Title: Pretty

Disclaimer: Written for fun, not profit. Lyrics are ‘Stand Still, Look Pretty’ by The Wreckers.

Summary: AU. Part of the Innocence and Feathers ‘verse (read the preceding stories first). A prequel of sorts to the rest of the ‘verse. Before Sam arrived in Los Angeles, Dean was drifting. Falling apart. Oneshot. Complete.

Pairing: Dean/John, Dean/others, implied Dean/Sam.

Feedback: Is love.

A/N: LOL I highly doubt anyone but me recalls this ‘verse, but here’s a little snapshot anyway.

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‘I wanna paint my face and pretend that I am someone else.’

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Dean pretty much gave up turning tricks for cash after he tried to kill himself. The two things were linked in a way he didn’t like to think about. Stumbling around New York City, naked, wet and dripping blood was not his finest hour and he didn’t want to repeat it.

The whole Pretty Woman fantasy hadn’t worked out. His Richard Gere had turned out to be an over-controlling ass that bought him jewels and dresses and wanted him to be a girl more than he was comfortable with, loaned Dean out to his friends and, at the end of the day, couldn’t deal with who Dean really was at all.

Dean was too insane. This happened a lot. What people took for wildness, for sexiness, for a free spirit... was actually just someone riding another manic wave. It only made the low points harder to bear. Dean could sleep for days, hardly moving from wherever he had fallen. No matter what drugs anyone gave him, Dean’s disorder wouldn’t go away.

He was done. Dean was so far beyond done with being someone’s party piece.

Maybe cutting his wrists while taking a bath wasn’t the best way to go about making a statement. It didn’t gain him any understanding or sympathy. It just landed him in hospital with doctors breathing down his neck, saying he was bipolar and needed help.

He did the only sensible thing. He ran.

John helped him to get respectable work. Well, respectable. Stripping was respectable compared to whoring, hell; he was practically a nine to five kind of guy. Of course, the hours were closer to nine at night until five in the morning, but that was a detail. Dean had no room for details. The only time he cared about the finer points in life was when he was putting his makeup on.

Because it had to be perfect. If it wasn’t perfect, what fun was it for whatever guy rubbed it off his face that night? He left his mask on people’s faces, on their hands, evidence of his existence. When Dean was making himself up that was how it really felt. Like he was inventing himself all over again. He was a blank canvas. When he looked into the mirror, he could see wide green eyes and pouting lips. He could see faded freckles. And he wanted to cover it all up, this ugly boy staring back at him. This person who wore their filthy life like pride. One night he decided to be a gorgeous blonde girl. He shaved himself clean and perfect, he put on his blonde curls and painted his lips shiny pink. He walked around his tiny apartment in six inch fuck-me heels to practice, so that no one could say he wasn’t convincing.

Sometimes he was a good girl, a sweet girl who sat on laps and twirled her hair.

More often he was a bad girl, the type of girl who bent over and showed everyone she wasn’t wearing any panties. The type of girl who got spanked.

As long as he wasn’t a mess of a boy then it didn’t matter who he was.

As long as he wasn’t Dean, the rest was gravy.

Sex inside the club was strictly forbidden, anyway. Boy2Girl had surprisingly stern policies against prostitution, at least they surprised Dean. Until he realized they were trying not to get shut down. A club for cross-dressing strippers? Apparently even in Los Angeles people didn’t like that kind of shit.

The most Dean ever did was jerk some guy off for ten bucks. The management let that slide, but as soon as people started wanting the full package, Dean had to back off, much as he ached to hang around and let someone take him.

Fuck me. Please let them fuck me.

It’s not hustling, he reminded himself, if you don’t take money. Dean took to letting guys get him wasted when he wasn’t working. They paid for him in alcohol and then he took them back to his room.

No one ever minded that his room was a mess, or that it stank of paint fumes for a while there. All they cared about was that he had a bed they could press him down on.

The world got blotted out by the pain of sex. It almost always hurt. No one ever waited around to prepare him properly, and Dean didn’t complain. At first he didn’t dare in case they left him, cold and untouched, then later he didn’t even want to. He liked the bruised, raw feeling. They always wanted him to moan so pretty and tell them it hurt so good.

Someone once complimented him that he wasn’t like a whore. Wasn’t loose like a whore.

Dean nodded and closed his eyes and pretended to sleep until the guy left.

When there was no one else, there was always John, who cuddled him a little and whispered sweetness into his ear. He told Dean. Sure. Sure I care about you. That’s it, be a good boy, be good for me.

Be bad for me.

Dean could be motionless while John was above him. He could just lie there and take it and not even moan once. He always wanted to ask if he was good enough, but he never did because he never wanted to sound needy.

John stroked his hair and kissed the back of his neck and called him pretty. Over and over until the word meant nothing anymore, until it meant less than nothing. Until it became an insult.

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‘Sometimes I find myself shaking in the middle of the night. And then it hits me and I can’t even believe this is my life.’

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To begin with he went to a doctor who was sort of shady and hooked him up with pills that made him go completely numb. Numb was good. Numb was happy, and he could sleep on those drugs, he slept too much. Sometimes he dropped unconscious without even realizing he was tired, sometimes he managed to stay awake until John could fuck him to sleep. If he drifted off with anyone else he got slapped hard for not paying attention. Dean always seemed to choose the guys who got a thrill from smacking him around like he was their downtrodden wife. Sometimes he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep just so that someone would hit him.

It was best when they wanted to look at him. Then they could see as soon as his eyes fluttered shut and sometimes – some wonderful times – a fist would crack across his jaw. If they wanted him to be a girl, they’d tear his dress and scratch his skin and make him tremble.

It was the nights he was alone and not working that were the most difficult. Dean toyed with the idea of creating his own pain, but he was incapable. He didn’t have the strength. He almost drowned in the bathtub a couple of times. John hauled him out one time, the other time Dean woke up as he went under and his survival instinct wouldn’t let him stay down.

After Dean had been in L.A. for a while, he stopped going to the doctor and started asking around the club what kind of pills would keep him balanced. After that he was never without some form of anti-depressant, and he didn’t have to talk about his feelings anymore.

No matter what he took, the mountainous highs and the crippling lows wouldn’t leave him entirely, they just happened less frequently, and the dreams wouldn’t go away.

Dean had the most terrible dreams. All hands and people trying to catch him, shadows gripping him. He went to John when this happened, sometimes they slept together and most times they didn’t. Dean’s heartbeat didn’t go normal for a long time after he dreamed.

At the club, Dean became a delicacy. Nobody could move like him.

You’re like a prima ballerina, someone said to him, petting his blunt cut, black wig. He smiled and giggled and curled up in their lap like a kitten. Such a pretty girl.

Once John asked him: What do you want, Dean?

The right answer was always something along the lines of I want you to come down my throat. I want you. Just you. I want to be your bad boy.

Dean smiled. I want to dance.

That was all he wanted. To dance. He only felt alive, and something like whole, when he was someone else. When he was dancing. In his dreams, his daydreams, he very occasionally let himself imagine being on a stage that wasn’t small and sticky, in a big hall and not a smoky club. He dreamt of shedding all his liar’s skin and presenting himself to the world.

Love me.

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‘I am slowly falling apart. I wish you’d take a walk in my shoes for a start. And you might think it’s easy being me... you just stand still, look pretty.’

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Even when he wasn’t working, Dean practiced. He put on music and dressed up and bared his false soul for the mirror.

Look at me. Look at you. He got right up close to the mirror, lips against the glass.

I. Hate. You.

The geisha idea came about by accident. He found a cheap kimono and decided it might be funny to play the part of a hangover from the days of his complete helplessness and subjugation. He would dance as the damsel in distress, make people want to save him from the life he lived.

No one’s going to save you.

When he first looked in the mirror, his face covered in white powder, concealing every freckle, eyelashes long and dark, lips a fleshy, bloody red... he couldn’t see himself at all. That was how he wanted it. He bowed to himself, his old black wig slipping a little as he did.

Welcome to the world.

Only like this could he show anyone who he was underneath, if there was anyone real there at all. He felt all the sorrow well up when he was like this, and he made it beautiful even though it wasn’t. He wasn’t.

He was a geisha when his eyes first fell on the boy who would be so important to him. The boy with innocence and joy and endless love, who could have loved anyone, could have looked right through him, who he was, this creature with ashes for blood.

But didn’t.

For a moment, just for a moment, Dean could see himself standing there, next to John and the boy, in jeans, with a face scrubbed clean of makeup, and he wanted to run. He wanted to run screaming. Then he bowed his head and accepted his life.

This was how things were. No one’s going to save you.

In the heat of the club, with all eyes fixed on Dean, the city was turning its cold back on him and there was nowhere left to go.

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End

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