SPN FIC: A Lullaby for the Boys We Used to Be
Title: A Lullaby for the Boys We Used to Be
Spoilers: season 6
Genre: AU
Summary: In which Dean is a pathetic drunk, Sam’s still got his back, and Bobby just wants to go to bed.
Warnings: Spoilers and speculation for Season 6, broken!Sam, emo!Dean. Straying dangerously close to curtain!fic territory.
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox.
Author’s Note: This is the third installment to the ‘verse that started with Drive All Night. It’s not essential that you read the previous stories, but it helps. It takes place three years after the events in For Keeps. I think this is like, the fourth story I’ve written that involves one of the boys falling asleep on the other one. I think I might have a problem.
Four and a half hours later, Sheriff Jodie Mills rapped on Bobby’s storm door with a piss-ass drunk Dean Winchester Singer leaning heavily against her side. Bobby was waiting, one ear trained on the driveway and one dedicated to Sam’s baby monitor because even after five years, Sam still woke up in tears from time to time and no, it didn’t get any less suck-ass, thank you very much.
So, Bobby heard the car doors slam, peered out his curtain with a frown, and flicked the porch light on. He opened the door and hissed “What in the hell were you thinking- “ only to be interrupted by the sheriff’s breathless explanation.
“It’s okay.” She said, shifting Dean’s weight as they stumbled up the quartet of stairs, “He just had a little too much to drink tonight, right Dean?”
Dean mumbled something and Mills rubbed the spot on his arm just above his elbow where, in the morning Dean would realize, her grip was tight enough to leave bruises, “You can pick the Impala up tomorrow. Kate and Red said they’ll keep their eyes on her. They were surprised to see you tonight. Thought you were all respectable now with your car restoration business.”
Dean shoved himself away when they got through the door. Bobby, who was not about to deal with a Sam-mess on top of this apparent Dean-mess, grabbed his arm and shoved him into the nearest chair with a “Keep it down you idjit. Your brother’s asleep.”
Dean groaned and laid his head on the table. Bobby had stashed the rest of the cake in the icebox, but he hadn’t gotten around to pulling up the paper Batman tablecloth. There were red and blue streamers, but no balloons because they hadn’t wanted to risk one of them popping and sending Sam into a tizzy. Bobby stared, arms crossed because dammit, he was pissed, until Dean lifted his head back up and slurred, “He’s thirty-four today” at Sheriff Mills.
The hard edges of Bobby’s face softened but he was still a little mad because Dean was still a little bit of a moron. It’s not like he went out and got plastered every May 2nd because he didn’t, not even that first one after the wall fell, and Sam just stared at nothing and wouldn’t eat a thing, no matter how hard they coaxed.
Bobby filled up a glass of water from the sink and sat it next to Dean. Dean picked it up and studied it, then leaned over and dumped it down the drain. He dropped it in the sink where it clanged against a few other dirty dishes and Bobby tensed, all instincts trained on the monitor, waiting for Sam to give himself away.
“Sammy’s got gray hair. I saw las’ night during his bath. Jus’ a ‘lil bit right here.” Dean rubbed at his temples, first, just to illustrate his words, then more purposeful, as though trying to smother a headache.
Jodie Mills slid into the seat opposite Dean and smiled, tight-lipped and polite, “Lots of people start to go gray in their thirties, Dean.” And then Bobby winced, because even though she knew the situation and meant well, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, he just knew that drunk or not, Dean was going to take them all wrong, “I bet Sam doesn’t even mind.”
“I mind.” He shot Mills a dirty look that quickly disintegrated into something sad looking, ran a hand across his face. She got off pretty easy, Bobby thought, thinking of the small band of Legion-rejects who crowded into Dean’s shop from time to time to steal beer and share the gospels of Ford and Chevrolet, who called Sam “Silent Sammy” and got a kick out of the way he shuffled clumsily around the shop, one hand wrapped tight around Dean’s amulet hanging from his neck. They weren’t malicious or anything, they just didn’t understand, and Dean had no patience for people who didn’t understand when it came to Sam. More than once, Bobby came home from a hunt to an earful from Dean about “those assholes,” only to walk in on a small crowd of those very assholes in the shop a week later.
That’s how it works, Bobby supposed, when you can’t just leave your identity in a cloud of dust anymore.
Dean continued, “M’not gray. I looked. M’almost forty an’ there’s not a speck of gray on my head. S’not fair.”
“You’re just lucky.” Jodie Mills said and Bobby wanted to smack her because anything that any of them said at this point was just going to be fuel for Dean’s guilt trip. He wondered if Dean knew it too because he grinned unsteadily at the sheriff and shook his head; barked out a low, bitter laugh before muttering, “M’goin to bed.”
Bobby caught the chair before it toppled over in Dean’s haste to get up, “Why don’t you sleep down here tonight.” He motioned at the monitor on the counter, “He’s been good tonight. Not a peep.”
Dean kept on shaking his head, an unsteady, exaggerated gesture, and ungracefully toed his boots off. “Need to be there in case he has a nightmare.”
Dean staggered through the living room and down the hall, padded up the steps, and Bobby couldn’t help but shake his head and smile at the fact that, even fabulously inebriated, Dean managed to skip every creaky step on his way up the old staircase.
Bobby looked up at the soft shuffle of Sam coming down the steps; one hand gripping the worn banister, the other clenched around the amulet.
“Dammit.” Bobby slammed his paper shut. He was just getting ready to head to his own bed too. He pushed back from his desk, “Did your asshole idjit brother wake you up?”
Sam glanced at him, then quietly shuffled into the kitchen. Bobby listened to the muffled sound of cabinets opening, the faucet running, then squeaking off. Bobby inched forward and leaned against the kitchen door. He watched with folded arms as Sam assembled a small arsenal of hangover remedies: a washcloth soaked in a bowl of cool water, a glass or orange juice with a red bendy straw, a small bottle of ibuprofen, a plastic bottle of Dasani. The hand that wasn’t firmly tangled in the amulet hovered over each object. Sam picked up the bowl, then sat it down and picked up the ibuprofen and the water. He tried to hold the plastic bowl with his index finger, rubbed the pad of his finger over the lid of the bowl as though considering his options.
Simply using both hands wasn’t one of them. In the three years since Bobby came home to find Dean’s long lost amulet dangling from Sam’s neck, he also hadn’t seen it without one of Sam’s hands holding it tight. He wasn’t sure if it was healthy, Bobby told Dean one day, the way Sam clung to it like some sort of security blanket; how Dean had to pry his hand away at bath time, forcibly shove the charm into Sam’s other hand before he hyperventilated. “Maybe we ought to wean him off of it or somethin’” he recommended one day.
Dean just looked at him, “Bobby. It makes him happy.”
Bobby supposed that was one way to put it.
He watched Sam struggle to fit his supplies into one hand, listened to his breathing take on that frantic, raspy quality that usually anticipated a meltdown, then he stepped in. Bobby gently pulled the bowl away from Sam’s hand, took the glass of orange juice in his other hand, “I’ll take this and you take that, alright?” he said, nodding at the Dasani and the ibuprofen held tight in Sam’s hand. Sam’s eyes flickered between Bobby’s hands and his own, but his breathing eased up, so Bobby called it a win.
“We takin’ this all up to the dumbass?”
Sam led the way, painfully slow with no free hand to reassure himself with the banister. Dean was curled up on his bed in their room, the old master bedroom, his head hidden in the waste basket from the bathroom. He groaned when Sam knelt beside him.
“M’sorry I woke you up. Go back t’bed. M’sorry.”
Sam dropped the bottle of water and the bottle of pills and rested his hand on the side of Dean’s face. Dean leaned into the touch and whined when Sam moved, reached out to take the washcloth out of the bowl in Bobby’s hand. He rung it out one-handed, then dropped it on Dean’s forehead. Dean muttered, “Go’way” and Bobby watched with fascination as Sam eased Dean beneath the blankets, his other hand never straying from its place around the amulet.
It was like watching some secret flower bloom for a brief time, a day, maybe just a few hours. He felt like he was intruding, like he wasn’t supposed to see this.
Sam fumbled with the bottle of ibuprofen and Bobby reached for it, dumped four little white pills into Sam’s palm. He snorted, despite himself, when Sam pressed the pills against Dean’s mouth, waiting for him to open up. When Dean refused, when he pressed his lips together in a flat, unbreakable seal, Sam pried at his bottom lip with his index finger. Dean swatted.
Bobby kicked the bed, “Take the damn pills, Dean. I want to go to sleep.”
Dean groaned, but followed the order. Sam clamped his hand over Dean’s mouth as though he was going to spit them out. Dean swallowed, paled, and gingerly lowered his head back into the relative safety of the waste basket. The washcloth slid off of his head and while Sam picked it up, he made no move to replace it, just held it loosely in his hand, glancing between it and Dean’s wilted form.
Bobby twisted the cap on the Dasani bottle and sat it on the floor next to Sam’s knee. He winced as his own knees cracked when he lowered himself to Sam’s level, cursed Dean for putting him in this position to begin with at two in the god-damned morning. He tentatively wrapped a hand around Sam’s shoulder and squeezed lightly, slid the washcloth out of his grip and dropped it back in the little bowl, “How about you go to bed too, Sam? He’ll be alright.”
Sam didn’t acknowledge Bobby, silently picked the orange juice up and poked at Dean’s lips with the straw until his lips parted and he sucked down a few sips.
“Yep,” Bobby continued, “He’s gonna be a joy to be around come morning. Goin’ out on a bender like he’s some twenty-somethin’ daddy’s girl who just got dumped by her dream guy.”
“Shut the fuck up, Bobby.” Dean slurred. He glared with one pained eye and winced, shot an unsteady hand out to paw at the faint tufts of silver beginning to streak Sam’s chestnut mop. His eyes crinkled at the corners and his chin trembled. “M’sorry.”
Bobby rolled his eyes, “Jesus H. Christ. We get it, Dean. You feel left out because you’re the big brother and little Sammy beat you to old age. Boo-fuckin’-hoo. It’s his damn birthday and it was a nice fuckin’ day and you’re gonna piss all over it because…because…” Bobby stumbled. Sam and Dean both looked at him expectantly, like he was about to share some great and wonderful secret with them, “because you just shouldn’t, alright?”
Dean’s voice was small and rough. He hung his head over the side of the bed. Sam reached out, rested his palm against the back of Dean’s head. Dean sucked a shaky breath in and raised his head, a small, sad smile stretched across his face in the moonlit bedroom. “Okay. Okay, m’sor-“
“Don’t say it.” Bobby cut him off. “Just go to bed. Let your brother go to bed. And for the love of god, let me go to bed.” Bobby squeezed Sam’s shoulder again and Sam looked at him, “Go to bed, Sammy.”
Of course, Sam climbed into Dean’s bed, shuffling and wiggling until Dean’s head was pillowed on his thigh. He leaned against the wall. His feet dangled over the side of the bed. He used his free hand to rub Dean’s aching head. Bobby considered making Sam get in his own bed, conceded defeat with the realization that even if he somehow managed to coax Sam into the bed on the other side of the room, he’d probably just migrate as soon as Bobby’s back was turned. So, instead, Bobby asked, “You gonna be able to sleep like that, Sam?
Sam didn’t look up from Dean’s lax face.
“You just ain’t gonna sleep, are you.”
Sam looked up at that, pure defiance wired through his too-skinny frame. Bobby held his hands up in mock-surrender and backed towards the door. “I’m goin’, I’m goin’. You just make sure he barfs in that waste basket and not in your lap. I ain’t doin’ your laundry.”
Sam raised both eyebrows, wrapped his free arm around Dean’s chest, and tangled his hand in the fabric of Dean’s soiled t-shirt, a warm spot on his chest where the amulet rested half a dozen lifetimes ago.
“Yeah, you think I’m kiddin’.” Bobby turned and shut the door so gently that the click was barely audible in his big, old, formerly empty house. He padded down the hall to his own room, the boys old room, where he didn’t quite have the heart to take down Dean’s old Playboy pin-ups or Sam’s map of the US, push-pins marking the towns they’d seen in plastic points of red and green and yellow. Relics, in a way, testaments to the boys they once were and, Bobby realized with a pleasantly warm jolt, still were, in their own way.
Spoilers: season 6
Genre: AU
Summary: In which Dean is a pathetic drunk, Sam’s still got his back, and Bobby just wants to go to bed.
Warnings: Spoilers and speculation for Season 6, broken!Sam, emo!Dean. Straying dangerously close to curtain!fic territory.
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox.
Author’s Note: This is the third installment to the ‘verse that started with Drive All Night. It’s not essential that you read the previous stories, but it helps. It takes place three years after the events in For Keeps. I think this is like, the fourth story I’ve written that involves one of the boys falling asleep on the other one. I think I might have a problem.
Four and a half hours later, Sheriff Jodie Mills rapped on Bobby’s storm door with a piss-ass drunk Dean Winchester Singer leaning heavily against her side. Bobby was waiting, one ear trained on the driveway and one dedicated to Sam’s baby monitor because even after five years, Sam still woke up in tears from time to time and no, it didn’t get any less suck-ass, thank you very much.
So, Bobby heard the car doors slam, peered out his curtain with a frown, and flicked the porch light on. He opened the door and hissed “What in the hell were you thinking- “ only to be interrupted by the sheriff’s breathless explanation.
“It’s okay.” She said, shifting Dean’s weight as they stumbled up the quartet of stairs, “He just had a little too much to drink tonight, right Dean?”
Dean mumbled something and Mills rubbed the spot on his arm just above his elbow where, in the morning Dean would realize, her grip was tight enough to leave bruises, “You can pick the Impala up tomorrow. Kate and Red said they’ll keep their eyes on her. They were surprised to see you tonight. Thought you were all respectable now with your car restoration business.”
Dean shoved himself away when they got through the door. Bobby, who was not about to deal with a Sam-mess on top of this apparent Dean-mess, grabbed his arm and shoved him into the nearest chair with a “Keep it down you idjit. Your brother’s asleep.”
Dean groaned and laid his head on the table. Bobby had stashed the rest of the cake in the icebox, but he hadn’t gotten around to pulling up the paper Batman tablecloth. There were red and blue streamers, but no balloons because they hadn’t wanted to risk one of them popping and sending Sam into a tizzy. Bobby stared, arms crossed because dammit, he was pissed, until Dean lifted his head back up and slurred, “He’s thirty-four today” at Sheriff Mills.
The hard edges of Bobby’s face softened but he was still a little mad because Dean was still a little bit of a moron. It’s not like he went out and got plastered every May 2nd because he didn’t, not even that first one after the wall fell, and Sam just stared at nothing and wouldn’t eat a thing, no matter how hard they coaxed.
Bobby filled up a glass of water from the sink and sat it next to Dean. Dean picked it up and studied it, then leaned over and dumped it down the drain. He dropped it in the sink where it clanged against a few other dirty dishes and Bobby tensed, all instincts trained on the monitor, waiting for Sam to give himself away.
“Sammy’s got gray hair. I saw las’ night during his bath. Jus’ a ‘lil bit right here.” Dean rubbed at his temples, first, just to illustrate his words, then more purposeful, as though trying to smother a headache.
Jodie Mills slid into the seat opposite Dean and smiled, tight-lipped and polite, “Lots of people start to go gray in their thirties, Dean.” And then Bobby winced, because even though she knew the situation and meant well, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, he just knew that drunk or not, Dean was going to take them all wrong, “I bet Sam doesn’t even mind.”
“I mind.” He shot Mills a dirty look that quickly disintegrated into something sad looking, ran a hand across his face. She got off pretty easy, Bobby thought, thinking of the small band of Legion-rejects who crowded into Dean’s shop from time to time to steal beer and share the gospels of Ford and Chevrolet, who called Sam “Silent Sammy” and got a kick out of the way he shuffled clumsily around the shop, one hand wrapped tight around Dean’s amulet hanging from his neck. They weren’t malicious or anything, they just didn’t understand, and Dean had no patience for people who didn’t understand when it came to Sam. More than once, Bobby came home from a hunt to an earful from Dean about “those assholes,” only to walk in on a small crowd of those very assholes in the shop a week later.
That’s how it works, Bobby supposed, when you can’t just leave your identity in a cloud of dust anymore.
Dean continued, “M’not gray. I looked. M’almost forty an’ there’s not a speck of gray on my head. S’not fair.”
“You’re just lucky.” Jodie Mills said and Bobby wanted to smack her because anything that any of them said at this point was just going to be fuel for Dean’s guilt trip. He wondered if Dean knew it too because he grinned unsteadily at the sheriff and shook his head; barked out a low, bitter laugh before muttering, “M’goin to bed.”
Bobby caught the chair before it toppled over in Dean’s haste to get up, “Why don’t you sleep down here tonight.” He motioned at the monitor on the counter, “He’s been good tonight. Not a peep.”
Dean kept on shaking his head, an unsteady, exaggerated gesture, and ungracefully toed his boots off. “Need to be there in case he has a nightmare.”
Dean staggered through the living room and down the hall, padded up the steps, and Bobby couldn’t help but shake his head and smile at the fact that, even fabulously inebriated, Dean managed to skip every creaky step on his way up the old staircase.
Bobby looked up at the soft shuffle of Sam coming down the steps; one hand gripping the worn banister, the other clenched around the amulet.
“Dammit.” Bobby slammed his paper shut. He was just getting ready to head to his own bed too. He pushed back from his desk, “Did your asshole idjit brother wake you up?”
Sam glanced at him, then quietly shuffled into the kitchen. Bobby listened to the muffled sound of cabinets opening, the faucet running, then squeaking off. Bobby inched forward and leaned against the kitchen door. He watched with folded arms as Sam assembled a small arsenal of hangover remedies: a washcloth soaked in a bowl of cool water, a glass or orange juice with a red bendy straw, a small bottle of ibuprofen, a plastic bottle of Dasani. The hand that wasn’t firmly tangled in the amulet hovered over each object. Sam picked up the bowl, then sat it down and picked up the ibuprofen and the water. He tried to hold the plastic bowl with his index finger, rubbed the pad of his finger over the lid of the bowl as though considering his options.
Simply using both hands wasn’t one of them. In the three years since Bobby came home to find Dean’s long lost amulet dangling from Sam’s neck, he also hadn’t seen it without one of Sam’s hands holding it tight. He wasn’t sure if it was healthy, Bobby told Dean one day, the way Sam clung to it like some sort of security blanket; how Dean had to pry his hand away at bath time, forcibly shove the charm into Sam’s other hand before he hyperventilated. “Maybe we ought to wean him off of it or somethin’” he recommended one day.
Dean just looked at him, “Bobby. It makes him happy.”
Bobby supposed that was one way to put it.
He watched Sam struggle to fit his supplies into one hand, listened to his breathing take on that frantic, raspy quality that usually anticipated a meltdown, then he stepped in. Bobby gently pulled the bowl away from Sam’s hand, took the glass of orange juice in his other hand, “I’ll take this and you take that, alright?” he said, nodding at the Dasani and the ibuprofen held tight in Sam’s hand. Sam’s eyes flickered between Bobby’s hands and his own, but his breathing eased up, so Bobby called it a win.
“We takin’ this all up to the dumbass?”
Sam led the way, painfully slow with no free hand to reassure himself with the banister. Dean was curled up on his bed in their room, the old master bedroom, his head hidden in the waste basket from the bathroom. He groaned when Sam knelt beside him.
“M’sorry I woke you up. Go back t’bed. M’sorry.”
Sam dropped the bottle of water and the bottle of pills and rested his hand on the side of Dean’s face. Dean leaned into the touch and whined when Sam moved, reached out to take the washcloth out of the bowl in Bobby’s hand. He rung it out one-handed, then dropped it on Dean’s forehead. Dean muttered, “Go’way” and Bobby watched with fascination as Sam eased Dean beneath the blankets, his other hand never straying from its place around the amulet.
It was like watching some secret flower bloom for a brief time, a day, maybe just a few hours. He felt like he was intruding, like he wasn’t supposed to see this.
Sam fumbled with the bottle of ibuprofen and Bobby reached for it, dumped four little white pills into Sam’s palm. He snorted, despite himself, when Sam pressed the pills against Dean’s mouth, waiting for him to open up. When Dean refused, when he pressed his lips together in a flat, unbreakable seal, Sam pried at his bottom lip with his index finger. Dean swatted.
Bobby kicked the bed, “Take the damn pills, Dean. I want to go to sleep.”
Dean groaned, but followed the order. Sam clamped his hand over Dean’s mouth as though he was going to spit them out. Dean swallowed, paled, and gingerly lowered his head back into the relative safety of the waste basket. The washcloth slid off of his head and while Sam picked it up, he made no move to replace it, just held it loosely in his hand, glancing between it and Dean’s wilted form.
Bobby twisted the cap on the Dasani bottle and sat it on the floor next to Sam’s knee. He winced as his own knees cracked when he lowered himself to Sam’s level, cursed Dean for putting him in this position to begin with at two in the god-damned morning. He tentatively wrapped a hand around Sam’s shoulder and squeezed lightly, slid the washcloth out of his grip and dropped it back in the little bowl, “How about you go to bed too, Sam? He’ll be alright.”
Sam didn’t acknowledge Bobby, silently picked the orange juice up and poked at Dean’s lips with the straw until his lips parted and he sucked down a few sips.
“Yep,” Bobby continued, “He’s gonna be a joy to be around come morning. Goin’ out on a bender like he’s some twenty-somethin’ daddy’s girl who just got dumped by her dream guy.”
“Shut the fuck up, Bobby.” Dean slurred. He glared with one pained eye and winced, shot an unsteady hand out to paw at the faint tufts of silver beginning to streak Sam’s chestnut mop. His eyes crinkled at the corners and his chin trembled. “M’sorry.”
Bobby rolled his eyes, “Jesus H. Christ. We get it, Dean. You feel left out because you’re the big brother and little Sammy beat you to old age. Boo-fuckin’-hoo. It’s his damn birthday and it was a nice fuckin’ day and you’re gonna piss all over it because…because…” Bobby stumbled. Sam and Dean both looked at him expectantly, like he was about to share some great and wonderful secret with them, “because you just shouldn’t, alright?”
Dean’s voice was small and rough. He hung his head over the side of the bed. Sam reached out, rested his palm against the back of Dean’s head. Dean sucked a shaky breath in and raised his head, a small, sad smile stretched across his face in the moonlit bedroom. “Okay. Okay, m’sor-“
“Don’t say it.” Bobby cut him off. “Just go to bed. Let your brother go to bed. And for the love of god, let me go to bed.” Bobby squeezed Sam’s shoulder again and Sam looked at him, “Go to bed, Sammy.”
Of course, Sam climbed into Dean’s bed, shuffling and wiggling until Dean’s head was pillowed on his thigh. He leaned against the wall. His feet dangled over the side of the bed. He used his free hand to rub Dean’s aching head. Bobby considered making Sam get in his own bed, conceded defeat with the realization that even if he somehow managed to coax Sam into the bed on the other side of the room, he’d probably just migrate as soon as Bobby’s back was turned. So, instead, Bobby asked, “You gonna be able to sleep like that, Sam?
Sam didn’t look up from Dean’s lax face.
“You just ain’t gonna sleep, are you.”
Sam looked up at that, pure defiance wired through his too-skinny frame. Bobby held his hands up in mock-surrender and backed towards the door. “I’m goin’, I’m goin’. You just make sure he barfs in that waste basket and not in your lap. I ain’t doin’ your laundry.”
Sam raised both eyebrows, wrapped his free arm around Dean’s chest, and tangled his hand in the fabric of Dean’s soiled t-shirt, a warm spot on his chest where the amulet rested half a dozen lifetimes ago.
“Yeah, you think I’m kiddin’.” Bobby turned and shut the door so gently that the click was barely audible in his big, old, formerly empty house. He padded down the hall to his own room, the boys old room, where he didn’t quite have the heart to take down Dean’s old Playboy pin-ups or Sam’s map of the US, push-pins marking the towns they’d seen in plastic points of red and green and yellow. Relics, in a way, testaments to the boys they once were and, Bobby realized with a pleasantly warm jolt, still were, in their own way.