![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantismaFandom: Supernatural
Title: Shattered, Part One (A follow on to Splintered)
Characters/Pairing: John/Dean, Dean/Sam, John/Sam, John/Dean/Sam
Rating: VERY NC-17
Word Count: 11,127 (total)
Summary: Dean is splintered and cracking and held together only by his need to make it okay, to help his father accept what has happened and make sure Sam is happy…but the pressure keeps multiplying and the fight may be more than any of them can stand.
A/Ns: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
johnsgillygirl who purchased me in the last Sweet Charity auction. This is darkness (no real surprise there, coming from me) that goes darker than most of my stuff. It is a follow on to Splintered. It is not the end of this story. That will come before too long. You really need to read "Splintered" before reading this.
Warnings: Please read the warnings. There is incest involving all three Winchesters. It is not pretty. This is dub to non-con, depending on how you read Dean's choices and how they all play out. There is also consensual sexual activity. There is angst (which may be the biggest damn understatement in the world). Also, under-age (Sam is 16)
You were sixteen when it started, and no one could lay the blame at your feet, though you do fine taking all the blame yourself…and so does he…the only one not full of blame is Sam…who is happy…who smiles more now than you remember…And it’s so wrong…the way he gives himself to you, the way you can’t help but take what he’s giving…and it’s fucked up…seriously fucked up…but you can’t bring yourself to change your mind…you’re weak…and you let them hold you, let the pressure of them contain your splintered pieces…And Sam is wrong…because this will never be okay…but if it keeps them alive and with you, if it keeps the family together…then it’s something you can live with…
The first few days were the hardest. They watched him, every move, every breath. Dean was nowhere near convinced that his father was okay. How could he be? He knew now.
John Winchester knew what he had become…and how can anyone be okay after that? He was quiet and withdrawn, more so than usual. He didn’t talk, barely looked at either of them.
Sam made sure he ate, made sure the weapons were hidden away. He smiled and he cuddled into Dean at night. Happy. Sam was happy.
Dean moved through each of those first days as if nothing had changed. He made breakfast and sent Sam off to school. When Sam came home he went out and hustled pool to make enough money to buy food…but it’s fucking Fresno and there are only so many bars, and he’s running out of new places to work.
It doesn’t happen for a while. They stumble through a week. Two.
“Stop.” John said as Dean shuffled through the room, clearing the morning’s coffee cup, still full of coffee and last night’s plate still covered in half a hamburger.
“Stop what?” Dean asked, turning back to look at him.
He was in the rumpled bed, the sheet tucked tight around him, as if covering himself was somehow protecting both of them. “Pretending this is okay.” John grumbled.
Dean felt the panic inside, the same panic that had been picking away at him since Sam opened his mouth, since Sam had forced the whole thing to a head. He swallowed and put the dishes down, moving closer to the bed. John cringed and Dean stopped.
“I’m not pretending.”
It was a lie. They both knew it.
“Dean.” He didn’t look up, his eyes stayed on his hands, hands that looked so much older than they had days before. “I want you to end it.”
“No.” Dean crossed his arms and stared down at his father. There was a lot in his life that was fucked up and wrong. That couldn’t be helped; he was a hunter and a Winchester. But he was sure that what he’d done to keep his father alive was the right thing to do.
“I’m telling you Dean, as your father. You go get a gun and you bring it in here and you kill me.” John’s eyes lifted. There were tears and quiet determination.
The front door slammed and Sam stormed in, past the hall and into the kitchen. “We’ll talk about this later,” Dean said. He picked up the dishes and headed for the kitchen. Sam was lifting the bottle of Jack, dumping it straight down his throat. “Little early for heavy lifting isn’t it?” Dean asked dryly.
Sam looked at him, his face red. He licked his lips and put the bottle on the counter. “We gotta go.”
“Go?” Dean sighed and set the dishes in the sink. “Where? Why?”
Sam shrugged and shook his head. “We just gotta. I don’t care where.”
“Sam, it’s the middle of a semester, we can’t just go.”
“We’ve done it before.” Sam countered.
“What happened?” Sam didn’t walk away from school easily, something had to have happened. Sam had been nothing but happy for days.
“Nothing happened.”
“You’re lying.” Dean put his hands on his hips and looked at his brother. “Sam, come on. I’m trying here…I need you to be honest with me.”
Sam’s face twitched into a grimace and picked up the bottle again. “I got called into the counselor’s office today.” He took a swig and didn’t look at Dean.
“What? Guidance counselor? Had to expect that, they start pushing you to do the college thing earlier all the time.”
“No, Dean.” He swallowed more, then handed the bottle to his brother. “Someone saw.” He lifted his shirt to the finger shaped smudges of blue and black on his hip and side, marks made when Dean was riding him into the table a few nights before. “Someone knows.”
Dean shook his head. “Knows what?”
Sam gave him a look that very clearly said he thought his brother was being stupid. “Us, Dean. This!” His hands motioned between them. He was clearly agitated.
“Okay…calm down.” He couldn’t make sense of what Sam was saying. How could anyone know anything?
“Calm down? Dean…you don’t get it. We have to go. Tonight. We can’t wait.”
Dean crossed to him, put his hands on Sam’s hips and pulled him close. “Sam, we’re fine. No one knows anything but that you have a few bruises.”
“Damn it Dean!” Sam pulled away, his face contorted in rage. “They can take me away, they can take you away! I stalled them, told them they were wrong, told them I got them playing football, but Dean, they’re going to call the police in. They’re going to call Child Services, Dean.”
Dean shook his head. Sam was no child. Sam hadn’t been a child since he was 9 and learned how to handle a sawed off shotgun.
Sam was pushing him toward the bedroom. “Get your shit, I’ll get Dad.”
It’s two-thirty in the morning when you’re finally ready and Sam pushes you out the door. Dad’s in the back seat of the impala, half asleep on whatever pain meds you had left because you can’t face him, can’t tell him why. Fresno fades in the rear view while they sleep and you try to understand. You don’t know where you’re driving, you just keep moving because when you stop you know that all of those splintered pieces are going to come crashing down around you.
“Pull over.”
His father’s voice, gravelly and slurred a little from the drugs, startled Dean out his thoughts. “Pull over.”
His head rose up in the rear view mirror and Dean licked his lips. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, Dad.” Dean said. His father’s eyes were dark, and his hand was heavy as it fell on Dean’s shoulder.
“Dean.”
Dean nodded, glanced aside at Sam asleep beside him. It was only a little while to dawn, the dark starting to shrink back at the edges of the horizon. “Can you hold on? Just a little bit. There’s a motel up ahead.”
The last thing they needed was to get caught fucking on the side of the road.
His father sat back, his eyes closing. Dean stepped a little harder on the accelerator, praying that he could get them to the motel, get them into a room before his father fell fully into the dark.
He snickered a little at the thought of praying. Even if he believed in a god, there wasn’t a god out there who would hear him. Not after everything he’d done.
“Dean.”
The growl was deep and made Dean’s cock twitch.
“I know. Just hold on.”
His eyes flicked to his father’s in the mirror. The need was getting strong. “Fuck.”
Sam stirred beside him. “What’s wrong?”
Dean shook his head and glanced over his shoulder. “Dad.”
Sam sat up and looked at their father. “You should pull over. Deal with it.”
“It’s almost daylight. What do you want me to do?” Dean put his foot down harder. “There’s a hotel up ahead. Twenty minutes. Tops.”
Sam nodded, yawning and stretching. “Maybe I can hold him off.”
Before Dean could say anything, Sam had his seat belt off and was sliding over the back seat. John’s tone changed and Dean could tell just from the sounds that Sam was kissing him.
“Sam.”
“Just drive.” Sam said. “I got this for now.”
Dean tried not to notice the tiny whimpers that told him their father’s hands were rough as Sam did his best to placate him. He tried not to hear the sounds of a zipper, of a mouth on a cock, of the grunts. He didn’t want to see the way Sam’s back was arched, or remember when it had been him and Sam in that back seat.
He concentrated on the road, on wrenching the car into the gravel parking lot. He got out and made for the office. He was hard and anxious and no one was answering the bell. He pounded on it again. It was only five in the morning.
He started when the door opened. An older man shuffled out, scratching his balls. “What?”
“Need a room.” Dean glanced over his shoulder. He could feel his father’s eyes.
It took forever, but eventually he had a room key and he was able to move back out to the car, drive it around to where the number 9 room was. He opened the back door of the car and pulled Sam out. “Get our stuff.”
John was glaring at him, his cock standing straight up out of his jeans, wet and shiny from Sam’s mouth. “Come on Dad, let’s get you inside.”
“Need.” John growled and Dean nodded.
“I know Dad. I know. Inside, then you can have whatever you need.”
He fisted a hand in his father’s t-shirt and yanked. It was worse than when he was drunk. “Sam, door.” He pressed the key into Sam’s hand, and helped his father up, turning them to follow Sam and kicking the door closed.
They stumbled and grappled until they were in the room and Sam was pushing the door shut as Dean just let go. His father pawed at his clothes, pulling his jeans down and shoving him to the bed. Sam was there instantly with the lube, the question in his eyes.
Dean just closed his and turned his face away. A second later he felt Sam’s fingers and the cool of the lube, but his father wasn’t waiting. He pulled Sam’s hand away and pushed himself inside. Dean bit the comforter under his head to keep from yelling.
It was bad. Waiting always made it worse. John’s hands were like iron on Dean’s hips, there would be bruises come morning, shaped like fingertips with tiny crescents etched into the tips.
“Dean…” Sam’s voice cut through the pain and reignited his own cock. His fingers were gentle on Dean’s face, turning him to look, his kiss tender…so strange and surreal.
“Sam.” Dean unclenched his fingers from the comforter and reached for Sam, pulling his face in close. There was a hint of peppermint on his tongue. Dean clung to him, groaning as his father’s rutting increased and pressed Dean’s cock into the mattress. Dean could tell he was close…then his father would stumble off to the other bed and sleep…and they’d start all over again when they woke up.
“It’s okay.” Sam whispered as John pushed in and came. Sam’s lips moved over Dean’s face, tiny kisses along his brow and down his nose.
John was done, out…Dean was hard and needy and he couldn’t help but groan himself as he rolled over onto his back, his jeans around his knees, his cock standing up. He was panting, reaching to finish himself, but Sam’s hands caught his, pulled them away.
Sam’s jeans were gone, his ass glistened with lube and he was already straddling Dean’s stomach, positioning himself, lowering himself until the tip was nestled into his hole. “It’s okay Dean…we’re okay.”
Dean shuddered as Sam pushed down and Dean slid inside his brother. It was so far from okay, but Dean held on, his hands settling on Sam’s hips as he started to move, grinding down against him, his head thrown back in pleasure as his own hands moved over Sam’s cock, pulling up with each downward push.
He could feel his father’s eyes as he came back from the bathroom, feel the disgust and self-loathing pooling on the dirty carpet around his feet. Dean closed his eyes and concentrated on finishing…on ending this for now. His breath stuttered as he approached orgasm, as Sam’s ass clenched around him and he thrust up into Sam’s next downward push, emptying himself and reaching to help Sam finish.
Sam’s come fell in heavy strings against Dean’s chest, and almost before he was done, Dean rolled him to the bed, pulling out and angling for the bathroom to shower, leaving Sam to deal with their father and securing the door.
Twelve hours. You squat there in one of the worst motels you’ve ever seen for twelve hours, watching him sleep, watching him suffer, watching him shuffle to the bathroom and listening to him throw up over and over again. Still you tell yourself he’ll adjust, that he’ll be okay…that you’ll all be okay. You don’t sleep, and somewhere near dawn you let yourself out of the stifling room and struggle to breathe.
Dean pulled at the neck of his shirt, pulled until it ripped and leaving him standing bare chested outside the room. It was still more dark than light, though there was a strip of crimson along the horizon, red like blood cutting through the sky.
He shook off the feeling of suffocation and dragged air into his lungs. It was easier outside the room, where he couldn’t hear his father’s tormented dreams, couldn’t feel the heat of his brother’s skin. Out in the cool of the not-quite-dawn he could pretend he was alone, that none of it was real.
The air was cold, and the hair on his body stood up in protest as he moved stiffly to the car. They needed to keep moving. Dean opened the glove box and pulled out the worn map. He tracked the road out of Fresno to figure out where they’d ended up. Middle of nowhere, with a whole lot of road between them and anything that resembled a population.
He had to get them someplace that would let Sam finish up the year. He ran a hand over his face and found a spot, a few days south, small town. Sam could finish the year and they’d move on before whatever happened in Fresno caught up with them.
Wearily, Dean sank onto the passenger seat, his eyes closed. Fresno. Where everything went to hell. Where John Winchester learned he had become one of the things he had always hunted. Where John Winchester learned his sons were fucking one another as a way to cope with the fact that he was fucking one of them.
Fresno.
Where Dean saw for the very first time just how fucked to hell they’d all become. He shoved the map back into the glove box and took out the gun nestled there. In the urgency of his father’s need the night before he’d forgotten it.
He held it, cradled it in his hands.
The metal was cold. The weight of it echoed the weight of his secrets.
You should have killed me.” John said. “Should have fucking killed me, Dean.”
It was only weeks ago and it feels like years. Dean stared at the gun and imagined pulling the trigger. Imagined leaving his father dead in the woods somewhere. He’d have Sam.
He sighed and tucked the gun back into the glove box.
Title: Shattered, Part One (A follow on to Splintered)
Characters/Pairing: John/Dean, Dean/Sam, John/Sam, John/Dean/Sam
Rating: VERY NC-17
Word Count: 11,127 (total)
Summary: Dean is splintered and cracking and held together only by his need to make it okay, to help his father accept what has happened and make sure Sam is happy…but the pressure keeps multiplying and the fight may be more than any of them can stand.
A/Ns: For
johnsgillygirl who purchased me in the last Sweet Charity auction. This is darkness (no real surprise there, coming from me) that goes darker than most of my stuff. It is a follow on to Splintered. It is not the end of this story. That will come before too long. You really need to read "Splintered" before reading this.Warnings: Please read the warnings. There is incest involving all three Winchesters. It is not pretty. This is dub to non-con, depending on how you read Dean's choices and how they all play out. There is also consensual sexual activity. There is angst (which may be the biggest damn understatement in the world). Also, under-age (Sam is 16)
You were sixteen when it started, and no one could lay the blame at your feet, though you do fine taking all the blame yourself…and so does he…the only one not full of blame is Sam…who is happy…who smiles more now than you remember…And it’s so wrong…the way he gives himself to you, the way you can’t help but take what he’s giving…and it’s fucked up…seriously fucked up…but you can’t bring yourself to change your mind…you’re weak…and you let them hold you, let the pressure of them contain your splintered pieces…And Sam is wrong…because this will never be okay…but if it keeps them alive and with you, if it keeps the family together…then it’s something you can live with…
The first few days were the hardest. They watched him, every move, every breath. Dean was nowhere near convinced that his father was okay. How could he be? He knew now.
John Winchester knew what he had become…and how can anyone be okay after that? He was quiet and withdrawn, more so than usual. He didn’t talk, barely looked at either of them.
Sam made sure he ate, made sure the weapons were hidden away. He smiled and he cuddled into Dean at night. Happy. Sam was happy.
Dean moved through each of those first days as if nothing had changed. He made breakfast and sent Sam off to school. When Sam came home he went out and hustled pool to make enough money to buy food…but it’s fucking Fresno and there are only so many bars, and he’s running out of new places to work.
It doesn’t happen for a while. They stumble through a week. Two.
“Stop.” John said as Dean shuffled through the room, clearing the morning’s coffee cup, still full of coffee and last night’s plate still covered in half a hamburger.
“Stop what?” Dean asked, turning back to look at him.
He was in the rumpled bed, the sheet tucked tight around him, as if covering himself was somehow protecting both of them. “Pretending this is okay.” John grumbled.
Dean felt the panic inside, the same panic that had been picking away at him since Sam opened his mouth, since Sam had forced the whole thing to a head. He swallowed and put the dishes down, moving closer to the bed. John cringed and Dean stopped.
“I’m not pretending.”
It was a lie. They both knew it.
“Dean.” He didn’t look up, his eyes stayed on his hands, hands that looked so much older than they had days before. “I want you to end it.”
“No.” Dean crossed his arms and stared down at his father. There was a lot in his life that was fucked up and wrong. That couldn’t be helped; he was a hunter and a Winchester. But he was sure that what he’d done to keep his father alive was the right thing to do.
“I’m telling you Dean, as your father. You go get a gun and you bring it in here and you kill me.” John’s eyes lifted. There were tears and quiet determination.
The front door slammed and Sam stormed in, past the hall and into the kitchen. “We’ll talk about this later,” Dean said. He picked up the dishes and headed for the kitchen. Sam was lifting the bottle of Jack, dumping it straight down his throat. “Little early for heavy lifting isn’t it?” Dean asked dryly.
Sam looked at him, his face red. He licked his lips and put the bottle on the counter. “We gotta go.”
“Go?” Dean sighed and set the dishes in the sink. “Where? Why?”
Sam shrugged and shook his head. “We just gotta. I don’t care where.”
“Sam, it’s the middle of a semester, we can’t just go.”
“We’ve done it before.” Sam countered.
“What happened?” Sam didn’t walk away from school easily, something had to have happened. Sam had been nothing but happy for days.
“Nothing happened.”
“You’re lying.” Dean put his hands on his hips and looked at his brother. “Sam, come on. I’m trying here…I need you to be honest with me.”
Sam’s face twitched into a grimace and picked up the bottle again. “I got called into the counselor’s office today.” He took a swig and didn’t look at Dean.
“What? Guidance counselor? Had to expect that, they start pushing you to do the college thing earlier all the time.”
“No, Dean.” He swallowed more, then handed the bottle to his brother. “Someone saw.” He lifted his shirt to the finger shaped smudges of blue and black on his hip and side, marks made when Dean was riding him into the table a few nights before. “Someone knows.”
Dean shook his head. “Knows what?”
Sam gave him a look that very clearly said he thought his brother was being stupid. “Us, Dean. This!” His hands motioned between them. He was clearly agitated.
“Okay…calm down.” He couldn’t make sense of what Sam was saying. How could anyone know anything?
“Calm down? Dean…you don’t get it. We have to go. Tonight. We can’t wait.”
Dean crossed to him, put his hands on Sam’s hips and pulled him close. “Sam, we’re fine. No one knows anything but that you have a few bruises.”
“Damn it Dean!” Sam pulled away, his face contorted in rage. “They can take me away, they can take you away! I stalled them, told them they were wrong, told them I got them playing football, but Dean, they’re going to call the police in. They’re going to call Child Services, Dean.”
Dean shook his head. Sam was no child. Sam hadn’t been a child since he was 9 and learned how to handle a sawed off shotgun.
Sam was pushing him toward the bedroom. “Get your shit, I’ll get Dad.”
It’s two-thirty in the morning when you’re finally ready and Sam pushes you out the door. Dad’s in the back seat of the impala, half asleep on whatever pain meds you had left because you can’t face him, can’t tell him why. Fresno fades in the rear view while they sleep and you try to understand. You don’t know where you’re driving, you just keep moving because when you stop you know that all of those splintered pieces are going to come crashing down around you.
“Pull over.”
His father’s voice, gravelly and slurred a little from the drugs, startled Dean out his thoughts. “Pull over.”
His head rose up in the rear view mirror and Dean licked his lips. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, Dad.” Dean said. His father’s eyes were dark, and his hand was heavy as it fell on Dean’s shoulder.
“Dean.”
Dean nodded, glanced aside at Sam asleep beside him. It was only a little while to dawn, the dark starting to shrink back at the edges of the horizon. “Can you hold on? Just a little bit. There’s a motel up ahead.”
The last thing they needed was to get caught fucking on the side of the road.
His father sat back, his eyes closing. Dean stepped a little harder on the accelerator, praying that he could get them to the motel, get them into a room before his father fell fully into the dark.
He snickered a little at the thought of praying. Even if he believed in a god, there wasn’t a god out there who would hear him. Not after everything he’d done.
“Dean.”
The growl was deep and made Dean’s cock twitch.
“I know. Just hold on.”
His eyes flicked to his father’s in the mirror. The need was getting strong. “Fuck.”
Sam stirred beside him. “What’s wrong?”
Dean shook his head and glanced over his shoulder. “Dad.”
Sam sat up and looked at their father. “You should pull over. Deal with it.”
“It’s almost daylight. What do you want me to do?” Dean put his foot down harder. “There’s a hotel up ahead. Twenty minutes. Tops.”
Sam nodded, yawning and stretching. “Maybe I can hold him off.”
Before Dean could say anything, Sam had his seat belt off and was sliding over the back seat. John’s tone changed and Dean could tell just from the sounds that Sam was kissing him.
“Sam.”
“Just drive.” Sam said. “I got this for now.”
Dean tried not to notice the tiny whimpers that told him their father’s hands were rough as Sam did his best to placate him. He tried not to hear the sounds of a zipper, of a mouth on a cock, of the grunts. He didn’t want to see the way Sam’s back was arched, or remember when it had been him and Sam in that back seat.
He concentrated on the road, on wrenching the car into the gravel parking lot. He got out and made for the office. He was hard and anxious and no one was answering the bell. He pounded on it again. It was only five in the morning.
He started when the door opened. An older man shuffled out, scratching his balls. “What?”
“Need a room.” Dean glanced over his shoulder. He could feel his father’s eyes.
It took forever, but eventually he had a room key and he was able to move back out to the car, drive it around to where the number 9 room was. He opened the back door of the car and pulled Sam out. “Get our stuff.”
John was glaring at him, his cock standing straight up out of his jeans, wet and shiny from Sam’s mouth. “Come on Dad, let’s get you inside.”
“Need.” John growled and Dean nodded.
“I know Dad. I know. Inside, then you can have whatever you need.”
He fisted a hand in his father’s t-shirt and yanked. It was worse than when he was drunk. “Sam, door.” He pressed the key into Sam’s hand, and helped his father up, turning them to follow Sam and kicking the door closed.
They stumbled and grappled until they were in the room and Sam was pushing the door shut as Dean just let go. His father pawed at his clothes, pulling his jeans down and shoving him to the bed. Sam was there instantly with the lube, the question in his eyes.
Dean just closed his and turned his face away. A second later he felt Sam’s fingers and the cool of the lube, but his father wasn’t waiting. He pulled Sam’s hand away and pushed himself inside. Dean bit the comforter under his head to keep from yelling.
It was bad. Waiting always made it worse. John’s hands were like iron on Dean’s hips, there would be bruises come morning, shaped like fingertips with tiny crescents etched into the tips.
“Dean…” Sam’s voice cut through the pain and reignited his own cock. His fingers were gentle on Dean’s face, turning him to look, his kiss tender…so strange and surreal.
“Sam.” Dean unclenched his fingers from the comforter and reached for Sam, pulling his face in close. There was a hint of peppermint on his tongue. Dean clung to him, groaning as his father’s rutting increased and pressed Dean’s cock into the mattress. Dean could tell he was close…then his father would stumble off to the other bed and sleep…and they’d start all over again when they woke up.
“It’s okay.” Sam whispered as John pushed in and came. Sam’s lips moved over Dean’s face, tiny kisses along his brow and down his nose.
John was done, out…Dean was hard and needy and he couldn’t help but groan himself as he rolled over onto his back, his jeans around his knees, his cock standing up. He was panting, reaching to finish himself, but Sam’s hands caught his, pulled them away.
Sam’s jeans were gone, his ass glistened with lube and he was already straddling Dean’s stomach, positioning himself, lowering himself until the tip was nestled into his hole. “It’s okay Dean…we’re okay.”
Dean shuddered as Sam pushed down and Dean slid inside his brother. It was so far from okay, but Dean held on, his hands settling on Sam’s hips as he started to move, grinding down against him, his head thrown back in pleasure as his own hands moved over Sam’s cock, pulling up with each downward push.
He could feel his father’s eyes as he came back from the bathroom, feel the disgust and self-loathing pooling on the dirty carpet around his feet. Dean closed his eyes and concentrated on finishing…on ending this for now. His breath stuttered as he approached orgasm, as Sam’s ass clenched around him and he thrust up into Sam’s next downward push, emptying himself and reaching to help Sam finish.
Sam’s come fell in heavy strings against Dean’s chest, and almost before he was done, Dean rolled him to the bed, pulling out and angling for the bathroom to shower, leaving Sam to deal with their father and securing the door.
Twelve hours. You squat there in one of the worst motels you’ve ever seen for twelve hours, watching him sleep, watching him suffer, watching him shuffle to the bathroom and listening to him throw up over and over again. Still you tell yourself he’ll adjust, that he’ll be okay…that you’ll all be okay. You don’t sleep, and somewhere near dawn you let yourself out of the stifling room and struggle to breathe.
Dean pulled at the neck of his shirt, pulled until it ripped and leaving him standing bare chested outside the room. It was still more dark than light, though there was a strip of crimson along the horizon, red like blood cutting through the sky.
He shook off the feeling of suffocation and dragged air into his lungs. It was easier outside the room, where he couldn’t hear his father’s tormented dreams, couldn’t feel the heat of his brother’s skin. Out in the cool of the not-quite-dawn he could pretend he was alone, that none of it was real.
The air was cold, and the hair on his body stood up in protest as he moved stiffly to the car. They needed to keep moving. Dean opened the glove box and pulled out the worn map. He tracked the road out of Fresno to figure out where they’d ended up. Middle of nowhere, with a whole lot of road between them and anything that resembled a population.
He had to get them someplace that would let Sam finish up the year. He ran a hand over his face and found a spot, a few days south, small town. Sam could finish the year and they’d move on before whatever happened in Fresno caught up with them.
Wearily, Dean sank onto the passenger seat, his eyes closed. Fresno. Where everything went to hell. Where John Winchester learned he had become one of the things he had always hunted. Where John Winchester learned his sons were fucking one another as a way to cope with the fact that he was fucking one of them.
Fresno.
Where Dean saw for the very first time just how fucked to hell they’d all become. He shoved the map back into the glove box and took out the gun nestled there. In the urgency of his father’s need the night before he’d forgotten it.
He held it, cradled it in his hands.
The metal was cold. The weight of it echoed the weight of his secrets.
You should have killed me.” John said. “Should have fucking killed me, Dean.”
It was only weeks ago and it feels like years. Dean stared at the gun and imagined pulling the trigger. Imagined leaving his father dead in the woods somewhere. He’d have Sam.
He sighed and tucked the gun back into the glove box.
