Title: the breaking point of steel
Summary: John and Dean in the three days after Sam left. Some hurt!Dean, plenty of angst.
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: "Pilot" only
Warnings: Blood, implied violence, some language, and more angst than you can shake a stick at. Very brief mentions of Dean's...eventful...sex life.
Pairings: None
Characters: John and Dean
Category: Gen, hurt/comfort, angst, preseries.
Word Count: 1,055
Disclaimer: Not mine; not getting paid; I'm just playing with them.
Author's Note: This is basically my first attempt at writing John (and it's still mostly about Dean).
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Dean's quiet for three days after Sam leaves—nothing but Yes, sir and No, sir at all the right times. They're traveling, headed for a haunting in Mississippi, Dean's uncharacteristic silence hanging heavy over the passenger seat. He stares out at the road, the line of his jaw tense.
John doesn't try to get Dean to talk. Doesn't feel much like talking himself, and it wouldn't do a damn bit of good anyway. When Dean goes quiet, he doesn't talk again until he's damn well ready. Been that way since he was four.
Sam, though...
John shuts that thought down quick.
Dean's quiet and John drinks every night more than usual, and you could write an encyclopedia from all the things they don't say to each other. Dean doesn't eat much either, which is more worrying than the silence, because John decided a long time ago that Dean not eating was a sure sign of the apocalypse.
John doesn't let himself worry too much. Dean'll come around. Always does.
----
It's a routine salt-and-burn, just a pissed-off murdered wife getting back at her bastard husband and his family. Takes half a day to find the grave, Dean doing the research Sam should have done.
It's warm in Mississippi, warm and stifling humid. (John doesn't let himself wonder about the weather in California.) They dig side by side, stripped down to dirty jeans and sweaty t-shirts. Dean's sunburning, always been fair like Mary, but doesn't seem to care.
John scatters the salt and lighter fluid and Dean throws the match. They watch her burn in silence, ashes and embers scattering across hair and skin, the smell of rot and fire all too familiar.
----
That night, Dean cleans their weapons while John flips through newspapers for another job. John can feel Dean's eyes on him as he takes a long drink of Jack, trying to drown sorrows that damn well know how to swim.
Finished with the weapons, Dean stands up, grabs his jacket off the back of the chair. "Goin' out," he says in that flat voice he's been using the last few days, voice like Sam leaving sucked all the life out of him. Like maybe Sam was his life. He isn't asking permission, just stating a fact. Doesn't wait for acknowledgment before he walks out.
John nods at his son's retreating back, granting approval that wasn't requested. Be good for Dean, pick up some chick with big tits and forget about what happened three days ago. Help him move on. Dean's tough, always moves on, picks himself back up. Always has.
John puts the whiskey away, not drunk but mellowed enough to sleep with regret and helpless fear weighing not quite so heavy. He doesn't wait up. Dean probably won't be coming back tonight anyway, will probably stay at some girl's house or apartment.
----
Sometime in the middle of the night John wakes to a thud at the door, scratching, clumsy sounds of key against lock. If it's Dean, he must sure as hell be drunk. Maybe he didn't go home with a girl, settled for a quickie in an alley. Dean's like that when it comes to sex. The fewer ties, the better.
Dean finally manages to get the door open. He stumbles in, bringing with him the smell of second-hand smoke and liquor and...
...blood.
John flips on the lamp and his feet hit the floor just as Dean falls to his knees, head bowed, one arm around his midsection. Blood's streaming down his neck from a gash in his hair and the way he breathes screams broken ribs.
"God, Dean." John kneels beside his son, not sure where to reach first. The left side of Dean's face almost black, eye swelled shut, cheekbone broken if John's any judge (and he is). He's swaying forward on his knees and the one eye still barely open is glassy. Blood everywhere, bruises black and ugly, and it looks more like a beating than a fight.
"Who did this, Dean?" Low and dangerous, hands already aching for a punch to throw, a trigger to pull. "Dammit, Dean! Who started this?"
"Me," Dean says suddenly. It's the first time there's been feeling in Dean's voice in three days, and John knows he's a worthless bastard for wishing the flat tone back. "I started it." He's looking at John now, half-open green eye flooded with anger and pain and guilt and betrayal, and John thinks Mary, I'm so sorry.
Dean falls quiet again while John peels off his jacket, listens dispassionately while his father swears fluently over the bruises, the breaks, the knife wound in his side. Doesn't make a sound until John touches his ribs, and even then it's only a low, grating groan.
Dean's tough, he's made of steel, but you put enough pressure on steel and it breaks. John hates himself for not seeing it before, hates himself for not knowing how to fix it now that he does see it. Mary's boy, her green eyes and freckles, broken and bleeding and John doesn't know how to help him. Didn't know how to hold onto the other, how to let go, and he's done the best he can but it's never good enough.
John gets Dean onto the bed, peels off the torn, bloody t-shirt, swears vehemently at the boot-shaped bruises. Dean may have started it but they finished it, and John figures Dean probably planned it that way. Nearly got himself killed, and was that what he wanted?
Dean stays still while John stitches up his side, face turned toward the wall, barely flinching when the needle goes in.
John sews, hands slick with blood. Tries not to think about his little boy too far away to protect. Tries not to think about how he can't even protect the one who stayed. He wants to ask Did you want them to kill you, Dean? Was that what you wanted? But he's too damn terrified of the answer so he just keeps stitching. Dean stares at the wall and the encyclopedia gets longer.
Dean'll be okay. Dean's always okay. He's good at welding himself back together, and the seams hardly even show.
For John's sake, Dean will make himself be okay...and John knows he's a worthless bastard for being glad of that.
-finis-