Parting Ways
Title: Parting Ways
Author:
hopeintheashes
Rating: PG-13
Genre/pairing: Hurt/Comfort, Gen + some Sam/Jess
Characters: Sam, Dean, John, Jess, and a little bit of Pastor Jim
Word count: 2500
Summary: Written for the spn_littlebro Team Bingo challenge, for the prompt "parting ways." This ended up covering a lot of ground, from pre-series through the pilot. Some parts overlap with Idumea, but you don't have to read one to understand the other.
Warnings: Highlight to read. ( skip) Implied abuse.
Disclaimer: These boys? Definitely not mine.
A/N: So, uh. I signed up to write this in the middle of July, when October 15 seemed very far away indeed. Grad school got in the way, but I've made it in just under the original deadline! (The challenge has been extended to the end of the year; feel free to go sign up!) Thanks to kat_of_rafters for her feedback. Any remaining weirdness is mine alone.
Also available on AO3.
. . .
. . .
Then
On Dean’s first day of kindergarten, Sam cried so hard he puked. He doesn’t remember it, of course. Dad used to bring it up sometimes, usually when he was a little bit drunk, with confusion and wonderment and jealousy in his eyes. (It took Sam years to untwist those threads; to put names to the emotions that would come out in quiet moments, or in rages, or whenever he thought his boys couldn’t see. Well, you left Dean to be the parent, Dad. What the fuck did you expect?)
Dean had walked into his classroom with his head held high. Dad always smiled at that: his brave boy. His soldier. Sammy, in Dad’s arms, had looked from Dean to his father, lip quivering, until Dean disappeared behind the classroom door. There had been a moment of silence, and then a scream that didn’t stop until he was sobbing so hard he couldn’t breathe. They were back in the car by then, Dad trying to strap in a flailing sixteen-month-old while cursing between his teeth (“Couldn’t get the goddamn carseat buckled; those things are the devil’s work”). Once he’d managed it, they drove. “Thought it would’ve calmed him down, but no, the kid just kept on going right up ’til he puked all over himself.” At this point, Dad would roll his eyes and take a sip of beer, like that was the punchline, but Sam was always pretty sure he hadn’t been the only one crying that day. Some of Sam’s first memories, the kind that are so early you’re never sure they’re real, amount to a blur of whiskyed breath and shared tears. He imagined Dad pulling over a soon as he was out of sight of the school, off on a side street where the other parents wouldn’t see, because it was supposed to be Mary walking their boys in for the first days of school, and that hurts worse than hell.
The rest of the story, the part that Dean remembers, has Sam squirming out of Dad’s arms and throwing himself at Dean the moment that first day of school was out. At 5, Dean was already steady and sure on his feet. He caught Sam and held him tight, there on the sidewalk in front of the school. That scene, Dad had once told him, played out every day for a week, until Sam finally realized that Dean would always, always come back.
. . .
. . .
Unlike that first traumatic experience, Sam remembers Dean’s first day of middle school. For a few months, they’d been in a town small enough to have kindergarten through eighth grade in one building, and Sam had held out hope that they’d stay there long enough that he’d still be able to see Dean in the hallways. No such luck. New town, separate schools. Dean walked him all the way to the front door, even though the middle school started earlier and he was already late for his first day. He smiled back at Sam as he walked away. Sam took a shaky breath and stepped into the unknown, holding on to Dean’s promise that he would be there waiting for him as soon as the bell rang.
. . .
. . .
After that, the transitions had gotten easier. Dean was a senior when Sam was a freshman, and having an upperclassman on his side meant that freshman year didn’t suck nearly as much as it could have. When Dean was off with Dad, though (more and more once he turned 16 and didn’t have to worry about the school or CPS coming after them for truancy), Sam came home to an empty apartment or motel room. He compulsively counted his cash, which he kept in an envelope tucked deep inside his duffel bag, and handed over the fake credit card with sweaty hands and bated breath. He wondered if Dean had done the same for the last 10 years. If he had, he’d hidden it well.
Sam jumped for the phone when it rang, hovering breathlessly, waiting for the hang-up and call-back. He was getting used to being left behind. It wasn’t that he minded, exactly. After all, he’d been left behind for weeks at a time when Dad had gone off hunting alone. Then, though, he’d had Dean. Sam ran a hand over the knife Dean had left for him as the agreed-upon number of rings and seconds passed. The moment the phone started ringing again, he grabbed it.
“Hey, Sammy.”
Sam blinked hard through unexpected tears and bit back the urge to ask the only question that mattered: When are you coming home?
. . .
. . .
The answer, Sam discovered, was rarely. And never for very long. They moved constantly, and when they stayed put, Dean and Dad were gone for weeks at a time. When they came back, Dad would throw some money on the table, whisky on his breath and cigarette smoke hanging on his clothes. It wasn’t nearly enough. Dean would wait ’til Dad had passed out to slip Sam some extra cash and ruffle up his hair. “You let me know if you need more, okay?”
Sam shrugged. “I can do some tutoring or mow some lawns or whatever.”
Dean had a look on his face that Sam couldn’t quite place, but he quickly worked it into a smile. “Good. A legit businessman.” And again, quieter: “Good.”
Sam never really knew how Dean got money when he was 12 or 15 and had two mouths to feed instead of one. He’d asked, once, needling at Dean’s brusque “I took care of it” until Dean had snapped. Dean came back from the bar that night more drunk than he’d been in months. Sam hadn’t asked again.
Dean and Dad left again the next day, Dean slipping him another twenty on his way out the door. Sam hung back in the doorway as they got into the Impala. Dean pointed back at him, eyebrows up - be good - and then it was tail lights and exhaust.
Sam hated being left alone. He didn’t mind being alone, like at the library or the park, but being left behind? He hated it. Hated the emptiness of every run-down motel room, hated watching the money disappear, hated lying awake at night wondering if that creak was the roof settling or something out of a nightmare coming to life. He would check the lock five times in a row, and add more salt, and rub at the sigils to make sure they’d stay. And then, convinced that he’d ruined the sigils in the process (though they still, in truth, looked fine), he’d add more ink, more paint, more ashes, more whatever was needed to keep the demons at bay.
The day he went to his latest school to discover that they were reading Death of a Salesman for his third time that year was the day he decided he was done. Done being alone, done being the object of pity and suspicion, just done. That night, he picked up the phone and put it back down.
“Fuck.” He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. One more deep breath, and he picked up the phone again.
Pastor Jim answered on the second ring.
. . .
. . .
The key, Jim said, was to make John believe that the idea was his in the first place. And so Sam had whined and complained and planted ideas until Dad threw up his hands and agreed to call one of the few people they knew with a house and a steady job. Sam would finish out high school there. Dean sat on their bed, sharpening his knife, stroke after stroke, long after the blade shone in the dim light. It took a full day for him to speak, and when he did, it was a bitter snarl: You’re not out of this family yet. Go do your goddamn job.
And so Sam had done his goddamn job, searching gravestones by starlight and counting the days until he could leave. He and Dean found an uneasy truce, but the betrayal was clear in Dean’s eyes. Well, fuck him. Dean had left Sam the moment he’d turned 16. Sam wasn’t going to sit at home like some dog waiting for its master, day after day, jumping up at every sound to run to the door in anticipation. He’d been working for years to get that diploma in his hands, proof that he was more than, better than this. He would graduate high school, and college, and law school, and he would be free. No more hunting. No more training in the rain and the heat and the dark. No more nights spent lying silent and still, afraid that any sound would set Dad off. He started walking out on those particular rages when he was 14. Dean… Dean stayed. It was his choice, Sam told himself. He was older. He could take care of himself. And if there were bruises afterward, bruises that could have come from training or hunting, well, Sam looked away and let himself believe that was the truth.
Sam left for Blue Earth on a bus. It was necessary, but it was also fitting. He held his backpack in his lap and watched the trees along the highway blur past. He was out, and he was never going back.
. . .
. . .
“Never” lasted until the end of the year. Stanford didn’t start until the middle of September and he’d taken advantage of Jim’s hospitality for long enough, so he’d ended up back on a beat-up motel doorstep in the middle of some nameless town, diploma tucked deep inside his duffel bag like that too-skinny envelope of cash.
He’d been prepared to head out to Palo Alto early, to get a job and an apartment and start his life. When he told Jim his plan, though, the pastor looked at him more seriously than Sam had ever seen. “You can’t just disappear.”
Sam had rolled his eyes.
“After everything your family has lost… they can’t lose you too. Not like that.” He shook his head sadly. “Go back and say goodbye, Sam. You owe them that much.”
So he had. He’d told Dean about Stanford two weeks after he got back. This time, Dean was quiet. Finally, through silent tears, he told Sam, “Don’t tell Dad. Not yet.”
He’d had to eventually, of course. It wasn’t the goodbye that Jim had hoped for. Or maybe it was. Maybe it was enough to say that he was going, to tell them where he would be. It’s not forever, he’d told Dean that night. And it didn’t have to be. He’d begged Dean to come with him. Away. Somewhere safe.
No such place, Sammy.
Maybe it was true. Maybe California wasn’t any safer than Kansas or Maine or Minnesota, but it had to be better than having nowhere at all, just blood and pain and alcohol and determination and despair.
At first, Sam didn’t know how to live without all that. Blue Earth had been a taste, but with Jim, he’d still been in the Life. Here, he was a man without a past. Tabula rasa. Jess asked him about it sometimes, but never pushed too hard. She had heard enough, seen enough, to take my family is pretty fucked up at face value and let it be. He loved her for it, and for her laugh, and for the way a future with her was slowly coming into focus. She threw it out casually sometimes, a joke about how they’d be when they were old together. Sam had never thought about being old. Never thought he’d live that long. With her, though, it seemed possible. He set down his drink and let her pull him to the dance floor, and into her arms.
. . .
. . .
Now
Sometimes, Sam thinks about Dean. Okay, every day. It doesn’t necessarily hurt less, it just hurts differently as time goes by. Every semester, he sends his grades to Pastor Jim, and gets a note back in the mail congratulating him. It’s not like he’s dropped off the face of the earth. If they wanted to find him, they would. He would.
Dean would.
Jess appears in the doorway and smiles at him. God, that smile. He holds out his hands for hers and pulls her close, and she holds him silently, like she does when he gets like this, just quiet understanding and her lips pressed gently against his neck. She’s washed off the makeup from the Halloween party, and they’re just a thin layer of cotton away from being skin-to-skin. It feels good, and it feels right, in a way that nothing has since he was almost too young to remember. They fall asleep with her head on his chest, their fingers intertwined.
. . .
. . .
The noise that wakes him is quiet, just a few creaks, but it’s enough. There’s a shadowy figure in the living room that has him pinned in moments, but a decade and a half of training kick in and suddenly, he’s on top. There’s no time to revel in his victory or decide what to do next, because the guy’s voice is coming through the darkness, and it’s all familiarity and pet names.
The floor tilts beneath him. “Dean?”
Christ, it’s real, this is really happening. Jess flips on the light and his worlds collide, and fuck, this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
It was supposed to happen, though. Dean at the door of his and Jess’ apartment, looking perfectly at home after three minutes - that, he’d let himself dream. Someday, when Dad was gone and Dean was free, they’d come back together and make it work. He and Jess would have jobs, and a house, and kids by then. Dean is fucking great with kids.
It’s too soon, though, and he’s reeling, because Dad is gone, or at least missing, and he’s got an interview on Monday and Dean’s looking at him expectantly: C’mon, man, it’s time to go.
He looks back at Jess, still standing there in her t-shirt and short shorts, looking impossibly beautiful in the middle of the night. It’s only for a day. Two, max. He’ll take care of this latest crisis, and then he’ll get into law school. Not bad for a weekend’s work. He pulls Jess in for one last kiss and promises he’ll see her soon.
Stepping into the Impala feels like coming home. Dean turns on the music and grins at him, and that feels right, too. As they pull away, Sam lets himself smile back, thinking of the far future. Maybe they can make that dream happen. Maybe he can have it all.
. . .
. . .
Author:
hopeintheashes
Rating: PG-13
Genre/pairing: Hurt/Comfort, Gen + some Sam/Jess
Characters: Sam, Dean, John, Jess, and a little bit of Pastor Jim
Word count: 2500
Summary: Written for the spn_littlebro Team Bingo challenge, for the prompt "parting ways." This ended up covering a lot of ground, from pre-series through the pilot. Some parts overlap with Idumea, but you don't have to read one to understand the other.
Warnings: Highlight to read. ( skip) Implied abuse.
Disclaimer: These boys? Definitely not mine.
A/N: So, uh. I signed up to write this in the middle of July, when October 15 seemed very far away indeed. Grad school got in the way, but I've made it in just under the original deadline! (The challenge has been extended to the end of the year; feel free to go sign up!) Thanks to kat_of_rafters for her feedback. Any remaining weirdness is mine alone.
Also available on AO3.
. . .
. . .
Then
On Dean’s first day of kindergarten, Sam cried so hard he puked. He doesn’t remember it, of course. Dad used to bring it up sometimes, usually when he was a little bit drunk, with confusion and wonderment and jealousy in his eyes. (It took Sam years to untwist those threads; to put names to the emotions that would come out in quiet moments, or in rages, or whenever he thought his boys couldn’t see. Well, you left Dean to be the parent, Dad. What the fuck did you expect?)
Dean had walked into his classroom with his head held high. Dad always smiled at that: his brave boy. His soldier. Sammy, in Dad’s arms, had looked from Dean to his father, lip quivering, until Dean disappeared behind the classroom door. There had been a moment of silence, and then a scream that didn’t stop until he was sobbing so hard he couldn’t breathe. They were back in the car by then, Dad trying to strap in a flailing sixteen-month-old while cursing between his teeth (“Couldn’t get the goddamn carseat buckled; those things are the devil’s work”). Once he’d managed it, they drove. “Thought it would’ve calmed him down, but no, the kid just kept on going right up ’til he puked all over himself.” At this point, Dad would roll his eyes and take a sip of beer, like that was the punchline, but Sam was always pretty sure he hadn’t been the only one crying that day. Some of Sam’s first memories, the kind that are so early you’re never sure they’re real, amount to a blur of whiskyed breath and shared tears. He imagined Dad pulling over a soon as he was out of sight of the school, off on a side street where the other parents wouldn’t see, because it was supposed to be Mary walking their boys in for the first days of school, and that hurts worse than hell.
The rest of the story, the part that Dean remembers, has Sam squirming out of Dad’s arms and throwing himself at Dean the moment that first day of school was out. At 5, Dean was already steady and sure on his feet. He caught Sam and held him tight, there on the sidewalk in front of the school. That scene, Dad had once told him, played out every day for a week, until Sam finally realized that Dean would always, always come back.
. . .
. . .
Unlike that first traumatic experience, Sam remembers Dean’s first day of middle school. For a few months, they’d been in a town small enough to have kindergarten through eighth grade in one building, and Sam had held out hope that they’d stay there long enough that he’d still be able to see Dean in the hallways. No such luck. New town, separate schools. Dean walked him all the way to the front door, even though the middle school started earlier and he was already late for his first day. He smiled back at Sam as he walked away. Sam took a shaky breath and stepped into the unknown, holding on to Dean’s promise that he would be there waiting for him as soon as the bell rang.
. . .
. . .
After that, the transitions had gotten easier. Dean was a senior when Sam was a freshman, and having an upperclassman on his side meant that freshman year didn’t suck nearly as much as it could have. When Dean was off with Dad, though (more and more once he turned 16 and didn’t have to worry about the school or CPS coming after them for truancy), Sam came home to an empty apartment or motel room. He compulsively counted his cash, which he kept in an envelope tucked deep inside his duffel bag, and handed over the fake credit card with sweaty hands and bated breath. He wondered if Dean had done the same for the last 10 years. If he had, he’d hidden it well.
Sam jumped for the phone when it rang, hovering breathlessly, waiting for the hang-up and call-back. He was getting used to being left behind. It wasn’t that he minded, exactly. After all, he’d been left behind for weeks at a time when Dad had gone off hunting alone. Then, though, he’d had Dean. Sam ran a hand over the knife Dean had left for him as the agreed-upon number of rings and seconds passed. The moment the phone started ringing again, he grabbed it.
“Hey, Sammy.”
Sam blinked hard through unexpected tears and bit back the urge to ask the only question that mattered: When are you coming home?
. . .
. . .
The answer, Sam discovered, was rarely. And never for very long. They moved constantly, and when they stayed put, Dean and Dad were gone for weeks at a time. When they came back, Dad would throw some money on the table, whisky on his breath and cigarette smoke hanging on his clothes. It wasn’t nearly enough. Dean would wait ’til Dad had passed out to slip Sam some extra cash and ruffle up his hair. “You let me know if you need more, okay?”
Sam shrugged. “I can do some tutoring or mow some lawns or whatever.”
Dean had a look on his face that Sam couldn’t quite place, but he quickly worked it into a smile. “Good. A legit businessman.” And again, quieter: “Good.”
Sam never really knew how Dean got money when he was 12 or 15 and had two mouths to feed instead of one. He’d asked, once, needling at Dean’s brusque “I took care of it” until Dean had snapped. Dean came back from the bar that night more drunk than he’d been in months. Sam hadn’t asked again.
Dean and Dad left again the next day, Dean slipping him another twenty on his way out the door. Sam hung back in the doorway as they got into the Impala. Dean pointed back at him, eyebrows up - be good - and then it was tail lights and exhaust.
Sam hated being left alone. He didn’t mind being alone, like at the library or the park, but being left behind? He hated it. Hated the emptiness of every run-down motel room, hated watching the money disappear, hated lying awake at night wondering if that creak was the roof settling or something out of a nightmare coming to life. He would check the lock five times in a row, and add more salt, and rub at the sigils to make sure they’d stay. And then, convinced that he’d ruined the sigils in the process (though they still, in truth, looked fine), he’d add more ink, more paint, more ashes, more whatever was needed to keep the demons at bay.
The day he went to his latest school to discover that they were reading Death of a Salesman for his third time that year was the day he decided he was done. Done being alone, done being the object of pity and suspicion, just done. That night, he picked up the phone and put it back down.
“Fuck.” He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. One more deep breath, and he picked up the phone again.
Pastor Jim answered on the second ring.
. . .
. . .
The key, Jim said, was to make John believe that the idea was his in the first place. And so Sam had whined and complained and planted ideas until Dad threw up his hands and agreed to call one of the few people they knew with a house and a steady job. Sam would finish out high school there. Dean sat on their bed, sharpening his knife, stroke after stroke, long after the blade shone in the dim light. It took a full day for him to speak, and when he did, it was a bitter snarl: You’re not out of this family yet. Go do your goddamn job.
And so Sam had done his goddamn job, searching gravestones by starlight and counting the days until he could leave. He and Dean found an uneasy truce, but the betrayal was clear in Dean’s eyes. Well, fuck him. Dean had left Sam the moment he’d turned 16. Sam wasn’t going to sit at home like some dog waiting for its master, day after day, jumping up at every sound to run to the door in anticipation. He’d been working for years to get that diploma in his hands, proof that he was more than, better than this. He would graduate high school, and college, and law school, and he would be free. No more hunting. No more training in the rain and the heat and the dark. No more nights spent lying silent and still, afraid that any sound would set Dad off. He started walking out on those particular rages when he was 14. Dean… Dean stayed. It was his choice, Sam told himself. He was older. He could take care of himself. And if there were bruises afterward, bruises that could have come from training or hunting, well, Sam looked away and let himself believe that was the truth.
Sam left for Blue Earth on a bus. It was necessary, but it was also fitting. He held his backpack in his lap and watched the trees along the highway blur past. He was out, and he was never going back.
. . .
. . .
“Never” lasted until the end of the year. Stanford didn’t start until the middle of September and he’d taken advantage of Jim’s hospitality for long enough, so he’d ended up back on a beat-up motel doorstep in the middle of some nameless town, diploma tucked deep inside his duffel bag like that too-skinny envelope of cash.
He’d been prepared to head out to Palo Alto early, to get a job and an apartment and start his life. When he told Jim his plan, though, the pastor looked at him more seriously than Sam had ever seen. “You can’t just disappear.”
Sam had rolled his eyes.
“After everything your family has lost… they can’t lose you too. Not like that.” He shook his head sadly. “Go back and say goodbye, Sam. You owe them that much.”
So he had. He’d told Dean about Stanford two weeks after he got back. This time, Dean was quiet. Finally, through silent tears, he told Sam, “Don’t tell Dad. Not yet.”
He’d had to eventually, of course. It wasn’t the goodbye that Jim had hoped for. Or maybe it was. Maybe it was enough to say that he was going, to tell them where he would be. It’s not forever, he’d told Dean that night. And it didn’t have to be. He’d begged Dean to come with him. Away. Somewhere safe.
No such place, Sammy.
Maybe it was true. Maybe California wasn’t any safer than Kansas or Maine or Minnesota, but it had to be better than having nowhere at all, just blood and pain and alcohol and determination and despair.
At first, Sam didn’t know how to live without all that. Blue Earth had been a taste, but with Jim, he’d still been in the Life. Here, he was a man without a past. Tabula rasa. Jess asked him about it sometimes, but never pushed too hard. She had heard enough, seen enough, to take my family is pretty fucked up at face value and let it be. He loved her for it, and for her laugh, and for the way a future with her was slowly coming into focus. She threw it out casually sometimes, a joke about how they’d be when they were old together. Sam had never thought about being old. Never thought he’d live that long. With her, though, it seemed possible. He set down his drink and let her pull him to the dance floor, and into her arms.
. . .
. . .
Now
Sometimes, Sam thinks about Dean. Okay, every day. It doesn’t necessarily hurt less, it just hurts differently as time goes by. Every semester, he sends his grades to Pastor Jim, and gets a note back in the mail congratulating him. It’s not like he’s dropped off the face of the earth. If they wanted to find him, they would. He would.
Dean would.
Jess appears in the doorway and smiles at him. God, that smile. He holds out his hands for hers and pulls her close, and she holds him silently, like she does when he gets like this, just quiet understanding and her lips pressed gently against his neck. She’s washed off the makeup from the Halloween party, and they’re just a thin layer of cotton away from being skin-to-skin. It feels good, and it feels right, in a way that nothing has since he was almost too young to remember. They fall asleep with her head on his chest, their fingers intertwined.
. . .
. . .
The noise that wakes him is quiet, just a few creaks, but it’s enough. There’s a shadowy figure in the living room that has him pinned in moments, but a decade and a half of training kick in and suddenly, he’s on top. There’s no time to revel in his victory or decide what to do next, because the guy’s voice is coming through the darkness, and it’s all familiarity and pet names.
The floor tilts beneath him. “Dean?”
Christ, it’s real, this is really happening. Jess flips on the light and his worlds collide, and fuck, this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
It was supposed to happen, though. Dean at the door of his and Jess’ apartment, looking perfectly at home after three minutes - that, he’d let himself dream. Someday, when Dad was gone and Dean was free, they’d come back together and make it work. He and Jess would have jobs, and a house, and kids by then. Dean is fucking great with kids.
It’s too soon, though, and he’s reeling, because Dad is gone, or at least missing, and he’s got an interview on Monday and Dean’s looking at him expectantly: C’mon, man, it’s time to go.
He looks back at Jess, still standing there in her t-shirt and short shorts, looking impossibly beautiful in the middle of the night. It’s only for a day. Two, max. He’ll take care of this latest crisis, and then he’ll get into law school. Not bad for a weekend’s work. He pulls Jess in for one last kiss and promises he’ll see her soon.
Stepping into the Impala feels like coming home. Dean turns on the music and grins at him, and that feels right, too. As they pull away, Sam lets himself smile back, thinking of the far future. Maybe they can make that dream happen. Maybe he can have it all.
. . .
. . .