightly. Y/N intentionally raised a brow at him a saucy smirk on her lips as if she was legitimately asking if he got the point. Jared snickered slightly and thoughtfully rubbed the back of his neck. He then looked directly at her and pressed a hand against his heart before bowing his head a little. Y/N nodded slightly from the stage before averting her own eyes.
Jensen nudged his arm causing him to look over. He’d seen the private exchange and was smiling indulgently at his ‘brother’ with pride. Jared lifted an arm and wrapped it around Jensen for an affectionate hug before adding Misha to the group.
Jared knew he had nothing to worry about. His friends weren’t going to leave him high and dry for Y/N. In fact, if he gave her a chance, Y/N could be another one of his closest friends. He just had to remember the evil voices in his head aren’t always telling him the truth.
Title – Something to be Thankful For Pairings – Jensen/Reader Word Count – 2,498 Warnings – Nothing for this final chapter! Square filled – Thanksgiving
Jensen Ackles’ life changes when he walks into his favorite coffee shop and meets Y/N, a Florida girl making a new start in Austin, Texas, as a Sheriff’s Deputy with the help of her sister. The two hit it off and quickly become an item that even the tabloids can’t tear apart. Jensen is excited to show his girl off at Thanksgiving dinner with his family, but she has to work the parade that morning first. What starts out as a normal event filled with balloons, clowns, and cheery faces soon turns deadly as one of the floats explodes and gunfire fills the air. Soon, Y/N is in a fight for her life as she and the rest of the deputies fight back against whoever it is trying to take over Downtown Austin.
Is Jensen doomed to watch the woman who brought love back into his life perish in a tragic mass attack, or will he have Something to be Thankful For after all?
AN: Thank you so much for all the love for StbTF! You guys have seriously made my heart so full with your kind words. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO BE ADDED TO MY TAG LISTS!
Chapter 8
TIME STAMP – 9 MONTHS
“This was a good session, everyone,” the counselor said, closing the folder she had in her lap. “I’m proud of the progress each of you are making. I know it’s hard, and it’s still going to take some time, but know you are all doing great. We’ll see you next week.”
Y/N stood up from her chair and waved goodbye to a few of her fellow deputies. The Sheriff made it mandatory those who were involved in the fray on Thanksgiving were to attend counseling sessions. It was met with resistance from many people, but when word got around that the sessions were going to be run by Maya Sonder things changed.
Maya Sonder is a well-known psychologist in law enforcement and had done plenty of presentations regarding PTSD, stress management, and the like. In fact, some of her sessions were required for new deputies who were just starting out. After she led a few of the sessions with those specifically involved in the Thanksgiving shooting, requests came in for more sessions unrelated to that specific incident.
Now, Maya was an employee of the Sheriff’s Office with her own office on property. She had group counseling sessions daily and always had her door open for one-on-one sessions in the case of an emergency. Even civilian employees started to take advantage of her services. It did wonders for the morale of the agency.
Y/N pushed the doors to the administration offices open and walked out of the building, pulling her sunglasses from the top of her head, and placed them over her eyes. Scanning the parking lot, she spotted Jensen leaning against his truck and playing on his phone. Smiling, she made her way over to him. She had been halfway toward him before he looked up and spotted her, a smile gracing his own face.
“Hey, sailor,” she said in a sing-song voice. Jensen chuckled, and when they met in the center of the parking lot, he cupped a gentle hand against her cheek and pulled her in for a deep kiss. Y/N responded with a quiet whimper, rising on her toes to reach him.
“Get a room, you two! This is a business, not a brothel!” they both heard someone shout. Breaking away, they laughed as they turned to look at Trevor as he walked by them on the sidewalk.
“Hey, Trevor,” Jensen said, pulling Y/N into a hug.
“Hey, Jensen. Get her outta here. Enjoy your weekend together,” he said with a wave. Jensen looked down at Y/N in his arms and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“Sir, yes sir,” he responded, turning them toward his truck. Jensen kept his arm around Y/N’s shoulder. He opened the passenger side door and helped Y/N step up into his truck before closing the door and going to the driver’s side. When he climbed in, he looked over at Y/N with a cheeky grin.
“Hey, babe,” he said sweetly. Y/N leaned over pressed a kiss to his lips.
“Hey, yourself,” she responded. “Let’s get out of here.”
Jensen nodded and turned the truck on, putting it into drive. He held Y/N’s hand the entire ride home.
It had been a tough 9 months for them. She was finally walking without a limp and breathing without any pain in her chest. The only remaining signs she has from the attack during the Thanksgiving Day Parade are the scars: physical and mental. The bullet wound on her hip was already covered by a tattoo thanks to a trip with her sister. The one her leg is something she will have to live with; there is no covering the damage there. The one on her face is thankfully covered by her hair.
Jensen was still doing his own therapy group up in Vancouver, and sometimes Jared would go with him. A support group for loved ones of Law Enforcement was something that helped both not only understand the heavy physical demands that being an officer requires but also the emotional ones as well. It’s more than PT tests and name-calling. The insight the group was able to give allowed both men to understand why Y/N would react to certain sounds, why she had to sit with her back against a wall, or why she always had a weapon on her person when they went out.
While she did her weekly group therapy with people at the agency, she still did her own therapy outside of the agency once a week as well. Five months later, she still had a hard time accepting the fact that Danny’s death was not her fault. A shooting incident while on a call didn’t help matters much.
Jensen flew back to Austin to surprise Y/N with a long weekend together, only to find her curled up in the corner of their shared bedroom crying hysterically. When he realized what was going on, Jensen dropped his things and approached her.
“Y/N?” he said quietly, cautiously reaching out to her. “Honey?”
When he finally landed a gentle hand on her arm, she startled. Jensen sat back on his haunches to keep from being on the receiving end of a fist, but she didn’t lash out. She started to cry harder.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Jensen asked, reaching a hand up to her cheek. Instead of answering, Y/N reached for him. Jensen sat down on the floor with his back against the wall and pulled Y/N into his lap, pressing her head down on his shoulder. She gripped his shirt tightly with both hands, her sobs getting harsher. He just wrapped his arms around her and held her close.
Suddenly, her cell phone rang. Looking around for the mobile device, Jensen realized her cell phone was on the floor next to them. He reached over and grabbed it without letting go of Y/N, looking at the caller ID before answering it. Maya.
“Hey,” he answered in a strained voice.
“Jensen?” Maya said surprised. “Where is she? Are you with her?”
“What happened? She’s hysterical, and I can’t get her to calm down,” Jensen said.
“Whereareyou?” Maya asked again.
“What the hell happened, Maya? I came home from Vancouver to find my girlfriend in hysterics over something, and I can’t get her to calm down. What is going on?!” Jensen demanded. Maya sighed on the other line.
“We had… an… incident. A domestic violence suspect was barricaded inside his house, refusing to come out. It had been hours before we were able to get him to release his girlfriend and come out. He was able to get a few shots off before we neutralized the threat. No one died, but there are some injuries,” Maya summarized. Jensen closed his eyes and swallowed hard.
He then rattled off his address and hung up the phone, dropping it on the carpet next to him. He wrapped his arms around Y/N and pulled her closer to him, hushing her softly.
“It wasn’t your fault, babe,” he muttered quietly. “Danny wasn’t your fault. Todaywasn’t your fault.”
Y/N just cried harder, her arms wrapping around Jensen and clenching in his shirt behind his back. Jensen was rocking her slowly when he heard his front door open, and a voice calls out. He shouted back at them to direct them to the master bedroom. Moments later, Maya and a tall man were walking into the room.
Jensen glared at them as they carefully made their way over to where they were sitting on the floor. Maya knelt beside them, frowning with deep sorrow in her eyes. When she looked up at the man next to her, he shook his head.
They had come to find out the man who was with Maya was Trevor Benson, Y/N’s lieutenant. He had been worried about how Y/N was acting after the domestic violence scene and had been trying to get in touch with her to do a wellness check. When she didn’t respond, he got Maya involved. It wasn’t until Jensen answered the phone they finally located the hurting deputy.
Maya decided to add an extra counseling session to Y/N’s treatment and asked Trevor to be there. Since he had experience in attacks like what happened on Thanksgiving, and in losing deputies much like how Danny died, Maya thought maybe he could help Y/N learn to forgive herself.
“It’s not something you are ever going to forget, Y/N,” Trevor had told her during one session together. “But you can’t control what people choose to do. In Danny’s case, he chose to go into the open. That’s on him, not you.”
“I could have saved him if I wasn’t injured. He saved me,” Y/N said quietly, her eyes on her hands. “He helped me.”
“Even if you were at 100% Y/N, you were not going to be able to save him. The shot that took him was lethal. I know you want to believe you could have saved him, but sometimes bad things happen to good people. You are not to blame for this.”
The group sessions continued for months. Trevor even escorted Y/N to see Danny’s grave, something she had yet to do because she was feeling so guilty. He held her as she cried her grief and allowed her some time to talk to Danny by herself when she asked for it. After that, she had been doing better.
“Um, Jen?” Y/N suddenly asked. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to dinner,” Jensen said with a smile. Y/N gave her adorable boyfriend of almost one year a suspicious look and Jensen laughed. “Just relax! Enjoy the evening.”
Jensen pulled up to Wink, one of Y/N’s favorite splurge restaurant’s in Austin. They discovered it one night early in their relationship, and Y/N fell in love with their art, small dishes, and local purchasing. It was something you simply didn’t get from places in Florida, so Y/N immediately fell in love with the place. Y/N’s eyes lit up when she saw where they were.
“Really? What’s the occasion?” she asked excitedly. Jensen chuckled as he handed the keys to the valet and wrapped her arm around his.
“I just wanted to do something nice for us. We deserve it,” he said softly. Y/N melted, kissing Jensen on the cheek as they walked in. He blushed slightly at the display of affection in front of the hostess, who giggled at them, before giving his name for the reservation. The two were escorted to a private table and were handed glasses of red wine immediately.
“What did you do?” Y/N asked suspiciously. Jensen laughed again.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Reservation already made, the wine already here, you’re up to something mister,” Y/N said with raised a brow at him. She took another long sip of her wine causing Jensen to laugh again.
“Just enjoy the dinner, honey,” he said as a plate of appetizers was placed in front of them. The evening went along beautifully as they enjoyed a wonderful meal. It gave them a chance to catch up after he was gone in Vancouver filming. He told stories from the set, and she laughed at the crazy antics. She filled him in on the happenings of Austin and how her sister was thinking of opening a second location near the Sheriff’s office.
Toward the end of the meal, the two were sharing a dessert when a slow song suddenly started playing. Jensen watched Y/N carefully, suddenly feeling insanely nervous.
“Hey, wait a minute…” Y/N said, listening carefully. Jensen set his spoon down and wiped his mouth. “Isn’t this… Oh my God! Jen!”
“Yeah,” Jensen said quietly, standing up. He held out his hand, asking Y/N to stand. With a smile, Y/N took his hand and stood. Jensen smoothly guided Y/N into his arms. Her eyes were soft when she looked at him, his arms wrapping around his waist.
It played out stranger than it seemed But what went down came true Like an all day dream
The two started to slow dance in the small space next to their table, Jensen softly singing the lyrics to his song in Y/N’s ear. Y/N couldn’t stop the smile from playing on her face. Jensen held her closer, his heart fluttering as he heard her voice in his ear singing the lyrics as well.
I don’t want to be the one to say it’s wrong When the heavens open and a new day comes along I know I would rather be together alone In a big top circle and a world we can call our own It’s all our own
Jensen pulled back a little, looking into Y/N’s eyes as they sang the next part together. His fingers gently brushed his fingers into her hair, curling it behind her ear. Y/N rested her forehead against his, her heart so full of love for this man.
In a world we can call our own You’ll find shelter darlin’ Where I’ll always promise to Never let it be
“I love you,” Y/N whispered to Jensen, pressing her lips to his as the song ended. Jensen pulled back and looked at Y/N with so much emotion.
“I can’t imagine my life without you, Y/N,” Jensen said, slowly bringing them to a stop. “The day I saw you in the coffee shop was the best day of my life. The next best day was Thanksgiving when they told me you were alive. You can top both by answering this one question.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a velvet box before dropping to one knee. Y/N’s eyes widened dramatically, her mouth opening in surprise.
“Y/N Y/M/N Y/L/N… Will you marry me?” he asked, opening the velvet box to display a beautiful solitaire ring set in a platinum band with two sapphires on each side of it. Y/N nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
“Yes. Of course, I will marry you,” she whispered. Jensen smiled brightly, standing, and crashed his mouth to hers in a passionate kiss, Y/N’s hands on his cheeks. When they separated, Jensen slipped the ring on her finger while both laughing.
“God, I love you,” Jensen said, kissing Y/N again. Cheers were heard behind them, causing them to separate. Y/N watched as Jared walked up behind Jensen and dropped a hand on his shoulder. Y/N’s eyes lit up and she laughed. Holly walked up and cheered, giving Y/N a hug as well.
Soon, the small area was full of their friends and family. Waiters from the restaurant carried out trays of wine and champagne for the guests, and soon the celebration was underway for the group. Y/N grabbed Jensen’s hand and pulled him outside.
“You okay?” Jensen asked concerned. Y/N just nodded and pulled him in for a passionate kiss. Jensen wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her close. By the time they separated, they were both panting.
“You are the best thing that ever happened to me,” Y/N breathed. “Thank God I moved to Texas.”
Title – Something to be Thankful For Pairings – Jensen/Reader Word Count – 1,705 Warnings – RATED R FOR: Violence in the form of a mass bombing/shooting, injuries both explained and detailed, cursing SPNMixedBingo Square filled – Thanksgiving
Jensen Ackles’ life changes when he walks into his favorite coffee shop and meets Y/N, a Florida girl making a new start in Austin, Texas, as a Sheriff’s Deputy with the help of her sister. The two hit it off and quickly become an item that even the tabloids can’t tear apart. Jensen is excited to show his girl off at Thanksgiving dinner with his family, but she has to work the parade that morning first. What starts out as a normal event filled with balloons, clowns, and cheery faces soon turns deadly as one of the floats explodes and gunfire fills the air. Soon, Y/N is in a fight for her life as she and the rest of the deputies fight back against whoever it is trying to take over Downtown Austin.
Is Jensen doomed to watch the woman who brought love back into his life perish in a tragic mass attack, or will he have Something to be Thankful For after all?
Chapter 7
Jensen walked into the hospital room slowly; eyes wide and scared as he looked toward the bed. The head of it was lifted a bit more than it had been the last time he was in there, and Y/N was propped up with extra pillows. The nurse that left the room as they walked up had told them a new IV bag, another dose of antibiotics, and pain medication was administered, but Y/N was awake.
Right then, she had her eyes closed as she rested against the pillow behind her head, her hair a halo against the white sheets. As if sensing someone was in the room with her, Y/N slowly opened her eyes with a whimper. From where he was standing, he could see that Y/N was looking around the room without moving her head. When she noticed Jensen, Y/N’s breath caught as her eyes filled once again. The weight in Jensen’s chest lifted slightly seeing her eyes open.
“Hey, baby…” Jensen muttered as he came further into the room.
“Jen,” Y/N breathed, watching as he came closer to her. For what felt like the thousandth time that day, Y/N started to cry as she lifted her hand toward the man she loved. Jensen took it in both of his as he sat in the chair next to her bed. He kissed her fingertips, and then pressed her hand against his cheek. Her skin was cold against his warm skin, but it was still the best feeling he had in the last 12 hours.
“I am so thankful you are okay,” Jensen choked out, his own eyes shining with unshed tears. Y/N simply stared at him, watching him carefully through a haze of pain and drugs. Jensen smiled at her softly before his expression melted into one of sorrow and fear. A wave of guilt crashed over Y/N, causing her eyes to slide shut. She felt a sob escape her, causing her face to scrunch up painfully as tiny stabs of pain danced along her ribs.
“I’m sorry, Jen,” Y/N choked brokenly. Jensen shook his head. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“No,” he whispered back, his own voice cracking. “No, Y/N. Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for. I promise. It’s just…Y/N…” Y/N slowly opened her eyes, tears streaming down her guilt-stricken face. She watched as Jensen stood and fiddled with the side railing of the bed until he figured out how to get the thing to lower. Carefully, he sat down on the mattress next to Y/N, whispering his apologies every time she winced. He leaned over to get as close as he could dare to, bringing their faces inches apart, his warm hands cradling her face.
“I thought I lost you today, Y/N,” he whispered. “I thought I lost you without ever telling you just how much I love you. I won’t let another moment go by without saying it again.”
Y/N’s breath catches at the word love, causing her eyes to widen slightly. She blinked a few times, forcing more tears to rush down her face. Jensen brushed them away with his thumbs, pressing a kiss to her forehead before continuing.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to say it, and I’m sorry I’m saying it like this. I know I should have made the moment more romantic and not just after a tragedy, but I almost lost you today,” Jensen said. He paused and looked at you in silence for a long moment, a tear breaking free and running down his cheek unchecked. “I almost lost you today,” he whispered, his breath catching. Y/N lifted a hand to grab a hold of his wrist gently, a small smile playing on her lips.
“I love you too,” Y/N breathed, her own tears spilling. “Before everything happened this morning, I was thinking about how I should tell you. I just didn’t think you felt the same.”
Jensen’s eyes lit up at her words and he delicately pressed his lips to hers, kissing the woman he loves and almost lost. When they separated, they simply stayed close together to share the same air. Y/N sniffled slightly, blinking a few more tears free that Jensen all too eagerly brushed away.
“I’m sorry, Jen,” Y/N whispered again, only to have Jensen hush her gently. He pressed his lips to her forehead.
“I love you so much,” Jensen whispered back, slowly settling himself back into a seated position on the bed. Y/N looked up at him, interlacing her fingers with his. They stared at each other in silence for a long time before Y/N found the strength to speak again.
“I love you, Jen… and I feel like I should warn you. What happened today… what I saw…” she said brokenly.
“No matter what happens, I will help you any way I can,” Jensen said quietly.
“It could get ugly. I’m going to be messed up for a while. I won’t blame you if you want to cut and run now,” she said, dropping her eyes. Jensen leaned down to kiss Y/N once more.
“I love you, and I will help you any way I can. Now get some rest. When they release you, you are going to stay with me.”
“I’m so sorry, Jen,” Y/N whispered again. Jensen shook his head.
“Hey, no. No more of that. None of this was your fault,” he said. “Just get some rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Ten days later, Y/N sat in the wheelchair with her favorite blanket wrapped around her, dressed in the most comfortable pajama pants and a zip-up hoodie she stole from Jensen. She shifted gingerly in the chair, making sure she was as comfortable as she could get before Jared walked back into the room to push her out of the hospital.
“Okay, I think we have everything packed up. Are you sure you don’t want to take the slipper socks? You never know when you’re going to need them,” Holly asked, holding up the ugly pair of red socks with white rubber tread. Y/N gave her sister a dry look.
“No,” Y/N said flatly. Holly nodded and dropped the socks back on the bed with a wry smirk, before zipping up the overnight bag of things that ended up making their way to Y/N’s hospital room. Clothes, blankets, toiletries, and a few electronics like her new phone and charger, and iPad all were packed up.
“Do you have any plans while you are at Jensen’s?” Holly asked with forced nonchalance. Y/N looked down at her hands, picking at her nails.
“They’re on hiatus for the holidays, so I’m just going to relax and enjoy my time with him between my physical therapy appointments,” she mumbled. “Continue with therapy.”
“Danny wasn’t your fault, Y/N/N,” Holly said sympathetically, walking around to face her with the overnight bag.
“Yeah,” she murmured. Y/N looked at her sister with a sad smile, trying to take the bag from her. Holly held it away from her.
“No,” Holly said firmly. “Your ribs aren’t healed yet, and the doctor said you can’t lift anything for three more weeks.”
“I’m not an invalid,” Y/N huffed. Holly shook her head with a sigh.
“No, honey, you’re not. You’re injured. There is a difference,” Holly said, kneeling down to see Y/N face to face. “This isn’t like the school shooting where you were able to walk away with a few bumps and bruises. We almost lost you. I watched you almost get blown up live on television. So if nothing else, humor me and let us take care of you, yeah?”
Y/N watched her sister for a long moment, before looking away with a nod. Holly stood up, slung the overnight bag over one shoulder, and crossed her arms over her chest. Y/N sighed and snuggled down in the blanket around her as Jared walked in.
“Okay, you two. Your paperwork is finished. Jensen is waiting downstairs with Cliff, making sure we can make a clean getaway. Ready to head out?” he asked. Y/N nodded.
“Yeah,” she replied quietly. Holly and Jared shared a concerned glance, but let it go. It was a quiet walk to the front of the hospital with Jared pushing the wheelchair and Holly carrying Y/N’s items. When they got there, Y/N saw Jensen talking with her doctor.
“…and I’m serious about the extra therapy. We’ve got some good doctors here that would be able to help,” she heard the doctor say. Jensen nodded, taking the pamphlets from him before shaking his hand.
“Yes, sir. We’ll be going,” he said. Jensen turned to face Y/N, his entire expression lighting up when he set eyes on her. “Hey, baby.”
“I’m already looking at going to therapy for the attack,” Y/N said, feeling insulted that they were talking behind her back. Jensen shook his head.
“It isn’t for you. It’s for me,” he explained. Y/N mouth opened in surprise.
“Oh,” Y/N muttered in surprise as Jensen knelt next to Y/N. “Are you okay?” she asked him quietly, the concern in her voice evident. Jensen’s smile softened and he took her hand in his, kissing her knuckles.
“I’m fine. I was getting information about a therapy group for loved ones of law enforcement officers. I know we have a rough road ahead of us, and I don’t know the first thing about how to help you. So, when I asked for advice, Dr. Marx suggested this as a starting place I could go to gain some insight from others who are in the same place I am,” he explained. Y/N closed her eyes and felt ashamed of herself. She dropped her head, hiding behind her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have assumed anything.” Jensen brushed her hair out of the way and carefully lifted her face so he could look into her eyes with a gentle smile. He leaned over and kissed Y/N on the forehead.
“Sweetheart. It’s okay. I told you, I’m here. I know it’s going to be tough” Jensen said. “I just know we’re tougher.” Y/N looked at him lovingly.
“I love you,” she said. Jensen smiled.
“I love you, too,” he replied. “Now, let’s get you home.”
