We Start and End with Family - Chapter 3
Title: We Start and End with Family
Summary: Two years after losing his brother, Dean has settled down and started a new family, but he’s never forgotten the family he left behind and his past has not forgotten him.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, ritual abuse and nudity with children present, but not involved. Distorted uses of biblical quotes/Christian doctrine/ceremony.
Spoilers: Through early Season 6
Word Count: 2,760 for this chapter
Author’s Note: Diverges from canon about two minutes before the end of ‘Swan Song’ (no Sam spying on Dean and Lisa).
Written for spn_reversebang. The beautiful art featured along with this story was illustrated by puguita, whose art prompt and bountiful creativity inspired the story. All her illustrations can be found together at the art master post.
A million worlds of thanks to the truly awesome agent_jl36 and ebony_quill for their scene edits and the tremendously kind durtydeefla82 for taking the time to do a read through and edits for the whole shebang on extremely short notice.
The story master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 2
Dean’s partial confession to Lisa had completely backfired. Instead of getting her off his back, she was all the more intent on hovering. If he’d been completely honest the only problem would be that she was wasting her time. He hadn’t lied, but he might have omitted a few key details. Something was coming, he didn’t know what, but he could feel it.
Another white lie had earned him a hall pass. Finally he was alone in the garage under the guise of working on the Impala. The truth was he hadn’t touched the Impala since he’d parked her in here years earlier, and he wasn’t about to now.
Lisa thought she knew what the car meant to him and that if he could bear to look at it then he would suddenly be whole again. He let her think that because it hurt too much to explain the truth.
Instead of popping the hood, he dug through an unlabeled cardboard box that summed up his life, but was relegated to the garage. It didn’t matter that it was everything he had been. He had to be something else now.
It wasn’t bad. If Sam wasn’t suffering, things would actually be good. That was how he knew everything was about to go to hell. Good things didn’t just keep on happening, not to him. Any minute it was all going to hit the fan and he wasn’t going to let himself be blindsided again.
His fingers ran over the familiar suede of Dad’s journal. Muscle memory let him immediately flip to any particular entry. He knew the entire journal by heart. Still he clung to a fading hope that he would this time find the secret he’d missed the last hundred times he’d combed line by line through Dad’s jumbled writings.
At the click of the garage doorknob turning, Dean slammed the journal closed. He didn’t have time to pretend to be working before the door opened. A touch of relief washed over him when he saw Ben standing in the doorway.
“You need something, sport?” Dean asked.
“Dinner?”
“Right.” Dean pulled back the flaps of the box and hid the journal beneath Dad’s old jacket. His hand lingered on the worn leather before he shoved the box back onto the shelf. “Did you finish your homework?”
“It’s too hard. I’ll figure it out later,” Ben mumbled. “What’s in the book?”
“Nothing. It’s just...whoa, back it up. Since when do we just give up on something?”
Ben plopped down on the garage steps, frustration coming off him in waves. “It’s just stupid stuff I’m never gonna use.”
Dean scratched his head. “Well, yeah, probably - that’s school.”
He’d made that point himself more than once and the problem was that he’d been right, at least until a couple of years ago. Now he was left barely able to scrounge a decent living and it sure as hell wasn’t a family wage. There had been more than a few months he’d had to hustle on the side, especially lately with Lisa on maternity leave.
“Half of it’s a bunch of useless crap,” Dean continued, “the other half is good stuff. Problem is you don’t know what you need to know until you need to know it. Homework then dinner.”
Ben put his elbow on his knees and rested his chin in his hands. “I can’t do it.”
“Hey, dude, come on. You can do anything. Did you have Mom look at it?”
Dean cringed at Ben’s dry chuckle. He was pretty sure he was guilty of unintentionally teaching the kid that. “Mom’s too busy with Mary. She doesn’t even know I exist anymore.”
“Come on, you know that’s not true. You gotta give her a break. How about I give it a shot?”
Ben looked rightfully skeptical, but hopped up from the steps and headed back inside. Before he even settled down in the chair beside Ben, Dean knew this was going to go badly. He hadn’t bothered with textbooks since junior high, had been elated to see a big red ‘C’ staring up at him when a teacher passed him back an assignment and indifferent if the letter came later in the alphabet.
“Can’t be that bad,” Dean said when he got a look at the opened book. “It’s got pictures.”
After staring at it for a few moments longer he realized it was math. Geometry. Fantastic. Sam would have a field day with this crap, but Dean’s eyes were glazing over and he hadn’t even made it past the first line of instructions. It wouldn’t matter if he had slept, it would still look as Greek as that damn Latin book.
“This is freakin’ America. Who the hell uses centimeters?”
“Scientists,” Ben said as he scooted his chair in. “It’s a universal measurement or some crap.”
Dean looked up from the book to raise a brow to Ben. “Don’t say ‘crap’.”
“Why not? You do.”
“Good enough reason not to.” At Ben’s questioning look Dean gave a smirk. “You start talking like me, who do you think Mom is coming after?”
Ben gave a little smile until his eyes returned to the textbook. He folded his arms on the table and dropped his head down on them. So far Dean was failing as a tutor. They hadn’t even looked at the assignment and he was already losing the kid. Dean shook Ben’s shoulder and tapped the book.
“Hey, stay with me here. Okay so...uh...‘calculate the cylinder volume in cubic centimeters’.”
Silence hung between them as they both stared at the evil sentence. A better question than how was why. If he needed to know how much something held he just filled it up until it was full, he didn’t pull out a damn calculator and encyclopedia.
Dean read through the instructions a couple more times before pointing. “I guess we just take this Enochian looking thing and...”
“Pi.”
“Pie might help,” Dean agreed. His stomach had just remembered he’d only eaten enough at breakfast to appease Lisa. “Maybe we should do dinner first.”
“No, I mean that thing,” Ben said as he pointed at the symbol, “it’s pi - 3.1416.”
If it was possible, Dean’s eyes glazed over all the more. He thought they were doing geometry, not geography. Maybe Ben also had geography homework. Dean sucked a lot less at that.
“And that’s a coordinate for...?”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s pi.”
“Wow. Okay. No idea what you just said, but okay.” Dean shifted in his chair and gave up on staring dumbly at the book, instead looking to Ben. “So you’re the Einstein here, what do with the...pie?”
“Multiply it times…I don’t need to know this,” Ben groaned.
“Yes you do.”
“You don’t.”
That much was painfully obvious. Lisa said she’d always wanted to find a strong role model for Ben. Dean was only half joking when he asked her when she was going to get around to that.
“Exactly. All the more reason for you to do it. Ben, you don’t want to end up like me.”
“Yeah I do.”
This kid was one of the biggest reasons Lisa should have kicked him to the curb on day one. Instead she had gone on about how Ben should look up to him and the kid was doing it. The whole thing scared the crap out of Dean. He was nothing, but a walking, talking cautionary tale.
“A barely employable nutcase who knows a boat load of diddly-sqaut? Yeah, I’m what everybody wants to be when they grow up.”
For the first time Ben did look at him like he was stupid. “Dude, you saved the world and you know like everything about hunting. That’s the coolest job in the whole world.”
The horror that flashed over Dean’s face was only a sampling of the terror he felt. Those were right next to the last words he’d ever wanted to hear come out of his son’s mouth. He remained silent as he tried to force himself to relax before replying. When he spoke, his tone was low.
“Let’s get something straight here. I didn’t save the world. My brother did. And hunting, it’s not a job. It’s...it don’t matter what it is because you ain’t touching it. Not now, not ever. You hear me?” When Ben’s stunned eyes just kept staring up at him, Dean realized that his voice hadn’t been as composed as he wanted to think. “Ben, look, I...”
The chirping of the doorbell saved him from coming up with words he didn’t have. Dean pushed back his chair and made a grateful dash for the front door. Whatever was knocking couldn’t be worse than whatever had been about to come out of his mouth. Demons didn’t tend to knock and he had a devil’s trap to filter out the ones who did.
Before he left the kitchen, he stopped and looked back to his son. The last thing he wanted was for Ben to think he’d done something wrong. Ben wasn’t the problem here. “You’re gonna be a hell of a better man than I am.”
“Dean?” Lisa called.
“I got it,” he called back. Dean stopped on the way to the door to look up the stairs and send Lisa a thumbs up. “It’s all good.”
It was probably Sid coming over to share the obvious fact that there was no point in showing up to work tomorrow. Even while he told himself that, Dean couldn’t help but tense as he unlocked the deadbolt and turned the door handle.
At first he didn’t see anyone. When he looked down he saw the boy standing on the steps. He looked around Ben’s age, but Dean didn’t recognize him as one of the neighbor kids. The boy was a gangly mess, all arms and legs, with piercing blue eyes, pale skin and closely cropped sandy blond hair.
The poor kid looked royally freaked. He stood frozen, staring blankly up at Dean. Old instinct kicked in. Dean moved forward to protect the child only to have the boy stumble backwards. When the kid nearly tripped over a clear plastic bag filled with boxes of cookies Dean realized the boy wasn’t running from monsters. He just wasn’t cut out to be a door-to-door salesman.
While it was that time of the year, Dean wasn’t sure what kind of parent let their son sell cookies during what might as well have been a monsoon. The rain pelted down sideways against the frail looking boy, who wasn’t even wearing a coat and had to be soaked to the bone.
“Just the man we were waiting for,” Dean said as he stepped aside. “Come on in.”
The boy stiffly shook his head, his eyes still wide. Dean was about to insist until he realized his need to get the kid some place warm was probably coming off creepy. There was no way he’d want Ben walking into some strange guy’s house. Of course he wouldn’t let Ben go door to door to begin with.
Dean’s brow creased as he leaned down to get a better look at the boxes. It wasn’t unusual for kids to come around selling Girl Scout cookies, but it was weird for boys to do it. He lifted one of the boxes from the bag and showed it to the boy.
“Seriously? Did you beat up some Brownie and steal her cookies?”
While it was mostly meant as a joke, the boy looked mortified. “No...no, sir. They were donations.”
Dean leaned forward and whispered, “Between you and me, some Brownies deserve it.”
He cracked a smile to try to lighten the kid up, but having moved in closer just let him see that the kid was shaking whether it was from cold or fear. Obviously he wasn’t going to cheer the boy up, the least he could do was buy some cookies.
“Tagalongs or Thin Mints?” Dean called over his shoulder.
When Ben and Lisa’s opposing answers came almost simultaneously Dean shrugged to the boy. “I guess we’re gonna be big spenders. One of each.” While he pulled out his wallet he gave another glance to the bag. “You going home once you sell all those?” The kid gave a little nod. “I’ll buy you out.”
The boy looked shocked and confused, but after a moment hesitantly dropped the bag inside the doorway. “What awesome cause are we supporting?” Dean asked as he surveyed his bounty.
“St. Peters Church.”
“Church? Super.” Dean tried his best not to make a face. He counted the boxes and pulled out the cash, he held it out to the kid but waited for the boy to meet his eyes before releasing his hold on the bills. “Okay, but word of advice.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Never trust an angel.”
The boy accepted the money, but wrinkled his face. “Uh...yes sir.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Dean replied as he stood back to his full height. “Hey, do you live close? If you need to call someone...”
“I’m fine, Mr. Winchester.”
The boy rushed down the front steps as fast as his feet could carry him. He stopped at the bottom to stare back up at Dean while the rain cascaded down over him. It almost looked like he was going to say something, but he took off down the street instead.
Dean pressed his lips into a thin line as he watched the boy run out of sight. Shaking his head, he locked the door back up and returned to the kitchen with his stash. At the sight of the bag, Ben’s solemn face lit up. He popped out of his chair and rushed over to Dean.
“Man, you hit the mother load!” Ben shouted excitedly.
“What are you boys up to down there?” Lisa asked from the top of the stairs.
“Dean bought a whole truck of cookies!” Ben called back before Dean’s ‘nothing’ could leave his mouth.
One way or another he was going to win himself a spot on the sofa tonight. He tried not to look guilty when Lisa walked in with Mary cuddled in her arms. For a long moment she stood there looking between the pile of cookie boxes and Dean.
“What exactly are we doing with all these cookies?” she asked.
“Eating them?” Dean fished out a box of Thin Mints and handed them to Lisa while Ben dug into the Tagalongs. When Lisa’s look didn’t let up, Dean let out an exasperated sigh. “I know, okay? But the kid was soaking wet and...”
Before Dean could finish, Lisa gave him another one of her confounding, random kisses. “God, I love you.”
“Uh...I love you to,” Dean replied in confusion. He rubbed the back of his head. “So we’re good?”
“We’re great.” Mary apparently disagreed and suddenly turned on the waterworks. “Everyone not in a dirty diaper is great,” Lisa corrected. “Duty calls.” She raised her brows to Dean before turning to leave. “Please don’t let Ben eat that entire box of cookies.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
With Lisa heading back up the stairs, Dean returned to his seat at the table with a box of Do-Si-Dos. Ben watched him warily like he thought Dean was planning on confiscating his cookies. Dean waved him off.
“She doesn’t know how many boxes there are,” Dean replied with a mouthful of cookie. “She won’t notice if a few are missing. Just save room for dinner or she is gonna take it out of my ass.” Dean poured a pile of the cookies on the table, pushed some of his towards Ben before pointing back to the textbook.
“Come on, read the question again. Better yet, flip to the back and see what kind of answer we’re shooting for.”
“Already tried. Some son of a bitch cut out the answers,” Ben replied. “I know something is going on.”
Dean slowly looked up from the textbook when he realized that Ben had changed the subject. “What?”
“You’re all worried again. Something is going to happen and I can help.”
“Everything’s cool. Now show me how to kick this cylinder in the ass then I’ll show you how to make spaghetti sauce alla Winchester.” The silence lingered long enough that Dean shot the boy a sideways look. “Ben...”
His son grumbled something Dean chose not to hear before reading the question again. While he listened, Dean looked past the kitchen blinds to the ceaseless driving rain that hammered against the window. Ben was right. Something was coming. Dean just wished he knew what it was.
Continue to Chapter 4
Summary: Two years after losing his brother, Dean has settled down and started a new family, but he’s never forgotten the family he left behind and his past has not forgotten him.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, ritual abuse and nudity with children present, but not involved. Distorted uses of biblical quotes/Christian doctrine/ceremony.
Spoilers: Through early Season 6
Word Count: 2,760 for this chapter
Author’s Note: Diverges from canon about two minutes before the end of ‘Swan Song’ (no Sam spying on Dean and Lisa).
Written for spn_reversebang. The beautiful art featured along with this story was illustrated by puguita, whose art prompt and bountiful creativity inspired the story. All her illustrations can be found together at the art master post.
A million worlds of thanks to the truly awesome agent_jl36 and ebony_quill for their scene edits and the tremendously kind durtydeefla82 for taking the time to do a read through and edits for the whole shebang on extremely short notice.
The story master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 2
Dean’s partial confession to Lisa had completely backfired. Instead of getting her off his back, she was all the more intent on hovering. If he’d been completely honest the only problem would be that she was wasting her time. He hadn’t lied, but he might have omitted a few key details. Something was coming, he didn’t know what, but he could feel it.
Another white lie had earned him a hall pass. Finally he was alone in the garage under the guise of working on the Impala. The truth was he hadn’t touched the Impala since he’d parked her in here years earlier, and he wasn’t about to now.
Lisa thought she knew what the car meant to him and that if he could bear to look at it then he would suddenly be whole again. He let her think that because it hurt too much to explain the truth.
Instead of popping the hood, he dug through an unlabeled cardboard box that summed up his life, but was relegated to the garage. It didn’t matter that it was everything he had been. He had to be something else now.
It wasn’t bad. If Sam wasn’t suffering, things would actually be good. That was how he knew everything was about to go to hell. Good things didn’t just keep on happening, not to him. Any minute it was all going to hit the fan and he wasn’t going to let himself be blindsided again.
His fingers ran over the familiar suede of Dad’s journal. Muscle memory let him immediately flip to any particular entry. He knew the entire journal by heart. Still he clung to a fading hope that he would this time find the secret he’d missed the last hundred times he’d combed line by line through Dad’s jumbled writings.
At the click of the garage doorknob turning, Dean slammed the journal closed. He didn’t have time to pretend to be working before the door opened. A touch of relief washed over him when he saw Ben standing in the doorway.
“You need something, sport?” Dean asked.
“Dinner?”
“Right.” Dean pulled back the flaps of the box and hid the journal beneath Dad’s old jacket. His hand lingered on the worn leather before he shoved the box back onto the shelf. “Did you finish your homework?”
“It’s too hard. I’ll figure it out later,” Ben mumbled. “What’s in the book?”
“Nothing. It’s just...whoa, back it up. Since when do we just give up on something?”
Ben plopped down on the garage steps, frustration coming off him in waves. “It’s just stupid stuff I’m never gonna use.”
Dean scratched his head. “Well, yeah, probably - that’s school.”
He’d made that point himself more than once and the problem was that he’d been right, at least until a couple of years ago. Now he was left barely able to scrounge a decent living and it sure as hell wasn’t a family wage. There had been more than a few months he’d had to hustle on the side, especially lately with Lisa on maternity leave.
“Half of it’s a bunch of useless crap,” Dean continued, “the other half is good stuff. Problem is you don’t know what you need to know until you need to know it. Homework then dinner.”
Ben put his elbow on his knees and rested his chin in his hands. “I can’t do it.”
“Hey, dude, come on. You can do anything. Did you have Mom look at it?”
Dean cringed at Ben’s dry chuckle. He was pretty sure he was guilty of unintentionally teaching the kid that. “Mom’s too busy with Mary. She doesn’t even know I exist anymore.”
“Come on, you know that’s not true. You gotta give her a break. How about I give it a shot?”
Ben looked rightfully skeptical, but hopped up from the steps and headed back inside. Before he even settled down in the chair beside Ben, Dean knew this was going to go badly. He hadn’t bothered with textbooks since junior high, had been elated to see a big red ‘C’ staring up at him when a teacher passed him back an assignment and indifferent if the letter came later in the alphabet.
“Can’t be that bad,” Dean said when he got a look at the opened book. “It’s got pictures.”
After staring at it for a few moments longer he realized it was math. Geometry. Fantastic. Sam would have a field day with this crap, but Dean’s eyes were glazing over and he hadn’t even made it past the first line of instructions. It wouldn’t matter if he had slept, it would still look as Greek as that damn Latin book.
“This is freakin’ America. Who the hell uses centimeters?”
“Scientists,” Ben said as he scooted his chair in. “It’s a universal measurement or some crap.”
Dean looked up from the book to raise a brow to Ben. “Don’t say ‘crap’.”
“Why not? You do.”
“Good enough reason not to.” At Ben’s questioning look Dean gave a smirk. “You start talking like me, who do you think Mom is coming after?”
Ben gave a little smile until his eyes returned to the textbook. He folded his arms on the table and dropped his head down on them. So far Dean was failing as a tutor. They hadn’t even looked at the assignment and he was already losing the kid. Dean shook Ben’s shoulder and tapped the book.
“Hey, stay with me here. Okay so...uh...‘calculate the cylinder volume in cubic centimeters’.”
Silence hung between them as they both stared at the evil sentence. A better question than how was why. If he needed to know how much something held he just filled it up until it was full, he didn’t pull out a damn calculator and encyclopedia.
Dean read through the instructions a couple more times before pointing. “I guess we just take this Enochian looking thing and...”
“Pi.”
“Pie might help,” Dean agreed. His stomach had just remembered he’d only eaten enough at breakfast to appease Lisa. “Maybe we should do dinner first.”
“No, I mean that thing,” Ben said as he pointed at the symbol, “it’s pi - 3.1416.”
If it was possible, Dean’s eyes glazed over all the more. He thought they were doing geometry, not geography. Maybe Ben also had geography homework. Dean sucked a lot less at that.
“And that’s a coordinate for...?”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s pi.”
“Wow. Okay. No idea what you just said, but okay.” Dean shifted in his chair and gave up on staring dumbly at the book, instead looking to Ben. “So you’re the Einstein here, what do with the...pie?”
“Multiply it times…I don’t need to know this,” Ben groaned.
“Yes you do.”
“You don’t.”
That much was painfully obvious. Lisa said she’d always wanted to find a strong role model for Ben. Dean was only half joking when he asked her when she was going to get around to that.
“Exactly. All the more reason for you to do it. Ben, you don’t want to end up like me.”
“Yeah I do.”
This kid was one of the biggest reasons Lisa should have kicked him to the curb on day one. Instead she had gone on about how Ben should look up to him and the kid was doing it. The whole thing scared the crap out of Dean. He was nothing, but a walking, talking cautionary tale.
“A barely employable nutcase who knows a boat load of diddly-sqaut? Yeah, I’m what everybody wants to be when they grow up.”
For the first time Ben did look at him like he was stupid. “Dude, you saved the world and you know like everything about hunting. That’s the coolest job in the whole world.”
The horror that flashed over Dean’s face was only a sampling of the terror he felt. Those were right next to the last words he’d ever wanted to hear come out of his son’s mouth. He remained silent as he tried to force himself to relax before replying. When he spoke, his tone was low.
“Let’s get something straight here. I didn’t save the world. My brother did. And hunting, it’s not a job. It’s...it don’t matter what it is because you ain’t touching it. Not now, not ever. You hear me?” When Ben’s stunned eyes just kept staring up at him, Dean realized that his voice hadn’t been as composed as he wanted to think. “Ben, look, I...”
The chirping of the doorbell saved him from coming up with words he didn’t have. Dean pushed back his chair and made a grateful dash for the front door. Whatever was knocking couldn’t be worse than whatever had been about to come out of his mouth. Demons didn’t tend to knock and he had a devil’s trap to filter out the ones who did.
Before he left the kitchen, he stopped and looked back to his son. The last thing he wanted was for Ben to think he’d done something wrong. Ben wasn’t the problem here. “You’re gonna be a hell of a better man than I am.”
“Dean?” Lisa called.
“I got it,” he called back. Dean stopped on the way to the door to look up the stairs and send Lisa a thumbs up. “It’s all good.”
It was probably Sid coming over to share the obvious fact that there was no point in showing up to work tomorrow. Even while he told himself that, Dean couldn’t help but tense as he unlocked the deadbolt and turned the door handle.
At first he didn’t see anyone. When he looked down he saw the boy standing on the steps. He looked around Ben’s age, but Dean didn’t recognize him as one of the neighbor kids. The boy was a gangly mess, all arms and legs, with piercing blue eyes, pale skin and closely cropped sandy blond hair.
The poor kid looked royally freaked. He stood frozen, staring blankly up at Dean. Old instinct kicked in. Dean moved forward to protect the child only to have the boy stumble backwards. When the kid nearly tripped over a clear plastic bag filled with boxes of cookies Dean realized the boy wasn’t running from monsters. He just wasn’t cut out to be a door-to-door salesman.
While it was that time of the year, Dean wasn’t sure what kind of parent let their son sell cookies during what might as well have been a monsoon. The rain pelted down sideways against the frail looking boy, who wasn’t even wearing a coat and had to be soaked to the bone.
“Just the man we were waiting for,” Dean said as he stepped aside. “Come on in.”
The boy stiffly shook his head, his eyes still wide. Dean was about to insist until he realized his need to get the kid some place warm was probably coming off creepy. There was no way he’d want Ben walking into some strange guy’s house. Of course he wouldn’t let Ben go door to door to begin with.
Dean’s brow creased as he leaned down to get a better look at the boxes. It wasn’t unusual for kids to come around selling Girl Scout cookies, but it was weird for boys to do it. He lifted one of the boxes from the bag and showed it to the boy.
“Seriously? Did you beat up some Brownie and steal her cookies?”
While it was mostly meant as a joke, the boy looked mortified. “No...no, sir. They were donations.”
Dean leaned forward and whispered, “Between you and me, some Brownies deserve it.”
He cracked a smile to try to lighten the kid up, but having moved in closer just let him see that the kid was shaking whether it was from cold or fear. Obviously he wasn’t going to cheer the boy up, the least he could do was buy some cookies.
“Tagalongs or Thin Mints?” Dean called over his shoulder.
When Ben and Lisa’s opposing answers came almost simultaneously Dean shrugged to the boy. “I guess we’re gonna be big spenders. One of each.” While he pulled out his wallet he gave another glance to the bag. “You going home once you sell all those?” The kid gave a little nod. “I’ll buy you out.”
The boy looked shocked and confused, but after a moment hesitantly dropped the bag inside the doorway. “What awesome cause are we supporting?” Dean asked as he surveyed his bounty.
“St. Peters Church.”
“Church? Super.” Dean tried his best not to make a face. He counted the boxes and pulled out the cash, he held it out to the kid but waited for the boy to meet his eyes before releasing his hold on the bills. “Okay, but word of advice.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Never trust an angel.”
The boy accepted the money, but wrinkled his face. “Uh...yes sir.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Dean replied as he stood back to his full height. “Hey, do you live close? If you need to call someone...”
“I’m fine, Mr. Winchester.”
The boy rushed down the front steps as fast as his feet could carry him. He stopped at the bottom to stare back up at Dean while the rain cascaded down over him. It almost looked like he was going to say something, but he took off down the street instead.
Dean pressed his lips into a thin line as he watched the boy run out of sight. Shaking his head, he locked the door back up and returned to the kitchen with his stash. At the sight of the bag, Ben’s solemn face lit up. He popped out of his chair and rushed over to Dean.
“Man, you hit the mother load!” Ben shouted excitedly.
“What are you boys up to down there?” Lisa asked from the top of the stairs.
“Dean bought a whole truck of cookies!” Ben called back before Dean’s ‘nothing’ could leave his mouth.
One way or another he was going to win himself a spot on the sofa tonight. He tried not to look guilty when Lisa walked in with Mary cuddled in her arms. For a long moment she stood there looking between the pile of cookie boxes and Dean.
“What exactly are we doing with all these cookies?” she asked.
“Eating them?” Dean fished out a box of Thin Mints and handed them to Lisa while Ben dug into the Tagalongs. When Lisa’s look didn’t let up, Dean let out an exasperated sigh. “I know, okay? But the kid was soaking wet and...”
Before Dean could finish, Lisa gave him another one of her confounding, random kisses. “God, I love you.”
“Uh...I love you to,” Dean replied in confusion. He rubbed the back of his head. “So we’re good?”
“We’re great.” Mary apparently disagreed and suddenly turned on the waterworks. “Everyone not in a dirty diaper is great,” Lisa corrected. “Duty calls.” She raised her brows to Dean before turning to leave. “Please don’t let Ben eat that entire box of cookies.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
With Lisa heading back up the stairs, Dean returned to his seat at the table with a box of Do-Si-Dos. Ben watched him warily like he thought Dean was planning on confiscating his cookies. Dean waved him off.
“She doesn’t know how many boxes there are,” Dean replied with a mouthful of cookie. “She won’t notice if a few are missing. Just save room for dinner or she is gonna take it out of my ass.” Dean poured a pile of the cookies on the table, pushed some of his towards Ben before pointing back to the textbook.
“Come on, read the question again. Better yet, flip to the back and see what kind of answer we’re shooting for.”
“Already tried. Some son of a bitch cut out the answers,” Ben replied. “I know something is going on.”
Dean slowly looked up from the textbook when he realized that Ben had changed the subject. “What?”
“You’re all worried again. Something is going to happen and I can help.”
“Everything’s cool. Now show me how to kick this cylinder in the ass then I’ll show you how to make spaghetti sauce alla Winchester.” The silence lingered long enough that Dean shot the boy a sideways look. “Ben...”
His son grumbled something Dean chose not to hear before reading the question again. While he listened, Dean looked past the kitchen blinds to the ceaseless driving rain that hammered against the window. Ben was right. Something was coming. Dean just wished he knew what it was.
Continue to Chapter 4