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"You can cry if you want to."
It's hot in the closet, airless. Sam's skin feels both gummy and slick and he's lightheaded but it's summer and summer is always an procession of motel rooms, where there's nowhere else to hide. It's Sam that taught Addie this, because Dean never has to hide from anything.
Procession. The act of moving along or forward. P-R-O-C-E-S-S-I-O-N. Procession.
Addie makes a face and scrubs her eyes. "I don't need to cry." Her cheek is swelling up, the bruising visible even in the dimness. "I'm fine. Leave me alone."
"Dean didn't mean to hit you so hard." Sam reaches to touch. Addie knocks his hand aside and then gives him a flat-hand strike to the chest, knocking him against the opposite closet wall. Sam grins.
"You think I don't know that?" Addie draws back into her narrow little crouch, like a spider. "Jeez, Sam. I know I messed up, okay?"
"No…" Sam frowns and picks at his worn shoelace. His sneakers are too tight; Dean's already had to cut the toes out. Summer is for hunting, no money for shoes. Not until fall, when they're back in school, when people are watching. "That's not what I meant."
"Yeah, bullshit, not what you meant."
"Watch your mouth, young lady." The closet door opens and they both squint against the light and Dean silhouetted black against it. Now that his voice is changed Dean sounds so much more like Dad and, Sam suspects blackly, Dean loves lording that over them. "Let's take a look at that face."
Silhouette. The outline or general shape of something. A dark image outlined against a lighter background. S-I-L-H-O-U-E-T-T-E. Silhouette.
"Where's Dad?" Sam asks as Addie unlocks from her rigid curl. She aims a kick in Sam's direction that he blocks with his forearm absently, still looking at Dean.
Dean freezes long enough for Sam to glean the truth, Sam's stomach turning hard and cold like a swallowed stone. Then Dean's grin is back, glittering and cocky. "What, you worried he's gonna put you in the ring next? Only one ass-kicking per day, kiddos. Lucky you." He loops his arm around Addie's neck and drags her against his side, Addie rabbit punching Dean's ribs as hard as she can as he steers her into the bathroom.
Sam pulls the closet door shut again, though there's not really anyone to hide from and it's still hot as Hades in there. With Addie gone, Sam lies down on the closet floor and stretches his legs up on the wall. He's grown two whole inches in the past month and his legs—scratched, bruised and mosquito-bitten—ache all the time.
The motel's walls are paper thin. Though Dean's lowered his voice, Sam hears it just as clearly when Dean asks Addie, "You know I didn't mean it, right, punk?"
Addie makes a sharp noise and she actually sounds more muffled when she mutters, "S'my fault. Dad said I wasn't paying attention to my left. Shoulda paid attention to my freakin' left. So stupid."
Sam doesn't understand why Addie gets so mad when she can't stand up against Dean or—worse and even less likely—Dad. She fights like an alley cat, but she's also ten and smaller than any of them.
"So next time you'll know better, yeah?" Dean pauses. "I'm sorry, kid. Looks like you're going to be stuck here until that thing heals."
"Aw, Dean…"
Sam looks up at the rod, the skeletal shapes of the unused hangers. All their things are still in their bags, ready to be picked up and moved at a moment's notice. He doesn't know why Addie sounds so aggrieved. She knows the rules, same as the rest of them.
Aggrieved. Wronged, offended or injured. A-G-G-R-I-E-V-E-D. Aggrieved.
"You want someone to think we've been beating you? You want somebody calling Child Services on Dad? Jesus, Addie, you know the rules."
Ha. Sam scratches a mosquito bite on his knee.
"I can tell people I got into a fight!"
"Addie. No." The sink top, which is loose, rattles and Sam imagines Dean shaking Addie by the shoulders. "You want them to split us up?"
It's The Big Taboo, made all the more real by the fact that their summer hiatus began a little early this year thanks to their nosy and know-it-all downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Cranford, who had decided Dad wasn't around enough for her liking. Only Dean's fake-ID and smooth talking –and Mrs. Cranford's long-standing and vocal history with the local PD—had saved them long enough to pack up and bail, meet Dad in Cheyenne.
As much as Sam can think up a million and one ways their lives totally suck, the thought of being split up and stuck in foster care is worse, chilling Sam even in the stifling heat. Dad's a jerk sometimes and so is Dean…hell, even Addie sometimes, but they're also everything he has.
"Come out of there before you make yourself puking sick." Dean swoops the door open and Sam squints against the renewed supernova of light. "And take a freakin' shower. I could track you by scent."
Sam grimaces and rolls to upright, his shirt glued flat to his back. He tugs it loose like a band-aid and scratches his hand through his sweated out hair. Addie is at the table, disassembling one of the revolvers—the Smith and Wesson with the notch on the handle that pulls a little left—with ferocious concentration.
Ferocious. Savagely fierce. F-E-R-O-C-I-O-U-S. Ferocious.
Dean pushes Sam lightly in the chest. "You got babysitting duties while I go get dinner, dude."
"Aw, Dean," Sam groans.
At the same moment Addie scowls and shouts, "I don't need a babysitter!" She jumps up from the table, scattering gun parts everywhere. Addie ignores it, pointing her finger at Sam. "He's only two years older than me, dude. Two. That's, like, practically the same age."
"Oh, sure," Dean agrees. "Except in the way it's totally not and you know Sam's in charge when me and Dad aren't around."
Sam's twelve and really too old for it, but he sticks his tongue out at Addie anyway, because ha.
Dean pushes Sam at the bathroom with one hand and points at Addie with the other. "You, shower and you, clean that up or I'm getting liver and onions for everybody."
"Aw, Dean!" Addie says more or less simultaneous with Sam. Sam knows he means it; Dean totally, totally means it. Because he is just that kind of jerk. Nobody mentions Dad. After his blow-up at Dean and Addie about the sparring, it's not likely he'll be back tonight. Maybe not tomorrow either.
On the plus side, that means Sam probably gets a bed all to himself. Cheered by the thought, Sam tugs off his shirt and tosses it across the room at Addie. She catches it and wads it into a ball. Sam closes the door just in time to hear it thump against the wood.
II.
Sam opens his eyes and Addie's standing next to the bed.
"Move over," she says, less a sound than a movement of her lips and an impatient hiss.
There's not a lot of room to do so; Dean insisted Dad would be back and so he's sprawled across his half-and-a-bit of the bed and Sam's clinging desperately to the slightly-less-than-a-third left. But it's Addie and they always make room for her. So Sam scoots and Addie climbs half on top of him, barely avoiding kneeing him in the 'nads.
"Hey," he growls softly in warning, afraid to wriggle too far in any direction. Dean hits when he gets startled awake.
"We could move to the other bed."
Sam tips his head back to look over the short bristles of her hair. Dad cuts it, same as theirs, once a month but Sam thinks Addie likes it just as well when people think she's a boy.
Like he knew it would be, the other bed is empty, moonlight and neon gleaming on the waxy spread. But he shakes his head when he looks back at Addie. "Nah. Dean'll get mad." And Dad might come home, he thinks but doesn't say, even though he doesn't believe it. He doesn't have to say it, though. It's not so dark he can't see the same thought in Addie's face and eyes before she puts her head down on his shoulder.
"My face hurts."
"I got some arnica in my bag. We can put it on your jaw tomorrow."
"It's boring here."
"So we'll figure out something to do. You can quiz me on my flash cards."
Addie's little fingers scratch-tickle Sam's chest, picking at the decaying puffed paint on his shirt. "Sam. That's boring too. Besides, Dad's never gonna let you enter a spelling contest. Too much attention."
"You don't know that," Sam says sharply.
"What I know is that both of you critters are going to end up with your heads stuffed in the toilet if you don't fuckin' go to sleep," Dean mutters venomously, lifting his head from the pillow and rolling on his side. "And don't give me the 'I'm not tired' routine because that just means I need to run the two of you harder tomorrow."
Sam sort of falls into the little bit of space Dean just vacated and Dean's arm flattens over them both, pinning them to the bed. Addie squeaks like she's surprised, but she only curls in tighter, pushing her swollen face into his neck.
"Sleep," Dean says again, slurring it this time, mostly asleep himself. He's tired; of course he is. Two miles each way there and back again for food. On foot, because Dad took the car and in the grilling heat of afternoon. And that after sparring with the three of them—Dad, Sam and Addie, with Dad yelling at Dean: Don't baby her, Dean! Harder! Hit her harder!
Two seconds after Dean knocked her down, Addie was up again, running for the motel and Dad yelling after her. Sam thinks he's the only one who saw Dean puke.
He thinks that's probably for the best.
Filial. Of, pertaining to or befitting a son or daughter, i.e. filial obedience. F-I-L-I-A-L. Filial.
Addie's right. Dad's never going to let him enter that fucking spelling contest.