[Fic] Almost Gone
Title: Almost Gone (Making It up As We Go 'verse)
Author:youaregonecas
Written for; hurt/comfort bingo
prompt: asphyxiation
Wordcount: 2.003 words
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: Mature
Pairing: Gen (build up to Dean/Cas)
Warning: ( skip) Mentions of choking, abuse, rape. In this fic, Dean mentions being kidnapped and his abuser, he remembers being choked by him and promiising he'd be 'good'. If you are triggered by any of that, please watch out. It also mentions Dean longing for death at certain moments, guilty tripping.
Summary: Dean Winchester should have known that the nights would never become easier for him, that Alastair and his abuse would keep haunting him. He hadn't expected it to hit this bad.
The city is all dark now and I’m here now at the house
There ain’t no light inside this concrete hole
All the doors are closed and I’m locked outside this place
Ain’t no need to hurry, it’s all gone
Almost Gone; Frank Goverts
The floor was cold to his back. If they found him here, like this the nurses would curse him for what he was doing, knew that this was his coping mechanism. At least, if they had read his file properly before switching from the day to the night shift. He was curled up on the floor, his knees tucked against his body and arms attempting to bring them even closer.
Honestly, he didn’t care. His nightmare had been bad, worse than the past couple of weeks and months before he was freed. No, bad didn’t even cover it. It felt like somebody had pushed a knife through his gut and twisted it so it would stay there, so it wouldn’t move. The drugs didn’t work. Whatever they were all pumping in him to ease down his anxiety and nightmares, his sadness. It didn’t work. Never worked.
Over and over, the nurses told him that he had only been there for two weeks that things would need some time to kick in, to work. Perhaps that was the case yeah, but that didn’t stop Dean from wanting to pull his hair out just to feel something other than that terrible nausea nibbling away at the mere thought of the nightmares or tear his skull apart to stop the thoughts.
He was suffocating again, gasping for air and trashing around trying to get the hands away from his throat. He could still feel them there, felt them as if they were real and pressing down, stopping him from breathing. Part of him knew that he could breathe normally, that his airway wasn’t constricted, but he still took in sharp breaths.
Dean could almost hear his therapist’s voice in the back of his mind, telling him to count, count to one hundred, more if he needs it. To count and focus on that until he no longer felt the hands or the fingers. Until they became ghosts.
One.
The guy pushed him back against the wall, encircled him. Dean tried to get away, tried each time but he couldn’t. He never could. Alastair told him, how he had been a bad boy comforting that friend of his, how he would need to be punished now. Dean should have listened, he really should have. But he couldn’t he couldn’t let his friend be on the wrong side of this.
A thumb caressed his cheek, turning slow and steadily, toying with the corners of his mouth. Dean couldn’t do this, he couldn’t. For one breathless second, Dean thought that he would push in, force him to show how good he could be for Alastair, show him that he could beg for forgiveness. But he didn’t, he didn’t push in, just smirked him.
Two.
The thumb slid down his throat, played with his jaw a little bit, turning slow circles only to settle on his Larynx. Alastair pressed down, gently at first, so it would barely constrict his breathing, as if he had found a way to tease him, to finally push him to his limits.
Dean hated him, hated the glee in his eyes when Dean gasped for breath, attempted to swallow.
“Breathe Dean. Can you breathe for me?”
Three.
Without warning, Alastair pressed down harder, made him spit out the words over and over again. They were like a mantra that he repeated to himself, again and again until he himself believed them. Until he himself would allow them to be true.
“Please, please, I’ll be good, I won’t do it again. Please, please.” They were almost like a prayer, no longer a plea but a prayer to whoever was out there, above him, wherever it be. Never in his life had he thought that praying to a God that he never actually believed him would help ease his mind. Never had he thought that there was something else other than earth and humans.
And yet, here he was praying. In his mind, praying to take him out of here, for Alastair to push down on his throat and kill him. For himself to finally be out of there, to finally be dead. He had been praying for so long now, ever since being abducted he had prayed to God and His angels to take him away. They never did.
“Dean. Please. I need you to be back on earth with me.” Someone’s fingers turned tiny circles in his shoulders and it pulled him back, ever so slightly. “Hey, can you open your eyes for me, please?”
Four.
Alastair pressed down hard enough for Dean to start seeing stars and almost lose his consciousness. He could only think one thing, thank you Lord. Thank you for getting him out of that place, out of the fire, out of the misery that is that dark cave. Thank you for taking me home again, for bringing me salvation.
“You don’t get to die, Dean,” whispered that venomous voice that crawled between his bones and settled there like a disease. Just hearing it made him feel dirty “You don’t get to die on my watch, it’s not over that fast, that quickly. If you die. I will just go for your precious little brother next.”
“I’ll be good. Please don’t. I will do anything. Anything.” Alastair’s smile widened at the mention of ‘everything’ like a promise. “Don’t take Sammy. Please.”
Dean had refused to do things, to allow him to do things that he himself found were too much, that he couldn’t cope with. He’d always been asked first, as a sick way of asking for consent. He never gave it, always took the alternative ways of being hurt.
This time, he was offering. He would allow Alastair to fuck him if that meant that he could keep his brother out of this. Dean couldn’t, couldn’t deal with that. He couldn’t bear to think of his brother Sammy going through all this. Ever being touched in the way that he had been going through. He would put his pride to the side and let Alastair be.
His eyes blinked open, barely clear enough for him to make out the figure standing in front of him, crouched down. For a second, he backed away. It couldn’t be Alastair, he couldn’t be there. The walls of the hospital would keep him out. He was in prison, he wouldn’t be coming back for him.
“No. No.”
“It’s okay. You’re safe. It’s me. It’s Cas. Dean?” But Dean wasn’t.
Five.
He wasn’t safe. He could never be safe, not in the hands of his monster. Not when there was such a real threat to his little brother. When if he died, if he tried to escape, his brother would be next, how could he? He couldn’t be that selfish son of a bitch that got his brother into this, he just couldn’t.
His brother would disappear too, would leave his parents alone without more than a notice, the way that he too had disappeared now months or years ago. He hadn’t really kept the time since he had been taken.
“I will take your brother, Dean. Poor little Sammy won’t be able to cope as well as you have.” The smirk widened. “So don’t think about checking out. It won’t work. You might be gone, but poor Sammy dear. He won’t know what is coming for him. He won’t know how to cope.”
“No! You don’t get to take Sammy! Don’t take Sammy.” The scream echoed in the room, reverberated back to him and it confused him. It shouldn’t come back to him, there was barely any echo in the room.
“Sammy is safe,” a voice whispered in his ear, hugging him tight. He wasn’t lying on the floor anymore, but gathered into someone’s arms. “Sammy is safe. You are safe Dean. You are safe. You can go to sleep, you’re safe. You’re not there, not anymore.”
He smelled familiar, like the old soap that they had at the hospital and aftershave, just a faint linger from the day before.
Dean didn’t count to six. The anxiety was pushed back by something else. A feeling that Dean never completely got, but had experienced before. A sense of home, a sense of belonging. He didn’t know the name for it, never said out loud how his roommate, his friend could get him back to earth.
Even if his hands sometimes morphed into Alastair’s when comforting him, even when his voice sometimes didn’t help completely. His heartbeat could always bring him right back, as would Cas comforting him by making circles on his back.
“Are you okay, Dean?” Dean couldn’t bear to look at Castiel’s eyes and see the sadness there, the obvious ‘I am so sorry’ in them.
“No, I’m not,” he muttered, looking down at his hands, which he could barely make out in the darkness. “I will be though. Thank you, Cas.”
After a week, the hallucinations had gotten so bad that his mother had called the doctor and together they had decided that it would be best for him to go ahead and be admitted, see if they could help him better than the outpatient appointments were doing.
“Do you want to change?” His shirt clung to his back as if he had just taken a shower, his hair stuck to the back of his neck. “I can get you a shirt and a wet washcloth. My mom brought back my laundry.” He didn’t answer more than just nodding, no energy left in his muscles. “Here you go.”
Dean probably should feel like a baby for being taken care of like this, but he knew that the next night or some moment during the next day, the roles could be reversed, Cas would be the one to need his help and he would do it. From one traumatized young guy to the next. From one boy that had been in Alastair’s claws to the other.
Dean’s nights were horrible, were when he was the most vulnerable, for Cas, those were the days. Along with trusting people, along with feeling secure with others. That he had let Dean in was a reassurance at the same time as a miracle.
“Go to sleep now Dean,” Castiel muttered once Dean had crawled under the blankets. “I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere, okay? I’m literally a bed away.”
“I’m sorry for waking you up Cas.” And he was sorry. Dean may be getting bags under his eyes from all the nights spend either not sleeping or not sleeping deep enough to feel rested, but he wasn’t the only one.
Castiel looked horrible some nights, when Dean had woken up five separate times from nightmares screaming. The bags under his eyes were impressive, especially if he was goong through some stuff as well.
“Maybe you should just request another roommate Cas,” Dean rolled away from him, turning his back to him. “Somebody who will actually allow you to get better.”
“Don’t worry, Dean. I wouldn’t switch you out.” Castiel patted the top of his shoulder gently. “Just go to sleep, okay? You’ll feel better in the morning.” Except he knew that he wouldn’t.