Home On the Highway
Title: Home On the Highway
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 5000
Disclaimer: Not my boys. Kripke broke them long before I ever got to them.
Summary: Wee!Dean worries himself sick while he and Sammy are stuck with their evil (not really evil at all) foster parents.
Written for the Dean focused h/c fic & art challenge on hoodie_time. Let's pretend this sort of fills my prompt m'kay?
The Hilliards aren’t what Dean expected when the scary lady at the police station started talking about foster care.
Foster care.
The words alone are enough to conjure up images of redneck nut jobs who buy kids off the government for cheap labor. People who lock kids in the basement and beat them with sticks.
The Hilliards look…clean for lack of a better word. Clean and polished with purses and Levis and shining white sneakers. Dean supposes he could still end up getting beat in the basement, but at least it’ll be a clean one.
They’re sitting on a bench in a long hallway, him and Sammy, and Mr. and Mrs. Hilliard are smiling when they come out of the judge’s office. They keep smiling, even though Mrs. Hilliard looks sad for a second when she takes in Sammy’s baggy shirt and Dean’s jeans with the holes in both knees.
“Hi,” she says and Dean scrambles to his feet, Sammy right behind him, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re talking to a lady.
“Hi,” Sam answers after a second when he realizes Dean isn’t going to talk.
Dean doesn’t want to talk to them. Doesn’t want to talk to CPS and foster parents and he just wants to go back to the motel room and have enough money to pay the manager before he calls the cops to look into the two boys who never have a parent around.
He wants Dad to have a phone he can take with him on hunts so he isn’t unreachable for forever.
The cops took all their things, even the .22 Dean kept under his pillow and the case of expired fake ID’s and Dean doesn’t know much, but he knows Dad won’t be able to go to the cops and ask for them back once he comes back and finds empty beds in an empty motel room.
Sam talks to the Hilliards all the way to the car, chattering away like they’re just another pair of babysitters and Dean trudges after them. He could make a run for the trash cans behind the court house. He’s quick on his feet like that, can outrun every kid his age and most adults even in his ratty sneakers that are kind of small and cut into the side of his toes.
Mrs. Hilliard’s got Sam’s hand wrapped up in hers though, so Dean has to stay.
They have a nice car. Not cool like the Impala, but nice.
Getting blood out of the soft, fuzzy upholstery would be a bitch though and Dean doesn’t think they could fit too many weapons in the trunk, so it’s not much good as cars go, anyway.
Sammy leans over in the backseat so his seatbelt cuts into his neck and his mouth is right next to Dean’s ear.
“They aren’t evil,” he whispers in a voice that’s loud enough to cut through the stupid Michael Jackson song coming from the radio.
Mrs. Hilliard smiles at them in the rear view mirror.
Dean mumbles “Christo” under his breath and is really sort of surprised when they don’t flinch.
Their house is nice too. With a yard and a blue fence and paint that isn’t peeling off.
It looks like the kind of house a family on TV would live in. The mom and dad and their two kids and maybe even a golden retriever who’s way cleverer than any real-life dog.
For a moment it feels like Dean can’t breathe. His lungs just stop working and grey spots start dancing up and down in front of the bright sky like all the blood in his body is rushing down to settle in his feet.
Then Mr. Hilliard puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder and says, “c’mon now, kiddo,” and Dean sucks in such a huge gulp of air he ends up coughing.
“Do we have our own room?” Sammy asks. His hand is already wrapped around Mrs. Hilliard’s again and something dark and hot and angry settles in Dean’s stomach before it turns to icy cold.
Dean remembers when he used to have a room just for himself. Not the small chamber with the twin beds in Uncle Bobby’s attic, but a real room with teddy bears on his shelves and rocket ships painted on the walls and Sammy’s room right down the hall. His heart stops right in its tracks. What if the Hilliards got them a room each?
He wants to ask but somehow his throat feels thick and full and like he just can’t.
They take a tour of the entire house (looks like straight out of TV just as it did from the outside). Sammy ooh’s and aah’s and Dean tries to yes, sir and yes, ma’am his way through the tour.
“Hey.” Suddenly Mr. Hilliard is bending down so he can look Dean in the eye and he looks sad in a way Dean doesn’t quite get. “Just call me Paul, okay?”
Dean’s lips twitch, but he keeps them from pulling into a full-on frown. “Yes, Paul,” he forces out in exactly the same way he’d say yes, sir.
Mrs. Hilliard is quick to tell them to call her Kelly and Dean makes himself mimic that too. He’s not entirely convinced they aren’t evil, but they’re better than what Dad talks about when he tells them about CPS. It’s not like Dean wants them to keep him and Sam, but he also doesn’t want them to keep Sammy and send Dean back because he can’t do as he’s told.
They only get one room. One room with beds that have Superman covers and Dean is so relieved, he doesn’t even mention how he’s too old for superheroes and Batman would kick Superman’s ass any day of the week, thank you very much.
“You guys like it?” Kelly asks with a hopeful smile and Dean is glad for Sammy’s delighted nod because Dean’s pretty sure he can’t talk through his throat filled with bad.
“There’s clothes in the cupboard over there,” Paul points out. “We didn’t know what sizes you’d be but it’ll do ‘til we can head out to the mall tomorrow.”
Sammy’s eyes grow big at the mention of new clothes from a real mall. Dean misses his dad’s USMC sweater that he forgot to grab when the social worker lady told them to pack their stuff.
It gets quiet after that.
Sammy stares at the toys in the shelf by the window with his eyes all big and saucer-like.
Dean scratches at a little hole in his jeans. He looks down at the floor, wishes it would just open up and swallow him whole.
:: :: ::
“You think Dad’s gonna let us keep all the cool stuff when he picks us up?” Sam asks later.
The Hilliards left them alone in their room, mumbling about getting settled and giving them time and privacy or whatever. Still left the door open on their way out, so Dean’s got a pretty good idea on their feelings on privacy.
Sam can’t keep his hands off the toys in the shelf by the window. He pulls out books and bright markers and little plastic dinosaurs like they’re the coolest thing he’s ever seen. Dean’s throat closes up again at the mention of Dad. He wants to crawl under the bed and close his eyes until Dad isn’t gone and they aren’t stuck with the Hilliards anymore.
He thought about climbing out through the window, but there’s no trees in the yard and besides, Dad won’t be able to find them once they’re living on the streets, so it’s probably better to stay where the cops put them for now.
Dean swallows hard. Breathing doesn’t usually hurt this much.
“De-ean.”
Sammy shoves a stuffed dog in Dean’s face, pretend-growling through his giggles.
“Sure,” Dean shrugs.
He stares at the hallway behind the open door and wonders how long it’ll take for Sam to realize that being in foster care is different from being with babysitters who happen to not be evil.
:: :: ::
Kelly comes up to their room to tell them dinner’s ready. Which is just weird when she could just as well yell for them from downstairs, but Dean’s not about to complain.
He rolls the vegetables around in his mouth. They taste…off. Not in a bad way that tells you you’ve left the can open a couple of days too long. Just off. He forces himself to chew because that’s what Dad always tells them. They can’t be picky with their food.
Dean can eat day-old burgers, pasta that’s been re-heated three days in a row, he knows how to eat dry cereal because the milk went sour a week ago, so he can definitely eat weird vegetables that don’t dissolve when he pushes them against the roof of his mouth.
Kelly is talking about school and how they are lucky they got here during spring break so they’ll have a couple of weeks to get used to their new family. She actually says that. Their new family. Dean kinda wants to take his fork and stick it in her throat.
“Sammy?” Kelly coos. “What’s the matter with your food?”
Dean glances over at his brother’s plate. Sammy has his fingers wrapped around his fork in a death grip, shoving beans and broccoli and meat loaf around on his plate.
“…tastes weird,” he mumbles.
Dean knows he’s thinking about what Dad would do if he caught him complaining about food.
“Tastes fine to me,” Paul shrugs, stuffs a fork-full of vegetables in his mouth to prove his point. “You need vegetables to grow strong, you know.”
Sam’s mouth twitches in that stubborn way that nobody can ever stand.
“It tastes weird,” he insists.
Dean bites down on another off vegetable and Sammy shoots him a dark glare like he does when Dad tells them to do something and Dean does it even though Sam doesn’t want to.
It’s silent around the table for a minute. Dean wills Sammy to just buckle under and eat the damn vegetables, suddenly scared that the sticks and basement idea isn’t so far off after all.
“Uncle Bobby makes me mac’n’cheese.”
He does. When Dad isn’t around to tell him off for coddling them too much, Uncle Bobby has a whole drawer full of canned mac’n’cheese just for them. Dean wants to point out that it’s bad manners complaining about someone’s cooking but suddenly his mind stops.
Uncle Bobby.
Uncle Bobby has cars. Uncle Bobby has cars and a phone with a number Dad made Dean memorize years ago.
Kelly gets up and walks into the kitchen but Dean doesn’t really notice. It’s already dark out. All he has to do is wait for the Hilliards to go to bed so he can sneak back downstairs and call Uncle Bobby and everything’s gonna be okay again.
:: :: ::
It isn’t all that hard staying up until the Hilliards have gone to bed. They send Dean and Sam off to bed at nine (which is even earlier than the bedtime they have when they’re staying with Pastor Jim) and follow about an hour after.
Dean tries not to think about how stupid it makes him feel that he didn’t think of calling Uncle Bobby sooner.
He watches the yellow glowy numbers on their alarm clock for about forty-five minutes after that before he slips out of bed and sneaks downstairs.
The stairs are covered in blue, fluffy carpet, so they don’t even squeak
The phone is high up on the wall in the kitchen. Dean doesn’t dare turn on the lights, even though he’s closed the door. He has to dial blind, walking his fingers along the dial plate like a spider.
“This better be important,” Uncle Bobby growls. He sounds mad through the static but still Dean sags against the wall with relief, his throat closing up all over again.
“Hello?” Bobby growls in his ear. “Who is this?”
Dean’s mouth falls open, he makes a soft sound that doesn’t make much sense but is somehow enough.
“Dean? Dean, ’s that you, boy?”
Dean nods with his eyes closed against the sudden sting.
“Yessir,” he manages even though his voice comes out barely more than a choked-up whisper.
“What’s wrong? Something happen to your daddy?”
Dean feels thick tears spill over and slide down his cheeks.
“I…” he chokes out. “I dun…I don’t know, Uncle Bobby, we’re…we - “
“Hey.” Bobby doesn’t sound mad even though he should be. Dean’s babbling and not giving him much of a report and should have thought of calling days ago. “Hey, calm down, kiddo. Are you hurt?”
Dean sniffs once, drags his sleeve under his stuffy nose.
“No, sir.”
“Your brother hurt?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you need me to come get you?”
Dean nods, sniffs, remembers Bobby can’t see him nodding.
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright, where are ya?”
“C - “ it hurts even saying it. “CPS.”
There’s silence for a moment, then Bobby curses up a streak that would make Dad proud and Dean clings to the receiver in his hands.
He manages to give Bobby the Hilliard’s address, tries to apologize for not calling sooner, but Bobby doesn’t let him. He says some stuff that doesn’t sound nice, but it’s not about Dean and it all drowns in the buzzing in Dean’s ears.
“It’ll take me a couple days to get there,” Bobby tells him. Dean can already hear him moving around. Putting on shoes, taking guns and keys off the walls. “Hang in there, kiddo, alright?”
It sounds like he’s waiting for Dean to say yes, sir, so that’s what Dean does.
He waits for the click of Uncle Bobby hanging up, before he forces his arm up to put the receiver back in place. Then he slides all the way down he wall, his knees weak and trembling and it’s all he can do to stick his fist between his teeth to keep from waking the entire house with his crying.
:: :: ::
Dean’s head hurts the next morning. It gets better when he drinks three glasses of orange juice but doesn’t really go away.
Breakfast is okay. The bacon isn’t as greasy as Dean’s used to, but the pancakes and scrambled eggs taste just fine.
Dean wanders out into the backyard after he’s done carrying the dishes into the kitchen (he wanted to do them all, but Kelly got all weird about it and told him to go play). There’s a tree there, far away from the window to their room, but it doesn’t look like it’d be much use for climbing or hanging swings on it or anything, so Dean just keeps sitting there on the front steps, watching Sammy walk his plastic dinosaurs up and down its roots and listening to the cars going by.
He knows Uncle Bobby said it’d take him a couple of days but that doesn’t stop Dean’s heart from leaping up into his throat every time he hears the sound of an old truck driving up the street.
Dean wishes Bobby had given him a better time frame. How much is a couple of days? One and a half? Three? Twenty?
Well, Dean know it doesn’t take twenty days to get from South Dakota to Petersburg, Virginia. He’d just like to know for sure is all.
He toes off his sneakers before he goes back inside. Kelly sounded real serious about that. Always take off your shoes when you’re in the house, you don’t want to get the carpets dirty.
Dean’s never been to a place that makes you take off your shoes (except for motel pools but those don’t count). Dad always tells them to keep their shoes on as long as they can so they can run whenever they need to.
He’ll just have to explain the shoe thing to Dad when the time comes. He’ll probably be mad, anyway, but Dean figures he's okay with that as long as Dad's alive to even be mad at him.
There are no books in the living room. No books Dean needs, anyway. There’s a whole shelf stuffed with romance novels or something.
They showed them Paul’s office yesterday and the entire back wall was covered in books so Dean sneaks upstairs. He freezes, just stands there and stares when he opens the door and Paul’s in there, sitting at his desk.
Paul looks up too, raises one eyebrow like he’s waiting for Dean to say something.
Dean isn’t sure what to call him. He knows he doesn’t want to be called sir or Mr. Hilliard, but while it’s okay to think of him as Paul, calling him that is definitely not okay. Dean chews on his lips for a second before he comes up with an embarrassing “uhmfg…ah” kind of sound.
His face and ears heat up like crazy. He wants to turn around and just disappear, but Paul’s still looking at him so Dean can’t very well run now.
“What’s the matter?”
Dean opens his mouth to ask for an atlas but all that comes out is another hoarse sound that’s barely more than a loud breath that tickles something in the back of his throat. He swallows and it hurts.
“I was just wonderin’, uh…do you have a…uhm…maps? Sir?”
Paul looks at him kinda weird for a second and Dean feels stupid for taking such a long time to ask and screwing up anyway.
“Sure,” Paul smiles easily. He rolls his chair back until he’s sitting in front of the book shelf at the back of the room. “Come here.”
Dean was really hoping Paul would just give him the book and send him off to not bother him anymore. Instead he picks it out of the shelf, opens it on a random page and beckons Dean over.
Dean hurries the three paces from the door to the desk.
“This is where we are,” Paul says, points at their street on a map of Petersburg. His finger wanders about the page as he points out their church, the school they want Dean to go to, another one for Sam.
Dean’s fingers are itching to flip the pages back until he can look at a map of the entire country, but Dad and Uncle Bobby and sometimes Pastor Jim get real mad when you’re not careful with their books.
Dean starts chewing on his lips again. He can’t help it.
Paul is flipping through the pages until he ends up on the map Dean’s looking for and stops. He watches Dean carefully.
Dean is glad Dad usually needs him to navigate when they’re on the road, so he knows his way around a map pretty well. He finds South Dakota in a single glance and knows Sioux Falls is right at the little dent by the eastern border. He’d really rather figure out the scale with his thumb and get the real distance so he can add it up and divide it by the average speed of Uncle Bobby’s trucks, but Paul’s still watching him, so he has to make due with a quick guess before he thanks Paul (doesn’t call him sir this time which seems to make him happy) and wanders back downstairs.
Dean guesses they’re about a thousand miles away from the salvage yard. Probably more since roads don’t usually go straight from one place to another. And Uncle Bobby’s cars aren’t really all that fast so it’ll take him about twenty-four hours to get here. More, really, because no one in their right mind drives for twenty-four hours straight without sleep unless they want to end up dead with their car wrapped around a tree.
Dean stares at the clock over the doorway, tries to remember what time exactly he called Bobby last night.
His head hurts though and there is a strange pressure on his chest that makes breathing kinda difficult so he gives up and goes back to waiting outside on the front steps until the cold has climbed through his jeans all the way up to his heart.
He goes inside when Kelly tells them it’s time for lunch and then later again for supper, but the cold doesn’t really go away.
:: :: ::
Dean wakes up shivering with his covers drenched in sweat and his throat full of barbed wire. He groans, turns his face into his pillow, wonders how long he can go without swallowing.
“Dean?”
Dean makes a soft, bitten off noise and shakes his head. His lips form the word “no,” but all that comes out is another embarrassing croak.
Sammy’s footsteps hammer in his head, the mattress shifts, then, “Deeaan!”
“Go’way.”
Sam’s hand is too rough on Dean’s shoulder. Dean tries to turn away and starts coughing into his pillow. It’s wet and disgusting, tricking down his chin onto Superman’s chest and Dean’s hands are clenched in front of his chest and throat like it’ll somehow help him not drown.
Time speeds up or slows down for a minute-second-days and eventually Dean isn’t coughing anymore. He takes quick, shallow breaths that make him feel like he’s been running way too fast way too long.
“I can get you Tylenol,” Sammy offers. His hand is still on Dean’s shoulder, burning and chafing and why doesn’t he take it off?
The cops took the duffel with the little orange bottles when they took Dean’s .22 and everything else.
Sammy doesn’t even know where the Hilliards keep their meds.
Dean wets his lips. His tongue tastes like mucus and salt. He goes back to coughing, watches through his lashes as Sam slides off Dean’s bed and climbs back into his own with one of his stupid books in his lap.
Dean feels like shit by the time his mattress shifts again. His skin is burning, tiny armies of a gazillion ants are marching up his back, down his legs.
“Hey, Dean,” Paul says softly, digs his fingers even deeper into Dean’s arm. “What’s wrong?”
Dean draws his knees up to his chest and coughs so hard it feels like he’s spitting up pieces of his lungs.
“He’s sick.” Dean can tell that Sammy’s only just peering over the edge of his book. “You should give him Tylenol.”
“Why didn’t you - “ Paul’s voice grows loud for a second but he catches himself before he even really gets started yelling. “Why didn’t you come get me or Kelly?”
Because we don’t need you, Dean thinks.
They don’t need Paul and his wife to take care of them. Sam and Dean take care of each other just fine.
“Cuz,” Sam says in that tone that’s always accompanied by a big shrug.
Paul sighs like he did when Dean called him sir.
“Can you sit up for me, buddy?”
Paul’s voice rises and falls over the words all wrong and suddenly Dean doesn’t care about all the promises in the world he made to himself. He doesn’t want to screw this up, but Paul’s hands around his shoulders hurt so bad and he’s shaking his head and drawing his arms up over his ears and coughing, coughing, coughing.
:: :: ::
Kelly comes in with a glass of apple juice sometime later (probably not later at all, but Dean can’t open his eyes against the bright light and look at the alarm clock, so he doesn’t know). She makes him drink it all even when he has to stop halfway through to take a deep breath that makes him cough again.
“He’s burning up,” Paul tells her.
Dean closes his eyes and waits. Maybe when he wakes up he won’t feel like shit anymore.
:: :: ::
An hour later he feels even worse.
Kelly’s still sitting next to him when he wakes up again. It looks like she pulled the big swively chair from Paul’s office into their room but Dean can’t open his eyes long enough to be sure.
She tries to give him juice again but it makes him cough even quicker than it did the first time ‘round and it hurts.
Dean tries to hide his face in his pillow again, tries to hide the fact that he’s got tears trickling down his face again, wonders how long it’ll take for him to just shrivel up and die.
Or just sleep until he’s better and Uncle Bobby’s come and brought them back to Dad.
Or…
Dean remembers when he was just a little kid, a little younger than Sammy’s now, he got real sick from taking his jacket off at the playground even though his mom had told him to keep it on. He got puky and everything felt like it was burning and Mom sat with him for three days even though her belly was already real big with his baby brother and it hurt her to be up so much. She stayed right with Dean until he finally felt better, sat next to him on his bed or the couch with her hands all tangled up in his hair.
Dean wants to ask if Kelly knows how to make soup but he doesn’t quite remember what kind he wants and he doesn’t want to get it wrong, so he doesn’t ask.
:: :: ::
They have to prop up his pillows after a while because he can’t even really breathe anymore lying down. He even gets Sammy’s pillow because his own isn’t enough to support his back.
“What…what time is it?” Dean gasps after he’s swallowed down some kind of pills that aren’t Tylenol.
Kelly runs her fingers through his short hair.
“Just after noon, why do you ask?”
Dean tries to add up the hours but can’t quite get his numbers straight. He shrugs, mumbles, “seems later,” and turns his head towards the window.
:: :: ::
Dean wonders when the air got so thin. It’s like breathing through a straw. Everything’s wet and dry at the same time and no matter how often he tries to breathe, it still doesn’t keep his chest from hurting.
Paul brings him crackers and Sammy curls up next to him. He says he wants to read a story from his stupid book about the bunny or rabbit or whatever, but Dean thinks he really only wants to steal his crackers so he doesn’t have to eat the weird mac’n’cheese Kelly makes that don’t come from a can.
Dean’s okay with that. Sam can have all the crackers he wants.
:: :: ::
It’s dark when he wakes up again.
Dean startles awake and ends up choking on his coughs before he’s done drawing in a full breath of air.
He looks around to figure out what woke him but can’t quite put his finger on it.
Swallowing still hurts like crazy. Almost as much as breathing or moving his head.
He hears the sound again but everything’s too hazy to really focus on a single little thing. Sammy mumbles something over on the other side of the room. Guilt settles high up in Dean’s throat.
Suddenly his stomach turns and it’s all he can do to keep from puking his guts out right over the edge of his bed.
He closes his eyes just for a second to sooth the horrible burn. Just a second and then he’s gonna get up and find out what’s going on.
His eyes fly open again, but it feels like more than a second later.
Somebody’s sitting on the edge of his bed. Somebody who isn’t Paul or Kelly and who very definitely isn’t Sam.
Dean’s heart freezes in his chest. He opens his mouth and all that comes out is another bitten-off whimper sound that won’t help him fight at all.
“Jesus, kid, did ya swallow an engine block?”
“Bo…’nlce Bobby?”
It hurts so bad saying it and suddenly the barbed wire closes tighter around his throat and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t keep from crying. His entire body’s shaking, he’s sobbing and coughing and trying to apologize for stuff he doesn’t even know.
“Hey…hey, kiddo.”
Bobby’s arms around Dean’s shoulders hurt just as much as Paul’s did earlier, but Dean doesn’t care. He throws himself into the flannel and coffee and motor oil.
“You got anything here we need to take?”
Bobby swipes his hand over Dean’s forehead in a motion that would push sweaty hair out of the way if Dean still had his bangs.
Dean shakes his head.
“Alright.” Uncle Bobby’s hands shift around Dean’s back and even though it doesn’t make breathing any easier, it sort of does anyway. “You gonna lose your meds all over me if I pick you up?”
Dean shakes his head, remembers the sick, knotted-up feeling in his stomach, nods, shakes his head again.
The tears just keep on coming.
Dean doesn’t know how Uncle Bobby gets him down the stairs without even stumbling once. He’s got his arms and legs wrapped around his neck and waist, clinging and burying his face in the strong chest even though he’s way too old to be carried like a baby.
The truck is parked around the corner which makes sense but also means that Uncle Bobby has to stop once so Dean can throw up all over someone’s rosebushes.
Sammy’s already in the backseat, still wrapped up in his Superman blanket.
“You didn’t wanna keep the ugly sheets, did ya?” Bobby asks and pulls Dean into the front seat with him.
Dean shakes his head, shifts around and somehow ends up with his head resting against Uncle Bobby’s thigh.
“D’you find Dad?” he forces out. His voice doesn’t sound like him at all anymore. Hot air, forced through his tight throat.
“You let me worry ‘bout John,” Bobby says quietly. His hand comes down and cards through Dean’s short hair again as the engine starts to rumble. “All you worry about is not puking onto my lap, alright?”
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 5000
Disclaimer: Not my boys. Kripke broke them long before I ever got to them.
Summary: Wee!Dean worries himself sick while he and Sammy are stuck with their evil (not really evil at all) foster parents.
Written for the Dean focused h/c fic & art challenge on hoodie_time. Let's pretend this sort of fills my prompt m'kay?
The Hilliards aren’t what Dean expected when the scary lady at the police station started talking about foster care.
Foster care.
The words alone are enough to conjure up images of redneck nut jobs who buy kids off the government for cheap labor. People who lock kids in the basement and beat them with sticks.
The Hilliards look…clean for lack of a better word. Clean and polished with purses and Levis and shining white sneakers. Dean supposes he could still end up getting beat in the basement, but at least it’ll be a clean one.
They’re sitting on a bench in a long hallway, him and Sammy, and Mr. and Mrs. Hilliard are smiling when they come out of the judge’s office. They keep smiling, even though Mrs. Hilliard looks sad for a second when she takes in Sammy’s baggy shirt and Dean’s jeans with the holes in both knees.
“Hi,” she says and Dean scrambles to his feet, Sammy right behind him, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re talking to a lady.
“Hi,” Sam answers after a second when he realizes Dean isn’t going to talk.
Dean doesn’t want to talk to them. Doesn’t want to talk to CPS and foster parents and he just wants to go back to the motel room and have enough money to pay the manager before he calls the cops to look into the two boys who never have a parent around.
He wants Dad to have a phone he can take with him on hunts so he isn’t unreachable for forever.
The cops took all their things, even the .22 Dean kept under his pillow and the case of expired fake ID’s and Dean doesn’t know much, but he knows Dad won’t be able to go to the cops and ask for them back once he comes back and finds empty beds in an empty motel room.
Sam talks to the Hilliards all the way to the car, chattering away like they’re just another pair of babysitters and Dean trudges after them. He could make a run for the trash cans behind the court house. He’s quick on his feet like that, can outrun every kid his age and most adults even in his ratty sneakers that are kind of small and cut into the side of his toes.
Mrs. Hilliard’s got Sam’s hand wrapped up in hers though, so Dean has to stay.
They have a nice car. Not cool like the Impala, but nice.
Getting blood out of the soft, fuzzy upholstery would be a bitch though and Dean doesn’t think they could fit too many weapons in the trunk, so it’s not much good as cars go, anyway.
Sammy leans over in the backseat so his seatbelt cuts into his neck and his mouth is right next to Dean’s ear.
“They aren’t evil,” he whispers in a voice that’s loud enough to cut through the stupid Michael Jackson song coming from the radio.
Mrs. Hilliard smiles at them in the rear view mirror.
Dean mumbles “Christo” under his breath and is really sort of surprised when they don’t flinch.
Their house is nice too. With a yard and a blue fence and paint that isn’t peeling off.
It looks like the kind of house a family on TV would live in. The mom and dad and their two kids and maybe even a golden retriever who’s way cleverer than any real-life dog.
For a moment it feels like Dean can’t breathe. His lungs just stop working and grey spots start dancing up and down in front of the bright sky like all the blood in his body is rushing down to settle in his feet.
Then Mr. Hilliard puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder and says, “c’mon now, kiddo,” and Dean sucks in such a huge gulp of air he ends up coughing.
“Do we have our own room?” Sammy asks. His hand is already wrapped around Mrs. Hilliard’s again and something dark and hot and angry settles in Dean’s stomach before it turns to icy cold.
Dean remembers when he used to have a room just for himself. Not the small chamber with the twin beds in Uncle Bobby’s attic, but a real room with teddy bears on his shelves and rocket ships painted on the walls and Sammy’s room right down the hall. His heart stops right in its tracks. What if the Hilliards got them a room each?
He wants to ask but somehow his throat feels thick and full and like he just can’t.
They take a tour of the entire house (looks like straight out of TV just as it did from the outside). Sammy ooh’s and aah’s and Dean tries to yes, sir and yes, ma’am his way through the tour.
“Hey.” Suddenly Mr. Hilliard is bending down so he can look Dean in the eye and he looks sad in a way Dean doesn’t quite get. “Just call me Paul, okay?”
Dean’s lips twitch, but he keeps them from pulling into a full-on frown. “Yes, Paul,” he forces out in exactly the same way he’d say yes, sir.
Mrs. Hilliard is quick to tell them to call her Kelly and Dean makes himself mimic that too. He’s not entirely convinced they aren’t evil, but they’re better than what Dad talks about when he tells them about CPS. It’s not like Dean wants them to keep him and Sam, but he also doesn’t want them to keep Sammy and send Dean back because he can’t do as he’s told.
They only get one room. One room with beds that have Superman covers and Dean is so relieved, he doesn’t even mention how he’s too old for superheroes and Batman would kick Superman’s ass any day of the week, thank you very much.
“You guys like it?” Kelly asks with a hopeful smile and Dean is glad for Sammy’s delighted nod because Dean’s pretty sure he can’t talk through his throat filled with bad.
“There’s clothes in the cupboard over there,” Paul points out. “We didn’t know what sizes you’d be but it’ll do ‘til we can head out to the mall tomorrow.”
Sammy’s eyes grow big at the mention of new clothes from a real mall. Dean misses his dad’s USMC sweater that he forgot to grab when the social worker lady told them to pack their stuff.
It gets quiet after that.
Sammy stares at the toys in the shelf by the window with his eyes all big and saucer-like.
Dean scratches at a little hole in his jeans. He looks down at the floor, wishes it would just open up and swallow him whole.
:: :: ::
“You think Dad’s gonna let us keep all the cool stuff when he picks us up?” Sam asks later.
The Hilliards left them alone in their room, mumbling about getting settled and giving them time and privacy or whatever. Still left the door open on their way out, so Dean’s got a pretty good idea on their feelings on privacy.
Sam can’t keep his hands off the toys in the shelf by the window. He pulls out books and bright markers and little plastic dinosaurs like they’re the coolest thing he’s ever seen. Dean’s throat closes up again at the mention of Dad. He wants to crawl under the bed and close his eyes until Dad isn’t gone and they aren’t stuck with the Hilliards anymore.
He thought about climbing out through the window, but there’s no trees in the yard and besides, Dad won’t be able to find them once they’re living on the streets, so it’s probably better to stay where the cops put them for now.
Dean swallows hard. Breathing doesn’t usually hurt this much.
“De-ean.”
Sammy shoves a stuffed dog in Dean’s face, pretend-growling through his giggles.
“Sure,” Dean shrugs.
He stares at the hallway behind the open door and wonders how long it’ll take for Sam to realize that being in foster care is different from being with babysitters who happen to not be evil.
:: :: ::
Kelly comes up to their room to tell them dinner’s ready. Which is just weird when she could just as well yell for them from downstairs, but Dean’s not about to complain.
He rolls the vegetables around in his mouth. They taste…off. Not in a bad way that tells you you’ve left the can open a couple of days too long. Just off. He forces himself to chew because that’s what Dad always tells them. They can’t be picky with their food.
Dean can eat day-old burgers, pasta that’s been re-heated three days in a row, he knows how to eat dry cereal because the milk went sour a week ago, so he can definitely eat weird vegetables that don’t dissolve when he pushes them against the roof of his mouth.
Kelly is talking about school and how they are lucky they got here during spring break so they’ll have a couple of weeks to get used to their new family. She actually says that. Their new family. Dean kinda wants to take his fork and stick it in her throat.
“Sammy?” Kelly coos. “What’s the matter with your food?”
Dean glances over at his brother’s plate. Sammy has his fingers wrapped around his fork in a death grip, shoving beans and broccoli and meat loaf around on his plate.
“…tastes weird,” he mumbles.
Dean knows he’s thinking about what Dad would do if he caught him complaining about food.
“Tastes fine to me,” Paul shrugs, stuffs a fork-full of vegetables in his mouth to prove his point. “You need vegetables to grow strong, you know.”
Sam’s mouth twitches in that stubborn way that nobody can ever stand.
“It tastes weird,” he insists.
Dean bites down on another off vegetable and Sammy shoots him a dark glare like he does when Dad tells them to do something and Dean does it even though Sam doesn’t want to.
It’s silent around the table for a minute. Dean wills Sammy to just buckle under and eat the damn vegetables, suddenly scared that the sticks and basement idea isn’t so far off after all.
“Uncle Bobby makes me mac’n’cheese.”
He does. When Dad isn’t around to tell him off for coddling them too much, Uncle Bobby has a whole drawer full of canned mac’n’cheese just for them. Dean wants to point out that it’s bad manners complaining about someone’s cooking but suddenly his mind stops.
Uncle Bobby.
Uncle Bobby has cars. Uncle Bobby has cars and a phone with a number Dad made Dean memorize years ago.
Kelly gets up and walks into the kitchen but Dean doesn’t really notice. It’s already dark out. All he has to do is wait for the Hilliards to go to bed so he can sneak back downstairs and call Uncle Bobby and everything’s gonna be okay again.
:: :: ::
It isn’t all that hard staying up until the Hilliards have gone to bed. They send Dean and Sam off to bed at nine (which is even earlier than the bedtime they have when they’re staying with Pastor Jim) and follow about an hour after.
Dean tries not to think about how stupid it makes him feel that he didn’t think of calling Uncle Bobby sooner.
He watches the yellow glowy numbers on their alarm clock for about forty-five minutes after that before he slips out of bed and sneaks downstairs.
The stairs are covered in blue, fluffy carpet, so they don’t even squeak
The phone is high up on the wall in the kitchen. Dean doesn’t dare turn on the lights, even though he’s closed the door. He has to dial blind, walking his fingers along the dial plate like a spider.
“This better be important,” Uncle Bobby growls. He sounds mad through the static but still Dean sags against the wall with relief, his throat closing up all over again.
“Hello?” Bobby growls in his ear. “Who is this?”
Dean’s mouth falls open, he makes a soft sound that doesn’t make much sense but is somehow enough.
“Dean? Dean, ’s that you, boy?”
Dean nods with his eyes closed against the sudden sting.
“Yessir,” he manages even though his voice comes out barely more than a choked-up whisper.
“What’s wrong? Something happen to your daddy?”
Dean feels thick tears spill over and slide down his cheeks.
“I…” he chokes out. “I dun…I don’t know, Uncle Bobby, we’re…we - “
“Hey.” Bobby doesn’t sound mad even though he should be. Dean’s babbling and not giving him much of a report and should have thought of calling days ago. “Hey, calm down, kiddo. Are you hurt?”
Dean sniffs once, drags his sleeve under his stuffy nose.
“No, sir.”
“Your brother hurt?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you need me to come get you?”
Dean nods, sniffs, remembers Bobby can’t see him nodding.
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright, where are ya?”
“C - “ it hurts even saying it. “CPS.”
There’s silence for a moment, then Bobby curses up a streak that would make Dad proud and Dean clings to the receiver in his hands.
He manages to give Bobby the Hilliard’s address, tries to apologize for not calling sooner, but Bobby doesn’t let him. He says some stuff that doesn’t sound nice, but it’s not about Dean and it all drowns in the buzzing in Dean’s ears.
“It’ll take me a couple days to get there,” Bobby tells him. Dean can already hear him moving around. Putting on shoes, taking guns and keys off the walls. “Hang in there, kiddo, alright?”
It sounds like he’s waiting for Dean to say yes, sir, so that’s what Dean does.
He waits for the click of Uncle Bobby hanging up, before he forces his arm up to put the receiver back in place. Then he slides all the way down he wall, his knees weak and trembling and it’s all he can do to stick his fist between his teeth to keep from waking the entire house with his crying.
:: :: ::
Dean’s head hurts the next morning. It gets better when he drinks three glasses of orange juice but doesn’t really go away.
Breakfast is okay. The bacon isn’t as greasy as Dean’s used to, but the pancakes and scrambled eggs taste just fine.
Dean wanders out into the backyard after he’s done carrying the dishes into the kitchen (he wanted to do them all, but Kelly got all weird about it and told him to go play). There’s a tree there, far away from the window to their room, but it doesn’t look like it’d be much use for climbing or hanging swings on it or anything, so Dean just keeps sitting there on the front steps, watching Sammy walk his plastic dinosaurs up and down its roots and listening to the cars going by.
He knows Uncle Bobby said it’d take him a couple of days but that doesn’t stop Dean’s heart from leaping up into his throat every time he hears the sound of an old truck driving up the street.
Dean wishes Bobby had given him a better time frame. How much is a couple of days? One and a half? Three? Twenty?
Well, Dean know it doesn’t take twenty days to get from South Dakota to Petersburg, Virginia. He’d just like to know for sure is all.
He toes off his sneakers before he goes back inside. Kelly sounded real serious about that. Always take off your shoes when you’re in the house, you don’t want to get the carpets dirty.
Dean’s never been to a place that makes you take off your shoes (except for motel pools but those don’t count). Dad always tells them to keep their shoes on as long as they can so they can run whenever they need to.
He’ll just have to explain the shoe thing to Dad when the time comes. He’ll probably be mad, anyway, but Dean figures he's okay with that as long as Dad's alive to even be mad at him.
There are no books in the living room. No books Dean needs, anyway. There’s a whole shelf stuffed with romance novels or something.
They showed them Paul’s office yesterday and the entire back wall was covered in books so Dean sneaks upstairs. He freezes, just stands there and stares when he opens the door and Paul’s in there, sitting at his desk.
Paul looks up too, raises one eyebrow like he’s waiting for Dean to say something.
Dean isn’t sure what to call him. He knows he doesn’t want to be called sir or Mr. Hilliard, but while it’s okay to think of him as Paul, calling him that is definitely not okay. Dean chews on his lips for a second before he comes up with an embarrassing “uhmfg…ah” kind of sound.
His face and ears heat up like crazy. He wants to turn around and just disappear, but Paul’s still looking at him so Dean can’t very well run now.
“What’s the matter?”
Dean opens his mouth to ask for an atlas but all that comes out is another hoarse sound that’s barely more than a loud breath that tickles something in the back of his throat. He swallows and it hurts.
“I was just wonderin’, uh…do you have a…uhm…maps? Sir?”
Paul looks at him kinda weird for a second and Dean feels stupid for taking such a long time to ask and screwing up anyway.
“Sure,” Paul smiles easily. He rolls his chair back until he’s sitting in front of the book shelf at the back of the room. “Come here.”
Dean was really hoping Paul would just give him the book and send him off to not bother him anymore. Instead he picks it out of the shelf, opens it on a random page and beckons Dean over.
Dean hurries the three paces from the door to the desk.
“This is where we are,” Paul says, points at their street on a map of Petersburg. His finger wanders about the page as he points out their church, the school they want Dean to go to, another one for Sam.
Dean’s fingers are itching to flip the pages back until he can look at a map of the entire country, but Dad and Uncle Bobby and sometimes Pastor Jim get real mad when you’re not careful with their books.
Dean starts chewing on his lips again. He can’t help it.
Paul is flipping through the pages until he ends up on the map Dean’s looking for and stops. He watches Dean carefully.
Dean is glad Dad usually needs him to navigate when they’re on the road, so he knows his way around a map pretty well. He finds South Dakota in a single glance and knows Sioux Falls is right at the little dent by the eastern border. He’d really rather figure out the scale with his thumb and get the real distance so he can add it up and divide it by the average speed of Uncle Bobby’s trucks, but Paul’s still watching him, so he has to make due with a quick guess before he thanks Paul (doesn’t call him sir this time which seems to make him happy) and wanders back downstairs.
Dean guesses they’re about a thousand miles away from the salvage yard. Probably more since roads don’t usually go straight from one place to another. And Uncle Bobby’s cars aren’t really all that fast so it’ll take him about twenty-four hours to get here. More, really, because no one in their right mind drives for twenty-four hours straight without sleep unless they want to end up dead with their car wrapped around a tree.
Dean stares at the clock over the doorway, tries to remember what time exactly he called Bobby last night.
His head hurts though and there is a strange pressure on his chest that makes breathing kinda difficult so he gives up and goes back to waiting outside on the front steps until the cold has climbed through his jeans all the way up to his heart.
He goes inside when Kelly tells them it’s time for lunch and then later again for supper, but the cold doesn’t really go away.
:: :: ::
Dean wakes up shivering with his covers drenched in sweat and his throat full of barbed wire. He groans, turns his face into his pillow, wonders how long he can go without swallowing.
“Dean?”
Dean makes a soft, bitten off noise and shakes his head. His lips form the word “no,” but all that comes out is another embarrassing croak.
Sammy’s footsteps hammer in his head, the mattress shifts, then, “Deeaan!”
“Go’way.”
Sam’s hand is too rough on Dean’s shoulder. Dean tries to turn away and starts coughing into his pillow. It’s wet and disgusting, tricking down his chin onto Superman’s chest and Dean’s hands are clenched in front of his chest and throat like it’ll somehow help him not drown.
Time speeds up or slows down for a minute-second-days and eventually Dean isn’t coughing anymore. He takes quick, shallow breaths that make him feel like he’s been running way too fast way too long.
“I can get you Tylenol,” Sammy offers. His hand is still on Dean’s shoulder, burning and chafing and why doesn’t he take it off?
The cops took the duffel with the little orange bottles when they took Dean’s .22 and everything else.
Sammy doesn’t even know where the Hilliards keep their meds.
Dean wets his lips. His tongue tastes like mucus and salt. He goes back to coughing, watches through his lashes as Sam slides off Dean’s bed and climbs back into his own with one of his stupid books in his lap.
Dean feels like shit by the time his mattress shifts again. His skin is burning, tiny armies of a gazillion ants are marching up his back, down his legs.
“Hey, Dean,” Paul says softly, digs his fingers even deeper into Dean’s arm. “What’s wrong?”
Dean draws his knees up to his chest and coughs so hard it feels like he’s spitting up pieces of his lungs.
“He’s sick.” Dean can tell that Sammy’s only just peering over the edge of his book. “You should give him Tylenol.”
“Why didn’t you - “ Paul’s voice grows loud for a second but he catches himself before he even really gets started yelling. “Why didn’t you come get me or Kelly?”
Because we don’t need you, Dean thinks.
They don’t need Paul and his wife to take care of them. Sam and Dean take care of each other just fine.
“Cuz,” Sam says in that tone that’s always accompanied by a big shrug.
Paul sighs like he did when Dean called him sir.
“Can you sit up for me, buddy?”
Paul’s voice rises and falls over the words all wrong and suddenly Dean doesn’t care about all the promises in the world he made to himself. He doesn’t want to screw this up, but Paul’s hands around his shoulders hurt so bad and he’s shaking his head and drawing his arms up over his ears and coughing, coughing, coughing.
:: :: ::
Kelly comes in with a glass of apple juice sometime later (probably not later at all, but Dean can’t open his eyes against the bright light and look at the alarm clock, so he doesn’t know). She makes him drink it all even when he has to stop halfway through to take a deep breath that makes him cough again.
“He’s burning up,” Paul tells her.
Dean closes his eyes and waits. Maybe when he wakes up he won’t feel like shit anymore.
:: :: ::
An hour later he feels even worse.
Kelly’s still sitting next to him when he wakes up again. It looks like she pulled the big swively chair from Paul’s office into their room but Dean can’t open his eyes long enough to be sure.
She tries to give him juice again but it makes him cough even quicker than it did the first time ‘round and it hurts.
Dean tries to hide his face in his pillow again, tries to hide the fact that he’s got tears trickling down his face again, wonders how long it’ll take for him to just shrivel up and die.
Or just sleep until he’s better and Uncle Bobby’s come and brought them back to Dad.
Or…
Dean remembers when he was just a little kid, a little younger than Sammy’s now, he got real sick from taking his jacket off at the playground even though his mom had told him to keep it on. He got puky and everything felt like it was burning and Mom sat with him for three days even though her belly was already real big with his baby brother and it hurt her to be up so much. She stayed right with Dean until he finally felt better, sat next to him on his bed or the couch with her hands all tangled up in his hair.
Dean wants to ask if Kelly knows how to make soup but he doesn’t quite remember what kind he wants and he doesn’t want to get it wrong, so he doesn’t ask.
:: :: ::
They have to prop up his pillows after a while because he can’t even really breathe anymore lying down. He even gets Sammy’s pillow because his own isn’t enough to support his back.
“What…what time is it?” Dean gasps after he’s swallowed down some kind of pills that aren’t Tylenol.
Kelly runs her fingers through his short hair.
“Just after noon, why do you ask?”
Dean tries to add up the hours but can’t quite get his numbers straight. He shrugs, mumbles, “seems later,” and turns his head towards the window.
:: :: ::
Dean wonders when the air got so thin. It’s like breathing through a straw. Everything’s wet and dry at the same time and no matter how often he tries to breathe, it still doesn’t keep his chest from hurting.
Paul brings him crackers and Sammy curls up next to him. He says he wants to read a story from his stupid book about the bunny or rabbit or whatever, but Dean thinks he really only wants to steal his crackers so he doesn’t have to eat the weird mac’n’cheese Kelly makes that don’t come from a can.
Dean’s okay with that. Sam can have all the crackers he wants.
:: :: ::
It’s dark when he wakes up again.
Dean startles awake and ends up choking on his coughs before he’s done drawing in a full breath of air.
He looks around to figure out what woke him but can’t quite put his finger on it.
Swallowing still hurts like crazy. Almost as much as breathing or moving his head.
He hears the sound again but everything’s too hazy to really focus on a single little thing. Sammy mumbles something over on the other side of the room. Guilt settles high up in Dean’s throat.
Suddenly his stomach turns and it’s all he can do to keep from puking his guts out right over the edge of his bed.
He closes his eyes just for a second to sooth the horrible burn. Just a second and then he’s gonna get up and find out what’s going on.
His eyes fly open again, but it feels like more than a second later.
Somebody’s sitting on the edge of his bed. Somebody who isn’t Paul or Kelly and who very definitely isn’t Sam.
Dean’s heart freezes in his chest. He opens his mouth and all that comes out is another bitten-off whimper sound that won’t help him fight at all.
“Jesus, kid, did ya swallow an engine block?”
“Bo…’nlce Bobby?”
It hurts so bad saying it and suddenly the barbed wire closes tighter around his throat and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t keep from crying. His entire body’s shaking, he’s sobbing and coughing and trying to apologize for stuff he doesn’t even know.
“Hey…hey, kiddo.”
Bobby’s arms around Dean’s shoulders hurt just as much as Paul’s did earlier, but Dean doesn’t care. He throws himself into the flannel and coffee and motor oil.
“You got anything here we need to take?”
Bobby swipes his hand over Dean’s forehead in a motion that would push sweaty hair out of the way if Dean still had his bangs.
Dean shakes his head.
“Alright.” Uncle Bobby’s hands shift around Dean’s back and even though it doesn’t make breathing any easier, it sort of does anyway. “You gonna lose your meds all over me if I pick you up?”
Dean shakes his head, remembers the sick, knotted-up feeling in his stomach, nods, shakes his head again.
The tears just keep on coming.
Dean doesn’t know how Uncle Bobby gets him down the stairs without even stumbling once. He’s got his arms and legs wrapped around his neck and waist, clinging and burying his face in the strong chest even though he’s way too old to be carried like a baby.
The truck is parked around the corner which makes sense but also means that Uncle Bobby has to stop once so Dean can throw up all over someone’s rosebushes.
Sammy’s already in the backseat, still wrapped up in his Superman blanket.
“You didn’t wanna keep the ugly sheets, did ya?” Bobby asks and pulls Dean into the front seat with him.
Dean shakes his head, shifts around and somehow ends up with his head resting against Uncle Bobby’s thigh.
“D’you find Dad?” he forces out. His voice doesn’t sound like him at all anymore. Hot air, forced through his tight throat.
“You let me worry ‘bout John,” Bobby says quietly. His hand comes down and cards through Dean’s short hair again as the engine starts to rumble. “All you worry about is not puking onto my lap, alright?”