Author:Mirrordance
Title: The Least I Can Do
Summary: Whenever he doubted himself, he drew on the memory of his son, battered but unbeaten on the stand, telling Social Services to screw themselves and just give him back to the best dad in the world. Dean is 16 and Sam is 12. The Winchesters fight to stay together.
Hi guys! Thanks for the reading, the C&Cs and the alerts. There'll be a more expanded thank you list and responses to any queries in my standard post-story afterword, which will be posted on the third and final installment of this fic, along with a preview of two new fics for Supernatural that I'm working on. Hope you stick with me for those too. Anyway, without further ado:
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The Least I Can Do
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2
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April, 1995
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The tiny waxy paper cup had a cheesy, cartoon-like print of steaming coffee cups with swirling contents in deep, dark brown and sand beige. It was made in Indonesia, out of recyclable materials. Every cup had a quirky "quote" printed on it. The last one of his said, for one reason or another, "You're a good friend."
A fresh cup crossed his distracted view, right at the quote: "Blood is thicker than water."
Huh?
"Coffee?" Sam asked him. John looked past the cup up to the already-considerable height of his twelve-year-old.
"Thanks, son," he said gruffly, taking the cup from the other's hand. He took a good, scalding gulp. It was hot and strong, more caffeine that coffee, more bitter than flavorful. It was not quite the way he liked his coffee, but just the way he got used to it. He put it down on the table beside him, only to find there was almost no room, what with six cups already sitting there, all in some form of middle-finish. His brows rose in surprise.
"Sorry dad," Sam said with a grimace, and he was moving so jerkily he wouldn't even sit down with his father in the waiting room, "I was walking around, kept thinking I must have been gone a long time, thought I'd get you something. I guess I haven't been gone that long after all."
"You should lay off of these for awhile," John said, mildly.
"What? -Oh," said Sam, "I actually haven't had any yet."
"At the rate you're going?" John asked, "That's a bitch."
Sam smiled, marginally, before his face shrank into itself again, "What's taking them so long?" He growled, sat down beside his father for two seconds, before he popped back up to his face and began to pace again. Again. This was not a new conversation. John watched him dart back and forth. Sam did not go from one end of the waiting room to the other, but set up invisible lines that he kept to religiously. Once, a nurse got in his way. He literally paused, and waited for her to move aside, before continuing in the same, trodden path. His Sam was really an odd one.
"Where'd you get all the money from, anyway?" John asked, in an effort to calm his son a little bit.
"I didn't have any," Sam said with a distracted shrug, walking, walking. John thought there was something about him that was Little-Napoleonic, intense and young and restless, "I just stood there pretending I lost my buck. Someone's always willing to give a kid a cup of coffee for his dad."
"Seven times?" John asked, skeptically, not sounding impressed.
"Of course not," Sam replied, still preoccupied, "The other times I hung out at the cancer wing, let people there make their own conclusions and feel sorry for me and whomever I'm visiting there."
Shaggy hair and sad eyes. Yeah, John thought, That would do it. Sam tended to have that intelligent, precocious orphan look.
"There are eight floors to this hospital, dad," Sam rambled, "About three machines to a floor so that's twenty-four vending machines in total to try something new with. Not counting charitable cafeteria ladies and fully-stocked doctor's lounges."
I think I raised a con-man.
Or Dean did, John corrected himself.
He had to stop kidding himself that Dean hadn't done most of the rearing on this one, for all its good and bad. He felt really sour about that, sure. What father wouldn't, especially after that last slip-up, Sam calling Dean "dad." But then again, he had made Dean, didn't he, so there must have been a certain level of transference there.
Dean...
God.
Sammy's right. What the hell is taking so long?
"Mister Winchester?"
He jumped right off of his seat. It still surprised him sometimes, being called by his real name. They were in the middle of one of their rare forays into semi-normalcy. John was nursing an injury, and Dean was working up to finish high school. It made sense to just lie low for a little while. As much as possible, he fought for his boys to finish high school under their real names. While he wanted them on the road with him, he also found their studies important and useful for the job. That it lent them have some semblance of normal for the present and a chance at normal for the future closed the deal. It tended to be damned inconvenient, but when was his life ever easy?
"How is he?" Sam blurted out, breathless, as if he was bursting out of his skin.
"He's stable," the doctor said, and John allowed himself a single breath of relief before he made a step toward the doctor.
"I wanna see him."
"Mister Winchester..." the doctor hesitated, biting at the corner of his lip, and motioning for John to sit back down.
"Everything else can wait, doc," Sam added literally shaking a leg in anxiety, "Is there something wrong with him? Can't we see him now?"
John watched the doctor's face carefully. He's done enough investigations to know when he was about to hear something he may not want to. The doctor before him was young, had a kind of careful fire in his eyes, as if he was angry and reining it in just-barely. He expected this, somewhere deep inside, that one place where his father's heart feared and cowered. That one place he was helpless. It's just that he did not let himself think about it until he was sure Dean was going to be fine. But this was not the first time he'd been looked at like this, no. Like he was some kind of a criminal.
John jerked his head at Sam. "You can go ahead, son."
Ever-perceptive, Sam's brows furrowed. "Dad...?"
"Sam," John said, sternly, "Your brother needs you, all right? Let me just talk to his doc here for a moment."
It was easy as pie to get rid of Sam even at his nosiest. All he had to say was Your brother needs you and it was a card John could always, always rely on.
"Where?" Sam urgently asked the doctor. The man called for a nurse and gave her instructions to bring Sam to the recovery room, before he turned toward John.
"Mister Winchester," he said, setting his jaws, "I think you know what this is going to be about."
John put his hands up in a kind-of resigned manner. "It's not the first time I've run into a well-intentioned idiot who tells me I can't look after my boys."
The doctor crossed his arms over his chest. "So you know I have to ask you questions."
"Yeah..." John said, sinking back to his seat. His knees felt weak, weary from the injury he's been nursing for days and the worry he's been strangled with the last few hours.
"How exactly did your son become injured?" the doctor – Doctor Dante, his name tag read – asked him, as he settled down a seat away from John, clipboard and pen and paper in hand.
There was this haunted house, John's mind filled in, wearily dry, I thought it was a fairly easy job, that even on the mend I could handle it. 'Sides, I was pissed as hell at both my sons so I left 'em behind, thought I'd do this one on my own. I was kissing my ass goodbye when I realized that he followed me, and his impressionable younger brother followed him. He saved my life. Just before the roof fell right under his feet. Kid tended to be unlucky that way...
"He's a kid," John grunted, "It's an abandoned house with a local legend. These two things have a way of finding each other. And then he fell."
"He tends to fall down a lot," Dante said with a decidedly suspicious frown, "There's a lot of damage on his body, Mister Winchester, some very serious and many more from long before tonight's fall. I consulted with a forensic doctor. But if you can furnish us with medical records--"
"I'm not good at keeping 'em," John said.
"Then we can go through a detailed medical history together," said Dante.
"What?" John snapped, "Gimme enough rope to hang myself with? You ask me, I tell you what's going on, you twist it around... like I said, this isn't the first time I've run into the likes of you."
"You were investigated several years ago. They said that you were an acceptable father," Dante said, "I looked your file up."
'Acceptable' father, John thought sadly, feeling as if he was stabbed in the gut.
"Same thing's gonna come up this time," John said, though he had a cold feeling about this round. Falling under the eye of Family Services a second time never turned out very well for anybody.
"I have to let you know," said Dante, "That I'm filing a child abuse complaint against you with protective services."
"You are?" snapped John sarcastically, "That's surprising."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Winchester," said Dante, "But I am doing what I think is best for your children."
"A life without me, right?" growled John, wanting to floor the bastard, "That's fucking grand of you." His mind was a whirl, he was going to start throwing punches except that would have made things infinitely worse. He rose to his feet and took a deep, calming breath.
"If you don't got anything else to say," he growled, "Take me to my son."
" " "
June, 1995
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Dean shifted in his seat, nervous and uncomfortable, as the lawyer for the FIA walked toward him. "Why are you here, Dean?"
The teenager shrugged, and then winced when it hurt him. Smothered the wince, ended up with this irked expression. "You scared Sammy. He said you were tearing our family apart."
"Did your dad tell you to come here?"
"No," Dean replied, looking at his father wryly, "I wish he did. He should have."
"Are you in school, Dean?"
"Most of the time," he replied, "I'm... I was finishing high school, until the accident."
"Tell us about the accident. Tell us about that night you fell."
"I was being stupid," Dean answered, scratching the back of his neck, "Haunted house, local legend. Teenagers and dares. I went. I fell. That was it."
"Our forensic pediatrician examined you carefully," said the lawyer, "Many breaks and hurts over the years."
"I'm a guy."
"Your level of injury is over 500 percent the standard levels of professional athletes and extreme sports enthusiasts, Dean," the lawyer pointed out, "We can hardly attribute all that to casual roughhousing, could we?"
Dean bit his lip in thought, wondering how he was going to explain this one.
"Does your father hurt you?"
"Are you crazy?" Dean snapped, "Of course not."
"Then what's going on?"
Dean glanced at his father. The lawyer was so sure he was an abused case. She had that closed expression that was annoying the hell out of him.
"I guess this is it, huh?" Dean asked, "This is my chance, right, tell him things I've never been allowed to before, get him back for all the things he's done to me and my brother."
"You will be protected by the law," the lawyer assured him, brows raising expectantly, as if she thought she had just reached pay dirt, and would be getting negative testimony against John Winchester from the best possible source at last.
"I request a recess," John's lawyer said, sounding mildly panicked, "The witness should be informed of--"
"I'll answer," Dean growled at him, gulping, nervous and uneasy.
" " "
April, 1995
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"Daddy."
Sam looked up at him with injured eyes, from the seat he carved for himself on the bed, next to Dean's hand, which he held in a death-grip. Sammy's seldom-heard, broken-voiced 'Daddy' was almost as scary as the sight of Dean, death-colored, death-still and nine-tenths buried in bandages and machinery.
"He won't wake up," Sam said, softly, "He always woke, whenever I called."
"You have to give him time," the doctor replied, "We sedated him very heavily, to allow his body to heal, and for the pain to be manageable."
"Are we looking at lasting damage?" John asked, "His back..."
"There will likely be chronic pain in the future," Dante answered, "But he will retain complete motor function. Paralysis is one bullet he dodged."
"One?" Sam asked, worriedly.
"Your unlucky brother tends to fall down a lot," Dante said pointedly.
"Not here," John snapped at him, "You can get the hell out."
"We'll speak again," Dante promised him, before walking out of the room.
"What's he talking about, dad?" Sam asked.
"Not now, Sammy," John sighed, walking closer toward Dean, and looking over his boy's body hungrily. He did look so damn damaged.
And I'm so damn sorry.
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June, 1995
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"I'll answer," Dean growled, gulping, nervous and uneasy. He averted his eyes from his father, looking chagrined, "Well what can I say, huh? I love the guy."
"You--" the lawyer stammered, surprised and disappointed.
"I do," Dean shrugged, "I ah... don't get to say that. But yeah."
"Why's it so hard to say that?" the lawyer asked, "Does he hurt you when you do? Doesn't he want you around?"
"Nothing like that," Dean said, looking sour, and though he didn't say it expressly, his expression made it clear he thought the woman was sick and reaching in the dark, "Since... since mom died, it's like I'm scared someone might hear me and take him away too. Stupid."
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May, 1995
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There was no mystery to Sammy's birthday wish that year.
He once wanted a host of very precise things, but today, he just wanted his brother to wake up.
There was no mystery either to Dean's gift which was, come hell or high water, whatever Sam wanted.
Just like that he was back, weak and in pain but awake, and the three Winchesters spent Sam's birthday satisfactorily eating healthy, flat, hospital food (Dean wasn't allowed to eat anything else and Sam was determined to keep him away from temptation) in Dean's room. No one complained. Dean was too tired, Sam too relieved, John too troubled by everything else that was brewing around them.
The CPS agent had already investigated the case over the last few weeks, and was ready to give his decision. But he had already asked for details on the boys' next-of-kin and John knew what that meant: they needed someone to take his sons in when they take them away from him.
He wanted to run. God, he wanted to fly. But Dean wasn't going anywhere, and god knew John had no intention whatsoever of leaving him behind. He had no intention of making their accusations true.
Or any truer, as the case might be. There was a part of him that understood full-well that kids, well-trained though they may be, had no place around guns and monsters. Then again, children and husbands weren't supposed to be without mothers or wives either, and so the hunt had to go on. It had to.
The day they took Sammy away was one of the hardest days he's ever had to live through in his life, and that's saying something, considering he hunted down monsters as a vocation and lost his wife at the hands of a demonic son-of-a-bitch.
They respected John's request that the change in custody be conducted off hospital premises. He knew that Sam would be more in control if he was away from his older brother, who had always been his safety net, the person he can be more hysterical than, the guy he expected to have his back and pick up any slack. He also knew that Dean wouldn't be reasonable at all about being torn from Sam and their dad, and the agitation could be damaging to his recovery.
He cursed the bastards that bore Sam away, even as he put on a tough face, in an effort to make Sam believe that everything would be all right. But the kid was at least as perceptive as Dean in situations like this, and, unlike Dean, he had the tendency to liberally call his father out on it.
"Stop lying to me, Dad," he said, "They're taking me away, I know it."
"Only for a little bit, Sammy, I promise," John implored him, "It's all just a mistake. They'll figure it out eventually. In the meantime, they need to make sure you're safe, before Pastor Jim gets here, or your mother's brother."
"Safe from you," Sam retorted.
John winced, saying, lamely, "It's all just a mistake."
"I'm going to a home, dad," Sam said, and the irony of that did not escape his young mind, "Like I'm a damned orphan."
Dead mother, dead father.
No wonder Sam could con his way into the things he wanted. He looked like an orphan. He felt like an orphan.
It was like getting kicked in the gut.
When they took Sam away, he was inhumanly calm, unbearably cold. He didn't look at his father asking for something, anything to be done. He looked at his father asking, why didn't you do anything? Past-tense, beyond recall, beyond reprieve, beyond repair.
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June, 1995
" " "
"Since... since mom died," Dean said, "It's like I'm scared someone might hear me and take him away too. Stupid."
A small, injured, self-deprecating smile. John recognized that one. It was the same one that got the kid everything he wanted, especially when he turned it toward a woman. He didn't know where Dean got that one. He sure as hell was sure it didn't come from him.
"You know," Dean paused thoughtfully, "You know the amount of food his bottomless sons could eat in five minutes costs more than what he made doing miscellaneous manual labor in an hour?"
"Putting food on the table for his children isn't the only thing a parent is supposed to give to a child, Dean," said the woman, "He should be keeping you safe and unhurt. He should be keeping you in school."
"He does," Dean insisted.
John winced in guilt.
"So then what's going on here?" she asked, "Why are you always hurt?"
Dean bit his lip in thought. His head shot up when a white-robed doctor walked into the courtroom with a wheelchair. He looked at the judge, imploringly.
More time, more time, more time, his hungry green eyes cried. The judge kind of just waved her hand in acquiescence. The doctor stood by attentively.
"We're not like everyone else," Dean said, "If we were like everyone else we'd have already killed each other. I spend all my meals with my brother and my father, except the ones I eat in school. We do our homework together--" Only the three Winchesters knew that translated to researching for hunts - "We hunt together. We travel together. I come out of a five-day road trip with my father and my brother with my sanity intact. We yell a lot, yeah, but its just about stupid, meaningless stuff. We laugh more. I can tell with a look, just one, if he's sick or he's worried or he's sad, or angry. I know exactly when I say something that changes his mood. I almost always know what he's about to say. Can anyone else say that, about their dad? To know him inside out? And still like what's there enough to fight tooth and nail for them? I'd kill for dad and Sammy. I'd die for them, easy."
"But why are you always hurt?"
"I..." Dean hesitated. John ground his teeth, nervously. Dean knew him inside-out, yeah, but sometimes, his eldest still surprised him.
"There's lots of reasons why anyone would want to take a jab at me," Dean said, with a small smirk, "We move around a lot. I'm always the new kid with the big mouth. Bullies don't like that. Girls tend to like me, I like girls, and their boyfriends don't like that. Anytime you're somewhere new you try to fit in. That's why you go to haunted houses and do stupid dares. Or buy nice stuff you gotta hustle at pool for. I win a lot, and I run my mouth a lot, so I do get my ass kicked a lot. Is it me or is my injury risk assessment getting higher here?"
"Judge," the lawyer sighed, "I have to point out that the injuries have ranged from minor cracked bones to severe stab wounds and burns. Can we truly just chock it up to youthful foolishness?"
"The man lives with me," Dean said, motioning for his father, "He shouldn't be getting a headache like this, he should be given a fricking medal. Or at the very least, an Advil. I can be a migraine. But he did well by Sam, didn't he? He must be doing something right."
He looked at the judge, begging. "Please. Please. I'm not gonna get any better 'til they're around. I'll change, I'll behave, I promise. You won't see me again. But don't take all this out on him, or on Sammy. My dad's the best dad in the world. He's a great guy, he is. Life's been tough, you know, so he had to get tough back. He has to do a lot of stuff for a lot of people and that's hard with me and Sam around but he's doing the best he can. 'Sides, Sammy told me he read that every effort should be made to keep the family together first, before anything else. That to keep us apart is the last option, right? And that if the evidence available can be applicable to both guilty or not guilty, then the party should be given the benefit of the doubt, huh? Huh? Please. They're all I have."
" " "
The judge ruled in their favor.
There was no fooling around now, John was hip-deep in the system of Child Protective Services, but he gets to keep his boys, and that afternoon, after riding with a drowsy, exhausted Dean on the ambulance back to the hospital, he drove to the foster home Sam had been staying in for the last few days to get the things he had left behind.
"You think Dean can go home with us soon, dad?" Sam asked, picking up his bag and slinging it over his shoulder; it was already packed, he's always been into forward-thinking and a good measure of hope.
"His doc said if he can walk around like that he'll probably survive being discharged in a day or two, depending on how he's doing after a few days and as long as he rests up," John replied, grabbing the bag from Sam and loading it into the back of the Impala.
"Oh good," Sam said, "I kinda miss him."
John smirked at the kid, as he settled in the driver's seat. "Kinda? I'd say a lot, wouldn't you?"
Sam just smiled slightly, murmured, "Hm."
John put the key in the ignition and said, lightly, "You know, you could have just told me Dean was well enough and met me somewhere and we could have just high-tailed it out of here."
"I told Dean that," Sam said, shrugging, "But he said he wants to put a wind up at 'em. He didn't like them much. I don't like 'em. Besides, no way were we gonna let them say those things about you, dad. You're not a bad father."
John just grunted, surprising himself with the naked, disagreeing honesty. The last few weeks was bound to get to him, after all.
"You don't think so?" Sam asked, softly.
For the longest moment, John didn't answer, and Sam was beginning to look disappointed, like this was one more conversation that wasn't supposed to happen, wasn't supposed to be heard.
"The way they were coming after me, Sammy," John said, voice low, eyes on the road because he felt stripped, "I was beginning to think it was something supernatural, you know, like some demon's messing with my head, getting good people to do these things to us. But there doesn't have to be anything supernatural about being a simple, flat-out bad father, right?"
Sam looked stricken, like he didn't know what to say. He wasn't like Dean, who patiently sat through their father's occasional, drunken, lonely rambling. He wasn't like Dean, who knew what to say, to make things seem better. His father had never opened up to him like this.
"Do you think at all sometimes that the things they say are right?" John asked him, "Tell your old man. I'm asking you if you think you or Dean are being wronged."
"Dad..." Sam's voice drifted, uncertain, scared.
"Nevermind," John sighed, "I shouldn't even be--"
"Asking me?" Sam asked, "Why not? 'Cos I'm a kid? When have we ever been normal, dad? Old enough for killing but not old enough to have decent conversations with?"
"Forget I asked," John snapped, and by his tone he was making it abundantly clear that he knew Sam's answer could only hurt him.
"There are lotsa things I wish I had," Sam said, playing with his ratty, too-used jeans.
"Sam, I said forget it--"
"You gotta listen this time," Sam snapped at him, "There's lotsa things I wish I had, and there are tons of things I wish Dean had. There's a good load of stuff I wish you had too. All we have is each other though, but a lot of times it's enough. Like all those things Dean said to the judge, you know. So... there's lotsa things wrong and that's just what it is, but you gotta be doing something right."
John glanced at his son's determined face.
"That's supposed to make me feel better?" John asked him, with a straight face, sure, although something inside him was coming alive again, after these last few weeks. Sam was far more candid than Dean... underlying the reply was the naked honesty that Sam did find their lives lacking in many respects, but that there was something right about it too. That was oddly more comforting than any false relief. John knew he made mistakes, yeah, hard to miss. But he also knew he's always tried his best, and was relieved that his children understood that too, somehow.
"I gotta be doing something right?" John asked him, "Where the hell did you get that?"
"Dean," Sam said with a shrug, "So I'm sure he got that from you."
"So it's my fault, then."
"Everything is, dad," sighed Sam, contentedly, feeling his father's slightly easing burden.
"Well you're absolutely useless," John told him.
"Am not," Sam said, yawning. He looked tired, and John had to admit that the last few weeks since the accident had been rough on all of them.
"Getting Dean to court?" Sam continued, "That was my plan. You wanna know what Dean's plan was? Summon a ghost in the lawyer's house and then get rid of it, hero-like, save the day, get 'em to back off. Biggest I-told-you-so-ever."
John chuckled at the thought. "Well we both know your brother's a sick puppy."
" " "
Home sweet home, such as it is.
A few days after their triumph at court, the three Winchester men shuffled into their motel room, Sam leading the way with arms full of take-out and three duffel bags slung as if weightless over his lean shoulders, his father and older brother right behind him.
John watched as his lanky, precocious twelve-year-old placed the food on the small table and the bags on the ground, and turned to watch him usher in the stiffly moving, grimacing Dean. He held his eldest by a white-knuckled grip on the arm, and he could feel his son trembling from exhaustion and hurt from their proximity.
Sam closed the door and locked it behind them, and then salted the entrance, and the ledges of windows. He darted from the bedroom to the kitchenette to the bathroom, doing the same thing. They had odd habits, the three of them.
For instance, aside from the compulsively necessary salting, they also always rented out a double room with twin beds and ordered an extra cot. When the boys were younger, Sam and Dean shared a bed and their father had the other. When Sam started to grow inhumanly tall, their situation required another bed, which Dean had grudgingly taken over in deference to his father's bulk and his kid brother's height.
John always owned the bed by the door, to protect his sons from anything that had the balls to try and go through there without a Winchester's permission. Sam had the bed at the far end of the room, and Dean had the cot at Sam's feet.
Tonight, though, John deposited Dean to sit on his bed. Dean grunted at the landing, but otherwise just closed his eyes and kept his mouth shut. John didn't have to explain why the change tonight. The grievously injured never had to suffer through a cot, John wasn't going to have that and Dean was too tired to start an argument he couldn't win anyway. John would have preferred to have Dean on Sam's bed, furthest from the dangers of being near the door, since he was in no position to protect himself. But then John didn't feel like exhausting Dean with something Dean would never be too tired to argue about; Sam's safety. He wasn't going to take over Sammy's place, that's for sure.
John set about preparing their dinner, as Sam sat next to his brother and began to peel the leather jacket away from him.
"You good, Dean?" he asked, his voice low, worried but calm and soothing. They were a unit, the three of them. And for all the good and the bad of this setup, including his youngest's big, yapping mouth, John always knew that his boys loved him. It's just that sometimes... sometimes, watching them talk to each other in those quiet, disarmed tones, he felt as if he was watching a play with a two-man act.
"Thanks, Sammy," the other rasped, with an assuring, rakish grin, as his younger brother took the jacket and ran his hands over the material reverently, as if smoothening it out.
"You wanna lie down for awhile?" Sam asked.
"Yeah," Dean admitted, though he kind of just looked behind him at the headrest blearily, and did nothing else.
"Well?" Sam pressed, "You need anything else?"
"It ah..." Dean hesitated, "Gimme a moment, brat. It takes a kind of technique."
"What?" Sam asked, frowning.
"I kind of," Dean said, shuffling uncomfortably, his hands gesturing in a confused sort of loopy manner, "I kind of can't lean back yet. It ah... hurts less if I kind of, you know, like, land on my side and then just roll on over and shimmy a bit to the back and... like I said. There's a technique, involved."
John smiled slightly at Dean's chagrin, and Sam's sour and at the same time calculating frown, as if he was creating a three-dimensional plan of execution. John put down the food he was preparing, and walked toward his sons.
"Back and ribs still can't hold 'ya?" he asked Dean.
"I mean they can but it's just that--"
"No," Sam answered for his rambling brother.
"All right," John said with a grin at his eldest, "That wasn't so hard, was it?"
"You two ganging up on me now?" Dean asked, wryly, "That don't sound good."
John just shook his head in amusement, as he picked up one of the pillows from the bed. He turned it up vertically, and placed it flat against Dean's back, supporting it with his shoulder.
"Fall back, son," he said, "Full weight, now. Just fall back, I gotcha."
Dean complied, stiffly, still stubbornly carrying some of his weight, making him break out in a sweat and begin to breathe harshly.
"Dean," his father said in a clipped tone, 'Major Payne' out in force now, "Lean."
Dean sighed, and just did as he was told. He let his full weight fall against the pillow on his back, and his father's strong arms pulled him back slightly and reclined him slowly down, until he was flat on the bed. He sighed again, this time in satisfaction, as the mattress sank beneath him.
"Nice," he murmured, "Thanks, dad."
"We'll eat in a bit, sport," John said, patting his arm.
"Awesome," Dean murmured, already half-asleep.
"Should he be sleeping so much like that, dad?" Sam asked, softly.
"It's just the meds, Sammy," John said, ruffling his hair, "He'll be okay."
The three of them, all together now, would definitely be, somehow.
"I think I'll turn in too," Sam said, "I'm not really that hungry anyway. We can eat together, when he wakes up. You'll wake me up, dad?"
"You're a bitch to wake up, Sammy," John groaned, "But okay."
Sam beamed at him, and flopped over to his bed, asleep within minutes, his breathing even, likely thee easiest sleep he's had in weeks, just having his older brother in the same room with him. John watched them sleep grimly.
It was hard, doing what they did. A lot of the time, he doubted what the hell he was doing there, this crazy job, dragging two kids with him. The self doubt was always easy to access, and the damn feds have touched on the right buttons with him--
"Whatcha looking at?" his eldest grumbled at him, eyes opening to slits. He kept his voice low, knowing probably by the sound of the breathing that Sam was sound asleep.
John smiled a little, and sat next to Dean's arm on the bed. The eyes perforce opened wider, and settled the cloudy gaze on his father's face.
"Hungry now?" John asked, just as quietly.
"Nah, I'm good," Dean said, licking his lips. His father read the expression on his face, and got up to grab a glass of water. He returned to his spot next to Dean and lifted his head and held the glass to his lips. He felt Dean stiffen in resistance, so he tossed him a warning glare until he just let himself be helped.
"Thanks," Dean breathed, leaning back, "I'm spoiled, aren't I?"
"Rotten," John lied.
"You look sad," Dean said, "Not happy to have me back, huh?"
"Dean..." John hesitated, "I called up Jim a few days ago, you know, he sent in those statements for court? Well I was thinking you and Sam could hang out there for awhile--"
Green eyes widened, "I'm sorry, dad, don't leave us, I won't mess up ag--"
"It's not that, you knucklehead," John growled at him, hating that he would have to say this, "I messed up. I did. I don't want to get you or Sam killed."
"Well you can't shake me," Dean told him, simply, "I fought the government to keep our family together and now you're just gonna ditch me? I can fight you too, dad. So just give it up. We're in this together. I wanna help you. We'll find the thing that killed mom. We'll help people. What you're doing, I get it, I do. I really do, and you shouldn't be at it alone. We're staying together. All that sissy shit I said couldn't have been for nothing. It was degrading. Give a guy a little dignity here, old man. The least you can do is keep going. Keep trying. I know you can. I also know we'll win in the end. We just... we gotta keep going, okay? And we gotta stay together, 'cos we're stronger as a family, and well, finally Sammy's improving."
Even when he's asleep you take jabs at your brother? John asked, wordlessly, shaking his head at Dean, Tsk, tsk.
Dean just grinned, like a wily Cheshire cat. "You can't shake me. You know what else that means? Nothing can kill me."
"Nothing can kill you," John said, flatly, skeptically.
"Nine lives, sir."
"I'll hold you to that."
"And Sam'll live even longer," Dean said, looking mischievous again.
"Why's that?"
"'Cos only the good die young," Dean replied, "And the kid is just nasty. Did he tell you about his other plan? About summoning some ghost to the lawyer's--"
"He said that was your plan," John pointed out, chuckling lightly.
Dean frowned in thought, "Yeah it does kinda sound more like me."
John laughed, and affectionately ruffled Dean's hair. He hasn't done that in... in damn near ages. Dean looked stunned; he was sixteen, not... six. But his face reddened slightly, in a kind-of embarrassed pleasure, welcoming his father's affection easily.
John just smiled, and shrugged at him before rising from the bed and heading for his own cot. He supposed he could rest early tonight too.
To be concluded...
C&C's always welcome. 'Til the next post!