Belonging-PG (Weechster Dean/Sam)
Title:Belonging
Author: usmc75
Pairing:Dean/Sam
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Pre Series
Summary: Dean takes Sammy to see Star Wars
Word Count: 2831
It was John’s before it was Dean’s.
Mary had bought it for him the first Christmas they were together, there was a faded photo somewhere of his face when he opened the package and saw it. There was a combination of surprise and joy, like he had suddenly discovered his best friend he had never met. He had worn it everywhere, until it was no longer a leather jacket but a second skin. For the next few years he was never without it.
And then he walked into the nursery.
It had sat in the trunk of the Impala for almost two years when Dean found it. They were in the middle of Nowhere, Montana: Population: Zilch. Word was there was something going bump in the night, and that meant Team Winchester was on the case. Well not Team Winchester, Team John with weapon cleaning and laundry detail by Team Dean.
Excessive whining and complaining by Team Sam.
They had been holed up in what was laughably called a hotel by its owner while John scouted the great wide nothing that surrounded the town. He had rented something with four wheel drive, not trusting the Impala for off road action. He had left the car parked outside the room with the keys in Dean’s hands for a Just In Case.
Just In Case meant different things to Dean than John.
John would mean Just In Case was a matter of life and death and he needed to get him and Sam out of town. To Dean it could mean the local drive in was showing the first Star Wars trilogy and his brother had never partaken in the movies besides on video. The difference in definitions had never been brought up. Dean reasoning what John didn’t know wouldn’t hurt Dean. Sam reasoned that Dean was a chicken shit.
So it was great circumstance got ready that night. He had actually bought product for his hair and even wore clean blue jeans. Sam watched the ritual with barely disguised amusement as Dean tried to tackle the same three hairs that made his bangs for the millionth time. Finally with a huge sigh Sam exclaimed, “You aren’t getting any prettier.”
Dean looked over to him with a wicked grin and said, “I think we both know that isn’t true.” Then turning back to the mirror he cocked his head and smiled, “Perfect”
“Perfectly stupid”, Sam muttered at that little brother volume, loud enough to be heard, low enough to deny.
Dean walked by and punched Sam’s shoulder at just the right big brother force. Hard enough to hurt, soft enough not to leave a bruise, “I heard that.”
Dean looked out the window and saw the still night falling. No clouds, no wind, nothing. It was just still. Not knowing what that meant in Nowhere, Montana he didn’t even bother to grab a long shirt. He had been working double time on pushups and sit ups, and he had no desire to hide the merchandise from the countless girls that would be there to see. Rolling the sleeves up slightly to show off the bulges he nodded at the mirror and turned to Sam, “You ready Sammy?”
“It’s Sam.”, Sammy said trying to take the pout out of his voice and not succeeding.
“Sure thing Sammy”, he walked by messing up his little brother’s hair, “Let’s go!”
“This is a mistake.” Sam said not grabbing a long sleeve shirt either. After all, Dean knew best. “I have seen the movies before.” he said closing the door behind him.
“Not like this!”, Dean said over his shoulder, “Not like it was meant to be seen my boy!”
“I am NOT your boy!” Sammy said with more force than he intended.
Dean looked back with a grin, “I think we both know that isn’t true.” The blush and anger on Sammy’s face was well worth the dig. As they walked out the night bit into their exposed flesh like a knife; raising gooseflesh on Dean’s arms. Being only 17 there was a sparse amount of hair on them, and what was there was so light as to be invisible. He actually thought about turning around and grabbing a shirt when he heard Sammy draw breath from surprise.
“It’s cold!” he said, this time not even bothering with the whine filter.
Dean hunkered down in his shirt and said, “Grow a pair Sammy, it feels great!”, he said as he began to dig for the keys.
“I’m gonna get a shirt!” Sam said hovering just outside the hotel door. Dean paused, key halfway in the car door and thought about it. He wanted a shirt in a bad way, but due to the retardation that all teenage males possess he equated admitting it with weakness. And Dean Winchester wasn’t weak.
“Fine wimp”, he said unlocking the door, “Go get a stupid shirt, see if there are some diapers too in case you have an accident during Empire!” He swung open the door and tried to slide in the same way he saw his dad do. But his legs weren’t long enough yet and his eyes came just above the steering wheel. Reaching underneath the seat he began to scoot it forward. With half a glance he snuck a look at Sam.
He was standing there, rubbing his arms fiercely, trying to decide if the label of wimp outweighed the cold. Normally Sam was the brighter of the two, but he was suffering from the only malady worse than teenage retardation. The desire for teenage retardation. Just on the cusp of that magic number, twelve year old Sam was stuck with the faulty reasoning of, if Dean can take it, so can I. No matter how insane or stupid that may be. Finally he heard Dean’s voice over the dull thumping of Rush, “You coming you big girl!”
And that was it.
Rushing into the car Sammy slammed the door and pulled the seatbelt across, “Shut up” he said to Dean in response to the grin that had spread across his face. The grin which was older brother code for, “Gotcha again”
Dean pulled out into traffic and began their trek to the drive in, the sounds of Tom Sawyer following close behind them.
Like the jacket, it was John’s before it was Dean’s.
A true work of art, the automobile was a member of the family. It was never a chore to wash her and filling her up with gas was thought more along the lines of supplying a meal to a hungry sibling than an actual job. Sam knew Dean thought the car would be his someday. Sam secretly hoped it would be Dean’s one day because that meant he was in direct line of succession. And though he would never imagine of anything bad happening to his older brother, for the Impala he could imagine a safe or two falling from the sky. It was a sweet ride and had some incredible features. An engine that purred like a kitten, a saber tooth tiger kitten with teeth as wide as your head, a stereo that seemed custom built to blast the greatest rock hits of the past thirty years with almost no distortion, a trunk that could hold more weapons than most armories, or a dead body if the mission called for it. It had a ton of great things that they enjoyed every day. It was missing one small feature that the brothers were realizing now.
The heater didn’t work.
Now it didn’t work as in it was inoperable. Everything in the car worked to one degree or another, if it worked the way it was meant was another story. The heater was this story. The ride to the drive in the chill became a cold and the cold became a freezing. By the time they pulled up to box office the freezing had become a few words unrepeatable in mixed company.
“Colder than a sonofabitch”, Dean said under his breath as he rolled down the window and handed the guy the money.
“You coming you big girl?” Sam mumbled under his breath, “Go get a shirt you wimp” he mimicked as Dean rolled up the window and glared at him. At sight of Dean’s clenched jaw he stopped talking.
They pulled the boat of a car into the theater and a few things became instantly obvious. One, not a lot of Star Wars fans in Nowhere, Montana. Which might have been untrue. Montana might be peppered with tons of Star Wars fans, none of them had shown up for this showing of the trilogy. The parking lot was empty as Dean pulled into a center lot, a sideways glance showed that the lack of an audience was not lost on Sam.
“Let’s so see Star Wars Sam. Tons of girls there Sam.”, he huffed as he blew his bangs out of his face.
The second thing was that this theater used the old style speaker grills that hung on a window instead of the new style system that used a car’s radio. Which meant someone was going to have to open a door to get the speaker, and a window was going to have to be cracked throughout three whole movies.
The last point was somehow it was colder in the drive-in than anywhere else.
“Get the speaker”, Dean ordered as he began to sit back in the seat. Sam slowly turned his head to face him with a look that was worth a thousand words. A thousand words that might have belonged to a sailor or merchant marine, but a thousand words nonetheless.
After a few seconds of staring at each other Dean sighed loudly and opened his door. He felt his arms began to shiver as he grabbed the speaker and began to hook it up to the window when he had an idea. Dropping the speaker he opened the door and grabbed the keys from the ignition. Sam opened his mouth to ask what Dean was doing, but was rewarded by a slamming door. Sam turned around and watched his older brother open the trunk up. He heard Dean rummaging around for something, which made Sam wonder since they had removed the weapons and stored them in the hotel room just like every other time they set up shop. After about three minutes Sam opened his door and instantly regretted it.
The night air engulfed him like he had plunged into a pool of freezing water. He slammed his mouth shut to prevent his teeth from chattering and wandered to the back of the car. As he came around the back taillights he paused in what could only be described as shock. Dean was standing there with a huge leather jacket on, looking a little shocked himself. It was a huge thing, dark brown and wrinkled, it looked perfectly used in a very Indiana Jones kind of way. It came to about mid thigh on him, his hands lost in the sleeves and the collar engulfing his entire skull. Dean was at the time in a teenager's life where he was not a young man, but a large boy and the jacket was in no way helping that image. His appearance and description could be summed up in the same sentence, “A boy wearing a man’s jacket.” The first words out of Sam’s mouth summed up the entire situation.
“Dad’s gonna kill you.”
Dean thought that same thought. His dad was indeed going to kill him. For taking the car. For dragging Sam along. For not wearing a long shirt. And finally for wearing his jacket. Dean summed up four deaths so far, and since he didn’t really care much past the first one, the other three had little to no effect.
“So?”, he shrugged closing the trunk. He smiled as he saw Sam look as quickly as he could for another jacket to somehow magically appear in the trunk before it slammed shut. Walking back to the driver’s side he hooked the speaker up to the window and sat smugly behind the wheel. Sam on the other hand more or less sulked his way back into the passenger seat, huddling his arms together, trying to kill Dean with a stare.
Dean ignored him.
Which of course meant Dean more or less tried to ignore him, which he couldn’t. It was the one trump card Sam knew he had over Dean and sooner or later, it always won. Even though Dean relished in his full time occupation of Big Brother (whose job duties involved: Bossing around stupid little brothers, teasing stupid little brothers for their own good, taking out frustration that their dad was a bit around the bend at time on stupid little brothers and his favorite, beating up stupid little brothers when they talked back) there was another job he took a bit more seriously.
He was Sam’s guardian.
From the moment John Winchester had thrust that wailing infant into Dean’s arms, it had been his job to look after him no matter what. And more times than not, the two jobs found themselves in conflict, and every time they did, the same job won out. Much to Dean’s chagrin.
“You cold?”, Dean asked watching the trailers.
Sam glared at him so hard that Dean should have indeed burst into flames, allowing Sam to warm himself over the charred remains for his bossy older brother. When nary a spark was produced, he simply said, “Yes.”
Dean said nothing and watched the screen with interest. Sam began to cuss him out in his mind, once again imagining the life size Human Torch action figure his brother would make. After the third trailer Dean scooted over from the driver’s side to the middle of the seat. Sam looked over to him, indignant, not only was he going to steal the coat, but he was going to hog the seat as well.
Stupid movie.
After the trailer of the black guy and the oriental guy that teamed up and had wacky adventures because of cultural misunderstandings and before the one about the huge rock that was hurtling towards Earth, Dean said, “Scoot over.”
Sam shot a glare at him again, “I am over as far as I can go! What are you doing, planning on lying out?”
Dean looked back with a scowl, “I mean this way you ijiot. It’s warmer if we sit closer to each other.”
Sam stared at Dean for a long while. His little brother mind ran the numbers of the odds of this being an older brother trap. Since time immortal the older brother/younger brother war had been fought. The first male sibling no doubt in some way made life unbearable for the first younger sibling and since that time, it was a tradition passed down to each generation. An act of unsolicited kindness was always the shampoo bottle and the mean act that followed was always the near hidden within. So Sammy’s mind raced as he struggled to find the catch.
Sighing Dean said, “I’m serious, stay over there and freeze, see if I care.” And went back to watching the trailers.
Sam watched Dean with narrowed eyes. This was a trap, as sure as the pile of bird seed was a trap for the Roadrunner, this was a trap. Problem was Dean never struck him as the evil mastermind type. Evil, sure, mastermind, never. So what was the angle. He saw his older brother laugh at the trailer and tried to think faster.
“No burping”, Sam said.
Dean looked over at him, “What?”
“NO burping in my face”, he amended, his arms crossed.
“Why would I burp in your face?”, Dean asked with real shock in his voice.
“Cause you’re a jerk”, Sam said with the certainty that every little brother possessed.
“Bitch”, Dean said and went back to watching the movie. Sam ignored the trio of dancing condiments on the screen and moved over slightly. Suddenly he said, “And no farting!”
Dean just sighed and shook his head, not even bothering to dignify that with a response.
Sam scooted closer and felt the jacket press against his arm. He didn’t feel any warmer, but the leather did smell nice. As the screen went black and the first drums of the movie began, Dean smiled as he felt his little brother lean into the jacket and against his side. The drive in grew quiet for a moment and the words, A long, long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away, appeared on the screen and the two of them held their breaths.
And then it exploded with music as the words Episode IV began to scroll up. Dean was rewarded with a gasp from Sam as he saw Star Wars for the first time.
He was John’s before he was Dean’s.
But they both knew who they belonged to now.