Whether it's dad telling you it's not enough or Sam telling you it's too much, you can still punch the wall of the shower until your knuckles bleed—because either way, you're markedly imperfect. And you hate the feeling of that black pit expanding in your chest. Yeah, you care. Way too fucking much. You listen and listen until your ears are numb and bleeding and these vehement harangues become you. And you're cast aside.

You pretend—either that you care much more or, usually, infinitely less. Mold yourself to what they want you to be until you can't fucking take it—because you aren't allowed to have these feelings, these pathetic, self-destructive paintings of your poor self-esteem. Oh, you know you're pathetic. You know you're desperate and you want attention and for once you don't want it to be too much or too little, you want it to be just fucking enough. But it never is, and so you fucking scream it.

This white hot fury consumes you, controls you. It yells at you—shrill riffs plugged into a deafening, muddled amp. And you try to find the words to vocalize this internal conundrum without sounding like a needy ignorant fuck which is about as successful as trying to force a liquid into a fixed shape—but it slips through the cracks between your fingers, comes out of your mouth uncontrollably. And even if they did understand, it'd be a never-ending loop. You try to explain all this—that you think nothing you do is ever enough and that you are quite aware that by saying it you're drawing attention to yourself, and then they lose interest. Play it off like these feelings are insignificant—because you are pathetic. "Don't be so weak, boy." But you know that and so you try to explain it once more, in a different way, inventive and less desperate, but he shuts down. And so you fucking scream. Dad doesn't hear you—he closes the door angrily behind him and it doesn't open again for days. Because you aren't allowed to feel. And when you do, you are used, abused, or neglected for it.

It hurts, it fucking hurts and it's in your heart and your head, stuck in your thoughts, won't stop multiplying until you want to desecrate every physical thing you come across. Feel the legs of the table collapse under your weight, the shower doors fucking shatter with the impact of your fist. And you're going crazy—you can't take these feelings but you can't tell anyone and the fact that you can't tell anyone burns holes through you until you literally CAN'T STAND IT. Want out of your head, want to feel your brain break apart into chunks, want to CRAWL OUT OF YOUR FUCKING SKIN.

But you can't, you have to be strong. You have to bear it. So you find ways to cope—touch yourself, stoke and pull in the shower violently as the water scalds your skin red. It's the only way you know to make yourself feel good anymore, even if it's empty. Seems to darken the pit even more. But you keep doing it. And as you step out of the shower, scrubbed so clean it stings, your skin is raw and steaming. Water drips onto the motel bathroom tile. You sit on the ground, because you can't look at that face in the mirror. Try to force your tears back to the source before they spill, but you fail.

You fail at everything.

That night, dad bangs you. Finds the shaking, vulnerable—fuckable—little lamb in a pool of shower water and tears on the floor and bends him over.

You take it in silence. Well, not complete silence. You grunt as quietly as you can, but it hurts. He pounds into you again and again—your own dad. And you try to stop yourself from thinking, because honestly your thoughts scare you. But as he finishes and pulls out, leaving you filled and dripping with come and blood, you think—"I like it, I like it," and you turn to him, whimpering, half-hard and getting harder. You want him to use you; any sense of importance is enough. And you want to use him, because there's all this anger and no direction, and it's so easy to let yourself fall into the same fucked-up patterns, especially when the one role-model you have condones it like no tomorrow.

A flint of hunger flashes in dad's eyes as you beg him with your eyes and with your body, and a peculiar, crooked smile creeps onto his face. Something deep inside this man is broken, corrupted beneath the surface, but that doesn't register. You cannot piece it together: you do not understand your father. A hero, hidden savior, reconciles the depraved by sending them to where they should be, and saves the innocent in the process. Heavy weights on his shoulders, he takes it upon himself to fix the world, with nothing to show for it. And when that door swings open and he stumbles into the motel room, drunken buzz to kill the pain, you take him into your arms. You sew up his wounds and listen to his every word, and then his decadence overcomes you.

The only thing that makes sense to you is that you deserve it. The pain; the slaps, claws, bites—as he throws your head down on the tile and sucks your neck, the lights dim and you start to go numb. The only thing you feel is your rear aching… and aching. You look down at your father, who at this point has begun to jack you off, and believe with your whole body that something is wrong with you. You want so badly to be told you are doing your best, and that's all that matters. You want so badly for your father's rough fingers against your erection to be an act of compassion. But you know tonight that this is punishment and nothing more. You are failing; as a brother, as a son. You have to work harder.

It hurts. A wave of nausea overcomes you and the urge to orgasm fades away. You lose your concentration, your body shuts down, and all you can focus on is the pain. You can feel frustration seep through dad into your skin as you begin to go limp in his hand. You look into his deep, dark eyes, unable to wipe the wince from your face. You are fighting the urge to beg him to stop—you want him to wrap his arms around you. You want to feel his fingers through your hair, and his strong arms carry you to bed, you want him to wipe away your tears. You want him to rub your back until you fall asleep on the warm, soft sheets beside him. You've taken enough girls on trivial dates to romance movies to know what sleeping together should really be like. You day-dream about it often, only with of your father and not one of your girlfriends from school. You know it's not normal, but you cannot shake the beautiful idea from your head.

Instead, he lets go of your cock and slouches back, an expression that you can only read as confusion on his face. You turn over onto your back and struggle to sit up. Your head is throbbing and everything stings. You try to read your dad again, but you can't see straight, so you stumble onto your hands and knees and crawl over to him. He's sitting on his knees, frozen in place. "I'm sorry," you plea, as the room grows darker. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry…" you whisper over and over.

"Dean? Dean?"

"Dean!"