Warnings: Swearing, language, reference to leukemia, mention and reference to gun violence, mention of hospitalization, mention of John's A+ parenting, mention of character death, mention of physical violence, spoilers for the Neverending Story?, PTSD, mention of ressucitation, mention of homophobic violence, (mention of) homophobia, self-blaming, John Winchester's pov, mention of past-underage sex, mention of drunkenness, anxiety attack, panic attack
Chapter 27: Trial and errors
Sam's life seemed to be a succession of surrogate parents and it was quite uncomfortable to have suddenly several volunteer moms to take care of him.
Anna had filled the fridge with food portions carefully labeled and spotlessly clean that he had remained watching a long time after her departure.
"After the transplant, we had to be careful with infections." Castiel said behind him. "She kept the habit."
"A healthy habit." Linda Tran commented from her seat at the small kitchen table. She had almost completely covered it with legal papers, except for a corner where Castiel had placed his mug of coffee. Linda didn't make soup, she was not that kind of mother, but the day before, after her arrival, she had literally put Sam to bed after having decreed that he needed it. He had difficulty remembering the last time someone had tucked him in. Jess? At the time when they went to party after exams? He held his liquor better than her, but curiously, she was always more sober than him, and often he didn't remember having returned or going to bed. She had ended up developing her muscles by dint of almost carrying him in the stairs of their residence. The thought made him smile. He stopped halfway to the coffeepot, surprised. He was thinking about Jess and was smiling. It was strange but he decided not to dwell on it. Kevin entered the kitchen, hair disheveled and only wearing shorts.
Ten years ago, Sam didn't know the people who were now roaming his kitchen. Yet, he felt confident and enthusiastic as on his first day at Stanford. Castiel was looking at him thoughtfully while Linda was ordering her son to dress more appropriately.
"Dorothy is still at the hospital?" The young man asked, pulling a sweater and sweat pants. The state of his hair physically made Sam want to comb it. He poured himself a coffee and instead, on reflection, handed the cup to Kevin. The young man seized it without looking at him and sat next to his mother.
"Yes." Answered Sam, sitting in his turn. "Madison said we'd need a scalpel to tear her away from Charlie."
The little humor was meant to cheer Kevin up but it only got a smile out of Castiel and Linda. To hell with it. Kevin could sulk if he felt like it, Sam had other things in mind that the bad mood of the cellist. He was barely awake and already he had to force himself to relax his shoulders at the sight of the papers Linda was annotating conscientiously. He hadn't gone enough to law school really grasp everything, but he knew that the coming weeks would be long and nerve-wracking.
Actually, it had been a relief, the day before, to have Linda and Crowley at his side while he filed a complaint against his father and made his deposition. The producer had said nothing but had simply pressed his shoulder when exiting the police station. Linda had stood on tiptoe to hold him against her. He could feel at her way a bit gawky to pat his back that she wasn't used to it, and the idea that she had forced herself was more comforting than the embrace itself. But neither this nor a restless night had been enough to erase the bad taste he had in the back of the throat.
"You don't have to do that." Said Linda. "The complaint of Castiel will be enough to indict your father. You don't need to inflict the trial to yourself, no one will hold it against you."
Kevin felt Sam tense beside him. He shook his head, clutching his mug all warm between his fingers. The question was a foregone conclusion, it was for so long that he now felt stupid for thinking that things could be resolved otherwise.
Running away to Stanford had not changed much between his father and him. They had never really appreciated each other, and Sam had finally accepted that in the eyes of John he was only the little boy who was born shortly before the death of his mother. For that, he didn't actually manage to blame him. But Dean had always tried to be exactly what his father wanted, and now he was the one in a hospital bed "where the nurses aren't even hot". And it was unfair.
"I don't have to, but I want to."
There was nothing else to say. He could discourse for hours on the subject. On how Dean tucked him in as a child and made him believe that their father was a superhero, on how he had once again tucked him in after the fire and the death of Jess. On the times they had shared a dingy hotel room before signing at Crowley Records. On all the memories where it was Dean and never John who took care of him. This time, it was Sam's turn to take care of his brother, and he intended to do it well, to do it right to the end.
In the afternoon, on his way to the hospital, he realized there was something else he wanted to do well and right to the end whatever it costs.
He climbed onto the bed of his brother, bringing with him a few hints of memories of when they were small enough to sleep together in a child bed when one of them had a nightmare. At the time, Dean had more nightmares than he would never admit and Sam had never said anything when it was his older brother who came for a bit of comfort in the night.
He was surprised that there was still enough room for the both of them in one bed even if they had to fold their legs and Sam still had one foot on the ground, the leather notebook placed precariously on his bent knee.
"The album lacks something." Said Sam.
Dean nodded. "It doesn't make our hands bleed when we play it." He agreed.
"Nor the heart." He opened the book at the first blank page he found, there were very few left, soon they would have to change of writing material. "I think it's time for us to say everything we didn't say."
Dean sighed. "I don't know if I'm ready for that... we've already stripped quite a few times in recent years on stage. You're not the one who gotta bring his inside out in front of a crowd of strangers." He leaned back against his pillows, his arms crossed. "I don't know if I have to courage to."
Sam was chewing his pencil thoughtfully, nodding. "I don't know either. But I think it's worth trying." Dean knew, even before his brother looks up to him that he would have his starving puppy eyes, and that he had already lost the battle. "At least I need to try. No matter if we never record it. If we never play it. I got things to say..."
Deans smiled. "You've got no room left for a tattoo?"
Sam looked surprised a good second before shaking his head. His hair was falling before his eyes, too dirty to properly curl and Dean had to restrain to send him to the shower. Sam wasn't four anymore.
"Maybe I no longer need it." He looked at his forearms as if he had just tattooed them and shook his head, covering the ginkgo leaves with one hand. "What I've never said, I can bring it out now. Otherwise than on my skin."
Dean took the notebook and pen off his hands, settled them on his raised knees, his feet tucked under the thigh of his brother sitting in front of him. "Go ahead. What d'you wanna say?"
Sam was still massaging his arm. "That I did all that on my own. Falling apart after the death of Jess, hitting people or drums rather than trying to go through a period of mourning, I did it on my own. And healing too, I did it on my own." He looked up to his brother. "You kept my head above water for years, but recovering from something like that, you can only do it on your own. And I felt so bad that I didn't have the courage or desire to. It suited me to be miserable and to think it was because of her."
"What now?"
"Madison says it's okay to be angry, or to never get over it."
"That girl really helped you, huh?"
Sam shook his head. "No. Just, I refuse to be less than what she thinks of me. And she thinks I can live with that. Not fight against it my whole life. Just live with the fact that I lost the love of my life. And that it will always hurt. But it doesn't have to destroy me. I don't have to destroy myself for this."
Dean hadn't written down a single word. He wanted to cry and, on an impulse, he leaned to take his brother in his arms. He didn't take account of the sharp pain it triggered in his ribs.
"And you also can live with that." Sam said when he finally let go of him, pressing gently on the large bandage that he had on his side. "And you don't have to forgive. It won't make you... less than what you are to be angry and not accept what he did to you."
Dean settled against his pillows again, biting his lip. He had lost the habit of biting his labret that had been withdrawn for his operation, but it came back day after day.
"I'd like to be better than that." He said softly. "I'd like to be able to forgive him, just to be better than him."
Sam smiled. "I made peace with my own flaws. I'm not better than him, and I don't intend to forgive him anything. And that's what I want to talk about on this album. That you can not be perfect, you can have something very ugly inside, but it doesn't define you, and it doesn't have to burn you out either."
For a moment, Dean said nothing, he digested the phrase, savoring it, watching without seeing them the white lines of the notebook. Then he wrote the phrase at the top of the page:
"You can have this ugly side in you.
But it doesn't define you,
Don't let it consume you."
"When did I blink and miss the moment when my little brother became a man?"
Sam smiled and took the notebook back. "I did it behind your back. Rule number one of little brothers: always do everything on the sly!"
Dean burst into a laugh. He moved closer of his brother, leaned over the notebook, and while the song took shape, while they softly told each other things they had never told anyone, their heads ended up resting one against the other. There were so many themes to address, people to evoke, topics to look deeper into. Enough to make a brand new album, too heavy, too intimate even behind the poetic turns of phrase. But they wrote them anyway, because just this time, it was them who mattered more than music. Music was just a means, not an end.
The end would come after. It would come in the form of Charlie's nods when Sam would bring her their songs to decipher, and the fan smile of Castiel. It would come when without a word, Kevin and Channing would begin to create a melodic theme for a song that later they would call "Cain".
"It's okay to hate the one behind the trigger
But knowing it doesn't make it easier
When no one hates you more than you do
And you think you deserve the shots thrown at you
But someone may stand where you should be
And take the bullet you thought you deserve
Because when the darkness in you is the only thing you see
Someone still loves you unconditionally"
Charlie left the hospital two days before Dean. Sam hadn't read her yet the part of the Neverending Story where Bastian discovers he becomes the hero of the story. Mainly because what they had renamed the Afternoon Story was frequently interrupted by visits from doctors or the nurse, and Dorothy and Kevin didn't stop punctuating his reading with comments which engaged them in long dissertations on the ins and outs of the story.
Chuck and Charlie had found common cause in explaining to Dorothy all the references and interpretations that escaped her and it were often the exasperated sighs of Kevin that saved her from conferences that didn't interest her.
From his room, Dean was grumbling to Castiel and Anna that he was deprived of bedtime or afternoon story.
"You're too old for bedtime stories." Castiel pointed out.
"Says the guy who never falls asleep without reading a chapter! No one reads some to me!"
Castiel raised his eyes to heaven, suppressing a sigh. His mother was smiling.
"And I'll have you notice, excuse me Anna, that usually stories are replaced by sex and someone decreed we wouldn't do that in the hospital!"
Anna made a face that would have been comical if she hadn't been so obviously shocked. Castiel buried his face in his hands.
"Your white coat fantasy is inappropriate and downright ridiculous." He mumbled.
"Boys!" Anna intervened. "I am open-minded but please, I have limits!"
"Sorry." They said in unison.
No matter how Castiel loved Dean, he absolutely didn't have the patience to give him a reading. He eventually brought him Charlie's touch pad on which they began to watch Game of Throne, which dissuaded his mother to stay with them at night. Subsequently, she slipped out after having kissed them both on the forehead after dinner.
The recording of the album had been delayed and the complaint filed by Sam and Castiel against John Winchester never ceased to arouse the curiosity of the tabloids. They almost had to secretly evacuate Dean from the hospital so that he wouldn't be bothered by journalists, and even then, there were cameras and video cameras everywhere in the street where he lived. Their photos were displayed in several newspapers under headlines that went from scandalous to indecent including a large percentage of pathetic. Kevin collected and compiled them in a binder every day bigger. They all went out as little as possible with the exception of Dorothy who barely interested the medias.
"I swear that if you had just a vague intention to make a coming out, this would be the perfect time!" Charlie said, temporarily established at the Winchesters' one week after leaving the hospital.
"The only one of us who can go shopping is me, as long as the situation hasn't subsided and neither Crowley nor Bobby will accept to go buy your pads, I'll stay in my anonymous closet!" Argued the truck driver. Charlie shrugged but had to own up to the realism of her partner.
Virtually cut off from the outside world, none of them really realized the extent of the phenomenon that grew around them, subtly fueled by Crowley. HellHound was selling surprisingly well for an album released almost two years ago, the connections to the official website only increased along with the number of views of the acoustic session videos. Kevin realized more than the others. Sam wrote and composed a lot, leaving his drafts laying between his room and the kitchen. Dean and Charlie were recovering from their injuries while seeking a way for the bassist to be able to pass the strap of her guitar around her shoulder without pain. She was considering getting a tattoo around the scar left by the bullet.
She also happened to have nightmares at night, or have unpleasant flashes in the day. Panic and the sound of gunshots overwhelmed her from time to time and her friends had gotten used to not call her out for a few seconds before slowly getting her out of her thoughts. Dorothy was better than the others at this task. More observant too, and day after day, she saw the outbreaks and nightmares fluctuate up to become a constant anxiety when they finally left the apartment of the Winchesters to resettle in that of Charlie. The purple walls and the familiar smell didn't appease her panic and she woke with a start almost every night.
The date of the first hearing was scheduled and when she heard the news, Charlie sat down on the couch without saying anything for long minutes.
"You'll have to talk about it." Dorothy said, sitting down beside her.
Charlie was wringing her hands without looking at her and nodded.
"But I already can't tell you about it... so the others..."
Dorothy nodded. "You've got time."
This was not true, now the time seemed limited before the trial. The recording occupied them almost ten hours a day to make up for lost time, and the rest seemed to fly by at an inconceivable speed, spent doing nothing or thinking that something should be done.
It took two full days to Charlie, but she finally broached the subject one evening when they had just lied down in the arms of one another. They fell asleep like that and always woke up when one or the other, numb, changed position with a grunt.
"I need to see him. I need to understand."
"You can't." Replied Dorothy. "Linda says that none of us should have any contact with John, as this will invalidate all our charges."
"Cause our accusations are poor."
Dorothy sat up and turned on the light. "Explain this?"
"The complaints were filled by Sam and Castiel. The two who haven't been shot, Sam was not even aimed at... It's poor, so poor that we got the trial only because Crowley pressurized the police. Linda is a good lawyer, but not good enough. Not if we get a biased judge..."
"Judges aren't supposed to be biased."
Charlie wrinkled her nose. "Yeah and fathers aren't supposed to shoot their sons but it occurs, go figure." She sighed, or rather took a deep breathe, winced a little and exhaled deeply to calm down. "Everyone seems to have forgotten but I was aimed at, and he had me. I was dead for seventeen seconds."
"Your heart has bolted for seventeen seconds." Dorothy corrected.
"Same difference." She was looking at the ceiling as if it was very interesting, mechanically stroking the scar on her chest. "But me, I can file a complaint for attempted murder and I have proof that he was serious."
"So you can't see him."
"But I don't get why... Why me?"
Dorothy shrugged, slipping under the blankets. "He's a homophobic maniac, you're lesbian, you really need me to do the calculation?"
"It's not that, it's… He raised Dean and he became a good man. And Sam too... how did the guy who made those two come to that?" She was pressing her nail on the scar, just enough to feel a slight pain.
Dorothy had no opinion on the subject. She turned off the light and held again Charlie in her arms, ensuring to move the hand of the bassist aside of her scar.
"I don't know if you were like that before, but you sound much like Dean now."
##
Henceforth, at night, Castiel watched the new scars of Dean, the impact of the bullet, and that of the drain, two points that would make white spots on his skin after summer has come back.
"Sexy huh?" Grimaced the singer.
"Almost as much as this one." He replied, pulling his collar to reveal the thin white line of his ex-implantable chamber.
Now it was frequently Castiel who awoke one arm around Dean, as if a crazed killer was likely to enter their room and that he wanted be sure to protect him in his turn. The singer had quickly established an impressive technique to sneak out of the bed without waking him. Anyway, the young man was so exhausted that he had to shake him violently in the morning to wake him up. He had purple circles under his reddened eyes and a sallow complexion. Somewhat less since he no longer spent his nights in hospital.
Dean had trouble to get to sleep and woke up a few hours later, mind clouded without the feeling of having rested. Often he managed to go back to bed before Castiel wakes up, but that night he heard him get out of bed with a grunt before feeling his hand press his shoulder. Chevy followed him, purring in the hope that something good to eat results from it, and climbed on Dean's lap to pass her nose above the table where he was leaning on his elbows while Castiel poured himself a glass of milk, silently offering one to his companion. The singer shook his head, sighing.
"You are here since a long time?" Castiel asked, checking the clock above the refrigerator.
"I guess so."
"What are you thinking about?" The young man sat down across from him and Chevy jumped on the table to sniff his glass. He put her down on the floor without taking his eyes off Dean, earning a frustrated meow.
"Charlie's gonna file a complaint against dad."
Castiel nodded. "According to Linda, it's going to take our case further. Our complaints, Sam's and mine, wouldn't have been sufficient to obtain a sentence."
Dean put his head in his hands. If guilt had a color, it had to be that of the wood table stained by innumerable drops of sauce and coffee.
"I should do it too. I should file a complaint against him."
Castiel nodded. "No one asks you to."
"But I should. I know I should. Not even for me, but for you. My own father tried to kill you. I should do it because he wanted to hurt you, because he has already succeeded once, and this time he almost killed Charlie too... He's dangerous and… But I can't. Cas I can't."
He had a lump in his throat and a big hole in the pit of his stomach. He heard the glass of Castiel land on the table before looking up at him.
"No one asks you to." Castiel said calmly. "This is precisely why Sam and Charlie file complaints. To prevent you from having to do it. To protect you because they know that it will be impossible for you."
"It's my job to protect them."
He hated when Castiel looked at him with that look of haughty pity he usually reserved for people who had just asked him a stupid question.
"You put yourself on your shoulders weights that nobody asks you to carry and then you collapse and this will have to stop." He took his hand in the middle of the table, the one where the wrist was tattooed with a rose to which he found was lacking some thorns these days. "You are responsible neither for us nor for your father. Maybe Sam and I have benefited from your strength to grow and build ourselves. And maybe Charlie and Kevin still need your support to get through their own trials. But you're not responsible for the way we conduct our lives. And this time it's you who need us. Do not insult us by believing that everything always rests on your shoulders. This is not true and you know it."
On the ground, the kitten mewed. "Even she agrees!"
Dean smiled. "You speak cat?"
"When it suits me."
There was a long silence after that. Dean was soaking up the words of Castiel. He knew how his companion was right but that did not change much to his feelings.
"I hate him sometimes you know. Often, even. I hate that. I hate everything that happens to us. And I hate being unable to prevent him from harming you. Especially when I know exactly what I should do about it."
"There is a difference between what you should do and what you can do." Castiel replied. Then he got up still holding his hand and led him to the bedroom to end the discussion. As they were lying down again, Dean thought to himself that this was exactly the same difference as between cowardice and courage. He could agree to have many flaws, but he refused to add cowardice to the list.
He felt sobs deep inside him without really knowing if they were of distress or rage. And no matter how Castiel wrapped himself around him and held him tight against his heart with all his strength, it didn't calm him. He fell asleep with the feeling of having a ball of tears and acid stuck in the throat.
##
The charges against John Winchester were serious and he knew it. He would have needed to be crazy or stupid to ignore them and he wasn't any of that.
He should have been afraid, or at least that was what it seemed to him, but he only felt a great discomfort and vague apprehension when entering the court. It was better than the smelly cell in which he had spent the last three weeks. They hadn't put the cuffs on him but the policeman behind him had made them more than obvious, which had almost made him smile. In his time he could have gotten rid of two policemen in minutes, weapons or not, handcuffs or not. But he had no intention of behaving like a criminal. His lawyer had been very clear on this point.
"There is no death penalty in this state, but attempted murder of your own son won't pass. Do not make things worse."
"I didn't want to kill them."
"I know." She had sighed. "Otherwise they wouldn't be here to complain."
John had acquiesced. You do not forget thirty years of military training like that. He could still aim. Even in a crowd. Even on a moving target. Especially when the target was in full light.
When he entered the courtroom, he found it curiously empty. That left him the space to stare at his sons, the redhead and her girlfriend, their Asian friends and the brunette he had seen with Sam. Madison if he remembered well.
And Castiel. For a moment he wondered why he hadn't aimed better. Or shot a second time to be sure to get him despite Dean. The young man was looking at him with cold eyes full of a form of resentment very close to hate, and a surge of animosity overwhelmed John. He had never liked that kid, since their first meeting, when he was covered with makeup and sweat, like Dean, like Sam. John had hated this image from the bottom of his heart. He had hated Castiel from the first second like a reverse love at first sight. He had spent whole evenings looking for his sons on the Internet, browsing fan forums with precarious grammar, finding too often Castiel in the background of a grab shot taken in the streets or near the tour bus. And that dated back to long, so long ago he could date the first photographs where Castiel appeared to the lack of tattoos on Sam's arms.
Sam who was wearing a light shirt and much less piercings than the last time John had spoken to him, and who didn't look up from his lap when John passed him. He almost wanted to kick his chair to get him to raise his head and assume what he was doing. For John, a man assumed his mistakes. If he took responsibility for the shots he had fired, Sam should at least have the guts to take responsibility for having filed a complaint. Take responsibility for wanting revenge and sending him to prison.
John understood. He would have done the same. Absolutely the same.
He felt the eyes of all the others on his back before sitting on the witness box across from them. He answered mechanically to the questions asked to him. He didn't have much to hide. And the audience, the judge included, was only waiting for one question that came soon enough.
"Do you acknowledge having shot with intent to cause death?"
John shook his head. He had had weeks to think about it. Before, during, after. He shook his head once again. "No." He answered calmly. He was saying the exact truth. "Scare, yes, kill, no."
"Why?"
This time, John took the time to look at each of his sons before answering. Sam had raised his head and he saw, somewhere behind the drawn features and clenched jaw, the face of the curious child he had been, with a vague echo of his little voice that always asked strange questions to which only Dean seemed to provide satisfactory answers.
"I have raised my sons with a certain values. Rectitude, integrity. I've tried to make of them people useful to the society and good men. When Sam left for college, I was furious because I didn't raise my son to become..." He looked at his lawyer with an apologetic look and she nodded for him to continue. "An overpaid bastard who defends the indefensible."
On the dock facing him, the young Asian stifled a sneer. Sam had clenched his fists so hard that Madison who was holding his hand groaned in pain. The redhead had laid her hand on his back as if he wasn't able to listen to John without support. He sighed mentally and resumed his explanation.
"But that I could have understood. Dean was my pride. He joined the army, he was good, he was respectable, he was defending his country. Then he was exempted from service."
"For what reason?" Interrupted the lawyer.
John sighed, he didn't like the word he was going to say or what it meant, and even years later, he could not erase from his mind the mental images of his son with another man. He suppressed a surge of disgust. "Homosexuality. Officially it was for insubordination and behavior contrary to regulations. But anyone who has set foot in the marines knows he has just been caught sleeping with the wrong person." The lawyer motioned him to continue. On the dock, Dean had buried his head in his hands, muttering. Castiel was clutching his knee so hard that his knuckles were white. John closed his eyes a second to erase from his mind the image of them both naked between white sheets.
"Him being gay, I certainly could have gotten used to it. Sam ending up being lawyer too. Then there was the fire and Sam's girlfriend died. I don't know why they didn't find anything better than going on the roads playing music. At that time I thought it was their way to mourn. I thought it would pass."
"And that was not the case?"
John shook his head again. Oddly enough it was there that began the difficult part of the story, the one where little by little, month after month he had realized the extent of his failure. In front of him, Dean had had a quickly suppressed anger burst and now he was glaring at him.
"I had promised their mother when she died, to protect them, to make good men of them. And I failed. They continued to make music, and after the arrival of… Castiel (the word had had trouble getting out as anything other than an insult), they never stopped. He changed my son. Dean was a good man before him, a man lost but good."
"Do you think Castiel corrupted your son?"
John winced. "I think when Dean was discharged from the army, at least, it wasn't because he was sleeping with a minor."
There was a burst in the audience. Dean went pale, Sam sat up suddenly, the girls seemed lost, as the judge and the lawyer of Crowley who leaned toward her clients articulating a not really discreet "what?".
"Explain yourself Mr. Winchester." The judge said. If he was surprised, he didn't show it.
"The facts are very simple Your Honor. Unless my son and him have waited years to have sex, they met when Castiel wasn't eighteen. Which is minor in almost all the states where they were seen together at the time."
There was a moment of shocked and tense silence during which John and Castiel's glances confronted each other. Something changed in the expression of the accountant which nearly made John smile. Castiel's rage shell seemed to melt into something close to interest. Something that made him lift his chin with a very slight grin that indicated his target had changed. John had already seen this expression several times. It was the one that replaced the determination on the face of a soldier defending a civilian when they were taking a bullet. Suddenly, the soldier was no longer protecting himself only, suddenly, it became personal. And for Castiel, the fight, whatever it is, had just become personal.
John left the witness box with a keen awareness of all the eyes placed on his wheelchair and Dean took his place.
"Did you have sex with Mr. Novak when he was a minor?" The lawyer asked Dean.
"In some states." His voice was a little tight but he was definitely not blinked, something John found himself admiring. He knew as well as his lawyer that the other party didn't expect the attack. But maybe Dean, himself had been aware of this possibility. Maybe had he shielded himself against such accusations. Or maybe he didn't care, which wouldn't have surprised John. After all, he didn't have many illusions about their morality anymore.
John took the time to watch him. He had seen his sons only a few times these last years and the photos on the internet might do him justice, they didn't show well the expressions of Dean. The photos didn't show the bitter fold of the corner of his mouth, or the way his eyes wandered beyond the shoulder of the lawyer in search of one of his friends or his companion.
"Statutory rape is a crime, Mr. Winchester, were you aware of this?"
"Perfectly aware." Dean answered calmly. Far too calmly, noticed John. He had been wrong to believe that the other party hadn't expected the attack.
"And why did you do this? Has Mr. Novak somehow forced your hand like your father suggests?"
Dean had clearly expected the question but his eyes widened to the formulation. He had a smirk that slightly moved the piercing on his lip which John found slightly obscene.
"I don't want to offend anyone." He said. "But if you intend to splash my sex life to make forget who is the accused here, I find your defense really poor."
"Answer the question." The judge ordered.
John saw Dean silently questioning Castiel and turned his head just in time to see the slight nod of the young man. Dean smiled, a little more relaxed, his seemliness mask slightly cracked.
"No one has forced anyone's hand. The exact words of Mr. Novak were: "I will like you the same and I will want you just as much in five months or in Nevada, three hundred kilometers from here, than now." I slept with Mr. Novak in the wrong place or at the wrong time, but none of us has forced the other to anything."
John did not listen to the rest of the testimony, he only looked at the face of his son come to life in comparison to the hands he composedly held folded on his lap as if to prevent himself from making big gestures. And he thought to himself that it was a shame, all of this. Such a shame to come here when it would have just taken a little effort, a little communication for things to worsen less. It would have just taken Sam to accept to listen to his argument once in his life rather than leaving slamming the door. It would have just taken John to be less angry two years later and him to take them in after the death of Jessica. It would have just taken him to be here when Castiel had come in the picture to avoid this. It would have just taken them to not meet the redhead. So many little things that would have avoided this disaster... So many little things that could have saved him the certainty of having definitively fucked up everything with his sons.
But he didn't feel guilty. He had done what he could. Tried to give them an education they eventually hadn't wanted, and values they had finally rejected. He had tried to make them respectable people whose mother would have been proud and they had preferred a life of street performers. He didn't blame them. He loved them despite everything, and perhaps precisely because of their rebellion.
He only deeply blamed Castiel. He perfectly imagined how the blue eyes could have touched Dean, how the story of the transplant which his son believed he knew nothing of could have moved him enough to think himself in love and then let himself being manipulated. Maybe Castiel was honestly not aware of straying Dean from the straight and narrow. After all the kid had a well-ordered life aside from Dean. And this was perhaps what John found the most appalling. To see how people used his sons on both sides. How Castiel found a status and a negligible recognition in his narrow little life by publicly appearing at the arm of a singer. How Charlie was using them to raise herself in a life she wouldn't have had otherwise. He blamed Crowley for the profit he made of them. And deep down, he blamed Dean and Sam to be so blind they didn't even see the bloodsuckers around them.
He blamed himself maybe even more for not having been able to open their eyes. It was like drowning in a giant puddle of regret when he had always done his best. And it was unfair.
So he had used extreme means, hired two former comrades in arms to scare (the precise terms were "beat the hell out of him.") Castiel but the accountant had clung. If he had been afraid it hadn't been enough. So John had gone to the concert, more to talk to them than anything else.
And it had been too much. All these almost indecent and disgusting declarations of love, to know that from now on everyone would know how Castiel held Dean under his yoke, it had been too much. He had aimed and fired. The first time on the back of Castiel, and the thought had crossed his mind that it was disgraceful to shoot someone's back. The second time, Charlie. Someone had mentioned the name of the redhead who was now going to the witness box. He knew the story because she had told reporters several times. How she had supposedly lost everything and how Dean and Sam had made her a place in their small family, why she didn't leave them since. They could have changed their lives without her, John knew that. He knew how things worked, a girl in the band, make her sexy, say she's a lesbian to excite the public and here comes glory.
The group would have run less without her, would have had a less broad audience. They wouldn't have brought in money to Crowley, wouldn't have had success, and sooner or later Dean and Sam would have come back home. Without Charlie, sooner or later, he would have retrieved his sons. And she was there, accusing him of attempted murder in a trembling voice.
He hadn't tried to kill her even though the idea didn't displease him at that very moment. As Castiel, he had wanted to scare her, let her know he was a threat to big for the profit she would make of his sons. He wanted her to leave them alone.
This is exactly what he explained when the lawyer passed on the question that the young woman apparently wanted to ask him for a long time.
"Why did you target miss Bradbury? She didn't deprave your son."
John turned his gaze in that of Charlie where he only saw an annoying weeping.
"Miss Bradbury says that my son are her family. A family she exploits for her own needs and has never tried to protect or put back on the right track. She legitimizes the destructive behavior of my sons. And this is not something I support. Unlike her, I try at least to take care of the people I love." He didn't add what he thought of her lifestyle. It was unnecessary and his lawyer had specifically forbidden him to evoke it.
Charlie bit her lip, ready to cry. John could feel the tension radiating from the room and the defeat in the shoulders of his lawyer.
Nobody stopped Sam when he began to speak without moving from his place.
"She, at least never shot us nor portrayed us as pimples or perverts. And she doesn't call us destructive when we do something she doesn't understand."
John was expecting Sam to yell. It was in his character, but he just turned his head toward the judge, silently asking permission to speak. It was quite contrary to his character, almost as much as the small scars on his face where lacked the piercings he had removed. He should have been trembling with rage like Dean and Castiel, but he was oddly calm when the judge gave him a nod of approval to replace Charlie in the witness box. Yet, he only talked to John when he spoke.
"She tries to love us as we are. That's why we left and we won't return. Even without Cas, even without Charlie. It was a decision we made long before them and that's not going to change. We are good people. Only not the way you wish."
He turned to Charlie who was seating very straight in her chair and smiled to her. "This isn't so much of a big deal in the end. We survived much worse."
"Do you want to withdraw your complaint?" Asked the judge, a little puzzled.
Sam throw a questioning look to his brother. Dean was trembling but shook his head before putting a word in the ear of the lawyer of Crowley.
"My clients only demand a restriction to approach but will not withdraw their complaint.."
John was barely listening, focused on the hands of Dean that had started to shake.
"And force him to seek treatment before he actually kills someone." She added. "This is my personal request."
John opened his mouth to protest, but his lawyer stopped him with a movement, shaking her head.
The session was adjourned for a few hours. Before leaving the court, accompanied by his lawyer, John looked at his son turn their backs on him one last time, supported by their friends.
He felt miserable and alone.
He had only wanted to protect them.
##
They had several hours to kill before the judge hands down a verdict and they were wasting them in a café near the court where some paparazzi had followed them before losing interest before their silence and their closed faces.
"Maybe he's right after all." Charlie said quietly, looking at the tea she hadn't touched. "Maybe I really take advantage of all of you."
"And maybe I play with your feelings for my personal benefit." Castiel added dryly. "Oh, wait, I have never concealed that."
Dean gave him a slight nudge in the ribs. "Save it for the bedroom, we have witnesses and I don't like putting on a show."
Dorothy and Kevin stifled a giggle. Channing looked tired and edgy. She was hiding her face with one hand so the photographer on the other side of the glass couldn't have a good shot of her, something she had learned fast enough and she deplored.
"This is all crap." She said. "He is either crazy or stupid, probably a little of both. But all he said, he can't think that, not really..."
Sam nodded. "This is pure bullshit, from start to finish." He confirmed. "But he believes it. And let's imagine just for a second that he's right..." He turned to Charlie. "When Dean picked you up in the street, you signed a tacit agreement. He promised to keep you safe, and you promised to thank him by remaining by his side. And you did."
"But you..." She started.
"You remember the first time we were smashed together?"
She nodded. "Your hair was so long I had to hold it while you were throwing up your vodka. And I passed out at one point in the night and when I woke, you had found a way to put me to bed and tuck me in."
"You were talking nonsense about life being a big game that we could never pause."
Nobody around the table had ever heard of this story nor understood why Charlie had tears in her eyes. "I thought I had imagined that. You said you'd be my pause as often as needed."
Sam nodded. "And it hasn't changed. I don't care what he says or thinks, he's wrong. None of us abuses anyone. We assist each other to become better, we aren't good at much else, but it has brought us this far. And maybe we're tattooed wastes hardly worth performing in bikers bars, but if a gang of bikers is the only public I can satisfy, goddamn I intend to do it. And do it well! At least I'll have done some good to some people."
Castiel leaned toward Dorothy pretending to whisper in her ear: "You think he realized he changed the subject along the way?"
"Give him the benefit of the doubt! The intention is good even if it got lost in the middle." She mocked.
Sam pulled a bitch face, earning a chuckle from everyone else except Dean. Then silence fell on them again. The kind of lack of sounds that usually leads to only one thing and they looked at each other, waiting for the others to decide to speak first, until Dean hits his fist on the table.
"We need to write that song."
"Which one?" Kevin asked.
"One that speaks of tattooed wastes in bikers bars."
"And it would be about what exactly?" Madison asked. She had begun to drink her tea quickly, because it seemed that things were going to precipitate shortly.
"Us, and life, and that despite everything, we made it through..."
"On the whole..." Castiel clarified.
"In the end..." Charlie added.
Dean smiled. "Plug your brains, we're going back to the studios." He jumped to his feet as Sam was already handing him their old leather book. "To the studios I said!"
"It's not that I mind your sudden domineering side, but can I remember that we don't have much time before us? We need to be back in court in..." He narrowed his eyes to look at the time on his phone.
"Two and a half hours." Castiel said without moving from his chair, arms crossed.
Dean was already putting a handful of bills on the table, pulling a sleeve of his jacket on. "Then we'll do it quickly." He cast a fixed gaze on his lover. "That, I know we're capable of."
"Who is putting on a show, now?"
Dorothy grunted and kicked the seat of the young man. "Come on, stand up, apparently this man has an idea and he won't drop it."
Of the few hours that followed, all they remembered was Channing, joyful and chirping, and for a brief moment, they all felt perfectly well. In a rush. Stressed. About to cry. But perfect.
##
Returning to the court, Dean realized he had sore hands. It had not happened to him since he played the guitar regularly. He was hungry too. Or maybe he just had a big ball that twisted his stomach, it was hard to tell the difference. Sam had shut himself the time of the taxi ride and was nervously scratching his thumbnail against the seam of his jeans. Charlie was dark, Kevin had his teeth clenched. Whatever the state of mind that had kept them so far, it had disappeared by the time they had left the recording studio.
The court was musty and the smell assaulted Dean like this morning, the knot in his stomach was definitely not from hunger. He sought the hand of Castiel behind him and squeezed it tight before sitting on the seat that had been assigned to him. He had a heavy head, burning eyes, and the ball that went back up from his stomach to his throat before coming back down again.
"It'll be fine." Said Channing in a low tone beside him, as if to convince herself. He nodded, not really convinced.
He tried to listen to the judge. He really tried. It was like being back at school face to a soporific teacher; impossible to focus his attention on something other than Sam who was tapping his foot and Dorothy who regularly put her hand on his leg so he would keep still. He clenched his free fist when John came in and sat near them on the dock.
He began to attend his own rush of anxiety as you look at an accident occur on a highway, unable to do anything to prevent or stop it. He heard neither the judgment nor the verdict. His ears had begun to buzz so loud that it seemed to him he had been dipped in water. His heart was beating too fast, or maybe not at all anymore, and his lungs were on fire. He was holding his breath, trying to prevent the ball from strolling through his belly. He had blurred vision but somehow he could no longer raise his head. And no matter how he was pressing Castiel's hand with all his strength, it brought him no comfort.
He stood up, crazed, groggy and followed the others. Sam was calmer, he was walking head down, shoulders hunched. Dean retained himself from asking what had happened, how much time had passed. He wasn't sure not to cry if he opened his mouth. The outside light struck him almost like a brick wall. He stopped, leaving the others distance him, apart from Castiel who was still gripping his hand without saying anything. And there, in the middle of the street, paralyzed with panic, he began to cry. Huge sobs that escaped him in waves he couldn't contain. The lump in his stomach was stretching like a sponge, up to his chest and his throat. It prevented him to breathe or do anything other than sniffing, hands clenched on his face, feeling tears rolling between his fingers.
He had done it. He didn't know the sentence, somewhere, his brain had refused to hear it. But he had done it. And even if a part of him told him that it was the right thing to do, standing there in this court, the rest of him didn't believe it. The rest of him only saw a little boy who had just sent his father in prison. And it was wrong.
There were two arms around him, which were holding him tight and it was all he could feel beyond the distress and guilt that gnawed his entrails.
"It's gonna be okay." How many times Sam had already repeated these words in the last minutes, rocking him there, stupidly planted in a street where paparazzi were beginning to gather? Dean had no idea, his head was spinning, he was feeling heavy, full of distress and very empty at the same time. He had stopped crying, he no longer had the strength to. He let himself being pushed into a taxi, and even without closing his eyes he saw nor felt nothing on the way until the door of Castiel's apartment closes behind them, suddenly muting the tumult of the outside world.
He let himself being undressed, pushed in the shower, put to bed. It still seemed to him he had a big ball of tears at the bottom of the heart, but he was too weak now to let it out.
"It'll be alright." Castiel said softly. It was maybe the thirtieth time, but he said it as calmly as if he were ready to repeat it again ad infinitum.
"No." Dean croaked.
"Yes it will."
Castiel slid under the blankets next to him, literally wrapped himself around him and hugged him as hard as he could. He must have showered too. He smelled of citrus. "It will." He repeated. "It doesn't seem so, I know, but the worst is over."
"How can you be so sure?"
"I've already lived it. I know what it's like." Said Castiel.
"It hurts like hell."
"I know." Castiel closed his eyes, gently pressing the scars of Dean, forehead resting between his shoulder blades. "But it'll be fine. I promise."
"You can never go back to the things that once were,
But there's always a place, you can go back and find shelter"