Chapter Text
John Winchester frowns, tightening his grip on the remote and hunching forward slightly.
“Dad!” Dean’s voice floats towards him from some corner or another of the shabby motel they’d holed up in.
(“Just for the night”, he’d reassured his eldest. “Just until we find someplace more permanent.” Variations of the same words he’d repeated almost twice a week for the past six months.)
“Yeah?” John calls absently, eyes never leaving the screen.
“Dad, look!”
“Not now, Dean. Gimme a sec.”
“But Dad-“
“Dean.”
His son fall silent, and John leans forward, concentrating on the words coming from the reporter: “-six months old baby, now an orphan. Police are still searching for any other survivors. The fire left little to-”
John leans back, a surge of vindictive pleasure coursing through him.
The sick bastard. We got him.
There’s a shriek, and John finally looks over, watching as Sam totters two final steps towards Dean before collapsing in a fit of giggles.
Dean sticks out a hand, “Alright, Sammy! You’re a natural!”
Sam practically glows as he slaps Dean’s hand, sticking his free fist into his mouth and emitting an inarticulate shriek of happiness.
Maybe too much happiness, John can’t help but think, and he watches as his youngest, overcome with enthusiasm, loses his balance and pitches flat onto his face.
Not unexpectedly, Sammy bursts into tears.
Concerned, John moves to grab him, but before he can rise off the bed Dean is there, quickly scooping up his brother and clutching him in a death grip.
John watches the scene, a trickle of amusement clawing it’s way forward.
‘Atta boy.
He’s not sure which of his sons he is referring to, and pretends not to see the all-consuming panic on Dean’s face before the latter has managed to wipe it away.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, it occurs to John that Sam’s first steps were towards his brother. Not that he had many options to choose from, but even this is a damn good portrayal of the developing Winchester dynamic if he ever saw one.
Eventually, he will decide that there’s nothing wrong with a little responsibility on Dean’s part. Sam needs a good figure to look up to, and it’s better this way. Really.
Sammy’s cries soften into hiccups as he sniffles into his brother’s shirt, and Dean rubs small circles onto his back, whispering soothingly. John can just barely catch bits of words- “it’s alright, Sammy”- “you’re fine, I got you”- “don’ worry about it”- “s’fine, it’ll all be okay”-
John, strangely enough, feels as though he’s intruding on a moment that he was never intended to witness. As he watches his boys- Sam’s ironclad grip on Dean’s shirt, and the fierce love etched into every line of the elder’s face- John can’t but feel that he’s stumbled upon a crossroads that he’d had no idea had existed. It’s almost as if some monumental decision had just been reached, and he hadn’t been consulted.
He grimaces, shoving that idea to the back of his mind. He’ll think about it later.
Always later.
For now, he turns away: turns his back on his kids and his face towards the horror in front of him as he focuses once more on the reporter. Hastily, he scribbles down the name of the town flashing across the screen, underlining it with a slash of violent finality.
In the distance, Sammy’s tears have once again transformed into laughter; but the sound is like white noise in John’s ears, and he stares at the screen, whispering an oath under his breath that he’s repeated on this very day every year:
“It’ll all be over soon, Mary, I promise.”