A/N: Starting another little story. /sigh, these characters are haunting me. I haven't wrote anything but fanfiction for months. Anyways. This is another Destiel fic. (my OTP what can I say?) Also a human AU. And a kidfic, somewhat. And...with a bit of a supernatural element that will come into play later. I think. I'm not exactly sure where this is going (this is also one of the first things I've uploaded without having the majority finished), but don't worry, I promise to stay with it. Updates will come at least once a week. I'm anticipating at least five chapters, most likely more. The first chapter comes in John's POV, the rest will switch between the kids. Reviews make me really, really excited, and I love to be asked questions or just given speculation. And suggestions actually, where this story is concerned. The prompt comes from Leviathan Castiel. Please R&R and Enjoy. Thank you!
John has a lot of rules. He's a parent, a slightly over-concerned parent, but he has his reasons. When your wife dies in a house fire that almost takes your two boys too, you get a little overprotective. Then there's the Marine training (ingrained and carved into his bones) that requires structure and order and immediate, unconditional obedience.
On bad nights (when whisky sings to him in the night and beer bottles litter the floor like a transparent blanket), John thinks Mary would hate him. She never approved of his heavy handed, militaristic attempts at parenting. He likes to think if she were still alive, she would have softened him up more. Made him a better father.
But she's not. And John's two boys have been left completely at his mercy.
John has a lot of rules.
For example:
- There will be no mention of the guns in the house
- Neither will their be mention of firearms training
- Friends cannot visit the house without at least 24 hours of notice
- Mary is not to be mentioned. Ever
- The dishes will not be left in the sink over night
- John's drinking will not be mentioned. Ever
- Look after each other. Always and unconditional.
John's boys, still pudgy faced Sam (only 8) and bold eyed, solider Dean (a proud 12), follow his directives silently. Sam sometimes has questions. ("Why can't we talk about Mom? I don't know anything about her!" or "I don't want to practice shooting! Why do we have to?") and John fears that the quickly silenced questions will escalate as childish innocence morphs to fierce independence.
Then, of course, there's Dean. Sturdy, trust-worthy Dean. John doesn't argue with his oldest son. He doesn't have to explain the importance of not talking about guns because people with question and wonder and nothing good ever comes from questioning and wondering. Dean nods and follows and never looks back.
At least, that was the case before a scruffy old man with a greasy baseball cap moved across the street. Him and that wide-eyed, blue-eyed boy.
At first, John doesn't care. Just another family, albeit an odd one because they can't possibly be related. There is zero family resemblance. More irrelevant neighbors.
Until Dean takes an interest, and those two strangers became very, very relevant.
It starts slow. Dean is not an open boy. He isn't overly friendly or very social. Maybe because of John's preference to silence than useless chatter. Maybe because of the tragedy early in his life. John doesn't know. But he does know that Dean had a few friends from school (a long-haired, crooked smiling boy named Ash and a slightly pudgy boy with a southern drawl named Benny) but that's all. And that's fine because John wants Dean to stick close to Sam—protect Sam—and without friends to distract him, that job is much easier.
However, when the odd kid and the old man move in next door, Dean perks up. He looks through the windows a lot. When Sam pedals his bicycle around the block, Dean gets distracted staring at that house across the street. At least three times Sam almost rides into traffic before Dean breaks out of his thoughts and catches him.
John was worried then.
Only slightly worried, but that worry is accompanied with the ominous feeling that worse things are to come.
Worse things come.
It's a rainy day, the muggy disgusting kind with black clouds and red skies that make John consider getting a tornado shelter (even if the last twister that touched down in town was decades ago and only stirred up some wind in the fields and dropped a cow on some poor man's car).
John is driving Dean home from school. Sam stayed home that day, sick and asleep when John left the house. The rain is going strong, making tears on the car's windows and beating relentlessly on the hood. Thunder claps and every so often Dean will give a little jerk, then duck his head—embarrassed. John pretends not to notice.
They are pulling into their street (water starting to pool by the gutters: flash-flooding. Great) when John sees him. The strange boy with big blue eyes, sitting outside on the lawn, completely drenched.
John is content to turn a blind eye, pull into their own driveway and shuffle Dean inside. He has no desire to involve himself with the strangers across the street or discover whatever possessed the boy to just sit out in the middle of a storm. It isn't John's responsibility, nor his business. And he would have just ignored it all if Dean didn't catch sight of the pathetic boy. His son jerks ramrod straight up in his seat and yells,
"Dad. Wait!"
And so, he waits, stalling in the middle of the road. "What?" he asks, but it's obvious. Dean's eyes are narrowed in on the lawn across the street, on the boy.
"That kid," Dean mutters, "he's just sitting out there." His little child face is scrunched together as if this is the greatest sort of tragedy. "He's getting all wet."
John tries to avert the inevitable. "We're not supposed to stick our noses into other people's businesses, Dean—"
"But, Dad!" Dean interrupts.
Dean never interrupts John.
He seems to realize this too, as the shock settles over John, and his own eyes widen in horror. "I'm sorry, sir, it's just—he's gonna catch a cold and that's no good. He'll be really, really miserable—he could die if it was really bad and—"
"That's enough," John commands. Cold. Definite. Final.
Dean lowers his head. An almost pout shadows his face as he waits to be punished. Resigns himself to it.
John pauses. He was prepared to snap a few reprimands, harsh as they needed to be, just for being interrupted. Good little soldiers did not undermine the authority of their superiors.
But there is that quiet, tiny Mary voice in the back of his head chiding him because their sons are not soldiers. They are young boys, and John is wrong to treat them otherwise.
John lifts his hand, and is stung a little by Dean's flinch, then he brings it down lightly on his son's shoulder. He smiles. "That's good, Dean. Caring about people is good," (or so Mary would say) "Go on out and ask him what's wrong."
The disbelief on Dean's face is almost painful.
John struggles to keep his smile up—is he really that bad?—"Hurry up. Run. I don't want you getting sick, too."
Dean jumps up then (obedient once again) and charges out of the car as though the raindrops and thunder are insubstantial.
John watches through the windshield as his son dashes across the street and up the neighbor's lawn to stand directly in front of the wet, wet boy. He can't see either of their faces, but there is a sudden jerk in Dean's shoulder (the surprised kind—not the scared sort, John would know) then he is leaning over the boy and yanking him to his feet.
That's when John catches sight of the kid's face, forehead wrinkled in confusion, but as Dean drags him back to the car (and Dean's expression is a twist of disbelief and anger) it settles into a sort of awe.
Awe directed firmly at Dean.
John's hands tighten on the steering wheel.
As the boys reach the car, John rolls down the window. Both are dripping, clothes plastered to their bodies, hair dark with moisture and glued to their heads. "What's going on?"
Dean answers first (but the quiet stolid look on the other boy's face implies he had no intention of responding anyway), "He got locked out of his house. Figured he'd wait outside til his," and here Dean stutters, eyes flicking down to the strange boy.
The strange boy speaks, "My guardian. Mr. Bobby Singer. We share no familial connection."
Yes, John was very right in thinking he was odd.
He clears his throat. "So, you can call him?"
The boy tilts his head, squinting again, but doesn't answer.
Dean speaks for him. "No. He doesn't have a cell."
Strange, John thinks. Strange that Dean has taken so immediately to this boy that he has never met before. Strange that they seem to share almost the same mind, answering and speaking in nearly the same way as Dean and Sam: together. Strange that they stand so close, the strange boy crowding behind Dean's back, and Dean still holding onto his hand firmly, even as the need has disappeared.
Dean turns to the kid, head crooked down slightly to cover the small distance in height between them. "You can come inside. Use ours." He says this almost chastising, as if the kid should have known this.
John clears his throat, and Dean immediately stiffens, quickly back-tracking, "I mean, um, if that's, uh, okay with—"
The boy puts a hand on Dean's shoulder, instantly quieting him in a way that John has never been able to. "I can return to waiting. The rain does not bother me."
And you could almost believe him, if not for the shivering. John sighs. He used to be a cruel, cold man who wouldn't think twice about leaving a kid out in the rain. He still is sometimes.
But not today. Even if everything about the boy unsettles him.
John shakes his head brusquely, pushing such thoughts way. "Nah. You should come in. Call this, uh, Mr. Singer, and wait until he gets back." John inclines his head to the door. "Dean."
Dean proceeds to grab the boy again and lead him under their awning over, to the house's door.
John couldn't have known then.
He couldn't have known that it would all lead to disaster.
The strange boy follows Dean so blindly, so trustingly, it's almost endearing—if John was the sort of man to be endeared by children. He is, however, amused by the angry, concerned lecture the boy receives from Dean on the porch. John can't hear what is said, but he assumes it resembles the chewing out Dean gave Sam for getting lost in the tall grass behind the house (they didn't find him til the next day and neither John nor Dean slept that night). The kind of talk that is furious at first glance but permeates, upon greater study, with worry and relief.
This should have been his first clue.
John will regret not leaving that strange boy out in the rain. He will regret not telling Dean "No" and keeping Dean, if only for a short while longer, tucked neatly in John's world of many, numerous rules and black-and-white, clear-cut dimensions.
How could he have known what their friendship would become, or how it would rip that perfectly structured world into tiny, meaningless pieces?