7. Lonesome Surprise pt. 2

She lets him take a break after that, and it would be welcome if being alone in the room didn't mean he was also alone with his thoughts. 

The doctor had smiled at him and then patted his hand, told him to take a breather, and then had jerked her head at the alpha and left in a hurry. His master had followed her, and their footsteps had faded, and now Dean can just make out what sounds like a tense discussion a few rooms away. 

He takes a steadying breath and regrets it immediately, the lingering scent of his master’s anger still thick in the air. Dizzy, he closes his eyes and wraps his arms around himself. 

God, he doesn’t want Castiel to punish him. It’s only been a few days since he was last disciplined, but he can already feel the tolerance he’s built for that sort of pain fading away. He really wanted to do this right, but all he’s done is fuck it up. He wonders if his master is describing to the doctor how he’s going to hurt Dean – it wouldn’t surprise him if he was setting up a follow-up visit for a few days to clean up what’s left of him. 

When the doctor finally returns, she has a grim look to her mouth that makes his stomach clench. His master trails in behind her, leaning against the entrance to the kitchen once more, and Dean can’t find the courage to look up and check how angry he must be.

But then Pamela shakes off her irritation and smiles at him again, and it’s so at odds with the steel trap around his lungs that he feels like he’s getting whiplash. “When you’re ready, Dean, I want you to tell me where you’re injured. Nothing is too small, so don’t skip over anything, even if you think it’s not a big deal.”

Dean swallows, nods, and Pamela’s face softens into something even more gentle. She doesn’t need to remind him not to lie – it’s all he can fucking think about. He’d gone back and forth in his head in the hours before her arrival about whether it would be better to keep his weaknesses to himself, or come clean. But telling the truth will show his master he is capable of following orders, despite what the state of him might suggest, and he is determined to secure his safety in any way he can. Short term discipline for being damaged goods is better than long term consequences for being a liar, at least in his experience. 

His pride is long gone and his master can take whatever he wants, anyway, regardless of whether or not Dean wants him to. There is no point in lying. So, in the end, there’d been no choice at all. 

Still, he’s not even sure exactly where all he’s hurt. He can guess, he supposes, based on his brief self assessment in the shower last night. The whole time he’d been cleaning himself, he’d been thinking about how much worse it could have been. The explosion that had taken Hell down had missed him, flames far away from the dark, freezing shed he’d been in, chained to the post, bleeding sluggishly. He’d never thought he’d consider that punishment lucky. 

He’s still not sure he does. 

He opens his eyes and Pamela is patiently waiting. Biting his lip, he glances over at his master, remembering the way the man had looked at his wrists before. Those wounds seem trivial, to Dean, but the alpha had seemed to think they were important. His master nods at him, so he reluctantly pushes his sleeves up to his elbows. The marks look ugly in the clean, bright kitchen.

Pamela’s hand on his arm startles him so badly that he wrenches back, sucking in a breath so fast that he nearly chokes on it. He tenses, waits for a reprimand, but she takes a step away from him with her hands raised instead. 

“Here to help, Dean. Remember?”

He shudders and closes his eyes. Shit. Shit shit shit. He’s fucking up. He’s resisting, and resisting is bad. It’s always bad. 

He jerks his arm back out toward her and forces himself to hold it there, gritting his teeth against the instinct to better protect something that’s already injured. But Pamela doesn’t touch him. She waits until his eyes are open again. 

“Let me know when you’re okay to be touched,” she says, no judgement or condemnation in her tone, and it takes Dean a long time to process her words. As soon as he does, he nods, not keen to waste any more time or disrespect his master by pretending he has any agency over himself. 

Pamela starts forward again, but this time she makes sure her movements are obvious and slow. Her touch is cool and soothing on the skin around the bruises and scabs. “Shackles made these?” Dean flicks his eyes up to her, nods. “How long were they on?”

He tries to count up the months and finds, depressingly, that he can’t. “Um. I don’t know.”

“Longer than a week.” It’s not a question. “Longer than a month?” 

He nods again. “Longer than a year?” This time, he doesn’t respond right away, trying to work up the courage, but his silence is a pretty deafening answer. Pamela makes a tsking noise and turns his hand over, examining the other side. “You pulled against them?”

She’s asking if he’s a bad slave, and he knows the answer is yes. He’d never been compliant like he should have, even when he’d suspected that some of the clients had liked that he fought. Never been able to lie there passively like he’d seen the slave before him do. She’d gone into that wing of Hell fighting and spitting and had come out hollow-eyed and empty and then, not long after, she’d disappeared forever. He’d told himself he wouldn’t let that happen when he was taken from the normal rotation as her replacement, just a few months into his stay in Hell.

So, the bruises have always been bad – but the cuts are his own fault. When the bomb had gone off, he’d been so panicked and sick with fear that he’d be the next one into the flames that he’d flailed against his bindings, too blind with terror to realize he was slicing himself to ribbons; too scared, even, to stop putting more pressure on his neck by pulling backwards. 

The officer that’d found him, hours later, had snapped the chains with bolt cutters and Dean had collapsed to the ground, too exhausted to hold himself up.

He can’t say any of that without his new master finding out exactly how bad of a slave he is. So, he skirts the question, praying the alpha won’t think he’s lying. 

“They… when I was working, they kept them on.” He hopes she won’t ask why, and he doesn’t mention that he was pretty much always “working”. Doesn’t mention that even when the chain was off, the shackles stayed on his wrists; heavy, unwelcome reminders of his place. 

When they’d cut them off at the holding facility, his arms had felt so light he’d thought they’d float away. He’d cried like a bitch yesterday when they’d cuffed his hands behind his back to move him out of his cell. The guard had slapped him for his trouble. 

Pamela makes another tsking noise and rummages in her bag again. “Can’t do much for the bruising – it’ll fade eventually. But I’ve got cream for the lacerations. I want you to put it on twice a day but let them breathe. They need to, to heal properly and without scars.” 

He nearly laughs. Scars were something he’d stopped worrying about a very long time ago. He doesn’t really think that the doctor would find it as funny, though, so instead he nods. Pam purses her lips like she can tell what he’s thinking anyway, but she doesn’t call him on it. “How about your upper body? Your back? How’s that looking?”

Bad, probably. He’d avoided looking too hard at himself in the shower, knowing that the bruises and cuts on him were going to be displeasing to his master. Every single one of them shows how much he’s been used and how shit of a slave he really is. The auction house hadn’t exactly been falling all over themselves to show his new master his body when he’d come to inspect Dean, choosing instead to leave him covered. They’d probably been worried that the alpha would try and bargain them down, citing damaged goods. 

In his experience, masters don’t like to see evidence of others taking what’s theirs. And they hate the idea that they won’t be obeyed.

He stares at his hands, heart pounding, until Pamela’s gentle cool palm touches his arm. “Dean?”

He glances up to his master’s face and looks down just as quickly. The man doesn’t smell or look angry anymore. His face is carefully distant, almost clinical. Dean blinks back into the now, cheeks reddening. 

He has to be good. 

“I can just…” 

He slides the hoodie off of himself with difficulty, wincing as the fabric brushes against his injuries. His master inhales sharply and Dean’s eyes are on him immediately, arms jumping up to cross against his chest as though that will protect him. The air of the house is cold against his skin and goosebumps rise on his arms and neck. He’s glad that his pants sit high enough on his waist to hide the worst of the damage, but there’s plenty to look at anyway. 

Pamela gently takes the hoodie from his hands and sets it to the side, stepping back a little. She glances at his master, some silent message darting between them that Dean is too anxious to catch. 

“How old are these?” She’s gesturing at a series of dark bruises along his side and back and he bites his lip. He doesn’t know, so he shakes his head. “Did you bleed when you urinated?”

Heart pounding as he feels the alpha’s gaze on his skin like a red hot iron, he answers. “A little. I think. Not anymore.” His voice sounds stupid and weak and he clears his throat, shifting back and forth nervously. He can’t make himself look up at his master, can’t make himself see the anger or disgust he knows is there. He can’t smell it over the acrid, burnt hair stench of his own fear, but it must be. 

Pamela nods, concern easing a little around her eyes, and slowly moves to his side so she can check his back. He should turn himself around, he knows, but he can’t make himself put his back to his master. He doesn’t want him to see evidence of his disobedience, and there’s no clearer indication than the lashes across his shoulders. 

The ghost touch of Pamela’s fingertips along the ridges of his spine startles him and he tears his attention away from his lap to watch her. She never presses too hard, never hurts him, her mouth thinning with every injury she finds until it’s a little white line. 

“What made these marks?”

His mouth is dry and he can’t answer till she backs away and gives him space to breathe. He assumes she means the long, thin bruises – not the lash marks, which are obvious, and not the faded white lines from beatings come and gone. 

“Cane,” he croaks. 

It’d been the night before the firebomb. He’d been so bad and uncooperative with a regular client – one that always wanted to kiss him as he fucked him, like he was choosing it, like he wanted it – that, in a moment of insanity, he’d tried to bite him. So he’d been forced to drink water dosed with poison. The alpha had shoved the bottle in his mouth and held his nose till he swallowed. 

It’d made him weak and dazed but he’d still remembered everything – every grope, slap and bite, every whistling, screaming impact of that hateful cane. The dosage had been low enough for him to still be awake to beg, and that had probably made things worse. That client had liked to see him cry. And, in the end, when Dean was too exhausted to protest again, he’d kissed all his tears away and then taken him just the same, his hand gripping the back of his neck needlessly, like Dean wasn’t already submitting in every possible way.

He’d still been too tired to struggle when Alastair had dragged him outside, too tired to stop himself from crying out when he was whipped for his defiance on top of the bruises. It reminds him that his master is seeing yet more evidence that he can’t behave himself, and that makes his stomach turn violently.

Still, that behavior was what got him out of the blast radius, so he guesses he should be thankful for it now. If he hadn’t been punished, he’d have been hit by the bomb, and he’d be dead like all the rest of those sick fuckers and the nameless slaves that had been with them in their beds.

He’d seen the rubble of the building as they’d dragged him away. He’d been secluded for so long that he hadn’t known any of the regular pleasure slaves who had died, but he’d felt sad for them anyway, knowing that they’d had an abrupt end to a miserable life. Dean had never resented them, though he’d tried – it wasn’t their fault that he had become the whipping boy of the whorehouse while they got to cater to the average clientele, the ones who just wanted a quick fuck and not a dog to beat. 

He had prayed that Alastair had been under it all. He doesn’t know if his former master is dead, but he thinks he must be. He’d heard the handlers whisper to each other that Dean had been the only survivor. Besides, there was no way Alastair would have let him be sold otherwise – he’d tried for years to cause enough damage or trouble to get the alpha to sell him back, and he’d never even come close.

Pamela’s light touch rips him from his thoughts, way too close to his nape for comfort. He jerks forward, heart pounding, mouth dry. 

She drops her hand and takes a step back. There’s something hard in her eyes, something murderous, so he ducks his head, hands clenching around his neck even as he pleads. “Sorry, sorry,” he chokes, “I didn’t mean to – I know I shouldn’t move, I’m sorry–” 

“Relax, Dean,” she interrupts calmly, her voice low. There’s nothing angry about her tone, though there’d been plenty of rage in her eyes moments ago. “There’s… I was just examining your nape.”

She waits, expectant, and he suppresses a wave of nausea. “Was bad,” he confesses, because that’s what he’s always been expected to do. His hands tremble as he covers the spot on his neck that he knows is dark with bruises. He’s just glad that the cuts have healed from the last time Alastair decided to whip him there.

She closes her eyes. Takes a long breath in through her nose, lets it out through her mouth. “Your master did that to you?”

Dean blinks back hot, panicked tears, and can’t make himself answer, because it’s obvious that’s what happened. Has been happening for years. Pamela cocks her jaw to the side, turns around. For the first time, he wonders if the anger is not for him, but is instead on his behalf, because she shakes her head and blows another slow breath out of her mouth like she’s trying to control her reaction. 

He chances a look at his master. The alpha has put a hand to his mouth and is looking away, which is… not exactly what Dean had been expecting. He looks sickened – not enraged, not possessive, not even disgusted. Just ill. He inhales, despite himself, and all he can pick up on is his own distress. 

Dean can’t help but be relieved by that. It seems that his new master isn’t a huge fan of how his old one treated him, at least in that way. He knows that lots of alphas feel strongly about an omega’s nape. Most of them act like it has religious significance, like it’s some kind of sacred spot, even for slaves. Most only touch it enough to control them, and don’t hurt omegas there even if the rest of their body is fair game. 

Alastair hadn’t been that way. He’ll never forget the first time his master clawed and twisted the sensitive skin – he’d literally fainted. 

Judging by the nauseous expression on his new master’s face, Castiel won’t be doing that. He’s so grateful he could cry. His hands slip from his neck, back to the cold counter, and he hopes that no one tries to cuff him so he won’t do that again. He clenches his fists. 

Back in control of her anger, Pamela pulls yet another tube of medication out of her bag and adds it to a growing pile, tapping it lightly. “That’s numbing cream. It’ll help for obvious reasons.” 

Her hand grips his shoulder briefly and he’s so startled that he doesn’t have a chance to make sense of why he would be granted anything to numb a punishment he earned. Maybe she doesn’t know it was his fault, that he tried to fight back. “There’s no need for stitches on your back, surprisingly, and it looks like the auction house cleaned you up okay.”

He just stares at her, too numb to make sense of what she’s saying. She smiles. “Alright, Dean. You’re doing great so far. I’d like to take your blood pressure now, which might pinch a little but won’t really hurt. Then your weight and pulse.” 

Dean nods – he remembers those things, at least, from childhood tv shows and movies. True to her word, there’s no pain, though she frowns at the numbers she sees. When she helps him down from the counter to weigh him on a little scale she pulls from her bag, she shakes her head. “Really have to get some meat on those bones, kid,” she mutters. 

Then she takes his pulse, puts the stethoscope on his back and chest and makes him breathe deeply. He coughs a little, but she says that’s probably from the smoke inhalation and he believes her. After all, it was the smell of the fire that had made him flail like a coyote in a trap.

“Anything else bothering you up here before you put your shirt back on?”

He wracks his brain then shakes his head no and she hands him back the hoodie, and when it’s on again he feels about a thousand times more at ease. It doesn’t make sense, because if he was ordered to he’d have to take it right back off, but it’s nice to feel less exposed. 

“Okie-dokie, kiddo. What’s next?”

He takes a long time to answer, but neither of them rush him, and eventually he picks at his pantlegs. This is what he’d been dreading, more than anything. He’s got one job, and he knows what it is, and now he’s going to have to reveal that the reason his master bought him is still torn to shit from the last session he’d had in Hell. His master could punish him for that. 

Or… 

Or worse, he could decide he just doesn’t want to bother. 

As soon as he realizes that, a new fear creeps into him. It was a stroke of luck, Castiel buying him. He knows he’s not fit for anything but another whorehouse at this point, with how fucked up he is, but his new master had purchased him before he could be sold en masse on the cheap with other rejects. 

He knows this, at least, with a dark, grim certainty: he’ll die before going back to another man like Alastair. And all of a sudden he’s realized how big of a possibility being sent back is. If the alpha can’t use him, if he can’t be good enough for this man, he might be returned to the auction house. Returned to his life from before.

He might as well beg his master to kill him now rather than risk that, because he doesn’t think he’ll survive if this man decides he isn’t worth the trouble. Not after this glimpse at what his life could be.

But he’d given Dean an order. 

“Um. There’s some stuff down… there,” he says, voice shaking, hoping she’ll understand. She seems to, because her face softens. 

“Novak, turn around.”

Dean watches, bewildered, as he does just that, moving a little too quickly. Pamela offers her hand to help him down from the island. He stands uncertainly, legs shaky. “I’ll need to see it to treat it,” she explains, and he swallows when he understands what she means. 

“Do I have to?” he whispers, already knowing the answer. 

But she shakes her head, to his surprise. “No. I’m not going to make you do anything.”

It’s the wildest thing he’s ever heard and he had no idea how to process it. He stares at her, sure he’s misunderstood. “What?”

“I told you that I’m here to help you. Sending you into a panic attack isn’t going to help anything.”

He stares at her, meeting her eyes, and he can see no lie there. His master is still turned to face the wall, his arms crossed. He hasn’t said anything. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest. What the fuck is he supposed to do? 

Pamela catches him looking, and frowns at his master. “I’m going to make an executive decision here, if you two don’t mind. Novak?”

“Yes?”

“Get out.”

Dean opens his mouth to protest, but his master doesn’t get offended. He simply nods at the wall and then turns back to look at Dean briefly. “I’ll be in the other room, Dean. Yell if you want me to come back, okay?”

He can only nod stupidly, so he does, and watches as the alpha hurries out of the room. 

When his master is gone, Pamela turns back to look at him and pats his arm. “You can say no, you know.” Dean blinks at her. “I won’t tell him, if that’s what you’re worried about. Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

He shakes his head at the obvious lie, and she looks at him curiously. He averts his eyes, mumbles, “That’s for free people,” because he just can’t help himself. 

Pamela just raises an eyebrow. “When you’re my patient, you’ll follow my rules.” When she pauses, Dean nods. “And my rules say that the specifics of what procedures I do stay between us unless you say otherwise. So.”

She leans back on the table and adjusts her glasses. “You can say no. Or, you can let me check you out and fix what I can and we can keep anything I find to ourselves – I’ll give him the bare minimum that he needs for you to be safe.”

He’s got no idea if Pamela is being truthful, but it seems like a complicated scheme to lie. He would do what she told him anyway, with or without reassurances, and they both know it. Dean almost wishes that she wasn’t doing this, that she’d just strap him down and do what she wanted so that he doesn’t have to make any choices and worry they’re the wrong ones.

He doesn’t know what’s going to hurt him worse and he’s so scared he’s sick. But he does know he doesn’t want anyone to see what’s been done to him, knows that he doesn’t want to give his master any reason not to want him. And so he gives an answer unconsciously, backing a step away from her without thinking through the consequences. 

Pamela gives him a sad little smile. “Alright.” 

His head is spinning so hard it feels like he’s on a tilt-a-whirl. He as good as said no. He said no, and she’s listening, and he isn’t getting the shit kicked out of him and she isn’t running to tell his master, and she isn’t angry. Pamela is packing her things away now, clearly ready to go, and lingering doubts he’d had about her forcing him to expose himself fade. 

Stupid. He’s being stupid. He knows what the right choice is supposed to be and he refuses to fuck this up. 

He clears his throat, and her eyes are on him instantly. “Yes, Dean?”

“Um. I’m sorry. You can. You know,” he says intelligently, heart racing again. “If you… need to.”

Pamela raises her eyebrows. “Are you sure?” And he isn’t, at all, but he nods anyway. 

She perks up and smiles at him and that calms a lot of the anxiety that had begun to jump through him like sparks of electricity. Dean knows he made the right decision. His master will find out just how damaged he is the first time he decides to use him anyway. The illusion of his privacy is just that – an illusion. Slaves don’t get that. Don’t get to say no to anything without consequences. 

Anything that might earn him the slightest smidgen of approval from his master is something he should do, no matter how uncomfortable it’s going to make him. If the damage is enough that he’ll be sent back, it will happen regardless of whether or not he’s cooperative now. Might as well hope for the best and bite the bullet. 

She snaps on a fresh pair of gloves and the sound makes his stomach roll. “I’m just going to do a superficial exam, Dean,” she reassures gently, when he takes another instinctual step back. “I promise that I won’t be invasive.”

He knows that he’s staring at her and knows he probably looks like a scared rabbit. She studies him. “Would you prefer to lay down on the island, or–” 

He’s already shaking his head frantically, so she pauses. “Then I need you to bend over the counter with your legs apart.” She says it slowly, watching his reaction. “You can still say no, honey.”

He doesn’t dignify that with a response. She lets him tug down his own pants even though it takes far too long, way longer than what would get him punished under normal circumstances. When she motions for him to bend, he forces himself to after a long moment, his own breath harsh and loud in his ears. She’s crouched behind him when he turns around to look and that makes him feel better – makes him almost forget the ghosts of hands gripping his neck or clawing into his back or pulling at his mouth when he’s been in this position before. 

Her touch is light and clinical when she pokes around, and she never hurts him, still true to her word. The air is cold, stinging, and he shudders as her fingers brush over what he knows is some major bruising. 

He’s so tired of bruises.

When her touch retreats, he looks down at her with a gulp, nervous. The viper look is back in her eyes and he stiffens, nausea rolling through him because he knows exactly why. 

She reaches up and brushes the ugly scar just below his navel, the one that goes deep into his belly, the one he never looks at and never touches and never quite manages to not think about.