“How’d you break out?”
November 7
Dean hated demons.
Dean hated oatmeal raisin cookies.
Dean hated chlamydia.
But Dean had never hated anything as much as he hated djinn.
Harry came back from whatever fantasy land that the djinn sent him to and he was different, quiet. It was driving Dean freaking crazy. Sam got them a motel room just outside Pittsburgh and the kid didn’t say a single word on the drive there.
Dean kept glancing up in the mirror at him so much that he thought he was going to end up wrecking. When Sam had offered to drive, Dean didn’t hesitate to give up the driver’s seat and slide in the backseat by his kid brother.
Harry wasn’t screaming anymore; Dean kind of wished he would. Dean would take anything over the absolute silence of what Dean got.
Djinn were nasty creatures. They’d get a person and lock ‘em in a fantasy world while they drained their life nice and slow. It would be a good fantasy too, one where a person’s deepest wish would be granted.
When the djinn locked Harry in his own head, Dean didn’t have to think hard about what wish Harry would have gotten granted. If it were Dean? Dean knew what he would have been given.
Dean just didn’t know how Harry busted himself out of it. Sam had called Bobby after they ganked the djinn and found their brother, Bobby said that there wasn’t anything Dean or Sam could do.
If Harry wanted out of it, he had to dig himself out. There weren’t a lot of options that Bobby knew of, but if Harry died in his fantasy then he’d wake up.
Harry woke up, Dean just didn’t know how.
“C’mon.” Dean didn’t have anything to say while Sam drove them to the motel. When they got there and Harry was still just rag-doll miserable, Dean slid out of the car and picked the kid up.
Sam was quick to get doors, get their stuff. Dean just carried Harry inside the motel and put him on the side of the bed furthest from the door. Harry laid there, his eyes swollen and red and open.
“Medical bag,” Dean told Sam, making decisions on the fly. Sam was quick to run for it, he made it back before Dean even got Harry’s shoes off him.
Then Sam backed up to let Dean work. Sam was better with cuts that needed stitches, but he never had to take care of someone bleeding on the inside before. And Dean was damn sure that Harry was hurting like hell - the kid screamed like his chest had been ripped in half when he came to.
Dean didn’t know for sure what Harry saw, what wish the djinn made him think had been granted, but he had a good guess.
If it were Dean? If Dean had one wild wish that could be granted?
Dean would have gotten his mom back and Dean never would have left that fantasy.
“I bet you saw your mom, huh?” Dean said as he worked with clinical precision. Harry had only been out of Dean’s sight for four hours - long enough for the djinn to nab him from the car and take him to another nearby abandoned house. Altogether, Dean had spent eight hours thinking Harry was dead - or on his way to dying.
“Probably your dad too,” Dean said. “I bet it felt real.”
Harry didn’t answer Dean and he didn’t fight him when he carefully pulled his jeans off, pretty much immune to brothers being undressed. Dean didn’t think Harry had any physical injuries, but it was better safe than sorry.
“If it were me? I would have seen my mom,” Dean told him. He snapped his fingers for Sam and pointed to the bag that Sam dropped on the floor before he wrangled Harry’s jacket off him.
“I never thought about it, no point, you know? But I bet if my mom hadn’t died then life would be different,” Dean said, keeping his voice soothing and calm. Dean paused then, actually considering that.
Dean loved his mom, he missed her like a limb that was taken from him. But if Mary hadn’t died, Dean didn’t think Harry would be there.
“Huh.” Dean dropped the jacket with the other clothes and took the bag from Sam. He knew right where to find their emergency stash of pills; fever pills, something for Sam’s annoying ass spring allergies. There were some low level pain killers, stuff to make a broken finger stop aching or a headache from getting banged up to go away. Dean sifted past them for the shit they only used in real emergencies, like a broken arm or twenty stitches.
Or getting everything a guy could ever want and then having to lose it all.
Dean had no idea how Harry pulled himself out of that.
“Water,” Dean told Sam absently, thinking over what Dean might have really wished for. A place with his mom and both his brothers. How that wish would have been granted? Dean had no idea and he didn’t want to know.
Thinking about shit like that would send a guy to the loony bin.
“I dunno what I would have gotten, but I know it probably would have felt great,” Dean said to Harry. Dean tapped his cheek, just trying to get him to open his mouth, and then grabbed his jaw when he didn’t.
Dean slid an emergency Vicodin in his mouth and held his head up while Sam was quick with the water.
“There you go,” Dean said. Man, it was killing him to see Harry so beat up and locked down. There weren’t any bruises anywhere, no cuts. The kid was a little dirty, but it didn’t stop Dean from picking his skinny ass up and shuffling some to pull back the blanket on the bed.
Dean laid Harry down and sighed before he ultimately kicked his boots off and climbed in the same bed. It wasn’t like Dean was going to get any sleep anyway, Sam could drive in the morning.
“It’ll be aright, Harry,” Dean told him as he awkwardly pulled Harry to his side. Dean didn’t do cuddles or gooey crap, it didn’t come natural to him. Dean just knew that if he had just been dropped back in a crap life after spending God only knew how long in his wildest fantasy… maybe he’d want someone to try and hug him.
Maybe.
It was quiet in their room. Sam shucked off his boots and laid on the top of his bed fully dressed. Dean wished he’d say something, the quiet was killing Dean.
So Dean did what he always did - he filled the silence with music. It wasn’t great, Dean was no Steven Tyler, but he did alright.
“Every time when I look in the mirror, all these lines on my face getting clearer. The past is gone. It went by, like dusk to dawn. Isn’t that the way? Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay.”
Dean repeated the chorus twice at the end and before he launched in a new song, Harry’s grip on the front of Dean’s shirt went slack.
Sam whispered to Dean after Dean butchered the opening bridge to Sweet Emotion.
“Dean?”
Dean stayed quiet, not wanting to wake the softly snoring teenager.
“Yeah?”
Sam was still laying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. If Dean wanted to look, he’d see that Sammy was hurting the same way Dean was, a shadow to what Dean imagined their little brother was feeling.
Dean didn’t look, he couldn’t. If Dean saw Sam hurting then he’d have to decide between the two of them and the kid needed him more. Even if he was asleep, Dean couldn’t leave him.
“I don’t know how he left,” Sam whispered, the same question that Dean had. “I don’t think I could have.”
“Yeah,” Dean sighed heavily. “Me either, Sammy.”
When Dean got an answer to that question, he wished he hadn’t.
Dean spent a long time awake. He knew he would, it just happened like that. Even if Dean knew Harry didn’t have any physical pains, his brain couldn’t sleep when one of his brothers were hurting.
It had been like that when Sam was a kid too.
If Sammy was sick with the colds that kicked his ass or wheezing from the allergies that were worse in the spring, Dean’s brain just didn’t shut off. Dean used to stay up all night with him too, just feeling his pulse and singing.
Harry’s pulse was a little slow, but that was okay. That was just the pain killer keeping him down. Dean never dreamed when he took Vicodin, but he usually chased it with jack so he couldn’t be sure that Harry’s sleep was peaceful. It seemed like it, for a while.
Dean was singing to nobody, just keeping himself occupied when Harry started to kick out. Dean still had his arm trapped beneath him and he tried to pat his side or something, something to keep him calm.
When Harry started murmuring slurred words, Dean wasn’t surprised by his first word.
“Mum?”
Dean was caught off-guard by his second, especially since Harry still had his eyes closed.
“Dean?”
Dean felt a real pain in his chest then. It probably didn’t mean jack, but it felt a lot like Harry wanted his mom and, since he couldn’t have that, he wanted Dean. That - shit. That was a lot.
‘Cause Dean was a lot of things, he wasn’t putting himself down. Dean was a handy mechanic, a decent hunter. Dean was a good brother, good enough since he was self-taught. But Dean couldn’t replace Harry’s mom, no one could. Nobody had ever replaced Dean’s mom, it just wasn’t a loss that could ever be fixed.
And Dean didn’t ask for that kind of responsibility.
Who the hell else was gonna do it?
“I’m here, kid,” Dean said, his voice gruff as he forced all his shit down and focused on Harry. Dean shuffled him close and rubbed his arm, only trying to do for Harry what he might have wanted someone to do for him.
Harry kicked out again and he opened his eyes slowly, blinking hard as he adjusted to the dark. Dean watched him, definitely not scared of the kid.
Yeah, Dean’s heart was racing like he was on a good hunt, but he deserved some panic. A little panic made a guy smarter, sharper. It kept him from getting lazy or, worse, falling asleep.
“Hey?” Harry said slowly, his voice thick with sleep. “‘S that the real you?”
Dean wanted to make a joke, something to lighten the weight of knowing that he was the closest damn thing Harry had to a parent.
Yeah, there was Sirius, but he was fucking useless.
“Yeah, it’s me.” Dean wanted to scoot away, move to the couch, something. Anything to put some space between them, tell Harry that Dean couldn’t be his parent because Dean - Dean…
Dean just couldn’t. Dean would let him down.
Harry got hurt on Dean’s watch and he got put in some death tournament on Dean’s watch. That was failure and failure sucked ass for a brother, it was unacceptable as a parent.
“You were supposed to watch him, Dean! I left you in charge! You failed, Dean. You let me down and you let Sam down.”
Dean swallowed the sickness that wanted to crawl up his throat. If Dean hadn’t been enough for Sam, he wasn’t gonna be enough for Harry. Not forever, but he could do his best for the night.
One night at a time.
“How you feeling, kid?” Dean asked. He touched the side of Harry’s head, ran his fingertips through his hair.
Harry closed his eyes and his head tilted over, leaning in Dean’s hand.
“Dunno,” he said. “Tired.”
“Go back to sleep,” Dean told him. It was late enough, Harry could sleep another four or five hours before Sam woke up.
Harry made a soft hum and Dean thought he was going to listen. Harry took orders like Dean did, most of the time. The rest of the time, like then, he had too much of Sam’s defiance.
“I had my mum,” Harry said, startling Dean as he thought he went to sleep. Dean kept still though, quiet too.
If Dean didn’t have anything helpful to say, he wasn’t going to say anything. Dean was there, he was trying.
That had to count for something because that was all Dean had.
“My dad… yours too.” Harry sighed and Dean kept up the small smoothing motions on the side of his head.
Harry’s wildest fantasy involved Dad? That was wild, a fantasy for fucking sure.
“We - we got to grow up together. And our dad didn’t hate me. My godfather was happy. My parents had more kids… our brother had that girl.”
Oh, thank fuck that Dean could hear Sam’s snores, too uneven to be faked. Dean didn’t think he’d be able to stand the way Sam would look if he heard Harry call Jessica ‘that girl’.
Dean could just see it all though and he hated that Dean couldn’t do anything to give Harry what he saw. Dean sometimes scared himself when he would get drunk and play a mental game of ‘what would I do?’ Dean didn’t play it often, usually only after he got hurt on a hunt trying to keep Sam from seeing any action.
Dean played it when Sam convinced him to side with vampires over a fellow hunter. He played it the night he found out Harry was a wizard. It would start simple and then get more complicated as Dean tried to find a line…
What would he do if Sam moved to China?
Dean would go with him.
What would Dean do if a bullet was aimed at Sam or Harry?
Dean would step in front of it, that was an easy question.
It was shit like ‘What would Dean do if Sam was turned into a vampire?’ that kept Dean awake sometimes. Giving up his life for his brothers was easy, that was a no brainer.
If he would die for them, would he kill someone for them? Yeah, probably.
Two people? Three? Would Dean kill a dozen innocent people for his brothers?
The problem was that Dean thought he might.
Dean would probably do anything for them and right when Dean would do everything for one of them, there wasn’t anything to do.
Harry had to ride it out knowing that real life sucked and that fantasy wasn’t ever coming true.
“How’d you break out?” Dean breathed, talking to himself again.
Harry answered him though, half-lucid and with his head nuzzled on Dean’s arm like a pillow.
“Knew you guys would be upset,” Harry murmured. “You’d have to watch me die.”
“So you…?”
“Shot myself. Didn’t hurt, not really.”
It probably had. Not physically, anyway. There hadn’t been any real gun, no actual bullets.
That didn’t mean it didn’t rip the kid like torture to walk away from a place where he apparently had three good parents and all those siblings he wanted.
Harry finally fell back asleep though, so Dean could pretend that he didn’t hear him say that. If Dean didn’t hear that Harry gave up what would have felt like a lifetime of happiness for Dean and Sam’s sakes then Dean could pretend something else too…
Dean could pretend that Dean Winchester Junior wasn’t laying beside him with no lines of his own.
‘Cause Dean just didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that kind of knowledge.
Harry and Sam were awake before Dean was ready to get up. Sam woke up first and Dean knew without checking that he’d be going for a run.
Dean kind of hoped he’d bring back food and coffee, which he did. Sam always brought back breakfast when he went for his ‘I’ve got feelings and want to run about it’ runs. It didn’t mean Sam would eat though, Dean figured he’d have to bug him into it when Sam finished in the shower.
Except Harry woke up while Sam was in the shower and Dean didn’t bug anyone into eating because he was busy eavesdropping.
“Hey.” Sam must have believed Dean was asleep because he spoke quietly when he left the bathroom.
Dean knew Harry was awake, he felt him shifting around and sitting up, Dean had just been giving him some time to sort himself out so they didn’t have to talk about their feelings or something.
“Hey.” Harry sounded dull, but he was talking so that was an improvement.
“You want to grab a shower?” Sam offered. “Or food? There was a taco truck down the road, I just bought a bunch of breakfast burritos. There’s coffee too.”
“Coffee?”
Of course that had the kid out of bed.
Dean waited for Sam and Harry to get situated over their coffee and burritos before Dean was going to stretch out and pretend to just wake up. They still had a ways to go until they reached New York and, shitty djinn trips aside, they still needed to find a way to get Harry out of a contract.
Then Sam and Harry started talking and Dean waited to get up.
“What did you see?” Sam asked Harry. It was easy for Sam to ask Harry shit like that, they were usually the best of friends. Things had been rocky lately, but when the going got tough - Sam was usually where Harry turned.
Sam bid his time asking Harry about it though, Dean would give him that. It wasn’t a real mystery what Sam would have had if he had been the one nabbed by the djinn.
Sam would have had Jessica, Dean would have had Mom.
Harry apparently got all the above.
“Er… I dunno, I don’t remember much.”
Ding. Dean turned his head to stare at the wall beside the bed. Bullshit.
“Oh. I was dating two girls though, isn’t that mad?”
Sam started coughing and Dean grinned.
Atta boy.
When Sam cleared his airway, Dean could hear his smile in his voice.
“Yeah? You get that first kiss?”
“It doesn’t count,” Harry said, half-irritated, half-disappointed?
Dean pinched his eyebrows together. The kid wasn’t bad looking and he was fourteen. Even Sam had a first kiss by fourteen… Dean had marked off most of his firsts when he was Harry’s age.
Course, Harry was shy as hell when it came to chicks. Dean should probably give him another pep talk, let him practice on chicks his age instead of babes in bars.
“I’m going to guess that one of those girlfriends was Hermione?” Sam asked. Judging by Sam’s huff of laughter, Harry probably blushed. “Alright, if she’s one then… was Jo the other?”
Dean grinned again. Jo was a babe. Maybe they should stop by the Roadhouse on their way home… let her tease Harry out of his funk. They could, if Meg hadn’t used Sam to kidnap the chick, Dean doubted if he would get Sam to agree to go to the Roadhouse for quite a while
“Jo’s not actually interested in me,” Harry said, Dean just knew he’d be rolling his eyes. “It was…” Harry went quiet and Dean heard Sam get up, his chair squeaking on the floor. Sam sat back down and Harry sighed.
“She’s not on here,” Harry said, confusing Dean for a second.
Then he remembered the list of names the kid had been carrying, his little foolproof way to identify everyone. Dean saw it the day before when they found Harry, it had been folded up neatly in his pocket.
Dean was apparently Harry’s oldest brother while Sam was his tallest.
“Is it someone from your school?” Sam asked.
“No, it was the girl from the airplane? She had pink hair?”
Dean thought the name the same second Sam said it.
“Oh! Michaela?”
“Yes, her! Er… d’you have a pen?”
Dean waited a little longer before he finally ‘woke up’. When he did, it was with a whole ass plan.
Dean couldn’t bring Harry’s parents back from the dead, he couldn’t make Sirius quit being a douche bag (though he added that to his list). But if the djinn made Harry think that he was dating that chick with the pink hair that Dean specifically recalled calling Harry cute, then there had to be something on the kid’s part.
And that? Dean could work with that.
They had a little less than six hundred miles until they hit New York and Dean shot down his own plan of letting Sam drive. If Dean wanted to cut down a nine hour drive to seven, Sammy wasn’t driving.
“Dean, I can drive?” Sam offered while he watched Dean chug a second energy drink.
“I’m fine,” Dean said, shooting Sam a breezy smile. “I’m trying to get there today, Sammy. Hey, you wanna do me a favor though? Call your boss or one of your fancy fed buddies and ask if we can buy one of those TARDIS things?”
“TARDIS things?” Sam repeated.
Dean waved an impatient hand. “You know, the magic travel shit? Now you’re here, now you’re gone?”
“A portkey?” Harry asked. Dean glanced in the mirror and saw that Harry had finally lifted his head off the window. He blinked at Dean’s reflection. “Why d’you need a portkey?”
“Cause you and I got an errand to run,” Dean said. When Harry made a face, so did Dean. That was what Sam called the hunt he wanted to pick up the other day.
“A good errand,” Dean said hastily. “You know, normal shit.”
Sam was dying to know what Dean had planned, but Dean wasn’t saying shit. It gave Harry something to wonder about instead of thinking over how he gave up a lifetime of good times for Dean and Sam.
Dean did tell Sam when they were about fifty miles from New York City though. Harry went inside a gas station with Sam’s fancy debit card and orders to grab drinks.
Credit cards were a thing of the past, according to Sam. Dean didn’t plan on giving his up, Sam could arrest him if he thought he was big enough.
“So where are you going?” Sam asked while Dean pumped gas.
“Nevada,” Dean told him. “I thought I’d try my hand at blackjack.”
Sam scoffed with an eyebrow raised, his little pre-bitch face.
“You’re taking Harry to Vegas to gamble while I’m trying to get him out of that contract?” Sam asked.
Dean glanced at Sam and judged the tightness of his shoulders, the lines in his forehead that Sam shouldn’t have. Sam was tired too, stressed and getting kicked by life every time he turned around. Sam could handle himself for a day or two though, it wasn’t going to hurt them any to divide and conquer.
Sam could kick some research ass, Dean could show Harry that not everything had to be a fantasy. Playing to their strengths and all that.
“I’m taking Harry to see that Michaela chick,” Dean told Sam. He shrugged and replaced the gas nozzle in the holster. “I thought it might be an alright consolation prize to- you know.”
“You mean you were being nosy this morning,” Sam said with a smug grin. “I knew you were awake.”
Fair enough.
“Whatever,” Dean said. “The point is that if the kid wants to kiss a chick, she’s easier to find than the other one.”
Dean waited for Sam to decide if Dean was being an idiot or not. Dean might go anyway, but the two of them were a good team because they could pick apart each other’s plans like nothing else.
“Yeah, alright,” Sam said. He ran his fingers through his hair and they both watched Harry slouch his way out of the gas station with drinks. “Take him and check something else off his list.”
Dean nodded and then thought that through.
“Sam,” Dean turned to glare at Sam with his hardest look, “What fucking list?”
A Bucket List.
Harry thought there was a good chance he was to die when he faced off with a dragon so he made a bucket list and talked Sam into helping him check shit off it.
Dean didn’t care so much about the list, but it made him want to put his fist through something when he thought too much about it.
Harry thought he’d die and figured a couple of weeks was better than the life in his djinn-dream if it meant Dean and Sam didn’t have to watch him die. What kind of sick logic was that?
Dean played the radio as loud as he could the rest of the drive.
No thoughts, nothing, only Ozzy.
Sam slid the list to Dean when they reached the city and Dean subtly looked it over after he found a parking spot near where Sam said the magic city was. Harry wanted to learn to drive, try 31 flavors of ice cream, kiss someone (Dean knew the kid wasn’t picky). He also wanted to save a life, have pictures of Dean and Sam (which explained the annoying ass camera).
All in all, an easy list to knock out.
Dean started with the pictures. It didn’t kill him to grab some dude in the parking garage and make him take a quick pic.
Dean slung an arm around both of his brothers shoulders, something that used to be easier before Sam turned into a giant. They stood in front of the car and Dean shook them both until they smiled.
Sam looked stressed, Harry looked sad, Dean looked like he was trying too hard.
Or maybe that was just Dean seeing shit that wasn’t there.
The new Magic City didn’t have as much appeal to Dean when it was filled with people in suits instead of chicks in skirts or dudes in jeans. It was stuffy, worse when Sam asked a wizard who looked like the freaking crypt keeper for directions to the Portkey Office.
They found the office, but then people started noticing Harry. Dean kept a casual arm around Harry’s shoulders and didn’t care at all to bare his teeth in a warning snarl when someone looked too interested in the kid.
Dean wouldn’t mind a fight to take the edge off everything; if one person tried to harass his kid brother then Dean would get it.
The chick in the portkey office was professional as could be though. She did make a little ‘ooh’ face when Harry had to give over his wand as an ID to buy the portkey.
“Destination?” the woman asked Sam, her eyes flicking to Dean enough that he tossed her a wink. Another time and Dean might flirt some, something to do, but he had other shit on the agenda.
“Reno,” Dean answered for Sam, jolting Harry from whatever thoughts had him silently brooding.
“We’re going to Reno?” Harry asked while Sam paid. Harry peered at Dean from where he was tucked beneath Dean’s arm - safe, alive. “Why?”
“Nunya, that’s why,” Dean said. Sam handed Dean the silver token from the chick and Dean passed it to Harry so he could grab their bags.
Sam would keep Baby, not wreck her. Dean would grab a car in Reno, use it to go mark ‘first kiss’ off Harry’s list then shag ass back home to help Sam with the research.
It was meant to be great.
Dean didn’t expect the girl to not be home.
Everything else had worked out just fine! Dean nabbed them a car in Reno, a nice one too that Dean was pretty sure was already stolen.
They stopped for lunch, Dean spruced Harry up some, gave him a pep talk during the drive. Then they pulled up and Dean told Harry whose house it was after they parked on the curb.
“What?” Harry sat up sharply and looked to the little colorful house set in suburbia. “Dean, why are we here?”
“So you can catch up with your friend,” Dean said. He smirked and winked when Harry glared at him. “Alright, alright, it’s so you can knock first kiss off your list. Trust me, it’ll be easy to get. The chick was crazy about you when I met her.”
“When she was possessed by a demon?”
Oh, fuck.
With the long list of bullshit that had happened recently, Dean forgot that Bobby told Harry the chick had been possessed. It had been utter bull, but Dean could spew it with the best of ‘em.
Thank God that Sam wasn’t there.
“Yeah,” Dean said. He shrugged, like it was no big deal. “Demons use a person’s thoughts to act more like them, right? So it must have picked up her thoughts about you or whatever.”
Harry sucked a cheek in and chewed it while he stared at Dean real hard. Dean wasn’t a novice when it came to bullshit though, so he wasn’t worried.
“You think Michaela was thinking that I was cute while she was possessed?” Harry asked.
The kid had Sam’s brains, Dean would give it to him.
“Or she got possessed right before you guys boarded,” Dean said. He moved on quickly, “Who knows? Only one way to find out! Up and at ‘em, kid!”
Dean climbed out of car before Harry could poke any more holes in to make his story. Harry followed him, but stopped Dean before he made it to the sidewalk.
“She’s not home,” Harry said. He leaned back against the car and was still frowning at Dean like he was a radiator that wouldn’t go back on just right.
“How do you know?” Dean asked. School had to be out by then and if not then they could wait.
If Dean remembered right, the chick’s mom had been single and hot. MILF’s loved Dean. He’d spin some story about doing a follow up, let the kids chat… Harry could get a few minutes alone with her, get that kiss.
“Because she goes to school in - er… another country during the year,” Harry told him. “She’s only here during summer holidays.”
“God damn it!” Dean turned and slammed his hand against the trunk of the ugly ass tree at the edge of the yard.
Yeah, that made sense and when Dean bothered to think back, he remembered the mom saying the same thing when Dean and Sam interviewed her. Before they met their brother. Before Harry gave up having his wish fulfilled for their sakes.
The kid gave up a pretty damn good thing for Dean and Dean couldn’t even remember critical facts before dragging him around the country on half-assed ideas.
Dean went ahead and punched the tree again, because he could. Then he held it with both hands, dropped his head for a second so he could breathe.
It didn’t matter, Dean just wanted to do something for Harry. Harry gave up everything that Dean never could have so that Dean didn’t have to watch him die. So, sue Dean for wanting to give him one fucking thing in return.
That was all.