Work Text:
Dean Winchester is a saint.
Well. Not literally. Mostly ‘cause there are stiff requirements for sainthood (namely, being dead), and he’s hardly performed a miracle in his lifetime (though there are those lucky enough to have been in his bed, who’d disagree, but still).
No, Dean’s a fucking saint because he puts up with his asshole brother and his salads, and his gas and his stupid books everywhere. And now this.
“Sam!” he shouts for the third time. “You’d better get out here and move this or I swear to God, I’m gonna—”
He’s not sure how to finish that thought. He fumbles, grasping for anything that sounds vaguely menacing. “—I’m gonna put your hand in warm water when you’re sleeping and watch you piss yourself again like you did in ninth grade!”
Yeah, it’s weak, but Dean hasn’t had his coffee yet.
Which brings him back full circle to the problem at hand. Or more specifically in chair. In his chair.
“The hell are you doing here?” He demands of the dead woman sitting in the very lawn chair that Dean sits in every morning to drink his first two mugs of coffee. It’s his favorite part of the day; the quiet, the air still cool and fresh from the night, the sun gently warming.
But now, this. This he could do without.
“SAM!”
It’s a couple of seconds later that his little-big brother appears out on the veranda, flustered and pushing chestnut bangs out of his eyes.
Just five minutes with the scissors. Just five. That’s all Dean would need.
“What the fuck, Dean?”
Dean could ask Sam the same question. His brother’s wearing board shorts and flip flops, and sure, they moved out to California, but now Sam is on a big health kick, and any second he’s gonna start spouting Bodhi’s lines from Point Break like they’re gospel, and Dean can’t cope with that, honestly.
Instead, he simply gestures towards the body occupying the space he should be and looks to his brother, eyebrows raised. “Well?”
Sam’s brow creases, marring his handsome face. He’s staring at the woman as if she’s suddenly going to start moving. Dean looks too, hoping against hope that she will. But she refuses to stir, instead simply sitting there, hands folded on her lap, ankles crossed casually. She’s wearing a sleek, blue evening gown teamed with sparkly heels, which — at the risk of giving unwarranted fashion advice to the dead — is inappropriate wear. A sundress or swimsuit would be better for this time of day, but a formal, off-the-shoulder gown is completely unsuitable, even pretentious.
Not that it’s really her fault, in fairness.
“Well what?” Sam asks, blowing out a breath.
Dean gives Sam a pointed look. “Well, she didn’t put herself there and I sure as shit didn’t, so by process of elimination, that leaves you.”
Sam looks mildly affronted by the suggestion. But then again, Sam’s affronted by most things that aren’t to do with recycling or wind farms. “The fuck, Dean? Why would I do this?”
It’s a fair question and one that Dean had considered at length as his coffee went cold. “Because you think it’s funny, I don’t know?” After all, not everyone could be blessed with Dean’s humor, charisma and charm, especially not a younger sibling after Dean had taken the lion’s share.
Sam makes a face. It’s not an attractive one. “This is not funny.”
“I’m glad we’re in agreement there.”
Bitchface number 28, patent pending. “I’m serious, Dean. I didn’t do this.”
“Well some fucker did.” Dean grumbles, already done with this whole situation. He’s tempted to nudge her off the chair and let her fend for herself. But that seems somewhat of an ungracious end for someone who clearly had a lot of grace and poise in life, and Dean’s not a complete monster.
Sam steps forward with a flip and then a flop, followed by another flip and Dean’s suddenly acutely concerned for his own dignity as well as the lady in blue. Sam kneels down beside her. “Nicely dressed, isn’t she?”
“Better dressed than you leave yours.” Dean mutters. For all Sam’s niceties and organic mushrooms, he’s an animal.
“Hmm,” Sam says, tipping her head back and brushing his fingertips over her bruised throat. “A nylon stocking,” he murmurs. “Maybe a scarf. Not my style at all, Dean. Come on, you know that.”
Dean does.
Which means that someone else has killed this woman and dumped her in Sam and Dean’s backyard.
Which is just fucking rude, frankly.
***
A couple of mornings later, Dean’s sitting out on the veranda in his lawn chair, drinking a cup of coffee when he hears the rumble of the door on the runner behind him and out flip-flops his brother.
“They found her body.” He announces, with a rustle of what is most likely the morning paper.
Dean takes another sip of his coffee.
“‘Dancer found slain’ it says, ‘The body of twenty-nine-year-old ballet dancer Marianne Foyet was found early Monday morning, the apparent victim of strangulation. Miss Foyet, understudy of Parisian ballerina Amelie Fontana, disappeared Friday night after the company’s performance of Swan Lake. Her body was discovered near the edge of Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica according to police officials…” Sam trails off, apparently finding no more worth sharing.
Sam had wanted to dump the poor girl’s body near Pacific Park, but Dean had been having none of it. A nice dress like that deserved upscale shops and nice eateries, not candy floss and clowns.
“You think they’ll trace it back to us?” Sam asks, concern edging his tone. It’s not their usual dumping ground, but that’s precisely why Dean had wanted to do it this way. Marianne hadn’t been their usual type of victim; too much attention would have been drawn by her disappearance. It had the potential to unearth a whole host of literal skeletons that needed to stay where they were.
“Nah.”
***
For several more days, Dean drinks his morning coffee in the backyard, enjoying the fresh air, the sunlight, the silence and peaceful solitude.
It’s bliss.
On Sunday, however, he finds the body of a lean brunette occupying his chair. She’s pretty, and reminds Dean a little of a girl he sort of dated (for a long weekend) a couple of years ago. Lisa something or other.
He stares at her. She stares back.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” he says on a heavy, heartfelt sigh. “You’re not gonna ruin my day this time.”
But she does.
Though Dean sits in Sam’s creaky hippie-dippie wicker chair, back turned so that she’s out of sight, he can almost feel her studying the back of his head.
Irritated, he goes inside to refill his mug. As he pours steaming coffee from the percolator, he has an idea.
Before resuming his seat, he makes a quick detour to the linen closet and covers the woman’s head with a striped pillow case.
Eh. He never said that it was one of his better ideas.
It almost works too. That is, until Sam gets back from the farmer’s market or wherever it is that Sam goes on Sunday mornings to fuck butternut squash, and makes an appearance right in Dean’s line of sight.
“Another one?” Sam asks, tilting his head towards the body.
“No.” Dean squints up at his brother. “This is my new housemate, Betty. She doesn’t ask stupid questions.”
Sam ignores him. Which is probably for the best, really. “A busy man, our strangler.”
Later that night, they put her in the trunk of a stolen Camaro. They leave the Camaro in a parking lot at Los Angeles International Airport.
Though the newspaper runs stories for several days about the disappearance of a dancer — another member of the troupe performing Swan Lake — her body isn’t found until Thursday night. It makes the Friday morning paper.
After reading the paper aloud, Sam forks a mouthful of salad into his mouth. Not even any dressing. Like, what the fuck. Are they even related? “We did pretty well on that one, Dean. If we’d wrapped her better to hold in the aroma, she might’ve gone another week...”
Dean swallows his huge bite of burger. Hums in acknowledgment, even though he’s already thinking about his own kill that he’s been planning for a while now. He’s not as sadistic as Sam, but then he supposes if he restricted himself to nothing but smoothies and salads, he’d be kinda cranky too. Still, he has needs and short of throttling the jolly green giant still prattling on… well.
“...I’d like to put the next one—”
Wait. What?
“What next one?” Dean demands.
Sam looks at Dean like he’s stupid. Which. Alright. Sometimes he can be a little slow. “We’ve had these dancers two weekends in a row. Number three’s gonna pop up tomorrow, I bet you anything.”
Not in Dean’s fucking chair she ain’t. He’s tempted to bring his chair inside — the prick can dump her in Sam’s seat, but then he’s struck with a better idea. “Let’s lay in wait for the strangler. If he comes along tonight with another corpse, we’ll catch him at it.”
“And?” Sam prompts, eyes like flint, dangerous undercurrent there just beneath the benign surface. Human nature in disguise. It must be absolutely terrifying for his victims, but for Dean? Dean’s just proud of his little brother.
As if he’s gonna admit that, though. Feeling feelings is not a Winchester specialty; expressing them is definitely not, so Dean resorts to type.
“Well,” he says slowly. “We’ll make him take it away.”
He watches Sam’s expression switch into one of confusion, darkness dissipating like clouds over California. “Seriously?”
Dean resists the urge to roll his eyes. Barely. “No, not seriously Sam. We’ll kill the fuck outta the disrespectful asshole.”
***
Dean’s sitting on a stool near the backyard fence at midnight, tumbler of whisky in one hand, meat tenderizer in the other, when he hears a car in the alley behind their house. It stops just on the other side of the fence, ignition cut, followed by the cooling ping of the engine, and the quiet bump of a closing door.
So this is how the bastard does it. Just drives up the alley and brings her in. But the rear gate? It’s always locked. How…?
Behind Dean, something thuds against the redwood fence. He turns and looks up. A blonde woman grins at him over the top. He hears a grunt, followed by the scrape of something. She towers over him for a moment and then folds at the waist, and Dean’s jumping out of the way, nearly spilling the remnants of his whisky, as he gapes at her. She hangs there, swaying slightly, like the body of a gunslinger draped over a saddle. Another grunt comes from behind the fence. Her legs flip high, slender and pale in the moonlight, then she’s leaping with the elegance Dean wouldn’t usually associate with the dead, performing a somersault as she lands on the grass, before laying still.
Dean glances towards the garage where Sam is, playing guitar music or fondling an avocado or something.
He moves into Sam’s line of sight, motions frantically for his brother to come and join him.
Quickly, he crouches at the corner of the fence, tosses back the last of the whisky and leaves the tumbler in the grass. The wood jolts against his back, and he sees an arm hook over the top rail. After a hushed curse and a scuffling sound, a leg appears. Then, in one quick motion, the man swings over and drops to the grass, landing silently and gracefully on his feet, less than a couple of yards from Dean.
Cheeky bastard.
Crouching, the strangler lifts the body with barely any effort. He flings it over a lean shoulder that Dean really should recognize — after all, he’d had his calves on those shoulders quite a few times over the years — but for now, he raises the meat tenderizer as he stands, ready to strike.
“Hey, fucker.”
Yeah, Dean’s all about the action-movie speeches.
“Get her back over that fence and maybe, just maybe I won’t bash your brains in. Go clutter up someone else’s yard.”
Still holding the body, the strangler turns around, and Dean’s heart stutters in his chest, a sudden kinetic buzz replacing the steady beat and for an insane moment Dean thinks he’s having a heart attack. “Now, why would I want to go and do a thing like that?”
He’s not sure how he does it, but a couple of arrhythmic beats pass before Dean manages to wring anything out of his abruptly useless voicebox. “Cas?”
Which, is of course, the moment Sam chooses to rock up, brandishing a hunter’s knife in one hand, a fireplace poker in the other.
They don’t even have a fireplace, the sadistic fuck.
“The hell?” Dean asks, not really wanting an answer, but needing one all the same.
Castiel shifts the weight of the body on his shoulder like she’s a fucking rucksack, all that grave-digging strength put to use, and between that and the tight t-shirt molded to every ridge and curve of his perfectly muscular torso, Dean desperately tries to think with his upstairs brain. “I thought you liked dancers, Dean?”
Oh hell no. That is not what this is about.
Sam, realizing that this is not quite going the way they’d planned, (or possibly wanting confirmation of Dean’s thing about dancers — which no, it was one time, fuck’s sake) shoots Dean a quizzical look. “Dean?”
Dean has more important things on his mind than his brother’s confusion, though. Mostly his own. “Why aren’t you in prison?”
The moonlight glints off straight, white teeth. His face, half-hidden in shadow, is terrible and dreadful and breathtakingly beautiful all at once. Goddamn. With eyes that Dean knows to be a more captivating shade of blue than the waters in Santa Monica Bay fixed on him, Castiel says, “Overcrowding, baby. Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Did he...just?” Sam splutters, glancing between them, but neither he or ‘the strangler’ are paying him any attention; their eyes are locked, heat and years suddenly everything and nothing. “Dean, what’s going on?”
Dean would like to know the answer to that himself.
Cas turns to Sam then, hefting the body off his shoulder and dumping her in the grass again, like a gym bag. “You must be Sam.” He sticks a hand out, casually, like a work acquaintance (which he kinda, sorta is, but so much more) that they’ve bumped into on the street. Dean knows intimately what Cas can do with those hands. Has seen it, has experienced it. There’s nothing friendly about those hands. “I’m Castiel. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Sam just gapes, stuck somewhere between 'stroke victim' and 'epiphany'. Which is probably a mirror image of Dean’s face right now, but still. A little decorum wouldn’t go amiss.
“I’ve heard nothing about you.” Sam replies, honestly.
“Uh huh,” Castiel replies slyly, the same stillness and danger crackling just below the surface that Dean has spent far too many nights furiously trying not to remember.
Swallowing, the sound carries, heavy in the semi-darkness. Dean attempts to salvage something, anything from the wreckage of this rapidly sinking conversation. “I don’t go around telling my brother about every person I’ve ever banged.”
“No, of course not,” Castiel agrees easily. Too easily. Then to Sam he says, “Though, I suppose he also failed to tell you anything about the time he narrowly avoided jail.”
Dean tilts his head back on a sigh. Stares up at the sky. It’s a clear night, but he can barely see any stars. He knew that this day would come, but he’d thought it would have been at least another two years and nine months (and that’s with good behavior, which was never Cas’ strong suit.)
Not that he’s been keeping count or anything.
“Dean?” Sam turns to Dean, sounding far too young and lost and nothing at all like the six and a half feet of mass murderer that he is. “What’s he talking about?”
“Huh. Isn’t that interesting,” Castiel says in that way that means it’s not actually interesting at all.
Asshole.
“Nothing, Sammy,” Dean says, mustering up what little fortitude he has left. “Ignore him, he’s just here to cause trouble.”
“And to leave you a present, of course.” Castiel nudges the woman’s head with his left boot.
Ah yes. Just how Dean managed to forget about the whole bodies-getting-dumped-in-his-lawn-chair is absolutely nothing to do with the gorgeous, infuriating bastard in front of him. Except for where it maybe is.
“A present?” he repeats, stupidly. “You gotta be shitting me, Cas.”
“Perhaps a little petty on my part, admittedly.”
Dean can’t actually believe what he’s hearing. “‘A little’?”
“Okay.” Castiel holds his hands up in defeat. “A lot. But you—”
Nope. No way are they having this conversation on his lawn in the early hours, with the third body of a ballet dancer lying between them.
“Get rid of her,” Dean hisses. “‘Cause Sammy and I are not cleaning up after you again.”
Castiel smiles again, venomous. “But you were doing such a good job getting rid of them for me. And I haven’t finished yet. I was going to bring you an entire troupe.”
“Oh, fuc—”
“May I ask,” Sam pipes up, interrupting Dean’s eloquent comeback. “Just how big an entire troupe is?”
Dean’s brother, as always, asking the important questions.
“Oh, big. Real big,” Castiel responds, dark-eyed. “Fifty-two. Y’know, one a week for every week you owe—”
“Nope!” Dean cuts in before Castiel can finish his thought. “Not happening Cas. You need to fuck off, and take her with you.” He tries to imagine forty-nine more bodies in the backyard on his lawn chair and whether it’s worth it just to persuade Cas to keep his mouth shut.
It really isn’t and the bastard knows it.
“I could do that, yes.” Castiel agrees easily, but Dean knows that tone. “But only if you let me take you out to dinner. Maybe then we’ll be even.”
Well, fuck. That, Dean wasn’t expecting. But then again, they both know what’ll happen if Dean says yes.
Sam shifts his weight impatiently. At least he’s not wearing flip flops tonight. “Wait, wait. You did all this just to get Dean’s attention?”
And they say that romance is dead.
“Worked, didn’t it?” Castiel doesn’t take his eyes off Dean.
Only in an abstract sort of way.
“Fucking fine,” Dean blurts. “I’ll go out with you. Now leave and take her.”
Castiel performs an over exaggerated princely bow. “As you wish.” And then he’s picking up the corpse of the poor woman and hefting her over his shoulder. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”
Dean absolutely, resolutely is not going to swoon.
As Castiel nimbly makes his way back over their fence, Sam turns to him. Dean can’t see properly, but he can tell that he’s wearing bitchface number 5: ‘eau de whatthehelldeanomg’ “Who the actual fuck was that?”
Dean folds his arms across his chest, watches as Castiel’s rather fine ass and gorgeously thick thighs disappear from view. “That, Sam, is the Suffolk County Reaper.” He frowns, and then adds, “And now the Swan Lake Strangler too, I suppose.”
He doesn’t need to look at his brother to see the hero worship in his eyes. Sam has been a huge fanboy of the Reaper for years; has studied his work — in the early days even tried to imitate some of his more infamous kills.
“You dated the Reaper?”
Dean scoffs. If only it were that simple. “I’m married to him, Sammy.”