The Words in the Picture (genfic mostly + mild Dean/OMC, pg-13, 3124 words)
It does not seem like I can travel anymore without ending up scribbling in a notepad. This is some throwaway fic, basically my take on the fic-cliché of Dean being sexually abused as a child and Sam finding out about it.
The Words in the Picture
(genfic mostly + mild Dean/OMC, pg-13, 3124 words, fairly non-graphic child abuse)
Everything's for sale, even if Sam and Dean disagree on the price.
Eloy was the first place Sam ever drove the Impala. He was eleven years old and John was bleeding out in the backseat while Dean tried to hold his stomach closed. He drove all the way from the warehouse off the back roads to the emergency room. That kind of thing sticks in the memory.
He thinks Eloy is also the place where their neighbours had a fat, good-natured tabby that was the start of Sam's long, and ultimately unsuccessful, campaign to get a pet. He's not sure though, it might have been Ajo. It's hard to separate out one place from another - it's just a long blurred line of little towns with monsters and schools Sam was never at long enough to make any friends.
So when Dean suggests they make a detour to stop in, see if they can get lunch at the diner they used to eat at (if it's even still there), Sam's surprised but not particularly bothered one way or another. If Dean wants to stop, they'll stop; it's not like they've got anywhere pressing to be.
When they drive into town, Sam gets a few brief flashes of something that could as easily be passed off as déja vu as memory. All these comfortable, quiet towns follow the same template if you see enough of them.
:::
Somehow, the diner has escaped the attention of thirteen years passing. It's still there: a little shadowy inside, dark red leather booths and shelves of painted, porcelain pigs. Sam thinks he remembers the pigs. And he vaguely recollects the waitress. He gets that whisper of familiarity when he looks at her, even if she's a little plumper now he guesses, with a few more lines about her coffee-brown eyes.
Dean doesn't try to jog her memory but while he eats the pie she sets in front of him - thick, gleaming red sauce leaking from the pastry - he shoots her occasional, almost furtive looks. When he's not looking at her, he's concentrating on his pie. He eats in silence and the warm, lazy contentment of the afternoon is jarred.
Sam puts too much sugar in his espresso and feels the caffeine buzz through him, settles down to hide in the oncoming headache.
On the way out, Dean hesitates at the door then turns back to the waitress.
"Hey," he says. "Don't s'pose you know if Jeremy Axtell still lives here, do you? He used to have a place over on the edge of town."
In the middle of giving another customer a refill, the waitress straightens up and cocks her head at Dean. The slants of sunlight coming through the blinds make it hard to make out her expression.
"He a friend of yours, honey?"
Dean shrugs and there's a smirk waiting to curl his lips. On instinct, Sam steps a little closer to him, until his elbow brushes against Dean's, a point of friendly human contact. The sun is warm on his back and he can hear the school bell ring for the end of the day.
The waitress eyes Dean a moment then sets her coffee jug back on the counter. She adjusts the paper-frilled cap perched amid her greying curls and wets her lips.
"His place is still over there, sure."
"But him?" Dean prods.
"He's in the hospital. Cancer. Not got long left, I'm afraid. It's an evil disease."
"Sure is," says Dean.
:::
The Impala's boiling. The metal is painful to touch and Sam sags in his seat, his shirt sticking to his back. He's got the window wound right down and is watching the shape of the saguaros in the distance, beyond the outcrop of houses.
They're over the other side of the town from where they lived but Dean's driving slowly, peering through the windscreen at street names and he's still not speaking much. Sam tries to read his silence and is frustrated all over again how he can know Dean better than he knows anyone else on the face of the earth and still not quite get him sometimes. There's no thickness to the silence, no tension or hostility. It's as if Dean's mind is simply someplace else. And Sam can't for the life of him figure out why it should be here.
When he pulls up outside a house, a house like all the others on this street, Sam raises an eyebrow at him and Dean pretends not to notice.
"Wait here," he says as he climbs from the car.
The path to the house seems neat at first glance but weeds are beginning to creep up at the sides of it. The flowers in the hanging baskets by the door droop listlessly over the edge like the branches of a weeping willow. Dean pats the dry soil in the baskets and retrieves a key, then he disappears into the house and Sam sinks deeper in his seat to wait.
He only manages about five minutes before he finds himself out of the car and halfway up the path.
The air inside the house is dry and dusty. Yet another plant is wilting in its pot on the table by the door and there's a pile of unopened mail scooted to one side on the floor. Sam has a bad feeling about whose house this is.
Wandering a little deeper into the house, Sam finds a conservatory. The glass is smeared, a clear crack in one pane, and there are bugs skittering about the corners of the room. But propped up against the walls are canvases of unfinished abstract paintings. Sam tilts them forward, caught on the bold swirls of colour and the texture of the paint. He runs a fingertip over the edge of one of them.
"I thought I told you to stay in the car."
Sam looks over at Dean, notes the folder tucked under his arm.
"Yeah, and I wanted to come in." He looks again at the folder Dean's carrying, a large album covered in cream fabric with a faded pattern of diamonds. "This is Jeremy Axtell's house, right?"
Dean brushes past him to look at the paintings. He doesn't linger on any of them, just flicks through like the pages of an uninteresting book.
"S'right."
"The guy dying of cancer? You're taking things from the house of a guy who's dying of cancer?"
Sam tries to keep his voice free from accusation but it's all there in the words. He knows he must have missed something, something that will explain what the hell Dean thinks he's doing. Because this leaves a really bad taste in Sam's mouth and he wants Dean to make it okay.
Dean's smirk doesn't make it okay.
"It's not like he's gonna need it anymore."
Dean's moved in to the kitchen and is going through the cabinets. Sam follows him and is made even more uncomfortable by seeing a school photo of a little boy, which is pinned to the fridge by a magnet in the shape of a cheerful elephant. There's another photo, framed on the windowsill, of a wedding couple standing with an older man. The man's got flushed, jowly cheeks and a horribly bright tie on, but his arm is about the bride's shoulder and he's pressing a kiss to her temple.
"Seriously. Dean, what are we doing here?"
The note of righteous anger in Sam's voice puts an abrupt stop to Dean's search. He sighs and glances up at him. In the soft glow of filtered sunlight, the bruise on his jaw from the angry spirit they'd salted and burnt a few towns over is nothing but a shadow. He rubs the back of his neck before speaking.
"There are videos in here somewhere. One of them'll be marked with my name or with '1994'. Help me find them."
Sam's lips move but he can't form any words. His brow furrows and Dean's shoulders sag at his confusion. He pushes past him and goes back through the conservatory.
"Just help me find them," he calls over his shoulder.
Sam listens to the creak of the staircase overhead and stares out of the window, at the garden full of dying things. His chaotic thought processes are interrupted by the glint of metal he can see among the wilted plants in the flowerbeds. He goes out the back door and across the yellowing grass. Somewhere he can hear the hiss of sprinklers, but not here.
The metal he can see is from the handle to a cellar of some kind. It's overgrown with weeds and Sam has to push so much dirt out of the way his nails are filthy by the time he's got the trapdoor clear. He looks back at the house and then heaves the door open.
There's a rush of thick, warm air and Sam reaches down, fumbling in the gloom until he finds a light switch. He's cautious of the short flight of narrow wooden stairs but they don't creak as he goes down and the room he finds himself in is as clean, if not cleaner, than the house.
It's a small room but comfortably fitted with a low, cushioned chair and a large Oriental red and gold rug spread out across the floor. It's weird but it's not what makes Sam's blood go thin and cold in his veins. The widescreen television and the video-player plugged in underneath do that, and so does the row of shelves along the wall, stocked full of videocassettes. Easily fifty of them.
The rug muffles Sam's footsteps as he crosses to the shelves but it's as if the whole world's on mute. There are names along the edge of each tape and sure enough, there's one with Dean, 7/94 on it. Sam eases the tape slowly from the shelf and looks down at it.
He looks back at the block of daylight pouring through the trapdoor, just for a second, listening for Dean, then he finds the TV remote and flicks it on. As the screen crackles with static, Sam crouches and pushes the tape into the player.
The picture is grainy, the colours bleached, but Sam recognises the rug he's standing on. It's lying on the floor of the conservatory though. He sees shadows fall across it and then Dean moves into view. Dean's young, unbearably cocky and even prettier than he is cocky. Sam can see it with the perspective the years have given him. Dean's face soft and smooth, impossibly green eyes and a mouth that always looks like it's just been kissed for half an hour non-stop.
Dean tilts his head at the camera and brushes his sun-streaked blond hair out of his face. It's longer then than Dean keeps it now. That was back before Dean took up the hunt and practicality came top on the list of priorities, way above prettiness.
"So?" he says. His voice is small and distant but Sam sways on his feet because it's like being a kid again himself. "How'd you want me?"
A voice off camera says, "Take your t-shirt off."
Dean smirks and tugs the hem of his Led Zeppelin t-shirt up. He stretches languidly as he strips and Sam frowns at how deliberately provocative he is. The façade falters for a second as Dean's arms twitch as if to cover his bare chest but then he throws the t-shirt down and, as always, anxiety becomes bravado.
"Like what you see?" he says and his hand strays to his fly, the waistband of his jeans hanging low about his narrow hips.
There's a laugh, low and throaty, off screen and Sam hits fast-forward on the remote. Lines crackle across the screen and Sam can't make out what Dean's doing but he recognises the colour of skin and recognises when someone else enters the picture. The shapes of the bodies shiver towards each other and then away. When Sam hits play, Dean's naked and getting down on all fours. Sam doesn't recognise the other guy in the picture, can only see his back and bare ass.
"Not scared, are you?" the guy says. His voice is gentle, intimate. "No, you're not scared. You want this. Don't you? That's a good boy. Tell me how much you want this."
He gets down on his knees behind Dean and puts his hands on him, on his hips, manoeuvring him into a better position for the camera. Up until then, Dean's eyes have been fixed on the rug, lips parted. Sam can see the stuttering rise and fall of his chest. He looks so small. Just a kid.
But at the command, he tilts his face up and seems to remember he's being filmed. He looks straight at the camera and a sharp smirk curls his lips. He opens his mouth to speak, to say just how much he wants this.
Sam stabs a finger at the Stop button. With shaking hands, he wrenches the video from the player. He stares at the white static flickering on the screen and tries to catch his breath. There's bile rising in his throat, bitter and hot.
He stumbles from the cellar and kicks the trapdoor shut behind himself. He meets Dean at the back door and Dean looks between his face and the videocassette he's holding. Sam presses it mutely into his hand and then pushes past him to get out of the house and back to the Impala.
:::
The videocassette sits with the photo album Dean had earlier on the backseat of the Impala. They're a presence in the car. Even though Sam doesn't once turn to look at them as they drive, he doesn't forget for a second that they're there.
Every so often, when he thinks Sam isn't looking, Dean sneaks a glance at him. Sam's pretty sure Dean's waiting for him to tackle the subject. Sam's pretty sure he's going to tackle the subject - it's all he can think of, after all - but he doesn't know where to start.
And in the end, Dean starts it for him.
"Did you watch the tape?"
"Some of it."
Dean nods and turns Blue Oyster Cult up louder.
They leave the town and drive out into the dust, stained red and orange by the setting sun. The shadows of the cacti are long and slant across the flat land. The heat that had settled on Sam earlier now seems feverish and the espresso-induced headache has reached a crescendo in his skull.
Dean clears his throat and adjusts his grip on the steering wheel.
"It was worth $500. Axtell was an artist. Paid me to model for him a couple of times. I mean, c'mon, getting paid to sit still? I could do that. Then he wanted to take photos and then… then he offered me $500 to fuck me and to film it." Dean shrugs like this is a ridiculously obvious situation. "Easy money."
Sam's stomach lurches and he wonders if Dean's going to think he's being a drama queen if Sam demands he stop the car so he can be sick. Better being mocked for being a drama queen than puking all over the Impala. He folds his arms tighter over his stomach and tries to keep his voice blank and empty.
"I guessed it was for money."
Sam feels rather than sees Dean look over at him. If he looks at Dean right now he's not going to be able to keep an even tone.
"Didn't traumatise me or scar me for life or any of that shit so get that look off your face. I went back 'cos I was curious. And the only reason I went and got the pictures was because he's dying." He looks at Sam again and says, "I'm not ashamed of it, Sam."
"Good. You shouldn't be. You were the victim."
"Never been a victim my whole damn life. Except maybe of your emo whining."
His tone is clearly asking for Sam to laugh or to get pissed off. His tone is asking for Sam to respond. But Sam can't right now. Not how Dean wants him too.
"You were fifteen," Sam says. Or tries to say it. His voice breaks halfway through and the rest of it comes out as a whisper. He wets his lips and says, "You were just a kid."
Dean waves a dismissive hand.
"A kid? Don't think so. Summer after that, I helped Dad toast my first vampire. And I'd already fucked Linda Sanderson too, not like I was a virgin. Remember Linda? From Albuquerque? God, she was hot. Had these thick plaits you could get a really good handhold on when she was blowing you."
When Sam doesn't answer, Dean slaps his leg lightly.
"C'mon, don't get all emo about it. It's not a thing, right? He offered me money for something that I had no problem doing. It's no big deal."
Rage makes Sam shudder. Rather than stop the car to be sick, he wants Dean to pull over so he can beat some sense into him. He needs to punch Dean until he stops trying to tell Sam that selling his virginity to some godawful pervert with a collection of videos like the one on the backseat is no big deal.
Instead, he turns his face to the window and watches the sun dribble beneath the horizon.
:::
They find a motel and Sam waits until Dean is in the shower before he winds the long, slick line of black tape from the videocassette into the trashcan and sets fire to it. He tries not to look at the numerous photos of Dean, naked and spread out in various poses, always with that tight smirk on his face, as he pulls them from the album and adds them to the bonfire.
The trashcan is still smoking when Dean gets out of the shower. He glances at it and the broken-spined photo album on Sam's lap, and rolls his eyes.
"Feel better?" he says, while he pulls on his sweatpants.
Sam looks at him and Dean blanches at his expression. He sighs and goes on dressing. Sam watches him, can't help but look for the differences between the man and the boy on the video. There aren't as many as he'd expect, as he'd hope.
"If it was me," he says.
Dean looks up at him, waiting for him to go on. Sam prods at the ashes in the trashcan.
"Pretend it was me. Pretend that when I was fifteen some guy paid me $500 so he could fuck me and film it. Now, tell me it's no big deal."
At Dean's silence, Sam offers him one of his own twisted smirks.
~end
The Words in the Picture
(genfic mostly + mild Dean/OMC, pg-13, 3124 words, fairly non-graphic child abuse)
Everything's for sale, even if Sam and Dean disagree on the price.
Eloy was the first place Sam ever drove the Impala. He was eleven years old and John was bleeding out in the backseat while Dean tried to hold his stomach closed. He drove all the way from the warehouse off the back roads to the emergency room. That kind of thing sticks in the memory.
He thinks Eloy is also the place where their neighbours had a fat, good-natured tabby that was the start of Sam's long, and ultimately unsuccessful, campaign to get a pet. He's not sure though, it might have been Ajo. It's hard to separate out one place from another - it's just a long blurred line of little towns with monsters and schools Sam was never at long enough to make any friends.
So when Dean suggests they make a detour to stop in, see if they can get lunch at the diner they used to eat at (if it's even still there), Sam's surprised but not particularly bothered one way or another. If Dean wants to stop, they'll stop; it's not like they've got anywhere pressing to be.
When they drive into town, Sam gets a few brief flashes of something that could as easily be passed off as déja vu as memory. All these comfortable, quiet towns follow the same template if you see enough of them.
:::
Somehow, the diner has escaped the attention of thirteen years passing. It's still there: a little shadowy inside, dark red leather booths and shelves of painted, porcelain pigs. Sam thinks he remembers the pigs. And he vaguely recollects the waitress. He gets that whisper of familiarity when he looks at her, even if she's a little plumper now he guesses, with a few more lines about her coffee-brown eyes.
Dean doesn't try to jog her memory but while he eats the pie she sets in front of him - thick, gleaming red sauce leaking from the pastry - he shoots her occasional, almost furtive looks. When he's not looking at her, he's concentrating on his pie. He eats in silence and the warm, lazy contentment of the afternoon is jarred.
Sam puts too much sugar in his espresso and feels the caffeine buzz through him, settles down to hide in the oncoming headache.
On the way out, Dean hesitates at the door then turns back to the waitress.
"Hey," he says. "Don't s'pose you know if Jeremy Axtell still lives here, do you? He used to have a place over on the edge of town."
In the middle of giving another customer a refill, the waitress straightens up and cocks her head at Dean. The slants of sunlight coming through the blinds make it hard to make out her expression.
"He a friend of yours, honey?"
Dean shrugs and there's a smirk waiting to curl his lips. On instinct, Sam steps a little closer to him, until his elbow brushes against Dean's, a point of friendly human contact. The sun is warm on his back and he can hear the school bell ring for the end of the day.
The waitress eyes Dean a moment then sets her coffee jug back on the counter. She adjusts the paper-frilled cap perched amid her greying curls and wets her lips.
"His place is still over there, sure."
"But him?" Dean prods.
"He's in the hospital. Cancer. Not got long left, I'm afraid. It's an evil disease."
"Sure is," says Dean.
:::
The Impala's boiling. The metal is painful to touch and Sam sags in his seat, his shirt sticking to his back. He's got the window wound right down and is watching the shape of the saguaros in the distance, beyond the outcrop of houses.
They're over the other side of the town from where they lived but Dean's driving slowly, peering through the windscreen at street names and he's still not speaking much. Sam tries to read his silence and is frustrated all over again how he can know Dean better than he knows anyone else on the face of the earth and still not quite get him sometimes. There's no thickness to the silence, no tension or hostility. It's as if Dean's mind is simply someplace else. And Sam can't for the life of him figure out why it should be here.
When he pulls up outside a house, a house like all the others on this street, Sam raises an eyebrow at him and Dean pretends not to notice.
"Wait here," he says as he climbs from the car.
The path to the house seems neat at first glance but weeds are beginning to creep up at the sides of it. The flowers in the hanging baskets by the door droop listlessly over the edge like the branches of a weeping willow. Dean pats the dry soil in the baskets and retrieves a key, then he disappears into the house and Sam sinks deeper in his seat to wait.
He only manages about five minutes before he finds himself out of the car and halfway up the path.
The air inside the house is dry and dusty. Yet another plant is wilting in its pot on the table by the door and there's a pile of unopened mail scooted to one side on the floor. Sam has a bad feeling about whose house this is.
Wandering a little deeper into the house, Sam finds a conservatory. The glass is smeared, a clear crack in one pane, and there are bugs skittering about the corners of the room. But propped up against the walls are canvases of unfinished abstract paintings. Sam tilts them forward, caught on the bold swirls of colour and the texture of the paint. He runs a fingertip over the edge of one of them.
"I thought I told you to stay in the car."
Sam looks over at Dean, notes the folder tucked under his arm.
"Yeah, and I wanted to come in." He looks again at the folder Dean's carrying, a large album covered in cream fabric with a faded pattern of diamonds. "This is Jeremy Axtell's house, right?"
Dean brushes past him to look at the paintings. He doesn't linger on any of them, just flicks through like the pages of an uninteresting book.
"S'right."
"The guy dying of cancer? You're taking things from the house of a guy who's dying of cancer?"
Sam tries to keep his voice free from accusation but it's all there in the words. He knows he must have missed something, something that will explain what the hell Dean thinks he's doing. Because this leaves a really bad taste in Sam's mouth and he wants Dean to make it okay.
Dean's smirk doesn't make it okay.
"It's not like he's gonna need it anymore."
Dean's moved in to the kitchen and is going through the cabinets. Sam follows him and is made even more uncomfortable by seeing a school photo of a little boy, which is pinned to the fridge by a magnet in the shape of a cheerful elephant. There's another photo, framed on the windowsill, of a wedding couple standing with an older man. The man's got flushed, jowly cheeks and a horribly bright tie on, but his arm is about the bride's shoulder and he's pressing a kiss to her temple.
"Seriously. Dean, what are we doing here?"
The note of righteous anger in Sam's voice puts an abrupt stop to Dean's search. He sighs and glances up at him. In the soft glow of filtered sunlight, the bruise on his jaw from the angry spirit they'd salted and burnt a few towns over is nothing but a shadow. He rubs the back of his neck before speaking.
"There are videos in here somewhere. One of them'll be marked with my name or with '1994'. Help me find them."
Sam's lips move but he can't form any words. His brow furrows and Dean's shoulders sag at his confusion. He pushes past him and goes back through the conservatory.
"Just help me find them," he calls over his shoulder.
Sam listens to the creak of the staircase overhead and stares out of the window, at the garden full of dying things. His chaotic thought processes are interrupted by the glint of metal he can see among the wilted plants in the flowerbeds. He goes out the back door and across the yellowing grass. Somewhere he can hear the hiss of sprinklers, but not here.
The metal he can see is from the handle to a cellar of some kind. It's overgrown with weeds and Sam has to push so much dirt out of the way his nails are filthy by the time he's got the trapdoor clear. He looks back at the house and then heaves the door open.
There's a rush of thick, warm air and Sam reaches down, fumbling in the gloom until he finds a light switch. He's cautious of the short flight of narrow wooden stairs but they don't creak as he goes down and the room he finds himself in is as clean, if not cleaner, than the house.
It's a small room but comfortably fitted with a low, cushioned chair and a large Oriental red and gold rug spread out across the floor. It's weird but it's not what makes Sam's blood go thin and cold in his veins. The widescreen television and the video-player plugged in underneath do that, and so does the row of shelves along the wall, stocked full of videocassettes. Easily fifty of them.
The rug muffles Sam's footsteps as he crosses to the shelves but it's as if the whole world's on mute. There are names along the edge of each tape and sure enough, there's one with Dean, 7/94 on it. Sam eases the tape slowly from the shelf and looks down at it.
He looks back at the block of daylight pouring through the trapdoor, just for a second, listening for Dean, then he finds the TV remote and flicks it on. As the screen crackles with static, Sam crouches and pushes the tape into the player.
The picture is grainy, the colours bleached, but Sam recognises the rug he's standing on. It's lying on the floor of the conservatory though. He sees shadows fall across it and then Dean moves into view. Dean's young, unbearably cocky and even prettier than he is cocky. Sam can see it with the perspective the years have given him. Dean's face soft and smooth, impossibly green eyes and a mouth that always looks like it's just been kissed for half an hour non-stop.
Dean tilts his head at the camera and brushes his sun-streaked blond hair out of his face. It's longer then than Dean keeps it now. That was back before Dean took up the hunt and practicality came top on the list of priorities, way above prettiness.
"So?" he says. His voice is small and distant but Sam sways on his feet because it's like being a kid again himself. "How'd you want me?"
A voice off camera says, "Take your t-shirt off."
Dean smirks and tugs the hem of his Led Zeppelin t-shirt up. He stretches languidly as he strips and Sam frowns at how deliberately provocative he is. The façade falters for a second as Dean's arms twitch as if to cover his bare chest but then he throws the t-shirt down and, as always, anxiety becomes bravado.
"Like what you see?" he says and his hand strays to his fly, the waistband of his jeans hanging low about his narrow hips.
There's a laugh, low and throaty, off screen and Sam hits fast-forward on the remote. Lines crackle across the screen and Sam can't make out what Dean's doing but he recognises the colour of skin and recognises when someone else enters the picture. The shapes of the bodies shiver towards each other and then away. When Sam hits play, Dean's naked and getting down on all fours. Sam doesn't recognise the other guy in the picture, can only see his back and bare ass.
"Not scared, are you?" the guy says. His voice is gentle, intimate. "No, you're not scared. You want this. Don't you? That's a good boy. Tell me how much you want this."
He gets down on his knees behind Dean and puts his hands on him, on his hips, manoeuvring him into a better position for the camera. Up until then, Dean's eyes have been fixed on the rug, lips parted. Sam can see the stuttering rise and fall of his chest. He looks so small. Just a kid.
But at the command, he tilts his face up and seems to remember he's being filmed. He looks straight at the camera and a sharp smirk curls his lips. He opens his mouth to speak, to say just how much he wants this.
Sam stabs a finger at the Stop button. With shaking hands, he wrenches the video from the player. He stares at the white static flickering on the screen and tries to catch his breath. There's bile rising in his throat, bitter and hot.
He stumbles from the cellar and kicks the trapdoor shut behind himself. He meets Dean at the back door and Dean looks between his face and the videocassette he's holding. Sam presses it mutely into his hand and then pushes past him to get out of the house and back to the Impala.
:::
The videocassette sits with the photo album Dean had earlier on the backseat of the Impala. They're a presence in the car. Even though Sam doesn't once turn to look at them as they drive, he doesn't forget for a second that they're there.
Every so often, when he thinks Sam isn't looking, Dean sneaks a glance at him. Sam's pretty sure Dean's waiting for him to tackle the subject. Sam's pretty sure he's going to tackle the subject - it's all he can think of, after all - but he doesn't know where to start.
And in the end, Dean starts it for him.
"Did you watch the tape?"
"Some of it."
Dean nods and turns Blue Oyster Cult up louder.
They leave the town and drive out into the dust, stained red and orange by the setting sun. The shadows of the cacti are long and slant across the flat land. The heat that had settled on Sam earlier now seems feverish and the espresso-induced headache has reached a crescendo in his skull.
Dean clears his throat and adjusts his grip on the steering wheel.
"It was worth $500. Axtell was an artist. Paid me to model for him a couple of times. I mean, c'mon, getting paid to sit still? I could do that. Then he wanted to take photos and then… then he offered me $500 to fuck me and to film it." Dean shrugs like this is a ridiculously obvious situation. "Easy money."
Sam's stomach lurches and he wonders if Dean's going to think he's being a drama queen if Sam demands he stop the car so he can be sick. Better being mocked for being a drama queen than puking all over the Impala. He folds his arms tighter over his stomach and tries to keep his voice blank and empty.
"I guessed it was for money."
Sam feels rather than sees Dean look over at him. If he looks at Dean right now he's not going to be able to keep an even tone.
"Didn't traumatise me or scar me for life or any of that shit so get that look off your face. I went back 'cos I was curious. And the only reason I went and got the pictures was because he's dying." He looks at Sam again and says, "I'm not ashamed of it, Sam."
"Good. You shouldn't be. You were the victim."
"Never been a victim my whole damn life. Except maybe of your emo whining."
His tone is clearly asking for Sam to laugh or to get pissed off. His tone is asking for Sam to respond. But Sam can't right now. Not how Dean wants him too.
"You were fifteen," Sam says. Or tries to say it. His voice breaks halfway through and the rest of it comes out as a whisper. He wets his lips and says, "You were just a kid."
Dean waves a dismissive hand.
"A kid? Don't think so. Summer after that, I helped Dad toast my first vampire. And I'd already fucked Linda Sanderson too, not like I was a virgin. Remember Linda? From Albuquerque? God, she was hot. Had these thick plaits you could get a really good handhold on when she was blowing you."
When Sam doesn't answer, Dean slaps his leg lightly.
"C'mon, don't get all emo about it. It's not a thing, right? He offered me money for something that I had no problem doing. It's no big deal."
Rage makes Sam shudder. Rather than stop the car to be sick, he wants Dean to pull over so he can beat some sense into him. He needs to punch Dean until he stops trying to tell Sam that selling his virginity to some godawful pervert with a collection of videos like the one on the backseat is no big deal.
Instead, he turns his face to the window and watches the sun dribble beneath the horizon.
:::
They find a motel and Sam waits until Dean is in the shower before he winds the long, slick line of black tape from the videocassette into the trashcan and sets fire to it. He tries not to look at the numerous photos of Dean, naked and spread out in various poses, always with that tight smirk on his face, as he pulls them from the album and adds them to the bonfire.
The trashcan is still smoking when Dean gets out of the shower. He glances at it and the broken-spined photo album on Sam's lap, and rolls his eyes.
"Feel better?" he says, while he pulls on his sweatpants.
Sam looks at him and Dean blanches at his expression. He sighs and goes on dressing. Sam watches him, can't help but look for the differences between the man and the boy on the video. There aren't as many as he'd expect, as he'd hope.
"If it was me," he says.
Dean looks up at him, waiting for him to go on. Sam prods at the ashes in the trashcan.
"Pretend it was me. Pretend that when I was fifteen some guy paid me $500 so he could fuck me and film it. Now, tell me it's no big deal."
At Dean's silence, Sam offers him one of his own twisted smirks.
~end