So Not Fair

by firechild

Rated T

Disclaimer: I own the culprit. And not nearly enough antacid. The Winchesters, sadly, are not mine.

Warning: Spanking. Don't like, don't read.

A/N: This is for you, Razzie. It isn't epi-centric, just an old idea I'd stuck in a dusty corner, but it was the best I could do for now.

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"He wants to die."

Dean Winchester paced the room, checking his watch as he had every two laps. He'd given Sammy fifteen minutes to shower and get ready for bed. Seven of those minutes had gone by, and to an infuriated older brother, those seven minutes had seemed, surprisingly, almost as long as the forty-two minutes of eternity it had taken to find and rescue the younger hunter. Dean had nearly refused to let the kid out of his sight even in the windowless (escape-proof, stupid-proof, Sammy-proof) bathroom. As he paced, Dean muttered; it didn't really help, but it was a reflex he'd developed over the past few months, and one that he didn't have the patience to try to stop. He wondered idly, in the back of his mind, if his dad was a mutterer. "The little brat wants to die. That's the only explanation."

As he paced, he thought back, wondering just how a couple of days off could go so unbelievably wrong.

Oh. Yeah. They were Winchesters. They didn't do 'off.'

It had started so simply--a hunt for a poltergeist that had turned out to be one very sharp little kid trying to keep his old man from taking a job in another state, which had turned a two-day job into a four-hour debunk, a blessedly clown-free county fair, some stupid games, a couple hours of just goofing off and being brothers. . . and some sort of appearance, something that Sammy had claimed to be a little girl who was lost and alone and needed help. Dean believed that Sam had seen something, but he hadn't been so sure of what, and they'd totally disagreed about what to do.

If they'd just taken some time to talk it over, they might've come to a reasonable conclusion and made a plan. Sammy was usually a lot more together than this, even though he was out of practice and had apparently invented the sulk, but in the last two days, the younger hunter had taken an abrupt left down Brat Boulevard, and by mid-afternoon today, Dean had been just about ready to treat the kid like the six-year-old he'd started to resemble. They'd spent yesterday evening and a chunk of today at the fairgrounds, but when Dean had had as much fried peach parfait, and as much Sammy-Whammy, as he could take, Sam hadn't wanted to leave and had come sickeningly close to pitching an honest-to-Chevy temper tantrum before Dean had managed to get close enough to say something that had at least gotten the overgrown geek into the car. They'd gone back to the motel in silence, which suited Dean just fine, and the evening would have been liveable. . . if Sammy had stayed put.

By the time Dean had returned from picking up a late dinner, figured out that Sammy had vamoosed, put together where he'd gone, and taken off after him (Sammy's only saving grace was not taking the Impala--if he'd done that, he wouldn't have survived the trip back to the motel) the fair had shut down for the night, and in unfamiliar territory in the dark, it had taken Dean too much time to find Sam, who'd been fast losing a fight. Dean snorted to himself as he remembered--leave it to one of them to start out hunting supernatural creeps and wind up getting worked over by creeps of the totally human variety.. Turned out, there had been a little girl, only no one had reported her missing; Sam had been sneaking her food and small toys he'd won for her, even a blanket, but she'd refused to make a sound until he'd pulled out his cell phone to call the police--then the girl had opened her mouth and let out an angry scream that had brought half a dozen fairbreakers running from their jobs securing the equipment, and they'd gone on the assumption that Sam was, well, exactly what it looked like. Dean had been able to extract him with a few well-aimed shotgun blasts (and one spray of rock salt into the rear of one particularly stubborn grunt.,) and he'd managed to get Sammy and the girl out, the child having decided that maybe running away and wreaking havoc on the fairgrounds at night hadn't been her best idea, after all. Once she'd been checked over, soundly lectured in Dean's very best John Winchester voice, and left with a rent-a-cop, the boys had returned to the motel, where Dean had forced Sam to undergo a wound check before sending him to clean up. At least Dean had arrived before the fairhands had gotten in more than a couple of punches.

Dean had decided what he was going to do as soon as he'd realized that Sammy had taken off. Being in a whiny mood was one thing, and Dean had to admit that Sam had a point about Dean not being Dad or a DI, but Sammy had broken his word about dealing with this together, he'd lied to Dean by saying that he'd stay put and look for any reports about the girl whil,e Dean was out, and he'd taken off, scaring his brother more than Dean would ever admit. This was gonna end, right now, and it was gonna end hard. The Winchesters were about to reinvent the screeching halt.

The shower had fallen silent, but Sammy hadn't reappeared, and Dean knew that his brother would have had to have had a lobotomy to not know that he was seriously in for it, though if Sam had known exactly what 'it' he was in for, he might've made his own window and used it.

When he finally gave up the stalling game and slipped out into the room, Dean was ready for him. Sammy had to sit through a scathing lecture worthy of his father before his brother pulled him to his feet by the elbow and then sat down and yanked the younger man over his lap. Sammy protested (well, actually, he squeaked and then protested) and tried to worm his way off of Dean's lap, but Dean proved that he was still the big brother, no matter their sizes, by managing to clamp the younger hunter in place and yank down the sweatpants and boxers; he'd said all that he was planning to say for now, so Sammy felt a rush of cold air across his backside, and before he could do more than squeak (again) in shock, Dean well and truly warmed him up, his hard right hand slamming down onto the vulnerable rear over and over again, sometimes laying several swats on the same spot before moving and sometimes not. For all that he was methodical in everything else, right down to plowing through junk food, the older brother managed to at least seem unpredictable when he spanked, a fact that Sammy might have remembered if he'd been thinking straight (then again, Dean hadn't had to do this since Sam was nine, so maybe not. One thing was for sure--it was all coming back to the kid now like the words to those sappy old songs they played in grocery stores. Yeah, Sammy, I'll show you the way to San Jose.)

Dean kept up his speed and force, hearing and feeling his brother go from horrified to indignant to angry to wheedling to dealing to pleading. The backside under Dean's burning hand was an angry red when he heard a soft, hitching, "D-dean, p-pleeeease! I'm s-sorryyyy!" The words should have been a whine, but instead they held a ring of sincerity, and Dean slowed his swats, not giving in yet but listening. "Dean--AH!--p-please, stoooop! I won't d-do it ag-gain--AI!--I m-mean it." Dean could hear his brother give in to the sobs that had been building for awhile now, remembering that Sammy had always tried to take punishments silently--never succeeded, but hey, had to give the kid points for effort.

"What aren't you going to do again?" Dean still didn't stop, but he wanted Sam to get to a point where he could acknowledge his mistakes and prove that he understood why they were doing this. When he didn't get an answer after about ten seconds, Dean laid a cannonade of rapid swats on Sam's undercurve, drawing a strangled cry. "What aren't you going to do again, Sammy?" Dean enunciated the words, lacing his voice with sternness that the boy would know was a warning.

"AHH! I w-won't g-go off by mys-self again!!" The slower swats kept coming, and Sammy tried to gather his thoughts. "And-and I won't b--AGH!-break a p-promise to y-you ag-gain!" It still wasn't over, and the kid dug deep. "An--AH! Pleeeease!--and I w-WHOA-n't l-lie to you ev-ever ag-gain, I sw-wear!!" Sammy collapsed, exhausted and sobbing with abandon. Dean added a pair of swats to each section of the dark red rump, then shook out his hand to the side, knowing that if it was killing him, Sammy's backside must feel like a meat factory.

Dean waited a minute before laying his warmed right hand on the small of Sammy's back, a little surprised when his brother jumped and whimpered, startled and maybe scared. "Hey," Dean said softly, "it's okay, buddy--the hard part's over." Not sure what to do now, Dean went on instinct, drawing his hand about halfway up Sam's spine and then back down, letting it slip up under the younger boy's shirt. He rubbed for a few minutes, changing his pattern, a little concerned that the kid wasn't trying to pull himself together.

Ten minutes later, Sam was out, and Dean eased out from under him, working the pants and shorts off and covering the kid as best he could.

The next morning, Dean woke, dressed, and though he hated to risk it for a bunch of reasons, left Sammy sleeping while he went for some breakfast-to-go. He didn't really think that the kid would be that stupid twice in a row, especially not after their little pow-wow last night, but still. . . He was profoundly relieved when he quietly let himself back into the room, only to see Sammy laying facedown on the far bed, his head toward the foot of the mattress, reading something on the screen of his laptop. The boy glanced to the side, saw Dean, and looked away, face burning; he didn't look mad, just embarrassed.

"Hey." Dean spoke quietly. Sam didn't quite manage an audible response, but he looked like he badly wanted to be a turtle right about then, with a shell in which to disappear forever. Okay, scratch 'embarrassed,' replace with 'mortified.'

Dean set out the food on the little table, then rethought that idea and gathered Sammy's breakfast and utensils, setting them on the bed near his brother's computer. "Eat up," he ordered. "We still have to figure out where we're going next."

"Already on it," Sam mumbled.

"Good." Dean let that fall before taking a breath and adding, "You gonna act your age now?"

"Well, I don't know, Dean; how old am I?" The words should have been snarky and sarcastic, but they weren't, and neither were Sammy's troubled eyes which he finally turned on his brother. "Dean, I. . . I really don't know quite what to say about. . . I mean, I didn't mean. . . I never. . ." He looked down at the paisley bedspread, trying to gather his thoughts. "I don't know what it was, really. I remembered being an adult, but it was just like suddenly I. . . wasn't anymore. I knew what was going on around me, I knew what I was supposed to do, but I just. . . I couldn't seem to stop myself. Or at least I didn't want to try." He looked up sideways at his brother again. "I knew what I was doing, I was responsible for my choices, no matter how weird I felt. I just wanted you to know that, well, I didn't plan to act that way." He looked back at his screen. "Took awhile, but I think I finally figured out when and where it started; it could have been nothing, but I've been researching, and I've found a couple of snatches of reports that might be linked." He didn't look up at Dean again, but he seemed to be all but holding his breath as he waited for his brother's response.

Dean paused for a moment, then moved closer, shoving the styrofoam box closer to the corner of the bed as he leaned over his brother's shoulder. "Yeah? Whatcha got?" He could've been talking about any one of hundreds of routine hunts they'd done over the years. Sam tensed at having Dean so close, but he explained his findings, still somewhat off of his usual rhythm.

"Um, well, I know it sounds strange--heh, even for us--but I've got a couple of other mentions here and there of people acting strangely after spending a lot of time in this," he pointed to a map on-screen, "section of the fairgrounds. That's where the magnetic house attraction was yesterday, but up until last year, they'd always put the Kiddie Kaboose--a kind of lost-and-found for parents and kids--right there, and that's the spot where all the reports had people who'd suddenly started acting, well, you know. So I did some more checking, and turns out, there's this thing called an denib--it's a sort of half-demon, half-spirit. They're not real common, but sometimes when a person's soul goes bad through extreme violence and trauma and the soul's owner becomes some kind of heinous criminal, there's a residual, like an echo, or like Peter Pan's shadow, that gets left behind, and it takes on a life of its own, only it's made up of all of these leftovers from terrible emotions like despair and loneliness and fear, and when it manifests, it's like a child, trying to relieve its loneliness by finding a companion. If it can't find another of its kind, which I don't see any way it could because they are kind of rare, then it'll try to make a companion--it'll find some bit of itself in someone nearby, and grab on. It doesn't possess you, exactly--more like it. . ." he ran a hand down over the back of his hair, "it reminds you of how it feels to be a child, hoping that you'll stay with it and be a child with it forever. The one at the fairgrounds must be really strong--that's how she manifested herself as the little girl." Sam trailed off, looking like he still wanted to dig a hole and bury himself even though it sounded to Dean like neither of them could have known what was going on; sure, the kid should have acted better, he'd even admitted that he could have, but who knew how much influence this thing might've had, really? Dean didn't regret spanking Sammy's butt, but as far as he was concerned, his brother had answered for his crimes and it was done.

Dean noticed Sam's shyness and hesitation, and rolled his eyes behind Sammy's back at how much this weirdness bothered the tough older brother, almost like he'd missed something. They discussed their ideas, finding that they actually agreed that they needed to find out what had happened to create the denib so they'd have an idea of how to kill it, and with a sense of satisfaction, Dean made a plan. Sam seemed fine with his brother's decisions but still wouldn't look at him, and when the older hunter made a comment about making sure Sammy didn't get his abnormally large head chopped off, the kid had shrugged as if it wouldn't matter.

Dean sighed; now he knew why it bothered him so much. He'd been raised by a man who was afraid to be soft or to get too close to his sons, and it had rubbed off on the older brother, which suited him just fine--him, sure, but not Sammy. The youngest Winchester had always been different, always needed more reassurance, and Dean had let himself forget that. He mentally kicked himself now, hiding his concern for his brother behind a layer of irritation because that was easier to accept even in his own mind.

He wasn't going to have a chick-flick moment now--he just wasn't. But he recognized that if he didn't at least try to settle up, he'd be too distracted watching Sammy for signs of dejection to really pay attention to the job, and that could get them both dead real fast. He straightened and told his brother to eat, going over to the table to do the same. Before sitting down, he paused, then made himself turn to face Sammy, who was still reading his screen while absently pulling his breakfast closer to him, not even perking up at the aroma of maple sausage.

"Hey, Sammy?" Dean waited for the inevitable bite-back about the name, but got only a hesitant, questioning look. 'Oh, yeah, this is gonna be fun.' "You. . ." Dean sighed, running his hand down his face. "About last night. . . You know I'm not good with this kind of stuff, but, um. . . I. . ." Why was this so hard? He'd used his mouth in much more challenging (and some much more interesting) ways. "Listen, Sammy, I know I was kinda rough on you, but you know I--"

Sam didn't quite smile, but he looked a little less like Mr. Gloomypants as he ducked and looked away, clearly embarrassed and (gratifyingly for Dean) uncomfortable. "Yeah, Dean. I know."

Dean blinked, then nodded once, satisfied. "Okay, then. Use your trap for something useful and eat so we can get out of here." After all, they had a dineb to kill.

Yep, just like old times--Dean and Sam Winchester, savin' the world from monsters, ghosts, and demonic preschoolers.

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