Chapter 2.

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"Come on, Sammy." Dean mumbled and looked at his watch yet again. "Come on. Where are you?"

Dean kicked at a small stone on the ground and paced impatiently back and forth in front of the school entrance. Sam was late and that was a pretty unusual thing for the youngest Winchester because Sam was never late. Dean had turned it over in his head several times; He knew that Sam was off before Dean had been so, unless Sam had been punished for misbehavior (which was as likely as thirteen months on a year), Dean was pretty sure his little brother had gotten himself into some kind of trouble.

Dean bit his lower lip and peered passed the few kids left in the schoolyard until his eyes were settled on the school building. He impatiently drummed with his fingers on the gate by the entrance while he kept staring at the building as if he hoped the small gesture would somehow force his brother outside.

"Come on, Sammy." Dean mumbled again with worry in his voice. "Don't make me come in there and drag you out."

The entrance doors of the school building opened up and Dean stopped drumming on the gate, straightened up and hoped to see Sam's curly brown locks flop up and down as he ran towards his older brother. But no curly brown mop peeked outside. Instead, Dean narrowed his eyes as the three boys, he recognized as the kids he'd seen near Sam a few days ago, walked outside with mischievous smiles on their faces. They looked a little too happy for Dean's liking; he'd already been suspicious of those kids since he'd found his younger brother on the ground the other day. Sam could be clumsy sometimes, sure, but Dean highly doubted that Sam had actually fallen down a rock.

The three boys left the school on bikes and that was when Dean decided to walk inside the school building to look for his younger brother.

"I swear, if those assholes did anything to my baby brother.." Dean muttered under his breath as he pushed the entrance doors open and walked inside the now empty hallways.

Dean's brow furrowed as he tried to figure out where Sam's classroom was located, but when he didn't immediately come by the right one, he gave up and started calling for the youngest Winchester instead.

"Sam?" Dean called – his voice echoing down the empty hallways. "Sammy, where are you? Sam?"

Dean opened up door after door in his search for the younger brother and became more and more frustrated as every room seemed to be empty, but he stopped cold when he opened up the door to one of the boys bathrooms. Because there – on the floor of the bathroom – his eyes fell upon the eight-year-old who was scraping together what appeared to be torn-apart book pages using one hand while the other hand was pressed against the boy's chest. Dean's heart dropped when Sam looked up at him with tear tracks on his cheeks and blood running from his nose.

"Dean." Sam sobbed and Dean closed the gap between him and his brother in a heartbeat. "M-my b-books."

"Sammy, what happened?" Dean asked and kneeled down in front of Sam before grasping the young boy's head to inspect the damage. "Who did this to you?"

"T-they're ruined, De." Sam sobbed but Dean couldn't care less about the damn books right now.

Sam's nose was bleeding. He had an angry red mark underneath his left eye and his hair was covered in what looked – and smelled – unmistakably much like peanut butter and jelly. Dean's anger rose tremendously when he also noticed the fact that some of Sam's fingers on his right hand looked swollen and blue which meant that they were probably fractured.

"Sammy." Dean said and thumbed away some of the tears that still made their way down his little brother's face. "Who did this to you?"

Sam sniffled and hesitated for a short moment before he started talking.

"Billy Maple from fourth grade." Sam sobbed and buried his face in Dean's shirt. "A-and Gary and Simon."

"They all hurt you?" Dean asked while trying to control his rising anger.

"Y-yes." Sam confessed. "But it was my own fault, Dean. I-I-I shouldn't have.. They wouldn't have i-if I'd just.."

Sam was so upset that Dean couldn't make much sense of the younger boy's words, but two things were clear to him; the three fourth-graders had hurt his brother, and Sam had somehow gotten the crazy idea that he'd had it coming.

"Shh, it's okay." Dean told his brother in a soft voice. "We'll talk about this later, alright? Let's get you home first."

Sam nodded into Dean's shirt and reluctantly pulled away from his big brother. Dean gave Sam's shoulder a gentle squeeze and picked up Sam's empty backpack before helping Sam up from the floor. The younger brother was still crying softly and his knees buckled a little when he was back on his feet but Dean quickly steadied him.

"Come on." Dean said, turned his back to Sam and bent down a little.

Sam gratefully accepted the gesture, put his arms around his big brother's neck and wrapped his legs around his brother's waist when Dean straightened back up.

"You settled?" Dean asked.

"Yeah." Sam sniffled.

Dean nodded and then began the task of getting his little brother back to the motel - piggyback style.

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When they'd made their way back to the motel room, Dean carefully put Sam down before unlocking the door and guiding his brother inside. Sam's eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from crying and Dean clenched his jaw in suppressed anger towards anyone who could break his little brother apart like that.

With Sam safely inside the room, Dean locked the door, and then led Sam to the small bathroom.

"Here." Dean said in a soft voice and gently pushed Sam down to sit on the closed lid of the toilet, before he started rummaging around the cabinets for the first-aid kit.

Sam watched in silence and rubbed a bit at his eyes as Dean also found a washcloth that he held under the faucet of the sink, before he made his way back to Sam.

"Lean back." Dean said and Sam tipped his head back a little.

Dean crouched down a little in front of Sam, used one hand to keep Sam in place while the other one carefully wiped away the blood from Sam's mouth and chin with the washcloth. Dean was even more careful when he reached Sam's nose but Sam still hissed a little when Dean touched the tender area.

"Easy." Dean soothed. "Doesn't look broken."

"It doesn't?" Sam asked and Dean shook his head with a little smile.

"The boy who hit you must be hitting like a girl." Dean said to lighten up the mood a bit but Sam didn't smile.

"It really hurt when he hit me." Sam admitted and Dean's smile faded away.

"Where else were you hit, Sammy?" Dean asked and dabbed a bit at the mark underneath Sam's left eye that had started to turn purple and would probably end up as a black eye.

"My stomach." Sam answered. "But it doesn't hurt now. My fingers do."

Dean nodded and grabbed Sam's right wrist to study the hurt fingers. Two of the middle fingers were triple the size they normally were and Dean was now pretty sure both fingers were broken – especially since Sam wasn't able to bend them. The older brother found some frozen peas in the small freezer in the kitchen and wrapped the bag into a towel before putting them on Sam's fingers.

"How did your fingers get hurt?" Dean asked while keeping the home-made ice bag in place, wincing a little when Sam softly whimpered a bit from the pain.

"Billy.. clamped them in a door." Sam said between hisses.

"Did he now?" Dean said between clenched teeth.

Oh that Billy was so gonna get it!

"But I shouldn't have.." Sam started when Dean cut him off.

"Sam, nothing you could have done could possibly justify what those bullies did to you." Dean exclaimed and Sam winced a bit from the anger in his big brother's voice. "Nothing, okay?"

"But Dean, I provoked him." Sam tried to explain. "Billy wanted me to make his homework and I wrote this poem that I knew would make him mad. I thought we would be gone before he could figure out what I'd done but.."

"Whoa whoa, hang on a minute." Dean said and shot Sam an incredulous look. "He wanted you to make his homework and you said yes?"

"He didn't really give me much of a choice." Sam said in a small voice.

"What are you talking about, Sammy? You should have told me about this! I could have done something." Dean said with frustration.

"I know, Dean." Sam said and looked down.

"Damn right you know!" Dean said. "So why didn't you tell me?"

"Because.." Sam mumbled.

"Because what, Sam?" Dean asked.

"I was just trying to be more tough.. like you." Sam admitted without looking up, and all the annoyance and anger Dean had felt moments before deflated right away.

"Hey." Dean said in a soft voice and lifted Sam's chin to make the younger boy look at him. "You are pretty tough, okay? And you know why?"

Sam shook his head so Dean continued.

"Because you're my brother and my brother is the toughest kid I know." Dean said with a smile and Sam sent Dean a weak smile in return. "Now, let me look at your hair."

Sam smile disappeared immediately and he looked at Dean with fearful eyes. It was no secret that the youngest Winchester cherished his hair and was terrified every time their dad decided it was time for a haircut. Sam liked his hair long and had until now succeeded in keeping it that way.

"It's all covered in peanut butter and jelly." Dean tried to reason with his brother. "Nothing soap and water can't handle, okay?"

"There's gum in it too." Sam revealed and Dean's brow furrowed.

"Gum?" He said and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's a little more difficult."

"Please don't cut it, Dean!" Sam begged with tearful eyes. "Please!"

"Hey, take it easy." Dean ordered the anxious boy. "I'll try to get it out without using the scissors, okay?"

"You promise?" Sam asked.

"I promise I'll give it my best shot." Dean said and Sam nodded before he allowed Dean to have a look at it.

Dean mentally cursed when he got a better sight of the state Sam's hair was in. It was sticky and stuck together in big blots – and the gum was smeared into a large area of Sam's hair which would be quite difficult to deal with.

"What did those boys to do you..?" Dean mumbled and shook his head a bit before he began his mission of saving Sam's hair.

There was one good thing about the peanut butter and that was the fact that peanut butter could be used as a way of getting rid of gum - which was exactly what the older brother intended to do.

"So, the poem you were writing the other day, that was Billy's homework?" Dean asked as he worked on Sam's hair.

"Yeah." Sam said in a small voice and Dean sighed heavily.

"What did you write anyway?" The oldest Winchester brother asked.

"You really wanna know?" Sam asked.

"Yeah." Dean said and Sam recited the poem which made a smirk spread on the older boy's lips.

"Hey Sammy?" Dean said. "For a pain-in-the-ass little brother, you can be quite brilliant sometimes."

Sam looked up at his big brother and smiled with teary eyes.

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Dean hated gum! At least the kind of gum that got stuck in little brothers' curly mops and didn't want to let go again. But Dean was a stubborn kid and he spent about a whole hour working on Sam's hair until the gum was finally out. He then led Sam to the bathtub, washed his younger brother's hair and rinsed out everything that didn't belong in those brown locks, before he used a towel to dry Sam's hair.

Dean then bandaged Sam's broken fingers and used some surgical tape to splint the fingers together with the two fingers next to them to keep them in place, before he provided Sam with some painkillers that would knock the younger boy out for sure once they kicked in.

The oldest Winchester brother made sure Sam got something to eat and he couldn't help but smile as Sam soon started nodding off by the table.

"Time for bed." Dean said and nudged Sam's shoulder.

"But it's early." Sam whined with half-closed eyes.

"Come on, Sammy." Dean said in a soft voice and guided his little brother to bed before tugging him in.

Sam was asleep within seconds and Dean sat down on the edge of the bed and let a hand card through Sam's damp bangs for a few moments. His eyes came across the bruise underneath Sam's eye and the anger he'd tried to suppress, since he'd found his brother on the bathroom floor at school, now returned with full force.

Those bullies were about to feel the wrath of Dean Winchester – and that was a thing no one should ever wish to experience!

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TBC..

(One more chapter to go.)

Please leave a review. It makes me happy ;)

-Elisa.