SPN Fic: Mercy for you, none for myself
Reveal time! Here's the first of three prompts I filled for blindfold_spn last week.
Title: Mercy for you, none for myself
Author: deirdre_c
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2,500
Warning: some dub-con content
Summary: Dean enters the Panic Room at exactly the wrong time.
Author's Note: Set during episode 4x21. Thanks to rivers_bend (once more!) for the ultra-quick beta. Written for the blindfold_spn meme for the prompt, Sam fucks Dean hard using his powers, and Dean really, really likes it.
It was just a gut feeling, a tickle in the back of Dean’s brain, but those never-okay, aside from a few impressive exceptions-steered him wrong, so he headed down the steep stairs into Bobby’s basement. He turned down the dank passage that led to the Panic Room just in time to see the latch creep slowly sideways and the heavy door swing silently open a couple inches.
“What the hell, Sam?” Dean muttered, pressing himself to the nearest wall and sliding cautiously toward the doorway.
When he peered in, he saw his brother where he and Bobby’d left him after his-what, fit? seizure? - still cuffed to the cot. Dean drank in the sight of him: under control, resting, safe.
But just as Dean’s heart rate was dipping back to normal, he heard a soft snick, snick and saw the handcuffs binding Sam’s wrists and ankles pop open, untouched. Sam sat up, shaking his head slightly as if to clear it and flexing his freed hands in disbelief.
“Sam.” Dean stepped into the room and shut the door behind him, not that it would do jack-squat to keep Sam inside, with the lock disengaged. “What’s going on?” He tried for a gentle tone, but the anxiety that somehow Sam had found a way out of their wards gave it an inadvertent edge.
Sam’s head snapped up at the sound of Dean’s voice, and in a flash he rolled off the cot to the opposite side, sandpaper voice gritting out, “No. Not this time. This time I know you’re not my brother.” He crouched slightly, weight on the balls of his feet, as if preparing for Dean to launch at him.
Dean’s stomach dropped and he held up his empty hands palms out. “Dude. What are you talking about?”
Sam flinched, then jerked his chin defiantly, his hair flipping off of his face, purple smudges under his eyes. “You back to call me a failure again? A monster? Back to torture me some more?” The corner of his mouth twisted up in the mockery of a smile. “You should try using Ruby’s knife on me. I bet that would really leave a mark now that I’m no longer completely human.”
Dean scowled at the thought. “I’m-- I’m not here to-- I wouldn’t do any of that.” He took a step forward, hoping to sit Sam down, get him calm, and figure out what the fuck this was all about. But as he moved, Sam cowered back, flinging his arms out to fend Dean off, and suddenly Dean was chucked across the room, flying through the air, walls blurring around him. He let out a grunt as his back struck the far wall, and he found himself pinned by an invisible force.
Sam’s eyes widened with fear and then a look of triumph slowly spread across his face as Dean strained and fought, but couldn’t budge from where he was held. “Looks like the tables have turned, asshole. Not so fun being the one held down, is it?” He looked down and Dean followed his gaze to the spot on the floor where a thick, smeared line broke the seal of the binding sigil.
Dean glanced up to see Sam stalking toward him, broad and powerful, jaw clenched tight. Dean closed his eyes and turned his head as far to the side as he could as Sam crowded right up in front of him, but his brother’s scent- sharp and ripe from the long hours of detox- filled Dean’s senses.
He’d been restrained like this by demons before- too many goddamn times- but this was Sam, Sam’s mind, his will, pressed up against every spot on Dean’s body, confining him, surrounding him.
His cock twitched traitorously.
Oh shit, not now, Dean thought, desperately willing his body not to react to Sam’s closeness, to the fulfillment of three years of sick jerk-off fantasies involving Sam and his so-called powers. He tried to distract himself, to concentrate on Sam’s illness, his weakness, the way he’d suffered the past 24 hours, but all of that was drowned in a wave of hunger as Sam grabbed Dean’s face and jerked it around, forcing Dean to look him in the eye.
“Christo,” Sam whispered. Dean blinked, thinking his eyes really ought to turn black, with this twisted, unnatural lust seated deep within him all these years, to hell and back. “Well, not a demon; I guess you’re simply one more masochistic hallucination of mine after all. I can’t believe I’m already repeating myself. Then again,” Sam inched a bit closer, voice thrumming under Dean’s skin like the rumble of the Impala’s engine, “nobody else can fuck me up half as well as Dean can.”
He tried to pull away, but Sam’s hand on his jaw burned like a brand. “No, it’s me, Sammy. I’m really me.”
“Shut up.” Sam’s eyes narrowed into slits. “No one gets to call me that but him.”
“I just want to help you. Me and Bobby and… and Cas, we--“
“I said, shut up!” Sam grabbed the front of Dean’s shirt in both fists, but at the same time Dean felt unseen hands whip the leather belt from the loops of his jeans. Stilling, Sam stared for a second at the belt as it hung in midair, then watched as it dropped to the floor. He stepped back, leaving Dean dangling on the wall, helpless, and stooped to pick it up.
Telekinesis. Dean had never seen Sam use it intentionally before. A shiver ran down his spine, and he wasn’t sure how much of it was dread.
Slowly, Sam folded the belt, doubled it up and gripped it in both hands, looking it over liked he’d never seen one before. Then he yanked the two ends and the sharp crack of leather echoed in the quiet of the room, interrupting the sh-shush rhythm of the slowly rotating fan above. Dean closed his eyes for a second and could almost feel the lash of it against his skin.
“I think I recognize my teeth marks on this,” Sam said, thoughtfully. “Short-term memory’s a bit hazy, but I believe Dean had to shove it in my mouth a few hours ago to keep me from biting through my tongue during my last go-round with one of you.” He looked at Dean and raised his eyebrows mockingly. “High marks for verisimilitude.”
“Let me down,” Dean demanded. “You’re not yourself, you’re not thinking straight, can’t you see that? I know it’s damn hard, but you agreed that we need to get this shit out of your system. Don’t wreck it all now, you’ve come this far.” Dean was nearly begging now. “Don’t do something you’re gonna regret."
“Regret? Regret?” Dean could feel the slight tremble in Sam’s fingers as Sam reached up and used the belt to gag Dean, forcing Dean’s mouth wide as he quickly, efficiently looped it twice around Dean’s head and secured it with the buckle digging into the back of Dean’s neck. “My whole life is nothing but one long string of regrets. This? This is simply a little payback.”
When he was finished, he planted his palms against the wall on either side of Dean’s head, breath hot on Dean’s face. ‘You see, it’s pretty easy to tell you’re not my brother.” He stepped up into Dean’s space, pressing a leg between his thighs and grinding it into Dean’s thickening cock. “Dean may be wrong about a lot of things, but he’s not wrong.” On the word he shoved against Dean harder, Dean instinctively trying to thrust his hips forward to chase the pressure, but still trapped. “He’s good and honorable and would never want this like I do.”
Sam’s hands never moved from the wall, but Dean’s fly started to open, button popping, and then the teeth of the zipper clicking down agonizingly slow, one by one. “You think you can pluck this… this perversion from my brain and use it against me? Nothing you say would be half as damning as what I tell myself every day.”
Sam stuck a hand into the now-open vee of Dean’s jeans and grabbed hold of Dean’s dick, drawing it out and stroking it roughly several times. Dean moaned behind the gag, shaking his head back and forth, torn between the fire blazing through him, the thrill of actually having Sam’s hands on him and wanting more, but knowing that this would end them, that he and Sam would never recover from this.
Sam kept one hand wrapped around Dean’s cock and brought the other up to run a gentle fingertip along Dean’s lips where they stretched around the belt. His eyes were dazed and tender, but when Dean made a quiet, begging noise, they hardened again, Sam snatching his hand away from Dean’s mouth like it’d burned him.
“Fuck you,” he spat. “Fuck you for wearing his face like this.” Sam spun away and instantly the pressure holding Dean against the wall shifted, sent him tumbling forward, careening over to the empty cot. Without a hand on him, he was pushed down onto his knees, chest flush with the thin mattress, arms being dragged above his head, crossed at the wrist and held there.
He writhed against the constraint and shouted Sam’s name from behind the gag, but couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t turn his head to see, was shocked to feel Sam’s hands suddenly at his waist, pulling his jeans and briefs down his thighs, baring his ass to the cool air.
Two of Sam’s long fingers, slick with spit, speared into him and Dean keened at the intrusion, ass clenching and head thrown back. It’d been a long, long time since Dean had last been fucked, but it didn’t take him more than a minute to be reminded how good it felt to get filled up, how many nights he’d pictured Sam just like this, one huge, hot hand on his back holding him down, the other pumping in and out of him.
Too soon, Sam pulled his fingers out, and Dean groaned at the loss, wide open and empty. But then Sam uncinched the belt, unwrapping it and yanking it from between Dean’s lips. “I want to hear you scream,” he gritted out, and shoved his thick cock into Dean, ramming right up into his ass, the friction and the brutal stretch together burning Dean’s channel, making him curse and jolt and buck, but simply driving Sam deeper with each twist of his hips.
No lube and not enough prep and Sam pounding into him hard and fast was enough to bring tears to his eyes, but each time Sam’s dick dragged across his prostate, his entire body lit up with sparks and he found himself grinding down against the cot, struggling against the invisible restraints on his arms, dying to get a hand on his own cock, sobbing and calling out, “Please! Please!”
Sam wrapped an arm around Dean’s chest and hauled him upright, sitting back on his heels and jerking Dean down into his lap, spearing Dean fully on his dick, practically cleaving him in two. Dean gasped. Pain and pleasure surged through him in bright red waves, his muscles trembling uncontrollably, feeling Sam panting hot and wet into his shoulder. But before he could even start to adjust, Sam pushed him off, tugging out fast and rough despite the way Dean’s ass clung to his dick, and flipping Dean over onto his back on the cold concrete floor.
Sam tossed his head, and Dean’s boots flew off and across the room, one ricocheting off of the wall, then his jeans slithered down his legs and off. Dean couldn’t take his eyes off of Sam, his heaving chest and his expression a terrible combination of wanton and miserable and frantic. Dean felt a force grip his legs, curling them up and folding them toward his chest, opening him up to Sam again, who didn’t waste another moment before covering Dean with his body and thrusting back in.
The pain was even worse this time, Dean’s abused hole raw and throbbing, but now he could see Sam’s face and he found that his hands were free, so, as Sam thrust into him again and again, Dean wrapped one hand in Sam’s hair drawing him down into a kiss.
Sam jerked when their lips met and he tried to wrench away, but Dean had leverage and held him, licking at his mouth, demanding entrance, until Sam gave a little sob and opened up, hot and furious, his tongue chasing Dean’s. Dean tasted Sam for the first time, savoring and memorizing the essence of him, teasing it out from underneath the stale taint of captivity and illness. The kiss grew more and more intense, frenzied, their teeth clacking together as they bit and sucked and laved, heat spiraling through Dean until he had to reach down to and wrap a hand around his aching cock, the sharp twitch and blurt of precome in response making him gasp into Sam’s mouth.
Sam reared back then, eyes shocked and angry. The gentle pistoning of his hips that he’d kept up during the kiss turned vicious, and he started hammering Dean down into the floor with hard thrusts, even as Dean continued to jack himself ruthlessly. Sam shifted so he was supporting himself on one arm, and the long, strong fingers of the other hand wrapped around Dean’s throat, gradually tightening against his windpipe, both of them staring into each other’s eyes until Dean’s orgasm burst over him. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before, lightning coursing under his skin, bright and hot and excruciating, come pumping out of his dick in long strands, painting Sam’s belly with white as he arched above. Gasping desperately for air, shuddering and head swimming, Dean was still acutely conscious of Sam’s anguished cry and the way he filled Dean’s ass with wet heat, making his final few powerful thrusts mercifully slick and smooth.
There was a strange moment of stillness, and then Dean’s legs dropped from where they were hooked around Sam’s waist.
In seconds, Sam was on his feet. He towered over Dean as he lay panting on the bare floor, looking like he wanted to weep, or to spit in Dean’s face, or to die. He fastened up his jeans and stumbled backwards a few steps, hand blindly reaching out for the door handle. Dean searched for words, anything that could keep Sam there. “Don’t walk out that door,” he rasped. “Come back.”
But Sam simply turned and slipped out of the Panic Room. Dean’s head dropped back against the unforgiving concrete.
He knew he had to get up, gather his clothes, figure out what to do, but instead he just lay there and squeezed his eyes shut as he heard the echo of Sam calling out, voice rising young and overwrought, as he made his way up the stairs, “Dean? Dean? Where are you?”
Title: Mercy for you, none for myself
Author: deirdre_c
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2,500
Warning: some dub-con content
Summary: Dean enters the Panic Room at exactly the wrong time.
Author's Note: Set during episode 4x21. Thanks to rivers_bend (once more!) for the ultra-quick beta. Written for the blindfold_spn meme for the prompt, Sam fucks Dean hard using his powers, and Dean really, really likes it.
It was just a gut feeling, a tickle in the back of Dean’s brain, but those never-okay, aside from a few impressive exceptions-steered him wrong, so he headed down the steep stairs into Bobby’s basement. He turned down the dank passage that led to the Panic Room just in time to see the latch creep slowly sideways and the heavy door swing silently open a couple inches.
“What the hell, Sam?” Dean muttered, pressing himself to the nearest wall and sliding cautiously toward the doorway.
When he peered in, he saw his brother where he and Bobby’d left him after his-what, fit? seizure? - still cuffed to the cot. Dean drank in the sight of him: under control, resting, safe.
But just as Dean’s heart rate was dipping back to normal, he heard a soft snick, snick and saw the handcuffs binding Sam’s wrists and ankles pop open, untouched. Sam sat up, shaking his head slightly as if to clear it and flexing his freed hands in disbelief.
“Sam.” Dean stepped into the room and shut the door behind him, not that it would do jack-squat to keep Sam inside, with the lock disengaged. “What’s going on?” He tried for a gentle tone, but the anxiety that somehow Sam had found a way out of their wards gave it an inadvertent edge.
Sam’s head snapped up at the sound of Dean’s voice, and in a flash he rolled off the cot to the opposite side, sandpaper voice gritting out, “No. Not this time. This time I know you’re not my brother.” He crouched slightly, weight on the balls of his feet, as if preparing for Dean to launch at him.
Dean’s stomach dropped and he held up his empty hands palms out. “Dude. What are you talking about?”
Sam flinched, then jerked his chin defiantly, his hair flipping off of his face, purple smudges under his eyes. “You back to call me a failure again? A monster? Back to torture me some more?” The corner of his mouth twisted up in the mockery of a smile. “You should try using Ruby’s knife on me. I bet that would really leave a mark now that I’m no longer completely human.”
Dean scowled at the thought. “I’m-- I’m not here to-- I wouldn’t do any of that.” He took a step forward, hoping to sit Sam down, get him calm, and figure out what the fuck this was all about. But as he moved, Sam cowered back, flinging his arms out to fend Dean off, and suddenly Dean was chucked across the room, flying through the air, walls blurring around him. He let out a grunt as his back struck the far wall, and he found himself pinned by an invisible force.
Sam’s eyes widened with fear and then a look of triumph slowly spread across his face as Dean strained and fought, but couldn’t budge from where he was held. “Looks like the tables have turned, asshole. Not so fun being the one held down, is it?” He looked down and Dean followed his gaze to the spot on the floor where a thick, smeared line broke the seal of the binding sigil.
Dean glanced up to see Sam stalking toward him, broad and powerful, jaw clenched tight. Dean closed his eyes and turned his head as far to the side as he could as Sam crowded right up in front of him, but his brother’s scent- sharp and ripe from the long hours of detox- filled Dean’s senses.
He’d been restrained like this by demons before- too many goddamn times- but this was Sam, Sam’s mind, his will, pressed up against every spot on Dean’s body, confining him, surrounding him.
His cock twitched traitorously.
Oh shit, not now, Dean thought, desperately willing his body not to react to Sam’s closeness, to the fulfillment of three years of sick jerk-off fantasies involving Sam and his so-called powers. He tried to distract himself, to concentrate on Sam’s illness, his weakness, the way he’d suffered the past 24 hours, but all of that was drowned in a wave of hunger as Sam grabbed Dean’s face and jerked it around, forcing Dean to look him in the eye.
“Christo,” Sam whispered. Dean blinked, thinking his eyes really ought to turn black, with this twisted, unnatural lust seated deep within him all these years, to hell and back. “Well, not a demon; I guess you’re simply one more masochistic hallucination of mine after all. I can’t believe I’m already repeating myself. Then again,” Sam inched a bit closer, voice thrumming under Dean’s skin like the rumble of the Impala’s engine, “nobody else can fuck me up half as well as Dean can.”
He tried to pull away, but Sam’s hand on his jaw burned like a brand. “No, it’s me, Sammy. I’m really me.”
“Shut up.” Sam’s eyes narrowed into slits. “No one gets to call me that but him.”
“I just want to help you. Me and Bobby and… and Cas, we--“
“I said, shut up!” Sam grabbed the front of Dean’s shirt in both fists, but at the same time Dean felt unseen hands whip the leather belt from the loops of his jeans. Stilling, Sam stared for a second at the belt as it hung in midair, then watched as it dropped to the floor. He stepped back, leaving Dean dangling on the wall, helpless, and stooped to pick it up.
Telekinesis. Dean had never seen Sam use it intentionally before. A shiver ran down his spine, and he wasn’t sure how much of it was dread.
Slowly, Sam folded the belt, doubled it up and gripped it in both hands, looking it over liked he’d never seen one before. Then he yanked the two ends and the sharp crack of leather echoed in the quiet of the room, interrupting the sh-shush rhythm of the slowly rotating fan above. Dean closed his eyes for a second and could almost feel the lash of it against his skin.
“I think I recognize my teeth marks on this,” Sam said, thoughtfully. “Short-term memory’s a bit hazy, but I believe Dean had to shove it in my mouth a few hours ago to keep me from biting through my tongue during my last go-round with one of you.” He looked at Dean and raised his eyebrows mockingly. “High marks for verisimilitude.”
“Let me down,” Dean demanded. “You’re not yourself, you’re not thinking straight, can’t you see that? I know it’s damn hard, but you agreed that we need to get this shit out of your system. Don’t wreck it all now, you’ve come this far.” Dean was nearly begging now. “Don’t do something you’re gonna regret."
“Regret? Regret?” Dean could feel the slight tremble in Sam’s fingers as Sam reached up and used the belt to gag Dean, forcing Dean’s mouth wide as he quickly, efficiently looped it twice around Dean’s head and secured it with the buckle digging into the back of Dean’s neck. “My whole life is nothing but one long string of regrets. This? This is simply a little payback.”
When he was finished, he planted his palms against the wall on either side of Dean’s head, breath hot on Dean’s face. ‘You see, it’s pretty easy to tell you’re not my brother.” He stepped up into Dean’s space, pressing a leg between his thighs and grinding it into Dean’s thickening cock. “Dean may be wrong about a lot of things, but he’s not wrong.” On the word he shoved against Dean harder, Dean instinctively trying to thrust his hips forward to chase the pressure, but still trapped. “He’s good and honorable and would never want this like I do.”
Sam’s hands never moved from the wall, but Dean’s fly started to open, button popping, and then the teeth of the zipper clicking down agonizingly slow, one by one. “You think you can pluck this… this perversion from my brain and use it against me? Nothing you say would be half as damning as what I tell myself every day.”
Sam stuck a hand into the now-open vee of Dean’s jeans and grabbed hold of Dean’s dick, drawing it out and stroking it roughly several times. Dean moaned behind the gag, shaking his head back and forth, torn between the fire blazing through him, the thrill of actually having Sam’s hands on him and wanting more, but knowing that this would end them, that he and Sam would never recover from this.
Sam kept one hand wrapped around Dean’s cock and brought the other up to run a gentle fingertip along Dean’s lips where they stretched around the belt. His eyes were dazed and tender, but when Dean made a quiet, begging noise, they hardened again, Sam snatching his hand away from Dean’s mouth like it’d burned him.
“Fuck you,” he spat. “Fuck you for wearing his face like this.” Sam spun away and instantly the pressure holding Dean against the wall shifted, sent him tumbling forward, careening over to the empty cot. Without a hand on him, he was pushed down onto his knees, chest flush with the thin mattress, arms being dragged above his head, crossed at the wrist and held there.
He writhed against the constraint and shouted Sam’s name from behind the gag, but couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t turn his head to see, was shocked to feel Sam’s hands suddenly at his waist, pulling his jeans and briefs down his thighs, baring his ass to the cool air.
Two of Sam’s long fingers, slick with spit, speared into him and Dean keened at the intrusion, ass clenching and head thrown back. It’d been a long, long time since Dean had last been fucked, but it didn’t take him more than a minute to be reminded how good it felt to get filled up, how many nights he’d pictured Sam just like this, one huge, hot hand on his back holding him down, the other pumping in and out of him.
Too soon, Sam pulled his fingers out, and Dean groaned at the loss, wide open and empty. But then Sam uncinched the belt, unwrapping it and yanking it from between Dean’s lips. “I want to hear you scream,” he gritted out, and shoved his thick cock into Dean, ramming right up into his ass, the friction and the brutal stretch together burning Dean’s channel, making him curse and jolt and buck, but simply driving Sam deeper with each twist of his hips.
No lube and not enough prep and Sam pounding into him hard and fast was enough to bring tears to his eyes, but each time Sam’s dick dragged across his prostate, his entire body lit up with sparks and he found himself grinding down against the cot, struggling against the invisible restraints on his arms, dying to get a hand on his own cock, sobbing and calling out, “Please! Please!”
Sam wrapped an arm around Dean’s chest and hauled him upright, sitting back on his heels and jerking Dean down into his lap, spearing Dean fully on his dick, practically cleaving him in two. Dean gasped. Pain and pleasure surged through him in bright red waves, his muscles trembling uncontrollably, feeling Sam panting hot and wet into his shoulder. But before he could even start to adjust, Sam pushed him off, tugging out fast and rough despite the way Dean’s ass clung to his dick, and flipping Dean over onto his back on the cold concrete floor.
Sam tossed his head, and Dean’s boots flew off and across the room, one ricocheting off of the wall, then his jeans slithered down his legs and off. Dean couldn’t take his eyes off of Sam, his heaving chest and his expression a terrible combination of wanton and miserable and frantic. Dean felt a force grip his legs, curling them up and folding them toward his chest, opening him up to Sam again, who didn’t waste another moment before covering Dean with his body and thrusting back in.
The pain was even worse this time, Dean’s abused hole raw and throbbing, but now he could see Sam’s face and he found that his hands were free, so, as Sam thrust into him again and again, Dean wrapped one hand in Sam’s hair drawing him down into a kiss.
Sam jerked when their lips met and he tried to wrench away, but Dean had leverage and held him, licking at his mouth, demanding entrance, until Sam gave a little sob and opened up, hot and furious, his tongue chasing Dean’s. Dean tasted Sam for the first time, savoring and memorizing the essence of him, teasing it out from underneath the stale taint of captivity and illness. The kiss grew more and more intense, frenzied, their teeth clacking together as they bit and sucked and laved, heat spiraling through Dean until he had to reach down to and wrap a hand around his aching cock, the sharp twitch and blurt of precome in response making him gasp into Sam’s mouth.
Sam reared back then, eyes shocked and angry. The gentle pistoning of his hips that he’d kept up during the kiss turned vicious, and he started hammering Dean down into the floor with hard thrusts, even as Dean continued to jack himself ruthlessly. Sam shifted so he was supporting himself on one arm, and the long, strong fingers of the other hand wrapped around Dean’s throat, gradually tightening against his windpipe, both of them staring into each other’s eyes until Dean’s orgasm burst over him. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before, lightning coursing under his skin, bright and hot and excruciating, come pumping out of his dick in long strands, painting Sam’s belly with white as he arched above. Gasping desperately for air, shuddering and head swimming, Dean was still acutely conscious of Sam’s anguished cry and the way he filled Dean’s ass with wet heat, making his final few powerful thrusts mercifully slick and smooth.
There was a strange moment of stillness, and then Dean’s legs dropped from where they were hooked around Sam’s waist.
In seconds, Sam was on his feet. He towered over Dean as he lay panting on the bare floor, looking like he wanted to weep, or to spit in Dean’s face, or to die. He fastened up his jeans and stumbled backwards a few steps, hand blindly reaching out for the door handle. Dean searched for words, anything that could keep Sam there. “Don’t walk out that door,” he rasped. “Come back.”
But Sam simply turned and slipped out of the Panic Room. Dean’s head dropped back against the unforgiving concrete.
He knew he had to get up, gather his clothes, figure out what to do, but instead he just lay there and squeezed his eyes shut as he heard the echo of Sam calling out, voice rising young and overwrought, as he made his way up the stairs, “Dean? Dean? Where are you?”