Fic: Chasing Ghosts 2/3 (Supernatural)
Title: Chasing Ghosts
Fandom: Supernatural
Character(s): Sam, Dean, John
Pairing(s): Gen
Word Count: 19,300
Rating: NC-17 - DARK THEMES: Abuse, violence, sexual assault, panic attacks, strong language
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never was.
Warnings: THIS STORY DEALS WITH THEMES OF ABUSE, specifically child abuse. It includes physical and verbal abuse, nonconsensual sexual encounters, starvation, and isolation. Most of the direct descriptions are included in the flashbacks, denoted by italics, but these events are referenced and discussed throughout. THIS STORY ALSO DESCRIBES A PANIC ATTACK as well as dissociation and a few brief mentions of (passive) suicidal thoughts. Please do not read if you feel this might be triggering.
Summary: When Dean’s wish on the pearl digs up old hurts, the brothers have to deal with the fallout.
Chasing Ghosts
“He would block the door from outside and just leave.”
“Hold on, back up,” Dean said, looking genuinely lost. “Dad locked you in the bathroom? Where was I?”
“Usually you two were on a hunt nearby.”
“We? Dad was with me? For how long? When did this happen?”
Sam shrugged, his shoulders pressing into the leather of the seat. “There were a couple of times, but it was only more than a day or two the first time.”
“A day or two?! There was a time it was longer?! When? How long?”
Sam frowned up at the ceiling. There was a little piece of lint clinging to the fabric just over the passenger side door. It took a minute to process all the questions Dean had thrown at him. “I was thirteen. It was all super hazy for a while once you got back. I never did get the story straight in my head. You were gone for eleven days though. That part stuck.”
Sam snuck a glance at Dean from the corner of his eye. Dean had gone white. “Eleven days.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “It was the one time I saw Dad realize he’d gone too far. I was in pretty bad shape when you two got back.”
“That’s...that’s...”
“It sucked,” Sam supplied. “It was so fucking boring. And I was so hungry. For the first couple of days I couldn’t decide which was worse being hungry or being bored. But then I stopped being hungry.”
“Hungry? How much did he leave you with?”
Sam tilted his head along the back of the seat to look at him sideways, not sure how to interpret that tone, or the question really. “What do you mean?”
“You were in there for days.” Dean couldn’t even say that without looking like he was going to hurl. “How much food did dad leave with you? What did he plan for?”
“He didn’t,” Sam said. He frowned at Dean. Why would John have left him food?
“He didn’t what?”
“I made him mad. He tossed me in the bathroom and blocked the door so I couldn’t open it. He didn’t plan anything. All I had was what I had with me, which was basically a bit of lint in my pocket.”
Dean was deathly silent for a long moment. “Montana.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed.
Dean slammed his fist down onto the steering wheel. Sam recoiled, curling back into the corner between the door and the seat despite himself.
“That son of a bitch! I knew something was wrong. When we came back you were so thin. I could actually see your ribs. You could barely lift your spoon that first night. You were skittish and claustrophobic and barely spoke. And I bought that story about you being sick.”
“I was sick, although that set in the last day or two. Time was weird by then, so I couldn’t tell you exactly how long I’d been down with something.”
“You nearly died!”
Sam flinched. He clenched his hands in his lap and focused on that. His knuckles turned white from the pressure. “No,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I didn’t. It wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t that close.”
“Yes, you did,” Dean insisted, leaning forward. “You started having trouble breathing. Your heart went funny. Dad wouldn’t let us take you to a hospital. He said they’d take you away because we’d been gone so long. And they would have because any doctor would have taken one look at you and known exactly what happened.”
Sam was shocked into looking up, mouth hanging open like an idiot. “I didn’t know,” he said, softly. “I did some research later, and everything I read said it took more like three weeks for the really bad stuff to set in, especially if you had water. I figured I had just gotten sick from sleeping in the tub, you know?”
Dean’s jaw clenched. He opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it shut. A shudder ran through his frame. He looked like an over wound spring ready to fly apart at any moment. When he didn’t say anything, Sam glanced at him from under the fringe of his hair.
“Dean? You okay?”
Dean’s fists clenched. His jaw worked back and forth before he managed to spit out, “Fuck no.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” Dean’s eyes snapped to him with a flash of something dangerous.
Sam pulled back, eyes going back to his lap. “I just...I-I get it if you’re angry with me.” Dean hadn’t even heard the worst part yet. If he was angry now, he’d be livid if Sam told him the rest.
Dean breathed through several little puffing, seething breaths before he finally said, “I’m not mad at you. I’m absolutely pissed, but not at you.”
“Wait, you’re not?”
“Of course not. I mean, you should have told me, but John is lucky he’s dead.”
“You believe me?”
Dean seemed to shake off the temper he’d fall into. He finally looked back at Sam with something closer to confusion. “Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I know how much Dad meant to you. I uh, well, I didn’t want you to have to I guess choose. And well, this is all hard to hear.”
Dean’s jaw clenched again. “What else?”
“Dean.”
“You said you were thirteen. You telling me that between then and when you left, it never escalated?”
“No, it did. But are you sure? I-I uh I’m not sure I can even talk about it. It’s, um, not something you really walk away from knowing.”
“Just tell me.”
Sam shrugged. It wasn’t like he hadn’t irreparably damaged Dean’s opinion of him anyway. His fingers found the edge of the shirt he’d stripped out of earlier and started worrying at the loose thread head meant to snip off ages ago.
He knew that this had been hard for Dean, but he also knew that the next part would be worse, although he wasn’t sure if it would be harder for him or Dean.
He sucked in a breath and focused on the string twisting between his fingers.
“Like I said, the first time was the worst, but he seemed to like that one. He started tying me down during punishments. He said it was part of my training, to make me get out of the ropes. It wasn’t great, but in terms of bad it rated pretty low on the scale, you know? When I turned sixteen, things changed.”
“Changed how?”
…
Sam never managed to stay in the moment when John really got going. It was like he just checked out. It hurt - God did it hurt - but he got to a point where he would watch it from outside himself.
John had wrestled him down after Dean swaggered off. He was twenty now and a little thing like a year wasn’t going to stand between him and a little fun in a bar or finding some hot coed to spend the night with. As much as Sam wanted him to have a life beyond this horror show, he was jealously angry every time he left, because that’s when the worst things happened. John wouldn’t do much if Dean was home or just getting dinner for them. It was when he walked out the door like he was the greatest gift to the world that Sam knew he was in for a rough night.
He stopped keeping track of why he was being punished. Half the time, John didn’t bother with a reason anymore anyway. Tonight it had been something about being the reason they were even in the life. Something about Mom and Dean that hadn’t made sense even when Sam had been paying attention.
Sam still fought. He was determined. John would not break him. He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of knowing he had won. So Sam still resisted when John grabbed him and bodily hauled him around. He still struggled when he was being tied down, this time to the bed.
His wrists were tied above his head at either corner of the headboard. John hadn’t bothered with his feet, electing instead to sit on his hips so that any struggle he did make was ineffectual at best.
“Stupid brat, can’t even get out of that, can you? I don’t know why I waste my time with you.”
Sam couldn’t respond, even if he wanted to. Apparently he’d screamed too loud, or maybe John just wasn’t in the mood, because he’d smacked Sam across the face and then shoved a t-shirt that had been lying in the floor into his mouth and tied it around his head.
Sam was a little confused. Normally when John tied him down it was so he could do something with full, uninterrupted access, usually a good belting. Sometimes he even pulled out his knife. Tonight it seemed to be because he could. He’d been yelling, like always, and Sam had taken his fair share of punches tonight, but it hadn’t been like the other times.
Of course, without a way to curl up or protect himself, John could land one just about anywhere he wanted. Sam was pretty sure his ribs were going to be bruised, and he’d have to be extra careful of his left side where he’d taken a hard kick before John had gotten him down.
Sam was brought back to the moment when John froze mid punch. He looked up. John was straddling him, fist raised, but his eyes were focused on Sam’s stomach where his shirt had ridden up in the struggle.
John’s expression had gone soft, unreadably distant. He brought his hand down and skimmed it over a bruise that was starting to form just along Sam’s hip bone. It didn’t hurt. It was a surprisingly gentle touch, but something about it made Sam’s blood run cold. Sam froze, barely able to breathe.
John’s eyes went hard. “You took her from me! You took her and then you walk around acting like her, looking like her.” His voice was low.
John climbed off him and stood.
“You take what’s mine, I’ll take what I want from you.”
Sam had a horrible feeling about where this was going. John grasped his legs and lifted. Sam struggled as hard as he could. He bucked and kicked and twisted trying to get free. Whatever came next would be worse, so much worse than what had come before. He tried to call out, but the gag in his mouth muffled it down into incoherent cries.
In one swift motion, John flipped him over. Sam’s arms, still attached to the headboard, felt like they were going to pull from their sockets. He landed with a grunt as John dropped him. Despite the agony his shoulders were in, he tried to flip back before John could do anything. John was quicker though. He grabbed the back of Sam’s jeans and dragged him down the bed. His arms were pulled tight. He didn’t even have the leverage to lift his head. His face was pressed hard into the mattress The twisted sheet tangled under him, making it that much harder to move. He finally got his head turned to the side so that he could breathe when John lifted his hips up enough he could unbuckle his jeans. In seconds they and his boxers were pulled free and discarded to the side of the bed.
Sam renewed his struggling. He kicked, trying to find purchase against anything so he could get away from what was coming next. His foot clipped something warm and hard. John grunted.
“You little asshole.” John gave a solid punch to his kidney, making Sam drop limp for a moment. A moment was all John needed to yank the sheet out from under him, twist it around his ankles and tie his feet apart at opposite sides of the bed. “Kick me now you little shit.”
John climbed up into the bed. Sam did his best to twist away, but he couldn’t stop it as John pulled him around and yanked him back. Sam was crying now, tears of terror.
John spent a moment doing something behind him. Sam was too tangled up to see more than the edge of the nightstand from where he was laying. He just laid there panting.
Finally, John said, “This is for everything you’ve stolen from me.”
Then he grabbed Sam’s hips and dragged him back as much as he could. Sam cried out as pain split through him. John forced himself into Sam. The next few minutes were a long haze of pain and movement and fear.
When John finally spent himself, he yanked free of Sam and climbed off the bed. He spent a long time just staring at Sam’s limp body.
Sam lay there, trying to breathe through the pain, too spent to even think about moving. He took the three hard smacks to his ass with indifference. No pain John could do with his hand could match what Sam was feeling inside him.
After a snort of derision, John turned and went into the bathroom leaving him to his misery. The water in the shower turned on, but Sam didn’t care. He could still feel everything about John touching him, pulling at him, filling him.
Sam didn’t know how much time passed before John was back. He barely spared Sam a glance as he found clean clothes, dressed, and collected his keys. In seconds he was out the door.
As much as he didn’t want to move, he knew if he stayed in that spot, his arms would be fucked. He could already feel the harsh tingling of nerve pain from being yanked against the natural movement of the joint. If John was gone, he was okay to try and slip out of the tie. In fact, if he didn’t, John would give him worse when he got home.
Sam gathered his strength then used his feet to leverage himself up as best he could. He couldn’t go far. The sheet tying his ankles didn’t have much slack. The little bit of movement made his shoulders scream, but did take a little pressure off and gave him just enough give to raise his head and study the knots.
What he saw wasn’t encouraging. John had tied his hands directly to the posts. When he’d flipped him, Sam’s wrists had been forced to rotate in the already tight ties. Both were bloody and weeping. The angle had pulled the ropes even tighter. There wasn’t any way for him to even reach the knots without flipping back over and as tightly as the ropes had eaten into his skin, he’d never slip them without breaking something. John would murder him if he did something that obvious that couldn’t be hidden.
Sam tested the give on the sheets around his ankles. Those would be the easier of the two to slip, but John had double tied them. Without something to rub against, he wasn’t getting out of those either and he wouldn’t be able to flip back over until they were gone.
Sam collapsed back onto the bed, spent. He was stuck. He wasn’t getting out until John came back.
Sam spent most of the hours he was alone trying to distract himself. If he thought too hard about what had just happened, he was going to throw up, and with the gag still splitting his jaw, he would be in a world of trouble if he did.
When John finally stumbled in, he tripped his way over to Sam’s bed. Sam tensed, afraid he’d decided to come back for more.
“Stupid little slut. Can’t even untie a knot can you. Should give you a belting, but I’m tired. I’m so tired. It’s your fault. If I didn’t spend all my time trying to straighten you out, I wouldn’t be so damn tired. Since you’re too lazy to do it right, you can sleep like that.”
John turned and went into the bathroom. Sam could hear him brushing his teeth. Eventually he stumbled back out and collapsed into the other bed, shoes and all. He rolled over and flipped the light off.
“Sleep tight, Sammy.”
Sam was plunged into darkness.
…
The next morning, John got up with his alarm and ignored Sam completely. He went about his morning. Only when he was showered, dressed, and had enjoyed two cups of coffee over the paper he’d picked up yesterday did he finally come over to Sam’s bed.
“I don’t have time for your whining this morning. Understand?”
Sam nodded weakly into the pillow.
“We are meeting your brother for breakfast in twenty minutes. I expect you cleaned up and ready to go in fifteen.”
Again, Sam nodded. John pulled his knife from his waistband. Sam clenched his eyes shut, hoping he wasn’t about to go round three. Instead, the cool metal slid along the inside of his wrist and pulled. The rope tore free.
John tossed the knife onto the bed next to him. “This room better be spotless before we leave or I’m leaving you here.”
John went back to the little table and picked his paper up. Sam spent a few precious seconds working the feeling back into his hand before he picked up the knife and clumsily cut his other wrist free. With his hands finally down, he could barely move his arms. It hurt bad enough he whimpered. That brought his attention back to the now tacky t-shirt that had been stealing the moisture from his mouth all night. He lifted his aching arms and plucked the knots from the fabric until it fell limply away from his head. He had to pull the wads of fabric from his mouth before his jaw could finally close in a natural way, although that hurt too.
He knew he was spending precious minutes of his allotted time, so he forced his hand under him and pushed himself up onto his knees so he could reach the sheets tying his ankles down. The knots on those were easier. Either he had worked them loose a little overnight or John hadn’t been as careful with them. They’d been impossible when he didn’t have any leverage, but pulled out easily enough. When both ankles were free, he launched himself from the bed and into the bathroom. He made it just in time to loose what little he had in his stomach into the toilet.
Next he was made aware that his bladder was about to burst.
Immediate needs seen to, he took stock. He didn’t have to worry about his face, but his wrists were a bloody, mangled mess. He’d be wearing his extra-long sleeved hoody for sure.
He climbed into the shower. He didn’t have the time he wanted to stand under the spray and wash every last memory of those hands off his skin, but he spent a few extra minutes letting the hot water scald away the evidence of the night before. He took the time to wrap up the raw wounds on his wrists and to treat the few spots that were actually cut and bleeding on his torso, although most of those had scabbed over during the night.
He was stiff and sore and very bruised, but the worst of his injuries weren’t on the outside. It hurt to walk. He’d noticed blood where there shouldn’t have been any and he just had to hope it wasn’t something he would need a doctor for. Every time he moved he was reminded of what had happened the night before.
Sam didn’t let himself think about it. John was only a few feet away in the next room, and he had a deadline to meet if he didn’t want to bring more down on his head.
He flew through the cleaning. It didn’t take as long as he’d feared. He threw the duvet straight so the bed looked made, but bundled the sheets and set them outside the door for the maid to pick up. His discarded clothes he shoved to the very bottom of his duffel bag and the cut rope he hid at the bottom of the trash can. By the end, the room looked as neat as it ever did.
John didn’t say anything, just collected his keys and left, Sam trailing behind. They made it in time for Dean to smirk at the waitress and drop at least ten disgusting hints about what his night had entailed. Sam swallowed down the bile threatening to make an appearance as he remembered his own night.
When Dean didn’t get the rise he was looking for, he stopped and frowned. “You okay there, Sammy?”
Sam forced a smile and nodded. “Didn’t sleep well. I’m just tired.”
Dean gave him a hard look. He was thankfully distracted by the waitress who dropped off his plate of bacon and eggs with a wink.
…
“The first time was strange. He had me tied to the bed, but I could tell something was off. He turned almost gentle before he pinned me. He ripped my pants down and tied my feet so I couldn’t struggle against him. Then he…he used me until he came. He left me tied up while he went out drinking. That was always part of it. I was supposed to get out by myself. Because of the way I was flipped, I couldn’t even work the knots loose. When he stumbled in he said if I was too lazy to untie myself I could sleep like that.”
Sam could go on. He could go on for hours about everything John had done, but he didn’t need to. Dean only needed enough to understand what had happened, why he was having nightmares. He couldn’t look at Dean’s face. Instead, he watched a flock of crows circling overhead. They were drifting lazily on the high current, barely more than black shapes against the sky.
Sam had almost forgotten Dean was there when he said, “Sammy.” His voice was rough and low. Before Sam could even blink, Dean was throwing the door open and heaving onto the asphalt.
“Dean!”
Sam surged forward and grasped Dean by the shoulders. When it seemed like he was done, Sam pulled him back into the car. “What the hell? Are you okay?”
“Stop asking me that.”
Sam glanced down at his lap. “I never wanted to tell you. I was afraid of what you’d think of me. And I didn’t want you to remember Dad that way. This all happened years ago. There was no reason to go digging it all up.”
“Fuck him.”
Sam flinched. “Dean…”
“No, I mean it. Fuck him. Sammy, I’m so, so sorry.”
Sam frowned. “For what? None of it was your fault.”
“I should have been there. I should have realized. I could have stopped him or killed the bastard.”
“Dean,” Sam said with a sigh. “Don’t. Seriously.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“At first, he said if I did, he’d hurt me worse. Then he said he’d make you take my punishments. After a while, it was just too hard to even talk about. I never told anyone.”
Dean fell quiet and Sam sat fiddling with his thumbs in his lap. “So,” Sam said, finally. “Do you hate me?”
Dean spluttered in the seat next to him. “What? Why would I hate you?”
“I allowed all that to happen. I was basically a fuck toy there towards the end. It’s not exactly something I’m proud of.”
“Sam,” Dean said gently. He reached out towards Sam, but Sam couldn’t help the small flinch at the brush of his fingers. It was almost instinctual despite the fact that Dean had never hurt him. “I don’t hate you. I’m pissed as hell at John, but I don’t hate you.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“But you idolized Dad. And some part of me still thinks I probably deserved some of it.”
“No,” Dean growled. “Dad damned himself to Hell all on his own. You didn’t deserve one bit of any of that. He should have never even laid a hand on you. None of this is your fault. I just wish I had known sooner.” After a short lull, “That’s why you’ve been having nightmares?”
“Yeah. I keep remembering, only it keeps getting mixed up with everything else in my dreams.”
“So the panic attack?”
“I stumbled across Dad not long after we spoke. He said some things, things I’d wanted to hear for a long time, but it was all wrong. He grabbed my shoulder. Called me Sammy. I don’t know. I already was on shaky ground.”
Next to him Dean was practically vibrating. Sam tensed and laid a hand on Dean’s arm. “Stop. It’s not like that. It wasn’t threatening. He wasn’t hurting me. It just put me back there. Smelling his cologne. His grip on my arm. His voice. I was only inches away from one to start with.”’
They fell into silence again. Dean seemed to not quite know what to say to any of this. He was staring out the windshield, not seeing any of the open road ahead of them. Sam’s thoughts drifted to that night. He could still see the way Mom grinned as John told a cheesy joke that hadn’t been funny the first hundred times and the way she laughed as they talked. She had brightened up the room in a way he hadn’t expected. If they told her, she might not ever laugh that way again.
“You can’t tell Mom,” Sam said.
Dean jumped at the sudden demand. He turned and pinned Sam with a look. “Wait, what?”
“Mom. She shouldn’t have to know.”
Dean stared at him. “Sam…” He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.
“I can’t do that to her,” Sam said. Didn’t Dean see? She didn’t deserve that. “Let her keep that night.”
“No, I can’t promise that.”
“Dean,” Sam said, more firmly this time. “I mean it. This doesn’t change anything. It was half a lifetime ago. More when you consider everything that’s happened. It’s done. Just let it be done. Let Mom keep her memory of him.”
Dean scowled at him. He crossed his arms over his chest. “It changes everything. And don’t tell me it’s done. You’re still having nightmares over it. That’s not done.”
“What,” Sam snapped, his own fist clenching in his lap. “What does it change? I left for college. He never touched me again. Dad’s dead. I’m only having nightmares because I wasn’t prepared to see him. There’s no use chasing ghosts. Not this time.”
“Do you hear yourself? It doesn’t mean anything because it happened years ago? It shouldn’t have happened at all!” Dean’s fist smacked down on the steering wheel hard enough to make the horn let out a little beep.
“But it did,” Sam said, quietly. “And I survived.”
Dean sighed and settled back into his seat. He scrubbed a hand over his face and turned to stare out the window again. Sam watched him from the corner of his eye. After a long minute, he reached forward and started the car.
They rode the rest of the way home in absolute silence. Sam was studiously not saying anything at all. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to try and ease the tension sitting between them or what might happen if he did.
They arrived home a few hours later and bundled their things into the bunker as quietly as they had made the drive. Mary was sitting at a table in the war room. She looked up as they came in.
“Hey, how was Granville?”
Dean didn’t stop. He powered down the stair and through the room. A few moments later Sam heard his door slam. He winced and came down the stairs.
“That good, huh?”
Sam gave her a wan smile. “Dead end. Nothing but an overactive rumor mill.”
“So what happened? You two look like you’ve been ten rounds. Are you fighting?”
Sam shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Just too long in the car together. You know how it is. He just needs some space from me, I think. And I need a shower.”
She smiled at him. “Well, there’s a solution for that.”
Sam huffed. He hefted his bag further up his shoulder and took off for his own room. Mary would check on Dean and probably smooth over some of his temper. Sam would just need to steer clear for a day or two until he was a little calmer.
<< Previous Chapter ~ Next Chapter >>
Fandom: Supernatural
Character(s): Sam, Dean, John
Pairing(s): Gen
Word Count: 19,300
Rating: NC-17 - DARK THEMES: Abuse, violence, sexual assault, panic attacks, strong language
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never was.
Warnings: THIS STORY DEALS WITH THEMES OF ABUSE, specifically child abuse. It includes physical and verbal abuse, nonconsensual sexual encounters, starvation, and isolation. Most of the direct descriptions are included in the flashbacks, denoted by italics, but these events are referenced and discussed throughout. THIS STORY ALSO DESCRIBES A PANIC ATTACK as well as dissociation and a few brief mentions of (passive) suicidal thoughts. Please do not read if you feel this might be triggering.
Summary: When Dean’s wish on the pearl digs up old hurts, the brothers have to deal with the fallout.
Chasing Ghosts
“He would block the door from outside and just leave.”
“Hold on, back up,” Dean said, looking genuinely lost. “Dad locked you in the bathroom? Where was I?”
“Usually you two were on a hunt nearby.”
“We? Dad was with me? For how long? When did this happen?”
Sam shrugged, his shoulders pressing into the leather of the seat. “There were a couple of times, but it was only more than a day or two the first time.”
“A day or two?! There was a time it was longer?! When? How long?”
Sam frowned up at the ceiling. There was a little piece of lint clinging to the fabric just over the passenger side door. It took a minute to process all the questions Dean had thrown at him. “I was thirteen. It was all super hazy for a while once you got back. I never did get the story straight in my head. You were gone for eleven days though. That part stuck.”
Sam snuck a glance at Dean from the corner of his eye. Dean had gone white. “Eleven days.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “It was the one time I saw Dad realize he’d gone too far. I was in pretty bad shape when you two got back.”
“That’s...that’s...”
“It sucked,” Sam supplied. “It was so fucking boring. And I was so hungry. For the first couple of days I couldn’t decide which was worse being hungry or being bored. But then I stopped being hungry.”
“Hungry? How much did he leave you with?”
Sam tilted his head along the back of the seat to look at him sideways, not sure how to interpret that tone, or the question really. “What do you mean?”
“You were in there for days.” Dean couldn’t even say that without looking like he was going to hurl. “How much food did dad leave with you? What did he plan for?”
“He didn’t,” Sam said. He frowned at Dean. Why would John have left him food?
“He didn’t what?”
“I made him mad. He tossed me in the bathroom and blocked the door so I couldn’t open it. He didn’t plan anything. All I had was what I had with me, which was basically a bit of lint in my pocket.”
Dean was deathly silent for a long moment. “Montana.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed.
Dean slammed his fist down onto the steering wheel. Sam recoiled, curling back into the corner between the door and the seat despite himself.
“That son of a bitch! I knew something was wrong. When we came back you were so thin. I could actually see your ribs. You could barely lift your spoon that first night. You were skittish and claustrophobic and barely spoke. And I bought that story about you being sick.”
“I was sick, although that set in the last day or two. Time was weird by then, so I couldn’t tell you exactly how long I’d been down with something.”
“You nearly died!”
Sam flinched. He clenched his hands in his lap and focused on that. His knuckles turned white from the pressure. “No,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I didn’t. It wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t that close.”
“Yes, you did,” Dean insisted, leaning forward. “You started having trouble breathing. Your heart went funny. Dad wouldn’t let us take you to a hospital. He said they’d take you away because we’d been gone so long. And they would have because any doctor would have taken one look at you and known exactly what happened.”
Sam was shocked into looking up, mouth hanging open like an idiot. “I didn’t know,” he said, softly. “I did some research later, and everything I read said it took more like three weeks for the really bad stuff to set in, especially if you had water. I figured I had just gotten sick from sleeping in the tub, you know?”
Dean’s jaw clenched. He opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it shut. A shudder ran through his frame. He looked like an over wound spring ready to fly apart at any moment. When he didn’t say anything, Sam glanced at him from under the fringe of his hair.
“Dean? You okay?”
Dean’s fists clenched. His jaw worked back and forth before he managed to spit out, “Fuck no.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” Dean’s eyes snapped to him with a flash of something dangerous.
Sam pulled back, eyes going back to his lap. “I just...I-I get it if you’re angry with me.” Dean hadn’t even heard the worst part yet. If he was angry now, he’d be livid if Sam told him the rest.
Dean breathed through several little puffing, seething breaths before he finally said, “I’m not mad at you. I’m absolutely pissed, but not at you.”
“Wait, you’re not?”
“Of course not. I mean, you should have told me, but John is lucky he’s dead.”
“You believe me?”
Dean seemed to shake off the temper he’d fall into. He finally looked back at Sam with something closer to confusion. “Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I know how much Dad meant to you. I uh, well, I didn’t want you to have to I guess choose. And well, this is all hard to hear.”
Dean’s jaw clenched again. “What else?”
“Dean.”
“You said you were thirteen. You telling me that between then and when you left, it never escalated?”
“No, it did. But are you sure? I-I uh I’m not sure I can even talk about it. It’s, um, not something you really walk away from knowing.”
“Just tell me.”
Sam shrugged. It wasn’t like he hadn’t irreparably damaged Dean’s opinion of him anyway. His fingers found the edge of the shirt he’d stripped out of earlier and started worrying at the loose thread head meant to snip off ages ago.
He knew that this had been hard for Dean, but he also knew that the next part would be worse, although he wasn’t sure if it would be harder for him or Dean.
He sucked in a breath and focused on the string twisting between his fingers.
“Like I said, the first time was the worst, but he seemed to like that one. He started tying me down during punishments. He said it was part of my training, to make me get out of the ropes. It wasn’t great, but in terms of bad it rated pretty low on the scale, you know? When I turned sixteen, things changed.”
“Changed how?”
…
Sam never managed to stay in the moment when John really got going. It was like he just checked out. It hurt - God did it hurt - but he got to a point where he would watch it from outside himself.
John had wrestled him down after Dean swaggered off. He was twenty now and a little thing like a year wasn’t going to stand between him and a little fun in a bar or finding some hot coed to spend the night with. As much as Sam wanted him to have a life beyond this horror show, he was jealously angry every time he left, because that’s when the worst things happened. John wouldn’t do much if Dean was home or just getting dinner for them. It was when he walked out the door like he was the greatest gift to the world that Sam knew he was in for a rough night.
He stopped keeping track of why he was being punished. Half the time, John didn’t bother with a reason anymore anyway. Tonight it had been something about being the reason they were even in the life. Something about Mom and Dean that hadn’t made sense even when Sam had been paying attention.
Sam still fought. He was determined. John would not break him. He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of knowing he had won. So Sam still resisted when John grabbed him and bodily hauled him around. He still struggled when he was being tied down, this time to the bed.
His wrists were tied above his head at either corner of the headboard. John hadn’t bothered with his feet, electing instead to sit on his hips so that any struggle he did make was ineffectual at best.
“Stupid brat, can’t even get out of that, can you? I don’t know why I waste my time with you.”
Sam couldn’t respond, even if he wanted to. Apparently he’d screamed too loud, or maybe John just wasn’t in the mood, because he’d smacked Sam across the face and then shoved a t-shirt that had been lying in the floor into his mouth and tied it around his head.
Sam was a little confused. Normally when John tied him down it was so he could do something with full, uninterrupted access, usually a good belting. Sometimes he even pulled out his knife. Tonight it seemed to be because he could. He’d been yelling, like always, and Sam had taken his fair share of punches tonight, but it hadn’t been like the other times.
Of course, without a way to curl up or protect himself, John could land one just about anywhere he wanted. Sam was pretty sure his ribs were going to be bruised, and he’d have to be extra careful of his left side where he’d taken a hard kick before John had gotten him down.
Sam was brought back to the moment when John froze mid punch. He looked up. John was straddling him, fist raised, but his eyes were focused on Sam’s stomach where his shirt had ridden up in the struggle.
John’s expression had gone soft, unreadably distant. He brought his hand down and skimmed it over a bruise that was starting to form just along Sam’s hip bone. It didn’t hurt. It was a surprisingly gentle touch, but something about it made Sam’s blood run cold. Sam froze, barely able to breathe.
John’s eyes went hard. “You took her from me! You took her and then you walk around acting like her, looking like her.” His voice was low.
John climbed off him and stood.
“You take what’s mine, I’ll take what I want from you.”
Sam had a horrible feeling about where this was going. John grasped his legs and lifted. Sam struggled as hard as he could. He bucked and kicked and twisted trying to get free. Whatever came next would be worse, so much worse than what had come before. He tried to call out, but the gag in his mouth muffled it down into incoherent cries.
In one swift motion, John flipped him over. Sam’s arms, still attached to the headboard, felt like they were going to pull from their sockets. He landed with a grunt as John dropped him. Despite the agony his shoulders were in, he tried to flip back before John could do anything. John was quicker though. He grabbed the back of Sam’s jeans and dragged him down the bed. His arms were pulled tight. He didn’t even have the leverage to lift his head. His face was pressed hard into the mattress The twisted sheet tangled under him, making it that much harder to move. He finally got his head turned to the side so that he could breathe when John lifted his hips up enough he could unbuckle his jeans. In seconds they and his boxers were pulled free and discarded to the side of the bed.
Sam renewed his struggling. He kicked, trying to find purchase against anything so he could get away from what was coming next. His foot clipped something warm and hard. John grunted.
“You little asshole.” John gave a solid punch to his kidney, making Sam drop limp for a moment. A moment was all John needed to yank the sheet out from under him, twist it around his ankles and tie his feet apart at opposite sides of the bed. “Kick me now you little shit.”
John climbed up into the bed. Sam did his best to twist away, but he couldn’t stop it as John pulled him around and yanked him back. Sam was crying now, tears of terror.
John spent a moment doing something behind him. Sam was too tangled up to see more than the edge of the nightstand from where he was laying. He just laid there panting.
Finally, John said, “This is for everything you’ve stolen from me.”
Then he grabbed Sam’s hips and dragged him back as much as he could. Sam cried out as pain split through him. John forced himself into Sam. The next few minutes were a long haze of pain and movement and fear.
When John finally spent himself, he yanked free of Sam and climbed off the bed. He spent a long time just staring at Sam’s limp body.
Sam lay there, trying to breathe through the pain, too spent to even think about moving. He took the three hard smacks to his ass with indifference. No pain John could do with his hand could match what Sam was feeling inside him.
After a snort of derision, John turned and went into the bathroom leaving him to his misery. The water in the shower turned on, but Sam didn’t care. He could still feel everything about John touching him, pulling at him, filling him.
Sam didn’t know how much time passed before John was back. He barely spared Sam a glance as he found clean clothes, dressed, and collected his keys. In seconds he was out the door.
As much as he didn’t want to move, he knew if he stayed in that spot, his arms would be fucked. He could already feel the harsh tingling of nerve pain from being yanked against the natural movement of the joint. If John was gone, he was okay to try and slip out of the tie. In fact, if he didn’t, John would give him worse when he got home.
Sam gathered his strength then used his feet to leverage himself up as best he could. He couldn’t go far. The sheet tying his ankles didn’t have much slack. The little bit of movement made his shoulders scream, but did take a little pressure off and gave him just enough give to raise his head and study the knots.
What he saw wasn’t encouraging. John had tied his hands directly to the posts. When he’d flipped him, Sam’s wrists had been forced to rotate in the already tight ties. Both were bloody and weeping. The angle had pulled the ropes even tighter. There wasn’t any way for him to even reach the knots without flipping back over and as tightly as the ropes had eaten into his skin, he’d never slip them without breaking something. John would murder him if he did something that obvious that couldn’t be hidden.
Sam tested the give on the sheets around his ankles. Those would be the easier of the two to slip, but John had double tied them. Without something to rub against, he wasn’t getting out of those either and he wouldn’t be able to flip back over until they were gone.
Sam collapsed back onto the bed, spent. He was stuck. He wasn’t getting out until John came back.
Sam spent most of the hours he was alone trying to distract himself. If he thought too hard about what had just happened, he was going to throw up, and with the gag still splitting his jaw, he would be in a world of trouble if he did.
When John finally stumbled in, he tripped his way over to Sam’s bed. Sam tensed, afraid he’d decided to come back for more.
“Stupid little slut. Can’t even untie a knot can you. Should give you a belting, but I’m tired. I’m so tired. It’s your fault. If I didn’t spend all my time trying to straighten you out, I wouldn’t be so damn tired. Since you’re too lazy to do it right, you can sleep like that.”
John turned and went into the bathroom. Sam could hear him brushing his teeth. Eventually he stumbled back out and collapsed into the other bed, shoes and all. He rolled over and flipped the light off.
“Sleep tight, Sammy.”
Sam was plunged into darkness.
…
The next morning, John got up with his alarm and ignored Sam completely. He went about his morning. Only when he was showered, dressed, and had enjoyed two cups of coffee over the paper he’d picked up yesterday did he finally come over to Sam’s bed.
“I don’t have time for your whining this morning. Understand?”
Sam nodded weakly into the pillow.
“We are meeting your brother for breakfast in twenty minutes. I expect you cleaned up and ready to go in fifteen.”
Again, Sam nodded. John pulled his knife from his waistband. Sam clenched his eyes shut, hoping he wasn’t about to go round three. Instead, the cool metal slid along the inside of his wrist and pulled. The rope tore free.
John tossed the knife onto the bed next to him. “This room better be spotless before we leave or I’m leaving you here.”
John went back to the little table and picked his paper up. Sam spent a few precious seconds working the feeling back into his hand before he picked up the knife and clumsily cut his other wrist free. With his hands finally down, he could barely move his arms. It hurt bad enough he whimpered. That brought his attention back to the now tacky t-shirt that had been stealing the moisture from his mouth all night. He lifted his aching arms and plucked the knots from the fabric until it fell limply away from his head. He had to pull the wads of fabric from his mouth before his jaw could finally close in a natural way, although that hurt too.
He knew he was spending precious minutes of his allotted time, so he forced his hand under him and pushed himself up onto his knees so he could reach the sheets tying his ankles down. The knots on those were easier. Either he had worked them loose a little overnight or John hadn’t been as careful with them. They’d been impossible when he didn’t have any leverage, but pulled out easily enough. When both ankles were free, he launched himself from the bed and into the bathroom. He made it just in time to loose what little he had in his stomach into the toilet.
Next he was made aware that his bladder was about to burst.
Immediate needs seen to, he took stock. He didn’t have to worry about his face, but his wrists were a bloody, mangled mess. He’d be wearing his extra-long sleeved hoody for sure.
He climbed into the shower. He didn’t have the time he wanted to stand under the spray and wash every last memory of those hands off his skin, but he spent a few extra minutes letting the hot water scald away the evidence of the night before. He took the time to wrap up the raw wounds on his wrists and to treat the few spots that were actually cut and bleeding on his torso, although most of those had scabbed over during the night.
He was stiff and sore and very bruised, but the worst of his injuries weren’t on the outside. It hurt to walk. He’d noticed blood where there shouldn’t have been any and he just had to hope it wasn’t something he would need a doctor for. Every time he moved he was reminded of what had happened the night before.
Sam didn’t let himself think about it. John was only a few feet away in the next room, and he had a deadline to meet if he didn’t want to bring more down on his head.
He flew through the cleaning. It didn’t take as long as he’d feared. He threw the duvet straight so the bed looked made, but bundled the sheets and set them outside the door for the maid to pick up. His discarded clothes he shoved to the very bottom of his duffel bag and the cut rope he hid at the bottom of the trash can. By the end, the room looked as neat as it ever did.
John didn’t say anything, just collected his keys and left, Sam trailing behind. They made it in time for Dean to smirk at the waitress and drop at least ten disgusting hints about what his night had entailed. Sam swallowed down the bile threatening to make an appearance as he remembered his own night.
When Dean didn’t get the rise he was looking for, he stopped and frowned. “You okay there, Sammy?”
Sam forced a smile and nodded. “Didn’t sleep well. I’m just tired.”
Dean gave him a hard look. He was thankfully distracted by the waitress who dropped off his plate of bacon and eggs with a wink.
…
“The first time was strange. He had me tied to the bed, but I could tell something was off. He turned almost gentle before he pinned me. He ripped my pants down and tied my feet so I couldn’t struggle against him. Then he…he used me until he came. He left me tied up while he went out drinking. That was always part of it. I was supposed to get out by myself. Because of the way I was flipped, I couldn’t even work the knots loose. When he stumbled in he said if I was too lazy to untie myself I could sleep like that.”
Sam could go on. He could go on for hours about everything John had done, but he didn’t need to. Dean only needed enough to understand what had happened, why he was having nightmares. He couldn’t look at Dean’s face. Instead, he watched a flock of crows circling overhead. They were drifting lazily on the high current, barely more than black shapes against the sky.
Sam had almost forgotten Dean was there when he said, “Sammy.” His voice was rough and low. Before Sam could even blink, Dean was throwing the door open and heaving onto the asphalt.
“Dean!”
Sam surged forward and grasped Dean by the shoulders. When it seemed like he was done, Sam pulled him back into the car. “What the hell? Are you okay?”
“Stop asking me that.”
Sam glanced down at his lap. “I never wanted to tell you. I was afraid of what you’d think of me. And I didn’t want you to remember Dad that way. This all happened years ago. There was no reason to go digging it all up.”
“Fuck him.”
Sam flinched. “Dean…”
“No, I mean it. Fuck him. Sammy, I’m so, so sorry.”
Sam frowned. “For what? None of it was your fault.”
“I should have been there. I should have realized. I could have stopped him or killed the bastard.”
“Dean,” Sam said with a sigh. “Don’t. Seriously.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“At first, he said if I did, he’d hurt me worse. Then he said he’d make you take my punishments. After a while, it was just too hard to even talk about. I never told anyone.”
Dean fell quiet and Sam sat fiddling with his thumbs in his lap. “So,” Sam said, finally. “Do you hate me?”
Dean spluttered in the seat next to him. “What? Why would I hate you?”
“I allowed all that to happen. I was basically a fuck toy there towards the end. It’s not exactly something I’m proud of.”
“Sam,” Dean said gently. He reached out towards Sam, but Sam couldn’t help the small flinch at the brush of his fingers. It was almost instinctual despite the fact that Dean had never hurt him. “I don’t hate you. I’m pissed as hell at John, but I don’t hate you.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“But you idolized Dad. And some part of me still thinks I probably deserved some of it.”
“No,” Dean growled. “Dad damned himself to Hell all on his own. You didn’t deserve one bit of any of that. He should have never even laid a hand on you. None of this is your fault. I just wish I had known sooner.” After a short lull, “That’s why you’ve been having nightmares?”
“Yeah. I keep remembering, only it keeps getting mixed up with everything else in my dreams.”
“So the panic attack?”
“I stumbled across Dad not long after we spoke. He said some things, things I’d wanted to hear for a long time, but it was all wrong. He grabbed my shoulder. Called me Sammy. I don’t know. I already was on shaky ground.”
Next to him Dean was practically vibrating. Sam tensed and laid a hand on Dean’s arm. “Stop. It’s not like that. It wasn’t threatening. He wasn’t hurting me. It just put me back there. Smelling his cologne. His grip on my arm. His voice. I was only inches away from one to start with.”’
They fell into silence again. Dean seemed to not quite know what to say to any of this. He was staring out the windshield, not seeing any of the open road ahead of them. Sam’s thoughts drifted to that night. He could still see the way Mom grinned as John told a cheesy joke that hadn’t been funny the first hundred times and the way she laughed as they talked. She had brightened up the room in a way he hadn’t expected. If they told her, she might not ever laugh that way again.
“You can’t tell Mom,” Sam said.
Dean jumped at the sudden demand. He turned and pinned Sam with a look. “Wait, what?”
“Mom. She shouldn’t have to know.”
Dean stared at him. “Sam…” He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.
“I can’t do that to her,” Sam said. Didn’t Dean see? She didn’t deserve that. “Let her keep that night.”
“No, I can’t promise that.”
“Dean,” Sam said, more firmly this time. “I mean it. This doesn’t change anything. It was half a lifetime ago. More when you consider everything that’s happened. It’s done. Just let it be done. Let Mom keep her memory of him.”
Dean scowled at him. He crossed his arms over his chest. “It changes everything. And don’t tell me it’s done. You’re still having nightmares over it. That’s not done.”
“What,” Sam snapped, his own fist clenching in his lap. “What does it change? I left for college. He never touched me again. Dad’s dead. I’m only having nightmares because I wasn’t prepared to see him. There’s no use chasing ghosts. Not this time.”
“Do you hear yourself? It doesn’t mean anything because it happened years ago? It shouldn’t have happened at all!” Dean’s fist smacked down on the steering wheel hard enough to make the horn let out a little beep.
“But it did,” Sam said, quietly. “And I survived.”
Dean sighed and settled back into his seat. He scrubbed a hand over his face and turned to stare out the window again. Sam watched him from the corner of his eye. After a long minute, he reached forward and started the car.
They rode the rest of the way home in absolute silence. Sam was studiously not saying anything at all. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to try and ease the tension sitting between them or what might happen if he did.
They arrived home a few hours later and bundled their things into the bunker as quietly as they had made the drive. Mary was sitting at a table in the war room. She looked up as they came in.
“Hey, how was Granville?”
Dean didn’t stop. He powered down the stair and through the room. A few moments later Sam heard his door slam. He winced and came down the stairs.
“That good, huh?”
Sam gave her a wan smile. “Dead end. Nothing but an overactive rumor mill.”
“So what happened? You two look like you’ve been ten rounds. Are you fighting?”
Sam shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Just too long in the car together. You know how it is. He just needs some space from me, I think. And I need a shower.”
She smiled at him. “Well, there’s a solution for that.”
Sam huffed. He hefted his bag further up his shoulder and took off for his own room. Mary would check on Dean and probably smooth over some of his temper. Sam would just need to steer clear for a day or two until he was a little calmer.
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