FIC: "Occasions of Sin" 1/1 (Supernatural, gen)
Title: Occasions of Sin
Author: hiyacynth
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Angst
Characters: Sam, Dean, John, Pastor Jim, and featuring Weechesters
Rating and Warnings: PG-13 for some bad language and blood. Spoilers up through "Everybody Loves a Clown."
Disclaimer: Woe is me, for I do not own the Winchesters and am not making any money here. No bunnies were hurt in the writing of this story.
Summary: "Oh, Sammy..." Pastor Jim sighs and runs his hand over his softly grooved face and up through his grayed hair. "Have you learned so little about forgiveness?"
Acknowledgements and notes: This story owes a huge debt to likethesun2. I had the pleasure of beta-reading her story, "Violent World Our Fathers Brought," and during that beta I discovered sudden and undying love for Pastor Jim. Since then, she's not only been incredibly supportive about my own story, but has also been her usual genius self and has saved me from my own laziness, frustration, and obviousity more times than I can count. Another enormous thanks to my dear friend cunien, who's read everything I've written in three years, usually in fits and starts, and always knows the right thing to say. Thanks, too, to baylorsr for the last-minute theological beta. Last but not least, eternal love and gratitude to liptonrm, whose devoted bitch I am since she coaxed me into the fangirlish glory that is Supernatural. Consider this a "hang tough through law school and thanks for letting me leave crazed messages in your voicemail" present.
1990
Sammy sits on the guest chair in Pastor Jim's office at the back of Saint Eustachius' church, reading aloud from one of the books Dad left on the rectory's kitchen table before he and Dean headed out. Jim helps him with the Latin when he gets stuck, rubbing a calloused hand through Sammy's hair and saying proudly that the boy's the quickest study he's ever seen. "Most kids your age can barely read the funny pages," he says, and Sammy's chest swells a little.
Sammy's pronunciation is good, and Jim says that most of the time just-plain reading'll do the trick. But if you want to make the Latin count--make it help, make it hurt--you gotta know what it is you're saying.
A gray-haired lady interrupts the lesson, sticking her head around the doorframe as she knocks on it. "Father Murphy?" She sees Sammy and smiles the way all ladies smile at him. "Can I steal you for a minute? Janice and I have the program for midnight Mass mocked up, and we were hoping you could give it a look-see."
Jim gets up from and taps Sammy's book as he passes. "Keep going. I'll be right out here."
"Sweet boy," Sammy hears the lady say. "I wish my Francine had studied her catechism like that." He laughs inside, thinking about what Pastor Jim said about knowing what the Latin means. He hasn't understood everything he's been reading, but he's pretty sure the lady wouldn't've smiled like that if she'd seen the pictures in his book.
Jim and Sammy eat the leftovers of the stew Jim made for them all yesterday. It's even better the second time around, and it warms Sammy right up after sitting so long in the stone church's draughty office. After dinner, Jim takes over reading aloud and then sends Sammy to bed, letting him take the book with him. Dad and Dean come back late. Sammy wakes up when Dean throws the book to the floor and flops heavily onto the mattress.
"Shove over."
Sammy shinnies left as Dean's icy feet bump his calves in a further bid for space. His brother smells like dirt and sweat and kerosene smoke, and he shivers Sammy out of the warm spot where he'd been sleeping and onto the cold edge of the sheet. Sammy doesn't mind.
"Did you find him?"
"Right where Dad said. Dug him up, salted him, burned hell out of him."
Sammy nods. "Why wouldn't Dad let me come?"
He recognizes the sound that puffs out Dean's nose--it means he's already tired of his little brother's stupid questions. "He told you. The ghost goes after kids."
Sammy makes a noise of his own. "You're a kid."
"Little kids," Dean corrects. "You saw what Dad found in the library. It's never hurt anyone over eleven."
"Your birthday's not till next month."
"Shut up, Sammy. Go to sleep." Dean rolls onto his side and slides asleep as easily as always.
Sammy envies him. His brain's spinning round like it does, wondering about things that don't seem to bother his brother. Like how come Dean's always old enough and Sammy never is, even when he's the same age as Dean was when he did things. Like how he's pretty sure the passage Pastor Jim helped him memorize tonight will help a lot the next time they come across a banshee, and how he wants to know all of them--all the passages and spells and stories and rites that will hurt all the spirits and monsters they hunt--because he might never be able to fight as good as Dean, but he knows he can do other things to help Dad--more than just pour the salt--and maybe even do them better than Dean someday. Pastor Jim was a Marine like Dad and has a hidden room full of weapons under his church, but Sammy's never seen him use them--he always reaches for his books first. Maybe Pastor Jim's right. Maybe knowing what stuff means can help just as much as doing the stuff.
The sheets have warmed up again, and his brother's back is solid against his own. Sammy follows Dean into sleep thinking tomorrow he's going to ask Pastor Jim to teach him more Latin.
He doesn't get much of a chance to talk to Jim the next morning, just a couple of minutes when he's helping with the breakfast dishes. Dad's eager to get on the road--there's someone he wants to see while the boys are still on vacation from the school he and Dean have been going to in Missouri. Sammy wishes he'd rent an apartment here so they could go to school in Pastor Jim's little town, but Dad says Minnesota's hard to get to and from quick--he likes being in the middle. He promises to they'll be back to spend Christmas with Jim, though.
They load up the car while Jim puts coffee into a Thermos for Dad and makes some PB&J for the road. Sammy lingers outside the kitchen and watches his father and brother finish locking down the weapons. Pastor Jim comes out and takes the food over to Dean, scrubbing his head hard as he says goodbye. Dean makes a face but grins at the end of it and Sammy knows he's happy they're coming back for Christmas, too.
Sammy pushes off the door. Pastor Jim catches him before he comes down the steps and surprises him by handing him a book Sammy hadn't noticed under the bag of sandwiches.
"Study up, Sammy," he says. "We'll talk more at Christmas." From the top step Sammy's tall enough to look into Jim's face without having to crane his neck. The cracked leather is gummy in his hand, and it smells old and strong. The stamped letters spelling out "Artes Latinae" have lost a lot of their gold leaf but still sparkle enticingly. Sammy opens the cover and looks at the words written in fresh ink on the wrinkled page.
"Sammy,
Scientia potentia est
With love from your godfather, Jim Murphy"
"My first Latin grammar text. It should get you started."
Sammy thumbs through the yellowed pages, pausing to squint at a scribble in the margin, the silvery old-pencil dust shimmering over a brown stain he knows is blood.
"Really?" he asks, and Jim chucks him on the shoulder.
"I'm your godfather, aren't I? I'm supposed to see to your spiritual education." Sammy wants to hug him, but Dad's hand is thumping impatiently against the roof of the Impala and Dean's hollering at him to hurry up, they gotta move.
"Thanks," he says, and hugs the book to his chest instead.
"Don't let anyone tell you it's a dead language, Sammy." He grabs Sammy under the arms and swings him off the stoop, tossing him into a trot over to the car. "Keep safe!" Jim calls as Sammy pulls the door shut after him and settles into the back seat, and Dad waves out the window and kicks the engine to life.
1993
The familiar squeal-bang of the driver's door slamming yanks Sam awake. He pushes up onto his elbow and rubs his eyes, teetering between letting Dean tell him about the hunt and finishing his night's sleep. When he hears Dean yell for Pastor Jim, though, Sam doesn't hesitate. He swings out of bed and throws himself out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Sam beats Jim out the rectory's back door and skids to a halt in front of the car, loose gravel tearing into his bare feet.
Dean's pulling Dad out of the shotgun seat, and before the blood on Dad's face registers, Sam hears himself say "You drove?" because Dean's thirteen, and though both the boys learned how to drive at eight, Dad doesn't actually let them except in empty fields or deserted back roads. "Just in case," he always said, and as Dean glares at him, Sam realizes "Just in case" is now.
Sam feels the rush of air as Pastor Jim runs past him to help Dean with Dad, who takes an arm up and leans heavily on his friend.
"Sam," Jim calls, and Sam snaps to attention at the tone, so similar to Dad's. "Get all the towels you can carry from the bathroom and then hightail it down to the basement and bring up the big case in the bottom of the cabinet at the back wall. It's the only one not locked down there. Case's got a big red cross on it." Sam's up the stairs, heart pounding, before Jim finishes the order.
Dad's on the table in his underwear when Sam bangs back into the kitchen, and Dean's leaning hard on a folded towel pressed against Dad's right thigh. Dad's jeans are a pile of scraps on the floor, dark and wet, and his skin, where it's visible, is bright white. Jim is talking quickly and quietly as he cuts through two layers of shirts.
"Damn it," Dad spits, jerking away from Jim's scissors, "that's my best shirt."
"And I'm sure if whatever did the job knew that, he would have asked you to take it off before he started slicing. Hold still. You're making the bleeding worse." Jim throws Sam a look over his shoulder. "Bring it here, crack it open. Should be some saline in there. White bottle. Good."
Pastor Jim squirts the clear liquid all over Dad's shoulder, into the cuts. Dad hisses out a couple of choice words, and as he leans over the parallel tears, Jim chides, "Don't blaspheme," and beckons Sam with a jerk of his head. "Bandage," he says, jabbing an elbow at the kit. Sam rips the package open and holds it out, but Jim points at Dad's shoulder with his chin. "Put pressure here for me, not too much, just keep the skin together. Right?"
"Yes sir," Sam answers. Dad's blood is hot on Jim's hands as they slide out from under Sam's when Jim turns toward Dean.
"Let me see," he says, nudging Dean down the table. He inspects the towel before he carefully lifts an edge. "You did a fine job with the field dressing, Dean. And you," he's talking at Dad again, "are a lucky son of a gun. Looks nasty, but it's surface stuff. Nowhere near the artery. Which I could've told you from the fact that you didn't bleed out in the front seat."
"No chance of that," Dad scoffs. His eyes rest on Dean, and Sam's follow them to his brother, whose lips and eyes are flat and ringed in white. "Impala hasn't broken ninety since seventy-eight." He jerks his left foot into the underside of Dean's wrist, where he's clenching the corner of the table. "My boy here's a helluva driver. Gonna cost me a fortune in speeding tickets and bribes, I don't keep an eye on him."
Sam watches Dean's mouth twitch into a quick smile, and then he smiles, too. Pastor Jim pokes Dean with an elbow. "All right, Speedy. You know where I keep the hooch?" Dean nods. "Well, get your father a drink, then."
Dean hustles to find the bottle, and then hustles some more, helping Jim get washed up and his instruments set up. Dad hunches up to take a swig off the bottle and then sets it on the table at his hip. Sam can feel him tremble under his fingers as the whiskey goes down, like a spider web over a slamming door.
"You get it, Dad?" Sam asks, and his father's teeth look sharp and too-white against the blood on his face.
"We got it, kiddo," Dad answers, and then drags the bottle up for another, longer drink.
Jim's got gloves on now, flushing Dad's leg with the saline and wiping a clean shape around the torn skin, and Dad says, "You boys pay attention. Doc here can stitch better'n a spinster at a quilting bee."
Sam answers, "Yes, sir," along with Dean and tries not to wish they'd gone to a hospital or clinic like they usually do when they need more help than the Winchester first aid kit can provide, where the nurses make a fuss about keeping the boys' germs out of the treatment area and buy them pop and let them watch TV till Dad comes out all cleaned up and puts a hand on each of their necks as they head back to the car. Sam concentrates on Pastor Jim's steady, even voice--on the meaning of the words he's saying--as he talks the boys through what he's doing.
Jim tells them how alcohol or hydrogen peroxide can damage the skin cells in the wound, so you should always have saline in your aid kit for serious lacerations. How a lot of the time, a steri-strip and a good dressing will do the job just as well as sutures. How he's going to give them some of the lidocaine he's injecting right into the edges of the cuts because getting sewn up hurts like the devil and it doesn't matter how tough a guy is, there's no call for making it worse if you don't have to. He has Sam take the bottle away from Dad because, yeah, the alcohol will help him relax, but it thins the blood, so you can't give him too much. He tells them about the needle holder he uses, how it helps him control how deep his stitches go and which way he turns them, and how if you have to, you can use pliers but he'll set them up with a good kit, don't worry about that. He puts in stitches that cross over the top of the cut and stitches that snake around underneath and hold it closed from the inside, but tells them not to try anything fancy when simple will work just as well.
Sometime in the middle of it, sometime after Sam stopped having to swallow hard every time the needle bit into his father's flesh, Dean lets out a tight, hissing laugh and says, "Geez, what kinda priest are you, anyway?"
Pastor Jim and Dad laugh along--Dad harder, because of the hooch--and Jim says, "The kind who did two tours as a corpsman."
Dad smiles through his teeth. "'Cept he was so preachy we called him Pastor as often as Doc."
Jim takes another stitch--he's finished Dad's leg by now and is on the first of the three slices in his shoulder--and shares Dad's smile. "I was young, still trying to work out what God had in mind for me. Finding your calling at eighteen is a lot rarer than anyone thinks."
The next day Dad lies low on the couch with ice packs and a week's worth of newspapers from all over the country and tells Sam and Dean to get some bow practice in. Dean leads the way through the muddy stand of birch trees, but it's Sam who gets the first hit--an autumn-fat rabbit whose brown summer coat is patching with white. Dean gets one too, and when they bring them back to the church Pastor Jim says he can find at least a couple of ways to put them to good use. One he cleans and skins and puts on the stove to brown for stew. He gives the boys a pack of disposable razors and directs them to shave the other clean, then spends the afternoon supervising as they practice their sutures while he chops and stirs and seasons.
Saying the population's out of hand this season, Jim sends them out every morning, adding half their catch to his never-ending stew pot. After five days, Dad says he's recuperated enough and has a few leads he wants to check out in New Mexico, enough that they might stay the winter.
Jim sends them off with a fully stocked aid kit and a Tupperware full of stew. Five minutes later Dad pulls into the gas station next to the interstate. Dean fills the tank while Sam washes the windows, and when he's done, Dad cranks the driver's window and passes Sam the Tupperware with a grin. Dean high-fives Sam when he chucks it into the garbage can. They're all three laughing as they hit the road, swearing by all that's good and holy that they'll never touch rabbit again.
1996
Sam's reading by flashlight, flat on his back across the front seat, feet propped in the open passenger window. Dean teased him for borrowing a book from Pastor Jim, but Sam knew he wouldn't get in the door and likes to be prepared. This kind of gig works better solo, anyway. Hot waitresses are less likely to squint past Dean's fake ID when he's setting a bad example for his gawky kid brother, and he can't very well pretend to be drunk if he doesn't have a beer in his hand. Sam's backup, and when it comes to hustling pool, backup's just fine with Sam.
It's almost midnight when Sam's phone rings. Sam sits up and tosses the book and flashlight in the back and waits to see which code Dean's using. Two rings is fake family emergency, three is bust in screaming and crying. The third ring trills and Sam starts hyperventilating as he rips off the first of four band-aids stuck to his forearm for the purpose, wincing at the pulled hair. The phone rings again as the second one comes off and his eyes start to water. Four. And then five? They didn't make code for more than three rings. He punches the talk button and Dean's voice blasts through the speaker before he can say anything.
"--hear me? Start the fucking car, Sammy!" There's a crash in Sam's ear that he hears from outside the car, too, and through the phone someone yells, "You punk-ass little motherfucker!" and then Dean's voice again, loud and pissed, "Now, Sammy!"
Sam flings the phone down and cranks the engine, pulling in a tight turn out one end of the bar's dusty driveway, onto the road, and back in so he can screech to a halt in front of the place and throw the passenger door open just in time for Dean to explode out of the bar, yelling "Go, go, go!" as he dives in. The door bounces off his boot as Sam guns it out of the parking lot and Dean swears as he rights himself and heaves the door closed. When he hits the road, Sam risks a look in the side mirror as he throws it into second. Three huge guys are giving up the chase behind them, but a fourth is being stubborn. Dean leans out the window and flips him the bird, screaming "Maybe next time, sucker!" and Sam pushes the Impala into third and leaves the guy in the dust. Dean flops back into the car and whoops, "Now that's what I call backup, little brother!"
The tires squeal as Sam takes the turn onto the highway too fast, and Dean laughs wildly and pounds Sam on the back. Sam shoots a look at his brother, who's grinning even as he wipes blood out of his eyes. The smell that rolls off of him crinkles Sam's nose.
"You're bleeding," Sam says, because it's safer than "You're wasted."
"No shit. Pull over."
Sam ignores him, and Dean reaches for the steering wheel. "I said pull over. Dad'll kick my ass if he finds out I let you drive in town." Sam shoves his hand off the wheel, and that's when he realizes Dean's not just bleeding from the cut over his eyebrow.
"Your arm--"
Dean twists his arm to check it out. "Fucker came at me with a bottle."
"Put pressure on it, we're almost there."
By the time he pulls around back of Pastor Jim's little country church, Sam knows they're in trouble no matter who's driving. Dad and Jim are kicking back on the stoop outside the kitchen, enjoying the clear summer night.
Sam can see the exact moment Dad realizes who's behind the wheel. The beer he'd had dangling between his fingers clinks into the gravel and he's across the drive before Sam even has the keys out of the ignition. Dad's big hands come in the window to check Dean's head, push blood away to judge how bad off he is. He flicks his eyes over to Sam, who's clutching the keys in his fist now, hurting his palm.
"How bad?"
Sam starts to tell about Dean's arm but his brother's laugh cuts him off.
"You should see the other guy," he chuckles. "Guys. There were, like, five of them." He pulls away from Dad's hands and digs into his back pocket, pulling out a thin fold of bills. "Not my best take, sorry."
"Are you drunk?" Dad looks back at Sam, eyes blazing. "Sammy? He drunk?"
"Dad, his arm's cut pretty bad."
Dean holds up his arm. "Guy had a bottle," he repeats, and then the door screams open and Dad's got the neck of Dean's shirt in his fist and is hauling him out of the Impala. Dean stumbles as he's dragged to the little house, and Sam clambers out of the car, picking up the money Dean dropped. Pastor Jim puts a hand on Sam's shoulder as he reaches the steps.
"All right, Sammy?"
Sam doesn't know how to answer that, except "Yes, sir," so that's what he says. Dean leaves a stripe of blood on the doorframe as he bumps his way through, and Sam adds, "I better go get your kit."
When Sam comes back up with the case, the kitchen looks just like he expects it to. Dean's bleeding onto Jim's kitchen table and floor, Dad's pacing and yelling--has been since he pushed Dean into a chair as Sam headed down to the cellar--and Jim's swabbing at the mess on Dean's arm.
"The hell were you thinking?" The windows rattle as Dad slams the back door. Sam flinches; he's never seen Dad like this, not with Dean.
"John," Jim says in his quiet voice, but Dad doesn't seem to hear him.
"You know how that game goes. You pay for eight beers, you drink one of 'em!"
Dean's still grinning, hasn't caught on yet. "That chick, though, Dad. You shoulda seen her. She had me doing shots of rum cream or some crap off her belly. Bet was, I won at eight ball, I get to do 'em off her--"
"Goddamn it Dean, you chase tail on your time, not on the job. I ever catch you drinking like this again, you'll be riding shotgun till you're seventy. How were you planning on getting back here?"
Dean points. "Sammy was…"
Dad's voice hurts Sam's ears. "Sammy is twelve. Sammy was backup, not your designated driver."
"I'm thirteen," Sam corrects as he ducks under Dad's jabbing finger and puts the case on the table. He's been thirteen for more than a month, and they knew it. Dean bought cupcakes from the Danish bakery across from the motel, and Dad gave him a new knife.
"You shoulda seen his getaway," Dean says with a sloppy slap that grazes Sam's arm. Sam opens the kit open for Jim, takes out the saline, and starts looking for the butterfly bandages. "I couldn'ta done much better."
"That's not saying much. You couldn't piss a straight line right now. No wonder you botched the job. For what--"
"Jesus Christ, Dad, it wasn't a job, it was pool!"
"--a piece of ass? Anywhere I tell you to go's a job and you know it. You got off easy with that arm. You coulda wrapped that car around a phone pole!"
"John," Jim's voice squeezes through a gap as Dad and Dean both gather more breath for hollering.
Dad slams his palm against the wall and barks, "What?"
"Maybe you should get some air. I can't patch him up with you two going at each other like this." He doesn't wait for John's answer, but issues Sam a string of instructions in the same calm voice. "Grab a couple clean hand towels from the drawer, Sam, and get his face cleaned up so I can see what I'm working with."
The kitchen's suddenly full of soft sounds that feel somehow louder than the shouting: Dean sniffing back blood from his nose, the clean paper-rip of Jim tearing open a bandage, the steady rush of the faucet as Sam wets a towel, Dad's breathing, heavy and puffing and still mad but maybe starting to calm down.
Sam turns back to the table and starts mopping at Dean's face. It's not as bad as it looks once the excess blood is gone. The cut over his eye should be fine with a couple of steri-strips, and though the skin over the bridge of his nose is split and both eyes'll be black before morning, it doesn't look like his nose is broken. And from the look of his knuckles, he got his fair share of pounding in before the bottle entered the fight.
"I wouldn't have let him drive," Sam says because he thinks that's what Dad's most upset about. The instant it leaves his mouth, he knows it was a mistake. Dean's boot catches him on the side of the ankle, and he snaps "Shut your hole," just as Dad growls, "You wouldn't'a had to drive if you had his back in the first place." Sam knows right away his brother thinks Sam's going to rat on him about wanting to drive. What Sam doesn't get is why Dad's yelling at him.
"I did!" His voice squeaks embarrassingly, the way it's doing all the time these days. "I got us back here, didn't I? We're fine."
"Having his back means having his back, Sammy, not sitting in a corner with a book."
Indignation shoots through him. "I couldn't get in! He barely got in! Maybe if you want his back covered in a bar, you should send someone who's old enough to drink!"
"Watch your tone," Dad snaps.
"For fuck's sake, I was just shooting pool! I don't need a babysitter, especially not my dork of a kid brother."
Jim's voice breaks through, though it's not nearly as loud as any of the three others being used. "That's enough. All of you. You can fight all you want after I get this arm stitched up. John, go take that walk. Sam and I've got Dean." Dad swears and starts to leave but he stops when he hears Jim ask Sam to sterilize the needle.
"No."
"Sorry?" Jim asks.
Dad stalks over to Sam and plants himself above him. "You think you're up for being backup, then you follow it through to the end. Your partner comes out of a job bloody, it's on you to fix him up. You've seen me do it. Hell, you've seen Dean do it. Time you moved up from the stew rabbits, Sammy."
Pastor Jim's voice is tight. "John, really. That's not necessary. I'm right here."
"Won't always be," Dad points out. "Our line of work, you can't always get to a hospital, don't always have a corpsman on hand. Boy's gonna have to do it sometime. Better now, with you to supervise, Doc."
Sam's stomach goes cold, and over Dean's groaning about how Sammy using him as a pincushion is just what he needs after the night he's had, he says, "No. I don't want to. Pastor Jim's…"
"Did I ask you what you want or did I give you an order?" Dad snaps in his drill-sergeant voice.
"I can't," Sam insists, face burning. "Really. I can't."
"Don't do this, John," Jim says in a tone Sam's never heard from him. "These boys will forgive you for it, but it'll be on your conscience--"
"Don't you tell me how to raise my sons,” Dad cuts him off. His face is bright red, but his voice is like a hard edge of ice. “You know how this family lives, what we're up against. They need to understand the responsibility--"
"This is not the way--"
"It's the only way. Winchesters looking out for Winchesters."
"Dad, please." Sam's voice cracks again, and Dean kicks the chair next to him into the wall.
"Shit, Sammy, stop being a pussy and get on with it already."
In the end, Sam puts nine stitches into Dean's arm, high on the forearm, just under the elbow. Looking at the wound, Sam can see how it happened, can see Dean throwing a bent arm up to block the blow aimed at his head. Pastor Jim watches everything Sam does from the lidocaine to the final dressing, reminding him to make his stitches deep and narrow, to use steri-strips where he can. He puts a warm, dry hand on the back of Sam's neck when he's done and squeezes, then tells him to go wash up and get some sleep. Sam looks to Dad, who's been watching in jaw-clenched silence, and at Dad's tight nod of dismissal he pounds his way to the upstairs bathroom.
He uses the nail brush until his hands sting, brushes his teeth, and leaves black marks on the bedroom wall when he kicks his shoes off. Slams off the light and seethes on the bed as he listens to the rest of them settle in for the night. Jim says something Sam can't hear, but the only answer he gets is the bang of Dad unfolding the sofabed. Then Dean's thumping unevenly up the stairs. He stays in the bathroom for a long time, water running, and Sam's filled with a mix of angry satisfaction and disgust when he hears his brother puking into the toilet.
Dean trips over the doorjamb as he comes into the room, and Sam can't stand the idea of being in the same place as him. He grabs the extra blanket from the foot of the bed and pushes past his brother, down the stairs and out the door without bothering to be quiet about it. He hauls the back door of the car closed with a satisfying crash that he almost hopes will bring Dad out for another round.
Sam wakes just after dawn and picks up the book he brought with him last night, reading until he hears the back door and sees Pastor Jim coming down the steps with two steaming mugs. He motions Sam to open the door and slides into the back seat next to him, passing him a coffee. They drink in silence until Sam can't hold it in anymore.
"You were wrong," he tells Jim. "I won't forgive him."
Jim puts his arm across the back of the seat. "Yes, you will. Sooner than you think."
"Why's he like that?"
Jim considers the question. "He's scared."
Sam scoffs. "Yeah, right."
"He is, Sam. Your father's one of the bravest men I know, but you boys terrify him--the thought that something could happen to you." They sit for another few breaths and then Jim asks, "Dean ever do anything like that before? Drinking?"
"Nah. I mean, he drinks--like, a beer with Dad once in a while, or if he's got a hustle going, or a waitress he's trying to pick up--but never like that."
"You can see why your father would be angry, then, can't you? That Dean might've gotten hurt worse, or tried to drive. He put you both in danger."
"Well, then, Dad shoulda made Dean sew his own arm up. Why'd he make me do it? I didn't do anything wrong." Sam shakes his head in annoyance when his eyes start burning and swipes angrily at them with the back of his hand. "I hate him."
Jim's arm curves around Sam's shoulders and he pulls him against his side. "Of course you don't hate him. You're angry, and rightfully so. But don't ever forget that the only reason John Winchester does anything is for love of his family. Forgive him his mistakes, Sam. He does the best he can, but he's only human, just like the rest of us."
Sam sighs and stares into his coffee until Jim opens the door. "I'm thinking omelet. You want to help, or should I leave you here with your book?"
Sam knows what Jim wants him to do and after he mulls the options over for a minute, he thinks it's probably what he wants, too. He can't hide in the car with a book all day. They're supposed to be heading out before services tomorrow, and it's a long drive to Louisville. He's gonna have to talk to Dad and Dean sometime.
"Can you show me how to flip them like you do?" he asks, and slides out after Jim.
Dad comes in as Sam slides the fluffy, steaming eggs onto a serving dish and leans in the doorway, gaze heavy on Sam. Jim pours him a coffee and sets it on the table next to the three plates he's laid out. "Didn't figure we'd be seeing Dean for a few hours yet," Jim says when he catches Dad looking at the empty place as he takes his seat.
"Good guess," Dad agrees, dishing the eggs out by thirds. "He's got a long day of polishing boots and detailing that car ahead of him. He's gonna get every drop of blood off that interior, I tell you what."
Sam sits and stares down at his plate as Dad digs in. He jumps a bit when he feels a hand scruffing his hair. "Great job, Sammy," Dad says, and Sam looks into his face. "Best omelet I've had in years."
2002
It starts with a phone call in March. Pastor Jim always calls Dad if a lead comes up, so when Jim's number pops up on Sam's own phone, he knows immediately what it's about.
"Hey, can you hang on a second?" He ducks out the front door of the cabin they've been renting since arriving in town a week late for Sam's last semester of high school. Dean raises an eyebrow and makes smooching noises as he goes, obviously assuming the call's from Kelly. "Sorry," Sam says when he's put a dozen yards between himself and the cabin, "what's up?"
Jim's gentle voice carries a fair dose of irony. "Judging from your open, forthright greeting, I'm guessing your father has no idea about the amount of mail I'm getting for you these days."
"Please don't tell him," Sam says without preamble.
"I won't lie for you, Sam, and you should know better than to ask me to."
Sam hadn't thought about that when he'd listed Jim's as his permanent address on the applications. Mainly, he wanted to be sure they wouldn't end up in post office limbo when Dad decided they needed to be somewhere else. It'd been hard enough wrangling transcripts and SAT scores by fax and email; he wasn't going to risk it on the college applications. And, yes, if he was honest about it, having his mail go to Pastor Jim made it easier to avoid at least one type of argument, though God knows the Winchester Traveling Circus never lacked for a fight. Sam sometimes wondered if Dad had picked Yellsville as much for its blatantly appropriate name as for the recent increase in creepy Ozark juju.
"Isn't there some sort of client-priest confidentiality clause that will get you off the hook?" he jokes, hoping Jim will play along.
"Are you asking me to take your confession, Sam?" Jim asks, and Sam drops the bullshit.
"I swear I'm going to tell him soon," he promises. "Just--you know how he is. We've been here since January and he's getting restless. I just want to graduate, and I'm already a year behind. It's Podunk Arkansas, I know, but it's a good school. I'm taking a bunch of college-level courses, and I have a… there's a girl. And the way he freaked out last year when he wanted to leave Fort Scott the week before my SATs and I wouldn't go--he doesn't care about school at all."
There's a sigh across the line. "All right, all right. Which one do you want me to open first?"
Sam's grin stretches his face. "What're my choices?"
"Brown, Harvard, University of Minnesota--I'm flattered, Sam, but if you pass up Harvard for U of M, you'll go straight to Hell--Stanford--"
"Stanford? Open it."
Sam chews his lip through the ripping and unfolding and then bounces excitedly in place when Jim reads, "Dear Mr. Winchester, Congratulations on your acceptance to Stanford University…"
"Yes!" Years of carefully managed hope bursts free in Sam's heart. Adrenaline kicks through him, making his limbs ache with the urge to run it off. He takes three steps and a leap, catching a branch of the tree at the end of the driveway and swinging one-handed, feeling the wood bend and spring under his weight. He hears twelve different guidance counselors telling him that with grades and test scores like his, Sam could go to any school he wanted, but that even the mid-range universities lay a lot of importance on activities Sam's almost never been in one place long enough to participate in. "Yes! God, I don't believe it!"
Sam rides the momentum he's built on the branch and lands lightly in the gravel, putting the phone back to his face and laughing into it. He can hear the smile in Jim's voice when he speaks again.
"All right. Confess already, so I can cover my butt."
Sam doesn't hesitate. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he recites, TV and movies feeding him the appropriate words. "It's been… gosh," Sam falters, having never actually confessed, and then finds the next best thing. "It's been ten months since I told you about the money I collected for the fake cancer walk. I gave it to your church, remember? Since then, I lied to my father and brother about applying to college." He waits for Pastor Jim. "So? Am I absolved?"
"That's it? One sin in ten months? You're gonna have to do better than that."
Sam pauses again to consider, wondering if God understands about the lies the Winchesters tell every single day, the ones Sam's had to tell Kelly. His insides tighten and glow at the memory of his other secret--the one Dean thinks he knows but doesn't, or doesn't know right.
Jim hears the weight in the silence. "Come on, Sam. Make it count."
The heat in Sam's middle rises to his face, embarrassed and a little bit defensive. "I don't know if I think it was a sin, but it's probably on your list. I, uh… I had sex. Last weekend, with my girlfriend. Kelly."
There's an awkward pause. "Did you use a condom?"
Sam laughs nervously, feeling his face go hotter. "Does that make it more or less of a sin?"
"What do you think?"
"We were careful. And it wasn't like…" He almost says, "it wasn't like Dean," but that sounds awful on a couple levels. Dean had been trying to get his little brother laid since Sam was fourteen and giving him regular shit about it since he was sixteen. Sam knows Dean knows about him and Kelly, but he doesn't think Dean knows Sam's been lying about the state of his virginity for more than a year. "It wasn't casual, I mean. I really like her."
Jim's sigh buzzes in Sam's ear. "All right. Now listen to me, because we haven't done this before and we're bending a few rules, so it's important you understand. Simply telling a priest your sins doesn't absolve you of them. You have to be penitent; you have to change the behavior."
Sam presses his lips together. "But I don't believe it was a sin, with Kelly."
"I'm talking about your father," Jim says sternly. "Do we understand each other?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right, Sammy. Three Hail Marys, an Act of Contrition, and tell your father about Stanford."
"Yes, sir," Sam repeats.
"And Sam? Lying and fornication aside, I'm proud of you."
It takes Sam two days to get to Blue Earth from Yellsville. He storms out of the cabin--Dean yelling after him--before dawn the day after graduation and hitches north into Missouri, where he catches a series of county busses to Springfield and switches to a conveniently timed Amtrak. His phone starts ringing as he rattles past Independence. Sam turns it off without looking at the screen and gets off the train in Kansas City, where he skulks around the Greyhound station until the northbound bus comes through early Sunday morning. From there it's five hundred-odd miles to Albert Lea with nothing to do but think about how the hell he's ended up here and why he's remotely surprised. Two rides west on I-90 get him within a couple of miles, and just after sundown on Sunday Sam slides into a back pew at Saint Eustachius' and rests, road weary and dejected, until he hears Pastor Jim come out of the office and put something away on the pulpit.
Sam pulls himself out of his slump, and Pastor Jim looks up at the noise. His face flashes a moment of surprise before he says nonchalantly, "Your brother's looking for you. Called here yesterday." Sam gets up as Jim comes up the center aisle. "I'd ask how you're doing, but you've got the answer written all over your face." It startles Sam when Jim pulls him into a hug and holds it for a long moment, saying, "I thought we had an understanding, Sam."
"I tried," Sam says, feeling four years old. His sinuses burn. "I tried to tell him." He pulls away from Jim and sniffs to clear his head before he starts bawling. "He wouldn't listen. Any time I even mentioned the idea of college he went off. He was already on my case about Kelly and a hundred other things. I just--I thought if I could just concentrate on one thing at a time, you know? Just finish high school…" Sam leans against the pew and stuffs his hands into his pockets. "He was ready to move out in April, but Dean talked him into waiting. I thought we'd spend the summer on the road--it's always better between us in the summer--and I'd tell him then."
Jim nods, prompting. "But…"
"But Kelly's mom outed me at graduation. Told Dad how proud he must be to have a son heading off to Stanford in the fall."
"And now here you are."
"I didn't know where else to go."
"And I've got your financial aid paperwork," Jim teases kindly.
"Well, yeah, but that's not the only..."
"I know," Jim says and keeps his eyes evenly on Sam. "So. Want to tell me what happened? Knowing you two, I'm guessing the conversation didn't go well."
Sam looks away. His head echoes with the accusations and threats Dad and he hurled at each other, bouncing around his skull like they bounced off the cabin's thin, wood-paneled walls. They'd been at it for hours when the steel toe of Dean's boot crushed a hole in the cheap plywood of the bathroom door and shocked them all into a brief, tense silence. Dad gave Sam's lapel a final shake and stepped back, slapping away Sam's defensively raised fists and telling him to get a move on if he wanted out of this family so bad, and to forget about ever coming back. Then he smashed into his bedroom, rattling all the windows, and Dean kicked a second hole in the bathroom door.
Sam tries not to think about how his brother followed him into their bedroom and pulled out every piece of clothing Sam stuffed into his duffle bag, shouting "Goddamn it, Sammy, you cut this shit out!" until Sam shoved him off and told him to get out of his life already. Or about how Dean was still yelling when Sam slammed out the front door, half expecting Dad to come after him with handcuffs. But he didn't--as far as John Winchester's concerned, Sam figures, he's only got one son now.
"'Not well' is one way of putting it," Sam says. He can barely stand to think about it, and knows he can't speak it, can't repeat the things he said to his father, to his brother. Not yet, maybe not ever. He shakes his head. "I've never seen Dad that mad. I swear, I thought he was going to put my teeth down my throat."
Jim scolds him. "Your father wouldn't raise a hand to you. Shame on you for suggesting it."
Sam's ire flares again, remembering Dad's fists clamped on the lapels of his cheap sports coat, the one usually reserved for gathering information at funerals. "No," he bites out, "he'd make Dean do it, and then make him stitch me up after, too."
"Oh, Sammy…" Pastor Jim sighs and runs his hand over his softly grooved face and up through his grayed hair. "Have you learned so little about forgiveness?"
Sam hangs his head, exhausted, enraged, guilty, and scared all at once. He wonders if Dean will forgive him for leaving. Wonders if it's fair to hope that either of them might, when he himself isn't capable of forgiving his father for the life he made for his sons.
Jim's hand lights briefly on the back of Sam's neck before he gives him a gentle nudge toward the door. "Come on. Let's get some dinner, see if we can sort some of this mess out." He leads Sam back past the altar and into the labyrinthine passage between church and rectory, where one door leads down into the weapons cellar and the other into the little house's kitchen.
Later, Sam offers to do the dishes, but Jim won't have any of it. He leans against the sink until Sam sighs, pulls out his phone, and holds down the two until Dean's number flashes and connects.
"Get your ass back here," Dean greets him. "I'm gonna beat the tar out of you."
"Your motivational speech could use some work."
Dean's voice is hard. "I'm not joking, Sammy. Don't go."
"I'm already gone, Dean," Sam says simply. He can practically hear Dean's teeth grinding.
"Where are you?"
"Pastor Jim's." Sam pushes on before his brother can say anything. "Don't come up here. You can't stop me. I'm going to college. You need to get used to it."
Dean's voice crashes through the phone, and Sam is suddenly tired down to his bones. He pushes to his feet and drops the phone on the counter next to Jim's soapy hand, Dean's tinny curses still fighting through the speaker. Sam's done what he promised. His family knows where he is, knows he's safe. But he's not going to have this fight again. That wasn't part of the bargain.
Jim wipes his hands on the seat of his black pants and nods to Sam before he picks up the phone and waits for Dean to take a breath so he can get a word in. Sam climbs the creaky stairs to the bedroom he and Dean have shared on visits going back longer than he can remember. The room seems tiny to him now, but as he toes off his shoes and slumps onto the bed, he shivers at how empty it feels.
2006
The morning after the clown hunt, Dean calls Bobby about the minivan. He even manages to sound sorry about getting it ID'd in a burglary, but Sam knows Dean's pleased as punch to have left the abomination in those scrubby, nowhere bushes, and he can see the relief on his brother's face and knows Bobby's told him it's not worth bringing back. When Dean hangs up a few minutes later, he has a rueful smile on his face.
"Guess who has a buddy in Lincoln?"
"Bobby?" Sam guesses the obvious, and then gets it. "Bobby."
"Dad's truck's at his yard. We just gotta get there and then we've got respectable wheels again."
Dean wants to steal a car to get them to Lincoln, but Sam talks him out of it. They may know there won't be any more homicidal clown murders, but the cops are still working the case, looking for the pair of armed white men who broke into that last family's house. Greyhound gets them to Nebraska in a day.
Bobby's friend Dwight has detailed Dad's truck, and says it's got new tires--they were slashed when he found the truck, and there was sugar in the gas tank. Dean nods tightly as he thanks Dwight and tries to pay him, and Sam just looks away.
Dean drives, which is fine by Sam. He watches the plains unfold out the passenger window and tries not to think about the only other time he's been in this truck, a tense half-hour drive to meet Dean on the outskirts of Salvation. Dad was still driving the Impala when Sam left. They get a good five hours' driving in before Dean pulls off somewhere in the middle of Missouri--another one of those places they specialize in, with a four-block-long downtown and a spray-on veneer of Midwestern hometown charm. Sam counts six bars and four churches before Dean steers the truck into the obligatory run-down motor inn.
Dean is asleep within minutes of sliding into his bed; he's always been like that. Sam's never been an easy sleeper, except with Jess. She had a CD she played at night, waves on a beach. After she'd fallen asleep, Sam would reach across her and turn it off, knowing he'd never hear anything more perfect than this--this beautiful being drawing life into her body--and that would lull him into the most peaceful rest he'd known.
The sun comes up and gives Sam an excuse not to be asleep. He dresses silently and goes out to Dad's truck, rifling through the fake IDs in the console between the seats. The glove compartment holds the weapons a cop wouldn't recognize as being deadly: an Evian bottle Sam knows without question holds holy water, a round box of Morton's salt, and a squeeze bottle of lighter fluid. Beneath that are the registration and proof of insurance--Mr. McGillicutty again--and under that he finds a book that defies explanation.
Sam runs his fingers over the letters stamped into the cover, and they come away flecked with gold. His throat constricts as he eases the stiff leather cover open and reads the inscription.
"Sammy,
Scientia potentia est
With love from your godfather, Jim Murphy"
Grief slams into Sam, harder, more fiercely than it did on the side of the road to Salvation, when Dad relayed Caleb's call. Then, he'd fought it off, same as Dad--wrestled it under control and threw himself stonily into their work. Now there's no job to keep his mind off it, no demon to kill, no Colt to kill it with, and no Dad to tell them what to do, and so Sam drops his face into his hands and cries.
It doesn't last long, because some part of his mind--the part that got him into trouble so regularly with Dad and Dean--is asking, "Why? How?" He hasn't seen this book in four years. Dad was always on his case about hauling books around with him when damn near every town in the country had a library. Sam used to buy five bucks' worth of fifty-cent garage-sale paperbacks in any town they paused in, simply to have books he could make a show of leaving behind; it made the few he treasured look reasonable. Sam's books hadn't made it into his duffle when he left Yellsville. And yet here this one is, tucked in with Dad's roadside salt-and-burn emergency kit.
But again, that voice, "Why?" Dean would just roll his eyes, his way of saying Sam's an idiot for even asking. But Jim's voice comes into his head, calm and clear, with the answer: "Everything John Winchester does is for love of his family."
Sam thinks about his brother, whom he's been watching all week, digging at him to admit his pain. Sam knows it's there, because if Sam is rotting inside without Dad, even after all the hell they gave each other, how must Dean feel--Dean who lived by every word the man said, who took every question Sam raised to Dad as a personal affront, who threw Sam's attempt at being a good son back in his face: Too little, too late.
He looks at the fading ink of Jim's inscription. Knowledge is power. Sam remembers that lesson. It's not enough to say or hear the words. To make them count you have to understand what they mean. That's why Dean's words hurt so much: they were true, and Dean knew it, knew what they meant. Sam knows it, too, but hasn't let himself say them, think them, feel them. He does too much of all of those things already.
Up and across the road, the creaky speaker system in the church's belfry announces six o'clock. Sam tucks the book into the inside pocket of his jacket and follows the bells to Saint Hubert's, where he sits in a back pew and bows his head, whispering his confession.
Some time later--he remembers hearing the bells chime eight--Sam wakes up to the sound of footsteps echoing in the vestibule, his brother's voice bouncing in after them. Sam sits up, disoriented, and rubs his face with his sleeve before turning around to see Dean come in.
"Damn it, Sam, how many times we gotta have this conversation? You answer me when I call you." Dean tosses Sam his phone and slumps into the pew next to Sam, legs dangling out into the aisle, and scratches his ear. "The hell're you doing in here anyway?"
Sam shakes his head and shrugs. Jim's book slides over his ribs, and Sam shrugs again, just to feel it move. "I dunno."
Dean gives him one of those sideways, eyebrow-filled looks of his. "Okay, then. We can make Bobby's by midnight if we stay on I-64 and don't fuck around. God, I am so sick of this drive. Next case, we gotta go south or something." He stands up and strolls toward the door.
Sam follows, but drifts to a stop in front of the candle-laden table to the side of the church. He digs in his pocket and stuffs a crumpled dollar bill into the donation box, then takes one of the tapers and uses it to light a votive. He can hear Dean scuffing impatiently in the doorway, but doesn't let himself be rushed. When he's sent up his prayer, Sam joins Dean on the steps. The sideways look has more eyebrow than ever, and Dean's mouth is curled with a mix of amusement and concern.
"Dad'd tell you not to waste a buck, you know," he says lightly.
Sam sniffs in the chilly morning air and nods, tucking his hands into his pockets. "It's not for Dad," he says, and heads down the steps. Dean's stare is heavy on Sam's shoulders, but Sam is growing accustomed to the weight.
The truck's engine has a different drone to it than the Impala's, but the combination of it, the rush of the interstate, and the Saint Louis classic rock station that's just crackling into range is a powerful soporific. Sam's asleep within twenty minutes, deep and dreamless and grateful. He wakes in a gas station halfway across Kentucky and drives them the rest of the way.
Bobby's house is as big and rambling as ever. At the top of the stairs, Dean mumbles goodnight and shuts himself into the bedroom he's been using since they've been here. Sam, who's spent all but one summer of his life sharing a room, lies awake across the hall, missing the soothing whistle of his brother's breath.
The next morning, Sam lies in his bed until he hears Dean tramp down the stairs. The back door bangs, and Sam knows they're right back where they started. Dean fixing the car, Sam with everything to fix but nothing that's fixable.
He goes back to the truck, going through Dad's weapons chest--sorting, consolidating, sharpening, cleaning, polishing. They're leaving the truck with Bobby, Dean announced last night as they crossed into West Virginia, it's the least they can do. Sam figures Bobby can use whatever won't fit in their own lock box.
A couple of layers down in Dad's trunk is a paper bag that catches on the grip of a machete and tears as Sam lifts it out, spilling a cascade of rosary beads into the dirt. As Sam fumbles with the bag, the rip widens and a book breaks free, bounces off the tailgate, and lands face down and open where its spine is cracked. Sam recognizes his father's cheap paperback copy of the Catholic Book of Prayers.
He slides his thumb under the book and scoops it up while he gathers the beads with his other hand. The book flops open again as he straightens up, and Sam's eye catches the prayer it's broken to, the Act of Contrition. A shiver runs through him, despite the sunshine. Sam wonders briefly if he's being haunted, but it's broad daylight, the truck's radio plays softly without static, and there's no sulfur in the air, which is still and calm.
Sam's eyes drift down the page, lingering on the last lines of the prayer, I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin, and knows where he needs to start.
The words don't hurt any less coming from his own mouth, but speaking them to his brother, acknowledging his sins, feels right even as it burns--like flushing a wound with saline. But Dean's eyes are deader than ever when Sam leaves him, and when he hears the smash of glass followed by the rhythmic, metallic crashes, Sam presses his fist against his mouth and thinks he must be the most selfish son of a bitch on earth.
Jim stays close in Sam's mind, and Sam gives the afternoon over to memory and nostalgia, following the directions Jim gave him that summer an age ago. By the time Bobby follows his nose into the underused kitchen, the stew is ready for a test run. Sam continues to tinker after Bobby's pronounced it serviceable and headed out again. There's a lady he's trying to make at a bar in town, he confides with a wink, and Sam says, "Isn't there always?"
It's full dark when Dean finally comes in. Sam looks up from the book he's reading--one of Bobby's meatier demonology tomes--and searches Dean's face for clues to how this scene is going to play. He gets a momentary pause in the doorway punctuated by a squint, and that's all Sam needs: It's Dean for "nothing to see here, move along," so Sam stands up and cuts across his brother's path on his way to the stove.
Dean stops in the middle of the room, and, casting a glance over his shoulder, Sam squelches a smile at the way Dean sniffs, wrinkled nose pulling his whole face into a baffled frown.
"Did you cook?" Dean asks, and the word could just as easily have been "molt" for all the disbelief his voice carries.
"Some farmer paid Bobby in produce yesterday," Sam says. "Gotta love a barter economy."
"I guess," Dean answers skeptically. He steps around Sam, flips the water on in the sink, and scrubs at his engine-greased hands with the dwindling bar of Lava soap while Sam sets the table and cracks them each a beer.
Dean still looks suspicious when he sits down across from Sam, but after a first tentative taste of Sam's stew he shrugs and tucks in. Sam watches him between bites, amused by the half-assed washing-up his brother did. Dean's hands and wrists are clean, but there's a distinct line across his forearms where he stopped scouring the day's work away. In the middle of a dark smear under his elbow, a pencil-thin line of white catches and holds Sam's attention--the scar stands out in sharp relief against the dirt.
Dean notices the stare a couple of mouthfuls later. He twists his arm to see what Sam's looking at and makes a dismissive clicking noise. "Not your best work, Sammy," he admonishes and downs the end of his beer. "You're lucky chicks dig scars, or I'd hold it against you."
Sam snorts. "Considering I was thirteen and it was my first non-rabbit seamwork, I say you got off easy. It doesn't show when you're not covered in grease."
Dean goes back to his dinner, but stops abruptly with his mouth full and an expression of alarm on his face. "Aw, shit, you didn't," he mumbles around the half-chewed food. He forces the stew down and pushes the back of one hand over his mouth. "Tell me you didn't, Sam."
Sam lets his smile through, seeing the connections Dean's made.
"Dude, we took a solemn vow," Dean says, looking so distressed that Sam takes pity on him.
"It's chicken, I swear." Sam reassures him. "I thought about it, but I didn't have the heart. Or the stomach." He laughs softly. "God… You know that summer I spent there? I told him we'd developed a family allergy to rabbit."
"Lying to a priest…" Dean scolds, getting up to grab two more beers. "Maybe not the best thing you've done for your immortal soul."
"I guess I've done worse," Sam says into his bowl, the brief lightness in his chest departing as unexpectedly as it arrived.
He feels Dean's gaze on him again. A few seconds later the cold damp of a bottle nudges his wrist, and Sam looks up to find Dean's face quiet and somber.
"Guess we both have," Dean says as he sits back down.
The air in the kitchen suddenly feels heavy with remorse, crowded with the sins they've committed against each other.
Dean breaks the silence. "Nah, you know what?" He spits onto his napkin and wipes a clean spot over the scar. "You patched me up good. Always have."
Sam's throat tightens again, but he breathes through it and comes out the other side. "I had a good teacher."
Dean tips his head in agreement and raises his bottle. "Pastor Jim," he toasts.
Sam lifts his own bottle in answer, thinking about the last time he spoke to Jim--a too-brief conversation squeezed between calls to Jefferson and Caleb a couple of days after he and Dean had left Lawrence for the second time. "You boys look out for each other," he'd said. "It's what you Winchesters do best. Your father'll tell you the same thing when you find him." They should have called back when they found Dad, Sam thinks. Jim would've wanted to know.
"Pastor Jim," Sam repeats and drinks with his brother and their ghosts.
end
Author's note: From Catholic Encyclopedia:Occasions of sin are external circumstances--whether of things or persons--which either because of their special nature or because of the frailty common to humanity or peculiar to some individual, incite or entice one to sin.
Author: hiyacynth
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Angst
Characters: Sam, Dean, John, Pastor Jim, and featuring Weechesters
Rating and Warnings: PG-13 for some bad language and blood. Spoilers up through "Everybody Loves a Clown."
Disclaimer: Woe is me, for I do not own the Winchesters and am not making any money here. No bunnies were hurt in the writing of this story.
Summary: "Oh, Sammy..." Pastor Jim sighs and runs his hand over his softly grooved face and up through his grayed hair. "Have you learned so little about forgiveness?"
Acknowledgements and notes: This story owes a huge debt to likethesun2. I had the pleasure of beta-reading her story, "Violent World Our Fathers Brought," and during that beta I discovered sudden and undying love for Pastor Jim. Since then, she's not only been incredibly supportive about my own story, but has also been her usual genius self and has saved me from my own laziness, frustration, and obviousity more times than I can count. Another enormous thanks to my dear friend cunien, who's read everything I've written in three years, usually in fits and starts, and always knows the right thing to say. Thanks, too, to baylorsr for the last-minute theological beta. Last but not least, eternal love and gratitude to liptonrm, whose devoted bitch I am since she coaxed me into the fangirlish glory that is Supernatural. Consider this a "hang tough through law school and thanks for letting me leave crazed messages in your voicemail" present.
1990
Sammy sits on the guest chair in Pastor Jim's office at the back of Saint Eustachius' church, reading aloud from one of the books Dad left on the rectory's kitchen table before he and Dean headed out. Jim helps him with the Latin when he gets stuck, rubbing a calloused hand through Sammy's hair and saying proudly that the boy's the quickest study he's ever seen. "Most kids your age can barely read the funny pages," he says, and Sammy's chest swells a little.
Sammy's pronunciation is good, and Jim says that most of the time just-plain reading'll do the trick. But if you want to make the Latin count--make it help, make it hurt--you gotta know what it is you're saying.
A gray-haired lady interrupts the lesson, sticking her head around the doorframe as she knocks on it. "Father Murphy?" She sees Sammy and smiles the way all ladies smile at him. "Can I steal you for a minute? Janice and I have the program for midnight Mass mocked up, and we were hoping you could give it a look-see."
Jim gets up from and taps Sammy's book as he passes. "Keep going. I'll be right out here."
"Sweet boy," Sammy hears the lady say. "I wish my Francine had studied her catechism like that." He laughs inside, thinking about what Pastor Jim said about knowing what the Latin means. He hasn't understood everything he's been reading, but he's pretty sure the lady wouldn't've smiled like that if she'd seen the pictures in his book.
Jim and Sammy eat the leftovers of the stew Jim made for them all yesterday. It's even better the second time around, and it warms Sammy right up after sitting so long in the stone church's draughty office. After dinner, Jim takes over reading aloud and then sends Sammy to bed, letting him take the book with him. Dad and Dean come back late. Sammy wakes up when Dean throws the book to the floor and flops heavily onto the mattress.
"Shove over."
Sammy shinnies left as Dean's icy feet bump his calves in a further bid for space. His brother smells like dirt and sweat and kerosene smoke, and he shivers Sammy out of the warm spot where he'd been sleeping and onto the cold edge of the sheet. Sammy doesn't mind.
"Did you find him?"
"Right where Dad said. Dug him up, salted him, burned hell out of him."
Sammy nods. "Why wouldn't Dad let me come?"
He recognizes the sound that puffs out Dean's nose--it means he's already tired of his little brother's stupid questions. "He told you. The ghost goes after kids."
Sammy makes a noise of his own. "You're a kid."
"Little kids," Dean corrects. "You saw what Dad found in the library. It's never hurt anyone over eleven."
"Your birthday's not till next month."
"Shut up, Sammy. Go to sleep." Dean rolls onto his side and slides asleep as easily as always.
Sammy envies him. His brain's spinning round like it does, wondering about things that don't seem to bother his brother. Like how come Dean's always old enough and Sammy never is, even when he's the same age as Dean was when he did things. Like how he's pretty sure the passage Pastor Jim helped him memorize tonight will help a lot the next time they come across a banshee, and how he wants to know all of them--all the passages and spells and stories and rites that will hurt all the spirits and monsters they hunt--because he might never be able to fight as good as Dean, but he knows he can do other things to help Dad--more than just pour the salt--and maybe even do them better than Dean someday. Pastor Jim was a Marine like Dad and has a hidden room full of weapons under his church, but Sammy's never seen him use them--he always reaches for his books first. Maybe Pastor Jim's right. Maybe knowing what stuff means can help just as much as doing the stuff.
The sheets have warmed up again, and his brother's back is solid against his own. Sammy follows Dean into sleep thinking tomorrow he's going to ask Pastor Jim to teach him more Latin.
He doesn't get much of a chance to talk to Jim the next morning, just a couple of minutes when he's helping with the breakfast dishes. Dad's eager to get on the road--there's someone he wants to see while the boys are still on vacation from the school he and Dean have been going to in Missouri. Sammy wishes he'd rent an apartment here so they could go to school in Pastor Jim's little town, but Dad says Minnesota's hard to get to and from quick--he likes being in the middle. He promises to they'll be back to spend Christmas with Jim, though.
They load up the car while Jim puts coffee into a Thermos for Dad and makes some PB&J for the road. Sammy lingers outside the kitchen and watches his father and brother finish locking down the weapons. Pastor Jim comes out and takes the food over to Dean, scrubbing his head hard as he says goodbye. Dean makes a face but grins at the end of it and Sammy knows he's happy they're coming back for Christmas, too.
Sammy pushes off the door. Pastor Jim catches him before he comes down the steps and surprises him by handing him a book Sammy hadn't noticed under the bag of sandwiches.
"Study up, Sammy," he says. "We'll talk more at Christmas." From the top step Sammy's tall enough to look into Jim's face without having to crane his neck. The cracked leather is gummy in his hand, and it smells old and strong. The stamped letters spelling out "Artes Latinae" have lost a lot of their gold leaf but still sparkle enticingly. Sammy opens the cover and looks at the words written in fresh ink on the wrinkled page.
"Sammy,
Scientia potentia est
With love from your godfather, Jim Murphy"
"My first Latin grammar text. It should get you started."
Sammy thumbs through the yellowed pages, pausing to squint at a scribble in the margin, the silvery old-pencil dust shimmering over a brown stain he knows is blood.
"Really?" he asks, and Jim chucks him on the shoulder.
"I'm your godfather, aren't I? I'm supposed to see to your spiritual education." Sammy wants to hug him, but Dad's hand is thumping impatiently against the roof of the Impala and Dean's hollering at him to hurry up, they gotta move.
"Thanks," he says, and hugs the book to his chest instead.
"Don't let anyone tell you it's a dead language, Sammy." He grabs Sammy under the arms and swings him off the stoop, tossing him into a trot over to the car. "Keep safe!" Jim calls as Sammy pulls the door shut after him and settles into the back seat, and Dad waves out the window and kicks the engine to life.
1993
The familiar squeal-bang of the driver's door slamming yanks Sam awake. He pushes up onto his elbow and rubs his eyes, teetering between letting Dean tell him about the hunt and finishing his night's sleep. When he hears Dean yell for Pastor Jim, though, Sam doesn't hesitate. He swings out of bed and throws himself out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Sam beats Jim out the rectory's back door and skids to a halt in front of the car, loose gravel tearing into his bare feet.
Dean's pulling Dad out of the shotgun seat, and before the blood on Dad's face registers, Sam hears himself say "You drove?" because Dean's thirteen, and though both the boys learned how to drive at eight, Dad doesn't actually let them except in empty fields or deserted back roads. "Just in case," he always said, and as Dean glares at him, Sam realizes "Just in case" is now.
Sam feels the rush of air as Pastor Jim runs past him to help Dean with Dad, who takes an arm up and leans heavily on his friend.
"Sam," Jim calls, and Sam snaps to attention at the tone, so similar to Dad's. "Get all the towels you can carry from the bathroom and then hightail it down to the basement and bring up the big case in the bottom of the cabinet at the back wall. It's the only one not locked down there. Case's got a big red cross on it." Sam's up the stairs, heart pounding, before Jim finishes the order.
Dad's on the table in his underwear when Sam bangs back into the kitchen, and Dean's leaning hard on a folded towel pressed against Dad's right thigh. Dad's jeans are a pile of scraps on the floor, dark and wet, and his skin, where it's visible, is bright white. Jim is talking quickly and quietly as he cuts through two layers of shirts.
"Damn it," Dad spits, jerking away from Jim's scissors, "that's my best shirt."
"And I'm sure if whatever did the job knew that, he would have asked you to take it off before he started slicing. Hold still. You're making the bleeding worse." Jim throws Sam a look over his shoulder. "Bring it here, crack it open. Should be some saline in there. White bottle. Good."
Pastor Jim squirts the clear liquid all over Dad's shoulder, into the cuts. Dad hisses out a couple of choice words, and as he leans over the parallel tears, Jim chides, "Don't blaspheme," and beckons Sam with a jerk of his head. "Bandage," he says, jabbing an elbow at the kit. Sam rips the package open and holds it out, but Jim points at Dad's shoulder with his chin. "Put pressure here for me, not too much, just keep the skin together. Right?"
"Yes sir," Sam answers. Dad's blood is hot on Jim's hands as they slide out from under Sam's when Jim turns toward Dean.
"Let me see," he says, nudging Dean down the table. He inspects the towel before he carefully lifts an edge. "You did a fine job with the field dressing, Dean. And you," he's talking at Dad again, "are a lucky son of a gun. Looks nasty, but it's surface stuff. Nowhere near the artery. Which I could've told you from the fact that you didn't bleed out in the front seat."
"No chance of that," Dad scoffs. His eyes rest on Dean, and Sam's follow them to his brother, whose lips and eyes are flat and ringed in white. "Impala hasn't broken ninety since seventy-eight." He jerks his left foot into the underside of Dean's wrist, where he's clenching the corner of the table. "My boy here's a helluva driver. Gonna cost me a fortune in speeding tickets and bribes, I don't keep an eye on him."
Sam watches Dean's mouth twitch into a quick smile, and then he smiles, too. Pastor Jim pokes Dean with an elbow. "All right, Speedy. You know where I keep the hooch?" Dean nods. "Well, get your father a drink, then."
Dean hustles to find the bottle, and then hustles some more, helping Jim get washed up and his instruments set up. Dad hunches up to take a swig off the bottle and then sets it on the table at his hip. Sam can feel him tremble under his fingers as the whiskey goes down, like a spider web over a slamming door.
"You get it, Dad?" Sam asks, and his father's teeth look sharp and too-white against the blood on his face.
"We got it, kiddo," Dad answers, and then drags the bottle up for another, longer drink.
Jim's got gloves on now, flushing Dad's leg with the saline and wiping a clean shape around the torn skin, and Dad says, "You boys pay attention. Doc here can stitch better'n a spinster at a quilting bee."
Sam answers, "Yes, sir," along with Dean and tries not to wish they'd gone to a hospital or clinic like they usually do when they need more help than the Winchester first aid kit can provide, where the nurses make a fuss about keeping the boys' germs out of the treatment area and buy them pop and let them watch TV till Dad comes out all cleaned up and puts a hand on each of their necks as they head back to the car. Sam concentrates on Pastor Jim's steady, even voice--on the meaning of the words he's saying--as he talks the boys through what he's doing.
Jim tells them how alcohol or hydrogen peroxide can damage the skin cells in the wound, so you should always have saline in your aid kit for serious lacerations. How a lot of the time, a steri-strip and a good dressing will do the job just as well as sutures. How he's going to give them some of the lidocaine he's injecting right into the edges of the cuts because getting sewn up hurts like the devil and it doesn't matter how tough a guy is, there's no call for making it worse if you don't have to. He has Sam take the bottle away from Dad because, yeah, the alcohol will help him relax, but it thins the blood, so you can't give him too much. He tells them about the needle holder he uses, how it helps him control how deep his stitches go and which way he turns them, and how if you have to, you can use pliers but he'll set them up with a good kit, don't worry about that. He puts in stitches that cross over the top of the cut and stitches that snake around underneath and hold it closed from the inside, but tells them not to try anything fancy when simple will work just as well.
Sometime in the middle of it, sometime after Sam stopped having to swallow hard every time the needle bit into his father's flesh, Dean lets out a tight, hissing laugh and says, "Geez, what kinda priest are you, anyway?"
Pastor Jim and Dad laugh along--Dad harder, because of the hooch--and Jim says, "The kind who did two tours as a corpsman."
Dad smiles through his teeth. "'Cept he was so preachy we called him Pastor as often as Doc."
Jim takes another stitch--he's finished Dad's leg by now and is on the first of the three slices in his shoulder--and shares Dad's smile. "I was young, still trying to work out what God had in mind for me. Finding your calling at eighteen is a lot rarer than anyone thinks."
The next day Dad lies low on the couch with ice packs and a week's worth of newspapers from all over the country and tells Sam and Dean to get some bow practice in. Dean leads the way through the muddy stand of birch trees, but it's Sam who gets the first hit--an autumn-fat rabbit whose brown summer coat is patching with white. Dean gets one too, and when they bring them back to the church Pastor Jim says he can find at least a couple of ways to put them to good use. One he cleans and skins and puts on the stove to brown for stew. He gives the boys a pack of disposable razors and directs them to shave the other clean, then spends the afternoon supervising as they practice their sutures while he chops and stirs and seasons.
Saying the population's out of hand this season, Jim sends them out every morning, adding half their catch to his never-ending stew pot. After five days, Dad says he's recuperated enough and has a few leads he wants to check out in New Mexico, enough that they might stay the winter.
Jim sends them off with a fully stocked aid kit and a Tupperware full of stew. Five minutes later Dad pulls into the gas station next to the interstate. Dean fills the tank while Sam washes the windows, and when he's done, Dad cranks the driver's window and passes Sam the Tupperware with a grin. Dean high-fives Sam when he chucks it into the garbage can. They're all three laughing as they hit the road, swearing by all that's good and holy that they'll never touch rabbit again.
1996
Sam's reading by flashlight, flat on his back across the front seat, feet propped in the open passenger window. Dean teased him for borrowing a book from Pastor Jim, but Sam knew he wouldn't get in the door and likes to be prepared. This kind of gig works better solo, anyway. Hot waitresses are less likely to squint past Dean's fake ID when he's setting a bad example for his gawky kid brother, and he can't very well pretend to be drunk if he doesn't have a beer in his hand. Sam's backup, and when it comes to hustling pool, backup's just fine with Sam.
It's almost midnight when Sam's phone rings. Sam sits up and tosses the book and flashlight in the back and waits to see which code Dean's using. Two rings is fake family emergency, three is bust in screaming and crying. The third ring trills and Sam starts hyperventilating as he rips off the first of four band-aids stuck to his forearm for the purpose, wincing at the pulled hair. The phone rings again as the second one comes off and his eyes start to water. Four. And then five? They didn't make code for more than three rings. He punches the talk button and Dean's voice blasts through the speaker before he can say anything.
"--hear me? Start the fucking car, Sammy!" There's a crash in Sam's ear that he hears from outside the car, too, and through the phone someone yells, "You punk-ass little motherfucker!" and then Dean's voice again, loud and pissed, "Now, Sammy!"
Sam flings the phone down and cranks the engine, pulling in a tight turn out one end of the bar's dusty driveway, onto the road, and back in so he can screech to a halt in front of the place and throw the passenger door open just in time for Dean to explode out of the bar, yelling "Go, go, go!" as he dives in. The door bounces off his boot as Sam guns it out of the parking lot and Dean swears as he rights himself and heaves the door closed. When he hits the road, Sam risks a look in the side mirror as he throws it into second. Three huge guys are giving up the chase behind them, but a fourth is being stubborn. Dean leans out the window and flips him the bird, screaming "Maybe next time, sucker!" and Sam pushes the Impala into third and leaves the guy in the dust. Dean flops back into the car and whoops, "Now that's what I call backup, little brother!"
The tires squeal as Sam takes the turn onto the highway too fast, and Dean laughs wildly and pounds Sam on the back. Sam shoots a look at his brother, who's grinning even as he wipes blood out of his eyes. The smell that rolls off of him crinkles Sam's nose.
"You're bleeding," Sam says, because it's safer than "You're wasted."
"No shit. Pull over."
Sam ignores him, and Dean reaches for the steering wheel. "I said pull over. Dad'll kick my ass if he finds out I let you drive in town." Sam shoves his hand off the wheel, and that's when he realizes Dean's not just bleeding from the cut over his eyebrow.
"Your arm--"
Dean twists his arm to check it out. "Fucker came at me with a bottle."
"Put pressure on it, we're almost there."
By the time he pulls around back of Pastor Jim's little country church, Sam knows they're in trouble no matter who's driving. Dad and Jim are kicking back on the stoop outside the kitchen, enjoying the clear summer night.
Sam can see the exact moment Dad realizes who's behind the wheel. The beer he'd had dangling between his fingers clinks into the gravel and he's across the drive before Sam even has the keys out of the ignition. Dad's big hands come in the window to check Dean's head, push blood away to judge how bad off he is. He flicks his eyes over to Sam, who's clutching the keys in his fist now, hurting his palm.
"How bad?"
Sam starts to tell about Dean's arm but his brother's laugh cuts him off.
"You should see the other guy," he chuckles. "Guys. There were, like, five of them." He pulls away from Dad's hands and digs into his back pocket, pulling out a thin fold of bills. "Not my best take, sorry."
"Are you drunk?" Dad looks back at Sam, eyes blazing. "Sammy? He drunk?"
"Dad, his arm's cut pretty bad."
Dean holds up his arm. "Guy had a bottle," he repeats, and then the door screams open and Dad's got the neck of Dean's shirt in his fist and is hauling him out of the Impala. Dean stumbles as he's dragged to the little house, and Sam clambers out of the car, picking up the money Dean dropped. Pastor Jim puts a hand on Sam's shoulder as he reaches the steps.
"All right, Sammy?"
Sam doesn't know how to answer that, except "Yes, sir," so that's what he says. Dean leaves a stripe of blood on the doorframe as he bumps his way through, and Sam adds, "I better go get your kit."
When Sam comes back up with the case, the kitchen looks just like he expects it to. Dean's bleeding onto Jim's kitchen table and floor, Dad's pacing and yelling--has been since he pushed Dean into a chair as Sam headed down to the cellar--and Jim's swabbing at the mess on Dean's arm.
"The hell were you thinking?" The windows rattle as Dad slams the back door. Sam flinches; he's never seen Dad like this, not with Dean.
"John," Jim says in his quiet voice, but Dad doesn't seem to hear him.
"You know how that game goes. You pay for eight beers, you drink one of 'em!"
Dean's still grinning, hasn't caught on yet. "That chick, though, Dad. You shoulda seen her. She had me doing shots of rum cream or some crap off her belly. Bet was, I won at eight ball, I get to do 'em off her--"
"Goddamn it Dean, you chase tail on your time, not on the job. I ever catch you drinking like this again, you'll be riding shotgun till you're seventy. How were you planning on getting back here?"
Dean points. "Sammy was…"
Dad's voice hurts Sam's ears. "Sammy is twelve. Sammy was backup, not your designated driver."
"I'm thirteen," Sam corrects as he ducks under Dad's jabbing finger and puts the case on the table. He's been thirteen for more than a month, and they knew it. Dean bought cupcakes from the Danish bakery across from the motel, and Dad gave him a new knife.
"You shoulda seen his getaway," Dean says with a sloppy slap that grazes Sam's arm. Sam opens the kit open for Jim, takes out the saline, and starts looking for the butterfly bandages. "I couldn'ta done much better."
"That's not saying much. You couldn't piss a straight line right now. No wonder you botched the job. For what--"
"Jesus Christ, Dad, it wasn't a job, it was pool!"
"--a piece of ass? Anywhere I tell you to go's a job and you know it. You got off easy with that arm. You coulda wrapped that car around a phone pole!"
"John," Jim's voice squeezes through a gap as Dad and Dean both gather more breath for hollering.
Dad slams his palm against the wall and barks, "What?"
"Maybe you should get some air. I can't patch him up with you two going at each other like this." He doesn't wait for John's answer, but issues Sam a string of instructions in the same calm voice. "Grab a couple clean hand towels from the drawer, Sam, and get his face cleaned up so I can see what I'm working with."
The kitchen's suddenly full of soft sounds that feel somehow louder than the shouting: Dean sniffing back blood from his nose, the clean paper-rip of Jim tearing open a bandage, the steady rush of the faucet as Sam wets a towel, Dad's breathing, heavy and puffing and still mad but maybe starting to calm down.
Sam turns back to the table and starts mopping at Dean's face. It's not as bad as it looks once the excess blood is gone. The cut over his eye should be fine with a couple of steri-strips, and though the skin over the bridge of his nose is split and both eyes'll be black before morning, it doesn't look like his nose is broken. And from the look of his knuckles, he got his fair share of pounding in before the bottle entered the fight.
"I wouldn't have let him drive," Sam says because he thinks that's what Dad's most upset about. The instant it leaves his mouth, he knows it was a mistake. Dean's boot catches him on the side of the ankle, and he snaps "Shut your hole," just as Dad growls, "You wouldn't'a had to drive if you had his back in the first place." Sam knows right away his brother thinks Sam's going to rat on him about wanting to drive. What Sam doesn't get is why Dad's yelling at him.
"I did!" His voice squeaks embarrassingly, the way it's doing all the time these days. "I got us back here, didn't I? We're fine."
"Having his back means having his back, Sammy, not sitting in a corner with a book."
Indignation shoots through him. "I couldn't get in! He barely got in! Maybe if you want his back covered in a bar, you should send someone who's old enough to drink!"
"Watch your tone," Dad snaps.
"For fuck's sake, I was just shooting pool! I don't need a babysitter, especially not my dork of a kid brother."
Jim's voice breaks through, though it's not nearly as loud as any of the three others being used. "That's enough. All of you. You can fight all you want after I get this arm stitched up. John, go take that walk. Sam and I've got Dean." Dad swears and starts to leave but he stops when he hears Jim ask Sam to sterilize the needle.
"No."
"Sorry?" Jim asks.
Dad stalks over to Sam and plants himself above him. "You think you're up for being backup, then you follow it through to the end. Your partner comes out of a job bloody, it's on you to fix him up. You've seen me do it. Hell, you've seen Dean do it. Time you moved up from the stew rabbits, Sammy."
Pastor Jim's voice is tight. "John, really. That's not necessary. I'm right here."
"Won't always be," Dad points out. "Our line of work, you can't always get to a hospital, don't always have a corpsman on hand. Boy's gonna have to do it sometime. Better now, with you to supervise, Doc."
Sam's stomach goes cold, and over Dean's groaning about how Sammy using him as a pincushion is just what he needs after the night he's had, he says, "No. I don't want to. Pastor Jim's…"
"Did I ask you what you want or did I give you an order?" Dad snaps in his drill-sergeant voice.
"I can't," Sam insists, face burning. "Really. I can't."
"Don't do this, John," Jim says in a tone Sam's never heard from him. "These boys will forgive you for it, but it'll be on your conscience--"
"Don't you tell me how to raise my sons,” Dad cuts him off. His face is bright red, but his voice is like a hard edge of ice. “You know how this family lives, what we're up against. They need to understand the responsibility--"
"This is not the way--"
"It's the only way. Winchesters looking out for Winchesters."
"Dad, please." Sam's voice cracks again, and Dean kicks the chair next to him into the wall.
"Shit, Sammy, stop being a pussy and get on with it already."
In the end, Sam puts nine stitches into Dean's arm, high on the forearm, just under the elbow. Looking at the wound, Sam can see how it happened, can see Dean throwing a bent arm up to block the blow aimed at his head. Pastor Jim watches everything Sam does from the lidocaine to the final dressing, reminding him to make his stitches deep and narrow, to use steri-strips where he can. He puts a warm, dry hand on the back of Sam's neck when he's done and squeezes, then tells him to go wash up and get some sleep. Sam looks to Dad, who's been watching in jaw-clenched silence, and at Dad's tight nod of dismissal he pounds his way to the upstairs bathroom.
He uses the nail brush until his hands sting, brushes his teeth, and leaves black marks on the bedroom wall when he kicks his shoes off. Slams off the light and seethes on the bed as he listens to the rest of them settle in for the night. Jim says something Sam can't hear, but the only answer he gets is the bang of Dad unfolding the sofabed. Then Dean's thumping unevenly up the stairs. He stays in the bathroom for a long time, water running, and Sam's filled with a mix of angry satisfaction and disgust when he hears his brother puking into the toilet.
Dean trips over the doorjamb as he comes into the room, and Sam can't stand the idea of being in the same place as him. He grabs the extra blanket from the foot of the bed and pushes past his brother, down the stairs and out the door without bothering to be quiet about it. He hauls the back door of the car closed with a satisfying crash that he almost hopes will bring Dad out for another round.
Sam wakes just after dawn and picks up the book he brought with him last night, reading until he hears the back door and sees Pastor Jim coming down the steps with two steaming mugs. He motions Sam to open the door and slides into the back seat next to him, passing him a coffee. They drink in silence until Sam can't hold it in anymore.
"You were wrong," he tells Jim. "I won't forgive him."
Jim puts his arm across the back of the seat. "Yes, you will. Sooner than you think."
"Why's he like that?"
Jim considers the question. "He's scared."
Sam scoffs. "Yeah, right."
"He is, Sam. Your father's one of the bravest men I know, but you boys terrify him--the thought that something could happen to you." They sit for another few breaths and then Jim asks, "Dean ever do anything like that before? Drinking?"
"Nah. I mean, he drinks--like, a beer with Dad once in a while, or if he's got a hustle going, or a waitress he's trying to pick up--but never like that."
"You can see why your father would be angry, then, can't you? That Dean might've gotten hurt worse, or tried to drive. He put you both in danger."
"Well, then, Dad shoulda made Dean sew his own arm up. Why'd he make me do it? I didn't do anything wrong." Sam shakes his head in annoyance when his eyes start burning and swipes angrily at them with the back of his hand. "I hate him."
Jim's arm curves around Sam's shoulders and he pulls him against his side. "Of course you don't hate him. You're angry, and rightfully so. But don't ever forget that the only reason John Winchester does anything is for love of his family. Forgive him his mistakes, Sam. He does the best he can, but he's only human, just like the rest of us."
Sam sighs and stares into his coffee until Jim opens the door. "I'm thinking omelet. You want to help, or should I leave you here with your book?"
Sam knows what Jim wants him to do and after he mulls the options over for a minute, he thinks it's probably what he wants, too. He can't hide in the car with a book all day. They're supposed to be heading out before services tomorrow, and it's a long drive to Louisville. He's gonna have to talk to Dad and Dean sometime.
"Can you show me how to flip them like you do?" he asks, and slides out after Jim.
Dad comes in as Sam slides the fluffy, steaming eggs onto a serving dish and leans in the doorway, gaze heavy on Sam. Jim pours him a coffee and sets it on the table next to the three plates he's laid out. "Didn't figure we'd be seeing Dean for a few hours yet," Jim says when he catches Dad looking at the empty place as he takes his seat.
"Good guess," Dad agrees, dishing the eggs out by thirds. "He's got a long day of polishing boots and detailing that car ahead of him. He's gonna get every drop of blood off that interior, I tell you what."
Sam sits and stares down at his plate as Dad digs in. He jumps a bit when he feels a hand scruffing his hair. "Great job, Sammy," Dad says, and Sam looks into his face. "Best omelet I've had in years."
2002
It starts with a phone call in March. Pastor Jim always calls Dad if a lead comes up, so when Jim's number pops up on Sam's own phone, he knows immediately what it's about.
"Hey, can you hang on a second?" He ducks out the front door of the cabin they've been renting since arriving in town a week late for Sam's last semester of high school. Dean raises an eyebrow and makes smooching noises as he goes, obviously assuming the call's from Kelly. "Sorry," Sam says when he's put a dozen yards between himself and the cabin, "what's up?"
Jim's gentle voice carries a fair dose of irony. "Judging from your open, forthright greeting, I'm guessing your father has no idea about the amount of mail I'm getting for you these days."
"Please don't tell him," Sam says without preamble.
"I won't lie for you, Sam, and you should know better than to ask me to."
Sam hadn't thought about that when he'd listed Jim's as his permanent address on the applications. Mainly, he wanted to be sure they wouldn't end up in post office limbo when Dad decided they needed to be somewhere else. It'd been hard enough wrangling transcripts and SAT scores by fax and email; he wasn't going to risk it on the college applications. And, yes, if he was honest about it, having his mail go to Pastor Jim made it easier to avoid at least one type of argument, though God knows the Winchester Traveling Circus never lacked for a fight. Sam sometimes wondered if Dad had picked Yellsville as much for its blatantly appropriate name as for the recent increase in creepy Ozark juju.
"Isn't there some sort of client-priest confidentiality clause that will get you off the hook?" he jokes, hoping Jim will play along.
"Are you asking me to take your confession, Sam?" Jim asks, and Sam drops the bullshit.
"I swear I'm going to tell him soon," he promises. "Just--you know how he is. We've been here since January and he's getting restless. I just want to graduate, and I'm already a year behind. It's Podunk Arkansas, I know, but it's a good school. I'm taking a bunch of college-level courses, and I have a… there's a girl. And the way he freaked out last year when he wanted to leave Fort Scott the week before my SATs and I wouldn't go--he doesn't care about school at all."
There's a sigh across the line. "All right, all right. Which one do you want me to open first?"
Sam's grin stretches his face. "What're my choices?"
"Brown, Harvard, University of Minnesota--I'm flattered, Sam, but if you pass up Harvard for U of M, you'll go straight to Hell--Stanford--"
"Stanford? Open it."
Sam chews his lip through the ripping and unfolding and then bounces excitedly in place when Jim reads, "Dear Mr. Winchester, Congratulations on your acceptance to Stanford University…"
"Yes!" Years of carefully managed hope bursts free in Sam's heart. Adrenaline kicks through him, making his limbs ache with the urge to run it off. He takes three steps and a leap, catching a branch of the tree at the end of the driveway and swinging one-handed, feeling the wood bend and spring under his weight. He hears twelve different guidance counselors telling him that with grades and test scores like his, Sam could go to any school he wanted, but that even the mid-range universities lay a lot of importance on activities Sam's almost never been in one place long enough to participate in. "Yes! God, I don't believe it!"
Sam rides the momentum he's built on the branch and lands lightly in the gravel, putting the phone back to his face and laughing into it. He can hear the smile in Jim's voice when he speaks again.
"All right. Confess already, so I can cover my butt."
Sam doesn't hesitate. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he recites, TV and movies feeding him the appropriate words. "It's been… gosh," Sam falters, having never actually confessed, and then finds the next best thing. "It's been ten months since I told you about the money I collected for the fake cancer walk. I gave it to your church, remember? Since then, I lied to my father and brother about applying to college." He waits for Pastor Jim. "So? Am I absolved?"
"That's it? One sin in ten months? You're gonna have to do better than that."
Sam pauses again to consider, wondering if God understands about the lies the Winchesters tell every single day, the ones Sam's had to tell Kelly. His insides tighten and glow at the memory of his other secret--the one Dean thinks he knows but doesn't, or doesn't know right.
Jim hears the weight in the silence. "Come on, Sam. Make it count."
The heat in Sam's middle rises to his face, embarrassed and a little bit defensive. "I don't know if I think it was a sin, but it's probably on your list. I, uh… I had sex. Last weekend, with my girlfriend. Kelly."
There's an awkward pause. "Did you use a condom?"
Sam laughs nervously, feeling his face go hotter. "Does that make it more or less of a sin?"
"What do you think?"
"We were careful. And it wasn't like…" He almost says, "it wasn't like Dean," but that sounds awful on a couple levels. Dean had been trying to get his little brother laid since Sam was fourteen and giving him regular shit about it since he was sixteen. Sam knows Dean knows about him and Kelly, but he doesn't think Dean knows Sam's been lying about the state of his virginity for more than a year. "It wasn't casual, I mean. I really like her."
Jim's sigh buzzes in Sam's ear. "All right. Now listen to me, because we haven't done this before and we're bending a few rules, so it's important you understand. Simply telling a priest your sins doesn't absolve you of them. You have to be penitent; you have to change the behavior."
Sam presses his lips together. "But I don't believe it was a sin, with Kelly."
"I'm talking about your father," Jim says sternly. "Do we understand each other?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right, Sammy. Three Hail Marys, an Act of Contrition, and tell your father about Stanford."
"Yes, sir," Sam repeats.
"And Sam? Lying and fornication aside, I'm proud of you."
It takes Sam two days to get to Blue Earth from Yellsville. He storms out of the cabin--Dean yelling after him--before dawn the day after graduation and hitches north into Missouri, where he catches a series of county busses to Springfield and switches to a conveniently timed Amtrak. His phone starts ringing as he rattles past Independence. Sam turns it off without looking at the screen and gets off the train in Kansas City, where he skulks around the Greyhound station until the northbound bus comes through early Sunday morning. From there it's five hundred-odd miles to Albert Lea with nothing to do but think about how the hell he's ended up here and why he's remotely surprised. Two rides west on I-90 get him within a couple of miles, and just after sundown on Sunday Sam slides into a back pew at Saint Eustachius' and rests, road weary and dejected, until he hears Pastor Jim come out of the office and put something away on the pulpit.
Sam pulls himself out of his slump, and Pastor Jim looks up at the noise. His face flashes a moment of surprise before he says nonchalantly, "Your brother's looking for you. Called here yesterday." Sam gets up as Jim comes up the center aisle. "I'd ask how you're doing, but you've got the answer written all over your face." It startles Sam when Jim pulls him into a hug and holds it for a long moment, saying, "I thought we had an understanding, Sam."
"I tried," Sam says, feeling four years old. His sinuses burn. "I tried to tell him." He pulls away from Jim and sniffs to clear his head before he starts bawling. "He wouldn't listen. Any time I even mentioned the idea of college he went off. He was already on my case about Kelly and a hundred other things. I just--I thought if I could just concentrate on one thing at a time, you know? Just finish high school…" Sam leans against the pew and stuffs his hands into his pockets. "He was ready to move out in April, but Dean talked him into waiting. I thought we'd spend the summer on the road--it's always better between us in the summer--and I'd tell him then."
Jim nods, prompting. "But…"
"But Kelly's mom outed me at graduation. Told Dad how proud he must be to have a son heading off to Stanford in the fall."
"And now here you are."
"I didn't know where else to go."
"And I've got your financial aid paperwork," Jim teases kindly.
"Well, yeah, but that's not the only..."
"I know," Jim says and keeps his eyes evenly on Sam. "So. Want to tell me what happened? Knowing you two, I'm guessing the conversation didn't go well."
Sam looks away. His head echoes with the accusations and threats Dad and he hurled at each other, bouncing around his skull like they bounced off the cabin's thin, wood-paneled walls. They'd been at it for hours when the steel toe of Dean's boot crushed a hole in the cheap plywood of the bathroom door and shocked them all into a brief, tense silence. Dad gave Sam's lapel a final shake and stepped back, slapping away Sam's defensively raised fists and telling him to get a move on if he wanted out of this family so bad, and to forget about ever coming back. Then he smashed into his bedroom, rattling all the windows, and Dean kicked a second hole in the bathroom door.
Sam tries not to think about how his brother followed him into their bedroom and pulled out every piece of clothing Sam stuffed into his duffle bag, shouting "Goddamn it, Sammy, you cut this shit out!" until Sam shoved him off and told him to get out of his life already. Or about how Dean was still yelling when Sam slammed out the front door, half expecting Dad to come after him with handcuffs. But he didn't--as far as John Winchester's concerned, Sam figures, he's only got one son now.
"'Not well' is one way of putting it," Sam says. He can barely stand to think about it, and knows he can't speak it, can't repeat the things he said to his father, to his brother. Not yet, maybe not ever. He shakes his head. "I've never seen Dad that mad. I swear, I thought he was going to put my teeth down my throat."
Jim scolds him. "Your father wouldn't raise a hand to you. Shame on you for suggesting it."
Sam's ire flares again, remembering Dad's fists clamped on the lapels of his cheap sports coat, the one usually reserved for gathering information at funerals. "No," he bites out, "he'd make Dean do it, and then make him stitch me up after, too."
"Oh, Sammy…" Pastor Jim sighs and runs his hand over his softly grooved face and up through his grayed hair. "Have you learned so little about forgiveness?"
Sam hangs his head, exhausted, enraged, guilty, and scared all at once. He wonders if Dean will forgive him for leaving. Wonders if it's fair to hope that either of them might, when he himself isn't capable of forgiving his father for the life he made for his sons.
Jim's hand lights briefly on the back of Sam's neck before he gives him a gentle nudge toward the door. "Come on. Let's get some dinner, see if we can sort some of this mess out." He leads Sam back past the altar and into the labyrinthine passage between church and rectory, where one door leads down into the weapons cellar and the other into the little house's kitchen.
Later, Sam offers to do the dishes, but Jim won't have any of it. He leans against the sink until Sam sighs, pulls out his phone, and holds down the two until Dean's number flashes and connects.
"Get your ass back here," Dean greets him. "I'm gonna beat the tar out of you."
"Your motivational speech could use some work."
Dean's voice is hard. "I'm not joking, Sammy. Don't go."
"I'm already gone, Dean," Sam says simply. He can practically hear Dean's teeth grinding.
"Where are you?"
"Pastor Jim's." Sam pushes on before his brother can say anything. "Don't come up here. You can't stop me. I'm going to college. You need to get used to it."
Dean's voice crashes through the phone, and Sam is suddenly tired down to his bones. He pushes to his feet and drops the phone on the counter next to Jim's soapy hand, Dean's tinny curses still fighting through the speaker. Sam's done what he promised. His family knows where he is, knows he's safe. But he's not going to have this fight again. That wasn't part of the bargain.
Jim wipes his hands on the seat of his black pants and nods to Sam before he picks up the phone and waits for Dean to take a breath so he can get a word in. Sam climbs the creaky stairs to the bedroom he and Dean have shared on visits going back longer than he can remember. The room seems tiny to him now, but as he toes off his shoes and slumps onto the bed, he shivers at how empty it feels.
2006
The morning after the clown hunt, Dean calls Bobby about the minivan. He even manages to sound sorry about getting it ID'd in a burglary, but Sam knows Dean's pleased as punch to have left the abomination in those scrubby, nowhere bushes, and he can see the relief on his brother's face and knows Bobby's told him it's not worth bringing back. When Dean hangs up a few minutes later, he has a rueful smile on his face.
"Guess who has a buddy in Lincoln?"
"Bobby?" Sam guesses the obvious, and then gets it. "Bobby."
"Dad's truck's at his yard. We just gotta get there and then we've got respectable wheels again."
Dean wants to steal a car to get them to Lincoln, but Sam talks him out of it. They may know there won't be any more homicidal clown murders, but the cops are still working the case, looking for the pair of armed white men who broke into that last family's house. Greyhound gets them to Nebraska in a day.
Bobby's friend Dwight has detailed Dad's truck, and says it's got new tires--they were slashed when he found the truck, and there was sugar in the gas tank. Dean nods tightly as he thanks Dwight and tries to pay him, and Sam just looks away.
Dean drives, which is fine by Sam. He watches the plains unfold out the passenger window and tries not to think about the only other time he's been in this truck, a tense half-hour drive to meet Dean on the outskirts of Salvation. Dad was still driving the Impala when Sam left. They get a good five hours' driving in before Dean pulls off somewhere in the middle of Missouri--another one of those places they specialize in, with a four-block-long downtown and a spray-on veneer of Midwestern hometown charm. Sam counts six bars and four churches before Dean steers the truck into the obligatory run-down motor inn.
Dean is asleep within minutes of sliding into his bed; he's always been like that. Sam's never been an easy sleeper, except with Jess. She had a CD she played at night, waves on a beach. After she'd fallen asleep, Sam would reach across her and turn it off, knowing he'd never hear anything more perfect than this--this beautiful being drawing life into her body--and that would lull him into the most peaceful rest he'd known.
The sun comes up and gives Sam an excuse not to be asleep. He dresses silently and goes out to Dad's truck, rifling through the fake IDs in the console between the seats. The glove compartment holds the weapons a cop wouldn't recognize as being deadly: an Evian bottle Sam knows without question holds holy water, a round box of Morton's salt, and a squeeze bottle of lighter fluid. Beneath that are the registration and proof of insurance--Mr. McGillicutty again--and under that he finds a book that defies explanation.
Sam runs his fingers over the letters stamped into the cover, and they come away flecked with gold. His throat constricts as he eases the stiff leather cover open and reads the inscription.
"Sammy,
Scientia potentia est
With love from your godfather, Jim Murphy"
Grief slams into Sam, harder, more fiercely than it did on the side of the road to Salvation, when Dad relayed Caleb's call. Then, he'd fought it off, same as Dad--wrestled it under control and threw himself stonily into their work. Now there's no job to keep his mind off it, no demon to kill, no Colt to kill it with, and no Dad to tell them what to do, and so Sam drops his face into his hands and cries.
It doesn't last long, because some part of his mind--the part that got him into trouble so regularly with Dad and Dean--is asking, "Why? How?" He hasn't seen this book in four years. Dad was always on his case about hauling books around with him when damn near every town in the country had a library. Sam used to buy five bucks' worth of fifty-cent garage-sale paperbacks in any town they paused in, simply to have books he could make a show of leaving behind; it made the few he treasured look reasonable. Sam's books hadn't made it into his duffle when he left Yellsville. And yet here this one is, tucked in with Dad's roadside salt-and-burn emergency kit.
But again, that voice, "Why?" Dean would just roll his eyes, his way of saying Sam's an idiot for even asking. But Jim's voice comes into his head, calm and clear, with the answer: "Everything John Winchester does is for love of his family."
Sam thinks about his brother, whom he's been watching all week, digging at him to admit his pain. Sam knows it's there, because if Sam is rotting inside without Dad, even after all the hell they gave each other, how must Dean feel--Dean who lived by every word the man said, who took every question Sam raised to Dad as a personal affront, who threw Sam's attempt at being a good son back in his face: Too little, too late.
He looks at the fading ink of Jim's inscription. Knowledge is power. Sam remembers that lesson. It's not enough to say or hear the words. To make them count you have to understand what they mean. That's why Dean's words hurt so much: they were true, and Dean knew it, knew what they meant. Sam knows it, too, but hasn't let himself say them, think them, feel them. He does too much of all of those things already.
Up and across the road, the creaky speaker system in the church's belfry announces six o'clock. Sam tucks the book into the inside pocket of his jacket and follows the bells to Saint Hubert's, where he sits in a back pew and bows his head, whispering his confession.
Some time later--he remembers hearing the bells chime eight--Sam wakes up to the sound of footsteps echoing in the vestibule, his brother's voice bouncing in after them. Sam sits up, disoriented, and rubs his face with his sleeve before turning around to see Dean come in.
"Damn it, Sam, how many times we gotta have this conversation? You answer me when I call you." Dean tosses Sam his phone and slumps into the pew next to Sam, legs dangling out into the aisle, and scratches his ear. "The hell're you doing in here anyway?"
Sam shakes his head and shrugs. Jim's book slides over his ribs, and Sam shrugs again, just to feel it move. "I dunno."
Dean gives him one of those sideways, eyebrow-filled looks of his. "Okay, then. We can make Bobby's by midnight if we stay on I-64 and don't fuck around. God, I am so sick of this drive. Next case, we gotta go south or something." He stands up and strolls toward the door.
Sam follows, but drifts to a stop in front of the candle-laden table to the side of the church. He digs in his pocket and stuffs a crumpled dollar bill into the donation box, then takes one of the tapers and uses it to light a votive. He can hear Dean scuffing impatiently in the doorway, but doesn't let himself be rushed. When he's sent up his prayer, Sam joins Dean on the steps. The sideways look has more eyebrow than ever, and Dean's mouth is curled with a mix of amusement and concern.
"Dad'd tell you not to waste a buck, you know," he says lightly.
Sam sniffs in the chilly morning air and nods, tucking his hands into his pockets. "It's not for Dad," he says, and heads down the steps. Dean's stare is heavy on Sam's shoulders, but Sam is growing accustomed to the weight.
The truck's engine has a different drone to it than the Impala's, but the combination of it, the rush of the interstate, and the Saint Louis classic rock station that's just crackling into range is a powerful soporific. Sam's asleep within twenty minutes, deep and dreamless and grateful. He wakes in a gas station halfway across Kentucky and drives them the rest of the way.
Bobby's house is as big and rambling as ever. At the top of the stairs, Dean mumbles goodnight and shuts himself into the bedroom he's been using since they've been here. Sam, who's spent all but one summer of his life sharing a room, lies awake across the hall, missing the soothing whistle of his brother's breath.
The next morning, Sam lies in his bed until he hears Dean tramp down the stairs. The back door bangs, and Sam knows they're right back where they started. Dean fixing the car, Sam with everything to fix but nothing that's fixable.
He goes back to the truck, going through Dad's weapons chest--sorting, consolidating, sharpening, cleaning, polishing. They're leaving the truck with Bobby, Dean announced last night as they crossed into West Virginia, it's the least they can do. Sam figures Bobby can use whatever won't fit in their own lock box.
A couple of layers down in Dad's trunk is a paper bag that catches on the grip of a machete and tears as Sam lifts it out, spilling a cascade of rosary beads into the dirt. As Sam fumbles with the bag, the rip widens and a book breaks free, bounces off the tailgate, and lands face down and open where its spine is cracked. Sam recognizes his father's cheap paperback copy of the Catholic Book of Prayers.
He slides his thumb under the book and scoops it up while he gathers the beads with his other hand. The book flops open again as he straightens up, and Sam's eye catches the prayer it's broken to, the Act of Contrition. A shiver runs through him, despite the sunshine. Sam wonders briefly if he's being haunted, but it's broad daylight, the truck's radio plays softly without static, and there's no sulfur in the air, which is still and calm.
Sam's eyes drift down the page, lingering on the last lines of the prayer, I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin, and knows where he needs to start.
The words don't hurt any less coming from his own mouth, but speaking them to his brother, acknowledging his sins, feels right even as it burns--like flushing a wound with saline. But Dean's eyes are deader than ever when Sam leaves him, and when he hears the smash of glass followed by the rhythmic, metallic crashes, Sam presses his fist against his mouth and thinks he must be the most selfish son of a bitch on earth.
Jim stays close in Sam's mind, and Sam gives the afternoon over to memory and nostalgia, following the directions Jim gave him that summer an age ago. By the time Bobby follows his nose into the underused kitchen, the stew is ready for a test run. Sam continues to tinker after Bobby's pronounced it serviceable and headed out again. There's a lady he's trying to make at a bar in town, he confides with a wink, and Sam says, "Isn't there always?"
It's full dark when Dean finally comes in. Sam looks up from the book he's reading--one of Bobby's meatier demonology tomes--and searches Dean's face for clues to how this scene is going to play. He gets a momentary pause in the doorway punctuated by a squint, and that's all Sam needs: It's Dean for "nothing to see here, move along," so Sam stands up and cuts across his brother's path on his way to the stove.
Dean stops in the middle of the room, and, casting a glance over his shoulder, Sam squelches a smile at the way Dean sniffs, wrinkled nose pulling his whole face into a baffled frown.
"Did you cook?" Dean asks, and the word could just as easily have been "molt" for all the disbelief his voice carries.
"Some farmer paid Bobby in produce yesterday," Sam says. "Gotta love a barter economy."
"I guess," Dean answers skeptically. He steps around Sam, flips the water on in the sink, and scrubs at his engine-greased hands with the dwindling bar of Lava soap while Sam sets the table and cracks them each a beer.
Dean still looks suspicious when he sits down across from Sam, but after a first tentative taste of Sam's stew he shrugs and tucks in. Sam watches him between bites, amused by the half-assed washing-up his brother did. Dean's hands and wrists are clean, but there's a distinct line across his forearms where he stopped scouring the day's work away. In the middle of a dark smear under his elbow, a pencil-thin line of white catches and holds Sam's attention--the scar stands out in sharp relief against the dirt.
Dean notices the stare a couple of mouthfuls later. He twists his arm to see what Sam's looking at and makes a dismissive clicking noise. "Not your best work, Sammy," he admonishes and downs the end of his beer. "You're lucky chicks dig scars, or I'd hold it against you."
Sam snorts. "Considering I was thirteen and it was my first non-rabbit seamwork, I say you got off easy. It doesn't show when you're not covered in grease."
Dean goes back to his dinner, but stops abruptly with his mouth full and an expression of alarm on his face. "Aw, shit, you didn't," he mumbles around the half-chewed food. He forces the stew down and pushes the back of one hand over his mouth. "Tell me you didn't, Sam."
Sam lets his smile through, seeing the connections Dean's made.
"Dude, we took a solemn vow," Dean says, looking so distressed that Sam takes pity on him.
"It's chicken, I swear." Sam reassures him. "I thought about it, but I didn't have the heart. Or the stomach." He laughs softly. "God… You know that summer I spent there? I told him we'd developed a family allergy to rabbit."
"Lying to a priest…" Dean scolds, getting up to grab two more beers. "Maybe not the best thing you've done for your immortal soul."
"I guess I've done worse," Sam says into his bowl, the brief lightness in his chest departing as unexpectedly as it arrived.
He feels Dean's gaze on him again. A few seconds later the cold damp of a bottle nudges his wrist, and Sam looks up to find Dean's face quiet and somber.
"Guess we both have," Dean says as he sits back down.
The air in the kitchen suddenly feels heavy with remorse, crowded with the sins they've committed against each other.
Dean breaks the silence. "Nah, you know what?" He spits onto his napkin and wipes a clean spot over the scar. "You patched me up good. Always have."
Sam's throat tightens again, but he breathes through it and comes out the other side. "I had a good teacher."
Dean tips his head in agreement and raises his bottle. "Pastor Jim," he toasts.
Sam lifts his own bottle in answer, thinking about the last time he spoke to Jim--a too-brief conversation squeezed between calls to Jefferson and Caleb a couple of days after he and Dean had left Lawrence for the second time. "You boys look out for each other," he'd said. "It's what you Winchesters do best. Your father'll tell you the same thing when you find him." They should have called back when they found Dad, Sam thinks. Jim would've wanted to know.
"Pastor Jim," Sam repeats and drinks with his brother and their ghosts.
end
Author's note: From Catholic Encyclopedia:Occasions of sin are external circumstances--whether of things or persons--which either because of their special nature or because of the frailty common to humanity or peculiar to some individual, incite or entice one to sin.