Work Text:
Everyone alive has a father. Just like everyone alive has a heart. Sam’s known many fathers, had many friends who have had fathers, and he knows what the word means. But every time he sees the Father’s Day sale poster at their local grocery store, pasted right next to the isles filled with screwdrivers and iron nails, he feels like the word is born right in front of his eyes. Conceived and delivered at that very moment, as if the term hadn’t existed before then.
It’s silly, though. Of course, the word existed before. He’s known so many fathers, after all.
The iron nails and the drill machines must be popular because a short man seems to be browsing through them as though his life depends on them. Maybe he’s a son. He doesn’t look that old, and his brown trousers seem like desk job garb. Even his hands and nails seem tidy and polished, nothing like that of a hammer-loving father who builds desks and sofas on the weekend.
Jessica’s dad used to build stuff, and he was a history professor, his brain retorts. His assumptions are probably shit. Jeanne Moore had loved books and she apparently would collect romance novels and space operas with such a passion that one weekend, Jessica and her dad had spent a sleepless night trying to make a bookshelf that would fit in her parents room. Jessica had been so fond of that memory, and he’d heard her mention it so often in the passing.
“If dad was here, he’d help me fix this cabinet,” she’d say and then proceed to call him up and ask him what she would need to do it herself. When Sam had moved in with her, and they barely had enough money to secure the lease, she’d decided that they’d borrow and buy whatever furniture they could and fix it up over the first few weeks. Of course, her dad had driven down from Riverside and helped them on one such weekend.
Maybe some fathers could teach history all morning and afternoon and still want tools on sale for Father’s Day. How the hell would Sam know though? In his mind, the word was always unknowable— with no prior definitions of it sticking the way they should.
He didn’t like how this aisle made him feel and he quickly rounded back to the cashier with gallons of milk and a Sunday morning newspaper in tow.
He sat down in his room, changing out of his running pants and hopping onto the mattress with his newspaper in hand. There was still an uneasy feeling about him, and Sam’s fingers kept drawing patterns on the neatly set bedsheet. He hadn’t hated his father so completely and absolutely that the word should knock him out the way it did. Dad had been a ton of things, amongst one of them was a father.
Fathers were commonplace, everyone had one: maybe alive, maybe missing, maybe long and lost, maybe dead. But fathers weren’t unique enough that the general idea of them should trouble him. The word, though, had always seemed so malleable to him.
In some universe, maybe he could be one. Dean had experience being one for Ben. Bobby had tried his hand at being their father, even though this was a piece of knowledge that Sam didn’t realize until way too late. Their angelic friend Castiel seemed to be constantly at war with what a father was too. A war he’d brought upon himself when he’d taken Jimmy away from Claire.
The word had been rounded up and rotated in his brain like a centrifuge until it seemed confusing and unearthly. What the hell was a father? Was it Jessica’s timid and quiet father who liked to build things for his wife and daughter? Was it Bobby going over Sam’s math homework when no one else would? Was it Dean’s hands teaching him how to tie his own shoelaces?
Or was it John that one morning that Sam still remembered so brightly? A memory even the cage hadn’t dulled?
He’d been nine and fond of history in a way that he regarded as lunatic. Maybe, that’s when he became the nerd Dean mocked him for being. But history had seemed so inviting then, filled with reasons for why people did the things they did. He’d liked the fact that people built civilizations on river banks, and made pottery beautiful despite it serving no purpose. Sam used to dream that he’d accidentally stumble across some major artifact when he dug around sand in the local park. He wished it was an old coin or vase or something old enough that he would be featured in the newspaper for finding it!
Dean had laughed at him and said that nobody put archaeologists in the newspapers.
Astronauts make better news, Sammy! Think bigger if you really want to be famous, okay? Planes are weird but at least if you go to space you get to be famous.
A few weeks later, one of his projects at school was to write an essay about their favorite historical city. It had felt like this was what would change his life forever. Sam, nine years old and constantly in the public library that he had Dean drag him to, was a powerful force.
The A on his assignment agreed.
That afternoon, his legs were faster than they’d ever been. He had run into the Impala, jumping down in the front seat, despite not being allowed there. The radio had been loud, but not playing any rock song he’d heard. Just some mellow tune from about twenty years ago. He’d taken one look at the radio and then another at his father. His face must’ve looked funny because John had taken one look at him and turned towards Dean, who dutifully sat behind and was comfortably stuck to his favorite window, to ask what was wrong.
Sam didn’t give him that chance to ask, though, pulling out his assignment sheet and handing it over to John, “Dad, I got an A!”
To this date, Sam remembers the smile John had given him.
The paper was in his hand and the A on it was red and buzzing with vibrancy. And John… The father who didn’t smile when Sam told him jokes he’d heard from Dean, the father who didn’t laugh when Dean fell from his bed while sleeping, had actually beamed. Beamed and given his son a high five!
“I’m proud of you, Sammy,” he’d said, and put the ruled sheet back in Sam’s tiny hands.
Sam had recalled the way Dean looked at the interaction, so surprised and quiet, and then Sam must’ve mentioned how Dean had actually helped Sam with looking for facts at the library for hours last week because Dad then told Dean that he was proud of him too. They didn’t talk about much else that car ride, with Dean chiming in about astronauts being just as cool as archaeologists.
The word father still seems rough. Scabby. Scratched out. He doesn’t hate the word, though. Sam never hated the idea of a father, but there will always be something hollow about it. Something that will always make him uncomfortable when a song from 1972 plays on the radio, or when the grocery shop aisle begs him to buy gifts. Everyone alive has a father… Just like everyone alive has a heart, Sam thinks again and picks himself up from his bed to wake his older brother.