Looking For Space

Author: Cheryl W.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dean, Sam or any rights to Supernatural, nor am I making any profit from this story.

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CHAPTER 12: Weighed Down

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For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

~ Romans 8:18

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Dean woke to raised voices, which really, wasn't anything new. Wondered what Sam and his Dad were fighting about now…when he remembered he was in Caleb's motel room and the voices he heard were Mac and Caleb's. Hardwired to a be a referee, Dean pushed the covers back and rolled out of bed, almost went to one knee as he tried to put his full weight on his bad leg. So it was more a hobble than a walk that got him across the room. Opening the bedroom door, he was suddenly privy to the conversation.

"I know I called him but now's not the time for him to storm in here, barking orders and interrogating Dean," Caleb heatedly retorted to whatever his father had said.

"Caleb, John's his father, he has every right to be here. He should be here," Mac insisted but in his calm, therapist tone he liked to pull out when tempers were high.

Both men swiveled to face Dean when the fifteen year old spoke. "You called my Dad?!" Dean angrily hissed, his irk aimed unflinchingly on Caleb. "Why would you do that?!"

Caleb sighed, ran a hand through his hair as Dean limped into the middle of the room. "I called him two days ago because I wasn't getting through to you, because I was scared," he admitted with raw honesty. That did him no good in Dean's eyes.

"That was your crap to work though!" Dean nearly shouted. "You didn't have to call him. Go running off to your mentor. What, you needed more brownie points with him even after your all-star hunt?! Thought ratting me out that I was misbehaving would get you more high praise from the mighty Knight."

Dean turned on his heels before Caleb answered, was furiously making his way back into the room, to retrieve his shoe and get as far away from Caleb as he could. But the jerk only followed him into the bedroom, stood over him as he yanked his shoe onto his uninjured foot.

His tone soft as he watched the kid's frantic actions Caleb explained, "Dean, I thought you needed him here, that he could stop your dares." 'Make you see that your life wasn't expendable.' But all Reaves' words got him was a shoulder-check by Dean as the boy hobbled out of the room, apparently on a mission to get his other shoe that was left by the couch.

Knowing Dean's goal, Caleb darted ahead of the injured boy, snagged the shoe off the floor and held it behind his back, which earned him an unholy glare of death from Dean. "Deuce, just…calm down. I didn't tell your father about the dares." Dean didn't need to know that was because John hadn't given him a chance to tell him, had shut him down long before the conversation could get there. Seeing some of the fury drain away from Dean's features, Caleb continued, "I told your dad that you were pushing me away…pushing Mac away, that you needed him." But that statement undid some of his good works.

"Well, I don't," Dean growled, making an unsuccessful grab for the shoe behind Caleb's back. "Fine, I don't need the stupid shoe." Turning for the door, he found Caleb blocking his way with his freaky tall body. "Get out of my way, Caleb."

"No," Caleb quietly but firmly replied. Then he tossed the shoe to his dad, who deftly caught it. Then, latching onto Dean's arms, he held the boy in place as he crouched down so Dean didn't have to look up at him, thought he was towering over him in a sign of aggression. "Deuce, I think you need to talk to your dad, tell him how you're feeling."

Dean's eyebrows rose to his hairline and his laugh was a bitter bark. "How I'm feeling?! Have you met John Winchester?! He doesn't care about feelings…he cares about the hunt….about his soldiers obeying his every command."

And Caleb couldn't dismiss that out of hand, had the same take on John some days. Ok, most days. Faltering in the belief that this was the right way to go with this, Caleb looked to his Father, wanted someone to tell him he was doing what was best for Dean.

Sitting Dean's shoe on the nearest chair, Mackland crossed over to the two boys he loved dearly. "Dean, why don't you sit down, take the weight off that leg."

With ill grace, Dean allowed Caleb to turn him around and steer him back to the couch, tensed for the upcoming confrontation when Caleb flopped on the couch beside him and Mac claimed a seat again on the table he had hours before. He headed off whatever doctor crap Mac was about to spew with a biting goad of "You aiming for a hat trick, want to be a medical doctor, the scholar and a psychiatrist now, Mac?"

Finding he was still thin-skinned when it came to verbal assault from Dean, Mac looked to Caleb, understood why his son was hesitant to push Dean too far. But their earlier conversation, before Joshua had called to give them a heads up that John was headed their way, replayed in his head.

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"Dean says he's done with the dares. Do you think…..is he?"

"Caleb, you showed him how much he's loved, how much he is needed. He won't forget that. Will think of the consequences to others for his reckless actions."

"So more responsibility on his shoulders, another guilt trip?"

Mac sighed. "It's how Dean values himself: what his family thinks of him and needs from him. We can't break that part of him away, Caleb, even if we wanted to. But I am afraid that's an emotional roller coaster, that he might swear to never be reckless again but might fall into that habit to make himself feel better if we don't get things out in the open, prove to him that he has value in and of himself, even when those he loves are mad at him, hurt him.'

"How?"

And Mac hadn't had an answer to that…because he wasn't a psychiatrist.

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Said as much aloud to Dean now. "I'm not a psychiatrist, Dean. I'm just someone who loves you and is worried for you."

Dismissing Mac's declaration of love as a shrinky tactic, Dean scathingly repeated, "Worried for me?! If you gave a crap about my happiness, you won't have called my Dad, wouldn't sic him on me just because I wasn't toeing the line for Damien. I get to have my own life when I'm not a hunter, when Dad's not around. But now you screwed that up. He'll probably have me doing hunts solo or workouts or …or someone checking in on me to make sure I'm always being the hunter he's grooming me to be, even when he's not around."

Caleb's blood ran cold at Dean's assumptions because they might not be that far off. He shot a panicked look to Mac. "Dad, maybe John doesn't have to be told everything."

Mac fought down a sigh. Caleb's crumbling resolve wasn't helping matters. "And how did that work out for Dean when you didn't tell John his son ran away to you." Because Caleb would bravely face John's wrath but was ever vigilant to not subject Dean to it.

"Dad doesn't have to know anything about this. If you two don't tell him…." Dean plotted, beseeching eyes going from Mac to Caleb

"Joshua knows about your river stunt…and then there's the Lositros kid. Dean, this will all come out sooner or later," Caleb realized.

"Ok, but …it's no big deal. If you hadn't overreacted and called him…" Dean began to rebuke his best friend.

"Overreacted?!" Caleb loudly repeated, shifting to the edge of the couch so he could glare at Dean. "You almost died! Four times!"

"Four times?! No way, once….maybe," Dean vehemently argued.

"Maybe?! The tram fell, shattered into a thousand toothpicks?! A tram you were going to get in!?" Caleb pointed an accusing finger at Dean. "So don't tell me some fairy tale about you maybe dying."

"Boys!" Macklack sharply called, finally bringing order back to the room. "I think we're straying from the point."

"The point is, this is none of your business!" Dean growled out his often touted line of the past week.

"You are my business!" Caleb fervently declared. "Your well-being is always going to be my business!"

Mac held up his hands before the conversation could escalate. "Ok, ok," he placated before he reached out, laid his hands on Dean's knees and got the boy's full attention. "That's the main point: your well-being. That's all we want. For you to be ok, Dean."

Dean ducked his head down at Mac's unmitigated concern for him, mumbled, "I'm ok."

"That's all your father wants too, Dean," Mackland vowed and knew how true that was, even though John was bad at showing it, especially to his sons. "He wants you to be safe, for you to know how to keep yourself safe."

"To keep Sam safe. That's my job number one," Dean shot back, eyes raising to Mac's, daring the Scholar to lie to his face. "I haven't forgotten my place in the family and that's all Dad will care about." Then he pushed Mac's hands off his knees and surged off the couch. Limping across the room, he ripped the door open and started down the hallway.

"Well, that family session went well," Caleb snarked as he grabbed the shoe Dean had left behind and tore off after his best friend.

No one was left in the room to hear Mac do the famous impersonation of "I'm a doctor, man, not a psychiatrist." And at that moment in time, facing off with some alien life form like Doctor McCoy would have to do seemed more preferable to having to mend the heart of not only one boy, but two.

Mackland grumbled to the room at large, "John, for once in your life, drop your titanium walls and tell your son you love him. Do it before you lose him for all of us."

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Dean hit his motel room running, well, limping fast. Was cleaning up like mad, stuffing things back in bags, leftover food was being tossed into the refrigerator or the trash can, and his bed made so a quarter could bounce off it. All in preparation for his Marine Dad's arrival.

And as much as Caleb understood the ritual, did it enough times with his home when his Dad was returning after being away a few days, there was a measure of fear in Dean's action. That there wouldn't be a disappointed sigh but a physical blow if he failed to clear away all evidence of his pigsty lifestyle the last month. Somewhere down deep, that hurt Caleb to witness. From his stance just inside the doorway, he assured, "It's going to be ok, Dean."

But Dean shot him a derogatory glare. "Says the man who ratted me out."

Caleb's stomach turned at the "ratted" accusation even as he knew it was accurate from Dean's point of view. Stood there silent as Dean finally took a seat on the edge of his bed but wasn't expecting the kid to pull his injured foot onto the bed, take off his shoe and begin to unwrap the bandage around his ankle. "Whoa whoa!" he exclaimed, crossing to Dean lightning fast and grabbing the kid's hand before he could unravel more of the dressing. "What are you doing?"

"Like I told Mac, I don't need the stupid bandage on," Dean bit out, yanking his hand from Caleb's grip. But Caleb didn't go away, instead he sank down on the bed at Dean's side and held his gigantic hands above the boy's ankle so the Dean couldn't finish the job he had started.

"You're not undoing Mac's hard work," Caleb stated in the tone he liked to throw around when he thought he was lead hunter over his younger charge.

"Right, okay. Well, why don't you scurry back to your old man and let me deal with mine," Dean drawled bitterly, wanted Caleb long gone before his Dad made his appearance.

The light bulb went off in Caleb's head. "You want to remove the bandage because you have no intentions of telling your Dad you hurt your ankle."

"It's just a stupid sprain. You and Mac totally have the freak-out-about-nothing response down pat."

Caleb chose to clench his jaw instead of ticking off all the reasons his "freak out" was called for. Instead, he silently rewrapped the section of the bandage Dean had loosened and secured the snap before he met Dean's frustrated expression. Would have given the kid a stern talking to …if he didn't know that, at the heart of Dean's reaction, was fear. As if that wasn't bad enough, Caleb felt it too. The fear that John would storm into the room and make everything worse, would hurt Dean when he was vulnerable, would unknowingly prove to Dean that everything he thought, that he was just a weapon to his father, that his life was expendable on a hunt, that if he was gone…John and Sammy would get over it, was somehow true. And Caleb knew that was the farthest thing from the truth.

"I know Johnny's crap at showing it, but he loves you Dean." And Caleb knew that as an irrefutable fact. Knew that John would crumble apart if something happened to either of his boys.

"Did I ask for a chick flick moment?" Dean sneered, making to move off the bed and away from Caleb but the twenty three year old caught his wrist in a gentle hold, forestalling his departure.

"He'd do anything to keep you and Sam safe. You saw how upset he was when Sam went AWOL."

"Yeah, that's Sam," Dean bitterly clarified. "And was it about fearing for Sam's safety or pissed he disobeyed his ranking officer and went off the reservation? Guess Sam should be lucky he didn't get fifty lashes for desertion. But then again…this is Sam we're talking about."

And Caleb was starting to finally get it, to see more of the missing pieces of the puzzle. "You think John only loves and worries about Sam? Dean, that's…"

But Dean yanked his wrist out of Caleb's hold and surged off the bed, hobbled to the table and began to wipe it down. Course Caleb trailed him there.

As much as Caleb wanted to out and out deny Dean supposition, he couldn't, but he could see what Dean didn't, that John wasn't acting that way for the reasons Dean thought. "Since your mother's death, you've been his anchor."

"Yeah, weighting him down," Dean grumbled with self-hatred, let Caleb spin him around to face him.

"Keeping him from drifting away, shattering apart," Caleb tenderly corrected. "When he needed someone to keep Sam safe while he tried to save you mother, he put baby Sam in your arms. When he had no one to tell him everything would be alright, you told him it would be. When he was drowning in the despair of finding monster after monster in the world he had thought was safe, you proved to him that there was still good in the world, in his world. Dean…it might not have been fair, but you've been holding your family together since day one, been safeguarding Sam's innocence and John's heart."

Dean turned his head away, felt his eyes welling. "What if I don't want to do any of that anymore?" he choked out, had done the thankless job for what? To be abandoned, to be forgotten, to be relegated to bait, to be a weapon, a crutch.

Caleb's heart broke more at the boy's question because he didn't have an answer for that, didn't know how Dean could change his role from anchor to child again. How John would survive if Dean did that, gave up all the duties he had taken on out of love. So he simply pulled Dean into a hug and said nothing, offered nothing. Not even hope. Couldn't, not when it could be a lie and he wouldn't do that to Dean again, wouldn't be another person who blindly hurt Dean, used him, relied on Dean's wholly selfless and good heart as if he didn't know what it cost Dean.

Caleb wasn't all that surprised when the fifteen year old pulled out of his hold a few seconds later, wiped a hand over his face to remove the despair like some magic trick. And it seemingly worked because John's tough little soldier was back. "You know what, all this drama is over nothing. He won't care," Dean bluntly stated as much as challenged. At Caleb's 'what the heck are you talking about' look, he clarified, "Dad won't care about the dares."

"He'll care you almost died doing them," Caleb shot back, but he couldn't forget his conversation with John on the phone, how the man had just blown off his fear for Dean.

Dean pulled on a smug smirk. "'Almost' is like 'close'…it only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Doesn't count. So tell whatever cock and bull story you want, it won't matter. You know why….because no one died, I didn't disobey any of Dad's rules and I'm still hunting fit." Then he took a laid back pose on the bed like he didn't have a care in the world.

Caleb almost pointed out that Dean and Jason trespassing, running the tram, and destroying private property was calling attention to himself, and therefore was breaking one of Johnny's rules. But he didn't want Dean thinking John's upcoming lecture was about rules instead of love so he chose to not mention that. "You risked your life, could have been in that tram when it fell."

"'What if's aren't really Dad's thing," Dean unworriedly countered. "He deals in facts. No harm, no foul."

Caleb continued to protest. "But he…"

"Isn't Mac!" Dean shouted back before he tried to reclaim his nonchalant attitude. "He's not Mac, Damien. He's not going to make me hot chocolate, pull me into a hug and swear that the big bad world will never hurt me. Won't tell Sammy he doesn't have to do the family business, won't tell me that I'll never have to be bait again. One thing I can count on with dear old Dad…he doesn't lie, not to me." No matter how much Dean wished that he did. That his Dad hadn't told him how his Mom had died, that there were monsters in the world, that he and Sammy weren't safe, that he had to be vigilant and keep himself and his brother safe.

Before Caleb could think how to respond, they both heard the rumble of the Impala's engine, knew that John Winchester was about to make his whirlwind appearance. And Caleb felt sick to his stomach with fear, not that John would ream Dean out…but that he wouldn't. That Johnny would react like Dean thought he would, that he wouldn't care Dean had nearly died, maybe had wanted to die…would only care that his son hadn't die. And that just wasn't going to be good enough. Not by a long shot.

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TBC

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Thanks for reading & reviewing.

Have a great day!

Cheryl W.