SPN FIC - Family Ties
gwendolyngrace offered up a challenge a while back: Dean and Bobby, both in ties. So here's Christmastime 1991, with ties. (The picture that inspired both of us is here.)
Characters: Dean (age 12), Sam (age 8), Bobby, John
Pairings: none
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: none
Length: 2901 words
Disclaimer: Kripke. Owns everything. At least he lets us babysit.
“She’s not gonna tell him jack squat. It’s settled.” Bobby slowed the truck down, flipped his directionals on, and turned into the parking lot of a pizza place. He had to go around back to find an empty parking spot. “I’ll tell you one thing, boy: if it wasn’t for my abundant natural charm, you’d be in some mighty deep crap,” he said as he turned the engine off. “They don’t take real kindly to assault, no matter what your motivation was.”
Family Ties
By Carol Davis
“It never works,” Dean said vehemently. “All that stuff they say about ignoring the bully and that’ll make him go away. They don’t go away. They don’t want you to ignore them. It just makes them madder.”
Bobby Singer made a noise then that made Dean think it might be a good idea to stop talking. It was the kind of noise Dad made when he was pretty much out of patience, so Dean cut himself off and looked steadily out the windshield at the road ahead.
“You’re not wrong,” Bobby said.
“I’m not?”
“Did you think you were?”
“No,” Dean ventured.
“Thing with bullies is, most of ‘em are being kicked around by somebody bigger than they are. And if there’s one thing that’s true in this life, it’s that shit rolls downhill. Every one of those kids is just doin’ what they’ve been taught: you pick on what’s littler than you. Some of ‘em never grow out of it.” Bobby was silent for a moment as he eased the truck to a halt at a stop sign. “Probably a safe bet that most of ‘em never grow out of it.”
“So they get to be adult bullies?”
“It ain’t age-specific.”
“I couldn’t let them keep doing what they were doing. They broke that kid’s glasses.”
“Yeah,” Bobby said.
“Then I did do the right thing?”
“You ever take one in the nuts?”
Dean frowned. “No. Well…kind of. No. Not really. Dad says it makes you want to cry and throw up.”
“Among other things.”
“I guess I could have punched him. But he’s pretty big. I kind of figured I’d just get one shot.”
“Maybe so.”
“I wasn’t sure I could take him. And Dad says don’t ever get into a fight if you’re not sure you can win.”
Bobby snorted softly. “And he follows that advice himself, does he?”
“Well…yeah.”
Never in his whole twelve years of life (almost thirteen, now) had Dean ever had so much trouble figuring out how an adult felt. His dad was pretty much an open book, and most of the other adults he crossed paths with - the other hunters, teachers, landlords - didn’t bother playing games with him. If they were mad, they let him know. If they were happy, they let him know.
Bobby Singer just kept looking at him like he thought Dean was funny as hell but didn’t dare let on.
Or maybe he was wondering how he’d gotten mixed up in all this.
“Are you gonna tell Dad?” Dean ventured.
“How do you figure that’d be a good idea?”
“Because you’re not my dad. He’s the one who’s responsible for me?”
“That a question?”
“Ms. Connelly might tell him.”
“She’s not gonna tell him jack squat. It’s settled.” Bobby slowed the truck down, flipped his directionals on, and turned into the parking lot of a pizza place. He had to go around back to find an empty parking spot. “I’ll tell you one thing, boy: if it wasn’t for my abundant natural charm, you’d be in some mighty deep crap,” he said as he turned the engine off. “They don’t take real kindly to assault, no matter what your motivation was.”
“How come when I do it, it’s assault, but when Tommy does it, he’s just being a guy?”
“You get a look at Tommy’s dad?”
Dean made a face.
“You were about two hairs away from them calling in the people you really don’t want to meet,” Bobby told him.
He was serious now; the funny unreadable grin was gone. “CFS?” Dean guessed.
“You think you’re God’s gift to a dull day. You mouth off to teachers, cut classes, don’t do your homework. Where do you figure that’s gonna get you?” Before Dean could even begin to put together an answer, Bobby went on, “One confrontation out behind the school ain’t the problem, by itself. But it’s getting close to bein’ the straw that broke the camel’s back. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that your dad’s prime directive was ‘Don’t call attention to yourself.’”
He looked Dean right in the eye. And didn’t blink. When that had gone on for a few seconds, Dean began to twitch.
“I don’t like school,” he mumbled.
“Gonna be a lot of things in this life you don’t like.”
“I’m not good at it.”
Bobby groaned and lifted his cap off long enough to rub at his scalp like his head hurt. “You know what you do then? You keep your head down and you tough it out.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“You’ve got that all figured out, do you? You’re twelve, you little idjit. Stay in the truck.”
Dean had a lot of time to ponder the enormous snowbank piled up against the back wall of the pizza place while Bobby was inside. He’d thought Bobby had called the order in ahead of time, but that didn’t seem to be the case. He sat there while the cab of the truck gradually grew cold enough to make him shiver.
Neither of the two kids Tommy Pratt had been picking on was Sam. Therefore, Dean had no real obligation to defend either one of them. Their business was their business. But Tommy Pratt outweighed both of them by a good twenty or thirty pounds. He’d been held back twice and was still in middle school when he should have been a freshman in high school, figuring out how to duck bullies who outweighed him by thirty pounds. Maybe that was part of it, Dean thought: Tommy was ashamed of being stuck in with little kids when he should have been in high school.
Still, that was no reason to grab the glasses off a kid who couldn’t see past his own nose without them.
Tommy Pratt never saw Dean coming. Even if he had, he probably wouldn’t have worried; Dean wasn’t much bigger than the two kids he’d dove in to save.
But Dean was fast. And he’d been trained by an ex-Marine to kick ass and take no prisoners.
When Bobby yanked open the driver’s door of the truck, a blast of cold air swept through that made Dean quake inside his not-really-meant-for-South-Dakota jacket.
“Don’t you have a decent coat?” Bobby asked as he handed the two pizza boxes off to Dean.
“It’s too small. I gave it to Sam.”
“So you’re just gonna freeze your ass off all winter?”
The pizza boxes were an excellent lap warmer. Dean rested his palms flat on the top box and shuddered again as the heat spread through his legs and hands. “I’m okay,” he told Bobby. “I’m not outside that much.”
Bobby rolled his eyes as he turned the key in the ignition. “Santa’s bringin’ you a coat.”
“My dad can -“
“Never mind. Your dad’s payin’ for it. And for the tie.”
“What tie?”
“You got a decent shirt? And pants that don’t say ‘Levi’s’ on ‘em?” As he used one hand to steer the truck back out onto the main road, Bobby pulled a folded sheet of green paper from his jacket pocket with his free hand and flipped it at Dean.
Dean knew what it was without looking: the Christmas party announcement. The Christmas party. The one every kid in his class had been talking about since Thanksgiving. More specifically, the one Melissa Taylor had been talking about since Thanksgiving. “I can’t go to this,” he mumbled. “I’m suspended.”
“You’re not suspended. And you’re goin’. To show those people at that school that you weren’t raised by wolves. Which ain’t none of my goddamn business, but you roped me into it, so I’m gonna see it through. You’re goin’, and I’m gonna be right there watching you.”
“You are?”
“I am.”
“Oh,” Dean said.
Sam was awestruck. Big-eyed, open-mouthed awestruck. “Wow, Mr. Singer. I didn’t know you looked like that.”
Bobby turned a scowl on him. “Like what?”
“Like…you know. A guy who works in an office or something. Or Sears.”
A soft snort got out before Dean could stop it. It earned him an even bigger scowl, and considering that Bobby Singer was holding a noose around his neck, it wasn’t even on the list of smart responses to Sam’s comment.
Still, Sam was standing there as google-eyed as one of the little kids in those cheesy paintings, which was pretty darn funny, noose or no noose.
“Hold still,” Bobby barked.
“Why do I even need a tie?” Dean protested.
“Because you’re gonna look like you don’t live under a bridge.”
Sam pondered that for a second, then blurted out, “People live under the bridge? Where? I didn’t see them. You mean the little bridge over the creek, on that road that goes to the Wal-mart, or the big one?”
“Never mind, Sam.”
The three of them all turned to look at Dad. Bobby’s look only lasted a second, then he went back to straightening Dean’s tie.
“You’re a lovely couple,” Dad said.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in two weeks. The pneumonia that’d laid him low after the run-in with the banshee still had him coughing in a way that sounded painful, and he still wasn’t eating much. But he was back on his feet, and that was definitely progress.
A little bit of progress, anyway.
Dad didn’t know anything about the fight, or the meeting with Ms. Connelly. She hadn’t called, and, true to his word, Bobby hadn’t brought it up. All Bobby’d said was, there was a party, he was chaperoning because he felt a responsibility to the community - which was a gold-plated line of crap if Dean had ever heard one, but Dad was so worn-out he bought it - and while he he’d sprung for new shirts and ties for both of them, he said he’d be dipped in shit if he was gonna teach Dean to dance. His generosity towards the children of John Effing Winchester didn’t go anywhere near that far, not in this lifetime or any other.
Why he wanted to be generous to them at all, Dean wasn’t sure. They’d just shown up at his doorstep one night because somebody Dad had talked to on the phone said Bobby Singer was the go-to guy for demons.
Then Bobby and Dad had yelled at each other for about two hours.
They still yelled at each other pretty often, and insulted each other even when they weren’t yelling, but they seemed to…respect each other.
Which was weird.
Bobby finally seemed satisfied with the tie. He took a step back, nodded at Dean, then headed for the living room and said over his shoulder, “Meet you out at the truck. We better get goin’, unless you want to be fashionably late.”
Dad waited until the bang of the front door said Bobby had gone outside, then said to Sam - though his gaze was firmly locked on Dean - “Run out to the kitchen and get me a glass of water, would you? Put some ice in it. And let it run cold.” When Sam hesitated, well aware that he was about to miss something good, Dad added, “Take your time.”
He waited for Sam to drag himself out of earshot, then asked Dean pleasantly, “What’d you do?”
“Me?”
“Yeeeaaaah. You.”
“I didn’t -“
Dad raised an eyebrow. “Why’s Singer taking you to a dance?”
“It’s not a dance,” Dean muttered. “It’s a party.”
“You split hairs like a damn surgeon. What did you do?”
Dean’s shoes began to scuff against the floor, as if they had minds of their own. “I kind of…got into a fight. This bigger kid, he was picking on a couple little kids,” he said before Dad could respond, “and he broke the one kid’s glasses. He does it all the time, and nobody does anything about it.” Then he waited a moment, but Dad didn’t say anything. “I…you know.”
“Gave him a shot in the jewels?”
“Yeah.”
“D’he go down?”
“Yeah.”
“Cry?”
“No. He kind of screamed for a while. Then he started cursing.”
“He gunning for your ass now?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“You figure we ought to hit the road again?”
Dean thought it over for a minute. “No.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because it’s running away.”
Dad leaned against the doorframe. He’d gotten a little paler - maybe he was pushing it by being on his feet for so long, when he’d pretty much been in bed for a week. “You stop to think that maybe this bozo would come looking for your brother?”
“I’ll take care of it. He won’t go after Sam.”
“And you’re sure about that.”
Dean turned a little and looked at his reflection in the bedroom window: it was dark enough outside that the window made a halfway-decent mirror. He didn’t look bad, he decided. The shirt fit him just right, and the tie didn’t look too goofy. And he didn’t look like anybody who worked at Sears. “His dad owns this big car lot in town,” he told Dad with a small sigh. “He donates money to a lot of stuff, and I think he’s on the school board. If anybody complains about Tommy, he has a meeting with the principal and they forget all about what Tommy did. But that’s wrong. It is, Dad. He picks on little kids.”
Dad didn’t say anything for a while. His face didn’t give away what he was thinking.
“Dad?” Dean prompted him.
With a small smile, Dad reached out to ruffle Dean’s hair. His hand was most of the way to Dean’s head when Dean drew back a little. “Right,” he said. “Don’t mess up the ‘do.”
“That’s our job, isn’t it? We help out innocent people?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you -“ Dean cut himself off, and when Dad raised an eyebrow, shrugged and didn’t say anything more.
“Permission to speak granted,” Dad said mildly.
“I mean…you do what you do, and…well, it’s dangerous sometimes for me and Sammy.”
“You’re right.”
“But you need to do what you do. Because those people need your help.”
They were looking at each other in silence when Sam returned, carrying a glass full to the brim with water and ice cubes. He stopped a couple of paces away from his father and brother with enough of an annoyed look on his face to betray that he’d been listening but hadn’t overheard anything good. With a small snort of amusement Dad took the glass, sipped from it, then reached out and tousled Sam’s hair.
“So is there some girl at this dance?” he asked Dean.
“What? No.”
“She gonna think you’re a hero because you kneed some bully in the ‘nads?”
“There’s no girl.”
“Yeah there is,” Sam put in. “Her name’s Melissa.”
Dad took another sip, then asked Dean, “Was she standing there watching when you took all this on?”
“No.”
“But word’s gotten around, I imagine.”
“I guess. Maybe.”
Sam was about to offer another nugget of information when Dad handed the glass back to him and gave him a nudge. “Take that back to the kitchen. See if there’s more of those crackers I had with supper.”
“But -“
A raised brow sent Sam on his way. Around the corner out of sight, at least.
“So you thought this through,” Dad said. “You didn’t just go hauling ass in there without figuring out how it’d play out.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah you did, or yeah you didn’t?”
“I could have thought it through some more. But I did the right thing.”
For no reason Dean could pin down, Dad started looking wistful. Because he was all dressed up, maybe, and looked kind of grown-up. It was the kind of thing that made parents get all misty-eyed - at least on TV. Dad didn’t get misty-eyed at a whole lot, but he was definitely pointed in that direction.
Maybe he was trying really hard not to laugh.
“You better go,” Dad said. “Singer’s wearing a goddamn suit. Evening’s not starting out on a good foot.”
As if he’d been cued, they could hear Bobby bellow from outside, “DEAN!”
“I should go,” Dean sighed.
“Have fun,” Dad told him. “And…don’t stand near any mistletoe.”
Dean feigned a little bit of horror - only a little bit, because, after all, he was John Winchester’s son, and Dad had let slip one night a while back some info about what’d happened to him back in seventh grade. Dad grinned at him, then winked, and tipped his head in the direction of the front door.
Dean took a couple of steps, then stopped. “Dad?”
“Son?”
“Shit rolls downhill. Rule of the universe. I guess I was trying to make it go back uphill.”
“Rate of success is gonna vary on that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Dean took a couple more steps and stopped again.
“You look good,” Dad told him.
“He looks like a geek,” Sam said from around the corner. “He’s wearing a necktie.”
“There’s something to be said for neckties, on the right occasions. Makes a guy look serious. Sincere.”
“He looks like a geek.”
Dean cuffed his brother as he passed him. He got all the way to the front door before he stopped one last time and looked back at his father.
“Knock ‘em dead,” Dad said.
And Dean went on out to the truck.