Nothing Left To Fear

7

Cho brings him his tea, Dean knows better than to trust the demon, but he makes good tea and has a sort of soothing personality that can be relaxing. As a demon he is ferocious and violent and terrifying, but this is what most of the Hunters see, the cowed slave with his Limiters brassy bright on his ears, bringing his master tea. What they don't know is that this capitulation is all Cho- Dean can bring him to heel with agony, using the Limiters, and can influence his will to a degree, but he has never had to.

Cho fusses over him like a butler. He is wearing a Chinese American man who looks ill at ease in anything other than shirts and suit trousers. He wears a vest today, buttoned tight over his chest. "You look tired," he says as he puts the tea, complete with saucer, down on the table, "you need to get more rest, you can hardly run an apocalypse without getting enough sleep."

Castiel sits cross legged on the bed, playing with a child's puzzle, trying to separate the pieces of metal, but Cho knows it will take less than a thought for the angel to jump across and destroy him. "You must learn the difference between being a foot soldier and a general or all of this will be for nothing." He sits at the table, all long legs and crosses his fingers before resting his chin upon them. "If you fall at the first hurdle your soldiers will too."

"Where do you learn this stuff?" Dean asks, he turns the tea cup on it's saucer so the handle shifts from the right to the left of the bowl.

Cho never smiles, he has this almost look of serenity that lightly lifts the curve of his lips, the sort of promise of a smile under his black fringe and glasses. One eye is always covered by that dark fall of hair, to hide the absence underneath. "I like to read." He says, "now drink your tea and sleep, we will discuss you fighting with the soldiers another time." That is an old argument between them and Dean knows he's right but he wants his men to see that he is one of them, as prepared to die as they are. Cho thinks he should be more aloof, something other, but they are both right in their own way, Dean knows. He should sleep more, but when he sleeps, he remembers and he doesn't want to do that.

The tea is perfectly made, with the water one jot shy of boiling. Cho really does make the perfect cup of tea. "You better get," Dean says with a muffled yawn, "Ellen will be wondering where you got to, she already thinks we're having an affair."

Cho has that half almost smile again, "you don't bring me the right kind of tea," he says firmly, "the tea that you drink, all I can taste is paper and bleach." He tilts his head, "perhaps for loose leaf sencha I might be amenable. Now I will return to the kitchen, as you say, Ellen will be wondering where I am." Cho is a good looking man, Dean thinks, tall and thin, he could have worse lovers and if not for the demon inside him he'd be a formidable member of his army. "One moment," he asked turning back, "since you have returned how many demons have you killed?"

Dean shrugs, "a couple of hundred, maybe," he looks up to the right counting them off in his head, "it's in the low hundreds."

"Just, perhaps it is a conceit, a rumor to soothe demon children in their beds" he turns, so comfortable in someone else's skin that it might as well be his own, "but if you kill one thousand demons you will become one. You might want to start keeping count."

"Is that a warning not to kill your brethren?" Dean asks, angry now.

"I don't care for them. I've killed far more than you, Dean, you know that," he answers, "merely I do not want your army to have to kill you, because with this Limiters that will almost surely kill me as well. Now drink your tea and take a nap, it is late afternoon, the hunt will not leave until late, or without you," his smile is softly mocking, "and there will be food for you when you wake. Castiel," he turns his attention to the angel on the bed, Castiel's wide eyed innocence is disturbing. "He needs rest, please wait until he returns to exhaust him."

As he leaves Dean turns to the angel as he flops out on the old and saggy double bed, kicking up the covers with his feet and patting the bed beside him for Dean. "Is it true?" Dean asks, "about the demon killing?"

Castiel gives him that lopsided grin that usually precedes sex. If it is true, he will never tell of it and Dean will never force him to.