« five more minutes… » jack and sam !
SIX The Musical Sentence Starters | Not Accepting
Jack didn’t eat much. Not by basic human standards, and by Dean Winchester measurement, he starved. Typically, it was a bowl of cereal in the morning, maybe chicken fingers and fries at night when they all sat for dinner. Though, Sam was never sure if Jack was hungry again or he just wanted be a part of the communal act of family dinner. Often, when he watched Jack mechanically place a fry into ketchup (or honey mustard after Sam told him it was his favorite, and his heart swelled and he swallowed the lump in his throat because little brothers never had someone mimic them. This was foreign and flattering and he loved this kid so much), he sort of gathered that it was definitely more about joining in than satiation. Jack ate like it was autopilot; like he was copying the action based of what he saw Sam and Dean do, or people on TV, and not on any sort of instinctual need to feed. So, as it was, Jack didn’t eat much. Because he was half angel.
Jack also didn’t sleep much. He’d go to his room when they all separated to their own corners for the night, sensing that soft lull of an evening winding down. He’d been living with them for years now, he was picking up on the social ques of daily happenings. Sam knew he didn’t fall asleep then, though, could hear him making noise in the other room or occasionally reading a book aloud. Jack was noisy, because Jack was a child, Sam often found he had to keep reminding himself of that. (He was also quiet and sullen and introspective and unanswered and unheard. And Sam was sorry he hadn’t listened more for every noise. Responded to every muffled call.) The kid only slept a few hours, maybe two or three, and that seemed to be more than enough - and Sam envied him - before he was wide awake and asking questions and absorbing information and learning, learning, always learning. Because he was half angel.
In the recesses of his mind, Sam longed for the clichés of fatherhood. For a son to be preoccupied with a book, or game, or something else so mundane but all-consuming, that when Sam called him for dinner he would chirp back with “five more minutes?” And Sam would feign annoyance, but oblige, because nothing made him happier than when his kid’s eyes danced with fully engrossed passion.
For a Wednesday morning to find him inside his boy’s room, nothing discernible but a lump covered by blankets (maybe a wayward foot peeking out the edge, a tuft of hair somehow on the bottom of the bed. Like the teen had flipped in the night). Sam would wake him up the same way he had woken his big brother for decades before in crappy motels across the country, and his son would reply in the same drawn out whine as Dean, “five more minuuuuutes.”
But Jack didn’t eat much anyway.Jack didn’t sleep much. He never had to request another five minutes.
But he was Sam’s son.And he was half human, too.
He remembers the first time Jack died. Blood pouring from his mouth, staining the bunker’s sheets in a macabre mosaic. Somehow grotesque enough to make Sam gag, but beautiful enough that for a fleeting moment he wanted to hang the stain glass in a church. To revere and pray for and idolize his fallen son; because Jack was half angel. He was half human.
He held Jack’s hand when he died. There was no one else in the room and selfishly he treasured it. He was the first one Jack ever saw on Earth, and the last. Sam might just be blessed. Tears clogged his throat and constricted his airway, he couldn’t speak until his kid had already passed, missing the opportunity to tell him how he was proud and he had never doubted him. It wasn’t until Jack’s lips took a grey twinge that Sam managed to stutter out, “five more minutes…”
“Five more minutes…”“Huh?”
Sam shook his head, blinking at the burning stinging wetness he was going to ignore that was building in his eyes.
Jack didn’t remember him here. Just when Sam thought the universe had run out of ways to flip him the bird they had handed him Jack 2.0: DC Edition. He faltered, forgetting what had triggered that memory in the first place. Right. He’d asked when the next bus was coming. It was so plaintive. So formal and distant and dissociative. He smiled, hand aching to cup Jack’s shoulder, but he took pause and knew had to take it slow; rebuild their relationship from the ground up. “Yeah, right, sorry. Thanks, appreciate it.”
It didn’t matter how long it took for Jack to see him as a mentor, or father, or friend again.
Because on the bright side of it all, at least Sam got another five minutes.