Fic: Cracks

[summergen-mod.livejournal.com]

Title: Cracks
Author: mamaesme
Recipient: innocentculprit
Rating: PG
Warnings: Language, Angsty Winchester Family
Author's Notes: I had far too much fun with this whumpage. Way too much fun.

Summary: [Season One] Dean plays peacemaker between Sam and John again, but the Winchester’s are quietly falling apart.

They were screaming again.

Dean was at his wits end. This was the third goddamn fight in the past four days. Temper’s were flaring, and his was about to explode if this didn’t stop soon.

Sam was pushing, pushing, pushing until there wasn’t anything left to push against. Dad was annoyed; always wanting to get Sam to understand what was truly out there, what he did to keep them safe. But Sam rebelled, Dad left to hunt and Dean tried to pick up the pieces.

It was getting harder and harder to duct tape them all back together like the happy family they had been all those night ago before his mother had burned on the ceiling with her eyes wide open, whispering run.

Dad protected the Winchester’s from the outside, but Dean protected them from themselves.

Slamming his bottle down, because Dean needed a beer so the words they would fling wouldn’t hurt so damn much, he trudged into the house to separate the two. Again.

“What if I don’t want to do this?”Sam had been shouting. “I never had a choice Dad! I never got a chance to be normal.”

Dean snorted. Normal? Winchester’s were meant to be normal. Even if the yellow eyed bastard hadn’t burned their mother, they wouldn’t be normal. There was something about them, the three Winchester boys, which was wild and utterly free that domesticity would have smothered them, suffocated them, until they died a slow but quiet death fenced in by the apple pie life.

“None of us had a choice, Sammy,” John retorted. “We never had a chance at normal. Never!”

Sam’s bitch face is starting and Dean knew it was time to put an end to this drama game. If it continues on, it’ll end with words that shouldn’t have been spoken but can’t be taken back. It’ll end with beer bottles, hangovers and a few quiet tears. Dean doesn’t feel like cleaning that up.

“That’s enough,” he said quietly in his corner. Neither heard him over their screaming. He pushed off the wall he had been leaning on, and tried again. Louder this time. “Okay, stop!”

Dad and Sammy were pretty much in each other’s faces, so Dean had to side step and inserted himself between them. “Stop!” he roared.

They both stilled, quietly watching his face, waiting for a moment of weakness for him to break down and for them to pounce. Animals staring down their prey, but he’s a Winchester through and through and no way in hell is he going to back down. Not with these two. Not if he wants to keep another crack from forming on their family that’s pretty much already falling apart.

Sammy backed off first. He ducked his head, quietly muttering a yeah, okay before heading off outside to sit on the porch outside their latest crappy hotel to do what Sam Winchester does best these days, brooding.

John watched his youngest go before easing up as well. He moved toward the fridge in Dean wondered for a moment who he should follow, but eventually decided Dad. He needed another beer anyways. Sam’s too depressing to tackle without another cold one in hand anyway.

John quietly handed Dean a beer and takes a seat on one of the two beds in the room, quietly angry and remorseful at the same time. That’s Dad, Dean thought a bit more resigned than fond. A contradiction that makes no fucking sense.

“He’s going to end up getting hurt,” Dad finally said after the silence had stretched between them and Dean’s beer was nearly empty. “He’s going to get hurt badly, and I won’t be able to save him this time.”

“Then I will,” Dean vehemently disagreed. Anyone would have to hurt Sammy over his dead and cooling body.

Dad took another sip of his beer and Dean watched as the shadows fell across his eyes, hiding any expression on the already unreadable man. “No,” Dad settled in his knowledge of what was to come. “No you won’t.”

“You won’t be able to,” Dad added, seeing the thunderous expression on his face. “That boy is going to run. Run as far as he can from us. He’s just waiting for the right moment.”

Dean shook, literally shook, with anger. “How do you know that?”

John Winchester let out a low laugh. “I had the same damn look on my face when my Daddy told me I couldn’t enroll in the Marines. Guess what?”

They both knew what happened, but Dean had to respond anyways.

He said it without humor, “You did anyways.”

“Yeah,” John agreed. “I did. Now Sam’s going to make my mistake again. This is one damn cycle Dean. It just keeps going around and around, Sam making my mistakes until the love of his life burns on the ceiling just like Mary. And then he’s me. All over again.”

Dean’s silent and Dad moved off the bed, clinking the long-necked bottle on the nightstand table and exchanging it for that leather-bound journal of his with all that cryptic Yoda crap. The conversation was over, and Dean pushed off the bed himself and silently exited the hotel room, empty bottle still in his hand.

Sammy was leaning on the Impala, staring up at the clear sky. There was a chill in the air, reminding Dean that the seasons were about to change again and fall was coming.

“Don’t you dare scratch her,” he called out, a bit more serious than joking.

Sam rolled his eyes, use to the over-protective driver deal. “Dude,” he groaned. “You do it all the time.”

“But I don’t look like a sasquatch.”

“You’re just jealous I’m taller than you.”

“Whatever. It just helps you with that big geek look you’ve got going. I, on the other hand, am the hottest thing on Earth.”

“Ha! You admit it! You are pissed you’re shorter than me”

“I admit nothing and deny everything, Gigantor.”

“Shrimp.”

“Asshat.”

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

They both smiled at that, but Sam’s was quick to fade. Dean’s didn’t last much longer after his brother’s. They both leaned against the Impala and listened to the night’s activity, the low rumble cars passing by in the nearby road, a loud couple fighting in the parking lot, and a few crickets here and there. Dean fidgeted with the label of the bottle in his hand, not knowing where this would go.

“Dean?” Sam quietly said.

Dean lifted his head, but didn’t say anything. This was Sam’s conversation, not Dean’s.

“Do you ever wonder what if would be like?” Sam asked, not looking at Dean. “If she hadn’t died?”

She would have been ambiguous in any other family, but the Winchester’s. Sure, Dean had wondered what it could have been like when he was younger if he’s Mom had lived. Would she still have smelt like laundry and pie? Would she like the man he had become? Would he even be anyone like the man he was now?

Sure he had wondered. But it had never been good thoughts.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But Sammy, I couldn’t be some domesticated person. This life is good enough for me. I don’t do normal. Us Winchesters? We star chaffing the moment domesticity collars us.”

Sam just looked out past him, angry. “Can I get a chance to see if I don’t like it? What if I’m not like you and bad and normal is what I need?”

“Woah, kiddo. Slow down.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Sam continued. “I want to go to college, get a degree and do my stent with the white picket fences and two point five kids stuff. I want that Dean, but Dad doesn’t get it.”

Dean knew what was going on. Sam was about to make a run for it, unless Dean tried to step in and smooth this over with Daddy dearest. And Dean had to have his family close by. He had know they were safe, and Sam running off. Well, that could be the one thing that would tip Dean and John over the edge of sanity into suicidal.

Sam was their last hope for humanity, for the family. He would be the one who made it out fine, but Dean and John had to know that their goals – their hope – was still alive. And that included Sam sticking with them until the bitter end.

Because Dean, without a doubt, needed Sam. Needed to feel needed.

“Let me talk to Dad,” Dean pleaded. “Give me a little while to work on it. Maybe we can get this worked out.”

Neither brother spoke after that, just simply looked up at the stars and stared out at nothing both lost in their own little worlds. Sam’s with his new life and future ahead of him, and Dean’s thoughts of how to convince their Dad on how to support Sam enough to let him get at least a piece of his apple pie dream life.

Two weeks later, Sam hopped on a Greyhound bus to Palo Alto in the middle of the night, leaving a letter for Dean and John to find when they returned from a hunt after the latest battle in the war that was Sam vs John.

The Winchester family shattered apart: John emotionally distancing himself from his eldest son and unwilling to think about his youngest, Dean angry at them both for putting him in this situation and driving him to pull some suicidal stunts, and Sam so willing to immerse himself in normality that he tried to forget that his brother and father were still living.

The Winchester family cracked apart the night Sam left for Standford.

Dean still isn’t sure it’ll ever be fixed.