everybody’s so sure dean’s going to be an alpha like his sire when he grows up, but then comes the god-awful early morning in june of ‘95 – three weeks after school gets out and five weeks after sam’s birthday – when john shakes sam awake with a t-shirt folded and tied tight over his nose and mouth, and tells him to go grab the cooler from the back of the car and fill it up with ice from the machine outside.
something reeks in their motel room. it burns sam’s nose, sharp, and almost sweet; not the syrupy smell of a coolant leak, or the burnt-marshmallow charred tang of a smoldering electrical fire, but more like he’s stuffed his cheeks full of cinnamon atomic-fireball candies and taken a hefty swig of sugary mexican coke. his throat aches from breathing it in, and he coughs a little, tugging the neck of his t-shirt – an old one of dean’s that’s too tight on him and baggy on sam that they’ve been passing back and forth all spring like a box of junior mints at the movies – up to cover his lower face. (the inside of the shirt is a thousand times better: sleepy sweat and their ancient powdered laundry detergent and the last swipe of dean’s old spice deodorant.)
the parking lot’s dead at this time of the morning – too late for the last-call bar crowd, but still too early for the meatpacking workers in the extended-stay units to be up to catch the 4:30 bus for the early shift – so sam’s alone all the way to the ice machine underneath the stairs. it’s packed in between two ancient vending machines, and sam crouches down to shimmy his arm into the drop chute. he pulls down two squirts and a canada dry, and stuffs them down at the bottom of the cooler, underneath all the ice.
the light on in their room is the only one lit on the entire ground floor. even the office (open 24 hours according to the blinking neon in the window) is dark, just the red glow of the exit sign visible inside. sam hadn’t noticed over the smell inside, but from the outside, he can tell that dad’s scentmarked not just the lintel and doorjamb, but all the way down along the threshold, too. their whole doorway stinks like a pissed-off alpha in his prime, an olfactory TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT sign; a clear warning to turn around and fuck right off. even sam, whose unpresented senses are dull in comparison to what they’ll be in four or five years’ time, wrinkles his nose and has to fight back a physical recoil at the smell.
(when he’s liquored up and missing mom, dad will sometimes rattle on and on about how much mom loved his pine forest scent. how she would always say that he smelled like fresh-cut christmas trees, or a long walk in the winter woods. sam, in his less charitable moments, thinks dad mostly smells like pine-sol floor cleaner.)
sam knocks at the door with his knuckles, tap-tap-ta-tap-tap, and dad pulls it open, glancing over sam’s head, left-right-left.
“fucking get inside,” he snaps, yanking sam through the doorway and grabbing the battered green cooler off the sidewalk behind him. sam lets himself be manhandled, because it’s that or stay standing outside like a fucking vacuum cleaner salesman – his knees have locked up and he feels lightheaded, vision tunneling as the scene inside the room burns itself onto the folds of his brain, polaroid snap-print crisp.
dean, up on his knees, t-shirt pulled half-off so it hangs loose around his neck and one arm, the other arm shoved between his legs, his chest and face flushed prickly pink, and a wet patch blooming on the back of his grey briefs, so dark it looks black.
(sam has a sudden, powerful urge to put his mouth there and suck.)
“dean, stop.” dad’s voice is strained from behind his ersatz mask. “stop presenting. ‘m not your alpha, bud; I’m your sire.”
dean turns his head to the side to stare at them both, face squished into the flattened pillows so that his neck is left open and inviting. his eyes are fever-bright and sparkle wetly. he lets his mouth fall open on the next wave of discomforted whining, lets his tongue peek out, pressing against the sharp new edges of his eyeteeth.
(people’ve always liked the look of dean’s mouth, since before sam can even really remember. dean’s had store clerks and teachers and landlords and peers offering to stick things between his lips since before he hit double digits, and sam can’t for the life of him understand why their father, their own goddamned father, would deny dean what he so clearly needs right now.)
he’s crying. sam can smell the salt from where he stands, hands balled into fists to keep himself to crossing the room in three long strides and hurling himself onto the bed to curl up next to dean.
(sam wants to shove his fingers in dean’s mouth, press on the red-hot inflamed tissue of his gums where his grownup teeth have come in. he wants to push the pads of his forefinger and thumb against the sharp points of dean’s pretty omega fangs until they bleed, then have dean suck the wounds clean for him.)
“alpha, please.” the way dean says the title makes gooseflesh crawl up sam’s spine, makes his scalp prickle. they never call dad formally like that – he’s just dad. “hurts – it hurts, daddy, please, fuck, I can’t.”
dad growls, low down gravel in his throat. frustration, anger. dean arches his back into a prettier angle, spreads his knees open on the slippery polyester coverlet. the scent that pours off him is desperate, cloyingly sweet. sweet ‘til it kills you, like antifreeze. it makes sam’s head swim a little, like when they do windsprints in november and his throat hurts so bad from the cold he can’t breathe.
“christ, he needs a suppressant,” dad mutters, mostly to himself. he rubs at his eyes with his knuckles. “I don’t even think there’s a dispensary anywhere near here. closest one’s probably in lincoln, and that’s two hours there and worse coming back through the construction on I-80.”
“you should go, dad,” sam hears himself say. “I can stay. if you go now, you probably won’t even hit the morning commuter traffic on the way back.”
he doesn’t say, I’ll shoot anything that comes through that door, dad. maybe even you.
andulkaphoto
izzy806
romaincrisis
