kin & keeper; part 7.
Iberia, Missouri
September 1991
Sammy watched the hacksaw move back and forth, endlessly, squealing a little bit against the metal of the shotgun's barrel, chin in his hand, content and quiet.
The curtains in the room were closed, but sunlight still filtered through, golden and thick; dust motes danced in it. Dad wouldn't be back until much later that night, Dean knew, and he intended to be finished by then.
“It's gonna be a surprise,” he'd told Sammy. A surprise for their father, and while Sammy probably thought it was meant as a gift or something like that, Dean knew what this sawed-off shotgun would really mean when his Dad saw it: I can be a hunter too.
Sammy didn't much care for guns. That had become apparent over the last year, as Dad brought weapons into the rooms more and more often, nervous that they'd be found out in the Impala's trunk, nervous, in his increasing paranoia, that his children were in danger there. Sammy didn't know what they were for, what they were used on-not yet; that secret was still safe-but he shied away from them almost instinctively, as if they were poised to go off at any moment, or hurl themselves away from where they lay on tables or against walls to attack him.
He knew better, now, than to ask questions of Dean when it came to Dad-Dean was careful to keep up a blank and frustrated face whenever the subject arose, and Sammy wasn't stupid. Sometimes, when he was feeling petulant enough to be annoying, he'd rattle off questions at Dean until Dean wrestled him to the floor or cuffed his head, defaulting to pushing his little brother into anger and sulking rather than facing what he was being asked. He was running out of ways to tell Sammy to be quiet, to stop wondering.
Dean dusted off his hands, cracking his knuckles; they were stiff from holding the hacksaw. “You like it?” he said, a little breathless, glancing at his little brother.
Sammy shrugged. “I guess,” he said.
“Dad's gonna love it,” Dean said, ignoring his lack of enthusiasm, picking up the gun and peering down the shortened barrel. “You think? He's gonna be proud.”
“I hate his stupid guns,” Sammy muttered, clambering backwards down from the table, pushing his dark hair out of his eyes. He scuffed the carpet with his foot, scowling at it. “Why does he need all those guns? Why do you gotta have one?”
“'Cause when I grow up,” Dean said, cocking the gun, holding it level with his eye to peer down the barrel, “I'm gonna be just like Dad.”
“I thought Dad fixed cars,” Sammy said, without looking at him, but Dean could hear in his voice, in the careful sound of his words, that this was yet another attempt to get the truth-because these days, Dean knew, Sammy was perfectly aware that he was being lied to.
Dean set the gun down, looked at him. Set his jaw. “He does.”
Sammy looked at him out of the corner of his eye, swaying a little; his face was getting peevishly flushed in the way it always did when he was quietly angry. “Then why does he need all those guns?”
“I keep telling you, Sammy, sometimes he goes on hunting trips to, like, kill deer and stuff.”
Sammy clearly wasn't convinced. “Then how come we never go with him?”
“Dude-shut up, go watch some TV,” Dean said, louder than he'd intended, shoving the sawed-off across the table with a loud, heavy noise. “You're so-”
But he stopped, fists clenched against the table's wood, at a loss. Sammy glared at him for a moment in the accusing way of children and then walked defiantly off, shunting the switch on the motel's TV, sulking down into the armchair across from it, so far down that his legs were extended straight against the floor. Dean sighed, frustrated, and turned back to his shotgun, his precious hard-earned shotgun, looking at the ends of the barrel for things to file off.
When Dad came home, much later, after dark, Dean jumped up from the table just in time for Sammy-still slouching in the chair-to say, “Dean made a stupid gun,” snatching the surprise right from Dean's hands, and he faltered, shoulders falling, the shotgun in his grip.
Dad hardly even glanced at the shotgun as he made his way inside; there were specks of blood on his forehead. “That's good, son,” he said in passing, and then he went into the bathroom and closed the door.
Dean stood there for a moment, stomach twisting with upset, and then he threw the shotgun down and strode across the floor to whack Sammy on the back of the head.
“Ow!” Sammy yowled, starting upright, twisting violently to look at him. “What was that for, you jerk?”
“I was gonna show him first!” Dean hissed, feeling his face grow hot. “I was gonna show him and you just had to ruin it!”
“Who cares?” Sammy bit back. “I don't care about your stupid gun. You won't even tell me what it's for.”
“It's for hunting, Sammy, I keep telling you that!”
“I hope you kill a lot of deer with your stupid gun,” Sammy said, spiteful, and turned back to the TV, and Dean had to swallow tears, force himself to keep from cuffing his brother round the head again.
He wanted, right then, more than anything, to admit the truth, to sit down on the floor opposite Sammy's sulk and spill it all. This was what lying did to him, to his little brother-it made them nasty; it was making Sammy grow up sour and angry, tipping dangerously forward into a world that was already black and awful, and Dean missed the toddler who rarely spoke and never dreamed of anything being other than the way it was.
But then Dad came out of the bathroom and Dean felt any and all resolve to tell the truth sealing up and pushing back down into his throat, and when they were ordered to bed they both answered with a moody, melancholy yes, sir, and though Dean was still angry at Sammy he still tucked him in, blankets snug and secure around that thin, wiry body, arms clutching Dog's rat-bitten fabric. This couldn't last much longer.
Cicero, Indiana
Present Day
“Think we're good?”
Ben looked thoughtfully at the shopping cart, piled up in the middle with objects for the check-out, his hands wrapped around the cart's metal edge.
He and Dean had been out here all afternoon, moving from store to store looking for Christmas gifts for Lisa; for someone with little to no experience buying actual, expensive presents for people, Dean was finding the excursion almost-comforting. They'd picked up a new set of dishes for the kitchen; he'd found a new bathrobe for her in her favourite shade of purple, had held it up against his palm, imagining her bright smile, her dark hair laid out against it. There was a kind of nervous energy to this, an uncertainty about what would be appreciated or not, but there was a kind of pride in it too-a sense of accomplishment.
This was going to be his first Christmas, he knew, in a real house, trappings and traditions and all. This new life was full of so many firsts.
Dean waited patiently for Ben to look over the haul and make sure nothing was missing. They were in an aisle stuffed to bursting with red and gold and green, tinsel and baubles and silver, a new star for the top of the Christmas tree nestled between the running shoes Lisa had been coveting for months and the coffee table book on the history of the Indianapolis Colts that he'd seen her eyeing the last time they'd been out together.
It only took a moment for Ben to pipe up.
“I gotta get her calendar!” he said, and took off down the aisle, wheeling around the corner, and Dean sighed, without frustration, leaned against the cart to push it after the kid.
When he found him, Ben was looking through the racks of pre-packaged, oversized kitchen calendars, tongue between his teeth, searching for the perfect one, and Dean crossed his arms on the railing of the cart, watched.
It was going to be strange to see the calendar on the pantry door go. Be replaced. He knew it'd be consigned to the pile of past years in the study, where Lisa could look back through it whenever she liked, but it still made him feel a little uneasy. His arrival date was in that calendar. Putting it away felt like-closing a chapter, opening a new book, when it felt as if nothing had quite reached a conclusion just yet.
He'd been with these people for almost eight months. That number felt almost too big, or perhaps not big enough, and it was only going to get bigger, and what did that mean?
Ben found a calendar with a taut plastic packaging and put it triumphantly in the cart and then turned, making his way towards the end of the aisle, to the front of the store.
Dean swallowed. He pictured two, three, five, ten, a dozen more calendars, blank and arrayed out in front of him, and Terrible May marked out in big red symbols on each one, as if to say, soon this month is going to be an anniversary, and you're going to live through it, year after year, further and further away from him-
Dean ground the side of his arm down hard against the rough railing of the shopping cart and the grate of pain banished that thought. He walked faster than he should have to catch up with Ben, the wheels gliding across the linoleum. The kid was standing near a checkout, two Twix bars clutched optimistically in his hands. Dean let him have them. It felt like spiting the sadness.
They had all gone out together to get the tree from the Home Depot, and Ben had selected the fattest, tallest Douglas Fir he could find, and watched, rapturous, while the man at the front trimmed it down to size. The man and Dean had strapped it to the top of Lisa's car while she held the bungee cords down by the doors, and all the way home Ben twisted in his seat to see the ends of branches hanging over the street, to make sure the tree didn't fly off on the highway.
It was standing in the corner of the living room now, by the window; Dean had had to cut off the top-it had scraped a long brown line across the ceiling when they'd lifted it, a few centimeters too tall for this room. Lisa had put on the station with the least annoying Christmas repertoire and Dean, for the first time in his life, hung tinsel and kitschy knick-knacks from relatives he'd never met, instead of air fresheners and stale popcorn strings, on the branches.
When they were done it glimmered and shone like every tree in every Christmas movie Dean had ever seen, and he felt proud-proud that they had done this, that he had helped in making something so beautiful-but even something like this had no effect on the empty hollow feeling in his gut.
That was still there. The sadness, the intelligent persistence of memories. It lifted its blackened, long-haired head to the smell of the pine and the glow of the lights on the wall whenever Dean passed the living room by, and he was too weary of it to fight it back down much anymore.
When he and Ben got home from the shopping center he sent the kid upstairs, clutching bags and boxes, to hide Lisa's gifts in his closet. He stood a moment, a little lost, in the foyer, listening to the doors opening and closing upstairs, the tree standing darkly in the corner of his eye.
Suddenly and desperately he wanted Lisa. He'd been doing so well, keeping his grief closed up, these last few weeks, but Christmas was looming and he knew it was going to be hard to keep that up much longer with the holiday staring him in the face. He wanted her, her touch, whatever mundane things she had to say.
She was in the kitchen when he went looking-walked past the calendar on the pantry door- stirring a candy cane into a mug of hot cocoa, watching snow collect out the window. When she heard his footsteps she turned.
“Hey,” she said, grinning; her feet made no sound on the tile when she came to him, kissed him gently, smelling of peppermint and cold. “How was shopping?”
She had to lift her hands with the mug in them when he put his arms around her, buried his face in her shoulder, and she froze like that, awkwardly, her hot cocoa hovering over his head.
“You okay?” she said, muffled, into the side of his head, and he couldn't answer; he just wanted to hold her a little, be held by her. She was warm, solid, and her free hand was resting on the back of his neck, now, and he felt himself sag a little-not relax, but come loose.
Lisa twisted a little to set her mug down on the kitchen table and then she hugged him properly, her face against his neck.
They stood like that a while, swaying a little on the tile, the grey wet day outside. Before too long Ben came crashing down the stairs again and Dean breathed in hard, broke away from her, held her waist a moment in his hands, looked down at her; she looked up at him, quiet, eyes questioning.
He cleared his throat, kissed her mouth before he could say anything about the sadness stirring in his chest. Christmas was in three days. He wasn't going to bring this down for her, not when she'd taken such pains to make it good for him.
God, but he wished he could tell her what he saw in his dreams, in still moments of daylight. But to tell her would be to admit that he'd been dwelling, that he liked dwelling, that grief was easier and more comfortable than hauling himself up bodily from that pit, that sometimes, though he felt like a traitor to his promise, he didn't want to move on, to get better. That the idea of giving up his sadness felt like a betrayal, of Sam, of everything that had been before-that he loved her, but there were moments where he loved his sorrow more.
He didn't want to lose her smile, her understanding, her insistence that he heal. Maybe he loved his grief, but he knew it would kill him without someone shouting to him from the top of the abyss. She-standing here in her socks and sweatpants, her hair loose, her hand wrapped around her steaming mug, the sweetest, most normal, most loving person he had left-was all that was keeping him upright, he knew.
And he was a guest here; he always had to remember that. He had the safety of this little family only because they were kind enough to give it to him. His mouth to feed, his person to accommodate, was burden enough.
On Christmas Eve they stayed up late, the both of them, trying to peel tape and fold wrapping paper as quietly as possible so as not to wake Ben upstairs. The lights of the Christmas tree were the only glow to work by; between the curtains on the window snow was falling, stark against the black darkness.
They didn't speak much, but Lisa hummed while she worked, expertly wrapping Ben's gifts and writing out From: Santa Claus on a few every now and then in looping handwriting that wasn't her own. Ben didn't believe in Santa anymore, but she still did this, she told Dean, every year. It almost made her sad that her child had lost that piece of innocence already. He thought, as he watched her, that maybe she did it to keep hold of the little boy Ben had once been for one more year, one more Christmas.
He knew the feeling.
Dean had no eye for the aesthetics of the tree, so he let her arrange the gifts around its bottom, propped up or laid out, bows glittering against the tree-skirt. She flicked a pine needle from her finger when she was done and then stood up, stepped backward until she had landed against Dean's chest, and he twined his arms around her middle, resting his lips on the back of her head, looking in near-awe at the postcard-perfect assembly before them-Thomas Kinkade couldn't have painted it better.
“Wow,” he said, breathed, against her head; he could almost feel her smiling. “It looks great, Lis.”
“No thanks to you,” she murmured, resting her hands on his. “You couldn't gift-wrap to save your life. I hope you know that.”
Her laughter felt like butterflies bumping beneath his palms, and he closed his eyes, grateful for it, grateful for the gentle smell of her hair and the glow of the tree and the warmth of the room, grateful that he got to have this, if only while it lasted.
“Come on,” she said, turning towards the stairs, looking up at him, her dark eyes almost liquid in the light. “Let's go to bed.”
He stopped her at the foot of the stairs to kiss her, fighting down the itch of melancholy on his spine, and for a moment she held his face in her hands.
“Merry Christmas, Dean,” she said, softly, against his lips, and pressed her forehead against his, in solidarity, almost.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “You too.” He smiled, as much as it was possible for him to smile, and let her lead him upstairs. Away from the golden glimmer of the tree, and the languid black shadow that seemed to be crouching behind it, waiting for run its fingers through his head, to make him remember.
He woke early in the morning, when it was still dark, unsure what had woken him; the curtains were open a little, and snow was still falling fast and thick and utterly silent.
Lisa was asleep, her back turned to him. Dean lay there a moment, looking at the blankets tucked up almost to her ears. He'd thrown off his own covers, he realised, looking down at himself, as if in a nightmare, and his bare arms and legs were rough with goosebumps.
He sat up, quietly, careful not to make the bed-springs creak.
The carpet was cool under his feet, almost damp.
He'd woken into one of those bizarre states of complete uncertainty-wasn't sure why he was awake, what he was doing, why he was sitting here-for an instant, as he was blinking sleep away, he thought he saw something flicker in the darkened corner of the room, and lifted his head. There was nothing there.
He got up, stood idle for a moment, feeling the cold prickle on his back; then he reached down to pick up his wallet from the nightstand, wandered around the bed to the window, lifted the curtain a little.
It rested against his side. The glass was black, the street below obscured by driving snow-he could almost imagine he was staring into nothingness, an endless, blizzarding night, that Lisa's house was the only bastion of existence left, and he was in it. The leather of his wallet in his hand was cool and slick.
It only took a moment to open it and find what he was looking for. He kept it behind his dollar bills, always. The only photograph of Sam he had.
It was small, only an inch high, and creased and faded almost beyond recognition, but he pulled it out anyway-he could feel the soft, worn spot where he always held it between his fingers. Even if this picture were smudged and destroyed he'd still know exactly what it looked like. He was certain of that.
He held it up against the cold glass for the modicum of light the street-lamps offered, the better to see it. His hands were shaking, just a little bit.
He hadn't looked at this picture since-since before Sam died, really, if he was remembering correctly; it had been too hard to stomach in the months since he'd been gone. It wasn't even the best picture-it was his high school sophomore yearbook photo, Sam in that strange between-state of young teenagers, not yet quite the sharp, dark, fox-like thing he'd grown into, not quite the soft, crooked-smiled child he'd been anymore.
It was the most generic of pictures, just a straight-on smile, creases at his eyes. His brother collapsed down into dull colours, flat shades. No nuance to the nut-brown of his skin that Dean remembered from those days. No real testament to the freakishly changeable earth of his eyes. A single camera flash couldn't possibly convey the way they'd shifted under different lights, how they could be imbued with fire or Spanish moss or summer grass whenever they pleased. Often it had been subtle, but Dean remembered. He'd been in awe of that, once.
He leaned against the window, shoulder pressed to the chilly glass, looking at the shadows creeping into the folds in the photo. As if they were going to overwhelm it, eat it up, take the last image of his brother's face out of the world.
He stuffed it back into his wallet with something almost like paranoia, and sank into himself against the window, too awake to go back to sleep, too listless to move. The snow outside went on and on. It seemed as if morning might never come and the dark would stretch out forever, and the snow would rise and pile higher and higher until it consumed the house and then there would be nothing left.
Dean heard blankets shifting and knew Lisa was awake, but if she saw him standing there, she said nothing. He could feel her eyes on the back of his head like two fingerprints, watching, trying sleepily to understand what he was doing up, doing over there.
He didn't move. His eyes unfocused past the snow until it was one long blur of white against black, waiting, though it was hours away, for the first grey push of the sun.
Broken Bow, Nebraska
Christmas Eve, 1991
It was the sound of the curtains pulling back, rings against rods, that jarred Dean from what little sleep he was wrapped in, the gentle sound of metal on metal. He turned over in the hard twin bed, blinking.
Sammy was at the window, his little silhouette as familiar to Dean as anything else in the world, his hand fisted in one curtain, his head tilted to peer out into the early morning dark. It wasn't yet dawn, he knew, but it was close; and after Christmas morning they'd probably be gone from here, loaded into the Impala like so many little weapons and driven away to some new place just as poor and dirty.
Dean shifted upright-didn't say anything; just watched.
Sammy probably thought he was being professionally quiet, out of bed like this. He pulled the curtains closed again slowly, carefully, but not before he reached up and tested the lock with his fingers, tugging against it to be sure it was holding steady. Against the golden neon light of the motel sign Dean could see his breath frosting on the cold glass for just a moment before the shoddy curtain shut out the light again.
Sammy tiptoed to the door, then, and stood and looked at the doorknob as if contemplating what to do with it. He touched it, then, gripped and twisted it with utmost caution so that it wouldn't grind in the jamb; then he stood on his very tiptoes, reaching up for the latch at the top of the door in a way that Dean knew would make his muscles burn. He couldn't reach it; he was still too scrawny and small for that; but he bounced back down on his heels and gave it a good long stare, as if making certain it was closed, the metal loop flat against the chipped paint of the door. He touched the deadbolt, too, took hold of it between his fingers and then swung it home.
The lock thunked into place and he stepped back on the flat carpet in his socks, looking satisfied. Touched a hand to his mouth, fidgeted in place, unaware that he was being watched from the bed, too caught up in his own private fears, worries, whatever they were.
Dean lay there, breathing evenly, looking at him. His Christmas gift was lying heavy on his chest. The big gold pendant on its black string, making folds in his shirt, unfamiliar enough to be exciting, though he'd owned it for hours now. Sammy's heel was pushed squarely into the discarded newspaper on the floor that had wrapped the necklace in the first place.
And here was something he had never seen before, Dean realised, sleepily, looking at his little brother standing there like that, examining the door with slow eyes moving from latch to lock to knob and back again-in the shadows by the unlit Christmas tree, floor littered with chip bags and wrapping paper and fake pine needles and Dean's own muddy bootprints, in a shirt too big for his skinny chest and pyjama pants that hung loose on his hips, socks that hadn't been cleaned in two states-he'd seen Sammy scared before, but not like this. The shock after the shtriga, that had been fear; his baby-crying after nightmares, or on the street after the fire, that had been fear. But this was new. It was tensed all up his body, as if someone had put pins into his elbows and knees and neck, keeping him fixed on that door.
Dean knew what he was doing out of bed so late. He was doing what Dean had done at his age and before. Making sure the monsters couldn't get in, now that he knew that they were out there somewhere in the cold black wilds beyond the door.
When Sammy finally turned away-reluctantly, as if he were wrenching himself from something-Dean shut his eyes quickly, relaxed, guilty for having intruded on something like that, and for a million other reasons besides.
A moment later he felt the mattress sink beside him and the covers lift, let in chill and fall, and then Sammy's bony body was curled up right next to his, his face pressing the new necklace into Dean's chest, the hard pointed horns of the golden face poking into his sternum, and Sammy's cold hand, knuckles bent, on his arm.
Dean opened his eyes again only when he was sure Sammy had fallen asleep again. There wasn't much light to see by-only the faded glow of the motel sign filtered through the curtains-but he could see the tight places on his little brother's face where he'd been crying, even after the fiasco with the stolen presents, even after the night was over and the truth Dean had told him had settled. His dark hair splayed back from his open face, and all at once Dean felt sick-nauseated, that he'd sat there, looked into his innocent brother and spilled the beans, brought the hatchet down on all his dreams and thoughts and hopes. It was Christmas, and in one fell movement he'd darkened Sammy's world by twenty shades. He'd done that. Ruined so much.
It would be a relief, not having to lie so much; there was that. But tomorrow morning, in the cheerless snow, under the dark end of December, Sammy wouldn't be the same person he'd been the day before, and he'd never be that person again. Never small and ignorant and bright-smiled, not ever again.
He remembered Mrs Chancey's living room, what seemed forever ago-remembered whispering that the hands laid against his skin right now in this bed would never, ever hold a rifle in them, would never pull a trigger, not if he could help it; and now that promise was crumpled on the floor among the mud and the newspaper, and he knew now that he was naïve to ever say that. Of course he couldn't help it. The world was big and cold and black and hungry, twisted up with metal and dark roads and smoke, and it ate up little boys like nothing, and whether he liked it or not they were both in its jaws now, speared on its needle teeth, and all he could do-all either of them could do, now-was latch the door, and pray to be spared.
The tighter he gathered Sammy up against him in their bundle of blankets and cold feet, the harder the necklace pushed against his chest, as if it would pierce him straight through. He gathered him tighter anyway.