The Wellspring
Chapter Four - Kitten
Sam isn't sure how he feels about this. It's one thing that he and his brother hunt ghosts and shit for a living, it's another thing altogether to do it while having a sick kid in the back seat - a sick kid who just happens to be a genetically engineered killing machine.
"I'm a genetically engineered killing machine," Alec says again.
"You said that already," Dean reminds him from the driver's seat. "You've said that five times, in fact."
"Then why am I still here?"
The boy's frustrated. He doesn't understand Dean. Sam gets that. Dean's pretty complicated considering he's such a simple guy.
"Why wouldn't you still be here?" Dean replies.
"Because I'm a genetically engineered-"
"-killing machine. Stop being a broken record, dude. That's not what we're made of."
Dean's already attached to the kid. Sam can tell. His big brother is looking at Alec the way he looks at Sam, like Alec belongs to him. Like Alec's always belonged to him.
"I'm not yours," Alec says. "You have no reason to keep me in this car with you. You have no reason not to return me where you found me."
"Why the fuck would we do that?" Dean asks, and Sam can tell his brother's patience is wearing thin. "You're a kid and they did horrible things to you. Why the fuck would we take you back to them?"
"You have no reason to trust me!"
"And you have no reason to trust us."
Alec groans and kicks the back of Sam's seat. Sam glances at his brother's profile, notes the wide eyes and the clenched jaw.
"Alec..." Dean growls. "This is confusing. I get that, okay? But if you're frustrated, you swear or something. Or, if you're really mad, hit Sam. You don't take it out on the car. You never take it out on the car. Understand?" A stony silence follows the question. Dean prods,"Alec?"
Reluctantly, "Yes, sir."
Dean takes a moment to process his own surprise at the familiar phrase but nods to himself. "Good boy."
Sam, however, can't believe what he's hearing. A long arm strikes out and a large hand smacks Dean upside the head. Dean strikes back, punching Sam in the shoulder with an irate fist.
"Dude, what's your problem?"
"You just told him to hit me if he's frustrated."
"Yeah, so?"
"Better you than the car," Alec chirps from the back.
Dean grins, points a pleased thumb back at his little clone. "Good kid, isn't he?"
Sam groans, throws up his arms in his own frustration. He gives up, he really does.
They coast across Montana state lines. The drive is long, and the weather sucks - the rain drips, and then pelts, and then stops. Then it pelts again. Alec falls asleep, eventually, small hands wedged between his stomach and the Impala's leather and Sam forgets that the kid's a genetically-engineered killing machine, even kind of forgets that its his annoying brother's clone in the back seat of the car. Its just a kid, a sick kid with a hurting stomach, whose face is expressing pain even in his sleep.
"We should stop for the night, Dean. Alec should probably sleep in a bed."
"Yeah, probably."
"What are we going to do with him, anyway?"
Dean doesn't take his eyes from the road, even though Sam can tell he really wants to. Even in the dark, he can see his brother's hands tighten around the steering wheel.
"We're keeping him, Sam."
Sam sighs. "Yeah, I know."
The leather squeaks as his brother's body loses tension. "You...do?"
"Yeah."
"He's not really gonna hit you, you know."
"I know. He has your sense of humor."
Dean's bright smile glints in the darkness. "He does, doesn't he?"
"Yep. It's really unfortunate."
They stop at a seedy motel in Idaho. Sam wishes they had headed east, towards Bobby, but Dean had insisted that they get out of Montana state lines as quick as possible, and Sam had agreed. They don't really know how steadfast this "Manticore" crowd will be in their search for Alec, but they're not taking any chances.
Dean pays for the room. It's one bed, and there's no cot, but the Winchester brothers have sucked up their need for separation in these hard times - it won't be the first time in recent months that they've been stuck together in a bed.
"Alec's the barrier," Dean says decisively and Sam eases the little boy down onto the center of the mattress.
"What if he has to go to the bathroom?"
"He'll just have to crawl over you, then, won't he?"
Sam curses under his breath as Dean snickers to himself. They lower themselves into the bed, careful of Alec, and close their eyes. They fall asleep without another word.
Alec awakens to the sounds of soft breathing and a comfortable weight on the small of his back. The grogginess passes over him within a minute and he blinks, surprised with the knowledge that he's been asleep. Alec never sleeps.
Sam's face is the first thing to come into focus, his expression mellifluous with the quiet rhythm of his breathing under the mop of dark hair. Sam's hair is long. Alec kind of wants to touch it. Nobody at Manticore had long hair.
Hair is a strategically unsound accessory, Lydecker had informed them, and pictures had flashed across the screen. Pictures of hair caught in fingers and pulled taut, knives placed at the scalp. Pictures of hair and scalp separated from skulls, hanging from tree branches like trophies.
Alec remembers lining up single file at the end of each month, pair after pair of small feet waiting to march themselves to the chair, the chair each child left with a freshly shorn head.
Alec isn't sure how his fingers come to touch the tips of Sam's bangs, or how they come to twine themselves around the ends of the smooth tresses, but they do. He feels the hair between his fingers and his mouth falls open in wonder.
Sam's eyelids flutter. Alec jerks his hand away, forgetting their current position, and Sam flinches and curses at the rough pull, blue-green eyes batting furiously to focus.
"Alec?" Alec winces internally at the tone. "What the hell'd you do that for?"
The weight on Alec's back lifts and the thin mattress shifts beneath him as Dean stirs on his other side. "Sam? What-"
"Alec pulled my hair."
"M'sorr-"
"Don't apologize to him, kid. S'not your fault he has girl hair."
Sam glares at Dean over the top of Alec's head. "Of course you would encourage this."
"M'not encouraging anything, Sam. Now, why don't you stop whining and go take a shower or something before I decide to pull your goddamn hair?"
Sam huffs, but he throws his long legs off the side of the bed and tromps off to the bathroom. Alec doesn't turn to face Dean, but he feels a hand on his neck and then his cheek and then his head. He bats the hand away.
"And you call him a girl?" he asks indignantly.
"I didn't call him a girl. I said he had girl hair."
"Same thing."
Dean snorts. "Yeah. It really is." The silence is long. The walls are thin. They hear Sam shuffling around in the bathroom. The water turns on. The pipes moan and rattle in the walls.
Alec turns onto his other side, where Dean's eyes are there to meet him with a steady gaze.
"You feelin' better?"
Alec is feeling better. He nods.
"That radioactive goo gets you over salmonella poisoning pretty quick I guess."
"Stop calling my cat DNA radioactive goo. It's neither radioactive, nor goo."
Dean's mouth twists into a broad grin. "Goo."
Alec is tempted to punch him, but he doesn't. Instead, he asks, "D'you think Sam's mad at me?"
"Nah. He's just a bitch in the morning...and in the afternoon...and y'know, at night and stuff." Dean reaches over and ruffles Alec's hair. Alec is pleased, but he bats at the hand anyway. "So, like...we didn't get too much into the cat DNA bit yesterday."
"Maybe that's because you were too busy calling it radioactive goo."
"Yeah, well..." Dean reaches back. Alec hears the jingle of keys as Dean pulls them off the night stand.
"Where're we going?"
"Nowhere." Dean suspends the keys over Alec's face and shakes them. Alec blinks. Dean persists.
"What are you..."
"You have cat DNA, dude."
"So you're...aw, c'mon!" Alec hopes that his disgust is plain on his face, because, really...he's disgusted. It only makes it worse part of him knows that this action is something that he, too, would find humor in...if it wasn't at his own expense. "Sam!" Alec has a set of lungs on him when he wants to use them, and Dean jumps as Sam rushes out of the bathroom, dripping wet with a towel wrapped around his waist.
"Wha-"
Alec launches himself off the bed, and his arms are suddenly latched around Sam's middle. He peers up at the tall man with imploring eyes.
"Dude, did you see how fast he is?" Dean wonders in tones of deep awe.
"What is going on?"
"Dean's making fun of my cat DNA!"
Sam looks unsure of how to deal with this, and really, Alec's surprised at his own reaction. He's not one for touching people he doesn't know. Actually, he's not one for touching people at all, but this seems like a decent manipulation tactic. Harmless, yet undoubtedly effective.
He feels a hand pat his head. "It's okay, Alec. Dean makes fun of me all the time."
"But-"
"In fact, you've been helping him a lot as of late."
"Well, it's funny when it's you..."
Sam rolls his eyes, runs his hand down the back of Alec's head. "Yeah. It's funny when it's me." Alec digs his feet into the ground as the man pushes him away. He feels slightly indignant that this plan didn't work. "I'm going back to my shower. Don't yell like that again unless it's an emergency."
Alec opens his mouth to protest, but Sam has already disappeared inside the bathroom, the door clicking firmly shut behind him.
"Didn't go quite like you expected, huh, kid?" The smirk on Dean's face both delights and irritates Alec, though he doesn't understand why. He shakes his head in response to the question. "You really think Sam would kick my ass for you?" Alec shrugs. Dean grins. "He might try, actually...though, he'd never succeed."
"I could kick your ass."
Dean gives him a considering look. "Yeah, kitten, you probably could. Why don't you?"
"Because you don't bite the hand that feeds you. And don't call me kitten."
Dean's grin broadens. "Sure thing. Kitten." He pauses, soaking in Alec's glare with unrestrained mirth. "Now, why don't you show me that speed again?"
Alec judges the distance to the bed, cocks an eyebrow at Dean. "I could jump from here to there."
Dean chuckles. "You could not. That's impossible."
Alec flashes a set of gleaming white teeth at his wellspring of superior genes. "Wanna bet?"
"How much?"
"How much you got?"
Uneasiness flashes across Dean's face, replaced instantly with a bold determination. Alec almost dances with glee as the man reaches for his wallet. He's really glad these two walked into the barn that day. They're hilarious and they're easy money.
Dean's just a little pissed that he lost five bucks to a nine-year-old, but he'll get over it soon. Hell, the kid can jump. Like a cat, really. And it's freaking amazing. A lot of things about this kid are amazing.
"And this is Led Zeppelin," Dean says, shoving the cassette into the player with one hand while driving with the other. "Led Zeppelin is very important."
"Why are they important?"
"Because they just are. Some things are just important, Alec. That's one of the things you have to learn now that you're a real boy."
"Things aren't important without reason," Alec disagrees. "Why is Led Zeppelin important?"
Dean opens his mouth to respond, but Sam interjects, "Because Dean glorifies everything that he likes. Led Zeppelin is important to Dean. They don't have to be important to you, too."
"Are they important to you?"
"No."
"Well, what's important to you?"
Sam shuts up, which kind of worries Dean, but he throws in a save before the kid can start asking more questions.
"What's important to you, kitten?" Dean looks in the rearview. Alec holds his crisp morning winnings taut between two hands. "Yeah, I thought so. M'gonna teach you how to play pool next time we stop by a bar."
"You can't take a nine-year-old into a bar, Dean."
"Says you."
Sam huffs. Sammy's always huffing these days, but that's okay with Dean. Soon they'll be out of Idaho and Sam can huff some more when they stop to get Funyuns and some gas, which Sam will siphon out of another car.
They drive for several miles in silence, listening to Led Zeppelin's self-titled debut album. Alec bounces in the back seat and hums along, and Dean smirks to himself. Kid's full of energy when he's not sick as a dog. Or cat. Or whatever.
The phone in the glove compartment rings.
Alec stops bouncing. Dean turns down the volume. "I thought you got rid of your phones?"
"We did, Alec. It's another phone." Sam rifles through papers and weapons and shit, and by the time he finds the damn thing, its stopped ringing.
"The hospital doesn't have that number, though, right?"
"That's right."
"Bobby?" Dean asks. Sam nods. "I guess Alec's gonna have to learn the job faster than anticipated."
"What job?" Alec asks.
Dean exchanges a grim look with his brother.
Alec persists, "And who's Bobby?"
Dean feels kind of bad about this. Kid's weird ass life is about to get a hell of a lot weirder.