FIC: Gingerbread

[nilchance]

Title: Gingerbread
Author: nilchance
Rating: Adult.
A/N: Dark Angel/Supernatural X-Over. Gen. Alec gets in over his head.



2008 is a good year. The people are easy, the money comes fast, and his Harley drives like a dream. There are hot showers and plenty of food. And the women...

The girl with her leg over Alec's shoulder tastes like salt water, how he imagines the ocean tastes. She makes surprised noises and pushes into his mouth, melts down on his chin. Her hands comb through his hair and clutch him against her, and Alec is glad he doesn't need to breathe. She's a sweet girl (Cindy? Mindy?), it's late, and the diner pantry is all theirs.

He could get dessert out of this.

The door jingles open, and Cindy-Mindy groans before realizing they can hear her. Alec snickers, and she squeaks a protest before yanking at his hair. Alec growls and molds his mouth against her, sucking hard and tonguing fast.

"Oh!" Cindy-Mindy slaps her hand down on his shoulder, digs in nails. "Oh, oh..."

"Hello?" Somebody calls from out by the booths, their voice muffled by Cindy-Mindy's clenching thigh. She tenses like she's going somewhere, and Alec gives her the edge of teeth.

"Alec," Cindy-Mindy whines, and goes off. Alec stays with her until she pulls him off, looking flushed and indignant. "I have customers."

"You've got one right here," Alec reminds her.

She shoves her little skirt down and goes looking for her shoes. In a minute, she's decent again, if she doesn't bend over. Fluffing her hair, she fixes her nametag. Mindy. "Paying ones."

"You didn't ask."

"Smartass." Mindy glances at his mouth, shivers, and heads back out of the pantry. Halfway there, she pauses. "Hey, you said you were from out of town."

Alec wipes his chin and licks it off his hand. "I am from out of town, honey." Way out of town, but she doesn't need to know that he's giving tomcatting a new meaning. "Why? You want me to use an accent?"

Mindy wrinkles her nose. "No. Nobody waiting up for you somewhere?"

Alec smirks. He's hard, but not distractingly so and he could sure as hell get a hand with it somewhere else. If she's trying to hint that she doesn't want to return the favor, though, he's not going to make it easy on her. "Just you. Scared to get your hands dirty?"

She smiles down at him, touches his cheek. Her hand is cold, but he only feels it for a second before the barbed quill darts from her wrist and burrows through his shoulder.

A hard jolt. The metal bite of pain, replaced by spreading warmth around the entry wound. Alec looks down at the thing buried in his shoulder, the wrongness of it like chewed bone. The blood flows out sluggish, getting thicker.

Anomaly-- no. Not here. It isn't Manticore, she doesn't smell like that, she smells wrong...

The pantry swims in front of him. Alec thumps back onto his heels and nearly tilts over on his face. It's all wrong; he's immune to every poison Manticore could find, and his metabolism burns up drugs. There's no reason for dark spots to spread in his vision like rot.

Mindy fingercombs his hair, gently. There's a round puncture at her wrist where the quill shot out. Her blood smells sticky. "I like my hands dirty."

Alec says, "You bitch."

"And you go down like one." Mindy touches her thumb to his eyelid, peels it back a little to consider his pupils. The touch rocks his head back, and the world tilts until he hits the floor. Mindy hums, kneeling over him, her thighs around his hips. Something coils out of her, slips over Alec's skin.

Have to hit her. Have to get out. Protocol. Alec tries to jerk free, but it feels like moving through deep cold water. Worse; he's been tested in underwater combat. It's fighting through resin that ties his body down, slows every move, clogs up his joints.

This isn't possible. She isn't human, isn't transgenic, isn't like those thugs that White sent into Jam Pony. She's other, and she's got him. The coil from between her hips binds his arms to his hips, his legs together. He kicks, but it's weak and it doesn't break him free.

Alec takes shallow breaths. Can't get bound tight with his lungs compressed; he's made to last without air but it's not like he enjoys it. Still, he pants out, "Might-- want-- to get that-- checked--"

"Too easy," Mindy says. "Are you sure you're one of them? Winchester blood?"

Through the honey-sweet darkness, that sparks. Alec forces his eyes open. "Got-- the wrong-- guy--"

"Blood tells, baby." Her lacquered nails tap the quill, jolting it inside of him. "You're quite the prize. Always wanted to get my mouth on you boys. And I got the fresh meat. Nobody's heard you scream..."

With the last burst of energy, Alec drives his knees up, trying to buck her off. She laughs, laughs, and shoves the quill deeper in.

Alec goes away for a while.

When he comes back, it's through a veil of sticky white. His eyelashes cling together, giving him a thin strip of watery vision. He can't open his mouth or move his limbs; his thoughts slog together. All he can smell is her thick resin blood. Mindy hums as she settles him, cool metal along his back. A tray beneath him. She's coccooned him on a tray? Why would she--

He hears the oven door open.

No. No--

The diner's entry bell rings. Mindy pauses, raising her face and scenting the air, and Alec thinks dizzily of Joshua. He yells, throwing his lungs into it, tearing up his throat, but all that comes out is a muffled buzz.

"Hush now," Mindy says, and lifts. Pushes the tray like it's nothing, metal rattling on metal, and his view is swallowed up by darkness and narrow walls. He howls, throat-burning animal sound, and the tray hits the back of the oven.

"Coming," Mindy sings, and closes the door. She closes him in. There's no air, no light; Alec sucks in air through his nose and smells the gas.

She turned the oven on.

He screams, he throws his body against her bindings and the tray hits the walls with a metallic clatter. He can't get out, he can't breathe, and the air is getting hotter.

Not like this, not like this, notlikethisGodpleasenotlikethis--

The door clatters open. Alec kicks before he thinks, but he only rattles the tray a little.

"Jesus," someone mutters, and grabs his ankle. In one hard yank Alec is out, out of the hot claustrophobic hell and into the open air. He heaves in a breath through his nose, so steep his vision dims, and tries to thrash free of the bindings. His string of curses gets lost somewhere in his throat, becoming a high frantic whine.

"I know," the man above him chants, "I know, I'm coming. You need to hold still. Stop," he says, laying one hand over Alec's throat, pinning his head back against the hot tray. Does Alec smell burnt skin? There's another smell, deep and animal and right in Alec's face, and the man says, "Just stop, just hold on."

A knife flicks open; Alec knows the sound. He freezes, and the knife skims over his mouth, slicing open a way to breathe. Alec isolates the panic that wants to tear out in a scream, holds it tight and crushes it down until he's silent, silent. There's enough air in the room even if it doesn't feel like it, even if it tastes oily in his mouth as he sucks it down.

"This'll hurt," the man says, Dean says, right before he pours what feels like acid on Alec's face.

Alec snaps his mouth shut and yells against his own clenched teeth, gritting the noise back until his jaw burns. There's a hissing noise, a smell like rotten eggs, but the stickiness steams away from his face. He opens his watering eyes and the focus is crazy, glittering with reflexive tears. He's panting through his nose like an animal, just enough distance from his own panic to be disgusted by it.

Dean scrubs at Alec's face with a towel. His hands are rough, but Dean eyes Alec like it matters that he wasn't roasted alive. "Leave you alone five minutes and you're covered with demon spunk. Whoa," Dean plants a hand on Alec's chest when he tries to sit up, shoving him backwards, "park it, you're not exactly up for the forty meter dash."

Dean's timing is either the best or the worst that Alec's ever seen. He slumps back and contemplates passing out for a minute, but this isn't Max or Joshua; it's nobody Alec grudgingly trusts. He digs his fingernails into the pain, breathes it in until he's back in the shitty little diner with a quill through his shoulder. It's only nerves firing. It'll heal.

"You with me?" Dean asks, like he's expecting Alec to swoon or something.

Alec manages to roll his eyes.

He's kneeling by the tray, holding a flask in one hand and a revolver in the other, but he sets the flask aside to touch the quill with his thumb. "That's gotta come out, kid."

There's no spit in Alec's mouth. He swallows a few times before he can even scrape out, "Al'c." It seems important that Dean know. If that thing, that demon knew, Dean should know. "Alec."

Dean's expression shifts fractionally, a look Alec knows from the mirror. It's a Max look, a Joshua look, and Dean's stupid if he thinks he should look at Alec like that. "Hey, Alec. Guess that's better than Runs Like Rabbit."

Alec glares. "Barbed."

"Figured. I've got to push it through." Dean talks like Alec is some kind of civilian who needs these things explained in small words.

"G't this off." Talking is hard, all clipped and round noises in Alec's mouth. He flexes his jaw and tries to grin. "'ll do it m'self."

"Yeah, okay there, Rambo. This isn't exactly a DIY job." A weapon fires, and it takes Alec a second to identify it as a shotgun. He's a little too fuzzy to define the make. Dean glances towards the noise, shakes his head. "We don't have time. You need a belt?"

"Nn."

"Fine. On three. One, two--"

Alec is completely unsurprised that Dean moves on two. It hurts, but not as bad as it did coming in. The pain is distant, underwater, and that worries Alec more. When he can refocus on Dean, the shape and scent of him, Dean's working his arms under Alec's shoulders and knees. Alec jerks, tries to roll over like he's going anywhere but face first on the floor, and Dean just hitches him up like he's nothing. He could at least grunt.

The hollow of Dean's throat smells like sweat and leather. There's no reason for Alec to want to bury his face in it.

"Nice thing about harpies," Dean says. "Venom's got blood coagulant. Keeps the, uh, juices in the roast. Stairs coming up."

Juices in the roast? Jesus Christ. "F'ck is wrong with you?"

"A lot," Dean says cheerfully, and shifts Alec to kick the door open. The night is sharp on Alec's face; he blinks against the orange of fire welling up in the diner's entrance. Dean glances that way like he's tracking a scent, too intense for an Ordinary, and barks, "Sammy?"

Alec should hear Sam coming, he should know, but there's suddenly broad arms pulling him off Dean. He's all fucked up, too fucked up for this, and he wants a warm dark place to curl up and die.

Sam's voice is an earthquake under his ear, a broad vibration like purring. He turns and Alec can see his Harley, kicked over on its side in the high grass, and somehow that pisses him off more than the blood poisoning. That's a damn fine bike, Alec could get a lot for it back in Terminal City, he could get enough for weeks of food. Not that he'd sell it, but it's just good to know...

Something-something-hospital, Sam says.

Alec swings his head up and nearly feels it tip off. Max always said it was big. "No," he says, and it's strangely clear, "no hospitals, no doctors."

Sam put his big paw on Alec's head and pushes it back down. In a very reasonable voice for reasonable people, Sam says, "You're hurt."

"No."

Sam and Dean exchange a look, and Alec doesn't recognize Dean's expression. It isn't a matter of Dean being older and, if Alec says so himself, less attractive. Alec doesn't look at anyone like that. Not like that.

Then Dean looks at Alec and says, "We'll deal with it. No hospitals."

Alec puts his head back down. It's heavy. Sam's shoulder is uncomfortable, like rock, but there's scent rising up from his skin. Warm. Good to be warm.

He's going to pass out, Alec realizes with brief clarity. He's going to pass out on these guys he doesn't even know. Because he got his ass kicked. And they saved him.

It's all wrong.

The world dips, then settles into a humming cave that smells like old leather and stale coffee. Sam keeps up a running commentary, his hand on Alec's neck, palm settled over the barcode. It's a lot of "easy" and "here we go" punctuated by "Dean, hand me that." Alec isn't sure whether or not the organization they've got going is comforting. And then there's a needle in Alec's arm.

"Hey," Alec slurs, "hey..."

He loses the words, and then he loses everything.