Fic: The First Time Sam Ran Away
Title: The First Time Sam Ran Away
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG
Genre: gen, wee!chesters, some humor, emotional h/c, angst, slice of life
Characters: John, Dean, Sam (John's POV)
Word Count: ~4,500
Summary: Sam is four. The title pretty much says it all.
"John saw another little piece of Dean being compressed into a new shape by all the pressure he had to endure. John hoped it was like was coal being forged into a diamond ... but he doubted it. Dean never complained about this. If anything, he seemed to blame himself for not being stronger."
John was on the phone long-distance with Bobby (it would be charged to the room, conveniently after they were long gone), when a hysterical 8-year-old Dean burst through the door. It’s not that Dean didn’t get hysterical fairly often, but not like this. John could see the fear in his eyes all the way across the room, and he told Bobby urgently to hang on, standing up. “Dad, I can’t find Sam!”
“I’m gonna have to call you back.” He hung up without waiting to hear if Bobby understood him and grabbed his jacket. “Where have you looked?” he asked, clipped and efficient.
“Everywhere! Everywhere we go! He wasn’t in the park, he wasn’t in that old man’s yard, he wasn’t in the alley, he wasn’t at the 7-11!”
“Okay, Dean. What’s the last thing he said to you?”
“Um ... um ....” John forced himself to wait patiently while his child struggled with his memory, with words, with fear. He tried to be patient, he really did. He used to think he deserved to be canonized for his patience with his unruly boys, until the last four teachers Dean had had all put ‘patience’ on the top of their list of ways he could be a better parent. It would get better, he told himself, as he couldn’t help thinking how much farther away Sam could be getting during these precious seconds. Dean would get older, and better at this.
Unfortunately, so would Sam, because John didn’t think Sam’s disappearance was an accident. Sam had announced loudly sometime last year that he would run away if John and Dean didn’t start being nicer to him--proudly, like he’d found his ace in the hole. He seemed shocked by the reaction he got: Dean’s furious disapproval, his outrage that Sam would ever even want to, and John’s quiet threats of what he would do not if but when he found him. Sam never mentioned it again, that was for sure, but John saw something in the resentment in his eyes, the newly circumspect and cagey way he sometimes pored over the “adventure journal” Pastor Jim had given him for Christmas. (“Helping Sam make the best of a bad situation,” Jim had explained, right before telling John, yet again, that he thought he should settle down for the sake of his boys.) John had checked out the journal, of course. Sam had taken to reading and writing with astonishing speed, taking the basics John taught him and running with them. Soon he would outpace Dean. John hadn’t been able to make out anything telling in his journal, but Sam was all about spy stuff and intrigue lately, and John wouldn’t put it past him to have written it in some kind of code only he understood.
John’s eye twitched as he waited, his hand twitched, he blinked several times in quick succession. Yelling at Dean to hurry up would only make it take him longer to get it out, he knew from hard experience. And Sam thought he had it so rough. It was Dean with whom John had made all his worst mistakes as he tried to figure out this parenting thing, Dean who’d borne the brunt of his grief, who took on his quest for revenge, making himself as perfectly as he could in his father’s image.
“Um ... he, um ... he said ... he said he was thirsty!”
“Is there a body of water near here, Dean, a lake or a river, a swimming pool?”
Dean nodded anxiously. John pushed Dean through the door in front of him, making sure it was locked, and got in the car, Dean climbing proudly into the front seat with him. Sam was circumspect and hard to read, but not Dean. John almost always made the both of them ride in the back, because as any halfway decent parent knew, the backseat was by far the safest place. Dean may as well have been wearing a neon sign right now that read “Dad’s either too distracted or needs my help too much to make me get in the back today!” Ah, Dean. Well, John would give him this: Dean would not hesitate to use any situation--any situation at all, no matter how dire--to get the things he spent his days craving. Sometimes John thought their itinerant, militaristic lifestyle was the only thing that saved Dean from turning into one of those kids who spent all day every day in front of the t.v. shoveling pie into his face. Because it’s not like John didn’t want Dean to have these incredibly simple things that made him happy; he just couldn’t afford them most of the time. Dean would have to be rich to be able to afford all the pie and candy and comic books and cable t.v. he wanted.
John’s mind drifted, as it often did, to his boys’ future, after this hunt was finally over and it was safe to go back to a normal life. Sam would be some kind of scholar, that was plain. John almost couldn’t not picture him at a podium in graduation robes and cap, giving some brilliant speech. Pride warred with terror at the image--out there in the open, everyone knowing his name. Any sinister creature could be watching, plotting Sam’s demise. John’s mouth twitched and he forced his mind down another pathway, one that made him more angry than afraid ... such as Dean’s future. John glanced over at Dean, his eyes just now caught on the sign for the donut shop, staring intently at it as they passed, even turning a little in his seat to get one last glimpse. The look in those big, round eyes ... John had seen soldiers in war zones look less desperate, less hungry. It would only get worse as he got older; what would happen when he discovered the opposite sex?? John made himself look away. The important thing was to get both boys through childhood alive; they’d grapple with the future when they got there.
John tried not to be hard on Dean, he really did. He never allowed himself to say things like “Your mother didn’t die for you to gorge on sweets” or some threat about how if he whined anymore, the demon would come for him. Sometimes it was all he could do to bite it back, but he always, always did. Still, John wondered if it somehow slipped through between the words. It didn’t make Dean crave self-indulgence any less, but Dean was also developing a troubling weight of guilt. Two of his teachers had noticed it. Of course John had, too, but he didn’t know what to do about it. Just telling them not to be like that didn’t work with kids. All their experiences added up to some particular, unique set of beliefs they had about themselves and the world, and John was finding it impossible to untangle every thread and root it out. John’s attempts to help rolled off (or made it worse, as Dean seemed at first bewildered by John feeling the need to say such things ... then seemed to find a way to feel guilty about that, too), but when he screwed up, again, and was harder on the boys than he meant to be, he saw this look on Dean’s face, this terrible weight settling behind his eyes, and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do about it.
Meanwhile, nothing got past Sam’s sharp eyes, silently taking in every mundane interaction between John and Dean, measuring, judging, calculating, concluding. Trouble was, John couldn’t know what conclusions he was coming to, but he was willing to bet, whatever they were, they were responsible for where he and Dean were right now, headed for the river. “He knows better than to drink out of a river,” John muttered furiously, knowing this was a long shot but taking it anyway. He asked Dean for Sam’s last words before taking off because kids couldn’t seem to resist dropping clues, no matter how hard they were trying to keep something secret. John spent his whole day putting clues together. Thank God at least one of the skills he’d developed hunting was useful for parenting, too, since hunting mostly seemed to make him an unfit parent.
Dean opened the door and leaped out before John had quite come to a stop--knowing, again, that John was too anxious about finding Sam to take the time to yell at him about it now--and booked it toward the river, shouting Sam’s name. John rolled his eyes, locking up the car as fast as he could before jogging after Dean, trying to catch him so he could quietly explain that they needed to not shout Sam’s name like that unless no one was around ... but then, as usually seemed to happen with Dean, John’s worst fears were instantly realized. An older woman asked Dean why he was shouting, able to tell from Dean’s hysterical tone that it was probably his brother, then more people were asking, then suddenly everyone in the park by the river was mobilized on a man-hunt and the whole situation was out of John’s control. Next the cops would be here, then John would be answering questions about how his son managed to get so far without John’s noticing .... John grabbed Dean’s arm as he whipped past, and he jerked him close. “No shouting your brother’s name, Dean,” he hissed, keeping himself under tight control. He couldn’t afford to lose it here, now, in front of all these people, when there was something so much more important to worry about. “You just look, don’t shout, got it?”
Dean didn’t understand, plainly, but his anxious eyes were all desperation to please.
“We don’t want to attract attention,” he explained. “In fact ... it’s time to leave.”
John turned and headed for the car. Dean trotted beside him, unable to keep up with his father’s long strides. “But--Dad--what if he’s here?”
“If he was here and wanted to be found, he’d have come out already, and if he doesn’t want to be found, he’s already moved on.”
They got in the car and peeled out. Dean was babbling anxiously, because that was what he did. “But why wouldn’t he want to be found, Dad?”
John weighed whether he should clue Dean into his suspicions. Most parents seemed to have this idea that you should keep hard truths from your kids, but John couldn’t think of a good reason why he shouldn’t just tell Dean. Maybe he really was a bad parent, but he was the only parent they had, the only one who knew about Sam, the only one who understood what had to be done to keep his boys safe. “I think Sam’s been planning to run away,” he admitted to Dean--then it immediately occurred to him how this confession could be beneficial. “Has he said anything on the subject to you over the past five months or so, Dean?” he asked sharply. “Anything at all.”
Dean had settled down, contemplating the question most seriously ... twined with a look on his face of unmistakable disbelief, of betrayal, of utter confusion, because Dean couldn’t comprehend how Sam could leave him, walk away from his dad and his responsibilities, or anything about this, really. This must be why John shouldn’t have told him. John rubbed his face. It seemed like there was just no way to get this parenting thing right ... or if there was, John would never figure it out. John reached out to pat Dean, the only reassurance he knew how to offer right now ... and Dean flinched, startled, looking up at his father fearfully. John let him go with a sigh, exhausted with all his own failures. Dean had to stand up under too much weight, living with Sam and John. Maybe Dean would be better off living with Bobby and John could just keep watch over Sam ... but if there was one thing John knew about Dean, it was that that was the very thing that would break him. Dean would tolerate the lack and hardship and travel, would even gladly put up with John’s crappy parenting, as long as he could always be with what remained of his family.
“He’s said a lot of things,” Dean said then hesitantly, and John listened intently. There was a caginess to Dean now suddenly, too, and John looked at him quickly. Had Sam sworn him to secrecy or something? “He, um ... he misses Nebraska, he really liked that place where we ....” He trailed off.
“Do you think he would try to get there?” John demanded. His 4-year-old son, trying on his own to get to another state? The idea would be laughable with most kids ... but with Sam, even if he couldn’t get all the way there, he might be able to get a good distance. Dean’s eyes rolled with anxiety, and John was aware of all the pressure he was putting on him, but he had to put more on him, he had to, to find Sam. If there was a God, he must be a cruel son of a bitch. “Dean, you tell me everything you know. Think, Dean! Where would Sam go? If he was going to go anywhere today, where would it be?”
John saw another little piece of Dean being compressed into a new shape by all the pressure he had to endure. John hoped it was like was coal being forged into a diamond ... but he doubted it. Dean never complained about this. If anything, he seemed to blame himself for not being stronger. He thought hard, way too serious for an 8-year-old, and said suddenly, “The high school.”
John did a double-take. “What?”
“I don’t know, I just ....” John gunned it for the high school. They’d been there once, for an astronomy presentation John thought Sam would like. Maybe there was something to Dean’s guess, because Sam had been enamored of the place: its largeness, its library, its gym, the pool ... even the trophy cases and homecoming posters. Sam had been entranced, asking all about when he would get to go to high school, staring up at passing high-school students in awe, asking if he would ever get that tall. Dean seemed all the more anxious. “I don’t know if I’m right, Dad, I--”
“It’s a good guess, Dean. We’ll start there.”
It was a Saturday. John was afraid the place would be locked up, but the second door they tried was open, and they burst in. After a quick look around didn’t yield anything, John said quietly to Dean, “Check the library and the planetarium; I’ll check the gym and some other places. Don’t shout for him or he might take off again; just look. If you can’t find me, go to the car and I’ll meet you there. If someone asks what you’re doing, say you’re lost and that you’re looking for your dad. Okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Dean said, running off immediately.
John watched him go, then started checking every possibility in the school: bathrooms, maintenance closets, classrooms. He imagined Dean rushing back, Sam in tow, having found him lost in science books in the library; that was the most likely spot he’d gravitate toward. John checked the gym, the locker room, the pool--a warm, indoor, Olympic-size pool like this would be right up Sam’s alley, since he was willing to swim in freezing, scum-crusted water at any hotel that had a pool. But no Sam. Maybe Dean’s guess was wrong.
He heard Dean shouting for Sam down the hall and shook his head. That kid. Desperate to please, but he couldn’t follow an order to save his life. John headed to where Dean’s voice was coming from to remind him as gently as he could manage not to shout for Sam, already taking deep breaths and reining in his anger, when he stopped in his tracks. He could hear Dean clearly now through the echoey hallways; he was nearby ... and he was with Sam. “Sam, no,” Dean was saying. “It’s too late; Dad already knows you’re here.”
“How did he know!” Sam demanded, outraged. “You told on me?!” There was a pause; maybe all Sam had to do was look at his brother’s face. “You told on me!” he cried, even more outraged.
“I didn’t know; I just guessed!” Dean said defensively. “But you’ve got to come home now. Dad said.”
“No; I’m living here now,” Sam said defiantly, and despite the situation, John couldn’t help smiling a little bit. His precocious son, still very much a kid in some ways. The smile remained even as a couple of tears leaked out, and he wiped them away, chuckling very softly to himself. Sam was all right.
“No, you’re not,” Dean sighed, already back to sounding like the older brother beleaguered by his little brother’s ignorance; Dean Winchester: holder of all worldly knowledge. “They won’t let you live here. All the students will be back on Monday, and they’d kick you out.”
“I can hide during the school day, until I’m old enough to go to school here.”
“What would you eat?” Dean scoffed.
“What I’ve already been eating, from the cafeteria. Dean, they have jello!”
John had a moment’s worry, hearing the catch in Dean’s throat at this news, that they would both run off to the cafeteria and John would have to find them there and give them a hard time, but though he heard in his voice how difficult it was for Dean to do, Dean managed to shake it off and said, “No. Come on, Sam. Dad’s really mad.”
John wasn’t sure what about this information was supposed to make Sam feel like he should do as Dean said, so John found them--in a small, carpeted classroom, where Sam had arranged a pretty nice set-up for himself: blankets, some food, and inevitably, half a dozen books scattered around his little living space, one open to a page full of life-sized color pictures of beetles. John knew now why Dean had shouted for him--Dean must have seen his set-up, if not Sam himself, and known he was nearby.
John couldn’t help calculating how his son had fared on his own. He spent a great deal of their time together teaching them how to fend for themselves, so he couldn’t help but be just a little bit proud of his very young son’s self-reliance skills. If Sam had never overslept and gotten caught, if he had returned the books to their spots on the shelves nightly, if he hadn’t been too obvious about what he culled from the cafeteria, he might have gotten by here for a few weeks ... except that the crumbs on the floor around his sleeping space would have given him away far sooner than that.
John eased into the room, and they both stopped talking instantly and stared at him, wide-eyed. “Hey, son,” John said gently, and went to kneel beside Sam. What was with that flare of jealousy in Dean’s eyes? Anytime John got near Sam, Dean looked like that lately. John ignored it. “I know you’re dying to go to high school, but you’ll get there before you know it. In the meantime, we need you. Your family needs you.”
“No, you don’t,” Sam said belligerently, pulling away and flumping down again bullishly in his sleeping space. “You can keep hunting; I’m staying here.”
Dammit. Every single time John tried to do it the nice way, this is how it went. “Sam, come on,” John said, more sharply. “You’re not staying here; you can’t. That’s final.”
Sam lay down in passive resistance, arms crossed, and John tried to suppress another grin, surely partly brought on by his overpowering relief. It was adorable that Sam thought he weighed enough that this could make any difference. John and Dean looked at each other. Dean looked anxious, but when he saw the twinkle in John’s eye, he relaxed, and shook his head at Sam, sighing like he was also Sam’s dad, too old to be 8. John smirked at Dean, and when Sam didn’t get up, finally shrugged. “You get the blankets.”
“What about the books?”
“Leave ’em.” John picked up Sam (who started caterwauling instantly) and tossed him over his shoulder. Sam got in a couple of sharp kicks before John managed to hold his legs down tightly enough that he couldn’t move them. “You keep this up, Sam, and you’ll be sorry,” he said dangerously, but Dean no longer looked perturbed, tossing the blankets over his shoulder (imitating his dad) and sauntering out beside John. Dean was fine now because Sam was okay, and if Sam brought down armageddon on his own head, so be it.
But Sam wouldn’t quit, whining and squirming and reaching back toward his cubbyhole, finally crying, then throwing an epic tantrum, yelling at the top of his lungs. If there was anyone in the entire school right now--a janitor, a teacher working on the weekend--they would be here in a second. John set Sam on his feet and got in his face, hissing low, shaking him lightly. “Sam Winchester, you stop that right now, or so help me, I will have your hide.”
John expected much more of a fight, but something about what he’d said distracted Sam, his expression suddenly thoughtful, though tears still stood on his red face. “I don’t have a hide,” he said at last. “I have a skin.”
John tried very hard to suppress his grin. “I’ll have your skin then.”
“What would you do with it?” Sam asked belligerently.
“Sam,” John said warningly, looking around paranoidly and hurrying them out of the high school back to the car. Dean tried to get in the front again, but John ordered him to get in the back, saying Sam would sit up front with him. Dean refrained from complaining out loud, surely knowing how wound up John was, but the heavy, reluctant way he moved was like a billboard screaming that it was unfair that Sam should be rewarded for his bad behavior and Dean should not be rewarded for his success. But this was no reward. After John had started the car, he turned to look at him, very seriously. “Sam? Sam, listen to me.” Sam wouldn’t look at him. “Sam, look at me!” he barked, and Sam raised resentful eyes to his--betrayed eyes--the same eyes he had every time John took him away from a home he had come to love. “Son, don’t you ever run away again, do you hear me?”
Sam half nodded, half shook his head, and looked away impudently. John grabbed his arm. “Sam, you are never to run away again. That’s an order. Do you understand me?”
“I’m not a soldier, I’m a kid!” Sam shouted back.
“Sam!” said Dean.
“Dean, stay out of this. Sam, you are a Winchester, and like it or not, you always will be. I order you never to run away again.”
“Or else what?”
John and Sam stared at each other for a long, long moment, and a lot was exchanged in those few seconds. Man, that kid had a stubborn will as strong as Bobby’s, as strong as his mother’s. Only four, and he was already convinced he had the strength to bend the world to his will. Sam had already calculated what John had in his arsenal, and there was nothing there that would stop him. John seldom laid a hand on his children, largely because it did no good; it only made Sam more resentful and Dean more anxious. Kids wanted to please, but they also had to be whatever they were, even if their father didn’t like it. The only way John could force Sam to do his bidding would be to break his will, and he wouldn’t do that, couldn’t do that; he had to keep them strong, not destroy the most important tool they had to get through this life: themselves. So John resorted to the only card he had left. “Sam, please.” He saw Dean look at him sharply, alarmed by the tone of supplication in his voice.
Sam was also thrown off by his father’s unexpected turnabout. John was relieved to see he didn’t calculate how to use this to get as much as he could out of John while he had the upper hand; he looked instead kind, fair, generous even. “Then ... please can we stay in the next good place we find?” Sam said hesitantly, peering up into his dad’s eyes beseechingly, and John’s heart broke.
He pulled Sam onto his lap, pressing his lips against his head. “Sam, son, God, if there’s one thing I want in this world, it’s to get us to a good, safe place and stay there, where we can all be happy. It’s just ... out of my reach right now, son, but I’m trying, I’m trying to get us there, and I will as soon as I can. Okay?”
Sam looked up into his eyes again searchingly. He must have seen the absolute sincerity there, and maybe John’s eyes were a little wet, too, because Sam looked away quickly and nodded, seeming to feel awkward and a bit shamed. John let him go, he scooted over and put on his seatbelt, and John started the car and headed home without another word.
A glance in the rearview mirror revealed the blisteringly resentful look Dean shot him before looking away again quickly: Dean, who had borne the weight of the entire search for Sam--Sam, who’d not only escaped punishment but had gotten a kiss, a promise, and a ride in the front seat for running away. John glanced at Sam, who still seemed to be reeling a little from the unexpected conversation. It would seem cruel to send him into the back seat now. John sighed. Parenting, evidently, involved endangering your kids to make them happy. “Dean, why don’t you come up here and sit in the front seat with your brother?”
John wouldn’t say all Dean’s resentment was swept away with those words, but a fair bit of it was, his eyes widening with surprise and disbelief. He cast off his seatbelt and clambered over the seatback to settle there next to Sam, still silent, as if afraid to break the spell of his father’s sudden unexpected benevolence. There was no third front seatbelt for Dean. He was the worst parent.
Dean wasn’t past his resentment yet, clearly, as he immediately fell to teasing Sam meanly. They were just passing by the donut shop again now on the way home. “Who wants donuts?” John said, praying he had at least enough in his pocket to get one each for both boys. Dean threw his hands up into the air and cheered, all sorrows forgotten, and Sam did, too, though he didn’t care about sweets that much; swept up in the moment, John guessed. And that’s how Sam ended up eating nothing but jello and donuts the day he ran away.
~ The End ~
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG
Genre: gen, wee!chesters, some humor, emotional h/c, angst, slice of life
Characters: John, Dean, Sam (John's POV)
Word Count: ~4,500
Summary: Sam is four. The title pretty much says it all.
"John saw another little piece of Dean being compressed into a new shape by all the pressure he had to endure. John hoped it was like was coal being forged into a diamond ... but he doubted it. Dean never complained about this. If anything, he seemed to blame himself for not being stronger."
John was on the phone long-distance with Bobby (it would be charged to the room, conveniently after they were long gone), when a hysterical 8-year-old Dean burst through the door. It’s not that Dean didn’t get hysterical fairly often, but not like this. John could see the fear in his eyes all the way across the room, and he told Bobby urgently to hang on, standing up. “Dad, I can’t find Sam!”
“I’m gonna have to call you back.” He hung up without waiting to hear if Bobby understood him and grabbed his jacket. “Where have you looked?” he asked, clipped and efficient.
“Everywhere! Everywhere we go! He wasn’t in the park, he wasn’t in that old man’s yard, he wasn’t in the alley, he wasn’t at the 7-11!”
“Okay, Dean. What’s the last thing he said to you?”
“Um ... um ....” John forced himself to wait patiently while his child struggled with his memory, with words, with fear. He tried to be patient, he really did. He used to think he deserved to be canonized for his patience with his unruly boys, until the last four teachers Dean had had all put ‘patience’ on the top of their list of ways he could be a better parent. It would get better, he told himself, as he couldn’t help thinking how much farther away Sam could be getting during these precious seconds. Dean would get older, and better at this.
Unfortunately, so would Sam, because John didn’t think Sam’s disappearance was an accident. Sam had announced loudly sometime last year that he would run away if John and Dean didn’t start being nicer to him--proudly, like he’d found his ace in the hole. He seemed shocked by the reaction he got: Dean’s furious disapproval, his outrage that Sam would ever even want to, and John’s quiet threats of what he would do not if but when he found him. Sam never mentioned it again, that was for sure, but John saw something in the resentment in his eyes, the newly circumspect and cagey way he sometimes pored over the “adventure journal” Pastor Jim had given him for Christmas. (“Helping Sam make the best of a bad situation,” Jim had explained, right before telling John, yet again, that he thought he should settle down for the sake of his boys.) John had checked out the journal, of course. Sam had taken to reading and writing with astonishing speed, taking the basics John taught him and running with them. Soon he would outpace Dean. John hadn’t been able to make out anything telling in his journal, but Sam was all about spy stuff and intrigue lately, and John wouldn’t put it past him to have written it in some kind of code only he understood.
John’s eye twitched as he waited, his hand twitched, he blinked several times in quick succession. Yelling at Dean to hurry up would only make it take him longer to get it out, he knew from hard experience. And Sam thought he had it so rough. It was Dean with whom John had made all his worst mistakes as he tried to figure out this parenting thing, Dean who’d borne the brunt of his grief, who took on his quest for revenge, making himself as perfectly as he could in his father’s image.
“Um ... he, um ... he said ... he said he was thirsty!”
“Is there a body of water near here, Dean, a lake or a river, a swimming pool?”
Dean nodded anxiously. John pushed Dean through the door in front of him, making sure it was locked, and got in the car, Dean climbing proudly into the front seat with him. Sam was circumspect and hard to read, but not Dean. John almost always made the both of them ride in the back, because as any halfway decent parent knew, the backseat was by far the safest place. Dean may as well have been wearing a neon sign right now that read “Dad’s either too distracted or needs my help too much to make me get in the back today!” Ah, Dean. Well, John would give him this: Dean would not hesitate to use any situation--any situation at all, no matter how dire--to get the things he spent his days craving. Sometimes John thought their itinerant, militaristic lifestyle was the only thing that saved Dean from turning into one of those kids who spent all day every day in front of the t.v. shoveling pie into his face. Because it’s not like John didn’t want Dean to have these incredibly simple things that made him happy; he just couldn’t afford them most of the time. Dean would have to be rich to be able to afford all the pie and candy and comic books and cable t.v. he wanted.
John’s mind drifted, as it often did, to his boys’ future, after this hunt was finally over and it was safe to go back to a normal life. Sam would be some kind of scholar, that was plain. John almost couldn’t not picture him at a podium in graduation robes and cap, giving some brilliant speech. Pride warred with terror at the image--out there in the open, everyone knowing his name. Any sinister creature could be watching, plotting Sam’s demise. John’s mouth twitched and he forced his mind down another pathway, one that made him more angry than afraid ... such as Dean’s future. John glanced over at Dean, his eyes just now caught on the sign for the donut shop, staring intently at it as they passed, even turning a little in his seat to get one last glimpse. The look in those big, round eyes ... John had seen soldiers in war zones look less desperate, less hungry. It would only get worse as he got older; what would happen when he discovered the opposite sex?? John made himself look away. The important thing was to get both boys through childhood alive; they’d grapple with the future when they got there.
John tried not to be hard on Dean, he really did. He never allowed himself to say things like “Your mother didn’t die for you to gorge on sweets” or some threat about how if he whined anymore, the demon would come for him. Sometimes it was all he could do to bite it back, but he always, always did. Still, John wondered if it somehow slipped through between the words. It didn’t make Dean crave self-indulgence any less, but Dean was also developing a troubling weight of guilt. Two of his teachers had noticed it. Of course John had, too, but he didn’t know what to do about it. Just telling them not to be like that didn’t work with kids. All their experiences added up to some particular, unique set of beliefs they had about themselves and the world, and John was finding it impossible to untangle every thread and root it out. John’s attempts to help rolled off (or made it worse, as Dean seemed at first bewildered by John feeling the need to say such things ... then seemed to find a way to feel guilty about that, too), but when he screwed up, again, and was harder on the boys than he meant to be, he saw this look on Dean’s face, this terrible weight settling behind his eyes, and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do about it.
Meanwhile, nothing got past Sam’s sharp eyes, silently taking in every mundane interaction between John and Dean, measuring, judging, calculating, concluding. Trouble was, John couldn’t know what conclusions he was coming to, but he was willing to bet, whatever they were, they were responsible for where he and Dean were right now, headed for the river. “He knows better than to drink out of a river,” John muttered furiously, knowing this was a long shot but taking it anyway. He asked Dean for Sam’s last words before taking off because kids couldn’t seem to resist dropping clues, no matter how hard they were trying to keep something secret. John spent his whole day putting clues together. Thank God at least one of the skills he’d developed hunting was useful for parenting, too, since hunting mostly seemed to make him an unfit parent.
Dean opened the door and leaped out before John had quite come to a stop--knowing, again, that John was too anxious about finding Sam to take the time to yell at him about it now--and booked it toward the river, shouting Sam’s name. John rolled his eyes, locking up the car as fast as he could before jogging after Dean, trying to catch him so he could quietly explain that they needed to not shout Sam’s name like that unless no one was around ... but then, as usually seemed to happen with Dean, John’s worst fears were instantly realized. An older woman asked Dean why he was shouting, able to tell from Dean’s hysterical tone that it was probably his brother, then more people were asking, then suddenly everyone in the park by the river was mobilized on a man-hunt and the whole situation was out of John’s control. Next the cops would be here, then John would be answering questions about how his son managed to get so far without John’s noticing .... John grabbed Dean’s arm as he whipped past, and he jerked him close. “No shouting your brother’s name, Dean,” he hissed, keeping himself under tight control. He couldn’t afford to lose it here, now, in front of all these people, when there was something so much more important to worry about. “You just look, don’t shout, got it?”
Dean didn’t understand, plainly, but his anxious eyes were all desperation to please.
“We don’t want to attract attention,” he explained. “In fact ... it’s time to leave.”
John turned and headed for the car. Dean trotted beside him, unable to keep up with his father’s long strides. “But--Dad--what if he’s here?”
“If he was here and wanted to be found, he’d have come out already, and if he doesn’t want to be found, he’s already moved on.”
They got in the car and peeled out. Dean was babbling anxiously, because that was what he did. “But why wouldn’t he want to be found, Dad?”
John weighed whether he should clue Dean into his suspicions. Most parents seemed to have this idea that you should keep hard truths from your kids, but John couldn’t think of a good reason why he shouldn’t just tell Dean. Maybe he really was a bad parent, but he was the only parent they had, the only one who knew about Sam, the only one who understood what had to be done to keep his boys safe. “I think Sam’s been planning to run away,” he admitted to Dean--then it immediately occurred to him how this confession could be beneficial. “Has he said anything on the subject to you over the past five months or so, Dean?” he asked sharply. “Anything at all.”
Dean had settled down, contemplating the question most seriously ... twined with a look on his face of unmistakable disbelief, of betrayal, of utter confusion, because Dean couldn’t comprehend how Sam could leave him, walk away from his dad and his responsibilities, or anything about this, really. This must be why John shouldn’t have told him. John rubbed his face. It seemed like there was just no way to get this parenting thing right ... or if there was, John would never figure it out. John reached out to pat Dean, the only reassurance he knew how to offer right now ... and Dean flinched, startled, looking up at his father fearfully. John let him go with a sigh, exhausted with all his own failures. Dean had to stand up under too much weight, living with Sam and John. Maybe Dean would be better off living with Bobby and John could just keep watch over Sam ... but if there was one thing John knew about Dean, it was that that was the very thing that would break him. Dean would tolerate the lack and hardship and travel, would even gladly put up with John’s crappy parenting, as long as he could always be with what remained of his family.
“He’s said a lot of things,” Dean said then hesitantly, and John listened intently. There was a caginess to Dean now suddenly, too, and John looked at him quickly. Had Sam sworn him to secrecy or something? “He, um ... he misses Nebraska, he really liked that place where we ....” He trailed off.
“Do you think he would try to get there?” John demanded. His 4-year-old son, trying on his own to get to another state? The idea would be laughable with most kids ... but with Sam, even if he couldn’t get all the way there, he might be able to get a good distance. Dean’s eyes rolled with anxiety, and John was aware of all the pressure he was putting on him, but he had to put more on him, he had to, to find Sam. If there was a God, he must be a cruel son of a bitch. “Dean, you tell me everything you know. Think, Dean! Where would Sam go? If he was going to go anywhere today, where would it be?”
John saw another little piece of Dean being compressed into a new shape by all the pressure he had to endure. John hoped it was like was coal being forged into a diamond ... but he doubted it. Dean never complained about this. If anything, he seemed to blame himself for not being stronger. He thought hard, way too serious for an 8-year-old, and said suddenly, “The high school.”
John did a double-take. “What?”
“I don’t know, I just ....” John gunned it for the high school. They’d been there once, for an astronomy presentation John thought Sam would like. Maybe there was something to Dean’s guess, because Sam had been enamored of the place: its largeness, its library, its gym, the pool ... even the trophy cases and homecoming posters. Sam had been entranced, asking all about when he would get to go to high school, staring up at passing high-school students in awe, asking if he would ever get that tall. Dean seemed all the more anxious. “I don’t know if I’m right, Dad, I--”
“It’s a good guess, Dean. We’ll start there.”
It was a Saturday. John was afraid the place would be locked up, but the second door they tried was open, and they burst in. After a quick look around didn’t yield anything, John said quietly to Dean, “Check the library and the planetarium; I’ll check the gym and some other places. Don’t shout for him or he might take off again; just look. If you can’t find me, go to the car and I’ll meet you there. If someone asks what you’re doing, say you’re lost and that you’re looking for your dad. Okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Dean said, running off immediately.
John watched him go, then started checking every possibility in the school: bathrooms, maintenance closets, classrooms. He imagined Dean rushing back, Sam in tow, having found him lost in science books in the library; that was the most likely spot he’d gravitate toward. John checked the gym, the locker room, the pool--a warm, indoor, Olympic-size pool like this would be right up Sam’s alley, since he was willing to swim in freezing, scum-crusted water at any hotel that had a pool. But no Sam. Maybe Dean’s guess was wrong.
He heard Dean shouting for Sam down the hall and shook his head. That kid. Desperate to please, but he couldn’t follow an order to save his life. John headed to where Dean’s voice was coming from to remind him as gently as he could manage not to shout for Sam, already taking deep breaths and reining in his anger, when he stopped in his tracks. He could hear Dean clearly now through the echoey hallways; he was nearby ... and he was with Sam. “Sam, no,” Dean was saying. “It’s too late; Dad already knows you’re here.”
“How did he know!” Sam demanded, outraged. “You told on me?!” There was a pause; maybe all Sam had to do was look at his brother’s face. “You told on me!” he cried, even more outraged.
“I didn’t know; I just guessed!” Dean said defensively. “But you’ve got to come home now. Dad said.”
“No; I’m living here now,” Sam said defiantly, and despite the situation, John couldn’t help smiling a little bit. His precocious son, still very much a kid in some ways. The smile remained even as a couple of tears leaked out, and he wiped them away, chuckling very softly to himself. Sam was all right.
“No, you’re not,” Dean sighed, already back to sounding like the older brother beleaguered by his little brother’s ignorance; Dean Winchester: holder of all worldly knowledge. “They won’t let you live here. All the students will be back on Monday, and they’d kick you out.”
“I can hide during the school day, until I’m old enough to go to school here.”
“What would you eat?” Dean scoffed.
“What I’ve already been eating, from the cafeteria. Dean, they have jello!”
John had a moment’s worry, hearing the catch in Dean’s throat at this news, that they would both run off to the cafeteria and John would have to find them there and give them a hard time, but though he heard in his voice how difficult it was for Dean to do, Dean managed to shake it off and said, “No. Come on, Sam. Dad’s really mad.”
John wasn’t sure what about this information was supposed to make Sam feel like he should do as Dean said, so John found them--in a small, carpeted classroom, where Sam had arranged a pretty nice set-up for himself: blankets, some food, and inevitably, half a dozen books scattered around his little living space, one open to a page full of life-sized color pictures of beetles. John knew now why Dean had shouted for him--Dean must have seen his set-up, if not Sam himself, and known he was nearby.
John couldn’t help calculating how his son had fared on his own. He spent a great deal of their time together teaching them how to fend for themselves, so he couldn’t help but be just a little bit proud of his very young son’s self-reliance skills. If Sam had never overslept and gotten caught, if he had returned the books to their spots on the shelves nightly, if he hadn’t been too obvious about what he culled from the cafeteria, he might have gotten by here for a few weeks ... except that the crumbs on the floor around his sleeping space would have given him away far sooner than that.
John eased into the room, and they both stopped talking instantly and stared at him, wide-eyed. “Hey, son,” John said gently, and went to kneel beside Sam. What was with that flare of jealousy in Dean’s eyes? Anytime John got near Sam, Dean looked like that lately. John ignored it. “I know you’re dying to go to high school, but you’ll get there before you know it. In the meantime, we need you. Your family needs you.”
“No, you don’t,” Sam said belligerently, pulling away and flumping down again bullishly in his sleeping space. “You can keep hunting; I’m staying here.”
Dammit. Every single time John tried to do it the nice way, this is how it went. “Sam, come on,” John said, more sharply. “You’re not staying here; you can’t. That’s final.”
Sam lay down in passive resistance, arms crossed, and John tried to suppress another grin, surely partly brought on by his overpowering relief. It was adorable that Sam thought he weighed enough that this could make any difference. John and Dean looked at each other. Dean looked anxious, but when he saw the twinkle in John’s eye, he relaxed, and shook his head at Sam, sighing like he was also Sam’s dad, too old to be 8. John smirked at Dean, and when Sam didn’t get up, finally shrugged. “You get the blankets.”
“What about the books?”
“Leave ’em.” John picked up Sam (who started caterwauling instantly) and tossed him over his shoulder. Sam got in a couple of sharp kicks before John managed to hold his legs down tightly enough that he couldn’t move them. “You keep this up, Sam, and you’ll be sorry,” he said dangerously, but Dean no longer looked perturbed, tossing the blankets over his shoulder (imitating his dad) and sauntering out beside John. Dean was fine now because Sam was okay, and if Sam brought down armageddon on his own head, so be it.
But Sam wouldn’t quit, whining and squirming and reaching back toward his cubbyhole, finally crying, then throwing an epic tantrum, yelling at the top of his lungs. If there was anyone in the entire school right now--a janitor, a teacher working on the weekend--they would be here in a second. John set Sam on his feet and got in his face, hissing low, shaking him lightly. “Sam Winchester, you stop that right now, or so help me, I will have your hide.”
John expected much more of a fight, but something about what he’d said distracted Sam, his expression suddenly thoughtful, though tears still stood on his red face. “I don’t have a hide,” he said at last. “I have a skin.”
John tried very hard to suppress his grin. “I’ll have your skin then.”
“What would you do with it?” Sam asked belligerently.
“Sam,” John said warningly, looking around paranoidly and hurrying them out of the high school back to the car. Dean tried to get in the front again, but John ordered him to get in the back, saying Sam would sit up front with him. Dean refrained from complaining out loud, surely knowing how wound up John was, but the heavy, reluctant way he moved was like a billboard screaming that it was unfair that Sam should be rewarded for his bad behavior and Dean should not be rewarded for his success. But this was no reward. After John had started the car, he turned to look at him, very seriously. “Sam? Sam, listen to me.” Sam wouldn’t look at him. “Sam, look at me!” he barked, and Sam raised resentful eyes to his--betrayed eyes--the same eyes he had every time John took him away from a home he had come to love. “Son, don’t you ever run away again, do you hear me?”
Sam half nodded, half shook his head, and looked away impudently. John grabbed his arm. “Sam, you are never to run away again. That’s an order. Do you understand me?”
“I’m not a soldier, I’m a kid!” Sam shouted back.
“Sam!” said Dean.
“Dean, stay out of this. Sam, you are a Winchester, and like it or not, you always will be. I order you never to run away again.”
“Or else what?”
John and Sam stared at each other for a long, long moment, and a lot was exchanged in those few seconds. Man, that kid had a stubborn will as strong as Bobby’s, as strong as his mother’s. Only four, and he was already convinced he had the strength to bend the world to his will. Sam had already calculated what John had in his arsenal, and there was nothing there that would stop him. John seldom laid a hand on his children, largely because it did no good; it only made Sam more resentful and Dean more anxious. Kids wanted to please, but they also had to be whatever they were, even if their father didn’t like it. The only way John could force Sam to do his bidding would be to break his will, and he wouldn’t do that, couldn’t do that; he had to keep them strong, not destroy the most important tool they had to get through this life: themselves. So John resorted to the only card he had left. “Sam, please.” He saw Dean look at him sharply, alarmed by the tone of supplication in his voice.
Sam was also thrown off by his father’s unexpected turnabout. John was relieved to see he didn’t calculate how to use this to get as much as he could out of John while he had the upper hand; he looked instead kind, fair, generous even. “Then ... please can we stay in the next good place we find?” Sam said hesitantly, peering up into his dad’s eyes beseechingly, and John’s heart broke.
He pulled Sam onto his lap, pressing his lips against his head. “Sam, son, God, if there’s one thing I want in this world, it’s to get us to a good, safe place and stay there, where we can all be happy. It’s just ... out of my reach right now, son, but I’m trying, I’m trying to get us there, and I will as soon as I can. Okay?”
Sam looked up into his eyes again searchingly. He must have seen the absolute sincerity there, and maybe John’s eyes were a little wet, too, because Sam looked away quickly and nodded, seeming to feel awkward and a bit shamed. John let him go, he scooted over and put on his seatbelt, and John started the car and headed home without another word.
A glance in the rearview mirror revealed the blisteringly resentful look Dean shot him before looking away again quickly: Dean, who had borne the weight of the entire search for Sam--Sam, who’d not only escaped punishment but had gotten a kiss, a promise, and a ride in the front seat for running away. John glanced at Sam, who still seemed to be reeling a little from the unexpected conversation. It would seem cruel to send him into the back seat now. John sighed. Parenting, evidently, involved endangering your kids to make them happy. “Dean, why don’t you come up here and sit in the front seat with your brother?”
John wouldn’t say all Dean’s resentment was swept away with those words, but a fair bit of it was, his eyes widening with surprise and disbelief. He cast off his seatbelt and clambered over the seatback to settle there next to Sam, still silent, as if afraid to break the spell of his father’s sudden unexpected benevolence. There was no third front seatbelt for Dean. He was the worst parent.
Dean wasn’t past his resentment yet, clearly, as he immediately fell to teasing Sam meanly. They were just passing by the donut shop again now on the way home. “Who wants donuts?” John said, praying he had at least enough in his pocket to get one each for both boys. Dean threw his hands up into the air and cheered, all sorrows forgotten, and Sam did, too, though he didn’t care about sweets that much; swept up in the moment, John guessed. And that’s how Sam ended up eating nothing but jello and donuts the day he ran away.
~ The End ~