#boots you are first on the hitlist already and this did not help your case

[ghirahimbo]

BOOTS. You are on THIN ICE already.

[fanforfanatic]

Of the Beholder

Relationship: Dean x OFC Rating: This is not smut. Not angst. Not fluff. Not crack. It is BS. Warnings: None. Well... brief moment of violence but akin to the show. A/N: This is for @seenashwrite ‘s 200 Follower Celebration Challenge. Who I hope you follow because she is v v talented. [Nash, please don’t ask me to explain myself. It was not supposed to be this, but crack is not my forte, ok goodbye.]

~2.5k words (too many)

Summary: You and Dean go to an underground poker game of the supernatural variety. It goes exactly as planned. Or at least as close to planned as either of you expected. 

Here’s the thing about the supernatural: You think of it and you think corpses. You think of the red pond the body’ll be found in and the new Pollock on the walls painted with that same blood. You think of how the body- the person got there in the first place. You think of the vicious teeth that ripped into flesh. You think of the thing attached to those teeth- and no, it’s not the other way around- red stained and grotesque and evil.

What you don’t think about is what those creatures get up to between kills. You don’t think of them cleaning up in a sink or in a shower. You don’t think of them having a home they pay rent for with sinks and showers. You don’t think of them preferring half-and-half over milk, of them loading their minivan with groceries, of them laughing at themselves at the door after looking for their already in-hand keys. You don’t think of them going out to buy new shoes, or staying in because they don’t like the humidity, or skipping twenty songs when their music player is on shuffle to get to that one. Here’s the other thing about the supernatural: It has a life.

A night life at that, which doesn’t always consist of murdering humans, which sometimes consists of shooting the shit and sharing a pint (of what exactly? you don’t know). And that’s what you’ve just walked into. Some kind of supernatural speakeasy that wasn’t easy to get an invitation to or to physically get to. You and Dean managed, though, going down more flights of stairs and deeper into the Earth’s crust than you think you have before. Excluding Hell. Well. Where is Hell even?

You whisper the question, though it is neither the time nor the place, and there is a distinct lack of answer in your ear. You turn to Dean, tuck a strand of hair behind your left ear and shake your head infinitesimally. Dean understands that the comm in your right ear isn’t transmitting anymore.

“Guess we’re on our own,” he tells you, grinning, like this is exactly the challenge he was looking for.

It’s infectious and you’re grinning too. “Aren’t we always that?” You raise a brow and paired with the stretch of your lips you wonder if it makes you look as crazed as you feel eager.

Dean lets out a loud laugh but it goes unnoticed by the bustling crowd made up of probably every type of evil you’ve ever faced. “Come on, the fun’s in the back.” The fun being an exclusive poker game where money isn’t what’s at stake. You follow Dean as he casually leads the way, weaving through the patrons.

You pointedly ignore the sheet of wood hanging over the bar, with its sick version of a menu written out in thick, black marker, but you can’t escape the snippets of conversations that reach you. Some are gory retellings and others are mundane everyday chatter and it’s the latter that disturbs you the most. The third thing about the supernatural and the lives they have: They don’t get to keep them, you decide.

 It’s an embarrassingly short amount of time later that you find your hands chained to the ceiling of a stone room. A few yards away, Dean is shackled to the wall, low enough that he’s sitting down. Lucky bastard, you think as your calves strain to keep you on your toes and your weight off the tendons in your shoulders.

The room glows white with moonlight spilling in from the skylight overhead, drawing a pattern in shadows over the floor. You realise that you’re no longer in the speakeasy. Possibly nowhere near it and that the odds of Sam swooping in for an assist are slim.

Okay, so maybe, your plan to blend in wasn’t the best despite what you and Dean announced you were bringing to table. Maybe it was a bit of a joke.

“Hey, Dean,” you half whisper.

Dean grunts.

“Two hunters walk into a bar and-”

A figure steps into the circle of light. Female, dark haired, skin wrinkled and rippling as a result of having been scorched. The discoloration is cut off by a high black turtleneck. She’s wearing gloves, and boots that go up over her black jeans. The only accessory she’s sporting is a glass eye that matches her good one.

“Who wants their ass beat first?” She asks pleasantly. “And before you decide, keep in mind that I’m gradually going to get more tired, but also gradually more Berserker.”

Dean says, “Sign me up.”

“He can go first. I like my chicks a little crazy,” you shrug awkwardly.

“Besides,” Dean frowns, looking terribly sad for a moment. “I hate being picked last. Gym class was a tough time for me.”

The woman rolls her good eye and stalks over to you.

“Woah! Hey!” You shuffle back as much as you can manage on the tip of your toes. “Did we not just agree that he gets the pleasure of the first round?”

“Y’know, seeing how willing you are to get me injured is real heartwarming.”

You send Dean a look that is equal parts sheepish and grudging.

“The two of you came to the game with the Lazarus Pearl as bargaining chips,” the woman starts. “I know this. I also know they’re in your person.” She looks at you as she finishes, one beady eye focused on yours, the other just slightly off to the side.

“You evil do-ers gotta start doin’ more research. I’m the one with all the pockets.”

“I’ve done the research.” Her eye glints in amusement as it remains trained on you. “The Pearl is kept in the mind. No need for pockets. I’ve researched you too, Mr. Winchester. I know all about your history. From the daddy issues, to the mommy issues, to the people issues. The insecurity that, miraculously, hasn’t crippled you quite yet, but that happy coincidence might be because of your hero complex. And don’t get me started on this life of excess and sin. Girls, booze, deception. Still, the risks you take are calculated and walking into the back room of that quaint dive you know you were to be top of the hitlist and that made the Pearl safest with her.” She nods to you as though she hasn’t been staring you down this whole time. “Dean may be a vain, selfish, lying, and quite possibly alcoholic man-whore, but gambling is one vice he doesn’t have.”

You scoff, making sure your breath hits face, purposefully riling her up. These things that go bump in the night like to talk and talk and pretend they comprehend who people are at their core, but these things stick to the shadows and they have no real understanding of what’s in the light, no matter what day job they keep. The arrogance pisses you off.

“Dean is not selfish.”

“Yeah! Hey! That’s the only thing you want to object to. Everything she said and that’s-”

“Sorry.” You give Dean as apologising a look as you can muster.

“Cute,” the woman says. “In any case, if he’s got it, it’s torturing you that’ll get him to fess up.”

“I don’t know about that,” Dean says contemplatively. “You think so?”

“Yes, because you,” She swivels towards Dean but stays- thankfully- close to you. “Prolapsed rectum that you are - are infatuated with her, whose cobwebby old snooch, by the way, I can smell from here.”

“Hey!”

“I’m really not that fond of her.”

“Hey!”

The woman cackles, turning towards you and bending forward enough that you think you might be able to do the job. But then she’s leaning back again, out of reach again.

It has to be you who does it. It was going to be Dean back when you thought you’d be not-tied-up and playing poker. His hands are stronger- you cringe at the realisation of what you’ll have to use, now. With Dean sitting, hands shackled behind him, he wouldn’t be able to get close and that’s why you’ve both silently agreed to have the woman approach you with the very tactful use of reverse psychology (or what might just be dumb luck).

“Look,” the woman says. “Hurting you isn’t high on my priority list.” She pulls out a gun you recognise the make and model of- which doesn’t help you in any way. “I’d really rather not. It’s boring. What is a priority is the Pearl. You give it to me and I leave you and the Winchester alone.”

You purse your lips like you’re considering it.

She pulls the safety back and the click doesn’t exactly scare you but you don’t feel particularly good about how the situation is escalating. “You don’t know what I’ve been through, to get this close to the Pearl.”

You let out an unintentional laugh at the sheer irony of her words and it earns you a bullet in the thigh.

“Motherfucker!”

You grind your teeth and shut your eyes as the pain flares, hearing Dean shout your name and the sound of his chains in a distant sort of way: the echos of his words and of the clanking more so than the sounds themselves. You’ve been shot enough times that you can tell, the bullet has hit bone.

“But here’s an idea of what I’ll do.” She fires another shot, same leg but lower, cringingly near your knee but it goes through only flesh, coming out the other side bloodied.

“I have it, it’s with me!” Dean shouts, kneeling as close to you as he can with his arms bound.

The woman- Ignacia, her name is. You know because she’s been your mark for weeks.- glares sharply at Dean. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Fine,” you spit. “You can have it.”

Ignacia focuses on you again, stepping closer. “Give it to me.”

You sigh dramatically. “It’s not on me.”

Her hand shoots out and grabs the back of your neck, pulling you closer and pulling on the cuffs binding your wrists. “I’ve read the prophecy, girl. The Pearl is in the mind of all who keep it. I may not know how you came across it in the first place but I know it is locked in your brain.”

“You’re wrong. You’re paraphrasing.”

“What?”

“You must have been young when you first heard it, huh? It must have been decades ago. Somewhere along the way, you decided that what you thought it meant is what it said. That’s not how it works.”

“What are you going on about?” Ignacia scowls, tugging your hair back and the prickle of pain is almost a welcome distraction from the throbbing in your leg.

“All this time…” you continue. “And you never figured it out. I guess that makes sense, the Beholder keeps it safest that way, not knowing. Or maybe they did tell you, but you died at least once since so you don’t get to remember.”

“I have never died.” Ignacia, looking frazzled, raises her weapon again, aims for your shoulder this time. Huh, so the whole coming back to life thing isn’t as normal for not-Winchesters. Funny how easy it is to forget that. Still, Ignacia must remember at least a little about the time she died.

You hear Dean say your name warningly.

“I can tell you,” you say. “How you died. It wasn’t pretty. No no no no- I mean it. One of the grosser deaths I’ve come across. Like, a big, sweaty fireman carries you out of a burning building and you think- Yeah, okay, he’s gonna give me mouth-to-mouth - but instead he just starts choking the shit out of you, and the last sensation that you feel before you die- and you do die- is he’s squeezing your throat so hard that a big wet blob of drool drips off his teeth, and just- flurp- falls right onto your popped-out eyeball. That level of gross.”

Ignacia gets right up in your face and this close you think hers might have been pretty once. Before the flames ate it up. “Enough of this.”

“The prophecy doesn’t say the Pearl is in the mind. It says it’s kept in the head.”

It’s a herculean effort, but you manage to hoist yourself up and wrap your good leg around her, keeping her from escaping you. The gun goes off another three times and you think you get shot once, though you can’t tell where. Feels like a graze, with your adrenaline pumping like it is.

You lead with your mouth, teeth bared, and latch onto her eye socket as best you can. The good eye. The eye saved by the flurp. The one thing that wasn't swallowed by flames that night. The eye that has an energy embedded into it powerful enough to rival that of the eight billion souls on Earth.

Ignacia struggles to get away and you feel her hands burn against your skin- she wasn’t as inactive a witch as you had thought- but you latch on and before long you’re spitting the eyeball Dean’s way and hoisting yourself even higher with a pained shriek. You use both legs this time, as you choke the woman with thighs around her necks. She digs fingers into bullet holes- huh, so she got you in the hip too- but eventually her struggles cease, her hands slacken and her body follows suit. You let it drop to the ground and slump in your cuffs with a grunt.

“You fucking bit her eye out!” Dean screeches after a lull of silence.

You take a moment to assess your injuries, dazed as you are. You’re bleeding but you’ve got at least a few minutes. “Next time, remind me to get shot in the head.” It’d be less painful.

“Tell you what,” Dean suggests. “Next time, I’ll shoot you myself if it means I don’t have to watch you do that.”

You laugh a little, lids feeling too heavy to be kept open now.

“Hey, stay with me. Just ‘cause I don’t like where your mouth’s been today don’t mean I don’t want it revisiting some places.”

You wheeze and hope it sounds like a laugh too.

“Sam’ll find us soon. Any minute now.”

When did Dean become the hopeful one? You make a sharp sound and Dean hears the question.

“When we first started going out, I may have… injected a tracking device into your body.”

“You’re psychotic.”

“You bit her good eye out.”

You ignore him and say, “Werewolves are only werewolves once a month. Maybe they stand in the sun the rest of the time, Dean.” The words are mumbled but Dean makes them out. More than that, he gets it.

“She was a witch,” he reassures you. “With a ticking time bomb in her face and less than stellar track record, dropping bodies all over the place and ours were next.”

You nod a little dumbly, not pointing out that he’s conveniently skipped the part about how Ignacia never chose this. Never wanted the Eye. Never wanted her life to become one giant irony, where she spent its entirety searching for the thing she’s had all along. Never wanted to be a pawn in this big, twisted, cosmic game.

Dean watches you pass out. He isn’t too worried. Sam really should be moments away with Cas in tow and you’re losing blood but not fast enough that your death is imminent.

Dean sighs and slumps against the wall, rolling the eyeball between his fingers, layers peeling back to reveal a pearl inside. It glows, inside out, but only when he’s really looking for it. He grins, he might give you shit more often than not but damn if you don’t know how to get a job done. He laughs to himself, at his luck.

“Goddamn psychopath,” he says fondly, glancing at you for a moment before tilting his head back to look at the ceiling. That’s wherefrom I’m peering into the lives of these characters. Dean’s green eyes, in turn, peer into my soul, because that’s what Dean’s green eyes do. He says, “Hope you liked it, Nash,” and then, just because Dean is a bit of a shithead, he winks and adds, “Sweetheart.”

Boopboop:  @hannahindie @escabell @trexrambling @impandagrl @klaineaholic

A/N: I did my best. Do not shun me from the community xx