Rounding up heifers in rain and mud in the late twilight is not a fun task, but it is quite a decent workout.

When the last head finally got herself through the gate, Jack stomped over to the 16-year-old boy, who'd leaned on the railing, doing the deep gasping of someone who's been running back and forth for the better part of an hour over uneven ground. Jack grabbed the boy's arm and shook him roughly before letting him go.

"Ya' was the last one out this afternoon after feeding. Didn't shut the gate, did ya'?"
The boy shook his head mutely.
"Told you. Rule one of farming: always shut the gates, always check to make sure latch has caught, didn't I?"
The boy nodded, still not speaking.
"We've gotta go see to them now, gotta make sure they are all good, no injuries. You. You wait in the kitchen for Sonny. You hear me?"
The boy nodded but didn't move.
Jack grunted.
"Well, then, git. Or do the belt need to come off right here, right now?"
The boy took two steps backwards before he whirled around and ran for the house.
Jack looked after him, muttering under his breath:
"Damn delinquents. Little bastards, every one of them."

It was full dark, when Sonny finally trotted wearily into the house. He saw light in the kitchen and went to investigate. When he saw Dean sitting slumped over at the table he recalled dimly that Jack had yelled something through the noise of the agitated heifers about the new kid, the gate and someone waiting in the house... but then he'd gotten caught up in going through the still-milling heifers. Luckily there was no damage there, just a bunch of wound up animals, who'd had a taste of freedom but was now, finally, settling down in their usual surroundings.

Oh, well. It made sense now. The kid hadn't latched the gate properly. It was an easy mistake to make, when you were new to farming, just pulling the gate shut, but not checking for the latch to catch. And after all Dean hadn't been here a month yet. Heck, the bruises he'd shown up with on his arms was still visible as shadows under the skin. Sonny had never gotten a reasonable explanation for those, but he sensed clearly that none would be forthcoming, so he hadn't pushed the issue.

When he entered the kitchen, Dean almost jumped out of the chair and skittered halfway around the table. Sonny paused to look closely at the boy. It was almost like he had been replaced with a clone, that looked right, but wasn't acting the same. The Dean Sonny was getting to know, was cocky, smart mouthed, but under the piss and vinegar there was an intelligent, hardworking kid, who had the definite potential to make something worthwhile of himself. But this Dean, standing in the kitchen of the old farmhouse, looked most of all like a wild animal caught in a trap, ready to fight or flee at the drop of a pin.

"Hey, D-dawg. Jack said, you wanted to talk?"
Dean straightened up like a soldier on the parade ground.
"Yessir. I left the gate unlocked. I'm sorry."
"Hm? Easy mistake to make. Now you know why it's important."
"Yessir."

Sonny moved into the room. He was tired, he wanted to sit. He saw Dean tense up, so he stopped. Maybe, after all, he had a pretty decent idea of where those old bruises had come from. This wasn't the first kid, he'd seen sending off this particular vibe. Kids like that, they learned early on to read body language. Most of them read it better than they read English. Sonny consciously relaxed his shoulders, stuck his hands in his pockets.

"So…thank you for helping round them back up. That's hard work."
"Yessir."
Sonny cast around for something to say, something that would help calm the kid down.
"Erhm. They are all fine, no injuries."
"Yessir."
That was the only verbal response, but there was a loosening of the shoulders, a bit less tension.
Sonny sighed.
"It's all good, Dean, why don't you go to bed?"
"Sir?"
"And stop sir'ing me, I'm Sonny, ok?"
"Yessi…Sonny, I'm sorry…. Uhm… can we… can we …deal with this now, please… before the rest wakes up?"
Dean was shifting his weight from foot to foot, looking at a point over Sonny's right shoulder.
Oh. Sonny suddenly understood.

"Nothing to deal with, D-Dawg. You made a mistake, you helped correct it, and I'm betting that you'll remember to check the gates in the future."
Dean didn't look like he was paying attention, he was staring at Sonny's middle now.
"Dean? Are you listening?"
Sonny looked down at himself, was his fly open? His shirt had come loose, so he grabbed his belt to tuck it back in. Big mistake. There was a small sound from the other side of the room, and when Sonny looked over, Dean was so white his freckles stood out, islands in a sea of milk. When their eyes met, Dean swallowed and stepped closer to the table, hands moving towards his own belt.
Sonny hurriedly lifted his hands, holding them low and out to the sides. Ok. This had gone far enough. Time to talk plain.
"Dean. I know what's going through your head. Stop. Don't worry, I'm not about to use my belt on you. Take a breath, kid, you look ready to faint."
Dean ignored the last part. He stared quizzically at Sonny.
"You're not?"
"No. Promise."

Instead of the desired calming effect, this just made Dean look furtively all around the room.
His eyes rested for a moment on the old beer-stein on the counter with its collection of whisks, spoons, spatulas and ladles. Apparently dismissing those, the green eyes flitted on to the coat-rack, and then into the corner, where a collection of items had ended up, as things tend to do in old farmhouses, where nothing is ever thrown away, as you never know what might come in handy. There was a shepherd's hook, which hadn't been used since Sonny took over the farm, an old walking stick, the origin long lost in time, a couple of forgotten horsewhips, even though the farm hadn't had horses for years and the kitchen broom, the only thing living in that corner, that saw the light of day on a regular basis.

Dean's eyes found the horsewhips as if drawn by a tractor-beam. He swayed on his feet, and slowly turned his attention back to Sonny, eyes suddenly more black than green, fear dilated pupils drilling a ragged hole through Sonny's soul.
"No! Dean. No. Never. I never have, and I never will."
Sonny pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. Really, these boys. They found a thousand ways to break a man's heart.
Sitting down didn't have the desired effect either. Dean began to slowly back up, hands held in front of him pleadingly.
"Please, sir, I'd rather the belt, please."
"Oh ferchrissake."

Apparently there was no way to make the kid understand that he wasn't going to get punished. So, Sonny would go the other way, and actually punish the boy. But in his own way.
"Dean. Listen."
He waited patiently for eye contact.
"Ok, this is your punishment for leaving the gate open. Are you listening?"
Dean straightened up into that soldier stance again. It was achingly obvious how he gathered his considerable courage and the ragged remains of dignity around him like a homeless man bundling into a tattered cloak to keep out the harsh wind of winter. Sonny had to admire the boy. He would make a formidable man someday, if he got the chance.

"Yessir… Sonny."
"For the next week, you'll get up an hour early and do the morning feeding. It's the same drill as the afternoon, so you know the job. Now you'll get to do it twice a day. 'kay?"
Deans brown wrinkled.
"That's it? Just feeding the cattle?"
"Yep. Give you a chance to practice those gate closing skills"
Sonny tried for a little humor, but the kid wasn't ready for that.
"Just feeding? No… nothing else?"
"Nope. You'll have to work hard, though. You'll want to have time for a shower before school."
"Yessir… but … Jack… ?"
"Yeah, he's a hard-ass, but he isn't as bad as he likes to sound. Don't worry about him. I'll talk to him."

Dean suddenly whirled around and ran from the kitchen. Sonny stood slowly and followed at a leisurely pace. The upstairs bathroom door banged, and when Sonny reached it, he heard the unmistakable sounds of someone losing every meal of the day into that big white receiver.
When silence finally descended, after the toilet had flushed, he knocked perfunctorily before walking in. Dean quickly turned so he halfway had his back to the door, but Sonny took him gently by the shoulder and turned him back around, pulling him into a hug. He stood quietly while his shirt got soaked with salt water, waiting for the storm to calm.
They had no further words between them that night, but the tentative smile, Sonny got, was so different from the shit eating grin the kid usually showed, that it made his heart ache even fiercer.
Almost as badly as it did 6 weeks later, when Dean walked out the door and got into a black impala, which roared like a demon when it carried this boy, with eyes that had seen too much, too soon, away from Sonny's door.

The first thing John said, after they'd taken the bags into the motel room was:
"Sam. Shower, then bed. Dean, I want you to sharpen the blades. "

This was a nice motel, Sam thought, as they got to their tasks. There was a main room and a bedroom with two beds, a double and a smaller one. That meant he'd have to share a bed with Dean. When you are 12, you are too old to share a bed with your brother, but when it's the first night together after your big brother has been lost on a hunt for 2 months, well... Sam wasn't going to say anything, he didn't want Dean to think he was a sissy, but he wasn't about to protest the idea of sharing either. He was rather looking forward to it, truth be told. He slipped easily into sleep listening to the metallic sounds of weapon maintenance from the main room, sounds that were the lullabies of his childhood.

Dean had been sneaking quick glances at his dad while they settled in. Dad was drinking again. Whisky, not tequila, thank god, but it still paid to watch your step when the man had a bottle open.
So far, John had just sat down with his glass and bottle at the table across from Dean. In between drinks he was disassembling, and then fiddling with the release on, his favorite Colt.

As Sam slipped into sleep, so Dean slipped into the well-known, comforting rhythm of working with the different blades. He'd heard about hippies meditating to find inner peace. Well, they should try hand sharpening a machete. Nothing more soothing than the quiet rasp of stone on metal, the repeated movements, the feel of the tools of his trade. He was back, with his family. Sonny, Robin and the farm slowly started to sink back into a place in the darkness of memory, fended off, separate.

"So, Dean."
Dad set his glass down with a clink.
"You disobeyed a direct order back there."
"Huh?"
Dean was honestly confused, they had driven straight here from Sonny's, when had he had time to do something wrong?
"Before I left for that rugaru, what did I tell you?"
"Huh?"
Dean tried to shake off the half-trance he'd fallen into while working with the machete.
"I told you to take care of Sammy, and stay out of trouble!"
Oh, shit. Suddenly he felt wide awake, a spear of fear running down through his body, stabbing all the way into his toes.
"Instead, you gambled away my money, got arrested for stealing and Sammy was left alone in a motel."

Yes, true enough, but there hadn't been enough money, so he'd tried to make a few bucks extra. That hadn't gone well, and he'd had to run from a couple of pissed off biker types, one of which had put a burning cigarette butt to his arm before he'd gotten away. Then he'd gone to the market to try the good old five finger discount. Not for the first time. But he'd been rattled by his near miss with those bikers and had gotten snatched.
Not that spilling that whole sordid tale to Dad would do any good. He knew most of it anyway. Better to just clam up and start sir'ring.

"Yessir, sorry sir."
Dad stood up, so Dean did too. As Dad's hands went to his belt, Dean tried one last desperate ploy. It'd sometimes worked before. If Dad had been drinking, and you got him to wait with the asskicking until the next day, he sometimes forgot.

"Dad, it'll wake Sammy. "
"You'll just have to be quiet."
"Dad, please, it's the belt itself, it's noisy…you know… tomorrow, when he's not around…please…"
Dad actually hesitated. Dean held his breath. Then:
"Jeans off and bend over."

Dean kicked off his booths and jeans, bending over a chair, since the table was full of assorted weaponry.
He bit his lip. He could hear his dad rummaging in the closet. What the hell was the man looking for? At least it didn't look like the belt would be in play, but whether that was a blessing or a curse would depend on whatever Dad got his hands on instead. The Incident of the Extension Cord from Hell popped up in Dean's mind but was hurriedly squashed. That had been particularly horrible.

Dad was right behind him now. He closed his eyes. There was a thin whistle, then a burning line of fire branded itself across his ass, then another, going deep, deeper than the bruising thudding of belt, as bad as that damn cord, no, oh shit, this was even worse, whatever it was, was thinner, felt almost like it was talons ripping into him, again and again.

Suddenly anger roared through his system. No. Not again. Not this time. Damn it all. He'd gotten sent to a boy's home for trying to steal food for Sammy, separated from his family, from Sammy. And now this, whatever it was. No. Just, no.

He stood up and whirled around, saw one of the wire hangers from the closet whirling down towards him, stepped closer into Dad's body, blocking the blow with his left arm, and punching Dad in stomach with his right. A short, sharp punch powered by rage and desperation in equal measures.
Dad dropped the hanger as he folded up, gasping for breath.
Dean stepped backwards, found his balance and sunk into his fighting stance.
Dad came back up swinging and it was on.
Dean took a punch to the shoulder, that sent a buzz down his arm, numbing it momentarily. He swung with the force of the blow, used the momentum to get a punch in with his other hand, bloodying Dad's nose, got a split lip as his reward and backed up to get some room.
As Dad followed, Dean shifted his weight, kicking for Dad's middle. But Dad stepped sideways at the last moment, a swinging downwards sweep of his arm knocking Dean's leg out of its trajectory, spinning him a little, so he ended up with his back to his dad. A vicious punch to his lower back sent him to his knees. He'd piss strawberry juice for over a week from that punch, but that wasn't the most immediate concern. The knee landing on his back, pinning him to the floor was much more urgent.

A real fight isn't like the ones we see in the movies or on TV.
Even when the opponents are well matched, it is a fast, chaotic affair. Often the first blow will be the last.
And this fight was between a teen and a grown man. The fact that the grown man wasn't entirely sober didn't make up for the fact that the man had weight, reach and experience on his side. Or for the fact that the man had been the one to train the boy in the first place. Hard to pull a surprise move on someone who knows everything you know, knows how you move, what your go-to-moves are. All in all - Dean did well to even land more than one punch.
The whole fight took just seconds from Dean swung that first fist until he was on the dirty carpet, trying to breathe through the mind-numbing throbbing pain from the blow he'd taken to his back, and the heavy knee pressing down on him. The pressure increased horribly as his dad leaned forward reaching for something, then blessedly lightened again, letting him gasp in air.

But the relief was short, the gained air left in a rush, pushed out by the pain, as the damn wire hanger got in on the game again.
Usually he had a pretty good sense of when Dad was winding down and it was going to end, but this time the beating just went on, and on, interspersed with his father's low, rasping voice, sometimes hissing curses, sometimes demanding impossible answers, answers that would be hard enough to give if he could think, but the throbbing pain, the burning, digging fires wouldn't let him.
The waves of rage coming of his dad dizzied him as he was caught in a hurricane of mental and physical pain.
Worthless. Stupid. Irresponsible. Careless. Words like whipworms burrowing into his brain, drilling in, making themselves at home.
Somewhere in that inferno of hurt, something broke inside him. He didn't feel it snap, not then, when it happened, but he would live the rest of his life with that break. It would never truly mend. In time it would settle, the ragged edges smoothed by time, by love for his brother, for friends, for the ragtag patched-together family that he and Sam would build, but that was years in the future at this point.

When Dad's arm finally got tired and he left to "go get a drink," Dean had long ago stopped struggling, focusing instead on breathing, on surviving, on not waking up Sam. The words "Take care of Sammy", ran through his mind in manic circles the whole time, like a carousel of words gone crazy. And when the whipping was over, his left wrist was bleeding from wounds he'd made with his own teeth, obstinately set on not crying out.

It takes time, and quite a lot of determination, to paint an entire ass red, blue and black using a only thin metal coat hanger as the paint brush, but his dad, the stubborn son of a bitch, had managed it.

When Dean finally wobbled into the bathroom to get ready for bed, he found that he had to change his underwear, as the skin had broken in two places, leaving bloody smears on the fabric, and there was a little pee on the front of his boxer-briefs. He threw them hurriedly into the trash. He hadn't seen that. Of course not. He was 16 and he hadn't peed himself. He was a hero, he saved people for fuck's sake.

He got into a pair of old, soft, loose boxers and went to the bedroom. He ought to put the weapons away, but he couldn't muster the energy. Besides, Dad wouldn't be home for hours, and when he staggered in, he would be too out of it to do anything besides crash into bed. It could wait until morning.

Dean stopped in the bedroom door. Sam was sleeping peacefully. They had managed to keep the noise down enough not to wake him. Good.
As he stared at his little brother, a picture turned up in his mind, from earlier today. The impala, seen from above, Sammy's arm sticking out, shirtsleeves flapping, while he flew a model airplane up and down through the air.
A rush of nauseating hatred flashed through Dean in an instant but was just as quickly followed by a wave of love. He'd come back for Sammy, and here he would stay. Damn his annoying pain in the ass little brother, he would die for him if he had to. But for now, climbing into the bed, carefully settling on his stomach, and throwing an arm over the kid was enough. This, just this, was truly home, and family.

In that dingy room, in that squalid motel on that dark, unnamed, highway somewhere under the stars in the United States, there was no one to see the tears that soaked into a grubby pillow. Dean didn't know they were there either. He had finally fallen into the black pit of exhaustion and slept deeply, if not peacefully through the purging his eyes decided to do.
But in an old, well-maintained, farmhouse somewhere else under the same stars, a man lay awake that night, thinking about a boy. If he had known that they would meet again years later, maybe he could have slept that night. But probably not.