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It’s been a bad week.
There’s something going on in town, and the only motel with a vacancy has just a single bed. John lets the boys have it. He’s slept upright with a helmet clasped under his chin and the butt of a gun as a pillow before, back during the war. This thing—a decently plush recliner that’s pretty damn luxurious if you don’t start asking questions about the slick black stains or the musty smell that comes off it if you fluff the armrests too much—is more than adequate.
He has about two days until he needs to head out, two days to be alone with his thoughts and memories. In the silence, he broods and worries. Despite all the atrocities of the war and the desperate wickedness of the human heart, John was always comfortable in the idea that even the cruelest mind could be snuffed out with a bullet to the brain. Even an evil man in body armor could be killed if you just took off the damn vest to get to warm, vulnerable flesh.
John always took comfort in that. He’s highly trained. He can go up against human flesh and prevail.
He’s trying, damn it. He’s trying to get his boys ready to face this new threat, but he can’t. No matter what he does, he can’t protect them, can’t prepare them to fight the threats no one can even see, the ones that come into your nursery in the night and—
John swallows the memories with a generous helping of Jack. Mary, his sweet Mary, she didn’t know what was out there, and it got her. John’s love did nothing for her.
Knowledge is all he can give his boys. Knowledge and training.
Today, Sammy’s come down with something, what with the rain and the cold and how he insists on keeping the window down and sticking his head out all day. Yesterday, he didn’t wake Dean up with airplane sounds, and Dean was immediately on guard, watching everything Sam did with the eyes of a hunter. (Dean’s gonna be a great hunter one day, the best.)
By mid-afternoon, Sammy had been grumpy and sluggish. By dinner he’d started complaining that his throat and tummy felt funny, and by ten that night he’d spiked a fever that had scared John. He wouldn’t even answer questions, whimpering and curling into a tiny ball, flinching away from touch. He hadn’t kept down the fever reducers for long, so Dean had settled in with a cool rag and slept beside Sam all night, cooing soothing noises at him whenever he got agitated and wringing the rag out a few times every hour with cool water.
A part of John envies that. He can’t be the man he was when Mary was alive, though. That kind of softness is what got his wife killed. So he watches, fingers clenching and unclenching with the need to do something.
“Dean,” he says, voice gruff and low with either exhaustion or alcohol. He can’t tell. Maybe both.
Dean looks up with wide eyes, whispers, “Sir?”
“How is he?” John gets up from his seat, and it’s definitely the alcohol, his head swimming with it. He steadies himself and walks over to Sam’s bed, settling a warm, dry palm on Sam’s forehead.
Still too hot.
Dean watches John with all the attentiveness of a wild animal, waiting to see what he’ll do. He only relaxes when John steps back, and then his gaze returns to Sammy, who’s still sleeping.
“Fever’s still high. I got him to keep down some water earlier, so we don’t need to worry about dehydration just yet.”
“Good,” John says, and returns to his seat. “If it doesn’t break by nightfall or he still can’t keep anything down, there was a clinic on the way into town.”
Dean nods without looking up. “By the pharmacy and the place with the sign with cheese on it. I know.”
Sometimes, John regrets.
He knows that Dean has sacrificed a lot, knows that Sam hasn’t made some of those sacrifices only because he never had any of those things long enough to give them up. He can’t see any other options, though.
The fever breaks in late afternoon, and Dean murmurs praises under his breath as Sammy opens his eyes and sees his brother for the first time in almost two days. Sam bursts into tears, blubbering Dean’s name, and Dean gathers his little brother up and smoothes sweaty tangles of soft brown hair back from his forehead. Sam is too tired to do much after the effort of the kind of crying only a five (almost six) year old can manage, so he lies pliant and trusting as Dean presses a kiss to one cheek and then helps his brother out of sweat-damp superhero pajamas and into clean clothes with all the focus and patience of a saint.
John watches, and doesn’t stand. Something twists inside him that even the burn of alcohol won’t loosen. John is sure that, to Dean, taking care of his brother is a given. To Sam, John thinks, that unconditional trust and love is merely a natural response.
He wonders, from the outside, if either of the boys realizes how deep that bond goes. He wonders if anyone else will see it, will try to break it.
It’s better, though—better together than apart. He’s glad they’ll have another person with whom they can share the burden.
John wants to get up and hug his boys, tell them he’s so proud, but the words stick in his throat and get lost there, because he’s made his bed already, assumed his role, and there's no use complaining about it now.
John sighs and stands, giving the recliner a sideways glance. Instead of saying I love you, he claps a hand on Dean’s shoulder, the thin, bony shoulder that supports another life, and he squeezes, and says, “I’m gonna take a nap, son.”
And Dean just nods, looking up at John for a long while, like he can read the words he’s not saying. “I know,” he whispers, and for a moment John has all of his eldest son’s attention. “I’ll watch out for Sammy.”
Then the moment is gone. Dean turns back to Sammy, who's still woozy and weak, and curls in close to his little brother to whisper nonsense-words until he falls to sleep.