SPN FIC - Nothing But the Truth
Okay -- you guys wanted John, so here ya go. Christmas Day 1991, following A Very Supernatural Christmas.
The thing barely had any needles on it. It was Charlie Brown's Christmas tree in the middle of January, after even Charlie Brown had given up on it. It had lights, though, what seemed to be a single string of outdoor lights that beyond a shadow of a doubt Dean had boosted from somewhere. John didn't bother to try to convince himself that this was the 24th, that he'd gotten in under the wire. He hadn't; he'd driven right on past the wire. It was the 25th, and even that was winding down.
Characters: John, Dean (age 12), Sam (age 8)
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: A Very Supernatural Christmas
Length: 2848 words
NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH
By Carol Davis
He went to the wrong motel. That was his first mistake.
Okay, maybe not the first. Maybe not anywhere near first. First one that day, possibly. Either way, John had the room key in his hand and was about to slide it into the lock when he realized that the door looked…wrong.
Tired, he thought. Just…tired.
But he'd been at this for too long to reject any notion of wrongness his subconscious tried to hand him. Go with your gut was a good plan most of the time, and that included anytime he was so tired he had to instruct himself to put one foot in front of the other. So he took another look at the door. Looked at the key. Turned a little and looked at the weather-beaten neon sign at the far side of the parking lot. The sign that had prompted him to turn in here. Blue and white - that was right, wasn't it? He couldn't go by the name of the place, use that to decide whether he was right or wrong, because for the life of him he couldn't remember what the name ought to be. These goddamn places all had names that sounded the same, anyway. And they all looked the same, with minor variations.
That an excuse, you sorry bastard?
He was at the wrong motel.
Slowly, with exhaustion humming through every inch of him, he walked the few steps back to the Impala. He had to fumble in his pocket for the keys.
Eight years now, and it wasn't only the motels that all seemed the same; the jobs fell into that same bucket. He'd finished up a job less than three hours ago and already the details of it were dissolving into a gray haze. He'd barely managed to keep his wits about him until it was done, which was certainly…
What?
What do you want, the fucking MVP award? You stay in the game, you stay with the game, or you get yourself killed.
Tired hadn't counted when he was nineteen and in country, and it didn't count now.
He drove up and down the main road for twenty minutes, feeling a rising sense of panic that he tried to beat back with the knowledge that yes, this was the right road; he was sure of that much. This was the right road, and he was on the right section of road. And that meant that…what, the motel had magically disappeared?
The muscles of his shoulders and lower back had started to scream in protest a couple of minutes before he found it.
Gonna get yourself killed, you ass.
You're gonna get them killed.
He pulled into the parking lot, looked for the room, the right room this time, the one the key belonged to, thinking that, as always, Dean would hear him coming. Dean had an ear for the car the way animals could pick their young out of a crowd - even if the TV was on, turned up loud, even if he and Sam were bickering, he'd hear the car. He'd told John that, once - that he knew the sound, the particular rumble of its engine, even from quite a ways off.
A long time ago, when John would rumble into the driveway, home from the garage, Dean would meet him at the door. Would fling himself into John's arms and squeal, "Daddy!"
Didn't do that any more. He'd smile, sometimes. Say, "Hey, Dad."
John put the key in the lock and turned it. Didn't turn the knob; first, he knuckle-rapped a signal on the door, a code that would tell Dean It's me.
Dean turned the knob for him. Opened the door wide.
Said quietly, "Hey, Dad."
"Hey, Dean," John replied.
The boy looked him up and down. Didn't skip a detail. Looked for clues that would mean John was hurt: an arm held stiffly in place, pale skin, any sign of blood. There was none of that, but by the time Dean had convinced himself that his father was all right, John had started to lose patience with standing in the doorway. He rested a hand on Dean's shoulder in what he hoped was a gesture of encouragement, but no, Dean took it as John's need to lean on something and started his survey all over again. Shaking his head, John nudged him aside and aimed for the bed nearest the door.
"I'm all right," he told Dean.
He barely noticed the debris on the floor: candy wrappers, potato chip bags, some magazines and comic books. Later on, after he'd had some rest, he'd remind Dean to clean up the mess. It'd draw bugs, and the last thing they needed was another motel room full of ants, like back in…well, wherever that had been. Little fuckers had come right on into the beds, following the trail of chips and French fry grease and Christ only knew what all else. All three of them had gotten bit up something ugly - him and Dean and Sam.
Sam?
John shot a bleary look around, found the bathroom door shut. Nodded at that and gingerly stretched himself out on the bed.
"Do you want something to eat?" Dean asked. "I can get you something."
"Maybe later."
John closed his eyes. Let himself drift in quiet darkness for a minute. Let his muscles start the slow process of relaxing. The covers were rumpled and lumpy underneath him, but he couldn't put together the ambition to get up and straighten them. No matter; he'd slept under worse conditions. Conditions that made this place look like a room at the Four Seasons. Good enough, he thought, and let himself slide down toward sleep.
Then he remembered a glimpse of something at the far end of the room.
He opened his eyes. Peered muzzily at it in the dim, late-afternoon light.
The fuck is that?
"Dean?" he said in a mutter, but before the boy could say anything, John had found the answer on his own.
Son of a bitch.
The thing barely had any needles on it. It was Charlie Brown's Christmas tree in the middle of January, after even Charlie Brown had given up on it. It had lights, though, what seemed to be a single string of outdoor lights that beyond a shadow of a doubt Dean had boosted from somewhere. John didn't bother to try to convince himself that this was the 24th, that he'd gotten in under the wire. He hadn't; he'd driven right on past the wire. It was the 25th, and even that was winding down.
"It's okay," Dean said. "You're here. That's -"
"Where's your brother?"
"In the head."
"How long's he been in there?"
"Uh…not long."
Since he heard the car, John guessed. Ignoring the shriek of protest he got from his back and shoulders, he pushed himself upright, sitting with legs hanging over the side of the bed. Getting to his feet took some doing, and once he was up he had to shuffle to the bathroom door. He knocked, three easy raps, and said close to the jamb, "Sammy? Come on out, son."
He didn't get a response. He knew better than to think Sam had passed out in there.
"Sam," he said a little more firmly.
A few seconds went by - the amount of time Sam generally took to underscore his point - before the door creaked open. Sam walked past John without looking at him and sat himself down on the couch, attention focused on the TV.
"Sam, quit it," Dean said.
"Gonna take a shower," John told his younger son. "Then we can go out and get some dinner."
"Not hungry," Sam muttered.
Dean glanced back and forth, his mouth tight. By the look of it, Sam was breaching some agreement they'd come to in John's absence, and if John left the two of them alone, Sam was going to get his flesh peeled from his bones. A long, hot shower - if the water held out - might allow enough time for that.
"There's a place open down the road," John said. "Not sure what they've got, but -"
"I said I'm not hungry," Sam barked.
John let a couple of seconds slide by, then replied, "Fine. Dean and I will go get some dinner. And you can sit here and work on your attitude."
Dean sidled a couple of steps closer to his brother. Glared down at him. Said under his breath, "You quit it or I'll kick your ass."
"Go screw yourself," Sam announced.
"Dean," John said. "Excuse us." He was only halfway through saying it when Dean started to wind up to intervene, but John cut him off with a look that didn't invite intervention. Didn't let it anywhere inside the city limits. With a small sigh and a grimace that said he was either constipated up to his eyebrows or Sam had betrayed something big and important that they'd agreed on a while ago, Dean went on into the bathroom and pushed the door shut most of the way. Not all the way, and that was pure Dean: he was going to leave himself the opportunity to step in to prevent bloodshed. He'd done it before, would do it again. But for the time being, at least, he was out of sight.
John moved around the couch to address Sam face to face. Or face to top of head, at least. "You have a problem, mister?" he asked.
"Nope," Sam said. "No problem."
"Then you want to explain that mouth?"
"Not really."
There were scraps of giftwrap paper on the couch, shoved into the groove between the arm and the cushion. More scraps on the floor, along with a fancy boxed Barbie doll and a… The hell? A fairy wand.
"Sam," John sighed, and shoved a hand through his hair.
Sam looked up at him. There was enough fiery indignation in his expression to ignite the remains of that sorry-ass evergreen. He wasn't in a mood to listen to The job took longer than I thought or We'll do something tomorrow or even I fucked up. Wasn't in a mood to listen to anything at all; that was plain.
"Let's just go get some dinner," John said. "Please."
"You lied to me."
"What?"
"You lied."
Behind the bathroom door, Dean let out a noise.
Possibilities ran through John's mind at remarkable speed, given that a minute ago he'd wondered if he could find his way to the restaurant he'd passed six or seven times in his search for the right motel. Lied? About…Santa Claus? About being back here on time? About having some specific gift in hand? About going somewhere - Jim Murphy's, maybe?
Sam let him flounder.
"I'm sor -" John began.
"I found your book," Sam told him.
And that was like being thrown into free-fall. John didn't need to ask which book, didn't need to wonder how much of it Sam had read, because it was there on his face: he'd gone through the whole thing. The journal. The parts about Mary. John's suppositions about what had killed her. The rest of it, too, all the details about the things he'd hunted for going on eight years now. Another kid might think all of it was bullshit, was some kind of adventure story, something fun.
Sam didn't look like he thought much of anything was fun. Not right now.
"Sam -"
"You lied."
"I was keeping you safe."
"You don't want to keep Dean safe?"
"Of course I do. Dean is older. He can -"
"Did you always tell him the truth?"
The boy had a stare like an interrogation lamp. Could rip right through you like shrapnel, leave you torn and bleeding. Leave you with nothing to say, no leg to stand on. Like his mother, when she went on a tear.
"I wanted you to be a kid, Sam," John said quietly.
"You said we have to keep moving because of your job. You don't have a job, do you?"
"Not the kind you're thinking, no."
"We have to keep running all over the place because you chase monsters."
At least there was no sneer in Sam's voice. No disdain. Just anger, and anger was an opponent John knew how to handle, how to defuse.
Or maybe not. Not coming from Sammy.
"I have to do what I think is best, Sam," John said.
The boy looked away from him for a minute, the fingers of his left hand plucking absently at the ribbing on the edge of the couch cushion. "You could get a real job," he said finally, not looking at his father. "And we could live in one place. We could have someplace nice. A regular house. We wouldn't have to stay in places like this."
"I'd do that if I could, Sammy. Believe me."
"Why can't you?"
Sam fixed those eyes on him again. Stared at him, steady and uncompromising. Eight years old. Eight years past the night John had snatched him out of his crib and passed him off to Dean.
It was no random act, what had happened that night.
None of it, none of it at all, had been random.
And only once in a while, in the daylight, could John indulge himself for a moment, let himself believe the lie that it was over.
"I'm gonna take a shower," he told his son. "Get cleaned up. I smell like -" Like that thing I killed. "We'll get some dinner. Biggest dessert they've got, okay? Then tomorrow we'll go do something. Movies. That sound good?"
Sam gaped at him. Astonished. Said nothing.
John reached out and rested his hand on the top of Sam's head. Scuffled his fingers in Sam's soft hair a little bit. To his relief, Sam didn't try to pull away. He might be seething inside, but he sat there stone-still. "I want to keep you safe, son," John told him. "I know it sounds like a line of crap. I know this isn't what we had before your mom died. But it's - it's what we need to do. Can you work with me on that?"
No answer.
"Sammy," John pressed. "Can you help me with this?"
"Will you stop lying to me?"
"Sam -"
"Will you?"
"You want me to explain to you what's in the book?"
"I want to know what Dean knows."
"All right."
"Everything Dean knows."
Go with your gut, John thought. Sonofabitch'll never steer you wrong. Dean seemed to know that, at least part of the time. Trouble was, Dean usually went with his heart, if it came down to a contest between the two. It made him easy to read. Easy to out-maneuver.
Between the three of them, he thought, they made a whole human being: gut, and heart, and head.
"You want to know how to burn mac and cheese?" John asked dryly.
"What? No."
"Get ready for dinner. Shoes would be good."
Sam sighed heavily and crawled off the couch, sliding into a reluctant scan of the floor for his sneakers. He seemed to have forgotten how angry he was, but John knew better than to rely on that. More than likely, something would set him off again before they'd finished dinner, and John couldn't bring himself to blame Sam for that.
Eight years back, he'd felt like he'd been lied to, too.
By the whole goddamn world.
He was halfway to the bathroom door when Dean came out, still working himself down from whatever plateau of outrage he'd reached in the can. John didn't need any help in guessing what that was about: there was a Don't tell Dad involved, for sure. A promise from Sammy that no, no, he wouldn't breathe a word of what they'd talked about. And that was something Dean still needed to learn: that more often than not, Sammy's Good Book was the Gospel of Sam. If it was in Sam's best interest to break promises like breadsticks, then so be it.
That was going to bring them to grief. All of them.
"Sammy?" John said.
The boy, on his hands and knees alongside the bed, peered up at John through the curtain of his bangs.
I know "the best I can" isn't "the best there is."
"Day after tomorrow," John said. "We'll talk about things."
Sam nodded, and went back to looking for his shoes.
A minute went by, composed of nothing but Sam ferreting under the bed, coming out with first one sneaker, then the other. Then Dean said, "Dad?" not much over a murmur.
John turned to look at him. Saw the defeat on Dean's face, the layers of I didn't know how to do it right.
The layers of I'm sorry.
Smiling - and he could feel the melancholy in it - John laid a hand on Dean's shoulder and squeezed.
Dean smiled back at him, and the expression matched John's in its lack of anything positive.
"One foot in front of the other," John told his son. "That's about the best we can do."
~~~~~~~~~~~