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Did you know you were a saint?
What a shameful fall from grace,
But I'll catch you.
I'll catch you.
Dean catches Sam's surprised look when he shows up with a week's groceries, plus pizza and a six pack of brand name soda.
"Is it my birthday?" Sam asks, watching his brother put steaming slices onto plates. John is gone, as usual for this time of night, and they have the place to themselves.
"Smart ass." Dean slides a can across the kitchen counter, "I can't treat now and again?"
Sam shrugs, cracks open the soda and takes a drink. "So...this is nothing to do with the fact you've been out a lot recently?"
Dean pauses in his efforts with the pizza.
"It's ok." Sam assures him quietly. "I get it, you have a life."
"Not at your expense." Dean puts the empty box to one side. "Sam, if you want we around more..."
"No." Sam holds up his hands defensively. "It's fine, you need to go out and...it's kind of good that you're...dating, not just..." Sam blushes like a twelve year old.
"Yeah, that other thing." Dean fills in. "It is nice."
"Good." Sam confirms inanely.
They each pick up a slice of pizza and start to eat. Dean counts the seconds in his head.
"It's with Cas, right?" Sam finally breaks the silence. "You're...with, Cas?"
"Yeah." Dean chews his pizza meditatively.
"And..." Sam sighs. "I'm really trying to be ok about this but...he's my age Dean – younger."
"I know." Dean looks up at his brother. "Believe me it makes me feel all kinds of creepy knowing that."
Sam waits for the rest.
"He's different to you." Dean says awkwardly. "To any of the other..."
"Kids his age?" Sam mutters.
"Hey – knock it off." Dean glares. "I'm trying here...because, Castiel is different, he reminds me..." He half smiles bitterly. "Of me, back when I was your age."
Sam looks suitably chastened.
"Kind of like he had to grow up too fast, like a load of crap got dumped on him that he didn't deserve." Dean looks sightlessly down at his plate. "I feel like I can make it better...and he makes me better. That's it."
"Dean...I'm..."
"You don't have to be sorry." Dean's head snaps up. "You're my brother, having me take care of you is a right." Dean means it, Sam will always be entitled to everything he has to give, he's family, and he's innocent. "but...I'm twenty-six...and it's kind of nice to have someone around who isn't family...or a one night stand...it makes me feel normal, that I can still meet normal people."
"Cas never seemed exactly normal." Sam says gently, raising his eyebrow.
"He was." Dean shrugs. "And he's getting better."
Sam lets it slide after that. They eat the rest of the pizza and drink their way through the soda, Sam gets out an ancient set of scrabble and forces Dean to play best of three with him. It's a nice way to spend an evening, still, when Dean eventually turns in, all he can think of is what tomorrow night will bring.
Castiel has assured him that the plan will be worth it, that it'll get Brian off their backs forever, and that Dean will no longer be in danger of losing Sam. Still, Dean finds the idea of taping Castiel with Brian to be particularly sickening. It adds more fuel to guilt that's burning a hole in his gut – first he'd used Cas for sex, and now Castiel was going to be the one whoring himself to make the consequences of that go away.
Dean's mood is not improved by the fact that John wakes him up at two am.
He opens his eyes to the darkness of his room, seeing the shadowed figure in his doorway as soon as he's fully awake.
"Dean?"
"What it is?" Dean levers himself into a sitting position, swiping a hand over his eyes.
"I'm sorry son..." John whispers brokenly, and inwardly, Dean stiffens. Almost worse than his rage, than his indifference, are John's fleeting moments of guilt.
"Go to bed." Dean whispers, not unkindly. "We'll talk tomorrow." He promises, knowing full well that they won't .To his discomfort, John comes closer, hovering near the edge of the bed.
"I know I should have done better, for you – after your Mom died." There's a small, rough sound that Dean realises is a sob. This he cannot deal with. Taking care of Sam, paying the bills and cleaning up the puke – but please God not this, God spare him his Father's tears in the middle of the night.
"I should have...If I'd held on for a while, maybe things wouldn't have ended so badly, back in Lawrence."
"Dad." Dean uses the abandoned title gently. "Why don't you go to bed – you're tired."
"I'm going to do better Dean, I promise." John's words crumple with his growing distress, and Dean leans forward to touch his shoulder, gently smoothing the creased fabric.
"I know." He whispers. "You'll get better, we've almost saved up enough money."
"I'm so sorry." John says again, voice muffled and cracking.
"I know." Dean shuffles across the bed and puts his arm around him, smelling whiskey as he does so. "Let's get to bed, ok?"
He takes John into his own room and sits him on the bed, listening to a continuous stream of apologies and pleading as he does so. John falls asleep almost instantly, once Dean's laid him out and taken his boots off.
When he goes back to bed he finds sleep alludes him, he stares at the ceiling until the alarm goes and he gets up to make breakfast for Sam. There's no vomit to clean up this morning, though, given a choice between rancid stomach acid and seeing his father a babbling drunken mess? He'd take the puke. Every time.
"I heard Dad last night." Sam says on the drive to school. They're driving today, he's been driving more, it makes getting to Castiel's after school easier.
"Oh." Dean says noncommittally.
"At least he's sorry." Sam mutters.
"I think if he really was, he'd stop." Dean fixes his eyes on the road.
"Maybe he can't."
"Maybe. Not by himself. But he's had help, he's had us and Bobby...Pastor Jim." Dean swallows a wave of resentment. "Maybe if he tried harder he'd get better, wishing doesn't help anyone."
"It's hard." Sam sticks up for John, someone has to, and Dean's sick of trying. "He lost Mom, lost more than we did...I don't even remember her."
Dean touches Sam's hand, eyes still on the road. "You remember the important stuff – the good stuff."
"But Dad lost his wife, his house...he lost so much." Sam's getting himself upset, he does this sometimes, when the reality of their situation creeps out from behind all the day to day crap and stares him full in the eye – bloodshot and ugly.
"Dad didn't lose all that much." Dean says, because he remembers. He might have been a kid, but some things stick with you, they cut through the peach fuzz of childhood and they stay under your skin like a school yard splinter.
"How do you know?" Sam says stubbornly. Still so young, still ready to believe that the father who hits him, who yells at him for hiding the money they need to live, could have been a decent man – changed at the flick of a switch. The lighting of a match.
"Dad drank before the fire." Dean says slowly, quietly. "I remember smelling it on him, seeing him drunk...he had this, long before Mom died."
Sam goes quiet after that.
Dean doesn't tell him the rest.
The things he'd overheard between Bobby and Pastor Jim. About the fire. The investigation.
The cigarette and the glass of whiskey.
Sam doesn't need to know about that.
Let him believe in good a little while longer; in the John Winchester of myth – good father, doting widower.
The truth hurt like a bitch, and once you got it – there was never any relief.