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I forget what gave me the first inkling to write this but I think I'd already read johndean and found it either horny fluffy daddy kink stuff, which isn't my bag, or super violent reprehensible abusive stuff, which is also not my bag. and I've been in some bad relationships and they're more complicated than that, so I thought, why not try writing something that, for me, feels realistic.

He also had a tan line on his left ring finger that Dean wished he hadn’t noticed.

of course I give that hardcore opening to this commentary and then open with: wedding ring tan line is sooooo sexy.

The thing that had made Dean’s pupils dilate from across the dark, grungy bar was his curly mop of black hair and his boxy canvas jacket.

a frequent (overused!) theme in my fics is sex by proxy. you want someone you can't have, so you fuck people who look like them. it is just so devastating.

“I mean, Jesus,” the guy rasped, panting against his mouth, “I’m old enough to be your—”

[new section: 1994]

“Dad,” Dean choked out, “slow down, I’m fine.”

this transition makes me think about Austin Powers every time. not consciously when I wrote it, but that's 100% why I did it. big austin powers fan lmfao

He looked every year of forty under the fluorescent lights, but to Dean, it was cool, all grizzled and tough. No sleazy old guy ever told John Winchester he had a pretty mouth.

Love to touch on Dean's fraught relationship with his prettyboy looks. there's a line in some other fic where Dean thinks "his supermodel to Sam's action hero" and that's how I've always thought of them. which would be shameful for a young roughneck

Dean tipped his head down. It put their faces close together and he could see the new flecks of silver in John’s eyebrows as he looked back at him, and his long lashes, and he found the word for the embarrassing twisty-hot feeling in his stomach. It was intimacy. It was intimate, cripplingly so, to be shirtless in a tiny bathroom with a needle in his arm and his dad kneeling between his feet, his hand on his bare skin. It wasn’t something they did.

sexual or otherwise, there is a very BIG feeling that comes with being closer to someone than you have been before. even in a nonsexual relationship—as dean is thinking about it here—it's horrifying to be so close to his dad. I felt the same way seeing my dad cry. just like "ohhhh this is fucked up, I shouldn't be here for this."

At his silence, Sam ventured, “You want help?”

Yes. Dean had to shut his eyes against the sting behind them.

John taking care of Dean taking care of Sam. John shutting out dean, dean shutting out Sam. Matryoshka dolls, baby!!!!!

The guy was looking back at him. “Uh. Your…?”

“No, no. Brother.”

how many old dudes have seen Sam at a bar with Dean and been like "is that your boyfriend" and Dean has been like no but I can be yours and then blows them in the bathroom? almost not worth thinking about

“Do you have any idea how fucked up our relationship is if you think you can say shit like that to me and not get your teeth knocked out?”

laboured over this line, and this exchange. like yes their lives are already fucked up and they have very few boundaries but HOW to make this sound even halfway believable? asking your brother if he's fucking guys who look like your dad? I feel sick because I've always thought marc Maron was hot but as he's gotten older he looks a lot like my dad. it's highly yuck

His mouth was raw from a night spent sucking dick and drinking whiskey, skin greasy with dried sweat.

my other other goal in my writing life is to write eloquently and honestly about hangovers. I spend like 40% of my life hung over and I need to capture that feeling for people smarter than me. you wake up and your mouth is raw from acidic drinks and liquor, like you got punched in it. it's horrible

Jennifer

when I need an NPC name, I figure their age, get their birth year, then look up popular baby names for that year. this is in 1997, a high school sr would be like 17, she'd be born 1980, and depending on their rough personality I pick one. popular cute girl gets the #1 baby name of 1980, Jennifer.

He slid his hand down her side, gripping hard, but it wasn’t— something was different in him lately, and it wasn’t all good. High school girls weren’t doing it for him. He was eighteen and just grateful to be getting laid, but he’d gotten a few slaps to the face for being too rough. He felt guilty as hell over it, but it was just… different. It was like he couldn’t get there, wherever there was, not just coming or making a girl come, but to— he didn’t know what to call it. To lose his mind for a while. To have someone hold him down. He’d been having dreams, one every few months, where he woke up sweating and hard. They were specific. They didn’t help the guilt. He thought about the dreams when he caught some guy looking at him over the top of a diner booth, or in the parking lot of a motel. He didn’t know what kind of beacon he was putting out, but there was a question in their eyes he was terrified of answering.

this is maybe my favourite paragraph I've ever written. I'm a narcissist at the best of times but this is really it. being bi myself there are a lot of different Kinds of sex you can have, even just looking at genders. wild stuff

Dirty Harry

I remember I'd seen it recently. a real dad day afternoon movie. John would be like man this guy rules. dirty harry does not rule

It was a proxy war type thing, Dean always thought. They didn’t fight about it or even talk about it, but they both knew. There was no way John didn’t know. Dean would watch him do push-ups when he was supposed to be sparring with Sam. For a long time, Dean passed it off as a sick kind of jealousy—John could grow a beard, John was big, rugged and rough; Dean was pretty, Dean had trouble keeping on weight—and once he couldn’t pretend anymore, it was just another thing he shoved down inside him and ignored so he could take care of his family.

I always knew I wanted them to dance around it. again, trying to capture the absolute ENORMITY of the thing. I have never been in such a taboo fucked-up relationship but I know what it's like to not be able to look at something fully and lie to yourself. when I was 23 I spent months convincing myself I didn't have bed bugs even though there were blood specks all over my sheets.

There was never a time when his father’s attention didn’t make him dizzy and sick and pleased, and he had no illusions, he knew it had something to do with how often he got that attention—how often he caught John looking back, watching him—but what did it matter if they were broken in the same way?

It was very important for me to land this sentiment early and often: Dean thinks they're on level ground. like in sssoooo many abusive relationships, it's like, "well we were both wrong" NO, you are a child and he is your father, those things are not the same.

“I’m at some diner trying to eat my breakfast, and I look up and catch my kid staring at the tits of a waitress twice his age. You got a weird type.” [...] “Come on, I’m just having fun,” John said. There was a hiss as a bottle cap came off. “You don’t want me to see it, don’t do it.”

such an excruciating bit of old-man-bullying. I got bullied a lot as a kid. John, being the big man, knocking Dean down. ugh

Dean could see the shape of his dick in his sweatpants; half hard or just big, Dean could never tell.

I've never resisted a gray sweatpants no boxers opportunity no matter how terrible the situation

He shut his eyes again, it was excruciating, half turned away and he could smell him, different from the cold, earthy way he smelled in winter when he was all leather and metal. Summer was sweat and Old Spice and beer on his breath.

you might think I'm gross for saying this but I think it's just part of being a writer: I do draw on my own dad for some pieces of John, as a character. my dad worked outside and always stunk. he was always greasy. that's a dad thing now to me. who tf has a clean dad

There was an exact second, somewhere in there, where it changed. It wasn’t a fight. Dean could feel it in the air like a static charge, under their skin, in the way John stopped pulling on his shirt and leaned his fists against his chest and put his weight on him. I wouldn’t. I’m not.

I wanted this to be the terrible tipping point. there are two Johns inside of you. one wants to bully and beat his son to keep it all macho and distanced. the other wants to kill himself and maybe dean can save him.

The first second made Dean think of being a kid, what choice did he have—his mother’s lips on his cheek, and his father’s—John picking him up, being carried in his big arms— fucking sickening, unrecognizable from here.

if you've ever had intrusive thoughts, this one's for you. it is exhausting to be alive.

He wanted to drive until he passed out behind the wheel, run until his legs broke, burn himself alive, but— there was no forgetting. This would ruin everything if he let it, both of them and everything they had. He could fix it. He had to.

I think in this moment dean realizes that if he doesn't make this ok for John specifically, John would kill himself or just make things very worse for their family in general. he WANTS to fuck his dad but he does, on a subconscious level, also realize that he HAS to now. if he takes the blame, John doesn't need to.

Age six, pressing a blood-soaked rag to a gash on John’s arm while he fumbled with bandages. Age twelve, easing an empty whiskey bottle out of his numb fingers. Age eighteen, holding his face in his hands and giving him absolution for putting his tongue in his mouth. All variations on a theme.

I always found this hamfisted and melodramatic but couldn't make myself remove it. don't do this.

To call it good would be glossing over too much, he couldn’t even come close to thinking of it like that, but it still wrecked him worse than the best kiss he’d ever had.

this is a line I tried to toe throughout this whole sex scene because like... yes it is sexy, probably, or it was to me, and at the same time being like "haha yay they're fucking!" isn't right either. not GOOD but it is... sexy.

the wooly scrape of his beard

an overused ron-ism lol. many such cases

He spat in his palm and Dean’s panic kicked up to a fever pitch.

John being about to go in bare really sets the whole thing I think. not to put too fine a point on it but you're a bad dad lol

There weren’t any guys, not even a kiss and sure as hell not sex. John was never great at telling when Dean was lying; he did it so rarely, he figured, that John never got a read on it. It was valuable when he really needed it, even if lying made guilt rise in his gorge like bile. He could say it because it was what John wanted to hear. I didn’t break it, it was like that when I found it.

I cribbed this from American Beauty, honestly. when he finds out she's a virgin. it feels ssssooo powerful, this idea that this child you want to fuck has already been around so it's not your problem, and then on finding out that they haven't, bailing. it was broken when I found it.

He twisted and spread and crooked his fingers in a way that made Dean’s imagination run wild—who, and when? He couldn’t have, not him, but—maybe during the war, bored and lonely—he assumed Dean had, so he must have done it himself—maybe something more recent, stuff in locked bar bathrooms while his boys slept—

fic headcanon: John absolutely did lol. at least a couple times. drunk self hating highly homophobic hookups. not that he was kind enough to finger those guys.

“It’s okay,” John mumbled, hardly words. Sweat dripped from his hair onto Dean’s cheek. “You’re okay.”

so gross

“Dad—”

ssssoooooo gross. I am trying to gross you out. I am thinking what would be the most difficult to read.

How did he ever think doing it would be better than wanting it?

this is kind of a big thing. it's all fun and games (not really) to want something horrible, but then you GET something horrible and you think it'll free you but it's just bad in a new way.

The bell above the door jingled as he opened it and the elderly woman behind the counter looked up, said nothing, and went back to watching a Korean soap on a small TV mounted to the shelf that held the smokes. [...] He sat in one of the three plastic lawn chairs under the greenish fluorescent lights across from the machines and stared at the one that was his. It had a glass front and he watched the white sheets slosh around in the sudsy water. He thought he could see the flash of red every so often. He spun an unwilling fantasy where the whole thing filled up with red, and the lady at the counter came over and asked him about it. Whose blood is that? Are you okay? Do you need me to call someone?

memories of a laundromat I went to for a long time in van. about the blood: I remember being a sad kid and just wanting someone to notice how sad and lonely I was. I dreamt about being in the hospital a lot. you guys are learning more about me than my therapist lmao

He didn’t want to hug Sam back. It felt like a privilege he’d lost.

making the connection between touching his dad and touching his brother. viewing HIMSELF as sick and not worthy of trust, for what they did. tied into his omnipresent fear of losing Sam to cps.

Robocop

I had watched Robocop recently. I love robocop. most movies I mention in fic I saw recently or love. ask me about my fic movies lol.

“Fuck”—Dean choked out, pushing back on him, hands clawing at the sheets—“Dad—”

This always felt a bit contrived to me but I've never been in this situation specifically but I have absolutely said some very cringe shit when I'm drunk.

He was probably in his late fifties, heavy and hairy with a belly and big thighs.

fat hairy older guys are sexy. he's got curly thick salt and pepper hair too.

“You probably know this, but you’re astoundingly beautiful. That entitles you to things other people don’t get.”

I won't get on my soap box about how beautiful people have an entirely different experience of life than us uggos, for better or worse, but this is the thesis.

He couldn’t tell this stranger that John died to save him, and that despite every fucked-up misstep that made up Dean’s whole life, he’d been trying. He loved him. Reducing John Winchester to some con man who touched his kid made Dean feel sick and unclean.

I wanted to give John some amount of slack. within the logic of spn, he did try, and Dean not being able to tell this guy the full breadth of who John was would be highly distressing

Dean and John maxed two credit cards paying for motel damages, one place in Salt Lake City and another in Baltimore, from smashed TVs, broken mirrors and holes in the drywall. The rest of their money went towards pills and whiskey, which were more than a little responsible for the motel damages.

I'm obsessed with men punching holes in drywall. I also think they would have abused prescription medication. you're telling me these guys aren't doing oxy, with their broken bodies?? not taking ketamine to sleep and adderall to wake up? c'mon now.

“Sit. I got your boots.”

Another grumble out of John, but no real fight. “We got any whiskey left?”

wanted to immediately establish that they were now comfortable with each other, however that would look. John lets dean take care of him. they are a long way away from that first time.

grabbed their shitty plastic bottle of whiskey from the counter where they’d left it the night before

I don't see enough writers taking note that cheap hardbar comes in giant plastic bottles with a lil hand divot in it lol. that can't just be Canada.

Case in point: a few weeks ago, after splitting a fifth of drain-cleaner vodka, John spanked him. It was just a few loud, cracking slaps, but he was bent over his knees and everything. It made Dean hard enough to pound nails. Any tact or sanity or sense of self-preservation they’d been clinging to had left with Sam, with nobody else around to hold it together for. They slept in the same bed and shared shirts. When they fought, things got broken. Dean called Sam and it went straight to voicemail, John dialed and never made the call. Dean got spanked. Life trudged on uncaring around them as they fell apart.

the spanking thing came to me like a bolt of God's own thunder but I didn't have the courage or opportunity to write it. sometimes I think mentioning it and letting readers imagine it in their mind palace is better than anything I could do. also indicative of them going completely off the rails in Sam's absence and BECAUSE of Sam's absence. all the fucked up shit they'd kept a lid on now free.

Their thing was a balancing act, sometimes. He was supposed to be tough, but not talk back. Be ready when he wanted it, but don’t just roll over. Take what was given, and give liberally. Be soft—John holding him just then, the arm across his chest, nuzzling his shoulder—only when following a lead. It wasn’t so different from when he was a kid, watching for John’s signals and reading him as a kind of self-preservation, only the stakes were higher now. [...] There was a rarely-heard playfulness in his tone. It was the highest rank on the John Winchester risk-reward spectrum: if Dean played it right, he was in for one hell of a night. If he played it wrong, there could be another TV screen shattered by a chair leg.

abusive relationship thesis. you walk on eggshells and try to read their mind. the rules don't apply evenly. take care of yourself out there.

he’d only commented on Dean’s appearance point blank a handful of times ever, the most notable being on the kind of night where they were so drunk it was remembered only in snatches. They were in a booth at some wood-paneled dive bar, and John leaned across the table, grabbed Dean by the face and said, you’re so beautiful it makes me sick, then kissed him. It wasn’t the kind of place where two guys kissing would be received well, let alone two guys with thirty-plus years between them. It got a hell of a lot worse when John let him go after the kiss and said, I can’t believe you came outta me. Dean was the more sober of the two of them and got them out of there pretty quick.

big fan of this anecdote. John only being sweet when he's drunk: another horrible flag. not that this story is a cautionary tale but my god.

Dean imagined leaving Sam a voicemail about it: I started making Dad wear a condom when he fucks me, is that what you meant when you said ‘boundaries’?

very proud of this lol. this second sex scene has more levity, more sexiness. also the ghost of Sam being much more prominent.

Dean went through the checklist: maybe Dean came too quick or stopped too soon. Maybe he made John use his leg too much, kissed him too much, came on him, missed something. It was an endless checklist, and it was always better to ask than to get it wrong.

more eggshells and mind reading. I wanted to show that this has happened before and that they fight often and that Dean now tries to prevent fights before they happen.

“I think you’re doing it,” Dean said carefully. “I think you don’t do things you don’t want to do.”

“Is that what you think? You think my life’s been so fucking perfect, Dean? It’s all worked out for me?”

the way abusers turn things around on you. they are very good at it. dean feels bad at the end of this scene even though he did nothing wrong.

“Every day, I pray to God you start telling me no.” His voice was like gravel. He swallowed hard. “Other than that… I got nothing to say.”

I think John believes this. maybe he would take no for an answer if Dean ever said it and left, but he's put dean in a position where he is incapable of saying no, or even thinking about what it would mean to say no, so it's a moot point and an empty sentiment.

Sam asked, “Did he make you?”

I tried to think of what the first thing Sam would say was, what was the most important to him. he's clearly thought about how he'd phrase it, and even if he knows they're fucking, he doesn't know WHY. from here on, he's the audience surrogate, seeing how incredibly sad this is for dean and how they were never equal and he didn't ever really have a choice. and just loving dean anyway.

there's a version where it ends with more of a fight, but with such a tense piece I just wanted it to end with some comfort. throughout the piece, Sam's on his side, and I wanted it to stay that way.

also, goes pretty much without saying, but I meant to hint at the samdean after this. dad smell, brother smell. it takes some time but they would get together in the future.