forthedog | Everywhen

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.

He can't breathe. He knows he must be, can feel the air push in and out of his lungs, but he can't hear it, ears stopped up with white noise and the long, slow drag of knife. Every fresh cut bites cold and sharp, leaves fire in its wake, and when Mike releases his hair, for a short moment Dean can't remember where he is, smells ash and copper and the salt of the tears streaming down his face.

He sags against the hands framing him, and when the knife parts the soft flesh of his belly, he feels a sob rip free of his chest. There's a word to make this stop. It doesn't fit with the rest of what's happening, where he is, there's not supposed to be a way out. There's a word, and Dean can't remember what it is.

He wouldn't use it if he did.

The blood just trickles, never really does much more than trickle, and he's careful. Every cut is careful. He learned how to do this very quickly, how to control the flow, how to bleed someone just enough to make them sick and weary enough to talk and no more. This isn't that far, never that far... But he's aware that he's using skills he doesn't normally use.

Once it would have frightened him. Now he still feels that calm gentleness, even behind the knife, the feeling that he's guiding someone into something, and when he hears the sob he pauses and looks up. Not concerned. But evaluating.

And goes back to work.

He stops just above Dean's hipbones, pauses again, and straightens up. The whole front of Dean's body is a mess, and he slides a single fingertip through it, attention narrowed to a sharp point as he lifts his finger to Dean's lips and paints the lower one red.

There's no water in hell. It'd been one of Alistair's favorites for a while, to leave Dean hanging for days in the heat and sulfur, let him dry out well past the point of desperation, come to him in his last moments and make a cut. Press the sluggish drops of Dean's own blood against his cracked lips.

And Dean had opened for them every time.

His lips part now, but nothing comes, and Dean opens his swollen, glassy eyes, tongue darting out without thought to taste.

He doesn't feel pity. It doesn't seem like it has any place here, and he knows Dean wouldn't want it, would probably regard it with insulted scorn. But he sees Dean's cracked lips, feels the tip of Dean's tongue against the pad of his finger, and thinks of the blood he's lost, and the bottle of water still tucked away in the duffel bag.

Not yet. Mercy, like everything else here, has to be carefully applied, and in its own time.

Once this would have been the point at which he would begin to ask questions, and he asks one now, not examining it too closely but simply letting it come.

"Where are you?"

Dean shakes his head, or tries to. It feels so heavy, rolling forward until Dean's chin rests against the stinging flesh of his sternum. The world won't quite come into focus, but looking down there's red, so much red. His heart leaps, and instead of fire Dean feels relief, something opening up to take him in like warm water.

He licks his lips again, and again, tastes copper and home, and he can't answer the question still ringing in his ears. "Don't know," he whispers, then, sensing his peril, sucks down a breath. "Please don't stop."

He lets out a quiet sound, not quite a laugh, and rakes his fingers back through Dean's hair again, somewhere between rough and not. The truth is that right now he wants to be gentler than he thinks he can be. Wants something he senses it's not time for yet. Because there's still further to go, and the fact that Dean is asking for it...

He wouldn't be that cruel.

He steps away again, back to the bed, picks up a piece of gauze and wipes down the blade of the knife before putting it aside. He hesitates then, hand hovering between the rattan cane and the baton... But there's a specific order that the pain has to come in, and he picks up the cane and turns back.

It's light, deceptively delicate, made to be sharper and more vicious than even the crop. He presses the tip of it under Dean's chin.

"I think we're getting close, though," he murmurs. "Don't you?"

Without waiting for an answer, he begins on the sides of Dean's arms, rapid bullet-fire strokes with utterly no gentleness in them at all.

Edited 2013-02-23 23:22 (UTC)

Dean twists in shock, but the blows come hard and fast, crack crueler than the crop, and it's a long, heady moment before Dean realizes those short, surprised shouts are coming from him. Every stroke punches another from his lungs, and Dean grits his teeth, red lips stretching in an endless snarl, but it doesn't hurt like before. For every blow that lands, Dean takes it and feels himself pushed a little further, down where it's easy and quiet. Down where it's simple.

His toes flex, but Dean can't keep his feet, and after a moment more, Dean stops trying. He hangs there, feels breathless and skinless and wide, wide open.

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