Destiny Interrupted

Supernatural. John/Dean, prior John/Sam. NC-17. ~3100 words. Follow-up to Blue Soaring’s No More Room in Hell, Boys.

Dean’s been Sam’s protector since the demon took Mary, and what greater betrayal than what John let his youngest do?

Where the Devil Sleeps

Their base of operations is a week-to-week furnished with thrift store castoffs and mismatched carpet. Tacked-up sheets cover the windows, the late afternoon sun glowing amber through a pattern of stripes and faded roses. One wall is riddled with pinholes and bristling with maps and newspaper clippings. Half of the hunts are history—souls laid to rest, dark beasts put down—with all the important lore noted in John’s journal. The remainder are the framework of open cases, sketchy bits and pieces of hearsay and potential strangeness, skeletons in a hundred mile radius that might flesh out to something worth his time or be passed on when it’s time to move to the next town.

Sam isn’t going to want to pack up again. The boy never does, gets sullen and tight-mouthed whenever they’re hauling their bags out to the car in the pre-dawn chill. John closes his eyes, stomach pitching like a sinking ship. Sam’s mouth isn’t something he wants to think about, not after the Phelps’s back acre woods. The hurt in his shoulder lingers, a deep-muscle ache that seizes up when he wakes in the morning or takes more than a breather during the day.

“Shoulder still bothering you?” Dean asks from the doorway. He’s a shadow in a thin black tee and dark jeans, the bruises that had kept him out of the harpy nest faded to nothing. The limp is only a slight hitch in his step as he enters the gloom of the living room.

“A bit.” John flexes his elbow and sets down his pen. Closing the journal on a page filled with cribbed notes, he leans back and turns to regard his son. The cheap wooden chair creaks under his weight. “Your brother at the library?”

“Until closing. Promised I’d pick him up.”

John lowers his head in a nod. A faint flush of shame warms his collar. He doesn’t blame the kid for avoiding him more than usual. There’s no undoing what happened, and nothing to say to make the moment fade faster. He’s managing with the memory of it; Sam would have to do the same.

Edged into the room to haunt the space near the television stand, Dean’s gaze skims the pages upon pages tacked to the wall. He’s got tension writing a line between his brows. John keeps an eye on him since it’s not like Dean to hover, and catches him rereading the same old article for a third time.

“You got something you want to say to me, Dean?”

Dean straightens up, stops avoiding eye contact to acknowledge John, but drops his gaze to the floor quick enough. He gnaws briefly on his lip before he swallows and wets them with a hasty lick. “Sir.”

John swivels to sit sideways in the chair, ready to face the accusation head on. Dean’s been Sam’s protector since the demon took Mary, and what greater betrayal than what John let his youngest do? Wanted, at that base physical level that knew the pleasure of a mouth was twenty times better than what he got by on. When Dean’s fist closes white-knuckled, John stands. He slides his hands into the pockets of his jeans–he’ll take the blow, but he won’t take it sitting down.

“Should’ve been me,” Dean says in a growling rush, a strike to the gut that sends John back a step. “Me, not him.”

“Son-”

“No, Dad. If I hadn’t been too slow on the last hunt, Sam wouldn’t have even needed to be there.” Dean looks up, his eyes shining. His brows pull tight, deepening the furrow in his forehead, and he closes the space between them in three heavy steps to grab the open collar of John’s shirt. Dean’s long since done with his growth spurts, but his muscles are still filling out, and standing eye-to-eye with his son, John can see the echoes of the man he’ll grow into. “He’s just a kid…”

“I know,” John says, words forced out past stinging bile in his throat. “What’s done is done. It’s not up for debate or hindsight.”

“A kid. A stupid, fucking kid.” Dean’s voice breaks midway through, his hands twisting deeper into John’s shirt. Button-threading snaps and John’s willing to forgive a lot considering the circumstances, but there’s a level of discipline necessary to keep them all safe and Dean, always the dutiful one, is toeing the line.

“Dean, I know. Now that’s enough.”

“He didn’t want to tell me,” Dean says, eyes flickering between John’s like there’s an answer to be found there. A heartbeat later, his cheek brushes up along John’s jaw, his breath a whisper, the skid of his mouth just as faint. “Dad, I’m sorry.”

There’s a dull buzzing in John’s skull, a pressure behind his eyes from the sudden rush of blood. “Dean, what are y-” The words smear to nothing under the push of soft lips and wet tongue. John’s mouth twitches, almost kissing back by ages-old muscle reflex, and if he’s avoided the trap of returning his own son’s kiss, the boy’s not deterred enough. Dean makes this low, anguished sound, and it’s too much like the noise Sam had made when–

John rips his hand out of his pocket to take hold of Dean’s shoulder and force him to arm’s length. He grits his teeth through the pain rocketing from his collarbone to his elbow and doesn’t know what to make of Dean’s expression—eyes unfocused, mouth parted, wetness on his curving lashes. “Son,” he says, trying to remind Dean of everything that word means. “You need to get your head straight.”

He can’t remember the last time he saw tears on Dean’s face, but there they were, sliding damning down his face. He’d do the same, Dad.

Hunting has taken a lot from John, ground him down to little more than sharp edges, and he knows his boys have their share of burdens to bear, but this? Dean would’ve. Dad, he would’ve. It sets John’s stomach to turning all over again to think Sam’s upholding his brother’s willingness to do what was necessary could’ve been a shade of something John’d been blind to. He knew Dean’s loyalty ran deep, how much he valued the bond of blood. Had it grown so twisted after a thousand windy back-road miles and faceless motel rooms?

Frozen before him, Dean is shaking, a slight but relentless tremor that eats away at the ground under John’s boots. “Dean,” he says, and ignoring his own unease, John folds the boy into a hug. The warmth of Dean’s body against his front is foreign, the way Dean holds animal-still before relaxing forces him to try and recall the last time he’d held one of his sons so close.

“Just shy of eighteen and he’s the stupidest kid I’ve ever known,” Dean says, voice thick and muffled where his mouth presses against John’s shoulder. He takes a breath like he’s got more to say, but releases it, the heat seeping through a layer of wool and a layer of cotton to the crescent of angry flesh left by a harpy’s beak. John suppresses the shiver trying to seize his spine, prepared but not enough for the slow lift of Dean’s head and the questioning flicker that asks for permission he can’t give.

It’s bad enough that he doesn’t say anything when Dean’s eyes slide shut and worse, so much goddamn worse, when it’s his judgment that leaves hardly more than a sliver of space between them. John breathes Dean’s breath for a long span of seconds, and it’s no comfort to have been forced to realise that Dean is as much a stranger as Dean is his son.

He breathes in Dean’s shaky, “Dad,” and there’s an adrenaline dump of lust and fear pounding through his veins when the growing thickness of his son’s cock presses against his leg.

Now it’s Dean who doesn’t kiss back, not at first, when their lips stick and catch and John is still reeling over what he’s committing them to. But once Dean starts up again, he makes up for lost time, biting hungrily at John’s mouth as his hands skid to settle at John’s sides, fingers clutching tight. Dean’s breath goes quick and shallow, soft panting that forces him to break away to drag in a solid lungful.

Fallen this far, head-pounding and body responding to Dean’s enthusiasm, John takes Dean’s mouth again. His tongue pushes deep, quickly learns the taste of his son’s mouth. The sound Dean makes when he starts to lick back has John reaching down to palm Dean’s crotch, the natural progression on the hell-bound course he’s set. His thumb finds the hard ridge outlined under soft denim and Dean jerks, moans a curse into his mouth.

“Language,” John warns, pulling back and scraping his lips dry with his teeth.

Dean’s lips stay slack, the moan spilling past them obscene in the hush of the room. The ticking of the wall-clock follows the lazy rhythm of John’s thumb, and Dean’s hands flex hard, his hips twitching like he’s trying to keep from just fucking his daddy’s hand.

“Not fair,” Dean rasps, his grip loosening, fingers gathering fabric to slide under and touch hesitantly at John’s skin. “It’s not fair that I don’t-” He swallows hard and starts to undo John’s belt. “I want to know what you taste like too.”

That’s some fucked-up sibling rivalry and John swears a streak, almost yanks Dean’s hands away from the buckle. He doesn’t though, and loses another curse when Dean is peeling up his undershirt and crouching down to kiss a slow path towards the button of his jeans. With the way Dean’s acting, he half expects him to use his teeth to peel down the zipper, but whatever has Dean playing at this, there’s still a raw nervousness in the fumbling of his fingers, the shaky rush of his breath. Not a virgin by far, something John can’t say about Sam, but Dean’s swagger and appetite for girls has always seen him home before dawn.

“Here,” John says, and nudges Dean’s hands away to open his fly himself. A sickening thrill dizzies him, overwhelms the knowledge that nothing about this is right or good. Dean either feels the same or he’s doing a fair job of hiding the desire to stop, his cheek rubbing against the inside of John’s thigh with more eagerness than hesitation.

The muscles of John’s arm jerk as he stretches his palm out to rest it on the curve of Dean’s head. His shoulder pulses with an ache, but even with the reminder it’s too late to turn back now. His other hand already has his cock free. He feeds it straight into Dean’s waiting mouth, and Dean, obedient as always, swallows what he can, lips going taut, his eyes snapping up to meet John’s.

“That’s good,” John tells him because it seems like the right thing to say. “Really good.” Dean responds by pulling back, mouth softening, giving John a good show of where the head of his cock rests wet and darkly flushed on the flat of Dean’s tongue.

There are questions simmering in the back of his mind, things he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to know the answers to. How much about his own son does he not know? Unconsciously, his hand fists in Dean’s hair, the length just long enough to get a solid hold on, and Dean’s eyes widen a fraction. How much should he know?

Not this much, that’s the goddamned truth. John stares Dean down, asks, “More?” and the gritty moan humming down the length of his cock makes him tighten his grip in Dean’s short hair. “You want a better taste?”

Dean tries to swallow, tries to speak, tries to nod, and can’t hardly do any of it as John holds him in place and fucks back into his mouth. He moans again though, guards his teeth and starts tearing his own pants open, fist finding his cock and flying along the length of it. It’s a dozen sweet thrusts into Dean’s mouth accompanied by the smack of flesh before John has to pull back and stop, because no matter how fucking good it feels, it’s close enough to the mess the week before only lacking the spattering of the rain.

It doesn’t factor in to John that Dean’s not Sam, and it’s not just the less sloppy technique, but rather that he won’t quit, even when there isn’t a life hanging in the balance.

“Son,” John says, and has to force Dean back with a hand over his face, fingers digging into his cheeks like a muzzle.

Dean just makes another hungry sound, twists to suck John’s fingers, tongue forcing between digits in a lewd push. He’s still beating off, arm moving slower but in a definite rhythm, and a glance reveals the shining mess of precome slicked over the head of his dick.

“Dean.”

“Let me,” Dean says, and then he’s settling on his heels, fucking his fist and practically begging. “Fuck, just let me.”

John’s hand slides out of Dean’s hair. He’s treading on dangerous ground and he’s about to break more than his own moral rules trying to find his way. You get burned jumping into the unknown without a point of reference–he’s got the scars to prove it, but this is a mark that runs deeper, darker. This is a different sort of poison.

He nods towards the battered couch shoved up against the wall. The profile of the cushions is low to begin with, but with his weight bowing them down, his knees are jackknifed. His spreads his legs out, bootheels dragging along the dusty carpet, and Dean rises up to draw near. Dean’s cock spears out from the open vee of his fly and though John’s seen him stripped to the skin often enough, he’s never seen him hard.

“C’mere,” John says, and pulls Dean forward but not down. “Turn around.”

Dean falters, and John guides him to perch on the lip of the couch. Dean’s muscles are corded tight, but he’s docile in John’s hands as John strips him of his shirt, pulls it up and over his head and hauls Dean up close to him again. The warmth of Dean’s skin floods John’s chest, and John settles his chin at the strong slope of Dean’s shoulder as his hands spread wide over his son’s flat belly.

“Planning to get yourself off, boy?” he asks as his fingers skim down to the hot length of Dean’s cock. A fresh surge of blood thickens it as he curls his grip, and Dean does nothing less than squirm, the seat of his pants brushing against John’s crotch.

“Was,” Dean admits. “Didn’t think you’d–” He gasps, twists both into and away from the scratch of John’s face against his neck. His cock jerks, come spitting in a high arc to fleck his chest and stomach white. “Shit. Oh, shit.”

John strokes him through it, smears the mess into Dean’s skin when Dean calms down enough to keep still. “Didn’t I warn you about language?” he says.

“Gonna spank me?” Dean asks. The corner of his mouth is tugged high until he turns enough to catch John’s expression. His momentary boldness vanishes, the natural flush of pleasure on his cheeks darkening a few shades. “Sir, I didn’t mean that.”

“Taught you better than to say things you don’t mean.”

Dean’s blush drains, leaves him pale, the scatter of freckles on his face contrasting sharply. He moves with a numbness to him when John tells him to get up. When he realises he isn’t dismissed, the relief that shows in his eyes is knife-edge keen.

John pulls him back in, face-to-face again, and the old springs in the couch creak as Dean straddles his lap. Dean’s legs spread wide, his thighs brushing the tops of John’s, and John doesn’t have a plan beyond trial and error.

“Also taught you better than to not follow things through, didn’t I?”

A quick flash of pink tongue wets Dean’s lips to shining again. “How should….”

He cradles Dean’s face in one palm, puts pressure behind the hinge of Dean’s jaw to bring him into a fresh kiss. Dean melts right into it, his hands finding the back of the couch to prop there and take some of the strain off the muscles in his leg. If he sucks dick like an amateur, he kisses like a seasoned pro, his mouth going from pliant to demanding. It’s not in John’s nature to let someone else take the lead when he’s feeling lost in the dark, but it’s beyond him what Dean needs from him right now and there’s something that says the boy’s fragile.

“Here,” John says. He peels his hands away from Dean’s hips to take his son’s hand and guide it between them.

Dean doesn’t need further instruction. His tugging grip is more firm than steady, the gentle rock of his body finding a slow pace that John’s hand matches in long sweeping strokes down the ripple of Dean’s spine.

“Almost?” Dean asks, kiss faltering and mouth pressing open against John’s cheek.

John holds him tighter, scrapes teeth against the soft skin of Dean’s neck. He closes his eyes, lets the flex of Dean’s muscles lull him into the pure pleasure of the act, forget everything except a willing touch that isn’t his own.

Dean groans louder than he does when he comes, the mess spreading thick on his belly and smearing wet over Dean’s fingers. He can hear it under the harshness of their breathing, the slickness of his come turning sticky with each slowing tug.

The day’s moving to night and in the growing shadows, John opens his eyes to the new hole in the ground he’s struck bottom of.

“About time you fetched your brother, isn’t it?” he says, hands falling away from Dean’s back.

“Yeah.”

“Go wash up. You don’t want to be late.”

“Right.” Dean’s voice is gritty, his manner subdued. John wonders—prays—that it means he’s feeling the same hollow regret.

Watching Dean slide off the couch, limp more pronounced leaving than when he’d entered, John takes off his shirt to clean himself up best he can, and doubts he’s got enough luck left for any prayers to be heard. He wads up the stained woolen shirt and tucks it next to his leg. Tipping his head back, John stares up at the ceiling. Absently he runs a hand up his arm to touch his shoulder, trace the bitemark there and pray instead that there’s still some foulness in his blood instead of just sin and ruinous decisions.

He’s still sitting there when Dean’s tearing out the door, keys jingling. The front door slamming shut rattles through the walls, pushes a breeze to ripple across the pages upon pages of tragedy and horror pinned like so many dead butterflies.

John drapes an arm over his face.

No luck at all.

*

End