And the Burden's Mine
Title: And the Burden's Mine
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2100
Disclaimer: Not my boys. Kripke is the one who started hurting them.
Summary: Coda to Dead Man's Blood: Dean starts obsessing over that one comment John made about cleaning the Impala. Sam is worried.
So uhm...I'm supposed to be working on my two other claims for the Writing Between the Lines Challenge, but I couldn't help myself and just had to fill 'Inanimate Objects' for my angst_bingo card.
“Hey Dean, why don’t you touch up that car, before you get rust? Wouldn’t have given you the damn thing if I thought you were gonna ruin it.”
At that moment it seems funny.
Dad has that look on his face like he’d like nothing better than to haul Dean’s 6'2 ass right over his knee. Dean would probably go along with it, Sam thinks. Would probably salute and click his heels first. Like there is nothing fucked up about that notion at all.
Dean drops his gaze and shuffles his feet and God, Dad is such a sucker the way he falls for this submissive crap time and again. He shoots one last glower over his shoulder and Dean squirms uncomfortably before the door of the black truck slams shut with more force than strictly necessary.
Sam can’t help but feel insanely smug. Haha, you’re in trouble with Daddy, he sings in his head, almost has to stuff his fist into his mouth to keep from breaking out in a delighted giggle. Who’s the favorite now, jerk?
Yeah, it was funny all right. Now? Not so much.
The Impala is gleaming like nobody’s business. She has been washed, dried, polished, waxed more times than should be possible in the span of three days, especially if you spend a good part of those three days ganking a nest of vampires.
Every time they walk past her Dean starts bouncing on his tippy toes with the glee of some five year-old, all but chanting look at me, Daddy. Look what I did. Aren’t I awesome?
And every time John just keeps walking and doesn’t acknowledge the superior state of the car, Dean’s shoulders slump and that eager look falls right off his face and he tries to act like it doesn’t bother him one bit.
And then he gets quiet and Sam just knows he is convincing himself that the fact that he can’t clean a car to his father’s liking means he is a failure and a burden and it drives Sam crazy that even though he now knows this all goes back to two little boys stuck in a motel room in Wisconsin, he still can’t do anything to make this better. Dean gets quiet and withdrawn and doesn’t look people in the eye anymore and only speaks up when the situation absolutely calls for it, aside from the occasional yes, sir. It’d be downright ridiculous of it weren’t so goddamn sad.
“What’re you doin’, man?” Sam groans into his pillow, not even bothering to lift his head when Dean crashes into the side of his bed in the middle of the night.
A shuffle of clothes, maybe a shrug is all the answer Sam gets. Bottles and boxes clunk against each other and Sam figures Dean is about to go out and work on that paint job again.
He cracks open the eye that's nearer to the nightstand with the glowing alarm clock. It’s three in the morning.
“Dude, it’s three in the morning.”
Dean doesn’t even bother with a response, quietly shuffles out into the parking lot.
Yeah, the entertainment factor of this thing has definitely reached its expiration date. Sam tries to convince himself that there is no need for an intervention, that there is nothing wrong with just going back to sleep and hoping Dad will nod appreciatively next time he sees the damn car and everything will be fine.
Oh, who’s he kidding? Dad probably doesn’t even know he is supposed to notice anything.
Sighing Sam forces himself to roll out of his tangled up sheets, slips into a pair of old jeans and an even older hoodie and scoots down in front of the old green cooler they’ve been dragging around for as long as Sam can remember.
He doesn’t really like the thought of dowsing his brother with alcohol before they even attempt a conversation, but whatever his pre-med friends in Stanford might have told him, twenty-two years of being a Winchester tell him it’s the only way.
Quietly Sam makes his way into the parking lot. Dean has his back turned to him, bent all the way over the hood, the back of his shirt already soaked through with sweat despite the cold night air. Rags, soap, buckets filled with water, all lined up in a neat row by his feet, next to a ¾ gone bottle of Jack Daniels.
So Dean has Sam beat on the booze front. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts.
Sam makes sure to drag his right heel through the gravel to alert his brother to his presence. Dean’s been jumpy and this car thing has him on edge and Sam really doesn’t feel like catching a stray fist to his jaw.
Dean doesn’t stop his meticulous, slow movements, doesn’t turn around to look at Sam. His hands are moving with such care, Sam has to wonder how drunk his brother really is.
Sam takes a deep breath and puts the beer he brought for his brother on the hood next to Dean’s elbow.
“Dude!” Sam actually takes a step back at the anger that’s coming off of his brother in waves. Dean snatches up the bottle with unexpected dexterity and shoves it back into Sam’s hand. “Can you even say watermarks?”
Sam shrugs awkwardly, doesn’t really apologize but doesn’t say anything bitchy in response either. He puts the bottle he brought for Dean down by the Impala’s front tire, next to its big whiskey brother and takes a halting sip off his own.
“Shouldn’t you be doing this in the daylight?” he asks.
It’s a legitimate question. Not like the idea is entirely based on late night viewings of car wash soft porn or anything.
Dean shoots a look over his shoulder that clearly says Sam is a heathen and should be locked away for the greater good of humanity.
“Sorry,” Sam mumbles before he can stop himself. He isn’t the one Dean needs to hear apologize. His brother ignores it anyway.
Sam keeps sipping his beer, hoping his sad little sighs get muffled in the green glass of his bottle and Dean occasionally stops in his efforts to make his baby reflect every single star in the dark sky above them to take a quick, angry sip of Jack. Finally he moves away from the hood, makes a funny little step to avoid the bottles on the ground and settles in front of the fender.
Sam watches the careful, almost tender movements as his brother starts drying off the car with a new sheepskin chamois that Sam knows for a fact cost more than Dean’s entire Salvation Army wardrobe.
“You don’t need to be doing this, y’know?” Sam mumbles quietly, feels like he is talking to a cornered dangerous animal that can at any moment go from huddled in the corner to bloody rage.
“Dad’s right,” comes the carefully enunciated reply, like Sam needed any more proof that Dean and Jack have been getting way too close. “He gave that car to me, I can damn well show some gratitude and take care of her.”
Sam hates this. Hates that Dad can make one offhand comment that comes straight out of his ass and Dean shuts down like some dog that's been kicked one too many times. Dean might not like how Dad turns Sam into a surly teenager in the course of five seconds, well Sam doesn’t like the way Dad turns Dean into a desperate, sad little boy.
“He has no right to treat you like this.” Sam tries to keep his voice calm, like he’s stating a fact, not reciting an old and tired argument. “You’ve been taking care of that car for as long as I - “
“Oh, spare me the Cats in the Cradle crap,” Dean growls, hot and angry. Then quieter, “go back to bed, Sammy.”
Sam shakes his head and Dean tilts the bottle in his hand all the way back, makes sure he lets the last drop of his amber companion slide down his throat and Sam is left standing there, not knowing what the fuck he is supposed to do, so he does what he does best. What Dad does best. He lashes out at the person who’s just gonna suck it all up and take it.
“God damn it, Dean, this is so pathetic.”
He didn’t mean it last time. He doesn’t really mean it now.
Dean’s lips purse together in a tight line. A week ago he would have risen to the bait, they would have spent some time trading punches or insults and gone back inside, feeling slightly less bad than before. Now, Dean drops his eyes and makes a humorless, almost silent chuckle, like he has resigned himself to that little fact a long time ago.
“Fuck you, Sam,” he says quietly. He finally stops his treasure hunt inside the whiskey bottle, puts it down on the pavement where it immediately topples over and rolls off into the dark parking lot. Dean’s eyes follow it for as long as possible before it is swallowed by the darkness, then he snatches up the warming beer by his feet.
He polishes it off in several quick gulps without putting it down and for a second he looks like he is going to be sick. Then he turns around and starts on the Impala again.
“Oh c’mon, Dean,” Sam huffs at his brother’s back. “He didn’t mean it, you know that.”
Dean scoffs and doesn’t turn around. Whatever Dad says, it’s the law of the land.
“He was just being pissy, man. He was mad at me and he lashed out at you. He does that all the time.”
I do that all the time.
“Yeah, well he never does it without a good reason.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
There is a short pause. Dean takes a deep breath, clumsily kicks the beer bottle out into the darkness.
“Fuck you, Sam.”
Sam bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep from retaliating. If Dean needs to vent then cursing at Sam is probably healthier than getting caught up in a drunken bar fight. Of course Dean could just go out and say ‘You know Dad, that thing you said really hurt my feelings.’ but Sam isn’t holding his breath.
Dean glowers at Sam from slightly glassy, red rimmed eyes, then turns back to his car. Wax on, wax off, like he is in some stupid Karate Kid remake and if he just follows enough of these bullshit orders Dad will turn into a loveable Japanese Zen Master and maybe later they can all hold hands and go to Disney Land or some shit that even a year ago Sam would have given his right arm for.
He slumps down on the cold concrete of the motel parking lot. Dean doesn’t want to talk, doesn’t want to listen, fine. He still isn’t doing this alone though. Little pieces of gravel dig into Sam’s ass and the cold seeps through his faded jeans and Dean doesn’t even realize he is shivering in his soap and sweat soaked shirt.
Slowly the sky turns grey around the edges and suddenly Dean is right there in front of him.
“Gimme that bottle,” he demands quietly and Sam can tell that sometime in the last hour all the alcohol and sleep loss and desperation have finally gone all the way up to his brother’s brain.
Dean grabs Sam’s lukewarm beer with clammy fingers and Sam gets to his feet, just in case Dean does one of the drunken face-plants he is prone to doing.
“It’s good, right?” Dean asks hopefully, jerking his head in the direction of the gleaming car and for a moment he looks so sad and vulnerable that Sam wants to scoop him up and wrap him in blankets and get him far away from this fucked up life that’s breaking all of them. “He’s…he’s gonna see it this time, Sammy.” Dean’s tongue shoots out in a nervous tick, his eyes keep flicking across the lot in the direction of the window to their father’s still dark motel room. “Y’know, I didn’t really do a good job polishing her fenders last time, but I think I got it all now. He’s gonna like it, don’t’cha think, Sam?”
“Sure Sammy, Dad’s gonna make it home for Christmas.”
“I'm sorry, Dad really wanted to get back and see your play, Sammy.”
“Don’t worry Sammy, Dad’s always gonna come back for us.”
“Yeah Dean, I’m sure Dad’s gonna love it, man.”
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2100
Disclaimer: Not my boys. Kripke is the one who started hurting them.
Summary: Coda to Dead Man's Blood: Dean starts obsessing over that one comment John made about cleaning the Impala. Sam is worried.
So uhm...I'm supposed to be working on my two other claims for the Writing Between the Lines Challenge, but I couldn't help myself and just had to fill 'Inanimate Objects' for my angst_bingo card.
“Hey Dean, why don’t you touch up that car, before you get rust? Wouldn’t have given you the damn thing if I thought you were gonna ruin it.”
At that moment it seems funny.
Dad has that look on his face like he’d like nothing better than to haul Dean’s 6'2 ass right over his knee. Dean would probably go along with it, Sam thinks. Would probably salute and click his heels first. Like there is nothing fucked up about that notion at all.
Dean drops his gaze and shuffles his feet and God, Dad is such a sucker the way he falls for this submissive crap time and again. He shoots one last glower over his shoulder and Dean squirms uncomfortably before the door of the black truck slams shut with more force than strictly necessary.
Sam can’t help but feel insanely smug. Haha, you’re in trouble with Daddy, he sings in his head, almost has to stuff his fist into his mouth to keep from breaking out in a delighted giggle. Who’s the favorite now, jerk?
Yeah, it was funny all right. Now? Not so much.
The Impala is gleaming like nobody’s business. She has been washed, dried, polished, waxed more times than should be possible in the span of three days, especially if you spend a good part of those three days ganking a nest of vampires.
Every time they walk past her Dean starts bouncing on his tippy toes with the glee of some five year-old, all but chanting look at me, Daddy. Look what I did. Aren’t I awesome?
And every time John just keeps walking and doesn’t acknowledge the superior state of the car, Dean’s shoulders slump and that eager look falls right off his face and he tries to act like it doesn’t bother him one bit.
And then he gets quiet and Sam just knows he is convincing himself that the fact that he can’t clean a car to his father’s liking means he is a failure and a burden and it drives Sam crazy that even though he now knows this all goes back to two little boys stuck in a motel room in Wisconsin, he still can’t do anything to make this better. Dean gets quiet and withdrawn and doesn’t look people in the eye anymore and only speaks up when the situation absolutely calls for it, aside from the occasional yes, sir. It’d be downright ridiculous of it weren’t so goddamn sad.
“What’re you doin’, man?” Sam groans into his pillow, not even bothering to lift his head when Dean crashes into the side of his bed in the middle of the night.
A shuffle of clothes, maybe a shrug is all the answer Sam gets. Bottles and boxes clunk against each other and Sam figures Dean is about to go out and work on that paint job again.
He cracks open the eye that's nearer to the nightstand with the glowing alarm clock. It’s three in the morning.
“Dude, it’s three in the morning.”
Dean doesn’t even bother with a response, quietly shuffles out into the parking lot.
Yeah, the entertainment factor of this thing has definitely reached its expiration date. Sam tries to convince himself that there is no need for an intervention, that there is nothing wrong with just going back to sleep and hoping Dad will nod appreciatively next time he sees the damn car and everything will be fine.
Oh, who’s he kidding? Dad probably doesn’t even know he is supposed to notice anything.
Sighing Sam forces himself to roll out of his tangled up sheets, slips into a pair of old jeans and an even older hoodie and scoots down in front of the old green cooler they’ve been dragging around for as long as Sam can remember.
He doesn’t really like the thought of dowsing his brother with alcohol before they even attempt a conversation, but whatever his pre-med friends in Stanford might have told him, twenty-two years of being a Winchester tell him it’s the only way.
Quietly Sam makes his way into the parking lot. Dean has his back turned to him, bent all the way over the hood, the back of his shirt already soaked through with sweat despite the cold night air. Rags, soap, buckets filled with water, all lined up in a neat row by his feet, next to a ¾ gone bottle of Jack Daniels.
So Dean has Sam beat on the booze front. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts.
Sam makes sure to drag his right heel through the gravel to alert his brother to his presence. Dean’s been jumpy and this car thing has him on edge and Sam really doesn’t feel like catching a stray fist to his jaw.
Dean doesn’t stop his meticulous, slow movements, doesn’t turn around to look at Sam. His hands are moving with such care, Sam has to wonder how drunk his brother really is.
Sam takes a deep breath and puts the beer he brought for his brother on the hood next to Dean’s elbow.
“Dude!” Sam actually takes a step back at the anger that’s coming off of his brother in waves. Dean snatches up the bottle with unexpected dexterity and shoves it back into Sam’s hand. “Can you even say watermarks?”
Sam shrugs awkwardly, doesn’t really apologize but doesn’t say anything bitchy in response either. He puts the bottle he brought for Dean down by the Impala’s front tire, next to its big whiskey brother and takes a halting sip off his own.
“Shouldn’t you be doing this in the daylight?” he asks.
It’s a legitimate question. Not like the idea is entirely based on late night viewings of car wash soft porn or anything.
Dean shoots a look over his shoulder that clearly says Sam is a heathen and should be locked away for the greater good of humanity.
“Sorry,” Sam mumbles before he can stop himself. He isn’t the one Dean needs to hear apologize. His brother ignores it anyway.
Sam keeps sipping his beer, hoping his sad little sighs get muffled in the green glass of his bottle and Dean occasionally stops in his efforts to make his baby reflect every single star in the dark sky above them to take a quick, angry sip of Jack. Finally he moves away from the hood, makes a funny little step to avoid the bottles on the ground and settles in front of the fender.
Sam watches the careful, almost tender movements as his brother starts drying off the car with a new sheepskin chamois that Sam knows for a fact cost more than Dean’s entire Salvation Army wardrobe.
“You don’t need to be doing this, y’know?” Sam mumbles quietly, feels like he is talking to a cornered dangerous animal that can at any moment go from huddled in the corner to bloody rage.
“Dad’s right,” comes the carefully enunciated reply, like Sam needed any more proof that Dean and Jack have been getting way too close. “He gave that car to me, I can damn well show some gratitude and take care of her.”
Sam hates this. Hates that Dad can make one offhand comment that comes straight out of his ass and Dean shuts down like some dog that's been kicked one too many times. Dean might not like how Dad turns Sam into a surly teenager in the course of five seconds, well Sam doesn’t like the way Dad turns Dean into a desperate, sad little boy.
“He has no right to treat you like this.” Sam tries to keep his voice calm, like he’s stating a fact, not reciting an old and tired argument. “You’ve been taking care of that car for as long as I - “
“Oh, spare me the Cats in the Cradle crap,” Dean growls, hot and angry. Then quieter, “go back to bed, Sammy.”
Sam shakes his head and Dean tilts the bottle in his hand all the way back, makes sure he lets the last drop of his amber companion slide down his throat and Sam is left standing there, not knowing what the fuck he is supposed to do, so he does what he does best. What Dad does best. He lashes out at the person who’s just gonna suck it all up and take it.
“God damn it, Dean, this is so pathetic.”
He didn’t mean it last time. He doesn’t really mean it now.
Dean’s lips purse together in a tight line. A week ago he would have risen to the bait, they would have spent some time trading punches or insults and gone back inside, feeling slightly less bad than before. Now, Dean drops his eyes and makes a humorless, almost silent chuckle, like he has resigned himself to that little fact a long time ago.
“Fuck you, Sam,” he says quietly. He finally stops his treasure hunt inside the whiskey bottle, puts it down on the pavement where it immediately topples over and rolls off into the dark parking lot. Dean’s eyes follow it for as long as possible before it is swallowed by the darkness, then he snatches up the warming beer by his feet.
He polishes it off in several quick gulps without putting it down and for a second he looks like he is going to be sick. Then he turns around and starts on the Impala again.
“Oh c’mon, Dean,” Sam huffs at his brother’s back. “He didn’t mean it, you know that.”
Dean scoffs and doesn’t turn around. Whatever Dad says, it’s the law of the land.
“He was just being pissy, man. He was mad at me and he lashed out at you. He does that all the time.”
I do that all the time.
“Yeah, well he never does it without a good reason.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
There is a short pause. Dean takes a deep breath, clumsily kicks the beer bottle out into the darkness.
“Fuck you, Sam.”
Sam bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep from retaliating. If Dean needs to vent then cursing at Sam is probably healthier than getting caught up in a drunken bar fight. Of course Dean could just go out and say ‘You know Dad, that thing you said really hurt my feelings.’ but Sam isn’t holding his breath.
Dean glowers at Sam from slightly glassy, red rimmed eyes, then turns back to his car. Wax on, wax off, like he is in some stupid Karate Kid remake and if he just follows enough of these bullshit orders Dad will turn into a loveable Japanese Zen Master and maybe later they can all hold hands and go to Disney Land or some shit that even a year ago Sam would have given his right arm for.
He slumps down on the cold concrete of the motel parking lot. Dean doesn’t want to talk, doesn’t want to listen, fine. He still isn’t doing this alone though. Little pieces of gravel dig into Sam’s ass and the cold seeps through his faded jeans and Dean doesn’t even realize he is shivering in his soap and sweat soaked shirt.
Slowly the sky turns grey around the edges and suddenly Dean is right there in front of him.
“Gimme that bottle,” he demands quietly and Sam can tell that sometime in the last hour all the alcohol and sleep loss and desperation have finally gone all the way up to his brother’s brain.
Dean grabs Sam’s lukewarm beer with clammy fingers and Sam gets to his feet, just in case Dean does one of the drunken face-plants he is prone to doing.
“It’s good, right?” Dean asks hopefully, jerking his head in the direction of the gleaming car and for a moment he looks so sad and vulnerable that Sam wants to scoop him up and wrap him in blankets and get him far away from this fucked up life that’s breaking all of them. “He’s…he’s gonna see it this time, Sammy.” Dean’s tongue shoots out in a nervous tick, his eyes keep flicking across the lot in the direction of the window to their father’s still dark motel room. “Y’know, I didn’t really do a good job polishing her fenders last time, but I think I got it all now. He’s gonna like it, don’t’cha think, Sam?”
“Sure Sammy, Dad’s gonna make it home for Christmas.”
“I'm sorry, Dad really wanted to get back and see your play, Sammy.”
“Don’t worry Sammy, Dad’s always gonna come back for us.”
“Yeah Dean, I’m sure Dad’s gonna love it, man.”