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“Goddamn it, Dean, where are you? Call me back. Now.”
John hangs up without another word, then resists the impulse to throw his phone against the motel room wall. He thought better of Dean than this, damn it. He might have expected it of Sam if he’d been here, but of course Sam isn’t here.
Which is likely the bitter root of the problem.
Sam’s been gone almost a full year now, and Dean’s still sulking about it. He’s been worse than ever since May, when the colleges let out for the summer. John knows what he expected to happen—Sam to return to the fold for the summer months at least, to reconnect and spend a little quality time with his big brother—but he doesn’t know how Dean convinced himself to buy into such a patently obvious fairy tale. Even in June, Dean was mentioning how maybe Sam was just looking for them—maybe they should give him a call—and John finally had to put an end to the nonsense by sweet-talking Sam’s summer course enrollment out of the innocent and fresh-faced girl in the undergrad summer session office.
Since then, it’s been like working jobs with a mule.
Dean mouths off. Dean knuckles under John’s lead only reluctantly, and with open bitterness. Dean needles John’s skin like he’s making up for Sam’s absence the only way he knows how.
He hasn’t openly disobeyed before, though, and up until John came through the door expecting to find Dean researching at the motel table, he would have sworn that Dean isn’t capable of pulling that kind of shit anymore. Not since he learned what it might cost them.
John’s going to tan the boy’s hide for this. He doesn’t care if Dean is twenty-three. Behavior like this clearly demonstrates that he isn’t too old to have his ass handed to him on a plate.
John told him to stay put for a reason, damn it. Dean is just the right demographic for this thing, whatever it is, and they have no idea what to call their quarry, let alone how to kill it. John’s son is not going to be on the menu. Not when he’s the only boy John has left.
A brief pang of regret muscles in through John’s fearful anger, and he marvels at his incredible parenting skills. Three boys, and his middle son would shoot him as soon as look at him, and his youngest… Well, last time John came around for Adam’s birthday, he was treated to a dose of sullen, confrontational teenager that made dealing with Sam look like a cakewalk.
Hell, John has to admit as he runs his hand brusquely through his hair and surveys the room for some hint of where his boy might have gone, Dean’s probably the most damaged of the three. He doesn’t have the sense to get away, though, and John is just lonely and desperate enough to want to keep him. Even if it might be kinder—safer—to send him running off to California.
Dean might not think so, but Sam would take him in. Sam would be thrilled to have his hero of a big brother back without John’s shadow and orders getting in the way.
And then Dean could keep an eye on Sam, keep him safe from the darkness hunting him…
John gives his head a shake. He has to focus. Now isn’t the time to indulge himself in might haves and could bes, not when something in Gatlinburg has been turning virile young men into gangrenous, reeking pin cushions. John still has the scent of the last victim in his nose from his recent trip to the morgue, and the thought of having to face Dean laid out on a metal table like that turns his stomach.
So think, old man. Where’d he get to?
John has the Impala, so Dean didn’t have an available car—not unless he wired one, and John taught him better than to hoist anything in an area where they have to work. Rebellious as he’s been, Dean isn’t going to risk jail time. So he’s in walking distance, which means any one of the hundred-odd bars that crowd the few miles of urban sprawl around Gatlinburg’s Econo-Lodge Motel.
Right, then.
John forces himself to wait several more minutes, while he regains more even control over his temper, and then heads out into the night to collect his son.
John finds Dean in the fourth bar he tries. His anger flares immediately—the boy is sitting with his back firmly set on the door, which John has told him not to do at least a hundred times more than should have been necessary. And, from the loose-limbed, sprawling posture of his body, he’s drunk.
The only thing saving Dean from an instantaneous ass-whupping to teach him a lesson in caution is the fact that John knows “drunk” doesn’t mean “defenseless.” Especially when it comes to Dean.
He’s forced to rethink that generous assumption once he sits down next to Dean and Dean doesn’t so much as twitch, though. He doesn’t think Dean has even noticed he isn’t alone anymore, still staring down into a glass that’s the wrong shape to contain anything so harmless as beer. Dean’s eyes are open but unseeing; John could be a hot, eighteen-year-old something with a pushed-up rack and a fake ID and something to prove, and Dean still wouldn’t have blinked.
John can’t sit here and wait to be acknowledged, and he’s too angry to speak first right now… at least without first having all the facts. God knows he’s allowed his emotions to drive him into things headfirst before without looking where he’d land. Those mistakes sometimes had a snarling, rebellious Sam on the other end, but more often he remembers it being Dean. Dean’s wide, doe-like eyes framed by those ridiculous lashes (Mary’s lashes) that always make him look about five years younger and fifty times more innocent than he actually is.
Over the years, John has allowed those hasty misjudgments to cut into Dean far too often. He doesn’t want to see that dumb, bewildered hurt on his son’s face tonight. Not with thoughts of Sam and Adam so close to the surface. He doesn’t need another, fresher reminder for how much he’s fucked up with his boys.
So instead of speaking, John pushes himself back up (still no notice from Dean) and takes himself down the bar to where the bartender is chatting up a pretty brunette with a wide smile and low décolletage. A twenty grabs the man’s attention swiftly enough, and John leans conspiratorially close over the bar to say, “It’s yours if you tell me about that young man over there.”
The bartender glances at Dean briefly, and when he turns back to John there’s a knowing look in his eyes that turns John’s stomach. “Don’t know his name, but he’s been here since seven, and he’s plenty trashed if you want to make a move.”
The bartender reaches for the twenty as he finishes speaking and John (could have been anybody, could have wanted anything, this son of a bitch sold Dean out) grabs his hand instead, gripping the pressure points and folding it back over his wrist. The bartender doesn’t quite scream as the twenty flutters down on the bar—the hold John’s other hand has on his throat takes care of that—but enough sound makes it past his lips that Dean should have been roused… and he hasn’t. Boy’s going to be more than sorry once John is done with him.
Come to think, so is the sorry sack of shit John has hold of now.
“Get lost, sweetheart,” John says softly to the girl, and she scrambles for the door quickly enough. She might decide to call the police, but she might not. John isn’t planning on being here long anyway. As long as no one else noticed this little tussle—and they haven’t; John’s broad shoulders are hiding the action from the bar at large, not that business is booming anyway—John should have plenty of time to do what he needs to.
“That’s my son you’re selling,” he rumbles, digging his fingers into the bartender’s throat while pushing further back on his wrist.
“S-sorry,” the bartender chokes out. He looks it, too. Even if John doesn’t follow through and snap a few bones the way he’s considering, this son of a bitch seems to have learned his lesson. John doubts he’ll be selling any information on his patrons in the future.
“So far,” John says, still keeping his voice low, “I haven’t done any damage an ice pack won’t cure. You’re going to be bruised and sore for a while, and your wrist will probably swell up some, but that’s nothing compared to what I’d like to do to you right now. So it’s in your best interest to be very accommodating and answer all my questions promptly and truthfully. Are we clear?”
The bartender tries to nod, remembers that John’s left hand is interfering with his mobility, and chokes out, “Yeah.”
“Good. How much has he had?”
“N-nine glasses.”
“Nine glasses of what?”
“Wh—whisk—”
Yeah, John figured it’d be that. Nine glasses, though, spread out over just three hours, is quite a bit. Dean’s an accomplished drinker—he’s had to be, to hustle pool as well as he does—but he’s had enough that he’s in for a world of hurt tomorrow even if John doesn’t lay into him tonight. Hell, he’s lucky he isn’t on his way to the damn hospital.
“It didn’t occur to you to cut him off?”
Now there’s a bit of spark in the bartender’s eyes—looks like John just banged up against some rusty sense of professional pride.
“I kept an eye on him! He wasn’t even drunk at all until about a half hour ago, and he only ordered the one since.”
John takes the bartender’s claim to mean Dean wasn’t slurring his words or focusing in that fuzzy, studied way that all drunks seem to have. It’s just John’s bad luck that he’s all but trained those tells out of Dean—doesn’t do for hunters to let a potential enemy know just how off their game they might be. John’s seen the boy stride confidently over uneven ground on a more or less shredded left thigh before: Dean isn’t going to telegraph a little thing like being drunk to the world at large.
The fact that he’s slurring at all is a worse sign than John wants it to be. He better get Dean home quick and get him to sick some of the liquor back up again if they want to avoid a trip to the ER.
When Dean’s sober enough to see straight again, John’s going to kill him.
He needs one last piece of information from the sorry bastard behind the bar first, though.
“He say anything to you aside from placing his order?” John demands, giving the bartender’s neck an encouraging shake.
“N-no, man. No.”
A gleam in the bartender’s eyes announces that he isn’t being entirely truthful, though, and John puts more pressure on his wrist.
“Not to me,” the bartended blurts, twisting his body in an attempt to keep his hand in one piece. “Heard a name, though—Stevie or Scotty or—”
“Sammy,” John supplies with a sinking, leaden drop in his gut.
“Yeah,” the bartender agrees hastily. “Yeah, that was it.”
For a moment, John is at a complete loss. Sam isn’t even here, and he’s somehow still managing to get in John’s way. He’s still screwing around with Dean’s head—distracting him, forcing him into stupid mistakes that John’s sure Dean wouldn’t make on his own.
Then he remembers that, whatever the cause, Dean has over half a bottle of whisky in his stomach right now.
He doesn’t bother wasting any more words with the bartender—just lets him go (the son of a bitch yelps; he clearly wasn’t expecting his release to hurt just as much as the initial lock) and strides over to his son’s side. This time, when he grasps Dean’s arm and hauls him up, he gets Dean’s eyes. They’re hazy with hurt and confusion, and for once it isn’t Mary that Dean reminds him of, but Adam. Adam looked at him like that, after John had introduced himself only to announce that he had to go.
And how can that resemblance be possible, when John has always been so certain that Dean inherited Mary’s eyes? How can Dean remind him so much of Adam, when they haven’t ever even met?
“Ahd?” Dean says—slurring, just like the bartender said, and badly.
“Can you walk?”
Dean’s chin drops heavily onto his chest as he studies his feet while John holds him up, and after a few seconds, Dean makes a loose grunt that might mean anything at all—up to and including, ‘gee, these shoes look nice; I think I’ll puke on them.’
“Okay,” John mutters to himself, and then pulls Dean in closer, draping one of Dean’s arms over his shoulders and sliding his own arm around to brace against Dean’s back. Getting Dean out of the bar is an exercise in patience, and by the time they’re halfway across the parking lot, John is tempted to just drop his son and leave him where he is.
But he recognizes that Dean’s state is more or less his fault—he pushed Dean on Sam; every time Dean’s attention wandered he refocused him like a wayward dog smacked on the snout with a rolled up newspaper. Dean maybe made the decision to go drink tonight, but John’s the one who opened the doors of the bar and showed his son in. It’s only fair now that John be the one to carry him out.
Dean’s muttering the entire time—when he isn’t moaning—although the words only come audible once Dean has been dumped in the backseat of the car and John has parked himself behind the wheel. Even then, John catches only fragments: ‘little bitch’, ‘phone’, ‘ivy-league asshole’.
Just enough to identify the subject of Dean’s monotone, indecipherable babbling, as if it was ever in question.
John drives the speed limit back to their motel—he in no way wants to be pulled over with Dean like this—and then pulls to a stop outside their room. Getting Dean out of the car is even more interesting than getting him in.
When Dean is finally upright and leaning back against the cool metal, he seems to focus on John for the first time all night. The hurt in his gaze crystallizes into something low and wretched, and he says, “S’not coming. Said—fuck, said he’s done with’r bullshit.”
“Shh,” John soothes, resting one hand in the center of Dean’s chest and stroking the other over his hair. “It’s alright, son. I’ve got you.”
“’M not a fuckin’ win—window toy.” Dean frowns, as though sensing that didn’t come out right, and emphatically rephrases, “Wind up toy. I got—I got thoughts. I jus’… I doan go ‘round throwin’ ‘em in people’s faces alla’time. Righ’?”
This drunken rambling of Dean’s is giving John more insight than he wants into what he is guessing was a fairly horrendous phone conversation between his two eldest boys. It’s telling him far more than he knows Dean would want him to hear.
“Let’s just get you inside, okay?” he suggests, moving into position to get Dean’s arm up over his shoulder again.
“’kay,” Dean agrees amiably, and then leans forward and throws up all over John’s boots.
Somehow, John gets Dean from the sidewalk into the bathroom, where Dean promptly pukes again (in the toilet this time), and then sits on the edge of the tub while John gets him a toothbrusth. John watches him struggle with it for a few minutes before moving in and getting him to just tilt his head back and open his mouth. It brings back memories John doesn’t want—memories of Dean after the fire, when he was silent and near catatonic for weeks.
John’s relieved when the routine task is over, and even more relieved when Dean seems alert enough to use the cool washcloth John hands him. Once he’s done, John gets his son to toss the cloth behind him into the bathtub and then helps him back up. There’s another stumbling struggle to bring Dean from the bathroom to his bed, where John lowers him as gently as possible.
“Get your coat and belt off, kiddo,” he says, patting Dean on the shoulder. Dean blinks at him owlishly and then starts shrugging out of his jacket. John waits long enough to see that Dean is serious in the attempt and then crouches at his son’s feet and starts in on Dean’s clunky workman’s boots.
When the boots are off—Dean either needs some new socks or needs to do some laundry—he looks back up and is dismayed to see that Dean is crying. Not a lot—just a few, almost unobtrusive tears, but John can count the number of times he’s seen his eldest cry since the fire on one hand. He gets up hastily, knees popping, and reaches out to set a steadying hand to Dean’s shoulder. He realizes that Dean’s jacket is half-off, twisted around his elbows where Dean apparently ran into technical difficulties, and shifts his hold to lean Dean forward a bit.
“Move your arm up a bit,” he requests, not mentioning the tears. Dean’ll thank him for that later, after he sobers up. If he even remembers this.
“’M not pathetic,” Dean proclaims. “I jus’—I got loyalty. Doan—fuck. Fuck ‘im. Fuck ‘im, righ’?”
“That’s right, son,” John answers—more because he senses Dean needs his agreement than because he knows what he’s agreeing to. Although he’s been piecing together the disjointed fragments of Dean’s speech, and the picture is distressingly clear.
After a brief struggle, John manages to get one of Dean’s arms out of his jacket. The other comes more easily, although John is forced to pause when Dean reaches up to grab hold of John’s shirt.
“Dean,” John says, releasing the jacket in favor of gripping his son’s wrist. “Hey, ease up, all right?”
Instead, Dean clenches his fist more tightly and chokes out, “Dad. He’s—he’s not comin’ back.”
Aw, hell.
John does his best to ignore the sudden, sharp pain in his chest and focuses on rubbing his thumb soothingly over the inside of Dean’s wrist.
“It’s okay, son,” he says—lies, really. But what’s one more added to the pile of falsehoods he’s already accumulated? Besides, the simple platitude seems to calm Dean again—or maybe that’s just the drink taking over and pushing Dean back down into a semi-stupor where he can more easily be managed.
Whatever the reason, Dean’s hand falls away from John’s shirt and John is able to finish removing his son’s jacket. When he gives Dean’s left shoulder a slight push, Dean drops back with a sudden, heavy motion. His eyes slide shut, mouth slack and loose, and his breathing evens out.
Christ, he looks young lying there. He looks young and vulnerable in a way he hasn’t since… John can’t actually remember how long it’s been. Five years? Ten? Fifteen? It’s been a hell of a long time, anyway, and for a moment John is pissed at Sam for putting that look on his brother’s face.
He can’t maintain the emotion for long, though, and before he has finished turning Dean onto his side (boy’s already emptied his stomach twice, but that doesn’t preclude a third incident), his anger has slipped back over into guilt. He can’t even begin to imagine what Mary would say if she could see him now: if she could see the mess he’s made of things.
“Should’ve gone with Sammy, kiddo,” he murmurs as he brushes Dean’s temple with the fingertips of one hand. It’s a thought he has never been brave enough to utter by daylight, although he’s thought it a thousand times since that last apocalyptic fight. He wouldn’t be brave enough to say it now, except he knows that Dean is dead to the world.
With a heavy sigh, John gets up and moves away from the bed. He’s still holding Dean’s jacket in one hand, and now he digs his son’s cell phone out of the right hand pocket and turns it back on. He’s aware that this is a breech of privacy, but he needs to know just how bad the damage is, and Dean sure as hell isn’t going to tell him. And, as he scrolls through his son’s contact list for the number he wants, John feels less guilty than vindicated.
He’s going to have to keep a close guard on his tongue for this conversation.
Sam would have ignored a call coming in from John’s number, John is sure, but with Dean’s phone in his hand, the phone only rings once before Mary’s youngest picks up.
“Unless you’re calling to tell me you’ve come to your senses, I don’t want to hear it, Dean,” Sam’s voice announces, superior and curt and igniting all of John’s anger despite his best intentions.
Sam’s always been able to find just the right words to piss him off.
“Dean’s unavailable right now,” John says, “but I’ll be sure to pass the message along once he’s done sleeping it off.”
There’s a moment of shocked silence as Sam readjusts, and John wonders if he’ll be listening to the dial tone in a second. But Sam doesn’t hang up—is maybe too proud to hang up. That would be too much like backing down.
“Nice to see your better habits are rubbing off on him.”
For a single, blinding instant, John sees red.
Your brother was one drink away from alcohol poisoning, he thinks viciously. He damn well could have died, and all you can think to do is find another way to poke at me?
But of course Sam has no way of knowing how bad it is, although he must suspect. He’s a smart boy, and he has to know how Dean feels about him. He certainly used Dean’s devotion to fuck with John often enough, maneuvering Dean time and again into a position where he would have to clash with John or ‘betray’ his little brother and then sitting back to watch the show. John wants to believe that Sam didn’t know what he was doing to Dean—maybe couldn’t see—but he can’t be sure.
After a moment, John settles on ignoring Sam’s jab to demand, “What the hell did you say to him?”
“He called me,” Sam shoots back, taking up a defensive position as easily as he took up the offensive before. Highly adaptable, is John’s middle son. And too smart for his own good.
“I don’t give a damn who started it. I want to know what you said to him. Aside from insulting his intelligence and character.”
“It isn’t an insult to tell someone the truth.”
“And just what is ‘the truth’ as you see it, Sammy?”
“That he’s never had a mind of his own. All he ever does is what you tell him to do. He might as well be a wind-up soldier for all you care. I told him it’s pathetic and that if he has any self-respect at all he should ditch you and get himself a life.”
That isn’t all of it, of course—it can’t be. Sam is only ever truly inspired when he knows his words are finding their marks, and while hearing how he needled Dean does rouse John’s anger, it isn’t quite personal enough to garner him a repeat performance. It’s just as well; John’s already having a difficult enough time controlling his temper.
“You know he actually asked me to come back,” Sam continues. “I mean, how stupid can you get? As if I’d ever come back to you.”
“Good,” John hears himself say.
It stops Sam in his tracks on the other end of the phone.
Feeling as though he’s having an out of body experience, John continues, “In fact, do me a favor. Next time your brother calls you, don’t bother picking up.”
“You can’t tell me what to do anymore,” Sam insists, rousing again.
“You’re right,” John agrees. Suddenly, he feels every long year on his shoulders—every dragging mile. Exhaustion both dulls the edges of his anger and makes it more impossible to bear. “But I’d like to think there’s a part of you that’s a decent human being instead of a selfish, spoiled brat. And if I’m wrong about that, then so be it. But if you care about your brother at all, the next time you see this number on your phone, you’ll let it ring through. Dean’s got enough to deal with. He sure as hell doesn’t need you dumping on him because you’re pissed at me. Are we clear?”
Silence answers him.
“Are we clear?” he repeats, growling more loudly this time.
“I hate you,” Sam spits across the miles. “You ruined my life, and you’re still ruining Dean’s. Why don’t you just leave him alone, if you care about him so much? Huh?”
It’s a good question.
John looks back toward the bed, where Dean is drooling into his pillow, and thinks about what it would be like not just to have Dean in California with Sam, but to have him out of the business. To have him married somewhere, settled down with a wife and a couple of kids and a job. Dean would make good money as a mechanic, and never mind whether or not he’s got a high school diploma. If his eldest boy left hunting behind, John could even introduce him to Adam.
For a few, precious seconds, John imagines his boys together at a family barbeque—Dean and Sam and Adam gathered around a grill with beers in their hands, laughing at some dumb joke while their wives make salads and sides in the kitchen and the little ones run around the yard. There’s no place for John in that vision, but that’s for the best. It’s as should be.
Then Dean—the real, drunken mess John’s made of him—moves in the bed, one hand groping up underneath his pillow. When he pulls his hand back down into sight, he’s gripping a pistol.
When did that happen? John wonders. When did his boy become so acutely aware of the things in the night that he began to feel safer sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillow?
The daydream dissolves into dust.
Wrong or right, Dean belongs in this life now. Casting him out would do more harm to the boy than good.
And they’re making a difference. John has to cling to that one truth. He and his boy, they’re doing good in the world. That has to count for something.
“I’m the only thing he has left,” John says, solidly if a little untruthfully.
He crosses the room as quickly as he can, lifting the gun from Dean’s lax grip and folding his son’s hand around a clump of blanket instead. He’ll have words with Dean about the proper storage of weapons in the morning when Dean can think straight enough to understand that a sense of security doesn’t mean a damn thing once you’ve accidentally blown your own head off. Nightstand’s more than close enough.
John has moved quickly enough that Sam still hasn’t responded, and now he adds, “You hate your brother that much, that you want him left on his own?”
An undercurrent of fear runs through him in the wake of his question—Sam might make an offer; he might summon Dean to his side and then what is John going to say—but, once more, Sam is silent.
“Don’t call him,” John reiterates more firmly as he settles Dean’s pistol down on the nightstand. “Don’t pick up if he calls you. You wanted to leave? Fine. But you stay gone. You don’t jerk your brother around like this, you hear me, Sam?”
There’s no response, but something in the quality of the silence has shifted. John lowers the phone from his ear to look at the screen and sees that the call has been ended.
Little shit hung up on me, he thinks with a sense of incredulity. A mulish, hostile instinct wants him to call back—he was winning; Sam doesn’t get off that easily—but John muscles it down. Figuring out how to clear the call he made from the phone’s memory takes some doing, but he manages that eventually as well. Then, powering the phone down again, he replaces it in Dean’s jacket pocket.
A glance at the clock on the nightstand tells him that he has about five hours to sleep before the sun comes up. He considers the clock, glances toward his empty bed, and then rubs a hand over his face and moves over to sit down on the table. Pulling the laptop toward himself, he powers it up and waits for the systems to come online.
He’s got some research to do and a monster to catch. Just as importantly, he has a son to watch over—he’ll be ready with a bag of greasy breakfast and some strong coffee in the morning. Just what Dean needs to get back on his feet before John lays into him with a couple of hard truths he’d do well to learn. It’ll hurt, but it’s for his own good. John can’t have Dean spinning out of control like this. Not when it’s liable to get Dean killed.
He sees that metal table again, gleaming in the pitiless morgue light, and then shakes the vision away.
No rest for the wicked, John thinks and, with a crack of his knuckles, gets down to work.