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The first time John hits Dean, it is both out-of-the-blue and expected. Neither one can tell if they’re surprised it happened or not. Dean is barely ten, pale, small, fragile, and wide-eyed. For all his smallness, for all that he seems to curl in on himself so tight he disappears, for all his silent subservience, he seems to get in the way a lot. He stands between John and the bed he was going to sit on. He’s right there in John’s personal space as he’s trying to reach for a glass. He’s a roadblock stopping John from getting the dagger on the nightstand in time. So, when John hits Dean, it’s a weird thing. Weird because he can’t believe his dad would lay a hand on him, and weird because the second skin hits skin, it’s like it was always there.
The worst part, Dean thinks, is it wasn’t even during a hunt. It was a motel room, Sammy tucked into cool sheets that have seen far too much, and John packing salt into cartridges. Dean is stuck in limbo: bright green eyes bouncing between Dad at the table and Sammy in bed. He feels stuck between two worlds, not just the normal one and the supernatural one, but the little kid one and the big kid one. He is tired, an ache no boy his age should carry weighing on his bones, and even then, before it happens, there’s a bruise on his arm from when he’d been acting as bait and John was just a little too delayed. Dean desperately wants to go to bed, to curl up beside Sammy and bury his face in his hair and go to sleep, but then there’s Dad at the big table. Dad never sleeps before midnight, never crashes the moment the hunts over. He’s always ready, always preparing for the next one, always on his toes. Dean wants to be like Dad so badly. In the end, he decides he’s too old for little kid stuff, is going to join Dad at the table and get ready for the next hunt. They already caught wind of one in Iowa. They’re always on the move.
Dean makes his way over, standing on his tippy toes as he rests his arms on the table, chin pressed against cool wood. He reaches for an empty shell, and that’s when it happens. His arm grazes some of the filled ones. It’s like a domino effect and he watches in horror as they all begin to fall. Salt spills on the table, the floor. A rough hand flashes across his vision. He blinks, and he’s on the floor. There’s a pulsing on his face.
“Boy! What the fuck—” John shouts, standing up, chair squealing across wood behind him.
Then, “Dean, I didn’t—” as the momentary anger washes away from Dad’s face, replaced by something sick.
Dean feels his lip begin to waver, his elbows pressed against the salt as he sits halfway up on the floor. His eyes are locked on John’s and John’s on his. Sammy makes a tired little noise as he wakes up from the commotion. Immediately, it is over. Dean and John both know one thing; Sammy doesn’t get hurt, doesn’t get scared, and doesn't need to know what the worlds like just yet. John sits back down, sighs into his hands, and leans against the table. He doesn’t move to clean the salt, doesn’t even take a swig from the bottle by his arm. Dean gets up, slowly, mechanically, and crawls into bed with Sammy. They don’t ever talk about it.
The next time, Dean can’t fault him. He screwed up and Sammy almost got hurt and he’s already hyperventilating. He feels sick. Dean couldn’t live with himself if Sammy got hurt, especially not if it was because of him. When John finishes tending to him and has tucked him into bed, he walks to the car where Dean has been sitting for the past twenty minutes. He’s only hit him once before, nothing to indicate this is a pattern, but they both know it the second John opens the door.
“Out,” His voice is rough and harsh and Dean knows he doesn’t deserve to cry but it makes him want to.
John’s grip on his arm is bruising but the sort of seedy motels they stay at are likely used to it, and so neither of them worry about being seen.
“You’re supposed to take care of him, Dean. You’re the big brother here,” He growls, and Dean knows .
He wishes he could hit himself too. He knows he failed Sammy. He’s almost ready when John’s calloused hand collides with his face. Dean doesn’t fall to the ground, still kept in place by the Impala and John’s other hand. It makes the aftermath awkward, stilted, like a first time. There’s no Sammy to make them pretend nothing happened, no regularity to make it easy to brush off. Dean doesn’t move, waits for John to set the precedent for how this is going to go from now on. Because both of them can feel it in their bones; It’s going to be like this now. It’s a permanent, unchangeable thing.
Eventually, John decides. This is how it will go; John will hit Dean; They will make horrible, awkward eye contact for a long moment; John will tell Dean to go (to the motel, to the car, to another room) away. Sammy won’t know.
When Sammy finds out for the first time, it is seven years later. He’s thirteen and already questioning John, spitting back angry comments, choosing to do his homework instead of hunt. It makes Dean want to throw up; It makes Dean act up in his own way so John never turns on Sammy instead, even though he’s sure he wouldn’t. Sammy has this burning resentment building inside him that Dean has never had, or at least has never let himself have. It’s going to be the start of something bad. It’s going to be the end of them. That’s why Dean can’t let Sammy know what really happens. He’s scared of what his barely-teen brother will do if he finds out that not all those bruises and cuts and marks are from monsters. He’s scared of what he’ll do when he finds out the real monsters walk among us in human suits of their own.
When Sammy finds out, it is the worst thing to ever happen to Dean. It happens like this. Sammy is at school and Dean and John are preparing for a hunt. John has been in a bad mood because of Sammy’s behavior, because of his insistence on not missing his biology test when John wanted him to stay home. Dean makes a snarky comment or something and John’s been day drinking and he sort of snaps. Dean knows it has to be hard to carry the burden John does. John’s a hero; He’s saved a lot of people.
When Sammy opens the door—he’d gone home after the test because his stomach started hurting—John’s fist is colliding into Dean’s face for the third time. Dean stumbles backwards, hits the wall, and that’s when he locks eyes with Sammy. He notices it before John does, the man’s hunter instincts dampened by a few too many bottles.
“What the FUCK,” Sammy screams, outrage glistening in his eyes, and John and Dean are at a loss.
They both agreed; Sammy would never know. There’s no script for this.
“It’s not like that,” Dean manages to get out, and Sammy goes ballistic.
“Are you seriously defending him right now, Dean?” He shouts, throwing his backpack at John who falters and takes a step back.
“Now, son,” John says, too drunk to form the right words to placate Sammy, not that there were any.
Dean’s eyes fly back and forth between the two, and he knows something bad is going to happen. Cheek still on fire, he grabs Sammy and pushes him out the door, herding him into the Impala parked right out front.
“Let’s just get food, or something, wait for Dad to sober up,” Dean mutters, not making eye contact.
Sammy is livid at the suggestion, “How long?”
“What?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Dean. How long has Dad been beating you,” He snarls.
Dean’s fingers clench around the wheel as he peels out, “Don’t do that. Don’t say that like I’m some—”
“Battered housewife? Because that’s what it fucking looks like. How are you still defending him?” Sammy is fully turned around in the seat, facing Dean head on, and he’s so grateful to be driving so he can look at the road and resolutely ignore Sammy.
“He’s drunk,” Dean finally whispers.
The car fills with silence after that, before being disrupted by Sammy’s appalled laughter. Dean wants to cry, even though he hasn’t cried about John hitting him since he was fourteen.
“Yeah, and I’m sure he’s been drunk every time for the last few years,” Sammy says bitterly.
“Yeah.” Dean says, stone-faced as he lies through his teeth.
“It’s been years?” Sammy says, suddenly very quiet, and Dean realizes he trapped himself.
“Can we not right now, Sammy, please,” He begs because he can’t do this right now, not ever.
Sammy probably would have said no, would have kept pushing on, if not for the tears welling in Dean’s eyes: “fine.”
The rest of the ride is silent and neither of them acknowledge the tears trickling down Dean’s face, past the throbbing mess that’s sure to bruise bad. They don’t talk as they get food, nor do they on the way home, and opening that door again is the hardest thing Dean’s ever done. He can’t face Sammy as he opens the door to find John passed out on the couch. When he does finally look back at him, there’s betrayal burning in Sammy’s eyes as Dean cleans up John and drags him to bed.
Six years later, Sammy leaves home. It’s the only thing on his mind.