Fic: Five Monsters Dean Can't Help Being (Inside I'm Bleeding Remix) (SPN, Dean, R)
Five Monsters Dean Can’t Help Being (Inside I’m Bleeding Remix)
Author: Regala Electra
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, Language
Summary: Dean’s tired of this weird shit.
Word Count: 3,876
Author’s Notes: No, it's true, I wanna hold ignited's hand. Thank you for the beta work, Stefackles. Remix of Five Powers Dean Doesn’t Have by clex_monkie89. Remix original posted here.
*
Shape-shifting (Turn You Inside Out)
Dean’s tired of this weird shit.
It’s not like he really has that much of a problem with being an amazing gender-bending freak, it’s more that, well, because he is an amazing gender-bending freak and he’s Dean, he tends to get himself into weird sticky situations that he has to figure out for himself.
This is exactly what he has to do: save his own ass regardless if he’s wearing boxers or a thong. Although he doesn’t wear thongs ‘cause he tried that once and man that’s powerfully uncomfortable.
Look, the first time he shape-shifted into a girl? It was awesome. Because his body, his rules, which means his boobs and all the other parts were his, but you know, getting to be handsy with himself is only fun for so long. It’s hard to hide his bizarre ability, especially when he had to figure out how he did it all on his own. It was only once he figured out that weird situation that he told Dad about it, because he doesn’t keep secrets. Not from Dad at least.
So, he’s the Amazing Dean, capable of switching between sexes at a moment’s whim, only it’s not fucking magic, it’s work, body twisting under skin, it starts with his bones at first, cracking (Dean worries one day he’s going to get an X-Ray and find out he’s like Mr. Glass, ready to shatter at a moment’s notice and then he’ll be forced to stop, to stop doing what’s a part of his nature).
The bones break down and mend thinner, muscles contracting (like having a fucking never-ending Charley Horse in all your muscles), fat moving around, dick going in (so freaking weird, still can’t get used to it), ass softening, breasts forming (so freaking awesome), everything going compact to accommodate his slightly smaller female form.
It does kind of piss him off that when he’s a chick, people comment on how tall he is but when he’s sporting his male-born body and he’s next to Dad or Sammy, he looks freakin’ short.
There are two duffel bags that he has to keep packed, one for his guy-body and one for his girl-body. The girl-one isn’t as full and he used to store weapons in there until Dad commented that most ladies don’t go around smelling like gunpowder and grease and Dean’s forced to buy freaking perfume to cover up the motel soap he uses, okay for a guy but not for a girl. Whatever, he only dabs it on when he’s sent off for covert recon stuff and he has to be a girl or he’s acting as bait on a hunt, otherwise, he still puts on his cologne, because having a vagina doesn’t mean he’s not a girl. After all, he can change back.
Sam asked him once if it hurt and Dean lied, said, Dude, you think I’d be doing it if it hurt?
Yeah.
Well, it doesn’t. Shut up.
Fuck, it does hurt and he experimented because he’s a friggin’ genius, worst of it’s now, with his body utterly fucked up, and it’s all so goddamn hilarious, having Dad and Sammy walk in and his organs are all twisted around, stomach kinda...uh, sticking out, because he needed to kill something monstrous and he’s never had any time for the police. So, plan B-which, huh, kinda misleading, that name-girl time and faking a pregnancy to top it off.
Yeah, Dean Winchester, he’s a MENSA candidate just like his geek brother.
Only not, cause even after two showers, he’s still got slime in unmentionable places, even after sealing up all the nooks and crannies. Also, the whole pissing his pants thing 'cause his bladder ain’t where it’s supposed to be? Not a goddamn laugh riot.
Maybe it would be easier if he was actually pregnant. Hell, he doesn’t even want to know if that’s possible, to swap out genders and still be carrying a bun in the oven. He’ll leave that to someone other poor bastard who’s got the same deal with as Dean (trouble is, for all their research, Dean’s fucking special in the worst possible way).
‘Sides, he’s sure it’ll go down, his organs will push back into place and he’ll be right as goddamn rain until the next time he tries to fake a pregnancy. Until the next time Dad or Sammy’ll ask him to do, for laughs, for a hunt, for something and there’s no way Dean can say no.
Sometimes Dean puts on a baggy shirt and puts on a ratty old pair of jeans that he matches up with a belt full of extra notches and for Sam’s amusement, he’ll shape-shift right in front of Sam’s eyes. Each time, it hurts more, but he’ll be damned if he’ll ever let Sam know that, defiant, showing off.
See, the more I do it, the quicker it goes each time.
The more Dean does it, he keeps on wondering what it’s like to have a normal person’s body that doesn’t change just because he can mentally will it to happen.
“We’re gonna figure out a way to fix this mess,” Dad tells him, gruff but amused, after he sends Sam out of the motel room. Picks up an anatomy book that doesn’t have a section on what to expect when you’re pretending to be expecting.
Dad’s been saying that they’ll have it sorted out since the first time Dean switched right in front of Dad’s eyes.
Hasn’t happened yet.
*
Second Sight (...and Super Creeps)
Dean fucking hates The Dead Zone.
And not the T.V. version, he doesn’t watch that, the original Christopher Walken movie, because look, Christopher Walken’s kind of awesomely freaky and Dean loves a good horror movie, probably has an unhealthy love of ‘em, it’s just seeing Walken zoom off into a vision, and well, it ain’t a barrel of laughs when you’re suffering with the same affection.
Death visions. Not even just psychic ability, it’s the fucking brunt of it, to be stuck only catching that instant of terror in 3-D color, taste, smell, everything. It starts off in shards but the more he touches? The clearer it gets. Fucking sucks out loud.
‘Specially since Dean’s ability had the fucking consideration to manifest after he’d already had sex and knew exactly what he’s missing out on.
Sometimes he tries not to wonder if it’s not just like he’s a sieve, helpless to seeing the end in all its grisly detail, because so far, every person he’ s had the misfortunate to touch, by accident or by a stubborn intent (because, god, he needs contact, craves it so much that it’s an active ache in him, hates seeing people be so free with touching when he has to be so freakin’ careful all the goddamn time), all of those people, their ends, well they ain’t pretty.
Never dared voiced that out loud, the thought that his touch’s poison, leaking chaos and pain with just a brush of skin-on-skin. It’s easier to say he’s cursed with seeing death-visions. No way he could be responsible with just a freaking brush of skin for those deaths. Yeah, he keeps on telling himself that ‘cause maybe one day he’ll be able to believe it.
At first it was fine touching Sam, to the point, where he once joked, “Hey, if you weren’t my annoying little giant brother...” and trailed off because Sam glowered at him and maybe rightfully so, it’s the kind of thing you don’t say to a person when you’re buck-naked.
Yeah, naked, ‘cause when he’s out and about, he’s fucking layered up to kingdom come. Only thing he refuses to wear are gloves, which Sam points out should a problem, fingerprints and their line of work and all, but hey, a man’s got to have an excuse for human contact. There’s a reason Tom Hanks went crazy on that island.
Then Sammy bitches about him watching Castaway when Dean should have been helping Sam research at the library and finally he gets all flustered and asks Dean to stop pacing around in the buff.
Oh, right, the naked deal. Well, in the motel rooms, he doesn’t have a need to be layered up, it’s not like anyone’s coming into room (and if Sam ever does score, he manages to do it not like normal people: at night when Dean’s pacing around or whacking off in the bathroom, ‘cause Sam’s always passed out on his own bed, snoring gently). He does sometimes spare Sam the whole deal and puts on boxer-briefs, but not always because his skin chafes like a mother ‘cause most of the time, he’s wearing just too freakin’ much.
And he isn’t about to start lathering himself up with girly skin creams to keep the rashes and blotchy skin issues at bay, no matter how many times Sam might sarcastically offer to take him to a body care store in one of the countless malls dotted all over America.
Still, Sam, bitch he may be, is a good sport. They make due and hunt in colder places where Dean doesn’t stick out as much, even though that’s kind of ruined with him and Sam walking hand-in-hand.
Sam’ll lean over to tell him something dumb like how if they were doing this in the Middle East, no one would look twice.
Dean responds by knocking his shoulder (covered in three layers not including his jacket, part of his scarf dragging done, he’ll have to fix it again) against Sam’s, not saying anything to really piss off Sam ‘cause then maybe Sam’ll stop letting him do this and he can barely stand the whole no sex deal.
Cut a man away from touching anyone ever and he’s sure to start wearing buckets for shoes and climbing up watchtowers to do some amazingly evil shit.
It’s when he starts seeing Sam’s end, that’s when he knows he’s a goddamn anathema.
Doesn’t stop him, hell, a couple of months pass and he hopes, stupid as it is, that maybe he can stop it, he’ll be right there, right?
Forces himself to look deeper, harder in the vision, sickness spreading in him when he sees out of Sam’s dying eyes, himself there as well, just as bleeding and broken.
In the visions, Dean dies as well or close enough to it that he’ll be dead long before anyone comes looking for them.
But Sam’ll ask if he can drive this time and Dean lets him, hating himself each time for how sick it is, to let events play out as they’re destined to because he sees too much and he never figured out a way to stop the deaths from playing out as he sees them.
And if, if, the crash happens, then maybe he’d die, rid the world of a ‘lusus naturae’.
Freak of nature.
*
Sixth Sight - Ghost Whisperer (Laugh, I Nearly Died)
It’s digging up the girl’s body that’s the worst part.
Doesn’t help with Jeanie handcuffed to his car’s grill (which he warned her if she scratched up by trying to get out of the handcuffs that he’d have to get unpleasant so at least she’s stopped moving, tracks of blood drying on her skin, sleeves of her), little noises, gasps and pleading words as he shovels into the ground.
They were arrogant and thought they’d never be caught. It turns his stomach when he unearths the body, sees the violation they left rotting in the ground.
“I should bring her here,” he says, indifferently, storing the rage for when he needs it, has to find out where dear Ray’s hiding out after all and Jeanie’s the best guess for him to find Ray’s trail. “I’d have to cover her body, wouldn’t want Sara to see it, but you know, she wanted her mother so much. When they die, children always burn with love. More than when they’re alive. You should see it. See what I have to see.”
But he can’t pass his gift on to Jeanie and now that Sara’s aware she’s a ghost, that she’s barely clinging to the world anymore (just salt and burn her bones and be done with it), he knows that it is unnecessary torture. And oh, how he longs to do it, call out the child who deserves this bloody revenge.
Dean’s learned his lesson. There’s a procedure he has to follow or he’s leaving more disturbed spirits in his wake. Has to let his captive understand exactly what’s been committed, has to get them begging for death.
Sam never joins him in hunts that end like this. For good reason and Dean can handle his soul being tarnished, so long as the people he love are safe and sound. After all, Sam accepts this part of him, the vigilante, ridding the world of the inhuman human monsters that hide in plain view.
Someone less kind might call him sick or disturbed. A sociopath. No, he only wishes he was that, he knows how to feel , he feels, has to deaden himself from it when he’s on the job.
Removes the handcuffs, Jeanie sobbing openly, maybe she’ll even piss her pants, just like her daughter did, because she had a mother who didn’t care what happened to a sweet little girl, a child.
“You should see what you did. Even her fingers, the broken ones, you can still see them.”
“Please...”
“Yes.” He nods at this. “Start praying. There’s no God, but I’m sure you can prove me wrong. Strike me dead. Or, get Ray to do the dirty work.”
Dean’s tried before to take his information to the cops, tried it and seen murderers get off, have ghosts following him until he exorcised them, had them screaming for revenge as they left the world, curses ringing in his ears.
It’s his fault for letting the girl cross the rock salt, but, he couldn’t leave her out, it’s the children that are the hardest to ignore. The older ones, they’re just as brutal, but sometimes he can make up lies about them, believe they brought it on himself.
The sick rises up but he just spits on the ground, squashes it down.
He still has to get the one who did this after all and Jeanie’s ready to talk. Being forced to kneel in front of a corpse does that to people.
Dean starts half of the ritual now, salts the bones. He’ll burn it when he’s got Ray there as well, sacrifices, purifiers, Dean’s had to learn such things. Can wipe a ghost’s last painful memory if the murderer (or murderers) are cast off with the remains of the spirit.
“Trust me, Jeanie,” he tells her after she blubbers where Ray’s hiding out, probably drunk off his fucking rocker, “I’ll make sure Sara’ll be in a good place.”
There are ghosts watching them, not Sara, mercifully, couldn’t stand to see her crying, all of them waiting for Dean to give in, let them cross his salt lines or drop one of his precious charms. Because he does it, every damn time, lets another ghost tell him of what’s left them behind and what else can he do?
He’ll keep on going, until the ghosts stop following him or until he doesn’t find any more living monsters taking on human shapes, feeble, pitiful things that call him crazy when he’s the one who knows exactly what they did and tried to get away with.
*
Pyrokinesis (The Roof is on Fire)
Whatever kills him doesn’t make him stronger. That’s a lie.
He figures out the link between his emotions and the fires all too late, how even with too much of a smile, the burning comes and he can’t control it until he’s destroyed something, property, people, lives.
It doesn’t kill him though, despite his efforts, when he was young and terrified in a car and he almost took Sam out with him. Can’t burn himself from inside out, burn out this rotten part of him that can’t be controlled, it just lies in wait, and Dean has to smother it down, can’t let it rage out. Doesn’t let his throat heal properly even though the doctors tell Mama Moseley that Dean shouldn’t be in so much pain when he tries to speak, that he should have regained better functions after... after all the fires Dean was responsible for.
It’s the people who stare at him too long, the ones that flinch, that make Dean wonder if they can see all the way down, past the twisted appearance and see what he’s made out of. Buried deep, beneath uneven skin, scarring that runs ragged, coarse, painful. If they’re repulsed by it.
And Sammy, Samuel, using his full and proper name, he’s never ashamed by it, sees something else in Dean that Dean still can’t believe is true.
There is too much death on Dean’s hands for him not to be completely damaged. Unworthy.
Gifts, Mama Moseley said, once to Dean, and Dean locked himself up in his room and didn’t come out, Sammy had to pry the lock open himself and kept on saying, It’s okay, Dean, it’s okay and Dean couldn’t say why it wasn’t okay.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want his voice to ever be like a normal person’s voice. He’ll be expected to talk. To be honest.
Sometimes Dean thinks he sees the shadow of a man standing on the front lawn of Mama Moseley’s house, unable to get past the wards she’d set up a long time ago.
When he looks real hard, it looks like his father, only there’s something bright about his eyes and from what he remembered, his dad had dark eyes, they'd never glow so bright in the shadows.
Those are the worst nights because sometimes things go sparking, catching like kindling and Dean has to smother it out with thick fireproof blankets because he can’t get in trouble. He told Mama Moseley and Samuel that he couldn’t burn stuff so bad anymore and if they ever figured out, then he’d be found out.
Things burn around him like they always have, he’s just had to get better at stopping it.
Later, when he’s done his firefighting for the day (or night), he’s tired and weak, sometimes has to have Sammy help him get dressed, it’s that bad, and all his scars get worse or infected and he has to go the hospital again, hear about all the dangers of not taking care of his precious skin grafts.
He’s in medical books, you know, for all the burns to his body and the skin grafts needed, and how he’s still managed to survive. Medical rarity, one in a million or a million-million. Even though Samuel’s scarred, he never got the worst of it, Dean thanks the god he doesn’t believe in for that.
Once he asked a doctor, when he was seventeen, if he could sign a DNR when he became an adult, just in case, in case of-
The doctor had been gentle, too nice, always looked directly into his eyes, never flinched at having to check over his wounds, the scars that twisted his skin into unnatural shapes, the grafts that didn’t, couldn’t, make whatever his original skin color was supposed to be.
"Yes," she said, "you could sign a DNR. But Dean, you are a healthy young man. You survived."
Yes, he knows, he survived. That’s the problem.
*
Telepathy - Shallow (Fade to Black)
The first thing he successfully signs is let me die.
There’s no place to go. Even the most barren places, doesn’t work, the lack of people will lead to his death and he can survive in pain long enough if they’re careful about it. The drugs work too, even drag him out of dreams where he’s like them, running his mouth, half-listening but pretend to listen. Whispering, laughing, screaming, all the things he’s forgotten to do.
All the things people can’t help but do around him.
Even Dad and Sam, they’ll use their voices and god, they don’t know what it feels like, really they don’t. No way to explain, something crawling inside his brain, the hot violation of it makes bile rise in his throat because there’s no screams that he let out in response. Leaves his bowels icy-cold, skin on fire. They wonder why Dean struggles to eat after an episode, Dad’s nice way of thinking about what his oldest boy goes through.
The meds never last long enough, Dad and Sam have to do a job, sometimes they have Dean read the thoughts of sleeping people, disjointed though dreams may be, they’re easier to handle than the talking.
Words cut into his brain, dig in, sear with every syllable. It’s a genetic fluke one doctor tried to tell Dad when it first started up, slowly, like a migraine. Nothing to be done with it, just have to medicate the problem away, keep him away from stress, noisy places.
It worked for a week and then his mind blew open, all the noises they didn’t say, those came through loud and clear.
The problem is that when people speak, somehow, they think it too, at the same time, and it amplifies in Dean’s mind, tears him deep until he starts slipping, stops being a person.
No better than an animal.
It’s supernatural in origin, that’s what Dad once thought to Dean, grave as anything. Then they realized they were being tracked, something that was trying to play too hard at being human hadn’t used the right shields against Dean and he knew, signed it to Dad and Sam, They’re coming. For me.
Signed Let them have me but Dad didn’t see that. Refused to see it.
He’s good though. He puts on the soundproofed earmuffs at night, can’t dare to slip into a dream unprepared. It also gives him a place where he can dream, dream of the normal. In the dream, he can hear music without wanting to trepan himself, he speaks like a person and his throat isn’t falling apart from disuse and too many dry swallows of pain pills. In his dream, he isn’t waiting for the last piece of his sanity to finally crack away, he will act like a person, won’t need to react against everything bodily, will show his anger in words, not in his fists.
In his dream, he never wakes up and finds himself on the floor, tossing around in horror, his earmuffs ripped from his head and something with yellow eyes staring at him, impatient for this.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
And that, that, that, THAT will be the last of it, and he will turn savage and bloody, tear everything apart within his reach, blood spurting and screaming and he can hear them begging in their minds as they scream, hear it so, so fierce and he is happy about it, happiness, an emotion that has atrophied in him.
Or, Sam will wake him and think, Dean, it’s just a nightmare.
Stupid extra words being added to confuse Dean, rile him up, unnecessary, all of it.
He signs back, No, I’m a nightmare.
end
Author: Regala Electra
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, Language
Summary: Dean’s tired of this weird shit.
Word Count: 3,876
Author’s Notes: No, it's true, I wanna hold ignited's hand. Thank you for the beta work, Stefackles. Remix of Five Powers Dean Doesn’t Have by clex_monkie89. Remix original posted here.
*
Shape-shifting (Turn You Inside Out)
Dean’s tired of this weird shit.
It’s not like he really has that much of a problem with being an amazing gender-bending freak, it’s more that, well, because he is an amazing gender-bending freak and he’s Dean, he tends to get himself into weird sticky situations that he has to figure out for himself.
This is exactly what he has to do: save his own ass regardless if he’s wearing boxers or a thong. Although he doesn’t wear thongs ‘cause he tried that once and man that’s powerfully uncomfortable.
Look, the first time he shape-shifted into a girl? It was awesome. Because his body, his rules, which means his boobs and all the other parts were his, but you know, getting to be handsy with himself is only fun for so long. It’s hard to hide his bizarre ability, especially when he had to figure out how he did it all on his own. It was only once he figured out that weird situation that he told Dad about it, because he doesn’t keep secrets. Not from Dad at least.
So, he’s the Amazing Dean, capable of switching between sexes at a moment’s whim, only it’s not fucking magic, it’s work, body twisting under skin, it starts with his bones at first, cracking (Dean worries one day he’s going to get an X-Ray and find out he’s like Mr. Glass, ready to shatter at a moment’s notice and then he’ll be forced to stop, to stop doing what’s a part of his nature).
The bones break down and mend thinner, muscles contracting (like having a fucking never-ending Charley Horse in all your muscles), fat moving around, dick going in (so freaking weird, still can’t get used to it), ass softening, breasts forming (so freaking awesome), everything going compact to accommodate his slightly smaller female form.
It does kind of piss him off that when he’s a chick, people comment on how tall he is but when he’s sporting his male-born body and he’s next to Dad or Sammy, he looks freakin’ short.
There are two duffel bags that he has to keep packed, one for his guy-body and one for his girl-body. The girl-one isn’t as full and he used to store weapons in there until Dad commented that most ladies don’t go around smelling like gunpowder and grease and Dean’s forced to buy freaking perfume to cover up the motel soap he uses, okay for a guy but not for a girl. Whatever, he only dabs it on when he’s sent off for covert recon stuff and he has to be a girl or he’s acting as bait on a hunt, otherwise, he still puts on his cologne, because having a vagina doesn’t mean he’s not a girl. After all, he can change back.
Sam asked him once if it hurt and Dean lied, said, Dude, you think I’d be doing it if it hurt?
Yeah.
Well, it doesn’t. Shut up.
Fuck, it does hurt and he experimented because he’s a friggin’ genius, worst of it’s now, with his body utterly fucked up, and it’s all so goddamn hilarious, having Dad and Sammy walk in and his organs are all twisted around, stomach kinda...uh, sticking out, because he needed to kill something monstrous and he’s never had any time for the police. So, plan B-which, huh, kinda misleading, that name-girl time and faking a pregnancy to top it off.
Yeah, Dean Winchester, he’s a MENSA candidate just like his geek brother.
Only not, cause even after two showers, he’s still got slime in unmentionable places, even after sealing up all the nooks and crannies. Also, the whole pissing his pants thing 'cause his bladder ain’t where it’s supposed to be? Not a goddamn laugh riot.
Maybe it would be easier if he was actually pregnant. Hell, he doesn’t even want to know if that’s possible, to swap out genders and still be carrying a bun in the oven. He’ll leave that to someone other poor bastard who’s got the same deal with as Dean (trouble is, for all their research, Dean’s fucking special in the worst possible way).
‘Sides, he’s sure it’ll go down, his organs will push back into place and he’ll be right as goddamn rain until the next time he tries to fake a pregnancy. Until the next time Dad or Sammy’ll ask him to do, for laughs, for a hunt, for something and there’s no way Dean can say no.
Sometimes Dean puts on a baggy shirt and puts on a ratty old pair of jeans that he matches up with a belt full of extra notches and for Sam’s amusement, he’ll shape-shift right in front of Sam’s eyes. Each time, it hurts more, but he’ll be damned if he’ll ever let Sam know that, defiant, showing off.
See, the more I do it, the quicker it goes each time.
The more Dean does it, he keeps on wondering what it’s like to have a normal person’s body that doesn’t change just because he can mentally will it to happen.
“We’re gonna figure out a way to fix this mess,” Dad tells him, gruff but amused, after he sends Sam out of the motel room. Picks up an anatomy book that doesn’t have a section on what to expect when you’re pretending to be expecting.
Dad’s been saying that they’ll have it sorted out since the first time Dean switched right in front of Dad’s eyes.
Hasn’t happened yet.
*
Second Sight (...and Super Creeps)
Dean fucking hates The Dead Zone.
And not the T.V. version, he doesn’t watch that, the original Christopher Walken movie, because look, Christopher Walken’s kind of awesomely freaky and Dean loves a good horror movie, probably has an unhealthy love of ‘em, it’s just seeing Walken zoom off into a vision, and well, it ain’t a barrel of laughs when you’re suffering with the same affection.
Death visions. Not even just psychic ability, it’s the fucking brunt of it, to be stuck only catching that instant of terror in 3-D color, taste, smell, everything. It starts off in shards but the more he touches? The clearer it gets. Fucking sucks out loud.
‘Specially since Dean’s ability had the fucking consideration to manifest after he’d already had sex and knew exactly what he’s missing out on.
Sometimes he tries not to wonder if it’s not just like he’s a sieve, helpless to seeing the end in all its grisly detail, because so far, every person he’ s had the misfortunate to touch, by accident or by a stubborn intent (because, god, he needs contact, craves it so much that it’s an active ache in him, hates seeing people be so free with touching when he has to be so freakin’ careful all the goddamn time), all of those people, their ends, well they ain’t pretty.
Never dared voiced that out loud, the thought that his touch’s poison, leaking chaos and pain with just a brush of skin-on-skin. It’s easier to say he’s cursed with seeing death-visions. No way he could be responsible with just a freaking brush of skin for those deaths. Yeah, he keeps on telling himself that ‘cause maybe one day he’ll be able to believe it.
At first it was fine touching Sam, to the point, where he once joked, “Hey, if you weren’t my annoying little giant brother...” and trailed off because Sam glowered at him and maybe rightfully so, it’s the kind of thing you don’t say to a person when you’re buck-naked.
Yeah, naked, ‘cause when he’s out and about, he’s fucking layered up to kingdom come. Only thing he refuses to wear are gloves, which Sam points out should a problem, fingerprints and their line of work and all, but hey, a man’s got to have an excuse for human contact. There’s a reason Tom Hanks went crazy on that island.
Then Sammy bitches about him watching Castaway when Dean should have been helping Sam research at the library and finally he gets all flustered and asks Dean to stop pacing around in the buff.
Oh, right, the naked deal. Well, in the motel rooms, he doesn’t have a need to be layered up, it’s not like anyone’s coming into room (and if Sam ever does score, he manages to do it not like normal people: at night when Dean’s pacing around or whacking off in the bathroom, ‘cause Sam’s always passed out on his own bed, snoring gently). He does sometimes spare Sam the whole deal and puts on boxer-briefs, but not always because his skin chafes like a mother ‘cause most of the time, he’s wearing just too freakin’ much.
And he isn’t about to start lathering himself up with girly skin creams to keep the rashes and blotchy skin issues at bay, no matter how many times Sam might sarcastically offer to take him to a body care store in one of the countless malls dotted all over America.
Still, Sam, bitch he may be, is a good sport. They make due and hunt in colder places where Dean doesn’t stick out as much, even though that’s kind of ruined with him and Sam walking hand-in-hand.
Sam’ll lean over to tell him something dumb like how if they were doing this in the Middle East, no one would look twice.
Dean responds by knocking his shoulder (covered in three layers not including his jacket, part of his scarf dragging done, he’ll have to fix it again) against Sam’s, not saying anything to really piss off Sam ‘cause then maybe Sam’ll stop letting him do this and he can barely stand the whole no sex deal.
Cut a man away from touching anyone ever and he’s sure to start wearing buckets for shoes and climbing up watchtowers to do some amazingly evil shit.
It’s when he starts seeing Sam’s end, that’s when he knows he’s a goddamn anathema.
Doesn’t stop him, hell, a couple of months pass and he hopes, stupid as it is, that maybe he can stop it, he’ll be right there, right?
Forces himself to look deeper, harder in the vision, sickness spreading in him when he sees out of Sam’s dying eyes, himself there as well, just as bleeding and broken.
In the visions, Dean dies as well or close enough to it that he’ll be dead long before anyone comes looking for them.
But Sam’ll ask if he can drive this time and Dean lets him, hating himself each time for how sick it is, to let events play out as they’re destined to because he sees too much and he never figured out a way to stop the deaths from playing out as he sees them.
And if, if, the crash happens, then maybe he’d die, rid the world of a ‘lusus naturae’.
Freak of nature.
*
Sixth Sight - Ghost Whisperer (Laugh, I Nearly Died)
It’s digging up the girl’s body that’s the worst part.
Doesn’t help with Jeanie handcuffed to his car’s grill (which he warned her if she scratched up by trying to get out of the handcuffs that he’d have to get unpleasant so at least she’s stopped moving, tracks of blood drying on her skin, sleeves of her), little noises, gasps and pleading words as he shovels into the ground.
They were arrogant and thought they’d never be caught. It turns his stomach when he unearths the body, sees the violation they left rotting in the ground.
“I should bring her here,” he says, indifferently, storing the rage for when he needs it, has to find out where dear Ray’s hiding out after all and Jeanie’s the best guess for him to find Ray’s trail. “I’d have to cover her body, wouldn’t want Sara to see it, but you know, she wanted her mother so much. When they die, children always burn with love. More than when they’re alive. You should see it. See what I have to see.”
But he can’t pass his gift on to Jeanie and now that Sara’s aware she’s a ghost, that she’s barely clinging to the world anymore (just salt and burn her bones and be done with it), he knows that it is unnecessary torture. And oh, how he longs to do it, call out the child who deserves this bloody revenge.
Dean’s learned his lesson. There’s a procedure he has to follow or he’s leaving more disturbed spirits in his wake. Has to let his captive understand exactly what’s been committed, has to get them begging for death.
Sam never joins him in hunts that end like this. For good reason and Dean can handle his soul being tarnished, so long as the people he love are safe and sound. After all, Sam accepts this part of him, the vigilante, ridding the world of the inhuman human monsters that hide in plain view.
Someone less kind might call him sick or disturbed. A sociopath. No, he only wishes he was that, he knows how to feel , he feels, has to deaden himself from it when he’s on the job.
Removes the handcuffs, Jeanie sobbing openly, maybe she’ll even piss her pants, just like her daughter did, because she had a mother who didn’t care what happened to a sweet little girl, a child.
“You should see what you did. Even her fingers, the broken ones, you can still see them.”
“Please...”
“Yes.” He nods at this. “Start praying. There’s no God, but I’m sure you can prove me wrong. Strike me dead. Or, get Ray to do the dirty work.”
Dean’s tried before to take his information to the cops, tried it and seen murderers get off, have ghosts following him until he exorcised them, had them screaming for revenge as they left the world, curses ringing in his ears.
It’s his fault for letting the girl cross the rock salt, but, he couldn’t leave her out, it’s the children that are the hardest to ignore. The older ones, they’re just as brutal, but sometimes he can make up lies about them, believe they brought it on himself.
The sick rises up but he just spits on the ground, squashes it down.
He still has to get the one who did this after all and Jeanie’s ready to talk. Being forced to kneel in front of a corpse does that to people.
Dean starts half of the ritual now, salts the bones. He’ll burn it when he’s got Ray there as well, sacrifices, purifiers, Dean’s had to learn such things. Can wipe a ghost’s last painful memory if the murderer (or murderers) are cast off with the remains of the spirit.
“Trust me, Jeanie,” he tells her after she blubbers where Ray’s hiding out, probably drunk off his fucking rocker, “I’ll make sure Sara’ll be in a good place.”
There are ghosts watching them, not Sara, mercifully, couldn’t stand to see her crying, all of them waiting for Dean to give in, let them cross his salt lines or drop one of his precious charms. Because he does it, every damn time, lets another ghost tell him of what’s left them behind and what else can he do?
He’ll keep on going, until the ghosts stop following him or until he doesn’t find any more living monsters taking on human shapes, feeble, pitiful things that call him crazy when he’s the one who knows exactly what they did and tried to get away with.
*
Pyrokinesis (The Roof is on Fire)
Whatever kills him doesn’t make him stronger. That’s a lie.
He figures out the link between his emotions and the fires all too late, how even with too much of a smile, the burning comes and he can’t control it until he’s destroyed something, property, people, lives.
It doesn’t kill him though, despite his efforts, when he was young and terrified in a car and he almost took Sam out with him. Can’t burn himself from inside out, burn out this rotten part of him that can’t be controlled, it just lies in wait, and Dean has to smother it down, can’t let it rage out. Doesn’t let his throat heal properly even though the doctors tell Mama Moseley that Dean shouldn’t be in so much pain when he tries to speak, that he should have regained better functions after... after all the fires Dean was responsible for.
It’s the people who stare at him too long, the ones that flinch, that make Dean wonder if they can see all the way down, past the twisted appearance and see what he’s made out of. Buried deep, beneath uneven skin, scarring that runs ragged, coarse, painful. If they’re repulsed by it.
And Sammy, Samuel, using his full and proper name, he’s never ashamed by it, sees something else in Dean that Dean still can’t believe is true.
There is too much death on Dean’s hands for him not to be completely damaged. Unworthy.
Gifts, Mama Moseley said, once to Dean, and Dean locked himself up in his room and didn’t come out, Sammy had to pry the lock open himself and kept on saying, It’s okay, Dean, it’s okay and Dean couldn’t say why it wasn’t okay.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want his voice to ever be like a normal person’s voice. He’ll be expected to talk. To be honest.
Sometimes Dean thinks he sees the shadow of a man standing on the front lawn of Mama Moseley’s house, unable to get past the wards she’d set up a long time ago.
When he looks real hard, it looks like his father, only there’s something bright about his eyes and from what he remembered, his dad had dark eyes, they'd never glow so bright in the shadows.
Those are the worst nights because sometimes things go sparking, catching like kindling and Dean has to smother it out with thick fireproof blankets because he can’t get in trouble. He told Mama Moseley and Samuel that he couldn’t burn stuff so bad anymore and if they ever figured out, then he’d be found out.
Things burn around him like they always have, he’s just had to get better at stopping it.
Later, when he’s done his firefighting for the day (or night), he’s tired and weak, sometimes has to have Sammy help him get dressed, it’s that bad, and all his scars get worse or infected and he has to go the hospital again, hear about all the dangers of not taking care of his precious skin grafts.
He’s in medical books, you know, for all the burns to his body and the skin grafts needed, and how he’s still managed to survive. Medical rarity, one in a million or a million-million. Even though Samuel’s scarred, he never got the worst of it, Dean thanks the god he doesn’t believe in for that.
Once he asked a doctor, when he was seventeen, if he could sign a DNR when he became an adult, just in case, in case of-
The doctor had been gentle, too nice, always looked directly into his eyes, never flinched at having to check over his wounds, the scars that twisted his skin into unnatural shapes, the grafts that didn’t, couldn’t, make whatever his original skin color was supposed to be.
"Yes," she said, "you could sign a DNR. But Dean, you are a healthy young man. You survived."
Yes, he knows, he survived. That’s the problem.
*
Telepathy - Shallow (Fade to Black)
The first thing he successfully signs is let me die.
There’s no place to go. Even the most barren places, doesn’t work, the lack of people will lead to his death and he can survive in pain long enough if they’re careful about it. The drugs work too, even drag him out of dreams where he’s like them, running his mouth, half-listening but pretend to listen. Whispering, laughing, screaming, all the things he’s forgotten to do.
All the things people can’t help but do around him.
Even Dad and Sam, they’ll use their voices and god, they don’t know what it feels like, really they don’t. No way to explain, something crawling inside his brain, the hot violation of it makes bile rise in his throat because there’s no screams that he let out in response. Leaves his bowels icy-cold, skin on fire. They wonder why Dean struggles to eat after an episode, Dad’s nice way of thinking about what his oldest boy goes through.
The meds never last long enough, Dad and Sam have to do a job, sometimes they have Dean read the thoughts of sleeping people, disjointed though dreams may be, they’re easier to handle than the talking.
Words cut into his brain, dig in, sear with every syllable. It’s a genetic fluke one doctor tried to tell Dad when it first started up, slowly, like a migraine. Nothing to be done with it, just have to medicate the problem away, keep him away from stress, noisy places.
It worked for a week and then his mind blew open, all the noises they didn’t say, those came through loud and clear.
The problem is that when people speak, somehow, they think it too, at the same time, and it amplifies in Dean’s mind, tears him deep until he starts slipping, stops being a person.
No better than an animal.
It’s supernatural in origin, that’s what Dad once thought to Dean, grave as anything. Then they realized they were being tracked, something that was trying to play too hard at being human hadn’t used the right shields against Dean and he knew, signed it to Dad and Sam, They’re coming. For me.
Signed Let them have me but Dad didn’t see that. Refused to see it.
He’s good though. He puts on the soundproofed earmuffs at night, can’t dare to slip into a dream unprepared. It also gives him a place where he can dream, dream of the normal. In the dream, he can hear music without wanting to trepan himself, he speaks like a person and his throat isn’t falling apart from disuse and too many dry swallows of pain pills. In his dream, he isn’t waiting for the last piece of his sanity to finally crack away, he will act like a person, won’t need to react against everything bodily, will show his anger in words, not in his fists.
In his dream, he never wakes up and finds himself on the floor, tossing around in horror, his earmuffs ripped from his head and something with yellow eyes staring at him, impatient for this.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
And that, that, that, THAT will be the last of it, and he will turn savage and bloody, tear everything apart within his reach, blood spurting and screaming and he can hear them begging in their minds as they scream, hear it so, so fierce and he is happy about it, happiness, an emotion that has atrophied in him.
Or, Sam will wake him and think, Dean, it’s just a nightmare.
Stupid extra words being added to confuse Dean, rile him up, unnecessary, all of it.
He signs back, No, I’m a nightmare.
end