Debriel Big Bang entry (2012) Part 3
You Are Where I Want To Be, part III
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Part III
Dean, aged 22
The day of Sam's graduation from college was a sunny one. All through the ceremony Sam smiled like the gigantic dork he was while Ellen, Jo, John, Bobby and Dean all watched on from the crowd of enthusiastic parents and teachers who were clearly eager for their summer to begin before the next school year. Gabriel had been invited too, but he'd declined, saying it wasn't right as he wasn't family. Dean had tried his best not to take that personally, because as far as he was concerned Gabe was the next best thing to family and no one here had more right than him to be here, except maybe Dean as he was Sammy's brother. He hadn't said anything like that to Gabriel though, graciously accepting the other man's decision and had spent the day ignoring the buzzing of his cell phone which let him know that Gabe was texting. It may have been immature of him but honestly he didn't want the negative emotions he associated with Gabriel to impact on his day. Things had been strained between them over the past few years, partially because Dean refused to let Gabe push him away and also because Gabriel had been dating people who weren't Dean. It sucked on multiple levels, but hey, that's what therapy was for.
After they sat through the ceremony they just about had time to say 'congratulations' to Sam and take a photo before the kid was off with his school friends. It was so relieving to see how awesome Sammy grew up, he was outgoing, honest, intelligent, driven and most of all; happy. Dean knew that everything he'd gone through was worth it if this was the outcome.
“I'm gonna miss that kid when he's at college.”
Dean froze. “What?” He whispered in shock.
Ellen, who was smiling motherly in the direction of Sam, turned to face Dean. “What was that sweetie?”
“College? Sam's going to college? Away from here?” He managed to get the words past his dry throat without sounding like he was choking and it was a miracle.
Ellen's face fell and everyone around him looked uncomfortable. Dean guessed he was the last to know. “Uh, no I mean that's great. I always knew he was headed for college, he just never said...” anything. Sam had been so vague when talking about the end of the summer that Dean had almost forgotten that it meant he'd leave. Somehow in his head Sam always stayed close, but from Ellen's remark he guessed that was just a pipe dream.
“Oh, honey. I'm sure he was just waiting for the right time,” Ellen said soothingly.
Dean did his best to smile in response but inside he felt like punching someone. Himself, most likely. Why hadn't his brother told him? What was Sam going to do? Never mention it and just send him a postcard from his campus novelty shop? Obviously he wasn't the awesome brother he'd imagined himself to be over these past few years. Great, another way in which this year was going to suck.
(Later that night)
“Cheer up, grumpy!” Bela shouted into his ear drunkenly.
Bela, Max and Dean were out at a bar. They'd stopped going to the meetings a year or so ago, insisting that they were old enough to make their own decisions. Besides, everyone else who'd been there when Dean met Max and Bela were gone. They were the last ones standing. Since then they had replaced group therapy with alcohol, bowling, watching films and hanging out in random secluded locations with alcohol. Normally these nights were full of the type of antics you couldn't write home about. Tonight Dean's heart just wasn't in it.
“Leave me alone, Bela,” Dean replied, hunching in on himself.
“Oh, come on. I'm sure I can find some way to make you feel better,” Bela suggested in her smokiest voice, her hand running smoothing up his thigh towards her goal. This wasn't an abnormal situation, tit had happened several times before and led to mutually beneficial sex. Not this time. She froze, groping at his soft cock through his jeans and getting no response. Dean kicked and dislodged her hand.
“Sex isn't the answer to all of life's problems,” he told her.
She sat back, offended.
“It's the answer to all of my problems,” Max muttered, staring longingly at Bela who'd been the object of his unreturned affections for the past four years.
Dean sometimes felt guilty that he'd had sex with Bela, but he couldn't bring himself to regret it completely. He knew now that he wasn't gay, probably just bisexual. Anna said that he didn't need to worry about labels, that emotion mattered more than gender and people were in such a rush to belong to a group, heterosexual, bi-curious, gay, bisexual, transsexual... that they missed what was in front of them because of it. For Dean it wasn't about missing something, it was about trying to convince someone else that he was worthy. At least, that was the way it felt most of the time. After his first time with Bela he'd been so confused and had felt shamed by his sexual experience despite the fact that he knew it was normal to have sex with people, with girls, his own age. It had been his first consensual sexual experience but he'd still been plagued by the same emotions that reminded him of Alastair.
He'd called Gabe straight afterwards, still drunk, and ranted at him. It had been the middle of the night and Gabriel hadn't been impressed. Dean may have said something along the lines of 'this is what you wanted, right?'. It took Anna a while to get him through that, and then she'd had to nudge Gabriel too in order to get her cousin to forgive that phone call and the guilt he probably felt because of it.
Dean was such a mess. Still, years after Alastair had been imprisoned, locked away so that he could never hurt Dean or anyone else again. They'd tracked down some of the other foster kids to back up Dean's testimony. One had died from an accidental overdose of heroin, another had hung themselves, and Ruby, the only name he had, had been found living life as a prostitute, selling her body in order to raise her son who looked suspiciously like Alastair. She had refused to testify, insisting that he had loved her. Closer surveillance of the situation showed that Alastair paid for her apartment and still visited her once a month, and stayed the night. After that the case had been a sure thing. Dean should have felt safer. Instead he'd only been confused, angry, and ashamed. Gabriel had been the one who'd helped him, who'd made him feel like a whole person instead of that damaged little boy. Dean guessed that was ironic considering Gabe was the one person who couldn't look at him and see that broken little kid.
“I'm getting out of here,” Dean said, throwing down a few bills and storming off. That was the last time Bela tried to seduce him. Not long afterwards she started dating Max, who wasn't the most exciting boyfriend but she revelled in his adoration of her. He was good for her, better than Dean would have been and he was always glad that things turned out that way for her.
That night he called Gabriel from his cell. No one picked up, but once his answering machine kicked in and Dean heard his voice he couldn't stop himself. “What do you want from me, huh? I did every thing you asked. I made some friends, fucked some of them too. I'm not some stupid fucking kid who's confused. Except when I am confused. Which is now. You make me confused. Do you even want me at all or did you set me on this path hoping I'd find someone else? I won't. You're the one, damn it. Stop playing with me and tell me how you feel because I-” BEEP.
The message was cut off.
~*~
“The child is in love with you, Gabriel,” Castiel said in his monotonous voice, sounding more like he was reciting the first ten amendments rather than chastising his cousin.
Of course 'the child' in question was Dean. Despite Dean having left childhood behind long ago, Gabe's cousin, who was a good seven years younger than him was just as close in age to Dean as he was to Gabe, still he insisted on referring to Dean as such. “It's a case of hero worship mixed with hormones, Cas, he'll be fine once he meets someone he likes enough to sleep with them more than once,” he dismissed Castiel's concerns.
“He's twenty-two, Gabriel, no longer young enough to be so entirely consumed by hormones as to excuse his attitude,” which was ironic coming from the man who constantly referred to Dean as a 'child', “and he seems to know his own mind. Do you know yours?” Castiel asked with that odd tilt of his head of his. Gabriel theorised that Castiel was dropped on his head as a baby. More than once. However this didn't seem to have affected his intelligence, just his ability to act like a human being on days ending in 'y'.
“I know that the kid has a hard time and I was the one who made it all better, put a band-aid on his freaking past and kissed it all better. Figuratively speaking, Cas. You know why I had to help him, and it wasn't entirely unselfish. He built me up in his mind to be someone I'm just not, and never could be. So yeah, I know my own mind, and I know his. That's why I know this will pass, he'll realise I'm just as human as he is and that'll be it,” Gabriel summarised darkly. Every time they talked about this, and believe him he just wished this was the first conversation they'd had about Dean's emotional well-being, it reminded him of his brothers and how he still felt like he had failed them. Helping Dean didn't absolve his guilt, but it had helped him sleep a hell of a lot better. Michael was still dead, Lucifer was still in prison, but Dean was safe and sound, and Gabriel was going to do everything he could to see that the kid stayed that way, even if it meant he had to push him away just to motivate Dean into having an emotionally healthy relationship with someone.
(Four months later)
“Do you accept that your brother moving away to attend college is not a rejection of you?” Anna asked and Dean avoided her gaze, staring instead at a photograph on her wall of her, her brother Castiel and their cousin Gabriel at her graduation party.
“I accept that he doesn't think of it like that,” Dean answered. Most days he did his best to thwart the questions that Anna threw at him like flaming daggers aimed at his heart. He had been in some kind of therapy on and off since he was four, since the first time he stopped talking, and mostly he had resented it. With Anna it was different, maybe because she seemed like a real person to him and not just a text book on legs waiting to write him a prescription or cart him off to the looney bin, but Dean suspected it was most likely because she was Gabriel's cousin. He trusted Gabriel, and so by extension he trusted Anna.
“But you do,” Anna said.
What Dean liked most about the fact that Anna was his therapist rather than the other douche-bags that had been in his life was that she didn't write things down. Well, he supposed she did but during their sessions she never strayed from him to note something on a pad of paper. He had once asked her about that and she said that not only did she have a good memory but she also tapped the session. Once it was over she would make notes and then destroy the physical recording. It was important to her that her patient received her full attention.
“Do you see Gabriel's evasions as rejection?” She probed.
Dean shifted in his seat, tearing his eyes away from the photograph containing the topic of conversation and instead examined the carpet under his feet. “It depends,” he said.
“On?”
“Whether I'm having a good day or a bad day,” he admitted.
“On your bad days you interpret any hesitation or negative stimuli as rejection of yourself. That's natural, Dean, everyone, to some degree, experiences that. If you are thinking of ourselves in a negative way then we interpret other peoples reactions to us as negative. It's really the same principal as smiling at a stranger and getting a smile back as opposed to ignoring them and being ignored in return. When you are happy, the world is a good place, when you are sad it isn't, only the world isn't the thing that changed, Dean, you have.”
“So what I should just be happy all the time and more happiness will come?” Dean asked snidely.
“No. Life is a balance of ups and downs and no one can escape that. You will just have to except that there will be good days, and there will be god awful shit days that make you want to crawl into the corner of your basement and never emerge.”
Dean laughed. Anna always said it like it was. “Yeah, there has been plenty of those,” he agreed.
“Can you tell me about one of your bad days?” Anna asked.
“Relive it?” Dean said. “That doesn't sound like something that's gonna help me.”
“I'm the doctor here, Dean. Doctors orders,” she joked with a smile.
He sighed and found another photograph to look at. This one was of Gabriel as a child. There were also two other boys in the photograph, both older than him by about ten years. They were his brothers, Dean knew, and he also knew that both were gone now, in their own ways. Everyone had bad things in their past that they would rather never happened. “Okay. I... um... the day I stopped talking.”
“The day your mother died?”
“Uh, no, not really. I mean technically I did stop speaking the day she died but to me it doesn't really count. It was the next morning when the police came and they asked me what I'd seen. I wanted to tell them all about the man who killed my mom and the house burning down but I couldn't. Every time I tried nothing came out, and my dad was getting more and more desperate to know and even the officers seemed frustrated. They left after two hours with no leads and my dad was so angry. I felt so bad, because I'd failed him. I failed my mom.”
“Heavy emotions for such a young child to have, especially considering you were grieving for your mother at the time,” Anna said.
“So was my dad, and he understood what it meant, to have someone be dead. He was hurting so much, and I couldn't make it better,” Dean explained, feeling every inch as frustrated with himself now as he had back then.
“Dean,” Anna said gently, “you weren't meant to be able to make it better. You were four, he was the grown up. It was his job to make you feel better, to feel safe, and he failed, because he is just as human as you or I, and people fail all the time. It doesn't make it right or any easier to bare, but it's the truth.”
Dean left that session feeling lighter than he had since he'd found out Sam was leaving for college. He was there now, at Stanford and from the phone call last night it sounded like he was having a great time. He didn't resent his brother for being able to have the normal college experience, just like he didn't hate him for growing up surrounded by love and affection. He was happy for his brother. What he struggled with was what it said about Dean that he couldn't have that. Sam left, it sucked but he as long as there were phone calls and emails and Christmases then he could deal. It was okay.
With that in mind Dean set out to visit Gabriel. This tension had existed between them for too long. He couldn't take it any longer. Gabriel needed to clarify some things, even if it ended up making everything worse.
It started off okay, with Dean calmly asking to come in. He instantly noticed the lack of Kali's stuff and guessed they'd broken up (again). They never lived together but when they were dating she tended to leave expensive silk scarves and perfume bottles lying around the place. The picture of them as a happy couple that Gabriel only propped up when they were together was missing, and that was enough proof for Dean. He built up to the point, but soon found himself stonewalled and frustrated. It was the same thing all over again. Gabriel telling him he wasn't ready, that his emotions weren't real... blah, blah, blah. He was twenty-two for god's sake. He knew what he was damn well feeling!
“Screw you, Gabriel,” Dean spat out, too angry to mince words. “You're always telling me that I don't know what I'm really feeling, that I'm just mistaking gratitude with love, but I know what I feel. Maybe it's you who doesn't know?”
“Oh Dean, I know what I feel. Trust me.” Gabriel bit back, equally as angry.
“Then tell me. If you don't want me, let me know. I'm a big boy now, Gabe, I can handle the truth!” Dean shouted.
“Can you? Could you really handle hearing that I don't want you in my life?” Gabriel asked, and for a moment the words echoed around in Dean's mind, fear freezing his vocal chords as he considered the possibility that it was true, that Gabriel didn't want him (just like everybody else).
Then he breathed again, and the paralysing self doubt dissipated enough to let him speak. “I deserve to know if that's the truth.”
“We don't always get what we deserve, Dean,” Gabriel said and stalked out of the room leaving a stricken Dean in his wake.
~*~
“Gabriel, are you trying to undo all the hard work I've been doing with Dean?” Anna demanded only half joking.
Gabriel didn't answer. He didn't want to have this conversation.
“Gabe, I know how you feel about him. Maybe your reasons, whatever they are, for keeping them to yourself are good, but maybe you owe Dean the truth as well?” She suggested tentatively as she took the seat next to her cousin.
He laughed hollowly. “What if I don't have a good reason, An? What if all I have is regret because I was frustrated and angry and I hurt Dean for no damn reason?”
“Then,” she sighed, “I guess the rumours aren't true, and you are just as human as the rest of us.”
Silence lingered between them, sober and dark. Then Anna giggled, breaking the atmosphere, and Gabriel felt her delicate fist punching his arm. “Lighten up, Gabe, it isn't the end of the world. If you didn't mean it then I'm sure you'll find a way to make it up to him. He isn't some fragile child who needs constant assurances, he's an adult who knows you better than you give him credit for. He knows himself better than you think he does. Come on, I'll buy you a drink and you can try and persuade me that he's better off without you,” she teased.
“Fine but make it a good drink,” he said, and smiled for the first time since his argument with Dean.
~*~
Gabriel knocked on the door of Dean's apartment, half expecting to be turned away without a chance to explain even if deep down he knew Dean wouldn't do that.
Dean opened the door and let him in with a silent nod and they made themselves comfortable in the living area. Well, as comfortable as they could be with the tension between them thick enough to cut with a surgical knife.
Dean was the first to speak. He sounded tired, and looked it. Gabriel felt a stab of guilt and had to suppress the immediate desire to insist that Dean take a rest before they had this conversation. “I have jumped through every hoop you've put in front of me, Gabe. When are you going to admit to yourself that I'm an adult who's perfectly capable of making my own decisions and mistakes? When are you going to just give me an answer?”
“I didn't mean to make our relationship an obstacle course, Dean,” Gabriel said.
“Okay, fine, you didn't mean it. That isn't an answer,” Dean wouldn't be fobbed off with excuses or psycho-babble. “Do you love me?” He asked and Gabe sucked in a shocked breath. That was pretty damn forward. He was almost proud of Dean's ability to ask that question except for how awkward he now felt.
Still, he figured he owed him the truth. “Yes, but that wasn't why we went through all this.”
Dean looked relieved, happy even, but only for a second as anger replaced the emotions. “Was it fuck! It was why I went through this. I've been in love with you in one way or another since I was twelve and you god damned knew it. I never knew if you cared about me the same way,” he said, his green eyes flashing pain and anger.
“I've always cared about you Dean. When I saw you in that hospital bed... you reminded me of Michael. No one believed him either when he told people Lucifer was abusing him. I get it, brothers rough-house and it's easier to believe that it was just a case of sibling rivalry rather than the horrific truth. But if just one person had believed him then maybe he'd be alive today and Lucifer would have been stopped before it got bad enough to warrant a prison sentence. God, even now my parent's can't admit that Lucifer was molesting Michael. I knew someone was hurting you, and when I saw your file everything made such clear sense,” Gabriel drifted off, lost in the memories. His brother's cold body lying on the floor, blood seeping out of the back of his head while his mother shrieked hysterically. The first time he'd seen Dean, watching the boy sleep unaware as his foster father talked with the doctor nodding in his fake concern and the woman at his side lying through her teeth to protect the paedophile she's married. As soon as the doctor had left them alone Alastair's expression had turned nasty, his touch perverse on Dean's pale pre-teen skin as he'd stroked the bruised flesh. His wife had turned away, unable to watch the display but complicit in it by keeping guard. Gabriel had hated how helpless he had felt both times. Saving Dean from that situation had saved his soul, he was sure of it, if he'd been unable to do anything for the boy Gabriel knew he'd have spiralled down and never resurfaced.
Dean had never heard the details but he had known the basics. It was still a shock to hear the situation described by Gabriel and watch as pain twisted his features up. Even twenty years later Gabriel was still haunted by his brother's pain. “Is that the only reason you care? Because I remind you of Michael?”
“No, that was only at first. Michael and you have nothing in common, he had his own issues that prevented him from seeking help. When I was older I found his diary, in it he admitted he didn't want help, not at first, that he'd seen Lucifer's touches as a sign of affection and love. He was only seven, and Lucifer was thirteen. Old enough that Lucifer should have known better and Michael couldn't be expected to. Later, after being exposed to the world, he came to understand that Lucifer was sick and he blamed himself. Lucifer had turned to more violent pleasures before Michael was even a teenager and he tried to tell people, if only to stop the pain. When no one believed him he took his own life. He was fourteen. I was only seven at the time. When I first found out I blamed myself, thought that if I hadn't been born then Lucifer would never have been able to get away with it,” Gabriel admitted. These issues had been put to bed a long time ago, but occasionally they still haunted him, especially on the anniversary of Michael's death or a family birthday. It hurt to remember how happy and loved he'd felt as a child, when Michael had been in such pain.
“It wasn't your fault,” Dean sounded positive of this.
“Probably,” Gabriel said wryly.
“What Alastair did wasn't my fault,” Dean announced bravely, meeting Gabriel's eyes square on.
“Do you really think that?” He challenged the younger man.
Dean flushed slightly. “Not always. But I know it's true even if I still sometimes doubt myself. Anna says it's natural,” he shrugged.
“Yeah,” Gabriel agreed roughly.
Silence descended as they let old ghosts return to their graves. “You aren't like a brother to me, Dean, and I stopped seeing you as a kid the moment you kissed me on your eighteenth birthday. I just never wanted to make you regret knowing me, or ever have reason to stop trusting me.”
“It isn't like I don't totally understand why you did all those things, and I know you've always put me first. It's one of the reasons I love you so damn much, but I'm not about to let the fact that someone hurt me when I was a kid stand in the way of the best thing that ever happened to me. All I've ever wanted is for you to love me the way I love you,” Dean admitted. He hated this damn chick flick stuff but he didn't see anyway around it. Gabriel wouldn't take the first step, so Dean had to push himself to.
“I do love you, in every way. I'm not going to leave you or betray you. You're what I've been waiting for since you woke up in that hospital room and gazed at me with those broken green eyes,” Gabriel said. “You know, in a non-creepy way.”
They both laughed. “I know. Maybe now you can except that I'm old enough to be yours?” Dean suggested with a hint of desperation.
“Okay. Now you can be mine,” Gabriel smiled, and leaned in to Dean, planting a kiss on his mouth that quickly turned passionate. This time no one broke away, physical contact seemed to be a necessity and they only stopped kissing long enough to snatch a breath before starting again, only interrupted caressing in order to strip out of their clothes until they lay naked on the carpeted floor, bodies heated by lust as they writhed and moaned. Gabriel made sure to kiss every inch of exposed flesh, licking at Dean's sensitive perky nipples and lapping at his navel before travelling south to mouth at his cock. He didn't give him a blow job as much as a tongue bath but it seemed to work for Dean who was hard and leaking pre-cum before he was finished. Dean grew impatient, trusting his hips up into the air in frustration, so he pulled Gabriel up to resume kissing, moving his mouth from the doctor's sinful lips down his throat not even bothering to try and avoid stubble burn as their skin rubbed against each others. Dean sucked at the hallow of his life long love's neck as he palmed the other man's cock, stroking until Gabriel was close to orgasm.
Dean's hand left Gabe's cock and the older man groaned in deep disappointment. “Nu uh. Want you inside me. Like no one ever has been.”
Strictly speaking that wasn't the truth, and they both knew it, but at the same time Gabriel knew it was how Dean honestly thought. Dean had never invited Alastair to use his body, never enjoyed it or participated in the painful penetrations that his foster father had forced upon Dean as a child. This time would be unlike anything Dean had previously experienced, and Gabriel was more than honoured that Dean trusted him enough to share this with him.
He nodded and stood up, pulling Dean with him. “The bed,” he whispered as he pressed a row of kisses to Dean's freckled shoulders. “Carpet burn is a son of a bitch and I don't want a single moment of this to cause you pain,” Gabriel said and they made their way to the bedroom.
Gabriel made sure he put a condom on before the making out continued, both of them weren't far off being unable to think coherently and he wanted to do everything right, everything perfect.
“Come on, please,” Dean moaned desperately as he parted his legs to allow Gabriel access. He'd handed his lover some lubricant so Gabriel could prepare him, but he hadn't realised how damn slow he'd go. It was torture. He kept brushing over his prostate, a thing that Dean had known had existed but had never actually felt before. It was like a rush of pleasure that jumped up his spine and overloaded his brain and every time Gabriel did it Dean thought he was about to come.
“I think you're ready, but you know despite what I said there will be some pain, right?” Gabriel warned him, lining up to fuck him as he caressed Dean's hip bones.
“Ya huh. Just fucking get in me already and stop being such a doctor about it. Sex doesn't need to come with a warning label,” Dean said, and Gabriel smiled.
“Okay,” he agreed and let Dean have it.
Despite his confident words Dean did tense up as Gabriel trust in, shallowly at first but he spent his time calming Dean down with kisses and soft words until Dean was mellow enough to enjoy the sensations building up inside him. Then Gabe found the right angle to graze his prostate and Dean was unstoppable as he pushed into every trust and egged his lover on.
It didn't take long before both men were coming. Afterwards they lay in each other's arms, sticky and sweaty and not giving a damn because this was what they'd both been waiting for. Dean knew that if he had nightmares Gabriel would be there to remind him that Alastair was in the past, unable to hurt him now. And Dean would be here to prove to Gabriel that even haunted men could be someone's hero. These were two people who loved each other, not just the good parts but all of them.
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