Author's Note: In recompense for my late update last week, and because tomorrow's going to be nuts for me, an early update! A bit shorter than average but I hope you enjoy!
Dean walks back into the motel room, his face dry and feeling a little bit less unsteady than he did before.
Until he sees Luke, that is.
The kid is sitting on the floor, against the wall near the desk where John had been researching. His face, too, is dry, but Dean knows what a kid who's been crying looks like. Luke's cheeks are flushed and his eyes are red, and his lips twitch every few seconds like he's trying really hard not to cry again. He looks up when Dean enters the room, his eyes widening for a second before he ducks behind the book in his hands.
Dean stands in the doorway. John comes up behind him but Dean blocks his entrance, guiding him outside and shutting the door as he joins him. He sees Luke's eyes over the edge of the book as he closes the door.
"What's wrong?" John asks, instantly on alert, and Dean runs his hands over his face.
"I think he heard us," Dean murmurs. "I need to go fix this, okay? Just give me an hour. I'll talk to him. I don't know what he heard, but he looks pretty freaked out, so give me an hour."
John looks predictably unhappy with this order, and he shakes his head as he says, "Dean—"
"Dad." Dean meets his father's eyes, and tries to look as mature and reasonable and serious as possible. "Please."
John doesn't break eye contact as he fishes his keys out of his pocket. "An hour," he echoes. "And Dean. Remember what we talked about."
He's not Sammy, Dean.
"Yeah," Dean whispers. John nods, and his hand lifts for a second as though to grip Dean's shoulder, to provide strength.
He lets it fall and walks off towards the Impala.
Dean takes a single breath to fortify himself, then turns and opens the door to the motel room.
Luke is right where Dean left him, but he's not even pretending to not watch Dean this time. His red-ringed eyes peer above the book at Dean as he shuts the door behind him and shoves his hands into his pockets, but Luke doesn't say anything. Just watches. Waits.
"I don't know what I did this time," Dean begins, which he immediately judges to be a stupid thing to say but oh well, he's already said it. "But you're obviously upset with me."
Luke shakes his head, but doesn't say anything. Dean takes a step closer and he curls in on himself, just a little bit. Dean sighs deeply, crossing the rest of the way across the motel room, heedless of the way Luke tries to make himself small, ignoring, to the best of his ability, the way Luke's eyes scrunch shut and his shoulders hunch when he arrives at the desk.
Dean leans with his back against the wall and slides down, keeping his distance from Luke, not looking at the younger boy. They sit like that for a second, Luke slowly unraveling, Dean sitting and just breathing.
"I'm not going to hit you."
Luke nods.
"I'm not going to yell at you."
Luke nods.
"I'm not going to do whatever the hell it is you think I'm going to do, although it would be easier to not do it if you told me what it was."
Luke nods.
Dean sighs. "I don't know why you're freaking out."
"Just a hard day," Luke murmurs.
"Sure," Dean says, and maybe it's how calm he sounds that has Luke's head snapping around to finally look at him. "It's been a hard couple of days for everybody. No denying that." He turns to Luke. "You need a nap? Are you hungry? Hell, need a night cap? I won't tell if you don't."
Luke makes a snorting sort of sound. "I don't want any alcohol, Dean. Thanks."
"What do you want?"
The question hangs heavy in the air for a moment, and Dean doesn't push for an answer. He knows it's a bigger question than it sounds like, and he's willing to let Luke take his time.
What he doesn't expect is for a small sniffling sound to be the answer to it.
He sits up straighter and turns fully to Luke, who's rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. "You don't have to cry," Dean says miserably. "Jesus. Come on, dude. Don't cry."
"I'm just really tired of not knowing what's going on," Luke mumbles, wiping at his eyes viciously. "I'm really tired of not having any rules."
Dean watches him for a moment, watches him compose himself, rubbing his eyes dry and taking deep breaths so that he stops shaking. He watches as Luke tries to make himself look like stone, to take away all the vulnerability that's so visible right now in his face, his posture, everything. But he can't really stop his chin from wobbling, just a little bit.
"What did you hear?" Dean asks, and Luke freezes like a deer in the headlights.
The silence stretches on for what feels like a thousand years, and Luke murmurs, "I didn't mean to eavesdrop."
"What did you hear?" Dean asks again. "What was it? The part about how Dad thinks you still think I'll hit you? Or the part about...bed? Was it how he was trying to convince me that you need to be bossed around?"
"Dean," Luke begins, but Dean isn't done.
"It's not gonna happen," Dean promises.
Luke sighs, so quietly that Dean is sure the kid doesn't think he heard. "Okay," he says, sounding resigned.
Dean groans, and buries his face in his hands. "No, not okay," he says. "Come on, Luke. We were doing better. Talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about, Dean, I promise, I'm fine," Luke says, but it sounds rote, like he's been practicing how to say it so Dean will believe him but just not getting any better at it.
Dean stares at Luke, narrowing his eyes, trying to find something in that miserable, closed-off expression. He sees a terrified kid, heart-sick and wrung with the kind of unhappiness that makes your stomach sour, but he doesn't see anything that helps him understand why. What it was he did.
Because he always manages to do something, doesn't he?
Whether it's an innocent invitation to not sleep on the floor or a too-sudden movement or a thoughtless, casual reminder of Luke's place, he always manages to do something to dent or break the fragile trust he's trying so hard to build. So it's him. It's got to be. It always is. He just doesn't know what it was this time.
Except that it probably doesn't help when he hears himself say: "If I told you to tell me, would you?"
Luke stills, and Dean's positive he's imagining it when he sees some of the tension drain out of Luke's shoulders. "If you ordered me?" the younger boy asks softly.
"Would you?" Dean repeats, unwilling (unable) to echo Luke's words.
Luke slumps against the wall, his eyes drifting mostly closed. "I told your dad, I wouldn't disobey an order," he says. "You've been more than fair to me."
"Fair isn't really what I'm aiming for," Dean mutters, but doesn't say anything else. The boys sit there for a while, silent and tense and so unhappy that Dean wants to scream.
"Are you going to?" Luke asks, finally.
"To what?"
"Order me."
Dean lowers his eyes, letting his gaze fall on his hands, loose in his lap. God, how did things get so fucked up?
"No," Dean says, his voice hardly more than a breath.
Luke nods, and he's quiet for a moment, before he asks, "Why?"
"Because I refuse to treat you in a fucked-up way just because other people said it was okay to," Dean snaps. "All right?"
Luke shrugs. "All right," he says, and Dean stands up and runs his hands through his hair, darting to the other side of the room before beginning to pace so he doesn't hit something.
"Stop saying it like that!" Dean shouts, and while he expects to see Luke flinch away from the violence in his voice, the kid just glares at him. "Just—just stop being so fucking passive! If you're pissed at me, and obviously you're pissed at me, fight me!"
"I'm not gonna fight you, Dean, you'd beat the shit out of me," Luke snipes, folding his arms protectively over his chest. "I'm not stupid."
"Then yell at me! Christ, hit me, I won't hit back! Just do something!" Dean is almost screaming by the end of the sentence, and Luke shoots up when he approaches, rears his arm back, and decks Dean across the face.
Dean stumbles back, and Luke staggers against the wall, clutching his fist, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.
"Why did you make me do that?" Luke whispers.
"It's okay," Dean mumbles, prodding at his jaw experimentally. It was a solid hit. "No, that's good. It's good. I'm glad you did it."
Luke nods, as though he understands. "Gives you a good reason, later," he says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
"Later?" Dean echoes, wondering where the ice pack is.
"When you hit me back," Luke replies. He doesn't flinch when Dean jolts as though shocked and then approaches him. His eyes don't leave the older boy, though.
"I'm not gonna hit you," Dean says. "I swear."
"Not now," Luke agrees. "You're okay now. But one day you won't be okay, and I'll be right there."
"I don't just beat the shit out of people for laughs," Dean says, and he can't keep the heat out of his voice.
"No," Luke says, and he's so fucking agreeable that Dean wants to shake him. "But eventually, you'll have a bad day. You'll have a day where you can't save somebody. Where you don't find the monster. Where it gets away. Where somebody uses whatever power they have over you to make your life shit. And then you'll get back to the motel room, and you'll suddenly realize that, hey, if I hit this kid, nobody will do anything about it."
"Shut up," Dean breathes.
"And if I hit this kid, he won't do anything about it," Luke presses on.
"Shut up," Dean says.
"Because power corrupts, Dean. I read that when my last owner was away. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and there is nobody in the world who knows I'm alive or would miss me if I'm gone, and if you want to beat the shit out of me, you can, and nobody will stop you—"
"I said to shut up," Dean says, and he's all but on top of Luke now, gripping his collar with one hand loosely fisted in the material. He doesn't want to grab him and make him right, make himself just another asshole who pushes Luke around. He doesn't not want to grab him, either, though.
"—and you just spent the last ten minutes realizing that I'm not your little brother, no matter how much you want me to be," Luke hisses, and Dean freezes. "And you haven't hit me yet because you wouldn't hit Sammy, but I'm not Sammy, and I won't ever be, no matter how much you want it, so that means I'm nobody!"
Dean does grip Luke by the collar, then, with both hands, and he tugs the kid closer, eliciting a small gasp. Luke's eyes are full of tears and wide as dinner plates, but it's rage he's trembling with, rage and grief, because Dean knows the difference. Dean knows what fear looks like, and this isn't it. Not yet.
So Dean grabs Luke by the collar with both hands, and he pulls him in, and he says, "You don't have to be Sammy for me to not hit you. You can just be Luke. I wouldn't hit Luke, either."
That's it.
Dean's grip on Luke's shirt quickly shifts into a supportive embrace as Luke's knees give out and the kid starts sobbing. He guides Luke down to the floor and presses the kid's face against his neck with a firm hand on the back of his neck. "I wish I was Sammy," Luke sobs, and Dean has to work really hard on remembering how to breathe. "I wish I could be Sammy."
"You don't have to be him," Dean whispers.
"I wish I could be Sammy for you," Luke cries.
"Just be Luke," Dean says. "Just be Luke and don't be scared of me."
"I'm so jealous of him." Luke's voice is thick and choked, and it leaves a lump in Dean's throat. "He was so lucky."
"He died when he was four," Dean mutters. "Not so lucky."
"He was," Luke insists, and he lifts his face out of the crook of Dean's neck. "He was, Dean. You were his big brother."
"Stop," Dean pleads, his voice breaking.
"I wish you were my big brother. I wish I was Sammy," Luke whispers, and Dean feels like the floor beneath him disappears.
He pulls Luke in closer, wrapping his arms around the younger boy, resting his nose in Luke's shaggy brown hair. "I don't wish you were Sammy," he says, his voice muffled. "I'm not gonna say Sammy had nothing to do with all of this. But I don't wish you were him. I'm happy you're here anyway."
"I just don't want this to go away," Luke breathes against Dean's neck.
"Don't want what to go away?"
Luke sighs, and Dean feels both the hot breath and the warm trickle of tears. "Feeling safe," he says. "Feeling like, things are gonna be okay, maybe."
"You don't seem like you feel that way much," Dean replies, his voice wry.
"There's a difference between feeling something and believing it," Luke admits, laughing a single, choked laugh.
Dean supposes he can't argue with that.
So instead he adjusts Luke so that the kid's ear is against his heart—he always found the position comforting when he was younger, hearing the thu-thump, thu-thump that told him his dad was right there, still there, still alive and taking care of him. Luke seems to melt against Dean's chest, and Dean cradles him. "We're gonna hunt the demon two days from now," he says soothingly, "and then we'll put it behind us. The demon. The hunt. The shit you've been through. It'll all be in the past, and we'll figure out what we're doing now."
"We?" Luke repeats.
"We," Dean says firmly. "Us. Together. I'm not leaving you."
Luke burrows in closer. "Okay."
Dean lets him sit for a minute, feeling the younger boy's breathing and heart rate even out, and then he says, "Do you believe me?"
Luke leans his head against Dean's chest, and exhales slowly before saying, "I feel like you're telling the truth."
Well.
It would have to be good enough.
Lying
Lying lying lying
He had to be
Because that is not how this works
It's not
It's not
He doesn't get to punch his owner without repercussions
He doesn't get to scream at him
He doesn't get to contradict him
He doesn't get to not be Sammy and for it to just be okay
He doesn't get to just be Luke because Luke's not good enough Luke was never good enough Luke is a disappointment and a let-down and useless and a waste of space and a waste of money and a waste of time and a waste of Dean's kindness and
It's not fair for Dean to keep treating Luke like this and
(No, stop touching)
(No, stop comforting)
It's not fair to make him wait this long for the other shoe to drop
(No, stop promising things that will never ever ever ever ever be fulfilled)
And Dean manhandles him but it's not like it ever was with his old owners
It doesn't hurt except his heart
When Dean presses Luke's ear to his chest
And he hears the
Thu-thump, thu-thump
Of Dean's strong heart
And it sounds like comfort and reassurance and promises and home
It's not fair
God, it's so unfair
And Dean wants promises in return
But Luke is out of promises.
Luke is out of everything.
Luke can't even muster the strength to fight anymore.
He's just so tired,
And he needs to save his strength
For when Dean realizes that he was right all along.