A/n: The utter heartbreak of 'Jump the Shark' (for Dean, mostly) captivates me to no end. So this is a little twin-drabble, featuring Dean's and Sam's respective takes on their father's reasons to keep Adam a secret from them.
Set, presumably, after 'Jump the Shark', s4.
Disclaimer: No characters, plot-lines, inherent to the show, belong to me.
Still the riddle lies*
It all made sense, in the end, Dean mused. That Dad would keep this makeshift family of Kate and Adam secret from him. Another son Dad wanted to shelter from the dark. Another son whose innocence Dad set out to protect. Another son, that wasn't Dean.
It burnt like an honest to God funeral pyre they've just given Adam, ever since the get-go. Since that… thing called, and Dean just knew. Holy water, silver and all the pictures at the Milligans' were but a technicality, really. All the times Dad insisted they go on separate hunts for no good reason but to clip Dean's attempts at protest with a razor-wired order. All the phone-calls, aborted noncommittally, whenever Dean waddled back into the motel room from a beer run or just a shower. God, he felt like living a full-blown déjà-vu now, with Sam. Everything clicked into place. And made perfect sense, come to think of it.
The only way to preserve Adam and his mother safe and normal was to keep Dean out of the premises, sure enough. The farther the better. Dad must've figured out early on Dean was not to be trusted with caring for them too. Some spectacular job Dean's done with Sammy, so far! Dad should've known Dean would fail that one, as well. Like he was failing by the minute to save Sammy, failed God and His squad of feathery douche-bags, failed the whole damned planet having given in to pain and fright. Condemned six odd billion people with his own hand. The hand that picked up Alastair's razor. For all his insight, Dad should've really picked up a different son to save…
It all made sense, Sam mused. That Dad would keep the guilty secret of Adam and his mother from Dean. Sam ruled his own self out downright – they were out of touch back then and not much by way of being on speaking terms with Dad afterwards. Not for something this big to be spilled in a heart-to-heart. Dean was different. Always there with Dad. For Dad. Definitely there when Dad learned of a newfound son. And yet, it made perfect sense that he should play it close, come to think of it.
There was a distinct quality to Dean's love. A clear-water magnitude that would inevitably hoist you up to someone you could be, given time and effort. Someone better, braver, kinder, stronger. Sam's only witnessed it applied twice, but both occasions count by a thousandfold. And Sam is fairly positive now, Dad was aware of that little bit of customized Dean-magic. If you lost it, or as much as chinked it to disappointment or hurt, pooling in those impossible eyes of his brother's, that would be just your own self to face in the mirror henceforth: flawed, fallible, lost. Sam would know first-hand, as of recently. Would give anything not to care. And there was most definitely no way Dad would've given the vitality of Dean's adoration up willingly, admitting to being susceptible to the same delusion of normal, Sam fell for. Admitting to being human. Admitting to being wrong. Tough as it is, Sam's nearly entertaining a thought it's probably a good thing Dad never lived close to losing it anyway, faded away from Dean's increasingly forlorn look through the latter years.
But it still made sense why Dad would go full-on stealth about his little family side-project. The same reason Sam's lip-tight about Ruby's blood. And maybe, if Sam's lucky, he won't live to face Dean's gaze too, when it outs.
*THE SECRET
Some things that fly there be, -
Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:
Of these no elegy.
Some things that stay there be, -
Grief, hills, eternity:
Nor this behooveth me.
There are, that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the riddle lies!
(by Emily Dickinson)