The solid weight of the chrome-colored metal polished almost-reflective shiny is comforting, an anchor in Dean's lap. It gives him something to clench, to keep his nails from digging into the soft skin of his own flesh. It's all he wants to do, tear himself apart piece by piece and let the fragments scatter in the wind, carried away. Indefinitely dissolved.
The silver of the gun is a jolt against the bleak background of his pants, a black dress style he's only rarely needed to wear. Today he did. He needed the pants, and shoes he doesn't like to wear because he has to polish them afterward to keep them from scuffing, and a white shirt, (the shade brilliant, too clear and pale, asking to be stained). His clothes are not the clothes of life. They aren't the wrinkled, day-old t-shirts and jeans of the day in and day out.. He is shrouded in the material of death, punctuated by somber colors and 'for occasion' stiffness. Crow black and too-white, dead and alive.
He is alive.
His brother is dead.
Dean has a heart in his chest that beat beat beats, the steady slow of a man in thoughts deeper than quicksand, the here-there-nothing of a single memory, a too-pale face, broad jaw and forehead, dark hair splayed against a pointless pillow, eyelashes closed over unseeing eyes. The scent of caked-on makeup is heavy in his nose, thick on his tongue and he swallows the oily remnants down, trying to swish them away but they stay, the last pieces he has of Sam whose cheek had been so cold beneath Dean's lips, so still and rigid and lifeless. The last of his family has dwindled, been reduced to dust carried away with the softest of breaths, leaving him alone, heart heavy with the sudden nothing it holds, like hands reaching out into empty air. Fresh tears, saline he wouldn't let fall during the service leak out hot and fast, disappearing into the material of his pants, blending into the black as if they didn't exist at all, though the wetness under his chin mockingly contradict that idea.
"He didn't suffer, at least," one of Sam's friends had murmured, soft words falling from soft lips, a nice sentiment that meant fuckall to Dean. No, Sam did not suffer during his quick, lightning fast aneurysm. Apparently, all his brother had done was look vaguely surprised as he fell to his knees, then onto his chest, lips forming an 'o' that was never brought to life because his breath had already stilled in his chest. So no, Sam did not suffer. He did not clench or writhe in pain and fear. But he was robbed of time, of life that was just getting good, having graduated law school only a few weeks prior.
"Now you get to pay off those loans," Dean had joked at the graduation, slipping an arm around his too-tall brother, the fabric of his suit (so similar to the one he wears now) slippery against Sam's robe. Not that he'd had any, really. Sam is—oh, fuck, was—the king of grants, of no-parents-just-an-older-brother sob-story essays that won him more than enough to get by.
He won't do it. He won't pull the slim piece of metal, won't launch an easy bullet waiting in its chamber, licked by flames just before parting the skin of his temple. He can't. Because even though Sam is gone and he is without, a spec in a busily spinning world, he isn't selfish. He will continue a life a little bit more pathetic, like a painting with all the colors bled out until it's his turn and he finds reprieve in the nothingness of finality.
He lets the weapon, innocuous, rest, bringing his hands up to the wheel where he lies his head, knowing he should go home, that being parked in the middle of nowhere next to an abandoned house he told ghost stories about as a child is immature. He's running away, trying to escape backward into time where he and Sam were alive together, before adult thoughts invaded their lives. But there will be messages on his machine and food from all-but strangers in his fridge, on his table. Food so he can keep on going, flowers so he can look at something pretty and not think about how his brother is rotting in a box somewhere, skin peeling, flaking, bones shriveling beneath the quiet exterior of cemetery ground.
His shudder is interrupted by a few quick taps on his window. There's someone out there, someone in the middle of nowhere with him. He glances up, chin jerking quickly, surprise flaring in him like a pool of gasoline catching alight.
"Fuck," he hisses, jumping in his seat, pressing back into the leather. It's the first and last thing he manages to say before he catches sight of two pinpricks of light, the shade a strange, hazy blue, just outside the glass of his window. They're the only things in the dark, like headlight shining down a road. And as he stares, they become all he can see, absorbing pools that beckon, that caress his tight back with long-fingered hands, calming him. Soothing him. Why shouldn't he give in?
Dean's pulled out of his hasty sleep by a cat's-tongue-rough voice. It's low, just by his ear and it starts him from a fog of restless dreams that jangle his nerve endings, leaving imprints of Sam behind his irises as his lashes part and his vision clears. It doesn't reveal much at first, just the off-white paint of a ceiling, though a chandelier, a delicate thing of silver and crystal, throws bent light back in patterns that absorb him before he realizes what, exactly, is wrong with the situation.
He should be looking up at the roof of the Impala, at the slight singe from when he used to smoke, the time Sam fucked with his lighter and the flame leapt up high, singing both the spikes of his gelled hair and the cloth of the car's roof. He'd been more pissed about the car than his destroyed coif.
"Are you a god-fearing man?" comes the voice again, the voice he didn't notice before because he's coming around so slowly, mind lethargic, tripping through a haze while trying to peer out at the world around it. A reflexive swallow almost chokes him; his throat is dry, achy and when he coughs he thinks he understands how it would feel to have his lungs go through a cheese shredder.
A shake of the head, a search for the voice. It's not close anymore, has backed off into a shadowy corner of a delicately lit room that allows its secrets, that keeps only what's absolutely necessary in the light.
"Where are you?" Any attempt at intimidation is gone with his candle-snuffed voice. There's but a whisper of it left, smoke rising into air and dispersing fast. He sounds weak, desperate. Unsure.
"Where are you?" He tries again, but it's worse this time, a whisper that barely clears his throat. The light of the chandelier blurs in front of him when he looks back up, long-lined headlights in the dark. Fuck. He's been drugged. He didn't even drink after the funeral, didn't do anything but slip from the grasp of well-wishers and doe-eyed women shooting him looks of pity mixed with desire, that spark left in those still alive to reaffirm the fact, the animal need burning within.
"Fuck," he mutters, now aware that the word is too thick, slurring over his tongue. "What..."
"I asked if you fear God," the voice comes again, soft. Removed. It could be talking to an inanimate object for as much emotion is laid into the gravel of his pitch, the deep timbre giving away nothing.
The first breath of adrenaline in Dean's blood comes then, a mix of that strange tone and the odd struggle to move his limbs that comes to a halt when he realizes what, exactly, is giving him trouble. It's a raw ring around his wrist, a pull that keeps him spread, softest parts of him open, vulnerable. He is an X on the bed—yes, the bed underneath him, each limb tied and secured. The mattress under his tensing back is too comfortable, a strange contradiction to his rag-doll spread pose. What the fuck is happening?
"No," he finds himself saying, the first thing that makes sense, the first answer. The truth. He doesn't fear a god he doesn't believe in and that's all there is, a lack of fear, though a kernel of hypocrisy is buried there instead. Because he's angry, so angry with that same god he equates with the Easter Bunny or Santa Clause, figments of weak imaginations that need a reason to keep going.
"Didn't think so," there's a shuffling, the softest of footsteps as his captor comes closer. "Otherwise you wouldn't have been sitting on my property, about to blow your brains in."
There's breath on Dean's cheek now, and that voice, that contradictory gruff smooth voice is reaching for him, mocking sarcasm dripping from lips he can't see.
"Such a pretty color it would be against the black of that car. But really, you would've fucked up the interior. And it's such a classic."
"Get away from me," Dean orders, shuddering at the sudden touch on his wrist, the slow trail a single finger makes toward his elbow.
"Why?" The finger stops, is lifted away from goosebumped skin pebbled with fear. "I saved your life, you know."
"What, so you could take it yourself?"
And there it is, out in the air. And he's provoking a fucking psychopath, but the fire that had been splashed cold in his heart burns now, embers awakening with rage. He wasn't going to fucking kill himself, wasn't going to let Sam down. But that gun, that gun had been power, the ability to take his own life, to take control of it by putting it down, pushing it away. He just hadn't been able to let it go just yet, couldn't imagine not grasping its comforting weight. And now he's the hostage of some backwoods murderer or rapist and that control is gone again, tossed into hands unseen.
His breaths are sharp, pins and needles against his ribs but he doesn't notice it, or so much less so than he normally would because there's a new pain there, the solid burden of a body on top of his own, pressing him down into the mattress. He blinks, once, twice and the shape of a man before him clears, revealing sharp features more akin to a model than a murderer. But hey, Ted Bundy was a looker. The man, though sneering, can't twist his face into ugliness. His nose is sharp-angled, cheeks high, reaching up for eyes that rival the early morning sky for intensity, a blue that hurts to look into for more than a second, though that might be the intensity of the stare.
"What would I be robbing the world of?" There's still no anger in the man's voice. It's like hearing the black depths contained in a shark's eyes, a robotic, mechanical thing that's worse than any crime of passion. "Another lost soul burden on society?"
The last words change, contain the sting of glistening poison ready to be flushed into veins. They're a shock, the snap of a rubber band against skin and Dean's bucking before he understands how, with strength out of nowhere, the last firing of exhausted synapses. His hips twist and turn frantically, trying to dislodge the man, the rope biting into his willful limbs, the tortuous slide of trying to free his wrists and ankles from their restraints.
There's only a chuckle from above, a sudden shift in weight so the man is flush with him, arms and legs touching all at once, the pose of a lover, the person one chooses to let close. But Dean hasn't chosen a thing.
"Shh, human," the words tickle his ear, skittering around the shell before sinking in and stopping his movement completely because the command is so strange.
"Human?" He huffs, looking into a face that's too close, that's turning into shapes and angles instead of a person, details of a painting instead of the whole picture. What draws his gaze down is the in and out shaping of moving lips, the pushing out of sounds and vowels, all of which fall on deaf ears because what's behind that too-red mouth is more important, an evolutionary trap that knows he is now prey, one to be hunted, struck down as easily as he would crush a mosquito between his own calloused fingertips. There, pressing lightly into his captor's bottom lip are the tips of the unreal, teeth too long to be human, too sharp to be anything but deadly.
"No fucking way." He's staring into a hallucination, that's all. Eyes wide, heart-racing, he's having a mental breakdown. And while that's less than comforting, it's better than the idea that his death is inches away, that he's a wolf's smile away from bleeding out onto sheets ready and waiting to suck his scarlet life down.
"Way," the stranger breathes before angling the diamond cut of his jaw, stretching it to accommodate those teeth, those fangs, before driving them through skin and muscle and veins, all waiting to be torn apart.
Just before the euphoria hits, a balloon taking him up, up, all Dean can feel is the soul-splitting glide of daggers, the stop of breath and heart, the focus of his world narrowed to two tiny apertures and the spill of his life down the stranger's throat.