Work Text:
Second verse, same as the first, Tony thought as the bus bounced over potholes on the backcountry Virgina road. Chains jingled around him as background noise to the blacktop, his included. His left wrist connected to the right wrist of one Dean Winchester, serial killer, psychopath, suspect in the murder of five petty officers, and according to the FBI, dead. They had enough evidence to hold him in a Federal prison until arraignment, but the Director wanted the brother, too, who hadn't so much as touched the grid since Dean's arrest.
The bus hit a particularly nasty bump, sending Tony into Dean's side as the vehicle tilted dangerously and skidded to a hard stop. The driver slumped to the side, knocked out, and one of the guards, stunned, rushed forward to help. Tony nudged Dean, who met his head jerk toward the guard with a tiny nod. "Three, two, one," Tony mouthed and they sprung up and tackled the other guard from behind.
Five minutes later they were sliding in the mud down the hill and away from the bus, the push and pull of Dean's weight against the chain heavy against Tony's wrist as they slowed to a halt a the bottom. Tony pulled back gently. "I didn't catch your name."
Winchester gave him a slow once over. Tony held his gaze and tried not to think about the mutilated bodies that had greeted him when he got back from vacation.
"Dean," he finally said. "We need to get out of these cuffs."
The trailer in the woods had been arranged, just close enough to the state park for it to be plausible. More importantly, empty and with laundry on the back line. It took them two hours to reach it on foot, and Dean was silent the whole way, grunting when Tony started talking, making plans for getting back, finding the traitor who turned on him, Oscar worthy stuff.
"What were you in for?" he asked, putting a little belligerence into the curiosity.
"Shits and giggles," was Winchester's reply. "Hold up." He stopped abruptly, and Tony bumped into him.
"What?"
"Up ahead."
Winchester was cautious and he knew how to case a place, but it wasn't long before they were in the trailer and raiding it for something to take the cuffs off with but they couldn't find anything small enough to fit the lock – "Not even a paperclip!" – and had to settle for only swapping out the coveralls for jeans to go with their prison t-shirts.
Changed, Tony eyed Winchester who eyed him back, clearly displeased.
"It looks like we're stuck together for a little while longer," said Tony. "You know this area at all?" He looked at the trees and more trees. The road wasn't far and Gibbs was camped out about a mile south in the little town that wasn't much more than a rest stop. "Cops are going to be crawling around here soon, and we need wheels."
"Do you know anyone?" asked Winchester.
"Haven't you been listening to me? I got sold out." Cover story, beautifully delivered and completely ignored. Tony rolled his eyes and jerked on the chain. “I got no one who won’t eat me alive. For sure no one's gonna welcome me back. I gotta get out of Virginia if I want to keep my head."
Winchester made a face. "Great. Well, I don't have anyone who can come either. Not till tomorrow at the earliest. And we don't exactly have a phone to call him with."
Tony grinned and fished the phone he'd lifted oh, so conveniently from the trailer.
Winchester was infuriating.
"What do you mean tomorrow!?" he demanded. They'd had to start moving through the woods again after they heard the sirens in the distance converging on the wrecked bus.
"Look, he won't be able to come find us till tomorrow," Winchester repeated. "And I'm sure as hell not explaining myself to you. I don’t even have to take you with us."
“What? You’re just going to throw me back to the cops, let them add another charge and ten years to my sentence while you get away scot-free?”
That got to him a sympathetic wince. “All I’m asking for is a ride,” said Tony. “Just give me that. Sooner rather than later.”
Winchester sighed and jerked on the chain in irritation. “Fine. But he still won’t be able to get here before tomorrow.”
"He pulling a job?"
"Something like that," Winchester shrugged, eyes darting back to the scenery. "Look we're fine. All we gotta do is lay low for the night and then I'll call him. We'll drop you at the bus station."
"Cops are going to be all over the bus station by then," said Tony darkly, jerking him to a halt on the chain harder than necessary. He hoped Gibbs was getting all this. "We don't move fast they're gonna catch us, so call your damn friend already. We can at least make a plan to get us out of bumfuck nowhere."
Winchester grabbed the chain yanked back, pulling Tony off balance and into him, hand clamping down around his forearm. Pressed close, Tony froze at the sudden change in atmosphere. Winchester breathed into his ear "Don't tell me what to do," soft and dangerous. "We're waiting for tomorrow."
Tony jerked his head in something like a nod, and Winchester let him go. Before, Winchester hadn't seemed like the killer his file said he was, but now Tony could see it. He took a step back as far as the chain would let him go. "Cops will be on us hard," he said quietly.
The stone cold killer softened after a bit, nodding in acknowledgement. "If it gets bad I'll pray," he said. If Tony hadn't been wary enough to keep his eyes on Winchester he would have missed the weird smile that followed. But he didn't, and creepy just went up a notch.
"I hate the woods," Winchester muttered as they tromped through the undergrowth just out of sight of the road. The phone was a lead weight in Tony's pocket. They better get the brother out of all this or there was going to be a DiNozzo smack down.
"Not a Boy Scout, huh?"
Winchester snorted, and great, now he felt like talking. "Not so much."
His father was a survivalist, though, so Tony had no doubt that he knew how to move softly and take care of himself if he had to. Didn't imagine there were very many happy camping memories to fall on.
"I'm a city boy myself," said Tony. "Love the crowds. Love to get lost in them, find just the right people, you know what I mean?"
Winchester shrugged in the fading light. It was a new moon and was only going to get darker. "Don't stick around people much."
"Why not?" He shouldn't push, but Tony was curious now, wondering what made a man like Dean Winchester tick. A creative and deadly trail with few consistencies, even amongst the evidence, and weird connections to the occult, but for all that, Winchester didn't strike Tony as the nut job type. He moved with confidence and didn't have any of the nerves that he usually associated with the mentally disturbed. There was that moment outside the trailer but that had felt like one dangerous man warning off another, brisk and down to business, a quality that his long drawn out crimes did not have.
"Don't stay in one place."
Understatement, but Tony didn't have a chance to pursue it. Headlights cut through the growing twilight as two cars pulled up nearby. Both of them froze, Tony dropping into a crouch and pulling Winchester with him, their shoulders slamming together.
"We'll start here," Gibbs's voice floated through the trees. "McGee, take the north side and meet with Hodge's team by the creek. Ziva, you take Lee and Parkson south to highway 20. The dogs will be covering this sector as soon as they get here."
Tony and Winchester didn't waste time scrambling for cover behind and partway underneath a fallen tree. It wasn't comfortable jammed together and Tony did his best to ignore the knee digging into his thigh.
"This is why you should have called," he hissed into Winchester's ear. He only got a grunt in reply.
The search missed them, no surprise there, but it was full dark before they moved from the tree.
"You drooled in my ear," Winchester whispered as they untangled themselves.
"Well I wouldn't have if your friend had already come and picked us up and we didn't have to hide from the cops." Like pulling teeth and just as painful. Tony really didn't want to spend the night in the woods. "They'll be back with search dogs soon, and they aren't going to be fooled by trees. Do you want to get caught?"
"What time is it?" Winchester was ignoring him again which just pissed Tony off that much more.
"Time for you to get someone to get us out of here?"
But Winchester just rolled his eyes and reached for Tony's pocket for the cell phone. Tony batted his hands away and they scuffled for a minute, jerking the chain back and forth until they were knocking into each other and trying to burn each other with their glares.
When they came to a standstill, Tony had the phone. "Call your friend."
"What time is it?" Winchester repeated through clenched teeth.
Reluctantly, Tony checked. "A little after eight."
Winchester still glared at him, but his shoulders relaxed and he let go of the chain. "I'll call at nine. They should be done by then."
"They?" Tony said before he caught himself. It was supposed to be the one brother, not one brother and an accomplice. "And how long are we going to have to wait out here?" he hurried on.
Winchester jerked on the chain again and led them further into the woods without a word.
"You better start praying now if you don't want those dogs to find us."
At nine o'clock, Winchester called his brother. "Sam…Not in jail. Bus crashed and I escaped with another prisoner…You done?...Good. The search is on our tail and we need to get out these damn woods. We're barely a step ahead of the search dogs….Yeah, the phone's stolen…Probably…Pick some place with Cas…Where is he?...No, I'll do it. He usually listens to me…Shut up, bitch….Okay…See you in a few."
He flipped the phone closed and tossed it into the trees. "Cops are probably all over it," he said.
"So where we going?" asked Tony. He hoped it was close enough for Gibbs to get there in time. "I thought you didn't know the area?"
"Know it well enough," said Winchester, but Tony was starting to get a bad feeling about this. "We need to get away from the phone first." Winchester yanked him forward. Tony was getting tired of it, but he followed, asking more questions, keeping in character and generally annoying Winchester just because it felt good and kept his mind off the alternatives. Winchester told him to shut up and resorted to pulling him off balance when he'd had enough.
When they finally stopped, they were still in the woods.
"Shouldn't we be back closer to the road?" They weren't far, Tony had a decent sense of where it was, but they were nowhere near close enough for a car to find them.
Winchester shrugged again. "Close your eyes."
Shit. "No. No way." Tony was not taking his eyes off of the serial killer who was back to glaring at him before giving up with a huff.
"Fine. But I'm not paying for therapy."
And then, Tony saw proof that maybe Winchester was just as insane as his file said he was. He stepped back from Tony as far as the chain would allow them, spread his arms, and closed his eyes, face tilted to the sky.
"Castiel? Are you there? It's me, Dean. Volito vestri ignavus angelus culus sursum. I need your help. Preferably sooner rather than later. Amen."
Tony stared. He couldn't help it. Winchester hadn't been kidding about praying, no matter how bad it was. Like God or this Castiel person would answer a prayer like that. "Are you crazy?"
Winchester didn't move. "Nope."
That was it, Tony was calling it in. Winchester wasn't giving up his brother, they'd have to hope the phone call was enough because this? This was certifiable.
He took a breath to speak the codewords but stopped when he thought he heard something. The woods had gone quiet, and a shiver ran down Tony's spine for no good reason. Now he was going as crazy as Winchester. He yanked on the chain, pulling the man off balance.
"What the hell? Dude, stop."
"Enough of this," said Tony.
"Dean."
Tony froze. Winchester turned, a smile lighting up his face as a man stepped into view.
"It's about time, Cas! Everything go okay?" Winchester dragged Tony with him toward the stranger, a silhouette in a trench coat that had come out of nowhere. No sticks cracking underfoot, or leaves shuffling. No warning. He was just there, in the middle of nowhere Virginia.
"Here, break this," Winchester said as if all of this was perfectly normal. Before Tony could process it, the stranger – Cas or Castiel – touched the chain and the tension fell away. "Finally!" Winchester groaned happily. "I've been stuck to this nut all day. But I told him we'd take him with us. He needs to get out of the state. We can drop him off somewhere across the country before we meet Sam."
"He is a criminal," Cas or Castiel's voice was flat.
The broken chain link had been snapped clean in two, the edges sharp.
"So you can give the cops a tipoff. I told him I'd give him a ride."
That kind of force was impossible. He had simply touched it.
Cas or Castiel was silent for a heartbeat. Then he reached out and grabbed Winchester's arm, the other reaching for Tony. "We should go then."
The movement was all it took for Tony to snap back to the here and now and jump away. "Wait a minute! Whoa!” He looked between the two of them who, even in the dark, Tony could tell were looking at him like he was the crazy person. “What’s going on? Where did you come from?"
“Come on, we don’t have time for this,” said Winchester. “You were the one who wanted to get gone, now you want to wait around for the dogs to find us? Let’s blow this joint.”
Before he could protest further, Cas or Castiel latched onto his arm. Tony blinked and they were somewhere else. A parking lot. It was still night and Tony didn’t know what to think. He might have left his brain in the woods, or at the office when he’d said yes to this assignment.
Tony was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he was in a parking lot when he had just been in the woods when Winchester started talking.
“Where are we?”
Thank God Tony wasn’t the only one not okay with this.
“Idaho. The Sherriff’s office is across the street.”
A great big grin broke out on Winchester’s face and he laughed. Psychotic break, Tony thought, until Winchester slapped Cas or Castiel on the back. “Now that’s what I call cruel and unusual.”
“The other alternative is that I smite him.”
Tony was still stuck on Idaho.
“Come on, let’s get out of here. Hey man,” Winchester punched Tony’s arm. “Nice escaping with you. Best of luck.” Then while Tony watched, Cas or Castiel grabbed Dean Winchester’s arm again and they disappeared to the sound something fluttering through the air. Tony stared at the spot they had occupied and breathed until oxygen returned and he could think. Except not so much.
Idaho.
Tony turned in a full circle and saw the building across the street that had one light illuminating the Teton County Sheriff’s Department.
“Boss? I hope you got tape of that, because I have no idea what just happened.”
With a deep breath, Tony started walking, seriously not looking forward to this phone call.