By Chya
(Anytime after Shadow)
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Sammy never understood why Daddy often went to pick Dean up from places when Dean called from whatever errand he'd been running and asked Daddy to come get him. Daddy always made Sammy walk.
Sammy never understood why, when Daddy brought Dean home, he'd send Sammy to his room while he got a couple of beers for himself and Dean and they would have long talks without him.
Sammy understood very well about the things that went bump in the night.
Sammy understood very well about the bumps and cuts and bruises you got when you made those things go away.
Sammy never understood why Dean never asked questions.
Sammy never understood why the questions he always asked were met with impatience and then anger when he persisted.
Sammy never understood why he and dad always argued, when Dean and Daddy only ever talked.
Sammy understood very well that Dean was always there like the referee at a soccer game.
Sammy understood very well that Dean was always there for him to rant at when he was angry with Daddy and needed to vent his feelings about how horrible Daddy was that day.
Sammy never understood why Daddy had to tell Dean how horrible Sammy was that day.
Sammy never understood why sometimes, deep in the middle of the night, he would hear Dean crying softly into his pillow.
Sammy didn't know what to do the first time Dean was really sick in the toilet because Dean told him never to tell Daddy.
Sammy never understood why Dean yelled and cried at him when he told Daddy anyway the fourth time Dean was sick in the toilet.
Sammy never understood why he was sent away to Aunt Kate's, first for the summer and then for a whole school year, but he loved every minute of it.
Sammy didn't understand why he felt so much like an outsider even though he was overjoyed to have his family back.
Sammy never understood why Dean didn't cry any more, but that had to be a good thing, didn't it?
Sammy didn't understand a lot, but he did understand that he wanted to live the life he'd had at Aunt Kate's.
Sammy never understood why Dad hated him so much for leaving.
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Sam finished tying the final knot of the cords that bound his mercifully unconscious brother to one of the twin beds before sitting abruptly down on the other, all energy suddenly gone.
The ghost had been banished and they'd returned to the flea infested motel room they called base with barely a scratch. The mayhem they fought, the wide and varied ghoulies and ghosties and monsters under the bed were supposed to abide by certain rules, and one of those most basic rules was that once the thing was banished, the chaos it caused went away. But this one had left Dean with a very real problem that by all rights he should never have had.
Dean had offered himself up as bait for reasons Sam couldn't begin to fathom. There was only one way that particular ghost could have gotten inside Dean's head and Sam didn't want to think about that. Worse, he had no idea what to do, how to deal with the aftermath and how to make Dean better.
Rubbing his hand over his face, Sam reluctantly dialled his Dad's number and left a message. Again. Half hearted, but hoping that John would know how to deal with this; he must do mustn't he? After all, Dean and John had spent most of Dean's life together, something that Sam harboured his own jealousy of. Sam's thoughts didn't know what direction to go in, so they circled and collided behind unseeing eyes while he waited for Dean to… To do whatever came next.
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John opened the door to the motel room quietly, not wanting to disturb the two young men who should be sleeping at this hour. He trusted both his boys to look out for each other, but Sam's message outlined something that John knew Sam would not know how to deal with, and with all his being, he hoped his youngest son never would.
Looking at them both in the lamplight, Dean sweating and shivering on the bed, while Sam sat dozing, his head propped up on his hands, he was thrown a lifetime into the past to a point that he'd hoped and prayed never to come to again.
Fourteen years earlier, John slumped against the corridor wall and slid to the floor, oblivious to the tears that ran down his face while he listened to Dean moaning in pain in the bathroom, while little Sammy sniffled away gulping sobs in his bed.
With the million and one things he had to do to take care of the boys, the constant research and the continual investigations all brought to a screeching halt, and with no alcohol to numb the worry and pain, John realised that he couldn't take care of his boys after all.
He just couldn't cope anymore.
For ten years he'd kept the boys with him, moving from town to town as the hunts took him, their education being that of life supplemented by books and a different school every other semester.
He counted himself lucky that Dean had a strong pragmatic streak and was able to take some of the burden of looking after himself and Sammy off him. But now, forced to look back and see how this situation had developed, he realised just how much he'd relied on that.
All the times he'd forgotten to leave money for the boys to eat, or sent them out to see what they could scavenge when they just didn't have any. Little Sammy had been taught the skills too, but John was aware that it was only Dean that ever really used them. The occasional telephone calls from the local police station asking him to go collect his wayward eldest son, and he'd go pick up the kid who had usually conned one of the nice lady officers into giving him M&M's and coffee. Every time, he'd give the boy a beer and talk to him like a man, go over what happened, what went wrong, and why it wouldn't go wrong next time. It had been happening more frequently recently, mostly stupid mistakes and now John had to wonder if the frequent trips to the cells and courts hadn't been a cry for help. Especially as he only now realised that Dean only made stupid mistakes when Sammy wasn't around to get caught too.
And that meant that John hadn't listened and now Dean was screaming his pain away in a self-inflicted drug-cocooned silence.
Up until now he'd been able to drown the guilt he felt in the harsh fire of bourbon, always after the kids were in bed, and just enough to kill the pain of his eternal grief. Although that killing seemed to take more and more as time went on.
His sister, Kate, had offered to take the boys before when she'd thought he needed a break, maybe now was the time to take her up on it. But not both boys. Dean needed him right now more than Sammy, and although every fibre of his being screamed that Sammy might not be safe, that he was still a baby, the ten year old was smart enough and loud enough to know when to shout for help.
After leaving a very sad and bewildered little boy at Kate's, John turned his attention to his eldest son. He held Dean through the sickness and shakes, took the blows through the screams and abusive shouts and drank whisky through the tears and pleading. But in the end, when there was nothing but a confused and frightened 14-year-old boy on the sweat and vomit stained sheets, he found that he was heartbreakingly proud; his son had fought his demons and won.
On that thought he knocked back another whisky.
Later, when Dean was looking at him with big, thankfully clear, eyes there was only one thing left.
"Why?" John asked.
The reply came in a hoarse whisper while those expressive eyes stared at the amber filled glass in his father's hand. "To stop the pain."
John looked at his drink and looked at the miserable boy by turns. He understood exactly what Dean meant. He didn't ask for further explanation and Dean didn't offer any.
It wasn't until much later that John would realise that he had transposed his own pain onto his son's, it never occurring to him that Dean's pain could be something else entirely. At that moment in time, it was enough that Dean had pulled through, and perhaps it was time for John to pull through too.
The next months were spent giving Dean something to do, training him harder, something the boy seemed to revel in, fighting monsters side by side, comrades in arms, so much so that John encouraged Dean in every way he knew how. The boy had a natural affinity for pool and poker, two of his own favourite pastimes, and father and son forged a far closer bond than had existed before. They talked girls, cars and guns at great length, ate popcorn, M&Ms and burgers, yet never, ever spoke of anything important.
John phoned Kate every couple of weeks to check on Sam and, after he got over the initial embarrassment of knowing Sammy had seen him sick, Dean called him regularly too. John had been ready to collect Sam at New Year, but Kate said the boy was thriving, that perhaps it would be better to let him stay until the end of the school year. Talking to Sammy, John was disappointed to realise that she was right.
Things went downhill again once Sammy rejoined his family in the summer. Not through any fault of the boy, but because John couldn't relate to his youngest son. He was perhaps too aware that to attend to one boy was to neglect the other, and he never felt that he could strike the right balance. It was too easy to give Dean too much attention; their interests were similar. Whereas Sam's interests were in areas that John could barely conceive of. He found ways of using it, having Sam concentrate on the research and texts involved in the hunts, but became frustrated that the boy needed to be pushed and pushed in the more physical areas his brother excelled at.
John found himself taking a step back, letting the boys rediscover their bond in their own way. He noticed that Dean encouraged Sam to talk to him, get whatever was bothering him off his chest and it was during one such moment that John realised that Dean's ever growing strength was built from the carefully constructed barriers he'd erected inside himself. He wondered briefly if those barricades were too brittle to bend with the storms that were bound to blow through, but concluded that Dean took warmth from his family to keep those barricades flexible enough to never break.
There were many fights between John and Sam along the way and John was aware of Dean being caught perpetually in the middle as he always had. He tried to make it up with the gift of the car, not to buy the older boy off, but to give him a place to retreat to. Sam he had no idea what to do about, so when Sam finally left, he felt that he'd failed his youngest. Sam wanted to leave because John wasn't good enough. And that wounded him far deeper than he would ever admit.
"Dad!" Sam's voice broke John from his reverie, shocking him back to the here and now. He'd made peace with his youngest without the need for apology. "You shouldn't be here, its too dangerous!"
"I know," John smiled without humour. "But I need to be here for this. I've taken precautions and we're safe for a couple of days."
"I don't understand," said Sam, both hands carding through his air. "This was supposed to have been a safe job, and easy job. An addictive spirit constantly reliving his own overdose through forcing druggies and ex-addicts to do the same. We should have been safe. It needed the experience to be already there to be able latch on to someone. I didn't understand why Dean said he'd be bait. It should have been safe."
John shook his head as he sat down wearily beside his anxious youngest son. "There's no such thing as a safe job, son," he said gently. "You should know that."
"But, but… I don't understand… how could I not know…?"
John took a deep breath. "Do you remember the time you spent with your Aunt – "
"Kate, yeah," Sam finished and John's gut gave a little lurch of regret at the involuntary spontaneous smile that appeared on the young man's face at the memory. "Yeah, I do," he nodded and looked back at John, the question on his lips dying as realisation set in.
"Dean needed me then more than you did and I couldn't take care of you both." As Sam's face fell, John wanted to say I'm sorry, but the words just wouldn't come.
Sam opened his mouth to reply, but understanding hit him a slow avalanche of confused resentment and relief. He remembered Dean having that stomach bug because it had scared him, but how could they have kept the truth from him? Dad had always been brutal with the truth, never shielding them from reality, and Dean and he had always shared everything when they were kids.
No, Sam recalled, Dean always made him share everything. Whether it was cookies or problems, Sam always gave it up and Dean always took it away. He always knew that his father had many skeletons in his closet, and Sam carried one or two of his own, but for the first time, Sam wondered how many other secrets Dean had hidden away.
He finally had just the smallest inkling of where Dean's blind loyalty to John came from and why he'd had the feeling that he was on the outside looking in throughout his teenage years.
And he finally understood that he was never the lesser son, rather that in the same way Dean had always taken care of Sam, so John had learned to take care of Dean. It was screwed to hell, but it was the way their freaky family worked.
"I don't know what to do," Sam said finally. "I can fix monsters, I can fix tangible injuries, I can even read the stubborn jerk when he tries to blow me off with some lame assed joke sometimes. Hell, dad, I can even fix death!" Sam took a deep breath. "But I can't fix this." He waved a hand at his brother's still unconscious body, and frowned at the shivering becoming tremors.
"You don't need to," John told him. "Just be there when he needs you."
Sam couldn't accept that. He should have taken Dean to a clinic or something. When he'd exorcised the ghost and his brother had collapsed, Sam had thought it was just post possession exhaustion. He hadn't clued into the fact that the ghost had already filled his brother's veins with the vile concoction it used to kill; it shouldn't have had the time. The first idea he'd had that all was not well was when Dean had shot up from the bed Sam had dumped him on and punched Sam in the face his expression manic and crazed with rolling eyes and extended veins.
Sam shook his head as he realised that John was still talking. "I learned that your brother is incredibly strong in both mind and body. You got the intellectual mind, the smarts, the ability to question everything." At this John chuckled, a private laugh that Sam thought he understood. "Just like your mother. And Dean got the willpower. From your mother. You both got the stubbornness, and I think that came from me. Bottom line is, your brother can find his own way without any help from us or any shrink types. We've just got to be here." John's eyes drifted over to Dean and Sam almost missed the next few words. "He's a lot stronger than me." Sam understood that, too. His father had never been able to give up the alcohol, though not for want of trying.
There was a long silence broken only by Dean's increasingly harsh breathing. "Get a bucket," John told Sam, and while Sam's instinctive reaction was to bristle at being ordered around by his father, he silently acknowledged that this was one occasion where John was right. "And get some ice." John smiled, and knowing the question that Sam would not be able to stop himself from asking, he clarified. "For your face."
When Sam returned with a bucket borrowed from housekeeping, he saw that his father had turned a shaking Dean on his side and retied the cords.
"Sweat detail, or vomit clearance?" John asked as he took the bucket and placed it near the head of the bed.
"I'll take the bucket," Sam said and John raised an eyebrow. "Feels like I'm doing something."
Sometime in the lull after Dean had thrown up all his stomach contents and the dry heaves had receded, Sam came back out of the bathroom having cleaned the bucket out. With John sitting behind his brother, murmuring indistinct words as he mopped up the sweat and cooled Dean's burning skin with wet towels, Sam once again felt left outside. He had a lot of experience with never quite fitting in, but only with his family did feel excluded and angry. At least now he understood why, although it didn't make it any better.
He replaced the bucket and handed his father some more cold towels.
"You should get some rest," John told him. "Ready for the next bout."
"So should you," Sam replied, settling back to his position on the edge of the second twin. John didn't answer but looked as though he were considering the idea, so Sam helped him out. "Dean is scared of being alone."
Surprise flitted across John's face, and Sam felt a small surge of victory over his father; he knew something about his brother that John didn't. Instantly he felt guilty; this was neither the time nor place to put Dean in between himself and his father, and it was high time he stopped doing it altogether.
John seemed to read some of his thoughts, for he said, "Then we'd better show him we're both here for him."
John and Sam sat on either side of Dean as he struggled both inside and out. Sam wasn't clear how John could be so certain that the drugs wouldn't kill, something to do with the spirit impressing it's own wish to die on its host, but he found himself having the faith in the man that Dean always had.
There were no words in the harsh cries of pain that accompanied every violent spasm Dean endured, no recognition in the wild eyes, but it was obvious to both observers that Dean was fighting for control.
Sam saw the bitten back shouts and straining muscles as his brother trying to push everything he was fighting against down inside, trying to climb on top of it and be in control, internalise and bury in a deep hole somewhere to be forgotten. He wished Dean would just scream it all out and let it all go.
John saw the violent struggles and clenched jaw as his son fighting overcoming this challenge. He compared this to the miserable and angry boy who had spewed screaming vitriol along with tears and vomit, and was proud at how strong a man his boy had become.
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The following dawn rose to see all three men sleeping peacefully.
It was Dean who stirred first, smiling at Sam sprawled untidily on the floor between the beds and someone else snoring loudly that turned out to be his father slumped in a chair with his head thrown back.
Dean smiled, basking in the dream of having his family back, even though he knew it couldn't stay that way.
He must have made some sound because Sam and John both simultaneously groaned and sat up. "Bitch of a ghost, wasn't it?" Dean smirked at his brother. "Nasty black eye there, Sammy, you piss some girl's mother off?"
"That would be you, Dean," Sam's face was full of relief as he came over to undo the cords tying Dean to the bed still.
"Didn't know you were into kink, baby bro. Hey, dad, miss me?"
"Always," John smiled, standing to stretch his back before sitting on the bed. He pulled Dean into a big hug and looked over at Sam, holding his other hand out to his youngest son.
Sam only hesitated for a brief second before joining his father and brother in a three-way hug.
Sam still didn't understand a lot, but for now he understood enough.
FIN