Supernatural fic: Strip. Poker. Boom. (gen, PG-13)
Thursday, 31 August 2006 08:44![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krisomniacTitle: Strip. Poker. Boom.
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
krisomniac
Rating, Warnings, pairing: PG-13, half-nudity and explosives, gen
Disclaimer: Not mine. No profit. No copyright infringement intended.
A/N: This one's been cooking for a long while. I'm really pleased with it in the end. Go read. A thousand thanks toignipes and tvm for beta-reading in their busy busy lives.
Wordcount: ~3800
Summary: Winchesters and Poker, a story in fourteen cards
Strip. Poker. Boom.
Joker
The picture on the back was faded and worn until you could hardly see the design. On the front, the joker smiled out from underneath his jester's cap. Dean slipped it into his pocket out of habit. He'd need all the luck he could get in there if he was going to save Sam's sorry ass. Again.
It had been one hell of a week--bad tips, angry spirits, and impossible summer heat beating down on their shoulders. Bereaved parents and dusty, back road towns. Every piece of clothing they owned was caked in sweat or blood or worse. Dean was ready to pack up, drive north to Canada or Alaska or fucking Greenland, for all he cared--anywhere it wasn't hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement.
All he wanted was a cool room and a clean T-shirt, and they'd been so close to getting out of here. He glanced at his watch again. Sam was late. Dean hoped he hadn't had too many problems with the ghouls.
It had been easier than either Sam or Dean would have guessed to track them en route to Mexico. It had been harder than either expected to kill the first two they met on the road. Rescuing the stolen children, well, that had gone nearly according to plan.
Dean was pretty sure the kids would be okay.
Sam, on the other hand, hadn't met them at the rendezvous.
He checked one last time to make sure his gun was loaded, then tucked it into the waistband of his jeans--more for comfort than any good it would do against the ghouls inside. Running a hand over his face and neck, already slick with sweat, he turned and drove back to the hut.
Two.
Sam watched from inside the tiny cage, pulse pounding, white-knuckled fists closed around inch-thick steel bars.
The ghoul with the dragon tattoo stood so quickly his chair fell to the floor with a dull thud. A vein pulsed at his left temple, just below the dragon's inky wing. His eye, the blue one, twitched three times before he blinked slowly and exhaled through pursed lips.
He slapped his hands down, and a carefully stacked pile of chips toppled over onto the cracked plywood. Leaning across the table, the muscles of his back bulged huge and tortuous. He was the kind of creature about whom people used the word menace as a verb and fugly as a noun.
Across the table, Dean didn't so much as blink.
His shoulders were relaxed, casual smile unwavering. If his eyes were alert and wary, his fingers too carefully poised on his cards, Sam only noticed because he knew to look.
The tattooed ghoul flared his nostrils, and a deep, rumbling growl rose from his chest.
"Straight flush," Dean said, flipping the final card from his hand, "beats a pair of aces no matter where..." He looked his opponent up and down, absorbing every detail of the henchman's strange skin and misshapen bones. "You come from."
The other one, whose knobbly knuckles dragged gorilla-like on the dirt floor, balled its fists.
Dean sat up straighter, eyes narrowing. "My game," he said simply, "my key."
He leaned in towards the dragon tattoo, reaching across with one hand, and grasped the chain around the thing's neck. With a flick of his wrist, a silver link snapped and the key was his.
Three.
Dean had taught him how to play. Explained the rules, taught him when to hold, when to stay or call, and how much to ante in. They couldn't have been more than eight and twelve, playing through restless nights, deliberately not looking at the phone. Dean never asked about the nightmares, and he'd deal and deal until Sam got sleepy again. They'd mastered every game in every podunk town from Seattle to Jacksonville, memorized the rules, by-rules and unwritten codes, dropped names like New York Draw and Five Card Stud with the same fluency they discussed the most recent X-Men comics or Saturday morning cartoons.
Sam remembered their deck of cards: soft and curled around the edges, missing a joker, hand painted by some old mystic friend of Dad's. He remembered the musty, mildewy smell of motel rooms late on summer nights in Georgia, when it was too hot to breathe and insects buzzed against the screen, fighting for a sliver of hissing fluorescent light. Sam had forgotten the names of the towns, which monster or spirit or ghost had lived where, but he remembered waiting up late for Dad and dealing the cards.
You're bluffing, Sammy.
Am not... How do you know?
You've got like a million tells.
Shut up…. Like what?
Four.
Straightening up, Dean blinked slowly. The chain fell with a faint clink of silver on a beer- and blood-stained floor. The tattooed ghoul stared at Dean and bristled.
Dean tuned and walked towards the cage in the corner.
In the dim light from the window, Sam couldn't see the bruises. Nothing in Dean's walk betrayed torn muscles or battered ribs, souvenirs of the beating they'd taken only yesterday.
Sam closed his eyes and looked up to a sky he couldn't have seen anyway. Metal bars digging into the back of his head, he listened to Dean's footsteps and slowly exhaled.
Five.
"Call."
Smoke from Joshua's pipe drifted in lazy puffs around the single light bulb hanging from the basement ceiling. The sweet tobacco scent mingled with the smell of bare wood and Doritos, amber liquor and damp earth. Dean listened to the sound of rough fingers drumming on the board.
"I fold." Bobby laid his cards face down and leaned back in his chair, stretching his knotty muscles and yawning like a wiry, brown grizzly bear.
Dad stared hard at Caleb, who grinned back across the table; their profiles were hazy and muted in the smoke. Dean could only see the back of Pastor Jim's head, his dark hair beginning to grey, cocked to one side as he considered his options. Thorn, the towering hunter with hands the size of dinner plates, sat opposite him, dark eyes preternaturally still and unmoving.
They would play all night. They always did, on the rare occasions that more than three of them met in a single place. They'd pass the hours talking shop over cards, discussing the finer points of molding bullets from silver and drawing anasasi symbols between bursts of laughter at jokes older than dirt. Dean knew they saw him watching from the top of the steps; they were too good not to. But no one invited him in.
No one told him to go to bed, either.
When Thorn stood and began to walk towards the kitchen, Dean slipped into the shadows behind the door. The big man glanced his way and grinned. In the second it took his face to resume its normal, somber expression, Dean wondered whether he'd seen the smile at all.
Then he turned back to the game. You could learn a lot watching these guys play poker.
Six.
Dean slipped the key into the lock with a neat click and the cage door swung open.
Sam unfolded his legs, grabbed the bars, and pulled himself out. He stood shakily, feeling stiff muscles and joints unwind, new bruises protest over the length of his back, and pins and needles run along his toes. Dean steadied him, a hand on his shoulder, guiding him towards the open door and out into the afternoon light.
"I don't like it," whispered the ghoul with the forked tongue and gorilla arms.
Dean raised an eyebrow, turned to the guard and half-smiled, but his humorless grin disappeared almost immediately and he shrugged. "Your pal made the bet. I won." When turned back toward the door, his jaw was tight, brow furrowed, right hand hovering over his gun. He pressed more insistently on Sam's back, digging into a bruise.
Sam didn't flinch, didn't hurry, but he covered more ground with each step.
Sometimes he wondered when Dean had learned to do it, to stare at a creature he knew was ready, willing, and under direct orders to tear him to pieces, and smile.
Seven.
Can I play, Dad?
Grown-up laugher always followed the question. No, son, I don't think these men want to get beat by a twelve-year-old.
Sam had heard the lines so many times before, in smoky back rooms and dimly lit bars, that he barely looked up from his Coke and drawings. He remembered the first time Dean had asked. That time, even Dad was surprised.
Sam wasn't.
I've got… Dean made a show of rummaging around in his pockets. Five dollars. He put the crumpled notes on the table.
Still lauging, the men would ruffle Dean's hair, shrug, and-- if the kid's that eager to loose his candy money, no reason to stop him--pull over a chair.
Sam had wished, that first time, that he was big enough to sit with the adults and Dean. But Leena, the waitress who smiled and blinked at Dad like she had dust in her eyes, made him a Shirley Temple with extra cherries and promised she'd keep him company while his brother played. She told him stories about her dog, Minnie, and her boss, Hector, while Sam drew pictures on the backs of beer labels. Pretty soon the men at the poker table had stopped laughing.
They always did.
Sam pushed his pencils back into his bag and glanced up at the game. The men at the table were grumbling. One of them said, Fuck, and slammed his fist on the wood. From the looks on rest of their faces, Sam didn't think he'd have time to go to the bathroom before Dad herded them back into the car.
They always hated getting beat by a kid.
He drank the rest of his Coke as fast as he could.
Eight.
Sam pulled the door closed as Dean settled into the driver's seat. Dean slid the key into the ignition and turned it, but the engine remained stubbornly silent.
Sam's heart was pounding, offering up a silent prayer to the God of Chevys that the car would start and they could leave this tin-roofed dump in the dust. He gripped the door handle, slick and warm in his palm, and chanced a look behind them.
The two ghouls were standing in the doorway, wearing what passed, on their twisted faces, for identical shit-eating grins.
"Tell me they didn't," Dean hissed. He opened the fuse box and began trying to jump the car. "What ever happened to honor among thieves?"
Sam shook his head. "I think they did."
The one with the dragon tattoo was spinning something that looked suspiciously like the Impala's starter in the palm of his hand. Sam wondered when they'd had time to go get it.
"Come and play for it," the forked-tongued one said. "You win, you both go. We win, you stay for dinner." It laughed, a harsh, unpleasant sound.
"Wait," Sam leaned across the front seat and grabbed Dean's arm. "What if it's a trap?"
Dean turned to face him. "Then I guess I'll have to pull that ace from my sleeve." He winked and wriggled out of Sam's grip. He pet the roof of the car as he turned back to the four mud-brick walls and corrugated tin roof that served as a way-station for the smugglers. Halfway there, he called out to Sam, "Oh, and try not to stumble into any more cages while I'm gone."
Nine.
Cool rain ran in rivulets down the windows of the red brick building. Droplets hovered at the end of Dean's eyelashes, and he swiped them angrily away. Neon lights advertising domestic beer blazed onto the dark street. He pulled his jacket tighter around him and leaned back against a No Parking sign.
Damn parking regulations in Palo Alto; the closest spot had been more than five blocks away from the place that Sam and his college buddies frequented.
A group of girls walked up to the door, tipsy and tilting on their high-heeled sandals, t-shirts pleasantly damp and clingy in the rain. "You coming in?" the brunette asked. "It's too wet out here to smoke." Her friends giggled behind her.
Dean shook his head and waved them on. Dammit. Trust Sam to pick the one dive in the whole of the United States that was too small and brightly lit for him to sneak into unnoticed. He blew a drop of water from the end of his nose. It was probably for the best, anyway, that he stay away from college town bars. Especially after Ohio.
He glanced through the window again.
Sam's back was to him. His hair was lighter, bleached after a summer in the California sun. He was sitting in a booth near the front, his arm around a pretty blonde. Dean wondered whether they were dating, how long they'd been together and whether--he closed his eyes and forced himself to forget dark, wild hair tickling his chest and neck--Sam had told her their little family secret. He suspected not.
Rain water squelched in his boots, welled around his toes, and he scuffed his feet on the pavement for good measure.
Inside, one of the guys at the table had pulled out a pack of cards. Dean stepped closer, following the numbers on the hands he could see, reading the game in the set of Sam's shoulders against the back of the booth. The kid still had far too many tells: cocking his head to the right when he was bluffing, sipping his beer when he drew a rotten hand, sitting up too straight when he moved in for the kill.
By the time Dean could feel the water running down his neck and the eyes of the cop across the street boring into his back, Sam had won several games. Maybe that's how he could afford the college life. Dean smiled and turned away from the bar. He wasn't surprised.
Ten.
The sun was setting, and Sam was getting twitchy. Dean had been in there too long. No more than five minutes, but still too long.
He climbed out of the car, ignoring the protests from his legs, popped the trunk, and began to rummage around for a weapon, for anything with more firepower than Dean's old deck of cards and plastic chips. He tried to remember the nursery rhyme Pastor Jim used to sing to them, tucking them into bed after he let them stay up late watching TV, humming softly in his gruff baritone about monsters and boogeymen until Sam drifted to sleep. If only he could remember the words. Gunpowder for Goblins and Salt for Ghosts... but the line about the Ghastly Ghouls eluded him.
"Screw it." He grabbed the biggest shotgun in the trunk. It might not stop the ghouls, but it would sure as hell slow them down.
He heard harsh laughter from the house and refused to contemplate the possibility that Dean had lost. He took three long steps across the yard, then stopped. Loose tumbleweed blew across the drive, and Sam remembered. He went back to the car for one more weapon. Just in case.
He was sure he wouldn't need it.
Dean never lost.
Jack.
Dean swallowed the tequila and grimaced, grabbing a lime from the plate in the center of the table. He placed the shot glass at the end of the growing row in front of him and licked his lips.
"What next?" he asked, grinning like the cat inside the canary cage.
The three sirens laughed in harmony; the sound was like bees in the summer, water running over smooth river stones, and the cheering of a stadium crowd.
Anything you want, said one.
Whatever you desire, said another.
But first a game, said the third, walking over and straddling him in the rickety wooden chair. We hear you're pretty good.
Dean swallowed. "A game?"
Texas Hold'em. The first one smiled and waved her hands over the table. A deck of cards appeared and began to shuffle itself, numbers and faces dancing between them.
"For what?" Dean asked. "All I've got are a few stolen credit cards."
We don't need money, said the second.
No, whispered the third, leaning forward in his lap, stroking his cheek with one icy hand. We play for something much better. She slipped her fingers along his neck and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. She winked, and before he saw her move, she was standing opposite him. The dusty table had covered itself in green felt, and three heavy chairs had just materialized from thin air.
Dean felt pleasantly dizzy, the tequila coursing through his blood, the lingering taste of perfume and lime, the outlines of the sirens dancing in front of him.
A small voice in his head recalled the news articles taped to a motel wall, reminded him of the twelve male bodies, all in their twenties, found naked and stone dead in the fields. He remembered triangulating the positions of the corpses, offering to investigate the abandoned house where meridians intersected; he knew his father would come to find him. Eventually.
Suddenly there were cards in his hands, though no one had dealt them. The sirens were grinning, and Dean looked down at his. Not even a pair amongst them. He closed his eyes and waited for the flop, strongly suspecting it would do him no good.
He lost his flannel shirt that round, his belt and jeans in the next. And the blinds were only getting higher.
A small part of him worried that the beautiful women in flowing white dresses were starting to look awfully hungry.
The rest of him noted that there were still seven pieces of clothing on his body, including socks, and he hoped Dad would take just a little longer to arrive.
Queen
Sam adjusted his grip on the gun and peeked through the hole in the wall that passed for a window.
They were staring at each other across the table, sweat beading on the back of Dean's neck. Sam could see Dean's hand over his shoulder: pair of fours, no face cards, nothing in the same suit. His jaw was clenched tight, eyes narrow as he stared down his opponent, leering across the table.
The river card was an ace of spades.
The ghoul smiled wider. Forked tongue flicking out between dark lips, it turned its broad knuckled hands. Two more aces stared back at Dean, along with a three whose pair in the flop sealed his fate. Full house. God damn.
The tattooed one laughed, harsh and guttural, and pulled Dean's arms roughly behind him, knocking his chair back to the floor.
Sam ran around to the door, heart pounding. "Wait!" he yelled, bursting in, shotgun raised aiming at one ghoul, then the other.
They paused, and the one holding Dean shoved him roughly to the ground.
Sam's mind was racing. "Don't I get a hand?" he asked hopefully.
Dean looked pissed as hell, but the ghoul spoke first, looking Sam up and down. "You?" The ghoul's forked tongue flitted in and out of its mouth.
Sam thought fast. "Seems to me you guys are lacking a little firepower around here," he finally said, never blinking or lowering the gun from his shoulder.
"Sam--" Dean started, but a kick to the stomach cut off his words.
"I can help you with that." Slowly, Sam lowered the gun and reached into his back pocket.
King
"I can't believe--" Dean reached across the bench and smacked the back of his head, anger and relief mingled in his words, in the heel of his hand.
"Ouch." Sam winced.
"What the hell were you thinking?"
"Saved your sorry ass."
The smell of smoke and dust followed them down the road long after the sight had disappeared in the rearview. Dirt and loose stones rattled under their tires, and Dean's old Doors tape played softly from the speakers.
"That was fucking pure, frozen nitro," he said, voice cool as the canister of explosives that had been hidden in the bottom of the trunk. "Do you even know how dangerous that was?"
Sam shrugged. "I knew you had it rigged. Minute twenty, you said, once it hit room temp. You said you'd stake your life on it."
Dean looked at him across the car, mottled purple-blue bruises rising livid across his face. "Sam. You actually staked our lives on it."
Sam grinned, but his hands were still shaking.
Dean drove silently for another few miles. "I was so sure, when you lost that game--"
"Had a plan the whole time."
"You knew you could convince them they could reset the bomb with that stupid cap?" Dean paused, chancing a sideways glance at Sam's open and totally earnest face. He was less surprised than he probably should be. "And that they would trade the starter--and me--for it?"
Sam shrugged. "Saved your ass, remember?" He stared out the window at the scrub and hayfields passing by, heat rising off the pavement in the long afternoon shadows. "Those kids gonna be okay?"
"Yeah." Dean watched the mile markers tick past, driving to the point where the road touched the sky. He could still feel the ghoul's thick hand on his shoulder, still hear Sam's voice as he offered the trade, their lives for the cap, to cool the explosives. They had less than a minute to get out before the whole place blew. He could still taste the adrenaline on the roof of his mouth, still see the cool stare Sam cast the ghouls, playing his bluff to the very last. Dean shook his head, wondering when his little brother had become so incredibly terrifying.
"Remind me," Dean said, "not to play you at poker. Ever again."
"You're just bitter 'cause they beat you."
"Whatever, dude. I could take you. If I wanted to."
"Oh, really?"
He grinned. "Name the place."
Ace.
They were sitting shirtless at the table, cold beers in hand, washing machine churning just outside. Sam leaned back in his chair, the air conditioner blasting in his face and raising goose bumps on his arms. He glanced back at his hand. Un-fucking-believable.
Dean had dealt the cards, a seventh game to break the tie. Five card stud. Winner take all. Loser folds the laundry.
He pulled off his belt and his left boot. "You're bluffing," he said.
"Am not." Sam sipped his beer. "How would you know?"
"You've still got a million tells."
Sam smiled and looked back at his cards. The deck was weathered and worn, missing the joker, hand painted drawings faded and out of place in the clean, cool motel room. "That's what you think," he said. "I'll see your belt, and raise you a pair of jeans."
Author:
krisomniacRating, Warnings, pairing: PG-13, half-nudity and explosives, gen
Disclaimer: Not mine. No profit. No copyright infringement intended.
A/N: This one's been cooking for a long while. I'm really pleased with it in the end. Go read. A thousand thanks to
ignipes and tvm for beta-reading in their busy busy lives.Wordcount: ~3800
Summary: Winchesters and Poker, a story in fourteen cards
Joker
The picture on the back was faded and worn until you could hardly see the design. On the front, the joker smiled out from underneath his jester's cap. Dean slipped it into his pocket out of habit. He'd need all the luck he could get in there if he was going to save Sam's sorry ass. Again.
It had been one hell of a week--bad tips, angry spirits, and impossible summer heat beating down on their shoulders. Bereaved parents and dusty, back road towns. Every piece of clothing they owned was caked in sweat or blood or worse. Dean was ready to pack up, drive north to Canada or Alaska or fucking Greenland, for all he cared--anywhere it wasn't hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement.
All he wanted was a cool room and a clean T-shirt, and they'd been so close to getting out of here. He glanced at his watch again. Sam was late. Dean hoped he hadn't had too many problems with the ghouls.
It had been easier than either Sam or Dean would have guessed to track them en route to Mexico. It had been harder than either expected to kill the first two they met on the road. Rescuing the stolen children, well, that had gone nearly according to plan.
Dean was pretty sure the kids would be okay.
Sam, on the other hand, hadn't met them at the rendezvous.
He checked one last time to make sure his gun was loaded, then tucked it into the waistband of his jeans--more for comfort than any good it would do against the ghouls inside. Running a hand over his face and neck, already slick with sweat, he turned and drove back to the hut.
Two.
Sam watched from inside the tiny cage, pulse pounding, white-knuckled fists closed around inch-thick steel bars.
The ghoul with the dragon tattoo stood so quickly his chair fell to the floor with a dull thud. A vein pulsed at his left temple, just below the dragon's inky wing. His eye, the blue one, twitched three times before he blinked slowly and exhaled through pursed lips.
He slapped his hands down, and a carefully stacked pile of chips toppled over onto the cracked plywood. Leaning across the table, the muscles of his back bulged huge and tortuous. He was the kind of creature about whom people used the word menace as a verb and fugly as a noun.
Across the table, Dean didn't so much as blink.
His shoulders were relaxed, casual smile unwavering. If his eyes were alert and wary, his fingers too carefully poised on his cards, Sam only noticed because he knew to look.
The tattooed ghoul flared his nostrils, and a deep, rumbling growl rose from his chest.
"Straight flush," Dean said, flipping the final card from his hand, "beats a pair of aces no matter where..." He looked his opponent up and down, absorbing every detail of the henchman's strange skin and misshapen bones. "You come from."
The other one, whose knobbly knuckles dragged gorilla-like on the dirt floor, balled its fists.
Dean sat up straighter, eyes narrowing. "My game," he said simply, "my key."
He leaned in towards the dragon tattoo, reaching across with one hand, and grasped the chain around the thing's neck. With a flick of his wrist, a silver link snapped and the key was his.
Three.
Dean had taught him how to play. Explained the rules, taught him when to hold, when to stay or call, and how much to ante in. They couldn't have been more than eight and twelve, playing through restless nights, deliberately not looking at the phone. Dean never asked about the nightmares, and he'd deal and deal until Sam got sleepy again. They'd mastered every game in every podunk town from Seattle to Jacksonville, memorized the rules, by-rules and unwritten codes, dropped names like New York Draw and Five Card Stud with the same fluency they discussed the most recent X-Men comics or Saturday morning cartoons.
Sam remembered their deck of cards: soft and curled around the edges, missing a joker, hand painted by some old mystic friend of Dad's. He remembered the musty, mildewy smell of motel rooms late on summer nights in Georgia, when it was too hot to breathe and insects buzzed against the screen, fighting for a sliver of hissing fluorescent light. Sam had forgotten the names of the towns, which monster or spirit or ghost had lived where, but he remembered waiting up late for Dad and dealing the cards.
You're bluffing, Sammy.
Am not... How do you know?
You've got like a million tells.
Shut up…. Like what?
Four.
Straightening up, Dean blinked slowly. The chain fell with a faint clink of silver on a beer- and blood-stained floor. The tattooed ghoul stared at Dean and bristled.
Dean tuned and walked towards the cage in the corner.
In the dim light from the window, Sam couldn't see the bruises. Nothing in Dean's walk betrayed torn muscles or battered ribs, souvenirs of the beating they'd taken only yesterday.
Sam closed his eyes and looked up to a sky he couldn't have seen anyway. Metal bars digging into the back of his head, he listened to Dean's footsteps and slowly exhaled.
Five.
"Call."
Smoke from Joshua's pipe drifted in lazy puffs around the single light bulb hanging from the basement ceiling. The sweet tobacco scent mingled with the smell of bare wood and Doritos, amber liquor and damp earth. Dean listened to the sound of rough fingers drumming on the board.
"I fold." Bobby laid his cards face down and leaned back in his chair, stretching his knotty muscles and yawning like a wiry, brown grizzly bear.
Dad stared hard at Caleb, who grinned back across the table; their profiles were hazy and muted in the smoke. Dean could only see the back of Pastor Jim's head, his dark hair beginning to grey, cocked to one side as he considered his options. Thorn, the towering hunter with hands the size of dinner plates, sat opposite him, dark eyes preternaturally still and unmoving.
They would play all night. They always did, on the rare occasions that more than three of them met in a single place. They'd pass the hours talking shop over cards, discussing the finer points of molding bullets from silver and drawing anasasi symbols between bursts of laughter at jokes older than dirt. Dean knew they saw him watching from the top of the steps; they were too good not to. But no one invited him in.
No one told him to go to bed, either.
When Thorn stood and began to walk towards the kitchen, Dean slipped into the shadows behind the door. The big man glanced his way and grinned. In the second it took his face to resume its normal, somber expression, Dean wondered whether he'd seen the smile at all.
Then he turned back to the game. You could learn a lot watching these guys play poker.
Six.
Dean slipped the key into the lock with a neat click and the cage door swung open.
Sam unfolded his legs, grabbed the bars, and pulled himself out. He stood shakily, feeling stiff muscles and joints unwind, new bruises protest over the length of his back, and pins and needles run along his toes. Dean steadied him, a hand on his shoulder, guiding him towards the open door and out into the afternoon light.
"I don't like it," whispered the ghoul with the forked tongue and gorilla arms.
Dean raised an eyebrow, turned to the guard and half-smiled, but his humorless grin disappeared almost immediately and he shrugged. "Your pal made the bet. I won." When turned back toward the door, his jaw was tight, brow furrowed, right hand hovering over his gun. He pressed more insistently on Sam's back, digging into a bruise.
Sam didn't flinch, didn't hurry, but he covered more ground with each step.
Sometimes he wondered when Dean had learned to do it, to stare at a creature he knew was ready, willing, and under direct orders to tear him to pieces, and smile.
Seven.
Can I play, Dad?
Grown-up laugher always followed the question. No, son, I don't think these men want to get beat by a twelve-year-old.
Sam had heard the lines so many times before, in smoky back rooms and dimly lit bars, that he barely looked up from his Coke and drawings. He remembered the first time Dean had asked. That time, even Dad was surprised.
Sam wasn't.
I've got… Dean made a show of rummaging around in his pockets. Five dollars. He put the crumpled notes on the table.
Still lauging, the men would ruffle Dean's hair, shrug, and-- if the kid's that eager to loose his candy money, no reason to stop him--pull over a chair.
Sam had wished, that first time, that he was big enough to sit with the adults and Dean. But Leena, the waitress who smiled and blinked at Dad like she had dust in her eyes, made him a Shirley Temple with extra cherries and promised she'd keep him company while his brother played. She told him stories about her dog, Minnie, and her boss, Hector, while Sam drew pictures on the backs of beer labels. Pretty soon the men at the poker table had stopped laughing.
They always did.
Sam pushed his pencils back into his bag and glanced up at the game. The men at the table were grumbling. One of them said, Fuck, and slammed his fist on the wood. From the looks on rest of their faces, Sam didn't think he'd have time to go to the bathroom before Dad herded them back into the car.
They always hated getting beat by a kid.
He drank the rest of his Coke as fast as he could.
Eight.
Sam pulled the door closed as Dean settled into the driver's seat. Dean slid the key into the ignition and turned it, but the engine remained stubbornly silent.
Sam's heart was pounding, offering up a silent prayer to the God of Chevys that the car would start and they could leave this tin-roofed dump in the dust. He gripped the door handle, slick and warm in his palm, and chanced a look behind them.
The two ghouls were standing in the doorway, wearing what passed, on their twisted faces, for identical shit-eating grins.
"Tell me they didn't," Dean hissed. He opened the fuse box and began trying to jump the car. "What ever happened to honor among thieves?"
Sam shook his head. "I think they did."
The one with the dragon tattoo was spinning something that looked suspiciously like the Impala's starter in the palm of his hand. Sam wondered when they'd had time to go get it.
"Come and play for it," the forked-tongued one said. "You win, you both go. We win, you stay for dinner." It laughed, a harsh, unpleasant sound.
"Wait," Sam leaned across the front seat and grabbed Dean's arm. "What if it's a trap?"
Dean turned to face him. "Then I guess I'll have to pull that ace from my sleeve." He winked and wriggled out of Sam's grip. He pet the roof of the car as he turned back to the four mud-brick walls and corrugated tin roof that served as a way-station for the smugglers. Halfway there, he called out to Sam, "Oh, and try not to stumble into any more cages while I'm gone."
Nine.
Cool rain ran in rivulets down the windows of the red brick building. Droplets hovered at the end of Dean's eyelashes, and he swiped them angrily away. Neon lights advertising domestic beer blazed onto the dark street. He pulled his jacket tighter around him and leaned back against a No Parking sign.
Damn parking regulations in Palo Alto; the closest spot had been more than five blocks away from the place that Sam and his college buddies frequented.
A group of girls walked up to the door, tipsy and tilting on their high-heeled sandals, t-shirts pleasantly damp and clingy in the rain. "You coming in?" the brunette asked. "It's too wet out here to smoke." Her friends giggled behind her.
Dean shook his head and waved them on. Dammit. Trust Sam to pick the one dive in the whole of the United States that was too small and brightly lit for him to sneak into unnoticed. He blew a drop of water from the end of his nose. It was probably for the best, anyway, that he stay away from college town bars. Especially after Ohio.
He glanced through the window again.
Sam's back was to him. His hair was lighter, bleached after a summer in the California sun. He was sitting in a booth near the front, his arm around a pretty blonde. Dean wondered whether they were dating, how long they'd been together and whether--he closed his eyes and forced himself to forget dark, wild hair tickling his chest and neck--Sam had told her their little family secret. He suspected not.
Rain water squelched in his boots, welled around his toes, and he scuffed his feet on the pavement for good measure.
Inside, one of the guys at the table had pulled out a pack of cards. Dean stepped closer, following the numbers on the hands he could see, reading the game in the set of Sam's shoulders against the back of the booth. The kid still had far too many tells: cocking his head to the right when he was bluffing, sipping his beer when he drew a rotten hand, sitting up too straight when he moved in for the kill.
By the time Dean could feel the water running down his neck and the eyes of the cop across the street boring into his back, Sam had won several games. Maybe that's how he could afford the college life. Dean smiled and turned away from the bar. He wasn't surprised.
Ten.
The sun was setting, and Sam was getting twitchy. Dean had been in there too long. No more than five minutes, but still too long.
He climbed out of the car, ignoring the protests from his legs, popped the trunk, and began to rummage around for a weapon, for anything with more firepower than Dean's old deck of cards and plastic chips. He tried to remember the nursery rhyme Pastor Jim used to sing to them, tucking them into bed after he let them stay up late watching TV, humming softly in his gruff baritone about monsters and boogeymen until Sam drifted to sleep. If only he could remember the words. Gunpowder for Goblins and Salt for Ghosts... but the line about the Ghastly Ghouls eluded him.
"Screw it." He grabbed the biggest shotgun in the trunk. It might not stop the ghouls, but it would sure as hell slow them down.
He heard harsh laughter from the house and refused to contemplate the possibility that Dean had lost. He took three long steps across the yard, then stopped. Loose tumbleweed blew across the drive, and Sam remembered. He went back to the car for one more weapon. Just in case.
He was sure he wouldn't need it.
Dean never lost.
Jack.
Dean swallowed the tequila and grimaced, grabbing a lime from the plate in the center of the table. He placed the shot glass at the end of the growing row in front of him and licked his lips.
"What next?" he asked, grinning like the cat inside the canary cage.
The three sirens laughed in harmony; the sound was like bees in the summer, water running over smooth river stones, and the cheering of a stadium crowd.
Anything you want, said one.
Whatever you desire, said another.
But first a game, said the third, walking over and straddling him in the rickety wooden chair. We hear you're pretty good.
Dean swallowed. "A game?"
Texas Hold'em. The first one smiled and waved her hands over the table. A deck of cards appeared and began to shuffle itself, numbers and faces dancing between them.
"For what?" Dean asked. "All I've got are a few stolen credit cards."
We don't need money, said the second.
No, whispered the third, leaning forward in his lap, stroking his cheek with one icy hand. We play for something much better. She slipped her fingers along his neck and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. She winked, and before he saw her move, she was standing opposite him. The dusty table had covered itself in green felt, and three heavy chairs had just materialized from thin air.
Dean felt pleasantly dizzy, the tequila coursing through his blood, the lingering taste of perfume and lime, the outlines of the sirens dancing in front of him.
A small voice in his head recalled the news articles taped to a motel wall, reminded him of the twelve male bodies, all in their twenties, found naked and stone dead in the fields. He remembered triangulating the positions of the corpses, offering to investigate the abandoned house where meridians intersected; he knew his father would come to find him. Eventually.
Suddenly there were cards in his hands, though no one had dealt them. The sirens were grinning, and Dean looked down at his. Not even a pair amongst them. He closed his eyes and waited for the flop, strongly suspecting it would do him no good.
He lost his flannel shirt that round, his belt and jeans in the next. And the blinds were only getting higher.
A small part of him worried that the beautiful women in flowing white dresses were starting to look awfully hungry.
The rest of him noted that there were still seven pieces of clothing on his body, including socks, and he hoped Dad would take just a little longer to arrive.
Queen
Sam adjusted his grip on the gun and peeked through the hole in the wall that passed for a window.
They were staring at each other across the table, sweat beading on the back of Dean's neck. Sam could see Dean's hand over his shoulder: pair of fours, no face cards, nothing in the same suit. His jaw was clenched tight, eyes narrow as he stared down his opponent, leering across the table.
The river card was an ace of spades.
The ghoul smiled wider. Forked tongue flicking out between dark lips, it turned its broad knuckled hands. Two more aces stared back at Dean, along with a three whose pair in the flop sealed his fate. Full house. God damn.
The tattooed one laughed, harsh and guttural, and pulled Dean's arms roughly behind him, knocking his chair back to the floor.
Sam ran around to the door, heart pounding. "Wait!" he yelled, bursting in, shotgun raised aiming at one ghoul, then the other.
They paused, and the one holding Dean shoved him roughly to the ground.
Sam's mind was racing. "Don't I get a hand?" he asked hopefully.
Dean looked pissed as hell, but the ghoul spoke first, looking Sam up and down. "You?" The ghoul's forked tongue flitted in and out of its mouth.
Sam thought fast. "Seems to me you guys are lacking a little firepower around here," he finally said, never blinking or lowering the gun from his shoulder.
"Sam--" Dean started, but a kick to the stomach cut off his words.
"I can help you with that." Slowly, Sam lowered the gun and reached into his back pocket.
King
"I can't believe--" Dean reached across the bench and smacked the back of his head, anger and relief mingled in his words, in the heel of his hand.
"Ouch." Sam winced.
"What the hell were you thinking?"
"Saved your sorry ass."
The smell of smoke and dust followed them down the road long after the sight had disappeared in the rearview. Dirt and loose stones rattled under their tires, and Dean's old Doors tape played softly from the speakers.
"That was fucking pure, frozen nitro," he said, voice cool as the canister of explosives that had been hidden in the bottom of the trunk. "Do you even know how dangerous that was?"
Sam shrugged. "I knew you had it rigged. Minute twenty, you said, once it hit room temp. You said you'd stake your life on it."
Dean looked at him across the car, mottled purple-blue bruises rising livid across his face. "Sam. You actually staked our lives on it."
Sam grinned, but his hands were still shaking.
Dean drove silently for another few miles. "I was so sure, when you lost that game--"
"Had a plan the whole time."
"You knew you could convince them they could reset the bomb with that stupid cap?" Dean paused, chancing a sideways glance at Sam's open and totally earnest face. He was less surprised than he probably should be. "And that they would trade the starter--and me--for it?"
Sam shrugged. "Saved your ass, remember?" He stared out the window at the scrub and hayfields passing by, heat rising off the pavement in the long afternoon shadows. "Those kids gonna be okay?"
"Yeah." Dean watched the mile markers tick past, driving to the point where the road touched the sky. He could still feel the ghoul's thick hand on his shoulder, still hear Sam's voice as he offered the trade, their lives for the cap, to cool the explosives. They had less than a minute to get out before the whole place blew. He could still taste the adrenaline on the roof of his mouth, still see the cool stare Sam cast the ghouls, playing his bluff to the very last. Dean shook his head, wondering when his little brother had become so incredibly terrifying.
"Remind me," Dean said, "not to play you at poker. Ever again."
"You're just bitter 'cause they beat you."
"Whatever, dude. I could take you. If I wanted to."
"Oh, really?"
He grinned. "Name the place."
Ace.
They were sitting shirtless at the table, cold beers in hand, washing machine churning just outside. Sam leaned back in his chair, the air conditioner blasting in his face and raising goose bumps on his arms. He glanced back at his hand. Un-fucking-believable.
Dean had dealt the cards, a seventh game to break the tie. Five card stud. Winner take all. Loser folds the laundry.
He pulled off his belt and his left boot. "You're bluffing," he said.
"Am not." Sam sipped his beer. "How would you know?"
"You've still got a million tells."
Sam smiled and looked back at his cards. The deck was weathered and worn, missing the joker, hand painted drawings faded and out of place in the clean, cool motel room. "That's what you think," he said. "I'll see your belt, and raise you a pair of jeans."
