Chapter Notes:
I offer no excuses, but only my sincerest apologies. This chapter was very difficult for me. I struggled with it, I tweaked, I tore it apart, I tossed it, I wrote and re-wrote it. In the end it turned out I had no idea where I wanted it to go (even though most of the story is mapped out already in my head). Hopefully it was worth the wait. It was a lot more angsty than I had intended, but this is where the muse took me (she's a real bitch sometimes!).
Thank you all so much, from the bottom of my heart, for your kind words and enthusiasm! And to those of you who were so kind as to send private messages inquiring after my health and well-being, I offer my sincerest thanks. I am not dead (though I did suffer a horrible bout of the flu that put me out of commission for a full week).
The story should pick up again more quickly after this chapter.
Chapter 26
There weren't many days that he woke up in the morning thinking, "Gee, it's great to be John Winchester!" In fact, ever since the bloodscreamingsmokefire, John had keenly felt that he wouldn't mind trading places with Eddie-the-Bum or Joe the One-Eyed Boozer, if it meant an escape from his own skin. Losing Mary was like losing the biggest, best chunk of his soul, and for just shy of five years the hopeful, innocent faces of his two sons had been bittersweet pleasure-pain to him. He loved his boys more than himself, more than anything on this Earth, but he was so fucking afraid for them that sometimes being around them hurt like a sucker punch to the gut. He was so afraid for them, afraid of what the darkness would do if and when it managed to sink its claws into them, that he put hunting first and his kids second. He had just wanted so badly to keep them safe – needed to keep them safe.
Being behind bars made doing his job as a father almost impossible. He knew he'd been a shit father before he got arrested, and he was certain that what he was about to do would forever immortalize him as the Biggest Asshole Dad Ever to Crawl the Earth. But there was a bigger picture – there was always a bigger picture – than just loving his kids and being there for them. Christ knew he couldn't do anything for them while he was behind bars, but he could make damned sure that they were ready. He could and would push and push and push them until they were a tight, cohesive unit, each watching the other's back, so that they could keep each other safe. Did it make a difference to the Yellow-Eyed sonofabitch that Dean was only fourteen and Sam only ten? The answer, of course, was a resounding 'No.' That demon wasn't going to wait until they were old enough, or prepared enough, before it decided to strike. It wasn't going to wait until John got out of jail and was there to keep his kids safe.
That meant that Dean was his last line of defence in keeping that evil motherfucker away from Sam. John still had no clue what it wanted with his baby boy, but it couldn't be good. A child marked by a demon at such a young age could only have the most sinister plans behind it. Some kind of ritual sacrifice, maybe, to raise some unspeakable evil? Or perhaps it was more sinister than that. Maybe the demon had chosen Sam to corrupt him somehow, win him over to darkness so he could use him for his own demonic purposes. John didn't really know what the hell kind of games demons played that involved little children, but he was damned sure that he didn't want to find out.
They were keeping that demon away from Sam. Period. Which meant Dean needed to step up his game. Which meant John had to get his eldest son on the phone and tear him a new one, even though his heart was screaming at him to just wallow in the relief of Dean's narrow escape from that mugger. He wanted so badly to just melt through the phone and hold his boy tight, hold him and never let go. He wanted to tell him that he was proud of him for fighting the fucker off one-handed. He wanted to praise him for being so strong and quick and brave.
But instead he was going to tear him down. He was consciously, with premeditation, going to ream that kid until he was trembling with the weight of responsibility that was his little brother's care – because if Dean couldn't keep himself and Sam safe, both boys were lost. And John couldn't accept that.
His heart ached at a sudden memory sprung before his mind's eye. He could remember it as though he were living it all over again: Dean at four years old, playing with his soccer ball in the front yard while Mary bounced baby Sammy on her lap. John had been inside on the phone with his business partner, Mike Guenther, and the discussion hadn't been going well. He couldn't remember what they'd been arguing about at the time, but it was enough to get John's blood pressure going. Mary had snuck inside with the baby for a quick pee break, and it was in that blink of maybe a couple of minutes, tops, when Dean lost his ball and wandered out onto the road in hot pursuit. John and Mary both ran at the sound of squealing tires, hearts in their throats with visions of their blonde-haired baby boy crushed and lifeless a few feet from their house. But Dean was okay. He was okay. The red Dodge had swerved into the ditch and Dean stood triumphantly clutching his ball, completely oblivious to the danger he'd just been in.
The relief was so overwhelming that at first John had been light-headed with it. But then Mary had burst into near-hysterical tears and John's relief had turned to anger. The poor child was slammed with a barrage of dire warnings: 'You could have died!' 'Do you have any idea how frightened we were!' 'You know you're not to cross the street by yourself!' And God help him, how was he supposed to impress upon a four year-old the concept of danger, especially when that four year-old was Dean – Dean who loved things that made loud banging noises, Dean whose eyes would light up with excitement when things blew up on TV, Dean who giggled when he took a tumble that would have most kids his age bawling their eyes out – how was he supposed to make his young son comprehend that he'd nearly gotten himself killed over a fucking ball?
So Dean had gotten a spanking. It wasn't the worst spanking in the world – it certainly wasn't enough to scar him emotionally or anything. But the terror in his parents' eyes, especially his momma's, was enough to instil fear in him when nothing else would. He'd pulled up his cute little dimpled chin and bravely offered an apology, "I'm sorry, Mommy" and Mary had held him so tight, whispering harshly for him to 'never, ever, ever do that again, you hear me?'
And three years later, when it came Sam's turn to try the same stunt, John thought he was prepared for it. He'd been at the library most of the morning and had spent all afternoon speaking to witnesses on the latest hunt. The boys were supposed to be in the motel room, under strict orders not to leave under any circumstances, but when John returned it was to find the damned room empty, with a note in Dean's untidy seven year-old scrawl saying, "Gone to the park with Sammy. Be back soon!" John should have been more understanding. It was a beautiful late-August day and the boys had been cooped up indoors since they arrived at that Podunk town two days prior. They were just looking to blow off a little steam. And boys would be boys, right?
He'd been prepared to rein in his temper, though his tone was harsh and commanding when he caught sight of his two wayward sons tossing a ball back and forth at the park (or, more accurately, Dean was rolling the ball on the grass towards Sam, while Sam ineffectually biffed the ball with a chubby arm, barely making it worth Dean's while to fetch the damned thing). John didn't ask where they'd gotten the cheap, plastic ball, though he silently prayed that Dean hadn't stolen it from some other poor kid.
John called Dean's name sharply, angry that his orders had been disobeyed in spite of his relief at seeing his boys safe and sound.
"Dad!" Dean exclaimed with a guilty jump and a freckled grin as his father marched over to him. "Sorry 'bout not stayin' inside," he apologized, squinting upward at his looming Daddy in the late afternoon sunlight. "But Sammy got cranky and then he started cryin'... I know we were s'posed to stay in, but..." he trailed off with a helpless shrug, as if to say, 'what can you do?' and looked up at his Dad knowingly. John felt a stab right in his ribcage, somewhere in the vicinity of his heart, at seeing that look on his little boy's face – a look that belonged on someone four times his age.
So he told himself to silence the angry bear inside and was just about to offer a reassuring pat on the shoulder, maybe even a consoling, "You did good, son," for the way his eldest had managed to curtail a full-on Sammy tantrum, when the sound of screeching tires drew his attention to the nearby intersection.
They'd both only looked away for a second, but three year-old Sam had important places to be, apparently. While the big boys talked shop, Sam had taken it upon himself to kick that damned plastic ball across the park and over the curb of the sidewalk, toddling his wobbly way right onto the street into oncoming traffic. The swerving Ford truck narrowly missed crushing him in front of a playground full of kids.
"Sammy!" Dean cried in a panic before John's horrified brain could catch up with him.
And then they both were on the move, making a beeline for the chubby toddler whose face was scrunching up in a perfect mask of terrified misery. Sam was startled more than hurt, but the ensuing water works would make anyone think that he'd been chased by the boogie man (or worse, a clown). He threw his little head back and howled at the enormity of his near-miss and John just scooped him up into his arms and held him close, so close, to soothe his baby's fears away.
"Shhhh, Sammy, I gotcha," he whispered, patting the shaggy brown mop of soft curls with a trembling hand. "You're all right, bud. You're okay. Daddy's gotcha."
Dean was at his side, pale-faced and out of breath and looking as though the world had just collapsed on top of him.
And this, right here, was why John had damned well told Dean to stay the fuck indoors.
"I almost got killded!" Sammy wailed, hiccupping for breath. Night and day different reaction, John noted, than Dean's three years previous.
"Yeah, well, that's why you're not supposed to run out onto the street," John grumbled, though he held on a little more tightly. "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, Sammy. You do not leave your brother's side."
Sam pouted stubbornly and squished his little face up with righteous three year-old indignation, as if to convey how truly hurt he was to be chastised after his recent brush with death.
"He didn't mean it, Dad," Dean defended his brother quietly. "He's only just a kid – he doesn't get that it's dangerous to play in the street."
Right. Because at the ripe old age of seven, Dean had clearly outgrown his own kid status. But then John looked and Dean's big green eyes were wide as saucers and kind of pleading, afraid even. He was no doubt remembering the smart spanking he'd received when he'd pulled the same stunt when he was Sam's age. Fearing for his little brother's tender bottom.
"Please don't be mad at Sammy," Dean pleaded. "It's not his fault – I was s'posed to be watchin' him."
"Not my fault," Sammy parroted, nodding against his Daddy's shoulder.
And it was true, damnit. He trusted Dean to man the fort while he was gone, especially for one afternoon. He'd asked him to do one damned thing and Dean had disobeyed. If he couldn't trust Dean at home to keep his brother safe, then all bets were seriously fucking off. How could John do his job, risking his life to fight all that evil in the dark, if Dean was going to bend to his brother's every whim just for the sake of avoiding a tantrum? Dean was his last line of defense on the home front, and if he couldn't trust Dean to look out for Sam then he might as well pack it all in and give up the hunt altogether.
"That's right," John growled, hating himself for it but ploughing ahead anyway because there was an important lesson here that needed learning right the hell now. "You were supposed to be watching him. At home. In the motel."
"I—" Dean gaped awkwardly, looking momentarily stunned. "We just- I thought... It was just for a lil' while, Dad."
"Just for a lil' while," Sammy sniffed, nodding again and burrowing into John's shoulder.
"I gave you an order," John intoned, enunciating his words carefully and hating the way Dean gulped as though his mouth had gone dry. "It looks like I can't trust you to obey me when I leave you with very simple instructions. I'm gone for one afternoon and this is what happens? Your brother almost gets hit by a car!"
Dean's head jerked back as though he'd been struck, though his eyes sharpened a bit with incredulity and he looked on the verge of scoffing. The seven year-old wasn't one for talking back, but John could see the retort on his tongue now, just waiting to take flight and earn him a serious ass-tanning. That little pink tongue peeked out to wet his lips and his sharp eyes skittered from John's to the ground and back up to John's again. He was just itching to say something. John could see it.
He didn't almost-get-hit until you got here, a voice that sounded remarkably like Dean's sounded inside John's head. And John would lay down money that that's exactly what Dean was trying so very hard not to say. If Dean had even a single brain cell in his head he'd know better than to say it.
"You got something to say to me?" John challenged, daring Dean to put that particularly damning sentiment to words. Because if he even dared it would prove just how badly this lesson needed to be learned.
Dean quickly averted his eyes and resumed his dirt scuffling with the toe of his worn sneaker. "No," he mumbled sulkily.
"What was that?" John pressed.
"No sir," Dean replied, clearly now. Then, raising his head, tentatively added. "It's just..." He looked at John with an expression that pleaded with him to be reasonable, to see the clear, seven year-old logic that could probably pass for clear adult logic for anyone that wasn't a Winchester, for anyone that wasn't fighting a crusade against evil. These kinds of mistakes are normal, the look said. There's no harm in going to the park to play ball. It's a normal kid activity. So we went out for a couple of hours to blow off some steam – it's not the end of the world. And besides – you were right there when Sam almost got hit. It's as much your fault as it is mine.
And for a normal person, living a normal, apple-pie life, those excuses would probably justify the offense. But Winchesters were hunters, and Dean might just be the only thing standing between his brother and the legions of Hell – so yeah, it was a big fucking deal when he dropped the ball and broke the damned rules. John's rules were there for a reason.
"It's just what?" John grated out, feeling his anger growing the more he dwelled on the microcosmic significance of this one seemingly insignificant flub on his son's part – the teeny, tiny mistake that represented the whole of everything that could go wrong if Dean couldn't be the soldier his father needed him to be.
Dean shrugged. "You were right there," he said at length.
It was the straw that broke the camel's back.
John wasn't proud of the way he acted, nor was he glad to impart the kind of harsh lesson he taught both his sons that day. When his heavy hand clamped down onto Dean's skinny wrist and lifted the poor boy nearly off his feet, so that he was scrambling on his toes to keep his footing, bumping into his father's legs as he was walked bodily across the street to the motel room. He didn't revel in the confused, bewildered expression on Dean's face when he shut himself up in the bathroom with him and took off his belt to issue the spanking that should have been Sam's, and would have been Sam's if Mary were still alive and evil weren't everywhere and John hadn't become a hardened bastard. Little pieces of himself flaked away with each slap of leather to Dean's bare, reddened bum, cracks forming in his soul with each bitten-off whimper, with each trickling, salty tear.
But the worst moment was afterwards, when the spanking was over and John was left in the motel room with two crestfallen kids who'd learned very different lessons from the same event. Sam learned that his willfulness and stubbornness could get his brother in trouble, and that he had to mind Dean or else Dean would fall out of line. And Dean? Well he learned that he was worth less than his brother, didn't he? He learned that when Dean screwed up, Dean got in trouble; and when Sam screwed up, Dean got in trouble. And a part of John knew that Dean understood it, understood and somehow simply accepted, with a hollow-hearted kind of heaviness that weighed his little shoulders down even more, that it was a burden he would bear far more easily than Sam. Because neither John nor Dean could bear the thought of any harm coming to Sam, even if it was a spanking. Not Sam – teeny, tiny, rolly-polly butterball Sam.
And Dean was strong and brave and competent, and he could handle the hard knocks. He could take a lickin' and keep on kickin', finding the courage somehow to pull up the brave face and distract his baby brother with games and TV, in spite of his stinging ass, and John had had to just find the nearest bar and drown his guilt in Jack Daniels or the urge to pull Dean into his arms and beg for forgiveness would have won out.
No, John wasn't proud of that moment, and though he had no desire to relive it, he was going to be the hard-ass and ream Dean again in order to keep him safe.
So he picked up the telephone and watched as the CO dialed the number for Peter and Jane Wesley's house in Philadelphia, hating himself that little bit more for what he was about to do. But what other choice did he have?
888
Dinner was quiet after all the afternoon's excitement. The puppy was settled snugly in a doze on one of the couch cushions and all three kids were coming down from their adrenaline highs. Angela Platt had returned home to her little brother for their own family meal, and it was just the Wesleys and their extended or added family left seated around the kitchen table. Rosemary was smugly pleased at the contented looks on the children's faces as they ate her home made chicken pot pie – none of her daughter's "healthy alternative" food at the table tonight. Dean had taken one bite, closed his eyes in a flutter of ecstasy, and boldly announced to Rosemary, through a mouthful of partially chewed food, "That's it! You're stayin'."
She resisted the urge to rub her hands together in wicked satisfaction. So far her plan was working: good cooking + puppy = approval. Excellent.
She very pointedly ignored the cool looks her daughter was giving her, knowing full well that Jane did not approve of the fattier foods, the pastries and desserts, or the puppy. But Rosemary was not above playing the Mom-card, which trumped Jane's own Mom-card, because Rosemary was older and had changed Jane's diapers and if she chose to lay down the law with her grown-up daughter then she would. Because the plain fact remained that these kids needed coddling. There'd been too much upheaval and stress, too much to invite nightmares in, to leave them feeling unsettled and frightened. And when the ground shook underneath a child's feet, that child needed as much comfort as he or she could get – and Rosemary knew just how to give it. So she bore her daughter's silent, simmering anger with calm indifference.
When the phone rang she thought at first that it would be ignored, as was the regular custom at meal time in Jane and Peter's house. Family meals were generally not to be interrupted by the demands of a ringing telephone. But then her son-in-law surprised her by quickly rising from the table, with a brief, whispered apology as the chair legs scraped against the floor in his haste to get to the phone. Rosemary thought maybe he was expecting a call from the police regarding Dean's attacker, or perhaps the doctor was supposed to call with more instructions for Dean's care.
"Wesley residence," Peter said. "Department of Corrections?" His brow furrowed in momentary confusion. "May I ask who's speaking?"
But Dean must have had an idea of who was on the phone because like a flash he was up from the table, his fork and knife clattering in his wake as he leapt from his seat and bounded towards the phone. He didn't say a word, just hovered next to Peter, his one working eye wide and pleading. Peter sighed in resignation and that was permission enough for Dean, who snatched the phone from his foster-father's hand and curled into the wall as if to make himself invisible for the duration of the telephone conversation.
"Dad?" His voice was breathless, hopeful, his fingers twining nervously through the curls of the phone cord. "Hey, Dad." Nodding nervously, shoulders rigid with tension. "I'm good, Dad. Little banged up, but good. [pause] What?" Scratching absently at the back of his head. "Yes sir."
Dean looked so tense Rosemary was sure he hadn't breathed since the words 'Department of Corrections' had left Peter's lips. His whole body thrummed with anxious energy, his stance tense, like a spring coiled too tight, aching for release but never being granted it. It made Rosemary wonder what kind of man John Winchester was.
"No," Dean replied. "No, he didn't... [pause] Yes sir. Ye-no sir." His mouth drew down into a frown, that plump bottom lip gnashed between his top and bottom teeth as he worried it unconsciously. "No sir, I wasn't... [pause] No, sir." Shoulders slumping. "You're right. Shouldn'a let him get the drop on me. Won't happen ag—no sir." He grimaced and took a deep, steadying breath before continuing. "I listen to it every morning when I take my run. I didn't think—" Once again he was cut off abruptly by his father, whose voice Rosemary could hear shouting through the phone even from this distance.
She had half a mind to hang up on the ornery bastard.
"Yes sir," Dean said, defeated. "No more walkman. Stupid, I know... [burying himself deeper into the wall] Yeah, sloppy. Yes sir. I promise."
The poor kid's shoulders were so slumped in defeat that he looked perfectly wretched. Rosemary's urge to hang up on Mr. Winchester morphed into a keen desire to reach through the phone and throttle him instead.
"But I got a coupl'a good shots in," Dean offered hopefully, then paused for a moment to listen to his father's reply. "Good solid shot to the gut – doubled him right over! And then when he knocked me down with a tackle I totally nailed him with a knee to the jewels." He paused again to wait for his father's reaction. "Oh, it got him good, believe me. Then, when he started pinnin' me, I rolled him right off and got him hard and fast – pow-pow – with a shot to the solar plexus and the throat. Coulda sworn I heard somethin' give too."
He chuckled at whatever his father said in reply and seemed to grow, suddenly, with the praise coming from the other end of the conversation.
"He was wheezin' pretty bad before he clocked me in the face with a rock," Dean beamed. "I was totally kicking his ass until he got in that lucky shot."
Even with all the bruising and swelling, Dean's face was remarkably expressive. He frowned, his bottom lip pouting in thought as he listened to his father.
"No, you're right. Not lucky," he muttered sullenly. "But I'll be better, I pr-" he cut off mid-sentence, interrupted by the voice on the other end. "Yes sir." He listened some more and then nodded his head. "Sammy's doin' good. We're both in the same school now – some yuppie Academy private thing." Then his head snapped around and his one wide eye looked guiltily at Jane and Peter. He mouthed 'sorry' exaggeratedly before nodding in reply to whatever his father was saying. "Yeah, great opportunity for Sam," he said with a bit of forced enthusiasm. "He really likes it, anyway. It's a good school. But I guess Bobby already told you that, huh?"
At this point in the conversation a very interesting change took place, the dialogue shifting gears from dressing down, then catch-up small-talk, to private, coded father-son talk that Dean clearly didn't want anyone else being witness to. He huddled close to the wall and turned his back to the family entirely, holding the phone close to his mouth and speaking in hushed tones. It didn't block the sound entirely – Rosemary could still make out most of what he was saying. But his replies were cryptic enough that no one in the Wesley residence would have a sweet clue as to their meaning.
"He did?" Dean's whispered voice sounded incredulous. "Where? When?" He nodded. "Okay. Sure – I mean, yes sir. I will." He stood up taller, his shoulders square, like a soldier standing at attention. It made all the fine hairs on Rosemary's skin stand on end.
"Yeah, you too," he huffed a breathless little laugh and nodded again. "I'll tell him."
And with that he hung up, turned around, and left the kitchen without another word. They listened to the sounds of his feet on the stairs as he made his way up to his bedroom and no one spoke until they were certain his door was closed.
"Well, that went well," Peter drawled humourlessly.
Because it really, really wasn't funny.
888
Dean tried not to take the stairs two at a time. He needed to get to his room and he needed to get there now. He could have been a bit more subtle about the whole exit thing, but he figured he'd be given a wide berth because of the whole concussion thing, and the talking-to-his-Dad thing, and the getting-reamed-by-his-Dad thing. Who wouldn't want to make a hasty retreat after being yelled at to pull his head out of his goddamned ass, to get his head back in the fucking game, to get his shit together before he got himself or his brother killed? Dean really wished his father were out of prison so he could have just kicked his ass instead of making him feel like the biggest failure the planet had ever seen – not that he hadn't deserved it. Because he did. He knew he did. But it wasn't the dressing-down that had him jumping out of his skin as he made a beeline for his bedroom. It wasn't shame or humiliation or a deep desire to be alone to deal with his 'emotions'. It was what Dad had told him about Bobby's visit.
"While you were in the hospital and the Wesleys were keeping vigil, Bobby popped by the house to do a little bit of safeguarding. I want you to go check it out."
Dean knew that crafty old bugger wouldn't have left town without leaving his mark: and apparently a host of Devil's Traps (which his Dad hastily explained were some kind of demon symbols that trapped demons in them) in each bedroom, buried under the carpet, as well as some specially mixed paint with salt and iron somehow suffused into it, at every windowsill and door of the house, were the kind of work Bobby could pull off during a few break-ins over the weekend.
Closing the door behind him, Dean carefully crouched to his knees – head still spinning and pounding like a mother from the concussion – and peeled the carpet back from under the door casing. And there, sure enough, was a sweeping red spray-painted circle of a symbol beneath it. Dean was pretty sure that if he checked the carpet near the window he'd find a matching symbol there as well.
Man, Bobby was fuckin' awesome.
So the house was protected against demons. That was definitely a plus. Dean would like to see that evil sonofabitch try to get near Sam now. Well, actually, he wouldn't. He really wouldn't. But now that Bobby had set up these safeguards, the likelihood of him being able to get to Sam were less. Unless, of course, the demon came after Sam at school, or on the playground, or in the backyard, or anywhere else that wasn't inside the house. Damnit, there were so many places that still weren't protected. Still, Dean had to force himself to be optimistic. They spent a large chunk of their time inside these four walls, and if Dad couldn't be around to protect them, then the safeguards Bobby had left would have to do. For now.
Dean sighed and made his way to his closet to inspect the last item on his father's agenda. There was something else, Dad had said, that Bobby had left especially for Dean. Something secret. Something no one else in the house could know about (not that anyone was supposed to know about the Devil's Traps, either).
Dean held his breath, biting his bottom lip between his teeth as his blood pulsed through his veins. Dad hadn't told Dean what it was that Bobby had left him, but Dean was pretty sure he already knew. It was a weapon. It had to be. Bobby had left him a weapon – something for Dean to practice with, something he could use to protect himself and his family – and it was tucked away neatly in a metal lock box stuffed under the shoe rack in his closet. Dean crouched to his knees and slid the shiny silver box towards him. The combination lock on the cover secured it shut tightly, so that neither Sam nor Suzie could get in and accidentally kill themselves or someone else playing with it.
Licking his lips and taking a quick, steadying breath, Dean grasped the lock and turned the dial right-left-right: 32-16-25. It clicked and Dean eased it open with trembling hands, peering in at a thing of beauty gleaming inside the metal box.
Nickel-plated, with intricate engravings along the handle, was Dad's favourite Colt 1911. Dean had polished the thing more times than he could count, marvelling at the tender age of seven, eight, and nine, at how something so lethal could look so pretty, with its sleek design and swirling, engraved patterns, gleaming metal polished to mirrored perfection. He'd held the thing like a hallowed object, learned every contour and cranny, making it shine for his Daddy like a brand new penny.
And now it was his. Dean felt the weight of it in his palm and all his unease melted from his frame. He was like a cowboy taking the reins of a favoured steed at the end of a long journey, a race car driver sliding behind the wheel to grasp sleek leather. Young, practiced hands balanced the weapon with care, and Dean could feel himself sinking back into his own skin, as though he'd been wearing someone else's for the last five years. It felt right to have a gun in his hand, no matter if it would be fucked up to say it out loud. It felt right.
This was who he was supposed to be. A soldier. A warrior. Someone who fought monsters and saved innocent people. And maybe the last five years of fear and worry and shame and degradation were just... a nightmare or something. A horrible blip on the radar in an otherwise straight path to hunterdom. Dean could deal with that. It might take big steaming heaps of denial, and a few rigorous exercises in self-delusion, but Dean was nothing if not stubborn and persistent. They were always telling him that, when he set his mind to it, he could do anything. So yeah, maybe the last five years could just disappear.
Well, Dean thought. You'll never know unless you try, right?
He didn't have any damned ruby slippers, and he sure as hell wasn't going to click his heels and say, "There's no place like home!" But in his mind he performed a similar, though far more manly, symbolic 'happy thought' and willed his past to just cease to be. Dean was a soldier now. And he was going to kick some evil ass, live hard, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.
It was a sound plan.
888
"Well that went well," Peter muttered darkly as the whole family watched Dean make a hasty retreat to his room.
"Should I...?" Jane wondered aloud, rising slightly from her seat as if to follow Dean.
Peter just shook his head.
"I think he just needs a moment alone," he consoled, though he sounded more hopeful than certain. "Bit overwhelming for him, probably, having all of us hovering all the time. And I imagine he's still in a great deal of pain."
Sam huffed a humourless laugh and scowled. "That, and John Winchester is a total jerk!" he snarked.
"Sam! Language!" Jane chided, but Sam wasn't one to be deterred when he was filled with righteous indignation.
"Well?" he challenged. "He is! You heard him yelling at Dean 'cos somebody attacked him at the park! What kind of..." he struggled for the right words. "That's not right, Mom!" He shook his head desperately. "It's not right! Dean didn't do anything wrong, and he got hurt real bad, and he almost..."
He choked off the rest of his words as angry tears brimmed in his big, round eyes.
"Oh honey," Grammy Tilny sighed, reaching over with a weathered hand to clutch Sam's consolingly. "I know it looks bad, but your brother's fine."
But Sam wasn't biting, shaking his head in denial, pouting through his overwhelming frustration.
"He's not fine!" he ground out sullenly. "He's just a real good liar. He pretends he's tough and macho so we won't see that he's hurt—"
"Unless he wants the remote," Suzie amended thoughtfully.
"Unless he wants the remote," Sam conceded, the ghost of a smile playing at his tiny, bowed mouth. "Or if he thinks Mom'll bring him snacks on the couch in the living room."
Jane looked slightly scandalized but said nothing as Sam's smile crumpled into a fresh round of tears.
"H-he almost died," Sam whispered in terrified anguish. "When we went to see him in the hospital..." he told his grandmother, looking at her with pleading eyes. "He got hit in the head so hard he wouldn't wake up, even at the hospital, and the doctors thought they were going to have to operate on his brain. His brain!"
He sucked in a huge gulp full of air and shook with sobs, the fear and horror and earth-shattering reality of the situation bearing down on his ten year-old frame. It was a terrifying moment to witness, when Sam Winchester/Wesley learned of his own brother's mortality, that Dean could die some day.
"And Dean's got enough problems with his messed up head," Sam cried. "With the n-nightmares and drinking and sneaking off with girls at the water park..."
Peter's eyebrows got lost somewhere in his hairline at that revelation.
"...and struggling to keep up with school and police qu-questioning him about I-don't-know-what and nobody will tell me!"
He fired an accusing glare at his parents, who were looking at him with matching open-mouthed expressions of surprise.
"You think I'm just a dumb kid," he accused, "but Dean's my brother. He's mine! I'm the one that knew about the bad man in New York – I'm the one that made you bring him back with us! You can't keep secrets from me when people are trying to hurt him!"
The silence following Sam's tirade was palpable, as though the child had breathed life into the words and those words had taken shape and form and grown into an organic thing, a purple, spotted elephant in the room that no one cared to or dared to acknowledge.
When the tension finally broke, it was dear little Suzie who broke it.
"He's mine too," she sulked possessively, blue-grey eyes glistening with tears.
Sam sniffed and stared angrily, forlornly, at his half-empty plate, tears sliding silently down his pudgy cheeks as his breath hitched with suppressed sobs. He was still angry, but the target of his anger had apparently gotten lost somewhere. It was likely he wanted to direct his ire at his biological father, the elusive and loud convict who was decidedly beyond the ten year-old's reach behind bars in a Maximum Security prison. Dean's attacker, too, was probably high up on Sam's hit list. It was clear to everyone in the room that the child was angry, and upset, and frustrated, and felt unable to express how deep his feelings ran, how much the hurt stung him, how solidly the fear shook through his frame. So he stared ahead and wallowed in his own impotent feelings, his little shoulders heaving with barely suppressed emotion.
"I have an idea," Grammy Tilny suggested lightly. "When you're finished your supper, why don't you take the puppy upstairs to Dean's room. Seems he forgot her when he went upstairs."
Sam peeked at his grandmother through his bangs and offered a shy, dimpled grin.
"He'd like that," he said thickly before wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
888
They say that home is the place where, when you have nowhere else to go, they have to take you in. If the saying were true, then it meant that Dennis's home, his only home, was with his brother, Daniel. Orphaned by the age of 18 and 20, Danny and Dennis were all the family the brothers had left in the whole world, and Danny was the only person Dennis would ever or had ever turned to when life got rough. Danny was a safe harbour, unconditional love, and something else, something deeper, that he would never know, to his little brother, and it was times like these that Dennis found himself wandering like a piece of driftwood towards the familiar shores of his brother's hearth. Two and a half hours away from Phoenix, where local law enforcement officials wouldn't be looking for a man 6'2" with a crushed windpipe for an unsolved mugging attempt.
The drive had been exhausting and near-impossible, his vision blanking out off and on as he struggled for every breath. His throat had swollen so badly that he could scarce squeeze air through his abused windpipe, but he knew better than to seek treatment at a nearby hospital. There would be red flags at all the nearby clinics and ERs to keep an eye out for a man of his basic physical description (masked face notwithstanding) with an injured throat, and Dennis wasn't fool enough to walk into that kind of trouble. Sheer will propelled him onward (though the heavy dose of anti-inflammatories and painkillers he'd taken immediately upon entering the car didn't hurt, either), even when his body insisted that he'd reached the end of the line. He was stubborn to the point of manic, determined to the point of crazy, and desperate enough to suffer through the torturous drive, wheezing like a 90 year-old man the entire way, until he finally reached his big brother's shabby two-bedroom bungalow.
The knock on the front door was sharp and loud, Dennis's knuckles stinging from the impact, but it was worth it when he was greeted by Daniel's clear blue eyes, his kind smile (before it morphed into a concerned frown), his open and waiting arms.
Dennis felt his heart stutter in that familiar, glut-clenching way when he took in the sight of his big brother – so handsome now even as he approached 40, eyes kind and bright and filled with so much hurt it made Dennis ache all over. There were so many ghosts behind that gaze, a thousand deaths suffered by a soul that had been too young to process pain and humiliation and shame without internalizing it. Danny was like a phoenix who burned up with his own self-hatred and was reborn from the ashes, constantly trying to reinvent himself, reform himself, renew his spark of life in spite of decades of being wrongwrongwrong. Dennis loved him so much he wanted to peel the skin from his body and grind his bones to dust.
"Dennis," Danny exclaimed, stunned and worried in an instant. "What're you – Jesus Christ! What happened to you?"
Dennis's reply was lost in a wash of agony as his throat worked to form words, the sound dying in a groan.
"Oh my God!" Strong hands grasped him by the shoulders and manoeuvred him through the front door. "Can you breathe?" Danny demanded. "Are you breathing?"
Dennis nodded weakly, the action causing sparks of pain to stab through his abused neck. His big brother manhandled him toward the shabby couch in the living room, forcing him to sit down.
"I'm calling 911." Danny made a move toward the phone but Dennis stopped him by clutching his wrist in a vise-like grip.
"NO!" he croaked, tears of pain springing unbidden to his eyes. "No," he repeated, eyes wide and pleading.
Danny paused and crouched down low so that he was below Dennis's line of vision.
"Den, it looks like someone beat the holy hell out of you," he said solemnly. "You're barely breathing, man!"
"I'm okay," Dennis mouthed soundlessly. "Please!"
He watched as his brother chewed on his bottom lip with worry, weighing out his options, trying to decide whether or not to admit defeat or stand his ground. It was a 50/50 chance of him choosing either: Daniel was fiercely protective of his little brother and would move heaven and Earth to see him safe; but he was also a push-over and had a very hard time saying no where his little brother was concerned. In the end the latter won out, and Danny collapsed onto his ass on the floor with a worried sigh.
"Then you gotta talk to me, little brother," he said warily. "Tell me what happened."
Dennis smiled faintly and raised well-manicured hands to mimic writing with a pen and paper. He waited patiently, still struggling for each breath, while Danny fetched him a pen and a pad of paper. Then he took a seat next to him on the couch and waited, his fingers picking nervously at a stray piece of thread on the couch.
Dennis had already planned out, during the drive over, how he would play this. He needed his brother to sympathize with his plight enough to not call the police or paramedics. The lie he had constructed was both pathetic and believable, and he just hoped that it fit in nicely with some of Daniel's secret misconceptions about his little brother.
'I was going to surprise you,' he wrote carefully. 'I took some vacation time and drove down to see you. Got mugged at the ATM machine when I got into town.'
It was partly true. He had booked time off at work for a "family emergency" on Tuesday, though admittedly it was for the purpose of kidnapping the young hooker, Dean Winchester, and trussing him up in the newly soundproofed basement on Friday. Dennis wasn't stupid: he was a planner. And he knew that people would be connecting dots if Dennis's absence conveniently coincided with Dean's disappearance. It was why he'd opted to make his exit from the work scene on the Tuesday. And with Danny's history of run-ins with the law, the "family emergency" excuse wasn't likely to be questioned. So Dennis was here now, visiting his brother just like he'd told Peter Wesley he would be, though for different reasons. Danny wasn't the one that was in trouble, Dennis was. And Dennis wasn't the one who'd been mugged, but Daniel didn't need to know that, either.
Danny's face darkened with anger when he read his younger brother's tidy scrawl.
"Then why the hell aren't I calling the cops?" he demanded, then softened his tone.
"Dennis, your neck looks real bad. You probably need a trach tube or something. I really should—"
'NO,' Dennis wrote in block letters, underlining it for added emphasis. 'No hospital! No police!'
"Why the hell not?" Danny demanded. "It's not as if it's your fault!"
Dennis made a show of looking at his feet, forcing a shamed blush to his cheeks as he feigned embarrassment.
"What is it?" Danny asked gently, voice softening as he reached out to give Dennis's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "What aren't you telling me?"
Dennis bit his lip with faked apprehension and wrote, 'Skinheads. Hate crime.'
And that did it – he'd taken the bait. Big brother's suspicions confirmed, he leaned forward and gave another gentle squeeze. "Because you're gay?" he hazarded quietly.
Dennis managed a weak nod and tried not to grin at his own cleverness.
Sweet, stupid, gullible Danny. The poor fool had been chewing on the possibility of his little brother being gay for over a decade, but had never had the guts to just come out and ask him. It was a natural conclusion for him to have drawn, Dennis supposed. He hadn't really done much dating, had never had a real girlfriend, and didn't show much interest in the opposite sex. He'd tried pretending when he was in his late teens, but by then Danny had been so lost in his own demons, with the drugs and the Grand Theft Auto and then jail, that the need for pretense had kind of fallen by the wayside. But of course Danny wondered, and of course he'd concluded that his little brother was gay. It was certainly more appealing than assuming his little brother was a paedophile.
"Dennis," Danny practically whined. "You can't let them get away with that, man! I know you think you've got to keep it a secret, or whatever... But it's nothing to be ashamed of."
And Danny would know all about shame, wouldn't he? Dennis thought. Danny's very skin was made up of layer upon layer of shame, a cloak so thick and impenetrable there was no scrubbing it clean. Even after all these years, Dennis could still smell it on him.
It made him hungry.
'Do you think Dad made me this way?' he wrote with practiced hesitance, going for gold and biting his lip in uncertainty.
Danny's eyes squinted in confusion as he read his little brother's words and then he flushed red.
"Jesus, Dennis!" he blurted out angrily, standing up and pacing the shabby room like a caged animal. "No! Fuck no! Why would you even think that?"
It was so wrong to do this to him, but Dennis had long ago lost all ability to connect with anyone on an emotional level. When he wasn't drinking in their pain he wasn't feeling anything at all, and Danny's pain was like a drug. Dragging him kicking and screaming back to those terrible, wonderful childhood years was an addiction Dennis had to indulge in sparingly, lest he force his brother to shut down altogether.
"Dad didn't make you gay!" Danny went on, his hands trembling at his sides as he squeezed them into fists. "For fuck's sake, Dennis, why would you think that?"
'But I'm not normal,' Dennis wrote, casting Danny a pleading look.
Stroll down memory lane with me, big brother. Let's remember together how it felt when you cried and begged and none of it made any difference.
"No one's normal!" Danny scoffed. "Least you didn't end up in jail!"
Because Dad ruined you, Dennis thought, trying to suppress a grin. Because he tore you open and bled you dry and left nothing behind but the broken tatters of your soul. Because you're weak and you turned to drugs and got caught.
"Hell, Dennis, I'm not gay and I'm the one he—" Danny choked back the rest of his reply, grinding his teeth like a carnivore chewing to the deep marrow of a bone.
You're the one he loved, Dennis thought. You're the one he saw every day. You're the one that mattered.
Danny paused in his pacing and looked at Dennis with such mixed emotions warring in his beautiful blue eyes: rage and pain and loss and, so fresh and intoxicating, shame and humiliation.
"Christ, Dennis!" he whispered harshly. "Why'd you gotta bring that up, huh? Why can't you just let it the fuck go!"
As if Danny had ever let it go. Danny who spent most of his twenties in the gutter jumped up on heroine. Danny who's been in and out of jail more times than a five-dollar hooker. Danny who lived alone in a piece of shit rented house and worked as a janitor because he couldn't get a decent job with his colourful criminal record.
But Danny's always been good at self-delusion, and he always tried so damned hard to function like the rest of the animals playing at being people. No matter how hard Danny fell he always picked himself up again. Went to rehab. Got a job; paid his taxes. He even had a girlfriend now, and they had a baby on the way.
"It's over, Dennis," Danny said forcefully, then softened as he retook his seat on the couch and placed a gentle hand on his brother's shoulder. "It's over. It happened a long time ago, and yeah, it was fucked up and awful. But it's over man. Dad was a monster, but he's gone now, and he didn't make you this way."
No, he didn't make me this way, Dennis thought. You did.
Crying in the night as the headboard in the next room thump-thump-thumped against the wall behind Dennis's head, pleading brokenly, 'No please stop dad no please don't!'
Dad never tried keeping it down, never bothered being quiet. Dennis might as well have been a light fixture in the room for all his father noticed him. Never laid a hand on him. Never cast his eyes in his youngest son's direction with that hungry, lustful gaze. Never made any inappropriate advances. Never knew he existed except as another body to clothe and a mouth to feed.
For months Dennis had lain quietly in his bed, listening to his brother's pleas, their father's grunts, and the constant banging on the wall, and had wondered what it all meant. Too young to have much of an understanding about sex, but knowing from school and teachers' dire warnings that what happened in Danny's room at night was the kind of thing he wasn't supposed to tell anyone about. Dennis's toes had curled in fear and something else, something he couldn't explain, as he'd listened to the almost nightly ritual in the room next to his.
Dad loved Danny oh, so much.
'You see what you do to me? See what you make me do?'
Dennis had wondered about those sounds, about his Dad's blissed out moaning and grunting, about the raw hunger and need he heard in that voice, about the sated sighs that followed. He'd listened and wondered: wondered why Danny's tears made Dad so happy. Why his pleas spurred him on to be rougher, the banging always growing louder when Danny begged, 'pleasepleasedadno!'
When, at twelve, Dennis came home early from a sleepover one night to find Danny sprawled on the kitchen table, their father pounding into him from behind, his large hands clamped down over Danny's smaller ones, pushing them wide at his sides, pinning them to the table as his hips jerked roughly, Dennis hadn't wondered anymore. His eyes open for the very first time, his insides roiling at the vision splayed out before him, his groin burning hot with sudden understanding, Dennis finally saw what his father saw.
Danny was beautiful. Danny was perfection personified, flawless skin over long angles, skin and bone and so much flesh, panting in pain or maybe want, his plush lips parted, his gorgeous eyes squeezed shut tight.
And Dennis understood in that moment that everything their father had said was true. Danny made him this way. Dennis knew it because he could feel it pulling below his navel, he could feel the first stirrings of desire in his young loins, and this was it.
This was perfection. And he'd touched himself for the first time that night, lying in his bed and tugging at himself and crying at the rush of blood that felt sofuckinggood, remembering Danny's tears and all that beautiful skin, remembering the pleading, and loving his brother so much he spilled over his hand when his orgasm hit.
And he'd known, at age twelve, that he'd never love anyone more, would never hate anyone more, than he did Danny, for what he'd become.
Dennis had been chasing the vision of that fourteen year-old boy, splayed open and broken on the kitchen table, begging and crying and so fucking beautiful, from that moment onward.
Dean Winchester was going to be so perfect when Dennis finally claimed him. With a little more time, more careful planning, more patience, Dennis would be able to put this incident behind him, covering his tracks and smoothing out the creases, and then he'd make his move. Then he'd finally be able to touch that vision. Dean was so perfect, and so bright and wrong, just like Danny. So perfect and vibrant and dirty and Dennis knew he would cry so pretty, would beg so beautifully, would die with such exquisite grace that Dennis would finally find peace.
"Come on," Danny's voice said soothingly, breaking Dennis from his reverie. "Let's get you settled in the spare bedroom, huh? Then I'll go to the pharmacy and see if I can get something to help out with the pain."
Dennis nodded, feeling the tension ease out of his body. Everything would be all right.
888
The lamp was still on in Dean's room when Sam eased his way quietly inside. His knock had gone unanswered and, impatient with a wriggling puppy in his arms, the ten year-old had taken the lack of a response as permission to enter (because really, if Dean didn't want him to come in he most definitely would have said 'no'). When he poked his shaggy mopped head into his big brother's room, it was to find said brother sprawled in a seated position against the headboard of his bed, propped up by a host of pillows with an open book resting on his lap, fingers lax, eyes closed, and jaw hanging open in a silent snore.
Dean was out cold, and in the middle of playing catch-up on his homework, it appeared.
Sam grinned and made his way to his brother's bedside on silent feet. Quietly and gently as he could, he lifted the book from Dean's hands and eased it away from his lap, placing it on the bedside table and then replacing it with a wildly wriggling Lucy, who'd had enough of being held.
The puppy scrambled up the sleeping teen's chest, her padded feet weighing almost nothing at all, before she paused at Dean's chin and began licking enthusiastically.
"Mmmhuh?" Dean mumbled blearily as the sensation of velvet wet puppy tongue drew him from his slumber.
"Thought you might want some company," Sam whispered.
"Sam?" Dean asked through sleep-swollen eyes. He peered up at his baby brother slowly through heavy lids. "Wha'ss goin' on?"
"You fell asleep," Sam explained mildly. "I brought Lucy up to see you. I think she missed you," he added with a bright, dimpled grin.
Dean grinned in return, lazy against the pillows and looking just the tiniest bit goofy. His hair was flat on his brow, without the usual styling gel to keep it in those oh-so-cool spikes, and the bed-head look made Dean look about twelve instead of almost-fifteen. He pushed his head back into the pillows and did a one-armed cat-like stretch, yawning so big his jaw popped, before easing back bonelessly into the bedding.
"Don't tell your Grandma I said this," Dean said in his sleep-raspy voice, "but this dog is pretty awesome."
"Yeah," Sam agreed wistfully.
They sat together in companionable silence as the puppy toddled around on the bed, tripping over her own ears, chasing her tail, tipping over onto her side on her wobbly legs, getting caught up in the blankets, and barking at the bundled mess beneath her when Dean tormented her with a probing hand under the blanket.
"She's cute," Sam said.
Dean just grunted non-committally, which Sam figured was his way of saying yes.
"Hey Dean?"
"Hmmm?" Dean replied absently, obviously still sleepy.
"Can I sleep in here tonight? You know, because of the puppy...?" Which was Sam Wesley secret code for 'because you almost died and I never want you to leave my sight ever again.'
Dean shrugged, fluent in all his little brother's secret codes.
"Sure," he allowed. "'Cos of the puppy."
Sam grinned and crawled up the bed, easing his way under the covers with a contented sigh.
"But just to warn you," Dean added. "Any sign that you're about to cuddle me and I'll sick Lucy on your ass. I can already tell she's got the makings of a seriously awesome attack dog."
Said attack dog was mashing her wrinkly puppy face into the blankets, her pudgy bum high in the air, curled tail wagging madly as she yipped into the bedding. Then, as if sensing that they were talking about her, she raised her head with a snuff, sneezed, and toppled over onto her side.
"We should rename her," Sam mock agreed. "She looks more like a Cujo than a Lucy."
"Yeah, bite me."
It didn't take long for the puppy to tire herself out. Both boys played with her until their eyes were drooping, and then when she settled between their pillows, Dean turned out the light and the brothers slunk silently into the darkness, each content to be home and safe and together.
"Hey Dean?"
"Hmmm?"
It was easier to voice his fears under the cover of darkness, Sam thought.
"You scared me," he admitted in a whisper. "I thought—"
"It's okay, little brother." And when he said it like that, it was hard not to believe him, especially because he couldn't see the lie in his eyes when the lights were off.
"I know it got kinda hairy for a little while there," Dean admitted. "But it's gonna take more than a dude in a mask to take Dean Winchester down."
"But he almost—" Sam protested.
"He didn't," Dean assured him. "It was dumb of me to be out in the dark like that with those damned headphones in my ears. If I hadda been smart, I wouldn't have brought the walkman. Rookie mistake. But it won't happen again, Sam."
Sam wasn't convinced.
"And hey, even with my arm in a sling, I still kicked his ass." Sam could practically hear the grin in his brother's voice. "I bet there's some guy out there cryin' into his beer right now 'cos he got his ass handed to him by a fourteen year-old with a bum arm. An' he'll be eating out of a straw for the next few weeks, too, so I call this one a win."
"I guess," Sam allowed reluctantly.
It was silent for a few more moments, during which time Dean shuffled from his left side onto his back.
"Hey Dean?"
The aggrieved sigh was loud and plaintive in the darkness. Then, with practiced patience, "Yeah, Sammy?"
"I love you," Sam whispered before chomping nervously onto his bottom lip.
The pregnant pause before Dean managed a reply was painful, but when it came it brought both laughter and relief.
"That's it," Dean said with an exasperated growl. "Sick 'im, Lucy!"
Sam fell asleep that night with a grin on his face and a puppy on his pillow.
TBC...
End Notes:
I thought it would be best to end this on a more positive note (rather than leaving you all with the sour taste of Dennis in your mouths). I'm sorry to have plagued y'all with that monster's inner workings, but there's a context to everything and his was like a sickness I needed to purge to make myself feel clean again. Coming up we'll have a few things to look forward to: more puppy schmoop; Margaret meets her match; Angela turns 14; and Dean gets in touch with the left side of his brain.
Please keep your eyes open for .Dakota.'s upcoming fic, which is an off-shoot from "In Shadow." It's not finished yet, but she has written it as part of this 'verse and I'm just tickled pink! It's untitled as of yet, but I'll let you know once it's been completed and posted here!