Chapter 8

Sam carried his empty backpack on his back, though he felt kind of foolish with it flapping back there. It was just the best place to carry the stupid thing. His teachers had all been disappointed to see him go, or variations on that theme. Sam was used to that. Teachers always said stuff like that to him when he went to turn his books in.

As he passed Main Street, he paused and glanced towards the diner, contemplating asking Dad if they could go there for lunch. He didn't have anything good in the apartment, and he was really hungry. Then he saw Dean coming down the street from that direction, a plastic bag in one hand, a white cast on the other. Sam ran over to him, dodging the one or two cars that were passing at the time.

"Hey, Dean!" he called as Dean turned the corner onto first.

Dean jumped like he was scared, and he almost dropped the bag. His eyes scanned the area, and when he saw Sam running up, he relaxed. "Don't do that, Sammy!" he exclaimed.

"What'd I do?" Sam asked. "I just yelled your name."

Dean stared at him for a second, then shrugged. "I got lunch for you, me and your old man. I hope he doesn't have your objection to onions."

"Nope." Sam looked curiously at Dean's arm. "The cast's not very big," he observed.

"What, you'd want it to be bigger?" Dean asked, holding it out from his body and examining it.

Sam shrugged. "I wasn't sure where your arm was hurt, is all. I half-expected you to come back with your whole arm in a cast, the way Dad was going on about it. Does it hurt?"

"Not now," Dean said. "Before, yeah, it hurt some."

"You want me to carry the food?"

"Do I look like I'm having trouble?" Dean demanded, and Sam grimaced.

"Jeez, I was just trying to help," he muttered, giving Dean a sidelong look.

Dean reached up with his right arm and tousled Sam's hair. It was weird, because he could feel the cast catching in the hair a little. "I know, Sammy, I'm just in a crappy mood."

"Is it just your arm, or is something else wrong?"

Dean shrugged, and Sam glanced up at his face. The expression there wasn't particularly inviting, so Sam decided not to ask again. They walked another block in silence, and Sam found that weird, too, because it wasn't an uncomfortable silence. It was more like a mutual agreement not to talk. He'd never had that with anyone he wasn't related to, except Bobby. Other guys his age wanted to chatter all the time, and guys Dean's age wouldn't have anything to do with a runt like him. Grown ups always seemed to feel obligated to either entertain or educate you in some way. It was kind of nice just to be with someone without any of those stupid expectations.

"Anyone say anything at school?" Dean asked eventually.

"Not really," Sam said. "At least not to me, but we haven't been friends all that long, and not really at school, and I don't think anybody knows you're staying with us yet."

"Everyone in town will know by nightfall," Dean predicted. "And whether someone will call Ms. Nosy Parker is anyone's guess."

"Ms. Nosy Parker?" Sam asked curiously.

"My social worker." Dean glanced down at him. "I think her real name is Natalie, but Nosy suits her so much better. I mean, she wants to know how many hours I sleep at night. Come on! Who really cares?"

They'd reached the apartments, and Sam was surprised to see his dad coming out of the first one instead of number three, grinning broadly. "Hey, boys, I got Lynch to let us move to an apartment with two bedrooms, since he had one vacant." Sam snorted. Half the apartments were vacant. They were dirty and run down, and no one wanted to live there.

"That's not necessary," Dean said. "I could sleep on the couch."

"We're already moved, Dean, so don't worry about it."

"But that's got to cost more," Dean protested.

Dad shook his head. "Nope, I'd already paid for the month of December, and, like he said, it's not going to rent anyway. We'll have to pay for a couple of days in January since we're not leaving till the second at least, but that's no big deal."

They were having this conversation on the walkway outside the apartments while the food got cold. Sam looked back and forth between his dad and Dean. They seemed to be having a staring contest. "I'm starving," he announced, hoping it would get either one or the other of them moving.

"Yeah, let's eat lunch," Dad said, putting a hand out for the food. After a second, Dean handed him the bag, and they all went in. Dad put the bag down on the kitchen counter and Sam went to the fridge. He'd had a twelve-pack of Coke, a six-pack of beer, and the remains of a half gallon of milk in the fridge in the other apartment, and Dad hadn't forgotten them.

"Dean? You want Coke or milk?"

"You gotta ask?" Dean replied with a cocky grin.

Sam pulled out two Cokes and one of Dad's beers and took them over to the table. Dad was parceling out the food. "No onions, that will be Sammy."

"Sam, Dad," Sam corrected as he sat down in front of the styrofoam carton with his food in it.

"How come he gets to call you Sammy, and I don't?" Dad asked with a faint grin. Sam shrugged. He didn't know what the answer was, and he wasn't sure he wanted to think about it too close right now.

"It's my winning personality," Dean said. "He just can't resist it."

"Oh, is that it?" John replied. "I see." He nodded to Dean. "Sit down, son, the food's getting cold. Is the extra onions for you?"

"Oh yeah," Dean said enthusiastically, and he finally sat down.

Sam buried himself in his burger, forgetting everything but lunch.


Dean still wasn't quite sure where he fit with these two. Sammy seemed to have wholeheartedly adopted him as surrogate older brother, and if that went too far it might have to be stopped. Dean wasn't replacing anyone. He was himself, not a pale copy of the Dean they'd lost. He didn't mind being older brother, so long as Sammy didn't try to turn him into something he wasn't. John . . . John was harder.

Dean kept catching the man looking at him in the oddest way. If John was looking for a replacement for the son he'd lost, Dean would have to have a talk with him, too. No way in hell he was going to try and live up to some man's image of his dead son. That was just asking for trouble. Most of the time, though, John just treated him like a semi-adult that he didn't know very well. Maybe comparisons were inevitable. The fact that he and the missing kid shared a name couldn't help matters any.

He wondered when John was going to ask him again about the knife thing. The thought made his gut twist, but he forged on with his lunch, not wanting either of them to notice anything wrong. His appetite wasn't dimmed by much, anyway, not these days. He figured he must be growing again, because whenever he got this hungry all the time, it usually heralded another vertical climb.

"So," John said, and Dean looked up, hoping he didn't look like a deer in headlights. "I figure that if there aren't any obvious leads from the file in Garrettville, we'll go up north, to South Dakota."

"South Dakota?" Dean asked, a little startled. "What's in South Dakota?"

"Uncle Bobby," Sammy said. He turned to his father and gave him a narrow-eyed look. "I thought you said we weren't going back there till hell froze over." Given how glowingly Sam had spoken of his time at Bobby's, Dean found this surprising.

"How long has that ever lasted?" John asked, his tone gruff with embarrassment.

"Six months, the last time," Sammy said. "This time it's only been two."

"I want to get Dean started out right, and one thing he'll definitely need to know is who he can trust."

"And I can trust Bobby?" Dean asked uncertainly.

"Yeah," John said, shrugging. "Bobby and me, we just don't always see eye to eye, and I can have something of a temper sometimes."

"And Bobby?" Dean asked.

Sammy laughed. "Uncle Bobby only ever gets mad at Dad," he said confidingly.

"He got mad at Ezra once," John protested.

"That doesn't count, Dad, everyone was mad at Ezra that time." Dean wasn't sure he wanted to know why everyone was mad at Ezra. The conversation was losing him quickly. "Well, if he needs to get to know who he can trust, then we ought to stop by Pastor Jim's and go see Ellen, too."

"Pastor Jim, sure, if he's there, but you know how I feel about visiting Ellen, Sammy. If Bobby feels like driving down to Nebraska to see her while we're there, then maybe, but I'm not going."

"Who's Ellen?" Dean asked.

"An old friend," John said shortly. "Bobby used to leave Sam with her sometimes if he had to go away."

"She has a daughter, Jo, who is totally cool," Sam said enthusiastically. "She can fight like a boy, and she's better at pool than I am. Only I haven't seen her in a couple of years, so I might be better now, and who knows, she might have gone all girly. She's fourteen."

"So, your age," Dean said, nodding.

"Actually, Jo's not quite a year older than Sam," John said, glancing aside at Dean. "Sam won't be fourteen till May."

"What?" Dean stared at Sammy. "You mean I've been hanging out with a thirteen-year-old all this time?" He clapped his left hand to his forehead. "My reputation will be ruined!"

"Shut up," Sammy growled. "I'm a really cool thirteen-year-old. I'm a hunter."

"Apprentice hunter," Dean corrected. Then he grinned and leaned closer to Sammy. "Short, apprentice hunter."


John sat back, watching his sons banter. Sam tried to glower at Dean, but he ended up laughing. "At least I'm an apprentice. I'm not even sure what to call you."

"Apprentice to the apprentice?" Dean suggested, his eyes twinkling.

Evidently they already had in-jokes, because John had no idea what they were talking about. They kept going, nonsense mostly, and John just sat back, enjoying the family feeling of the moment. Once he might have silenced the amiable bickering he was taking such pleasure in, but he hadn't entirely realized how much he missed hearing his boys be boys. Sam hadn't been a boy in quite awhile, and the few times he tried to be one, John usually had to stop him.

When it became clear that everyone was done eating, John stood up. "Okay, I'll get the dishes for this meal," he said, collecting the styrofoam trays and soda cans. "Why don't you two get stuff together for the laundromat? I know Dean has some dirty clothes, and Lord knows I'm almost out of clean stuff."

"Sure," Sam said, and Dean shrugged his agreement.

"Where's my stuff?" he asked.

John inclined his head in the direction of the bedroom with two beds. "I didn't unpack it."

Dean disappeared into that bedroom and came out a short while later with one of the duffels partly full of clothing. Sam came out dragging the military issue duffel they habitually used as their laundry hamper. "Are you coming, Dad?" he asked. "It's too far to walk with the bags."

John bent and hefted the gigantic duffel. "Of course. Come on, boys." At the laundromat, he sat on the side and let the boys do the running, though Dean ran out of steam fairly quickly. John watched, amused, as Sam gave him a shove towards the bench where John was sitting and then kept working.

Dean walked over and sat down, looking vaguely perturbed. "I've been ordered to rest."

"Well, as apprentice to the apprentice, you have to follow orders, I guess," John said.

Dean snorted. "Dude, don't take that too seriously."

The noise of the place and Sam's preoccupation with making sure everything washed right and no one stole their stuff made a good combination for a private chat with Dean. John cleared his throat and leaned closer. "So, how often do you have flashbacks?"

Dean looked over at him, his eyes widening. "Um . . ." He bit his lip and turned away. "Not very. Just . . ." He shook his head. "That was the first time in weeks."

John nodded slowly. "Is that as bad as they get?"

"Mostly."

"Anything besides knives set them off?"

Dean went really quiet, and John thought he wasn't going to get an answer, but finally, the boy said, "Fire."

John felt his stomach flip over. Dean's voice was quiet and controlled, but the emotion was clear behind it. Nausea swept over him, leaving him feeling shaky and cold. Images followed, Mary on the ceiling, fire shooting out from her body to engulf Sam's nursery, him handing baby Sammy to tiny Dean to carry outside.

"You okay?" Dean asked.

John managed to nod. "I'll . . . be back in a moment," he said, and he left the laundromat. He walked a few yards away, around the corner. If he was going to have a hysterical fit, he wasn't doing it in front of the boys. Dean had witnessed part of Mary's death, just how much John had never been able to ascertain, but he'd never exhibited any fear of fire afterwards, and he'd had opportunities. What that could mean, the horrors it implied, made John want to scream and throw things and punch the wall. He did none of those, he simply stood with tears streaming down his face and leaned back against the cinder block wall behind him.