The Stacks

THE cabin keeps its quiet like a vow kept between clenched molars, not the empty quiet of abandonment but the deliberate hush of a place where the world has been pared down to load bearing materials and necessity until it resembles a monastery built by men who never learned to pray without breaking something first. the cabin sat back from the lake under a stand of pine and spruce, low and dark, its timber walls old enough to have taken on the color of dried blood beneath varnish. when the morning warmed them, resin sweated from knots in amber tears that caught the light like infected honey. the chinking between logs was black with old smoke, packed with grit and dead insect husks and whatever winter had tried to get inside and failed. nails oxidized into dull little aureoles, halos for hardware, sanctifying nothing except persistence. the floorboards had swollen and shrunk through enough seasons that they spoke in little arthritic complaints under weight, but never loudly when he crossed them, because ben had learned long ago to make even his size a threat held in reserve. there were iron skillets hung on pegs beside the stove, their bellies layered in carbon until they looked less manufactured than excavated, black plates dug from some prehistoric altar where men had once burned meat and called it provision. a percolator sat on the stove with its metal belly dented inward, its handle scorched, its lid rattling faintly whenever the heat came up beneath it. knives lived where knives should live, within reach, clean enough to use, ugly enough to be trusted. flannel shirts hung near the stove as though they had been peeled from him and left to dry into another hide. boots stood beside the door in a narrow row, toes aligned with an almost military cruelty, mud drying in their treads like clotted earth.

nothing in the cabin performed comfort unless comfort could be defined as proof that a thing had survived being useful. the table had been cut, burned, stained, and struck. rings from mugs overlapped in faint brown moons. blade marks feathered along one edge. near the corner, visible only when light crossed the grain from the side, were crescent dents where a fist had come down once with enough force to bruise oak. it had not happened again. that did not make the table safe. it made restraint another object in the room, as solid as the rifle in the corner, as solid as the cast iron, as solid as ben himself when he stood in a doorway with his arms loose and his eyes already taking inventory of weakness, exit, weapon, wound.

the rifle leaned in the corner where an icon might have stood in a catholic house, but it looked embarrassed now, a relic from a religion whose congregation had either died, lied, or changed channels. once, a thing like that had explained him to strangers. soldier. hero. hunter. man. the categories lined up cleanly when people wanted him simple. the rifle, the shoulders, the jaw, the flag, the grin sharp enough to sell cereal and war bonds, the old body built by chemical violence and national appetite. now the rifle watched him the way old uniforms watch from trunks, accusing and obsolete, because he had not become harmless after vought. that would have been too neat and too charitable. retirement had not sanctified him. isolation had not washed him. the woods had not taken soldier boy by the hand and taught him gentleness under birdsong like some sentimental piece of shit written by someone who had never smelled blood under hot lights. he had not learned to be soft. he had learned to stop wasting motion.

that was worse.

ben was older now, but age had not humbled him into kindness. it had stripped the lacquer off the myth. it had made the thing underneath more visible, more stubborn, less interested in performing for anyone who did not already belong inside the small radius of his attention. he wore age the way he had once worn armor, with contemptuous acceptance, as if time had made a move against him and he had decided not to respect it enough to flinch. his beard was thick and uneven, silver catching in the coarse dark where dawn touched it, biblical without becoming holy. his hair was rough from sleep or weather, usually both. the lines at his eyes were cut deep from squinting into sun, smoke, cameras, gunfire, and decades of people wanting him to mean something. the shoulders remained obscene, broad enough to make doorframes seem improperly designed, but the posture had changed. not softened. never that. soft implied surrender, and ben considered surrender a moral disease unless it happened beneath his hand. the old parade-square readiness had settled into something quieter and more predatory, the stance of a man who no longer needed to advertise force because every room he entered understood it anyway.

he could listen now. that was the strangest and most dangerous evolution in him. not kindly, not with patient therapeutic openness, not with the face people make when they want to be thanked for tolerating pain. he listened the way he had once listened for tripwires. the stove ticking as it cooled. the kettle beginning to hiss. your breathing shifting in the other room. the cupboard latch catching. your step crossing the floor too fast or too carefully. a drawer closed with the wrong amount of force. he heard these things and stored them. a man like ben did not become attentive because he had discovered emotional literacy. he became attentive because possession made negligence intolerable. what was his, he watched. what was his, he corrected. what was his, he refused to let rot without at least putting his hand around the throat of whatever rot had arrived.

and you were his, though not in any clean language. nothing between you had ever been clean for more than a few seconds before history, appetite, fear, need, and old violence put their hands back in it. there was love, maybe, but love was a word too often used by people who had never watched devotion bare its teeth. with ben, care did not enter the room carrying warm towels and gentle explanations. it came through the door with boots on. it checked your pulse like it was interrogating your body for treason. it put food in front of you and called you an idiot if you forgot to eat. it noticed your silence, cornered it, and waited until it had to either speak or bleed. it protected like ownership and corrected like punishment. it did not make you small, did not turn your hurt into something delicate and decorative so it could be safely adored. ben did not know what to do with delicate things except distrust them. he believed in pressure. he believed in endurance. he believed a man could be shoved back into himself if someone stronger blocked every exit.

thursday mornings belong to him the way sunday mornings once belonged to priests, partitioned off like a sacrament, and your body knows it before your mind catches up, anticipatory dread braided with the kind of hunger that feels like an insult to your dignity. testosterone here is not clinic, not bureaucracy, not the fluorescent sterility of waiting rooms and printed pamphlets and anxious glances, it is ritual performed with the materials of a world that has forgotten paperwork, a small holy violence administered in dawn light while the cabin smells of ash and pine sap and coffee and the faint metallic ghost of his own history. the supplies live in a tin box on the highest shelf, not because he is careless but because he is careful in a way that borders on superstition, the alcohol wipes sealed, the syringes sleeved, the vial wrapped in cloth as though warmth might corrupt it, as though exposure to air might make the world remember it has laws.

when he takes the box down he does it like a man retrieving contraband, not because it is forbidden but because it is precious, because it is proof that transformation can be deliberate rather than inflicted, and he sets it on the table with a controlled gentleness that is almost insulting coming from hands that have snapped men in half for sport. those hands are steady from old training, from muscle memory, from the long national catechism of being turned into a weapon, and now all that steadiness is repurposed toward you, toward the tender brutality of care, toward a needle and a measured dose and the ordinary miracle of something changing slowly enough to be survivable.

“sit down,” he says, and his voice is low and rough, gravel with a faint metallic undertone, like a coin rubbed between teeth, and it is not unkind, but it is absolute, because he has never been a man who negotiates his own authority, he simply decides what it is and lets the world deal with it. the chair is scarred, the table is scarred, everything in this cabin wears the marks of contact, and when you sit you can feel the grain press into the backs of your thighs through fabric, a small physical reminder that nothing here is designed to coddle. “c’mon, sweetheart,” he says it like an instruction and a claim at once, like he is placing you in the correct posture for a rite you both pretended was clinical until it started feeling like something else, something with a throat and teeth. “thigh up.” the air between you is warm with stove heat and the faint sting of antiseptic, and when you hesitate, just a fraction, not because you don’t want it but because being handled by him still makes something molten roll in your gut, he watches the hesitation as if it is a tell in a card game, and the corner of his mouth twitches under the beard. “don’t make me tell you twice.” and there it is, that collision only he could sustain without breaking it, drill sergeant and confessor and something fouler besides, some domestic tyrant of an invented religion in which masculinity was not a public identity but a secret rite performed under pine boughs by two men who had agreed, tacitly and then aloud, to make a chapel out of nowhere.

there is was something so indecent about the contrast it verged on sacrilege. soldier boy, benjamin, whatever remains of the man beneath all that vought sponsored mythology, standing in dawn-light with your leg bare and his big hand braced warm over your knee, as if steadying both of you at once, preparing the syringe with the concentration of a combat medic and the gravity of a priest. no cameras. no slogans. no star spangled bullshit. just him tapping the syringe, squinting a little, muttering, “hold still,” like the phrase itself is a kind of blessing. and when you look at him, when you really look at him, at the thick lashes lowered in concentration, at the beard gone silver in places the light catches, at the old crow’s feet carved there by decades of rage and sunlight and having to be a symbol to people too stupid to deserve him.

he feels your gaze the way some men feel a hand on their throat. of course he does. he was built for attention, manufactured into it, trained to register the temperature of other people’s desire as if it were weather. “what?” he says, though he already knows what. his thumb presses into your skin, firm and warm and proprietary in a way that nearly makes your breath hitch. “you keep staring at me like that, sweetheart, i’m gonna start charging for the service.”

and you laugh, because you have to, because if you do not laugh you might say something humiliatingly earnest, something about how his version of care was not a blanket around the shoulders but a hand on the back of your neck pushing your face toward the truth until you stopped flinching from it. instead you rolled your eyes, though it came out too weak to be convincing. “you’d overcharge.”

he snorts through his nose, beard shifting with it, and drops his eyes back to the needle. “yeah, yeah. be funny after. right now, stay put.” then, quieter, roughened at the edges with something almost embarrassingly sincere, almost old-fashioned in its gravity: “you want this, right?” the question lands like a hand at your throat, not squeezing, just there, just present, reminding you that he could if he wanted and he is choosing not to unless you tell him yes, and your face warms with that humiliating mixture of gratitude and arousal that makes your body feel like it is betraying you and honoring you at the same time.

you nod once, instinctive, because you want to get past it, because you want the needle in and done, because you want the week marked, and he tips his chin in that impatient little gesture that means he wants obedience in the form he respects. “use your words.”

heat crawls up your face, not embarrassment exactly but the humiliation of being seen so clearly, of being forced into articulation, as if desire is a vow you must take aloud, as if the body does not count unless the mouth signs the paperwork. “yes,” you say, quieter than you meant, and the word drops between you like a coin on a table, payment, offering, proof.

his whole face changes without changing much at all; tension settles, not dissipating but aligning, like a weapon being clicked back into safe mode. “good,” he murmurs. “then quit looking at me like i’m doing you a favor. you know what this is.”

he did not say what. he did not need to. this was not charity. not reassurance. not some clean gendered benediction where you were told you were enough and handed back to yourself like a fragile object. this was correction by chosen violence, masculinity treated as sentence and sacrament, as something already true in you and therefore enforceable. ben did not coax the man out of you. he dragged him forward by the collar. he looked at shame as if shame were cowardice wearing perfume, and he looked at your flinching as something that could be trained out if he put enough pressure in the right places. it was cruel. it worked. that was part of the horror.

that was the center of the thing, perhaps more intimate than anything either of you did once clothes were off and breath turned ragged and language degraded into monosyllables and noise, because this was where power disclosed its ethics. not through abstention, not through innocence, but through exacting stewardship.

“let me take care of it,” he said, and even that sounded like a command.

the alcohol wipe was cold enough to make the muscle jump. he noticed and pinned your thigh more firmly, not painful, not gentle, simply immovable. the wipe passed over skin with a medicinal sting, leaving a dark wet oval that chilled as the air touched it. he angled the needle. you watched his face instead of the point. his mouth was set, eyes narrowed, all the ridiculous force of him concentrated on the smallest controlled wound. the injection was swift and precise, priestly in its severity, a bright puncture through skin, a clean sting that deepened into pressure as the needle entered muscle. he pushed the plunger slowly. you felt the ache bloom outward, a dull hot seed under the surface, and realized with the old disgusted clarity that the ache was part of what you craved. not pain for itself. proof. proof that something had crossed the border. proof that the week had been marked. proof that the body had not been left alone to continue its old administration unchallenged.

he withdrew the needle and immediately pressed gauze. his thumb was firm enough to hold the ache in place. he rubbed the muscle in practical circles, forcing the dose into its work as though even chemistry might slack off without his supervision.

“there,” he says, satisfaction roughening the edges of his voice, the way a carpenter exhales after setting the last nail straight. “all done. you’re always so damn tense before it.”

“needle’s not exactly my favorite thing,” you mutter, because your mouth needs to do something with the leftover adrenaline, because silence feels too intimate, too much like admitting that you trust him with your transformation in a way that scares you.

he gives you that look, half amused and half impossibly intent, like he’s watching a fire learn it can call itself flame, like he’s watching an animal test the strength of a fence. “yeah,” he says, dragging the word so it brushes you like the back of his knuckles. “big bad thing, huh.” then he rubs the muscle in small practical circles, not tender in the sentimental sense, but meticulous, as if he can massage the medicine into obedience, as if the body can be persuaded by pressure to accept what the mind has already chosen.

(some people live with absence the way amputees live with a phantom organ, except there is nothing clean about it, nothing so mercifully named as loss. loss implies there was once a correct shape, a before-image, a limb that belonged and then was taken, a grief with borders. this is worse because the wrongness has always been housed inside the same flesh that feeds you, warms you, heals you, betrays you, drags air into your lungs while denying you the dignity of feeling wholly present in the breathing. it is not sadness, not the delicate blue bruise of melancholy people like to imagine when they want suffering to look civilized enough to sympathize with. it is a low, administrative damnation in the body, a clerical error stamped into skin, glands, fat, voice, muscle, blood, a birth certificate written by strangers and then nailed to the inside of your ribs. you carry it everywhere because there is nowhere else to put it. every mirror becomes a tribunal. every reflection lifts its rotting hand and testifies against you. every casual glance at your own shape is another official document in a language you never agreed to learn.

on the worst days, you do not feel trapped in a body so much as slowly digested by one. the flesh does not merely contain you; it chews. it takes the clean hard thing you know yourself to be and works it between dull molars of biology, softening it with heat, saliva, hormones, inherited error, the wet animal bureaucracy of organs continuing their duties without permission. there is something cannibalistic in that, something obscene and intimate, your own body feeding on the name you have made for yourself, swallowing it before it can fully harden, breaking it down into usable shame. the body has its own old liturgy. it kneels to cycles. it answers to chemistry. it obeys instructions written deeper than language, and that is precisely what makes it unbearable, because obedience without consent is still obedience, and the meat, stupid and devout, keeps worshipping at an altar you have spent years trying to burn.

there are mornings when the absence is only a pressure behind the eyes, a film over the world, a thin membrane of wrongness between you and ordinary tasks. you can make coffee, pull on socks, answer when spoken to, walk across the cabin floor and feel the boards give beneath your weight, but none of it lands cleanly. your hands look like instruments issued to you by some careless hospital. your voice, even when it pleases you, still arrives in your throat like contraband. your chest, your hips, your stomach, the soft places and stubborn places and half-changed places, all of it becomes a committee of traitors speaking over you at once. other days it is not pressure. it is revolt. it is the body lifting its head from the trough, red-mouthed and blinking, and reminding you that it has not been killed, only disciplined. that it can still make announcements. that it can still open old doors in the basement and let water in.

thursday, then, becomes more than a day. it becomes an answer. not an instant deliverance, not a miracle with trumpets and clean white light, because nothing about this has ever been clean, but a mark against the body’s monarchy. a small violent correction. a measured refusal. a dark little sacrament drawn into a syringe and carried into the muscle like a secret army crossing a border at dawn. you hate how badly you need it. you hate the hunger that gathers before it, the way anticipation begins in you before thought catches up, the way your body, the same body you curse, waits for its own overthrow with animal obedience. testosterone is not abstract here. it is not a pamphlet word, not clinic-glossy, not a neutral line on a chart. it is a blade ground slowly enough that the sharpening becomes ritual. it is a language entering the flesh one dose at a time and teaching the meat to mispronounce its old prayers.

but slowness is a cruelty with clean hands. that was what people never understood. they spoke of patience as though patience were a moral virtue and not sometimes just another room with no windows. they said time as if time had not already been given too much authority. time was the thing that let wrongness settle. time was the cellar where unwanted things grew fur. time was the damp passage where resentment fattened itself on hope. transformation that takes months, years, a lifetime, can feel less like becoming and more like being forced to watch yourself rot in increments small enough that no one else calls it an emergency. each week gives you something and withholds something else. each change arrives partial, conditional, humiliatingly biological. one hair where you wanted a forest. one shift in voice where you wanted thunder. one hardening line where you wanted a body that looked back at you without argument. and because the body changes slowly, the grief learns to become impatient in more sophisticated ways. it learns spite. it learns bargaining. it learns the false holiness of sabotage.

that was why you stopped.

not because you did not want it. never because you did not want it. wanting was the disease and the cure at once, a hunger so constant it began to feel less like desire than anatomy. you stopped because some ugly, wounded, childish priest inside you wanted to punish the altar for not catching fire fast enough. you stopped out of rage at the vial, at the calendar, at the indifferent arithmetic of dosage and weeks, at the way progress made promises in whispers and dysphoria screamed from the doorway like a butcher announcing fresh meat. you stopped because the body had made slowness feel personal. because every delayed change felt like mockery. because hope, handled too often, starts to look like carrion, and there are days when grief would rather eat itself sick than be fed one careful spoonful at a time.

for a few days, nothing happened, which was almost worse. the cabin went on being the cabin. the stove gave heat. the kettle hissed. ben moved through the rooms with his old predator’s quiet, opening cabinets, sharpening knives, bringing in wood, listening with that unbearable attention he pretended was not concern. you kept your face arranged. you told yourself control was control even when it was only postponement dressed in boots. you moved through the days with a sharpened contempt for your own skin, waiting for consequence and hating yourself for waiting. somewhere inside the body, down in the blind wet machinery where no argument could reach, something was counting.

then the blood came.

not dramatically. not with thunder. not with any grandeur proportionate to the devastation it caused. that was part of the obscenity. the body did not even have the decency to make its betrayal operatic. it happened quietly, domestically, with the sickening intimacy of laundry. a stain first. then the knowledge before the full sight of it, a cold internal drop, the mind recognizing disaster by its smell, by pressure, by that ancient treasonous ache gathering low and deep like weather in a locked valley. your stomach went hollow. your mouth filled with saliva in the bad way, the pre-vomit way, the way the body prepares to reject what cannot be ejected. when you looked, the fabric had already begun its dark confession. old blood against cotton, brown-red, clotted at the edges, not bright enough to be an injury someone else would respect, not clean enough to be a wound, not foreign enough to hate properly. blood that belonged to you and therefore felt more violating than any stranger’s hand.

you remembered standing there for a moment with the boxers in your grip, staring down as if the cloth had spoken. there was a terrible smallness in the garment then, a ridiculous vulnerability, the elastic waistband limp over your fingers, the soaked place darkening unevenly, the cotton holding warmth with a tenderness that made you want to tear it apart. it was not the amount that ruined you. it was the meaning. the stain became scripture. the stain became a mouth. the stain said: unfinished. the stain said: not yet. the stain said: the body remembers what you are trying to starve out of it. and because shame is not content with one wound, it immediately found another. not just the biology, but the posture required by it. the handling. the cleanup. the hunched secrecy. the bathroom door. the sink. the cold water. the practical motions. being reduced to maintenance of the very system you wanted abolished, made custodian of the evidence, janitor of your own anatomical indictment.

you turned on the tap with too much force. water struck porcelain and splashed back against your wrists, icy enough to make your fingers seize. the sink had old hairline cracks in the glaze, thin gray veins branching under the enamel like something once alive had fossilized there. the greenish bulb above the mirror hummed faintly, a cheap weak light that made every surface look ill, your skin sallow, the water metallic, the porcelain faintly cadaverous. you shoved the fabric under the stream and began scrubbing with a violence so focused it might have looked calm from behind. cold water blackened the blood first, then thinned it into red-brown ribbons that crawled down the basin in diluting strands. they gathered around the drain in brief little coronas before vanishing, each one disappearing too easily, as if the world were mocking you with the simple mechanics of rinsing. look, it seemed to say, look how quickly evidence leaves a surface. look how little force it takes to make a stain pretend it never happened.

but the smell stayed.

iron rose through the water, stubborn and animal, the odor of pennies held too long in a hot fist, of raw liver on a cutting board, of a bitten lip, of old sacrifice left in a bowl. beneath it was soap, mildew in the grout, damp wood, the mineral bite of the cabin’s plumbing, but the blood cut through everything because blood always believes itself important. it has that arrogance. it announces kinship even when kinship feels like a curse. you scrubbed harder, thumb grinding cotton against cotton until your nail bent back painfully, knuckles knocking the porcelain lip, wrists splattered. your fingers went numb and then aching, the skin puckering, the small creases filling with diluted rust. you twisted the fabric until water streamed from it in thin pink cords. you opened it again. still there. paler, uglier, more intimate for being faded. a ghost of a stain, which was worse than a stain somehow, because ghosts insist on memory. ghosts say removal is not resurrection.

your reflection watched you from the mirror with the cruelty of a witness who could not leave. the glass had silvering damage at one corner, black speckles blooming beneath the surface like mold under skin, and your face appeared inside that failing rectangle as if trapped in diseased ice. the posture undid you. shoulders rounded. head lowered. hands in cold water. fabric clenched. the whole scene made you feel small in a way that had nothing to do with height or strength, a humiliating choreography assigned to you by the body, a ritual of abasement so old it seemed to have been waiting before you were born. you hated how familiar your hands looked doing it. you hated the efficiency. you hated that you knew what to do. knowledge itself became contamination. it was not just that the body had betrayed you; it was that some part of you had been trained by betrayal into competence.

and underneath the disgust, deeper and meaner, there was grief. not clean grief. not the grief people bring flowers to. this was grief with hair in its teeth, grief crouched in the gut, chewing. it had been eating quietly for years, swallowing little pieces of you each time someone named you wrong, each time clothing sat wrong, each time your reflection required negotiation, each time patience was demanded from you by people who were not trapped in the same room with their own flesh. now it lifted its face, red around the mouth, and you felt the awful urge to turn the violence inward, not as an act, not as a plan, but as a fantasy of correction so abstract and total it became almost religious. to unzip the body from the inside. to peel away the offending grammar. to reach into the wet machinery and silence whatever blind little bell had rung. not death. not even mutilation exactly. something older and less articulate. a wish for the meat to stop talking over you.

you did not hear ben come in at first.

the cabin’s quiet taught you to hear everything. usually you knew his movement by its contradictions, by the impossibility of a man that large making so little sound, by the particular complaint of floorboards under his weight, by the brush of flannel at a doorway, the controlled exhale through his nose when he paused. you knew the rhythm of him the way people in older, crueler stories knew weather by their scars. but shame is a kind of deafness. it takes the world and pares it down to one brutal task, one sink, one stain, one pair of hands failing to erase the body’s testimony. the water ran and ran. your breath shortened. the cloth rasped wetly between your fingers. somewhere outside a branch scraped the cabin wall with a faint, fingernail sound. all of it folded into the private roar inside your skull.

then his reflection appeared behind yours.

huge. shadowed. beard wild from sleep or weather or whatever private war he had been fighting before dawn. shoulders filling the bathroom doorway until the room seemed to shrink around him, his flannel dark at the collar, hair rough, eyes narrowed not with anger yet but with the first cold intake of information. he looked unreal in the mirror, not because you had not seen him monstrous before, but because he was too solid against your humiliation, too physically undeniable, a man shaped like old propaganda standing behind the small sick theater of your body’s betrayal. the sight of him there made your stomach drop so violently your knees nearly loosened. being witnessed in that state felt like being caught praying to the wrong god. worse, it felt like being caught believing in that god for one ruined second.

his gaze did not go everywhere at once. that was almost unbearable. ben noticed things in order. he always had. first your shoulders, too high. then your hands in the sink. then the water’s pink-brown cast. then the fabric. then your face in the mirror, bloodless under green light, jaw locked so hard the muscle jumped near your ear. you watched him understand. not quickly in the shallow way, but completely, piece by piece, the way a soldier reads a room after violence and reconstructs the event from what has been displaced. he did not ask what happened because the question would have insulted both of you. he did not say your name at first. he did not move to touch you. he simply stood there, and his attention entered the room like a second temperature.

that attention had weight. it pressed flat between your shoulder blades, not cutting, not yet, but present as a blade laid against skin while the hand holding it decides whether mercy would be useful. there were men who looked and stripped dignity from what they saw. there were men who looked and consumed, men who turned vulnerability into meat and then called their appetite honesty. ben was not innocent of that kind of looking. no one who had lived as long and been worshipped as violently as he had could be innocent. he had spent years being fed people’s fear, desire, patriotism, envy, and obedience until his own hungers had grown baroque. he knew how to consume a room. he knew how to make attention feel like teeth.

but this was different, and that difference was worse because you could not hate it cleanly.

he looked at you and did not flinch from the blood, did not recoil from the shame, did not make the soft useless face people make when they want pain to become small enough for them to hold. pity would have been an insult. disgust would have been simple. anger would have given you something to push against. instead, something old and dangerous passed through his expression, not tenderness exactly, not at first, but recognition sharpened by possession. it was the look of a man seeing an animal caught in its own trap and understanding, with horrifying calm, that the trap is not separate from the animal’s body. that to free it would mean blood either way. that gentleness, if it came, would have to be brutal enough to matter.

inside ben, something went quiet in the way battlefields go quiet after the first shot, not peaceful, never peaceful, only clarified. he saw the sink. he saw your hands. he saw the stain. and beneath the immediate facts, beneath the water and blood and clenched jaw, he saw the old architecture of violation he had never learned to name politely. the body as chain of command. the body as uniform issued without consent. the body as government property. that he understood. maybe not the same way, maybe not cleanly, maybe not with the language a kinder man would have gathered and kept for you, but his life had taught him plenty about being made into a symbol before being allowed to become a person. he knew what it was to have strangers assign meaning to muscle, face, voice, posture, appetite. he knew what it was to be manufactured and then punished for exceeding the mold. he knew what it was to have the world put its hands inside your image and rearrange you for consumption.

the difference was that his cage had been gilded with applause, and yours had been hidden under skin.

that thought, or something like it, moved behind his eyes. you could not have translated it then. later, maybe. later, when the scene had settled into memory and memory had begun its awful work of decorating pain with symbols, you would understand that ben’s silence had not been empty. he was standing there with rage in his mouth, rage not at you but around you, rage circling the room looking for a throat. the body had no throat. time had no throat. dysphoria had no throat. the cruel little endocrine bell ringing inside you had no face he could break. and ben, who had solved too many of his problems with force to ever be fully comfortable when force had nowhere clean to go, stood in the doorway and had to endure the insult of helplessness.

then he said your name.

low. nearly gentle. not soft, because softness in him always had bone under it, but controlled enough that it entered the room without shattering you. that was worse than if he had barked. if he had snapped, you could have snapped back. if he had cursed, you could have made yourself angry and anger would have covered the humiliation with something hotter. but he said your name as though it were a thing he had found wounded under debris, as though he were warning you not to move before he knew where the break was. your hands froze in the water. the cloth sagged between your fingers. diluted blood streamed from it into the sink in thin exhausted lines.

you looked up.

your eyes met his in the mirror, and for a second the room split into layers so precise they became unbearable. your face in front, sickly in the green bulb’s light. his behind you, enormous and grave, beard catching shadow, mouth set. the sink below, holding water tinged with your body’s old argument. the drain swallowing evidence. the cabin beyond him, dim and warm and smelling faintly of coffee, ash, pine, male sweat, iron. the world continuing, indecently stable. and there you were, pinned in the glass, your personal san sebastián, though the thought came stupidly, bile-bright and unwanted, because you did not believe in saints except when suffering needed a costume grand enough to stand inside. reed-arrows and sin. martyrdom without glory. a body pierced not from outside but from within, every organ its own little roman soldier, every cycle another arrow, every stain another wound nobody else could see unless you were unlucky enough to be witnessed cleaning it.

ben stepped in then, slow enough not to startle you, slow enough to make restraint visible. that was the terrible thing about him. even his restraint had mass. he entered the bathroom as if entering a room after a hostage situation, eyes flicking once to the floor, to the sink, to the angle of your shoulders, to the mirror again. his hand came down beside you on the counter, not touching you yet, palm flat against the chipped wood, fingers spread. the counter gave the faintest creak under him. he smelled like cold air, sleep, wool, gun oil gone old in a drawer, and the bitter coffee he had not finished. the heat of him reached your back before his hand did. you could feel him there, enormous and alive, a wall of blood and muscle and old violence set between you and whatever part of yourself you were trying to scrub down the drain.

“look at me,” he said.

barely more than that. no speech. no rescue wrapped in vocabulary. he had never been good at the clean verbal architecture people use to build bridges over pain. he sounded almost irritated by the necessity of speaking, as if language were a cheap tool when what he wanted was to take the whole rotten mechanism out behind the shed and beat it until it stopped moving. but his voice did something to the room anyway. it put an edge in it. it gave the panic a command structure. your gaze stayed on the mirror because turning around felt impossible, because facing him directly would mean bringing the whole filthy little altar with you, the sink, the cloth, the stain, the posture, the knowledge. he did not repeat himself immediately. his eyes held yours in the glass, and that patience was worse than force.

you wanted to say something cruel. you wanted to make a joke sharp enough to cut the scene open and let you climb out. you wanted to tell him to leave, to tell him not to look, to tell him this was nothing, a maintenance issue, a stupid consequence, an accident of timing, a small thing, a manageable thing, anything except what it was. but your mouth would not cooperate. shame had climbed into it and laid its swollen body over your tongue. so you stood there with your hands submerged in water gone pink around the wrists, holding ruined fabric like evidence from your own murder, and the silence stretched until it began to feel less like absence than judgment.

ben’s hand moved at last, not to the blood, not to the boxers, not to the sink. to your wrist.

he closed his fingers around you carefully, which in another man might have been tenderness and in him felt like containment backed by catastrophic strength. his thumb settled over the knob of bone there, warm against skin chilled by water. he did not yank. he did not pry. he simply stopped the scrubbing, and because he was ben, because his body had been made ridiculous by power and then disciplined by age into something even more unsettling, your frantic motion ended at once. the stillness was immediate. total. the cloth drooped. the tap kept running.

the sound of the water became enormous.

it filled the bathroom, struck porcelain, broke itself apart, gathered, vanished. water, that stupid indifferent element, touching blood, touching cotton, touching your hands, doing without thought what you could not do by force. you stared at the reflection of his hand on your wrist. the size of it. the steadiness. the proprietary warmth. and there, in the grotesque intimacy of that contact, another wave of humiliation passed through you, not because he held you, but because part of you wanted to be held still by him. wanted the authority. wanted the interruption. wanted someone stronger than the body to enter the room and overrule it. not gently. not with therapeutic softness or clean little phrases. you wanted a commandment. you wanted a hand coming down on the altar and scattering the false offerings. you wanted him to take the shame by the throat even if he could not kill it.

dysphoria ate you from within, but your need for him had its teeth too. you wanted to be consumed by a gaze that did not misunderstand you. wanted him to swallow the wrong names before they reached you. wanted his authority to devour the body’s evidence, to make of himself a second skin over your skin, not soft enough to comfort, hard enough to contest. love, if that was the word, had never arrived between you as a dove or a clean white animal. it came red-jawed. it came hungry. it came dragging old bones. it came with ben standing behind you in a bathroom that smelled of iron and mildew, holding your wrist over a sink while your body tried to preach its old sermon in blood.

he looked from the cloth to your face again. you saw the muscle in his jaw move under the beard.

“you stop taking them?” he asked.

the question was quiet. dangerous in its quietness. not a question asking for information, because he already knew. a question asking whether you intended to lie to him. your throat worked once. the room tilted slightly around the edges, not enough to faint, just enough to remind you the body had more humiliations available if it wanted them. your fingers flexed weakly in his grip.

you gave the smallest nod.

something changed in him then. not explosion. contraction. his anger did not flare outward; it compacted, became denser, like coal under the earth learning patience from pressure. his nostrils flared once. his eyes lowered for half a second, not in disappointment, not exactly, but in that grim internal recalculation he did when confronted with damage that had already happened. ben hated waste. wasted pain most of all. pain should do something, should teach, punish, clarify, leave a map. senseless pain offended him because it resembled the institutions that had made him, all machinery and no soul, all consequence and no confession.

for a moment, you thought he might scold you. part of you wanted him to. scolding would restore order. scolding would make you a person who had done a stupid thing rather than a body caught in a theological failure. but he only reached past you with his free hand and turned off the tap.

the abrupt silence after the water stopped was so intimate it felt indecent.

drips fell from the faucet into the basin at irregular intervals, small bright ticks. the soaked fabric sagged heavy in your hand. blood-thinned water crawled between your fingers, down toward your wrist where his thumb still held you. ben looked at it, at the diluted red reaching toward his skin, and did not move away. the drop touched him. a faint pink line slid over his knuckle. he watched it with an expression so unreadable it frightened you more than disgust would have. then his thumb pressed once, not hard enough to hurt, hard enough to anchor.

in his head, though you did not know it then, ben was thinking about all the ways bodies could be made into enemy territory. he was thinking, with a clarity that disgusted him, of laboratories and dressing rooms and doctors smiling with dead administrative teeth. he was thinking of his own body turned into national property, measured, sold, applauded, injected, filmed, wanted, feared. he was thinking of how many times he had mistaken being looked at for being known. he was thinking of you at the table on thursday mornings, jaw tight, pretending the needle did not mean more than medicine, pretending you did not wait for it like absolution with a steel point. he was thinking of your leg under his hand, the muscle jumping despite your attempt at stillness, the way your breath always changed right before the puncture, not fear exactly, not desire exactly, something more complicated and more naked, as if the smallest sanctioned violence could become a door if administered by the right hand.

and now this. this sink. this cloth. this blood, old as law, stupid as inheritance.

he wanted to hate something with a face.

instead he had you, shaking without admitting it, your reflection trying to hold itself together out of spite.

“turn around,” he said.

you did not move at first. your body obeyed him in theory before it obeyed him in practice. shame resisted with all its little claws sunk in. then his hand left your wrist and came to the back of your neck, not squeezing, not forcing, just settling there with awful certainty. the warmth of his palm covered the vulnerable place beneath your hairline, and your eyes closed for one second despite yourself. there was no mercy in how much that touch helped. that was the insult. your body, traitorous in one direction, could still tell the truth in another. it knew him. it knew the heat and weight of his hand. it knew authority when it arrived with your name in its mouth.

you turned.

now the mirror was behind you and he was in front of you, and somehow that was worse because there was no glass to make the scene symbolic. no doubling. no martyr in a frame. only ben, close enough that his chest nearly brushed yours, and you, cold-handed, holding wet evidence at hip level like a child caught with contraband. his eyes moved over your face with a discipline that made you want to flinch. he did not look at your body the way the world looked at it. he did not search for the old categories. he looked for injury, resistance, lies, collapse. he looked the way men look at structures after fire, trying to see which beams still hold.

your mouth twisted before you could stop it.

“don’t,” you said, though you did not know what you were forbidding. don’t look. don’t know. don’t make it real. don’t be kind. don’t be angry. don’t stand there with that awful recognition in your face as if you can see the trap and the animal and the blood all at once.

ben’s expression hardened.

not at you.

for you, maybe, but not softly enough to call it that.

“you think i give a shit about that?” he said, and his chin tipped once toward the sink, the cloth, the whole ruined evidence of the morning.

the words were crude, insufficient, very him. but they struck some rotten bell inside you anyway. your eyes burned. not because it fixed anything. it fixed nothing. the blood had happened. the body had spoken. the stain had made its little testimony. but his contempt for it was so total, so immediate, so brutally unromantic, that for one second the shame lost its monopoly on the room.

he did not say it does not matter. that would have been a lie and both of you would have known it. he did not say it is natural, which would have been unforgivable. he did not say body, journey, patience, any of the clean little words that made you want to peel paint from walls with your teeth. he looked at the evidence and treated it like an enemy too pathetic to respect.

then his gaze returned to you.

“you don’t starve yourself of what keeps you sane because you’re pissed it ain’t working fast enough.”

there it was. not comfort. judgment. relief came through it anyway, foul and hot and unwanted. your breath hitched once and your face crumpled only around the edges, the smallest failure, quickly corrected. ben saw it. of course he saw it. his hand remained at your neck, thumb just behind your ear, and the pressure there changed slightly, not a caress, not quite, but something that told your nervous system it had been noticed and was not allowed to bolt.

the bathroom still smelled of blood. the stain still existed. the body still crouched inside you with its old red mouth, not defeated, not exorcised, only interrupted. but ben stood between you and it now, not as savior, never that clean, but as a violent witness, a man whose own life had been half ruin and half weapon, looking at your private biological catastrophe with such fierce refusal that the room seemed to reorganize around him. he could not undo the blood. he could not reach into you and tear out the mechanism. he could not make time less slow, could not make flesh repent faster, could not force the body to finish becoming by sheer hatred of its delay.

but he could make the shame share space with him.

and shame, for all its appetite, did not know what to do with ben.

it had expected secrecy. it had expected your lowered head, your cold hands, your frantic little rites at the sink. it had expected you alone, doubled in the mirror, priest and sacrifice, butcher and meat. it had not expected him in the doorway, massive and grave and furious, refusing pity because pity was too small, refusing disgust because disgust belonged to lesser men, refusing to let the blood become the final authority in the room. it had not expected his hand on your neck. it had not expected the old monster of american masculinity, half-saint, half-state-sponsored ruin, to look at your unfinished body and recognize not failure, but territory under attack.

your personal san sebastián, you thought again, but the image changed. not you alone now, pierced and leaking in the green bathroom light. now there was another figure in the frame, not holy, not merciful, not clean enough for heaven, standing beside the martyr with blood on his knuckle and rage in his mouth, ready to pull the arrows out with his teeth if teeth were the only tool left. the thought was grotesque, almost funny in its extremity, and still it steadied you. suffering always did this when it got bad enough; it dragged religious language out of the body like bile, dressed humiliation in gold leaf, gave anatomy the scale of apocalypse because otherwise you would have to admit how small the object was. a sink. a stain. cold water. cotton. a man behind you saying your name.)

now he leans in close enough that the smell of him fills your head, lakewater and soap and smoke, wool warmed by his body, coffee gone bitter on his breath, and beneath all of it the faint metallic ghost of whatever they put in his blood to make him into a legend, some chemical sainting, some laboratory sacrament, some obscene patriotic chrism that never stopped haunting the meat after the flag was peeled away. the heat of him enters before his words do. it presses against your face, your throat, the damp place where your pulse has started acting stupid under the skin, and he drops his voice the way he does when he wants a sentence to bypass hearing entirely and settle somewhere deeper, somewhere lymphatic, somewhere in the soft red machinery of you where orders become reflex before thought can object.

“you’re doing fine,” he says.

the simplicity of it is unbearable because the meaning inside it is not simple at all. he is not only talking about the needle. he is talking about the whole obscene labor of becoming, about the week survived and the dose accepted and the thigh held still beneath his hand, about the discipline required to keep choosing yourself in increments when some rancid child-god in you still wants metamorphosis to arrive like apocalypse, clean and total and biblical, a ripping open of sky and flesh that would leave no room for patience, no room for paperwork, no room for waiting on glands and weeks and visible proof. he is talking about the courage it takes to continue in a world that keeps trying to narrate you as an argument, and because ben cannot praise without making praise feel like a test, the words do not land like comfort. they land like inspection. they land like a man with a clipboard and a knife deciding you have not embarrassed yourself enough to be dismissed.

“better than fine,” he adds, and his thumb drags once over the place he has just tended, over the hidden puncture beneath gauze, slow and deliberate, not stroking, not soothing, but marking. the possession in it is not soft ownership, not romance made polite for witnesses, not the sentimental idea of belonging that people put in songs because they are afraid to admit possession has always had teeth. his touch says something cruder and older. this is mine to oversee. this is mine to correct. this is mine to keep from turning on itself when no one else is strong enough or ugly enough to do the job right. he does not protect like a good man. he protects like a guard dog, with blood under its nails and no patience for appeals. his thumb presses down and the ache in your thigh answers, dense and slow, the oil settling deeper into muscle, the body receiving its amendment in the only language it cannot argue with.

“taking it real pretty.”

pretty. from him, it never meant delicate. it never means ornamental, never fragile, never small enough to display and pity. pretty is not lace or softness or some diminishment dressed up as praise. pretty is a blade honed until it can part muscle with almost no resistance. pretty is a rifle cleaned so thoroughly it reflects the face of the man about to use it. pretty is the line of a shoulder beginning to cut harder under skin, a jaw that looks less negotiable in bad light, the raw architecture of a body gradually learning how to make threat visible. pretty is a wolf’s ribcage under wet hide, stark and starved and built for motion. he says it the way a collector might speak of a weapon, the way a hunter might speak of the kill before he hangs it, appraisal and appetite and pride twisted together until none of them can be separated without drawing blood. the word strikes you like a bruise you asked for and hate yourself for needing. it makes heat move through your already wrecked nerves, not clean arousal, not even pleasure exactly, but that humiliating ignition that comes when approval touches the same place shame has been chewing. your body, treacherous hunk of difficult meat, wants the sentence. worse, it believes him. it meant sharpened, fitted, exact.

the cabin becomes an accomplice after that. the stove ticks to itself with the dry patience of cooling iron. the coffee in his mug goes lukewarm because he forgets it, because you have taken up the attention that used to belong to other things, the way a wound takes up a room, the way a body on a table makes every other object suddenly irrelevant. the tin box remains open on the scarred wood, its small surgical inventory scattered with spent orderliness, alcohol packet torn cleanly down one side, gauze wrapper curling at the edges, syringe capped and dead-looking, the vial wrapped again but not yet returned to the shelf. everything bears the stunned, desecrated neatness of a rite just completed. the room smells of ash and disinfectant, of coffee oils cooling into bitterness, of skin, resin, metal, and the faint sterile sting where the alcohol wipe touched your thigh. the bandage sits there with insulting modesty, too small for the meaning of what entered you, a pale square over a chosen wound, and beneath it the muscle aches with a slow, dense pressure that feels less like pain than evidence. a private seal under the skin. a stamp in the dark. the body, amended.

outside, the pines stand in that thin cold light just before full morning, when the world has not yet decided whether it means to be merciful or merely visible, each trunk blackened into a vertical judgment against the pale wash of sky, the needles holding beads of moisture that do not fall so much as wait, suspended, like the forest itself has drawn breath and forgotten how to release it. the cabin behind you is already warm in that grudging, wood-fed way, the stove ticking to itself, the coffee turning bitter in the dented percolator, the table still bearing the tin box and its small surgical inventory, gauze, alcohol packet, bandage wrapper, the spent orderliness of a rite just completed. your thigh aches with the slow, dense pressure of oil settling into muscle, not pain exactly but evidence, a private seal beneath the skin, the body receiving its amendment in the only language it cannot argue with.

somewhere deeper in the timber a deer moves through brush, invisible except for the brief crackle of its passage, one brittle branch giving way under a careful hoof. the sound drops something into your head with the force of a recollection that was never yours but has been waiting in your marrow anyway, the old image returning, antlers in velvet, that soft bloody sheathing over new bone, growth so tender it can barely tolerate the air before season and mineral and appetite harden it into weapon, ornament, proof. nobody talks enough about the horn in masculinity, about the way certain forms of becoming are not additive in the abstract, not a decorative layer placed over a waiting self, but osseous, secretive, built through blood and ache and the body’s own unwilling treasury, bone dragged out of calcium, protein, salt, sleep, hunger, illness, stubbornness, every mineral tithed toward the crown before the crown is allowed to be seen. male deer do not simply wear the antler. they feed it. they carry the branchwork in secret beneath velvet while it is still vulnerable, obscene, vascular, so alive it is almost an exposed organ, the skull reengineering itself in darkness, mining the body for what it needs, building its own cathedral from inside the head with no architect except season and no witness except pain.

then, when the time comes, the velvet splits, peels, hangs wet and ragged, strips away in curtains of bloodied tissue against bark, leaving behind the hard polished geometry that idiots call beautiful because they did not see the cost while it was still warm. what remains looks regal only to those ignorant enough not to understand the blood budget involved. some days your transition feels exactly like that, not the mounted trophy, not the clean antler hung over a fireplace by men who like symbols better once they have been removed from the animal, but the hidden phase, the tender bastard stage, the hot itch under the skin, the body drawing from itself to produce the architecture it was denied, the ache of an identity that has not yet hardened into something the world is afraid to question.

and because ben is ben, because he cannot hear your breath change without needing to know what invisible hand has entered the room, because he notices every minor atmospheric shift in you with the same ugly efficiency he once reserved for threats, the same predatory literacy with which he used to read crowds and rooms full of men deciding whether they were brave enough to die, he tilts your chin up with two fingers and says, “where’d you go.” it is not a question in any ordinary sense. it is a summons, a hook set under the tongue of your silence. his fingers smell faintly of alcohol wipe and coffee and skin, blunt, warm, impossible to make sentimental, and the touch is light only because he chooses it to be, which means even gentleness from him has the pressure of restraint inside it, the terrible knowledge of unused force.

you could tell him antlers. you could tell him you were thinking about bone becoming proclamation, about the skull turning its own hidden labor into outward law, about masculinity not as costume, not as permission, not as a word handed over by the kind and revoked by the cruel, but as something grown through irritation and blood supply, as branch and tine and defensive splendor. you could tell him becoming a man sometimes feels less like being born than like growing weapons from a wound. like earning the right to be dangerous in your own shape, earning the branch and tines of yourself through season, chemistry, indignity, patience, ache. you could tell him the antler is not the opposite of the wound but the wound’s architecture, the wound learning to stand upright and cast a shadow. instead you look at him, at the thick beard catching morning in its silvered edges, at the crow’s feet cut deep beside eyes that still belong too much to a supe and too much to a man who has learned to notice domestic things because domesticity itself must be patrolled, and the hunger in you rises in its old revolting form, not lust, not something so simple or cleanly named, but the ruinous desire to be abolished into another body, to be relocated out of your own difficult flesh and housed somewhere denser, safer, more incontestable.

“nothing,” you say, finally, because the first defense of any unbearable thought is poverty of language, and because some part of you still believes that if you make your mouth small enough the thing inside you will not be seen trying to crawl out.

ben’s thumb shifts along your jaw, not stroking, simply correcting the angle of your attention. “bullshit.”

you huff once, weakly, not quite laughter. “you always say that.”

“because you always lie badly.” his eyes lower for a fraction of a second to your mouth, then return to your eyes. the look is appraising in that old ruinous way of his, not tender, not hungry in any simple sense, but exacting, proprietary, irritated by the fact that there are regions of you still attempting secrecy. “try again.”

“i heard something outside.”

“heard it too.”

“a deer, maybe.”

“probably.”

you look past him again, toward the window where the trees stand like dark ribs against the paling sky. “it made me think about antlers.”

he waits. with ben, waiting is never passive. it is pressure organized into silence. another man might have asked what about them, might have softened his voice, might have made the moment delicate and thereby ruined it. ben only stands there, big hand still at your chin, letting the absence of further speech do its work on you. he understands interrogation too well to waste it on too many words. eventually you swallow, and the motion drags against his thumb.

“how they grow,” you say. “how it’s bone, but it starts out covered. soft. bloody. not finished yet.”

his gaze changes minutely, not with surprise, because you do not think much surprises him anymore, but with recognition sharpening itself. “yeah?”

“yeah.” your voice comes out quieter than you want. “i don’t know. it just feels like that sometimes.”

“what does.”

you look at him, and for a second you hate him for making you say it, hate the old bastard’s cruel little devotion to voiced truth, hate that he has the patience to stand there until your own silence becomes more painful than confession. “this,” you say, gesturing vaguely toward your thigh, toward the tin box, toward the whole morning, but the gesture is too poor for the scale of what you mean. “me. my body. transition. whatever.” the words feel ugly in the air, overly modern, bureaucratic, insufficiently bloody. “like something is trying to grow out of me, but it’s still under velvet. still too soft. still embarrassing.”

his hand remains under your chin, but his eyes have gone darker, not softer. ben’s softness, when it comes, rarely looks like softness at all. It looks like attention becoming more dangerous.

“embarrassing,” he repeats.

you shrug, but the movement dies under his hand. “you know what i mean.”

“i know what you said.”

“fine.” irritation sparks, and it helps, because irritation has structure where shame is only weather. “it’s humiliating sometimes. needing time. needing the shot. needing someone to do it for me because my hands get stupid when i look at the needle. needing this whole little ceremony like i’m some animal waiting to grow antlers and everyone else already has bone where i have…” you stop, breath tightening, because the sentence has opened too much too quickly and there is no graceful way to close it. the silence after your unfinished sentence feels wet and exposed, like a mouth held open under a surgical lamp. “whatever this is.”

“say it.”

your jaw tightens. “no.”

“say it.”

“you don’t get to order everything out of me.”

his mouth does not smile, but something mean and almost pleased flickers behind his eyes. “no?”

“no.” your voice is steadier now, sharpened by the need to push back, to prove you are not only a thing being tended, corrected, handled, administered. “you heard enough.”

“i heard you quit before the useful part.”

“maybe the useful part is none of your business.”

his thumb presses once under your chin, not enough to hurt, only enough to make the denial feel anatomical. “sweetheart, i put the needle in your leg every thursday before breakfast. your business is already on my table.”

the words should make you furious. they do, a little. they also settle something in you with a brutality you resent, because there is a terrible relief in being known past politeness, past the little social cosmetics of privacy, past the flimsy curtain behind which most people allow themselves to remain theoretical. he knows the ugly facts. he knows the tin box. he knows the tremor in your hands. he knows where the needle goes and how your breathing changes when it does. he knows which jokes will make you bare your teeth and which commands will make your body betray its own reluctance. it is not fair that this steadies you. nothing between you has ever been fair.

“i hate feeling unfinished,” you say at last, and the sentence comes out flatter than you expected, less dramatic, more ruined. “i hate needing proof. i hate that i can want something this much and still have to wait for my body to catch up like it’s some lazy animal i’m dragging behind me. i hate that sometimes it feels like the real me is standing outside the meat, knocking, and the meat’s too stupid to open the door.”

ben looks at you for a long moment, and you can see the old violence in him walking around behind his eyes, not directed at you, not exactly, but awake, summoned by the idea of anything having made you feel small enough to speak that way. It should frighten you more than it does. Instead it steadies you, which is probably one of the worst truths about you both.

“you’re not unfinished,” he says.

you give him a look so sharp it almost becomes a laugh. “don’t.”

his brows pull together. “don’t what.”

“don’t make it sweet.”

“i wasn’t.”

“you were about to.”

the corner of his mouth moves, but there is no humor in it yet. “sweetheart, if i was trying to make it sweet, you’d know. i’d do a worse job.”

that almost gets you. almost. your mouth twitches despite yourself, and he catches that too, the traitor flicker of your face. his thumb leaves your chin and drags once along the hard line of your jaw, as if testing the future shape of it through skin.

“you’re in process,” he says, and the phrase sounds strange in his mouth, too clinical for him and therefore somehow more obscene, a borrowed word forced through gravel. “that’s different.”

“process sounds like paperwork.”

“everything sounds like paperwork when you’re being dramatic.”

“i’m not being dramatic.”

“you compared yourself to a deer growing head bones five seconds ago.”

“that was accurate.”

“sure it was.” he lets the faintest trace of amusement surface, then buries it again beneath something heavier. “doesn’t make you unfinished.”

you look down at your thigh, at the bandage pressed over the small puncture, at the ordinary flesh around it, and the sight makes something in you twist with that old familiar revulsion, not because the flesh is wounded, but because it is not wounded enough, not visibly transformed enough, not obedient enough to the fact of you. “it doesn’t feel that way.”

“i know.” he says it too quickly, and that is how you know he means it, because ben does not rush lies. lies, for him, have always been theatrical. truth comes out blunt, almost bored, as though embarrassed by its own existence. “look at me.”

you do, because he tells you to and because part of you is built to resist him only after obeying, because that is the foul little knot at the center of the two of you. his hand slides from your jaw to the back of your neck, palm heavy and broad, fingers fitting there with awful familiarity, not squeezing, not soothing, simply owning the point of contact.

“you think those deer know what the antlers are for when they start growing?”

you blink at him. “what?”

“answer.”

“i don’t know.”

“no. they don’t. body does. animal doesn’t.” his voice lowers. “sometimes the body gets ahead of the mind. sometimes the mind gets ahead of the body. either way, something’s gotta suffer while the rest catches up.”

the words land with more precision than you expect from him, and for one dangerous second you almost want to close your eyes. “that’s disgusting.”

“yeah,” he says. “usually is.”

you hate that this comforts you. you hate that he knows exactly where to put the blade so that it becomes support instead of injury. you hate that he can make acceptance feel unsanitary, not pastel, not gentle, not one of those smiling little affirmations people give when they want suffering to behave in a way that does not inconvenience them. ben’s version of affirmation is more like being dragged by the collar out of a ditch and told the ditch does not get to keep you. ugly, practical, almost punitive. it works on you because it does not ask you to pretend the ditch was not real.

“the body’s not a church,” you say, and you are not sure why you say it until it is already out, ugly little blasphemy, a sentence that tastes of old metal and bad doctrine. “people keep talking like it is. like it’s sacred. like i’m supposed to stand around grateful because it exists.”

ben studies you for a moment. “you don’t sound grateful.”

“i’m not.”

“no?”

“not always.” you swallow again, and his hand at your neck seems to register the movement before your own mind does. “sometimes it feels like a bad room. like i woke up in a house someone else built and everyone keeps telling me to decorate instead of admitting the foundation’s wrong.”

the cabin pops around you, a little burst from the stove, wood contracting or surrendering heat, and for a moment the metaphor becomes so physically present it nearly chokes you. walls, beams, chinking, nails, roof, ribs. everything built around emptiness and pretending emptiness is shelter.

ben’s eyes move briefly to the room, then back to you, and you know he understands more than he will say because structures are one of the only languages old men always understand. what holds. what fails. where weight goes. where rot hides.

“foundations can be reinforced,” he says.

“you sound like a contractor.”

“you started it with the bad room.”

“i hate when you’re literal.”

“i hate when you’re evasive.”

“you love when i’m evasive.”

that does make him smile, barely, a narrow crease under the beard, mean and fond in the same breath. “i like correcting it.”

“of course you do.”

his hand tightens at your neck, not punishing, only reminding. “and you like making me.”

the air changes. not softens. thickens. the cabin seems to draw inward by a fraction, the way bodies do before impact. you look at him, and he looks back with all that old ruinous certainty, the kind he never lost because age took polish from him but not arrogance, never arrogance, not the great fossilized beam at the center of him. shame returns, but no longer cleanly. it has been contaminated by the other thing, threaded through with a need so terrible it becomes almost indistinguishable from disgust, the need to be seen so thoroughly that secrecy becomes unnecessary, the need to have someone stronger than your panic name the shape of you and hold it still until it stops convulsing. shame alone had been simple enough to hate. shame mixed with want becomes a spoiled sacrament. it sticks to the teeth. it makes prayer taste like meat gone sweet under heat. you want to say something sharp because sharpness has saved you before, not truly, not permanently, but long enough to change the subject of the wound. you want to call him arrogant. you want to tell him his whole personality is a museum of outdated masculine disease and weaponized competence, all busted statues, bad flags, and dead men with hard-ons for discipline. you want to make him snort and insult you back because anger is a room with furniture in it and shame is only a cellar full of wet earth.

but the words fail. his hand is on your neck. your thigh aches. the bandage sits square over the puncture, absurdly clean and pale against the heat of your skin, and beneath it the oil is settling into muscle with the slow, dense pressure of an amendment entering law. outside, the deer has already vanished into timber with its invisible antlers or future antlers or absent antlers, leaving nothing behind except the idea of bone hidden under velvet, bone fed by blood until season commands it outward, bone that does not ask the animal whether the animal feels ready to become a weapon. all of it has opened some deeper chamber of thought you cannot close again. the cabin, the shot, the deer, ben’s thumb sealing the bandage, his voice saying there he is as if your manhood had been a thing dragged out of the dark by the collar rather than comforted into visibility. it all enters the same chamber. it all rots together. it all begins to breathe.

because thats it is, is it not. that is the final obscenity at the center of this, the thought you do not say until it is already rotting under your tongue, the one that comes not when he is at his cruelest, not when his old arrogance shows its teeth, not when his temper makes the air go hot and metallic, but when he is most competent, most concentrated, most disgustingly reliable, when the needle has gone in cleanly and the bandage has been pressed down square and his hands have done what they were supposed to do without spectacle. you want his body the way famine wants a field, not admiring the field from the road, not praising its greenness, but entering it with the ancient entitlement of hunger, taking root and grain and seed and soil until the boundary between appetite and landscape collapses. you want him not as spectacle but as annexation. you want to crawl inside the architecture of him and let his frame overrule yours. you want to be taken into his ribcage like contraband, smuggled under the sternum and hidden there among the old damage, tucked into the red vault where history has hardened around the organs like sediment around bone. you want his chest to split like temple veil, not in brutality, not in the cheap theatrical gore of opened meat, but in invitation, solemn and catastrophic, and for him to say in that same flat, certain voice he uses for commands and questions and all the small domestic orders that keep the day from collapsing, come here then, get in, take what you need, make a room of me. you want your own skin to become provisional, something shed and found later in strips, like velvet rubbed from antlers, like snakeskin left translucent on warm stone, like bloodied cloth abandoned in a sink after the body has once again proved itself an unreliable witness, and you want his skin, his breadth, his old obscene certainty, to become the permanent document.

it is not even a mirage of protection in the childish sense. protection would be too small, too respectable, too easily made pretty by anyone willing to lie about what need does when it goes long enough without satisfaction. this is hungrier and fouler than protection. it is replacement. exchange. grafting. a fantasy not of being shielded from the world but of being reissued from a body the world has already learned to read as final, as male, as threat, as structure. take my sinew, you think, though perhaps it is his voice you hear saying it now, because he has infected even the grammar of your wanting, because his authority has become one of the internal weather systems by which your desire announces itself. take the muscle, take the breadth, take the ugly miracle of certainty, take the horn and hide and weathered bone, take the old american ruin of me and make from it whatever shape lets you breathe.

there is something profoundly unclean in wanting a person as infrastructure, as host, as reliquary, and you know that. you know it the way one knows a prayer has gone rotten in the mouth before one can stop speaking it, the syllables already warm with spoilage, already sweet in the wrong way. but he encourages the corruption by existing as he does, all that obsolete force rendered domestic, all that national violence learning the minute calibrations of care, the ruined weapon hand made precise around a syringe, a bandage, a coffee mug, the back of your neck. he makes the monstrous wish feel almost logical. he stands there as proof that a body can be manufactured into myth and still later be asked to hold breakfast, hold silence, hold you, and the idea of being held stops meaning arms and begins meaning ribs, sternum, interior shelter, the locked chapel of the torso where no one enters unless the body has been opened.

he presses the bandage over the injection site and smooths it down with the broad pad of his thumb, and the gesture is so ordinary it feels apocalyptic. that is what no one tells you, that the end of the world may come not as fire but as competent tenderness from a man whose hands know too many other uses. the adhesive catches lightly against the fine texture of your skin, the gauze pad centered over the puncture, the small square now absurdly clean against the heat of your thigh, and his thumb lingers one heartbeat longer than the task requires. “there,” he says again, quieter now, looking at the sealed bandage as if verifying the success of some small engineering task, as if this too belongs to the vast catalogue of things he has learned to repair by force of method rather than purity of motive. then he lifts his eyes to yours, and whatever he sees there must be bad enough, hungry enough, because his expression changes, not softening, never that, but darkening into recognition. his face does not give itself away easily. age has made it heavier, less performative, less inclined toward the old cinematic grin that once turned cruelty into entertainment, but the recognition still moves through it like weather passing over a dead lake. “christ,” he mutters, almost to himself, though there is no prayer in it, only the blasphemous reflex of a man raised by a country that taught him to invoke holiness whenever flesh became inconvenient. his hand comes up behind your neck again, not kind, not cruel, just heavy, incontrovertible, holding you in place under the full weight of his attention. the heat of his palm settles at the nape, the fingers splayed into the smaller muscles there, and your pulse kicks once against the restraint. “you keep lookin’ at me like you wanna crawl inside my skin.”

the shame that floods you is instant and useless because he is right. worse, he is more right than language can bear, more right than you have been willing to be even in the privacy of your own skull. it is not his skin exactly, not the surface, not the costume of him, not beard or muscle or shoulder or the visual grammar of him as a man the world has never hesitated to name. it is the internal territory, the old blasted organs, the warped ribcage, the deep chest where history has congealed into something almost structural. you want not to wear him but to be contained by him, to make an address of him, to escape the provisional, litigated, administratively hostile fact of your own body by disappearing into his more incontestable one. your own flesh has always felt too subject to argument, too dependent on explanation, too vulnerable to correction by strangers with small minds and official voices, while his body, ruined as it is, reads like law written in bone. that is the obscenity. you do not want his beauty. beauty is cheap compared with what he has. you want his inevitability. you want the dense, unquestioned grammar of him, the way even his damage seems authorized, the way even his scars look less like interruptions than footnotes in a text the world already accepts as true. he sees enough of the answer in your face that a slow, appalled humor cuts across his mouth, and the humor hurts because it is not mockery alone; it is the amusement of a man recognizing a hunger so ugly it almost flatters him. “yeah,” he says. “i know.”

and then, because he is incapable of leaving a wound unopened once he has found it, because every mercy from him has to be made uncomfortable before he will let it stand, because ben has never trusted kindness unless it first passes through the old machinery of domination and comes out scarred enough to be useful, he bends close until his forehead nearly touches yours and speaks in that low ruinous register that always feels half command, half confession. “wouldn’t fit, sweetheart.” his hand tightens at the nape of your neck, not enough to hurt, enough to translate the sentence into muscle. “too much of me in there already.” it should be cruel. it is cruel. the cruelty is not accidental, not decorative, not the reflexive insult of a man afraid of tenderness, but something more intimate and exact, a blade turned sideways and slid under a truth to lift it into the light. yet beneath it there is the old polluted tenderness, the implication that if he could unmake the limits of the body for you, if he could crack himself open and seat you under his ribs where the machinery of him still labors, if he could make a second room in the red architecture of his chest and assign it your name, he would do it, not because he is noble, not because sacrifice purifies him, but because he is possessive enough to prefer incorporation over distance. he would rather become inhabited than risk losing what he has decided belongs in his radius. he would rather turn his own body into a locked house than watch you stand outside it in the weather.

there was something in the old Adamic story that had lodged in you like shrapnel and refused to work its way free, not the softened sunday school version with its pastoral innocence and its domesticated miracle, not the clean little sleeping man and the benevolent hand and the airbrushed innocence of companionship made safe for children, but the uglier theological machinery under it, the fact that the first sanctioned intimacy in that tradition does not emerge from speech or courtship or even recognition, but from incision. before there is vow, there is opening. before there is relation, there is wound. God does not make companionship from clean dust a second time, does not begin again from the earth as though equality could be granted by separate origin. he opens a body. he reaches into the side, into the barred dark of the torso, into the inward architecture that keeps breath contained and the heart from becoming public spectacle, and he removes a rib, one of the load-bearing slats of the living cage, and from that theft, that structural subtraction, another life is declared. the image had never once felt romantic to you. it felt surgical, proprietary, almost obscene in its implications. to be made from someone’s rib was not to be loved in any gentle sense; it was to be derived from what held them together, to be authored by their hidden scaffolding, to owe your shape to the white curved bone that stood guard over their lungs and pulse and animal heat. it was not the rose, not the hand, not the mouth, not the sentimental inventory of tenderness people use when they want bodies to stop being frightening. it was bone. house-bone. guard-bone. the curved pale plank of the interior fortress. and somewhere along the line, in the more fevered chambers of your own wanting, the image had curdled into something fouler and far more intimate than metaphor.

because the rib is not an ornament. it is not excess. it is not the detachable flourish of a body generous enough to spare a piece of itself without consequence. the rib is enclosure. the rib is weatherproofing for the heart. the rib is the barred window of the animal chapel, the white trellis over lung and vessel, the skeletal hand the body keeps folded around its own most urgent machinery. to be made from that is not to be complimented by creation. it is to be implicated in injury. it is to have one’s origin tied to a gap in another body, a deficit, a scar, a subtraction that must be healed over and lived with. the old story says Adam sleeps, and that detail disgusts you almost more than the incision, because sleep makes the violation sacred, makes unconsciousness into permission, makes the body available to divine surgery without the vulgarity of consent or refusal. the first man is opened in a darkness he cannot remember, and when he wakes, relation has already been made from what he lost. the wound precedes knowledge. the body knows before the mouth names. that is the part that attaches itself to your own hunger like a parasite. you do not want to be loved in the polite, external way, standing whole beside another wholeness while the world applauds the civility of boundaries. you want the wound that proves relation has cost something. you want origin with evidence. you want the scar that says something was taken to make room for you.

to look at ben too long in the pale aftermath of thursday, his hand still warm over your thigh, the ache of the oil settling into the muscle like a private seal, is to feel that old biblical image mutate into appetite all over again. not a wish to be held, but to be housed. not a wish to be near him, but to be admitted beneath the hooked white branches of him, under the rib-shadow, into the red concealed chapel of his body where breath is made and kept. he is too easy a host for the thought and too terrible a one. his chest has always been public property before it was ever allowed to be private flesh, sold as national architecture, photographed, costumed, armored, adored by people who wanted the fantasy of male power without ever having to smell the rot it was cured in. broad enough to seem engineered rather than born, sternum like a shieldplate, ribcage built for impact, the whole torso reading less like anatomy than infrastructure, a bunker with skin stretched over it. vought made him into a country you could point at. propaganda with a pulse. and now the country has collapsed inward, and what remains sits in a cabin cooking eggs and preparing your shots and noticing when your breath changes, which makes the fantasy worse, not better, because domesticity has not gentled the architecture. It has made it intimate. the public monument has become a private shelter with a lock only he knows how to open.

you want the side-wound version of mercy. you want the impossible vulgarity of being remade from his enclosure, to have the body’s whole administrative mistake corrected not by paperwork or patience or the tedious kindness of bureaucratic recognition, but by a second genesis conducted in marrow. his opened side offering up not salvation but kinship, not purity but provenance, the right at last to say, i came from here, i was cut from the structure, i belong because i was made from the bone that once kept this monstrous heart alive. you want a genealogy uglier than family and more convincing than law. you want his rib as affidavit, his wound as signature, his body as origin document. It is ridiculous and horrific and unbearably serious inside you, this desire to be retroactively authored by a man whose own authorship was industrial, coerced, national, obscene. perhaps that is why he fits the fantasy so perfectly. he knows what it is to have a body made into somebody else’s argument. he knows what it is to wake and find a mythology already using your muscles. he knows what it is to be inhabited by purposes that were not born in you, to be dressed in a meaning and expected to salute. so some diseased part of you thinks he would understand the reciprocal atrocity of it, the wish not merely to be seen by him but to be derived from him, not merely touched but issued, not merely desired but built.

the thought is monstrous. it arrives clothed in biblical matter, in Adamic rib, in eucharistic consumption, in all those old religions where love and devouring were never as separate as the later clean-handed faithful preferred to pretend. take, eat. this is my body. those words are supposed to be holy, yet holiness has always had a stomach if one reads closely enough, always had teeth hidden behind doctrine, always asked the faithful to place flesh on the tongue and call consumption communion. to love is to want to eat and be eaten, to be made one substance, to lose the bureaucracies of the separate body, to abolish the humiliating border where one skin ends and another begins. what else is devotion, when stripped of its hymns, but a disciplined appetite? what else is grief but the inability to digest the absent? what else is possession but the wish to keep another person warm inside the locked pantry of the self? you know this is ugly. you know the metaphor has teeth and that the teeth are not metaphorical enough to be safe. but there are moments when his attention rests on you with such brutal completeness that being seen feels like being chewed, broken down, incorporated into the dark efficient chemistry of his concern. he looks at you as if he could swallow the world’s version of you and spit out the bones, as if he could strip away every wrong name and false shape and civilian misunderstanding until only the hard edible truth remained. he looks at you as if preparation is a form of restraint. he does not devour carelessly. he butchers precisely. he salts. he waits. he feeds what he has chosen to keep.

he, of all people, understands that instinct in its least romantic form. he has been eaten by institutions, by nation and laboratory and audience and myth, swallowed so completely that for years he mistook digestion for purpose. the country opened its mouth and called it honor. the company carved him, seasoned him, plated him under lights, and the crowd consumed the version of him they were given until even his own face became something he had to retrieve from between their teeth. he knows what it is to be used as sacrament by people who do not love you, only the strength they can metabolize from your image. he knows what it is to have strangers feed on the idea of your body until the actual body becomes secondary, inconvenient, excessive. you want him to say, “you’re mine to take care of, not to carve up,” not to carve up. not to try to make you something you did not ask to be. not to answer slow pain with a knife because he is too impatient to respect the violence already underway in chemistry and time. not to mistake opening for fixing. not to take the butcher’s shortcut through a transformation that has its own terrible law. the phase matters because it carries the shadow of the alternative. it knows the fantasy. it knows the bad room un your mind where you have imagined being cut open, corrected, remade through some immediate sacrament of force. it knows the hunger to be handled so decisively that hesitation dies. yet his refusal is not gentle. it is commandment. you are mine to tend, not mine to ruin. mine to guard through process, not mine to split for spectacle. mine to steady while the velvet tears in its own season.

you hate wanting access to that certainty. you hate the infantile grandeur of the hunger, the way it wants origin instead of process, derivation instead of wanting. it is not enough, in the worst moments, to become but degrees, to let chemistry do its slow lawful violence, to feed the antlers and trust that the bone will one day stand clean in air. some days you want a counterfeit genesis, a radioactive wound, a masculine origin so brutal and definitive that no one could argue with it. you want to crawl backward through scripture and come out of his opened side already named. you want the rib not as romance, not as subornation, not as womanhood, never that, but as proof of source. proof that you had not invented yourself from hostile matter. proof that your body was not petition waiting on approval. proof that some older, harder masculine structure had been broken open and made room for you before the world had the chance to mislabel the evidence.

the thought makes your stomach clench with disgust because it is not cleanly symbolic. it has texture. it has warmth. it has anatomical persistence. you can imagine the ribcage not as a diagram but as wet architecture, intercostal muscles stretched between place curves, cartilage glistening where bone yields towards sternum, the pleural hush of breath moving behind it, the heart’s blunt percussion somewhere deeper, stupid and loyal and alive. you can imagine being small enough, or boneless enough, or forgiven enough by the laws of matter to fit in there, folded into the cavity where no bureaucracy could find you, hidden behind the cage that you had been built to protect him. you want to live in that red dark like a secret organ. you want your name swallowed into his circulation. you want the old spiritual cannibalism of it, not eating ben, not being eaten by ben in any crude sense, but becoming one of the things his body is forced to account for, something metabolically nonnegotiable, something lodged so deep removal would kill the host. love, if that is what this diseased dependency can be called, has never felt to you like two people standing separately and choosing one another from a courteous distance. it feels like ingestion. like one history entering another history and refusing digestion like a shard swallowed and carried forever in the gut.

the antlers and the rib begin to braid together in your mind until you can no longer seperate them. antlers are bone going outward, the body making its private hunger public, pushing proof through skin until the animal’s head becomes a crown of posed architecture. the ribs is bone taken inward, hidden bone, protective bone, the architecture beneath the surface opened and repurposed into another life. one is eruption. one is extraction. one says its own mineral debt. one says the body can opened and made to author what it lacks. both are violent. both are sacred only if you ignore how wet the process is. both make the skeleton less private than people pretend. bone, in either case, refuses to remain merely bone. it becomes sign, sentence, inheritance, proof. and transition, in your most fevered understanding of it, lives somewhere between those two horrors, the antler’s slow public emergence and the rib’s impossible claim to origin. you are growing what you need from within, yes, feeding the hidden branches, surviving the velvet stage, but some obscene part of you still wants to be taken from him, wants his side opened so you can be declared not aspirational but derived, not becoming but begotten, not an argument but evidence.

still, the fantasy continues to breathe under the refusal, because desire does not die when contradicted; it becomes subterranean, damp, more elaborate. you imagine the rib anyway, not as clean white bone in a museum drawer but as something drawn wet from the side, slick with the body’s red grammar, curved and pale and intimate as a secret. you imagine his torso opened not by violence but by some impossible theological compliance, the sternum yielding, the ribs parting like the doors of a ruined cathedral, not gore, not surgery, but revelation, the interior of him lit by no light and yet visible, the heart working there with obscene persistence, the lungs dark and expanding, the whole chamber hot with the labor of continuing. you imagine one rib loosened from its bed, one guarded strut surrendered, and the horror of it is not the blood but the implication that a body could give up part of its enclosure and still remain standing. that is what you want from him, perhaps. not to be rescued from yourself, but to know that something strong could lose structure for you and not collapse. to know that a man so overbuilt by violence could make an absence in himself and call the absence yours. to know that belonging might be more than being allowed into a room, that it might be being made from the wall itself.

but the story is poisonous, because the Adamic rib has always carried hierarchy under its tongue, derivation under the perfume of intimacy, and you are not ignorant of that. to be made from the rib can become a trap if one lets lesser minds preach it, an origin that makes the second body dependent, secondary, forever explained by the first. that is not the part you want. you reject that old sermon as easily as spitting gristle from your mouth. what you want is stranger, more heretical, less submissive than the church version ever dared to be. you want not to be lesser because derived, but incontrovertible because derived from the protected center. you want to reverse the humiliation. if the rib has been used to make one body auxiliary to another, you want to seize the image by its throat and make it say something else: that what is taken from the side is not afterthought but kin to the heart’s own guard, that the one made from the rib is not decorative helpmeet but living evidence that the body’s architecture can become generative, that structure itself can be broken and reborn as personhood. you do not want to be Eve. you do not want womanhood smuggled back into you through scripture’s side door. you want the incision without the assignment. you want the bone without the sermon. you want the masculine cage opened not to feminize you, not to make you derivative in the old obedient way, but to prove that manhood can be kinship, wound, extraction, branch, antler, inheritance, and theft all at once. you want to be the rib that refused the name it was given after removal. you want to be bone returning as verdict.

you detest the way your body entraps you, and the thought arrives with such force it almost becomes sound. not merely discomfort, not merely dissatisfaction, not even hatred in the clean, theatrical sense, but detestation as a mode of perception, the body suddenly legible as prison architecture, as hostile housing, as a carceral state with skin for walls and bone for law. this human flesh, so burdensome and repugnant, this bureaucratic meat, this living document stamped with signatures you never gave, this soft nation of organs where your soul has been detained without trial. forgive me, someone, anyone, for harboring such abhorrent thoughts, you think, though no one in the room is qualified to grant absolution and perhaps that is why the plea feels so sincere.

you yearn not for prettiness, not for simple improvement, but for the mercy of needing to be something else without being made to apologize for the need. you yearn for a violence clean enough to be called transformation and a transformation honest enough to admit its violence. yet even as you strip away the layers of your being that are so easily condemned, even as the shot enters on thursday and the weeks compile themselves into subtle evidence, this skin does not feel like you. masculine on the outside in certain lights, yes, or moving toward it, or capable of being arranged into the suggestion of it, but the inside rattles. the inside remains a locked tenement after the authorities have cut the heat. the inside is full of pipes banging at night and anonymous doors and stairwells smelling of rust and old water. what solace it would be if you could step out of this skin occasionally, not forever, not even dramatically, just sometimes, as if a zipper ran along your back and some merciful hand had finally found the pull. to hear the sinews unfasten from the muscle, to feel the dermis loosen from fascia with a damp adhesive sigh, to peel yourself off from yourself in one long trembling garment and hang the body over a chair so it could air out while you stood elsewhere, raw and unassigned, invisible to every stupid law of shape.

but it clings to you.

that is the horror. it clings and clings, devotional in the worst possible way. you claw in imagination, scratch in thought, pull until the nails of the mind bend backward, and still it remains, or grows back, stubborn and unyielding, proliferative as mold in a sealed room. what torment, you think, and the words are childish only because agony sometimes strips intelligence down to its oldest vowel. get off. you wretched flesh. release me. the body does not release. the body has never understood argument. it understands chemistry, pressure, hunger, sleep, injury, time. it understands the slow governance of hormones and scar tissue, the terrible deliberation of cells, the red bureaucracy by which blood travels its appointed routes no matter what the mind has voted. the body is a dystopia precisely because it continues functioning. that is the unbearable part. not collapse, not visible monstrosity, not the mercy of a dramatic failure that would justify your horror to anyone watching, but administration. continuity. the lungs fill. the heart contracts. the gut digests. hair grows where it will and refuses where it will. blood remembers old instructions. skin heals over punctures as if healing were always benevolent. the state of the flesh keeps operating, processing, issuing permits, denying appeals, collecting taxes from your despair. you are trapped in a country whose language you did not choose, carrying documents written in muscle and gland and cartilage, stopped daily at the border of your own reflection by guards wearing your face.

and there, in the last part of the thought, the dystopia opens wider, because the body is not merely a bad room but an occupied city. there are districts of you under curfew, corridors where no one goes after dark, alleys full of old names rotting in puddles, government buildings with your birth assigned in marble over the door, checkpoints at the throat, the hips, the chest, the mirror, the voice, the bathroom, the memory of blood in a sink. every organ has a ministry. every nerve is surveillance. the skin is propaganda stretched over infrastructure. the bones are old law. the endocrine system is a parliament of ghosts arguing in a language older than justice. you walk through your own day like a dissident moving under posters of a ruler he never elected, and every thursday morning in this cabin, with ben’s hands steady over the syringe, with the vial unwrapped like contraband scripture, with your thigh exposed and the air smelling of coffee and ash and resin, the regime receives one more act of sabotage. the dose is small. the act is small. the puncture nearly invisible. that is what makes it radical. not the grand cinematic overthrow, not the palace burning, but a needle entering muscle before breakfast while an old national weapon holds your leg still and tells you not to flinch. each shot is a little insurgency. each week, a clandestine press printing new law beneath the skin. each ache, a rumor spreading through the provinces that the old government is not immortal.

ben’s hand remains at your neck while the sacrilege burns through you, and he does not know the full theology of it, he cannot know the entire cathedral of it, cannot know every little nave and transept of disgust inside your skull, every scripture verse that has gone septic in the folds of your thinking, every rib, branch, velvet-shedding horror, every private hour when your own body has stood before you like a house inherited from an enemy, with locks changed before you were born and your name scraped off the mailbox by someone who called it nature. he cannot know the architecture in its totality, because nobody can enter another person’s body-hatred without bringing the wrong shoes, without tracking in some vulgar little footprint of pity or politics or clean-handed concern, and pity has always offended you worse than cruelty because cruelty at least admits there is meat involved. pity keeps trying to drape linen over the carcass. pity wants the body made palatable before it agrees to look. ben has no talent for pity, which is one of the few mercies in him that has not been ruined by sentiment. he knows enough. he knows silence when it stops being silence and becomes containment failure. he knows the body when it starts holding itself like a prisoner refusing a photograph. he knows the way your gaze flattens when disgust comes in, not softens, not trembles, not becomes childlike, but goes cold and judicial, as if some inner tribunal has convened and sentenced the flesh without bothering to call witnesses. he knows the way the room around you seems to lose dimension because you are no longer fully in it, because some essential and arrogant part of you has slipped behind the wall of the body and begun beating from the inside with both fists, not begging to be let out, never begging, but demanding entry into the shape it was owed.

he knows enough to move closer. not tenderly. not with that insulting delicacy people use around pain they are afraid might contaminate them. ben has never treated pain like porcelain. he treats it like hostile territory, like something with coordinates, weak points, supply lines, a command structure that can be invaded if a man is mean enough to keep advancing. he moves like he is entering a room he expects to clear. heavy, controlled, quiet in the wrong way for a man built like a monument to impact. his hand does not leave your neck. it stays there, hot and deliberate, not squeezing, not exactly, but resting with the ugly certainty of possession, thumb settled close to the hinge of your skull, fingers curved over tendon and the fine vulnerable machinery of the nape. it is not comfort. comfort would be too clean a word for what his touch does. his hand is a claim driven into the body like a surveyor’s iron stake. it says: here. it says: mine to handle. it says: you do not get to abandon the thing i am still holding.

“don’t go there,” he says.

the words come out low, roughened by morning and age, but without pleading. there is no please in it. there is no invitation. he is not asking you to come back because your distress has touched some soft pastoral instinct in him. he is ordering the retreat to halt. He hears the machinery beginning to fail, sees you backing out of yourself, sees the body turning into furniture in the room, and something in him refuses the vacancy with a violence that has nothing noble in it. he does not want to be left with the body if you are not inside it. he does not want the shell. he has handled shells before. supes. men in dressing rooms pretending to be alive under pancake makeup and shame. the husk disgusts him. not because the body disgusts him, but because absence in a body feels like theft.

you blink once, slow, the way you do when you are trying to make contempt pass for composure. “i’m right here.”

“no,” he says, and the word is almost bored, almost lethal, flattened by certainty until it has the weight of a stone tablet. “you’re standing three miles outside yourself staring through the window.”

the accuracy has no elegance, which makes it worse. it arrives in work boots. it does not ask permission to be right. something in your face tries to sneer because sneering is easier than being found.

“that’s poetic for you.”

“don’t start.”

you try for a smirk. it comes out brittle at the corners, too clean to be real, a porcelain little thing made for shattering. “what, you don’t like when i’m accurate?”

“i don’t like when you disappear and leave me with the furniture.”

the phrase lands strangely, almost absurdly, until you understand with a spike of ugly recognition that the furniture means your body, the seated thing, the remaining flesh, the warmed chair of you, the blooded apparatus still in the room after you have withdrawn behind the old interior barricade. it is cruel. it is perfect. it makes you want to spit and laugh and snap your teeth at him because the accuracy is indecent. furniture. object. arrangement. body as something left behind for someone else to dust, move, handle, own by default. the word should debase you, and instead it clarifies the exact insult you have been committing against yourself, the way you flee the body and then despise it for being abandoned, the way you leave the house empty and then complain when ghosts move in.

“maybe the furniture’s the problem.”

his eyes narrow. the movement is small, but the atmosphere notices. “the furniture’s what i’ve got my hand on.”

“lucky you.”

“don’t be cute.”

“i’m not.”

“you are.” his fingers press more firmly at the nape of your neck, dragging your attention back down into vertebrae and tendon and pulse, back into the wet mechanical fact of being embodied whether you approve of the arrangement or not. “you’re being cute because you got too close to saying something ugly, and you’d rather make me chase it out of you.”

you hate him then, briefly and brightly, hate him with such clean heat it almost feels medicinal. you hate him for his accuracy, hate him for that old instinct that turns care into pursuit, you hate that he can read your evasions not as doors but as blood trails, little wet proofs across the cabin floor leading straight to the animal you have been hiding behind language. he has always been too good at finding what has been wounded and deciding whether it needs dressing, discipline, or a boot on its throat. that is the sickness of him. that is the use of him. he does not comfort the wound first. he establishes jurisdiction. “maybe i don’t want to say it.”

“you never want to say it.”

“then stop asking.”

“no.”

simple. immovable. a stone rolled in front of a tomb and refusing miracle. you glare at him, and he accepts it with the infuriating calm of a man who has been hated by better organized forces than your embarrassment. there is something unbearable about how unaffected he remains by your resistance, not because he dismisses it, but because he likes it where it belongs. resistance gives him a surface. resistance lets him feel the shape of the thing he is holding down. a softer man would mistake your anger for injury and step back in apology, leaving you alone with the rot. ben does not step back. ben was not designed, trained, rewarded, ruined, buried, and resurrected into this late domestic brutality so he could be frightened off by the sound of your teeth clicking together.

“you think i don’t know what happens when you don’t say it?” he asks.

you say nothing. partly from spite, partly because something in you has gone still around the question.

his mouth tightens under the beard. “it starts eatin’ you.”

the bluntness opens something. not because it is profound in the ornamental sense, not because it arrives with philosophical embroidery, but because it is physical. eating. yes. that is exactly the verb. the thought has teeth. the body has teeth. dysphoria, when it gets bad enough, stops being mist or sadness or discomfort and becomes appetite turned inward, a closed-mouth cannibalism where the self consumes the self because there is no other available meat. it begins behind the ribs, not in the heart but near it, somewhere between sternum and stomach, a wet grinding place where thought chews shape into pulp. It eats the morning first, strips the light from the window and leaves only glare. then it eats the mirror, not by breaking it but by teaching every reflection how to prosecute. then it eats the sound of your own voice, pulling it apart syllable by syllable until each vowel returns from your mouth wearing the wrong uniform. then it eats the harmless weight of fabric over skin, the seam of a shirt, the pressure of waistband, the stupid domestic intimacy of cloth touching a body that has not yet become obedient enough to deserve neutrality. it gnaws the body’s ordinary facts until they become obscene. a shoulder is no longer a shoulder but insufficient breadth. a jaw is no longer a jaw but a failed announcement. a throat is no longer a throat but a corridor where sound betrays its architecture before it reaches the air. a chest is no longer a chest but accusation, terrain, jurisdiction, a structure of wrong emphasis. skin becomes packaging for an error. blood becomes evidence for the prosecution. even softness, innocent as fat under the palm, becomes loaded, conspiratorial, an informant whispering to the world that you are not yet what you know yourself to be.

the horror is not that the body feels foreign. foreign would be cleaner. foreign implies distance, passports, borders, the possibility of refusal. foreign can be left at the port. foreign can be named without contaminating the tongue. the horror is that it is intimate and alien at once, yours and not yours, obedient in some functions and treacherous in the ones that matter most, a beloved enemy, a house that feeds you while keeping you locked in the cellar. it digests for you. it sleeps for you. it closes wounds for you with smug biological efficiency, laying collagen over punctures as if healing were always benevolent, as if repair and obedience were the same virtue. it carries you from room to room, performs the grotesque errands of survival, warms itself, sheds cells, remembers thirst, builds hunger, produces sweat, answers weather, reacts to ben’s hand before your pride approves the reaction. that is what makes the disgust unbearable. the body is not useless. it is useful in the wrong accent. it is a loyal animal owned by the wrong god. it keeps you alive and then expects gratitude for the insult.

ben watches your face as the thought passes through it, and his grip changes, not tightening exactly, but becoming more deliberate, the way a hand on a leash changes when the animal at the end sees the road and starts calculating distance. he has the old horrible patience of men who have dragged bodies, enemies, teammates, friends, victims, and versions of themselves across thresholds where nobody thanked them. he knows the flavor of a person leaving the body. he knows the limpness that is not surrender but evasion, the way a mind can abandon its post and call it survival. he has done it in his own way, though he would rather swallow glass than name it. there were years when his body belonged more completely to america than to him, when every muscle was inventory, every bruise corporate weather, every act of strength another public meal for a nation that liked its gods injectable, obedient, photogenic, and mean. he was eaten long before he learned to enjoy biting back. he knows what it is to have the world feed on your body’s meaning until the person inside becomes gristle caught in the national teeth. that is why your disgust angers him. not because he is noble. nobility has no durable habitat in him. it angers him because he recognizes a rival owner.

his thumb presses once beneath the skull, exactly where the neck becomes head, and the pressure is not pain but command translated into anatomy. your spine answers before your mouth can object. the body comes back in pieces, resentful and unavoidable: tendon under his palm, ache in the thigh, breath snagged under the sternum, tongue heavy behind the teeth, palms damp, the faint adhesive pull of the bandage, the after-smell of alcohol and coffee and smoke. it is humiliating to return to the body because he ordered you into it. it is more humiliating that it works.

“that’s not yours to give away,” he says.

you know what he means before you let yourself understand it. the body. the post. the territory. the room. the flesh you keep abandoning out of hatred and then leaving open for shame to occupy. he says it with the flat possessive certainty of a man who has never believed land should stay uncontested just because someone else planted a flag there first.

“it’s my body,” you say, and the words come out harsher than intended, because the truth of them matters, because some part of you still has to defend ownership even against the man whose hand is holding you in place.

“then act like it.” the sentence is crude enough to bruise. it has none of the polished generosity another person might offer, none of the therapeutic caution, none of the careful language meant to leave no marks. it hits bone. for a second all you can do is stare at him.

ben’s face is close, beard rough and silvered, eyes hooded with old violence and a kind of attention so total it feels indecent. there is no pity in him. no softness arranged for your benefit. he looks at you as if your body is a post you deserted and he has dragged you back before the enemy noticed. he looks at you as if masculinity is not a feeling to be protected but a duty you are insulting by letting shame command the room.

“you don’t get to hate it so much you hand it over,” he says. “not to blood. not to some bad day. not to that rotten little voice telling you to crawl out and leave the rest behind.”

you swallow. the motion drags against his thumb.

“you don’t know what it’s like.” the words leave your mouth before you can sharpen them. they sound too exposed. you hate that. you hate the sudden nakedness of the sentence, the way it gives him an opening large enough to step through.

his expression changes, not softening, but going colder, stripped of even the small cruel amusement that had moved through him earlier. for a moment you see the bunker under the man, the laboratory under the myth, the old national animal chained inside a body everyone had claimed and no one had known how to love without consuming. “i know enough about bodies that get turned into somebody else’s property.”

it is the closest he will come to confession, and even that comes like a threat. he does not linger on it. he does not dress it in vulnerability. he throws the fact down between you like a weapon on a table. then he steps over it.

“difference is, i learned to bite.” there it is again, the old ugliness, the old doctrine, the forcemasc gospel according to ben: not peace, not safety, not validation, but teeth. the body as territory. manhood as refusal under pressure. shame as an enemy that deserves no poetry unless the poetry can be sharpened and used. his answer to disgust is not to soothe it but to make you more dangerous than it.

“and that’s what you’re gonna do,” he says.

anger stirs again, blessedly hot. “you giving orders now?”

“yeah.”

“of course you are.”

“somebody has to.” his hand slides from the back of your neck to your jaw, not gentle, not cruel, just controlling the angle of your face so your eyes cannot slip past him toward the window or the floor or the little escape routes the room keeps offering. his thumb comes to rest along the line of bone as if reminding you there is structure there already, not enough for your impatience, maybe, not finished enough for your hunger, but present, real, refusing erasure under the skin.

“you’re gonna stay in it,” he says. “you’re gonna take the shot. you’re gonna stop treating every slow thing like it’s betrayal. and when the meat starts running its mouth, you’re gonna shut it up like a man.”

it is awful. it is exactly him. meat. man. shut it up. no softness, no clean affirmation, no pastel shrine where pain is made acceptable by being spoken of gently. he makes the body low so the self can stand over it. he makes the function crude so it cannot crown itself holy. he takes every delicate terror and drags it into a barracks yard where it can be cursed, disciplined, made to do push-ups in the mud.

your throat tightens with something too complicated to be relief. “that’s easy for you to say.”

“no shit.” the answer is so blunt it knocks the self-pity off balance before it can fully rise.

“i didn’t say it was fair,” he says. “i said you’re not getting out of it by turning ghost on me.”

turning ghost. the phrase sinks under your skin with the others, not poetic because he meant it, not elegant because elegance would have weakened it. the body as furniture. the self as deserter. shame as eater. the flesh as contested ground. ghosting yourself as cowardice, not morally but tactically, a bad maneuver under fire. ben’s language is rotten with war because war is the cathedral that raised him. he cannot speak of healing without making it sound like an occupation. he cannot speak of care without making it sound like a command structure. and still, in that vulgar doctrine, something answers. not because you believe suffering should be conquered by cruelty. not because cruelty is clean. because your shame has become too swollen for tenderness to cut through. it needs a blunter instrument.

the cabin seems to listen. the morning has brightened by degrees, but the light remains thin, cold, unsparing. the table beyond him still holds the tin box, and in the open tin the vial catches one narrow bar of light, amber and clinical and holy in the worst way. the used alcohol wipe has dried into a curled scrap. the syringe lies capped, stripped of threat now that its purpose has been completed. the stove gives off a final metal tick. somewhere in the wall, a pipe knocks once and settles. outside, the forest keeps its own counsel. the deer, if it was a deer, has gone farther into the trees with whatever crown the season has assigned it, velveted or bare or not yet grown, indifferent to the men inside making theology out of bone.

ben follows your gaze to the table and then back to you. “look at it.”

you do, unwillingly. the tin box. the vial. the little instruments of weekly sabotage. the private arsenal. it sits there small enough to fit in one hand, and you hate that something so small can hold so much authority over you. you hate the disproportion. you want transformation to look like transformation, like fire, like splitting, like the old skin coming off in one long wet sheet. instead it looks like a bottle, a needle, a bandage, an ache that could be mistaken for nothing by anyone not living under it.

“that’s yours,” he says. “not the blood. that.” his chin tips toward the vial. “that’s the part you picked. that’s the part you keep picking. you understand me?”

you do not answer immediately. he lets you have three seconds, maybe four, then his fingers tighten at your jaw. “words.”

you hate the heat that rises in your face. you hate that he knows exactly what that command does, how it drags desire and consent and shame into the mouth and makes them stand there visible. he has used it before the needle. he uses it now like the ritual is not over, like the injection was only the first half and this, this ugly articulation under his hand, is the second. “i understand.”

“good.” he releases your jaw only to tap two fingers against the side of your face, once, not affectionate, more like checking whether a man is awake after being hit. “then quit insulting yourself in my house.”

your eyes cut back to him. “your house?”

the smallest mean smile shows under the beard. “you wanna argue real estate right now?”

“i want you to stop acting like you own the air.”

“i do when you’re wasting it.”

the cruelty of it should land wrong. it almost does. then it hits the place he meant to hit, the place where your breathing has gone shallow, where you have been half withholding yourself from your own lungs as if existing less fully might make the body less offensive. you inhale before you mean to. deeper. rough. the air carries smoke, coffee, pine resin, old wool, the sour trace of disinfectant, his skin. it enters the body you hate and proves the body still knows how to take in the world. that, too, feels like a violation and a rescue at once.

ben hears the breath. of course he does. “there.”

one word. not praise. not kindness. correction completed.

you want to tell him he is unbearable, that he is making it worse, that he is making it better in a way that should be illegal, that his whole presence has become a crude external skeleton holding you upright because your own feels too provisional. instead your mouth stays shut, and the silence between you changes texture. it is no longer evasion. it is not peace either. peace would be obscene in a room like this. it is containment, maybe. a held line. a door barred from inside.

his hand returns to your neck, heavier than before, thumb brushing once over the short hairs at your nape, and even that near-caress feels like command because nothing from him arrives unarmed.

“you think being a man means you don’t get trapped?” he says. “wrong. means you break the trap or you drag it with you until it breaks on something harder.”

your stomach tightens. the line is so him it nearly becomes ridiculous, but he believes it too completely for ridicule to survive. “and what’s harder?” you ask, voice low.

he looks at you as if the answer should offend you by being obvious. “you.”

the word is not sweet. it does not land like comfort. it lands like an accusation you are expected to live up to. he says you as if he is sick of watching you pretend the body has the only teeth in the room. he says it as if your masculinity is not a wound to be protected but a weapon you keep forgetting to draw. he says it as if he can see the man in you standing behind the shame with blood on his mouth, furious at being mistaken for the thing trying to eat him.

for one second you cannot breathe around it.

ben sees that too. his eyes narrow, and his mouth flattens with something like satisfaction.

“there he is.” the sentence comes quietly, but it enters hard. not there you will be. not there you might become. there he is, as if the man in you has been present all along, buried under velvet, under shame, under soft bloody tissue not yet ready to split, and ben, impatient as judgment, has seen the bone before it hardened and decided the rest of you will catch up because he said so. it is not validation. validation asks to be accepted. this does not ask. this declares. this forces the room to accept the shape of you before you have stopped flinching from your own evidence.

the horror of it is that you want to believe him more than you want to be comforted.

your eyes sting again, and this time you do not look away fast enough. ben’s face shifts, not into pity, never pity, but into a harsher focus, as if he has caught the moment before it can collapse and intends to pin it alive to the wall.

“don’t you dare make that face like i handed you something,” he says. “i didn’t give you shit. it was already there.”

your jaw tightens. “then why do you keep acting like you’re dragging it out of me?”

“because you keep burying it.”

the answer is immediate. brutal. clean enough to cut.

he leans closer, until his forehead nearly touches yours, until the cabin, the table, the tin box, the forest, the vanished deer, the whole hostile government of the body seem to fall back behind the heat of him. “you can hate the process,” he says. “you can hate the wait. you can hate the blood, the needle, the mirror, all of it. i don’t care. hate’s useful if you stop letting it chew through the wrong wall.” his thumb presses into the tendon at your neck. “but you don’t get to call yourself unfinished in front of me.”

the sentence lands with the ugliness of a vow and the force of a threat. your breath catches. his eyes do not move from yours.

“you’re not unfinished. you’re under construction, and i don’t give a damn if that sounds like paperwork. construction sites are ugly. loud. full of exposed beams, mud, busted knuckles, men yelling over machines. doesn’t make the building less real.”

despite yourself, despite the pressure in your throat, something in you almost laughs because the metaphor is crude and practical and exactly the kind of thing he would reach for: not chrysalis, not rebirth, not butterfly, not any delicate transformation made pretty for people who like growth only when it emerges clean. construction. beams. mud. noise. injury. permits ignored. weather delays. men swearing in half-built rooms. foundations reinforced. walls gutted. load-bearing structures exposed. the building real before it is finished, dangerous because it is unfinished, not unreal because of it.

ben sees the flicker in your face and points at you with two fingers, still too close. “yeah. that. keep that.”

“keep what?”

“the part that wants to hit me.”

that does draw a rough breath from you, not laughter exactly but something adjacent, something pulled up from under the rot.

“you’re fucking insane.”

“and you’re back in the room.”

the words close around you like a lock.

for a moment nothing moves except the slow lift of your chest under his attention. the body is still wrong in all its ordinary ways. the ache remains under the bandage. the old disgust has not been cured or exorcised. no cathedral collapses. no angel comes down with a flaming sword to cut you free from flesh. the body continues its bureaucracy. the ministries remain staffed. the occupied city does not fall in one morning because an old bastard with soldier’s hands told you to breathe.

but the insurgency is still there beneath the skin. small. chemical. seditious. the dose moves where it will, slow as rumor, oil dispersing through muscle, entering blood by degrees, carrying its instructions into the provinces. the old government is not immortal. that is the dangerous thought. not hopeful, exactly. hope is too clean a word and too eager to be framed on a wall. this is uglier. this is sabotage with a pulse. this is the knowledge that a regime can look permanent until the first crack opens under the foundation and everyone realizes the stone has been taking water for years.

ben’s hand stays on your neck.

“now stay,” ben says, and the command remains after his mouth closes, lodged in the air like a nail driven through old wood, simple enough to be mistaken for ordinary speech by anyone who has never had a word enter the body and become architecture.

the body obeys before you decide whether obedience is humiliating enough to deserve anger. breath enters. breath leaves. ribs lift under skin with the stiff reluctance of a bad house taking weather through its walls. your thigh aches where the needle went in, the bandage still sitting square and pale over the puncture, a little square of false innocence pasted above the muscle where the oil has begun its slow chemical trespass. beneath the gauze, the dose is no longer an object. it has become instruction, a dark medicinal rumor entering tissue by degrees, spreading its new law through heat, circulation, capillary patience. the cabin holds you in its resinous mouth, timber walls breathing out sap and smoke, stove cooling with small metallic ticks, coffee turning bitter in ben’s abandoned mug, tin box open on the table like a reliquary after the saint’s bone has been removed and used for something practical. everything smells too alive and too dead at once, pine-sap, ash, old wool, the medicinal sting of alcohol drying from your skin, the faint metal of the needle, the faint metal of him.

ben watches you the way men in older stories watched doors after hearing something move behind them. his hand remains at the back of your neck, heavy enough to make the vertebrae feel counted, thumb set near the hinge of your skull, fingers spread into the tendon and muscle there with the ugly certainty of a claim staked into ground no longer considered neutral. he has dragged you back into the room by pressure and insult and the brute fact of his attention, and now that you are here, breathing under his hand, he studies the body you keep trying to abandon as if it is a post you have no right to desert. his eyes drop to your thigh. the bandage is absurdly small for the meaning of it, a white seal over the place where the week has been marked, and his gaze makes the ache beneath it thicken. you feel the muscle pulse once, deep and involuntary, the body answering his attention like a dog that hates the leash and still knows the hand holding it.

your eyes try to slip away. not dramatically. not with any gesture large enough to be accused. only a small sideways drift toward the table, toward the window, toward the unoccupied corners where thought can thin itself into abstraction. ben catches it at once.

ben’s thumb moves at your neck again, not soothing, correcting your posture when your chin tries to dip.

“don’t look away from it,” he says.

you almost snap that you are not looking away, but you are, and both of you know it. your eyes keep wanting to slide past the body, past the thigh, past the bandage, past the evidence that becoming has to happen through flesh and not around it. you would prefer, still, some cleaner metaphysics. some stern masculine soul stepping fully formed from the ribs of the world. some second genesis without biology, without waiting, without the wet bureaucracy of tissue. but the body sits there under you, unarguable and warm, with the dose already sealed in the muscle, and ben is no longer letting you retreat into abstraction where disgust can dress itself in theology and call that dignity.

“i’m looking,” you say.

“no,” he says, voice low. “you’re glancing like it’s got a gun.”

the insult lands, and heat stings at the back of your throat. he sees it. of course he sees it. the corner of his mouth moves, not quite a smile, something meaner and more approving.

“there,” he says. “get mad. better than that hollow-eyed shit.”

“you’re unbelievable.”

“yeah. and you’re still here.”

he releases your neck, and the absence of his hand is immediate, almost physical, a cooling print at the nape that your nerves cling to for one stupid second before pride comes limping after. your muscles tense where his palm had been, trying to remember the shape of authority without the weight of it. ben sees that too, because ben sees everything that might be used against you or for you, and something in his eyes darkens with recognition. he has found another seam in the wall. shame has hidden there, behind language and theology and the ornate ruin of metaphor, and he does what he always does when he discovers a hidden chamber. he reaches for it.

he lowers himself slowly, not with ceremony arranged for beauty, not with any theatrical reverence that would let you pretend the room has become gentle, but with the grave practicality of a man changing position to get closer to the work. one knee touches the floorboards with a dull sound that travels up through the chair and into your bones, a blunt domestic noise made indecent by context, by the spread of your legs under his hands, by the old cabin holding its breath around the movement as though the wood itself recognizes an altar being made without permission. soldier boy on his knees should look like a contradiction in some clean symbolic world, should suggest humility, supplication, worship, some overturned hierarchy the old saints might have painted with gold leaf and lowered eyes, but ben does not become smaller by kneeling. he changes the angle of command. he looks like a man getting close to a wound, a mechanic under a machine, a butcher bringing his face near enough to see where tendon shines white through red, a field surgeon bending over an amputation with no priest in sight and no time to bless the instruments.

the floor accepts his weight with a faint shift of old boards, and the cabin seems to draw in around him, pine walls dark with resin and smoke, table still holding the opened tin box, the vial, the torn antiseptic wipe, the spent syringe capped and harmless now only because it has already done its harm. the first sacrament is still lying there in pieces. alcohol, puncture, oil under muscle, bandage over the entry wound. ben’s hands settle on your thighs with a heat that makes your skin tighten, thumbs pressing into muscle, fingers wrapping around the outside with enough force to make you aware of every tendon in your legs, every useless reflex that wants to close you off from him. his grip spreads your knees with slow controlled pressure, and the chair scrapes softly against the floorboards, a dry indecent sound that seems louder than it should because everything else has gone still. he looks up at you from beneath heavy lids, beard rough, mouth set, eyes dark with concentration so severe it feels almost medical until hunger moves beneath it, not disguised, not apologized for, simply held on a leash because ben likes command even more than appetite.

his eyes narrow. “don’t look like that,” he says.

your jaw clenches. defiance rises because it is easier than admitting the sight of him down there has already begun rearranging the weather inside your body, easier than acknowledging how quickly heat has gathered under your skin, how violently your nerves have recognized his position before your mind has had time to dress the recognition in disgust. “like what.”

“like i’m about to do something you didn’t ask for.”

the sentence draws a line through the room, not clean, not pretty, but unmistakable. a fence post driven into frozen ground. ben does not soften the words, does not lower his voice into kindness, does not make permission fragrant or graceful or morally attractive. he names the border the way he would name a weapon, by function. his hands stay on your thighs, heavy and hot. his gaze stays on your face. the old monster in him does not vanish, does not kneel down and become something forgiven, but it stands inside the boundary he has made and waits there, disciplined by a law too blunt to flatter either of you. outside, something moves once in the brush and is gone. inside, the room remains fixed around the point of his stare.

“say yes,” he says, “or tell me to get the hell up.”

your mouth goes dry so fast your tongue feels scraped. desire rises in you with such violence it almost resembles sickness, a low hot wrenching in the gut, a hunger with shame woven through it so tightly the two cannot be separated without cutting through both. your body knows what he is asking before your mind finishes forming the answer. it knows the heat of his hands, the floor under his knees, the weight in his voice, the sight of him lowered between your legs with all that national ruin and private competence concentrated on you. it knows the ache in your thigh where the shot went in, the tender sealed puncture under the bandage, the way the testosterone is already there beneath the skin like contraband hidden in a wall. it knows the old blood-memory at the sink, the return of red where you had wanted only absence, the soaked fabric in your fist, your throat closing around the evidence of a body you could not bully into silence. it knows the antler under velvet, the rib under flesh, the country occupied from birth and the flag of yourself raised anyway in alleys full of smoke. it knows ben’s mouth as another invading force, not an enemy invasion, but a hostile rescue, a siege staged from inside the walls because he has decided there are parts of you worth taking back by force. your hands curl against the chair until the wood bites the pads of your fingers, and the bite helps. pain is clean enough to stand on for a moment. pain has corners.

“yes,” you say.

ben does not move, yet.

“again.”

heat climbs your neck, your face, the backs of your ears, ugly and immediate. he watches it happen with a calm that makes the embarrassment worse.

“yes.”

“good.”

the word does not offer comfort. it closes a lock.

his hands slide higher on your thighs, not hurried, not fumbling, each inch claimed by palm and thumb, and when his fingers hook under the waistband of your underwear your stomach drops with such suddenness that for a second you feel the cabin tilt. he does not take everything off. he does not make a show of undressing you. there is no seductive ritual to give your mind distance, no elaborate removal that would let the act become performance. he pulls the fabric down only as far as he needs to, practical, exact, the elastic dragging over skin with a small rasping sound that seems to expose more than flesh. the air touches places the morning had not yet touched, cool against heat, and your body reacts with such immediate treason that shame rushes up your spine. your thighs tense, trying to close by reflex, and ben’s hands stop them before they move an inch.

“stay,” he says again, quieter this time, worse for being quiet.

the exposure is brutally specific. not nakedness as a concept, not the body as symbolic territory, not some long philosophical wound you can enlarge until it becomes impersonal, but your thighs spread under his hands, your underwear dragged down and held out of the way, your t-dick hard with want and fear and attention, swollen from arousal and from the slow work of testosterone, the small head flushed darker, slick gathered at the tip and catching the thin morning light in a bright obscene bead. there is hair there now, more than there used to be, darker and rougher, a change you have counted privately and hated yourself for counting, a little thicket of evidence around the base, the body revising itself in increments too slow for mercy. the head of your cock twitches under the air, oversensitive before he has even touched it with his mouth, and that involuntary movement makes shame lift its head inside you, red-mouthed and ready to speak. the sight is intimate enough to feel violent, not because it denies you, not because it makes you less than you are, but because it refuses abstraction. there is no room to hide inside antlers or ribs or scripture. there is only flesh under his gaze, nerve and heat and the evidence of your body answering before pride has completed its objections.

ben gets there before shame can put on the judge’s robe.

“look at your cock.” the words strike so directly that your whole body tightens. there is no euphemism to soften the edge. no careful detour. he says cock because that is what he means, because ben has never had patience for language that kneels before someone else’s discomfort, because to him naming is a form of possession and he has no intention of letting shame name anything in the room before he does. his thumbs press hard into your thighs when your gaze flickers.

“look,” he says.

you force your eyes down, and it feels like swallowing a live coal. your cock twitches under your own attention, slick gleaming at the flushed tip, small and hard and achingly sensitive, undeniably there, undeniably yours, and the sight nearly splits you because the body has become evidence in two opposing trials. shame wants to call it humiliation. ben’s gaze calls it proof. shame wants to make the reaction a betrayal. ben’s hands hold your thighs open like the reaction has been summoned to testify on your behalf. the pressure of his grip bruises sensation into the muscle. his beard catches the light when he leans closer. you hear his breath before you feel it, warm and slow against the head of your cock, and your stomach drops as if the floor has opened beneath the chair.

“that’s yours,” he says.

the sentence is too blunt to become sentiment. yours. not the old names. not the old paperwork. not the blood at the sink. not the body’s bad timing. not the voice that comes crawling out of disgust wearing a judge’s robe. yours. the word does not wash anything clean, does not heal the old fracture, does not tell you there is no wound. it plants a flag in the wound and dares anything to tear it down. his thumb drags once along the inside of your thigh, rough pad over skin, close enough that the tendon there jumps. your cock jerks again, tiny and helpless and obscene under both your gazes, and the slick at the tip shines more visibly.

ben makes a low sound, almost disgusted, almost pleased, and the ambiguity burns than anything else would alone. “see that?” he says. “body knows who it belongs to when your head stops running its mouth.”

your hands tighten on the chair until your knuckles ache. “fuck you.”

his eyes lift, sharp beneath his brow, and the corner of his mouth turns with that mean satisfaction you hate because it always means he has found the vein. “better.”

then he lowers his mouth.

the first touch is not a kiss in any romantic sense. it is contact, heat, wetness, claim. his tongue presses flat against the underside of your t-dick and drags upward in one slow wet stroke, from the base to the swollen head, and every nerve under the skin lights with such concentrated force that your hips jerk before thought can form. his forearm comes down across your lower stomach immediately, pinning you back against the chair, heavy enough to stop the movement and make you feel the useless strain of trying. his beard scrapes the sensitive skin around your cock and the inner crease of your thigh, rough hair against heat, not cutting, but rasping with enough friction to make the flesh there wake in a red irritated halo. his breath spills over the slick head of your cock, warm and damp, and then his tongue circles it, slow and mean, pressing at the tip where sensation sharpens until your fingers claw against the wooden seat, and your breath breaks into a sound you would rather not recognize as yours.

ben pulls back just enough to look up at you.

“eyes on me.”

your face is burning. your throat works around nothing. he waits, mouth wet, breath warm against you, until your gaze drops back down to him. only then does he take the head of your cock between his lips.

the sight almost unmans thought itself, not you, never you, but thought, language, all that ornate inner machinery you use to build distance between yourself and sensation. lips closing around you. beard brushing your thighs. broad hands keeping you spread. the wet pressure of his mouth focused on that swollen sensitive point with a patience that feels punitive. he sucks lightly at first, just enough to draw a thin desperate pulse from the base of you, then eases off and lets his tongue work around the head, firm circles, small strokes, the flat of it rubbing until pleasure becomes too bright to categorize. saliva gathers quickly, slicking you further, smearing over the head and down the shaft as his mouth moves. the sounds are small at first, breath and wet heat, the sounds are small at first, breath and wet heat, then more obscene as he learns the rhythm of your body, the soft pull of suction, the quiet break when he releases you only to lick again, the wet click of his mouth settling more securely over your cock.

the cabin hears all of it. the pine walls. the table. the open tin box. the old rifle in the corner. the cooling stove. the vial on the table, wrapped and waiting like the first half of a rite not yet cleared away. needle into muscle, mouth on cock, alcohol sting fading while saliva warms, puncture sealed while another kind of evidence swells under his tongue. the sequence is too clear to hide from. ben’s hands do not move anywhere else.

his left hand clamps your thigh open, fingers digging into the outer muscle hard enough that you know the marks will bloom later. his right forearm pins your hips down, weight spread across your lower stomach, keeping you from bucking into his mouth or away from it. he has made himself the hinge and the lock. he has made your body unmistakable under his attention, every place touched accounted for, every sensation traceable. tongue over the head. lips around the shaft. beard against your inner thigh. breath over slick skin. thumb pressing into muscle. no ghostly confusion, no unnamed invasion, only the exact obscene fact of ben’s mouth working your cock while his eyes force you to witness it.

your head starts to tip back, eyes closing from the intensity, and he stops. the loss makes you inhale sharply, irritation forming before you can conceal it.

his fingers slap the inside of your thigh, not hard enough to injure, sharp enough to sting and make your eyes snap open. “watch,” he says, the word roughened because his mouth is still close enough to make it damp. “you wanted proof so bad. don’t look away when it’s right in front of you.”

you drag your gaze downward again, and the humiliation of watching is almost worse than the touch. ben’s mouth moves over your t-dick with grim concentration, as if this is another dose he has taken responsibility for administering, another piece of private maintenance turned sacrament by his hands and will. his tongue laps over the head, then presses beneath it, finding the place that makes your fingers claw at the chair. he notices immediately. of course he notices. he returns there, slower, meaner, dragging the flat of his tongue over that nerve-bright spot until your thighs tremble openly. the slick spreads under his mouth, over his lower lip, into the rough line of his beard where it grazes you, and the visible wetness of him, the fact that he has your body on his mouth and does not seem embarrassed by it, almost breaks something in you that had depended on revulsion being private. if he looked away, you could look away. if he flinched, you could call that proof. but he stays there as if this is obvious, as if the only strange thing in the room is your insistence on treating your own body like contraband.

the shame tries to rise again, but pleasure keeps interrupting it. that is the new horror. not that shame disappears, not that ben kills it with one obscene act of devotion, but that it cannot maintain its sermon under the conditions he has created. every time disgust begins to assemble its old indictment, his mouth pulls another reaction out of you, another twitch, another broken breath, another involuntary tightening of muscle under his palms. the body you have accused of treason keeps answering him in a language he refuses to let the enemy translate. he treats each response as yours. your heat. your nerves. your cock hard in his mouth. your breath going ragged because he has found exactly where sensation turns unbearable. he will not let the body become a hostile witness. he grabs the testimony and makes it speak for the defense.

“there,” he mutters, mouth leaving you only long enough for speech. “that’s not shame. that’s yours.”

you make a sound of protest, or try to, but it breaks when his tongue flicks over the tip again. slick smears at the corner of his mouth. the sight drives heat through you so hard it becomes almost pain. your body tries to arch away from the intensity, and his forearm pins you harder.

“none of that,” he says against you, the words felt as much as heard. “you don’t run from your own hunger.”

your own hunger. not his, though his is there, unmistakable in the set of his jaw, in the force of his hands, in the way his attention seems to feed on every flinch he can make you keep. not shame’s. not the old body’s. yours. the word opens a private violence in you. hunger has always been the least dignified evidence of life, the stomach’s argument, the mouth’s confession, the body announcing what it lacks with no regard for pride. to have him name it yours is to be given back another contaminated province and ordered to govern it. desire becomes another city district taken from the enemy. lust becomes not humiliation, but armament. the shame in you wants to vomit at the thought, wants to crawl backward through the years to where numbness still seemed possible, but ben’s mouth is already there again, lips closing around your cock with a wet pressure so exact you cannot finish the thought.

the pleasure grows slowly, which is ben’s doing. he keeps it under the edge of too much, then withdraws by fractions, then brings it back, refusing rhythm long enough for anticipation to become its own form of pressure. each near-rise of sensation gathers in your hips and stomach, then stalls under his control, leaving heat to thicken instead of break. he is dragging it out because he can feel how badly you want the collapse, how badly some part of you wants to be overwhelmed beyond thought, beyond seeing, beyond the unbearable labor of staying in the body while the body is made to answer. he does not give you that mercy. not yet. he keeps you there at the threshold, where shame cannot hide in numbness and pleasure cannot hide in release. threshold is where ben likes people best: against the wall, at the line, before the door opens, with all their lies sweating through their skin.

“ben,” you say, and his name comes out lower than you expected, torn around the edges.

he looks up. “don’t whine.”

anger flares, immediate and blessed. “i’m not.”

his mouth curves faintly. “then take it.”

the words go through you like a chain thrown across a table. take it does not mean passive endurance in his mouth. it means claim what is happening. keep your eyes open. do not insult your own body by pretending it is only a trap when it can also respond, demand, want, harden, ache, testify. take the attention. take the proof. take the roughness you asked for by staying. take the fact that he is treating your cock like a cock with no apology and no explanatory footnote. take the horror of being present and make it useful. take the manhood he keeps throwing back into your teeth and stop expecting it to arrive in a language that does not hurt.

his mouth returns, and the sensation sharpens.

this time he uses more pressure, lips sealed around the head while his tongue works in slow firm strokes underneath, dragging over the underside again and again until the nerves there feel peeled open. your cock is slick enough now that every movement makes a small wet sound, each pull of his mouth audible, each release obscene in the silence. he lets the head slip from between his lips only to flatten his tongue and lick you from base to tip again, deliberate, visible, making the action impossible to misread. saliva threads briefly between his mouth and your skin before breaking. he watches it break. you watch him watch it. the grotesque intimacy of that small shining line makes your stomach tighten, not with revulsion alone, but with the recognition that even fluid has become testimony in his court. even wetness is being claimed out from under shame. even the body’s least dignified evidence is being made to stand upright.

your head falls back for one second, but his hand is at your jaw at once, dragging your gaze down again. the force of it makes your teeth click, not enough to hurt badly, enough to make the body understand consequence.

“eyes here,” he says. “you wanted proof. stop acting scared when it shows up.”

proof. the word is almost unbearable. proof has always been the hunger at the center of this, the carrion thing hope becomes when forced to wait too long. proof in the mirror, proof in the voice, proof in the shoulder, proof in hair, proof in the small hard changes no one else notices but you inventory like relics after a church fire. proof that the self has not been inventing itself in a hostile room. proof that the body can be made to carry the right message. proof that manhood is not a theory begged from strangers but a structure under construction, ugly, loud, reinforced by repeated violence too small to impress anyone who has never needed it. ben gives you no pretty proof. he gives you this: his knees on the floor, his hands bruising your thighs, his mouth on your cock, his eyes forcing you to see it, his voice low and mean whenever you try to leave yourself.

“coming in nice,” he says, his thumb brushing roughly through the hair at the base, not lingering anywhere else, just framing what he wants you to look at. “you see that? testosterone’s doing its job. you’re just too damn impatient to notice unless i shove your face in it.”

the words hit with a force the mouth alone could not have managed. coming in nice. not delicate progress, not gentle encouragement, not any polished affirmation with the edges sanded off. assessment. inspection. a rough appraisal of growth, of change, of your cock swollen from his mouth and your body answering testosterone in increments you hate needing and cannot stop wanting. he says it as if he is looking at a blade taking an edge, a beam settling into load, antlers hardening under torn velvet. he says it like the process is visible to him even where it feels unfinished to you, and because ben’s certainty is ugly enough to resist pity, the words land where sweeter ones would have curdled. his thumb presses the base of your cock upward slightly, making the swollen head more visible, making you see the slick gathered there, the flush, the hard little pulse of it under his attention. his hand is not gentle enough to make the display soft, not cruel enough to make it punishment alone. it is worse than either. it is demonstration.

your lips pull back from your teeth. “stop talking like you built it.”

ben’s eyes darken with amusement. “didn’t say i built it.” he lowers his mouth until his breath warms the tip again. “said i’m not letting you pretend it ain’t happening.”

then he licks the slick from the head in a slow upward drag, and your argument dissolves into a broken inhale.

the cabin becomes unbearable around the act. the table holds its little instruments, the dead syringe, the vial, the torn wipe. the stove keeps ticking with tiny metallic contractions. the old rifle in the corner watches with its mute obsolete shame. smoke clings to the beams. resin sweats from the walls in amber beads. the whole room feels like a chapel built by men who did not believe in mercy but believed in rites, in repetition, in knives sharpened before dawn, in meat salted properly, in wounds cleaned whether or not the wounded man wanted to look. if this is a sacrament, it is one with no clean god presiding, only ben with his mouth and hands, appointing himself butcher, priest, judge, witness. he does not pray over you. he does not bless you. he does not ask heaven to recognize what he has already decided. he brings his mouth to your body and makes the body answer in the only language shame cannot keep from breaking.

he drags the pleasure up again and stops it short.

your hips strain. his arm stops them, again. “not yet,” he says.

the denial lands in your stomach like a fist. your body pulses with the frustrated demand for completion, every nerve gathering toward an edge he refuses to let you reach. you hate him for it, which steadies you. hatred is easier to stand in than need. hatred gives you spine. hatred lets you bare your teeth instead of begging.

“asshole,” you breathe.

he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, crude, almost casual, but his eyes do not leave yours.

“yeah,” he says. “and you’re still hard.”

the humiliation flashes through you so bright it nearly whites out thought. he sees the reaction and leans in again, but not to touch you with his mouth yet. he holds himself close enough that each breath moves over the slick head of your cock, close enough that your body tightens in anticipation, close enough to make denial a physical instrument. warmth, pause, warmth, pause. the absence of his tongue becomes its own pressure. your cock twitches toward his mouth, and he smiles like the movement has confessed something on your behalf.

“look at that,” he says. “can’t even lie right now.”

“shut up.”

“no.”

one word, absolute, almost bored. then his thumb presses into the inside of your thigh again, hard enough to ground the moment in pain. “you don’t get to spend all morning talking like your body’s a coffin and then act offended when it proves it’s alive.”

alive. the word turns over in you with all its wet repulsive weight. alive means sweat under your arms, breath sour at the back of your throat, blood moving whether invited or not, nerves firing under his tongue, skin reddening where his beard has scraped you, the bandage on your thigh pulling as muscle tenses beneath it. alive means no clean exit. alive means hunger with no dignity. alive means there is still something in you capable of wanting badly enough to be used against your despair. ben knows it. ben has always had a genius for finding the living part and putting his boot on it until it kicks.

he lowers his mouth again, but this time he does not take you between his lips immediately. he opens his mouth and lets his tongue rest flat and hot against the underside of your cock, holding there, pressure without motion, saliva pooling around the contact. the stillness is worse than movement. the heat settles into you, spreads, makes your hips twitch against his forearm. then he moves only the tip of his tongue, small slow strokes beneath the head, and the precision makes your vision blur at the edges.

“that’s where, huh,” he murmurs.

you refuse to answer. he does it again, firmer.

your body answers for you with a sharp breath and a helpless tightening of your thighs under his hands.

ben makes that low sound again, the one that seems dredged from some private cellar of appetite. “yeah. thought so.”

he focuses there until the pleasure becomes almost intolerably localized, all the heat in your body narrowing to the slick sensitive head and the underside just below it, each stroke of his tongue dragging a bright thread of sensation down into your stomach. he does not touch anywhere else. that is part of the cruelty and part of the clarity. no confusion. no diffusion. no letting sensation become broad enough to blur. he keeps you fixed on the exact place you most want and most fear being seen. when his lips close again, he sucks harder than before, still controlled, still stopping short of giving you release, drawing you into the wet heat of his mouth and then letting you slip free with a soft obscene sound. you feel spit cooling on you immediately, then his breath warming it again, and the alternation makes the skin throb.

“ben,” you say, and this time it does sound too close to pleading.

his eyes cut up.

you force your jaw shut. (too late. he heard it.)

he pulls back, and the air feels cold enough to be punitive.

“say what you want,” he says.

the demand opens a pit beneath your ribs.

you shake your head once, a hard reflex.

his grip tightens. “don’t play stupid. you’re bad at it.”

“i want you to keep going,” you say through your teeth.

“keep going where.”

your face burns.

he waits.

the stove ticks once, delicate and hateful.

“my cock,” you force out. “keep your mouth on my cock.”

there is a second where the room seems to tilt toward him. ben’s expression changes by degrees, not into softness, not into sweetness, but into something darker and more satisfied, the look of a man who has made another fortress door open from the inside.

“there,” he says. “wasn’t hard.” then he adds, with a glance down that makes your stomach tighten, “well. not for that reason.”

you hate the laugh that tries to break out of you. it comes mangled and breathless and angry, but it comes, and ben’s eyes sharpen as if he likes you better with teeth showing, better when humiliation makes you fight instead of fold. then his mouth is on you again, and the brief splinter of humor is consumed by heat.

this is how he devours you without eating flesh: attention first, then language, then the private meanings you had hidden in disgust. he puts his mouth to the part of you most crowded with contradiction and begins taking apart the old architecture bite by bite, not destroying the body, but consuming the shame that has nested there like larvae in meat. it should feel holy if holiness were not so often just violence with incense. it should feel obscene if obscenity were not sometimes the only honest grammar left. ben’s devotion has teeth even when his mouth is soft around your cock. he does not worship by kneeling lower. he worships by refusing to let anything else own what he sees. he eats the lie out of you like a wolf worrying marrow from bone, patient, bloody-minded, unashamed of the cracking.

his tongue slides over you again, slow at first, then with firmer rhythm, and when your hips try to move he lets them this time by half an inch, just enough to make you feel yourself seeking his mouth before he pins you down again.

“careful,” he says, lips brushing the head with each word. “you start fucking my mouth like you mean it, i’m gonna make you ask before i let you finish.”

the sentence goes through you so hard your hands slip on the chair.

he sees that too. he always sees. “yeah,” he says, pleased in that rough ugly way. “that got through.”

he takes you back into his mouth before you can answer. the suction is stronger now, enough to make your thighs shake, enough to pull a low sound from your chest rather than your throat. his tongue presses under the head while his lips seal around you, and the coordinated pressure makes pleasure climb fast, too fast. your stomach tightens. your breath begins to fracture. the edge comes nearer, not as release yet, but as a dark bright line gathering in the distance, inevitable if he continues.

he stops.

you make a furious sound, half gasp, half curse, and ben lifts his head with spit shining on his mouth, the wetness catching in the rough dark of his beard, slick bright at the corner of his lips, obscene not because he looks ashamed but because he does not, because he looks up at you with the calm satisfaction of a man who has just proved something and intends to keep proving it until the proof changes shape under pressure. your cock throbs in the open air, wet from his mouth, aching from how long he has kept you near the edge without letting you fall over it, the head flushed dark and slick enough that even the draft moving through the cabin feels like texture dragged across raw nerve. your thighs shake under his hands. the chair creaks beneath you. the bandage on your thigh pulls tight when your muscles tense, a small white square over the injection site, absurdly clean beside the red marks from his fingers and the scraped warmth where his beard has burned your skin.

ben sees every piece of it.

he always sees too much.

he looks at the tremor in your thighs first, then the tightness in your stomach, then the way your hands have gone white-knuckled around the edge of the chair, then finally back to your cock, wet and hard and denied under his gaze. he lets the silence lengthen until your body starts to understand that the pause is not accidental. it is another form of touch. his mouth no longer has to be on you to keep you trapped there, because the memory of it remains in the slick cooling over your skin, in the oversensitive pulse at the head, in the places where his lips had closed and pulled and released, in the humiliating certainty that he knows exactly how close you are. he has dragged you to the cliff and held you there by the back of the neck, and now he is looking at the drop as if considering whether you have earned the fall.

“look at you,” he says, voice low, almost amused, the words roughened by spit and breath and the shape your body has left in his mouth. “all that mouth earlier, and now you can’t even sit still.”

you glare down at him because glaring is the only thing left with edges sharp enough to hold. your breath comes too hard through your nose. the room seems to pulse with you, stove ticking in little metallic contractions, the pine walls dark and close, the open tin box on the table like some minor altar after the god has already eaten. you can feel your cock twitch under his attention, and the small movement makes his eyes drop immediately.

his mouth tilts. “there it is again.”

“shut up,” you say, but it comes out too strained to carry authority, scraped raw by restraint and want.

“no,” ben says, simple as a door locking. “i don’t think i will.”

his thumb strokes once along the inside of your thigh, nowhere near enough, not touching your cock, just pressing into the trembling muscle with the cruel leisure of a man demonstrating ownership of distance itself. the pressure is grounding and infuriating. your body wants his mouth back with a desperation so bright it has become nearly sickening, but he stays where he is, kneeling between your spread legs, looking at what he has done to you like a craftsman inspecting stress fractures in hot metal. his breath moves across you when he leans closer, not touching with tongue or lips, only breathing, warm air slipping over the wet head of your cock until your hips jerk against nothing.

ben laughs under his breath. “that bad already?”

“ben.” the name comes out like a warning and a plea had tried to occupy the same throat and mangled each other on the way up.

“what,” he says. “you want something?”

you clench your jaw.

his eyes sharpen, pleased by the refusal because refusal means there is still fight in you, and ben likes the fight almost as much as he likes making you lose it. he lowers his head by an inch, just enough that his mouth hovers above your cock, open slightly, heat gathering there, close enough that your whole body tightens in expectation. then he stops again. your hips twitch upward before you can command them not to.

he does not touch you.

“careful,” he says. “you keep reaching like that, i’m gonna start thinking you want my mouth.”

“fuck you.”

“that ain’t an answer.”

your thighs tremble harder under his hands. the denial has made every sensation larger, monstrous, swollen beyond its original borders. the air is not air anymore, but a rough cloth dragged over nerves. the scrape of his beard against your skin has become a burning map. the bandage on your thigh feels like a separate eye watching from your own flesh. your cock is wet enough that when it twitches again, the slick catches and slides, a tiny movement made catastrophic because ben is watching it happen.

“say it,” he says.

your stomach twists.

“no.”

his mouth comes closer. his lips brush the very tip, not a full touch, not enough pressure, just the ghost of wet heat, and the sensation spears through you so sharply your breath breaks. before you can lean into it, he pulls away again.

“no?” he asks.

you hate him so much in that moment that the hatred feels holy. a black communion. a consecrated violence with your teeth clenched around it.

“let me cum,” you say, voice low, hoarse, furious with need.

ben watches your face as if measuring whether you stayed inside the words.

“again.”

you feel almost feverish with restraint. “let me cum with your mouth on my cock.”

his hand returns to your thigh, gripping hard. “good boy.”

the phrase hits like a struck nerve. not soft from him, not small, not diminishing. in his mouth it comes out like praise given after a fight, like a hand closing around the back of your neck, like a dangerous reward, like he has found the part of you that responds to being seen and is using it without mercy. your cock pulses visibly at the words, and ben’s eyes drop to catch it.

“yeah,” he says, darker now. “that’s it, good boy.”

then he takes you down into his mouth and does not stop.

the heat closes around you completely, lips tight, tongue firm beneath the head, suction deepening with a steady brutal rhythm that leaves no room for thought to rebuild itself. he holds your thighs open as you start to shake, fingers digging in, keeping you spread, keeping you witnessed. his mouth works faster now, not frantic, never out of control, but deliberate in its permission, each pull telling your body that the denial has ended because he has decided it has. pleasure rises with terrifying speed after being held back so long, all the stalled heat rushing together, every denied edge returning at once with interest. your stomach tightens hard under his forearm. your breath breaks open. the room goes bright at the borders.

you try to look away at the last second.

ben growls around you. the vibration tears through your cock, and his fingers clamp harder on your thighs.

you look back down.

he is watching you with your cock in his mouth, eyes dark and fixed, beard wet, cheeks hollowing slightly with each controlled pull, and the sight is what finally destroys the last brace inside you. not release alone, not pleasure alone, but seeing him take it, seeing him insist on it, seeing your body become undeniable in his mouth.

“yeah,” he says when he pulls off for half a breath, voice rough and wet and almost vicious with approval. “that’s it. good boy. come on.”

his mouth returns before the words finish moving through you.

you cum with a sound dragged out of your chest like something hooked and hauled from deep water, not pretty, not soft, not relieved so much as overcome. your body seizes hard in the chair, thighs shaking under his hands, hips jerking against the weight of his arm as your cock pulses against his tongue. there is no spill, no impossible proof shaped like someone else’s anatomy, only the violent internal break of orgasm, the sharp rhythmic clenching through your pelvis, the oversensitive twitch of your cock in his mouth, the slick already smeared there turned hotter and messier by his tongue and saliva and the force of your body finally giving in. ben holds you through every wave, mouth sealed around you, tongue pressing steadily while your breath fractures, while your hands grip the chair so hard your fingers ache. he does not let you hide from the twitching, the heat, the wet obscene proof of your body responding under his mouth. he keeps his eyes up as much as he can, watching your face come apart, watching the anger collapse into something rawer without becoming gentle, watching the man he has been dragging out of you finally stand inside the body instead of above it.

the cabin seems to contract around the release. the stove gives one small tick. the pine walls hold their dark resinous silence. the bandage on your thigh pulls as your muscles tremble through the aftershocks. the air smells of smoke, sweat, spit, antiseptic, and the hot salt evidence of skin and mouth and arousal, not a clean cis fantasy pasted over you, not an anatomy borrowed for comfort, but the body as it is, forced into witness and made unbearable because it is yours. for a few seconds there is no metaphor large enough to protect you. no scripture, no antler, no city, no grave. only ben’s mouth, your cock, your body shaking under his hands, and the hideous undeniable fact that you are present for every pulse of it.

he keeps his mouth on you past the first unbearable wave, not enough to hurt, but enough to make oversensitivity bloom sharp and bright. you jolt, cursing under your breath, and he finally releases you with a wet sound that seems indecently loud in the quiet room.

he stays kneeling. spit shines on his mouth. his beard is damp. he breathes once through his nose, eyes never leaving yours, and the simple fact that he does not look away makes your stomach twist with a shame so intense it almost becomes awe.

then he wipes the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “see?” he says.

then he gets up.

there is no reverence in the movement, which is what makes it feel reverent. no pause to gather breath, no bowed head, no shame bent into the spine, no theatrical aftermath in which the monster recognizes himself in the cracked mirror of what he has done. he simply plants one hand on his knee, pushes himself upright, and stands over you with the slow, ugly certainty of a man rising from prayer after receiving exactly the answer he expected. the boards complain beneath his weight. his shadow climbs the wall behind him, broad across the pine planks, shoulder and jaw and crown distorted by the low lamp until he looks less like a man than a saint painted by someone who hated saints, all dark varnish and meat-colored light, all authority without mercy. his mouth is still wet. his beard is darkened in uneven places. the sight should be grotesque enough to break whatever spell remains, should return you to embarrassment, to anger, to the easy clean violence of revulsion, but instead it makes the room tilt inward around him, as though every nail in the walls has turned its head toward ben and is waiting for instruction.

he does not look away first.

that is another cruelty, maybe the oldest one. not the mouth, not the hands, not the denial, not the final permission that tore through you with the force of a verdict finally spoken by the judge who had been pretending not to know your name. it is the fact that afterward, when your breathing is still ragged and your thighs are still shaking and your body has not yet returned to being a place you can lie about from a distance, ben looks at you plainly. he does not flinch from the exposed disorder of you. he does not make a joke quickly enough to let the moment become smaller. he does not offer tenderness to disinfect it. he studies the wreckage with the same grave attention he gave the needle, the dose, the bandage, the small swelling beneath your skin where the hormone has entered and begun its slow, subterranean argument with the rest of your flesh. to be seen like that is not comfort. it is excavation. it is the spade edge entering wet soil above a grave you insisted was only garden.

your body keeps making tiny after-movements you cannot command. a tremor in the thigh. a catch in the lower stomach. the delayed flutter of nerves overstimulated past usefulness. your hands ache from gripping the chair, and when you loosen your fingers, the wood grain has printed itself faintly into your palms, little pale lines like scripture impressed into wax. the room smells wrong, too crowded with evidence. smoke from the stove, old dust in the curtains, alcohol sharp and medicinal from the wipe, sweat cooling on skin, the faint metal tang from the needle, the warm animal closeness of ben, and beneath all of it the intimate salt of what has just happened, not a single odor but a congregation, every sense kneeling unwillingly in the same ruined church. the lamp hums faintly. outside, the trees drag their branches across one another in the dark with the dry patient sound of bones being sorted.

ben turns toward the table.

the table is not large, but in the aftermath it appears immense, an altar pretending to be furniture. its surface is scarred by knife marks, heat rings, blackened spots where cigarettes were crushed out years ago, and one long gouge down the center that looks like something tried to crawl across it while being held in place. on it sit the supplies he laid out earlier with an order that had seemed almost mundane until it became part of the rite: the small bottle of testosterone, squat and amber, its rubber stopper punctured, its label slightly peeling at one corner; the syringe with its plunger drawn back and emptied, a transparent instrument now more accusatory for being spent; the orange cap lying on its side like a severed insect carapace; the torn square of alcohol wipe packaging, silver paper curled open and drying at the edges; the used cotton; the little paper wrapper; the bandage backing; the cheap plastic sharps container he has brought from somewhere and set down without explaining, red-lidded, ugly, official, a government mouth waiting to be fed.

he begins cleaning.

not quickly. not slowly. exactly as needed. no trembling hand. no fevered rearrangement. no obvious attempt to erase guilt. he does not clean like a man covering evidence. he cleans like a man concluding a necessary procedure. he picks up the vial first, checks the cap, wipes the outside with his thumb as if the glass has offended him by carrying fingerprints, and sets it back inside the small tin box with the cotton balls and spare needles. the vial catches the lamplight as it moves, the amber glass briefly glowing the color of preserved organs in a medical museum, little saintly relics suspended in fluid and named in latin by men who never loved them. the oil inside shifts thickly, slower than water, and you think of marrow, of fat rendered from sacrificial animals, of chrism gone rancid in a broken cathedral, of holy substance that does not cleanse but enters the body and rewrites its weather.

he puts the cap back on the needle.

the sound is almost nothing. a thin plastic click. small enough that in any other room, on any other night, it would vanish beneath breath or floorboard or the pulse in your ears. here it lands with the authority of a lock turning. you know, distantly, absurdly, from a life in which informational pamphlets and pharmacy warnings still mattered, that used needles are not supposed to be recapped. the knowledge passes through you like a pale fish glimpsed beneath black water. irrelevant. ben does it anyway, not clumsily, not in ignorance, but with the same old-world stubbornness with which he does everything, as though safety procedures invented after his prime are suggestions made by men too soft to bleed properly. the capped needle lies across his palm for one second, white plastic and transparent barrel, a little weapon made sterile and domestic, and then he drops it into the sharps container.

the container receives it with a hollow rattle.

the sound goes through you.

you imagine the needle inside among others, though there are no others yet, scraping against red plastic in the dark belly of the box. a spent fang. a dead stinger. a thin metal tongue that has already spoken under your skin and has no more gospel to deliver. later, there will be more. the thought arrives not as speculation but as architecture. an entire future of rattling little fangs in a plastic reliquary. a calendar of punctures. thursdays lined up like vertebrae. your body becoming not a single event, not an exception made vivid by danger and sex and ben’s intolerable attention, but a schedule. a practice. a church service held under fluorescent pharmacy light and cabin lamp alike. the injection does not end because the needle is gone. it enters time.

ben picks up the alcohol wipe next.

it has dried into a limp white scrap, edges curling inward like something dead from thirst. he folds it once between thumb and forefinger, not delicately, only efficiently, and throws it into the small trash bin near the stove. it lands on top of kindling shavings, coffee grounds, a strip of bloody gauze from your earlier wound, and the crumpled foil of some old ration packet. the trash is ordinary in a way that makes your stomach tighten. everything sacred becomes garbage when the rite is finished. cloth that touched skin. paper that held medicine. packaging that protected sterility until it was torn open by hands. the little things that made the act possible now lie among peelings and ash, demoted without ceremony, abandoned by meaning the second their usefulness ends. you wonder if that is what ben does to tenderness. uses it as instrument, consumes its function, discards the wrapper before anyone can mistake it for mercy.

he gathers the rest of the supplies. cotton back into the tin. spare syringe packet squared with the others. the prescription box turned label-down. the vial nested in its corner like a sleeping insect egg. his hands move with the same calm violence he brings to loading a rifle, folding a flag, cleaning blood from under his nails, touching you. each object becomes smaller beneath his order. each trace of the event is absorbed into arrangement. the chaos that has been inside your body for the last hour, the shame and need and fracture and heat and horror, becomes a neat collection of medical items in a tin box with a dented lid. he presses that lid closed with his palm. the metal snaps shut.

you flinch.

ben looks over.

only once.

not with concern. with recognition.

the flinch belongs to him now too.

he slides the tin toward the far side of the table. not hidden, exactly. worse than hidden. placed. given a home. it sits beside the ashtray and the old field knife and a stack of unpaid mail as if it has always belonged there, as if testosterone supplies are only another household category now, like ammunition, coffee, soap, matches. a domestic inventory of survival and violence. you stare at the tin until the dent in its lid begins to look like a thumbprint pressed into the skull of some small silver animal. inside it, the vial waits with the patience of a buried commandment.

your legs are still spread around the empty space where he had been. when you notice, shame moves through you late and hot, a delayed infection. you start to shift, but your muscles answer badly. the bandage on your thigh pulls. the skin beneath it throbs, tender around the injection site, and the pain is so minor compared to everything else that its clarity becomes obscene. a little square ache. a precise wound. a small white door through which the future has entered. you reach down without thinking to fix yourself, to pull clothing back into place, to restore some border between body and room, but your hands are slow and not fully yours, trembling at the wrist.

ben crosses back before you manage it.

he does not kneel this time. he bends from the waist, one hand braced on the arm of the chair, the other catching the waistband of your boxers. the proximity is immediate and unbearable. his face near your stomach. his breath along skin. the dark wet places in his beard no longer shining as brightly but still visible if you know where to look, and you do know, your mind traitorous enough to catalogue the evidence even while it recoils from itself. you stiffen, but he does not pause for permission because he is not beginning anything. he is ending it. his fingers hook the fabric and draw it upward, over you, over the oversensitive ache, over the slick and heat and shame, settling everything back behind cotton with the same matter-of-factness he used to pull it down.

because, to him, the ritual is finished.

the waistband snaps softly against your skin.

that small domestic sound nearly ruins you more than anything before it. not the earlier force, not the gaze, not the words. the soft elastic settling into place like a lid closing over a reliquary. he has put you away. he has restored the visible border of the body without restoring any of the private walls he tore through. clothed again, you are not safer. you are only disguised. the room knows. the chair knows. the table knows. the red-lidded sharps container knows. your skin knows beneath the fabric, nerve by nerve, each place that has been looked at until it became incapable of returning to secrecy.

ben straightens. his hand lingers at your hip only long enough to smooth the waistband flat. the gesture would be tender from almost anyone else. from him it is maintenance. a soldier checking a strap. a butcher tying an apron. a priest laying the cloth over the altar after the sacrifice, not grieving the animal but ensuring the sanctuary is ready for morning. his knuckles brush your lower stomach once, incidental and devastating, and then he withdraws.

you sit there dressed and undone.

the contradiction is intolerable.

somewhere beyond the cabin wall, an animal moves through the brush. the sound is faint, a careful cracking of twigs under cautious weight. deer, maybe. or something smaller pretending to be large by making the undergrowth speak for it. the forest presses against the windows, black and wet, the glass reflecting the room back at itself so that ben appears twice, once in flesh near the table and once flattened in the pane, a darker ben standing outside among the trees, watching through the glass with the patience of a hunter who has already eaten and still cannot stop looking at the kill.

he reaches for the chair across from you and drags it back into place.

the scrape of wood across floorboards is long, raw, almost vocal. you feel it in your teeth. he sits down only halfway, one hip against the chair, not fully resting, as if still prepared to move, to strike, to catch you if you fall or to stop you if you try. he takes the tin box again, not opening it, just turning it once so the latch faces outward. then he looks at the bandage on your thigh.

your eyes follow his.

the bandage is very white.

too white.

it has no right to remain so clean. after everything, it should be red, black, soaked, blooming with some visible sign of consequence. instead it sits there neatly beneath the edge of your boxers, a small adhesive square pressed over punctured skin, polite as a postage stamp. beneath it, oil disperses into muscle. beneath it, the body obeys chemistry before it obeys belief. beneath it, cells receive instruction without caring whether the instruction is sacrament or poison. your blood does not pause to ask what you are willing to become. it carries.

ben says, “shot’s due next thursday.”

the sentence is ordinary enough to be catastrophic.

it does not arrive like a threat. that would be easier. threats have shape. threats can be resisted, answered, cursed, fled from. this arrives like weather, like rent, like a chore written on a calendar in blunt pencil. shot’s due next thursday. not are you okay. not did that help. not stay with me. not any of the phrases people use when they want to pretend the body is a wounded animal that can be coaxed gently from under a porch. shot’s due next thursday. a fact. an appointment. a nail driven into the wall of the coming week.

you stare at him.

he does not seem to understand, or else he understands completely and has chosen not to honor the enormity of your reaction. his face is calm, mouth relaxed, beard still rough and damp in the lamplight, eyes settled on you with that terrible unreadable steadiness. he might have said the stove needs wood. he might have said rain tomorrow. he might have said there is soup in the pot, cartridges in the drawer, a dead raccoon under the porch. instead he has named the next opening in your skin.

next thursday.

He always does this. He knocks on your door and grabs your face between big hands, and suddenly all that resolve and determination—never again—dissolves with your willpower. His hands are rough  and calloused, but trace your hips and hold you down so gently, you can almost pretend he cares if you break. His cock is thick and impossibly long, and he always drags it between your soaked heat and bumps it against your clit before pushing himself in just right. His lips are chapped and soft, sucking possessive marks into your neck that he has no right to claim, but that doesn’t stop you from running your fingers through his hair and holding him right where he is. He wouldn’t dare to leave. Not in the middle of this. Not before you’ve both gotten what you want.

What Dean wants. You don’t let yourself pretend that this is everything you need anymore. It’s the only hope you have of one day telling him no, because the rest of you control rests on a thin rope, and it always slips from your hands the moment Dean touches you like you matter.

You never walk away from him with an aching, unsatisfied body. A few nights ago he put you on his face and made you ride until your thighs were shaking and tears were springing into your eyes. Before this, he spit on your cunt and scissored you open with thick, careful finger, kissing and nipping at your thighs as your greedy pussy swallowed him right up to the knuckle. Even now, as every roll of his hips becomes smaller—as his face twists in concentration and his mouth against your jaw becomes desperate—Dean’s thumbing at your clit, trying to get you over the edge with him.

“C’mon, baby, c’mon-“ He pushes himself up to his knees, forcing a deeper, rougher angle. “Show me what you’ve got, I know you can do it, come on-

You whimper, staring up at him under lidded, glazed eyes. The whole world is just a blur of color at this point, but Dean is bright and clear. The heave of his broad shoulder and chest, every muscle in his arm as he wraps it around your waist and makes you arch your back, the flex of his abdomen as he ruts forward like a feral dog. The sharp, unforgiving thrusts are making your head spin with pleasure, turning you into a boneless wreck of need. You grab his arm, trying to steady yourself against something, and Dean’s attention rips up.

He says he likes to watch himself fuck you, and you’ve never doubted that for a second. He’s spent whole sessions just staring at his cock or fingers splitting your cunt open. He likes putting you on his face because he can watch you react. You like it better like that, usually. The eye contact is too close. Too intimate. Too real.

But you grab him, and he looks at you, and it’s almost like a shot. His eyes are blown-out and so strangely soft, staring at your wrecked, open expression with too much, too much, too much-

“De- Deeean-“ You cry it out like a pray, because it is. Dean grunts, hips snapping, the wet sound filling up the air and his eyes never leaving yours. “Dean- Dean- Fuck, please- Please-“

You’re babbling. You never do that with anyone else, but Dean is Dean, and he makes you do things you never counted yourself capable of. He groans your name, and you squeal when he drags you up, off the mattress and straddling his thighs. Your clit drags against his abdomen, his cock bullies right against your g-spot, and Dean grabs your jaw with a single, painfully gentle hand.

“Cum for me, sweet girl,” he rasps, still holding your gaze, even as your eyes start to cross. “Soak this fuckin’ cock, baby, cum-“

You almost scream as your orgasm rips through you, and Dean crashes his mouth against yours, eating every whimper and moan with harsh lips and his tongue down your throat. You press into him, pussy gushing and fluttering around his dick, and he makes that deep, rumbling sound that always comes right before-

“Shit-“ Dean gasps against your mouth, pulling you so close you can’t feel anything but the heat of his bare chest, the sensation of his cock twitching and pumping in your cunt. “Fuuck-“

Dean moans your name, and a warm, pleasant heat starts to spread through your tummy and drip between your thighs. He doesn’t stop moving until his cock is softened, and you don’t try to stop him. You’re barely more than a limp doll right now, returning his kisses with tiny mewls, eyes crossed and body limp.

For a moment after it’s done, you stay tangled together. You always do. It’s the most dangerous part of the whole thing, because it feeds that tiny little fool in your chest, who refuses to believe that this is just sex. Who takes your heartstrings and weaves grand worlds where Dean loves you back, and you’re going to be just fine.

Dean kisses your brow, and your eyes flutter closed. There’s an advantage, to being a crybaby whenever he fucks you stupid. He never once has considered that the tears might be real.

“Think you can walk?” He mutters, still buried deep inside of you, still holding you like he cares.

You shake your head, and his mouth twitches against yours.

“Alright, pretty girl. I’ve got you.”

And you press your face into the crook of his neck, letting that fool take you over. She takes his words as gospel. My girl and I’ve got you and Baby, they’re exactly what he means and nothing more, nothing less.

When the logical part of your brain wakes back up—Dean’s always had this ability to hit a button in you, sliding his hand around the back of your neck and making all your thoughts just bubblegum feelings and electric colors—you’re going to remember why you always say this has to be the last time.

He’s perfect, and he’s not yours. He makes that perfectly clear, until he pulls these little stunts and ends up buried between your thighs. You agreed that he wasn’t yours, when this arrangement started.

Safer with someone you know, he’d told you, like he hasn’t fucked his way across the entire country. Easier. Nothing to worry about, when it’s you and me.

And you’d been a starry-eyed, gooey hearted fool who just wanted whatever part of Dean he was willing to show you. The burning love you kept tended in your ribs hadn’t seen a problem with adding fuel to the wildfire, even if Dean was never going to see it. But now he’s carrying you to the bathroom like a princess, and he’s going to be gone in the morning, and that wildfire is an inferno. He doesn’t know. He can’t know. You can map out everything he’d ever say in response to your feelings, from the harsh sneer he would’ve given when he had the Mark of Cain, to the kinder let down you’d get now.

You’re too young, he’d say, like it was a consolation prize. And I like you, sweetheart, but I don’t do this kinda thing. Not with girls young enough to be my daughter. Not with kids that I hunt with. Not with you.

You press your face further into his neck. He’s always so warm and sturdy, a massive tree that’s offering you just as much shade crushing, unbearable weight and tangled roots that keep you pressed down. He smells like leather and whiskey and something perfectly, faintly spice. You want to drown in it. You want to drown in him.

“You good?” Dean asks, and his voice is too gentle. It rattles the little fool, screaming for the rest of you to listen and just accept that he loves you.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t.

“You’re bein’ quiet, even for- Y’know-“ He chuckles, that low, insufferably charming pride crawling into his voice. “After I fuck you dumb.”

“You did not fuck me dumb,” you mumble against his skin, and you can hear his grin.

“Big words from the girl who couldn’t talk five minutes ago.”

“That was unrelated.”

“Unrelated,” he echoes, his thumb dragging a small circle against your spine. “Always forget how bratty you get after, sweetheart. Dangerous.”

You roll your eyes, and hug him tighter. He laughs, and kisses the side of your head, and he has the nerve to call you dangerous.

“You wanna watch a movie?” He asks, leaning down to run the water, still keeping you tucked so carefully against his chest, and all you can do is nod. Dean sighs. “C’mon, gimme a little more than that-“

“Yes, please,” you mumble, and he pauses.

It’s only a fraction of a second. You don’t understand it, and you don’t want to. Not when he feeds your delusions and kisses your brow again, then your cheek, then your lips. And you let him. You always let him, because you’re a foolish, stupid, lovesick idiot. You don’t want his affection, not like this. But you don’t want to lose him—it would be like ripping a vital organ out of your ribcage, even if you didn’t know you had it a year ago—and you can’t ever tell him to stop being so sweet without explaining yourself, and getting that gentle, horrible let down.

You don’t want it. You don’t want any of it. And this, this had to be the last time. 

You hold the line. You don’t know how, but you hold that line with white knuckles and grit teeth and a taste like bile in the back of your throat.

Dean knocks on the door, only two nights later, and you don’t answer. He calls your name and you sink into the mattress, praying he just thinks you’re asleep. 

“I just- Uh- I wanted to talk?” He says, and you press your face into the pillow like that can somehow shield you. “Really, that’s it. Just talking, so- If you could-“

Dean sighs. You can hear the please, hanging between every word, but Dean doesn’t really say please. He just begs with everything else in him, or gives up. And you can picture him running his hand over his face, the heavy look in his eyes, the defeated sag in his shoulders. It’s like a knife being driven through your gut, and you sit up, ready to open the door-

“Alright,” he mutters, and you freeze. “Night, baby. Sleep well.”

Footsteps retreat, and you stay there on the mattress, frozen and lost, adrift in a sea you dove into.

But you did it. You held the line.

And you keep it. It makes sweat bead and your skin burn, but you close the door and don’t open it back up. You’re done, and you’re going to keep it that way.

Dean doesn’t ask questions. You don’t know if you want him to or not, but it doesn’t matter, because you catch him staring and giving out signals, but he’s taken your no in stride, and doesn’t seem to have any plans to push back against it. When this started, you agreed to leave out a specific book on the war room table if either of you wanted something. Dean starts to leave it out every night, and you never go to his door, and one night, it vanishes.

And that’s fine. That’s exactly what you wanted.

And if it feels like you’re dying because of it, and if you spend an hour over the toilet dry heaving that night, that’s no one’s business but your own.

“Dean’s been grumpy lately,” Sam says one morning, and you blink at him over your coffee.

“Grumpy? Dean? That’s- Woah-“

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Sam gives you a flat look. “You know what I mean. Grumpier.”

You shrug, looking back to your mug. “Maybe he needs to get laid.”

“Uh huh.”

You can feel Sam’s stare. It makes you itchy and small, and you’re not sure if you want to punch him or run. You settle for staring at your coffee harder. It’s the easiest course of action.

“Dean needs to get laid,” Sam repeats your words, something strange—almost sharp—in his tone, and you nod.

“That’s what I said.”

“Dean-“

“What’s up?” Dean walks into the kitchen, stopping right behind you, and you hunch over like you can grow a shell to protect yourself.

Even just a few feet away, he’s always so warm.

“Uh- Hey, Dean-“

“Hey,” Dean mocks back, and Sam huffs.

“Dude-“

“Shut your face-“

“I didn’t say anything- I-“ Sam says your name, and you glance up. His brow is furrowed with worry, his eyes locked on Dean behind you. “We were just-“

“Just what?” Dean snaps. “Just talking? Shooting the shit, getting real comfortable?”

Sam sighs. “Dean-“

“I got a gun, Sammy,” Dean points firmly, and you stare at his finger like a woman driven mad with thirst. “Don’t forget that.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “We all have guns, that- That threat doesn’t do anything-“

“I’ll show you doing something- Hey-“

Dean says your name, and you freeze. You’d been trying to slip out while they fought, but Dean—goddamn him—had noticed. He always notices. You love him so much it’s going to make you cave in on yourself, and maybe take the whole bunker with you, like a dying star.

He catches your arm, and you can’t stop yourself from looking at him. His brow is knit, his jaw locked, and his handsome face has deep lines you only used to see when the world was ending. There are bags under his eyes. Deeper than usual. You want to smooth the lines with your thumb and kiss his jaw until he relaxes, but that’s not your ache to soothe.

Dean doesn’t say anything. You can’t say anything. He looks exhausted, and there’s a lump forming in your throat.

“You- You hungry?” Dean rasps, and you’re starving.

“No,” you breathe before you can think, and Dean swallows.

“Well, when you’re hungry- There’s a diner in town-“

“Henry’s?”

“No, uh- A new one. I- I was wonderin’ if you wanted to go, later, or something.”

“Or something?” You tilt your head, and Dean nods.

“Whatever you want.”

God, he’s cruel. He’s perfect and cruel, and you want to vomit on his flannel and kiss him until you pass out.

“Oh- Okay,” you say, because you’re only so strong.

The lines in Dean’s face relax. His grip loosens. Then Sam coughs, and Dean lets you go.

The diner is… nice. Nice and easy, in a way you haven’t felt in longer than you want to admit. Dean insists on driving you, and paying, and sitting in one of those booths with your feet bumping under the table.

He presses his knee forward, while he orders. You swallow and don’t allow yourself to think much of it. He’s warm through his jeans, but he’s always warm, and he hasn’t tried anything in a few weeks, so you allow it. Your love for him hasn’t been flickering out, but the harsh wind of his absence has made everything feel colder. It’s okay, to indulge yourself in something so small. You’re still keeping it together. You’re still holding the line.

“So, uh-“ Dean clears his throat, turning his bottle in his hands. “How are you?”

“How- Am I?” You blink at him, and he nods tightly. “I- I’m okay. How are you?”

“Good. Great.” He frowns at the table. “You know. Same as always.”

You almost laugh. “You’re always great?”

“I focus on the positives, sweetheart-“

“No, you don’t.”

He rolls his eyes, glancing up to hold your light, amused gaze. His mouth twitches. His fingers tap against the glass, and you try not to let yourself sink too deep into the attention.

It’s okay to drown a little. A long as you don’t drop the line.

“Maybe I’m turning a new leaf,” he says, and your face splits into a full smile.

“You?”

“Yeah, me. Why’d you say it like that-“

“Because you’ve never turned a leaf in your life-“

“Ah-“ He points the head of his bottle at you with a grin. “Not true. Remember when I started learning guitar?”

“Yeah, you smashed it on a werewolf’s head after a month.”

“That was a tactical choice, I would’ve kept playing if the wolf didn’t get in the way.”

“Uh huh.” You lean back in your seat, crossing your arms. “What songs  had you learned to play?”

Dean’s nose wrinkles. “Hey, we don’t need to talk about that-“

“I think we do.”

“Nah, I mean- I only had a month-“

“You learned how to work a rocket launcher in a week.”

“That’s just buttons and triggers, sweetheart. Even you could work it.”

“Even I?” You raise your brows—trying not to let the delight shine too bright in your voice—and Dean freezes.

“I mean- uh- You’re not great with guns, and- I could teach you-“

“You could teach me.”

“Maybe? If you wanted- Or-“ Dean groans, slumping back. “Stop givin’ me that look.”

“I’m not giving you any look,” you tease, and Dean sighs.

“Will you stop if I say I’m an idiot?”

You soften slightly. “You’re not an idiot, Dean-“

“You sure?” He grumbles. “Kinda feeling like one right now.”

You laugh, but it’s gentle. You can almost see him pushing down into himself. It makes you heavy for him, like you’re trying to take that invisible weight off his shoulders, even if he can’t feel you helping the pain. “You’re a dork,” you say, bumping his knee under the table. “But you’re not an idiot.”

Dean grunts, watching you under hooded eyes, and you smile easily.

You missed this, more than you want to tell him. Just talking, without worrying that it’s going to end in world-changing, back-breaking, beautifully heart-aching sex. He feels like your friend again, closer to your fingertips than he’d been when he was balls deep inside of you.

“Wonderwall,” he grunts suddenly. “And Hallelujah.”

You blink. “What?”

“Those were the songs,” he mutters, picking at the label of his bottle. “That I got, before I smashed the guitar.”

“Oh,” you pause. “I love Hallelujah.”

“Yeah. I know.”

You stare at him, and he stares right back. A faint flush is threatening your cheeks, so you duck your head to hide it, and Dean lets out a soft laugh.

“You alright-“

“Yep. I- I’m good-“

“You look good.” Dean laughs again, when you shoot him a glare. “Don’t gimme that face, I’m saying something nice-“

“You’re being a butt,” you stick out your tongue, and his eyes dance with an easy kind of light that almost makes your heart stop.

“You’re the one who was callin’ me old earlier,” he drawls, and you roll your eyes.

“You are old.”

“Yeah, but that’s never stopped you, has it.”

Your mouth falls open, eyes going so wide it almost hurts, and Dean grins at you. If you weren’t shocked into static, you’d slap him or- or lunge across the table and kiss him-

Hold the line.

“Aged wine is supposed to be better,” you manage to say, somehow, and Dean laughs, loud and free.

“That all I am to you? Some wine?”

“No,” you smile at your plate. “You’re also very good cheese.”

“Good cheese, huh.”

“Mhm.” You point a stern finger at him. “No puns.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but dips his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

There’s the flush. You’d keep trying to hide it, if Dean didn’t start talking about something unimportant and easy, and suddenly you forgot to be embarrassed. He’s not trying to kiss you or get you back to the car. He’s just… Talking to you. Dropping that light, teasing praise like it’s nothing, then telling you a story about when he used a tuba to beat a poltergeist, grinning like a winner every time you laugh.

When lunch is over, he rests a hand lightly on your lower back, but doesn’t do much more. He kisses your cheek when you get back to the bunker, and asks if you want to watch a movie tomorrow night. You swallow, locking your hands together like they can force the line to stay firm. Dean says your name, almost panicked, and you blink up at him.

“Just a movie,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Out in town, at- Uh- That shitty theatre next to the coffee place. Or- I can try and find a drive-in, if those still exist-“

“They do,” you say softly, and he swallows. “There’s one out in Beloit.”  

“Beloit,” Dean mutters. “Yeah- Yeah, okay. You wanna go there?”

You nod, and he grins. You smile back, and it feels… Different. Shy, in a way you haven’t been around him since he first started fucking you. Almost delicate. You weren’t supposed to let this feel like something delicate.

Dean jaw works, and you can almost see the thoughts turning behind his eyes. He lurches slightly, brow furrowed, then pulls back up. You’re seconds from asking him what’s wrong when he just leans down and… does it.

His lips graze your cheek, his hand brushing against your waist, and you almost melt right into him.

But then he stands back up, and takes a large step away. You swallow, resisting the urge to reach up and brush your fingers over where he kissed. It’s not like he’s never done that before, but again.

It just feels different.

“See you tomorrow,” he murmurs, and you nod weakly.

If you had a mind that was thinking in more than bursts of glee and songs of Dean, Dean, Dean, you’d tell him that you live together, and he’s always going to see you tomorrow. But he walks away, and you let him, and it doesn’t hurt. There’s a space that he left, but something in you seems to think he’s going to come back. You can’t tell if it’s the fool or not.

For once, you decide not to try.

The movie is nice. Dean rests his hand on your knee, but doesn’t go any higher. You lean into his side, and his arm goes around your shoulders, but there’s no kissing or dragging into the back seat, and you didn’t know there could be a better way to be close to him. Sex is great. Looking up and finding him already watching you is better.

He brushes some hair from your face, and you half expect him to kiss you. His eyes dart down to your lips like he wants to. Your fingers curl in his shirt, and his throat bobs.

“You likin’ the movie?” He whispers, and you nod.

“Good find,” you breathe, and he grins.

“Thanks. Eat the popcorn, it cost me a billion bucks.”

You roll your eyes, and throw some of the over-buttered, half-burnt popcorn at his face. He laughs, catches a kernel in his mouth, and grabs your chin between two fingers. Your breath catches. He just turns your face back to the screen, and pulls you a little closer into his side.

The movie ends the same way the diner did. Dean walks you to your bedroom door like it’s the porch of your house, kisses your cheek, then walks away.

Then, after the movie, you play mini golf. You win, but you know he let you. He buys you a snow cone and licks it off his nose when he eats it like a rabid dog. You wipe a little extra off his cheek, and he stares at you, but still doesn’t kiss you. Not fully. His hand seems to always rest on your lower back, now, but that’s all the contact you get. All that you allow.  

Hugs are on the table, too. They’re somehow more dangerous than the forehead kisses. After the hugs, he sometimes just stares at you and cups your cheek, and your heart moves into your throat until you think you’re going to spill it out all over his chest.  

You manage to keep it together. For the sake of this new, slowly growing garden of what your friendship is becoming, you swallow your love with greater ease and more bile than you ever did while you were fucking. After the mini golf you get dinner and see another movie. You convince him to go on a walk with you, and he hates it less than he pretends to. You eat together in the bunker and call when he’s on a hunt with Sam and go to a car show and it all feels like breathing.

Sometimes he still looks at your mouth, and you freeze up, unsure if you want him to kiss you or not. You know you want him, but somehow you’ve found even more to lose than before, and if it slips through your fingers, you’re not sure they’re ever going to stop shaking and groping at the empty spaces again. You can take holding his hand in the bookstore while he peers over your shoulder, pretending to be interested for no real reason other than to make you smile.

“There are so many of them,” he mutters, and you giggle.

“There’s a lot of ways to write words, Dean.”

“Yeah, but- You’d think there would be repeats or something.”

“There probably are,” you shrug, running your fingers over the spines. “But they’re still all fun.”

Dean sighs, squeezing your upper arm. “Whatever you say, sweetheart.”

You hum, leaning back to smile at him, and all his features relax.

“You want some coffee?” He brushes some hair from your face and you nod.

“There’s a shop next door, could you get me-“

“Hey,” Dean flicks your nose, grinning roguishly. “Trust me, I know what you want.”

You nod a little stupidly, and his smile falters. He looks to your lips again, then almost shakes himself, taking a small step.

“Don’t move,” he squeezes your arm again, then backs away. You watch him go, unable to help yourself, and smile when he looks back. He does that all the time now. And he always smiles back.

You turn back to the shelf, looking at the books without actually looking. You already miss him, and he told you not to move, but that can’t count if you’re going to stand next to him in the coffee line, can it-

“Hey.”

You fumble slightly, turning to find a man leaning against the shelf and smirking at you. You blink, and his smirk widens.

“What’s girl like you doin’ in a place like this?”

“The… Bookstore?” You frown, and he laughs. You don’t think you said anything all that funny.

“Look, I just- I saw you from over there,” he nods vaguely, and you frown. “And I thought you were cute. Can I get you some coffee or something?”

“My- My friend is already getting me coffee,” you say, and your voice sounds strangely far away.

The man nods, but doesn’t retreat. “Alright, then can I get your number? Maybe beat your friend to coffee next time?”

And you don’t want to say yes, but this is a chance. To hold onto this new friendship with Dean while also getting over him at the same time. This man isn’t ugly. Compared to Dean, no one really stands a chance anyway, and you have to get over him eventually.

So you give him your number, and try not to feel like you just did something wrong.

Dean clears his throat from behind you, and you spin around on your heels, a sour guilt twisting in your gut.

“You- You’re back,” you say, and he grunts.

He’s not look at you. He’s glaring at the man with the same, deadly glint that he gives monsters and demons before he cuts them in half. You touch his arm lightly, and he tenses. You feel sick.

“Hey, buddy,” he snaps at the man, who—not seeming to understand the gravity of Dean’s glare—grins back.

“Hey.” He winks at you, slowly backing away. “Have fun with your friend.”

Dean’s coffee spills over the top of it’s lid. He doesn’t look away from the man when he leaves the store. He shoves your drink into your hand, not meeting your gaze.

“Dean-“

“I’m gonna go wait in the car,” he mutters, and you swallow.

“Oh- Okay.”

Your arm wraps around your stomach, and you press a little away from him, from the wrath seeming to wave off his body like a volcano. He glances down, jaw tight and a vein in his brow ticking. You stare at his neck, unable to hold the weight of his gaze. He lets out a sharp breath, and shakes his head.

“Get your book.”

You shake you head. “No- It- It’s okay-“

Dean says your name, and your mouth snaps shut. “Just- Get the damn book.”

He looks like he’s in pain, and you don’t know how to fix it, so you do as he says. You get a cheap one, that worm of guilt burrowing deeper and deeper into your gut until you can’t even drink your coffee without feeling like it’s going to come back up.

Dean’s fingers dig into your back, when he guides you out the door. He starts the engine by almost punching in the keys, and holds Baby’s wheel like he’s trying to strangle it. You can see all the anger brimming under the surface of his skin, and worried you’re just going to make it worse. You don’t even know where it came from. It’s not like you’re together, or the guy said something rude. You open and close your mouth too many times to count, then give up, shrinking back into your seat.

Dean looks over at you. You try to look out the window, and nowhere else.

A loud, sharp breath escapes him. “Son of a- Alright.”

You look over with a frown, then squeak when he yanks the wheel off to the side.

“Shit- Dean-“

“Just- Fuck-“ He bows he head, glaring down at his legs, and you swallow.

You fidget with your fingers, watching him nervously, waiting for him to break the silence. It takes while. So long you think about just getting out of the car to give him space.

But then he looks up, and your heart gets cleaved open. His face is twisted in pain, his lips parted and his voice quieter than you’ve ever heard.

“What-“ He takes a deep breath, scanning over your openly confused features. “What else am I supposed to be doin’?”

You blink at him, fingers curling in your lap. “What?” You ask softly, and his throat bobs.

“I- I’m really trying,” he mutters, looking back to his hands. “I swear to god, baby, I’m tryin’ my best, and- I know I ain’t amazing at this but- If you could throw a guy a rope when he’s never- I’ve never done this, alright.” He waves between your bodies, jaw clenched tight. “And I’m really givin’ it my best shot, but I’m still not allowed to kiss you, and you’re takin’ numbers right- Right in front of me- So just- Something.” He gives you a pleading, broken look, eyes shining on yours in the dark. “Anything.”

You open your mouth, but you can’t even figure out what the fuck you’re supposed to say. You know all the words he’s saying, but it’s like he’s speaking a language you never learned, spitting out a code you’re just supposed to magically understand. Dean’s jaw ticks, when you don’t answer, and you try to sputter out an answer, but he’s too loud to hear your confused whimper.

“Look, just- Whatever the hell you do need me to do, I’ll do it, I swear I’ll do it, but- You gotta tell me, sweetheart-“

“Tell you what?!” You almost shout, and Dean leans back in surprise. “Dean, I- I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dean huffs a low laugh, looking back out to the road. “Yeah. Alright,” he grabs the keys, voice rough and pained. “Sure. Whatever-“

“No.” You grab his wrist before he can start to the engine. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”

“It doesn’t matter-“

“Yes, it does-“

“Nah.”

“Dean-“

“You wanna call that guy, call ‘im.” There’s an almost toxically bitter sound to the words, and Dean’s making a face like he just got shot. “Whatever. See if I care.”

Your nails dig into his wrist, when he tries to yank it away. He shoots you a glare, the bags—gone, after months of ease—already starting to form.

“C’mon, kid, just- let go-“

“Would you care?”

Your question is small, but it makes Dean recoil like it burned. He scoffs, but it’s too loud, and you hold him tighter.

“Would you care-“

“No, I fuckin’ love watching douchebags parade around with my girl, who would care about something like that?”

Something snaps, right at the base of your spine. You sit so tall you’d think someone is dragging you by the nape of your neck, and Dean blinks in something close to surprise.

“What-“

“Your girl,” you whisper. “That’s- I’m- Why would you say that?”

Dean blinks. “Why wouldn’t I say that?”

“Because you and I- We’re not- That’s-“ You lean back, letting go of his wrist, and when you look down, you’ve left little crescent marks in the skin. “No- No- You didn’t- You said no- No strings-“

“Yeah, and then you stopped fuckin’ me, and I-“ Dean says your name as you press back against the window, brow furrowed in worry. “Baby, it’s- It’s alright, I’m not that pissed-“

“You were yelling,” you choke out, and he swallow.

“Well, I was- Just- C’mere.”

He reaches out, cupping your cheek with the same gentle touch he used to use, right before he kissed you. You gape at him, head spinning, panting like you just ran a marathon.

“I’m not mad,” he rasps, almost pleading, and you shake your head.

“You were-“

“Sweetheart-“

“Why?” You whisper, grabbing his wrist, your nails sinking back into the marks. “Why- Why would you care?”

Dean swallows. He shakes his head, looks out the window, and chuckles.

“Dean-“

“I don’t want you goin’ out with him. And- Call it possessive, or stupid man shit, or- Whatever the hell you want,” he drags his thumb over your cheekbone, voice dropping to something tender, something soft. “You’re my girl. And I want you here, telling me what to do, how to- To be what you need.” His voice cracks. “Come on, baby. Just- Tell me what to be.”

You stare at him, a lot of pieces colliding into each other at once in your head. The diner and the movie and the touching and the caution and-

“Are we dating?” You choke out, and Dean frowns.

“What’d you mean, are we dating?”

“I mean are we dating, Dean, are you- Are you my boyfriend?”

“Uh- Boyfriend kinda makes it sound like we’re sixteen and necking-“

“What the fuck is necking?”

Dean groans, dropping his head. “Don’t say that, sweetheart. Makes me feel fuckin’ fifty.”

Your lips twitch. “You are almost fifty,” you say, and he chuckles.

“Yeah. Guess I am.” He looks back up to you, caution lining his features. “You always seemed to like it.”

You swallow. You did. You’d never been sure if it was the older thing itself, or the fact that it was just Dean, but you’d liked it. You always liked all of him, from the uglier wounds to the beautiful, glowing heart that almost managed to peak through, no matter how thick his steel and iron walls became.

He glides his thumb back and forth over your cheekbone, and your breath hitches. He swallows, closes his eyes, and mutters your name.

“Did you… Not think we were dating?”

You shake your head, and Dean snorts dryly.

“Huh,” his mouth curves into a tight smirk. “Makes sense why you wouldn’t kiss me, I guess.”

“You guess?” You squeak, and Dean nods.

“Yeah, makes a lotta sense, actually-“

“How long have we been dating?!” You almost shriek, and he gives you an amused look.

“’Bout three months.”

“Three months?!”

“That’s what I said, baby-“

“Shut- Shut up-“ You plant a hand over his mouth, and he raises his brows. “Why the fuck wouldn’t you tell me we were dating, you- You butt?!”

Dean’s eyes sparkle, looking pointedly down to your hand, and you release him with a scowl. He rubs his jaw, grinning at you like you’re some cute bunny, and you lean back in your seat with a huff.

“Sweetheart,” he says gently. “I thought you knew.”

“How would I have known-“

“’Cause I asked you on a date? And you said yes?”

“That- That never happened.” You snap, and Dean frowns.

“Yes, it did. Sammy- He was there-“

“Sam was there-“

“Yeah, and- I said there was a new diner in town, and you said you’d go with me, and we started dating!”

You stare at him, mouth hanging open. Dean stares pointedly back, and you can’t help yourself. You bark out a loud, sharp laugh.

“That was not asking me on a date, you fucking- Oh my god!” You shake your head, and Dean’s frown becomes almost puppy like.

“Yes, it was-“

“You have to actually say it’s a date, Dean! You can’t just- Just ask me to do something, I thought we were just hanging out! As friends.”

He’s pouting now. If you weren’t pissed, it would be adorable. “I- Uh- I paid for everything. And got you gifts.”

“Friends do that-“

“Do friends kiss your face all the time?” Dean twists to fully glare at you, and you pause.

“Um- Maybe?”

Dean snorts. “No, they don’t-“

“But I thought that was just you!” You protest. “You- You’re always- You know-“

“I know?” He mocks, and you scowl.

“We were fucking for a year, Dean,” you snap, tipping up your chin. “I thought you were comfortable with me.”

“I am comfortable with you,” Dean shrugs, leaning slightly forward. “Real comfortable.”

Your nose twitches. He’s too close, now. Consuming your vision, making your vision all stupid and fuzzy. “You’re comfortable with everyone,” you sniff, and he laughs.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he drawls, running a hand slowly up your thigh. “We both know that ain’t true.”

You make a tiny, involuntary sound when his fingers dip under your skirt, teasing sensitive, neglected skin. He hasn’t touched you there in so long. Too long. You have to hug yourself to stop your body from flying at him.

“I haven’t fucked anyone else in eighteen damn months,” Dean mutters, holding your gaze. “I’ve been waiting around for you for months, wondering what the hell I was doin’ wrong, and you thought I was just being nice?!”

You swallow, your voice suddenly small. “You are nice,” you whisper, and Dean snorts.

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re nice to me-“

“Because I-“ He cuts himself off, fingers pressing into the soft skin of your thigh. You grab his hand, holding it against you, and his eyes dart down. He heaves a long breath, squeezes his eyes shut, and bows his head.

“Dean?” You whisper, and he shakes his head. “Dean, I- I’m sorry I didn’t- You said we were just going to be casual-“

“I know what I said,” he grunts, glaring at your hands. “But I- I didn’t- I thought it would help me.”

You swallow. “Help you?”

“Yeah.”

“With what-“

“You know what.” He finally looks at you, and you’ve never seen him this vulnerable. Almost bowing before you, holding onto your hand like it’s the last thing keeping him alive. “And I can’t- I don’t know how to-“ He takes another ragged breath, gives you another pleading look. “You stopped letting me pretend, you started- You started telling me no, and I couldn’t- I couldn’t.” He swallows. “I’m tryin’ to do this right, baby.” He squeezes your hand, leaning a little closer. “Please let me do this right.”

You blink at him, tears watering in your own eyes, and nod. Dean’s shoulders shudder, and he holds your hand so tight you think he’s trying to just mold you together. He glances at your lips, but doesn’t move. So you do it for him.

Dean stares at you, completely still as you lean forward, his chest so still you’re worried he’s not breathing. You rest your hand lightly on his chest and press the lightest kiss you can to his parted lips. He shakes, one hand flying to your waist, his touch still heartbreakingly delicate. You kiss him again, a little harder, and a low rumble starts in his chest.

You pull back, pressing your brows tight together. Dean stares at you, eyes glossy and blown out, the restraint ticking in his jaw, and you smile softly.

“I love you,” you breathe. “And I- I know you can’t- You know, say it back, but- I love you, Dean.”

His breathing his ragged, and he’s still gaping. You laugh nervously, looking down to your fingers, fiddling with the collar of his shirt.

“If- If you could say something, though, that would be- Um- Nice-“

Dean grunts, and your words fall off into a squeak as Dean drags you forward into his lap.

And this. This is a real kiss. Dean’s mouth slots perfectly against yours, his arm wrapping fully around your lower back, his fingers digging into your hips and his other hand cradling the back of your head. He kisses you like he’ll die if he doesn’t, pushing his tongue down your throat and moaning against your mouth. You pull on his shirt and he gropes at your ass, dragging you further into his lap. The pressure of his thigh against your core makes your head spin, but that might just be the lack of oxygen. Neither of you seem to be willing to come up for air, taking sharp, tiny breaths between sloppy kisses.

You whimper, already going limp, and Dean leans back with darkened, shining eyes. You know that look. You used to pray for and dread it all at once. It always made you feel like something close to prey, paralyzed and unable to flee his spell.

But this time is different. This time, there’s nothing you’d rather do but fall into his charm.

Dean presses another, small kiss to your lips, dragging his thumb over the tingling swell. Your tongue flicks against the pad of the finger, and he groans, pushing it slowly between your lips.

You wrap around him, sucking lightly, giving him your best, sweetest Bambi eyes. Dean’s throat bobs, his fingers digging into your ass.

“We’re goin’ home,” he mutters. “Then I’m gonna fuck you.”

That’s a lovely plan. You smile around his thumb, and he says your name, pulling his thumb away with a small pop.

“Jesus, you- You gotta tell me yes-“

“Just fuck me here,” you whisper, pulling on the collar of his shirt.

Dean glances to the backseat, then to you. “Uh- I mean- That’s- If you’re sure-“

“Please,” you push a little further forward, dropping your hand to press against the bulge in his jeans. “I need you, Dean. Now.”

And for a second, you think he’s going to demand going all the way back home. Say something about you deserving a soft bed and gentle loving, when you just want him, filthy and raw and yours. You’re so busy giving him doe eyes, you don’t notice his hand dragging down your spine and your ass, right up until it dips under your skirt, and cups your pussy through your panties.

You gasp, and Dean smirks, slowly rubbing his hand back and forth.

“Need me?” He drawls, pushing his thumb against your clit. “Like this, baby? This how you need me?”

“Ye- yes-“ Your lips brush over his, your hips starting to grind down as he drags his thumb in tiny circle, his hand still rocking back and forth. “Just- Just like that, Dean- Shit-“

You push down, kissing him with a sloppy, uncontrolled mouth. Dean grunts, splaying his free hand against your neck and pushing you down. He’s massive and warm, the hand working your pussy offering just enough friction to work you up, but nothing more. You wrap your arms around his neck, panting against his lips and moving you hips to chase more friction.

“That feels good, doesn’t it,” he mutters, kissing you between every word.

You coo, trying to kiss over his face, and Dean slaps your pussy once, leaning back with a stern glare.

“Doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” you answer immediately, already getting heavy-eyed and dazed. “So- So good, Dean, feels so good, just- More-“ You claw at his shoulders, trying to at least get to some bare skin, and settle for pressing your mouth back over his. “More- Need some more, De, now-“

Dean silences you with a deep, rough kiss, and taps his thumb against your clit in quick, harsh movements, pushing his palm down hard against your aching pussy. You cry out, trying to force your hips further down against him, and Dean squeezes that back of your neck.

“Look at  you,” he mutters, almost in awe. “Few months without some cock and you get bossy, don’t you.”

“No- No,” you manage to protest. “You’re just- You’re being slow-“

“I’m being slow?” He mocks, running his fingers over the line of your panties. “Baby, I’ve barely fuckin’ started.”

You try to roll your eyes at him, but he uses his hold on your neck to turn your head, forcing your gaze back down to his. Your eyes widen, and he smirks slightly, raising his brows.

“You gonna break out some manners for me?” He asks, slowly dragging your panties to the side. “Or am I gonna need to teach you again?”

“Te- Teach me?” You choke out, and Dean hums.

His thumb drags down from your clit, parting the lips of your pussy and smearing your arousal. Your heart is trying to hammer out of your chest, every nerve in your body seeming to respond to the mockingly sweet touch.

“Dean,” you press your hands against his chest, unsure if you want to push him away or drag him closer. “Don’t- Don’t be mean-“

“I’m not bein’ mean,” he hum, the gleam in his eyes something else all together. “I’m giving my girl exactly what she wants, how she wants it.”

You blink at him hopelessly, and he chuckles, pulling you down into a long, slow kiss. It would be romantic and loving, if it wasn’t for his thumb pushing at your weeping entrance, refusing to dip even a fraction of the way inside.

“Remember how you used to beg for me?” He mutters, and your face burns with a mix of arousal and shame. “I sure as shit do. Spent hours thinkin’ about it lately, planning how I was gonna take you when you let me again. But,” he switches out his thumb for the very tips of his fingers, yanking slightly on your hair when you try to look down. “Jesus, baby, I’m worried I’m gonna break you.”

You shake your head frantically, and Dean raises his brows.

“Words, pretty girl,” he reminds you, pushing his fingers just a little big deeper. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve got it, talk to me-“

“I can take it,” you breathe out, watching him under fluttering lashes. “I- I can take it. I promise.”

Dean works his jaw, his grip on your hair tightening. “Sweetheart-“

“Please,” you breathe, leaning down until your noses bump. “I need it. I need you.”

Those are the magic words. Dean stops trying to play noble, stops trying to hold back for the sake of romance. You loved him when he fucked you like a whore and gave you nothing soft, and you’re going to love him even more when he treats you like a toy, then kisses you everywhere after.

Dean smashes his lips against yours and eases his fingers into your waiting pussy, groaning under his breath when you clench down around him.

“So fuckin’ tight,” he mutters, scissoring them inside you. “Never gonna get over how fuckin’ tight you are, sweetheart, like you were made for me. Made to be mine.”

He almost snarls the last words against your lips, pushing himself fully up to the knuckle. You mewl as he finds your g-spot with that precision that makes it look easy, that’s always made you sure you couldn’t ever enjoy someone else if you tried.

Dean pumps his fingers slowly, crooking them so they drag against that spot, and pulls you back to watch your face contort with pleasure.

“That’s it,” he grunts, pulling almost all the way out before slamming them right back in and twisting to bully against that sensitive spot. “That’s just how you like it, huh? Already gettin’ like this from just my fingers,” he chuckles, grinding his hips up against your thighs. “Imagine how you’re gonna be on my cock, sweet girl, if you can barely fuckin’ take this?”

“That- That’s not fair-“ You choke out, every word breathy and weak, and Dean just smirks.

“Isn’t it?”

You try to protest, but Dean pushes your head back down, and his kiss knocks almost every thought from your head. It’s all just the familiar, perfect way his mouth moves against yours, rememorizing something that never stopped being his. The wet sound of his fingers working you open fills the car, and your whole body burns with desire and shame. He’s right. You’re already soaked and ready for him, your cunt clenching down and still begging for more. You need that full, impossible split of him. After months of nothing, you’re worried his cock is the only thing that’s going to be able to do it.

But Dean seems to like proving you wrong today. A coil, tight in your stomach, starts to wind tighter and tighter. He drops his grip on your hair for a second to push down on the base of your spine, forcing your cunt almost right over his bulge. He reangles his hand, forcing in another finger, and you make a strangled sound.

“De- Dean-“

“We’re gonna get you relaxed, baby,” he mutters, twisting his wrist so the drag against your g-spot almost rips through your body. “Nice and relaxed ‘f me, you can do it.”

You let out a shaky breath, trying to listen, and your clit pushes down against Dean’s cock, still tight in his jeans. The pressure is perfect, combined with the brutal thrusts of Dean’s hand, and you press your cheek to his.

“That- That’s good,” you pant, clinging to the hem of his shirt. “So- Soo good-“

You whimper, and Dean hums. He’s rubbing your back, and that’s somehow almost as good as the hand obliterating your cunt. “There she is,” he mutters. “Always so good at listening when I got my hands on you, aren’t you sweetheart.” He kisses the side of your head. “That’s my girl.”

That’s what does it. My girl.

The coil snaps, and your orgasm rips through you, making your eyes cross and your body curl limply into Dean’s arms. His hand coaxes you through it, his palm rubbing against your pussy as you mewl and clench around nothing, the light pressure helping you ride it like a long, easy wave.

Dean kisses your cheek when it’s done, then right under your eye, then your nose.

“That’s one,” he mutters, and you whine. He chuckles, hiking your skirt up with light touches. “Come on, you know the rule.”

“Stupid rule,” you grumble. “Never agreed to it.”

“Never heard you complaining before,” he points out, peeling your dress off, and you stick out your tongue.

“That’s because I always forget- Dean!”

He smacks your ass, and you squeak, pussy clenching around nothing. He’s forming a tent in his jeans as he looks up at you, and you narrow your eyes. You fingers brush against the head of him, and his groan falters, his head tipping back against the bench.

You smile, pushing your hand down against his cock, and he catches your wrist, shooting you a stern glare.

“Not at young as I used to be,” he warns, and you giggle.

“But I want to,” you try to pull your hand free, and roll you eyes when he won’t let you. “Oh- Come on-“

“Nope,” he grunts, even as his dick jumps against the fabric. “You know the rule-“

“Dean-“

“Three to one,” he mutters, a dare gleaming in his eyes. “You give me one, I give you six. That’s the fuckin’ deal.”

You laugh, but his mouth doesn’t even twitch, and slowly, your smile falls into something more serious. More determined.

Damn this stubborn beautiful man and his orgasm rules. Damn you, for thinking he ever wouldn’t want to fuck you when he made you orgasm rules that weren’t proportional or fair at all.

You yank your wrist away, stick out your tongue again, and pull your underwear fully off. Dean watches you with his hands tight on your waist, eyes shining with curiosity, but patient.

And you’ve never been good at riding him, but you’ve always been good at this. You climb over Dean’s lap so your ass is near his shoulder and your face in his crotch, your back arched like some animal in heat, your pussy bare and on full display.

Dean’s never been able to help himself. One hand immediately slides around the arch of your back, then the curve of your ass, then settles back against your pussy. The other slides in your hair, petting your hair while you fumble with his belt. He chokes out your name, and you shoot him a glare, pulling out his cock with light, careful hands.

He’s so hard you’re worried he’s going to hurt himself. Pre-cum is beading around his tip, his veins throbbing like a porno. You stroke him slowly, and he lets out a sharp breath between his teeth.

“I’m serious, baby-“

“Prove it,” you say, before licking a slow, teasing stripe up his shaft.

And you know how this game ends. You’ve played it a million times before. The beautiful thing about it is that—especially when Dean thinks he’s winning—you can never lose.

You take him into his mouth, and the sound that he makes is sinful. It’s a choked, rough version of your name that sounds holy from his mouth, and comes with his fingers dipping into your heat like it’s a comfort toy. You take him until he bumps against the back of your throat and hum, swirling your tongue. Dean grunts, and pushes your head a little further down. You wiggle your ass, pussy cold and throbbing, and Dean groans.

“Jesus, woman- Gonna kill me- Fuuuuck-“

You start to bob up and down, sucking with that perfect pressure you know he likes, getting what can’t fit in your mouth in your hand. You can take him better and better with every second, letting his push against your gag reflex, and you drop that hand to play with his balls. Dean’s already giving shallow uncontrolled microthrusts, repeating your name over and over until it’s more of a choked moan.

“Can’t- Shit, baby, I can’t- That damn mouth, you’re gonna- Shit-“

You squeeze his balls and suck as hard as you can, and Dean almost roars your name, his cock jumping as he shoots thick, white ropes of cum down your throat. You swallow every drop, licking the rest off your fingers as you rise back up. There’s going to be a handprint on your ass, from where he was holding onto you. You hope you feel it in the morning.

And when you smile at Dean, you know you’re in trouble. Naked and wet for him, crawling forward so your tits press into his face and kissing him as sweetly as possible. Dean grunts, one hand shooting up to cradle the back of your head, and his responding kiss is deceptively gentle. He lets you lead it, groaning when your tongues press together, tasting himself on your lips. He lets you pull his shirt over his head and lets you trace over the lines of his muscles. You smile against his lips and lean back, and there’s that predatory glint again.

Dean’s hand twitches on your back. He wipes your chin, gathering some stray cum and slowly pressing his against your lips. You clean it off obediently, and his jaw ticks.

“Back seat,” he grunts. “Now.”

You almost scramble to listen. Rolling off of him and trying to climb over, making it halfway before you feel massive hands wrapping around your waist, holding you in place. You swallow, trying to twist over your shoulder to look at him, but Dean blows a sharp breath over your clit, and you double over with a squeak.

“De- Dean-“ You plant your hand on the bench, blood rushing to your cheeks. “Dean- wait-“

“Hmmm.” He kisses one curve of your ass, then the other. “Wait for what?”

You’re not really sure. “This- I- I can’t hold myself up,” you fumble, and he chuckles, kissing right over your clit.

“That gonna be a problem?” He teases, pressing smaller, faster kisses over the sensitive button. “Or,” he spreads your ass cheeks, humming against your heat. “Do dirty girls get what they asked for?”

Shit. “It’s uncomfortable,” you whisper, and Dean pauses.

He sighs, then kisses your clit again. You squeak when he drags you back down, and melt into his chest as he kisses all over your face, rocking you back and forth in his arms.

“’S why I wanted the bed,” he mutters, and you sigh.

“’M sorry-“

“No,” he kisses the corner of your mouth, massaging your hips with steady hands. “I’ve got it, just- uh-“

He glances up, and you watch him frown around the car with an openly adoring expression. The work of his jaw and furrow of his brow as he thinks, how he holds you so tight in his arms, it’s impossible to not love him.

“Got it,” he mutters. “Trust me?”

You nod easily, and he glances back down. His eyes soften when they meet yours, and this kiss isn’t feral or brutal. It’s just… slow. Adoring, a silent promise of what you’ve sort of always known.

Dean is going to take care of you.

He lays you out in the backseat, rubbing your thighs as you settle into the cushioned bench. You watch him with your heart in your throat, arms wrapped tight around your stomach. Sometimes, under his attention, you’re not sure what to do with yourself. He’s too pretty, too big, too much in the best possible way.

“Getting’ shy on me?” He teases, pushing up your knee, and you flush.

“N- No.”

“Hm,” Dean pins your leg against the bench, guiding the other one so it hooks over his shoulders. “Sounds like you’re gettin’ shy.”

You swallow, hugging yourself tighter, and he chuckles.

“All that work to make you relax,” he mutters, kissing his way up your thigh. “And you’re already wound back up.”

“You took too long,” you whisper, and Dean laughs.

“Sorry, sweetheart.” He kisses just the side of your cunt, and your breath hitches as he sucks a small, firm bruise into the skin. “You know I’m gonna make it up to you, yeah?”

You nod weakly, then blurt, “Yes!”

Dean’s mouth twitches, and he grabs one of your wrists, guiding it down to his hair. You weave it between your fingers, your breathing already ragged, your whole body lit up with anticipation.

“Easy,” Dean murmurs, kissing the other side of your cunt, massaging your thigh and pushing your leg a little higher. “Nice and easy, pretty girl.” He kisses you pussy, open-mouthed and wet, and you let out a high, shameless sound.

His mouth should be classified as a sex toy or something. It moves and works against you like a machine, kissing you with so much fervor you already start to see stars. You had some recovery from the fingering, but Dean’s already stripping it away with sharp, unrelenting kisses and grazes of his teeth against your clit.

“Taste so fuckin’ good,” he groans against you, the word vibrating through your body. “Never wanna live without this pussy again, baby girl, shit-“

He groans and dives back down, starting to work you open like a man starved. You push on his head, silently begging for more, afraid to open your mouth. The sounds that leave you will be embarrassing, and you’re already too far gone for them.

But Dean likes you loud, and he won’t let you hold back. He hooks his arm fully around your leg, dragging you further down, giving him a better against your pussy. You mewl when he wraps his lips around your clit, sucking impossibly hard, and Dean laughs against your cunt.

“Fuck- Fuck-“ You grab at the front bench, yanking mindlessly on his short hair. “De- Dean- Oh my god-“

He groans, pushing his face impossibly further. His tongue is deliberate and thick, pumping in and out of your cunt before pressing flat on your clit and dragging back and forth. It’s enough to drive you mad, making the coil in your stomach burn and burn and burn until your whole body is shaking with the sensation.

“De- Dean-“ You whimper. “You- Fuck-“

He nips at your clit, dragging a long, slow stripe up your pussy. Your eyes lock, and you swallow, a broken moan falling from your lips. The first time he did this, he told you that he loved it. That there was nothing better than a woman, right on his face, dripping and sweet for him. It didn’t take you long to believe him.

Here, he looks at you like you’re some kind of heaven he’s been allowed to touch. His mouth never stops moving against you, his eyes lidded and almost drunk, and your arousal shining on his face whenever he reangles it to devour you a new way. It’s a sight that could knock you off your feet, if you had any left to stand on. Dean on his knees, his broad, freckled shoulders forcing your knees apart, his attention a drug you never want to bother being clean from again.

You start to shake, your stomach seizing up as you fight off your orgasm, but Dean doesn’t tolerate that either. His mouth goes back against your clit, his tongue darting up and down and back and forth in tiny motions, almost tickling it, making the little nerves light up and-

You cum with a loud, choked sound that’s really supposed to be Dean’s name, and push at his head. You expect him to stop, and finally get on top of you.

But you forgot about his stupid orgasm rule, and he doesn’t stop. His grip tightens and he starts to make out with your overstimulated pussy. You squeak, pushing weakly at his head, and his eyes gleam.

“De- Dean- Fuuuuck- That’s-“ Your eyes roll back, your body seizing up again, almost unable to take so much. “Oh- Oh my gooood-”

Dean groans against you again, and it’s worse than a vibrator. It’s warm and deep and Dean, mixed with his filthy mouth and stubble, scraping against soft skin.Your thighs lock around his head and he lets them, his eyes never leaving yours as he slowly pulls you fully onto your back, pushing himself up onto his knees. His cock bounces against his stomach but he ignores it, using his now free hand to grope at your breast. You moan, clenching around nothing as he laps at your clit and pussy.

“I- I can’t-“ Tears spring at your eyes. “Dean- Please-“

He hums, rolling your nipple between deft fingers, and you throw your head back with a broken moan.

Warm, thick fingers weave through yours, and  you blink at him under watery lashes. He’s let go of your breast to hold your hand. His thumb is dragging slowly back and forth, and his mouth isn’t slowing down, but you don’t want it to. You can see the challenge shining in his eyes. You take a ragged breath, give him the smallest nod, and he smiles against your pussy.

You didn’t know the human tongue could move that fast. You’re sure it’s not supposed to, but Dean’s never cared about things like that. He drinks you up like wine, rapidly toying with your clit—swirling and kissing and flicking and sucking like it’s candy—and your eyes roll back in your head as your third orgasm springs through your body like a geyser.

Dean lowers you down slowly, pressing one last kiss to your swollen kiss before rising back up, wiping his chin of your release and cleaning it off his fingers with a smug grin. His cock is at attention, and your mouth waters. He always gets it in. You’re a little afraid of it right now.

“Six?” You breathe out, and Dean snorts.

“You’re the one who pushed for it, princess.”

“It- It’s your stupid rule-“

“You love it,” he shrugs, slowly settling himself back between your legs. “And you’re gonna take it, aren’t you, baby.”

You wrinkle your nose, and Dean gives you a stern, amused look.

“Aren’t you?” He taps the head of his cock against your cunt, and you squeak.

“Dean-“

“You’re the one who got bratty and cocky, sweetheart,” he drawls, pushing your leg back down. “So you’re gonna take it, ‘cause I know you can.”

You swallow, giving him your best doe-eyes, and he just chuckles. Dean lowers himself down, presses a gentle kiss to your brow, and murmurs against your skin.

“That ain’t gettin’ you out of this.”

You press your face into the crook of his neck, and Dean smiles, kissing the side of your head.

“All shy again,” he mutters, dragging that massive cock between the lips of your pussy. “Let’s take care of that, huh?”

You cling to him as he rolls you both over, guiding your legs to straddle his torso and lining up his cock with your weeping, abused pussy. He pulls you gently up, rubbing your side and watching you a painfully adoring gaze. You try to cover yourself again, and he catches your hand, shaking his head.

“Come on,” he mutters, weaving your fingers together. “Let me see you.”

And damn him for being so soft and sweet, you don’t think you could tell him no if you wanted.

“Take it easy,” he says, wrapping both of his hands around your waist. “All you, baby. Show me what you want.”

“I- I can’t-“

“Yes, you can.”

You believe him, in a way you’d never believe anyone else. It might be how he looks at you. Like you’re an angel over him, like you’re really, truly letting him enter paradise as you sink down onto his cock.

He grunts, his fingers tightening against your body as his cock slowly splits you open. Even with how much he’s worked you open—your pussy so wet it’s already dripping onto his thighs—it’s a tight fit. You can feel every vein dragging inside of you, the hard curve pressing right into your g-spot and making you flutter around him.

Dean jerks his head up, squeezing his eyes shut, and you swallow.

“Sorry-“

“’S- ‘S alright,” he exhales sharply, relaxing back into the seat. “Don’t worry ‘bout me, baby. I’m good.”

A smile ghosts over your lips, even as you start to only breathe through your nose. “You look it,” you tease, and Dean gives you a half annoyed, half impressed look.

“You’re tight,” he grunts, and your smile widens.

“You’re big.”

He groans, throwing his head further back, and you giggle again. He’s sitting just right again, his chest rippling under your hands, and you feel like that angel. You feel like a goddess, with how his hands are dragging over your body, how your name falls from his lips.

“So fuckin’ perfect,” he mutters, eyes raking over your body. “So perfect.”

You take a deep breath, and start to grind down onto his cock. Dean groans, one hand dragging down to squeeze your ass, but he doesn’t move. He won’t unless you beg him, and you’re determined not to. You can ride him until your thighs give out. His cock bumps against your g-spot, and his abdomen drags near your clit, and it feels good. You rock back and forth a little faster, your breath catching, and Dean groans.

“Look at you,” he mutters, almost to himself. “Pretty fuckin’ girl, riding my cock like the needy little thing you are, aren’t you. So fuckin’ wet for me, baby, so- so tight-“

He groans, and you push down on his chest, picking up your pace.

“So big, Dean,” you moan, pushing up your chest like a pornstar, trying to make him break first. “You’re so big, feels so- so good-“

You moan, tossing your hair, and Dean makes an almost feral sound.

But he doesn’t break. The bastard never breaks, and you’ve never been good at riding him. Your thighs are already sore, and they quickly start to ache, making your movements smaller and weaker. Dean watches you start to whine, your brow furrowing in concentration, and just smiles. You both know what he’s waiting for. You don’t want to give in.

“So quiet, sweetheart,” he coos, running his hand up to palm at your breast. “Someone drove by, they’d think I wasn’t fuckin’ you properly.”

You glare at him, unable to even speak, and he chuckles.

“You know what you gotta do, baby girl.”

“Fu- Fuck you-“

“I will,” he winks. “If my girl says please.”

Your eyes narrow. His grin widens, and you think you might be about to fly apart with how bad you need it. Fuck him. Fuck him and his stupid face that you love and his big cock that makes you all jelly and dazed thoughts and useless.

“Please-“

The word barely leaves your mouth before Dean moves. A single, well-aimed thrust up into your cunt that makes you fall apart. You fall forward onto his chest with a scream, and Dean groans, giving shallower, gentle thrusts to work you through the orgasm.

“I know,” he murmurs in you ear, his words painfully soft in comparison to the pleasure wracking your body. “I know, princess. Two more to go.”

You don’t think you can take two more. Four has been your max for a very long time, and that was with a lot more prep time and space between orgasms. But Dean doesn’t seem like he’s going to give you much of a choice.

You’re a doll in his arms again, when he hauls you up into his lap. His cock leaves you for a single second, just for the adjustment, and you whimper at the loss.

Dean hums, kissing all over your face as he slides back in.

“That’s my girl,” he starts to rock your hips back and forth with steady hands, picking you up then dropping your back down so his dick drags through every inch of your heat. “Takin’ me so good. Just like that, feel that, baby-“ He pushes on your lower back, making his cock slam against your g-spot, and you sob against his neck. “Feel how fuckin’ good we fit together, my girl.”

Dean’s voice is lined with something darker now. More possessive and hungry. He fucks up into your like an animal, dips drilling forward and mouth attached to your neck. All you can do is take it, over and over until your eyes are crossing and the only words you can remember are babbles of Dean and please.

The neck orgasm is slow, blooming from where he’s slamming against your cervix and spreading pleasantly through your body. Dean moans against your skin, mouthing at your jaw and neck, his tongue dragging and kisses messy. When you try to kiss him back, it’s mostly with a mewl and lips that follow his lead. Everything is humid and light in your body, everything is Dean around you, and there’s a new, strangely hot sensation in your core that’s demanding all of your attention.

It’s tighter than the usual coil, and gets hotter and hotter with every thrust of Dean’s cock. He’s getting uneven now, his own words falling into pants and moans, his balls slapping against your ass and hands leaving prints as he folds you fully over his chest.

“One- One more-“ His voice is gravelly, almost as wrecked as you feel. “Milk my fuckin’ cock, baby girl, cum for me-“

You open your mouth to warn him about the strange feeling, but it’s too late. Dean slams home, crashing his mouth against yours, and you cum with a hoarse scream. Hot cum shoots into your cunt, right as something gushes out of you in wet, burning waves. It feels good, so good you can’t think, so good your mouth hangs open and your moans turn into pathetic, weak babbles.

“Fuck- Fuck-“ Dean groans against your mouth. “Fuckin’- Yes-“

Your body seizes and twitches around him, but even when he’s done, Dean doesn’t pull out. The last of your release pushes itself out and her collapses backward, rubbing your back and craning his neck to grin at your cockdrunk expression.

“Gettin’ stupid?” He teases, and you can’t manage to raise an arm, so you just bite his nose. He laughs, leaning up to steal another, quick kiss from your lips before settling back down.

You curl over him, resting your head against his shoulder while he pets your head, both of you still panting and coming back down. You might be there for a hundred years, or just an hour. It doesn’t matter. The car is going to reek of sex for maybe a year. Sam might never agree to ride in it again. But it was worth it. More than worth it, when you look up at Dean, and find him—just as always—already looking back.

“We’re still dating, right?” You whisper, because you have to be sure.

Dean grins, and kisses you slowly. You hum, letting your eyes flutter shut. Letting him carry you, whenever he thinks is safe to go.

“Yeah,” he mutters, and you can hear it in his voice. All the love he’s been trying to show you, for who knows how long. “We are."

✦End note: if i write enough of these it's gonna happen to me guys trust ✦

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You laugh into his mouth, your hands moving up to his shoulders, feeling the way he shifts under your touch. One hand drags down, feeling the muscles on his back tense up on every slow thrust.

He scatters kisses across your face, lips on your cheeks and nose, across to your ear as he nips at the lobe. He speaks quietly, breath caught, "I missed this-"

He pushes deep, your body arching for him, legs wrapping around his waist. He keeps himself steady, despite how clearly he wants to speed up, making sure you feel every inch of him filling you. He builds a careful rhythm, keeping himself inside you just long enough that you feel used to it before he pulls out again, long strokes, trying not to rush.

"You look-" Your words are cut off as he pushes in again, lifting your body off the mattress slightly, winding any thought out of you.

He kisses your temple, speaking against your skin, "Yeah?"

You smile, catching your breath as you speak quietly, "Look so pretty, Dean."

He kisses you again, voice soft, "Says you-" he speeds up, only slightly, "-prettiest sight I'll ever see-"

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it was the first real time; the sultry focus from another man was sending an electric jolt straight to his groin. the idea of being wanted by a man was something new.

downing the rest of his whiskey in one sharp swallow, dean practically threw himself off the stool, rushing straight into the dim men’s washroom.

dean stumbled over to the sink, placing both hands down on the porcelain edge. he stared wide-eyed into the cracked mirror at his own blown-out pupils and flushed face, his breathing soft and strained.

slowly, his gaze drifted downward to the undeniable, hard tent stretching the front of his jeans. poor dean was nervous— completely out of his depth. his thumbs fidgeted anxiously inside his pockets as he tried to figure out how the hell to make it go away.

all the older brother needed was an easy pickup line, a confident smirk, and a girl whose name he’d forget by morning. he knew how to play that game in his sleep. but this? his brain racked over how to even approach a situation like this, or if he even wanted to.

dean turned the taps on the sink, trying focusing on "non-sexy" things— the mechanics of the impala's engine, the salt lines they needed to pour, cold lore books, anything to make his swollen cock go down. but every time he thought he had a handle on it, he imagined rough hands on him, instead of soft ones. the scrape of stubble against his throat. a deep voice telling him how good he's being.

his hand slid down the front of his jeans, palms smoothing over the undeniable, rigid bulge straining the denim. with his eyes squeezed tight against the glaring fluorescent light, he gently ground his hard length into his palm, a soft, helpless whimper catching in his throat at the pressure.

the man from earlier walked into the bathrom, stopping a respectful but close distance behind dean, looking at him through the glass.

"hey," the guy asked softly, his voice quiet. "you okay?"

dean stared at the ground, his voice barely a whisper. "fucking hell— yea i'm fine."

“you were staring pretty hard out there,” the man said quietly, eyes flicking over dean’s flushed face. “couldn’t help noticing. you looked like you wanted something.”

dean’s throat worked around nothing. he tried to find some smartass comment, but there was no mistaking the yearning in his emerald eyes. the raw, unspoken yes he couldn’t force himself to say out loud.

the man took one slow step forward, then another, until he was right in front of dean.

“have you ever…?” his hand lifted, smoothing a broad palm on dean’s chest, right over the frantic thud of his heartbeat.

dean shook his head, quick and small. “no,” he whispered. “never.”

the guy hummed, low and pleased. his eyes dropped lower, taking in the obvious, bulge still straining against dean’s jeans. leaning in far enough until his lips were barely a breath away from dean’s.

“did you ever think about being with one?” he murmured. . “y'know a man touching you , tasting you...”

dean’s breath stuttered. his cock twitched at the words, leaking against the inside of his boxers. shame and want twisted so tightly in his chest he felt dizzy.

“i… i don’t fucking know,” dean lied, barely audible. but his body betrayed him. he leaned forward just slightly, chasing the heat of the man’s body.

the guy’s hand slid lower, fingertips brushing over the waistband of dean’s jeans. “wanna be a good boy and let me to show you?”

dean’s answer was a broken, barely-there nod. his eyes fluttered half-shut, submissively, silently pleading.

the guy took dean’s hand and tugged him into the last stall, locking the door with a quiet click. as soon as they were closed in, he dropped to his knees on the dirty tile.

he yanked dean’s jeans and boxers down in one rough tug, freeing his thick cock. it bounced out heavy and leaking, the flushed head smearing a shiny trail of precome across the soft pudge of dean’s belly. his dark, unkempt bush curled at the base, damp with sweat.

“fuck, look at this pretty cock,” the guy breathed. “keeping something this nice away from guys like me— that’s a goddamn sin.”

dean’s face burned. “shut up— ah fuck,” he hissed, but the words died in a broken moan as the man leaned in and dragged his tongue slowly up the underside of his veiny shaft, collecting the bead of precome at the tip.

the first deep suck pulled a loud, desperate sound out of dean. “oh fu— fuck.” his hand shot to the guy’s hair, fingers twisting tight in the strands. the man’s throat relaxing as he took dean deeper, nose brushing against the sweaty, musky bush at the base. spit traveled down dean’s balls, and dropped onto the jeans at his ankles.

and then the bathroom door opened. two drunk guys walked in, laughing loudly, taking their time at the urinals. dean’s eyes snapped open, panic cutting through the pleasure.

“wait— there's people,” he whispered frantically, even as his cock twitched harder in the man’s mouth. the guy didn’t stop. he just looked up at dean with dark eyes and took him even deeper, throat squeezing around the head while spit ran messily down his chin.

dean bit his lip hard, trying to stay quiet, but soft, helpless whimpers kept escaping. “fuck i’m gonna—” his free hand pressed against the stall wall, knuckles white. sweat slicked down his lower back. every time the guy swallowed around him, gagging softly but never pulling off, dean felt his orgasm barreling closer.

the sloppy sounds mixed with the thigh pressure made dean unravel. he barely got the warning out before his cock pulsed hard, thick ropes of come spilling straight down the guy’s throat.

dean’s head fell back against the stall with a dull thud, a broken moan tearing from his chest as he came harder than he had. the guy kept sucking him through it, swallowing every drop, milking him with slow, lazy pulls until dean was shaking and oversensitive.

when the guy finally pulled off, lips glossy with come, he stood up slowly. before dean could catch his breath, the man cupped the back of his neck and kissed him messily. dean could taste himself on the guy’s tongue, salty and bitter, and it made his spent cock twitch weakly between them.

“you ever come around here again, ill be here,” he murmured against dean’s lips. then he stepped back, gave dean one last heated look, and slipped out of the stall.

dean stayed behind, back pressed to the wall, chest heaving. his lips felt bitten off. the taste of himself still sat heavy on his tongue. shame and confusion crashed back in hard, but underneath it all was a warm, secret thrill he couldn’t ignore.

“fuck,” he whispered into the empty stall, dragging a hand down his face.

dean knew it wouldn't be the last time.

You see the Impala outside the house and stop dead in your tracks. You look around, and then you see Dean sitting on the steps that lead to the front door. You hurry towards him, call out his name. He looks up, not seeing you at first and then he does. There’s something strange in his expression, but he covers it up with a charming smile. 

“What are you doing here?” you ask, throwing your arms around his shoulders. He hugs you back, but not with his usual fervor. You lean back, look at him. 

“Wanted to surprise you,” he says, and if it wasn’t for his tired look and tensed jaw, you’d almost believe him. 

“Come on,” you say, tugging on his hand and you lead him upstairs. 

You close the apartment door behind you and then Dean is already pressing you against it, kissing your neck. You close your eyes, sigh at the feeling of him. When he starts pulling on your clothes to undress you, you don’t question it. It’s not unusual for the first sex you have when you see each other again to be fast, needy, almost frantic. Only then, your first passions spent, can you focus more on each other, take things slower. 

Dean unbuttons the top button of your uniform, but then goes to push up the skirt of it instead. He’s even more desperate than usual, but you don’t mind, love that he wants you so badly. You unbutton his jeans, take his cock out. You quickly collect some spit on your fingers and then stroke him while you kiss him again. Dean’s breathing heavily, but he’s not getting hard as quickly as he usually does. It doesn’t bother you, but it bothers him.

“Let me—” he says. You let go of him and he spits into his hand, starts stroking himself, deep concentration on his face. You keep yourself busy kissing his face, running your hand through his hair and over his chest. He grunts, but it’s a frustrated one, not one of lust. 

“Let’s just try,” he says, grabbing at your thighs. You started taking birth control a while ago, so you don’t need to look for a condom. You’re still not sure if Dean has sex with other women during the long stretches you don’t see each other, but if he does, you trust him to be safe. 

Dean hoists you up and you giggle, kiss him again when you wrap your legs around him. He leans you against the door, pushes your underwear to the side, tries to enter you. It doesn’t work. 

“Fuck,” he curses under his breath. 

“Dean,” you say, stroking his face. “It’s okay, baby.” But he shakes his head. He puts you down, starts stroking himself again, one hand leaning against the wall while he looks down himself with his lip pulled up.

“Let me try,” you whisper to him, making your voice sound as seductive as possible. You drop to your knees, look up at Dean with big eyes. He looks at you, swallows, an unsure smile passing over his face. You take his cock from him, kiss it, then start running your tongue along it. 

Dean closes his eyes, concentrates on your touch, his fingers tangling in your hair. You take him into your mouth, hum at the taste of him, at the feeling. God, you’ve missed him. But soon Dean pulls back, his cock bobbing half hard, only having twitched once or twice in your mouth. 

“I think it’s—” he says, but doesn’t continue. He looks embarrassed. You stand up and kiss his cheek. 

“I’m really tired anyway, baby,” you say, run your fingers along his jaw. “Let’s just go to bed, okay? I just want to sleep next to you.” He nods, but he’s not looking at you. 

You pull off your uniform and then drag Dean’s jeans the rest of the way down, pull his shirt off him, drop it all on the floor there next to your door, something to take care of in the morning. You walk him into the bedroom, push him towards the bed, the one that now has a frame. You take off your bra and pull on the shirt you sleep in. You’ll forgo the shower. 

Dean lies down, somewhat reluctantly, and you lie next to him, wrap your arms and one leg around him. 

“This is nice,” you say. It’s the truth, but Dean scoffs a little. You frown. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask. Dean stares at the ceiling instead of looking at you. You can tell he’s turning things over in his head, is thinking through what he wants to say. You give him time, don’t rush him. 

“Sam left,” he finally says. You give him a moment to elaborate, but he doesn’t. 

“Left where?” you ask. Dean swallows. 

“He’s been applying to colleges,” he says. “Got into a few of them, even got a scholarship. He didn’t even tell me he was applying.” Dean swallows again. “He left.” 

Sam, going to college. You feel a rush of euphoria at the thought of it. You haven’t seen him in years, but you imagine him, the way you think he might look now, sitting somewhere in a lecture hall, books in front of him, his shy but brilliant smile, the one he uses so sparingly, filling his big, beautiful brain with knowledge. Away from the loud voice and harsh hands of John Winchester. 

You can’t help but imagine him coming into an empty apartment, much like you did not so very long ago. Feeling that freedom. Feeling like life, for the first time ever, belonged to him.

And the next second, you understand. That Sam left. That Sam left Dean. You cup Dean’s face and make him look at you. You think there’s tears in his eyes, and he blinks quickly to hide them. 

“This is a good thing, Dean,” you say, looking at him intently. Dean frowns, but you don’t let that deter you. 

“Sam is growing up,” you say, “and he’s choosing his own path. Don’t be mad at him because it’s not the same as yours.” Dean shakes his head. 

“I’m not mad at him,” he says, then makes a face. “I mean, I am, but it’s not that, it’s—” He stops himself, looks at your lips. He’s quiet for a while. A car drives by, someone yells something down in the street.

“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” Dean finally asks. “What do I do if I don’t… if I’m not looking after Sammy?” The love that explodes in your heart for the man next to you is almost painful. You pet his cheek. 

“You do whatever you want,” you say, a slight smile on your face. Dean looks back into your eyes. He looks so open and soft in that moment, like the boy he was when you met, the way he looked in that hospital waiting for news on his little brother. He looks terrified. 

“I don’t know what I want,” he says finally, almost whispers it. 

Dean turns his head, looks at the ceiling again, and you watch him. His features that you know so well. How could he possibly know what he wants? He’s been his father’s appendage all his life. Dean might have been raised to be tough, to be strong, to take punishment and give back twice as good. But he was never raised to think for himself. 

But also, also. Why isn’t his first instinct to see this as an opportunity to finally leave it all behind and be with you? You’ve been living in this arrangement for going on two years now. The feeling comes crawling back with a vengeance, that this is all so much more important to you than it is to him.

You press your lips together. This isn’t about you, and you shouldn’t try to make it. Dean is clearly in some sort of crisis. Sam’s leaving, and if you know anything about the Winchesters, you know he didn’t go quietly. It feels selfish to make it about yourself now. So you try to push the thought away.

“And now you get to find out,” you say. Dean turns back to you, looks unsure. 

“How do I do that?” he asks, and he sounds so young. Not like the man he’s grown up to be at all. You stroke his cheek again. 

“I’ll help you if you want,” you say. Dean chews the inside of his cheek. 

“I don’t know if my dad will like that,” he says, and he’s trying to bring sarcasm into his voice, like he wants you to think he doesn’t actually care what his father thinks, but of course he can lie to you no better than he’s lying to himself. “He was livid, basically threw Sam out the same night. He hasn’t been around much since.”

New and old anger at John comes rushing in, and you need to bite down on a destructive comment. You think for a second, think about what you want to say. Whether you want to reach out. Risk being rejected again.

“You know,” you say, and now you’re the one that’s lying, because you try to make it sound like a casual suggestion when it’s really not. “You could stay here for a while. Figure things out. I mean, better here than some shoddy motel, if your dad’s not around anyway.”

Dean is staring at you and you prepare yourself to be let down, for him to tell you that he will not be doing that. But something builds in his face, something careful and quiet. 

“You mean that?” he asks. You shrug.

“I mean it,” you say. “Long as you help with the dishes and, uhm, keep having lots of sex with me.” Dean grins a little, and so do you. Then suddenly he rolls over you, kisses you. 

“I love you,” he says into your mouth and you say it back, and then he’s kissing his way down your body. 

He pulls off your underwear, buries his face between your legs, presses himself close, lips and tongue immediately eager and hot. 

Dean stays between your thighs, and when you pull him up, shaky and hot, kiss yourself off his lips, you feel him hard and aching against your leg.

"Make love to me," you breathe into his mouth, and Dean pushes into you, hard and deep and claiming. He comes quickly, nose pressed against your cheek, and you could die from happiness.

You fall asleep in his arms, can't help feeling hopeful.

Having Dean there with you isn’t what you expect it to be. 

It’s a hundred times better.

He wakes you with kisses and a hand between your thighs. Makes coffee so strong it could wake the dead, the greasiest breakfast of all times. If you’re not working, he drags you back to bed, holds you close while the two of you doze off. If you have to work, he drives you. Gives you a sweet, lingering kiss. When you walk out after your shift, he stands there, leaned against the car. It takes you everything not to jump into his arms.

You plan trips, but never make them. There’s a national park nearby you’ve been wanting to go to and Dean says he’ll take you, but then you end up spending your free day in bed. You don’t mind. Just two days of not putting on any clothes except to open the door for the pizza delivery guy.

When you take Dean out with your friends, you can tell some of them are a little surprised he’s actually real. He stays close to you, beer in one hand, the other somewhere on your body. Charms the pants off everyone. Kay holds out the longest, arms crossed over her chest, studying him like he’s a stain on her boot. But you catch her giggling at something he says later on. It feels like a win.

You drag Dean close when the two of you get home - home - kiss him until you’re breathless. Push him back so he plops down on the couch, then get on your knees in front of him. Look into his eyes while you undo his belt buckle, an excited and unbelieving look on his face. You bite your lip, let it slip out between your teeth before you lower yourself.

"Oh shit," you hear him mutter, and grin to yourself.

When you come up for air and swallow, he’s got his head pressed back into the couch cushions, brows pushed together, eyes screwed shut. As you climb up next to him, his hand goes up and over his forehead.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, breathing hard. “What the fuck did I do to deserve that?” You giggle, press in close to him.

“Just been thinking about it all night,” you reply. Dean turns his head, studies your face. Then leans in, kisses you next to your nose.

“I'm a lucky guy,” he says and you lean your head on his shoulder with a big smile.

Dean does get restless, eventually. You ask him if he wants to get a job, maybe at a car shop, but he barely even answers. Instead, he finds a case.

At first he acts like he doesn’t care. Rips out the newspaper article like it’s muscle memory, then shakes his head, balls it up and throws it in the trash. Walks into the bathroom, and you walk over, fish it out of the basket. Put it on the table then return to where you were reading on the couch. When Dean comes back, you can see out of your periphery that he doesn’t sit down, instead stands there and looks at the piece of paper. Carefully and slowly, you look up at him. He’s rubbing the tips of his fingers together, then turns his head and looks at you. He chuckles as he sits down. 

You have some unused time off, and two days later, Dean comes back from picking up food for the two of you and you meet him in front of the house with packed bags. 

“We can eat on the road,” you say and grin at him. 

It’s your first ever case, and it’s not how you expect it to be. It’s more legwork, first of all, much more theory than you expected. Dean tells you that you have a knack for the research, and although he says it proudly, you can see the shadow of sadness that passes over his face for a moment as you’re sure he thinks of Sam. 

But he’s right, you are good at it. All these years of cataloguing books for Bobby seem to have paid off. Dean calls the old hunter once, and you talk to him on the phone for the first time in a long time. He still calls you “honey”. You almost ask after your mother, but then don’t. It feels like a different life now. Bobby doesn’t volunteer the information either. You wonder if that means it’s bad.

You see Dean in action for the first time, and it’s like so much more of him suddenly makes sense to you. The way he moves, the way he fights. Like he’s in his natural state, freed from everything that pulls at him. 

When you finally find the culprit – the ghost of a woman who killed herself – both of you nearly get your ass handed to you. You manage just in time to salt and burn her bones, but you’re bruised and battered when you get back to the motel. 

It doesn’t matter though. You fuck like you never have before. You’re lying flat on your stomach and Dean is over you, driving into you, fast and hard, arm clasped over your chest. One of your hands is desperately fisting the sheet, the other reaching back to grab hold of any part of Dean’s you can reach, your fingernails pressed into his flesh. You’re sore and hurt and you know Dean is too, but it’s like the two of you can’t stop yourself. You wring everything from your bodies, ready to pass out afterwards, the sheets and your hair wet with sweat. 

Under the shower in the morning, Dean picks you up, wraps your legs around his waist. Drives into you like it’s the only thing on his mind. You’re sore and tender now for other reasons, but you don’t want to stop either.

The next day, when you’re back in your apartment, you notice a bruise on your lower back from where Dean fucked you against the shower tiles. It’s right next to one you got from being thrown into an armchair by the ghost. You didn’t even notice when it was happening. He sees it and apologizes, says he’s sorry with widened eyes but the truth is, you love it. Love that this is your body and you can push it to the limits that you want. 

Back in your apartment, everything seems a little quieter, a little more relaxed. You make slow, sweet love in the mornings, then have coffee together before you go to your job at the occult shop. Dean spends his days researching and soon he finds another case.

You can’t join him on this one. You have work, can’t take more time off. Dean says you could just quit, that he’s got credit card scams and hustling pool to keep you both afloat. He says he’ll teach you, that having a pretty girl by his side will make him rich. You scoff, but don’t answer. You don’t like the thought of quitting your jobs. You enjoy the normality of it. The hunting is nice, an adventure, but it’s no way to live. You ask Dean to stay, not take on the case, but you see how restless it makes him. Finally, against every instinct, you tell him to go.

He returns, four nail-biting days later, days during which you’ve spent every waking moment waiting for him to call. Imagined him dead in a hundred million different ways. When he comes back, you hug him so hard you’re sure you bruise a rib. He’s fine, he assures you, but you don’t dare let go of him for even a second.

The next few days after this, you swarm around him like a moth around light. Cook for him, don’t let him out of your sight. Dean loves it, even though he acts like he doesn’t. It’s a different kind of heaven, one where both of you have clearly assigned roles, follow them to perfection. 

You the lover, Dean the loved. It doesn’t last, of course. 

The next case comes, and then the next one. On a few, you join Dean. There’s something about hunting that still attracts you, how outside of space and time and real life it is. No worrying about bills, or when you can get your landlord to fix the sink in the kitchen that keeps dripping. No worrying about physical pain or nightmares. It’s like being a ghost yourself, ironically. Nothing to keep you tied down, no responsibilities. It’s easy to disappear that way. It’s endlessly tempting. It’s terrifying. 

Some of the cases, you sit out, let Dean go, and these are the worst. You bring yourself to the edge of hysteria with worry, and while the relief is always immense when he’s back, it becomes more and more difficult to climb out of that hole. 

And then there are some cases that you beg Dean not to go on. Sometimes he listens, but you always pay for his safety with him sulking. A few times he says something about how innocent people may be dying and he’s not doing anything about it. It feels like he’s smearing their blood on your hands, too. You don’t talk for long stretches when he gets like this. He feels further away than if he was actually out there.

It’s on a case of the first variety, where you join Dean, that the topic of John comes up.

Dean doesn’t talk about Sam, even though you bring him up from time to time. Not to provoke, but simply because he is a part of your and Dean’s life, even if he’s not there right now. Dean doesn’t react well, stiffens, turns away. If you had photo albums, you think, you’re pretty sure you’d have a hard time finding any evidence of Sam ever existing. It makes you uncomfortable. This ability to act like something didn’t happen, like there’s something you’re not allowed to talk about. It reminds you too much of your childhood, of life in the church. Your room at your grandfather’s house. The creak of a wooden floorboard.

There’s a pastor called Jim that Dean takes you to. He’s a sweet man, and from talking to him, you learn that he often watched Sam and Dean when they were young. You give Dean a soft smile, run your hand along his arm. Remember those faraway days when the boys were at Bobby’s. The endless summers. The fear, the belief that there would never be anything else. That you would never be free.

It gives you whiplash to think about it. You’re dragged from your thoughts when the pastor speaks. 

“Heard about your old man and that ghoul case he was on,” he says, then chuckles a little. “Only a tough SOB like John could survive something like that.”

It’s minor, but you know Dean well enough to see it. The way the cup of coffee he’s holding stutters briefly on the way to his mouth. The slight crinkle next to his eyes, before he catches himself, chuckles along, like this is all so funny.

It settles in your stomach like a big, heavy rock. You keep watching Dean, keep trying to get him to look at you. When you walk out to the car, you expect him to broach the subject, but he doesn’t. 

You watch him while he drives. Usually he’d notice, but the way his finger is tapping against the steering wheel even though there’s no music, his narrowed eyes and the clenching and unclenching of his jaw tell you he’s far away.

“You should check in on him,” you say, voice soft. Dean blinks, looks over at you, and the way you see his entire demeanor change to pretend he’s right there with you breaks your heart. 

“Who?” he says. You press your lips together.

“Your father,” you say. Dean looks forward again, doesn’t answer.

It hasn’t been long that Dean’s been living with you - a couple of months. But you’re not sure if he’s talked to John at all in that time. It’s strange, thinking he hasn’t. But you can easily imagine John punishing his older son for picking you, just like he’s punishing Sam for picking college with a total break of all contact. Or that’s what you think, until Dean drags you from your thoughts when he speaks.

“I’ve been seeing him,” he says. You frown, not understanding. Dean’s still not looking at you, but you see the flare of his nostrils that tells you he’s nervous about something. “I mean, we’ve been working some cases together.”

You keep looking at Dean. Not understanding, and then you slowly do.

“The cases you’ve done on your own?” you ask. Dean shoots you a look, nods, looks forward again. “But…”

You’re lost for words. Dean’s been lying to you. Now that you think about it, he’s been less insistent on having you join him on cases. You thought it was because he didn’t want you to get hurt, or saw how important your regular life is to you. He’s also been even more frustrated when you ask him not to go. Because he was going to work with John. Because he had to tell his father that he had to stay home with you.

“What the fuck, Dean,” you press out. “Why… why didn’t you tell me? Why would you lie?” Dean shifts.

“Because I know what you think of him,” he replies. You open your mouth, lips moving, but no words come out, too overwhelming is the insanity of what you’re hearing. You close your mouth again, bring your hands up to your face. Try to calm yourself.

“I’m sorry,” you hear Dean say, his voice challenging even in his apology. You take another deep breath, then drop your hands, look at him.

“Don’t fucking lie to me,” you say, tone somewhere between angry and pleading. “You can’t do that, Dean.” You see him swallow, before he nods. 

“I know,” he replies. You stare at him for a moment longer. Sigh.

“Pull over,” you say. 

Dean shoots you a look. Maybe he thinks you’ll make a scene, get out of the car and threaten to walk. There’s nothing but endless miles of forest around you, so you’re not about to do that.

Dean pulls over by the side of the road. He doesn’t turn to you, and you hope it’s because he feels ashamed. To make up for the distance, you scoot closer to him on the bench. He finally looks at you, face like a dog expecting to get hit on the nose with the newspaper. 

“Look,” you say, making your voice soft. “There are many violent, mean things I would like to do to your father.” Dean scoffs, and you can tell even in that little noise that speaking ill of John still feels like blasphemy to him. So you reach out, take his hand.

“But he’s your father,” you say. “I know I can’t make you… choose between us. If you want to know how he’s doing because someone said he got his ass kicked on a case, then that’s okay.”

Finally, finally, Dean turns towards you fully. He brings his arm up, lays it over the back of the bench, fingers stroking your shoulder.

“You’re sure?” he asks and you take a deep breath, let it out slowly. 

“It’s not about me, Dean,” you answer. “I’m here, okay. I’m in. But I can’t do it on my own.”

It feels like a very adult thing to say. Dean looks at where his fingers are touching you, then nods.

“Okay,” he says. You nod when he looks at you.

“Okay,” you say, wishing he would finally give you more.

Dean leaves as soon as the two of you return home. Doesn’t even unpack his bag. You try to act supportive through it all. You walk him down to the car, kiss him before he gets in. When he drives off, you want to lie down in the middle of the street.

You wait for him to call, but he doesn’t. It makes you angry, then it makes you sad, then it makes you angry again. That he wouldn’t go the extra mile, already knowing that this is hard for you. That you always have to make up for the space in between.

He doesn’t call you and then suddenly he’s back. Light and airy and loving, but you find yourself unable to melt into his affection the way you usually do. It feels fake. It feels like a lie. 

It feels like he’s buttering you up for whatever comes next.

You find out why a few days later.

Dean greets you at the door when you come home. You force a smile when he kisses you, then press past him into the apartment.

“I got us dinner,” he says, pointing at a big bag from the Chinese place down the street you like. 

“That’s great,” you say, your voice sounding all wrong. “Just gonna grab a shower.” You turn without another word, walk into the bathroom. 

Under the warm spray, you stare at the tiles. Realize you’ve zoned out. You feel tired, and you don’t think you should be. You walk back out to see Dean on the couch, doing his darndest to act like he’s just casually sitting there. But the tension in his shoulders, the fidgeting of his hands is enough to give him away.

You sit down next to him with a sigh. Look at him and he needs a few seconds to return your gaze.

“What’s up?” you ask. He takes a deep breath.

“Talked to my dad today,” he says. You don’t nod, don’t smile. Don’t give any indicator to what you’re feeling. Simply keep listening to him. 

“He, uh, he thinks he might have a lead,” he says. You raise your eyebrows just a little.

“Lead on what?” you ask. Dean licks his lips.

“The thing that killed my mother,” he says. 

You look down at the couch, the fabric between you two. You can’t even win against John. There’s no way you can win against Mary.

You stand up without another comment, walk over to where Dean’s taken the boxes of food out of the bag. You reach out to open one of them, then realize you have no appetite. Drop your hands, and turn around.

You look at Dean, watch him as he shifts around. He can’t meet your gaze.

It slowly washes over you. The understanding of it all.

“You’re not staying,” you say, and it’s not a question. “You’re going back.” You see Dean’s brow crease, but he doesn’t even bother to deny it. In a way, you’re thankful for that. You’re too exhausted to fight him.

“He needs me,” Dean says, finally looking up. He looks as sorry as he’s ever been. You take a slow breath.

“What about me?” you ask. Dean gives a small smile.

“You don’t need me,” he says. “You’re… you’re tough. Different tough. And I’ll be back here before you know it. I promise.” 

“But you won’t!” you reply, your voice cracking on the last word. Dean gives you a blank stare. You take a sharp breath, but it’s out now.

“You’re not really here,” you continue, tone becoming a little desperate as your own words pierce something inside of you, something you’ve kept down and haven’t looked at for fear of seeing what it is, how big it is. “You’re out the door every chance you get, every fucking thing that could be a case, and you’re chasing it.” You sniff, quickly run the back of your hand over your nose.

“And I’m here, trying to keep up this pretense that we have a normal life,” you continue, unable to stop now. You’re a runaway train. “And then you’re here, but I can tell you’re not really. You’re mad at me, because I don’t come with you, and because you think I’m judging you for wanting that life. And I just feel like you don’t even fucking want me. I’m just the place you come to if you need to lick your wounds and get fucked without working for it.” 

You can feel tears filling your eyes, snot building in your nose. You sound dramatic, a little shrill, but Jesus, you didn’t know you had this in you. The wish and need to have some kind of normalcy has been your constant companion, but the urge to burn it all down and live wild and reckless and self-destructive is there just as much. And if you’re being honest, you’ve hated Dean a little for getting to indulge in both while you don’t. While you’re here, holding up the walls.

“And you say you want all this,” you continue, your chest heaving in a quick sob, tears now coming, “you say you want what we have here, but I don’t think you really do. I think you want it when you’re out there in the guts and blood, but when you’re here, you realize it bores you. That I bore you.”

You need to stop talking then, a volley of sobs leaving you, your body desperately trying to suck in air. There’s tears now freely running down your face but what also happens is that the fist in your chest has loosened. The fist you’ve been trying so hard to ignore.

Dean has been listening to you, not moving, not commenting. His expression is unreadable, somewhere between confused and awe-struck, but really neither. When you stop talking is the first time he moves since your confession started.

“Sweetheart,” is the first word out of his mouth, and it nearly splits you in half with how softly he says it.

You slowly exhale through your nose. You could tell him you need him too - it’s the truth. Guilt him into staying. It’s a childish thought, but you feel like you’re due one. But Dean’s already made up his mind. Adding more guilt to his decision to put his father and his insane mission of revenge first doesn’t really help anyone.

But it also means you need to draw a line, or things will just keep repeating themself.

“I can’t do this anymore,” you say, voice soft. You can tell Dean is trying hard not to show any kind of reaction, but you see the twitch in his features. Maybe he was expecting you to just keep doing what you’ve been doing. But you’re tired of not being enough.

For a moment, you hope that he's going to fight it. Maybe tell you that soon, things will change, that he’ll really be with you, forever this time. But then he nods slowly.

“I get that,” he says.

You want to step forward, straddle him, climb onto him, hold him, make him stay. But you’re not sure you can without breaking apart, so you don’t.

Dean packs his things for the last time. You sit at the kitchen table, the food gone cold, stare out the window. You don’t want to watch.

You walk him to the apartment door where he stops. He turns around, looks at you. His gaze goes over your face, and you wonder if he’s trying to commit you to memory.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. You nod. You don’t think you’ve ever been this tired in your life.

“I know,” you say. “Me too.” The two of you look at each other, and then you hug. You close your eyes, take a deep breath. The thought of never touching Dean again is the worst you’ve ever had.

Dean lets go first, opens the door and walks outside. You stand on the landing, watch as he walks down the stairs. He doesn’t look back.

You walk back inside and slowly close the door. Turn, and sink to the floor with your back pressed against it. Stare off at nothing until you hear the Impala roar to life downstairs and speed off. Keep sitting there. For a long, long time.

Next time on SUN BLEACHED FLIES:

“That guy has been watching you for, like, ten minutes now,” she says. You blink yourself out of your thoughts, look at her. Then follow her gaze.

He hasn’t changed much. He’s still as beautiful as daylight, as pretty as the moon. He’s wearing his oversized leather jacket, collar popped. Bottle of beer in front of him, but his hands are intertwined where he’s leaning forward. He nods at you with a raise of his chin, a small smile on his lips.

“What the hell is that?” 

He shakes the foot that felt the tickle. Up top, he’s trying his best to keep himself from flailing. 

It’s hard to keep calm when your hand’s patting him square between his shoulders. It’s uncalled for as you pull yourself to his side. Wading as one with the ocean. 

“It’s just kelp,” you say. The ripples your fingers make against the sun-kissed current cling to your shape as your hair does to your scalp. 

At least your bra is covering your nipples. 

He’s in his boxers, and sure, your panties cover less thigh, but you still have two pieces of clothing protecting you from the elements. The size and cut of the fabric have nothing to do with it. Dean has more dangly bits. Excuse him for not caring for whatever’s feeling him up when he’s sporting bait without the tackle on account of the shrinkage he’s got going on.

Of course, you make it worse. Dean hears each word clip your teeth as you mutter “Or a shark.”

He spins around, nudging you into the surf with his newfound momentum, so it’s your arms doing the flailing. No longer his. 

You pay him back by pulling him down with you into the brilliant green and blue depths. To Bruce’s lair. Though it’s gonna be someone’s locker or his own soon if he’s not careful. He’s gotta keep his head above the water and just keep swimming. Damn, Dory never worried ‘bout great whites. Least not with her memory. Dean’s works way too well for his liking. 

Lake Manitoc. A B&B in Connecticut, even though he didn’t end up wet. There are too many things that can go wrong when you can’t see past the legs of your underwear. His bowed ones are there somewhere. He kicks them. His feet tread through the brine. 

“Hey,” he splutters. Gargles the surf. Saltwater sluices his chin as he bobs back up and wipes his face. He skims the foam off the top of the sea to splash you some more with the other hand, but you cling to it. The smile on your face has him giving in. 

His arm pulls you closer, palm squeezing your slippery side as tight as he can as another wave washes through you both. 

He lets it. Goes with the tide because he can still touch the bottom if he needs to. Can still pull him and you out and back to the shore with little effort if he has to, but he doesn’t. He sinks down to his shoulders instead, pulling you further into him bridal style, like he’s stepping over a different threshold. One that’s just as scary and looming over him.

“Told you it’d be fine.” Your arm swings around his neck. Your free hand rests across his tattoo, smoothing the salt and seawater further into his pores. If only you could trace the mischief bubbling under his skin. 

“Oh, I knew I’d be fine.” He grins. His hand reaches for yours, still draping over his shoulder, and grips your wrist, raising it above his head like he’s removing a tie or his flannel. Even dips himself further again into the water, asking slow and deliberate, "Question is—are you?”

Before you can react, he’s let you go into the next wave. You’re slippery enough, you slide back in. 

Your head goes under; hands peek out above the white tips of the swell. Until he pulls you back into the safety of his frame before you can drift too far out to sea and away from him again.

“Asshole.” There’s no bite to it, ‘cause you’re the one sputtering this time. Wiping your face, you follow down the smooth ends of your hair.

“You’re the one who mentioned sharks.” He can’t hide his grin.

“It was a joke.” You dip your head back into the water. Run both hands over the mop on your head, only to perk back up, skin flushed beneath that bra of yours, jiggling for him. You stare him down when you use the next wave to your advantage. “Are you afraid of sharks?” you say, serious now. Concern flickers in your eyes like you’ve decided it must be so.

“No.” He kicks his foot off the seabed. Tiptoes, quick. Barely there in the sand, but enough to piston himself to rise with the next wave. 

Dean could do this all day. The sea is a spell. The way it cleanses his body and lifts him like he’s weightless. Takes the worry out of his spine and the tension out of his joints. Lets him relax—almost. If it weren’t for the constant gauge of your abilities to keep your own head up.

You swim after him, though. The tide gives you a lift. It’s as if it wants you in his arms, too, even though he’ll continue to pretend you’ve usurped him in some way. 

The ocean may be pretty, but so are you and Baby. The sand tints the sea like the sun’s rays tint her dash, or your eyes when they stream through the windshield. The depths, deep and transverse, like the night sky, blanket the open highway. The stars that scatter across that very sky are as lovely as the ripples you still make in the vast body of water before him. 

It’s different from what he knows, that’s all. S’not that he’s afraid. Just uncertain with the unknowing. To come here and do this with you without forethought or a plan or a towel waiting with your discarded clothes. 

It’s exhilarating, yet he’s shut it away and out of his mind. Like the seabed below, it will drop off. So will Dean when he allows himself, but for now the ocean keeps him upright as it continues to surround him. 

You surround him, too. He stills and waits as your arms loop back around his shoulders. Head tilting opposite to yours as he nips at the silt on your lips.

He takes a second taste in search of what makes you, you. Your fingers, now twirling through the hair at the base of his neck, give a gentle tug, drawing him back to look into your eyes.

“So what’s got you so antsy?” Drops of seawater cling to your forehead. Dean thumps his own against them and yours. 

“Nothing.” He swipes at those clinging to your cheek with his thumb. He’s earnest until he adds, “just swimming with fish gunk.”

You snicker. The question’s in your gaze. Seeming unsure how to take what he’s said when the idea of them floundering through your feet doesn’t bother you one bit.

“They’re crapping in here.”

You bite your lip. Your cheeks, now higher, fuel him on.

“Getting their rocks off!”

That continuous snicker you’re now containing bursts through a raspberry that has even Dean beaming at himself and his own antics. He could’ve said worse. He does. “Those drops on your face. Got fish-spunk in ‘em.”

Your “What?” is half-humoured. Your face; your smile; those lips. You detach your hold on his shoulders, but don’t bother wiping the remaining patches of ocean off you. Dean does.

He halts you. Runs his palms and thumbs through said spunk, and keeps you from moving any further. 

He pulls on your jaw and captures your lips again before you can call him out on his contradiction or the next wave rolls over you. 

He leans back into it. Lets the ocean lift you both. Your weight, a mass of slippery flesh, covers him with a heartbeat that presses against his chest.

It’s hard to stay still once the current smooths and flattens across the ever churning surface. The waves rise and fall. Only when they fall is he ever truly free. You’re still in his arms, but your legs, splaying out behind you, turn you into a raft, making him the dead weight hanging off of you. 

He lets you go for air. The wet smack sounds over the rolling tide, bracketing your words on one end. “So you’re not afraid of the ocean?” you chuckle.

“The ocean?” 

You chuckle again, repeating those three syllables so he hears it a third time with another roll of a wave.

But your eyes widen. Your laughter turns into a cackle. It’s like he’s fallen flat on his face or been upturned and flipped by the foamy edges crashing and now tumbles below the bubbles and rips of the undertow. 

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“You are.”

He’s what now? Last he checked, he was drifting in this mess with you. Swimming with the fishes, just not dead yet.

“Am not.” He’s defiant. His fingertips still tease your skin beneath the surface, and your chin. He’s clinging to you, sure. Keeping his feet well off the ocean floor, aware of the depths below you both, and how far away the beach meets the shore.

“What is it then?”

He pulls his legs up and under him. Paddles himself ‘round, just not all the way so his eyes can stick to the sheen of the beach, even as your arm snakes over his shoulder, splaying your hand on his chest once more. 

You squeeze him as he’s done you, not just here, but whenever either of you needs grounding. It’s not that he fears anything. He’s just never been in it before. 

The water is deep, and the waves can be rough, but it’s beautiful and exciting. He wants to stay right here next to you for as long as he can float because he knows you’re enjoying yourself. He wants to enjoy it, too.

“S’nothing,” he says when he feels your gaze on his salt-crusted cheeks. He grips your wrists tight, raises your arms—again. Lets you slip back into the swell, because you haven’t learned your lesson, it would seem.

You can swim. So can he. It’s if you sink to the bottom or not that’s the worry. He sees your tangle of hair and your arms moving to bring you back to him. Though that shiny ring on your left hand is gonna pull one or both of you down if he lets the weight of it get the better of him. 

He doesn’t want that.

No, he wants to keep your head above the water like he does his own. Be your raft and keep you swimming and living for as long as he can by his side. 

You’re back by his side now, where you belong. He pulls you in, and this time he doesn’t let you go; only holds you closer. Feels how carefree life can be, even in uncertainty. Reminds himself how far he’ll go to stay near you. How far he’ll chase.

“Have you had enough yet?” he mumbles as he looks into your eyes. He has, but he’ll let you decide. 

“Never.” Your irises flicker. You draw him in, and you don’t let him go. “The fish-spunk suits you.”

You lick your lips.

He samples yours again.

Salt and sugar don’t just look the same.

Thank you for reading ❤️ Please consider dropping a like, comment or reblogging if you enjoyed this. You can find my other works here.

But it never goes further than that. Not ever. One of you always stops it, usually you- pulling back and slumping against the mattress like it's not supposed to tear Dean apart the way he wants to keep going so bad. But he'll laugh, he'll grin and joke and pretend he's drunker than he is. And in the morning neither of you will mention it- why would you mention a thing like that? It's just a kiss.

He's staring at you across the small booth, lost in the way your eyes look in the dim light of the bar. He thinks you look beautiful, but he won't tell you that. It's not the sort of thing he says to you.

"-and then he actually went and knocked the whole top off!" You laugh, telling the end of a story Dean wasn't listening to.

Sam laughs next to him, clearly he was listening, "No way! How did the cop not see him?"

"Guess he had that magic touch!"

Both of you break into another fit of laughs. Dean feels guilty for not paying attention- he likes your stories. He picks at the label on his empty beer bottle, willing himself to pay attention to the words instead of the way your lips are moving.

You stand, grabbing the bottle out of his hand as you flash him a smile, "My round."

Dean doesn't watch you walk away. He's trying not to be obvious.

All the same, Sam knocks his knee under the table- a silent question.

Dean looks at him, "What?"

"You good?"

"Yeah- yeah course I am."

"You keep zoning out."

"I'm fine, just a weird hunt-" Twelve hours ago you were bleeding out in Dean's arms while Sam tried to fight off two ghouls, your blood soaking through his jeans as he kept you awake, "-nothing another beer won't fix."

"You and her-" Sam starts, not sure how he's going to finish.

Dean doesn't let him try, "I'm worried she's gonna rip those stitches if she keeps moving around."

"They're small, they'll stay." Sam assures him, then adds "That it?"

"That's it." Dean isn't willing to give in to the inevitable conversation.

"Just- you're getting real close recently-"

He practically rolls his eyes, "She's my best friend."

Sam feigns mock anger.

"You're my brother- I didn't get to pick you."

"But you picked her?" Sam raises an eyebrow.

"She's a friend. That's it. Drop it." Dean's tone doesn't allow room for question.

"You sure? Coz you're not looking at her like a friend." Sam questions anyway.

"I'm looking at her like a hunter. A hunter who's gonna tear her stitches." He lets out a sharp breath through his nose.

"All I'm saying is- if this is gonna get... messy-"

"It's not gonna get-"

"If it's gonna get messy, you need to give me a heads up. She's my friend too."

You cut them off as you walk back over, carelessly setting down three more beers on the table. You look at Sam, "Go get her, tiger!"

"What?" Sam laughs.

"The girl by the bar, talked you up to her- only thing is she thinks your name is Roosevelt."

"Roosevelt?"

"Same as her dog- it's like a fate thing."

Sam raises an eyebrow.

You laugh, "Just go with it! She's cute!"

Sam doesn't need convincing, he grabs his beer and slides out of the booth, giving Dean one more glance before he moves away.

You take your seat back opposite Dean, still grinning, "Now we've just gotta find a girl for you!"

Dean doesn't say what he wants to say. Instead, "I'm too fuckin' exhausted for that."

You laugh, "The Great Dean Winchester is too tired to get laid? Never thought I'd see the day!"

"Give me one decent night sleep and I'll be back to normal, I promise." he jokes.

"You're always coming up with excuses- what was it last time? Nowhere to buy a condom?"

"Hey- that's not an excuse, I take that shit seriously-"

"I don't remember the last time you even thought about taking a girl back. How long's it been, huh?"

Dean doesn't want you doing the math on how long he's gone without sex- the math on how desperate he's pretending not to be- "Speak for yourself- god knows how long it's been since you've been laid!"

Two months. Dean remembers the hickey that stayed on your neck for a week. The feeling he had seeing you walking around with a reminder of someone else on your skin. How sick he felt until it faded.

You blush slightly at his words, but take another sip of beer, "Find me a guy who's actually worth going home with and I'll find you my plans for the night."

⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆｡˚ ☽ ˚｡⋆

When Sam strikes out three drinks later, Dean's thankful. He doesn't mean to be, but he's been watching you fidget with the glass bottle with a desperate hope you have the same feeling he has. That feeling that mistakes are ready to be made.

By the time you stagger back to the motel, Sam's drunker than the two of you put together. The walk should only take five minutes, but with him slumped over your shoulders it takes fifteen. He's already half asleep when Dean gets the door open for him, helping him past the threshold so he can collapse against the bed.

Then he looks back at you. You're still stood in the doorway, just watching him. He doesn't know if its an invitation- if you know what he wants- or if you're just being cautious. He never knows with you, he can't work you out. You're just a friend, a friend he never stops thinking about, a friend he pictures spending the rest of his life with, a friend he needs more than he's ever needed anything.

He raises an eyebrow, "I'll walk you back?"

You nod, a small smile spread across your face.

Dean trails you to your room. Sam wouldn't say anything even if he was sober, this isn't an unusual sight. Dean always complains about the way Sam snores, about how sleeping with you is just easier.

He watches the back of your head, the way your hair falls as you step into your room, throwing your things down onto the tiny wooden table. He steps up behind you slowly, you don't move, just relax your shoulders slightly as you feel his presence behind you.

"I missed you." Dean speaks quietly, like he's afraid he's gonna say something stupid.

"I've been here all night." You laugh, still not turning around.

"I missed you."

You finally turn, looking back up at him, your eyes still sparkling like they did at the bar.

He brushes his hand across your cheek, moving a hair out of your face as he stares down at you, "You have a good night?"

You smile, "Course I did, it's always fun watching Sam get drunk."

He feels his heart pounding in his chest as he looks at you, that tingling in his fingertips that tells him he's drunker than he feels. That's what he'll pin this on- the alcohol- like he always does. He's been good at lying to himself recently, good at pretending he doesn't feel anything more. Today was a fluke, a weird moment where he couldn't stop staring- but he'll be back to himself by tomorrow. Back to being able to ignore that ache in his gut only you can resolve.

He won't admit he wants more than this, not to you, not to himself. That he wants more than stupid drunken kisses and hesitant mistakes. But if that's what you want, that's what he'll give you. That's what he'll give you every damn time.

His hand moves down as he runs his knuckle across your jaw, thumb finding your bottom lip, sweeping across it as he allows himself one moment of truth, "You look beautiful. I always think you look beautiful."

You reach down the hem off your shirt, pulling it up off your body without another word. Dean wets his lips as he takes a small step back, letting his eyes gloss over you. He's seen you like this hundreds of times- only a few hours ago he saw the same thing when he stitched up your abdomen, but he doesn't look there now. He's too distracted by your chest, the way your bra hugs your tits, rising and falling as you take in a short breath.

He leans down slowly, until his lips are almost touching yours, his eyes still trained on you. He could stop here, he could make this easy for himself, he could let the night pass without the taste of you waking him in the morning.

But then you push yourself up, closing the gap, until your lips press softly together. Dean's heart stutters when he feels the way you relax into the kiss, like maybe you've been waiting to do this just as long as he has.

His hand finds your waist without him meaning to, fingers wrapping around your body to pull you closer. His other hand reaches up, moving to the crook of your neck, running his thumb along your jaw. He feels your own hand find his nape, your fingers threading through his hair. You smile against him, unmistakable.

He pushes you back slowly, carefully, until the back of your legs hit the bed. This is moving quicker than it should, messier than it should, but Dean needs this. There's a chance that this will be the night you'll let it go further, that you'll let him give you everything he can. He's not willing to waste a second.

You collapse against the bed, Dean doing his best to lower you slowly against the mattress, though you both fall with a clumsiness he'll pretend doesn't make his heart tight. He likes being clumsy with you, it feels safe, like you won't judge him for any mistakes he makes.

He pulls at his own T-shirt, dragging it over his head and throwing it to one side in a move designed to get his chest closer to yours. He can feel the heat from your skin instantly as he presses himself against you, his hands finding their places back on your body. He holds the kiss, his tongue darting out to drag along your lips, his fingers curling against your skin.

He moves, planting light kisses along your jaw, the hand on your waist trailing up your body until he's running his thumb along the bottom of your bra. He nips at your earlobe, making your lean into him, your back arching as your breasts push against his chest.

He speaks without deliberateness, "I've been thinking about you all day- everything I wanna do to you-"

He never normally talks, something about keeping it silent makes it feel like you could be anyone- but you're not anyone. Dean wants you to know it's him, and the way you react to his words- the way you lean into him, a small gasp escaping your lips- clearly you do too.

He fumbles out something else, just to feel you move again, "I wanna touch every part of you-"

You reward him by kissing across his temple, your own hands running down his back, pulling him into you, heated.

"I want to see what you look like without this bra- wanna see these gorgeous tits-" He starts to regret it as soon as he says it, like it's something too primitive, but you keep kissing him, your nails dig into his skin, and he realizes maybe that's what you want too. Maybe he can't have everything- the affection and tenderness- but maybe, at least, he can have this.

He pushes it further, testing how far you'll let him go as he spills his secrets in a whisper, "I want to make you come on my fingers, want to know what it sounds like when you're moaning my name-"

This has never been part of the deal, anything more than soft kisses and groping hands. But Dean means it, he's thought about it constantly- every night since the first time you made out in messy drunken heap on an old motel bed. He's thought about all of it, how he'd touch you, how you'd react. He's touched himself with the images flashing through his mind, felt guilty after when he remembers who you are.

But you're responding. You're here, right now, and you're actually responding. Not with words, but with your body, the way you start grinding up against him, the way you pull him in close, the way a small gasp escapes your lips.

"I wanna fuck you with my tongue."

God he means it. That's all he wants, all he's wanted for months.

He feels you pull back slightly, slumping back against the mattress as you angle your body to push him away from yours. He swallows hard, heart pounding, that drunken feeling filling his body again. He doesn't want this to stop. It can't.

It doesn't. He realizes you're reaching for the top of your pants, kicking them off your legs before Dean even knows what's happening. He doesn't question it, just follows suit, fumbling at his belt so he can throw his own jeans off next to yours.

Your knees collide, the biting pain making Dean feel real- tangible- every sensation suddenly amplified. The way the pads of his fingers feel against your skin, your breath against his body. He knows he's drunk, that's why he feels like this, but he doesn't regret a thing.

Especially not when you let out a small laugh, pulling your knee back as your face twists into a mixture of pain and amusement, "Goddamn-"

You've spoken, breaking the seal that Dean didn't even realize was there. It makes him realize how desperate he is to hear more, how much he needs your voice.

He moves back against your body, tangling his bare legs into yours, pushing a knee up between your thighs. You react instantly, letting out a small gasp, pulling him closer, your lips landing on his shoulder in messy confusion.

He speaks quietly, grinding his knee against you, "I want to make you come so many times you don't even remember your name, I want you sobbing into the sheets-"

You moan against him, "Dean-"

Jesus he thinks he's gone to heaven in that moment, just hearing you say his name sends his brain fuzzy. He grips your waist tighter, fingers curling against your skin with a hunger he can't explain.

You bite down on his shoulder- Dean can't tell if you're trying to push him over the edge or if you're just trying to keep yourself quiet. Either way, the soft sting makes his cock jump, his jaw tightening as he lets out a sharp grunt.

He knows he should keep it down, that tonight shouldn't happen like this, but he doesn't care. Sam won't hear through the thin wall. He's too drunk. Sam won't know and you won't say and this can be your little secret. Your secret that he never wants to end.

He lowers his face until his lips are resting on the shell of your ear, his breath caught, "I wanna fuck you raw- want you to feel me come inside you-"

This is it. He can feel it. Your hands are grabbing at him, lips against his collarbone, hips grinding up. This is everything he's been so desperate for- fuck this is actually happening.

He moves down fast, lips against you- your jaw, your neck, your tits. He drags his tongue down, the feeling running down his whole spine as he realizes how good you feel, your chest right there, your eyes on him. He looks up as he moves lower, keeping his gaze trained on your face, the way you bite your lip absentmindedly.

He settles between your thighs, then look back down at your underwear. He holds his breath as he takes you in, this sight he's been so desperate to see. He reaches up towards your waistband, running the tips of his fingers along it.

You lift your hips off the mattress, a soft desperation spilling from your lips.

He can't believe the way you're looking at him, like he's something so special, so beautiful. No- no he really can't believe it. That's not how you look at him- that's not how friends look at each other. He's pushed this too far, too quickly- what if this is something you'll regret? A mistake that festers and eats.

He glances up towards the gauze on your abdomen, the one he put there only hours before. There's a tiny patch of blood starting to seep through, bright red and striking against the white of the bandage. The exact thing Dean's been worried about all night, sitting in front of him like a slap in the face.

He can't stop himself, he looks back up at you, propping himself up slightly, "Your stitches-"

"I'm fine-" you laugh, lifting your hips towards him again.

You're not. He knows you're not. He pictures you bleeding out in his arms, how warm your body was against his legs, how your blood soaked under his nails.

He was distracted. That's why you got hurt today- because he was distracted, he wasn't thinking, he was an idiot. He's always distracted by you.

And this is only going to make it worse- knowing what you look like with your underwear off. How's he supposed to focus when he knows a thing like that? When he knows what you feel like? What you taste like?

He pulls back, staring up at you, "Sweetheart-"

You swallow, it's like you know what he's going to say. You fall silent, letting him finish.

He doesn't want to. He wants you to stop him. But you don't, "-we're too drunk for this."

You nod, a small smile, "Aren't we just drunk enough?"

Don't make this harder, he wants to say, please don't make this harder. "We can't."

You nod again, and Dean wonders if the look on your face is regret over his words or regret this ever happened. He keeps one finger tracing your waistband for just a moment more, and then pulls back completely, staring down at your body like he's trying to sear it into his mind.

For a moment you just gaze at him, and then you shift on the bed, moving to one side to make space for him to lay next to you.

He looks at the blank space, willing himself to move into it. He wants to feel you next to him, wants to feel the warmth from your body as he falls asleep. These days it's the only thing that can make him settle, the feeling of you right there. And you're looking at him like that's what you want too.

But he knows he can't. Not after everything he said. Not after everything he's done. He needs to forget tonight, forget all of his feelings for you. He needs to get as far away from you as possible. At least right now, while his mind's still swimming and his cock's still throbbing and his fingers are still tingling.

He stands, quickly, trying not to look at the way your face seems to fall into confusion and longing. He swallows, looking away from you, "I need to go-"

"You don't have to."

He looks back, then regrets it, he can't see you right now, not if he wants to lie to himself, "I- I should check on Sammy-"

"You can stay."

"I'll tell him I was snoring- you kicked me out coz I was being too loud-"

"Dean- I-"

"You-" he sighs, "-You need to sort your stitches out before they get worse-"

You don't reply, just give a small nod.

reporting bias: yet another confounding factor found in both placebo and placenta effect studies; while the placebo effect is often noted by those conducting a study, for those experiencing the placenta effect, parties who are close to the non-committed partners will often learn of their initial inept compliance; it is also not uncommon for one or both of the non-committed partners to realise their errors during the reporting bias stage, and as a result become distressed

Thank Chuck for a darkened room, even if the curtains let a little too much in from the outside world. It was still far better than walking across the floor in only his boxers and a shirt, with it all lit up the way it’d been before he’d entered the motel bathroom. 

Dean hadn’t thought to pack anything other than the clothes on his back, what with the sudden rush to leave the bunker. He didn’t think you’d be out on the road this long, let alone this far east of Omaha. Nor did he account for the motel’s lack of a rollaway or sofa-bed, either, when you checked into the room. 

But there he was, him, you and Jody, bunking together again because even he wasn’t capable of driving that far in one day. Him and you sharing the bed, which, perfect. Missouri’s words still hung over him like the stench of soured milk he’d likened them to.

“Don’t you lose her, too.” Yeah—thank Chuck for a darkened room again. He’d have settled for the hot-tub he’d slept in at a Knight’s Inn once if it meant he got some shut-eye. He’d give his organs up to protect you and Jody if he kept what dignity he had left. But he could see that wasn’t happening. Not with you sleeping next to him, that is. 

Missouri’s words weren’t the only thing getting him bothered under the collar. He’d say hot, but that was more dangerous than thinking ‘bout the lacy number he’d glimpsed at the gas station earlier. He was outnumbered, three to one with you and its partner, which was why he insisted you and Jody take the first showers. 

Two weeks on from the sewer pipe and the purity spell had given him a lot of grief. The hustle with the wraith hadn’t helped when his leg twisted the wrong way, and Missouri’s words? Well, he wasn’t getting any younger. Finding you already settled on your back on the side he wanted also wasn’t helping, even after the dose of Jack he’d taken to ease the burn.

“Move over,” he whispered, preparing to shove you if you ignored him, knowing full well you weren’t asleep, yet. There was only one lot of snoring going on. It wasn’t yours. No, he knew the sounds you made in your sleep. Not once had he thought to perform an exorcism on your airways with a pillow and a bucket of holy water. Though he sure as hell wanted to when you questioned him.

Your eyes popped open before your mouth did. All creepy, like at any moment you’d screech or jump out at him, only to give him a rather short, “Why?” 

And really? “Just.” Dean raised both arms, straight enough he could roll you over, stiff à la morgue style. “Door’s my side. You know that.”

“Sam’s not here.”

“Don’t matter. Move or I’ll sit on you.” 

And with the threat said, he lifted the covers and moved in on top of you like he’d warned. A smirk of satisfaction, beaming on his face as his right ass cheek grazed a flailing limb, only to be taken away just as quickly by a sharp elbow to his shoulder once you’d scrambled to the other side of the mattress like he’d wanted. 

“Hit a guy while he’s down, why dont’cha,” he said, but a rather tumultuous snort from Jody made you both still—for all of one second. 

You rolled to your side and drew in against his arm, lifting your head to stare at him, a Cheshire cat grin contrasted against the darkness, thanks to your teeth catching on the very light he’d been not so grateful for. 

“Keep it at and I’ll even it out,” you said. He didn’t doubt it. Your bite was more vicious than your bark, but in his case, at least, he knew it was all banter. 

Just like siblings, he told himself. Nothing sexual about it. No matter what Missouri said, you’d shared a room with him plenty of times until now and nothing had ever happened between you. 

Dean had seen a lot of you and your body over the years. Patching you up, gashes and scrapes. Popping a finger back into place. Hell, he let you bite his arm while he’d done that; carried you unconscious a separate time because you were his partner in the working sense. You, a hunter like him and Sam.

Yet, for a fleeting moment through the curtains’ soft glow, and you, almost on top of him, there was something different behind the sneer and familiarity. 

Wide-eyed and challenging, your hair was messy and unkempt from the day’s drive and the pressure of the pillow. Like the blankets over your waist were supposed to be, you and an exposed shoulder, teasing him with the slightest sliver of skin, were soft and unguarded—almost. 

It’s as if he were seeing you for the first time—really seeing you, but in his defence, it had been two weeks. He was only a man, red-blooded and still re-hymenated. In Hartford, he’d met Carmelita at that chastity group, and well, he’d broken that record—you were there. He’d meant what he’d said when he gave those women that very detailed exposition on why he was reclaiming his virginity. He knew even before he recognised Suzy that he wouldn’t last all that long. History had a way of repeating itself, and you were here now—with Jody in the room.

What was he thinking?

“Just go to sleep.” He relented, shutting his eyes and you out of mind, out of sight. His skin had to be a different shade because his heart was pumping all the blood in his veins down to little Dean, the traitor, twitching in his boxers. 

He raised his leg. “Annoy me all you want when the freight train’s not roaring through the room.” He wriggled his ass into the mattress below to make his point—conversation over. Tucking his arms to his sides had his hands up in the air like tiny T-Rex ones had replaced them, but he didn’t feel so large and powerful now. His head sank into the pillow, a grunt escaping him, low from his gut. 

You rolled over then. You, on your back, as he was. The sounds of Jody, dead to the world, filtered around you both until you said, “You think you’re gonna sleep through that?” 

“Not with you talking.” Not with you watching him either, but he wouldn’t say it. He just kept his head straight and his lips straighter, ignoring the feeling of your eyes scoring into him as Missouri had done, even though he wanted nothing more than to steal a glance at you as you settled yourself. 

Your breath was hard to ignore, but he ignored it. 

Your hair, so close to him, overpowered the unfamiliar detergents and stains in the room.  

Your movements rocked the mattress until they didn’t. 

And the last thing he remembered doing was shifting onto his side before the spell of sleep overtook him, too; waking to the feel of you pressed against him and his name questioned on your lips.   

“Son of a bitch,” Dean mutters. While he can hear the trill of your phone, he can’t see you, and that’s not ominous at all. 

He’s lived through way too many horror films for his blood pressure not to spike. His heart may as well have stopped altogether. The beats, few and far between, pulse sharp and heavy against his ribcage even as his veins continue to rush the blood through him. A will to constrict or break it—but at least he’s breathing. 

His rasps course into the mic in his hand. His chest rising and falling, the only thing keeping him upright as he somehow propels himself across the empty lot, knees and ankles threatening to splinter from his weight opposing his speed.

There’s no one around. Too late, too cold out. Most folks are at home already or in the warmth of their cars on their drive back to them. 

It’s where he’d rather be right now. Even if you weren’t talking to him, he’d know you were safe in any case, because heading towards a damn bush tells him you’re not; has him pushing harder, and though it won’t make a lick of difference, no matter how fast or slow he takes the descent, his boots coast over the dirt beneath him and out from under him as he drops to the ground.

The sting as his palm smashes the dirt ricochets up his arm and into his shoulder, but he’s reaching into the bush with the other, fishing for the strap of your purse he can just make out through the gaps in the leaves.

Spindly branches thwart him, but after a few sharp tugs, the bag falls free, and Dean’s soon opening the flap to shut off the offending chime. But if Dean, tracing your phone to an alley at the back of the local drugstore, had his heart pounding; it’s the packaging from said drugstore that grinds it all to a halt. 

Any warmth he felt; his flight or fight. It drains from him, seeping into the earth below. 

He doesn’t need to open the bag to know what’s inside. He recognises the shape through the paper. Still, he does so with trembling hands, unraveling the fold at the top. It might not be digital. Might not cost the same as a beauty, but the ClearBlue label is clear even under the darkened sky. 

That familiar blue and pink merges all his fears into one, screaming at him for not seeing the signs, because he should’ve. He should’ve noticed the changes in you. The way you were acting. The way you avoided him. He should’ve checked your period had come, but his message is still there on the screen in his other hand, still unopened, staring at him. 

Just checking your period came right?

It’s too little. It’s too late. 

Just checking.

He was an idiot. A fucking dumbass. 

“You look out for her,” Missouri had said. “Even when you feel she’s done you wrong, don’t let her go.” And he shouldn’t have. He should have never left you out of his sight, but here he is, sitting defeated in the middle of the lot, too little, too late. 

You don’t even need to have taken the damn test he’s holding for him to know, just as Edith and Mr. Humphries and all the others have been, you’ve been snatched, and he didn’t protect you. His own flesh and blood slipped through his fingers because you are pregnant, even if you weren’t sure you wanted to be. You’re having his kid, and you’re out there somewhere, a catheter in the back of your hand, draining you of the blood you need. 

And that’s on him.

He sniffs; reels the frustration back in. His hand swipes his eyes and cheeks, fingers digging deep against the sockets. Though his world is spinning ‘round him, and he can’t understand why you’d go down a street like this, he pulls himself to his feet and dials Sam to get the search in motion.  

“Hey—”

“I need you to bring up any street cams on Twelfth Street. Grafton Drug,” Dean barks down the line. “Gonna see if I can get you an exact time.” He takes a step back, searching for any sign of a camera, and satisfied he’s given enough info, he’s on the move, hanging up before Sam can so much as question him. 

There’s no time. He needs a time, and he needs a license plate—now.

Son-of-a—

Fuck.

Dean’d jump up and away, but then things really would be obvious. Jody would wake if she wasn’t already. He couldn’t tell, just couldn’t see her. Wasn’t about to go looking for her either.

She certainly wasn’t ready to see him in all his glorious detail, and as there were no more rumbles rattling up his spine, at least, not the kind that he needed to worry about, there was no way he was risking it, because outside that Memphis motel? Trucks rolled past. Which meant it was indeed time to be up. Just…not like this.

His whole body had flooded with warmth. Concentrated, centralising in his nether regions, leaving him frozen and startled, stiff as a board and hard as steel. His name on your lips, would’ve added more to the former effect with his newfound lack of composure, but his dick seemed to like the way you said it when it came with your ass flush against him.  

He should’ve cleaned the pipes, not settled on simply checking them. Should’ve worn his jeans for extra protection. Of course, he would’ve felt worse, painfully tight and or constricted, but there’d be no chance of you feeling him, every time you fucking moved. 

Boy, did you fucking move.

Didn’t you realise how every little shift sent signals through him? His balls pulled tight, fingers and toes tingled. His gut flooded with a warmth that was not a good thing when you were the one doing it.

“Dean,” you said again. And what the hell did you want him to say? You shouldn’t have said a guy’s name like that and then expected him not to react. 

All he could do was mutter an apology, but it wasn’t like he could help it. 

It was natural. Some would say a beautiful thing and a compliment. He shuffled his ass back away from you to make some room between you, because there was no chance he was rolling over until he’d sorted both his heads out and calmed them both down. Only you did roll—onto your back to look at him, and soon traced your eyes over the blanket and the blank space he’d created beneath it by the curve of his hips.  

“Y’mind,” he muttered. Voice like gravel through the strain at both ends. “M’not a piece of meat.”

“Never said you were.” Your brows raised. “But I’m not the one who was doing the poking.” You bit your lip to stifle a giggle, clear, you were enjoying his pain. “Was that your gun in the bed with us, or were you that happy to see me?” 

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Though the shake of your chest wasn’t helping his resolve, especially with your nipples straining under your clothing, almost as much as he now strained his clothes further at the sight. 

“Might be a virgin now, but we both know you’re not,” you said. 

It wasn’t fair; his arousal was strikingly obvious. Guys really had the rawer end of the deal with their junk. Still, “I bet I got you wet without even meaning to,” he said, controlled and coolheaded, like the pre-cum that dripped out of him onto his boxers. Not at all how he felt under your scrutiny.

There was no easy way to hide anything now. He’d definitely pushed things way too far with that last comment, but you were asking for it. What with teasing him for something out of his control. But he couldn’t help but notice the flicker of something unspoken and new flashing through your eyes once. It pleased him to see you squirm. 

And for another fleeting, rather long moment, he wondered if his words were true, because he’d guessed—hoped for his ego even. Until he caught a shift in your thigh and the covers, shifting with it when you hummed. 

“Well, it has been two weeks. At least I beat your record.”

“Suzy was a given. Wanted me just as bad.” In truth, he was hella persuasive on his part. It wasn’t one of his best moments, but she did not feel bad at all. Far from it.

“Only ‘cause of the way you delivered your little speech,” you spat back.

Dean looked you square in the eyes, then down to where the tent in his crotch remained covered. His smirk followed and covered his face. “What I’m packing ain’t little, honey.” He winked. “Maybe next time I’ll let you see it.”

His fingers gripped ‘round the edge of the blankets, teasing, watching the way your tongue swept out over your lips. 

He had to wonder what they were like down below, but at that opportune moment, the bathroom door opened, and Jody walked out, seemingly unaware.

Dean’s phone is out and on his ear before his heels have escaped the pharmacy’s doors. When Sam picks up, he doesn’t bother with the pleasantries. “She checked out at four-twenty eight. Left the store straight after.” 

He continues to rattle off details. The alley; how you got jumped ‘round the back of the building. As hard as it is for him to form the words, if he doesn’t say something? If he doesn’t concentrate on Sam on the other end of the line, he has to see the moment you got jumped replaying over and over because that’s all he was doing as he walked back through the rows of shelves and products. 

The clinical smell, disinfectant and the stale, mothball tang he gets from visiting old people’s houses cling to the hairs in his nose, and not even the gas from the station across the street can clear it out.

He gives Sam ample time to get his hands on the keyboard. To do his thing. The rhythm of fingers tapping against computer keys clacks in time to Dean’s steps as he crosses the road to Baby, who’s parked out front of a neighbouring house. “Tell me you got something on the street cams,” he says, slipping in behind her wheel.  

“There’s a van. Looks like a dodge. Left about five minutes after she left.”

“Got a license plate?” Dean opens the door and slides in behind the wheel, placing your purse next to him. He closes his eyes and drops his head back against his neck, waiting. His free hand can’t force his skull any further down, but his fingers try. They drag through his hair, like they’re fighting the images of you inside the store from creeping back into his mind.

“Yeah. Just running it now—” Sam trails off, too slow, too relaxed—not like you. No, you walked briskly when you stepped through that door. A soldier on a mission, though your arms wrapped ‘round your body tight, seeming to keep your worry shielded from the world. 

But Dean didn’t miss the way your brows neared your lashes or your lips parted when your teeth weren’t holding them up. He saw you reading the signs above each aisle as you located the family planning section. He saw you pick up multiple tests to read the labels, too, only to change your mind and put them back. 

You were distracted. He couldn’t blame you.

The night before you told him you were late was the same as any other in the bunker. He was just as distracted. Hell. He thought you were checking up on him by not minding your business, like usual. Him, nursing Ketch’s rare and unspeakably expensive bottle of scotch, like he nursed his jaw and ego, still battered, bruised, and a little bloody, all thanks to Rowena’s expired piece of arm candy. 

Bernard had packed a punch; it still hurt to swallow, but it wasn’t just the juice running down the back of his throat that soured his gut. There had to be a piece of tooth or a chunk from Bernie’s fingernail floating ‘round in there ‘cause something was scraping ‘round in his head that made it hard for him to sleep. 

Mary and Jack. Charlie. Even Ketch and his stupid antidote. His drinking was a tribute—a thanks for the asshat’s sacrifice. The early hours, the best time to do it. 

Dean often found solace at the kitchen table, and only the bunker’s many machines to keep him company. The buzzing and distant hums in the foundations, and not the ones caused by his grenade-launcher, were a comfort. As was the low lighting on his eyes, even when they flickered.

There were no ghosts, though. The kitchen had no cold spots, unless you counted the way his spine tingled at your arrival. The glare from your oversized t-shirt nipped at your smooth skin and bared thighs went through him alright. 

He hadn’t heard your bare feet padding down the hall, but he sure heard your voice break into his quiet. “You go to bed at all?” 

“Nope.” Dean sat back on his stool, parting his knees further apart as he threw back another long swill through his newfound slackened jaw. “You planning to go back to yours?” 

You folded your arms, and the worn fabric pulled tight across your breasts and raised the hem higher. “Only if you are.” Your eyes flicked to his glass.

“Oh, I’d have come to yours, honey,” his little finger raised from the crystal in his hand and tipped towards the door, “if only you’d offered first.”

“That’s not what I meant.” You scoffed. It wasn’t his intention to invite you to join him, but you took his words as invitational and moved across the kitchen floor, taking up the stool next to his.

“That’s not what I meant,” he repeated.

“I know.” But then you attempted to take his drink away. Though it may’ve been innocent on your part, even with your bed-head and pillow marks ingrained in your cheek. You were a slight against his dram; he was quick to withdraw. If you wanted your own, you could get your own—from a different bottle. This was his. If you wanted him for another reason? Well, that was a different story, but you’d need to do a lot more than swipe at his hand as he withdrew it from you. 

He’d laugh, but teetering his weight out to the side of the table like that was‌n’t his idea of a good time. His foot closest to you raised off the floor to counter himself. His pre-burdened gut somehow held him steady until he gave up and stood up. He collected his incredibly rare booze and moved it to the safety of the kitchen bench, which he rounded and leaned over, folding his arms on the icy surface. 

A smug look on his face; a tilt of his head, jaw clicking. He took another sip. His fingers, gripping the tumbler as if the risk were too grand, even with a hunk of stainless steel now standing between you.

“Child,” you said.

“Cart’s accessible to everyone.” He shrugged. 

“What?”

“Get your own.” He swung his head to the door you’d walked through and downed the rest in his hand so he could pour himself another. “Library’s less than fifty feet.” 

“I didn’t come here to drink.”

“No? Then why’d you come then?” 

The glass ground against the metal when he set it down. Dean’s fist wrung along with his throat when he swallowed back the words he didn’t say. He didn’t mean to yell at you, but history and genetics liked to repeat themselves. You were no longer just the one who fulfilled his physical needs. 

“I—” He shook his head, slinking further into the bench before him. If his skin could meld into the steel, he’d have gladly let the stuff take him, ‘cause at least he’d no longer feel any burden or pain. Then he could skip those thirty years of waiting for his mom to age, assuming she was still alive, like Jack had seen all together. Solidify his death. Rid himself from the people he hurt.

But “Couldn’t sleep,” you said, as if you were resetting the scene and ignoring the few lowly minutes you’d been in the kitchen. As if it were true, you stood up and stepped over to him, arms wrapped tight over your chest, shielding you from his stone-cold stare.

He was in disbelief, but he was still a man. You, walking towards him with that hem kissing your thighs again, drew his attention higher to your chest when you stood opposite him, leaning forward just as he had done.

“Wanted to see how you were doing.” You shrugged the same, too. 

“M’fine,” he relented for the sake of you hearing him say it. 

You were well aware of what Winchester-fine meant, but “I’m not,” you whispered—apparently, you didn’t. Only then did he really look at you, dipping lower to catch the glimmer of tears in your eyes.

If only he hadn’t been so eager to take on a case so soon after the damn test. He wouldn’t be here in the car again, chasing after you, kidnapped. He wouldn’t be hoping on pure luck; he was heading in the right direction because you wouldn’t be missing. No, you’d be safe. Exactly where you’re supposed to be, in the bunker. You and his kid. 

He swipes his hand over his mouth again for what must be the umpteenth time. Sniffs—just as many; he’s thankful Sam’s not in the car with him, while also counting on him jacking a car and meeting him at the warehouse. 

There was no time to pick him up. No time to waste when he’s thinking of Humphries’ body in the same breath he’s thinking about yours. He’s seen enough stiffs to guess what a person might look like on the morgue table. Yours is not one he wants to picture regardless of his position in your life. 

You’re family first—family always. Seeing you like that ain’t an option. Not even on a pyre. Of course, creeping over Baby’s deafening rumble as he steers her towards the address Sam sent him, Missouri’s words replay along with everything else that’s already been spiraling through him since he left the pharmacy. 

“You’ve had some great losses. Don’t you lose her, too,” she said. Ironic that it was her words that got you into his head like this in the first place.

“You look out for her. Even when you feel she’s done you wrong, don’t let her go.” But he had let you go. At least he hadn’t fought for you, simply backing down when things got too real and too raw.  

“You’re a good man, Dean Winchester. Remember that.” But he wasn’t. He was vulnerable, a failure, a grunt. 

“You know, silent treatment is a form of emotional abuse, right?” That wasn’t a good man. That was weak and petty.

You didn’t have to talk to him if you didn’t want to. “Sam found a case,” was one of the first things he’d said to you the morning after the negative test. Just because he didn’t know what else to say was no excuse when there were so many things he could’ve said that weren’t that, yet he didn’t. Just as he hadn’t protected you now, he didn’t have your best interests then, either.

The tears in your eyes were new. If only you hadn’t gone from zero to sixty on him. He’d have thought the reflection in them from the stainless steel counter below you made them rather pretty, even in his current state. 

“You’re not?” Dean’s eyes blinked rapidly. He’d had a few, but he wasn’t at the point of not hearing you correctly. The way you said you weren’t okay, definitely wasn’t taking advantage of his Winchester-fine line. “So you call me a child for not giving you a drink?” he said.

“No.” Still leaning, your arms drew out in front of you, elbows hanging over the edge of the bench, teetering like he’d done in his seat moments ago. You’d tried to pry his glass from his fingers; now yours flexed, palm against palm. 

Their subdued flounce held your words back, gears grinding somewhere in your head. The clock on the distant wall ticked away the seconds faster than you did as he waited for you to do or say something more, but, “No,” you repeated. Another followed it, softer. 

“No?”

“I dunno, Dean.” You looked up at him, voice louder. Swiped a hand across your face and brought it back down to the bench to smooth it over. “You keep getting injured. Don’t tell me something didn’t happen to you over in the other world, ‘cause I can see it. There’s a reason Rowena’s toy boy got you so badly. I’m just—” 

You stopped yourself. Your shoulders shrugged again as you dropped your chin back to your chest to stare at your hands. You smoothed the bench under your skin with a gentle caress. If the metal were an animal, it’d be purring. 

Dean watched on, cheeks hollowing as he pulled his tongue across the back of his teeth. His body’d wound up tighter than it had been before he came into the kitchen. Or perhaps it was more that he let himself notice it then. 

The scrapes settled in his head, keeping him awake? The chunk of Bernie floating ‘round inside him? They were all excuses, of course. It didn’t take a genius for anyone to see through them, let alone you. He wasn’t even sure why he bothered when you always called him out on the bullshit. 

He pursed his lips, chewing them from the inside. His grip on the glass, loosening. “I, ah—”

“Don’t tell me you’re fine,” you snapped.

“Alright, I’m not.” But the tail from the animal he’d seen in the bench, stuck between his legs now, though he did his best to hide it. 

He straightened up and, gripping the hem of his undershirt, moved ‘round to where you stood so he could show you the still healing wound from one poisoned bullet.

“What—”

“Ketch made some antidote.” Dean grunted as your fingers moved round the edge of the wound. The muscle itched as far as the black veins had exuded. “S’a little tender.”

“A little?” you scoffed, but at least your eyes flicked to his with some concern. “Why didn’t you say anything?” you asked, rather endearing compared to how you had been.

“Y’want me to bitch about it?” His brow raised with a smirk that pushed through his battle scars. Like all the previous ones, in the moments that gained him attention with the ladies that weren’t you, he laid on the charm, thick and boastful. “Gonna offer to fix me up? ‘Cause I thought there weren’t any offers on the table tonight.” 

His hands reached for yours, then he pulled them down and out to the side before looping them ‘round his middle and setting them on his waist. 

“You’re impossible. You know that?” Your chin pointed at him. 

He knew, but it didn’t stop him from doing whatever the hell he wanted. You’d come into his time and space and interrupted his peace. There was retribution required. A tax for giving him shit and attempting to steal his drink, even if it was all just you seeking him out for comfort for a change.

He should’ve felt enamoured that you seemed to care about him in that way. Chuck knew it was rare for him to let anyone fuss over him, including Sam. After the past few weeks he’d had, though, he definitely deserved a piece of you a second time. “Remember last week when you found me on the floor over there?” He nodded to the wall where he’d been far better hidden. “Think I had you dripping f’me before we even made it to your room,” he leant into your ear. 

“I think I had you on your knees.” You let go of your position on his back and traced his belt ‘round to the buckle, pulling him against you.

“You had me in your mouth.” He leaned in and captured your lips with a teasing kiss. Barely any pressure, barely even touching them, he ghosted over you, his warm breath mixing with yours. “Wanna take this elsewhere?” he said, before he swooped in and kissed you properly. His broad palms on your cheeks drew the heat right outta you and settled deep down in the pit of his stomach. 

Grafton and its surrounds are scarce of many trees, but his adrenaline floods his veins like a wildfire rips through a forest, anyway. Each nerve beneath his skin, alight and buzzing, but at least he’s out of the Impala and moving now. 

Dean closes Baby’s door and feels the clip of a breeze on his cheek. It’s too cold for his liking. Too nippy. Though he’s still in his coat, he’s also still in his fed gear. It may be light as far as Dean’s wardrobe goes, but it’s too bulky. Too many loose layers’ll impede on his arms and his blade as it cuts through the high-pitched cackle of laughter, travelling on that same breeze. 

He rounds the back and opens her up, quick to reach for two machetes and a couple of vials of dead man’s blood. A flash of headlights, sweeping over the discarded machinery littered along the road, tells him Sam’s caught up. Or he’s about to get into a fight a lot sooner than he expected.

The place is like a salvage yard. Like Singer’s Auto, if the old hunter had lined his property with silos and shrubbery amongst the balanced piles of scrap metal. Nature creeps out from underneath the metal frames and caterpillar tracks here, and Dean’s eyes flick to the old flare gun.

Sam pulls up just as Dean shuts the trunk. “Dude.” He spans his arms in the air like wings, but his tone didn’t convey the sentiment. 

“Just—” Dean hands him a weapon. 

Just what, exactly? 

Please? He can’t lose you? Don’t give him that crap, ‘cause it’s not like he planned this? He’s feeling guilty enough without his baby brother throwing his two cents into the mix.

“Okay.” Sam nods, at least, Dean thinks he does. 

His back’s already turned, and his ankles and knees are moving his weight again, but they’re not splintering like they did before. Each step he makes now, practiced in precision, even in the darkness. 

With vamps and his heart the way it is, he needs all the advantages he can get.

He had the advantage in the kitchen. Even after the expensive scotch, blood coursed through his veins as he deepened the kiss. His lips pressing against yours, moved back and forth, parting, gaining whatever access he could with the slip of the tongue.

Sloppy? You betcha, but so were his hands as they traced your body. Fumbling up your sides, pulling at the shirt you didn’t need. 

It was inconvenient when yours were still on his belt, but he wasn’t about to stop you. His hips pressed closer, if anything, bucking up towards your touch involuntarily. You, giggling into his mouth, had him grinning between his next onset on yours. Noses hitting each other, he had to stop what he was doing lower to hold you still. 

The look in your eyes was full of mischief, pupils blown, irises brighter under the light overhead. But your head tilted, and though it was only slight, your teeth also pulled your lower lip in before he could take it again. 

It had him pause. More than he was already at that moment. He swallowed. His own amber greens flickered over your face.

“S’everything okay?” he said. His hand stilled on your waist, gripping your skin tight through the fabric. His fingers pressed into your flesh, pushing the edge of his nails further, to the point where they could bruise. 

He didn’t mean to grip you so firm, it was more that he had to hold himself together. He was needy now. Desperate to feel you both beneath and around him, because the last few weeks had taken their toll. 

It wasn’t just missing his chance in that other world, seeing Charlie, or losing Ketch. His shoulder ached; he was getting older—he wanted a win, but what he wanted more was a piece of normal. To feel more skin beneath his fingers and experience another’s touch on his. Yeah, he was touching you now, but it wasn’t quite the same ‘cause he could do that with anyone. Maybe not as close; certainly in the same areas, though his dick getting wet was extra.

That build he spoke about in Hartford made him feel alive. Sex was sticky, but it felt too good to grind and move against another person. To cover the expanse of his hand, fingers and all, with them. To grab and not be hindered by anything. No barriers aside from the wet heat and the owner constricting him. That’s what he needed. His crotch couldn’t help itself but press against you again. 

“Dean,” you said. He was still close enough to feel your breath on his cupid’s bow. Warmth and moisture clung to the five o’clock shadow. Long enough to be classed as ten or a further spin ‘round the clock. 

“Yeah?” he husked. Closed his eyes and ghosted another kiss into the corner of your mouth ‘cause he couldn’t help it. 

You shook your head. “Doesn’t matter.” Your lips returned the gesture. Their heat spread further than the place they’d landed upon. The soft skin caught on his own. 

His hand on your cheek moved round to your ear, and there he fingered through the strands, always soft compared to his own, neither laced with greasy products he either took from Sam or swiped from gas stations. The ones that lived in Baby and still seemed to show up years later. 

That fragrance he recognised on the road outta Omaha. That taste that’s unique to you when he layered another kiss on you. 

“Y’sure?” he spoke over you, but his hand, not in your hair, was now under your shirt, scratching up towards your panties with no intention of stopping even though a part of him knew he should’ve.

Blame the alcohol. Blame the shoulder. He needed to heal, and he knew what’d make him feel better. 

His nails scraped, skin against cotton. Dipped a little lower to just above the apex of your thighs, tracing the little dip where your folds joined. Felt the fabric damp and warm. And though he knew the answer, “Or is she dripping f’me already?” he said.

“Could use some persuading.” You hummed. A chuckle laced through it. Quiet, not amused, but more a hitch. A simple announcement of pleasure over amusement. 

But Dean was one step ahead of you, having lifted the edge of the elastic at the top. “Yeah?” He scooped down over your mound and twisted his wrist to access you better, finding the thicker nub above your opening, slippery to the touch. 

“Think I can getcha there like this?” He dug deeper, spreading your slick and coating his own skin. His dick twitched through the denim still covering him, throbbing at the thought of doing it again when he got you to his bed.

He’s lucky it’s the scales and not the pointy end of the machete that digs in close to his ribs. If his skin weren’t thick, he’d be a shish-kabob as well and soaring across the warehouse floor. His body makes a great substitute for the feathers of an arrow as it is. 

Dean lands with a grunt, though. The table edge, almost just as sharp. He scans for his weapon as he stands, but the big guy wraps his arms ‘round him in a wrestler’s hold. Fangs on display and looking like they want a piece of him.

“Sorry, tiny. I don’t kiss on the first date,” he says, ‘cause apparently he’s at the acceptance stage of despair now. Big grin, even wider, as he wraps his arms around the expansive frame. “Not when you stole a chunk o’ my pie,” he grunts. 

He curls his lip up as he tries to take hold. Fists the vamp’s jacket, airing a chuckle as their eyes meet and lock. “It’s not your colour.” His grin falters, and—he’s in the air again…until he’s not, rolling over rough concrete that brandishes him, missing a foot to his junk. 

It’s just as brittle now as it was earlier that day. Skin sticking on skin’s gonna be the death of him, if not you. That’s the thought that pulls him out of it.

As if he’s newly bitten, with a strength that’s born from the midst of a fight, he strikes his elbow into the nook of the shoulder. His skull busts its nose. John would hurtle in his grave if he had one. The hustle is a poor excuse for all the years of training Dean underwent, but his father’s dead—so is this monstrosity. Sam’s machete severs the neck above him and hauls the chunk of undead flesh off‌ him.

“Thanks.” He swallows the exertion. His throat’s drier than it’s been in a long while, and the lump that keeps forming ain’t helping none.

Sam lends his hand down and hoists him to his feet. If only that were the least of his worries. 

“No problem,” Sam says, just as out of breath. His hands follow Dean’s to his own sides; his glare isn’t as mutual. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“What?”

“Do you have a death wish or something? ‘Cause being reckless like that won’t save her.” 

And neither will standing around like this, but here they are. Dean says nothing in response. He steps over Tiny and reaches for his weapon, on the move before Sam can say another obvious. 

As much as the point affects his ego, there is a point to be made. He can’t help you like that. He needs to keep on his toes—literally. They’ve come across four bloodsuckers already, and the last two weren’t easy. The trail of heads, not to mention you and the other four victims, won’t be an easy cleanup, especially if something’s happened to you. 

There was a trail of clothes that led to his bed, but Dean couldn’t care less if Sam found them or not. The last thing he should’ve thought about during the moment you pushed him backward onto his mattress was what his brother thought about you both fooling around.

If the guy wanted to get laid, there were plenty of women out there who’d take his money. Dean ignored the niggle in his chest that reminded him he’d found you living under the same roof as him. 

It was Missouri’s fault, and those sweet thighs that moved to straddle him. Your hands came down to his chest, just below his nipples and the bullet wound with sweet, sweet pressure. Why did something so simple as the gentle touch of a woman do it for him? If you’d been the one to do the first-aid instead of Ketch, he’d be a goner for sure.

He had to stop thinking ‘bout all those other people. He was raging hard, and he did not want to lose it, especially after a couple of rounds of scotch. You’d never let him live it down.  

His hands raised ‌in surrender. Opened to you, he brought one palm to your head and the other to your folds.  

Soft and wet; his callouses ran over strands while he dipped a middle finger lower. Strands picking up under the callouses. He dipped a finger into your entrance, also sweet, and oh so slick and warm. He swirled over your clit and dipped his middle finger lower. “S’wet,” he inserted and curled it through your channel, “S’all from the kitchen?” 

“Mm-hmm.” You shoved his hand away and wrapped a firm fist around him. “Need you, Dean,” you said, lining him up and inching yourself closer. 

The way you clung to him when you sank yourself down, parting both sets of lips and drawing a perfectly rounded “oh” from the top ones, had him bucking into your heat with an urgent need. And a groan that turned more guttural when you looked into his eyes.

The warehouse is larger than it looks. Dean’s eyes scan through what little haze the moon shining through the skylights allows. Each foot of concrete flooring alternates between shadow and light as they move through the remaining hall that runs down the centre. The metal of his machete, not covered in blood, flashes like a flashbulb with each corresponding step.

He holds it close to his side. The worn leather on the handle sweats against his palm, but he grips it tighter. Fingers and arm now locked from the extensive hold will no doubt stay the way they are for days to come. 

Dean’s more determined than ever when Sam taps the elbow with his free hand and nods to the right side of the split in the hallway ahead.

He reels his focus in. Pictures your face as he scales the left hall, checking each door and open space. Aside from the soft creak of his soles curling as he shifts his weight from toe to heel, however, the place is devoid of sound. At least with Sam still next to him there were two pairs of boots, stressing that life was surrounding him. 

Now, even his breathing has him on edge. The blood, thrumming in his ears, warms the empty spaces in his head, threatening all the progress he’s made with his focusing. 

Be here. As horrifying as it is that he’s praying you’re here in a place like this, you just have to be, because this isn’t just another day at the office. The universe can’t give him the world and then take it away from him like this, even if he didn’t jump at it from the start. His mind flicks to Cas, but with him hot on Heaven’s ass, how can he ask for his help when he’s the one who let you slip through his fingers? When he’s the one who pushed you away? 

“Should I be expecting a proposal next?” He sees his error. He saw it the second he said it. Who’d wanna marry a guy who only proposed because he thought he’d knocked you up? Any other guy that treated you that way would meet his fist.

“You said you were on birth control.” And anyone who said that to you, too. 

So why did he?

“Fuck.” Dean’s fingers bunched the juicy globes of your ass beneath them like a thick piece of meat, made to be eaten. They were. Just not when his cock pistoned in and out of you.

He spread you wider. Each cheek tucked up and out by his fingertips sinking further into your skin, all so he could marvel at the way he disappeared and withdrew from the mess. His spit and pre-cum mixing with your slippery slick was oh so sticky and wet—a chemical reaction. The dirtiest dissertation on yin and yang. 

His name left your lips as you burrowed your face into the sheets below you. A halo of hair spilled ‘round the edges of your crown and over your balled fists, messy, as it had been that night in Memphis. Dean leant down and freed your ear, tucking a chunk behind it and holding it in place until you twisted back to look at him. 

Mouth parted, eyes half-lidded, your expression was unreadable, aside from the clear exhaustion in your brow. 

You’d never looked at him like that before now. Not during sex, nor throughout your regular days. Not even when he patched up your scrapes and popped your bones back into place, did you ever seem to stare beyond the meat-suit?

At least, that’s what it felt like. It was something ‘bout the way you held your eyes. Intent. Stubborn as Missouri had been when she reminded him of his losses. That he shouldn’t lose you, too. That he was a good man.

And though his thighs were tight, and his ass clenched, and his balls were thrumming. Close to the point of no return, even. Dean slowed, and still connected, heaved you up so he could reach you. 

Holding your head in place when it dropped back to his shoulder, his arm wrapped ‘round your middle; cradling you into him. His, “Hey,” was audible enough for you to hear him, but to a fly on the wall your breaths and the soft slaps his pelvis made as he continued to rut up into you would mask it. 

With a sloppy rhythm, he refused to falter, and his tip, still hitting all the right places, “Hey,” you said just as quiet and breathless as he had done. 

While he should’ve asked what was wrong earlier, that moment was no better, what with the beginning flutters of your orgasm creeping over him. “Y’kay now,” he nuzzled into the crook of your neck. Placed a kiss, then another.

Being so tender wasn’t new to him by any means. Maybe a little out of place after throwing lewd remarks in that moment. It was a first with you, though. Maybe what Missouri was suggesting in a very round-about way.

“You’re a good man, Dean Winchester.” He’d try to remember it. 

“I’m good,” you said, half whine, half airy laugh. Cunt to chest and legs, your body shuddered against him, and his fingers dipped down to hold the rest of your body through it. 

If he is a good man, then why is he traipsing through the old warehouse with a machete in his hand? A good man has a respectable job and spends his weekends watching football on a big screen TV. A good man listens to his partner’s complaints, then ignores them when she’s left the room. 

The little things, of course. The stuff that doesn’t matter ‘cause it’s not all that important. Rings on coffee tables. Staying out late with the guys. Alright, he never did that to Lis’…but it’s the cute things that make up sitcoms. The apple pie life stuff with trivial problems like what colour you’re going to paint the nursery—

The nursery? Dean scoffs, though he shouldn’t. He’s supposed to be all stealth and nimble. Supposed to be concentrating on the task at hand. 

There’s been no more run in’s with bloodsuckers since the scuffle with Sam, and he starts to lose hope. They found Humphries on the other side of town, yet there are still no signs of actual living people aside from himself down here. Just rows upon rows of shelving that he passes. Empty crates and pallets. A female, appearing between a gap in one of the taller racks. 

And a heavy sliding door, the kind often hiding a cool room behind it, closed and latched behind her. 

His eyes narrow on it and then hers. Why else would a loner be here in the hallway if not to protect whatever is behind it? They’re not running a catering business. Can’t be. Catheters and a smorgasbord of blood types, all with that damn hormone? 

Is the universe working with him for once? 

She’s smaller than Tiny. Her long hair, a godsend when she launches at him. For a few brisk steps, he carries her. The bitch’s chest presses into his. 

His arms stretch to get her off him. His stomach muscles and lower, pull tight as he clings to his machete’s handle, desperate not to slice himself or drop it on the ground.

If he loses it, Humphries ain’t the only one ending up on the riverbed. HCG or not, her fangs are out and she’s clawing at him. 

It’s the concrete wall behind him that does the trick in the end. He spins and grabs her by the jacket she wears, throwing her to the ground. 

That she’s here of all places, separated from the others. That he spots a door he hasn’t checked yet is all Dean needs to know. 

His hand is firm, and his arm is straight as he takes his swing. He aims for her neck and drives the metal down into the skin. Muscle, flesh, bone, reverse. The sharp blade cuts through it all. Jarring his body from wrist to shoulder; tingling through his nerves like his heart just jumped a foot across his chest.

The burn is real, but the head is rolling. He watches it tumble, hair wrapping ‘round it in a tangle of stands and knots the further she goes. 

Stopping only when the bristles of a broom head catch the chin. The thing magnetised to the one object that can fix the disaster of blood and tissue, now strung through the edges.

Dean kicks the limp body in the waist as he steps over her and moves to the door. Adrenaline still from the fight pumps through him, once again threatening to break through his ribcage as he drops the bloody blade and brings his hands to the lock. The clang of metal against concrete echoes through his spine, but Dean’s focus remains on his grip. His knuckles white as the bones beneath them—probably. If it weren’t for the darkness that’s only foil is the beams of light still filtering down from the window’s glass in the ceiling.  

He puts all his effort into the latch. The rust, brushing his skin like sandpaper. Flaking under his fingers, scraping and slipping beneath them until he gives up and readjusts his footing, taking on the handle from the other side.  

His grunt is long and drawn out. Breath and tongue clip his teeth. He gets it open, though. Arms like jelly. His shoulder, protesting at him for daring to do any more with it as he grips the edge of the door and slides it open. 

His eyes try their best to adjust to what little light the moon allows from the angle.

He hears a soft sigh of surprise, though. Someone’s whimper of terror.

And then the thing he’s been looking for. The one thing that’s kept him going. Whose thoughts of, almost had him done for at the hands of Tiny.

“Dean?” your voice carries through in question. A you-shape figure sat in what he soon realises is a chair, second from the left. Another three bodies sitting on your right.

A/N: One more chapter to gooooooo!

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response bias: another confounding factor found in both placebo and placenta effect studies; including low values that contribute to the mean regressing, the response bias considers how the non-committed partners continue to traverse through their day-to-day lives, including any attempts at empathy and/or concern shown from one half of the pair to the other

The drive to Grafton was long, just not because of the distance. Like Omaha to Lebanon, Dean could do that with both eyes closed—if it weren’t for lack of sleep. Of course, he was driving, though. Still suffering the aftereffects of his dreams that morning and the events that had led to them, and as such, was in a terrible state. 

Anyone would think his period was late. If he had one. Maybe he was experiencing whatever it was those fake ones were called when the guy experienced what his girl was going through. Cramps. Bloating. Heartburn. His shoulder still ached. He was certain after all that fake running around that he’d been doing mid dream had caused his old knee injury to flare up, because his legs sure were stiff, and his head was—

Hang on. 

Hold the fucking phone. His girl? Had he just… 

Did he just refer to you as his girl?

Wow! 

No. Seriously. Wow!

Last he checked you were still just friends with the benefits going off of last night. Fuck Buddies. Dangerous Liaisons, maybe? That was a thing and a movie, right? That was all about deception and seduction and John Malkovich in a wig. Honestly, he only remembered sneaking into the cinema when John had left him and Sammy alone at a motel in Colorado. He’d snuck himself into the local theatre because the trailer made the thing look raunchy as all hell to a ten-ish-year-old Dean.

It wasn’t. He got his ear clipped, and it rang at the thought. Or was that your laughter coming from down the hall?

Yeah. No. Definitely your laughter. His gut flipped at the trill as you chattered ever so casually with Jody. It was her house after all.

Unlike his dream, Jody’s bathroom was familiar and real. He felt the water run over his hands when he dipped them under the stream. He felt it run down his wrists when he splashed his face. The vanity at his hips, his toes, and his socks wrapped around them, inside his boots and no longer bare. The smell of something floral in the soap he recognised from being here previously, but couldn’t name in the wild or in a supermarket. 

It screamed Jody as much as the worn carpet in her living room screamed family whenever he passed through Sioux Falls in his later years. Strange, yes, that you weren’t at Bobby’s. Familiar, again, in that the township never changed, even though the ties to his uncle had burnt to the ground years ago. 

He dried his hands on the small towel she kept on a rung by the mirror. The fabric, soft compared to the ones you kept in the bunker. The ones he’d selected from a box store. Not stolen from the last motel he’d stayed in like he would’ve in the past. 

It was surprising how the cost of something made it last longer. Much like…

He snickered. He was still thinking about the cost of that damn test? He supposed it was only natural, though his cheeks burned because the stretch of his smile was unfamiliar. It’d only been a day since he’d made the comparison between his skin mags and the test. Maybe a little over if he considered the time and the drive to get there. Not to mention this morning, but—

This thing costs more than a Beauty? The crows feet by his eyes seemed more prominent in his reflection. 

And he thought the distance to Grafton was long? Well, the distance between you was longer. May as well have left you back in the bunker with the way you felt so far away in Baby’s backseat. 

You weren’t talking to him, except out of politeness in front of others—well, Sammy and Jody—and the attendant at the pump in Hastings. Of course, he understood why. He should’ve come sooner. Should’ve gone after you the night before and stormed into your room. Told you to listen to him because that morning had been too late. He’d lost his window. 

Your laughter from down the hall sounded a second time. He finished up, determined at that moment to find the time to pull you aside and talk to you before you hit the road again, even if it meant doing so in front of Sam and Jody. Just because he couldn’t make a move in front of Jody all those months ago meant jack with what you’d both been through over the past twenty-four hours. That test made you closer. Bonded. 

You were in Jody’s living room when he returned, sitting down next to Sam on her plaid couch, having a great old time, it would seem. With Jody, to your left in the armchair he’d sat in back when Alex patched his knee up. 

“Hey,” she beamed up at him, her body leaning on the diagonal and into the chair’s back, legs crossed, hands folded in her lap. 

He couldn’t help but smile back at her, though his eyes scanned you and how close you were to Sam. Not jealous. Never. Just annoyed at how casual you were with his brother. His knee touching yours. Your shoulder, leaning into him as if he were the chair’s backing, even though you shared the large couch. 

“Guess this means you guys are leaving my presence again?” Jody sat up and leaned forward, clapping her hands together to lean her arms on her thighs. “Missing people to find, cold cases to solve?”

Cold case? Dean’s head tilted to the side at that remark. He wouldn’t call a little over a week a cold case, but, “Okay,” he said, voice raised higher than normal. He was still waiting for the joke to drop, assuming there was one. 

Sam licked his lips, also leaning forward as Jody had done, a slight to his face, proud of himself for something. “Yeah, I was looking over the case on the way here. Was just telling Jody that it’s following a pattern similar to another string of cases a few years back, also in the Red River Valley.”

“Also?” Dean blinked. He understood all the words Sam had spoken, but it was his first hearing about a pattern, let alone the Red River. Last he checked you were heading to North Dakota, not Texas. 

“Well, I don’t know if they’re connected, but there was a string of disappearances a few towns over that were never solved, and—”

“In Texas?” 

“In North Dakota.” Sam scoffed—because it was so funny, apparently. You sure seemed amused, looking up at him with your own crooked smile. “Where we’re headed,” Sam added, neck sticking out further like the giraffe he was. “Anyway,” he cleared his throat, “the circumstances are similar, but we still don’t have a lot to go on until we get there and talk to their sheriff.” 

He turned himself to Jody, torso and all, who pointed back to him, her hands still clasped together, both index fingers sticking out.

“Right.” Her brows wagged up close to her bangs 

“Right,” Dean muttered before turning his attention back to Jody with another of his broad grins. “Guess we are hitting the road,” he said more clearly, meeting Jody halfway for a goodbye hug. 

It didn’t take long for all goodbyes to be said, and for the three of you to be waving to Jody from behind Baby’s windshield. Her engine purring beneath you, you in the back, and Dean still unable to pull you aside. 

He may as well have accepted his fate then and there, because with Sam still in your midst and no doubt sharing a room with you tonight, Dean couldn’t see himself getting you alone anytime soon. Unless he pulled you into another bathroom and locked the door. 

Maybe there was a significance to his dream after all, because he sure couldn’t see it meaning anything else besides chasing you. He was already doing that with an imaginary tail between his legs.

Like he did in Omaha, he pulled Baby out onto the main drag to Grafton. Zeppelin once again in the tape deck—Black Dog, just to hit him in the chest harder. 

He couldn’t see you stealing his money when he had none, but he could reflect on the obsession because maybe that’s all this was. You told him having a kid with him wasn’t feasible, and all of a sudden, he wanted it. Wanted you and dragged back into that idea of white picket fences and apple pies. 

He threw one wayward glance after another as he drove out of Sioux Falls that day, lips twitching, threatening to form his own pout each time his eyes dragged up. You couldn’t have a kid, at least, he couldn’t have a kid with you when he was practically one himself. His face screwed up, scowling with a complex amount of emotional constipation he didn’t realise he was doing until he noticed Sam not only staring at him, but throwing his own brief look towards you—none the wiser. Until you caught Sam doing it. 

“Everything okay?” you asked, unsure. Your mouth forming its own pout as you queried them further with your own tilted glare.

“Yup.” Dean’s hands gripped the wheel beneath his fingers tighter, drawing the blood out and turning them white. He himself stole another shot at Sam who, while no longer looking at either of you, smirked, then swallowed what Dean could only assume was a sound he didn’t want to hear. 

“You said there’s been similar cases?” he asked, figuring talking about the case would get Sam’s continued focus.

“Yeah,” Sam took the bait, pulling ‌his laptop out from beneath the seat. 

Whether he knew what Dean was doing didn’t faze him so much. No doubt he did. Didn’t stop him rambling on as Dean wanted—or didn’t. It was a matter of surviving the rest of the journey to North Dakota, point B to point C, or D, depending on when you asked for another bathroom break. 

Dean flicked yet another glance your way as Sam booted up the machine. Your eyes, catching him this time. 

They narrowed. Your brows challenged him, but Dean had nothing to say that he could in front of Sam. Nothing but the case, at least. “Any more before it?”

“Ah—dunno. There’s been plenty of disappearances in the area like everywhere else, but it’s hard to tell if it’s localised. The area’s covered by a lot of farmland. Population of Grafton specifically is about four thousand and declining.”

“So what makes you think they’re connected?” you said, also placing your focus on Sam. It was the most you’d said about the case, aside from agreeing to come with them.   

“The circumstances.” Sam looked over his shoulder at you. 

It made Dean twist his wrist on the wheel for a different reason altogether, as opposed to what came with you or other women. He had to focus on the case over what was happening in his life. The case was most important. People missing. A guy, dead. But what could there be besides that? That was their normal, and he said so. “People who don’t show up to work the next day? Come on, man.”

“Hey, I told you it was a stretch. You jumped at the chance.”

And yeah, okay, that was true, he did, but, “I also thought the Red River was in Texas,” he muttered.

“It is,” you and Sam said in unison. Sam, further informing you both, it was also a song because that was also important.

Son of a bitch. Seems everybody's pregnant. Well, everyone but you—but that’s not the point! No. The point is, the universe is fucking with him, and if it’s fucking with him? It’s no doubt fucking with you, too.

Why else would you still be in the bathroom if not because of what happened at Edith’s or because of your damn period? You’ve been in there since you returned from the Walsh’s, and that has to be it aside from the not talking to him part. 

Truth be told, he accepts it for what it is. You’re mad. He shouldn’t have listened to Sam at the morgue this morning. Worst idea ever, forcing you into his presence to do the interviews. 

No, Dean should’ve just left you at the motel. He should’ve insisted on it, but why else are you here if not to help on the case? You came after all. You don’t just get to mope around the motel, not that you were—are. Research was important. Lore was important, as much as the morgue and dealing with the sheriff was. Just as much as visiting all the families was. 

He should’ve let you go off on your own and interviewed Marjorie. Sam got the raw end of the deal either way with dealing with the other three families you didn’t. Maybe then, most definitely actually, you’d be closer to solving the mystery and finding where the nest is because so far there’s been no footage of the missing being taken. Like you in the bathroom, they disappeared without a trace. 

Now he has to pry you out of there. Or, at least, risk getting his head bitten off so he can tell you, him and Sammy are leaving. 

He stands up, and Dean follows, grabbing his coat and throwing it back over his shoulders. Only, “Meet you at the car,” he says. “I’ll just—” He nods to the same chipped wood you’ve been hiding behind, avoiding Sam’s stalled look. 

Whatever he’s thinking, he lets it go. Says nothing. Just grabs his coat, too, and his phone. Closes the lid on the laptop and picks it up, striding to the door with his freakishly long legs. 

Once again, Dean was alone with you. Sort of. 

He runs his palm over his cheek. Stubble, shaven this time, having made a point to, as he’d planned to before he and Sam left for the sheriff. Just part of the reason the weather’s been affecting him so much.

What does he say this time? Is he asking you to come? Would you even answer? Because you refused to talk since leaving the Walsh’s. The drive back to the motel, awkward just as much as it is standing here now and deciding.

The walls are thin, like most rooms are. Same as a bathroom stall. Like the ones in the bunker, only he still can’t hear any noises because technically the gap between tattered carpet and chipped paint ain’t all that much. He can’t even see a shadow moving beyond the door, blocking the light like many others do. 

No groans from the pipes or hums from the exhaust. What could you possibly be doing in there for so long, and does he want to know? Bathroom doors are there for a reason, and aside from needing to know you’re taking another test, he doesn’t need to. 

Still, he wonders. You really are a world away from Omaha and Memphis. A world away from Missouri, telling him not to lose you. Kind of seems like he is. Or he’s just being dramatic.

Yeah. You’re being dramatic, Winchester, he tells himself. The biggest dumbass there is. Falling for you and fucking it up by opening his big fat mouth.

He sighs. Drops his shoulders. Rolls the ever aching one. Damn bullet wound’s giving him as much grief as his sack is due to the icy temperatures. All that going in and out of them. Having to do it again now. 

His steps are cautious and slow as he moves around the table and past the beds. Fist on his right side, already forming. 

Like your room, he knocks with the same one he used on you yesterday, with the hope you’ll reciprocate. Like his steps, it’s slower, though. Softer. Almost light enough to be unheard. All he can do then is wait. The words he thinks he wants to say caught in his throat until your, “What Dean?” filters to his ears.

You’ve said his name in worse ways before, but this is…well, he’s not sure what this is. The lump blocking his airways, heavy. Disappointment, even though he should’ve been expecting it so. 

It’s quiet. If he had been standing further back, if he wasn’t leaning on the door, he wouldn’t have heard you. He rubs his lips together, taking the time to moisten them and the rest of his mouth the best he can before he replies. And come on, man? This ain’t him.

“Sammy and I are heading out,” he says with much more confidence than his gut is giving him. “Gonna talk to the boyfriend. See if we can get Edith’s last location,” he adds with a little more conviction. A little more authority. 

For a moment more, he’s left standing there, waiting still on a delayed “Okay,” which is rather purposeful as his pout and your ‘only if it’s intentional’ line was regarding silent treatment.

If this isn’t silent treatment, he doesn’t know what is? He doesn’t know what to add to it either besides repeating your exact wording. “Okay?” into a question. 

“Do you need me?” you say, and while it’s not exactly sarcastic, he hears the annoyance. If you were seventeen, it’d be your ‘do I have to’ tone.

His jaw stretches; cheeks draw inwards. They don’t need you. Not exactly, though “Not really,” is what he says defeated. “I’ll, ah, we’ll see you when we get back, yeah?” He cringes because this is getting pathetic. 

But you don’t say anything, and, fist still on the door, he removes it, taking a step back. 

Okay. Yeah. No. It’s okay. That okay doesn’t mean anything. You just acknowledged what he said, and he acknowledged you. Done. Dusted. 

He picks up that tail that continues to hinder his gait (along with his icy sack) and heads to the door. He can bitch and moan all he wants later. Get a six-pack after they see this Jake kid. Maybe drop Sam off and leave him with you while he heads to a bar. This place can’t be that small that there’s no dive. 

Even the diner on the corner he got breakfast from—Granny’s? Whatever it’s called. The server, Meghan, was rather nice. The kind of small-town girl he went for. 

He’d only look, of course. He may be a dumbass, but he’s not an asshole. Any guy or girl who did anything more than look deserves more than Dean’s fist to their face. 

As he steps outside the main door and shuts it behind him, Sam’s face is rather unimpressed. Brow quirking up, he’s sat in the passenger seat, head tilting. His eyes narrow when he sees Dean looking back at him, and as Dean reaches Baby and climbs inside, he’s expectantly doing so. 

But the Impala, shifting beneath Dean, is a comfort. Her scent warms him like the tendrils from a steaming cup of coffee curl past his cheeks. Like any other time, the slight you left him reeling in seeps off his shoulders and into the air as he settles. 

He steals one last glance at the door he’s just left before his hands have even touched the wheel or keys. Baby’s engine, pulling him out of it as he turns the ignition over, and shakes his head. 

He’s gotta get his head in the game. Stop moping. It’s not like you’re going to disappear while he and Sam are gone. No doubt, you’ll slink out of that bathroom the second you hear the rumble leave the parking lot. 

As always, he shifts the car into gear and, turning himself to the side, raises his arm to the backrest to reverse, and finds Sam still staring at him.

“What?” He allows one flick of his eyes to Sam before easing her out of the space. His concentration on what’s behind him. His ears burning on account of the continual glare. 

“Is everything okay?” Sam says, and Dean knows without checking his peripheral that his baby brother finds whatever he thinks is going on hilarious. 

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

Sam scoffs. That ever-pompous chuckle where his lips cover half his face. “Gee. I dunno, Dean.” And Chuck, does he hate it when he says his name like that. “Maybe we can skip to the part where you tell me what’s going on between you two, unlike this morning,” he says next. 

Having reversed, Dean turns back to the front. His arm, slow and floating as his eyes pass over Sam’s face one last time. “Unlike this morning, your advice was a load of crap.” He shifts Baby into drive. 

Sam scoffs again. It’s not so hilarious now, is it? 

He nods his head, said head now facing the front, too. That peripheral of Dean’s again notes it as well as his flick of the tongue over his lower lip.

Clearing his throat, as he always does first, Sam seems to consider his words, which, perfect. Dean shoves the tape sitting in the deck, back into the stereo. Though he considers turning it up, too, Metallica was more for his benefit on the drive back from the Walsh’s when the silence was more obvious on account of the proximity.

Part of him wants to ask Sam straight out what he should do, but the other is still dealing with his pride. There’s no doubt he knows there’s something going on between Dean and you. How could he not? If it ain’t obvious, then it’s a question of Sam’s intelligence. Dean just sees no point in telling him about the test. Not yet. Not now, when the world is throwing hCG wielding adults at him.

So, still—again, he’s lost on what to say, so he goes with the first truth that comes to his mind. Surprisingly, it makes some sense. “I asked her out,” he says. Pauses. Takes that brief second between his thoughts to twist his jaw. Make sure it’s working. “She wasn’t interested.” He shrugs, pressing his foot into the gas to end the conversation ‘cause that’s it. That’s all there is to it.

You’re friends, family. That’s all he can ever ask for because you’re important to him. Always there for him, like he’s gonna be for you when you decide you’re no longer mad at him.

His heart was pounding in his chest. Mary. Mom. His mom. She was working with the Brits for them? The same jerks that’d tortured Sam and rammed his Baby? That crazy bitch Bevell who’d played mind control games on him? Made him hallucinate he was dating her under a spell, only to burn his feet and slice him with a knife? Those Brits? 

So what if they helped them escape the feds? It didn’t change the fact, they’d done all that other stuff. She was their mom. She was supposed to stick up for them. Support them. She was supposed to support him, but she never did. She never wanted to be around.

It made Dean feel like there was something wrong with the man he’d become when she was the one who wasn’t there to raise him.

Well, she wasn’t. And it wasn’t his fault. It was hers for making that deal and leaving them the way she had. 

Why’d he have to suffer when she should’ve known better? Why’d he have to miss out when he was so excited to have her back? 

“So there’s the door.” Dean’d made his point. Adrenaline still coursed through the arm he’d used to do it as he spun on his heels, unbothered to wait for a response or see the shock on Mary’s face—if it was ever there. 

He’d had enough. He’d had enough ten minutes ago. Couldn’t look at her after she’d spewed all that crap about Wally. 

But he did the dutiful thing for Sam until he high-tailed it. His steel caps scuffed over the polished floor as he stormed away. Rabid scrapes, bow legs, they ground bone against bone on impact. His tendons didn’t stand a chance.

And neither did the liquor cart. 

He needed a drink—he needed twenty. He’d head to the local bar. Drown himself, down and out, but that risked another pass by, and that wasn’t happening. There was no way he could keep his mouth shut, knowing what she’d done. 

That’s not what family did. That’s not what moms did, yet here they were.

He passed ‌through the library. Pulled out a bottle of whiskey, never looking back, even as Sam mumbled something about himself needing time. 

Dean heard the scrape of his chair. He wasn’t far behind him, but even Sam was the last person he wanted to see. How could he continue to pretend that woman was the mom he lost? In another thirty years, maybe. Then she’d at least look the way his mom was supposed to look, and he’d be too old or dead. 

He could only hope he would be. He was off to a right start, needing to calm down because his heart was now in his throat and choking him. The blood flowing through his veins—her‌ blood, throbbed through his arms and beneath his fingers as he clenched them tighter ‘round the glass and raised the lip to his mouth just as he made it to his room. 

Dropping to the floor at the foot of his bed, he chased the smokey liquid down his gullet, jarring his ass against the icy concrete and his tooth against the bottle, which was perfect, because you appeared, curious. There was no chance for the sting behind his eyes to do anything more than be present. 

With your hand on the door, you leant in, not crossing the threshold just yet, but twitching. seeming to wait for his invitation, or for him to say something first. But what were you expecting when he was this close to actual tears? He could choke up the sudden emotion and pretend the booze was more potent than he remembered, but what was the point? You knew better than that. He was a thriving alcoholic. Often running on the fumes of the last drink. He wasn’t ashamed to say it. 

There was a reason you were here now, though, having been nowhere near the vicinity of the war room when she’d waltzed in unannounced. Even the burgers she’d brought with her to butter them up hadn’t pulled you from wherever the hell you’d just come from. 

“You heard all that?” he muttered into the bottle. He took another swig and blinked away the burn still threatening his tear ducts. He was rather calm, considering. Too shaky and shocked to raise his voice any higher than he had back there, aside from the fact it was red raw like his face must’ve been, because your brows softened. Your head tremored, just as. 

You stepped into the room and moved to sit beside him without a word. Your hand, held out to take his whiskey from him. Dean swallowed as you did. 

Your swig was much smaller compared to his; still, you let out a cough that didn’t match the amount you’d taken. You closed your eyes and breathed out of your mouth like you were birthing another tinier scotch for him. 

“Weak,” he smirked, stealing it back.

“Mhmm, maybe,” you said, watching him down another mouthful. Out-smirking him with, “Just don’t make me be the asshole and call out the double standards here.”

“What? I’m weak for showing emotion now?” he sputtered, lowering the bottle back down between his knees. 

“No,” your hand touched his arm as you said the word a second time. “You left it open. I had to.” You paused, forming the broad grin across your face that you always wore when you were trying to make him feel better. 

If it had been a cinematic moment, he, as the hero, would’ve said something witty to continue the banter. Locking the sidekick in a headlock. Pulling the love interest in for a kiss, but Dean took the opportunity you’d given him. He blurted out what he knew you were fishing for, just to get it over with, he told himself. 

“Mom’s working for them.” His fingers picked at the edge of the label, focused on his fumbling fingers instead of waiting for the surprise to overcome you.

“Them being—” Your free hand waved for him to continue, but it was hard enough for him to say the first part aloud. 

Who else would she be working with? Who else had been on your tail of late if not Crowley or the feds? 

Lucifer was in the wind, racing against you to find Kelly. The other angels were minding their own business for now. 

“The fucking Brit’s.” He took another gulp, larger than the first few. Anything to stop himself from saying more about it. About Sam and what they did to him. It was hard to watch him sit across from her and hear it as it was.

Dean dropped his arms to his thighs, resting the bottle between them. He mightn't have been a child, but he sure as hell felt like one. He continued picking at the label, waiting for you to fill the silence. To tell him it was okay to be angry or something along those lines, but your hand just took the one doing the picking and squeezed it instead. 

Call it a tantrum, whatever the fuck you wanted. This type of thing was supposed to come from her. He was supposed to go to her, or better yet, her to him. 

“She’s supposed to be my mom,” he whispered, and your arm was around his neck, pressing yourself into him without another word. Your chest half on his back, chin on his shoulder. Your fingers, smoothing down his flanneled sleeves, massaging what you could reach with a gentle touch.

He should’ve come to you from the get go. Your presence, calming him enough, even if you said nothing more. No apologies. No ‘I told you so,’ or badmouthing Mary, though he was certain you wanted to. He appreciated it. You had a way of knowing what he needed in the moment, even when his own mother didn’t, and she was supposed to know him or, at the very least, get to know him.

“That him?” Dean says as he and Sam walk closer to Grafton High School. Honestly, Dean’s certain it’s Jake. He’s just a little surprised to see Edith’s boyfriend’s arm sitting rather comfortably around another teenage girl, so soon after her disappearance. 

“Think so.” Sam pulls out the printouts they got from the clinic’s security cameras prior to this. Jake Hart’s mug on it. “Kid moves fast.” 

“So much for young love,” Dean mutters. 

The sheer luck of finding him like this right as school lets out says more about the town itself than their detective work, but here they are, honing in on the teen-player as he walks out the school gate. Here they were expecting to talk to the principal before finding him, but this is where his parents said he would be, albeit leaving.

The fact that he’s walking out in a group of four or five other teens is perfect. Dean could use the chance to play up his bad cop act. If only he weren’t wearing his coat, he’d adjust his gun and raise his arms enough that his Colt caught on his jacket.

Best he can do is stand taller, though. He supposes Sammy’s height is an advantage sometimes. They trek across the grass out front, covered in leaves and twigs that crunch beneath them and announce their approach. Not that any of the teens are paying attention to the two old guys approaching them.

“Excuse me, Jake?” Sam calls out. He pulls himself into a light jog to catch up with him, now mid-laugh and heading in the opposite direction to him and Dean. “Jake Hart?” he calls a little louder. Only then does Jake turn around.

His grin is as broad as the acne covering his face. It falters when he takes in the clothes they’re wearing. Realisation, seeming to hit as both Sam and Dean whip their badges out from their coats and flash them at him. 

Dean’d say he’s guilty right there on the spot, but he’s also seen enough teenage vamps in his time to know this jock turned timid little boy ain’t one. 

“Federal agents?” Jake reads the lettering. His eyes, flashing to the girl now hanging off him. His tongue swipes at his lips, and she leans forward and up. Must need glasses if she can’t see the craters, but then again, Dean never judges. Can’t say he never had a zit.

“Bonham and Jones.” Dean hollows his cheeks, voice stiff. His arm waves between him and Sam, before stowing the badge away in his coat pocket. “You got a minute?” He couldn’t care less that Jake’s friends are watching their exchange, paying particular attention to the girl when he adds, “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Edith Walsh.”  

Dean’d laugh at Jake’s sudden lighter shade, but he is a professional after all. He wags his brows and clicks his tongue. 

“Ah, yeah.” Jake looks back at his friends; Dean exchanges one with Sam when Jake leans in and plants a kiss on the girl’s cheek, heads tilting all round. Jake even gets a throat clear from Sam. 

“You guys go on ahead,” Jake says. But as if nothing’s amiss, he turns back to them, fed suits and all, and dares to ask, “What about her?” His hands go to the pockets of his varsity jacket. The green colouring isn’t a good look for him. 

“Do you know her?” Dean lowers his chin. Blinking, not bothering to keep his tone in check in favour of intimidating the kid. It’s a shame he’s not wearing his usual gear. As much as he didn’t like Gary, Dean’d love to give the punk a shiner on the father’s behalf.  

“Yeah, I knew her,” Jake says, shrugs, but he doesn’t seem all that worried, even to be talking to them. 

“Oh, you knew her?” Dean folds his arms across his chest and looks at Sam again, half twisting, half bending his back. “You hear that, Sammy? He knew her.”

“Do you know what she was doing at the hospital about two weeks ago?” Sam’s eyes flick to Dean’s in warning as he hands Jake the printouts. “That’s you there with her, isn’t it?” Sam points to the closeup of his face.

It’s not the best image. Though the security camera caught him at a bad angle, all the angles are bad in Dean’s opinion. 

And why is life imitating the cases he does again? You don’t treat a baby mama poorly, no matter how young you are. Even if you thought they were your baby mama and then you found out they weren’t, you don’t treat them shitty and hook up with other chicks the next day, either. 

Except if you’re this kid; he nods his head. “She thought she was pregnant. Begged me to come with her.”

“She is pregnant,” Dean corrects him. “We spoke to the clinic ourselves. But you knew that.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s mine.” Jake shrugs. “Edie could’ve slept with someone else after me.” 

“Regardless if that’s the case, she’s missing,” Sam says. Rather aggressive as far as Sam goes, which is great, because Dean’s got nothing. The kid’s ability to maintain a social life grander than his in Grafton is impressive. 

How old is he? Sixteen? Seventeen? As Gary had done, Dean unfolds his arms, only to refold them again. “When did you last talk to her?” His chin drops again, too, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“Ahhh—Thursday, I think.”

“The day she disappeared?” Sam doubles down. He was shuffling through his papers as he said it, but he’s now giving Jake the look he gives Dean when he’s at the end of his tether. 

And when Jake replies? His “Yeah, I guess so,” is tacked onto another shrug? 

Sam’s knees bounce at the audacity. His hands, coming to his hips like he wants to pull his jacket up and show the kid his gun instead of Dean.

It’s Dean that deals with it though. “You guess so?” He releases his arms to stick his hands in his pockets. His thumb, tracing the edge of his phone to keep at least one fist in check, because he’s had enough. “Your girlfriend’s missing and you guess so?” 

“We broke up. I wasn’t exactly happy to see her when she showed up.”

“At your house?” gets him a nod in reply, and that’s it. Dean’s tapping out. He’s letting Sam take the reins on this one. Aside from the fact that it’s not his place to do so, Dean’s not gonna stand ‘round and listen to Jake’s crap without going off on another tangent about how shitty a boyfriend he is to a girl Dean doesn’t even know.

Edith might not be Claire or Alex. She’s no Krissy or even Patience either—he hasn’t even met her, but he can’t do this. He may not be the best role-model, sure, but at least he offered to stick by you and take on his responsibility before you’d found out. 

He’ll ignore the part that asking you out when he did wasn’t the best time.

Besides, Sammy’s the stable one. He can keep Dean outta jail for child endangerment this way. Maybe it was a good thing your test was negative, because Dean’s definitely not father material. Though he sure as hell would make any son of his deal with the consequences of their actions. Just as John would’ve done to him now if things had been different. 

Maybe after this he and Sam should pay Jake’s parents another visit? Get him grounded at the very least. 

Dean keeps his eyes on him, unmoving, unforgiving. His thumb still plays with the edge of his phone as Sam goes through every detail.

But then he asks a question that has Dean pause and grip his device mid-flip. “What do you mean the first test was negative? She got tested at the hospital?” 

“Yeah, but we took one of those home ones first,” Jake says, and now Dean’s paying attention. 

Again. Life. Imitate. Case. Thank Chuck, Dean’s not strong enough to break another phone without the Mark’s influence. Luckily, his stomach is in on the conversation, because the contents inside take over his fingers, flipping whatever remains there from lunch over for him instead. 

“And that first one was negative?” Dean asks, and though he can feel Sam staring at him, he keeps his focus on Jake. There’s been too many damn coincidences throughout this case, and he’s not liking the latest one. Not one bit.

All it takes is for Jake to say the word “yeah,” and Dean excuses himself. 

If Sam protests, Dean doesn’t see it. Wouldn’t even know if he’s confused him—doesn’t care. 

He turns his back on both of them and moves a couple of yards away. His now tingling fingers are whipping his phone out, wasting no time unlocking it and finding your name in the contacts list.

He’s overreacting. Has to be. But moments and conversations flood through his head.

Taking the test in the bathroom. What happened after. How you’ve been treating him like asking you out how he did is the same as chasing you through the bunker with a hammer. He never threatened your person. Just wanted to do the right thing and offer you more than the situation you’d landed yourselves in. Nothing wrong with that, even if you don’t know the real reason behind it.

It’s safe to say he’s no Jake. Though maybe he is for not making you go see a second opinion. If history tells you anything, Dean is exceptionally virile. His swimmers have broken rubber barriers; it don’t matter if Lydia was an Amazon. His male genes were the ones that hit the target.

But you don’t answer. The phone rings out, which, there has to be a logical explanation for. There always is. Only the second and third times has him equally pissed and left with a racing heart. 

He should check on you, right? Swing by the motel just to make sure you’re still as pissed at him as ever? Make sure your period did come and isn’t still late because now that he thinks about it, he just assumed.

He opens his messages. Goes to shoot you a message. Starts typing: Just checking, your—your what? Your period came? Shark Week going well? Is your lady garden bleeding yet? No, no, no. He can’t say that. But what the hell does he say? It’s not his business, let alone send it in a text, but—

“Dude,” Sam says, now in his peripherals again. Not close enough to see what he’s typing, but close enough that he needs to finish and hit send—now.

—period came right?

Without further thought, he hit the little arrow and shut it off, running his free hand over his mouth again. Out of habit? To keep himself busy? Or to hide the ticks he’s doing with his teeth and tongue as Sam moves beside him.

“You, of all people, should know contraceptives don’t always work,” you’d said in the bathroom. 

It was more a dig at him, of course. Didn’t mean there was meaning behind it, even if at that point you hadn’t seen the results. There just couldn’t be. 

Problem was, again, the universe liked to screw him over, and this just didn’t sit right. 

You were on the pill, and yeah, it didn’t always work, just as rubbers didn’t. He’d put up with Jody bombarding Claire and Alex over that very thing a few years ago. Even if that was more a focus on STDs (he thinks), it worked with the other stuff, too.

What’d Lisa tell him once? That time she’d taken a test, she’d been worried because she’d skipped one and he’d had to suit up for a week afterwards?

Right?

Right?

He runs his hand down his chin. Sam’s watching him again now, and he can’t continue with Sam up in his face like this. 

“What?” he says, shaking his head, blinking just as fast. Dean knows there was a question there. Sam was thumbing behind him towards the Impala, but with his eyes narrowed now, looking at Dean in both disbelief and a concern that didn’t need to be there because there’s nothing concerning about this, right?

“Is everything okay?” 

“Yeah,” Dean mutters, shoving his phone back into his pocket before giving Sam his full attention.

“Really? ‘Cause you went from Starsky to Hutch in under sixty seconds,” he scoffs, “What was so important?” He flicks his chin towards where his phone now lies.

“Just something he said. Thought I had a lead.” Dean looks over to Jake, now much further away than Dean first realised. Hand still in his pocket, thumbing the side again, waiting to feel the vibration of a reply, he gestures they get a move on themselves. 

He’s not sure what Sam’s next move is, but a part of him really wants to swing by the motel, just for his own peace of mind. If you don’t send a text back, he’ll make you talk to him this time. There’s a niggle in his throat that won’t go away until he does. 

Call it his spidey senses tingling. Call it delusional. It’s not that he wants it to be the case, and he can’t help but ask, “So what’d I miss?” as they cross the asphalt to where Baby is still waiting for them. His head to the ground most of the way.

“Not a lot. Kinda concerned for Grafton’s next generation, though.” Sam’s grin is wide—he snickers at his own joke. That giant grin plastered on his face again. Dean snickers with him. 

So does Dean’s stomach, even as he pulls on the door handle and gets into the car.

Of course, unless Sammy has picked up some x-ray vision from the same store Dean got his discounted radioactive spider bite from, he’s none the wiser to any of it. He joins Dean from the passenger seat with a grunt and the other obvious. 

“Still doesn’t help us, though,” he muses. “You think we should go back to where Humphries was found?”

Dean has to think carefully about how he can suggest otherwise. Too quick off the mark and Sam will know something’s up aside from his Hutch act. 

“Why? Because the first time was so successful?” He turns the engine over, grateful for the purr and the leather beneath his fingers. If he just focuses on his Baby and not some hypothetical one that doesn’t exist, he’ll get through the rest of this case until you reply, and—screw it.

“You know, I say we go back to the motel. Check the lore.” ‘Cause the lore is Sam’s weakness. “At least get out of these monkey suits.” ‘Cause that’s his. “Didn’t you say there were creatures who fed on pregnant women? Maybe it is a blood thing and not vampires being picky? I mean, when have we ever seen bloodsuckers be selective about their food?” 

He gives Sam a quick glance to hide the fact that he’s talking way too fast. Thankfully, “We haven’t,” Sam says in agreement. Though his eyes are as suspicious as Dean feels they are, and Dean himself is suspicious. But he pulls out of the curb before Sam can say anything against him otherwise. His mission? Confront you.

“Smartass.” He drew you in by your wrists and a crooked smirk. Then he raised your palms to his shirt, doing as you’d dared him to, only at a loss on what to do next.

You had been a smartass when you’d asked him if he was going to dry your hands, and he’d done it. Two your-sized paw prints now sat smack bang over his stomach. Dark enough, they were almost a design.

But you? Your arms were limp under his fingers. Spaghetti noodles? Or just not aroused enough ‘cause he shook them, and you only went limper. Your half sniff, half snort was gonna be the best he could get. 

“So…you good?” he said again.

“I think so.” You pursed your lips, flushing their appearance with a subtle sheen that in any other circumstance would leave Dean with no other choice than to kiss you proper. 

There was something about the way you were less hardened in that moment that had him settling for your temple, though. He leaned in close to place a chaste kiss there. It seemed more sacred that way. More belonging to a couple over how you’d been in the past and up until that morning, even if you hadn’t seen it that way yet. 

“Yeah, me too,” he said. His mouth, still against your skin, when he wrapped his arms further around you. 

There was something still beating beneath the surface. That softer side he’d seen in your eyes as he continued to lean over you, seeping through your clothes and into his. 

Whatever it was, that feeling, he reeled it all in, squeezing you tight. “It’s gonna be okay,” he said. 

He almost believed it. 

You were both adults. You could do this. It had taken you a while, but you’d told him; he’d gotten you the test. You were being more adult-like than some people he’d known in his life, taking on the responsibility to do the right thing and make sure if you were or you weren’t. 

It’s why you were there in that bathroom. The bunker was no roadside dump or rundown hole you’d squatted in. You had a home base—a roof over your head that you then shook beneath his chin. 

Dean pulled back to look at you, seeing the woman he’d known all along. Still determined, mouth still flushed. How he found this softness in you attractive was as terrifying as the glow he’d seen before when he considered what hung in the air. 

That little piece of plastic you were both waiting on was either a blessing or a curse to your working relationship. It could and would hurtle you into the awkwardness of something else he wasn’t ready for, if it were positive. Or not. 

He should’ve wrapped it. He should’ve stayed a virgin, and though he didn’t know it at the moment in time, you agreed.

“We can’t have a kid, Dean.” You reinforced that rational side he needed to hear. Only telling him he couldn’t have something was the worst thing you could do when there was a spark poking its ugly head out of a book he’d locked away a long time ago. 

His time with Lisa. His shorter time with Cassie. The list could go on if he thought hard enough about it. He ran from all of them because he was never in it, though he had plenty of opportunities. He assumed he was the grunt he’d been running from all along until Sammy waltzed back into his life and roped him into the things his own father chased. 

It reacquainted him with you. You’d known each even then. He’d considered another slice of apple pie with you now, in a matter of hours. A carrot in his line of vision, encouraging him to take what he once gave up, like it were golden and would feed him forever. Not just a once off thing. 

You stood there before him, still in his arms, only at a greater distance the more he stared at you. He nodded to the test, still sitting above the sink. It hadn’t even been three minutes, but there was a deep pull in his chest that wanted to reach out and flip it over. In that moment, he dared the thing to be negative.

“It’s a little late for that, honey,” he mumbled. Audible for you to hear, but unsure of the words himself. It was too late. Having sat down and pissed on it already, it was non-refundable. 

“It’s never too late.” Your head tremored, and Dean didn’t like the way you’d emphasised certain words. The cogs in the back of his mind worked harder than ever as he considered them. 

“What’re you—” 

“This life; the job.” You pulled back a step, too. Hands coming together to pull at the tips of both sets of fingers. “I mean, we’re not even dating. We—” But you trailed off yourself. Those hands of yours, now bobbing in front of your still very flattened stomach as you tried to make a point, Dean still wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. 

The job? Well, the job he could understand. The life? Sure. He guessed. He wasn’t the only one ‘round here that had a history in the family business. But dating? He was expecting a different word altogether, and hey, that was your choice. Maybe that’s what you were trying to say and even you’d backed out. 

Of course, he went the high road. 

“So what?” He licked his lips. “You wanna date me?” He’d cling to that if he didn’t have to deal with the A word before you knew the test results. You could avoid an awkward conversation if you just held off a little longer. At least he hoped he could. He didn’t want to think about that because that little niggle in his gut was still festering. Still considering the possibilities, he wasn’t supposed to want. 

Even if this was only ever a temporary thing, it’s not like the two of you weren’t good together. The last words Missouri’d said came to mind.  

He took a step back and opened his arms out to you, shrugging like the answer was obvious. It was obvious to him. “That’s an easy fix.” He just wasn’t expecting the reaction he got,

“You’re serious?” Your eyes narrowed.    

Damn right he was. Though he didn’t appreciate the edge of a smirk that came to your lips. 

You didn’t appreciate his offer either. “I don’t want to date you,” you said. You could’ve at least made your tone a little lighter. Not look at him like it was all a big joke ‘cause wow! The smile you’d been holding back had his jaw tick and his eyes fluttering like he was trying to take off and follow old patterns. If only his lashes were long enough. 

Should he be insulted? He should be insulted, right? Was he not a good-looking fella? 

He folded his arms and stared down at you, his forehead stretching with the weight of his brow. “So I’m good enough to be the stud and let off a bit of steam, but I’m not boyfriend material?” 

“You’re saying it like I wanted this to happen.” 

“I’m giving you an option.” His vocal cords shrilled. He was insulted, alright. Wanted to take the whole thigh back. “Kinda regretting it now.” 

“You should be. What’s next? A marriage proposal?”

“No,” his voice raised higher, catching in his throat. Though he can see how you got there. Maybe. That’s what the guy in the movies always did, right? Made things official by making someone honest. He needed that more than you, but it wasn’t the point. 

“Then why’d you offer that?”

“You said we’re not dating,” he said, but your head was shaking for real that time, and “What?” he said next. Could he be any more insulted than he wasn’t supposed to be? There were no subtle tremors in sight. Everything, obvious and dismissive until you stopped to rub your fingers across your temple, turning away from him like you were the one struggling to understand him. 

“I meant we’ve been careless.”

Careless? “You said you were on birth control.” And that did it. May as well have dropped your jaw like your tongue was a tape measure because you stared back at him like he’d told you he was the one who was pregnant and you were waiting on his test results. 

Your head snapped to him like the measure had wound back and startled you. “You, of all people, should know contraceptives don’t always work.” 

Your face held there for a pause. Eyes flickered back and forth. His were doing the same.

Dean felt whatever it was you were measuring deep within the pit of his stomach. There was that fear again. The one that’d been circling around him ever since you’d told him, circling back over you to a familiar scene. 

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay.” Even after you’d cut him down over that very line moments ago, he meant it now. Believed it.

“Maybe,” you muttered. Dean reached for you again. He pulled you towards the sink and the reason for all the back and forth. His hands on your arms, itching and ready to take it.

It had to be three minutes now, right? At least close enough that the line would’ve changed had it been one of those other ones that weren’t digital. He’d been foiled by pretty packaging and a gimmick that hindered the result. He still didn’t know how it worked. Hadn’t read the instructions. But he doubted the letters in the plastic window would appear like an alkaline test with the gradual swell of liquid on the paper. 

He wasn’t that stupid. 

He tilted his head to the side and tried to see yours at a better angle. “Let’s just find out first, huh?” ‘Cause that was most important here. No matter what happened, there were nine months left to decide if it was positive. He said so. “S’not like we have to decide anything now.” 

“Just in nine months,” you scoff. Right on the money. You were smart, too. One step ahead of him.

He hadn’t said it for a reason, but he could go on about Lydia. You think months aren’t enough time? Try days. Hours even. Finding out he had a monster Hannah Montana for a daughter a day after shacking up with her mother still made his skin crawl.

He’d had a daughter, though. She was…if he looked past the wanting to kill him thing, Emma was beautiful. Her mother sure was a looker. There’s a reason he’d hit on her in the bar and said he was an investment banker.  

If it weren’t for Sam dealing with Emma on his behalf, though, Dean’d be dead as a doornail. And you? You wouldn’t be here, that’s for sure. And maybe that would’ve been for the better? At least you wouldn’t be so unlike yourself as you were now. The usual spitfire; the heat he saw in your eyes and the lip you often gave, gone behind one that was being chewed. 

Dean looped his arm around you further, grounding himself, hoping to ground you, too. A part of him still wanted to cling to the notion that this could happen. His skin was crawling, yes, but his gut was churning at the thought that the words he’d read when he flipped it over would say the words he’d admit he was hoping for. He couldn’t see any other possibility. The universe had those ways of messing with him. They could bring in the negative, and honestly, that’d screw him over more. 

He was in his head so much, you took control of the situation, though; the grounding having worked. You picked up the test before he could lift a finger. 

Like some cliche moment in a movie where the camera honed in on the character’s face and the music playing in the background slowed before the hook came in, you flipped it over with that same flip of the chords. Words waiting for you both on the screen.

Not pregnant.

All the hope and groundedness in his body hurtled out the nearest exit. His blood evaporated into nothing.

The words, clear as day. 

But that was okay, right? That was a good thing. You dodged a bullet. You couldn’t have a kid, just as you’d said so. The evidence was right there. In your hands. In his because he’d loosened his grip. Fingers barely clung to you. His arms now heavy and floppy like yours had been. 

Not pregnant.

“Not pregnant.” Your hand startled him. A soft touch on his good shoulder. 

The air that escaped him, laced with the start of a chuckle that never formed. “Yeah,” he said. Licked his lips to moisten the dryness. Did nothing for his throat. Eyes, lids, lashes, brows and frown lines raised, hoping to do something more than staring at the test in your hands. “You, ah—” 

What? He wasn’t going to ask if you were good again, when he wasn’t, was he? Talk about hypocrisy. 

Like Winchester-fine, good was a copout. You could answer in the affirmative and not mean it. It was the signal that the discussion was over, or at the very least, there was no pressing on it. So again—what? What did you say after something like that, aside from going back to your separate rooms? It’s not like sex was on the table.  

“You know I meant what I said about datin’ me?” He’d just been terrible on the delivery. 

“Yeah, I know,” you whispered. If it were possible, your chin dropped lower. 

You moved your hand off his shoulder and took a step backward. The warmth he’d been feeling, sucked away with it. 

And that was it? That’s all you were gonna say to that? “Guess it’s still off the table, huh?” he chuckled. His smile, forced. It didn’t reach his eyes, though they crinkled just the same. 

It was the kind you made when you were trying to hold your head high from a rejection. He should’ve been insulted, but he couldn’t bring himself to voice it. Not quite the way he wanted, at least.

“Look, I know it’s not the answer, but I—well, we’ve got a good thing going on here. Care’ta, at least, join me for a drink? S’not like you can’t have one now.” Chuck knew he could have another drink. 

You were still holding the test in one hand. Your fist held it tight on one end. But you tucked it into the shorts you were wearing, no longer just underwear below the oversized shirt.

He hadn’t noticed until now. Too focused on everything else.

“I think I’m gonna go to bed.” 

Your tone was a little louder that time. More certain than you had been minutes ago.

“Okay, yeah.” Honestly, Dean couldn’t believe it. “Yeah.” He brought his thumb up to his temple just to do something over stammer. “Yeah. Last thing you need is to wind up in the sheets with me again.”

It came out way too butthurt. Too denounced even for him. He sighed and took another step back. It wasn’t much. Your silence, or at least, lack of anything substantial besides going to bed, was telling. You were running away. Now, saying his name and only his name.

You were about to say something else but stopped short—and after he’d held you close and kissed your temple like that? That was boyfriend material right there, and…once again Dean—wanting something he couldn’t have.

So maybe he was a child? Didn’t matter now with you not being pregnant. He didn’t need to take on any responsibility anymore, aside from getting his mom and Jack back. Easy. Then he could enjoy his life. Take on an occasional hunt when he got bored.

He could sleep around—eventually. Go to bars and not worry if you were gonna get insulted. Jealous. He could sleep around; or go back to Miss. Itchi-gatsu when he was deprived of human touch. 

“I, ah—” He shook his head—once. Choosing to focus on you then. “Least you know the contraceptives do work.” 

“Dean, that’s not—” 

“Woah. No, no, no.” He swiped his hand through the air. Palm raised high in the sky, more than flatlined. A talk to the hand, except he was stepping around your hand coming back to his body. A toreador, if he had a cape in his hand. “I—you go to bed. You need it after last night. We got quite a workout in.” 

In any other circumstances, he’d be struggling to hide the grin that came with the thought of you, split open for him. His palms on your ass, spreading it further as he ploughed into you. But no, no. He had to stop that. Get a load of Itchi-gatsu into him or onto her. That’s what skin mags were for. 

“Dean,” you said, and you were louder. All because he was walking out on you. 

He strode across the bathroom tiles, empowered. That you were trying to call him back and hash it now left him reeling. Maybe you’d do the chasing for the time being if you wanted a piece of him. How stupid was he to think you ever might’ve been? 

Stupid Missouri. Sweet…deceased Missouri, but he never trusted psychics, and this was why. They got in your head. They made you see things that weren’t there. Well, now was too late.

“It’s all good, sweetheart. I got a bottle and a bed to lie in.” He thumbed to the door, now only a foot behind him. His hand was on the handle the next second, yanking it down with his ever aching shoulder. “I’ll—” He had nothing more to say unless he went with the low blow he wanted to go for. 

He didn’t, though. He didn’t have anything other than the need to get one back for the red face he guaranteed he had. 

So he walked out on you that night, which was funny, because if anything, he thought he’d be comforting you, but apparently, you didn’t need it.

Dean is just as quick at shutting off the Impala’s engine as he was at turning it over out front of the school. It took five minutes to get to the high school from Jakes’s house and another five to get back to the motel, but it’s still not fast enough. The whole point A to point B thing really hits home. Not bothering to play the part of calm and collected, he’s more dazed and confused as he jumps out of the cab. 

The first to the door before Sam has even closed the passenger side, Dean notices nothing weird out front. Though if Sammy has in his behaviour, it can wait until after. 

Dean barges in and scans the room, but at first glance, you’re not there. Not at the table. Not in the bathroom—neither’s your purse. 

But that’s normal, right? Things move. People use them. Your purse could be on the other side of his bed. Shoved in behind the toilet, for all he knows. He doesn’t know what you do with it. Women’s purses are about as functional as Mary Poppins’ magical bag was in his eyes. You could have a whole ass lamppost in there. A Baby? The Impala, to be clear. 

He takes a deep breath. Pulls his phone out—again. Hits call and waits. 

As Sam enters the room, Dean’s thrown a cautious glance his way. He feels it reach straight into his skull. His world, spinning out of control with each unanswered buzz and the call that drops out. 

“Son of a bitch.” He checks his texts. You haven’t left him on read, either. The tick in the message he sent you mere minutes ago, ten, fifteen max, still greyed at the bottom.

He’d throw his phone on the ground, but then where would he be, besides having a cracked screen and the dents in his palms to prove he once had it? No, it’ll only prove there’s something wrong when any second you’re bound to walk through that door behind him and not talk to him again. 

Sammy’s taking off his jacket. You’ll do the same. You’ll stare at him just like Sam is, head tilting to the side and laughing at how worked up he’s become over nothing. Except Sam’s not laughing—you were late. You did the test together. Dean saw the negative. The words read Not Pregnant. That was it. Final.

Yet, here was that same feeling washing over him again. The cliche moment. The music, slowing as the hook came in and stole the show.  

You weren’t answering his calls. You hadn’t opened his text. You weren’t in the room, and this case? This fucking case was dealing with pregnant women. HCG. Whatever. You weren’t here. You ain’t here. And he just needs to know that you’re walking ‘round, still breathing. Your neck, still intact and not in a river somewhere or having a catheter stuck into the back of your hand right now. 

He ran his hand over his face. The same hand then runs through his hair as he thinks. Frets. His forehead lines with trench marks that’ll set if he doesn’t right them.

“Dean?” Sam says, still standing. Still staring—but Dean ignores him. Can’t focus on anything other than you. 

You have to be on your period. Why else would you be acting so harsh towards him if it weren’t that you were moody and hurting a little extra? That’s how the bleeding thing worked, right? You bleed later, you get more blood? 

Does he Google that? Does he ask Sam that?

Nope—not asking Sam that. 

He shakes his head. Mutters the same word, “Nope.” He goes over to your gear that is here. Pulls it up off the floor and drops it onto your bed, ransacking through it like a common thief on a jewel heist.

He’s been through your stuff before. If you catch him red-handed, so be it. He looks at the door, looks down again at the bras and the shirts and the panties. A pair of jeans. The sleeve of a jacket. Just no little pouch you keep that stuff he’s looking for.

“Must be in the bathroom,” he says under his breath. 

And while Sam comes over, Dean spins on his heels. “What’re you doing?” doesn’t stop him. Not even his name being called more aggressively does as he strides to the bathroom door. 

The light flickers in the small space, having a fit of its own at being turned on, but Dean’s body is lunging forward. His fingers, peeling open the zipper on the prize waiting for him. Only then does he realise he doesn’t know how many tampons or pads he’s supposed to find amongst the packet of pills and Trojans. 

He stoops as low as going to the trash, which is where Sam steps in and draws the line. He yanks Dean’s hand away from lifting the lid up after he’s picked it up off the floor, the same as he did with your duffle. 

“Dude! What the hell are you doing?” His voice bounces off the tiles. He should feel lucky that he stopped Dean before he dumped the contents into the sink. Looking at Sam and having to explain that is worse than just coming out with it, though. 

“I, ah,” Dean scrubs his face with his hand; Sam screws his up in disgust. But Dean’s too far gone to think it has anything to do with him when he hasn’t even said what he needs to say yet.

How does he put this irrational fear into words? ‘Cause any second now he’s still expecting you to walk through that door so he can laugh about it. 

“She—took a pregnancy test two days ago.” He looks at his boots and not at his brother’s newfound stare. Sam could catch flies with that hole; Dean could shut his own up and snip off his junk while he’s at it. Still, he tries his best to explain further before Sam does it for him. 

“It was negative—but she’s not answering her phone, and what Jake said got me thinking.”

“Do I wanna—” Sam cuts himself off, waiting—no; hoping for a logical reason behind Dean’s sudden bathroom assault. It’s hard to win anyone over when the evidence stacks up against you. 

Dean shuts his eyes before relenting, “She was late, but I never checked if she actually got her period.”

“So you’re checking the trash for evidence?”

“She’s not answering her phone,” he says. It’s the most logical thing he can think of. Sammy’s gotta see that.

“Gee, I wonder why?” Sam’s hand points to the trash can like it’s the small bucket at fault.

And what does a guy say to that? It’s not like he did anything to deserve the silent treatment. “That’s what I wanna know,” Dean says, but the pitch is rather high. Sam was already questioning him in the car earlier. Asking him to just come out and say it over fretting like this. But how could he? It’s ridiculous enough now, yet his gut is flipping and his skin is starting to crawl. 

The only difference between this being you and Lydia is that you are family. A matter of you being harmed in any way whatsoever over a kid he’s not trying to think about. 

He wanted this in the bunker’s bathroom for a fleeting moment, but not like this.

Sam doesn’t react, though. He pulls out his own phone and, from where Dean is standing, brings up your number, dials, and puts the call on speaker. 

Dean holds his breath on the third ring. The cliche kind. The music slowing; the wait for the upbeat rhythm that tells the audience everything’s okay—or the hero is way out of his depth.  

What hope does he have if Sam can’t get through to you either?  Because the dial tone soon rings out.

Though Sam tries again, it still doesn’t get through—and then Dean catches the moment panic sets in Sam’s eyes. Only then does Dean let the panic settle in his own gut. Butterflies, crawling caterpillars—whatever. 

He clenches his jaw. “I’m checking her GPS,” he says.

A/N: Dun, dun, duuuuuunnnn. What can I say? I feel clever ✌️ With this chapter posted, I've hit the minimum 25k word count required (I'm sorry judges) -but there's still two more to go -❤️

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regression to the mean: a statistical phenomenon where data samples will often produce extreme values, followed by lows; a confounding factor found in both placebo and placenta effect studies; in regard to the placenta effect specifically, it is considered the point in which the non-committed partners become inept in their compliance due to stress and anxiety, and also includes the initial low values

Months later, you’re a world away from that stretch of highway outside Omaha; sitting in the living room (read: industrial freezer) of one, Marjorie Humphries, a seventy-something-year-old who seems to prefer layering herself up with the oversized doilies she hasn’t used to decorate with. 

There’s plenty of room for you to straddle Dean’s lap in the Grafton home. No doubt about that. The shag carpets’d be nice and cozy next to that fireplace—if it was on. Dean would lie down and have you ride him, but there’s no way you’re getting your legs around his lap without removing that fine piece of skirt you’re wearing off your ass first. 

He’s wearing his fed suit, too. Even with his coat still on, he’s not exactly toasty. It bunches below him; pulls at his neck. The cushion below it is rather comfortable, but he sits half off his seat, elbows on his open knees, just to keep his balance and stop himself from sinking into the old springs that creak whenever he shifts. 

Any extra weight right now is out of the question, hence the pulling. The thick padding strains against his back because he’s already tried to fix it multiple times.  

And he thought old people complained about the cold. He’s not saying he’s old, just…getting closer to forty daily.

Yeah, North Dakota is a far-cry away from Omaha, alright. It’s a little too close to the Canadian border for Dean’s liking. He’s got blue balls again, since he got to this stinking town. His junk, lacking in blood thanks to the ice he put there himself. Skin is sticking to skin in all the wrong places, which only makes things worse when he shifts forward again.

But that’s not why he’s bitching.

“The coroner said your husband was undergoing chemo?” His tone’s much kinder on the surface, trying the less cynical approach for Marjorie’s sake. His usual touch of charm he often pulls on cases like this, is hard to draw upon. However—

“He has—had testicular cancer,” Marjorie says, and Dean’s jaw pulls tight at the struggle to reference his passing. It can’t be easy being married to someone for so many years only to have them battle a deadly disease and still turn up as vampire chow.

She doesn’t know that, of course. You both do. Dean in particular, having gone to the morgue himself.

You hadn’t.

Which is just another slight he’s trying to ignore. He’s certain even Sammy wouldn’t get this close to a deceased’s widow, even if her age matches the usual crowd he tends to draw in. You, though? 

You’ve known Marjorie for all of five minutes, fifteen technically, yet you sat next to her on the two-seater sofa, over taking up the armchair next to him. And there’s the real problem. It’s actually hard to swallow. Watching your palm come to her shoulders like the dutiful granddaughter you’re not when the cold Dean’s really facing is the cold from your icy heart and a rather harsh round of PMS. 

He clears his throat and nods to your tender fingers in warning. It’s not that it’s a huge deal, it’s that it’s not part of your job description to comfort her, whether your cycle has you more impartial to a stranger right now or not. 

You’re here on business, not shopping ‘round for adopt-a-grandmother programs. You should reel that palm back in and stick to the questions you’ve come here to ask, but you don’t. Your eyes just flick to him. A hundredth of a second of your attention thrown his way before you’re turning back to the sweet old lady who’s resumed playing with her false teeth. 

“Did he attend any appointments the day he went missing?” you ask, knowing full well he didn’t. No medical professional is leaving a catheter in the body once the occupant has passed, but Ronald showed up on the riverbank, tubing still attached to his wrist. 

There were a couple of fang marks at the base of his throat, too, but Marjorie doesn’t need to know that. Not when the coroner put them down to a bunch of trees in the river.

She shakes her head no and rubs her lips together, blissfully unaware, though that’s up to interpretation. “We see,” she says and corrects herself again with a further tremor in her jaw, “We saw Dr. Dolgado every second Tuesday. That was supposed to be tomorrow.”

“And there were no other appointments the week he went missing?” you say.

“No,” she softly hoots, dropping her head down. Her shoulders shake beneath your palm, that’s still resting there. Dean’s surprised you’re not attempting to draw your arm behind them, but he’s also surprised you turn to look at him, eyes now pleading.  

They turn downwards. Your own lower lip would wobble if your own jaw weren’t tight like his had been. 

Are you actually looking to him for some sort of advice, or do you want him to say something? ‘Cause he’s got nothing—but he tries. 

“We—” Dean also has to correct himself. The lump in his throat gives him enough pause to do so. “The coroner found a catheter in his hand,” he says, which, granted, is probably not what you were expecting from him. There’s not much more he can do, though.  

“There’s no way he’d have access to one outside of his appointments, is there? He wasn’t a doctor before he retired, or—?” Or what? Did he have a kink for medical supplies? Was he a kleptomaniac, pillaging the local hospitals and clinics? 

The sheriff’s report had him down as a retired PE teacher. His medical history had him down as attending the free clinic in town outside of his chemo and oncologist appointments. Unless he’s been inspired by Walter White, Dean can’t see how there’s any logical explanation for the catheter in his hand besides vamps becoming respectable now. Has to be the cutlery equivalent for drinking blood, he supposes.

Marjorie shakes her head again. The words don’t even form this time; meanwhile, you’re glaring at him harder. 

Dean can see this interview ending rather abruptly. Pretty much has. You know what you’re chasing, and aside from Mr. Humphries and his mysterious catheter, there are still others who haven’t been found yet. Ronald was just the unfortunate first to show up dead. 

“Well, I think we’ve got all we need for now,” Dean says, as mindful as he can be at the end of an interview. He checks his footing and uses the pressure of his arms still on his thighs to hoist himself up. Before you or Marjorie can say otherwise, he looks to you with a flick of his eyes toward the door. 

You’re still not the most pleased, but it seems you can’t argue with him. At least, not in front of her. 

Your fingers squeeze her arm over that doily shawl of hers, smiling quite warmly considering the tension in your own shoulders. “He’s right. We still need to interview the other families, but we really appreciate you talking to us today, even with your loss.”

And though her head still trembles and she doesn’t meet your gaze, Marjorie does give you her quiet thanks before you take your leave. Dean insists you can walk yourselves out.

He follows your lead to the front entrance. In view of the living room, anyway. He nods his head to her as he closes the door behind him and steps out onto the small covered porch at the front of the house.

Outside is a shock to his system. Like stepping out of a regular household refrigerator and into an industrial freezer, his junk turns from stuck to frozen solid in a fraction of a second. Two ice blocks and an icicle clunking together between his legs? He’s a walking clacker toy from the nineties, what with the way you’re looking at him. Still insistent on keeping his sack iced.

“What?” he says. It’s not like he voiced his Walter White thought, or said anything bad or obtuse for that matter. He knows you’re not a mind reader. If you were, you would’ve done more than glare at him while he was exploring the possibilities of the Humphries living room floor. 

No, you’re just back to silence because you can. Your back is doing the talking for you as you step over the grass towards Baby. No mention of what you’ve just discussed with Marjorie. No hunches about the case like you’d normally do once you leave the comfort of the apple pie lives you’ve been presented with. 

Dean blinks, stuck in place for a second. His legs, hesitant. They’re either concerned about the potential Darwinism they have the sole charge of preventing, or they’re scared of you and your irrational wrath. It’s not like what he did was that bad. Most of the time he was good.

Your situation was always good. The sex was fantastic. Sure. Ever since Omaha, it’d been roadside hookups and sneaky motel room romps for quite a few months, and not for any reason. Often, that’s just when he wanted you the most. A hunt gone bad, a clash of personalities, with you or any other person. 

Now, though, he spread you wide, like a piece of art made for him and his bed. You, as wrecked as he felt. Eyes, half-lidded and almost closed from all your previous exertions. 

Your chest heaved, lifting the girls higher. Your nipples, pebbled and peaked. Mouth parted, much like your legs were, hooked over his thighs keeping you open for him, wet and wanting. Him wanting so much more. 

He raised himself to lean over you, chin dropping as he angled his weeping head and swiped it through your folds, collecting the mess he’d helped create and spreading it further. Him, the master still at work, and you, giving into his whims however he wanted you.

He groaned as he pushed forward. His hand guided himself down and caught the crown on your entrance. Slipped inside with ease. 

Your pussy lips clung ‘round him like the thirsty thing you were. Desperate to milk him dry. Desperate to feel him deeper. “So wet f’me.” He dipped lower, pressing an inch more of himself into your heat. “You feel that?” ‘Cause he sure did. “Greedy cunt, tryna pull me in down here.”

His lip curved up on the side, feral at the sight of you. It was all he could do not to slam his hips, but after the day he’d had, he needed to take his time. Even if his body couldn’t take much more, there was something about being put under a love spell and losing his will to Sabrina’s kid sisters that day that just did it to a guy. 

Made him want to be in total control of himself and his body again. 

Made him want to be in control of you.

You might’ve teased him for his cosmic fate line, but you were kinda sorta perfect under him. 

Your arms stretched out in search of his shoulders. Not quite able to latch onto anything until he leant forward that bit more. He adjusted his knees beneath him and dropped to his hands and elbows, gliding all the way down your channel with a long drawn out hiss that turned part grunt on the end as your cry reached his ears. 

“Tell me you want it, baby.” He drew up just enough to find you staring at him. Still blissed out, but a little more amused than he was hoping for. No-one smiled like that during sex. 

“What?” he said, not as confident as he had been for a guy who was still balls deep. 

Your cunt squeezed him just right, tight and warm. Soft, slick walls parted open, surrounding him; had him trembling just to hold himself there and not try to bury his tip deeper. A sexy game of hide the sausage, only—yeah, nope. That wasn’t helping. 

But neither were you. 

“Baby’s new,” you said, looking much different now. You’d lost that edge to your cheeks. 

He swore he’d seen the warmth coming off them like the haze lifting off Baby’s hood on a hot summer’s day. Your eyes no longer closed but opened wider, raised with scrutiny. Your brain, no longer short circuiting, nor close to shutting down.

“No, it isn’t—” It wasn’t. “I’ve said it before.” He raised himself up, arms straight, weight denting into the memory foam. He risked swallowing you whole if he sank any farther into the spiral that threatened to take his very manhood away. 

“You really gonna keep tabs when I’m in the moment now?” He eased himself back. It pained him to do so. Your chuckle wasn’t helping.

“Dean.” His name’d sounded better before. The slight come hither you made when you split the sound in two was more dream-like. Pulled from his worst nightmares of women leaving him. Of those damn witches.

But you weren’t them. Your thighs, wrapping ‘round and drawing his length back to the hilt didn’t belong to them, either.  

“Easy,” he drawled, when you clenched, inside and out. Your arms, tugging on his shoulders, pulled the rest of him flush against you, taking his attention away from your face to your breasts, pliant and full beneath him.

“M’not keeping tabs. Just—making observations,” you hummed, insisting on talking more, even as Dean’s mouth moved to your collarbone. 

“Oh, yeah?” He nipped; your skin clinging to his lips, poignant on his tongue, and so deliciously tart, he’d be choosing you for his last meal, if he ever got the choice to choose it, because you sighed, fingers carding though his hair, keeping him in place. There was no other place he wanted to be.  

“What else got you observing?” he said, not actually expecting a coherent answer because when he tested the connection with a gentle thrust of his hips, he followed through with another, and another, swifter and firm. He ground his pelvis against you. Soon pushed you further into the bed, pushing himself further into you. Pushing you both further still with a sudden snap that became the set rhythm. 

Moans, and sweet sounds of skin slapping skin, only heightening the experience until the pull in his gut was pulling his leg muscles taut. 

His mouth took a nipple. Fingers sunk into your flesh, marking your skin, making his entire body tingle. And when you breathed out another expletive, he groaned around you, thrusts pushing harder; pounding—earth-shattering. 

He released your tit and tried drawing air into his lungs, but all he could manage were quick, short gulps that did little for his head and rhythm. 

He was faltering. “M’close,” he stuttered—cringed at how fast he’d come undone. “So fucking good. I’m gonna—” But the remaining words didn’t fall. They couldn’t. His next three thrusts took everything from him. 

With a heavy grunt, he slammed himself in as far as he could go. The resistance from your walls, futile, even though they tried to clamp in on him.

His dick pulsed. The familiar quickening as his balls tightened flooded his nerves before he felt the burst pump thick ropes of cum through him to you. 

“Fuck me.” His head dropped to your shoulder, breathing laboured. The rest of his body, limp aside from the aftershocks that left him jerking over you. “Haven’t nut that hard in a long time,” he chuckled.

It’s a little strange to go from a seventy-year-old man’s home to that of a seventeen-year-old girl’s. The case is like one big joke with the catheter alone, and even then, it’s not the biggest one. 

Dean has already likened the mystery to one of those old riddles where three different people walk into a bar. Except there’s no president or priest here. No rabbi or shaman. Edith Walsh isn’t drinking unless she’s doing it under the nose of her parents, which, possible, but she’s not doing it in a public place. 

There’s also five victims, not three. Well, four now that Mr. Humphries’ body’s been found, and that’s the weird part. That was three days ago, while victim number five, a middle-aged councilor, was reported missing yesterday on the drive here. She leads an entirely different life to the mother of three and the former bodybuilder who also went missing. 

Yes, the town is dropping like flies, as far as cases go in a town so small. It’s just lucky for you the sheriff has fallen into the old trap of small-town folk jumping ship for somewhere larger and more exciting. He did struggle to explain Mr. Humphries away, though. 

If it were true and they were skipping town, Dean wouldn’t blame them. The place has its small town charm, sure, if you ignore the temperature. Dean’s surprised more men aren’t doing said skipping because of it. 

As Sammy said, the place is surrounded by farmland. Like Lebanon, there can’t be many opportunities outside of farming for the young folks like Edith. The Red River Sam was also oh so interested in talking about isn’t even red. 

But as Dean turns onto Dogwood Avenue, leaning over Baby’s wheel in search of the house numbers, he’s met with that small town charm he was talking about. 

Like Lisa’s place in Cicero, only without a suspicious mini-me in Ben clouding his judgement, he’s met with yet another postcard example of the apple-pie life he once thought he wanted. The one he thought he wanted ‌again for a fleeting moment, only to remind himself that ship had sailed with Emma. 

Someone should put a warning on it below Dogwood’s Irish green-looking marker. Someone may as well have pulled the street itself off the little town model some guy has in his swanky city office and placed it, smack bang in the centre of Grafton.

Number fourteen-thirty-nine sits halfway down the street, shrouded by a couple of leafy trees, bordering the drive. Dean pulls over to the side next to one of them. The light filtering through the cracks in the fall foliage sprinkles the cab with a soft, spotty glow. 

You’re no exception. Even your winter coat picks up the sheen, and Dean has to shake his head before it goes anywhere he doesn’t want it to. 

“Nice digs,” he tries, but it’s pointless. He knows it. He’s just surprised you agree and say so.

“It’s exactly the same as the Humphries.” Your face scrunches up like he’s let one rip. 

He hasn’t. He dropped a doozy this morning on account of the cheeseburger he ate last night after first arriving. His stomach, ‌clear of knots—now, thanks to the booze he downed it with and the extra coffee—yours, he had with his own. Whatever they put in those sweeteners you like, it wasn’t fit for human consumption. 

Maybe that’s why you’re so much more indifferent than normal? This silent treatment you’re dishing? A mix of him being in your bad books and you being hangry on top of your period that’s pulling you through the ringer this cycle. 

All that extra blood. It makes sense. It’s just surprising he can’t hear your stomach over Baby’s purr.

“That was—nice.” He’s a little too defensive about something so insignificant. If he had cut one loose, he’d be guilty as fuck. The smirk he’s sporting isn’t evidence enough against him, though; he’s just smug from his winning you over. “Just didn’t comment on it,” he adds, “Not a lot of commenting going on today.”

Your brows raise; he cuts Baby’s ignition, leaning back in his seat, not letting your gaze that’s ‌on him go. It feels like days since you last looked at him, and he means really looked, even though it was just the other night. 

“You know, silent treatment is a form of emotional abuse, right?” He pouts, and damn straight, it’s on purpose. 

So is your initial hum in response, humouring him. Taunting him further. “Think it only counts if it’s intentional.” 

“And this ain’t?” Chuck knows he can’t take much more of whatever the hell it is you’re doing to him. You’ve been there for him through thick and thin these past few months. The least you could do is let him in after everything that’s happened between you because he knows you’re hurting. He knows he’s ‌to blame, which is why he’s trying to fix it. 

“I got nothing important to say to you. That’s all.” Your hand reaches for the door handle like the conversation is over before it’s even begun. 

All he can do is repeat your last line in question before you open it and walk out on him. 

“Yeah, Dean. That’s all,” you snap, and though your gaze turns into a glare, at least your fingers let go of the handle in favour of balling up into a fist. “I can’t do this now. Not when we have missing people to find. Our relationship problems aren’t—”

“Oh, so they’re relationship problems now?” His jaw draws back. “Last I checked, you rejected me.” 

“With good reason, apparently,” you scoff. “Who comes in and says they want to talk, but then brings up a case, which,” your head swipes towards the Walsh’s house, “we’re on, by the way.” 

“It was time sensitive.” He sits up and the vinyl under his ass squeaks. 

It’s not ideal. In any other circumstance, he’d ‌be laughing at the interruption. Here he is, trying to have just one serious moment with you here, has been since this morning, and his life, his car, his first love, wants to hinder him. “S’not like I planned on Sam finding a case. You didn’t wanna talk to me the night before, either.” 

“I needed a little space. A chance to think,” you say. And, okay? He could understand that. After the dreams and a little shuteye. Your head drops and your hands do the same in your lap. Your fingers now pull at themselves again, twisting, turning, pulling the skin against the bone.

You woulda had little sleep yourself the night before on top of the test, even if you were alert yesterday morning. 

Couldn’t blame you. If he had something potentially growing inside him, he’d have been a little freaked, too, and still dealing with it. It’s not the kind of thing that went away just by throwing it away and into the trash. This stuff, it—well, it was life changing. One second you’re you, the next you’re not only with added responsibility and an asshole that makes passes at you, but you have to consider what comes next. 

It’s kinda what he’s doing now. What he did after Emma—which, you’d think he’d have learnt something. Though, in his defence, you weren’t exactly a stranger, even if you weren’t his significant other. Further away than ever it seems, even though he wants to fix the distance.

Luckily, you don’t seem to be in a rush to say anything more or leave the cab for the Walsh’s house yet. He’s surprised you gave so much back to him just now, and all because he called you out. If only he’d done that sooner after taking the softer road and dealing with it. Chuck knows it wasn’t easy watching you with Marjorie. With the way things are going, the Walsh’s’ll be the same.

He looks over to the house, too. Picture perfect frontage, just like the Humphries’. Driveway. Nice, tidy lawn. Then his eyes flick to you. Still sitting there. Quiet. Lost in your own head.

Dean purses his lips, stretching his jaw. At least here, he has you cornered, so to speak. He can get the most important stuff out now before you go back to whatever you end up deciding on after you hear him out. 

“I just wanna know you’re okay… That you will be,” he says, and it’s gentle now. “S’not about me.” It’s not. It’s about you. This whole thing started with you. 

But you don’t give him much more than a subdued “Okay” and a nod before there’s silence again. 

It’s not awkward as such. Not much to make a headline of, though it’s as if he’s said nothing of importance to you in the last couple of minutes. 

It’s the kind of silence where your eye twitches and your tongue ‌plays with the back of your teeth. Unless you’re looking or know what to look for like he does, you can’t tell. 

All Dean can do now is wait for your next words to come, but they never do. Not in Baby’s cab, at least, because the next second, you’re reaching for the handle and you’re committing to it this time. 

You open the door and step out onto the curb, closing it again with him still inside. Starting your ascent up the Walsh’s drive, leaving Dean dumbfounded.

“Okay?” he says, but of course, you don’t hear him.

Dean’d needed to stretch his legs, he’d told himself. At least he’d told Sam that as he’d left the kitchen that morning. And he did. He needed to stretch his arms and fists, too, because Chuck knew he needed a change from hanging around the bunker. He couldn’t keep waiting for Rowena to find Gabe or spending his days thinking about his mom and Jack, and you.

You were the worst of his problems. He hadn’t seen you since he’d left you standing on read in the bathroom last night—unless you counted his dreams. They were the only reason he knew he’d slept. 

He could still feel the vase Ben broke on Lisa between his fingers that he himself broke in one, thinking he’d caught you, only to open more and more stall doors and curtains of all things. 

Of all the bathrooms to be in during sleep, you’d think his subconscious would throw him in a truck stop stall with a guy named Phil over Lisa’s. But he also supposed he was lucky to not be thrown in with Shia LaBeouf or Karen Allen. He doubted he’d be able to run from Indy’s giant boulder on top of chasing after you. 

He wasn’t judging his subconscious. There had to be worse things in there, but what the actual fuck was with the bathrooms? Tiles upon tiles. Stalls upon stalls. Green grass, velvet cushions, and gold trimmings, even he didn’t wanna ask about, yet no matter the location, he came up empty every time. 

And that was the problem. Why? Weren’t you supposed to be chasing him? He’d left you there. He’d walked out on you because you hadn’t wanted to talk to him, so why the hell was he doing all the grovelling in his dreams? 

Why was he so hesitant to go to you now? 

Because there was no movement from your room when he’d hit the head or returned past it on his way to the kitchen, That’s why. No sign of you even waking yet. He could only assume you’d slept because there was no bowl in the sink from the cereal you ate religiously. It was the only thing that didn’t go off and was quick to fix, or so you always said. 

Your go-to coffee mug still sat in its usual spot next to the machine, which, great for you. Must be nice for some people to not need coffee to fuel or wake them up, like the bitter smell did for him most mornings. It’s why he was up. That and his shoulder. Couldn’t be his guilty conscience… 

Nope. 

Not at all.

It was all on his shoulder. It still ached. His very conscience, doing fine on account of the dreams, but that muscle in his shoulder? It tingled. Even after your tender loving care during the early hours of yesterday morning. 

Kinda funny how one minute he was comforting you, the next he was running from your poor pathetic excuse for some, only to go back to sniffing you out.

But you had a case. Fucking North Dakota. His throat was tight again just thinking ‘bout it. 

Last time he was there, he was Crowley’s demonic wingman in all aspects of the word. He wasn’t even sure he was allowed back in the state, yet here he was heading to your door to tell you Sam’d found a case there.

He couldn’t let Sam do it because then Sam would start asking questions, and Dean was still healing all wounds. Tail and shoulder. 

His fingers were tight, trying to circulate the blood that seemed to insist on sticking round the entry point of the bullet wound. He flexed them as he walked down the hall to your room. 

Ketch’d said nothing ‘bout after care for it. No, he just concentrated on telling Dean to go through the rift without him.

And suppose he hadn’t? He wouldn’t be in the mess he was in now, and—huh.

Maybe that’s why you were so concerned with his welfare in the kitchen the night before last. 

That’d been rather nice, actually. Meant you cared about him. And you cared about him, right? That’s what this whole thing was about. You didn’t wanna let him down. Didn’t wanna ruin the friendship. The—it’s not you, it’s me line, tongue tied on account of you not being able to express the sentiment at that moment?

Yeah, that was it. It had to be. Everyone sucked at relationship stuff sometimes. Even Dean. 

He rolled his shoulder as he neared your door, though. Gearing up to knock. He had to slow his steps, having no idea how he was going to do this. What was he supposed to say to you for starters? Because he couldn’t just jump straight in with Sam’s gotta case. Meeting in twenty, get your ass up. No. Despite other prior examples, he didn’t have a death wish. His ego couldn’t take anything more after last night.

He balled his fist and rapped below the brass aquarian star like he had no hesitation in the world, though. Purposeful, with a knock that expected reciprocation, not that he expected it. He just wanted you to know it was him. 

If you didn’t answer, he’d tell you through the door about the case. If you did, well, he’d do the same, but by then he also hoped he had a plan. 

And while you didn’t respond with the typical double knock that accompanied his playful one, he did get a, “Door’s open, Dean.” out of you, and hey, that was a win, right? Wasn’t exactly friendly, but you were open to communication.

He opened the door with that and poked his head in. “Hey,” he said, eyes searching for you through the stretch of darkness the hallway granted to your room, and you, sitting up in your bed, legs crossed. 

He didn’t know what to expect, but he hadn’t expected you like this. 

You. Your hair swept back, messy, as he was most familiar with of late. Told Dean you hadn’t been sleeping in the last thirty minutes and had done something to tame the bedhead at the very least. There was no indent from a pillow either. Quite the opposite, actually. Must’ve had just as much sleep as he had if your tone had been anything to go by, yet you hadn’t had breakfast. 

“You, ah, you eaten?” He placed the charm on thick. That boyish chuckle he often used to annoy Sam but get his way with the ladies he met on the road was a surefire hit. 

It didn’t blow your socks off, though. In his defence, you weren’t wearing any. You were in another t-shirt that looked suspiciously like his. 

Not hoarse, but not laced with gravel either, “What kind of question is that?” you said. 

“The kind where I don’t know what else to say.” He wasn’t ashamed to say it. Honest—the words spilled from his lips without thought as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, hands remaining on the handle. “I, ah—didn’t mean to run out on you like that.”

“You didn’t?” If you were wearing glasses, they’d have fallen off your nose and into your lap. Your forehead, shinier than a bowling ball thanks to the low light of the bunker’s early morning ambiance. Dean could see the frown lines when you scrunched your brow. “Never thought I’d see you run like that,” you scoffed. It was just as insulting as ever.

He ran all the time. Came with the hunting territory. What he’d done had been a dash at most. You’d given him nothing. Weren’t chasing after him yourself.

“Yeah, well, you were a barrelful of laughs.” He crossed his arms and lifted his head like he was showing off the bob in his throat or rearranging the extra layers in his neck. He brought it back down and glared back at you, less intimidating than you were, with a look that said he wasn’t backing down. “I think you said two words to me after I brought up us dating again.” 

He was proud of bringing it up. Until he remembered you’d said more, and “No,” he shook his head. “You said you were going to bed.” He would’ve pointed his finger, but he was a little too close to replaying the speech he’d given his mom months ago. That wasn’t happening. Even if you hadn’t had the pleasure of the original. Only the aftereffects. 

“Yeah.” For a short word, you made it extra sharp. Your chin flicked, just as. “You’re here in my room, remember? Last I checked, that was okay,” your body leaned forward a fraction, “Unless you want me to leave like you did?”

Dean was still by your door, arms still folded. “That’s not—” What wasn’t it? Fair? How it happened? His lashes were fluttering to take flight again. “You rejected me.” 

“And you asked me out in a bathroom. And I believe the exact words you used were, ‘So, you wanna date me?’ Oh, and, ‘that’s an easy fix,’ like you offering to be my boyfriend is some sort of consolation prize. You know women do this alone, right?” 

“You said we weren’t dating.” And you weren’t pregnant. He was smug, but it didn’t line up. 

“I said we’d been careless. Forgive me for not wanting to make two big decisions at the same time.” 

As far as he saw, there was only one, and another he had no control over that didn’t even hold weight now, though much for the best, he supposed. But as if the audacity were on him, you sighed and stood up. Dean, still by the door, arms still folded, held his ground. “I wasn’t expecting one. Just wanted to talk about it.”

“Well, you’re here now.” You shot him a look. “I’m listening.” But all he saw was you walking ‘round to your closet.

“Oh, you’re listening?” He leaned forward, stomach muscles folding. His knees bent in turn. A short tick that’d drop him to the ground if anyone were to come ‘round behind him and kick him there. “Really looks like it, too.”

“I’m getting dressed,” you said, back turned to him, sound muffled. Your muscles moved beneath the fabric. The little sleep shorts you’d been wearing last night, revealed whenever your shoulders raised, were still kissing your thighs. “It’s called multi-tasking.”

“Yeah, well…think you can pack, too?” He cringed as soon as the words left his mouth. It wasn’t the way he wanted to bring it up, and it wasn’t what he wanted to talk about, because he did want to talk to you. He wanted to set things right before things escalated, and he pushed you away again. 

But you were too, by the looks. Cringing. Body still now. He brought his hand up to his still unshaven cheek and smoothed the hairs. He’d do it when you got to Grafton, if the northern air didn’t mess with his complexion. The red face beneath his stubble was less visible that way. 

“You’re here to tell me there’s a case?” you whispered, and it was soft. Nice change for being rather scornful, though he didn’t blame you, even if he wasn’t the most accommodating after how you’d shut him down last night. He could forgive it—really. His actions now, just the repercussions of his own ego getting torn down a notch.  

“Yeah, ah, Sam found one in North Dakota. Couple of people missing.” He moved into your room further. Boots landed on the rug beneath your bed. “Told him we’d leave in twenty.”

“Right,” you said, lifting your shirt over your head to reveal your bare back. Even under the shadow of the closet door, he could see which bra you were about to put on. Though it didn’t take a genius to know you’d choose one of the more comfortable ones. Your push-ups, reserved for cases, you’d once told him. After that lobotomy thing in Grand Junction. Guess he should feel lucky he could still go to strip clubs with you now.

Your hands reached round to do the clasps. He was inclined to step forward and help you, but you were reaching back into the closest and pulling a different, more fitting shirt back over your head. Your hair further ‘combed’ if you could call it such, even with the static. “What is it?” Your voice tremored.

“Ah. Vampires he thinks. Going by the lack of animal attacks being reported.” He swallowed. You were busying yourself with something at the base of your closet now. Sleep shorts still on, you crouched low, squatting as you reached for something new. 

He’d been in your room plenty of times, but he’d never paid attention to the layout of your closet. Your room was just another one in the bunker. Same furniture as his. Same general layout, aside from the bed being opposite the main door. 

“Guy was found in the river. Cancer patient. He ah,” he shook his head. This could all wait for the car. “We won’t have much of a chance to talk on the road, so maybe we can—”

“He’s the only one?” You stood again, still refusing to look at him. A pair of jeans hanging from your arms. 

“Yeah.”

You slipped your shorts off, kicking them back into the corner of the closet. “How many’s a couple?” Your foot stepping into the denim legs had your panties mooning him. And seriously? It’s like you were doing it all on purpose. Had to be. If he squinted hard enough, he was certain he’d see the marks he’d left on your ass yesterday morning, slipping out from under the elastic. 

You knew he’d been rather proud of that. Knew he’d confessed his feelings for you when you were laying with him after. But there you were, having not even given him the chance to answer the first question, still avoiding the others, and determined to get all the info it seemed. “Three? I dunno. I—”

“But it’s in North Dakota?”

“Yes,” he huffed. “Would you look at me? I’m trying to talk to you.”

“And I’m trying to get the details.” Your hands came to your hips, and only then did you turn around and face him. Pout clear on your face. “You said twenty minutes. Means I have to pack or am staying behind.” Your eyes narrowed on him. They’d be cat-like in the darkness if they glowed. There was that look, part alert, part ready to skitter off, never to be seen again if he didn’t say the right thing. 

“So which is it?” you said, and he considered you for way too long. At least if he insisted you did, he could find the time to talk to you—eventually.

The dishwasher gurgles next to Mr. Walsh, creating such comedic timing Dean struggles to keep a neutral face. The thing’s been humming most of the time you’ve been sitting at their kitchen table, but it’s the first instance Dean’s questioned if it’s a machine, or someone’s stomach. 

He’s heard it before. The Walsh’s argument that is. They’ve already spoken to the local authorities; you’re wasting your time. He’d be questioning Gary’s motives himself if Dean hadn’t ‌seen the fang marks on Mr. Humphries’ neck. 

Don’t dentists know a thing or two about general body stuff and anesthesia? You’re close to looking at all the medical facilities in the area as it is, but with a town like Grafton, and many people traveling to larger hubs, Mr. Humphries’ catheter isn’t a lot to go on when he’s only one person.

You need something more, anything, but Mrs. Walsh is apologising for her husband, and since the gurgle, all Gary’s done is uncrossed his arms, refolded them, and leant against the kitchen bench. 

Diane, Mrs. Walsh, shakes her head some more. She’s been doing that a lot. Like Marjorie, she’s beside herself over her daughter, and that makes sense. It’s just a wonder it hasn’t fallen off with all the extra tremors and the cross around her neck that’s on a rather short chain. 

Her palm comes up to trace it again, rolling the gold across her cream sweater. “Sorry. We’re just a little on edge,” she says.

A little? Dean shoots a look your way, but you’re still ignoring him. Your focus on Diane. You reach your arm across the table to lay a gentle hand on hers—and it’s like Marjorie all over again. Lending a comforting touch to someone when it’s not your place to do so. Mrs Walsh has a daughter, depending on how you look at it, but you’re way too old to replace her.

“It’s alright,” you say. “I know it doesn’t feel like looking at photos is going to do anything to help find Edith or the others, but we’re just trying to cross all our bases.”

As if she sees hope in your words, Diane sits up straighter. “But the sheriff doesn’t think there’s a connection?” 

“And there might not be one,” Dean points to Mr. Humphries, whose face is sitting amongst the pile of photographs, front and centre on the table. “All we know is he didn’t die where they found him.” He leaves out the part about the catheter. “And she’s got three kids of her own, another on the way. Neither of them had any reason to disappear, either, but they all have families waiting for them, just like your daughter.” 

Dean’s about to continue on the tirade and get his point across, because you’re wasting time going ‘round in circles. Marjorie was way more co-operative; you’re wasting time doing it. But his phone rings, and hale-fucking-lujah. Saved by the ringtone. 

He wastes no time fishing it from his pocket and looking at the flashing screen while you take over the table.  

“Excuse me,” he says, the politest he’s been while on the case. Even compared to Marjorie's. He scrapes his chair against the tiles as he gets up from the table, making his way to the front room, knowing full well Gary can still see him through the door. 

It’s wide enough. You could fit their two sofas through the doorway with room to spare in the kitchen once they made it. Dean stands behind the low back, looking down at the large cushions that won’t suck his ass in like the Humphries one did. He taps the screen to answer. 

“Hey,” he says to Sam on the other end, screwing up his nose. There’s a lot of space for a family of three, but he wonders if any of them have sat on it when there’s not a mark in sight. 

“So I just left Maria Russell’s office,” Sam says down the line. “Her secretary mentioned she’d had a few appointments at a local clinic.”

“Don’t tell me we’re dealing with cancer patients.” Dean turns his back to face the scene in the kitchen. Gary’s a tool, but asking or even suggesting his daughter might have a tumour on top of being missing isn’t something he feels like doing—ever.  

“Well—Mr. Humphries’ cancer has something to do with it.” 

“How?” 

“I, ah, think it’s a blood thing,” Sam says. Dean rolls his eyes. 

Of course, it’s a blood thing. How could it not be? Sam was at the morgue, too. He saw the catheter and the bite, but, “Maria had a pamphlet for an obstetrician’s office in her desk,” Sam says, and that’s…that’s way worse. 

“You think she’s knocked up?” Dean’s still watching Gary. Gary’s still watching him, and the cancer line of thinking is looking mighty fine right about now. How could it not?

The father of one has joined his wife at the table, sitting opposite you. That makes Dean’s stomach drop. 

His cheeseburger resurfaces, gurgling low in his stomach. Could’ve sworn he dumped it all, but something draws up into his throat, forming a lump he could’ve sworn he left back in the Bunker’s bathroom. 

“I need to make some calls. See if I can get into her medical records.” 

“Okay, but two pregnant women don’t connect a bodybuilder and a cancer patient,” Dean says. Unless Sam’s gonna tell him the bodybuilder conceived at age fifty-eight, too. Then the theory is a bust. Not to mention, why the hell would vamps be so selective about their food when blood is blood and humans are, well…humans. 

Sam doesn’t, though. He chuckles, and it’s not in a funny way. Dean can see the smug, unapologetic look on his face, and “Actually, it does,” he says through it.

“How?”

“Human Chorionic Gonadotropin.” 

Yeah, that mouth of Sam’s is smug, and now speaking in tongues because, of course, he says the big words matter-of-factly. 

It’s like he’s been practicing it for a test. Looking down upon Dean like that chick with the mound of hair from Harry Potter does to Harry and the red-head kid. Levee-oh-sar is not a part of anyone’s everyday vocabulary, including Sam’s, even if he were a witch. As it is, Dean can’t even repeat what he heard. Can’t even break it down besides the word human before getting stuck.

Chlorine? Chloroform? Sam repeating it doesn’t help.

“Human Chorionic Gonadotropin,” he chuckles again, “H.C.G.” Why couldn’t he have just said that? Dean can say the letters. He can remember those, even if he has no clue what they are or mean combined. 

All it takes is a pause on the line for Sam to spill the knowledge, of course. Dean doesn’t need to bother asking, because Sam’s know-it-all is jumping at the chance to tell him, further personifying the child-witch their Charlie loved so much.

“It’s a hormone that’s associated with pregnant women. I looked over the cold case again. One of the missing from four years ago was also pregnant,” Sam continues, “Y’know, home pregnancy tests?”

“Yeah.” Dean knows them alright.

“Well, they pick up the HCG in women’s urine. Turns out it’s also a marker for testicular cancer.” 

“And bodybuilders?” Dean hones in on that one. He’s listened to every word; he’s just not too fond of any of them. 

The world keeps getting stranger. The universe continues to mess with him, and it’s got nothing to do with Gary and his perfect princess. 

But if art imitates life, why is it his life is always the one that gets freakishly ironic?

“Sort of,” Sam says, missing the cogs grinding away in Dean’s ear. Even though his phone’s pushed up against it and there’s the perfect opportunity for the pathway to be heard, Sam can’t see the look on his face. Or the shade it’s turned to know he needs to. No, nothing’s amiss, according to Sammy. “It’s used in a treatment to stimulate testosterone,” he says. “Again, I need to look into the records, but chances are—” 

“Farley’s been using it,” Dean concludes, though he’s hating it. It sure gives you a motive, not that the vamps needed one. Not that you haven’t been wrong before, either. It’s still that factor that your lives seem to follow the cases you work, like Chuck himself is personally throwing things at you to teach some sick life lesson that’s sticking to him. 

Well, Dean doesn’t want a life lesson.

Still, Sam agrees. “Not something the sheriff would’ve thought to look into.” He’s right on the money about the sheriff, too. But why does it have to be this way? 

“Yeah. Doesn’t mean much if we don’t know where these people are,” Dean says. Anything to keep his focus on the case and nothing else, ‘cause he still hears you talking to the Walsh’s.

“No, it doesn’t, but you’ve still gotta talk to the Walsh’s right?”

“We’re here now.” His head tilts. eyes now watching you, too. Your back still to him. 

At least for Dean’s sake, Sam says something that he’d honestly much rather do over anything else at that given moment, and given the circumstances, and that’s saying something.  

“Any chance Edith has a boyfriend?” he says—the little chuckle isn’t appreciated.

Dean’s chest was as tight and constricting as the plastic was ‘round his fingers as he stepped back into the bunker that afternoon. It all came down to that moment. The test he’d bought for you in the bag, weighing on you both even before he’d collected you and guided you towards the main bathroom. 

The halls were, albeit silent, aside from your hurried footsteps. Sam, nowhere to be seen. Though with how loud and fast it was pumping, his heart threatened to change that. Dean, surprised you didn’t hear it. Or the tiles painted red with the pressure.

He locked the door behind you, heading straight for the row of sinks along the wall where he dumped the pharmacy packaging and held the ClearBlue box up to you. “This thing costs more than a Beauty,” he said like he was some kind of used-car guy, selling you the opposite of a lemon; making the mark-up work for him. “Makes sense when you think where else I coulda—” 

He stopped himself, shaking his head through the chuckle you weren’t pleased to see. You mightn’t have been all that impressed with him, but in his head, he had a valid point. 

Sure, he could’ve nutted in his favourite skin mag. Sure, the two of you wouldn’t be standing there if he had. Wouldn’t have been as pleasurable, either, though. And you couldn’t say you didn’t enjoy it when you often begged him for it. Pretty sure you’d said you’d needed him earlier that morning when he was balls deep. 

Your brows raised much like they had as he’d spilled into. Your hands came to your hips like you were already practising your poses for a future guided by a positive result. The look you’d given him alone, enough to make even him, as potential dad to this situation, shudder, and the toughest of employees change their tactics over it alone. 

As such, “It’s a digital one,” he added, ’cause that was the real selling point in his eyes. More accurately, for $19.99, the cost alone meant the thing had to work. When all the others were half the price.  

“Will tell us straight, too,” he took the test out and offered it to you, still in the foil, “Either you are or you aren’t. No messing about with lines.” 

‘Cause that’s what you wanted, right? Accuracy. Simple. At least, that’s what he wanted. He just had to shake it a little more in front of you before you took it off him. Your fingers, as apprehensive as he felt, minus the wisecracks, curling ‘round the end he’d held out for you, slow and cautious. 

“You’ve done this before,” you said. Neither a question nor a statement. The cogs behind your eyes, grinding to a halt, extended their weight to the plastic still held between you. It alone shifted the moment from casual to way too real.

“Yeah. Wasn’t planned or anything.” He clicked his tongue against his cheek. 

There was no way you wanted to hear about Lisa right now. There was no way he was going to say her name. He knew you’d have known who he was referring to, without even saying it. Wasn’t like Lydia had shown him proof Emma was his, aside from the teen coming after him as the lore had said. 

“You’ve never?” he asked—and really? He dug his hands into his pockets. What was that even supposed to mean? You were a hunter, sure. You had to be more cautious than most about getting knocked up, avoiding getting stuck with decisions he and so many males in the profession got to walk away from. 

He half expected you to say no, but, “Once. In college,” you supplied. All well before hunting had swallowed your life, and you’d met him. 

“Guess I should feel special, I also re-popped that?” He chuckled again. As if re-de-hymenating you wasn’t enough.

You weren’t laughing. “I’ll just—” You thumbed to the stalls behind you, leaving him with no choice but to sit back and wait while you closed the door and dropped your panties behind it. 

Wasn’t like he was there for anything else. Which…well…it wasn’t good.

The walls were thin. The space between them only grew thinner with the movement you made behind the crack. Skin, fabric. He’d have closed his eyes, but the tiles’ echos picked up the surrounding sounds better than the halls had with the clinks and shuffles of porcelain kissing thighs. 

It left him with little to no imagination—except, now he knew how Indiana Jones felt in all his movies. That giant boulder had Dean’s name on it, hurtling towards him with all that was imminent. 

Not that Indy ever worried about the consequences of his actions with the girl. 

No, he fucked off. Left Karen Allen behind, never knowing he had a kid until Shia LaBeouf showed up looking for those ridiculous skulls. At least Dean was here, and you could tell him you were late. At least he wasn’t feeling too inadequate—until he heard you sniff. 

Then he threw his head back to the ceiling, tracing the watermarks and anything else worthy of interest to respect your privacy. “What’s the holdup?” he said. Anything to block out his own thoughts, still waiting for a telltale tinkle because you were quiet, and he was impatient. There’s a reason he told you to drink a bottle of water before he left. 

“I thought you had to—”

“Give me a minute, will you?” you groused. “There’s a lot of pressure here.”

Performance pressure came to mind, but he didn’t know why he was insulted. It’s not like he had any issues with that. “You’ve taken a leak in front of me before.” He huffed.

“That was different.”

“How’s the road different? There’s a door here.” His hand pointed, though you probably didn’t see it.

It was a rather open one, too, but when you responded with his name, the distinct sound of a steady stream hitting the bowl soon followed it. All Dean could do was smirk to himself and continue his waiting for you to finish. 

It’d been a tough couple of hours. He could wait a little longer.

As it was, it took you most of the early hours of the night of you talking in the kitchen. Then in his bed that morning for you to come straight with him. He wasn’t sure why he was complaining. He didn’t know how it worked, besides knowing that morning’s nut wasn’t the nut, and he’d told you so. His arms, still looped around you as he had. 

Startled? Sure. More off guard because you’d said nothing in the kitchen. Though he now saw that’s what you meant when you said you weren’t fine.

That morning was a rare one for you. He still couldn’t get those eyes of yours out of his head when he’d looked down over you. His hands on your ass, gripped and spread you open. Was that why it felt so different? 

Dean ran his palm over his face like the combination would push the memories away, just in time for you to reappear with the most murderous of eyes.

His grin was sketchy. Yours wasn’t there. There was no way either of you were winning the socks off of anyone at that moment, screw picking up at a bar or fooling the Feds. 

He wiped his hands over his hips, ridding himself of his nerves as best he could, hoping for the best that the sweat didn’t stain his jeans. “You, ah,” Dean glanced down at your hands. He’d have yanked the test out of them if he could’ve, but in that moment, he couldn’t manage more than a simple, “You good?” 

You looked good. He’d say you were glowing, but the fluorescents overhead made even the mildew and the limescale in the bathroom shimmer. The affirmative flick you gave contradicted the way your body crossed beneath them. “Three minutes, right?” You said in a shaky whisper. All the confirmation Dean needed to swoop in. 

He hovered close, waiting for you to wash up and finish what you needed to. Overbearing? Probably. Did he care? Nope. He shut the faucet before you could reach for it yourself, having had enough of doing nothing but standing there playing trophy wife while he waited for you.

“You gonna dry them, too?” You shook your hands at him. 

“Smartass.” He drew you in by your wrists and a crooked smirk. Then he raised your palms to his shirt, doing as you’d dared him to, only at a loss on what to do next.

Like the front of the Walsh house, you’re out of the Impala ahead of him. Having shut the door before Dean’s even cut the engine this time. 

He sits there just a moment longer; watches you enter the room and shut the door behind you. At least you didn’t slam it, but he wonders if that’s for Sammy’s sake and not his own.

Of course, he knows it’s not for him. He’s not an idiot; he’ll keep reminding himself he’s not—because he’s not.

He told you what you were looking for when you entered Edith’s room, and you’ve been weird like he knew you would. That’s not dumb. That’s intuitive. 

And why wouldn’t you? Be weird; that is. You’re the one who took the test. You’re the one who’s dealing with the aftereffects of it, and that includes him.  

Also, not him being weird. No, you’re just dealing with him. Tolerating. Making do. Putting up with, because you wouldn’t be here, literally. If it weren’t for him.

Which also makes him think. Why bother coming? It’s not like he forced you. Just told you ‘bout the case in case you wanted in. And like that moment in your room, and out the front of the Walsh’s, he still wishes you would just open up to him. Talk to him. Tell him what’s on your mind. 

He holds his breath as he walks into the room a few seconds later. Though why is he surprised you’re not sitting at the table with Sam?

Dean’s eyes scan the small room. “Hey,” he says to Sam. Your rollaway in the corner is empty. Your duffle, missing off the floor. In fact, the only evidence you were ever here in Grafton was your water bottle by the castors of the folded extra bed. 

Honestly, Dean could say the neatened sheets and that piece of plastic still ain’t solid evidence. But the door to the bathroom is closed. You sure seem to like your time there of late, which again makes sense. Period. Blood. Again, he doesn’t know how it all works, but jostling you around the way he did the morning before you took the test must’ve done it. Just…a delayed response?

And maybe you should’ve stayed behind? It’s safer than bringing the vamps their dinner when you end up locating the nest. Not that you could tell before you left.

Like their last phone call, Sam has that look on his face that Dean imagined. Smug and one-hundred percent Mr. Know-it-all, Sam looks at him, eyes wide and expectant. The question on his lips and palm against his thigh, thinking, what’s up with her? ‘Cause you didn’t give him anything, either it would seem. Your animosity is spreading ‘round.

Dean says nothing to it. Just pulls his coat off, and slumps down in a vacant chair. 

Like the Walsh’s he’s purposeful with his actions, though Sammy might not know it. He’s facing the door, dragging another chair with his boot. He raises his feet all casual-like. Then regrets he didn’t grab a beer.

“So I called Mrs. Humphries,” Sam says. As usual, straight into the case.

“Yeah.” Dean’s eyes flick to him, then move back to the door. Shifting his ass in his seat. Flexing his wrist as he lets his sack de-ice again.

The temperature is getting ridiculous. The constant cold, warmth, and cold again. Your ass in that skirt. Your ass getting cold on him. He stares down that door you’re behind, waiting, observing, attempting to listen for any sign you’re coming out ‘cause you can’t stay there forever. No doubt Sammy’s got some news.  

“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat, also watching Dean as he glares at the chipped wood, like it has any chance of picking up the specks of colour that long stuck to the carpet. He gives Sam a longer, lingering side-eye to satisfy him, though. “Got the name of the oncologist he was seeing and his referring doctor at the clinic.” Sam leans back in his seat, face now beaming harder with that knowing pride. “Guess who else is a patient there?”

“Got the name of the oncologist he was seeing and his referring doctor at the clinic.” Sam leans back in his seat, face now beaming harder with that knowing pride. “Guess who else is a patient there?”

Dean shows even less interest as opposed to what little interest he’d had at the Humphries’ and the Walsh’s. Until he’s reminded of another smug face: Gary’s, and his brow raises high. Body twisting enough to give Sam his full attention. “Couldn’t be, miss, not-allowed-to-date, is it? ‘Cause there’s a boyfriend, alright. Just hid it from Mommy and Daddy.” 

“And Maria. I hacked the databases. Turns out she’s pregnant, too.” Sam says.

A/N: Still with me on those time jumps? It sure was fun to figure out.... I probably have two fics worth of scraps in my Google docs (plus the multiple backups lol). Next up, Dean is in for a rude awakening. ❤️

Dean Taglist: @alexxavicry @ambiguous-avery @artemys-ackles @aylacavebear @bejeweledinterludes2 @deans-baby-momma @district447 @enchantedtomeetcoffee @foxyjwls007 @fuckingdamnitdean

@fymyuji @globetrotter28 @hobby27 @idjit-central @kimxwinchester @impala67rollingthroughtown @jackles010378 @jollyhunter  @kiddieclaws @kr804573

@krazykelly @ladykitana90 @ladysparkles78 @linkilocks11 @livinginataydream @lori19 @lupinslibraries @lyarr24 @maddie0101 @middleearthlife

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@supernotnatural2005 @thewinchesterwench @ultimatecin73 @waynes-multiverse @winchesterwild78 @youroldfashioned @yoursrosie @zepskies

precursory (pre-cur-sory), a, dictionaries define a precursory as something coming before something else; in regards to the placenta effect, this is often the event that triggers two individuals, often friends, into becoming non-committed partners

If you had said to Dean that the journey to point B was longer than the one back to point A, he would’ve agreed with you. There’s an excitement in the unknowing, no matter the path you take. 

It could be physical, it could be emotional, it could even be spiritual—or psychic, which it was in Dean’s case. At least, that’s how it all started. Dean, you, Jody, Missouri, and her deceased friend Dede’s quaint little store in Omaha. 

Though she shouldn’t have, “Come on,” Dean said to Missouri, once she’d thanked him, raising his hands to her and flapping them for one last hug before the three of you hit the road. 

Buckhead. It sounded more like you were hitting Texas in search of Beavis over somewhere in Georgia. But Missouri’s eyes hardened on him, and that thought went out the window, along with his pride. 

How could he even joke like that? Missouri was hurting. Dean knew how serious this was. She was family, and that made James and her granddaughter Patience his family, too, and top priority. He needed to protect them, as he’d set out to do when he left the bunker that morning.

So with the strings of Dede’s beaded curtain still casting their purple haze over his face, and the incense in the air, burning his lungs and eyes, Dean wrapped his arms ‘round Missouri, and drew her in tight until her bulky necklace dug a hole into his chest.

She squeezed him just as hard. Didn’t let him go when he pulled back to say his goodbyes. Her hands moved to his upper arms and gripped him that much harder. Those eyes of hers, more stubborn than his ever were, latched onto him in a death grip as she reached deep into his soul. 

“Dean Winchester.” The rise in the first two syllables of his name held a slight in her tone he couldn’t quite understand during the second rendition. 

He expected her to tell him to hurry. To floor it down the interstate. But those same eyes flicked over you, already out the door with Jody, waiting for him. They softened—she smiled like she’d watched over you her entire life.

It disappeared when they fell back on him again; however, “You’ve had some great losses. Don’t you lose her, too,” she said.

All Dean could do was protest. At least he tried to. Typically, Missouri knew it. 

He opened his mouth to tell her he wouldn’t, because of course, he wouldn’t. You were family, too. She shook her head and doubled down before his throat had even formed the words. 

“I mean it. She deserves a man who treats her right. Not one that leaves her out in the cold.”

He wasn’t planning on leaving you anywhere. As far as deserving a man who treated you right? Well, he wanted that for you too, he supposed. Wasn’t his business. He licked his lips and fluttered his lashes like he’d misunderstood her that time. “Lucky we’re just partners then.” You’d whip his ass if he tried to pull anything on or in you.  

Missouri frowned. “No.” She grabbed his right ear and tugged hard enough to make his head lower to her level. “You look out for her. Even when you feel she’s done you wrong, you don’t let her go.”

She patted his cheek like nothing had happened, glare turning into a warm smile when she tilted her chin. “You’re a good man, Dean Winchester. Remember that.”

And…well…that…

His grin reached the crowns of his cheeks, but he hid it by tilting his own chin downward. Arms, letting go of her, shoved his hands deep into his pockets before the moment turned any softer. “Missouri.” He practically bowed. “Always good to see you.” 

And with that, he slinked away, taking his leave towards you and Jody. Missouri’s words clinging to him like she’d poured milk in his coffee for the first time in years and he’d found the taste much sweeter than he remembered. 

It sure was new. The concept…interesting. Not that he’d thought about you like that, because he hadn’t. Not really. Well…only in the instances when his body dutifully reminded him you were indeed a woman, and had the parts that made his engine tick. 

But thanks to Missouri’s words, there were a few extra points on the journey home from Buckhead that stirred the melting pot. It came to a head when you arrived back at Dede’s shop two days later. Your every movement, word, and the aromas that surrounded you took every piece of his attention.

Jody was closing the door behind her as you slunk into the passenger seat from the back. “Thanks for the ride.” She leant on the open window, ducking her head down to see you better. 

“O’course.” Dean swiped his own to the side. He’d never leave Jody stranded back in Georgia. Not after Sam’d called her out here how he had. “You gonna stop over, or you need us to follow you outta town?” he asked, regretting it as soon as he had. Up close and next to him, whatever fruit-scented concoction you’d last used throughout the day was bleeding into his air again. 

He knew he didn’t have the patience of a saint, but if she said yes to his offer, he needed to find it, and quick, because you were confused and shooting him a narrow stare. 

Though it failed to compare to the longer exchanges of stifled grins you’d been giving him through the rearview, thankfully, Jody shook her head. “I think I’m going to drop in on Claire,” she said in that motherly way of hers. Even under their low coverage, the street lamps dusted her face with a warm glow. 

“Well, send her our love.” You patted her arm, and with one last wave, Dean pulled Baby out of the lot and onto the main drag outta Omaha. The bunker was only three hours away, give or take, and he was in a rush to get her somewhere.

His eyes flicked between you and the road a few times. He’d been a cocky son of a bitch that morning, but he’d been in his element then. Already under the sheets with you. 

“What about you? You good to keep going?” His right hand moved to the vinyl between you, waiting to see what you’d do. 

He could drive this path one handed if he had to. Eyes closed, or on you, didn’t matter. He knew that road like the scars on his hands, and right now he wanted to trace them over you.

If he thought the effects of Bevill’s blood purifying spell were catching up with him, since the motel, earlier that day in Memphis, his pipes were buckling under pressure. His balls, the bluest they’d ever been after any of his virginity losses, and nothing, nothing, felt innocent anymore when those exchanges in the rearview had also tested his jaw and the flexibility of his wrist.

While you slid that bit closer to him, brushing your thigh against his fingers, much to his disappointment, “I’m good,” you said. Though you did push his Zeppelin tape back into the deck.

“Woman after my heart,” he muttered.

“I like to please.” The same smile you’d been giving him all day flashed across your cheeks. 

Yeah…you liked to please, alright.

You both settled into a comfortable silence after that as he drove through the last of the city’s outer limits, not taking long for Baby to ease onto the highway once he got her there. Your lips were mouthing to Levee when Dean opened up her throttle. The roar of her engine suited him just fine, even though his two weeks continued rolling through the back of his mind.

It didn’t help that there was a pounding in his chest each time he felt you shift next to him that went against the grain and straight to his groin, either. He had to remind himself that it was nothing. That it wasn’t on purpose, because he was running out of ways to get his blood moving. There were only so many positions he could shift his foot on the gas— 

“You think Patience’ll stay out of it?” he asked to break his thoughts.

“Dunno.” You considered him longer than he expected you would. The way your finger and thumb ran across your mouth and puckered your lower lip had to be purposeful, ‘cause it sure backfired on his resolve. “Seems like a waste not to use her gift,” you said.

“Her dad doesn’t think so.” And Dean couldn’t believe he was siding with James on that, but he’d meant what he’d said to her. There was no joy in hunting monsters. She was better off in calculus and normal, even if Dean didn’t see that for himself anymore.

“And he didn’t pull out those gems when he was desperate?” You clicked your tongue. Dean supposed it was fitting for Missouri’s sake. 

Holding the family legacy. Helping people the way the Mosley matriarch had done. “Noticed Jody slipped her a card.”

“Yeah?”

“Seems everyone’s fishing for kids now.” He shook his head. Unlike his ‘woman after his heart’ comment, he didn’t mean for you to take it as seriously as you did. 

“You jealous?” And that’s when you chose to look at him? Because you looked at him like Missouri had done, reaching into his soul, trying to find meaning in something that wasn’t there. 

“No.” Just because Patience had people ‘round looking out for her didn’t mean he wanted to change his past. Though even he could recognise he was way too defensive with the word.

“You sure about that?” He nodded, but he wasn’t expecting the judgemental scoff that came next. “Because Jack needs our help, too y’know,” you said, and…wait…wait…

“What?” Lucifer’s spawn? Dean’s face screwed up, only for him to blink his way out of it, spluttering a reply he never thought he’d have to say to you of all people. “That kid needs to be locked in a box and dumped in the ocean.” At least until Dean could find a way to gank him.

“Sam thinks he’s innocent,” you whispered, and Dean pulled his right hand, still close to you on the bench and waiting for contact the entire time, away and up to the wheel, curling his fingers tight over the leather.

“He’s already killed three people.” 

“And one of them was his mom.” 

Your eyes fixed on him again, but Dean refused to look back at you. That just made it worse.

Even when your palm came down to his thigh and squeezed the taut muscle there like you’d done many times of late, he continued to focus on the road and the slow rhythm of Dazed and Confused’s baseline. 

Wanted a woman; never bargained for you. The lyrics never felt truer to him than they did now. But as Plant spoke to him through the music; you continued to speak to him in real time. Something about the year being a shit show and things looking up. Dean didn’t care.

He huffed and rolled his eyes at the sentiment. He didn’t appreciate the kind words no matter how hard you tried until your hand caught his attention by moving higher up his thigh. “Least, they were.” You squeezed him again.

If that weren’t an innuendo or an advance on his interest, he was better off a virgin—there was no way anyone could misconstrue that. Your hand was heading somewhere. Your fingers curved ‘round the shape of his leg. Dipped into his nether regions. Your fingertips slid up further into that junction his jeans made when he sat down and the fabric billowed.

“Woah.” He swallowed—chuckled even, because he’d been flirting with you all day. Now it was all too real. 

And when you said his name? The way it rolled off your tongue, sank straight into his gut, where his balls somehow connected, awakened, tingling and warm. 

“You asked me if I wanted to keep going.” You said it like he didn’t understand what you were doing. Not in that fake way a lot of his previous one-night-stands used on him. No, you played it like you were in control. The same woman he’d known for years, who hustled pool and knew how to wield a blade, coming onto him, all confident and comfortable in her skin. 

“Well—I wanna keep going.” Your hand moved over him. Fingers curled down and ‘round, thankfully not as firm as he’d been with the wheel just now. 

They stroked over the thick layer covering him in much the same way he’d be touching you if he weren’t hurtling Baby down the interstate. 

His eyes snapped to yours, flicking between you and the road for as long as it was safe to do so. “You sure about this?” Because his dick was betraying him, awakening with an obvious yes, you only had to look down and see. 

His head, however? The one up top that mattered was hesitant. Like you were confusing him with all that talk of Jack and Kelly Kline. 

Jamie. The Carmelita. Technically, like you with his morning wood, he’d come onto them first, but they weren’t friends in the sense that he knew you. That he considered you family and them, flashes from the scarce headlights of the scarcer lit highway. Maybe it was a good thing Jody had been there last night and all day? 

Though what the hell was going on with his inhibitions? He’d been wanting you alone, and here you were. You pressed your body against him. Your other hand, not stroking him, came to his neck with your sweet, sweet mouth. If his blood hadn’t already rushed south yet, it was sprinting down his veins to the finish line.

He felt himself twitch. He sure as hell felt your hand twitch in response, moving to cover more of him. To put pressure on and trace the outline of his hardening length. 

“So is that your gun?” you whispered into his ear. “Cause I think you told me you’d let me see it this time.”

And that did it. That was all it took. Dean’s resolve gone, his charming, slack-jaw ways replacing it with a sudden onslaught of a southern drawl he hadn’t quite meant to use. 

“S’happy to see you, darlin’,” he said. His own hand dropped to your thigh and tucked his fingers nice and close to where he wanted to be.

“Yeah?” You nibbled under his jaw with soft, but purposeful kisses as he searched for somewhere to pull off the second he was able. You were on him the next. 

Your jacket removed, your leg thrown over his lap to straddle him. He pulled your core flush against him, moaning as your lips came down on his for the first time. Plush and full of warmth and life; clear in their intentions. You were as receptive to him as any other partner he’d had in the past. 

Sensual, sexual, it felt way too damn good for someone he was supposed to care about, and maybe that’s why it did?  

But it didn’t stop there. Nope. Far from it. You became an outlet. He used you; you used him. Like Bob Seiger once said, neither one of you cared, because you didn’t seem to have as much to lose—back then.

A/N: It’s been a while since I posted something. Hopefully, this is a nice comeback as I'm rather proud of this work. Tomorrow's chapter get's us into the non-linear side of things at a little over 10k…. Prepare for more smut, and the start of the case this story centres around! Until then ❤️

Dean Taglist: @alexxavicry @ambiguous-avery @artemys-ackles @aylacavebear @bejeweledinterludes2 @deans-baby-momma @district447 @enchantedtomeetcoffee @foxyjwls007 @fuckingdamnitdean

@fymyuji @globetrotter28 @hobby27 @idjit-central @kimxwinchester @impala67rollingthroughtown @jackles010378 @jollyhunter  @kiddieclaws @kr804573

@krazykelly @ladykitana90 @ladysparkles78 @linkilocks11 @livinginataydream @lori19 @lupinslibraries @lyarr24 @maddie0101 @middleearthlife

@mostlymarvelgirl @multiversefanfics @my-stories-vault  @redwinexsupernova @roseamie13 @roseblue373 @rosemicheal12 @sepho @soullessambs @stoneyggirl2

@supernotnatural2005 @thewinchesterwench @ultimatecin73 @waynes-multiverse @winchesterwild78 @youroldfashioned @yoursrosie @zepskies

CHAPTER LISTING

1 - The Precursory

2 - Regression to the Mean

3 - Response Bias

4 - Reporting Bias

5 - Non-inert Treatments 

Additional Notes: phew! It’s been awhile! As most stories go, the final product is very different to how it all started. The original concept I had was to turn the fake dating trope into a fake pregnancy one. Some days it did my head in, but here we are!

I signed up for the competition late last year and throughout the process there were moments I thought I wouldn’t get it done on time thanks to a very mushy brain. To all my lovely mutuals and regular readers who read this, I hope you enjoy, and apologies for being absent for so long. Hopefully, I’ll get back into my regular interactions and reading - Beth ❤️

“Don’t play dirty,” you respond, looking back at the board.

He chuckles a little. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

That’s when you see it.

You raise your hands, link your fingers in front of your mouth so Sam doesn’t see the grin you’re suppressing.

Dean always tells you you have a horrible poker face and unfortunately he’s not wrong. It’s a bad combination with how competitive you get.

You’ve only been playing chess for a few weeks, always thinking before that it would bore you. But then Sam found this beautiful chess board in the bunker, his eyes lighting up like it’s Christmas morning. You knew Dean wasn’t going to play with him so you saw it as your girlfriend-ly duty to step in.

You started playing, him explaining the rules to you, and before you knew it, you were enjoying it. So now you and Sam spend many of the long afternoons in the bunker hunched over the board, in deep concentration.

So much for the good news.

The bad news is that Sam has been winning. Every. Single. Game. Of course he’s good at it, he’s the smartest guy you know. And he doesn’t brag about it or rub it in your face. When he wins, he just kind of sits back, nods. Sometimes you think he actually feels bad.

Once you think you caught him trying to purposefully loose, and you nearly wreaked havoc on his ass. You’re competitive, not fragile. He didn’t try losing again after that.

And now here you are, and after weeks of practice, you think you just might have him.  

You breath out slowly, trying to hide your excitement. Then you take one hand away from your face, make your move. You immediately bring it back where it was because Sam doesn't seem to notice, is thinking about his own move. 

Now that it's his turn you use the chance to ogle him a little. You enjoy chess, but this part ain't so bad either.

He sits there, leaned forward over the table, arms crossed in front of him. His lips are pinched together in concentration, his brow a little furrowed. It's a damn good picture.

He must notice your gaze one him, because he looks up at you.

"Nothing," you say, before he can ask what's going on. "Just checking you out."

He grins a little, looks back at the board.

"Like what you see?" he asks, casually.

"Not too shabby," you reply. "Could be a little faster at chess, though." 

He looks back up at you. "I thought no playing dirty?"

"Yeah, that goes for you," you say, like it's obvious. "I need every advantage I can get."

Sam smiles, clicks his tongue, looks back down. Then he raises his hand, makes his move. 

This time you can't hide your grin. He walked right into your trap. You move your knight.

"Checkmate," you say.

Sam looks stunned. He stares at the board, his eyes going back and forth. 

You throw your hands in the air and make a whooping sound, because being a gracious winner is for tall guys with beautiful hair, not for you.

Sam leans back and grins. He looks proud and impressed. It makes your heart melt a little, and you almost don't want to make the fact that you beat him your entire personality. Almost.

You put your fist in front of your face, holding an imaginary microphone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, friends at home, we are here covering what might be the coolest, most savage chess win of all times." 

Your sound more like a sports announcer than a news caster, but that's a detail you don't worry about.

"We are here today," you continue, "with Samuel Winchester, who will answer the question: what is it like to have a girlfriend who is not just beautiful, not just intelligent, but also a menace at chess? Samuel, what can you tell us about this experience?"

You scoot up, leaning over the table to hold the fake mic into Sam's face.

He sits up, leaning closer. "It's actually Sam," he says into your fist.

You make a buzzer noise, even though that makes the whole thing more of a talkshow host impression. Whatever. You beat Sam at chess. Accuracy is for losers.

"That is actually incorrect! The correct answer is that it's the best thing in the world, and that she will be getting foot rubs from you for eternity." 

You hold the mic back to him, giving him a chance to defend himself, but instead he smiles.

"I was going to do that anyway," he says, and than he wraps his hand around your wrist and quickly bites your finger.

He lets go and you put on a stunned tone when you talk back into the mic again.

"Gentle viewers, it seems that he just bit the reporter."

Sam makes a face. "I bit the microphone. Wait, you're supposed to be a reporter? I thought you were a game show host."

You roll your eyes. "Details, Samuel, details." You swish your hand around in front of his face. "Don't have time for details when I'm winning."

He grabs your hand from where it's waving around and holds it up to his face. Just when you think - hope - he'll bite you again, he kisses the back of it.

"I don't need to win. I already got the main prize," he says.

So cheesy, you think. You grin at him and he smiles back and you won at chess and all is well.

“c’mon, doll; y’been actin’ funny all day,” she starts, as she always does. making it sound so nonchalant; just another day! “gotta let me check what’s makin’ my girl all squirmy all of a sudden, yeah?”

as time goes on, it becomes routine. just a simple ask, or even soldier girl checking without asking, and you obliging because you’re just such a good girl for your mom. you simply open your legs, feel your face grow warm at how easy it is for you to get wet from this, and allow her to check you. all without a single thought– from you.

her rough hand holds your jaw as your hazy eyes meet her hardened ones. “hm, not feelin’ too good, are you? y’want mommy to fix it for you?” to which you nod, slightly eagerly, opening up your legs even more for mommy to fix your little problem that you’re not trusted enough to take care of yourself. 

if anything, you’re brainless. just some trained, obliging pup, being inspected whenever you’re told. and you’re definitely no stranger to being dragged into the bathrooms at vought, having her hand cup your barely clothed cunt as she makes her judgement. or, even first thing in the morning– not even having a chance to come around, only to find her fingers prying at your swollen, aching cunt. “got so wet f’me overnight, kid. see how desperate she was f’me? should’ve woken me up to take care of her.”

and this is who you are now. not able to remember a time before– a before where you didn’t have your drooling hole checked because you can’t control yourself (or speak up about how badly you need her, really). your brain being re-wired, so that all you know is that you have to obey; be your mommy’s good girl.