Title: Nerves
By: Mancuso
Pairing: Dean/Castiel, non-con Alistair/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Hints at non-con Alistair/Dean. Also the tiiiniest hints at Dean/Castiel. But only if your sniffing for it.
AN: Don't hate me! This is pure Hurt!Dean. I'll warn that it hints at non-con. And it's also kinda gory.
Disclaimer: Don't own Dean, don't own Alistair (Although my description of his true form has nothing to do with the show) don't own Castiel (though that one's in my letter to Santa) So...Kripke shouldn't want to sue me for borrowing them.
Summary: It's the end of a day in Hell for Dean Winchester, but this time Alistair may finally get what he wants.

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Dean's eyes stared up from the sockets. That's all he was now, anyway. Bones and eyes. They'd scraped away all the meat from him. They'd done it clean. The bones were still bloody, and it was still a horror for Dean to be able to see the holes just inches above where his eyes should be, instead of resting on the back of his skull, rolling waywardly at whim. He was thankful that it was the 23rd hour. By this time every day the nerves were all gone. He couldn't feel anything. Just see. And then, through those two holes just a few inches away from his eyes, Alistair appeared with a smirk on his face. Alistair, who was salvation in the 24th hour. Alistair, who pretended to care every day until Dean refused and refused and refused, and by that time he'd be whole again, restored, and the demon would turn nasty on him and be the first to tear in. Always beginning with the stomach. Always. And never the eyes, because Dean had to be able to see, hadn't he? Alistair who was beautiful in a dark and scary way; visited upon Dean, now, and Dean felt weaker today than any other day. Today was the day. And the demon knew it. Today was the day that hairline fracture in Dean's will finally would split to the cut. Today was the day Dean Winchester would crack.

"Dean. Dean, my sweet." The demon cooed. His eyes glittered black sapphire and the extreme cut of his cheekbones and jaw draped the most sinister veil of shadows about his face. He was all angles with a very handsome, straight nose. Dean wanted nothing more than to reach up with his skeletal fingers and dig in at that blue-tinted skin. Dig until Alistair was like him; nothing but eyeballs and calcium.

"Fuck you." Dean said with the twinkle in his eyes. It had died down since the first day. Down to an ember. Alistair could hardly be communicated to through them, anymore. Luckily for Dean, Hell was different. Suffering of others was easily sensed by anyone. And so it was for any other feelings. When Dean said "fuck you" and meant it, Alistair felt it. This particular time, Alistair responded with a broad grin.

"We both know how you feel about me, Dean. No use wasting time on that. In fact, you know just why I'm here, so why, you may be wondering, am I here wasting my time at all? I'll tell you, Lovely." Alistair leaned in close. His long bluish fingers turned Dean's skull as he rounded to the side of the platform, allowing his features to no longer be eclipsed by the skull. Now Dean could see as Alistair's face came to meet his, only an inch between. Of course, it felt like so much more because Dean's face was a few extra inches above his eyes, now. A lock of the demon's silky jet strands fell out of place, spilling over half of his face and sweeping down to touch Dean's skull. He would've liked to spit. "Dean Winchester. Today is the day you save yourself. No more pain. All you have to do...well...you know what you have to do."

The pain began coming in again. This was a different kind of pain, though. This was the pain of restoration. Of healing. Dean was becoming whole again, and it would hurt, but in a relieving sort of way. That was, until he remembered the purpose of it. And Alistair was watching, the demon lust growing in him. God help Dean, he wanted him to say "no" suddenly as the smell of flesh began to rise. Dean felt the matter of his brain begin to return and his sight was elevated back up into the sockets very slowly. Alistair was holding back from tearing into the poor soul stretched on the platform as he did at the end of every day. He wanted to destroy and rip and rape, but he always suppressed it because it was not the plan. The goal in sight was to get Dean Winchester to cave. And it hadn't been easy.

"Dean..." Alistair snarled and taunted. "You know what to do to make this all stop. To make the pain go away. You know. And if you don't give in today, you will tomorrow. Or the day after. It's inevitable, so you might as well get an early start." His impatience was becoming more and more external. Dean was shaking, now that he had the flesh-matter with which to do so. This was the message he sent out:

"If I give in...will you take me to your master?" Dean happened to know that Alistair was one of a very select bunch of demons who still had contact with Lucifer. He was fairly certain he wasn't meant to know this, but demons often share a habit of letting things slip.

Alistair cocked his head and leaned back up, away from Dean's now muscle-bound face. "I'm afraid I don't understand your request. I have no master. Unless, of course, you're speaking of You Know Who. And in that case, Lucifer doesn't take house-calls."

"You're a liar!" By now Dean had most of his tongue, and when he half-shouted, blood and mucus flew from the gash of his mouth and the negative spaces between strips of muscle that covered the bones of his cheeks. A fleck landed on the corner of the demon's mouth, and his smooth red tongue darted quickly out to salvage it before the hot sizzle of the atmosphere dissolved it completely.

"Well of course I am, my love."

"Take me to him! Or so help me God, I will tear myself from this mother fucking table and I will rip you up and I'll get to find out how your bone marrow tastes for a change. And I'll lick up every last drop of your cursed blood and I'll let you watch."

"Dean, it's awfully early for dirty-talk. I've just arrived, after all." Alistair smirked. "But I'll make you an offer. I will let you up and I will take you to Lucifer, but the conditions don't change, otherwise. You're still bound as you would've been before. It changes nothing." The demon laughed a little.

"I don't care. Take me to him." Dean found that he'd suddenly been granted the freedom of mobility. The hooks that had previously held him down to the table were somehow dissolved, and he was free to sit up, to turn, to stretch. He hadn't moved in thirty years. It felt like rebirth. His skin was creeping back over, layer by layer, until his epidermis was finally back intact. Dean was whole, again, and for the first time in thirty years (hell...in more than that) he was without pain. And when Alistair held out a long blue hand to help him down, Dean accepted it. It didn't occur to him until afterwards that he'd just taken the hand of the demon who'd been torturing him for the past three decades. The man who'd humiliated him at first until there was no more pride left and it only served as a means to please himself. The man who could identify all of Dean's vital organs in a blindfold taste-contest. The man who recited poetry, mocked him with lover's names and pillow talk as he asphyxiated him with his own intestines. Dean took his hand and accepted his help down. He even let himself be led down the sidewalks of Hell in silence as Alistair gripped his wrist firmly and spoke excitedly about his triumph and Dean's finally "coming around." He seemed to think this made them buddies. If that was the case, he was sorely mistaken. Dean understood that the options for companionship were limited in this place, but he definitely wasn't considering himself on the market, yet. At least not for a millennium or two. Even if this technically made him a demon -and he wondered, were his eyes made of coal, yet?- he'd never sink to that level. But it felt good to finally be able to think things out again. To not have to deafen yourself with your own thoughts just to drown out the pain.

"Here we are..." Alistair halted before a round door in the ground. "I'll be waiting for you here when you come out."

"You're not going in, too?" Dean was suddenly frightened. He'd just lived a lifetime of Hell, and he shouldn't have been afraid of anything, but he was. After all, this was Lucifer he was now dealing with. And what could he really have to say to The Devil that would change anything? Did he really think that Lucifer would stand there and take a good ass-chewing just to allow Dean the chance to blow off some steam?

"I wasn't summoned." The demon smirked. "But I get the feeling he won't be too disappointed in seeing you, Dean. And I'm warning you; you are a threat to him. Even if you go in there and learn all there is to know about him, you won't remember come tomorrow. He'll have wiped you clean by then. Even I don't remember what he looks like. I just remember enough to know to stay away when I'm not called for."

"You think I'm scared?" Dean snorted, feeling very insecure and forcing himself to be cocky. "I'll show you, Alistair. I'll show him, and then I'll show you."

The blue demon crouched down, excitedly, laughing cheerfully and running his hand over the large round door. "Well go on, then, Dean! Go meet the man, himself!"

"I'm going..." Dean took a step closer to the door, then hesitated.

"What're you waiting for!" The laughter was becoming increasingly maniacal.

Dean bent down and grabbed the brass handle of the door, swinging it up on it's hinge, opening it to a pit of darkness. It looked like space if all the stars were to be vacuumed out. "...What...?" He began before Alistair sprung back up to his feet.

"Not what you expected, Dean?" He asked, looking across the pit of nothingness with mock sympathy. "Try behind you, then." He blinked, and Dean saw it in Alistair's eyes. Saw himself, and yes; his eyes were the same reflective pitch as everyone else's were down here. But, more strikingly, he saw his brother. Sammy. Towering over him and only a foot behind him. He blinked, himself, wanting the image to go away, but in that time, he felt the force of his brother's hands against his back and he fell forward, pitched into oblivion.

"SAM!" He called, jerking up into consciousness, the cold sweat slick against his back and forehead.

"Sam is sharing a room with Ruby, Dean. You know that." Came the soft, soothing voice of Castiel from the couch on the far side of the room. Dean had never heard anything so sweet in his life. "You were having another nightmare."

Dean just collapsed back into his pool of sweat and nodded in agreement. "Cas?"

"Yes?"

"I want you to tell me something."

"I'm listening..." The angel said.

Dean swallowed the lump in his throat and looked at the wall opposite him, shedding every ounce of his pride to be able to make his request.

"Tell me I'm never going back. No matter what I do."

The angel clasped his hands together and stared down at them in thought.

"I can promise that I will never be in favor of sending you back." He finally replied.

And that had to be good enough. Because that was all Dean Winchester was ever meant to have.

THE END

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