SPN Fic: Living Inside the Box 2/2 (Gen, Pre-Series, R)
Thanks to the always rockin phantomas for the most excellent beta. She always makes me much better than I otherwise am.
Title: Living Inside the Box (2/2)
Author: dodger_winslow
Challenge: Psych 30 Chart
My Prompt: #6 Inferiority Complex
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Word Count: 16,000
Pairings: None
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.
Summary: He had to give it to the soulless bastard: this fear demon certainly knew its shit. Knew exactly what John was afraid of, knew exactly how to put him in the worst of all possible scenarios.
He couldn’t fight any more. He just wanted it to be over. Just needed this to end.
God, please let it end.
"Get his hands, Dean. Put them on your face so he can feel you. A demon can’t mimic that. Can’t be what it isn’t in the corporeal world, even if it can make you think you’re seeing what you aren’t in your head. But you’re going to have to control him, boy. Don’t let him knock you on your ass if he starts thrashing around again, which he might."
"Okay. I’ve got it."
"You ready?"
"I’m ready."
The grip on John’s arms loosened cautiously. He felt someone pick up his hands, hold them. It felt like Dean, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
Dean didn’t know where he was, what he was hunting. The fear demon was fucking with him. It was trying to seduce him into believing, trying to give him one last thing to believe in so he could open his eyes and find it wasn’t real.
Nothing was real. Nothing mattered.
But even knowing that, John let it pull his hands up, let it put them on someone’s face.
Dean’s face.
John tried not to move his fingers, tried not to let himself believe what he already believed.
"Come on, Dad," Dean’s voice encouraged. "It’s Daredevil time. The man who has no fear, right?"
John choked on his own terror. His fingers moved of their own volition, finding his son’s features, identifying someone he knew so well he didn’t have to see him to recognize him.
"Sam," he said, desperate to confuse it, desperate to trick it into shifting to try and match his expectations. But the demon was too deep inside him, too incumbent to his own perceptual perspective. It could feel what he knew, and John knew this was Dean.
He believed it.
"Sam? Dude, you suck as a blind person. It’s me. It’s Dean."
He believed it. It was Dean. Dean had come for him. Dean was here.
"Dean?"
"There you go."
"Dean?" John whispered again. "Dean?"
"Come on, Dad. Open your eyes. We look like a couple of girls here, doing all this touchy-feely crap, and Caleb has a camera phone. You don’t want this getting on the internet, do you? Or even worse, getting emailed to Sammy. That would suck wouldn’t it? Come on, Dad. Open your eyes. Just trust me and open your eyes, okay? Please, Dad. For me. Open your eyes for me."
"Dean," John breathed. He opened his eyes. He’d never been more scared to do anything in his life, but he did it, made himself do it.
He trusted Dean. He believed in Dean.
And it was Dean.
John’s heart cramped in his chest. He whined again - heard himself whine and hated himself for it - but Dean’s face was only inches from his, his eyes sharp with a near-panic that didn’t show in his voice at all. Dean grinned at him, doing everything he could to look like he wasn’t as close to breaking as John was to already broken.
"There you go, Dad. See? I told you it was me, didn’t I?"
"Dean."
"That’s my name, dude. And you are totally wearing it out."
"Dean." It wasn’t a question any more, wasn’t a disbelief predicated on belief. It wasn’t confusion about how what seemed so real could actually be real, wasn’t confusion about how what seemed to be there could actually be there.
It was Dean.
Dean was here.
John could see it in his son’s eyes. He could see the child he’d raised behind the man who hunted with him now, the son who stayed when everyone else left. When even Sammy left.
But not Dean. Dean stayed. Dean needed him. Dean was here, and Dean would be always here.
He could trust Dean. He could believe in Dean.
And he did. And it mattered.
John’s hands slid off Dean’s face to grab at him, hold on to him, cling to him like a lifeline tossed into the eye of a category four hurricane. Releasing his hold on John, Caleb moved out of the way so Dean could return the embrace, so he could hang on to his old man almost as desperately as his old man was hanging on to him.
"Aw, that’s sweet guys," Caleb said with a grin. "That’s really, really sweet."
John ignored him, ignored everything but the feel of his son in his arms. It was Dean. It was really Dean. He held on without speaking, struggling to catch up to the belief that Dean wouldn’t evaporate to some soulless illusion the moment John actually believed in him.
But he wouldn’t. And he didn’t. It was Dean. Dean was real.
Dean’s standard evasions were conspicuously absent, the protests he normally offered in response to the prospect of any show of impending affection absolutely silent. He’d dropped his face to John’s shoulder, his hands twisting into the back of John’s tattered, blood-stained jacket. It was something he used to do when he was a kid, something he did to make it impossible for anyone to separate them unless they were willing to break a little boy’s hands to do it.
"Dean," John breathed.
Caleb waited for several minutes before he said, "Okay, guys. Hate to break up the lovefest here, but I’ve got more important things to do today than watch some chick flick go on and on and on. Dean, we need to get your dad out of here. Go get the car and pull it around front while I check him out, make sure nothing important’s broken."
Dean didn’t move, didn’t pull out of John’s embrace.
"You hear me?" Caleb asked after a beat.
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "I hear you."
"Then get to it."
"Just hold on to your panties for a minute. I’ll get to it when I get to it." Dean was still holding onto his dad, both hands still twisted into John’s jacket.
Caleb’s eyebrow climbed up his face. "Hold on to my panties?" he challenged. "Who’s in a girl clench with his old man here, boy? Sure as fuck ain’t me."
"Just hold on to your panties for a minute, Caleb," John whispered. His voice was coarse, breaking a little as he spoke. He couldn’t let go yet, couldn’t release Dean even though he knew he should.
It was starting to actually feel real to him now. Starting to feel real in a way that didn’t feel that way just because he believed it. The demon couldn’t do this. It couldn’t make him feel what he was feeling right now. If it could, it wouldn’t need victim participation in the escalation to a state of fear that allowed it to feed. But it did. It required it because humans had free will. They felt what they felt. They couldn’t be forced to feel something they didn’t feel.
He was realizing that now, understanding it in a way that superceded the fact that logic told him Dean couldn’t have found him because Caleb wouldn’t have betrayed him by telling his son what he was hunting.
But Dean did. And Caleb had. He could feel it. Feel it as truth. Feel it as real.
John held on for another thirty seconds, maybe forty five, before he could force himself to unclench his hands, force himself to release the death grip he had on the leather of Dean’s jacket to pat him on the back, telling him to let go, telling him the chick flick moment was over.
Dean disagreed. He held on for another full minute before he let go, too. When he finally released John, finally pulled back, he looked to John instead of Caleb for direction.
"Go get the car," John said. "And keep your eyes peeled. These things don’t travel in packs or even pairs, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make an exception now and again. Always err on the side of caution, Dean. Especially when you’re dealing with something that just kicked your old man’s ass."
Dean nodded. He was grinning, his eyes full of tears he wasn’t letting fall, one hand still twisted into John’s jacket, holding on for just a moment longer before he let go. "Don’t sweat it, Dad," he said. "Always a little harder for an old guy to be a bad ass than it is for us prime-time warrior types."
"Still young enough to put you in your place if you get too mouthy with me," John said. His hand was shaking when he let go of Dean’s arm, released him completely to send him on his way.
Dean stood. "Bold talk from a one-eyed, fat man," he quipped. It was a quote from one of John’s favorite movies, one they’d watched together enough times to know every line by heart. It was Dean seeing the fear still carving his dad up from the inside out, speaking directly to it, telling John it was him, it was Dean, it was his son.
Not some fear demon.
It was Dean.
John nodded, telling his son he got it, he understood. Dean gave him a small smile of hang-in-there, then turned and headed for the back of the cavernous warehouse at a trot.
John watched until Dean was gone before he shifted his gaze, looked around the shadows and echoes of empty space put to the task of nothing much, struggling to make sense of something that made no sense to him.
"Where are we?" he asked Caleb finally.
"Same place you’ve been for the last fourteen hours, you dumb son of a bitch," Caleb answered. "Warehouse on thirty-second. You don’t remember getting your ass kicked and shoved into a box here?"
"Fourteen hours?" John repeated dully.
"Give or take."
"I’ve only been here fourteen hours?"
Caleb was checking him over, examining the fresh blood on John’s hands, then moving on to look for the source of blood washed down the side of his face in a dry, cracked veneer; flaking to red dandruff in his beard, crackled like snakeskin down the side of his neck.
"Son of a bitch, John," Caleb asked. "Do you ever hit anything ass first instead of head first?"
"It didn’t bury me?" John asked hollowly.
Caleb flicked him a glance. "Bury you? No. It didn’t bury you. You’ve been right here the whole time. Nice, neat little John-in-a-box, but not buried alive."
"I heard the dirt hitting the outside of the box," John whispered. "Felt it lowering me into the ground."
Caleb progressed his exam from John’s head to his bruised chest and cracked ribs. "Yeah. Demons will fuck with you that way. It’s what they do. That’s why we call them demons."
"So it didn’t bury me?" John asked again.
Caleb pushed on the worst of his aching ribs and John gasped, cursing.
Caleb grinned. "No thanks, John," he said mildly. "You’re really not my type. And for the last time, no, it didn’t bury you. If it had, you’d’ve run out of air hours ago. But if that’s the way you want to tell it at the Roadhouse, that’s fine by me. Makes a better story. Much scarier than just sitting in an empty warehouse in a box."
"Broken?" John asked, referring to his ribs.
"Nah. Pretty sure they’re just bruised, although I think you might have broken a couple of fingers spazzing out in the box the way you were while me and your kid were busy putting a scorch to your play buddy. You were lucky, which I suppose is a good thing to be if you’re also going to be stupid."
"Stupid?" John repeated.
Caleb snorted. "I told you not to go after this bastard alone, didn’t I?"
"You said it wasn’t a good idea," John allowed.
"No," Caleb corrected. "I said you were the stupidest mother fucker ever born if you tried to take on a fear demon without backup. I’m pretty sure those were my exact words, in fact. Which most people - you evidently excluded - are smart enough to realize means don’t do that or you’ll get your ass killed. Or worse."
"I told you not to tell Dean what I was after," John said.
"I didn’t."
"What?" John challenged. "He just stowed away in your trunk when you came looking for me?"
"I wouldn’t have come looking for you," Caleb said a little sharply. "Not realizing you were stupid as I probably should have."
"So I’ve been told," John said.
Caleb shook his head. He stared out into the emptiness of the dark warehouse, saying nothing for a long moment. Then, almost like he was trying to explain calculus to a child too stupid to ever learn something as simple as two plus two equaling four, he said "This was a pretty low level player in the bigger scheme of things, John. They’re nasty little bastards if they get hold of you, but they’re not all that hard to destroy, so most hunters worth their damn salt don’t have any trouble with them. Because as long as you don’t try to Lone Ranger one of the little fuckers, somebody on the team will get it long before it has time to amp anybody it grabs up to a point where it can suck you into a desiccated husk. So really, the only way to get screwed by one of these bad boys is by being stupid enough to go after it alone. Which I could swear I told you not to do. Which is probably why I didn’t think you’d do it, so I didn’t really feel a need to check up on you and make sure you made it home for breakfast."
"Damned negligent of you, all things considered," John said mildly.
Caleb laughed at that. "That’s funny, John. You calling anybody negligent is truly damned funny. If your kid hadn’t come knocking on my door looking for you this morning, you’d be one soul-deficit, funny mother fucker right now. It was actually feeding when we got it. You know that, right? You felt it?"
"Yeah," John allowed. "I felt it."
"Well put this in your pipe and smoke it, you stupid, negligent bastard: your kid saw it, too. Saw that fucker getting off on what it was sucking out of you; which is not a pretty sight, let me assure you. And he got to hear you flopping around in that box like a landed carp, too. Did you know you were actually screaming, John? Like you were being skinned alive, man. It scared the piss out of him. Hell, scared me a little, too. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a grown man make a sound like that."
"Wasn’t much fun for me, either," John said.
"Yeah? Well at least you deserved it. Your kid didn’t do nothing but get himself born to the wrong old man to deserve to hear someone he loves making a sound like that."
"Watch it, Caleb," John warned. "I’ve decked you for less than dogging me on how I raised my boys."
Caleb smile a little. "Yeah. You really look like you could deck me right now, John. I’m shaking in my skivies, can you tell?" He held out a hand. "Come on. Let’s get you out of that fucking box."
John accepted Caleb’s hand, let him do most of the heavy lifting of getting John to his feet, supporting him while he stepped out of the small, coffin-sized box in which he’s spent the last thirty-seven hours.
Or fourteen, evidently.
Once John was clear of the box, Caleb eased him back to the warehouse floor. He settled carefully, cautiously, feeling every bruise in his body as he worked to keep from letting legs shaking with weak give out and drop him to an unceremonious heap on hard concrete.
It took him several moments of just breathing to recover from the monumental effort it was just to move. "So," he said when he could manage speaking again. "I thought I told you not to tell Dean what I was after?"
Caleb just looked at him. He laughed finally and shook his head. "Yeah, well you’re not the boss of me, you hard-headed bastard. Good thing, too, or your boy would be going after dangerous shit without backup, just like his old man used to."
"I did what I did for a reason," John said.
"Because you’re stupid?" Caleb suggested.
"Because I didn’t want Dean exposed to this kind of thing. Vengeful spirits, wendigos, raw heads … that’s one thing. But this is something else. He’s gone through enough in his life. He doesn’t need to have his own fears turned against him, too."
Caleb snorted. "Dean’s fearless," he said. "That boy would walk into hell by the front door and call the Devil himself out for an ass kicking, if that’s what he got a mind to do."
"He’s not fearless," John corrected. "Which is exactly why I didn’t want him anywhere near this thing."
"What do you want me to say?" Caleb demanded. "The kid’s just like you. He can be a real pain in the ass. But he can also be very convincing, which he must get that from his mother because you couldn’t convince a shedding snake it doesn’t need its old skin. And he made some points I couldn’t argue with; one of them being that a fear demon isn’t all that dangerous if you hunt them with backup, and another being that you are far too stupid to have done that. I couldn’t argue with him on that. In fact, once he pointed it out, I felt like a fucking idiot for not realizing that myself. For actually trusting you when you said you’d use your damn head and not get yourself torn apart by something I gave you the intel to find. Because fuck you for that, John. Fuck you for making me party to trying to make those boys of yours orphans."
John shook his head, looked away rather than answer. His whole body was trembling now, reacting to the overload of adrenaline that had him souped up to a tasty entre for the smear of black scorch half a dozen yards away. The scar on concrete was all that was left of the demon that had tortured him for the last thirty-seven hours.
Or fourteen, he reminded himself.
"You sure it was only fourteen hours?" John asked after almost a minute of silence.
Caleb sighed. Shifting out of his crouch to take a seat on the floor at John’s side, he said, "Yes. I’m sure. Just like I’m sure you weren’t ever buried. Why?’
John shrugged. "Seemed longer," he said.
"That’s the whole point. It’s supposed to seem like an eternity. They fuck with your perception of time, just like they fuck with your chemical balance. Anything they can access in your head, they’re going to fuck with. That’s what they do."
"Thought I’d be able hold on longer than that," John said. "Spent several weeks in an interrogation chamber once. Never even came close to spilling it. But this bastard had me on my knees. You hadn’t gotten here when you did, I wouldn’t have made it. Bit of a ball buster to find he managed that in only fourteen hours."
"When I said stupid," Caleb said after a beat of silence. "I was talking about your judgement skills, not your intellect."
John frowned. "Meaning?"
"Meaning surely you can’t actually be that stupid, can you? Comparing fourteen hours going one-on-one with fear demon on its own playing field to a human interrogation? You realize that’s like comparing pee-wee football to the NFL, right? Girl’s pee-wee football, even."
"I don’t know. Those Iranians know their shit."
"Human, John." Caleb said. "The key ingredient is human. I don’t care how bad they are, they’re still rank amateurs compared to what a demon can and will do."
John nodded. "Yeah. I guess." He looked away again, studied a far wall without saying anything else.
"What’d it hit you with?" Caleb asked after a beat.
John shook his head.
"Mary?"
"Don’t want to talk about it."
"Do you remember Ken Ponsei?" Caleb asked.
"No."
"Tall guy. Considered himself quite the big game hunter. Had a thing for wendigos?"
"Oh. Yeah. I remember him. What of it?"
"Fear demon got him a couple of years back," Caleb said quietly. "He lasted five hours. The guy was leather to the bone, and he lasted five hours. His hunting partners were right there, right on site with him when he got grabbed, but by the time they found him, it was already too late." Caleb stopped for a moment, then finished in a voice almost too gentle for the specifically ungentle man he was, "Fourteen hours is relative, John. It’s nothing to be ashamed of."
John nodded, didn’t answer.
"They cheat," Caleb added. "And they lie. I know you already know this, but maybe it bears repeating: That’s the one thing you can always count on with demons, that they’ll cheat and they’ll lie. It’s what they do. And these guys turn your own head against you. Every time you try to push a thought out of your mind, they push it back in. They keep you on the track they want you on, won’t let you get off, won’t let you take a break, won’t let you hide from yourself, distract yourself, control yourself. Time is their enemy and they know it. The longer it takes, the more chance there is someone will find you, steal their dinner, fuck up their sick, twisted fun.
"They’re fear demons, not sit-around-and-wait demons, so they condense the timeframe as much as they can, accelerate the fear response by pulling every dirty trick in the book. You’ve probably got enough adrenaline in your system to give most men a stroke. They push that to keep it flowing, keep you amped so you’re more reactive to anything they can poke you into thinking about.
"So whatever they used against you; it isn’t your fault it worked," Caleb finished. "You know me, John. I’d tell you if it was. I’d call you on it in a heartbeat if I thought you were weak. You aren’t weak. You’re stupid to put yourself in that position in the first place, but you aren’t weak to have responded to a fear demon with fear. It’s what they do."
"Yeah," John said. And nothing more.
"They sense fear, you know," Caleb added. "Smell it like an animal, only a thousand times more sensitive."
"Yeah," John said again. "I know."
"It sensed me," Caleb said. "Right before it went down, it sense me, figured out where I was because it smelled it on me. And I wasn’t even really afraid so much as just a little anxious. But it sensed me and was just about to de-corporealize into the night, taking as much of you with it as it had. That might not have been enough to de-soul you, or even kill you; but it sure as shit would have been enough to take you out. You’d have never recovered. You would have spent the rest of your life where ever it had you when we showed up; and I’m assuming that was hell, because pretty much all demons get their jollies by putting guys like you in hell."
John looked up, met Caleb’s gaze. "Do you have a point? Or is this just the scared straight schpiel?"
"Dean was right behind it," Caleb said quietly. "And it never even knew he was there. It never saw him coming, John. Never knew what hit it. That’s how good your kid is. How fearless he is. The fucking demon never even knew he was there."
John swallowed hard, looked away. "Yeah. I know. He’s good. Strong. Both he and Sam are. Sometimes they make me wonder how in the hell I ever managed to raise them without fucking it up."
Caleb started to answer, but stopped when the front door to the warehouse slammed open and Dean strode through it. Walking across the emptiness between them in long, distance-eating strides, Dean’s eyes studied John with an intensity he normally reserved for hot girls in short skirts who were giving him their best come-fuck-me look.
There was a starkness hiding in his son’s eyes that John could see as clearly as ink dropped in milk. How the demon could have missed smelling the fear burning there was something John didn’t understand, and probably never would.
"You ready to hit the road, Dad?" Dean asked as he dropped to a crouch at John’s side.
"Yeah. Give me a hand up, son."
Dean slipped in under his arm, helped John struggle to his feet. It surprised him, as it always did, exactly how strong Dean was. How easily he bore up under John’s weight, how much it seemed less a burden to him than something he carried like he carried his own heart.
"Need any help?" Caleb asked.
"No. I’ve got him. You can get the door if you want though." Holding John’s wrist with one hand, Dean slipped the other around John’s waist, getting a good grip on his belt to establish a balance between them that assured far more weight would fall on him than fell on John.
That’s the way Dean was, the way he’d always been. Even as a child, he stepped up, stepped in, took the weight and carried it like it was his.
"Hey," John said quietly, watching his son’s profile as they made their way across the warehouse.
Dean glanced at him. "Yeah?"
"Thanks."
Dean grinned. "Sure. No problem."
"For coming," John clarified.
Dean winced a little. "Really? I figured you’d probably be pissed about that."
"I am. But still. Thanks."
Dean nodded. He looked away then, trying to hide how much such simple words meant to him. "Pretty stupid of you to leave without telling me where you were going," he said almost like it was out of line for him to mention it.
"Yeah. Suppose it was."
"Don’t do it again, okay?"
John smiled a little. "Who’s the dad here?" he asked.
It was something John had been asking Dean since he was a child. Dean always answered the same way. He answered differently this time.
"Fuck that, Dad. Don’t do it again."
He glanced at John out of the corner of his eye. The look wasn’t asking for approval. It was almost angry enough to qualify as bitter.
"Okay?" Dean pressed when John didn’t say anything.
"Yeah," John agreed. "Okay."
John felt Caleb watching them. He spared the smaller man a quick glance, and Caleb met his eyes, shifted his focus to Dean, then brought it back to John again.
He knew. He’d figured it out.
John didn’t bother denying it. There were a lot of things for a man who lived the way he did to fear. If he let himself fear them, he wouldn’t have been any good to anyone, least of all, his own sons.
So he didn’t fear them. Not because he didn’t, but because he wouldn’t.
Wouldn’t allow himself the indulgence.
Caleb opened the door and Dean maneuvered John through it carefully, making sure nothing snagged on the doorframe, making sure none of his dad’s battered limbs got wedged in a way that would twist them, hurt them.
The Impala was parked close. There was only enough clearance between the car and the warehouse to get the back door open. Dean horsed John inside, muscles straining as he settled his dad across the back seat, leaning him carefully against the far door for support.
"You want me to sit back here with you?" he asked.
"No. I’m fine."
"You’re okay then?" Dean’s eyes were worried, his expression tight with agitated concern. "Nothing hurts? You don’t need me to settle you better, or adjust anything for you?"
John smiled tiredly. He passed on the opportunity to tease his son, passing on the chance to hurt him just a little with the way something he felt so deeply could be turned to seem like it made him less of a man than he should have known he was. "Everything hurts, Dean," he said quietly. "But I’m okay. I’ll be fine long enough to get back to Caleb’s."
"We’re not going to Caleb’s. We’re going to the hospital." Dean’s voice was firm, ready for an argument.
John obliged him. "I’ve got a couple of bruised ribs. A gash in the head that needs stitching and maybe - maybe - a couple of broken fingers. Other than that, I’m fine. Bruised as hell, but fine."
"We’re going to the hospital," Dean said again. "Now watch your feet, I’m going to close the door." He pushed John’s feet inside and closed the door carefully.
"You driving?" Caleb asked.
"No." Dean tossed him the keys. "You are." Swinging himself inside the Impala, Dean turned around in his seat so he could watch John, keep a constant eye on him.
"You’re passing on a chance to drive her?" John asked.
Dean shrugged. "Whatever. Not important right now."
"Since when isn’t my baby important?" John asked, letting his son think he was talking about the car Dean lived to drive whenever his dad was willing to surrender the keys.
Caleb got in, kicked the Impala to life. "Hospital?" he asked, looking in the rearview mirror at John.
Dean’s expression tightened, the tension around his eyes betraying the fact that he was geared up for a fight and just waiting for the starter’s gun to go off before he engaged. John watched him for a long moment, then nodded. "Whatever Dean thinks," he said.
"Hospital," Dean said immediately. Unequivocally.
"Hospital it is." Caleb put the car in gear, pulled out slowly.
"Just to be sure," Dean said to John. "I’d feel better that way, okay?"
He was looking for approval now. Looking for John to tell him he’d made the right choice even though it had been clear in every line of his posture that if John had tried to make any other choice, he would have fought him tooth and nail.
"Whatever, dude," John said, closing his eyes.
Dean laughed, a small burst of surprise that puffed out of him like a gut punch, but in a good way. "Dude? Did you just call me dude, Dad?"
John smiled, kept his eyes closed. He was remembering Dean as a four year old, remembering the way he used to greet John when he came home from the garage, covered in grease and sweat, so tired he could hardly stand sometimes, with a back that was usually kicking him in the ass for standing on cement all day long, his arms over his head, jacking with the undercarriage of half a dozen cars that hadn’t been given the kind of attention they deserved, hadn’t been afforded the kind of care they needed to keep them sharp, keep them in good running order, keeping them running like cars instead of hay wagons left out in the field to rust because no one cared enough to just drive them inside where it was dry.
Where it was safe.
Like all children that age, Dean had no concept of what it was like to work for a living. He had no idea what overtime meant or how hard it was for John to sacrifice time with his family so he and Mary could get an early start on their sons’ college funds. Saving was hard to do when the paycheck thrummed centimeters short of the breaking point just to make ends meet, but they were dedicated to giving the boys the life they deserved, dedicated to offering them both a chance at the kind of education that would allow them to be whatever they decided they wanted to be when they grew up.
Dean wanted to be a fireman at that age, but who knew? He might want to be a lawyer some day. Or a doctor. Or Batman. Or, knowing Dean, a car mechanic just like his old man.
But as far as John and Mary were concerned, it didn’t matter what he wanted to be so much as it mattered that his parents loved him enough to put everything they had into making sure whatever it was, he had the opportunity. And not just Dean, but Sammy, too.
That was important to John and Mary. Important enough they were willing to make the sacrifices that had to be made to make it happen.
But Dean didn’t understand any of that. He had no understanding of how often John came home so tired all he wanted to do was sit in a chair and stare for a while, so tired even the temptation of Mary’s body lying warm in the bed beside him wasn’t enough to keep him awake long enough to do what he would have liked to do. What they both would have liked to do.
All Dean really understood was that his dad had been gone since before he woke up in the morning and he was home now. John was home. So Dean greeted him. He greeted him the same way every day, running down the hallway as fast as he could and hurling himself at his old man with a child’s blind faith that he’d be caught, that his dad wouldn’t let him fall.
And John never did. Not once. Not ever.
"What?" John said, his eyes still closed, his voice slurring slightly on the words as he spoke. "I thought dude was the new ‘it’ word. Or the old one. Or something like that."
Dean laughed again. Listening to the sound of it, John remembered the sound of Mary laughing. "Yeah, Dad. Okay. Whatever. Just stop short of saying cool or groovy, will you? Because, dude. So not cool for an old dude to be saying things like that."
John smiled again, let himself relax, let himself listen to the purr of the Impala’s engine as she slipped onto the highway and headed for the nearest hospital. He could smell something in his memory. Perhaps it was just the smell of memory itself.
And it smelled like Mary. Nothing in specific, just her in general. Just the way she was. Just the way John remembered her, standing next to him, smiling in that way she smiled when he swung Dean up in aching arms and gave him all sorts of grief about Sammy being old enough to play ball with them, or watch John Wayne movies with them, or work in the garage on the Impala with them.
Dean’s response was always the same. Always "Nooooooooo," when his old man asked if he thought Sammy was old enough to … whatever.
Just that. "Nooooooooo." And then a little giggle that said Dean had absolutely no fear he might be replaced, he might be left behind, he might be stripped out of the life he understood by having everything torn away and getting nothing in return for what he lost but fear.
Just fear.
Fear of losing the only thing he had left. Fear of screwing it up. Fear of failing it.
Failing him.
Failing Dean.
John let himself remember that time, a time before the fear; and in remembering it, he remembered her, and everything was whole again, if only for a little while.
finis
Title: Living Inside the Box (2/2)
Author: dodger_winslow
Challenge: Psych 30 Chart
My Prompt: #6 Inferiority Complex
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Word Count: 16,000
Pairings: None
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.
Summary: He had to give it to the soulless bastard: this fear demon certainly knew its shit. Knew exactly what John was afraid of, knew exactly how to put him in the worst of all possible scenarios.
He couldn’t fight any more. He just wanted it to be over. Just needed this to end.
God, please let it end.
"Get his hands, Dean. Put them on your face so he can feel you. A demon can’t mimic that. Can’t be what it isn’t in the corporeal world, even if it can make you think you’re seeing what you aren’t in your head. But you’re going to have to control him, boy. Don’t let him knock you on your ass if he starts thrashing around again, which he might."
"Okay. I’ve got it."
"You ready?"
"I’m ready."
The grip on John’s arms loosened cautiously. He felt someone pick up his hands, hold them. It felt like Dean, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
Dean didn’t know where he was, what he was hunting. The fear demon was fucking with him. It was trying to seduce him into believing, trying to give him one last thing to believe in so he could open his eyes and find it wasn’t real.
Nothing was real. Nothing mattered.
But even knowing that, John let it pull his hands up, let it put them on someone’s face.
Dean’s face.
John tried not to move his fingers, tried not to let himself believe what he already believed.
"Come on, Dad," Dean’s voice encouraged. "It’s Daredevil time. The man who has no fear, right?"
John choked on his own terror. His fingers moved of their own volition, finding his son’s features, identifying someone he knew so well he didn’t have to see him to recognize him.
"Sam," he said, desperate to confuse it, desperate to trick it into shifting to try and match his expectations. But the demon was too deep inside him, too incumbent to his own perceptual perspective. It could feel what he knew, and John knew this was Dean.
He believed it.
"Sam? Dude, you suck as a blind person. It’s me. It’s Dean."
He believed it. It was Dean. Dean had come for him. Dean was here.
"Dean?"
"There you go."
"Dean?" John whispered again. "Dean?"
"Come on, Dad. Open your eyes. We look like a couple of girls here, doing all this touchy-feely crap, and Caleb has a camera phone. You don’t want this getting on the internet, do you? Or even worse, getting emailed to Sammy. That would suck wouldn’t it? Come on, Dad. Open your eyes. Just trust me and open your eyes, okay? Please, Dad. For me. Open your eyes for me."
"Dean," John breathed. He opened his eyes. He’d never been more scared to do anything in his life, but he did it, made himself do it.
He trusted Dean. He believed in Dean.
And it was Dean.
John’s heart cramped in his chest. He whined again - heard himself whine and hated himself for it - but Dean’s face was only inches from his, his eyes sharp with a near-panic that didn’t show in his voice at all. Dean grinned at him, doing everything he could to look like he wasn’t as close to breaking as John was to already broken.
"There you go, Dad. See? I told you it was me, didn’t I?"
"Dean."
"That’s my name, dude. And you are totally wearing it out."
"Dean." It wasn’t a question any more, wasn’t a disbelief predicated on belief. It wasn’t confusion about how what seemed so real could actually be real, wasn’t confusion about how what seemed to be there could actually be there.
It was Dean.
Dean was here.
John could see it in his son’s eyes. He could see the child he’d raised behind the man who hunted with him now, the son who stayed when everyone else left. When even Sammy left.
But not Dean. Dean stayed. Dean needed him. Dean was here, and Dean would be always here.
He could trust Dean. He could believe in Dean.
And he did. And it mattered.
John’s hands slid off Dean’s face to grab at him, hold on to him, cling to him like a lifeline tossed into the eye of a category four hurricane. Releasing his hold on John, Caleb moved out of the way so Dean could return the embrace, so he could hang on to his old man almost as desperately as his old man was hanging on to him.
"Aw, that’s sweet guys," Caleb said with a grin. "That’s really, really sweet."
John ignored him, ignored everything but the feel of his son in his arms. It was Dean. It was really Dean. He held on without speaking, struggling to catch up to the belief that Dean wouldn’t evaporate to some soulless illusion the moment John actually believed in him.
But he wouldn’t. And he didn’t. It was Dean. Dean was real.
Dean’s standard evasions were conspicuously absent, the protests he normally offered in response to the prospect of any show of impending affection absolutely silent. He’d dropped his face to John’s shoulder, his hands twisting into the back of John’s tattered, blood-stained jacket. It was something he used to do when he was a kid, something he did to make it impossible for anyone to separate them unless they were willing to break a little boy’s hands to do it.
"Dean," John breathed.
Caleb waited for several minutes before he said, "Okay, guys. Hate to break up the lovefest here, but I’ve got more important things to do today than watch some chick flick go on and on and on. Dean, we need to get your dad out of here. Go get the car and pull it around front while I check him out, make sure nothing important’s broken."
Dean didn’t move, didn’t pull out of John’s embrace.
"You hear me?" Caleb asked after a beat.
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "I hear you."
"Then get to it."
"Just hold on to your panties for a minute. I’ll get to it when I get to it." Dean was still holding onto his dad, both hands still twisted into John’s jacket.
Caleb’s eyebrow climbed up his face. "Hold on to my panties?" he challenged. "Who’s in a girl clench with his old man here, boy? Sure as fuck ain’t me."
"Just hold on to your panties for a minute, Caleb," John whispered. His voice was coarse, breaking a little as he spoke. He couldn’t let go yet, couldn’t release Dean even though he knew he should.
It was starting to actually feel real to him now. Starting to feel real in a way that didn’t feel that way just because he believed it. The demon couldn’t do this. It couldn’t make him feel what he was feeling right now. If it could, it wouldn’t need victim participation in the escalation to a state of fear that allowed it to feed. But it did. It required it because humans had free will. They felt what they felt. They couldn’t be forced to feel something they didn’t feel.
He was realizing that now, understanding it in a way that superceded the fact that logic told him Dean couldn’t have found him because Caleb wouldn’t have betrayed him by telling his son what he was hunting.
But Dean did. And Caleb had. He could feel it. Feel it as truth. Feel it as real.
John held on for another thirty seconds, maybe forty five, before he could force himself to unclench his hands, force himself to release the death grip he had on the leather of Dean’s jacket to pat him on the back, telling him to let go, telling him the chick flick moment was over.
Dean disagreed. He held on for another full minute before he let go, too. When he finally released John, finally pulled back, he looked to John instead of Caleb for direction.
"Go get the car," John said. "And keep your eyes peeled. These things don’t travel in packs or even pairs, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make an exception now and again. Always err on the side of caution, Dean. Especially when you’re dealing with something that just kicked your old man’s ass."
Dean nodded. He was grinning, his eyes full of tears he wasn’t letting fall, one hand still twisted into John’s jacket, holding on for just a moment longer before he let go. "Don’t sweat it, Dad," he said. "Always a little harder for an old guy to be a bad ass than it is for us prime-time warrior types."
"Still young enough to put you in your place if you get too mouthy with me," John said. His hand was shaking when he let go of Dean’s arm, released him completely to send him on his way.
Dean stood. "Bold talk from a one-eyed, fat man," he quipped. It was a quote from one of John’s favorite movies, one they’d watched together enough times to know every line by heart. It was Dean seeing the fear still carving his dad up from the inside out, speaking directly to it, telling John it was him, it was Dean, it was his son.
Not some fear demon.
It was Dean.
John nodded, telling his son he got it, he understood. Dean gave him a small smile of hang-in-there, then turned and headed for the back of the cavernous warehouse at a trot.
John watched until Dean was gone before he shifted his gaze, looked around the shadows and echoes of empty space put to the task of nothing much, struggling to make sense of something that made no sense to him.
"Where are we?" he asked Caleb finally.
"Same place you’ve been for the last fourteen hours, you dumb son of a bitch," Caleb answered. "Warehouse on thirty-second. You don’t remember getting your ass kicked and shoved into a box here?"
"Fourteen hours?" John repeated dully.
"Give or take."
"I’ve only been here fourteen hours?"
Caleb was checking him over, examining the fresh blood on John’s hands, then moving on to look for the source of blood washed down the side of his face in a dry, cracked veneer; flaking to red dandruff in his beard, crackled like snakeskin down the side of his neck.
"Son of a bitch, John," Caleb asked. "Do you ever hit anything ass first instead of head first?"
"It didn’t bury me?" John asked hollowly.
Caleb flicked him a glance. "Bury you? No. It didn’t bury you. You’ve been right here the whole time. Nice, neat little John-in-a-box, but not buried alive."
"I heard the dirt hitting the outside of the box," John whispered. "Felt it lowering me into the ground."
Caleb progressed his exam from John’s head to his bruised chest and cracked ribs. "Yeah. Demons will fuck with you that way. It’s what they do. That’s why we call them demons."
"So it didn’t bury me?" John asked again.
Caleb pushed on the worst of his aching ribs and John gasped, cursing.
Caleb grinned. "No thanks, John," he said mildly. "You’re really not my type. And for the last time, no, it didn’t bury you. If it had, you’d’ve run out of air hours ago. But if that’s the way you want to tell it at the Roadhouse, that’s fine by me. Makes a better story. Much scarier than just sitting in an empty warehouse in a box."
"Broken?" John asked, referring to his ribs.
"Nah. Pretty sure they’re just bruised, although I think you might have broken a couple of fingers spazzing out in the box the way you were while me and your kid were busy putting a scorch to your play buddy. You were lucky, which I suppose is a good thing to be if you’re also going to be stupid."
"Stupid?" John repeated.
Caleb snorted. "I told you not to go after this bastard alone, didn’t I?"
"You said it wasn’t a good idea," John allowed.
"No," Caleb corrected. "I said you were the stupidest mother fucker ever born if you tried to take on a fear demon without backup. I’m pretty sure those were my exact words, in fact. Which most people - you evidently excluded - are smart enough to realize means don’t do that or you’ll get your ass killed. Or worse."
"I told you not to tell Dean what I was after," John said.
"I didn’t."
"What?" John challenged. "He just stowed away in your trunk when you came looking for me?"
"I wouldn’t have come looking for you," Caleb said a little sharply. "Not realizing you were stupid as I probably should have."
"So I’ve been told," John said.
Caleb shook his head. He stared out into the emptiness of the dark warehouse, saying nothing for a long moment. Then, almost like he was trying to explain calculus to a child too stupid to ever learn something as simple as two plus two equaling four, he said "This was a pretty low level player in the bigger scheme of things, John. They’re nasty little bastards if they get hold of you, but they’re not all that hard to destroy, so most hunters worth their damn salt don’t have any trouble with them. Because as long as you don’t try to Lone Ranger one of the little fuckers, somebody on the team will get it long before it has time to amp anybody it grabs up to a point where it can suck you into a desiccated husk. So really, the only way to get screwed by one of these bad boys is by being stupid enough to go after it alone. Which I could swear I told you not to do. Which is probably why I didn’t think you’d do it, so I didn’t really feel a need to check up on you and make sure you made it home for breakfast."
"Damned negligent of you, all things considered," John said mildly.
Caleb laughed at that. "That’s funny, John. You calling anybody negligent is truly damned funny. If your kid hadn’t come knocking on my door looking for you this morning, you’d be one soul-deficit, funny mother fucker right now. It was actually feeding when we got it. You know that, right? You felt it?"
"Yeah," John allowed. "I felt it."
"Well put this in your pipe and smoke it, you stupid, negligent bastard: your kid saw it, too. Saw that fucker getting off on what it was sucking out of you; which is not a pretty sight, let me assure you. And he got to hear you flopping around in that box like a landed carp, too. Did you know you were actually screaming, John? Like you were being skinned alive, man. It scared the piss out of him. Hell, scared me a little, too. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a grown man make a sound like that."
"Wasn’t much fun for me, either," John said.
"Yeah? Well at least you deserved it. Your kid didn’t do nothing but get himself born to the wrong old man to deserve to hear someone he loves making a sound like that."
"Watch it, Caleb," John warned. "I’ve decked you for less than dogging me on how I raised my boys."
Caleb smile a little. "Yeah. You really look like you could deck me right now, John. I’m shaking in my skivies, can you tell?" He held out a hand. "Come on. Let’s get you out of that fucking box."
John accepted Caleb’s hand, let him do most of the heavy lifting of getting John to his feet, supporting him while he stepped out of the small, coffin-sized box in which he’s spent the last thirty-seven hours.
Or fourteen, evidently.
Once John was clear of the box, Caleb eased him back to the warehouse floor. He settled carefully, cautiously, feeling every bruise in his body as he worked to keep from letting legs shaking with weak give out and drop him to an unceremonious heap on hard concrete.
It took him several moments of just breathing to recover from the monumental effort it was just to move. "So," he said when he could manage speaking again. "I thought I told you not to tell Dean what I was after?"
Caleb just looked at him. He laughed finally and shook his head. "Yeah, well you’re not the boss of me, you hard-headed bastard. Good thing, too, or your boy would be going after dangerous shit without backup, just like his old man used to."
"I did what I did for a reason," John said.
"Because you’re stupid?" Caleb suggested.
"Because I didn’t want Dean exposed to this kind of thing. Vengeful spirits, wendigos, raw heads … that’s one thing. But this is something else. He’s gone through enough in his life. He doesn’t need to have his own fears turned against him, too."
Caleb snorted. "Dean’s fearless," he said. "That boy would walk into hell by the front door and call the Devil himself out for an ass kicking, if that’s what he got a mind to do."
"He’s not fearless," John corrected. "Which is exactly why I didn’t want him anywhere near this thing."
"What do you want me to say?" Caleb demanded. "The kid’s just like you. He can be a real pain in the ass. But he can also be very convincing, which he must get that from his mother because you couldn’t convince a shedding snake it doesn’t need its old skin. And he made some points I couldn’t argue with; one of them being that a fear demon isn’t all that dangerous if you hunt them with backup, and another being that you are far too stupid to have done that. I couldn’t argue with him on that. In fact, once he pointed it out, I felt like a fucking idiot for not realizing that myself. For actually trusting you when you said you’d use your damn head and not get yourself torn apart by something I gave you the intel to find. Because fuck you for that, John. Fuck you for making me party to trying to make those boys of yours orphans."
John shook his head, looked away rather than answer. His whole body was trembling now, reacting to the overload of adrenaline that had him souped up to a tasty entre for the smear of black scorch half a dozen yards away. The scar on concrete was all that was left of the demon that had tortured him for the last thirty-seven hours.
Or fourteen, he reminded himself.
"You sure it was only fourteen hours?" John asked after almost a minute of silence.
Caleb sighed. Shifting out of his crouch to take a seat on the floor at John’s side, he said, "Yes. I’m sure. Just like I’m sure you weren’t ever buried. Why?’
John shrugged. "Seemed longer," he said.
"That’s the whole point. It’s supposed to seem like an eternity. They fuck with your perception of time, just like they fuck with your chemical balance. Anything they can access in your head, they’re going to fuck with. That’s what they do."
"Thought I’d be able hold on longer than that," John said. "Spent several weeks in an interrogation chamber once. Never even came close to spilling it. But this bastard had me on my knees. You hadn’t gotten here when you did, I wouldn’t have made it. Bit of a ball buster to find he managed that in only fourteen hours."
"When I said stupid," Caleb said after a beat of silence. "I was talking about your judgement skills, not your intellect."
John frowned. "Meaning?"
"Meaning surely you can’t actually be that stupid, can you? Comparing fourteen hours going one-on-one with fear demon on its own playing field to a human interrogation? You realize that’s like comparing pee-wee football to the NFL, right? Girl’s pee-wee football, even."
"I don’t know. Those Iranians know their shit."
"Human, John." Caleb said. "The key ingredient is human. I don’t care how bad they are, they’re still rank amateurs compared to what a demon can and will do."
John nodded. "Yeah. I guess." He looked away again, studied a far wall without saying anything else.
"What’d it hit you with?" Caleb asked after a beat.
John shook his head.
"Mary?"
"Don’t want to talk about it."
"Do you remember Ken Ponsei?" Caleb asked.
"No."
"Tall guy. Considered himself quite the big game hunter. Had a thing for wendigos?"
"Oh. Yeah. I remember him. What of it?"
"Fear demon got him a couple of years back," Caleb said quietly. "He lasted five hours. The guy was leather to the bone, and he lasted five hours. His hunting partners were right there, right on site with him when he got grabbed, but by the time they found him, it was already too late." Caleb stopped for a moment, then finished in a voice almost too gentle for the specifically ungentle man he was, "Fourteen hours is relative, John. It’s nothing to be ashamed of."
John nodded, didn’t answer.
"They cheat," Caleb added. "And they lie. I know you already know this, but maybe it bears repeating: That’s the one thing you can always count on with demons, that they’ll cheat and they’ll lie. It’s what they do. And these guys turn your own head against you. Every time you try to push a thought out of your mind, they push it back in. They keep you on the track they want you on, won’t let you get off, won’t let you take a break, won’t let you hide from yourself, distract yourself, control yourself. Time is their enemy and they know it. The longer it takes, the more chance there is someone will find you, steal their dinner, fuck up their sick, twisted fun.
"They’re fear demons, not sit-around-and-wait demons, so they condense the timeframe as much as they can, accelerate the fear response by pulling every dirty trick in the book. You’ve probably got enough adrenaline in your system to give most men a stroke. They push that to keep it flowing, keep you amped so you’re more reactive to anything they can poke you into thinking about.
"So whatever they used against you; it isn’t your fault it worked," Caleb finished. "You know me, John. I’d tell you if it was. I’d call you on it in a heartbeat if I thought you were weak. You aren’t weak. You’re stupid to put yourself in that position in the first place, but you aren’t weak to have responded to a fear demon with fear. It’s what they do."
"Yeah," John said. And nothing more.
"They sense fear, you know," Caleb added. "Smell it like an animal, only a thousand times more sensitive."
"Yeah," John said again. "I know."
"It sensed me," Caleb said. "Right before it went down, it sense me, figured out where I was because it smelled it on me. And I wasn’t even really afraid so much as just a little anxious. But it sensed me and was just about to de-corporealize into the night, taking as much of you with it as it had. That might not have been enough to de-soul you, or even kill you; but it sure as shit would have been enough to take you out. You’d have never recovered. You would have spent the rest of your life where ever it had you when we showed up; and I’m assuming that was hell, because pretty much all demons get their jollies by putting guys like you in hell."
John looked up, met Caleb’s gaze. "Do you have a point? Or is this just the scared straight schpiel?"
"Dean was right behind it," Caleb said quietly. "And it never even knew he was there. It never saw him coming, John. Never knew what hit it. That’s how good your kid is. How fearless he is. The fucking demon never even knew he was there."
John swallowed hard, looked away. "Yeah. I know. He’s good. Strong. Both he and Sam are. Sometimes they make me wonder how in the hell I ever managed to raise them without fucking it up."
Caleb started to answer, but stopped when the front door to the warehouse slammed open and Dean strode through it. Walking across the emptiness between them in long, distance-eating strides, Dean’s eyes studied John with an intensity he normally reserved for hot girls in short skirts who were giving him their best come-fuck-me look.
There was a starkness hiding in his son’s eyes that John could see as clearly as ink dropped in milk. How the demon could have missed smelling the fear burning there was something John didn’t understand, and probably never would.
"You ready to hit the road, Dad?" Dean asked as he dropped to a crouch at John’s side.
"Yeah. Give me a hand up, son."
Dean slipped in under his arm, helped John struggle to his feet. It surprised him, as it always did, exactly how strong Dean was. How easily he bore up under John’s weight, how much it seemed less a burden to him than something he carried like he carried his own heart.
"Need any help?" Caleb asked.
"No. I’ve got him. You can get the door if you want though." Holding John’s wrist with one hand, Dean slipped the other around John’s waist, getting a good grip on his belt to establish a balance between them that assured far more weight would fall on him than fell on John.
That’s the way Dean was, the way he’d always been. Even as a child, he stepped up, stepped in, took the weight and carried it like it was his.
"Hey," John said quietly, watching his son’s profile as they made their way across the warehouse.
Dean glanced at him. "Yeah?"
"Thanks."
Dean grinned. "Sure. No problem."
"For coming," John clarified.
Dean winced a little. "Really? I figured you’d probably be pissed about that."
"I am. But still. Thanks."
Dean nodded. He looked away then, trying to hide how much such simple words meant to him. "Pretty stupid of you to leave without telling me where you were going," he said almost like it was out of line for him to mention it.
"Yeah. Suppose it was."
"Don’t do it again, okay?"
John smiled a little. "Who’s the dad here?" he asked.
It was something John had been asking Dean since he was a child. Dean always answered the same way. He answered differently this time.
"Fuck that, Dad. Don’t do it again."
He glanced at John out of the corner of his eye. The look wasn’t asking for approval. It was almost angry enough to qualify as bitter.
"Okay?" Dean pressed when John didn’t say anything.
"Yeah," John agreed. "Okay."
John felt Caleb watching them. He spared the smaller man a quick glance, and Caleb met his eyes, shifted his focus to Dean, then brought it back to John again.
He knew. He’d figured it out.
John didn’t bother denying it. There were a lot of things for a man who lived the way he did to fear. If he let himself fear them, he wouldn’t have been any good to anyone, least of all, his own sons.
So he didn’t fear them. Not because he didn’t, but because he wouldn’t.
Wouldn’t allow himself the indulgence.
Caleb opened the door and Dean maneuvered John through it carefully, making sure nothing snagged on the doorframe, making sure none of his dad’s battered limbs got wedged in a way that would twist them, hurt them.
The Impala was parked close. There was only enough clearance between the car and the warehouse to get the back door open. Dean horsed John inside, muscles straining as he settled his dad across the back seat, leaning him carefully against the far door for support.
"You want me to sit back here with you?" he asked.
"No. I’m fine."
"You’re okay then?" Dean’s eyes were worried, his expression tight with agitated concern. "Nothing hurts? You don’t need me to settle you better, or adjust anything for you?"
John smiled tiredly. He passed on the opportunity to tease his son, passing on the chance to hurt him just a little with the way something he felt so deeply could be turned to seem like it made him less of a man than he should have known he was. "Everything hurts, Dean," he said quietly. "But I’m okay. I’ll be fine long enough to get back to Caleb’s."
"We’re not going to Caleb’s. We’re going to the hospital." Dean’s voice was firm, ready for an argument.
John obliged him. "I’ve got a couple of bruised ribs. A gash in the head that needs stitching and maybe - maybe - a couple of broken fingers. Other than that, I’m fine. Bruised as hell, but fine."
"We’re going to the hospital," Dean said again. "Now watch your feet, I’m going to close the door." He pushed John’s feet inside and closed the door carefully.
"You driving?" Caleb asked.
"No." Dean tossed him the keys. "You are." Swinging himself inside the Impala, Dean turned around in his seat so he could watch John, keep a constant eye on him.
"You’re passing on a chance to drive her?" John asked.
Dean shrugged. "Whatever. Not important right now."
"Since when isn’t my baby important?" John asked, letting his son think he was talking about the car Dean lived to drive whenever his dad was willing to surrender the keys.
Caleb got in, kicked the Impala to life. "Hospital?" he asked, looking in the rearview mirror at John.
Dean’s expression tightened, the tension around his eyes betraying the fact that he was geared up for a fight and just waiting for the starter’s gun to go off before he engaged. John watched him for a long moment, then nodded. "Whatever Dean thinks," he said.
"Hospital," Dean said immediately. Unequivocally.
"Hospital it is." Caleb put the car in gear, pulled out slowly.
"Just to be sure," Dean said to John. "I’d feel better that way, okay?"
He was looking for approval now. Looking for John to tell him he’d made the right choice even though it had been clear in every line of his posture that if John had tried to make any other choice, he would have fought him tooth and nail.
"Whatever, dude," John said, closing his eyes.
Dean laughed, a small burst of surprise that puffed out of him like a gut punch, but in a good way. "Dude? Did you just call me dude, Dad?"
John smiled, kept his eyes closed. He was remembering Dean as a four year old, remembering the way he used to greet John when he came home from the garage, covered in grease and sweat, so tired he could hardly stand sometimes, with a back that was usually kicking him in the ass for standing on cement all day long, his arms over his head, jacking with the undercarriage of half a dozen cars that hadn’t been given the kind of attention they deserved, hadn’t been afforded the kind of care they needed to keep them sharp, keep them in good running order, keeping them running like cars instead of hay wagons left out in the field to rust because no one cared enough to just drive them inside where it was dry.
Where it was safe.
Like all children that age, Dean had no concept of what it was like to work for a living. He had no idea what overtime meant or how hard it was for John to sacrifice time with his family so he and Mary could get an early start on their sons’ college funds. Saving was hard to do when the paycheck thrummed centimeters short of the breaking point just to make ends meet, but they were dedicated to giving the boys the life they deserved, dedicated to offering them both a chance at the kind of education that would allow them to be whatever they decided they wanted to be when they grew up.
Dean wanted to be a fireman at that age, but who knew? He might want to be a lawyer some day. Or a doctor. Or Batman. Or, knowing Dean, a car mechanic just like his old man.
But as far as John and Mary were concerned, it didn’t matter what he wanted to be so much as it mattered that his parents loved him enough to put everything they had into making sure whatever it was, he had the opportunity. And not just Dean, but Sammy, too.
That was important to John and Mary. Important enough they were willing to make the sacrifices that had to be made to make it happen.
But Dean didn’t understand any of that. He had no understanding of how often John came home so tired all he wanted to do was sit in a chair and stare for a while, so tired even the temptation of Mary’s body lying warm in the bed beside him wasn’t enough to keep him awake long enough to do what he would have liked to do. What they both would have liked to do.
All Dean really understood was that his dad had been gone since before he woke up in the morning and he was home now. John was home. So Dean greeted him. He greeted him the same way every day, running down the hallway as fast as he could and hurling himself at his old man with a child’s blind faith that he’d be caught, that his dad wouldn’t let him fall.
And John never did. Not once. Not ever.
"What?" John said, his eyes still closed, his voice slurring slightly on the words as he spoke. "I thought dude was the new ‘it’ word. Or the old one. Or something like that."
Dean laughed again. Listening to the sound of it, John remembered the sound of Mary laughing. "Yeah, Dad. Okay. Whatever. Just stop short of saying cool or groovy, will you? Because, dude. So not cool for an old dude to be saying things like that."
John smiled again, let himself relax, let himself listen to the purr of the Impala’s engine as she slipped onto the highway and headed for the nearest hospital. He could smell something in his memory. Perhaps it was just the smell of memory itself.
And it smelled like Mary. Nothing in specific, just her in general. Just the way she was. Just the way John remembered her, standing next to him, smiling in that way she smiled when he swung Dean up in aching arms and gave him all sorts of grief about Sammy being old enough to play ball with them, or watch John Wayne movies with them, or work in the garage on the Impala with them.
Dean’s response was always the same. Always "Nooooooooo," when his old man asked if he thought Sammy was old enough to … whatever.
Just that. "Nooooooooo." And then a little giggle that said Dean had absolutely no fear he might be replaced, he might be left behind, he might be stripped out of the life he understood by having everything torn away and getting nothing in return for what he lost but fear.
Just fear.
Fear of losing the only thing he had left. Fear of screwing it up. Fear of failing it.
Failing him.
Failing Dean.
John let himself remember that time, a time before the fear; and in remembering it, he remembered her, and everything was whole again, if only for a little while.
finis