Fic: The Long Broken Arm of Human Law, pt. 5/8
The compromise they strike involves a few conditions.
They end up going back to Katherine’s for the time being: Sam. No active attempts to provoke her are going to happen: Dean. Various aspects of the house budget are skimmed to pay for a pair of video cameras they stash in the living room/kitchen area and in Katherine’s bedroom: Sam. If either of them are ever in any immediate danger, they call the cops and deal with whatever fallout she wants to throw at them: Dean. Finally, if all else fails-fuck it and run.
The last one was a duel point of agreement.
There had been a few other general precautions taken. Padlocks on the bedroom doors, both of them slept with bats by their bedsides, and more often than not, Sam found his way into the basement at night, but it didn’t make Dean any happier about coming back here. Having to spend any amount of time staring at her smug, pointed face. Everything real there was to take from them, she’d fucking done it.
Keeping Sam on an even keel, from running headlong into danger, it had allowed the fire in Dean’s gut to cool, but every time she showed, and he had to stop and face the reality of where he was, it came raring back.
So did his promise to her.
The lights flicker rapidly and Dean comes back to himself. He blinks and she’s there, filling his vision from across the dinner table. It’s a sick joke, her bothering to sit down here, put on some morbid fantasy of familial closeness. He grips his steak knife tightly and clenches his jaw as the power shuts off completely for a few seconds.
“I’m glad you boys weren’t running around out there when the storm set in,” she pops a bite of meat into her mouth, sighing in contentment.
Dean glares, doesn’t indulge her. Neither of them had said a word the entire meal but Sam breaks just then. “I’m not afraid of you.”
She considers him contemptuously, more effort than she usually expended on Dean. “Because your cameras will protect you?”
He cringes inwardly and pointedly doesn’t look at Sam to not give them away. Careless of them. Should’ve banked on her being thorough if nothing else. But Sam isn’t cowed. “Doesn’t matter. You can’t kill us.”
Her brow quirks up as she busies herself sopping up sauce with a piece of meat. “Care to test that theory?”
“Don’t need to. If you went through all of this to bring us here, to get rid of our parents-you’re not just going to kill us for mouthing off. You need us for something.”
She sets her sights on Dean at that, wolfish and predatory. Because he knows and Sam doesn’t-whatever purpose she has, Sam is at the center and Dean is expendable. The threat she was about to issue is cut short by the doorbell.
Giving Dean a look that says it isn’t over, she pushes back from the table. The sound of the door opening and the low, drawling murmur of a male filters into the dining room. It’s a short conversation. An older man, thinning brown hair, greeting smile that’s half smirk, walks into the room, Katherine trailing behind.
She’s wearing an entirely different expression now, one that Dean relishes. Suddenly shaken..
“Evening boys,” he briefly shakes Dean’s hand before he’s even held it out completely and then moves on to Sam, clasping his considerably longer. “Some freak weather tonight.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Sam responds, confused. Katherine’s change in demeanor hadn’t escaped his attention either.
“I’m Richard. Call me Dick,” he begins jovially, “I’m here on behalf of the state. Periodically, we’ll do random check-ins on recent adoptions. Make sure there aren’t any issues that need resolving,” his head inclines toward Katherine, now hovering entirely too close to Sam’s side.
The two of them exchange a glance, wondering how and if they should take advantage of the opportunity. Behind the case worker, Katherine’s eyes flit back and forth and the warning is clear. Sam seems to have the brunt of the guy’s attention, so he starts, “Well, Katherine is really busy with work so we don’t see her much. Dean takes care of all the house stuff and if he’s not around, I’m pretty much by myself.”
“Is that so?”
“We’re used to relying on ourselves,” Dean adds ambiguously, not outright attacking her but making the point clear.
“That’s a bit of an exaggeration,” she jumps in. “Once or twice, I may have-“
“Don’t interrupt, it’s rude,” Richard cuts her off firmly and if the circumstances were less dire, Dean would’ve laughed. She complies instantly.
“How has your aunt treated you during your stay? Anything you feel I should know about?” Sam’s lips are pursed tight, eyes cast downward. He wants to spill, it’s all over his face. Richard slaps on a comforting grin, “You can tell me, son.”
“Fine,” Sam says, clipped. “When she’s here, just fine.”
Her expression brightens hugely and Dean’s skin crawls, watching Sam lie for her. For him, because Dean is letting her threats control them. Exactly the way she wants.
“Bullshit.”
All eyes turn toward him at the interjection, Sam’s uncertain and big. “Dean, it’s okay.”
It’s really not.
“No. It’s bullshit,” he says again, stronger. This isn’t going to be how it is, under her heel. If the cops can’t protect them, Dean will die trying because they’re not going to live like this. “It’s not fine, it’s about as far from fine as there is.”
He lifts his shirt upward, exposing the array of grossly dark, bruised skin on his chest. “This was for looking in her car and finding blood. This too,” he gestures to the lingering splotches on his face. “She said I was next if I tried to leave, if I tried to take Sam away.”
Her eyes darken menacingly; she was counting on him holding his tongue, too afraid of her promises. Too bad.
“For excess baggage, you have been one enormous pain in my ass,” she spits, and her eyes haven’t just darkened, they’ve turned into pools of pitch black. Dean shoves away from the table, making Sam follow and keeping an arm in front of him as a barrier.
She turns to the case worker, as if asking permission, but he doesn’t acknowledge her, still only has assessing, patient eyes for Sam. He’s part of it. They played their hand and it fell through. Salvation was never an option.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” one-handed, she flips the table over, forcing Dean and Sam back against the wall.
Dean exhales shakily, banging the back of his head into the wall. This is it. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“No,” Sam shakes his head, refusing to listen.
“Close your eyes,” Dean orders, grabbing the lapel of Sam’s jacket roughly. “No matter what you hear, don’t open ‘em. You hear me?”
“Stop her,” Sam doggedly won’t look at Dean, tries to plead to the case worker. “Please, I’ll do whatever you want.”
His eyes just narrow, expectant and eager. “I’m not the one at bat, kiddo.”
Katherine stops in front of them, and suddenly her fist is where Dean’s head had been a second earlier. It goes clear through the wall as he and Sam break apart, separated by her, advancing on Dean. She grabs him easily by the throat as he struggles and lashes out, gradually raising him into the air, mangled sounds spluttering out as his air starts to go.
“Goodbye, Dean. I’ll drop you a line downstairs,” he begins to go limp in her clutches and Sam, breathing heavy, screams something muffled to Dean’s fading senses.
The iron grip on his throat releases like a latch suddenly, dropping him to the floor. Through blurry eyes, he looks up in time to catch the first streak of flames appear across Katherine’s arms. He blinks, but he’s not imagining it, the fire came from nowhere.
Katherine howls an ear-splitting roar of pain.
Sam drags him back by his shoulders, away from the grotesque sight, Katherine fighting a losing battle against a fire rapidly tracing its way across her back, down her legs. When her skin starts to blister and crack, it gives off the pungent scent of charred meat.
Shielding his eyes, Dean can see the case worker eagerly watching it all. But there’s no time to consider him further when Katherine slams into the wall, somehow still standing and catching the long curtains in the living room alight. The fire spreads impossibly quickly, burning hot and precise as it consumes the room.
“Go!” he shoves Sam toward the front door as the smoke churning out from Katherine’s body starts to pile on. Sam covers his mouth with his sleeve as he runs and yanks the door open, disappearing onto the lawn. Squinting, Dean catches sight of the keys to the car, still resting on the counter. He snatches them and makes for the door, narrowly avoiding being set ablaze by Katherine’s wild grab for him.
Those black eyes are still glaring at him even through this.
He bursts out onto the lawn where Sam is bent in half, desperately inhaling the fresh air. Grabbing Sam’s arm, they jump into the car, slamming their doors shut almost in unison. The windows in the living room are reflecting the fire, the way they did fourteen years ago, when Dean guns it and peels out into the night.
*~*
The screams of Katherine Winchester pierce the air, increasingly lost below the sound of roaring flames.
Richard the case worker, surveys the burning living room, the flames seemingly afraid to go near him. The Winchester boys are gone. He gazes down at Katherine as she writhes on the floor, an unmarred patch of skin nowhere to seen, the fire still burning heartily across her torso, spontaneously rekindling on the side of her face.
He studies her wordlessly, an insect under a magnifying glass.
“Azazel, it hurts! Make it stop, I’m sorry!” she begs, voice wrecked.
“I could,” he steps around her pathetic form and crouches next to her face, knees creaking. “But I think tonight, I’m more interested in dispensing lessons about taking shortcuts with one’s assignments.”
With a wave of his hand, every inch of her body is instantly alight and seconds later, she’s disappeared in a viscous cloud of heavy, black smoke, leaving only ashes in her wake.
The faint clack of booted heels travels across the wood, coming to a stop in front of the pile. A petite, blonde girl with short-cropped hair cranes her neck to inspect the burning surroundings. “Dinner by hellfire. Classy.”
“The event of the season,” he boasts. “I got what I came for.”
“What now? Should I bring him back? Kill the older one?”
Contemplating, he toes at the ashes. “No. But stay close. Leave the older one alive.” Beneath the ashes are a set of scorch marks. He raises a brow at the discovery. “Dawes was right. The older one is the key. Look what a pretty mess the boy made for him.”
*~*
The first drops splatter against the windshield an hour out of Amarillo.
Dean blinks and the lanes merge together into an indistinguishable image of washed out gray, melting into the horizon and refusing to settle back into their original positions. He gulps down the last of a tepid gas station coffee and squints hard against the rain, starting to blot out what little there is left to see with his worn eyes.
It takes ten minutes and a sudden slide off onto the graveled roadside before Dean gives it up. It hurts to move, aches settled into every rigid muscle through the night, and the rain is flagging them down, putting the brakes on their flight to nowhere.
By the time he finds a plaza with a McDonalds beginning to open its doors, he can barely see. Kills the ignition and leans back into the seat, willing off thoughts the strain of pushing through the night had blessedly kept quiet and dulled.
Sam’s eyes are downcast but not closed completely.
“Did you get any sleep?”
“No.” Sam doesn’t look up.
“Hungry?”
Unopened snacks from gas stations along the way still line the dash. Neither of them managed to put anything on their stomachs. “I just want to brush my teeth.”
Inside, the sound of preparation filters from the kitchen, but no one is at the counter yet. The two of them pass it by without concern, finding an empty and mostly clean bathroom. Dean cracks his back after he takes a leak while Sam wets his toothbrush with water, scrubbing with nothing else at his teeth.
Dean leans against the edge between stalls, staring at Sam’s efforts above his head in the mirror. He’s fuzzy, almost outlined by the light, and Dean rakes his eyes over every part of him, memorizing. He was almost gone in that house. The two of them, so close to being done, busted up forever.
He’s never going to look away from the sight. From Sam. Never again.
Sam spits and drags the back of his hand across his mouth when he catches Dean’s gaze in the mirror. Searching and all the more intense for not actually looking right at him. He doesn’t turn around, just reaches out and lightly touches Dean’s reflection in the glass, traveling down the line of his jaw, to his chest.
“I don’t know how, but we’re still here. That’s what matters, right?”
There are a million things clawing to get out of Dean’s throat. All he can do is nod, stepping forward and wrapping his arms around Sam’s middle, bowing his head to press his cheek against Sam’s temple, the soft strands of hair there. Sam’s hand snakes up along the side of Dean’s neck, holding him there, sharp eyes still watching them together in the mirror.
“Don’t tell me no. Not today,” Sam implores, scratches blunt nails along the nape of Dean’s neck.
“Okay,” Dean breathes out, warmth of it passing by Sam’s lips.
“Do you want to go back to the car?”
“I don’t-“ he wrenches his eyes shut, can’t look at the pair of them, how small Sam is with Dean’s frame wrapped around him.
Sam nudges back against him, signaling for space. He pulls at the cuff of Dean’s jacket when he turns around, beckoning. Leaves Dean burning under his skin and staring at the swinging door as he’s left alone. He’s going to go outside and let this happen. It has to, no part of him is screaming not too loudly enough to be heard over this sparking pull. Hypnotic and undeniable.
The rain soaks him in the seconds it takes to jog back to the car, but the sound of it, the oppressive weight of his sodden jacket, it vanishes when he opens the back door, Sam’s form distorted from the outside by the rain on the window. He’s just sitting on the opposite side, wet bangs pushed back from his forehead, waiting on Dean the way he has a million times before.
There’s a dark glint in his expression that makes Dean’s cock throb. No, it’s nothing like anything that’s happened before.
Dean shuts the door and finds himself awkwardly shoved against the driver’s seat as Sam repositions himself, banging elbows and knees into the surroundings until he prods Dean into stretching out as best he can across the backseat, buckle digging into his side, one foot planted on the floor to not lose his balance, and Sam, eagerly climbing on top of him.
Their wet clothes fasten them together, restrict already limited movement, but Sam isn’t deterred in the slightest, rutting against Dean’s stomach and whimpering in frustration into his mouth when it isn’t enough. Dean grabs hold of his shoulders and holds him still, letting the mindless need bleed away a little, giving Sam a long look before he turns his face and kisses him, tongues sliding together perfectly in a happy, demented accident. The sound of it is obscene above the rain pounding the roof, gentling into something less obtrusive when Sam picks up the cues, trades his feverish swipes for more nuanced contact and it’s an intense pull in Dean’s stomach every time they meet in the middle.
I’m his first, Dean marvels. I’ll always be his first.
“Wanted it to be you,” Sam kisses the side of his mouth. “Always.”
It should make him sick, but Dean just angles his hips to better crash into Sam’s, despite the wet denim robbing him of most of the sensation. He’s still searching, twisting his body, when the cold air rushes in where Sam’s body had kept it at bay a moment before. There’s heat and hands at his fly, unbuttoning him, working the stiff fabric down to his thighs.
“Wait-“ he manages to pant.
Sam already has a hand wrapped around the pulsing shaft of his dick, intently studying Dean’s face when he slides his grip up and down. Dean bites off his protest, curling his toes in his wet sneakers. “Tell me you don’t want me to,” Sam insists, rendering Dean’s arms, his will, useless and unimportant. Every sensation in his body is centered in the skin Sam is rubbing, the shiny, angry head peeking between his fingers.
He can’t move, do anything but writhe in exquisite, disgusting agony as Sam lowers his wet, blindingly hot mouth onto the tip, licking tentatively. Dean can see him playing the taste around his mouth and deciding he wants more. His cock looks so much bigger in that little mouth. Groaning like he’s wounded, he slams his head back against the door, uncaring.
Sam can’t take him in very far, but slurps at every bit of skin he can, maddeningly touches Dean all over, his balls, ghosting over his asshole, exploring as he pushes him closer to spilling. The thought of doing that to Sam-in Sam, Dean grabs at his cock while he has the briefest moment of something akin to clarity, slipping out of the glorious, welcoming fire and suction and jerking himself to completion as Sam watches avidly.
He would’ve let Dean do anything to him.
Dean cups his cock with his free hand, coming as hard as he ever has all over himself, preventing any of it from landing on Sam. He twitches with the aftershocks, gingerly coaxing the last drops out as Sam pushes his hand out of the way and slides a finger through the mess dripping from it and onto the exposed strip of Dean’s stomach. Locking eyes, Sam sucks the pearly fluid off, pink flash of tongue making Dean grip himself too hard and hiss.
“Didn’t have to do that,” he mumbles, unable to look Sam in the eye as the euphoria starts to fade all too quickly.
“Yeah, I did,” he muses, flexing his fingers, “And so do you.”
Dean wonders half a word aloud before Sam shoves his hand into his own jeans, emerging with the still warm evidence of his own reaction to the day’s many firsts and smearing it across Dean’s lips. Dean grimaces but licks it off with his eyes on the ceiling, because gross or not, it’s part of Sam. Part of them.
For long minutes, neither of them talk, just pull up their partially taken off clothes, not caring about the cooling mess they’re concealing. He can feel Sam trying to get him to look.
“Where are we going?” Sam asks finally.
Dean swallows. “I have no idea.”
*~*
Two more days and they’re driving in circles through Texas.
Spending dry, hot nights cramped in the car at whatever rest stop or scenic point looks safe enough to park in. They switch off nightly on who gets the slightly less painful backseat, blow way too much through their limited funds for gas, and on Dean’s part, anyway, keep conversation to a bare minimum. Silence as stifling as the weather while they search for some place and increasingly running out of time to do it.
What happened-it can’t have happened. Not to him, Dean fucking Winchester, the guy every girl wanted a piece of, the older brother that took beatings to protect Sam, no, he wasn’t that image of depraved, abhorrent lust. He couldn’t be. That day, it was like being possessed, something else crawling into his skin and turning his world to walking, sick nightmares.
Dean can feel the fuming betrayal emanating from Sam. Pointedly finds a rapidly changing, but unchanging spot in the scenery to focus on instead. They can’t do this for much longer. Any of it.
Sam occasionally tried to force Dean’s hand, make him talk, but thus far to no success. But Dean can’t help it when Sam says, “What am I?” miserable and resigned.
He glances over. “You’re Sam, alright. Don’t be an idiot.”
“I’m not right.”
A beat passes and he almost doesn’t, but Dean reaches a hand over and briefly strokes the side of Sam’s face, hastily redirecting his eyes to the road afterward. When he chances another glance, he sees it did what he’d hoped, that Sam is studying him with that look of blinding adoration. He’ll never want to stop seeing that, even after what happened between them, what Dean let it be polluted with.
The moment of consolation is short-lived. “They’ll all be looking for us,” Sam confirms darkly. Cops, the caseworker and whoever or whatever it is that he’s with that wants Sam. Because of what Sam did, what he can do, what he shouldn’t be able to.
Dean’s brow knits together. “That’s why we’re going to get lost. No more fucking around. We need a city, somewhere no one will look twice at us.”
Everything had turned dangerous, the world, what they knew, and the space between them. All Dean could do is run. For good and from it all.
*~*
“Here,” Dean drops a steaming bowl in front of Sam, taking a seat opposite him with his own at the long, wooden table in the center of the room. A few seats down, much older men wrapped in old layers dig into the stew being served as the Tuesday night specialty by the soup kitchen. It was one of those religious ones, not too far from downtown Dallas, and he and Sam stuck out like sore thumbs.
Dean shovels a big chunk of meat into his mouth, stomach gurgling in satisfaction as their food budget had shrunk the past week, funds running lower by the day. It wasn’t bad tasting, pretty decently seasoned actually, but Sam poked at his disinterestedly, lost in thought.
Without drawing too much attention, Dean checks in on the wrinkled woman overseeing the room. She’d been eying them since they came in, and he was sure it wouldn’t be long before she came over and started asking questions. He wanted to be gone before that happened and he sure as hell didn’t want to hear that God loved them and was looking out for them or any of that spiel.
He didn’t want to hear a thing about God.
“Eat up, we can’t stay long,” he prompts Sam.
“I know you’ve been thinking about it,” Sam levels, ignoring the order.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean counters automatically. That conversation isn’t happening now.
“What I did to Katherine,” he corrects, assuming accurately that Dean was thinking of something else and almost as bad.
“No, actually, I’ve been doing a damn good job of not thinking about it. And neither should you,” he forks another bite into his mouth.
“I guess it makes sense now,” Sam goes on, “People have always known there was something wrong with me.”
Dean drops his spoon against the bowl with a clatter and glances cautiously at the old woman. “That’s crap,” he leans over, speaking softly, “Listen, you saw her eyes. It wasn’t normal. Without you, I’d put my money on us being in pieces right now. Me anyway.”
And it was that exhilaration of being alive, being together, that threw so many unneeded problems onto the pile.
“Thanks,” Sam accepts, expression hardening suddenly afterward. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. ‘Cause maybe-maybe it could help us. No one could mess with us, maybe we could even make enough money to live off of.”
Dean gapes at him. “Absolutely not. I will figure out a way for us to live, you hear me? What happened, erase it from your memory. The end.”
Unhappily, Sam finally takes a bite of the stew. “I’m just tired of being walked on.”
By bullies, by the system, by life. Dean gets the feeling. But Sam, he can’t open that box. If they’ve learned nothing else about what it is, it’s that it’s deadly.
The two of them rapidly finish their food and slip out while the woman is engaged with one of the other patrons.
*~*
There’s a look to most schools that makes one practically indistinguishable from another a thousand miles away. Schools are what’s inside, beyond the ugly, squat buildings that don’t do much in the way of inspiring pride or a desire to learn. And there’s always way too much of a resemblance to prison.
Not that Dean was about to share any of that as he parked in the far end of FDR middle school, watching as Sam whipped his head back and forth, taking in their surroundings in disbelief. “You were serious about school? It’s practically the end of the year and I don’t even have any supplies.”
“Use your duffel,” he suggests, “Borrow some paper and a pencil.”
“So weak,” Sam complains. “Why should I waste my time here when I could help make us money?”
Dean sighs internally. Scraping together enough to live on as a transient eighteen year old without even a GED was something he didn’t begin to have any experience with handling. Life at the home and in the system wasn’t glamorous, but for them, it was mostly comfortable, a lot more than a shitload of people had and neither he nor Sam were ever forced to genuinely support themselves.
They were kids.
“By doing what? Annoying people into giving you spare change? Besides, you like school, what are you complaining about?”
“It was my fault we had to leave,” he says quietly.
Dean turns to him. “There are people truly responsible for the insane clusterfuck of our lives and none of them are sitting in this car. Right now, you’re safer surrounded by people at school during the day than you are with me. Especially since I’m going to have to camp out by the pay phone I gave the office the number to.”
Sam weighs this, seemingly coming to agree. “I’ll go to class if you kiss me.”
And they’re just going to talk about it. Now. In the harsh light of day and with so many other things threatening to cave Dean’s head in.
“So someone can walk by and think I’m some kind of pedo asshole? No, thanks.”
“That’s the only reason why not?”
“Yes. I mean, no,” he exhales. “There are about a billion reasons why not and you know ‘em all,” he gestures vaguely, “And you, you’re-shell-shocked.”
“It’s called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder now,” Sam corrects pointlessly. “And this is how it’s going to be? It’s okay if you’re drunk or we almost died? I’m just trying to learn the rules,” he sneers.
“None of that is ever going to be okay!” Dean explodes in retaliation. “I-couldn’t stop. You-if I’d been able to think straight, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“I didn’t make you do anything,” he spits, furious. “I didn’t cast some fucking spell on you.”
“How am I supposed to know that?” Dean blurts, unthinking, just eager to hurl something damaging back, to erase any truth of Sam’s words. Sam closes his mouth, nodding.
“Guess I was right. I’m just the freak that always ruins your life.” Dean stays silent, still pissed, sorry but not, unwilling to budge in the heat of the moment. Sam gets out of the car, grabs his small duffel and slams the door shut. “Without me,” he goes on, looking toward the school, “You, Mom, Dad, everybody would’ve been better off. Lucky me, I get to say it and have it actually be true.”
Once Sam disappears through the front doors, Dean puts the car in gear and drives. He’s not going to sit there and try to pick through the knot of his thoughts. Doesn’t fucking want to and doesn’t have the time. They have to eat, and they don’t have to like each other for Dean to shelve this constant back and forth in his head into a corner and get to it.
*~*
Twice a week, Dean donates plasma. It crashes his energy, but it’s the most legitimate and guaranteed of their newfound sources of income, so he inhales something high in sugar from the vending machine afterward and schedules his next appointment.
Plasma is usually in the morning when he can get in and out the fastest. The center wasn’t exactly renowned for speed or efficiency in handling the clients. After that, he’d found one old trick that had actually come in handy-his ability to put on a show for bored housewives and make a profit. It wasn’t all that different from Lawrence. He had to learn the layout, did get chased out of a couple of higher-end neighborhoods by security, but most didn’t label him cause for concern. He looked like he could live in those houses, be the good-looking, non-threatening suburban youth. It made the right people leave him alone most of the time and brought him to the attention of the ones with the wallets.
Yardwork had cut it back in Kansas, where the group home was in close proximity to most of the houses Dean worked, but here, he quickly found that some of the wives were interested in more than the view. He didn’t mind, had been hard up since-it’d been a little while, suffice to say. And it was getting paid to do something he loved anyway: women, cougars to be exact. What red-blooded male would pass that up? He was good with being a face, a piece of meat. Sure.
Told himself so all the time.
The women meant a big expansion of their income, meant nights in a room sometimes instead of wrecking their spines in the car. Katherine’s car, which any day, could prove to be a death knell but was too valuable to let go. He shakes the thought.
More money meant a semi-frequent bed but that meant they blew through what they did have faster.
The first time Dean tried to pickpocket, it was at a movie theater and he almost took a beatdown from some guy with a thick Jersey accent. Managed to slip away into the crowd when the guy’s girlfriend tried to calm him down. A pickpocket’s saving grace, anonymity. Sam and Dean’s too.
That one he didn’t try as much, even though he got better, couldn’t afford to get picked up and have his name run through the system, be separated from Sam. But when things threatened to get thin, he’d find a nice, loud crowd and try his hand. Grew more aware of its subtleties the way he learned the streets, who to avoid, who could teach him something of use. There were times he even resorted to old-fashioned begging, sometimes bringing Sam along for that one or to hang out at the plasma center after school or on the weekends. Kept it honest when Sam was around.
They were still barely talking, weeks later.
But Sam had lunch money most days, showered at school when they didn’t have access to one and basically went back to immersing himself in it, pulling away from most everything and everyone the way he always had with one notable exception-and Dean wasn’t so much the exception these days.
This was his life. Risky. Questionable. He was always the one that could see himself getting old in Lawrence. For all it could lack, Dean missed it. No one in particular, he admitted, just the easiness, the set of worries that looked like childsplay in comparison to reality as it stood now. Lawrence was simplicity.
If he couldn’t have it, no matter what stupid shit he said out of anger, he was going to make sure Sam got as close to it as possible.
The jangle of change falling into his cup breaks him out of his thoughts. He looks up but can’t discern his benefactor from the heavy foot traffic. Almost time to pick Sam up from school, he realizes.
A cop car passes by as he idly watches the street. Part of him wants to get out of sight, like the unconcerned officer inside could see right through him. Another part, pointlessly holding on to old values, wants to flag it down and hope for the best.
But the sight of Katherine, flames engulfing her from nowhere, it’s there and Dean knows-regardless of whether or not they got blamed for her death, the office fire-the cops can’t solve their real problems.
A young girl around his age approaches and Dean flashes her a blinding grin.
*~*
Dean distractedly tosses a couple of bucks onto the counter for a stale donut, attention drawn by the flickering portable t.v. the owner has blaring behind the glass partition. Half expects the local news to paste pictures of him and Sam on the screen before logic catches up and he remembers the citizens and newscasters of Dallas don’t give a shit about random house fires in bumfuck, Kansas. They barely give a shit about what’s happening in Dallas.
The owner, this wiry guy with a buzz cut, maybe some kind of vet, punches numbers into the cash register. “That it?”
Dean glances at him. Few items tucked securely into the pockets of his jacket. He made it a point to buy something small when he lifted something. Eased suspicion and Dean’s conscience a little to boot. “That’s it.”
His thoughts drift back to the t.v. and maybe that’s why it doesn’t strike him immediately when the owner produces a baseball bat instead of Dean’s change.
“Fuck,” Dean mutters, breaking for the door.
“Run if you like, but I’ve seen you all around the neighborhood, taking shit. Bet a few of the other stores would appreciate a heads up.”
Dean stops, hand on the door, trapped.
“Or I could just put in a call to the cops now. How far you figure you’ll get with a face like that before they pick you up?”
An icy stab of dread runs down Dean’s back.
He turns around. “What do you want? Here,” producing the few packages from his coat, he gets close enough to throw them onto the counter. “I won’t be back. Sorry.”
“That ain’t gonna cut it, boy.” The way his eyes linger on Dean’s face, his mouth, makes him nauseated on the spot.
“I ain’t like that.”
“Sure you are. There are all sorts of ways you know to get out of trouble. Aren’t there?”
He leaves the glass box, starting toward Dean like he would a skittish Colt. Dean doesn’t want to know how he looks right now-like prey. He breathes hard, steeling himself.
“Guess I don’t have a choice.”
A broad grin breaks out on the owner’s face. He’s close enough to touch Dean but he refrains. “Always got a choice. You can choose to get on your knees and be a good boy. Make all of this go away.”
“Or,” Dean starts, “I can find that brunette that comes to see you in the mornings. Your wife, I’m guessing? Nice of her.”
That wipes the malicious mirth from his face.
“You do that and I’ll choke every bit of life out of your body.”
Dean shrugs. “Then pay me. Now and after. You keep your mouth shut about me, I’ll do the same and you’ll never see my face again.”
The shift in power isn’t pleasing to the owner in the slightest, but he steps forward, guides Dean’s hand to the crotch of his jeans, swelling bulge making Dean want to recoil. He doesn’t. “You better be fucking worth it.”
Dean swallows down the fear, wills the roiling of his stomach away. “I am.”
He moans when he’s told, tames his gag reflex, does it all from somewhere else. Funny, he wonders through the void-it’s the same. The exact way it is with the women. Dean has no part in this. No one ever really wants him, no one but Sam. He’ll always be worth most as someone’s empty, pretty plaything.
The contents of his stomach come up in the alley outside. Overheated, dirty air swirling around and making him dizzy, pissing him off. His hand is throbbing for some reason and it’s the most random thing when a bright rivulet of blood streaks from his bruised knuckles and down his arm. He doesn’t remember smashing them into the alley wall at all.
Part VI