Become As Little Children
Title: Become As Little Children (or more scenes from an alternate universe wherein Sam stole the Winchester boys in 1987)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 4,335
Spoilers: Vague, but for all aired episodes.
Warnings: Language, briefly mentioned child abuse, briefly mentioned neglect.
Summary: More from the world of " Reverse Engineering" if Sam had stayed. Previously played with this verse in " The Competitive Exclusion Principle States." So I guess it's a verse now?
Neurotic author's notes: Merry Christmas, Christmas-celebrators! This is my gift to you. These are the scenes I wrote to make myself happy during finals week, and now I've only just had time to post them (I got home Friday night, and this is the first moment I've actually had to myself!). As with before, please ignore any timey-wimey implications of this--Sam changed history and the Winchesters as they existed before that are gone, I'm thinking. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
Also: The title is from the Bible, from Matthew 18:3: "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The cut text is from Seneca (Hercules Furens).
Dean still won’t eat a full meal. It doesn’t matter if Sam piles his plate with his favorites, if he and Sammy have stuffed themselves. He picks at his food, pushes it around his plate, jumps his fries and mashed potatoes and other treats on Sammy’s. Sam tries to talk to him about it, but he’s dismissed with a diminutive series of “yes sir”s and “no sir”s that lead to nothing.
He is also still convinced he’s stupid, though settling down at one address (or in one school district, Sam tells himself, as he’s determined to get them out of the tiny apartment as soon as he possibly can) seems to have had a positive effect on his schoolwork. He still struggles with reading, but tries anyways, and more than once Sam has happened upon Dean reading Sammy’s little kid books aloud, stumbling torturously though the bigger words, sometimes with Sammy listening absently as he plays, sometimes by himself. His grades in math, however, are excellent, and the reading is improving, slowly but surely. Nonetheless, he maintains, with apologetic insistence, that he is stupid.
That’s the other things-he’s always apologizing. He’s sorry He’s sorry he’s not very hungry. He’s sorry Sammy is fussy. He’s sorry he’s behind in school, and that Sam’s alarm clock didn’t go off one morning, and that there’s traffic, and that his shoes are falling apart. It doesn’t matter how many times Sam tells him gently that it’s alright, and he doesn’t need to keep apologizing. Dean is either apologizing or spoiling for a fight, surly and sulky and, once, in a memorable argument about whether or not Dean is qualified to watch Sammy by himself while Sam’s at work, daring Sam to just hit him already, hollering and red in the face. Sam doesn’t remember this temper from when they were small, but he does remember the fierce protective fervor that always defined his relationship with Dean.
It’s the temper that earns Sam a phone call from Dean’s teacher. “I’d like to having a meeting regarding Dean,” she says, which tells Sam this is the sort of conversation she isn’t comfortable having over the phone, which gets him vibrating with a nervous energy and an overwhelming desire to pack up and run, which he supposes is a souvenir of the Winchester childhood.
But he goes anyways, and Dean’s teacher, a Ms. Lilly Draper, who is younger than he is and delicate and bony greats him with an awkward little, “Hello, Mr. Richardson,” which gets Sam frantically mentally rehearsing his lies one more time.
He’s Sam Richardson, and he has two little boys. He’d thought perhaps he could play himself off as an uncle, but the startling physical resemblance between him and Sam Jr.-as Larissa, his landlady-cum-babysitter calls him-seems to have cinched it. There is a vague understanding that Something Bad happened to the Richardson family, and that mom is not in the picture anymore. Sam could spend a longtime agonizing over the parallels between himself and his father in this regard, but he doesn’t, instead installs the boys in a permanent home with some modicum of stability and learns, for the first time, what it is to be poor and honest.
The boys are used to lying and though they never outright endorse the going theory, they don’t drag Sam into trouble by asking for their real father or pointing out that they only met him a few months ago. Sam is pretty sure Dean’s teachers have come to understand, by deduction or gossip, that Sam has only recently gained custody of his sons, and Sam knows for a fact that Larissa believes they were living with some “bad news” before Sam came along. For their part, the three lost Winchesters-or Richardsons, as it were-keep largely quiet, and allow their story to be shaped by those around them. Sam remembers that from when they were small pretty well, the parade of well-meaning teachers and neighbors and caretakers and friends.
“Hello,” he says, and she asks him to sit down.
“Dean isn’t normally violent,” she begins, and Sam reconsiders his decision not to pack up and run. “In fact,” she continued, “he’s mild to a fault, mostly. Never speaks up in class and if I call on him I don’t get much of a response. He’s not really socializing, which is-look.” She takes a deep breath, apparently taking Sam’s apprehension for impatience. “He’s a very smart boy, and I think very kind as well, but he doesn’t interact much with the other kids. I don’t know what his school situation was before this, but no matter what he tells you he is catching up just fine. He’s quite prone to putting himself down.”
“Don’t I know it,” says Sam, and she gives him a strange look.
“Anyways he’s-I have no idea what it was about, neither boy will tell me, but he’s been in a fight.” Sam’s mouth drops open and he’s pretty sure Miss Lilly Draper knew this would come as news to him. “He hasn’t been suspended this time, but it was-Dean’s propensity for violence has us all a little concerned. It seems like that may be his first reaction to distress.” She’s giving him this very strange look, now, and it takes Sam longer than it should to figure out it’s the “do you hit your kids?” look. Well. Shit.
“Dean is-Dean-” He stops, takes a breath, arranges his story. Composes himself. “It’s a complicated story, Ms. Draper, but Dean grew up with-has been exposed to a lot of violence,” Sam finishes lamely. “I mean up until now, the only answer to stress he’s ever witnessed firsthand is alcohol and violence. He doesn’t know how to process something without getting angry. If he’s acting out it’s probably because it’s all he knows?” Sam stops, realizes who he’s talking to, the look Lilly Draper is giving him. He swallows. Fixes her with the big, misty eyes, and tries, though he knows better, to make her understand him.
“I haven’t had Dean and Sammy for long,” he says, “only a few months. I-I won’t trouble you with the details,” he says, borrowing a phrase his father used to patch the holes in countless lies, “but suffice to say they were in a bad situation and I got them out. Dean is-dealing. But he doesn’t have much experience in…that,” Sam finishes lamely, and the look on Lilly’s face told him he’s won.
“I understand, Mr. Richardson. I…I won’t pry,” she says, “but please do talk to Dean. And know there are resources here, at the school, if Dean needs them.”
Sam nods, ducks out as soon as he can, goes to get Sammy at daycare a few hours early. He’s taken the day off his day job and tonight’s his night off. Sammy gives a surprised little squeal when Sam shows up just as they’re putting the matts away after nap time and toddles over, grins toothily and allows himself to be scooped up.
“Hi, big Sam!” he sing-songs, and Sam gives him an appreciative jostle.
“Hey, Sammy,” he says, “how about you and me hang out for a little bit, then go and get Dean?”
Sammy lights up at this possibility, as he normally doesn’t get to pick Dean up, and by three o’clock Dean is just as delighted to find his brother waiting for him. Once they get home, Sam tells Dean to get a head start on his homework, because they’re going out tonight (or going to McDonalds and getting milkshakes, as the case may be, because Sam is broke as hell), and Dean gives him a wary look but Sammy is bouncing off the walls so he does as he’s told.
Sam waits until Sammy is engrossed in cartoons before he goes over to Dean and asks in a low voice if he got into a fight.
Dean stops fidgeting with his pencil and folds into himself immediately, tucking his chin to his chest and nodding minutely. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, too ashamed, evidently, to lie.
Sam wants to tell him it’s okay, wants to ask him what the hell else he would know to do, raised as he was and taken so suddenly into such a new, strange situation, but he holds his tongue. He’s got to get this right.
“What was the fight about?” he asks, setting a hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean starts but neither pulls away.
“Chris was sayin’ I looked dumb, and tha’ we lived in a dump, and I-and I-” He breaks off, hugs his knees, and Sam doesn’t want to encourage fighting or make Dean think this is okay but he can’t help it-he reaches out and pulls Dean, shocked into pliancy, into his lap.
“It’s okay,” Sam tells him, as the kid goes stiff and wary in his arms, “I’m not angry, Dean, I won’t hurt you-but you can’t-hurt people either. Dean. Do you get that? It’s not-I know, okay. I know how it is, with your dad, how it was, okay, but you. You don’t want that, you don’t, okay, that’s the part I was-”
He stops when he realizes Dean is hugging him back. Dean tends to shy away from physical contact that isn’t Sammy. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, three or four times while Sam rubs his back.
“Don’t be,” says Sam helplessly, “please, Dean, don’t be.”
:::
Sam decides to send his letter to Bobby on Christmas day, after he and the boys have unwrapped their smattering of gifts-three or four each from Sam to Dean and Sammy, little things from the Goodwill, crayon drawings from Sammy to Dean and Sam, small clay trinkets made in art class and wrapped in newspaper from Dean to the Sams-and he’s surprised them with his meager approximation of a Christmas meal (Sloppy Joes and a box of donuts).
Sam fingers the small, misshapen clay dog Dean has given him (Sammy got a tiger) and considers his letter to Bobby in full. It’s more or less his memoir, he realizes, skimming page after handwritten page detailing who he is and what he’s doing. It’s a diary, as well, with snippets added on since he first wrote it-Dean gets these nightmares, Sammy’s got a speech impediment, today Dean kicked my shin, once during his bath Sammy asked me if I was an angel and you can’t understand yet but that has got to be the sickest thing anyone’s ever asked me.
It’s very little, and Bobby’s loyalty to John, however tainted, runs deep, but he loved the Winchester boys once, and he might again, and this is all Sam’s got. He adds a Christmas greeting and seals the envelope, sets it on the windowsill by the door with his keys so he’ll remember to send it, then settles with the boys to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas on CBS. Sammy, who had been listing against Dean, crawls into his lap in and instant, and Dean’s face is a little pinched until he sees Sam is holding the little clay dog in his hand. Sam snakes a hand over Dean’s shoulders and Dean lets him leave it there.
:::
Dean turns nine on a Sunday, and it’s cold and bright and Sammy remembers first of the three of them. He’s bouncing around the cramped apartment, round little body buzzing with excitement as he sings Hap-pee birfday to Dean, hap-pee birfday to De-an, hap-pee birfday dear Deeeeee-an, hap-pee birfday to you again and again, tripping over the space heater and catching himself without ceasing in his song. Dean’s pink around the ears while Sam grins to himself and makes pancakes.
The phone rings at 11 o’clock and it’s Bobby, which shouldn’t surprise Sam, but it does. Bobby had not replied to Sam’s letter, but by the New Year both boys had received a small smattering of Christmas presents from South Dakota. Sam thinks there in the beginning of an understanding there.
He’s not sure what Dean and Bobby talk about, but the conversation goes on for a long time. Dean crouches in the corner of the kitchen, as far as he can go without stretching the worn phone cord beyond its limits, curls his small fingers around the phone and mumbles a series of “yes sir”s and “uh-huh”s and Sam gives him his privacy, draws Sammy into the happy game of wrapping the present they’d picked out together.
“I made a card,” Sammy announces, presenting Sam with a folded over piece of construction paper with DEAN SAMY written on the front. “’s for Dean,” he clarifies, and Sam nods.
“It’s wonderful, Sammy,” he says, and he means it. There’s something sweet and good and earnest in Sammy, something Sam is not entirely willing to believe existed so wholly within himself at one point. It makes it easier to love the boy, makes the need to protect him all the more pressing. He reaches forward and tickles Sammy’s chin. “Do you think Dean will like his presents?”
“Yes!” cheers Sammy, throwing his arms in the air and exposing his round little tummy as his sweatshirt rides up. Sam tugs it down absently. Sammy is growing again. “He’s gonna like your card ’specially,” says Sammy, “’cause he finks you’re real cool.”
Sam stills, one hand still bracing baby Sammy. This is news. “Really?” he asks, not caring that he sounds like a kid.
“’Course really!” laughs Sammy. “I’m not twicking you!” Sammy’s big on tricks, lately. Always something small and absurd, Dean today I ate twenty pancakes! Big Sam dere’s a bumble bee in your hair! Dean, dere’s a whole lotta snow outside, look! and then a fit of giggles as Dean’s eyes grew wide or Sam batted wildly at his head, a squeal of I twicked you!
“You sure? Not a trick?” Sam asks, giving Sammy’s tummy a little tickle.
“Nope!” laughs Sammy, then he gives a little thrill and says “Dean!” and runs to embrace his brother.
Sam turns to examine the birthday boy. He’s standing still with Sammy hanging off him, his eyes red-rimmed and his nose bright red; he’s been crying, but he isn’t now, and instead he reaches up to give Sammy’s hair a ruffle and, miraculously, smiles at Sam.
That night, after a dinner of cheeseburgers and root beer floats (the splurge was worth it for Dean’s high, clear laughter when Sam and Sammy both turned to him with froth on their noses), after Sammy’s in bed, Dean and Sam are sitting in front of the TV, watching the news. It’s getting close to Dean’s bedtime, but for his birthday, this once, Sam decides it’s okay that they stay up and watch.
Dean is sleepy, though, and before long he’s plastered himself to Sam’s side. “Time for bed, buddy?” Sam asks, and Dean kind of nods but makes no effort to get up.
Throwing caution to the wind, Sam twists and pulls the boy into his arms, pulling him up and taking a tottering step towards the boys’ room. He expects Dean to stiffen or squirm away, but instead he lets out a little sigh and wraps both arms and legs around Sam like an octopus. It shocks him, makes him sway and almost stumble, but he can’t, he absolutely cannot, because there’s this boy in his arms and so he can’t fall down.
Sam makes his way to the bedroom slowly, and Dean dozes on, his breath coming in warm little puffs against Sam’s neck. He’s suddenly struck, with something akin to terror, by how very, very small Dean is, light and bony and built like a bird. Logically, he knows Dean will grow, will become a tall, broad man more than capable of defending himself, but in that moment, lowering Dean gently into the bed with his brother, the idea that he would ever be anything but little Dean is absurd, almost painful.
He bends low and presses a tight-lipped kiss to Dean’s temple. Dean gives a little snuffle and rolls towards Sammy, who is curled up with one knuckle in his mouth. It’s overwhelming, suddenly, looking down at these tiny little boys, one wiry and freckled and the other round and serious-faced, fast asleep before him, all his.
“Happy birthday, Dean,” he whispers, then he pulls the blanket up and tucks it more securely around the boys and heads off to bed himself.
:::
Four days after Dean’s birthday a package arrives with an Arizona postmark and it contains three Batman comics, thirty dollars in tens, and birthday card with no annotations beyond Dean- and -Dad. Dean doesn’t say anything, but he keeps it under his pillow.
:::
In early February, Dean has a dream about angels. He doesn’t really seem to think much of it, just tells Sammy-and sort-of Sam, to Sam’s delight-over breakfast that he had a dream with angels in it.
“Did dey sing?” asks Sammy, and Dean says that no, they didn’t.
“Did they talk?” asks Sam, keeping his voice even, and Dean nods.
“One of ’em was big and blue and he said we were goin’ upstairs,” says Dean, and Sam takes a sip of his piping hot coffee and considers this, what it could mean, if it’s some kind of misplaced memory, if they angels really are fucking with him, if it was just a dream. He’s thinking about Cas and the love-some bent and twisted version of love, but love nonetheless-he and Dean had shared; thinking about that love which cannot ever be, now, the Dean and Sam Winchester who will never exist in all their flaws and triumphs, all their courage and their cowardice gone.
“It was a cool dream,” says Dean, and Sam smiles, because he’s glad.
:::
Bobby is a worker of miracles and his primary virtue is that he doesn’t ask too many questions, and so Sam discovers that Jimmy Novak is fourteen years old, an active member of his church’s youth group, madly in love with a girl named Bethany, obsessed with Guns ’n Roses, and lives with his parents and sister in Pontiac. Sam isn’t sure if he should be relieved, but he is.
One night after the boys are in bed Sam screws up his courage and calls the number Bobby provided, the Novaks’.
“Novak residence, Jimmy speaking, how may I direct your call?” says a voice on the other end, that of a fourteen-year-old boy who knows he’s being a little shit, but it’s also Cas’s voice, and something in Sam’s chest is doing somersaults so he hangs up in a hurry, then sits on his couch bed with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him like he’s praying.
Which isn’t actually a bad idea.
“Cas,” he says, aloud, and then, “Castiel, angel of the Lord, I’m just-making sure I haven’t done anything unforgivable.” Nothing happens and Sam lets out a little sigh, feeling stupid. “Just a sign,” he says, “if you’re out there. If you know what I’m talking about. Who I am.”
Nothing happens, but the next day there is, quite inexplicably, an enormous, sleek black feather sticking innocently out of Dean’s careworn little backpack.
:::
Sammy is beginning to learn to read, and Dean and Sam both are absolutely bursting with pride. He’s started taking the simpler books from Dean, now, and Dean lets him, helps him through the tougher words, pushes all the harder on his ths, and now and again Sammy remembers and manages to pronounce the words right.
It’s a Saturday night and Dean is sitting at the base of the couch, doing his math homework and, more often, looking at a comic John got him, and the Sams are on the couch, Sammy in Sam’s lap, sleepily reading himself a bedtime story, as has become his custom.
Sammy drags his fingers over the worn pages of a raggedy library copy of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and when he gets stuck on a word and Sam helps him, he lets out a contented little, “Thanks, Daddy.”
Sam’s first reaction is to be pleased Sammy has managed to say thanks correctly, but the room is suddenly airless and tense as Dean’s whole body stiffens and he turns, slowly, to look at Sammy, whose eyes are wide as he gradually realizes his mistake.
Dean rises slowly, staring at both Sams as they sit there, frozen, caught out. There’s a long, tense moment before Dean’s whole face screws up and he shouts, “You’re so stupid, Sammy!” before turning and dashing into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Sammy sits there, dumbstruck, for a full ten seconds before Dean’s words catch up with him and he begins to cry. Sam sits there for a moment, his arms going around Sammy automatically to comfort him, as what just happens catches up with his brain. Thanks, Daddy.
“Dean!” Sam calls, and he carefully extracts himself from under Sammy before running to the door. It’s locked, which Dean knows isn’t allowed. “Dean, let me in. Dean. Now.”
“Go away!” comes Dean’s muffled voice, pitched at full-on meltdown tantrum. He’s too old for this, Sam thinks with frustration, before rapping on the door.
“Dean! Let me in!”
“NO!” screams Dean, and there’s a dull thunk as he throws something at the door. God, if Dean gets the cops called on them he doesn’t even know what he’s going to do.
Sammy is standing awkwardly in the hallway, wailing, and Sam is jiggling at the cheap lock for all he’s worth while Dean is hurling things at the door and yelling incomprehensibly, and for the first time in a long time Sam feels totally and utterly helpless.
The door gives way just as Sammy begins to calm down, and Dean’s resulting roar of fury only gets Sammy started again. Deciding Dean’s need is greater at this particular moment, Sam plants himself in the doorway and catches Dean as the kid launches himself at Sam, and he’s hollering and crying over Sammy’s babyish wails while Sam is trying to talk him down as calmly as he possibly can and after a moment’s struggle Dean turns to Sammy, still keening in the hallway, and yells, “Just STOP IT!” which somehow shuts everybody up.
In the resounding silence that follows, Sammy sits in the center of the hallway, on the cheap, nubby brown carpet, eyes wide and face blotchy and coated in snot, staring at Sam and Dean, who are frozen in the doorway, Sam with his hands wrapped around Dean’s wrists, Dean beet red in the face and sniffling.
“Don’t cry, Sammy,” says Dean lamely, after a moment, and it’s very nearly funny in its absurd awkwardness, and then Sam drops to his knees and, holding Dean’s wrists fast, says, “Dean, look at me.”
Dean does, after a moment, his jaw set and his chin trembling.
“Calm down, Dean,” says Sam, softly, “let’s go talk for just a second, okay? Just a second.”
Dean allows himself to bed led into the bedroom, allows himself to be hoisted onto the bed next to Sam, allows Sam to put an hand on his knee. Sam’s still thinking about what to say when Dean blurts, “You’re not my dad.”
“I know,” says Sam.
“My dad is cooler than you.”
“Yeah, he probably is.”
“My dad didn’t want me, though.”
Something cold and razor-sharp seems to lance its way straight through Sam’s heart. “That’s not true, Dean,” he says, because he is a bastard to the end and no great defender of John Winchester but he will not allow Dean to believe he was abandoned.
“Well, then what am I doing here?” Dean looks at him then, desperate and sad, and Sam is struck by how mature he suddenly looks, how much like an adult seeking an adult answer.
“I took you,” says Sam, softly, “because your dad, your dad loves you so much, Dean, but he-” Sam stops, takes a deep breath, notes with dismay that Dean’s eyes are shining with tears. “I want to take care of you,” says Sam, eventually, “because you should have somebody who can do that. Who can take care of you. So I am.”
Don’t get mad at me. Don’t you do that. I had to. I had to look out for you. That’s my job.
Dean is looking at him like he’s speaking a language Dean only barely understands, but when Sam reaches out and cups his cheek, he doesn’t flinch away.
“You’re not my dad,” Dean says again.
“Nope,” says Sam, and hopes it’s enough.
“But you’re Sam,” says Dean, and maybe it is.
:::
Rating: PG-13
Words: 4,335
Spoilers: Vague, but for all aired episodes.
Warnings: Language, briefly mentioned child abuse, briefly mentioned neglect.
Summary: More from the world of " Reverse Engineering" if Sam had stayed. Previously played with this verse in " The Competitive Exclusion Principle States." So I guess it's a verse now?
Neurotic author's notes: Merry Christmas, Christmas-celebrators! This is my gift to you. These are the scenes I wrote to make myself happy during finals week, and now I've only just had time to post them (I got home Friday night, and this is the first moment I've actually had to myself!). As with before, please ignore any timey-wimey implications of this--Sam changed history and the Winchesters as they existed before that are gone, I'm thinking. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
Also: The title is from the Bible, from Matthew 18:3: "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The cut text is from Seneca (Hercules Furens).
Dean still won’t eat a full meal. It doesn’t matter if Sam piles his plate with his favorites, if he and Sammy have stuffed themselves. He picks at his food, pushes it around his plate, jumps his fries and mashed potatoes and other treats on Sammy’s. Sam tries to talk to him about it, but he’s dismissed with a diminutive series of “yes sir”s and “no sir”s that lead to nothing.
He is also still convinced he’s stupid, though settling down at one address (or in one school district, Sam tells himself, as he’s determined to get them out of the tiny apartment as soon as he possibly can) seems to have had a positive effect on his schoolwork. He still struggles with reading, but tries anyways, and more than once Sam has happened upon Dean reading Sammy’s little kid books aloud, stumbling torturously though the bigger words, sometimes with Sammy listening absently as he plays, sometimes by himself. His grades in math, however, are excellent, and the reading is improving, slowly but surely. Nonetheless, he maintains, with apologetic insistence, that he is stupid.
That’s the other things-he’s always apologizing. He’s sorry He’s sorry he’s not very hungry. He’s sorry Sammy is fussy. He’s sorry he’s behind in school, and that Sam’s alarm clock didn’t go off one morning, and that there’s traffic, and that his shoes are falling apart. It doesn’t matter how many times Sam tells him gently that it’s alright, and he doesn’t need to keep apologizing. Dean is either apologizing or spoiling for a fight, surly and sulky and, once, in a memorable argument about whether or not Dean is qualified to watch Sammy by himself while Sam’s at work, daring Sam to just hit him already, hollering and red in the face. Sam doesn’t remember this temper from when they were small, but he does remember the fierce protective fervor that always defined his relationship with Dean.
It’s the temper that earns Sam a phone call from Dean’s teacher. “I’d like to having a meeting regarding Dean,” she says, which tells Sam this is the sort of conversation she isn’t comfortable having over the phone, which gets him vibrating with a nervous energy and an overwhelming desire to pack up and run, which he supposes is a souvenir of the Winchester childhood.
But he goes anyways, and Dean’s teacher, a Ms. Lilly Draper, who is younger than he is and delicate and bony greats him with an awkward little, “Hello, Mr. Richardson,” which gets Sam frantically mentally rehearsing his lies one more time.
He’s Sam Richardson, and he has two little boys. He’d thought perhaps he could play himself off as an uncle, but the startling physical resemblance between him and Sam Jr.-as Larissa, his landlady-cum-babysitter calls him-seems to have cinched it. There is a vague understanding that Something Bad happened to the Richardson family, and that mom is not in the picture anymore. Sam could spend a longtime agonizing over the parallels between himself and his father in this regard, but he doesn’t, instead installs the boys in a permanent home with some modicum of stability and learns, for the first time, what it is to be poor and honest.
The boys are used to lying and though they never outright endorse the going theory, they don’t drag Sam into trouble by asking for their real father or pointing out that they only met him a few months ago. Sam is pretty sure Dean’s teachers have come to understand, by deduction or gossip, that Sam has only recently gained custody of his sons, and Sam knows for a fact that Larissa believes they were living with some “bad news” before Sam came along. For their part, the three lost Winchesters-or Richardsons, as it were-keep largely quiet, and allow their story to be shaped by those around them. Sam remembers that from when they were small pretty well, the parade of well-meaning teachers and neighbors and caretakers and friends.
“Hello,” he says, and she asks him to sit down.
“Dean isn’t normally violent,” she begins, and Sam reconsiders his decision not to pack up and run. “In fact,” she continued, “he’s mild to a fault, mostly. Never speaks up in class and if I call on him I don’t get much of a response. He’s not really socializing, which is-look.” She takes a deep breath, apparently taking Sam’s apprehension for impatience. “He’s a very smart boy, and I think very kind as well, but he doesn’t interact much with the other kids. I don’t know what his school situation was before this, but no matter what he tells you he is catching up just fine. He’s quite prone to putting himself down.”
“Don’t I know it,” says Sam, and she gives him a strange look.
“Anyways he’s-I have no idea what it was about, neither boy will tell me, but he’s been in a fight.” Sam’s mouth drops open and he’s pretty sure Miss Lilly Draper knew this would come as news to him. “He hasn’t been suspended this time, but it was-Dean’s propensity for violence has us all a little concerned. It seems like that may be his first reaction to distress.” She’s giving him this very strange look, now, and it takes Sam longer than it should to figure out it’s the “do you hit your kids?” look. Well. Shit.
“Dean is-Dean-” He stops, takes a breath, arranges his story. Composes himself. “It’s a complicated story, Ms. Draper, but Dean grew up with-has been exposed to a lot of violence,” Sam finishes lamely. “I mean up until now, the only answer to stress he’s ever witnessed firsthand is alcohol and violence. He doesn’t know how to process something without getting angry. If he’s acting out it’s probably because it’s all he knows?” Sam stops, realizes who he’s talking to, the look Lilly Draper is giving him. He swallows. Fixes her with the big, misty eyes, and tries, though he knows better, to make her understand him.
“I haven’t had Dean and Sammy for long,” he says, “only a few months. I-I won’t trouble you with the details,” he says, borrowing a phrase his father used to patch the holes in countless lies, “but suffice to say they were in a bad situation and I got them out. Dean is-dealing. But he doesn’t have much experience in…that,” Sam finishes lamely, and the look on Lilly’s face told him he’s won.
“I understand, Mr. Richardson. I…I won’t pry,” she says, “but please do talk to Dean. And know there are resources here, at the school, if Dean needs them.”
Sam nods, ducks out as soon as he can, goes to get Sammy at daycare a few hours early. He’s taken the day off his day job and tonight’s his night off. Sammy gives a surprised little squeal when Sam shows up just as they’re putting the matts away after nap time and toddles over, grins toothily and allows himself to be scooped up.
“Hi, big Sam!” he sing-songs, and Sam gives him an appreciative jostle.
“Hey, Sammy,” he says, “how about you and me hang out for a little bit, then go and get Dean?”
Sammy lights up at this possibility, as he normally doesn’t get to pick Dean up, and by three o’clock Dean is just as delighted to find his brother waiting for him. Once they get home, Sam tells Dean to get a head start on his homework, because they’re going out tonight (or going to McDonalds and getting milkshakes, as the case may be, because Sam is broke as hell), and Dean gives him a wary look but Sammy is bouncing off the walls so he does as he’s told.
Sam waits until Sammy is engrossed in cartoons before he goes over to Dean and asks in a low voice if he got into a fight.
Dean stops fidgeting with his pencil and folds into himself immediately, tucking his chin to his chest and nodding minutely. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, too ashamed, evidently, to lie.
Sam wants to tell him it’s okay, wants to ask him what the hell else he would know to do, raised as he was and taken so suddenly into such a new, strange situation, but he holds his tongue. He’s got to get this right.
“What was the fight about?” he asks, setting a hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean starts but neither pulls away.
“Chris was sayin’ I looked dumb, and tha’ we lived in a dump, and I-and I-” He breaks off, hugs his knees, and Sam doesn’t want to encourage fighting or make Dean think this is okay but he can’t help it-he reaches out and pulls Dean, shocked into pliancy, into his lap.
“It’s okay,” Sam tells him, as the kid goes stiff and wary in his arms, “I’m not angry, Dean, I won’t hurt you-but you can’t-hurt people either. Dean. Do you get that? It’s not-I know, okay. I know how it is, with your dad, how it was, okay, but you. You don’t want that, you don’t, okay, that’s the part I was-”
He stops when he realizes Dean is hugging him back. Dean tends to shy away from physical contact that isn’t Sammy. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, three or four times while Sam rubs his back.
“Don’t be,” says Sam helplessly, “please, Dean, don’t be.”
:::
Sam decides to send his letter to Bobby on Christmas day, after he and the boys have unwrapped their smattering of gifts-three or four each from Sam to Dean and Sammy, little things from the Goodwill, crayon drawings from Sammy to Dean and Sam, small clay trinkets made in art class and wrapped in newspaper from Dean to the Sams-and he’s surprised them with his meager approximation of a Christmas meal (Sloppy Joes and a box of donuts).
Sam fingers the small, misshapen clay dog Dean has given him (Sammy got a tiger) and considers his letter to Bobby in full. It’s more or less his memoir, he realizes, skimming page after handwritten page detailing who he is and what he’s doing. It’s a diary, as well, with snippets added on since he first wrote it-Dean gets these nightmares, Sammy’s got a speech impediment, today Dean kicked my shin, once during his bath Sammy asked me if I was an angel and you can’t understand yet but that has got to be the sickest thing anyone’s ever asked me.
It’s very little, and Bobby’s loyalty to John, however tainted, runs deep, but he loved the Winchester boys once, and he might again, and this is all Sam’s got. He adds a Christmas greeting and seals the envelope, sets it on the windowsill by the door with his keys so he’ll remember to send it, then settles with the boys to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas on CBS. Sammy, who had been listing against Dean, crawls into his lap in and instant, and Dean’s face is a little pinched until he sees Sam is holding the little clay dog in his hand. Sam snakes a hand over Dean’s shoulders and Dean lets him leave it there.
:::
Dean turns nine on a Sunday, and it’s cold and bright and Sammy remembers first of the three of them. He’s bouncing around the cramped apartment, round little body buzzing with excitement as he sings Hap-pee birfday to Dean, hap-pee birfday to De-an, hap-pee birfday dear Deeeeee-an, hap-pee birfday to you again and again, tripping over the space heater and catching himself without ceasing in his song. Dean’s pink around the ears while Sam grins to himself and makes pancakes.
The phone rings at 11 o’clock and it’s Bobby, which shouldn’t surprise Sam, but it does. Bobby had not replied to Sam’s letter, but by the New Year both boys had received a small smattering of Christmas presents from South Dakota. Sam thinks there in the beginning of an understanding there.
He’s not sure what Dean and Bobby talk about, but the conversation goes on for a long time. Dean crouches in the corner of the kitchen, as far as he can go without stretching the worn phone cord beyond its limits, curls his small fingers around the phone and mumbles a series of “yes sir”s and “uh-huh”s and Sam gives him his privacy, draws Sammy into the happy game of wrapping the present they’d picked out together.
“I made a card,” Sammy announces, presenting Sam with a folded over piece of construction paper with DEAN SAMY written on the front. “’s for Dean,” he clarifies, and Sam nods.
“It’s wonderful, Sammy,” he says, and he means it. There’s something sweet and good and earnest in Sammy, something Sam is not entirely willing to believe existed so wholly within himself at one point. It makes it easier to love the boy, makes the need to protect him all the more pressing. He reaches forward and tickles Sammy’s chin. “Do you think Dean will like his presents?”
“Yes!” cheers Sammy, throwing his arms in the air and exposing his round little tummy as his sweatshirt rides up. Sam tugs it down absently. Sammy is growing again. “He’s gonna like your card ’specially,” says Sammy, “’cause he finks you’re real cool.”
Sam stills, one hand still bracing baby Sammy. This is news. “Really?” he asks, not caring that he sounds like a kid.
“’Course really!” laughs Sammy. “I’m not twicking you!” Sammy’s big on tricks, lately. Always something small and absurd, Dean today I ate twenty pancakes! Big Sam dere’s a bumble bee in your hair! Dean, dere’s a whole lotta snow outside, look! and then a fit of giggles as Dean’s eyes grew wide or Sam batted wildly at his head, a squeal of I twicked you!
“You sure? Not a trick?” Sam asks, giving Sammy’s tummy a little tickle.
“Nope!” laughs Sammy, then he gives a little thrill and says “Dean!” and runs to embrace his brother.
Sam turns to examine the birthday boy. He’s standing still with Sammy hanging off him, his eyes red-rimmed and his nose bright red; he’s been crying, but he isn’t now, and instead he reaches up to give Sammy’s hair a ruffle and, miraculously, smiles at Sam.
That night, after a dinner of cheeseburgers and root beer floats (the splurge was worth it for Dean’s high, clear laughter when Sam and Sammy both turned to him with froth on their noses), after Sammy’s in bed, Dean and Sam are sitting in front of the TV, watching the news. It’s getting close to Dean’s bedtime, but for his birthday, this once, Sam decides it’s okay that they stay up and watch.
Dean is sleepy, though, and before long he’s plastered himself to Sam’s side. “Time for bed, buddy?” Sam asks, and Dean kind of nods but makes no effort to get up.
Throwing caution to the wind, Sam twists and pulls the boy into his arms, pulling him up and taking a tottering step towards the boys’ room. He expects Dean to stiffen or squirm away, but instead he lets out a little sigh and wraps both arms and legs around Sam like an octopus. It shocks him, makes him sway and almost stumble, but he can’t, he absolutely cannot, because there’s this boy in his arms and so he can’t fall down.
Sam makes his way to the bedroom slowly, and Dean dozes on, his breath coming in warm little puffs against Sam’s neck. He’s suddenly struck, with something akin to terror, by how very, very small Dean is, light and bony and built like a bird. Logically, he knows Dean will grow, will become a tall, broad man more than capable of defending himself, but in that moment, lowering Dean gently into the bed with his brother, the idea that he would ever be anything but little Dean is absurd, almost painful.
He bends low and presses a tight-lipped kiss to Dean’s temple. Dean gives a little snuffle and rolls towards Sammy, who is curled up with one knuckle in his mouth. It’s overwhelming, suddenly, looking down at these tiny little boys, one wiry and freckled and the other round and serious-faced, fast asleep before him, all his.
“Happy birthday, Dean,” he whispers, then he pulls the blanket up and tucks it more securely around the boys and heads off to bed himself.
:::
Four days after Dean’s birthday a package arrives with an Arizona postmark and it contains three Batman comics, thirty dollars in tens, and birthday card with no annotations beyond Dean- and -Dad. Dean doesn’t say anything, but he keeps it under his pillow.
:::
In early February, Dean has a dream about angels. He doesn’t really seem to think much of it, just tells Sammy-and sort-of Sam, to Sam’s delight-over breakfast that he had a dream with angels in it.
“Did dey sing?” asks Sammy, and Dean says that no, they didn’t.
“Did they talk?” asks Sam, keeping his voice even, and Dean nods.
“One of ’em was big and blue and he said we were goin’ upstairs,” says Dean, and Sam takes a sip of his piping hot coffee and considers this, what it could mean, if it’s some kind of misplaced memory, if they angels really are fucking with him, if it was just a dream. He’s thinking about Cas and the love-some bent and twisted version of love, but love nonetheless-he and Dean had shared; thinking about that love which cannot ever be, now, the Dean and Sam Winchester who will never exist in all their flaws and triumphs, all their courage and their cowardice gone.
“It was a cool dream,” says Dean, and Sam smiles, because he’s glad.
:::
Bobby is a worker of miracles and his primary virtue is that he doesn’t ask too many questions, and so Sam discovers that Jimmy Novak is fourteen years old, an active member of his church’s youth group, madly in love with a girl named Bethany, obsessed with Guns ’n Roses, and lives with his parents and sister in Pontiac. Sam isn’t sure if he should be relieved, but he is.
One night after the boys are in bed Sam screws up his courage and calls the number Bobby provided, the Novaks’.
“Novak residence, Jimmy speaking, how may I direct your call?” says a voice on the other end, that of a fourteen-year-old boy who knows he’s being a little shit, but it’s also Cas’s voice, and something in Sam’s chest is doing somersaults so he hangs up in a hurry, then sits on his couch bed with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him like he’s praying.
Which isn’t actually a bad idea.
“Cas,” he says, aloud, and then, “Castiel, angel of the Lord, I’m just-making sure I haven’t done anything unforgivable.” Nothing happens and Sam lets out a little sigh, feeling stupid. “Just a sign,” he says, “if you’re out there. If you know what I’m talking about. Who I am.”
Nothing happens, but the next day there is, quite inexplicably, an enormous, sleek black feather sticking innocently out of Dean’s careworn little backpack.
:::
Sammy is beginning to learn to read, and Dean and Sam both are absolutely bursting with pride. He’s started taking the simpler books from Dean, now, and Dean lets him, helps him through the tougher words, pushes all the harder on his ths, and now and again Sammy remembers and manages to pronounce the words right.
It’s a Saturday night and Dean is sitting at the base of the couch, doing his math homework and, more often, looking at a comic John got him, and the Sams are on the couch, Sammy in Sam’s lap, sleepily reading himself a bedtime story, as has become his custom.
Sammy drags his fingers over the worn pages of a raggedy library copy of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and when he gets stuck on a word and Sam helps him, he lets out a contented little, “Thanks, Daddy.”
Sam’s first reaction is to be pleased Sammy has managed to say thanks correctly, but the room is suddenly airless and tense as Dean’s whole body stiffens and he turns, slowly, to look at Sammy, whose eyes are wide as he gradually realizes his mistake.
Dean rises slowly, staring at both Sams as they sit there, frozen, caught out. There’s a long, tense moment before Dean’s whole face screws up and he shouts, “You’re so stupid, Sammy!” before turning and dashing into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Sammy sits there, dumbstruck, for a full ten seconds before Dean’s words catch up with him and he begins to cry. Sam sits there for a moment, his arms going around Sammy automatically to comfort him, as what just happens catches up with his brain. Thanks, Daddy.
“Dean!” Sam calls, and he carefully extracts himself from under Sammy before running to the door. It’s locked, which Dean knows isn’t allowed. “Dean, let me in. Dean. Now.”
“Go away!” comes Dean’s muffled voice, pitched at full-on meltdown tantrum. He’s too old for this, Sam thinks with frustration, before rapping on the door.
“Dean! Let me in!”
“NO!” screams Dean, and there’s a dull thunk as he throws something at the door. God, if Dean gets the cops called on them he doesn’t even know what he’s going to do.
Sammy is standing awkwardly in the hallway, wailing, and Sam is jiggling at the cheap lock for all he’s worth while Dean is hurling things at the door and yelling incomprehensibly, and for the first time in a long time Sam feels totally and utterly helpless.
The door gives way just as Sammy begins to calm down, and Dean’s resulting roar of fury only gets Sammy started again. Deciding Dean’s need is greater at this particular moment, Sam plants himself in the doorway and catches Dean as the kid launches himself at Sam, and he’s hollering and crying over Sammy’s babyish wails while Sam is trying to talk him down as calmly as he possibly can and after a moment’s struggle Dean turns to Sammy, still keening in the hallway, and yells, “Just STOP IT!” which somehow shuts everybody up.
In the resounding silence that follows, Sammy sits in the center of the hallway, on the cheap, nubby brown carpet, eyes wide and face blotchy and coated in snot, staring at Sam and Dean, who are frozen in the doorway, Sam with his hands wrapped around Dean’s wrists, Dean beet red in the face and sniffling.
“Don’t cry, Sammy,” says Dean lamely, after a moment, and it’s very nearly funny in its absurd awkwardness, and then Sam drops to his knees and, holding Dean’s wrists fast, says, “Dean, look at me.”
Dean does, after a moment, his jaw set and his chin trembling.
“Calm down, Dean,” says Sam, softly, “let’s go talk for just a second, okay? Just a second.”
Dean allows himself to bed led into the bedroom, allows himself to be hoisted onto the bed next to Sam, allows Sam to put an hand on his knee. Sam’s still thinking about what to say when Dean blurts, “You’re not my dad.”
“I know,” says Sam.
“My dad is cooler than you.”
“Yeah, he probably is.”
“My dad didn’t want me, though.”
Something cold and razor-sharp seems to lance its way straight through Sam’s heart. “That’s not true, Dean,” he says, because he is a bastard to the end and no great defender of John Winchester but he will not allow Dean to believe he was abandoned.
“Well, then what am I doing here?” Dean looks at him then, desperate and sad, and Sam is struck by how mature he suddenly looks, how much like an adult seeking an adult answer.
“I took you,” says Sam, softly, “because your dad, your dad loves you so much, Dean, but he-” Sam stops, takes a deep breath, notes with dismay that Dean’s eyes are shining with tears. “I want to take care of you,” says Sam, eventually, “because you should have somebody who can do that. Who can take care of you. So I am.”
Don’t get mad at me. Don’t you do that. I had to. I had to look out for you. That’s my job.
Dean is looking at him like he’s speaking a language Dean only barely understands, but when Sam reaches out and cups his cheek, he doesn’t flinch away.
“You’re not my dad,” Dean says again.
“Nope,” says Sam, and hopes it’s enough.
“But you’re Sam,” says Dean, and maybe it is.
:::