Dean Bendis had had a rough week on top of a rough past, and was dealt the worst hand in life. Everything was wrong and in so many ways. Sometimes he'd even think that before Carter found him he was probably was better off, because there wasn't anyone to disappoint. He'd been okay with being a loser, he'd been okay with being alone, simply because the loneliness was unconditional.

He hated it when he disappointed Carter, those blue angry eyes looking into his emotionless ones. He hated it worst when Carter made him stay in the most dangerous of situations and the most dangerous places, among the most dangerous of people. It made him feel like Carter didn't care if he got killed. All Carter wanted was for the job to be done. Nothing more and nothing less.

His job. Dean's job, the job that haunted him almost every waking second of his life.

That was why he drank: to forget the job. Drank until his mind couldn't even function enough to turn a doorknob, but sometimes that didn't work. He'd even hang out with Jamie, not just to sleep with her but to talk, because she got him in ways that most people didn't.

Jamie got him, got why he did what he did. She didn't care about who he shot at that day because she'd shot at the same person. That was what made the sex so much better. But Dean knew he couldn't have a real relationship with Jamie. Jamie was unstable and she couldn't handle the smallest things. Not that Jamie was the main cause of why they couldn't have relationship; no, it was because Dean couldn't love anyone. Well, it wasn't so much that he couldn't but because he didn't want to. Because he didn't want to disappoint anyone.

That was why he was 'okay' when he went to Jamie's house and she was back with her boyfriend. It didn't bother him because they had nothing more then sex. Just sex, nothing else. It might have not seemed that way when he saw the man and knew he was back in her bed, but Dean told himself it was a weak moment.

Somehow he felt that he'd disappointed himself because he'd seen it coming and he wished he could have prepared himself better for it. He should've seen it coming, anyway, and he should have accepted that and not let himself be bothered by Scott at Jaimie's.

Dean told himself it was just another weak moment.

It seemed to him like he'd having too many of them lately, and the worst part was that it wasn't because of Jamie. It had nothing to do with Jaimie. It was Carter, always Carter. It was Carter, after all, that made him feel like an idiot for not changing his clothes when he went home and then calling him out about it the next day.

It was Carter that made him shift his weight impatiently from foot to foot because he asked Dean, had he eaten anything that day, or the day before?

And not even Dean could deny him when he came over with bag of groceries, told him to "stop spending his money on beer and buy some food." Because Carter was a cop. Carter took all those moments of weakness and stockpiled them in his head, and later, when Dean denied them, Carter pulled them out and neatly displayed them just like a regular cop displayed his evidence.

But those were weak moments. Dean tried to pretend the games he played with Carter were not weak moments, but they were. Dean knew they were, and he was pretty sure Carter knew, too.

He hated Carter for doing that to him. He hated playing cat-and-mouse games. Especially when Carter was always the cat