Mother Issues, [PG-13] 6/?, Sam, Dean, Ellen
Title: Mother Issues
Author: deanie_mcqueen
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, Family, Hurt/Comfort
Characters: Sam, Dean, Ellen
Word Count: 2,563
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers up through S2, de-aging!fic, WIP
Summary: Set at some ambiguous point in S2, Sam and Dean find themselves in a small situation after a hunt goes awry. Lucky for them they chose to stay at The Roadhouse, a lovely one-star resort complete with all the amenities: cots, booze, sandwiches...fine, maternal specimens named Ellen Harvelle...
Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
______________________________
Dean looked out the window at the passing scenery and tugged at his seatbelt. Sam, who was appropriately seated in the space reserved for bitches - the bitch seat, that ridiculous little place located between the driver and the passenger - also fidgeted uncomfortably.
Seatbelts, Dean had discovered (and reckoned his brother had, too, by the way Sam had somehow managed to inconspicuously unbuckle his lap belt) were assholes. Ellen's truck wasn't a smooth ride by any means, but that didn't stop Dean from believing this form of safety was a heinous scheme in disguise. Between the shoulder belt's tendency to press into his neck, and/or getting stuck and constricting against his chest, Dean deduced that this alleged "safety harness" was actually a rather mediocre attempt against his life.
He tugged at it again, emitting small sounds of irritation as he did so. Moans and groans and grunts, and other such unintelligible forms of whining. Dean wasn't usually a whiner, but really? Why did cars have these things?
The Impala didn't have such detestable devices as seatbelts. Classic cars lived dangerously, just like their owners.
To make matters worse, Ellen didn't drive with the radio on, either. And while Sam had managed it, the sound of Dean's seatbelt unbuckling? That could somehow be heard over the cracked asphalt and noisy engine.
"Dean Winchester, you put that seatbelt right the fuck back on before I pull this truck over."
Dean's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. Ellen, for all her sweet and overprotective mommy-isms, could sound seriously mean when she wanted to. She had a growl like a lioness, that one.
"Aw, Ellen-"
"Don't you 'aw, Ellen' me. Put it on. Right now."
Inevitably, Dean sighed and re-buckled himself and refrained from tattling on Sam while he did so. That didn't mean he wasn't about to bitch about it, though.
"This piece of shit keeps biting into my neck," he groused, pushing the belt away from said neck. "I feel like I'm in a fucking Anne Rice novel over here."
Ellen ignored him and didn't respond at all when he continued to complain. She seemed to become completely immersed in the road just for the sake of blocking him out, in fact, and Dean was kind of impressed. Dad used to get irritated really easily on those rare occasions when Sam and/or Dean had become restless in the car. Pulling over was hardly ever an idle threat and it usually ended in timed runs until they tired themselves out, or lectures with threatening eyes, or worse.
Dean didn't really want to think about worse. He tugged at the goddamn seatbelt again.
Eventually, Sam quietly cleared his throat and turned slightly to his right, towards Dean. He took the shoulder strap in a tiny hand and pulled it up and over his brother's head without a word, so that it was resting unobtrusively behind Dean's back.
Sam had been really quiet since last night. Apparently screaming and wailing like a six-year-old really took it out of you - even when you were, physically, six.
"Better?" he asked softly, peering out at Dean from under unruly brown bangs.
"Uh huh." Dean nodded, and, with a small fist, socked his brother lightly in the thigh. "You okay there, mini-Sasquatch?"
Sam sighed. "I refuse to respond to you until you refer to me either by my name, or a name that isn't an oxymoron."
"You're an oxymoron."
"I was asking for that," Sam admitted, but he didn't answer Dean's question, just returned the gentle hit to his once-big brother's leg.
They got to the witch's abode without further argument. It was a gloomy scene: a derelict one-story house with rotting wood siding and a dead tree in the front yard. It seemed like the sunlight instantly became overpowered by looming, dark clouds and a mysterious fog and Dean couldn't stop himself from snorting at the stereotypical nature of the supernatural.
The gravel driveway crunched under the truck's tires as they came to a rocky halt.
This is when Ellen noticed the lack of seatbelts.
This is also when, before she had the chance to explode, Sam quickly made a case in his most apologetic of tones and with his most pleading eyes, "If we actually got into a collision, we'd just slip out of them, anyway, Ellen. Either that or our internal organs would get smushed or our ribs would get broken because they're too big for us. Not to mention we're already sitting in the front seat, so really we've just been tempting death and the law this whole drive... I mean, if we're going to be honest with ourselves, what difference does putting our seatbelts on really make?"
Dean heard Ellen grumble something about booster seats as they got out of the truck. He truly hoped with all of his little heart that said grumble wasn't indicative of some future event.
She walked around the back of the truck and climbed up onto the bed. There was a trunk back there, and she opened it up and pulled out a shotgun, swung it over her shoulder before dropping back down to the gravel. Then she stalked towards the house, leaving Sam and Dean to follow.
One thing was clear: Ellen was pissed. And Dean was surprised to find himself suddenly feeling very guilty and very sad and very-wanting-her-not-to-be-pissed-at-him-anymore. A glance at Sam told him that he wasn't alone in these feelings.
They ran to catch up to her, trotted by her sides to keep up with her quick gait.
"M'sorry, Ellen," Sam blurted out. He grabbed her left hand and dug his heels into the driveway until she stopped. "Please don't be mad at us. We're just not used to them and they were all constricting and irritating and..." he trailed off, and Dean watched his eyes as he searched desperately for something to say to right this apparent wrong. "We're just...sorry."
She frowned, her lips pressed thin as she looked down at them with scrutinizing brown eyes. They held their breaths for Dean-didn't-know-how-long until she sighed.
"You're probably right about it being just as unsafe, but it's not safer to have them off, is it?"
Sam shook his head. Dean fidgeted on his feet.
"That's right," Ellen continued. "It isn't. So when it's a choice between one unsafe thing and another unsafe thing, you do the one I damn well tell you to do, you got that?"
Sam looked down and scuffed the toe of his sneaker into the gravel. "Yes, ma'am."
Dean didn't speak up. He was too lost in thoughts of John again, and the way the man had pulled shit like this, too. If there was no right or wrong decision, there was only Dad's decision. And apparently, there was only Ellen's decision. Dean wondered if this was a hunter thing, or a parent thing, or both. Rank. It all came down to rank in the end, and Dean wasn't reigning first at the moment.
That would have been okay with Dad, but sometimes he still looked at Ellen and wondered who the fuck this lady even thought she was.
This was one of those times.
"We don't even have them in our car," he informed her, and he didn't really mean to take on quite such an antagonistic tone of voice, but what are you going to do?
"Dean," Sam hissed.
Sam used to be the one who did this. And that thing that Sam did? That obedience? Dean used to be the one who did that.
Ellen gritted her teeth. "Well, you should," she said. "Especially with the way you drive. And I know you have enough on your police record that you probably don't want to be pulled over. You're gonna get yourselves caught or killed or both one of these days."
She wasn't wrong, Dean knew. By all means, driving without seatbelts was probably a stupid thing to do in their particular situation, but so was drinking and driving and Dean did that more than he should, too - meaning that he did it once or twice when he was sad and not thinking. And that was okay, because he was going to die soon, anyway. He and Sam were both going to die soon because their lives were rivers of shit that would flow by really quick and dirty, filled with gross things and painful things and things Dean didn't want to think about, but he would undoubtedly experience some day in the near future. Not to mention diseases picked up by women just as promiscuous as Dean, himself, was.
It was all part of the job. Their unwritten and unprofitable job that didn't require seatbelts.
"We probably should," he agreed. "But you have no right to tell us what to do."
Her lips went really thin, so thin that they were practically just a line that sloped down at the corners. She held up a hand and made a small space between her thumb and other fingers.
"I swear to God, I am this far away-"
"You're not our mom," Dean cut her off, and that line that was her mouth softened into lips again. Everything about her just seemed to fall down or fall apart or something that involved falling, and Dean felt a little stab of bad in the pit of his stomach, but he trooped on anyhow. Dean did this because he was a trooper. "You're not our mom and you're not our dad and we're not your kids. So stop treating us like we are."
He didn't wait around for a response. He just walked past both Ellen and Sam, up the crumbling porch steps and into the house. The knife was in the kitchen, he remembered. It had all gone down in the kitchen.
Kind of like how it had all just gone down outside. Dean didn't know why he kept doing this. Ellen was just helping. Ellen was taking care of them even though she had no obligation to, because they were in this situation where it was near impossible for them to get things done by themselves. And Dean kept kicking her and pushing her away, and she kept coming back because she was kind and loyal and at one point in time, had regarded Dean's father as family.
Dean never got the "it takes a village to raise a child" memo. It was just him and Sam and sometimes Dad. Nobody else.
Because Mom was dead. Mom was dead and she was never coming back, so everything else was dead, too. Dad was dead and tummies were dead and sandwiches-without-crusts were dead and the concept of friends was dead and the entire fucking world was dead because when Mom burned up in flames, all the lights went out. And the darkness was full of dead things and that's what their lives became.
Their lives became cockroach-infested kitchens in states of disarray, filled with abandoned cats who alternated between licking their paws and staring at Dean with keen eyes. They weren't black, at least. She hadn't been completely filling the stereotype.
They sat in a deformed circle around the knife, which had been licked clean of Sam's blood and Dean's blood and all that blood that might have been on it. There might have been bunny blood on it, but Dean had freed all the bunnies. Because sometimes - most of the time, Dean tried really hard to be a good person.
For bunnies.
"Dean?" Sam was behind him. Dean turned around to find himself on the receiving end of a stormy look. "I don't know why you have to be such a dick all the time."
Dean didn't, either, so he just said, "Okay."
After a beat, "I take it back. I know exactly why you have to be such a dick all the time."
Dean didn't want to hear it.
"I don't want to hear it."
Sam nodded. "I know. What's with all the cats?"
"What's with your sweater vest?"
Sam rolled his eyes, but in one seemingly unconscious movement, swiped his hand over his beloved sweater vest, as if trying to dust this place or Dean's teasing off of it. "Stay on topic for once, will you?"
Dean shrugged. "I think the more pressing question is, why are they all gathered around the knife?"
This was the more pressing question, and Sam tilted his head as he regarded the circle of cats, took one small step towards them. Testing the waters.
"Be careful," Dean warned him, but the warning wasn't necessary. None of the cats moved to protect the knife. One of them even nuzzled Sam's leg and purred.
"They seem nice enough," Sam noted, and both tiny Winchesters plunged into the circle.
That's when the kitten dashed in. Dean hadn't seen him before, but it was quite clear from the get-go that this was one fierce little motherfucker. He pounced on the knife handle and hissed, swiping one menacing little paw in their direction.
"Um..." Sam said.
"Aw, he's so little." Dean, who was also one fierce little motherfucker, was quite fond of baby animals. "Hey there, little guy."
The kitten pulled back his ears and bristled his tail and hissed again.
Dean blinked at him. So did Sam. This was all very bizarre and they weren't really used to handling animals in their line of work. The only thing Dean really knew about kittens was that they were born in litters. And this one seemed to be alone.
"Where are all his brothers and sisters?" Dean wondered aloud.
Sam looked around and shrugged helplessly. "Maybe she sacrificed them or something."
"That bitch."
"Yeah."
They continued looking at the kitten, at its bristling tail and angry ears, until realization set in.
"Think he licked our blood off the knife?" Dean asked.
"Ten bucks says he did," Sam said. "Ten bucks says he was a lot bigger before."
In the end, they decided the only way they could take the knife was to take the kitten with it. Ellen, who had been in the doorway watching them the entire time, stepped in before they got too close.
"You're too small," she explained, looking at Sam and not at Dean. "He's small, too, but even small things are capable of causing a helluva lot of pain."
Dean swallowed at the words, and thought about apologizing. Again. 'Sorry' started to lose meaning after a while, though, so he didn't. He just watched as she scooped the kitten up with gentle hands.
The kitten didn't resist. He purred, in fact, and nuzzled his little face into her sleeve.
Dean picked up the knife. It was heavy in his hands.
He walked behind Ellen and the kitten on the way back to the truck, stayed by his brother's side where he belonged.
The kitten stayed curled up by Ellen's leg for the entire ride back to the Roadhouse. Dean kept trying to watch the passing scenery, kept trying not to tug at his seatbelt (which he had put on without being told to), but his eyes kept drifting back to that tiny kitten with his little body and easy affection.
Dean wondered how he did it.
Author: deanie_mcqueen
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, Family, Hurt/Comfort
Characters: Sam, Dean, Ellen
Word Count: 2,563
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers up through S2, de-aging!fic, WIP
Summary: Set at some ambiguous point in S2, Sam and Dean find themselves in a small situation after a hunt goes awry. Lucky for them they chose to stay at The Roadhouse, a lovely one-star resort complete with all the amenities: cots, booze, sandwiches...fine, maternal specimens named Ellen Harvelle...
Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
______________________________
Dean looked out the window at the passing scenery and tugged at his seatbelt. Sam, who was appropriately seated in the space reserved for bitches - the bitch seat, that ridiculous little place located between the driver and the passenger - also fidgeted uncomfortably.
Seatbelts, Dean had discovered (and reckoned his brother had, too, by the way Sam had somehow managed to inconspicuously unbuckle his lap belt) were assholes. Ellen's truck wasn't a smooth ride by any means, but that didn't stop Dean from believing this form of safety was a heinous scheme in disguise. Between the shoulder belt's tendency to press into his neck, and/or getting stuck and constricting against his chest, Dean deduced that this alleged "safety harness" was actually a rather mediocre attempt against his life.
He tugged at it again, emitting small sounds of irritation as he did so. Moans and groans and grunts, and other such unintelligible forms of whining. Dean wasn't usually a whiner, but really? Why did cars have these things?
The Impala didn't have such detestable devices as seatbelts. Classic cars lived dangerously, just like their owners.
To make matters worse, Ellen didn't drive with the radio on, either. And while Sam had managed it, the sound of Dean's seatbelt unbuckling? That could somehow be heard over the cracked asphalt and noisy engine.
"Dean Winchester, you put that seatbelt right the fuck back on before I pull this truck over."
Dean's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. Ellen, for all her sweet and overprotective mommy-isms, could sound seriously mean when she wanted to. She had a growl like a lioness, that one.
"Aw, Ellen-"
"Don't you 'aw, Ellen' me. Put it on. Right now."
Inevitably, Dean sighed and re-buckled himself and refrained from tattling on Sam while he did so. That didn't mean he wasn't about to bitch about it, though.
"This piece of shit keeps biting into my neck," he groused, pushing the belt away from said neck. "I feel like I'm in a fucking Anne Rice novel over here."
Ellen ignored him and didn't respond at all when he continued to complain. She seemed to become completely immersed in the road just for the sake of blocking him out, in fact, and Dean was kind of impressed. Dad used to get irritated really easily on those rare occasions when Sam and/or Dean had become restless in the car. Pulling over was hardly ever an idle threat and it usually ended in timed runs until they tired themselves out, or lectures with threatening eyes, or worse.
Dean didn't really want to think about worse. He tugged at the goddamn seatbelt again.
Eventually, Sam quietly cleared his throat and turned slightly to his right, towards Dean. He took the shoulder strap in a tiny hand and pulled it up and over his brother's head without a word, so that it was resting unobtrusively behind Dean's back.
Sam had been really quiet since last night. Apparently screaming and wailing like a six-year-old really took it out of you - even when you were, physically, six.
"Better?" he asked softly, peering out at Dean from under unruly brown bangs.
"Uh huh." Dean nodded, and, with a small fist, socked his brother lightly in the thigh. "You okay there, mini-Sasquatch?"
Sam sighed. "I refuse to respond to you until you refer to me either by my name, or a name that isn't an oxymoron."
"You're an oxymoron."
"I was asking for that," Sam admitted, but he didn't answer Dean's question, just returned the gentle hit to his once-big brother's leg.
They got to the witch's abode without further argument. It was a gloomy scene: a derelict one-story house with rotting wood siding and a dead tree in the front yard. It seemed like the sunlight instantly became overpowered by looming, dark clouds and a mysterious fog and Dean couldn't stop himself from snorting at the stereotypical nature of the supernatural.
The gravel driveway crunched under the truck's tires as they came to a rocky halt.
This is when Ellen noticed the lack of seatbelts.
This is also when, before she had the chance to explode, Sam quickly made a case in his most apologetic of tones and with his most pleading eyes, "If we actually got into a collision, we'd just slip out of them, anyway, Ellen. Either that or our internal organs would get smushed or our ribs would get broken because they're too big for us. Not to mention we're already sitting in the front seat, so really we've just been tempting death and the law this whole drive... I mean, if we're going to be honest with ourselves, what difference does putting our seatbelts on really make?"
Dean heard Ellen grumble something about booster seats as they got out of the truck. He truly hoped with all of his little heart that said grumble wasn't indicative of some future event.
She walked around the back of the truck and climbed up onto the bed. There was a trunk back there, and she opened it up and pulled out a shotgun, swung it over her shoulder before dropping back down to the gravel. Then she stalked towards the house, leaving Sam and Dean to follow.
One thing was clear: Ellen was pissed. And Dean was surprised to find himself suddenly feeling very guilty and very sad and very-wanting-her-not-to-be-pissed-at-him-anymore. A glance at Sam told him that he wasn't alone in these feelings.
They ran to catch up to her, trotted by her sides to keep up with her quick gait.
"M'sorry, Ellen," Sam blurted out. He grabbed her left hand and dug his heels into the driveway until she stopped. "Please don't be mad at us. We're just not used to them and they were all constricting and irritating and..." he trailed off, and Dean watched his eyes as he searched desperately for something to say to right this apparent wrong. "We're just...sorry."
She frowned, her lips pressed thin as she looked down at them with scrutinizing brown eyes. They held their breaths for Dean-didn't-know-how-long until she sighed.
"You're probably right about it being just as unsafe, but it's not safer to have them off, is it?"
Sam shook his head. Dean fidgeted on his feet.
"That's right," Ellen continued. "It isn't. So when it's a choice between one unsafe thing and another unsafe thing, you do the one I damn well tell you to do, you got that?"
Sam looked down and scuffed the toe of his sneaker into the gravel. "Yes, ma'am."
Dean didn't speak up. He was too lost in thoughts of John again, and the way the man had pulled shit like this, too. If there was no right or wrong decision, there was only Dad's decision. And apparently, there was only Ellen's decision. Dean wondered if this was a hunter thing, or a parent thing, or both. Rank. It all came down to rank in the end, and Dean wasn't reigning first at the moment.
That would have been okay with Dad, but sometimes he still looked at Ellen and wondered who the fuck this lady even thought she was.
This was one of those times.
"We don't even have them in our car," he informed her, and he didn't really mean to take on quite such an antagonistic tone of voice, but what are you going to do?
"Dean," Sam hissed.
Sam used to be the one who did this. And that thing that Sam did? That obedience? Dean used to be the one who did that.
Ellen gritted her teeth. "Well, you should," she said. "Especially with the way you drive. And I know you have enough on your police record that you probably don't want to be pulled over. You're gonna get yourselves caught or killed or both one of these days."
She wasn't wrong, Dean knew. By all means, driving without seatbelts was probably a stupid thing to do in their particular situation, but so was drinking and driving and Dean did that more than he should, too - meaning that he did it once or twice when he was sad and not thinking. And that was okay, because he was going to die soon, anyway. He and Sam were both going to die soon because their lives were rivers of shit that would flow by really quick and dirty, filled with gross things and painful things and things Dean didn't want to think about, but he would undoubtedly experience some day in the near future. Not to mention diseases picked up by women just as promiscuous as Dean, himself, was.
It was all part of the job. Their unwritten and unprofitable job that didn't require seatbelts.
"We probably should," he agreed. "But you have no right to tell us what to do."
Her lips went really thin, so thin that they were practically just a line that sloped down at the corners. She held up a hand and made a small space between her thumb and other fingers.
"I swear to God, I am this far away-"
"You're not our mom," Dean cut her off, and that line that was her mouth softened into lips again. Everything about her just seemed to fall down or fall apart or something that involved falling, and Dean felt a little stab of bad in the pit of his stomach, but he trooped on anyhow. Dean did this because he was a trooper. "You're not our mom and you're not our dad and we're not your kids. So stop treating us like we are."
He didn't wait around for a response. He just walked past both Ellen and Sam, up the crumbling porch steps and into the house. The knife was in the kitchen, he remembered. It had all gone down in the kitchen.
Kind of like how it had all just gone down outside. Dean didn't know why he kept doing this. Ellen was just helping. Ellen was taking care of them even though she had no obligation to, because they were in this situation where it was near impossible for them to get things done by themselves. And Dean kept kicking her and pushing her away, and she kept coming back because she was kind and loyal and at one point in time, had regarded Dean's father as family.
Dean never got the "it takes a village to raise a child" memo. It was just him and Sam and sometimes Dad. Nobody else.
Because Mom was dead. Mom was dead and she was never coming back, so everything else was dead, too. Dad was dead and tummies were dead and sandwiches-without-crusts were dead and the concept of friends was dead and the entire fucking world was dead because when Mom burned up in flames, all the lights went out. And the darkness was full of dead things and that's what their lives became.
Their lives became cockroach-infested kitchens in states of disarray, filled with abandoned cats who alternated between licking their paws and staring at Dean with keen eyes. They weren't black, at least. She hadn't been completely filling the stereotype.
They sat in a deformed circle around the knife, which had been licked clean of Sam's blood and Dean's blood and all that blood that might have been on it. There might have been bunny blood on it, but Dean had freed all the bunnies. Because sometimes - most of the time, Dean tried really hard to be a good person.
For bunnies.
"Dean?" Sam was behind him. Dean turned around to find himself on the receiving end of a stormy look. "I don't know why you have to be such a dick all the time."
Dean didn't, either, so he just said, "Okay."
After a beat, "I take it back. I know exactly why you have to be such a dick all the time."
Dean didn't want to hear it.
"I don't want to hear it."
Sam nodded. "I know. What's with all the cats?"
"What's with your sweater vest?"
Sam rolled his eyes, but in one seemingly unconscious movement, swiped his hand over his beloved sweater vest, as if trying to dust this place or Dean's teasing off of it. "Stay on topic for once, will you?"
Dean shrugged. "I think the more pressing question is, why are they all gathered around the knife?"
This was the more pressing question, and Sam tilted his head as he regarded the circle of cats, took one small step towards them. Testing the waters.
"Be careful," Dean warned him, but the warning wasn't necessary. None of the cats moved to protect the knife. One of them even nuzzled Sam's leg and purred.
"They seem nice enough," Sam noted, and both tiny Winchesters plunged into the circle.
That's when the kitten dashed in. Dean hadn't seen him before, but it was quite clear from the get-go that this was one fierce little motherfucker. He pounced on the knife handle and hissed, swiping one menacing little paw in their direction.
"Um..." Sam said.
"Aw, he's so little." Dean, who was also one fierce little motherfucker, was quite fond of baby animals. "Hey there, little guy."
The kitten pulled back his ears and bristled his tail and hissed again.
Dean blinked at him. So did Sam. This was all very bizarre and they weren't really used to handling animals in their line of work. The only thing Dean really knew about kittens was that they were born in litters. And this one seemed to be alone.
"Where are all his brothers and sisters?" Dean wondered aloud.
Sam looked around and shrugged helplessly. "Maybe she sacrificed them or something."
"That bitch."
"Yeah."
They continued looking at the kitten, at its bristling tail and angry ears, until realization set in.
"Think he licked our blood off the knife?" Dean asked.
"Ten bucks says he did," Sam said. "Ten bucks says he was a lot bigger before."
In the end, they decided the only way they could take the knife was to take the kitten with it. Ellen, who had been in the doorway watching them the entire time, stepped in before they got too close.
"You're too small," she explained, looking at Sam and not at Dean. "He's small, too, but even small things are capable of causing a helluva lot of pain."
Dean swallowed at the words, and thought about apologizing. Again. 'Sorry' started to lose meaning after a while, though, so he didn't. He just watched as she scooped the kitten up with gentle hands.
The kitten didn't resist. He purred, in fact, and nuzzled his little face into her sleeve.
Dean picked up the knife. It was heavy in his hands.
He walked behind Ellen and the kitten on the way back to the truck, stayed by his brother's side where he belonged.
The kitten stayed curled up by Ellen's leg for the entire ride back to the Roadhouse. Dean kept trying to watch the passing scenery, kept trying not to tug at his seatbelt (which he had put on without being told to), but his eyes kept drifting back to that tiny kitten with his little body and easy affection.
Dean wondered how he did it.