Dynamic Equilibrium - Part Seven
7.
Sam and Jess’s flight will be arriving at Lincoln Airport at 4.00pm on Saturday December 18th. Sam plans to hire a car for the two hour drive to Kearney and Dean is expecting to see his little brother in the flesh, for the first time in over a decade, at around 6.30pm.
Just in time for supper.
Despite having been Face-timing and emailing with Sam for almost two months, Dean is nervous.
Things had been confusing in the six months leading up to Dean being dumped on Ellen and Sammy had been so young. What if he doesn’t respect Dean anymore? What if he treats him like some kind of helpless weakling?
Dean works himself up into such a state worrying about how things are going to go with Sam that Gabriel breaks out the ropes. He binds Dean tightly and suspends him from a makeshift harness and then stuffs him with a ball gag and a vibrating butt plug. By the time Sam and Jess’s plane lands, Dean is limp, drooling and glassy eyed. Gabriel fucks him slow and deep while jacking him off and when they’ve finished he sends his loose, sleepy, stress-free Sub to have a nap, while he cleans up and packs everything away.
Dean wakes up to shouting and a scent-overload of dominant pheromones. Gabriel is telling someone to calm down, there’s a woman’s voice telling someone to calm down and there is another voice, demanding: “What did you do to my brother? Dean doesn’t nap! If you’re abusing him, I swear to the Lord and Lady that I’ll rip your lungs out!”
Ah. Sammy.
Dean gets out of bed and pulls on sweat pants and a long-sleeved Henley. Probably better if Sam doesn’t see the faint diamond patterns mottling Dean’s skin right now.
He pads downstairs, barefooted and sleep-tousled and finds Sam bailing Gabriel up against the hallway wall.
“What the Hell, Sammy?” he says. “A guy can’t take a nap around here without you going all SuperDom, Protector of the Universe?”
Sam gapes at him. “Dean?”
Dean spreads his arms wide. “The one and only.”
Sam lets go of Gabriel with a sheepish apologetic glance and throws himself at Dean. He hugs him tightly, giant arms swamping Dean. For all his obvious power and strength, Dean can feel him trembling and all his big brother instincts and urges come racing back. He hugs his little brother tighter, closing his eyes and just revelling in having Sammy in his arms. It feels a lot like coming home.
“I’ve missed you so much,” Sam whispers, and Dean can tell that he’s trying hard not to cry.
“Back at you, little brother,” he says, voice gruff with emotion.
They pull apart by unspoken mutual agreement, but remain standing shoulder to shoulder. Sam casts another sheepish glance at Gabriel. “I’m sorry, man,” he says. “I can’t believe I went off on you like that. I’ve just been so…” he looks instinctively to the woman, who is standing off to the side, just watching them. She’s tall and blonde and really attractive, wearing tight blue jeans with black lace up boots, a low cut Smurfs top and a black leather jacket.
“Tense?” she says. “Stressed out? Nervous? A huge pain in my ass for the entire day?” She smiles at Dean and shakes her head. “If he was a Sub, I would’ve put him down deep, just to get him to relax. I’m Jess, by the way.” She steps forward and offers Dean her hand.
“Dean,” he can’t help the flirtatious grin. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I love the Smurfs. And I just gotta say, you are way outta my brother’s league.”
Gabriel rolls his eyes. “Really, Dean?”
The Dom steps toward Sam and offers his hand. “Maybe we could try the introductions again,” he says, “this time, without your gigantic paw up against my throat.”
Sam shakes Gabriel’s hand and unleashes the puppy dog eyes. “I am so, so sorry,” he says.
Gabriel waves a hand at him dismissively. “Oh put those away. I understand, kid. I really do. But you might wanna rethink some of those instincts around your brother. He won’t stand for it,” he turns to Jess and shakes her hand too, before suggesting to Dean that he show them up to the guest bedroom.
Sam and Jess have a duffel bag each and they follow Dean up the stairs.
“So,” Dean turns and eyes his brother. “You’re both Doms.”
Sam swallows. “Is that gonna be a problem?”
“Nope. I don’t care who you love, who you bone or who bones you. So long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters to me.”
“Thank you,” Sam says.
Dean waggles his eyebrows. “So how does it work then, do you switch it up? Or does one of you always play the Sub part?”
Sam face-palms. “Really, Dean?”
“Hey,” Dean holds his hands up. “I’m just curious. Here’s your room.”
Dean leans against the wall and watches while his brother and his partner put their bags down and look around the small, nicely-furnished room. They exchange a look and then Sam says, “If you must know, Jess and I are both a-dynamic.”
Dean gapes. “What? You just fuck and that’s it?”
“We’re not into BDSM,” Jess says gently. “We enjoy each other’s bodies in pleasurable ways, but we never incorporate pain or domination in our pleasure.”
“Oh,” says Dean. “Well…whatever trips your trigger, right? The bathroom’s right across the hall. Feel free to freshen up. Supper’ll be ready in about twenty minutes.”
--
Sam and Dean slip back into the easy, comfortable relationship they had as kids without too much trouble. They move in sync, have long conversations without saying a word and tease each other mercilessly. They go out together and choose a Christmas tree and Sam takes great joy in helping Gabriel to decorate the tree and the house, while Dean and Jess roll their eyes. Jess, Dean learns, is training to be a nurse. He makes appropriately inappropriate comments about her being welcome to examine him thoroughly any time, until Gabriel threatens to take him upstairs and spank him, which embarrasses both Jess and Sam immensely, and Dean not at all.
Gabriel buys a ton of Christmas candy and spends the week with a candy cane perpetually sticking out of his mouth. It makes him taste like peppermint, which Dean decides he prefers to Gabe’s usual cherry flavor.
So things are going well, but that’s not to say there aren’t some uncomfortable moments. Sam’s eyes nearly bug out of his head the first time Dean sits at Gabriel’s feet, and Dean’s cheerful revelation that he’d be doing it stark naked if Sam and Jess weren’t around does nothing to help with the narrow-eyed almost-glares Sam keeps sending Gabriel’s way. Sam winces whenever Gabriel calls Dean ‘my Sub’ and he looks perplexed whenever Dean refers to Gabriel as ‘my Dom’ and he seems to be having a hard time believing that Dean is really and truly happy with Gabriel.
Things come to a head on Christmas Eve.
Usually, Gabriel uses Shibari to get Dean into Subspace, but it’s not something they can do in front of Sam and Jess and their bedroom is too small to fit the A-frame they need to suspend Dean. So the night before Christmas Eve, Gabe spanks him. Dean sleeps late the next morning and wakes up feeling relaxed and content. His ass is barely pink and doesn’t really hurt and he’s whistling cheerfully when he enters the frigid atmosphere of the kitchen.
“Whoa,” he says. “Who died?”
Gabe is frying bacon at the stove, his back studiously turned.
“Ah shit,” Dean’s face tightens. “Who died? Is it Dad?”
Sam clears his throat and then gets to his feet, inclining his head toward the living room. “Can we talk, Dean?”
They sit on the sofa and Sam runs a nervous hand across his mouth.
“Are you okay?” he asks finally.
“Uh. Yes? What’s going on Sammy?”
“It’s just…we heard… Your Dom beat you last night, Dean!”
“Really?” Dean raises an eyebrow. “That’s what this is about?”
“Of course that’s what this is about,” Sam hisses. “I know I was only a kid when you presented and Dad started beating you, but don’t think I don’t remember you screaming in agony for him to stop! Don’t think I don’t remember how bruised and welted your ass was; how you couldn’t sit for days; how miserable you were and how much you cried! I-”
“Dean?”
Sam breaks off when Gabriel comes into the room, followed by Jess. It’s only then that he realizes his brother is hunched in on himself and-a subtle sniff tells him- emitting waves of distressed pheromones.
“Dean?” Gabriel sits down next to Dean and Dean curls into the Dom’s chest.
“What the Hell?” Sam mutters, embarrassed by his brother’s open neediness.
“So your Dad tried to manage you himself, huh?” Gabriel says softly against Dean’s hair.
Dean nods.
“And he didn’t get the training?”
Dean shakes his head. Gabriel squeezes him tightly. “I bet that worked well,” his voice drips sarcasm.
“Dad beat the shit out of him,” Sam says harshly, “once a week, every week, regular as clockwork.”
Gabriel’s look is assessing. “I can’t imagine the impact that must’ve had on you,” he tells Sam.
Dean sits up, abruptly pulling away from Gabriel. “Awesome though this little trip down memory lane’s been, I smell bacon.”
Gabriel puts a restraining hand on him. “Did your Dad manage to get you into Subspace at all?”
Dean laughs and it’s an ugly, broken sound. “Nope. Which made him even more pissed off at me, which made him hit me even harder.”
“And then you got sick? Because you hadn’t reached Subspace in nearly six months?”
Dean closes his eyes. ‘Yeah.”
“So he sent you to live with Ellen, hoping she could do what he couldn’t?”
Dean shudders. He pushes up from the sofa and moves away, standing with his back to the three Doms in the room.
“Like clockwork, right Sammy?” he says, his voice distant. “Every Saturday night, after he’d spent a couple hours at a bar getting himself drunk enough that he could do it,” he pauses and Sam and Gabriel exchange a look.
“This one night,” Dean says finally, “I felt so shitty that I just…I couldn’t go through it again. So I took off. I thought that if I could just stay out all night, wait him out, then maybe he wouldn’t do it. I don’t even know; I was pretty much a mess by then with Subspace Deprivation Syndrome; who the Hell knows what I was thinking.”
Dean rubs a hand across his face and when he speaks again his voice is thick and shaky. “I got cornered by a group of college-age Doms in the park. They said they knew what I needed and they were gonna give it to me,” Dean sniffs wetly and rubs at his face again. “When I got home…after…Dad could smell them on me and he thought I’d gone out and let a bunch of Doms fuck me on purpose. He was…so angry with me,” Dean’s voice breaks and his shoulders tremble. “But you wanna know the worst part?” Dean wipes at his face and turns around, peering at them with tears streaming down his face. “That was the first time I reached Subspace. What kind of sick fuck relaxes enough to reach Subspace from their own rape? That’s what convinced Dad that I’d wanted it, that I was a slut. And that’s why he dumped me at Ellen’s.”
Dean scrubs a hand over his eyes again and Gabriel goes to him slowly and wraps him up in a comforting hug. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says. “Dean, it wasn’t your fault.”
“I know,” Dean says.
“You were suffering from acute SDS. Anyone half way competent should’ve been able to put you down easily. You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“Why couldn’t my Dad do it then?”
Gabriel sighs. “Because he didn’t know how to without making it sexual. He should’ve done the training. Everything that went wrong? His fault, not yours.”
“Gabriel’s right,” says Sam, his own eyes red-rimmed with tears.
Dean looks directly at him. “Do you trust me, Sammy?”
“You know I do.”
Dean nods. “Then trust me when I tell you that I know when I’m being abused and when I’m not. And Gabe is not abusing me. He just gives me what I need.”
Sam studies him intently and then gives a brisk nod. “You’re really happy, aren’t you?” he says.
“Yeah, Sam, I am.” Dean lifts his chin, his expression mulish.
Sam nods again. “You know, after I saw the way Dad treated you, after I heard you’d been passing as a Dom, and, well, knowing that I was a-dynamic, I just kind of figured that you couldn’t really be happy living as a Sub. I figured you were going along with it out of fear or obligation or some kind of Stockholm syndrome. But…you’re actually happy.”
Sam sounds kind of incredulous and Dean wishes there was some way he could make his little brother understand. He shrugs. “I guess I found some kind of balance,” he says.
“Dynamic Equilibrium,” Jess says.
The men all turn to look at her. “The rate of loss is equal to the rate of gain,” they still look puzzled, so she explains, “You give up something of yourself by submitting to Gabriel, but he gives you another part of yourself back in return.”
--
In the wake of Dean’s revelations, the household spends the day walking on egg shells, treating Dean like some kind of invalid. It gets on Dean’s nerves and he ends up pulling his baby out into the driveway and giving her some much needed TLC.
He skips lunch, preferring to give his beautifully-tuned baby a wax and polish, and then spends the afternoon reclining in her back seat, listening to his cassette tapes and thinking about the past. He thinks about what Jess said too and figures that she’s right. He may not fit the Sub stereotype, but he’s definitely a Sub. What he has with Gabe works. It makes him happy. And he can see himself being with Gabe long after the DoD collar comes off. Which means he should probably tell him about Gordon.
Sam and Jess take over the kitchen and bake beef and vegetable pot pies for supper, which go a long way towards improving Dean’s mood. He’s also pleased to see that any lingering animosity there’d been between Gabe and Sam has gone; they’re thick as thieves in fact, talking animatedly about Sub rights, the SRA and law reform.
After supper they all watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, followed by Diehard, and Gabriel makes eggnog, which Dean drinks sitting at his Dom’s feet.
Dean is still uncharacteristically quiet when they go to bed. He strips naked and slips into bed beside Gabriel, burrowing himself against the older man.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Gabriel asks.
Dean shakes his head. “It happened, it sucked. I survived,” he sighs, “but while we’re poking at festering wounds, I should probably tell you about Gordon.”
Gabriel looks at him expectantly and Dean rolls over onto his other side, ass pressed against Gabriel’s groin, back against his chest.
Gabriel swallows and wraps a comforting arm around his Sub. If Dean can’t even look at him for this, it’s obviously going to be a tough conversation.
“I met Gordon when I was twenty-one,” Dean tells him after a while. “I’d stumbled onto a vampire Hunt, but Gordon was already on the Job. Officially. Sent by the Guild. I decided to shadow him, see what I could learn. When he went to clean out the nest, one of the vamps got the drop on him and I ended up saving his life,” he huffs out a humorless laugh. “I was so proud of myself. Anyway, Gordon insisted on taking me out to a bar to say thank you and we just kind of hit it off, spent the night getting wasted and swapping Hunting stories. I woke up the next day gagged and handcuffed to his bed. My DomScent had worn off during the night,” Dean shudders. “The way Gordon figured it, he wouldn’t tell the Guild I’d been Hunting unlicensed and I’d show my gratitude by being his slave. He kept me on a short leash,” Dean barks out a laugh, “literally, for eight months,” a single tear runs down his cheek and he wipes at it angrily. “I wouldn’t submit to him at first so he sliced and carved and tore at me in ways that you…until there was almost nothing left of me. Eight months of slave positions, humiliation, punishment and rape and I fucking hated every second of it, but I didn’t lose me. I hung on, bided my time. He made me wear a collar like this one,” Dean touches his DoD collar, “micro-chipped and alarmed so that I couldn’t get away from him.”
“So how did you get away?” Gabriel asks softly.
“We were working a Hunt, an angry spirit that was abducting and killing kids. Gordon thought he had me completely under his thumb, so he was letting me off the leash a bit more, letting me help out, you know? Like a reward for being such a good little slave. We figured out where the spirit was taking the kids, but we got to the house too late and the latest victims were already dead. The poltergeist went after Gordon, knocked him out cold, but she ignored me completely. Guess she didn’t think a Sub was any kind of a threat. To cut a long story short, I had enough time to figure out who she was, salt and burn her bones, clean up all the ectoplasm and then plant evidence that framed Gordon for the kidnappings and murders. Then I took off; phoned in an anonymous tip to the cops on my way outta town. Gordon was arrested, tried and convicted and, last I heard, he’s still in jail.”
“Ouch,” Gabriel says lightly. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
Dean rolls onto his back and turns to look at his Dom. “He deserved it. He was a dangerous psychopath and he put me through Hell,” Dean clears his throat. “So anyway, that’s the worst of it, I guess,” he chews on his bottom lip. “I should probably tell you though, that I’ve, you know, only when I was really broke, let people fuck me for money,” he clears his throat again. “So now you know all of my dirty little secrets. Still think I’m a catch?”
Gabriel leans forward and presses his lips to Dean’s, licking his way into the younger man’s mouth and kissing him insistently until Dean is breathless and pliant beneath him. “Yes,” he says. “I still think you’re a catch.”
--
Gabriel reprises his amazing Thanksgiving lunch on Christmas Day and Jess makes both apple and cherry pies for dessert. Once they’ve all stuffed themselves stupid, they exchange presents. Dean gets a Hunter’s Journal from Sam and Jess and an auto-mechanic’s toolkit from Gabe; he gives Sam and Jess bookstore gift vouchers, and Gabe a four pound box of Gummi Bears and a book about rope bondage which makes Sam blush. They’ve just finished watching It’s a Wonderful Life and Dean is wondering if he can stuff in another piece of apple pie without exploding when Gabriel clears his throat.
“So Dean told us a few things about his past yesterday and it got me thinking about my own deep, dark secrets. Some of them you already know,” he turns to Dean. “You only found out about the extra assistance I give to the SRA when we had Lisa and Ben stay with us. Dr Milton told Sam about the level of my SRA involvement when we agreed that I would apply to be your State appointed Guardian Dom.”
“I had to know that I could trust him,” Sam said, “and knowing that he was part of the Underground Railroad like Jess and I are went a long way towards achieving that.”
Dean nods. “But I’m guessing there’s more?”
Gabriel runs a hand across his mouth. “Dr Milton,” he says. “Cas…he’s my brother.”
“What?” Sam splutters. “But…no…Dr Milton only has two brothers; Michael and Lucien.”
Gabe nods. “I was expunged from the family records. My father is powerful enough to do that, you know. It was supposed to be my punishment for helping Cas, for being a disgrace to my dynamic, but in reality, it’s been more like my own private witness protection program.”
“Well, yeah,” says Dean. “I mean, your family are a bunch of heavy weight douchenozzles.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrow. “I love my father, my brothers. Love them. But watching them turn on Cas? Understanding for the first time that they’re not really about cherishing, valuing and protecting Subs, but about using and controlling them? I couldn’t bear it, so it was easier to just…go along with my banishment, lay low. Help out the SRA in small ways.”
Dean is staring at him. “You’re Loki,” he says.
“I am,” Gabriel concedes. “Also known as Gabriel Archangel; son of Charles, brother of Michael, Lucien and Castiel.”
“Holy shit!” says Sam. “You’re Loki! You’re…wow!”
“Yeah,” Gabriel rubs at the back of his neck. “More importantly, I’m done hiding. The things I know about the Archangel family; the things I know about the DoD… it’s time for me to stand up to them,” he turns to Sam. “If you’d like to interview me for your thesis, or for an SRA article, I’m all yours.”
Sam dashes up to his room and comes back with a mini tape recorder, a writing pad and a pen. Dean doesn’t think he’s ever actually seen someone giddy with excitement before. He gets to his feet and stretches. “I’m gonna put on a pot of coffee,” he points a finger at Sam and gives him a meaningful look. “You just remember,” he points at Gabriel, “he’s mine, okay?”
--
Sam and Jess leave a few days after New Year. Dean is sad to see them go and he’s going to miss his little brother like a severed limb, but he must admit that it’s nice to have the house to themselves again without having to worry that they’re going to freak out Sam and Jess with their sex life.
Back at work the apprentice-Trent-seems to have decided to dedicate the New Year to being a complete douchebag to Dean. Dean learns that the kid failed an important exam just before Christmas and the boss is riding him hard. Taking it out on the only Sub in the company seems to be his coping strategy.
Dean is bent over vacuuming the interior of a Lexus when Trent comes up behind him, grabs his hips and grinds against him.
“Fuck off, Trent,” Dean says mildly.
“What’s with the attitude, Subbie? You know you like it. And it’s not like you’ve got a real Dom.” He gets a couple of fingers underneath Dean’s collar and tugs at it.
Dean backs out of the car and stands up, shrugging Trent off.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Trent’s smile is cruel. “You’re under a State Guardianship Order, Subbie, it’s not like you’re bonded. All you are to your Guardian Dom is a convenient hole.”
“Fuck you, kid,” Dean says, turning away. “You don’t know shit.”
Trent grabs his ass. “What did you get in trouble for anyway,” he says, when Dean spins around and glares at him. “Pretty guy like you; cock sucking lips like those? It was whoring, wasn’t it?”
“Unlicensed Hunting,” Dean says flatly. He grins, slow and nasty, and watches Trent pale, just a little. “I used to spend my days gutting monsters,” he adds. “You, I could gut with my eyes closed and both hands tied behind my back. Just as well my instincts know you’re not any kind of threat.”
The sexual harassment stops after that, but Trent still speaks to Dean like Dean is shit on the bottom of his shoe. The other mechanic, Eddie, is happily bonded and never gives Dean any grief and the boss, Hank, is decent enough, but he’s also old-fashioned enough to turn a blind eye if any of the Doms on his team harass a Sub.
After a particularly poor service job Trent had done which had resulted in elderly Sub Johnson’s car breaking down a little way up the road, Dean now makes it a habit to check over the cars he has serviced when they come to him for detailing.
When he finds that Dom Barnes’s car has no brake pads, he calls Hank over and points out the problem.
“Why’re you lookin’ at brake pads?” Hank wants to know.
“You want something like Sub Johnson happening again? I know you’re too busy to double check all Trent’s work, so I’ve been double checking it for you.”
Hank strokes his beard and then asks Dean what he thinks he knows about fixing cars.
Half an hour and one thorough examination of the Impala later, Hank is offering Dean an apprenticeship, provided he passes the GED and can get himself into an auto mechanics course.
Later that night Dean checks out what auto mechanics courses the local community college offers and finds out that there’s a very reputable course run at the Hastings campus of Central Community College, which is only an hour’s drive away.
A week after his conversation with Hank, Dean gets his GED results. Included in the envelope is a letter from the Testing Center recommending that he sit for the SATs. Dean unfolds the results transcript and stares at it in disbelief. His lowest score is 773 for the writing test. His highest score is 798 for the math test.
Dean talks to Gabriel and Hank and Sam and decides that he doesn’t need to sit for the SATs. He wants to do the auto mechanics course at Central in Hastings and they’re more than happy to accept him on the basis of his GED results. Even better, Hank knows their head instructor, Jim, and on Hank’s recommendation they let him test out of doing both first and second year and end up offering him a place as a third year apprentice.
“The problem with that,” Hank says when Dean bounds enthusiastically in to Hank’s office to tell him, “is that I ain’t got no need for two third year apprentices.”
Dean hangs his head. “Right. Of course. Trent. Yeah. Sorry,” he almost offers to let Hank pay him less, but Gabe and Sam would have his head if he did that. So.
Hank climbs to his feet and sticks his head out his office door. “Trent!” he hollers.
The apprentice appears. He looks from Hank to Dean and back again and frowns.
“Whatever he said, it’s bullshit. I haven’t done nothing to the little Subbie.”
Hank grins broadly. “You’re fired,” he says. “You’re making too many mistakes, failing too many tests and making us look
bad.”
Trent glowers at Dean and Dean manfully resists the urge to poke his tongue out at him.
--
The SRA’s new campaign on Workplace Discrimination is kicked off by an article about Dean’s experiences as an unlicensed Hunter, which is quickly picked up by the syndicated press and goes national within a week. Dean is never named in the article, but given that it was written by Sam Winchester, it’s not going to be hard for the powers that be in the Hunting world to put two and two together.
The follow up article is an interview with Loki; also known as Gabriel Archangel. It’s powerful stuff, with Gabriel revealing, not only how he was excommunicated from the family for trying to protect his Sub brother’s rights, but also the threats they levelled against Castiel to secure Gabriel’s silence. Lucien took him on a tour of several State Homes and promised that Cas would end up in one if Gabriel ever spoke out against the family or the Department.
“Why are you speaking out now?” the interviewer asks.
“Because they’ve lost sight of the mission,” Gabriel says, “and they’re doing more harm than good. Doms and Subs are different but equal. If we lose that balance our whole culture suffers.”
There’s a whole lot of fuss about the article and news crews camp outside Gabe and Dean’s house for days, even going so far as to follow Dean to the garage and to class. Subs’ Weekly writes a sickeningly sweet article about the Bad-Boy Sub with the Heart of Gold who persuaded every Sub’s hero Loki to step out into the spotlight. The next time Dean sees that particular ‘journalist’ he shoots him with rocksalt.
Gabriel, meanwhile, is suspended without pay pending an investigation into allegations that he improperly used DoD resources to assist the SRA. Dean is worried, but Gabriel just shrugs and sucks on his Tootsie Pop.
“I’ve been careful, Dean. They can’t prove a thing.”
“But money’s gonna be tight. I don’t earn anything like as much as you,” Dean frowns. “I guess I could-”
Gabe cuts him off. “Oh no,” he says, “I know what you do when you’re broke and there is no way in Hell I’m going to allow you to do that. This ass,” he reaches out and squeezes the ass in question, “is mine.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “I was going to say I could ask Bobby for a loan.”
Gabriel slurps around the lollypop in his mouth. “I have a trust fund,” he says. “Well. It used to be a trust fund. I got control of it at twenty-five. I’ve never touched a penny of it because I didn’t want their money. But it’s there. To be honest, I probably never have to work again if I don’t want to.”
Dean blinks and then grins. “Use it,” he says. “Fuck ‘em.”
“Yeah,” Gabe nods. “Cas has been asking me for years to take a more active role in the SRA. I think maybe it’s time I did that. Maybe I’ll see what I can do about getting the State Homes shut down.”
<
| NEXT>>
Back to Masterpost
Sam and Jess’s flight will be arriving at Lincoln Airport at 4.00pm on Saturday December 18th. Sam plans to hire a car for the two hour drive to Kearney and Dean is expecting to see his little brother in the flesh, for the first time in over a decade, at around 6.30pm.
Just in time for supper.
Despite having been Face-timing and emailing with Sam for almost two months, Dean is nervous.
Things had been confusing in the six months leading up to Dean being dumped on Ellen and Sammy had been so young. What if he doesn’t respect Dean anymore? What if he treats him like some kind of helpless weakling?
Dean works himself up into such a state worrying about how things are going to go with Sam that Gabriel breaks out the ropes. He binds Dean tightly and suspends him from a makeshift harness and then stuffs him with a ball gag and a vibrating butt plug. By the time Sam and Jess’s plane lands, Dean is limp, drooling and glassy eyed. Gabriel fucks him slow and deep while jacking him off and when they’ve finished he sends his loose, sleepy, stress-free Sub to have a nap, while he cleans up and packs everything away.
Dean wakes up to shouting and a scent-overload of dominant pheromones. Gabriel is telling someone to calm down, there’s a woman’s voice telling someone to calm down and there is another voice, demanding: “What did you do to my brother? Dean doesn’t nap! If you’re abusing him, I swear to the Lord and Lady that I’ll rip your lungs out!”
Ah. Sammy.
Dean gets out of bed and pulls on sweat pants and a long-sleeved Henley. Probably better if Sam doesn’t see the faint diamond patterns mottling Dean’s skin right now.
He pads downstairs, barefooted and sleep-tousled and finds Sam bailing Gabriel up against the hallway wall.
“What the Hell, Sammy?” he says. “A guy can’t take a nap around here without you going all SuperDom, Protector of the Universe?”
Sam gapes at him. “Dean?”
Dean spreads his arms wide. “The one and only.”
Sam lets go of Gabriel with a sheepish apologetic glance and throws himself at Dean. He hugs him tightly, giant arms swamping Dean. For all his obvious power and strength, Dean can feel him trembling and all his big brother instincts and urges come racing back. He hugs his little brother tighter, closing his eyes and just revelling in having Sammy in his arms. It feels a lot like coming home.
“I’ve missed you so much,” Sam whispers, and Dean can tell that he’s trying hard not to cry.
“Back at you, little brother,” he says, voice gruff with emotion.
They pull apart by unspoken mutual agreement, but remain standing shoulder to shoulder. Sam casts another sheepish glance at Gabriel. “I’m sorry, man,” he says. “I can’t believe I went off on you like that. I’ve just been so…” he looks instinctively to the woman, who is standing off to the side, just watching them. She’s tall and blonde and really attractive, wearing tight blue jeans with black lace up boots, a low cut Smurfs top and a black leather jacket.
“Tense?” she says. “Stressed out? Nervous? A huge pain in my ass for the entire day?” She smiles at Dean and shakes her head. “If he was a Sub, I would’ve put him down deep, just to get him to relax. I’m Jess, by the way.” She steps forward and offers Dean her hand.
“Dean,” he can’t help the flirtatious grin. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I love the Smurfs. And I just gotta say, you are way outta my brother’s league.”
Gabriel rolls his eyes. “Really, Dean?”
The Dom steps toward Sam and offers his hand. “Maybe we could try the introductions again,” he says, “this time, without your gigantic paw up against my throat.”
Sam shakes Gabriel’s hand and unleashes the puppy dog eyes. “I am so, so sorry,” he says.
Gabriel waves a hand at him dismissively. “Oh put those away. I understand, kid. I really do. But you might wanna rethink some of those instincts around your brother. He won’t stand for it,” he turns to Jess and shakes her hand too, before suggesting to Dean that he show them up to the guest bedroom.
Sam and Jess have a duffel bag each and they follow Dean up the stairs.
“So,” Dean turns and eyes his brother. “You’re both Doms.”
Sam swallows. “Is that gonna be a problem?”
“Nope. I don’t care who you love, who you bone or who bones you. So long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters to me.”
“Thank you,” Sam says.
Dean waggles his eyebrows. “So how does it work then, do you switch it up? Or does one of you always play the Sub part?”
Sam face-palms. “Really, Dean?”
“Hey,” Dean holds his hands up. “I’m just curious. Here’s your room.”
Dean leans against the wall and watches while his brother and his partner put their bags down and look around the small, nicely-furnished room. They exchange a look and then Sam says, “If you must know, Jess and I are both a-dynamic.”
Dean gapes. “What? You just fuck and that’s it?”
“We’re not into BDSM,” Jess says gently. “We enjoy each other’s bodies in pleasurable ways, but we never incorporate pain or domination in our pleasure.”
“Oh,” says Dean. “Well…whatever trips your trigger, right? The bathroom’s right across the hall. Feel free to freshen up. Supper’ll be ready in about twenty minutes.”
--
Sam and Dean slip back into the easy, comfortable relationship they had as kids without too much trouble. They move in sync, have long conversations without saying a word and tease each other mercilessly. They go out together and choose a Christmas tree and Sam takes great joy in helping Gabriel to decorate the tree and the house, while Dean and Jess roll their eyes. Jess, Dean learns, is training to be a nurse. He makes appropriately inappropriate comments about her being welcome to examine him thoroughly any time, until Gabriel threatens to take him upstairs and spank him, which embarrasses both Jess and Sam immensely, and Dean not at all.
Gabriel buys a ton of Christmas candy and spends the week with a candy cane perpetually sticking out of his mouth. It makes him taste like peppermint, which Dean decides he prefers to Gabe’s usual cherry flavor.
So things are going well, but that’s not to say there aren’t some uncomfortable moments. Sam’s eyes nearly bug out of his head the first time Dean sits at Gabriel’s feet, and Dean’s cheerful revelation that he’d be doing it stark naked if Sam and Jess weren’t around does nothing to help with the narrow-eyed almost-glares Sam keeps sending Gabriel’s way. Sam winces whenever Gabriel calls Dean ‘my Sub’ and he looks perplexed whenever Dean refers to Gabriel as ‘my Dom’ and he seems to be having a hard time believing that Dean is really and truly happy with Gabriel.
Things come to a head on Christmas Eve.
Usually, Gabriel uses Shibari to get Dean into Subspace, but it’s not something they can do in front of Sam and Jess and their bedroom is too small to fit the A-frame they need to suspend Dean. So the night before Christmas Eve, Gabe spanks him. Dean sleeps late the next morning and wakes up feeling relaxed and content. His ass is barely pink and doesn’t really hurt and he’s whistling cheerfully when he enters the frigid atmosphere of the kitchen.
“Whoa,” he says. “Who died?”
Gabe is frying bacon at the stove, his back studiously turned.
“Ah shit,” Dean’s face tightens. “Who died? Is it Dad?”
Sam clears his throat and then gets to his feet, inclining his head toward the living room. “Can we talk, Dean?”
They sit on the sofa and Sam runs a nervous hand across his mouth.
“Are you okay?” he asks finally.
“Uh. Yes? What’s going on Sammy?”
“It’s just…we heard… Your Dom beat you last night, Dean!”
“Really?” Dean raises an eyebrow. “That’s what this is about?”
“Of course that’s what this is about,” Sam hisses. “I know I was only a kid when you presented and Dad started beating you, but don’t think I don’t remember you screaming in agony for him to stop! Don’t think I don’t remember how bruised and welted your ass was; how you couldn’t sit for days; how miserable you were and how much you cried! I-”
“Dean?”
Sam breaks off when Gabriel comes into the room, followed by Jess. It’s only then that he realizes his brother is hunched in on himself and-a subtle sniff tells him- emitting waves of distressed pheromones.
“Dean?” Gabriel sits down next to Dean and Dean curls into the Dom’s chest.
“What the Hell?” Sam mutters, embarrassed by his brother’s open neediness.
“So your Dad tried to manage you himself, huh?” Gabriel says softly against Dean’s hair.
Dean nods.
“And he didn’t get the training?”
Dean shakes his head. Gabriel squeezes him tightly. “I bet that worked well,” his voice drips sarcasm.
“Dad beat the shit out of him,” Sam says harshly, “once a week, every week, regular as clockwork.”
Gabriel’s look is assessing. “I can’t imagine the impact that must’ve had on you,” he tells Sam.
Dean sits up, abruptly pulling away from Gabriel. “Awesome though this little trip down memory lane’s been, I smell bacon.”
Gabriel puts a restraining hand on him. “Did your Dad manage to get you into Subspace at all?”
Dean laughs and it’s an ugly, broken sound. “Nope. Which made him even more pissed off at me, which made him hit me even harder.”
“And then you got sick? Because you hadn’t reached Subspace in nearly six months?”
Dean closes his eyes. ‘Yeah.”
“So he sent you to live with Ellen, hoping she could do what he couldn’t?”
Dean shudders. He pushes up from the sofa and moves away, standing with his back to the three Doms in the room.
“Like clockwork, right Sammy?” he says, his voice distant. “Every Saturday night, after he’d spent a couple hours at a bar getting himself drunk enough that he could do it,” he pauses and Sam and Gabriel exchange a look.
“This one night,” Dean says finally, “I felt so shitty that I just…I couldn’t go through it again. So I took off. I thought that if I could just stay out all night, wait him out, then maybe he wouldn’t do it. I don’t even know; I was pretty much a mess by then with Subspace Deprivation Syndrome; who the Hell knows what I was thinking.”
Dean rubs a hand across his face and when he speaks again his voice is thick and shaky. “I got cornered by a group of college-age Doms in the park. They said they knew what I needed and they were gonna give it to me,” Dean sniffs wetly and rubs at his face again. “When I got home…after…Dad could smell them on me and he thought I’d gone out and let a bunch of Doms fuck me on purpose. He was…so angry with me,” Dean’s voice breaks and his shoulders tremble. “But you wanna know the worst part?” Dean wipes at his face and turns around, peering at them with tears streaming down his face. “That was the first time I reached Subspace. What kind of sick fuck relaxes enough to reach Subspace from their own rape? That’s what convinced Dad that I’d wanted it, that I was a slut. And that’s why he dumped me at Ellen’s.”
Dean scrubs a hand over his eyes again and Gabriel goes to him slowly and wraps him up in a comforting hug. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says. “Dean, it wasn’t your fault.”
“I know,” Dean says.
“You were suffering from acute SDS. Anyone half way competent should’ve been able to put you down easily. You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“Why couldn’t my Dad do it then?”
Gabriel sighs. “Because he didn’t know how to without making it sexual. He should’ve done the training. Everything that went wrong? His fault, not yours.”
“Gabriel’s right,” says Sam, his own eyes red-rimmed with tears.
Dean looks directly at him. “Do you trust me, Sammy?”
“You know I do.”
Dean nods. “Then trust me when I tell you that I know when I’m being abused and when I’m not. And Gabe is not abusing me. He just gives me what I need.”
Sam studies him intently and then gives a brisk nod. “You’re really happy, aren’t you?” he says.
“Yeah, Sam, I am.” Dean lifts his chin, his expression mulish.
Sam nods again. “You know, after I saw the way Dad treated you, after I heard you’d been passing as a Dom, and, well, knowing that I was a-dynamic, I just kind of figured that you couldn’t really be happy living as a Sub. I figured you were going along with it out of fear or obligation or some kind of Stockholm syndrome. But…you’re actually happy.”
Sam sounds kind of incredulous and Dean wishes there was some way he could make his little brother understand. He shrugs. “I guess I found some kind of balance,” he says.
“Dynamic Equilibrium,” Jess says.
The men all turn to look at her. “The rate of loss is equal to the rate of gain,” they still look puzzled, so she explains, “You give up something of yourself by submitting to Gabriel, but he gives you another part of yourself back in return.”
--
In the wake of Dean’s revelations, the household spends the day walking on egg shells, treating Dean like some kind of invalid. It gets on Dean’s nerves and he ends up pulling his baby out into the driveway and giving her some much needed TLC.
He skips lunch, preferring to give his beautifully-tuned baby a wax and polish, and then spends the afternoon reclining in her back seat, listening to his cassette tapes and thinking about the past. He thinks about what Jess said too and figures that she’s right. He may not fit the Sub stereotype, but he’s definitely a Sub. What he has with Gabe works. It makes him happy. And he can see himself being with Gabe long after the DoD collar comes off. Which means he should probably tell him about Gordon.
Sam and Jess take over the kitchen and bake beef and vegetable pot pies for supper, which go a long way towards improving Dean’s mood. He’s also pleased to see that any lingering animosity there’d been between Gabe and Sam has gone; they’re thick as thieves in fact, talking animatedly about Sub rights, the SRA and law reform.
After supper they all watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, followed by Diehard, and Gabriel makes eggnog, which Dean drinks sitting at his Dom’s feet.
Dean is still uncharacteristically quiet when they go to bed. He strips naked and slips into bed beside Gabriel, burrowing himself against the older man.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Gabriel asks.
Dean shakes his head. “It happened, it sucked. I survived,” he sighs, “but while we’re poking at festering wounds, I should probably tell you about Gordon.”
Gabriel looks at him expectantly and Dean rolls over onto his other side, ass pressed against Gabriel’s groin, back against his chest.
Gabriel swallows and wraps a comforting arm around his Sub. If Dean can’t even look at him for this, it’s obviously going to be a tough conversation.
“I met Gordon when I was twenty-one,” Dean tells him after a while. “I’d stumbled onto a vampire Hunt, but Gordon was already on the Job. Officially. Sent by the Guild. I decided to shadow him, see what I could learn. When he went to clean out the nest, one of the vamps got the drop on him and I ended up saving his life,” he huffs out a humorless laugh. “I was so proud of myself. Anyway, Gordon insisted on taking me out to a bar to say thank you and we just kind of hit it off, spent the night getting wasted and swapping Hunting stories. I woke up the next day gagged and handcuffed to his bed. My DomScent had worn off during the night,” Dean shudders. “The way Gordon figured it, he wouldn’t tell the Guild I’d been Hunting unlicensed and I’d show my gratitude by being his slave. He kept me on a short leash,” Dean barks out a laugh, “literally, for eight months,” a single tear runs down his cheek and he wipes at it angrily. “I wouldn’t submit to him at first so he sliced and carved and tore at me in ways that you…until there was almost nothing left of me. Eight months of slave positions, humiliation, punishment and rape and I fucking hated every second of it, but I didn’t lose me. I hung on, bided my time. He made me wear a collar like this one,” Dean touches his DoD collar, “micro-chipped and alarmed so that I couldn’t get away from him.”
“So how did you get away?” Gabriel asks softly.
“We were working a Hunt, an angry spirit that was abducting and killing kids. Gordon thought he had me completely under his thumb, so he was letting me off the leash a bit more, letting me help out, you know? Like a reward for being such a good little slave. We figured out where the spirit was taking the kids, but we got to the house too late and the latest victims were already dead. The poltergeist went after Gordon, knocked him out cold, but she ignored me completely. Guess she didn’t think a Sub was any kind of a threat. To cut a long story short, I had enough time to figure out who she was, salt and burn her bones, clean up all the ectoplasm and then plant evidence that framed Gordon for the kidnappings and murders. Then I took off; phoned in an anonymous tip to the cops on my way outta town. Gordon was arrested, tried and convicted and, last I heard, he’s still in jail.”
“Ouch,” Gabriel says lightly. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
Dean rolls onto his back and turns to look at his Dom. “He deserved it. He was a dangerous psychopath and he put me through Hell,” Dean clears his throat. “So anyway, that’s the worst of it, I guess,” he chews on his bottom lip. “I should probably tell you though, that I’ve, you know, only when I was really broke, let people fuck me for money,” he clears his throat again. “So now you know all of my dirty little secrets. Still think I’m a catch?”
Gabriel leans forward and presses his lips to Dean’s, licking his way into the younger man’s mouth and kissing him insistently until Dean is breathless and pliant beneath him. “Yes,” he says. “I still think you’re a catch.”
--
Gabriel reprises his amazing Thanksgiving lunch on Christmas Day and Jess makes both apple and cherry pies for dessert. Once they’ve all stuffed themselves stupid, they exchange presents. Dean gets a Hunter’s Journal from Sam and Jess and an auto-mechanic’s toolkit from Gabe; he gives Sam and Jess bookstore gift vouchers, and Gabe a four pound box of Gummi Bears and a book about rope bondage which makes Sam blush. They’ve just finished watching It’s a Wonderful Life and Dean is wondering if he can stuff in another piece of apple pie without exploding when Gabriel clears his throat.
“So Dean told us a few things about his past yesterday and it got me thinking about my own deep, dark secrets. Some of them you already know,” he turns to Dean. “You only found out about the extra assistance I give to the SRA when we had Lisa and Ben stay with us. Dr Milton told Sam about the level of my SRA involvement when we agreed that I would apply to be your State appointed Guardian Dom.”
“I had to know that I could trust him,” Sam said, “and knowing that he was part of the Underground Railroad like Jess and I are went a long way towards achieving that.”
Dean nods. “But I’m guessing there’s more?”
Gabriel runs a hand across his mouth. “Dr Milton,” he says. “Cas…he’s my brother.”
“What?” Sam splutters. “But…no…Dr Milton only has two brothers; Michael and Lucien.”
Gabe nods. “I was expunged from the family records. My father is powerful enough to do that, you know. It was supposed to be my punishment for helping Cas, for being a disgrace to my dynamic, but in reality, it’s been more like my own private witness protection program.”
“Well, yeah,” says Dean. “I mean, your family are a bunch of heavy weight douchenozzles.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrow. “I love my father, my brothers. Love them. But watching them turn on Cas? Understanding for the first time that they’re not really about cherishing, valuing and protecting Subs, but about using and controlling them? I couldn’t bear it, so it was easier to just…go along with my banishment, lay low. Help out the SRA in small ways.”
Dean is staring at him. “You’re Loki,” he says.
“I am,” Gabriel concedes. “Also known as Gabriel Archangel; son of Charles, brother of Michael, Lucien and Castiel.”
“Holy shit!” says Sam. “You’re Loki! You’re…wow!”
“Yeah,” Gabriel rubs at the back of his neck. “More importantly, I’m done hiding. The things I know about the Archangel family; the things I know about the DoD… it’s time for me to stand up to them,” he turns to Sam. “If you’d like to interview me for your thesis, or for an SRA article, I’m all yours.”
Sam dashes up to his room and comes back with a mini tape recorder, a writing pad and a pen. Dean doesn’t think he’s ever actually seen someone giddy with excitement before. He gets to his feet and stretches. “I’m gonna put on a pot of coffee,” he points a finger at Sam and gives him a meaningful look. “You just remember,” he points at Gabriel, “he’s mine, okay?”
--
Sam and Jess leave a few days after New Year. Dean is sad to see them go and he’s going to miss his little brother like a severed limb, but he must admit that it’s nice to have the house to themselves again without having to worry that they’re going to freak out Sam and Jess with their sex life.
Back at work the apprentice-Trent-seems to have decided to dedicate the New Year to being a complete douchebag to Dean. Dean learns that the kid failed an important exam just before Christmas and the boss is riding him hard. Taking it out on the only Sub in the company seems to be his coping strategy.
Dean is bent over vacuuming the interior of a Lexus when Trent comes up behind him, grabs his hips and grinds against him.
“Fuck off, Trent,” Dean says mildly.
“What’s with the attitude, Subbie? You know you like it. And it’s not like you’ve got a real Dom.” He gets a couple of fingers underneath Dean’s collar and tugs at it.
Dean backs out of the car and stands up, shrugging Trent off.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Trent’s smile is cruel. “You’re under a State Guardianship Order, Subbie, it’s not like you’re bonded. All you are to your Guardian Dom is a convenient hole.”
“Fuck you, kid,” Dean says, turning away. “You don’t know shit.”
Trent grabs his ass. “What did you get in trouble for anyway,” he says, when Dean spins around and glares at him. “Pretty guy like you; cock sucking lips like those? It was whoring, wasn’t it?”
“Unlicensed Hunting,” Dean says flatly. He grins, slow and nasty, and watches Trent pale, just a little. “I used to spend my days gutting monsters,” he adds. “You, I could gut with my eyes closed and both hands tied behind my back. Just as well my instincts know you’re not any kind of threat.”
The sexual harassment stops after that, but Trent still speaks to Dean like Dean is shit on the bottom of his shoe. The other mechanic, Eddie, is happily bonded and never gives Dean any grief and the boss, Hank, is decent enough, but he’s also old-fashioned enough to turn a blind eye if any of the Doms on his team harass a Sub.
After a particularly poor service job Trent had done which had resulted in elderly Sub Johnson’s car breaking down a little way up the road, Dean now makes it a habit to check over the cars he has serviced when they come to him for detailing.
When he finds that Dom Barnes’s car has no brake pads, he calls Hank over and points out the problem.
“Why’re you lookin’ at brake pads?” Hank wants to know.
“You want something like Sub Johnson happening again? I know you’re too busy to double check all Trent’s work, so I’ve been double checking it for you.”
Hank strokes his beard and then asks Dean what he thinks he knows about fixing cars.
Half an hour and one thorough examination of the Impala later, Hank is offering Dean an apprenticeship, provided he passes the GED and can get himself into an auto mechanics course.
Later that night Dean checks out what auto mechanics courses the local community college offers and finds out that there’s a very reputable course run at the Hastings campus of Central Community College, which is only an hour’s drive away.
A week after his conversation with Hank, Dean gets his GED results. Included in the envelope is a letter from the Testing Center recommending that he sit for the SATs. Dean unfolds the results transcript and stares at it in disbelief. His lowest score is 773 for the writing test. His highest score is 798 for the math test.
Dean talks to Gabriel and Hank and Sam and decides that he doesn’t need to sit for the SATs. He wants to do the auto mechanics course at Central in Hastings and they’re more than happy to accept him on the basis of his GED results. Even better, Hank knows their head instructor, Jim, and on Hank’s recommendation they let him test out of doing both first and second year and end up offering him a place as a third year apprentice.
“The problem with that,” Hank says when Dean bounds enthusiastically in to Hank’s office to tell him, “is that I ain’t got no need for two third year apprentices.”
Dean hangs his head. “Right. Of course. Trent. Yeah. Sorry,” he almost offers to let Hank pay him less, but Gabe and Sam would have his head if he did that. So.
Hank climbs to his feet and sticks his head out his office door. “Trent!” he hollers.
The apprentice appears. He looks from Hank to Dean and back again and frowns.
“Whatever he said, it’s bullshit. I haven’t done nothing to the little Subbie.”
Hank grins broadly. “You’re fired,” he says. “You’re making too many mistakes, failing too many tests and making us look
bad.”
Trent glowers at Dean and Dean manfully resists the urge to poke his tongue out at him.
--
The SRA’s new campaign on Workplace Discrimination is kicked off by an article about Dean’s experiences as an unlicensed Hunter, which is quickly picked up by the syndicated press and goes national within a week. Dean is never named in the article, but given that it was written by Sam Winchester, it’s not going to be hard for the powers that be in the Hunting world to put two and two together.
The follow up article is an interview with Loki; also known as Gabriel Archangel. It’s powerful stuff, with Gabriel revealing, not only how he was excommunicated from the family for trying to protect his Sub brother’s rights, but also the threats they levelled against Castiel to secure Gabriel’s silence. Lucien took him on a tour of several State Homes and promised that Cas would end up in one if Gabriel ever spoke out against the family or the Department.
“Why are you speaking out now?” the interviewer asks.
“Because they’ve lost sight of the mission,” Gabriel says, “and they’re doing more harm than good. Doms and Subs are different but equal. If we lose that balance our whole culture suffers.”
There’s a whole lot of fuss about the article and news crews camp outside Gabe and Dean’s house for days, even going so far as to follow Dean to the garage and to class. Subs’ Weekly writes a sickeningly sweet article about the Bad-Boy Sub with the Heart of Gold who persuaded every Sub’s hero Loki to step out into the spotlight. The next time Dean sees that particular ‘journalist’ he shoots him with rocksalt.
Gabriel, meanwhile, is suspended without pay pending an investigation into allegations that he improperly used DoD resources to assist the SRA. Dean is worried, but Gabriel just shrugs and sucks on his Tootsie Pop.
“I’ve been careful, Dean. They can’t prove a thing.”
“But money’s gonna be tight. I don’t earn anything like as much as you,” Dean frowns. “I guess I could-”
Gabe cuts him off. “Oh no,” he says, “I know what you do when you’re broke and there is no way in Hell I’m going to allow you to do that. This ass,” he reaches out and squeezes the ass in question, “is mine.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “I was going to say I could ask Bobby for a loan.”
Gabriel slurps around the lollypop in his mouth. “I have a trust fund,” he says. “Well. It used to be a trust fund. I got control of it at twenty-five. I’ve never touched a penny of it because I didn’t want their money. But it’s there. To be honest, I probably never have to work again if I don’t want to.”
Dean blinks and then grins. “Use it,” he says. “Fuck ‘em.”
“Yeah,” Gabe nods. “Cas has been asking me for years to take a more active role in the SRA. I think maybe it’s time I did that. Maybe I’ll see what I can do about getting the State Homes shut down.”
<
| NEXT>>
Back to Masterpost