
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/214237.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Dean_Winchester/John_Winchester, Dean_Winchester/Alistair, unrequited
      Dean_Winchester/Castiel, unrequited_Dean_Winchester/Sam_Winchester_-
      Relationship
  Character:
      Dean_Winchester, Sam_Winchester, John_Winchester, Alistair_
      (Supernatural), Castiel, Lisa_Braeden, Ben_Braeden
  Additional Tags:
      Dark!Dean
  Stats:
      Published: 2011-06-22 Words: 2099
****** A Sad Song ******
by orphan_account
Summary
     Dean's had many Sir's in his lifetime, and he's served everyone of
     them.
A Sad Song
*
He’s ten when he first realizes that something is very wrong in the family he
loves. He loves his dad with all his heart, except for the parts that belong to
Sammy. Sammy’s six, still babyfat chubby and following Dean around with his
sticky fingers clinging to the hem of his shirt. They only have one picture of
Mary, and Dean can barely remember her himself, but whenever Sammy smiles,
which is often, he looks exactly like mom.
Dean thinks that maybe that’s why Dad doesn’t really spend time with Sam. It’s
Dean who changes Sammy before Sammy learns to use the toilet. It’s even Dean
who teaches him that too. It’s Dean who makes sure that his milk is body
temperature, and Dean who picks out his clothes in the morning. It’s Dean who
puts Sammy to bed and sings “Hey Jude” to him when he can’t sleep.
It’s okay though, because dad does all those things for Dean. Until Dean is
twelve and doesn’t need him to, and it’s still okay because Sammy’s eight and
thinks the world of Dean and Dad. And what Sammy doesn’t know will never hurt
him.
At night, after Sammy’s put himself to bed, playing his eight-track with Hey
Jude on repeat, just loud enough to drown out Dean’s muffled noises in the dark
of their living room. In the dark, after the empty bottle of Jack Daniels has
been put in the sink or the trash, that’s when dad stops being dad.
Sir looks at Sam like Dad looks at the picture of Mary. Sir whispers things in
Dean’s ear as Dean closes his eyes and tries to think of something - anything -
to make the night go by faster. Sir whispers that if Dean isn’t good enough,
isn’t strong enough, perfect enough that someday soon it’ll be Sammy’s turn.
Won’t that be nice? Sammy looks just like Mary, Deano, it’ll be easy to
pretend.
So Dean does what Sir asks, he bends over, or opens his mouth and learns to be
the very best son that Sir could possibly ask for. Sammy is too young, too
little, too innocent to see Sir. And Dean will deal with it, because when the
dawn comes and Sir wakes up, he’s dad again, and everything goes back to
normal.
When Sam is fifteen and outgrows the adorable babyfat but not the dimples that
cut deep grooves into his cheeks, and is long and lean with the whipcord
strength of youth, Dean works doubly hard to keep Sir’s eyes off Sam. Sam is
Dean’s responsibility, and even though Sam has no idea what Sir does to Dean
after Sam’s fallen asleep, Sam still must see something in his father’s eyes.
They fight all the time in those days, long arguments that battle back and
forth over Dean’s head as he tries to keep the peace between them.
Because when Dad goes to bed angry, Sir wakes up twice as enraged and Dean’s
not sure his body can take the abuse. It’s hard enough hiding the bruises from
Sam in the mornings. His excuses are wearing thin.
When Sam is eighteen and packing for college, Dean wants to say so much to his
brother.  ‘Don’t leave me here with him,’ or ‘take me with you, god please,
take me with you’ or ‘don’t go’ or ‘don’t you know? Don’t you see?’. All he
manages to say out loud is “let me drive you to the bus station.”
Sam’s gone four years, and Sir fucks him every single night of it.
*
It’s been four years, five months and seventeen days since Sammy left for
Stanford, and Dean wakes up alone for the first time. He stumbles to the
bathroom, eyes still most of the way closed and falls into the shower, rinsing
blood off his thighs and other things he doesn’t want to think about.
Once he’s clean and his body has stopped throbbing with pain from moving too
much too quickly, Dean manages to drag himself from the sanctuary of the shower
to face the day. If he’s lucky, it’ll be Dad at the table, smiling and asking
for help researching a hunt. Hunts make Sir stay away longer, hunts give John
something to think about.
Dean glances around the room when his father is not immediately present, and
for the first time realizes his father’s things are gone. The duffle on the
other bed, the boots by the door, the weapons bag on the table. Gone. Dean
twitches the curtains open and sees the Impala where he’d left it the night
before, but his fathers truck is gone.
He left no note but Dean is overcome with relief. There must be a hunt, and he
gets his father back for a few days. So Dean waits, and waits, two days pass
before he starts to worry. He calls his father’s cell phone and chills race
down his spine as the automated voice tells him ‘we’re sorry but the number you
have reached is not in service’.
Dean does the only thing he can do. He gets in the Impala and drives to
Stanford.
*
Having Sammy back without Dad around is like breathing fresh air after
suffocating for four years. Sam is quiet and withdrawn, mourning the loss of
Jess and having nightmares, but Dean takes care of him, just like when Sammy
was small. And if Dean touches him a little more, presses their shoulders
together when they walk, or smacks the back of his hand against Sam’s arm for
his attention, Sam doesn’t say anything.
Eventually Sam starts smiling again, and Dean had forgotten how good Sam looked
when he did that. Things are normal, they’re hunting things and saving people
and Dad isn’t there, hanging over Dean’s shoulder with the looming presence of
what happens when the alcohol is gone.
It isn’t until they come across their first possession that Dean starts to
think that when Dad stopped being dad and started being someone else, maybe
there was a legitimate reason for it. Meg Masters is definitely possessed, her
eyes black on black, no whites to speak of. She doesn’t die and is strong as
anything so of course that’s when Dad comes back - just in time to see Dean
fail.
He barks orders at Dean and Dean can hear himself say “Yes, Sir” even though he
wants to scream.
Nothing’s changed anyway. Sam and Dad still fight and Dad still whispers how
good Sammy would feel if he were to take Dean’s place. Dean doubles his efforts
in the ensuing days. Dad leaves again, and Sammy dies.
It’s only logical that Dean would want to take his place there, too.
*
When his father walks towards them, glowing light surrounding his soul that
fought its way to the surface from Hell itself, he smiles at Dean and ducks his
head. Dean likes to think it was approving. Azazel is dead, shot through and
through with the Colt and Sammy’s alive.
He has one year to live but that’s more than he deserves. He got his reward
already. Sammy survived.
At night, when he has nightmares of the nights he spent with Sir, he sometimes
thinks he can hear a quiet, off key rendition of Hey Jude, hey Jude, don’t make
it bad, take a sad song and make it better....
He fights the Hellhounds tooth and nail as they drag his soul to Hell. He’s no
match for them, and they leave him strung up, wires through skin, and Dean
can’t help but scream for Sammy.Sammy, Sammy help me!
He lays there in agony for a dozen eternities until a low chuckle breaks
through the Beatles playing in his head. He drags his bloody eyes slowly to one
side and sees his father standing there beside him. He tries to speak but finds
he’s screamed himself mute and when the man beside him smiles, Dean goes cold
in all the heat of Hell. It’s not his father.
It’s Sir.
Later, he learns that the demon’s name is Alistair, but Dean will always call
him Sir. He calls him Sir as he begs for the torture to stop, as Alistair
carves sigils and runes into his flesh and bones. He calls him Sir when he
spreads Dean’s legs and calls him a pretty whore, or squeezes his jaw tight
enough to bruise. He calls him Sir as he climbs off the rack and takes up
Alistair’s knife as his own.
He calls him Sir as he climbs into Alistair’s bed and begs prettily for more.
If it’s not believable he spends the night on the rack, relearning Alistair’s
favorite tricks.
It takes a normal soul one eternity in Hell to break. It took Dean forty of
them.
It’s on the tip of Dean’s tongue to call the beautiful being ‘Sir’ when it
storms the room he lays in, he’s bleeding for a hundred puncture wounds, and
the light that surrounds him hurts when it heals him. Sir, he says to the being
with no form, Sir are you my next duty?
The being doesn’t reply and Dean wakes up buried in a wooden coffin, nothing
but two handprints on his shoulders to show for his stay in Hell.
His name is Castiel and he’s an Angel of the Lord, but Dean still calls him Sir
in his head.
*
Cas is the only one he can depend on half the time. He’s not like the other
Sirs that Dean’s had, he doesn’t make Dean spread his legs like John did. He
doesn’t make him tear the flesh from others, like Alistair. He seems wholly
uninterested in anything like the others, except for his dislike of Sam.
All the Sirs in Dean’s life don’t like Sam. But Sammy isn’t Sammy anymore
either. Dean spent four eternities in Hell and Sam spent that time getting as
close to Hell as possible without opening a gate there and walking in.
Sam finds his own Sir, in the demon Ruby and Dean almost can’t blame him for
just jumping when she orders it. But now Sam doesn’t need Dean, and its easier
to turn to Cas - the only Sir who has never hurt him - than try and fix Sam.
Seals are breaking left and right, and Dean can’t muster up the energy to do
much more than turn into his father. He won’t do to Sam what John did to him,
but he drinks until the dawn comes and then does it all again.
Denial, it’s the Winchester way.
Sam brings in the next man who takes up the mantle of ‘Sir’. He opens a portal
to Hell, a cage that holds the ultimate Sir, the man Alistair praised and
looked up to. Lucifer bursts forth from the cage in a halo of light and sound.
When it all fades, the dreams start and it’s Michael who hurts him the worst.
*
It takes over half a year for Michael to wear down what little resistant Dean
reacquired once being retrieved from Hell. He whispers in his ears, ‘say yes,
my Host, my Dean. Say yes to me’. When entreaties fall on Dean’s deaf ears,
Michael begs, pleads. ‘I will die without you’ he says.
He threatens Deans life but Dean only laughs, rolls over and starts humming the
Beatles loud enough to get his point across. It’s seven months before Michael
gets through to him. ‘Say yes to me Dean, before Sammy says yes to Lucifer.’
‘Yes, Sir,’ Dean thinks and goes to find a priest. Tell them Dean Winchester
says – 
He forgot for a moment that Castiel was a Sir first, and he has his loyalties.
Michael loses to Cas’ fists, and Cas stops being the only Sir who never hurt
him.
Only this time, Dean wants it. He doesn’t say yes, he fights against it, for
Cas. For the Sirs. For Sam.
Sam says yes anyway.
He loses Sam, Sir and anything that held him together like a human being all in
one day.
He goes to Lisa, and to little Ben, and pretends to live out normal like Sammy
had asked. He goes to baseball games, and PTA, and takes Lisa out to dinner, he
teaches Ben how to sing Hey Jude, and tells him that monsters aren’t real. He
cooks, he cleans and he drinks a bottle of Jack before falling asleep. He
becomes part of a family, and Ben slips up a few times and calls him ‘dad’. Ben
looks a lot like Sam.
At least, when he smiles.
*End
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