Just a short little one-shot, a wee!chester fic, which I have never ventured into before. It was kind of inspired by frustration with my 5yo son, which got me thinking about Dean going through his silent phase at the same age and how frustrating that must have been for John.
Disclaimer: Got no business messing with Supernatural.
Waiting for the words
"What happened buddy?" John knelt before his eldest son, took the slight shoulders beneath his large hands and gazed into the forlorn cherubic face, looking for answers. "I don't know what's wrong. I can't help you if you don't tell me what happened."
John's voice was light and melodic, calming and soothing, but there was a sigh to the tone, the words so familiar, on an ineffectual loop, uttered almost every day in various permutations. And always without reward. Always his son unforthcoming. He'd tried different approaches to get the boy talking, to get to his thoughts. Delivered the plea please talk to me in a variety of different ways, using different emphasis and different inflections. Tried understanding, annoyance, tears in his eyes, wall punching fury, searching for the right combination of words and emotion to unlock Dean's silence, waiting for that blissful day when he would get an audible response. But so far it had been months of fruitless monologuing.
And every time John had to ask his son to explain himself, every time his son responded with sad soulful eyes and nothing more, John felt inadequate. He felt like a failure. He felt like he should know what was wrong, that he should know his son better. His inability to read his mute son drove John to distraction. The muteness drove him to distraction.
He stared at the little boy, who had tears silently tracking down his cheeks, break-your-heart sorrow on his face, and had absolutely no idea what had caused the upset, not even a clue. John had been in the bedroom reading, Sam was asleep in the next room and Dean had been parked in front of the tv. There had been no loud noises, no banging or crashing, no evidence of anything untoward having occurred in the tv room, just Dean walking into the bedroom with his face crumpled.
"Are you hurt?" John asked, trying to put the pieces together.
There was a shake of the head in reply.
"Do you feel sick?"
Shake of the head.
"Did something happen?"
Shake of the head.
"Is something wrong with Sam?"
Shake of the head.
"Was there something sad on tv?"
Shake of the head.
"Dean..." John removed his grip from his son's shoulders, let one hand drop to his side while the other ran over his face, rubbed at his eyes, then raked up through his hair and down to the nape of his neck. He was going to start getting loud in a minute, compensating for his son's quiet and he used the moment to compose himself, push down the well of irritation that was rising in his chest.
With a contrite look on his face and forced calm in his voice he stated with simple conclusion, "I don't know why you're crying." And he felt like a moron for not being able to figure it out. The answer couldn't be that hard. The kid had only been in the next room for crying out loud, it's not like the possibilities were endless. But Dean appeared physically fine and beyond that the father couldn't speculate, he had no idea what was going on in that little head.
John reached out his hands and tapped the child behind the shoulders, propelling him closer, then wrapped him in a hug. "I'm sorry son," he whispered, "but I just can't guess at these things. I'm not that good."
The little boy stood stiffly in the hug, unresponsive except for a small tilt of the head which buried his face into the crook of John's neck and indicated that perhaps the closeness wasn't entirely unwanted. But he was sending the message that this wasn't what he came in for, he hadn't been looking for a hug. Which led John to wonder what he had come in for. If he wasn't going to verbalise the problem, why seek out his father? He could only conjecture that perhaps it was for the acknowledgment, to let John know that he was upset, not looking for solutions just not wanting to bear his sorrow alone.
John felt such helpless despair. His son was a baffling mix of tough and delicate, independent and needy, prickly and soft. John ran around in circles trying to figure out where he was coming from, anticipate what he was thinking and feeling. He was stubbornly holding onto the silence. And that in itself had John stumped. He knew Mary's death had been a terrible trauma for Dean, an unbearable loss, but what was he gaining by refusing to talk? What was the motivation for its continuation? It had to be as frustrating for the five year old as it was for the father.
John leaned out of the hug and the child immediately straightened, didn't try and linger in the contact. John gave an encouraging smile, wiped the tears from the soft, smooth cheeks and asked, "Okay now?"
Dean nodded, and John felt deeply dissatisfied that he was never going to know what had upset him. It joined a long list of things that the boy was keeping to himself. John couldn't help but think that a parent should know why their child was crying, should be able to provide the appropriate comfort and support. But he squashed the inner criticism. There was no point dwelling on it, getting twisted up in knots over his deficencies, there was nothing to be gained from that. All he could hope was that maybe the next time Dean was upset, the next time John asked him what was wrong, the outcome would be different.
"Good. How about we go see if Sammy's awake?"
The little boy nodded again, brightened a bit, and when John gained his feet, Dean took his hand and patiently waited to be led into the next room. As they walked the few steps to where Sam lay in his cot, John felt distant from his firstborn, completely out his depth caring for this child that he couldn't comprehend. His love for Dean was unchanged, enduring, but that emotion was overborne by a crushing sense of responsibility. He knew he had to protect and nurture his son who was so painfully struggling with his grief, but all the time he was tip-toeing through a minefield, wondering if he was making things better or worse.
His heart squeezed in ongoing dismay at the loss of the easy relationship he had enjoyed with Dean when Mary was alive. He'd taken for granted the youthful exuberance and vitality, the affection and inquisition. Now that it had disappeared he had no idea how to foster its return, he'd mostly left the parenting to Mary, raising his voice when required, lavishing attention when he had the time but for the most part skirting around the edges leaving the hard stuff to her.
Now he was both mother and father to his boys and undeniably shaky in the dual role. He was still coming to terms with his own grief, the ground still shifting beneath him. He wasn't certain of anything anymore. And he didn't feel capable in his upgraded role. He wanted to do what was right for his eldest son, wanted to guide him back to some semblance of normality but he was pretty sure he lacked the necessary skills. The persistent lack of voice in the little boy told John that he was sucking at single parenthood so far and he hoped like hell that he would improve, that the situation would improve, that they could regain as a family some of the things that were lost when Mary died.
The End