Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural in any way, shape, or form.
Author's Note: Just another one shot about the boys as kids. Oh, and just a fun fact: I actually came up with this story during a thunderstorm exactly like the one described in the story about two weeks ago.
As always, constructive criticism is always appreciated. Enjoy the story!
Warnings: None. Absolutely none...no cursing, no violence...nothing. Well, unless you're scared of thunderstorms. Only then may this story kind of suck for you.
Sam jolted away suddenly, his almost seven-and-a-half year old heart practically beating out of his chest. It was a dream, it was all a dream…but how come the bullets were still firing? He could hear them, clear as day, loud as if the bearer of the gun was underneath of his bed as he fired round after round.
Suddenly, the room was illuminated and then went dark, followed quickly by a clap. Lightning, thunder; it was a storm, and the bullets were the heavy raindrops of the roof. Sam wasn't sure if he should be comforted or even more scared – he was glad that no one was firing a gun in his room, but still…he hated thunderstorms.
"Dean," he whispered hoarsely as he tried to untangle himself from the sheets. They twisted around his legs like tentacles of an unseen monster, pinning him to the thin, smelly mattress. "Dean, it's a really bad storm!" He gave his left leg a wretch and finally pulled free of the sheets, tumbling out of bed from the force. He hopped up and over to his brother's identical bed and pulled back the sheets. To his horror…Dean wasn't there.
"Dean?" he whispered. Where was his brother? Dean knew that Sam hated thunderstorm, so why had he gone away? "Dean, where are you?" Sam quickly ducked down to check under the bed – no Dean. He continued to look in the usual hiding places – in the closet, behind the bookcase, under Sam's bed. Still no Dean.
He'd have to wake his Dad up. He knew that Dad hated it when Sam woke him in the middle of the night, but this was bad – Dean was gone! Sam's fingers were clasped around the doorknob to his father's room when, to his horror, the little boy realized that his Dad was still out hunting – he wasn't going to be back until tomorrow night! Panic-stricken, Sam descended down the stairs and to the first floor of the house. No Dean sprawled out on the couch, no Dean in the kitchen eating out of the fridge like Dad hates, no Dean…anywhere.
Thunder clapped again, causing Sam to jump. He knocked into the rickety table and fell over, whacking his head on the linoleum floor. He felt something hit against his leg too, with a sickening thud. He turned and saw that one of the chairs was lying across his ankle, and his eyes welled up with tears. Ouch. Pain seared through his leg and his head, and he felt a cry collect in his chest.
Suddenly, the door flew open. "What happened?" Sam didn't even have to look up, because he knew it was his brother's voice.
"Where were you?" he cried out accusingly, his voice mingled with tears as Dean pulled the chair off of his younger brother. "I was looking all over for you and then…t-then I hit the chair and it fell and…my ankle hurts." The rain came down even harder and a blast of thunder shook the house with such force you would have thought that a giant fist overhead had grabbed it and was shaking it like a plaything.
"Calm down, Sammy." Dean said, trying to help his brother sit up. "Where's your ankle hurt?"
Sam pointed to right above the ankle bone. Dean muttered darkly as he saw it was already starting to swell up. "Can you turn your foot?" he asked.
He breathed a sigh of relief when Sam turned his foot, only wincing a little. "Alright, sit up and stay here, let me get you an ice pack, okay Sammy?"
"It's Sam," the little boy grunted as he sat up. Dean smiled with satisfaction; if his brother was reminding him of what his name 'really was', then he was sure that his injury couldn't be too severe. He threw open the freezer, squinting in the bright light, and pulled out a handful of ice before stuffing it into a sandwich baggy.
"Here you go, kid," he said, handing Sam the ice pack. Sam looked up at Dean with big, mournful eyes.
"You know that I hate thunderstorms," he said.
"You know that I love thunderstorms!" Dean returned. "Besides, I've told you – thunderstorms aren't that big a deal, Sam, really." He suddenly reached out for his little brother's hand. "C'mere," he said, pulling Sam up.
"Where are we going?" Sam asked, limping slightly as Dean pulled open the front door. The torrential downpour splattered outside of the house, and thunder seemed to shake the trees until they would turn into nearly nonexistent powder.
"Sit here, next to me – that was you won't get wet." Dean said, pointing up at the awning covering the rickety old porch – cracks ran through it like lines in an old woman's hand, and water dripped through some of them.
They sat down next to each other, Dean slinging his arm around his younger brother's shoulder. Every once in a while Sam would jump at the scream of the lightning or the cry of the thunder, but soon they became nothing more than familiar voices.
"When the lightning flashes, if you count until you hear the thunder boom again, you can tell how many miles away the storm is."
Lightning flashed, and they counted together. "One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi…"
The thunder shook again.
"Four miles," Dean said.
"That's close," Sam said, staring up at his older brother with worry.
Dean smiled. "Don't worry, kid. You're safe."
Together they sat, staring out at the great rolling fields as the rain fell. They sat until all of the ice in Sam's ice pack melted. They sat until Sam laid his head on his brother's shoulder, dozing off. They sat as Dean stared down at Sammy, watching him so that they breathed in and out at the exact same time. They sat until Dean's back started to ache but he tried not to move around so that he wouldn't wake Sam up. They sat until the sky stopped its weeping and the lightning stopped its screaming and the thunders shrieking cries ceased to exist. They sat until the rain was nothing more than a drizzle and Sam finally woke up.
"Is it over?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.
"Yeah kid, you slept through all the best parts. That tree totally came down over there, see it?" Dean pointed outward and Sam stepped up to go look.
"Cool," he said once he caught sight of the fallen oak.
Dean smiled a little bit. "See, thunderstorms aren't so bad, are they?"
Sam smiled as he looked up at Dean. "Of course they aren't – not when you're here, Dean."
On Sam's first night at Stanford, the skies wept and the lightning screamed and the thunder cried like Sam had only heard once before in his life.