Work Text:
1999
Jan. 24
Dean turns twenty today. He's in Ohio somewhere, hasn't called in a couple of days. Tracking a possible poltergeist. He's supposed to call in every night. Mission discipline is critical.
~
The poltergeist was easy to take care of, really. It’s the second day in Kent, Ohio, and Dean's gotten rid of the spirit. Easy. Hardly a memorable hunt. Just the usual. Just another case alone. He's done dozens of those now, since his first. Sure, his dad didn’t send him on a solo hunt for a couple months after that, and Dean was terrified of him asking about it. But his father never said a word about that, and it was buried and forgotten, and then solo hunts became more normal. It's just how it works now. Dean's a hunter. A damn good one, honestly. He doesn't think anything will change that. He doesn’t know much else, and he's gotten really good at it, anyways. The only thing he is good at. And he'll just keep doing it until some monster kills him or something.
He pushes the thought away as he closes the door to the motel room behind him. He knows he'll end up dead before thirty, probably. He doesn’t like the idea very much, but he's getting used to it. It's the best way to go, anyway, right? That's what makes sense, at least. A real man's death. A hunter's death. Guns blazing. One last fight.
Whatever.
Dean sets his hunting bag on the bed with a sigh, blinking away exhaustion. He hasn't slept more than a few hours in the past three days. He goes for his phone in his pocket, though, because he should call his dad, update him, say he'll meet up with him in the morning. Maybe Sam's still awake and they can talk a little. Dean smiles at the thought. He hears the creak of a door hinge a moment later.
He doesn’t know how long it is before he's waking up with a hot pain in his head, contrasting hard with the cold numbness that seems to be stuck to every other part of his body. He tries to see, blinking violently in an attempt to lessen the darkness that’s clinging to air, but it doesn't do much. The pain in his head steadily gets worse, and his throat lets a small sound escape past his lips as he tries to make something of his surroundings. He's lying down, he thinks. The frigid solidity of the surface under him is the only thing he has to go on. He moves to sit, but he can't. He tries again. He still can't make it. Not to say he can't move. But something's keeping him down. The itchy coarseness of thick rope registers against his icy wrists a moment after. Well fuck.
Door hinges creak again, emulating his last memory of being in the hotel room. Dean’s chest, already tight and aching dully from the cold, gets tighter, and it’s hard to breathe. He closes his eyes and pretends he’s still unconscious. It’s all he can think of to do, and he hopes it helps him somehow. At least, until he can think of something else.
“I know that you are awake,” comes a voice, loud and bitter and heavy with some accent that Dean can’t place right now. Almost British, almost Scottish. Not quite either. Dean feels heavy. Crushed. He forces his eyes open again, and he sees light shining, dim and grey, from behind a figure that he can’t really make out. He just knows that it’s tall, and it’s probably what brought him here.
“Who the hell are you?” he says, and his voice scrapes and hitches on its way out because of the cold, like he hasn’t used it in days.
“The Sineater.”
Dean wants to laugh, but he’s too cold and still trying to wake up. So he just tries to focus and notice any details the figure has. “And what, you eat sinners?” he says, trying to keep any shaking out of his voice. “Well, good luck with that, pal, that’s…a lot of people.”
The figure, Sineater, whatever, laughs. And God, it’s a noise that finds a way to shove itself down Dean’s throat and into his gut until he wants to choke and cry and explode. It hurts. He wishes he could cover his ears. “I do not eat the person. I feed upon the sin.”
Dean realizes that the Sineater’s coming closer, and he tries to get his wrists free of the ropes that seem to tighten with each movement, each strangled breath he takes. He can make out a face now. The Sineater looks like a normal man. But Dean knows he’s not. He’s not just some crazy guy who decided to kidnap people and call himself the Sineater. There’s something unnatural about him. Something wrong, so wrong. “Confess.”
The word throws Dean off for a moment, and he swallows hard. “What the fuck-” he starts, and this time he can’t help the shake in his voice. The Sineater’s hand hits his forehead.
“Confess.”
Dean can still feel the laugh, the voice, all of it flooding his insides, searching him, trying to tug out everything he wants to hide. He lets out a shuddering breath. “Where d’you want me to start….?” he breathes. “Drinking, premarital sex-”
“The sin.”
Dean nearly bites off his tongue to stop himself from talking.
“The sin.”
He doesn’t know what it means for a small second, and then he can feel it. He can feel what the Sineater wants to hear. He can taste the confession in his mouth, like scalding water threatening to boil over. He can’t. “You’re gonna have to specify,” he manages to say, and he swears he tastes blood the moment he says it.
“Confess.”
Dean shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, and he nearly cries out from the feeling of the voice’s fingers clawing and ripping him apart from the inside.
“Confess.”
He can’t even deny it now. But he won’t say it. He can’t. “N...no…” he breathes, and the pain, the want to spit it out, to get it over with, grows stronger. But he shakes his head instead, closing his eyes tight. “Sh-shit, I can’t...stop, I can’t…!” He does his best not to scream the words, but they come out loud and echoing and broken.
“Confess.”
The one does it. Dean can’t take it anymore, and he screams. He spills. He tells the Sineater everything. He tells him about the first time he had a crush on a boy and the nuns and the hiding and the pretending and how he acts like he’s better, but he’s not. He screams it, and he hates himself for it, and his one hope is that the Sineater’ll kill him when he’s done.
It’s too much to hope for.
When he opens his eyes, the Sineater’s gone. The ropes around his wrists are loose. There’s light shining under a tattered wood door, and Dean can see where he is. It doesn’t matter to him, but he pretends it does. He sits up, shuddering at the deathly emptiness that he feels in the pit of his stomach. He pretends that all that matters is getting out of here and getting back to Sammy and dad. It is, honestly. But not to him. Not right now.
He walks for what seems like miles when he can stand. Walks until he hits a town. He walks into a store to call his dad. He wonders how long he was in the wood shack. He catches the date on the newspaper, and he manages to laugh just a little. So he’s twenty today. Ha.
His family arrives in the Impala a few hours later. His dad’s not happy. He hits him for the first time in almost a year. Dean lets him. Dean usually lets him.
He doesn’t tell John why he didn’t call for almost three days. He says he forgot. John buys it, or at least doesn’t question it. And Dean tries to bury what happened deep down, to tuck it away with the rest, and pretend that it never happened. He never looks up what a Sineater is or anything like that. He forgets it.
It never happened.