Not For Lack of Trying

Disclaimer: I don't own anything...

1993

Sam stood at the end of the pontoon in just his swim trunks. His arms wrapped around his torso at the slight chill in the early morning air, and he glanced back at the cabin for a moment before he looked back out at the lake with determination.

The day before, he and his brother and father had been out here. John had had a folding chair propped on the ground where the lake met the earth, and Dean had been sprinting up the floating dock and jumping wildly into the lake with goofy roars that made Sam smile, as though seeing Dean have so much fun, was fun enough in itself for Sam.

"Why don't you go swim with your brother, Sammy?" John asked before taking a swig from his bottle of beer.

"I...can't," Sam replied, nervous all of a sudden.

"What do you mean, you can't?" John narrowed his eyes. "You can't swim?" Sam shook his head. "Well that needs to change," he finished off the beer and threw the bottle down next to the four empty ones beside the chair, then grunted as he pushed up out of the chair.

A small glimmer of hopefulness was quickly thrust into fear when John clamped onto Sam's hand and started head onto the pontoon. "Dad?" Sam walked with him for a moment, until John had them on the pontoon. As it swayed with the weight of them, Sam slowed in his steps.

"Come on, Sam," John pulled at him. Sam began to struggle, panic brewing in his chest.

"What's going on, Dad?" Dean called from where he was wading near the dock.

"Sam's gonna learn to swim," he called back.

Dean watched the terrified eyes of his baby brother as he struggled against their father's insistent pull. "Uh, Dad, I don't think that's a good idea."

"He's ten damn years old, Dean," John replied. "He should know by now." He struggled to get a hold of the wriggling boy beside him, to scoop him up and toss him into the lake like his father had taught him.

Dean was scrambling up the pontoon as fast as his fourteen year old body would let him, fueled by his brother's frightened breathing as he struggled to get away from John. "Just let him alone, Dad!" Dean said as he pushed to stand, dripping with lake water onto the slick wood of the deck.

"He needs to learn," John argued.

"Not like this, he don't," Dean bravely grabbed his father's arm. And suddenly Sam was afraid for another reason. Dean was defying their father; stopping him from doing something. Everyone grew stock still. The only movement was the not-so-gentle swaying of the pontoon, rocking from the force of the previous struggling, and Dean's quick ascent onto it from the lake.

Sam's mind had gone a little blank, by that point. Next he knew, he was sitting cross-legged in his and Dean's room, on one of the fold-out cots, listening to his brother and father as they fought in the kitchen.

"He needs to know how to survive in the water, Dean," John said, gruffly. "He should know by now."

"Not like we've had much time for swimmin'," Dean retorted. "When's the last time we even had a motel with a pool when the weather was okay for it?" John just grunted at that. "He'll learn, Dad," Dean told him. "Just not like this. You gonna just throw him into a hunt when it comes time, without training him, first? Hope he figures it out, then, too?" he pointed out.

Sam looked over at the closed bedroom door, waiting and listening for a response. None came. It wasn't for a good half a minute until he heard heavy footsteps leading away from the kitchen.

"Dad, where you goin'?" Dean asked.

"Next town over. Got a job to do," he stated without emotion.

"Alone?"

"Alone," he replied, sternly. "I'll be back tomorrow night. Don't even think about leaving here till I get back." The door slammed closed, and there was silence again.

Then there was crashing. Angry noises of things being thrown around in the kitchen, and it made Sam jump a little. He uncrossed his legs and turned so that they were hanging over the side of the cot. His hands gripped onto the thin mattress on either side of his lap, hesitating in his internal fight to either go make sure his brother was okay, or stay in his room to avoid the risk of getting in his way.

Ultimately, he chose to stay put. Dad was angry at Dean because of him. No use going in there if that might mean Dean was mad at Sam for that fact.

Eventually, the anger-fueled destructive tantrum stopped. Sam strained to listen for anything else. After some cupboards opened and closed, he heard the stove click on, and the metal of a pan clink onto the burner. Five minutes later, the door to the bedroom opened. "Come eat," Dean told him, shortly, then turned back to return to the kitchen.

Sam stood and slowly made his way after him, glancing around at the mess of items on the floor, as Dean put a bowl on the table and filled it with ravioli. As Dean set the pan back on the stove, Sam sat down in front of his dinner, and Dean grabbed a beer from the fridge, easily popping the top off with the help of the end of his tee shirt.

"You shouldn't drink that," Sam told him. "Dad'll be mad."

"Shut up, squirt," he mumbled as he sank down into the chair across from him.

Sam picked up his spoon and started mixed the food around in his bowl, his gaze wandering back over to the mess on the floor. Softly he said, "Sorry, Dean..."

"'s not your fault," he replied, taking a swig from the bottle. "Eat your supper." Dean wasn't mad at Sam. He was mad at their dad. Maybe a little at himself for renting The Abyss a few months ago. He and Sam had watched it when John was off meeting with Pastor Jim one weekend. Sam had nightmares for a week after that, waking up gasping and coughing, thinking he'd been under water and not been able to get to the surface. Dean hadn't realized how much it'd affected him until about a month later, when they actually did get a motel with a pool, and the two of them had snuck out to it in the middle of the night. Sam had been excited, but as soon as they'd gotten to it, he was suddenly too afraid to get in. Dean thought maybe it was because it was dark. But now he knew that Sam had developed an irrational fear of being in the water. It wasn't really Sam's fault. Hell, it wasn't their dad's fault, either. But sometimes their dad's thought-patterns were a little messed up after a few beers, and Dean'd be damned if he let the man make the stupid fear even worse.

The next morning, Sam had gotten up extra early. He quietly cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, then snuck out to the pontoon, determined to get over his fear, and learn to swim before their dad came back. As he stood there, looking out at the water, he mentally prepared himself to calm down. He had to remind himself that this was not the ocean. The water wasn't nearly as deep as it was in that movie. And even though there were monsters in the world, there most certainly wasn't one in this lake. His big brother would know if there had been...

*~.~*

Dean grunted as he turned over in his cot, cracking an eye open to check on his brother in the cot across the room. Only, the thing was empty. He glanced around the room before calling out, "Sam?" There was no answer. He sat up. "Sam, you in the bathroom?" he yelled a little louder. A creaking sound he knew to be the pontoon, moved his attention out the bedroom window, just in time to see his little brother making a run up the deck. "Sam!" he shouted, but he kept going, jumping a good few feet out into the lake. "Son of a bitch!" Dean scrambled out of the cot and tore out of the room, out the back door, faster than he'd ever run in his life, as he raced toward the dock. "Sammy!" he yelled, only seeing bubbles surface where he'd seen him disappear just a moment ago.

Dean's chest hurt with the force of his pounding heart, as he reached the end of the dock. "Sammy!" he shouted again, no longer able to see a sign of where he was in the water. Without another thought, Dean dove in. The water was colder than it had been the evening before. But he didn't allow that to hinder him. His eyes opened in the dim water, and he was at least grateful that the sun had come up just over the trees and lit up below the surface.

Dean twisted in the depths of the water, turning in every direction in search of Sam. His chest seized when he finally spotted him. Sam was a couple feet to Dean's right, floating there with open eyes; his poof of hair floating like a halo around his head. Dean screamed out in the water, losing his air, yet grabbed for his brother anyway, making quick work of getting them to the surface.

With some kind of super-human strength, Dean pulled Sam to the pontoon, and threw him up onto the deck before climbing up onto it, himself. "Sammy," Dean's voice shook as he turned the small body onto its back. Sam's eyes were still a little cracked open, his lips turning blue, now. "No, no, no," Dean shook his head, tears filling his eyes as he positioned himself over him, preparing to do chest compressions. He'd watched his father do it, before. Hell, he'd seen it in movies and on TV. Ironically enough, the very movie that caused Sam's fear had been his best teacher at it.

"Please, Sammy...please..." he pushed one, two, three times, hard into Sam's chest, desperately. And that's all it took before Sam was coughing, spewing lake water out of his pinkening lips, and sucking in much needed air. "Sam?" Dean's voice shook in a mixture of relief and the aftermath of the terror of almost having lost him.

"D-Dean?" Sam's eyes sought him out.

"Sammy," his voice broke as he scooped Sam up into his arms, holding him close, tight, yet careful.

Sam could feel Dean's chest, under his cheek, shaking. But it wasn't the shaking you get when you're cold. "Dean?"

"What were you thinking?" Dean meant to yell, but his voice was too broken. "You coulda died... Sammy, you coulda died..."

"'m sorry... I'm sorry, Dean. I just..." his arms snaked around Dean's back, gripping onto the wet shirt that was clinging to Dean's body. "I just wanted to learn to swim. I wanted Dad not to be so disappointed in me..."

"Godamnit, Sam," Dean could only whisper as he pulled Sam tighter to him. "Screw Dad, okay?"

"But...but you were fighting..."

"It's okay. I don't care about that. Sammy, I care about you. If you wanna learn to swim, I'll teach you. You don't do this crap without me. Not when you could..."

Sam felt him shudder, and it hit him then that he'd done wrong. "I'm sorry," his voice pinched, and tears swelled in his eyes.

"It's okay. It's okay, I'm not mad... Just...just never do that again, okay?"

"Okay, Dean," he replied, sniffling.

"Let's get you back inside and dry."

"But what about swimming?" he pulled his head away, looking up at his brother.

Dean looked down at him incredulously. "You just drowned, Sammy. Your nightmare. And you wanna go back in and learn to swim now?" Sam's eyes searched around in thought for a moment, then met Dean's again, and he nodded. Dean huffed a laugh, shaking his head. "Guess you got over your fear, then."

"The worst thing happened," Sam told him, "But you saved me. So I know everything else will be okay, now."

"That so?" he asked as he stood, helping Sam up on his feet.

"Yeah."

"You're one brave kid, Sammy. Stupid, but brave."

"Hey!" Sam looked offended.

Dean just smirked, swooping down to pick him up. "Hey, nothin'," he replied. "It's okay, anyway. Long as I'm around, I'll always save you, squirt. Just uh...try to avoid doing stupid crap that makes me have to, okay?" Sam grunted. "Scared the crap out of me, for real..." And Sam's annoyance left him, abruptly.

Dean began the walk back to the house, still carrying his brother in his arms. He expected a struggle, but instead he felt Sam's arms go around his neck to hug him, his head resting on the older boy's shoulder. He knew Sam was sorry. And he knew it doubly when he sat him down at the table in the kitchen and realized the mess had been cleaned up. For needing saving an awful lot, Sam made up for it by surprising Dean with little silent apologies. Even ones he didn't really need to give. Maybe even especially those times.

"You want breakfast?" Dean asked. "You eat up and dry up and if you feel okay, I'll take you back out and we'll have a swim lesson."

Sam smiled and nodded emphatically.

Dean poured him some cereal and leaned back on the counter, watching for any signs that he should take the kid to a doctor. He had to smile. Sam was definitely a Winchester. Brave and stupid. Well...more brave, really. And never giving up. He'd protect that kid until his dying breath. And if he had anything to do with it, it'd be even after that...

~End

AN: Hey, guys! So...check out authorsnote dot org for ancon2013 coming up!

Also, I've published my first book! If you'd like a link to the listing, hit up my email. It's my penname at gmail dot com :)