75. Cry For Judas(2)

Dean chokes on his breath, tries to protest, but Alastair laughs over him. The sound is just as cruel as he remembers. “I fixed you,” he taunts, breath sour on Dean’s face. “Made you mine.” 

“No,” Dean sobs, closing his eyes, fear forcing the last of his resistance from him. “No, you–” 

“I did,” Alastair assures him patiently. “Oh, pet, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Don’t you remember begging me to keep you? Don’t you remember bowing at my feet, pleading to stay?”

Bile rises in Dean’s throat. He – he does remember, he does, because the things that Alastair forced out of his mouth will haunt him until the day he dies. He’d been so blind with pain and fear back then, so broken. Empty of anything but the desperate need for even a second free from agony, from hunger, from sleep deprivation. He would have said anything to save himself, back then. Would have given Alastair anything to make the pain stop. 

All these months later, and he feels like he might be back there any second. 

He has what he needs. Alastair has admitted it, has said out loud that Dean had run away, despite what the official paperwork says. But Dean doesn’t feel like he’s won anything at all. 

“And here you are again,” the alpha whispers, his teeth scraping the shell of Dean’s ear, his mouth brushing against Dean’s neck as he drags in the scent of his terror. “Seeking me out once more, like a beat dog coming home to his master.” 

He smiles, the shape of it like a brand on Dean’s skin. “You know who you belong to, don’t you, darling?” 

Dean’s knees finally go. They fold like wet paper, collapse under the strain of his fear and his training and the blinding, terrible scent of his master’s hungry excitement. But Alastair doesn’t even let him kneel. 

Instead, he wraps his hand around Dean’s throat and holds him upright. Arranges him like a lifeless, glassy-eyed doll. His perfect little toy. Dean is that, has been that since the very first time Alastair laid eyes on him. Owned on paper since the man pressed his thumbprint into Dean’s collar, but owned in spirit for even longer than that. 

Alastair squeezes. Effortlessly cuts off Dean’s air, the pressure so slow it’s almost gentle. “I could have you right here,” he says, reddening irises glinting as he stares down at him. Dean chokes on that more than anything, on the sick scent of Alastair’s lust, on the fear of what those red eyes mean. “No one would care, pet. Not a soul.” 

Not true, something in Dean’s brain is screaming, but the voice is distant, miles and miles away from him and getting ever farther with each squeeze of his master’s claws. Not true, not true! 

His hands come up of their own accord – a break in his training. He’s not supposed to move, not supposed to fight, but he – there’s something in him that doesn’t want to die, the same flicker of bravery that’s kept him alive against all odds for so many years roaring back to life after far too long in dormancy. He scrabbles against Alastair’s hold, manages to momentarily peel away his fingers and suck in a gasping breath of air. 

Alastair looks down at him with a savage little smile, vicious and venomous. Victorious. And the expression sends a jolt of terror through Dean that douses his spark of defiance, because he knows it, he knows what it means – that he’s fucked up, that he broke under the strain, that Alastair has found a reason to punish him, and the fear that rips into him is savage in its intensity. So much so that he stops pulling at the man’s hand. So much so that he whines. 

“Such a bad boy,” his master murmurs, squeezing even harder, forcing Dean’s body against the brick wall with slow precision. His knee presses in between Dean’s legs, spreading them apart with pitiful ease. “You know better.” 

He does. He does, he’s learned, he knows he can’t protest, knows he can’t fight, he’s learned this lesson so many times, he doesn’t want to be punished and he doesn’t want pain, and he’s sorry, he’s–

“Oh, I know,” Alastair says with a pout, running a hand through Dean’s hair in the violent mockery of a fond caress. “I know you are, pet. Not as sorry as you will be, though.” 

Dean wants to sob, would be sobbing if he could breathe, he wants to lay his face down on the ground and beg and plead and get as low as he can, because he doesn’t want to hurt anymore, he – 

Dean’s body goes limp all by itself. His hands fall from Alastair’s of their own accord, slowly dragging down his chest. He doesn’t have the strength to hold them up anymore. 

He feels something cold and metallic brush against his fingertips; a beaded chain. A pair of dog tags. And, all at once, he remembers.  

He’s Cas’s, now. He’s not Alastair’s, he’s Cas’s. 

And Cas wants him to be free. 

Against every instinct screaming at him to give in, to give up, to stay silent, Dean speaks. 

“I’m… not… yours.” 

He chokes the words out, breath reedy and weak, his gasps reduced to pitiful whispers. Blackness encroaches on his vision till he can’t see anything, till all he knows is Alastair’s touch and scent and choking, hateful hands… and the spark of hope that Cas has lit inside of him that’s brighter than any of it. “Not… yours…” 

And then he’s slumping to the ground, gasping and coughing on air, sucking in lungful after lungful so quickly that he’s afraid, just for a moment, that his chest will explode with the pressure of life itself. 

Above him, Alastair is smiling with savage, visceral pleasure. He slowly crouches down in front of Dean, his scarred face swimming in and out of focus as he slowly wraps his hand around Dean’s jaw. He forces Dean’s head back until their eyes meet. Dean’s too weak to pull away. 

“Not yet,” the alpha murmurs, pupils wide and dark and black as the pits of hell. 

“But you will be.”