Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

They’d been driving for hours by the time they pulled into the parking lot, somewhere in North Carolina. Deanna hadn’t been paying much attention to the roadsigns, fighting the urge to doze off under the unrelenting heat.

Groaning, she peeled herself from the leather seats, shoving at Sam’s head as he clambered out from the back. He had been curled up over the two seats, attempting to shade himself from the bright summer sun. All day, he’d been complaining about the heat, even as it faded out into a cooler evening from its peak in the afternoon.

Deanna hadn’t been so lucky: she could feel the dry air stinging against her sunburned skin. The midsummer had left the fine hairs of her arms blonded, and a spattering of freckles had started to dust at the high points of her face and across her shoulders. She wondered how long it’d take for her hair to start blonding too. She liked it lighter like that: it reminded her of the film photo of her mom that Dad had tucked into his wallet, her golden hair so blown out by the sun it showed like a white halo on camera.

Sam scowled, swatting ineffectually at Deanna.

“Bitch,” he said, but there was no heat behind it.

“Jerk,” She shot back. She was grinning, all teeth.

He was all gangly, long-limbs now, having breached fifteen that passing May. He’d tried to obscure his babyface with those stupid bangs of his but the awkward gait of a body-too-big was a dead tell for his age. He’d cut the bangs in a motel bathroom back in Oklahoma, two hunts ago, after a spirit had tossed him back into a headstone and left a gash along his hairline that had John cursing up a storm all the way back to the Impala. Deanna had spent hours cleaning blood out of the car seats.

“Get your things.” Dad grumbled. He was wiping the sweat from his brow as he clambered out the car with the back of a broad, scarred hand. The whole ride he’d refused to shed any of his layers.

Even Deanna had barely been able to handle the heat. She’d given in and stripped down to her tank-top and too-small shorts from the summer before (she’d been much leaner then), unable to even think about the layers of flannel and denim she usually turned to. Perched in the shotgun seat of the Impala, she’d even kicked off her boots into the footwell.

Dad ducked to rummage through the glovebox for his wallet. Sam slung his heavy duffel over his shoulder and dropped Deanna’s down onto the gravel for her. He took Dad’s, too, before beginning to trudge to the motel.

The sun was setting overhead, casting long lines of shadow across the gravelled tarmac. Deanna stretched out. Her arms and her back first, with a satisfying pop of her stiff joints, before leaning down to rub at her lean, sore calves.

She’d gotten tan all-over in the last few weeks. The last week in Muskogee had been one of the hottest Mays in record and she’d spent most of it outside, with nothing better to do, baking under the hot sun. The backs of her knees felt damp when she touched them. The gravelled pavement was hot and sharp under her feet.

When she turned, glancing back at where Dad was stood by the open driver door, he was looking at her.

The thin, stretched sunlight caught the glisten of sweat on his brow. His eyes looked darker under the shadow. Heat prickled on the back of Deanna’s neck like a beetle scuttling up the curve of her spine.

He turned back to his wallet, where he had been rifling through a stash of credit cards.

Deanna swallowed. Her stomach was twisting. Her palms felt sweaty as she bent at the knees to take the duffel, slinging it over her shoulder. She’d been packing lighter and lighter with each move.

“You get everything?” John asked as he slammed the Impala’s door shut. The fading sun cast their figures onto the gravel, side-by-side, “I want you looking out for your brother. Not a moment out of your sight. He’s- he’s been in a bad way since Muskogee. I don’t want him getting reckless.”

His voice was low, direct, something curt in it. Not quite distaste, but something like disapproval, maybe. He wiped, again, at the sweat beading at his brow.

The last few weeks had been busy, and every hour of that was visible on John’s face: he’d gotten that same dusting of freckles over his face as Deanna, hidden under the olive tan of his skin and the prickle of stubble-turned-scruff. His hair had gotten too long, too, long enough to stick to the nape of his neck and forehead where it’d been drenched in sweat. She knew she’d catch him at the bathroom sink sometime soon, struggling to shear the base of his skull until she’d take the clippers from him and do it herself. Mary had always done it before, and John had never been able to get it quite right since.

Reckless, Deanna thought, as if John hadn’t had this frantic edge to him all summer.

He’d never made a habit of sticking around longer than he needed to, but lately he’d been more skittish than usual, throwing himself even harder into the hunts. There’d been a rugaru back in Wisconsin, sometime in March when the weather was starting to finally turn. The thing had gotten a good swipe at his face, and Deanna had stitched the gash on his cheek up, knees pressed up against his spread open legs.

You could’ve died, she’d said as she threaded the curved needle through the skin of his cheek, and he’d just shrugged. Looked anywhere but at her with those tense, dark eyes. Not the worst thing that could happen. I got sloppy. And then, apropos of nothing, You really are starting to look like her, now. 

The last few hunts had worn John thin but she hadn’t been able to really see it until then.

“Yessir,” Deanna nodded, looking away. She trained her eyes on their shadows, “He’ll come around eventually. Always does. Just- he liked it there, a lot. Had friends. Got too attached. I told him we’d be gone before the summer but, well, you know.”

Muskogee had been hard on Sam. He’d made good friends there, had spent more than a few evenings at football games or in the library with them. Towards the end of their tenure there, he’d even hit it off with some girl in his Algebra II class – Grace? Gina? Deanna had tried not to laugh when she’d seen the girl, with at least half-a-head on than Sam, leaning to give him a lipgloss kiss on the cheek before he scuttled off towards where Deanna was sat, waiting in the Impala. Leaving had been harder than usual.

He was fifteen, now, and Deanna could tell he was starting to become disillusioned with hunting. It had lost its appeal quickly after they’d started bringing him along, when he’d realised the job wasn’t as cool as Dad had made it seem. When the job wasn’t brutal and laborious, it was boring, and Sam didn’t seem to have the patience for that.

“I think he’s just- lonely. Misses his friends.”

John looked at her. The golden sun caught the slivers of silver that were beginning in his beard. Each one of his fourty-something years seemed that much more apparent.

“Look at me, Deanna,” he said, and she did, “We don’t need anyone but each other. Family first, always. Your brother needs to understand that. I don’t care if we’re not enough for him. Family comes first.”

“Yessir.”

“He needs to learn,” John continued, “Sam- he’s not like you, Deanna. More sensitive. This job, it doesn’t come so natural to him.”

The job’d never come natural to Deanna, she didn’t think, more like she’d never known much outside of it. Not when her entire life oscillated around this. John had her weaned on revenge before she’d even known what it really meant.

Deanna didn’t have anything to say to that. She chewed her lip and kept her gaze trained on their shadows the entire way up to the front desk where Sam was waiting, and tried to ignore the shiver building at the base of her spine.

The guy at the check-in leered at Deanna the entire time Dad spoke.

His beady, dark eyes scanned her up and down, barely brushing her face before shifting down to her blushed shoulders, with their fine sheen of sweat and pale tanlines, and then to the swell of her tanned thighs where her shorts clamped too tight.

She was no stranger to people looking. People always looked, wherever they went, had looked even when she was fourteen and fresh-faced and didn’t know why they looked. It was worse, now, when she knew how bad they looked. No one looked at her and John and thought father and daughter .

John talked with an impressive purpose to ignore his blatant, lecherous gaze. He pushed the card across the countertop and kept his back straight, emphasising the height he had on the sitting man. He didn’t glance back at Deanna has he sent the two of them ahead, to the room.

“That guy shouldn’t have been looking at you like that,” Sam started, voice tense and low as they began towards the room, “It’s- it’s-”

His body was taut like a bowstring, almost vibrating with the tension in his muscles as he kept himself restrained. Deanna scoffed. Not like he’d be able to do much, the kid was skin-and-bones. He was lithe with muscle, sure, scrappy, but he’d never been in a real fight.

“No different from every other place we’ve stayed, Sammy.”

The room stunk like cigarette smoke and dust when she managed to pry the stiff door open. There were two queens in the middle of the room, maybe a metre apart, and a desk pushed against the opposite wall.

Deanna dropped her boots down by the doorway with a thunk. She shrugged her duffel off onto the first bed.

“Don’t call me that,” Sam trailed in after her, wrinkling his nose up at the dust-laden air. It was stifling, “I’m not a kid. And- that doesn’t make it right.”

“I never said it was.”

She began towards the only window, to the left of the door. Honeyed sun was spilling into the room, and stepping into its pathway washed Deanna in a palpable warmth. She yanked the moth-bitten curtains closed with a harsh sshhk!

“Just- don’t worry about it, okay. Don’t need you to defend my honor, or anything.”

“I’m not trying to-” From somewhere behind her, she could hear the sound of Sam setting the salt-line at the doorway, “Dad’s not gonna do it.”

She turned sharply, at that. Sam was bent at the waist, curving off the thick salt line at the edge of the doorframe. His hair flopped down over his face. He’d started growing it out months ago when some girl had said she thought he’d look better with long hair.

And, yeah, maybe Dad wasn’t going to. He had tried once, when Deanna was sixteen and had come to the bar with him, somewhere in Montana, and this group of fourty-somethings had leered at her from across the room all night. One of them had grabbed her ass through her denim skirt and John had been about ready to sock the guy, but Deanna had given the guy a grin and leaned down to let him catch a glimpse of her cleavage under her tank top. They’d left the bar with more information about the case than they’d managed to get out of the victims in days. John hadn’t interfered much after that.

“Dad knows I don’t need him to,” She said, “God, Sammy, he was just like every other sleezeball motel guy or bar creep or- I don’t know, your nerd-freak friends at school who’ve never seen a girl before.”

Sam straightened. He was pink at the ears.

“My friends weren’t-”

Deanna grinned. She moved towards the bed, where Sam had opened her duffel to find the salt cannister. She started to work her hands under the back of her tank, fumbling at the clasp of her bra.

“Yes, they were, dude.” She snorted. Sam was still blushing “Look. Just drop it.”

“Whatever.”

“Look at you, getting all overprotective,” She teased.

“Shut up.”

Sam started wrestling off his own t-shirt, unable to bear the heat much longer. He’d already outgrown the damn thing, small enough to expose a sliver of belly and stretch dangerously tight over his broadening shoulders. He’d been a slight thing only last year, before his growth spurt had hit. Thinking about it made Deanna want to cry, a little. She remembered when he was so small he’d had to use a stepstool to brush his teeth at the bathroom sink.

Briefly, Deanna considered shimmying out of her shorts, too, but decided against it. Her socks could go, though. She pulled her hair up from her shoulders, tying it up and away, exposing her blushed neck.

“Some might even call that jealousy, Sammy,”

“ Not my name.” Sam was stripping off his jeans, too, leaving them in a heap on the floor with his shirt. She watched his broad back ripple as he slunk towards the motel bathroom, “I call first shower.”

“Hey, you respond to it,” She called across the room, grinning, “Like a dog,”

There was a sharp rap at the door. When she turned, John was pushing the thing open. He was cradling a bottle of soda and a candy bar from the vending machine they’d passed in the hall.

John had followed them at his own slow pace, and was now lingering in the open doorway. His looming figure seemed even larger, cut in shadow with the setting sun behind him. He was looking at Deanna, again, something inscrutable in his eyes. His gaze tilted down to her bare feet against the rough carpet.

“Salt lines should be thicker,” he said by way of greeting, “You know better than that. Sam’s in the shower?”

He tilted his head to the now-closed bathroom door. Deanna nodded. She straightened her back. Dad nodded. He stepped forward, and Deanna met him halfway, taking the drink and candy from him. His eyes followed her hands.

He wasn’t tense, not exactly, but there was something in the way he carried himself that made Deanna wonder what had gotten him so paranoid. It was like he was waiting to be caught out at any minute, and he was bracing himself for the impact.

That feeling had been there for weeks now, that sense that something was coming. She could feel it heavy in the air like when a thunderstorm was coming, all electric and begging for a spark. The sinking feeling in her stomach kept crawling back every time she’d tried to push it away.

She wondered if that’s what Dad was feeling, the beginning-of-the-end, the spool finally unravelling. It was only a matter of when, and what.

“I’m going out. Talk to some locals. I want you to stay here, keep an eye on your brother. You got enough cash for dinner?”

I’m not a baby , she could almost imagine Sam saying. Instead, she let her gaze flicker up, meeting his dark eyes.

She wasn’t getting any taller, not at nineteen, but Dad had at least half a foot on her. She thought, then, about how he’d always seemed so big, when she was younger, so solid and unconquerable. That feeling had never quite disappeared, even as she’d grown bigger.

“Yessir.”

Dad swallowed. She watched his adam’s apple bob with it. There was a bead of sweat working its way down the side of his wiry neck.

“Shotgun’s in the duffel. Don’t answer the door to anyone. Emergency, you call me.” 

As if they needed reminding. It was as natural to Deanna as breathing.

“Yessir.”

He disappeared out of the door without a glance back. She watched him go. When she finally heard the rumble of the Impala’s engine in the parking lot below, Deanna turned away from the door. She looked down at the candy bar he’d passed her. Three Musketeers, her favourite.

Evening swiftly faded into night. Sam had emerged from the shower, shaking the water from his hair like a dog. As the muggy darkness settled in, they curled up against the headboard of one of the double beds, stripped down to their underwear. The heat settled like a thick blanket on their skin, even then, and Deanna had tried to beat the broken AC unit into submission with little success.

Sam’s skin was still damp, beading up with shower water as she traced symbols into his bare, tanned shoulder. He had his head tucked into the crook of her neck.

He was getting big, now. Too big for her to cradle in her arms, the way she had when he was much younger. She ached to hold him like that, like a baby, her baby, the way she saw little girls cradle their babydolls, curving their own small arms around them.

The bright, blue light of the TV illuminated them in the darkness, a cool shade of stuttering static. Deanna barely focused on the reruns of Wheel of Fortune playing, instead honing in on the comforting, masculine scent of sunscreen and the dollar store three-in-one they all used, and the hot press of Sam’s body. He ran hot. She loved it in the winters, but it was beginning to grow unbearable in the already stifling heat.

“Nngggh,” Sam yawned into the crook of her neck, all hot-wet breath. She wrinkled her nose, “G’nna take the other bed. Too hot.”

“Dad’ll want it when he comes back,” Deanna warned lightly, thinking whenever that is to herself.

Sam shrugged, nosing at her jaw for a final time, nuzzling into her like a cat, before she pushed gently at his shoulder. He peeled himself away – he’d grown into a tangle of limbs, too long and lean and clumsy like a day-old colt learning to walk.

Deanna watched him pad to the other bed. She remembered watching him learn to walk the first time around. Sam collapsed onto the small cot with a great, heaving sigh. His feet jutted out over the edge.

The telltale rumble of the Impala’s engine was what broke Deanna from her drowsy almost-sleep.

She hadn’t been keeping track of the time when she’d started dozing off. The heady warmth made it hard to sleep, but not impossible, leaving her in that awkward, restless middleground. She had long since turned off the TV and tucked herself under the thinnest blanket. She could never sleep without the weight of something on her. It was never easy to sleep when Dad wasn’t around, either: it wasn’t that she felt unsafe, but his presence held such a certainty, a promise of safety.

She squinted into the darkness. Across the room, she could see the line of Sam’s back. It rose and fell at a steady, rhythmic pace. If she listened, she could single out the sound of his soft breaths as he slept.

The Impala’s tires groaned against the gravel and, moments later, she heard the crunch of John’s heavy workboots. Even with the sputtering air con breathing lukewarm air, they seemed impossibly loud. John always did that – demanded a presence much greater than himself.

Deanna listened to his clunking steps growing louder, that familiar staccato of an unsteady, weighted stumble. He favoured his left when he’d been drinking. His good leg. She listened to the twist of a key in the lock, the chhhk-clink! before the door creaked ajar. She was fully awake, now.

He staggered in, hulking frame cutting through the faint moonlight. The heavy dark of the summer night seemed to bend and curve around him. Deanna breathed shallowly, in and out, feigning sleep. Even in the burning heat she felt the pinpricks of gooseflesh across her bared limbs.

She tried to discern each creak and shuffle — John attempting to fix the salt-line at the doorway that he’d undoubtedly broken through, him shrugging off his jacket, locking the door behind him.

She listened, still, as he stumbled into the attached bathroom. The off-white lamp glow was visible even through the thin skin of her eyelids. She listened to the run of water, whining through the pipes, and the sound of John rustling around. He was, what, splashing water onto his face? In the safety of the darkness, Deanna opened her eyes the slightest crack as John came back into the room.

Through the thin sliver of vision, she watched Dad hover at the edge of Sam’s bed. Sam had shifted in his sleep, onto his back, his body splayed out over the sheets like a gangly starfish. Dad snuffled, something like a stifled snort, before reaching down with a broad hand to brush the mop of hair away from Sam’s face. He bent, then, pressing a soft kiss to the crown of Sam’s head, right where he’d split it open on that headstone back in Muskogee. It was the most gentle thing Deanna’d seen him do in years, and it was in the safety of darkness, when he thought no one could see him do it. Deanna squeezed her eyes shut.

In a better life, maybe this is where things would have diverged: Dad would have turned to where Deanna was supposedly sleeping, and pushed the hair away from her own face. He’d smile down at her, all secretive and soft, and give her one of those booze-mottled kisses to the crown of her head, the same way he had for Sam, and the same way he had when he’d held her as a baby. Maybe they’d wake up, and Dad would decide they could skip their drills for the day.

This wasn’t that life. This hadn’t been that life since the moment Dad had pulled them both from the fire.

There was a sniff, and then a bristle, like John was rubbing at his scruffy cheek and jaw. She heard his footsteps circle around the bed, and then-

His weight jostled the double as he crawled in, boots and all. Deanna felt the bed dip, tried not to give herself away. That acrid, sharp scent of cheap beer lingered in the air around them. She could’ve choked on it.

She kept her breaths measured and steady. Forced her body still, but loose. One of John’s hands settled on her waist, bracing themselves to use her as leverage to shuffle forward into the bed. His palms were warm and wide, spanning easily around the curve of her body. Belatedly, Deanna tried to recall the last time Dad had ever touched her. It had to have been back in Muskogee. She’d thought Sam was going to die. Dad had pulled her into a tight, desperate hug once they’d gotten back to the house and she had breathed in his scent, all sweat and leather and 3-in-1.

“Deanna,” He whispered, but the word felt directionless. As if spoken out to the darkness and not to her. Here he was, in the dead of night, calling her name out into the pitch black like he was confessing something. Deanna scrunched her eyes shut.

She could feel his weight against her back, all-encompassing. They hadn’t slept in the same bed since she was seven, maybe eight, still having nightmares about mom. She would curl up into his side and listen to his heartbeat and he would stroke her hair until she was soothed to sleep.

Deanna, Dad’s lips moved against the skin of the nape of her neck. He murmured her name over and over, Deanna, Deanna, Deanna, like some sort of prayer. The hot, laboured breath plumed out against her burning skin. She felt the condensation, damp, discomforting, as it settled.

His rough hand curled and inched its way across her stomach, feeling the soft give of her flesh under his fingers. Distantly, Deanna wondered if he could smell the heady, artificial coconut of her shampoo, with his face pressed against the back of her head.

 Did he think she was asleep?

John kept his hand there. His loud breath rattled in her ear, heavier and heavier, and for a long moment, Deanna wondered if he had fallen asleep like that, pressed up against her, his hand on her stomach, fully-clothed against stripped-down. She leaned back, and felt it – he was half-hard, undeniably, beginning to strain against his jeans where he met the small of her back.

“Deanna,” He said again, something like desperation behind it.

And, god, had he wanted this? How long had it been? She thought back to that bathroom in Wisconsin. He’d not been able to look her in the eye, kept his gaze wandering across her face, half-obscured in shadow, safe. He’d pressed the outside of his thigh to her knees and leaned his body weight into her as she worked.

And- and- outside the car, today, when she’d caught him looking at her- had that been something? Had he been wanting her, then, catching glances of her when he thought he was safe to? The points of contact between their bodies suddenly felt like they were burning.

Deanna couldn’t breathe. Her eyes were clenched shut and she held air captive in her lungs but it didn’t feel like enough, she didn’t know if she wanted to sink deeper into the moment or pull away from it completely, throw herself out of the bed and out of the room and take the Impala and just keep running, never once looking back.

But, God, she loved John. Like a dog loved it’s master – Deanna knew that one day it’d burn her from the inside out, all that love for him, that devotion. And if he wanted her like this – he wanted her. She’d never been one to say no to him.

If he couldn’t take it from her, she’d give it to him.

Deanna put her hand over John’s. Combined, she slid them up her body until she was cupping the soft flesh of her tit through the thin fabric of her top. She knew he could feel the swell of it beneath his palm. And, fuck, these had been the same hands that had cradled her head as a baby.

John froze. She felt it like a shockwave over him, starting at where their hands joined and rippling all through him. The breath caught in his throat with an audible noise. They were both silent for a long, terrible moment. 

“Deanna-” His strained whisper sounded like yelling into the stiff silence of the room  There was something like horror there.  “What- what are you doing? ”

“I saw you looking at me,” Deanna said. John’s hand shot back like he’d touched something scalding. She turned from her side, more to her back, to look at him.

His eyes were wide, and wet, as he stared down at her through the darkness. The scruff of his almost-beard looked like dirt on his sunken cheeks. Their bodies were still aligned as they pressed up against each other and Deanna could feel him, still hard, against her hip. She kept going.

“When I got out of the car. I saw you.”

Because it had to have been, right? The way he’d looked at her. She’d seen that same hungry gaze before. The guys in the bars, the motel receptionists, Sam’s stupid virgin friends. She’d seen it on John’s face and it had struck her as so unfamiliar, the way it felt hearing someone speak to you in a language you didn’t know. The words were different, maybe, but the message carried.

Dad shook his head. He had inched back, body tense and jerking like someone had run an electric current through him. He tilted his face into the pillow, away from her, like he could somehow escape her.

“Jesus,” He croaked, something desperate there, “Dee, Jesus, you’re my- I’m your- What the fuck is wrong with you?”

John got big when he got scared, like a mean dog showing its teeth.

“And I saw you in Muskogee, and when I was fixing your face in Wisconsin, and that bar in Montana, and- and- you didn’t just want to knock that guy’s teeth in for hitting on me, did you?”

The words just kept coming. Distantly, Deanna knew she should just shut up, stop digging this hole she’d found herself in. But- she was on the cusp of something here.

“How could you ever think-” John was shaking his head, face turned into the pillow still. “Deanna- How could you-”

“I wanted you to. To look. I want you to, okay?”

She reached out and he flinched from the movement.

He didn’t move away when she took his face in her two hands, though. He was so warm and rough in her grasp; she watched his eyes press shut for a long, long moment, and he leaned into her touch like a man starved.

When he opened his eyes, he looked like she had stabbed him. Taken a knife to his chest, or throat, let him bleed out over their bed like a stuck pig. Maybe it was betrayal, or shame, or disgust, at her or himself, she couldn’t be sure, but it was something and it was killing him.

She could strangle him now and he’d probably let her. It would be an act of mercy.

“I want you to,” Deanna echoed.

She shuffled, turning onto her side so they were facing eachother. Their bodies were curled towards each other’s, twin skeletons, hers stripped bare and him still in his leather-denim-uniform. His face was inches from hers. She could feel the bloom of his hot, wet breath over her face.

“Dee,” He said, but he was looking at her mouth, “Dee, it’s not right.”

“But you want it.”

John’s gaze flickered, searching over her face with a soft intensity. What he was looking for, Deanna couldn’t be sure – proof this wasn’t some sort of joke, maybe, that she meant what she said. He was still leaning into her touch, his body curved inwards until their knees were brushing.

“I shouldn’t want it. You know that. Come on, Dee, you know that, don’t you?”

Most of Dad’s questions were ones with no answer – What do you think you’re doing? What were you thinking? You’re some sort of hero now? She’d never heard something so pathetic out of him. He was pleading with her. She ran her thumb over the bristle of John’s weathered cheek.

She thought, then, with a rush of horror, that Sam was only feet away. She’d never been much of a believer, but she’d prayed to God that

“Dad, please. Let me-” She took a deep breath, “Let me do this for you.”

He shuddered with something like a sob. Deanna thought she might be sick. Her body was burning all over, a pulsing heat that radiated from where her palms met John’s cheek and seeped all down to her toes. The rational part of her was screaming What the fuck are you thinking? What are you doing? What is wrong with you? You’re sick, you’re sick, you’re so fucking sick for wanting- but she’d never been one for rationale when it came to Dad. It was this, them, the family above anything else.

She’d kneel and lick the dirt from his boots if that was what he wanted. He could trace the steel-toe and rubber along the edge of her jaw and she’d be waiting for the kick. She wanted to tell him that, but knew he’d pull back even further. Everything was riding on this moment, here and now.

“What am I supposed to say?” He said, voice broken. His face twisted up like he was trying not to cry. Deanna watched him run a hand over his face, colliding with where her hands were still cradling him. “I’m not- you know I’m not-”

Like that. She’d heard the stories, knew what people thought of them. Knew they were closer than any family should be.

“I know you’re not,” She was choking on it, “That’s not- this isn’t that. I want it, okay? You have to trust me.”

John curled one giant, clammy palm at the junction of her neck and shoulders, letting a thumb swipe back and forth against her sweat-damp skin. Her heart, a kick-drum, pounded in her chest. The action brushed against the sun-kissed skin at the nape of her neck, fine baby hairs bleached and spine cutting sharp out of her skin, and she shuddered into it without even thinking. John breathed in, harsh.

The softness was disconcerting. She didn’t think a kindness like that fit in a life like theirs.

He was looking at her, really looking, and Deanna felt like she was burning alive under his gaze, infinitely big but infinitely small. Hurtling through space must have felt calm compared to this.

Deanna pressed forward until her forehead was touching his. She was still holding his face, and he was still holding her shoulder, and their legs were squashed together under the thin sheet. He was panting hard through his mouth.

“You’re my baby,” He sobbed, body heaving with it, “Oh, god.”

When she looked, he really was crying. Big, wet tears rolling down his cheeks as he blinked, unable to look away from her now that he’d latched his gaze onto her. The tears caught the sliver of moonlight between the curtains, like molten silver spilling down his face.

“I want this. I want this,” She echoed. Because she did. She’d let her have him, cradle-to-grave.

“Let me do this for you, Dad. Let me have this.”

And that must have been it, for John. Letting Deanna take the fall – he was just doing what she’d asked. He’d never been able to say no to her, had he?

It was like the strings holding him up had been cut clean-through as he dissolved in her arms. He squeezed his eyes shut, long, dark eyelashes brushing against the high points of his dappled cheeks.

Deanna surged forwards, crashing her mouth to John’s into a kiss that bled agony. The moment they met, Deanna thought, fuck , because there was no going back now, no pretending this never was, no burying their heads in the sand. The thought made her press into him deeper, a messy clash of teeth and lips. John’s mouth slid against hers, restrained at first. When his hand slid up her neck quickly to tangle through the knots of her sun-bleached hair, twisting desperately for some sort of stability, it drew a soft whimper from somewhere deep in Deanna’s chest that had him kissing back with a force she’d only ever associated with his rage before.

His breath tasted stale and sour like the beer he’d been drinking and he reeked of sweat, but Deanna had never wanted to bask in it more. She wanted him to kiss her harder until her lips were bruised, until she was bleeding, wanted him to unhinge his jaw and swallow him whole if that was what would soothe the wounded-animal noises he was making against her mouth.

The whole line of her body pressed up against him, aching to get closer and closer, and she felt the hardness of him as she shoved a knee between his thighs. He was breathing, heavy, as she crushed against him, pressing her tits to her chest where she could feel his hammering heart.

It unravelled from there – his hands skated down across her body with an apprehension she’d never seen him wear before, nervous like a teenage boy, like he was wearing a skin too big for his skeleton. She let him touch, arched her back and gasped into his mouth when he touched all the right places. When his fingers had brushed against the elastic waist of her panties, Deanna had rolled her hips up into the movement and tugged at the too-long hair at the nape of Dad’s neck. He had stifled a groan before slipping his fingers down past the waistband.

The pads of his fingers brushed against her coarse hair before moving down, swiping over where she was warm and wet and aching for him. Her skull felt heavy and headached cradled in his wide hand, the other pressed, searching, between her legs.

His breath heavied as he felt her there, wet and trembling, and then he pushed two fingers in at once. A cry caught in her throat at the last moment, and he’d made a half-assed attempt at silence himself, pulling his face away to stifle his grown against her tawny hair. She clenched around his fingers.

“Dad,” she whimpered, and he inched his fingers out slowly.

They were thicker than anyone she’d been with before, the stretch less forgiving than the hands of the boys she’d been with in highschool. She felt the roughness of them, the labour that had left his hands scarred and calloused. With a knee pressed between her legs until one was draped over his hips, he could plunge his fingers back into her, deeper, so deep it forced her thighs to clench around him.

She could hear how wet she was, could feel it soaking onto his hand, hear the awful squelch of his curled fingers inside of her. These were same hands that had held her, she though, bathed her and soothed her back to sleep and pressed to her forehead the first time she’d gotten a fever after Mary had died, and Dad had cursed up a storm, and cried, and stolen Nyquil from the drugstore for her.

“You’re my baby,” he said, buried knuckle-deep in her cunt, middle and ring finger. She whimpered against him. He was still cradling her head, and stroked her blonde hair as he soothed her.

“So good for me.”

He fingered her open, long and languid and slow, letting the dull ache fade away and something grow in it’s place – Deanna wanted him. She burned from the inside out with it.

When he pulled his fingers away, eventually, Deanna squeezed her eyes shut. She had pressed her face into the crook of his neck at some point, smelling the warm musk of his sweat-slick skin. In the darkness, all she could rely on was sound – she listened, heart pounding.

There was a loud, wet noise: belatedly, Deanna realised he was licking his fingers clean. Then, the clink of metal, the scrape of leather and fabric, as he unbuckled his belt and shuffled his jeans just an inch down his hips.

He tapped the head of his cock against her, their bodies intertwined, teasing her with the slick friction as he slid between her thighs. Her hips jerked forward on instinct, and she could hear him laugh, muffled, into her hair. He nudged her thighs further apart, settling between them like he’d always belonged there.

The pinch of pain that blossomed between her legs as he pressed in shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. She whimpered, hands clamping around his bicep with the ache of it.

He froze. Whether he was waiting to see if she was hurt, or to see if they’d woken Sam, she couldn’t be sure. His hand at the base of her skull ran down between her shoulder blades, slowly, soothing her.

“Easy, easy,” He said, hips easing forward centimetre by centimetre, tortuously slow, “Not gonna- not gonna hurt you. Just relax, come on, you can take it.”

“Dad-” She said, and then, “Fuck,”

There was no way he could be wearing a rubber, fucking her here. Something pulsed through her, hot and aching, and she arched into him as his hand settled at the small of her back. He sunk deeper into her.

“Breathe,” He instructed, the softest command he’d ever given, and she obliged, breathing deep through her nose and out through her mouth, “Good girl.”

He sunk deeper until his pelvis was pressed against hers, bottoming out all at once. It punched the air from Deanna’s lungs. Deanna thought she might actually be on fire, every inch of her skin burning, heart pounding so hard in her chest she was sure that alone could wake Sam from across the room.

“God, look at you,” He breathed, glancing down through the darkness at where their bodies joined, “You’re so good for me.”

He pulled his hips back, slowly, slowly, dragging out of her, before pushing back in gently. It dissolved, slow like sugar in water, into a steady rhythm, slow but deep so she could feel every inch of him.

Deanna hadn’t realised she’d been crying until John cupped her face with one of his big, tan hands, and his fingers smeared the wetness of it across her cheek. He was panting, hips jerking harder, so maybe he liked it, that she was crying. Maybe that did it for him: the thrill of invasion.

“So good, so good for me,” He echoed, soothing those frantic tears that spilled as he pistoned his hips forwards. She hiccuped wetly into the thick, night air. He hushed her again, a litany of all those sweet names he’d never use for her when it was light out: babygirl, sweetheart, darling. It made her sick – she pressed her lips back to his, open-mouthed, just so he’d shut up.

Where had he been, that evening? Had he been thinking of her?

Had he gone out and fucked another woman, bent her over the Impala or pushed her up against a wall, imagining it was Deanna? What sort of women did he pick up — young, lean, big tits and bigger mouth, twirling light brown hair around a finger? Or maybe they were blonde, doe-eyed, like Mom had been, god . Older, like Mom should be. Deanna’s stomach rolled.

She was tender and pliant all over for him as he dragged his tongue along the roof of her mouth, stealing the unspoken words between them right from her throat. The veil between them had always been thin, flesh-and-blood all the same, but she’d never felt so much like him as now, like he was crawling into her skin and she was crawling into his.

The ache had started to fade gradually, easier to swallow with John’s large, gentle hands cradling her face like she was something fragile, replaced by a sharp current of pleasure that had Deanna’s calves tensing every time John eased forward. 

Rocking her hips against his, Deanna met John thrust-for-thrust, feeling him deep and intrusive and impossible to ignore. He was panting, groaning against her mouth, keeping their bodies pressed close and tight with his hips settled between her legs. There was sweat beading down her back, sending little, rippling shudders through Deanna that had John keening. 

When a particularly rough jerk forward had Deanna whining, scrabbling her hands over John’s biceps for purchase, he broke away from her mouth to press their foreheads together. He was looking at where their bodies joined, slick wet in the dark, and he peeled a hand from Deanna’s face to slip it between the two of them. She felt the heel of his palm press against her pubic bone as his fingers found her clit in small, lazy circles. 

“Taking it so well,” he said, and Deanna forced her face into the pillow to stifle her sobs. She gripped him, hard, nails digging into firm, tan muscle, as he rutted hard and fast and desperate against her.

She wanted this, she thought. In more than just this moment. Deanna tried to imagine how this could fit into their lives: Dad coming home after a week-long hunt, wrapping her up in his arms and kissing her soft on the lips, all roughness in him left behind at the burning pure of whatever monster he’d been hunting. Or, maybe, her at the kitchen counter in the morning, making Sam’s lunch for school — Dad’s come up behind her, grope her ass with those wide, tanned hands, mouth at the side of her neck with his coffee-breath. Press her face-down into the mattress and fuck her til she was crying, shaking, begging for it. She’d do anything he wanted her to, likely more. The perfect daughter. 

With a guttural moan, John’s hips stuttered forward, pressing as deep as possible into her. Warmth bloomed somewhere inside of her where he had spilled, white-hot. 

The pillow was wet where Deanna had pressed her face into it – from the tears pooling at her eyes, maybe, or her hot-wet breath, and she squeezed her eyes shut against it as John pulled out of her. There was an awful, wet sound as he did, and she could feel where his come left the insides of her thighs slick.

His mouth pressed to the golden-blonde crown of Deanna’s head, John heaved;

“Oh, god,” he had said. His voice was hoarse. He sounded like he’d just been wounded. Now that the room was still, silent, every word felt too loud. Deanna clenched his bicep. Her skin was prickling all over, “Oh god, oh- fuck, good god,”

No gods here, Deanna thought, but she couldn’t speak between her gulping breaths. Her lungs ached like the caress of air horrified them.

“Deanna,” He was breathing heavy, still, she could feel his chest rising and falling rapidly into the hollow between them. 

“Dad,” She whispered back into the darkness. 

It must’ve been the wrong thing to say. John wrenched himself back from Deanna the moment she’d said it, scrabbling on the sheets with an awful scrape of denim and leather against cotton. The distance formed isn’t huge, but the sudden ocean of sheets between them feels uncrossable. 

“Oh god.”

Deanna raised her hands to cup John’s face. He flinched back from the movement, wholly this time, no relaxing into her grip. His face was wet, and with a shock of awful, twisting guilt, Deanna realised he must have been crying. She started rubbing her thumbs over his cheekbones where they hit out of his weathered skin, face too-thin with all the meals he’s skipped so they could eat. He looked nothing like the pictures she’d seen of him when he was younger, back when Mary was alive — more like a long lost relative, maybe, a cousin or something. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” She couldn’t feel herself saying the words, but they echoed out into the stillness, so it must have been her, “Dad. Dad. Please don’t be mad. Please. Don’t be mad.”

She loved him so fully she ached for it, felt like she was drowning under a crashing wave every time she looked at him. He looked so small, now, shoulders hunched in on himself and eyes wet, god, she hadn’t seen him cry in God knows how long. 

“Deanna-“ He was whispering, frantic, and he couldn’t seem to look her in the eye, “Deanna, you’re my baby,” 

Her gut twisted. She leaned into him, curling into his chest like she was a baby again. He was trembling all over, like an overworked muscle. If only he’d wrap his arms around her. 

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she was babbling now, knew she must sound borderline incoherent, “It’s all so rotten. I didn’t- it’s my fault, okay? I wanted it. I took it from you. It’s not your fault: I took it from you.”

I wanted it. I took it from you. You’ve never been able to say no to me. John was still shaking. Across the room, Deanna listened to Sam shuffle in his sleep, turning over or kicking under the blankets maybe. It was done, now. There was no going back.

Morning came early, at the cusp of 5am, threads of golden sun spilling in through the crack in the curtained windows. Deanna drifted in and out of sleep as the morning crept in and settled fully, and when she woke fully, the bed was empty. 

Sam was at the small table by the kitchenette, brushing his bangs out of his eyes over and over. He was cradling a cup of weak coffee, pale with milk, and he had spread his summer homework out over the tabletop. He gave Deanna a bleary-eyed, clumsy smile when she padded over, barefoot on the linoleum tile. He looked like he’d slept well.

“Where’s dad?” Deanna asked. She ran a hand over her face, feeling the thin sheen of sweat.

“Beats me,” He shrugged, jerking his head towards the door. “Car wasn’t here when I woke up. Didn’t leave a note.”

Then, Sam paused. He squinted at Deanna’s face, struggling to see her where she was cast in shadow, backlit only by the bright sun. 

For an awful, awful moment, Deanna’s heart dropped to her stomach. Her blood froze in her veins and her lungs seized up. He knows, she thought, wiping her sweaty palms frantically on her thighs, he knows, shit, he knows, he woke up last night and he knows.

“You look awful. The heat kept you up?”

“Yeah,” Deanna said, mouth so numb she must’ve taken a shot of novocaine to the jaw sometime, “Yeah, guess it was the heat.”