FIC: What Remains Behind (Supernatural, dark, non-con) - Mature only
TITLE: What Remains Behind
FANDOM: Supernatural
RATING: Mature
PAIRINGS: Dean/Bobby, Dean/OMCs
CONTENT WARNING: Rape, hurt/comfort, angst, grieving
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Written for this prompt at SPN Kink Meme. Cross posted various places. Set S7 after they lose Castiel (haven't actually seen the eps yet so playing a bit fast and loose with canon).
SUMMARY: It was just another hunt. Dean didn't know anything different until he got back to Bobby's and by then, it was too damn late.
Dean grunted as he kicked his way out from under the corpse of the snake-thing. There was no name for it in any of the lore he’d worked his way through before coming out here to kick its ass, hardly anything about it at all. Just that it was poisonous in more ways than one, but he’d been careful. It hadn’t even managed to graze him with its fangs, huge curved fucking things that could probably have torn chunks out of him if it had managed to get a hold of him with them.
Not that it hadn’t tried, even made to throw its loops of muscle around him at one point to constrict the life out of him.
But it was dead now. The cold slimy blood was on his hands, face, neck and his clothes, but a shower and a stop off at the nearest laundrette would take care of that. And then on to Bobby’s for some decent food and a chance to sleep without having to worry about no one being there to watch his back.
When he made it back to the motel, he ended up kicking off his clothes and shoving them inside a garbage bag that he stowed in his duffel. He could wash them back at Bobby’s. Even a shower seemed too much effort, but he figured it was better to sleep clean than get the bed covered in gross snake blood.
So he hauled himself under the water, scrubbed himself clean even when he found places his body ached. Damn thing hadn’t gone down without a fight, and it was the kind of thing he’d have preferred Sam being there to help with.
But someone had to track the Leviathans, those fucks, and Dean forcefully steered his thoughts away from them. Because when he let his mind wander, he was back at the reservoir, watching his stupid idiotic misguided friend stagger into the water and then go under.
While he stood there watching because there was fuck all else he could do about it.
He didn’t sleep too much that night.
**
He set out early the next morning, desperate to just get home and be with Sam and Bobby again. He dialled Sam’s phone as he drove, keeping a careful eye out for any police.
“Dean, hi,” Sam said. “You come up with a name for your snake monster yet?”
Dean found himself shrugging. “Working on it.” He wondered at the tenuous link between the snake and the pet shop owner in town who never seemed to be around at the same time. Dean had stopped in before leaving town and found the shop locked up. The guy’s car was still there, so Dean wondered if maybe it had been him all along.
“Getting slow, old man?”
“Screw you, bitch,” he said, grinning. “Were-snake. No, wait. Manaconda.”
“You’re shitting me. For real?”
“Looks like.” He’d put an anonymous call into the sheriff’s department, telling them there were a lot of unattended animals in the guy’s store. It was up to them from there on in. “First time for everything, Sammy. Gonna be there in maybe two hours.”
“Yeah, Dean…I’m not at Bobby’s.”
Dean felt something knot tight in his gut. “Where are you, Sam?”
“Look, I got a lead on a possible Leviathan. We can’t miss any chance we’ve got to stop them, Dean. Especially not after what they did. What they could do.”
What they did. “Cas chose his own path there, Sam. And I don’t want you going after any of them on your own. They’re too dangerous.”
He could hear the frustration in Sam’s voice. Sam had had this conversation with him many times, all mostly one-sided because Dean just wasn’t ready to pull back the dressing on that particular wound and see just how festered it was.
“He didn’t choose the Leviathans, Dean. He didn’t know they were in there. They were probably just waiting for the chance at him.”
And Cas had given them that chance. Dean had told him not to. Had warned him. But Cas was too like Sam. Wouldn’t see sense, wouldn’t budge. Too damn stubborn, thinking it was all on him. He could fix this all on his own.
And look where it had gotten him.
“Get back to Bobby’s,” Dean said. “I’ll meet you there, we can talk out a plan and then we’ll go. All three of us.”
“Dean,” Sam said, but Dean cut him off.
“I mean it, Sam.”
“I won’t get there until tomorrow.”
“Ok. Any longer than that I’m coming after your ass.”
Sam chuckled at him. “Whatever. Manaconda. Sometimes, I can’t believe we’re related.”
“Your cross to bear, Sammy. See ya.”
He hung up and dumped the phone on the passenger seat. Sometimes, Sam was too like Cas. Wouldn’t wait, had a plan and so had to go for it without letting anybody else just think it through with him.
If he was honest with himself, for a while there he’d had two little brothers. And now he was back to one, and no matter how much he insisted it was all Castiel’s own doing, he couldn’t ignore the voice in his head that told him somehow he was as much to blame.
It was his job to protect his family, and he’d done a poor fucking job so far.
**
He noticed the other vehicles when he rolled into Bobby’s yard later that morning, but didn’t pay it too much mind. They looked like they belonged to hunters - beat up pick-ups, a couple of vans, even a Harley. You got to know, them and their cars. Kind of like some not quite sixth sense, maybe the way cops knew other cops even out of uniform.
It looked like Bobby was having a get together, and Dean considered turning the car around and heading back out. He wasn’t really in the mood for any company other than Bobby’s, because Bobby knew when to just guide him to the liquor and then leave him the hell alone.
But he’d also told Bobby he’d be back, and he didn’t want him worrying.
He pulled up outside the house, and went on in.
There were maybe six or seven other guys in the den. Bobby was sitting behind his desk, shaking his head in disbelief at the story one of them was telling. Dean heard something about someone getting head off some grateful housewife while her hubby was sleeping off an exorcism upstairs.
Some guys were just douchebags.
Bobby looked up as he came in, and waved him forward. “Dean! Come on in, son. You probably don’t know these guys.”
Dean glanced once around the room, nodded a greeting. “Don’t think so, no.” He really didn’t want to either, but this was Bobby’s house and he wasn’t going to be a dick.
Bobby made introductions he really wasn’t listening to, but figured he was just going to find an excuse to go sleep and probably stay in his room until they were gone.
One of them - big dude, beard nearly down to his waist - caught Dean’s hand and shook it hard enough to half take his arm off. And then he didn’t let go, even when Dean stared pointedly at their joined hands.
“Uh, ok, you could wrestle grizzlies, I get it.” He tried to tug his hand back, but the guy didn’t let go.
“Bobby,” the guy said. He shot a leery grin over to where Bobby sat. “How come you never mentioned you had this little thing hanging around before now?”
Dean pulled harder and got his hand free. “Excuse me?”
Bobby stood up, and Dean figured this was where Bobby told the guy to get the fuck out.
“Well, I never thought about it like that until now. Never really thought about him that way until now.” He caught the furious look Dean shot him. “Well, he’s got a point, Dean. Come on, boy; you almost flaunt it. Can’t blame the fellas if they take notice of what you’re putting out.”
“Putting out? Seriously? Bobby, what the fuck!”
And then he realised what Bobby had said. He risked a glance around at the other men. They were staring at him in ways Dean wouldn’t have minded if they all had racks and were eyeing him up in a bar somewhere.
This was way different, and he suddenly felt creeped out. And really scared.
He backed up, fast, and one of them - fuck the introductions, he couldn’t care less about names at this point - made a lunge at him.
Dean snapped out his elbow, breaking the guy’s nose, and then rammed his foot into his stomach. He went down hard, and Dean grabbed the only weapon he had on him at that point.
Castiel’s angel blade, the one he’d taken off Cas when the Leviathans were fighting to take him completely over.
He started retreating to the door, holding the blade a little behind him, ready. The other men - Bobby too, what the hell was going on - were starting to move towards him like a pack, except the one he’d downed.
All the possibilities ran through Dean’s head, each crowding in on the other. Possession, no, because every hunter had the tattoo. Curse, maybe, but Bobby hadn’t come down with the rain and it would take something pretty shifty to get one over on him. And they’d been okay until he’d come in, he was sure.
If they’d been like this when Sam was here - and Dean was immediately grateful they clearly hadn’t been, because the thought of Sam in this situation made him feel physically sick - then Sam would have warned him. Sam would have called him for help. He wouldn’t have glibly let Dean blunder into this.
So whatever was wrong, it was something he’d brought in with him.
Fuck it, he hadn’t touched anything either. The car was as warded as Bobby’s house, so no hex bags could work in it. You couldn’t get cursed and not realise it.
He reached the door and felt backwards with his hand until his fingers fastened around the handle. He turned it desperately, moved forward enough to yank the door open and then backed out onto the porch.
They were following him. The door was his only lucky break. They couldn’t come at him all at once, for whatever they had in mind - and from the looks he’d been getting, Dean knew what that was even if his mind baulked at the idea of it.
He tugged the door shut and made a run for it.
The car was right there. He could rabbit, and then call Sam and try to figure out what the fuck was going on.
He even thought he had a chance until he caught movement from the corner of his eye. He cried out as something connected hard with the side of his head and he crashed to the ground.
Someone loomed over him, a guy, that was all he could tell. His head felt like it had been split open, and he wanted to throw up.
“Going somewhere, sonny?”
Dean groaned. He rolled onto his stomach, dug his fingers into the dirt and tried to haul himself towards the car. He was so fucking close.
The guy put his foot down just above the small of Dean’s back and pressed with his weight. Dean grunted, fought but the pressure and the pain in his head and the nausea were too much.
He collapsed forward, fingers reaching in vain for his Baby like she could somehow just get him out of this because he needed it.
“Yeah, didn’t think so,” the guy said, and then reached down to flip him over.
The last thing Dean saw was the guy’s fist come flying towards him.
**
He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but they’d certainly put the time to good use.
He woke up buck naked, face down on the hood of the car, the air chilling his skin. And there was no point in trying to get up, because his head was turned to the side and he could see the length of rope knotted around his wrist. Wincing, he turned his face to see it was the same on the other side.
The ropes vanished out of his line of sight, and he tugged at them just in case, but found them taut and inescapable.
Hell, these were hunters. Nobody else was better for knowing how to tie somebody up so they had no chance of getting loose.
Dean tried to move his legs, and felt the burn of rope against his ankles and thighs.
Fuck, if he’d been in any doubt what was next he sure wasn’t now.
“Bobby,” he gasped. It was a little hard to breathe with his upper body - hips to head - pinned flat on the hood of his car. “Bobby, please.”
Bobby was next to him, suddenly, leaning down. “Hell, son, I don’t know what you expect me to do. I’ve seen you flirting like you’ve got a license, can’t blame me if somebody takes note. And maybe this’ll be good for you. Seen how you’ve been lately - all twisted in on yourself. Only a matter of time before you got yourself or somebody else hurt.”
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Dean snarled. He tore hard against the ropes, felt the burn turn into something sharper as his skin broke and bled. “Don’t you dare make like this is for me! Don’t you fucking mention that!”
Bobby made shushing sounds, brought his hand to rest on Dean’s back. Dean whimpered, scared and shaken and hurt. Yeah, he’d had Bobby’s hands on him before - stitching wounds, setting breaks, hugging him that one time when he’d been fevered and ill.
This wasn’t that and he wanted to scream.
“There’s no talking to you when you’re like this,” Bobby chided him, and it was worse because he sounded so low and worried - like he wanted to fix him and he couldn’t figure out how.
Then he moved out of Dean’s sight, and Dean tried to turn his head so he could see where he’d gone. But all he could see was a little of the yard to either side, and if he craned his neck and rested his chin on the cold metal beneath him, the windscreen right in front of him.
A shadow fell across the glass, the reflection he realised of one of the guys from the den. He couldn’t tell which - and did it really matter, anyway.
Something cold dribbled onto his skin, just above the base of his spine, and Dean jerked.
“Where you trying to go, little thing?” It was him, the guy with the beard. “Ain’t no place you can go, not until we’ll done with you.”
Dean grunted as he felt a finger drag that coldness down his skin, to someplace it wasn’t meant to be and then push roughly inside him.
“Fuck off!” he yelled. “Just get off me!”
He dug his teeth into his bottom lip as the guy started crooking his finger in and out. Blood welled up and filled his mouth, the taste of copper on his tongue making him gag. He swallowed it down desperately. If he puked like this, they’d probably leave him to choke on it, and he was finding it hard enough to breathe.
“You wait til my dick’s in you, boy,” the guy said. “Gonna loosen you up for the rest of them. You think you’re sore now? By the time we’re done, walking’s gonna be something you used to do. Maybe Singer’s still got that chair around somewhere. Maybe we’ll tie you into it until we’re ready to go again, huh?”
Dean moaned as the guy pulled his finger out. Hated it as he had, he knew what was next and almost wished the guy’s finger was still inside him.
He couldn’t help but yell as the guy breached him. Not slow, not easy, just ramming himself in like he’d gone through the world’s longest dry spell. Every shove pushed him forward on the hood of the car, straining the ropes, making them bite harder into him. His dick rubbed hard against the chrome, and despite himself he knew he was getting hard.
Fuck it, how could he be turned on by this?
Then beard guy was groaning and pumping in short brutal jerks and Dean could tell when he’d come. He gave a gasp and then flopped forward, his weight landing on Dean and driving the air out of him.
“Lucas, get the hell off of him,” he heard Bobby say. “You’re smothering the boy.”
The weight lifted and Dean sucked in as much air as he could hold, but it didn’t feel like enough.
And then someone else was behind him and he pulled away on instinct, even if he knew he couldn’t go anywhere.
And then there was someone else, and someone else, and eventually he couldn’t tell when he was empty or full, except when they had their hands on his hips.
“Oh, Dean,” Bobby said, finally. Dean didn’t acknowledge him. His throat hurt, feeling like someone had balled up some barbed wire and shoved it down there. “You know, I wanted to be first, but - well, gotta be a good host, right?”
Dean screwed his eyes shut. He hadn’t cried, no matter how much it had hurt, up until then, but he couldn’t hold it back.
“Please,” he managed. He swore that one word made his throat bleed. “Please, Bobby, please not you.”
“Come on, son. You wouldn’t say no to me, now would you? Not to me.” He rested his hand on the back of Dean’s neck, petted him. It was the heaviest thing Dean had ever felt, and he wished he’d had the strength to shrug it off at first.
But it felt so like Bobby. Like how Bobby had rested his hand there after…after they’d locked Sam in the panic room. After he’d found out about Sam’s soul. After Death had put it back and Cas had said….
Cas.
After Cas had staggered into the water, knowing he wasn’t coming back out, and Dean had watched him go - full of hurt and hate and so much fucking pain he wasn’t sure that he wasn’t about to be ripped apart just like Cas was going to be.
“Cas,” he whispered. “Cas, please. Please help me.”
“Shush, boy. Ain’t no use praying to the dead.”
Dean sobbed as he felt Bobby thrust against him, and finally, finally, fell into the darkness.
**
He woke up to find Sam sitting next to him and his first instinct was to grab his brother and get out.
But Sam grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back down onto the bed. “No, no, it’s ok, Dean. I swear to God it’s ok.”
Dean sagged back against the pillows. He was too numb to hurt, but he could almost feel it waiting in the wings.
“Sam, what happened to them?”
Sam shook his head. He looked pale and stricken, like he’d woken from the worst nightmare ever and yet knew it wasn’t over. “I think…. I checked all your gear and found your clothes. That blood, you got some of it on you?”
Dean nodded. Of course, it had to be. It was the only thing that had happened to him, the only thing it could have been.
“Did you burn them?”
Sam nodded. “Bobby’s…. He’s getting drunk out in the yard. Don’t worry, he hasn’t got any guns or knives. He kicked the rest of them out.”
Dean raised his hands, saw bandages wrapped neatly around his wrists. “How bad?”
“Dean.”
“How bad, Sam?”
Sam swallowed hard. “You’re torn up pretty bad. Anywhere the ropes were. And…down there. I cleaned you up as best I could, and the bleeding’s stopped, but I think we should get a doctor to check you out. You probably need some anti-biotics, Dean. Some post exposure medication, just in case. There’s no way of knowing if they had anything.”
Ok. Dean could see the sense in what Sam was saying. But he wasn’t going to a doctor. They knew people who could get him meds, whatever he needed.
“You’re not going to go to the hospital, are you?” Sam could always read him so easily.
“And tell them what, Sam? I got tied down and fucked on the hood of my car by Bobby and his hunter buddies?”
“So we don’t tell them who.”
“Yeah, and the hospital won’t call the cops, and the cops won’t push me for answers. They’ll just happily leave it there.”
“Damn it, Dean. We can’t look after this.”
“Yes, we can. Get on the laptop, find out what people get prescribed after… Afterwards. Then we’ll get Garth or somebody to get it for us. It’ll do. It has before.”
“You’ve never been raped before.”
Dean glared at him. If he could have, he’d have hit him. But he couldn’t sit up on his own, right now. “Just go look into it.”
Sam got up, shaking his head, and started towards the door. He turned back, angrily.
“It wasn’t great for me, either, you know - finding you tied to the front of the car, bleeding and out cold. So do me a favour and don’t fight me on this. Just this once. Please, Dean.”
Then he was gone, and Dean lay there in the silence. Amazed at no matter how bad things got, he always managed to find a way to fuck them up even worse.
**
It took another couple of days before he was strong enough to get out of bed. Sam had been with him almost constantly, feeding him, washing him down as far as Dean would allow, helping him to the bathroom.
Pushing pills on him, which had arrived the same day Sam had found him tied to the car, probably courtesy of Garth, prophylactic measures against whatever Sam worried he might have caught.
“At least I can’t get pregnant,” he managed, once, as the bitter taste of the meds hit the back of his throat and almost cause him to bring them back up.
Sam stared at him, hurt and anger in his eyes, and Dean figured too soon.
And Bobby hadn’t come close once during that time. Dean wasn’t sorry for that. He didn’t know when he’d be able to look at Bobby without feeling…. Whatever it was he was feeling now. It was everything all at once, and Dean couldn’t pick it apart.
His worse fear was fear. That he’d flinch if Bobby appeared in the doorway or he heard his voice.
But that was going to happen at some point - this was Bobby’s home. And until he was strong enough to leave, Bobby would be somewhere nearby.
At that point Dean decided he was going to have to face the fact that he’d bump into him at some point. So he decided on the middle ground. He wasn’t going to seek Bobby out, but if it happened then it happened.
He waited until Sam had passed out in a chair by the bed and then went out to the yard.
The Impala was right where he’d left it.
Dean drew in a sharp breath as he saw the marks on the hood. The places where the ropes had scored the paintwork, and the other marks. The ones he could at least clean with soap and hot water, and he wished it would be that fucking easy to get them off him too.
Sam had cleaned him up afterwards and then covered his bandages with cling film so he could eventually shower himself, but it didn’t feel like it had made much of a difference.
Dean filled a bucket from the spigot at the side of the house, grabbed some soap and a chamois from the small shed where Bobby kept his tools and the like, and made a start on the job.
He needed the car clean, back the way it was. There was a bodywork place in town that could fix the chafed paint, but it would take a few days before he was up to the job of driving the car there. For now, this was all he could do, but it was a start.
The thought of forever having his Baby tied to the memories of what had happened was too much. Maybe it would take more than scrubbing her clean, but he hoped not. This car had been a constant to him and Sam. She was pretty much the only thing they’d had for as long as he could remember, other than each other.
She had been their home, their shelter.
And now he felt like she’d been as misused as he had.
Fuck Bobby. And fuck those other bastards.
He finished soaping her up, scrubbed as hard as he could especially in the places where he knew they’d marked her and he probably had too. Not by choice.
But even though it hurt what they’d done, to her, to him, he couldn’t push what Bobby had said out of his mind.
Putting down the bucket and cloth, Dean dried his hands on his shirt and then went around to the trunk.
Under the fake shelf, in a box crammed in among the weapons, was the trench coat.
Dean pulled it out and looked at it.
Bobby had been right, and he knew it now. If Cas had heard him pray, had known what was happening there was nothing in Heaven, on Earth, or in Hell, that would have kept him from coming to save him.
Maybe this time, he wasn’t coming back.
He sank down next to the car, and buried his face in the coat. Was this what it had taken? To get him to just accept it? That he’d lost part of his family, by not being strong enough to hold on to Cas? To rein him in? To kick his ass if need be until he saw sense?
He screamed against the coat, raw and angry, and cursed that stupid child of an angel for just not listening to him.
Once he was done, body aching, feeling more drained than he ever had, Dean pushed himself to his feet. He put the trench coat back into the box and closed it over.
Cas had come back before. Maybe he was somewhere he couldn’t hear Dean. Maybe those fucking Leviathan had dragged him off with them. Maybe something else was holding him somewhere, or maybe he was still trying to make his way back. To them.
To him.
He closed the trunk and turned to lean gingerly against it. Until he knew for sure that Cas was never coming home to him, he was going to take it on faith that he was.
Because if you couldn’t have faith in your family, no matter how broken they were, no matter what they did, then who could you have faith in?
FANDOM: Supernatural
RATING: Mature
PAIRINGS: Dean/Bobby, Dean/OMCs
CONTENT WARNING: Rape, hurt/comfort, angst, grieving
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Written for this prompt at SPN Kink Meme. Cross posted various places. Set S7 after they lose Castiel (haven't actually seen the eps yet so playing a bit fast and loose with canon).
SUMMARY: It was just another hunt. Dean didn't know anything different until he got back to Bobby's and by then, it was too damn late.
Dean grunted as he kicked his way out from under the corpse of the snake-thing. There was no name for it in any of the lore he’d worked his way through before coming out here to kick its ass, hardly anything about it at all. Just that it was poisonous in more ways than one, but he’d been careful. It hadn’t even managed to graze him with its fangs, huge curved fucking things that could probably have torn chunks out of him if it had managed to get a hold of him with them.
Not that it hadn’t tried, even made to throw its loops of muscle around him at one point to constrict the life out of him.
But it was dead now. The cold slimy blood was on his hands, face, neck and his clothes, but a shower and a stop off at the nearest laundrette would take care of that. And then on to Bobby’s for some decent food and a chance to sleep without having to worry about no one being there to watch his back.
When he made it back to the motel, he ended up kicking off his clothes and shoving them inside a garbage bag that he stowed in his duffel. He could wash them back at Bobby’s. Even a shower seemed too much effort, but he figured it was better to sleep clean than get the bed covered in gross snake blood.
So he hauled himself under the water, scrubbed himself clean even when he found places his body ached. Damn thing hadn’t gone down without a fight, and it was the kind of thing he’d have preferred Sam being there to help with.
But someone had to track the Leviathans, those fucks, and Dean forcefully steered his thoughts away from them. Because when he let his mind wander, he was back at the reservoir, watching his stupid idiotic misguided friend stagger into the water and then go under.
While he stood there watching because there was fuck all else he could do about it.
He didn’t sleep too much that night.
**
He set out early the next morning, desperate to just get home and be with Sam and Bobby again. He dialled Sam’s phone as he drove, keeping a careful eye out for any police.
“Dean, hi,” Sam said. “You come up with a name for your snake monster yet?”
Dean found himself shrugging. “Working on it.” He wondered at the tenuous link between the snake and the pet shop owner in town who never seemed to be around at the same time. Dean had stopped in before leaving town and found the shop locked up. The guy’s car was still there, so Dean wondered if maybe it had been him all along.
“Getting slow, old man?”
“Screw you, bitch,” he said, grinning. “Were-snake. No, wait. Manaconda.”
“You’re shitting me. For real?”
“Looks like.” He’d put an anonymous call into the sheriff’s department, telling them there were a lot of unattended animals in the guy’s store. It was up to them from there on in. “First time for everything, Sammy. Gonna be there in maybe two hours.”
“Yeah, Dean…I’m not at Bobby’s.”
Dean felt something knot tight in his gut. “Where are you, Sam?”
“Look, I got a lead on a possible Leviathan. We can’t miss any chance we’ve got to stop them, Dean. Especially not after what they did. What they could do.”
What they did. “Cas chose his own path there, Sam. And I don’t want you going after any of them on your own. They’re too dangerous.”
He could hear the frustration in Sam’s voice. Sam had had this conversation with him many times, all mostly one-sided because Dean just wasn’t ready to pull back the dressing on that particular wound and see just how festered it was.
“He didn’t choose the Leviathans, Dean. He didn’t know they were in there. They were probably just waiting for the chance at him.”
And Cas had given them that chance. Dean had told him not to. Had warned him. But Cas was too like Sam. Wouldn’t see sense, wouldn’t budge. Too damn stubborn, thinking it was all on him. He could fix this all on his own.
And look where it had gotten him.
“Get back to Bobby’s,” Dean said. “I’ll meet you there, we can talk out a plan and then we’ll go. All three of us.”
“Dean,” Sam said, but Dean cut him off.
“I mean it, Sam.”
“I won’t get there until tomorrow.”
“Ok. Any longer than that I’m coming after your ass.”
Sam chuckled at him. “Whatever. Manaconda. Sometimes, I can’t believe we’re related.”
“Your cross to bear, Sammy. See ya.”
He hung up and dumped the phone on the passenger seat. Sometimes, Sam was too like Cas. Wouldn’t wait, had a plan and so had to go for it without letting anybody else just think it through with him.
If he was honest with himself, for a while there he’d had two little brothers. And now he was back to one, and no matter how much he insisted it was all Castiel’s own doing, he couldn’t ignore the voice in his head that told him somehow he was as much to blame.
It was his job to protect his family, and he’d done a poor fucking job so far.
**
He noticed the other vehicles when he rolled into Bobby’s yard later that morning, but didn’t pay it too much mind. They looked like they belonged to hunters - beat up pick-ups, a couple of vans, even a Harley. You got to know, them and their cars. Kind of like some not quite sixth sense, maybe the way cops knew other cops even out of uniform.
It looked like Bobby was having a get together, and Dean considered turning the car around and heading back out. He wasn’t really in the mood for any company other than Bobby’s, because Bobby knew when to just guide him to the liquor and then leave him the hell alone.
But he’d also told Bobby he’d be back, and he didn’t want him worrying.
He pulled up outside the house, and went on in.
There were maybe six or seven other guys in the den. Bobby was sitting behind his desk, shaking his head in disbelief at the story one of them was telling. Dean heard something about someone getting head off some grateful housewife while her hubby was sleeping off an exorcism upstairs.
Some guys were just douchebags.
Bobby looked up as he came in, and waved him forward. “Dean! Come on in, son. You probably don’t know these guys.”
Dean glanced once around the room, nodded a greeting. “Don’t think so, no.” He really didn’t want to either, but this was Bobby’s house and he wasn’t going to be a dick.
Bobby made introductions he really wasn’t listening to, but figured he was just going to find an excuse to go sleep and probably stay in his room until they were gone.
One of them - big dude, beard nearly down to his waist - caught Dean’s hand and shook it hard enough to half take his arm off. And then he didn’t let go, even when Dean stared pointedly at their joined hands.
“Uh, ok, you could wrestle grizzlies, I get it.” He tried to tug his hand back, but the guy didn’t let go.
“Bobby,” the guy said. He shot a leery grin over to where Bobby sat. “How come you never mentioned you had this little thing hanging around before now?”
Dean pulled harder and got his hand free. “Excuse me?”
Bobby stood up, and Dean figured this was where Bobby told the guy to get the fuck out.
“Well, I never thought about it like that until now. Never really thought about him that way until now.” He caught the furious look Dean shot him. “Well, he’s got a point, Dean. Come on, boy; you almost flaunt it. Can’t blame the fellas if they take notice of what you’re putting out.”
“Putting out? Seriously? Bobby, what the fuck!”
And then he realised what Bobby had said. He risked a glance around at the other men. They were staring at him in ways Dean wouldn’t have minded if they all had racks and were eyeing him up in a bar somewhere.
This was way different, and he suddenly felt creeped out. And really scared.
He backed up, fast, and one of them - fuck the introductions, he couldn’t care less about names at this point - made a lunge at him.
Dean snapped out his elbow, breaking the guy’s nose, and then rammed his foot into his stomach. He went down hard, and Dean grabbed the only weapon he had on him at that point.
Castiel’s angel blade, the one he’d taken off Cas when the Leviathans were fighting to take him completely over.
He started retreating to the door, holding the blade a little behind him, ready. The other men - Bobby too, what the hell was going on - were starting to move towards him like a pack, except the one he’d downed.
All the possibilities ran through Dean’s head, each crowding in on the other. Possession, no, because every hunter had the tattoo. Curse, maybe, but Bobby hadn’t come down with the rain and it would take something pretty shifty to get one over on him. And they’d been okay until he’d come in, he was sure.
If they’d been like this when Sam was here - and Dean was immediately grateful they clearly hadn’t been, because the thought of Sam in this situation made him feel physically sick - then Sam would have warned him. Sam would have called him for help. He wouldn’t have glibly let Dean blunder into this.
So whatever was wrong, it was something he’d brought in with him.
Fuck it, he hadn’t touched anything either. The car was as warded as Bobby’s house, so no hex bags could work in it. You couldn’t get cursed and not realise it.
He reached the door and felt backwards with his hand until his fingers fastened around the handle. He turned it desperately, moved forward enough to yank the door open and then backed out onto the porch.
They were following him. The door was his only lucky break. They couldn’t come at him all at once, for whatever they had in mind - and from the looks he’d been getting, Dean knew what that was even if his mind baulked at the idea of it.
He tugged the door shut and made a run for it.
The car was right there. He could rabbit, and then call Sam and try to figure out what the fuck was going on.
He even thought he had a chance until he caught movement from the corner of his eye. He cried out as something connected hard with the side of his head and he crashed to the ground.
Someone loomed over him, a guy, that was all he could tell. His head felt like it had been split open, and he wanted to throw up.
“Going somewhere, sonny?”
Dean groaned. He rolled onto his stomach, dug his fingers into the dirt and tried to haul himself towards the car. He was so fucking close.
The guy put his foot down just above the small of Dean’s back and pressed with his weight. Dean grunted, fought but the pressure and the pain in his head and the nausea were too much.
He collapsed forward, fingers reaching in vain for his Baby like she could somehow just get him out of this because he needed it.
“Yeah, didn’t think so,” the guy said, and then reached down to flip him over.
The last thing Dean saw was the guy’s fist come flying towards him.
**
He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but they’d certainly put the time to good use.
He woke up buck naked, face down on the hood of the car, the air chilling his skin. And there was no point in trying to get up, because his head was turned to the side and he could see the length of rope knotted around his wrist. Wincing, he turned his face to see it was the same on the other side.
The ropes vanished out of his line of sight, and he tugged at them just in case, but found them taut and inescapable.
Hell, these were hunters. Nobody else was better for knowing how to tie somebody up so they had no chance of getting loose.
Dean tried to move his legs, and felt the burn of rope against his ankles and thighs.
Fuck, if he’d been in any doubt what was next he sure wasn’t now.
“Bobby,” he gasped. It was a little hard to breathe with his upper body - hips to head - pinned flat on the hood of his car. “Bobby, please.”
Bobby was next to him, suddenly, leaning down. “Hell, son, I don’t know what you expect me to do. I’ve seen you flirting like you’ve got a license, can’t blame me if somebody takes note. And maybe this’ll be good for you. Seen how you’ve been lately - all twisted in on yourself. Only a matter of time before you got yourself or somebody else hurt.”
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Dean snarled. He tore hard against the ropes, felt the burn turn into something sharper as his skin broke and bled. “Don’t you dare make like this is for me! Don’t you fucking mention that!”
Bobby made shushing sounds, brought his hand to rest on Dean’s back. Dean whimpered, scared and shaken and hurt. Yeah, he’d had Bobby’s hands on him before - stitching wounds, setting breaks, hugging him that one time when he’d been fevered and ill.
This wasn’t that and he wanted to scream.
“There’s no talking to you when you’re like this,” Bobby chided him, and it was worse because he sounded so low and worried - like he wanted to fix him and he couldn’t figure out how.
Then he moved out of Dean’s sight, and Dean tried to turn his head so he could see where he’d gone. But all he could see was a little of the yard to either side, and if he craned his neck and rested his chin on the cold metal beneath him, the windscreen right in front of him.
A shadow fell across the glass, the reflection he realised of one of the guys from the den. He couldn’t tell which - and did it really matter, anyway.
Something cold dribbled onto his skin, just above the base of his spine, and Dean jerked.
“Where you trying to go, little thing?” It was him, the guy with the beard. “Ain’t no place you can go, not until we’ll done with you.”
Dean grunted as he felt a finger drag that coldness down his skin, to someplace it wasn’t meant to be and then push roughly inside him.
“Fuck off!” he yelled. “Just get off me!”
He dug his teeth into his bottom lip as the guy started crooking his finger in and out. Blood welled up and filled his mouth, the taste of copper on his tongue making him gag. He swallowed it down desperately. If he puked like this, they’d probably leave him to choke on it, and he was finding it hard enough to breathe.
“You wait til my dick’s in you, boy,” the guy said. “Gonna loosen you up for the rest of them. You think you’re sore now? By the time we’re done, walking’s gonna be something you used to do. Maybe Singer’s still got that chair around somewhere. Maybe we’ll tie you into it until we’re ready to go again, huh?”
Dean moaned as the guy pulled his finger out. Hated it as he had, he knew what was next and almost wished the guy’s finger was still inside him.
He couldn’t help but yell as the guy breached him. Not slow, not easy, just ramming himself in like he’d gone through the world’s longest dry spell. Every shove pushed him forward on the hood of the car, straining the ropes, making them bite harder into him. His dick rubbed hard against the chrome, and despite himself he knew he was getting hard.
Fuck it, how could he be turned on by this?
Then beard guy was groaning and pumping in short brutal jerks and Dean could tell when he’d come. He gave a gasp and then flopped forward, his weight landing on Dean and driving the air out of him.
“Lucas, get the hell off of him,” he heard Bobby say. “You’re smothering the boy.”
The weight lifted and Dean sucked in as much air as he could hold, but it didn’t feel like enough.
And then someone else was behind him and he pulled away on instinct, even if he knew he couldn’t go anywhere.
And then there was someone else, and someone else, and eventually he couldn’t tell when he was empty or full, except when they had their hands on his hips.
“Oh, Dean,” Bobby said, finally. Dean didn’t acknowledge him. His throat hurt, feeling like someone had balled up some barbed wire and shoved it down there. “You know, I wanted to be first, but - well, gotta be a good host, right?”
Dean screwed his eyes shut. He hadn’t cried, no matter how much it had hurt, up until then, but he couldn’t hold it back.
“Please,” he managed. He swore that one word made his throat bleed. “Please, Bobby, please not you.”
“Come on, son. You wouldn’t say no to me, now would you? Not to me.” He rested his hand on the back of Dean’s neck, petted him. It was the heaviest thing Dean had ever felt, and he wished he’d had the strength to shrug it off at first.
But it felt so like Bobby. Like how Bobby had rested his hand there after…after they’d locked Sam in the panic room. After he’d found out about Sam’s soul. After Death had put it back and Cas had said….
Cas.
After Cas had staggered into the water, knowing he wasn’t coming back out, and Dean had watched him go - full of hurt and hate and so much fucking pain he wasn’t sure that he wasn’t about to be ripped apart just like Cas was going to be.
“Cas,” he whispered. “Cas, please. Please help me.”
“Shush, boy. Ain’t no use praying to the dead.”
Dean sobbed as he felt Bobby thrust against him, and finally, finally, fell into the darkness.
**
He woke up to find Sam sitting next to him and his first instinct was to grab his brother and get out.
But Sam grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back down onto the bed. “No, no, it’s ok, Dean. I swear to God it’s ok.”
Dean sagged back against the pillows. He was too numb to hurt, but he could almost feel it waiting in the wings.
“Sam, what happened to them?”
Sam shook his head. He looked pale and stricken, like he’d woken from the worst nightmare ever and yet knew it wasn’t over. “I think…. I checked all your gear and found your clothes. That blood, you got some of it on you?”
Dean nodded. Of course, it had to be. It was the only thing that had happened to him, the only thing it could have been.
“Did you burn them?”
Sam nodded. “Bobby’s…. He’s getting drunk out in the yard. Don’t worry, he hasn’t got any guns or knives. He kicked the rest of them out.”
Dean raised his hands, saw bandages wrapped neatly around his wrists. “How bad?”
“Dean.”
“How bad, Sam?”
Sam swallowed hard. “You’re torn up pretty bad. Anywhere the ropes were. And…down there. I cleaned you up as best I could, and the bleeding’s stopped, but I think we should get a doctor to check you out. You probably need some anti-biotics, Dean. Some post exposure medication, just in case. There’s no way of knowing if they had anything.”
Ok. Dean could see the sense in what Sam was saying. But he wasn’t going to a doctor. They knew people who could get him meds, whatever he needed.
“You’re not going to go to the hospital, are you?” Sam could always read him so easily.
“And tell them what, Sam? I got tied down and fucked on the hood of my car by Bobby and his hunter buddies?”
“So we don’t tell them who.”
“Yeah, and the hospital won’t call the cops, and the cops won’t push me for answers. They’ll just happily leave it there.”
“Damn it, Dean. We can’t look after this.”
“Yes, we can. Get on the laptop, find out what people get prescribed after… Afterwards. Then we’ll get Garth or somebody to get it for us. It’ll do. It has before.”
“You’ve never been raped before.”
Dean glared at him. If he could have, he’d have hit him. But he couldn’t sit up on his own, right now. “Just go look into it.”
Sam got up, shaking his head, and started towards the door. He turned back, angrily.
“It wasn’t great for me, either, you know - finding you tied to the front of the car, bleeding and out cold. So do me a favour and don’t fight me on this. Just this once. Please, Dean.”
Then he was gone, and Dean lay there in the silence. Amazed at no matter how bad things got, he always managed to find a way to fuck them up even worse.
**
It took another couple of days before he was strong enough to get out of bed. Sam had been with him almost constantly, feeding him, washing him down as far as Dean would allow, helping him to the bathroom.
Pushing pills on him, which had arrived the same day Sam had found him tied to the car, probably courtesy of Garth, prophylactic measures against whatever Sam worried he might have caught.
“At least I can’t get pregnant,” he managed, once, as the bitter taste of the meds hit the back of his throat and almost cause him to bring them back up.
Sam stared at him, hurt and anger in his eyes, and Dean figured too soon.
And Bobby hadn’t come close once during that time. Dean wasn’t sorry for that. He didn’t know when he’d be able to look at Bobby without feeling…. Whatever it was he was feeling now. It was everything all at once, and Dean couldn’t pick it apart.
His worse fear was fear. That he’d flinch if Bobby appeared in the doorway or he heard his voice.
But that was going to happen at some point - this was Bobby’s home. And until he was strong enough to leave, Bobby would be somewhere nearby.
At that point Dean decided he was going to have to face the fact that he’d bump into him at some point. So he decided on the middle ground. He wasn’t going to seek Bobby out, but if it happened then it happened.
He waited until Sam had passed out in a chair by the bed and then went out to the yard.
The Impala was right where he’d left it.
Dean drew in a sharp breath as he saw the marks on the hood. The places where the ropes had scored the paintwork, and the other marks. The ones he could at least clean with soap and hot water, and he wished it would be that fucking easy to get them off him too.
Sam had cleaned him up afterwards and then covered his bandages with cling film so he could eventually shower himself, but it didn’t feel like it had made much of a difference.
Dean filled a bucket from the spigot at the side of the house, grabbed some soap and a chamois from the small shed where Bobby kept his tools and the like, and made a start on the job.
He needed the car clean, back the way it was. There was a bodywork place in town that could fix the chafed paint, but it would take a few days before he was up to the job of driving the car there. For now, this was all he could do, but it was a start.
The thought of forever having his Baby tied to the memories of what had happened was too much. Maybe it would take more than scrubbing her clean, but he hoped not. This car had been a constant to him and Sam. She was pretty much the only thing they’d had for as long as he could remember, other than each other.
She had been their home, their shelter.
And now he felt like she’d been as misused as he had.
Fuck Bobby. And fuck those other bastards.
He finished soaping her up, scrubbed as hard as he could especially in the places where he knew they’d marked her and he probably had too. Not by choice.
But even though it hurt what they’d done, to her, to him, he couldn’t push what Bobby had said out of his mind.
Putting down the bucket and cloth, Dean dried his hands on his shirt and then went around to the trunk.
Under the fake shelf, in a box crammed in among the weapons, was the trench coat.
Dean pulled it out and looked at it.
Bobby had been right, and he knew it now. If Cas had heard him pray, had known what was happening there was nothing in Heaven, on Earth, or in Hell, that would have kept him from coming to save him.
Maybe this time, he wasn’t coming back.
He sank down next to the car, and buried his face in the coat. Was this what it had taken? To get him to just accept it? That he’d lost part of his family, by not being strong enough to hold on to Cas? To rein him in? To kick his ass if need be until he saw sense?
He screamed against the coat, raw and angry, and cursed that stupid child of an angel for just not listening to him.
Once he was done, body aching, feeling more drained than he ever had, Dean pushed himself to his feet. He put the trench coat back into the box and closed it over.
Cas had come back before. Maybe he was somewhere he couldn’t hear Dean. Maybe those fucking Leviathan had dragged him off with them. Maybe something else was holding him somewhere, or maybe he was still trying to make his way back. To them.
To him.
He closed the trunk and turned to lean gingerly against it. Until he knew for sure that Cas was never coming home to him, he was going to take it on faith that he was.
Because if you couldn’t have faith in your family, no matter how broken they were, no matter what they did, then who could you have faith in?