Before he could retreat more than a hair, Sam darted forward with his own hands, landing them on top of John’s fingertip. “Agreed!” he echoed his older brother.
John’s finger nearly flinched in tandem with Dean’s much smaller hand, but he managed to breathe and keep it still, taking Dean’s cue for when to shake his finger up and down ever so slightly.
His eyes widened and his jaw nearly dropped when Sam’s tiny hands joined both of Dean’s.
Struck by a thought, John carefully reached a hand toward the brothers, extending a finger to Dean with an amiable look in his eye. “Shake on it?”
Dean recoiled from the hand, his eyes darting from the extended finger up to John’s expression to read his intent. Spotting nothing but honesty in the planes of John’s face, he hesitantly reached forward.
As his hand approached the waiting finger, Dean’s much smaller fingers brushed against the thick skin and flinched. Reaching forward again, Dean gripped John’s fingertip, finding his entire hand inadequate to cover the entire surface. Using that same determination, Dean reached out with his second hand as well, clasping the rest of John’s fingertip and a bit of his nail, the rigid surface ungiving between Dean’s hands as he shook them up once, then down.
He finally noticed that Sam was tugging at his sleeve. The younger boy was looking up at Dean, his expressive eyes full of worry. “What?” Dean said, his tone sharp with the lingering exhaustion from the night before combined with the stress of waking up with Sam and John both missing from the bedroom.
“There’s bacon,” Sam said simply, pulling Dean’s sleeve in the direction of the food. “John made it. It’s good!” He tugged harder at Dean’s arm. “Please?”
With the map spread out on the seat next to the teenager, Dean could survey their path from above with a bird’s eye view, but there was something about being down, on the map, that always appealed to him. Once he finished off his last bite, he took the initiative to slide down Jacob’s sleeve to join in on the planning.
Letting go of Jacob’s sleeve a few inches from the ground, Dean landed with a thump, rolling to catch his balance and coming out of the roll to land on both feet. The motion was as agile as any cat landing on their feet, graceful for a man of less than four inches. The only thing that ruined the move was a slight stumble as he skid to a stop, the paper unexpectedly wrinkling under his boots from the added weight.
Brothers Apart 