Wardings & Words

ORDINARY - main fic masterlist

Summary: Your life was simple. Ordinary. Lonely. Until everything changed. Until a monster, straight out of your favorite TV show, attacked you.

Turns out, the world you escaped to for comfort is very real. And so is Dean Winchester...

She wasn’t part of the plan. A stranger who somehow landed in the middle of the Winchesters’ world. But with a past she doesn’t fully understand and a kind of magic they’ve never seen before, she might be the key to more than just surviving the trials ahead. And for Dean, she might be the one thing he never saw coming.

SEQUELS TO ORDINARY

⠂⠂⠂A BREAK ⠂⠂⠂

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female!Reader Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester Rating: 18+, Mature Word count: 38 k Chapters: 10 ⸻ Summary: You only wanted a break. Just one week of quiet mornings, crackling fires, and no hunts. Dean’s idea of Heaven. But breaks don’t come easy for hunters. And not everything that looks like paradise is safe. ⸻ Story tags: Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Established Relationship, Fluff, Angst, Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Monster of the Week, Post-Trials, Canon Divergence, Blood Magic, Dean Winchester In Love, Possessive Dean Winchester, Smut, Sex, Tension, Trauma, Body Worship POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

⠂★ ⠂A WILD RIDE ⠂★ ⠂

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Fiancée!Reader (plus-size, f) Rating: 18+, Mature Word count: 36 k Chapters: 8 ⸻ Summary: Dean never asked for more than pie, beer, and a quiet night in front of the TV with you. What he got instead was a surprise that pulled him straight into one of his oldest daydreams. For a guy who never figured he’d have much of a future, living out a fantasy with you is about as good as it gets. ⸻ Story tags: Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Established Relationship, Fluff, Smut, Monster of the Week, Post-Trials, Canon Divergence, Blood Magic, Dean Winchester In Love, Possessive Dean Winchester, Smut, Sex, Fun, Body Worship POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

CHAPTER 1: Surprise

CHAPTER 2: Outfit

CHAPTER 3: Sheriff

CHAPTER 4: Ride

CHAPTER 5: Game

CHAPTER 6: Need

CHAPTER 7: Outlaw

CHAPTER 8: Hunt

⠂୨୧ ⠂A PROMISE ⠂୨୧ ⠂

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Fiancée!Reader (plus-size, f) Rating: 18+, Mature Word count: 170 k Chapters: 21 ⸻ Summary: After everything you’ve survived, you’d think planning a wedding would be easy. It’s not. Between blood magic, Vegas, and Dean Winchester’s version of a bachelor party, ordinary still isn’t in your vocabulary. But maybe this time, you can get close. ⸻ Story tags: Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Established Relationship, Fluff, Smut, Angst, Wedding prep, Bachelor party, Post-Trials, Canon Divergence, Blood Magic, Dean Winchester In Love, Possessive Dean Winchester, Sex, Drama, POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

CHAPTER 1: Permission

CHAPTER 2: Decision

CHAPTER 3: Binding

CHAPTER 4: Sacrifice

CHAPTER 5: Vegas

CHAPTER 6: Rescue

CHAPTER 7: Reunion

CHAPTER 8: Gamble

CHAPTER 9: Truth

CHAPTER 10: Distance

CHAPTER 11: Effort

CHAPTER 12: Breakthrough

CHAPTER 13: Connection

CHAPTER 14: Heaven

CHAPTER 15: Anchor

CHAPTER 16: Aftermath

CHAPTER 17: Planning

CHAPTER 18: Preparation

CHAPTER 19: Vows

CHAPTER 20: Celebration

CHAPTER 21: Promise

-- IN YOUR SKIN --

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Wife!Reader (plus-size, f) Rating: 18+, Mature Word count: 44 k Chapters: 6 ⸻ Summary: A small blood spell was supposed to be harmless. By morning, you’re in Dean’s body, Dean is in yours, and the two of you are stuck navigating a magical disaster that is absurd, inconvenient, and way too personal. ⸻ Story tags: Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Body swap, Blood Magic, Smut, Sex, POV Dean Winchester, Canon Divergence, Dean Winchester In Love, Married Dean Winchester, POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

°⛧. WHAT COMES OUT ⛧°。

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Wife!Reader (plus-size, f) Rating: 18+, Mature Word count: - Chapters: - ⸻ Summary: Heaven finally calls in the favor it’s been holding over your head since the day you came back from the dead. To repay it, you, Dean, and Sam have to go through Purgatory and into Hell itself to retrieve the Lance of Michael. But Hell has been closed for a long time, and the things trapped inside have not forgotten who locked the door. Some promises survive the dark. Others come back changed... ⸻ Story tags: Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Action, Violence, Angst, Drama, Blood Magic, Blood play, Smut, Rough sex, Emotional strain, Moral conflict, POV Dean Winchester, Canon Divergence, Married Dean Winchester, POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

CHAPTER 1: To Hell And Back Again CHAPTER 2: The Descent CHAPTER 3: There Will Be Blood CHAPTER 4: Dead Man Walking CHAPTER 5: What Lies Beneath CHAPTER 6: Point Blank CHAPTER 7: The Man Who Wasn’t There CHAPTER 8: Taken CHAPTER 9: The Cabin in The Woods CHAPTER 10: Misery CHAPTER 11: Weird Science

ONESHOTS FROM ORDINARY UNIVERSE

Note: Can be read as a standalone, but beware of spoilers if you're reading Ordinary and haven’t finished it yet. Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female!Reader Rating: 18+, Mature

A KNIGHT'S TALE

Tags: smut, sexual tension, goofy, LARP, medieval cosplay, POV alternating, Dean x girlfriend!reader

FEELING ALIVE

Tags: smut, established relationship, threesome, a bit of angst, POV alternating, endverse!Dean x girlfriend!reader x Dean

TELL THE TRUTH

Tags: fluff, light angst, established relationship, trust issues, Sam is hiding something, POV alternating, Dean x fiancée!reader

A BREAK (smutty one-shot)

Tags: Plus-Size reader, Sex, Dean on top, possesive!Dean, self-esteem issues, body worship, established relationship, POV Dean Winchester, POV alternating

PIES AND STEAKS

Tags: Plus-Size reader, Oral Sex - female receiving, possesive!Dean, body worship, established relationship, POV Dean Winchester, POV alternating

TAKE CHARGE

Story tags: Demon!Dean, Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Action, Violence, Angst, Drama, Blood Magic, Blood play, Smut, Rough sex, Emotional strain, Moral conflict, POV Dean Winchester, Canon Divergence, Married Dean Winchester, POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

A/N: Thank you, guys. You know damn well what for. I love you all.

Also… does it look like I’m getting off on making them talk this much? Because I’m not. But I will admit I may have a slight problem with loving their dynamic a little too much.

You woke with one side of your face pressed into a dusty old mattress and your mouth so dry it hurt to swallow.

For a few seconds, you had no idea where you were. Your head throbbed behind your eyes, dull and heavy, and your body felt stiff in too many places. Your neck ached from the awkward position you had slept in. Opening your eyes took effort and when you tried to do it, the light coming through the bedroom window made the pain in your temples pulse harder.

Then the cabin came back.

The knife, the wards, Dean. The bottle shattering in his hand. His back turned at the sink while you asked him to let you take him home.

No.

That was the last thing you remembered. His refusal, face cold and set, then nothing. You had no idea how you got from the chair to the bed, although it was not hard to guess. Dean must have carried you here after you passed out, which meant he had held you against him while your magic burned through his clothes and skin the whole way.

The thought sat wrong in your chest.

You pushed yourself up slowly, bracing on both arms before you remembered the cuts. Pain shot through your forearm so fast your breath caught. You froze, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the worst of it to pass. It took longer than you liked.

The bandage pulled tight against the skin, and the whole arm throbbed from wrist to elbow. Your fingers felt slightly swollen. Your shoulder and hip still hurt from being thrown around. Every bruise announced itself once you were awake enough to notice.

You were cold. Really cold now that your body was no longer running on adrenaline and terror. Dean’s flannel was still around your shoulders, but it was doing a terrible job against the chill in the cabin and the damp sweat drying on your skin. You shivered hard enough to make your arm pulse again.

Fantastic.

Carefully, you swung your legs off the bed and sat on the edge for a moment, letting the dizziness pass before you tried anything more ambitious. Your stomach rolled unpleasantly. Too much whiskey, too little food, blood loss, stress crash. None of that needed much analysis. You knew enough medicine to understand your body had finally pulled the emergency brake.

The bandage on your forearm was a mess. The gauze had dried stiff and dark in places, stuck to the cuts beneath it where the blood had soaked through. At least it was no longer fresh. That meant the bleeding had stopped at some point while you were out, which was good. The rest was less good. You were absolutely not looking forward to peeling it off, and you were not doing it until you had something clean to work with.

The cuts underneath were going to leave scars. There was no way around that. You knew it before you even saw them again. That was the price of using a rusty, dull kitchen knife on yourself in a panic because you had run out of better options.

You were used to drawing your own blood for magic. Usually, you used needles for minimum damage. If a knife had to be involved, you used a sharp one, and you kept your blades clean enough to satisfy your own paranoia. Having Cas on speed-dial for the worst injuries had definitely spoiled you too.

This time, there would be a reminder of the day you tried to outsmart Demon Dean Winchester and nearly dropped yourself in the process.

You rubbed your good hand over your face and sat still, breathing carefully through another wave of nausea.

Yesterday had been… a lot. That was one way to put it.

You weren’t surprised your body finally gave up. Honestly, that collapse had been a long time coming. After what you'd been through, something had to give eventually.

What you had not expected was how calm you felt right before it happened, how clear the final thought had been before everything went black.

Because talking to Dean had put the whole thing into perspective.

Because by talking to him, you had found out just how desperate he was to have you around. Close, safe, and unhurt. Because by talking to him, you had made him admit he needed you. Needed you, not just wanted you. And you had seen just how much he hated himself for admitting it.

He was annoyingly confident in his ability to manipulate you into submitting to him willingly. He believed he could use everything he knew about you to make you give him what he wanted. And he was not entirely wrong. He knew how badly you wanted your husband back, and he had already proven he could turn all of that against you.

But maybe you could use the same approach. Or at least something in your gut told you that you could.

You were a scientist, right? So if Dean wanted to turn your relationship into some twisted experiment, then you were going to go along with it. You were going to test him, observe him, and find the cracks in all that arrogant confidence. You were going to find out just how much you could play with him. How much he would give you if you made him believe it got him closer to what he wanted.

Your intent was clear.

Cure him. Get your husband back.

And to do that, you needed to survive the demon by whatever means necessary. You needed to be patient, careful, calculating, and ruthless enough to use him.

You needed to become someone who could play the game without forgetting why you were playing. And if Demon Dean wanted you fighting back, you would give him that.

Just not in the way he expected.

Pushing yourself to your feet took more effort than you wanted to admit. Your knees wobbled once, and you grabbed the edge of the mattress until the room steadied. Sleep had helped, even with the dramatic way your body had forced it on you, but you still felt physically weak. Your muscles were sore from the fight, your mouth tasted awful, and your skin felt grimy with sweat, dust, and dried blood.

You felt disgusting.

You made yourself walk out of the bedroom, ignoring the old armchair sitting suspiciously close to the bed. It had been angled toward you and the door at the same time, which told you exactly where Dean had spent at least part of the night. Watching over you.

You looked away before that thought could take up too much space in your head.

The main room was empty. Dean was gone.

You stood still and listened. There were no footsteps, no sound from outside except wind moving through the trees and the faint old groan of the cabin. The repaired door looked rough, with new boards and a fresh latch that did not match the rest of the frame. Dean had not done pretty work, but it looked strong enough.

You walked up to it, already expecting the result.

Of course the lock held when you tried it.

You stared at the door for a second, then let your hand fall away. It did not surprise you, but it did not make you nervous either. Maybe it should have, but it didn't matter anymore. The game had changed, and you were already working on a new plan. A better one, hopefully. So locked door or not, it did not really make a difference.

You turned back toward the cabin and looked around again, this time without the immediate panic clawing through every thought. You were no longer searching for something sharp or counting exits. You were assessing a place you were most likely going to be stuck in for at least a few days.

The place looked different than it had yesterday. Honestly, it was almost charming, even with the layers of dust Dean obviously had not bothered to get rid of when prepping the place for your stay. You had no idea how long in advance he had planned to bring you here, but making sure it was angel-proofed and figuring out how to actually get you probably took priority over cleaning.

Morning light spilled in through the windows in colors that suggested it was probably golden hour. Deep honey, copper, and soft rose tones covered the walls and surfaces, and the low angle of the sun peeking through the tops of the trees stretched long shadows across the floor. The wood grain in the old furniture and the worn fabric of the couch and armchairs looked clearer now, and the dust floating in the air caught the light in thin glowing beams.

The cabin did not look as tragic as it had the night before, and you took that as a good sign. Maybe your rationality was finally coming back.

You noticed another thing a second later.

The blood sigils were gone.

Your blood had been scrubbed from the windows, walls, and doorframe. Some faint smears remained in the grain of the wood if you looked closely, but the shapes were removed. Dean had actually taken them down.

You tried not to picture him doing it. Pissed, annoyed, muttering curses, probably using more water and rags than the job needed because one wrong move with your blood could hurt him badly. You tried not to enjoy the thought of him cleaning up after you because you had refused to obey his order.

You enjoyed it anyway. A small, honest smirk tugged at your mouth. The expression felt strange on your face after weeks of barely using those muscles for anything real.

Yeah.

The more you thought about it, the more certain you became your plan could work.

Or it could get you killed.

Those were the terms. You accepted them because you did not have better ones.

You pulled in a slow breath, ignored another round of aches through your body, and finally turned toward the one door you had not opened yet.

Please be a bathroom.

A functioning bathroom would be a gift at this point. A toilet, a sink, a shower with hot water and enough pressure to make you feel human again. You already knew the cabin had water and electricity, which put it above plenty of hunter crash pads you had seen before. Right now, though, none of that mattered compared to the urgent need to pee and the equally urgent need to get yesterday off your skin.

You opened the door near the kitchen area and stopped.

‘Oh, hell no.’

It was a bathroom. Technically.

Dark, cramped, and cold enough to make your arms tense. There was a pedestal sink, a toilet that looked old but usable, exposed copper pipes running along the wall, and a small aging water heater mounted against the wall. All of that would have been acceptable, even survivable, if the room had included a shower.

It did not.

Directly opposite the door, under a small window with a short faded curtain, stood an old enamel soaking tub. No showerhead. No handheld sprayer. No curtain rail. Just the tub.

You stepped into the limited floor space and reached for the tap at one end. The pipes groaned loudly before brownish, metallic water coughed out. After several seconds, it began to clear, but the pressure stayed weak. Filling the tub would take forever, and you doubted the water heater could handle more than a few inches of anything warm.

‘Fucking great,’ you muttered, and shut the tap off.

The sound of water had made the bladder situation worse, so you closed the door behind you, tried not to focus on the fact that there was no lock, and took care of business.

Only after that did you make yourself look in the mirror above the sink.

It was stained and smudged in several places, yet somehow that did nothing to soften the damage.

You looked horrible. Truly, objectively horrible.

Your face was pale, with circles under your eyes so dark they looked almost like bruises. There was a dried blood smear on one cheek that you had missed completely. Your lips looked dry. Your hair was tangled badly enough that cutting it all off would have been the fastest solution.

You stared at yourself for a while.

Then you shook your head and turned on the sink.

The pipes complained again. You waited until the water ran mostly clear, then leaned over and washed your face with your good hand. The cold made your skin sting. You scrubbed at the blood on your cheek until the smear finally came off, then rinsed your mouth as best you could and spat into the basin. You had no toothbrush, no soap, not even the towel.

You sighed and looked at your shirt.

Yeah, it had to go.

The shirt that had been white yesterday was wrinkled, dirty, gaping wrong at the buttons, and marked with dust and blood in enough places to count as ruined.

You unbuttoned it carefully and pulled it off with slow, awkward movements, easing it over the bandaged forearm so the dried gauze did not catch. You were not ready to peel that thing off yet. Removing it would probably open the cuts again, and you needed antiseptic, clean dressing, and maybe something strong to drink before you tried.

You looked down at the shirt in your hand.

Then at the sink.

A proper shower was out. A bath was too much work and probably a terrible idea until your arm was dealt with. So you soaked the cleanest parts of the shirt under the water, wrung it out, and used it to wipe yourself down as best you could. Neck. Chest. Stomach. Underarms. Anywhere sweat and dust had dried into your skin overnight. It was awkward, cold, and extremely unsatisfying, but it made you feel slightly less disgusting.

Slightly.

You did what you could with your hair next. Your fingers dragged through the worst tangles, and your headache immediately objected. After three attempts, you gave up before you made yourself nauseous again.

You walked out of the bathroom and picked up Dean’s flannel from where you had left it near the bed. It was the cleanest thing you had, which was depressing, considering he had worn it yesterday and you had slept in it after bleeding all over half the cabin. You pulled it on and with every movement the scent of him rose from the fabric.

Your throat tightened.

The levels of how much you missed your husband had moved past anything you could describe without sounding pathetic. Especially now. Especially with him right there. Close enough to reach for, to touch. Close enough to kiss.

You closed your eyes while you buttoned the flannel.

Then, because no one was around to see it, you lifted one side of the collar to your face and pressed it against your cheek for a second. Just one second.

A small, stupid indulgence. A private piece of softness before you had to lock it away again.

Before Dean came back.

Before you had to become someone you never had to be with him.

You did not know how much time had passed since you woke up. You had no phone, no laptop, and there was no clock anywhere in the whole damn cabin. Judging by the light outside and the fact that the sun had climbed well above the tree line, it had definitely been more than an hour. Maybe two.

Dean was still gone.

You could only guess where he had gone or why. Supplies, probably. You were pretty sure demons didn't need food or water the same way humans did, but maybe he still wanted beer and whiskey stocked within reach. Or maybe he had left because you had annoyed him. Maybe this was punishment for fighting, for cutting yourself, for getting him to admit the ugly truth during that argument last night.

Whatever the reason, he had been gone for hours, and you were about ready to lose your own mind.

There was nothing to do. You had gone through your plan in your head several times already. You had checked every corner of the cabin, opened every drawer and cabinet twice, discovered the small functioning fridge in the kitchen, even found a broom and considered sweeping the floor just to have something to do with your hands. The longer you stayed in silence, the more your brain worked, and the more your brain worked, the more it created problems and scenarios you did not need to focus on right now.

Eventually, you ended up on the couch, watching the clearing and the trees through the window. Then you finally had enough.

‘Alright,’ you said, standing abruptly. ‘Screw it.’

The cabin tilted slightly when you stood too fast, and you had to pause with one hand on the back of the couch until the brief rush of dizziness passed. You crossed to the nearest window and tried to open it. At first, it did not want to move, even with the latch off, and for a second you thought Dean had somehow sealed those too.

You braced one hand against the frame, carefully, because your injured arm was useless for anything that required force. It had probably been ages since anyone opened it, and dust and rust had made the hinges stubborn. You pushed a little harder, and the window finally gave with a sharp complaint. Cold air rushed in immediately.

You closed your eyes and breathed it in, even through the shiver.

It wasn't an escape plan. You had not changed your mind and decided to run into the woods in some hopeless attempt to find your way back to the bunker. You just needed to get out of the cabin for a few minutes. You needed air. Space. Something other than old furniture, stale dust, and your own thoughts. Maybe you could walk the perimeter, see if there was anything else around the cabin, get a better look at the place Dean had chosen to hide you in. You were not planning to wander far. Just the clearing. Just enough to stop feeling caged inside your own head.

The window was not too high above the porch, but you still pushed a chair beneath it to make climbing out easier. The last thing you needed was to tear open your already tight slacks and end up with your bare ass out in the cold.

You climbed carefully, one hand gripping the frame, one foot on the chair, the other leg already over the sill, when you heard it.

The familiar rumble came from between the trees, low at first, then getting closer by the second.

You froze.

‘You gotta be kidding me.’

For a second, your body could not decide what it wanted to do. Out or back in. You shifted too fast, caught by surprise, and your foot knocked against the chair. It tipped sideways and hit the floor with a loud clatter.

‘Fuck,’ you hissed.

You decided to climb back inside because there was no way you were explaining yourself from halfway out the window. Then the exact thing you had been trying to avoid happened.

Your pants caught on something just under your ass.

You stopped immediately.

The fabric pulled tight, and you held very still, trying to figure out if you were hooked on a nail, a splinter, or some other piece of cabin bullshit that had clearly been waiting for the worst possible moment. One wrong move, and you were pretty sure the seam would rip.

Of course, that was exactly when the trees parted and the Impala rolled into the clearing.

You squeezed your eyes shut and let out a long, exhausted breath.

When you opened them again and turned your head, the car wasn't moving anymore. Dean was still in the driver’s seat. He had leaned forward slightly, both hands draped over the steering wheel, staring at you through the windshield.

Sure. Yeah. Of course he had come back now. Of course he had found you hanging halfway out of the window, stuck on the sill, after several hours of you very responsibly deciding not to run away.

You looked at each other for a few long seconds.

Then Dean finally shut the engine off and opened the car door.

You muttered another swear while he stepped out of the car, shut the door, and walked around the front of the Impala. Then he leaned back against the hood with his arms crossed over his chest, looking up at you with the kind of entertained expression that made you want to throw something at his head.

‘By all means,’ he called, voice carrying clearly across the clearing. ‘Don’t stop on my account.’

Heat rushed to your face.

You gave him the nastiest glare you could manage from your ridiculous position. Because you would carry on if you were not worried about ripping your fucking pants open and getting wooden splinters right in your-

Dean’s entertained smirk interrupted your thoughts, and you realized you needed to do something before this got even worse. You lifted yourself carefully, gripped the frame with your good hand, then reached down between your legs to free whatever part of the fabric had caught.

‘Need some help?’

You bit down on your tongue to keep from telling him to fuck right off.

After a few careful tugs, the fabric snapped free without the sound of tearing. You exhaled in relief, swung your other leg over the ledge, and jumped down onto the porch with a dull thud.

‘Wow,’ Dean said from a few feet away. ‘Just… wow.’

You turned to him reluctantly.

He uncrossed his arms and braced his hands on the hood behind him, leaning back with that smirk still firmly in place. The sight annoyed you. It also made your heartbeat do something very stupid, because he looked too good standing there in the morning light, smug and broad-shouldered and entirely too pleased with himself.

You forced your face flat.

‘Seriously?’ he asked. ‘That was your big plan? Climb out the window and make a run for it through the woods?’

‘I wasn’t-’

‘Thought we were past stupid calls.’ Dean pushed off the hood, the amusement fading into something more irritated. ‘Did yesterday teach you nothing?’

You sank your teeth into your bottom lip before you could snap back too hard.

Because no. That was the plan now. Patience. Control. Level head. You were not going to let him pull every reaction out of you just because he knew where to poke.

‘I wasn’t running away,’ you said, slow and firm. ‘I just wanted to look around. That's it.’

Dean gave you a flat look. ‘Yeah. Sure.’

He walked around the Impala to open the passenger door. ‘Weren’t you supposed to be wasting that energy on the whole shutting-your-magic-down thing?’

He reached inside and came back out with a large pizza box balanced on one hand and two six-packs hooked in the other.

You did not answer. You only rolled your eyes and walked along the porch instead, because if he wanted to accuse you of trying to run, you might as well finish doing what you had actually planned.

The clearing narrowed behind the cabin, the woods pressing close to the back wall. On the other side, it was mostly the same, except for a stack of firewood piled under a slanted bit of roof and a small fire pit made of stones, with two sitting logs placed nearby. With more care, this place truly could have been nice. Quiet and private. A little rough, sure, but almost cozy in a way that made your chest ache if you let yourself think about it too long.

You wondered whether Dean had found it on his own, or whether it had belonged to Bobby or Rufus or some other hunter who needed a place far away from everyone else.

‘Do you mind?’

Dean’s voice came from behind you, rough and demanding.

You turned.

He stood in front of the door with both hands lifted slightly. Pizza box in one hand, two six-packs in the other, his expression offensively put-upon for someone who had kidnapped you and then locked you inside.

Your eyebrows rose because you had no idea what he wanted.

His eyes dropped down to himself, then back to you.

‘Keys,’ he said, smugness creeping back onto his face. ‘Unless you wanna use the window again.’

You followed his line of sight.

Dean lifted his hands a little higher, just enough to make the black T-shirt pull up over his belt. A narrow strip of exposed skin showed above the waistband of his jeans, and your attention caught there before you could stop yourself. Which was very annoying.

Then you saw the faint outline in his front pocket.

Right.

He wanted you to reach into his pocket for the key. As if he could not set the beer down. As if he could not hand you something to hold. As if this was not completely intentional.

Fine.

If he wanted to have fun, you could give him something to remember.

You walked closer slowly and stopped right in front of him, keeping your expression as unimpressed as you could manage. Dean’s eyes stayed on your face, smug and waiting, but the tension in his jaw gave him away.

He knew. Or at least he suspected.

You reached down with deliberate care, keeping your eyes locked on his, and slid your fingers toward his pocket. All the while making sure to drag them right across the bare strip of skin above his belt.

‘Mother-’

Dean jerked, hissing through his teeth, his hand clamping tighter around the six-packs. The cardboard creaked under his grip.

You smiled.

Then you reached into his pocket and pulled the key free.

You unlocked the door without a word, pushed it open, and stepped aside. Dean watched you with narrowed eyes now, suspicion and amusement both visible on his face.

You could have stopped there, but you didn't.

You turned back, lifted the edge of his shirt with your fingertips, and shoved the key behind his belt instead of putting it back in his pocket.

This time, the burn was worse.

Dean swore loudly, his whole body going tense as smoke curled from the strip of skin under your hand. For one second he looked very close to dropping the pizza and beer right there on the porch.

You stepped away before he could recover fully, still smiling, and walked inside as if nothing had happened.

It took him a moment.

When he came in after you, his breathing was still heavier than usual, but the smug look had returned.

He set the pizza box and one six-pack on the table, then shoved the second into the fridge. He shut its door with his hip, looked back at you, and nodded toward the chair.

‘Sit down and eat,’ he ordered.

Then he walked back out toward the car.

You looked at the box on the table. The smell of pizza filled the cabin fast, and your empty stomach responded almost immediately. You had not eaten properly in a long time, and you knew your body was demanding to get its strength back. The rest of you had no appetite at all. Even through the hunger, your stomach felt a little uneasy from yesterday’s whiskey, but you knew you needed to force something down. You needed to be functional if you were going to have any chance of bringing Dean back.

You opened the box reluctantly, mostly because it felt a little too much like doing it only because he told you to, then grabbed one of the smaller slices and took a bite. You did not sit down. You turned around and stood near the table, looking out through the open door. Dean was mostly hidden behind Baby’s open trunk now.

The pizza was warm and tasted okay, but it still went down with effort. You kept chewing slowly, forcing yourself to swallow. You were just thinking you would pay good money for a bottle of fresh water when Dean moved from behind the car with his hands full again. A pack of water bottles and a few grocery bags.

You kept chewing through one stubborn bite while you watched him lay everything out on the table.

Dean glanced at you as he walked by. He was well aware you had been watching him closely the whole time.

‘Careful, sweetheart,' he said without slowing down. 'You keep lookin’ at me like that, I might start thinkin’ you missed me.’

He did not wait for your reaction. He knew the teasing annoyed you, so he just turned and walked out again. You tore into the plastic wrap around the water bottles immediately, twisted one open, and finally took a big gulp.

It did not fix the way your body still felt weak and aching, but it sure as hell helped. You basically drained the whole bottle at once and finally sat down.

Not because he told you to, but because your legs were getting a little shaky, and you were done pretending otherwise.

Your eyes scanned the bags in front of you.

Dean had done the kind of grocery run a toddler might do with stolen cash and no supervision. All kinds of road snacks, pretzels, chips, chocolate. Sandwich bread, peanut butter and jelly, a couple of protein bars, and, naturally, more alcohol.

You scoffed and shook your head, although it did not really surprise you.

At least until you caught sight of your favorite tea brand.

Your breath caught.

Jerk.

Of course he had to do something considerate. Of course he had to show that he was, in fact, Dean, with your husband’s memories and your husband’s knowledge of his own wife.

You looked away from the groceries and took one angry bite of pizza.

You could not keep letting him get to you like that. He had basically promised he would make you beg him to touch you at some point, and you knew he would use every means of manipulation to get there. And this was probably part of it. A small, calculated reminder.

You swallowed, took a deep breath, and tried to calm down. It was ridiculous. One stupid box of tea could not make your focus slip.

The slam of the Impala’s trunk snapped your attention back.

Dean’s tall frame blocked the entrance a few seconds later, and this time he was carrying something bulky. You squinted against the light to see more clearly and immediately raised your eyebrows.

Bedding.

He was carrying a full set of bedding. Sheets, a blanket, a couple of pillows stacked, with one more bag balanced on top.

You blinked. That was probably the last thing you expected him to bring.

Dean walked past you in silence, dropped the extra bag on the table, then went straight into the bedroom and threw the whole armful onto the bed. When he came back, he caught your expression and rolled his eyes.

‘What?’

You stared at him.

‘Sheets were nasty,’ he muttered, looking irritated enough to remind you he was not doing any of this because he had suddenly got his humanity back. ‘Unless you wanna sleep in mystery stains and dead mouse crap.’

He dragged the chair opposite yours with one boot, and dropped into it. His eyes moved over the pizza slice in your hand, then to the water bottle, then to your face.

‘Would you look at that,’ Dean said, one arm resting across the back of the chair. ‘You do know how to follow directions.’

You swallowed and gave him a flat look. ‘You want a medal or something?’

His mouth curved. ‘For gettin’ you to eat? Nah. I’ll save the victory lap for something better.’

You took another bite because telling him to go screw himself felt too predictable.

Dean leaned back in his chair, watching you with open satisfaction while you chewed.

He looked way too pleased with himself, and that made you want to shove the crust up his smug ass. You didn’t, mostly because the food was helping. Your hands had stopped shaking completely, and the water had taken the worst of the awful dryness from your mouth.

His gaze dropped to your arm. The look on his face changed.

‘After that,’ he said, nodding at the pizza, ‘we’re dealin’ with the cuts.’

Your hand tightened around the crust. ‘I can do it.’

Dean ignored you completely. He reached into the smaller bag he had left on the table and started pulling things out. Gauze, bandage wrap, a bottle of antiseptic, Steri-Strips, medical tape, painkillers. Then he pulled out a toothbrush and toothpaste, and, out of everything on the table, that was the thing that made you most excited.

Your hand went for those first. You pulled them closer immediately.

Dean watched you do it. His mouth twitched, but he did not comment. Then he grabbed the bottle of painkillers, popped the lid open, and shoved it toward you with two fingers.

Some part of you really did not want to admit in front of him just how much pain you were in. Your head still felt close to exploding, and your arm burned like hell under the old bandage. The painkillers sounded too good to pass up. So you finished the slice slowly, took the bottle, shook a couple of pills into your palm, and washed them down with a big sip of water.

Dean opened a bottle for himself, except his was beer, of course. Then he grabbed a slice of pizza and shoved half of it into his mouth.

You watched him, curiosity pushing through the rest of the mess in your head. You had spent so much time focused on the obvious disaster of this situation that you had not really thought about the other side of it. You were trapped in a cabin with a demon. Your own personal demon, basically. One who could answer questions, react, tell the truth out of spite, and let you observe him up close.

Scientifically speaking, it was almost fascinating. Which probably said something terrible about you.

‘Do demons get hungry?’ you asked, straight to the point.

Dean washed the generous bite down with an even more generous gulp of beer, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘For food?’ he asked. ‘Nah. Not really.’

His eyes lifted to yours, and the look he gave you made your stomach twist.

‘Other stuff, though...’

You pushed the reaction down and kept your face calm.

‘I don’t need food,’ he said, leaning back with the beer loose in one hand. ‘I like food. Big difference. Beer, whiskey, burgers, decent pie. That’s still the good stuff.’

He finished the rest of the slice, wiped his fingers against each other, then stretched back in the chair. His shirt rode up a little, exposing the narrow strip of skin above his belt. It was still faintly red from where you had burned him outside, and you hated the way your attention caught there.

Dean noticed, of course, and one corner of his mouth lifted.

‘And when I really like something,’ he said, voice dropping low as his eyes went black, ‘I’m real damn good at enjoying it.’

Heat moved through your body, and this time it was not only your face.

It was the way he said it. The way he looked at you while he said it. The son of a bitch knew exactly what he was doing, and the worst part was that he was good at it.

But so were you.

‘Yeah, well,’ you said with a small shrug, ‘if only there was a way you could get what you really want, right?’

His black eyes stayed on you. You did not look away. A muscle moved in his cheek, and for a second, you thought you had pushed too hard. Then he smiled, slow and unpleasantly content.

‘How’re you feelin’, by the way?’ he asked, reaching for his beer again. ‘You looked pretty rough last night.’

The black blinked away, and his eyes dragged over you in a blunt once-over. ‘Still do, if we’re bein’ honest.’

You refused to give him the satisfaction of reacting.

‘I’m fine,’ you said.

Then you finally sat back a little and put your injured arm on the table.

The bandage looked worse in daylight. Dried blood had definitely glued parts of it to your skin, and you still knew exactly how much removing it was going to suck.

Dean set the beer down and pulled his chair closer.

‘Just sayin’,’ he said, looking down at your arm, ‘I’d rather not have you turn into a problem I gotta keep fixing.’

You watched him reach for your sleeve, and this time you did not pull away.

‘Or carry you around while you’re cooking me alive,’ he muttered, almost to himself.

You let him catch the cuff of the flannel and draw your arm toward him through the fabric. His eyes flicked to yours once, checking for the flinch, the fear, whatever reaction he expected to find there now.

You kept your face still and that seemed to interest him.

‘You sure you’re alright?’ he asked quietly, amused. ‘You’re a little too cooperative today.’

Your pulse gave you away.

Dean’s smile widened, but he did not push the line any further. He turned his attention to your forearm and started working the old bandage loose with more care than you were ready for. The first pull made the gauze tug at dried blood, and pain shot up your arm so sharply you sucked in a breath.

He paused. Only for a second.

‘Yeah, that’s gonna hurt,’ he said, very unhelpful.

You glared at him. ‘You think?’

Dean soaked part of the stuck gauze with clean water first, then antiseptic, working it loose a little at a time. He used a thick pad and the edge of the flannel to keep anything wet with your blood away from his bare fingers.

There was that annoyingly attractive competence again, and you found yourself breathing just a little quicker. You watched his hands while he worked and tried to separate the movements from the man you missed.

It did not work very well. Your eyes kept flicking to his mouth.

By the time the old bandage came off, your eyes were watering, and your good hand was clenched tight around the edge of the chair. The cuts underneath looked as bad as you expected. Ragged, red around the edges, ugly from the dull blade. A few places started bleeding again almost immediately.

Dean stared at them for a second too long.

Then his face went cold.

‘You’re a pain in my ass,’ he said.

Your mouth pressed into a thin line. ‘I’ll try to be more considerate next time I’m abducted and held hostage.’

‘See, that mouth right there?’ He reached for the antiseptic. ‘That’s why I keep you around.’

The sting of disinfectant cut your answer short. You hissed, shoulder going tight, and Dean’s hand closed around your sleeve before you could pull back.

'Stop squirming.'

You swallowed hard and forced your arm to stay where it was.

You wanted to tell him he was an insufferable ass. You saved the energy and let him clean the cuts because he was doing it properly, and because infection would make everything worse. Dean let you place the Steri-Strips over the worst cuts yourself, because that was too close to open skin for him to do safely. You did it carefully, spacing them evenly as fast as you could, then he covered the rest with gauze and wrapped it tight enough to hold.

His eyes stayed on your arm.

Yours stayed on him.

There was something wrong and deeply fascinating about sitting at a kitchen table while Demon Dean Winchester patched you up. The fact that it had happened two days in a row only made it worse.

When he finished taping the bandage, he kept his hand near your arm for one second longer than necessary. Heat built between your skin and his, even through the layers, and he did not seem to care. He looked at the bandage, then at you.

‘There,’ he said. ‘One damn thing outta the way.’

You looked down at the cleaner wrap around your forearm. It felt much better already, although you still wished you had been able to shower before putting on fresh bandages. But that was a problem for later.

Dean stood, collected the old bandage and the rest of the trash, and tossed everything into a bin in the corner.

‘Speaking of things standin’ in the way.’

Your eyes lifted.

His stance changed first. Then his voice. Then the whole room around him.

‘I didn’t bring you here for a vacation.’

You sat back slowly, keeping your injured arm close. ‘Yeah, you made that painfully clear.’

‘Good.’ He dropped back into the chair, spreading his knees, beer bottle already loose in one hand. ‘Because you’re gonna start working on that magic problem. Today. Not tomorrow, not next week. Today.’

Your heartbeat picked up. You made yourself hold his gaze.

‘Okay.’

Dean had clearly been ready for a fight. He drew in a breath, opened his mouth, then stopped. He blinked once, small and quick.

‘Okay?’ he repeated.

You nodded.

Suspicion moved over his face immediately, wiping away the faint surprise. He leaned forward, elbows near the table, eyes narrowing.

‘Yeah, that’s a load of crap.’

You simply shrugged. ‘What’s the point? You’re not gonna let me go out of the goodness of your heart. And you told me yourself there’s no way I can escape, so…’

‘Sweetheart, yesterday you painted half the damn cabin with your own blood to keep me out. Now you’re suddenly on board?’ His lips curled, without any warmth behind it. ‘Yeah. I’m not buyin’ it.’

Of course he was not buying it. But you couldn't afford to back off now. Your pulse was too fast, and you knew he could hear it, but you kept your face calm. This was the first real test. You had to play it right.

‘You want my magic out of the way,’ you said calmly. ‘Fine. I can look into it.’

Dean stared at you, probably trying to read your face, your pulse, your breathing, anything that could help him figure out what had changed.

‘Of course, I’m gonna need something from you too,’ you said carefully.

His eyes sharpened at once.

‘Are you now?’ He leaned back slightly, beer resting against his thigh. ‘Well, come on. Lay it on me. I’m all ears.’

You took a deep breath and tried to make your voice as steady as possible. ‘I said I can look into how to let you get close without burning the hell out of you. I never said I’d let you touch me just because I figured it out.’

The corner of Dean’s mouth ticked, and you knew he understood exactly where you were going.

‘So I need you to promise you won’t-’

‘I’m not gonna force myself on you.' Dean cut you off before you could finish. 'Don’t insult me.’

His tone was dry and flat, with enough warning under it to make your skin tighten.

‘And why should I believe you?’ you asked, because you could not stop yourself.

As many times as he had repeated that you were safe with him, some part of you still could not ignore the obvious truth. He was a demon. He wanted you. And demons took whatever they wanted when they wanted it badly enough.

Dean’s face did not move.

‘You don’t have to. I don’t give a damn.’ His eyes stayed on yours, cold and steady. ‘But trust me, sweetheart, when it happens, you’re gonna want it. I want you shaking because you can’t help yourself, not because you’re scared I’ll take something.’

You kept looking at him, searching his face for a lie, a trick, a smirk. There was nothing.

So you chose to believe him. As completely insane as it might be.

You tilted your head slightly and nodded once. ‘Alright.’

‘Alright,’ Dean echoed, taking a sip of beer. Then he tapped his fingers on the table and leaned back again. ‘Okay, cool. If that’s all, I’m gonna-’

‘That’s not all.’

Dean’s jaw locked immediately. His eyes narrowed, and you noticed his fingers curl into a fist on the table.

‘Yeah?’

You leaned in slightly. ‘You know damn well how my magic works.’

You kept your voice steady enough to make it clear you were not backing away.

‘This isn’t some curse I can get rid of because you’re horny and impatient.' His expression darkened, but you kept going. 'It’s bloodline protection tied into spells I barely understand.’

He listened, fist slowly tightening.

‘And the last time I pushed my magic too far, I lost my memories.’ You paused for one second, because the images of that disaster were still too easy to reach. Dean gave no reaction, which hurt more than you wanted to admit. Human Dean would have flinched. Your Dean would have looked away, reached for your hand, anything.

This Dean only watched you, completely still, waiting for the point.

You gave it to him.

‘So unless you want me guessing until I accidentally fry you to death, I need my research.’

Dean’s lips thinned, knuckles going pale against the table.

That landed. Finally.

You watched him process it, watched suspicion and irritation fight across his face. He understood enough about your magic to know you were right, and he knew you well enough to understand where exactly this was going.

And he hated it.

‘Your research,’ he repeated slowly.

You nodded. ‘Yes. My notes. My journals. My great-grandfather’s journals. The Men of Letters files. The lore books. The spell books.’ You kept your voice steady. ‘And I need my laptop too.’

Dean snorted. ‘Yeah, no.’

‘Dean…’

‘No.’

He doubled down, and the tone in his voice was threatening. You made yourself ignore it. You knew this was never going to be easy, but you needed to push. You needed to find out how badly he needed this. How far he was willing to budge if you made it sound practical enough.

‘Alright.’ You ran a hand through your hair and crossed your legs in the chair.

You made sure your foot brushed his calf quickly before you squeezed your thighs together. Your black slacks strained a little, and Dean’s eyes dropped exactly where you wanted them to. You knew damn well how much he liked having those thighs around him, and if he missed it even half as much as he claimed, you needed him remembering it right now.

‘Then you can sit here and wait while I invent an off-switch out of nothing,’ you said. ‘Should be good to go in about… a year? Maybe two?’

Dean’s eyes narrowed.

You lifted your eyebrows and crossed your arms over your chest for emphasis. ‘What? Is there a problem?’

Dean shifted in the chair, a muscle in his neck moving once.

‘You think I don’t know what you’re doing?’

You held very still and hoped to God your heartbeat would slow down at least a little.

‘This big calm act you’ve been tryin’ to pull all morning,’ he said. ‘You woke up and decided, what? Play nice with the demon, maybe he gives you what you want?’

Your stomach tightened.

He was not stupid. Of course he was not stupid. Demon or not, this was still Dean Winchester, and underestimating him would get you nowhere good.

So you decided not to insult him.

‘Yes,’ you said plainly.

Dean’s brows lifted.

You swallowed against the nerves and kept going. ‘Yes, obviously. I want something. So do you. You’re trying to use everything you know about me to get what you want, and I’m trying to use everything I know about you to get what I want. What did you expect?’

For a moment, he said nothing.

Then his mouth curved slowly.

‘Alright, not gonna lie,’ he said. ‘That’s kinda hot.’

Your face heated instantly, but you ignored it. This was not the time to get flustered.

Dean’s smirk stayed, but his eyes had gone colder. ‘And let me guess. What you want is still the cure and your husband back.’

‘Of course.’

‘Which I already told you ain’t happening.’

You rolled your eyes dramatically, mostly to cover the sting in your chest. Then you took a deep breath and hated how shaky it suddenly was.

‘Listen, we can sit here and have this discussion all day for all I care. We both know it won’t lead anywhere.’

Dean’s fist finally loosened, and his palm closed around his beer again.

‘Right now, I am willing to do the research,’ you said. ‘Mostly because I don’t have anything else to do here, and you won’t let me leave.’

Dean scoffed into the bottle already at his lips. ‘Well, you’re not wrong.’

You worked through the annoyance as you watched him take a sip.

‘And honestly? I’m curious if it’s possible.’ You let your eyes drop briefly to the spot above his belt you burned earlier, then back to his face. ‘Also kind of looking forward to testing it on you.’

Dean stared at you in a way that made you remember every bad idea you had ever had around him. He was measuring you up, and it sent a chill down your spine.

He stayed silent long enough to make your pulse kick even harder, then finally set the bottle down with a loud clunk.

‘And how exactly do you want me to get you your research?’

‘Let me call Sam,’ you said immediately.

Maybe too quickly, but you did not care. You wanted to get it over with before your courage started falling apart.

Dean’s eyes went hard so fast you almost flinched back in your chair. Then he stood suddenly and paced away from the table, running a hand through his hair.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No way in hell. I’m not lettin’ my brother anywhere near this place.’

‘I didn’t ask you to.’

Panic clawed up your throat, and you tried to force it down because you could not afford to sound desperate now. You had known this would be the hardest part, and maybe you had underestimated just how unrealistic the request would sound to him.

‘I asked you to let me call him so he can get the stuff I need and leave it somewhere for you to pick up.’

Dean laughed once, sharp and very annoyed now. ‘Yeah, right. You think I’m handin’ you a phone so you can have a little call to arms with Sammy? That’s adorable.’

You breathed through the urge to argue. Falling into a fight with him was dangerous and painfully easy. You could not let it happen.

‘Dean, I need my stuff,’ you said, rubbing your forehead. ‘And not just the books. I need supplies, clothes, my medication, basic hygiene products, goddamn soap!’

He paced again, forehead creased, one hand rubbing over his mouth.

You saw him think about it.

‘You planned the part where you dragged me here and got off on having me trapped, but clean underwear and soap didn’t make the list?’ you said, adding too much bite before you could stop yourself. ‘Pretty half-assed job, if you ask me.’

He stopped pacing and looked over at you slowly.

‘Careful now.’ He blinked, and his eyes turned black. ‘Don’t confuse me wanting you with me being harmless.’

The warning in his voice made you freeze. It cut straight through your bravery and reminded you exactly where you were, who you were talking to, and how badly this could go if you pushed the wrong way.

Yeah. You were walking on thin ice. Because even though he had promised not to force himself on you, promised not to physically hurt you, he could still make your life a living hell. You knew that. He probably wanted you to remember it.

‘You’ll have full control,’ you said slowly.

You stood up and took a step toward him. His black eyes made your skin crawl, but this mattered more than your fear right now.

‘The speaker will be on. You’ll hear everything I say to him. You can pick a place far away from here for the handoff. Sam packs the things, you check everything before you bring it back.’

Dean’s expression did not change. If anything, it hardened.

You took another step, closer this time, and made sure you looked into his eyes when you spoke.

‘I won’t pull any stunt. I promise.’

He blinked, and the green came back. You let out a quick breath, because something told you that was a good sign.

‘And what stops my little brother from bringing every angel and hunter he can find?’

‘The fact that he’ll know exactly what happens if he tries,’ you said seriously.

Dean’s eyes stayed on you. Then his mouth twitched. Just a little.

You hated that this was the thing that worked. Making sure he knew he still had power over the situation.

But you pushed once more.

‘You know Sam,’ you said. ‘If he hears my voice, if he knows I’m alive and safe, he’ll listen. I’ll explain it, and he’ll hate it, but he’ll do it. Because…’

You swallowed quickly and forced yourself not to look away.

‘Because the alternative would be much worse.’

Dean kept looking at you in silence. You knew he was thinking it through, weighing his options, probably enjoying the way he could make the quiet stretch until your nerves started to fray.

Then his gaze dropped.

His eyes moved down your body, over the open dip of the flannel at your chest, then lower to your thighs beneath the hem. He took in the careful way you stepped closer, and when his gaze finally lifted back to your face, his expression sharpened.

‘You have any idea how hard it is not touchin’ you right now?’

You blinked, completely taken by surprise. Because what the hell was he talking about?

Dean came closer, crowding into your space until you had to tilt your head back to meet his eyes.

‘Standing here, takin’ control,’ he said. ‘Wearing my own goddamn shirt.’

He dragged his teeth over his bottom lip, and smiled.

You stepped back at once. You were suddenly very aware of how tired you still were, how much the conversation had taken out of you, and how quickly he could drain all the confidence out of you just by weaponizing your body's reaction to him.

Dean noticed the change immediately. His eyes dropped to your lips, then your arm, then back up.

‘You get three minutes,’ he said.

Your breath stopped for half a second.

‘On speaker. Phone stays in my hand. You say one thing I don’t like, I hang up. You try to get cute, I hang up. Sam tries to pull some distress-signal crap, I hang up, and we go back to doing this my way.’

You nodded once, heart racing so fast you felt lightheaded again. ‘Okay.’

‘And you don’t tell him anything about where we are.’

‘I don’t know where we are,’ you said honestly.

‘Good answer.’

Dean reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

A/N: No Dean POV in this one, because I already stretched the chapter to an absolutely insane 9k words.

But speaking of that, just to keep the conversation going, what do you enjoy more in this whole series: her POV or Dean’s?

Tag list:

@tinysnacklefan @spacepl4ant @ladysparkles78 @foxyjwls007 @mbinvisible @freddiemcn @alliwantisanimeandfood-blog @chknnwffls

Story tags: Demon!Dean, Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Action, Violence, Angst, Drama, Blood Magic, Blood play, Smut, Rough sex, Emotional strain, Moral conflict, POV Dean Winchester, Canon Divergence, Married Dean Winchester, POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

A/N: Okay, first things first: I’m sorry if the writing in this chapter feels a little off. I hadn’t touched writing in weeks, and I think it shows. I’ll probably come back to smooth it out a bit in a few days, but I didn’t want to leave you hanging any longer.

And now for the bigger apology. I’m sorry for going radio silent for a month. I was in a really bad place because one of the very few things keeping me sane was taken from me, brutally. It pulled me down so hard that I stopped finding joy in other things too. To the point that I couldn’t even write, and genuinely considered deleting all my work here.

But I managed to pull through, and I’m slowly rebuilding my relationship with the things that used to bring me joy.

You sat in the chair at the table, staring at the bottle of whiskey Dean had pulled from the paper bag, without really seeing it. Your mind had narrowed down to the steady sound of the hammer.

Metal against wood. Again and again. Dean was outside still working on the door he had broken, and somehow that was the part your brain chose to latch onto. The rhythm gave you something to focus on that was separate from the blood drying under your bandage, separate from the ache in your body, separate from the fact that you had just fallen apart on the floor in front of him.

You felt strangely numb. The sharp pain in your forearm was the only thing cutting through it with any real strength, and even that was starting to feel distant around the edges. The exhaustion had finally caught up with you. It was physical, sure. Lack of sleep, barely any food, hours of panic, fighting, running on fear, and now blood loss from the rushed, ugly cuts you had made with a filthy knife. All of that was more than enough.

You were done. Completely drained.

Three weeks of mourning. Three weeks of worry, searching, dead ends, burner calls, hope you were terrified to have, and fear you could not put down. Three weeks after all the dread and preparation for the mission that had taken your husband from you.

And after all that, the one thing you had always been able to rely on in danger, the only protection you had against demons, had not been enough.

Your blood had been enough. Your magic had been enough.

You had not.

You had been too slow. You hesitated, too afraid to use your own strength on a demon because the demon was still your husband. That was why you lost it when he knocked the knife from your hand. That was why it had been so easy for him to break the last thing holding you upright.

You felt weak in a way you had not felt for a long time, and the worst part was that you knew, logically, you had power here. Your magic could hurt him badly if only you stopped hesitating. You could probably kill him, if you truly wanted to.

You had the upper hand. Objectively.

But you wanted your husband back so badly that it gave the demon power over you, and you hated yourself for that more than you knew how to handle anymore.

Your eyes drifted from the bottle to your forearm, at the place where Dean had wrapped gauze around the cuts with careful, irritated hands. The bandage was already stained red in places.

You should have been embarrassed. Crying on the floor in front of him, folding in on yourself while he stood there and watched, should have made you want to crawl out of your own skin. Somehow, at this point, you did not even have the energy to care. Dean wanted fire from you, he wanted fight, attitude, the thrill of pushing until you pushed back. You knew that now. You had seen how he reacted to it. You had felt exactly how much he liked it when you jumped him in the car and threatened to burn him alive.

Too bad.

Your body had nothing left to give him.

You got so lost in the blankness that you didn’t notice the hammer stopping. The silence took a few seconds to register, and by the time your eyes focused again, Dean was already back inside. He tossed the hammer onto the couch with a dull thud and dropped into the chair opposite you, legs stretching out under the table with an exaggerated sigh.

‘So,’ he said, crossing his arms over his chest. ‘About the bloody finger-painting.’

You lifted your eyes to him.

He motioned around the room with one finger, taking in the sigils on the windows and walls.

‘Thought I told you to wipe that crap off.’

There was no teasing in his voice this time. No lazy playfulness. He looked perfectly serious, and for several long seconds, you stared at him in silence.

Then you reached for the bottle.

Dean’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t stop you.

You unscrewed the cap slowly, lifted the bottle to your mouth, and took a long drink without breaking eye contact. The whiskey burned all the way down and landed in your empty stomach with enough force to make your eyes sting. Usually, you did not reach for alcohol when your nerves were bad. You had enough bad coping mechanisms without adding that to the list. Right now, though, the warmth spread fast through your body and left a dull tingle in your fingers almost immediately. Maybe it was the whiskey. Maybe it was your body finally switching into preservation mode.

Whatever. You took what you could get.

You lowered the bottle and wiped your mouth with the back of your hand.

Dean watched every movement.

You hugged the bottle against your chest with one arm, keeping your bandaged forearm close to your body.

‘Take them down yourself,’ you said finally.

Part of you expected him to snap. Bark another order. Slam a hand on the table. Remind you exactly how badly this could go if you kept testing him. A bigger part of you had stopped caring.

Dean said nothing at first. He just looked at you, quiet and still, eyes fixed on your face. After a moment, the corner of his mouth twitched.

‘Fine.’

Your eyes narrowed. ‘Fine?’

He gave a low chuckle.

‘Yeah, fine. You’re clearly beat,' he said, looking you over slowly, and there was enough blunt assessment in his expression to make you feel exposed all over again. 'And I don’t need you bleeding out all over the place.’

His gaze stopped on your forearm.

You looked down too. The red had spread more through the thin layers of bandage, darker near the center where the cuts were worst.

Your chest tightened with irritated confusion.

Because why the hell was he doing this?

He was selfish now. Arrogant and cruel. A violent, possessive dick who had left you grieving for three weeks, tortured you with clues and phone calls, kidnapped you, dragged you into the woods, manhandled you, and ordered you around as if you were his property.

Then he promised not to hurt you. Gave you his flannel because you were cold. Patched up your arm.

Was that part of the game too? Another way to mess with your head? Give you scraps of care, little flickers of your husband when it suited him, just enough to see how badly you wanted to believe there was still something to hold onto?

Or was he really that desperate for your presence, your attention, your touch, that he was willing to work around the parts of you that hurt him?

You did not ask. You took another slow drink instead. This one went down easier, which was probably a bad sign.

A drop of whiskey caught on your bottom lip, and you wiped it away with your tongue before you thought about it. Dean’s arms tightened across his chest. You saw it. You saw his throat move when he swallowed.

Your teeth pressed into the inside of your cheek.

He wanted you. Badly. He had not been subtle about that from the start, sure, but maybe you had underestimated how much it was affecting him. Grinding at him. Making him impatient enough to take risks.

Good.

You needed to know what he wanted badly enough to make mistakes over.

You lifted the bottle for another sip, but Dean leaned forward and reached across the table. To your own tired surprise, you did not flinch this time. You did not pull back either.

He noticed.

A brief flash of satisfaction crossed his face before he covered it with that smug little curve of his mouth.

His hand closed around the neck of the bottle just above yours, his fingers brushing your knuckles long enough for heat to rise between you.

‘Easy there,’ he said, smirking as he pulled the bottle from your hand. ‘We’re supposed to share.’

He brought it toward his mouth, then stopped.

You frowned.

Dean looked down at the rim, his expression shifting into something thoughtful. Then he tapped the mouth of the bottle carefully against his lower lip and waited.

For a second, you had no idea what the hell he was doing. Then it clicked, and a ridiculous little breath pushed out of your chest.

He was testing it. Your saliva. The possibility that even as little as that might burn him.

The whole thing was so careful and so stupidly practical that you almost laughed, which probably meant you were closer to losing your mind than you thought.

But there was no reaction. No hiss, no sign of pain. Dean’s eyebrows lifted a fraction, and then he tipped the bottle back and took a long drink.

‘Besides,’ Dean said when he lowered the bottle, ‘you keep goin' like that, you’re gonna pass out on me.’ His smirk gained that bratty edge that made your fingers tighten around nothing. ‘And we still gotta talk.’

He took one more sip and handed the bottle back.

You reached for it and this time, you made sure your fingers closed over his hand. It was quick. Deliberate. Hard enough to make the point.

The burn snapped between your skin and his.

Dean hissed through his teeth, but his grin only widened when you gave him a pointed look and took the bottle.

The whiskey really was starting to work now. Mostly on the pain, which had dimmed from sharp stinging into heavy pressure under the bandage. Your limbs felt looser than they had any right to feel. The warmth spread fast through your bloodstream. Weeks of barely sleeping and barely eating were doing you no favors, and you knew that. You also did not stop yourself from taking another drink.

You were still watching Dean carefully, but with the panic dulled and the immediate fight over, curiosity pushed its way in.

He looked unfairly good, which was a big fucking problem. The black T-shirt clung to him in all the wrong places, and when he settled back with his arms across his chest again, the muscle in his forearms and biceps shifted in a way you were almost certain he did on purpose.

You dragged your gaze back to his face.

The smug grin told you he knew exactly where your eyes had gone.

His eyes were green. There was a spark in them that looked close enough to the boyish one you missed so much it made your chest hurt. For one stupid moment, you could almost pretend it was just Dean. Your Dean. Sitting with you on some random night, sharing a bottle, irritating you on purpose because he liked the reaction.

Then he opened his mouth.

‘Now,’ Dean said, voice low in the quiet room, ‘you good to finally talk? Like an adult this time? Or do I gotta pin you down again?’

You hated how your body reacted to that, so you rolled your eyes as hard as you could to cover it.

‘Weren’t you supposed to be scrubbing off the sigils right about now?’

The corners of Dean’s eyes tightened as he dragged his teeth over his bottom lip.

‘You always did look good with an attitude.’

Memories hit before you could do anything about it. All the times he had fixed that attitude, using that exact tone in your bedroom, against a wall, in the Impala, everywhere your mind should not have gone while this version of him sat across from you.

Heat rose in your cheeks.

Goddamnit.

You took another sip because it was easier than letting him see your teeth clench.

But Dean saw it anyway. His grin told you enough.

‘I’ll get to it,’ he said, leaning back lazily. ‘Eventually. Right now, I wanna have a drink with my lovely wife.’

The mocking edge in his tone hit exactly where he meant it to. You flinched before you could stop yourself.

Dean’s smirk faltered, but you doubted guilt had anything to do with it. He was probably adjusting, choosing the next angle.

‘Alright,’ he said, straightening in the chair. ‘Let’s get one thing straight.’

You kept the bottle close, fingers wrapped tight around the glass.

‘I already told you. I’m not gonna hurt you. I don’t wanna hurt you.’ His eyes dropped to your bandaged arm. ‘So quit bein' stupid.’

You pressed your lips together.

‘No, seriously,’ he went on, leaning forward now. ‘What the hell were you thinkin'? Huh? You were gonna turn this place into Fort Knox, sit on the couch, and wait me out?’

You said nothing.

Dean’s smile came back, slower this time.

‘Or was that the plan? Sit tight until Sammy comes charging in? Maybe Cas?’

Your stomach pulled tight.

Dean laughed under his breath and leaned back again.

‘Yeah. About that.’ He glanced around the cabin, eyes moving over the useless sigils. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, princess, but you’re not the only one who knows what these little smudges can do. Whole damn radius is angel-proofed.'

Fuck.

You kept staring at him.

‘So don’t waste your energy thinkin' Feathers is gonna swoop in and save the day.’

You should have expected that.

Of course he wouldn’t leave you somewhere Cas could simply appear and grab you. Of course he had chosen the place carefully. He was still Dean. Some part of him, at least. He knew you. He knew the first three desperate options your brain would reach for and had already taken them off the table.

The wards had been your one pathetic attempt at changing the rules, and you couldn't even finish them.

Dean scanned your face while the realization settled. He looked pleased with himself.

You watched him as he pulled the bottle from your hands and took another drink. Watched the amber liquid slosh inside the bottle as he set it back on the table and pushed it toward you with two fingers.

You grabbed it, drank, swallowed, and finally found your voice again.

‘Do you really think keeping me here against my will is going to make me cooperate?’

You wanted it steady. It came out close enough.

Dean looked at you for a moment, then leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

‘Of course not.’ He shrugged. ‘I knew you were gonna put up a fight. Kinda looking forward to that part, actually.’

You scoffed, disgusted despite the exhaustion dragging at your limbs.

‘But you keep forgetting something, baby,’ he said, voice dropping lower. ‘I know you. I know everything about you. Every soft spot. Every button.'

Your fingers tightened around the bottle. Dean’s eyes stayed on yours.

'And eventually, you’re gonna be a real good girl and give me what I want.’

The arrogant certainty nearly pushed you over the edge again.

You twitched in your seat, ready to reach across the table and burn that smug face until the smile finally disappeared. But your body refused to follow through. Everything hurt. Your limbs felt heavy. Your head had started to buzz at the edges. You were too tired to make the movement worth it, so you pulled in a slow breath and held your ground from the chair.

‘And why the hell would I do that?’

You set the bottle down and crossed your arms over your chest. Then immediately regretted it when the movement shifted your badly buttoned shirt. Dean’s attention dropped fast. A muscle in his jaw ticked. The look on his face was pure hunger, and you yanked his flannel tighter around yourself.

Dean rolled his eyes, visibly annoyed. ‘Oh, come on.’

You straightened as much as you could and forced every word to come out clear.

‘I. Don’t. Want you.’ You glared at him. ‘I want my husband back. My Dean. And you know damn well that’s the only reason I’m not burning the fuck out of you right now.’

Dean reached for the bottle again, smiling.

‘Sure. Yeah. Right.’ He took a sip and leaned back. ‘Looked real convincing when you were bawling your eyes out on the floor.’

The words landed low. You went still.

That was dirty and you knew he meant it to be.

You deserved it, maybe. You had shown weakness in front of him, and now he had it in his hands. You wanted to tell him to fuck off. You wanted to tell him he had no right using that against you when he was the reason you had been coming apart for three weeks. You wanted to remind him that you had watched him die, that you had held him, that every second since then had felt like a knife being twisted in your heart again and again.

You did none of it. You said nothing.

Dean tilted his head, studying you.

‘You really do want him back, don’t you?’ He huffed and shook his head. ‘Well, sweetheart, I’m right here. Still me. Just without the guilt hangover.’

‘No, you are not him,’ you shot back, swallowing against the anger in your throat. ‘You’re not even close.’

Dean's brow lifted. ‘And what makes you so damn sure?’

There was actual curiosity in the question. Real enough that it pulled the answer out of you before you had time to think it through.

‘You hurt people. You killed people.’

Dean just shrugged. 'Killed people before.’

Your fingers found the bottle again because this conversation needed something to dull it. ‘Not like this.’

He rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his hair, already irritated.

'Oh, come on. Don’t get all cute and naive on me now. Those guys were all assholes.’ He leaned forward slightly, voice sharp with conviction. ‘Couple of scumbags who thought they were better than everyone else. I did the world a favor.’

You took a drink and winced when the whiskey burned down your throat. Then you set the bottle back on the table harder than you meant to. The sound cracked through the cabin.

You were getting angry again. Which was good, because anger was easier than the rest of it.

The worst part was how normal this kept trying to feel. Sitting across from him. Talking to him, arguing with him, hearing his voice answer yours. Watching his hands move when he reached for the bottle. After three weeks of silence and waking up to nothing beside you, he was finally here, close enough that you could see every flicker in his expression.

You were relieved. Scared. Excited. Furious. Drunk enough to admit it out loud if he asked.

You missed him so much. And now you were so overwhelmed you were pretty sure you would cry again if your body had anything left.

So you used the anger.

Because for whatever reason, you seemed to be the one person in the world still allowed to push Demon Dean’s buttons and live.

‘Oh, right,’ you said, letting every bit of snark you had left into your voice. ‘You’re a real damn hero.’

Dean’s mouth kicked up as he grabbed the bottle from your hand.

‘You know what this is really about?’ he asked.

You stared at him.

He drank quickly, then set it down with a soft thud. It was almost empty now. You felt the missing whiskey in the heaviness of your eyelids and the way the pain in your arm had dulled completely.

‘Please,’ you said flatly. ‘Enlighten me.’

Dean’s smile widened.

‘It pisses you off because you know this was underneath the whole time.’

The sentence hit hard enough to take your breath for a second.

Because you had thought that before. Of course you had. You had seen the darkness in Dean. The violence, the brutality, the rage. The part of him that could scare people just by going quiet. You had watched him work too many times to pretend he was only soft hands and bad jokes and that beautiful, tired smile he gave you when he hoped no one else was looking.

You loved every part of him. Even the damaged parts. Especially the parts he thought made him hard to love. They were inside a man who fought himself every day to be better than the world made him.

But hearing this Dean say it out loud with such a mocking tone made your stomach turn.

‘Your Dean spent half his life choking on shame,’ Dean said. He picked up the bottle and moved it lightly in his hand, watching the whiskey catch against the glass. ‘I cut that part out.'

He made a small toasting gesture toward you.

‘You’re welcome.’

You stared at him until your vision blurred at the edges. You pulled in a careful breath and made yourself speak.

‘Just… tell me why you’re doing this.’

Your voice sounded tired even to you.

Dean’s smile faded by a fraction.

You closed your eyes for a second and rubbed your forehead with your good hand. The whiskey, the blood loss, the panic crash, all of it was starting to really drag you under.

‘Really. Just cut the crap and tell me. Is this your idea of fun? Does seeing me like this make you feel good?’

When you opened your eyes again, Dean was no longer looking at you. His head had tipped back, eyes turned toward the ceiling, jaw set hard.

‘Dean.'

His name came out softer than it should have, but you didn't really care.

'I’m serious. What’s the fucking point of all this?’

He stood suddenly, chair scraping against the floor.

The movement made you tense, but he didn’t come toward you. He dragged a hand down his face and swore, loudly, before he started pacing.

‘I swear to God,’ he snapped, shoulders tight, ‘it’s like I’m talkin' to a damn wall.’

You watched him move, pulse climbing again despite the whiskey. He was angry now, but it didn’t feel the same as before. This wasn’t the cold threat from the car or the sharp impatience at the cabin door. This had frustration under it. Real frustration, coming from saying something too many times and still not being heard.

Dean stopped near the table and turned back to you.

‘How many times do I gotta tell you?’

His hand closed around the back of the chair. The wood creaked under his fingers, and for one second, you watched the pressure of his grip instead of his face. His knuckles went pale. Anger climbed through him fast now, visible in the line of his shoulders, the set of his mouth, the way his whole body seemed to hold itself back by force.

Then his eyes went black.

You had no idea whether he meant to do it or whether his patience finally slipped. Either way, the effect was immediate. Your stomach tightened so hard it was almost painful.

Dean pushed the words through his teeth.

‘I want you,’ he said. ‘Because you’re mine, and I like keepin’ what’s mine close.’

Yeah. Of course.

There it was again. His possessive bullshit, sharpened by the demon in him until it turned into something that sat wrong in your chest. You had already known that was part of this. You were his wife. He had decided your body, your time, and your choices all belonged to him.

And it got under your skin exactly the way he wanted.

‘I’m not anyone’s property,’ you bit back, forcing yourself to ignore the cold shiver his black eyes sent over your skin. ‘And I’m sure as hell not yours. I belong to my husband. My human husband. Not some… monster wearing his face.’

The chair made another strained sound under his hand.

Dean’s mouth twitched once, but there was no humor in it.

‘Yeah. You can call me a monster all you want.’ His voice came out low and too controlled. ‘Won’t make me any less yours.’

The words caught you off guard. For one second, every thought in your head stalled. Until now, it had always been about you being his. He had never said it the other way around. He had never implied the possession went both ways. That made something sharp pull behind your ribs.

Dean saw the hit land. His smile came back, slower this time, and his eyes flicked green in one lazy blink.

‘And I’m still very much Dean where it counts, baby.’ His gaze moved over your face, down to your mouth, then back up again. ‘Believe me.’

Something inside you snapped clean through.

‘But… I don't understand,’ you said. 'You can have anybody.'

Your voice came out sharper than you wanted, and once the words were out, you could not pull them back. Your heart started beating too fast.

‘Hell, you told me yourself. You take whatever you want. You do whatever you want. So don’t stand there trying to scare me with your black eyes and your demonic ass and tell me how much you care about what’s yours when you were the one who left me.’

You did not even realize you had stood up until the room shifted around you and the chair scraped behind your legs. Your head spun for a second, but anger held you upright better than strength could have.

Dean stared at you.

You probably should have stopped, but you didn’t.

‘You said you didn’t want to be cured, and then you left me. You left me in that bunker losing my fucking mind while you went screwing around God knows where with God knows who.’

The words were out before you fully understood what you had said.

Then you froze.

You stood there with your chest heaving, hand tight around the edge of the table, wishing you could drag every word back into your mouth and swallow it. You had just handed him something raw, another stupid thing he could use against you.

Dean watched you for a long second.

Then his grip on the chair eased, and the corner of his mouth lifted.

‘So that’s what’s got you all bent outta shape.’

You crossed your arms over your chest and looked away at once.

The movement pulled at your bandaged forearm, but the sting barely registered. You wanted to deny it, to give him some cold, clever answer that made you sound above all of this. But there was no point. You had already laid it all out.

His voice dropped. ‘You think I cheated on you?’

You chewed the inside of your bottom lip and said nothing.

‘Oh,’ Dean said.

Just that. Rough. Interested.

Your eyes stayed on the wall, but you heard the chair scrape softly when he moved around it. A few slow steps brought him closer, and you stayed where you were because your head spun when you tried to shift your weight. Maybe that was whiskey. Maybe the blood loss. Maybe the fact that your body was still stupid enough to respond to him even while your mind screamed at you to keep distance.

‘Is that what’s been keepin’ you up at night?’ he asked.

He stopped close enough that you could feel the heat of him before you looked back. Your throat tightened.

‘Your precious husband fucking somebody else?’

The sting in your chest was instant. Your stomach turned, and bile burned at the back of your throat because he knew. He knew how right he was. He knew you well enough to understand the thought had been eating right through you.

You forced yourself to meet his eyes.

Dean’s gaze dropped.

Your shirt had shifted again. Your breasts were pressed high under the way your arms were crossed in the half-buttoned fabric, and his attention locked there with a hunger that made your pulse kick so hard it almost embarrassed you more than the question had.

His hand came up.

You tensed immediately.

Dean noticed. His eyes flicked back to your face, and for a second, that smugness sharpened. Then his fingers caught the crisp edge of your shirt where it split open over your chest. He touched the fabric only, teasing it aside just a little, slow and deliberate, careful not to let his skin brush yours.

‘These hands,’ he said, voice roughening, ‘on somebody else.’

You tried not to visibly wince.

His fingers slid along the seam of your shirt, close enough that your skin heated under the fabric anyway.

Then he leaned down. Too close. Close enough that for one terrible second, you thought he was going to kiss you. The heat between you rose fast. His scent hit you, whiskey and leather and Dean under all of it, and you hated that your body loved everything about it.

His face hovered near yours, his eyes moved over your lips, and your chest rose rapidly no matter how hard you tried to control it.

‘This mouth,’ he said, quieter now, ‘kissing somebody else.’

Your breathing went shallow. Your anger flared hard, and thank God for it, because anger made you pull yourself together.

You caught his wrist. Hard.

This time the burn was immediate and brutal. His eyes flashed black inches from your face, and a growl tore out of him as he jerked back. Smoke curled from under your fingers before you let go.

Dean stepped away, teeth clenched, shaking his hand once at his side, but he was not angry. He smirked instead.

Your heart was still racing as you glared at him. From the fear, from the closeness, from the sick pain of what he had described. Because of course it had kept you up at night. Of course you had thought about him with other women. You kept telling yourself it was not him, that your husband would never do that to you, that whatever Demon Dean did while he was gone did not count.

It had hurt all the same.

‘You can glare all you want, sweetheart,’ Dean said, still smirking as he flexed his burned wrist. The red marks were already fading too fast. ‘Doesn’t change what your pulse did when I got close.’

‘Screw you,’ you snapped.

Your eyes dropped to his wrist. The burns were almost gone.

That stopped you for half a second. You had seen your magic tear through demons before. And Dean was healing from it much faster. The damage closed in front of your eyes, leaving irritated skin behind where there should have been a much nastier wound. Something was definitely off.

Dean followed your gaze, then lifted his wrist with a little tilt of his head.

‘What? See somethin’ you like?’

You dragged your eyes back to his face, but said nothing.

His smile sharpened.

Then he turned away, dropped back into the chair, and reached for the whiskey.

‘Anyway,’ he said as he lifted the bottle and found only one swallow left. ‘You can unclench. I didn’t do any of that.’

You kept glaring at him as he took the last of the whiskey, drained it, and set the empty bottle down with a hard little tap.

‘The kissing and the fucking, I mean.’

He said it so casually that your breath caught, which pissed you off all over again. You laughed once, short and disbelieving, because how could you not.

‘Yeah, right.’

Dean’s eyebrows lifted.

You lowered yourself back into the chair because your head spun hard enough to make the room tilt. The rush of emotion had burned through whatever false steadiness the whiskey gave you, and sitting seemed smarter than finding out what the floor tasted like.

'Do you seriously expect me to believe that?’

Dean’s expression changed. The teasing did not fully disappear, but something colder settled behind it. He looked at you across the table, eyes narrowed and too serious now.

‘Cheating’s for asshats who gotta go sniffing around because they can’t keep what’s theirs satisfied. That ain’t me.'

You blinked at him.

Then immediately rolled your eyes because the line was so absurdly corny and so ridiculous that you did not know what else to do.

Dean just shrugged, as if the rest was obvious. ‘Besides, I already had the good stuff at home.’

Was he serious right now? Honestly. Was he just… mocking you again?

This had to be another way to mess with you. Demon Dean could not possibly be sitting across from you with a straight face and claiming he followed some kind of moral marital line out of principle.

You let out another tired, humorless laugh as your fingers dug into the flannel around you.

‘Of course, now,’ Dean went on, irritation cutting back in, ‘I can’t lay one damn finger on my own wife without getting my ass kicked by her magic.’ He threw one hand out, exasperated. ‘That’s a problem.’

'And why is that?'

You knew it was stupid. Of course it was stupid. You were exhausted, drunk, bleeding through a bandage, and sitting across from your demonic husband asking him why he cared so much about touching you when he had already spent the whole day making that painfully clear.

Still, your attitude was the only thing making you feel like a person instead of a trapped animal, so you held onto it.

Dean blinked slowly. ‘Really?’

You lifted your chin, even though the motion made the room tilt a little.

He looked at you for a full second, then rolled his eyes so hard you almost expected them to get stuck.

‘We're actually doing this now? What are you, twelve?’

Heat crawled up your neck.

Yeah. You had walked right into that one. But what else were you supposed to do? Let him sit there and talk about your body like it was some kind of denied privilege?

You looked away for half a second, trying to gather whatever was left of your dignity, but it was getting harder to hold onto anything. Your body was really starting to shut down now. Your mind too. You felt the pull of unconsciousness somewhere behind your eyes. Your limbs were heavy. Your eyelids kept trying to fall. You needed to lie down. You needed food, water, sleep, stitches, maybe a hospital.

And still, for one stupid, obvious reason, you wanted to keep him talking.

Because he was here. Because he was responding. And every word gave you something.

So you pushed through the dizziness and forced yourself to focus.

‘I just don’t get why-’

‘Goddamnit, I need you!’

His voice tore through the cabin hard enough to make you stop breathing.

Dean stood with both hands braced on the table now, face twisted with anger that looked too close to desperation. The empty bottle rattled near his hand. His eyes were green, but there was nothing soft in them. He looked furious with you, furious with himself, furious with the fact that the words had come out at all.

‘Alright?’ he snapped. ‘That what you wanna hear? Yeah. I need you.’

He grabbed the bottle, remembered it was empty, and the uselessness of it seemed to piss him off even more. His fingers closed around the glass.

‘I tried everything,’ he said. His voice dropped, but the force stayed in it. ‘Every damn thing I could think of to get you outta my head. I drank. I fought. I let women hang all over me. I let myself do whatever the hell I wanted because, hey, that’s the whole point, right?’

His grip tightened. The bottle creaked in his hand.

‘And it still came back to you.’ He looked at you then, and the raw frustration in his face made your breath go shallow. ‘Every time. You. Your voice. Your face. Your body.’

Your throat closed.

Dean’s mouth pulled tight. His jaw was clenched. ‘Nothing else was enough. Nobody else was enough. It all came back to my body needing yours.’

The bottle shattered in his hand.

Glass cracked across the table. You jerked back in your chair as sharp pieces skittered over the wood, some stained red where they cut into his palm. Dean swore, loud and nasty, and shook the shards loose. His hand was a mess for maybe two seconds. Then the skin started knitting itself back together.

The healing should have been the part that stunned you. But that was not the thing that held you still.

It was what he had said. The way he had said it.

Irritated. Furious. Hungry. Desperate in a way that made your stomach tighten because Dean had needed you before. Your Dean had wanted you. Missed you. Reached for you in ordinary moments. Your Dean had loved you.

This was different. This was terrifying. Because he obviously hated needing you.

And underneath the fear, under the whiskey and exhaustion and the insane pounding of your heart, something else pushed through.

A thought.

He needed you enough to lose control. He wanted you badly enough to make mistakes. Badly enough to bring you here, to let you burn him, explain himself, come closer even when every inch of your skin was a weapon against him.

That meant something. It had to mean something, right?

Maybe it wasn't enough to save yourself. But maybe it was the only thing you had. If he wanted you this much, if his obsession was this strong, then maybe you could use it. If he was trying to manipulate you, maybe you could do the same. Just to slow him down. To keep him close enough for the cure.

To bring him back.

Not tonight, of course. Not while you could barely keep your eyes open and your arm was bleeding through the bandage. But soon. You had to get your head clear. You had to stop reacting to every word, every look, every familiar piece of him he used against you.

You had to lock the fuck in.

Dean shoved away from the table and walked to the sink. He turned the faucet on hard and rinsed blood and glass from his already healed hand. The tension in his shoulders did not ease. If anything, he looked more annoyed now, as if admitting any of that had pissed him off more than your burning touch.

A faint wave of satisfaction moved through you.

It would have felt better if your vision had not started blurring at the edges.

You looked down.

The bandage around your forearm was soaked through now. The cuts throbbed under it. You had used too much blood, too much strength. Your body had been warning you for a while, and you had ignored every signal because you didn't want to show any more weakness.

You needed to lie down. Badly. But you still had one thing to say.

You gripped the edge of the table with your uninjured hand.

‘If you need me that much,’ you said, and even to your own ears, the words sounded thin now, ‘then let me cure you.’

Dean stayed with his back to you. His hands were braced against the counter, head dropped between his shoulders.

You swallowed, fighting the pull behind your eyes.

‘Let me set this right and take you home.’

His shoulders went still.

You tried to stand, or maybe you only thought about standing. Your body did not cooperate either way.

‘Dean.’ Your voice almost broke on his name.

He did not turn around.

‘Let me take you home.’

‘No.’

One word. Low. Final. More growl than answer.

The room tilted.

You blinked hard, but the shapes did not come back right. Dean’s back blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again. Your injured arm still throbbed under the ruined bandage, and your fingers had gone cold around the edge of the table.

‘P… please.’

This time he turned.

‘I said no.’

His face was stone cold. Jaw set. Eyes fixed on you with a sudden sharpness that told you he noticed what was happening a second before you did.

He looked like he might say something else.

That was the last thing you remembered before everything went black.

‘Son of a-’

Dean moved before the chair could tip all the way back.

One second she was sitting there, staring at him with those exhausted, glassy eyes, and the next her body went loose. Her head dropped, her hand slipped off the edge of the table, and the whole damn chair started going with her.

He caught her before she hit the floor.

‘Awesome,’ he breathed under his breath. ‘That’s just awesome.’

Her weight was not the problem. Demon strength made that part easy. The problem was the heat that hit the second he pulled her against him. Her body pressed into his arms and chest, and the burn came fast, biting through his sleeves, through his shirt, through every place she was close enough for that magic of hers to react.

Dean hissed through his teeth and tightened his hold anyway.

‘Yeah, yeah, I get it,’ he muttered, carrying her toward the bedroom. ‘Still mad at me.’

She did not answer. Her body was limp in his arms, her head against his shoulder, one hand hanging loose, and she was still hurting him without even trying.

He crossed into the bedroom fast, careful not to knock her bandaged arm against the doorframe. The old bed creaked when he lowered her onto it, and Dean had to peel his hands away one at a time. His shirt smoked faintly. The skin underneath stung and pulled tight while it healed.

He ignored it.

He leaned over her, close enough for his mouth to hover near her throat, and listened. Heartbeat there. Weak. Fast. Too damn fast, actually, but there. Her chest rose under the half-open shirt, shallow and uneven, and the next breath brushed warm against his cheek.

Still breathing.

Something in his chest loosened and he hated that immediately. He did not like the weird flash of relief that hit him, and he sure as hell did not like how it felt to know she was breathing.

Dean straightened, rubbed both hands over his face, then planted them on his hips and stared down at her.

Yeah, he was pissed.

No. Pissed did not cover it. He was livid.

Part of it was at himself. Obviously. Because apparently he had decided to run his damn mouth until he handed her every ugly piece of truth she had been digging for. Great job, dumbass. Real smooth. This was supposed to be fun. He was supposed to be leaning back, enjoying the show, watching her get all mad and flushed while he pushed buttons he had earned the right to push. She was supposed to figure out how to shut that magic down so they could both stop wasting time.

Instead, she had pushed and pushed until he said too much.

Need.

He had actually said that. Out loud.

Son of a bitch.

Now she had one more thing to throw in his face when she got her strength back. One more little weapon for that big brain of hers to turn over until she thought she understood him.

No. She didn’t understand crap.

Still, the worst part was her arm.

Dean’s eyes dropped to the bandage. Red had spread through the gauze near her wrist and along the lower edge, darkening where it had soaked too deep. The sight made his teeth press together.

That was on her.

If she had not tried to be a goddamn hero with the bloody art project, if she had not grabbed the nastiest knife in the cabin and carved herself open to keep him out, she would not be lying there unconscious, drained, pale as hell, and making him deal with one more problem.

He should have let her sit with the consequences a little longer. That was the lesson, right? Pull a stupid stunt, pay for it.

Except the lesson was useless if she bled through the damn sheets.

‘Unbelievable,’ he muttered.

Dean reached down and checked the bandage again, using the edge of the flannel wrapped around her to lift her arm. The cuts probably needed stitches. Better cleaning too, because those little wipes from the kit were crap.

She needed sleep. Proper rest. He knew that. He wasn’t an idiot. He had seen the dark circles under her eyes the second he got close to her in the Impala. Seen the hollow look in her face under all that panic. Seen how hard she had been running herself into the ground.

He had just hoped she could keep it together long enough to get them somewhere useful.

Common ground. A deal. A plan. Obedience would have been great.

Dean looked at her face.

She was turned slightly toward him. Her mouth was slightly open, still breathing unevenly. She looked wrecked. Worse than she had at the table. Worse than she had on the floor, crying.

And still, goddamnit, he missed her so much it made him angry all over again.

His gaze moved before he could decide against it. The shirt was still half-open under the flannel, fabric pulled wrong from the fight, from his hands, from the whole stupid day. His eyes caught there first, because of course they did. Then lower, to the curve of her waist, her hips under the wrinkled fabric, all the places he had been thinking about for three miserable weeks while every other distraction bored him into a bad mood.

Then his eyes stopped at her lips.

Bad idea.

Really bad idea.

Dean exhaled through his nose and ran a hand over his mouth.

He could wake her up. Shake her until those eyes opened, tell her to quit passing out on him, tell her she had a husband right there and a few damn marital duties she was seriously neglecting. The thought came fast and ugly, because he wanted her real fucking bad.

His eyes dropped to the soft skin peeking through the open shirt again, and his jaw worked once before he forced himself to look away.

No.

Even like this, he wasn’t that desperate. He didn’t need to take it from her while she was half-dead on an old bed. He wanted her awake, looking right at him when she finally stopped holding back. He wanted her to want it. Wanted her to ask. Beg, if he did this right.

And he was damn sure he could get her there.

The red on the bandage finally snapped his head back where it needed to be.

Dean's mouth flattened.

He was gonna have to make another run. He needed better bandages. Real disinfectant. Stitch strips, maybe. Something he could use instead of needle and thread, because stitching her up while her skin tried to cook him was going to be a real fun time for nobody. Food too. Something with salt, sugar, protein, whatever the hell she needed after bleeding on every wall in the room. More booze for himself, because this whole thing had turned into a bigger pain in the ass than advertised.

But the stores were closed now, or close enough to it, and driving out would take too long. He had already left her alone once, and she had turned the cabin into a damn murder house.

No. He was staying put until he knew she was stable.

Dean left the bedroom and dragged one of the old armchairs from the main room. The legs scraped over the floorboards the whole way, loud enough to make her shift faintly on the bed. He stopped, eyes cutting to her face. She didn’t wake.

He planted the thing beside the bed, angled it toward her and the door at the same time, then dropped into it with a hard, annoyed huff.

He leaned back, stretched his legs out, and stared at her.

She slept on, pale and silent. Her breathing evened out and her pulse seemed to settle back toward normal.

Dean’s mouth tightened.

‘You better not make a habit outta this,’ he muttered.

She didn’t answer, obviously.

He settled deeper into the chair, eyes glued to the rise and fall of her chest.

For now, he would watch her. Make sure she kept breathing. Make sure the bandage did not keep soaking through. Make sure nothing came through the woods, through the patched-up door, or through any other damn thing trying to take what belonged to him.

Yeah.

For now, he was making sure she was alright.

And if anyone had a problem with that, they could bite him.

CHAPTER 11 here

Tag list:

@tinysnacklefan @spacepl4ant @ladysparkles78 @foxyjwls007 @mbinvisible @freddiemcn @alliwantisanimeandfood-blog

Story tags: Demon!Dean, Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Action, Violence, Angst, Drama, Blood Magic, Blood play, Smut, Rough sex, Emotional strain, Moral conflict, POV Dean Winchester, Canon Divergence, Married Dean Winchester, POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

A/N: I’m going through a lot with this story right now because it turned into a much bigger writing challenge than I expected. So if you want to read more about my current spiral over Demon Dean, our girl, and this whole mess, I poured some of it into the chapter note on AO3.

Your chest was still heaving under Dean’s weight when his words sank in.

He wanted to touch you without your magic hurting him.

Even with every lifelong doubt you had ever carried about your body, about how men saw you or didn’t see you, Dean had proved to you over and over that he wanted you, that he found you sexy. He had proved it with his hands, his mouth, his impatience, his complete inability to keep his attention off you most of the time.

It wasn’t impossible to believe that some twisted, demonic version of that desire had stayed.

The part that you couldn't really wrap your mind around was... he could have anyone.

He was still Dean Winchester. Ridiculously attractive, broad, strong, with those soft pouty lips, that deep voice, and that unfair face that made people look twice. Now he had no guilt, no shame, no loving attachment stopping him from taking whatever he wanted from whoever offered it.

You wished you could stop thinking about that. You wished you hadn't thought about it for three weeks.

You were pretty damn sure he had not spent all that time alone. The idea hit the same place every time, deep in your chest, sharp enough to make you want to stop breathing until it passed. You tried hard not to picture it. Your husband's hands and mouth touching someone else while you lay awake in the bunker crying your eyes out.

No. Picturing it didn't solve anything.

And still… for some insane reason, after all that, he had come for you. He had risked Sam, risked your magic, risked whatever lead he had been keeping ahead of all of you just to drag you here and demand that you figure out a way to let him put his hands on you.

Well, first of all, fuck him.

Honestly.

Did he really expect you to just let him? Did he think that after everything he had done, after everything he had become, you would sit down in some rotting place and work out how to make yourself safe for a demon's hands because he was horny and used to getting whatever he wanted?

Or worse, did he think he could simply take it, without asking?

The thought made bile rise in your throat so fast you almost choked on it.

The shapeshifter came back to you in ugly pieces. Dean’s face on something that was not Dean. Hands that looked like his, a mouth that looked like his, touching you. The violation of it, the sick confusion of your own body before your mind fully caught up... That memory still made you want to tear your skin open and climb out of it.

Your fingers curled into the old seat beneath you.

Would he really do that?

Even like this, would Dean be able to hurt you that way?

Whatever I want.

That was what he had said when you asked what he was doing. There had been almost no limit in those words. No line he seemed afraid to cross.

But he had also told you he was not going to hurt you.

And maybe even as a demon, Dean was still a man of his word in some fucked up, deranged way. Maybe there were pieces of him that still understood certain things were off-limits, even if he couldn’t feel love the way he used to.

You didn’t know. And you didn't like not knowing.

And even if he meant it, even if he really had no intention of forcing you, the rest of it made no sense. How the hell did he expect you to do this? The protection was in your blood. There was no light switch. You barely understood how all of it worked, and the last time you had pushed your magic too hard, your mind had slammed into a wall and the life you had built was erased.

Dean would have understood that. Your Dean would have.

This one was thinking with his dick, or his pride, or whatever demons ran on when they decided they wanted something.

You must have been silently glaring at him for too long, because when your focus snapped back into place, some of the impatience had faded from his face. His eyes were green again, and he was watching you in a way that made your pulse race faster than the black ever had.

Dean was still above you, close enough to make breathing difficult, but his hands were carefully braced on either side of your body. Even pinned under him, you could tell he was controlling every inch of himself, placing his weight with care, keeping away from your open shirt and your exposed skin. His shoulders blocked most of the car. His face hovered near yours, full of hunger and interest, and for one second, if you ignored the situation hard enough, you could almost see your husband there.

‘God, I missed that face,’ he said.

His mouth curved. There was no real affection in his voice. It sounded closer to fascination. You knew he was studying your every reaction to him.

His eyes moved over your face slowly.

‘Especially when you’re tryin’ real hard not to want me.’

Your jaw clenched so hard it hurt. ‘I don’t want you.’

You tried to make it sound convincing enough that both of you could believe it.

Dean’s smile only deepened.

He leaned in just a little, stopping just short of brushing his nose against yours.

‘Yet.’

Your heart jumped hard enough to make you hate it.

Wait, was he… Did he honestly think you would give yourself to him willingly? Did he think all of this would end with you forgetting what he was because your body still reacted to Dean Winchester?

He had to be out of his fucking mind.

That was never going to happen. Not while he was like this.

You were ready to laugh in his face, or at least try, when Dean took a slow breath. His chest expanded against yours, close enough for you to feel the pressure through the layers between you. Heat built where his body hovered near yours, and for one awful second, you could not tell whether it was your magic reacting or your own body betraying you again.

Dean felt it. You saw it in the tiny pull at the corner of his mouth and in the tension that ran through his shoulders.

‘You even smell the same,’ he said, voice low enough that it moved through your chest. ‘That’s unfair as hell, by the way.’

Your eyes squeezed shut for half a second.

Because he did too.

He still smelled like Dean. Leather, whiskey, some kind of smoky perfume, and something warm and familiar underneath. It made you furious. It made you sick with yourself. You felt so many things at once. Fear. Dread. Anger. Relief. Want. Shame... All of it jammed together and you wanted to scream.

He was finally this close.

He was also the reason you were terrified.

You forced your eyes open and pushed your trapped hand harder against him, trying to create any amount of space. Your voice came out low and rough, much steadier than you felt.

‘Get. Off. Me.’

Dean stayed over you for another second, watching you with that infuriating smirk, then finally pushed himself up. He made sure to take his time, too, just to make it clear he was choosing to let you go.

The absence of his weight should have made you feel better. It did not, for some insane reason.

You scrambled back across the bench at once, your spine hitting the passenger door. Your hands flew to your shirt, pulling the fabric together and fumbling with the buttons that popped free. The tremor in your fingers was obvious and you hated that he could see it.

Dean's eyes stayed on your chest while you tried to cover yourself. He leaned back in the driver’s seat, stretching his burned hands once, acting like the pain was more of an annoyance than anything serious.

‘I’m tellin’ you,’ he said, eyes dragging back to your face, ‘you’re scared of the wrong thing here.’

You held your shirt closed with one hand and glared at him.

‘You’re safer with me than you are out there.’ His mouth twitched. ‘And I sure as hell don’t need to hurt you to keep you.’

Yep, there it was. The power move.

You were his, right? That was how he saw it now. His wife, his possession, his thing to move around and lock away until you did what he wanted.

God, you wanted to wipe that smug look off his face. Yet you still couldn’t make yourself hurt him badly. That made you feel pathetic, and the shame only made the anger worse.

‘Yeah, right,’ you scoffed, voice sharper than was probably smart. ‘Because this all looks like a totally safe situation.’

You had no idea where that much bite came from. It sure as hell wasn't confidence. You were still scared of him, that had not changed just because he was no longer pinning you to the seat. Maybe it was Dean’s face, Dean’s voice, Dean’s everything that made some irrational part of your brain keep insisting that you could push him farther than you would push any other demon.

And the fact that you could burn his skin off probably helped.

Dean rolled his eyes and reached for the keys. He pulled them from the ignition and stepped out.

You straightened immediately, shifting away from the door. He walked in front of the Impala, fingers tapping the hood lightly as he crossed to your side. Your eyes caught on his hands. They were still red in places, irritated and healing, but nowhere near as ruined as they should have been after the burns you gave him.

That was another problem that went on the pile of things you didn’t have time to analyze.

Dean opened your door and stepped back, waiting for you to get out.

The cold air from outside hit your face. Behind him, the cabin waited with its crooked porch and dark windows.

No.

Not a chance.

Why should you go inside? Why should you do what he told you? Why should you let him trap you in some creepy cabin in the woods so you could work on making yourself easier for him to touch?

You should have been more careful. You knew that. He was a fucking demon. Strong, evil, unpredictable, although currently more patient than you expected him to be. You should not have been poking at him.

Still, something inside you refused to move. You sank deeper into the seat and crossed your arms over your chest.

Dean waited all of two seconds.

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

‘Get out of the car.’

You stared straight ahead through the windshield at the cabin, refusing to look at him. You were not just being stubborn, even if you knew that was what it looked like. You were trying to think. You needed a plan. A real one. Not another half-panicked move that ended with him on top of you and your shirt half-open.

You were not doing that again.

You despised how much power he had over you. And that the one thing that made you dangerous to demons was the thing making you hesitate now.

Because no matter how much you threatened him, your stupid ass did not want to hurt him badly enough to end this.

‘Sweetheart,’ Dean said, voice dropping into something frighteningly calm, ‘get out of the car.’

Your fingers pressed harder into your arms. You couldn’t go into that cabin. Once you got inside, things would get harder. You knew it. If you were going to do something, you needed to do it before the door closed behind you both.

Your eyes flicked toward the trees.

Running was a terrible idea. You had no phone, no idea where you were. The woods were thick, the light was fading, and if you ran, he would catch you. So you stayed in the seat and held onto the only refusal you had left.

Dean leaned one hand against the open doorframe. You gave him one quick glance and immediately wished you hadn’t.

He was watching you too closely. Of course he could hear your heart, see the fear. Of course he knew you were stalling.

His head tilted a little. ‘You really wanna make this harder than it has to be?’

You took one slow breath.

‘You can’t really expect me to-’

That was all you got out.

One second, you were sitting in the passenger seat about to tell him you were not going anywhere, and the next his hands were on you. He grabbed you without hesitation, one arm hooking under your thighs and the other bracing across your back, and lifted you straight out of the car.

You twisted on instinct.

The burn hit immediately.

His bare forearms pressed against your body, your own hands shoving at his shoulders and chest, and smoke rose between you in sharp little bursts. He hissed through his teeth, jaw flexing, but his grip did not loosen.

That was when you realized he had known. He had known it would hurt and he had done it anyway.

Panic hit harder.

You kicked, twisted, tried to wrench yourself free, but he was too damn strong. His arms locked around you, and every movement only made your body press against more of him. Your magic tore into him through fabric and skin, and still he kept moving.

Because it wasn’t burning fast enough.

He had noticed that too. You knew he had. The realization landed cold in your stomach. He was learning the limits of your protection in real time, finding out exactly how much pain he could push through before you became a real threat.

Dean hauled you up and over his shoulder in one rough movement, like you weighed nothing.

Your stomach lurched as the world flipped. Your hair fell forward, your hands grabbed at the back of his shirt, and your ribs hit his shoulder hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs. And even in this situation, some ridiculous part of you noticed the view of his tight ass right there in front of your face.

You immediately wanted to punch yourself for noticing.

Smoke and the smell of burning flesh filled the cold air. Your hands clawed at his shirt, trying to pull it up, trying to find skin. He carried you toward the porch without slowing down.

‘Dean, put me down!’ you demanded.

He ignored you.

The porch boards creaked under his boots, but he didn’t stop to search for a key. He didn’t bother with the handle, either. He kicked the door open hard enough that the whole frame cracked. The sound was brutal in the quiet forest, wood splitting, metal snapping, the door slamming inward against the wall.

Then he carried you inside.

Dust hit your nose. Old wood, stale air, damp fabric, cold ash from a fireplace that had not been used in a long time. You barely got a look at the room before anger overrode everything else.

You had enough.

If he wanted to learn your limits, fine. He could learn them.

You grabbed the back of his flannel with both hands and yanked it up. The black shirt underneath came with it just enough for your fingers to find the bare skin at the small of his back.

You shoved both hands under the fabric.

Then you dragged them upward.

Dean growled, because this time, the pain was real.

The sound rumbled through his body under you, low and rough, and satisfaction shot through the fear so fast it almost made you dizzy. Your palms burned him hard, magic working fully now that there was bare skin under your hands. You felt his back tense, muscles locking under your grip, and you dug your fingers in harder as you dragged your hands up along his spine.

You knew this was a bad idea.

Hurting him like this would not make him gentler. And it would definitely not make him less dangerous. You were trapped in a cabin with him now, far from Sam, and you had just burned a demon badly enough to make him lose control of his breathing.

But you refused to do nothing.

Dean threw you onto the couch.

You hit the old cushions with enough force to bounce once, dust bursting up around you and making you cough. Pain flashed through your hip and shoulder. You scrambled upright anyway, one hand already lifted, ready to burn him again if he came for you.

He didn’t.

Dean stood a few feet away, breathing through his teeth. His flannel hung twisted around his sides, the black shirt shoved up high enough for you to see the damage across his back. Red, raw, blistered skin stretched over tense muscle, already trying to heal, but not fast enough to hide how badly you had hurt him. His eyes were black again. His fists opened and closed at his sides, and every few seconds a low, furious sound dragged out of him.

You braced for the worst.

Because he was angry now. You could see it in every line of him. Yeah, this was where he snapped. This was where the demon finally forgot whatever rule had kept him from hurting you. This was where he grabbed you by the throat or slammed you into a wall and gave you enough reason to stop holding back.

Instead, he paced.

He muttered under his breath, every other word a swear, one hand reaching back to tug his shirt away from the burned skin.

‘Son of a-,’ he hissed, shoulders tight. ‘Goddamnit. Fucking-’

His jaw was clenched so hard it looked painful. He rolled his neck, breathing hard, and you watched him fight the pain down through sheer stubbornness. You had hurt him this time. Really hurt him. Any other demon would have come at you for less.

Dean didn’t.

Your hand stayed raised, although your defiance had limits. Your whole body shook against the couch as you tried hard to ignore the fact that hurting him made you feel sick.

After a long moment, Dean stopped pacing. Finally, his breathing steadied. The worst burns along his back had started to close, leaving angry red patches behind. He pulled his shirt down with a sharp tug, then shoved the flannel back into place.

When he looked at you again, his eyes were green.

‘I’m trying,’ he said, voice strained and very careful, ‘real hard… to be patient with you.’

You pressed yourself harder into the couch, trying to make your own breathing even.

Dean’s jaw flexed. ‘Don’t fucking waste it.’

The words landed heavy in the room.

You didn’t answer, because you didn’t trust your voice.

Dean stared at you for another beat, then dragged a hand down his face and turned toward the ruined door hanging half-open behind him. Cold air slipped through the gap, stirring dust across the floor.

He looked at the splintered frame, the broken lock, the cracked wood scattered near his boots.

‘Awesome,’ he muttered. ‘Now I gotta go get a new door lock for this piece of crap.’

You watched him kick a broken piece of the rusty lock aside, then finally forced yourself to look around.

The cabin was probably bigger than the front room showed, although your brain did not want to imagine any more space than necessary. Every extra room meant another place where Dean could corner you, another place where you would be trapped with him and whatever this version of him wanted.

The main room was crowded with old furniture. Beat-up armchairs with torn fabric. A couple of old cupboards pushed against the plank walls. Wooden storage chests with rusted hinges. A table with mismatched chairs. A small kitchen area with stained counters and a sink that looked as if it had not seen a clean dish in years. There was one open doorway leading into another room, and from where you sat on the couch, you could just make out the edge of a bed. Another door stayed closed near the back wall, and your best guess was a bathroom.

God, you hoped this place had a bathroom.

The thought of safely running was leaving you by the second. The open doorway showed trees, more trees, and the narrow strip of dirt road Dean had driven down, which had twisted through too many turns and too many half-roads for you to trust your memory.

No. You had to think of something else.

That annoyed you more than it should have, because right now your brain wasn’t moving fast enough.

Stalling. That was all you had for now. Let him think you were cooperating, at least enough to keep him entertained. Drag out the time. Use your touch if things got dangerous enough. Hope he really meant it when he said he would not hurt you.

Hope that Sam would find you.

Your jaw tightened.

You were smart. You were a goddamn doctor. A scientist. You had survived too much to sit on a dusty couch and wait for a demon to outsmart you.

Even if the demon in question was the best hunter in the world.

You watched Dean pick up the larger chunks of the broken wood and toss them aside. He kicked smaller splinters out onto the porch with the toe of his boot, muttering under his breath.

The sight of him doing something so stupidly practical in this place made your brain take an awful turn.

Because once, a long time ago, you had imagined something close to this.

You and Dean. A small place with trees all around, remote and private enough to be just for you. A cabin far away from hunting and noise and the world asking too much of him. It had been after you found out the two of you shared a Heaven, after Dean told you that was what he had imagined. Just the two of you, spending forever somewhere tucked away from the rest of the world.

Looking around now, past the dust and rot and broken lock, you could almost see how this place might have been warm with enough work. With fresh wood, clean windows, a repaired porch. With Dean grumbling through every task and secretly enjoying the fact that he was building something he planned to keep.

That thought hit too hard.

You had the lodge by the lake now. That was the place where you and Dean had quietly started building a future. If fate was generous enough to let you grow old, that was where you had imagined ending up.

But still, before the lodge, before the wedding, the first version of that dream had been this. A small cabin in the woods.

Now your heaven turned into this. A nightmare. And you had no idea if the man you married would ever come back to spend any kind of forever with you.

Tears rushed hot into your eyes before you could stop them.

You blinked hard and looked away.

You were so caught in the thought that you didn’t notice Dean had stopped moving until you felt his stare.

When you looked up, his eyes were on you. The amused expression on his face almost made you want to throw up.

A cold draft pushed in through the broken doorway, cutting across the room and slipping under your open shirt. You shivered before you could stop yourself. It was late October, and you were sitting in a cold cabin wearing a thin dress shirt with half the buttons barely fixed.

That didn’t make you freeze as much as the flannel landing over your shoulders.

Dean had shrugged it off and stepped close enough to drop it around you, careful not to touch your skin. The amusement was gone. For one startling second, his face was serious.

You stared at him.

You wanted to throw the flannel off. You wanted to tell him to shove it up his demonic ass.

Instead, your fingers caught the edges and pulled it tighter around you.

Dean's scent hit you so hard you almost made a sound. Your throat closed.

You missed him.

You missed him so fucking much.

For three weeks, you had nothing except his pillow and his side of bed, losing the last traces of him day by day, the smell of cinnamon fading too fast from fabric that had gone cold.

Now he was here.

He was right here.

Dean was standing in front of you and it was him and it was not him, and the contradiction was so exhausting you wanted to scream until your throat gave out.

‘Alright.’

Dean’s voice filled the small space and forced you back into the room. He was watching you again, his expression harder to read now.

‘I need to make a run. Stat. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.’

You looked up at him, frowning. ‘You’re leaving? Now?’

‘Can’t have you catchin’ a cold, can we?’ His eyes moved over the flannel around your shoulders, then back to your face. ‘Unless you do your homework so we can cuddle.’

Jackass.

‘Bite me,’ you snapped, face tight.

Dean raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. He was down to the black T-shirt now. His bare forearms and biceps flexed with the movement, and your eyes dropped for half a second before you dragged them away and reminded yourself to have one single shred of self-respect.

Dean huffed, smug as hell.

‘Whatever you want me to do, baby.’ His voice dropped just enough to make your skin heat under the flannel. ‘Soon as you stop roasting the hell outta me.’

Your eyes snapped back to him, and you gave him the nastiest glare you could manage.

He only smirked and pulled the car keys from his jeans.

The sight of them made your stomach drop. Of course. He was taking the car. The only obvious way out and leaving you with thick trees and a broken door.

‘I’ll be right back,’ he said, tossing the keys once in his hand. ‘Try the woods if you want. I’ll find you anyway. And when I do, I’m probably gonna be in a bad mood.’

The casual threat in his voice brought the unease back fast. Your hand curled into a fist against the dusty cushion.

Dean turned toward the door, then stopped at the smashed threshold and glanced back over his shoulder.

‘I believe you’ve got my gun on you, right?’ he said. ‘I’d take it out if I were you. In case some wild animal decides to visit.’

Then he walked out.

You sat there, frozen, while he crossed the clearing and got into the Impala. The engine started, that familiar rumble moving through the trees, and your chest tightened again because the sound of Baby leaving felt wrong. He backed out of the clearing, turned between the trees, and disappeared down the narrow track.

The engine faded slowly.

Then the quiet settled.

You were alone.

In the middle of the woods, in a ruined cabin, with no phone, no car, no idea where you were.

And still, for a second, relief hit so hard your shoulders almost gave out.

His presence had been too much. Every second near him had forced your body to make choices your mind hated, and now that he was gone, you could finally breathe without worrying he would hear it.

You looked at the broken doorway. Then the trees. And for one reckless second, you considered running anyway.

You could go now. He was gone. The woods were open. You could pick a direction and move until your legs failed. Anything had to be better than sitting here waiting for him to come back, right?

Your hand tightened around the edge of the flannel.

No.

You already decided running was useless. Staying felt insane, yes, but running felt worse.

So you stayed.

Not because he scared you into obedience. Because you realized he made a stupid mistake.

Dean had left a Men of Letters legacy alone in a cabin full of surfaces.

You stood so fast your knees almost buckled.

The room tilted for one second, then steadied. You moved toward the kitchen, stepping over broken wood and dust, scanning counters, drawers, cabinets. Your hands shook as you yanked open the first drawer. Empty. The second stuck halfway before you forced it open with a hard pull. Utensils rattled inside, old and filthy.

Good enough.

You grabbed the first knife you found.

The blade was ugly, spotted with rust, the edge dull and chipped in places. You didn’t care.

You pushed Dean’s flannel off one shoulder, rolled your sleeve up, exposing the shivering skin of your forearm, and pressed the blade down.

Then you cut.

Dean wasn’t too thrilled about leaving her out there alone.

Running didn’t worry him. She was smart enough to know she wouldn’t get far with no phone and no clue where the hell she was. The woods were thick, the road back was a mess of turns and gravel, and even if she picked the right direction, he’d catch her before she got close to anything useful.

She knew that. She also knew who she belonged to.

No, the problem was the broken door.

That part kept digging under his skin while he drove, one hand on the wheel, the other resting against the seat beside him where he had her pinned just moments ago. He had left her in the middle of the woods with the front door smashed open, with no real barrier and nothing but a gun. If something wandered inside, some animal, some drifter, or some dumb son of a bitch who saw a cabin and thought it was empty, he was gonna decorate the trees with their guts.

Dean’s grip tightened on the wheel.

Yeah.

He hadn’t been kidding when he told her she was safer with him. He didn’t give a damn how that sounded. It was true. Dean didn’t like people touching what was his. His car, his weapons, his records, his wife. There was an order there, sure, and she was sitting pretty damn high on it.

The only person who got a pass was his brother, and even that depended on the day.

Maybe Dean was just a greedy ass. Maybe he had spent too many years owning nothing that couldn’t fit in the trunk of the Impala. Didn’t matter. His wife was his now, and that meant protected.

With him, she was safe. Everybody else could choke.

Dean pushed harder on the gas. The Impala took the narrow road hard, gravel spitting under the tires. He had the lock, the hinges, a couple pieces of cut lumber, screws, nails, a new latch, and the bottle he picked up because this whole damn day had earned him a drink.

Yeah, maybe he shouldn’t have left her alone. But she needed to learn. She needed to understand that pulling stunts had consequences. Refusing to get out of the car when he asked so nicely. Acting tough while shaking under him. Burning his back with those damn claws of hers.

Fuck, that had hurt.

He could still feel it across his back, even through the healing. Her hands dragging up under his shirt, her magic digging straight into him, hot and vicious enough to make his vision black out at the edges for a second. He should’ve been mad. He wanted to be mad.

He wasn’t.

Because it had been fun.

Seeing that fire in her, that furious defiance, her hand on his throat and her body over his in the front seat, had been the best damn thing he’d felt in weeks. She had looked scared and angry and alive, and it made him so hard he almost forgot he was being burned.

He still felt her weight in his lap. Still remembered the way she froze when she realized exactly what she was doing to him. Still remembered the little catch in her breathing when embarrassment hit and her body answered before she could shut it down.

That was why he had taken her. That right there.

The silent calls had been good. Watching her chase him had been fun. But nothing came close to having her near enough to smell, near enough to touch if her magic wasn’t being a pain in his ass.

He was going to fix that. She was going to fix that. Then he was going to show her exactly how much fun they could have once she stopped resisting.

Right now, she was scared of him. Fair enough. He enjoyed that more than he probably should have. But she was scared of the wrong thing. He knew what was sitting in that head of hers. She thought he was going to force her to have sex with him.

That put a bitter taste in his mouth.

Dean took what he wanted now. Sure. No point in pretending he cared about morality or some other crap. But that? No. He wasn’t some pathetic piece of trash who needed to force his wife like that.

Where was the fun if she didn’t ask for it?

And she would.

Dean was damn sure of that. He knew every button she had. Knew what made her blush, what made her breath hitch, what made her shake. He knew how to get under her skin. Once that magic stopped getting in the damn way, he was going to push every single one until she stopped lying to both of them.

He was looking forward to that.

One more turn and the trees parted. Dean’s foot eased off the gas. The cabin sat in the clearing ahead, crooked and ugly, with the busted front door hanging open.

And blood on the windows.

Dean’s smile died. ‘Son of a bitch.’

He brought the Impala to a hard stop in front of the porch and stared.

She wasn’t outside. Didn’t come running. Didn’t show herself in the doorway. But the sigils were there, painted clear across the window frames, the doorframe, the visible boards around the threshold. Fresh blood. Her blood. Red lines curling into shapes he knew well enough to hate.

That sneaky little pain in the ass.

For one second, Dean just sat there with his hand on the wheel, jaw tight, anger climbing fast.

He had underestimated her.

He thought she would be scared. Thought she might try the woods, maybe hide behind the couch with his gun and that stubborn look on her face. He hadn’t expected her to turn the damn cabin into a bloody panic room while he was gone.

Which made him look like a fool.

And Dean Winchester didn’t like looking like a fool.

He slammed the car door hard enough to rattle the frame and walked toward the cabin, eyes moving over the sigils as he got closer. The blood was still visible. Wet in places. That was important. He had seen enough of her work to know the real nasty stuff didn’t stay looking like paint once she activated it. It burned in, sank deep, disappeared into wood and stone.

These weren’t set yet.

Which was good. If she had finished the work, this would have gotten real annoying real fast.

Still, the air pushed back when he stepped onto the porch. A pressure shoved against his chest before he even reached the threshold. His lip curled.

Clever girl.

‘I see you’ve been busy,’ he called.

Then he caught a movement inside. Dean’s eyes found her through the open frame.

She stood near one of the side windows, left arm bloody, right hand slick red to the knuckles. The knife in her grip looked nasty as hell, rusted and chipped, the kind of blade that tore more than it cut. Her shirt sleeves were pushed up, his flannel still hanging loose around her shoulders, her face pale and tight with panic and fury. Her fingers were pressed to the glass, dragging blood through the last unfinished curve of a symbol.

She looked pissed. Probably because she hadn’t been fast enough.

Dean stepped toward the doorway.

The ward shoved him back.

His jaw ticked. ‘Seriously?’

She didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at him for more than half a second. Just kept drawing, fast and messy, her blood leaving thick lines over the old glass.

Dean forced his voice level. Barely.

‘You think I won’t break every ward in this place to get to you?’

Still nothing.

The knife flashed in her bloody hand as she cut a fresh line over her forearm and went right back to the window.

Dean turned sharply and headed for the trunk.

He grabbed the hand axe.

By the time he came back to the porch, she had finished the window and moved deeper inside, toward the middle of the room. Her breathing was too fast. He could hear it from outside. Could hear the hitch under the anger. She was burning through strength she didn’t have, riding panic and that crazy stubbornness of hers.

Dean lifted the axe.

‘You’ve got five seconds to stop doing that and break the sigil at the door,’ he said, voice low. ‘Or I’m gonna do it myself, and believe me, you’re not gonna like what happens next.’

She looked at him then. Just one glance. Silent. Shaking. Furious.

Then she lowered her bloody fingers to her palm and started drawing another symbol on her own skin.

Dean’s blood went hot.

‘You’re testing the wrong damn guy.’

She didn’t stop. Of course she didn’t stop.

That was his wife. Smart enough to know better and determined enough to do it anyway.

Dean swung the axe.

The blade slammed into the wood above the doorframe, biting through the blood line and splitting the old plank underneath. The ward snapped against him, hard enough to make his teeth clench. She flinched inside, but her bloody fingers kept moving.

Fine.

Dean swung again.

Another line broke under the blade. Then another. He chopped through the side of the frame, scraped the axe hard across the threshold, tore into the blood lines until the pressure pushing against him started to weaken. The spell fought back in ugly pulses, snapping at his skin every time he broke another piece.

He kept swinging. Wood cracked. Blood smeared. The air around the doorway shuddered once.

Then the force gave.

Dean stepped inside.

She stood in the middle of the room with her bloody palm half-marked and the rusted knife raised in her other hand. The second she saw him cross the threshold, real fear hit her face.

That fear should’ve pleased him, but it didn't.

It made something in his chest go mean and tight, because why the fuck did she still look at him like he was going to bury the axe in her? Why the fuck did she keep making him prove the same thing over and over? He didn’t want to hurt her. He wanted his wife, his hands on her, her magic out of the way, all that fight turned into something more pleasant than this.

And now her blood was everywhere.

Fresh. Red. Deadly.

Her touch hurt, yeah. But her blood could do worse. Much worse. They both knew that. The knife was covered in it, held between them with enough warning to make even him slow down.

Dean looked at the blade, then at her face. He threw the axe onto the couch. It landed with a dull thud in the dust.

Then he lifted both hands.

‘That was smart,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ll give you that. Almost impressed.’

Her chest rose and fell too fast. ‘Stay back.’

Dean’s mouth twitched. He stepped closer.

She didn’t step back. The knife stayed up, bloody and shaking, pointed right at his chest.

Her arm was a mess. Long cuts, uneven and ugly, blood slipping down to her wrist and dripping off her fingers. She was exhausted. He could see it now, clear as day. Pale face, trembling hand, knees locked because they probably wanted to give out. She was holding herself together with anger, fear, and not much else.

That made her dangerous. Reckless.

‘Put the knife down,’ Dean said.

She didn’t.

His patience thinned.

‘Sweetheart,’ he warned, voice dropping, ‘put the knife down before I stop finding this cute.’

Her hand shook. Just a little.

Dean moved, fast. He caught her wrist from the outside, avoiding the bloody edge, twisted just enough to break her grip, and knocked the knife out of her hand. It hit the floor and skidded under the table.

For half a second, everything went still.

She looked at her empty hand.

Dean braced.

He was ready for her to slam that bloody palm against his chest. Ready for the burn. Ready for pain bad enough to put him on his knees. He could take it. He’d have to. Because he was done letting her put weapons between them.

But she didn’t touch him.

Her face crumpled. Then she dropped to her knees and started sobbing.

Dean froze.

That was not what he expected. Not even close.

He stared down at her, hands still half-raised, body ready for a fight that had just disappeared out from under him. She folded over herself on the dusty floor, bloody hands covering her face, shoulders shaking so hard the flannel slipped down one arm. The sound of it filled the cabin, raw and broken and wrong.

Dean couldn’t move.

For one stupid second, all he could do was stare.

He had done it.

He had finally broken her.

That should’ve been good. Should’ve felt like winning. He had pushed her hard enough, scared her long enough, cornered her until the fight finally went out.

Except looking at her like that made something ugly crawl under his skin.

He didn’t want this.

No, this pissed him off.

He wanted the fire. The glare. The smart mouth. He wanted her angry enough to forget fear and brave enough to make him work for it.

This? This wasn’t fun. This was just a mess on the floor crying into bloody hands.

Dean’s jaw clenched.

‘Yeah,’ he muttered, mostly to himself. ‘Awesome.’

She didn’t look up.

He stood there another second, hating the sound, hating the blood, hating the way his own body wanted to go down there and pull her hands away from her face. Human Dean would’ve done it. Human Dean would’ve hit the floor beside her, whispered her name, apologized until his throat gave out.

Screw that.

Dean turned away and went back outside to deal with the busted lock.

The door still needed fixing. The cabin still needed to be safe. She still belonged to him, and the whole damn place was open to the woods.

So he left her on the floor and got to work.

It took her a while to stop.

Dean didn’t count the minutes on purpose, but he heard every one of them. Worked through most of it with his jaw clenched. The sobs slowed. Her breathing caught and settled, then broke again, then settled for real. He hauled the supplies in from the car, set the brown paper bag on the table, and started fixing what he had broken. Planks first. New latch after. He worked with his back half-turned to her, hammer in hand, because looking at her too long made him feel that same crawling anger again.

By the time she moved, Dean had the first board nailed over the worst part of the broken frame.

She stood slowly. No words, no smart comment this time.

That was worse.

She crossed to the sink, face blank, and turned the faucet. Pipes groaned somewhere in the walls before brownish water coughed out, then cleared enough for her to shove her hands underneath. Blood thinned and spiraled down the drain. She washed quietly, shoulders tight, his flannel still hanging around her.

Dean kept hammering. She kept washing. For a few minutes, the only sounds in the cabin were water, nails, and the old wood groaning every time he hit it.

When she shut the faucet off, Dean set the hammer down and walked toward her.

She heard him coming and went stiff.

He stepped close. She immediately moved back, hips bumping the counter behind her. Her eyes flicked to his hands.

Dean lifted them, palms out. ‘Relax. Just wanna see what you did to yourself.’

Her eyes snapped up to his. Her mouth tightened. ‘Don’t act like you care.’

Dean’s face stayed flat.

He reached for her arm. She tried to pull back, but he caught the edge of her sleeve and used the fabric to draw her closer. He lifted her forearm and looked.

The cuts were deep, ragged, and ugly. The kind of damage a dull knife made when someone used it in a hurry. His fingers flexed once in the fabric of her sleeve.

For a second, he didn’t say anything.

Dean stared at the torn skin, at the blood still welling slow and red along the uneven lines, and something mean twisted under his ribs. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like seeing her cut up like that. Didn’t like knowing she had done it to herself because he had left her alone long enough to get desperate. And he didn’t need her desperate. He needed her useful, breathing, and in one damn piece.

‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

She tried to yank her arm away. ‘Let go.’

Dean held the sleeve tighter. ‘If you’re gonna go to town on yourself with a knife, at least make it a sharp one. I thought you knew that.’

Her eyes flashed, and for a second, it looked like she might snap something back at him. She didn’t. Her mouth pressed shut, tight and shaking, and that bothered him more than any smartass answer would have.

Dean looked at the cuts again.

They were still bleeding, enough to make a mess. He had to watch where he put his hands because her blood was right there, warm and dangerous, coming out of her.

‘Goddamn,’ he muttered.

He let go of her sleeve before he could tighten his grip hard enough to hurt her. Then he turned and walked for the door.

She tensed behind him. He heard the quick shift of her feet and her shallow breath, but he didn’t look back. He crossed the porch, went straight to the Impala, and popped the trunk. The first aid kit was right where it always was, shoved in with the rest of the crap he kept for hunts and roadside emergencies. Dean grabbed it, slammed the trunk shut, and headed back inside.

She hadn’t moved.

Dean dropped the kit on the table, flipped it open, and dug through it with more force than necessary. Gauze. Tape. Antiseptic wipes. Bandage wrap. Good enough.

He glanced at her. ‘Sit.’

Her face tightened.

Dean’s eyes narrowed. ‘That wasn’t a request.’

She stayed standing for one more second. Then she sat at the edge of one of the chairs, stiff-backed, watching him with suspicion.

‘Don’t get all warm and fuzzy,’ he said, pulling out the antiseptic. His eyes dropped to the blood on her arm again, and his voice roughened all of a sudden. ‘I need you functional.’

That anger flickered again. Yeah, good.

Dean caught the edge of her sleeve and pulled her arm toward him through the fabric. She resisted on instinct, but there wasn’t much strength behind it anymore. Her hand was cold. Her pulse was racing. Her whole body was running on fumes.

He set her forearm on the table and worked without making a big production out of it.

The antiseptic came first. She hissed when he cleaned around the cuts, her fingers curling against the wood. Dean ignored the sound because he had to. Looking at her face every time she made a noise like that was a real bad idea, and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with whatever crap that dragged up.

‘Hold still.’

She did, mostly.

The cuts were real nasty up close. Jagged edges, uneven depth, skin torn to all hell. Dean tore open another batch of the antiseptic wipes, folded them over a thick wad of gauze, and used that to clean around the wounds. The wipes did the job. The gauze kept his fingers away from the blood. He wasn’t stupid enough to get any of it on him. He had learned plenty today.

Still, his jaw kept tightening.

He should’ve been pissed that she tried it. And yeah, he was. But damn if part of him didn’t like seeing her fight that hard. The rest of him wanted to throw that rusty piece of crap knife through a wall, because fighting him was one thing. Cutting herself open to do it was something else.

He found himself reaching with his other hand, slowly this time, and tracing one fingertip along the inside of her forearm, just beside one of the cuts. Close enough to feel the heat of her skin.

The sting came immediately. A low hiss rose from the contact, and pain bit into his fingertip.

Dean ignored it.

Goosebumps rushed over her skin.

He saw them. Of course he saw them.

He let himself look for a moment, enjoying the way her heartbeat quickened under his smallest touch. She could glare all she wanted. Her body still knew him.

Dean finally wrapped the gauze around her forearm and taped it down. He pulled it tight enough to hold, checked the edge with his thumb, then tore the tape with his teeth and pressed it flat.

When he finished, he didn’t let go right away.

Her arm stayed in his hand, covered now. Even under the gauze, her skin still had a warning heat to it, just enough to remind him what she could do.

His eyes lifted to hers. She looked wrecked. Tired past the point of hiding it. Red eyes, pale face, jaw still clenched because she hated that he had seen any of it. Yeah, she needed sleep. Food too, probably. Maybe a drink. A damn minute where nobody pushed her.

Well. Too bad.

Dean wasn’t done for today.

‘Alright,’ he said, voice low and careful, ‘now you’re gonna take those bloody masterpieces down while I finish fixing the door.’

She stared at him. He jerked his chin toward the brown paper bag on the table.

‘Then we’re gonna crack that bad boy open, and you and me are finally gonna talk.’

CHAPTER 10 here

A/N: And now I’m curious... what are your feelings about Demon Dean at this point? Is it love, love/hate, or just pure hate?

Also:

- There’s a reference in here to one of my giant movie guilty pleasures. Whoever catches it gets a gold star.

- There’s also a scene that mirrors a moment from a completely different setting in one of the other sequels. I didn’t spell out the reference, but let me know if you caught it.

Tag list:

@tinysnacklefan @spacepl4ant @ladysparkles78 @foxyjwls007 @mbinvisible @freddiemcn @alliwantisanimeandfood-blog

Story tags: Demon!Dean, Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Action, Violence, Angst, Drama, Blood Magic, Blood play, Smut, Rough sex, Emotional strain, Moral conflict, POV Dean Winchester, Canon Divergence, Married Dean Winchester, POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

A/N: Here we go. Let me know if I got that Demon Dean character right.

Dean was living his best life.

About damn time, too.

He had no idea how the hell he woke up with black eyes after Ramiel beat his ass into the floor of Hell and sliced him open, and he didn’t really care. There was probably some big answer. Some cosmic crap. Maybe he’d punched his card enough times downstairs to get the upgrade.

Whatever.

Worked out pretty damn good from where he was sitting.

Being a demon had perks. The healing? Awesome. Getting punched, cut, burned, shot, all of it went away before it could turn into a real problem. The strength wasn’t half bad either. He could drop a grown man with one hit if he felt like it. And yeah, most days he felt like it.

The black eyes were a nice touch too. Scared the hell out of people. Saved time.

Best part, though? No guilt.

No shame. No voice in his head asking what Sam would think, no damn lecture about doing the right thing. No saving people, hunting things, family business sitting on his back every second of the day, weighing him down.

That had been the real joke, hadn’t it? All those years thinking he was free because he had the car and a road in front of him. Bullshit. He’d been chained to everybody else's problems since he was four years old. Dad’s orders. Sammy’s life. The world ending every other damn Tuesday. Angels. Demons. Prophets. Hell. Heaven. Purgatory.

Her.

His wife looking at him with those eyes every time she thought he was one bad day away from losing it.

Exhausting.

Now? Now he did whatever the hell he wanted. Drank until the bottle ran dry, then grabbed another. Ate when he felt like it. Slept when he bothered. Picked fights because some asshole looked at him wrong, breathed too loud, or because Dean was bored and wanted to feel bones crack under his fist.

And people got in his way. A lot. Bartenders with opinions. Bouncers with hero complexes. Some jackass at a gas station waving a gun around before Dean had even finished reading his morning papers.

Yeah, Dean liked fixing that.

Liked how fast a room changed when everybody realized he wasn’t playing by the same rules. Liked the fear, and the silence after. That look people got when their brains finally caught up and told them they’d made a real bad call.

Mostly, though, he liked being left the fuck alone. No wife, no brother, no friends breathing down his neck.

Yeah. Dean was having the time of his life.

Except that was a load of crap.

Because the truth was, he was pissed.

Goddamn furious, actually. It sat under his skin, all day, every day. He drank, fought, laughed, sang bad karaoke just to piss off a whole bar. He let women smile at him, touch his arm, lean in close and make promises they thought sounded dirty.

He hit strip clubs because why the hell wouldn’t he? Cheap booze, loud music, naked women. And nobody asking him what he was feeling after.

Should’ve been perfect.

It wasn’t.

He tried anyway. Let a blonde in a red dress drag her nails down his chest. Let a brunette breathe filthy crap into his ear. Sat close enough to the stage that some dancer’s perfume stuck to his jacket, her thighs right there, bare and open because he had cash in his hand.

Nothing.

A whole lot of nothing.

His body worked fine. Better than fine, actually. His brain was the problem. His stupid, stubborn, son of a bitch brain kept looking at every woman in front of him and picking her apart. Lining her up against the one that wouldn’t get the hell out of his head.

Too tall. Too thin. Too loud. Wrong mouth. Wrong laugh. Wrong hands. Wrong eyes.

Wrong everything.

And why the fuck should he chase other guys’ scraps when he already had the good stuff?

That was the part that pissed him off. He could have anyone. That should’ve been the whole damn point. Take what he wanted and move on. Except every time some woman got close, all he could think was that she wasn’t his. Didn’t know where to put her hands. Didn’t know when to push, when to shut up and let him get his mouth on her. Didn’t know what made him lose his goddamn mind.

His wife knew.

Yeah, his wife burned him now, which was a real pain in the ass, but she knew.

And that was the problem.

He’d been in a strip club a few nights ago. The dancer had leaned down, all fake smile and practiced moves. She was good. Dean would give her that. Had the whole room watching. Men sitting there with their mouths open, ready to empty their wallets because a pretty girl looked at them for five damn minutes.

Dean watched her and got annoyed.

Because she wasn’t his wife.

Then his brain did something stupid. He pictured her up there instead. Her body under the lights. Her hips moving. Her eyes on him. That nervous little look she got when she wanted to be bold and hated being watched at the same time. All those men staring at her. Wanting her. Thinking about her.

His hand tightened around his glass until it cracked.

He reached for the dancer, and some bouncer decided to be a hero. Dean barely remembered what the idiot said. Something about hands off. Something about taking it outside. Then the guy touched the dancer’s arm, guiding her back. And Dean saw that hand on his wife.

That was it. Lights out.

He had the guy’s face smashed against the edge of the stage before the poor bastard even understood he was in a fight. Blood hit the floor. Somebody screamed. The dancer stumbled back so fast she almost ate shit in her heels. Dean kept hitting him. Again and again, because the picture wouldn’t get out of his head.

Another man’s hand on his wife. Another man thinking he could tell her what to do.

Hell no.

Nobody touched what belonged to him.

And she belonged to him.

Yeah, okay. He left her. That one was on him. He walked out of the bunker because he could. Left Sam on the floor with his girlfriend scrambling for him. Left his wife standing there with his gun in her hands and that broken look on her face.

Because she shot him.

His sweet, bleeding-heart, please-let-me-save-you wife put a bullet in his chest because he pushed her hard enough and she broke right where he wanted her to. He could still feel it. Her hand under his. The kick of the gun. The way her whole face went empty after, like he’d made her do something she could never take back.

Yeah. He had.

And damn, had it felt good.

Dean was pretty sure he could make her do anything. Because she loved him that much.

He didn’t love her like that anymore. That soft crap was gone. The hand-holding, wedding-vow, die-for-you garbage. Human Dean could keep all that. Dean wasn’t sitting around missing candlelight or pillow talk or that look she gave him when she thought he was still good underneath.

Screw that. He didn’t want to be fixed. He didn’t want her telling him he was sick, or Sam looking at him with that kicked-puppy face and talking about cures.

But her love?

That was fun.

She loved him so much she couldn’t think straight when he was in the room. She loved him so much she followed him even after he dropped Sam. She aimed a gun at him with both hands shaking and still needed him to make the call.

His wife loved him so much he could stand in front of her with someone else’s blood on his hands, and she’d still search his face for her husband.

That was devotion. That was power and she had handed it to him. Just like that. The only irritating part was the burn.

Because she was his.

And Dean wanted her.

That was where everything kept jamming up. He wanted his hands on his wife. Wanted her under him, over him, against him. Wanted her breathing hard, trying to hate how much she still reacted. Wanted her mouth, her thighs, her hands grabbing at him because, for one second, she forgot she was supposed to be scared.

Yeah, he wanted that part where she stopped thinking. Always his favorite.

And now he couldn’t touch her.

Every time he thought about that, he wanted to break something. So he did. Trashed a motel room one night just because there wasn’t anybody around worth hitting. Broke the mirror, smashed a chair through the TV, tore the place apart until his knuckles were bloody and healed again.

Didn’t help.

Cheap girls didn’t help. Drinking didn’t help. Porn didn’t help. The fights got boring. Even the fear started tasting the same.

His mind kept going back to her.

Every damn time.

So he started calling. At first, it was funny. Just a little game. Let the phone ring once, maybe twice in the middle of the night. Hang up before she could answer. Picture her jolting awake, scared and hopeful, reaching for the phone with his side of the bed cold beside her.

Yeah, that was good. But then she called back and that changed things.

The first time he heard her voice through the line, rough with sleep and fear, Dean had to close his eyes. That pissed him off, too, because it worked on him. Not in some sad, soft way. It didn’t make him want to apologize or crawl back home and beg her to forgive him.

Fuck that.

No, it made him want to be there. In the room with her. In their bed. Close enough to watch her say his name with that crack in her voice. Close enough to see if she’d reach for him before she remembered she shouldn’t.

So he said nothing.

Let her ask who it was. Let her breathe too hard into the phone. Let her finally whisper his name. Dean didn’t answer. He just listened. And well… maybe he enjoyed that more than he should have.

He knew they’d been chasing him for three weeks.

Sam, because Sam was predictable as hell. He’d hunt until he dropped. Make that tight, miserable face and talk about saving Dean because Sammy never knew when to quit. Charlie helped for sure. Eileen too, trying to keep Sam from losing it. Cas probably hovered around being useless, feeling guilty.

Dean let the whole Scooby gang catch enough to keep them moving. Left crumbs when it suited him. Let them get close, then walked away. Again and again.

But all he wanted was to get his wife away from them.

Dean wanted her alone. With him. Long enough to stop focusing on a pointless cure and admit she still wanted him. Even like this. Especially like this. She admitted once, a long time ago, she had a thing for dangerous Dean. Well, it didn't get more dangerous than this.

He just needed to figure out how to shut that damn burn off, because Dean was done watching from a distance. Done listening to her voice through a phone. Done pretending any woman who wasn’t her was worth his time.

He smiled behind the wheel of a stolen car and turned toward the gas station ahead.

Time to pick up his wife.

He waited until Sam got out of the car.

His wife sat in the passenger seat with the laptop open across her knees, head down, working hard. Probably blaming herself for every bad thing Dean had done since he walked out of the bunker.

Yeah. This was gonna be fun.

Dean watched from the side of the building, out of view of the pumps and the store windows. Sam went inside to pay for gas and that was all Dean needed.

He slid in behind the wheel and shut the door. She didn't even look up. He was right beside her and she had no damn clue.

He took one second to look at her before she noticed. She looked tired as hell. Pale, dark circles under her eyes. Hair pulled back too tight. His ring still on her finger.

Dean smiled.

Then he turned the key.

Impala woke up under his hands with that familiar rumble and his smile got wider because she still didn’t look up.

Eyes moving fast over the screen, one hand near the trackpad, the other resting against the side of the laptop. He could see the tension in her shoulders, the stubborn set of her mouth. Even worn down, she was still working the problem. Still trying to find him. That was that devotion again. Right there. Stupid and dangerous, making her careless because she was too busy trying to save the guy she married.

Adorable, really.

Dean let his eyes drag over her slowly. The FBI fit was a test of his goddamn willpower. The white shirt was holding on for dear life, buttons straining, fabric pulled tight across her chest. Dark slacks hugged her thighs where the laptop rested. She had probably thrown the outfit on without the second thought. To look official while they ran around the crime scene.

Dean wanted to haul her across the seat and ruin the whole crisp little fed suit. Ruin her. He had missed that body more than he wanted to admit and now it was sitting inches away from him.

His fingers tightened on the wheel. The burn was the only thing stopping him. The fact that if he grabbed her now, she might scorch half his damn skin off before they made it out of the parking lot.

Fucking annoying.

He bit his bottom lip hard enough to feel the sting, dragged his eyes back up, and finally gave her the courtesy of letting her know their little game had changed.

‘Hey, sweetheart.’

Her whole body went still. Just for a split second.

Then her head snapped up fast enough for him to see the shock hit. Her eyes went wide. The last bit of color drained out of her face, and Dean watched fear kick through. Then disbelief.

He stayed relaxed behind the wheel, one hand resting low, the other near the gearshift. Her gaze moved over his face before she could stop herself. She took in the hair, the scruff, his hands. Took him in sitting there in his own damn car, grinning at her, and he saw the exact second her panic got tangled with something messier.

Dean caught that, of course.

Fear was there, a lot of it. Smart. He was dangerous, and she knew it. But her eyes dropped to his mouth, and he could tell by the way her lips pressed together right after… she hated that she looked.

Yeah, she definitely liked what she saw. He always knew when she liked what she saw.

Dean’s grin sharpened.

Her hand twitched toward the door and he didn’t move to stop her. He didn't have to.

She looked toward the store. Toward the open lot outside the windshield. He could practically see the thoughts lining up in that big brain of hers. Open the door. Scream for Sam. Burn him if he grabbed her. Maybe jump out before he pulled away. Good plan, a real solid hunter move.

She didn’t do any of it.

Because she had been searching for him for three weeks, and now he was right there. Because she wasn’t stupid enough to throw away the first real shot she’d had since he walked out of the bunker.

Dean looked at her and smirked. ‘How ’bout we go for a ride?’

She didn’t answer. Her throat moved when she swallowed.

Dean kept his eyes on hers for another beat, because he wanted her to know exactly what was happening. ‘Just you and me.’

Then he shifted into reverse and backed the Impala away from the pump.

That finally broke something loose in her. ‘Dean.’

God, that voice. Rough from exhaustion. Careful as hell. Trying so hard not to shake.

‘What are you doing?’

Dean turned the wheel, eased Baby toward the exit, and smiled at the road.

‘Oh, whatever I want.’

Her breathing changed. Just a little. Not enough for a human to catch. Human Dean probably would’ve missed it too, busy being torn up about feelings.

But now, Dean caught everything.

Her eyes flicked toward the gas station doors again. Of course, Sam was still inside. Dean didn’t even look. Didn’t care enough to. What he cared about was having her eyes back on him. He liked them there. And three weeks of watching from a distance had made him meaner about it. He wanted her looking. Wanted her scared, wanted her mad. Wanted all that attention aimed at him where it fucking should be.

In the rearview mirror, the station door burst open. Sam came running out, face going slack with panic when he saw the Impala moving. Poor Sammy. Always a step too late and making the same pathetic expression every damn time.

His wife turned in the seat, looking back through the rear window.

‘Sam,’ she breathed.

Dean gave the gas a little more pressure.

The engine opened up and the car surged forward fast. Sam ran, chasing them for a few useless seconds. Dean watched him in the mirror, long legs rushing through the lot, one hand already reaching for his phone. He shouted something Dean couldn’t hear. Then he slowed. Stopped. Stood there in the lot, getting smaller by the second.

Dean chuckled. ‘Attaboy.’

Her phone buzzed almost immediately.

Dean held out his hand, palm up, eyes on the road. ‘Your phone.’

She didn’t move. The phone buzzed again.

His fingers curled once in the air. ‘Sweetheart?’

Dean glanced over. She had pulled it from her pocket, and Sam’s name lit up the screen. Her thumb hovered close, but she didn’t answer. She looked at Dean instead, fear tighter now.

He could see the defiance sit under the fear. Small, stubborn, right in her eyes. She knew the phone mattered. She knew why he wanted it. And she didn't want to give it up easily.

‘Give me the damn phone!’

The snap of his voice made her flinch. His mouth twitched, because he didn’t care. She wanted to play tough, she could deal with him running short on patience.

She chewed the inside of her cheek. Weighing her options. Then she slapped the phone into his palm, hard. And made damn sure her fingers dragged across his skin when she did it.

Pain shot through his hand, hot and mean. His palm hissed. Smoke curled up between his fingers for half a second before the contact broke. Dean’s grip tightened around the phone, and his jaw clenched before he could stop it.

Son of a bitch.

She watched him, chin lifted, eyes bright with terrified satisfaction.

Dean laughed under his breath, flexing his burned fingers around the phone. The skin was already stitching itself back together, but the sting stayed long enough to piss him off. And turn him on at the same time.

So that was how she wanted to play.

‘Good girl.’

Her expression twisted.

Dean crushed the phone in his fist. Plastic cracked, glass popped. The screen shattered inward, buzzing once in a pathetic little rattle before going dark. He rolled down the window and tossed the pieces out onto the road.

She watched them scatter behind the car. For one second, her face slipped. Fear came up again, sharp and real. She looked out the windshield, then toward the side mirror. Tracking the route. Counting turns. Trying to figure out where Sam was behind them and how long before he got a car.

Dean could almost respect it.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked, jaw flexing.

Dean didn’t answer. Silence bothered her more. He knew it would.

She shifted in the seat, anger taking over. Good. He always liked her with some fire in her. Her breathing had picked up again, and that damn shirt was still doing its best to keep his attention.

Dean forced his eyes back to the road.

She stayed quiet for a while.

Not because she had nothing to say. Dean knew better. Her mouth was tight, her hands clenched around the laptop, and her pulse jumped at her neck. She was holding back. He could almost see her building and rebuilding the plan. If she jumped out, she got hurt. If she burned him, he might crash the car. If she pushed too hard, Dean might disappear again.

That was the part holding her still. He knew it. She knew it.

She wasn’t backing down because she trusted him. No, she was doing it because leaving meant losing him all over again.

Dean dragged his teeth over his bottom lip, because damn if that didn’t work for him.

He reached over and closed the laptop with two fingers. His arm passed close enough that her breath hitched and she jerked it away from his reach. His eyes flicked down. That shirt pulled tighter, the fabric straining across her boobs with the sudden movement. His grip tightened on the wheel until the old leather creaked.

‘Put that in the back.’

‘It’s not connected to anything because you crushed my fucking phone,' she mouthed off. That pleased him more than it should have.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘And I also told you to put the damn thing in the back.’

She didn’t move fast enough.

Dean let the smile drop.

‘Now.’

That did it. Her eyes flicked to his face, and this time she must have seen something there she didn’t want to push. She turned carefully, set the laptop on the back seat, then faced front again with both hands in her lap.

Dean glanced down.

‘Look at you,’ he said with a little smirk. ‘Still wearing the ring.’

Her left hand tightened before she looked down. Then she covered it with her right.

Dean huffed a quiet laugh. ‘That’s cute.’

Her gaze moved to his hands on the wheel.

He flexed his left hand, letting her see the bare finger. No ring. He hadn’t really thrown it away, he just didn’t need it on his hand. Didn’t need the silver and her blood sitting there pretending they meant the same thing now.

Her face cracked for one second before she forced it down.

‘Aw,’ he said, smiling. ‘You don’t like that, do you?’

She stared out the windshield.

Dean leaned back, one hand loose on the wheel. ‘I can hear your breathing change, sweetheart. It's, uh, cute little tell you’ve got there.’

‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked again, voice firmer now.

She was pulling herself back together. He could practically see her trying to keep her breathing under control.

‘Already told you. For a ride.’

She turned toward him, lifting her hand a few inches between them, palm angled toward him. A warning. Her fingers were steady enough to look almost impressive.

‘I won’t ask again.’

Dean glanced at her hand, then back at the road.

‘Or what? Hm? You gonna touch me?' he smiled, flashing his black eyes. 'Go ahead, make a move. See how it ends.’

He expected her to recoil at that. She didn't. Her hand stayed there.

Brave little act, sure. But now it was kinda starting to get on his nerves. Also making his blood heat in a way that had nothing to do with rage.

‘You still think your touch scares me?’ he asked. ‘That’s great.’

He checked the mirror, took the next turn with easy speed, and watched the empty road ahead.

Every second sitting this close to her was starting to grind under his skin. She smelled the same. That was the real problem. Same shampoo, same skin, same warm, sweet scent. Close enough to touch and still completely out of reach.

Three weeks of cheap liquor and even cheaper women, and now she was right there.

He wanted his hand on her knee. Wanted his fingers under that shirt, popping those buttons one by one because they were already fighting a losing battle. Wanted to lay her down on the bench seat and remind her how fast he could make her stop thinking.

His palm still stung from the phone, reminding him her magic sat between them like a goddamn wall.

Dean flexed his burned fingers around the wheel and smiled because the alternative was putting his fist through the dash.

‘Look, we both know you ain’t gonna do it. Not while you still think your Dean’s coming back.’

Her mouth tightened.

‘The only reason I’m holding back,’ she said through her teeth, ‘is because I don’t want to accidentally kill you.'

‘Uh-huh.’

‘But believe me, I have no problem hurting you.’

Dean’s smile widened. Because that right there, that was something worth playing with.

‘Yeah, I bet you don’t,’ he said. ‘Gun worked just fine, right?’

Yep, perfect hit.

Her reaction was exactly what he expected. Anger dropped out of her face so fast it was almost funny. Pain was there now, real pain. She tried to hide it by turning toward the window, jaw tight, one hand curling against her thigh.

Dean remembered the sound of that shot like it had happened five minutes ago. He had pushed and pushed until she broke, and part of him still liked knowing he could do that.

‘That one still keeping you up?’ he asked, knowing damn well what he was doing to her.

She didn't answer right away, just kept staring at the road outside. Then she looked at him slowly.

‘Fuck you.’

Her eyes flashed and for a second, he thought she might actually touch him. Slap him, burn him, make him swerve straight off the damn road. And part of him wanted her to. Part of him wanted her to stop pretending she was nice and sweet, and finally hit back.

Instead, she curled the hand on her thigh tighter. She breathed in through her nose, slow, careful. Trying to calm down, to hold herself back. Dean watched the way her chest rose and hated the goddamn shirt again.

The want came up hard enough to make his teeth clench. He wanted to grab the back of her neck and make her look up at him.

He didn’t.

Couldn’t.

Because of the fucking magic.

Dean turned down another road. Less traffic now, fewer houses, more trees crowding the edge of the pavement. He knew where he was going. Had picked the place a couple days ago. Sam wouldn’t find it fast. Cas might not find it at all if Dean got the angel proofing right.

She noticed the turn and her posture changed. Shoulders tighter. Right hand moving toward the door again, very slow this time.

‘Relax,’ he said and his voice came out a little strained. Dean forced his hand loose on the wheel before the leather cracked under his grip. ‘I’m not gonna hurt you.’

She scoffed, but there was no humor in it. ‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘I’m serious.’ He glanced at her, voice dropping. ‘If I wanted you dead, sweetheart, you wouldn’t be sitting there glaring at me.’

She swallowed. Then her eyes narrowed, because the road closed in ahead. Dean slowed just enough to take the turn, then cut the wheel hard onto a smaller road half-hidden between trees.

‘Then what do you want?’

Dean smiled again. He heard the shake under the words. She tried hard to bury it under anger. She always did that when she was scared and trying not to give anyone the satisfaction.

‘I want my wife,’ he said simply.

That made her flinch again.

Then she straightened, pulling herself back together.

‘Your wife is sitting right here,’ she said carefully. ‘So what happens now?’

Dean’s smile sharpened, but he said nothing. Instead, he turned his attention back to the road, because staring at her too long was making the hunger worse. She kept breathing too hard and he could hear every damn rise of her chest. He knew the difference between fear and wanting. Knew her body too well to buy the whole act.

Gravel cracked under the tires. The road behind them vanished fast, swallowed by the woods and the low growl of the engine. She looked out the windshield, then back at him, alarm rising fast now.

The trees closed in around them, thick and dark on both sides of the narrow road. Branches scraped along the car. Beside him, she grabbed the edge of the seat, eyes wide.

Dean kept one hand on the wheel and watched her from the corner of his eye.

She was scared now. Really scared.

Dean smiled and drove them deeper into the woods.

Every part of your body was screaming at you to do something.

Burn him. Grab him. Throw yourself out of the car and run for your life before he got you anywhere farther from Sam, farther from cameras and witnesses.

But your mind wouldn’t let you.

You had spent three weeks trying to find him. Three weeks staring at security footage until your eyes burned, chasing dead ends, listening to silent calls in the middle of the night, trying to push through grief and terror. And now he was here. Right next to you. Driving with one hand on the wheel and that awful smile on his face, taking you God knows where, while the broken pieces of your phone were scattered somewhere on the road behind you.

You couldn’t screw this up by panicking.

That was always how it went, wasn’t it? You thought you could fix something by acting fast, by throwing yourself into the worst part of the situation and trusting that courage would carry you through. Then it turned into something complicated and even more dangerous.

So no. You had to be smart.

You were scared out of your damn mind, of course you were. You were trapped in a car with a demon. You knew what demons were, what they did. What he had done.

Still, he had not killed you. He hadn’t even hurt you, not physically at least. He had crushed your phone, mocked you, scared you, and pushed every painful button he could reach, but he had still kept both hands to himself. That meant he needed something from you. Dean wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of taking you from under Sam’s nose just to leave a body in the woods. He wouldn’t risk Sam following, wouldn’t risk your magic against his skin unless there was a reason.

That was the part that made your blood boil.

He knew you wouldn’t hurt him unless you had no choice, and that every time you imagined using your hands on him like that, something inside you twisted. It made you so angry you almost wanted to hurt him just to wipe that certainty off his face.

But your husband was still inside him. Somewhere. Twisted, trapped, whatever the hell happened to his soul down there. And if you wanted to bring him home, if you wanted to cure him, you needed to be careful.

That didn’t mean seeing him drive you deeper into the forest wasn’t freaking you the hell out.

You had no idea what he was planning or why he had suddenly decided to come after you now. It sure as hell wasn’t love. You doubted demons loved anything besides saving their own filthy skins.

And power.

They loved power. You had learned that the hard way. With Abaddon, with Crowley, with every black-eyed son of a bitch that had ever smiled while trying to tear someone apart from the inside out.

So maybe that was what this was. Power.

This demonic version of your husband wanted control, and who better to practice on than his wife? The woman who still wore his ring, who could burn demons alive but couldn’t burn him without losing sleep over it?

Your hands curled around the edge of the seat. If he thought you were going to bow down and do whatever the hell he wanted, he was in for a rough ride.

At least, that was what you kept telling yourself while trying to ignore the insane fear blooming in your chest.

The road had barely been a road for the last few minutes. Gravel and dirt crunched under the tires, branches scraping against the Impala’s windows and roof with soft, ugly sounds that made your skin crawl. Baby was built for highways, back roads, long drives with music too loud and Dean’s hand warm on your thigh. She was not supposed to be here, carrying you deeper into a place where no one could see what happened next.

Trees pressed in on both sides, thick enough to block most of the fading light, and your pulse jumped again.

You hated that, so much, because apparently Dean could hear it now. Or sense it, or whatever creepy demon thing he had been using since he got into the car. He caught every hitch in your breathing, every time your body betrayed you by reacting to him, because he looked good. Terrifying, sure, but incredibly hot.

God, that part made you want to crawl out of your own skin.

Your husband had become the same thing that destroyed your family. The thing your great-grandfather had sacrificed himself to protect his wife and child from. The thing your bloodline had been built to burn.

And still your heart kicked too hard every time your body remembered how big and strong and confident he was beside you.

Fucking disgrace.

You forced your fingers to uncurl from the seat.

You were going to pull yourself together. You were going to focus on getting Dean back. You were going to keep him from hurting anyone else.

You were going to keep him from hurting you.

Dean made a slow turn through the trees, careful enough that it told you he had been here before. The road dipped, then climbed slightly, and the branches parted just enough for you to see the cabin ahead.

It was small, old, beat-up, with dark windows and a porch that looked one heavy step away from giving out. It was nothing like the lodge your great-grandfather had left you by the lake. This looked closer to the places Sam and Dean had been forced to use after Bobby’s house burned down.

Your throat tightened.

Dean rolled the Impala to a stop right in front of it and shut the engine off. The sudden silence pressed hard against your ears.

For a second, you couldn’t move. Your eyes stayed fixed on the cabin, trying to make sense of it. Part of you had expected this the moment he turned into the woods, because of course he wouldn’t take you somewhere public.

That still didn’t tell you what he wanted.

‘I know what you’re thinkin’.’

Dean's voice snapped you out of it, low and close enough to make your shoulders tense.

You turned your head to look at him.

He was already watching you. Leaned back in the driver's seat, his body angled toward you now, one arm draped over the wheel. His mouth curved with lazy satisfaction.

‘I’m not gonna rip your throat out and bury the body behind the shack.’

His eyes moved over you slowly. He caught his bottom lip between his teeth, and the look on his face made heat crawl up your neck despite the cold fear in your gut.

‘I might bite, though.’

Anger snapped through you so fast you almost snarled at him. He looked so pleased with himself. So careless and full of himself, making jokes while your pulse was still trying to beat its way through your throat.

Then the practical part of your brain finally caught up and you realized…

He wasn’t driving anymore.

The engine was off. The keys were still there. The wheel was right there.

You could threaten him. Burn him just enough to force him back. Incapacitate him, maybe. Get behind the wheel. Drive straight back to the bunker, lock him down, and start the cure before he had time to disappear again.

You didn’t give yourself time to think it through.

You threw yourself across the seat at him.

The space was tight. Your knee landed hard against his thigh, your ass slammed into the steering wheel, and the edge of the seat dug into you sharply enough to hurt. You didn’t care. One hand braced against the backrest behind his shoulder, and you forced yourself over him, straddling him awkwardly in the driver’s seat before he had time to react.

For once, Dean’s eyes went wide.

Not from pain or strain under your weight.

From pure shock.

For one glorious second, you had caught him off guard.

That gave you the opening.

You shoved your forearm under his jaw, pressing it hard against his throat and forcing his head back against the seat. Your sleeve kept your skin from touching his directly, which meant you weren’t burning him yet. Your fist stayed close to the side of his neck, bare knuckles barely an inch from his skin.

You leaned over him, breathing hard, face almost level with his.

‘Enough,’ you growled and your voice almost didn’t sound like yours.

Dean stared up at you. No smirk now.

‘If you think you can toy with me,’ you said, pressing your forearm harder into his throat, ‘if you think you can just kidnap me and I’ll follow like some lovesick puppy, you’re out of your damn mind.’

Dean stayed completely silent. His eyes were locked on yours.

You were shaking now, but rage made it easier to hide.

‘I will burn the fuck out of you.’

The words came fast, pulled out of grief and loss and every sleepless night, every nightmare, every silent call, every crime scene, every second you spent staring at his empty side of the bed, wondering what he was doing.

‘I swear to God, Dean, I will do it. I will cut my skin open and bleed on you if I have to, and trust me, that will hurt worse than anything you have ever felt.’ Your breath dragged through your teeth. ‘So unless you want to find out exactly how much of you I can burn off before you stop healing, you’re going to move your black-eyed ass out of the driver’s seat and let me take you home.’

You held him there.

Your forearm stayed hard against his throat. Your fist hovered close to his skin. Your heart slammed so violently you were sure he could hear it. His eyes sharpened under you.

Then his hands came up slowly and stopped at your sides, hovering just inches from your body. Not touching. Close enough that you could feel the heat of him through your shirt and the space between you. For one second, you braced for him to grab you.

He didn’t.

Heat started building under your sleeve where your arm pinned his neck. The fabric softened the burn, but it didn’t block it. Your magic pushed through anyway, and Dean’s jaw tightened just enough to tell you he felt it.

Good. Let him.

You expected him to fight. To throw you off. To slam you into the dash or grab your wrist and twist until something broke. You were ready for it. Terrified, but ready. If he hurt you, you would stop holding back.

But instead, his eyes narrowed.

His lips parted, and the tip of his tongue pressed briefly against his teeth.

Then the amusement came back. Slow. Awful.

Dean's hands lifted a little higher in mock surrender, smile spreading.

‘Oh, baby,’ he said, voice rough around the pressure on his throat, ‘I’m right where I wanna be.’

His eyes dropped.

You followed the look before you could stop yourself.

The sudden lunge had popped several buttons on your shirt free, leaving your bra and the heavy swell of your breasts exposed in the narrow space between you. Right in his line of sight.

‘Fuck,’ you snapped under your breath.

Heat rushed into your face, but you refused to move. This was not the time. You were not going to let him make you flustered enough to retreat.

You opened your mouth to repeat the demand. One last warning before things got ugly.

Then you felt him. Hard. Pressed right up against you where you were straddling his lap.

The realization hit so sharply that your hand almost slipped from its place near his throat.

Your face burned hotter. You were straddling him, threatening to burn him alive, and apparently this just counted as goddamn foreplay to him. Your whole body went rigid, heat rushing into places you should not be thinking about right now.

Dean felt you freeze. His smile turned filthy.

For one stupid second, embarrassment lowered your guard.

That was all he needed.

He moved with a strength you weren’t prepared for, even after everything you knew. One moment you had him pinned under your arm, and the next his hands closed on your waist, burning under the fabric as he hauled you off him and shoved you down across the front bench seat.

Air punched out of your lungs.

Your back hit the old vinyl upholstery. Your hip slammed against the edge of the seat. Before you could get your hand up, Dean was over you, one knee braced between yours, one hand planted near your ribs, the other gripping your shoulder, pinning you in place.

The fabric kept him from direct skin, but the burn still flared between you. You smelled it almost immediately. His skin blistering under his own grip. His jaw clenched, eyes black now, but he didn’t let go.

He leaned over you with a smile that made your chest seize.

‘You wanna play hunter with me?’ he asked, voice low and dangerous. ‘Fine. We can play all you want.’

You tried to twist under him. His grip tightened, and the burn got worse. Still, he didn’t move.

‘But if you keep pushin', sweetheart, eventually I’m gonna push back.’

You shoved against him with your forearm, trying to get enough space to bring your bare hand up. He shifted his weight down before you could, trapping your arm between your bodies. You kicked once, knee scraping against the underside of the dash, and he pressed his hips down harder to stop you.

Your breath caught.

You hated the tiny pull that answered low in your stomach. Hated it so much it made your eyes burn.

‘Get off me,’ you forced out.

Dean’s eyes dropped to your mouth, then back to your face. His smile widened just enough to tell you he had felt the change in your body.

The burn was getting worse. His jaw clenched, and a faint tremor moved through his fingers, but he still didn’t let go.

Then his expression shifted. The amusement faded. His eyes dropped to his hands, to the red, ruined skin already trying to heal, and for the first time since he pinned you, irritation cut clean through.

‘I want my wife,’ he said, quieter now. ‘Your magic’s gettin’ in the damn way.’

Your heart kicked.

The reason he had brought you here was suddenly clear, and it made your stomach turn.

Dean’s eyes came back to yours.

‘So now you’re gonna be a good little pet,’ he said, every word deliberate, ‘get out of the car, get inside the damn cabin, and handle it.’

Your mouth had gone dry.

You had known he needed something. You had known there had to be a reason he took you alive, a reason he called, a reason he played this game for three weeks and then finally came for you himself.

He wanted your protection gone. He wanted access to you without the burn.

Your voice scraped out of your throat. ‘How?’

Dean stared at you for a beat, then slowly pulled his hands away from your body. He still didn’t let you up. His palms braced against the seat on either side of you.

He was looking down at you with black eyes, his face hovering above yours so close you could see your own stunned expression in them.

‘I’m sure that big brain of yours can figure it out,’ he said. ‘But you’re not leavin’ this place until I can touch you.’

A/N: I hope I made Dean’s motivation clear enough. I was really trying to capture the obsession and the wanting, not him needing his wife because of some deep love he still feels for her. Also, I know it seems like she’s not burning him as badly as she burns other demons, and yes, I do have a theory for that too. Don’t worry.

Anyway, I struggled with this so much I almost dropped the whole story. The excitement kind of gave way to frustration because I just couldn’t get what was in my head down on the page the right way. Well… I guess that happens sometimes.

CHAPTER 9 here

Tag list:

@tinysnacklefan @spacepl4ant @ladysparkles78 @foxyjwls007 @mbinvisible @freddiemcn @alliwantisanimeandfood-blog

Story tags: Demon!Dean, Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Action, Violence, Angst, Drama, Blood Magic, Blood play, Smut, Rough sex, Emotional strain, Moral conflict, POV Dean Winchester, Canon Divergence, Married Dean Winchester, POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

A/N: I hope this one won’t be too boring for you.

It took you three weeks to find Dean.

Considering you were tracking Dean Winchester, especially the version of him that did not want to be found, that was almost impressive.

The first week gave you nothing. No trace, no credit cards, no sightings that matched. No motel clerks who remembered him, no bartenders who looked at the picture on your phone and nodded. It was like he had walked out of the bunker and disappeared from the planet completely.

Which made sense, really. Dean knew how hunters tracked people. He knew every method Sam would use, every database you could tap into, every place you would think to check first. He knew how to disappear better than anyone you had ever met, and whatever came back in his body had all that knowledge without any guilt holding him back.

Then the second week started, and the silence broke. The bodies started to show up.

A man beaten half to death behind a bar. A bartender who swore the guy responsible had black eyes and a smile that made her skin crawl. A gas station camera catching the side of Dean’s face for half a second before the feed cut out. A motel room trashed so badly the owner called the cops before he checked the register. Injured strangers. Broken cameras. Bodies left behind with the kind of cold violence that made your stomach turn every time Charlie sent another file.

You learned quickly what became of your husband when his humanity was gone.

You also learned he was enjoying himself.

That was the part you tried not to think about too long, because if you let your mind sit with it, you felt something inside you tear wider. Dean was out there, hurting people, drinking, fighting, moving from place to place with no remorse and no hurry, while you ran on panic and too little sleep, and with the gunshot still echoing in your hands.

Every lead came too late. Every dead end felt like him laughing at you from somewhere far away.

Then he made a mistake.

Or maybe arrogance finally got the better of him. Maybe he thought you wouldn’t be able to follow him that far. Maybe he thought you wouldn’t be stupid enough to go after him after what happened in the bunker. Or maybe he wanted you to find him, because he was bored. Because he wanted to prove, one more time, that you only got close when he let you.

He used his real name.

A low-end motel registration system, two states away from the last bloody mess he left behind. Charlie’s tripwire caught it within minutes.

And that was where you went. Because you were going to get your husband back. No matter what it took.

The car ride was almost completely silent. Sam drove with both hands on the wheel, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the road. You sat beside him with a flask of holy water in one pocket, demon cuffs tucked under your jacket, and your hands folded together in your lap because if you let them move, they started shaking.

Neither of you said much. There was nothing useful to say. This was the mission now. The only mission that mattered. You both knew that.

Your body had gone past fear and into something harder. Colder. This time, you wouldn’t hesitate.

That was what you kept telling yourself.

You would do what you had to do. You would get close enough, burn him if you had to. You would use holy water, cuffs, traps, your magic, anything that stopped him long enough to start the cure. You had done hard things before. You had bled for spells, tortured demons. You had died for Sam. You had shot your husband in the chest.

You could do this.

You had to.

The plan was straightforward. You would wait until Dean was in his room, then go in alone.

Sam hated that part, so much he argued with you for almost an hour in the car. You argued back, because your hands were still your best chance. Dean knew that too, which meant he would be careful, but your touch was still stronger than anything Sam had. And some naive, desperate part of you kept hoping he would be less willing to hurt you than he had been willing to hurt Sam.

You felt stupid for hoping it.

Sam would wait outside the entrance. If Dean bolted, he would be there. If you managed to get the cuffs on him, Sam would come in. If things went bad, he would hear it.

It was a terrible plan, you knew that. But it was the only one you had.

The clerk at the reception desk was more than happy to point you toward the right room for a decent amount of cash. His eyes lingered on you a little too long, probably because you looked like you hadn’t slept in days. You didn’t really care.

The corridor smelled like old carpet, stale smoke, and cheap cleaning products. Your pulse climbed higher with every step.

Room 14.

The number sat crooked on the door.

Your stomach dropped when you reached it. Because the door was open. Just slightly. A thin strip of light waited between the frame and the edge.

Your hand tightened around the flask in your pocket.

‘No need to knock,’ Dean’s voice came from inside. ‘Just come in.’

The entertainment in his voice sent a wave of cold shivers through you.

Arrogant. Relaxed.

Waiting for you.

You felt Sam stop behind you, far enough back to keep to the plan, but you knew every instinct in him was screaming to shove past you.

You didn’t look back at him. There was no point turning around now. You took one breath, pulled the flask free, and stepped inside.

Dean was right there.

He was sprawled in a chair near the small motel table, one boot hooked against the leg, a bottle of beer loose in one hand. His jacket hung over the back of the chair. His hair was a little longer than it had been when he walked out of the bunker. He looked rested. Clean. Alive in a way that made something inside you ache so badly you almost forgot what he was.

His eyes were green when they landed on you. The smirk that welcomed you was easy and cold.

‘Took you long enough,’ he said.

He put the bottle down and stood slowly.

You hated the way your body reacted to that before your mind could stop it. He was tall and broad and so painfully handsome that looking at him still took your breath away, even after everything. Even now. Even knowing what he had done.

You forced yourself to focus. This was not your husband waiting for you in a motel room. This was a predator wearing the face of the man you loved.

‘How did you-’

‘You kiddin’ me?’ Dean huffed a laugh. ‘You think you’d find me if I didn’t want you to, sweetheart?’

The name landed exactly where he wanted it to. You braced yourself and took one step closer.

‘Why?’

Dean shrugged. ‘Figured it was time to finish this game.’

He raised both hands in mock surrender, that smirk still sitting on his mouth.

‘So come on. Show me what you got.’

Then his eyes went black.

Your pulse kicked.

Dean’s grin widened.

‘Oh, unless…’ His gaze dropped deliberately to your hands. ‘You wanna give the gun another go.’

He tapped his chest a few times, right where you had shot him.

Your stomach turned hard.

Your hands remembered the recoil. Your ears remembered the shot. Your body remembered Dean staggering back with blood spreading across his shirt while he smiled like you just handed him a gift.

You knew what he was doing. He was trying to make you nervous.

You couldn’t let him.

You took the flask from your pocket and threw the holy water at him before he could say another word. It hit him across the chest and neck.

Dean snarled.

The sound was rough and furious, almost more animal than human, and steam rose from his skin where the water soaked through his shirt. His body jerked back, one hand slamming against the table hard enough to make the beer bottle tip and roll off the edge. It shattered on the floor.

You moved.

The cuffs were already in your hand as you rushed him. Dean shook off the first wave of pain fast, too fast, and turned on you with black eyes and a terrifying grin.

‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about!’

You didn’t answer.

You grabbed his wrist. His skin burned under your hand immediately, the smell of it cutting through the cheap motel room air. Dean’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t cry out this time. You slapped one cuff around his wrist and heard it click shut.

For half a second, hope punched through you so hard it almost hurt.

One cuff. You had one cuff on him. You just needed the other.

Dean’s free hand caught the chain before you could pull it around.

He stepped in. Too close.

Your back hit the wall beside the bed, and the impact stole the air from your lungs. You tried to pull the second cuff toward his free wrist, but Dean’s cuffed hand shot up fast, dragging the short chain with it.

You couldn’t let go of the other cuff. That was the only reason he didn’t simply tear away from you and run. The metal was still your one piece of control, the one stupid, fragile advantage you had managed to get on him. At least that was what you kept telling yourself.

So when his cuffed hand shot upward, you held on.

Your arm went with it.

The chain snapped tight, yanking your hand above your head hard enough to make your shoulder flare with pain. Your free hand slapped against the wall on instinct, palm flat on the smooth surface to keep yourself upright.

For one second, you were pinned there by your own refusal to let go.

Dean knew better than to touch your skin. But he didn’t need to touch you to trap you. He stepped in until there was almost nothing left between you. His body crowded yours, big and solid, blocking the room, blocking the door, blocking the plan you had barely managed to hold together in your head. He kept his cuffed hand raised while his other hand stayed just out of reach.

You could burn him.

You knew that.

Your free hand was right there, pressed to the wall beside you. You could move it. You could slap it against his throat, his face, his chest, anything. You could make him scream.

But he leaned over you slowly, close enough that your body betrayed you again. Heat rose under your skin, unwanted and humiliating, because your own body did not understand the difference fast enough. For one horrible second, underneath the fear and the adrenaline and the smell of holy water burning through his shirt, there was something else. Something you should not have been capable of feeling right now.

Dean noticed.

His mouth curved.

He dipped his head lower, close enough that his breath brushed your cheek, and took one slow breath in through his nose. He was taking you in.

Your stomach clenched, and not from fear alone. That realization hit hard enough to make you hate yourself for it.

His black eyes stayed on your face, watching every flicker, every little failure of control.

‘That all you brought?’ he asked, voice low. ‘Holy water and some hardware?’

Your grip tightened on the loose cuff until the edge bit into your palm.

You needed to move. Needed to burn him. Needed to throw your knee up, twist free, do anything except stand there with your arm pinned above your head while your husband’s demon leaned over you like that.

But then his gaze dropped.

Lower.

At first, you thought he was looking at your free hand. Then you realized your shirt had shifted during the struggle. The neckline had pulled aside just enough for the top of your scar to show.

The scar. The only one Heaven had left behind. The place where your own knife had gone in when you died in that church so Sam could live.

Dean’s eyes fixed on it and everything in you went still.

His expression changed. Not much. But you saw it because you knew that face better than any face in the world. His mouth loosened, the cruel curve faded. His brows pulled together just a little.

Your breath turned shallow.

The black in his eyes vanished. Green looked back at you.

Dean’s green.

Your whole body forgot the cuff in your hand.

His cuffed hand came down slowly. He didn’t touch you. His fingers hovered over the scar, close enough that you felt the heat of him without contact.

Your eyes burned.

There. There it was.

You felt it so strongly that your knees nearly gave.

This was Dean. Your Dean. Buried somewhere under all of it, trapped under black eyes and cruelty and whatever Hell had done when Ramiel killed him. He remembered. He saw the scar and he remembered the church. He remembered you dying. He remembered what it meant. He was still there.

You had reached him.

You could cure him.

You could bring him home.

His eyes lifted from the scar to your face.

Then he whispered your name. Softly. Just once.

It went straight through you.

For one second, you thought he was going to say something else.

Then the knife hit.

No warning. No draw of weapon you could track. No time to move back or bring your hands up. Just Dean’s arm moving fast and the blade slamming into the place where his eyes had been fixed a second before. Right into your heart.

The pain stole every bit of air from your lungs.

You looked down.

His hand was wrapped around the handle. The scar was gone under fresh blood.

Your fingers closed around his wrist on instinct. His skin burned under your palm, smoke curling between you, but he didn’t pull away. He only leaned closer, close enough that all you could see when your eyes lifted again were his.

Still green. Still Dean’s.

Then his mouth curved again.

And you woke up choking.

You sat up so fast the room spun around you. For one second, you had no idea where you were. Your hand flew to your chest, fingers digging into the thin fabric of your sleep shirt, searching for blood, for the knife, for the open spot where your scar had been split apart again.

There was nothing. No blood. No blade.

Just your bedroom.

The bunker vents hummed quietly overhead and the nightlamp on Dean’s side of the bed painted the room in low yellow light. You hadn’t been able to turn it off since he left. You tried once, lasted maybe ten minutes in the dark before your mind started filling the room with the gun going off, with Dean looking back at you from the top of the stairs, with the sound of the bunker door closing.

So the lamp stayed on. Every night.

Your breathing was loud and ragged in the quiet room. Your shirt clung to your back and chest with cold sweat, and your hands shook so badly that it took you a second to pull them away from the scar and check your palms. Still no blood. You were fine. Dean hadn’t killed you.

Dean wasn’t there…

You grabbed your phone from the nightstand. The screen lit up too bright, making your eyes ache.

6:24 a.m.

You sighed heavily and dropped your elbow to your thigh, forehead falling into your palm. Your hair stuck to the side of your face. Your throat hurt, probably from the way you had woken up choking on a scream that never fully came out.

You sat like that for a moment, forcing air in through your nose and out through your mouth. It didn’t help much, but it gave your body something to do besides shake.

Then you saw the missed call icon on the screen and your breath stopped.

For a second, you just stared at it.

Unknown number.

Your heart, already beating too fast, kicked hard enough to make your chest ache. You unlocked the phone with clumsy fingers and opened the call log.

One missed call. 3:17 a.m.

Of course. Of course it was at night. It was always at night.

Your thumb hovered over the number for half a second before you pressed call back.

The ringing sounded too loud in your ear. Once. Twice. Three times.

Then the line clicked.

Silence.

You sat up straighter, every muscle in your body going tight.

‘Hello?’

Nothing. You swallowed hard.

‘Who is this?’

Still nothing.

You could hear your own breathing now, close to the phone, too uneven. Maybe that was all it was. Maybe the faint sound on the other end was your own panic laughing back at you.

But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like someone listening.

Your fingers tightened around the phone.

‘What do you want?’

Silence.

Your skin prickled. You closed your eyes because you hated yourself for what you were about to say. Hated that hope still found ways to crawl up your throat even after everything. Hated that he knew exactly how easy it was to make you hurt.

‘Dean?’

Your voice broke on his name. You opened your eyes and stared at the empty side of the bed.

‘Dean, is that you?’

The line stayed quiet for two more seconds.

Then it disconnected.

You lowered the phone slowly. For a while, you couldn’t move.

It wasn’t the first call since he disappeared. It was the third. Always a missed call first, always at night, always a different number. You never heard a voice. Never got anything that Sam could trace cleanly or Charlie could lock down fast enough. Just silence, breathing that might not have been breathing, and then nothing.

You knew it was him. You simply knew.

He was messing with you. Tormenting you, letting you know he was still out there, still aware of you, enough to reach into your room through a phone line and pull you apart without saying a single word.

And it worked. Every time. And you despised him for it, so much. Because you missed him so badly you could barely stand it.

You put the phone down on the bed beside you and pressed both hands over your face.

Three weeks. Dean had been gone for three weeks.

You watched him die in Hell, held him while his blood poured through your fingers and his eyes went empty, and you hadn’t even had time to grieve him properly. Because now he was alive somewhere.

Alive, moving, drinking, fighting, hurting people. Doing God knew what with God knew who. You saw his face on security cameras. Read his name in police reports. Your husband was walking through the world without his humanity, while you sat in your bedroom unable to sleep through a full night.

You were exhausted in a way sleep couldn’t fix. Emotionally. Physically. Mentally. Your body felt like it had been running for weeks. Food tasted like cardboard most days. You ate because Sam put something in front of you and watched until you took at least a few bites. You slept because your body finally shut down, then woke up worse than before because the nightmares kept finding new ways to give you Dean back and rip him away again.

At first, you cried all the time.

In the shower, in your lab, in the hallway outside the kitchen because you saw one of Dean’s favorite mugs in the sink and couldn’t breathe. In your bed with face pressed into his pillow, which had stopped smelling like him a little more each day no matter how tightly you held it.

But the tears came less often now. Though that didn’t mean you were better. It only meant your body had started running out of ways to show the damage.

Most days, you felt like a ghost wearing your own clothes. Moving through the bunker, opening laptops, reading files, checking cameras, answering Charlie’s messages, listening to Sam’s updates, nodding when Castiel appeared with another theory or another apology in his eyes. You did the things because the things needed doing. Because stopping meant thinking. Because thinking meant Dean's body on the floor. Dean’s hand over yours. Dean’s smile after the gun went off. Dean at the top of the stairs.

Still, every morning, you got up and looked for him.

And there was one reason you could keep doing that.

Sam.

Sam was going through his own private hell, and you knew that. He had lost Dean too. He had watched his brother die, carried his body through Hell, and then woken up from being knocked unconscious by the person he was trying to save. You saw the toll it took every time you looked at him. The weight loss, the dark circles. The way he went too still whenever someone said Dean’s name.

But Sam kept moving. He kept searching. And somehow, through it all, he kept you upright too.

He checked if you ate, made sure you slept at least a few hours, sat with you when you couldn’t be alone in your room and didn’t make you talk. He never said everything would be okay unless you needed to hear it, and even then, he sounded like he was forcing himself to believe it too.

Eileen helped him the same way.

You were grateful for her in a way you didn’t know how to say out loud. She kept Sam from falling too far into himself. She watched him when he thought no one was looking. She touched his shoulder, his arm, the back of his neck, small practical touches that reminded him he was still breathing, still needed.

Seeing them together hurt sometimes. You hated that too. Because you loved them. You were glad Sam had her. But every time she leaned into Sam, every time his hand found hers without thought, every time they moved around each other with that quiet familiarity, the empty space beside you felt even worse.

You missed Dean’s hand on your back. You missed his knee knocking yours under the table. Missed the way he stood too close in the kitchen because he liked being annoying and touching you all the damn time.

You missed your husband so much it made you feel physically sick.

Castiel stopped by often. Sometimes with information, usually with worry he didn't even try to hide. He had no answers from Heaven, only theories that made your head hurt and your stomach turn. Heaven was still baffled by what happened to Dean. Cas believed it had been some uncanny combination of too many impossible things stacked on top of each other: Dean’s soul having been torn apart in Hell before, his part in breaking the first seal, Ramiel killing him with Michael’s Lance, and Dean dying directly in Hell.

Maybe that was true.

Maybe it wasn’t.

At some point, you stopped wondering. How it happened no longer mattered as much as getting him back. Finding him. And curing him.

That was the only thing that mattered now.

Charlie checked in constantly. She sent leads, camera stills, hacked motel databases, police reports, anything that might help. Benny called more than he ever did, his voice rough and strained over the phone, asking how you were holding up in a way that made you want to lie and cry at the same time.

Everyone was trying. Because everyone loved you. And you knew everyone meant well.

But every question about whether you were okay, every careful encouragement, every promise that you would find him, drained something out of you. Because you had to respond. You had to nod, had to say you knew, or thank you, or we’re close, or we’ll get him. You had to be a person, when most days you barely felt like one.

And you weren’t sure how much more you could take…

Your phone stayed dark on the bed beside you. You stared at it for another moment, then forced yourself to move.

Your morning routine was simple now. Cry if tears came. Wash your face. Brush your teeth. Change clothes. Pretend the shaking in your hands was from exhaustion, not from the nightmares. Leave the bedroom before the walls started feeling too close.

By the time you made it to the bathroom that morning, the tears had come again.

The quiet, annoying ones.

You washed them away with cold water, then stood there with both hands braced on the sink, staring down at the drain until your breathing steadied enough to pass for normal. When you looked up, the woman in the mirror looked pale and tired and older than she had three weeks ago.

You looked away quickly, then changed into clean clothes, pulled your hair back without caring how it looked, and headed toward the library.

You yawned twice on the way there, rubbing at your eyes with the heel of your hand. The bunker was quiet in the early morning, the whole place too big without Dean in it.

Sam was already in the library. He sat behind his laptop with a huge jug of coffee within reach, shoulders hunched, hair messy from running his hands through it too many times. There were open files spread across the table, a map pushed to one side, and a list of towns written in his handwriting on a legal pad. His eyes moved across the screen quickly, scanning whatever database he had pulled up before most people were awake.

He looked up the second you came in.

It only took one look. His face softened, and that almost made you cry again.

‘Another nightmare?’

You stopped beside the table.

For a second, the motel room came back. Dean’s green eyes. His voice saying your name. His gaze dropping to the scar. The knife hitting before you had time to move.

Your hand twitched toward your chest, but you stopped it halfway and let it fall.

Then you nodded.

Sam’s jaw tightened.

You pulled out the chair across from him and sat down.

‘And another call,’ you said, voice still rough from sleep and panic.

Sam went completely still. The laptop screen reflected pale light across his face.

‘When?’

You picked up the nearest file because your hands needed something to do.

‘Three seventeen.’

Sam’s forehead creased immediately. He looked down at his screen, pulled his laptop closer, and started typing. You leaned into the chair, eyes burning, chest still tight from the nightmare, and tried not to think about how badly you wanted the next call to come.

Even if it ruined you all over again.

‘Anything new?’ you asked, breaking the silence.

You flipped the file open before Sam could shake his head. It was one of the uglier ones from the last week. A bouncer at a strip club, beaten nearly to death in front of half the room after trying to throw out a man who matched Dean’s description. According to the witness statements, the guy had put a hand on one of the dancers, the bouncer stepped in, and Dean beat him down right there beside the stage. Then he apparently downed his drink and walked off.

You stared at the words for a second longer than you needed to.

The strip club part made your stomach twist, even though you were mad at yourself for caring about that right now. People were hurt, that was what mattered. That was what you were supposed to focus on.

But the sting was there anyway.

Because it was Dean.

Dean, who had always enjoyed certain things with his whole body. Music in the car, horror and western marathons, pie, good burgers, whiskey, beer… sex. He loved sex and was not subtle about it. With you, he had been hungry and shameless and playful and intense in ways that made you feel wanted to your core.

Now there was a version of him out there with no guilt, no restraint, no vows that meant what they should have meant, and you had no idea what he had done with that hunger once you were no longer there.

You tried to tell yourself it wasn’t really Dean. That whatever he did, whatever he wanted, whatever he took, he would never have done it if he hadn’t been turned into this.

It didn’t help as much as it should have.

You closed the file a little harder than necessary and pushed it away.

Sam glanced up, but didn’t say anything. You were grateful for that. You didn’t have the energy to explain the ugly, jealous part of your brain that kept making everything worse.

‘Have you eaten, yet? I can make something,’ you said after a moment, rubbing both hands down your face. ‘Toast or eggs or… I don’t know. Something.’

Sam’s eyes softened just a little. ‘You don’t have to.’

‘I know.’

You stood anyway. Cooking would give your hands and mind something normal to do. Maybe you could even force yourself to eat half a toast.

Your phone buzzed on the table.

You froze. Sam did too. For half a second, neither of you moved.

Then you grabbed it.

It was Charlie.

Your thumb almost slipped opening the message.

Sending you an email. It’s definitely him and he’s close.

Your heart kicked so hard nausea rolled through you.

‘Sam.’

‘I know,’ he said, already opening a new window. His voice changed instantly. Tired disappeared under focus. ‘She sent it to me too.’

You moved around the table and stood behind his chair as the email loaded. There was a short message from Charlie at the top, then an attached video file and a location. Sam clicked the file without speaking.

The footage opened in grainy black and white.

Gas-n-Sip security camera. Aisle view. Magazine rack. Counter in the corner.

A tall man in a cap stood near the magazines with his back partly turned to the camera. Your whole body locked before his face was visible. You knew his shoulders. You knew the slight bow of his legs, the lazy set of his stance, the way he stood with his weight mostly on one side, relaxed.

Dean.

He was browsing the magazine section like he had nothing better to do. Then the front door opened. A masked man came in with a gun.

You could not hear anything on the footage, but the body language was clear. The cashier raised both hands immediately. The masked man shouted something, waving the gun toward the register. Dean barely reacted at first. He only lowered the magazine a little, head turning in mild annoyance, like the whole thing had interrupted him.

Your stomach tightened.

He put the magazine back, then he walked over. Completely calm, almost bored. The masked man turned the gun toward him. Dean hit him, just once. The man dropped hard enough that your hand flew to your mouth.

Dean crouched, grabbed the gun, tossed it aside, then pulled a knife from somewhere under his jacket. The rest happened fast and terribly clear, even through the poor-quality footage. Too many movements with too much force. The cashier stumbled back against the wall and stayed there, frozen, hands still raised while Dean finished what he started.

Sam’s jaw went tight.

You couldn’t look away.

Dean stood after a few seconds, wiped the blade on the dead man’s jacket, and went back to the magazine rack. Like nothing happened. Like he hadn’t just killed a man on the floor of a gas station.

He picked the magazine up again, glanced toward the counter, then finally looked up.

The camera finally caught his face and your breath stopped.

There he was. Your husband. Cap low, jaw rough with stubble, mouth curved in a lazy little smirk. And his eyes flashed black. Quickly, just a tiny burst of horror.

Then the video ended.

For a second, the library was completely quiet except for the low hum of Sam’s laptop.

‘Where is this?’ you asked. Your voice caught on the last word.

Sam was already checking the location Charlie included. His fingers moved fast over the keyboard.

‘About an hour’s drive.’

Your heart started beating faster.

‘When?’

Sam’s eyes flicked across the email. ‘Two hours ago. Police put out an APB immediately, so it hit the system fast.’

Two hours.

An hour away.

Dean hadn’t been this close since he walked out of the bunker.

You gripped the back of Sam’s chair hard enough for the wood to press into your palms. Your whole body felt suddenly awake in a way that was almost painful.

‘Are we going?’

Sam looked up at you.

There was fear in his face. Exhaustion too. And under both, the same hard determination that had kept him upright for three weeks.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Meet you in the garage in five.’

You were sitting in the Impala, and everything about it felt wrong.

It had felt wrong from the first second you climbed into it again. Sam and Eileen had been the ones to pick it up from the place where you left it before the reaper took you to Purgatory. You couldn’t do it then. You couldn’t sit in Dean’s car after watching him die, after seeing him come back with black eyes, after standing in the war room with his gun still warm in your hand while he walked out of the bunker and left you there.

So Sam brought it back.

And ever since then, every time you had to drive somewhere in it, your body noticed all the wrong things at once.

Sam was too tall behind the wheel. His hands sat differently on it. He adjusted the seat and mirrors to fit him, because this was an emergency and a car was a car, except it wasn’t. Not this car. Not to you. The Impala sounded the same, smelled the same, carried the same worn leather and old music and gun oil under everything else, but Dean wasn’t in it. He wasn’t humming along to his favorite albums, his hand wasn’t on your thigh, his fingers weren’t working the wheel with that casual confidence that always made it look easy.

You had no idea why Dean hadn’t come back for her. That bothered you more than you wanted to admit.

Maybe it meant nothing, maybe he knew you and Sam would watch for it. Maybe he was smart enough to leave behind the most obvious thing anyone could track.

But there was another thought underneath that, uglier and harder to ignore.

What if he just… didn’t care.

What if Baby meant as little to him now as the bunker did. As Sam did. As you did.

The ride was so quiet you were almost relieved when Sam finally parked in front of the Gas-n-Sip.

Patrol cars were still outside. Police tape stretched across the entrance, bright and ugly against the glass doors. A uniformed officer stood near the pumps, talking to another one with a clipboard, and you could see movement inside through the windows. Detectives, techs, people stepping around evidence markers on the floor.

Sam killed the engine, then he reached into his jacket and pulled out the fake badge.

You did the same.

The FBI pretext got you through the door quickly enough. Sam in a blue suit, you in a black pantsuit, both of you tired enough to pass for federal agents who had already seen too much before breakfast. You flashed your badge, said the names, kept your face steady, and stepped into the store.

Your eyes immediately went to the covered body on the floor and your stomach turned.

Not because you had never seen a dead body. You had seen things most people couldn’t even imagine since you came into this world. But this was different.

Because Dean had put that body there. Brutally.

And maybe the man under the sheet had walked in with a gun and threatened the cashier. Maybe he had been a dangerous scumbag. Maybe Dean had technically stopped something worse from happening. But that didn’t matter enough. The man had still been human. And that was the line your Dean had always tried hard not to cross.

Sam’s face tightened beside you, but he said nothing.

A detective met you near the magazine aisle. He looked tired, annoyed, and too wired on adrenaline, which made sense if he had spent the last few hours trying to make sense of a murder that looked insane on camera.

‘Agents,’ he said, giving your badges a quick glance. ‘You’re here about the video?’

‘That’s right,’ Sam said.

The detective led you toward the counter, where a laptop had already been set up with the footage paused. You had seen it in the bunker, but seeing it here, inside the store where it happened, made your skin feel too tight.

The detective hit play.

‘Okay, now, porn guy’s just minding his own business,’ he said, pointing at the screen.

Porn guy. For one stupid second, your brain stopped at that.

Why the hell would they-

Then you looked at the magazine section.

Right.

Of course.

Did you really think Dean Winchester would be reading People magazine in a gas station?

The detective kept talking. ‘And there’s the burglar right there. Now watch this. See how calm he is?’

Dean put the magazine down on the footage.

Your fingers curled at your sides.

‘And he just puts a grown man down with one small punch,’ the detective went on. ‘I don’t know what the hell this is. Problem is, we don’t know if this guy’s a hero or a psychopath.’

Neither, you thought.

He's a fucking demon.

You didn’t say it.

Sam leaned closer to the screen, jaw tight. ‘Can we speak to the witness?’

‘Cashier’s over there,’ the detective said, nodding toward the side of the store. ‘Poor kid’s been repeating himself for three hours.’

You looked over.

The cashier sat on a plastic chair near the far aisle, wrapped in a cheap emergency blanket even though the store wasn’t cold. He was young. His face was pale, eyes too wide, one leg bouncing fast enough to shake the edge of the blanket.

You felt bad for him.

Not only had he been held at gunpoint, he had watched a man stab another man to death a few feet away, and now he was still sitting in the same place under fluorescent lights, probably being asked the same questions over and over again by people who wanted details his brain had every right to forget.

And you were about to ask him the same things.

You and Sam crossed the store together.

‘Hi,’ you said, softening your voice as much as you could while still keeping the agent mask on. You showed the badge again. ‘Agents Currie and Jett. We just have a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.’

The cashier blinked at you.

‘I already told them everything.’

‘I know,’ you said. ‘We just need to hear it from you one more time.’

He looked exhausted enough to cry. Then he nodded.

You tucked the badge away. ‘You were the only witness here?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can you describe the attack?’

The cashier let out a shaky laugh with no humor in it. ‘Well. Porn guy was an animal.’

Sam’s eyebrows lifted slightly.

The cashier pointed toward the magazine rack with one trembling hand. ‘Bro came in here like, 'get the fuck outta here,' and the other one was all like, 'fuck off, give me all your money'. And then porn guy just-’ He slapped one hand into the other. ‘Dropped him. Like, down. And then there was a lot of blood after that.’

You heard Sam take a careful breath beside you.

‘Right. Um… when the guy, uh-’ Sam’s mouth tightened. ‘When porn guy came in, did he say anything?’

The cashier shrugged. ‘W-where’s the porn.’

You closed your eyes for half a second.

‘That’s all he said?’ you asked, opening them again. ‘Did he buy anything? Did he use a credit card? Did he ask for directions, talk to anyone, mention where he was going?’

The cashier stared blankly.

You weren’t sure if he didn’t remember or if he had been too scared to notice anything beyond the knife and the blood. Either way, you couldn’t blame him.

Sam was less patient.

‘So some guy comes in, kills another guy in your store on your watch, and you just-’ He stopped himself, but not fast enough. ‘You what? Just keep on keepin’ on?’

The cashier looked at him like Sam had lost his mind.

‘You mean when porn guy was stabbing the other guy to death ten feet in front of me, and I was having a total code-brown moment in my favorite freakin’ pants because I thought I was next, did I conduct a field interview?’ He stared at Sam. ‘No.’

You and Sam exchanged a look.

Yeah.

Fair.

You were just about to ask if he had seen what car Dean came in, whether he left alone, anything small that might help, when the cashier shifted under the blanket.

‘But, uh… I did find a phone.’

Sam straightened. ‘A phone?’

‘Yeah. Wedged under the T.P.’ He nodded toward the techs near the counter. ‘I think it’s porn guy’s. I gave it to them.’

Your heartbeat jumped.

Sam looked at you once, then back at the cashier.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

You went to the techs next, asked to look at the phone, and pulled on rubber gloves before handling it because the whole room was watching and you needed to look like you belonged at the crime scene. The phone was cheap. Burner, of course.

You opened the call log.

One outgoing call. Your number.

Your breath caught so hard your chest hurt.

You knew it.

You frickin' knew it.

The missed calls, the silence, the timing. You had known it was him, but seeing your number there, on a phone he had left behind at a crime scene, still rattled you hard enough that for a second the store blurred around the edges.

Sam stepped closer.

You turned the screen toward him.

He looked at it. Said nothing. His face did enough.

You handed the phone back, thanked the tech, and got out of the store before the air inside could choke you.

Outside, the daylight felt too bright. You took one deep breath, then another, standing near the Impala while Sam looked back at the Gas-n-Sip with a hard, closed expression.

‘You think he left it for us?’ you said.

Sam’s jaw flexed. ‘Don't know.’

Neither of you had an answer you wanted, so you got back in the car.

Sam slid behind the wheel, and you sat in the passenger seat with your laptop already open across your knees before he even pulled out of the lot. The Impala rumbled under you and you forced yourself to focus on the screen instead of the space next to you where Dean should have been.

‘So, nearest motels?’ Sam asked.

‘Already looking.’

It was probably pointless. Dean had either moved on already or never stayed anywhere nearby in the first place. But maybe arrogance had really made him that sloppy.

You checked the closest places first.

Two motels.

No luck.

No Dean Winchester. No aliases you recognized. No one matching his description, according to the bored desk clerks Sam talked to while you stayed in the car and checked cameras, registration logs, anything you could reach from your laptop.

By the time you pulled out of the second parking lot, your eyes burned from the screen and your stomach felt hollow in a way that had nothing to do with hunger.

Sam glanced at the gas gauge.

‘I need to stop for gas.’

You nodded without looking up, already pulling up the next motel on the map.

‘Okay.’

Sam turned the Impala back toward the main road.

You didn’t really pay attention when he pulled into the gas station. Your eyes stayed fixed on the laptop screen, on the list of places within a twenty-mile radius, on names and distances and reviews that meant absolutely nothing when the man you were looking for could already be gone.

The Impala stopped. Sam got out. The driver’s door closed.

A few seconds later, you heard the dull metallic sound of the gas cap, the pump handle lifting, the low click of it starting.

You kept staring at the screen.

Your mind wouldn’t settle. It kept circling the same useless points again and again until you wanted to slam the laptop shut just to stop seeing motel names. He had been close. He had been an hour away. Just a few hours ago. He had probably left a phone behind with your number on it on purpose because he wanted you to know. Because all of it was a game to him.

And you had no idea how to catch him.

Your fingers hovered over the trackpad, then stopped. The next motel was eleven minutes away. Bad reviews, cash only, no cameras in the parking lot, according to two angry comments from people whose cars had been broken into.

Could be something.

Probably not.

You added it to the list anyway.

The pump clicked outside. A few minutes later, you heard movement. Footsteps on concrete. The familiar creak of the Impala’s driver’s door opening.

You didn’t look up.

Your eyes stayed on the screen while your brain kept working through the search, already lining up the next places to check. Sam slid into the seat beside you. The car shifted slightly with his weight. The door closed.

The engine started.

‘Hey, sweetheart.’

Your whole body went cold.

Not Sam.

Not even close.

Your head shot up so fast pain snapped through your neck.

Dean was sitting behind the wheel.

For one second, you couldn't move. He was right there, close enough that your knee almost touched his, one hand resting on the wheel, the other near the gearshift. The cap was gone. His hair was a little longer than the last time you saw him. A rough scruff darkened his jaw, sharpening his face, making him look dangerous and so goddamn attractive that you barely resisted biting your bottom lip.

You hated yourself for it immediately.

Your hand twitched toward the door handle. Dean’s gaze dropped to the movement.

‘Don’t.’

Just one word. It stopped you anyway.

Your heart slammed hard against your ribs. Sam was outside. Sam had to be right outside. All you had to do was scream, move, throw yourself out of the car, burn Dean, anything.

He looked at you with that easy, awful smirk.

Your body did none of it.

‘How ’bout we go for a ride?’

His eyes stayed on yours.

‘Just you and me.’

A/N: We’re finally getting Demon Dean’s POV in the next chapter, so please wish me luck getting his voice right.

CHAPTER 8 here

Tag list:

@tinysnacklefan @spacepl4ant @ladysparkles78 @foxyjwls007 @mbinvisible @freddiemcn @alliwantisanimeandfood-blog

Story tags: Demon!Dean, Plus-Size reader, Reader is from a different reality, Action, Violence, Angst, Drama, Blood Magic, Blood play, Smut, Rough sex, Emotional strain, Moral conflict, POV Dean Winchester, Canon Divergence, Married Dean Winchester, POV Second person, POV Alternating, No use of y/n, Ordinary sequel

A/N: I know you’re probably fed up with all the angst and drama by now, but the… things will be happening soon..

It took you too long to understand what you were looking at.

Your heart was beating so fast it hurt, slamming against your ribs hard enough that, for a second, you thought maybe your body had finally reached the limit of what it could take. Grief, loss, Hell, Purgatory, panic, exhaustion. Maybe this was what happened when a mind had to process too much and simply… gave up. Maybe this was the part where you finally lost your grip on reality completely, because Dean was gone.

You had learned that with his blood under your hands and his body heavy in Sam’s arms. When Castiel’s grace failed to pull him back, when his skin stayed cold under your fingers no matter how long you held on.

So his chest rising now couldn’t be real. His eyes opening couldn’t be real.

The black staring back at you could not be real.

It had to be your mind dragging Hell back into the room with you. Just a delayed nightmare. A hallucination built from every demon you had to burn.

The faint smell of burned skin reached you again. Your hand still felt too warm where you had touched him. You saw blistered marks on Dean’s skin.

You felt tears flood your eyes in a sudden, violent rush, and for one second you thought about getting up and finding water, or whiskey, or anything that might drag you back into sanity. Anything that might shut down the image in front of you before it finished destroying whatever was left of you.

Then Dean sat up.

He honestly, impossibly pushed himself upright on the mattress, shoulders rolling forward, body moving with his own strength again.

This time, you couldn’t hold the sound back.

‘Dean!’

It came out desperate, shocked, torn open. You moved before thought caught up, reaching for him because he was sitting up, because he was moving, because some broken part of you didn’t care what his eyes looked like as long as his body was warm and alive and there.

Your hands closed around his arm.

His skin hissed instantly.

Dean let out a loud, animal growl and jerked away from you so hard your hands slipped off him. His eyes were still black when his head snapped toward you. Still black when pain flashed across his face and twisted into fury.

You scrambled back fast enough that the chair tipped behind you and crashed against the floor. Your heel caught the edge of it and you stumbled hard into the dresser. Pain cracked through your spine, sharp enough to steal a breath, but you barely felt it.

Dean was staring at the burns on his arm.

The door burst open.

Sam rushed in first, Eileen right behind him. His eyes were still red from crying, face drawn and pale, but alarm cut through all of it the second he took in the room. The fallen chair. You against the dresser. Dean sitting up on the bed.

For one tiny, terrible second, relief hit Sam so hard his mouth went slack.

Then he saw Dean’s eyes.

And he stopped.

Completely.

You were still too stunned to move. One hand clutched the edge of the dresser because you were not sure your legs could hold you without it. Your lungs refused to work right, and your brain kept trying to force the image in front of you into anything that made sense.

Dean was moving.

His eyes were black when he looked down at himself. His eyes were black when his fingers traced his throat, where Ramiel’s slash had been open only minutes ago. His eyes were black when he checked the burns rising on his arm.

His eyes were black.

He flexed his hand once, slow, testing the feel of his own body. Then he looked at the angry, blistered marks your touch had left on his skin.

‘Huh, that’s new.’

His voice was deeper. Rougher. Still Dean’s voice, which made it worse. It came from his chest the same way, but there was no warmth in it. No softness.

He finally lifted his head. The black eyes landed on Sam first.

Then, slowly, turned to you.

You felt sick. Not only with fear. Fear would have been simple. This was confusion so deep it made your body feel out of sync with itself. Your husband had been dead. And now he was sitting up. And he had black eyes. Your husband’s skin had burned under your hand.

Dean’s mouth curved.

Your breath hitched, and before you fully registered the movement, you slid along the dresser and backed toward Sam.

Dean noticed you putting distance between you. His eyes followed you the whole way.

‘That right there?’ he said, dry amusement dragging through every word. ‘That’s new too.’

He held your gaze for one second longer, then squared his shoulders and rolled his neck, like he was working stiffness out of muscles that had no right working at all.

‘Damn Prince had one hell of a swing,’ he muttered.

The words landed wrong.

Because he remembered. He remembered Ramiel and the Lance. He remembered dying.

Your stomach dropped.

Then Dean stopped, like he had only just gotten around to noticing the three of you were there. His eyes moved from you to Sam, then to Eileen, then back to you again. His face did not soften. Did not do anything Dean’s face should have done if he woke up and saw the people he loved looking at him like this.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You all look like crap.’

He swung his legs off the bed.

Sam shifted beside you. He was the first one to find his voice, and even then, it barely held.

‘Dean?’

Dean looked at him.

‘Hey, Sammy.’

The nickname sounded wrong, without the usual feeling behind it. It was casual. Almost bored.

He stood up.

You felt Eileen move on your other side. Her hand went behind her belt, fast, and came back with a blade.

Dean saw it immediately. He took one deliberate step forward. Then another.

That was when something in you finally snapped into place.

Demon.

There was a demon inside your husband.

You didn’t know how. You didn’t know when. You didn’t know what had crawled into him between the Lance and Castiel’s failed healing. But it was there now, wearing Dean’s body, moving Dean’s hands, using Dean’s voice inside the bunker like it had any right to stand there.

You stepped in front of Sam and Eileen before either of them could move closer. Both hands came up, palms out, fingers shaking hard enough that you had to force them steady.

‘Get out of my husband, you sick son of a bitch.’

The thing wearing Dean stopped.

Then it smirked. Cold. Empty. Infuriating.

‘What’s goin’ on, sweetheart?’ he asked. ‘You don’t recognize me?’

You flinched at the word.

Sweetheart.

It came out of Dean’s mouth with your husband's voice, but there was no affection in it.

Then, with a blink, his eyes changed.

Green.

Dean’s green.

That almost hurt worse than the black.

‘You don’t recognize your own husband?’

The way he said husband made your blood turn hot. Taunting. Dragging the word through the room as if he knew exactly how much it meant to you and wanted to see what happened when he ruined it.

Anger rose fast through the shock.

Because how dare it.

How dare some filthy black-eyed thing take the man you loved. How dare it sit in Dean’s old room, in Dean’s body, with Dean’s mouth and Dean’s wedding ring still on his hand.

You wanted to step forward and burn it out of him. You wanted to grab his face with both hands and pour every bit of your bloodline magic into whatever was hiding inside until it screamed itself apart.

But it was Dean’s body. That was Dean’s skin.

He would need that body when Heaven found his soul and brought him back. You couldn’t destroy what was left of him because you were scared. You couldn’t let rage make that choice for you.

So you held your ground and forced your hands to stay raised.

‘I’m gonna give you one warning,’ you said, voice shaking despite everything you did to steady it. ‘Get. The fuck. Out.’

You expected mockery. A laugh. Something ugly and simple.

Dean only took another step closer.

‘And what’re you gonna do, huh?’ His eyes dropped to your hands, then back to your face. ‘You gonna fry me extra crispy?’

The words hit exactly where he aimed them.

Behind you, Sam moved to your side.

‘Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica-’

Dean laughed.

It was low and rough and amused, and the exorcism didn’t even make him blink. Not a twitch. Not a single flinch. Nothing.

Sam stopped.

Dean looked at him like that had been mildly entertaining.

‘You can Latin at me all damn night,’ he said. ‘Ain’t gonna do crap. 'Cause I'm not possessed.’

Your heart climbed into your throat.

Sam’s face had gone pale again.

‘Then what are you?’ he asked, voice low.

You already felt the panic rising before Dean answered.

Because it couldn’t be true.

It couldn’t.

Demons were souls twisted until there was no humanity left. You knew that much. Torture, pain, Hell stripping pieces away over centuries. Over millennia. That was what you had always understood. That was what made demons demons.

Dean had been dead for hours. Hours.

But Ramiel’s words crawled up from the back of your mind.

Ten years with the blade, after thirty on the rack… You learned faster than souls who had been down here since men still prayed to stones… What happens when Hell’s favorite little prodigy comes home and dies on the floor?

Your fingers curled slowly.

‘Sam,’ you gasped. ‘You think-’

‘Oh, it’s me, alright,’ Dean cut in.

Your mouth went dry.

Dean’s eyes were still green now, and somehow that made every word worse.

‘And I’m done with whatever the hell this is. So let me through.’

He took another step forward.

You took one back before you could stop yourself. Your legs shook a little. You steadied yourself fast, anger flashing hot through the fear because you hated that he saw it. You hated that he was watching you calculate and hesitate. But most of all, you hated that he knew exactly why you still hadn’t burned him.

Sam didn’t move.

‘Alright,’ he said carefully. His hands were raised, palms open, the way they were when he was trying to talk someone down. ‘Okay. Dean, listen to me.’

Dean stopped.

His face shifted into visible annoyance. That alone made your stomach twist, because it was so Dean. The narrowed eyes, the tightened jaw. The impatient little tilt of his head.

‘We can fix this,’ Sam said. ‘We know how to cure this. Remember?’

Dean stared at him.

Then rolled his eyes. ‘Good talk. Now move.’

The words were flat now. Still annoyed, but heavier. More dangerous.

‘I can’t, Dean,’ Sam said. ‘You know I can’t do that.’

Dean looked at him for a moment. Then shrugged.

‘Yeah, well.’

He moved too fast.

Sam reached for him at the same time, and Dean caught his wrist. For one split second, smoke curled between their skin. Sam’s protection worked. Weakly. Barely. Enough to make Dean’s jaw tighten.

He ignored it.

He twisted Sam’s arm hard and drove his other fist into Sam’s stomach. Sam cried out, pain cracking through the sound, and then Dean shoved him into the wall with a force that made the room shake.

‘Sam!’

Sam hit the floor hard.

He didn’t get back up.

Eileen lunged before Dean had even lowered his arm. The blade flashed in her hand, fast and practiced, but Dean turned into the movement and knocked her aside with brutal efficiency. He caught her forearm, shoved her off balance, and sent her into the desk hard enough to make the lamp crash to the floor. She went down with a pained sound, still conscious, already dragging herself toward Sam before she had even fully caught her breath.

You moved too.

You didn’t think. You just rushed to Sam and dropped beside him, one hand going to his face, the other to his chest. He was breathing. Out cold, but breathing. You checked because you had to. Because Dean had hurt him.

Your hands shook so badly you almost couldn’t feel the rise and fall of his chest.

Eileen was there too, teeth clenched, one arm wrapped around her ribs, fingers already searching Sam’s pulse with the same focused panic you felt tearing through you.

Dean stood over all three of you.

You looked up at him.

For a second, the room held completely still.

That was your husband.

That was Dean, standing in the bedroom where his own brother lay unconscious on the floor because he had put him there.

You should have attacked him. You knew that. You should have grabbed his ankle, burned him, brought him down, done anything. Your touch had hurt him. You knew it had. You could smell it still, faint and awful under the dust and dried blood on your clothes. You had the advantage, maybe the only one anyone in that room had.

But your body would not move.

Because it was Dean.

Because you had spent hours carrying his dead body out of Hell. Because you had just sat beside his bed and begged him to forgive you. Because he was alive again, his chest was moving, and every instinct you had was still screaming 'that's your husband'.

Dean looked from Sam to Eileen, then back to you.

‘What?’ he said. ‘He’ll wake up.’

A beat.

His mouth curved.

‘Maybe.’

The word cut through you. But it did something useful too. It made the shock flare into anger.

Your hand left Sam’s chest slowly. Dean’s eyes tracked the movement, interested now.

Eileen made another rough sound beside you, already reaching for the blade she had dropped. Dean saw it, and his eyes flicked black again for half a second.

‘Ah, ah, ah,’ he said.

Just that. Enough threat in it to make the whole room tighten.

You pushed yourself to your feet. Your legs shook. Your spine still hurt from the dresser, and your whole body wanted to go back to Sam. To check again. To make sure he was still breathing, still alive.

But Dean turned and walked out of the room.

He was leaving.

Shock and grief pulled back just enough for adrenaline to hit hard. You shot one quick look at Sam and Eileen. She was still beside him, one hand pressed to his chest, eyes sharp and terrified when they met yours. You didn’t wait for her to tell you not to go.

You ran after Dean.

By the time you caught up to him, he was already in the war room.

He wasn’t rushing. That was the part that made your skin crawl. He moved through the bunker slowly, almost lazily, like he had all the time in the world. His shoulders were loose, his steps even, his head turning slightly as he looked around the room, almost bored.

He walked straight toward the library table, where someone had dumped the gear after you carried his body in. His jacket, his weapons, the backpack. The things you had dragged back from Hell.

Your heart jumped.

No.

You couldn’t let him get to those. You couldn't let him leave.

You moved faster, cutting around the other side of the map table and rushing into his path before he reached the library. Your boots slipped slightly on the polished floor, but you caught yourself and planted your body between him and the table.

Dean slowed. Just a little. His mouth curved, amused.

Of course he was amused.

You were shaking. You knew you were. Your hands, your knees, your breath, all of it. From fear, from anger, from grief still buried too close to the surface. He could see every bit of it, and the look on his face told you he liked that.

‘You gonna block my way now?’ he asked. ‘Bold move.’

You didn’t answer right away.

You were thinking too fast.

Your hands could stop him. Maybe. Your touch burned him now. If you lunged at him, if you grabbed him by the face or throat, you could hurt him. Badly. You could force him back. You could maybe hold him long enough for Eileen to wake Sam, for Castiel to come back. You could also kill him. Burn him until he's just a smoking pile on the ground.

And the thought of touching him like that made something inside you recoil.

Your hands were not supposed to hurt Dean.

Your hands knew him in every possible way that mattered. They had held his face when he kissed you, gripped his shirt when he made you laugh into his chest, pressed into his back when he slept too restlessly, traced scars he didn’t like talking about. They had steadied him through nightmares. They had pulled him closer when he was buried inside you.

Now your touch was a weapon against him. A lethal one, if you pushed hard enough.

You couldn’t do it.

Not yet…

Maybe that made you weak. Stupid, even. Maybe every hunter in the world would have called it a fatal mistake. But every hunter in the world had not spent the last few hours with Dean’s dead body in front of them, had not closed his eyes with shaking fingers, had not begged an angel to put his soul back where it should be.

You needed his body intact.

You needed him here.

If he left the bunker, he was gone. Dean knew how to disappear. If he walked out now, if he got past you, you might not see him ever again.

No.

You had to slow him down. You had to trap him somehow.

Your eyes flicked toward the table behind you. The cuffs were still in his backpack. The demon cuffs with the trap etched into them. If you could get him distracted, get him close enough, get one wrist locked-

Dean’s eyes followed yours.

Damnit.

You moved before he could read the rest of it.

Your hand closed around the gun on the table. Dean’s gun. The weight of it hit your palm with a familiar solidity. You had held it before. Practiced with it. Cleaned it a few times while Dean sat beside you pretending not to watch your technique. You told him once it was the most beautiful gun you'd ever seen.

You lifted it and pointed it at his chest.

‘Stop.’

Your voice shook, but the word landed.

Dean’s gaze dropped to the gun.

You clicked the safety off.

His smile widened. Devastating. Wrong. Still on his face.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s not gonna kill me.’

‘I know.’ Your voice surprised you with how fast it came. Thin, shaken, but immediate.

Dean’s eyes lifted back to yours. You forced yourself to keep the gun steady.

‘I don’t want to kill you. I want to help you.’

He blinked once, slow.

‘Do you now?’

‘Yeah.’ You swallowed. Your throat hurt. Everything hurt. ‘That’s why you’re not leaving this place.’

Dean stared at you for a second. Then he gave a short, humorless laugh.

‘Oh, but I am.’

‘Dean, please.’

His jaw tightened at the sound of his name. Maybe annoyance. Maybe something else. You couldn’t tell anymore, and that scared you more than you wanted it to.

‘We can still fix this,’ you said, and your voice cracked around the words because you needed them to be true. ‘Please. Just let me fix this.’

Dean’s face shifted into something almost cruel.

‘Please,’ he repeated, pitching the word higher, softer, mocking the break in your voice. ‘Just let me fix this.’

You flinched.

He saw that too. His expression darkened, disgust curling through the amusement.

‘You sound like my brother.’

The words hit hard because Sam was unconscious on the floor down the hall. Because Sam had carried Dean out of Hell. Because Sam had begged Castiel to bring him back. Because Sam would still try to save him after being thrown into a wall by him.

‘You’re sick,’ you said. ‘This isn’t you.’

Dean chuckled. Low. Horrible.

‘I’m more myself than I’ve been in years.’

That one struck deep.

You hated that it did.

Because it sounded too sure. Like a blade slipping between ribs. It made something cold open in your chest, because if that was true, if any part of him believed that, then what did that say about all that time before? About the quiet mornings, the bunker, the lodge, the wedding, the vows? Had humanity been the thing holding him close to you, or the thing keeping true parts of him buried?

No.

No, that was the demon talking.

It had to be.

Dean took another step toward you.

You raised the gun a fraction higher. ‘Don’t.’

He stopped only long enough to look down at your hands. Then at the space between you. Then at the gun.

‘Could’ve burned me,’ he said.

Your grip tightened.

He looked back at your face. ‘But you didn’t.’

You said nothing.

Your hands wanted to shake harder. You forced your finger to stay where it needed to be, forced your elbows not to drop, forced yourself to keep breathing even though Dean was close enough now that you could see the tiny scar on his chin, the dried line of blood you hadn’t fully cleaned from the corner of his jaw… the freckles you loved so much.

Dean’s eyes narrowed slightly, watching you work to hold yourself together.

‘That because you’re scared of hurtin’ me?’ he asked. ‘Or scared you’ll like it?’

Your teeth clenched so hard pain shot through your jaw.

He smiled.

He knew.

Of course he knew.

‘I saw you down there,’ he said, voice dropping lower. ‘Burnin’ those black-eyed sons of bitches to a crisp. You liked it.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Nah.’ He took another slow step, and you hated that your body reacted to the movement before your mind did. ‘You loved it.’

‘I said shut up.’

His gaze stayed locked on yours, no mercy in it. ‘All that power in your hands. All that fear. Bet that felt real good after bein’ scared outta your mind for days.’

Your pulse pounded in your ears.

Hell came back in flashes. Demons stepping away from you. The one in the corridor screaming under your hands. The smell. The silence afterward. The sick, awful satisfaction that had cut through the helplessness because for once, something was afraid of you.

Dean watched your face.

‘Bet you finally didn’t feel… what was it?’ His mouth curved. ‘Useless?’

‘Shut up!’

Your voice cracked through the war room. Loud enough to hurt.

Dean stepped closer.

You backed into the edge of the library table.

The gun stayed between you.

‘You wanna stop me?’ he said. ‘Stop me.’

‘You think I won’t?’

He took another step.

The barrel touched his chest.

You froze.

Dean looked down at it, then back at you, and there was something almost satisfied in his face now. Something dark. He wanted to see exactly how far he could push before you broke.

‘Do it,’ he said. ‘I wanna see you do it.’

Your head gave the smallest shake. You didn’t mean to. It just happened.

His eyes caught it.

‘C’mon, sweetheart.’ His voice went softer, rougher, and somehow meaner for it. ‘Don’t get shy on me now.’

Your grip tightened. Your fingers trembled anyway.

Dean’s gaze dropped to your hands.

‘What’s wrong, baby?’ he asked. ‘Need me to tell you when?’

You swallowed hard.

His eyes lifted back to your face.

‘You always were better when I talked you through things.’

The words hit before you could brace for them.

Your breath caught, shame and fury twisting together so fast you almost lowered the gun just to swing at him instead. He had no right. No right to drag that into this room, into this moment. He had no right to know exactly which words would land because he knew you. Because he was Dean. Because it was Dean’s memory behind those eyes, Dean’s mouth letting the cruelty out with perfect aim.

‘Don’t,’ you said again.

This time it barely came out.

Dean leaned in close enough that you could feel his breath against your face.

‘Don’t what?’

You could smell him.

Under the blood, under the stale air of the bunker, under that faint wrong heat coming off his skin, he still smelled like Dean. That was so much worse than if he had smelled like sulfur or rot or anything else that would have made this easier.

‘Don’t make this easy for you?’ he asked.

The barrel pressed harder into his chest as he moved another inch forward.

You couldn’t step back. The table was behind you.

Dean’s eyes stayed on yours.

Your finger tensed. He noticed. His smile sharpened.

‘Don’t make you prove my wife’s got more bite than bark?’

The word wife almost took you apart. He said it like something he could still use because, demon or not, it was still true.

‘You’re not him,’ you whispered. 'You're not my husband.'

Dean’s face changed. Just a fraction. The smile didn’t leave, but something ugly settled beneath it.

‘Yeah,’ he said quietly. ‘Keep tellin’ yourself that.’

Then his hand came up. For one second, you thought he was going to take the gun away.

He didn’t.

His fingers closed over yours. His palm pressed against the back of your hand, forcing your grip tighter around the handle, steadying the barrel against his own chest.

The contact burned instantly.

His skin hissed under yours. The smell of it cut through the room. Dean’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t pull away. His eyes went black all at once, and this close, with his hand burning over yours and his body pressed to the gun, they swallowed every trace of green.

You gasped.

‘Dean-’

‘What, need my help?’ His voice came out rougher now, edged with pain and something that sounded too much like pleasure. ‘Yeah? No? Maybe?’

His hand tightened over yours.

Your magic pushed under your skin on instinct, hot and defensive, reacting to the demon touching you, to the threat, to the wrongness of him. You tried to pull back, but he held you there. Held himself there. Let your touch burn him because it proved some point only he understood.

His face came closer.

‘Want me to pull the damn trigger for you?’

Your whole body shook.

He jerked your hand slightly, not enough to fire, just enough to make the gun shift against his chest. Just enough to make you feel how little control you really had while his burning hand covered yours.

Then he barked, sudden and loud enough to echo violently across the room.

‘Come on! Do it!’

The gun went off.

The sound tore through the library and punched straight through your chest.

For one second, there was nothing else.

No bunker. No air. No Dean. Just the blast, the recoil snapping through your arms, the sharp smell of gunpowder, your ears ringing so hard the world went thin around the edges.

Dean staggered back with a grunt.

The bullet hit him square in the chest. Blood spread across his shirt.

Your whole body stopped.

Demon. He was a demon. You knew that. You knew guns didn’t work on demons the way they worked on people. You knew the bullet wouldn’t kill him. You knew it before you pulled the trigger, knew it before he forced your hand against the gun, knew it while he stood there grinning and burning himself on your skin just to prove he could make you do it.

Your body did not care.

Your body saw Dean take a bullet to the chest from your hand.

For half a second, your brain forgot every bit of logic and saw only your husband. The man you loved more than anything you ever loved.

You had shot him.

The thought came in too clearly. Too sharply.

You had shot Dean.

Your fingers went numb around the grip. Your hands were still locked in place, both of them holding the gun, arms extended, barrel aimed at his chest. Smoke curled from the muzzle, faint and unreal in the low bunker light.

Dean looked down at the wound, at the red spreading through the fabric.

Then he lifted his head.

And smiled.

Slow.

Satisfied.

Almost proud.

That smile destroyed you. Because he didn’t look shocked. He didn’t look hurt. He didn’t even look angry.

He looked pleased.

You had finally given him exactly what he wanted.

‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about,’ he said, voice rough with amusement. ‘Knew you had it in you.’

You couldn’t breathe.

The wound started closing, right in front of you. The blood stopped spreading. The torn fabric still showed the hole, still dark and wet around the edges, but underneath it, the skin pulled itself back together, fast.

Dean rolled his shoulder once, testing it, then let out a small, pleased huff.

Your hands shook harder. The gun was suddenly too heavy.

You kept staring at the place where the bullet had gone in, even after there was nothing left to prove it had happened except the blood on his shirt and the ringing in your ears.

He made me.

The thought came fast. Desperate.

He made you. He pushed. He cornered you. He put his hand over yours. He burned himself on your skin and smiled through it. He yelled. He startled you. He forced the whole world down to one impossible second.

He made me.

Then another thought answered from somewhere much colder.

No. Your own finger moved on the trigger.

You nearly dropped the gun.

Your arm fell to your side, loose and useless. The barrel pointed toward the floor now, your finger safely off the trigger. Your grip stayed tight enough to hurt because letting go would mean the gun might clatter to the floor, and you couldn’t handle another loud sound.

Dean watched you for another second.

Then he reached past you.

You flinched hard.

His mouth twitched.

His arm brushed close to yours as he grabbed the backpack from the table behind you. The movement was casual, almost insulting in how little effort he put into it. He took his time as he slung it over one shoulder and took his jacket next.

He paused, only for a second, glanced down at you.

Then he turned away.

You couldn’t move.

Your body stayed rooted beside the table, heart beating too fast, ears still ringing from the shot. Dean walked through the war room without looking back, his boots steady against the floor, the bag over his shoulder, your whole life leaving the room one step at a time.

At the top of the stairs, he stopped.

You held your breath.

He looked back at you one last time.

There was blood all over his shirt. His hand was blistered where he had held yours. His eyes were green, and there was nothing gentle in them.

His gaze moved over you slowly.

The gun.

Your shaking hand.

Your face.

And then he left.

Your knees weakened, but you didn’t fall. You just stood there, holding Dean’s gun with numb fingers, staring at the empty doorway while the sound of him leaving stretched through the bunker.

Somewhere behind you, far down the hall, Eileen called your name.

You barely heard it.

A heavy sound rolled through the bunker. The front door closing. Final. Deafening.

After that, there was only silence.

You stood in the war room with Dean’s gun in your hand, the smell of gunpowder still in the air, and the man you loved gone.

CHAPTER 7 here

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