With Spit and a Prayer

Many thanks to Starflow, AngelJade, From Across the Pond, Mary and sami for their kind comments on chapter eighteen.

sami: I'm afraid I can't email you to let you know when I've updated, since I don't know your email address. I update usually about once a week, though.

Also, guys, I've had a couple of problems recently with people spoiling me in the comments to my fic. I don't know anything about any episodes of SPN from 2x20 on, including titles, promo information, etc., so if you do, please don't mention it. Many thanks!

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With Spit and a Prayer, Chapter Nineteen

One hundred and sixty-eight days
----
“OK, so, what, you want me to lie down or something?” Dean asked, eyeing the couch and trying not to shift from foot to foot.

“Whatever makes you feel comfortable,” Horst said. He had his legs crossed at the knee, his hands clasped around the top one, and he looked so much like a fucking shrink that it made Dean want to turn right around and leave. Instead, he dropped onto the couch, sprawling as wide as he could, and shot the doc a challenging glance.

“Would you like to take your coat off?” Horst asked, seeming completely unruffled.

“Nah,” said Dean. “I’m good.”

Horst nodded, smiled, and said, “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

Dean scanned the room again, drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. “Hear you’re giving it away for free. Wouldn’t want to miss an offer like that.”

Horst smiled some more, and damn, he was good, if Dean was him he’d be getting pretty pissed by now. “And why do you think you need counselling, free or otherwise?”

Dean tried to think of a smartass reply, but nothing was forthcoming. Damn, he was tired. “Sam said I should come, so I came,” he said. “If you ask me, this is bullshit.” He watched Horst openly, waiting for annoyance, but there was nothing. Goddamn shrinks.

“Then why do you pay for your brother to come?” Horst asked.

Dean gave a one-sided shrug. Not for him, you idiot. For me. That was too much, though, because this guy would totally make something of that and Dean really didn’t feel like dealing with psychobabble crap right now. Which was kind of a problem, because he was in a counsellor’s office, for Christ’s sake, but consistency was overrated anyhow. He just wanted to get the hell out of there and go back to the motel.

“And why did Sam ask you to come?” Horst asked.

Dean’s eyes narrowed. This shit was fucking annoying, and actually, he felt kind of exposed being spread out on the couch like this. He jumped to his feet, paced a couple of times, feeling boxed in even though the guy hadn’t even asked him anything major yet. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to be on his own on the crazy side of the room,” he said, and then wished he could bite off his tongue (Sam’s not crazy).

“Sam’s not crazy,” said Horst, and Dean hesitated for a moment in his pacing, because for all he’d thought it, for all he believed it (wanted to believe it), he was pretty sure that Sam looked pretty goddamn crazy to everyone who wasn’t him.

“Oh yeah?” he said, challenging, because this guy, this guy was just trying to get on his good side, and he was a shrink, of course he fucking thought Sam was crazy (Sam was crazy).

“That’s right,” Horst said. “He’s hurting, because of the rape, but he’s not crazy.”

Dean did stop then. Because of the rape. Jesus, the guy said it just like that, like it was nothing, and Dean had raped his brother. He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting the urge to throw a punch, and when he opened them Horst was watching him, all traces of smile gone from his face.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened in Biloxi, Dean,” he said.

Dean snorted. “You ask Sam that?”

“I can’t discuss my meetings with Sam,” Horst said, and Dean thought that he hadn’t seemed to care about that a couple of minutes before.

“But you asked him, right? I mean, you must have asked him. So you already know.” The air felt like it was getting too thick, like breathing was hard, and Dean clenched his teeth and tried to ignore the panic and rage curling through his stomach.

“I want to hear what you think happened,” Horst said, still infuriatingly calm, and Dean couldn’t fucking bear it, this guy, this stranger, sitting there and asking like it didn’t even matter. He took two steps forward and lunged, one hand on each arm of Horst’s chair, face right up close to his so he could smell the mint on Horst’s breath, and oh yeah, figured this guy would use breath-fresheners.

“You want to hear what happened? Huh?” Dean asked, and Horst didn’t break eye contact, and apart from a momentary flutter of surprise, his face was still that goddamn unreadable mask of calm. “I beat my brother into submission and then I raped and strangled him. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

He was breathing heavily, and he thought fuck, fuck, I’ve done it now, because OK maybe Sam had told Horst something close to the truth, but this was a confession and now he was most likely getting locked away. He had to go, right now, leave town, except he stayed exactly where he was, waiting. Horst stared back at him and Dean realised that he was relieved, he’d been waiting for someone to look at him and see what he was for months and now this guy knew, and Dean was going to get what he deserved and end up somewhere where there was no risk of him hurting anyone (Sam) again. So yeah, he stood there, waiting for Horst to call the cops, but all the guy did was gently put a hand on his chest and push him away, until Dean was standing up, still panting and feeling faintly ridiculous.

“And did you hurt Sam of your own free will?” Horst asked, and Dean heard the words hurt Sam and felt cold.

“No,” he said, even before he’d really processed the question. “No, God, no, I’d never...” he stopped, looking down at his hands. Sam had told him the story he’d constructed in a roundabout way; he hadn’t actually referenced Biloxi, just said Dean, I told him there was a guy with a gun, and Dean had known what he meant, of course. It was pretty ludicrous, as stories went, but even so it would soundmore believable to most people than sorry, officer, I was possessed (which said a lot about the sheer idiocy of most people), and Dean guessed it was time to fall back on it now.

“There was this guy,” he said, shifting and stepping back from Horst, and he couldn’t even really believe he was talking about this, why the hell was he talking about this? “He threatened me. Threatened Sam.”

“I see,” said Horst, writing something down. “And then you were raped?”

Dean had been checking out the exit, wondering if now was a good time to just cut and run, and he turned his head so sharply that he almost pulled a muscle. “What?” he said. “You mean Sam, right? Sam was...” I raped Sam.

Horst eyed him steadily. “You were raped, Dean.”

Oh, Jesus, this was fucking ridiculous. “Look, doc, I don’t think you’re hearing me. You do get how rape works, right?”

“Yes, I do,” Horst said. “Rape is defined as the forcing of a person to perform sexual acts against their will. You had sex with Sam against your will, ergo you were raped.”

Dean couldn’t even get his head round what the fuck the doc was saying. It was just meaningless. How the hell had he thought sending Sam to this goddamn quack was a good idea? Jesus, Jesus fucking Christ.

“Dean?” Horst said, like he was Dean’s friend, like he knew a single goddamn thing about Dean.

“Fuck you,” said Dean, and walked out.

----

He didn’t wait to call Sam, was dialling even before he’d made it out of the building, even though they always spoke at the same time every evening, and he wasn’t sure how they came to that agreement but it had been working so far. At first, Sam didn’t answer, and Dean felt like hurling the cell phone against the wall, crushing it with his boot, maybe taking out his rage on one of the unsuspecting pedestrians who took one look at his face and hurried by a little faster. This was all wrong, all wrong.

“Dean?” Sam’s voice on the line made him suck in his breath. He sounded confused, scared even.

“We’re getting a new fucking shrink,” Dean said, and his voice sounded harsh to his own ears, grating. He shouldn’t be talking to Sam like that, not now, not with Sam so goddamn lost, but he couldn’t make the words come out any other way.

“What?” Sam asked, and if possible he sounded even more disoriented than he had when he first answered. Dean slid into the Impala, gunned the engine.

“Horst’s a goddamn quack,” he said. “I’m finding you someone else. He’s a fucking...you’re not seeing him any more, Sammy.”

There was quiet on the line, and Dean compensated by slamming on Black Sabbath as loud as the stereo would go. Sam might have said something else, but he didn’t hear it, and a minute or so later, the call disconnected.

----

Sam rubbed a hand over his face and lay back on the bed. It was late afternoon, winter now, so the light filtering through the curtains was fading rapidly from daytime-grey to the weird muted glow of streetlamp. That was how Sam felt, too – muted, fading. It wasn’t panic in his chest, in his belly, just a sense of the inevitable, that it was the only thing that could have happened, because really, who was he kidding thinking that maybe this whole mess could be, if not fixed, at least made better? Who did he think he was with the job and paying for Dean’s room and trying to make him better, trying to make Dean better, it was laughable. And now Dean had seen through it, or something, something had happened anyway, it had gone wrong and Sam didn’t understand why but it was only what he had been waiting for anyway.

He heard the Impala pull in to the parking lot. It was weird, hearing it every day; sometimes he had the urge to just go, to knock on Dean’s door and beg him to take Sam back, but he knew that wasn’t what Dean wanted, and he thought he was beginning to understand why, so he just lay with his eyes closed, listening to the engine and imagining he was riding shotgun, just him and Dean, back before any of this ever happened. It still felt foreign, like those years and years had happened to someone else, but some days Sam thought he could imagine what it must have been like, to be him then.

When the engine cut out and the door creaked and slammed, Sam crawled off the bed to the bathroom. His face in the mirror looked back, and that was foreign, too, bones jutting, sharp-edged in a way he was pretty sure he’d never been before. There were marks on the mirror, rust-coloured, and Sam sat on the edge of the bath and drew a deep breath, started at the beginning, first principles, the way Horst had taught him and the way he’d been practising at work, until he remembered how they’d come to be there. His blood on the mirror, still there after all these weeks, and Sam wondered if he’d even looked at himself since that day.

He stood up now and lined his face up until the flaking patches of brown covered the eyes of his reflection. Then he reached forward with a fingernail and scraped them off. His eyes looked back at him, exhausted, lost; expectant.

Sam went back into the bedroom and picked up the phone.

----

The phone rang maybe half an hour after Dean got back to his room, and he thought about not answering, because it would be just like Horst to call him, the fucking prick, and Dean thought if he had to talk to him right now he might go right back there and kill the son of a bitch.

It wasn’t Horst, though.

“Sammy,” he said, fear threading through the rage in his gut because Sam hadn’t called him since before Dean left town, it was always Dean that called Sam. “You OK?”

“No,” Sam said, and Dean actually took a step back at the force in his voice.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit, what’s wrong?” Jesus, I yelled at Sam, I fucking yelled at him what was I thinking?

There was a pause, and then Sam said, “No, I mean. I mean no, I’m, I’m going to keep seeing Horst.”

Dean stared at the wall, feeling the anger start to burn again, but there was confusion, now, too, and the fear still, Jeez, Dean was like a fucking smorgasbord of emotion. “What?”

“I’m,” Sam trailed off. The vehemence of his first word was gone now, like he’d used up everything he had just to say it in the first place. “I need to. He’s helping me.”

Dean blew out a breath, because fuck, that goddamn bastard had got his claws deep into Sam, and it was Dean’s fault, Dean had sent Sam there in the first place. “Jesus, Sammy. He’s not helping you, he’s just gonna make it worse.”

Sam sort of chuckled, and Dean started in surprise at the noise. “I... seem worse to you? Worse than... worse than when you left?”

“You...” Dean stopped. He felt weird, light-headed, like maybe he was going to pass out, and it struck him that this was the most Sam had sounded like himself since Dean could remember, maybe since he had remembered Biloxi in the first place. He sank down to sit on the bed, and had the freakiest feeling of talking to his brother, not the stranger Sam had become. He covered his eyes with one hand. “Listen, you...” But Horst, Horst had said.... And Dean was not fucking having it, he wasn’t. “You don’t know what he said,” he finished, and it sounded lame, whiny, even to Dean.

Sam was quiet, like he was waiting for Dean to tell him, but no way, no way was Dean repeating that, so he just sat with his hand over his eyes and triedto figure it out, Sam’s getting better, he’s getting better, but Horst, Horst said...

“I know that when he’s said stuff to me, he’s usually been right,” Sam said finally, and Dean thought maybe he was drowning.

“Fuck,” he said, “fuck.” He wanted to disconnect the call, maybe carry out his fantasies about smashing the phone from earlier, but he couldn’t even find the strength to move his hand, even to let it fall onto the bed.

“Dean,” Sam whispered, sounding wrung out and broken, “he’s helping me. He might be able to help you, too, if you let him.”

“Fuck,” said Dean again. What else was there to say?

----
One hundred and seventy days
----
“I wasn’t sure whether to expect you back,” said Horst, and Dean took up a position with his back to the wall where he could see both the doc and the door, and his exit wasn’t blocked.

“Yeah, well,” he said, trying for nonchalant and hoping he didn’t sound as edgy as he felt, “my bro just won’t stop talking my ear off about how awesome you are, so.” He bit down on his lip and tried not to remember how long it was since Sam had talked his ear off about anything. He’s getting better, it’s gonna be OK.

“You speak to Sam often?” Horst asked, turning in his chair to face Dean fully. Dean shifted, feeling exposed.

“Call him every day.”

“Do you ever speak to him face-to-face?” Horst asked, making some stupid note or something, and Dean wanted to rip the clipboard out of his hands.

“No,” he said.

Horst nodded, still writing (what the hell was he writing, how Dean was too fucked up to even see his brother at all?). “And why is that?”

“Jesus.” Dean started pacing, couldn’t fucking help himself. The room was too goddamn small, was what, the couch was ugly as sin and there wasn’t enough air. “What the hell business is it of yours?”

Horst watched him for a couple of turns of the room, and Dean didn’t look, wasn’t going to let that bastard make him look. “You and Sam are very close,” he said, and Dean just growled. “You used to live together,” Horst continued. “It strikes me as an important part of getting to the bottom of your current situation for me to understand why you don’t now.” He waited a beat, but Dean wasn’t saying a fucking thing, wasn’t remembering the day he’d left Sam, the weight of the gun in his hands and the way he felt when Sam passed out with Dean’s hands around his throat and Dean’s dick inside him. He shouldn’t have come back, he couldn’t... He couldn’t do this, not now, not ever.

“Did you moving out have anything to do with your sexual relationship with Sam?” Horst asked, and Dean was faced with two choices: beat the shit out of the doctor, or leave. And the only thing that stopped him doing the former was Sam’s voice in his mind saying he’s helping me.

Five minutes later, he put his fist through the window of the Impala. The pain was instant and gratifying, and he stood on the sidewalk surrounded by bloodstained shards of glass and ignored the passers by who crossed the street to avoid him. Sam said Horst was helping him, and maybe that was true, maybe Horst helped Sam because Sam needed it, needed help so fucking bad, and God, he deserved to have someone to help him. Dean was pretty sure that Horst was damning him. And when he thought about it, maybe that was what he deserved, too.