This is a disclaimer.
AN: montisello requested John-and-Sammy for her birthday. Thus do I oblige. Title pinched from the Neil Gaiman poem of the same name.
Instructions
Springtime tends to be a pretty wet time of year. It's late March, and the town looks a bit like the flood just came through, or something. Water dripping everywhere you look, off trees and houses and cars and bushes. Piles of mush in the gutters and by the pavements, long rivers of dirty water running down the streets into the drains.
Sam kicks his way through slush and mud towards the house they're renting, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans against the lingering chill, the biting wind. He thinks he left his gloves behind in the move a month ago, and Dad will chew him out for not getting more already, but seriously. Sam's fed up of taking orders about his own personal well-being from a guy who spent most of last week god-only-knows-where, going after that poltergeist, and turned up again three days ago with bruised ribs, a concussion and a wound across his right thigh that needed eighteen stitches.
Neither Dad nor Dean will give him details about what, exactly, happened, and that makes Sam even more mutinous. He'll be seventeen in May, for cryin' out loud. He's been on four hunts already in the last year, and they both still treat him like a baby.
His schoolbag's stuffed with new books, straps cutting into his shoulders through his jacket. He's actually got catching up to do at this school; more often than not, he's already covered what they're teaching in three different states.
Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. And it doesn't help that he reads a lot of stuff he doesn't need to yet, because if he can look sufficiently busy then chances are Dad'll let him off training. But he is kinda looking forward to the increased workload. Sam's vaguely aware that he enjoys that kind of pressure, the press of deadlines and exams, the weight of new knowledge in his head, but he doesn't think too much about it. Just soaks it all up.
Dean would probably try to exorcise him if Sam ever told him about it.
Maybe he'll try for the soccer team. Try-outs are in a few weeks.
He stomps through a large pile of slush shovelled against the wall then, quite deliberately spreading it across half the pavement so as to drown out the voice in his head that's telling him he might not be here in a few weeks.
An elderly couple coming towards him give him and the slush a dirty look, one from each of them; Sam returns them in kind. He wishes he were still young enough to stick his tongue out at them, but at almost-seventeen, you can only go so far with the temper-tantrums.
He's struck up a few tentative friendships, at least. There's Bill and Julie and Hannah, and a couple other guys who've exchanged a few words with him once it came out that he was a good soccer player. Sam knows he makes friends easily, he's not shy or hesitant about talking to people. Anything but. As a rule, he gives them all the benefit of the doubt, likes everyone on principle and then gets proved wrong. Now Dean, on the other hand... when Dean starts picking him up from school again, once Dad's better, he'll give most of Sam's new friends one look – one single look – and then be able to tell his brother which ones are worth it and which ones are assholes.
Dean's first impressions of people are rarely wrong. Even at almost seventeen, Sam's aware of how strange it is to see that sharp intuition, those precise instincts, in a boy who's barely even twenty-one.
The part of town they're living in isn't exactly rich, but most of the houses are still neat, still trying to be respectable. Dad has a knack for neighbourhoods like that, but both he and Dean are terrible at picking out motels. Just terrible.
There's kids everywhere it seems, running around and yelling, jumping through the wet snow in the gardens, mournfully trying to rebuild their decomposing snowmen. Their Moms stand on porches or at kitchen windows, coffee-mugs in hand, watching and laughing.
Did Mom do that for Dean? Would she have laughed for Sam like that?
He hunches his shoulders and walks on, putting on a bit more speed.
When he reaches the house, Dad's in the kitchen, sitting at the table glaring into his coffee-cup, tired and irritable.
"Hey, Sammy," he says, short and clipped but trying not to snap. "Coffee? Machine's still on."
"Sure, thanks," Sam answers, dropping his rucksack onto a chair and unzipping his jacket. Something's happened, he can tell. Better be careful. One wrong move and kaboom. "Dean head out?"
John's mouth twists. "You could say that."
Trouble is, half the time Sam can't tell the difference between the wrong moves and the right ones where John Winchester's concerned.
"Um..."
"Caleb swung by. Found a hunt over near Syracuse, a two-man job. Won't wait for my ribs."
"So Dean went?"
"Caleb'll look after him."
Sam could tell just by the set of his father's jaw that while John trusted his friend absolutely, he still hadn't been impressed with the idea. How Dean had talked his father into letting him go along would remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of the universe to Sam.
The bastard! Taking off like that and leaving him with Dad. Great, just great. Now he'd have to keep an eye out for Dad's injuries, and walk to and from school every day, and probably make dinner, too. Remember to take the trash out on Friday and everything.
"Just you and me, huh," he says with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
Strangely enough, that's what snaps John out of his bad mood; suddenly, he looks amused. "Sorry, son. Looks like you're gonna have to acknowledge my existence every once in a while. We have take-out for dinner, or d'you wanna try and cook something?"
Sam growls "take-out, please" at the coffee machine and refuses to look at his Dad as he drags himself off to his room to study.
The next morning, he hauls himself out of bed and falls into the shower, profoundly grateful to the Moirae that it's still only Thursday, and he's got an excuse to be out of the house for two more days. With any luck, Dean'll be back by Saturday. Please, let him be back.
Dad's already up. He's always the first one up, and more often than not the last one to go to bed. Sometimes Sam wonders if he ever sleeps anymore; if he even needs to. This morning there's coffee and toast waiting for him on the table, and twenty crisp new bucks. The note crackles a little when he picks it up.
"Dad, your money," he says to John's back; he's frying himself bacon. Sam always did hate big breakfasts.
"For you," John says, not looking round. "Leave here early and get yourself some gloves on the way to school. Before you get frostbite."
"It's not that cold anymore," Sam protests, in direct contrast to what he was thinking just yesterday.
"I don't care," John snaps. "Gloves or grounding, which would you prefer?"
Sam eats his toast in silence. God, he's an idiot some days. Part of him feels like he should apologise, but he just doesn't know how. Dad always makes him feel so helpless, like a little kid, and not in the warm-and-protected good way.
"Keep the change," John adds when he gets up to leave, and even though it makes him feel like even more of an ass, Sam comes back that night with a new pair of gloves and a copy of Kipling's Plain Tales From The Hills.
On Friday morning, they don't really talk at all.
It's not a bad silence per se, not an awkward one, because none of the Winchesters are ever at their best before nine in the morning anyway. But it still makes Sam itch between his shoulder-blades, makes him cast around for something to say, makes him feel like he's missing out on something.
He slouches off to school trying not to think of the evening ahead of him – them – or worse yet, the weekend. It's so unfair that Dean and Dad can be so easy and so comfortable with each other even when Dean's breaking rules left right and centre, but not even in the one week that Sam has done nothing, not a single thing to incur his Dad's wrath can the two of them talk.
The evening doesn't start off too badly, actually. Dad's doing research when Sam gets in, spread out over the big kitchen table. He clears a space for Sam to eat something, asks a few cursory questions about school. Without knowing why he's doing it, Sam tugs his homework out of his bag and bends over it, still sitting opposite Dad in the kitchen. He thinks he catches John smiling a little out of the corner of his eye, and the silence that follows is companionable and relaxed and broken only by brief academic questions or the whirr of the coffee machine dispensing Winchester life blood.
But then, around nine or so, there's a power cut. Not just their house, but the whole street. There's nothing to do but light a fire, put up candles on the stairs, in the kitchen and bathroom, and wrap up warm. John uses the grid out of the oven to boil a kettle so they can have hot tea, at least.
Dad doesn't look in the least bothered by it. In fact, Sam could almost swear he's enjoying it.
"Had this happen back home once, when I was a bit younger than you are," he says, maybe noticing Sam's sour looks. "Course there was a fireplace inside and all, but we ended up buildin' a bonfire in the yard. Power went out in the afternoon, see, and they sent us home from school, so we had to entertain ourselves somehow. Anyway, we shovelled out a pit in the back yard, and filled it up with all the wood we could find lyin' around. Alex nearly burned the shed down at one point."
Sam smiles a bit. "Sounds fun."
"Yeah, it was. Till Dad got home."
Sam laughs this time, loud and more relaxed, leans back against the couch behind him. He's tall enough that his shoulders stick out above the seat. "Alex was a friend of yours?"
Congratulations, Sammy, you've done it again. Wrong move. Dad's face clouds over, closes up, mouth turning down. He's staring deep into the dancing flames, and his eyes seem to flicker yellow-orange-red with their reflections.
Finally, he looks up. "We grew up together. He died in Vietnam."
Sam swallows hard. He knows Dad was about eighteen when he went over there, knows he came back highly decorated and barely older than Dean. Knows he won't talk about his tours, ever. End of discussion, boy.
And that's all.
Briefly, he tries to imagine himself in Dad's place; tries to picture how he'd feel if one of his friends... no, if Dean died on a hunt, and finds he can't. Just... can't.
"I'm sorry."
Dad looks up at him, and flashes a smile that tries to but doesn't quite reach his eyes. "It's all right. Mind changin' the subject?"
Sam rolls his shoulders, grins a little, tells his Dad about his day, about the teachers, the kids, the Principal who is, quite frankly, completely insane. About his fascinating history class, and how he disagrees with half the conclusions drawn in the book about the rise of the Nazi regime. About the brawl in the cafeteria in lunch hour yesterday, and how he could've kicked both the fighter's asses in ten seconds flat, and Dad listens and laughs and makes sarcastic remarks, and Sam feels totally happy and strangely grown-up.
But.
Dad never talks about his childhood. Occasionally he'll talk about Mom; usually at Christmas, or birthdays, little snippets of information reluctantly given and jealously guarded by both his sons. So now Sam can't let go of this new story, that image of his Dad building a bonfire in his parent's back yard. Can't stop picturing what his grandfather could've looked like. Sam doesn't even know where they lived, or how old Dad was when he met Mom, or anything.
There's nothing specific he wants to hear, not really. He doesn't care if the story's with Mom or before her or when Dad was in kindergarten, but all of a sudden, he just wants... something. Something of that part of Dad. Before the fire, before hunting.
Dean had that part of Dad for four whole years. Sam just wants a story or two; is that really so much to ask?
"Hannah's Mom is pregnant, she says," he tells Dad. "They're deciding on names, and Hannah was complaining today 'cause she thinks they're all awful."
Dad snorts; he's pouring hot water into the mugs, teabags bobbing to the surface. "People do give their kids some pretty weird names these days."
Sam unscrews the milk bottle, hands it over to him. "What would you have named me or Dean if either of us had been girls?"
"Dean, God only knows. Diana, maybe? Or Elizabeth. We hadn't really decided, 'cause Mary was sure he was a boy."
"What about me?"
"Samantha."
"I'm... not sure if that's weird or not."
"Mary's grandfather was named Samuel," John explains, more quietly now the picture of Dean-as-a-girl has faded away. "The name has a bit of a tradition in her family, and she wanted you to be a Sam."
"Oh," Sam says. He wraps a hand around his mug, the heat burning but welcome, and picks at the carpet with his other one, long fingers pulling at a loose strand of once-dark red. "So where's 'Benjamin' come from?"
"Her uncle."
"And Dean –" and then Sam stops, because his brother's full name is Dean Alexander, and now he knows why.
"Damned if I'm naming either of you 'Henry'," says John, making a joke of it.
"That was –"
"My Dad. Harry Winchester."
"Henry is a little –"
"Lame? Yeah. And it doesn't suit him at all. Too sophisticated, you know? Dad doesn't do smooth and up-market very well."
Sam barely dares to ask, but he can't stop himself now, he's gone too far, he has to know. "What was Mom's middle name?"
Astonishingly, Dad's mouth curves a little, even though he's staring into the distance again. "Victoria. I used to call her Guinevere."
Oh, this is amazing. Who knew a simple power cut could get John Winchester to open up like this? It's a feast, a gold-mine of information about his family, and Sam knows he'll be pondering it for weeks, for months: turning every name over and over in his mind, the inflections in Dad's voice, his look when he talked about his Dad that mirrored the one Dean gets when he talks about John. Alex, whom Dean was named for. Sam can see him in his mind's eye already, a fair-haired joker with a ready grin who could take John out of his quiet reserve the same way Dean can for Sam. His grandfather, a bear of a man, tall and broad, military like Dad, deep gruff voice and callused hands.
And now Mom.
"Why Guinevere?" Sam whispers.
"The song. CSN? Guinevere, had green eyes, like yours, my lady like yours."
"CSN," Sam repeats, slow and solemn, and he knows that by Monday evening, he'll own a copy of one of their tapes with that song on it, and listen to it over and over, trying to feel his mother in the warm flow of the music, the slow sad words. "CSN."
"Yeah," Dad says, soft and low, still not looking at him, as if he can see something far away in the darkness around them beckoning to him, but that he can no longer reach.
For the first time in a long while, Sam doesn't begrudge him that look.
"Was she... was she a bit... you know, hippie? They were at Woodstock, CSN. Right?"
"Hippie?" John finally meets his eyes. "No, not really. She was about as far left as you can get without being a Communist, though. And she loved – she loved pretty things. Soft sheets and sunshine... simple little luxuries. But she didn't believe in that peace-and-love stuff. She foughtfor what she wanted. She'd had to."
Sam's tea is getting cold, he's been so still for so long, afraid to break this spell that darkness and firelight and solitude have laid on his father. He gulps it down now, while it's lukewarm still, and then draws his knees up against his chest, wraps his arms around them, fighting a yawn. He's trying to think of a prompt that would get Dad to tell him about how they met without coming right out and asking when there's a flicker of light outside the windows, once, twice, and then the whole street's lit up, orange-yellow glow flooding the sitting room.
"Power's back," John says unnecessarily, getting stiffly to his feet and crossing the room. He snaps the lights on, and both he and Sam blink in the sudden brightness.
They blow out the candles in silence, pack them all away. Sam collects kettle and mugs from the sitting room, puts them in the sink. John's checking to see if the phone's back as well, a little worried he might have missed Caleb's or Dean's call.
"Bed, Sammy," he says when Sam stops by him in the hall. "Go on."
"Yessir," Sam murmurs, feeling a tight knot of regret in his chest that Dad's back, blunt and hard as ever. He climbs the stairs slowly. His head feels heavy, brim-full of information and the dull pang of grief for people he never knew and never will know. Already he's drawing conclusions about Mom, imagining her early life based on what Dad's said. Already he's painting a bright, colourful picture of her, of them.
"Hey, Sammy," Dad calls after him.
"Yeah?"
"Sleep well."
Sam smiles. "You too, Dad."
Dean gets back next morning, bringing breakfast and coffee and groceries for the weekend with him, practically bouncing with accomplishment. He monopolises Dad from the minute he gets in, his voice filling up the house as he puts the food away and describes the hunt and explains that Caleb stayed behind to do some cleaning-up – no, they didn't get arrested, jeez, Dad, I'm twenty-one, you know!
Sam sits in the kitchen chair and sips his coffee, feeling a bit left out and totally uninterested in Dean's war stories. He'd meant to tell him about everything Dad said, about Alex and Mom and the bonfire and everything, but sitting there, he decides he won't. He'll keep the stories to himself. He'll keep that part of Dad to himself. Dean, after all, has all the other parts.
He makes Dean stop in town to buy CSN on the way home from school on Monday, who bitches at first about the chick music, but when Sam fast-forwards the tape till Guinevere comes on, he pauses.
"I know this," he says uncertainly; it's almost a question, like he can't quite remember.
"Mom used to play it," Sam tells him, and Dean's hands flex around the steering wheel. Sam catches a brief glimpse of his face before he turns away, and it shocks the breath out of him, white and pained, grief etched in every line.
Then Dean turns back to him, grins bright and shiny. "No shit, Sherlock. Hey, I'm proud of you for not committing patricide this weekend, by the way," and pulls out of the parking lot, humming along under his breath.
"Hey, I did brilliantly. Dad and I were great; he told me all sorts of stuff about our family. And you mighta hung around long enough to say bye on Wednesday, asshole. I missed you," Sam says, but Dean doesn't hear, just sits there smiling a little as he drives, because Sam can't quite manage to say it out loud. Not just yet.