Weekend with the Winchesters
Title: Weekend with the Winchesters
Author: innocent culprit aka solosundance
Genre/Rating: Gen, PG for language
Characters: John, Dean, Sam, Bobby
Wordcount: 3, 600
Summary: Sometimes John thinks hunting would be a more peaceful option
A/n: written for erushi who requested young Winchesters left to fend for themselves. This is almost that, but not entirely :) I also had the option of adding John and/or Bobby, which of course I did :) Beta'd by the incomparable ancastar
John Winchester didn’t know what day of the week it was until some instinct told him to go look in the bedroom.
Then he knew.
He knew because it was almost ten and the blinds were still down. He knew because the room reeked of socks and sweat and sugar-coated cereal floating in sour milk. Since it would be impossible to enter without putting himself at risk of injury from frosted-flake-encrusted spoons or other sharp objects hidden under the sea of clothes, books and what seriously looked like the contents of the kitchen trash-can upended in a search for something that should never have been thrown away in the first place, John remained motionless in the doorway, trying to shift gear from hunter to dad.
Jesus, but there was some major league sleeping-in going on here.
John was weary. He couldn’t recall precisely how many days he’d been away, just that he’d left in a hurry last Sunday night and he’d been assuming he was going to get back in time to surprise the boys with his rested, patched-up self when they trailed back in from school. No such luck. A labored calculation told him it was Saturday, and as he hadn’t been there to kick their butts out of bed, there they would lie for as long as possible.
Sam wasn’t really visible save for a clump of hair emerging halfway down his bed from the twisted pile of sheets and blankets that had evidently been scooped in a single armful from the floor and dumped on the mattress seconds before the occupant burrowed in. An ankle poked apologetically out of the nest near the pillow. It made John’s heart thrum with familiarity and loss.
Across the room on the second bed Dean seemed to be posing for Teenage Stud magazine, if such a thing existed, and John sincerely hoped it didn’t. He’d discarded the faded teeshirt he slept in. What remained of the bedding was wound around his left thigh and the rest of him was sprawled in an unconsciously provocative display of newly-muscled limbs, one arm crossed over his chest in a last-minute attempt at modesty. John’s eyebrow quirked.
“Hey, boys,” he said, but his voice was so feeble and croaky that no way was it going to wake either of them. Nothing short of a large explosion would do that by the look of it.
John backed out and stood in the center of the main room of the apartment getting his head together. Both his arms burned from the abrasions that coated them, his neck ached where it had met the unbending trunk of a tree three nights ago, but he had only one thought in his head.
They were safe. Thank God, thank God, thank freaking God. His boys were safe.
Dean and Sam had survived ordinary life once more, and once more John would probably never know quite how.
Now it was the weekend and stuff happened on the weekend. He knew enough to realize he should get in the shower quickly before it became a no-go area.
-----
My God but Dean was a bad-tempered, moody little shit.
John tugged his hair while he reported this, the one salient fact he’d gotten a handle on since he arrived. “Yeah, so ... hormones, I get that. Mixed-up man-boy. But really ... Jesus. Do all parents of teenagers have to put up with this crap? This monosyllabic, self-centered, unhelpful ... crap?”
A slightly tetchy silence from down the phone line. “I wouldn’t know, John. I just called to see how the job went off.”
John tugged his hair harder. “It went off OK.” He was guarded.
“All dealt with?”
“Every last one, Bobby. Took me three days. I swear, these fuckin things are getting tougher.”
“Hmm,” Bobby said. “And now what? You home for a while?”
“It’s the weekend,” said John, as if that were actually an answer to Bobby’s question. “Sam has ...” He barked a laugh, raked a hand down his face, “he has soccer practice, and then he has a birthday party at some kid’s house. He tells me we have to buy some gift for this kid. I don’t know this kid. I don’t know this kid’s parents ... Sam hardly knows this kid. How long have we been here? Jeez, well anyway, Mr. Popular will hardly be here the whole day and we have laundry to do, groceries to buy, all that shit. Dean says he’s busy tonight. Busy for crying out loud.”
Bobby let out a a low laugh-snort. “Hot date?”
“God only knows, Bobby. When I asked him he looked at me like I’d asked him if he was possessed. Jesus. He is possessed. By some kind of madness.”
“It kind of amuses me that you always find this stuff so surprising,” Bobby said. He paused. “Well, at least I think it amuses me. Maybe it scares the crap outta me.”
“Yeah well.” John felt normal life dragging at his nerve-endings. “Thanks for the call, Bobby.”
“You got it. Have a good one.”
He had scarcely turned from the shelf by the door where the clunky old phone was situated, when a voice demanded, “Who was that?”
John gave in to his first instinct. “Mind your business, boy. Not every call is for you.”
“I never ...” Dean began. “I didn’t ... Jesus!” He was standing in the kitchen doorway doing his best impression of persecuted youth.
“It was Bobby,” John said, calmer, wishing he’d gone with this first.
Sam had snaked past Dean, holding one sneaker. “You going away again?” he asked.
John told himself that Sam wasn’t being demanding, he wasn’t pushing. He was just a kid who was worried he was about to get left.
“No. Bobby was just checking in.”
Dean hadn’t altered his posture, but he’d dropped the attitude, was all business. “What was the job?”
John shook his head. “Later, Dean.”
“Dad,” Sam said, “I got soccer practice.”
“Yeah I know, Sammy, you told me that. Tell me again what time you gotta be there.”
“Eleven-thirty.”
“Tell me again where you gotta be.”
“Daaad ....”
“I’ll take him,” Dean said.
John rubbed his eyes, knew he should be thinking of a plan. “Hold it a minute,” he said. Sam paused, twirling the sneaker thoughtfully. “We have a load of stuff to do. Let’s approach this ... we need to take the laundry. The machine’s still busted, right?”
“Dean took it apart,” Sam said, “and now it’s busted and the door’s on wrong.”
The sneaker was knocked from his hand and flew across the room, tipping over a half glass of milk standing on a low table.
“Dean!” Sam said accusingly.
“You shouldn’t have left the freakin milk there, Sammy, I told you last night. Why do you never clear up after yourself, you lazy little brat?”
John held up his hands. “OK, OK. Time out on this before it gets started. We take Sam to ... wherever the hell it is ... and then we’ll go on and do laundry and groceries.”
“Freakin super,” Dean growled.
“Oh maaan!” Sam said, dropping on to the couch. “That sucks. You never stay to watch the practice. Everyone else’s dad stays to watch the practice. It’s not fair.”
“Just shut the fuck up, Sammy, at least you get to do something fun,” Dean snapped at him.
“Hey ... just ... don’t talk to your brother like that,” John got in. “Where do you get off talking like that? You got a mouth like a sewer, boy.”
Dean muttered just low enough not to be heard.
“You’re only jealous because you got kicked off the football team,” Sam said.
“What?” John screwed up his face. “Dean? You got kicked off the team? What for?”
Dean looked to the ceiling, one fist balled into his palm. “It’s no big deal, Dad.”
Sam opened his mouth but John snapped a finger towards him. “I don’t need your input. We don’t have time for this.” He did another rake of his hair. “OK, so where are your sneakers, Sam? You have your stuff? How far away is this place?”
“Ten minutes,” Dean informed him.
“Good. Let’s go.” John waved a hand at the pile of bloody, mud-streaked clothes that he had hauled out of his duffel and dropped on the floor by the door, and then at Dean.
Sam was rooting for the one sneaker he’d been in possession of. “This is a real mess,” he said, pointing at the milky puddle.
“Yeah, well you’re going to clean it up when you get back,” Dean told him.
Sam turned to John, mouth open.
“Someone is going to clean it up,” John said. “I haven’t decided who yet.”
-----
Sam was pretty good at soccer.
John knew he’d seen him play before but this still seemed like the first time. Everything always seemed like the first time. He was glad he’d kept Dean with him because the other dads (and a few moms) were in a suspicious huddle several yards away and he needed Dean to whisper the pertinent facts in his ear.
They’re the ones having the party ... They’re loaded ... That woman will interfere if you speak to her ... I don’t know them .... The little shit who just kicked Sammy in the thigh? That’s his dad right there.
Coach Johnson drifted over while the kids were taking on fluid.
“Sam’s doing great,” he said. “Hard worker, good vision.”
John beamed at him. Go Sammy.
The coach flicked a glance at Dean. “Having second thoughts?” he said, not very friendly.
Dean shrugged, looking away, and John could see how it might make Coach Johnson spit. He found a hand to clap on the back of his son’s neck.
“Sam’s the team sportsman,” he said. “Dean’s more of a ... long-distance kind of a guy.”
“Oh yeah?” said Coach. “Well maybe I’ll give him a tryout on that.” He smiled unsmilingly at Dean. “Get you doing some laps.”
John could tell he and Dean didn’t like each other one little bit. When he’d gone back to the center circle Dean muttered angrily.
“Thanks, Dad. Now he’s never going to leave me alone.”
“So he gives you a try-out. So you show him how good you are.”
“Yeah right.”
“Come on, son. Believe in yourself. You can out-run anyone.”
“I wouldn’t do it for him,” Dean grumped. “Guy’s a jerk.”
“Yeah, yeah. So do it for me, dude. Do it for the girls. Girls love a jock.”
“Jesus, Dad, you are so lame. Girls don’t love a jock. They love a bad boy.”
John’s head bent slightly and he knocked Dean’s shoulder with his own.
Sam came racing over then and John fought to keep his face neutral. The kid had an unerring eye for huddles and crashed that particular party whenever he could.
“Hey, Sammy, looking good.”
Sam rolled his eyes spectacularly. “Do you actually know anything about soccer?”
John didn’t.
-----
At four-thirty he was sitting looking at a neat-clipped rectangle of very green grass and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Where’s Dean?” Sam demanded when he emerged from the group of preteens on the front lawn and got down to the Impala.
“Laundromat,” John said.
Sam poked in his favors bag, extracted a glow stick and stared at it.
“You know, I could’ve stayed for the sleepover if you’d been around to say yes. Everyone else is staying. Connor’s parents wouldn’t let me without you to say yes.”
“OK, I’ll say yes now. You wanna stay?”
Sam glanced out of the window at the group, some of whom were watching and others who were totally disinterested.
“Nah.”
“Good. Because we have to be up early.”
“Because?”
“We’re going shooting.”
“But I have homework.”
“Not all day you don’t.”
“Dad, do I have to come? I mean, it just sucks getting up early on Sunday.”
“No arguments, Sam.”
There was silence. Sam poked some more in his favors bag, pulled out a length of green candy shaped like a weird sea creature and bit its head off. John glanced sideways at him, then back at the road.
“So, good party?”
Sam chewed. “I guess.”
“And this Connor kid? He a good friend of yours?”
“I guess.”
“Huh. So, you want him to come round sometime?”
Sam’s head snapped towards his father at once. “No, Dad. No way.”
John struggled to comprehend. “But if he’s your friend ... and isn’t there some rule that says he has to come over now? Now you’ve been ... invited? Isn’t that the rule? I thought that was the rule.”
“Yeah, that’s the rule, but no.”
“Why? Are you ashamed of us?”
Sam looked front, frozen in horror. “Daaad ... just ... forget it. I got friends. That’s enough. Why do you always ...?”
“All right, all right, no playdates! Jesus, anyone would think I .... okay. All right.”
There was silence for the rest of the journey, enlivened only by the sound of Sam steadfastly chewing his way through the rest of the gummy sea creature.
-----
Back at the apartment there was loud music coming from inside the bathroom.
A pile of laundry lay like a snow-capped mountain in the center of the main room.
John wanted to sleep. He also wanted to get the guns cleaned and go back over all the information he’d stashed somewhere about river spirits. The gnarled and shiny confection that Sam had worked his way through in the car had triggered a thought.
“I have an information gap,” he told Sam. “You want to help fill it?”
As far as John knew, this kind of question to Sam was like asking Dean if he wanted to go break the speed limit in the Impala.
Sam had thrown himself over the mountain and on to the couch, was rooting amongst the cushions for the remote. “Not on the weekend, Dad.”
John toed the foothills doubtfully. Then he turned to the bathroom door and yelled.
“Dean! Get out here! Now!”
Sam made a face. After a while the door sprang open. The radio was still blaring inside and Dean emerged in a towel.
“Didn’t you shower this morning? Turn that goddamn racket down! Why the hell is the laundry all over the floor, can’t you at least go throw it somewhere else?”
“I’m late,” Dean said. He ducked back into the bathroom, turned off the music and reemerged to gather up the laundry. “Sure, Dad, I’ll throw it somewhere else. Hey, Sammy, catch!”
“How the hell?” John bellowed, after a minute or two of clothes whirling around the room in some fabric-softened battle of wills, “How the hell do you manage when I’m not here?”
Dean disappeared into the bedroom, came out again after a while and began poking through items of clothing, eventually snatching something that Sam was attempting to hide behind his back.
“Oh Deeeean!” Sam sang out in a falsetto, “You’re wearing my favorites, I love you so muuuuuch!”
John was still trying to catch up with the fact of the laundry being spread around the room and that neither of his sons were taking much notice of him.
“Now wait just a minute!”
His voice was suddenly loud enough, pitched at just that tone. Both of them turned to him, fell silent.
“Dean, why does it matter what underpants you’re wearing for a date?”
Sam clutched the cushion in glee.
“Who the hell will be seeing your underpants?”
Dean floundered.
“Well you know ... if I had an accident. Better to have clean ones.”
“Where the hell are you going anyhow?”
“Party.”
“Party? What does that mean?”
Sam blinked over the cushion. He seemed curious to know, too.
Dean looked at John like he was, seriously, a retard. “Just some friends at some friend’s house. And music. And ... music.”
“And booze?”
“Party, Dad.”
“And you’re going with a girl?”
“Well, kinda meeting her there.”
“And she cares what underpants you’re wearing?”
Dean shifted on the spot. He took a quick, murderous look at Sam. “Might.”
“Jesus, Dean. You’d better not be ... for God’s sake.” John raked his hair once again, let his hand travel down the back of his head and then his neck. His tense and painful neck. “Well you’re not to be late back. Is that clear?”
“What does late mean?” Dean grumbled.
“Eleven-thirty, dude. We’re up and out early in the morning.”
“Oh come on, Dad, eleven-thirty sucks.”
“Any later than that and you’re grounded.”
Dean snorted. “Yeah, like hell.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Sam nibbled a corner of the remote nervously.
“Due respect and all, but ... you gonna be here to enforce it?”
Godfuckingdamnit.
-----
At seven John looked in the refrigerator, then the kitchen cupboards. He was surprised to find a neat stack of the groceries they’d bought earlier. Funny, he hadn’t thought about them since they’d left the store.
“So, what’s it going to be, Sam?”
He had a vague idea that he should be treating him to pizza and ice-cream, a movie maybe. Should be engaging with him about school and stuff.
“Whatever.”
John opened the refrigerator again, determined to do better this time.
“You uh ... know anything about this party your brother’s going to?”
He turned around and Sam met his eyes. John could see, straightaway, that despite the earlier slaps and recriminations, there would be no betrayal. Proud, uneasy and frustrated, he gave a tight smile. Sam shrugged, apologetic.
The kid lay full-length on the couch all evening eating a succession of salty snacks and watching ... well, it seemed like anything that came on really. There was a pretty consistent changing of channels. It amused John when Sam paused for for ten minutes or so on something factual before making a return to cars crashing or other assorted junk.
He sat in the chair trying to think of his opening line about school. He slept. Woke with a goddamn blanket tucked around him, the TV silent but flickering. He found Sam back in his cocoon of sheets. Another crusty bowl had come to join its peers on the floor.
It was midnight before the key turned in the lock.
A shadowy Dean stiffened to attention when he saw John standing in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded.
“Sorry, Dad.” He had his chin up, sounded ready to take his punishment. There would be a reason for the lateness, some reason to do with kissing and God knew what else. John could remember being seventeen. Just about. He also remembered that his son knew more about the need for obedience than most other seventeen year-olds on the planet.
“Go to bed, Dean.” He kept his voice low.
“Sir.”
He heard the sounds of quiet voices for a while in the bedroom which made him smile. Then it all went quiet, and although he needed sleep himself, John also needed to read.
The phone rang at two-thirty.
He spoke down the receiver in a low voice. When he’d finished with the call he went to find his duffel.
“I have to go, boys.” John stood in the bedroom doorway and spoke to the lumps in the beds. “Just a day or two.”
There was the sound of two sets of even, companionable breathing. He listened for a while, steeling himself.
They’d be fine. Of course they would. Because Dean, for all his attempts to butt heads, was always his good soldier. And Sam ... damnit, Sam was just the best kid in the world.
They almost didn’t need him.
John swallowed fiercely.
-----
Sam came to at eight in the morning, got his head out of the sheet somehow.
He saw Dean curled, fetal, in his bed, hair splayed and stiff with gel on the pillow. The room reeked of smoky, beery clothes. Sam remembered he’d woken when Dean had stumbled in, had whispered “You busted?” into the dark. And Dean had sat on the edge of the bed telling him about the party. It had been kind of cool.
Now Sam recalled that it was Sunday morning. For a brief few seconds he wondered why they weren’t all standing out in the middle of a forest somewhere. Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.
------
Dean, hungover and bitchy as hell, rang Bobby at midday.
“No, nothing to do with me, kid. He leave a note or anything?”
Dean fingered the scrap of paper in his hand. “Just that he’d call later.”
“Well OK.” Bobby didn’t sound convinced. “He’ll call later. You boys going to be all right?”
“Sure. I’ll take Sam to the movies.”
“He not doing so good with it?”
Dean explored his furry teeth with a finger. “Sam’s fine. He’s being a geek with his homework.”
Bobby paused. “You going out tonight?”
“No, not tonight, Bobby.”
“Why’s that?”
Sam, cross-legged on the floor, was sorting schoolbooks into two neat piles, a Dean pile and a Sam pile. He glanced up briefly, gave his brother a one-eyed squint of appraisal.
Jesus. Sharp as a tack that kid.
Dean grinned into the phone.
“Can’t, Bobby,” he said. “I’m grounded.”
-ends-
Author: innocent culprit aka solosundance
Genre/Rating: Gen, PG for language
Characters: John, Dean, Sam, Bobby
Wordcount: 3, 600
Summary: Sometimes John thinks hunting would be a more peaceful option
A/n: written for erushi who requested young Winchesters left to fend for themselves. This is almost that, but not entirely :) I also had the option of adding John and/or Bobby, which of course I did :) Beta'd by the incomparable ancastar
John Winchester didn’t know what day of the week it was until some instinct told him to go look in the bedroom.
Then he knew.
He knew because it was almost ten and the blinds were still down. He knew because the room reeked of socks and sweat and sugar-coated cereal floating in sour milk. Since it would be impossible to enter without putting himself at risk of injury from frosted-flake-encrusted spoons or other sharp objects hidden under the sea of clothes, books and what seriously looked like the contents of the kitchen trash-can upended in a search for something that should never have been thrown away in the first place, John remained motionless in the doorway, trying to shift gear from hunter to dad.
Jesus, but there was some major league sleeping-in going on here.
John was weary. He couldn’t recall precisely how many days he’d been away, just that he’d left in a hurry last Sunday night and he’d been assuming he was going to get back in time to surprise the boys with his rested, patched-up self when they trailed back in from school. No such luck. A labored calculation told him it was Saturday, and as he hadn’t been there to kick their butts out of bed, there they would lie for as long as possible.
Sam wasn’t really visible save for a clump of hair emerging halfway down his bed from the twisted pile of sheets and blankets that had evidently been scooped in a single armful from the floor and dumped on the mattress seconds before the occupant burrowed in. An ankle poked apologetically out of the nest near the pillow. It made John’s heart thrum with familiarity and loss.
Across the room on the second bed Dean seemed to be posing for Teenage Stud magazine, if such a thing existed, and John sincerely hoped it didn’t. He’d discarded the faded teeshirt he slept in. What remained of the bedding was wound around his left thigh and the rest of him was sprawled in an unconsciously provocative display of newly-muscled limbs, one arm crossed over his chest in a last-minute attempt at modesty. John’s eyebrow quirked.
“Hey, boys,” he said, but his voice was so feeble and croaky that no way was it going to wake either of them. Nothing short of a large explosion would do that by the look of it.
John backed out and stood in the center of the main room of the apartment getting his head together. Both his arms burned from the abrasions that coated them, his neck ached where it had met the unbending trunk of a tree three nights ago, but he had only one thought in his head.
They were safe. Thank God, thank God, thank freaking God. His boys were safe.
Dean and Sam had survived ordinary life once more, and once more John would probably never know quite how.
Now it was the weekend and stuff happened on the weekend. He knew enough to realize he should get in the shower quickly before it became a no-go area.
-----
My God but Dean was a bad-tempered, moody little shit.
John tugged his hair while he reported this, the one salient fact he’d gotten a handle on since he arrived. “Yeah, so ... hormones, I get that. Mixed-up man-boy. But really ... Jesus. Do all parents of teenagers have to put up with this crap? This monosyllabic, self-centered, unhelpful ... crap?”
A slightly tetchy silence from down the phone line. “I wouldn’t know, John. I just called to see how the job went off.”
John tugged his hair harder. “It went off OK.” He was guarded.
“All dealt with?”
“Every last one, Bobby. Took me three days. I swear, these fuckin things are getting tougher.”
“Hmm,” Bobby said. “And now what? You home for a while?”
“It’s the weekend,” said John, as if that were actually an answer to Bobby’s question. “Sam has ...” He barked a laugh, raked a hand down his face, “he has soccer practice, and then he has a birthday party at some kid’s house. He tells me we have to buy some gift for this kid. I don’t know this kid. I don’t know this kid’s parents ... Sam hardly knows this kid. How long have we been here? Jeez, well anyway, Mr. Popular will hardly be here the whole day and we have laundry to do, groceries to buy, all that shit. Dean says he’s busy tonight. Busy for crying out loud.”
Bobby let out a a low laugh-snort. “Hot date?”
“God only knows, Bobby. When I asked him he looked at me like I’d asked him if he was possessed. Jesus. He is possessed. By some kind of madness.”
“It kind of amuses me that you always find this stuff so surprising,” Bobby said. He paused. “Well, at least I think it amuses me. Maybe it scares the crap outta me.”
“Yeah well.” John felt normal life dragging at his nerve-endings. “Thanks for the call, Bobby.”
“You got it. Have a good one.”
He had scarcely turned from the shelf by the door where the clunky old phone was situated, when a voice demanded, “Who was that?”
John gave in to his first instinct. “Mind your business, boy. Not every call is for you.”
“I never ...” Dean began. “I didn’t ... Jesus!” He was standing in the kitchen doorway doing his best impression of persecuted youth.
“It was Bobby,” John said, calmer, wishing he’d gone with this first.
Sam had snaked past Dean, holding one sneaker. “You going away again?” he asked.
John told himself that Sam wasn’t being demanding, he wasn’t pushing. He was just a kid who was worried he was about to get left.
“No. Bobby was just checking in.”
Dean hadn’t altered his posture, but he’d dropped the attitude, was all business. “What was the job?”
John shook his head. “Later, Dean.”
“Dad,” Sam said, “I got soccer practice.”
“Yeah I know, Sammy, you told me that. Tell me again what time you gotta be there.”
“Eleven-thirty.”
“Tell me again where you gotta be.”
“Daaad ....”
“I’ll take him,” Dean said.
John rubbed his eyes, knew he should be thinking of a plan. “Hold it a minute,” he said. Sam paused, twirling the sneaker thoughtfully. “We have a load of stuff to do. Let’s approach this ... we need to take the laundry. The machine’s still busted, right?”
“Dean took it apart,” Sam said, “and now it’s busted and the door’s on wrong.”
The sneaker was knocked from his hand and flew across the room, tipping over a half glass of milk standing on a low table.
“Dean!” Sam said accusingly.
“You shouldn’t have left the freakin milk there, Sammy, I told you last night. Why do you never clear up after yourself, you lazy little brat?”
John held up his hands. “OK, OK. Time out on this before it gets started. We take Sam to ... wherever the hell it is ... and then we’ll go on and do laundry and groceries.”
“Freakin super,” Dean growled.
“Oh maaan!” Sam said, dropping on to the couch. “That sucks. You never stay to watch the practice. Everyone else’s dad stays to watch the practice. It’s not fair.”
“Just shut the fuck up, Sammy, at least you get to do something fun,” Dean snapped at him.
“Hey ... just ... don’t talk to your brother like that,” John got in. “Where do you get off talking like that? You got a mouth like a sewer, boy.”
Dean muttered just low enough not to be heard.
“You’re only jealous because you got kicked off the football team,” Sam said.
“What?” John screwed up his face. “Dean? You got kicked off the team? What for?”
Dean looked to the ceiling, one fist balled into his palm. “It’s no big deal, Dad.”
Sam opened his mouth but John snapped a finger towards him. “I don’t need your input. We don’t have time for this.” He did another rake of his hair. “OK, so where are your sneakers, Sam? You have your stuff? How far away is this place?”
“Ten minutes,” Dean informed him.
“Good. Let’s go.” John waved a hand at the pile of bloody, mud-streaked clothes that he had hauled out of his duffel and dropped on the floor by the door, and then at Dean.
Sam was rooting for the one sneaker he’d been in possession of. “This is a real mess,” he said, pointing at the milky puddle.
“Yeah, well you’re going to clean it up when you get back,” Dean told him.
Sam turned to John, mouth open.
“Someone is going to clean it up,” John said. “I haven’t decided who yet.”
-----
Sam was pretty good at soccer.
John knew he’d seen him play before but this still seemed like the first time. Everything always seemed like the first time. He was glad he’d kept Dean with him because the other dads (and a few moms) were in a suspicious huddle several yards away and he needed Dean to whisper the pertinent facts in his ear.
They’re the ones having the party ... They’re loaded ... That woman will interfere if you speak to her ... I don’t know them .... The little shit who just kicked Sammy in the thigh? That’s his dad right there.
Coach Johnson drifted over while the kids were taking on fluid.
“Sam’s doing great,” he said. “Hard worker, good vision.”
John beamed at him. Go Sammy.
The coach flicked a glance at Dean. “Having second thoughts?” he said, not very friendly.
Dean shrugged, looking away, and John could see how it might make Coach Johnson spit. He found a hand to clap on the back of his son’s neck.
“Sam’s the team sportsman,” he said. “Dean’s more of a ... long-distance kind of a guy.”
“Oh yeah?” said Coach. “Well maybe I’ll give him a tryout on that.” He smiled unsmilingly at Dean. “Get you doing some laps.”
John could tell he and Dean didn’t like each other one little bit. When he’d gone back to the center circle Dean muttered angrily.
“Thanks, Dad. Now he’s never going to leave me alone.”
“So he gives you a try-out. So you show him how good you are.”
“Yeah right.”
“Come on, son. Believe in yourself. You can out-run anyone.”
“I wouldn’t do it for him,” Dean grumped. “Guy’s a jerk.”
“Yeah, yeah. So do it for me, dude. Do it for the girls. Girls love a jock.”
“Jesus, Dad, you are so lame. Girls don’t love a jock. They love a bad boy.”
John’s head bent slightly and he knocked Dean’s shoulder with his own.
Sam came racing over then and John fought to keep his face neutral. The kid had an unerring eye for huddles and crashed that particular party whenever he could.
“Hey, Sammy, looking good.”
Sam rolled his eyes spectacularly. “Do you actually know anything about soccer?”
John didn’t.
-----
At four-thirty he was sitting looking at a neat-clipped rectangle of very green grass and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Where’s Dean?” Sam demanded when he emerged from the group of preteens on the front lawn and got down to the Impala.
“Laundromat,” John said.
Sam poked in his favors bag, extracted a glow stick and stared at it.
“You know, I could’ve stayed for the sleepover if you’d been around to say yes. Everyone else is staying. Connor’s parents wouldn’t let me without you to say yes.”
“OK, I’ll say yes now. You wanna stay?”
Sam glanced out of the window at the group, some of whom were watching and others who were totally disinterested.
“Nah.”
“Good. Because we have to be up early.”
“Because?”
“We’re going shooting.”
“But I have homework.”
“Not all day you don’t.”
“Dad, do I have to come? I mean, it just sucks getting up early on Sunday.”
“No arguments, Sam.”
There was silence. Sam poked some more in his favors bag, pulled out a length of green candy shaped like a weird sea creature and bit its head off. John glanced sideways at him, then back at the road.
“So, good party?”
Sam chewed. “I guess.”
“And this Connor kid? He a good friend of yours?”
“I guess.”
“Huh. So, you want him to come round sometime?”
Sam’s head snapped towards his father at once. “No, Dad. No way.”
John struggled to comprehend. “But if he’s your friend ... and isn’t there some rule that says he has to come over now? Now you’ve been ... invited? Isn’t that the rule? I thought that was the rule.”
“Yeah, that’s the rule, but no.”
“Why? Are you ashamed of us?”
Sam looked front, frozen in horror. “Daaad ... just ... forget it. I got friends. That’s enough. Why do you always ...?”
“All right, all right, no playdates! Jesus, anyone would think I .... okay. All right.”
There was silence for the rest of the journey, enlivened only by the sound of Sam steadfastly chewing his way through the rest of the gummy sea creature.
-----
Back at the apartment there was loud music coming from inside the bathroom.
A pile of laundry lay like a snow-capped mountain in the center of the main room.
John wanted to sleep. He also wanted to get the guns cleaned and go back over all the information he’d stashed somewhere about river spirits. The gnarled and shiny confection that Sam had worked his way through in the car had triggered a thought.
“I have an information gap,” he told Sam. “You want to help fill it?”
As far as John knew, this kind of question to Sam was like asking Dean if he wanted to go break the speed limit in the Impala.
Sam had thrown himself over the mountain and on to the couch, was rooting amongst the cushions for the remote. “Not on the weekend, Dad.”
John toed the foothills doubtfully. Then he turned to the bathroom door and yelled.
“Dean! Get out here! Now!”
Sam made a face. After a while the door sprang open. The radio was still blaring inside and Dean emerged in a towel.
“Didn’t you shower this morning? Turn that goddamn racket down! Why the hell is the laundry all over the floor, can’t you at least go throw it somewhere else?”
“I’m late,” Dean said. He ducked back into the bathroom, turned off the music and reemerged to gather up the laundry. “Sure, Dad, I’ll throw it somewhere else. Hey, Sammy, catch!”
“How the hell?” John bellowed, after a minute or two of clothes whirling around the room in some fabric-softened battle of wills, “How the hell do you manage when I’m not here?”
Dean disappeared into the bedroom, came out again after a while and began poking through items of clothing, eventually snatching something that Sam was attempting to hide behind his back.
“Oh Deeeean!” Sam sang out in a falsetto, “You’re wearing my favorites, I love you so muuuuuch!”
John was still trying to catch up with the fact of the laundry being spread around the room and that neither of his sons were taking much notice of him.
“Now wait just a minute!”
His voice was suddenly loud enough, pitched at just that tone. Both of them turned to him, fell silent.
“Dean, why does it matter what underpants you’re wearing for a date?”
Sam clutched the cushion in glee.
“Who the hell will be seeing your underpants?”
Dean floundered.
“Well you know ... if I had an accident. Better to have clean ones.”
“Where the hell are you going anyhow?”
“Party.”
“Party? What does that mean?”
Sam blinked over the cushion. He seemed curious to know, too.
Dean looked at John like he was, seriously, a retard. “Just some friends at some friend’s house. And music. And ... music.”
“And booze?”
“Party, Dad.”
“And you’re going with a girl?”
“Well, kinda meeting her there.”
“And she cares what underpants you’re wearing?”
Dean shifted on the spot. He took a quick, murderous look at Sam. “Might.”
“Jesus, Dean. You’d better not be ... for God’s sake.” John raked his hair once again, let his hand travel down the back of his head and then his neck. His tense and painful neck. “Well you’re not to be late back. Is that clear?”
“What does late mean?” Dean grumbled.
“Eleven-thirty, dude. We’re up and out early in the morning.”
“Oh come on, Dad, eleven-thirty sucks.”
“Any later than that and you’re grounded.”
Dean snorted. “Yeah, like hell.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Sam nibbled a corner of the remote nervously.
“Due respect and all, but ... you gonna be here to enforce it?”
Godfuckingdamnit.
-----
At seven John looked in the refrigerator, then the kitchen cupboards. He was surprised to find a neat stack of the groceries they’d bought earlier. Funny, he hadn’t thought about them since they’d left the store.
“So, what’s it going to be, Sam?”
He had a vague idea that he should be treating him to pizza and ice-cream, a movie maybe. Should be engaging with him about school and stuff.
“Whatever.”
John opened the refrigerator again, determined to do better this time.
“You uh ... know anything about this party your brother’s going to?”
He turned around and Sam met his eyes. John could see, straightaway, that despite the earlier slaps and recriminations, there would be no betrayal. Proud, uneasy and frustrated, he gave a tight smile. Sam shrugged, apologetic.
The kid lay full-length on the couch all evening eating a succession of salty snacks and watching ... well, it seemed like anything that came on really. There was a pretty consistent changing of channels. It amused John when Sam paused for for ten minutes or so on something factual before making a return to cars crashing or other assorted junk.
He sat in the chair trying to think of his opening line about school. He slept. Woke with a goddamn blanket tucked around him, the TV silent but flickering. He found Sam back in his cocoon of sheets. Another crusty bowl had come to join its peers on the floor.
It was midnight before the key turned in the lock.
A shadowy Dean stiffened to attention when he saw John standing in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded.
“Sorry, Dad.” He had his chin up, sounded ready to take his punishment. There would be a reason for the lateness, some reason to do with kissing and God knew what else. John could remember being seventeen. Just about. He also remembered that his son knew more about the need for obedience than most other seventeen year-olds on the planet.
“Go to bed, Dean.” He kept his voice low.
“Sir.”
He heard the sounds of quiet voices for a while in the bedroom which made him smile. Then it all went quiet, and although he needed sleep himself, John also needed to read.
The phone rang at two-thirty.
He spoke down the receiver in a low voice. When he’d finished with the call he went to find his duffel.
“I have to go, boys.” John stood in the bedroom doorway and spoke to the lumps in the beds. “Just a day or two.”
There was the sound of two sets of even, companionable breathing. He listened for a while, steeling himself.
They’d be fine. Of course they would. Because Dean, for all his attempts to butt heads, was always his good soldier. And Sam ... damnit, Sam was just the best kid in the world.
They almost didn’t need him.
John swallowed fiercely.
-----
Sam came to at eight in the morning, got his head out of the sheet somehow.
He saw Dean curled, fetal, in his bed, hair splayed and stiff with gel on the pillow. The room reeked of smoky, beery clothes. Sam remembered he’d woken when Dean had stumbled in, had whispered “You busted?” into the dark. And Dean had sat on the edge of the bed telling him about the party. It had been kind of cool.
Now Sam recalled that it was Sunday morning. For a brief few seconds he wondered why they weren’t all standing out in the middle of a forest somewhere. Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.
------
Dean, hungover and bitchy as hell, rang Bobby at midday.
“No, nothing to do with me, kid. He leave a note or anything?”
Dean fingered the scrap of paper in his hand. “Just that he’d call later.”
“Well OK.” Bobby didn’t sound convinced. “He’ll call later. You boys going to be all right?”
“Sure. I’ll take Sam to the movies.”
“He not doing so good with it?”
Dean explored his furry teeth with a finger. “Sam’s fine. He’s being a geek with his homework.”
Bobby paused. “You going out tonight?”
“No, not tonight, Bobby.”
“Why’s that?”
Sam, cross-legged on the floor, was sorting schoolbooks into two neat piles, a Dean pile and a Sam pile. He glanced up briefly, gave his brother a one-eyed squint of appraisal.
Jesus. Sharp as a tack that kid.
Dean grinned into the phone.
“Can’t, Bobby,” he said. “I’m grounded.”
-ends-