[FIC] Father's Gun (54/?)
Title: Father's Gun
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: Mature
Warnings: minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.
Notes: Sorry for the late update!! Hope you guys enjoy the chapter. :)
Previous Chapter | Master Post
Dean beat a phouka at lying once in the dead, dark backwoods of Pennsylvania, one of those cases when Dad was gone and Sam was gone and not much else seemed to matter. He won a wish locked tight in a silver ring for his trouble. Coulda gone for money. Fame. Smarts.
He picked never getting pulled over for speeding again. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
It seems like a fucking fantastic idea now. He tears through the miles between him and Sam, rips apart should-have-knowns and could-have-dones in his head as his heart pounds, his hands clenched tight on the wheel. He tries, tries and fails not to think of every twisted, evil thing that Dad and Jim could be doing to Sammy right now, but when he hits Blue Earth, when the snarling, angry, dizzy mess the rage and the drugs have made him crosses that county line, it's not making them pay that's on his mind. It's not what they were thinking then or what they're doing now or anything.
It’s the thick, black, awful cloud that's on the horizon, choking out sun and sky and right where Jim's church - right where Sam - should be.
Dean thought he couldn't drive any faster. He thought wrong.
He tears up the church drive and skids to a stop. John Winchester, eyes heavy and face black with grime, is helping a coughing, soot-covered Jim out of the parsonage and into the truck.
“What happened? Where's Sam?” Dean demands, door slamming like a shot behind him.
“They came while we were in the church,” Jim rasps, choking on air. “The Boeffels- we-”
Dean doesn't wanna hear it. He trusted this bastard. Sam trusted this bastard, and he drugged Dean and shipped him off, and if this son of a bitch is here in the parking lot running his trap then-
“WHERE THE HELL IS SAM?!” Dean roars.
Dad and Jim don't say a thing, not a damn thing, but their eyes track heavy with guilt to the burning sanctuary, and Dean knows, he just knows. Knows that they kept Sammy caged in that panic room, knows they had him locked up like an animal while they did who the hell knows what, and when shit went to hell, when it all fell apart, they caught wind and ran off, and they just left him there, tore off after their precious fucking civvies and left his brother alone to burn.
His little brother is in there, and they weren't even gonna try and save him.
The rage rips into Dean, tears through him hot and fast. This is the last time, the last time someone locks them up, puts them in a cage and turns their back and leaves them to fucking die, and it's worse, so much worse, because it's Sam, it's Sam and he's Dean's and he could already be too late and he had one job, one job-
“Sammy!” Dean shouts, barreling to the smoking side doors.
Jim and Dad surge forward, snatch at his arms. Well, good fucking luck stopping him, because Dean is not having that, not when Sam could be- could be- Before he even registers it, he's whirling, his fist shooting out, slamming into Dad's jaw with punishing, brutal, unforgiving force. Dean sends him reeling just in time to fling Jim back against the truck, and then he's back at it, kicking hard against the blistering doors. They give, break, collapse to the floor and send up a sharp, stinging cloud of ash and embers. Dean winces as the searing, oven-like heat hits him in a broiling, furious wave. His eyes are watering as sweat breaks out, and he can't see, can't see a damn thing.
“Sammy?” he shouts, squinting through the soot and smoke, already gasping for air in the clawing, claustrophobic heat.
The windows are gone, the pews going as the flames climb higher and higher up the walls, over the rafters, licking and laving and leaving filthy black stripes across saints and sinners alike. Showers of soot and cinder pour over him like a hot, angry rain.
“Dean, this place is coming down!” Dad shouts, surging into the church behind him and snatching a fistful of Dean's jacket, hauling him back towards the ruined door. “We have to get out!”
“Not without Sam,” Dean swears, shoving free and tearing down the aisle to the panic room with a vengeance, dodging the burning chunks of plaster that are coming from the roof.
“All we know Sam coulda done this!” Dad roars at his back, and Dean doesn't have time for this, needs to get to Sammy right the hell now. “He could be long gone with those-”
Dean whirls, has the Colt out before he even registers going for it, glaring through the smoke down the barrel at his father.
“Say another word,” he grinds out, fierce and furious, and they don't have time for this. “I'll put a bullet in you, I swear to god. Now, are you gonna help or are you gonna get the hell out?”
“Hurry!” John bites out after a moment, a heartbeat's hesitation they don't have, digging the keys from his pocket without taking his eyes off Dean. “This place won't last much longer.”
“Whose fuckin' fault is that?” Dean mutters, snatching the keys and shoving the gun back in his jacket as he surges down the aisle.
He dodges another barrage of burning debris, half-runs, half-falls down the stairs to the panic room, and collapses against the hot, heavy iron door with a frenzied bang.
“Sammy?” he rasps, voice smoke-singed and heart in his stinging throat as it stops, it all just stops, everything, until-
“Dean?” Sam coughs from the other side of the door, his voice faint and incredulous and muffled by unforgiving iron. Entirely against Dean’s will, against everything he's ever said or seen or known, his eyes close and his chin tips up and a near-silent 'thank you' escapes.
“Better late than never, right?” he jokes weakly.
His fingers trip and tangle over the sooty, searing steel of the locks to the panic room. For a second, for one awful, terrifying second, he thinks they're gonna jam up on him, that it'll all end with him on one side of the door and Sam on the other, but then the last tumbler gives, the last bar falls away, and there's Sam.
He's sweaty and grimy and shaking but he’s here, here and alive and holding onto Dean like he's the last safe, solid thing in the world, and nothing, absolutely nothing else matters. Nothing but the sooty, sweaty, trembling tangle ofhomeandsafeandbrotherlocked around him, against him, lungs gasping and heart pounding. Dean doesn't know what he would have done if he hadn't- if they couldn't- He just doesn't fucking know.
“What'd I tell ya about playin' with matches, Sammy?” he breathes into Sam's shoulder, voice thick and hoarse with a harsh, stinking mix of smoke and hot, heavy relief.
“Fun and easy?” Sam rasps on a shaky, shuddering laugh.
“The fuck are you two doin’?!” John barks from the top of the staircase. “This place is two seconds from gone. Let's get a fucking move on!”
“Dad?!” Sam exclaims as Dean hustles him up the stairs into the sanctuary.
“Long story,” Dean says, shielding Sam from the debris raining from the ceiling and shooting a worried glance in the direction of the rafters, creaking dangerously as they threaten to give. “Move already!”
“Boys!” John barks, throwing out an arm just as a section of the roof caves, collapses right in front of them, cuts them off in a rain of burning plaster and smoking, cindery insulation.
“Shit!” Dean swears, fists a hand in the jacket over Sammy's shoulder and shoves him down the space between two mercifully unburnt pews, towards the other side door with John at his heels, furiously muttering.
“Come on, come on, faster-!”
“Dean!” Sam calls, eyes darting up as they clear the pews.
The heat seems sharper, the flames all around them higher, faster, the hot, threatening cracking over their heads closer, meaner, and the note in Sam's voice, the fear-
“RUN!” Sam shouts.
And suddenly he’s pushing them, shoving them both towards the door. It's Sam's hands, but it'snot, because they're everywhere, like getting hit by one big Mack truck of brother thrusting them across the room so fast Dean’s boots barely skim the floor.
There's a snarling, crackling roar as the ceiling gives, comes down in a hot, hellfire rush of smoke and ash and ruin. Before Dean can move or shout or do anything, Sam shoves a hand up, shoves a hand up and punches out and- and goddammit, it's like a fucking bomb goes off, blasts the collapsing ceiling out and away.
Before Dean can process anything more than holy shit, Dad is hauling them both forward by their collars, flinging them out the side door. He drags them across the parking lot, keeps dragging them until they can collapse against the Impala in a tangled, gasping, panting heap, sirens a faint, far-off wail in the distance.
And Dean might want to crawl into the front seat of his baby and sleep for a week, collapse into sooty clothes and noodley limbs and Force-punching baby brothers, but he's got a job, a job covered in soot and grime and making really fucking scary wheezing noises against his collarbone right now. He shoves away the pounding in his head, the aching in his chest, the burning in his fingers and stinging in his eyes to push Sam off. His brother leans against the Impala while Dean checks him over for burns and bruises and breaks and whatever the fuck you check over after your little brother saves your ass by psychically pounding the shit out of a burning building.
“M'fine,” Sam murmurs, his voice a rough, smoke-wrecked rasp. He leans into Dean's hand as it skates nervously over his face, trying to suss out what's burned or bruised and what's just dirty. He recognizes the split on Sam's cheek as his sucker punch from last night, and gets a fresh hit of guilt.
“Yeah, you're the picture of fucking health,” Dean grumbles as he checks Sam's face, his neck, his clothes for any burns or cinders that might have escaped the fire. “Breathe for me.”
Sam inhales deep and barely manages to swallow a whimper.
“ER, now,” Dean orders, opening the passenger seat with his best ‘Don't Fucking Fight Me On This, Sammy’ glare.
“Dean,” Sam wheezes, stomping his foot like an annoyed eight year-old.
“Your brother's right, Dean,” Dad gravels from where he's been leaning silently against the back fender, listening to the sirens wailing in the distance. “It's not safe here. We need to move.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dean sputters. “You, you of all goddamn people are gonna tell me what's safe for him? You were ready to let him die!”
“We didn't know-!”
“What, that he's your fucking son?” Dean demands, rounding on their Dad as the fear, the panic, falls away into nothing but hot, bloody rage. “That you don't leave family behind like that? That you can't just call it a day and ditch us when it looks bad? Or when it gets in the way of the goddamn mission?!”
“Dean,” Sam rasps, his hand on his shoulder, pulling him back, holding him together. “We have to go.”
Dean can hear the sirens coming closer, but it's nothing compared to the roaring in his ears, the pulse hammering in his head, fury and betrayal churning like bile in his gut, surging up to stick in his throat, insistent and painful.
“You're damn right we do,” he forces out.
“Son,” John starts, taking a step closer, palms raised. “You need to understand-”
“No! No, you need to understand,” Dean snarls, cutting him off. There's nothing Dad can say, no fucking explanation for this, and this time, for once in their goddamn lives, it's his turn to listen. “If I hadn't showed up when I did, Sam would still be in there!”
He points a finger at the inferno of crackling flame and mangled wood that used to be Pastor Jim's church.
“He'd be dead!” Dean growls, voice thick. “Gone, just like Mom. Slow and awful and just- just like her.”
He has to stop, swallow hard against the burn in his throat, the pain.
“You would’ve killed him!” Dean says, his voice rising, growing more ragged, more furious. “And he wouldn't have been demonic or evil or even using his fucking powers!He would’ve been alone. And scared.”
He hears his voice crack, feel tears pricking at his eyes, and he's furious, so fucking furious that he's feels like he's going to burst through his own skin. So furious that his fists are trembling at his sides, and Sam's hand on his shoulder is the only thing keeping him from driving them into Dad's face over and over until he can't recognize him anymore. Until Dean doesn't have to look at him and see the man who used to ruffle his hair when he came through the door at night, who taught Dean to shoot and looked so goddamn proud when he got a bullseye on his first try, who took Dean on his first hunt and taught him to drive and gave him his first Zeppelin tape. The man who'd been his hero since before he can remember, the man who Dean had wanted to be.
“He was going to die. Sammy, your son was going to die,” Dean croaks, “and you were just going to watch.”
And he doesn't care about the look that creases his father's face, doesn't try to figure out if it's horror or remorse or anything in between, because he doesn't give a damn how Dad feels.
It doesn't matter. None of it matters anymore. Shouldn't have mattered at all, not after Dad laid his hands on Sam in Arkansas, not after he told Dean about the goddamn demon blood, told him to keep an eye on Sam like this was a hunt and Dean's brother was the target, and goddammit, Dean should have known this was coming. The second Dad drew his gun on Sam in Ellen Harvelle's fucking living room, he should have known.
Except some part of him had known, hadn't it? He'd sensed way back then how dangerous Dad was becoming. His instincts had been screaming at him to get Sam away from there as soon as possible. He'd just ignored it, kept ignoring it, and dammit, Dean's supposed to be better than this. What's wrong with him? Why the hell didn't he go with his gut? Fuck the case, fuck the Demon, fuck Dad, that should've been the end of it.
If any other hunter had pointed their piece at Dean's little brother with that look in their eyes, they'd be lucky if they didn't end up a bloody smear on Ellen's carpet. Dean definitely wouldn't have kept working with them, let them call shot after shot, wouldn't have trusted their intel or their intentions. Not after that. Not after they'd called his baby brother a monster and ever expected Dean to accept it.
Goddammit, he'd been such an idiot. He'd wanted to believe so damn badly - in Dad, in the family, in the idea that if he just tried hard enough he could find a way to make this work, that he could somehow keep them both - and he'd almost lost Sammy today because of it.
He can't afford to make that mistake again. Never, ever again.
“We're done,” Dean tells Dad now, level and serious and so, so sure. “Lose our numbers and don't fuckin' follow us. ‘Cause I ever see your ass again? If I ever so much as hear about you makin' a move on Sam again?”
Dean takes a step closer, feels Sam’s fingers clench tight on his shoulder as he glares at their father, jaw set tight.
“It won't be Yellow Eyes you have to worry about."
He turns his back, shoves a stricken-looking Sammy into the passenger’s seat and, slamming the driver's door behind him, jams his key into the ignition and peels out of the parking lot. He leaves his dad standing there on the lawn, reduced to nothing more than a long, black shadow by the flames roaring at his back, and he doesn't think twice.
Chapter 55
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: Mature
Warnings: minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.
Notes: Sorry for the late update!! Hope you guys enjoy the chapter. :)
Previous Chapter | Master Post
Dean beat a phouka at lying once in the dead, dark backwoods of Pennsylvania, one of those cases when Dad was gone and Sam was gone and not much else seemed to matter. He won a wish locked tight in a silver ring for his trouble. Coulda gone for money. Fame. Smarts.
He picked never getting pulled over for speeding again. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
It seems like a fucking fantastic idea now. He tears through the miles between him and Sam, rips apart should-have-knowns and could-have-dones in his head as his heart pounds, his hands clenched tight on the wheel. He tries, tries and fails not to think of every twisted, evil thing that Dad and Jim could be doing to Sammy right now, but when he hits Blue Earth, when the snarling, angry, dizzy mess the rage and the drugs have made him crosses that county line, it's not making them pay that's on his mind. It's not what they were thinking then or what they're doing now or anything.
It’s the thick, black, awful cloud that's on the horizon, choking out sun and sky and right where Jim's church - right where Sam - should be.
Dean thought he couldn't drive any faster. He thought wrong.
He tears up the church drive and skids to a stop. John Winchester, eyes heavy and face black with grime, is helping a coughing, soot-covered Jim out of the parsonage and into the truck.
“What happened? Where's Sam?” Dean demands, door slamming like a shot behind him.
“They came while we were in the church,” Jim rasps, choking on air. “The Boeffels- we-”
Dean doesn't wanna hear it. He trusted this bastard. Sam trusted this bastard, and he drugged Dean and shipped him off, and if this son of a bitch is here in the parking lot running his trap then-
“WHERE THE HELL IS SAM?!” Dean roars.
Dad and Jim don't say a thing, not a damn thing, but their eyes track heavy with guilt to the burning sanctuary, and Dean knows, he just knows. Knows that they kept Sammy caged in that panic room, knows they had him locked up like an animal while they did who the hell knows what, and when shit went to hell, when it all fell apart, they caught wind and ran off, and they just left him there, tore off after their precious fucking civvies and left his brother alone to burn.
His little brother is in there, and they weren't even gonna try and save him.
The rage rips into Dean, tears through him hot and fast. This is the last time, the last time someone locks them up, puts them in a cage and turns their back and leaves them to fucking die, and it's worse, so much worse, because it's Sam, it's Sam and he's Dean's and he could already be too late and he had one job, one job-
“Sammy!” Dean shouts, barreling to the smoking side doors.
Jim and Dad surge forward, snatch at his arms. Well, good fucking luck stopping him, because Dean is not having that, not when Sam could be- could be- Before he even registers it, he's whirling, his fist shooting out, slamming into Dad's jaw with punishing, brutal, unforgiving force. Dean sends him reeling just in time to fling Jim back against the truck, and then he's back at it, kicking hard against the blistering doors. They give, break, collapse to the floor and send up a sharp, stinging cloud of ash and embers. Dean winces as the searing, oven-like heat hits him in a broiling, furious wave. His eyes are watering as sweat breaks out, and he can't see, can't see a damn thing.
“Sammy?” he shouts, squinting through the soot and smoke, already gasping for air in the clawing, claustrophobic heat.
The windows are gone, the pews going as the flames climb higher and higher up the walls, over the rafters, licking and laving and leaving filthy black stripes across saints and sinners alike. Showers of soot and cinder pour over him like a hot, angry rain.
“Dean, this place is coming down!” Dad shouts, surging into the church behind him and snatching a fistful of Dean's jacket, hauling him back towards the ruined door. “We have to get out!”
“Not without Sam,” Dean swears, shoving free and tearing down the aisle to the panic room with a vengeance, dodging the burning chunks of plaster that are coming from the roof.
“All we know Sam coulda done this!” Dad roars at his back, and Dean doesn't have time for this, needs to get to Sammy right the hell now. “He could be long gone with those-”
Dean whirls, has the Colt out before he even registers going for it, glaring through the smoke down the barrel at his father.
“Say another word,” he grinds out, fierce and furious, and they don't have time for this. “I'll put a bullet in you, I swear to god. Now, are you gonna help or are you gonna get the hell out?”
“Hurry!” John bites out after a moment, a heartbeat's hesitation they don't have, digging the keys from his pocket without taking his eyes off Dean. “This place won't last much longer.”
“Whose fuckin' fault is that?” Dean mutters, snatching the keys and shoving the gun back in his jacket as he surges down the aisle.
He dodges another barrage of burning debris, half-runs, half-falls down the stairs to the panic room, and collapses against the hot, heavy iron door with a frenzied bang.
“Sammy?” he rasps, voice smoke-singed and heart in his stinging throat as it stops, it all just stops, everything, until-
“Dean?” Sam coughs from the other side of the door, his voice faint and incredulous and muffled by unforgiving iron. Entirely against Dean’s will, against everything he's ever said or seen or known, his eyes close and his chin tips up and a near-silent 'thank you' escapes.
“Better late than never, right?” he jokes weakly.
His fingers trip and tangle over the sooty, searing steel of the locks to the panic room. For a second, for one awful, terrifying second, he thinks they're gonna jam up on him, that it'll all end with him on one side of the door and Sam on the other, but then the last tumbler gives, the last bar falls away, and there's Sam.
He's sweaty and grimy and shaking but he’s here, here and alive and holding onto Dean like he's the last safe, solid thing in the world, and nothing, absolutely nothing else matters. Nothing but the sooty, sweaty, trembling tangle ofhomeandsafeandbrotherlocked around him, against him, lungs gasping and heart pounding. Dean doesn't know what he would have done if he hadn't- if they couldn't- He just doesn't fucking know.
“What'd I tell ya about playin' with matches, Sammy?” he breathes into Sam's shoulder, voice thick and hoarse with a harsh, stinking mix of smoke and hot, heavy relief.
“Fun and easy?” Sam rasps on a shaky, shuddering laugh.
“The fuck are you two doin’?!” John barks from the top of the staircase. “This place is two seconds from gone. Let's get a fucking move on!”
“Dad?!” Sam exclaims as Dean hustles him up the stairs into the sanctuary.
“Long story,” Dean says, shielding Sam from the debris raining from the ceiling and shooting a worried glance in the direction of the rafters, creaking dangerously as they threaten to give. “Move already!”
“Boys!” John barks, throwing out an arm just as a section of the roof caves, collapses right in front of them, cuts them off in a rain of burning plaster and smoking, cindery insulation.
“Shit!” Dean swears, fists a hand in the jacket over Sammy's shoulder and shoves him down the space between two mercifully unburnt pews, towards the other side door with John at his heels, furiously muttering.
“Come on, come on, faster-!”
“Dean!” Sam calls, eyes darting up as they clear the pews.
The heat seems sharper, the flames all around them higher, faster, the hot, threatening cracking over their heads closer, meaner, and the note in Sam's voice, the fear-
“RUN!” Sam shouts.
And suddenly he’s pushing them, shoving them both towards the door. It's Sam's hands, but it'snot, because they're everywhere, like getting hit by one big Mack truck of brother thrusting them across the room so fast Dean’s boots barely skim the floor.
There's a snarling, crackling roar as the ceiling gives, comes down in a hot, hellfire rush of smoke and ash and ruin. Before Dean can move or shout or do anything, Sam shoves a hand up, shoves a hand up and punches out and- and goddammit, it's like a fucking bomb goes off, blasts the collapsing ceiling out and away.
Before Dean can process anything more than holy shit, Dad is hauling them both forward by their collars, flinging them out the side door. He drags them across the parking lot, keeps dragging them until they can collapse against the Impala in a tangled, gasping, panting heap, sirens a faint, far-off wail in the distance.
And Dean might want to crawl into the front seat of his baby and sleep for a week, collapse into sooty clothes and noodley limbs and Force-punching baby brothers, but he's got a job, a job covered in soot and grime and making really fucking scary wheezing noises against his collarbone right now. He shoves away the pounding in his head, the aching in his chest, the burning in his fingers and stinging in his eyes to push Sam off. His brother leans against the Impala while Dean checks him over for burns and bruises and breaks and whatever the fuck you check over after your little brother saves your ass by psychically pounding the shit out of a burning building.
“M'fine,” Sam murmurs, his voice a rough, smoke-wrecked rasp. He leans into Dean's hand as it skates nervously over his face, trying to suss out what's burned or bruised and what's just dirty. He recognizes the split on Sam's cheek as his sucker punch from last night, and gets a fresh hit of guilt.
“Yeah, you're the picture of fucking health,” Dean grumbles as he checks Sam's face, his neck, his clothes for any burns or cinders that might have escaped the fire. “Breathe for me.”
Sam inhales deep and barely manages to swallow a whimper.
“ER, now,” Dean orders, opening the passenger seat with his best ‘Don't Fucking Fight Me On This, Sammy’ glare.
“Dean,” Sam wheezes, stomping his foot like an annoyed eight year-old.
“Your brother's right, Dean,” Dad gravels from where he's been leaning silently against the back fender, listening to the sirens wailing in the distance. “It's not safe here. We need to move.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dean sputters. “You, you of all goddamn people are gonna tell me what's safe for him? You were ready to let him die!”
“We didn't know-!”
“What, that he's your fucking son?” Dean demands, rounding on their Dad as the fear, the panic, falls away into nothing but hot, bloody rage. “That you don't leave family behind like that? That you can't just call it a day and ditch us when it looks bad? Or when it gets in the way of the goddamn mission?!”
“Dean,” Sam rasps, his hand on his shoulder, pulling him back, holding him together. “We have to go.”
Dean can hear the sirens coming closer, but it's nothing compared to the roaring in his ears, the pulse hammering in his head, fury and betrayal churning like bile in his gut, surging up to stick in his throat, insistent and painful.
“You're damn right we do,” he forces out.
“Son,” John starts, taking a step closer, palms raised. “You need to understand-”
“No! No, you need to understand,” Dean snarls, cutting him off. There's nothing Dad can say, no fucking explanation for this, and this time, for once in their goddamn lives, it's his turn to listen. “If I hadn't showed up when I did, Sam would still be in there!”
He points a finger at the inferno of crackling flame and mangled wood that used to be Pastor Jim's church.
“He'd be dead!” Dean growls, voice thick. “Gone, just like Mom. Slow and awful and just- just like her.”
He has to stop, swallow hard against the burn in his throat, the pain.
“You would’ve killed him!” Dean says, his voice rising, growing more ragged, more furious. “And he wouldn't have been demonic or evil or even using his fucking powers!He would’ve been alone. And scared.”
He hears his voice crack, feel tears pricking at his eyes, and he's furious, so fucking furious that he's feels like he's going to burst through his own skin. So furious that his fists are trembling at his sides, and Sam's hand on his shoulder is the only thing keeping him from driving them into Dad's face over and over until he can't recognize him anymore. Until Dean doesn't have to look at him and see the man who used to ruffle his hair when he came through the door at night, who taught Dean to shoot and looked so goddamn proud when he got a bullseye on his first try, who took Dean on his first hunt and taught him to drive and gave him his first Zeppelin tape. The man who'd been his hero since before he can remember, the man who Dean had wanted to be.
“He was going to die. Sammy, your son was going to die,” Dean croaks, “and you were just going to watch.”
And he doesn't care about the look that creases his father's face, doesn't try to figure out if it's horror or remorse or anything in between, because he doesn't give a damn how Dad feels.
It doesn't matter. None of it matters anymore. Shouldn't have mattered at all, not after Dad laid his hands on Sam in Arkansas, not after he told Dean about the goddamn demon blood, told him to keep an eye on Sam like this was a hunt and Dean's brother was the target, and goddammit, Dean should have known this was coming. The second Dad drew his gun on Sam in Ellen Harvelle's fucking living room, he should have known.
Except some part of him had known, hadn't it? He'd sensed way back then how dangerous Dad was becoming. His instincts had been screaming at him to get Sam away from there as soon as possible. He'd just ignored it, kept ignoring it, and dammit, Dean's supposed to be better than this. What's wrong with him? Why the hell didn't he go with his gut? Fuck the case, fuck the Demon, fuck Dad, that should've been the end of it.
If any other hunter had pointed their piece at Dean's little brother with that look in their eyes, they'd be lucky if they didn't end up a bloody smear on Ellen's carpet. Dean definitely wouldn't have kept working with them, let them call shot after shot, wouldn't have trusted their intel or their intentions. Not after that. Not after they'd called his baby brother a monster and ever expected Dean to accept it.
Goddammit, he'd been such an idiot. He'd wanted to believe so damn badly - in Dad, in the family, in the idea that if he just tried hard enough he could find a way to make this work, that he could somehow keep them both - and he'd almost lost Sammy today because of it.
He can't afford to make that mistake again. Never, ever again.
“We're done,” Dean tells Dad now, level and serious and so, so sure. “Lose our numbers and don't fuckin' follow us. ‘Cause I ever see your ass again? If I ever so much as hear about you makin' a move on Sam again?”
Dean takes a step closer, feels Sam’s fingers clench tight on his shoulder as he glares at their father, jaw set tight.
“It won't be Yellow Eyes you have to worry about."
He turns his back, shoves a stricken-looking Sammy into the passenger’s seat and, slamming the driver's door behind him, jams his key into the ignition and peels out of the parking lot. He leaves his dad standing there on the lawn, reduced to nothing more than a long, black shadow by the flames roaring at his back, and he doesn't think twice.
Chapter 55