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It was supposed to be a normal hunt. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
The boys were left in the motel room for a reason.
It started out like a normal hunt. Though it wasn’t often that John actually worked with other hunters, now that Dean and Sam were older and he knew what he was doing.
He didn’t really work with anybody as closely as he had worked with Bill Harvelle.... To be honest, he had never really seen Bobby in the field before. And he didn’t know Rufus, but Bobby trusted him.
Something must’ve happened between them, because Rufus clearly wasn’t happy that they were there, but Rufus was the one who called for help.
John didn’t ask. It wasn’t his place, they wouldn’t tell him, and they had bigger things to be concerned about.
“So what exactly is it that we’re hunting? You said it was a demon, but I’ve never heard of a demon going around like this.”
“It’s an incubus,” Rufus said. “Sexual assault and rape is what they do.”
Bobby nodded. “Used to be that the Catholic Church would blame every single sexual assault and unwanted pregnancies on incubi. You can see why the excuse died away.”
John shook his head.
“So these demons possess people, make them rape someone, then leave the body?”
“More or less. The incubi feeds off of sexual energy, so they attach themselves to people who have a lot of repressed sexual urges or have a lot of sexual energy, then sic that energy on someone else who isn’t possessed, and they feed off of the energy that is given off during the act. Stomach full, it jets out of there, leaving both victims traumatized and never the same again.”
John nodded, listening and filing that information away in his head to write down in the journal later.
“So we catch it in the act, anchor it, then recite an exorcism.”
“That’s the idea. If worse comes to worse, we anchor it, then torch it and the poor sucker it’s stuck in,” Rufus remarked.
John shuddered a little, but he didn’t disagree with the assessment.
They finished putting together all their equipment. John slung the bag over his shoulder.
There was the sound of footsteps, and John looked over his shoulder. Dean was there.
“You lock up and don’t let anyone in. I have my key.”
Dean nodded. "Yes, sir."
John, Bobby, and Rufus then left the motel room and headed out on their hunt. John saw a glimpse of Dean talking to Sam in the motel room window.
He didn’t let his thoughts stray from the hunt for too long. But Dean really was growing up to look just like his mother.
He wished he hadn’t had that thought in his head at all now.
They found the demon easily enough, surprisingly. Its current victim was making a hell of a lot of noise. Though to be sure that it was the incubus and not human scum, they did the Christo check. The eyes turned black, and they knew what to do.
Except it didn’t go as planned.
They had trapped the demon in a devil’s trap and were about to start the exorcism - but the incubus thought something was funny.
John realized too late that he had forgotten an important symbol in the trap.
By the time he picked up on it, the demon had jumped from the poor sap in the trap and into him.
John had no control over his body. He could feel the demon rooting around in his head and using his fists and feet and weapons to get away from Bobby and Rufus.
He could hear what the demon was thinking. What it wanted. What it was planning to do for revenge.
And John couldn’t fight it off. He couldn’t get it to get out of his body. He couldn’t get it to leave.
It was heading to the motel room, and it was taking out the key in John’s jacket pocket.
Bobby and Rufus didn’t have a key, so when the incubus locked the door, both via the handle and the metal slider at the top of the door, John really started to panic.
But no matter what he said (thought?) or did, he was trapped inside his own body.
“Dad?”
No. No, don’t, please.
“Where’re Bobby and Rufus? Did you get it?”
No, Dean, hide.
The demon spoke in his voice.
“Yeah, I got it.”
Son of a bitch.
Dean smiled some - that proud smile that showed that he wouldn’t want anyone else to be his dad. Even though John was perfectly aware that he wasn’t the best father. He tried the best he could, and . . . he knew it wasn’t good enough. But sometimes that smile made it easy to pretend that it was.
Except now that smile was being given to the incubus possessing John’s body. John could feel his eyes looking Dean up and down like he was some stripper or a piece of meat.
Leave my boy alone!
The demon walked towards Dean and reached out to touch Dean’s face. Dean furrowed his eyebrows, confused, because John had never done that before, but he didn’t move away. Because to Dean it was Dad.
Dean didn’t know what it really was.
“Have I ever told you how much like your mother you look?”
You son of a bitch don’t you dare!
John was fighting for control, but it felt like cords were tying him down. He couldn’t grasp onto anything, he had no control, he had no way to get control back.
Dean flushed a little. “No, sir.” He tilted his head to the side. “Dad, are you feeling okay?”
“Oh, yeah. The hunt went well, so I’m feeling great.”
My boy isn’t your prey, you bastard!
The incubus made John’s thumb caress Dean’s lower lip, and John was screaming.
Dean’s eyebrows furrowed further, but nothing more, as the demon moved in closer, bringing their faces closer together.
“Say, why don’t you and I do something fun together? Just you and me, unless Sammy’s awake.”
LEAVE MY CHILDREN ALONE!
Dean shook his head. “Sam’s asleep.”
The demon smiled at Dean.
“Pity. I guess that just means more for you.”
It then grabbed the back of Dean’s face forcefully and pressed their lips together. It forced John’s tongue into Dean’s mouth. Dean squirmed and tried to fight back, managing to get out a “Dad - !?” before the incubus silenced him.
John kept fighting for control. He didn’t want this to happen to Dean - and he certainly didn’t want to watch it happen! But he kept failing, and the demon was laughing at him, and Dean was a strong boy but he was still only fourteen. John had more strength in his whole body than Dean had a hope of achieving at his age. John had military training and then the hunting for a lot longer than Dean was, and he was bigger than him, and it wasn’t hard for the demon to use all of that against Dean.
And it broke John’s heart to notice that Dean wasn’t doing everything that John knew he knew to fight back.
John wasn’t stupid. He knew he had raised Dean to obey orders and not talk back. He knew he raised Dean to do what John wanted him to. Because it was life or death in this life. Dean had to listen to him or Sam could get hurt or Dean could get hurt.
But now Dean was thinking this was what John wanted from him, and while it was clear Dean didn’t want it or understand why this was happening - even from a non-demonic-possession standpoint - that didn’t stop Dean from falling back on what he was raised to do and that was obey John and the demon knew that. It was rummaging around in his head and knew far too much about him. About his boys.
Dean was getting hurt because John taught him to obey him.
And at fourteen and never touched by a man before and, in all the ways that mattered right then, was a virgin, he wasn’t too proud to beg his father to stop.
“Dad, stop - please - !”
The demon forcefully shoved Dean and pinned him to the wall, his hand at Dean’s throat. “Why? You’re my little soldier, aren’t you?” it taunted.
John didn’t know how to fight this monster off. He didn’t know how to fight back from the inside. But he was screaming for Dean to at least recognize that this wasn’t John.
The demon was threatening to choke Dean if he didn’t respond, tightening his grip with the longer he waited to answer.
“Yes, sir,” Dean managed to get out. The demon chuckled to itself.
“That means I get to use you however I wish and you do it without complaint. Right, soldier?” It moved to whisper in Dean’s ear. “Besides, why would you deny me this? With how you torment me with how much you look like her?”
John could feel Dean stiffening underneath the demon’s grip.
“And those bowlegs are practically inviting me to be in between them, you little whore.”
STOP TALKING TO MY CHILD LIKE THAT, YOU SICK FUCK!
The demon pulled John’s face back, and they could both see the tears that were starting to gather in Dean’s eyes.
John raged inside, fighting harder than ever to get out.
“Now - are you gonna be a good boy, drop your pants, and spread your legs for Daddy? Like your mommy would?”
DON’T TALK ABOUT HER LIKE THAT! DON’T FUCKING TALK TO HIM! DON’T FUCKING TOUCH HIM!
Dean is crying, but he nods.
All Dean ever wanted, and John knew it, was to make John happy. To make John proud of him.
And that demon knew that now, too.
John felt helpless as he watched the demon let go of Dean’s throat. He felt helpless as the tears rolled down his son’s cheeks, and his hands dropped to his pant zipper.
Something about actually watching Dean push his pants down over his hips made something inside John snap.
Whatever snapped made it possible to reach for the demon.
The demon snarled and growled, and John felt his hands clawing at his face as it did so, but he finally had a hold on himself. It still had control of his upper body, but John managed to control the legs enough to back away from Dean, to give him room to get away from him, to hide, to run.
John and the demon stumbled as they fought for control, John’s control switching off to different body parts and - oh fuck, ew, the demon had manufactured a boner off of manipulating and assaulting his son and this fucker was so going down.
He could hear banging on the front door - had to be Bobby and Rufus - but John didn’t know how long it would be until the door could be broken down.
John was literally fighting against his body, he and the demon taking turns throwing his body around the motel room, into counters and furniture and when they reached the kitchen area, he wasn’t sure which one of them grasped for a knife first, but it was John who stabbed it through the hand that it had used to choke Dean and pin him to the wall.
“D-Dad?” Dean asked, his voice trembling - scared and confused and - and still wanting to help his father.
“Dean - !” John tried to get out, but the demon twisted his tongue and all they could both get out was strangled groans and yells and screams.
The knife drug across John’s arm and chest, then plunged itself into his gut and drug through his skin and muscle and organs and shit it hurt so much but he couldn’t let this thing get back at Dean, couldn’t let it touch him again, couldn’t let it rape him.
The motel room door finally blasted open - courtesy of Bobby - and both he and Rufus rushed into the room.
John was screaming, and he didn’t know if it was actually him or the incubus, and the physical pain almost didn’t matter because the war going on inside was so much greater and meant so much more.
Soon, he was vomiting up black smoke, and it was escaping through the open door way, and he could hear Bobby reciting the exorcism, but he couldn’t actually see where Dean and Rufus were and there was no way Sam had slept through this and Jesus fuck.
When the demon fully left, John’s head hit the linoleum floor, and the physical pain flooded all back to him like a baseball bat to the balls. But he couldn’t focus on that yet. He wouldn’t let himself until he knew that Dean and Sam were okay.
He struggled to sit up, and Bobby was by his side.
“Don’t get up, you idjit, you’ll make it worse. We’re gonna have to call an ambulance for you. Rufus - ”
“On it,” Rufus said, calling the number.
“Dean,” John gasped out. “Is he - ?”
Bobby looked over at Dean, who John couldn’t see.
“How much do you remember?”
John swallowed. “All of it.”
“So you tell me. What did that demon do?”
John opened his mouth to speak, but Dean’s voice spoke up from a corner of the room he couldn’t see from where he was on the floor, and it made his heart break.
“That was a demon?”
Had John really failed that badly at parenting that Dean would honestly think that John would actually - ?
“Winchester.”
John swallowed, fighting through the pain to answer.
“It - it kissed on him and threatened him and manipulated him, but it - it didn’t get that far. I got some control back before it got that far.”
John could feel the tears in his own eyes now.
He had come so close to being forced to watch his little boy be raped.
Bobby nodded, then started to work on stopping the bleeding.
Later, in the hospital bed, John realized that Bobby might’ve just let him bleed there had he not been able to fight back. It was his fault the incubus got out of the devil’s trap, after all. And Bobby cared a lot about his boys.
John was in a hospital bed and connected to machines and blood bags and IV drips when he was told what Rufus and Bobby had gone through to get to him and Dean. What Sam’s side of the story was.
All Sam could see from the bedroom doorway had been Dean without pants or underwear on, and Bobby and Rufus smashing their way into the motel room. Dean had told him to go into the bathroom and lock himself in, that it wasn’t safe in the rest of the motel room. Sam had tried to argue, but ultimately he did as Dean told him to.
He was still very confused as to what had happened.
Bobby was angry with John, and John didn’t blame him. But it wasn’t until Dean sat with him and talked to him that he really understood why.
Dean swallowed hard.
“Bobby’s been asking me a lot of questions.”
“Yeah?”
Dean nodded.
“About what living with you is like.”
“. . . Why’s he doing that?”
Dean couldn’t look at him.
“He thinks that I should’ve known you were possessed if you . . . if what happened wasn’t a normal thing.”
John didn’t know whether to feel disgusted, horrified, or angry that Bobby would think he’d do such a thing, but in the end, he just settled for ashamed of himself for not being a good enough father.
“You know I’d never say those things to you, right? Or touch you like that?”
Dean nodded, but John had a sinking feeling that Dean was just saying that to make him feel better.
“I mean it. I would never - ”
“I know,” Dean said. “I should’ve known that you’d never talk about Mom like that.”
That made John’s insides grow cold. Dean still wasn’t look at him.
He tried to speak up - say that it wasn’t just that, that it was because he would never hurt Dean like that, never demand something like that from Dean.
And he didn’t know why it died in his throat.
He didn’t know why he let Dean believe that John only cared about Mary’s memory, even for a moment.
“Dean, look at me.”
Dean looked up.
He wanted to tell Dean that he loved him. That he loved him more than anything.
Some days, he loved Dean more than Sam.
But the words he wanted to say just died. And he couldn’t figure out why.
So instead, he said, “You ARE your mother’s memory. You’re the only thing I have left of her, really. You’re the only one I can share her with. And she would never want me to hurt you or let you be hurt by anyone. She loved you. And would kick my ass if anything ever happened to you. Understand?”
Dean nodded. “Yes, sir.”
If he could just make Dean understand that John would never rape him or talk to him like that demon did, no matter what else it meant, he would. It was important.
If John couldn’t tell him he loved him, then he would tell him how much she loved him and it would just have to do.