Another One shot! Okay, right off the bat. John is abusive here, fair warning. I'll understand if it's not to your taste and you decide not to read further. That being said, for those brave soldiers, please take a moment of your time to review. Thanks to everyone, especially CFEditor, who makes these things happen.
-Han
Dean presses his body against the motel wall and tries to pretend he's somewhere else. It's the easiest thing to do when John is angry. And where Dean is now, he can't feel the itchy wallpaper against his back, the shaggy carpet against his boots. Where he is, he doesn't feel anything except for the cool whisper of air against his skin.
The moments he spends waiting for a hit are those he will remember for years, anxious buildup to a hard punch to his right temple that sends him reeling, his head pushed roughly to the side and impacting the wall and he's ripped from his safe place. It's hard to breathe here, but he has to look at his Dad or things will only get worse, he'll have to stare into coal black eyes, heated in anger and desperation, fury like a man possessed. Like the drink had gripped his soul and ripped, shredded until nothing was left of the father Dean used to know. Dean prays he'll never fall that far, as his father hits him.
He can't fight back, won't, because he deserves every red-hot flash of pain from where the blows land. His father grips his collar, yanks him forward long enough to slam him back into the wall, knocking the breath from his lungs. If he had a moment to breathe in, he would smell the alcohol on John's breath; if his vision wasn't doubling, he'd see the redness in his father's eyes.
Sam left. Sometime between Dean's first and second job, between John's seventh and ninth shot, not even he really knows. Dean doesn't know where he is, but he knows why he's gone. Hunting was weighing on the kid and the summer was hot and sticky in Florida and he wanted to live.
That morning John had told the kid it was time to leave his illusions behind, had screamed that college and the real world and happiness would always elude him. John had screamed an inch from Sam's face that no one would ever accept him once they knew the skeletons in his closet.
When the motel door slammed shut, Dean was left to pick up the pieces, whisper that he would always be there for his little brother, he would protect him, he would accept every imperfection in his perfect image. Dean left the room twenty minutes later, shutting the door softly behind him, his shirt damp with his little brother's frustrated tears.
Dean walked back into the room an hour later with Sam's favorite salad from the diner down the street and a cocky grin on his lip. The smile froze, and dropped in time with the Styrofoam boxed dinner. The room was empty, Sam's duffle was gone, even his broke-backed copy of Catcher in the Rye was gone. It was more than obvious that he'd left. Nothing had taken him. The fucking salt lines were still intact.
His breathing picked up, green eyes blown wide and scared and flying to an end he didn't want to see. One where his father got home. He fumbled with his phone, managing to hit speed dial number one with numb fingers and waited. It didn't even ring.
"Hey, you've reached Sam Winchester, if you're Dad or Dean, calm down, give it a few seconds, ring again." Dean almost smiled. He'd helped the kid set up that voicemail when he was just old enough to figure out the buttons. So around five. Kid was too smart for his own good. The voicemail was to remind John and Dean, but mostly Dean, to not lose his mind, let himself be carried away.
Dean did as the message recommended and called again two minutes later. It didn't ring. Sam was avoiding him. Dean was dying inside. It would only be an hour or so before his father came home, and he was thinking too fast, his mind rushing to ends filled with pain and fear and Sammy might never come home.
He opened his father's old and heavy laptop with trembling fingers, praying he could remember the password. He swallowed. Of course he did, it's the date his childhood went up in flames. He tapped his fingers nervously against the fake wood side table, cursing cheap technology as it booted up. He knew the tracking site by heart, the one that followed the little blip on the map that was Sam's cell phone. It didn't show up. He'd probably ditched the phone and kept the Sim card, the kid knew enough to not ditch it all.
Seconds slipped into minutes and Dean was no closer to finding him than when he started. He began making calls across the country, even though it wasn't physically possible for him to be out of the state. His breathing was shallow and his palms were sweaty, and he flinched every time he heard a noise.
"I'll watch out for him," Uncle Bobby answered gruffly, sounding more concerned for Dean than for the sixteen-year-old runaway. "You gonna be okay, kid?"
"Depends on how bad Dad gets when he sees the mess I've made," Dean grumbled down the line, pressing the phone to his ear and taking a shaky breath.
"You tell John to get his head out of his ass and stop puttin' the blame on anyone but himself," Bobby growled and Dean remembered how much he missed the old hunter. He was softer than John was, kinder, a father figure instead of a drill sergeant.
"If he gives me a chance to talk, man," Dean said as nonchalantly as he could, pressing the End button before the man could answer back. Silence engulfed him, pulling him down, dragging him under. He needed to find Sam, tell him that he loved him.
The door opened in the one second Dean took to breathe deeply and close his eyes against the loneliness. It was the worst position he could have been found in, a half-empty room and an absent Sam, the ghost of the young man's need to leave lingering in the air. John knew before Dean could open his eyes, before he could open his mouth. And his back hit the wall and he wasn't surprised.
'Dean feels the telltale burst of air blanketing his face, a half-second of softness, before John's fist slams into his cheek. He takes the hits with the air of someone who is familiar with pain, knows it on a first name basis, speaks with it at length about the state of foreign affairs and how dirty politics are getting these days. He knows this pain better than he knows himself some days.
His father is almost never the cause of it, but sometimes a hunt goes wrong and he drinks too much and punching a wall isn't enough to quiet the pain. And Dean understands this because sometimes the pain is strong enough to quiet the agony burning in Dean's own chest. When a hunt goes wrong Dean feels it too, but he doesn't react, he acts as a punching bag, stands between his father and the pain and the fear and the destruction. And every hit that builds his father up is retribution and punishment Dean deserves to receive.
Sam doesn't know that. Never will. Not while Dean is breathing.
Another hit to his ribs and Dean swears something has cracked. He finds himself not caring much. It's an easy lie to tell Sam when they find the kid and he asks. He's been lying all his life, it's not even difficult anymore. His bones are shards of glass in his chest, shearing and tearing his lungs and leaving him gasping for breath. It comes shallow and slow, like the oxygen doesn't want to enter him, like it hates him. He wouldn't be surprised.
When John collapses against Dean and the wall, breathing too hard, his breath a sinful marriage of alcohol and tobacco, Dean knows his father was in one of the smoking bars. His dad doesn't smoke, that he knows of. The older man finally pushes himself off of his son, his knuckles bruising and eyes hard. Dean can see the tears building up, but he doesn't say anything. They both know Dean deserved what he got.
"Stop standing there like a fucking moron and find your brother," John growls, words cutting deeper than any monster he'd ever faced. Dean makes himself move, shamed eyes avoiding his father as the man stalks to the table and sits down heavily, already thumbing through the journal with his cell phone pressed to his ear, screaming curses into the receiver when Sam didn't pick up.
"He left at least two hours ago," Dean says stiffly, knowing a report was needed. "I tried to track his phone, but I'm guessing he took the SIM card out to avoid that. I called nearly everyone on the list, and no one knows where he is or where he might be going." He pauses, breathing deeply around the pain in his limbs and he feels blackness beginning to creep in, his skull is pounding, his ribs throbbing. "He's got the credit cards though, and maybe twenty bucks. He'll have to card something eventually, if he hasn't already."
"He knows how to hustle," John disputes gruffly, glaring at his son like he should know better. Dean shakes his head, taking a small step backwards just in case. He doesn't like to be such a caged animal, but he can't trust John when he's swimming in liquor.
"He hates doin' that. He'll try to make some kind of honest work once he gets himself to a spot he wants to settle. It's harder to do that on the road. Our best bet is to watch the credit card trail and try to follow him."
John doesn't speak, he seems to have reluctantly come to the same conclusion as his son. He stands, back cracking in the dim motel room and bends over Dean's duffle. He pulls out a pair of gym shorts and throws them at the twenty-year-old.
"Go train."
They both know Sam's too smart to make a credit card slip when he's so close to them. John would catch him before he could blink. He would wait. Dean nods, takes the shorts and changes in the bathroom. The cheap lights make his skin look yellow, blue where the bruises are already beginning to rise. He breathes in, turns to the side, presses his fingers down over his ribs. He hisses through his teeth, but nothing's broken.
He walks past his father and runs, asphalt blurring beneath his feet until the monotony of his actions becomes comforting. His constant. The sun warms the back of his neck and sweat makes trails against his skin. His heart pounds in his chest. He knows he's alive.
He runs until he knows his father will be sober, and then he runs more. His cell phone is in the short's pocket, just in case.
When he finally returns to the motel room it's starting to get dark. Brilliant oranges and pinks shoot across the west side of the sky, fading into a blackness Dean wishes he could fall into. He opens the door with more than a little anxiety, fingers fumbling with the lock. He steps inside; his father is sitting on his own bed, running through the journal still, but the tenseness in his back has faded into lines of regret and shame. John was always like this. It was why Dean always forgave him.
Neither of them speak while Dean walks through to the bathroom, grabbing his duffle as he goes, and takes a cold shower to rid himself of the sticky Florida heat. When he gets out, his limbs have stopped burning, but his body hurts in a way he has come to associate with breathing. In and out. It keeps you alive.
He walks straight to his bed, closest to the door. His father had allowed him the privilege after years of leaving him alone with Sam, after those first few years, when Dean refused to let go of Sam for more than a few minutes and John still put himself between the rest of the world and his boys. It was the only place he could sleep now. He crashes down on it, rolling over on his side to face the door, and feels absently for the knife under his pillow.
"We'll head West tomorrow, that's our best bet," John says tiredly, not looking up from his journal. Dean swallows, wonders if Sam would hate him even more when he showed up to bring him back, kicking and screaming and rejecting every aspect of their life.
Dean couldn't blame him, felt that way too sometimes. He even once entertained the notion of college, a stray thought when he turned seventeen that made him apply, got himself a PO box just in case they moved. His grades were better than Sam thought, not that he'd ever bring them home for John and him to see. They were his business. Two months after he turned eighteen, letters starting coming. And some of them were acceptances. A lot of them were.
He never told Sam. John had caught him reading one of them, from Northwestern, and they burned it together when Dean told him it was a rejection and he'd only applied to pacify his kid brother. It wasn't for Sam, and it wasn't a rejection.
Neither of them spoke of it again.
And now the time is coming for Sam, and Dean has little doubt that Sam will go. And Dean knows a part of him will die, but he can never really blame his little brother. He just wants to enjoy the time they have left.
He closes his eyes and tries to pretend like Sam will never leave him, that his little brother will always be there to take care of, to annoy. The sun finally slips completely below the horizon, and Dean is still not convinced. He makes himself sleep anyway, and he dreams that Sam is alone and needs him and misses him and hates him and wants him gone and rejects him. All at once.
He wakes drenched in sweat and confused, his heart racing and his hands shaky. He wants to see Sam. Misses him so much it hurts. The little boy is his brother and his son all at once, bonded at the soul and he raised Sam. And he may not be so little any more, but he'll always be the one Dean has to protect. He'd die for him in an instant.
John is already awake, computer out, tapping away and watching the screen with his hawkish eyes. Twenty minutes later they're out the door and Dean barely remembers sitting up, but suddenly he's in the car and he's driving the Impala while his dad is in the truck and the scenery is blurring past them.
Before he's sure of what's happening, he's tracking a single credit card slip in Louisiana, with one hand typing on the laptop and the other caressing the wheel, and they're almost to the border of Alabama. Then they're there and John finally stops for food and Dean pulls off the interstate behind him and has more coffee than is probably healthy and a burger to go.
Then he's rocking his head to AC/DC for the seventh time today and it still hasn't gotten old and he knows Sam would be bitching right about now and all he can think about is how glad he is that he's not in the same car as John. His dad can never look at him after an episode, one of those inside-a-bottle moments where Dean goes somewhere else and John loses a piece of his humanity. They never talk about them, but both men think about the seconds that pass in silence or in rage or in Dean's pacifying words. Dean is always picking up the pieces.
John can see that when his vision isn't foggy from the whiskey.
They stop when the reach Mississippi and that's more miles than Dean would like to think about and his mind is all SamSamSamSamSam and the name is syncopated with the beating of his heart and he needs someone to protect. And without it he's lost, hating the way the world is still turning. He thinks Earth should know when he and Sam are separate, should know his pain.
John is sober when the Impala rolls into a Super Eight next to his truck, and he waves his hand dismissively, shooing Dean on to a bar and a night of something to take his mind off of his missing brother. Dean breathes for Sam, and now he's choking.
He follows his father's instructions though he'd rather not, and it's already three in the morning and there's only one bar open and its seedy and just right for what he wanted. When a woman slips her arm around his waist he grins hollowly and forces himself to trail his lips up her jaw teasingly. He can't take care of anyone else, so he takes her back to the motel, buys his own room, makes every moment torture and pleasure and somewhere in there, he thought she might have found heaven. That was what he was aiming for.
Afterwards their skin is sticky and her fingers trace lazy patterns on his chest and she whispers that he's something else. And he grins and says it's the least he can do. It is. He can't save her from this bum-fuck town in southern Mississippi, take her away from her job that pays by the hour and her annoying friends or anything else. But he can kiss bruises into her neck and give her passion she'll never really forget.
Sam likes to think Dean's a hound dog, uses women for his own pleasure. The truth is that no woman's ever seen such an attentive lover, and he can make you feel wanted like no one else ever will. He'll whisper that you're beautiful and worth every sigh of pleasure and he'll have you screaming and breaking and falling and he'll catch you and pick up all the pieces, letting you slip into dreams with soft kisses on your forehead.
The next morning, he leaves her and she's not surprised, none of them are. Before he unlocks the motel room in the haze of beer and lust and her pretty eyes, he leans close and whispers the same thing every time. And if they can't handle it, he leaves. "I won't be able to stay, but I promise that, for tonight, I'll love you like no one else ever has." And he means it, every time.
The sunlight is cool on his skin in the morning, calming, soothing. He finds his dad's motel room and slips in, goes straight for the shower. He skips forward two hours and he's been on the road for an hour and a half but he doesn't remember the time. Everything is fuzzy and his brain has shifted from its satisfied state to remembering that he never really forgot Sam, and his brother is always in the back of his mind. They're getting closer and further all at once, John says there's been another card slip in West Texas and Dean guesses he bought a bus pass, because he hasn't stopped moving.
He taps his fingers on the steering wheel and wonders how pissed his dad would be if he passed him. He doesn't. Stays resolutely behind the truck though the throaty engine begs to roar. Dean shivers, pets the dashboard affectionately. Baby wouldn't run off on him.
He starts to talk out loud after a while, but he's not that worried. Sam told him once that it was fine to talk to yourself, fine, even, to argue with yourself. But when you lose one of those arguments, you have a problem. Dean's never lost an argument, so he thinks he'll be okay.
"Gotta ditch John when we find him, Sammy won't come quietly if Dad's there to piss him off," he mumbles, because he knows Baby's listening, if not her than those angels he pretends he doesn't believe in. John had told him to stop praying, stop crying, they're not gonna answer you. He hadn't spoken for a year after that, but he still folded his hands over his heart when he lay awake at night and mouthed prayers and goodnights to the moon and his brother and his mother in the sky. John and Sammy don't know that he still prays sometimes. Still bothers to believe.
"I should take him some place, some girly coffee bar or something." Dean speaks to his home for the remainder of the drive, crossing state lines he knows better than any other American; by six, he was the only kid in his class who could name all fifty. He still has to make it out to Hawaii one of these days.
It takes another week to drive all the way through Louisiana and Texas, since the credit trail has stopped and Sam could be anywhere in that big ass state and Dean spends his time wandering the cities they stay in and pretending he's normal. He starts a three-day fling with a girl named Maria, who thinks life is overrated and thinks Dean is the one that brings the rain to the drought-ridden county. It pours for three days, and they huddle up in her house after she takes him off the street in his wanderings. She says he looked like a lost puppy. The sex is good, the Die Hard movie marathon almost better and they fight over the status of licorice as a movie snack. She hates it, he loves it. They laugh like children and he finds himself spilling that he misses his little brother.
On the night he announces he has to leave come sunrise, she makes him talk about Sam. He says he's scared for the kid, doesn't want him to die young, amount to nothing, live unhappy. She wraps her arms around him and lets him pretend not to cry into his shoulder.
He promises not to forget her. She promises the same. Neither of them breaks their promise, and in two years, when Sam turns eighteen, he will find his way back to her house, when he no longer believes in angels, or heaven, or happiness.
He and his father rarely speak, but eventually Dean's bruises and aches fade enough for John to look at him. On the ninth day, John cracks a bit more, comes to the motel toasted and hits Dean once, twice, collapses in a pool of his own vomit. Dean cleans him up, hauls him into bed, and ices his face in the dark.
He tries not to be afraid of his father, and he fails. He hides in the safety of the Impala that night, the night after, as they slowly inch their way through New Mexico. On the eleventh day, Dean gets a call from Pastor Jim. Sam called, he's in Flagstaff, and Dean's the only one allowed to have the message. He's not ready to go back yet. Dean swallows and the Pastor can hear the pain and the frustration as he whispers down the line, "I can buy him three more days."
Apparently that's enough, because Jim doesn't call back. Dean calls his father and mutters something about a possible lead in Colorado, Utah at the furthest. It's not a complete lie. Flagstaff is west.
Dean wonders if he can take Sam to the Grand Canyon. He's always wanted to go, but John never had the time. He sighs, presses his foot down on the gas and is enthralled by the answering roar. Baby wants to go to the Grand Canyon too.
He grins, and thinks Sam would be shaking his head at him right about now.
Three days later and John has hit him again two nights in a row. He's growing anxious, anger and pain and fear warring inside his body, and hitting a wall just doesn't cut it like it used to. He needs a body to react to the pain, feel it like he is. Dean is perfect. He takes more than anyone else can, shoulders the pain because it's easy to tell himself he deserves it.
It's a pattern now. Drive all day, stop, John drinks and Dean prays, John snaps, pushes him against a wall, and slams his fist into Dean's body as many times as he can before the blackness and the shame is too much and he passes out. After that Dean puts him in bed and sleeps in the car. The next morning, John doesn't look at Dean out of guilt, though Dean interprets it as disgust.
Why would he want to look at Dean? All he does is mess up.
When he reaches Flagstaff, Dean convinces his father to split up so they can canvas the city. He knows John won't be able to tell where Sam would want to stay. Dean finds a string of those dirt-cheap renters' cabins for vacationing nuclear families who want to bring their dogs to the middle of the desert with them.
It doesn't take long to find Sam's. All he has to do is ask the front desk if they've had a Sasquatch living in one of their cabins and he's pointed in the right direction. He knocks, bothering to care about his brother's privacy for the first time in years. He hears a subdued 'come in' and walks inside slowly.
A yellow Labrador Retriever jumps him the moment he steps inside, all happy eyes and slobbery tongue and ohmygodaperson. He pets it on instinct, grinning despite himself at its bright joy. "Good boy," he coos affectionately and he's never gotten to have a dog. He thinks he'd like one.
The room is cluttered and warm, wood paneling on the walls, postcards everywhere, and maybe they're Sam's. Dean thinks they might be. There are pizza boxes and Fanta bottles and Funyons littering the table and the bed and the kid is really a slob.
"Dean," Sam greets softly, and the lanky, overgrown kid looks well rested, looks whole for the first time in years. Looks happy. Dean's eyes crinkle at the edges as his smile grows and being back with his brother is better than he imagined. It's important.
"Sammy," Dean is still petting the dog. "Who's this guy?" he asks, and his voice is the same he uses on Baby when he's being loving.
"Bones, I found him," Sam says slowly, and there's a hesitancy there, because he knows he can't go with them, and that insistent wagging tail will be on like a speedboat for days until he finally realizes Sam won't be coming home. Dean feels his heart breaking at the notion.
"The owners here are dog friendly," Dean says after a moment and his hand hasn't stopped rubbing circles on the contented dogs head. "I'm sure they'll take him." His voice is softer than it's been in years and it sounds like he's talking Sam down from the edge of a bridge.
"I don't wanna leave him," Sam says petulantly, brooding and he knows it. Dean nods, smiling to himself.
"An' I didn't want to leave this girl I met in Texas. Wild in bed." Dean was good at ruining the moment and fixing it all at once. Sam rolls his eyes, as if saying he's not surprised.
"Do you even remember her name?" he asks.
"Maria," Dean answers automatically, as he loops a belt from its position on the bed through the dog's collar. He guesses Sam bought one. He walks out the door before Sam can catch up and arranges a happy home for Bones. The owners are a nice, loving couple with a little girl who loves that name for a dog and needs a friend.
Thirty minutes later Sam is all packed up and in the passenger's seat. "I didn't mean-" but he stops. Dean can't tell if he's going to say 'to imply you're a manwhore' or 'to leave you behind'. It probably doesn't matter. The car starts, roars, and they pull out of the parking lot until Dean finds a café Sam might like. When they get out, Sam's expression crumples into confusion.
"Night you left I went out of my way to buy you a girly salad," Dean says with a smirk. "Not gonna have that go unnoticed."
Sam smiles and for the first time in three weeks, it's genuine. Dean forgets about Maria, the weeks of driving, the hits and the pretending he's somewhere else, where only the wind can touch him. He forgets the feeling of fists against his rib cage and the heat of his father's gaze on his skin. He forgets to tell Sam that John is pissed, will be even worse later, to tell Sam that it's good to have him back. He likes to think that Sam knows all of that.
They walk inside the café, and Dean slaps an arm on Sam's back, having to reach up to do so. He can feel the set of shoulders, the rough cotton, the too-long hair that brushes the tips of his fingers. He can feel home.