( For one heady, resonating moment, Dean feels so very deeply like he has failed. He's failed both of them. It rings familiar — harkens back to old days, old insecurities, old fractures in his soul and his personality that he will never outgrow. They've been filled in with gold, those cracks, and made permanent in him like Kintsugi. He will forever watch the person he looks up to the most and the person he's trying to protect rift, and fall apart, and he will never, ever be able to mediate them so that he can have both peacefully and happily.
He cannot remember the finer details of this pain. He can't remember the man he once disappointed, he can only vaguely remember Sam's childhood years — but the familiarity fades as quickly as it rises, and he's left standing there in the aftermath with something far more important than his own issues to deal with.
Steve is behind him, and while Steve is not a child anymore... ask any parent, any of them, age twenty or age eighty — or older, in the case of those more supernaturally inclined — and they will tell you it doesn't matter how old your kid is, they're still your kid. Adult or not. Right now, Steve sounds and feels as young as Dean has ever seen him.
It takes effort to scale back the adrenaline and anger, takes concentration to school himself into something less than pissed — but he manages. Through decades of experience, he manages to stuff it back into a compartment in his mind, to take the edge out of his voice when he finally turns, shoulders slumped, to look Steve over again.
Those black eyes and fangs echo through his memory, and he'll ask about that in a minute, but he knows where Steve got them from. They're not alarming, just surprising. It can wait. )
No, it wasn't your fault. ( He crosses the distance between them, and settles a hand on Steve's bicep. The other tosses his sword absently to the ground, so he can raise Steve's chin to look at him properly. More sternly: ) Hey. Look at me. It wasn't your fault, you hear me?
no subject
He cannot remember the finer details of this pain. He can't remember the man he once disappointed, he can only vaguely remember Sam's childhood years — but the familiarity fades as quickly as it rises, and he's left standing there in the aftermath with something far more important than his own issues to deal with.
Steve is behind him, and while Steve is not a child anymore... ask any parent, any of them, age twenty or age eighty — or older, in the case of those more supernaturally inclined — and they will tell you it doesn't matter how old your kid is, they're still your kid. Adult or not. Right now, Steve sounds and feels as young as Dean has ever seen him.
It takes effort to scale back the adrenaline and anger, takes concentration to school himself into something less than pissed — but he manages. Through decades of experience, he manages to stuff it back into a compartment in his mind, to take the edge out of his voice when he finally turns, shoulders slumped, to look Steve over again.
Those black eyes and fangs echo through his memory, and he'll ask about that in a minute, but he knows where Steve got them from. They're not alarming, just surprising. It can wait. )
No, it wasn't your fault. ( He crosses the distance between them, and settles a hand on Steve's bicep. The other tosses his sword absently to the ground, so he can raise Steve's chin to look at him properly. More sternly: ) Hey. Look at me. It wasn't your fault, you hear me?