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John notices it the first time when Dean is three.
He's getting the kid ready for school, lifts Dean's shirt up his head and stops. It's bright red and it takes up most of his right side. It wasn't there the night before, when John got Dean ready for bed, and it makes him freeze.
John knows exactly what it is as soon as he sees it. The horror sets in his face in the few moments he stands still, frozen in his shock until Dean squirms and asks him what's wrong.
John can't say it. His breathing is loud, he shudders as he tries to keep his face calm and pull Dean's shirt off even if John knows he must have gone pale. He smiles down at Dean, a crooked thing that's all wrong because John's lips are trembling and he's not sure he knows how to do it properly after this.
He looks down, deep into his son's eyes, and can't find the loving boy that ran down the stairs to jump into his lap when they had breakfast just a few minutes ago. John can see Dean now, and wishes more than anything in the world that he could turn his face away.
"It's nothing, bud, I just…" he licks his lips and tries again. Can't find the words, tells himself he's just a little boy, it's fine, it's just Dean but that's gone now. John's hands are shaking as he picks Dean up. He moves easily, always happy to be in his father's arms, but it doesn't matter. John wants to jerk away from his touch.
"C'mon, your mom needs to see something."
Mary smiles when she sees them go down the stairs, puts down her coffee and everything. Her eyes light up, like Dean's presence in her life is enough to create stars behind her eyelids. Like it makes up a whole galaxy, even, and John will never regret anything as much as he regrets turning on his feet to let his wife see their child's side.
Dean is distracted by the cartoons playing on the TV, so he doesn't see his mother's eyes fill to the brim with tears, doesn't see her hand fly up to cover her gaping mouth. Mary settles back in her chair, backs away, wants to run away from this. John knows. He wants it too.
She shakes her head no, it can't be, and trembles. Dean turns his head, the cartoons forgotten when he hears the porcelain of Mary's cup clatter on the kitchen table. He frowns, wants to ask her what's wrong, and it's a second of her horror etched onto his infantile mind until Mary smiles.
John has no idea how she does it, how utterly perfect she fakes it, how she manages to get her face to soften and her eyes to light up again. Isn't sure he wants to know either.
He sets Dean onto Mary's lap and that's when his son notices the red mark covering his skin. Mary doesn't let him get too scared before she explains it to him, lies to Dean about it because he's a child. Didn't deserve any of this.
"You have a soulmate mark, sweetie," she says, voice sweet like when Dean asks why the sky is blue or if he can get a little brother. "It means that someday, you're gonna meet someone with a mark just like yours. They'll be very special, and they're gonna love you very, very much."
Her voice cracks at that, but Dean doesn't even notice. He's too busy smiling ear to ear, grinning up at them like Christmas came early, and John wants to die.
Later that day, Mary tells him she's pregnant. He doesn't let himself think too much about that.
The horror in the nurse's eyes when she's giving baby Sammy for Mary to hold is enough to confirm what they both already knew: Sam has a matching mark covering his left side.
John spends the entire drive home shaking, stopping himself from crashing the car over and over again. Would Dean's mark disappear if Sam died? Could he live a good, normal life if John just turned the fucking wheel and let the Impala get completely destroyed by that moving truck?
He finds he's too weak to do it. John's punishment is delivered in the utter and complete devotion in Dean's eyes as he holds Sammy in his arms for the first time.
John drinks too much and works too much and when the house burns and Mary goes with it, he misses her every single day and can't help but breathe relieved. He won't be able to stop his sons, can barely stop Dean from spending all of his time by Sam's crib but at least she won't have to live to see what they'll become anymore.
Time passes and John tries, lies through his teeth and buries himself in hunting. Dean knows Sam has a mark just like his and John thinks he's going to ask why doesn't John have one too, since they all love each other, but he doesn't. Dean knows it's different and John knows Dean doesn't feel a fraction of what he feels for Sam for him.
Dean is ten and he won't stop talking about Sam. He does everything a parent should and everything a big brother should and forgets he's supposed to be bitter about it. Thrives in it, would ask for more if he knew how to do so without hurting Sammy's feelings.
John leaves them alone most of the time, goes away on hunts and tells himself and his children that he's searching for Mary's killer when he knows damn well he's running away from what waits for him in the motel bed right next to his. Sam and Dean exist in their own orbit, spinning around each other and leaving no space for anyone else.
John tells himself it's because they spend most of their time together, because of what he did to them, and not because his sons were born wrong. Not because there's something rotting deep inside them, poison dripping from those damned red imprints and scorching everything in their insides until it leaves a shell ready for the other to fill.
Sam is eight and asks why Dad isn't around more, cries and tells his brother he misses John and for the first time John sees Dean turn to him with anger in his eyes. Rage, even, so visceral John almost reaches for his gun. Dean looks exactly like the bastard he just killed a couple states ago. John leaves right after that because he can't, can't look, can't sit around and wait for what he knows is fated to happen.
Dean figures it out when he's thirteen and Sam skins his knee. It's hardly the first time, but this time is exceptionally bad. Sammy is gonna end up limping so he doesn't break the scabs when he walks and even after it's healed he'll have a huge round scar. Sam wails, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks and John knows it makes Dean ache, can see it in the way his brow furrows, can see how his baby brother's cries get him desperate.
He tells Dean to calm Sammy down, goes to the motel bathroom to rummage under the sink for their first aid kit. It doesn't take John five minutes to get everything, but when he's back, Sam has stopped crying.
Silent hiccups make his tiny frame shake, but his gaze is fixed on Dean kneeling in front of him, pain long forgotten. Sam's brother has gone completely still, unblinking and unmoving except for his heaving chest. Dean stares at his own hand, fingers made red by the blood that dripped down Sammy's leg. There was a tiny stone trapped in his wound and Dean tried to get it out, but never got that far.
John goes still too, shocked, staring at Dean's eyes. They're glazed over, transfixed on his palm, staring at his baby brother's blood as if he's never seen anything like it before, as if it's divine, ambrosia. Dean pants, open mouthed and hungry and nearly going cross-eyed as he brings his hand near his mouth.
That's what makes John move. He clamps one hand down on Dean's shoulder, drags him away by force. Dean doesn't even try to stop him, doesn't seem to realize what is going on until John lets go and he braces his bloodied hand on the carpet, body stopping him from hitting the floor by instinct.
Dean's mind catches up to the situation quick, and when he realizes John dragged him away from Sam his face turns into that mask of rage again. It's possessive, it's an animal dragged away from his food and John lies to himself and says it's unrecognizable. John wants to say that it (it) doesn't look like his son, cannot be his son, but he knows. He sees Dean in those bared teeth.
John stays unmoving, places himself between Sam and Dean with his feet planted firm on the ground and stares his oldest down until Dean shuts his mouth and shakes his head, trying to get his breathing into control. John turns at that, kneels down in front of Sam and tries to keep his lunch inside his stomach.
"Go wash your hands," John says, and pretends he hears the sound of the water dripping as Dean turns the faucet. When the boy comes out of the bathroom with his fingers clean and his lips reddened, Dean joins him in faking it.
They watch TV after Sam goes to sleep, on opposite ends of the small couch because Dean wants to be as close to Sam as possible and John wants to get away. John stares at the movie on the screen without seeing and drinks, wishes he was at the bar down the road and tries to ignore the nausea when he's reminded that the only reason he stayed in the first place is that Sam asked him to and he didn't want to deal with Dean.
"I love him," Dean says, and his father almost laughs.
No, John wants to answer, you're hungry for him. You want to consume him. You pray each day that you wake up and find that you've been stitched into one just so you never have to let go. You want to hollow him out, you want a space for yourself inside his flesh, you want to suck on his bones, you want to dine on his meat. You want him to live within you. What you feel is hunger.
Instead, he takes a sip of his beer and says:
"I know, kid. I love him too."
It happens again when Dean is sixteen. John is watching them wrestle, correcting their form and giving them tips. Both boys have thrown their t-shirts away a long time ago, the summer heat and the exercise more than enough to leave them sweating.
Dean pins Sam down, getting the upper hand easily. Sam tries to get Dean off of him, but before he gets to do anything Dean's gaze has zeroed in on his throat. Dean drops his weight on top of Sam and the kid chokes, still trying to fight him off, knowing in the back of his mind that it's a losing battle. Sam looks so good, veins jumping as his heart pumps desperate, muscles working as he thrashes on the ground, sweat getting his glistening skin all salty. Sam is young and fresh and perfect and Dean can't help himself.
He bites down on his shoulder, jaw drawing shut slowly, teeth working on Sam's tender flesh. Sam stops moving as soon as Dean's teeth touch his skin, going completely still, serves his body on a silver platter. Dean moans when the taste of blood floods his mouth, gives a full body shudder and drinks a mouthful down. Sam is the best thing Dean's ever tasted and deep inside him, something goes right. An itch beneath his skin is scratched, the rotten thing that keeps trying to breach through his guts goes quiet and satisfied.
John can taste the bile on his tongue and the world spins under his feet. His hands shake and he tries to reach for his gun, finds it disassembled on the table right in front of him and decides that's a good thing. His instinct is to shoot Dean, the hunter in his mind telling him to off the monster, but John isn't so sure he wouldn't end up aiming it at his own head if he had it in his hands right now.
So he pushes that all aside and works on getting Dean off of Sam, prepares to drag him kicking and screaming but finds no resistance. John's arms around him seem to bring Dean back to reality and he scrambles away, horrified at himself.
Dean sits on the floor, stares at the wound he bit open on his brother's flesh and cries, trembling. He tries to swallow, tries to wipe away at his mouth, but that just makes the taste of Sam's blood stronger and it's so fucking good he gags. Sam sits up and touches the wound, looks down at his fingers when they come back bloodied and trembles too.
John holds his breath, waits for him to scream, waits for him to cry, waits for anything except him moving closer, trying to get near Dean again. Dean flinches when Sam's hot breath hits his face, draws in a sharp breath and stares at the wall above him. Dean can't stop shaking, John notices, the effort of stopping himself almost too much for him.
"It's okay, De," Sam says, "you can have it."
That gets Dean to drag his eyes back to him, mouth gaping open in terror, shocked that Sam can know him like this, that Sam can see the extent of his desire and not be disgusted, that Sam welcomes it. He stands up on shaky legs and a moment later the motel door is slammed closed.
John cleans Sam's wound, patches him up and tells him to go shower. He tries not to think about it, but his hands are shaking, his mind keeps replaying the look in Sam's eyes as he reached for his brother. The unquestioning trust John finds there is enough to make him drag his eyes away. He pretends he hasn't seen it, pretends he didn't know until now that they share those marks and that fate, didn't know that it's mutual. How could it not be?
How could Sam see Dean's hunger for him and not want to feed him? How could he know that he is the only thing that could sate his brother's want and not offer up his neck? When someone wants to suck on your veins and scrape the flesh from your bones, when someone wants you wholly, down to the bone, how can you say no? How could Sam see such unconditional love and turn his face away from it?
John sighs, tired, way too tired for this and thinks one more time about the gun in the table. The motel door is swung open, and he sees Dean hasn't stopped crying. He gives full body shudders, gasping, and looks at John.
"Dad," Dean begs, desperate, and he's a child again, looking at his father for help, trusting him to fix what's completely broken. "I want him, Dad."
John knows that means make it stop, make me stop and he thinks about the gun on the table for a third and final time. He forces himself to hug Dean, to ignore the blood drying on his chin and the way his eyes fleet to the bathroom door every so often and thinks that this destiny is too cruel for a child to carry on their shoulders.
Sam is seventeen and John opens the motel door to find him laying on Dean's lap, back to his brother's chest, brows furrowed and eyes squeezed shut, long legs sprawled on the floor and his big brother's wrist between his bloodied lips.
Even from this far John can see that he's chewing, trying to gnaw his way into Dean's insides with his teeth as both his hands hold his brother's flesh to him. Dean sighs, head thrown back, lets out a low moan when Sam sucks harder. He looks at peace, John realizes, they both do.
This is what they were put on this Earth for, to hunger for each other and find nourishment in their love. Because Sam and Dean do love each other, John knows. That's the problem. There is an inability in finding solace in a person, in feeling complete when you're side by side and not wanting to swallow the other, raw and alive as they are. If you love something enough, you eat it to bring it closer. Sam loves Dean, so he chews at him so that his big brother gets to be a part of him.
John leaves for three months after that. Says he's on a hunt, lies and says he had to go on another and then another when Dean starts to get suspicious. He spends most of the time drinking more than he should.
When Sam gets into college, John wants to fight. Wants to fight for Mary, wants to say he doesn't want to be left alone but John knows that's bullshit. Even by Sam and Dean's side he was always alone.
He knows he should put a stop to it the minute Sam tells him Dean is coming with him and John's mind is already running, conjures up a plan to get them separated and put a bullet through each of their heads quicker and easier than any father should.
John lets them go, says goodbye and knows this is the last time he's going to see his sons. He doesn't think they realize it, already in their own world once they're halfway down the door because if Sam has Dean and Dean has Sam, all is well.