Razorblades and Bandaides

Dean Winchester watched the tightly balled up form of his brother, burrowed beneath the sheets and blankets of the bed next to the bathroom, as he waited for their father to return. Panic and disappointment had nearly risen in him when he found the room empty after he’d gotten Sam bathed—until he remembered barely catching his father’s shout that he was going for supplies. He couldn’t help the exhausted sigh that escaped his lips as he allowed his body to sink into the broken foam cushion of the motel’s chair.

Sam looked so much younger than his seventeen years, tucked under the covers with his dark brown locks obscuring much of his face. The last time Dean could remember his younger brother looking so small and boyish was the spring before his last growth spurt. Sam had been days from his fifteenth birthday and dangerously close to being hospitalized with the flu. Yet another time their dad had left them to their own devices while he went to hunt. . . Dean never was sure what their dad had taken off to hunt that time.

At the time, however, he was sure of one thing—he was hours away from taking his charge to the hospital. The hard stares and whatever grumbles or punishment their dad would have given him would have been worth it to make sure Sam was safe and alive. Sitting in the small motel room miles from the one they’d been in just the day before, Dean knew that he’d do the same for Sam now. The exception this time was that at the first sign of an infection Sam was going to the doctor. . .even if he had to knock his dad out to do it.

“How is he?” his dad’s gruff whisper broke Dean’s musings about his brother’s care.

“He almost freaked out on me in the shower. He’s been sleeping for a little while—the sleeping pills from the car helped,” Dean said, not taking his eyes from the curled up form of his younger brother. “I think we should take him to a doctor.”

“Takes time to call in favors,” John groused, setting the six pack of beer he’d bought next to a bag of the take out on the mostly sturdy motel table.

“What favors?” Dean turned to stare at his dad. “There shouldn’t be any favors be any favors to call in. Sam’s hurt we take him to the hospital.”

“Your brother was raped, Dean!” John snapped at the younger man.

“Gee, thanks, Dad, I’d forgotten that little detail.” He didn’t miss the way his father’s hand curled and uncurled, as though it had an itch that striking him might just scratch.

“If,” John said after a tense pause, “we take your brother to the hospital they’ll have to call the police.”

“So we tell them that he came home like this and we don’t know who did it.”

“I killed five people back there, Dean!” John barked, driving the heel of his hand into the wall behind the table. “Hell, you helped me kill two of them! We take Sam to the hospital and it won’t be long before the police find something to tie us to the bodies.”

“We’d be long gone before they could or would make that connection. Hell, we’re in a completely different state!”

“He’s not going to the hospital, Dean,” he said after nearly a full minute of glaring at his eldest son. “This is not up for discussion any more.” Grabbing some food from the take out sack and a bottle from the six pack, John dropped the wrapped sandwich to the table with a wet slap and slammed the bottle to the table just north of the sandwich—closing out any further discussion.

Dean watched as his father’s fingers tore at the foil wrapper encasing the sandwich—taking in their barely controlled trembling. Carefully his green eyes settled onto his father’s weary worn face. Red lined the edges of his eye lids showing Dean the tears his father was doing his damnedest to keep in and how tired the elder hunter really was. The guilt his father was feeling lay hidden just beneath a thin veneer of control. His father’s fingers wrapped around the beer’s twist off cap and Dean averted his eyes back to the bed and the thinly framed body of his little brother’s body curled beneath the sheets.

The beer bottle scraped across the table as his father picked it up, and Dean tried not to flinch at the once welcome and familiar sound.

“I don’t like them,” Sam hissed in Dean’s ear, eyeing the two young men sitting across from them in the small motel room.

“It’s just one hand, dad,” Dean said in teasing, staring at the cards in his hand. Reaching to his left without looking Dean’s fingers curled around the neck of his bottle of beer.

The food at the diner had been a nice change from the scenery of the cramped motel room, but Dean wanted to have more fun than sitting in the hard seat of the diner’s booth, sipping soda pop and watching the few townsfolk walk by. He and Sam had been cooped up in this town for almost two days, and they’d all spent a few days in another town nursing their wounds from the last gig.

The poker game and beer the motel owner’s nephews had come to their door offering was more along the lines of the fun Dean was itching to have. In all fairness to Sam’s objections he did attempt to—although not too hard—tell them no. He started with the excuse that he didn’t want to expose his baby brother to gambling. When they didn’t believe him, Dean fumbled with the weak excuse of having a headache. They laughed at the fumble for words, but didn’t move. He sighed and admitted that he had no cash. Again they laughed. They only moved enough to allow a bag of pretzels between them.

The need for social interaction—even if it was Jimbob and his creepy ass twin—won over the rules their father drilled into them about letting people near their secrets.

“You plain’…” Darrin began, snapping Dean’s attention back to the game and the cards in his hands.

“Or chattin’?” Aaron finished, both of the men were staring at him expectantly.

“No. No, I’m playing,” he said, grabbing his beer and taking a long swig.

“Well all right,” the twins said together, a twinkle in their eyes that sent a shiver of dread down Dean’s spine, as they continued to stare at him. What did they expect him to do…a trick? He wondered, setting the empty bottle of beer on the table.

That was the table, wasn’t it? He thought as a loud crash filled the small room. He couldn’t think, could barely see and the twins laughter sounded as though he were hearing it through water. One thing he heard and saw clearly was Sam yell out to him and Darrin—at least he believed it to be that twin—grab Sam. Sam tried to get away; tried to struggle against the more muscular man. In the end Darrin won.

Sam lay pinned to the bed by Darrin, his hazel-green eyes glued to Dean’s drooping greens. His breath came in pants and Darrin laughed as Aaron approached his brother and Sam—he was saying something Dean’s drugged mind couldn’t make sense of. He pulled a baggy from his back pocket and moved closer to Sam.

Inwardly Dean screamed for them to leave Sam alone; threatened to kill them slowly if they touched his baby brother. The only sounds that would leave his mouth were slurred words and grunts—the twins laughed harder.

Darkness crept slowly over Dean’s mind as he watched Aaron remove a folded cloth from the plastic bag and place it over Sam’s mouth and nose with a firm grip. Sam thrashed as violently as he could against both Darrin and Aaron’s grips. Dean grunted his frustration and tried to crawl the few feet to the youngest Winchester—failing.

The last memory his brain formed before giving in to the looming darkness was Sam laying limp beneath the grip of the twins—who had yet to stop laughing at the crime they were committing.

Bile began to creep up the back of Dean Winchester’s throat as the memory tore through his brain. Doing his best to suppress the sudden feeling of nausea Dean clamped his jaw and took a hard breath. He stood and the room spun momentarily before the dull blue walls closed in around him.

“’m gonna get some air,” he muttered, snagging the key from the table and exiting before his father could ask a question or grunt of acknowledgement.
Taking a large gulp of the cool night air, Dean leaned against the closed motel room door. The large brass numbers bit sharply into his upper shoulders, and he welcomed the pain and the cold air. Slowly his stomach’s want to give back its contents went away.

In a slow sweep, Dean’s tongue wet his overly dry lips. It was then that the salty, bitter taste of the monster that had kidnapped and assaulted Sam and him felt thick on his tongue again, and he began to wish he’d taken the beer his dad had offered. It was a taste he’d tried to wash from his mouth with the toothbrush he’d dug from his bag and the cheap mint toothpaste the motel supplied while Sam sat in the shower.

He was almost surprised that the cheap toothpaste had chased the bitter taste of the monster’s spunk from his mouth for the hour or so that it had. It was funny, in the that’s weird funny kind of way, to him how much the taste that’d sat heavily in his mouth for the hours his father drove did not bother him. He’d live with that taste the rest of his days if it would un-do what had happened to Sam. Now that they’d stopped, and Sam was safe that the bitter taste, he thought he’d scrubbed from his mouth, returned.

The urge to head back into the room, grab up a beer and down it just as fast as he could was outweighed by his absolute lack in desire to do so. It wasn’t just the lingering memories of the doctored beer that had him leery to go back into the room—it was also the cramped and stale heat feeling of the room keeping him from the about face his body was willing him to do.

Peeling his tired body, shakily, from the support the motel door offered, Dean Winchester willed what energy he left within him to move him along the street to the nearest bar. His mouth became wet, despite the bitter taste set in it, in anticipation of the bourbon Dean’s mind was set drinking; it wasn’t the taste of the liquor itself his mouth was awaiting, but the taste the burning liquid promised, by thought of it alone, to strike from his mouth. It would take more than simple mint flavored toothpaste to steal the smooth taste of the liquor from his mouth and lips in the morning.

The metal handle on the door of the bar was colder than the air of the night, sending a violent shiver through Dean’s body as his fingers curled around it. Without another thought he pulled the heavy looking door open. He almost yelped in surprise when the door flew open with more ease than he’d thought it would.

No one in the small bar noticed the front door nearly slamming open or the figure sheepishly pulling it closed behind him. To say the place was packed would have been an understatement. Filled to capacity and then some would have been a more accurate description, Dean thought, edging through the crowd on his way to the bar.

To Dean’s pleasure the throngs of people filling the bar seemed to be ignoring the bar and its liquor stores for the dance floor—all twenty feet of it square. Settling himself on a stool in front of the beat up wood of the bar Dean signaled its tender his presence. The burly man behind the bar didn’t speak, didn’t ask for I.D. or drink preference—he merely sat a small glass on the counter and poured a double of whiskey into it. Sliding the glass to Dean, who picked it up to sip as he nodded, the large man moved to the other end of the bar where two obviously underage girls had seated themselves.

He moved the smooth amber liquid around his mouth—allowing it to burn the taste of his attacker from his mouth—before finally forcing it down his throat. He reveled in the burn the drink left in his mouth and throat. He took another drink. The burn was still there—scorching away another layer of the semen that’d sat in his mouth for too many hours—though not as harsh as the first sip it was still welcome.

Warmth from the liquor spread through his cold body before Dean could bring the glass to his lips to drain the remainder of the amber liquid. He all but slammed the empty glass on the counter top. The bottom of the glass had barely settled on the wood of the bar when the bartender once again filled it.

Scooping the glass from the bar, Dean poured its contents into his mouth and swallowed. There was no burn this time—no quick spreading warmth coursing through his tired body—just the usual buzz alcohol left in you brain after it’d burned its way to your belly and warmed your body; even if you weren’t cold.

“Drink much?” a distinctly female voice shouted to him over the music filling the small bar.

“Not nearly enough today, Sweetheart, not nearly enough,” he said setting the empty glass on the counter for another fill.

“Not do enough of anything else today?” the voice asked, as the body belonging to it took a seat on the empty stool next to him.

Dean scooped up the newly re-filled glass and turned to lay eyes on the girl who was trying too hard to be coy and cute. Blonde hair hung in loose curls to her shoulders with thick black and purple streaks of dye striping through it. Her barely there top revealed a bra matching the dyed streaks in her hair. The skirt she wore looked as though she’d stolen it from a much younger sibling. He smirked at her attempt to look sexy. It was a good attempt.

“Always dress so cheap?” He resumed sipping at the liquor in his glass. He hadn’t intended to be so blunt with her, but someone needed to be.

“Only for special occasions,” was her shouted reply.

“And tonight’s one of those occasions.” Of course it would be. He’d been in enough bars over the years to know her type by the wry tone on the voice. She hadn’t offered him sex yet, but it was coming. He could feel it sure as she was sitting there wearing Britney Spears’ cast off clothing. “What makes this occasion special?”

A sardonic smile pulled at the corners of her cherry colored lips. “You.”
Dean laughed. “Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me your game?” He took another sip of the liquor he’d gone to the bar to drink.

“All right,” she straightened her thin frame on the stool—no longer attempting to be sexy—cleared her throat and leveled darkly shadowed green eyes at him.

She’d be pretty if she wiped that crap off her face and put on decent clothes, he thought.

“150 for an hour, 450 for the night.”

He quirked a brow at her, “you are cheap, honey.” If she were surprised by his declaration she didn’t show it. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“My ass,” Dean bit at her. She was maybe seventeen, if she were a day, by his eyes. “How old are you really?”

“Seventeen last week,” she admitted looking away from his suddenly intense gaze.

“Wanna know why I’m sitting here drinking?” He sat his glass on the bar to be filled again. The beside him gave him a slow nod as she turned her eyes back to him—questions pooling in her eyes. “Because someone I love and would die to protect had taken from them tonight the exact thing you give away to paying customers.”

“I’m sorry,’ she said—voice barely audible against the music still pounding through the bar.

“Seventeen years old and still all the innocence he had left is gone. You shouldn’t have given yours away—you have no idea how precious it really is.” He sat the drained glass on the counter bottom up. Laying three fives on the bar beside the glass Dean slid from the stool and fought his way back to the front door.

Cool night air rushed in to greet Dean as he exited the warmth of the bar. The light breeze raked through his short cropped hair and forced the tears to fall from his eyes. He didn’t want to cry. Brushing the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, Dean continued his furious pace back to the motel.

There he could pretend to be strong; pretend that he didn’t want to scream and cry to the world how what he admired most in his baby brother was gone. For his family he could pretend to know how to fix everything in them that was broken.

Crying meant that he mourned the loss of all that was innocent about Sam, and he refused to accept that. If there was a way to make his brother whole again he was going to find it. With a final sniffle Dean quelled the tears still threatening to fall, wiped them from his eyes and pulled the room key from his pocket.
“NO!” Dean heard two voices howl at the same time. His heart jumped violently to his throat and his normally nimble fingers fumbled lightly with the lock as he rushed to get in the room.

FIN.