So, ready for things to start going downhill? Yes? Well in that case you are mean, mean people. Sorry teen Dean, the readers made me do it…
xXBalorBabeXx, Oh no, colds are the worst and they always come out of nowhere too! I hope you feel better and I hope this chapter helps too. What's the saying? Read wrestling fiction for a cold, starve a fever? Because if that's not it then it totally should be!
Mandy, I figure if Dean's not going back to school then the least he should have is a bankable future, plus some pay off for all his hard work. Thanks for your prayers, we're now halfway through mum's treatment so getting there slowly.
SkittlezLvr79, You can always read my mind with these stories! You know me too well (or have my computer bugged, should I be worried?!) Yep, good old Jerry and Mama Ambrose are never too far away and this chapter probably makes that pretty darn clear!
Wolfgirl2013, Thank you! It's no picnic getting these things written and edited and posted up, but the comments always make it worth it. Things switch up from this chapter on, but in a good/dramatic way I hope. Fingers crossed you like it!
Raze Olympus, Teen Dean is far too cute and precious to have to put up with his mother and Jerry's crap, you're totally right...unfortunately nobody hold either of them that though, so there's an outside chance they'll show up again...okay a big chance...alright, so it's totally happening!
Minnie1015, I know you like your drama, so from here on out, I think you'll like this even more (fingers crossed). Papa Reigns can be a hero too. I feel I don't give him enough love sometimes, so that last one was for him, let him be the big softie for once!
Skovko, Well, Dean and Roman were running the place anyway, so it was pretty much like they had owned it all along. Papa Reigns just needed to be old sweetheart and officially sign it over (the extra buildings were because he cares...but sssh, don't tell him I said that!)
Drama, drama, drama, drama...
Eleven.
It takes just three days for the crest he's been riding to come back down to earth with a thump and is made more unfair in that it knocks the wind out of him.
He doesn't see it coming.
Nobody does.
It's early in the week and Dean is still buzzing from being gifted the gym by Papa Reigns the week before, which he still has to totally pinch himself hourly to even very vaguely start to figure is real. He and Roman have already told the workforce, which they do in the morning when everyone is there and they respond like they've won a world record for something because every single person that works for them lights up.
Sasha is so damn emotional about it that she actually gives Dean a kiss on the lips and while he guesses it's fully accidental he doesn't complain and even laughs when it makes her blush. Three months earlier she had gone and got married to a guy they hadn't know she was dating at all and Dean had huffed and sulked just a little until the day he had caught her singing and realized that his crush was in love. From that point on it had been hard to be bitter, besides which he had then seen the choppy haired blonde, whose ripped jeans and general age compatibility had frankly made him forget he'd been in puppy love at all. Roman likes to kid him about all his hormones and how fickle they make their gender throughout their teens, but Dean knows different –
Choppy hair is his soulmate.
He just needs to meet her and make sure she feels the same.
In actual fact it is next on his hitlist and he figures if he fails to win her over then his business will help. After all he isn't just a teenage no-hoper still studying in lessons. He has a gym empire now. Or at least he co-owns one thriving gym venture with another two in the pipeline being primed to take off and all before his seventeenth birthday which has to impress her, right? For the most part though he's so pumped about the business and his broadening future that he forgets about his mom, up until he hears about the long police record possessed by her boyfriend,
"Jerry Burke, drug possession, extortion and fraud."
Roman delivers the verdict one evening when Dean is fixing them a stir-fry up and following a fairly lengthy phone call with their father who has clearly paid someone to do some detective work. It shocks him a little but only a little since Jerry has always seemed a pretty shitty guy although it leaves Dean with questions including a big one which he voices right away,
"What are we meant to do now?"
"Nothing, we just wait uce and see if they come round again."
"Okay, then what?"
His brother had clapped a hand across his back and then kneaded at his neckline in a soothing little motion that had worked like it always did,
"That would be your choice."
Which is kind of a pretty stressful thing to have to think on, or would be if his mother didn't once more take off and literally disappear right into the ether like she had done the last time things had been too tough. By the third day he is even resigned to the notion that maybe he isn't going to see her again or that possibly she'll be one of those infrequent parents who pops up every year and for the most part that's fine, since it won't impact much on his own life too dramatically or upset the world he's built with the Reigns and therefore it seems like it's maybe best for all of them.
Which is naturally the moment she then chooses to show up again.
It's early in the evening and just getting dusky and Dean and Roman are finishing off, they've started to open a little later than usual and so the staff on the late shift are getting themselves geared up and gathering in the hall for the loose pre-shift briefing that either of the co-owners likes to give out. Sometimes Dean takes them but since he and Truth are cleaning up after a hectic boxing class for the a group of under fives, Roman steps in with a smug little chuckle before grabbing him in a headlock,
"Take those trash bags out kid."
"Hey," Dean squirms, "You're meant to call me co-owner,"
Roman scrubs his hair,
"How 'bout boy instead?"
Dean scoops up an empty soft drinks can and makes to throw it and his older brother skitters laughing away, his brown eyes glowing with a sort of contentment that always makes life and the world just seem right.
Truth shakes his head,
"You two are like children."
Roman stops in the doorway,
"One of us still is."
He ducks the can, side-stepping off into the corridor as the empty sports drink bounces off the flanking wall and misses him by all of about two inches to which Dean huffs a sigh out and curses,
"Damn."
In response to the near miss and their more general antics, the gym staff veteran fights down a grin and blows out a breath that makes his hair braids waver and tangle together,
"You two yahoos own this place?"
Dean grins brightly, layering the smugness until it almost drips off him like rainwater,
"Yep."
Truth shunts a garbage bag into his ribcage and raises a brow,
"In that case boss, take out the trash."
If Dean was more of a skipping sort of person then he might even utilize it heading out back, since he feels so god damn pumped up and happy although fortunately he merely turns it into a jaunty little step. Even the dumpsters look pretty amazing since they're his dumpsters now – or well, half of them are his – which makes them the best damn dumpsters in the city so therefore not a drag.
Okay, maybe a bit.
He throws the trash in with a chirruped little whistle and bangs the lid down before brushing off his hands and is then in the process of heading back into the gym again when he hears heels behind him which make him stop.
Surely not?
Even before he spins round towards her, he already knows without a doubt it's his mom and it makes his fists curl up in weird anger because why does she always have to come and mess things up? Why can't he have just a moment to celebrate all of the things going right in his life without one of his less than stellar birth parents pitching up, throwing a damn fit and getting involved? He hasn't really said as much on any of the occasions he had fumbled through their meetings before but he is going to say it there and make it clear once and unflinchingly that he does not, in any way want a relationship with her.
"Look mom – ,"
The two words are essentially all he manages and are said as he spins himself around on his heels, whereupon they swiftly die away into a murmur as he takes in the gigantic blooming bruise across her face.
He gasps,
"What the hell did that fuckin' asshole do to you?"
Because it has to be Jerry – just fucking because.
His mother smiles weakly and then winces above a split lip that looks fresh and weepy and matches her gaze. Dean feels an anger bubble up from deep inside of him and it growls out as a sentence,
"Where is he mom?"
She shakes her head and the red hair bounces, a few strands getting stuck in the wetness around her eyes and further highlighting the fact that she's been crying not to mention fucking beaten –
He remembers how that feels.
"Doesn't matter kid,"
Her voice is a whisper and it breaks him a little because that's what he is. He is still just a kid and out of his element not to mention god damn traumatized when it comes to domestic beef. Swallowing a little at the knot in his gullet which has risen straight up from the pit of his gut, he holds up a hand like she might try to take off on him and decides to get the person that he knows will always help.
"Stay here okay? I'll go get Roman and he can – ,"
"No."
It isn't a shout but itis weirdly sudden and issued like she's angry at his having even suggested it at all.
Dean shakes his head,
"I didn't mean – ,"
"Please son," she interrupts quietly, "Just walk me home instead?"
Then she holds a hand out and it trembles so badly that he finds himself moving before he registers he is. Gently allowing her to wrap around his elbow like she's lacking the strength to even hold herself up. It's the closest they have been to one another in a decade and potentially stretches back to the night she popped him out. Sometimes when he and Mama Reigns are out shopping for the clothes she likes to get him, she'll do the same thing and Dean sort of melts at having her attached to him because it means she's not leaving –
But it's different with his birth mom.
She smells kind of stale and not like the perfume full of soft floral notes that Mama Reigns likes to wear and nor does she have his adoptive mother's cosiness. Instead she's frozen solid and nothing short of skin and bones. In truth, the whole thing is weirdly unsettling but there's a resonance too because he's doing right by her, which is pretty much all he wants from their acquaintance.
He's her son after all, so he will see her right.
Briefly he wonders about stopping inside quickly and letting Truth or somebody know what's going on, but almost as if she can tell what he's thinking, his mother tugs at him and murmurs brokenly,
"Take me home."
Dean falters briefly,
"Uh, where're you stayin'?"
"We rented an apartment couple blocks away."
"Only a couple?"
"Two or three maybe, won't take five minutes."
He pauses,
"Okay."
For the most part they walk together pretty slowly, both being ruffled by the warm summer air. Despite that though she still feels pretty icy which he thinks could be withdrawal or more hopefully mild shock. The silence is hard though and after only one street of it, the teenager simply can't take it anymore and clears his throat roughly in a vague attempt to fill it which comes out forced sounding,
"I never asked when you got back – uh – to the city I mean – like – this bit, a few weeks or what?"
"Um, I guess about six months."
The answer sort of dumbfounds him a little because he pretty much figured she'd come straight to seek him out, which fairly categorically is not what had happened and instead she had sat on it.
"Why didn't you – ," he stops, not too keen to sound like he's wounded because that would only make it seem like he cares and won't help his thing of trying to be courteous without getting close to her.
She licks her bloodied lips,
"I tried but – well – I didn't know you'd want to see me, I had to build my nerve up."
"Where were you before?"
"Mexico."
He grunts because that's always what he had guessed at and so relatively speaking it's not surprising to hear, besides which it explains why Titus couldn't find her when he'd tried to wing the precious emancipation sheets her way. Back then it had seemed like she wasn't on the planet and so often he had wondered if she wasn't maybe dead, although given the beaten addicted life she had grown into, maybe in a way, that might have been best? Dean shakes his head and fights it away again.
Nope, no good came of thinking like that.
"Down here, this way."
They turn into an alley which doesn't seem to have any apartment looking doors and something kind of prickles at Dean's neck a little,
"Uh, mom?"
His answer very quickly gets lost because halfway along a car turns the corner and squeezes tightly down the gap, headlights blinking and driving so fast that Dean worries it's not stopping and so braces himself.
It screeches to a halt.
In less than a second the driver has leapt out of it and come around the front in a purposeful stalk and Dean spots the gun even before he sees the person, who is vastly overweight with a beard.
Oh crap.
Before he even has time to react to it, Jerry has grabbed and hauled away his birth mom and spun her around with the gun to her temple which makes her sort of whimper as Dean's insides tense up.
"Get in the car kid."
He blinks in astonishment, his head wildly spinning in time to his heart, which is pounding up so hard and fast against his ribcage that it feels like it might be in danger of breaking out.
He falters,
"I – ,"
"Now."
To further his instruction Jerry holds the gun in closer to her head and Dean's hopeless mother begins shaking like a fault line, clearly on the verge of totally and utterly breaking down.
He swallows.
"A-alright, please don't hurt her."
The older man chuckles and then flings open a backdoor, throwing the keys at his beaten up girlfriend as he forces the kid in and then climbs in behind,
"You, drive, come on, let's get this shit moving."
Dean hits the backseat front first as he's shoved, then lets a cough out as Jerry sits on top of him and drives the wind clean out of his lungs. Tears prick Dean's eyes and he curses his stupidity and whispers Roman's name because he needs him to come. Only this time it doesn't seem like that's going to happen since his protective older brother doesn't even know he's gone. In fact no one does because he didn't fucking tell them.
He repeats it again anyway.
Roman, please come.
*Ducks and hides* Come on, you guys love this stuff...um...right?