Mockingbird [3/?]
I actually managed... O.O
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sam/John
Word Count: ~3,200
Disclaimer: Don't own nuttin'.
Warnings: Wincest! Spankings! (Probably.) Character Death! Sex! Not your cup of tea? Then don't touch.
Spoilers: Devil's Trap and beyond
Summary: The surviving Winchesters start hunting again. John takes some drastic measures.
~
So, this is about two weeks late... I'm really sorry and hope you enjoy. Sadly, Hell Week is coming up and I probably won't be around much, mostly running from test to quiz to presentation. But do send feedback and I'll get back to you as soon as possible! :)
~
Part I
Part II
Mockingbird
Chapter III
+++
If that mockingbird don't sing,
I'm gonna buy you a diamond ring
+++
There were times Bobby wasn’t sure if John really deserved it all. Whether he really deserved a son that questioned his every move, preferably when some Hell spawn had just decided feasting on humans would be a really good idea. If he really deserved to be called a stubborn ass and an emotional wreck by everyone he was friends with at some point. Whether he really deserved to have everyone he met want to wring his neck.
Right now, Bobby was actually quite sure of it. Staring at the worn-out boots protruding from under one of the more battered of Bobby’s cars, his fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle he was holding. He could vividly remember the feel of his trusted Remington in his fingers, the heat -and betrayal, always with the fucking betrayal -in John’s eyes, Booby’s hands itching because of some stupid shit his friend had done or said.
This time, it was what he didn’t do.
Because John might be an emotionally stinted and a wreck of a father, but he was still a God damned father and looking at Sam made Bobby’s chest ache.
Bobby was not known as the most compassionate person around.
Still. Since John Winchester had one day shown up at his doorstep with two boys Bobby had only vaguely even heard about in tow, he had had to get used to being called ‘Uncle Bobby’, and he’d grown to like it. He’d watched Sam learn how to walk, clinging tightly to Dean’s hands, he’d helped the kid learn to read Latin and even signed his homework reports every now and then. He’d witnessed him say the most bratty, disrespectful things Bobby had ever heard to his father, and he’d heard John retort with some pretty fucked up things himself. It had never worried him as much as this did, though. Boy sitting on the couch all day, staring at damn nothing. It just wasn’t natural.
John knew that, or he wouldn’t spend his days hiding under cars.
Bobby downed the last of his beer, cast one last, unfriendly gaze at John’s boots, and stepped back inside, screen door clattering shut behind him. He dropped the bottle into the sink noisily. He thought he’d seen Sam flinch slightly, and that was when something inside him just snapped. Heading for his study in sharp strides, he gathered up a stack of papers resting on the table. It was an odd array, cheap local news from all over the country, the ones small enough to not be above reporting the mysterious and unexplained. It was a hefty pile. He rarely managed to sort through them all before the next batch came, and there was seldom something of interest to be found. But that didn’t matter right now.
The hunter marched back into the living room and stopped in front of the couch and Sam, letting the stack of papers drop. The crooked coffee table groaned under the sudden weight, but it held steady. Sam stared at the papers for a moment before he slowly raised his head, to look at Bobby. There was the shadow of a question in wide, mostly lifeless eyes. They made Bobby’s stomach turn.
“Might as well be useful,” he said, looking away, “You know what to look for.”
He hardly dared to breathe as he walked away, but as he pulled the door open, he could see the boy faintly reflected in the glass pane, carefully reaching for the pile in front of him.
+++
John offered astonishingly little resistance when Bobby dragged him out from under the battered frame of some Mustang and steered him towards the house. He grumbled something about food and water and not keeling over and the man obeyed readily (which in itself was enough to make Bobby’s eyes pop).
“Is it that late already?” he asked, frowning up at the slowly darkening sky in irritation.
“Yep,” Bobby said, willing a friendly tone into his voice, and pulled the door open, letting John go first.
Sam was still firmly planted on the couch, but he was holding a battered piece of paper, a newspaper cutting, in his long fingers, not quite looking at it but not away, either. He looked like he wanted to be somewhere else.
Bobby’s wrench caught him in the back painfully as he stopped dead in his tracks.
Sam let his head hang, bangs falling into his face like a curtain, a tint of red creeping over his ears and the back of his neck. But he reached out anyway, holding the clipping in front of him like an offering.
It wasn’t until Bobby cleared his throat behind him that John remembered to move, to take the few steps and take the paper from Sam’s fingers, pretending not to see that they were shaking. Still, it took him a moment to stop staring at the top of Sam’s head and acknowledge the article and the bright red marks on them.
There was a picture of a mostly empty field with a few trees in the distance. It looked the polar opposite of supernatural - let alone eventful - and didn’t even gain much appeal by the caption reading “Field in which mutilated cattle were found.” John scanned the article for underlined passages, phrases jumping out at him immediately.
“Decapitated woman,” “string of murders,” “cattle mutilations”…
He looked down at Sam, who was still finding the tips of his boots terribly interesting, and then at Bobby.
“Our kind of case?” he asked, but Bobby shrugged.
“I wouldn’t know, I didn’t go through ‘em yet. Gotta ask Sam for that one.”
Right.
“Sam?”
It wasn’t really that he’d expected a reaction; it would simply have been nice to get one. With a sigh, he ran his hand over his face, looked back to Bobby who gave him a pointed stare. His friend tilted his head towards the couch. John stared back.
With a barely suppressed groan, Bobby moved beside him, pushing him down onto the couch next to his son before disappearing into the dim passages of the house. Sam didn’t move and John just sat. He sighed, turning the page over and over in his hands, waiting for inspiration. Some divine pointer. Anything.
Nothing came. He chanced a glance at Sam who just stared ahead; it was hard to believe he was supposed to have worked his way through an entire stack of old newspapers.
“Come on, Sam,” he said finally, softly, “talk to me, buddy.”
Sam didn’t, of course. John sighed, rubbing a hand over tired eyes.
“Sam, kiddo, you gotta give me something to work with, here. You read all these reports. Think this could be our kind of thing?”
“I think it’s worth checking out,” Sam said quietly. It seemed to take him forever to do it, but he managed to lift his head and look John in the eye.
John gave his boy a pat on a shoulder so he didn’t just grab him and hold him without ever letting go.
Worth checking out. He could work with that.
+++
They left early the next morning, John stuffing the meager leftovers of their belongings into a few duffel bags. He checked his weapon hold at least four times. The glove box with the Colt inside was locked, his research stored in the small space behind his seat. Sam’s article rested on the very top; John couldn’t help staring at it, at proof of the fact that Sam might be an utter and total wreck, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t brilliant.
He fetched Sam from where the boy had been sitting on his bed as soon as he had packed. Bobby was waiting for them on the porch, beer in hand despite the early hour. Sam let his father steer him toward the car with a light shove in the right direction.
“See ya, Bobby,” he said, barely more than a whisper.
Bobby only narrowly avoided trotting on Rumsfeld II’s tail.
Sam blushed crimson under the stare while Bobby cleared his throat, answer coming ages too late.
“Yeah, sure, Sam,” he stammered, and the boy quickly fled to the truck, sliding down low in his seat.
John gave a weary shrug.
“We will, Bobby,” he said with a wry smile.
“You do that, John,” the man retorted, clasping him on the back, “I don’t want to hear about you - either of you - getting yourself killed. You do, I’ll be coming down to Hell personally to kick yore asses.”
John laughed. He had no doubt that he would, too, the bastard.
“And don’t you go wringing each other’s necks, either, ya hear me?”
John smiled.
“Family’s family, Bobby.”
“Yeah,” Singer growled, “And then there’s ‘Winchester family’, where normal rules don’t apply.”
John snorted, making his way down the steps, but was stopped by Bobby’s call.
The hunter let his gaze travel to a metallic lump resting in the shade under a tree close to the house, covered with a dark cloth.
John sobered up immediately, giving the slightest shake of his head.
“Not yet, Bobby. Please.”
“All right,” Bobby murmured, sending him off with a nod and a small eye roll, but only after John had turned away.
+++
The ride was silent unless John was speaking, making some inane comment about something or other. It was like Sam’s silent treatment which he had perfected as a sulky teenager, only so much worse. John abandoned any hope for conversation quickly, falling into an uncomfortable silence because even that was less unnerving than being completely disregarded while Sam drifted along in his own little bubble.
At least he followed on his own now, which wasn’t necessarily helpful but at least not suspicious as they made their way to the coroner’s office and, in it, the decapitated woman’s head. Bribing the med student on duty was easy - John couldn’t help wondering if Sam had been that desperate for money in his Stanford days - and he parked his son somewhere close by before setting to work.
“So, what do you think, Sammy?” he asked quietly, not really expecting an answer, “ritual sacrifices? Why human and animal though? Summoning spell maybe?”
He rambled on, not really caring what he was saying as long as the empty, sterile silence didn’t threaten to swallow him completely. He ran a few half-baked theories by his son who didn’t say much of anything, or anything at all, for that matter. When he found the teeth, he let out a long, tense sigh.
“Vampire,” he breathed.
Sam’s eyes flicked upwards, his brows drawing closer together.
John felt a warmth uncurl in his belly that had nothing to do with the thing before him or the case, but he swallowed it quickly, prodding one of the razor sharp teeth.
He nodded, both to himself and his son. This was bound to be interesting.
+++
The sky had turned a bluish black by the time they were heading back to the motel, and John’s stomach was growling. He was pretty sure Sam was hungry, too. Or he should have been, at least, and that was good enough for the hunter. He pulled into the parking lot of the first diner he saw; a mostly empty building remnant of the fifties, both in style and material. There were only a few other cars in the parking lot, mostly trucks, which meant relative peace and maybe even the opportunity to get a word out of Sam.
Speaking of which. He yanked the key out of the ignition and turned to find Sam giving him a blank, possibly questioning look.
“Food,” he said, as if that explained everything, “Come on, you gotta eat.”
His son blinked at him but obeyed, sliding out of the car with a simple twist of his long legs. He trudged after him across the gravel of the parking lot without a word, no surprise there. John pushed the door to the diner open, a small bell giving a half-hearted ring, and led the way to a booth somewhere in the near-empty room. Sam folded himself into the cramped space opposite him, giving him a hearty kick in the shins while he was at it, his apologetic half-shrug making John ridiculously happy.
The waitress, a girl around Sam’s age with a bobbing ponytail, appeared at their side almost instantly, heavy heels heralding her arrival from behind the counter.
“Hi, and welcome,” she greeted them, her voice high and soft, “What can I get for you?”
John took in the signs above the bar, squinting slightly to bring them into focus, before giving her half a smile.
“Two coffees,” he said, “black?”
“Sure, sir,” was the reply as the girl scribbled the order down on her pad, “anything else?”
“Just one coffee.”
Sam’s soft interruption stopped John, who’d already opened his mouth to order dinner, short. He whipped his head around to gape at Sam, but his son was fully concentrating on the waitress who nodded with a bemused smile on her face.
“Would you like something else?”
“A large caramel mocha with double foam and organic half-and-half,” he said, “if that’s okay?”
“Sure.”
She clonked away, making the silence settling between the two men all the more palpable.
Sam blushed, staring down at the scratched up tabletop, his hands in his lap. John could feel anger rising, white and hot, his fingers just itching to close around that long neck.
“What. The fuck. Was that?” he hissed.
Sam ducked his head lower.
John wasn’t quite sure, but he thought he’d heard him mumble an almost petulant, “It tastes good,” and he really wanted to take something apart right now.
He threw a twenty dollar bill down on the table and practically wrestled Sam, who actually looked alarmed, out of the booth. He gave the arriving waitress a smile which absolutely failed at being reassuring.
“Change of plans, sorry,” he growled, shoving his son out the door and into the deserted parking lot.
“What the fuck was that, Sam?” he snapped again as soon as they were out of sight and earshot.
Sam stumbled back a step, refusing to raise his eyes, and that just pissed John off even more.
“What, you can’t even answer a simple fucking question, but you have no problem ordering your half-caf organic milk mocha bullshit?”
John really hoped to hell and back that Sam hadn’t just murmured “Black coffee tastes like shit”. He really fucking hoped so.
“If Dean could see you now…”
The words hadn’t even left his mouth before John was regretting them already. Sam’s head shot up, his eyes dark and wounded, angry and confused and frightened. How low did he have to sink to tear his son’s heart out because he couldn’t figure out what else to say to him?
“You really think he’d be okay with this?” John shot harshly, wishing he could tear his tongue out to stop it from moving, “You think Dean wouldn’t tell you to stop moping around feeling sorry for your fucking self? Wouldn’t tell you that you’re being God damn selfish?”
Sam took a step back, stumbling slightly as if John was delivering physical blows instead of emotional ones. His face was cracked open, the hurt and pain there for the world to see. John wanted to stop, to hug him and whisper soothing nonsense or to go kill everything he could find or to just go stark crazy and get himself off’d as quickly as possible. He wanted to stop but couldn’t. It was like digging his fingers into a new, open wound, and he could only hope - pray - he was right. If he wasn’t, if this wasn’t what Sam needed, then he wasn’t going to lose his son. He was going to push him over the brink himself.
“Dean would be fucking pissed off is what he’d be. How do you think he’d react if he saw his beloved brother stumbling around like some retard-“
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Sam’s yell caught him off-guard, and for a split second he could only stare at his son who had his hands clasped over his ears like a child before he tore them away, gesturing helplessly.
“Don’t talk- Don’t…” he murmured, staring at his fingers numbly.
“Don’t what? Say the God damned truth?”
John could hardly hear his own voice as he said the words, didn’t want to hear them. All he noticed were Sam’s wide, black eyes, his trembling hands that clenched and unclenched at his sides.
“Face it, Sammy,” he snarled, “Dean would be disgusted by what you’re doing.”
His son lunged forward.
John had been going for that reaction, he knew that, and if Sam had given him any warning, he might have even let him. But with a fist suddenly flying his way, instinct took over and he smacked it out of the way with his left, bringing his right elbow up sharply.
Bone connected with bone with a sickening crunch and against everything John had learned about mass inertia and could actually remember, Sam was suddenly tilting backwards, slamming down onto the trampled ground with a strangled groan. Blood was already splattered across his face as he reached up, smearing it over lips and cheeks. Lifting his head, he blinked at John, then at the blood on his hand. He brushed his fingers trailed his nose, his lips, sliding between them carefully as if he couldn’t quite believe it was his own blood he was tasting. His tongue slid out between his lips, blood leaving bright streaks on it. Sam moved slowly and prodded his nose with the utmost care, but still a small whimper escaped his lips.
The sound startled John out of his stupor and he dropped down at Sam’s side, relief flooding him when Sam didn’t shy away.
He took his shoulder, easing the boy up so he could prop himself up with one elbow.
“You broke my nose, dude!” Sam complained, voice muffled by the blood and his hand covering his mouth and nose.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
John seized his wrist, shoving his hand out of the way. Running his fingers along the skin, fingertips taking on a reddish tint, he ignored Sam’s theatrical display of pain, focusing instead on the bone under his hands. Nothing broken. Sore and a bloody mess, maybe, but not broken. Maybe he was out of practice.
“Come on, Sammy, up,” he commanded, sliding an arm behind him to boost him up. His other arm was already up, in front of him like a safety rail, and he pushed Sam gently into it, feeling his son’s face come to rest somewhere along his elbow.
“I hate you,” Sam mumbled into his arm, making a show of wiping the blood away with the back of his hand, smearing it across his cheek and down the side of his neck.
John couldn’t help smiling as he patted the back of Sam’s neck, leaning back to catch a glimpse of a night sky dotted with small, gleaming stars. Even if he’d thought the boy meant it, at least Sammy was speaking to him again.
+++
Chapter IV
~
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sam/John
Word Count: ~3,200
Disclaimer: Don't own nuttin'.
Warnings: Wincest! Spankings! (Probably.) Character Death! Sex! Not your cup of tea? Then don't touch.
Spoilers: Devil's Trap and beyond
Summary: The surviving Winchesters start hunting again. John takes some drastic measures.
~
So, this is about two weeks late... I'm really sorry and hope you enjoy. Sadly, Hell Week is coming up and I probably won't be around much, mostly running from test to quiz to presentation. But do send feedback and I'll get back to you as soon as possible! :)
~
Part I
Part II
Mockingbird
Chapter III
+++
If that mockingbird don't sing,
I'm gonna buy you a diamond ring
+++
There were times Bobby wasn’t sure if John really deserved it all. Whether he really deserved a son that questioned his every move, preferably when some Hell spawn had just decided feasting on humans would be a really good idea. If he really deserved to be called a stubborn ass and an emotional wreck by everyone he was friends with at some point. Whether he really deserved to have everyone he met want to wring his neck.
Right now, Bobby was actually quite sure of it. Staring at the worn-out boots protruding from under one of the more battered of Bobby’s cars, his fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle he was holding. He could vividly remember the feel of his trusted Remington in his fingers, the heat -and betrayal, always with the fucking betrayal -in John’s eyes, Booby’s hands itching because of some stupid shit his friend had done or said.
This time, it was what he didn’t do.
Because John might be an emotionally stinted and a wreck of a father, but he was still a God damned father and looking at Sam made Bobby’s chest ache.
Bobby was not known as the most compassionate person around.
Still. Since John Winchester had one day shown up at his doorstep with two boys Bobby had only vaguely even heard about in tow, he had had to get used to being called ‘Uncle Bobby’, and he’d grown to like it. He’d watched Sam learn how to walk, clinging tightly to Dean’s hands, he’d helped the kid learn to read Latin and even signed his homework reports every now and then. He’d witnessed him say the most bratty, disrespectful things Bobby had ever heard to his father, and he’d heard John retort with some pretty fucked up things himself. It had never worried him as much as this did, though. Boy sitting on the couch all day, staring at damn nothing. It just wasn’t natural.
John knew that, or he wouldn’t spend his days hiding under cars.
Bobby downed the last of his beer, cast one last, unfriendly gaze at John’s boots, and stepped back inside, screen door clattering shut behind him. He dropped the bottle into the sink noisily. He thought he’d seen Sam flinch slightly, and that was when something inside him just snapped. Heading for his study in sharp strides, he gathered up a stack of papers resting on the table. It was an odd array, cheap local news from all over the country, the ones small enough to not be above reporting the mysterious and unexplained. It was a hefty pile. He rarely managed to sort through them all before the next batch came, and there was seldom something of interest to be found. But that didn’t matter right now.
The hunter marched back into the living room and stopped in front of the couch and Sam, letting the stack of papers drop. The crooked coffee table groaned under the sudden weight, but it held steady. Sam stared at the papers for a moment before he slowly raised his head, to look at Bobby. There was the shadow of a question in wide, mostly lifeless eyes. They made Bobby’s stomach turn.
“Might as well be useful,” he said, looking away, “You know what to look for.”
He hardly dared to breathe as he walked away, but as he pulled the door open, he could see the boy faintly reflected in the glass pane, carefully reaching for the pile in front of him.
+++
John offered astonishingly little resistance when Bobby dragged him out from under the battered frame of some Mustang and steered him towards the house. He grumbled something about food and water and not keeling over and the man obeyed readily (which in itself was enough to make Bobby’s eyes pop).
“Is it that late already?” he asked, frowning up at the slowly darkening sky in irritation.
“Yep,” Bobby said, willing a friendly tone into his voice, and pulled the door open, letting John go first.
Sam was still firmly planted on the couch, but he was holding a battered piece of paper, a newspaper cutting, in his long fingers, not quite looking at it but not away, either. He looked like he wanted to be somewhere else.
Bobby’s wrench caught him in the back painfully as he stopped dead in his tracks.
Sam let his head hang, bangs falling into his face like a curtain, a tint of red creeping over his ears and the back of his neck. But he reached out anyway, holding the clipping in front of him like an offering.
It wasn’t until Bobby cleared his throat behind him that John remembered to move, to take the few steps and take the paper from Sam’s fingers, pretending not to see that they were shaking. Still, it took him a moment to stop staring at the top of Sam’s head and acknowledge the article and the bright red marks on them.
There was a picture of a mostly empty field with a few trees in the distance. It looked the polar opposite of supernatural - let alone eventful - and didn’t even gain much appeal by the caption reading “Field in which mutilated cattle were found.” John scanned the article for underlined passages, phrases jumping out at him immediately.
“Decapitated woman,” “string of murders,” “cattle mutilations”…
He looked down at Sam, who was still finding the tips of his boots terribly interesting, and then at Bobby.
“Our kind of case?” he asked, but Bobby shrugged.
“I wouldn’t know, I didn’t go through ‘em yet. Gotta ask Sam for that one.”
Right.
“Sam?”
It wasn’t really that he’d expected a reaction; it would simply have been nice to get one. With a sigh, he ran his hand over his face, looked back to Bobby who gave him a pointed stare. His friend tilted his head towards the couch. John stared back.
With a barely suppressed groan, Bobby moved beside him, pushing him down onto the couch next to his son before disappearing into the dim passages of the house. Sam didn’t move and John just sat. He sighed, turning the page over and over in his hands, waiting for inspiration. Some divine pointer. Anything.
Nothing came. He chanced a glance at Sam who just stared ahead; it was hard to believe he was supposed to have worked his way through an entire stack of old newspapers.
“Come on, Sam,” he said finally, softly, “talk to me, buddy.”
Sam didn’t, of course. John sighed, rubbing a hand over tired eyes.
“Sam, kiddo, you gotta give me something to work with, here. You read all these reports. Think this could be our kind of thing?”
“I think it’s worth checking out,” Sam said quietly. It seemed to take him forever to do it, but he managed to lift his head and look John in the eye.
John gave his boy a pat on a shoulder so he didn’t just grab him and hold him without ever letting go.
Worth checking out. He could work with that.
+++
They left early the next morning, John stuffing the meager leftovers of their belongings into a few duffel bags. He checked his weapon hold at least four times. The glove box with the Colt inside was locked, his research stored in the small space behind his seat. Sam’s article rested on the very top; John couldn’t help staring at it, at proof of the fact that Sam might be an utter and total wreck, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t brilliant.
He fetched Sam from where the boy had been sitting on his bed as soon as he had packed. Bobby was waiting for them on the porch, beer in hand despite the early hour. Sam let his father steer him toward the car with a light shove in the right direction.
“See ya, Bobby,” he said, barely more than a whisper.
Bobby only narrowly avoided trotting on Rumsfeld II’s tail.
Sam blushed crimson under the stare while Bobby cleared his throat, answer coming ages too late.
“Yeah, sure, Sam,” he stammered, and the boy quickly fled to the truck, sliding down low in his seat.
John gave a weary shrug.
“We will, Bobby,” he said with a wry smile.
“You do that, John,” the man retorted, clasping him on the back, “I don’t want to hear about you - either of you - getting yourself killed. You do, I’ll be coming down to Hell personally to kick yore asses.”
John laughed. He had no doubt that he would, too, the bastard.
“And don’t you go wringing each other’s necks, either, ya hear me?”
John smiled.
“Family’s family, Bobby.”
“Yeah,” Singer growled, “And then there’s ‘Winchester family’, where normal rules don’t apply.”
John snorted, making his way down the steps, but was stopped by Bobby’s call.
The hunter let his gaze travel to a metallic lump resting in the shade under a tree close to the house, covered with a dark cloth.
John sobered up immediately, giving the slightest shake of his head.
“Not yet, Bobby. Please.”
“All right,” Bobby murmured, sending him off with a nod and a small eye roll, but only after John had turned away.
+++
The ride was silent unless John was speaking, making some inane comment about something or other. It was like Sam’s silent treatment which he had perfected as a sulky teenager, only so much worse. John abandoned any hope for conversation quickly, falling into an uncomfortable silence because even that was less unnerving than being completely disregarded while Sam drifted along in his own little bubble.
At least he followed on his own now, which wasn’t necessarily helpful but at least not suspicious as they made their way to the coroner’s office and, in it, the decapitated woman’s head. Bribing the med student on duty was easy - John couldn’t help wondering if Sam had been that desperate for money in his Stanford days - and he parked his son somewhere close by before setting to work.
“So, what do you think, Sammy?” he asked quietly, not really expecting an answer, “ritual sacrifices? Why human and animal though? Summoning spell maybe?”
He rambled on, not really caring what he was saying as long as the empty, sterile silence didn’t threaten to swallow him completely. He ran a few half-baked theories by his son who didn’t say much of anything, or anything at all, for that matter. When he found the teeth, he let out a long, tense sigh.
“Vampire,” he breathed.
Sam’s eyes flicked upwards, his brows drawing closer together.
John felt a warmth uncurl in his belly that had nothing to do with the thing before him or the case, but he swallowed it quickly, prodding one of the razor sharp teeth.
He nodded, both to himself and his son. This was bound to be interesting.
+++
The sky had turned a bluish black by the time they were heading back to the motel, and John’s stomach was growling. He was pretty sure Sam was hungry, too. Or he should have been, at least, and that was good enough for the hunter. He pulled into the parking lot of the first diner he saw; a mostly empty building remnant of the fifties, both in style and material. There were only a few other cars in the parking lot, mostly trucks, which meant relative peace and maybe even the opportunity to get a word out of Sam.
Speaking of which. He yanked the key out of the ignition and turned to find Sam giving him a blank, possibly questioning look.
“Food,” he said, as if that explained everything, “Come on, you gotta eat.”
His son blinked at him but obeyed, sliding out of the car with a simple twist of his long legs. He trudged after him across the gravel of the parking lot without a word, no surprise there. John pushed the door to the diner open, a small bell giving a half-hearted ring, and led the way to a booth somewhere in the near-empty room. Sam folded himself into the cramped space opposite him, giving him a hearty kick in the shins while he was at it, his apologetic half-shrug making John ridiculously happy.
The waitress, a girl around Sam’s age with a bobbing ponytail, appeared at their side almost instantly, heavy heels heralding her arrival from behind the counter.
“Hi, and welcome,” she greeted them, her voice high and soft, “What can I get for you?”
John took in the signs above the bar, squinting slightly to bring them into focus, before giving her half a smile.
“Two coffees,” he said, “black?”
“Sure, sir,” was the reply as the girl scribbled the order down on her pad, “anything else?”
“Just one coffee.”
Sam’s soft interruption stopped John, who’d already opened his mouth to order dinner, short. He whipped his head around to gape at Sam, but his son was fully concentrating on the waitress who nodded with a bemused smile on her face.
“Would you like something else?”
“A large caramel mocha with double foam and organic half-and-half,” he said, “if that’s okay?”
“Sure.”
She clonked away, making the silence settling between the two men all the more palpable.
Sam blushed, staring down at the scratched up tabletop, his hands in his lap. John could feel anger rising, white and hot, his fingers just itching to close around that long neck.
“What. The fuck. Was that?” he hissed.
Sam ducked his head lower.
John wasn’t quite sure, but he thought he’d heard him mumble an almost petulant, “It tastes good,” and he really wanted to take something apart right now.
He threw a twenty dollar bill down on the table and practically wrestled Sam, who actually looked alarmed, out of the booth. He gave the arriving waitress a smile which absolutely failed at being reassuring.
“Change of plans, sorry,” he growled, shoving his son out the door and into the deserted parking lot.
“What the fuck was that, Sam?” he snapped again as soon as they were out of sight and earshot.
Sam stumbled back a step, refusing to raise his eyes, and that just pissed John off even more.
“What, you can’t even answer a simple fucking question, but you have no problem ordering your half-caf organic milk mocha bullshit?”
John really hoped to hell and back that Sam hadn’t just murmured “Black coffee tastes like shit”. He really fucking hoped so.
“If Dean could see you now…”
The words hadn’t even left his mouth before John was regretting them already. Sam’s head shot up, his eyes dark and wounded, angry and confused and frightened. How low did he have to sink to tear his son’s heart out because he couldn’t figure out what else to say to him?
“You really think he’d be okay with this?” John shot harshly, wishing he could tear his tongue out to stop it from moving, “You think Dean wouldn’t tell you to stop moping around feeling sorry for your fucking self? Wouldn’t tell you that you’re being God damn selfish?”
Sam took a step back, stumbling slightly as if John was delivering physical blows instead of emotional ones. His face was cracked open, the hurt and pain there for the world to see. John wanted to stop, to hug him and whisper soothing nonsense or to go kill everything he could find or to just go stark crazy and get himself off’d as quickly as possible. He wanted to stop but couldn’t. It was like digging his fingers into a new, open wound, and he could only hope - pray - he was right. If he wasn’t, if this wasn’t what Sam needed, then he wasn’t going to lose his son. He was going to push him over the brink himself.
“Dean would be fucking pissed off is what he’d be. How do you think he’d react if he saw his beloved brother stumbling around like some retard-“
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Sam’s yell caught him off-guard, and for a split second he could only stare at his son who had his hands clasped over his ears like a child before he tore them away, gesturing helplessly.
“Don’t talk- Don’t…” he murmured, staring at his fingers numbly.
“Don’t what? Say the God damned truth?”
John could hardly hear his own voice as he said the words, didn’t want to hear them. All he noticed were Sam’s wide, black eyes, his trembling hands that clenched and unclenched at his sides.
“Face it, Sammy,” he snarled, “Dean would be disgusted by what you’re doing.”
His son lunged forward.
John had been going for that reaction, he knew that, and if Sam had given him any warning, he might have even let him. But with a fist suddenly flying his way, instinct took over and he smacked it out of the way with his left, bringing his right elbow up sharply.
Bone connected with bone with a sickening crunch and against everything John had learned about mass inertia and could actually remember, Sam was suddenly tilting backwards, slamming down onto the trampled ground with a strangled groan. Blood was already splattered across his face as he reached up, smearing it over lips and cheeks. Lifting his head, he blinked at John, then at the blood on his hand. He brushed his fingers trailed his nose, his lips, sliding between them carefully as if he couldn’t quite believe it was his own blood he was tasting. His tongue slid out between his lips, blood leaving bright streaks on it. Sam moved slowly and prodded his nose with the utmost care, but still a small whimper escaped his lips.
The sound startled John out of his stupor and he dropped down at Sam’s side, relief flooding him when Sam didn’t shy away.
He took his shoulder, easing the boy up so he could prop himself up with one elbow.
“You broke my nose, dude!” Sam complained, voice muffled by the blood and his hand covering his mouth and nose.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
John seized his wrist, shoving his hand out of the way. Running his fingers along the skin, fingertips taking on a reddish tint, he ignored Sam’s theatrical display of pain, focusing instead on the bone under his hands. Nothing broken. Sore and a bloody mess, maybe, but not broken. Maybe he was out of practice.
“Come on, Sammy, up,” he commanded, sliding an arm behind him to boost him up. His other arm was already up, in front of him like a safety rail, and he pushed Sam gently into it, feeling his son’s face come to rest somewhere along his elbow.
“I hate you,” Sam mumbled into his arm, making a show of wiping the blood away with the back of his hand, smearing it across his cheek and down the side of his neck.
John couldn’t help smiling as he patted the back of Sam’s neck, leaning back to catch a glimpse of a night sky dotted with small, gleaming stars. Even if he’d thought the boy meant it, at least Sammy was speaking to him again.
+++
Chapter IV
~