Summary: Set during the year Dean spent with the Braeden's, Dean helps Ben with his physics homework, in typical Dean-style. Also featuring Lisa, and Sam through some brief wee!chester flashbacks.

Warnings: None.

Disclaimer: Writing belongs to me. Everything else belongs to Warner Brothers/CW/Kripke and co. For entertainment purposes only.

AN: After writing 'Fingerprints of a Life', it was interesting to go back and think about a small snippet of Dean's life with Ben and Lisa, especially given the crushing grief he would have been feeling at this time, and finding those little moments in which we can glimpse the beginnings of Dean's positive and encouraging influence for Ben. Hope you enjoy the story. Thanks for reading. Reviews are very much appreciated :)

Death by Physics

By Lanthiriel25

Dean sighed to himself as he scrubbed his hand over his face. Lisa was out at the gym with some of her girl friends and Dean was left at home with Ben. He loved the kid, he really did, but today wasn't one of his better days, having been plagued by nightmares of Sam in the pit for the past week. He'd thought after the first month of sleepless nights, and almost catatonic days, before he'd managed to work himself up into some semblance of a normal life with the help and support of the Braedens, that the nightmares were gone, but no. Needing a coffee, more for the act of having something to keep him occupied rather than for the caffeine, Dean made his way to the kitchen. Walking into the room however he was met with an unexpected, but surprisingly not unusual, sight. Dean smiled as he leant in the doorway watching Ben softly banging his head off the surface of the table.

"Something wrong?" he asked, glad to have something to distract him from images of twisted cages and burning hellfire.

Ben groaned, the sound muffled from where he'd buried his head in his arms.

"I think Mrs. Craigson wants to kill me."

"Oh yeah?" Dean chuckled, the sound catching in his throat as he ruthlessly ignored the memories of Sammy claiming the same thing throughout his school career, and all the bittersweet and painful emotions that line of thought dredged up.

Dean walked over to the table, pulling out a chair to sit next to Ben as Ben lifted his head, which seemed to take a lot of effort on his part. Dean tried not to smile at the faint red mark on Ben's forehead. With a snort of disgust Ben gestured somewhat violently to the books and papers in front of him, before picking one up and shaking it in Dean's amused face so hard that he nearly ripped it in two.

"Yeah, I mean, the woman's sadistic I swear. Who sets ten pages of practically impossible equations to be done for tomorrow?! Come on, she's trying to physics us all into an early grave!"

"'Physics you into an early grave'?!" Dean asked wryly, one eyebrow quirked in soft amusement.

Glancing up at his surrogate father, Ben shrugged, his mouth twitching slightly, before reaching over to shove Dean in the shoulder.

"Shut up, dude. You gonna help me or what?"

Dean pondered for a moment.

"Or what," he replied decisively, before standing up and making his way over to the coffee machine.

"Mom's out right?" Ben asked Dean's t-shirt clad back.

Dean turned from his task, looking over his shoulder to answer Ben's question.

"Yeah. Why?"

Ben nodded to himself, secure in the knowledge he wouldn't be yelled at or told to wash his mouth out. "You're an ass."

"Is that so?" Dean teased, showing Ben he wasn't really going to leave him struggling through equations by himself, despite the fact that helping a younger family member with their homework was the last thing Dean wanted to do, striking a little too close to home for his fragile emotions.

"Sure is!"

Rolling his eyes Dean left the coffee machine to do its job as he settled himself back at the kitchen table, dragging Ben's work across the surface so he could take a closer look. Ben was right, it would seem Mrs. Craigson was indeed trying to fry her students' brains; there was page upon page of straight calculations, no method, no problems, no application. Dean sighed; he was no teacher but he knew that giving kids pages of sums to do was one sure fire way of having them switch off, much better to get stuck right in.

Sam had loved it when Den had helped him with his homework: he'd struggled to learn all the states of America so Dean had taught him the state song which he'd remembered Mary teaching him (a tactic he'd regretted for months after that since it was all Sam would sing during the long drives from state to state); Sam had found memorising his times tables difficult so Dean had invented 'Multiplication Man', a superhero who saved people's lives through his knowledge of the tables, to help Sam to learn them. They'd spent hours climbing over the furniture in that motel room, hurtling round the room, tipping over chairs and tables as they went, Sam being Multiplication Man chasing Dean around the 'city' as Dean fired times table questions at him and for every question Sam got right he was able to load his imaginary laser gun and take a shot at Dean's bad guy, who ducked and rolled to try and escape the fire as Sam increasingly got more and more right. The next day Dean had stuck Sam's test paper with a big A+ written in red felt tip on the fridge door, so proud of his little brother.

Pushing the painful memories aside, Dean frowned in concentration as he glanced over the pages, mind working quickly as to how to help Ben with his work. He looked up to see Ben sitting watching him expectantly.

"Right then, we're gonna need paper, string, pens, scissors, stopwatch, the fridge magnets, scales, possibly a hammer…"

Ben gaped at him, gesturing helplessly to his text book.

"Dean, I just need…"

"Ah," Dean held up his hand to stop Ben, "you wanted help, this is me helping, now snap to it!" Dean chivvied Ben along with a smile, a smile that he was surprised to realise wasn't entirely forced.

"Okaaay," Ben huffed, clearly not convinced.

Once the pair of them had gathered everything Dean thought they'd need, they got to work.

Lisa arrived home almost two hours later, refreshed from her workout, to a sight that had her frozen in shock.

"Dean? Ben?" she asked weakly, not sure if she really wanted an explanation.

They both spun in place to face her, Dean looking decidedly guilty from where he was standing on the kitchen table, small homemade parachute gripped in one hand, stopwatch in another. Ben on the other hand grinned at her, hammer and stopwatch clutched in his grip.

"Mom! Dean's helping me with my homework!" Ben exclaimed excitedly as he quickly dropped the hammer and scribbled down something on his piece of paper.

"Oh, is that what's happening?" Lisa asked bemusedly, looking up at her partner.

"5.7 seconds?" Ben confirmed, glancing up at Dean.

"Yeah Ben," Dean nodded distractedly, his worried gaze still fixed on Lisa as Ben continued to hurriedly record their findings on the page.

"Ok, so 5.7 seconds times by…is….so kilograms, no wait, newton metres …if we…" Ben mumbled to himself as he worked through the question in his head. "What's the force of gravity again?...and the gravity is the acceleration…Dean, the force is the mass right?...it took…with no parachute…so the resistance of the parachute is…"

Ben alternately chewed on his pencil and tapped the end absently on the table as he considered the problem Dean had turned one of the questions into, to help Ben to really understand what he was being asked to work out. "Air resistance of the parachute…upward thrust…so the opposing force against the pull of gravity… Dean, add on the other magnet, I'm gonna time how long that takes, see what difference it makes to the drag."

Lisa gaped at Dean; seeing her son so engrossed in his studies was something she had not seen for a long time. It's not that he didn't work hard at school, he always had, but it had never seemed to really excite him; he merely did the work he was asked and then moved onto the next thing. To see him clearly interested and engaged with what he was doing was something that made her very happy to see.

"Watch this Mom!" Ben encouraged.

Dean quickly attached the second magnet as requested and waited for Ben to reset the stopwatch, watching for his signal. At Ben's command he let go of the parachute, using his own stopwatch to compare with Ben's for a more accurate result. They both stopped their timers at the clunk as the magnet hit the linoleum kitchen floor. Dean held out his stopwatch to Ben so he could average and record the result.

By the end of the evening Lisa had joined Dean on the table, Ben asking them to drop different weights, both separately so he could time it and together so he could compare, all the time scribbling down notes before inserting the information into his calculations, using his understanding to solve the questions in front of him. By nine o' clock all the calculations were done and the whole family had had more fun working on Ben's Physics homework than any of them would have guessed.

"Thanks Dean," Ben mumbled into Dean's t-shirt as he hugged him before he went upstairs to get ready for bed.

"No problem, kiddo," Dean replied with a smile, ruffling Ben's hair before watching him climb the stairs for bed, heart definitely lighter than it had been a few hours ago.

Dean settled more comfortably into the cushions of the sofa, beer bottle held loosely in one hand, resting on the arm rest as he watched the news. His mind was far away from current affairs however; instead he allowed himself to remember the good times with Sam, the times that made him smile despite the painful pull at his heart given everything that had happened since. Glancing up at Lisa as she joined him on the sofa, winding an arm around her shoulders when she leant in against his side, Dean knew he wouldn't have survived the days after Sam's fall without the wonderful woman by his side and caring boy who he could hear clattering about upstairs. They'd saved his life, and, even though some days he wasn't sure how grateful he was for that, he knew small moments like this, helping Ben with homework, were what kept him going.

Sam's absence was a gaping, agonising hole in his soul but after days like these he could almost, almost, imagine Sam smiling at him, his dimples and dancing eyes shining at him, happy that Dean had done what he'd promised. It didn't hurt any less, but seeing Sam's wide smiles, instead of hearing his tormented screams, helped Dean struggle through from one day to the next. Sam had asked him to do this, had practically begged him, and he knew he could never say no to his brother. So he'd sought out the apple pie life, done what Sam had wanted, and here he was, a domesticated, broken hunter, fighting against the pain and the grief to keep going.

Dean's darkening thoughts were interrupted by Ben yelling down the staircase.

"Night, Mom! Night, Dean!"

"Goodnight, sweetie," Lisa replied, twisting in her seat so she didn't have to shout quite so loud. "Don't stay up too late reading."

Dean could practically hear Ben's eye roll in his reply. "I won't, I promise!"

"Goodnight!" Dean called, knowing he'd check in on Ben later before he turned in, just making sure everything was as safe as it could be, that his new family was as safe as they could be.

Turning his attention back to the television Dean sighed, thinking about what his life had become, what the years ahead would bring. An image of him helping Ben with many more pages of homework flashed across his mind, just like he had helped a young Sammy all those years ago, and surprisingly, even with the burning grief which he carried with him every day and that he knew he always would, he found that the image wasn't a bad one in the slightest.

The End

Thanks for reading. Reviews very much appreciated :)