forthedog | Everywhen

He doesn't watch the process. Somehow it feels like something that doesn't belong to him, that shouldn't belong to him, and again he thinks about Castiel and what he feels... isn't guilt, exactly. But all the more reason to tread very carefully.

But he does turn again when the sound of movement stops, looking Dean slowly up and down. This still really isn't about obedience so much as it is about pain, but control is still part of it, so he only hesitates a moment more before he steps forward and lands a hard slap across Dean's face.

And then another one. Because why not, really.

Dean's head snaps sideways, the second blow landing before he's had time to do more than gasp through the first. He turns back, eyes alight with challenge - thirty years of resistance on the rack and he still can't back all the way done, but there's relief there, too. If Dean can't give, he has to hope that Mike will take anyway.

He pulls the briefs down without a word, letting them fall in a loose pile on top of his jeans.

The adrenaline of doing this is always a rush, but it subsides quickly, leaving the flesh beneath his skin humming. He doesn't need it, but it helps, and he doesn't take his gaze off Dean's face as the last of his clothing comes away.

Part of him is cool. Detached. Part of him is deeply, intensely present.

He holds out the two wrist cuffs - suspension cuffs, their chains inset with handles that can be gripped - and nods for Dean to slide his hands through.

Rarely naked these days with someone he knows, Dean's cheeks are pink with more than just Mike's handprint, but he proffers his hands without a word, sliding them through the leather for Mike to secure.

Fingers tangling with the chain, he watches Mike's hands rather than his face before his gaze is drawn inexorably back to the bed. Dull and black and well-suited to the dim shadows of the room, the baton looks particularly cruel.

"I know you said you don't like talking." One after the other, Mike locks the cuffs and lifts Dean's hands so he can hook them to the attach points. This is ritual, and the steady evenness of it settles the sense of control in his own mind, slows everything down just enough. "So I'm going to keep it to a minimum. And I know you don't safeword, but I want one anyway. 'Red' okay?"

He picks up the ankle cuffs and drops into a crouch, slapping the inside of Dean's left calf. "Spread your legs."

"Okay," Dean grunts, spreading his legs for the man kneeling between them, and tongues at the word he's been given. It's different than the word he'd chosen on his first night here, simpler, and Dean wonders if he'll see need to use it. Still standing on the brink of things, Dean doubts it, but below him Mike is fixing him immobile.

He's been in them before, but still Dean tests the restraints, hands flexing around their hold, pulling. He's locked in tight, with no way out again but red.

He exhales, forcing his breaths to come steady and deep.

He looks up once, nods, says nothing else as he locks Dean's ankles in and affixes them to the bolts in the floor. He stands, slow, and takes a step back, considering, because he has a plan of attack, knows where he's going, but now he wants to really consider the terrain.

He's aware, in a very distant kind of way, that Dean is beautiful, but it also doesn't feel as though it really matters.

Hands are a good place to start. Hands are a kind of sealing, just as much as they open. He pauses another moment and then pulls back and slaps Dean across the face again, and again, even, relentless strokes, watching the skin bloom red.

He's already decided to leave no marks where they'd be readily visible. But this... This works too.

Eight. Twelve. Sixteen. It's more times in succession than anyone in here has bothered with before, the pain newly sharp and bright, a shock each time until Dean's eyes are wide, his face burning as if held to fire.

"Figured you for hands," he says through gritted teeth, not mocking but not silent either, face tilted to offer up his cheek.

He breathes out a short laugh, almost a hiss, and hits Dean again, harder than he has yet. If he's breathing hard at all now, it's from the effort expended, and he pauses, shaking the warm sting out of his palm, considering.

"Not just," he murmurs, almost to himself, and turns back to the bed, picking up the flogger. It's of medium length, made for medium intensity, the leather tails black and deceptively soft to the touch. He turns back and walks, making a slow circuit around where Dean is standing, stopping at his back.

And for another moment he does nothing, looking at Dean's bare shoulders in the dimness, before reaching out and running his hand over the line of Dean's shoulderblades. Priming. But there's also an element of reassurance in it, and if that's too kind, well, too fucking bad.

Dean's muscles leap beneath Mike's hand, the whole of his body jerking in surprise at the gentle touch, though Dean is quick to recompose himself. He doesn't know why he's bothering - with any luck, Mike will soon have him screaming, but the part of Dean that still refuses to go down easy holds his body upright.

After a moment more, he bows his head, accepting the kindness as a different kind of torment. It's the same reaction that's kept him from asking for this before now, that sends him to the beds of strangers and never to those that profess to care about him. It's too much, feels too raw, and Dean swallows hard. "C'mon."

"I know," he whispers. It's hard. Of course it's hard. Maybe that's why he's doing it, why he's forcing Dean to accept it, even for only a short span of time. How blows can be easier, how gentleness can feel like the cruelest kind of torture, because it makes you want to hope.

He moves back again, letting his arm go loose and flexible, and starts in on Dean's upper back.

There's not much force behind it, not immediately, but as the minutes go on he builds the rhythm in rapid sweeps of the leather, slow but inexorable, soft flicks to impacts hard enough to ring off the room's bare walls. He crisscrosses across Dean's back, the skin here flushing too - and slowly beginning to darken beyond even that.

That short whisper hurts more than the leather, at least through the first set of strokes. And then Mike's arm flies faster, harder, and Dean can't decide what hurts worse, the ache that deepens with every hard stroke, or the sting that accompanies the lighter ones.

Toes curling against the floor, Dean grips his chains, face turned hard into his shoulder. There's a sound building in his throat, but it doesn't make it out, a low whine that Dean swallows down and releases with short, panted breaths, one for every dull smack of leather.

They'd been right - Dean in his assumption and Mike in his confidence. Mike is good at this, and Dean takes the first step towards letting go, towards trusting the other man to give him exactly what he's said he will, and do it well.

It's not really like actually torturing someone. Not really. But it is, in some ways, very close to that, and the fact that it's Dean probably has a tremendous amount to do with it. With Neil, it's play, even when it's rough, even when it's cruel, and there's always a softness behind it that he never doubts. Even when it's him, Neil making him crawl or Neil cutting into him - but then maybe it comes closer to this. Needing to be hurt. Needing to let go.

He listens to Dean's breathing change over the sound of the leather striking flesh and he feels an element of satisfaction. Closer.

He's hitting hard enough now that his arm is beginning to ache with the effort, the skin under the leather a dark, furious red, and he picks that moment to just... stop.

Measured though they are, Dean's breaths are loud in the sudden silence, too loud, and Dean is halfway to twisting his head before he remembers that he can't, before his back protests the extra strain and sends him up on his toes.

"Fuck," Dean exhales in a hiss, dropping down again, hanging hard to the chains until the spike of dizzy adrenaline fades. His back feels shredded - and Dean would know - the burning ache bone deep where it's not gone numb. It feels...better.

"Can't be tired yet," he calls.

"Shut up." It's not said with any anger, not really any emotion at all, but he cuffs Dean across the back of the head before he crosses back to the bed again.

He lays the flogger down and appears, for a moment, to be choosing between one instrument or another, but he already knows. How to warm up the skin, how to get the most out of the welts. How to draw blood.

He picks up the crop and turns back around, swiping it once through the air with a sharp whistle.

Dean gives an involuntary wince for the sound of it, exhaling with a tiny, shaken laugh. His back hurts more with every moment, no sting left to distract from the throb, and the thought of that whistling crop striking any part of it has his heart racing.

He turns away from the sight, head tipped back to regard his own hands holding tight to the chains. Dean might have just been told to shut up, but he's pretty sure he won't be silent for long.

He almost smiles at the laugh. Again, he starts slow. Again, he doesn't stay that way.

This time it's the front of Dean's thighs, the strokes again even and measured, but he builds faster, harder, and little by little Dean's thighs are banded with red stripes, and then the red stripes begin to swell, to turn a faint purple.

But this was only ever to give Dean's back a brief respite. So nearly without missing a stroke he's back there again, landing blow after blow on flesh that's already gone raw. Every second, he's sinking deeper into the rhythm. There was always something horribly soothing about the process of taking someone apart.

No, he's not tired. He's not even close to done.

Edited 2013-02-16 05:42 (UTC)

Dean jumps hard at the first strike, not only for the sting but for the proximity to his dick, but even that is soon forgotten to the growing pain. His thighs are beyond tender, hurting more than his back for a while, if only for Dean's relative inexperience with pain here.

And then the switch finds his back, and Dean lights up like a star, each smack of crop against abraded skin nearly incandescent in its intensity. His fingers flex, reach uselessly and grab again, clinging to the chain like it could pull him away from here.

And never once does he consider using his safeword. But he does growl and curse, too controlled yet for surrender but growing more savage all the time, and when the moment comes that a blow lands and none is quick to follow, Dean whines high in the back of his throat, choked with dread and desire both.

He waits, poised, momentarily breathless at that sound.. He's sensing that they're reaching a point, that Dean's ready for something worse, but the noise Dean's made is surging through his veins like a drug, and the welts across Dean's back are too lovely to abandon completely. They've gone past red, past purple in some places, broken open and oozing blood here and there.

He pulls back and pulls in a breath, flings the end of the crop at Dean's flesh as hard as he can. It's like the sound of a hand clapping inches from his ear, sharp and fine-edged. More blood blooms like flowers.

He withdraws to the bed again, silent, leaving only the ghost of his fingertips behind on abused skin.

Dean pants in his bonds, head fallen back and muscles pulled too desperate and tight to let him lift it for long moments, mouth dry and sore. Not from the slaps, he must have bitten his lips, his tongue, the sides of his mouth to stop from screaming, and his feet are rigid against the floor. Dean unfurls cramping toes one by one, stretching them fitfully.

In the silence, Dean eases his discomfort by drawing trembling limbs back under control, but it's harder all the time. He feels wired, too jumpy, and yet exhausted, movements jerky and agony on his back. When he thinks he can keep his head upright, he rolls it up, propped against his lifted arm, and finds Mike at the bed.

Dean's lips part, but he doesn't ask when or for more, sensing that Mike will come to him in his own time. There's something dripping down his shoulderblades, cool when it catches the air, and Dean jerks again to realize it's blood.

He meets Dean's gaze just as it comes into being, poised to lay down the crop, and what he sees there almost makes him shiver with its power. Fear. Need. Other things he doubts either of them could name. And he thinks all at once that this is a dark moment but in some way this is also a sacred moment.

What he's being allowed to see. To do.

He picks up the smaller knife - Neil's gift, he thinks with some wry humor - and slides it out of its leather sheath, holding it up to the faint light and turning it this way and that, letting the blade gleam. One side is serrated, good - in his experience - for light scratches, sensation play. And then there's the other side.

His gaze is still locked on Dean's as he steps forward. He's not asking for permission. Not asking for anything as he presses the edge of the blade against the base of Dean's throat.

The blade is as cold as it looks, but Dean doesn't jump. He doesn't flinch, he doesn't even breathe. This had never gotten any easier below. Alistair might have been an expert at dealing out pain, but he was a master with a blade, carving Dean in new ways every time, impossible to anticipate or adapt to, every agony singular and unique.

Dean's eyes widen, heart beating so hard against his ribs he wonders if it will just stop, and still he doesn't breathe. Dimly, he recalls that he has something he never had before, a magic word to make it stop, remembers where he is and who he's with, but it doesn't seem to matter.

All that matters is that sharp edge, pressed to his skin where it's the most tender. Dean exhales the air building in his lungs in a slow, thin hiss, eyes on the ceiling as they grow hot and begin to spill.

He remembers this from long before. The waiting, being poised. Breathing there on that edge, feeling how little it would take to tip. Red and black memory. Death lurching in the dark and in the bright places.

Dean exhales and he picks that moment to inhale and imagines it passing from one set of lungs to the other, fixated on the way Dean's eyes are glistening, wet.

"What you said before, about no permanent scars," he murmurs. So calm. "Yeah, I don't know about that." He lifts his free hand and cups Dean's face, thumb smudging tears away from under his eye with idle fascination. "Do you want me to let up?"

Dean squeezes his eyes closed against that quiet murmur, that gentle fitting of a palm to his cheek, and draws in a shaky breath. "Fuck you," he says, nearly kneejerk, and feels, if not better, then at least in a place he understands. He can't read Mike like this, doesn't know if he'll stop when he says he will, and the thought should terrify him, but nothing matters but the knife.

"You carve your name on me, you'll regret it."

He laughs softly, recognizing the defiance, even - on some level - delighting in it, but just as quickly as it came it's gone again. He slides his hand to the back of Dean's head, curls his fingers into hair and drags it back, and begins to cut.

It's shallow, really hardly a break in the skin at all, but more than a scratch. A single long, graceful, sweeping slice down from the corner of Dean's right collarbone and across his chest, followed by another, and another, until he's lost in the careful delicacy of it. Parallel cuts, cuts that cross, some done quick and some achingly slow. At last he releases Dean's hair and drops back into a crouch, framing Dean's ribcage with his hands before he begins to drag the edge of the blade down over the bumps of his ribs.

Too much in the way of even shallow wounds and they'll have a problem on their hands. But this is just enough.

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