I come back! Bearing fic, no less!

[ginzai]

Short fic. Ficlet fic. Prompt response to comment_fic fic, but fic none the less!

Title: (Because I'm Such A) Selfish Man
Author: ginzai
Genre: Gen, John POV, hurt!Dean, protective!Sam
Timeline: S1, about a month after Faith. Just pretend they went north, okay?
Rating: PG
Warnings: Bit of salty language. These are the Winchesters, after all.
Word Count:

Comments

[ginzai]

Thank you for reading! I love John but the man has got some ISSUES. And this might just be my take on it, but I think a lot of the strife between Sam and John could have been resolved if some more information had been shared. Sam has a tendency to assume the worst and John has a tendency to be all need to know and between the two, it's no wonder that they went for so long without speaking.

[mangokulfi]

Nicely done. It's always been my personal cannon too that John got Joshua to tell Sam about the faith healer so I can totally see something like this happening. :)

[ginzai]

Aw, thanks! I think John was around a lot more than either of his boys realized. He was too close at hand too often for me to think otherwise (Home, Shadows) and his obvious care and love for his sons make me entirely unable to combine his willingness to sacrifice his life for Dean's with the guy who didn't even bother to call to make sure Dean had survived the rawhide. Man's got some issues with being a decent father (a LOT of them!) but I can't see him actually ignoring a real distress call. Maybe not telling Sam and Dean that he'd been there, but that's a different story. :D

[mangokulfi]

Yes that's exactly the way I see it too. No doubt he was a shitty father in many ways and did some irreparable damage to both his sons, but in the end, I do think he loved them more than anything and I do think he justified a lot of his assiness by telling himself that he was doing it to toughen them up for the war he conscripted them into. You know, for a guy who was on the show for less than half-a-dozen episodes, he sure is a complex character. :)

[ginzai]

Very much agreed! I think John screwed up more than he realized and I can very easily buy him being emotionally abusive. That he was neglectful certainly is canon! With the right set up, I can even see physical abuse, particularly of Dean. But I don't think any of it was out of maliciousness or because he was anything but over his head, overwhelmed, and overworked. He tried, he really did. I've a lot of sympathy for him.

I agree with you. It's pretty amazing that a mere handful of episodes can give us such a dynamic, viable character that his head is still so fascinating to try and get into four years after he's been off the show. :)

[heather03nmg]

Ouch, that kinda hurt to read but you did a great job getting into John's head. Loved it and I think we need Sammy's POV too. Pretty please.

[ginzai]

Thanks! I think John's head is a kind of painful place to be most of the time.

We'll see about a Sam's POV follow up. I think he'd be torn between outright panic and fury at the situation. John's supposed absence would just be something he could focus his rage on after the MOTW was killed. If Winchesters are good at anything, it's displacement... :D

[tahirire]

Oooh, ouch. I can see John doing something similar to this - just being too tired and feeling too guilty to want to fight. *hugs them all*

BTW, typo - "rawhide". ;)

[ginzai]

I think those Winchesters could all use a hug at this point! And thank you so much for commenting. :)

Ack - you know, this must have been a brainglitch because I honestly thought it was rawhide for a bit there. Not going to ask where that one came from!

[ginzai]

Man, I love poking at Sam and John's relationship. They're so very alike and yet hardly ever manage to see eye to eye. And yes, John's a little bit wrong and Sam's a little bit right, but neither of them is completely unbiased and both are either buying into or laying out painful misconceptions. Thanks for your comment!