brightly_lit | Fic: Family Night

Title: Family Night
Author:

brightly_lit
Rating: PG
Genre: gen, wee!chesters, slice of life
Characters: John, wee!Dean, wee!Sam
Word Count: 1,500
Summary: John Winchester has two rowdy boys to take care of while he travels the country and hunts, staying in cruddy hotels along the way. As hard as that sounds, it's even harder, because one of those boys is Dean.

John threw open the door to the sleazy hotel room and dropped his heavy weapons duffle on the floor. Sam and Dean raced through right on his heels, shoving their way through at the same time, giggling, ran across the small room and started jumping on the bed. John thought about telling them to quit it, but he’d told them a million times not to do it and it never stuck, and anyway, that bed could hardly get any worse. It was better when they were giggling and having fun (staying within view; it was never good when they found some nook or cranny or adjacent room and fell dead silent and he realized he hadn’t seen them for fifteen minutes) than when they were grousing and fighting, so he’d leave them to it this time.

John dragged himself to the table next to the closet, tossed his journal on it, and sat down to write some notes and study what little he’d gathered on the shifter that had taken up around here. Dean catapulted himself off the bed (Sam followed his lead, but couldn’t get as much distance) and hit the ground at a run, heading for the bathroom, hollering about filling the tub and putting Magic Rocks in there again.

“Nope,” John said, managing to catch Sam by the shirt as he whipped past. He turned him around and gave him a gentle shove back toward the bed. “Stay in the main room.”

“But I have to pee!” shouted Dean.

“Fine, pee, but otherwise you’re staying in my sight until I get this thing.” He eyed Sam nervously as he mentioned the shifter, but Sam was as wonderfully oblivious as ever. Not like John filled Dean’s head with details about his hunts, but Dean knew he hunted monsters and that some of them could make themselves look like you. Dean knew whenever that happened, John insisted they stay in his sight. He knew that was why John had gotten one big king bed this time instead of two beds--so his boys would be right there all night and the thing couldn’t slip in the window, kidnap one of them, and replace him with itself.

“Yes, sir.”

“And no more Magic Rocks in the bathtub, Dean! Where did you even get those things?”

Dean mostly shut the door to pee and shouted, “Found ’em!”

John shook his head and covered his eyes. When he took his hand away, Sam was staring at him from a foot and a half away. “Your brother’s lying,” he told him, and Sam nodded soberly, so much more serious by nature than Dean. “But you’ll never lie to me, will ya, Sammy?” Sam dutifully shook his head, but John could tell he meant it, and his own mouth quirked up a little at the corners. He pulled Sam close for a quick hug. “That’s my boy.”

Dean burst out of the bathroom lugging the plastic ice holder, now full of water. “Let’s play ‘drowning army man,’” he suggested to Sam, who acquiesced, ever happy to do whatever his elder brother suggested. John thought back to his own childhood, remembering how elder siblings were always shunning the younger ones. It was nice for Sam, in a way, that Dean only had one option for a playmate; Sam would get as much of his brother as he wanted. It was nice for John, too--it made the bond between the brothers very strong--strong enough that Dean was protective of Sam of his own accord.

John shook his head as he worked, listening to their macabre game, which seemed to involve one unlucky soldier (who evidently couldn’t so much as dog paddle) falling into the deep, upon which his would-be-rescuer army buddies also then succombed one by one. John figured it was just an excuse to submerge all of their toys (there was not a ton of entertainment to be found in a cruddy old hotel room, but kids always found something), but if other fathers hadn’t told him it was normal, he’d think Dean was a sociopath. He got so into killing an entire army down to the last man, making the requisite horrible screams for help and death-gargle sound effects. Still, as he glanced now and again over at them to make sure they were all right out of habit, he couldn’t help the way it squeezed his heart, seeing their rapt focus. His boys. Four years gone now without Mary, and somehow they were all still alive and still together, still okay. They were okay.

Tiring of their game, Dean suggested they watch t.v. They tuned in the little t.v. and sat as close to it as they could get, wiggling and talking, Dean changing the channel every thirty seconds. Six o’clock came around, the programs changed, and Dean let out a triumphant shout. “Star Trek!” he yelled, pumping his fists. He looked back at John, all eager hope. “Hey, Dad, you wanna watch? It’s Star Trek!”

“Not tonight,” John said, turning back to his notes, but not before seeing the disappointment come over Dean’s face and seeing Dean try to cover over it with calm acceptance. His 8-year-old son, already learning to hide his real feelings ... because Dean knew John would never say anything else. It would never be the night.

John sat back and tossed down his pen. Yeah, the shifter needed to get got, but he could get it just as easily tomorrow. “Yeah, okay,” he said, got up, and went to sit on the bed. The excitement on Dean’s face was absolute: the joy of a candy store and a roller coaster and being on the winning team, all wrapped into one. John suppressed his ever-present guilt as he thought he really needed to do this more often. They wouldn’t be kids forever. Dean seemed more worldly by the day.

Sam clambered instantly onto John’s lap. Dean was standing right in front of the t.v., blocking their view, so John tugged on his shirt until he managed to get his attention and make him sit beside him on the bed--not that that lasted long. Dean squirmed around, onto his knees, then onto his feet on the bed, finally jumping up and down on the bed behind him, bracing his hands on John’s shoulders, howling about what was going on on the screen the whole time. This was what happened when you kept a kid cooped up in a car all day. They seemed to like the travel, honestly. The back seat of the Impala was their domain. God only knew what all they got up to back there, but one way or another, they kept themselves entertained. Still, kids had a lot of energy, especially Dean, and he almost never got to blow off steam like this, so John gave up on trying to hear the episode and let Dean do what he wanted.

“What’s that!” Dean shrieked, pointing at the screen, still jumping up and down.

“Looks like a Gorn,” John said mildly.

Dean stopped jumping long enough to hear it identified onscreen, then he hollered with victory when it was indeed identified as a Gorn. John grinned, pleased with himself. How often did you get to look so smart? John was always scraping together information on the things he hunted on his own and then finding out some time later that something he’d thought was priceless information was common knowledge among hunters, but plainly, to his kids right now, he was a god. “Dad, how’d you know! How’d you know, Dad??” Dean cried, awed.

The truth was, there was a reptilian monster other hunters had nicknamed “Gorn” and that was the only way he knew; he wasn’t about to tell his kids there were monsters that really looked like that, though. “Lucky guess,” he said, and winked at Sam, who was staring up at him from his lap, having no interest in the show now that he had his dad’s attention. Sam giggled.

Dean cheered and started jumping as high as he could on every corner of the bed. Sam got up and followed suit. John was just telling them to settle down or someone would get hurt when they both jumped in the same direction at the same time and Dean stumbled over Sam, pitching headfirst toward the dresser. Years in the Marines followed by years of hunting had honed his reflexes; John grabbed Dean out of the air just in time, shaking him as soon as he was safe. “Damnit, Dean, what was I just telling you?! You--”

He saw the look on Dean’s face--fresh out of the terror of nearly breaking his neck came the terror of his father’s wrath, which John himself knew was pretty daunting. Dean was pale as a ghoul, his big eyes huge, Sam watching them both silently at John’s shoulder. There was a moment that seemed endless, but which probably only lasted a fraction of a second.

“What was I just telling you?” John said, tossing Dean onto the bed and tickling him. Dean screamed with relief as much as delight at first, but before long he’d forgotten there had ever been a bad moment and he was convulsing with hysterics. Sam must have gotten jealous; abruptly he dog-piled on Dean, so John tickled them both until they couldn’t breathe. Yes, tonight was the night. There would have to be a lot more nights like this from now on.

~ The End ~

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borgmama1of5.livejournal.com

I want to believe John let there be nights like this.

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Fic: Family Night

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