Warnings: This chapter references to underage rape and dub-con.
Note: The differentiation Dean draws between his experience of coercion and rape as separate things are not an expression of my views. Both are rape, but as a character, I think it possible that Dean would not view both experiences as rape. Sam, on the other hand, would, though he does not get to express that here fully.
———————
"Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
And nothing else matters
Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters"
(from Nothing Else Matters by Metallica)
———————
"I don't mean only being honest. The spell the witch cast, 'dicem veritatem tuam', we know is latin and veritatem comes from the root word veritas..." Sam started.
"Oh kill me now!" Dean interjected.
"...Actually originated from the Greek word 'aletheia' meaning 'not hidden' or 'not concealed'" Sam continued, only a slight narrowing of his brows betraying he had heard Dean's comment.
Sam looked down, and Dean knew he was not going to like what came next.
"What if rather than just speaking the truth, you reveal things you keep hidden? What if I asked you things. About the stuff you hide and you answered only with the truth?" The pleading in Sam's voice revealing his own desperation to try and overcome the curse. Night after night of listening to Dean's cries and he was as his wits' ends.
Just how desperate Dean was too, was clear as he did not scoff or outright reject the idea as Sam had expected.
Sam kept quiet, knowing that to get Dean to agree he could not push, never push.
——————
Dean took another bite of the pizza Sam had placed on the table between them stalling for time.
"I don't think this is going to work."
"Dean..." Sam started, but Dean cut him off with "this is stupid Sam!"
"I tell you some personal crap and you think it will make everything better!"
"What have you got to lose?" Sam replied, sounding reasonable in the way that got Dean mad faster than even the dreaded bitch-face could.
Everything, was Dean's first thought. He was being unfair, though, and he knew it. Sam and him had fought long and hard to achieve a more equal partnership, with the scars to prove it. He was not going to throw all that away over a stupid witch's curse.
"Fine," he grumbled and heard Sam's restrained exhale. "What do you wanna know now?"
Sam, with sorrow realised that Dean was ready to answer all the things he normally kept so well hidden and guarded. Only at the point of pain of death was he willing to acquiesce to Sam's want of knowledge. It was a final, bitter victory.
"Ok, first question," Sam started. Dean's shoulders visibly hunched, his hands gripping the arms of his chair for support against the oncoming onslaught.
"Did you ever cheat when you fought against dad?"
A wolfish smile crossed Dean's face and Sam knew the answer before Dean spoke it. "Always." Came the reply. "But then so did he! Who do you think I learnt all the tricks from?"
"Alright. Next question then. Who was the first person you had a crush on?"
"Milly McInnes" Dean replied "3rd grade". The unmistakable glint in Dean's eyes revealing that the crush had been mutual.
Sam smiled, the light so long gone from his brother's eyes, he could not help feeling good seeing its return, however briefly.
"Ok, who did you lose your virginity to?" Dean had always been uncharacteristically cagey about this, despite knowing each and every one of Sam's passionate attachments, sometimes in far too much detail in Sam's view. I mean, no-one likes their, aherm, physical prowess critiqued by an older, more experienced big brother, do they?
The half-smile disappeared from his brother's features and Dean glanced down at his hands as if needing to recall a distant memory. Sam did not remind him of the need for the truth, they were both only too aware.
A long silence before Dean answered "what kind?"
Sam was taken aback. A question meant as an ice breaker, a building up of trust, and he had already stumbled into uncharted, forbidden territory.
"All kinds, I suppose," Sam answered, not wanting to reveal he was not certain how many different kinds there were in Dean's view.
Dean rubbed his mouth, his most obvious tell and Sam knew he was not going to like the answers if Dean was this apprehensive already.
Of course Dean started with the easy answer. "Charleen Chiggs. 8th grade". Dean's eyes remained dull, though, as he continued. He placed both hands on the table top, far too casually, then continued, "Officer Wells. 8th grade." A pause. When he looked up his eyes were set in a challenge. 'Here lie skeletons - enter if you dare' projected to Sam loud and clear.
Sam could have swerved, gone back to safe territory and asked about Charleen. Instead he continued with "how did that happen?"
Dean suddenly got up and walked around the table. Annoyed that the challenge had been accepted, yet knowing it would. They had been sitting in the middle of the library and there was plenty of space for Dean to move around in. Yet, he still felt confined, caged.
God, how he hated this.
"I hate this," he said truthfully.
"I know." Sam replied calmly, still sitting down, gallingly immobile. Sam was also no longer smiling, both of them knew that what came next would be unpleasant for them both.
So Dean talked, of a time when Sam had been ill, a fever spiking, a dad unreachable. He had got caught stealing medicines. There had been no time to wait for the slow wheels of a social system not set up to deal with their situation. Short on time, and needing the medicine, Dean had brokered his release for that of the officer's - he spoke in crude terms of pain, hunger, lust.
Sam understood and that was enough. "And Charleen?" He prompted into the quiet. Dean continued along the easier path Sam had mapped out. He did not sit down again.
When evening came Dean undressed as always. Wrapped himself in the blanket which was shredded through in multiple places, the wolf's sharp claws ripping into the old fabric causing it to cover too little. Dean laid down on the floor to await the pain.
It took a while before he realised the pain was not coming. The curse had been lifted. But the relief was only momentary, he now knew.
——————-
"Did you ever hate Dad?" They were back to the QA from hell. Sam prodding long buried memories best left in peace.
"No."
"Did dad ever..."
"Give it a rest, Sam," he interrupted sullenly.
Sam had decided they should sit on the mezzanine floor in the bunker, in the faded leather armchairs they had only rarely used until now. He had lid three candles on the table and turned off all other lighting. Dean was grateful that he could not see Sam's expression clearly in the darkened hall, instead able to follow the dancing flames as they flickered and spat.
"I watched you die." He suddenly blurted.
"What happened after?" Sam asked. He had always been curious to know, possibly morbidly so. At least that's what Bobby had growled at him when he had asked him. He had not got an answer then and had not asked again.
Dean understood with sudden clarity: Sam did not understand and Dean had to make him, he realised. His truth.
"I watched you die, and for me the world ended." He said instead. "All was lost."
To Sam's horror, Dean started crying. He had never seen his brother so quickly and freely release his feelings. To just let go. It was horrifying to watch, to realise how much Dean had hurt then, for this one thought, just thinking about this one memory, to yield such sorrow. To be that important for someone else. The responsibility it implied. Sam watched his brother wrap his arms around himself, pushing himself further into the chair, to comfort himself or hold more emotions in, Sam wasn't sure. So, Sam went to him, dropped to his knees so they were of same height. Wrapped his older brother in a hug and let him pour his sorrow out. For all that Sam might want to know, it was not what happened next that had mattered to Dean.
The curse did not visit that night.
'Will it be enough you think?" Dean asked.
"I don't know", Sam answered though in his mind a traitorous voice whispered 'no'.
——————
Dean was sulking, not that Sam did not sympathise. Yet, though he felt awful for Dean's suffering, there was also another smaller feeling of childish glee that Dean was having to experience what Sam so frequently had, to have all his inner thoughts revealed. Dean had always known just what Sam had always felt. In fact, Sam had rarely been able to hide anything from Dean. The longest secret he had ever held had been the months he had carried his acceptance letter around from Stanford. A sudden thought occurred and Sam asked: "When did you know I was leaving? For Stanford I mean."
The blank facade Dean presented confirming his sudden suspicion. "A couple of weeks before you told dad," he answered after only a brief pause.
"Why didn't you talk to me about it?" Sam asked earnestly.
"Why didn't you?" Dean countered. The facade still in place.
For all that Dean was forced to reveal, it was only fair that Sam should face the truth on a few matters himself, he reasoned.
"I thought you would be mad, at me," he answered with his own candour.
"I was." Came the honest reply.
———————-
"How did you get the scar on your shoulder?" They both knew which scar Sam asked about, though it had been gone for years. A scar Dean had explained away with daring tales of hunts gone wrong, creatures lashing out, yet not the same tale told twice.
Dean folded his arms. Not in anger, but in an unconscious posture of defence. Damn Sam and his perceptive, elephantine brain.
He thought about lying. Was the pain really so bad as being worth preventing by opening this can of worms?
The pause told Sam that Dean was deliberating whether to tell him the truth. His brother's screams still vividly fresh, only a few nights old in his memory, and yet here Dean sat, debating whether the pain was better, more bearable, than telling Sam a simple truth of how he got a scar. If he didn't know from hard earned experience just how Dean would react if he expressed how angry this made Sam, he would start speaking his mind right about now. Instead, he reigned in his frustration, his anger and let the silence carry the question.
'"I got it from a belt buckle."
At first, Sam didn't get it. Then it dawned on him and through clenched teeth he asked "who?"
As much as he wanted to evade this whole conversation Dean was not one to back down once started. A single word reply would suffice, he knew. But the price, to shatter his brother's trust, a trust that had only recently healed. It felt a terribly high price for the sake of easing his own pain.
"Dad."
He doubted Sam would be able to forgive what came next.
———————-
"When was the last time dad 'punished' you this way?" The way Sam sneered the word 'punished' conveyed adequately that he thought it was anything but.
"The night you left." Dean begrudgingly answered. There would be no way back after this. Any thoughts of a happy reunion in the afterlife one day, destroyed for a few hours to live pain free. Dean was not sure he didn't feel worse for telling.
"Why didn't you fight back? It wasn't your fault I left!" Sam all but shouted the last sentence, his calm posterior finally starting to crack.
"Wasn't it?" Dean, this time the one remaining calm, replied. "I knew you were leaving and I did nothing to stop you".
Sam, reeling, his whole world tilting. His brother, always so infuriatingly loyal and devoted to their dad. Sam had always assumed that Dean had chosen that, had in the end chosen their dad rather than coming with Sam to California, from a position of love for their father and duty to their cause. Now, he saw Dean as a child impossibly lumbered with responsibility beyond what he could physically do, unable to earn money or provide, reliant on a negligent parent whose priority was to avenge the dead at the cost of the living. A child, dependant on a father who instead of providing, brutalised him. Who demanded a childhood to be sacrificed on the altar of Sammy's. Not a chosen loyalty, a necessary one. Or else.
Sammy thought back to the Introduction to Psychology class he had taken in college for extra credit. They had covered attachment in one class. He still vividly remembered the picture of a monkey clinging to its surrogate mother doll, the monkey upon having experienced distress clinging harder to the 'parent' who had caused it. Dependency, had been the term used. He had already then recognised the relationship, and from the discomfort of being confronted with unwanted understanding, dropped the module soon after.
In a moment, the love and respect Sam had so newly rebuilt for their father, crashed and burned. No. This was not forgivable.
——————-
"Did you tell anyone about being raped?" Sam jumped straight in - no preamble, no warning.
It took Dean a few seconds to determine what Sam was referring to.
"I was not raped, Sam" he answered irritated by the direction of their conversation. Why did they have to talk about this again?
"You were how old? 13? 14? A minor coerced by an adult, who as a police officer was in a position of ultimate power. That's rape, Dean."
"I was the one suggested the sex, I was not 'coerced'. The guy prepped me, ok! It was not rape, it was just sex. I know the fucking difference, Sam!"
Dean was tired, tired from lack of sleep in this eternal wait-and-see if the curse would raise its ugly head each night. Tired from being questioned on all matters private that he had no interest in exploring, that tore at his emotions. He felt wrung out, or he would have noticed the slip-up earlier, known to expect what came next. Instead, there was a moments silence, and just when Dean thought Sam might leave it, another dreaded question appeared.
"How do you know the difference between rape and just sex?" Sam asked coolly, the voice constrained from withheld anger.
How had this become their life, Dean wondered.
"This is such bullshit, Sam. We should be out hunting things, saving people. Not sitting with our thumbs up our arses debating what counts as rape and what doesn't!"
"Then stop stalling Dean. How - do - you - know!" The last part enunciated between clenched teeth.
For the millionth time Dean debated whether to suffer the physical pain instead of answering. But Sam was like a dog with a bone, he knew all too well. He'd never let it rest, but instead repeat the question day after day. Eventually, Dean would answer and all that stood between now and then were nights of pain and more pain. Better to tell now then though part of him wanted to go hide in his little room and await the change.
He needed a drink for this. He got up and pulled out the whiskey he had hidden behind the books on mermaid lore (they never needed to read those). He chose to forego glasses and instead took a long pull of the whiskey straight from the bottle. Wiped his mouth a couple of times before sitting back down, feeling Sam's eyes upon him the entire time.
"Turn around." He finally said.
"What?" Sam's eyebrows drew together in confusion, though anger still lingered in his eyes.
"I can't tell you this if you're looking at me. Turn around." Dean didn't meet his eyes but Sam caught the plea in them all the same. He turned his chair so he sat with his back to Dean. Dean took another swig of the bottle. Then he told Sam what he knew of rape. His knowledge was surprisingly comprehensive. The bottle was empty by the time he had finished.
Sam carried him to his bed, gently placed him on top of his covers.
"Isshit bedtjime, Sammyee" he slurred. Someone was crying. Was someone crying? Where had that thought come from, he wondered? He listened but could not hear any crying. Someone stroked his hair though, but his eyes had closed and he wasn't sure who it was. Must be Sammy, he thought. He led the thought go, enjoying the gentle comfort as he drifted off to sleep.
Sam couldn't sleep. His emotions were all over the place. He felt riled up and exhausted at the same time. The anger that had started rising earlier had never subdued, instead rising to supernova heights. But now it was paired with bone-deep pain and sorrow.
He felt ready to burn the world to the ground, to avenge what had been done to his brother. So much hurt and pain, and he had never even known.
He needed, no wanted, to hurt someone, kill those who had hurt Dean. But he couldn't leave his brother like this, drunk as a skunk and emotionally raw. So, Sam stayed and watched over Dean as he slept, the slow rise and fall of his chest, inch by inch calming Sam down until the early hours when he felt satisfied Dean would be alright. Sam lay down next to Dean, too tired, feeling too alone, to want to sleep in his own room. He'd wake up before Dean and leave, he thought as he fell asleep also.