Moths on the Mirror (Dean/OMC and Dean/Sam, 18978 words, nc-17)
Moths on the Mirror
(Dean/OMC and Dean/Sam, 18978 words, nc-17, extremely dubious consent but not between Sam and Dean)
There's something wrong in Red Haven Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but no one's going to listen to a psychopath like Dean Winchester.
They came in the body-chute. Tongues like knives and eyes like fire. Their shadows on the wall.
Here they come.
Clatter clatter clatter, run run run.
They came in the body-chute. They see you. They see you.
:::
Dr Joshua Somerville is the Chief Psychiatrist at Red Haven Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He's a very tall, very thin man and when Dean looks at him, he thinks of stick insects. His voice is very quiet and Dean is brought to see him roughly once a month. Dr Somerville expects to be the one to break Dean. Dean thinks he hasn't considered that broken things tend to have sharp edges.
Then there's Dr Angela Rechtman, who smells of salad and often has it caught between her teeth. She is not, and never has been, impressed with Dean's celebrity status. The others speak to Dean gently and carefully, as if his silence is due to fear. Not her. Dean kind of likes her for that. She wears a silver charm bracelet that Dean can hear rattling against the desk as she sets her notes out before they bring him in. Sometimes, she wears a blouse that is more see-through than she knows. If Dean felt like talking, he might tell her about it.
Newest recruit is Dr Michael Harrison. He's tall, blond and uncertain. A pair of geekboy glasses perch on the end of his nose and he's a specialist of some kind. Dean hasn't met him yet but he's seen him watching.
There's a shapeless mass of nurses in the hospital, soft as blankets and firm as tyrants. At their head is Nurse Dominque DuPleiss who is a nice lady who tells Dean what a good boy he is when he takes his medication without forcing her to have him strapped down. She has a niece in Florida who's getting married soon; Dean's seen the photos.
Nurse Lauren Fisher is a very cute redhead with an awesome rack who is totally gay. She is very unhappy in her job but only Dean can see it. She looks at Dean like there's something wrong with him. She looks at Dean like there's something wrong with him and she feels sorry for him.
Nurse Jim Hooper is ex-military yessir nosir stand up straight when you're talking to me. He has curly dark hair and he recognises Dean as trouble. That's okay because Dean recognises him as trouble too. He favours his left side and Dean suspects he has knee trouble. Dean knows Jim hears the scratching but refuses to acknowledge it.
Nurse Chet Hayes has blue eyes and a scar on his eyebrow that Dean doesn't believe he really got in a bar-fight. He weighs about 260 and it's mostly muscle. When he jerks off, he likes to make Dean suck his fingers. He has big hands that taste of the inside of surgical gloves.
:::
"How are you feeling today, Dean?"
Dean watches the ash drift onto the desk between he and Dr Somerville. On the ceiling, Mary is flopping around in the fire like a fish left in not enough water. The ash is tasteless, melts to nothing when Dean breathes it in.
"The nurses tell me you've spent a lot of time in the gym. You're looking very well. Are you thinking about trying to leave here?"
Leaving here isn't something Dean's thought about at all. He knows he has to leave here one day because they have work to do. But it's like the edge of space - what is there beyond it? And is it somewhere Dean wants to go? He's not sure it is. He thinks he might get lost in the nothingness. There used to be roads but he's not sure how to find them anymore.
"I'm hope you're not going to try to leave too soon," says Dr Somerville. "There's someone come to spend some time with you. You did a lot of very strange things before you came here and there are still a lot of people very confused about why you did them. Just like you're confused. So I hope you and Dr Harrison can try to figure it out between you."
Dean looks up from the desktop, through the silent rainfall of ash, and meets Dr Somerville's benevolent expression with a blank gaze.
:::
If you spend too long looking out of the window in the solarium, then things start looking back at you. Only they can't because they don't have eyes. They shuffle around in the glass, so close Dean expects to hear their foreheads bumping the window.
It's a shame because outside there are green and grey mountains and the sky and sometimes birds too.
And it's also a shame because if Dean isn't looking out, then he has to be looking in and there are creeping shadows in the hospital that the sun just glances over and won't touch.
Dean carefully chews the edges off a jigsaw piece until it is roughly the shape he needs and then jams it into the space. He likes his picture better than the one on the box.
:::
Normally he sees Dr Somerville about once a month. Dr Somerville is a very busy man but Dean killed lots of people in interesting ways before they caught him so Josh is no big frickin' deal to him. It was only yesterday that Dean last saw him and so he's surprised when Chet brings him back to the consultation room, expecting Dr Rechtman and kind of dreading it because the woman's a bitch.
Chet manhandles Dean into a chair when he freezes at the sight of Dr Somerville. He doesn't want to be seeing Dr Somerville now because he knows a month hasn't passed and if he lets him go screwing around with the calendar in Dean's head, Dean knows he'll get his Wednesdays confused with his Aprils.
The only thing to do when Chet gets handsy is to go limp so Dean does just that and lets Chet struggle to haul him upright in the chair, all the while conscious of Dr Somerville's scrutiny. Dean knows Chet'll get his own back sometime so he doesn’t feel guilty for showing him up.
With a serene rush of flame, Mary catches fire on the ceiling and Dean sighs. It's gonna be one of those days.
The new guy is sitting next to Dr Somerville, watching. His dark blond hair curls around his ears and he looks too young, too fresh to be let loose in a building full of psychos and whackjobs. Dean approves of Dr Somerville being here to hold his hand. Dean is a bad bad man.
"This is Dr Harrison," says Dr Somerville. "He's going to be staying here with us, talking to you on a daily basis and trying to help you understand why you did those terrible things." There's a pause, Dr Harrison offering Dean a smile that Dean studies with disinterested curiosity. Then Dr Somerville glances towards Dr Harrison and goes on. "Dean hasn't spoken since he came here, almost a year ago now. He had a few difficulties settling in but he's much calmer these days."
"Hello, Dean," says Dr Harrison. "How are you doing?"
In the lens of Dr Harrison's glasses, something moves. Dean instantly directs his gaze down to the tabletop and writes his name in the layer of ash.
:::
It's cold, and Tony - cannibal Tony, not arsonist Tony - in the room opposite, won't stop coughing. Cough cough cough, metallic and hoarse like a coin stuck in his throat.
Dean's room isn't bad. The walls are bare and there's a big bastard lock on the door. And normally Dean can stare at the pale blue paint on the walls until his mind floats off into somewhere nice and fluffy.
But tonight he's cold and underneath the sound of Tony's coughing, there's scratching at the window. It scritch-scratches until Dean rolls over and looks at his milky reflection in the glass.
:::
When Jim brings Dean in, Dr Harrison isn't sitting down. He's stood up, pacing, stupid geek-glasses dangling from his fingers. He sinks into his chair and smiles, leaning forward a little, shoulders hunched.
Jim's gentler than Chet, doesn't think Dean has a dirty cocksucking mouth like Chet does - or if he does, hasn't ever commented on it. But there's a warning in his touch. Dean knows Jim is waiting, always waiting, for the day that Dean shows his true colours, the red-black of murder and desecration.
Mary hasn't had chance to start burning before Dean leans in towards Dr Harrison.
"Look, I don't wanna make a big deal of this," he says, "but she told me to tell you shouldn't be walking around here with your eyes open."
Dean's voice sounds different in the air than it does in his head. It's been in his head for almost a year. He sounds nastier in his head, more capable. He hopes she won't have anything more to say to Dr Harrison, or that she'll find someone else to tell him. Dean doesn't wanna be talking.
Jim draws in breath and looks to Dr Harrison. Dr Harrison's mouth moves uselessly for a second and then his face melts into a smile, both triumphant and wary.
"Who's 'she'?"
"Fucker," says Dean. That's more like it. That's the voice he knows, that's the voice that's been chattering away at the back of his head.
Dr Harrison frowns at him, Dean kicks back in his chair and thinks he might have forgotten something. Something pretty important.
:::
He remembers what it is at about 3am. At least, he remembers on some fundamental level and he starts screaming for it. He's up at the door, banging his fists and screaming.
"Sammy! Where's my Sammy? Have you got my Sammy? I need my Sammy! What have you done with my Sammy? Sammysammysammy!"
He doesn't know what his Sammy is, what it does, why he needs it. Only that its absence is eating away at him. He screams for his Sammy and the pane of plexi-glass in the window rattles in sympathy.
Footsteps shudder outside, voices raised in alarm. Dean's panic spreads through the level and madness wails around him. Don't go prodding at scorpions, they get restless. Dean goes on screaming though. He's still screaming when the key turns in the lock and he's being brought down to the floor. Hands bend his arm out straight and his screams become snarls. Because where's his Sammy, goddamn it?
"Good work, Harrison," someone says. "You got him talking. Can you get him to shut up?"
Something scrapes the inside of Dean's elbow, pricks the skin.
"Hey, gently," Harrison snaps.
The world goes blue and numb, takes a step back from Dean so the darkness can jump all over him. The window's still shaking.
:::
It's not paralysis. That's what Dean thought at first and he's relieved to discover that he can still twitch and flex. Those are useful skills: twitching and flexing.
Any sense of paralysis he's feeling is probably connected to the fat straps that are pinning him flat to his bed. They don't allow much by way of movement and Dean has a vague memory of spending a lot of time drugged and strapped to his bed when he first came here. But they're memories coming out of somewhere hazy and so he can't trust himself not to be making them up, like he apparently did with a whole lot of other shit.
Irritably, Dean twitches a little harder. There is no give in the straps. It's daylight outside and everyone else is probably up and doing stuff and not strapped to beds.
"Awake now!" he calls out. Silence answers him, so he tries again, a little louder.
He keeps calling until he hears someone coming, then he falls silent and tries to look harmless. It's Chet, filling up the doorway, and Dean tenses because he doesn't like being strapped to beds when Chet is around. Call him paranoid but he thinks someone who gets off on fucking his fingers into Dean's mouth might take advantage of him being held immobile on his bed.
"That was one hell of a tantrum you threw, sweetheart," says Chet. "You gonna behave now?"
He keeps moving closer and Dean thinks about how he'd take him to pieces if he didn't have straps all over him and there wasn't still some kind of drug dead in his blood. Dean can feel his lip curling up into a feral baring of teeth.
Dr Harrison moves past Chet and smiles down at Dean. Harrison's hands twitch uselessly at his sides.
"Can we unstrap you? Not gonna make me look bad and go on a rampage the minute I let you up?"
The drug has left Dean's mouth dust-dry. Shouting is one thing but normal words are difficult. He swipes a cracked tongue over his lips and swallows hard.
"I'll be good."
Dr Harrison nods and he touches Dean on the shoulder, greatly daring, like he knows he's breaking rules. Chet makes a disapproving noise, which Dr Harrison ignores.
"Let him up," he says to Chet.
Dean likes Dr Harrison.
:::
Yellow ones are only for the morning. It's considerate of the pharmaceutical company to make the morning ones look like the sun coming up.
Blue ones are for morning, just before lunch and just before he goes to bed. They're kind of like 'greens' in as much as you have to take 'em without complaining, because they're that important. But they don't make any green tablets so Dean is fed his blues instead of greens. He's a big strong boy - he needs his blues. Blues are good, like jazz and depression.
There are pink ones too, twice a day. Little diamond-shaped ones. If you're gonna make your pink tablets into pretty shapes Dean doesn't know why they don't really go for it and make 'em heart-shaped.
White ones are all day everyday, pretty much every time Dean opens his mouth. Like oxygen. Thirsty? Take this. Hungry? Take this. Want to tear this fucking place down to rubble? Take this. The white ones are like snow inside Dean, feathery and stifling.
There used to be orange ones but Dean's such a good boy now they don't need to give him those.
He has a whole spectrum of pills and when they're all doing their thing, then the people in the glass who have frickin' great holes in their heads where their eyes should be all back off. Dean approves. Dominique gives him his little paper cup of pills and Chet waits to see if Dean's gonna misbehave, whether Chet's gonna have the chance to put his hands on Dean's face and pry his lips apart.
Dean meekly downs his medication and takes a sip of the glass of water Dominique gives him.
"That's right, sugar-lamb. They're gonna make you better if you let 'em," Dominique tells him. Chet pats him on the cheek, fingers leaving red smears on the skin.
Behind the wire grille over the television screen in the corner, the reflection of the rec room warps for a moment and then Dean can only see the reflections of the things that everyone else can see. Just as it should be.
:::
Apparently, sometime after Dean was shoved into a straitjacket, shot full of enough sedative to down a whale and then locked up in Red Haven, geek-boy glasses became a fashion article for young psychiatrists. That's the only explanation he can come up with for why Dr Harrison has the damn things when he spends more time peering over the top of them instead of through them.
Still Dr Harrison's kind of cute and definitely better company than most other things in this hospital - flesh and blood and glass - and so Dean finds it in himself to forgive him.
"So what do you want to talk about today?"
"Aren't you meant to pick the subject?" Dean says. "I might wanna talk about the best kind of swing to use when decapitating someone, or how long it takes to burn a body. I'm a sick freak."
Dr Harrison's lips twitch and he brushes his hair back behind his ears.
"That's what I've been told. Do you wanna talk about decapitation and burning bodies?"
Dean shrugs and looks up at the ceiling, waiting for Mary to appear. She's taking her time about it today. Maybe it's one of John's days. Dean hasn't had a John-day in a while, not since all that aggression and rage and the need to escape burnt out into silence. A John-day would be bad. Dean can't stand the shouting and disapproval.
"Not really." He pauses and then glances back to Dr Harrison. "Don't you think it's kinda weird about all the people with their eyes carved out of their heads?"
Something flickers in Dr Harrison's expression. A tightening, a new level of intensity. He leans a little towards Dean and a slow, lazy flare of unexpected desire curls in Dean's belly. It's only an instinctive response to Dr Harrison's dark eyes and hazelnut skin but it's nice to feel it all the same. Makes him feel more human.
"You're talking about the murders."
Dean's not. He's talking about the people who walk about the hospital when no one sane is looking. But Dr Harrison seems to know what he's talking about so Dean decides to go with it.
"What can you tell me about the murders, Dean?"
Dean shakes his head and says, "I didn't do 'em."
Dr Harrison smiles again, like he can't help it. But it's not a very happy smile. Dean wonders if maybe Dr Harrison was hoping to pin these murders on Dean, and if so, he's gonna be disappointed because Dean never did any crazy shit like that. He did a lot of crazy shit but he never cut anyone's eyes out of their head.
"Okay, today, Dean, what I need you to take away from this session is that you are not responsible for every crime in the world and anyone who acts like you are is wrong."
Yeah, Dean likes Dr Harrison. Thinks he's naïve, but likes him.
:::
"I'm saying no. You can't do this. It's too dangerous."
Sam leans in, sets about tongue-fucking Dean's mouth before he can argue. Dean's skull is cradled in Sam's hands, fingers flicking over the nape of his neck until Dean's skin prickles with need. He arches up towards Sam, reflexively spreading his legs wider as Sam moves between them.
As Sam's mouth moves over Dean's collarbone, leaving a warm, glistening trail of saliva, Dean slides his hand down Sam's spine and works his fingertips under the low-slung waistband of his jeans.
"I can handle it. People are dying. Someone's gotta do something."
Sam's fingertips dig into him, so hard Dean thinks Sam's searching for bone to get hold of. He grinds his thumb along Dean's collarbone where his mouth has left wet, red marks.
"Not letting you."
"I'll be in and out before you know it," Dean says, and it's a promise.
There's no bruise left on Dean's collarbone. It faded away while he was in a padded room, drooling on himself. And there's no Sammy to put a new one there. Dean stares at himself in the mirror and rubs at the thin shape of the bone until it's good and red. The new bruise is what's important, not the scritch-scratch of something in the mirror.
:::
According to the box, the jigsaw was meant to be a cheery picture of a house by a lake with a few geese wandering by outside. Dean prefers his use of the pieces, which makes an admittedly jagged and abstract interpretation of something, well, something big, green and blue. He's not sure what it is but he likes it.
Lauren brought him a new jigsaw puzzle this morning. This one wants to be an exciting scene of two fighter jets but Dean thinks it'll end up being something grey.
He sets to work straight away, tipping the pieces out on the tabletop and trying to decide on a centre piece.
"Hmm. Didn't have you down as a jigsaw type."
Dean grins up at Dr Harrison and then goes back to his puzzle. He doesn't comment when Harrison takes the seat across from him, though he wants to warn him that sitting there will leave him facing the windows and no one wants to see that. Still, it'll be interesting to see what Harrison makes of the eyeless freaks in the glass. 'Cos they'll be looking at him. Dean knows they will. Won't be able to look away.
"Come to play with the inmates?"
Harrison glances out across the room of patients, some silent and some exceptionally noisy. The nurses are watchful and patient, stepping in to supervise only when things get out of hand. Harrison looks back at Dean and smiles, cheeks colouring a little.
"Actually I came to play with- came to see you."
Dean sniggers and goes back to his puzzle, giving Harrison some time to flush even more brilliantly than before.
"Dude, you do remember I'm a psycho mass murderer, right? Possibly a necrophile too, I'm still waiting for you lot to get your heads out of your asses and tell me what all the grave desecration is about."
"I know who you are," Harrison says and he's serious. There's no playing, no flirting. He knows who Dean is and he's still sitting at the table.
“Careful of that one, Doctor,” says Chet, wandering over and grinning at the two of them. “He’s a spitter.”
He’s not sure why Chet’s being weird and warning people about Dean. Dr Harrison knows what Dean is, he’s read the notes. And Chet’s never worried about getting up close to Dean - and Dean’s mouth - whenever he gets chance and honestly, it’s been a long while since Dean spat at anyone. Not like he’d ever spat at anyone who didn’t deserve it anyway. But if Chet wants to be weird, Dean can be weird right back.
“Got a fine set of teeth on me too,” he says and snaps his jaw meaningfully at Chet.
“Oho! We gonna have to get you a muzzle, sweetheart?”
Chet’s laughter seems pretty genuine but when he pinches Dean’s jaw, squeezing his lips into a pout that is apparently meant playfully, it’s just a little too rough to be comfortable. Harrison raises an eyebrow at Chet and Chet’s hand drops. His attitude is more disgruntled than chastened though.
The silence is slightly awkward and Dean goes back to his puzzle. The window whispers to him and he considers a moment before obeying. He jerks his head towards Harrison.
“Hey, Chet, tell him about the body-chute.”
Chet’s fingers curl loosely about the baton that hangs at his hip. The baton is thin and white like a corpse's finger, and it leaves bruises that are bone-deep. Dean’s a good boy now, open up, suck, moan, and it’s a long while since Dean felt the dull thump of it. The easy, graceful grip Chet’s got on it still makes him slump a little further down in his chair though.
“Now how the hell did you hear about that?”
His tone is curious, wondering, but Dean still doesn’t straighten up. Chet can croon the sweetest nothings you ever heard, and all the while be trying to put a few dents in your spine. Dean can feel Chet’s eyes on him and he wishes the window had kept her goddamn mouth shut because he doesn’t like it when Chet’s watching him. He thinks too damn loud and all of it’s about what he can make out of Dean.
“What’s a body-chute?” Harrison says, looking between them with the wide-eyed expression of a kid eager to learn.
“It’s where the bodies get taken out,” says Chet and he grudgingly takes his eyes off Dean. “When this place was built in the thirties, it had a body-chute. Long tunnel underground where you wheel the bodies out to the hearse, so the other patients don’t see ‘em. Hasn’t been in use for years. Gets mentioned at staff induction, just as a security point but…” He looks back to Dean, still with that speculative look in his pale eyes.
“What about the body-chute?” Harrison says to Dean, all mild and gentle. God, yes, Dean likes Dr Harrison. Even with the window whispering and snickering over there, and the plastic glasses of water on each of the tables taking up the conversation, Dean gets a little hung up on Dr Harrison.
“That’s where they came in,” Dean tells him.
Chet laughs again and ruffles Dean’s hair, proprietary, like Dean’s a dog that’s done a neat trick.
“I think it’s time for someone to have some more candy.”
An openly irritated look from Dr Harrison is enough to shut Chet right up, but it takes a moment before he removes his hand from Dean’s head. He slides it away over the curve of his skull, fingertips resting briefly on the back of his neck, and Dean doubts Dr Harrison thinks much of it but Dean knows what he’s being told.
“Where who came in, Dean?” says Dr Harrison.
Dean’s reflection slithers over the cluster of metal keys that are clipped to Chet’s waistband. And then it’s not his face looking back at him, not anything looking back at him at all but two gaping, bloody holes where eyes used to be. He looks back down at his puzzle and determinedly forces a piece into place.
He doesn’t look up when Harrison leaves but he hears Harrison’s voice, deep and displeased, talking to Chet.
“Are you always so hands-on with the patients?”
He doesn’t hear Chet’s answer, not right then anyway.
:::
Underneath him, the floor is cold, hard tile. Dean’s on his knees and the regulation hospital sweatpants are worn too thin to offer any protection. This is the first time Chet has ever fucked his mouth. His cock is bigger than his fingers and he keeps shoving it in, until drool is dribbling from the corners of Dean’s mouth. Tears gather in his eyes and when he blinks, a fat teardrop rolls slowly down his cheek. Chet thinks he’s crying and laughs at him. Dean’s not crying. It’s just it’s kind of difficult to breathe with Chet’s cock nudging the back of his throat, like Chet wants to slip it further down.
It won’t be long, Dean decides after a moment’s dispassionate analysis, that Chet’s cock will manage to lodge itself in his throat and when Chet comes, Dean’s going to have no choice but to drink it. That’s the kind of thought that does nothing for Dean’s unwillingness to vomit. He hates vomiting. Hates the sound of it, the loss of control, the tug-tug-tug in his belly.
Chet hooks his thumb in the corner of Dean’s mouth, alongside the spit-slick length of his cock, and uses his grip on Dean’s jaw to pry his mouth wider open. He tilts Dean’s face back until Dean’s spine is spiking with pain and Chet’s pretty much riding Dean’s face, grinding down onto him. It fucking hurts and if Dean didn’t have a mouth shoved full of cock he’d tell Chet to ease up a bit.
And is it paranoid of him to think that Chet might not listen?
“Such a slut. Everyone thinks you’re a monster. They’re all so scared of you. But I know what you are. Just a slut. Just need a good deep dicking, don't you? Keep you good and full of cock and you're just a pussycat."
Chet groans as his cock makes it down Dean's throat and Dean gives up on ever breathing again.
:::
John is unsettlingly quiet. He stays in the corner of the room, watching Harrison like he doesn't know what to make of him. Dean sits up straight in his chair and keeps a civil tongue in his head, doesn't give John any reason to shout.
"Do you remember before you came here?" Harrison says.
It's a tough one, because Dean doesn't want to lie but it's not like he can talk about the Family Business to a complete stranger. John'd string him up for that. Rule number one, don't talk about the family business. Rule number one-a, don't talk about the family business to people in the mental health profession.
So he settles for a nod and that earns him a smile from Harrison.
"What do you remember before you came here?"
How can he answer that? He knows things are different to the way the doctors'd have it. He knows he can't tell 'em that because that kind of talk always ends up with Dean doped so high he can see the tops of the clouds. He remembers a lot but it's difficult to figure out what he's remembering and what he's dreaming (nightmaring?). There are things in his head that clearly should not be there. Things too horrible to be allowed to be true. And there are other things, things like watching porn on the motel cable while Sammy takes a shower, and cheeseburgers, and Led Zeppelin. Good things.
"Impala," he says finally. He clears his throat and speaks again. "My '67 Impala. My baby girl. I remember my Impala."
Harrison's quiet for a second and then raises an eyebrow.
"You remember a car? Nothing else? Nothing more significant?"
It sounds a little accusatory coming from a psychiatrist. Aren't they meant to be freaking neutral and impartial? Besides, not like Dean's gonna tell Harrison about his Sammy. He shrugs and doesn't answer.
John nods at him from his corner. Dean's done well. He's looked out for his Sammy and he hasn't broken under interrogation. His heart swells a little with the sense of a job well done.
:::
Interesting folks live in Red Haven Hospital.
Dean hasn't made 'friends'. Friendships aren't encouraged, just like kicking and biting and name-calling aren't. Friendships are harmful because everyone's just a different kind of toxic. Like bottles of poison getting mixed together and coming up with something even better at twisting you inside out.
Still, doesn't mean they don't talk. Dean's been listening for ages. That's what he's done most of in Red Haven: listened. Listened to the patients whisper amongst themselves when the nurses were over the other side of the room. Listened to the doctors when they mistook muteness for deafness. Listened to the people in the glass, listened to her.
And now, between them, Dr Harrison and her have shaken Dean's voice loose and he can talk.
Plenty of people to talk to, plenty of things to say.
Candice is a good-looking woman with light brown hair and long-lashed dark eyes. When she found out her husband was having an affair, she killed her babies. Only reason she's not lurking around in a flimsy white dress on the edge of a highway somewhere is that after she'd wrung their tiny little necks, she didn't kill herself, but instead took it out on the person really to blame. Whatever they buried of her husband, it's not all of him. Only the bits they could find.
Dean doesn't approve of baby-killers, generally has high expectations for mothers, but Candy's a nutcase and Dean's sympathetic to that, even if he's not to people putting their hands around kids' throats and squeezing 'til they turn blue.
She coils her hair about a fingertip and tugs, experimentally. Glances up at Dean from under sweeping lashes.
"The moths are on the mirror," she says.
Dean nods and considers his jigsaw so far. It's very grey and there's not a fighter jet in sight. Then he realises that Candice is looking a little anxious so he smiles reassuringly.
"They can't find her, not so long as she stays under the glass. The reflections confuse them."
"You think?" says Candice, snapping a few strands of hair from her scalp.
"Sure. She told me."
Candy rubs her fingertips together, letting the hairs she's plucked drift to the floor. Her nails are blunt and rounded, clipped so far down her fingers it must be painful. Somehow, the way she moves her fingers, you'd think she was still sporting a full French manicure. Dean bets her nails were wicked sharp when she killed her kids.
"That new doctor, the guy who talks to you."
Dean raises an eyebrow.
"What about him?"
Thin pink lips make for an oddly cute smile on Candice's face. There's almost something girlish about the look she gives Dean, like this is all one big sick slumber party.
"He looks sweet. Is he?"
For someone so hot, Candice is totally failing to turn Dean on. Perhaps his dick is broken.
:::
His dick is not broken.
He wakes up hard and thinking of Dr Harrison's geekboy glasses, his soft low voice and the stupid curls of his hair about his ears.
His dick is so not broken.
:::
Sam lays the folders down on the table and Dean turns away from the TV to give them his full attention. Sam glances up at him and flips each of the folders open. He pushes his bangs out of his eyes and taps the oldest looking one - paper all crinkled and golden-brown.
"Red Haven. Built in 1932. Nothing too eventful the first few years but… housing the kind of patients they were, still a pretty colourful history. Then, in 1938, the first body is found. Patient's name was Elijah Giggs, serial rapist. He went missing from his locked room sometime on the Friday night, his body was found Saturday afternoon. Back in his room, dead, eyes cut out."
Sam looks back up at Dean to check he's taking this in.
"Eleven more victims over a period of almost seventy years. All missing for a short period of time then returned to their rooms with the eyes missing. Last one happened three weeks ago."
Picking at the last of his nachos, Dean nods slowly. He wipes his greasy hands on the motel bedcover and gets to his feet. He moves to Sam's side and glances over the folders with him. One of the photos catches his attention. It's grainy and the contrast's taken up way too high. He tilts his head as he studies it.
"How were the eyes removed?"
"Scratched out."
"I know about the murders," Dean says.
Dr Harrison pauses, uncertain how to handle the abrupt cut-off. But he nods and smiles. Dean relaxes at the smile. It's a little boy's smile, cautious and innocent.
"Okay. Do you remember where you heard about them? Who you heard about them from?"
All of the comfortable, contented feeling Dean was enjoying - the mild sense of arousal he gets from these sessions with Harrison all to himself - disappears abruptly. Sammy's name does not get mentioned, not to these people. Not the nutjobs in the wards. Not to the people in the glass. They don't have his Sammy and Dean's sure as hell not going to bring their attention to him now.
Dr Harrison picks up on the abrupt change in Dean's demeanour and holds a hand up to keep Jim from coming any closer. Dean getting all narrow-eyed and hostile always puts Jim on alert.
Dean tries to settle again but even thinking about Sammy while he's letting Harrison prod and poke at him sends a prickle of unease down his spine.
"All right. We'll leave that. Can we talk about how you came to be here?"
"Probably something to do with the number of people I killed. Not to mention no one was too keen on the way I killed 'em."
Harrison leans forward and looks Dean in the eye. Which is so not fair because he has big dark eyes that Dean is a total sucker for.
"They brought you here because they think you're not well. That you did those things not because you meant to but because you're not well."
"Batshit crazy," Dean clarifies helpfully.
There's no answering twitch of Harrison's lips. Dean likes making Harrison smile and he hates it that Harrison is insisting on being serious and intense.
"Dean, do you really believe you're batshit crazy?"
He's got no right asking. He's got no right to be trying to confuse Dean like this. Harrison won't quit staring at him and Dean shies away. He looks over his shoulder at Jim, cutting Harrison out as much as he can.
"I want my meds now. They'll make me better if I let 'em."
:::
Mary was not in the consultation room but she is waiting on the ceiling when Dean gets to his room that night. Her body is a dark shape but Dean knows it's her. He lets the nurses lay him down on his bed, watches his mom and listens to the rattle of the door being locked before the nurses retreat.
Beyond the door, the nurses scuff down the corridor and there's a brief raising of voices as someone has a weird moment and needs to be restrained. Distant curses and snarling break down into stifled wet breaths. The nurses' voices are calm and efficient.
There's silence in Dean's room.
And then the rush of the flame as Mary burns. She smiles at him through the licking heat. She can burn and burn for hours. She's still burning when Chet comes into his room.
Chet cuffs Dean's wrists to the bed. They've come back to Chet taking a few precautions now they've moved on to Chet sticking his cock in Dean's mouth. First time he stuck his fingers in Dean's mouth while he fucked his fist, Chet had kept a syringe of sedative close by. Dean had been too out of it to consider biting, even if he did keep trying to spit out the foul taste of surgical gloves. More often Chet did it though, the more reckless he became, like it was part of the thrill.
Still, Dean doesn't blame him for being a little edgier about putting his dick so close to Dean's teeth than he was his fingers. Lose a finger or two and you can cope. Lose your cock, well, might as well take a bullet to the brainpan in Dean's opinion. 'Course, it's pretty insulting to realise Chet considers Dean toothless in pretty much every sense aside the literal. Drugs'll do that to you.
Dean reckons Chet's probably got a syringe tucked away somewhere. He doesn't blame him. Dean's getting a little fed up with this. He's pretty sure this isn't making him better, unless the FDA now qualifies Chet's come as medication. Somehow he doubts it.
Taking a firm grip of Dean's chin, Chet turns his head on the pillow and yanks his jaw down. Dean watches as Chet hooks his cock out, already straining and wet at the head, fists it a few quick strokes, then pushes it towards Dean's mouth. Dean goes on watching even as his lips close about the width of him and Chet bucks his hips.
He fucks Dean's mouth with quick, deep thrusts and all Dean has to do is keep his mouth wrapped about him and take it. Short, breathy grunts make it past Chet's gritted teeth and he shoves harder, hips jerking in short, sharp rhythm.
Dean goes on watching and Mary's ash drifts down like dead leaves around them.
"What you looking at, baby?" Chet hisses. "You like this? Yeah, you do. Like me fucking your slutty mouth. Want me to fuck you up the ass sometime too? Yeah, you'd like that. Take it like a whore, wouldn't you?"
When Chet comes, it's over Dean's face. Dribbling over his swollen lips and down his chin, dripping onto his throat. Chet uses the hem of Dean's t-shirt to wipe most of it away but Dean's still tasting it, still feeling it on his skin after Chet's gone and the door's locked again.
And Mary's still burning.
:::
Gym-time is when Dean's body tries to remind Dean's mind who he is. It chatters at him with questions about how fast do you think you could you run if you were chasing a werewolf? and isn't headbutting just the best thing ever? That look of surprise on people's face because no one ever expects a good old-fashioned headbutting, don't you love that?
Gym-time is Dean's reward for playing nicely and taking his meds. Dr Somerville doesn't like letting him have it. He wants the knife blunt rather than sharper than ever. Tough luck. Dean behaves, Dean takes it all, licks his lips and doesn't scream the place down. Dean is owed his freaking gym-time.
In the gym, Dean is grace and power and sleek-drawn lines. In the gym, Jim watches him with cool appraisal and Chet shifts from foot to foot. Dean's used to the audience. There are long mirrors on the walls and they're always full of shuffling crowds. Dean doesn't know what they're staring at, they haven't got any fucking eyes. But they mill about in the glass, press their faces up against it and leave red smears from the gaping holes their eyes used to live in.
Only the shadows make 'em back off and Dean's not a fan of those either. It's like the sun going behind a cloud you know it's never coming out from. The freaks scatter and Dean slams his hand down on the control pad for the running machine. Turns about to Chet and Jim.
"I'm done," he says. "Get me outta here."
:::
Lauren's either a saint or as screwed in the head as the patients. She did some course or something and now she promotes this art therapy she's in to. Which basically means that every sucker she can rope into it ends up scribbling away at paper with crayons. Crayons since that nasty incident with that guy trying to stab the colouring pencil through his tongue. Arsonist Tony had bet cannibal Tony five bucks that the guy wouldn't be able to get the pencil clean through his tongue. The nurses had intervened so the bet had been called off, which is just as well because Dean doesn't think Tony's good for the money, either of 'em.
This session, Dean has drawn a big yellow spiral. Two big yellow spirals. And a gun. It could possibly be a dick but he intended it to be a gun. It's hard to get those finer details when you're working in chubby crayon. He wonders if these things get analysed, whether Rechtman and Somerville are gonna stare at this for hours and figure out what exactly is wrong with Dean. Aside from the fact his interpretation of a gun looks unsettlingly like a dick. And even Dean can do the brainwork on that one.
Lauren's collecting the sheets, admiring them and asking questions, while Chet follows along beside her and collects the crayons. They're talking together and when they get close enough, Dean strains to hear what they're saying.
"I think you're jealous," Lauren says.
"What the hell do you mean?"
Chet's tone, brutal and brisk, causes her to stop what she's doing. She glances back at him and gives him a confused but indulgent smile.
"He's younger than you, he's a highly-recommended psychiatrist and he probably earns three times as much as you do. You're just the muscle. And it's not like he's lacking in that."
"Oh you've gotta be kidding me! You're not getting wet for that jerk too, are you? He's already got Rechtman panting like a bitch in heat. And Dominique was trying to pinch his cheeks in the staffroom at break."
Lauren pauses to coo over Candy's picture of a vase of flowers - Candy's always drawing flowers - while Chet unfurls Candy's fingers and takes her crayons away from her. Then Lauren shrugs and carries on the conversation. They're only a few tables away from Dean now.
"You gotta love his dimples, Chet." She laughs at the expression on Chet's face. "C'mon, he's totally not my type. Far too much equipment, if you know what I'm saying."
When it's his turn, Dean hands her his picture and shoves the crayons across the table at Chet.
"And this here's his number one fanboy," says Chet. "The reason we're lucky enough to have the wonderful Dr Harrison with us. Y'know, Winchester, they sent Harrison to us just so he could be your special friend. Aren’t you a lucky boy?"
Dean raises his gaze to him, full of blank contempt.
"C'mon, move it along," Jim calls towards them.
Chet throws Dean one last unloving look before he moves onto the next table but Lauren lingers a little, touching the yellow whorls Dean's drawn. She glances between him and his 'art' and she offers a tentative smile.
"This is really interesting, Dean," she says. "Can you tell me what you've drawn?"
"Eyes," Dean says, because he thinks it's best to leave the cock-or-gun out of the discussion. Lauren's not into that sort of thing.
She hesitates and considers the whorls for a moment longer.
"They're yellow. Yellow eyes?"
"Yeah. Gateways to the soul. Except I shot him and his soul went all sparky and the son of a bitch is dead now. That was for our mom."
Lauren gets that look which makes Dean feel itchy and stupid, like he's got this huge gaping wound somewhere and Lauren knows he's not gonna make it and Dean's blabbering on like an idiot who doesn't realise his guts are hanging out.
Lauren nods and presses her lips together. Then she has to move on real quick.
:::
"I found something you might be interested in," says Harrison.
There's a lot about Harrison Dean's interested in. Like whether he'd let Dean lick those cute dimples he gets when he smiles and how he'd look with his tie a little looser and his shirt a little rumpled and what that skin just where his jaw meets his neck smells like. None of these are relevant questions so Dean tries to look attentive.
Harrison moves Dean's casefile over to the side of the desk and brings the folder out from underneath it. He flips it open.
"In 1937, a fifty-eight year old woman called Amelia Morrow came to Red Haven. This was after she'd had a breakdown of some kind and murdered her husband and their daughter. She'd gouged their eyes out with her bare hands."
Harrison waits to see Dean's response to this. Chet makes a noise like clearing his throat, which Dean knows means he doesn't approve. But then Chet doesn't approve of Harrison at all. He reaches new levels of assholish behaviour when he fucks around with Dean after Harrison sessions.
When Dean doesn't say anything, Harrison flicks through a few pages and pulls a photo loose. The paperclip skitters across the table and Chet makes another, louder noise of disapproval. Harrison shoots him a look but removes the paperclip from Dean's reach.
He sets the photo in front of Dean.
If she didn't have her eyes open, Dean might recognise her. He doesn't know how Dr Harrison is going to feel about him graffitting his pictures though. Hesitantly, he reaches out for Harrison's pen. Harrison lets him take it but Chet takes a step towards the table.
"He's not allowed pens, Dr Harrison," he says, sounding snappish and put-upon.
Dean figures Harrison is the one with a fuckload of qualifications and if he's happy for Dean to have the pen then who cares what a grunt like Chet thinks? But he withdraws his hand all the same. He takes a blank piece of paper instead and smirks at Chet.
"A sheet of paper's not a lethal weapon, right? Or are you gonna be pissing your pants if I'm allowed one of those?"
Harrison's lips do that half-smile thing again and Dean figures that whatever Chet decides to stick in him and how hard he decides to do it, that little half-smile is worth it.
He covers the top half of Amelia's face, so he's just looking at that sad mouth, sagging and quivery like it's been drawn by a child, and nods. Looks up at Harrison and nods again.
"That's her."
:::
It's not Chet. Too tall and lean to be Chet. Dean curls in on himself because if it's not Chet then it's someone else and there's too much in this hospital that Dean doesn't think he can handle touching him. Dean hides his head beneath his pillow to shut out the window's whispering which is so loud now it's like a little storm in the corner of the room. If I can't see you, you can't see me, he thinks to the figure. But he knows it doesn't work like that. The window tells him that, and so do the mirrors and the reflections in the glass.
After carefully closing the door behind itself, the figure crosses the room to Dean's bedside. Its shadow falls over him and Dean squeezes his eyes shut.
"Dean? Are you awake?"
Dr Harrison.
Dean sits up and stares at him. Harrison smiles at him but it's tense and he keeps glancing over at the door.
"You shouldn't be here," Dean tells him.
"I had to talk to you without them listening. Now this is important, Dean, so you gotta listen to me."
"You shouldn't be here."
Harrison's face goes pinched and anxious. He leans a little closer and Dean catches the scent of him and starts to think that maybe it's all right to have Harrison here after all. If Chet turns up, Dean can just tell him he's got Harrison to handle those deep dicking needs he apparently has.
"Those drugs they're giving you, they're not helping you. You don't need them. You've gotta stop taking them."
Those pills are going to make Dean better if he lets them. And once Dean is better he can go find his Sammy. Harrison's cute and all and Dean likes him better than just about anyone else in the hospital but he can't be taking Dean's pills away.
Harrison sees Dean's face crumple and he lays his palm against his cheek, leans in closer yet and for a crazy moment Dean thinks he's gonna kiss him. Dean could totally live with being kissed by Harrison. He bets he's a good kisser, slow and deep when you need it and all snarly and bitey when that's what you're aching for.
"I'm here to help you and I'm telling you: those drugs are not what you need. You gotta work with me on this."
Dean gets the sudden compulsion to suck on Harrison's tongue. This is what they mean when they say Dean gets inappropriate urges. He wonders if it'd be even more inappropriate to put his hands down Harrison's pants and find his cock, jerk him off good and hard 'til he comes all over his expensive suit. Dean thinks he'd look even better all fucked-out.
"Are you listening to me?" Harrison demands.
"Not really. I'm thinking about how much I'd like to be licking your come off my fingers."
Harrison's jaw goes slack. Eyes wide. Gateways to the soul, y'know and she's told Dean before about not letting Harrison wander around with his eyes open. He gets this awesome dazed look and Dean licks his lips.
"Jesus, Dean… do you even know what you do to me?"
He studies Dean through the darkness and then makes a decision. He swoops in and crushes his mouth to Dean's. He presses hard against him, catching the back of Dean's neck and pulling him into it, while he shoves his tongue between Dean's lips. He keeps moving forward until Dean's pushed onto his back and Harrison's moving over him. It's the good kind of scary, like losing yourself in so much awesome you know it doesn't matter that you're never coming back.
Dean wraps Harrison's tie about his hand and drags him closer until Harrison's body entirely covers his. Harrison's kissing is hungry and desperate and Dean meets each kiss with a need he didn't know he was feeling. Harrison's thumb keeps moving over Dean's cheekbone in a really distracting stroking gesture and Dean wants to push into it because it feels really good but he likes Harrison's mouth on his.
Someone passes by in the corridor outside and Dean jerks away. Harrison makes a small, plaintive noise and tries to chase after his mouth.
"You shouldn't be here," Dean says. Harrison's still sprawled over him, breathless and flushed, and that doesn't make it particularly easy for Dean's brain to take over the thinking from his cock. "If Chet finds you in here you'll get into trouble. They'll make you leave."
Harrison's brows draw together and he shakes his head.
"Why would Chet find us?"
"If he comes in!"
Harrison pushes up onto his elbows and stares at Dean.
"Why would he be coming in?"
Well that's a conversation that Dean doesn't want to have. So he just shoves at Harrison's shoulder again until he gets the message and gets off Dean.
"I'm crazy, dude. You don't wanna be in here with me. C'mon, you gotta go."
Harrison catches him and Dean wriggles awkwardly because he doesn't like the strength in Harrison's grip. He'd had Harrison down as fit but not fit and the strength in his hands makes Dean uncomfortable. Harrison's jaw has gone tight, all 'don’t mess with me'. Does no one in this goddamn hospital realise that Dean is a bad bad man for fuck's sake? Where do all these pricks get off on intimidating him and getting in his space?
"Why would he be coming in?" He frowns when all Dean does is pull an irritable face. "Look, we'll talk about it later. But just, just try to stop the drugs. Yeah? For me?"
After he's gone, the window stops shrieking at Dean and Dean can jerk off in peace.
:::
Now, correct him if he's wrong, but Dean's pretty sure Harrison shouldn't be taking it so easily in his stride. Harrison and Dean made out last night - Harrison broke a whole load of rules, came to Dean's room, told him not to take his meds and they made out. Does that not deserve some kind of flush in the cheeks when he sees Dean?
Hell, before Sammy made everyone else drop out of the equation, Dean used to hook up with people all the time and even he's feeling a little hot under the collar at seeing Harrison!
But no, Harrison's the same as ever. Maybe there's a hint of something more skittish in the way he's acting but there are no lingering looks or accidental touching. Dean feels cheated, which puts him in a bad mood. He should make more of an impression than this.
"Now," Harrison says, "next week, you're going to see Dr Somerville-"
"Why?"
Dr Harrison's expression wavers, as if he recognises the note in Dean's voice that is warning that Dean's planning on being difficult.
"It's government funding that pays for my placement here. It's important that they know these sessions are helping you."
"What if they're not?"
That wipes the smile from Harrison's face and obscurely, Dean feels like an asshole. Harrison looks down at his notepad in front of him, picks up his pen and then puts it down again. He looks up again at Dean and he doesn't even need to say the words but Dean hears them all the same. I'm doing my best.
Poor kid probably is. What the hell kind of fucked up government sends someone as fresh and naïve as Dr Michael Harrison to wade around in the shithole that is Dean's psyche?
"They'll terminate funding and call me back," Harrison says.
"You never ask me why," Dean says. "You never ask me about my mom or my dreams. You just… you talk about murders with me and ask me what I remember and you-"
Remembering Jim's presence in the room, Dean slumps back in his chair and wipes his hand through his hair. He lets out a breath and rolls his shoulders, willing the ache away.
"So, tell me what I gotta say to keep you here."
The slight tug of a smile at the corners of Harrison's lips is enough to make Dean feel forgiven.
"Well, if you could avoid suggesting that I coached you, that might help."
Dean smirks at him, and there it is: the faintest hint of a flush.
"I'll be subtle," Dean promises him.
:::
Turns out, Dean is a remarkably subtle person. Who knew? And after something like a year, Dominique's eyes aren't quite as watchful. She gives Dean his little cup of pills and watches to make sure he tilts his head back and his throat rolls, but she doesn't insist on checking inside his mouth.
Dean's a good boy and he knows the pills'll make him better if he lets 'em. Except, Dr Harrison says they won't and so Dean's not actually swallowing them anymore. He carries the pills under his tongue until he can find somewhere to lose them. First time was a bitch but Harrison's around a lot now and he ends up taking them away for Dean.
It's a big risk for Harrison and Dean's not sure what Harrison's getting out of it. Dean's a fine piece of ass, sure, but he refuses to believe Harrison couldn't find some that's - all right maybe not as nice but - nice enough that isn't currently institutionalised for an indefinite period of time due to assorted homicidal craziness.
Two days later and Dean realises why this isn't a good idea. Why his sanity, in particular, would really like those damn pills.
In the corner of the room, Chet's talking to Dr Harrison, with that big old grin on his face. So amiable. Such good friends. Harrison isn't looking at him. Isn't looking at Dean either but is doing a good job of ignoring Chet entirely.
And at all the windows, the eyeless freaks are slamming their hands against the glass.
part ii
(Dean/OMC and Dean/Sam, 18978 words, nc-17, extremely dubious consent but not between Sam and Dean)
There's something wrong in Red Haven Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but no one's going to listen to a psychopath like Dean Winchester.
They came in the body-chute. Tongues like knives and eyes like fire. Their shadows on the wall.
Here they come.
Clatter clatter clatter, run run run.
They came in the body-chute. They see you. They see you.
:::
Dr Joshua Somerville is the Chief Psychiatrist at Red Haven Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He's a very tall, very thin man and when Dean looks at him, he thinks of stick insects. His voice is very quiet and Dean is brought to see him roughly once a month. Dr Somerville expects to be the one to break Dean. Dean thinks he hasn't considered that broken things tend to have sharp edges.
Then there's Dr Angela Rechtman, who smells of salad and often has it caught between her teeth. She is not, and never has been, impressed with Dean's celebrity status. The others speak to Dean gently and carefully, as if his silence is due to fear. Not her. Dean kind of likes her for that. She wears a silver charm bracelet that Dean can hear rattling against the desk as she sets her notes out before they bring him in. Sometimes, she wears a blouse that is more see-through than she knows. If Dean felt like talking, he might tell her about it.
Newest recruit is Dr Michael Harrison. He's tall, blond and uncertain. A pair of geekboy glasses perch on the end of his nose and he's a specialist of some kind. Dean hasn't met him yet but he's seen him watching.
There's a shapeless mass of nurses in the hospital, soft as blankets and firm as tyrants. At their head is Nurse Dominque DuPleiss who is a nice lady who tells Dean what a good boy he is when he takes his medication without forcing her to have him strapped down. She has a niece in Florida who's getting married soon; Dean's seen the photos.
Nurse Lauren Fisher is a very cute redhead with an awesome rack who is totally gay. She is very unhappy in her job but only Dean can see it. She looks at Dean like there's something wrong with him. She looks at Dean like there's something wrong with him and she feels sorry for him.
Nurse Jim Hooper is ex-military yessir nosir stand up straight when you're talking to me. He has curly dark hair and he recognises Dean as trouble. That's okay because Dean recognises him as trouble too. He favours his left side and Dean suspects he has knee trouble. Dean knows Jim hears the scratching but refuses to acknowledge it.
Nurse Chet Hayes has blue eyes and a scar on his eyebrow that Dean doesn't believe he really got in a bar-fight. He weighs about 260 and it's mostly muscle. When he jerks off, he likes to make Dean suck his fingers. He has big hands that taste of the inside of surgical gloves.
:::
"How are you feeling today, Dean?"
Dean watches the ash drift onto the desk between he and Dr Somerville. On the ceiling, Mary is flopping around in the fire like a fish left in not enough water. The ash is tasteless, melts to nothing when Dean breathes it in.
"The nurses tell me you've spent a lot of time in the gym. You're looking very well. Are you thinking about trying to leave here?"
Leaving here isn't something Dean's thought about at all. He knows he has to leave here one day because they have work to do. But it's like the edge of space - what is there beyond it? And is it somewhere Dean wants to go? He's not sure it is. He thinks he might get lost in the nothingness. There used to be roads but he's not sure how to find them anymore.
"I'm hope you're not going to try to leave too soon," says Dr Somerville. "There's someone come to spend some time with you. You did a lot of very strange things before you came here and there are still a lot of people very confused about why you did them. Just like you're confused. So I hope you and Dr Harrison can try to figure it out between you."
Dean looks up from the desktop, through the silent rainfall of ash, and meets Dr Somerville's benevolent expression with a blank gaze.
:::
If you spend too long looking out of the window in the solarium, then things start looking back at you. Only they can't because they don't have eyes. They shuffle around in the glass, so close Dean expects to hear their foreheads bumping the window.
It's a shame because outside there are green and grey mountains and the sky and sometimes birds too.
And it's also a shame because if Dean isn't looking out, then he has to be looking in and there are creeping shadows in the hospital that the sun just glances over and won't touch.
Dean carefully chews the edges off a jigsaw piece until it is roughly the shape he needs and then jams it into the space. He likes his picture better than the one on the box.
:::
Normally he sees Dr Somerville about once a month. Dr Somerville is a very busy man but Dean killed lots of people in interesting ways before they caught him so Josh is no big frickin' deal to him. It was only yesterday that Dean last saw him and so he's surprised when Chet brings him back to the consultation room, expecting Dr Rechtman and kind of dreading it because the woman's a bitch.
Chet manhandles Dean into a chair when he freezes at the sight of Dr Somerville. He doesn't want to be seeing Dr Somerville now because he knows a month hasn't passed and if he lets him go screwing around with the calendar in Dean's head, Dean knows he'll get his Wednesdays confused with his Aprils.
The only thing to do when Chet gets handsy is to go limp so Dean does just that and lets Chet struggle to haul him upright in the chair, all the while conscious of Dr Somerville's scrutiny. Dean knows Chet'll get his own back sometime so he doesn’t feel guilty for showing him up.
With a serene rush of flame, Mary catches fire on the ceiling and Dean sighs. It's gonna be one of those days.
The new guy is sitting next to Dr Somerville, watching. His dark blond hair curls around his ears and he looks too young, too fresh to be let loose in a building full of psychos and whackjobs. Dean approves of Dr Somerville being here to hold his hand. Dean is a bad bad man.
"This is Dr Harrison," says Dr Somerville. "He's going to be staying here with us, talking to you on a daily basis and trying to help you understand why you did those terrible things." There's a pause, Dr Harrison offering Dean a smile that Dean studies with disinterested curiosity. Then Dr Somerville glances towards Dr Harrison and goes on. "Dean hasn't spoken since he came here, almost a year ago now. He had a few difficulties settling in but he's much calmer these days."
"Hello, Dean," says Dr Harrison. "How are you doing?"
In the lens of Dr Harrison's glasses, something moves. Dean instantly directs his gaze down to the tabletop and writes his name in the layer of ash.
:::
It's cold, and Tony - cannibal Tony, not arsonist Tony - in the room opposite, won't stop coughing. Cough cough cough, metallic and hoarse like a coin stuck in his throat.
Dean's room isn't bad. The walls are bare and there's a big bastard lock on the door. And normally Dean can stare at the pale blue paint on the walls until his mind floats off into somewhere nice and fluffy.
But tonight he's cold and underneath the sound of Tony's coughing, there's scratching at the window. It scritch-scratches until Dean rolls over and looks at his milky reflection in the glass.
:::
When Jim brings Dean in, Dr Harrison isn't sitting down. He's stood up, pacing, stupid geek-glasses dangling from his fingers. He sinks into his chair and smiles, leaning forward a little, shoulders hunched.
Jim's gentler than Chet, doesn't think Dean has a dirty cocksucking mouth like Chet does - or if he does, hasn't ever commented on it. But there's a warning in his touch. Dean knows Jim is waiting, always waiting, for the day that Dean shows his true colours, the red-black of murder and desecration.
Mary hasn't had chance to start burning before Dean leans in towards Dr Harrison.
"Look, I don't wanna make a big deal of this," he says, "but she told me to tell you shouldn't be walking around here with your eyes open."
Dean's voice sounds different in the air than it does in his head. It's been in his head for almost a year. He sounds nastier in his head, more capable. He hopes she won't have anything more to say to Dr Harrison, or that she'll find someone else to tell him. Dean doesn't wanna be talking.
Jim draws in breath and looks to Dr Harrison. Dr Harrison's mouth moves uselessly for a second and then his face melts into a smile, both triumphant and wary.
"Who's 'she'?"
"Fucker," says Dean. That's more like it. That's the voice he knows, that's the voice that's been chattering away at the back of his head.
Dr Harrison frowns at him, Dean kicks back in his chair and thinks he might have forgotten something. Something pretty important.
:::
He remembers what it is at about 3am. At least, he remembers on some fundamental level and he starts screaming for it. He's up at the door, banging his fists and screaming.
"Sammy! Where's my Sammy? Have you got my Sammy? I need my Sammy! What have you done with my Sammy? Sammysammysammy!"
He doesn't know what his Sammy is, what it does, why he needs it. Only that its absence is eating away at him. He screams for his Sammy and the pane of plexi-glass in the window rattles in sympathy.
Footsteps shudder outside, voices raised in alarm. Dean's panic spreads through the level and madness wails around him. Don't go prodding at scorpions, they get restless. Dean goes on screaming though. He's still screaming when the key turns in the lock and he's being brought down to the floor. Hands bend his arm out straight and his screams become snarls. Because where's his Sammy, goddamn it?
"Good work, Harrison," someone says. "You got him talking. Can you get him to shut up?"
Something scrapes the inside of Dean's elbow, pricks the skin.
"Hey, gently," Harrison snaps.
The world goes blue and numb, takes a step back from Dean so the darkness can jump all over him. The window's still shaking.
:::
It's not paralysis. That's what Dean thought at first and he's relieved to discover that he can still twitch and flex. Those are useful skills: twitching and flexing.
Any sense of paralysis he's feeling is probably connected to the fat straps that are pinning him flat to his bed. They don't allow much by way of movement and Dean has a vague memory of spending a lot of time drugged and strapped to his bed when he first came here. But they're memories coming out of somewhere hazy and so he can't trust himself not to be making them up, like he apparently did with a whole lot of other shit.
Irritably, Dean twitches a little harder. There is no give in the straps. It's daylight outside and everyone else is probably up and doing stuff and not strapped to beds.
"Awake now!" he calls out. Silence answers him, so he tries again, a little louder.
He keeps calling until he hears someone coming, then he falls silent and tries to look harmless. It's Chet, filling up the doorway, and Dean tenses because he doesn't like being strapped to beds when Chet is around. Call him paranoid but he thinks someone who gets off on fucking his fingers into Dean's mouth might take advantage of him being held immobile on his bed.
"That was one hell of a tantrum you threw, sweetheart," says Chet. "You gonna behave now?"
He keeps moving closer and Dean thinks about how he'd take him to pieces if he didn't have straps all over him and there wasn't still some kind of drug dead in his blood. Dean can feel his lip curling up into a feral baring of teeth.
Dr Harrison moves past Chet and smiles down at Dean. Harrison's hands twitch uselessly at his sides.
"Can we unstrap you? Not gonna make me look bad and go on a rampage the minute I let you up?"
The drug has left Dean's mouth dust-dry. Shouting is one thing but normal words are difficult. He swipes a cracked tongue over his lips and swallows hard.
"I'll be good."
Dr Harrison nods and he touches Dean on the shoulder, greatly daring, like he knows he's breaking rules. Chet makes a disapproving noise, which Dr Harrison ignores.
"Let him up," he says to Chet.
Dean likes Dr Harrison.
:::
Yellow ones are only for the morning. It's considerate of the pharmaceutical company to make the morning ones look like the sun coming up.
Blue ones are for morning, just before lunch and just before he goes to bed. They're kind of like 'greens' in as much as you have to take 'em without complaining, because they're that important. But they don't make any green tablets so Dean is fed his blues instead of greens. He's a big strong boy - he needs his blues. Blues are good, like jazz and depression.
There are pink ones too, twice a day. Little diamond-shaped ones. If you're gonna make your pink tablets into pretty shapes Dean doesn't know why they don't really go for it and make 'em heart-shaped.
White ones are all day everyday, pretty much every time Dean opens his mouth. Like oxygen. Thirsty? Take this. Hungry? Take this. Want to tear this fucking place down to rubble? Take this. The white ones are like snow inside Dean, feathery and stifling.
There used to be orange ones but Dean's such a good boy now they don't need to give him those.
He has a whole spectrum of pills and when they're all doing their thing, then the people in the glass who have frickin' great holes in their heads where their eyes should be all back off. Dean approves. Dominique gives him his little paper cup of pills and Chet waits to see if Dean's gonna misbehave, whether Chet's gonna have the chance to put his hands on Dean's face and pry his lips apart.
Dean meekly downs his medication and takes a sip of the glass of water Dominique gives him.
"That's right, sugar-lamb. They're gonna make you better if you let 'em," Dominique tells him. Chet pats him on the cheek, fingers leaving red smears on the skin.
Behind the wire grille over the television screen in the corner, the reflection of the rec room warps for a moment and then Dean can only see the reflections of the things that everyone else can see. Just as it should be.
:::
Apparently, sometime after Dean was shoved into a straitjacket, shot full of enough sedative to down a whale and then locked up in Red Haven, geek-boy glasses became a fashion article for young psychiatrists. That's the only explanation he can come up with for why Dr Harrison has the damn things when he spends more time peering over the top of them instead of through them.
Still Dr Harrison's kind of cute and definitely better company than most other things in this hospital - flesh and blood and glass - and so Dean finds it in himself to forgive him.
"So what do you want to talk about today?"
"Aren't you meant to pick the subject?" Dean says. "I might wanna talk about the best kind of swing to use when decapitating someone, or how long it takes to burn a body. I'm a sick freak."
Dr Harrison's lips twitch and he brushes his hair back behind his ears.
"That's what I've been told. Do you wanna talk about decapitation and burning bodies?"
Dean shrugs and looks up at the ceiling, waiting for Mary to appear. She's taking her time about it today. Maybe it's one of John's days. Dean hasn't had a John-day in a while, not since all that aggression and rage and the need to escape burnt out into silence. A John-day would be bad. Dean can't stand the shouting and disapproval.
"Not really." He pauses and then glances back to Dr Harrison. "Don't you think it's kinda weird about all the people with their eyes carved out of their heads?"
Something flickers in Dr Harrison's expression. A tightening, a new level of intensity. He leans a little towards Dean and a slow, lazy flare of unexpected desire curls in Dean's belly. It's only an instinctive response to Dr Harrison's dark eyes and hazelnut skin but it's nice to feel it all the same. Makes him feel more human.
"You're talking about the murders."
Dean's not. He's talking about the people who walk about the hospital when no one sane is looking. But Dr Harrison seems to know what he's talking about so Dean decides to go with it.
"What can you tell me about the murders, Dean?"
Dean shakes his head and says, "I didn't do 'em."
Dr Harrison smiles again, like he can't help it. But it's not a very happy smile. Dean wonders if maybe Dr Harrison was hoping to pin these murders on Dean, and if so, he's gonna be disappointed because Dean never did any crazy shit like that. He did a lot of crazy shit but he never cut anyone's eyes out of their head.
"Okay, today, Dean, what I need you to take away from this session is that you are not responsible for every crime in the world and anyone who acts like you are is wrong."
Yeah, Dean likes Dr Harrison. Thinks he's naïve, but likes him.
:::
"I'm saying no. You can't do this. It's too dangerous."
Sam leans in, sets about tongue-fucking Dean's mouth before he can argue. Dean's skull is cradled in Sam's hands, fingers flicking over the nape of his neck until Dean's skin prickles with need. He arches up towards Sam, reflexively spreading his legs wider as Sam moves between them.
As Sam's mouth moves over Dean's collarbone, leaving a warm, glistening trail of saliva, Dean slides his hand down Sam's spine and works his fingertips under the low-slung waistband of his jeans.
"I can handle it. People are dying. Someone's gotta do something."
Sam's fingertips dig into him, so hard Dean thinks Sam's searching for bone to get hold of. He grinds his thumb along Dean's collarbone where his mouth has left wet, red marks.
"Not letting you."
"I'll be in and out before you know it," Dean says, and it's a promise.
There's no bruise left on Dean's collarbone. It faded away while he was in a padded room, drooling on himself. And there's no Sammy to put a new one there. Dean stares at himself in the mirror and rubs at the thin shape of the bone until it's good and red. The new bruise is what's important, not the scritch-scratch of something in the mirror.
:::
According to the box, the jigsaw was meant to be a cheery picture of a house by a lake with a few geese wandering by outside. Dean prefers his use of the pieces, which makes an admittedly jagged and abstract interpretation of something, well, something big, green and blue. He's not sure what it is but he likes it.
Lauren brought him a new jigsaw puzzle this morning. This one wants to be an exciting scene of two fighter jets but Dean thinks it'll end up being something grey.
He sets to work straight away, tipping the pieces out on the tabletop and trying to decide on a centre piece.
"Hmm. Didn't have you down as a jigsaw type."
Dean grins up at Dr Harrison and then goes back to his puzzle. He doesn't comment when Harrison takes the seat across from him, though he wants to warn him that sitting there will leave him facing the windows and no one wants to see that. Still, it'll be interesting to see what Harrison makes of the eyeless freaks in the glass. 'Cos they'll be looking at him. Dean knows they will. Won't be able to look away.
"Come to play with the inmates?"
Harrison glances out across the room of patients, some silent and some exceptionally noisy. The nurses are watchful and patient, stepping in to supervise only when things get out of hand. Harrison looks back at Dean and smiles, cheeks colouring a little.
"Actually I came to play with- came to see you."
Dean sniggers and goes back to his puzzle, giving Harrison some time to flush even more brilliantly than before.
"Dude, you do remember I'm a psycho mass murderer, right? Possibly a necrophile too, I'm still waiting for you lot to get your heads out of your asses and tell me what all the grave desecration is about."
"I know who you are," Harrison says and he's serious. There's no playing, no flirting. He knows who Dean is and he's still sitting at the table.
“Careful of that one, Doctor,” says Chet, wandering over and grinning at the two of them. “He’s a spitter.”
He’s not sure why Chet’s being weird and warning people about Dean. Dr Harrison knows what Dean is, he’s read the notes. And Chet’s never worried about getting up close to Dean - and Dean’s mouth - whenever he gets chance and honestly, it’s been a long while since Dean spat at anyone. Not like he’d ever spat at anyone who didn’t deserve it anyway. But if Chet wants to be weird, Dean can be weird right back.
“Got a fine set of teeth on me too,” he says and snaps his jaw meaningfully at Chet.
“Oho! We gonna have to get you a muzzle, sweetheart?”
Chet’s laughter seems pretty genuine but when he pinches Dean’s jaw, squeezing his lips into a pout that is apparently meant playfully, it’s just a little too rough to be comfortable. Harrison raises an eyebrow at Chet and Chet’s hand drops. His attitude is more disgruntled than chastened though.
The silence is slightly awkward and Dean goes back to his puzzle. The window whispers to him and he considers a moment before obeying. He jerks his head towards Harrison.
“Hey, Chet, tell him about the body-chute.”
Chet’s fingers curl loosely about the baton that hangs at his hip. The baton is thin and white like a corpse's finger, and it leaves bruises that are bone-deep. Dean’s a good boy now, open up, suck, moan, and it’s a long while since Dean felt the dull thump of it. The easy, graceful grip Chet’s got on it still makes him slump a little further down in his chair though.
“Now how the hell did you hear about that?”
His tone is curious, wondering, but Dean still doesn’t straighten up. Chet can croon the sweetest nothings you ever heard, and all the while be trying to put a few dents in your spine. Dean can feel Chet’s eyes on him and he wishes the window had kept her goddamn mouth shut because he doesn’t like it when Chet’s watching him. He thinks too damn loud and all of it’s about what he can make out of Dean.
“What’s a body-chute?” Harrison says, looking between them with the wide-eyed expression of a kid eager to learn.
“It’s where the bodies get taken out,” says Chet and he grudgingly takes his eyes off Dean. “When this place was built in the thirties, it had a body-chute. Long tunnel underground where you wheel the bodies out to the hearse, so the other patients don’t see ‘em. Hasn’t been in use for years. Gets mentioned at staff induction, just as a security point but…” He looks back to Dean, still with that speculative look in his pale eyes.
“What about the body-chute?” Harrison says to Dean, all mild and gentle. God, yes, Dean likes Dr Harrison. Even with the window whispering and snickering over there, and the plastic glasses of water on each of the tables taking up the conversation, Dean gets a little hung up on Dr Harrison.
“That’s where they came in,” Dean tells him.
Chet laughs again and ruffles Dean’s hair, proprietary, like Dean’s a dog that’s done a neat trick.
“I think it’s time for someone to have some more candy.”
An openly irritated look from Dr Harrison is enough to shut Chet right up, but it takes a moment before he removes his hand from Dean’s head. He slides it away over the curve of his skull, fingertips resting briefly on the back of his neck, and Dean doubts Dr Harrison thinks much of it but Dean knows what he’s being told.
“Where who came in, Dean?” says Dr Harrison.
Dean’s reflection slithers over the cluster of metal keys that are clipped to Chet’s waistband. And then it’s not his face looking back at him, not anything looking back at him at all but two gaping, bloody holes where eyes used to be. He looks back down at his puzzle and determinedly forces a piece into place.
He doesn’t look up when Harrison leaves but he hears Harrison’s voice, deep and displeased, talking to Chet.
“Are you always so hands-on with the patients?”
He doesn’t hear Chet’s answer, not right then anyway.
:::
Underneath him, the floor is cold, hard tile. Dean’s on his knees and the regulation hospital sweatpants are worn too thin to offer any protection. This is the first time Chet has ever fucked his mouth. His cock is bigger than his fingers and he keeps shoving it in, until drool is dribbling from the corners of Dean’s mouth. Tears gather in his eyes and when he blinks, a fat teardrop rolls slowly down his cheek. Chet thinks he’s crying and laughs at him. Dean’s not crying. It’s just it’s kind of difficult to breathe with Chet’s cock nudging the back of his throat, like Chet wants to slip it further down.
It won’t be long, Dean decides after a moment’s dispassionate analysis, that Chet’s cock will manage to lodge itself in his throat and when Chet comes, Dean’s going to have no choice but to drink it. That’s the kind of thought that does nothing for Dean’s unwillingness to vomit. He hates vomiting. Hates the sound of it, the loss of control, the tug-tug-tug in his belly.
Chet hooks his thumb in the corner of Dean’s mouth, alongside the spit-slick length of his cock, and uses his grip on Dean’s jaw to pry his mouth wider open. He tilts Dean’s face back until Dean’s spine is spiking with pain and Chet’s pretty much riding Dean’s face, grinding down onto him. It fucking hurts and if Dean didn’t have a mouth shoved full of cock he’d tell Chet to ease up a bit.
And is it paranoid of him to think that Chet might not listen?
“Such a slut. Everyone thinks you’re a monster. They’re all so scared of you. But I know what you are. Just a slut. Just need a good deep dicking, don't you? Keep you good and full of cock and you're just a pussycat."
Chet groans as his cock makes it down Dean's throat and Dean gives up on ever breathing again.
:::
John is unsettlingly quiet. He stays in the corner of the room, watching Harrison like he doesn't know what to make of him. Dean sits up straight in his chair and keeps a civil tongue in his head, doesn't give John any reason to shout.
"Do you remember before you came here?" Harrison says.
It's a tough one, because Dean doesn't want to lie but it's not like he can talk about the Family Business to a complete stranger. John'd string him up for that. Rule number one, don't talk about the family business. Rule number one-a, don't talk about the family business to people in the mental health profession.
So he settles for a nod and that earns him a smile from Harrison.
"What do you remember before you came here?"
How can he answer that? He knows things are different to the way the doctors'd have it. He knows he can't tell 'em that because that kind of talk always ends up with Dean doped so high he can see the tops of the clouds. He remembers a lot but it's difficult to figure out what he's remembering and what he's dreaming (nightmaring?). There are things in his head that clearly should not be there. Things too horrible to be allowed to be true. And there are other things, things like watching porn on the motel cable while Sammy takes a shower, and cheeseburgers, and Led Zeppelin. Good things.
"Impala," he says finally. He clears his throat and speaks again. "My '67 Impala. My baby girl. I remember my Impala."
Harrison's quiet for a second and then raises an eyebrow.
"You remember a car? Nothing else? Nothing more significant?"
It sounds a little accusatory coming from a psychiatrist. Aren't they meant to be freaking neutral and impartial? Besides, not like Dean's gonna tell Harrison about his Sammy. He shrugs and doesn't answer.
John nods at him from his corner. Dean's done well. He's looked out for his Sammy and he hasn't broken under interrogation. His heart swells a little with the sense of a job well done.
:::
Interesting folks live in Red Haven Hospital.
Dean hasn't made 'friends'. Friendships aren't encouraged, just like kicking and biting and name-calling aren't. Friendships are harmful because everyone's just a different kind of toxic. Like bottles of poison getting mixed together and coming up with something even better at twisting you inside out.
Still, doesn't mean they don't talk. Dean's been listening for ages. That's what he's done most of in Red Haven: listened. Listened to the patients whisper amongst themselves when the nurses were over the other side of the room. Listened to the doctors when they mistook muteness for deafness. Listened to the people in the glass, listened to her.
And now, between them, Dr Harrison and her have shaken Dean's voice loose and he can talk.
Plenty of people to talk to, plenty of things to say.
Candice is a good-looking woman with light brown hair and long-lashed dark eyes. When she found out her husband was having an affair, she killed her babies. Only reason she's not lurking around in a flimsy white dress on the edge of a highway somewhere is that after she'd wrung their tiny little necks, she didn't kill herself, but instead took it out on the person really to blame. Whatever they buried of her husband, it's not all of him. Only the bits they could find.
Dean doesn't approve of baby-killers, generally has high expectations for mothers, but Candy's a nutcase and Dean's sympathetic to that, even if he's not to people putting their hands around kids' throats and squeezing 'til they turn blue.
She coils her hair about a fingertip and tugs, experimentally. Glances up at Dean from under sweeping lashes.
"The moths are on the mirror," she says.
Dean nods and considers his jigsaw so far. It's very grey and there's not a fighter jet in sight. Then he realises that Candice is looking a little anxious so he smiles reassuringly.
"They can't find her, not so long as she stays under the glass. The reflections confuse them."
"You think?" says Candice, snapping a few strands of hair from her scalp.
"Sure. She told me."
Candy rubs her fingertips together, letting the hairs she's plucked drift to the floor. Her nails are blunt and rounded, clipped so far down her fingers it must be painful. Somehow, the way she moves her fingers, you'd think she was still sporting a full French manicure. Dean bets her nails were wicked sharp when she killed her kids.
"That new doctor, the guy who talks to you."
Dean raises an eyebrow.
"What about him?"
Thin pink lips make for an oddly cute smile on Candice's face. There's almost something girlish about the look she gives Dean, like this is all one big sick slumber party.
"He looks sweet. Is he?"
For someone so hot, Candice is totally failing to turn Dean on. Perhaps his dick is broken.
:::
His dick is not broken.
He wakes up hard and thinking of Dr Harrison's geekboy glasses, his soft low voice and the stupid curls of his hair about his ears.
His dick is so not broken.
:::
Sam lays the folders down on the table and Dean turns away from the TV to give them his full attention. Sam glances up at him and flips each of the folders open. He pushes his bangs out of his eyes and taps the oldest looking one - paper all crinkled and golden-brown.
"Red Haven. Built in 1932. Nothing too eventful the first few years but… housing the kind of patients they were, still a pretty colourful history. Then, in 1938, the first body is found. Patient's name was Elijah Giggs, serial rapist. He went missing from his locked room sometime on the Friday night, his body was found Saturday afternoon. Back in his room, dead, eyes cut out."
Sam looks back up at Dean to check he's taking this in.
"Eleven more victims over a period of almost seventy years. All missing for a short period of time then returned to their rooms with the eyes missing. Last one happened three weeks ago."
Picking at the last of his nachos, Dean nods slowly. He wipes his greasy hands on the motel bedcover and gets to his feet. He moves to Sam's side and glances over the folders with him. One of the photos catches his attention. It's grainy and the contrast's taken up way too high. He tilts his head as he studies it.
"How were the eyes removed?"
"Scratched out."
"I know about the murders," Dean says.
Dr Harrison pauses, uncertain how to handle the abrupt cut-off. But he nods and smiles. Dean relaxes at the smile. It's a little boy's smile, cautious and innocent.
"Okay. Do you remember where you heard about them? Who you heard about them from?"
All of the comfortable, contented feeling Dean was enjoying - the mild sense of arousal he gets from these sessions with Harrison all to himself - disappears abruptly. Sammy's name does not get mentioned, not to these people. Not the nutjobs in the wards. Not to the people in the glass. They don't have his Sammy and Dean's sure as hell not going to bring their attention to him now.
Dr Harrison picks up on the abrupt change in Dean's demeanour and holds a hand up to keep Jim from coming any closer. Dean getting all narrow-eyed and hostile always puts Jim on alert.
Dean tries to settle again but even thinking about Sammy while he's letting Harrison prod and poke at him sends a prickle of unease down his spine.
"All right. We'll leave that. Can we talk about how you came to be here?"
"Probably something to do with the number of people I killed. Not to mention no one was too keen on the way I killed 'em."
Harrison leans forward and looks Dean in the eye. Which is so not fair because he has big dark eyes that Dean is a total sucker for.
"They brought you here because they think you're not well. That you did those things not because you meant to but because you're not well."
"Batshit crazy," Dean clarifies helpfully.
There's no answering twitch of Harrison's lips. Dean likes making Harrison smile and he hates it that Harrison is insisting on being serious and intense.
"Dean, do you really believe you're batshit crazy?"
He's got no right asking. He's got no right to be trying to confuse Dean like this. Harrison won't quit staring at him and Dean shies away. He looks over his shoulder at Jim, cutting Harrison out as much as he can.
"I want my meds now. They'll make me better if I let 'em."
:::
Mary was not in the consultation room but she is waiting on the ceiling when Dean gets to his room that night. Her body is a dark shape but Dean knows it's her. He lets the nurses lay him down on his bed, watches his mom and listens to the rattle of the door being locked before the nurses retreat.
Beyond the door, the nurses scuff down the corridor and there's a brief raising of voices as someone has a weird moment and needs to be restrained. Distant curses and snarling break down into stifled wet breaths. The nurses' voices are calm and efficient.
There's silence in Dean's room.
And then the rush of the flame as Mary burns. She smiles at him through the licking heat. She can burn and burn for hours. She's still burning when Chet comes into his room.
Chet cuffs Dean's wrists to the bed. They've come back to Chet taking a few precautions now they've moved on to Chet sticking his cock in Dean's mouth. First time he stuck his fingers in Dean's mouth while he fucked his fist, Chet had kept a syringe of sedative close by. Dean had been too out of it to consider biting, even if he did keep trying to spit out the foul taste of surgical gloves. More often Chet did it though, the more reckless he became, like it was part of the thrill.
Still, Dean doesn't blame him for being a little edgier about putting his dick so close to Dean's teeth than he was his fingers. Lose a finger or two and you can cope. Lose your cock, well, might as well take a bullet to the brainpan in Dean's opinion. 'Course, it's pretty insulting to realise Chet considers Dean toothless in pretty much every sense aside the literal. Drugs'll do that to you.
Dean reckons Chet's probably got a syringe tucked away somewhere. He doesn't blame him. Dean's getting a little fed up with this. He's pretty sure this isn't making him better, unless the FDA now qualifies Chet's come as medication. Somehow he doubts it.
Taking a firm grip of Dean's chin, Chet turns his head on the pillow and yanks his jaw down. Dean watches as Chet hooks his cock out, already straining and wet at the head, fists it a few quick strokes, then pushes it towards Dean's mouth. Dean goes on watching even as his lips close about the width of him and Chet bucks his hips.
He fucks Dean's mouth with quick, deep thrusts and all Dean has to do is keep his mouth wrapped about him and take it. Short, breathy grunts make it past Chet's gritted teeth and he shoves harder, hips jerking in short, sharp rhythm.
Dean goes on watching and Mary's ash drifts down like dead leaves around them.
"What you looking at, baby?" Chet hisses. "You like this? Yeah, you do. Like me fucking your slutty mouth. Want me to fuck you up the ass sometime too? Yeah, you'd like that. Take it like a whore, wouldn't you?"
When Chet comes, it's over Dean's face. Dribbling over his swollen lips and down his chin, dripping onto his throat. Chet uses the hem of Dean's t-shirt to wipe most of it away but Dean's still tasting it, still feeling it on his skin after Chet's gone and the door's locked again.
And Mary's still burning.
:::
Gym-time is when Dean's body tries to remind Dean's mind who he is. It chatters at him with questions about how fast do you think you could you run if you were chasing a werewolf? and isn't headbutting just the best thing ever? That look of surprise on people's face because no one ever expects a good old-fashioned headbutting, don't you love that?
Gym-time is Dean's reward for playing nicely and taking his meds. Dr Somerville doesn't like letting him have it. He wants the knife blunt rather than sharper than ever. Tough luck. Dean behaves, Dean takes it all, licks his lips and doesn't scream the place down. Dean is owed his freaking gym-time.
In the gym, Dean is grace and power and sleek-drawn lines. In the gym, Jim watches him with cool appraisal and Chet shifts from foot to foot. Dean's used to the audience. There are long mirrors on the walls and they're always full of shuffling crowds. Dean doesn't know what they're staring at, they haven't got any fucking eyes. But they mill about in the glass, press their faces up against it and leave red smears from the gaping holes their eyes used to live in.
Only the shadows make 'em back off and Dean's not a fan of those either. It's like the sun going behind a cloud you know it's never coming out from. The freaks scatter and Dean slams his hand down on the control pad for the running machine. Turns about to Chet and Jim.
"I'm done," he says. "Get me outta here."
:::
Lauren's either a saint or as screwed in the head as the patients. She did some course or something and now she promotes this art therapy she's in to. Which basically means that every sucker she can rope into it ends up scribbling away at paper with crayons. Crayons since that nasty incident with that guy trying to stab the colouring pencil through his tongue. Arsonist Tony had bet cannibal Tony five bucks that the guy wouldn't be able to get the pencil clean through his tongue. The nurses had intervened so the bet had been called off, which is just as well because Dean doesn't think Tony's good for the money, either of 'em.
This session, Dean has drawn a big yellow spiral. Two big yellow spirals. And a gun. It could possibly be a dick but he intended it to be a gun. It's hard to get those finer details when you're working in chubby crayon. He wonders if these things get analysed, whether Rechtman and Somerville are gonna stare at this for hours and figure out what exactly is wrong with Dean. Aside from the fact his interpretation of a gun looks unsettlingly like a dick. And even Dean can do the brainwork on that one.
Lauren's collecting the sheets, admiring them and asking questions, while Chet follows along beside her and collects the crayons. They're talking together and when they get close enough, Dean strains to hear what they're saying.
"I think you're jealous," Lauren says.
"What the hell do you mean?"
Chet's tone, brutal and brisk, causes her to stop what she's doing. She glances back at him and gives him a confused but indulgent smile.
"He's younger than you, he's a highly-recommended psychiatrist and he probably earns three times as much as you do. You're just the muscle. And it's not like he's lacking in that."
"Oh you've gotta be kidding me! You're not getting wet for that jerk too, are you? He's already got Rechtman panting like a bitch in heat. And Dominique was trying to pinch his cheeks in the staffroom at break."
Lauren pauses to coo over Candy's picture of a vase of flowers - Candy's always drawing flowers - while Chet unfurls Candy's fingers and takes her crayons away from her. Then Lauren shrugs and carries on the conversation. They're only a few tables away from Dean now.
"You gotta love his dimples, Chet." She laughs at the expression on Chet's face. "C'mon, he's totally not my type. Far too much equipment, if you know what I'm saying."
When it's his turn, Dean hands her his picture and shoves the crayons across the table at Chet.
"And this here's his number one fanboy," says Chet. "The reason we're lucky enough to have the wonderful Dr Harrison with us. Y'know, Winchester, they sent Harrison to us just so he could be your special friend. Aren’t you a lucky boy?"
Dean raises his gaze to him, full of blank contempt.
"C'mon, move it along," Jim calls towards them.
Chet throws Dean one last unloving look before he moves onto the next table but Lauren lingers a little, touching the yellow whorls Dean's drawn. She glances between him and his 'art' and she offers a tentative smile.
"This is really interesting, Dean," she says. "Can you tell me what you've drawn?"
"Eyes," Dean says, because he thinks it's best to leave the cock-or-gun out of the discussion. Lauren's not into that sort of thing.
She hesitates and considers the whorls for a moment longer.
"They're yellow. Yellow eyes?"
"Yeah. Gateways to the soul. Except I shot him and his soul went all sparky and the son of a bitch is dead now. That was for our mom."
Lauren gets that look which makes Dean feel itchy and stupid, like he's got this huge gaping wound somewhere and Lauren knows he's not gonna make it and Dean's blabbering on like an idiot who doesn't realise his guts are hanging out.
Lauren nods and presses her lips together. Then she has to move on real quick.
:::
"I found something you might be interested in," says Harrison.
There's a lot about Harrison Dean's interested in. Like whether he'd let Dean lick those cute dimples he gets when he smiles and how he'd look with his tie a little looser and his shirt a little rumpled and what that skin just where his jaw meets his neck smells like. None of these are relevant questions so Dean tries to look attentive.
Harrison moves Dean's casefile over to the side of the desk and brings the folder out from underneath it. He flips it open.
"In 1937, a fifty-eight year old woman called Amelia Morrow came to Red Haven. This was after she'd had a breakdown of some kind and murdered her husband and their daughter. She'd gouged their eyes out with her bare hands."
Harrison waits to see Dean's response to this. Chet makes a noise like clearing his throat, which Dean knows means he doesn't approve. But then Chet doesn't approve of Harrison at all. He reaches new levels of assholish behaviour when he fucks around with Dean after Harrison sessions.
When Dean doesn't say anything, Harrison flicks through a few pages and pulls a photo loose. The paperclip skitters across the table and Chet makes another, louder noise of disapproval. Harrison shoots him a look but removes the paperclip from Dean's reach.
He sets the photo in front of Dean.
If she didn't have her eyes open, Dean might recognise her. He doesn't know how Dr Harrison is going to feel about him graffitting his pictures though. Hesitantly, he reaches out for Harrison's pen. Harrison lets him take it but Chet takes a step towards the table.
"He's not allowed pens, Dr Harrison," he says, sounding snappish and put-upon.
Dean figures Harrison is the one with a fuckload of qualifications and if he's happy for Dean to have the pen then who cares what a grunt like Chet thinks? But he withdraws his hand all the same. He takes a blank piece of paper instead and smirks at Chet.
"A sheet of paper's not a lethal weapon, right? Or are you gonna be pissing your pants if I'm allowed one of those?"
Harrison's lips do that half-smile thing again and Dean figures that whatever Chet decides to stick in him and how hard he decides to do it, that little half-smile is worth it.
He covers the top half of Amelia's face, so he's just looking at that sad mouth, sagging and quivery like it's been drawn by a child, and nods. Looks up at Harrison and nods again.
"That's her."
:::
It's not Chet. Too tall and lean to be Chet. Dean curls in on himself because if it's not Chet then it's someone else and there's too much in this hospital that Dean doesn't think he can handle touching him. Dean hides his head beneath his pillow to shut out the window's whispering which is so loud now it's like a little storm in the corner of the room. If I can't see you, you can't see me, he thinks to the figure. But he knows it doesn't work like that. The window tells him that, and so do the mirrors and the reflections in the glass.
After carefully closing the door behind itself, the figure crosses the room to Dean's bedside. Its shadow falls over him and Dean squeezes his eyes shut.
"Dean? Are you awake?"
Dr Harrison.
Dean sits up and stares at him. Harrison smiles at him but it's tense and he keeps glancing over at the door.
"You shouldn't be here," Dean tells him.
"I had to talk to you without them listening. Now this is important, Dean, so you gotta listen to me."
"You shouldn't be here."
Harrison's face goes pinched and anxious. He leans a little closer and Dean catches the scent of him and starts to think that maybe it's all right to have Harrison here after all. If Chet turns up, Dean can just tell him he's got Harrison to handle those deep dicking needs he apparently has.
"Those drugs they're giving you, they're not helping you. You don't need them. You've gotta stop taking them."
Those pills are going to make Dean better if he lets them. And once Dean is better he can go find his Sammy. Harrison's cute and all and Dean likes him better than just about anyone else in the hospital but he can't be taking Dean's pills away.
Harrison sees Dean's face crumple and he lays his palm against his cheek, leans in closer yet and for a crazy moment Dean thinks he's gonna kiss him. Dean could totally live with being kissed by Harrison. He bets he's a good kisser, slow and deep when you need it and all snarly and bitey when that's what you're aching for.
"I'm here to help you and I'm telling you: those drugs are not what you need. You gotta work with me on this."
Dean gets the sudden compulsion to suck on Harrison's tongue. This is what they mean when they say Dean gets inappropriate urges. He wonders if it'd be even more inappropriate to put his hands down Harrison's pants and find his cock, jerk him off good and hard 'til he comes all over his expensive suit. Dean thinks he'd look even better all fucked-out.
"Are you listening to me?" Harrison demands.
"Not really. I'm thinking about how much I'd like to be licking your come off my fingers."
Harrison's jaw goes slack. Eyes wide. Gateways to the soul, y'know and she's told Dean before about not letting Harrison wander around with his eyes open. He gets this awesome dazed look and Dean licks his lips.
"Jesus, Dean… do you even know what you do to me?"
He studies Dean through the darkness and then makes a decision. He swoops in and crushes his mouth to Dean's. He presses hard against him, catching the back of Dean's neck and pulling him into it, while he shoves his tongue between Dean's lips. He keeps moving forward until Dean's pushed onto his back and Harrison's moving over him. It's the good kind of scary, like losing yourself in so much awesome you know it doesn't matter that you're never coming back.
Dean wraps Harrison's tie about his hand and drags him closer until Harrison's body entirely covers his. Harrison's kissing is hungry and desperate and Dean meets each kiss with a need he didn't know he was feeling. Harrison's thumb keeps moving over Dean's cheekbone in a really distracting stroking gesture and Dean wants to push into it because it feels really good but he likes Harrison's mouth on his.
Someone passes by in the corridor outside and Dean jerks away. Harrison makes a small, plaintive noise and tries to chase after his mouth.
"You shouldn't be here," Dean says. Harrison's still sprawled over him, breathless and flushed, and that doesn't make it particularly easy for Dean's brain to take over the thinking from his cock. "If Chet finds you in here you'll get into trouble. They'll make you leave."
Harrison's brows draw together and he shakes his head.
"Why would Chet find us?"
"If he comes in!"
Harrison pushes up onto his elbows and stares at Dean.
"Why would he be coming in?"
Well that's a conversation that Dean doesn't want to have. So he just shoves at Harrison's shoulder again until he gets the message and gets off Dean.
"I'm crazy, dude. You don't wanna be in here with me. C'mon, you gotta go."
Harrison catches him and Dean wriggles awkwardly because he doesn't like the strength in Harrison's grip. He'd had Harrison down as fit but not fit and the strength in his hands makes Dean uncomfortable. Harrison's jaw has gone tight, all 'don’t mess with me'. Does no one in this goddamn hospital realise that Dean is a bad bad man for fuck's sake? Where do all these pricks get off on intimidating him and getting in his space?
"Why would he be coming in?" He frowns when all Dean does is pull an irritable face. "Look, we'll talk about it later. But just, just try to stop the drugs. Yeah? For me?"
After he's gone, the window stops shrieking at Dean and Dean can jerk off in peace.
:::
Now, correct him if he's wrong, but Dean's pretty sure Harrison shouldn't be taking it so easily in his stride. Harrison and Dean made out last night - Harrison broke a whole load of rules, came to Dean's room, told him not to take his meds and they made out. Does that not deserve some kind of flush in the cheeks when he sees Dean?
Hell, before Sammy made everyone else drop out of the equation, Dean used to hook up with people all the time and even he's feeling a little hot under the collar at seeing Harrison!
But no, Harrison's the same as ever. Maybe there's a hint of something more skittish in the way he's acting but there are no lingering looks or accidental touching. Dean feels cheated, which puts him in a bad mood. He should make more of an impression than this.
"Now," Harrison says, "next week, you're going to see Dr Somerville-"
"Why?"
Dr Harrison's expression wavers, as if he recognises the note in Dean's voice that is warning that Dean's planning on being difficult.
"It's government funding that pays for my placement here. It's important that they know these sessions are helping you."
"What if they're not?"
That wipes the smile from Harrison's face and obscurely, Dean feels like an asshole. Harrison looks down at his notepad in front of him, picks up his pen and then puts it down again. He looks up again at Dean and he doesn't even need to say the words but Dean hears them all the same. I'm doing my best.
Poor kid probably is. What the hell kind of fucked up government sends someone as fresh and naïve as Dr Michael Harrison to wade around in the shithole that is Dean's psyche?
"They'll terminate funding and call me back," Harrison says.
"You never ask me why," Dean says. "You never ask me about my mom or my dreams. You just… you talk about murders with me and ask me what I remember and you-"
Remembering Jim's presence in the room, Dean slumps back in his chair and wipes his hand through his hair. He lets out a breath and rolls his shoulders, willing the ache away.
"So, tell me what I gotta say to keep you here."
The slight tug of a smile at the corners of Harrison's lips is enough to make Dean feel forgiven.
"Well, if you could avoid suggesting that I coached you, that might help."
Dean smirks at him, and there it is: the faintest hint of a flush.
"I'll be subtle," Dean promises him.
:::
Turns out, Dean is a remarkably subtle person. Who knew? And after something like a year, Dominique's eyes aren't quite as watchful. She gives Dean his little cup of pills and watches to make sure he tilts his head back and his throat rolls, but she doesn't insist on checking inside his mouth.
Dean's a good boy and he knows the pills'll make him better if he lets 'em. Except, Dr Harrison says they won't and so Dean's not actually swallowing them anymore. He carries the pills under his tongue until he can find somewhere to lose them. First time was a bitch but Harrison's around a lot now and he ends up taking them away for Dean.
It's a big risk for Harrison and Dean's not sure what Harrison's getting out of it. Dean's a fine piece of ass, sure, but he refuses to believe Harrison couldn't find some that's - all right maybe not as nice but - nice enough that isn't currently institutionalised for an indefinite period of time due to assorted homicidal craziness.
Two days later and Dean realises why this isn't a good idea. Why his sanity, in particular, would really like those damn pills.
In the corner of the room, Chet's talking to Dr Harrison, with that big old grin on his face. So amiable. Such good friends. Harrison isn't looking at him. Isn't looking at Dean either but is doing a good job of ignoring Chet entirely.
And at all the windows, the eyeless freaks are slamming their hands against the glass.
part ii