Rumspringa
Title: Rumspringa
Author: July
Rating: R
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: none
Warnings: Minors in jeopardy.
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. And that’s probably for the best, really.
Notes: Beta’d by pdragon76. She’s a cruel persecutor of italics everywhere and her feedback ought to be classified by the DoD. It's that good.
Summary: I don’t know if you notice anything missing, like the leaves on the trees or my clothes all over the floor. I don’t know if you even notice at all. Cause I was real quiet when I closed the door. -Fink, “This Is The Thing”
RUMSPRINGA
In October of 1995, Dean walked out of an apartment building in Tampa with the clothes on his back and a semi-automatic.
Then he walked off the reservation.
][
“Hiya, Jim. The seventies called. They want their mustache back.”
“Holy shit, Dean.”
“Careful, Padre.” Dean clapped Jim on the shoulder as he stepped inside.
“Thank God. Just...are you okay?”
Dean was okay. He had a little cash left from Atlanta, a motorcycle from Stillwater, a hot gas card from Tulsa, and he ate yesterday. He wasn’t dressed for the weather yet, not up here, but he was thawing out pretty fast now. He shaved at a rest stop before he came and changed shirts. He was doing a pretty good job of being okay.
“Where’d you get the bike?”
“Oklahoma.”
That was all he was really prepared to say on the subject, so he let the conversation drop while Jim started a pot of coffee. The noise of the percolator filled the room while they both made a point of saying nothing. Silence never seemed to bother Jim. He’d been serving a Lutheran congregation for twenty years. It wasn’t until Dean had a mug of coffee in his hands that Jim decided to have another go at it.
“Two weeks, Dean. Two weeks. Your dad’s fixing to have kittens.”
“I’ll bet.” Dean nodded, a tired half-smirk on his face. “Look, I gotta take a leak. Go ahead and call him. You’re going to anyway.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“Your poker face sucks. Besides, I haven’t even been covering my tracks since Oklahoma. He can’t be further than Illinois, tops. Maybe Indiana, if he-”
Jim, God love him, was an open fucking book. Your poker face sucks, Dean thought. He pushed the mug of coffee away. Suddenly it was too hot in there. It was cloying.
“Jim,” he said quietly. “Where’s my Dad?”
“Tampa.”
“Tampa,” Dean repeated. “And let me guess. Sammy has no idea. Thinks I’m off on an errand for Dad. Training with Bobby, maybe?”
“Helping Jefferson roof his house in Pennsylvania.”
“That’s a good one. I wouldn’t have thought of that one.”
“Dean, your dad’s just trying to-“
“I get it,” he said coolly.
“Dean-“ It was too late, though. Dean was already on his feet and the hell with the coffee. The hell with the pity.
“He thinks I’m gonna get tired and feel bad and come home. Like I don’t have a choice. Like the family dog.”
“Dean-“
Jim followed him out onto the porch, into the Minnesota winter. Dean was a step ahead of him, buttoning up his coat and grabbing his helmet.
“Tell him...whatever the hell you want.”
][
In Michigan, Dean stole some more clothes and found work at a Christmas tree farm. ‘Twas the season and nobody looked too close at his paperwork. He was there two weeks until they found out he was bunking in one of the equipment sheds. At least they paid him before they escorted him off the property.
He stood on the road for a while, couldn’t help wondering about Sammy’s science fair. Dean hoped he went for the volcano. That shit is classic. Sam. Baking soda. A blue ribbon. But Sam had big plans for some kind of osmosis cell thing. Dean preferred the volcano. His approach to education had always been yes, but when can I make it blow up? Never failed to drive Sam crazy. Sam and his calculus and his twelve-year old war against the establishment.
Shit. Did you think this was gonna be easy, you fucking pussy?
It hurt for a minute, made his chest tight. The family dog. So Dean decided to pretend. Just for a while. Nobody looking out for him but him. Nobody who needed him but the bike. And all of a sudden, it was like he’d been cut loose from a poorly set anchor.
Going is easier.
Dean didn’t even think to be scared. He just got gone.
][
In Ohio, Dean was hungry enough that he had to find a soup kitchen. It rankled his pride, but his survival instinct ran a hell of a lot deeper than his amour propre. The lady serving was a wizened battleaxe of a Baptist with a shiny cross necklace and a sparkly t-shirt that read Jesus Loves You.
“I don’t believe in God. Do I still get soup?”
“We make a special batch just for the atheists.”
][
He’d dropped some weight in the month since he left Florida. It didn’t bother him except his jeans were riding low and he kept buying gas instead of a belt. He was hustling pool in a bar outside of Kansas City when his mark walked right up and shoved a grimy hand down the front of his pants.
Dean broke the guy’s face open with his cue. He took his money and then he got on I-64 and headed east for an hour before he had to pull over on the shoulder and freak the fuck out for a minute. He didn’t even get off the bike, just held onto the handlebars and shook until he stopped. I handled it. It wasn’t that bad, nothing really happened, and I handled it. He looked around at the cars flying by for about ten minutes before he pulled his shit together, turned around, and headed west and then north.
I handled it.
][
“Fuck,” was the first thing Caleb said. He looked at Dean with some combination of worry and mistrust, and then he let Dean inside. Really, he’d have to be a pretty heartless bastard not to. “Fuck.”
Dean smiled at him, set his backpack down in the hallway, and rubbed his hands together in a credible imitation of confidence.
“I’m calling your dad.”
“And hello to you, too, Caleb.”
“I’m calling your dad.”
“I’m good, thanks for asking.”
“I’m calling your dad.”
“Look, I just need a-“
“I don’t get involved in Winchester family bullshit. That’s what Murphy’s for.” Dean was pretty sure he meant it. John had a reputation and the reputation was this: The Winchester Family was the third fucking rail. If you touched it, you died.
“Caleb.”
“I’m calling your dad.”
“Caleb.”
He wouldn’t plead, goddammit. He wouldn’t plead. Something crossed Caleb’s face. Dean had gotten better at reading people over the last month. He’d had to. His life had become a series of fight or flight responses punctuated by random acts of kindness. Caleb looked...sympathetic. For the first time, Dean wondered how Caleb had gotten into the game.
“I’m calling your dad. Just as soon as I finish my beer.”
“Oh. And how long...”
“Probably long enough for you to grab a shower and do a load of laundry.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m calling your Dad.”
“Yeah, I love you, too.”
It was probably the longest beer Caleb had ever had. Dean threw the contents of his duffel into the washing machine and went to take a shower. He shut the door behind him and locked it. He stared at it for a second and then he unlocked it, shook his head and started the hot water. Caleb was still nursing that Bud when Dean stepped into some clean clothes. Before he finished it, Dean was at the table with a bowl of hot chili and a cup of black coffee in front of him. As it turned out, Caleb was a pretty good guy.
“Do you know...is Sam okay?”
“Far as I know.”
“This isn’t, um, I hate to ask you for another favor, but I need a gun.”
“You left home without a gun?”
“I had to ditch it in Utah. Spent 48 hours in lockup. Vagrancy.”
“Shit.”
“I kept my knife, but that gun wasn’t registered. Do you have…anything?”
“Do bears shit in the woods? Of course I have a fucking gun for you.”
][
In Spokane, the wind chill dropped to minus ten and Dean didn’t have cash for a room. It was gonna be a long night, he thought, nothing he couldn’t handle, though. But then he saw his first bumsicle. He swallowed down something bitter and got a tip about a youth shelter run by an Orthodox congregation downtown. Shelters made his skin crawl so he spent the night chatting up his host, a rabbinical student named Yosef with an anemic beard.
“Why do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Help people.”
“Tikkun olam.”
“Well. Glad we cleared that up.”
“It means ‘perfecting the world’,” Yosef said. “Every mitzvah I perform helps heal a broken world and brings the Messiah a little closer to his arrival.”
“Can I tell you something? If you don’t work on that beard, none of the other rabbis are gonna take you seriously.”
“Tell me about it.”
][
If you’d asked Dean how he ended up in Anchorage, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you. He would’ve told you, though, that the place was fucking freezing. He found a truck stop in desperate need of a mechanic and in exchange, Dean leveraged three squares a day and a place to sleep. They showed him to a windowless room with a temperamental radiator and a door that locked from the inside. Dean almost cried with relief. He stayed there a month.
Two weeks before Christmas, a trucker named Big Top accidentally dropped the hood of his sleeper cab on Dean’s right hand. Dean did cry a little then because Holy Mother of God he could feel the edges of the little bones grinding against each other. The worst part was that Dean had no money. None.
He worked as best he could with his left hand. The right one wasn’t good for much, but he could still make it hold a socket wrench when he really needed it. He chewed Advil like bubblegum. At night, he lay perfectly still in his bed with his right arm propped up on a crate beside him and wondered if it would be worth the trouble to just cut the fucking thing off.
Couple days later, Dean slipped on a patch of black ice, broke his fall with the wrong hand and actually blacked out. When he came to, he hitched a ride to the ER where he waited for five hours next to a kid named Robbie who sneezed on him.
Dean gave them one of the family credit cards. In return, the doctor told him if he fucked his hand up anymore, he was looking at surgery. Dean lifted the guy’s wallet and left Alaska with a fiberglass cast, a bottle of Vicodin, and Robbie’s cold.
][
“Get your sorry ass in here,” Bobby said and damn, he looked pretty pissed. “You get your sorry ass in here and maybe just maybe I let you live. You didn’t call me, Dean. Two months and you didn’t call me. Two months.”
“I didn’t-“
“I’m Uncle Bobby goddammit!” he yelled. Just as fast, though, Bobby wasn’t angry so much as something else. “You call me, Dean. You call me no matter what. Jesus Christ. Did you think I’d nark on you? Did you think I wouldn’t take you in?”
Dean sneezed and studied the floor.
“Jesus, Dean.”
“I take it Dad’s looking for me now.”
“Your dad’s tearing his hair out. I swear to God he’s aged ten years since October,” Bobby said.
Dean wasn’t sure if he could trust that or not. That spooked him a little. Dad had taught him how to disappear, but not how to surface. But two months was a long time for anybody to be gone. Even me. Dean coughed like an old man and refused to meet Bobby’s eyes.
“C’mon. I think you left some stuff here last time. Shirt, sweats, maybe.”
“Yeah? I...I could go make up the couch.”
“Couch has been made up since October.”
Dean nodded and Bobby shuffled him off to the shower, which Dean was perfectly fine with because, really, he was starting to smell like pool hall and feet. He wrapped his cast in a plastic bag, stood under the hottest water he could tolerate and hoped that one day he’d be warm again.
“You want something for that cold?” Bobby asked after Dean sneezed again, wiping his nose miserably on the cuff of his clean shirt. Dean declined and shook out a couple of Vicodin for himself. He thought maybe the weather outside had helped numb his hand a little, because cutting it off was starting to seem like an option again. It was making his stomach roll and, he was pretty sure, sucking the will to live right out of him.
Bobby announced his intention to study ancient Sumerian curses for the rest of the afternoon and unfolded the couch. It wasn’t even five, but Dean couldn’t be bothered to give a shit. He felt like the oldest sixteen-year old on the planet. He stood up, a little lightheaded now that the Vicodin was kicking in. The couch was available, it was loaded with blankets, and Bobby was studying Sumerian. Dean decided to take the hint. He paused, one hand on the kitchen doorway for balance.
“Hey. Don’t call Dad yet.”
“Okay,” Bobby nodded. “Not yet.”
“Not yet,” Dean repeated.
“Hit the hay, kid.”
Not five minutes later, somebody was shaking him awake. The first time in months he’d been fucking warm and some jackass was waking him up. He was doped up and slow and Dean couldn’t figure why the hell he’d done something as stupid as let his guard down. Then again, the place looked kind of familiar. Bobby’s house. And...hey, there’s Bobby. I’ll be damned.
“What?” he growled, swiping clumsily at Bobby’s hands.
“It’s Sam,” Bobby said. And that was enough to kick Dean onto his feet. He was slow but he wasn’t that slow and this was the last straw.
“You called him?” he asked hoarsely.
“What? No.”
“You said you wouldn’t call him. I can’t believe you called him.”
“Dean-listen to me. I didn’t call him.”
“And that’s a cheap fucking trick, too.” Dean’s voice broke. “Using Sam. That’s pretty low.”
“Dean. Dean!” Bobby grabbed him by the shoulder, jarring his bad hand and shutting him up. “I didn’t call John. He called me from Anchorage. He can’t get a flight out and Sam’s in the hospital and he’s alone.”
“Holy shit.”
“Get your shoes on.”
][
Dean didn’t know exactly how many laws they broke on the way to Florida, but he was guessing a lot. They went straight through all day and all night, stopping only for gas and coffee. Bobby refused to let him drive and made him take the Vicodin, too. Dean slept a little, wrapped up in an old coat, jolting awake every time he heard a Mack truck.
Bobby dropped him off at the entrance to Tampa General and Dean, sick or not, busted arm or not, had never in his life run so fast. Dean only knew what Bobby knew: John had given consent over the phone. And Sam was fine now. Dean didn’t get how that was even fucking possible since his little brother was alone in a hospital.
When Dean found him, Sam was smiling at a pretty nurse and pushing Jell-O around his plate. He saw Dean, and Dean saw him, and then Sam totally came unglued. Dean cussed and elbowed past the nurse into the room. God, he hated it when his brother cried.
“Come on, Sammy,” Dean half-sat on the bed. “It’s not even that bad, dude. It’s not even that bad.” He ruffled Sam’s hair and checked for a temperature with the palm of his hand. He didn’t even mean to. It was just one of those muscle memory things. No fever. Good. Sam looked a little washed out, but they were giving him Jell-O now. That was a good sign, too.
“I’m not... I missed you. ‘S all.” Sam rubbed his eyes and pulled it together. “Where were you?”
“Scoot. Wait, can you scoot?”
Sam nodded, scooted and Dean climbed onto the bed, throwing his good arm around his little brother. Sam was staring at him and Dean remembered how bad he’d looked in the mirror at Bobby’s. The fluorescent lights probably weren’t doing him any favors.
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Liar. What happened to your hand?”
“I fell off Jefferson’s roof.”
“Dumbass.”
“Shaddup. So, do you get to keep it?”
“Keep what?”
“The appendix, stupid. You could put it in a jar and keep it next to the bed. Do you think it would taste good with fava beans and a nice Chianti?”
“That’s gross, Dean,” Sam said and yawned.
“Want to hear about Pennsylvania?”
“Sure.”
“Jefferson’s house is out in the middle of nowhere, Amish country. Every time I left to make a trip to Home Depot, I passed like eight buggies on the way there...”
Sam fell asleep before Dean could even start in on the fictional rooms in Jefferson’s imaginary house. Bobby appeared in the door with a cup of coffee and a handful of Vicodin. Dean took the coffee and pocketed the Vicodin. He’d been gone more than two months and he wanted to keep his head in the game for a while. Dean watched Sam sleep and felt like the worst big brother in the history of time.
][
John’s flight was late. Dean was dozing lightly, the pain in his hand tethering him to consciousness. He woke up the moment his father’s shadow fell in the doorway. John was frozen in the door for a solid minute before Dean climbed carefully out of the bed to meet his fate. His dad looked wrecked. He had eight weeks’ worth of beard and real grey in it for the first time. He was looking at Dean with disbelief, anger, and maybe a shadow of fear. Part of Dean really, really wanted to bolt.
John took a step forward and Dean thought he’s got every right to throw me out and never look back. It knocked the fight right out of him. He coughed into the crook of his right elbow and cradled the bad hand against his chest. John’s voice was low and gravelly.
“You sick?”
“No.”
“What happened to your hand?”
“It’s broken. I fell off Jefferson’s roof.”
John covered his eyes for a moment and then looked towards the ceiling. If Dean didn’t know better, he might have thought his dad was getting ready to cry. But before he could really process that, Dad had crossed the room and was holding onto Dean so hard all he could breathe was leather and sweat and gunmetal.
John released him just as fast and Dean swayed a little on his feet. There was an awkward silence filled by the beeping of machines down the hall. Dean muffled a sneeze. Dad just watched him.
“Dean.”
“Yeah.”
“You can’t-you can’t do this again. I thought, I don’t know what I thought, but I-you can’t do this again. You’re my son and if you leave like this again, I’m not gonna make it. I swear to God, Dean. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do.”
Dean was pretty sure he wasn’t lying. Sammy was asleep behind them, safe with his family. Dean thought about leaving things as they were, but his hand was throbbing in time with his pulse, the pain was starting to make him nauseous and he generally felt like death warmed over. And, honestly, Dad was right about one thing: this shit couldn’t happen again. So he said it.
“Don’t ever bet against me again.”
No spoilers past 4.10, please!
Author: July
Rating: R
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: none
Warnings: Minors in jeopardy.
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. And that’s probably for the best, really.
Notes: Beta’d by pdragon76. She’s a cruel persecutor of italics everywhere and her feedback ought to be classified by the DoD. It's that good.
Summary: I don’t know if you notice anything missing, like the leaves on the trees or my clothes all over the floor. I don’t know if you even notice at all. Cause I was real quiet when I closed the door. -Fink, “This Is The Thing”
RUMSPRINGA
In October of 1995, Dean walked out of an apartment building in Tampa with the clothes on his back and a semi-automatic.
Then he walked off the reservation.
][
“Hiya, Jim. The seventies called. They want their mustache back.”
“Holy shit, Dean.”
“Careful, Padre.” Dean clapped Jim on the shoulder as he stepped inside.
“Thank God. Just...are you okay?”
Dean was okay. He had a little cash left from Atlanta, a motorcycle from Stillwater, a hot gas card from Tulsa, and he ate yesterday. He wasn’t dressed for the weather yet, not up here, but he was thawing out pretty fast now. He shaved at a rest stop before he came and changed shirts. He was doing a pretty good job of being okay.
“Where’d you get the bike?”
“Oklahoma.”
That was all he was really prepared to say on the subject, so he let the conversation drop while Jim started a pot of coffee. The noise of the percolator filled the room while they both made a point of saying nothing. Silence never seemed to bother Jim. He’d been serving a Lutheran congregation for twenty years. It wasn’t until Dean had a mug of coffee in his hands that Jim decided to have another go at it.
“Two weeks, Dean. Two weeks. Your dad’s fixing to have kittens.”
“I’ll bet.” Dean nodded, a tired half-smirk on his face. “Look, I gotta take a leak. Go ahead and call him. You’re going to anyway.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“Your poker face sucks. Besides, I haven’t even been covering my tracks since Oklahoma. He can’t be further than Illinois, tops. Maybe Indiana, if he-”
Jim, God love him, was an open fucking book. Your poker face sucks, Dean thought. He pushed the mug of coffee away. Suddenly it was too hot in there. It was cloying.
“Jim,” he said quietly. “Where’s my Dad?”
“Tampa.”
“Tampa,” Dean repeated. “And let me guess. Sammy has no idea. Thinks I’m off on an errand for Dad. Training with Bobby, maybe?”
“Helping Jefferson roof his house in Pennsylvania.”
“That’s a good one. I wouldn’t have thought of that one.”
“Dean, your dad’s just trying to-“
“I get it,” he said coolly.
“Dean-“ It was too late, though. Dean was already on his feet and the hell with the coffee. The hell with the pity.
“He thinks I’m gonna get tired and feel bad and come home. Like I don’t have a choice. Like the family dog.”
“Dean-“
Jim followed him out onto the porch, into the Minnesota winter. Dean was a step ahead of him, buttoning up his coat and grabbing his helmet.
“Tell him...whatever the hell you want.”
][
In Michigan, Dean stole some more clothes and found work at a Christmas tree farm. ‘Twas the season and nobody looked too close at his paperwork. He was there two weeks until they found out he was bunking in one of the equipment sheds. At least they paid him before they escorted him off the property.
He stood on the road for a while, couldn’t help wondering about Sammy’s science fair. Dean hoped he went for the volcano. That shit is classic. Sam. Baking soda. A blue ribbon. But Sam had big plans for some kind of osmosis cell thing. Dean preferred the volcano. His approach to education had always been yes, but when can I make it blow up? Never failed to drive Sam crazy. Sam and his calculus and his twelve-year old war against the establishment.
Shit. Did you think this was gonna be easy, you fucking pussy?
It hurt for a minute, made his chest tight. The family dog. So Dean decided to pretend. Just for a while. Nobody looking out for him but him. Nobody who needed him but the bike. And all of a sudden, it was like he’d been cut loose from a poorly set anchor.
Going is easier.
Dean didn’t even think to be scared. He just got gone.
][
In Ohio, Dean was hungry enough that he had to find a soup kitchen. It rankled his pride, but his survival instinct ran a hell of a lot deeper than his amour propre. The lady serving was a wizened battleaxe of a Baptist with a shiny cross necklace and a sparkly t-shirt that read Jesus Loves You.
“I don’t believe in God. Do I still get soup?”
“We make a special batch just for the atheists.”
][
He’d dropped some weight in the month since he left Florida. It didn’t bother him except his jeans were riding low and he kept buying gas instead of a belt. He was hustling pool in a bar outside of Kansas City when his mark walked right up and shoved a grimy hand down the front of his pants.
Dean broke the guy’s face open with his cue. He took his money and then he got on I-64 and headed east for an hour before he had to pull over on the shoulder and freak the fuck out for a minute. He didn’t even get off the bike, just held onto the handlebars and shook until he stopped. I handled it. It wasn’t that bad, nothing really happened, and I handled it. He looked around at the cars flying by for about ten minutes before he pulled his shit together, turned around, and headed west and then north.
I handled it.
][
“Fuck,” was the first thing Caleb said. He looked at Dean with some combination of worry and mistrust, and then he let Dean inside. Really, he’d have to be a pretty heartless bastard not to. “Fuck.”
Dean smiled at him, set his backpack down in the hallway, and rubbed his hands together in a credible imitation of confidence.
“I’m calling your dad.”
“And hello to you, too, Caleb.”
“I’m calling your dad.”
“I’m good, thanks for asking.”
“I’m calling your dad.”
“Look, I just need a-“
“I don’t get involved in Winchester family bullshit. That’s what Murphy’s for.” Dean was pretty sure he meant it. John had a reputation and the reputation was this: The Winchester Family was the third fucking rail. If you touched it, you died.
“Caleb.”
“I’m calling your dad.”
“Caleb.”
He wouldn’t plead, goddammit. He wouldn’t plead. Something crossed Caleb’s face. Dean had gotten better at reading people over the last month. He’d had to. His life had become a series of fight or flight responses punctuated by random acts of kindness. Caleb looked...sympathetic. For the first time, Dean wondered how Caleb had gotten into the game.
“I’m calling your dad. Just as soon as I finish my beer.”
“Oh. And how long...”
“Probably long enough for you to grab a shower and do a load of laundry.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m calling your Dad.”
“Yeah, I love you, too.”
It was probably the longest beer Caleb had ever had. Dean threw the contents of his duffel into the washing machine and went to take a shower. He shut the door behind him and locked it. He stared at it for a second and then he unlocked it, shook his head and started the hot water. Caleb was still nursing that Bud when Dean stepped into some clean clothes. Before he finished it, Dean was at the table with a bowl of hot chili and a cup of black coffee in front of him. As it turned out, Caleb was a pretty good guy.
“Do you know...is Sam okay?”
“Far as I know.”
“This isn’t, um, I hate to ask you for another favor, but I need a gun.”
“You left home without a gun?”
“I had to ditch it in Utah. Spent 48 hours in lockup. Vagrancy.”
“Shit.”
“I kept my knife, but that gun wasn’t registered. Do you have…anything?”
“Do bears shit in the woods? Of course I have a fucking gun for you.”
][
In Spokane, the wind chill dropped to minus ten and Dean didn’t have cash for a room. It was gonna be a long night, he thought, nothing he couldn’t handle, though. But then he saw his first bumsicle. He swallowed down something bitter and got a tip about a youth shelter run by an Orthodox congregation downtown. Shelters made his skin crawl so he spent the night chatting up his host, a rabbinical student named Yosef with an anemic beard.
“Why do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Help people.”
“Tikkun olam.”
“Well. Glad we cleared that up.”
“It means ‘perfecting the world’,” Yosef said. “Every mitzvah I perform helps heal a broken world and brings the Messiah a little closer to his arrival.”
“Can I tell you something? If you don’t work on that beard, none of the other rabbis are gonna take you seriously.”
“Tell me about it.”
][
If you’d asked Dean how he ended up in Anchorage, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you. He would’ve told you, though, that the place was fucking freezing. He found a truck stop in desperate need of a mechanic and in exchange, Dean leveraged three squares a day and a place to sleep. They showed him to a windowless room with a temperamental radiator and a door that locked from the inside. Dean almost cried with relief. He stayed there a month.
Two weeks before Christmas, a trucker named Big Top accidentally dropped the hood of his sleeper cab on Dean’s right hand. Dean did cry a little then because Holy Mother of God he could feel the edges of the little bones grinding against each other. The worst part was that Dean had no money. None.
He worked as best he could with his left hand. The right one wasn’t good for much, but he could still make it hold a socket wrench when he really needed it. He chewed Advil like bubblegum. At night, he lay perfectly still in his bed with his right arm propped up on a crate beside him and wondered if it would be worth the trouble to just cut the fucking thing off.
Couple days later, Dean slipped on a patch of black ice, broke his fall with the wrong hand and actually blacked out. When he came to, he hitched a ride to the ER where he waited for five hours next to a kid named Robbie who sneezed on him.
Dean gave them one of the family credit cards. In return, the doctor told him if he fucked his hand up anymore, he was looking at surgery. Dean lifted the guy’s wallet and left Alaska with a fiberglass cast, a bottle of Vicodin, and Robbie’s cold.
][
“Get your sorry ass in here,” Bobby said and damn, he looked pretty pissed. “You get your sorry ass in here and maybe just maybe I let you live. You didn’t call me, Dean. Two months and you didn’t call me. Two months.”
“I didn’t-“
“I’m Uncle Bobby goddammit!” he yelled. Just as fast, though, Bobby wasn’t angry so much as something else. “You call me, Dean. You call me no matter what. Jesus Christ. Did you think I’d nark on you? Did you think I wouldn’t take you in?”
Dean sneezed and studied the floor.
“Jesus, Dean.”
“I take it Dad’s looking for me now.”
“Your dad’s tearing his hair out. I swear to God he’s aged ten years since October,” Bobby said.
Dean wasn’t sure if he could trust that or not. That spooked him a little. Dad had taught him how to disappear, but not how to surface. But two months was a long time for anybody to be gone. Even me. Dean coughed like an old man and refused to meet Bobby’s eyes.
“C’mon. I think you left some stuff here last time. Shirt, sweats, maybe.”
“Yeah? I...I could go make up the couch.”
“Couch has been made up since October.”
Dean nodded and Bobby shuffled him off to the shower, which Dean was perfectly fine with because, really, he was starting to smell like pool hall and feet. He wrapped his cast in a plastic bag, stood under the hottest water he could tolerate and hoped that one day he’d be warm again.
“You want something for that cold?” Bobby asked after Dean sneezed again, wiping his nose miserably on the cuff of his clean shirt. Dean declined and shook out a couple of Vicodin for himself. He thought maybe the weather outside had helped numb his hand a little, because cutting it off was starting to seem like an option again. It was making his stomach roll and, he was pretty sure, sucking the will to live right out of him.
Bobby announced his intention to study ancient Sumerian curses for the rest of the afternoon and unfolded the couch. It wasn’t even five, but Dean couldn’t be bothered to give a shit. He felt like the oldest sixteen-year old on the planet. He stood up, a little lightheaded now that the Vicodin was kicking in. The couch was available, it was loaded with blankets, and Bobby was studying Sumerian. Dean decided to take the hint. He paused, one hand on the kitchen doorway for balance.
“Hey. Don’t call Dad yet.”
“Okay,” Bobby nodded. “Not yet.”
“Not yet,” Dean repeated.
“Hit the hay, kid.”
Not five minutes later, somebody was shaking him awake. The first time in months he’d been fucking warm and some jackass was waking him up. He was doped up and slow and Dean couldn’t figure why the hell he’d done something as stupid as let his guard down. Then again, the place looked kind of familiar. Bobby’s house. And...hey, there’s Bobby. I’ll be damned.
“What?” he growled, swiping clumsily at Bobby’s hands.
“It’s Sam,” Bobby said. And that was enough to kick Dean onto his feet. He was slow but he wasn’t that slow and this was the last straw.
“You called him?” he asked hoarsely.
“What? No.”
“You said you wouldn’t call him. I can’t believe you called him.”
“Dean-listen to me. I didn’t call him.”
“And that’s a cheap fucking trick, too.” Dean’s voice broke. “Using Sam. That’s pretty low.”
“Dean. Dean!” Bobby grabbed him by the shoulder, jarring his bad hand and shutting him up. “I didn’t call John. He called me from Anchorage. He can’t get a flight out and Sam’s in the hospital and he’s alone.”
“Holy shit.”
“Get your shoes on.”
][
Dean didn’t know exactly how many laws they broke on the way to Florida, but he was guessing a lot. They went straight through all day and all night, stopping only for gas and coffee. Bobby refused to let him drive and made him take the Vicodin, too. Dean slept a little, wrapped up in an old coat, jolting awake every time he heard a Mack truck.
Bobby dropped him off at the entrance to Tampa General and Dean, sick or not, busted arm or not, had never in his life run so fast. Dean only knew what Bobby knew: John had given consent over the phone. And Sam was fine now. Dean didn’t get how that was even fucking possible since his little brother was alone in a hospital.
When Dean found him, Sam was smiling at a pretty nurse and pushing Jell-O around his plate. He saw Dean, and Dean saw him, and then Sam totally came unglued. Dean cussed and elbowed past the nurse into the room. God, he hated it when his brother cried.
“Come on, Sammy,” Dean half-sat on the bed. “It’s not even that bad, dude. It’s not even that bad.” He ruffled Sam’s hair and checked for a temperature with the palm of his hand. He didn’t even mean to. It was just one of those muscle memory things. No fever. Good. Sam looked a little washed out, but they were giving him Jell-O now. That was a good sign, too.
“I’m not... I missed you. ‘S all.” Sam rubbed his eyes and pulled it together. “Where were you?”
“Scoot. Wait, can you scoot?”
Sam nodded, scooted and Dean climbed onto the bed, throwing his good arm around his little brother. Sam was staring at him and Dean remembered how bad he’d looked in the mirror at Bobby’s. The fluorescent lights probably weren’t doing him any favors.
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Liar. What happened to your hand?”
“I fell off Jefferson’s roof.”
“Dumbass.”
“Shaddup. So, do you get to keep it?”
“Keep what?”
“The appendix, stupid. You could put it in a jar and keep it next to the bed. Do you think it would taste good with fava beans and a nice Chianti?”
“That’s gross, Dean,” Sam said and yawned.
“Want to hear about Pennsylvania?”
“Sure.”
“Jefferson’s house is out in the middle of nowhere, Amish country. Every time I left to make a trip to Home Depot, I passed like eight buggies on the way there...”
Sam fell asleep before Dean could even start in on the fictional rooms in Jefferson’s imaginary house. Bobby appeared in the door with a cup of coffee and a handful of Vicodin. Dean took the coffee and pocketed the Vicodin. He’d been gone more than two months and he wanted to keep his head in the game for a while. Dean watched Sam sleep and felt like the worst big brother in the history of time.
][
John’s flight was late. Dean was dozing lightly, the pain in his hand tethering him to consciousness. He woke up the moment his father’s shadow fell in the doorway. John was frozen in the door for a solid minute before Dean climbed carefully out of the bed to meet his fate. His dad looked wrecked. He had eight weeks’ worth of beard and real grey in it for the first time. He was looking at Dean with disbelief, anger, and maybe a shadow of fear. Part of Dean really, really wanted to bolt.
John took a step forward and Dean thought he’s got every right to throw me out and never look back. It knocked the fight right out of him. He coughed into the crook of his right elbow and cradled the bad hand against his chest. John’s voice was low and gravelly.
“You sick?”
“No.”
“What happened to your hand?”
“It’s broken. I fell off Jefferson’s roof.”
John covered his eyes for a moment and then looked towards the ceiling. If Dean didn’t know better, he might have thought his dad was getting ready to cry. But before he could really process that, Dad had crossed the room and was holding onto Dean so hard all he could breathe was leather and sweat and gunmetal.
John released him just as fast and Dean swayed a little on his feet. There was an awkward silence filled by the beeping of machines down the hall. Dean muffled a sneeze. Dad just watched him.
“Dean.”
“Yeah.”
“You can’t-you can’t do this again. I thought, I don’t know what I thought, but I-you can’t do this again. You’re my son and if you leave like this again, I’m not gonna make it. I swear to God, Dean. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do.”
Dean was pretty sure he wasn’t lying. Sammy was asleep behind them, safe with his family. Dean thought about leaving things as they were, but his hand was throbbing in time with his pulse, the pain was starting to make him nauseous and he generally felt like death warmed over. And, honestly, Dad was right about one thing: this shit couldn’t happen again. So he said it.
“Don’t ever bet against me again.”
No spoilers past 4.10, please!