Gift Exchange: Roll Away Your Stone
Title: Roll Away Your Stone
Author: madlyxxmadd
Gift Recipient: reapertownusa
Gift Type: fic
Rating: g (warning for fluff and slight angsty cuddles)
Spoilers: general for ending of season five
Original Prompt: Dean's Christmas with lisa and ben after losing his brother // hurt/comfort inspired cuddles.
Notes: dear recipient - this story started out as something quite different and was completely redone in the eleventh hour (quite literally, crammed into whatever spare minute I had in the last twenty-four hours). I am not sure if it’s what you wanted, although I hope it pleases in some way. Either way, I wish you a very merry and belated Christmas and hope this little piece of Dean-ness finds you well. :D
The dream starts out the same. A patch of land, inconsequential in all the ways that matter to the mortal world. Sometimes it’s a field, sometimes a graveyard dotted with crumbling headstones; always its autumn, with fallen leaves tossed by the wind and barren limbs pointing like accusing fingers up to a lead-gray sky.
In the middle of the field or the graveyard or wherever stands a figure. It’s familiar from all angles, always, and has been for all his life. It’s Sam, standing with his back to him, standing at the edge of a howling black gash of a hole. It’s the pit, the cage door. Sam stands over it and looks down, always looking down, always caught in the moment before the fall.
There’s no Bobby, no Cas, no Impala, no Michael - there’s just Sam and Dean and the pit, and the space that holds them all.
It’s a nightmare, this dream. A terrible inescapable torture. Every night he’s plagued with this scene, drawn from fragmented memory and the gaping loss. Every night he sees his brother and every night he’s forced to stand witness to the death of his last, once more and again.
Footsteps pound up the stairs. Dean jerks awake mid-dream, the darkness holding on despite the dawn light. He’s swimming in sheets and sweat, his breathing hard and panicked. He can barely see or think and it’s twenty-some-odd years of instinct that kicks in and has him reaching under his pillow for the shotgun that isn’t there anymore just as the door bursts open. Dean blinks and slowly the familiarity of his surroundings surfaces.
This isn’t a monster from his past that stands in the doorway. This is Ben, four feet of barely-contained excitement and tousled brown hair tucked into a pair of Superman pajamas. There’s a grin on his face as wide as the sky.
“Wake up, Dean! It’s Christmas!” He announces too loudly for the time of the day and doesn’t waste a tick of time more before he’s dashed away in a flash of blue and red, down the stairs again.
Dean watches the empty rectangle of space for an incredulous moment and then falls back on the pillows and waits for his heart rate to return to normal. He closes his eyes and focuses on breathing deep, slow, steady. There’s no trying to catch up with sleep again; its long gone. And Christmas, as Ben has reminded him, is a big deal around the Braeden home. Resigning himself to the inevitable, he opens his eyes again to see Lisa standing in the doorway. She’s dressed in her flowered robe, her hair drawn off her neck with a clip. She looks only slightly more awake than Dean feels and holds a mug of something warm in her hands; steam coils into the air.
“I told him not to wake you like that,” she offers as way of apology, coming to sit on the bed.
“Yeah,” Dean pulls himself up and rubs a hand across his face, dislodging the lines of sleep and traces of his fitful night. “Thought I was being attacked by an elephant.”
Lisa laughs. “I‘m sorry. He‘s very excited.“
“Its ok,“ he says, turning the focal point of his current half-awake universe to the cup in her hands and the liquid inside. His eyebrows arch hopefully. “Did you bring me something caffeinated?”
She smiles, handing him the cup of coffee. “Just the way you like it,” she confirms. “I warn you though: it’s a bribe.”
Dean takes a long sip. The bitter warmth blossoms inside him, caffeine jabbing at his arms and legs and tired mind. “Mhmm,” he concurs happily. “Most delicious bribe I‘ve ever tasted.”
Lisa seems to notice something he’s failed to conceal and her eyes crinkle at the edges, a sign of concern he knows well. “Is everything alright? You seemed… restless last night.”
Restless, he muses. Bless Lisa for understating. He looks at her and wonders at the worries churning behind those lovely eyes. For a brief instant he almost tells her what she most certainly already knows but then he draws back, recedes into himself like he’s always done, like he always will.
Dean presents a smile, something that doesn’t quite fill his face but puts a gentle end to the discussion. “I’m fine,” he says and Lisa is too smart to not know it’s a lie but she doesn’t continue it further. She never has.
So she tucks away her worry for another time and leans in to press a kiss to his cheek. “Well then, when you’re ready, come downstairs. I’ve got breakfast started.”
* * *
At the table, Ben fidgets something terrible. He’s already been around the tree three times, inspecting every present with his name on it; the scientific method of shaking was employed on one or two of the more oddly-shaped victims. If he’d had his way, surely the living room would be littered with the corpses of with paper and bows and infuriating plastic packaging, but his mother was adamant: breakfast first. The impatience is plastered all over his face and Dean is supremely amused by the sight.
“Simmer, kid,” he advises. “They say patience is a virtue.” He can’t help his tone or the grin and Ben shoots him a withering glance. Dean buries his mirth in his coffee cup.
Lisa is setting the table and gives her son a stern look. He sits still at that.
The arrangement she’s set out is nice. The placemats are green and red and the china plates are large ridiculous things, adorned with elaborate paintings of holly and pine. Dean remembers when she took them out of their box from the attic. They were a set her mother had given to her years ago and she’d never had the occasion to use them. He remembers the way her cheeks tinted pink when she admitted that, although they were quite ugly, she really wanted to use them on their “first Christmas“.
Dean had liked the sound of that too much to argue.
Outside, snow is falling. Fat, white flakes that pile on the hood of his truck and drift across the front yard and into the street. Inside, the smell of breakfast fills the warmth of the kitchen. Nat King Cole croons softly in the background about chestnuts and reindeer. Covered dishes call to the senses and Dean’s stomach grumbles in spite of his best intentions. He is about to dig in to the nearest plate when Lisa’s hand reaches over to take his, her other closing around Ben’s.
“Will you say grace?” she asks, and Dean feels suddenly as though the air has been kicked from his chest.
A million memories sputter to life inside his mind. They are like live wires, severed and sparking, threatening to scorch and burn and hurt. Anger rears its head - anger born from countless futile supplications, unheeded cries in the darkest of the night. No one had answered. No one would answer. He’d promised himself no more.
So he tells her no, and the word comes out harsher than he means. She takes it in stride somehow, Lisa does, with a reassuring squeeze of his hand even, as if she knows, as if she’s heard.
She bows her head and thanks the Lord for the food and the company and the time they have together. Dean listens but doesn’t hear. They are good words from a good faithful heart but he turns away from their sound. He cannot bear to be near them.
* * *
They are settled in the living room. Dean and Lisa on the couch and Ben on the floor, staring, enraptured-like, at the tree and it’s splendor beneath. His eyes are near as wide as saucers, the childlike wonder unmovable within him. Dean likes to see him shine like that; if there was a time he ever felt the same as Ben looked, he can’t remember it.
Ben is playing Santa, he says, and digs into the mountain of presents, separating them in individual piles: one for his mother, one for Dean, one for himself. Lisa helps him with the bigger boxes and Dean watches them wistfully. Somehow he is aware that he is a part of their laughter, joined now in their traditions of the holiday, together with them in the normalcy of this life. And yet somehow he feels so disconnected from it. Like he’s watching from a window in his mind.
Dean can count the number of real honest-to-goodness Christmases he’s had on one hand. And that isn’t a bad thing, he decides, it just is what it is. But still, his exceptionally whacked out childhood and subsequent life has left him feeling inadequate. He could rattle off a hundred or so supernatural facts about Christmas -lore, pagan gods, rituals, myths, urban legends- but he would be hard pressed to share a single detail about the celebrating of the holiday itself. Of course he’s seen movies and TV specials, so he has the general idea. But sitting here, in this room, surrounded by it all, was a completely different thing. In ways it was overwhelming.
And he knows he should be used to all this. He knows. It is after all just another facet to this new life. But it hasn’t been easy. And some things are harder than others. Some come with sadness and regret. Some come with doors he’s not ready to open yet.
Lisa hefts a present with mock strain. Ben rolls his eyes and they both laugh. She points out a small oblong thing in red paper with a ridiculously-oversized bow. Ben grabs it, and with an encouraging nod from his mother, plunks it in Dean’s lap. The unexpected thing stares him in the face and Dean looks from it to the two faces staring at him, bright with expectancy.
He falters. “You didn’t have to--” he begins lamely only to be cut off by a wave of Lisa’s hand.
“Shhh. We didn’t, but we did. It’s Christmas,” she prods his knee with her hand, a gentle urging touch. “Just open it.”
Dean’s fingers dig under the folds, pulling away the tape. Tree lights flicker between green branches and set the paper into red sparkles. From somewhere in the back of his mind something scratches uncomfortably and Dean rips at the paper, ignoring the way it feels familiar. Then suddenly a memory leaps forward.
Camped out on a stained hotel couch in some dive hotel on the edge of some no name town. Last smiles for a last Christmas. Fingers eager, tearing open presents bought, stolen, or used - who cares? Tomorrow might not come; next year won’t for sure. So this is to be enjoyed. Smiles around a beer or two, dinner from a take out wrapper. This is something to remember, no matter the way it grips the heart in ways that hurt. Home is where your family is and family is who you’ve got left…
Something heavy clamps around Dean’s lungs and the room loses it’s oxygen. His fingers twitch and the present rattles to the floor. He feels the stares, boring into his skull. For the first time in a long time, Dean feels small and vulnerable. The feeling is shattering.
The memory lingers longer than it should, fading out slowly, starting at the edges.
And Sam. Sam is looking at him with eyes that shine. Twenty-plus years and he still looks like a little kid, grinning like a fool. And trying his hardest not to break down in front of his big brother. And all Dean wants to do is tell him it’s going to be ok but they both know it won’t. All Dean wants is to protect Sam, even from this, from everything. But he can’t, he can’t forever…
The haunting last only a moment but it feels an eternity. The loss guts him like a fish, the happiness of before pouring out of him like life, leaving him gaping and cold and empty. Dying.
It’s only a moment but Lisa snatches up the dropped present with ease and pushes it into Dean‘s dangling fingers. “Wily devil,” she chides. “They ought to put a warning on this slippery shiny stuff.” She laughs and the moment is gone.
Dean catches her eyes. She nods with understanding, gripping tightly at his hand. The room slowly fills with air once again and Dean breathes deep, the painful memory gone without a trace just as quickly as it came.
* * *
They go on as if nothing happened and as it does, the day passes like any other day, oblivious to the holiday proceedings happening in almost every home, in so many different ways. Dean shoveled the fallen snow, perhaps just for something to do, the brisk winter wind helping to keep the unpleasant ponderings at bay. He passed by the phone once and paused, Bobby’s number coming to mind. In the end he decided against it.
Its far later and the lights are being doused for the night. Ben is hidden away in his room, giving special attention to all his new things - specifically a game station that surely means he won‘t see daylight again unless physical force is applied. The smell of the spice cake Lisa baked that afternoon still lingers in the corners of the house. Dean inhales; it tasted as good as it smelled.
Lisa is tinkering in the kitchen. He can hear the dull clang of pots and pans and the clink of clean silverware being sorted into the drawers. Dean walks his nightly routine. He checks the windows and doors, the security system, the grate on the fireplace, the Devil's Trap under the rug at the door - normalcy or no, some precautions should always be taken.
He's switched off the last of the lights and Lisa meets him at the door. "Eleven o'clock and all's well," he reports like some sort of town crier.
Lisa doesn’t mirror his pasted grin. Instead she takes his hand. "Come here," she says, pulling him away from the staircase and into the living room. The tree lights still burn, bright red and white bulbs setting the room in a fiery glow.
The shadows are few but full in the empty room. In the dark, Lisa settles herself onto the couch and Dean beside her. There’s something urgent about her manner, demanding his attention. She sits close to him, turned towards him, but her face is down. She holds his hand between hers, having never let it go. She’s looking at it in the darkness, turning it over, touching it softly. He doesn’t know what she could be seeing.
“You did well today,” she says, her voice soft.
He can’t help but scoff. His bumbled attempts to keep himself in check could hardly have passed with flying colors.
“No,” she finds his eyes and holds them with hers. “You did well. I was… worried, I guess. I don’t know what I was expecting, something worse, maybe.”
Dean can feel it coming, the meaning for her urgency. He sees it like a wave, breaching against the sky, threatening to rush down upon him. “Worse?” he echoes, and awaits the impact.
She pauses long before answering. “It’s Sam isn’t it?”
The name sounds strange in the open air. The past months its been captive in his head and heart, a desperate cry in silence. Now, free, it sounds fragile and foreign. And aching, painfully aching.
Dean’s mouth is suddenly dry, a barren cracked desert. He cannot find the words and so he nods.
She holds onto his hand still, her fingers tracing the backs of his, pausing over things she can see or feel. Scars and memories perhaps. They shame him, his hands, make him stand out when he only wants to blend in. They are hands that mock him, hands meant for something other than carpentry and cutting turkeys. Yet she holds them with fondness and he doesn’t pull away.
“Tell me about him,” she asks suddenly and he looks at her, sure she’s joking. They’ve only ever talked once about Sam, briefly. Once, and then never again, all the things about him and of him locked up and buried. She’s never pushed, not once, although she had plenty of opportunity. He’s surprised she would now, of all times.
But he’s surprised more by his desire to tell her.
“What… what do you want to know?” He’s aware of the sound of his voice and the way it feels as though something is opening inside him, something he’s fought to keep stored away. But it feels right.
She closes the space between them, huddling close to him, her head resting on his shoulder. He likes the way she feels next to him, gentle and perfect and encouraging. Her present is calming -like it always has been, since the day he arrived- and the ache subsides a little. He puts his arm around her and runs a strand of her hair across his fingers.
“Tell me if he would have liked our Christmas,” she says. “Tell me if he would have liked my cake.”
He tells her. He shares all he can remember and whatever he can imagine. The words pour from his mouth, like water over a broken dam. And for the first time, the rushing tide doesn’t swallow him whole; doesn’t make him gasp and sink.
Sam would have liked to have been a part of this day, Dean knows, embracing the realization with joy instead of grief. To sit at the table, to gather around the tree, to open presents, and laugh and smile... But Sam is gone, and maybe that was point of it all. Life continues on, it wakes up in the morning and celebrates Christmas with people that care about you. Through all the sadness and loss, life was still capable of grace and goodness.
Dean presses a kiss to Lisa‘s mouth, right and proper. He wouldn’t have her if things were different, he’s aware of that. But he won’t tease the understanding further than that. It is what it is and in this moment, wrapped together on the couch, this is the greatest gift. It isn’t taped up and topped with a bow. It’s subtle and small and continuous. Its this restart to life, this second chance for something better, something real - something that isn’t at the bottom of a bottle or the end of a barrel.
And maybe it’s not for keeps, and maybe it can’t fill the hole that’s dug so deep inside him. But it’s a home and family, makeshift as it is, and held together at the seams. And maybe that's good enough to satisfy a promise made to a condemned man in the passenger seat of an Impala - because it’s good enough for now for Dean.