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“Get in the car, Dean.”
“No!” Dean, age six, was having too much fun. Dad never brought them to the park anymore. He was always too busy working and leaving them with whoever was closest. Dean’d lost track of how many times he and his baby brother had been shelled out to the nearest open arms, shoved to the side, and hung out to dry while their Dad did whatever the heck he did for work.
Dean was sick of it! He wanted to play, he wanted to swing on the swings and go down the slide and climb the monkey bars and not have to worry about Sammy for five minutes because his brother was busy trying to eat the sand out of the sandpit and that was not his problem right now because he was too busy counting out his woodchips like fake currency all by himself.
“Dean!” His father called again, a restless Sam in one arm and the keys to his beloved car, a black one that was called something Dean can’t quite pronounce yet, in the other, “Get your ass over here and in this damn car or I'm leaving without you.”
The child just turned away and went back to trying to clamber his way up and down the rock wall, tiny hands grasping at the smoothed plastic rocks and pulling his tiny, malnutritioned- not that he knew that- body, up the side of the structure.
John, a gruff and angry man with too much on his shoulders, was not one for disrespect. He packed up his youngest son in his car seat, ignoring the sudden screaming cries of the toddler, ever anxious without his big brother in sight, and buckling him up tight.
He shouted out one last time, “You got five seconds or you can find your own way back to the motel,” John had no qualms about making due his promise, if Dean wanted to be stubborn he could play that game. The kid had no right giving him such snark, if he needed a little alone time to learn his lesson then John could provide it.
The six-year-old had his phone number memorized, and when he’d come to his senses and find someone to call John then he’d pile back into the car and come get his idiot first-born, but until then the brat needed to get in line and behave.
Dean listened to the car start, a familiar sound he’d heard over countless hours in the dang thing, but stayed stubbornly facing away as the Impala backed out of the parking space and pulled out of the park, turning onto the street and rumbling away until it was out of earshot and out of view.
Slowly, taking a breath, the first real and free breath he’d felt in forever, Dean climbed down the rock wall and stood on the mulchy ground. Too-long jeans dragging under his barely tied shoes as he wandered the empty playground. Finally free of responsibility.
He was a kid for goodness sake, he kicked a rock as his thoughts ran free for a Moment, he shouldn't need to be so responsible for another life. Sammy was so damn small and he always had to watch over him, ‘Look out for your brother,’ Daddy’d say, or ‘Make sure Sammy eats his food and doesn’t make a damn mess again.’
Dean was tired, sue him if he wanted five minutes to play by himself without his Dad barking orders at him. He misses when Dad was nice to him, when he would scoop him up in his arms and throw him in the air and the the walls of their house would fill with giggles and Mommy's voice and sometimes Sammy crying but that was okay because someone else would take care of it and Dean could go back to playing with his blocks or whatever he had been doing before.
He misses a lot, but everything changed when Mom went away and Dean couldn't for the life of him figure out why Daddy was so mean now.
He spent ten or so minutes like that, just wandering and kicking around the dirt in this empty park all by himself. It was quiet, no Dad pestering him to use his big-boy words, no Sammy asking him silly questions in his insistent half-understandable toddler speak.
Dean knows Sam talks a lot for a baby, a nice lady at one of the many diners told him so, when he quietly expressed that he would read books to Sam so that he could learn all the words in the world and Daddy for the first time in forever looked proud of the eldest son. Smiling and praising his genius boys to the random waitress as she dropped a charming smile to the three boys and said the little chocolate cake she snuck out to them was on the house.
Dean smiled at the memory, Sammy loved the little cake and Dean was sure to give him most of it, only taking a few bites for himself -pie was more his thing; plus Dad told him it was his job to always make sure Sammy was happy, and the cake made the toddler very happy- but even the good feelings that surfaced were washed away by the sudden scowling face of his father as he grumbled about the mess on Sam's face and clothes afterwords, shuffling the boys in the men’s room, dropping both the boys up on the sink counter, and instructing Dean to clean his brother up while he attended business and stomped his way into one of the stalls.
That was only a few hours ago, and right after Sam had practically begged from the backseat to go to the park he’d seen out the car window on the way to the diner. ‘Park,’ was one of the places in the book Dean had described when he read to him a few days before when the three had found themselves in a library as Dad flipped through some freaky-looking books after leaving the boys to run free in the children's section.
Dean had found a book, ‘The Up and Down Book Starring Ernie and Bert’, which had a picture of a seesaw on the cover and Dean had told his brother that those kinds of playthings show up in parks and in playgrounds. Those words must’ve locked into his genius baby-brothers head because he had spotted a seesaw out the window as they rushed past and had not stopped blabbering about it since.
Now, Dean stood in front of the seesaw all by himself in this big empty park and he just felt sad. This overwhelming type of sadness that was much too big for his tiny body. He missed his brother, and he didn’t want to go on the seesaw without him. They had played on it a bit before the baby had gotten bored and clambered off to go do whatever, like eat sand.
He missed his Dad and his Mom. The sun was setting and he was scared and he wanted to go home. But he threw a tantrum, and Daddy had warned him that he’d leave him if he kept whining like a baby and then he did leave and he's probably not coming back and Dean just wanted to go home.
Home to his bed, in his house from a lifetime ago with his whole family, and not lingering, black, smoke, or burning heat to taint his memories of the old house. He wants the comfort of dark with a nightlight, and the warmth of love, not flames.
Daddy said that if he ever got lost he should find someone and ask for a quarter and directions to the nearest payphone or place with a landline. He was told to rattle off one of the million phone numbers to all the houses Dad was friends with or the big brick phone Dad kept in the glove box or the number to whatever motel room they were staying in this time.
But Dean was scared and alone, and even if he could find someone the numbers were jumbled with his panic, and he couldn't do anything besides curl his skinny, stuck in too-big clothes, body on the end of the seesaw and cry.
Silent sobs because Daddy taught him that crying was for babies like Sammy, and Dean wasn’t a baby. Not anymore, he wasn’t allowed to be. He had to be big and strong for his brother, he had to prove himself to Dad and the nice waitress and everyone else and show how brave he was in the face of danger.
Men don’t cry, but Dean’s not a man, he's a little boy and he's terrified of the slowly dimming afternoon sun and the subtle darkness that crept across the skyline like a monster ready to jump out from under his bed.
If he had a bed, most nights it was just him curled up on his booster seat in the backseat of Daddy's car.
No, Dean was six years old, and he didn't know about all the horrors of the world just yet but he knew about creepers in the dark who snatch up little kids and take them away to wherever and so what if he’s scared out of his wits, he has every right to be!
Twenty more minutes of Dean silently sobbing into his hands on the lone seesaw passed before the child hatched a plan; he knew which way the diner was. He knew for sure that he was a lot closer to the diner than he was to the motel which meant he could walk there faster and find a phone and maybe beg Daddy to come pick him up.
Dean would say he was sorry for misbehaving and use his big-boy words and be brave and not clam up like a coward and let his tiny brother speak in his place because Sammy wasn’t with him.
That's what he has got to do, so he stands and wipes his tears away with his flannel sleeves and steals his face into the most serious one he can muster. Setting off with determined and not-at-all wobbly steps. He stomps out of the park and onto the sidewalk, mimicking his Dad's thundering footsteps to make him seem and feel big and strong and brave like he could handle anything the world throws at him if he just pretends everything will be ok.
He bottles up his fear and his abandonment and walks the sidewalk with a furious passion and false confidence and hopes that none of the cars passing by question why a little kid is wandering the streets at near dusk.
At least he’s not hungry, having eaten a whole burger at the diner all by himself just mere hours ago, and having gone longer with less he’s sure he'll be fine as long as he can get somewhere with a phone to call for help.
Soon after, he's tired. He had been walking for what felt like an eternity before he saw the restaurant's gleaming, ‘Open 24 Hours’ sign in the distance. Kids weren't meant to walk this long, let alone a mile and a half in the dark with only the sunset, a couple streetlamps and a dream to guide them.
But Dean made it, he was big and strong and he made it to the diner and he almost started bawling all over again from the sheer relief of it all. Maybe the nice waitress was still there and she would give him another piece of cake for his troubles and he’d keep it all for himself even if it wasn’t his favorite because he would have earned it and he had no one to share with.
He staggered through the front door, exhausted and red in the face and cold and thirstier than a fish in a desert, but he still forced his feet to take him to the hostess stand that he could barely, in all his 3 '4 ft. glory, see over. There was a blonde girl standing there, chewing some gum and looking utterly disinterested in whatever was going on as she doodled the margins of her table layout and bobbed her head to the music playing from the jukebox in the corner.
She couldn't have been more than sixteen, probably working the night shift after a grueling day at school and just trying to make some cash to go to a drive-in or whatever teenagers do in their spare time but to Dean she was like a godsend. She was older, and blonde, and looked a lot like the faded memories of his Mom, and even had the same blue eyes as her.
Dean knew this wasn’t his Mom, or even the younger version of her somehow, but he took comfort in the familiar appearance all the Ssame.
“Excuse me,” he whispered at her, ever polite and trying to make himself seem both small and un-annoying, worth the trouble of looking up from her table-sheet, as well as big enough and deserving of being heard.
Her eyes glanced up at his small voice, making eye contact over the edge of her stand and she smiled, sticking her gum to the inside of her cheek and plastering on a customer service-worn smile mixed with awe of a cute kid standing in front of her, “Hey there, little dude. What can I help ya’ with?”
Dean hesitated, suddenly struck with his Dad’s many lectures of keeping CPS off their asses by playing their stories the right way. If he told this girl the truth then she'd surely be worried and call the cops or something. He had to play it cool.
“I- Um, I got lost?” He started, looking down and fiddling with his sleeves, “Is there a landline I can use? I want to call my Daddy.”
She smiled, nodding her head and her blonde curls bobbing along with the movement. “Awe, sure kid,” She pranced around the side of the stand and stuck her hand out for him to take, “Let me take you to the back, we got an employee line back there for us kids that gotta call their folks to come get ‘em at the end of their shifts.”
He almost didn’t take her hand, scared it would bite him with her long painted nails, but thought better of it at the thought that she wouldn't help him if he didn't and grasped on tight and let her lead him behind a door next to the bathrooms labeled, ‘Employees Only.’
He tried not to think too hard about breaking that rule, maybe by holding the girl's hand he was an honorary employee and it was okay. He had to hope that was the case as she directed him to the back corner where a phone was sitting on a little table next to a couch that smelled a little too much like cigarette smoke for his liking.
But he was brave, and so he thanked the girl as she told him to take his time and informed him she had to go back to her stand.
“When you're all done and your parents are on their way you can come stand by me and I’ll give you a kid's menu to color, yeah?”
And didn't that sound just wonderful, finally his little heart had stopped racing and he nodded to her before she turned and left him alone in the room with the phone, the smelly couch, a few random posters, and a soda machine along the other wall.
Slowly, he reached for the phone, staring at the number pad and trying to rack his brain for one of the numbers he could call.
And he’s hit suddenly with the fact that he doesn’t want to call his Dad, not at all. He’d rather go back out there into the diner and cry in front of everyone, in a completely and totally embarrassing act of distress than face his father in his post-tantrum-sobriety.
He knows that he's in South Dakota and that Daddy has a bunch of friends all over, but one comes to mind. A man named Bobby, who he’d recently taken to calling Uncle Bobby since his last visit where the man had lied to some random woman questioning his relation to Dean and Sam, and Dean is overcome with relief as the memory of his phone number surfaced to his mind with the ease of a rubber ducky in water.
Uncle Bobby wouldn’t judge him, and he's only ever been nice to him and Sammy since they’d met last year. Surely he would help if Dean called. He even told Dean to call on this specific number if he ever needed help, because Bobby would come get him no matter what.
He’d promised, and so far Bobby hadn’t broken any promises like Daddy did.
So he dialed the number and waited for the ringing and ringing to stop as the line on the other end picked up and a gruff voice answered, clearly annoyed at being called in the middle of the night but nonetheless answering anyway.
“Who the hell is this?” The rugged grumble came over the crappy speaker and for the second time, Dean almost started crying from relief at the sound of the familiar voice.
He sniffled, barely pulling himself together, “Uncle Bobby? Can you come and get me please?” Before he knew it he was rambling, stringing his sentences together in half-formed thoughts stifled by only-just concealed sobs.
“Woah there, slow down there, son-” Bobby cut him off, anger dripping from his voice instantly replaced with smooth concern and all the comfort he could muster, “Where are ya’, kid?”
Dean rattled off the address, it was thankfully on a little advertisement on the table next to the phone, and Bobby promised he would be there within the hour, reassuring Dean a couple more times and telling him to stay where he was before hanging up the phone.
The child stood there for a few moments, once again trying to collect himself before he ventured back into the diner's main room. He adjusted his shirt, checked his laces, and shouldered open the heavy breakroom door before making his way back over to the hostess's stand.
She smiled at him as he reappeared, “Welcome back, short-stack,” She drawled, tone teasing and light like a feather, “Your folks on the way?”
He nodded, mimicking her smile but losing the energy to talk back. Instead he silently, and very shyly pointed to the little coloring pages tucked behind her counter, finally allowing the day's events to catch up to him; he just wanted to sit in a booth and silently color.
She chucked, grabbing the stack of coloring pages and a fresh pack of crayons and leading him to the closest booth in her sights so she could watch over him from the corner of her eye, “Ya’ hungry?” She asked, tilting her head and tucking a loose curl behind her ear as he settled into the seat.
He shook his head, looking away from her and laser focussing on his paper and crayons, he needed a break from all this excitement; if it could be called that.
“Well, just let me know if you need anything. ‘Kay, kid?”
He nodded again, smiling at the table for being treated so nicely, she reminded him of the waitress from earlier. Maybe they were friends.
As she wandered away he caught the muffled comment she made to herself of him reminding her of someone else in turn; her own little brother when he’d been Dean’s age. Wasn’t that a thought; Dean as the little brother, he almost laughed just thinking about it.
Finally relaxing just enough in the soft light and warm safety of the diner, Dean ripped open his package of crayons, scribbling meticulously inside the lines so as to not make a mess of his art. And when he finished he proudly sauntered over to the hostess and gifted her his art, the filled-in cartoon moose with his name scrawled out at the bottom, and smiled real wide when she praised his work and hung it up on the art wall he hadn’t noticed until now.
Right in the center, like he was special, deserving of the front-row fridge spot he’d heard about in cartoons and books. Like he was good enough.
Roughly ten minutes after that, Bobby came rushing through the Diners doors, looking half-crossed between livid and relieved as he laid eyes on Dean before his hunched shoulders relaxed and he scrambled over to the kid's side.
“There ya’ are ya’ idjit,” He said, playing up the act just enough as he scooped Dean into a not-at-all-acting hug of pure comfort, “I’ve been worried sick!”
Dean returned the hug with all the strength he had, but it was late, nearly 9 pm and he was so tired it almost hurt. Now that he was in safe hands he couldn't help but relax and simply give in to the call for sleep as he let Bobby thank the hostess and drop a couple of bills into her hand with a grateful smile and Dean perched on his hip.
When Dean woke, several hours later he was in Bobby’s guest room, tucked into the bed, and upon further inspection, his crayons and half-finished drawings from the diner were laid neatly on the little bedside table. He smiled into the half-fluffed pillow he rested on, feeling calmer than he had in weeks after a good nap and being tucked in; a luxury he hadn’t been afforded in what seemed like forever.
There was a glass of water on the nightstand too, as well as a note that read, ‘I’m in my room if you need anything. Snacks are in the cabinet but if ya want a full meal come get me. I don't need ya burning down my house trying to work that crap hole of an oven.’
The little clock on the other nightstand across the room read that it was nearly four in the morning, and Dean decided he would rather go back to sleep than do anything else. So he took a few refreshing sips of his water and snuggled back under the still semi-tucked comforter. Relaxing into the mattress and slinking off into darkness.
When he woke the next time it was to the sun in his windows and yelling outside.
He jolted out of bed, rushing downstairs and hovering behind a wall, peeking out through the open door where Uncle Bobby was yelling at his father.
“What kind of ignorant asshole leaves their six-year-old alone in a park, John? Let alone when it's almost dark out?” He shouted at the man's face.
John was standing in front of the Impala, who was stuttering in her idling state, like she too was angry with her owner as Baby Sam screamed through the open windows of the backseat, obviously reacting negatively to the shouting match between the two men.
“I told him to get in the car!” John recounted, “I said that if he didn't come here I'd leave, and guess what Bobby? He stayed on that stupid rock wall or whatever the fuck he was doing!”
“That doesn't give you an excuse to leave the kid all by himself!”
John crossed his arms, huffing, “He needs to learn his actions have consequences. He’s gotta grow up at some point or another, he's my damn son and I'll raise him how I damn well please. The god-damned right way; to be a damn man!”
Now Bobby was really angry, “He’s not a damn man! He's a little fucking kid, John!”
“Whatever, Singer. Just give me my damn boy so I can get the hell out of here.”
“Hell no!” Bobby said, nearly flinging his arms in the air with rage, “In fact, you give me Sam and get the hell off my property. Don't you come back until you've got your shit together and are man enough to act like a damn father!”
Now that got Dean's attention from where he was silently watching the three-way screaming match, the third of course being Sammy's cries from his car seat.
John scoffed, “You can't tell me how to raise my own damn kids.”
“Watch me,” Bobby stepped closer, “Now, get Sam out of that car seat and into my house, and then get the hell off of my property you sad excuse of a dad.”
There was a drip of malice that Dean had never heard out of Bobby's mouth before, bitter with an undertone of past experience that rang like a bell in the salvage yard. Shutting John up like a clamshell under attack.
John didn’t reply after that, hastily un-bucking Sam and all but shoving him into Bobby’s arms before he got back in the car, slammed the door, and sped off without a word. Sam stopped crying the second the yelling stopped, sobering up in Bobby's strong grasp and curving his head into Bobby's shoulder.
“Where's Dean?” He whispered, half-mumbled and worn out from crying just as Dean rushed out of the house and reached up to take his brother from Bobby's hands.
Bobby sighed, gently passing the toddler to his brother's waiting and impatient hands, “Here ya’ go ya’ idjit.”
Dean wasn’t sure if the man was talking to him or Sammy but he didn't care, feeling so much better now that his baby brother was with him and safe and away from Dad.
Dean was scared that Dad had left again, but honestly, he felt better with Bobby. Bobby was nice and told him to eat with Sammy and not just feed him. Bobby didn't let Dean be Sammy's only caretaker, Bobby helped.
Dean could be a kid here, and he was okay with that.
John didn't come back for over a month, but that whole month was filled with a quiet lack of yelling and VHS cartoons and that tinge of home that Dean had missed so much since Mommy went away.
Sammy was safe, he was safe, and Dean could trust Bobby to keep them both that way.