Let's Not Call It a Game - Part III
| Part II|
John dreams of dead children on cold metal tables that night. Their faces turn into Sammy’s, long bangs and frozen dimples. He dreams of Dean, watching his brother die. Mary, telling him he needs no make sure their boys can defend themselves out there, even though it doesn’t sound like anything she’d ever say.
He feels the panic first. Before any sense of awareness or being awake sets in, his heart is racing and he’s breathing fast and shallow. Moving is an effort. Opening his eyes is damn near impossible.
He’s lying on his back, hands curled into fists on the mattress, everything tense and hurting and pounding with the beating of his heart. It feels like he’s pinned down, ready to fight but unable to move a single muscle.
That’s when he hears it. Soft laughter coming from down the hall, muffled through the doors but there and alive and John holds his breath, like drawing attention to the fact will put both his boys back into the Fort Douglas morgue.
He takes a shower for the first time in days, watches the water turn red and grey and ugly brown as it washes over him, beating against the bruises on his back, tearing at the stitches above his eye. It’s the most alive he’s felt all week.
He finds a razor in Jim’s cabinet. It’s got a wooden handle with pretty silver engravings. Looks nothing like the cheap plastic motel giveaways John usually ends up using. Like it’s worth actual money. The kind of razor fathers give their sons in cheesy TV shows from the 70’s.
John runs his hand over his smooth cheeks. He isn’t sure if the lack of beard makes the bruises seem less threatening or if it makes them stand out even more.
The boys are curled up on the couch when John finds them in the living room, Jim’s quilt wrapped around both their shoulders, something loud and bright and obnoxious playing on the TV.
“Are we leaving?”
Dean’s eyes zero in on the duffel bag over John’s shoulder. The question's barely out before Sammy is scrambling to get up on his knees, both hands wrapped protectively around the remote control.
“I don’t wanna leave ‘fore Ninja Turtle’s over!”
His mouth is pulled into a sideways frown and John shakes his head, clears his throat and looks away before the face can make him angry.
:: :: ::
It’s one of those October days where everything is soft and the sun is a pale disc behind the thin clouds. It isn’t perfect for target practice, but it could be a whole lot worse.
Sam stares at the sawed off, like John just pulled a unicorn out of his bag. The kind of unicorn you don’t ever touch or God forbid, pick up.
“’m not allowed to touch the guns,” he says matter-of-factly. His eyebrows come down hard and dark and it’s a whole damn lot like looking at a mirror.
Sammy’s been in a pissy mood all morning, kept banging his sneakers against the back of John’s seat the entire drive up here. It can’t be just because he missed the last two minutes of his turtle show and it sure as hell can’t be because John made Dean stay behind. Dean couldn’t hit the side of a house with a water gun right now. Not with the way his hands are shaking and he keeps going white as snow whenever he gets up too quick. John even explained it to Sammy - the concussion and how Dean wasn’t up for much more than watching TV right now - which is sure as hell a lot more than he ever got from his own old man.
“That’s ‘cause you don’t know how to handle them,” John says. He manages to smile encouragingly even though Sam’s attitude is already giving him a migraine. “We’re gonna practice, so one day when something comes after you, you can pick up a gun and defend yourself.”
Sam’s frown deepens. “What would ever come after me?”
John didn’t mean to lose it with Sam this quickly, he didn’t, but the kid has a way of finding John’s buttons and digging his tiny, pudgy fingers into them without even trying.
“Just do as you’re - do as you’re told, Sam.” He manages to cut himself off just shy of swearing at his six-year-old, which has gotta count for something. “What do you know about handling a gun?”
Sam looks like he only just manages to keep from rolling his eyes.
“Don’t point it at no one unless you wanna shoot ‘em, always ‘ssume it’s loaded, a gun is not a toy,” he rattles off. Finishes with a smile because he knows he got all of John’s rules right.
“Good boy. Now pick it up.”
Sam’s lips uncurl until he catches the lower one between his teeth. He peers up at John, caught somewhere between frowning and squinting at the sun.
“Dean says shooting’s the best thing ever,” he tells him like his brother’s opinion on the matter is the only thing he cares about and doesn’t mind John knowing as much. “You think I’m gonna be as good as Dean?”
John reaches out and ruffles the kid’s hair.
“You’re gonna knock it out of the park.”
He doesn’t. Not by a long shot.
Ten minutes into the exercise Sam’s hit two bottles and even those only once John moved him another foot closer to the targets. The copper coated bullets spin into the ground and trees, dirt and wooden splinters explode in the brisk morning air and John can’t quite tell if his lungs are burning from cold or dust.
“Keep your eyes on the damn target,” John grits out when Sammy peers up at him with an exasperated sigh. “Don’t look at me, don’t look at the barrel. All you care about is those bottles, okay?”
Sam sighs again, long and deep before he turns to glare at his targets, his lips pressed together in the kind of mad concentration he used to get last year when he was bent over his school books, sounding out his words.
“Don’t carry the weight on your fingers,” John advises. He realizes it’s the wrong thing to say before he’s quite done saying it.
Sam turns back around, swinging the gun wildly, safety still off.
“I don’t even know what that means,” he whines loudly, eyes shining with tears that come out of nowhere.
“Sam!” John snaps, his heart going wild for a couple of beats. He snatches the gun out of the kid’s weak grasp, thumbs the safety back up.
“I don’t even know what that means,” Sam repeats in a quiet whisper, his voice breaks over the words.
John takes a couple of deep breaths to calm himself. He reminds himself that it’s not Sam’s fault that John is tired and scared and Sammy doesn’t really get why they need to train at all.
John kneels next to his boy, places the rifle back in his hands. He wraps his own calloused fingers around the small, soft baby hands, guides them around the trigger and shaft as he explains. “I mean don’t hold the weight of the gun with your fingers, kiddo. Carry the weight with your shoulder. The left hand’s only there to help you aim. Got it?”
Sammy’s hair flops up and down against John’s cheek as he nods once, his mouth still tight with concentration. John thumbs the safety back off, helps him pull the trigger, Sam’s tiny finger disappearing under his large one and twelve feet away a bottle explodes brown and green and white in the sunlight.
“Good,” John says, backing away to stand behind Sam again. “Now do it on your own.”
Sam’s tongue shoots out from between his lips as he focuses on the next bottle. The bullet flies with a quick bang and Sam staggers back against the recoil. His shoulder’s gonna be sore by tomorrow, but he’s just gonna have to get used to that until he’s big enough to absorb the kick.
The bullet hits the ground in another cloud of dirt.
“Too low,” John says and he can see Sam’s entire body stiffen. “Aim higher.”
Sam adjusts his grip on the shotgun and doesn’t shoot again. His shoulders are shaking as he bites down on his lips, his chin comes up stubbornly and John has to nip that kind of thing in the bud before it has the chance to grow into something dangerous.
“You got something to say to me, boy?”
Sam shudders for a second. He gulps once, twice, his tongue shoots out to wet his lips before he suddenly turns around, facing John full on. At least the barrel’s pointing at the ground this time.
“I wanna go home.” He says it right at John’s face with his jaw squared and his eyes dark. “I wanna go home and watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Dean and never shoot a stupid gun anymore.”
He actually stomps his foot in a way John thought the boy had outgrown years ago.
John runs a hand over his chin, stares at the bottles lined up in a neat row. “We’re not leaving until you get the hang of this. Now watch your mouth and keep going.”
Sam huffs a loud, obnoxious sigh and turns back to glare at his targets.
It wasn’t like this with Dean. Dean took to guns like a pyromaniac to a matchbox and a haystack.
There’s a huge difference between telling a boy he needs to shoot so he can kill the thing that killed his mother and telling him to do it just because. John gets that, but it can’t matter. Doesn’t matter that Sam knows jack shit about the things that go bump in the night when they can still come after him in his sleep.
Doesn’t matter when John’s the dad and all Sam needs to do is fall in line and do as he’s told.
Another bullet goes wide, breezes past the bottles and hits the ground behind them.
John curses under his breath, he clamps his mouth shut so tight he teeth hurt.
“Keep your elbow up,” he bites out. “I already told you twice.”
Sammy draws in a deep, shuddering breath, hides his wobbling chin in the collar of his jacket.
“You don’t need to yell,” he mumbles with a dark glare that he’s at least eight years too young for.
“Apparently I do,” John shoots back. “Don’t make this harder on yourself, kid, you need to learn this, so da as you’re told.”
Sam somehow manages to make the “yessir” he grits out sound like an insult.
“Sam…” John warns. He doesn’t even have the energy to call him on it.
The boy's mouth twitches in response and suddenly John feels vague dread rising up in his chest.
Sam sends another bullet zinging into the ground and John can see the last of his determination snap. There’s a frustrated, huffy sound, sneakers stomping on the leaves on the ground and suddenly the shotgun’s flying through the air. It goes off as it hits the ground.
Sam is staring at the gun at his feet, his eyes huge and round like he doesn’t quite get what just happened and before John knows what he’s doing he’s moving, hurling the boy up by his jeans until he’s dangling, ass up under his left arm.
He lets his arm whip down hard, harder than he’s ever hit Sam before.
Sam starts howling immediately. Not crying or begging for John to stop, just a single continuous angry wail as his legs kick and his hands claw at the back of John’s jeans.
John can hardly breathe through the panic, the guilt and the selfish feeling that things aren’t supposed to be this way.
He raises his arm all the way over his head, keeps bringing it down hard and fast, almost in time with his own erratic pulse.
“You don’t throw a loaded weapon!”
John doesn’t know if he’s raising his voice enough to cut through Sammy’s screams. Everything is dull and lost behind the roaring in his ears. His hand should be sore by now, coming down again and again, but all he feels is his own heartbeat, racing along in his fingertips.
Sam kicks his legs, throws his weight left and right until he’s almost slipping out of John’s arm, screaming and crying and John doesn’t stop to adjust his grip. He shifts the struggling boy on his hip and starts smacking the back of his legs.
John’s aware, on some level, that he’s hitting too hard, that he’s turning the kid’s ass purple instead of red but he can’t stop.
Sam finally goes limb against his side, his feet still kicking with the force of John’s blows. The back of John’s shirt is wet, tears and snot seeping into the fabric at the soft flannel.
They’re both panting and John finally notices the wicked sting in his palm.
John glances down at the shotgun that’s still lying on top of rusty-red leaves a couple of feet away. He grabs Sam with both his hands, turns him upright again and crushes him against his chest. John’s face is buried in the wild, sweaty curls. He breathes in the soft baby smell, reassuring himself that his boy isn’t dead.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he whispers, presses a harsh kiss to the boy’s temple before he realizes Sammy isn’t snuggling against his chest like he’s supposed to be doing.
Sam’s fingers are digging into John’s shoulders, tears running freely down his flushed face. John lets him slide down to the ground, ignores the hitched intake of breath when his butt brushes up against John’s arms.
“What’s that?” John asks gently when Sammy’s words get swallowed up by hiccups and tears and his hands furiously swiping at his cheeks.
Sam draws in a huge gulp of air with his mouth round and his lips still quivering.
“I ha- I hate shootin’,” he forces out, his brows coming down in a new frown. “I’m never gonna shoot again ‘n I’m not your friend anymore.”
John tries to ignore the unspoken I hate you, tries to ignore the deep empty hole inside his chest that only seems to be getting bigger.
“You’re right about one thing,” he growls. “You’re not touching a gun again before you’ve learned how to treat it.”
Sam gives a little yelp of protest when John wraps his hand around his scrawny arm and drags him back towards the Impala, picking up the goddamn gun on their way. He almost lifts the boy off his feet as he has to scramble along on his toes to keep his footing, stumbling over uneven ground into John’s legs.
John ignores the betrayed, crestfallen look on Sam’s face when he throws him into the backseat. The backseat’s safe. No monsters or guns in the backseat.
Sammy isn’t Dean though and in Sammy’s world sitting on soft leather with a stinging butt is a fucking tragedy.
John’s fingers are shaking, slick with sweat as he cracks up the volume on the country station that’s the only thing the radio will pick up out here. Sammy’s sniffles keep on coming, loud and exaggerated, interspersed with pitiful gulps of air in that exist in the special space where it’s loud enough to catch John’s attention and not quite loud enough to earn him a rebuke.
The tips of Sam’s sneakers dig into the back of John’s seat.
“Cut it out,” John growls. He wraps his hands tighter around the steering wheel, crashes his boot down on the gas pedal.
“You promised,” Sam hiccups, kicking the seat again. “You said we’d have fun and you promised we’d drive into town after and get milkshakes.”
John growls. They were supposed to set up the bottles and Sammy was supposed to take to it like his brother did. John would have ruffled his hair and told him good job, champ and Sam would have grinned in that way he only ever does for Dean.
They would have gone for milkshakes and burgers and John wouldn’t feel like he has to check the backseat every two seconds to make sure the kid doesn’t have a bullet hole in his head.
“You think you deserve a milkshake?” he asks, glaring at Sam in the rear view mirror, how he’s sitting on his hands and sinking his teeth into his lips in a way that’s not even close to contrite. “You don’t, you know.”
John watches as another thick crocodile tear slides down until it’s trembling on the tip of Sammy’s nose.
“I hate you,” Sammy whispers.
That’s okay. John can deal with that. As long as his boys stay alive.
:: :: ::
They come back in the middle of Sunday mass, which, huh, Sunday. The singing fills John’s ears as soon as he turns the key in the ignition and the growl of his car dies down.
John marches inside, his hand once again clamped tight around Sammy’s arm which is probably only adding to the kid’s whimpering. All he really wants to do is go lock himself in Jim’s guestroom and drink and smoke until he remembers how to breathe, but there’s things that are wrong to do and getting shitfaced while your only real friend in the world is preaching in the same house is one of them, so he drags Sam along the aisle until he spies Dean, sandwiched in between two elderly ladies.
He pushes his way into the pew, mumbling apologies under his breath when he knocks into people’s knees and Sammy stumbles over their feet.
The woman on Dean’s right gives John a long look that he doesn’t really care to decipher. Her white running shoes squeak as she scoots along the bench to make room.
Dean’s eyes are still entirely too bright and unfocused when he finally looks up to greet them, his lips moving silently around a "hey, Dad," before the twitch with a quick reflexive smile. John sits down on his right where it’s harder to make out the swollen side of his boy’s face.
Sammy whimpers and squirms on the wooden bench, pushes his hands under his butt and shifts his weight left to right. Dean eyes him worriedly around John’s chest but doesn’t say anything. He sways slightly in his seat, leans up against John’s shoulder before he stiffens and pulls away.
John tries to listen to Jim who’s no doubt managed to twist his sermon to fit the Winchesters’ situation to a T so John may see the light or something, but all he manages to do is close his eyes and pretend he isn’t sitting between two kids who’re doing their damnedest not to touch him.
:: :: ::
The thing John hates most about Sundays at Jim Murphy's - aside from the actual masses - are the women who invariably crowd around him and his boys as soon as they’ve said their amens and sang their last hymn. They touch his arm and ruffle Sammy’s hair, laugh in that affected, sugary sweet way when Dean dances out from under their mothering touches with a disgusted frown.
John is fucking useless at dealing with their batting eyelashes and offers of potato salad on his best of days, but today it feels like an actual accomplishment to not pull a gun on them and blasting their brains out.
He loses the boys in under a minute, Sam clinging to Dean’s hand as they hurry off and leave John to deal with Mrs. Holden’s inappropriate flirting and old Ms. Harrison’s never ending supply of too-dry cupcakes. His fingers are twitching for a smoke. He pads down his jeans and remembers he stored his last pack away under his throwing knives in the trunk of the car.
He excuses himself with a grunt and shoulders his way past the women. His boots kick up little clouds of dust as he all but runs down the driveway and it’s really goddamn easy ignoring the tsks and oh mys that follow him.
He grabs his cigarette, fishes the lighter out of his pocket and slams the trunk in one jagged movement, walks around to the passenger side to find Dean sitting on the ground with his shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around his knees as he’s leaning up against the front tire.
His good eye grows a little wider when he sees John, his head sinks a little deeper between his shoulders.
“I told Sammy to stay with Pastor Jim,” he explains quickly. John throws a quick glance over his shoulder to see Jim holding Sammy’s hand as he nods politely, listening to a teenage boy and his hovering father, both with the same awkwardly intense air about them that is exactly why John tries to avoid Blue Earth on Sundays. Sammy’s other hand is clutching one of Ms. Harrison's cupcakes, munching down on it like it’s almost as good as the milkshake he never got.
“Had to get away from ‘em?”
John isn’t sure what he’s supposed to be saying to his ten-year-old, sitting on the ground in nothing but ripped jeans and a T-shirt in the middle of October.
Dean pulls his shoulders up, halfway between a shrug and hiding a shiver.
“They kept askin’ about my face,” he tells his shoes, flicking a couple of pebbles down the road.
John doesn’t know what to say to that either, so he sits down next to Dean, leans his back against the dark metal that the sun hasn’t quite managed to warm up. John shrugs out of his flannel, drapes it around Dean’s small shoulders.
“Yeah, mine too.”
Mrs. Holden had all kinds of advice to offer, a first aid box the size she bet he’d never seen before if only he’d let her take him home.
Dean’s eyes flicker up to meet John’s for a second. John manages a quick smile that’s apparently all it takes for Dean’s posture to relax. He blushes slightly, reaches up and pulls John’s shirt closed around his front.
John shakes a cigarette out of the crumpled pack in his hands. Dry leaves rustle somewhere behind the car, cold wind whips against John’s face a moment later, blows out his flickering zippo.
Dean stares at the sparks as John tries to light his cigarette behind the cover of his hand. He starts, quickly turns back to staring down the street when John meets his gaze. His ears are flushed pink, from the cold John’d like to think, but it’s probably got more to do with some imagined shame in not being entire comfortable around fire.
John takes a deep drag off his cigarette and for a moment he feels warm and whole and like the cool smoke is enough to fill the hole inside him.
Dean shrinks back further, he ducks his chin like he’s trying to hide it in the collar of John’s shirt, which, unless he’s about to magically undo a good ten years of cheap detergent weighing it down, isn’t going to happen. He coughs once, twice, nervously licks his lips.
John tries to blow the smoke away from Dean’s face.
They can’t pussyfoot around this forever. Dean can’t spend the rest of his life leaving the room as soon as Jim or Bobby light up their fireplace, he can’t run off to the bathroom to throw up his dinner as soon as he smells something burn. As much as John would like him to, Dean can’t deal with…well, everything at his own pace. Not when there’s monsters out there who will come after them even if he’s only a traumatized little boy.
Maybe John’ll take Dean with him on his next salt ‘n’ burn. Nothing big or dangerous. Just something to get him used to standing next to a burning grave without having a panic attack.
“Sammy didn’t like shooting with you.”
Dean says it like he’s confessing to some great sin. Like it’s his fault that his brother is a little kid and his father isn’t very good at being a father. It tears at John, the way Dean makes these kinds of things about his own shortcomings, but he doesn’t know how to deal with it, so he doesn’t.
“He didn’t, huh?”
Dean shakes his head, his chin wobbles as he draws his shoulders up even higher.
“What if he doesn’t ever wanna shoot a gun anymore?”
John sucks on his cigarette. Their legs knock against each other, John’s thigh against Dean’s knee and Dean starts before he relaxes into the touch.
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“But what if - “
“Dean.” John’s voice cuts through the air like a gun shot. “It’s not gonna happen.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dean sighs, rubs his face against his sleeve before he coughs again.
John wants to ask about his eye but the words don’t come, so he keeps on smoking and Dean keeps on playing with the gravel under their feet.
“’m sorry I didn’t take good enough care of Sammy,” Dean whispers after a while. He’s ducking his head, but John can see his eyes glisten. He buys himself a minute by lighting a new cigarette before looking back at his son.
“I need to be able to trust you, Dean.” He takes another few puffs, watches Dean fiddle with the strings of his flannel. “I can’t do my job if I’m worrying about you and Sammy all the time.”
Dean nods quickly. “I know. I’ll do better, I promise.”
He clearly means it, too and there is something so desperately childlike in the promise it makes John’s heart ache.
John squeezes Dean’s knee. “You just do as you’re told and your brother will be fine.”
Dean nods quickly before he winces and stops, his hand coming up to rest against the side of his head. “Yes, sir,” he says instead, his brow wrinkled in concentration. “You can hit me again, you know?” Dean’s voice breaks roughly over the words, his eyes rimmed wet. “Just maybe not my face so much, ‘cuz I gotta go back to school ‘n stuff.”
John knows there’s something he’s supposed to say to that. Something a good father would say, though he supposes good fathers never find themselves in this situation in the first place. He takes another deep drag off his cigarette before he lets it drop down half-smoked next to the other two, crushes it with the heel of his boot.
He wraps his arm around Dean’s shoulders and Dean nearly jumps out of his skin. He relaxes slowly; lets John pull him against his side.
“You could use your fists again, or maybe, uh… m-maybe your belt.” He says it even as he’s nestling against John’s shoulder.
John doesn’t say anything.
John wants to fucking cry.
He sighs, cards his hand through his son’s short hair. Dean shifts closer and they don’t talk at all, but that’s okay, because Dean’s head is resting against John’s chest and John’s arm is wrapped around Dean’s shoulders and their thighs are touching.
John knows where Dean is and Dean knows where his father is and they know Sammy’s safe eating cake.