Offsides
Title: Offsides
Author: July
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: through 3.16
Disclaimer: Written for fun, not money.
Notes: I wrote this in the hostel at Kangerlussuaq, back when my brain was still working. montisello was kind enough to beta and not laugh at me.
Summary: "Take a lap, Winchester!"
OFFSIDES
“Take a lap, Winchester!”
Sam exhaled between gritted teeth and set off at a jog towards the chalk line of demarcation that ringed the soccer field. Zack was still holding his face on the sidelines, blinking back tears and bleeding from the nose. Pussy. If you couldn’t take a head butt-an incidental head butt-at this point in your life, how could you even look yourself in the mirror? So they were fourteen so what? Pussy.
Sam picked up the pace, sweating a little more in the Texas sun. You want a lap? I’ll give you a lap. Stupid Zack Tompson and his stupid nose. Stupid coach. Stupid game. Stupid Dad.
Sam was pissed because Dad was making soccer hard today and it was impossible not to be pissed about that. Soccer wasn’t supposed to be hard. It was supposed to be easy. There were rules. And if you followed the rules, things went well. You stayed in the lines and you played with the team and you ran around a lot. You scored goals, you played good defense, you won games.
Yeah, well, la-dee-fucking-da. Sometimes you didn’t belong on your team even if you were better than everybody else. Sometimes you didn’t belong on your team because you were better than everybody else. Sometimes your team didn’t want you because you were different and everybody knew it. Even if you were better than everybody else.
And being good at soccer might get you a blue ribbon or two, but it didn’t keep your Dad from coming home during last night’s M*A*S*H re-run looking like he’d been worked over by a fucking biker gang. It didn’t keep your Dad from breaking promises about mixing garage work with work work. It didn’t keep you from having to hold your Dad’s scalp shut while it got stitched up. It didn’t keep you from getting sent to school and soccer practice like there was absolutely nothing wrong at home like your Dad was passed out on the sofa from blood loss and Percoset.
The lap was up. Sam looked up and met the coach’s eyes. The coach squinted, didn’t like what he saw, and blew his whistle again.
“Another lap, Winchester!”
Soccer could go screw itself.
The sun was relentless and the sweat was not cooling Sam down like it should have. It was probably not at all related to being hot under the collar in the metaphorical sense as well as the literal one. No, sir. At least it was almost over. Another lap or two and Sam could rejoin the scrimmage and then walk home. Home might suck tonight, it always sucked when Dad was hurt, but it was better than being here, out here faking it.
The second lap was up. The coach put Sam back in the game. You could deal with this, Sam thought. If you were raised a certain way, you could deal with just about anything. You could suck it back and bite your tongue and play through it already because a couple hours of soccer, even in hotter-than-hell Texas was a cakewalk in comparison to the real world. You could focus on your defense, on your footwork, while you tried to not throw an elbow just to make yourself feel better or body-check somebody just for the satisfaction of having something to hit. But maybe in the back of your brain there was a familiar rumbling noise like maybe...
Sam’s head whirled around like a prize pointer after a dead duck. The slick, black silhouette of the car slid into the school parking lot about a quarter mile away. Sam didn’t get a chance to watch, but instead raced down the sidelines to stop Chase Capps from scoring. Chase was denied, but dribbled away with the ball firmly in his control. Sam’s next desperate over-the-shoulder glance caught a lone figure walking stiffly towards the field in jeans and a ball cap.
“That rust-bucket again,” Chase said, plenty loud enough. He was a big guy, a junior, and his shadow was broad in the afternoon light. “Hey, Winchester, isn’t that your Dad’s rent-a-wreck?
Sam smiled, hoped Dad was close enough to see this, and charged Chase. There were days, like today, when you understood that a little turf burn and some pain were a small price to pay for petty revenge. Sam stayed just far enough away to test the boundaries of fair play, then moved to intercept the ball from Chase, accidentally found that their legs got tangled up, and brought Chase down while passing the ball away to a waiting teammate. Chase landed on top.
It took a minute on the scorched grass for Sam to start breathing again: raw knees, elbows, and what was bound to be an epic bruise or two. So. Totally. Worth. It.
“It’s a classic,” Sam gritted out, struggling upright and just happening to nudge Chase with a cleat or two. “And it runs like a dream. Also? Your dad drives a mini-van. So shut up.”
Coach blew the whistle again. Crap. “Nice defense, Winchester.” Oh. That was a nice change of pace. Maybe Coach was starting to come around. “Hit the showers everybody.” Sam made to bypass that and head straight for Dad, who was still making his way towards the field. “Hold up, Winchester.” Double crap.
“Coach?” Sam turned, made eye contact, and tried to be innocuous like Dad said.
“I see you’re getting your licks in, Sam, and I understand that,” Coach said. “It’s gotta be hard for you, on a new team and all.” Understatement of the fucking century. “But you earned your way here. And they’ll come around. So don’t blow it by pissing these guys off. And don’t blow it by pissing me off, either.”
Sam grinned. “Thanks, coach.”
“See you tomorrow, Sam.”
Sam turned, collected a small Adidas duffle (Dad didn’t want the army surplus ones to make them stand out here) and a blue backpack (ditto) and made straight for Dad. He was only about halfway to the soccer field and Sam was annoyed that he was attempting it instead of staying off his feet and drinking fluids like he was supposed to. It was obvious that Dad still felt like crap. He was pale and clammy and moving like a man twice his age. Sam sighed. Why couldn’t he just stay on the fucking sofa?
“You okay?” Dad said by way of greeting, glancing up and down for a signs of real damage. Satisfied that there was no real harm done, he smiled wolfishly with approval. “I love that move with the legs. That one never gets old. You didn’t go for the jewels, though, did you?”
“He dissed the Impala.”
“In that case, I hope you went straight for the jewels.”
“Come on, Dad. That’s amateur shit.”
“Samantha Jane Winchester,” Dad said. “Language, dammit.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “It’s Sam, Daddy. Come on.” She slung the backpack and the duffel over her left shoulder and offered Dad her right. And he wasn’t too proud to put a hand on it this time, just for balance.
“Does Mom know you’re here?” The loaded question to end all loaded questions and Sam knew it.
“Warden drove me herself,” Dad said. Sam looked up, spotted the figure behind the wheel and wondered when her Dad’s next round of Percoset was due.
“Yeah, but your ribs. And the stitches. You should be-”
“Okay, kid,” Dad stopped walking. “I came because it’s time we had a conversation.”
“Oh God, Dad,” Sam’s eyes widened in horror at the thought of the impending dialog. “Mom and I have covered this. Like, at length. Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not go there.”
“Jesus, no,” Dad looked freaked, too. “No, no...just, no. Wait, you’ve already had this talk?”
“It’s SOP, Dad,” Sam said. Especially if you happened to be dating a varsity swimmer with a chest that looked like it could have been chiseled from marble. And your mom had eyes in the back of her head.
“Yeah, okay, well your mom and I will be talking about that later. But this is a different conversation.”
“Good. I think.”
“This is about...” Dad trailed off and looked over her shoulder into the huge prairie sky. He gently tapped his cap, the one hiding the fresh bandaging, and then pointed to the left side of his ribcage. “I don’t want you to feel like any of this was your fault.” Sam turned away, towards the car.
“I know I didn’t personally toss you into an arroyo and bust your head open, if that’s what you mean.”
“It’s not,” Dad said. “Mom says you were kind of upset this morning.”
“Well, yeah.” Sam scuffed her toes in the dirt. “I hate it when you come home like that and then you ask me to go to school like everything’s normal. It’s stupid.”
“Well, yeah, it is,” he admitted. “But I don’t think that’s the whole story.”
Sam hated it when her dad looked at her like that, like he had installed infrared lie-detection equipment behind his eyes. She’d asked him one time how he’d gotten so good at reading people and Dad had told her that he had plenty of practice with her uncle. That and, you know, the pathological lying that his real job required.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Sam hedged.
“I think you do.” Dad tried to cross his arms over his chest, couldn't because of the ribs, and had to settle for putting one of them in the pocket of his jeans. If he was trying to glower, he was failing miserably. Sam had her Dad wrapped around her finger since the day she was born, so it wasn’t like that was going to fly. But he looked on the verge of being disappointed and if there was anything that really got to her, it was the thought of disappointing her father. She took a deep breath.
“You mean what I said when you got home last night.”
“You said-and I quote: ‘If you’d let me go with you like I wanted, none of this would have happened. If I’d gone with you, you wouldn’t be bleeding like a stuck pig all over the fucking linoleum.’”
Sam took a deep breath and ran her palm down the freckled plane of her face, wiping off sweat and knocking loose a few pieces of grass. “Yeah, I guess I kind of said that.”
Dad reached out suddenly, taking her by the shoulders. He looked scary. He looked scared. “I need you to listen to me, Samantha. And I need you to listen good. Do you understand me?” Sam nodded. “I said do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You are not responsible for what happens to me.”
“Dad, I just-“
“What part of ‘listen good’ was unclear to you?” It was a rhetorical question. Her dad’s voice was shaking a little. “You are not responsible for me. Not at home, not at the garage, not while I’m hunting. I’m the grown-up here. You’re not responsible for me.”
There was something about the way he said it, the same way he talked when she’d taken her first flight. She’d never forget the way he stood just outside of security, watching her in a desperate way like she could disappear at any moment if he so much as blinked. It was also the same tone he used when he talked about her uncle, though the message was antithetical. Sam found herself blinking back tears.
“Okay.”
“I mean it, Sam. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” she whispered. He sighed, let go of her shoulders, and they continued their slow march towards the Impala.
“Okay,” Dad said. “It’s not that hunting isn’t important. It is. And we’ll keep teaching you, but only if you quit saying shit like that. You’re gonna make me old before my time.” Sam rolled her eyes. “And you don’t get to quit soccer.”
“Who said anything about quitting soccer?”
“I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck,” he said wryly. “You pull much more of that crap during practice and you’re going to get yourself thrown off the team. All the fun of quitting with none of the guilt afterwards.”
Sam grinned. “I see you’re on to my master plan.” Dad froze again, though, gripping her right shoulder tightly.
“Soccer is important, too. It just...it is. Your uncle played and Granddad made him quit and that was a mistake. So you’re gonna keep playing. Got it?”
“Got it, Dad,” she said, just as seriously. And she wouldn’t quit, either. She was a Winchester.
Winchesters didn’t quit. They didn’t quit, they didn’t piss and moan, they shot straight, they landed their punches, they were loyal to a fault, they didn’t surrender and they didn’t miss school when their dads came home bloody. Sometimes, though, they lied.
I mean it, Sam. Do you understand?
The real answer to that question was: No fucking way, sir.
They were Winchesters. And if they weren’t responsible for each other, who would be? Twice in her life she’d seen her father without his shirt on-twice he’d barked at her for not knocking or whatever, and twice she’d seen her own family history written large on his skin. So Dad could save his breath. Winchesters didn’t leave a man behind and they weren’t afraid to bleed. Daughter or no, she was just as responsible for her father as he was for her.
They were Winchesters.
.
Author: July
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: through 3.16
Disclaimer: Written for fun, not money.
Notes: I wrote this in the hostel at Kangerlussuaq, back when my brain was still working. montisello was kind enough to beta and not laugh at me.
Summary: "Take a lap, Winchester!"
OFFSIDES
“Take a lap, Winchester!”
Sam exhaled between gritted teeth and set off at a jog towards the chalk line of demarcation that ringed the soccer field. Zack was still holding his face on the sidelines, blinking back tears and bleeding from the nose. Pussy. If you couldn’t take a head butt-an incidental head butt-at this point in your life, how could you even look yourself in the mirror? So they were fourteen so what? Pussy.
Sam picked up the pace, sweating a little more in the Texas sun. You want a lap? I’ll give you a lap. Stupid Zack Tompson and his stupid nose. Stupid coach. Stupid game. Stupid Dad.
Sam was pissed because Dad was making soccer hard today and it was impossible not to be pissed about that. Soccer wasn’t supposed to be hard. It was supposed to be easy. There were rules. And if you followed the rules, things went well. You stayed in the lines and you played with the team and you ran around a lot. You scored goals, you played good defense, you won games.
Yeah, well, la-dee-fucking-da. Sometimes you didn’t belong on your team even if you were better than everybody else. Sometimes you didn’t belong on your team because you were better than everybody else. Sometimes your team didn’t want you because you were different and everybody knew it. Even if you were better than everybody else.
And being good at soccer might get you a blue ribbon or two, but it didn’t keep your Dad from coming home during last night’s M*A*S*H re-run looking like he’d been worked over by a fucking biker gang. It didn’t keep your Dad from breaking promises about mixing garage work with work work. It didn’t keep you from having to hold your Dad’s scalp shut while it got stitched up. It didn’t keep you from getting sent to school and soccer practice like there was absolutely nothing wrong at home like your Dad was passed out on the sofa from blood loss and Percoset.
The lap was up. Sam looked up and met the coach’s eyes. The coach squinted, didn’t like what he saw, and blew his whistle again.
“Another lap, Winchester!”
Soccer could go screw itself.
The sun was relentless and the sweat was not cooling Sam down like it should have. It was probably not at all related to being hot under the collar in the metaphorical sense as well as the literal one. No, sir. At least it was almost over. Another lap or two and Sam could rejoin the scrimmage and then walk home. Home might suck tonight, it always sucked when Dad was hurt, but it was better than being here, out here faking it.
The second lap was up. The coach put Sam back in the game. You could deal with this, Sam thought. If you were raised a certain way, you could deal with just about anything. You could suck it back and bite your tongue and play through it already because a couple hours of soccer, even in hotter-than-hell Texas was a cakewalk in comparison to the real world. You could focus on your defense, on your footwork, while you tried to not throw an elbow just to make yourself feel better or body-check somebody just for the satisfaction of having something to hit. But maybe in the back of your brain there was a familiar rumbling noise like maybe...
Sam’s head whirled around like a prize pointer after a dead duck. The slick, black silhouette of the car slid into the school parking lot about a quarter mile away. Sam didn’t get a chance to watch, but instead raced down the sidelines to stop Chase Capps from scoring. Chase was denied, but dribbled away with the ball firmly in his control. Sam’s next desperate over-the-shoulder glance caught a lone figure walking stiffly towards the field in jeans and a ball cap.
“That rust-bucket again,” Chase said, plenty loud enough. He was a big guy, a junior, and his shadow was broad in the afternoon light. “Hey, Winchester, isn’t that your Dad’s rent-a-wreck?
Sam smiled, hoped Dad was close enough to see this, and charged Chase. There were days, like today, when you understood that a little turf burn and some pain were a small price to pay for petty revenge. Sam stayed just far enough away to test the boundaries of fair play, then moved to intercept the ball from Chase, accidentally found that their legs got tangled up, and brought Chase down while passing the ball away to a waiting teammate. Chase landed on top.
It took a minute on the scorched grass for Sam to start breathing again: raw knees, elbows, and what was bound to be an epic bruise or two. So. Totally. Worth. It.
“It’s a classic,” Sam gritted out, struggling upright and just happening to nudge Chase with a cleat or two. “And it runs like a dream. Also? Your dad drives a mini-van. So shut up.”
Coach blew the whistle again. Crap. “Nice defense, Winchester.” Oh. That was a nice change of pace. Maybe Coach was starting to come around. “Hit the showers everybody.” Sam made to bypass that and head straight for Dad, who was still making his way towards the field. “Hold up, Winchester.” Double crap.
“Coach?” Sam turned, made eye contact, and tried to be innocuous like Dad said.
“I see you’re getting your licks in, Sam, and I understand that,” Coach said. “It’s gotta be hard for you, on a new team and all.” Understatement of the fucking century. “But you earned your way here. And they’ll come around. So don’t blow it by pissing these guys off. And don’t blow it by pissing me off, either.”
Sam grinned. “Thanks, coach.”
“See you tomorrow, Sam.”
Sam turned, collected a small Adidas duffle (Dad didn’t want the army surplus ones to make them stand out here) and a blue backpack (ditto) and made straight for Dad. He was only about halfway to the soccer field and Sam was annoyed that he was attempting it instead of staying off his feet and drinking fluids like he was supposed to. It was obvious that Dad still felt like crap. He was pale and clammy and moving like a man twice his age. Sam sighed. Why couldn’t he just stay on the fucking sofa?
“You okay?” Dad said by way of greeting, glancing up and down for a signs of real damage. Satisfied that there was no real harm done, he smiled wolfishly with approval. “I love that move with the legs. That one never gets old. You didn’t go for the jewels, though, did you?”
“He dissed the Impala.”
“In that case, I hope you went straight for the jewels.”
“Come on, Dad. That’s amateur shit.”
“Samantha Jane Winchester,” Dad said. “Language, dammit.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “It’s Sam, Daddy. Come on.” She slung the backpack and the duffel over her left shoulder and offered Dad her right. And he wasn’t too proud to put a hand on it this time, just for balance.
“Does Mom know you’re here?” The loaded question to end all loaded questions and Sam knew it.
“Warden drove me herself,” Dad said. Sam looked up, spotted the figure behind the wheel and wondered when her Dad’s next round of Percoset was due.
“Yeah, but your ribs. And the stitches. You should be-”
“Okay, kid,” Dad stopped walking. “I came because it’s time we had a conversation.”
“Oh God, Dad,” Sam’s eyes widened in horror at the thought of the impending dialog. “Mom and I have covered this. Like, at length. Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not go there.”
“Jesus, no,” Dad looked freaked, too. “No, no...just, no. Wait, you’ve already had this talk?”
“It’s SOP, Dad,” Sam said. Especially if you happened to be dating a varsity swimmer with a chest that looked like it could have been chiseled from marble. And your mom had eyes in the back of her head.
“Yeah, okay, well your mom and I will be talking about that later. But this is a different conversation.”
“Good. I think.”
“This is about...” Dad trailed off and looked over her shoulder into the huge prairie sky. He gently tapped his cap, the one hiding the fresh bandaging, and then pointed to the left side of his ribcage. “I don’t want you to feel like any of this was your fault.” Sam turned away, towards the car.
“I know I didn’t personally toss you into an arroyo and bust your head open, if that’s what you mean.”
“It’s not,” Dad said. “Mom says you were kind of upset this morning.”
“Well, yeah.” Sam scuffed her toes in the dirt. “I hate it when you come home like that and then you ask me to go to school like everything’s normal. It’s stupid.”
“Well, yeah, it is,” he admitted. “But I don’t think that’s the whole story.”
Sam hated it when her dad looked at her like that, like he had installed infrared lie-detection equipment behind his eyes. She’d asked him one time how he’d gotten so good at reading people and Dad had told her that he had plenty of practice with her uncle. That and, you know, the pathological lying that his real job required.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Sam hedged.
“I think you do.” Dad tried to cross his arms over his chest, couldn't because of the ribs, and had to settle for putting one of them in the pocket of his jeans. If he was trying to glower, he was failing miserably. Sam had her Dad wrapped around her finger since the day she was born, so it wasn’t like that was going to fly. But he looked on the verge of being disappointed and if there was anything that really got to her, it was the thought of disappointing her father. She took a deep breath.
“You mean what I said when you got home last night.”
“You said-and I quote: ‘If you’d let me go with you like I wanted, none of this would have happened. If I’d gone with you, you wouldn’t be bleeding like a stuck pig all over the fucking linoleum.’”
Sam took a deep breath and ran her palm down the freckled plane of her face, wiping off sweat and knocking loose a few pieces of grass. “Yeah, I guess I kind of said that.”
Dad reached out suddenly, taking her by the shoulders. He looked scary. He looked scared. “I need you to listen to me, Samantha. And I need you to listen good. Do you understand me?” Sam nodded. “I said do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You are not responsible for what happens to me.”
“Dad, I just-“
“What part of ‘listen good’ was unclear to you?” It was a rhetorical question. Her dad’s voice was shaking a little. “You are not responsible for me. Not at home, not at the garage, not while I’m hunting. I’m the grown-up here. You’re not responsible for me.”
There was something about the way he said it, the same way he talked when she’d taken her first flight. She’d never forget the way he stood just outside of security, watching her in a desperate way like she could disappear at any moment if he so much as blinked. It was also the same tone he used when he talked about her uncle, though the message was antithetical. Sam found herself blinking back tears.
“Okay.”
“I mean it, Sam. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” she whispered. He sighed, let go of her shoulders, and they continued their slow march towards the Impala.
“Okay,” Dad said. “It’s not that hunting isn’t important. It is. And we’ll keep teaching you, but only if you quit saying shit like that. You’re gonna make me old before my time.” Sam rolled her eyes. “And you don’t get to quit soccer.”
“Who said anything about quitting soccer?”
“I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck,” he said wryly. “You pull much more of that crap during practice and you’re going to get yourself thrown off the team. All the fun of quitting with none of the guilt afterwards.”
Sam grinned. “I see you’re on to my master plan.” Dad froze again, though, gripping her right shoulder tightly.
“Soccer is important, too. It just...it is. Your uncle played and Granddad made him quit and that was a mistake. So you’re gonna keep playing. Got it?”
“Got it, Dad,” she said, just as seriously. And she wouldn’t quit, either. She was a Winchester.
Winchesters didn’t quit. They didn’t quit, they didn’t piss and moan, they shot straight, they landed their punches, they were loyal to a fault, they didn’t surrender and they didn’t miss school when their dads came home bloody. Sometimes, though, they lied.
I mean it, Sam. Do you understand?
The real answer to that question was: No fucking way, sir.
They were Winchesters. And if they weren’t responsible for each other, who would be? Twice in her life she’d seen her father without his shirt on-twice he’d barked at her for not knocking or whatever, and twice she’d seen her own family history written large on his skin. So Dad could save his breath. Winchesters didn’t leave a man behind and they weren’t afraid to bleed. Daughter or no, she was just as responsible for her father as he was for her.
They were Winchesters.
.