Fic: The Long Broken Arm of Human Law, pt. 6/8
At the liquor store two blocks from the moldy dive the two of them are staying for the night, the cashier, not too much older than Dean, takes a look at him and the ID request dies on his lips. He nods discreetly at the camera, and Dean gives a perfunctory flash of his well underage ID.
He pushes the bag over to Dean, adding, “Have a good one, man. You look like you could use it.”
Dean mumbles a thanks he means more genuinely than it sounds, and is pulling the wrapper from the neck of the bottle even as the chimes announce his exit. On the street, he takes a look around before he has a swig, savoring the harsh burn of cheap whiskey on his throat. The last time he had anything to drink was probably his eighteenth, a lifetime ago in another place that might as well have ceased to exist.
It had only been a couple of months.
But Dean had a system at least. All the nickel and diming, the plasma and the petty shoplifting, that was out. Now, the days were when he saw his so-called upstanding clients, and the nights, those belonged to whoever picked him up off the corner. He did good business. Great. It was food and nights in a room. Bucks toward the next place they’d probably have to run when things inevitably fell apart here.
He presses his healing knuckles against the bottle but it’s not particularly cold. They don’t really hurt anyway, never did.
Their room is on the second floor, making drinking while climbing an exercise in coordination Dean isn’t passing with flying colors. Some of the liquid dribbles onto his chin and down his shirt, and he’s going to smell like booze from a mile away. Good thing Sam isn’t jumping for the chance to talk to him these days and he can fall asleep warm and lost in his head without having to speak. He couldn’t if he wanted to.
Sam is sitting cross legged in the room chair, book sprawled across his lap. His legs are almost too long for it, will be soon. He gives Dean a passing glance, notes the bottle without comment, and goes back to his book.
Dean is grateful to have the single bed to himself. Never bothered with two beds and couldn’t afford it anyway. When it comes time to sleep during the nights, it takes Dean the longest to nod off. Sam’s presence so close overwhelming and distracting, keeping his mind active, the rest of him wound up and prickling with energy. It almost made Dean prefer a dead woman’s car.
He’s half sitting up, just enough to drink without choking. Sam has the t.v. muted and it’s better somehow, has Dean making up stories in his head to accompany the images and commercials. He’s determining the backstory for a girl with spiked, green hair when the bed dips, Sam settling in beside him.
“Let me have a drink.”
Dean holds the bottle out of his reach, nearly dropping it in the process. “Did you finish your homework?”
Sam scoffs, forcing Dean’s hand back toward him and tipping the bottle up, their hands wrapped around each other’s at the neck. He breaks into a fit of coughing at the first swallow.
“God, that’s gross,” he manages.
“Then don’t drink any more,” Dean gladly takes it back, but Sam narrows his eyes and is taking a less irritating pull once Dean is done. They trade that way, back and forth, until the bottle is swinging largely empty between Dean’s fingers. He has no idea how much time has passed, or when Sam draped himself halfway across him.
But it’s good. For the first time in a while, Dean lets himself sink into the comfort, isn’t thinking about anything in particular. He falls back into an old habit, working his fingers through Sam’s hair, petting him. The bangs are swept back from his forehead, overgrown now. Dean likes it this way, hopes Sam keeps it.
“I’m partnered up with this girl in English. Melanie. She said I was cute,” Sam volunteers.
Dean makes a vague noise of assent, not stopping the motion of his hand.
“She plays soccer and she has these freckles. Kind of like yours. Faint, but you want to touch ‘em,” he moves his head to meet Dean’s eyes, interrupting Dean’s slow trace. “I’ll ask her out if you want me to. If it’ll make you happy. Just don’t hate me anymore, okay?”
He bows his head, kissing his way into Dean’s open mouth. Dean’s dulled senses not allowing him to do much but kiss back, flicking his tongue against Sam’s. He lets out a harsh breath, breaking contact and holding Sam away from him. What he spends his days and nights doing-he can’t bring it here, can’t picture it as anything but unwanted necessity right now. Can’t do it to Sam.
Sam tries to get up in a hurry, too drunk to do it with any grace, having to brace himself on the nightstand. “Wait,” Dean grabs him, pulling him back onto the bed in a heap. “Stay here,” he configures them back into a similar position, half-joined, Sam on his stomach, arm draped across Dean’s chest, one leg between both of Dean’s.
He doesn’t complain, call Dean a hypocrite, just presses back into him. “Feel good?”
Dean huffs out a shaky laugh. “Better than it has any right to.”
“Good,” he answers sleepily, closing his eyes. His breathing evens out quickly into genuine sleep, alcohol overwhelming his growing body.
Dean pulls the thin sheets and comforter over the two of them as best he can without disturbing him, drifting off with welcome ease for once when it’s done.
*~*
“Sam? This weekend?” Melanie gazes at him hopefully and Sam realizes that he’d been daydreaming while she was talking.
“Um, maybe,” he answers guiltily, “I’ll check with my brother, see if he can give us a ride.”
“Awesome,” she lights up, taking it as a good sign as they duck around a group of girls blocking the center of the hallway. She’s beautiful when she smiles, has one of those that animates every part of her face. She’s better than him at science, has these sitcom-wholesome parents that treat Sam like royalty the couple of times he’s gone over to her house. Sam likes being around her, he does.
“I’ll see you at the end of the day. Don’t forget your notes!” she offers cheerfully and with a departing wave, turning with the traffic heading into another hallway. Sam steps out of the flow and watches her go. Melanie, with the butterfly clips and the Oasis lyrics on her binder. He should want to be with her so much it’s hard to think about anything else. But he doesn’t.
Once she’s gone, his eyes drift across the sea of bored faces, chattering ones, bustling from point A to point B. All these people and so many of them could be something to him if he just-reached out. Made himself a part of their lives and them a part of his. Melanie wants it. So does Dean. But Sam-it was nothing new being a freak. The last few months hadn’t done anything but beat any weak, lingering idea of anything else out of his life, his head.
Melanie wasn’t too late. Sam was just never made for her. For any of the faces passing by.
He pushes against the crowd until he finds the exit. Makes a mental note to head back early enough to meet Dean, so he’ll think Sam went. He can’t fake it today. Pretend he really cares about these faces, any of the things they care about. It’s living beneath glass-that feeling of being somewhere else entirely, forced to stand alongside people in some completely different universe. He wants Dean to be proud of him, wants that way Dean goes around like the walking dead these days to disappear, even a little, but playing soccer again, joining some academic club-Sam bolts down the front steps, starts jogging toward the public bus stop.
Melanie wouldn’t be seeing him in English at the end of the day.
He catches the first bus that comes by, one heading downtown. Not much to do there, walk through the business districts, find something to eat that fit his budget. But the chance to clear his head was tempting, and he spends an hour heading nowhere in particular, craning his neck at the buildings ‘til it hurts. He always wanted them to end up in a city, hoped like hell he’d sprout wings and fly away from Lawrence.
He was bigger than it and Dean, despite all protests the contrary, had been too.
On the lookout for a franchise, which usually meant cheaper food, Sam comes across a four story mall on the corner. It advertises a Macy’s and he wrinkles his nose, distaste for clothes shopping, especially in overpriced department stores, coming back to life. He ducks inside, winding through the racks in search of the mall entrance, earning a lengthy ogle from a platinum blonde cashier he shrugs off.
Making his way to the cavernous bathroom in one of those extraneous hallways, he uses the urinal, realizing afterward that he’s alone. No one in the stalls, very little activity in the mall this time of day from what he saw. His dick starts to pulse in interest, the way it did over almost anything lately. Living in the closest proximity with Dean yet hadn’t exactly helped matters. At home in a hotel room or the car, they existed right on top of each other and even that turn of phrase is sending blood downstairs.
Giving himself a light, tension-relieving squeeze through his jeans, he takes a last look at the entrance and hurriedly shuts himself into a stall. He shakes his head in disbelief, but jerks open his fly, exposing his flesh to the air, sighing in relief. Has to make it quick.
With a lick of his lips, he wrenches his eyes shut, calling up the standbys, things guaranteed to have him shooting in a minute or two-every fucking thing about Dean. No girl does this to him and he doesn’t want guys. It’s Dean.
He strokes himself firm and fast, remembering Dean and Ms. Williams, the sounds they made, how it would’ve looked, Dean sliding in and out of her wet pussy, the way Dean said his name when he saw Sam standing there. He exhales shakily, can hear how loud the sound of his hand moving is with the echo of the tile.
God, he wishes he could see Dean’s dick again. Feel how hard it got inside Sam’s mouth, how hard Sam made him and he would never admit. Taste the saltiness leaking from the head and avidly learn the taste of his jizz until he was god damn perfect at making Dean come apart for him.
And one day-having Dean do it to him, suck him off with those fat, red lips, fuck him all the way, deep in him, so much farther than Sam could go with his fingers-
Shoes squeak on the floor and Sam gasps, concentration shattered. A tidal wave of sensation rips out of him and he thinks he’s coming but a resounding bang rings out, jarring and sudden. Sam blinks through dust and wood chips, still holding his dick, finally coming to his senses and tucking in.
The wall of his stall suddenly has a hole the size of his head punched through it.
“Holy shit. Is somebody in there?” his faceless company asks from outside the stall.
Sam can only gape at the destruction, until the guy tries to open the door. He unlocks the rattling latch himself, pushing past the guy without stopping, muttering over his shoulder that he’s okay.
Better than.
*~*
Dean slouches low enough in the driver’s seat to just see over the wheel, make out lines in the semi-visible parking lot, stretching out in a painful landscape of sunlight. He jams his fingers against the radio button, tuning on something vaguely alt and pitching it too quiet to be anything but background noise.
Few minutes ‘til dismissal. The school buses are gearing up near the front. Parents lined along the curb. And Dean-parked near the fence in a reserved employee spot.
He wonders idly if it’s time to ditch the car. Knows this guy from the corner that says he learned to boost from his cousin. Still pulled a gig if the opportunity presented itself. That guy was full of shit about most things, though, so odds were on it being another one for the pile. Dean wasn’t looking to get arrested with a fake asshole that didn’t have a clue what he was doing the week of Sam’s birthday anyway.
A generic bell rings, bringing on the flow of kids from the front doors. Some Rover pulls up beside Dean, annoyingly loud and partially obscuring his view. The soccer Mom inside kills the engine and Dean gives her a vague nod of acknowledgment.
“Getting out of here is going to be a nightmare, huh?” she fishes, leaning over to talk through the half-open passenger window.
“Yeah. But at least we’re not up there in the chaos.”
“For now.”
Silence falls between them, but she doesn’t orient herself away from Dean’s direction. “That’s a nice change of pace.”
“What’s that?”
“I practically have to bribe my older ones to pick Josh up from school. It’s nice of you to do this.”
Nice. Dean’s been sitting in the parking lot, unable to keep his eyes off the doors for more than a minute, for almost two hours. He clears his throat.
“Mind if I bum a smoke?” he redirects, suspicion dawning the way it did when he got asked questions like this. About Sam. “Swear I’m legal.”
“Am I that obvious?” Her teeth are faintly yellow. The sort of thing he picks up on with anyone he comes into contact with now. Seemingly useless info that might prove useful. Might save his ass. Or Sam’s. She produces a pack and shakes one out for Dean, throwing it down to him at an awkward angle. “Don’t make it a habit. You’re too young to chain yourself to these things.”
A sandy haired kid, scowling expression, much taller than Sam, is crossing the parking lot toward them. He’s glad to have her go, doesn’t look up as he lights the cig. All over the parking lot, kids hop into waiting cars, some of their mouths going a mile a minute, others looking like they’d rather be anywhere else. These stupid, bored faces Dean wants to deck into a modicum of appreciation.
He doesn’t start scanning for Sam again until he hears her pull away.
She wouldn’t think to wonder if the car is stolen, he muses, where their parents were, what Dean does that has him coming home and scrubbing his skin bloody in the shower.
How hard he’s warped his brother.
She’d be sick to the depths of her stomach if she was worth a damn, round up some band of husbands itching to work out the aggression they couldn’t at home and on unfulfilling jobs to beat Dean ‘til he stopped moving and the world was less one twisted son of a bitch.
He blinks owlishly when a pile of ash drops onto his jeans.
Sam doesn’t materialize after he’s taken a last, long pull and exhaled in a lingering cloud. Doesn’t usually make a habit of sticking around here longer than he has to. Which means fifteen minutes after the bell, Dean is out, going on the hunt and stalking through hallways like a man possessed. In the moderately sized library, Sam finally appears, hunched at a computer station.
Glancing around, Dean jerks him up roughly, crowded him into relative seclusion against the stacks. Sam just searches his face, eyes interested. Dean puts space between them after that. “You’re late.”
“Working on a paper that’s due tomorrow. Sorry,” he says as a genuine afterthought, mood less gloomy than usual.
“Then let’s go. I’ve got grocery money and you got to pick a cake. Not vanilla.”
“I don’t really want a cake. It’s kind of lame,” he shrugs indifferently. Lying his ass off. Probably to save the money, because he’s always digging, opening Dean up with a look, too damn often, and Dean wouldn’t put it past him to have caught on to the reality of their gravy train, the way he couldn’t stare Sam in the face right after.
He doesn’t know which part of that gets the honor of least fucked up.
“More for me. ‘Cause we’re getting a cake.”
“I’ve got to finish this.”
“Since when do you do shit at the last minute?”
“Since I plugged the floppy disk in and all my work had been erased.”
They step out of the corner and head back to Sam’s station. A magnet in plastic bolt of lightning form sits near the keyboard, still stuck to some note Sam had written. “You had this on the disk?”
“To remind myself to change the-“
“Magnets can and will erase the data off a floppy disk.”
“Oh,” Sam reacts dully. “Whatever. Guess I’ll have to eat this assignment.” Whatever is elevating his mood is apparently putting a serious damper on his priorities. Dean pulls a chair up and parks beside Sam’s, fixes his eyes on him until Sam gets the hint and sits back down. Starts chewing distractedly on the eraser of his pencil.
“Focus. Start over. We’ve got time,” Dean pushes the hand holding the pencil down. Sam decides to leave it resting on Dean’s thigh.
“Can’t type with one hand,” Dean notes, voice dropping to a pitch that says he wouldn’t mind if Sam could somehow pull it off. There’s a slow grin tugging at the corner of Sam’s mouth. Sitting up straight, he starts typing in the empty document, eyes straying occasionally for the feel of Dean turning him face forward again by his chin.
If that’s what it takes to keep Sam from bailing on a future Dean can’t follow him to, then that’s what it is.
*~*
The longest Dean has ever waited for a John off this intersection was about an hour and a half.
That was early, when he was getting a feel for the spot, this run-down public park on the edge of industry. When he was easing the locals into his presence, the outsider horning in. Weeks later, not much had changed-none of the fuckers ever had a light for him when Dean’s cheap Bic-knockoff wouldn’t catch.
But he knew what it was. He was competition. Lean and unblemished on the outside. Young enough to not disrupt a fantasy of something young enough to be off-limits. Taken to the occasional cig to kill the time and the edge but not here because it was a means to a fix, because he’d driven himself to the peeling, chipped swingset and burned every bridge behind him. He said once that he’d get in the dirt for Sam, and here he was, but there was that and there was throwing yourself in facefirst. That was the purported car jacker mastermind stepping out of the streetlight to conspicuously powder his nose.
There were a few others in a similar boat, not addicts, just guys, a few women, trying to get by. Here by some story they weren’t interested in telling Dean, even if he’d wanted to hear them. Ones of days gone by, somewhere else and somewhere better. But they’d been at it a long time, long enough for it to show on their faces.
That tell-tale hollow, it would get Dean soon enough too.
“Got a light?” A blonde-girl sporting one of those bobs leans an elbow on the swingset, cigarette dangling between her lips.
He squints at a dark car that approaches but doesn’t slow down. Takes an appraising look at her. Kind of the opposite track from most of the girls he’d seen-no teased up hair, make-up not too caked on. The leather was right at home though. “I take it you’re new. Or else you’d know I never have a light. Barely any cigs for that matter.”
“So you’re just a colossal mooch.”
“Tonight, I’m just the guy sweating my ass off. Hope somebody’s into it.”
“I’d hope you’re more interesting than that.”
She slinks around him, purring at a guy down the sidewalk and returning with a pack full of matches. “There,” she heaves it at him once she’s lit. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”
He snatches them out of the air, turning back to the road. “I won’t.”
“You know,” she lilts, undeterred, “I’ve seen you around a couple times. At the Salvation Army with the most adorable plaid shirt in your hands the other day. It was for some kid.”
“Mind finding somebody else to jaw at?”
“Long night ahead. Why not you?” She sighs, faint smirk fading at the hostility. “I know what it’s like, is all. Family. Like choking slowly,” her small hands wrap around her throat in example.
“I got somebody that depends on me. It’s not the end of the world.”
“How noble.”
He inspects their illustrious surroundings. “Yeah, that’s the word I’d use for it. Look, I’m not holding anything if that’s what you’re after. Not into it.”
“Neither am I. Drugs are bad. I don’t look bad, do I?” She trails her fingers down, teasingly dragging the zipper of her jacket down. Dean ignores it.
“Yours, they know you’re here? Your family.”
“Oh, they always know where I am. Just over my shoulder.”
The mild horror must have shown on his face. “Chivalrous too,” she grins in amusement, “How cute.”
“It’s harder for you,” he nods outward, “Out here. They’re worse to you.”
“I can take care of myself. And you,” she appraises him approvingly. “Seem to be a quick study in depravity.”
He shrugs in his coat, pulling out the collar. Takes a few steps back toward the road. Another car coming and he aims to be in it.
“Hey. I was just joking.”
“Forget it.” Edging his way past the slow to move group at the other end of the sidewalk, he strides up the car, forces it to stop for him. Ready to be out of here. He hangs through the window, leering at a bald guy in a sweated through dress shirt.
The girl is gone by the time they pull away.
*~*
On the way to school, Sam is buzzing in his seat. Drumming his fingertips against the dash, pulling at his seatbelt, shifting around like he’s about to explode.
Dean keeps an eye on him as he takes a turn. “You on some kind of sugar high or something?”
“I found some money,” he announces, self-satisfied. “At school. Like fifty bucks.”
“Nice. Hold onto it. Get something else before your birthday.” He switches around on the radio, eventually coming back to the station that had been playing originally. The slow, melodic part of some seventies rock song. “What are we listening to? Better question: why are we listening to it?”
Sam shrugs. “Something classic. It’s not bad actually.”
Dean scoffs, reaching across to the glove box, fumbling with it as he watches the road, popping it and producing a CD case. He slides it into the slot, and insistent, building guitar strings break out.
“What is this?”
“The new Foo Fighters. I got it for you,” he turns up the volume and the harder, pounding chords of Everlong fill the car. The beat makes him nod along but he glances over and finds Sam suddenly stiff and still.
“What’s your problem?”
“I told you I didn’t want anything.”
Dean gapes at him, disbelieving. Anger rising quick as a bullet train. “It’s just impossible for you to shut up and listen for two seconds?”
“I don’t want anything for my birthday if you have to buy it with-“ he stops himself, fuming but keeping his mouth shut. Dean’s eyes go hard.
“With what? Money I got from where, Sam?”
Sam shakes his head, isn’t going to say it. Take up Dean’s masochistic dare and rip him the part the way Dean clearly wants him to. The car lurches to a halt, two of them slammed back against their seats and then jerked forward. Dean ejects the CD, hurls it out the open window.
“I never should’ve bought the fucking thing,” he starts, mostly to himself, “Never should’ve brought us here. This-this is the best I can do for you and it’s just more shit and I don’t know what the hell is gonna happen but I need you to be better than this. Make some kind of life away from here and away from me.” he exhales, grips the steering wheel, “I don’t know what I am anymore but wrong and out of control. I can’t take anything else from you.”
“But I don’t-“
“Go to that police station a mile or two back. Tell them you need protection. They can change your name, find you another group home,” his throat hurts with the effort of keeping it together. “Get out.”
“Dean, you need to listen to me-”
He reaches across Sam’s chest, pulling the door handle. It springs open, bottom scraping against the sidewalk. Sam pleads silently, but Dean shoves roughly at his shoulder, making him brace his hands against the dashboard.
“I told you to get out.”
In a trance, Sam climbs out, standing there and watching with wide eyes. Thinking Dean won’t go through with it. All some fear-driven impulse that’ll pass, that’ll have him dragging Sam back, that overwhelming poison infecting both of them again-and Dean would. He’d touch Sam, run his mouth all over him here, in broad daylight. If he lets him back in.
With a deceptively soft click, he pulls the door shut and merges back into traffic. Covers his mouth with one hand as he turns onto the nearest street, before he can glance up into the rearview mirror.
*~*
By the time the moon is high, risen fully from behind the clouds, Dean can see it from his perch on the busted, old merry-go-round. Digs his heels into the dirt and turns it in slow semi-circles, creak of the effort piercing the low hum of nearby conversation. No one even looks but the blonde girl, leather a bright red on her shoulders tonight. She keeps her distance until Dean stares through her unconsciously, clicks over on spiked heels until she’s standing over him.
“Still need a light?”
“Something stronger than that. You got anything?”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” she narrows her eyes, but they’re still unusually bright. “Thought you weren’t into that?”
“The more you know. Fuck off,” he tosses over his shoulder.
Predictably, she lingers, runs her tongue over ruby lips before she speaks. “Whatever you think you did wrong that’s made you such a miserable, little martyr,” Dean’s jaw clenches at the accusation, “To hell with it. If it makes you happy, then what does anything else matter?”
“You got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Because you’re so much better than me. Noble Dean. Take a look around,” she nods, “Us? We’re the same.”
He searches her face with a sneer. “Not even close.”
“Suit yourself. But life, it is that simple. If you want it to be.”
He doesn’t look at her. Hears the leaves crunch under her heels as she saunters off to the darkened area near the public bathrooms, where light never quite reaches. Her words took time to shake off, tonight longer than usual. That ideal, if that was who he was, he’d be with Sam right now. Drowning happily in everything between them, letting his head go under the water. Unburdened by guilt that had walked beside him all his life. Free. Home.
But that wasn’t him. No man’s land-just normal enough to hate the sick bastard that looked back at him in the mirror but not abnormal enough to let him be happy. Even deal with his existence until they had to run. The fact that the two of them were one and the same.
He’s on his feet when a Lexus glides up beside him. Pointlessly conspicuous in this part of town, this part of night, hunting what this guy was. Arrogant prick.
But he rolls down the window and jerks his head for Dean to get in. Offering the chance to check in to oblivion, to be somebody else, someone without this hole in his chest. He takes it.
“Going my way?”
“Whatever.”
*~*
The hotel is more upscale than Dean is used to. The guy doesn’t make him wait in the car while he checks-in and the clerk doesn’t bat an eye at the pair of them. People probably paid for the discretion as much as the marble.
Dean makes a show of taking in the surroundings, the suite he’s led into, the well stocked mini-bar. Part of the package-this bullshit worship. As integral for pleasing this one as moaning over his cock. He flits disinterested eyes along the walls until the guy has had his fill, directs Dean by the shoulders toward the bathroom.
“Get cleaned up,” he instructs, loosening his tie and then sticking his hands in his pockets. Watching Dean intently as he shrugs off his jacket, pulls his shirt over his head, perfunctory and unsexy disrobing until he stands completely naked.
Dean waits for some other instruction. “Go on. Be quick,” is all he gets.
He leans against the bathroom door after it closes, slides down into a crouching position and closes his eyes. Takes a breath. Tries not think. In the spacious shower, he listlessly drags a washcloth over his skin as the sound of the spray lulls him into nothing. Must’ve been standing longer than he realized because suddenly there’s pounding on the door.
Those types, the world was supposed to bow down to them. Most of it did, when they flashed enough money. Just like Dean. Fact of the matter-he didn’t even need it anymore. Just didn’t have anywhere else to go.
He’s inspected after, a new purchase. Hands smoothing down his back, over the curve of his ass, cupping his flaccid cock. Lump of useless flesh that doesn’t rise even as the guy starts to stroke and lavish attention on it. Dean is trying but it’s-
“Make some noise, for Christ’s sake.”
Dean sways, the hands locking onto his hips, digging in hard enough to bruise. The usual. “Got anything decent to drink?”
The man, he might as well be a John, has the look about him. Dean should just call all of ‘em John. Has to stop hysterical laughter from bubbling to the surface. If his John, if Dad, could see him now.
This John scoffs at the insinuation that he wouldn’t. “You could’ve mentioned that earlier,” he says, irritated, “But if that’s the problem.”
He spends an unnecessary amount of time with his back to Dean, preparing a drink that Dean has working down his throat in a few seconds. When it’s gone, he immediately asks, “Can I have some more?”
John eases the glass from his hand. “No. I’ll not have you sloppy and disobedient. Kiss me,” he orders.
They’re almost the same height. Dean’s exposed dick pressing right against John’s clothed, hardening one when he wraps his arms around John’s neck, leans in, and nearly bites clean through his lip.
“Fucking trash,” he mutters, slamming his knuckles into Dean’s face. Dean gasps at the impact, wants more, harder. “I have to explain this to people,” he complains, shoves Dean onto the bed so that he lands on his stomach, makes no effort to turn over and face him.
“You want me to have to punish you? I will.” Dean can hear the buttons being undone. The belt. Feels the weight drape itself over him, hot on his back, forcing it to stay curved, Dean to keep his face buried in the covers the way Dean wants.
“Sam,” Dean keeps mumbling into it. “Sam.”
“Talk when I give you permission,” he pulls Dean upright, keeps an arm around his throat, cutting off his air. The other hand trails down, a finger abruptly being shoved into Dean’s ass. Dry and too deep, it makes him hiss. He’s going to get fucked with no prep and it’ll hurt the both of them. He wants it so badly he can taste.
“Wh-whatever you want,” he rasps with limited air. “I don’t know how to be good. Teach me?”
“That’s right, I’ll show you,” the finger withdraws some but stays inside, jamming back in deeper. Dean clenches up on it, intensifies the delicious burn and how long he’ll feel this after. “Can barely even fit this inside you. How am I gonna open you up?”
It hurts when Dean swallows. He fights the urge to pull away, desperately shifts down to let the fingers go deeper, makes John tighten the arm around his throat to keep him still. There are stars brimming in Dean’s eyes, blinding and bright.
“Whatever I want,” John says to himself, ignoring the way Dean’s movements start to slow. “I want to see what’s inside.”
If he’d been able, Dean would’ve croaked his consent before everything went black.
*~*
That hole in his chest, there’s air moving through it when he wakes up.
There are other ones. Little nicks all over him, pouring him out into the air. He blinks, finds he can’t move, sit up, do anything. A knife, dripping at the tip, appears in front of his face. John’s steely eyes appearing in its wake.
Dean tips his head down. His chest is streaked with blood, shallow, random cuts all the way down to the thatch of his pubes. He swallows, pulling at the bonds, just cut up sheets, chafing the skin of his wrists and ankles. He doesn’t want to see himself painted all over his skin.
“Let me up,” his throat is sore.
John shushes him, pressing the flat of the knife against his lips, forcing him to flick his tongue out to taste the collected liquid before he takes it away. “Not deep enough yet.”
“Stop. I don’t want your money. Let me the fuck up,” he jerks hard, gritting against the stinging in his chest. This pain, he didn’t want.
“I’m not done teaching you.” Smoothing Dean’s sweat-drenched hair, he digs his thumb into one of the cuts along Dean’s stomach. Dean writhes and shoots him a panicked look. “My stepson, about your age. Tall, strong. But doesn’t listen. Threw away every opportunity I’ve ever given him. He’ll come back to me one day, and I’ll teach him again-the way I’m teaching you.”
Dean gathers what he can in his dry mouth and spits into John’s face. Gob dripping from his cheek. Calmly, John wipes it away. Gives the most serene smile as he raises the knife into the air above Dean’s stomach.
He halts as Dean turns his face away from the blade, mid-plunge, hand poised in the air as if stuck.
The corner of his eye twitches. He reaches over and Dean braces himself, but he only lays the knife on the nightstand. Climbs off the bed and strides to the door where Dean can hear him opening it. He starts to yell a pained plea for help, but his voice shuts off like a faucet when John returns.
Sam is following him.
Obvious now that it’s a nightmare. Has to be. Even as John stands stiffly to the side while Sam passes, runs over and uses the knife to cut away at the sheets holding Dean down. Sam studies the ruin across Dean’s chest and stomach, fingers trailing around the edge and then curling into a fist.
He stands back when the bonds are all cut, just reaches out a hand for Dean to clasp as he carefully stands up.
“Can you put your clothes on?”
Dean takes a minute to find his voice again. Nods for now, padding across the room and finding his clothes neatly folded by John’s briefcase. He gingerly pulls on his shirt, tries not to bend too much as he puts his pants on. He turns to leave but sees Sam searching through the drawers and then John’s wallet. Decides to follow suit and snap open the briefcase.
He finds some papers and an unloaded pistol. Clip by the weapon. He tucks the gun and slides the clip into his pocket without thinking. Can’t think, process the sequence of events.
“How did you-“ he trails off helplessly.
Sam crams a folded wad of bills into his pocket, pauses. “I thought about you. Never stopped. After a while it was like I got this picture in my head. Where you were, how to get there. I just knew.”
Dean looks to John, frozen and eerie in the same spot. That was Sam too. “Let’s get out of here. Please.”
Sam swallows, looking from John to Dean. “One more thing.”
Already with his hand on the door, needing to be out of here now, Dean shakes his head. “Sam, don’t-“
“Take that knife of yours,” he starts, sound of his voice foreign and overlayed with something that sets the hairs on Dean’s arms on end, “And shove it into your stomach, you son of a bitch.”
Dean should’ve left. Dragged Sam out. Should’ve made himself do anything but cling to the door as John casually crossed to the nightstand, wrapped both hands around the hilt of the blade and drove it straight into his torso, crumpling to the floor with an agonized cry. The first of many.
Sam stares hard at his figure, doubled up and rocking, clutching at the spreading redness. “Now we can go.”
Part VII