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“Don’t touch me.”
It’s pressing all around. Moving, laughing, grabbing, shouting, stinging--The world. It watches. It judges. It’s full of stupid, useless, innocent, powerless living bodies that rub up against him, that invade his world.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Hey, Winchester.”
Dean turns around. He’s in a locker room in a middle school somewhere. Oh, this place.
“What happened to you?”
He knows this kid’s face, his blond hair, his name. Frank. The other boys called him Frank. Frank is lean and muscled and plays JV baseball with the high school kids. He’s special, stands out. Dean doesn’t.
Until now.
They all had to change for gym and Dean doesn't have many changes of clothes, but he has this one t-shirt that he’ll use over and over until it can get washed, whenever he can get around to washing it.
Dean sees the eyes examining his naked torso. Frank sees the scars. The bruises. The recent scrapes from his lessons with Dad. Dean thought they were badges of honor--marks of courage, of will. But in Frank’s eyes he sees judgment, and he feels naked and vulnerable and shamed.
He doesn't know why and he hates it. So he puts on his t-shirt. His flannel. His jean jacket and he walks out of the building and he doesn’t stop and the world slides by and he huddles in his clothes because Frank’s eyes touched him and never again will Dean let them judge his scars and his bruises and his badges because they will never understand their value.
*
“Dean...”
Dean wakes up to something warm on his hand.
Sam is ten and he’s standing by Dean’s hospital bed. He looks fucking traumatized because there are wires and cords and bandages and beeps and strangers touching his big brother. They’re tying him up and Dean is so beat, so loose on painkillers that he can’t fight it and he won’t because Dad had said to stop. But Sam was the one that saved him. Saved them both from the monster that almost killed them and he doesn't even remember doing it.*
“M’okay, buddy.”
“No, you’re not. You almost died, Dean. You were bleeding and your arm was broken so badly and you wouldn’t stop bleeding.”
Sam’s eyes are glistening and wet. The warmth is on his hand where Sam is touching him, holding him with both of his palms. It’s a lifeline. It blocks out the rest of the world until it’s just two halves of the same. It’s Sam’s touch and It’s why Dean’s alive and it’s just...good...
Dean relaxes..
*
In the darkness he’s moving, thrusting, and the pressure feels good. Her voice is quiet, into it, and that’s enough. Her fingertips are running down his back, grabbing his thighs and he’s lost in the warmth, the tang of the edge of a fingernail across his skin.
“God, baby...”
She doesn’t even really know his name. She calls him baby because she probably calls everyone baby, and that’s okay. He’s a nameless face, an hour or two of pleasure and nothing more..
Her calf is on his shoulder. They move like boats in a tempest. He’ll sink below her waves in anonymity...
“Don’t touch me...”
He needs the darkness when she puts his hands on him. When she feels his stomach and she kinda croons, it’s hot. It’s good, but it’s only the surface, and he’ll never let her see the scars that go to his bone, to his core--the bruises that poison his blood and make him a hero. He’s wrecked and he’ll never show her, but he’ll feel the softness of her breasts, the taste of her neck, because, god, he needs a connection, needs to fall over the edge with someone but...
But only this much. Only for now. And Dean doesn’t even know her name either because it’s dark and her soul is something he won’t touch because he has nothing that he’s willing to give and she has nothing that he actually wants.
And in the end he’s exhausted from trying this much. He’s tangled in blankets that pull him away, become a barrier to hide behind.
*
The covers shift. The bed sinks, but so very little.
“Dean? Are you awake?”
He wasn’t. He is now.
“Yeah.”
“I know I said I wanted to sleep by myself but...”
Pause. Because Sam thinks he’s a Big Kid, but he’s so not.
“Bad dream?”
He sees nothing but he can feel six-year-old Sam nodding.
“Get in here.”
Dean opens the covers and Sam’s there. His head burrows under Dean’s arm. Dad’s gone and that always makes them both uneasy, though they’ll never say it. But it doesn’t matter because for years they slept together, Sam in the crook of Dean’s arm because it was safe there, because Dean knew how to shoot and deal with the recoil of a .45 by the time he was nine and the gun was under his pillow anyway. And Sam doesn’t know all the things about the life, but he knows it’s safest near Dean.
“What’d you dream about. D’you wanna talk?”
Sam’s so warm.
“It was about Dad.”
Dean tenses, wishes it had been maybe about unicorns and space aliens--shit that Dean at least believes don’t exist.
“What about Dad?”
“I had a dream that Dad never came back.”
Ugh. Dean’s gut clenches. He has dreams like that too fucking much, and he knows what Dad does. Jesus, Sam. Why do your nightmares gotta be so real?
“Well, that was just a dream, Sammy. Of course he’s comin’ back. Soon. Might even be tomorrow.”
Sam’s got a hand wrapped in Dean’s T-shirt. He’s kneading it anxiously. Dean can hear both their hearts beating in this memory. Was that possible?
“You think so?”
So hopeful.
“Yeah, man. It’s okay. You just gotta sleep. When the sun comes up, everything will look better.”
It even sounds like he believes it.
“Yeah, okay.”
Dean wraps his arms around his brother who in turn sinks into him like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He feels better. Sam feels better. Why’d he have to start getting all independent anyway?
Sam falls asleep instantly. A fucking miracle, because the kid doesn’t sleep well, and Dean freezes, doesn’t want to wake him. Wants him to stay here where he’s safe, forever. Where Dean can keep a hand on him at all times and know that Sam’s okay.
*******************
Dean floats to the surface. Something’s not right, he knows it before he even opens his eyes.
Empty. The bed. Sam?
Dean’s up, he’s flapped the covers. It was once warm but now it’s just the cold suss of cheap motel sheets.
Thrumming pulse of blood in his throat. A disoriented sense of loss and his fingers scramble around the bottom of the bed to find no purchase--No tiny baby brother lost in the sheets. No one.
The darkness of the motel room is almost absolute--only the digital gleam of a cheap clock next to him shows him a second bed with a lump far too broad to be Sam.
Right. Because it’s 3am and Sam is gone. He wasn’t spirited away by some monster, he left, and Dean isn’t comforted by that fact. The heat of his hands, the twist of his t-shirt, and feel of his presence is missed in a way he can’t define because he never had to understand it until now.
A part of Dean has cut itself away from him and it took the better half. All that remains is the shell.
Dean lays back. He turns over to escape but it’s pressing all around. Moving, laughing, grabbing, shouting, stinging--The world. It watches. It judges. It’s full of stupid, useless, innocent, powerless living bodies that rub up against him, that invade his world.
And now Dean is powerless to stop it.