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John comes back from the apartment block's small laundry with an armful of dry linens, residual heat of them soaking through his shirt, hot scent rising. He balances the load to fumble with the key, leans the door closed again with his ass. Pauses, listens for sound. Frowns, heads to the boys' room.
The curtains are drawn right back, sunlight whitening the room, making the glare of the bare beds brighter. He dumps the load of linens on one of them, taking him far enough into the room to see where Sammy's got to.
Or rather, what Sammy's got to. The box he'd stubbornly watched John carefully pack not more than ten minutes ago is upended in the corner, its contents strewn out in a manner that recalls a degree of violence, spanning the space between bed and wall.
Sammy, of course, is nothing less than blatantly demonstrative at the complete lack of reason behind it. Despite the scattered possessions around him (and jesus, where and when the hell did he get that many toys?), he's sitting in the middle of the chaos, head down, playing with his toy rabbit. Which, John recalls, was not originally included in the contents of the box.
"Sam." He doesn't try and hide the irritation in his voice, lets it come out firm and short.
Sammy huffs, drawing his knees up, continuing to walk the rabbit back and forth across the floor in front of him, John suspects more for obstinate show than anything else. John makes himself unclench his jaw, rubs a hand down his face while Sammy's still turned the other way.
"This is the last time I'm gonna say this," John says, and the words are ridiculously familiar. "You clean that up, now, or there will be consequences."
He doesn't wait for a response, just turns and heads back through the narrow hall to the tiny kitchen. He opens up the cupboards, looking through the collection of chipped crockery for the odd delicate piece that requires wrapping in newspaper to take with them. The hand-painted mug Dean brought home from school last month. The only bowl Sammy will concede to eating his macaroni cheese out of.
John pauses mid-newspaper rustle, tilts his head a little, listening. Hears the clatter-thud of things being dropped into a cardboard box from down the hall. Allows himself a smirk.
He places the wrapped items carefully in the half-filled box by the threadbare sofa, heads back into his own room. Starts on the wall above the narrow desk, tugging pins out of the wall, organizing the leafs of paper into piles. It's not until he's half-filled another box with books and artefacts that he realizes that it's otherwise silent in the small apartment.
The box of toys is half-heartedly filled, a good deal of the toys still scattered around it. Sammy's face-down in the pile of fresh laundry, arms and legs splayed out, toy rabbit flung half-way up the bed.
"Sam," John growls, suppressing the urge to grab Sammy by the back of the tee-shirt and shake.
Sam twitches a little. "No," he says, muffled through the sheets.
"Fine. We're leaving it here, then."
"Don't care."
Well, good. One less box to find space for in the trunk. How they manage to accumulate so much stuff in such a short amount of time continues to baffle John. Although Dean's indulgence of Sammy certainly doesn't help. Or hell, who was he kidding? It’s John's indulgence of Sammy as much as anything else. Which of course, lead them here. Too much goddamn stuff and Sammy to used to getting his own goddamn way.
John discovers he's grinding his teeth again. "In half an hour," he says, "we're picking your brother up from school. Anything that isn't in the car by then stays here." Sammy still isn't moving. John scowls. "And that includes you."
Twenty-five minutes later, John's loading the last couple of boxes into the car. Somewhat sheepishly, he's left folding the clean bedding to the last, at least giving Sammy some time to calm down on his own.
Sam's not in the bedroom. He's not in the bathroom either, or the kitchen, and there's not really anywhere else to look after that, except -- dammit, dammit -- John had left the front door open as he'd loaded up the car.
Sammy hasn't made it very far. He's always slow on the stairs, has only made it a few yards beyond the bottom step when John comes down them two at a time.
"Sammy, what the hell," John grits, seething already, and Sammy wheels around, face twisted.
"Leave me alone!" he shouts back at John. "I'm running away!"
Like hell. Sammy's carrying his rabbit in one hand, Dean's half-bag of stashed M&Ms in the other. His shoes are on the wrong feet.
"Sam," John says. "We don't have time for this. Get in the car, now."
Sammy stamps his foot. "No!"
Fine. John takes the couple of strides forward, grips Sammy around the waist and hauls him up. Sammy shrieks, immediately writhing and pounding at John with his fists and feet, but John's had worse. Luckily he's left the car unlocked, so he's able to hold Sam under one arm while he opens the door with his free hand, depositing Sammy into the front seat then buckling him in.
Most of the violence has gone out of Sam by that stage, his energy taken up with sobbing instead, but he starts twisting and swinging his limbs again when John goes to shut the car door. "Bun," Sammy's gasping between sobs. "Bun!"
His goddamn rabbit. John's heart twists in guilt at the abject misery in Sammy's voice; he leaves the car door open so Sammy can watch while John goes back to the sidewalk, picks up the toy rabbit from where it's lying facedown on the concrete. Sammy clutches at it when John hands it to him, pressing it against his face and sobbing his goddamn heart out.
The car's silent but for the gradual easing of Sammy's gasping and gulping, the rhythm of his breath wrung out into occasional shuddering hitches by the time they pull up outside the school.
Dean's waiting on the sidewalk at the front, and opens the door to sling his bag in and climb in after it. "Are we going now?" he asks, tone light and eager.
"Yeah," John grunts in affirmation. Sammy stares out the window, shoulders slumped.
John signals, pulls away from the curb and into the traffic. The car's silent again and Dean doesn't ask, just reaches forward and puts his hand on Sammy's head, rubs fingers briefly in Sammy's hair. John meets Dean's gaze in the rearview and Dean offers a small, almost apologetic smile.
John shakes his head a little, looks away. The leaving should get easier, the more they do it. But since when has it ever been easy?
At the next set of traffic lights Dean climbs over to sit between them in the front seat, Sammy asleep against his shoulder before they've reached the city limits.