To Fight in the Shade - Part 5
Sam shrank back against the wall as Johnson came close, but he only walked past Sam and shook his head as he walked out the door. He locked the door firmly behind him. Sam could catch a glimpse of him through the thick, narrow window in the door, just for a second as he locked the door. He was just doing his job, Sam figured, just trying to scare Sam so he’d behave himself till Sgt. Moss got back.
Not that that would make anything better. Sam was still stuck in this cell until something happened to break the stalemate and either Sam talked or…or what? Would Dad be able to find him? And what would Dad do when he did?
Sam took a deep, shaky breath and pushed himself off of the wall and walked over to the desk where the tray of food sat. It was a plastic cafeteria tray like the kind they had at school, with little sections for each kind of food. There was spaghetti and little meatballs with tomato sauce, a large portion of peas swimming in pea juice, some bread and butter, an apple, and then, oddly, ginger ale.
He poked at everything with a finger. The spaghetti and meatballs were still warm, and the peas were too, but if Sam had been willing to eat peas that Dad had put in tuna noodle casserole just to prove a point (and because he’d been hungry), he wasn’t going to eat them in a jail cell when they were swimming in pee-colored juice.
If he ate the food now, would that make him a convict? Maybe he shouldn’t eat it, like a protest; he’d done that often enough when Dad made something he didn’t like. And anyway, the spaghetti, it was riddled with little pieces of tomato. Sam hated tomato unless it was in ketchup or if it was one of those blended tomato sauces that came in a jar. Then he could eat it, but this wasn’t that type of sauce.
Sam picked up the bread and butter and took a little bite, and discovered right away that the butter was really margarine, which Sam hated. Dad and Dean hated it too; Dad never bought it and they only had to eat it when there was no other option, like at a truck stop or something.
He put the bread back and picked up the apple. This he could eat, even though there wasn’t a real knife to slice off pieces of it, like Dean had taught him to do, showing him how to cut out the seeds and trim off the brown parts, if there were any. Dean had said it was cooler to do it that way, and anyway, it tasted better when Dean cut his apple for him. But he stood there next to the desk and ate the apple without cutting it, keeping one eye on the door, in case anyone should come for him.
Then he opened the ginger ale. It popped and fizzled and it had been ever so long since he’d had a soda, but the ginger ale was on the warm side and not as good as he remembered. He drank half of it, and then his stomach started feeling all funny and tight, so Sam put the soda down.
Now he had to pee. He looked at the metal toilet, standing there all plain and bare against the wall. Dean would laugh like anything if he saw Sam standing there, afraid to use it to pee. Probably, if Dean were here, he’d saunter up to it and pee, just as normal as anything.
Sam didn’t think he could hold it, so he pretended he was Dean and sort of sauntered up to it, and unzipped his shorts and peed. Then he zipped back up and looked for the thing to flush it with, and figured it was the flat metal button in the wall, so he pressed that with the palm of his hands. The flushing toilet sounded like a jet engine taking off and the new water that rushed into the metal bowl smelled faintly like chlorine.
Sam saw the powdered soap dispenser and paper towels, and he realized that he could stand a little sideways and just use the sink without leaning over the toilet, so he did that and washed his hands and threw the paper towel on the desk next to the tray because there wasn’t any trash can.
Sam paced the floor, trying to keep warm, because there was really no place to sit down; the bottom bunk bed was too hard and the sheets smelled funny, and the floor looked too icy to sit on. Plus there was a vent near the ceiling and it never seemed to stop blowing, so every time he tried to sit down, his teeth would start to chatter and he would shiver and shiver, and couldn’t stop. There was nothing else to do but walk and walk.
Eventually he felt tired and got desperate enough to pull a pillow from the bed and put it on the floor next to the bunk bed and sat on it with his back against the cinder block wall with the not-quite-wool blanket around his shoulders.
He didn’t know what time it was. Maybe he’d been in the narrow cell an hour at least; the food on the tray had gone cold so maybe it had been two hours. Long enough for Dad to be done with his phone calls and writing his notes in his dumb journal and to come looking for Sam, expecting him to be where he said he’d be. Dad was going to be so mad when he got to the park to find Sam long gone.
If Sam didn’t tell them who he was, he didn’t know how long they’d keep him there. On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine Dad not coming for him, even if when he did he was going to be so angry. What was Sam supposed to do? If he told Sgt. Moss his name, they’d go find Dad, maybe. Or maybe Dad would figure out where he was, and come get him. Either way, Dad was going to be so mad at Sam; not only had Sam not been at the park, but he now had a “sheet.”
Sam stretched out his legs and rested the heels of his sneakers on the floor, laying his hands on his bare thighs. He touched his rope burns gingerly; goose pimples stood up on his skin as the metal cuffs touched them. Twisting his wrists, he rubbed the links between his hands with his thumb. The links were cold and solid, just like the cuffs, his wrists were raw from jerking his hands trying to break them, but he knew better now.
The skin under the cuffs was a mess, all raw and bruises and so thin in places, the blood was popping up in little round dots. The marks already hurt but they were going to hurt worse if he couldn’t keep himself from jerking so hard. If he couldn’t get out of them, if nobody ever took them off.
His hands started to feel numb at the thought of this and his chest grew all tight and fluttery at the same time. He stood up really fast and threw off the blanket, head spinning. There wasn’t a single window and he really didn’t know what time it was and how much time had passed and what if he’d already been in jail a long time? What if Dad had given up on finding him and had gone to Dean and said, we’ll have to move on and leave Sam behind. Would Dean, being so mad at Sam all the time, even try to stop Dad?
His heart was thumping so hard against his ribs that he almost didn’t hear the lock in the door.
But he felt the warm movement of warm air and turned to see Officer Johnson come in, frowning with his whole face. He had come for Sam and was probably going to do something mean. Except, maybe at the same time, if Johnson took Sam out in the hallway, then Sam might be able to break free and start running, though what he was supposed to do after that-
“C’mon, kid,” said Johnson, advancing on him slowly. “Someone’s here to pick you up.”
Johnson didn’t say who, but Sam knew right away that Sgt. Moss was doing what he said he’d do, that he’d called Social Services because Sam didn’t tell him who he was.
Sam felt as panicky as he had when Dad had tied him to the tree the first time, in the woods near the cabin, and then walked off with Dean like there was nothing the matter. Leaving Sam to struggle by himself. Except now, Sam was really all alone and small and the world outside the cold cell suddenly seemed impossibly huge and wide and there would be no way that Dad and Dean could find him, ever, ever again-
“Kid,” said Johnson, his voice tight and completely out of patience.
Sam ran straight at Officer Johnson, head down, fists clutched against his chest. He slammed hard into Johnson’s stomach and wished he was bigger so he could just throw Johnson to one side and keep running right out the doors till he was away and free.
But Johnson must have been expecting this because he picked Sam up by the waist and swung him around to carry him bodily down the hall. When he reached the second door it was wide open and he walked right through it and Sam raged, growling deep in his throat because if he could have gotten past Johnson, then he could have raced down the shiny-floored hallway and right out the front door.
As hard as he squirmed, he couldn’t get free. But he knew he could make it difficult for the officer to carry him so as they turned a corner, Sam twisted and flailed his arms and smashed Johnson right in the face with both fists. Johnson’s nose started to bleed and he made a sound and his grip on Sam loosened and Sam pulled back his bound fists, ready for another blow.
“Sam.”
Sam froze and Officer Johnson slowly lowered Sam to the floor and turned him around.
It was Dad. He was standing next to Sgt. Moss’s desk, and behind him, through the wide window, it was dark and the street lights were just coming on. Dad must have been looking for him for hours.
Sam’s heart started to race. Dad’s hair was all standing up on end like it did when he ran his hands through it instead of giving Sam a smack. His shirt was covered with grass and sweat stains, though Sam couldn’t understand where the grass stains had come from. But Dad had only one glance for Sam, dark, before he looked back at Sgt. Moss, who sat behind his desk, just the same as before, as if he’d never taken his dinner break.
“So, yeah, Mr. Winchester,” said Sgt. Moss, as he’d been talking about this forever and was already tired of the subject. “I’m not gonna say she’s a pain in the ass, but she calls 911 anytime a dog so much as pees on her lawn. Keeping up with the paperwork is hell, and I’d rather not do it, but-
“That’s fine,” said Dad. His voice was as calm as if he’d been asking for someone to pass him the milk. He leaned forward to sign a piece of paper that was on Sgt. Moss’s desk and then straightened up as he put the pen down. “Now, if someone will get those handcuffs off my boy, I’ll take him home.”
Sam felt Officer Johnson move, but he didn’t come any closer, or grab Sam or anything.
Dad held up his hand and a small circle of keys went flying by Sam’s head to land in Dad’s palm.
“Come here, Sam,” said Dad, squatting down low.
Sam did as he was told; he didn’t know what else to do. When he got close, Sam saw the circles under Dad’s eyes, and could feel how hot and sweaty he was, like he did when he got worked up, even if Dad was being all calm now. As for him asking for handcuff keys, that part was a fake because Sam knew good and well that Dad could have unlocked him with a paperclip.
“Oh, now,” said Johnson somewhere behind Sam. “Now he’s docile as a dog with his Dad here.”
Dad quickly unlocked the cuffs and stood up, putting the cuffs and keys on Sgt. Moss’s wooden desk.
“You’re the one with the busted nose,” said Dad. His voice was level and reasonable, the bad kind of reasonable that Sam had often heard, usually right before Dad took off his belt. Dad was looking over Sam’s head at Officer Johnson. “But that’s what you get for underestimating a kid, especially one of mine.”
Sgt. Moss made a noise that sounded halfway between a snort and a laugh, and Sam quickly looked away, rubbing his wrists. Dad shook Sgt. Moss’s hand. Then, as he started walking out the door, Johnson moved out of the way. There Dad stopped, and standing right next to Officer Johnson but not looking at him, Dad looked at Sam.
“Let’s go, Sam,” he said. His voice was still level and calm and it was all a big show for Sgt. Moss and Officer Johnson because once out in the parking lot, or along a stretch of highway where Dad could pull over, Sam was going to get hollered at and worse.
Sam felt frozen in place, but Dad started walking down the hallway. His dark hair gleamed in the bright overhead lights, and his feet were almost soundless on the shiny linoleum.
“Sam,” he said, without turning back to look.
Sam’s choice was to stay here, and get sent to foster care, or follow Dad. Sam knew that even though he didn’t want to be with Dad right now, he did want to be with Dean. Besides, he knew Dad, and once the whipping was over, it would be over, except for the part where Dean yelled at him for making Dad mad, and then teased him for being such a dork.
“Move.”
Sam hurried to follow Dad.
He still felt like he was shaking all over, from the air conditioning, and his hip felt sore; he couldn’t walk full on it, he had to hobble a little bit. He didn’t want Dad to think he was trying to be a baby about it, to get out of what was surely coming to him, so he tried to hide it as best he could, and hopped a little bit with every other step to keep from pushing down on his left leg. But he had to hurry too, because Dad wasn’t slowing down for Sam, not one little bit. In fact, the closer he got to the main doors, the faster he went, and when he got there and opened them, he reached back and hauled Sam out into the parking lot by the scruff of his neck. Then he let Sam go.
The car was parked off by itself under a lamp post and when Dad opened the driver’s side, Sam scrambled in and scooted all the way over to the passenger side. He’d never ridden in the front seat so much in his life, and in spite of Dean bragging about it, how much fun it was, what a privilege it was, Sam didn’t like it. Especially now, as Dad started the engine, floored the gas, and shrieked out of the parking lot.
As Dad drove them along the main road, all the lights in the town were coming on. When they reached the highway, he really pushed on the gas pedal and they roared towards home. Sam wanted to open the window, but he also wanted to make himself feel really small right about now because who knew when Dad would decide to pull over and take off his belt. Or maybe he would make Sam wait for it till they got home, and do it there, and that would make Dean even madder at Sam, having to watch and listen to Sam crying.
Sam’s heart leaped up into his throat; he wanted to get this over now. “Dad-“
“Your brother’s going to be crazy with worry,” said Dad.
In the low, glowing light of the speedometer, Sam could just about make out that they were going around 70; the engine was growling with an effort to keep up with Dad’s demands on the gas pedal. Sam wasn’t sure if he wanted to ask Dad to slow down or not, but Dad wasn’t looking at him at all; it was like he wasn’t even there, so Sam didn’t dare. He just hung on to the door handle as tight as he could, and rubbed his hip a little bit every now and then and kept his mouth shut. He was already in so much trouble.
*
The headlights raced across the tree trunks and the gravel road gleamed as they pulled up to the cabin. Dean was already there waiting on the top step, shadowed in the porch light. When the car stopped, he raced down the steps, arms outstretched.
“Where the hell have you been!”
“That’s enough Dean.”
“But where’s Sam?”
Dean obviously couldn’t see him. Sam got out of the car, pushing the door open, and stepping out slowly because his hip had gone all frozen from sitting still. It felt like someone was jabbing something sharp into it. He closed the door, gently, and bit his lip, concentrating on walking rather than hopping. When he looked up, Dad was already up the stairs, opening the door for him and Dean.
But he waited for Sam; both of them did.
“In the house, now,” said Dad.
Then he turned away, into the house, taking Dean with him. Now Sam could hop a little bit; his hip started to loosen up a little. He really would have liked to be carried, but he’d been carried enough for one day, and besides, he was too big for that. So he walked it, up the stairs, gritting his teeth and pretending he was Dean, because nothing ever hurt Dean.
Once up the stairs, Sam opened the screen door, and let the familiar light from the bulb over the kitchen table stream over him. His heart thudded and the panic whirled around in his stomach, overriding every other sensation; now he was home, now Dad would get mad.
“What happened, Dad?” Dean asked as Dad got the first aid kit down from the top of the fridge and put it on the table.
Dad shook his head at Dean. He rummaged in the box and pulled out what he needed as Sam came closer.
“What happened Sam?” said Dean to Sam.
“I have a sheet,” Sam said, announcing this right away because it was better to get it done and over with.
“Move for your brother,” said Dad to Dean, and Dean got out of the way and went to sit in Dad’s chair at the end of the table.
“Sit down Sam, let me take care of those wrists.”
Sam was a little confused that Dad wasn’t yelling, but he sat down in Dean’s chair, the one in the middle, and put his wrists on the table. His shoulders started to throb, and he felt stiff all over.
“A sheet?” asked Dean.
Dad got a clean dishcloth from the drawer and wet it with cold water. As he wiped Sam’s wrists, he said, “Your brother got arrested today.”
Dean’s mouth hung open and his eyes were wide and he didn’t say a word. Sam had never seen Dean look so surprised in all of his life, but it didn’t make Sam feel like he thought it would; he wasn’t proud of what he’d done.
“Yes,” said Dad, his voice dry. “Apparently a Mrs. Cooperthwaite has the cops in Ft. Payne running for their lives, and when she says jump, they jump. And when she says arrest a kid for fighting with her son over a soccer ball, they arrest the kid, slap some cuffs on him, and throw him in solitary.”
“What?” Dean practically shrieked this and he stood up and looked ready to move and do something about it.
“Settle down, Dean, but yeah,” said Dad, “cuffs and solitary, for a 13 year old.” He shook his head, and slathered Sam’s wrists with first aid cream. “I was looking for him for three hours, under bushes, in the ditches, on the roadside…everywhere.” Dad’s voice grew gritty and fell off at the end as if he didn’t quite know how to finish his thought.
“How’d you find him?” asked Dean. He sat down, but looked really mad and ready to stand up any minute.
“Finally started knocking on doors,” said Dad. He looked tired, then, as if just the thought of how much trouble Sam had been was exhausting. “Found a neighbor who’d seen it, and told me what happened. Imagine my surprise when I get to the police station, and they bring him out in cuffs.”
As Dad and Dean stared at him, Sam squirmed in his seat and ducked his head. He was used to being ignored, somewhere off in the corner of Dad’s attention, unless he was in trouble.
Dad wrapped soft bandages around Sam’s wrists and gently taped them down. Then Dad smoothed them with his hand, and they started to feel a little better. But then Dad pulled him to his feet, Sam jerked backwards, bumping into Dean.
“What?” asked Dad. “What’s the matter with you now?”
Dad put his hand on Sam’s arm, and now Sam was caught. “I’m sorry, Dad, honest. I didn’t mean for them to arrest me, I was gonna stay in the park, just like you said, but they came and-please, Dad, please don’t whip me-”
“I’m not going to whip you, Sam,” said Dad. He pulled Sam close to him, and then Dad sat down in Sam’s chair, and, now level with Sam, looked Sam right in the eye. “Although I should, for you fighting over a soccer ball that wasn’t yours to begin with and that you shouldn’t be playing-”
Dad snapped his mouth shut over what he wanted to say next, but Sam could see in his eyes that he was furious about the whole thing, and might just be mad enough to whip Sam anyway.
Sam didn’t say what he wanted to say, that he was going to play soccer the next chance he got. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to bring that up, now that Dad had said that Sam wasn’t going to get a whipping. He started to wiggle his arm to get it out of Dad’s grip in case he changed his mind anyway.
“Hang on. I want to know why you were limping, what happened?”
At first, Sam didn’t know what Dad was talking about, and then he remembered. Only now, it was going to sound so stupid, he didn’t want to tell. He shook his head.
As Dad looked at Sam with serious eyes, Dean stood up and was at Sam’s shoulder, talking practically in his ear. “C’mon, Sammy, what happened to you?”
Sam licked his lips and took a little breath. “Um,” he said. “When they put me in the cell, they kind of threw me down, so-so I had cuffs on and couldn’t roll the right way so it wouldn’t hurt.” His wrists hurt a little bit from the fall, but not so much as his hip. It was his own fault, really, for not rolling with a fall, like Dad had showed him and so now Dad was probably going to get mad all over again.
Dad shot to his feet, and his eyes were all dark and scary, and Sam backed up, bumping into Dean again. Dean pulled on Sam to get him to move, and then Dean stood in front of Sam, which he sometimes did when Dad was mad at Sam. Dean hadn’t done it all summer. Until now.
Except instead of coming at Sam, Dad walked away, his hands balled into fists. Sam saw a flash of Dad’s bared teeth as he walked to the door and opened it like he meant to go out. Only he didn’t. He stood there, staring through the screen, and Sam felt horrible for not being able to do the roll and swore to himself that he’d practice like crazy, if only Dad wouldn’t be so furious about it.
“Dad?” asked Dean. That was good. Dean could always, well nearly always, talk Dad out of it when Dad was mad like this.
As if he’d made his mind up about something, Dad relaxed his shoulders and his hands, and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. Then he turned away from the screen door and came back to them. And although his expression was calmer now, Sam could tell he was still mad.
“Get some ice for your brother; Sam, let me take a look at that hip.”
Dad sat in Sam’s chair again and gestured for Sam to come closer. Dean had to reach over Dad for the ice tray, but he didn’t seem bothered by it, so Sam did as he was told.
“This one?” asked Dad. He pointed to Sam’s left hip.
Sam nodded. He chewed on his lower lip; he’d tried not to be a baby about it, but having Dad notice anyway was making him feel like crying again.
Dad tugged on the waist of Sam’s shorts and underwear to pull them down a little bit on one side. Dad cupped his warm hand over the bare skin of Sam’s hip.
“Does that hurt?” Dad asked, looking at Sam.
It didn’t figure that Dad would believe Sam if he said no, so Sam nodded yes. He didn’t say how much it hurt because he didn’t want Dean scoffing at his princess drama, which is what Dean called it when Sam complained about a splinter or stubbed toe. But his hip hurt a lot, all sharp and pounding, like someone was pulling thin strings out, one at a time, over and over.
Dad took his hand away, and looked at Sam’s hip, and then shook his head as he tugged Sam’s clothes back into place. “It’s all black and blue,” he said, flat, to no one in particular.
He was starting to sound angry again, but he looked at Sam and shook his head. Then he said, “Give me that ice.” He took the bundled towel that Dean handed him and made Sam sit down and put it against Sam’s hip. “Hold it like this.”
As Sam held it in place, Dad almost smiled at Sam, but Sam looked away, and felt Dean coming around to sit in Dad’s chair.
“As to why we're so late,” said Dad, like he’d been telling the story all along. “Sgt. Moss wanted Sam to tell him who he was, where he lived. And what does your brother do?”
He directed this at Dean, and of course Dean couldn’t tell him, so he shook his head and asked, "What did he do?”
“He wouldn’t tell them anything,” said Dad. “He stonewalled them for four hours,”
“Holy cow.” Dean’s mouth dropped open.
“Apparently,” said Dad, continuing on, “they threatened him with Social Services, foster care, the works, but not a word from Sam. He gave them nothing, never cracked once. Can you imagine? ” Dad almost seemed to laugh at something he was thinking, but he only rubbed his chin with his palm and sighed.
Sam looked at Dean. He looked impressed and that didn’t happen very often.
“Why didn’t you want to tell them who you were, Sam?” asked Dad.
Sam ducked his head and fiddled with one of his bandages, until Dad put his hand on Sam’s hand and made him stop. Then he took his hand away and touched the top of Sam’s head, and flicked away Sam’s bangs from his eyes.
“Why, Sammy?”
Sam looked up. Dad didn’t seem to be mad now, and he wanted Sam to tell him what had happened, why Sam hadn’t talked. For now, Sam wasn’t in trouble, and he’d like to keep it that way so he was going to tell Dad what he wanted to know.
“You said to keep a low profile, and if I told them who I was, maybe they’d tell the F.B.I, and then maybe they’d come and take you away and I couldn’t-” Sam’s throat closed up a little, and he cleared it, swallowing over a huge lump that suddenly formed there. “I couldn’t let them get Dean.”
That was the truth then, even if it made Dad’s eyes go dark and still and made Dean make that little face he got when Sam had said the very wrongest thing, like he sometimes did when trying to talk to Dean.
“I see,” said Dad. “Well, you did good there, it was the right thing to think.”
“But it’s not right to lie to the police, Dad, and not telling them is like a lie-” It was all so confusing.
“Still, Sam, you did the best you could in a bad circumstance. If you were a little older, I’d give you a beer.”
Dean sometimes would take a sip of Dad’s beer, if he’d left it on the counter and Dad wasn’t looking. Sam hadn’t yet dared, and he kind of never wanted to taste it, because if he started drinking it, then he’d be like Dad, maybe.
“I’d rather have an Otter Pop,” said Sam, although this was an old argument, and Sam was going to lose it, since Dad had forbidden them treats when they trained.
“I know you would,” said Dad. “But let’s get you something to eat. You hungry?”
Sam nodded. He wasn’t going to tell them about the horrible spaghetti and the peas swimming in what looked like lukewarm pee, nor was he going to tell them about the soda he couldn’t even finish, but yes, he was hungry.
Dad made Sam hold the ice pack against his hip, and got up and made Sam a peanut butter and banana and honey sandwich and poured him a big glass of milk. Sam held the bag of ice in the crook of his hip with one hand, and ate as fast as he could chew while Dad sat in Sam’s chair and Dean sat in Dad’s chair and both of them watched him eat.
“Aren’t you gonna eat?” Sam asked, after he’d swallowed a whole glass of milk in three gulps and wiped his mouth on the neck of his t-shirt.
Dad just shook his head, and Dean said, “Not hungry.”
Dad seemed to be looking at Sam while thinking of something else, and he shook his head again and got up. He took the dish and glass from the table and put them in the sink.
“But you did good today, Sam, and so-”
Then Dad went to the freezer and pulled something out and put it on the table in front of Sam. For a second, Sam didn’t recognize it, it was so bright and there were too many colors for him to figure out what it was. But then he recognized the red and blue striped box with the strange, brightly colored otters on the front and then he knew.
“Otter Pops!” Sam stood up and the bundle of ice fell to the floor, and his hip screamed at him, but he didn’t care, he had Otter Pops at last. He brought the icy cold box right up to his face so he could smell it. Of course, it only smelled like frozen cardboard, and was starting to make his fingers freeze, but it was the surest sign of a real boy’s summer that he knew.
“Divvy them up Sam, six each.”
Sam blinked. For a moment, he’d forgotten where he was and who was watching him. He put the box down on the table, and sat back down and then tore the cardboard open as the long, brightly colored, icy cold tubes spilled out.
“This been in the freezer all this time?” he heard Dean ask.
“For a while now,” said Dad.
Sam didn’t care about that, he was just glad to see there was a lot of Little Orphan Orange, and her little dog, which he loved, and not too many of Sir Isaac Lime, which he didn’t care for. His hands almost shook as he made three piles, trying as best he could to make sure not to hog all the orange ones, and not to give Dad too many of the lime ones. Dean liked Louie-Bloo Raspberry, or at least he said he did, so Sam made sure that Dean got most of those.
When the Otter Pops were separated into three somewhat tidy and icy piles, which were starting to melt in the heat, Dad got out the scissors, and took an orange one from Sam’s pile and cut open the top.
Dean grabbed the scissors from Dad. “No, like this. Curve it, otherwise, it cuts your mouth.” Dean showed Dad how to cut them in a curve, and Dad cut one open for each of them.
Sam took a breath. He had two Little Orphan Oranges all for him, and he took the one that Dad had cut open and shoved it in his mouth and started to suck on it.
His eyes closed with bliss, and he forgot his bruised hip and the marks on his wrists, the rope burns on his thighs. Even the threat of a whipping from Dad was now in the background, and all there was was the sharp, icy-cold sweet taste of orange sugar. The curve Dad had cut in the plastic tube was just perfect to fit inside Sam’s mouth, and he sucked and tilted the tube up so the already melted juice could run right down his throat.
“I guess he likes them,” said Dean, around his tube of Louie-Bloo Raspberry.
“I guess he does,” agreed Dad.
Sam looked up. He was almost done with his first Otter Pop, but Dad and Dean were still only halfway done, sucking on their tubes like polite ladies sipping tea.
“Here,” said Dean. “I’ll trade ya.” He took one of Sam’s Otter Pops, the Poncho Punch one, which didn’t really have any flavor at all other than a mild pink. And in its place he put a Little Orphan Orange one, so now Sam still had two orange ones to eat.
“Thanks, Dean,” said Sam, around a mouthful of orange sugar.
Dad snorted around the end of his tube, his lips stained purple by the flavor of Alexander the Grape, which Sam liked best after orange and Strawberry Short Kook.
“What’s funny, Dad?” asked Dean. Dean’s mouth was stained too, by the blue ice he was eating.
“You should have seen him,” said Dad, shaking his head.
“Who?” asked Dean.
“Officer Johnson,” said Dad. He tilted some of the purple ice into his mouth and chewed on it for a bit. “Sam apparently didn’t like him very much, and Johnson told Sgt. Moss that Sam had kicked him, repeatedly, and then bit him, and then when he was bringing Sam into the office, when I showed up, Sam busted his nose. Made it bleed pretty bad.”
Dad laughed a little bit more, and swallowed the rest of the purple ice and shook his head. He was even smiling a little, which he usually never did when Sam got himself into trouble. “Yeah, I said, take off the cuffs, and Officer Johnson, get this, Dean, he took a step back, didn’t want to come anywhere near Sam. I think he was a little afraid of him.”
Dad said it like Sam had done a good thing, but Sam frowned. You weren’t supposed to get praise for hurting a police officer, at least it wasn’t that way on TV or in any book Sam had read. Only a bad guy would attack a cop, like Sam had done today, and Sam didn’t want to be a bad guy.
“What’s the matter, Sammy?” asked Dean, teasing. “Got brain freeze?”
“No,” said Sam. He took his second Little Orphan Orange and held it for Dad to cut open. He was being rewarded with Otter Pops, he knew that, but it was for something he shouldn’t be rewarded for. As of today, he had a sheet, he was on the books, and if anyone put his name on the wire, they’d find out what he did today. “It’s just that-”
He stopped. He didn’t know how to explain this in a way that wouldn’t make Dean laugh at him or get Dad frustrated enough to punish Sam anyway, just to make a point. Then he looked up. Dad and Dean were still watching him, like they were afraid he’d vanish right in front of their eyes. There were things that could do that, Sam knew, even though he’d never seen any.
“I shouldn’t have kicked him,” said Sam. “Or anything bad. They probably wrote it down on my sheet, and now everyone will know-” The taste of orange was now bitter in his mouth.
“Well,” said Dad, looking at Sam, and considering his words, all quiet and slow, like he tended to do when he wanted to get his point across. “Maybe before he threw you to the floor, that might be true, but afterwards? All bets are off. You understand?”
Sam didn’t.
“Sgt. Moss, he’s a cop, and he was pretty mean to threaten you with foster care. But he was just doing his job; did he manhandle you?”
“No,” said Sam.
“Well, Johnson hurt you, so you were just fighting back, Sam. And he’s a cop, taking lumps like that is part of his job.”
“You were just trying to get away, Sam,” said Dean, like this was the best reason of all.
Sam thought about this. He looked at Dean, who was sucking his way to the bottom of Louie-Bloo Raspberry, contentedly, his eyes half-closing when he tilted his head back. His mouth was blue, and Sam thought that yes, he’d been trying to get away, but it had been so that whatever Sam had done (and the soccer ball, by rights, really had been his), it wouldn’t lead to Dean. And he’d done that. He’d kept Dean out of it.
If Dad felt comfortable and safe enough to walk into a police station and give them his real name and then sign it on a piece of paper? That was his lookout. Sam’s lookout was to make sure Dean was okay, at least as best he could.
“And if you’re worried about them coming for us, Sam,” said Dad. He stood up pointed his fast-melting Sir Isaac Lime at Sam. “If you’re worried about Dean, don’t be. Today was small potatoes for them, and considering their source-”
“Mrs. Cooperthwaite,” said Dean, his mouth curling around the name as if he enjoyed saying it.
“Mrs. Cooperthwaite makes hundreds of complaints a year, and I think, from the sounds of it, most of them get canned. Including this one. Sgt. Moss told me that once she sees the paperwork, the office staff manages to “lose” it, and on it goes. So don’t worry, okay?”
Dad threw his wrapper in the trash, and picked up the bag of melting ice from the floor and threw it in the sink. Then he touched the top of Sam’s head, and started walking away.
“Where you going?” asked Dean.
Sam turned in his chair. Dad was picking up the keys from the counter and hefting them in his hand.
“I have an errand to take care of,” said Dad. “I’ll be back later. You boys can finish those off, you can have mine between you, and Dean, make sure your brother brushes his teeth afterwards. Bedtime by ten, understand?”
“Sure, Dad,” said Dean.
Sam nodded absently at what Dad had just said; he couldn’t believe his luck. There were two orange Otter Pops in Dad’s pile, and Dean knew that Sam loved those best, so he was liable to pretend he didn’t want them, and take all the lime and raspberry ones instead. Leaving Sam with orange and purple and pink ones, which was only fair, even if the pink ones didn’t taste much like anything other than pink.
“Bye, Dad,” said Dean. He stood up now, too, watching Dad leave.
Sam didn’t look. He listened for the car door and the roar of the engine and felt all of the tightness in his shoulders and chest just whoosh away. He started dividing Dad’s pile of Otter Pops between him and Dean, until his pile grew so huge that some of the Otter Pops slipped onto the floor.
Sam bent to get them and straightened up, clutching them in his fingers like frozen straws. Then he put them on the table and counted them, one more time.
“I wonder where he’s going,” said Dean. He came back to the table, and looked at the pile that Sam had left for him. If he felt it unfair that he had two Sir Isaac Limes and no orange ones, he didn’t say anything. Instead he grabbed the scissors and stuffed them in his back pocket. Then he took up his eight remaining Otter Pops and jerked his chin at Sam.
“Let’s eat these on the porch and wait for Dad to come back.”
Sam nodded, and followed Dean outside with his Otter Pops clutched against his chest. They were so cold they almost burned him through his t-shirt to his skin, but he ran with them, and was able to plop them on the second step between his feet, and then he sat on the top step and admired his hoard.
Dean sat beside him and did the same. He took the scissors out and laid them on the top step between them.
Sam took up an Alexander the Grape and held it out for Dean to cut it, in a curve, the way Dean knew that he liked. Then he started sucking at the cold sugar, barely tasting the purpleness of it after all that orange. Little Orphan Orange was the strongest, sweetest flavor of them all, nothing could beat it. But even though he still had, count them, one, two, three, yes, four orange ones, he wanted to spread it out, and make it last. Which meant that he had to put up with one purple, two strawberries, and a pink in between.
Dean sucked on a Louie-Bloo Raspberry, his elbows on his knees, and he was staring down the driveway, even though, in the light from the porch, he could only see a little way.
“What’re you looking at, Dean?” asked Sam. Sam could never understand why the raspberry flavored ones were blue colored, but maybe it was just one of those mysteries. He sucked down some purple and decided he liked the taste of it a little better than the pink.
“Nothin’,” said Dean. “Just where did he go, anyway? We have groceries.”
Now Sam stared at the driveway, too. Dad sometimes did stuff like that, driving off in the middle of the night, only to come back days later, all covered with dust, with no story to tell about it. Not that Sam cared to know Dad’s stupid secrets, but Dean did; it bothered him when Dad wouldn’t tell him what was going on.
“Maybe he went to a garage,” said Sam around a mouthful of sugared ice, trying to be helpful.
“Too late for that,” said Dean. “He could fix that carburetor here, anyway, and I could help him.”
Dean always worried, trying to fix everything, make sure Dad didn’t work too hard on his own. He wanted to be a hunter like Dad, and do anything to help Dad, and sometimes, when he was like this, he tended to ignore Sam.
“I’ll give you one of my strawberries for a lime one,” Sam said. He held out the Strawberry Short Kook to Dean, but Dean just looked at it and shook his head.
“No way! I love Sir Isaac Lime!” Dean said, loudly and pointedly. “I’m not gonna give him away, not even for a sweet, red gal like Miss Short Kook.”
Sam smiled around the last bits of his grape Otter Pop, because that’s how Dean was. He knew how to tease Sam and not make it something mean. He felt the smile moving through him, like a lazy, contented stretch of warmth.
He held out another Little Orphan Orange and Dean cut it and Sam sucked on it and smiled some more, and Dean cut open a lime one and stuck it in his mouth and smiled around that, even though, as Sam knew, that after any other flavor, the lime ones tended to taste a little bitter.
For a while, they sat there, sucking on Otter Pops in the warm night air, with the moths flickering around the porch light, and the quiet (apart from the trees moving as the wind tossed the leaves a little bit) settled over Sam’s shoulders, and he felt like, for the first time all summer, that it was summer. A summer meant for a kid.
He didn’t have to go to summer camp, even, like Russ’s boy had done, as long as he could have moments like this. Sitting next to Dean, with Dean liking him a little bit, and being nice, the taste of melting orange sugar on his tongue, the sharp feel of the cut of plastic on the inside of his mouth. And Dean’s smile as he pretended not to look as he filched Sam’s Poncho Punch.
Sam sucked on his orange one for a minute, and then rested it against his knee. Taking up the scissors, he cut open another orange one and curved the top as carefully as he could. Then he handed it to Dean.
When Dean frowned at him, Sam said, “I want you to have it.”
Dean took it, but he shoved his only grape one into Sam’s pile to trade, and Sam let him. They both knew that Sam giving Dean an orange one was a big deal, but Dean didn’t like to talk about stuff like being nice, and so Sam would have to pretend that this was all normal. Still, it was hard not to smile as he stuck his tongue down the tube and tilted his head back so that the whole melting, orange mess slid into his mouth.
(Sam and Dean, on the front porch, enjoying Otter Pops, with each boy enjoying his favorite flavor.)
*
They ate Otter Pops until Sam’s tongue was burning, and still Dad didn’t come home. Sam managed to still have one orange and a pink one left when Dean suggested they watch some TV.
Sam picked up his Otter Pops and followed Dean inside. The cabin was a little warm, and so Dean turned on the fans and set them up in the doorways, while Sam turned on the TV. It was summer, so there would only be re-runs.
“Not Lois and Clark,” said Dean. “It’s too stupid.”
Sam turned the dial, clutching his almost melted Otter Pops in one hand. “X-Files?” he asked. The show usually freaked him out, especially if there was a monster whose skin came off or if Agent Mulder got locked up somewhere. But still, Dean liked the show, and he’d be there to make a joke if Sam got too scared, so Sam found the right channel, and sat in Dad’s chair so Dean could sprawl out on the couch.
As Dean settled in and started watching, he threw an empty wrapper at the TV. “Stupid Mulder, everyone knows the Jersey Devil is make-believe.”
But that didn’t make Dean want to change the channel, and so they continued to watch X-Files, and after that Walker, Texas Ranger, and Sam finished his pink one and then had Dean cut the last Little Orphan Orange open.
Dean did it in such a perfect curve that it didn’t hurt Sam’s mouth at all, even if his stomach was starting to feel a bit queasy. It was perfect, it was the best and the last of them all, and when he was done, Sam put the wrapper on the floor next to the chair and settled back with his hands on his stomach and let the flickering light of the TV spin before his eyes.
*
When the screen door opened, some movie was on, and Dean, who’d obviously been asleep on the couch, woke up right away and leaped up to go to Dad, who was walking as loudly across the floor as if it were daylight.
“What are you boys still doing up? It told you bedtime was at ten.”
The clock on the stove said 11:30.
“We wanted to wait for you,” said Dean.
Sam knew that Dean wanted to ask Dad where he’d been, what he’d been doing, but with Dad, if he wanted you to know, he’d tell you and no amount of begging would make it any different.
“Yeah,” said Sam. He got up too, and tried not to hobble, though his hip had stiffened up on him and his feet were all pins and needles. “We finished all the Otter Pops, and me and Dean watched X-Files and I didn’t have to cover my eyes, not once.” It had been a lame episode about a Jersey Devil, which nobody believed in, but Dad didn’t need to know that.
“Well, it’s bedtime now,” said Dad.
He walked forward into the light, and went to the sink. There was a large smear of grease across his shirt, and even from where he was standing, Sam could see the large bruise on Dad’s face. As he was washing his hands gingerly under cool water, for a second, Sam thought he could see that there was blood across the backs of Dad’s hands. Both of them.
Sam looked at Dean and Dean looked at Sam and raised his eyebrows, but neither of them dared ask.
Except, Dean tried to find out anyway. “You okay, Dad?”
Dad nodded. He finished up in the sink, turned off the tap and wiped his hands on his shirt. His knuckles were still red and when he turned around, Sam saw that he had a busted lip, too.
“I stopped to help someone change a flat tire,” said Dad.
Changing a flat tire didn’t mean that you came home with a fat lip and busted knuckles, but unless Dean was willing to say to Dad’s face that he was a liar (and Sam wasn’t about to), then there was no way the story was going to change.
“Must have been a really big tire,” ventured Dean, just the same. “You want some ice for that lip?”
Dean was always brave, but then, sometimes, like now, he was bold enough to look Dad right in the eye, like he was daring Dad to deny what was right in front of all of them that Dad was lying. Still, Dad didn’t say anything, only shook his head.
“I’ll get it, you boys brush your teeth and get to bed. Way past bedtime, and tomorrow we’re going to do some PT and you’re going to increase that run to three miles.”
Sam groaned. Trust Dad to take a wonderful, Otter Pop-filled, summer evening and ruin it with horrible news like that. He thought for a moment about mentioning his sore hip and how he couldn’t possibly run on it, let alone for three miles in the morning heat. And while Dad had been nice about it before, if Sam complained about his hip, Dad was liable to bark out something mean and holler at Sam and then the whole of the perfect summer evening would be ruined.
Still, Sam opened his mouth, but as Dad dipped his head and turned away, Sam saw that Dad had a large red scratch along the back of his arm and Sam knew that Dad had been up to something that wasn’t a flat tire, and it had worn him out. So Sam shut his mouth and did as he was told and went into the bathroom with Dean to brush his teeth.
“Changing a flat tire, my eye,” said Dean around the foam on his toothbrush. Sam brushed his teeth and looked at Dean in the mirror and nodded.
“He’s not going to tell us,” said Sam before he spit into the sink.
“Nope,” said Dean.
In the bedroom, Dean flicked off the light and Sam stripped down to his underwear in the dark. The skin over his hip still felt a little cool from the bag of ice (that Dean had refilled for him during Walker, Texas Ranger), but it still felt too stiff to lie on. So, as he climbed into bed, he had to lie on his right side, even though he wanted to face the other way and tell Dean about being in jail so that Dean could think about that and not worry about Dad so much. Dad could take care of himself anyway; Sam was just a kid, and being in jail had been a big deal, even if, in the end, he didn’t really have a sheet with his name on it.
“Hey, Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you know I had to pee in a metal toilet today? It wasn’t even in a bathroom, just stuck out from the wall.”
Sam waited. He wanted Dean to know how brave he’d been, how he’d sauntered up to that toilet like Dean would have, and washed his hands with strange, prison-smelling powdered soap like it was an everyday thing. About how bad the food had been, and how there’d been bunk beds, and how he’d wished that Dean had been there with him. Because if Dean had been there, it would have been different. And how, more than anything, more than orange Otter Pops even, how he wanted Dean to say something nice to him and tell him how brave he’d been today.
But Dean was taking so long, that Sam’s bottom lip was starting to shake and he clamped down on it so he wouldn’t start crying like a baby. Dean hated it when he did it.
“Dean?” he asked, and his voice came out all thready and Dean was sure to say something snotty and call him Waterworks Sammy, and then roll over and face the other way and not say anything nice. And Sam really needed someone, besides Dad, to tell him that he’d done a good job and that he was safe now.
“Dean?” he asked again.
“What?”
The fan was going in the window, sucking in cool air from the living room and pushing it through the room, so Sam didn’t think Dad could hear them, as long as they kept their voices down. Besides the TV was still on, Sam could hear it a little bit through the wall, so Dad was probably watching whatever was on.
“I almost got a soccer ball today, I mean, I didn’t mean to hit that kid so hard, but he lost it and I found it-”
“And then you went and got yourself arrested,” said Dean, interrupting him. He sounded mad.
“I didn’t mean to,” said Sam. He blinked against the half-darkness, frowning. “But I was brave and I almost got away at least a dozen times, and-”
“And you freaked Dad out today, don’t you know that?”
Now Sam had to roll over, wincing as he turned on his hip to face Dean. “Nuh-uh, I did not freak him out.”
Part 6
Master Fic Post
Not that that would make anything better. Sam was still stuck in this cell until something happened to break the stalemate and either Sam talked or…or what? Would Dad be able to find him? And what would Dad do when he did?
Sam took a deep, shaky breath and pushed himself off of the wall and walked over to the desk where the tray of food sat. It was a plastic cafeteria tray like the kind they had at school, with little sections for each kind of food. There was spaghetti and little meatballs with tomato sauce, a large portion of peas swimming in pea juice, some bread and butter, an apple, and then, oddly, ginger ale.
He poked at everything with a finger. The spaghetti and meatballs were still warm, and the peas were too, but if Sam had been willing to eat peas that Dad had put in tuna noodle casserole just to prove a point (and because he’d been hungry), he wasn’t going to eat them in a jail cell when they were swimming in pee-colored juice.
If he ate the food now, would that make him a convict? Maybe he shouldn’t eat it, like a protest; he’d done that often enough when Dad made something he didn’t like. And anyway, the spaghetti, it was riddled with little pieces of tomato. Sam hated tomato unless it was in ketchup or if it was one of those blended tomato sauces that came in a jar. Then he could eat it, but this wasn’t that type of sauce.
Sam picked up the bread and butter and took a little bite, and discovered right away that the butter was really margarine, which Sam hated. Dad and Dean hated it too; Dad never bought it and they only had to eat it when there was no other option, like at a truck stop or something.
He put the bread back and picked up the apple. This he could eat, even though there wasn’t a real knife to slice off pieces of it, like Dean had taught him to do, showing him how to cut out the seeds and trim off the brown parts, if there were any. Dean had said it was cooler to do it that way, and anyway, it tasted better when Dean cut his apple for him. But he stood there next to the desk and ate the apple without cutting it, keeping one eye on the door, in case anyone should come for him.
Then he opened the ginger ale. It popped and fizzled and it had been ever so long since he’d had a soda, but the ginger ale was on the warm side and not as good as he remembered. He drank half of it, and then his stomach started feeling all funny and tight, so Sam put the soda down.
Now he had to pee. He looked at the metal toilet, standing there all plain and bare against the wall. Dean would laugh like anything if he saw Sam standing there, afraid to use it to pee. Probably, if Dean were here, he’d saunter up to it and pee, just as normal as anything.
Sam didn’t think he could hold it, so he pretended he was Dean and sort of sauntered up to it, and unzipped his shorts and peed. Then he zipped back up and looked for the thing to flush it with, and figured it was the flat metal button in the wall, so he pressed that with the palm of his hands. The flushing toilet sounded like a jet engine taking off and the new water that rushed into the metal bowl smelled faintly like chlorine.
Sam saw the powdered soap dispenser and paper towels, and he realized that he could stand a little sideways and just use the sink without leaning over the toilet, so he did that and washed his hands and threw the paper towel on the desk next to the tray because there wasn’t any trash can.
Sam paced the floor, trying to keep warm, because there was really no place to sit down; the bottom bunk bed was too hard and the sheets smelled funny, and the floor looked too icy to sit on. Plus there was a vent near the ceiling and it never seemed to stop blowing, so every time he tried to sit down, his teeth would start to chatter and he would shiver and shiver, and couldn’t stop. There was nothing else to do but walk and walk.
Eventually he felt tired and got desperate enough to pull a pillow from the bed and put it on the floor next to the bunk bed and sat on it with his back against the cinder block wall with the not-quite-wool blanket around his shoulders.
He didn’t know what time it was. Maybe he’d been in the narrow cell an hour at least; the food on the tray had gone cold so maybe it had been two hours. Long enough for Dad to be done with his phone calls and writing his notes in his dumb journal and to come looking for Sam, expecting him to be where he said he’d be. Dad was going to be so mad when he got to the park to find Sam long gone.
If Sam didn’t tell them who he was, he didn’t know how long they’d keep him there. On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine Dad not coming for him, even if when he did he was going to be so angry. What was Sam supposed to do? If he told Sgt. Moss his name, they’d go find Dad, maybe. Or maybe Dad would figure out where he was, and come get him. Either way, Dad was going to be so mad at Sam; not only had Sam not been at the park, but he now had a “sheet.”
Sam stretched out his legs and rested the heels of his sneakers on the floor, laying his hands on his bare thighs. He touched his rope burns gingerly; goose pimples stood up on his skin as the metal cuffs touched them. Twisting his wrists, he rubbed the links between his hands with his thumb. The links were cold and solid, just like the cuffs, his wrists were raw from jerking his hands trying to break them, but he knew better now.
The skin under the cuffs was a mess, all raw and bruises and so thin in places, the blood was popping up in little round dots. The marks already hurt but they were going to hurt worse if he couldn’t keep himself from jerking so hard. If he couldn’t get out of them, if nobody ever took them off.
His hands started to feel numb at the thought of this and his chest grew all tight and fluttery at the same time. He stood up really fast and threw off the blanket, head spinning. There wasn’t a single window and he really didn’t know what time it was and how much time had passed and what if he’d already been in jail a long time? What if Dad had given up on finding him and had gone to Dean and said, we’ll have to move on and leave Sam behind. Would Dean, being so mad at Sam all the time, even try to stop Dad?
His heart was thumping so hard against his ribs that he almost didn’t hear the lock in the door.
But he felt the warm movement of warm air and turned to see Officer Johnson come in, frowning with his whole face. He had come for Sam and was probably going to do something mean. Except, maybe at the same time, if Johnson took Sam out in the hallway, then Sam might be able to break free and start running, though what he was supposed to do after that-
“C’mon, kid,” said Johnson, advancing on him slowly. “Someone’s here to pick you up.”
Johnson didn’t say who, but Sam knew right away that Sgt. Moss was doing what he said he’d do, that he’d called Social Services because Sam didn’t tell him who he was.
Sam felt as panicky as he had when Dad had tied him to the tree the first time, in the woods near the cabin, and then walked off with Dean like there was nothing the matter. Leaving Sam to struggle by himself. Except now, Sam was really all alone and small and the world outside the cold cell suddenly seemed impossibly huge and wide and there would be no way that Dad and Dean could find him, ever, ever again-
“Kid,” said Johnson, his voice tight and completely out of patience.
Sam ran straight at Officer Johnson, head down, fists clutched against his chest. He slammed hard into Johnson’s stomach and wished he was bigger so he could just throw Johnson to one side and keep running right out the doors till he was away and free.
But Johnson must have been expecting this because he picked Sam up by the waist and swung him around to carry him bodily down the hall. When he reached the second door it was wide open and he walked right through it and Sam raged, growling deep in his throat because if he could have gotten past Johnson, then he could have raced down the shiny-floored hallway and right out the front door.
As hard as he squirmed, he couldn’t get free. But he knew he could make it difficult for the officer to carry him so as they turned a corner, Sam twisted and flailed his arms and smashed Johnson right in the face with both fists. Johnson’s nose started to bleed and he made a sound and his grip on Sam loosened and Sam pulled back his bound fists, ready for another blow.
“Sam.”
Sam froze and Officer Johnson slowly lowered Sam to the floor and turned him around.
It was Dad. He was standing next to Sgt. Moss’s desk, and behind him, through the wide window, it was dark and the street lights were just coming on. Dad must have been looking for him for hours.
Sam’s heart started to race. Dad’s hair was all standing up on end like it did when he ran his hands through it instead of giving Sam a smack. His shirt was covered with grass and sweat stains, though Sam couldn’t understand where the grass stains had come from. But Dad had only one glance for Sam, dark, before he looked back at Sgt. Moss, who sat behind his desk, just the same as before, as if he’d never taken his dinner break.
“So, yeah, Mr. Winchester,” said Sgt. Moss, as he’d been talking about this forever and was already tired of the subject. “I’m not gonna say she’s a pain in the ass, but she calls 911 anytime a dog so much as pees on her lawn. Keeping up with the paperwork is hell, and I’d rather not do it, but-
“That’s fine,” said Dad. His voice was as calm as if he’d been asking for someone to pass him the milk. He leaned forward to sign a piece of paper that was on Sgt. Moss’s desk and then straightened up as he put the pen down. “Now, if someone will get those handcuffs off my boy, I’ll take him home.”
Sam felt Officer Johnson move, but he didn’t come any closer, or grab Sam or anything.
Dad held up his hand and a small circle of keys went flying by Sam’s head to land in Dad’s palm.
“Come here, Sam,” said Dad, squatting down low.
Sam did as he was told; he didn’t know what else to do. When he got close, Sam saw the circles under Dad’s eyes, and could feel how hot and sweaty he was, like he did when he got worked up, even if Dad was being all calm now. As for him asking for handcuff keys, that part was a fake because Sam knew good and well that Dad could have unlocked him with a paperclip.
“Oh, now,” said Johnson somewhere behind Sam. “Now he’s docile as a dog with his Dad here.”
Dad quickly unlocked the cuffs and stood up, putting the cuffs and keys on Sgt. Moss’s wooden desk.
“You’re the one with the busted nose,” said Dad. His voice was level and reasonable, the bad kind of reasonable that Sam had often heard, usually right before Dad took off his belt. Dad was looking over Sam’s head at Officer Johnson. “But that’s what you get for underestimating a kid, especially one of mine.”
Sgt. Moss made a noise that sounded halfway between a snort and a laugh, and Sam quickly looked away, rubbing his wrists. Dad shook Sgt. Moss’s hand. Then, as he started walking out the door, Johnson moved out of the way. There Dad stopped, and standing right next to Officer Johnson but not looking at him, Dad looked at Sam.
“Let’s go, Sam,” he said. His voice was still level and calm and it was all a big show for Sgt. Moss and Officer Johnson because once out in the parking lot, or along a stretch of highway where Dad could pull over, Sam was going to get hollered at and worse.
Sam felt frozen in place, but Dad started walking down the hallway. His dark hair gleamed in the bright overhead lights, and his feet were almost soundless on the shiny linoleum.
“Sam,” he said, without turning back to look.
Sam’s choice was to stay here, and get sent to foster care, or follow Dad. Sam knew that even though he didn’t want to be with Dad right now, he did want to be with Dean. Besides, he knew Dad, and once the whipping was over, it would be over, except for the part where Dean yelled at him for making Dad mad, and then teased him for being such a dork.
“Move.”
Sam hurried to follow Dad.
He still felt like he was shaking all over, from the air conditioning, and his hip felt sore; he couldn’t walk full on it, he had to hobble a little bit. He didn’t want Dad to think he was trying to be a baby about it, to get out of what was surely coming to him, so he tried to hide it as best he could, and hopped a little bit with every other step to keep from pushing down on his left leg. But he had to hurry too, because Dad wasn’t slowing down for Sam, not one little bit. In fact, the closer he got to the main doors, the faster he went, and when he got there and opened them, he reached back and hauled Sam out into the parking lot by the scruff of his neck. Then he let Sam go.
The car was parked off by itself under a lamp post and when Dad opened the driver’s side, Sam scrambled in and scooted all the way over to the passenger side. He’d never ridden in the front seat so much in his life, and in spite of Dean bragging about it, how much fun it was, what a privilege it was, Sam didn’t like it. Especially now, as Dad started the engine, floored the gas, and shrieked out of the parking lot.
As Dad drove them along the main road, all the lights in the town were coming on. When they reached the highway, he really pushed on the gas pedal and they roared towards home. Sam wanted to open the window, but he also wanted to make himself feel really small right about now because who knew when Dad would decide to pull over and take off his belt. Or maybe he would make Sam wait for it till they got home, and do it there, and that would make Dean even madder at Sam, having to watch and listen to Sam crying.
Sam’s heart leaped up into his throat; he wanted to get this over now. “Dad-“
“Your brother’s going to be crazy with worry,” said Dad.
In the low, glowing light of the speedometer, Sam could just about make out that they were going around 70; the engine was growling with an effort to keep up with Dad’s demands on the gas pedal. Sam wasn’t sure if he wanted to ask Dad to slow down or not, but Dad wasn’t looking at him at all; it was like he wasn’t even there, so Sam didn’t dare. He just hung on to the door handle as tight as he could, and rubbed his hip a little bit every now and then and kept his mouth shut. He was already in so much trouble.
*
The headlights raced across the tree trunks and the gravel road gleamed as they pulled up to the cabin. Dean was already there waiting on the top step, shadowed in the porch light. When the car stopped, he raced down the steps, arms outstretched.
“Where the hell have you been!”
“That’s enough Dean.”
“But where’s Sam?”
Dean obviously couldn’t see him. Sam got out of the car, pushing the door open, and stepping out slowly because his hip had gone all frozen from sitting still. It felt like someone was jabbing something sharp into it. He closed the door, gently, and bit his lip, concentrating on walking rather than hopping. When he looked up, Dad was already up the stairs, opening the door for him and Dean.
But he waited for Sam; both of them did.
“In the house, now,” said Dad.
Then he turned away, into the house, taking Dean with him. Now Sam could hop a little bit; his hip started to loosen up a little. He really would have liked to be carried, but he’d been carried enough for one day, and besides, he was too big for that. So he walked it, up the stairs, gritting his teeth and pretending he was Dean, because nothing ever hurt Dean.
Once up the stairs, Sam opened the screen door, and let the familiar light from the bulb over the kitchen table stream over him. His heart thudded and the panic whirled around in his stomach, overriding every other sensation; now he was home, now Dad would get mad.
“What happened, Dad?” Dean asked as Dad got the first aid kit down from the top of the fridge and put it on the table.
Dad shook his head at Dean. He rummaged in the box and pulled out what he needed as Sam came closer.
“What happened Sam?” said Dean to Sam.
“I have a sheet,” Sam said, announcing this right away because it was better to get it done and over with.
“Move for your brother,” said Dad to Dean, and Dean got out of the way and went to sit in Dad’s chair at the end of the table.
“Sit down Sam, let me take care of those wrists.”
Sam was a little confused that Dad wasn’t yelling, but he sat down in Dean’s chair, the one in the middle, and put his wrists on the table. His shoulders started to throb, and he felt stiff all over.
“A sheet?” asked Dean.
Dad got a clean dishcloth from the drawer and wet it with cold water. As he wiped Sam’s wrists, he said, “Your brother got arrested today.”
Dean’s mouth hung open and his eyes were wide and he didn’t say a word. Sam had never seen Dean look so surprised in all of his life, but it didn’t make Sam feel like he thought it would; he wasn’t proud of what he’d done.
“Yes,” said Dad, his voice dry. “Apparently a Mrs. Cooperthwaite has the cops in Ft. Payne running for their lives, and when she says jump, they jump. And when she says arrest a kid for fighting with her son over a soccer ball, they arrest the kid, slap some cuffs on him, and throw him in solitary.”
“What?” Dean practically shrieked this and he stood up and looked ready to move and do something about it.
“Settle down, Dean, but yeah,” said Dad, “cuffs and solitary, for a 13 year old.” He shook his head, and slathered Sam’s wrists with first aid cream. “I was looking for him for three hours, under bushes, in the ditches, on the roadside…everywhere.” Dad’s voice grew gritty and fell off at the end as if he didn’t quite know how to finish his thought.
“How’d you find him?” asked Dean. He sat down, but looked really mad and ready to stand up any minute.
“Finally started knocking on doors,” said Dad. He looked tired, then, as if just the thought of how much trouble Sam had been was exhausting. “Found a neighbor who’d seen it, and told me what happened. Imagine my surprise when I get to the police station, and they bring him out in cuffs.”
As Dad and Dean stared at him, Sam squirmed in his seat and ducked his head. He was used to being ignored, somewhere off in the corner of Dad’s attention, unless he was in trouble.
Dad wrapped soft bandages around Sam’s wrists and gently taped them down. Then Dad smoothed them with his hand, and they started to feel a little better. But then Dad pulled him to his feet, Sam jerked backwards, bumping into Dean.
“What?” asked Dad. “What’s the matter with you now?”
Dad put his hand on Sam’s arm, and now Sam was caught. “I’m sorry, Dad, honest. I didn’t mean for them to arrest me, I was gonna stay in the park, just like you said, but they came and-please, Dad, please don’t whip me-”
“I’m not going to whip you, Sam,” said Dad. He pulled Sam close to him, and then Dad sat down in Sam’s chair, and, now level with Sam, looked Sam right in the eye. “Although I should, for you fighting over a soccer ball that wasn’t yours to begin with and that you shouldn’t be playing-”
Dad snapped his mouth shut over what he wanted to say next, but Sam could see in his eyes that he was furious about the whole thing, and might just be mad enough to whip Sam anyway.
Sam didn’t say what he wanted to say, that he was going to play soccer the next chance he got. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to bring that up, now that Dad had said that Sam wasn’t going to get a whipping. He started to wiggle his arm to get it out of Dad’s grip in case he changed his mind anyway.
“Hang on. I want to know why you were limping, what happened?”
At first, Sam didn’t know what Dad was talking about, and then he remembered. Only now, it was going to sound so stupid, he didn’t want to tell. He shook his head.
As Dad looked at Sam with serious eyes, Dean stood up and was at Sam’s shoulder, talking practically in his ear. “C’mon, Sammy, what happened to you?”
Sam licked his lips and took a little breath. “Um,” he said. “When they put me in the cell, they kind of threw me down, so-so I had cuffs on and couldn’t roll the right way so it wouldn’t hurt.” His wrists hurt a little bit from the fall, but not so much as his hip. It was his own fault, really, for not rolling with a fall, like Dad had showed him and so now Dad was probably going to get mad all over again.
Dad shot to his feet, and his eyes were all dark and scary, and Sam backed up, bumping into Dean again. Dean pulled on Sam to get him to move, and then Dean stood in front of Sam, which he sometimes did when Dad was mad at Sam. Dean hadn’t done it all summer. Until now.
Except instead of coming at Sam, Dad walked away, his hands balled into fists. Sam saw a flash of Dad’s bared teeth as he walked to the door and opened it like he meant to go out. Only he didn’t. He stood there, staring through the screen, and Sam felt horrible for not being able to do the roll and swore to himself that he’d practice like crazy, if only Dad wouldn’t be so furious about it.
“Dad?” asked Dean. That was good. Dean could always, well nearly always, talk Dad out of it when Dad was mad like this.
As if he’d made his mind up about something, Dad relaxed his shoulders and his hands, and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. Then he turned away from the screen door and came back to them. And although his expression was calmer now, Sam could tell he was still mad.
“Get some ice for your brother; Sam, let me take a look at that hip.”
Dad sat in Sam’s chair again and gestured for Sam to come closer. Dean had to reach over Dad for the ice tray, but he didn’t seem bothered by it, so Sam did as he was told.
“This one?” asked Dad. He pointed to Sam’s left hip.
Sam nodded. He chewed on his lower lip; he’d tried not to be a baby about it, but having Dad notice anyway was making him feel like crying again.
Dad tugged on the waist of Sam’s shorts and underwear to pull them down a little bit on one side. Dad cupped his warm hand over the bare skin of Sam’s hip.
“Does that hurt?” Dad asked, looking at Sam.
It didn’t figure that Dad would believe Sam if he said no, so Sam nodded yes. He didn’t say how much it hurt because he didn’t want Dean scoffing at his princess drama, which is what Dean called it when Sam complained about a splinter or stubbed toe. But his hip hurt a lot, all sharp and pounding, like someone was pulling thin strings out, one at a time, over and over.
Dad took his hand away, and looked at Sam’s hip, and then shook his head as he tugged Sam’s clothes back into place. “It’s all black and blue,” he said, flat, to no one in particular.
He was starting to sound angry again, but he looked at Sam and shook his head. Then he said, “Give me that ice.” He took the bundled towel that Dean handed him and made Sam sit down and put it against Sam’s hip. “Hold it like this.”
As Sam held it in place, Dad almost smiled at Sam, but Sam looked away, and felt Dean coming around to sit in Dad’s chair.
“As to why we're so late,” said Dad, like he’d been telling the story all along. “Sgt. Moss wanted Sam to tell him who he was, where he lived. And what does your brother do?”
He directed this at Dean, and of course Dean couldn’t tell him, so he shook his head and asked, "What did he do?”
“He wouldn’t tell them anything,” said Dad. “He stonewalled them for four hours,”
“Holy cow.” Dean’s mouth dropped open.
“Apparently,” said Dad, continuing on, “they threatened him with Social Services, foster care, the works, but not a word from Sam. He gave them nothing, never cracked once. Can you imagine? ” Dad almost seemed to laugh at something he was thinking, but he only rubbed his chin with his palm and sighed.
Sam looked at Dean. He looked impressed and that didn’t happen very often.
“Why didn’t you want to tell them who you were, Sam?” asked Dad.
Sam ducked his head and fiddled with one of his bandages, until Dad put his hand on Sam’s hand and made him stop. Then he took his hand away and touched the top of Sam’s head, and flicked away Sam’s bangs from his eyes.
“Why, Sammy?”
Sam looked up. Dad didn’t seem to be mad now, and he wanted Sam to tell him what had happened, why Sam hadn’t talked. For now, Sam wasn’t in trouble, and he’d like to keep it that way so he was going to tell Dad what he wanted to know.
“You said to keep a low profile, and if I told them who I was, maybe they’d tell the F.B.I, and then maybe they’d come and take you away and I couldn’t-” Sam’s throat closed up a little, and he cleared it, swallowing over a huge lump that suddenly formed there. “I couldn’t let them get Dean.”
That was the truth then, even if it made Dad’s eyes go dark and still and made Dean make that little face he got when Sam had said the very wrongest thing, like he sometimes did when trying to talk to Dean.
“I see,” said Dad. “Well, you did good there, it was the right thing to think.”
“But it’s not right to lie to the police, Dad, and not telling them is like a lie-” It was all so confusing.
“Still, Sam, you did the best you could in a bad circumstance. If you were a little older, I’d give you a beer.”
Dean sometimes would take a sip of Dad’s beer, if he’d left it on the counter and Dad wasn’t looking. Sam hadn’t yet dared, and he kind of never wanted to taste it, because if he started drinking it, then he’d be like Dad, maybe.
“I’d rather have an Otter Pop,” said Sam, although this was an old argument, and Sam was going to lose it, since Dad had forbidden them treats when they trained.
“I know you would,” said Dad. “But let’s get you something to eat. You hungry?”
Sam nodded. He wasn’t going to tell them about the horrible spaghetti and the peas swimming in what looked like lukewarm pee, nor was he going to tell them about the soda he couldn’t even finish, but yes, he was hungry.
Dad made Sam hold the ice pack against his hip, and got up and made Sam a peanut butter and banana and honey sandwich and poured him a big glass of milk. Sam held the bag of ice in the crook of his hip with one hand, and ate as fast as he could chew while Dad sat in Sam’s chair and Dean sat in Dad’s chair and both of them watched him eat.
“Aren’t you gonna eat?” Sam asked, after he’d swallowed a whole glass of milk in three gulps and wiped his mouth on the neck of his t-shirt.
Dad just shook his head, and Dean said, “Not hungry.”
Dad seemed to be looking at Sam while thinking of something else, and he shook his head again and got up. He took the dish and glass from the table and put them in the sink.
“But you did good today, Sam, and so-”
Then Dad went to the freezer and pulled something out and put it on the table in front of Sam. For a second, Sam didn’t recognize it, it was so bright and there were too many colors for him to figure out what it was. But then he recognized the red and blue striped box with the strange, brightly colored otters on the front and then he knew.
“Otter Pops!” Sam stood up and the bundle of ice fell to the floor, and his hip screamed at him, but he didn’t care, he had Otter Pops at last. He brought the icy cold box right up to his face so he could smell it. Of course, it only smelled like frozen cardboard, and was starting to make his fingers freeze, but it was the surest sign of a real boy’s summer that he knew.
“Divvy them up Sam, six each.”
Sam blinked. For a moment, he’d forgotten where he was and who was watching him. He put the box down on the table, and sat back down and then tore the cardboard open as the long, brightly colored, icy cold tubes spilled out.
“This been in the freezer all this time?” he heard Dean ask.
“For a while now,” said Dad.
Sam didn’t care about that, he was just glad to see there was a lot of Little Orphan Orange, and her little dog, which he loved, and not too many of Sir Isaac Lime, which he didn’t care for. His hands almost shook as he made three piles, trying as best he could to make sure not to hog all the orange ones, and not to give Dad too many of the lime ones. Dean liked Louie-Bloo Raspberry, or at least he said he did, so Sam made sure that Dean got most of those.
When the Otter Pops were separated into three somewhat tidy and icy piles, which were starting to melt in the heat, Dad got out the scissors, and took an orange one from Sam’s pile and cut open the top.
Dean grabbed the scissors from Dad. “No, like this. Curve it, otherwise, it cuts your mouth.” Dean showed Dad how to cut them in a curve, and Dad cut one open for each of them.
Sam took a breath. He had two Little Orphan Oranges all for him, and he took the one that Dad had cut open and shoved it in his mouth and started to suck on it.
His eyes closed with bliss, and he forgot his bruised hip and the marks on his wrists, the rope burns on his thighs. Even the threat of a whipping from Dad was now in the background, and all there was was the sharp, icy-cold sweet taste of orange sugar. The curve Dad had cut in the plastic tube was just perfect to fit inside Sam’s mouth, and he sucked and tilted the tube up so the already melted juice could run right down his throat.
“I guess he likes them,” said Dean, around his tube of Louie-Bloo Raspberry.
“I guess he does,” agreed Dad.
Sam looked up. He was almost done with his first Otter Pop, but Dad and Dean were still only halfway done, sucking on their tubes like polite ladies sipping tea.
“Here,” said Dean. “I’ll trade ya.” He took one of Sam’s Otter Pops, the Poncho Punch one, which didn’t really have any flavor at all other than a mild pink. And in its place he put a Little Orphan Orange one, so now Sam still had two orange ones to eat.
“Thanks, Dean,” said Sam, around a mouthful of orange sugar.
Dad snorted around the end of his tube, his lips stained purple by the flavor of Alexander the Grape, which Sam liked best after orange and Strawberry Short Kook.
“What’s funny, Dad?” asked Dean. Dean’s mouth was stained too, by the blue ice he was eating.
“You should have seen him,” said Dad, shaking his head.
“Who?” asked Dean.
“Officer Johnson,” said Dad. He tilted some of the purple ice into his mouth and chewed on it for a bit. “Sam apparently didn’t like him very much, and Johnson told Sgt. Moss that Sam had kicked him, repeatedly, and then bit him, and then when he was bringing Sam into the office, when I showed up, Sam busted his nose. Made it bleed pretty bad.”
Dad laughed a little bit more, and swallowed the rest of the purple ice and shook his head. He was even smiling a little, which he usually never did when Sam got himself into trouble. “Yeah, I said, take off the cuffs, and Officer Johnson, get this, Dean, he took a step back, didn’t want to come anywhere near Sam. I think he was a little afraid of him.”
Dad said it like Sam had done a good thing, but Sam frowned. You weren’t supposed to get praise for hurting a police officer, at least it wasn’t that way on TV or in any book Sam had read. Only a bad guy would attack a cop, like Sam had done today, and Sam didn’t want to be a bad guy.
“What’s the matter, Sammy?” asked Dean, teasing. “Got brain freeze?”
“No,” said Sam. He took his second Little Orphan Orange and held it for Dad to cut open. He was being rewarded with Otter Pops, he knew that, but it was for something he shouldn’t be rewarded for. As of today, he had a sheet, he was on the books, and if anyone put his name on the wire, they’d find out what he did today. “It’s just that-”
He stopped. He didn’t know how to explain this in a way that wouldn’t make Dean laugh at him or get Dad frustrated enough to punish Sam anyway, just to make a point. Then he looked up. Dad and Dean were still watching him, like they were afraid he’d vanish right in front of their eyes. There were things that could do that, Sam knew, even though he’d never seen any.
“I shouldn’t have kicked him,” said Sam. “Or anything bad. They probably wrote it down on my sheet, and now everyone will know-” The taste of orange was now bitter in his mouth.
“Well,” said Dad, looking at Sam, and considering his words, all quiet and slow, like he tended to do when he wanted to get his point across. “Maybe before he threw you to the floor, that might be true, but afterwards? All bets are off. You understand?”
Sam didn’t.
“Sgt. Moss, he’s a cop, and he was pretty mean to threaten you with foster care. But he was just doing his job; did he manhandle you?”
“No,” said Sam.
“Well, Johnson hurt you, so you were just fighting back, Sam. And he’s a cop, taking lumps like that is part of his job.”
“You were just trying to get away, Sam,” said Dean, like this was the best reason of all.
Sam thought about this. He looked at Dean, who was sucking his way to the bottom of Louie-Bloo Raspberry, contentedly, his eyes half-closing when he tilted his head back. His mouth was blue, and Sam thought that yes, he’d been trying to get away, but it had been so that whatever Sam had done (and the soccer ball, by rights, really had been his), it wouldn’t lead to Dean. And he’d done that. He’d kept Dean out of it.
If Dad felt comfortable and safe enough to walk into a police station and give them his real name and then sign it on a piece of paper? That was his lookout. Sam’s lookout was to make sure Dean was okay, at least as best he could.
“And if you’re worried about them coming for us, Sam,” said Dad. He stood up pointed his fast-melting Sir Isaac Lime at Sam. “If you’re worried about Dean, don’t be. Today was small potatoes for them, and considering their source-”
“Mrs. Cooperthwaite,” said Dean, his mouth curling around the name as if he enjoyed saying it.
“Mrs. Cooperthwaite makes hundreds of complaints a year, and I think, from the sounds of it, most of them get canned. Including this one. Sgt. Moss told me that once she sees the paperwork, the office staff manages to “lose” it, and on it goes. So don’t worry, okay?”
Dad threw his wrapper in the trash, and picked up the bag of melting ice from the floor and threw it in the sink. Then he touched the top of Sam’s head, and started walking away.
“Where you going?” asked Dean.
Sam turned in his chair. Dad was picking up the keys from the counter and hefting them in his hand.
“I have an errand to take care of,” said Dad. “I’ll be back later. You boys can finish those off, you can have mine between you, and Dean, make sure your brother brushes his teeth afterwards. Bedtime by ten, understand?”
“Sure, Dad,” said Dean.
Sam nodded absently at what Dad had just said; he couldn’t believe his luck. There were two orange Otter Pops in Dad’s pile, and Dean knew that Sam loved those best, so he was liable to pretend he didn’t want them, and take all the lime and raspberry ones instead. Leaving Sam with orange and purple and pink ones, which was only fair, even if the pink ones didn’t taste much like anything other than pink.
“Bye, Dad,” said Dean. He stood up now, too, watching Dad leave.
Sam didn’t look. He listened for the car door and the roar of the engine and felt all of the tightness in his shoulders and chest just whoosh away. He started dividing Dad’s pile of Otter Pops between him and Dean, until his pile grew so huge that some of the Otter Pops slipped onto the floor.
Sam bent to get them and straightened up, clutching them in his fingers like frozen straws. Then he put them on the table and counted them, one more time.
“I wonder where he’s going,” said Dean. He came back to the table, and looked at the pile that Sam had left for him. If he felt it unfair that he had two Sir Isaac Limes and no orange ones, he didn’t say anything. Instead he grabbed the scissors and stuffed them in his back pocket. Then he took up his eight remaining Otter Pops and jerked his chin at Sam.
“Let’s eat these on the porch and wait for Dad to come back.”
Sam nodded, and followed Dean outside with his Otter Pops clutched against his chest. They were so cold they almost burned him through his t-shirt to his skin, but he ran with them, and was able to plop them on the second step between his feet, and then he sat on the top step and admired his hoard.
Dean sat beside him and did the same. He took the scissors out and laid them on the top step between them.
Sam took up an Alexander the Grape and held it out for Dean to cut it, in a curve, the way Dean knew that he liked. Then he started sucking at the cold sugar, barely tasting the purpleness of it after all that orange. Little Orphan Orange was the strongest, sweetest flavor of them all, nothing could beat it. But even though he still had, count them, one, two, three, yes, four orange ones, he wanted to spread it out, and make it last. Which meant that he had to put up with one purple, two strawberries, and a pink in between.
Dean sucked on a Louie-Bloo Raspberry, his elbows on his knees, and he was staring down the driveway, even though, in the light from the porch, he could only see a little way.
“What’re you looking at, Dean?” asked Sam. Sam could never understand why the raspberry flavored ones were blue colored, but maybe it was just one of those mysteries. He sucked down some purple and decided he liked the taste of it a little better than the pink.
“Nothin’,” said Dean. “Just where did he go, anyway? We have groceries.”
Now Sam stared at the driveway, too. Dad sometimes did stuff like that, driving off in the middle of the night, only to come back days later, all covered with dust, with no story to tell about it. Not that Sam cared to know Dad’s stupid secrets, but Dean did; it bothered him when Dad wouldn’t tell him what was going on.
“Maybe he went to a garage,” said Sam around a mouthful of sugared ice, trying to be helpful.
“Too late for that,” said Dean. “He could fix that carburetor here, anyway, and I could help him.”
Dean always worried, trying to fix everything, make sure Dad didn’t work too hard on his own. He wanted to be a hunter like Dad, and do anything to help Dad, and sometimes, when he was like this, he tended to ignore Sam.
“I’ll give you one of my strawberries for a lime one,” Sam said. He held out the Strawberry Short Kook to Dean, but Dean just looked at it and shook his head.
“No way! I love Sir Isaac Lime!” Dean said, loudly and pointedly. “I’m not gonna give him away, not even for a sweet, red gal like Miss Short Kook.”
Sam smiled around the last bits of his grape Otter Pop, because that’s how Dean was. He knew how to tease Sam and not make it something mean. He felt the smile moving through him, like a lazy, contented stretch of warmth.
He held out another Little Orphan Orange and Dean cut it and Sam sucked on it and smiled some more, and Dean cut open a lime one and stuck it in his mouth and smiled around that, even though, as Sam knew, that after any other flavor, the lime ones tended to taste a little bitter.
For a while, they sat there, sucking on Otter Pops in the warm night air, with the moths flickering around the porch light, and the quiet (apart from the trees moving as the wind tossed the leaves a little bit) settled over Sam’s shoulders, and he felt like, for the first time all summer, that it was summer. A summer meant for a kid.
He didn’t have to go to summer camp, even, like Russ’s boy had done, as long as he could have moments like this. Sitting next to Dean, with Dean liking him a little bit, and being nice, the taste of melting orange sugar on his tongue, the sharp feel of the cut of plastic on the inside of his mouth. And Dean’s smile as he pretended not to look as he filched Sam’s Poncho Punch.
Sam sucked on his orange one for a minute, and then rested it against his knee. Taking up the scissors, he cut open another orange one and curved the top as carefully as he could. Then he handed it to Dean.
When Dean frowned at him, Sam said, “I want you to have it.”
Dean took it, but he shoved his only grape one into Sam’s pile to trade, and Sam let him. They both knew that Sam giving Dean an orange one was a big deal, but Dean didn’t like to talk about stuff like being nice, and so Sam would have to pretend that this was all normal. Still, it was hard not to smile as he stuck his tongue down the tube and tilted his head back so that the whole melting, orange mess slid into his mouth.
(Sam and Dean, on the front porch, enjoying Otter Pops, with each boy enjoying his favorite flavor.)
*
They ate Otter Pops until Sam’s tongue was burning, and still Dad didn’t come home. Sam managed to still have one orange and a pink one left when Dean suggested they watch some TV.
Sam picked up his Otter Pops and followed Dean inside. The cabin was a little warm, and so Dean turned on the fans and set them up in the doorways, while Sam turned on the TV. It was summer, so there would only be re-runs.
“Not Lois and Clark,” said Dean. “It’s too stupid.”
Sam turned the dial, clutching his almost melted Otter Pops in one hand. “X-Files?” he asked. The show usually freaked him out, especially if there was a monster whose skin came off or if Agent Mulder got locked up somewhere. But still, Dean liked the show, and he’d be there to make a joke if Sam got too scared, so Sam found the right channel, and sat in Dad’s chair so Dean could sprawl out on the couch.
As Dean settled in and started watching, he threw an empty wrapper at the TV. “Stupid Mulder, everyone knows the Jersey Devil is make-believe.”
But that didn’t make Dean want to change the channel, and so they continued to watch X-Files, and after that Walker, Texas Ranger, and Sam finished his pink one and then had Dean cut the last Little Orphan Orange open.
Dean did it in such a perfect curve that it didn’t hurt Sam’s mouth at all, even if his stomach was starting to feel a bit queasy. It was perfect, it was the best and the last of them all, and when he was done, Sam put the wrapper on the floor next to the chair and settled back with his hands on his stomach and let the flickering light of the TV spin before his eyes.
*
When the screen door opened, some movie was on, and Dean, who’d obviously been asleep on the couch, woke up right away and leaped up to go to Dad, who was walking as loudly across the floor as if it were daylight.
“What are you boys still doing up? It told you bedtime was at ten.”
The clock on the stove said 11:30.
“We wanted to wait for you,” said Dean.
Sam knew that Dean wanted to ask Dad where he’d been, what he’d been doing, but with Dad, if he wanted you to know, he’d tell you and no amount of begging would make it any different.
“Yeah,” said Sam. He got up too, and tried not to hobble, though his hip had stiffened up on him and his feet were all pins and needles. “We finished all the Otter Pops, and me and Dean watched X-Files and I didn’t have to cover my eyes, not once.” It had been a lame episode about a Jersey Devil, which nobody believed in, but Dad didn’t need to know that.
“Well, it’s bedtime now,” said Dad.
He walked forward into the light, and went to the sink. There was a large smear of grease across his shirt, and even from where he was standing, Sam could see the large bruise on Dad’s face. As he was washing his hands gingerly under cool water, for a second, Sam thought he could see that there was blood across the backs of Dad’s hands. Both of them.
Sam looked at Dean and Dean looked at Sam and raised his eyebrows, but neither of them dared ask.
Except, Dean tried to find out anyway. “You okay, Dad?”
Dad nodded. He finished up in the sink, turned off the tap and wiped his hands on his shirt. His knuckles were still red and when he turned around, Sam saw that he had a busted lip, too.
“I stopped to help someone change a flat tire,” said Dad.
Changing a flat tire didn’t mean that you came home with a fat lip and busted knuckles, but unless Dean was willing to say to Dad’s face that he was a liar (and Sam wasn’t about to), then there was no way the story was going to change.
“Must have been a really big tire,” ventured Dean, just the same. “You want some ice for that lip?”
Dean was always brave, but then, sometimes, like now, he was bold enough to look Dad right in the eye, like he was daring Dad to deny what was right in front of all of them that Dad was lying. Still, Dad didn’t say anything, only shook his head.
“I’ll get it, you boys brush your teeth and get to bed. Way past bedtime, and tomorrow we’re going to do some PT and you’re going to increase that run to three miles.”
Sam groaned. Trust Dad to take a wonderful, Otter Pop-filled, summer evening and ruin it with horrible news like that. He thought for a moment about mentioning his sore hip and how he couldn’t possibly run on it, let alone for three miles in the morning heat. And while Dad had been nice about it before, if Sam complained about his hip, Dad was liable to bark out something mean and holler at Sam and then the whole of the perfect summer evening would be ruined.
Still, Sam opened his mouth, but as Dad dipped his head and turned away, Sam saw that Dad had a large red scratch along the back of his arm and Sam knew that Dad had been up to something that wasn’t a flat tire, and it had worn him out. So Sam shut his mouth and did as he was told and went into the bathroom with Dean to brush his teeth.
“Changing a flat tire, my eye,” said Dean around the foam on his toothbrush. Sam brushed his teeth and looked at Dean in the mirror and nodded.
“He’s not going to tell us,” said Sam before he spit into the sink.
“Nope,” said Dean.
In the bedroom, Dean flicked off the light and Sam stripped down to his underwear in the dark. The skin over his hip still felt a little cool from the bag of ice (that Dean had refilled for him during Walker, Texas Ranger), but it still felt too stiff to lie on. So, as he climbed into bed, he had to lie on his right side, even though he wanted to face the other way and tell Dean about being in jail so that Dean could think about that and not worry about Dad so much. Dad could take care of himself anyway; Sam was just a kid, and being in jail had been a big deal, even if, in the end, he didn’t really have a sheet with his name on it.
“Hey, Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you know I had to pee in a metal toilet today? It wasn’t even in a bathroom, just stuck out from the wall.”
Sam waited. He wanted Dean to know how brave he’d been, how he’d sauntered up to that toilet like Dean would have, and washed his hands with strange, prison-smelling powdered soap like it was an everyday thing. About how bad the food had been, and how there’d been bunk beds, and how he’d wished that Dean had been there with him. Because if Dean had been there, it would have been different. And how, more than anything, more than orange Otter Pops even, how he wanted Dean to say something nice to him and tell him how brave he’d been today.
But Dean was taking so long, that Sam’s bottom lip was starting to shake and he clamped down on it so he wouldn’t start crying like a baby. Dean hated it when he did it.
“Dean?” he asked, and his voice came out all thready and Dean was sure to say something snotty and call him Waterworks Sammy, and then roll over and face the other way and not say anything nice. And Sam really needed someone, besides Dad, to tell him that he’d done a good job and that he was safe now.
“Dean?” he asked again.
“What?”
The fan was going in the window, sucking in cool air from the living room and pushing it through the room, so Sam didn’t think Dad could hear them, as long as they kept their voices down. Besides the TV was still on, Sam could hear it a little bit through the wall, so Dad was probably watching whatever was on.
“I almost got a soccer ball today, I mean, I didn’t mean to hit that kid so hard, but he lost it and I found it-”
“And then you went and got yourself arrested,” said Dean, interrupting him. He sounded mad.
“I didn’t mean to,” said Sam. He blinked against the half-darkness, frowning. “But I was brave and I almost got away at least a dozen times, and-”
“And you freaked Dad out today, don’t you know that?”
Now Sam had to roll over, wincing as he turned on his hip to face Dean. “Nuh-uh, I did not freak him out.”
Part 6
Master Fic Post