Me, I'm not - Oklahoma, 1990-1991
Title: Oklahoma, 1990-1991
Verse: Me, I'm not.
Author: Lifeisticking
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: None
Rating: Gen
Words: 2500
Warnings: Alchohol
Summary: Sam is an unusual kid, and John is starting to worry about him.
Note : John's POV, some of Dean's POV
Oklahoma, end of August 1990 - Sam, age 7
Sam comes back from his first day of school (first grade) literally bouncing, while John waits in the car to pick him up. He’s glad to hear his son babble so excitedly about his first day, but he can’t help but notice that he’s not talking about his classmates at all, and very little about the teacher.
‘’Did you make any friends today? How was your teacher?’’ he asks, curious.
He’s surprised to see his face scrunch up in distaste, as he dismisses the idea of friends; ‘’They were all whiny, dad. I don’t think I want to be friends with any of them; besides, I’ve got Dean. And well… the teacher was okay, for an old lady; but I think Missouri’s better.’’ He answers, shrugging.
His heart stops for a moment when his remaining son mentions the name of his other deceased son, but he figures it’s a coincidence that the full name of the imaginary friend would be Dean. Sam always called it ‘’Dee’’ whenever he had talked to him about it… which hadn’t been all that much lately. He’d been hoping that his son had been growing out of his phase.
He decides to play dumb; ‘’Dean? Who is that, little man?’’
He looks at him, puzzled, before pointing toward the backseat, and simply saying, and rolling his eyes a little (where did he learn that ?); ‘’Dean, dad. He’s been there forever, I mean, I know you can’t see him. But it’s not like it’s a secret. I just tend to call him Dee. And he calls me Sammy.’’
He grins toward the backseat after that, sticking out his tongue at something ‘’Dean’’ probably said, before bumping his fist against thin air. He had been behaving as if there was someone else for a while, his persistent imaginary friend, and John hadn’t paid too much attention.
Still, there’s something bothering him and he asks; ‘’What is Dean like? You never told me that.’’
Sam considers it for a moment, before shrugging his shoulders and launching into a description; ‘’Well, Dean’s older than me, so he’s kind of tall… Hey, stop calling me a midget! And well, annoying.’’ He interrupts himself as he makes a face and his hair seems to be ruffled on its own, and he feels dread. ‘’Stop that, you ARE annoying sometimes. No, of course I love you, you know that, you’re the best brother.’’ John freezes.
Sam turns back toward him, still smiling; ‘’He helps me with everything.’’ He adds, affection coloring his tone. ‘’Other than that, well, he has blond hair… kind of like mom. His eyes are green. He has spots…’’ There’s a pause. ‘’Freckles, yeah, yeah, thanks Dean. He wears jeans and a black t-shirt, and hiking boots, I think. He has a black leather jacket, it’s kind of too big for him but he insists, and it is kind of like the one in one of your photos with Mom…’’ he trails off, unsure, looking between him and where ‘’Dean’’ is.
He’s speechless for a bit, his mind trying to process everything, before thanking his son and focusing on driving them home. Before he can put the car into gear, as he looks in the rear view mirror, he sees, or at least he thinks he sees, an older child wearing an oversized leather jacket, with short dirty blond hair, freckled face and green eyes, staring at him. He would love to put this town far behind his rear-view mirror, but he promised Sam he would spend, at the very least, the entire year here.
He checks the salt lines before allowing Sam to enter, which makes him suspicious, before allowing him to come inside, and John asks if ‘’Dean’’ is still here. Sam looks at him strangely before saying, with strange irrevocability, that Dean is always there, always has been, and will always be. There’s a cold spot just then but it might just be his imagination, Sam seems completely unaffected. He’ll have to give Missouri a call; after all, ghosts can’t get past salt lines, and there is no cursed object here.
It’s also impossible that it would really be Dean, despite the description, despite the use of the term brother; Dean was cremated, his ashes buried with his grandparents. So there’s some sort of entity, possibly bidding it’s time, sticking like glue to his little boy, and he’ll stop at nothing to figure what it is and destroy it. The alternative is that his son is hallucinating and he imagined the translucent boy in the backseat too… and he’s not sure which he dreads the most.
Two days later, Sam is still happily going to school and babbling more openly about ‘’Dean’’: Apparently he had taken his questioning as a green light to openly talk and act with ‘’Dean’’.
Missouri knows nothing that could help him determine what it is, assuming it’s either a spirit that can cross salt lines or his boy Dean who mysteriously grew up as a ghost - either possibility seem impossible, and he’s referred to Robert Singer, a retired hunter in South Dakota.
He’d love to up and go to him but he can’t get Sam out of school now, he promised - he doesn’t want his son to think he won’t respect his word. That is, if Dean exists, and he didn’t imagine something in the backseat out of fear, which is possible. A quick call to Mr. Singer and the man promises he’ll search, but can’t seem to think of anything right now: it just doesn’t add up. There’s a short line of questioning whether anything harmful has happened, to which he admits that so far no, that he had initially thought his son had an imaginary friend. He’s relieved when the older hunter thinks it might just really be that, and that John’s fears made him imagine things, but that he’ll check into it anyway.
Later, when they’re in bed, Dean talks to Sam; ‘’I don’t get it Sammy, John’s talking about sending me away… he thinks I’m some sort of monster!’’ he says, not even trying to hide the fact that he’s nervous, when they’re snuggled (more like squeezed) together in Sam’s bed. ‘’That’s ridiculous Dee, you’re not a monster! You saved me from the real monster, the Shtriga. Maybe we should just tell Dad about that.’’ Sam reassures his older brother, squeezing him tight, burying his head in his chest. ‘’Besides, you PROMISED you’d stay forever, he can’t make you go away.’’ He adds in a small voice, insecurity turning into fierceness.
Dean’s response is a small ‘’Yeah’’ before returning his brother’s hug. ‘’Go to sleep now, we’ll figure it out. I promise again I won’t leave you. And I’m the one supposed to reassure you, not the other way around.’’ He adds, gently stroking his Sammy’s hair, feeling himself doze off as in and out of awareness. He hears the sleepy ‘’Don’t care, Dean. So long as you’re okay…’’ and shushes the other boy to sleep, smiling slightly when he finally hears the small snores.
Nothing happens for a little while, with John working in a mechanic shop part-time, too busy to be hunting or to work out the puzzle of ‘’Dean’’; which apparently isn’t urgent since the thing hasn’t manifested itself again, although Sam sometimes looks at him with suspicion (which breaks his heart) and stopped quickly to talk openly about and to ‘’Dean’’.
Although he did receive a few concerned calls from Sam’s teacher about him seemingly talking to thin air sometimes, and suggesting he should take him to see a child’s psychologist… Which might not be a bad idea, after all?
When he suggests that Sam sees a psychologist to help him regarding ‘’Dean’’, his son becomes sullen and refuses stubbornly. He brings him there anyway, and he’s silent all the way. He had warned the psychologist about his son’s strange bond to his ‘’imaginary friend’’, after all, that’s why he’s sending Sam there despite his doubts.
After the session, Sam apparently has drawn a lot of things, including the Shtriga and ‘’Dean’’ saving him from it. The psychologist takes him aside, and tells him it IS abnormal for a child to keep an imaginary friend so complete and for so long, as well as not making any real friends. She asks John if there’s any story of mental illness in the family, and recommends that maybe a psychiatrist would be of more help. The woman sighs, before saying that Sam is way too stubborn and convinced that his imaginary friend is real and present in the room for a psychologist to help; she thinks he’s really hallucinating.
John holds his breath when Sam starts a new conversation with ‘’Dean’’, not even stopping when the psychologist turns around and sighs again, seemingly discouraged. John thanks her and calls Sam to him, telling him in the car that he won’t be going back, which lessens Sam’s frown a little. He’s not sure if he prefers that his son is insane or haunted by a thing. They both miss the facts that when their back was turned, the crayons far from Sam drew on their own for a while there.
During dinner, Sam is silent until he tells him out of the blue that Dean saved him from the Shtriga last year. John just stares at him, and his son nervously glance aside - probably at ‘’Dean’’ - before returning to poking at his spaghettis. He then asks if Dean ever hurt him. He’s taken aback by Sam’s loud ‘’NO!’’ before adding, slightly embarrassed at his outburst, that ‘’Dean would never.’’, and the plates rattle on the table.
‘’That was Dean’s doing, wasn’t it?’’ he asks carefully, ‘’The plates?’’
His son looks surprised and mumbles a short; ‘’He says that wasn’t him.’’
John really doesn’t know what to make of that. He holds his face in his hands, really not sure what to do with this entire situation. Dean, for his part, has a slight smile on his face that his father can’t see, because Sam made the plates move on his own - he always knew his little brother was more awesome than all the others.
So he talks, tries to make himself heard that John wouldn’t have been able to kill the Shtriga without his help, but he’s just looking at Sam, discouraged. ‘’He can’t hear me, Sammy.’’ He finishes, awkwardly.
So Sam repeats everything for him, talks for him, and he’s grateful for that. John doesn’t seem convinced, and asks to end the conversation, that they’ll talk about this later. He knows Dad doesn’t trust him, and the part of him that misses him from when he was four years old mourns that, but the rest, not really. So long as he doesn’t get separated from Sammy. They will be together forever, and John won’t be a threat to them. Otherwise he’ll have to take care of him, and the prospect makes him uneasy; he IS their father, after all.
Later, when John has sent Sam into bed, and Dean stayed until the twerp fell asleep, he wanders away, goes to where he’s sitting at the kitchen table with some Jack Daniel and a photograph of him and mom, and sits down next to him. ‘’Dad?’’ he asks gently, and apparently he hears him because she turns his head, shocked. He focuses really hard, tries to make himself visible, and he knows it works when his father’s eyes go wide, and he just looks at the bottle of booze then back at him. He can’t maintain it, so when John reaches for him, it goes through him (unlike with Sam, where it seems as if he’s always solid) and his face changes to a sad expression.
He hears his father whisper, with tears in his eyes; ‘’Dean ? Is that really you…? But, you were… we… is your mom there too ?’’ Before taking another shot from the bottle; ‘’Drunken hallucinations, it’s what it is.’’
He doesn’t know what more to do, and he hates leaving Sammy alone, so he retreats to Sam’s (their) bedroom.
John had just stared in shock at where an older version of his eldest had been standing, flickering for a second or two. He goes off to bed, decides that he will stop thinking about Dean, and he’ll worry if something happens again. As far as he knows, Sam might be a little insane, he might be drunk, and that’s what it is.
Oklahoma, June 1991 - Sam, age 8
He’s happy and proud when Sam comes back with his last first grade report card, and he’s graduated into second grade, and he tells him he’s a little genius, and he can see him bite a comment about Dean helping or something else (he always gets the same face when he does). He hadn’t made any friends, but after a small argument, he had made a few efforts to talk to the other children. That didn’t mean Dean was gone, or was any less important. Sam still hallucinates him - but he was quieter about it, and that was okay.
With the summer vacations, he’s going to bring Sam with him so he can do a few hunts; he’s surprised at how much his son doesn’t mind being dragged all over the place, he had expected a few fights. What had surprised him even more was him asking to learn how to defend himself from those the monsters, and if he and Dean could help; he had scolded him for wanting to put his life in danger running after monsters, as he had never wanted that for him. Properly chastised, he hadn’t mentioned it again, until one morning while they were packing to head for Illinois (werewolf, possibly), he had suggested that he could do research with Dean, and maybe some self-defence training?
So John allowed his son to help (John didn’t acknowledge Dean’s existence anymore, Dean isn’t real even if he is to Sam and explaining that to him generally didn’t go well) with the books, and had started to train him how to shoot, despite his reluctance. Sam was great at researching, and all the lore seemed to fascinate him.
John didn’t want to admit it, but Dean... helped. Such as when Sam was in a field, and his shooting stance was corrected, and the way he held his gun, steadied. In hand-to-hand combat, he showed Sam, who practiced alone since he was still just eight years old. John had gotten in arguments with him over how he was too young, but he kept insisting; he didn’t understand why his son would want to learn all this. But he kept a training schedule through the summer, barking like a drill sergeants during the sessions.
Sam refuses to return to his previous school when the summer ends; so he settles in Illinois, after criss-crossing the USA during the summer. He doesn’t have to persuade Sam to go to school, he seems to adore it, but he didn’t want to go back to the old one, unless he forced him to. But once again, same as in Wisconsin, the same issues arrive; concerned calls from the teacher about Sam, Sam not mingling properly, but excelling academically. When John mentions it to him, he shrugs, and agrees to talk to others again, but he’s looking at where Dean likely is with an odd expression on his face.
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Verse: Me, I'm not.
Author: Lifeisticking
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: None
Rating: Gen
Words: 2500
Warnings: Alchohol
Summary: Sam is an unusual kid, and John is starting to worry about him.
Note : John's POV, some of Dean's POV
Oklahoma, end of August 1990 - Sam, age 7
Sam comes back from his first day of school (first grade) literally bouncing, while John waits in the car to pick him up. He’s glad to hear his son babble so excitedly about his first day, but he can’t help but notice that he’s not talking about his classmates at all, and very little about the teacher.
‘’Did you make any friends today? How was your teacher?’’ he asks, curious.
He’s surprised to see his face scrunch up in distaste, as he dismisses the idea of friends; ‘’They were all whiny, dad. I don’t think I want to be friends with any of them; besides, I’ve got Dean. And well… the teacher was okay, for an old lady; but I think Missouri’s better.’’ He answers, shrugging.
His heart stops for a moment when his remaining son mentions the name of his other deceased son, but he figures it’s a coincidence that the full name of the imaginary friend would be Dean. Sam always called it ‘’Dee’’ whenever he had talked to him about it… which hadn’t been all that much lately. He’d been hoping that his son had been growing out of his phase.
He decides to play dumb; ‘’Dean? Who is that, little man?’’
He looks at him, puzzled, before pointing toward the backseat, and simply saying, and rolling his eyes a little (where did he learn that ?); ‘’Dean, dad. He’s been there forever, I mean, I know you can’t see him. But it’s not like it’s a secret. I just tend to call him Dee. And he calls me Sammy.’’
He grins toward the backseat after that, sticking out his tongue at something ‘’Dean’’ probably said, before bumping his fist against thin air. He had been behaving as if there was someone else for a while, his persistent imaginary friend, and John hadn’t paid too much attention.
Still, there’s something bothering him and he asks; ‘’What is Dean like? You never told me that.’’
Sam considers it for a moment, before shrugging his shoulders and launching into a description; ‘’Well, Dean’s older than me, so he’s kind of tall… Hey, stop calling me a midget! And well, annoying.’’ He interrupts himself as he makes a face and his hair seems to be ruffled on its own, and he feels dread. ‘’Stop that, you ARE annoying sometimes. No, of course I love you, you know that, you’re the best brother.’’ John freezes.
Sam turns back toward him, still smiling; ‘’He helps me with everything.’’ He adds, affection coloring his tone. ‘’Other than that, well, he has blond hair… kind of like mom. His eyes are green. He has spots…’’ There’s a pause. ‘’Freckles, yeah, yeah, thanks Dean. He wears jeans and a black t-shirt, and hiking boots, I think. He has a black leather jacket, it’s kind of too big for him but he insists, and it is kind of like the one in one of your photos with Mom…’’ he trails off, unsure, looking between him and where ‘’Dean’’ is.
He’s speechless for a bit, his mind trying to process everything, before thanking his son and focusing on driving them home. Before he can put the car into gear, as he looks in the rear view mirror, he sees, or at least he thinks he sees, an older child wearing an oversized leather jacket, with short dirty blond hair, freckled face and green eyes, staring at him. He would love to put this town far behind his rear-view mirror, but he promised Sam he would spend, at the very least, the entire year here.
He checks the salt lines before allowing Sam to enter, which makes him suspicious, before allowing him to come inside, and John asks if ‘’Dean’’ is still here. Sam looks at him strangely before saying, with strange irrevocability, that Dean is always there, always has been, and will always be. There’s a cold spot just then but it might just be his imagination, Sam seems completely unaffected. He’ll have to give Missouri a call; after all, ghosts can’t get past salt lines, and there is no cursed object here.
It’s also impossible that it would really be Dean, despite the description, despite the use of the term brother; Dean was cremated, his ashes buried with his grandparents. So there’s some sort of entity, possibly bidding it’s time, sticking like glue to his little boy, and he’ll stop at nothing to figure what it is and destroy it. The alternative is that his son is hallucinating and he imagined the translucent boy in the backseat too… and he’s not sure which he dreads the most.
Two days later, Sam is still happily going to school and babbling more openly about ‘’Dean’’: Apparently he had taken his questioning as a green light to openly talk and act with ‘’Dean’’.
Missouri knows nothing that could help him determine what it is, assuming it’s either a spirit that can cross salt lines or his boy Dean who mysteriously grew up as a ghost - either possibility seem impossible, and he’s referred to Robert Singer, a retired hunter in South Dakota.
He’d love to up and go to him but he can’t get Sam out of school now, he promised - he doesn’t want his son to think he won’t respect his word. That is, if Dean exists, and he didn’t imagine something in the backseat out of fear, which is possible. A quick call to Mr. Singer and the man promises he’ll search, but can’t seem to think of anything right now: it just doesn’t add up. There’s a short line of questioning whether anything harmful has happened, to which he admits that so far no, that he had initially thought his son had an imaginary friend. He’s relieved when the older hunter thinks it might just really be that, and that John’s fears made him imagine things, but that he’ll check into it anyway.
Later, when they’re in bed, Dean talks to Sam; ‘’I don’t get it Sammy, John’s talking about sending me away… he thinks I’m some sort of monster!’’ he says, not even trying to hide the fact that he’s nervous, when they’re snuggled (more like squeezed) together in Sam’s bed. ‘’That’s ridiculous Dee, you’re not a monster! You saved me from the real monster, the Shtriga. Maybe we should just tell Dad about that.’’ Sam reassures his older brother, squeezing him tight, burying his head in his chest. ‘’Besides, you PROMISED you’d stay forever, he can’t make you go away.’’ He adds in a small voice, insecurity turning into fierceness.
Dean’s response is a small ‘’Yeah’’ before returning his brother’s hug. ‘’Go to sleep now, we’ll figure it out. I promise again I won’t leave you. And I’m the one supposed to reassure you, not the other way around.’’ He adds, gently stroking his Sammy’s hair, feeling himself doze off as in and out of awareness. He hears the sleepy ‘’Don’t care, Dean. So long as you’re okay…’’ and shushes the other boy to sleep, smiling slightly when he finally hears the small snores.
Nothing happens for a little while, with John working in a mechanic shop part-time, too busy to be hunting or to work out the puzzle of ‘’Dean’’; which apparently isn’t urgent since the thing hasn’t manifested itself again, although Sam sometimes looks at him with suspicion (which breaks his heart) and stopped quickly to talk openly about and to ‘’Dean’’.
Although he did receive a few concerned calls from Sam’s teacher about him seemingly talking to thin air sometimes, and suggesting he should take him to see a child’s psychologist… Which might not be a bad idea, after all?
When he suggests that Sam sees a psychologist to help him regarding ‘’Dean’’, his son becomes sullen and refuses stubbornly. He brings him there anyway, and he’s silent all the way. He had warned the psychologist about his son’s strange bond to his ‘’imaginary friend’’, after all, that’s why he’s sending Sam there despite his doubts.
After the session, Sam apparently has drawn a lot of things, including the Shtriga and ‘’Dean’’ saving him from it. The psychologist takes him aside, and tells him it IS abnormal for a child to keep an imaginary friend so complete and for so long, as well as not making any real friends. She asks John if there’s any story of mental illness in the family, and recommends that maybe a psychiatrist would be of more help. The woman sighs, before saying that Sam is way too stubborn and convinced that his imaginary friend is real and present in the room for a psychologist to help; she thinks he’s really hallucinating.
John holds his breath when Sam starts a new conversation with ‘’Dean’’, not even stopping when the psychologist turns around and sighs again, seemingly discouraged. John thanks her and calls Sam to him, telling him in the car that he won’t be going back, which lessens Sam’s frown a little. He’s not sure if he prefers that his son is insane or haunted by a thing. They both miss the facts that when their back was turned, the crayons far from Sam drew on their own for a while there.
During dinner, Sam is silent until he tells him out of the blue that Dean saved him from the Shtriga last year. John just stares at him, and his son nervously glance aside - probably at ‘’Dean’’ - before returning to poking at his spaghettis. He then asks if Dean ever hurt him. He’s taken aback by Sam’s loud ‘’NO!’’ before adding, slightly embarrassed at his outburst, that ‘’Dean would never.’’, and the plates rattle on the table.
‘’That was Dean’s doing, wasn’t it?’’ he asks carefully, ‘’The plates?’’
His son looks surprised and mumbles a short; ‘’He says that wasn’t him.’’
John really doesn’t know what to make of that. He holds his face in his hands, really not sure what to do with this entire situation. Dean, for his part, has a slight smile on his face that his father can’t see, because Sam made the plates move on his own - he always knew his little brother was more awesome than all the others.
So he talks, tries to make himself heard that John wouldn’t have been able to kill the Shtriga without his help, but he’s just looking at Sam, discouraged. ‘’He can’t hear me, Sammy.’’ He finishes, awkwardly.
So Sam repeats everything for him, talks for him, and he’s grateful for that. John doesn’t seem convinced, and asks to end the conversation, that they’ll talk about this later. He knows Dad doesn’t trust him, and the part of him that misses him from when he was four years old mourns that, but the rest, not really. So long as he doesn’t get separated from Sammy. They will be together forever, and John won’t be a threat to them. Otherwise he’ll have to take care of him, and the prospect makes him uneasy; he IS their father, after all.
Later, when John has sent Sam into bed, and Dean stayed until the twerp fell asleep, he wanders away, goes to where he’s sitting at the kitchen table with some Jack Daniel and a photograph of him and mom, and sits down next to him. ‘’Dad?’’ he asks gently, and apparently he hears him because she turns his head, shocked. He focuses really hard, tries to make himself visible, and he knows it works when his father’s eyes go wide, and he just looks at the bottle of booze then back at him. He can’t maintain it, so when John reaches for him, it goes through him (unlike with Sam, where it seems as if he’s always solid) and his face changes to a sad expression.
He hears his father whisper, with tears in his eyes; ‘’Dean ? Is that really you…? But, you were… we… is your mom there too ?’’ Before taking another shot from the bottle; ‘’Drunken hallucinations, it’s what it is.’’
He doesn’t know what more to do, and he hates leaving Sammy alone, so he retreats to Sam’s (their) bedroom.
John had just stared in shock at where an older version of his eldest had been standing, flickering for a second or two. He goes off to bed, decides that he will stop thinking about Dean, and he’ll worry if something happens again. As far as he knows, Sam might be a little insane, he might be drunk, and that’s what it is.
Oklahoma, June 1991 - Sam, age 8
He’s happy and proud when Sam comes back with his last first grade report card, and he’s graduated into second grade, and he tells him he’s a little genius, and he can see him bite a comment about Dean helping or something else (he always gets the same face when he does). He hadn’t made any friends, but after a small argument, he had made a few efforts to talk to the other children. That didn’t mean Dean was gone, or was any less important. Sam still hallucinates him - but he was quieter about it, and that was okay.
With the summer vacations, he’s going to bring Sam with him so he can do a few hunts; he’s surprised at how much his son doesn’t mind being dragged all over the place, he had expected a few fights. What had surprised him even more was him asking to learn how to defend himself from those the monsters, and if he and Dean could help; he had scolded him for wanting to put his life in danger running after monsters, as he had never wanted that for him. Properly chastised, he hadn’t mentioned it again, until one morning while they were packing to head for Illinois (werewolf, possibly), he had suggested that he could do research with Dean, and maybe some self-defence training?
So John allowed his son to help (John didn’t acknowledge Dean’s existence anymore, Dean isn’t real even if he is to Sam and explaining that to him generally didn’t go well) with the books, and had started to train him how to shoot, despite his reluctance. Sam was great at researching, and all the lore seemed to fascinate him.
John didn’t want to admit it, but Dean... helped. Such as when Sam was in a field, and his shooting stance was corrected, and the way he held his gun, steadied. In hand-to-hand combat, he showed Sam, who practiced alone since he was still just eight years old. John had gotten in arguments with him over how he was too young, but he kept insisting; he didn’t understand why his son would want to learn all this. But he kept a training schedule through the summer, barking like a drill sergeants during the sessions.
Sam refuses to return to his previous school when the summer ends; so he settles in Illinois, after criss-crossing the USA during the summer. He doesn’t have to persuade Sam to go to school, he seems to adore it, but he didn’t want to go back to the old one, unless he forced him to. But once again, same as in Wisconsin, the same issues arrive; concerned calls from the teacher about Sam, Sam not mingling properly, but excelling academically. When John mentions it to him, he shrugs, and agrees to talk to others again, but he’s looking at where Dean likely is with an odd expression on his face.
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