3. Orange Ball of Pain

Dean presses his forehead against the wall of the shower and tries to breathe slowly. 

He’d taken a chance and turned the tap over to warm a few minutes ago, unable to stomach the sensation of being cold again as he’d stood under the icy spray. Even though doing so can get him beat, he can’t make himself regret it as the water pounds down on his shoulders, soaks through him. The chill in his bones that’s been there for days begins to fade away, and when he finally stops shivering, he feels so lightheaded that he wants to drop down to the tile and go to sleep right there.

He won’t cry. He won’t. Why should he? He’s alone. He’s inside. He’s not thirsty, and his belly is full for the first time in he’s not even sure how long; he’s showering in warm water and he’s actually using soap and his new owner hasn’t even hit him yet. This is as good as he’s had it in a long fucking time and he’s not going to waste a second by being a pathetic little bitch. 

His legs are well and truly shaking now, hardly holding him up, and he finally relents and slides down the wall to kneel inside the shower. The glass surrounding the stall is clear, unobstructed, and he’d crammed himself in the corner when he’d first gotten in, facing away from it so he wouldn’t feel so exposed – like it made any difference. The steam from the hot water has created a small barrier now, though he knows it’s just an illusion of privacy. 

Unable to bring himself to get down to scrubbing like he’s supposed to, like his new master told him to, he still grits his teeth and holds his tender wrists under the jet and winces at the sting. The water drains away rust colored. He hates how filthy he is. Dirty, soiled, inside and out. 

Castiel Novak has owned him for a grand total of five hours. 

Dean is still trying to wrap his head around why. The dude is obviously loaded. He could afford anyone he wanted to buy. Someone well trained, or at least someone fresh. But the alpha hadn’t even inspected him, hadn’t asked any questions. 

He’d been led out by the guards with a leash and made to kneel at the alpha’s feet, wrists cuffed behind his back as per usual, as though he could do any real damage with them free. Under normal circumstances, hands would have grabbed him, taken off his clothes, maneuvered his chin – things that have happened to him hundreds of times. He’d been too tired to put up his token fight, for once, drained from his ordeal in Hell and the subsequent sleepless, hungry nights. 

The most he’d been able to do is hope that the alpha would make his rejection quick so he could try and get some sleep back in his little holding cell. After all, it’s not like he’s good for much – though, from the little he’d been able to hear through the sound of his own pounding heart, the handler at the auction house had certainly tried to stress his expertise as a whore. Not to mention his carefully honed proficiency at taking a beating. As if both those things weren’t painfully obvious to anyone who’d bothered to look at his file, or at him. 

But, in the end, hardly a second had passed after the handler had stopped talking before the alpha agreed to purchase, no inspection needed. At the time, even through his terror, Dean had thought him a sucker for being duped by the auction house, by the seller’s claims that he was trained and eager. 

Trained, sure. Alastair had more than seen to that. But eager? No. 

But his bravado had vanished pretty quickly. He’d been ordered to his feet, and even though he’d tried, he couldn’t quite get his legs to listen to him. He’d been too dizzy – from hunger and thirst and exhaustion, and from fear of the man that would soon own him. The handler had hauled him up by the front of his collar and his vision had whited out at the agony of pressure on the back of his bruised neck –

And the alpha had growled. 

Possessive, already. The handler had dropped him like a hot pan and he’d huddled right there at the alpha’s feet, too lightheaded and too grateful that the collar was no longer pressed into his nape to do anything else. 

The man had continued to snap at the handlers and he’d been given paperwork faster than Dean had ever seen before. What would normally take hours of processing was done in ten minutes, and in all that time, no one else had touched him. Usually, they would have put him in some kind of holding room to be cleaned and threatened and, typically, roughed up one last time while they processed everything – but apparently no one had been brave enough to get that close to the simmering alpha. Castiel himself had knelt down and unlocked his handcuffs after a barked order for a key and a few tense minutes, but Dean had been too scared to let his hands fall from behind his back and too bewildered to thank the alpha like he probably should have.

Instead, he’d stayed down, curled with his head on the floor and had tried to breathe, just enough awareness to wonder why the fuck someone so obviously powerful wanted him of all slaves. Then he’d heard the price the alpha was paying for him and it made a little more sense.

Dean knows that he flushed red when he’d heard that low number. Pathetically low. He knows exactly why he isn’t valued for much – not anymore – but it had still stung. For every year in the trade, for everything that has been done to him and every consequence he’s brought upon himself, his value has decreased dramatically. 

It’s hard not to remember what they’d paid for him originally. It’s always felt vaguely stupid to be proud of the number, but now it sits on his chest like a heavy weight. Mocking him. Reminding him of all that had been taken from him, of how worthless he is now. He rests his head on his hands, tries to silence the voice in his head that’s screaming all the ways he’s a piece of shit.

There’s a sound behind him. 

He’s on his feet in an instant and screaming at his legs to keep him upright, blood rushing in his ears as he backs against into the corner, but the alpha doesn’t wrench the door open like Dean thought he would. Instead, the soft sound comes again. And again. A rhythmic tapping. 

He’s…  knocking?  

“Dean? I’ve got some clean clothes here for you. Is it alright if I open the door and set them on the counter?”

Dean’s voice is gone. He hardly understands what the man is saying, he’s so scared. He’d been so stupid to take his clothes off and give his master easy access, stupider to turn the water to warm. The condensation on the glass will give him away in an instant. And the blanket the alpha gave him is on the floor. The floor. The realization almost makes him scramble out of the shower and onto his knees right there on the bathroom rug; he would do that if he could get his legs to fucking listen to him. But apparently his sense of self preservation isn’t as strong as his need to freeze and hide. 

He’s a rabbit and his master is the hawk. Hopeless prey that already knows it’s been spotted, food for a bird that’s too keen to be fooled by camouflage and far too close to outrun. He cowers into the weeds and hides anyway – what else is a rabbit supposed to do?

There’s a pause, and the alpha tries again. “Dean?”

He opens his mouth but no sound comes out, and eventually his master cracks open the door and Dean does slide back to his knees right there on the tile, legs weak as gelatin, his hand white on the shower bar above him. He can’t breathe. The hot water that felt so good moments ago now feels like it could boil him alive. 

He can’t see the alpha through the fog on the glass, save for blurry, indistinct shapes, and he prays the same is true on his master’s side of things. 

“Are you alright in there?” 

It takes a long time for the question to sink in, to fall into an order that makes sense. There’s something like concern in the man’s voice, and Dean’s not in the right headspace to determine whether it’s genuine. 

“Yes,” he finally chokes out, not even sure if the man can hear his weak voice over the sound of the water.

The alpha clears his throat. “I brought you some clothes. They’re going to be big on you, I think, but it’s all I have right now. I hope that’s alright. Do you… do you want to keep your old clothes?”

Those clothes aren’t really his. He’s had them for a grand total of a few days, because before then he’d had no reason to wear anything at all. He’d been miserably grateful for them when a guard had thrown them his way, even though the beta had jeered at the shaky way he’d pulled them on. 

He doesn’t want to give up the only thing he has, especially not in exchange for whatever awful uniform his master has undoubtedly chosen for him to dress in. But nothing belongs to him anyway. His own life doesn’t even belong to him. The lesson has been beaten into him too many times for him to ever forget it.

“No,” he croaks, and it’s like tearing off duct tape. 

“Okay.” The relief is audible in the alpha’s voice, and at least that’s one thing Dean has done right. “Do you need anything?”

“No, mas-” 

He catches himself too late, and the water on him is no longer warm because he’s cold down to his bones. 

The alpha had told him not to call him master and he’s already fucked it up. His vision narrows to a pinprick and he cowers lower into the tile and puts his hands over his neck and– 

“Okay,” his master says, and his voice is jarring, gentle and soothing like it had been in the yard when Dean had almost lost his mind and bolted out into the snow. “I’ll be in the living room when you’re done. I think we should talk about a few things before bed.”

His heart is too far up his throat for him to reply, even though he should. Even though he should be throwing himself at the alpha and begging forgiveness, even though he should be kissing his feet for not beating him, even though he shouldn’t be in the shower at all and should be hosed off in the front yard if his master grants him the mercy of being clean – he still doesn’t speak. 

The door clicks shut before he can make himself. 

It would be stupid to waste anymore time in here, so he forces himself to start scrubbing in earnest to remove the grime from his body and ignores how dizzy he is. His master told him to clean himself, and he knows exactly what that means. He does the best he can with soap and water and ignores the way everything stings and aches. 

He doesn’t even try to prep himself. There’s no point. He’s too scared, and he still hurts too much from the last time someone fucked him. The idea that he could make himself slick right now is laughable. 

The towels his master told him to use are gentle and foreign against his skin. He dries off quickly, careful not to wet the floor or the rug, and hangs the soft towel on a hook on the wall and resists the insane urge to keep it.

He opens the bag on the counter with trepidation, his stomach in knots as he imagines what his new clothes will look like. But losing his rags from before doesn’t hurt as much when he slides into what the alpha left him. They’re probably the softest things he’s ever touched. 

It’s a strange uniform for a slave – when he’s had clothes, they’ve always been ugly and shapeless, or demeaning and revealing. These, though, are new, and they look and feel expensive, and they’re just… clothes. Normal. He doesn’t know if he should be relieved just yet, doesn’t know how long he’s gonna get to keep these. 

His master had been right; they are big on him, and he refuses to look in the mirror to see how starved he must look until he’s buried under a layer of fabric. 

The man staring back at him is not one he recognizes. The last time he’d looked at himself had been ages ago, some stolen glance in a bathroom mirror before he’d been too beaten down to give a shit anymore. His cheeks are hollow and sharp, eyes red rimmed and dark underneath. Buzzed off just a day ago, his hair is short and ugly, and there is a dark bruise along one side of his jaw from a blow he doesn’t even remember. 

He looks… tired.

He is tired.

There’s a toothbrush in an unopened package on the counter as well. It’s probably for him but his heart picks up when he uses it, sure on some level that Castiel will burst in the door and punish him for stealing. The minty toothpaste is overwhelming but he forces himself to brush anyway, as if he can clear years worth of filth from his mouth in a matter of seconds. 

There is blood in the sink when he spits, and the familiar coppery tang is enough to make him gag. 

He picks up the abandoned blanket and holds it in front of him, not sure if he’s still allowed to use it. It takes too long for him to open the door to the bathroom. He has to make himself. It’s not as if he’s really safe in here, though it sort of feels that way. 

His master said he wanted to talk before fucking him. So they’ll talk. He figures he should be grateful for that, for some small minutes of rest, but he can’t find it within himself. He just feels increasingly blank, even his fear trickling away as he struggles to stay awake enough to make it down the stairs without falling on his face. 

Castiel is sitting on one of the long leather sofas, a mug of something steaming in front of him. There’s another cup on the side table. He looks up with a smile. 

It sends a bolt of anxiety through Dean. It’s never good when they smile. He holds the blanket in his hands like a shield, like it can protect him from whatever his master has planned. 

“Please, sit.”

Dean swallows, clenches his hands against his nerves. Drops to his knees in front of the alpha like a good little bitch, exactly like he’s been trained. 

He can’t scent any lust on the man, but that doesn’t mean shit. He can’t smell much of anything over the acrid stench of his own terror – hell, even the achingly familiar scent of coffee is hardly filtering in. He realizes that his master has not said anything and he clenches his fists. He’s already done enough that’s wrong, clearly, and now the alpha is probably sizing up how best to kick the shit out of him and teach him his place, how he wants to remind Dean of how low he is – 

“There’s plenty of room on the couch.”

Dean blinks. 

He’s misheard, obviously. Or misunderstood. But when he looks up, the alpha is staring down at him, gesturing to the long, empty section of the sofa with one hand, his eyebrows drawn together. 

“I know my place, alpha,” he says quickly. He’s not that stupid. It's no surprise that his new master is testing him like this – he probably wants to know if he’s been trained properly. 

He has. The idea would normally make him burn with shame, but he’s too exhausted to feel much of anything. Tomorrow, he’ll put up a fight. Tomorrow, he’ll claw and spit and resist like he should. But tonight, he just wants to get this over with so that he can go the fuck to sleep.

The alpha’s mouth is pressed together in a thin line, and Dean knows he’s done something wrong but for the life of him he can’t figure out what it is. Not that it matters. He could breathe the wrong way and that would be justification for his master to hurt him. Hell, he could do everything exactly right and the alpha could still decide it wasn’t good enough. He learned that lesson a long time ago. 

Maybe his master wants him a different way. He slides his hands behind his back and grips his elbows, ducks his head down. Waits to be told what to do. 

But the only thing his master does is sigh. “I don’t expect you to hold that position, Dean,” he says, voice low, and Dean can only drop his hands back down in front of him after a confused pause, twisting them together in his lap. His heart is pounding and he can feel the heat of the blow that’s about to come. 

It could be that the alpha is waiting for him to admit that he used hot water. Waiting for him to beg for forgiveness. He knows he won’t get it, but he still apologizes in advance, for the little the good it will do. “Sorry, alpha.” His voice is small. Weak. Tired.

His master takes in a breath. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

That’s not true, and they both know it. Dean shakes his head, but he’s too tired to play this game. Too tired to convince the alpha that he is bad and needs to be punished. Alastair loved this little routine, the back and forth. The humiliation of Dean begging for pain, if only because the alternative was always worse. 

But when he looks up at his new master, the alpha doesn’t look amused. He looks… unsure. 

Maybe he’s the dude’s first slave. If that’s the case, the alpha might just want him to take the initiative. It’s been a long time since he’s had a master like this – one that wants him to pretend that this is willing submission, that he actually likes what’s been done to him. 

The last time this happened, he didn’t play along. Thinking back to the shit that followed is enough to make his stomach twist painfully. He wishes he had, now. Maybe then he wouldn’t have ended up in Hell. 

His new master has not punished him yet, but he’s sure it’s coming. He hasn’t followed his training at all – he has flinched back (wrong), he has whined and protested (wrong), he has let his scent spiral completely out of control (wrong). He’s ignored an order and taken liberties that he shouldn’t have. 

Wrong.

Dean has belonged to this man for less than a day and he’s already dug himself a grave.

He stares at the alpha’s body, languid and powerful on the couch in front of him, abruptly understands what the man must expect from him, and swallows. 

He can’t throw up. 

He can’t throw up, because if he does, it’s just going to add to the multitude of things he’s already done wrong. He’s not even used to having anything in him to throw up, and he knows he should be too grateful for the food to even consider being nauseous. But he feels like he’s going to puke anyway. 

Dean squeezes his eyes closed and tries to keep his scent neutral, tries to control his breathing, tries not to let the tears in his eyes escape. Tries to remind himself that it could be so much worse. 

He could be dead. He could be off to another training center. Shit, he could have been purchased by some other whorehouse – had thought for sure that he would be, had figured that was all he was good for. But instead he’s been bought by a singular alpha, one that has not already forced a cock into his mouth. One that did not drag him to the car by the leash or his neck but instead let him walk. One that did not put him in a crate or the trunk. One that has fed him for free and let him shower, has given him soap and clothes and a toothbrush. Already so much more than Alastair would have done.

Could be worse.

So he shuffles forward and puts his hands on the alpha’s legs, tips his chin to the side so his throat is exposed. His heart is pounding in his ears and his mouth is dry but maybe if he does this his new master will leave him alone long enough for him to sleep. 

He is stiff under Dean’s touch, neither helping him along nor pushing him away, so he swallows and moves toward the man’s belt so he can undo it. His hands are shaking. Mouth dry. He touches his fingertips to the leather. 

The alpha immediately scoots backward. 

Dean freezes, his hands pressed into the seat where his master had just been. 

“I don’t – Dean,” the alpha says, his voice a little higher than it’s been so far. “I don’t want that.”

Dean can’t help the way his teeth grit together or the clench of his closed eyes or the way his hands claw into the couch, even though any of those things are more than enough to get him beat for his insolence. He should be relieved, but he isn’t. He just feels fucking stupid. Helpless.

He wants to get this over with, because if he doesn’t go to sleep soon he’s going to go fucking crazy. He just wants rest. Just wants to be left alone, and he’ll do anything to get that, anything he has to, anything his master wants.

“What do you want, alpha?” He tries to make his voice submissive, coy, but it just sounds exhausted. More than a little pleading. He’s so fucking pathetic. 

The alpha clears his throat and awkwardly moves away from Dean until he’s on the other side of the couch. “Why don’t you sit on the other side of the coffee table.”

It’s probably supposed to sound like a suggestion, but Dean knows it’s an order. He shuffles back until he’s there, his head pounding with exhaustion and confusion. 

The alpha moves toward him and Dean can’t help an instinctual flinch backward, his hands jumping up to cover his face as he braces himself for the pain that’s finally coming. But all that happens is that he sets the other mug in front of Dean on the coffee table. He stares blankly at it, then at the man’s hands. 

“That’s for you.” His master gestures at the mug. The smell of coffee makes him a little dizzy. He can’t remember the last time he had any. He has to close his eyes and breathe through his mouth a few times to keep from passing out right there and then, a wave of nausea and vertigo overtaking him. 

Wincing as the heat burns his fingers a little, Dean takes it carefully and settles back into position on the ground. He peers down at the dark liquid and wonders what it’s drugged with, and wonders if he’ll be able to make himself drink it despite the pounding in his chest and the tremor in his hands. The alpha doesn't have to drug him to get his compliance - at least not tonight. But he doesn't know that.

His master leans forward and sets his own mug on the table and Dean jumps a little at the noise, splashing hot coffee onto his hand and the –  

The carpet. The white carpet.

There’s coffee on the carpet. 

There’s coffee on the carpet, and he’s dead.