#(but i feel like the absence of sam undergirds dean all the time)

[zmediaoutlet]

was listening to 'sanctify' by st paul & the broken bones and literally just started writing with zero plan in mind; ended up with a stanford-era john/dean thing. so.

(AO3)

Dean lights a match and holds it steady. The flame's a bright-white flare. Little, but enough. He watches past the tiny pool of not-dark, the heat creeping closer to his fingers. When he's about to get burned he shakes it out and drops it to the wrecked carpet. Can't be any worse than anything else that's happened to this floor. He rubs his hot fingertips together, shoulders shifting to get more comfortable against the wall. Rips another match out of the book and lights it.

He's nearly finished with the whole book before there's a brighter wash of headlights through the torn curtains and the room goes black and white—shadows of bedframe and window crossbars and his own hand flung up against his face—and he lets the last match keep going, down to his fingers to scorch his skin, and he's still holding onto the burnt skeleton of the matchstick when the door opens, across the room, and it's—

"Dad," he says.

Backlit by the headlights but Dean would know that silhouette in his sleep, when he's drunk, when he's dead. "Yeah," Dad says, slow and kind of sighing, and he stands in the open door with his hand heavy on the knob and his face hidden in black. Dean wishes he had one more match. "You good?" Dad says, after what feels like a long time, and Dean nods immediately because—but his head feels strange and his jaw feels kind of loose and the nod spools out into something that's maybe not so loyal.

"Yeah," Dad says again, slower, lower, and his silhouette shifts, ducks, when he runs his other hand over the back of his head, and there's another sigh before he says, "Hold on, dude," and turns around and disappears, leaving just the headlight blare in the room and Dean's heart in his throat and his singed fingers grinding the matchstick down to charcoal dust.

Lights off and the night flows back into the room, thick and cold. Dean's shoulderblades grind against the wallpaper. Then—Dad, back, and the lines of the door barely picked out in the dark show him closing it, and then—the camping lantern jolting to life, whiter than the headlights, making this little sun that sears across the Coleman cooler Dad's set it on and the sad iron bedframe with its stained old boxspring and the ratty green curtains and—Dad, five days of stubble grown into what's basically a beard, his face tired, his arm bandaged from Dean's fuck-up. Where Dean can practically see radiating lines, like a cartoon panel, going hey idiot, hey moron, you see? you see what you did?

It's possible Dean's a little loopy.

"Got food, water, Gatorade," Dad says. He looks along his shoulder at Dean. "Booze. But maybe you had enough of that, huh?"

"No such thing," Dean says. Dad laughs, in that nearly-silent Dad-way that's just his shoulders moving and a little air coming out of his nose. Makes warmth crack painfully in Dean's chest, anyway. Hot water hitting ice. He licks his lips. "You okay?"

"Know how to give myself stitches," Dad says. Dismissing. Dean nods and tips his head back against the wall, his eyes hot and his fingers hurting and his ankle, god, his ankle really really hurts but that's—his own fault, and he knows it, and it makes perfect sense that Dad left him here to wait, in the dark, in some abandoned motel on the ass end of nowhere while he took care of what Dean couldn't.

The lantern-light leaves weird crazed patterns on the ceiling. Splintery cracks that blur and move. Dean keeps his eyes on that and focuses on breathing in some way that might sound normal and he listens as Dad's steps thump around the interior of the room. Then—

"What's with the matches?" Dad says. Dean blinks. Dad's right in front of him, crouching, frowning down at the pile of charcoal.

"It was dark," Dean says. His lips feel fat, stupid. "Zippo ran outta juice."

"They do that." Line between Dad's brows. Glint in his eye, but then he's backlit again and it's hard to see detail in the dark. His lips press together and he shakes his head and Dean doesn't want to say he's sorry because he doesn't want to hear what comes after it, whether the correction he deserves or shrugging he doesn't, but he wants to say—he wants—but Dad's on his own schedule and he says, "All right, man, let's go," and he grabs Dean's forearm and there's an arm around Dean's waist and he's upright, lickety-split like a magic trick, and the change in elevation does something weird to his head and his ankle screams inside the loose frame of his unlaced boot but Dean just bites down on any feeling or sound and turns his face, his nose and mouth and eyes closed against Dad's shoulder—canvas, smoke. Safe. God, that they're safe.

The arm stays around his waist. A hand, rough and warm, at the back of his neck. Thumb up behind his ear. "Hurts, huh," Dean hears, somewhere, and he nods dumb against the canvas. He's walked a step backward—oh, his leg—but his weight somehow isn't quite right, and he falls—is carried—bounce of the boxspring and a cloud of dust and that huffing breath, and Dad says, "Gotta let go, buddy," and Dean finds he's got a double-handful of canvas jacket and he's carried Dad right along with him so he's bent over Dean where he's half-sprawled back on the bed, his mouth curved up at one corner, and he's not—mad. He should be mad and he's not.

"I have to?" Dean says.

"You really are out of it." He should be. He should be mad, but he's just breaking Dean's grip on his jacket with easy twists of his thumb—and grabbing his bag, and crouching down on the floorboards like before to find Dean's boot, to roll his jeans up his shin, to hiss at the damage.

"Dad," Dean says, and Dad says, "Bite something, would you?" and Dean doesn't have to do that, when has he ever had to do that?—so that when Dad pulls his ankle Dean just sucks air and lets the tears smart and feels his foot weirdly small in the double-warm grip, the way that hand drags up the back of his calf, squeezes mean and then gentle and he relaxes from the iron he turned into and becomes—whatever the opposite of metal is. He drags up onto his elbows and watches down the stupid stained length of himself and sees Dad shrug. So, no break. That's something.

The opposite of metal. Melting, pooling. He's braced on his elbows but it feels like the only solid point in his whole body. Dad has a clean roll of Ace and he settles down, wraps Dean up tight, where it hurts but in that good way, where it'll have to heal. One of the few things that do. "How's that," Dad says, when he's stuck a butterfly in place, and Dean says, lightheaded, "Like buttah," and Dad smiles at him, for real, looking him right in the eye.

"Dad," Dean says, a third try, and Dad shakes his head. Dean bites his lip.

"Didn't go so hot, huh," Dad says, instead. Understatement of the century. He's not smiling anymore but he's not frowning, either. The puddle that is Dean remains soft. "We can talk about it when your brains aren't leaking out your ears. You have that whole bottle?" No answer to that, either. Especially since Dad's hand strokes back up the wrecked line of his tendon, soft. Firmer on the calf, and then blunt fingers up in the hollow of his knee, under his jeans, tucking there. "You awake, Dean?"

Too soft to speak. He nods, loose still and stupid still but knowing why he's nodding. That's enough. Dad's hand turns, slides up that last inch and cups the bare back of Dean's thigh, squeezes. Then—up—sitting by Dean on the boxspring, big hand sliding over and covering his crotch. Hot. Dean spreads his legs. His bandaged heel bumps his discarded boot. He stays up on his elbows and Dad sinks down next to him, leaning half over, his breath on Dean's shoulder—unbuckling, unbuttoning, unzipping with easy one-handed practice—and then in past the fly, sliding over the top of Dean's boxers, hotter through the thin cotton. Dean blinks. Dad's hand's so tan, the hair on his wrist black, blacker in the lantern light. Strange against Dean's white belly when Dad rucks his shirt up out of the way so they can see. When it's been years and that should be the most normal thing, but—usually it's not bright like this, and Dean's not woozy like this, and Dad's not just getting on with it, like this, but—

Dean's getting there. Dad rubs him, pushes his boxers down and out of the way, fists his dick. Rough thumb under the head, too rough, and Dean's hips lift, squirm, but that hurts his ankle—he makes a sound—and Dad shushes him, squeezes, his mouth going down to Dean's shoulder through his jacket. Sweat erupts at the back of his neck, his pits. That squeezing massaging rub—just the way Dad handles it—it's swelling in Dean's balls, his throat. Dad's breath heavy, puffing against his collarbone. Dad lets go—no—but just to put his fingers in Dean's open mouth, and Dean sucks on instinct, licking, and then it's wet, rubbing, playing with the head and going down to handle his nuts and jerking finally, working, and Dean tips his head back on his shoulders and dissolves, flows away.

His elbows go out from under him. He lays flat, legs hanging off the end of the bed, body a strange static-blur of over-warm relief, pain off at the end of some long unworrying road. The bedspring's shaking and Dean turns his head and Dad's beside him, laying back just like him, eyes closed and brow tight. Getting off. His cheeks turning red under the cover of the beard. His shoulder, working. Dean watches like it's a sunrise. Normally Dad's on top of him, inside him, behind his back, overhead with his hands gripped around Dean's ears. This side view feels new.

His ear, his jaw. Sweat at his temple. His lips part and there's a shadow inside that Dean wants to taste but he still wants to see. Compromise: he turns and slides his hand down and holds Dad's balls—huge, hotter and hairier, loose often when Dean sees them but cupping up tighter now, drawing in—and Dad's eyes scrunch closed and his free hand goes over Dean's side, grabs his ass, drags him in so Dean has to hitch his hurt leg over Dad's legs and curl in close—on top, practically—and there's a grunt, and wet, but mostly there's Dad's eyes opening wide, startled. His thick eyelashes. Dean puts his head down on Dad's shoulder and feels the heaving shock of his breath. Dad's hand finds his and drags them both up to lay on Dad's belly, and Dean watches that instead. How it goes up and down, in this steady wave. Dad's heart beating, under his ear. Dad's blood, and that means it's Dean's blood, too, coursing back and forth, regular as tides.

He wakes up in the dark. His ankle throbs, his burnt fingers sting. He swallows, dry-mouthed, aching, and finds out that he's the right way around on the box-spring, something thrown over his chest like a blanket. He curls his hands into it. Canvas, smoke.

He licks his lips but doesn't get the chance to talk. "Right here," Dad says, from somewhere—to the left, on the far side of the room, across from the door. "It can wait 'til morning."

Dean shifts, tugs the jacket further up over his shoulders. Dad, in the dark. He puts his nose into the collar of the jacket and whatever he might want seems impossible, here, now. Not even enough moonlight to show the edges of things.

"Sleep it off, soldier," Dad says.