Title: The Little Things
Author:![]()
ashe_frost
Recipient:![]()
sasha_davidovna
Rating: PG 13 for language
Pairing: Dean/Bela
Summary: Dean and Bela find themselves together in Hell, which is not-awesome, just in case you were wondering.
Author's Notes: Thanks to my betas. Also I hope you like it!
Dean had had a lot of time to think since his last bloody, gasping moments. Most of the thinking had consisted of internally screaming Sam's name and realizing he was more alone and terrified than he ever had been before, but eventually that tapered down to a dull ache and the feeling of the meat hook shoved into his shoulder really took over. After he got used to that though, there was just the gaping feeling of emptiness and the realization that he would be there forever, without moving, only feeling pain and sorrow and hating himself more than he had ever done before.
In conclusion, Dean had done a lot of thinking, and he discovered with complete and utter clarity that Hell? Not awesome. In fact, Hell was so not-awesome that Dean had been (in his less gape-y and more thought-y moments) trying to think of words to describe just how not-awesome Hell was. So far, he'd come up with "lame,""sucktastic," and, "notawesome."
Dean had never been very good with words. That was Sam's thing. Sam. That was the worst, really. Every thought of Sam was like driving a blunt knife through every inch of his body then pouring salt on the wounds. Only on the inside. Maybe the outside, too. It was hard to tell.
Maybe in Hell there were really no outsides, and it was just his inside, only his insides looked just like his outsides and--See? This was obviously what Hell was like, because how else would Dean be left alone to think for all eternity? Dean didn't like to be alone. He didn't like to think. He'd rather work or fight or plot or fuck some random chick who he wouldn't have touched three shots ago, because thinking was for people that had different brains than he: the kinds that put together thoughts and words and emotions and made sense of the rage and pain jumbled up inside. The kind of brain like--
"SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!"
Fuck. He really had to stop doing that.
See, the thing was, it's not even really that he missed him that much. Dean hadn't really been in Hell long enough to miss him. It's just that thinking about him made him think about himself and his failure and his father and his existence of service into some demon's master plan. About becoming a demon himself. About what Sam might become, now Dean wasn't around.
There he went again, with the thinking, and thinking about how he should've thought this whole Hell thing through. How there should've been another way. There probably was. There were probably books on it. And hindsight was a bitch and it was the only thing he could think of to do at the time.
Which just proved the theory again: he shouldn't think. Dean Winchester shouldn't ever think. But he couldn't stop. It was like a light went off in his mind and every thought he'd ever avoided kept dancing through his mind. He tried to re-focus and name off flavors of pie but instead he thought of eating past his fill and saw clearly how that had negatively impacted all of the people he'd been spending his life trying to save.
Which spiraled into how he was never really trying to save any of them so much as punish the other half for living when they should be dead, for causing mayhem, for existing; for taking what wasn't his. For fucking with Sam and taking his mother and he was just so fucking angry he could kill something.
And he saw the faces of every single one of them he'd killed. Their actual faces, from before Hell. And he felt no sorrow and no grief as he looked across the barrel of the gun pointed at---Bela.
Which was shockingly a welcome distraction because that bitch was somewhere down here, too. Of course, she would be. Actually, the only thing Dean could think of to make her situation worse was if he had to put up with her fucking mouth all day while he was metaphysically locked in his room and thinking about what he'd done.
So obviously, she popped up next to him, half-naked and screaming, "No!" at the top of her lungs. She looked up at him wet-faced and sobbing until her features tapered into a glare. "You?" she spoke, angry and surprised, mouth forming around the word like the barrel of the gun.
"I'm not happy to see you either, sweetheart," Dean replied.
"Then why am I here?"
Dean tried to look relaxed in his bonds; didn't flinch at the hook in his shoulder or under her glare. "Even in Hell I'm a chick magnet."
"Charming."
"You know me."
They were silent for a moment, the only sounds echoes of torment and Dean thought he could hear his thoughts echoing around in his head. Bela kill hate run help hide Colt save Sam. SAM SAM SAM SAM--"Sa--" But he stopped it, just before it came out. Huh. That was new.
"You were saying?"
"None of your damn business."
"Calling for your brother?"
"What's it matter to you?"
"It doesn't. I'm just making conversation. Since I'm obviously doomed to spend eternity suspended in mid air next to you. Though clearly someone's gotten something wrong. Why wouldn't I want to see you hanging from the air in abject pain and sorrow? Bit of a happy ending, really."
Dean stopped talking. There were about a million things he wanted to do to her at the moment, starting with taping her mouth shut and ending with schooling her on the life and times of Dean Winchester and his awesomeness, which would end with her helping him get the meat hook from his shoulder. But without finding a way to get away from the meat hook, he couldn't tie her up. And anyway, he was in Hell. It wasn't like he could just pop down to the corner to get some duct tape from the 7Eleven. He sighed, long and weary.
"You could help, you know."
Her fingers didn't even touch him, and he was sitting alone in a dusty bar, drink in front of him, in jeans and his dad's leather jacket in his good boots, the ones that never rubbed blisters and Sam was the furthest thing from his mind.
Well, Dean thought. This was certainly a strange turn of events. He felt okay, at the moment. Not his best, but he was in HELL at the moment, and besides, he hadn't had anything to eat or drink since like, four hours before death.
A shot glass and a piece of pie appeared on the table in front of him, which was totally sweet. He stared at it for a moment. All he wanted at the moment were a shot of whiskey and a warm bed, and he had them both. Maybe he wasn't in Hell anymore. Maybe putting up with that annoying bitch for five minutes had qualified for sainthood and he'd gotten upgraded to purgatory. Or maybe Hell felt sorry for him and wanted him to live out his misery in peace.
It didn't seem likely, what with the crazy evil demon sluts in biker chick garb who followed his baby brother around telling him every demon from the Archeron to the Cocytus wanted his soul stuffed like a pig on a platter. He wasn't expecting hospitality and comfortable shoes. But that's what he got, and really, who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth. He lifted his glass to his lips.
It promptly shattered as a bullet winged it, whizzing past him.
Bela stood at the door staring at him. "Are you mad? Don't you know anything?"
"I know you're a crazy bitch."
"A crazy bitch who just saved you from a certain death."
"Uh, I don't know if you noticed this, sweetheart, but we're already dead."
Her heels clicked too loud and gritty on the floor as she walked over to him. They were hot as well--Hell, and thoughts of sex and bodies grinding together sweaty and sated ran through his mind. She didn't sit in the chair next to him, but looked down at him like his teachers in high school used to (when he showed up). "Obviously you've never read mythology."
"Do you know what I do?"
"Other than serve as a pain in the arse? Not particularly."
"That's the pot calling the kettle black."
"More of the good china calling the kettle a low-life moron, but that's quite the gist of it."
"Oh ha ha."
"Good to know your sense of humor's in tact after you nearly had the food in Hell."
Dean was pretty done with her at this point. "What the fuck are you blathering about?"
"Persephone? Demeter? Don't eat the food in Hell or you're doomed there forever?"
"In case you haven't noticed, dollface, we are doomed in Hell forever."
"You might not be." Her expression twisted into something Dean hadn't seen on her before, and it looked sick and pretty on her face. "You and your brother are famous for getting one another out of tight spots."
Dean didn't know what compelled him to ask, because it's not like it mattered or even that he was curious, but it popped out. Things in Hell sure were poppy these days. "What about you?"
"I made my bed, didn't I? I didn't know I was going to Hell at first, but once I figured it out I made a point of making sure I went down blazing. Not that it's any business of yours. It's just that this place has a way of making you think. Wow. It must be a lot harder for you than I originally thought. Thinking isn't much your strong point, yeah?"
There was the flare of anger in his chest. He wanted to hit her in the face or wrap his big hands around her proud, delicate throat. He never hit women unless they were demons because Dean Winchester was a class act, but he slammed her face first on the table anyway, pinning her down.
She turned her cheek so that she was looking at him in profile. "Let go of me."
"Why should I?"
Thinking about it, she was less proud than he'd ever seen her. And he was shocked when she answered, "What good will it do? I hurt enough already." Dean let go of her, and shoved his pie (uneaten) onto the ground instead.
And then he was somewhere else. Naked and freezing his nuts off. Which was just as well, because who cared about shrinkage in this place anyway.
"God, it's freezing," came a voice from the dark. A British voice.
The bitch, of course.
"At least I've got a blanket," she said.
The fucking bitch, of course. Dean felt his toes going numb. He could kill her from the blanket. He could. Hell, they were in HELL for Christ's sakes. How much worse could he get? But he didn't. He just grumbled unhappily and turned on his side to face the direction of her voice.
"You have a blanket. I'm freezing my nuts off." Yes. That was the most tactful way he could put it. Partially because Dean wasn't much for tact and partially because of that thing how he wasn't great with words.
"Sucks for you, doesn't it?" He could hear her smirking. He re-thought killing her for a moment. Or at least crawling over there and ripping the blanket from her cold, dead fingers. Cold, dead, naked fingers. Which added a whole new layer to the uncomfortablenss of the situation. Because Dean was all about getting girls naked, but not without, you know, their distinct and vocal permission. Just in case there were bruises later. Or bite marks, or something.
You know, thinking about it, if the government really wanted to find him, they could probably trace his path through his dental record pressed into thighs in every city of the nation. And a few places in Canada. One in Mexico, too, maybe. Except maybe not Mexico because there was all that tequila so the whole thing was a little fuzzy. Mostly he just remembered how pleased he was he didn't get crabs.
"That'd better be a banana in your pocket," Bela announced.
Which she should know nothing about but since he was currently spooning with her. "Spooning? That's how I know I'm in Hell."
"The meat hooks and the random shifts of time and perspective didn't do it for you?"
"Bite me. You don't seem much like the spooning type, either."
"No, actually. I'm much more of the reverse cowgirl type, personally. Wow, that's definitely not a banana in your pocket."
Dean pretty much decided that moment he was going to fuck her mouth shut, but then again, he could just lie there. He was warm now, pretty content. The dull aches were duller than ever and really, he could just lay there forever.
"I'm exhausted," she spoke.
Which was pretty much when Dean decided it was time to get moving. "Get up," he said. "I don't like the idea of being comfortable in Hell." And then they were somewhere else.
It was hard to describe the place, exactly. Dean hadn't seen anything like it. It didn't look like Hell, and it didn't feel like Hell. It was warm but not hot and he was comfortable. He was still thinking, but clearly, and without the throbbing pain in the back of his head about Sam and Dad and how he was never quite good enough. And he was content, for a moment.
Then everything went black.
~*~
When Dean woke up back on Earth, he wasn't that surprised, really. He was at Bobby's. Sam hugged him. Bobby hugged him warily. They told him to rest. Dean laid on the couch with a blanket over him and listened to the voices from the kitchen whispering, "What's she doing here?"
He got up and walked outside where Bela stood in one of his T-shirts.
She had a mug in her hand. "Did they tell you how we got back, yet?"
"Sam made a deal with the reaper. Something about resisting the seven deadly sins. I remember it being easy. It was little things."
"It's always the little things that make you a good person."
"Or a bad person."
"Touché."
"I'll let it slide. I'm in a surprisingly better mood now that I'm not in Hell."
"Yes, but neither am I." The air seemed thicker all of a sudden, and she didn't look like she was going to cry, just very sad and very determined. "This was never meant for me. I deserved Hell, Dean. I did everything I could to make sure I deserved it."
"Yeah, I noticed." He could've said more; he probably should've. About stealing the Colt and trying to kill him and generally being a bitch. But it felt different now. He wasn't angry. He didn't hate her. There was just a warm, buzzing feeling and the strange kinship that she was the only one who knew what it was like. He touched her shoulder.
She shrugged him off. "Don't go soft on me, Dean."
He smirked, "I don't think that'll be a problem."
"You're horrible."
"I saved your ass, didn't I?"
Bela rolled her eyes. "How can I ever repay you?"
Dean grabbed her by the waist and pulled her toward him. Her mug fell, unbroken, onto the sand. "With little things," he said, and kissed her.
Which, in retrospect, wasn't exactly the best idea because Sam and Bobby got worried when he didn't show up two hours later and they found him ass-naked in the back of the Impala while Bela repaid him again.
Author:
ashe_frostRecipient:
sasha_davidovnaRating: PG 13 for language
Pairing: Dean/Bela
Summary: Dean and Bela find themselves together in Hell, which is not-awesome, just in case you were wondering.
Author's Notes: Thanks to my betas. Also I hope you like it!
Dean had had a lot of time to think since his last bloody, gasping moments. Most of the thinking had consisted of internally screaming Sam's name and realizing he was more alone and terrified than he ever had been before, but eventually that tapered down to a dull ache and the feeling of the meat hook shoved into his shoulder really took over. After he got used to that though, there was just the gaping feeling of emptiness and the realization that he would be there forever, without moving, only feeling pain and sorrow and hating himself more than he had ever done before.
In conclusion, Dean had done a lot of thinking, and he discovered with complete and utter clarity that Hell? Not awesome. In fact, Hell was so not-awesome that Dean had been (in his less gape-y and more thought-y moments) trying to think of words to describe just how not-awesome Hell was. So far, he'd come up with "lame,""sucktastic," and, "notawesome."
Dean had never been very good with words. That was Sam's thing. Sam. That was the worst, really. Every thought of Sam was like driving a blunt knife through every inch of his body then pouring salt on the wounds. Only on the inside. Maybe the outside, too. It was hard to tell.
Maybe in Hell there were really no outsides, and it was just his inside, only his insides looked just like his outsides and--See? This was obviously what Hell was like, because how else would Dean be left alone to think for all eternity? Dean didn't like to be alone. He didn't like to think. He'd rather work or fight or plot or fuck some random chick who he wouldn't have touched three shots ago, because thinking was for people that had different brains than he: the kinds that put together thoughts and words and emotions and made sense of the rage and pain jumbled up inside. The kind of brain like--
"SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!"
Fuck. He really had to stop doing that.
See, the thing was, it's not even really that he missed him that much. Dean hadn't really been in Hell long enough to miss him. It's just that thinking about him made him think about himself and his failure and his father and his existence of service into some demon's master plan. About becoming a demon himself. About what Sam might become, now Dean wasn't around.
There he went again, with the thinking, and thinking about how he should've thought this whole Hell thing through. How there should've been another way. There probably was. There were probably books on it. And hindsight was a bitch and it was the only thing he could think of to do at the time.
Which just proved the theory again: he shouldn't think. Dean Winchester shouldn't ever think. But he couldn't stop. It was like a light went off in his mind and every thought he'd ever avoided kept dancing through his mind. He tried to re-focus and name off flavors of pie but instead he thought of eating past his fill and saw clearly how that had negatively impacted all of the people he'd been spending his life trying to save.
Which spiraled into how he was never really trying to save any of them so much as punish the other half for living when they should be dead, for causing mayhem, for existing; for taking what wasn't his. For fucking with Sam and taking his mother and he was just so fucking angry he could kill something.
And he saw the faces of every single one of them he'd killed. Their actual faces, from before Hell. And he felt no sorrow and no grief as he looked across the barrel of the gun pointed at---Bela.
Which was shockingly a welcome distraction because that bitch was somewhere down here, too. Of course, she would be. Actually, the only thing Dean could think of to make her situation worse was if he had to put up with her fucking mouth all day while he was metaphysically locked in his room and thinking about what he'd done.
So obviously, she popped up next to him, half-naked and screaming, "No!" at the top of her lungs. She looked up at him wet-faced and sobbing until her features tapered into a glare. "You?" she spoke, angry and surprised, mouth forming around the word like the barrel of the gun.
"I'm not happy to see you either, sweetheart," Dean replied.
"Then why am I here?"
Dean tried to look relaxed in his bonds; didn't flinch at the hook in his shoulder or under her glare. "Even in Hell I'm a chick magnet."
"Charming."
"You know me."
They were silent for a moment, the only sounds echoes of torment and Dean thought he could hear his thoughts echoing around in his head. Bela kill hate run help hide Colt save Sam. SAM SAM SAM SAM--"Sa--" But he stopped it, just before it came out. Huh. That was new.
"You were saying?"
"None of your damn business."
"Calling for your brother?"
"What's it matter to you?"
"It doesn't. I'm just making conversation. Since I'm obviously doomed to spend eternity suspended in mid air next to you. Though clearly someone's gotten something wrong. Why wouldn't I want to see you hanging from the air in abject pain and sorrow? Bit of a happy ending, really."
Dean stopped talking. There were about a million things he wanted to do to her at the moment, starting with taping her mouth shut and ending with schooling her on the life and times of Dean Winchester and his awesomeness, which would end with her helping him get the meat hook from his shoulder. But without finding a way to get away from the meat hook, he couldn't tie her up. And anyway, he was in Hell. It wasn't like he could just pop down to the corner to get some duct tape from the 7Eleven. He sighed, long and weary.
"You could help, you know."
Her fingers didn't even touch him, and he was sitting alone in a dusty bar, drink in front of him, in jeans and his dad's leather jacket in his good boots, the ones that never rubbed blisters and Sam was the furthest thing from his mind.
Well, Dean thought. This was certainly a strange turn of events. He felt okay, at the moment. Not his best, but he was in HELL at the moment, and besides, he hadn't had anything to eat or drink since like, four hours before death.
A shot glass and a piece of pie appeared on the table in front of him, which was totally sweet. He stared at it for a moment. All he wanted at the moment were a shot of whiskey and a warm bed, and he had them both. Maybe he wasn't in Hell anymore. Maybe putting up with that annoying bitch for five minutes had qualified for sainthood and he'd gotten upgraded to purgatory. Or maybe Hell felt sorry for him and wanted him to live out his misery in peace.
It didn't seem likely, what with the crazy evil demon sluts in biker chick garb who followed his baby brother around telling him every demon from the Archeron to the Cocytus wanted his soul stuffed like a pig on a platter. He wasn't expecting hospitality and comfortable shoes. But that's what he got, and really, who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth. He lifted his glass to his lips.
It promptly shattered as a bullet winged it, whizzing past him.
Bela stood at the door staring at him. "Are you mad? Don't you know anything?"
"I know you're a crazy bitch."
"A crazy bitch who just saved you from a certain death."
"Uh, I don't know if you noticed this, sweetheart, but we're already dead."
Her heels clicked too loud and gritty on the floor as she walked over to him. They were hot as well--Hell, and thoughts of sex and bodies grinding together sweaty and sated ran through his mind. She didn't sit in the chair next to him, but looked down at him like his teachers in high school used to (when he showed up). "Obviously you've never read mythology."
"Do you know what I do?"
"Other than serve as a pain in the arse? Not particularly."
"That's the pot calling the kettle black."
"More of the good china calling the kettle a low-life moron, but that's quite the gist of it."
"Oh ha ha."
"Good to know your sense of humor's in tact after you nearly had the food in Hell."
Dean was pretty done with her at this point. "What the fuck are you blathering about?"
"Persephone? Demeter? Don't eat the food in Hell or you're doomed there forever?"
"In case you haven't noticed, dollface, we are doomed in Hell forever."
"You might not be." Her expression twisted into something Dean hadn't seen on her before, and it looked sick and pretty on her face. "You and your brother are famous for getting one another out of tight spots."
Dean didn't know what compelled him to ask, because it's not like it mattered or even that he was curious, but it popped out. Things in Hell sure were poppy these days. "What about you?"
"I made my bed, didn't I? I didn't know I was going to Hell at first, but once I figured it out I made a point of making sure I went down blazing. Not that it's any business of yours. It's just that this place has a way of making you think. Wow. It must be a lot harder for you than I originally thought. Thinking isn't much your strong point, yeah?"
There was the flare of anger in his chest. He wanted to hit her in the face or wrap his big hands around her proud, delicate throat. He never hit women unless they were demons because Dean Winchester was a class act, but he slammed her face first on the table anyway, pinning her down.
She turned her cheek so that she was looking at him in profile. "Let go of me."
"Why should I?"
Thinking about it, she was less proud than he'd ever seen her. And he was shocked when she answered, "What good will it do? I hurt enough already." Dean let go of her, and shoved his pie (uneaten) onto the ground instead.
And then he was somewhere else. Naked and freezing his nuts off. Which was just as well, because who cared about shrinkage in this place anyway.
"God, it's freezing," came a voice from the dark. A British voice.
The bitch, of course.
"At least I've got a blanket," she said.
The fucking bitch, of course. Dean felt his toes going numb. He could kill her from the blanket. He could. Hell, they were in HELL for Christ's sakes. How much worse could he get? But he didn't. He just grumbled unhappily and turned on his side to face the direction of her voice.
"You have a blanket. I'm freezing my nuts off." Yes. That was the most tactful way he could put it. Partially because Dean wasn't much for tact and partially because of that thing how he wasn't great with words.
"Sucks for you, doesn't it?" He could hear her smirking. He re-thought killing her for a moment. Or at least crawling over there and ripping the blanket from her cold, dead fingers. Cold, dead, naked fingers. Which added a whole new layer to the uncomfortablenss of the situation. Because Dean was all about getting girls naked, but not without, you know, their distinct and vocal permission. Just in case there were bruises later. Or bite marks, or something.
You know, thinking about it, if the government really wanted to find him, they could probably trace his path through his dental record pressed into thighs in every city of the nation. And a few places in Canada. One in Mexico, too, maybe. Except maybe not Mexico because there was all that tequila so the whole thing was a little fuzzy. Mostly he just remembered how pleased he was he didn't get crabs.
"That'd better be a banana in your pocket," Bela announced.
Which she should know nothing about but since he was currently spooning with her. "Spooning? That's how I know I'm in Hell."
"The meat hooks and the random shifts of time and perspective didn't do it for you?"
"Bite me. You don't seem much like the spooning type, either."
"No, actually. I'm much more of the reverse cowgirl type, personally. Wow, that's definitely not a banana in your pocket."
Dean pretty much decided that moment he was going to fuck her mouth shut, but then again, he could just lie there. He was warm now, pretty content. The dull aches were duller than ever and really, he could just lay there forever.
"I'm exhausted," she spoke.
Which was pretty much when Dean decided it was time to get moving. "Get up," he said. "I don't like the idea of being comfortable in Hell." And then they were somewhere else.
It was hard to describe the place, exactly. Dean hadn't seen anything like it. It didn't look like Hell, and it didn't feel like Hell. It was warm but not hot and he was comfortable. He was still thinking, but clearly, and without the throbbing pain in the back of his head about Sam and Dad and how he was never quite good enough. And he was content, for a moment.
Then everything went black.
When Dean woke up back on Earth, he wasn't that surprised, really. He was at Bobby's. Sam hugged him. Bobby hugged him warily. They told him to rest. Dean laid on the couch with a blanket over him and listened to the voices from the kitchen whispering, "What's she doing here?"
He got up and walked outside where Bela stood in one of his T-shirts.
She had a mug in her hand. "Did they tell you how we got back, yet?"
"Sam made a deal with the reaper. Something about resisting the seven deadly sins. I remember it being easy. It was little things."
"It's always the little things that make you a good person."
"Or a bad person."
"Touché."
"I'll let it slide. I'm in a surprisingly better mood now that I'm not in Hell."
"Yes, but neither am I." The air seemed thicker all of a sudden, and she didn't look like she was going to cry, just very sad and very determined. "This was never meant for me. I deserved Hell, Dean. I did everything I could to make sure I deserved it."
"Yeah, I noticed." He could've said more; he probably should've. About stealing the Colt and trying to kill him and generally being a bitch. But it felt different now. He wasn't angry. He didn't hate her. There was just a warm, buzzing feeling and the strange kinship that she was the only one who knew what it was like. He touched her shoulder.
She shrugged him off. "Don't go soft on me, Dean."
He smirked, "I don't think that'll be a problem."
"You're horrible."
"I saved your ass, didn't I?"
Bela rolled her eyes. "How can I ever repay you?"
Dean grabbed her by the waist and pulled her toward him. Her mug fell, unbroken, onto the sand. "With little things," he said, and kissed her.
Which, in retrospect, wasn't exactly the best idea because Sam and Bobby got worried when he didn't show up two hours later and they found him ass-naked in the back of the Impala while Bela repaid him again.