Greyson Dubois
Then she saw it. The bruise. That red-purple swollen patch of flesh my father gave me. Then her eyes darted to my split lip.
She stopped. Her anger flickered, replaced by something else. Concern, maybe. Probably pity. I wondered briefly what was going through her mind. Oh, poor Greyson Dubois, slapped around by his father. A piss-poor substitute for his brother.
Damn her! I shouldn't have come.
Why did I come?!
I turned around to leave, but it was too late. She had already stepped out into the hallway, her fingers reaching up to my face.
"What happened?"
Her touch was soft… tender even. It almost made me flinch.
The hallway was empty, thank the gods. If anyone saw us like this—her hand on my face, me leaning into her like a starving man—the whispers would start before dawn.
I put on my best bad boy smile. The type that says nothing fazes me. Nothing gets to me. I'm an impenetrable wall.
"Oh, this?" I gestured to the bruise. "It's nothing. Had a disagreement with a wall." I stopped myself from leaning my shoulder beside her head. Stopped myself from seeking comfort.
"The wall won?" she asked, touching it again.
I nodded. "It did. Stupid wall."
"Poor baby," she muttered, cupping my face gently. "Do you need anything? For the pain?"
I watched her.
What I needed was to not feel anything at all. But looking down at her, with her worried eyes and her stupid, beautiful face, one thought popped into my head—and I hated myself for it.
Tilly Ann Winchester, it's hard not to like you.
So I said the one thing I knew would push her away.
"What I need, little princess," I said, taking a seductive step forward, "right this second, is to fuck you."
She blinked. Like her mind was trying to catch up.
"Fuck me?" she asked.
"Yes." I stated it as a matter of fact.
"I want to pin you against this wall and kiss you. I want to more than kiss you. I want to…" My thought faded away momentarily as the words make love to you popped into my head.
Which was weird, because I don't do love making. I fuck.
She blinked again. "There are better words for saying that. Make love to me would have sounded better, Chase."
Her pleading eyes looked at me. She was looking for someone that wasn't me. She was looking for my brother. The gentle, romantic type that brings flowers to dates and spends months courting a girl properly before he would even attempt to kiss her. She was looking for Chase.
If one thing has been established in this world… very loudly, I might add, was that I, Greyson Dubois, was not my brother.
"What's wrong with saying fuck?" I asked her, clearly at the end of my rope.
"It's crude. And it's vulgar. I would rather make love than fuck, Chase Dubois." Her big green eyes stared me down, like she was trying to will me to submission.
"Well, too bad," I said finally. "I don't do love making. I fuck. There's a difference. And if it makes you feel any better, sweetheart, you don't do love either."
She took a challenging step forward. "What's that supposed to mean?" Her eyes squinting just a little in anger.
"You want pretty words, Tilly Ann? Fine." I stepped closer, matching her challenge. "But proper girls don't do what we did. They don't get finger-fucked in storerooms and they don't scream on reading tables with their brother outside the door. And you—you did all of that. So don't ask me to pretend you're something you're not."
Her eyes flashed. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know enough."
She didn't back away. She didn't slap me. She took a small step closer, the scent of her drowning out the smell of my father's hatred.
"Say that again," she whispered. "To my face, Chase Dubois."
She took another step even closer. "I dare you to say it again."
A challenge. Everything I wanted.
I leaned in. My lips were a breath from hers. I could feel the heat of her. It would be so easy to just lean in and show her just how right I was.
She wasn't a flower-and-candlelight-dinner girl. She was an I-can't-wait-to-take-you-behind-the-secret-door type of girl.
My type of girl.
A lot of things stopped me from bridging that gap. The deal. The plan. The fact that I wasn't Chase. I was Greyson. And Greyson wasn't supposed to want her like this.
I pulled back as if burned.
"I have to go," I choked out, pushing away from the wall.
Confusion and hurt flashed in her eyes. "Yeah, you should," she said, taking it as surrender.
I could see the hurt in her eyes. The truth was bitter. I owed it to her to tell just a little bit of it.
"I definitely should go. I'm not supposed to fuck you anymore, anyway."
"Go to hell," she murmured angrily.
I nodded slowly and placed both hands in my pockets. "I'm already there, sweetheart."
I turned and walked away.
"Later, Winchester."
---
I made it to the stairwell before my legs gave out.
I slumped against the wall, my forehead pressed to the cold stone, and tried to remember how to breathe. She had touched my face. She had called me poor baby. She had looked at me like I was someone worth looking at.
And I had thrown it away.
Because that's what I did. That's all I did.
I pressed the heel of my palm against my chest, trying to slow the pounding. It didn't work. Nothing worked.
Somewhere down the hall, a door clicked shut. Her door.
I stayed in the stairwell until the moon climbed higher, until the silence swallowed everything, until I could almost pretend I had never gone to her room at all.
But I had.
And now I couldn't unfeel it. Her fingers on my face. The way she said poor baby like it meant something. The way she looked at me—at Chase—like she wanted more than just a fuck.
I laughed quietly, the sound hollow in the dark.
You don't do love either.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she did. Maybe she just didn't know it yet.
Or maybe I was wrong about everything.
I pushed off the wall and made my way down the stairs.
Tomorrow I would put the mask back on. Tomorrow I would be the bastard brother, the disappointment, the spare part.
But tonight, in the dark of the stairwell, I let myself be the man who almost kissed Tilly Ann Winchester.
And then I buried him, too.