“So we’re taking him back to Bobby’s?”
June 21
Harry passed every single test that Sam and Dean put him through. Harry wasn’t a monster or a demon or anything supernatural, he was just a kid who said his dad was John Winchester.
And once Sam was looking, yeah, that kinda made sense.
Harry had the same green eyes as Dean, he had the little dimples when he smiled that Sam had. Harry’s hair was darker than theirs, his skin not as tanned, but… but when Sam thought of photos of their dad, back when he’d been younger and fresh out of the Marines, Harry looked a lot like he had.
“This is crazy.” Sam laughed and looked from where his older brother sat beside him before looking at where his younger brother sat across from him.
They had convince Harry to grab dinner together while they talked, but so far Harry and Dean hadn’t said much. Dean ordered a burger and fries, Harry ordered chicken strips, that was the extent of their verbal communication so far.
Sam wouldn’t pretend to know what was going through Dean’s head, but it was easy to read Harry.
The way he stopped struggling and fighting the instant Sam showed him his photograph? The way his eyes lit up and he bobbed his head quickly when Sam asked if he wanted to grab food and talk?
Dean was a mystery in the new situation, but Harry was clearly excited. Well, actually, he was probably still a little freaked given how they ambushed him, but he was in the diner and didn’t stop looking at Sam and Dean.
“So… I bet you have a million questions,” Sam said with a genuine grin. He felt like an ass for what he pulled back in Reno, but what were the odds?? Sam knew he had a dozen questions to ask Harry, but he let the kid go first.
His first big brotherly act, it made him grin even harder.
“Yes.” Harry scooted forward in his bench seat and looked from Sam to Dean. “Why’d you throw a bullet at me?”
Sam laughed again because the entire situation was so unreal and of course that was Harry’s first question. Since Harry was looking at Dean for the answer, Sam smirked as he did too.
Go ahead, Dean. Answer that.
“We heard you talking about our dad and wanted to find out why,” Dean said shortly, his eyes never leaving Harry’s face. “Our dad had a lot of enemies, we can’t be too careful.”
That didn’t answer Harry’s question, but Harry deflated all at once anyway.
“‘Had’?” Harry asked quietly, glancing toward Sam for what seemed like confirmation.
Shit.
Harry was searching for John Winchester and it didn’t even dawn on Sam until he saw a heartbroken looking teenager that the man he wanted was dead.
“Yeah,” Sam said, ripping the bandaid off. “Almost a month ago now. I’m sorry.”
It felt weird consoling someone else for Sam’s dad dying, but it was weirder to learn he had a younger brother in the first place.
Harry swallowed hard and nodded down at his plate of mostly untouched food.
“Right, yeah, of course,” he mumbled. “So- so I came too late to meet him.”
Sam looked at Dean, Dean shrugged.
Apparently it was on Sam to deal with Harry’s obvious disappointment.
“I mean… I’m still glad you came,” Sam offered, meaning it. Was it crazy? Yeah, but with all the losses they had… it was nice to finally have a gain.
It was batshit crazy, but Sam wasn’t complaining.
Harry glanced up at Sam and - how did Sam not see it before? Harry and Dean had the same color eyes. Sam teased Dean his entire life about his bright green eyes and then when he saw the same color on a kid with John’s thick black hair, Sam’s first thought was ‘demon’?
Sam really hadn’t been getting enough sleep lately. That was the only excuse he could think of.
“Speaking of which…” Dean cleared his throat and finally decided to get involved. “How did you get here? Where’s your mom?”
“She’s dead.” Harry said it so matter-of-factly that it couldn’t have been recent. Though he didn’t look at either of the boys when he added, “And I… er flew here?”
Shit.
Sam had been so focused on demon, not-demon, brother, finding-brother, that he didn’t think of how Harry had been on the plane that went down. That had to be messed up, especially since there was no way that plane went down without supernatural assistance.
“Sorry to hear about your mom,” Dean said to Harry, a little gruff but Sam knew it was genuine. “You live with your aunt and uncle, right?”
Sam cocked his head at Dean’s information, but Dean wasn’t looking at Sam to explain how he knew that. Harry did look at Dean then when he nodded and some of the tension between the three started to dissipate.
“Mum died when I was a baby, my - er… step— no, both my parents died when I was a baby.” Harry raised his chin as if the boys were going to argue over him calling whoever his step-dad was his dad, but they were thinking of something entirely different.
“Your mom died when you were a baby?” Sam asked quickly.
Harry seemed confused about their interest. “Yeah?”
“Not in your nursery, right?” Dean asked.
They didn’t have to say it to be thinking it- both their minds were on Max Miller.
They met Max Miller a few months back, on a case that Sam’s visions led them to. Max Miller, like Sam, had lost his mom in a nursery fire when he was baby. Max Miller, like Sam, had some sort of abilities he couldn’t explain. Sam had his visions that seemed to mostly revolve around the Yellow-Eyed Demon, Max had a pretty strong hold on some telekinetic powers.
Max Miller, unlike Sam, had killed himself when Sam and Dean investigated the deaths of his father and uncle and found Max was responsible. They saved the life of his step-mom, but still had no answers as to what connected Sam and Max.
Harry was looking from Dean to Sam and back to Dean slowly with his eyebrows pulled low. When he did that, Sam thought he looked a lot like their dad.
And Dean… Harry definitely favored Dean more than Sam in looks.
“I - yeah, she did… how’d you know that?” Harry asked with a new bite of suspicion in his tone.
Sam was going to risk it. Sam was going to ask Harry if he got headaches, if he had any odd powers, if anything strange started happening to him—
“Our mom died in a house fire, Sammy here’s always looking for parallels,” Dean cut in. He kicked Sam’s ankle under the table hard and breezed right past the most important questions. “How’d you find out about John, anyway? Your aunt tell you or something?”
“Oh,” Harry blinked and the suspicion was gone. He actually grinned a little bit when he shrugged his shoulders again. “No, my parents’ best mate just got out of prison, he told me. Oh, I’ve got a picture, wanna see?”
Sam actually laughed in surprise again, Dean didn’t look very amused. Dean actually looked kind of pissed which meant he was either pissed or stressed or worried or - the point was, a lot of Dean’s emotions came out looking like ‘pissed’.
Harry started digging around in the new Greyhound backpack he picked up in Reno. It was good instincts he had too, Sam had been looking for a blue backpack on a black tshirt and Harry ended up slipping right past him in a grey hoodie and black backpack. If Dean didn’t catch him climbing on the bus steps, they might have lost him altogether.
Sam glanced at Dean to try and gauge his thoughts while Harry flipped through a black leather photo album. Dean was glaring, his lips mashed in a thin line.
“Dude…” Sam nudged him with his elbow and kept his voice at a very low whisper. “What?”
“Convicts, Sam, he’s getting information from convicts,” Dean hissed, his voice hidden beneath Harry’s “Aha!”
Sam rolled his eyes at Dean. As if that was a real problem. If the two of them were caught for half the shit they did, they’d be convicts. In fact, ‘Dean Winchester’ was a legally dead serial killer in the state of Illinois.
“This- this is my mum,” Harry told them, sliding a photo across the table to them. Dean got it first and Sam had to scoot closer to see the picture over his shoulder.
It was definitely Dad in the picture, probably about fifteen years ago. Dad sat on a barstool, the jacket Dean owned was on him and he had a hot red-head sitting across his lap, her lips locked on Dad’s. It didn’t bother Sam, he had no memories of Dad being with Mom and plenty of Dad hitting on waitresses, but Dean was quick to return the photo.
“I’m guessing the convict is the one who took the photo?” Dean guessed.
“Yeah.” Harry grinned down at the photo before tucking it back in his photo album carefully. Sam was pretty sure the front of the album said ‘blackmail’ but Harry put it away too quickly to be sure.
“So…” Sam looked from Dean to Harry and back to Dean. They didn’t actually talk about what they were going to do when they tracked Harry back down, they just… they knew they had to.
Harry was family and he traveled clear from somewhere in the UK to find his family. The kid survived a freaking plane crash, the boys weren’t leaving their brother high and dry.
“Vegas, huh?” Sam asked Harry, trying to feel out whatever the situation was. “Were you headed to the airport?”
“Before you decided to kidnap me?” Harry asked, seeming perfectly at ease with Sam. He was still grinning and Sam swore he could feel his legs swinging beneath the table.
“You got right in our van,” Dean reminded Harry. “You weren’t exactly fighting.”
Though Harry did nail Dean with a kick to the balls before then, a moment Sam would be sure to give Dean shit for in the future.
“I…” Harry faltered for a second, apparently taking Dean’s words to heart. “That was a bit mental, I suppose…”
“A bit,” Sam agreed with a grin he didn’t think he’d shake anytime soon. “You flying back or sticking around?”
“He’s sticking around,” Dean said decisively. When Sam looked at him, surprised, Dean only shook his head. And when Dean shook his head, it meant whatever plan he had was the plan they’d be following.
Dean was stubborn, but kidnapping was still a new one for them.
“Seems like I’m sticking around,” Harry said, not minding at all it seemed. “Do you live here? My godfather, the one who just left prison, he thought you did.”
“Us? No,” Sam laughed. “We live—”
“In Sioux Falls,” Dean cut in. “We’re heading back in the morning.”
The ‘and you’re coming with us’ was heavily implied.
Sam paid the check while Harry dashed to the bathroom, looking over his shoulder the whole time as if he thought they’d leave him behind. Once Harry was safely out of earshot, Sam raised a silent eyebrow at Dean and waited for an explanation.
It wasn’t that Sam was against taking their brother back to Bobby’s with them, Sam just didn’t understand why Dean wouldn’t let Harry decide on his own. Or give him time to call home and do whatever normal teenagers did when they were driving 1,400 miles across the country with two adult men that they just met.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Dean said. He leaned across the counter of the diner and had his eyes trained on the bathroom where Harry disappeared inside. “That kid came halfway across the freaking world to find us and Dad, you wanna just send him back?”
“Well, no, but—”
“But nothing,” Dean cut in again. “He’s our brother, Sam. He sticks with us.”
“He’s got a family,” Sam said, not arguing but trying to figure out Dean’s whole ‘gung-ho kidnap a kid’ mindset. “Don’t you think we should at least check with them before dragging him to Bobby’s?”
“Nope, screw them.” Dean moved his hard stare to Sam. “You know what he told that girl? He said that his aunt and uncle were bullies. And you know who bullies kids?”
Their dad?
“Child abusers.”
Oh.
Sam shifted uncomfortably and crossed his arms, unconsciously mimicking Dean’s nonchalant pose.
“So we’re taking him back to Bobby’s?” Sam checked.
“Yup.”
“Alright then.”
The three of them (which was still wild for Sam to even think, he doubted if the novelty would wear off any time soon) didn’t have to drive far to find a nearby motel. They snagged a room with two beds and a fold-out couch and Dean was quick to ‘call dibs on the couch’. Sam rolled his eyes and tossed his duffel on the bed closer to the door so Harry had no choice but to take the bed by the wall.
“You want first shower?” Dean asked. Harry shook his head and Dean shrugged. “Cool, I’ll be back then.”
Sam sank down on his bed and couldn’t stop looking at Harry. Which, was kind of creepy and explained the weird look Harry gave him.
“Sorry, it’s just, you look like our dad,” Sam said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”
A year ago and Sam would have thought ‘relative’ way before ‘demon’. But that was before Jessica was killed, Dad was killed, and Yellow-Eyes was in the wind with the Colt. It was before Sam’s visions started and before he remembered how sick the world could be.
It really was perfect timing to find Harry - or have him find them? Because Sam needed some sign that everything wouldn’t be shit forever, everything wouldn’t hurt forever.
It wasn’t fair to pin that sign on Harry’s arrival, but when was anything in a Winchester’s life fair?
Harry sat down on the bed across from Sam and kicked a foot out in what Sam would guess was a nervous gesture.
“What was he like?” Harry asked. “Your dad?”
“Our dad,” Sam corrected him. He cleared his throat, stalling, and wished it were Dean that Harry asked. Dean and Dad got along a lot better than Sam did.
Sam was never a good enough hunter, a good enough son.
Sam was the one who left, who wanted a normal life instead of constant motels and mysteries.
Sam was the one who was told if he walked out the door, not to come back.
Sam was the one who fought with their dad just before the man died.
Sam always fought with their dad.
And it was always going to be too little, too late, to take anything back.
“He was… stubborn,” Sam said, trying to find the right words to describe a man Harry would never get to meet. “He couldn’t see grey, you know? Everything was black and white for him. He - shit.” Sam swiped at his face with the sleeve of his flannel and forced a grin for Harry. It was hard separating all the different parts of who John Winchester was when it felt like they had just burned his body. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Harry said quickly. “I shouldn’t have asked. Oh! Is it just you and Dean or do you have more siblings?”
Harry looked so hopeful at the thought that it lightened the grief squeezing Sam’s insides.
“As far as we know, it’s just us, but I guess who knows?” Sam laughed. “We moved around a lot and Dad was sort of a ladies man, you know?”
“I was really hoping there’d be loads of you,” Harry said with a sigh. “My best mate, Ron, he’s got five brothers and a sister. I always wanted a bunch of brothers or sisters.”
Not Sam.
Sam had always been perfectly happy with just Dean. Sure, a time or two when he’d butted heads with Dad and had no backup he’d wished for another sibling that understood him, but Sam never really thought he needed anyone else.
Harry was there though, he was just a kid with bad luck and two older brothers. And Sam had no idea how to be an older brother, but… Dean made it look easy.
Sam figured that it wouldn’t be hard to figure out.
“Well you’ve got us,” Sam told Harry. “And Dean’s annoying enough to count as two brothers.”
“I heard that!” Dean yelled from the bathroom. The shower had turned off and Harry laughed at Dean’s about. “Sam’s the one that snores enough to count double!”
“So there’s really five of us then,” Harry said without missing a beat, jumping right in on the easy-going teasing with Dean’s grin and Sam’s dimples. “Brilliant.”
Dean walked out of the bathroom with a pair of sweats and an old shirt on and Sam looked from him to Harry sitting on the other bed.
Yeah, it kind of was brilliant.
If Sam thought that Harry and Dean would bond while he took a shower, he was wrong. Sam took a quick shower and Dean was passed out on the couch when he left the bathroom.
Harry was laying on the other bed, under the blanket with just his head poking out, his back to Sam and Sam assumed he was asleep as well. Sam figured he would follow their example and he clicked off the lamps before collapsing in bed.
It had been a long day and Dean would want to be on the road first thing in the morning. They still had to figure out what had taken down the plane Harry had been on - and how Harry and that girl walked away without so much as a broken bone - but clearly Dean wanted to get Harry to Bobby first.
Sam snorted. Dean had been an older brother for twenty-two years, it was no wonder he had an entire plan in place the instant they snagged Harry. Dean would have Harry wrapped around his finger in a second, just like Sam had been when he’d been…
Damn.
Sam didn’t even know how old their brother was.
That was a problem to figure out on their twenty hour drive the next morning though.
Or at two in the morning when Sam woke up from a dream about Jessica and found his brand new little brother just as awake as he was.
“Hey.” Sam’s voice sounded like gravel and he shot a look at where Dean - who had hours ago bitched about Sam snoring - was spread out on the couch, snoring like a trucker. Harry was awake though, sitting up in his bed, his knees drawn to his chest, the giant shirt he wore stretched over his legs.
Harry had been blinking at the wall and only turned to look at Sam when Sam abruptly jerked upright, trying and failing again to save Jessica.
Jessica burned, Dean died, Dad died. Every dream ended with Sam alone, alone, alone.
But Sam woke up to his kid brother blinking across the room at him, looking concerned despite his own tired eyes.
“I wake you?” Sam whispered, instinct telling him not. If Sam had to guess, he’d say Harry had been awake for a while.
“No,” Harry whispered back.
Sam scrubbed his face with his hands, making a quick decision. He grabbed for the jeans he tossed earlier and pulled the wad of ones from a pocket. When Sam swung his legs from his bed, he nodded toward the motel door.
“C’mon, let’s grab a drink,” Sam whispered, thinking they would find a vending machine. Harry was agreeable enough and Sam nearly grinned to see him climb from his bed in a pair of sweatpants that were way too big.
Sam forgot until Harry padded through the room silently behind him, both of them careful to not wake Dean, but Harry had a lot of natural hunters instincts. He had though to ditch his things at the bus station to get past Sam and Dean and before that he had hidden pretty well.
Harry grinned then ducked his head, hiding behind his hair, when they stepped outside and Sam asked him where he had hidden at.
“I scrunched up under a chair,” Harry said. Harry’s voice was thick and in all the everything - having a younger brother, finding the younger brother, taking the younger brother - Sam forgot that Harry was an actual kid that has been in a plane crash. It was probably why he was awake in the middle of the night, looking as wrecked as Sam felt.
Which was really messed up and kind of sad especially when Sam remembered Harry had been in the library trying to learn about how airplanes worked.
“If you’re ever being chased by anyone that isn’t us,” Sam forced a grin, “dive in a dumpster. Nobody ever looks when they throw trash away.”
Harry looked up at Sam and slowly made a face of such disgust that it actually did make Sam chuckle.
“Well now I’m going to start checking,” Harry said. “I think I’d rather have a bullet thrown at me than climb in with actual rubbish though.”
It struck Sam then- hard, fast, heavy.
They had walked the little way to the vending machines and Sam had been about to smooth a dollar on the side of the blue pop machine. His hand froze when Harry said that. Just… Sam stood there and realized what Dean’s entire life must have been like.
Because there were things that could chase Harry down and do a lot worse than throw silver at him or splash him with holy water. There were vampires that would drain him of blood, werewolves that would cut his heart out.
Sam suddenly realized that Harry could be attacked so easily. He was small, defenseless. He already had been in a plane crash for Christ’s sake.
“If it ever comes to it, just climb in the dumpster,” Sam said, staring Harry down seriously. Sam wouldn’t look away until Harry gave a pretty confused agreement. Sam let out a heavy breath and then nodded.
“What do you want?” Sam asked, finally sliding a few dollars in the machine. It was another Dean thought, but Sam remembered how little Harry ate for dinner and he had been on a bus for eight hours before that.
“Just… just water, please,” Harry said politely.
“You should get a snack too,” Sam told him, much less politely and more bossily than he meant to say it. “No offense, but you’re kind of skinny.”
When Harry huffed indignantly at Sam, Sam wondered if the low amusement and mild concern he felt were Dean’s baseline emotions.
Surely not.
Nobody could actually live like that.