Work Text:
Dad is a hero, Dean says. Monsters are real, Dean says. And Dad is gone, and he’s lied lies lying and Dean’s there, ok? So when Dean says hero and when Dean says monsters Sam believes him, even though he’s never seen one. Even though every adult and half the kids he’s ever talked to say there are no such things.
Dad lied to him. Dean won’t, anymore. Sam believes that. He has to believe something.
---
They’re going on four months past Christmas, and Dad hasn’t told Sam the truth. It’s starting to wear on both boys.
“Dean,” Sam whispers one night, poking his brother in the side, his voice masked by the television John is crashed out in front of.
Dean grunts awake and turns his head towards Sam, his hair mussed and eyes half-lidded in the blue-white glow of the television screen.
Sam pokes him again; this is important. “Have you ever seen one? A monster?”
Dean’s eyes fly open and dart towards John, who's still fast asleep. Dean opens his mouth and closes it again. Sam studies the rawness, the pain in his brother’s face until it shutters, hiding. Dean does that, hide.
“No,” Dean says, low, fervently, (why is there guilt under the glass of Dean’s eyes?) “But Dad says…”
“Yeah,” Sam interrupts, his voice choked. Because he can believe everything dad says. Right.
He hides his face in the side of Dean’s pillow and wishes, fiercely, that there are monsters because if not, then what is Dad doing? What is dad doing to his brother?
---
On his ninth birthday John tells him everything. Sam should feel relieved, alarmed, angry, sad, righteous, a vocabulary quiz worth of emotions, but all he feels is cold.
He fakes every emotion this is supposed to bring out in him, and John believes it.
There is a family resemblance, Sam reasons.
---
He understands why John decided to tell him on his birthday when barely a month later John pulls Dean away from the table to tell him he’s been training well, and it's time he goes on a hunt with his old man.
Dean lights up like he’s been given a gift, and every emotion Sam expected but didn’t feel on his birthday, he feels now.
It's the first time Sam can remember being left completely alone. It leaves him feeling anxious, like there is static under his skin. He checks the salt lines to make sure that they are still intact; they are. It leaves his insides feeling sour, the fact that despite his doubts this relieves him.
This time when Sam curls up in Dean and his bed and doesn’t cry (he doesn’t, really, he doesn’t) he doesn’t wonder what this is doing to Dean. Instead he wonders what is Dad doing to us?
Dean comes home smiling, rambling on and on, telling Sam everything (Only one person in this room does).
“Did you see it?” Sam asks, his urgency mistaken for excitement. Please, Dean, please say you saw it.
“What? Oh, the ghost?” Dean shrugs one shoulder, undaunted. “Nah, Dad picked a pretty tame one this time. I just kept my head down and dug, you know? But dude, the smell! It was like, that dino-era lady with the million parakeets in that one town in Texas times fifty-seven trucks of burning manure.”
---
It says something about Sam’s priorities when he doesn’t really think about what John is hunting (killing, hurting) if there aren’t monsters to hunt until the first time John carries Dean’s bleeding body into the motel and he finds himself scared to death that if a monster didn’t do this to his brother, his dad did.
---
He doesn’t know why he tells John there’s a monster in his closet, not completely. It has something to do with I’m your son and I’m scared, and tell me everything’s okay and please don’t be insane, but there are nothing but knife edges in John’s eyes. The .45 John presses into his hand is the heaviest thing Sam’s ever held.
---
By the time he’s ten, reading a good book has become Sam’s favorite way to pass the time when John and Dean are gone (which isn’t too often really, John’s always been a loner and someone needs to stay with Sam). A book means you don’t have to think about anything but the story.
Sam reads about the Salem Witch Trials.
He places the book carefully, gently, on the night table, throws the motel door open so hard it bangs against the wall and kicks at the salt line drawn across the threshold until it is nothing but scattered grains. Victory washes out his horror and he holds onto the feeling by his fingernails, curled in the bathroom between the tub and the toilet for seven minutes before he breaks and pours another line, thick and white, between him and the world.
He doesn’t cry this time. He doesn’t move from his seat on the motel bed until his family comes home, stepping carefully over the border he was taught to build.
---
The motel of the month’s wall is covered with newspapers, photos, yarn and thumbtacks, painstakingly arranged by John.
“Really, Sammy?” Dean crashes down beside him, raising an eyebrow at the television Sam doesn’t bother to look at. “Cop shows? You get dropped on the 'good-taste' part of your brain when you were a baby?”
“I don’t know. Did I?” Sam asks quietly, eyes on the TV. The protagonists are in the home of a serial killer.
“How would I know?” Dean steals the remote. “Couldn’t keep your butt in line all the time.” There’s something irritated under the joke, as if Sam had questioned his ability to take care of them (Dean shouldn’t have to take care of them).
On the show the serial killers walls are covered with newspapers, photos, yarn and thumbtacks.
Dean flips the channel to some space soap opera, nudges Sam with his elbow, and grins.
---
He’s eleven when he makes the call.
“911, what is your emergency?” A woman asks briskly.
He squeezes his eyes shut, squeezes the phone until the plastic squeaks. “Uh, hi, I’m… I need help.”He chokes on a sob.
“Hey, deep breath. What’s wrong, honey?” she sounds more like a person now.
He takes a deep breath, aware of how surreal his next words are. “I think my dad is killing people,” he whispers. He can hear the horror in his own voice.
She transfers him to the police pretty quickly and Sam has to fight not to hang up; years of taught distrust and dismissal of the law burning in the front of his mind.
“My name’s Mike,” the policeman says, his voice deep and commanding. “Can you tell me why you think your father’s killing people?”
Sam slips to his knees, pressing his fist to his mouth so he won’t scream. He’s so scared, so very afraid. The policeman asks again, softer this time, and Sam finds himself talking. He tells him about reading the journal that Christmas; about shooting practice; about his brother whispering did you get it while his father sews up his side with dental floss; how his brother didn’t see any ghosts at first; about living in run down motels; running laps until his sides feel like gaping wounds; about lines of salt and guns in the trunk; about his brother trying to make him tomato and rice soup when he was sick and burning it and taking off only to come back with a black eye, busted knuckles, and a grin; about how his dad changes names more often than underwear; about how he still hasn’t seen a monster; about newspaper clippings pinned to the wall, and what should he believe?
When he’s done the man says, “I want you to listen to me, okay, kiddo? It’s over, we’re going to come get you.” Mike’s voice has the same tone Dean’s does when he’s standing between Sam and some bully and telling Sam not to worry, he’ll take care of this. “Can you tell me where you are? Can you tell me your name? Your brother's, your father's?”
Sam finds his voice blocked. “What…” He breaths out, “What if I’m wrong? What if he is killing monsters? What if I’m wrong and you throw him in jail and he was helping and people die because… that’s why my brother does it. I know because he told me, it’s important to follow orders or people will die.”
“Listen, kid, you’re right about this.” Mike tells him fiercely, “You’re right, and so very brave and the police are here to help, okay? We’re going to protect you, you and your brother, you just need to tell us your name, where you are.”
“How can I be sure?” Sam asks, more empty and vulnerable than he ever remembers being before. “I’m just eleven, how do I know for sure?”
“You were sure enough to call,” Mike says gently. “What made you do that?”
Sam shivers at the memory. “We were… it was training, and… we don’t do stuff always, sometimes Dad just talks, and he-”
“You’re doing so very well, sport. What did he talk about?”
“Bodies,” Sam breathed. “About how to get rid of a body, if it was fresh.”
There’s dead silence on the other end of the phone.
“I know… You’re supposed to pour salt all over it and fire starter, and-“
Mike curses and Sam stops. “I’m sorry,” Mike says immediately. “I’m sorry, keep going. What did you mean if it was fresh?”
“I mean… They burn dead people a lot but this is worse because it means he killed them first, you know? Instead of just digging up ones that are already dead.”
There’s another long pause. Sam licks his lips.
“De- My brother calls them salt-n-burns. Dad’s going to take me on my first one soon; we’ve been talking about it. I’m just two year younger, you know, than my brother was when he did his first.”
“Listen to me.” Sam jumps at Mike’s voice, low and dangerous. “You’re never going on a salt-n-burn, son. You’re never going to have to be anything other than a normal kid, a normal, brave as hell kid. We have people who’ve been following where this call’s from alright? I’m almost there, okay, I just need you to tell us your name, your room number.”
Sam’s standing on the edge of a cliff, and there could be water at the bottom, or jagged rocks.
“Its room 108,” he says, “I’m Sam, Samuel Wi-”
The world stops at the unmistakable growl of the impala’s engine.
“Samuel what? C’mon, you’re so close.”
“They’re here,” Sam breathed.
“What?”
“They’re back!” Sam yells, surging to his feet. “They were just leaving on a hunt, how can they be-”
“Sam, Sam listen to me, is there a window, a door, fire escape they won’t see right away? Any way out of that room!”
“I- there’s a window in the bathroom, but it’s high and it doesn’t open.”
“Do you know how to break a window, Sam?”
Sam nods vigorously, already moving to shed his hoodie and wrap it around his hand. “Yeah.”
“Good boy.”
Sam recognized the sound of his Dad’s car idling.
“Mike!” Sam pleaded.
“You’ve got to hang up now, okay, champ? We’re a block and a half away, just get out of there and hide, we’ll find you, I promise!”
Sam risked a second to tell Mike thank you before he slammed the phone down on the receiver and went for the bathroom. He had just ducked inside when the front door broke open under a kick, Dean bellowing his name. He hadn’t even stepped towards the toilet when Dean rounded the corner, clamping down on Sam’s arm and tugging him towards the door.
“Dean, what-”
“Cops, Sam! We got to move.”
He’s pulled out into the cold black night, and panics, grabbing Dean’s arm, weak with the desire to get them both out. “Wait, Dean, you have to come and-”
“Leave the stuff, we’ll replace it!” Dean yells, and gives Sam a hard tug before letting go, sprinting to where the impala sits, passenger door open. Sam freezes as Dean slips in and slams the door, the knowledge that Dean is connected to John and if Sam runs now he will lose his brother one way or another a sickness in his stomach.
He can hear sirens.
“SAM!” Dean yells for him, all voice and naked need.
John’s pulling out before Sam’s door’s completely closed, swerving left so quickly Sam tumbles across the backseat to knock against the other door, fall onto the floorboard. Dean’s hand is fisted in his shirt then, keeping him immobile as their father drives like hell is chasing them.
He cuts into an alley and kills the engine.
Sam can see nothing from the floor, but he hears the squeal of sirens approach and then pass them, sees the red and blue flash across Dean’s face and vanish into the night.
"Woo, that was close!” Dean grins at him, bright and fierce. He lets Sam’s shirt go and pats his knee.
“What-“ Sam croaks.
“Someone called 911, when we were maybe twenty minutes out, about a kid in a motel room and some crap about a possible murder. It was just luck that we had the police scanner on; we turned around and booked it back.”
“What a mess,” John growls softly.
“Why sir?” Dean asks.
“They’re going to be swarming the city, looking for him.”
“We don’t have to leave him in a motel.”
John turns towards Dean and Dean looks back. “He’s ready,” Dean says, calm and still.
John turns to look at Sam critically.
“It’s just a low level salt-n-burn, Dad,” Dean continues softly. “Probably won’t even see the ghost.”
John searches Sam’s face for a moment before he nods. “Good a time as any.” He grins suddenly in the rear view mirror. “What do you say to that, Sammy?”
Sam fumbles with the door handle and barely gets it open before he pukes. He retches onto the pavement until he’s dry heaving, Dean’s hand on his back. When he’s done Dean turns Sam’s head towards him with a gun calloused hand to look at his face. “Probably got a concussion,” he murmurs. “Keep your eyes open, I got to check. You see this is why playing pinball in moving vehicles is a bad idea. You’re gonna be okay.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure, Dean?” Sam grabs his brother’s wrist and squeezes.
“Hey,” Dean’s forehead wrinkles, concerned, “Of course. I’m here. Dad’s here.”
Sam shivers violently.
“You must be freezing.” Dean rubs his one hand up and down Sam’s arm and reaches over him to snag Sam’s hoodie off of the seat with the other. He drapes it over Sam’s shoulders with an admonishment not to put it on until they get him cleaned up.
“You doing okay back there?” John asks, concern turning his voice rough and soft.
“We’re peachy.” Dean pats Sam’s shoulder. “Hey Sammy, why don’t you lie down on the seat until we find a place to clean you up? But watch the face, you get regurgitated greasy spoon all over the upholstery you're cleaning it up with your own friggin toothbrush.”
“The cops,” Sam whispers.
“Won’t find us tonight,” Dean states confidently. “Okay? Just lie down. It will all be better in the morning.”
Sam swallows his sob. “You promise?”
“On my honor as a sex god.”
“Dean,” John warns, amused.
The impala comes alive like thunder. Sam lies face up, staring at the car’s roof. It almost looks like the sky, he thinks, but without a single point of light.
---
He’s twelve the first time he tries to run away by himself. He rides, until he can't anymore, on an old bike he cleaned yards in four different towns to raise money for. He sits at a bus stop, bag by his side, through bus after bus he doesn't have the courage to get on. He’s still there when the Impala growls up. Sam has the door half open before he realizes it's John, not Dean, behind the wheel.
John is quiet as he forces the bicycle into the backseat. He doesn’t say a thing to Sam the entire rid home (to Dean).
Sam wakes to the sound of the Impala pealing out the next morning and goes back to sleep, not surprised. He senses Dean moving around but it isn’t enough to wake him completely. When he does get up Dean’s hogging the bathroom. Sam waits twenty minutes before he gets impatient and picks the lock. He finds Dean sitting on the toilet with pieces of Sam’s dismantled bike and a jar of dusty screws, nuts, bolts, and occasional twig arranged around him. He curses as he tightens a bolt on a length of bar that’s starting to resemble a bicycle again.
“I couldn’t find all the screws,” Dean mumbles, like that’s a personal fault.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Sam says, smiling. “Some things are just meant to stay broken. The point is you tried, right?”
Dean regards him with that gaze that sees too much. “Yeah,” he concedes, “I guess you can’t fault anyone for trying.”
---
END