Just a little something...
"Dean…" Sam whined. His feet—much too short to reach the ground—kicked helplessly at the empty air in front of his brother's chest.
"Shut up," Dean barked. He slapped at Sam's tiny hand when it reached down to interfere with his work. "No, it's like this. Look." He grabbed Sam roughly as he tried to pull away. At the terrified look on his brother's face, he softened. He said, quieter, "You gotta learn how to tie your shoes, okay Sammy?"
Sam hesitated. Then slowly, he nodded. "Rabbits," he prodded. This time, he didn't kick his brother's hands away.
Dean took Sam's little fingers and put the laces in them. "You see some rabbit ears, you chase him around the tree and through the hollow. Double knot, double knot," he recited as he guided the four-year-old's movements. Sam's face was puckered in concentration, watching Dean's every action.
The finished job wasn't perfect—a far cry from the easy uniform his father could manage in seconds, or the soft tugs his mother used to do with a smile. The truth was Dean could never really get it right; all he had to go on were fuzzy memories of his mother's fingers doing his own laces, and that verse she used to say. Around the tree and through the hollow…
But Mary was no longer there to help, and John was often moving too quickly for Dean to take note. Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he'd slide out of bed and practice on himself, over and over so Sam could learn it right. The youngest boy would come to see years later that Dean's shoelaces were always tied in a lopsided fashion.
"Say it back to me," Dean said, and listened while Sam repeated it quietly. Dean pulled the knot apart and sat back. "Show me," he ordered.
And he made Sam do it again and again and again until he could do it blind; until he could do it half-asleep at four a.m. when John was shaking them awake with the mutter of, "Time to go, boys." And it was shaky at first. Sometimes Dean would forget to check Sam's handiwork, and the laces would come half undone and he'd trip over them running out to the car. Dean would scoop him up and dust him off and shove him in anyways. Then he'd make him go through another session of rabbit chasing until he deemed Sam's efforts adequate.
When Sam got older he'd be right at Dean's heels, almost finishing as fast but not quite, his ever-growing fingers copying his elder's motions exactly. Or, as exactly as he could. (If John ever noticed the incorrectness of the knots his boys were making, he never did correct them.)
And then Sam didn't really need Dean to check his shoes anymore and sometimes he even urged Dean along, whispering proposals of "I'll race you!" on those rare days when he was up first. And then they didn't really do little kid stuff like racing or wrestling anymore and suddenly Dean was becoming John 2.0 and Sam had no interest in being John 3.0 and packed off without little so much as a warning. But it didn't matter.
Whether he was four or twelve or thirty, Sam's laces always did come out a little crooked.
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