Whiskey: Alternative Ending
Summary: Dean doesn't show up and John doesn't back down. Alternative ending for my story Whiskey.
A/N: Okay, so I couldn't help myself. But I'm going with the defence that it seemed as though some people wanted to read this. This picks up right after John hits Sam. Dean doesn't show up, and John doesn't back down.
(You need to read Whiskey to understand this, but if you want you can just read it as me doing horrible plotless things to Sam.)
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It wasn't the hardest punch he'd ever thrown (thank God), the alcohol making him sloppy, but he felt it connect before he knew what he was doing and the force was enough to send Sam spinning into the bathroom wall. He hit it with a thud and crumpled to the tiled floor.
There was a moment, a seconds pause, where regret stilled his movements. Hurting his boy was not his intention, but he couldn't back down now. This was important. A soldier who couldn't follow orders was a dead soldier soon enough, and Sam needed to learn before he found himself on the wrong end of a bad hunt.
Sam blinked dazedly on the floor, one hand hovering over his face as he stared wide-eyed up at John, stunned motionless.
John steadied himself. Another lesson: Never let your guard down.
Grabbing a hold of Sam's t-shirt, it was barely any effort to yank him forward. Sam yelped in surprise as he was sent sprawling on his stomach.
“Dad-” he gasped, trying to push himself up but John threw a leg over him, straddling him and planting himself on Sam's back.
Sam tried to roll, scrabbling to try to put distance between himself and the buzzing of the razor, but John refused to be moved.
“Dad, I'm sorry!” Sam burst out desperately, covering his head with his hands, trying to block John's access to his hair. “Please don't, don't!”
John set his jaw, steeling himself against Sam's pleading, and used his free hand to capture Sam's wrists to pin them to the floor in front of him.
“You brought this on yourself.”
Sam screamed and bucked, but his weight was no match, and John lowered the razor and sheared off a long strip of dark hair by Sam's temple.
“Dad!” Sam screamed, trying to twist his head away. “Stop!”
John shaved another jagged strip next to the first one, shaking the loose hair to the floor by his son's face. He watched Sam's face crumple at the loss. (As if the boy knew anything about loss.)
The fresh burst of anger spurred him on, accidentally pressing too hard and grazing Sam's scalp on the next strip. Sam cried out and bucked again. John growled and pressed the heel of his hand hard against his son's head.
“Stay still!” he barked.
Sam let out a sob, but obediently stilled, cheek pressed against the tile.
John turned the razor on the base of Sam's neck, scraping upwards from the side he could reach, curving it around Sam's ear. Clumps of hair fell away, pooling around Sam's head, and the boy squeezed his eyes shut, sobs shaking his shoulders.
The razor buzzed. John risked taking his hand from Sam's wrists to tug on the remaining hair at the back of Sam's neck, pulling his head up. Sam seemed to have given up fighting and simply moved to hide his face in his arms.
John ran the razor in short strips over Sam's forehead until there was no scrap of fringe left for him to insolently hide behind, just tiny filings of stubble, then branched out and swept it over and over the dome of his head. It snagged in the thick hair and tugged and Sam jolted with each one, hiccuping sobs accompanying the razors hum. John continued until all the hair in easy reach was spread out over the bathroom tiles, tumbling over Sam's bare arms, dark brown curls falling softly down the back of Sam's t-shirt as the teen wept.
“I hate you, I hate you,” he cried, distraught, and John clenched his teeth and forcefully turned his son's head against the tile, quickly taking care of the remaining patch of hair.
Within minutes, it was over, no single strand of hair longer than a few millimetres, inches of it severed and lying limp and dark against the white tiles. John flicked the razor off and threw it aside. He pushed himself to his feet and determinedly refused to feel any pity for his boy on the floor, surrounded by scatterings of hair, even as Sam reached up a shaking hand to run over his shorn head, feeling the absolute lack of hair, and began to sob harder. Even when the light fell on Sam's face in a way that accentuated his rapidly swelling and darkening eye, John couldn't bring himself to feel remorse.
When it came down to it, if this was what it took to teach his boy to fall in line, if this was what he needed to do to keep his boy alive, so be it. He'd do it a hundred times over. He was not losing anyone else.
“Next time I tell you to do something, you do it. Have I made myself clear?” he demanded, keeping his tone cold, standing tall and imposing in the bathroom doorway.
It took a few hitching breaths before Sam managed to gasp out a 'Yessir' between sobs, arms hugging himself tightly.
John cleared his throat, suddenly tight, as he surveyed his son, a crumpled figure on the bathroom floor, carpeted with his lost locks.
“Clean this mess up,” he ordered finally.
He didn't wait for Sam's reply before turning away and heading back to the kitchen. He needed another drink.
END