
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/2192823.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Dean_Winchester/Original_Male_Character(s), Dean_Winchester/Original
      Female_Character(s)
  Character:
      Dean_Winchester, Sam_Winchester, John_Winchester, Original_Female
      Character(s)
  Additional Tags:
      Underage_Prostitution, Prostitution, Canon-Typical_Violence, Pre-Canon,
      Underage_Sex, Oblivious_John, Oblivious_Sam_Winchester, Angst, Child
      Neglect, Canon_Dialogue
  Stats:
      Published: 2006-01-31 Words: 4913
****** Halo (In Reverse) ******
by poisontaster
Summary
     Adulthood has a taste.
Notes
     Written for Mona1347's 2006 birthday. Gracious & amazing beta by
     Inlovewithnight, with my thanks.
Adulthood has a taste. It tastes like semen.
                                      ***
The first time was an accident.
Dad’s gone on one of his road trips. “You’re too young,” he tells Dean, despite
all Dean’s protests to the contrary. “And someone needs to keep an eye on Sam.”
Dean wants to argue that Melba can look after Sam just fine, but it’s not the
truth. Dad leaves them with Melba all the time, but it’s Dean who makes sure
Sammy gets changed and bathed and fed. Melba mostly watches her soaps and
drinks. Dad always comes back from his trips stubbled and beat up, looking like
he hasn’t slept in days so Dean doesn’t say anything. He just buckles down and
tries a little harder, because Dad needs him and so does Sammy.
Dad’s been gone for days, and there’s no food left, except for some highly
suspicious take out and a couple sips of milk that aren’t going to do anyone
much good. Melba says that there’s no money for more, so they’ll just have to
deal. Sammy gets hungry, and Sammy starts to cry and Dean knows he’s got to do
something. He’s the man of the house, when Dad’s gone.
He doesn’t know what he’s going to do, though. He’s nine at this point, and his
years of grift are still ahead of him. But already he knows not knowing is no
excuse for not doing it.
So he puts Sam in the battered secondhand playpen with a sippie cup of the last
of the milk—doesn’t smell too bad yet—and he goes to figure it out.
                                      ***
hey kid, you okay? you look like something’s wrong.
no. nothing’s wrong. thanks.
you’re so pretty, you know that? i don’t know if i’ve ever seen a boy pretty as
you.
um…
tell you what. c’mere. i’ll give you ten bucks, you let me suck your dick.
no…
okay, wait! don’t go. twenty, i’ll pay you twenty.
                                      ***
He doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t tell Melba. He doesn’t tell Dad.
He hides the money behind the wainscoting in his and Sam’s room in a little tin
box and doles it out carefully in things like peanut-butter (which can be
hidden and keeps forever) and milk (because Sammy is still growing, and he
needs milk) and loaves of Mexican bread that cost a quarter.
It’s enough. It’s enough to last.
Dad comes back scratched up and exhausted, stinking of sweat and other,
stranger things. He swoops up Sammy and holds him over his head, grinning as
Sammy giggles. Then he looks at Dean and gives him a nod. “You take care of
everything while I was gone, Dean?”
Dean nods, feeling a little thrill of pride that it’s true. “Yeah Dad, I sure
did.”
                                      ***
Shortly thereafter, Dad finds out about Melba’s drinking. There’s a big, awful
screaming fight and Dad puts a hole in the wall with his fist (which is
just…wow. Cool.) and Melba packs up all her stuff in her suitcase with broken
latches and leaves. Dean’s not sorry.
For a while, Dad stays closer to home, but Dean knows it won’t last.
In the morning, before it’s even light, Dad gets up and gets all the newspapers
he can get his hands on. He sits hunched over breakfast with a felt tip pen and
makes circles and notes, muttering to himself. He always sounds angry, although
when Dean asks, he’ll smile and says he’s not.
Dean knows what it means.
Dad says that it’s necessary. That he’s going to catch the thing that took
Dean’s mom away and make it burn. Something in Dean smolders in response when
Dad says that, a tiny ember of satisfaction, a coal of revenge. “I need your
help, son,” Dad says, putting his hand on Dean’s shoulder and looking at him
seriously, like man to man. “You’re going to have to step up.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Dean says in reply, shocked that Dad even has to ask. “’Course I
will.”
                                      ***
Sometimes, in the weeks after, Dean will dream about it. What happened. Not the
guy so much as the feeling of it. Wet, sliding friction, slightly rough and
heat; an ache that builds into hardness, hardness that builds into pleasure,
pleasure that builds into…oh.
He wakes up a sticky mess and wonders how long before Dad leaves town again.
He wonders if the prospect makes him happy or not.
He doesn’t know.
                                      ***
The next time is on purpose.
It’s later; much later. Years later.
After everything with Melba, Dad starts taking him and Sammy wherever he goes,
packing them up in the car like extra pieces of luggage. It’s a happy time. And
though Dean’s still the one that makes sure Sam’s burgers get cut up into bite
size pieces and teaches him out to use a toilet like a big guy, Dad makes sure
that they always get enough to eat and someplace to sleep.
Dad starts to show Dean stuff, in the down time. Tracking, weapons, defense and
attack.
They’re a family. They’re a team.
And then Dad gets hurt.
                                      ***
This time the guy doesn’t want to blow him, he wants to be sucked.
He gives Dean sips from his bottle (peaches, it smells like peaches) and pets
Dean’s head like he’s a puppy and says it’s okay, it’s okay, i won’t tell. just
do it. come on. like that. yeah. fuck. oh fuck. yeah.
After, Dean pukes it all back up, his throat raw and his mouth sore. The guy
pets his head some more and tells him how good he was. really fucking good, he
says. Dean washes it away with more of the guy’s cheap-o wine and then goes
home.
He’s light-headed and kind of high and he’s got fifty bucks in his pocket.
He’s thirteen.
                                      ***
He comes home with food and tells Dad he stole it. Dad’s not happy, but things
have been going that way for a while, and it’s a hell of a lot better than
telling him what he really did to get the money.
Dad accepts it, reluctantly. There’s not much else he can do, until he’s
better. Well enough to get around without using Dean as a crutch. Well enough
to work. They fall into a routine. Dean starts taking on more of the hunting,
following Dad’s clues, Dad’s research. In the in-between, he tricks when he
can, he steals when he can’t.
It goes fast, an eroding line of morality eclipsed by the need to keep Sammy
fed and clothed. He learns with the same ferocity that he learns Dad’s
different firearms or the correct Latin to exorcise imps.
It’s for Sammy, he thinks, the nights he comes back way too late and has to
face himself in the mirror, scraped up, bruised and well fucked.
Normal is for other people, Dad says to Sammy one day, when Sammy’s bitching
about having to learn bow-hunting. Normal is an illusion.
It’s not until years later that Dean realizes Dad and he never had that talk.
Dean just always knew.
                                      ***
Fuck. Not enough lube. Not quite. It hurts. It drives him hard into the soft
and crumbling brick. The fucked up thing is that he really doesn’t mind so
much, fingers rough on his own cock as the guy thrusts hard and steady inside
him. He’s so fucking hard and so fucking close…
fuck. yeah. take it. shit.
The guy’s breath blurts on the back of Dean’s neck, hot and damp. When he
comes, he bites down on Dean’s shoulder where the collar of his shirt parts
ways from the skin, hard enough to leave the mark of his teeth. It’s the
feeling of his teeth, grinding on the bone, as much as his cock that sends Dean
hurtling, gasping and unhinged, over the edge.
                                      ***
“What the hell happened to you?”
Two moves in quick succession; one to throw the hand towel over the bruised and
torn flesh of his shoulder and another to flick Sammy with the bath towel in
his hand. “What’ve I told you about walking in on me in the bathroom?” he says,
his voice hard and irritated.
“Yeah, but…” Sammy ignores the question, wide-eyed, “Jesus, Dean.”
“Watch your mouth, Sam,” Dad chides absently from the living room.
“Was it a werewolf?” Sam reaches for the towel, and Dean backpedals; slaps his
hand away hard. “I bet it was a werewolf.”
“Yeah, it was a werewolf,” Dean agrees tiredly. “Mind your business, Sammy.” He
makes a face and shoves Sam out, closing the door on him.
                                      ***
“You did good, Dean,” Dad says, and claps him on the shoulder. “I’m proud of
you.”
He doesn’t have to keep tricking. He makes jokes about Dad walking like John
Wayne, but it’s a relief to have him up and around again. It makes Dean feel
like everything’s going to be okay. Dad’s got a part-time gig working at one of
the garages and Dean’s shown him the thing with the credit cards that he
learned from one of his tricks. It’s not a lot of money—especially given the
cost in ammo, rock salt, weapons and gas—but it’s enough. They get by.
He doesn’t have to keep tricking.
But he does.
                                      ***
They stay almost seven months in Gardner, him, Sammy and Dad, looking for the
Hellmouth. A tiny one, newly opened. Maybe it’s because of the Hellmouth, that
Dean gets the shit beat out of him by one of his tricks. Usually, he’s careful
about that sort of thing. At the end, he shows blade, scares the fucker off,
but in any case, he can’t go home like this, because there’s no way Dad’s going
to believe he got messed up like this hunting.
He’s not seeing so good out of his right eye. Or either eye, if you really want
to get down to it. He’s fumbling his way out of the alley and around the corner
and he stumbles into her. For all he’s normally good on his feet, at this
moment, they tangle and he thinks he’s going to fall, all the way to the
ungiving concrete…until she catches him.
“Oh, hey,” she says, sounding a little startled but not nearly as startled as
he thinks she should be for suddenly getting a double armful of fucked-up and
bloody seventeen year old.
He tries to apologize, tries to get himself off her and back onto his feet, but
it’s like drowning; he can’t quite figure out which way is up and the dark and
the cold are creeping in.
And then it’s all gone.
                                      ***
He wakes up trying to climb out from between her sheets. It’s daylight. She
pushes him back down.
“You’re hurt,” she says, like it’s easy.
“I’m fine,” he argues, because he believes it’s true.
This is how these things start.
                                      ***
Dad grabs him hard, both arms, and pulls him close. His forehead bone knocks
against the rough bristle of Dean’s homemade stitches. “Dean, don’t you ever,
ever do that again!” Dad breathes.
“I’m sorry,” Dean answers, breathless. Sammy punches him in the arm—and damn,
but the boy’s got the boniest knuckles—and then goes in their room and slams
the door.
“Your brother was worried too,” Dad says with an ironic half-smile as he hauls
himself heavily from his knees onto the vinyl kitchen chair. It creaks rustily
under his weight. “Come here.”
Obediently, Dean steps into the space between Dad’s knees. Dad grabs his chin
lightly and angles his face into the light. “Not bad,” he says appraisingly. “I
didn’t know we’d been here long enough for you to make any friends, Dean.”
Dean eyes him narrowly. He can’t always read Dad’s tone and there are more
traps in there than in the Kentucky woods in hunting season. “Just some Good
Samaritan, Dad,” he says blandly and shrugs. He’s good at that part.
Mostly he remembers how her long hair tickled his skin as she worked and the
careful, light pressure of her fingers on his chin (just like Dad) as she
wicked the needle through torn and broken skin and her voice.
”I’m Sufiya, by the way,” she said. She sounds like she’s laughing under the
surface of her words. ”You got a name, or will Frankenstein do?”
                                      ***
It’s a while before he goes out again.
It’s not because he’s scared (yeah, right), but because Dad and Sammy are
keeping a closer eye on him. He and Dad don’t split up any more while hunting,
and there’s more evenings kicking his heels in frustration back at the
apartment keeping an eye on Sam.
I don’t need it, he thinks, forehead resting on the steamed over glass of the
mirror. He feels lightheaded and weak-kneed, his chest too tight and his heart
racing too hard. He’s afraid to leave the bathroom, afraid to even fucking
move, for fear he’ll just start screaming, screaming his fucking head off and
then what? I don’t. It’s just because I have to. I have to.”
And those are the right words. He feels the slithery race of his heart slow and
ease, enough that he can breathe again.
Tomorrow, he thinks, and swipes a hand over his face. He’s beading sweat like
he just went toe to toe with a demon.
Sam starts pounding on the door. “Dean! I gotta go!”
                                      ***
Things have been getting worse with the Hellmouth. Too many distractions, the
sloppy and spreading nimbus of escaping evil. Too much collateral damage. They
can’t afford to not split up. Dad lets him go, with an admonition to stay alert
and be careful. Dean promises, blithely and with a clear conscience.
He chases a hob through some back alleys and a pooka across an elementary
school playground. Both are pretty weak, easily banished with iron and salt. A
vamp almost gets the drop on him when he’s scarfing down a hasty dinner of
crumbling ham sandwich in the park, but the crucifix around his neck lights up
like a magnesium flare and gets the thing off him long enough for him to dig
the stake out of his back pocket and dust the thing. He gets a handful of
splinters for his trouble, a shallow love bite over his collarbone that hurts
like a bitch, and his sandwich ground into the dirt. That was the last of the
ham; it’s going to be peanut butter and crackers tomorrow.
“Fuck!” he shouts, a lot louder than he means to.
You know what to do, a voice in the back of his mind observes. How to fix it.
You don’t want Sam to go hungry, do you?
No, he agrees wearily, wiping the blood off his neck absentmindedly and picking
up the stake to be re-pocketed. Can’t have that.
                                      ***
”Well don’t you look like a slice of half-dead? Well, come on up.”
He doesn’t mean to be here. He needs to be elsewhere, either earning a living
for his family or saving someone else’s. But when she unlocks the little door
next to the shop and goes, he’s right there behind her, feeling only a little
more lucid than the first time.
She feeds him; something from a crock-pot cooked down to the consistency of
stew. She scoops four helpings into his bowl before he feels anything like
human, sopping the gravy up with the bread she lays out alongside. She doesn’t
ask him any questions. She doesn’t sayanything, just eats and watches him eat,
drinking tea like it’s going out of style.
When the bowl’s clean—and it doesn’t look that different from when it came out
of the dishwasher—Dean just sits there looking at it. He knows he should go,
but he just can’t make the circuits work.
Finally, she sighs and stands. Holds out her hand. “Why don’t we get you
cleaned up?”
                                      ***
He…stops. He just stops.
She doesn’t ask him to. She doesn’t know. But she’s still having kittens about
sleeping with someone nine years younger; no sense in adding to the problem.
Besides, he doesn’t want her to know. He doesn’t want anyone to know. It’s not
who he is, after all. It’s just something he does. For the family.
But it helps, quitting. He stops having the panic attacks. His focus returns,
sharp and bright, and for the first time in months, his bruises actually have
time to fade. She traces his scars with her fingers, but she never asks him
about them. She never asks him anything.
Sometimes he wishes she would; it’s the only way he knows how to answer
anything.
Even if it’s just a lie.
                                      ***
He knows where she keeps her key; it’s barely after dawn, the apartment’s
quiet.
But she’s already up; he surprises her in the bathroom. She’s half
dressed—skirt and bra—and when he calls her, she whips around. He sees the
stick in her hand, white and long like a slightly bulbous tongue depressor. The
smile falls off his face so fast he thinks it might have shattered on the tile
and his stomach crampshard.
“I’m late,” she says apologetically, and holds the test out, like a peace
offering.
Dean doesn’t breathe until the negative sign appears in the little window, and
even after it does, he has to sit down, light-headed.
Her smile is relieved. “Well, that’s good, right?” she says.
But Dean already knows: he can’t risk this again.
Best steer clear of women altogether, I guess,he thinks.
                                      ***
But it’s like it’s been burned out of him; he can’t start up again and he can’t
go back. There are other dangers than the things that go bump in the night.
Then Sammy figures out an algorithm to triangulate the Hellmouth and Dean
figures out how to adapt the spell they know to actually close it.
“It’s only a ritual sacrifice, Sammy,” he tells Sammy with a grin, while Dad
marks out the lines of the circle in blood, chalk, salt and iron and Dean
twirls the athame over and around the flat of his hand. “Hardly hurt at all.”
Sammy scowls and wriggles. The ochre paste probably itches. “Yeah, well I don’t
see why you couldn’t do it.”
Dean’s smile cracks at the edges even as Dad says, “Because your brother’s got
a bit more…experience than you, Sam.”
Dean’s head whips around and he meets Dad’s tired and cynical gaze. Dad offers
a half-grin and Dean’s heart beats again.
“Whatever.” Sam’s head falls back. He rolls his eyes and wriggles again.
                                      ***
It’s over. They leave. It’s a relief.
He gets better at pool in a hurry, because even if he can’t do that, they still
need money. He still has responsibilities.
And after a while, the tightness of his chest eases enough that he can stand to
be touched again.
For Dad’s sake, and Sammy’s—because if there was ever a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
family, it’s this one—he flirts with everything verifiably human and female.
Dad is indulgent, other than a long and unnecessary discussion about the
dangers of losing focus. Dean nods and makes all the right noises in all the
right places. Sammy is mostly disgusted, although Dean’s noticed him checking
out girls more than once, and he’s starting to take much longer “showers”.
“Fuck, Sammy; spank all you want, but at least leave some hot water for the
rest of us!”
“Go to hell, Dean!” comes the reply.
Dad’s stopped trying to lecture them about language, engrossed in something on
his laptop and a red pen clenched between his teeth. He’s muttering to himself,
and Dean knows the signs. In a couple days, they’ll be on the road again.
“I’m going out,” he tells Dad and gets an absent hand wave in reply. Maybe less
than two days, he thinks, grimly satisfied.
He finds a club, one of the ones that really doesn’t give a shit how old you
are, as long as you have the money to pay. He finds a boy, one chronologically
about the same age, but years and miles younger in just about every way that
counts. He lets the boy bend him over a rusted out Mustang that hasn’t left the
parking lot in years and fuck him until his hands stop shaking and he stops
thinking about anything at all.
                                      ***
Sometimes he looks at Dad, looks at Sam and thinks: oh come on now; how do you
not see it right under your faces like this?
Sometimes he looks at them and he wonders: what parts of you don’t I see? What
are your secrets?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t ask. To ask is to put out an invitation to be asked
and there are certain questions Dean doesn’t want to hear, let alone answer.
He’s going through Sam’s duffel, looking for his whetstone—which Sam just will
not stop appropriating, even though he’s got one of his own—when he finds the
sheaf of college applications and financial aid papers and thinks, well.
There’s one.
After that night’s hunt—ghouls this time, a whole nest—Dean doesn’t even bother
to go back to the hotel with Dad and Sam. He goes to a seedy little bathhouse,
cleans up and flips three tricks in less than an hour.
He pukes it all up in the bathroom and his eyes burn as he looks at his bruised
mouth and aching jaw in the greasy tin mirror. He grinds the ache away with the
heels of his hands, then goes to do it again.
                                      ***
It’s three am, which means it’s more like four where she is and he’s fucked up
and fucked out and he doesn’t know why he’s calling her in the first place
except that when he went into his pocket looking for the rest of his money to
try and get drunk, he’d come up with the little scrap of diner place mat that
has her number written on it.
“You can call me any time, Dean. It doesn’t matter. I just want… If you’re in
trouble, or you just want to say ‘hi’…call.”
He’s hanging on the line and it’s ringing and his nose is running with snot and
who knows what else and suddenly he can’t. He just can’t.
“Hello?”
He freezes, halfway to hanging up, and the silence spins out. He wants to say
something, something important, but he doesn’t do that. Get into the habit of
saying nothing long enough, and nothing’s all you can say.
“Dean?”
His eyes close and he’s shaking again; vibrating, really, and he can’t stop.
Her voice breaks. “Fuck. Dean…is that you?”
He puts the receiver back into the cradle and goes back to the motel.
                                      ***
Sam leaves.
He and Dad start going their separate ways more and more often. Dad talks about
tactics, and greater potential for help and research, but Dean’s been hearing
what Dad doesn’t say for years now and the man can hardly stand to fucking look
at him.
Hell, Dean can hardly stand to look at himself.
Even though he doesn’t have to, he still finds himself flirting with the girls;
a habit reassuring as the continued movement of air in and out of his lungs.
Sometimes he’ll look at one of them and see something, some fleeting flash of
hair, or eyes, or body that makes him ache rottenly with something he can’t
articulate even to himself.
He still sticks to fucking boys, though.
                                      ***
“Dad’s on a hunting trip and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”
Fuck; he doesn’t want to be here. He’d rather be any fucking where than here.
He’s got that taste on the back of his tongue; the salt/iron bitterness like
some guy’s come down his throat—whether that’s actually true or not—and he’s
vibrating like a damned jackhammer despite all his efforts to be still. But
he’s got nowhere else to go. He built his life around Dad and Sam and maybe
they’ve both left him, but he can’t leave them.
“Jess, excuse us, we have to go outside.”
Jess. He knows that Sammy—and probably Jess for that matter—will take his
staring for leering, but that’s not it. He’s come through Palo Alto lots of
times, watching Sam from a distance but the problem with that kind of view is
that it lacks context. He’s not sure what he feels. He wants to ask Sam what
the hell it is he thinks he’s doing, that’s for sure.
Jess. He wonders how much Sam remembers about Mom.
Then Sam starts talking, and Dean wonders if Sam remembers anything about any
of them.
His anger starts to build like his headache and the pounding sense of
something’s wrong; but it’s only a thin crust over depthless cold and endless
darkness. Because if Sam won’t come, if he won’t help…
He’s never asked Sam for anything; it’s always been his job to provide, not
take. He doesn’t want to beg. But he knows he will. If he has to.
(please sammy don’t make me beg)
                                      ***
“Dad let you go on a hunting trip on your own?” Sammy sounds amazed,
almost…what? Envious?
“I’m twenty-six, dude.” He wants to spit. He wants to claw this taste out of
the back of his throat. Instead he fumbles through the Impala’s trunk with
unsteady fingers. Sam doesn’t notice. They bitch and wrangle and
finally—unwillingly—Sammy agrees to come. Dean wants to be angry, but mostly
he’s just grateful. Not alone. Not yet.
Sammy goes back into the apartment. Dean doesn’t think he can manage the stairs
again; his legs feel just that rubbery, so it’s just as well Sam doesn’t invite
him. Instead, he sinks down on the Impala’s seat, plants his elbows on his
knees and tries not to puke. Monday. He’s got until Monday.
Sammy’s coming. We’ll find Dad. And then it will be okay.
Except Dean can’t really remember the last time it was okay.
                                      ***
”So, So how’d you pay for that stuff? You and dad still running credit card
scams?”
Dean wonders what Sam would do if he said: “Actually, I fucked a frat boy and
blew his two friends.”
(yeah, fuck. suck it. all the way, yeah. like that, don’t you? cock hungry
little slut.)
“Yeah well…hunting ain’t exactly a pro-ball career. Besides, all we do is
apply, it’s not our fault they send us the cards.”
(you’ve never known where your lunch money came from, have you, Sammy?)
                                      ***
He’s forgotten how good Sammy is at the schmooze.
Dean’s too straightforward, honed by years of men with one thing on their mind
and precious little patience or—concurrently—tracking and fighting things no
one else believes in and being unable to talk about it.
But it’s more than that. He sees it in the diner when Sam’s making small talk
with that girl Amy and her friend. Dean’s not bad with people. But it takes him
time and effort. If you were to look at the four of them from a distance, you’d
pick him as the outsider right away, whether from body language, accent, or
clothes.
Sam, though…
Sam blends right in.
                                      ***
“Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things
you’ve done?”
(do you know? do you know the things i’ve done?)
“No and she’s not ever going to know.”
(of course not. we all have our secrets, don’t we?)
“Well that’s healthy. You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later
you’re going to have to face up to who you really are.”
(who are you talking to, dean? your brother or yourself?)
“Who is that?”
“ One of us.”
(except he’s not, not really)
“No, I’m not like you. This is not going to be my life.”
(god, sammy; i hope not/hope so)
                                      ***
Sammy—Sam—goes into the house and Dean drives off. Alone. Again.
He makes it about half a block before the roadside tacos start coming back up
on him. He jerks the Impala to the curb and stumbles out into the grass because
there’s no way he’s upchucking in the car. His arms quiver and he fights for
the strength to not go face down in his own sick as his diaphragm twists and
heaves.
When it’s over, he lifts his head, gasping in the cold Northern California air.
From the corner of his eyes, he sees a hot gleam of gold. Twenty-two years and
that color, that gleam is still etched in every brain cell and nerve ending.
Fire.
                                      ***
He wants to be sorry Jess is dead, and he is. He’s sorry and he’s angry and
he’s hurt, because he’s not sure he ever really expected to see that thing
again. Wasn’t entirely sure that there ever really was a thing, despite twenty-
two years of evidence to the contrary.
But mostly he’s just sickly, dumbly grateful and how fucked up is that?
                                      ***
”I don’t know, Dean; that credit card is almost maxed and we’re down to half a
tank. I just don’t think we have the money for that.”
Dean’s thumbs tap out a rhythm on the wheel that has nothing to do with the
Megadeth coming from the speakers. It’s a decent sized town and the bouncer at
Salome’s should still remember him.
“Let me worry about that, Sammy,” he says and turns on the full wattage of his
trust me smile. “Don’t I always take care of you?”
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