For maypoles's request #3 at spn_rambleon: AU to OTHOAP. Alastair gets away, but he keeps Dean in his sights, and he always will.

Warnings: Body parts, slight language, psychological messiness, horror

Jigsaw

When Alastair hits him, the world changes color.

The blow goes clean through Dean's head, hard flat pain and wet crunch. White sprays across his vision and for an instant there is only silence.

He drops to the concrete floor and gasps through the blood spilling from his nose. Pushes himself up on his elbows and skitters his gaze around the room, across the grey floor and the metal star and the chains and the white circle and the little puddle of water glistening in the poor light.

You should talk to your plumber about the pipes.

His mouth is full of blood, and Alastair's gone. Dean rolls over on his hands and knees and wipes at his face and spits and spits again, red splattering over the concrete like sudden flowers after rain. He smears it into a mess when he staggers to his feet as Castiel bursts into the room, all noise and rushing wind and the memory of something terrible.

Dean smiles at him with blood-soaked lips.

"Tell me the truth," he begs, and Castiel puts a hand on his face and stops the bleeding and the pain, the siren scream of splintered bone crushed and grinding against itself. Dean exhales in shock. The relief is startling.

"Alastair," he tries again, "Cas, he told me—about the seal, he said—"

Castiel won't look at him. And Dean understands.

It could have been a lie, but that wasn't Alastair's way. Why lie when the truth was so much crueler?

He doesn't talk to Sam about it. What can he say? His brother shows up in the Impala and Dean slams his way into the passenger's side and says, "Get us the fuck out of here" and Sam gawps at him.

"What?" Dean demands, wipes at the blood on his undamaged face again. "Jesus, Sam, what?"

"Nothing," Sam mutters after a moment of thick silence that Dean can't interpret. "Just—nothing." He throws the car into gear with an awkward, jerky motion.

"Damn right," Dean growls.

At the motel he locks himself in the bathroom to clean up, and after a few minutes he hears Sam go out. He makes some excuse through the door that Dean doesn't listen to and doesn't care about even a little bit. He knows it's Ruby. Always Ruby. Little slut.

He turns the water on in the sink and pulls back his lips and pushes his fingers inside his mouth, over the surface of his gums, the hard roots under the soft meat. He can taste the salt of his skin, and the residue of Alastair's host's blood.

He wonders for the first time about the host. Who is he? Was he? A surgeon, maybe, with those long deft fingers. It seems like the sort of thing Alastair would go for. Someone with the right sort of muscle memory.

A psychiatrist, maybe.

Dean grins into the mirror. Then he washes out his mouth as much as possible.

His hands are tingling. Fine tremors work through the bones, up and down and up and down. He wanders back into the room, staring at his hands and nearly walking into the table, a chair, the end of the bed. He's never seen his hands shake before.

Maybe Alastair did something, when he hit him.

He sits down heavily on the end of his own bed. Wonders how Castiel is doing. Is he searching for Alastair now? He didn't ask Dean if the demon knew anything about the dead angels. Maybe he was listening the whole time.

He could have stopped it, Dean thinks, viciously.

Christ, he needs a drink.

Dean's got half a bottle of cheap-shit whiskey stashed in his bag, tucked under his rolled up jeans. He gets on his knees and roots through flannel and denim for a long, stretching moment, before his fingers brush the reassuring smoothness of glass. When he extracts the bottle from its denim cocoon, though, he squints for a moment because he doesn't know what the hell he's looking at.

Something's floating in the bottle, pale and thin and ugly.

It's a human finger.

There should be blood, Dean reflects vaguely, and bits of skin or trailing tendons or muscle fibers, floating like seaweed in the alcohol. There's nothing of the kind, though. The finger's been cleanly severed at the base, just above the knuckle, by someone who knows exactly what he's doing. It's a ring finger.

Dean knows that he's seen it before. Knows where.

He doesn't open the bottle. Instead, he pushes aside Sam's laptop and sits down at the table. He sets the bottle in the center and watches the finger float serenely inside the glass.

After a while, he puts it back in his duffel, and goes to bed.

Four days later, on a milk run salt-and-burn outside Cheyenne, Dean reaches into his pocket for the lighter and his fingers brush against the sharp corner of a little plastic baggie. His fingers twitch but he doesn't say anything to Sam. Just sets the leftover pieces of one Robert Sebastian Crais (deceased) on fire, and moseys his way on back to the car, his brother trailing along behind.

Back at the motel, drab and water-stained and smelling vaguely of mildew, Dean curls up on the bed under his jacket and waits for Sam to leave. Waits a few more minutes, after the door clicks quietly shut. Listens for the noise of the engine of a little sporty car.

Waits.

When he can actually hear his heartbeat ticking over in his chest, he sits up slow and careful. Lays the jacket out on the bed and with something a little like reverence, pulls the plastic bag from his jacket pocket. Rests it on his thigh and smooths a careful hand over the delicate surface.

Both his hands are trembling again.

Inside the bag are three small squares of skin, cleanly cut and carefully removed, washed of blood and faintly shining. The light picks out fine, individual hairs.

He sits there for a long time, running his thumb over the surface of the plastic.

He should be afraid. It's a bad idea, not being afraid.

He's pretty sure, deep down, that he is. He's got to be fucking terrified, on some level. Like with dogs and the ghost sickness, only worse.

He's sure he is.

He sits on the bench outside the police station in Palestine, Ohio, and enjoys the warm sunlight washing over his face and neck. Sam's inside doing the fancy footwork. Dean just wants to sit here in the sun.

He's being watched and he should be scared. He should be scared to death.

A few weeks later, he finds part of an ear tucked inside a white box in the Impala's glove compartment. At a loss, Dean shoves it in his jacket pocket, fingers lingering a little over the glossy paper surface. That afternoon, when Sam's inside the gas station buying nasty sandwiches and cream-filled cupcakes, Dean crawls into the backseat with their bags. He fishes out the whiskey bottle and shoves the little piece of flesh through the glass mouth, to float in the alcohol bath with the severed finger. Alastair's finger.

Pieces of Alastair.

When Sam comes back he wrinkles his nose at the faint tang of alcohol in the air, but Dean isn't worried. He drums his fingers briefly on the steering wheel.

At least it doesn't smell like decay.

"What's so funny?" Sam demands about fifteen minutes into the drive, and Dean realizes that he's smiling to himself. He shrugs, strangles the tiny quirk of his lips, and schools his face into something flatter. Sam shoots him sharp sidelong glances, but doesn't say anything else about it. Just unfolds the map across his lap and hands Dean his sandwich.

When Sam goes out that night Dean sits in a chair by the window with the bottle clasped in both hands. He can't see the stars because of the glare from the streetlights and the parking lot, but he idly swishes the whiskey around inside the unopened bottle and makes up constellations anyway.

Sam's been watching him for a while. It's stupid. Dean wishes he knew why. He hasn't been doing anything different, as far as he's aware. He smiles a little more, maybe, but he wouldn't even know about that if Sam didn't keep bringing it up.

He wonders if Sam thinks Dean's on drugs, or something. He stares a lot, and once or twice opens his mouth, and he's fidgety and concerned and suddenly talkative. Dean has a hard time keeping his focus on the conversation, though. He trails off when his skin starts crawling or his hands threaten to tremble. He doesn't want to talk about blood on the concrete, or the screams that come tearing out of the dark. The way they beat in his blood, the pulse as real as his heart, squeezing in his chest like a fist.

He's sitting by the window, his hands loose and open on his thighs, all his bones separate from each other. Alastair pulled him apart once (more than once), piece by piece, and left him there. For hours. Days, maybe. Every single bone separate, scattered across hills and valleys. He remembers. He remembers.

Sam comes through the door. He looks at Dean, startled, and Dean stares back, mouth open slightly. He can't make any expression show on his face but he sees confusion and distress run around on Sam's, eyes widening and mouth working, briefly.

"Hey," Sam says, and rattles a white paper bag at him, ducking his head a little. "I, uh—dinner."

He can't remember what to say to that. Not for a long time.

One night Sam doesn't go out at all, just stays sitting at the table while Dean sprawls across his bed. Dean shuts his eyes and listens for the sound of the door opening and closing, but it never comes.

After a while, he falls asleep. Jerks awake in the middle of the night, ground class clogging his throat, tearing his breath to shreds.

Sam's in the other bed. The dark is huge and thick, fibers filling the room from floor to ceiling, tangled in everything, nosing at Dean's arms, his face, his neck.

Dean shoves his jacket off and staggers outside, shuts the door and leans on it, sucking in lungfuls of cool, quiet air. He presses his hands together, pushes them against his chest, his sternum. Something inside is tearing. It's wrong. If he makes any sound at all it's going to be a scream.

He sinks down on his haunches and presses a hand over his mouth. He wants a drink, for the first time in a while. A head full of sunlight and stars. His hands shake and he curves them in, against his chest, digging through his shirt.

There's something there, growing through the skin. Something in the way of his heart, his lungs. He needs to reach inside and tear it out, rip it out at the roots. He squeezes his eyes shut and claws into the skin of his throat, his chest. Opens his mouth but it doesn't do any good.

He lurches upright when the door opens behind him and Sam's there, nothing but a shadow in the doorway. Long arms reach out and Sam says, "Hey," and fingers latch on his shoulders.

Someone's saying, "Stop, stop." Sam digs his fingers in, manhandles Dean back in the room.

"What's going on with you?" Sam's voice hisses. He's a shadow in the dark, arms and fingers and voice like flaking ice. "You've got to tell me what's going on."

Dean shoves his hands away, his long arms.

"Get off me!" he snarls. "Why are you here, Sam? Where's that little bitch, huh? Where the hell is she?"

Sam is silent, rocks back a step. Dean can't see his face but when he speaks he sounds faintly stunned.

"What?"

"Leave me alone, Sam," he growls. "Just—enough. Enough." He shifts his weight, heel-toe-heel-toe, but doesn't move. Wants to go but can't think of where. Doesn't make fists and hears a strange sound and realizes it's his jaw, trembling. Teeth clattering against each other. He holds the rest of himself as still as he can, to make up for it.

Sam says, "Dean," and folds himself down to the floor. Knee-walks across the carpet and pulls Dean down with nothing but a tug on his hand. Dean loses his breath when his knees hit the carpet and Sam folds a hand across the back of his skull. Dean stares past him, over the shadow of his shoulder. Breathes shallow and slow.

The tremors spread through the rest of his body, slow as a rising tide. He lets his eyes slide shut.

His bones rattle around inside his skin, and Sam pulls him closer. Slowly, but with great strength. Dean lets his head tilt toward his brother's shoulder. His hands twitch and jerk. His forehead comes to rest on soft cotton, sharp bone and muscle. Skin and bones.

Sam doesn't say anything. He's very still.

The next night Sam doesn't go out. Flops on his bed with the remote and yawns big enough to give Dean a view of yesterday's breakfast.

He wrinkles his nose. "Dude."

Sam grins.

Fucker.

He wakes Dean up, though, in the middle of the night. Huge hand squeezing his arm until it hurts, and Dean snaps out of the dream and then lies there, silent, breathing in and out and staring up blindly.

Sam doesn't let go, and Dean doesn't move.

The next day he gets himself a new whiskey bottle. He needs something, a buffer. To help him pretend. To live in the world. Sam watches, silent, while he nurses it all evening, but he still wakes Dean up in the dark and holds on tight while Dean makes a noise like blood running out of his mouth.

In the morning he crawls through curtains of rust-red horror into warm streaming light. A note by the lamp says, Coffee. Back in 10. He rolls over and splays a hand across his chest and stares at the light blazing on the floor. His eyes are huge, and dry. He breathes, listens to the air going in and out. Red and brown and sharp and screaming skitter behind his eyes. They claw and make noises.

He hauls his body up and gets himself into the bathroom. Can barely tell his feet from his hands and his head screams piercingly, until he thinks the mirror should break.

It doesn't.

He needs a drink. (For Sam.) The bottle's on the counter. The new one. It should be about three-quarters full, but even squinting in the glare of the sunlight blazing through the bathroom's tiny window, Dean can see that it's not.

Can see that it's empty.

Almost empty.

He bends at the knees and crouches down, slowly, until his eyes are level with the counter. He pushes his fingers into his thighs and he stares through the glass, at what's lying on the bottom.

A finger. An index finger.

He picks the bottle up, and the finger rolls, and Dean realizes, no. It's not a finger.

It's two.

He bares all his teeth, the way he used to.

By the time Sam gets back he's got the new bottle stashed in his bag next to the old one. He accepts his coffee and grunts monosyllabically and remembers not to smile when Sam asks him how he slept. Not to smile at the memory, at the cold shivers and scream Dean for me for me.

"Fine," he answers instead. Voice like gravel.

Quietly: "Any more dreams?"

"Don't remember."

Sam nods, and Dean looks away.

He remembers.

Everything.

-End-

Note: It occurred to me, the other day, that Dean's alcoholism might actually be the lesser of two evil. If that makes sense.