Requests and Challenges - Reappearing: Chapter Four

[girlgotagun]

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Title: Reappearing
Author: girlgotagun
Pairing: Dean/Benny - Gen

Behavior triggers in this chapter include: fasting, loss of consciousness, medication abuse, references to purging, and death acceptance/ideation.

Please be safe. <3

Chapter Four: All Fall Down

. starve .

Dean didn’t give much thought to his sexuality; never really fully mulled it over in his mind or allowed himself to consider it as though he were a sexual being. When he had started to grow and his hormones had spiked he had felt sick to his stomach with the thoughts of touching-of being touched-another person in that way.

On the rare occasion that he allowed his mind to wander, he thought of men. But whether it was because he was really interested in men, or because he had only ever known of men in that context, he couldn’t say for sure.

His body offered him no clarification. His internal systems seemed to laugh at the thought. Dean couldn’t power his own body; it had no interest in anything intended to create another one. His faulty genes, the glitch in his programming, it wasn’t meant to be carried on. So his body had no interest in sex, and Dean had no interest in trying to force it.

He didn’t know what to say when Sam started asking him about girls. He was supposed to be the big brother and the parent all in one, was supposed to be the one to guide Sammy through the how-to and the safety and the wait until it’s special and you’re ready and the fraternal tricks of leaving girls soaking. And maybe in another life, in another universe, he could’ve done that. Because women weren’t indifferent to Dean; drawn in by his bright eyes and thick lashes and full lips. But in this world, in the only life that Dean had known, he was at a loss.

When Sammy started to fill out, more girls started coming around. On the weekends their small house was practically Grand Central Station, teenagers crashing in and out of the door in random intervals. Dean mostly enjoyed it; he liked seeing his brother happy, flourishing, normal. But at times, like that weekend, when Dean was fasting and the hunger was starting to eat up everything in him, including his patience, Dean wanted to tear his hair out; scream at the kids to get the hell out, to stop making a racket, to take the goddamned X-Box and loud music and lip gloss and awkward flirting to their own homes and leave him in peace.

This Saturday morning was relatively calm, just Sammy and a girl lounging on the couch watching daytime trash TV, and it was still too much for Dean. He felt restless. He needed to do something, to distract himself, to focus on anything with an intensity that could drown out the call of food in the fridge as he quickly grabbed an energy drink and slammed the door shut again.

“Going out for awhile, Sammy.” He glanced through the doorway to the living room, saw the faint smile his brother and the girl exchanged. Give him two seconds out of the house and the couch would be abandoned as they raced to Sam’s bedroom, the door slamming shut behind them. “You uh…you two good?”

Because they all knew what was going to happen, but it was still awkward to have your older brother and parental figure ask you if you needed condoms.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Dean. How long do you think you’ll be gone for?” He tried to sound casual. Tried to sound like he wasn’t trying to make sure that when Dean returned the two of them would be sitting back on the couch, his brother too happy and sated to realize that his shirt was inside out and the girl’s hairband missing.

“Better part of the day. Got a side job to take care of.” Dean tried to think of whether or not he should say something else; didn’t know himself what he would’ve wanted to hear in that situation, if anything. Probably nothing, he decided. “Don’t burn the house down,” he said to fill the blank where it had been obvious that he was about to speak.

“Yeah,” Sam answered as the screen door swung shut behind Dean, and Dean could hear them moving, the footsteps disappearing deeper into the house.

The big brother part of him swelled with pride. The parent part of him worried. The rest was a swirling mess of relief that it wasn’t him and jealousy that he would never have that.

. starve .

Benny Lafitte lived in the suburbs of Lawrence, in a gated community that seemed somehow at odds with his casual, almost rough appearance. Dean had some trouble finding the address; all of the houses looked the same. And really, they were. Communities like that were built with five or six variations of the same basic floor plan, the biggest differences in the houses only obvious on the inside. The streets that ended in neat little cul-de-sacs were kept tidy, the landscaping impeccable, personal touches kept to a minimum.

Dean’s neighbor had three plastic flamingos and five garden gnomes in the small amount of grass that their lot left around their double-wide. He felt at odds here.

When Dean finally found the place he parked at the curb, not wanting to block the driveway, and steeled himself for the walk up the driveway and then over to the front door, to press the bell and face the one person in the world that both terrified and intrigued him. He felt weak, lethargic. Wasn’t surprising; three days without food would do that to you.

He opened the glove box, pulled out the little breath mints tin that was stashed away there. He kept it in the car instead of the house, both to make sure it stayed out of Sam’s sight and that Dean didn’t resort to it often. He opened it and took out one of the small orange pills, one of the oblong purple-and-gray capsules. Ephedrine and caffeine. It would only fool his body for a minute, but it should ensure that he could keep moving, could stand and sit and crouch without his body screaming at him to stop, to rest, to conserve energy, to eat. He swallowed the pills down and got out of the car.

He made it halfway up the driveway before the garage door began to raise with the creaking and groaning of gears. The door raised slowly, Benny slowly coming into sight behind it.

“Saw you coming. Figured I’d go ahead and meet you here.” It sounded like a casual explanation, but it made Dean nervous-it shouldn’t. Caffeine was consumed en masse by perfectly normal people and the ephedrine was in an over the counter asthma medicine. Stacking was pretty common in dieters and fitness buffs alike. It wasn’t altogether a damning action, even if Benny did somehow know what the pills were. And really, they could have been ibuprofen.

So what if Benny had seen?

Dean nodded, approaching the man as his eyes landed on the car behind him. It was gorgeous, the body perfectly maintained or restored-one of the two. Given the year, Dean would guess restored. It was a bright cherry red with white accents, the convertible top a soft, buttery tan. His hands were itching to get under the hood, to figure out what was causing such a gorgeous piece of machinery trouble.

“Wow.” That was all that he said as he nodded at the car.

Benny chuckled, stepping back to look at it as well. “Yup. A few years and a couple hundred thousand and the thing still doesn’t want to run quite right. I’m at a loss, honestly.” His eyes flicked to Dean. “Thanks for this, man.”

“No problem.” Dean shrugged as he walked around to pop the hood, looking at Benny for permission before doing so. “My brother’s probably pretty psyched you asked. Got a girl over.”

Benny laughed. “Ladies’ man?”

“Not quiet.” Dean chuckled as he gazed at the engine, talking absently as he surveyed the mostly-new gleaming parts. “He’s a respectful little shit; polite as hell. No idea where he got that. But you know. Hormones.”

He looked around, spotted a flashlight on a workbench against the wall and grabbed it before returning to the engine, switching it on and peering at the complex system. It took him a minute to find the problem-it wasn’t glaringly obvious, and he wasn’t surprised that Benny couldn’t spot it easily; particularly because the problem was with a new part.

“You getting any clunking or whining when you drive it?”

Benny nodded. “More of a grinding, but yeah, it doesn’t sound good.”

Dean sighed, straightening up and wincing. “It’s not. Hate to tell you, man. The transmission is shot.”

“The transmission is new.” The older man looked confused.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Okay. Your transmission is new and shot. Doesn’t change the nature of the beast.”

Benny swore, looking like he was about at the end of his rope. He ran his hands over his face and the scars on his knuckles flashed in the light. Dean swallowed hard.

“Listen, Bobby can get the part cheaper than most-it’s not gonna be cheap, you know, but it’s better than buying an all-new one. And in the meantime, I can patch this up so that it can be taken to the garage and we can fix it there; save you some on the extra cost of the home visit.” Dean shrugged. “I wouldn’t leave it too long, though. The seal blows and you can start to get pressure building in the crank case, and then you’ll blow the whole damned engine.”

“So much for home restoration,” Benny muttered.

Dean gaped at him. “You did all of this?”

The older man nodded. “Yeah. It’s sort of been my project every weekend for the past few years. I try to keep my mind occupied.”

Dean smiled. “Me too.”

. starve .

It took Dean three hours to patch the transmission-not nearly as long as he had hoped. It wasn’t even about the hours, the pay. He just didn’t want to go back to the house yet. Especially since Sam wasn’t expecting him back until later and as much as Dean would like to think they had tired themselves out by now, well, they were teenagers and it wasn’t a guarantee. He might walk into something horrifying.

And even if they had, the odds were good that his little brother still had people over, likely a rowdy group of guys screaming at the TV and one of their gaming consoles, talking pure shit to each other and carrying on.

He was distracted as he thought about this, didn’t notice Benny coming to stand beside him and peer at the engine until the older man’s hand came to rest on his back to stop Dean from knocking into him. Dean jumped, straightening up and turning-too fast, the blood rushing to his head.

And then the edges of his vision were going black, fuzzy, closing in…and then it was dark and Dean hit the floor without even knowing it.

. starve .

Dean had only passed out a handful of times in his life. He just didn't seem especially prone to it. Sure, he'd often get a rush in his ears, the tunnel vision, the sense of weightlessness. But he usually managed to ride it out-it was only a few seconds, even if the terror made it seem like an eternity.

The first time had been in middle school phys ed. The sweet but naïve nurse in the office decided that he had been dehydrated. It was probably true enough. Dean had been too young, too new to really understand what he was doing. Didn't know about electrolytes and their importance and the need to use alternate sources when not consuming food.

There was this idea called harm reduction. Dean had encountered it during his one foray into the cyber world of eating disorders. It was basically a comforting lie, intended to ease the fear and buy a little more time in case you maybe, just maybe could dig yourself out one day. But ultimately, in Dean’s opinion, it didn't matter once your body began to consume itself. All the neat little ‘safety’ tricks in the world wouldn't magically make your body power itself with no fuel. But then, he didn't really follow through on them, anyway, the constant echo of pointless and worth the risk robbing him of any follow-through on the instructions.

Never use a foreign object to purge. Because he could choke, yeah. There was still a toothbrush squirreled away in the back of his dresser drawer for when the job had to be done quickly.

Break a fast slowly to avoid refeeding syndrome. Dean broke a fast when he couldn't hold off a binge anymore.

When fasting, be sure to keep hydrated and replenish electrolytes; dehydration will kill you faster than starvation. This one Dean followed, though, since that first time.

The second time was in high school. He had passed out on the living room floor and whacked his head on the coffee table on the way down. His phone showed six missed calls from Sam. He was supposed to attend parent-teacher conferences after classes were over for the day. He looked at the digital clock on the cable box-it was after four. He had missed it, and what was more, he hadn't picked Sammy up.

When he got to the school the teacher who had been enlisted to wait with Sam had given him a deep, disapproving glare tinged with suspicion. Dean muttered an excuse about being held up at work and forgetting his phone that morning while praying that Sam wouldn't bust him since he knew Dean had taken the day off and that the teacher wouldn't call child protective services on him. Sam didn't, and she didn't. Shame had twisted Dean’s stomach for weeks.

The third time was at the shop. Bobby was so concerned that Dean had admitted that he hadn't eaten. Not for how long or how often or why. But you know, low blood sugar. Bobby had asked him if he and Sam had enough food and Dean had edged around the question because that particular week no, they really didn't, but Dean had been perversely glad for it. The next day there was an extra hundred in his paycheck. His guilt and pride demanded that he return it; that it was his stupid fault, his awful brain that didn't work right, and he shouldn't put Bobby out for that. But they really did need it, and he couldn't let Sammy go without. So he had kept it. Bobby never mentioned it, and Dean never mentioned it, but every time he met Bobby’s eyes for the next two months he wanted to apologize. But he couldn't explain why, couldn't risk Bobby finding out. So he swallowed the guilt and let it sit heavy in his stomach.

And now he had passed out in Benny Lafitte’s garage. It was the worst place, the worst time, and in front of the worst possible person, except maybe Sammy. The one person who may be able to see Dean, who may try to build back everything he had whittled down.

When he woke up, it was a disoriented moment before he realized that he was in the house, stretched out on the couch. Benny must have brought him inside. His head throbbed and his shoulder hurt when he moved it, but upon inspection there was no outward sign of injury. Small blessings.

He sat up, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands as he waited for the room to stop spinning.

The sound of footsteps entering the living room reached his ears and he looked up to see Benny setting a few dishes down on the coffee table. Fruit salad, a bowl of thin broth, and a seared salmon fillet. It was a strange assortment of food, but Dean recognized it immediately.

It was the food recommended for harm-reduction in breaking a fast, to avoid refeeding syndrome.

Benny moved around the front of the coffee table and dropped into an armchair across from Dean, looking at him expectantly.

Continue to Chapter Five