Hey again, my lovelies.. I cranked this chapter out for y'all during a very slow afternoon at work. Wasn't that nice of me? ;) I call it "Retaliation" for more than one reason. Enjoy!
Roman wasn't supposed to be off work for another hour, but he couldn't stick around for a minute longer. Dolph, seeming to understand the gravity of the situation just moments after discovering Dean's dilemma, offered to cover Roman's last hour for him. Roman swore he'd work any upcoming shift for Dolph to thank him, as long as it didn't interfere with his school schedule. Dolph just brandished an appreciative hand and said, "Go get your boy."
"Where the hell could he have gone?" Roman barked outside, heated and fretful. He'd done a wonderful job countering his anxiety over the past several weeks, and now a rampant panic attack was in full swing. He wrestled himself into his coat, at first pulling his left arm into the right sleeve. He wasn't concerned with the temperature. He felt feverish by his apprehension, anyway.
"I don't know," Seth said, wrenching the passenger door open as soon as Roman unlocked the car. "He won't answer his phone. I tried it a million times."
"Fuck," Roman said. The engine roared to life with a twist of his key. A dreadful thought cornered his desperate heart. "You don't think he..."
"What? Went back to the Wyatts?"
"You don't think so, right?"
Seth drummed a clenched fist on his knee. "No. There's no way. Hell no."
"You know him better than I do, so I just had to hear you say it."
"Dean's a nut. He's illogical and fanatical and never thinks things through before jumping into whatever it is. But he's not an idiot. He's a faithful, selfless human being. He's with us now, and he'd never go down that road again."
"So it would make sense, then, if he went back to the Wyatts to keep us out of harm's way."
"I don't see it happening."
Roman hoped with all his heart that was true. "Where the hell do we look?"
"We'll check your place first. Maybe I'm an idiot and he said he was going to your place to talk to you, not the coffeehouse."
"But you both knew I was at work."
"Maybe he figured you'd be off by now?" Seth didn't sound so convinced of that himself. Roman valued his attempted optimism.
"Okay. We'll check my place first. Then where?"
"Downtown. All his hangouts. The park, his corner, Zodiac...15C."
Roman recalled the last entry on Seth's list as the bar where Dean had first met Bray Wyatt. Please, God, don't let us find him there.
Dean was not at Roman's apartment. He had no access into the facility on his own, and he wasn't sitting out in the parking lot, lonely in the cold. It brought about a sense of relief and a fresh sense of urgency concurrently.
"Downtown we go," Roman said. He was grateful to be behind the wheel. He couldn't imagine Seth going a mile over the speed limit, even in their dismal position. Inside the car was spooky quiet. Outside, wind thrashed and tires squealed against wet asphalt.
"I swear if he went back to them..." Seth said, more to himself than Roman. "I can't even imagine what I'd do..."
"I thought you said he wouldn't," Roman said, using a gruff voice to mask his fear. Though it was apparent to Seth and to himself.
Seth shoved hair from his face, the mane somersaulting over his head. "There's no telling what he's going to do at any given point, at any given time. I have no idea. For all I know, he could have either gone crawling back to the Wyatts to protect us...gone on a walk just to cool down...he could have plotted some kind of revenge on them...maybe he skipped town just so he wouldn't have to deal with it all."
"That doesn't seem likely." Roman exited the highway and found himself on the brink of downtown at the next turn.
"No, it doesn't. He's spent his entire life running. He's not really one to settle down, until he met me. If there's anything I know about Dean for a fact, anything at all, it's he never walks away from people he really, truly loves."
"And how many people like that exist in the world?" Roman screeched the car to a stop as a car turned left in front of him on an unprotected green light. The other driver had the nerve to honk at Roman for nearly hitting him. Roman kept his hands on the wheel, resisting the urge to flip him off.
"Not many. Like I said. He doesn't open up much, for anyone."
"Except...us?"
"Guess we're just special."
Roman made a right, searching desperately for any available parking spots. He didn't care if he had to pay or not. "We'll find him, Seth. He's going to be alright."
"He has to be. Or else..." Seth stared out the window, his breath casting a thin cloud over the cold glass. He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence.
Roman parked the car, and he and Seth sprung into the bitter evening.
There was a man playing guitar near Dean's usual area at Acacia Park, but Roman knew from a distance it wasn't his musician. He was much too big in stature, too whiny in voice. He made a side note, a completely irrelevant note, that Dean was the most talented musician to ever play in this area, and he deserved better than even his coffee shop on Thursday evenings.
They couldn't find him on any other corners.
The staff at Zodiac hadn't seen him.
15C had just opened. The place was vacant, awaiting their Saturday night crowd.
Roman was trembling for reasons other than the weather. His arms felt heavy. His heart was sheathed in a dark cloud that threatened to morph into a twister. Dammit, Dean, where are you, where are you...
"Where else?" Roman asked outside the smoky bar, feeling powerless.
"Let me think," Seth said, voice quaking. He pressed his hands over his mouth and closed his tired eyes.
Roman's phone buzzed in his coat pocket. He extracted the buzzing devide from its fabric receptacle and bit his lip, looking at the screen.
"Is it Dean?" Seth asked.
Roman shook his head. "Don't recognize the number." His chest constricted. His thoughts were choppy, daunting words instead of complete sentences. Bray Wyatt. Dean. Kidnapped. Ransom. Scared. So scared.
"Hello?" Roman answered.
"Hey, Ro."
He drew in a gasp, and his eyes fell closed once more. A tear squeezed from the corner of his left eye and glided down his cheek.
"Dean," he breathed. Oh, thank God.
"Where the hell is he?" Seth demanded.
"Where are you?"
"The library. Wanna come pick me up?"
Roman's brows knitted, forehead crinkled. He looked at Seth, bewildered.
"The library?"
Penrose Library was perhaps the most silenced, still place one could be downtown Colorado Springs on a Saturday night. Business was nearly at a standstill, even with a couple of hours left until closing. It was the last place Roman ever expected to find Dean Ambrose, but sure enough, as he'd told Seth over the phone - an ancient corded widget he'd used in the lobby - he was tucked away in a study room on the second floor, beyond shelves of historical and war books. He sat at the table with a couple of notebooks open in front of him, twirling a mechanical pencil around his thumb. He was wearing the same outfit from the night before: Roman's Batman shirt and his black sweatpants. He looked fine, his hair no more disheveled than it usually appeared, the clothes over him only as wrinkly as they had been from his night's sleep on the couch. No abrasions, no bruises, no signs he'd gotten into any recent physical altercations.
He was fine.
Roman nearly collapsed on the floor.
"Hey, guys," Dean said. Against all the panic Seth and Roman had just suffered for him, he was smiling.
"Are you hurt?" Seth asked, wandering around the round table to Dean's side.
"No. I'm alright."
Seth punched him in the shoulder, an deed that gained very little result. "Did you pick the library so I wouldn't be allowed to fucking yell at you?"
"Why would you yell at me?" Dean asked, truly shocked by Seth's irritation.
"We were worried sick about you, Dean," Roman said, presenting himself as much calmer than he really felt. He couldn't even feel much anger towards Dean; Roman was just delighted to find him alive.
"Where the hell have you been?" Seth demanded. He folded his arms over his chest like an angry parent. "We thought the Wyatts had gotten hold of you."
Dean snorted. He stared down at the writing in one of the notebooks, then scribbled something onto the blank page of the other. "They wish. But no. They didn't snatch me, and I didn't go crawling back to them. You guys didn't really think I would, did you?" There it was again, that genuine surprise on his face that he bestowed onto Seth, then Roman.
"Well..." Roman tried.
"We didn't know what the hell to think, Dean. You lied about where you were going, you didn't answer your phone-"
"Oh, yeah," he said, unceasingly writing in the notebook, "I need a new one, by the way. I destroyed my old one."
Seth was dumbfounded. "Why?"
"Same reason I didn't tell you where I was going. I had some business to take care of, and I didn't want to be followed. I didn't want either of you to get hurt."
An exasperated Seth dropped into the chair next to him. "Jesus, Dean."
Roman lowered himself in the chair across from Dean. "Just tell us what happened, Dean. You owe us that much, after all we went through."
"How scared we were," Seth included.
"I really didn't mean to scare you guys. I go off by myself all the time. Didn't think this time was so different."
"Things are different now, idiot," Seth said.
"I'll tell you everything," Dean declared. "If you really want to know."
Seth leaned over the table, arms still folded. "Go on."
Dean lowered the pencil to the table and folded his soft hands. "I was pissed earlier. Pissed at the Wyatts. They'd targeted my best friend, broken into my home, taunting me over and over, trying to get me to rejoin their band of sick hicks. They weren't going to stop. No matter what I did, until I made myself part of their family again, it wasn't going to stop. So I decided to pay a little visit to one of their own."
Seth groaned. "You did go back to them-"
Dean put up a hand, stopping Seth mid-sentence. "No. Not to them. To Bray Wyatt's sister."
"He has a sister?" Roman inquired.
"Yeah. Abigail. I got to know her a little bit when I was rolling with the Wyatts. She's pretty cool. She has nothing to do with her brother's gang, but she loves him through everything he does. Family first and all that." Dean scratched his nose. "I went by her work to see if she was there. She was. She was obviously shocked to see me. She was telling me how Bray wants my head on a platter and all that. I asked her for a favor. Told her I still had some stuff at mine at Bray's house. Needed to get in there and get it. Knew how much Bray wanted to skin me alive, so I couldn't exactly ask him. I buttered her up. Made her feel all pretty and special. Worked like a charm. She took me to his place. The one thing I never learned, rolling with these guys, was where Bray Wyatt lived. And she took me right to his doorstep." He chuckled, deviant, proud of this accomplishment."
"Jesus," Seth whispered.
"She told me to make it fast. I told her to watch the front door for him. She obeyed. Gave me enough time to get in there for what I wanted. I wanted him to know I'd been there without it being too obvious. Then I realized I didn't care how subtle it was: my message needed to be clear, like his. I used a pair of scissors I found in the kitchen to draw the anarchy symbol on his bedroom door. I cut open his pillows and threw the fluff everywhere. I stabbed his mirror until there was a huge puncture mark. Went through his closet, cut up some of his clothes. Abigail found me. She wondered what the hell I was up to. And I made her cut her hair."
It took Roman a moment to process that last bit. "You...what?"
"Yep. She had a beautiful, flowing black mane, and I told her to cut it off. And she did. She was scared of what I might do to her otherwise. I wasn't going to hurt her or anything. I'm not an asshole. But whatever she believed, it worked. She looks like Anne Hathaway now."
"W-why?" Seth asked. "Why make the girl cut her hair?"
"Another message to Bray Wyatt. To let him know I could have been really mean to his little sister. I could have hurt her, made her do all sorts of things. But I didn't. Just asked her to cut her hair. I didn't make her do anything too terrible, but it was clear who had power there. Who had control. She obeyed me. I laid the hair on his bed and told her to tell the truth if she asked what happened. 'Oh, that Dean Ambrose tricked me into letting him into your home, and he fucked a bunch of shit up.' Then, after finding Bray Wyatt's most precious possession, I left."
"What's Bray Wyatt's most precious possession?" Roman asked. He had a feeling the notebooks were involved in that equation.
Sure enough, Dean waved at the two spiral-bound pads. "His client list. All the people he comes into contact with over drug trades, car jackings, fellow gang members, rival gang members, the works. It's his diary, essentially. His entire operation, now under my control. And after I copy all the information over into my own notebook, I'm going to mail this back to him in pieces. Let him know I'm the one who reigns. I'm the one in charge of my actions, my life. He'll be helpless against my assault. I can unravel his entire kingdom, just with what I find in this book." He tapped the worn-down notebook with a dirty finger.
Seth looked to Roman, looking weary. Roman didn't know what to say. This was madness. This was difficult to believe.
This was very...Dean.
Dean closed the book. "Figured this was the safest place I could hide away from the Wyatts until I got a hold of you again. Those idiots don't know how to read, let alone fancy themselves in a place like this in their free time."
Seth shook his head. "Dean, sometimes it's the hardest thing in the world knowing you."
"I know. Yet you stick around. And I appreciate that, even though I've told you countless times that I'm a freak. I'm bad news. It's never too late for you to bail. That goes for you too, Roman." His blue eyes drowned Roman in a sea of unexpected bliss, the eye of the storm. "You have college. A job. A whole life ahead of you. Me, I'm not about that. And as much as it would hurt to lose you, I'd understand if one day you called it quits on me and walked. I'd get it."
Roman sighed. "I just want to get you home, okay?"
"Your home?"
"My home. Seth, you heading back to your parents' house?"
"Yeah, I guess so," Seth said. "But my car is still at the coffeehouse."
"I'll give you a lift."
"But I swear to God, Dean," Seth said, raising from the chair and pointing a finger Dean's way. "If you ever run off like that again and not tell me where you're going, I'll finish you off myself."
Dean stood up. "I love you, Seth. I love you more than anyone. Everything I do is to protect you. You're not going to suffer on my behalf anymore." He locked Seth in a hold that Seth couldn't stand up against. He hugged Dean back, tight.
He moved onto Roman next. "Don't ever hold your breath over me. Worrying is a waste of time. Whenever I get around to worrying about you, I lose my mind. I hate it. I want to do something about it, and more often than not, it's a really stupid something."
"Agreed."
"So try not to, okay?"
"I'm still going to."
"Just let me be the one to make all the stupid decisions, alright?"
"How about just don't make stupid decisions anymore?"
"Hey, there's an idea," Seth chimed.
"Once the Wyatts get off my ass, maybe I won't resort to such drastic measures all the time. But this had to be done. They have to know the truth: I'm above them, and they're not getting me back."
Dean lifted to his toes and pressed a kiss into Roman's lips. All forms of protest and insistence Roman had against Dean, the love of his life, melted away in the heat of the moment. Roman kissed him back, strong and sweet.
"Come on. Let's get out of here." Dean's fingers entwined with Roman's. "If I spend too much longer in here, people might mistake me for a nerd like you, Ro."