Body Swap

The Devil You Know

Dean noticed his breaths had become heavier as his heartbeat rapidly increased until he could feel it thumping out of the tips of his fingers.

His stomach was in knots and his vision began to blur as a radiating pain shot through his skull like a blazing firework.

Dean cupped his head in his hands and applied a massive amount of pressure against his eye sockets. He tried so desperately to relieve the agonising and utterly distracting pain but did not succeed.

"Dean is everything okay? You're not dying, are you? Please tell me youre not dying... Hello?! Breaker, breaker!" Charlie waved her hands desperately in front of Dean's face then placed them on his shoulders reassuringly.

Dean jumped in freight from this unexpected form of contact and began to pull at the long strands of hair from the roots of his scalp.

"Do you need some aspirin?! I cant help you if you don't tell me whats wrong Dean!" Charlie began to panic as she rose from her chair and paced around the table.

"I don't... I don't know...there's something seriously wrong... " Dean staggered with a clenched jaw and his face buried in the table.

"You're definitely right there, buttercup," a familiar voice echoed in Dean's mind.

Dean rose his head and noticed a figure standing in the doorway. His mouth gaped wide open as he began to internally hyperventilate.

"Oh Sammy, how I miss our little chats. A little tortuous convo is LONG overdue don't you think," the man had a devilish smirk permanently imprinted on his face.

"No.. It can't be..." Dean stuttered as he felt tears well in the corner of his eyes.

"The proof is standing right in front of you kiddo! I'm. In. side. your. head!" The man tapped Dean's forehead playfully then twisted around and sat on the edge of the kitchen bench.

"What's happening Dean?! Who are you talking to?!" Charlie looked directly into Dean's pretty hazel eyes with concern and terror.

"Lucifer..." Dean spoke with complete astonishment.

"That's me! In the flesh! Well not REALLY in the flesh, but you get the point," Lucifer joked with his arms spread out to his sides, palms facing the air.

"Lucifer?! What the hell? Dean... Lucifer is dead! He's in the empty!" Charlie attempted to reassure him, but he seemed distracted and disorientated.

"No, No, No... You're just a hallucination. You're not real," Dean growled.

"I'm as real as they come Sammy boy. You, on the other hand, there's something very different about you but I just can't put my finger on it," Lucifer raised his hand to his chin and began to stroke it melodramatically.

"I dunno what you're talkin about," Dean spoke, frozen in place.

"Oh, I think you do, but you're being all mister secretive about it. You can't hide anything from me," Lucifer said as he rose his hand with his index finger and thumb mere millimetres from each other.

Realisation struck Dean hard in the chest as his mind told him to run but his legs and body wouldn't oblige. He heard a thundering SNAP as the beer bottle in front of him exploded in a deadly shower of sharp glass fragments.

Time seemed as if it were slowing down and the only thing on his mind was Sam.

He remembered their first drink together when their father was out hunting down a vampire nest in 96. The time when Sam went on his first hunt and Dean got to show him the ropes.