Nourished

Nourished

A Supernatural story by Jennie @DeanIsntFine
Featuring Dean Winchester @DWImpala67

This is the fourth of my VBF stories, featuring my best fictional friend. It is set in the summer hiatus, after Season 14's "Moriah." To read the others, click:
Part 1: "VBF"
Part 2: "Welcome to Rocky's"
Part 3: "Last Call"

---

Dean Winchester made me a sandwich.

I take the barest moment to process that as the china plate clangs on the map table, where I’m sitting, poring over yet another ancient text on the nature of God.

“Here you go,” he booms. “Your favorite. Roast beef, rare. Extra mayo, tomatoes, and just a suggestion of salt. Piled high on… what the hell is ‘Seed-uction’ bread, anyway?”

I grab the rim of the plate, rotating it left and right to closely inspect his creation.

“More importantly,” I say, “where the hell did you even find it in Lebanon, Kansas?”

He shrugs and sits down, rubbing absently at his jaw and looking around the bunker’s war room.

I study him. “And exactly how is it that you know so much about my favorite sandwich?”

He looks at me, smiling slightly, and taps his temple. “Maybe that freaky link we’ve got that brings you here from your world works both ways. You’re always in my head, aren’t you? Time to even the odds, I guess.”

Well, I don’t want to ruminate on the implications of that, do I?

I hoist the sandwich and take a bite. Salty, savory. Perfect. The crisp tomatoes pop, screaming summer, and a small sound of satisfaction escapes from deep in my throat.

I look over at my best friend. He seems quite pleased with himself.

“I know that food and I have a troubled relationship,” I say, mouth still half-full. “But I do believe I’d marry this sandwich, if it’d have me.” 

He laughs. “Yeah, I’ve met a few burgers like that.”

As I eat, I notice his bottle-green eyes are everywhere but on mine as he fiddles with the rubber rings on the table, his feet fidgeting. He looks tired, and he’s battered—he and Sam both are.

But by Winchester standards, he seems—for the most part—fine.

With everything that’s currently on their plate, it’s nothing short of a miracle.

“Where’s Sam?” he asks finally.

Hands still wrapped around my sandwich, I chew on, gesturing with my head. “Down the hall. Looking for more books.” That last word comes out with a lisp, and I grab for my glass of water. “I’m not sure we’re getting any closer… A lot has been written about the big guy. And most of it’s crap.”

Dean taps out a beat on the table, heaves a sigh, then finally meets my gaze. “How’s the sandwich?”

Again, he catches me with my mouth full. I narrow my eyes at him. “You know itsh perfect,” I manage, followed by something that could have been either “fuck you” or “thank you.”

He grins, but the smile doesn’t quite rise to his eyes. “You’re welcome.”

Something about his vacillating demeanor makes me stop chewing and put down the sandwich. He’s on edge, agitated. Something’s eating at him. Of all people, I should have seen it. He’s not fine at all.

“I drove all the way to Wichita for that bread, you know,” he confesses, and tattoos the table again. He stands up abruptly, the wheels on his chair protesting with a metallic squawk. “Why the hell would I even do something like that, right?” he asks, scrubbing at the sides of his head with both hands.

And just like that, my lunch is forgotten, and I swallow dryly. He’s in pain. And he has my full attention.

He whips himself into a froth. “With everything that’s going on? It’s nuts!” he continues, and starts to pace, waving his arms. “But I get it stuck in my head: Gotta drive three hours. Gotta make Jennie’s perfect damn sandwich.” 

A tang of desperation creeps into his voice. “But who’s even driving now?” he asks me, cutting to the meat of the matter. Clearly, he’s questioning everything.

“Is that me in my head?” he demands. “Is it you? Or is it… him?” His mouth twists into a sour sneer as he invokes Chuck for the first time. “I mean, I just got rid of Michael… Do I even have a thought that’s my own anymore? Did I ever?”

I’m shocked into silence. So, he’s not over Michael—how could he be? And now this.

I study his eyes as he drops back into his chair, as if wrung out from his outburst. I hate it—absolutely hate it—when I see the pinch of fear there.

He rubs at his brow, no doubt chasing a leftover echo of the pain of Michael raging in his mind.

“I’m tired of feeling like a goddamn puppet on a string,” he says, resignedly, looking down at his lap, kneading his hands. He’s felt powerless before, I know. Many times. But this is different.

I take a sip of my water, swallowing hard. “You can’t think like that, VBF,” I say. “You just can’t. You'll go nuts.

“You are you,” I continue. “You are the sum of your own choices. Sure, Chuck’s powerful. But he can’t change that. He said it himself: He made free will part of the kit.”

We sit quiet for a moment, and I swirl my water around in the glass, watching the muted colors of the map table dance in its reflection. Inside I’m reaching for the right recipe, something that might comfort him.

“Hard truths?” I ask, and Dean looks up at me. In spite of himself, he always wants to hear my insight, even when it stings. “If I had to guess, I’d say you drove all the way down there just to go off-script. Just to take back control.

“It is nuts,” I say. “It’s something Chuck would never see coming. And it’s exactly the kind of thing that’s gonna save you.”

I pick up my sandwich again and take a bite, chewing slowly, letting that sink in. Dean rubs his jaw and looks up at the ceiling, then back at me.

“Chuck didn’t make everything,” I say finally. I hold up my perfect stack of bread, mayo and meat. “He didn’t make this. You did.”

He eyes me carefully, digesting that food for thought. “I guess a six-hour round trip for a sandwich is pretty off-script, huh?” he says.

“Something only Dean Winchester would do,” I agree, and take another bite.

He’s simmering down, I can see, and I’m glad of it. The fear drains out of his face.

He looks off into the middle distance, as if reminiscing.

“That store was something else,” he says, and I assume he means the Whole Foods in Wichita, the only place for hundreds of miles where one can score “Seed-uction” bread. “It was like… a food palace.” His eyes light up at the memory. “Have you even seen the meat counter they have there? And the bakery case...”

I smile, relieved. He’s back on terra firma, and so am I.

“It’s exactly the kind of place Sammy always used to try to get my dad to shop in,” he says.

This surprises me. Dean and I do talk a lot, but the subject of John is rarely broached.

“Really?” I ask.

“Yeah. When we were kids, food was like Sam’s way of—I don’t know—rebelling, I guess? Clapping back against my dad.”

I’m suddenly full of questions that I’m afraid to ask. So I wait, and let it brew. Dredging all this up can’t be easy for him.

“Dad was driven, obsessed,” Dean says carefully. He seems surprised to hear himself speak the words. “To him, food was just fuel, and eating was something meant to be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible, so that we could keep going, find the thing that killed Mom, kill whatever evil sons of bitches we could in the meantime.

“Even early on, Sam knew that kids weren’t supposed to live like that. They’re supposed to be… nourished, you know? Given what they need to thrive, to grow.”

His words pour forth now, and I let them. The least I can do is be present. Just be there for my best friend.

“Sam did all he could to get my dad to slow down,” Dean says. “To see us.”

I picture smart, fierce, little Sam, standing up to the consumed and all-consuming force that was John Winchester. Fighting for a taste of freedom. Doing whatever he could to grasp the tiniest morsel of control.

Dean continues. “He’d ask for stuff—crazy stuff, for a little kid. Fruits, vegetables. Things my dad would have to shop for, things he’d have to cook. Things meant to keep us all in one place for more than 10 seconds, I guess.”

He laughs, but there’s bitterness there. A deep, sour hurt that I know I can’t even begin to fathom.

“He always wanted to be normal,” Dean says of Sam. “But me? For me, complaining was not an option. I learned to eat whatever was put in front of me, whatever I could grab, as fast as I could eat it.”

He laughs again, the same rueful rasp. “And to enjoy it. Really enjoy it. Eat every meal like it was my last.”

“You never knew when it would be,” I say, sadly.

Dean nods. “Dad would go off for days at a time. We’d be fine for a while, then I had to make some tough choices.”

“Like stealing bread and peanut butter,” I say.

Burned again by the memory, he nods. “Yeah, like that. I had to get creative.

“I tried... God knows I tried…” He winces. “Man, we have got to figure out a way to quit saying that bastard’s name.

“Anyway, I tried—Winchester Surprise being the most infamous example of how I tried and failed.

“I wanted to give Sammy something... stability, I guess. Security.”

“What about you?” I ask.

“What about me, what?” he says, and I feel like that lovely little slogan might as well be carved into his damn chest.

I press him, because it’s something I’ve always longed to understand. “What does food mean to you? You use it for comfort. You use it to show love.”

I expect him to protest, to back-burner it, but he surprises me. Yet again.

“Well, that’s the bare minimum, isn’t it?” he says. “I had to give Sam what my dad couldn’t, or wouldn’t. I had to keep him fed.”

I feel a hot stab of sympathy in my chest, again picturing what they went through. No child can thrive in fear, I think. Under a thumb. Or clenched in a fist. 

“He was small for his age for so long,” Dean muses, and for a moment looks as worried now as he must have been then. Recovering quickly, he scoffs: “You’d never know it to look at him now, of course. Damn Sasquatch.”

“Yes, he’s very... well-nourished,” I say. “That means you did a good job.”

“I hope so,” he says. “For me? The road, the hunts, days rolling into weeks, into years... After a while, food started to feel like safety. It started to feel like home.

“Bacon cheeseburgers were like a delicacy. I’d get one wherever we went. I’d try to remember each place, sear it in my mind, by the tastes, the smells.

“I think I needed an anchor, you know? So it all didn’t blend together. So I had something to hold on to. So I didn't lose myself.”

There it is again, I think. Free will. A boy trying to claim control where, sadly, there was none. Not really.

“And then there’s pie,” I say, gently.

“Pie,” he says. A childlike hunger lights in his eyes, glinting with an underlying note of… shame? Regret? It’s almost impossible for me to read. “Talk about something to cling to, huh?”

I know him so well, and he knows that with me he doesn’t have to fill the space with words. I can see—feel—his thoughts drift to his mother. Gone for so long. Now lost again.

“I put her on such a pedestal, didn’t I?” he asks.

“You were 4,” I say. “What else would you have done? Your mom is your world at that age. She’s everything. She’s perfect.”

“Well, she wasn’t perfect,” he sighs. “But she was amazing, wasn’t she?”

“And you got a second chance,” I say. “To know her as a person. As a hunter.”

He nods. “And she became my hero.” His eyes brim with tears, and my heart breaks all over again. “I miss her,” he says.

I reach across the table and take both his hands in mine. “Of course you do, VBF,” I say. “But in the end, she got to know you, too. The time you had together helped both of you grow.

“She saw you. And loved you. Don’t ever forget that. The love’s not dead. You have to let it sustain you.”

He looks at the ceiling, gathers himself. He looks back at me, nods and flashes a small—and, at last, genuine—smile.

Just then, Sam walks in, carrying another tall stack of dusty books. He casts a long look at what’s left of my sandwich. “Hey, where’s mine?” he says, hurt.

Dean sniffles, then scoffs. “In the fridge, where else? Gigantor.”

Sam examines my plate more closely. “Did you use the tomatoes I got at the farmer’s market?”

“Yessss,” Dean says, and rolls his eyes. He sneaks a look at me, secretly pleased.

I look back and forth at both of them. I see the boys they were. I see the men they’ve become.

They’re going up against God himself, I think. The biggest bad of them all. They can’t even begin to guess what’s in store. 

But no matter what comes next, if Dean Winchester has anything to say about it?

His little brother will be well-fed.