Let's Do The Time Warp Again (gen mostly, 6870 words, pg-13ish)
Happy Halloween, all! Thank you for all the love in the stalker-meme last night! I tried to answer but the comments had maxed out. You lot are wonderful beyond words. ♥
I know I'm way behind on comments but I've got to get this one posted before I hit deadline! Please forgive the schmoop.
Let's Do The Time Warp Again
(gen but lashings of Sam/Dean UST, 6870 words, pg-13ish)
The scariest thing Sam and Dean ever did on Halloween was baby-sit a small boy.
The situation has to be desperate or Dean wouldn't have called. Sam knows that. It's been two years since he left and there hasn't been a word from either John or Dean. Not even so much as a birthday card. From John it wasn't a surprise but Sam never expected Dean to take him at his word when he said he wanted him out of his life. It was just the kind of thing you said, when you're angry and hurting and making a dramatic gesture like walking out on your fucked-up life.
"I really need your help, Sam," says Dean and furious as he is, as long as he's waited for this chance to show Dean how little he cares, Sam can't hang up.
He curls about the phone, taking a furtive glance to check that Jess is still in the shower as if talking to Dean is something secret and illicit, then wets his lips.
"What's happened?"
"I can't take much more of this. I need you… need your help. I don't want to screw up your studying or anything but- No! Put that goddamn gun down! You don't play with those! They're dangerous, do you hear me? You don't touch!" Dean makes this breathless, moaning sound then says, "Seriously, man, I'm dying here. I wouldn't ask but there's no one else."
Funny thing is, even if the situation wasn't desperate and Sam didn't have that deep-down tug of Dean to drag him out on Halloween, curiosity would have done the trick.
:::
The mall is both blinding and deafening. Sam blinks owlishly against the obnoxious glow of the Halloween decorations and tries to dodge the hordes of squealing midget monsters. He stands there, feeling awkward and lost, and then, from across the mall, he hears his name being called. Even smothered by the shrill chatter of kids on a sugar-high and harassed parents, the voice is achingly familiar. Sam's breath comes a little faster as he spots Dean through the crowds. Feeling stupidly nervous, Sam starts towards him.
Dean's changed, but only a little. His sun-streaked hair's cropped more closely to his skull and if he did it to detract from the stubborn prettiness of his features, it was a mistake. All the shorter haircut does is emphasise his cheekbones and give you a good proper look at his long-lashed green eyes. He's abandoned his band t-shirts and hoodies in favour of the John Winchester fashion collection: layer upon practical layer.
In essence though, he's still the big brother Sam remembers. He's not so different that Sam doesn't feel the sudden clench in his chest of having missed him so damn much. And he's not become so like John that Sam feels he's drifted too far out of reach. That'd been one of his most nagging worries when he left: that John would either get Dean killed or turn him into a clone of himself, all bloodthirsty drive and no affection or warmth.
Sam's just surrendering, helpless, to the smile tugging at his lips when a woman with a pushchair ducks out of the way and Sam sees the small boy hanging from Dean's arm. Between Dean having his weight so firmly planted and the boy being no more than four or five, all the struggling the kid's putting up isn't bringing him even so much as an inch closer to the comicbook stand he's straining at outside the next shop.
At Sam’s approach, the kid leaves off struggling, gnashes his teeth loudly and snarls at him. Dean watches with resigned interest.
“He’s a dinosaur,” he says, in answer to Sam’s quizzical look.
“T-Rex,” says the kid and snarls again, revealing tiny white teeth.
“Cute kid,” says Sam. “Whose is he?”
Dean scoops the kid up in one arm and ruffles the mop of dark hair. The kid beams at him and then tries to bite his hand. Dean avoids the bite by swinging him easily to the other arm, provoking a delighted shriek from the child as he’s slung about.
“Mine.” He flashes a grin at the kid who isn’t trying to bite him anymore. “Say hello to Sam, Johnny.”
It turns out Sam’s not really all that interesting to the kid, especially now he’s out of biting reach.
“Milkshake time now! Milkshake!” he demands instead.
As they start towards the milkshake parlour, Sam gives Dean another look. It can’t quite fully express his incredulity but it does a good enough job of it that Dean makes a definite effort to pretend he hasn’t noticed it. They’ve been together all of two minutes and already Sam’s getting pissed off by the traditional Winchester patterns. Still, when he catches hold of Dean’s arm and forces Dean to look at him, he still has a quivery thrill of pleasure at the novelty of seeing his brother again, irritating and mulish as he is.
“You named him after Dad?” he says.
“His mom chose his name, Sam,” says Dean with infuriating calm, pulling away as soon as he can escape from Sam’s grasp. “But there wouldn’t be anything wrong with it even if I had.”
The sickly pink sludge of the milkshakes Dean and Johnny both order are enough to turn Sam’s stomach and he goes for a polystyrene cup of sickly pale coffee instead, which is only marginally less revolting. Johnny slurps at his and the gurgling sound of it brings bloodsucking insects to mind, albeit ones with hollowed cheeks and eyes wide with determined concentration. With the practised air of a parent, Dean wordlessly moves all of the cutlery out of reach just seconds before Johnny tries to saw through the bottom of his cup with a plastic knife clasped in his chubby little hand. Johnny accepts the intervention with good humour and goes back to drinking very noisily and occasionally baring his teeth at Sam.
After a while, it becomes clear that whatever desperation drove Dean to reach out to Sam, it’s not sufficient to get him to explain now he’s got Sam back. He seems content enough to sit there and keep Johnny out of trouble and shoot frequent furtively happy looks at Sam when he thinks he isn’t looking. It’s all very blissful in a domestic kind of way and it makes Sam’s skin itch because domestic is one thing Winchesters aren’t.
“So, I imagine at any minute you’re going to tell me what I’m doing here,” says Sam.
“I… uh… well, there’s something I gotta do this evening and… well…”
Dean’s gaze falls on Johnny, who’s stabbing at the bottom of his cup with a straw now. Sam raises an eyebrow, lips tightening. The secret rush of glee he’d felt at Dean needing him is fast dissipating in the face of the nature of the help required.
“If the word ‘babysitter’ comes out of your mouth in the next sentence I’m gonna get up and walk out of here,“ he says.
“Sammy, c’mon! This is important stuff and I wouldn’t ask but the little punk’s gonna get himself killed because he won’t stay where he’s put-“ Dean emphasises this with a stern look at Johnny, who beams up at him cherubically. “And last hunt came too close for comfort-“
“You made the big doggy cry!” Johnny interrupts, looking at Dean with accusation written clearly on his face.
“It was a Black Dog and someone was trying to feed it M&Ms.” Dean leans a little closer over the table and Sam can smell the sweetness of strawberries on his breath. He can smell guns and car oil and that strange inexplicable Deanness that he’d tried to leave behind two years ago. “I can’t hunt and watch over him, not properly. And I’m not gonna leave him with just anyone. I won’t.”
That’s gratifying enough, the sense of being one of the few people in the world that Dean would trust with his son, that Sam relents a little. He sits back in his chair and studies the slowly stagnating cup of coffee.
“What about Dad?” The sudden tautness of Dean’s jaw brings the old ugly feeling back to the pit of his stomach. Sam can’t help the bitter twist of his lips. “Is he too drunk to help? Or did you get thrown out of the Winchester army for being so stupid as to try to have a life?”
“Dad can’t help right now. And when did you turn into such a bitch?”
“Bitch bitch bitch bitch-“ Johnny choruses.
He’s cut off by the light tap on the back of his hand from Dean. He gives the kid another of those firm, displeased looks and Sam vaguely thinks he remembers having seen those once or twice in his own childhood.
“That’s not a word for you, kiddo,” says Dean. “That’s a word for grown-ups.”
He looks back at Sam and Sam can feel his resolve starting to give. He’s as stubborn as any Winchester but it’s Dean asking and that’s just not fair because Dean doesn’t ask for things from Sam often. It’s not often, and certainly not recently, that there’s anything Sam can do for Dean. He lets out an irritable huff of breath and gives up on his coffee once and for all because he can’t even pretend to be drinking it anymore.
“What are you hunting?”
:::
Corpse-eaters are like supernatural maggots. They spring up in graveyards and do exactly what the name suggests. That’s not what the problem is with them - they’re pretty much harmless when they’ve got dead flesh to eat. It’s when the graveyards been picked bare and they start creeping into towns in the search for more sources of food. Then they turn plain nasty. Sam’s never hunted them before but he remembers John leaving him and Dean with Pastor Jim once when they were just kids while he went off to clear out an infestation.
Dean doesn’t seem too bothered about hunting them alone but when they get back to the motel, Sam sees signs of John’s presence and he wonders just how far away their dad is and if Dean’s counting on him to leap into the fray at just the right moment.
There’s John’s duffel full of clothes and Sam lifts it from the floor and sets it carefully on a chair. The bag sags a little open and Sam looks away from the familiar chequered pattern of flannel shirts. The colours seem softer in the fading light of late afternoon.
While Dean rifles through pages full of notes, Johnny sits on the end of his bed, legs swinging back and forth, and plays with the spent ammo shells Dean gave him. Sam knows it was just to distract him, after all, Sam’s only known the kid for an hour or so and already he knows to minimise the potential for trouble that Johnny can find. But it’s not right to see pudgy fingers toying with weaponry like they’re pieces from a game. It’s everything that’s wrong with the family. Johnny lays the shells out on the hideous motel-bed blanket in an order that doesn’t make any sense to Sam, then before he has chance to try to figure it out, Johnny starts moving them round again.
Keeping a watchful eye on him, Sam moves to Dean’s side as he scans over a map, his hands smoothing out the much-creased paper.
“So where’s his mom?”
Dean looks up at him, face blank for a second, before glancing at Johnny then back to the map. He rubs the back of his neck and keeps his voice low.
“She’s dead. There’s just me. I’m his only family.”
There’s something in his tone that gives Sam a moment’s pause. His hesitation obviously registers with Dean because he looks up again but there’s the trace of a genuine smile on his face this time. It takes Sam another moment to gather his thoughts because he knows that smile too and with John God-knows-where and it just being Dean with him, it’s hard to remember why Sam felt the need to cut loose.
“How are you going to do this? I mean, how are you going to raise him?”
Dean looks past him to Johnny and his eyes widen slightly, his lips setting into an incongruous pout. He frowns and rubs the back of his hand over his face. Going up against corpse-eaters hasn’t thrown Dean for even a heartbeat but looking at the small boy in his charge leaves him looking so young and out of his depth that Sam almost regrets asking. But he has to make Dean think about it. Because he knows that Dean won’t hesitate to give his last drop of blood if it’d keep Johnny alive, just as he wouldn’t for John or Sam, but Sam can see the way this is going and he has to say something while there’s still time.
“Are you going to raise him like Dad raised us? Weapons training and martial arts? Living out of motels and never spending more than a term in any school? Don’t you want something better for him than what we had?”
The last point is a mistake. Defensive anger flares up in Dean’s eyes and all vulnerability to his expression disappears.
“Dad did the best he could.”
He didn’t. Sam doesn’t believe he did the best he could for one minute. John’s only ever had one goal in sight and a regular, safe upbringing for his boys wasn’t it. But that’s the old sticking point between Sam and Dean and the temporarily rekindled spark of kinship between them is too precious for Sam to try to argue Dean out of a state of mind he’s stuck to for pretty much his whole damn life.
“Look, all I’m saying is you don’t have to raise Johnny like Dad raised us. You can do it differently and it doesn’t mean you’re saying Dad did wrong by us.”
Sam knows he’s all earnestness and probably using the underhanded puppy-dog eyes trick but he needs to save Johnny, because there’s still time. Dean was lost before Sam even realised he needed saving but he can save Dean’s son. And right then, Sam wishes he could still save Dean, wonders if maybe he didn’t try hard enough to take Dean with him when he left for Stanford.
The idea of it is beautiful. He could give Dean a normal life and Dean would have an incentive to stay with him and live normally because of Johnny. Sam’s breath catches in his throat as he takes in the whole splendour of it.
He lays a tentative hand on Dean’s shoulder and feels some of the tension seep from the tightly corded muscle at his touch.
“You could come back to Stanford with me. Settle down with Johnny somewhere. We could get a place together and-“
Dean recoils. He backs away from Sam, looking horrified. The backs of his legs hit the bed and he drops down beside Johnny, instinctively wraps an arm around the little boy. Johnny looks up, bemused, and tries to wriggle free so he can go back to playing with his shell casings.
“And what about Dad? Just leave him? You want me to frickin’ well walk out on him too? No!”
“For Johnny,” says Sam, reaching out to him uselessly.
“It’s too late.” Dean lets out a long, ragged breath. He puts his thumb under Johnny’s chin and tilts his face up. “Johnny, tell Sam your name. The long version.”
If the command is odd, it doesn’t faze Johnny. He chirps his name out obligingly and Sam blinks at it.
“John Charles Winchester.”
Sam gets no time to recover because then Dean’s saying, “Am I your daddy, Johnny?”
Johnny giggles and shakes his head.
“No! My daddy lives in Lawrence with my mommy! You’re just taking me on an adventure!”
Dean nods and hands Johnny one of his spent shells. Johnny’s attention is instantly taken up on it again and Dean gives Sam a washed-out smile.
“Curse hit about four days ago, a going-away gift from a coven we shut down. Bobby Singer says it’ll probably run its course by the end of the week. Dad’ll be back to normal and we’ll be able to go on our way as usual. But, until then, he’s five years old and doesn’t know a damn thing that’s happened in the last forty years of his life.”
Sam stares at the small boy, with his dark hair and dark eyes, with his smile and his face so entirely untouched by troubles. And then Dean stands up and claps him lightly on the shoulder. There’s the faintest note of forgiveness in his voice when he speaks, but it’s always easy to be gracious in victory.
“It’s all right, Sammy,” says Dean. “Took me a while to get used to it too.”
He shoulders a pack bag of assorted shotguns, rock salt and a few flasks of holy water then heads out the door. Sam listens to the clank of the Impala hood as Dean loads up for the hunt. His stomach feels hollow and his mouth is uncomfortably dry. He looks up again and sees Johnny watching him. He tries a smile but it feels strained because he can’t help staring at the little boy, looking for signs of the hard, uncompromising man Sam knows him to be.
“Sam?” says Johnny, palming a shell awkwardly in his too small hands. “Do you love Dean?”
“Erm…” Sam feels trapped by the wide-eyed stare. It’s a weird enough question because Winchesters don’t tend to ask questions like that and they certainly don’t answer them. But it’s John asking, the boy who grows up to be Sam’s father, which brings it to a whole new level of weird. “Yeah,” he settles for finally. “Yeah, I do. Why are you asking?”
From the way Johnny’s gaze drops down to his hands it’s clear Sam’s not the only one finding the conversation awkward. It’s not much by way of consolation.
“Dean wanted you to come and see us but he didn’t know if you wanted to. He said I wasn’t to be sad if you didn’t want to come. I thought you weren’t friends anymore.”
It takes a while for Sam to be able to muster a response and even when he does it causes him incredible discomfort to voice it. Still, it’s not like there is a comfortable way to give your five-year old father the Divorce Talk about you and your brother.
“It’s complicated, Johnny. Sometimes… sometimes two people love each other very much but for one reason or another they just can’t live with each other. It doesn’t mean they stop loving each other though.” Sam’s wincing even as he’s offering a reassuring smile. “Do you understand?”
Johnny stares at him with blank incomprehension. Sam gestures vaguely and stumbles over a few words, trying to think of a better way to explain it when he doesn’t even quite have a grip on it himself. Johnny chews his lip and considers his floundering with interested curiosity.
“Sam?”
The sound of his name in Johnny’s voice, that inoffensive note of query, is becoming something of great dread to Sam. He tries to look receptive to whatever new issue for angsting and confusion Johnny’s going to throw at him.
“Batman’s better than Spiderman, isn’t he?”
Sam nods wisely.
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
Johnny nods in agreement. He’s quiet just long enough for Sam to start to catch his breath again and then says,
“Sam? Are we going trick-or-treating now?”
:::
It turns out that Dean has not even considered taking Johnny trick-or-treating. Too many lectures from John over the years about Halloween being nothing but one more day of the year to be used for hunting evil has drummed the whole concept of trick-or-treating out of Dean’s head. Not Sam though, he’s been living in normality, after all. And not Johnny either, who quickly catches on to the fact that Sam is an ally in the war they’re waging on Dean to go trick-or-treating. Sam thinks it’d balance things out nicely if Dean takes Johnny trick-or-treating, considering Sam had to give the Divorce Talk.
“C’mon!” says Sam as Dean tries to shepherd him back into the motel room. Johnny’s long since slipped out under Dean’s arm and is loitering expectantly by the Impala. “What other chance is Dad ever going to get to relieve his childhood? To have a night off? To genuinely enjoy himself?”
Dean’s obviously torn but Sam can’t call the battle won yet. He’s fighting hard-ingrained principles, an attitude driven into Dean by John himself.
“There’s a corpse-eater on the loose, Sam. Dad wouldn’t want us to turn our backs on that just for…”
“For him,” says Sam softly, and he almost feels bad for preying so blatantly on Dean’s helplessness when it comes to the good of his family. “We’ll all go together to take care of the corpse-eater afterwards. It’ll only take a few hours and then we’ll be hunting and watching out for Johnny together.”
He sees the exact moment that Dean gives in: the flutter of his dark lashes against his cheek as his eyes sink shut, the slump of his shoulders and the low, soft breath he gives. Sam tries to maintain an understanding expression, one utterly devoid of gloating, but the first chance he gets, he gives Johnny a thumbs-up over Dean’s shoulder.
Johnny whoops and lapses into Tyrannosaurus Rex mode, giving a high-pitched roar and stomping menacingly about the parking lot.
:::
Once he’s on board with the plan, the biggest argument Dean puts up about trick-or-treating is Johnny’s costume. Dean is fixed on the Mad Scientist costume, with blood-spattered labcoat and inexplicable accessories that Sam supposes are meant to be sinister medical equipment but looks more like randomly shaped pieces of plastic. Johnny wants to dress up as a dinosaur and is disappointed to find that the shop doesn’t stock any costumes capable of transforming small boys into towering prehistoric beasts.
While Dean attempts to convince Johnny of the awesomeness of the Mad Scientist costume, Sam tries to compromise with the discovery of an Incredible Hulk costume.
“Look, Johnny,” he says, crouching down so he can see the hanger properly. “Cool huh?”
The steady, disdainful look Johnny gives him makes Sam feel like an idiot. The Incredible Hulk is clearly not high on the list of favourites. Sam doesn’t miss the furtive shake of Dean’s head as Johnny glances up at him for his opinion on the apparently ridiculous suggestion. Dean tries to hide it by pretending he was simply scraping his fingers through his hair. Sam gives him the best bitchface he can muster.
Johnny rummages through the rail and emerges with a Batman costume. Dean and Sam both nod approvingly.
“Badass,” says Dean.
“You’re right,” Sam tells Johnny. “Batman is way cooler than the Hulk.”
“Hulk’s no good. Batman’s got a car though.” Johnny pauses and adds, “I like Batman.”
Once Dean’s got Johnny dressed up - a quick change in a diner restroom - they walk along the street with Johnny in the middle. He holds onto both of their hands and chatters inanely about the myriad ways Batman is better than any other superhero. He likes the sound of his feet scuffing through the litter of fallen leaves and they have to go a bit slower as he kicks through them. Sam can’t get used to the feel of his tiny, warm hand in his. He’s so small and alive, and unlike John. Dean doesn’t seem fazed by it, he chips in with occasional questions that always give Johnny chance to further express just how awesome Batman is.
They stand together and watch him as he traipses up the path to each house. The sky’s the pale grey of a Fall dusk and the sun’s a hazy apricot blot sinking below the skyline. The quiet hush of growing excitement in the air and the surreal nature of what they’re doing leaves Sam feeling like it’s all some kind of dream. His mind goes light and he sinks into an odd good humour.
He glances over at Dean, taking in the familiar lines of his profile, the angles and sweeping curves, and grins at him for no particular reason.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was Dad from the start?”
Dean shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye and he shrugs but grins back at him.
“The man’s got his pride, Sammy.”
They stand in silence for a bit while Johnny works his way along the houses. Dean only once has to reprimand him for shoving another little boy - the other little boy is dressed as Superman and Sam suspects there were some slurs cast on the relative superiority of Batman. He and Dean quietly agree that that kind of thing totally deserves shoving but they’re playing at being good parents, even if neither of them has actually said it out loud.
“Y’know,” says Dean, out of nowhere, “if you wanted to come back…” He trails off as Sam looks at him sharply. A flush creeps along his cheeks and he shrugs and looks away. “I just meant, y’know, after you said about Johnny and me going back to Stanford with you… just wanted you to know the offer worked both ways. I dunno. Without you, it’s kinda…”
“Bad?” Sam says.
Of course Dean can’t say it. Sam knows he can’t but it’s still disappointing, still hurts more than it should.
“Different,” Dean chooses. Any deeper meaning his expression might have suggested is covered up with one of his blinding smirks.
They don’t speak again until Johnny comes charging back at them, waving his bucket of candy gleefully and his cheap blue cape flying out behind him. Dean catches him up and sets him on his shoulders. With hands too little to look like they’d have much strength, Johnny grips Dean’s hair and hangs on that way. He bobs along happily but keeps an eye on Sam, who’s carrying his bucket, as if to his mind Sam looks like the kind of guy who’d steal candy from a kid.
“Okay, so that’s the candy fest out of the way. Next up, corpse-eaters!” says Dean.
It says a lot about how John’s raised Dean that his level of enthusiasm has been pretty constant and looks set to stay that way.
“Iron bullet to the heart, right?” says Sam.
Dean glances at him, and Johnny looks that way too, steered by his fingers knotted in Dean’s hair. There’s something in Dean’s eyes but Sam can’t read it.
“Yeah, but you and Johnny can stay in the car.” He raises a hand as Sam opens his mouth to protest. “Most dangerous thing you’ve done in two years is leave your homework to the night before it’s due, Sammy. I don’t want you getting hurt and someone needs to watch Johnny.”
“Dean!” Sam stops dead in his tracks. “Don’t be so fucking ridiculous! I’m here, I can help!”
“Wanna see the fucking corpse-eater!” Johnny wails.
Dean tries to glare up at him but the angle’s impossible so Sam takes the full blast of it instead.
“See what you’ve done!” he snaps. He tilts his head back as far as he dares. “I don’t ever want to hear you using that kind of language again, John. Y’hear me?”
A pout settles on Johnny’s lips and he glowers down at his hands in Dean’s hair. His shoulders hunch over, making him look impossibly smaller. In the growing gloom, he’s a tiny dark shape with pointed ears.
“Sam said it first,” he mutters.
“I don’t care. Sam’s an adult. He can cuss if he wants. But you’re just a little guy right now. You can cuss when you’re older.”
“Wangohiya,” Johnny says.
Sam reaches up and carefully removes the end of the Batman cape from Johnny’s mouth. It’s soggy from where Johnny’s been sucking on it. Grateful for the shadows that hide his disgusted expression, Sam wipes his fingers off on the leg of his jeans. He smiles up at Johnny encouragingly.
“Try again now.”
“Want to go higher.”
“You can’t go higher,” says Dean. “You’re sitting on my fu-freaking shoulders. Short of trying to balance you on my head, kiddo, that’s as high as it gets.”
“Higher,” says Johnny, eyeing Sam meaningfully.
When Dean catches on a second later, Sam tries to hide his smirk under as Dean gives him a very black look. There’s a brief reorganisation as Johnny clambers up onto Sam’s shoulders and grabs two handfuls of hair to use as reins. It hurts much more than Sam expected, especially added to the repeated kicking of Johnny’s heels against Sam’s chest as he tries to spur him on faster. Still, Johnny’s excited squealing as Sam puts on a spurt of speed and races down the street kind of makes it worth it.
Oddly enough, that’s the end of the suggestion that Johnny and Sam stay in the Impala at the graveyard.
:::
Hunting the corpse-eater while keeping one hand on Johnny’s shoulder at all times lends Sam a newfound respect for John. Of course, it’s tempered with the knowledge that John usually passed his children off to fellow hunters before they were old enough to be of any use in a hunt and that Sam always had Dean there to look out for him. Still, Sam is acutely conscious, as they creep through the shadows cast by the gravestones, of just how fragile Johnny is. But it’s not like he can comfortably sit in the Impala and chat superheroes while he knows Dean is hunting alone. He just can’t, not if he’s right there, able to help.
And if Sam has to be with Dean, then the safest place for Johnny is with them both.
The little boy is remarkably quiet and when they catch the sickly white shimmer of the corpse-eater as it digs through the fresh, damp soil, Johnny only gives a tiny squeak. Yet it’s enough to bring the corpse-eater’s head round in their direction. Sam snatches Johnny up, pressing his face into his chest, and slips away. He knows Dean’s out there somewhere, trying to get close enough to land a proper hit. Peppering the thing with bullets is only going to piss it off and a corpse-eater in attack mode is not a pretty sight.
He wedges Johnny against the cool marble lines of a weatherworn angel and scans the cemetery for signs that the creature’s following them. There’s nothing. Sam hefts the reassuring weight of the shotgun in his hand and waits. Shivers are going through Johnny and Sam can feel the tremors against his legs. He touches his head and smiles down at him.
“You okay, buddy?” he whispers.
In the misty moonlight, Johnny’s face is pale and thoughtful. Sam feels a sudden rush of horror that he’s subjecting this small boy is exactly what he hated his father for subjecting him to all those years ago. He touches his knuckles to Johnny’s face, urging him to voice whatever worry’s making his face crease up like that so that he can soothe it away and make it all better.
“Sam?” he says. “Do dinosaurs eat bats?”
Sam stares at him, unsure whether to smile or shake the kid until he understands how much danger they’re in, then shakes his head.
“So the dinosaurs wouldn’t try to eat Batman? ‘Cos he’d have to fight them if they tried to eat him, wouldn’t he, Sam?”
Sam shakes his head again and frantically lays his finger on his lips. Johnny’s whispering is sharp and shrill and Sam stares about, straining to catch the shimmer that’ll be the first warning of the corpse-eater’s approach. He drops to a crouch and takes hold of his shoulders.
“Gotta be hush now,” he whispers.
“Why?”
Once, a long time ago, Dean had told him that ‘why’ had been the most irritating word in Sam’s vocabulary as a kid. Sam’s beginning to understand his pain. The urge to simply clap a hand over Johnny’s mouth is almost overwhelming but Sam’s determined to stick to being a good parent, even if it ends up killing them both. If John can do it, then goddamn it, so can Sam. Only he’ll do it better.
“Because it’s dangerous.”
“Sam?”
It’s as if Sam hadn’t even mentioned the whole ‘hush’ thing. He stubbornly hangs onto his patience, doesn’t let his face go all harsh and clenched-up like John’s was all too prone to when Sam asked questions.
“Really, buddy,” he whispers. “You’ve got to be ever so quiet-“
“Is that the Silver Surfer?” says Johnny, pointing to something just over Sam’s shoulder.
Sam’s just straightening up, shotgun coming up ready, when he hears Dean shout Down! and instinct takes over. He drags Johnny down and flings his own body over his. Shots crack through the air and Sam curls tighter about Johnny, covering his ears and making sure there’s not a single inch of Johnny’s small body that isn’t protected by Sam’s larger one. A hoarse growl shudders through the air and Sam feels Johnny tremble against him. Another shot and the noise is cut off, trailing into a wet groan.
Johnny recovers before Sam does. He squirms until Sam lets him free and when Sam lifts his head, he’s leaning over the twitching corpse-eating and prodding it. He lifts his finger away and a long, trailing strand of white ichor comes away with it. Dean lowers his shotgun and pulls a face.
“Kid, don’t do that. You don’t know where it’s been.”
Obligingly, Johnny leaves the corpse-eater’s cadaver alone, but it’s only because he wants to show Sam the gunk on his hand. Sam is just in time to catch his wrist and wipe his fingers clean on his jeans before curiosity wins out and the fingers go in Johnny’s mouth. Johnny looks up at him and his nose wrinkles.
“Ewww,” he says.
:::
It’s gone eleven by the time they make it out of the graveyard. All that’s left of the corpse-eater is the smell of its ashes drifting through the night. On Sam’s jeans there’s a sticky stain of Johnny’s slobber and corpse-eater slime. He thinks he must be starting to smell pretty bad. If the way Dean smells is any indication, he’s fairly certain he is. The slowing pulse of adrenaline leaves him feeling shaky but exhilarated. It’s like being a Winchester again. And it’s not terrible.
Sam stops in his tracks, watching Dean sling his shotgun into the trunk of the Impala while Johnny tells him how Batman wouldn’t have to fight the dinosaurs because Sam says dinosaurs don’t eat bats. There’s a damp fog in the air and Sam can only make the hazy shapes of them, but Johnny’s voice pipes up shrilly and the clatter of Dean at the Impala is an old, familiar racket to Sam’s ears.
Desire tugs low in his belly, pervasive and tempting, to sink back into this life with Dean and Johnny, to combine hunting with a normal life, to raise Johnny so he’s as good at maths and physics as he is at field-stripping a rifle. But of course it can’t be like that. Because in three days time, Johnny’ll be John again and Sam won’t be asked about how various superheroes might get on with dinosaurs but whether he’s done his training for the night.
“Hey? Sammy? What’re you dawdling for? We’re gonna miss the Mothra double feature.”
He realises Dean’s calling him and pulls himself together. There’s a look of confused concern on Dean’s face, Johnny looking at Sam too from where he’s standing right by Dean.
“Nothing’s changed, has it?” says Sam. “When he’s… when he’s himself again, it’ll all be exactly as it was, won’t it?”
Dean comes a step closer, hands raised as if in surrender, but Sam backs away before he can reach him. If Dean touches him, he’ll crumble and he’ll go back to being a soldier in Daddy’s army, destined for nothing but mindless obedience. And he can’t let that happen. He shakes his head.
“You gotta take me back to Palo Alto, Dean.”
“C’mon, man,” says Dean, soft and coaxing but Sam shakes his head again, more firmly.
“You gotta take me back.”
Dean gazes at him with unnerving blankness and then gives a single nod and turns back to the car. Sam can feel the waves of disappointment coming off him, thick and ugly as an oil slick. The sound of his footsteps on the wet street is slick and sharp. He opens the rear door of the Impala and tries to sweep Johnny into the car but the little boy’s staring between him and Sam with a furrowed brow and a dark look in his eyes. There’s a wobble to his plump lower lip that makes Sam feel like even more of a jerk. Johnny had been so stupidly fearless with the corpse-eater, just like the man he’s grown up to be. But Sam can’t see any of his father in the kid’s face right now.
He’s got to hang on because Johnny is just a temporary thing. He’ll be John again in days and it’ll hurt Dean more to suffer those same old conflicts between Sam and their dad.
“Are you going?” Johnny says.
“’Fraid so, kiddo,” says Sam, trying to keep it light even though his smile feels unnatural on his face.
“Sammy’s gotta go back to school,” says Dean. His voice is still empty but it’s more help than Sam was expecting from him. Dean moves forward and catches Johnny’s shoulder, tugging him away. “C’mon, we’ll drop him off and then hit up any diner that’s still open and get us some pie. Yeah? Pie?”
His attempts are all entirely lost on Johnny, whose big, dark eyes haven’t shifted from Sam’s face.
“No,” he says. “No, I don’t want you to go. Sam!”
There’s a note of stubborn disbelief in the way Johnny says his name, like he can’t comprehend that Sam might be doing something he doesn’t want him to. And that’s like John, even in the most adorable way. Sam’s smile starts to slip. He drops to a crouch so he can better look into Johnny’s face.
“I’ve got to. We’ve had a really great evening but I’ve gotta go back home now.”
“No!” shrieks Johnny and flings himself at Sam. He’s a small, writhing thing but the force of him almost knocks Sam off balance. He tries to catch him and hold him still but Johnny’s wriggling like crazy. “No! No! I don’t want you to go! I don’t want you to!”
His protests are lost in hiccupping sobs and Sam’s horrified to feel the growing wet patch on his chest where Johnny’s face is pressed into him. He smoothes the hair back off Johnny’s face and tries to sound soothing but it only comes across as helpless.
“Hey, hey! Don’t cry! We’ve had an awesome time and Dean’s gonna get you pie! Please, Johnny, don’t cry!”
He’s still stroking Johnny’s face, the tiny skull cradled in his huge hands, when Dean lifts the sobbing child off of him. Johnny wails into Dean’s shoulder but doesn’t struggle against him. Rubbing small circles on Johnny’s back as he shudders, Dean jerks his head towards the car.
“Get in,” he says to Sam.
He passes Johnny to Sam as soon as Sam’s in the Impala and Johnny snuffles noisily - and wetly - into Sam’s neck. Sam can’t find it in himself to be revolted.
:::
They drive back to Palo Alto in silence. Johnny stops crying but there’s a hitch in his breathing and he won’t look at Sam. Sam kind of wishes Dean wouldn’t look at him either but he can’t miss the frequent sidelong glances. They make him feel guilty when all he’s doing is avoiding slipping back into the same old hell. They pull up outside his apartment block and the lights are on up in his room - Jess is waiting for him.
Sam climbs out of the car and turns back, half expecting to find Dean’s window still wound up but it’s not. There’s no open anger on his face, only resentful disappointment. He gives Sam a quick grin, more smirk than smile.
“Here we go. Home sweet home.”
“Dean-” Sam starts to say but he’s cut off.
“Seriously, thanks for the help, man. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
There’s no way to make him understand. There’s no way to make him see that this isn’t about hurting Dean, it’s about escape. He’s just not going to see it. The realisation hits Sam cold and hard and he only manages a quick nod in response.
Johnny scrambles across the seat to stick his head out the window. He stares at Sam with a look that is far too old for such a small child.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” he says.
Sam does the only thing he can do: he lies, and when Dean drives away, Johnny’s got a smile on his face.
~end
I know I'm way behind on comments but I've got to get this one posted before I hit deadline! Please forgive the schmoop.
Let's Do The Time Warp Again
(gen but lashings of Sam/Dean UST, 6870 words, pg-13ish)
The scariest thing Sam and Dean ever did on Halloween was baby-sit a small boy.
The situation has to be desperate or Dean wouldn't have called. Sam knows that. It's been two years since he left and there hasn't been a word from either John or Dean. Not even so much as a birthday card. From John it wasn't a surprise but Sam never expected Dean to take him at his word when he said he wanted him out of his life. It was just the kind of thing you said, when you're angry and hurting and making a dramatic gesture like walking out on your fucked-up life.
"I really need your help, Sam," says Dean and furious as he is, as long as he's waited for this chance to show Dean how little he cares, Sam can't hang up.
He curls about the phone, taking a furtive glance to check that Jess is still in the shower as if talking to Dean is something secret and illicit, then wets his lips.
"What's happened?"
"I can't take much more of this. I need you… need your help. I don't want to screw up your studying or anything but- No! Put that goddamn gun down! You don't play with those! They're dangerous, do you hear me? You don't touch!" Dean makes this breathless, moaning sound then says, "Seriously, man, I'm dying here. I wouldn't ask but there's no one else."
Funny thing is, even if the situation wasn't desperate and Sam didn't have that deep-down tug of Dean to drag him out on Halloween, curiosity would have done the trick.
:::
The mall is both blinding and deafening. Sam blinks owlishly against the obnoxious glow of the Halloween decorations and tries to dodge the hordes of squealing midget monsters. He stands there, feeling awkward and lost, and then, from across the mall, he hears his name being called. Even smothered by the shrill chatter of kids on a sugar-high and harassed parents, the voice is achingly familiar. Sam's breath comes a little faster as he spots Dean through the crowds. Feeling stupidly nervous, Sam starts towards him.
Dean's changed, but only a little. His sun-streaked hair's cropped more closely to his skull and if he did it to detract from the stubborn prettiness of his features, it was a mistake. All the shorter haircut does is emphasise his cheekbones and give you a good proper look at his long-lashed green eyes. He's abandoned his band t-shirts and hoodies in favour of the John Winchester fashion collection: layer upon practical layer.
In essence though, he's still the big brother Sam remembers. He's not so different that Sam doesn't feel the sudden clench in his chest of having missed him so damn much. And he's not become so like John that Sam feels he's drifted too far out of reach. That'd been one of his most nagging worries when he left: that John would either get Dean killed or turn him into a clone of himself, all bloodthirsty drive and no affection or warmth.
Sam's just surrendering, helpless, to the smile tugging at his lips when a woman with a pushchair ducks out of the way and Sam sees the small boy hanging from Dean's arm. Between Dean having his weight so firmly planted and the boy being no more than four or five, all the struggling the kid's putting up isn't bringing him even so much as an inch closer to the comicbook stand he's straining at outside the next shop.
At Sam’s approach, the kid leaves off struggling, gnashes his teeth loudly and snarls at him. Dean watches with resigned interest.
“He’s a dinosaur,” he says, in answer to Sam’s quizzical look.
“T-Rex,” says the kid and snarls again, revealing tiny white teeth.
“Cute kid,” says Sam. “Whose is he?”
Dean scoops the kid up in one arm and ruffles the mop of dark hair. The kid beams at him and then tries to bite his hand. Dean avoids the bite by swinging him easily to the other arm, provoking a delighted shriek from the child as he’s slung about.
“Mine.” He flashes a grin at the kid who isn’t trying to bite him anymore. “Say hello to Sam, Johnny.”
It turns out Sam’s not really all that interesting to the kid, especially now he’s out of biting reach.
“Milkshake time now! Milkshake!” he demands instead.
As they start towards the milkshake parlour, Sam gives Dean another look. It can’t quite fully express his incredulity but it does a good enough job of it that Dean makes a definite effort to pretend he hasn’t noticed it. They’ve been together all of two minutes and already Sam’s getting pissed off by the traditional Winchester patterns. Still, when he catches hold of Dean’s arm and forces Dean to look at him, he still has a quivery thrill of pleasure at the novelty of seeing his brother again, irritating and mulish as he is.
“You named him after Dad?” he says.
“His mom chose his name, Sam,” says Dean with infuriating calm, pulling away as soon as he can escape from Sam’s grasp. “But there wouldn’t be anything wrong with it even if I had.”
The sickly pink sludge of the milkshakes Dean and Johnny both order are enough to turn Sam’s stomach and he goes for a polystyrene cup of sickly pale coffee instead, which is only marginally less revolting. Johnny slurps at his and the gurgling sound of it brings bloodsucking insects to mind, albeit ones with hollowed cheeks and eyes wide with determined concentration. With the practised air of a parent, Dean wordlessly moves all of the cutlery out of reach just seconds before Johnny tries to saw through the bottom of his cup with a plastic knife clasped in his chubby little hand. Johnny accepts the intervention with good humour and goes back to drinking very noisily and occasionally baring his teeth at Sam.
After a while, it becomes clear that whatever desperation drove Dean to reach out to Sam, it’s not sufficient to get him to explain now he’s got Sam back. He seems content enough to sit there and keep Johnny out of trouble and shoot frequent furtively happy looks at Sam when he thinks he isn’t looking. It’s all very blissful in a domestic kind of way and it makes Sam’s skin itch because domestic is one thing Winchesters aren’t.
“So, I imagine at any minute you’re going to tell me what I’m doing here,” says Sam.
“I… uh… well, there’s something I gotta do this evening and… well…”
Dean’s gaze falls on Johnny, who’s stabbing at the bottom of his cup with a straw now. Sam raises an eyebrow, lips tightening. The secret rush of glee he’d felt at Dean needing him is fast dissipating in the face of the nature of the help required.
“If the word ‘babysitter’ comes out of your mouth in the next sentence I’m gonna get up and walk out of here,“ he says.
“Sammy, c’mon! This is important stuff and I wouldn’t ask but the little punk’s gonna get himself killed because he won’t stay where he’s put-“ Dean emphasises this with a stern look at Johnny, who beams up at him cherubically. “And last hunt came too close for comfort-“
“You made the big doggy cry!” Johnny interrupts, looking at Dean with accusation written clearly on his face.
“It was a Black Dog and someone was trying to feed it M&Ms.” Dean leans a little closer over the table and Sam can smell the sweetness of strawberries on his breath. He can smell guns and car oil and that strange inexplicable Deanness that he’d tried to leave behind two years ago. “I can’t hunt and watch over him, not properly. And I’m not gonna leave him with just anyone. I won’t.”
That’s gratifying enough, the sense of being one of the few people in the world that Dean would trust with his son, that Sam relents a little. He sits back in his chair and studies the slowly stagnating cup of coffee.
“What about Dad?” The sudden tautness of Dean’s jaw brings the old ugly feeling back to the pit of his stomach. Sam can’t help the bitter twist of his lips. “Is he too drunk to help? Or did you get thrown out of the Winchester army for being so stupid as to try to have a life?”
“Dad can’t help right now. And when did you turn into such a bitch?”
“Bitch bitch bitch bitch-“ Johnny choruses.
He’s cut off by the light tap on the back of his hand from Dean. He gives the kid another of those firm, displeased looks and Sam vaguely thinks he remembers having seen those once or twice in his own childhood.
“That’s not a word for you, kiddo,” says Dean. “That’s a word for grown-ups.”
He looks back at Sam and Sam can feel his resolve starting to give. He’s as stubborn as any Winchester but it’s Dean asking and that’s just not fair because Dean doesn’t ask for things from Sam often. It’s not often, and certainly not recently, that there’s anything Sam can do for Dean. He lets out an irritable huff of breath and gives up on his coffee once and for all because he can’t even pretend to be drinking it anymore.
“What are you hunting?”
:::
Corpse-eaters are like supernatural maggots. They spring up in graveyards and do exactly what the name suggests. That’s not what the problem is with them - they’re pretty much harmless when they’ve got dead flesh to eat. It’s when the graveyards been picked bare and they start creeping into towns in the search for more sources of food. Then they turn plain nasty. Sam’s never hunted them before but he remembers John leaving him and Dean with Pastor Jim once when they were just kids while he went off to clear out an infestation.
Dean doesn’t seem too bothered about hunting them alone but when they get back to the motel, Sam sees signs of John’s presence and he wonders just how far away their dad is and if Dean’s counting on him to leap into the fray at just the right moment.
There’s John’s duffel full of clothes and Sam lifts it from the floor and sets it carefully on a chair. The bag sags a little open and Sam looks away from the familiar chequered pattern of flannel shirts. The colours seem softer in the fading light of late afternoon.
While Dean rifles through pages full of notes, Johnny sits on the end of his bed, legs swinging back and forth, and plays with the spent ammo shells Dean gave him. Sam knows it was just to distract him, after all, Sam’s only known the kid for an hour or so and already he knows to minimise the potential for trouble that Johnny can find. But it’s not right to see pudgy fingers toying with weaponry like they’re pieces from a game. It’s everything that’s wrong with the family. Johnny lays the shells out on the hideous motel-bed blanket in an order that doesn’t make any sense to Sam, then before he has chance to try to figure it out, Johnny starts moving them round again.
Keeping a watchful eye on him, Sam moves to Dean’s side as he scans over a map, his hands smoothing out the much-creased paper.
“So where’s his mom?”
Dean looks up at him, face blank for a second, before glancing at Johnny then back to the map. He rubs the back of his neck and keeps his voice low.
“She’s dead. There’s just me. I’m his only family.”
There’s something in his tone that gives Sam a moment’s pause. His hesitation obviously registers with Dean because he looks up again but there’s the trace of a genuine smile on his face this time. It takes Sam another moment to gather his thoughts because he knows that smile too and with John God-knows-where and it just being Dean with him, it’s hard to remember why Sam felt the need to cut loose.
“How are you going to do this? I mean, how are you going to raise him?”
Dean looks past him to Johnny and his eyes widen slightly, his lips setting into an incongruous pout. He frowns and rubs the back of his hand over his face. Going up against corpse-eaters hasn’t thrown Dean for even a heartbeat but looking at the small boy in his charge leaves him looking so young and out of his depth that Sam almost regrets asking. But he has to make Dean think about it. Because he knows that Dean won’t hesitate to give his last drop of blood if it’d keep Johnny alive, just as he wouldn’t for John or Sam, but Sam can see the way this is going and he has to say something while there’s still time.
“Are you going to raise him like Dad raised us? Weapons training and martial arts? Living out of motels and never spending more than a term in any school? Don’t you want something better for him than what we had?”
The last point is a mistake. Defensive anger flares up in Dean’s eyes and all vulnerability to his expression disappears.
“Dad did the best he could.”
He didn’t. Sam doesn’t believe he did the best he could for one minute. John’s only ever had one goal in sight and a regular, safe upbringing for his boys wasn’t it. But that’s the old sticking point between Sam and Dean and the temporarily rekindled spark of kinship between them is too precious for Sam to try to argue Dean out of a state of mind he’s stuck to for pretty much his whole damn life.
“Look, all I’m saying is you don’t have to raise Johnny like Dad raised us. You can do it differently and it doesn’t mean you’re saying Dad did wrong by us.”
Sam knows he’s all earnestness and probably using the underhanded puppy-dog eyes trick but he needs to save Johnny, because there’s still time. Dean was lost before Sam even realised he needed saving but he can save Dean’s son. And right then, Sam wishes he could still save Dean, wonders if maybe he didn’t try hard enough to take Dean with him when he left for Stanford.
The idea of it is beautiful. He could give Dean a normal life and Dean would have an incentive to stay with him and live normally because of Johnny. Sam’s breath catches in his throat as he takes in the whole splendour of it.
He lays a tentative hand on Dean’s shoulder and feels some of the tension seep from the tightly corded muscle at his touch.
“You could come back to Stanford with me. Settle down with Johnny somewhere. We could get a place together and-“
Dean recoils. He backs away from Sam, looking horrified. The backs of his legs hit the bed and he drops down beside Johnny, instinctively wraps an arm around the little boy. Johnny looks up, bemused, and tries to wriggle free so he can go back to playing with his shell casings.
“And what about Dad? Just leave him? You want me to frickin’ well walk out on him too? No!”
“For Johnny,” says Sam, reaching out to him uselessly.
“It’s too late.” Dean lets out a long, ragged breath. He puts his thumb under Johnny’s chin and tilts his face up. “Johnny, tell Sam your name. The long version.”
If the command is odd, it doesn’t faze Johnny. He chirps his name out obligingly and Sam blinks at it.
“John Charles Winchester.”
Sam gets no time to recover because then Dean’s saying, “Am I your daddy, Johnny?”
Johnny giggles and shakes his head.
“No! My daddy lives in Lawrence with my mommy! You’re just taking me on an adventure!”
Dean nods and hands Johnny one of his spent shells. Johnny’s attention is instantly taken up on it again and Dean gives Sam a washed-out smile.
“Curse hit about four days ago, a going-away gift from a coven we shut down. Bobby Singer says it’ll probably run its course by the end of the week. Dad’ll be back to normal and we’ll be able to go on our way as usual. But, until then, he’s five years old and doesn’t know a damn thing that’s happened in the last forty years of his life.”
Sam stares at the small boy, with his dark hair and dark eyes, with his smile and his face so entirely untouched by troubles. And then Dean stands up and claps him lightly on the shoulder. There’s the faintest note of forgiveness in his voice when he speaks, but it’s always easy to be gracious in victory.
“It’s all right, Sammy,” says Dean. “Took me a while to get used to it too.”
He shoulders a pack bag of assorted shotguns, rock salt and a few flasks of holy water then heads out the door. Sam listens to the clank of the Impala hood as Dean loads up for the hunt. His stomach feels hollow and his mouth is uncomfortably dry. He looks up again and sees Johnny watching him. He tries a smile but it feels strained because he can’t help staring at the little boy, looking for signs of the hard, uncompromising man Sam knows him to be.
“Sam?” says Johnny, palming a shell awkwardly in his too small hands. “Do you love Dean?”
“Erm…” Sam feels trapped by the wide-eyed stare. It’s a weird enough question because Winchesters don’t tend to ask questions like that and they certainly don’t answer them. But it’s John asking, the boy who grows up to be Sam’s father, which brings it to a whole new level of weird. “Yeah,” he settles for finally. “Yeah, I do. Why are you asking?”
From the way Johnny’s gaze drops down to his hands it’s clear Sam’s not the only one finding the conversation awkward. It’s not much by way of consolation.
“Dean wanted you to come and see us but he didn’t know if you wanted to. He said I wasn’t to be sad if you didn’t want to come. I thought you weren’t friends anymore.”
It takes a while for Sam to be able to muster a response and even when he does it causes him incredible discomfort to voice it. Still, it’s not like there is a comfortable way to give your five-year old father the Divorce Talk about you and your brother.
“It’s complicated, Johnny. Sometimes… sometimes two people love each other very much but for one reason or another they just can’t live with each other. It doesn’t mean they stop loving each other though.” Sam’s wincing even as he’s offering a reassuring smile. “Do you understand?”
Johnny stares at him with blank incomprehension. Sam gestures vaguely and stumbles over a few words, trying to think of a better way to explain it when he doesn’t even quite have a grip on it himself. Johnny chews his lip and considers his floundering with interested curiosity.
“Sam?”
The sound of his name in Johnny’s voice, that inoffensive note of query, is becoming something of great dread to Sam. He tries to look receptive to whatever new issue for angsting and confusion Johnny’s going to throw at him.
“Batman’s better than Spiderman, isn’t he?”
Sam nods wisely.
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
Johnny nods in agreement. He’s quiet just long enough for Sam to start to catch his breath again and then says,
“Sam? Are we going trick-or-treating now?”
:::
It turns out that Dean has not even considered taking Johnny trick-or-treating. Too many lectures from John over the years about Halloween being nothing but one more day of the year to be used for hunting evil has drummed the whole concept of trick-or-treating out of Dean’s head. Not Sam though, he’s been living in normality, after all. And not Johnny either, who quickly catches on to the fact that Sam is an ally in the war they’re waging on Dean to go trick-or-treating. Sam thinks it’d balance things out nicely if Dean takes Johnny trick-or-treating, considering Sam had to give the Divorce Talk.
“C’mon!” says Sam as Dean tries to shepherd him back into the motel room. Johnny’s long since slipped out under Dean’s arm and is loitering expectantly by the Impala. “What other chance is Dad ever going to get to relieve his childhood? To have a night off? To genuinely enjoy himself?”
Dean’s obviously torn but Sam can’t call the battle won yet. He’s fighting hard-ingrained principles, an attitude driven into Dean by John himself.
“There’s a corpse-eater on the loose, Sam. Dad wouldn’t want us to turn our backs on that just for…”
“For him,” says Sam softly, and he almost feels bad for preying so blatantly on Dean’s helplessness when it comes to the good of his family. “We’ll all go together to take care of the corpse-eater afterwards. It’ll only take a few hours and then we’ll be hunting and watching out for Johnny together.”
He sees the exact moment that Dean gives in: the flutter of his dark lashes against his cheek as his eyes sink shut, the slump of his shoulders and the low, soft breath he gives. Sam tries to maintain an understanding expression, one utterly devoid of gloating, but the first chance he gets, he gives Johnny a thumbs-up over Dean’s shoulder.
Johnny whoops and lapses into Tyrannosaurus Rex mode, giving a high-pitched roar and stomping menacingly about the parking lot.
:::
Once he’s on board with the plan, the biggest argument Dean puts up about trick-or-treating is Johnny’s costume. Dean is fixed on the Mad Scientist costume, with blood-spattered labcoat and inexplicable accessories that Sam supposes are meant to be sinister medical equipment but looks more like randomly shaped pieces of plastic. Johnny wants to dress up as a dinosaur and is disappointed to find that the shop doesn’t stock any costumes capable of transforming small boys into towering prehistoric beasts.
While Dean attempts to convince Johnny of the awesomeness of the Mad Scientist costume, Sam tries to compromise with the discovery of an Incredible Hulk costume.
“Look, Johnny,” he says, crouching down so he can see the hanger properly. “Cool huh?”
The steady, disdainful look Johnny gives him makes Sam feel like an idiot. The Incredible Hulk is clearly not high on the list of favourites. Sam doesn’t miss the furtive shake of Dean’s head as Johnny glances up at him for his opinion on the apparently ridiculous suggestion. Dean tries to hide it by pretending he was simply scraping his fingers through his hair. Sam gives him the best bitchface he can muster.
Johnny rummages through the rail and emerges with a Batman costume. Dean and Sam both nod approvingly.
“Badass,” says Dean.
“You’re right,” Sam tells Johnny. “Batman is way cooler than the Hulk.”
“Hulk’s no good. Batman’s got a car though.” Johnny pauses and adds, “I like Batman.”
Once Dean’s got Johnny dressed up - a quick change in a diner restroom - they walk along the street with Johnny in the middle. He holds onto both of their hands and chatters inanely about the myriad ways Batman is better than any other superhero. He likes the sound of his feet scuffing through the litter of fallen leaves and they have to go a bit slower as he kicks through them. Sam can’t get used to the feel of his tiny, warm hand in his. He’s so small and alive, and unlike John. Dean doesn’t seem fazed by it, he chips in with occasional questions that always give Johnny chance to further express just how awesome Batman is.
They stand together and watch him as he traipses up the path to each house. The sky’s the pale grey of a Fall dusk and the sun’s a hazy apricot blot sinking below the skyline. The quiet hush of growing excitement in the air and the surreal nature of what they’re doing leaves Sam feeling like it’s all some kind of dream. His mind goes light and he sinks into an odd good humour.
He glances over at Dean, taking in the familiar lines of his profile, the angles and sweeping curves, and grins at him for no particular reason.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was Dad from the start?”
Dean shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye and he shrugs but grins back at him.
“The man’s got his pride, Sammy.”
They stand in silence for a bit while Johnny works his way along the houses. Dean only once has to reprimand him for shoving another little boy - the other little boy is dressed as Superman and Sam suspects there were some slurs cast on the relative superiority of Batman. He and Dean quietly agree that that kind of thing totally deserves shoving but they’re playing at being good parents, even if neither of them has actually said it out loud.
“Y’know,” says Dean, out of nowhere, “if you wanted to come back…” He trails off as Sam looks at him sharply. A flush creeps along his cheeks and he shrugs and looks away. “I just meant, y’know, after you said about Johnny and me going back to Stanford with you… just wanted you to know the offer worked both ways. I dunno. Without you, it’s kinda…”
“Bad?” Sam says.
Of course Dean can’t say it. Sam knows he can’t but it’s still disappointing, still hurts more than it should.
“Different,” Dean chooses. Any deeper meaning his expression might have suggested is covered up with one of his blinding smirks.
They don’t speak again until Johnny comes charging back at them, waving his bucket of candy gleefully and his cheap blue cape flying out behind him. Dean catches him up and sets him on his shoulders. With hands too little to look like they’d have much strength, Johnny grips Dean’s hair and hangs on that way. He bobs along happily but keeps an eye on Sam, who’s carrying his bucket, as if to his mind Sam looks like the kind of guy who’d steal candy from a kid.
“Okay, so that’s the candy fest out of the way. Next up, corpse-eaters!” says Dean.
It says a lot about how John’s raised Dean that his level of enthusiasm has been pretty constant and looks set to stay that way.
“Iron bullet to the heart, right?” says Sam.
Dean glances at him, and Johnny looks that way too, steered by his fingers knotted in Dean’s hair. There’s something in Dean’s eyes but Sam can’t read it.
“Yeah, but you and Johnny can stay in the car.” He raises a hand as Sam opens his mouth to protest. “Most dangerous thing you’ve done in two years is leave your homework to the night before it’s due, Sammy. I don’t want you getting hurt and someone needs to watch Johnny.”
“Dean!” Sam stops dead in his tracks. “Don’t be so fucking ridiculous! I’m here, I can help!”
“Wanna see the fucking corpse-eater!” Johnny wails.
Dean tries to glare up at him but the angle’s impossible so Sam takes the full blast of it instead.
“See what you’ve done!” he snaps. He tilts his head back as far as he dares. “I don’t ever want to hear you using that kind of language again, John. Y’hear me?”
A pout settles on Johnny’s lips and he glowers down at his hands in Dean’s hair. His shoulders hunch over, making him look impossibly smaller. In the growing gloom, he’s a tiny dark shape with pointed ears.
“Sam said it first,” he mutters.
“I don’t care. Sam’s an adult. He can cuss if he wants. But you’re just a little guy right now. You can cuss when you’re older.”
“Wangohiya,” Johnny says.
Sam reaches up and carefully removes the end of the Batman cape from Johnny’s mouth. It’s soggy from where Johnny’s been sucking on it. Grateful for the shadows that hide his disgusted expression, Sam wipes his fingers off on the leg of his jeans. He smiles up at Johnny encouragingly.
“Try again now.”
“Want to go higher.”
“You can’t go higher,” says Dean. “You’re sitting on my fu-freaking shoulders. Short of trying to balance you on my head, kiddo, that’s as high as it gets.”
“Higher,” says Johnny, eyeing Sam meaningfully.
When Dean catches on a second later, Sam tries to hide his smirk under as Dean gives him a very black look. There’s a brief reorganisation as Johnny clambers up onto Sam’s shoulders and grabs two handfuls of hair to use as reins. It hurts much more than Sam expected, especially added to the repeated kicking of Johnny’s heels against Sam’s chest as he tries to spur him on faster. Still, Johnny’s excited squealing as Sam puts on a spurt of speed and races down the street kind of makes it worth it.
Oddly enough, that’s the end of the suggestion that Johnny and Sam stay in the Impala at the graveyard.
:::
Hunting the corpse-eater while keeping one hand on Johnny’s shoulder at all times lends Sam a newfound respect for John. Of course, it’s tempered with the knowledge that John usually passed his children off to fellow hunters before they were old enough to be of any use in a hunt and that Sam always had Dean there to look out for him. Still, Sam is acutely conscious, as they creep through the shadows cast by the gravestones, of just how fragile Johnny is. But it’s not like he can comfortably sit in the Impala and chat superheroes while he knows Dean is hunting alone. He just can’t, not if he’s right there, able to help.
And if Sam has to be with Dean, then the safest place for Johnny is with them both.
The little boy is remarkably quiet and when they catch the sickly white shimmer of the corpse-eater as it digs through the fresh, damp soil, Johnny only gives a tiny squeak. Yet it’s enough to bring the corpse-eater’s head round in their direction. Sam snatches Johnny up, pressing his face into his chest, and slips away. He knows Dean’s out there somewhere, trying to get close enough to land a proper hit. Peppering the thing with bullets is only going to piss it off and a corpse-eater in attack mode is not a pretty sight.
He wedges Johnny against the cool marble lines of a weatherworn angel and scans the cemetery for signs that the creature’s following them. There’s nothing. Sam hefts the reassuring weight of the shotgun in his hand and waits. Shivers are going through Johnny and Sam can feel the tremors against his legs. He touches his head and smiles down at him.
“You okay, buddy?” he whispers.
In the misty moonlight, Johnny’s face is pale and thoughtful. Sam feels a sudden rush of horror that he’s subjecting this small boy is exactly what he hated his father for subjecting him to all those years ago. He touches his knuckles to Johnny’s face, urging him to voice whatever worry’s making his face crease up like that so that he can soothe it away and make it all better.
“Sam?” he says. “Do dinosaurs eat bats?”
Sam stares at him, unsure whether to smile or shake the kid until he understands how much danger they’re in, then shakes his head.
“So the dinosaurs wouldn’t try to eat Batman? ‘Cos he’d have to fight them if they tried to eat him, wouldn’t he, Sam?”
Sam shakes his head again and frantically lays his finger on his lips. Johnny’s whispering is sharp and shrill and Sam stares about, straining to catch the shimmer that’ll be the first warning of the corpse-eater’s approach. He drops to a crouch and takes hold of his shoulders.
“Gotta be hush now,” he whispers.
“Why?”
Once, a long time ago, Dean had told him that ‘why’ had been the most irritating word in Sam’s vocabulary as a kid. Sam’s beginning to understand his pain. The urge to simply clap a hand over Johnny’s mouth is almost overwhelming but Sam’s determined to stick to being a good parent, even if it ends up killing them both. If John can do it, then goddamn it, so can Sam. Only he’ll do it better.
“Because it’s dangerous.”
“Sam?”
It’s as if Sam hadn’t even mentioned the whole ‘hush’ thing. He stubbornly hangs onto his patience, doesn’t let his face go all harsh and clenched-up like John’s was all too prone to when Sam asked questions.
“Really, buddy,” he whispers. “You’ve got to be ever so quiet-“
“Is that the Silver Surfer?” says Johnny, pointing to something just over Sam’s shoulder.
Sam’s just straightening up, shotgun coming up ready, when he hears Dean shout Down! and instinct takes over. He drags Johnny down and flings his own body over his. Shots crack through the air and Sam curls tighter about Johnny, covering his ears and making sure there’s not a single inch of Johnny’s small body that isn’t protected by Sam’s larger one. A hoarse growl shudders through the air and Sam feels Johnny tremble against him. Another shot and the noise is cut off, trailing into a wet groan.
Johnny recovers before Sam does. He squirms until Sam lets him free and when Sam lifts his head, he’s leaning over the twitching corpse-eating and prodding it. He lifts his finger away and a long, trailing strand of white ichor comes away with it. Dean lowers his shotgun and pulls a face.
“Kid, don’t do that. You don’t know where it’s been.”
Obligingly, Johnny leaves the corpse-eater’s cadaver alone, but it’s only because he wants to show Sam the gunk on his hand. Sam is just in time to catch his wrist and wipe his fingers clean on his jeans before curiosity wins out and the fingers go in Johnny’s mouth. Johnny looks up at him and his nose wrinkles.
“Ewww,” he says.
:::
It’s gone eleven by the time they make it out of the graveyard. All that’s left of the corpse-eater is the smell of its ashes drifting through the night. On Sam’s jeans there’s a sticky stain of Johnny’s slobber and corpse-eater slime. He thinks he must be starting to smell pretty bad. If the way Dean smells is any indication, he’s fairly certain he is. The slowing pulse of adrenaline leaves him feeling shaky but exhilarated. It’s like being a Winchester again. And it’s not terrible.
Sam stops in his tracks, watching Dean sling his shotgun into the trunk of the Impala while Johnny tells him how Batman wouldn’t have to fight the dinosaurs because Sam says dinosaurs don’t eat bats. There’s a damp fog in the air and Sam can only make the hazy shapes of them, but Johnny’s voice pipes up shrilly and the clatter of Dean at the Impala is an old, familiar racket to Sam’s ears.
Desire tugs low in his belly, pervasive and tempting, to sink back into this life with Dean and Johnny, to combine hunting with a normal life, to raise Johnny so he’s as good at maths and physics as he is at field-stripping a rifle. But of course it can’t be like that. Because in three days time, Johnny’ll be John again and Sam won’t be asked about how various superheroes might get on with dinosaurs but whether he’s done his training for the night.
“Hey? Sammy? What’re you dawdling for? We’re gonna miss the Mothra double feature.”
He realises Dean’s calling him and pulls himself together. There’s a look of confused concern on Dean’s face, Johnny looking at Sam too from where he’s standing right by Dean.
“Nothing’s changed, has it?” says Sam. “When he’s… when he’s himself again, it’ll all be exactly as it was, won’t it?”
Dean comes a step closer, hands raised as if in surrender, but Sam backs away before he can reach him. If Dean touches him, he’ll crumble and he’ll go back to being a soldier in Daddy’s army, destined for nothing but mindless obedience. And he can’t let that happen. He shakes his head.
“You gotta take me back to Palo Alto, Dean.”
“C’mon, man,” says Dean, soft and coaxing but Sam shakes his head again, more firmly.
“You gotta take me back.”
Dean gazes at him with unnerving blankness and then gives a single nod and turns back to the car. Sam can feel the waves of disappointment coming off him, thick and ugly as an oil slick. The sound of his footsteps on the wet street is slick and sharp. He opens the rear door of the Impala and tries to sweep Johnny into the car but the little boy’s staring between him and Sam with a furrowed brow and a dark look in his eyes. There’s a wobble to his plump lower lip that makes Sam feel like even more of a jerk. Johnny had been so stupidly fearless with the corpse-eater, just like the man he’s grown up to be. But Sam can’t see any of his father in the kid’s face right now.
He’s got to hang on because Johnny is just a temporary thing. He’ll be John again in days and it’ll hurt Dean more to suffer those same old conflicts between Sam and their dad.
“Are you going?” Johnny says.
“’Fraid so, kiddo,” says Sam, trying to keep it light even though his smile feels unnatural on his face.
“Sammy’s gotta go back to school,” says Dean. His voice is still empty but it’s more help than Sam was expecting from him. Dean moves forward and catches Johnny’s shoulder, tugging him away. “C’mon, we’ll drop him off and then hit up any diner that’s still open and get us some pie. Yeah? Pie?”
His attempts are all entirely lost on Johnny, whose big, dark eyes haven’t shifted from Sam’s face.
“No,” he says. “No, I don’t want you to go. Sam!”
There’s a note of stubborn disbelief in the way Johnny says his name, like he can’t comprehend that Sam might be doing something he doesn’t want him to. And that’s like John, even in the most adorable way. Sam’s smile starts to slip. He drops to a crouch so he can better look into Johnny’s face.
“I’ve got to. We’ve had a really great evening but I’ve gotta go back home now.”
“No!” shrieks Johnny and flings himself at Sam. He’s a small, writhing thing but the force of him almost knocks Sam off balance. He tries to catch him and hold him still but Johnny’s wriggling like crazy. “No! No! I don’t want you to go! I don’t want you to!”
His protests are lost in hiccupping sobs and Sam’s horrified to feel the growing wet patch on his chest where Johnny’s face is pressed into him. He smoothes the hair back off Johnny’s face and tries to sound soothing but it only comes across as helpless.
“Hey, hey! Don’t cry! We’ve had an awesome time and Dean’s gonna get you pie! Please, Johnny, don’t cry!”
He’s still stroking Johnny’s face, the tiny skull cradled in his huge hands, when Dean lifts the sobbing child off of him. Johnny wails into Dean’s shoulder but doesn’t struggle against him. Rubbing small circles on Johnny’s back as he shudders, Dean jerks his head towards the car.
“Get in,” he says to Sam.
He passes Johnny to Sam as soon as Sam’s in the Impala and Johnny snuffles noisily - and wetly - into Sam’s neck. Sam can’t find it in himself to be revolted.
:::
They drive back to Palo Alto in silence. Johnny stops crying but there’s a hitch in his breathing and he won’t look at Sam. Sam kind of wishes Dean wouldn’t look at him either but he can’t miss the frequent sidelong glances. They make him feel guilty when all he’s doing is avoiding slipping back into the same old hell. They pull up outside his apartment block and the lights are on up in his room - Jess is waiting for him.
Sam climbs out of the car and turns back, half expecting to find Dean’s window still wound up but it’s not. There’s no open anger on his face, only resentful disappointment. He gives Sam a quick grin, more smirk than smile.
“Here we go. Home sweet home.”
“Dean-” Sam starts to say but he’s cut off.
“Seriously, thanks for the help, man. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
There’s no way to make him understand. There’s no way to make him see that this isn’t about hurting Dean, it’s about escape. He’s just not going to see it. The realisation hits Sam cold and hard and he only manages a quick nod in response.
Johnny scrambles across the seat to stick his head out the window. He stares at Sam with a look that is far too old for such a small child.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” he says.
Sam does the only thing he can do: he lies, and when Dean drives away, Johnny’s got a smile on his face.
~end