Author's Note: It's been an incredibly long time since I have written anything so I hope I am not too rusty. This series will be a group of one shot stories that will tell different stories throughout our boy's lives. Sad, scary, funny and everything in between. No Destiel. Sorry. Leave a review if you like what you read and hopefully I can get back into the swing of things.
Dog Tired, Son
Dean Winchester was 9 years old the first time he'd ever heard the expression "dog tired". It was a term his father had taught him, one of those careless turns of phrase that are passed down generation to generation almost by accident. For Dean, it had become a permanent expression of the hunter life. John would return to whatever hole in the wall they were currently staying in after being gone for days, weeks at a time, bone weary and sporting whatever fresh injuries had been gifted upon him during his fight with darkness and Dean would be waiting for him with a cold beer in his hand, excited in his youth to hear of the tales of monsters his father brought to justice.
With Dean, John had always been eager to share his knowledge, to prepare the oldest Winchester son for the legacy that Dean would have to shoulder one day. Of course, if Dean had known just what that legacy would one day entail he may have opted for a different life path. Or maybe not. Dean had learned long ago that asking too many what if's would drive a man crazy. If he wasn't already.
Those moments with John, as few and far between as they were, were incredibly special to Dean. It was the most individualized attention he had ever received from his father, save for those few precious and dim memories of the time before their life had been flipped upside down by demons and prophecies and angels. Before he had become a warrior and before he'd been tasked with the protection of his brother, come death or anything else.
Somedays, however, a case had not gone well for John. He came home moody and surlier than usual. Instead of one beer, there were more and Dean would know from the second his father came home whether there would be any stories that night. Hunters understood that each case had the likelihood of taking a small piece of their soul with it, but they accepted these risks. Some hunters, like Bobby, took the bad with the good. John didn't mean to, but he had scared Dean when he came home like this. Bobby had never scared him. Not even in his weakest moments. Dean, for his part, refused to judge his father too harshly on this particular behavior because Dean wasn't exactly adept at dealing with emotions either.
As a boy, Dean hadn't understood the weight of hunting yet; he was still innocent in his belief that as long as men like his father existed good would always win. And for reasons still unknown to him, John Winchester made the first real fatherly decision since his wife had passed. On the nights where the good guys didn't always win, John would not discuss the darker aspects of the hunter life with his young son, but for better or worse Dean knew anyways.
The scene was almost always the same. John would stagger in, his shoulders heavy with a weight Dean could not begin to understand, and he would rest one giant hand on Dean's head in greeting, almost as if he were anchoring himself to the reality of his own family and the light they could offer him. Dean would grin, but it was half-hearted at best. It was in these moments that he could see his destiny racing towards him, the pain it would bring, the desperation, even if he didn't fully understand what he was seeing. It was in his father's eyes. So expressive, so much like Dean's own. Mary used to joke that she could always tell what her boys were thinking by the look in their eyes.
He would know then, as much as a child could know, that something had happened to his father during his time away that was terrifying in its implications. Fear would settle in his belly then and it would take everything he had to stay by his father's side. To be there for his old man in a way that he now knew no child should have been. But he had stayed and even now, so much older than he was then, Dean was proud of himself for it.
"Dad," Dean would say quietly, handing his father the first beer of the night. "Are you okay?"
Sometimes John would answer immediately and sometimes not for several moments. Dean would simply wait for the reply he knew would be coming. The dismissal that would allow him to retreat to the strange but still relatively safe realm of his own childhood. It almost became a ritual between the two of them, a dialogue that belonged to them and only to them.
"Yeah," John would whisper gruffly. "Just dog tired, son."
"Get some sleep, Dad," Dean would reply, before receiving a quick but tight hug from John. And off he would go, usually to Sammy, keeping the youngest Winchester from interrupting whatever John was working through, subconsciously relieved that he could run far away from the primal emotions he could feel radiating off his father. It was better to leave him to it, Dean had learned.
As Dean had gotten older it had become sort of a running joke between the two of them. If a case had gone wrong, one would simply tell the other they were "dog tired" and instead of beer they would break out the whiskey. The words went from something fearful, something harsh and cold in Dean's world, to something he understood. More importantly, something he had shared with his father that didn't end with bloodshed or violence or death. It was almost normal. Not the circumstances that had gotten them there, of course, but the afterward. The drink with a father. The conversations that would sometimes last well into the night, sharing war stories and comparing scars. It made him feel closer to his father than he ever had.
And then his father had disappeared, had snatched those moments, that blossoming feeling of belonging to a family as quickly as Yellow Eyes had taken his mother from him. At the time it had been a devastating blow, something that had kept him up at night, but now he could almost see it for the blessing it was. Dean didn't need John, not in the way he thought he did. But he did need Sam. Their relationship had almost died the night Sam had walked away, but his father's disappearance had given them the chance to become stronger than they ever had been.
Dean had shared a lot of the things his father had told him over the years with his brother, but the "dog tired" moments were completely his. Something he would hold and cherish for the remainder his life. And it felt right, having his father with him in the emotional trenches of hunting, knowing that John wouldn't judge him for his darkness because John had struggled with his own.
Sam and Dean had always approached life differently, it was what made them so effective as hunters. Dean thought one way and Sam thought another and together they could come up with one hell of a Hail Mary, but at times they struggled to communicate the ways in which they saw the world. Dean's darkness would always be different from Sam's, would always be something that his younger brother couldn't really understand. In much the same way that Dean could never truly understand the darkness that existed within Sam. But John came closer to understanding that particular side of Dean more than anyone. More than even Bobby, who Dean had come to see as more of his father than John was.
Which wasn't to say that Dean didn't see bits of his father in his younger brother. They were alike in many ways. Perhaps more alike than Dean would ever be. He liked to think that he took after his mother and, as he grew older, he grew more and more at peace with not being the man his father was. Yet, for every similarity between Sam and John, there were differences too. Sam strategized much like John had, compiled information and statistics in the same clinically cool manner that had fascinated Dean as a boy, watching as John drew complex symbols and figures within the pages of his journal. Sam, however had always been open with his emotions where John had been closed off at best. Dean handled things much the same way, whether that was due to being taught by John or simply his personality he couldn't say.
Talking about the moments in which he felt weak, powerless was nothing something he was ready to do with Sammie. Not in the way his younger brother wanted. It was a constant source of tension between them. It wasn't that Sam was wrong to want to discuss what he was feeling or that it was wrong for Dean to have the emotions in the first place, but Dean was Sammie's big brother, had been charged with the wellbeing of Sam since the night of the fire. It was a responsibility that he welcomed, but it meant that in some ways Sam would always be his "baby brother". No matter how capable Sam grew, and Dean knew that his brother was more than capable, the younger Winchester could never escape Dean's overprotective instincts. That included emotions. Dean had to be the protector in Sam's eyes.
When Sam had been small, it had been Dean that had comforted him. It is an unspoken pact between siblings that the older child will always have the younger child's back. In this way, Dean supposed they were normal, average brothers, but their reality was far more frightening. While normal big brother's must work up the courage to check for whatever imaginary beast might be living in their little brother's closet, there was an unspoken understanding among children that no matter how scared you became, if you simply had the courage to open the door or lift up the sheets, whatever had been lurking there would disappear. No tentacles to greet you. No howls of deranged and wild hunger. Normal children fear the unknown. Dean feared what he knew.
When Sam came crawling under his covers in the middle of the night because he was convinced there was a monster under the bed, Dean, with his understanding of how frightening the world really was, would have to not only work up the courage to check for that monster but understood that there was a definite possibility of something dark and hungry lurking there. His heart would pound as he crept around in the room, Sam's panicked breathing urging him on towards certain doom. As a boy only a few years older than Sammie, his fingers would shake as he grasped the bed skirt and lifted, eyes frantically searching for any threats that were waiting there for him. What he would have done if he had found any he still didn't know.
The point was that no matter how scared Dean got, no matter how dire circumstances were, Sam could never know. If Sam knew Dean was scared, how would Sam ever not be? It became a pattern between them, just as much as "dog tired" had integrated itself into Dean's life. In some ways, it had put up walls between himself and Sam. An emotional barrier that neither could get the other to cross. Dean knew it was especially frustrating for Sam when they had first begun to hunt together again. It had seemed like a slight, a punishment for leaving. As if Dean were keeping his brother from really knowing him as penance for Sam's choice. That couldn't have been farther from the truth, but he hadn't known how to tell Sam how incredibly painful and awkward those first few months had been. Of how devastated he had felt when Dean had realized how little he actually knew Sam. Or how little Sam actually knew him.
They had gotten much better at trusting one another over the years. Dean still struggled with letting Sam see what he considered weakness, but he found himself letting his brother in more and more often. They needed to if they were going to survive together, hunt together for the remained of their days, and that seemed the only possible conclusion to their life. They were never going to be normal. Never going to be anything but hunters, warriors out to defend the light against the darkness. They had made their peace with that, Dean long before Sam, but the outcome was the same. They were better hunters for it, for better or worse.
In those early days, especially the months following John's death, Dean had found himself drinking with his father in mind more often than not. He leaned heavily on those late night conversations with his dad, drew comfort from the familiarity of being "dog tired" and the ache inside him would ease slightly. He would remember the dignity and courage his father would exhibit even when things got dire and he would breathe again. For a little while anyways.
As the years passed, it had become easier to share with Sam, to open up and let his little brother in. It still wasn't perfect, they still argued and Sam still pushed, but Dean found it wasn't as hard as he had first thought it would be. Sam was not a little boy anymore, he could handle what Dean put on him and for the first time they were sharing the burden instead of hiding it away like a little dirty secret. It felt good and Dean wouldn't give it up for anything. And yet, Sam's acceptance and the love they shared for one another wasn't what he needed. Sometimes, when things got bad enough, when his soul felt like he couldn't take anymore, it wasn't Sam that got him moving again.
It was the memory of his father. A man who had made countless mistakes, a man who made questionable decisions, who gave his life and the lives of his sons to a cause greater than him. A man who would die for others without question. A man who could come home, battered and broken, with visions of terror and blood and death fresh upon his mind, but would get up the next day and do it again. That was what "dog tired" meant to Dean, that was enough to give him comfort. If his father could do it, so could he.
These days, a tough case meant a toast with his first shot of whiskey, the words "I'm just dog tired, dad" would tumble from his lips and he'd smile, imagining his father smiling back. With that memory, perhaps he would sleep that would wake the next day, the weight always present on his shoulders, the legacy staring at him in the face, his death always a decision away, but there was always light. Somewhere. Even if he couldn't see it.