A/N: I have no idea if the boys have been given middle names in canon yet. I just looked up names til I found ones I liked the meaning of.

I still own nothing supernatural.

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"Wait a second, just stop."

And to his amazement, Sam found himself on the inside of his current motel room, with the Ghost of Christmas Past just looking at him with exasperation.

"Look Mr. Christmas Past…"

"Call me Chris, it's easier. It's what your brother calls me."

"Ok, Chris," Wow a lot of sarcasm could be packed into two little words. "What exactly are you trying to prove here, where did you meet Dean and why are you bothering me? I know what our lives were like, and I get that Dean had it harder than me being the older one. So I don't need your ghostly version of Show-and-Tell to get me out of my 'pissy mood' to quote my brother. I'm allowed to be ticked off, I have a right to be angry and if you know my brother at all, you'll know that he specializes in pushing people's buttons. Mine especially, so if I'm pissed there's probably a good reason and we don't need you to run interference for us!"

"Wow. I can see we have our work cut out for us. First of all, we're here for a little Dean 101, secondly your brother helped us out of a trap that we'd accidentally stumbled into many years ago and really helped my youngest sibling out a lot. And what can I say – he intrigued us. And yes we've met your brother, we know you're 'pissed' – you really need to work on expanding your vocabulary – and yet it seems to us that we know him better than you. Hence the ghostly version of 'Show-and-Tell."

Sam was about to correct the sanctimonious spirit when all of a sudden he couldn't move, couldn't talk.

"Neat trick, hun? Let's see what was your current list of grievances? Oh yes, knife-wielding at seven, gun training at ten and life is generally unfair. It seems awfully convenient of you to have blocked out that you wanted to learn to throw knives at age seven as you wanted to emulate everything your big brother did and to shut you up and to keep you occupied your brother passed along the lessons your father taught him. You're also conveniently overlooking the fact that Dean's training you went against your dad's wishes – he thought you were too young – imagine that - and that in fact Dean was initially in trouble for showing you how to throw a knife.

"And while you did learn to shoot at ten when did you learn to do laundry, to do dishes, to cook? Oh that's right, you didn't. Dean did. It seems to me that Dean changed his first nappy – diaper to you yanks – at four, did laundry for the first time at five – what a disaster that was – and took on many of the domestic chores by the time he was six. Chores which included looking after his baby brother. Oh not by himself, your Dad didn't start letting Dean watch you himself til he was eight. But in those early days your dad was still drinking himself to sleep most nights, so little Deano had a lot to cope with. Let's take a look, shall we?"

And damnnit if their current motel room wasn't dissolving into a tiny bedroom with a young Dean just finished changing a squalling Sam. Dean was standing on a wooden chair which was pushed up against a changing table. The room was small and sparsely furnished and it was clearly late at night or early morning as single ceiling light in the room barely intruded on the dark subdued feeling of the adjoining hallway and rooms. It was yet another temporary home that Sam didn't remember.

Dean must have been five since his younger self did not look even a year old yet. Dean looked tired and was yawning himself as he tried to quiet his younger brother. Young Dean was holding a still screaming Sam who was obviously teething and was flailing tiny arms as his big brother tried to comfort him.

Dean was shushing his brother while swaying and patting him on the back. None of this was any comfort to his brother whose cheeks were flushed and whose little mouth was puckered and drooling. Five-year-old Dean was obviously at a loss as to what to do for his brother. Baby Sam found a solution of his own by sucking on one of his brother's fingers. Dean sat down on the wooden chair that he'd recently been standing on and enjoyed the respite from the crying. It looked like baby Sammy was about to go back to sleep, his eyes fluttering closed, when Dean tried to unobtrusively extricate his finger from his brother's tender teeth. Mistake. As soon as he took his finger away young Sammy woke up and started crying. Young Dean was getting frustrated and yelled at his brother to 'Stop crying!' but young Sammy was impervious to his brother's demands. Dean reluctantly stuck his finger back in his brother's mouth, but was obviously getting impatient with his brother and was searching the room for some other solution.

Sam and the Ghost of… sorry, Chris, watched as a lightbulb obviously went off in the older brother's tired brain. Five-year-old Dean took his baby brother, still sucking on the soothing index finger of his brother, and carried him down some wooden stairs and past the living room where their father was asleep on the couch (having slept through Sammy's cries and Dean's yelling) and into a small but tidy kitchen. Dean had to put Sam down in his playpen, which immediately started the screaming again, and pushed a vinyl padded kitchen chair up against one of the counters. He then climbed onto the counter top and opened an upper cupboard and extracted a clear bottle half full of amber liquid. He carefully set this on the counter and climbed down. He then proceeded to bring the partially drank bottle of Jack Daniels towards his brother's playpen, towards his still screaming younger brother. He was just carefully using both hands to uncap the bottle when from behind him, his father's voice suddenly intruded into this bizarre nighttime tableau.

"Dean William Winchester! What are you doing? Put that bottle down, this instant!"

'But Sammy won't stop crying. And I want him to stop." Tired hazel eyes, bright with tears of frustration, turned to their father, carefully holding the bottle, imploring him to understand. "And this always makes you go to sleep and not wake up til the next day. So it will make Sammy go to sleep too. It will work, Daddy, you never wake up, even when I yell really loudly, so Sammy will too. Please Daddy. He won't stop crying. Please?"

And Sam, watching the scene, would have laughed at his brother's ingenious, if unorthodox, solution if it were not for the pain that his brother's pleading up-turned face caused in his father's tired bloodshot eyes. Pain that was only visible for an instant, but was so real and so cutting that Sam was shocked at his own visceral response to Dean's anguished pleas and his father's shattering guilt. God his family was fucked up.

"Watch, Sam. Pay attention, you may learn something."

Sam, resenting Chris' interference, barely glanced at the insistent spirit and focused again on his father, who had gently plucked the bottle from Dean's shaking hands, and then leaned down to pick up his younger self, who was still crying, and was trying to calm Sam while dealing with his earnest older son.

"You can't give a baby alcohol Dean, he's too little. It's not good for him. It would make him sick."

"It makes you sick too Daddy, but you're ok in the morning, Sammy would be ok in the morning too, he just needs to go to sleep." Dean's pleading was rapidly turning into whining. All three were tired.

And Sam watched, as all the energy seemed to drain from his father as he slid down the wall to sit with Sammy on his lap, now sucking on his father's little finger while Dean leaned into his father's shoulder.

"You're right Dean. It does make you sleepy and hard to wake up. But that's not a good thing. I do it…"

And John couldn't think of a good enough reason any more. He knew why he drank each night, knew he needed the soporific effect to quiet the horrible vision of his wife's burning body each night, but to be so out of it that Dean had to try to take matters into his own hands… He already relied on his rock-steady older soon for too much, and while he might be there physically, he couldn't abandon his son nightly just to escape his own demons leaving Dean and Sammy to fend for themselves. He was just so tired of it all.

But obviously so was Dean. And while none of this was fair, he was supposed to be the adult here.

John looked at his sons, a new resolve forming. For his sons, for the sake of his remaining family. They were all that each other had.

"Dean, I'm not going to drink any more, from now on. Ok, Champ? It's not good for me and it's not good for Sammy. We'll get Sammy some medicine tomorrow to make his teeth better and then we'll all take care of each other. Ok, tiger?

"Ok, Dad," yawned a very sleepy Dean, unaware of the momentous decision his improvised efforts at parenting had prompted. He was now all but asleep on his father's shoulder. "I'll look after you and Sammy too."

And as the two boys succumbed to sleep with their Dad on the kitchen floor, Sam and Chris were gently pulled from the bittersweet memory.

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TBC