Let's Not Call It a Game - Part I
| Prologue|
For all the things that have gone terribly wrong in the last days, at least Minnesota isn’t South Dakota.
Jim Murphy isn’t Bobby Singer.
Jim understood when John dropped the boys off with him and left again with nothing more than a grunted “unfinished business” and he understands now when John is sitting in his kitchen, blood coated thick under his fingernails and down the side of his face. Jim wraps his bathrobe tighter around himself and makes coffee before he settles down in the chair next to John’s to take a look at the bruises.
His eyes linger on the deep cut at John’s temple that had blood trickling into his eye all the way from Fort Douglas to Blue Earth.
“Pool cue,” John grunts with a shrug.
Jim shoots him a long look before he sighs and runs a needle through a handkerchief drenched in Jack Daniels. Just like him to use perfectly good liquor for that kind of thing.
“Are you concussed?” Jim asks. His fingers dig into John’s chin, turning it until the light from the lamp Jim brought over shines right into John’s eye. It should hurt, strong, long fingers on fresh bruises, but John feels nothing but the distant beating of his heart echoing through sore muscles.
“Managed to drive here, didn’t I?”
That’s all that matters really. Concussions are only a problem if they keep him from doing his job.
Jim makes a soft sound, like a bitten-off sigh and threads the needle through John’s skin (John doesn’t feel that either. It’s a tickle behind the buzzing in his ears).
He isn’t sure what happens next. One minute he’s staring at the wall behind Jim’s stove, grey stains and a crucifix on white plaster, the next he’s still staring at the wall but Jim’s put his med kit back into its cabinet and the cup in John’s hand is warm with fresh coffee.
It should worry him, these lapses in time that kept happening on the three hour drive, but John figures he’s too worn out to worry about much of anything right now.
“Hungry?” Jim asks quietly.
John tries to remember the last time he ate.
A day ago at the hospital, his thinks. A squishy sandwich that was already falling apart inside its plastic wrapping, nearly soaked through with water leaking out of the pickles and tomatoes. John chucked it back up five minutes later when they showed him the dead body of the Kramer girl.
He shakes his head no, sneaks his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket to close around his flask. He wonders what Jim would say if he spiced up his coffee a little bit, maybe fill up half the cup.
His brain skips a couple of beats and suddenly he isn’t thinking about crappy sandwiches and booze and pool cues, but Sam and Dean and how he almost got them killed. He waits a second until he’s sure he can control the trembling in his voice before he opens his mouth.
“How are they?”
John lets his eyes slide towards the door that leads to the small living room where he knows his boys are curled up on the couch under that ugly quilt Jim’s grandmother made for her daughter’s wedding or something.
Jim’s eyes slide sideways. For half a second they grow dark, there and gone. John blinks and when he looks back up the pastor looks as genial and understanding as always.
“Sam’s fine,” he says slowly and it feels like there’s a hundred things he isn’t saying. “Quiet. Takes his cues from his brother, I guess. Dean hasn’t said a single word since you dropped them off. What happened, John?”
John’s fingers twitch around his coffee mug.
Mutism they called it, back when John was still a decent enough father to take his traumatized kid to a shrink instead of dropping him off with a priest and disappearing. They told him it might come back and it does from time to time. Sometimes it feels like shutting down is the only way the kid knows how to cope.
It doesn’t usually make John angry.
“He screwed up.”
Jim fiddles with the cuffs of his robe before his hands come to rest on the table, palms down, long fingers outstretched like spider’s legs. John wants to crawl out of his own skin. Make everything stop.
“He’s ten,” Jim says.
John nods. Dean’s ten. Ten-year-olds don’t always do as they’re told. Ten-year-olds get scared, no matter how often you make them shoot at beer cans.
“Maybe he doesn’t get to be a ten-year-old.”
It’s the truth, so where’s the point in pussy-footing around it? John closes his eyes against the sudden sting and tries to breathe around the guilt clogging up his throat.
“You should get some rest,” Jim says with a sad shake of his head.
Like rest will change anything.
John grunts and wraps his hands tighter around his mug.
He isn’t sure when Jim leaves, but when he opens his eyes again the kitchen is empty and dark except for the red glow coming from the digital clock over the fridge.
0455 hours.
John tries to add up the hours since he last slept, but his brain gets stuck, turns the numbers around in circles until all he can do is pour another swig from his flask into his cold coffee.
He watches the numbers dance from 0455 to 0512 without seeing any of the minutes in between.
His journal is still in the inside pocket of the jacket he hasn’t taken off since he stumbled through the door. John’s fingers are clumsy when he finally fishes it out of his pocket along with a sticky cough drop.
He runs his fingers over the kitchen table. It’s old and scarred and every so often his nails catch on a tiny wooden splinter. It should probably hurt more than it does, but John’s body is still thrumming with energy. His heart still beating way up in his throat like he hasn’t come down from the adrenaline high yet.
He knows he won’t be able to sleep, so he keeps staring at his journal, drums his fingers in the rhythm of some folk song his father used to hum, keeps himself sane with alternating injections of caffeine and tequila.
They leave a foul taste in his mouth that vaguely reminds him of decay and dying children and he drinks more, hoping that’ll drive the taste away.
He keeps sitting at the table until it’s almost light out (the numbers on Jim’s clock say 0612) and his arms and legs are liquid warm with molten lead. John closes his eyes against the grey light seeping in through the window and for a small droplet of time everything is calm and dark and pretty.
Then he starts awake again, his hand automatically goes to the gun in the waistband of his jeans before he’s even opened his eyes or started breathing again.
Light trickles into the kitchen from the hallway, the door is open at an angle it wasn’t when John closed his eyes.
The quiet click of his .454 Casull, still loaded with consecrated iron rounds, is like twigs breaking in the morning silence. Something moves in the light and shadows of the hallway until John can make out a face - half a face - staring at him from out of the space between door and wall.
He puts the safety back on, his breathing uneven and loud and scared in a way that’s adrenaline, more than real exhaustion.
“Come’ere,” he says quietly. The words come out dark and low, like his throat’s filled with pebbles.
Dean scampers across the kitchen, bare feet on hardwood floor. He stares at John’s face like he’s never seen his father bruised to all hell before.
A few quick breaths whistle through the boy’s teeth, getting ready to talk and thinking better of it last second.
John waits for the fury he felt earlier to come rising up again, but nothing happens. His emotions are sitting in a tangled up ball, low and heavy in his stomach and he doesn’t know what to do with any of them.
“I didn’t get it,” John finally says quietly and Dean’s face crumbles.
He slings his arms around himself, hands lost somewhere in the sleeves of John’s old USMC sweatshirt and suddenly the ball in John’s guts untangles itself.
Sammy almost died and Dean’s the one shivering in spite of his bundled up clothing and John just…he doesn’t know what it does to him but it isn’t good.
“Front and center, kid.” John growls.
He hooks two fingers in the belt loop of his son’s jeans and pulls. Dean scrambles to find his balance before his arms whip to his sides and his back straightens.
Good boy. Good soldier.
Except that look is still there, green and big and scared, and guilt, thick as vomit rises up in John’s throat because he knows what he wants to do.
John doesn’t make a habit of hitting his kids. He doesn’t. He cuffs them about the head and he kicks their little asses when they get too much to handle, but he’s never been out of control about it, never been so full of anger and disappointment - at himself as much as Dean - never been so far gone that his fingers are itching to take off his belt and show his eldest what happens to little boys who don’t fall in line.
It’d be easy, it’d be quick, sure as hell would get Dean talking again faster than a gunshot. It’s what John’s old man would’ve done and damn it if it’s the only way John knows.
Dean's too young for that, goddamnit.
Dean's too damn smart to go around disregarding orders.
Fuck.
“Was it fun?” John growls, suddenly so angry he doesn’t let any emotion seep into his voice at all. “Sneaking out and doing whatever the hell you want?”
Dean is breathing heavily; he’s pale, freckles standing out like bruises against his skin. He shakes his head slowly left to right, his eyes never leaving John’s face.
“I told you not to leave the room, didn’t I?” John repeats his words from last night.
John waits for the whispered yessir, keeps waiting.
“Don’t you think I deserve an actual answer, boy?”
Dean’s eyes go big and unbelieving for a second. He opens his mouth like he’s about to protest the unfairness of it all before he closes it again, sucks his lips in between his teeth and shucks his hair like the short buzz cut has a snowball’s chance in hell of hiding his eyes.
Dean’s school called towards the end of last school year, when they were still living in Boulder. Some school shrink lady got all up in arms about how a ten-year-old should really be able to deal with Bambi, while Dean sat on the couch in the nurse’s office, curled up against the wall, rocking back and forth. John tore them both a new one - the substitute teacher who was too good to read her students’ files and the patronizing shrink - dressed them up one side and down the other and got Dean the hell out of Dodge.
This is different though. Dean isn’t shutting down because of Disney movies and fires and dead mothers, he’s locking his voice away like a crutch, like the security blanket is was six years ago instead of stepping up and owning his mistakes and God, John's spine is filled with liquid ice.
“You’re gonna snap out of this,” he says, locking eyes with Dean even as the boy trembles and fidgets before he goes dead still. “You’re not four years old anymore. You go and you brush your teeth and the next time I ask you a question you better answer me.”
Dean shrinks back, pulls his arms around himself again and this is exactly what John can’t tolerate.
He yanks on Dean’s jeans again, turns him sideways and gives him a sharp whack on his bottom. He’s got him turned back around, the trembling chin locked between his fingers before the yelp has died on Dean’s lips.
“There,” John says. “Cat didn’t get your tongue after all, huh?”
Dean swallows, chances a quick glance at John before staring back down at his feet again. He nods once and blinks rapidly. John’s skin is crawling. Suddenly the anger is gone and there’s nothing he wouldn’t give to scoop his boy up into his arms and tell him to stop. See that it’s as much John’s fault for leaving them as it is Dean’s for being a kid. He can see the thoughts running through Dean’s head now, dark clouds in his eyes, the what if’s and the self-recrimination. He wants to tell him they’re good, the two of them, but that’s not the life they have and it won’t do any of them any good in the long run.
He slaps his fingers against the side of Dean’s face, not enough to hurt, but enough to catch the boy’s attention and apparently that’s as far as he’s willing to go on physical punishment this morning.
“We’ll be working on it,” he says, not sure what it even is (everything). “It won’t happen again.”
Dean’s breath hitches as he nods, his eyes are huge and bright but dry.
“Fuck,” John mutters under his breath. His hand comes up to swipe over the three-days-worth of beard on his chin. “Fuck it, Dean, by all rights I should be taking my belt to you right now.”
And damn it if it’s not the first thing John’s said that doesn’t make Dean flinch.
John sends him off to brush his teeth. He doesn’t trust himself to deal with this anymore.
:: :: ::
John does his best to help Jim with breakfast. His hands are trembling as he tries to pry the aluminum clasp off the plastic bag Jim keeps his toast in and his sweat-slick fingers end up slipping and he cuts his thumb. Curses flow together on his tongue, come out in one huge mess of sounds when he can’t settle on a single one.
Jim shoots him a long look over his shoulder. His eyes travel over John’s trembling hands, the face that looked grey and fallen-in when John caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window earlier.
John shrugs, a silent reply to Jim’s raised eyebrow and that’s that.
“Dad!”
John whips around to see Sammy standing in the doorway, still in his pj’s, drowning in Dean’s old Batman sweatshirt.
“Sam.”
John tries to pretend that his voice doesn’t break on the word. He crosses the kitchen with two steps, scoops Sammy up in his arms and suddenly, inexplicably his heart is in his throat.
Sammy twists uncomfortably in the unfamiliar embrace. His little fingers dig into John’s shoulders, pushing in a way that makes John’s heart beat even faster. Sammy’s alive and strong and John realizes he didn’t quite believe it until he’s got the kid wrapped up in his arms.
He puts Sam down on the kitchen counter, runs his hands through the floppy hair, tilts his head against the light from the window, checking for injuries he knows aren’t there.
“Da-ad,” Sammy whines, thrumming his bare feet against the cupboards.
He isn’t even pale. John drinks in the image and tries to plaster it over the ghostly pale Sammy lying dead in the morgue.
“’s your face hurt?” Sammy asks, peering up at John.
John shakes his head. He thinks for a second and realizes it really doesn’t. It’s numb and heavy like the rest of his body. His eyes are stinging.
“I’m fine,” he says, twists his lips back into a smile that comes almost naturally.
Sammy smiles distractedly and pulls the plastic bag into his lap. The clasp comes undone in seconds and John has to breathe through his nose and count to ten in his head, because suddenly all he’s thinking about is that Sammy came close - too fucking close - to never opening a single plastic bag again.
He runs his hand down the side of Sam’s face, gently, in a way he used to for Dean when he was smaller than Sam is now. He hears his own breath hitch before his arms wrap around the small waist again, grab against the fragile back. The toast lands on John’s boots and he can’t bring himself to care.
“Dad, you’re hurtin’ me,” Sam mumbles against John’s chest.
John takes a moment to bury his nose in his son’s soft mop of hair, squeezing him one last time before he sets him down on the floor.
Sam peers up at him, clearly still confused, not sure what to do with the constant hugging and that alone is enough to have John’s throat constrict all over again.
He makes himself turn away and carry the pancake-tower Jim’s been quietly building over to the table.
“You hungry, Sam-I-am?”
Sam nods big and runs to climb up into his chair by the fridge.
Jim’s pancakes are slightly burned as always, but they're a hell of a lot better than anything John manages to whip up on his best of days and Sammy beams as he pours thick strings of syrup over his helping.
John grabs a piece of toast off the plate Jim offers him. He folds it in half until it breaks, a shower of crumbs lands on his plate. He takes a small bite, ignores the way his stomach twists and lurches when he has to lick the salt off his upper lip.
Dean slips back into the kitchen a minute later, his hands still twisted into the frayed sleeves of John’s sweatshirt. He turns sideways to fit through the small opening between door and wall, like he can’t or won’t push the door out of the way.
John watches as the boy climbs into the chair next to Sam, his eyes glued to the ground, then his plate.
Talk, John thinks.
John doesn’t know what he’s gonna do if Dean stays silent but he’s pretty sure he’ll end up hating himself for it.
“Eat, Dean,” he says, pointing at his son’s empty plate, the crumbling piece of toast still squished between his fingers.
Dean draws in a quick breath, stares at John with big, round eyes. His tongue shoots out over his parted lips before he goes back to staring at the table. “Yes, sir,” he tells his plate in a voice that’s barely above a whisper. He takes a shuddering breath like it took something out of him.
Something warm loosens in John’s chest at the sound of his boy’s voice. He nods and reaches across the table, slams a pancake down on Dean’s plate.
“Eat,” he says again.
Sam’s eyes shoot left and right, his eyebrows come down in a confused frown as he stares first at John then at Dean, a thin coat of syrup clings to his lips and chin. John wants to reach across the table and wipe it off, but he doesn’t trust his trembling hands.
He takes another halting bite off his toast. It scrapes his throat, tastes bland and burned and like death going down.
Dean uses his fork to clip a small piece off his pancake, chews it forever in a way that John would find obnoxious if it weren’t for the obvious effort it takes of the kid to force down as much as he does. Sammy hoists himself up onto his elbows, hooks one leg up on his chair to lean over and whisper something in his brother’s ear. Dean flinches slightly, looks at John for a second before he shrugs.
John watches the whispered exchange for a minute. Sam’s lips moving next to Dean’s ear, Dean shrugging, shaking his head, shooting nervous glances at John across the table.
John wraps his knuckles on the table and both boys sit up straighter. He points his fork at Sam’s plate this time. Sam sighs in a big, exaggerated sort of way but slumps back down in his seat, shovels another bite of syrup-drenched pancake into his mouth.
“Pastor Jim’s got bluemer - bluebewwy maple syrup,” he announces, somehow chewing and licking the thick, sugary substance off his upper lip at the same time. “Dean don’t like it very much, but I think it’s better than orange lollipops.”
John feels his lips soften in a short smile, even as the familiar headache starts stabbing at the spot right behind his left eye.
“That good, huh?”
“Uh-huh.”
John’s fingers feel numb. His cup keeps slipping down, he spills coffee over his hands at least twice when he tries to refill it, but at least he can pretend the reason he’s not eating is the soaked toast.
“Maybe you should get some sleep,” Jim says pointedly.
John shakes his head.
“We got trainin’ to do.”
It’s a clear plan in John’s mind as soon as he says it out loud. Training. The boys need to train. They need to be prepared for evil to come knocking on their door again because getting out of Lawrence wasn’t enough. Taking Dean shooting every other week wasn’t enough.
:: :: ::
They start with running. Running won’t do them much good when a monster climbs in through their window again, but it’s a good basis for everything else John can teach them.
Laps around the church and house, up the dusty chalk road, past the front doors and down the grassy hill on the back. The grass is hard and crunchy under John’s feet, wet from the cold morning air. John sits down on the steps leading up to the front door with his watch clasped between his fingers.
“Hustle, boys,” he yells after they pass him for the second time, Sammy trailing close to Dean’s heels.
John hears the steps speed up on the road around the corner and nods quietly to himself. He needs them sharp. And quick and able to run if they can’t defend themselves.
John remembers before. Dean used to run everywhere. From the time he took his first steps right until the night he ran out the front door with his brother in his arms, chased by flames and smoke and his mother’s screams. Sometimes, when it was summer and the sun was down far enough below the trees so their backyard was covered with a cool blanket of shade, Dean would come running up to John, catch himself against his broad chest, little fingers scrambling to undo the leather bracelet that held John’s wristwatch.
Time me, Daddy!
John would smile as his boy ran in wild circles around the yard, zig-zaging around toys and gardening tools, his little legs stumbling over the soft grass but never falling.
Was I fast?
Kiddo, you’re breaking world records all over the place.
They come to a halt in front of him, Sam with his arms outstretched, almost bumping into his brother.
“How’d we do?” he pants, his cheeks flushed red, probably from the cold more than the physical exertion.
John glances down at his watch. Just under two minutes is an okay time, but it’s not nearly enough to keep them alive when it counts.
He ignores Sammy’s excited bouncing and fixes Dean with a hard look.
“You think coddling’s gonna do your brother any favors?” he asks.
Dean’s eyebrows shoot up all the way his dry forehead. He makes a small sound that doesn’t turn into a full protest before he clamps his mouth shut again.
“You slow down to his pace, neither of you’s gonna get any better.”
Dean digs his foot into the wet ground, his arms come up to wrap around his middle again. He ducks his head and addresses John’s feet.
“Oh…”
“What’s that?”
“…yes, sir.”
John nods. Icy cold is slowly seeping up from the floor boards through his pants into his ass.
“Gimme another three rounds then.”
Three rounds without his brother holding his hand is all it takes for Sam to grow tired of their exercise. He bumps into Dean, forty-three seconds after his brother has finished his set, panting and pulling back his lips like he’s smelling something bad. He buries his hands deep inside his jacket pockets, his tiny jaw stubbornly set, his little chest heaving with quick hard breaths.
“I’m…never g’nna be ’s…good ‘s Dean,” he pants, eyes shooting daggers at John and Dean and the church behind the house for good measure. “I don’ wanna run ‘nymore.”
John waits for the reins on his temper to snap like a crossbow drawn too tight. He waits for several seconds for the angry rebukes to fly, presses his lips together again when nothing happens. John doesn’t take well to his boys pulling crap to get out of training. He wouldn’t take this kind of attitude from Dean on his best of days, but watching your kid almost being murdered does things to a man.
“Three more rounds and we can do something else.”
“I said I don’t wanna run anymore,” Sam repeats, stamping his foot for emphasis. And that? Yeah, that pretty much puts an end to John’s special treatment for today. Just like that.
His boys not following orders is what got them here in the first place.
“Just run,” Dean hisses, jabs his elbow into his brother’s ribs.
Sam draws in a huge, exaggerated gulp of breath. John cuts him off before they can start one of the shoving matches that always end with Sam crying and Dean cursing and John is pretty sure none of them want to deal with the fallout from that kind of fight today.
“Dean. Go.”
He jerks his head at the road and Dean cuts his eyes towards his little brother for a second before he takes off at a dead sprint.
“I hate running,” Sam mutters darkly. He manages to sniff around his panting, peers up at John from under his unruly bangs, his lower lip jutting forward in a small pout. It’s cute and probably works on unsuspecting grade school teachers. John takes one look at the dry forehead and knows the kid is bluffing.
He rests his elbows on his thighs, bringing himself down to Sam’s level.
“You’re either gonna run your laps or you’re gonna run your laps with a warm butt. What’s it gonna be, huh?”
Sam’s eyebrows come down, just as his hands whip out of his pockets to cover his butt.
“Nooo!”
“You want me to start counting?”
Sammy’s eyes are swimming with tears as he shakes his head, long strands of hair whipping left and right and still, he’s not running.
John forces his voice deeper than usual, growls, “one”. That at least does the trick and gets Sam going, even if it’s not enough to fix the attitude, the scuffing and dragging his feet like a sullen teenager.
John Winchester doesn’t put up with a shitty attitude, but he can’t be the bad guy with Sammy right now. It kills him to even think about hurting his baby boy. As long as he does his running they’re good.
Dean comes running back around the corner just as Sam disappears around the first. His jacket is still buttoned all the way up, so John yells after him to run faster. He rubs his hands together between his knees, wonders why he didn’t bring any coffee. His throat feels dry as his lungs fill with the cold October air.
John closes his eyes and listens to their footsteps, Dean overtaking Sam just before the clamp-clack of sneakers on chalk turn to the swifter fhu-wish of almost-frozen grass. He keeps his eyes closed, keeps the heels of his hands pressed against his lids until it’s almost enough to fight back the pounding in his skull.
“Cool down lap,” he calls after Dean when he hears the boy coming ‘round the corner for the third time and immediately hears the boy’s steps slow down until they’re matching his brother’s pace, two laps behind him.
:: :: ::
John skips lunch.
Jim comes out through the back door with a couple of sandwiches and a carton of milk. John takes a sip after Sammy offers him the carton for the third time. It’s one of those with cows and happy farmers printed on the side, so at least there’s that. Still, the single sip is enough to coat the insides of John’s guts with a thin layer of dread that’s enough to make sure he won’t be eating much for the rest of the day.
“You can’t make them run circles around the house the entire day, you know,” Jim suggests carefully.
It sparks Dean’s attention in a quick and almost innocent way that he can’t stamp down on before he blurts, “I can practice with the guns.” His eyes go wide and his breath catches in his throat before he’s finished his sentence. “I…’cuz I gotta, you know.” The words come hushed and desperate, don’t sound like Dean at all really and maybe that’s why John suddenly wants nothing more than to hide away in his room and not feel or think or be fucking conscious.
“Know how to set up your targets?” he rasps, peering up at the sky so he can pretend his eyes are watering because of the stinging sun.
“Yes, sir.”
John grunts.
He heaves himself off the steps, only really notices the way the yard spins and blurs around him when both of Jim’s hands grab at his elbow.
“They’ll be fine,” he whispers somewhere close to John’s ear. “Dean can use one of my rifles. You go on and get some rest.”
|Part II|