For Your Own Good 1/8
For Your Own Good
Summary: “Don't worry, Dean. I'll be a good little soldier and do everything Dad says. Promise.” Sam doesn't know how right he is.
Sam is sixteen. Dean is twenty.
Chapter One
It isn't Sam's fault.
He had done everything that he'd been told to do. John said to carry the pack - heavy with extra knives and emergency supplies - so Sam carried the pack. He'd hardly complained at all, considering it must have weighed almost as much as he did. It kept throwing off his centre of gravity, threatening to send him sprawling in the undergrowth as he trudged doggedly through the uneven terrain.
When John had barked at him to quit bitching Sam had done that too. Instead, he'd entertained himself by compiling a mental list of all the things he'd like to say to his father. All the things he would say to his father, if not for the fact that he isn't dumb and he doesn't have a death wish.
And when the wood nymph had emerged from it's tree, spitting mad and moving freakishly fast on creepy stick-like legs, Sam had been ready with the silver knife John had given him when he turned sixteen, the latest in a long line of weapons as gifts that would inevitably end up in the back of John's truck. (Sam is convinced that John uses their birthdays as an excuse to add to his own weapons collection.)
Slashing at the creature, Sam had forced it back, giving John time to douse the tree in lighter fluid. He'd heard the striking of a match and the 'whoomph' of the flames and the wood nymph had screamed, shrill and seriously pissed off, but it didn't crumble to ash as the lore had promised.
The wood nymph had made use of their moment of surprise. It twisted like a falling leaf caught in a gust of wind, slipping around Sam, and Sam doesn't see it but he hears it when Dean hits a nearby tree. There's a 'crack' that sounds like a branch breaking, except branches don't yell in pain like Dean does.
It isn't Sam's fault. Later, Dean will tell him this over and over and Sam even thinks he believes it. After all, is it his fault that he isn't as fast a a supernatural stick monster juiced up on hikers?
Sam doesn't think so but John still yells at him the entire way to the hospital.
XXX
“It's really not that bad, Sammy, honest.” Dean is hiding pain behind a deliberately casual sprawl and a grin. His leg, in it's gleaming white cast, is propped up on the arm of the couch. He waves away the painkillers Sam is offering. “I've had broken bones before.”
“Don't be dumb.” Sam shakes the pill bottle insistently in front of Dean's face, getting between his brother and the TV he's trying to watch. Dean cranes his neck in an attempt to see the screen. “Dad isn't even here. You don't have to pretend you don't feel pain.”
Dean rolls his eyes but he holds out a hand. “Whatever. If it makes you feel better I'll take the pills. But if they make me loopy you don't get to laugh.”
“No promises.” Sam drops two pills into Dean's outstretched hand. “Want water?”
“Nah.” Dean tosses back the pills, swallowing them dry. “Happy?”
Sam makes a face. “Ecstatic.” He sits down on the floor, seeing as Dean is taking up the entire couch, and watches absently as a glamorous woman on the television screen slaps a second woman across the face.
Dean drops a hand onto his shoulder. “Ignore Dad. You know what he's like.”
“It's not like I let it past me on purpose,” Sam complains
“I know.”
“The lore said it would burn with the tree. Not that we needed to burn it and the tree.”
“Dude, I know.” Dean squeezes his shoulder. “You didn't do anything wrong. Dad's just... well, he's still pissed off about the bitch-fit you threw when we moved here.”
Sam spins around, looking up at his brother indignantly. “I worked hard on that project, Dean! One more week and I would have been done. It wasn't fair!”
Dean raises his hands as if fending off blows.
“Hey, I get it,” he says.
But he doesn't. Not really. Dean never wanted to go to college. He thinks Sam is just fighting with John for the hell of it. Teenage rebellion or something dumb like that. Dean has never looked at good grades and seen an escape route.
“Don't shoot the messenger, Sammy. And don't worry about Dad. He'll get over it eventually.”
XXX
Dean's prediction seems to prove correct. Gradually, John stops see-sawing between scathing lectures and glowering silence. He slides back into the demeanour Sam is more accustomed to; stern and distant, with a terminally disappointed scowl.
It takes a while. Dean's leg has almost healed by the time John seems to get over himself and forgive Sam for not being the perfect hunter John wants him to be. Dean points out that Sam isn't exactly helping matters.
“You make 'yes, sir' sound like 'fuck you'.” Dean is sitting on Sam's bed, watching Sam prepare for the night's hunt.
“I do not,” Sam denies as he rubs his hair dry with one of the rough motel towels, even though the observation makes him smile a little in smug satisfaction. He hopes John hears the insult, too.
Dean shakes his head. He swings his plastered leg up onto the bed and leans back against the headboard.
“Your smart mouth is gonna get you in trouble one day,” Dean warns.
Sam wonders if Dean has been sitting here waiting for him to get out of the shower just so they can have this conversation.
“What's Dad gonna do? Make me run laps? Clean weapons? Stay up all night hunting monsters when I should be studying?” Sam scoffs. “He already does all that, Dean.”
Sam tosses the damp towel aside and looks around for his sweatshirt. Dean tugs it out from beneath him - Sam makes a face - and holds it out.
“Can you just... try not to piss Dad off tonight?” Dean asks. “Please?”
Sam takes the sweatshirt. “I don't have to try. It just happens.”
“I'm being serious.” Dean sounds serious. There's a tightness to his expression, something pinched and stressed.
“So am I.” Sam pulls his sweatshirt on and starts looking for his shoes.
“I have a bad feeling about this - you and Dad, hunting without me.” Dean glares down at his cast, somewhat battered now and covered in the girly hearts and flowers that Sam had made a habit of drawing whenever he caught his brother sleeping, much to Dean's continued annoyance. “I should just cut this thing off.”
“No, you shouldn't. That would be stupid.”
Dean seems to actually be considering it. Sam softens. Being left behind sucks. Waiting. Worrying. Sam has had far too much experience with it. The only thing worse than being dragged out on a hunt is not being dragged out on a hunt. The hours between your family leaving and your family returning safe and alive tend to stretch into years.
Sam sits down next to Dean, bumping shoulders.
“It'll be fine,” he assures his brother. “Don't worry, Dean. I'll be a good little soldier and do everything Dad says. Promise.”
Dean shoves him off of the bed in response.
Chapter Two
A/N: Reviews will get to draw flowers on Dean's cast.