Archive of Our Own

Sam shifted on the hard bench seat. He had been sitting for just the wrong side of too long. His back was starting to ache and the winter sunlight coming in the windows was uncomfortably hot. The sweat was starting to pool behind his knees and at the small of his back. He had shed his flannel an hour ago. If it hadn’t been winter, he would have rolled the window down, but despite the stuffy heat inside the car, the air outside would be achingly frigid. Instead, he settled for pressing his head against the cold glass and closing his eyes against the glare.

He could feel Dean’s eyes on him. They had been following him for nearly a week now. He thought Sam didn’t know, but there was no mistaking the worried glances he kept sneaking. Sam was impressed it had taken this long for the issue to come to a head. Dean had obviously known something wasn’t right since their dad had crashed back into their lives, brief though the visit was. In fact, he was showing remarkable restraint. Sam had figured he would last a day tops before he pressed for answers.

Dean had been debating how to start the conversation for at least the last forty miles. Apparently he had decided that Sam couldn’t avoid the topic if he was stuck in a moving vehicle. He had cut the stereo off when the last tape ran out and had driven in silence since then. Sam had watched as he frowned, his brow furrowing every time he almost asked the question that was bothering him before he would think better of asking. Then he would shift, roll his shoulders, and relax back into the seat. The end result was that they were eating up the open pavement in stilted silence that Sam wished he could just ignore in favor of a nap.

Finally, Dean cleared his throat.

Sam cracked his eyes open and glanced over. Dean was gripping the steering wheel tightly enough that his knuckles were standing out under his skin. His shoulders were tight and he was staring resolutely ahead. Despite his body language, he managed to keep his voice casually neutral when he said, “So, what’s up with you?”

Sam didn’t bother to sit up. He knew exactly what Dean was asking, but he wasn’t interested in having this conversation. “What do you mean?”

“You,” Dean said with a wave of his hand. “You’ve been having nightmares since Dad left.”

“No, I haven’t.” Sam closed his eyes and leaned back against the cool of the window.

“Sam.”

“What,” Sam said, risking another glance at his brother.

“You’re exhausted,” Dean said. He was scowling out the windshield at the wide open road. “Mom and I were both up the other night because you were screaming bloody murder in your sleep. Not to mention you had a panic attack the night Dad was back. You know, the one you tried so hard to cover up? And let’s not start on why you haven’t been eating lately. So, what’s up with you?”

“It’s nothing,” Sam said. He sank down in his seat so that he was wedged into the corner. “Just bad dreams.”

“Bullshit.”

“What do you want me to say, Dean?”

“How about the truth? Was it Dad,” Dean asked. He finally risked a glance over. Sam was careful not to meet his eye. “Did he do something? You two were barely alone with each other. Don’t tell me you got into another shouting match.”

“I didn’t get in a fight with Dad. Give me a little credit. I’m not that twenty year old kid anymore.”

He wasn’t. He had learned a long time ago to control his temper and to set aside those insecurities, at least for the most part. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel like the same mess of a kid when he came face to face with the man he thought he would never have to see again.

…

“Just stop,” Dean barked. “Can we have one family dinner? All of us together. That’s all I want. Can you just give me that?”

Sam could feel his insides wilting at the tone of Dean’s voice. Maybe he was just letting his emotions color his thoughts. Maybe he was reacting out of fear. Could John being back be a good thing? Could it come without strings attached? Before he could respond, Dean turned and walked away.

Sam had messed it up. He knew he had. Dean loved Dad. He had idolized the man for so long. It was part of the reason Sam could never bring himself to talk about his own relationship with John. Dean accepted that John had his flaws and had been a questionable parent at best, but there was no reason to tarnish the memory of a person he held in such high esteem, even now.

As he stood there alone in the middle of the hall wondering if he should chase after Dean, Sam could feel the panic tightening his chest. He needed to get somewhere to decompress before he lost control. He just needed five minutes away from the situation so he could breathe and think.

He had left his phone in the library. He had an app that was supposed to offer guided exercises for panic attacks. He hadn’t touched it in a couple of years, but he had never deleted it on the off chance he might need it again. If this didn’t call for it, he didn’t know what would. He set off back along the hall and into the open study area.

He was so intent on finding the missing phone that he didn’t realize he’d walked in on John until he rounded the corner and came face to face with him.

John seemed as surprised as Sam was. He smiled and slipped the book he had been skimming back on the shelf. “This place,” he said. “I don’t even know.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He had to fight to keep his voice level and forced a half smile onto his face. “Yeah. Uh, when we…we, uh, first moved in, I-I think it kind of blew our minds too.” Sam cringed. Here he was, stumbling over his words like he was back in middle school again.

John smiled at him. It was the sad smile of someone who realized that some things never changed.

Sam was suddenly very aware that they were all alone in a room together. While he didn’t feel particularly threatened in the middle of the communal space with Dean somewhere nearby, he still didn’t hold many memories of them spending time together that didn’t also end in a shouting match. The tightness in his chest was starting to ache.

“Um, where’s – where’s Mom?” It was a stupid question, but it filled the silence.

“Oh,” John said, waving the question off with a wide grin. “She’s getting your brother a shopping list. She’s going to make that casserole of hers.”

Sam let out a chuckle, his nerves bubbling over the longer he had to make small talk. “Yeah, Dean and I tried to make that once.”

“I remember.” John gave him an appraising look. His grin had dropped away into a more serious expression. He took a few steps forward. Until then, Sam had left a wide berth between them, allowing John to stay well out of arms reach. “I screwed up with you a lot, didn’t I?”

Sam’s heart clenched. Of all the things he’d always wanted to hear, those words were probably near the top of his list. He couldn’t help but stare at the man in front of him. He looked so much older than he remembered. Still, there was something in the way he said the words that seemed more like he was trying to test the waters than apologize. Sam couldn’t meet his eye. Now wasn’t the time or place to begin to have that conversation even if it was what John was offering. He cleared his throat but he couldn’t find any words.

“Sammy, be honest with me.”

Sam’s breath hitched at hearing his dad call him that. It had an edge to it. Something that felt almost antagonistic. He couldn’t help but feel that he was trying to pick a fight now, something Sam wasn’t about to give him. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“You didn’t have a problem talking about it before you left.”

This was too much. The walls were looming closer and tighter around him. He took a step back, shaking his head. He always wanted the chance to say his piece. Now that he was here, he couldn’t summon any of the words he’d practiced in his head over the years. In that moment, all he could feel was the collapse of time as he was taken back to when he was so scared and hurt all the time.

“Dad.” He paused to find the right words – any words. “For me? That fight was a lifetime ago. I don’t even remember what I said, and – I mean…” He swallowed hard. He wasn’t comfortable with how close they’re standing. He wasn’t okay with this conversation. He wasn’t prepared for any of this.

He turned away. “I, uh, I can’t do this. Not… not right now.” Before he could even take a step away, John’s hand was on his arm.

Sam froze. “Don’t.”

“Sam, I am so sorry.”

Sam heard the crack in his voice. It made him want to give in and turn around. It made him want to maybe stay. All he had ever wanted was an apology. He was having a hard time breathing now. It was like he couldn’t quite get enough air into his lungs. The hand on his bicep felt like a vice, although he knew the grip was barely there.

“No, you’re not,” he said, softly. He pulled his arm away and fled down the stairs to his room. He locked the door for good measure. It wasn’t likely that anyone would come looking for him, but he needed to know that he was alone.

As soon as the lock clicked home, he turned and let the door take his weight. He slid down the wood to land in a loose heap on the floor. His heart was beating wildly. He was sweating through his shirt. His breath was coming in short gasps. The light was too bright. His eyes stung. He just sat there gasping and trying not to feel the pressure of that hand on his arm.

Finally, he managed to ride out the worst of it and take a deep, measured breath. He focused on pulling as much air into his lungs as he could and hissing it out through his teeth. He made himself focus on feeling each and every part of his body, starting with his toes and working his way all the way to the crown of his head. By the time he was done, his spiraling thoughts had gone from a panicked, jumbled mess to at least the semblance of coherent thought again. His heart wasn’t hammering out of his chest. While his breathing still had a bit of a hitch, he didn’t feel like he was suffocating anymore.

His hands were shaking when he lifted them to scrub the tears from his face. He felt wrung completely out. Worse, he had let the ghosts of his childhood control him again in the moment. It was what he had worked so hard to avoid for so long.

When he felt like he could stand again, he shoved himself to his feet and stumbled over to the sink in the corner of his room. He had to get back out there. Whatever way this went, he couldn’t spend his life huddled in his room to avoid his demons.

He washed his face, combed his hair, and changed shirts. By the time he was done, he had obviously cleaned himself up. Dean might ask why, but he didn’t think he had any obvious signs of the last twenty minutes. He gave his hair a little shake with his hand to make it look less like he’d restyled it. Satisfied that his breakdown wouldn’t be written across his face, he shuffled out of his room and down towards the kitchen where Dean was passing with a slip of paper clutched in his hand.

Dean glanced at him, but made to keep going.

“Dean, hold on.”

Dean stopped. “What.”

Sam paused. He knew Dean was upset. He stood by what he said, but he got where Dean had been coming from, and Sam wanted what Dean did. He wanted one night where they didn’t have to feel the loss sitting around the things they didn’t say. Maybe he didn’t want to come face to face with John again, but watching the way Mom lit up when she saw him and the way Dean turned into a giddy kid, he wanted to have that, just for a little while.

“Listen, you were right. You want some company?”

Dean smirked at him and clapped him on the shoulder. Together they turned and made their way to the garage. Sam couldn’t help the little feeling of relief as they slid into the car and set off towards town.

…

“Then what,” Dean demanded, snapping him from his wandering thoughts. “Was it seeing Mom and Dad suck face? Was it our fight?”

“Just drop it!”

“I won’t. Look, you want to brood and scowl all day, knock yourself out, but whatever this is it’s eating you alive. I won’t watch you spiral, not now.”

Sam sighed. “It just stirred some bad memories up, okay? I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Now, let it go.”

Dean went tense at that admission, small as it was. He snapped his gaze to study Sam’s face. “Bad memories? What kind of bad memories. I know our lives weren’t all roses and sunshine, but what was so bad it set all this off?”

Sam shrugged and went back to staring out the window.

“Sam…”

“I’ve already told you to drop it. I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Well too bad. We’re talking about it.”

“Dean,” Sam snapped, shoving himself back upright from where he’d slouched in the seat. “I get it. I do, but this won’t do either of us any good. It’s old news. I mean really old. I’m sorry I woke you up, but there’s nothing to be fixed or taken care of.”

“Dammit, Sam. I don’t care that you woke me up. I care that you’re so twisted up over whatever this is. But I got nothing. I can’t think of one single thing seeing Dad would have given you a panic attack over.”

“Besides maybe watching him die on the floor of a hospital?” It was a low blow. Sam knew it, but he was not above using every shot in his arsenal to avoid this conversation.

Dean flinched. “Sure, but if that was the case, you wouldn’t be playing dodge the question so it’s something you haven’t told me about. Now spill. You and I both know it’s the only way you’re going to feel better.”

Sam sank back into the seat. There was no way he was going to talk about this. He’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t taint Dean’s view of John.

…

“You never told Dean?” John was watching Sam through narrowed eyes, his tone dripping with disbelief. It had to be abundantly clear that Sam had never spoken about what had happened.

“No.”

“Why not,” John demanded. “You always told him everything.” It sounded like an accusation. Sam would have bristled at the barb, but he couldn’t exactly deny it either.

“Why should I,” he fired back. “Dean deserved to have his father, flawed as he was. I wouldn’t take that from him. It wasn’t like you were going down in the history books as more than an arrest record to the rest of the world.”

“Maybe I did teach you something after all.”

“I want you to understand something,” Sam said as calmly as if he was talking about the weather. “You died over a decade ago. The closest thing to a legacy that you left was Dean. That’s not insignificant given the number of times he’s saved the world, but the only reason Dean’s wish was to see you, is because I care about him too much to take away one of the few things that kept him going through all these years. So as far as I’m concerned, you and I are done. There is no peace to be made. There is no forgiveness to be earned. Dean deserves to have his happy memory. Mom does too. But you make one move on me and I will make sure you never hurt another soul again.” Sam maintained eye contact through his entire speech. He never wavered. His voice never rose. He was as calm and collected on the surface as he knew how to be.

Instead of the immediate rage that Sam had expected, he was surprised to find John studying him as though he had never met him before. A lot had changed since he’d been a cowering child. Sam knew his father was reconciling the difference with the boy he knew.

“You grew into a good man.”

Sam nodded. “Thanks. I had one hell of an older brother that raised me.”

With that, he turned and left. He had said everything he needed to. Granted it wasn’t what he’d set out to do, but he felt at peace with it. He was done with John Winchester in the flesh. His ghost might still haunt him, but he would not have anything to do with the man himself. Let John make his own peace with the situation.

…

“Sam!”

Sam flinched, all the fight going out of him at the sheer frustration and worry in Dean’s tone. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Dean could read a lie on him from a mile away when it came to these emotional revelations, he would have found a different confession to make. He didn’t think some slightly traumatic memory from middle school was going to cut it this time. Perhaps it was time for him to come clean. Obviously, he had worried Dean more than he’d ever meant to. There was no getting out of this. He just had to soldier through it and hope he could salvage the pieces when they were through.

“Fine,” Sam said, resigned. “Pull over.”

“So you can hop out and walk home? I don’t think so.”

A frisson of annoyance ran through him at that. He was many things, but a coward wasn’t one of them. He might tend to run away from his problems, but even he had better conflict management skills than literally fleeing from a car to get out of a conversation. “I mean it,” he said. “I’ll explain, but not while you’re driving.”

Dean glanced over at him. He must have seen something in the set of his jaw. “I swear, if you make one move to get out of this car, I will tackle you.”

Sam nodded, but Dean did pull over onto the shoulder and park. They were on a stretch of wide open farmland. There was nothing in sight besides wintering fields for miles. The sky was scorchingly blue, not a cloud in sight. Sam stared off at the horizon trying to imagine just how far it went.

“Sam,” Dean said when Sam stayed quiet.

“Did Dad ever hurt you,” Sam finally asked, his eyes not leaving the horizon. “Not on a hunt or as part of training, but like hit you when you messed up.”

“I mean, I’ve had my fair share of ass chewings, and he gave me a good spanking once or twice.”

“No. Really hurt you. Intentionally.”

“Of course not. Dad never laid a hand on us.”

Sam nodded. He’d thought that was the case, but he could never be certain. John had been so careful.

“What’s gotten into you,” Dean demanded. He twisted in the seat so he was facing Sam more directly, his leg tucked up under him and his arm slung across the back of the seat. “Why would you ask me that?”

“I had to be sure.”

“Sam, what’s going on?”

Sam slid back down in his seat, stretching his legs out as far as he could. He let his head fall back until it was supported on the seat back so that he was staring up at the fabric of the ceiling. He could feel things slipping out of focus. It was like he was there, but not. Time felt sticky and slow.

“It started when I was nine or so,” he said without preamble. “I screwed up during training. Dad let you go down to the arcade as a reward for hitting all the targets without missing. I had to stay back and clean the guns. I had just finished putting the last one back in the duffle when Dad called me over.”

…

Dad had been quiet all afternoon as Sam worked. He’d sat at the kitchen table and watched as Sam spread everything out on the living room floor, meticulously pulling apart the weapons and cleaning them before reassembling them. The scrutiny made him nervous. He dropped things more than once, cringing as he could feel Dad’s disappointment growing. When he was finally done, he stood and stretched out his legs from where he’d been sitting for too long.

“Sam,” Dad said. It was low and short. Sam flinched, but came to stand in front of him at the table.

“Sir?”

“What am I going to do with you?”

“Dad?”

“Dean gets better and better every week. By the time he was your age, he could hit the target every time and the bullseye eight times out of ten. You’re still missing half the time.”

“That’s not true! Besides, Dean started learning before I did.”

“Don’t talk back to me!” John roared, jumping to his feet. Sam had never heard him that angry, at least not outside of a few very rare occasions when he or Dean had truly crossed a line.

“I’ve tried with you. I really have, but you just won’t learn. Don’t you understand? This isn’t a game. It could very well be your brother’s life on the line one day, but you’re happy with this half-assed work ethic. Maybe a little extra incentive is what you need.” Dad sounded dangerous. There was a grimness to him, a steel that scared Sam. He was quiet, studying Sam for a long time. Finally he nodded. “Get my belt from my bag.”

Sam’s mouth went dry. “Dad?”

“Now, Sam!”

Sam jumped, but scrambled to do what Dad said. He brought the belt back and laid it on the table. Dad took it up, doubling it and snapping it between his hands. Sam felt his legs begin to shake.

“Take your shirt off. Stand with your hands against the wall.”

Tears welled in his eyes. “But Dad, I don’t –”

“Don’t make me tell you again,” Dad growled.

Sam pulled his t-shirt over his head with trembling fingers. He draped it over a chair then turned and put his hands against the wall. John came to stand behind him.

“You missed ten targets today. You’ll get ten strokes. Understand?”

Sam bit his lip. This wasn’t fair. He didn’t understand why Dad was doing this. He knew he screwed up. He would never be as good as Dean, but he’d done better today than he had last week.

“I asked you a question!”

Sam sucked in a breath. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Count them.”

Without warning, the belt bit into his back. It was a searing flush of pain. The initial impact stung, but afterwards the heat blossomed under his skin. Sam cried out. He could feel the trail from the tip of his shoulder all the way down to his hip.

“I told you to count!”

The belt came down again. “T-two.”

“If you don’t count, we start over. This is one,” he said as he brought the belt down, this time more across his middle back.

“One,” Sam said, hurrying to correct himself.

By the time he got to ten, he was nearly sobbing. Dad finally stepped back. “Quit your sniveling. Go wash your face and put your shirt back on. Let that back be a reminder what happens when you miss. And if I find out you’ve gone crying to your brother, I’ll make it double next time. Now, get out of my sight for the rest of the night.”

Sam snatched his shirt from the chair and ran up the stairs, putting as much distance between him and his father as he could.

…

“He gave me one stroke of the belt for each time I missed the target.”

Dean was silent, watching him with a look of confusion. “He hit you for missing your shots?”

Sam didn’t respond directly. “At first it was just when I made a mistake in training. Missed targets, slow lap times, failed obstacles. It even seemed, not normal, but I guess I got what he was trying to do, you know? But soon it was over smaller and smaller things. Eventually he just said it was part of reminding me of my place.”

Sam took a deep breath. That was the smallest of the things he’d endured and it had left him feeling disgusting to admit.

He had imagined what he might tell Dean if he ever came clean about the whole ordeal. He’d planned the conversation, over and over, full of apologies and the little things that made it seem not that bad. He knew he wouldn’t tell Dean everything, but there were pieces that had been weighing on him for so long. Now that he had started, he wasn’t sure he wanted to stop.

He couldn’t seem to talk in anything but a monotone, just enumerating the facts as plainly as possible so he didn’t have to dive into the swirl of emotional chaos they inevitably brought to the surface.

“He stuck to hitting for a long time, but there were other things. He kicked me out of the room a couple of times over night. Sometimes, when I got a little older, he would lock me in the bathroom. He would leave me in there for days.”

…

“Dean, why don’t you go load up the car. I need to talk to Sam. We’ll head out in a minute.”

“Sure,” Dean said. He scruffed up Sam’s hair and laughed when Sam pushed him off. “See y’a in a few days, Sammy.”

“Get outta here, jerk. And be careful.”

Dean gave him a smirk as he collected his bag and headed for the door. “I’m always careful,” he tossed over his shoulder as he left.

The door thumped shut behind him. Sam was left standing on the opposite side of the room from John, who was eyeing him with a look of disgust. Sam’s eyes immediately went to the floor. He could feel the distaste radiating from the other man.

“What will you be doing while Dean and I are out risking our lives?”

Sam flinched at the harsh tone. “I’ll be here training or at school.”

John grunted. “You think I can trust you to not blow our cover?”

“I know the rules,” he said quickly, not looking up from the stiff, grey carpet. “I won’t leave except for school. I’ll keep the door locked and the entrances salted. Nobody comes over. Nobody sees me out alone.”

John gave him a hard look. “And I’m supposed to believe you won’t go running off to one of your little friends’ houses the minute I’m gone? I’m supposed to trust that you’ll do your training and keep up with your routine?”

Sam didn’t like where this was going. John hadn’t raised his voice yet, but the air had taken on that heaviness when something bad was about to happen. He could feel the storm about to break.

“I swear I’ll be good. I’ll follow the rules. I won’t cause any trouble. I promise.”

“Promises from you aren’t really worth much, are they?”

Sam flinched. He could still remember the February night spent locked outside of the motel room when he’d lost track of time in study group and gotten home an hour after he said he would.

“No, sir.” He said.

“No, they aren’t. I can’t trust you not to do something stupid, and I can’t take you with me. So what am I supposed to do with you?”

Sam risked a glance up at John. He was scowling down at him, arms crossed over his chest. “I can stay here,” Sam said, scrambling to come up with an alternative. “If you call the school – tell them I’m sick – I can just not leave. No one would have to know I didn’t go with you.”

Sam was desperately hoping John took the offering. He had no idea what John might come up with if that wasn’t satisfactory. It would suck being behind in his classwork and being stuck in the room for a week, but if it kept John happy, he would do it in a heartbeat. He knew even if John did snap, he wouldn’t get a bad one this time around. Dean was waiting in the car, and he’d double back to check on them if it took too long. There was still an awful lot that could happen in five minutes that Sam would rather avoid if he could.

Instead of appeasing John, his suggestion seemed to stoke a burning rage. “And you think you deserve a vacation? You think you should get to sit on your ass while the rest of us are doing the damn job?”

“No, sir. I didn’t mean it like that! I just...”

Sam was cut off as John strode across the small room and grabbed him by the collar. John lifted him by his shirt so that his feet were just dragging the floor. “You want a vacation? Fine. You can have one.”

He dragged Sam through the room to the bathroom and flung him to the floor. With the force and the angle Sam was at, he didn’t have time to catch himself before his head was colliding with the edge of the tub.

He sprawled on the ground, blinking up at Dad through the haze of disorientation. “I hope you enjoy doing nothing, Sam.”

Sam sprang to his feet the minute he realized John was about to close the door. He was too slow and the door slammed shut. Sam grabbed the handle and twisted. It turned freely but there was a weight pressed up against the other side. “Dad, please! I can be good. I swear. Please! Just let me out.”

“If anyone, and I mean anyone, comes into this room for any reason, any punishment you’ve ever had will seem like a walk in the park. Do you understand me?”

“Dad!” Sam beat at the door. “Dad, what are you doing? Please!”

“Do you understand, Samuel?”

Sam was trembling head to toe. Surely he couldn’t mean to leave him here like this. “You can’t do this. I’ll do whatever you want just please!”

“I said, do you understand,” John roared.

Sam was fighting to breathe around the tears streaming down him face. “I understand. But please, you don’t have to do this.”

There was a long pause. Then John said, “Stand back from the door.”

Sam scrambled back, head down and standing at attention. Instead of the door swinging open as he’d expected, there was the sound of something dragging on the floor. A moment later there was a heavy thump against the wood of the door.

“Dad?”

There was another scrambling around the doorknob, then silence. Sam shot to the door again. He tried to turn the knob but this time found it jammed. When he pushed on it, it didn’t even rattle in its frame.

“Dad!” Sam was nearly screaming. John didn’t respond. Sam smacked the door a few more times.

A moment later, he heard the outer door shut and lock. Sam sank to the ground, breath coming in huge gasps. His world was spinning in and out of focus. He swallowed trying to keep the absolute panic at bay.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been on punishment when Dean and John left. It wasn’t even the first time he had been locked up, but John had always been close by for those, and it had never been so inescapable either.

Sam took stock. It could be that he could move whatever it was that was propped against the door. Taking a deep breath he stood and faced the problem. He tried the knob again, but whatever John had done to it had it jammed tight. He could barely even jiggle it. It didn’t even have the same give as a normal locked door. Sam twisted the knob back and forth, trying to work at the mechanism, but there was no give. He glanced around, but Dad and Dean had both taken their toiletries with them. The only things left in the room was a single bath towel as well as Sam’s own shampoo and toothbrush. His comb and everything else remotely hard or helpful was in his bag under the foot of his bed.

Sam leaned against the door, hoping whatever was jamming the knob was part of the object blocking the other side. If he could put enough force against it, he might be able to shift it enough to get the knob free, then push and topple the blockade.

Even shoving with all his might wasn’t enough to budge whatever was on the other side.

Sam once again found himself sitting on the cold tile of the bathroom floor. What was he going to do? Between a full day’s drive to get to their destination, a day of the most serendipitous research known to man, a day to kill the monster and rest, then one more to get home, he was looking at four days, minimum. That was if nothing went wrong and they found everything they needed the first day. Realistically they were probably going to be gone closer to six. That didn’t account for if one of them got injured or if they found something else close. Dean wouldn’t let them be gone too long, but they could easily pick up a second hunt on their way home and be gone for a few extra days.

Sam could feel the hysterical tears clawing their way back to the surface. What would he do? He had water but no food. He couldn’t even go down to the vending machine and get a candy bar. What if they were gone for weeks? How long could he go without food? What if something happened and they couldn’t get back? What if they ended up in the hospital? He’d be completely alone and forgotten. He couldn’t get to the phone. He couldn’t call out. He could maybe make enough ruckus that someone would hear him, but he had no doubt that if he did and John was fine, he’d wish he had starved to death.

…

The thing Sam didn’t anticipate was the sheer, absolute boredom. True, he was trapped in a tiny room with no food. True he had bigger problems than how little reading material was present, but what he wouldn’t give for just one magazine. Forget Dickens or Chaucer or Twain. He didn’t even need anything with plot. At this point he would kill even for one of Dean’s porno magazines. Anything to fill the absolute blankness of the slowly ticking minutes.

He was going to go insane.

He made a face. He had no idea how much time had passed. He wasn’t wearing a watch. If he flipped the light off and waited a few minutes he could just make out daylight around the edges of the door, but not much else. Whatever had been used to block the door covered up the crack at the bottom so he was guessing based on the ambient light in the adjacent room. It couldn’t have been but a couple of hours. At most. If he kept on this way, he was going to make himself even more miserable.

He climbed to his feet. If nothing else, he could get moving. That should help pass some time and keep him sane.

...

He wasn’t sure which was worse, the gnawing hunger or the brain melting boredom. He and Dean had survived some lean times. The key was distracting yourself from what you didn’t have. He couldn’t do that now. He didn’t even have the energy to get up and force himself through his limited exercise routine.

His stomach hurt. His head hurt.

…

The phone was ringing. Sam had shot up from the floor when it started. The bright trill was loud in the quiet of his little world. He scrambled at the door again, pushing and shoving. If he could get out. If he could answer the phone. His whole world narrowed in on that thought. Get out. Answer the phone.

It didn’t matter what he did, the door wouldn’t give. He rammed it several times, but it was as immovable as it had been that first day.

The phone stopped ringing.

...

He just felt tired. He was pretty sure it wasn’t good how tired he was. He didn’t have the energy to care. He had taken the shower curtain down yesterday and twisted the towel into a pillow to make a nest in the bathtub. If John came home and found it, there would be hell to pay, but right now he’s happy to curl up and sleep off the misery.

As he drifts off, he’s sure he can hear Dad muttering about what a waste of space he is. He doesn’t have the energy to get up and turn the light on to check.

...

The next time he woke, he actually felt better. He was thrumming with nervous energy. If he’d been outside, he would have been running. He felt almost euphoric. He took a few reps of everything he could think of, even jogging in place to wear down some of the energy.

It didn’t last long though. By the next morning, he just felt grouchy and slow. It wasn’t the overwhelming exhaustion from before, just a slow, dragging feeling of weariness. On the plus side, he wasn’t hungry anymore, but he was so bored he couldn’t think straight and he wasn’t interested in doing much besides laying in the floor staring up at the water stained ceiling.

...

He froze mid drink from the faucet. He’d heard something on the other side. It sounded like the door opening and closing. Sam held his breath and listened. There. He could hear booted steps moving around in the other room.

“Dad?” He pitched his voice so he could be heard through the door, but not so loud that he might attraction attention from the neighbors, his father’s warning still beating in his head.

No one answered. He heard someone moving. Finally, they shuffled up to the door. “Sam?”

“Dad! Please, let me out. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The silence from the other side pressed in against him.

“Not yet, you aren’t.”

John stomped off and the bed creaked as he settled on it. The TV clicked on, and Sam could hear the jumbled murmur of people talking in the background. Sam sobbed. His knees went weak. Before he knew it, he was crashing to the floor. As his head fell to rest against the wood of the door, he closed his eyes. He reached up and flipped the light off, hoping he could catch the flicker of the TV light. Just knowing someone else was there might help to ease the panic.

The minute the light cut out, everything stopped. The noise of the TV. The creaking bedsprings. Everything. The world stood still.

“Dad?” Sam couldn’t breathe, too afraid he might miss any sound that would mean John was still there. “Dad? Dad! Don’t leave me! Please!”

Sam huddled on the floor, sobbing. He couldn’t take much more of this.

It only took one more time for him to figure out he was hallucinating. It was the same script, the same sounds. The minute he changed anything about his little room, it all stopped. That doesn’t mean he didn’t try to hold onto the sound of the television playing talk shows in the next room for as long as he could.

….

He thought it had been about a week.

He took the shower curtain and tucked it up over the mirror. His face was looking gaunt, and he didn’t like to see the way his eyes looked heavy in their sockets. He didn’t think he looked emaciated. He hadn’t reached starving child in Africa charity commercial level yet, but he was looking thinner. He could tell his arms were smaller. Despite only having exercise to fend off the boredom, he could tell he’d lost some muscle.

He was beginning to feel like his whole world was this one room. It was ridiculous and probably as much a result of the lack of food as being stuck in one room, but he was having trouble imagining a world beyond this. He knew there was one, but it seemed like a distant planet, something he heard stories about or read in comic books.

He was well past the point he could have pushed over whatever blocked the door. He figured he had another couple of days before, threat or no, he would have to make enough commotion to somehow get someone’s attention.

...

He was sleeping. Not well, but he was dozing fitfully. He dreamed of slamming car doors and monsters that creaked up stairs and claws that scratched on window panes. He pulled the shower curtain closer around him as a draft teased across his arms.

Then he was scrambling up and into a corner as a noise like the crack of a gun startled him from sleep. He pressed himself into the corner, huddled under his makeshift sheet, as he blinked in the sudden harshness of daylight.

The light clicked on, and John Winchester was illuminated in the doorway.

“So you slept the entire week.”

Sam could do nothing but blink up at him. The words barely made sense. John was across the tiny bathroom in the space of a breath. Sam was huddled one moment, then dangling by his arm the next.

John ripped the curtain away from him, and shook him. “Here we’ve been out risking our lives to keep innocents safe, and I come home to find you sleeping the morning away! Is this your idea of discipline? Is this how you’re planning to prove you can be trusted alone?”

John shook him with each question. Sam was hearing him, but it was like it was a long way away. He just stared up, trying to figure out how to make words work. Distantly, he knew he was probably a little sick. Aside from the way his body had been slowing down, he’d felt feverish for a while now, and if he’d had any food in his system he’d have already thrown it up.

His mind snagged on one word. “Dad?” It rasped out of him, light and breathy and more of sigh than an actual, spoken word.

John’s face twisted. It looked like he was about to start screaming, but as he dragged Sam out into the main room, he paled.

“Sam?”

It was the first time in months he’d heard his name from his Dad’s mouth in anything other than anger. It took him so by surprise that he stiffened.

“Fuck,” John said. He readjusted his grip so that he was guiding more than dragging, and steered Sam to sit down on the edge of something soft. Sam sank into the mattress under him and let out a content sigh, his eyes closing in pleasure.

There was a flurry of activity, but Sam couldn’t be bothered to keep up with it. If John was pissed at him, and he usually was, he’d get around to addressing it sooner or later. Maybe he’d put Sam out of his misery once and for all.

A few minutes later, John was there, shaking Sam’s shoulder lightly.

“Okay, Sam. I need you to drink this. Small sips. Take it nice and slow.”

Sam blinked his eyes back open, fighting against the sleep that was tugging at him. John was holding out one of the motel cups full of cloudy water. Sam tried to take the cup, but his hand wouldn’t support it. He almost dropped it, but Dad was there, wrapping his own hand around Sam’s and gently guiding the cup to his lips.

The first sip was so deliciously sweet that he tried to tip the cup up and drink it down in one swift guzzle. John pulled it away. Sam made a noise, but John held it back.

“Small sips. You won’t do yourself any good if you make yourself sick.”

Sam nodded, wary of antagonizing this gentler version of John. It was almost like having his father back.

Over the next twenty minutes, Sam got down the entire cup. His stomach was making odd noises, but he found he was feeling a little clearer headed.

John whisked the cup away.

Sam felt like he blinked and then John was nudging him again. “Come on, kid. We need to get you changed. Can you do that?”

John was standing there with a bundle of clothes in his hands. It took Sam longer than it probably should have to understand what he was being offered. Finally, the question penetrated his brain and he sat up. John was there, supporting his back, guiding him through the motions.

Sam hadn’t had fresh clothes for days. He’d been careful to bathe, given that he had that luxury, but he hadn’t been able to do anything about the stale sweat and grime from the bathroom floor pressed into his shirt.

When he was dressed, John left him sitting to do something by the door. When he came back, he was carrying Sam’s shoes. He knelt down and started slipping them on Sam’s feet one at a time.

As he began tying them, Sam frowned. “Dad?” His voice was low and rough and quiet, even in the empty room. “You’re back? Really?”

John grunted.

“How was the hunt? Did you get it?”

John stopped mid tie and looked up into Sam’s face. Sam couldn’t place the expression. It wasn’t anger or annoyance or disgust. It seemed almost sad.

“We got it. Town will be safe now.”

Sam closed his eyes. “Good.”

John rose, and Sam blinked again. John pulled softly at his elbow until he stood up, then set a hand on his shoulder and another on his arm, guiding him out of the room. Sam felt clumsy and thick. He was walking, but his feet kept dragging and he still didn’t feel quite with it. Dad helped him into the car and started the engine.

When they pulled up outside the restaurant, John parked and cut the engine. They sat that way for a long moment. It was some sort of sit down bar, more a roadhouse than a restaurant. Sam could hear the thumping of rock music. As he watched, a half dozen people went in. The thought of so many people in one place was making him feel a little queasy. He wanted to turn around, go back to the little room and it’s quiet.

Before he could ask to go back, John had climbed out and come around to help Sam out. When he had his feet under him and they were about to head in, John squeezed his shoulder hard.

“You were sick. You’re still getting over it. Understand?”

Sam didn’t understand much of anything but he did know what John wasn’t saying. Dean wasn’t supposed to know. “Yes, sir,” he muttered.

When he entered, the sounds and smells and sights nearly bowled him over. If it hadn’t been for John’s hand on his arm, he’d have hit the floor. John paused long enough for Sam to get his bearings. It was too loud and too bright.

“Come on,” John murmured in his ear. “Dean’s over there. Just a little further then you can sit down. Remember, take it slow.”

Sam gave a nod, not trusting that his voice would cooperate. John helped him up a few short steps and then he was stumbling to a table in the back corner.

“Sammy!”

Dean was suddenly there in his space, his arm around his shoulders, his scent in his nose. Sam felt himself nearly going limp as he finally felt safe.

“Dean.” It was barely a whisper, but Dean seemed to know something wasn’t right. He pulled back a little and studied him.

“Jesus, Sam. What happened to you? You look like shit warmed over. Are you sick? Did you eat at all while we were gone?”

Sam clenched his eyes shut at the question. His entire body seemed to cramp at the mention of eating. Suddenly he could smell everything and his mouth was watering. He didn’t realize he was going down until Dean said, “whoa there. Kiddo?”

Sam steadied himself on Dean, using him to leverage himself upright again. Dean had him pulled around and sat in a chair before he could blink.

“Sam, what’s wrong?”

The sheer panic in his voice made Sam focus back on him. “M’fine,” he croaked. “Jus bn sick.”

“Uh yeah. I could tell. How sick is sick? You look hospital sick.”

“M’fine,” he said again.

“Sure. Dad? I think this is serious. Maybe we should get him checked out.”

“He’s barely running a fever. He’s probably on the back end of it now. Let’s all sit and see if we can’t get some food in him. If he’s not looking better in a few days, we’ll go from there.”

Sam let the noise wash over him. Dean scooted unreasonably close and chattered about their hunt. Sam lost time somewhere between sitting down and a bowl of soup appearing in front of him.

He tried to pull the paper ring off his silverware, but couldn’t get it loose. Dean reached over and plucked it from his fingers. Sam wanted to snap at him, but he knew it was the fastest way, short of flopping face first into the bowl, to get at the soup. Finally, a spoon was placed in his hand. He didn’t waste precious energy on manners. He shoved the spoon full of broth into his mouth as quickly as he could, afraid it might disappear at any moment. If this was another hallucination, he planned on enjoying it thoroughly.

The sound he made at the first taste would honestly have been embarrassing if it had been loud enough for anyone to hear. He nearly did make a dive for the bowl, but Dad laid a hand on his arm. “Slowly. Let your system get used to it.”

Sam didn’t think he had the willpower for that. The only reason he seemed to follow John’s directions was the fact that the stupid spoon was so heavy in his hand. It was work lifting it over and over again. By the time he’d finished half the soup, he was trembling. It was taking so much work to get the food into him, that he almost didn’t care about finishing it.

He pressed on as long as he could, but the longer they sat there, warm and with actual food in his stomach, the sleepier he got. He knew Dean and John were talking, but Sam let himself drift off, too exhausted to keep up with the conversation.

…

“He would block the door from outside and just leave.”

“Hold on, back up,” Dean said, looking genuinely lost. “Dad locked you in the bathroom? Where was I?”

“Usually you two were on a hunt nearby.”

“We? Dad was with me? For how long? When did this happen?”

Sam shrugged, his shoulders pressing into the leather of the seat. “There were a couple of times, but it was only more than a day or two the first time.”

“A day or two?! There was a time it was longer?! When? How long?”

Sam frowned up at the ceiling. There was a little piece of lint clinging to the fabric just over the passenger side door. It took a minute to process all the questions Dean had thrown at him. “I was thirteen. It was all super hazy for a while once you got back. I never did get the story straight in my head. You were gone for eleven days though. That part stuck.”

Sam snuck a glance at Dean from the corner of his eye. Dean had gone white. “Eleven days.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “It was the one time I saw Dad realize he’d gone too far. I was in pretty bad shape when you two got back.”

“That’s...that’s...”

“It sucked,” Sam supplied. “It was so fucking boring. And I was so hungry. For the first couple of days I couldn’t decide which was worse being hungry or being bored. But then I stopped being hungry.”

“Hungry? How much did he leave you with?”

Sam tilted his head along the back of the seat to look at him sideways, not sure how to interpret that tone, or the question really. “What do you mean?”

“You were in there for days.” Dean couldn’t even say that without looking like he was going to hurl. “How much food did dad leave with you? What did he plan for?”

“He didn’t,” Sam said. He frowned at Dean. Why would John have left him food?

“He didn’t what?”

“I made him mad. He tossed me in the bathroom and blocked the door so I couldn’t open it. He didn’t plan anything. All I had was what I had with me, which was basically a bit of lint in my pocket.”

Dean was deathly silent for a long moment. “Montana.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed.

Dean slammed his fist down onto the steering wheel. Sam recoiled, curling back into the corner between the door and the seat despite himself.

“That son of a bitch! I knew something was wrong. When we came back you were so thin. I could actually see your ribs. You could barely lift your spoon that first night. You were skittish and claustrophobic and barely spoke. And I bought that story about you being sick.”

“I was sick, although that set in the last day or two. Time was weird by then, so I couldn’t tell you exactly how long I’d been down with something.”

“You nearly died!”

Sam flinched. He clenched his hands in his lap and focused on that. His knuckles turned white from the pressure. “No,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I didn’t. It wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t that close.”

“Yes, you did,” Dean insisted, leaning forward. “You started having trouble breathing. Your heart went funny. Dad wouldn’t let us take you to a hospital. He said they’d take you away because we’d been gone so long. And they would have because any doctor would have taken one look at you and known exactly what happened.”

Sam was shocked into looking up, mouth hanging open like an idiot. “I didn’t know,” he said, softly. “I did some research later, and everything I read said it took more like three weeks for the really bad stuff to set in, especially if you had water. I figured I had just gotten sick from sleeping in the tub, you know?”

Dean’s jaw clenched. He opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it shut. A shudder ran through his frame. He looked like an over wound spring ready to fly apart at any moment. When he didn’t say anything, Sam glanced at him from under the fringe of his hair.

“Dean? You okay?”

Dean’s fists clenched. His jaw worked back and forth before he managed to spit out, “Fuck no.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Dean’s eyes snapped to him with a flash of something dangerous.

Sam pulled back, eyes going back to his lap. “I just...I-I get it if you’re angry with me.” Dean hadn’t even heard the worst part yet. If he was angry now, he’d be livid if Sam told him the rest.

Dean breathed through several little puffing, seething breaths before he finally said, “I’m not mad at you. I’m absolutely pissed, but not at you.”

“Wait, you’re not?”

“Of course not. I mean, you should have told me, but John is lucky he’s dead.”

“You believe me?”

Dean seemed to shake off the temper he’d fall into. He finally looked back at Sam with something closer to confusion. “Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I know how much Dad meant to you. I uh, well, I didn’t want you to have to I guess choose. And well, this is all hard to hear.”

Dean’s jaw clenched again. “What else?”

“Dean.”

“You said you were thirteen. You telling me that between then and when you left, it never escalated?”

“No, it did. But are you sure? I-I uh I’m not sure I can even talk about it. It’s, um, not something you really walk away from knowing.”

“Just tell me.”

Sam shrugged. It wasn’t like he hadn’t irreparably damaged Dean’s opinion of him anyway. His fingers found the edge of the shirt he’d stripped out of earlier and started worrying at the loose thread head meant to snip off ages ago.

He knew that this had been hard for Dean, but he also knew that the next part would be worse, although he wasn’t sure if it would be harder for him or Dean.

He sucked in a breath and focused on the string twisting between his fingers.

“Like I said, the first time was the worst, but he seemed to like that one. He started tying me down during punishments. He said it was part of my training, to make me get out of the ropes. It wasn’t great, but in terms of bad it rated pretty low on the scale, you know? When I turned sixteen, things changed.”

“Changed how?”

…

Sam never managed to stay in the moment when John really got going. It was like he just checked out. It hurt - God did it hurt - but he got to a point where he would watch it from outside himself.

John had wrestled him down after Dean swaggered off. He was twenty now and a little thing like a year wasn’t going to stand between him and a little fun in a bar or finding some hot coed to spend the night with. As much as Sam wanted him to have a life beyond this horror show, he was jealously angry every time he left, because that’s when the worst things happened. John wouldn’t do much if Dean was home or just getting dinner for them. It was when he walked out the door like he was the greatest gift to the world that Sam knew he was in for a rough night.

He stopped keeping track of why he was being punished. Half the time, John didn’t bother with a reason anymore anyway. Tonight it had been something about being the reason they were even in the life. Something about Mom and Dean that hadn’t made sense even when Sam had been paying attention.

Sam still fought. He was determined. John would not break him. He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of knowing he had won. So Sam still resisted when John grabbed him and bodily hauled him around. He still struggled when he was being tied down, this time to the bed.

His wrists were tied above his head at either corner of the headboard. John hadn’t bothered with his feet, electing instead to sit on his hips so that any struggle he did make was ineffectual at best.

“Stupid brat, can’t even get out of that, can you? I don’t know why I waste my time with you.”

Sam couldn’t respond, even if he wanted to. Apparently he’d screamed too loud, or maybe John just wasn’t in the mood, because he’d smacked Sam across the face and then shoved a t-shirt that had been lying in the floor into his mouth and tied it around his head.

Sam was a little confused. Normally when John tied him down it was so he could do something with full, uninterrupted access, usually a good belting. Sometimes he even pulled out his knife. Tonight it seemed to be because he could. He’d been yelling, like always, and Sam had taken his fair share of punches tonight, but it hadn’t been like the other times.

Of course, without a way to curl up or protect himself, John could land one just about anywhere he wanted. Sam was pretty sure his ribs were going to be bruised, and he’d have to be extra careful of his left side where he’d taken a hard kick before John had gotten him down.

Sam was brought back to the moment when John froze mid punch. He looked up. John was straddling him, fist raised, but his eyes were focused on Sam’s stomach where his shirt had ridden up in the struggle.

John’s expression had gone soft, unreadably distant. He brought his hand down and skimmed it over a bruise that was starting to form just along Sam’s hip bone. It didn’t hurt. It was a surprisingly gentle touch, but something about it made Sam’s blood run cold. Sam froze, barely able to breathe.

John’s eyes went hard. “You took her from me! You took her and then you walk around acting like her, looking like her.” His voice was low.

John climbed off him and stood.

“You take what’s mine, I’ll take what I want from you.”

Sam had a horrible feeling about where this was going. John grasped his legs and lifted. Sam struggled as hard as he could. He bucked and kicked and twisted trying to get free. Whatever came next would be worse, so much worse than what had come before. He tried to call out, but the gag in his mouth muffled it down into incoherent cries.

In one swift motion, John flipped him over. Sam’s arms, still attached to the headboard, felt like they were going to pull from their sockets. He landed with a grunt as John dropped him. Despite the agony his shoulders were in, he tried to flip back before John could do anything. John was quicker though. He grabbed the back of Sam’s jeans and dragged him down the bed. His arms were pulled tight. He didn’t even have the leverage to lift his head. His face was pressed hard into the mattress The twisted sheet tangled under him, making it that much harder to move. He finally got his head turned to the side so that he could breathe when John lifted his hips up enough he could unbuckle his jeans. In seconds they and his boxers were pulled free and discarded to the side of the bed.

Sam renewed his struggling. He kicked, trying to find purchase against anything so he could get away from what was coming next. His foot clipped something warm and hard. John grunted.

“You little asshole.” John gave a solid punch to his kidney, making Sam drop limp for a moment. A moment was all John needed to yank the sheet out from under him, twist it around his ankles and tie his feet apart at opposite sides of the bed. “Kick me now you little shit.”

John climbed up into the bed. Sam did his best to twist away, but he couldn’t stop it as John pulled him around and yanked him back. Sam was crying now, tears of terror.

John spent a moment doing something behind him. Sam was too tangled up to see more than the edge of the nightstand from where he was laying. He just laid there panting.

Finally, John said, “This is for everything you’ve stolen from me.”

Then he grabbed Sam’s hips and dragged him back as much as he could. Sam cried out as pain split through him. John forced himself into Sam. The next few minutes were a long haze of pain and movement and fear.

When John finally spent himself, he yanked free of Sam and climbed off the bed. He spent a long time just staring at Sam’s limp body.

Sam lay there, trying to breathe through the pain, too spent to even think about moving. He took the three hard smacks to his ass with indifference. No pain John could do with his hand could match what Sam was feeling inside him.

After a snort of derision, John turned and went into the bathroom leaving him to his misery. The water in the shower turned on, but Sam didn’t care. He could still feel everything about John touching him, pulling at him, filling him.

Sam didn’t know how much time passed before John was back. He barely spared Sam a glance as he found clean clothes, dressed, and collected his keys. In seconds he was out the door.

As much as he didn’t want to move, he knew if he stayed in that spot, his arms would be fucked. He could already feel the harsh tingling of nerve pain from being yanked against the natural movement of the joint. If John was gone, he was okay to try and slip out of the tie. In fact, if he didn’t, John would give him worse when he got home.

Sam gathered his strength then used his feet to leverage himself up as best he could. He couldn’t go far. The sheet tying his ankles didn’t have much slack. The little bit of movement made his shoulders scream, but did take a little pressure off and gave him just enough give to raise his head and study the knots.

What he saw wasn’t encouraging. John had tied his hands directly to the posts. When he’d flipped him, Sam’s wrists had been forced to rotate in the already tight ties. Both were bloody and weeping. The angle had pulled the ropes even tighter. There wasn’t any way for him to even reach the knots without flipping back over and as tightly as the ropes had eaten into his skin, he’d never slip them without breaking something. John would murder him if he did something that obvious that couldn’t be hidden.

Sam tested the give on the sheets around his ankles. Those would be the easier of the two to slip, but John had double tied them. Without something to rub against, he wasn’t getting out of those either and he wouldn’t be able to flip back over until they were gone.

Sam collapsed back onto the bed, spent. He was stuck. He wasn’t getting out until John came back.

Sam spent most of the hours he was alone trying to distract himself. If he thought too hard about what had just happened, he was going to throw up, and with the gag still splitting his jaw, he would be in a world of trouble if he did.

When John finally stumbled in, he tripped his way over to Sam’s bed. Sam tensed, afraid he’d decided to come back for more.

“Stupid little slut. Can’t even untie a knot can you. Should give you a belting, but I’m tired. I’m so tired. It’s your fault. If I didn’t spend all my time trying to straighten you out, I wouldn’t be so damn tired. Since you’re too lazy to do it right, you can sleep like that.”

John turned and went into the bathroom. Sam could hear him brushing his teeth. Eventually he stumbled back out and collapsed into the other bed, shoes and all. He rolled over and flipped the light off.

“Sleep tight, Sammy.”

Sam was plunged into darkness.

…

The next morning, John got up with his alarm and ignored Sam completely. He went about his morning. Only when he was showered, dressed, and had enjoyed two cups of coffee over the paper he’d picked up yesterday did he finally come over to Sam’s bed.

“I don’t have time for your whining this morning. Understand?”

Sam nodded weakly into the pillow.

“We are meeting your brother for breakfast in twenty minutes. I expect you cleaned up and ready to go in fifteen.”

Again, Sam nodded. John pulled his knife from his waistband. Sam clenched his eyes shut, hoping he wasn’t about to go round three. Instead, the cool metal slid along the inside of his wrist and pulled. The rope tore free.

John tossed the knife onto the bed next to him. “This room better be spotless before we leave or I’m leaving you here.”

John went back to the little table and picked his paper up. Sam spent a few precious seconds working the feeling back into his hand before he picked up the knife and clumsily cut his other wrist free. With his hands finally down, he could barely move his arms. It hurt bad enough he whimpered. That brought his attention back to the now tacky t-shirt that had been stealing the moisture from his mouth all night. He lifted his aching arms and plucked the knots from the fabric until it fell limply away from his head. He had to pull the wads of fabric from his mouth before his jaw could finally close in a natural way, although that hurt too.

He knew he was spending precious minutes of his allotted time, so he forced his hand under him and pushed himself up onto his knees so he could reach the sheets tying his ankles down. The knots on those were easier. Either he had worked them loose a little overnight or John hadn’t been as careful with them. They’d been impossible when he didn’t have any leverage, but pulled out easily enough. When both ankles were free, he launched himself from the bed and into the bathroom. He made it just in time to loose what little he had in his stomach into the toilet.

Next he was made aware that his bladder was about to burst.

Immediate needs seen to, he took stock. He didn’t have to worry about his face, but his wrists were a bloody, mangled mess. He’d be wearing his extra-long sleeved hoody for sure.

He climbed into the shower. He didn’t have the time he wanted to stand under the spray and wash every last memory of those hands off his skin, but he spent a few extra minutes letting the hot water scald away the evidence of the night before. He took the time to wrap up the raw wounds on his wrists and to treat the few spots that were actually cut and bleeding on his torso, although most of those had scabbed over during the night.

He was stiff and sore and very bruised, but the worst of his injuries weren’t on the outside. It hurt to walk. He’d noticed blood where there shouldn’t have been any and he just had to hope it wasn’t something he would need a doctor for. Every time he moved he was reminded of what had happened the night before.

Sam didn’t let himself think about it. John was only a few feet away in the next room, and he had a deadline to meet if he didn’t want to bring more down on his head.

He flew through the cleaning. It didn’t take as long as he’d feared. He threw the duvet straight so the bed looked made, but bundled the sheets and set them outside the door for the maid to pick up. His discarded clothes he shoved to the very bottom of his duffel bag and the cut rope he hid at the bottom of the trash can. By the end, the room looked as neat as it ever did.

John didn’t say anything, just collected his keys and left, Sam trailing behind. They made it in time for Dean to smirk at the waitress and drop at least ten disgusting hints about what his night had entailed. Sam swallowed down the bile threatening to make an appearance as he remembered his own night.

When Dean didn’t get the rise he was looking for, he stopped and frowned. “You okay there, Sammy?”

Sam forced a smile and nodded. “Didn’t sleep well. I’m just tired.”

Dean gave him a hard look. He was thankfully distracted by the waitress who dropped off his plate of bacon and eggs with a wink.

…

“The first time was strange. He had me tied to the bed, but I could tell something was off. He turned almost gentle before he pinned me. He ripped my pants down and tied my feet so I couldn’t struggle against him. Then he…he used me until he came. He left me tied up while he went out drinking. That was always part of it. I was supposed to get out by myself. Because of the way I was flipped, I couldn’t even work the knots loose. When he stumbled in he said if I was too lazy to untie myself I could sleep like that.”

Sam could go on. He could go on for hours about everything John had done, but he didn’t need to. Dean only needed enough to understand what had happened, why he was having nightmares. He couldn’t look at Dean’s face. Instead, he watched a flock of crows circling overhead. They were drifting lazily on the high current, barely more than black shapes against the sky.

Sam had almost forgotten Dean was there when he said, “Sammy.” His voice was rough and low. Before Sam could even blink, Dean was throwing the door open and heaving onto the asphalt.

“Dean!”

Sam surged forward and grasped Dean by the shoulders. When it seemed like he was done, Sam pulled him back into the car. “What the hell? Are you okay?”

“Stop asking me that.”

Sam glanced down at his lap. “I never wanted to tell you. I was afraid of what you’d think of me. And I didn’t want you to remember Dad that way. This all happened years ago. There was no reason to go digging it all up.”

“Fuck him.”

Sam flinched. “Dean…”

“No, I mean it. Fuck him. Sammy, I’m so, so sorry.”

Sam frowned. “For what? None of it was your fault.”

“I should have been there. I should have realized. I could have stopped him or killed the bastard.”

“Dean,” Sam said with a sigh. “Don’t. Seriously.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“At first, he said if I did, he’d hurt me worse. Then he said he’d make you take my punishments. After a while, it was just too hard to even talk about. I never told anyone.”

Dean fell quiet and Sam sat fiddling with his thumbs in his lap. “So,” Sam said, finally. “Do you hate me?”

Dean spluttered in the seat next to him. “What? Why would I hate you?”

“I allowed all that to happen. I was basically a fuck toy there towards the end. It’s not exactly something I’m proud of.”

“Sam,” Dean said gently. He reached out towards Sam, but Sam couldn’t help the small flinch at the brush of his fingers. It was almost instinctual despite the fact that Dean had never hurt him. “I don’t hate you. I’m pissed as hell at John, but I don’t hate you.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“But you idolized Dad. And some part of me still thinks I probably deserved some of it.”

“No,” Dean growled. “Dad damned himself to Hell all on his own. You didn’t deserve one bit of any of that. He should have never even laid a hand on you. None of this is your fault. I just wish I had known sooner.” After a short lull, “That’s why you’ve been having nightmares?”

“Yeah. I keep remembering, only it keeps getting mixed up with everything else in my dreams.”

“So the panic attack?”

“I stumbled across Dad not long after we spoke. He said some things, things I’d wanted to hear for a long time, but it was all wrong. He grabbed my shoulder. Called me Sammy. I don’t know. I already was on shaky ground.”

Next to him Dean was practically vibrating. Sam tensed and laid a hand on Dean’s arm. “Stop. It’s not like that. It wasn’t threatening. He wasn’t hurting me. It just put me back there. Smelling his cologne. His grip on my arm. His voice. I was only inches away from one to start with.”’

They fell into silence again. Dean seemed to not quite know what to say to any of this. He was staring out the windshield, not seeing any of the open road ahead of them. Sam’s thoughts drifted to that night. He could still see the way Mom grinned as John told a cheesy joke that hadn’t been funny the first hundred times and the way she laughed as they talked. She had brightened up the room in a way he hadn’t expected. If they told her, she might not ever laugh that way again.

“You can’t tell Mom,” Sam said.

Dean jumped at the sudden demand. He turned and pinned Sam with a look. “Wait, what?”

“Mom. She shouldn’t have to know.”

Dean stared at him. “Sam…” He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.

“I can’t do that to her,” Sam said. Didn’t Dean see? She didn’t deserve that. “Let her keep that night.”

“No, I can’t promise that.”

“Dean,” Sam said, more firmly this time. “I mean it. This doesn’t change anything. It was half a lifetime ago. More when you consider everything that’s happened. It’s done. Just let it be done. Let Mom keep her memory of him.”

Dean scowled at him. He crossed his arms over his chest. “It changes everything. And don’t tell me it’s done. You’re still having nightmares over it. That’s not done.”

“What,” Sam snapped, his own fist clenching in his lap. “What does it change? I left for college. He never touched me again. Dad’s dead. I’m only having nightmares because I wasn’t prepared to see him. There’s no use chasing ghosts. Not this time.”

“Do you hear yourself? It doesn’t mean anything because it happened years ago? It shouldn’t have happened at all!” Dean’s fist smacked down on the steering wheel hard enough to make the horn let out a little beep.

“But it did,” Sam said, quietly. “And I survived.”

Dean sighed and settled back into his seat. He scrubbed a hand over his face and turned to stare out the window again. Sam watched him from the corner of his eye. After a long minute, he reached forward and started the car.

They rode the rest of the way home in absolute silence. Sam was studiously not saying anything at all. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to try and ease the tension sitting between them or what might happen if he did.

They arrived home a few hours later and bundled their things into the bunker as quietly as they had made the drive. Mary was sitting at a table in the war room. She looked up as they came in.

“Hey, how was Granville?”

Dean didn’t stop. He powered down the stair and through the room. A few moments later Sam heard his door slam. He winced and came down the stairs.

“That good, huh?”

Sam gave her a wan smile. “Dead end. Nothing but an overactive rumor mill.”

“So what happened? You two look like you’ve been ten rounds. Are you fighting?”

Sam shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Just too long in the car together. You know how it is. He just needs some space from me, I think. And I need a shower.”

She smiled at him. “Well, there’s a solution for that.”

Sam huffed. He hefted his bag further up his shoulder and took off for his own room. Mary would check on Dean and probably smooth over some of his temper. Sam would just need to steer clear for a day or two until he was a little calmer.

…

Sam made his way to his own room and slipped in quietly. As he set his bag down, he realized he was completely alone. It didn’t often bother him, but after all the things he’d shared today, he felt that ache a little sharper. He always did. Digging up memories, especially the ones where he’d been locked away, made him want to attach himself to his brother’s side and never leave. Something about Dean always felt safe, but he wasn’t a thirteen year old kid anymore. He and Dean needed space right now.

He sighed and started stripping down. He really could use a shower. It always felt good to get under the hot water after sitting in the car all day. As he shed his layers down to his boxers, he pulled his shampoo from his bag and headed to the bathroom.

When he flipped the light on, he frozen on the threshold. He couldn’t breathe. Nothing in him was going to let him go into that tiny room. He knew he was about to drop. He forced his fingers to open and let the shampoo bottle slip from his grasp to clatter on the floor. It was the one thing he could physically control. At the noise, his focus wavered and he was able to take first one step, then another back from the doorway. He stood several paces back and just stared into the narrowing room. Okay. So maybe he’d just wash off in the sink.

He walked up to the adjacent wall and reached around the corner of the doorframe to switch the light back off. It was a trick he learned years ago so he didn’t have to look into the room itself. He tugged the door shut firmly and wandered over to the sink. It wasn’t a thorough wash, but he did scrub his face and arms off so that he felt a bit fresher.

When that was done, he wrapped himself in his biggest hoodie. It was one of the few things that brought him a little comfort. With the soft fabric hugging him, he relaxed enough to take stock of his room. That little part of his brain that was terrified of being trapped kept glancing at his bedroom door. He didn’t like having doors between him and his exit. It made his shoulders tense and his jaw clench. So would being in a large, open space right now. He could still remember the odd, abstract way the world had narrowed down to those four walls when he was under that particular punishment. For days after, he would feel like the whole rest of the world was too big and loud and not quite real.

He shook himself. Dwelling on the feeling wouldn’t help anything. As he looked for a distraction, his feet took him almost involuntarily to his bookshelf. His hands reached for the middle volume on the top shelf by habit alone, and he pulled it down to reveal a protein bar. He quickly scanned the package, but it was well within its date. He tucked it away again feeling a little more settled. It helped, but it didn’t completely ease the nervous anxiety. He would have to do a full sweep.

An hour later, Sam had settled with a book and a cup of tea in his bed. Of all the things he’d lived through, it seemed like the scars from John’s abuse ran the deepest. Those psychological wounds would break open and stir up all sorts of weird, unhelpful things. Even now, his gut was screaming that he shouldn’t leave the door closed, despite the fact that it opened inward and couldn’t possibly be barricaded from the outside.

His stomach cramped at the thought of being locked away. With that came the wave of panic that he’d been dealing with all evening. The one that said he was going to be hungry – deep in his bones hungry. With a shaking hand, he pulled the drawer of the nightstand open and felt along the bottom. His shoulders relaxed a little as he felt the slick packaging of the power bar taped to the underside.

His nerves itched to get up and check the rest of them again. It was absolutely ridiculous. It had been years, nearly a lifetime, since he’d ever been that hungry. While his little stockpiles had paid off over the years, he’d never gone so long without food again. A little part of his brain still worried over whether everything was really safe.

Sam growled. He brushed his fingers over the hidden bar one more time to reassure himself then snapped the drawer shut. His gaze flicked over to his door where the key was still resting safely in the unlocked position. He grunted and snatched his book back up.

He was trying to wind down before he went to sleep, maybe keep the old memories at bay for a little while, little good though it was doing him. It was times like now, when he was alone and had too much space to think, that they crept up on him. He had managed to dig his way through three full pages when there was a knock at the door.

Sam snapped the book shut, hands wrapping tightly around the cover, and closed his eyes for a second. When he felt a little more composed, he called, “Come in.”

Mary’s head appeared around the doorframe. “Are you still up?”

Sam sat up properly in the bed, shifting to sit cross-legged against the headboard. He motioned towards the other end, offering her a seat. She smiled and came to sit at the foot, giving him space, but still close enough to touch. “What’s up?”

Mary hesitated. She studied his face for a long moment. “Dean seemed really upset when you two came home today.”

Sam’s gaze shot to the side. He was going to have to do some fast talking if he wanted to avoid the conversation that was on the horizon. His luck sucked today.

“Hey, I’m not trying to accuse you,” Mary said. “When I asked him what was wrong he said I should talk to you. He seemed genuinely upset. Did something happen?”

Sam cleared his throat. “Sort of. We’re fine. Or we will be.”

“Oh, I know. I’m not worried about that. The only time I’ve seen Dean like that is when you’re hurt. Are you okay?”

Sam gave her a sad smile. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

She studied him for a long time. He couldn’t quite read the expression on her face, but he knew she wasn’t satisfied with that. “I know I never got to do much mothering, but you know I’m here, right?”

“I know, Mom. I’m really okay.”

“You haven’t been sleeping much.”

“Bad dreams,” Sam said with a shrug. “You know how it is. Some days are worse than others.”

“You’ve seemed off since your father… well, since his visit.”

Sam stared at the book in his hands. He wanted to tell her. He wanted so badly to have her tell him it wasn’t his fault. He longed to have her hug him and say that it was all going to be okay, but she’d never really been his mother. It wasn’t her fault, but Dean had been more a parent to him than anyone. It felt wrong to ask for that comfort from anyone, much less someone who had missed his entire childhood. Mary was trying, but they still hadn’t worked out exactly what they were to each other. Sam would never know what she might have been like when he had a bad dream or fell and scraped his knee. What he was looking for was something she had never given him, and he couldn’t expect it now.

He couldn’t stand the thought of her rejecting him. If she refused to believe him or worse, sided with John, he would break. He knew she wouldn’t. Everything rational in him knew she wouldn’t. But the lonely ten year old who just wanted a mom to come take him away from all the pain didn’t. He still thought, somewhere deep down, that John must have had a reason. He must have been right on some level.

“Dad and I never got along,” Sam said eventually. It wasn’t a confession, but it wasn’t a lie either. “I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about our relationship.”

“Seeing you three together, I’d guess he didn’t care in the end. He still loved you both.”

Sam clenched his hands around the book so that his shaking was less obvious. “Yeah.” His voice was flat, emotionless. He hadn’t meant for that to come out as robotic and lifeless as it had.

“Sam?” Mary reached out a hand to set on his knee and he jerked away. He drew his knees up to his chest and hugged them with his arms.

He realized his breathing had gone harsh. With it, tears were stinging in his eyes. He hid his face in his knees, not wanting Mary to see him cry. He took three long breaths. When he felt like he could speak again, he cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

“What’s wrong?” Mary’s voice was hesitant. Sam hugged his knees tighter and shook his head.

“Please? I know I’m not Dean, but I can listen.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Sam admitted. He knew exactly how horrible this whole thing was and it would hurt her. He couldn’t do that.

“You’re not going to hurt me.” When he didn’t respond, she sighed. “Is it about my cooking? You don’t have to worry. I know that casserole is atrocious. It’s basically a heart attack in a pan.”

Sam shook his head. “No, it’s about Dad,” he whispered into his knees.

Mary didn’t say anything. She just waited.

“He wasn’t all that great of a father.”

Mom let out a long breath. “I know. God, I know. Sometimes I wish he was still here so I could beat him senseless for the way he raised you boys. I never wanted you to grow up like I did, with all that hanging over your heads.”

“No,” Sam said quickly, finally propping his chin on his knees so he could speak clearly. His eyes found a spot past Mary’s should on the wall. He focused on that so he wouldn’t have to look her in the eye. “I mean, yeah. Who raises their kid like that, you know? But no. That I forgave him for a long time ago.”

“Then what do you mean?”

Sam shook his head, eyes falling closed. “It doesn’t matter. It’s long done and he’s gone. I’ve just been stuck in my head.”

“It does matter. Please? Just talk to me. I promise whatever you have to tell me, I can handle it.”

Sam’s shoulders slumped. The more he thought about it, the more he thought Dean might be right. If she had come in the morning when his defenses weren’t already worn thin, he might have been able to resist, but as it was, he was tired of the secret and the lies.

“You have to understand,” he said. “When it started, I think he really meant to help or straighten me out. It wasn’t right, but it wasn’t that bad. I was stubborn. I didn’t want anything to do with hunting and I wasn’t a natural like Dean. We butted heads so often I’m sure he was at the end of his rope.”

“When what started, Sammy?”

Sam pulled his legs tighter against his chest. “Dad, uh, he didn’t…well I wasn’t good at all that. I uh, didn’t want to b-be. And well, he thought –er, I don’t know what he thought but he…” Sam sucked in a breath and said, “Dad…”

“What did John do?” Mary’s voice was tight.

“He hurt me.”

Mary stiffened across from him. Sam buried his face back in his knees so he wouldn’t have to see the emotions on her face.

“He did what,” she hissed.

“I’m sorry. No one was supposed to know. But Dean, he kept asking questions and I couldn’t lie about it, not after everything. And then…I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out.”

“John hurt you?”

Sam nodded his head.

“How?”

“It’s not important, but that’s why Dean was upset. He didn’t know until today.”

“It is important. What did he do?”

“Hit me, mostly.”

“Sam,” she said, just a hint of sternness creeping into her tone.

“I mean it. At first it was just the belt or a smack. Then he started using his fists. He was smart. He never did anything I couldn’t cover. Occasionally he would lock me up, but mostly it was the hitting until I was in high school.”

“What happened in high school?”

Sam shook his head.

“Please? I need to know.”

“It turned sexual in high school,” Sam whispered.

Mary sucked in a sharp breath. He dared a glance up at her and found her on the verge of tears. “Mom?”

“Oh, Sam.” She reached towards him but didn’t make a move to touch him. Sam took her outstretched hand. She pulled gently until he was leaning against her. To his utter embarrassment, he realized huge tears were falling down his face. She rubbed his back. “I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you love him.” It was the simplest way to say all the reasons. He didn’t want her to hate him for ruining John’s memory. He didn’t want her to dismiss him because she couldn’t believe it of him. He didn’t want to take away any of the happy memories she had.

“And if I had known what he did, I’d have laid him out in the kitchen floor.”

Sam pulled back so that there was some space between them. “I don’t want this to change anything. I don’t want you to see me any different.”

She reached up and brushed his hair away from his face. “All I see is an incredibly strong man. I may still be getting to know you, but I’m proud you’re my son.”

A little of the warmth he’d been longing for opened up in his chest. “Really?”

“Yes. You’ve been through so much. You’ve seen so much, and you kept going. You survived. I’m not sure I could have.”

Sam let himself relax against her, his head laying on her shoulder. She seemed content to let him rest as she rubbed circles into his back. They stayed that way until Sam could feel his eyes getting heavy. When he huffed out a little yawn, Mary chuckled and nudged him. “Hey, sleepy head. Why don’t you lay down?”

Sam nodded. It took him a long moment to summon the energy to shift upright, but when he did, she stood to give him room to lay down properly. Sam rolled and pulled the covers over himself.

After he settled, Mary sat down on the edge of the bed. She let her fingers card through his hair. Sam blinked up at her.

“Get some rest. We’ll figure it out in the morning.”

She stood and clicked the bedside lamp off. In a show of affection he had never seen from her, she leaned forward and place a gentle kiss on his forehead.

Sam froze. It was so unlike Mary to be physically affectionate, but it was nice too. She ran her hand through his hair one more time, then cupped his cheek. “Goodnight, Sam.”

“Night.”

She turned and made her way to the door. As she reached to pull it shut behind her, something in Sam shuddered at the thought of having the door closed again. He called out, “Leave it cracked?”

“Okay.”

He listened to her steps as she moved down the hall, the warm light from the lamps just enough to softly illuminate his room.

…

Sam thought he would drift off quickly. He’d been on the edge of sleep when Mary left, but after a few minutes, it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to unwind quite that quickly. While the crying had tired him out, it had left him feeling keyed up at the same time. He had that nagging feeling that if he didn’t get up and move, he might implode.

Sighing, he sat up and flipped his light back on. His tea sat discarded on his nightstand, cold and forgotten. It was peppermint, the one thing that tended to calm his nerves and settle his mind enough for him to relax.

He knew he would feel better if he could force himself through some of his grounding exercises. He was more than a little annoyed that he hadn’t just faded into sleep and now it would take him hours to get back to that point. He knew he could try to ride it out, but in the end, he probably needed the comfort more than he wanted to prove he could survive without it.

With a scowl, he swung his legs out of bed and stood, grabbing the mug from its spot. He would go, reheat his tea, then come back and try to center himself around something that wasn’t the fraying ends of his nerves.

He padded down the hallway, trying to be quiet. He doubted either Mom or Dean were asleep, he hadn’t been down that long and it wasn’t that late, but he also knew they’d be on him in a heartbeat if either of them saw him now, and his raw nerves couldn’t take it.

The light was on in the kitchen, which meant someone was still up. Sam walked as softly as he could in his approach, not wanting to get caught if someone had gone after a late snack.

He could hear low conversation as he got closer. “…should have put a bullet between his eyes a long time ago,” Dean said.

Sam shuddered. He turned and let the wall take his weight, head falling back and eyes dropping shut. This had been a mistake. The room beyond had lapsed into a tense silence. Sam debated just creeping back to his room. Before he could, there came the sound of smashing glass and Mom’s wordless cry of surprise.

“Dean?” The question was quiet and cautious. It was the only thing that kept Sam from flying around the corner. It wasn’t the sound of someone in trouble, it was the cautious tone of someone talking to a cornered animal.

“He nearly killed him,” Dean growled. “Sam almost died and it was because of him.”

Sam felt a shudder run down his spine. That was a dangerous tone on Dean. It was the one he used when he was done trying to save people. It was the one he used when he was about to do something that would haunt Sam for the rest of his life.

In the next room, Mary didn’t prompt him. Sam wished he could. It should be him in there listening, but he’d caused this whole mess and Dean wouldn’t talk to him. Not yet anyway. Sam shouldn’t even be standing there. He should slink back to his room and leave them to it, but the next words rooted him to the spot. “He barricaded my brother in a bathroom and left him there while we went on a hunt.”

It was the last thing Sam had expected. Sure, he’d mentioned that it had been close when they talked in the car, but Sam had assumed this outburst had been in a broader sense about the abuse. It was true that John had crossed so many lines, Sam had wondered himself how he survived sometimes.

“I didn’t know,” Dean continued. “He said he wanted to talk to Sam alone and sent me on to the car. We left and Sam was trapped in a tiny room with no food. We were gone eleven days.

“When we got home, Dad dropped me off at the restaurant and told me to grab us a table while he went to pick Sam up so we could celebrate together. It took him forever. When he finally walked in, Sam was barely walking on his own. He was so weak he could barely feed himself.

“He got sick. At the time, Dad said it was probably just a bug that had turned nasty because Sam hadn’t treated it properly. The first night, he started having trouble breathing. It sounded like his asthma was coming back, and I couldn’t get him to do more than moan in his sleep. His lips started to look blue. John stole a nebulizer from a local clinic and set him up. It seemed to help a little but…”

By this point, Sam was transfixed. He had never heard this side of it. He hadn’t wanted to ask earlier. Dean had been odd for a while when they got back. Sam had always assumed it was a rough hunt, or guilt for, as Dean believed, leaving him on his own when he was sick.

He could hear Dean start to pace. Sam stared up at the ceiling willing him to go on. He had a feeling this was something Dean had been carrying around all these years. He needed to be free of it as much as Sam needed to hear it.

“Then his heart started beating funny. I could feel it pounding just by laying my hand on his chest. It was too fast and lopsided. I wanted to take him to a hospital. By this point we were feeding him through a tube just to try and get something in him so his body could fight his fever. John said we couldn’t, that they would take him away. I wish they had. I wish I had taken him when I first thought it and let them. They could have taken him away from all that.

“Dean, you couldn’t have known.”

Dean pressed on, not even acknowledging the words. “He turned a corner the next morning. His heartbeat evened back out. With the nebulizer his breathing seemed to ease. It was a few days before he woke up and nearly a week before he could even get out of the bed by himself.”

Dean’s voice broke near the end and Sam found himself sliding to sit on the floor, his mug cradled to his chest. It really had been close. He hadn’t known. He always thought it had been a bad fever and that’s why he had lost those few days. Dean had been worried, but chipper so Sam had assumed it was just a rough bug.

Sam had to concentrate on keeping his breathing quiet. Sometime in that explanation, it had gone ragged and he didn’t want Dean to stop.

As if he had heard Sam’s thought, he said, “He was funny after that too. Weird. He kept asking if we were real. At the time I thought it was the fever. I had to keep telling him that we had come back from the hunt and were really, truly there. He wouldn’t leave my side for a solid month after he got better and didn’t close the bathroom door for weeks. I thought it was just because he’d been alone and so sick. After a near death brush, I wasn’t going to discourage a little bit of clinginess. I can see the shape of it now. I know what that sort of confinement does to people. I’d be surprised if he didn’t hallucinate us at some point and that’s why he wasn’t sure we were real.

“He started hoarding food too. It was never from his plate. He would finish everything. I mean everything. He would not leave a bite on his plate and more than once ate my left overs to the point I thought he was going to be sick. That eased off over the years until now I have to fight to get him to eat most of the time. He told me he got to a point where he just wasn’t hungry anymore. Now I wonder if that’s part of it, because he certainly wasn’t shy about eating as a kid. I started finding things everywhere. Chips, candy bars, jerky. He taped it under drawers, tucked it into cabinets, even hid it in our clothes.

“I didn’t think much about it. I knew it wasn’t great, but Sam was going into his teens. Even at seventeen, I still felt like a waking stomach. And we had some lean months. I just assumed he was putting some back or keeping a stash. I remember the late night need for food and the cold walks to the vending machine. I didn’t say anything cause I didn’t want to embarrass him.”

There was a pause as Dean circled closer to the door. Sam held his breath hoping he wouldn’t come out and find him here in the floor eavesdropping. Instead glasses clanked as he pulled down another and poured himself a drink. He seemed to have calmed down a little and Sam listened to him settle at the table.

“He still does it now. He thinks I don’t know, but I do.”

Sam could feel his cheeks heating. He knew Dean knew he kept a stash, but he didn’t realize he’d figured out they were hidden around the bunker.

“He does those meal replacement bars. It’s handy sometimes when we’re too wiped to cook or too banged up to think about stumbling into a diner. He’ll whip some out and it’s a Godsend. But, he’s done three sweeps since we got home. Three! I tailed for the second one and they’re all over this bunker, top to bottom.”

Dean took a drink and thunked his glass back down on the table with a sigh. “I get it now. I’m not happy about it, but I get it. He said the first time was the worst but that it happened again. Even once would have been enough to fuck anyone over. He did it over and over again. Now I’m just glad that even if I was too thick to see what was going on, I never called him on hiding the food. I don’t know what I’d have done if I came back to find him wasted away like that again.”

And that was Sam’s cue. He could hear that note of guilt and self-loathing in Dean’s voice. It was time for him to step in. None of this was Dean’s fault. None of it had anything to do with him, really. Him beating himself up wouldn’t help, and he shouldn’t have to carry that guilt around. Sam shoved himself to his feet and took the last few steps to stand in the kitchen doorway.

Dean was scrubbing a hand down his face as Sam came into view. Mary was sitting, watching him with a drink in her hand that she was mostly toying with. Dean’s own drink sat on the table ahead of him. He was leaning back on his stool with his feet pushed out ahead of him like he hadn’t been able to hold himself up any longer and just sprawled on the first seat he had found.

Sam was about to say something when Dean said, “You know, he never backed down. He and John would go at it. It would feel like world war III some days. They would absolutely tear into each other. But I don’t get it. Why? Why bait him knowing what he could do?”

“Because it didn’t make any difference,” Sam said from the doorway. Dean flinched and sat up, spinning to look at him with wide eyes. “He was going to do what he wanted. I did it to prove to myself that I was still me. Dad wasn’t –“

“Don’t call him that!”

Sam jerked back at the absolute snarl, his tea sloshing over his hand to plop into a little puddle on the floor. Sam knew he didn’t have a right to call him that. Not anymore. He had only ever kept it up because it made Dean happy. He hated hearing Sam call their father John.

“Dean,” Mary muttered.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, not quite able to meet his eye. “I know.”

“Sick bastard should still be rotting in Hell.”

Sam glanced up at him, startled. The vehemence in his voice was so angry and certain. Sam had never heard him talk about John that way. While he knew, objectively the abuse hadn’t been his fault, he never thought Dean would react quite this way. He had always hoped Dean would be angry on his behalf, but Sam had always considered John somehow exempt from scrutiny at last from Dean. “You don’t mean that,” Sam said at last.

“Oh, I think I do,” Dean said, draining his whiskey and reaching for another. “No wonder Bobby was always at his throat.”

Sam tried to relax his coiled muscles. Fighting and arguing wouldn’t solve anything, especially tonight. “No, you don’t,” Sam reasoned. “He was still our father. And Bobby was an ornery bastard all on his own.”

Dean’s eye grew wide and he went pale. “Wait, he didn’t?”

Sam frowned. “Who didn’t what, Dean?” He was tired and wrung out and couldn’t quite keep up with how rapidly they were cycling through topics here.

“Bobby, he didn’t…”

“Bobby didn’t know as far as I’m aware,” Sam said with a frown. “I think he suspected something was going on, but if he had known, I’d be willing to bet he’d have done more than threaten John with buckshot.”

“But he wasn’t… he never…”

Sam’s own eyes went wide as he grasped what Dean was really asking. “What? No! Bobby would have never touched me. Never. He was the closest thing to what I imagined a real father was like.” Ice skittered down his spine as he considered the possible reasons Dean might have jumped to that conclusion. “Unless there’s something I need to know?”

“No! I just had to be sure.”

Sam collapsed sideways against the doorframe. “Look, this is a lot, I know, but there wasn’t some big, bad child abuser lurking behind every family friend we had as kids. You’ve got to take a minute to calm down here.”

Dean opened his mouth to respond, but Mary cut him off. “Why don’t you sit down, Sam,” she said. “You look like you’re about to fall over. I thought you were going to bed?”

Sam exhaled sharply. He came into the room and sat down next to her not quite trusting Dean’s temper at this moment. “I couldn’t sleep. I was going to reheat my tea.”

Dean snorted. When Sam glanced over at him, he was smirking, even if it didn’t quite look convincing.

“Shut up. It helps,” he said as Mary collected his mug and took it to the microwave for him.

“Whatever, Miss Muffet.”

“Miss Muffet was curds and whey. Is there a nursery rhyme about tea?”

Dean shrugged. “Do I look like Mother Goose to you?”

The microwave dinged and the mug reappeared in front of him. Sam blew across the top of it gently, then took a sip off the top. The cool bite of mint tingled in his mouth as he swallowed. It was refreshing and soothing. He took a moment to breath in the steam off the top. He never quite understood why peppermint tea smelled so herbal, rather than minty.

The three of them sat around the table nursing their drinks. Sam wanted to say something to soothe the mess of emotions this whole disaster had stirred up, but he was at a loss what that might be. He seemed to be sitting in a lot of awkward silence lately.

Dean took another sip off his third whiskey. He tilted the glass so that the pattern caught the light. He twisted it, watching the light dance on the table. “Why did you come with me?”

Sam glanced up from the glass to Dean’s face. He was still watching the shifting light rather than looking at Sam. “What do you mean?”

“When I came to get you at Stanford. Why did you come when I told you John was missing? You didn’t question that part of it. You just came. Why,” Dean asked, finally looking up at Sam.

“Because I missed you, doofus. So we were going to find Dad – “

“Sam.”

Sam sighed. “Fine. Right. Anyway. I had been thinking about you a lot. Every time something big happened I wanted to call you and tell you. The day I got my LSAT results, the only thing I could think was that I wished you were there to share it with me even before I opened the envelop. I guess I was hoping that you showing up meant we might have a chance to be okay. That maybe I could share some of those things with you.”

“Okay, but you stayed. Even when we had to work with him, you stayed.”

“John had answers. He knew more than he had ever told us and like it or not he had more experience. I had every intention of hunting him down and making him tell me everything he knew about what killed Jess and Mom, even if I had to beat it out of him myself.”

Dean nodded. He went back to playing with his glass. “Did he ever try again? Once we met back up with him, I mean.”

“Once, not long after he learned about the visions. I laid him out,” Sam said. Dean let his glass rest back down on the table with a thump. “The minute he tried to do anything to me, I punched him in the face hard enough he went down. He didn’t ever try after that, whether because we were never really alone together or because he figured out I wasn’t going to take it anymore, I don’t know.”

Dean smirked at him, this time far more genuine. He raised his glass in a little salute. “Atta boy, Sammy.”

Sam grinned at him and raised his own mug before taking a deep drink of his tea.

Next to him, Mary snorted. “Boys,” she muttered. He could practically feel her rolling her eyes, but her leg knocked against his under the table and he knew she was only teasing.

Sam smiled as he watched the two of them over his mug. Neither of them were happy, but some of the tension had eased from the atmosphere with that admission.

They were going to be all right. It would take time, but this little family of theirs was incredibly resilient.