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Dean wakes slowly, a painful pressure throbbing behind his eyes, the promise of a migraine. Probably hangover-related, if he feels like being honest with himself. It’s only when he goes to lift a hand to try and massage the budding ache away that he realizes he can’t. He can’t move his arms or legs because someone—or something—has strapped him down to a flat wooden surface with thick leather belts.
He lay there for some time, trying to will his blurry eyes to adjust to the dim flickering lights which he thinks might be candles. The place is cold and water drips faintly in the distance—he might be in a crypt or tomb, or underground somewhere. Dean pats his fingers against his pocket and lets out a sigh of relief when he feels his phone and car keys. At least they hadn’t bothered to empty his pockets, but that probably means they—whoever they are—plan to kill him.
Dean sighs and flicks his gaze about him. He can’t make out much, everything dim and dull, steeped in shadows that loom and dance across rutted stone walls.
“Great,” he mutters to himself. “A fuckin’ crypt.”
He kind of hates crypts. They don’t exactly give him the warm-and-fuzzies. Instinctively, he curls his fingers into fists, though it’s not like that’ll do him a lot of good with how tightly he’s strapped down.
There’s a sharp abrasive sound—a metal grate dragging across the floor, a blade scraping over stone—that sends his stomach tumbling and makes his palms grow slippery with sweat. A thick, pungent smell hits the air, prickling his eyes and, for a moment, Dean feels like he stumbled into a church service.
“You’re awake.” A male voice. Warm breath tickles his earlobe, carrying with it the light stench of must and decay.
Dean tries to squirm away, to no avail. He tries his best to sound menacing while lying prone on his back, growling, “Who the hell are you?”
“He’s awake,” another voice, a female, exclaims. “The ceremony can begin.”
Fear shoves its spikes through Dean’s heart. “What?”
A hand strokes over his arm, under the sleeve of his T-shirt. Dry fingertips brush against the handprint—Cas, Dean thinks, staring up at shadows. Cas, you gotta help me, man. God, I hope you’re listening.
Sharp nails dig into the flesh of his upper arm. “Stop that.”
Dean pastes a smirk onto his face. “Stop what, my natural smolder?”
“We should’ve taken the tall one,” the male voice hisses.
“She was very clear about which of the Winchesters we—” the woman snaps, but she’s cut short by the sound of a hand connecting with flesh.
“We don’t question our orders, Larisa.”
The woman huffs out a petulant sigh. Dean thinks he can see her dim shape in the shadows, rubbing at her face. They both seem to be wearing long baggy robes, like the kind monks used to wear back in the middle ages.
The man’s pale, doughy face swims into view. He peers down at Dean, lips twisted in a disapproving grimace. He prods at the curve of Dean’s cheek with a blunt, broken fingernail.
“He’ll do,” the man says, turning to look over his shoulder. “Olha will be happy.”
“She ought to be,” Larisa sneers at her companion. “We can’t exactly send him back if he doesn’t fit.”
“Wait, wait,” Dean yelps, struggling against the leather belts holding him down. “If I don’t fit what?”
“It’s none of your concern,” the man says, patting Dean condescendingly on the shoulder.
Dean bares his teeth. “The hell it’s not, Friar Tuck.”
“The last one wasn’t nearly this…feisty,” Larisa laments with a sad little sigh. “I preferred him, even if he did turn out to be a poor match.”
“Someone better start talking,” Dean snaps.
“Or what?” She turns on him, looking pointedly at the straps that bind Dean’s wrists and ankles.
He glares at her. “You better hope I don’t get out of these things, ’cause believe me, sister, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t. Yuriy was very thorough,” Larisa says, walking over and patting Dean on the chest, over his heart.
Larisa sinks her nails into his chest and they go right through his T-shirt, into his skin. Blood slowly turns heather-gray cotton the color of rust.
Dean thrashes against the leather straps that bind him, to no avail, as Larisa digs her talons even deeper. A howl of pain rises in his throat, but he grits his teeth against it, refusing to give either of them the satisfaction of having made Dean Winchester cry out for mercy.
And then, almost as quickly as it began, the pain recedes, leaving Dean a limp, panting mess.
“Very nice,” Larisa coos, drawing her hand away from his ravaged chest. “A strong heart. Olha will be so pleased.”
“I do believe we’ve found a winning candidate, at last,” Yuriy chimes in.
Dean stares up blankly at—well, he assumes it’s a ceiling, but he can’t help but be drawn to the shadows that gather in a corner of the dimly lit crypt. Shadows that seem almost alive, creeping across stone, congealing in one particular corner. Almost in the shape of a person.
He closes his eyes and focuses on breathing through the pain in his chest.
“Go retrieve Olha,” Yuriy says, moving to Dean’s side. He slides a pudgy hand over Dean’s shoulder and squeezes. “I’ll keep our new friend company.”
Dean glares up at him. “Come any closer and I’ll start biting.”
Yuriy chuckles. “You’ll do nothing of the sort.” He brandishes a syringe filled with yellowish liquid. He comes closer and grabs Dean by the shoulder, roughly yanking his sleeve up his arm.
Dean eyes the needle warily and licks suddenly dry lips. “What’re you gonna do with me?” His tongue feels heavy and swollen in his mouth.
“The bride needs her bridegroom,” Yuriy says cryptically.
Dean bites back the urge to fire off a smart-ass remark that would probably result in him getting stabbed with a needle. “Uh. What exactly does the bride need her bridegroom for?”
“The consummation, of course,” Yuriy says, clucking his tongue at Dean in admonishment.
Dean grits his teeth and frowns up at the ceiling. Shadows creep slowly across the stone. Shadows that look an awful lot like feathers.
Right on time, Cas, Dean thinks, gratefully.
Yuriy turns at the fluttering of wings. “What—”
Cas steps out of the darkness, eyes blazing with electricity, his wings magnificent unfurled in all their glory. “Step aside,” he orders somehow seeming to imply the full weight of the entire heavenly host will come crashing down on Yuriy’s head with just those two words.
Yuriy’s arm swings through the air, the needle glinting in the candlelight, and Dean finds his voice.
“Cas, watch out!”
He hears the sound of shattering glass and footsteps in the distance, skittering across the stone. They’re loud at first, then grow more and more distant, as Larisa flees. Dean struggles against his bonds, eager jump into the fray, but the siblings had tied him up pretty securely. He can only lie back and watch as Cas disarms Yuriy easily, then scruffs him by the back of the neck like a misbehaving kitten.
It’s honestly kind of hot.
“I’m going to retrieve his sister,” Cas says, tightening his grip on the back of Yuriy’s neck. “I’ll be back shortly to free you.”
Dean barely has a moment to respond before he flaps off. A single black feather drifts down, coming to rest on the back of Dean’s hand. He twists his hand until he can slip the feather between his fingers.
“Fuckin’ crypts,” Dean mutters. “Hate crypts.”
Cas blips back in, his hands free of Ukrainian necromancers. “I’ve taken care of the Tsarnovskyi siblings,” he says, moving over to Dean’s side and resting a hand on his arm. The leather straps fall away and Dean slowly flexes stiff fingers and aching wrists. “Are you in any pain? Can you stand?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dean says. “I’m fine. Mostly. I did almost become some dead Russian chick’s--”
“Ukrainian,” Cas corrects, slipping an arm behind Dean’s shoulders to brace him. “I understand they’re very particular about that distinction.”
“Ukrainian, right,” Dean says, letting Cas help him slide off the wooden table. “That was a close one.”
“It was, indeed,” Cas agrees, as he shuffles Dean toward the exit. “Sam’s been quite worried about you.”
“And what about you?” Dean asks.
Cas tilts his head, eyes narrowing. “What about me?”
“Were you worried about me?” Dean teases, his tone light, playful.
Cas rolls his eyes. “Need you even ask? You hadn’t answered my last text to you,” he points out.
They emerge from the crypt into daylight and Dean lifts a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. The rays are bright and warm on his skin, and he lets himself forget for a second that none of it is real.
“Send my compliments to the chef,” he says, turning to face Cas, slipping his arm from around his shoulders.
Cas wraps his fingers loosely around Dean’s hand. “Jack will be very happy to hear that,” he says, a smile curling his mouth at the corners. “He worked very hard on this one.”
Dean holds loosely onto Cas’s hands. “If all his holodeck simulations are this good, I don’t mind being his guinea pig.”
“Holodeck… Is that a Star Trek reference?” Cas asks, as they walk hand-in-hand to the waiting Impala.
“Indeed it is.” Dean pulls the keys out of his pocket and flips them to Cas. “You drive this time? I’m bushed.”
“I will. And I’ll even let you man the tape deck, out of the goodness of my heart,” Cas says.
“God,” Dean says, pausing by the side of the Impala to pull Cas by the lapels of his coat. “I love you.”
Cas kisses him warmly. “I know.”