A/N: This is very angsty. I don't know if it works or not. It kind of wrote itself.
Note that it's set in 1991, before Sam knows about the true nature of the Family Business.
Disclaimer: nothing that doesn't belong to me is mine.
It's only two o'clock in the afternoon, but the hours are already heavy on his shoulders.
John rubs at the stiffness in his neck with one hand, jamming the tagged key into the motel room lock with the other. He's vaguely aware of the sound of the shower running within, and feels a surge of irritation. Twelve-years-old, and Dean's already forming a habit detrimental to the hot water supply of wherever they're staying.
When he opens the door, he's surprised by something else—there's a hurried commotion by the foot of one of the grungy beds, and he realizes that Sam is frantically stuffing…something…into his duffel bag.
"Hi, Dad." Stick straight, shoulders squared. No slouching on the part of his occasionally rebellious youngest means something's up.
John's in no mood. "Sam, what's in the bag?"
He has no other reason for wanting to know than that Sam is trying to hide it from him…privacy is one thing, but secrecy is another, and though nothing in an eight-year-old's luggage is likely to be considered contraband, John has to know. Secrets aren't allowed. Secrets are the first steps down a long path of dark deals and broken bonds that John swears he's walked for the last time.
He repeats the question, chin down, eyes hardening…and won't acknowledge how disconcerting it is when Sam's wide-eyed features mirror the expression rather uncannily. "Nothing, sir."
"Don't lie to me, son. I saw you scrambling when I came in."
"S'not important," Sam argues, but there's just a fragment of a quaver in his voice that heralds his submission. John's relieved—he's too weary to fight with a third-grader, and he always feels guilty when he does—but he knows that sure as breathing, Sam's headed towards defiance someday.
And secrets, apparently.
John will stop what he can. "Show me what's in the bag. Don't think I haven't seen it lookin' bulkier lately." He hasn't, but he hopes that any sort of seemingly logical assertion will sway Sam.
It does. Sometimes the kid's too brainy for his own good. "Fine." He turns the duffel topside and lets the contents spill over the vomit-colored shag carpet. There's a tangle of torn jeans and t-shirts and balled-up socks, and among them are scattered…
Boxes?
John strides forward and picks one up, holding it between thumb and forefinger.
It's a pudding box.
"What the…?" His voice is incredulous, and though John Winchester doesn't like to admit when he's stumped, this is a bit…out of left field. Hell, he can't even remember the last time they had boxed pudding…last time they rented a house? At Bobby's?
He sure can't come up with a reasonable explanation for what an empty (it's been carefully taped shut, God alone knows why) box of instant butterscotch is doing in his youngest's gear.
"Sam, you care to explain?" It comes out as a bewildered question, not a command, and that knowledge makes him itch with exasperation that cannot justly be attributed to Sam.
"No, sir."
"Sam." The word is infused with a touch of John's trademark Drill Sergeant technique, but it still sounds a bit rusty. Dammit.
Sam raises green-dappled brown eyes that manage to be startlingly perceptive despite the embarrassed flush rising in his cheeks. "Why?"
John stabs a finger into the air between them. "I'm asking the questions."
"It's just a pudding box," Sam pleads, eyes skimming from the one in his father's hand to the others scattered on the floor. There are other varieties as well—Quick n' Easy stuffing, a cashew can…John rakes his memory for the possibility of a voodoo ritual involving Better Homes and Gardens, but comes up empty. The only one with answers here is his mop-headed son.
"I know what it is, Sam. I'm asking what it's doing in your bag."
Sam shuffles his feet. John can't be sure if he's dragging this out to be contradictory, or if he's actually reluctant to speak. Probably the former. But then—
"I was playin' home."
John's mouth goes dry and empty as old ashes. "You what?"
"Home. Like where there's a pantry full of lots of food, and people cook all nice and set tables, and everyone sits around and talks. Like real families."
Like real families. He supposes it would hurt if he wasn't so numb. Afterwards, he tries to believe he had no control over what comes out next. "Sam, I'm surprised at you. For all your talk of focusing on school, this is how you spend your free time? Collecting trash and playing house?"
The words ring in the air and it's only after he's fired that John realizes they were bullets. Sam stiffens, and goes redder than ever and then very pale. "I wasn't playing house," he says, in a high, angry voice that would sound trenchantly disdainful if he wasn't on the verge of tears. "Playing house is for babies and girls with dolls. I was playing home because I need to learn how to do it right. 'Cause someday we're gonna have one, me and Dean, and I wanted you too but maybe I don't, now! Maybe we'll find a new Dad and a new Mom."
For a strange moment John almost thinks he can see the silence fall, a shadow of stillness that drapes over them and suffocates everything but his anger, which is frozen into iron-hardness and which he won't let himself call pain.
"Don't you ever mention—" he starts, and he's going to say, "don't mention your mother in such a disrespectful way," but then he realizes that Sam's not mentioning Mary at all. He doesn't remember Mary. He doesn't remember a mom.
So John stops short, his words as frozen as his anger.
Dean chooses this moment to enter the room, in clean-if-threadbare clothes, rubbing his tousled hair with a dingy towel. He stops short, tensing up—he can smell a fight a mile off, and this one's not hard to observe.
Sam decides that Dean's presence is vindication for his anger, and starts up again. Behind the walls of misery and rage, John is almost impressed with the kid. He likes to think that the Legendary Fury of John Winchester is somewhat intimidating, yet here's his lanky little son facing up like it's nothing. 'Course, that just makes the sick, frigid feeling spread through his veins.
"It's not fair," Sam shouts, color streaking his cheeks again. "It's not fair to me an' Dean, that we can't have a home and lots of food and our own rooms and not have to be in a dumb car all the time. Can't you get a normal job and not have to drag us around ev'rywhere? I want us to be a real family, but you don't act like a real dad!"
Later, John's not sure what he would have done next. Thank God he doesn't have to know, because Dean rushes forward and closes his fingers, vice-like, around Sam's wrist, jerking him towards the door. It bangs shut behind them.
The sound echoes in John's ears long after it's passed. It's the most he can do—more than he feels he can, maybe—to raise his eyes to the ceiling, fixing his mind's gaze on the memory of a beloved figure pinned to another.
"I tried, Mary," he whispers, but the words ring hollow. Because he's said them before, and they were true, then—when he'd come close to the demon, tracked down another clue, checked off another possibility.
But now, when he thinks of Sam, who argues always, and Dean, who never argues at all…and the shabby motel rooms and the endless driving and the guns and the secrets that he doesn't mean to keep (but he has to, unlike the boys…sure, he won't go down that path again but he can't trace back the steps already gone) he knows he hasn't tried.
At least not hard enough.
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"You want to tell me what that was about?"
Sam squirms, because there's pearl-like tears beading up and trickling out of the corners of his eyes and he hates that, 'cause crying is for babies and he's not, not at all.
At least Dean isn't mad. He's just tired. And usually, knowing that makes Sam feel better but it doesn't, this time, and he has no idea why.
"I'm sick of this dumb stuff," he whines, and it's no answer at all.
Dean rubs a hand through his wet hair and steels himself against a shiver. They're sitting on the bench outside the motel, and the April wind is chilly. "Well, shouting at Dad isn't gonna help anything."
Sam narrows his eyes at the deserted parking lot. "I hate Dad," he says, with as much venom as he can infuse into his voice.
Dean punches him in the arm, just hard enough to hurt a bit. "Don't say that."
"Why not?" He means it to sound confident and old (older than eight, anyway), but it's trembling a little bit and the tears are still leaking, tickling his eyelids.
"'Cause you're eight, dude. You're not supposed to hate your parents yet."
Sam wants to snap back, but there's a little sliver of misery in Dean's voice that makes him stop, a lot more effectively than any of Dad's yelling. He decides to turn his wrath to a more innocuous target. "I'm gonna take ev'ry one of those stupid pudding boxes and tear 'em all up into stupid shreds." He wishes he could use a more effective word than stupid, but he figures Dean will be the one to get in trouble if he starts that habit, even if he's learned the words from Dad.
Dean stares out over the cracked asphalt, nonplussed. "Fine. Do that." He chews on his lower lip for a little while, then says mildly, "But I thought you wanted 'em. To make a home."
The words aren't meant to sound mocking, Sam knows, but he also knows that Dean doesn't believe them. Suddenly, neither does he. "It doesn't work that way," he growls bitterly. "You can't make homes out of boxes."
There's a long pause. Dean doesn't say anything, and Sam doesn't want to, but he has to.
"Can you?"
Dean's gaze slips away from him, towards the ground. "No. You can't."
Sam pushes cold fingers into stiff pockets. When it's cold he feels like his bones push through, almost to his skin. He can feel his phalanges. Those are the names for his finger bones, but it doesn't matter now. "What makes a home, Dean?" He's almost afraid to ask.
"Moms do," Dean answers, after what feels like a long time. His voice sounds funny, thick somehow.
Sam feels like the wind has sharpened into shard of glass, slicing through him, clean and cold and agonizing. He wants to ask, "But can't we get another one?" but he realizes that that's a question he doesn't want to ask and Dean doesn't want to answer.
So all that escapes from between his chapped lips is "Oh," and Dean isn't even there to hear it. He's already gotten up off the bench and is shuffling, half-stumbling back towards the room, very, very slowly, as though he's half-forgotten how to walk.
A/N: Review? Also, random side-note…I used to collect pudding boxes and cashew cans and lots of other such stuff when I was little, though not for such a sad reason of Sam. I was just a girl with dolls, and a packrat from an early age. : )