Work Text:
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child.
King Lear (1.4.280)
Dean is twelve years old the first time he points a gun at his father.
John stumbles drunk into the motel room, the smell of beer and body odor causing Dean’s nose to wrinkle. He squeezes his eyes shut from his position on the couch, hoping that John won’t notice that he’s still awake. Dean can hear footsteps, and he holds his breath as his father passes him, as if not breathing will make his pretend-sleep more believable.
John is almost to the bathroom when he trips over something - Sammy’s shoe, Dean remembers with a cringe. He had planned to move it aside, but he’d gotten distracted preparing dinner for the two of them and hadn’t gotten back around to it.
The already-drunk-and-unsteady John collides with the wall, letting out a yell. Once he’s steady on his feet again, he staggers over to the bed where Sam lay, sound asleep.
“How many times have I fucking told you to put your shit away?” he roars, causing Sam to bolt upright.
Swallowing heavily, Dean leaps out of his own bed, moving to stand next to his father. He looks at Sammy, eyes pleading him to stay quiet.
Dean looks up at his father, “It’s my fault, I’m sorry, sir,” he says, trembling just slightly.
John turns to him, and Dean can see the rage on his face, illuminated and accentuated by the tv. Dean’s eyes glaze over as his father yells, and he stops paying attention somewhere between the threats to send the two of them away, and the insistence that their mother would be disappointed in them.
By the time that the fog has lifted from Dean’s mind, John is splayed on the other double bed, snoring so loudly that Dean is sure the walls shake with the force of it. He feels a pit growing in the depths of his stomach, a rage that he had spent so much of his life learning to quell.
When he couldn’t take it anymore, Dean pushed back the thin, scratchy blanket that covered his legs, and walked over to the small table with purpose.
He picked up the pistol that sat there, his father’s gun. The weight was familiar in Dean’s hands, but they trembled nonetheless. He wasn’t sure what compelled him - maybe it was the anger he’d inherited from his father, maybe it was the need to escape this life - but he pointed the gun at his father’s sleeping form.
Dean didn’t hear the static of the tv, he didn’t hear the snores that emanated from his father, he didn’t hear Sam shifting around in his sleep. Dean only heard the way his breath hitched, and the constant thrumming of his heart.
His hand trembled so violently that he couldn’t secure a straight shot - not that he would actually do it anyway, he told himself. He couldn’t say for sure how much time had passed by the time he set the gun back on the table, adjusting it just so to ensure that his secret was kept.
When he finally succumbed to sleep, it was with gritted teeth and thoughts of a world free of the oppressive clutches of his father.
---
Dean is 22 years old when he finally pulls the trigger.
Sam is telling him, “You don’t even have to pay anything. I have a full ride --”
“I don’t give a damn about the money, Sam. You’re not going anywhere.”
Dean flinches when Sam starts yelling, “Yes I am, and I am never coming back. You’re never going to see me again.”
John stands up to his full height, still a great deal shorter than Sam, but no less intimidating, “It’s a good thing your mother doesn’t have to see how you turned out. She would be devastated to see this bullshit.”
Sam lets out a dry, humorless laugh, “Fuck you, Dad.”
Sam turns on his heel, making eye contact with Dean for a brief second before shouldering past him. Dean could feel his chest tightening, but pushed past that feeling as he stepped into the kitchen, where John was draining the dregs of a beer bottle.
“You ever set foot back into this house and I’ll fucking kill you,” John yells to Sam’s back as he hurries out the front door.”
By the grace of God, or whoever the fuck, Sam either doesn’t hear him, or chooses not to respond, and for that, Dean is grateful.
“Get me another beer, boy,” John grumbles, taking his eyes off the door for the first time since it slammed shut behind Sam.
“Yes sir,” Dean mumbles, rummaging through the fridge.
Dean opens the beer, setting it in front of his father, before turning to start on the dishes that had sat in the sink for the past week. As Dean expected, it wasn’t long before John started rambling about the issues with Sam, words already slurred to the point that Dean suspects he’d drank more than just beer that afternoon.
“You ever think about college?” John asks, his eyes hard and expression unmoving.
Dean’s fingers tighten around the handle of the knife he’s washing, knuckles whitening, “No, sir. I’ll be a hunter until it kills me or I die of old age, whatever comes first.”
John lets out a satisfied laugh, “That’s my boy.”
Despite his best effort, Dean feels a modicum of pride well up in his chest, totally
John continues, “Your brother is a fucking ungrateful little shit, I don’t know where I went wrong with him.”
The rage swells up inside Dean, only quelled by physically biting down on his lip until harsh words no longer threaten to escape.
Unable to take a cue, John drains the remainder of his beer and continues his downward spiral. Dean cringes when John opens the bourbon, knowing that the point of no return was approaching for the night.
“I’m going to kill him,” John said, turning Dean’s blood to ice.
“What are you talking about, Dad?” Dean said, laughing a bit to ease the tension.
John took another pull of bourbon, purposely ignoring Dean’s question. Dean shook his head, knuckles white as he clenched the dishes in his hand, willing himself not to tremble.
He’s not sure how much time passes between that conversation and the sound of the front door unlocking, Sam’s footsteps right behind it.
John slams the bottle of bourbon down onto the table, the thud echoing through the small kitchen.
“I thought I fucking told you not to come back,” John roars, causing Dean’s heart to stutter, and his knees to tremble.
Sam lets out a laugh, and Dean marvels at it, the way that Sam doesn’t seem to be phased by their father, even at his absolute worst.
“You think I’d just leave all my shit here with you?”
“Don’t you swear at me, boy,” John replies, teeth bared, “I’m your father, and you’d better show me some fucking respect.”
Sam rolls his eyes and Dean feels frozen in place, wants to tell Sam to stop and turn around, don’t come back here, but no words come out.
“Trust me, Dad,” Sam says mockingly, “The second I leave for college, you won’t ever hear from me again. Every fucking day I wish it had been you instead of Mom who died, and you are nothing but a reminder of what I lost that night.”
John is surprisingly light on his feet for the amount of alcohol he’s consumed, Dean finds himself thinking in the moments before John grabs the knife from the drying rack, lunging for Sam.
Finally, Dean finds his voice as he steps between the two men, “Dad! What the hell! Put that down.”
Dean reaches down, patting at the gun he had started carrying with him everywhere - since he’d started spending late nights in club bathrooms with faceless men, and he had found himself in more than his fair share of situations where a drawn gun was enough to dispel the threat of escalation.
John doesn’t put the knife down, and Dean sees the way his fingers tighten around the handle. Before Dean can think better of it, he steps fully in front of Sam, drawing his pistol.
“Put it down, Dad,” Dean says, no room for argument in his voice, though his hands tremble the way they always have.
The weight of the pistol in his hand and his father as the target is a familiar sensation, but the weight of his father’s gaze is new. The air in the room is thick and tense for a moment, and Dean finds himself hyper aware of the sweat collecting on his forehead, and the way his breathing catches in his throat.
John breaks the silence with a sharp laugh, and Dean jumps a bit with the abruptness of it.
“You could never do it, boy,” John says, a smile spreading across his face that doesn’t meet his eyes.
“Dean,” Sam says quietly from behind him, “We should just go.”
Dean clenches his jaw, turning to look at Sam for a moment, “You’re right, Sammy.”
Dean fixes his eyes on John once more, and lowers the gun slowly.
The fluorescent light above John’s head flickers a few times, and Dean thinks that maybe it’s telling him to run. Dean tries desperately to back out of the room, to follow Sam and hop into the car and leave their father behind, but as hard as he tries, his feet won’t listen to the signals his brain is sending.
Something is telling him that turning his back towards his father will be his biggest mistake.
Sam tugs at his sleeve - urging him out the kitchen door, but he’s cemented in place. He can’t hear Sam’s whispered pleas, for once, can’t hear the beating of his heart or the roar of blood in his ears. He can only pinpoint the incessant ticking of the fucking clock above the stove, and the inconsisten dripping of the faucet he’d been meaning to fix for weeks.
He registers it in slow motion, the way that John surges forward, the way he tries to shove Dean aside, the way he raises the knife to Sam.
He doesn’t realize when he pulls the trigger, only knows he’s done it by the way the sound echoes through the small kitchen, the way the sound fits between the dripping of the tap, the ticking of the clock.
It’s not real until John hits the floor, the blood pouring from his chest as he draws stilted breaths.
“Son of a bitch,” John breathes out, reaching to clutch at the chest wound with shaking hands, “You fucking shot me.”
Dean doesn’t dignify it with a response, doesn’t even look at Sam as he rushes out the front door. He gags and retches until his stomach is empty.
He’s not sure how much time passes as he sits slumped on the ground, carding his fingers through the brittle grass, when Sam comes out of the house, dry blood crusted onto his hands and the sides of his shoes.
“Dean…” Sam starts, “He… he didn’t make it.”
“He was going to kill you, Sammy,” he breathes, “I had to--”
“We have to go,” Sam replies, holding the lesser of his bloody hands towards his brother, “We have to get out of here before someone finds out what we did.”
Dean accepts the extended hand with a nod, “Where do we go from here?”
“Somewhere new,” Sam replies absently, “California, maybe.”