FIC: The Devil Will Come

[nilchance]

Title: The Devil Will Come
Author: nilchance
Rating: Adult
Pairing: Misha Collins/JDM
A/N: Sequel to If Bird or Devil. Jeff is a dom, Misha is his boy, Jensen is complicated.




The weather is an embrace: sweet tea weather, back porches and easy summer gossip, the sputter of sprinklers and the scent of charcoal burning. Jensen opens his eyes and is momentarily blinded by the sun. When he can see again, she fills up his vision. She's his horizon.

Renee sits on the swing in his backyard, the one Jensen's dad put up years ago from their huge scarred old tree. She's barefoot, yellow sundress kicking around her ankles, and her hair hangs loose around her shoulders just like he likes. Her arms cradle something in a pink blanket. Baby pink.

Jensen's heart seizes in his chest like a fist.

Peeking up, Renee gives her simmering smile. "Shh," she stage-whispers. "Don't you wake her, Jensen Ross, don't you dare."

Jensen goes to her, of course he goes, stopping short of her reach. His lungs hurt with the breath he's holding in, the noises he won't make. He had such a nightmare, he thought...

Renee lowers her eyes to the bundle. There's such tenderness in her smile, like he knew there would be. "Daddy's here. Good thing, nobody's read you crappy poetry in a while. You might have some taste when you grow up."

Jensen doesn't protest. He can't say anything. He just looks at her, the softness of her skin, the wicked gleam of her eyes, her smell. How could he forget that?

"You okay?" Renee tilts her head, studies him. "You look so tired, baby. You should stop and rest."

That's wrong. That's not what she would say.

"Here." Shifting to the edge of the swing, Renee holds her arms out. The bundle squirms, a glint of white socks in the pink blanket. His daughter. Their daughter. "Take her, Jen."

Take her. Accept this. Stop fighting...

As he reaches out to take her, the great thrumming of wings fill his ears. He hesitates for a moment, just a moment, and the raven is on him. Her talons drive through his palm, a shock of pain so fast that he sees white. Then it hurts, his hand torn away from the baby by the weight and speed of the enormous raven with her blood-slick wings. She pins him to the ground, nearly tearing his arm from its socket, and he can only watch as the baby falls from Renee's slack hands.

The little pink bundle hits the earth, the bright grass with its dandelions just like home, and the pink blanket spills its contents: maggots and snakes and entrails. Jensen pants in shallow breaths, trying not to puke. The raven flutters and wrenches at him like she'd drag him away, but he resists. He can put this back together. He can stay. He can make her stay.

"Now look what you've done," Renee chides. "Tsk, Jensen, that's no way to hold her. No, no." Kneeling in the grass, smearing blood all over her dress, Renee gathers up palmfuls of snakes and holds them to her. She unbuttons her dress, baring her pale sweet breast, and jerks in place as the snakes latch on. With a deep sigh, Renee says, "Hush little baby. I love you. We love you. We are love."

Blood trickles down, mingled with milk and venom. Jensen chokes. "No. Renee. This isn't how it's supposed to--"

Renee raises her eyes, and they're ruined again, torn up by what the killer did to her before he let her die.

"Legion loves you," she says, and tries to take his hand.

The raven pecks viciously at her, rending flesh, fucking up Jensen's pinioned hand. Renee snags the raven by one struggling wing and raises her up, to Renee's open toothy mouth.

Tilting her glossy head, the raven looks at Jensen with the Oracle's blue eyes. "See," the raven cries, "wake up and see!"

Jensen wakes up, his eyes stinging with salt. His hand hurts like there's a flame burning in his palm. He's alone, and the sun slants through wooden blinds, dissecting the bedroom into bands of light. For a moment, he can't move his legs; it's alarming until he realizes that the dog is sprawled across his ankles.

With a glance over at his hand, he sees the blood pooled in the cup of his palm. His hand sticks for a moment to the sheets, clotted there by the gouges around his knuckles.

"Aw, fuck," Jensen says. Rubbing impatiently at his eyes with his good hand, he swings his legs out from under the dog. When he tries to sit up, he loses track of gravity and falls back, spilling blood on their sheets. He swallows a few times, head spinning, and attempts to sit up again. Slower. That time, he makes it upright. His mouth feels like a stretch of desert that coyotes pissed in, and his muscles are stiff with disuse. Funny that they could handle sleeping in his car but not a night in a warm bed.

Warm because of friendly, close bodies. Warm because they held him, he let them hold him.

Never again.

Moving like an old man, he shuffles to their bathroom. He doesn't feel up to turning the lights on, so he just hunches over the sink and runs cold water into his bleeding hand. It stings like hell, blurring up his vision, before the worst of the mess clears away and he can assess the damage. Nothing too extensive, only a deep gouge in the center of his palm and two matching punctures on the back of his hand. Figures that it would be the hand he hadn't sliced open for the Oracle's sake. Two compromised hands; is She trying to get him killed?

A lesson? Or punishment because he hasn't killed for her in days?

"I know," he says into the dark. "Soon."

He smears thick, unpleasant anti-septic goop across his new injuries, sealing them off. It's easy enough to find the gauze in Morgan's bathroom cabinet, remembered from a few days before. Jensen wraps up his hand, holding the end of the gauze in his teeth and then taping it up. It leaves his hand stiff, clawlike, but he doesn't necessarily require both hands for wetwork.

As he shuffles back into the bedroom, he pauses and listens hard. There's no sign of life in the apartment. Maybe Morgan and the Oracle went to work while he was sleeping. Maybe he can slip out quietly and return later for Morgan's contract, when he's had time to recover himself and isn't sleep-warm and vulnerable.

Yeah, and maybe the murderer would walk around the streets with a neon sign above his head.

Legion loves you. Shivering, Jensen rubs away the cold sweat on the back of his neck and reminds himself that it's not his goddamn problem. Not so far, anyway. Legion is hunting the Oracle, and since Jensen made the mistake of protecting the Oracle with his own blood...

Bound. By power and blood and old gods, bound. He's the Oracle's protector now, as far as these things go, and who knows what the fuck Morrigan thinks he's done. Claimed the Oracle, maybe?

It's too early to try to predict Her mind, even if he could.

The sound of a long, slow exhalation comes like an answer. Grudgingly, Jensen turns his attention from the door (he can see it, he could run) to the Oracle, who is inexplicably coiled up in the middle of the floor. Misha breathes out again and slides from one pose to another, lean muscle stretching along his bared arms and under his tattered shirt. There's a thin sheen of sweat on his skin, reflecting back the sunlight that spills through the loft's tall windows. The Oracle exercises with his eyes closed, his breathing rhythmic and deliberate as his movements.

Would Misha be ready for an attack? Could he survive, soft as he is?

On the far side of the room, at their long friendly table, Morgan sits and watches the Oracle. His relaxed expression is betrayed by his eyes' steady burn, scalding Jensen with a glance. Morgan lifts a hand and beckons.

Jensen can't help looking once at the door, gauging the distance and whether he could clear it. He could, but he'd just have to come slinking back, and Morgan's already seen too much of his underbelly. Meeting Morgan's amused gaze, he stumbles over to the table. His creaky, stiff limbs don't seem to warm up as he walks; when he sits across from Morgan, he's glad for the chair.

"Hey, morning," Morgan murmurs. "Well. Afternoon, really. What happened to your other hand?"

Though Morgan puts out a hand like he expects Jensen to shake or something, Jensen leans a little away from him. He doesn't want to think too much about why he pitches his voice low, trying not to trouble the Oracle. "Freddy Krueger. Coffee?"

"Fine, be a smartass. I'll go fetch you a mug. Here." Morgan pushes a stack of paper at Jensen, thick rich parchment the color of bone. Some part of Jensen that still wants to collect first edition books is tempted to raise it to his nose and breathe in the crisp, comforting scent of paper. "The contract. You can fill it out while I feed you."

"I'm not a stray cat," Jensen tells Morgan's retreating back, and gets waved off for his trouble. He turns to the contract and is pierced by the name he reads there: Jensen Walker. Renee's maiden name. It's nothing, trivial compared to the nightmare and the bruises and the killing, but for a moment Jensen can't breathe. He goes to rub the ache away and finds his hand bound up, useless.

To Jensen's humiliation, it's the rhythm of the Oracle's steady breathing that lets him catch his own breath and move on.

The contract is standard cover-your-ass legalese: Jensen consents, he's in good health, Morgan isn't liable for any harm that comes to Jensen while Morgan's flogging him or whatever. Whatever Morgan decides Jensen needs to learn.

Jensen's mind fixates immediately on the memory of the vibrating machine. The woman making increasingly helpless noises. Jason's steady regard. Morgan won't do that, he's the Oracle's, he'd only blather on about not being a gigilo and drop the subject. Of course Morgan wouldn't force him down, hands heavy on his shoulders, making him--

Does the Oracle climb on that machine? Does Morgan hold him there, one hand gripped in Misha's hair, where everyone can see? Is it good?

Jensen feels all his blood rush up to his face, the tips of his ears, and hates that he's so goddamn pale. He scribbles his name on the contract and pushes it away. By the time Morgan returns from the kitchen with a mug of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal, Jensen has almost forced himself back to normal.

"Eat," Morgan says, nudging the oatmeal at Jensen.

It's thick enough to hold a spoon upright, covered with a thin swamp of cream and melted brown sugar, like Jensen's grandmother used to make for the littlest kids. Jensen has no right to be hungry again, not after gorging at last night's epic dinner, but his stomach growls loudly enough for Morgan to hear across the table. Morgan raises his eyebrows, smirking, and Jensen grudgingly takes the oatmeal. Free food is free food, after all.

"That's not my name," Jensen says, blunt as he can so this doesn't sound like it's up for conversation. "It's Ackles."

"Oh. Renee didn't--" And then Morgan stops himself, because obviously there are a lot of things Renee didn't do. Sinking into the chair across from Jensen, Morgan sips his own coffee and looks thoughtful. His hair sticks up in places, curling in on itself, haloed by the sunlight. After a minute, Morgan sighs. "I'm sorry."

"Fuck you," Jensen says. "Don't you apologize for her. She isn't-- wasn't--" The words slip away, growing muddier as they go. Without anything to throw at Morgan, he has to feel what's beneath the blood and fury. The tightness in his chest, choking off his air. The burning knot in his throat. The weakness.

Worse: Morgan watches him fumble. Morgan sees.

Jensen looks away. The side of his face feels like it's facing a bonfire.

Renee isn't (wasn't, damn) Morgan's responsibility to claim. Jensen's girl, infuriating and beautiful and destructive. She'd never let anyone apologize for her. She'd raise hell first. And now Jensen's here, raising hell for her. Her smitten fool like always, smoothing down the damage in her wake.

"Don't," he says to Morgan, when he can speak at all.

"Fine." Morgan speaks softly, and it had better be for the Oracle's sake. "Finish your oatmeal."

Irritated, Jensen snaps back, "Is that part of the contract?"

"No," the Oracle answers for Morgan, plunking down in a chair next to Jensen. He radiates warmth, probably from the workout, but Jensen is reminded of the light surrounding the Oracle at first sight. That's the danger of being a Seer, an Oracle, one foot in the meat world and one... elsewhere. A human crossroads, drawing darker things from both sides.

Jensen doesn't let himself wonder if he's becoming one of those darker things.

"Jeff feeds everybody," the Oracle continues, and reaches over to pat Jensen's arm. "Don't mind him."

Jensen pulls away before he can stop himself, leaving Misha dangling. Potential crackles in the distance between them, both because Jensen drew that damned blood circle and because they'd... because of the kiss. Because Misha's lips had been soft, coaxing Jensen into opening for the smoke. Because it's been a long time.

Sitting back in his chair, Morgan points triumphantly at Jensen. "See, that. That's gonna tip anybody off."

"What?" Jensen tries to sound pissy, but he's glad for the excuse to turn away from the Oracle's thoughtful frown. "That you're all too soft to be useful?"

"That you're not one of mine," Morgan says.

Scowling, Jensen says, "I'm not one of yours. I don't know what you think this is, Morgan, but I'm not even--"

"If you were mine," Morgan talks right over him, "you wouldn't flinch every time somebody tried to touch you."

He hadn't flinched last night, but now doesn't seem like the time to mention it. "So what do you want me to do, spoon with you?"

"No," the Oracle says. "You should stop sleeping in your car and stay here."

Jensen opens his mouth to lie, realizes that he's arguing with a seer, and changes direction. "That isn't necessary."

"You know what's hunting out there," Misha says with unexpected steel. "You know how to kill it."

"I--"

"It's just a couch and a shower, Jensen." Morgan steamrollers him. "We put up friends all the time."

Friends.

For a minute Jensen can't find the words to lash out, jabbed hard in the very wound that was already bleeding, but he's gathering a few choice profanities when the Oracle's hand suddenly clamps down on his arm. Jensen rounds on him, ready to snarl, except that the Oracle isn't listening; his eyes are rolled back, showing the whites.

Morgan's there in an instant, gripping Misha's shoulders when his chair threatens to tip. The Oracle doesn't seem to breathe, strained in a hard bow of muscle and bone, his teeth chattering as he shudders it out. His hand digs bruises in Jensen's arm, the nails carving half-circle marks.

"Mish," Morgan says raggedly, though Jensen doubts he'd know it, "baby, please, c'mon..."

Jensen reaches out and touches the Oracle's shoulder. Something jolts up his hand, sealing him to Misha like electricity, and then the Oracle is released all at once to hunch shivering in the chair. Morgan curls around him in an protective arch, his murmured comforts lost against Misha's back, and Jensen is forgotten.

Legion loves you, whispers something in his head. Jensen looks away.

"'m okay," Misha protests finally, muffled. "Jeff. Jeff, you need let me up."

Morgan eases back, looking like he'd rather not, and kneels in front of Misha. His hands rest on Misha's knees, gripping hard. "You all right?" Morgan asks. "Need a doctor? Or, uh, water?"

"I'm fine," Misha reiterates, and looks at Jensen. "It's about the murders. Cynthia's death. She wasn't--"

Jensen's cell phone rings, trilling out Ode to Joy. Morgan raises his eyebrows, and Jensen glares back. Renee picked that ringtone.

"What about her?" Jensen asks, reaching for his cell phone. It's not in his pocket. Figures. "Where's--"

"Kitchen," the Oracle says to Morgan. "Get it for him, please."

Morgan gives him a look, but whatever he sees in the Oracle's face makes him yield. With a last squeeze of Misha's knee, he stands and heads to the kitchen.

"The killer," Misha says, his voice pitched low. "Jensen. It wasn't-- the man who killed Cynthia, he didn't kill your wife. He didn't kill Renee."

The Oracle doesn't say that as if it's a relief. Jensen feels Her like wings battering against glass.

The ringing stops. Jeff looks in from the kitchen doorway, the cell phone in his hand. "The police," Morgan says, expression tight. "It's for you."

Jensen knows before he takes the phone.

"Get down here," Bell tells him, crowd noise in the background. "There's another body."