A/N: Sooo… anyone believe me if I said my girlfriend was pinned to the ceiling and burned alive, so I had to go on a year long hiatus to hunt the demon down and kill it? No? Yeah me either, especially considering how attractive I find Jensen and Jared :D For all of you who happen to read any of my other stories, I have no clue when I will work on those, but I wouldn't count on anything. New stories may or may not churn out, who knows?
In this story, Sam is 12 and Dean is 16 but they don't ever star. A plot bunny hit me, demanding that I write John's reaction at learning he might have to kill his baby boy.
Reviews are REALLY appreciated as are suggestions, criticisms, and spare cookies! Thank you so much for reading-enjoy!
Dedicated to the absolutely amazing and talented Autopsy Gremlin-never would have posted this without your support! Thank you, Madame Director!
Like A Dog
" John." Bobby barely glanced up from his book, far too used to the scraggly man stumbling across his kitchen at strange hours to wonder what the hell he was doing. Drinking, researching, hunting... After so many years, Bobby had given up trying to convince John to get his act together and devoted his efforts instead into ensuring that his sons didn't follow their father's drunken path.
Unfortunately, the Winchesters' stays tended to be brief, especially now that Sam was old enough to hunt and Dean's talent was inching closer and closer to his father's. But this out of the blue week-long stay, dumping a worry-eyed Dean and a whining Sammy, whose book bag had to weigh twice as much as the kid himself on his door step during the day and disappearing at night, left Bobby wondering if John would survive long enough to teach the boys everything he knew.
Dean, Bobby suspected, was gone. Lost in the wonder of the hunt and the brief moments of pride he dragged out of his stubborn father. There were only so many more months of school Dean would endure before accepting his GED. The only reason Dean hadn't called it quits all ready was a worry for Sam. Though too far apart to attend the same school most days, Dean managed to keep one eye on his younger brother no matter what.
Which brought Bobby to the second half of the problem. Sammy remained the same little kid who climbed the dangerous stacks of cars outside in an effort to find a decent hiding place to read and moaned about missing school like a fog horn, but in careful moments, especially during training, the chinks in his armor shivered, revealing for a moment a terrified young man unsure of where the hell he was supposed to be. Sammy would never drop out of school, hell he would teleport straight to college if he wasn't terrified of what John Winchester would say.
The slam of glass on Bobby's desk drew his gaze from an old exorcism, directing it to the hallowed out holes in his friend's eye sockets. Slowly, Bobby tipped himself a few fingers worth before passing the bottle to John, who hadn't bothered fetching a glass for himself.
Tilting his head back to the book, Bobby resisted the urge to scream and demand what the hell went wrong. Unlike Sammy, Dean and John needed to talk on their own time while the youngest, for now, could be prodded and poked into yakking his head off.
The Latin slipped past his eyes like a river, rushing away before he could distinguish any syllables. All that mattered was the silence across from him; John seemed intent on sitting in that damn chair all night, his breath silent as the moon.
" Talked to a demon." A bubble of air caught in Bobby's lungs, tight and merciless. Swallowing the lecture about hunting alone, Bobby nodded, finally inspecting his friend's face, dropping the disinterested facade.
Familiar dark circles lay beneath those dead, dull eyes Bobby hadn't cringed at since Mary's death, John's scarred fingers strangling themselves in clenched fists, his chest barely lifting against the stale, waiting air.
" Demons lie." Bobby said, John snorted.
" Yeah, they do. And God, I wish it were true. But I don't think so." Bobby didn't bother asking how the idjit knew; John Winchester's gut had yet to fail the man.
" And?"
" And it told me that my baby boy might be a monster in waiting." The words glided across the air easily, swooping and dipping like an eagle before slashing and clawing in a manic assault, exorcizing any air or coherent thought from Bobby's body without any Latin. Dean had never been John's baby boy; just his son. And that left the softly sleeping little boy upstairs, exhausted from an endless day of playing soccer with his big brother.
" John-"
Brown eyes, melted black, struck his, killing the words in his throat. No argument hid there, no fight.
" Apparently, when he gets older, he's gonna lead a demon army. The Boy King, it called him." Boy King. Sammy's voice of a lifetime ago tumbled past Bobby's cowering ears: ' Listen to this, Uncle Bobby! King Tut'nkhamoon was named king of Egypt at age nine! If I were him, I'd be king in two years!' He'd smirked at the kid and his poor pronunciation and told him to go practice his ruling skills by ordering his father and brother inside for dinner, Impala be damned.
A sigh rolled over Bobby, bitter and cold. Like a vengeful spirit. Not a bad analogy for the mess of a man across from him, dragging his sons on a crusade all over the country.
" I can't let that happen Bobby, can't let him turn into Mary's killer..." Bobby's lips parted, stinging with sarcastic assurances and reprimands. Because how the hell could John even consider the possibility of Sammy, the same Sammy who still laughed at the Sunday comics and believed Dean when he told him everything would be all right, turning into a monster? John beat him to it, though, beat him with every weapon in the Impala's trunk and every punch and kick and gunshot he could muster with his next words, " I researched it in the library... single dose of barbiturate should do the trick. It's what they use on dogs, I think. I'll tell him it's a flu shot or something, he'll never know..."
The punch came straight from Bobby's shredded heart, his fist roaring against John's slack face, the words that skipped over his lips the smoke from the bonfire tearing through his chest.
" Your son is not a goddamn dog! And I'll be damned if I let you put him down like one! Sam is not a demon nor will he ever be! You hear me, you selfish bastard? I don't give a fuck what some tortured demon said; you give your son the chance he deserves and more! You don't kill him because you're too scared of what might happen!" He pauses, just long enough to catch his breath and let the venom seething in his veins chain his next syllables together. " If I ever find out or hear you even consider hurting Sammy again, I will put a silver bullet in your heart." He spun, nearly toppling over a five foot tall stack of books, before storming up the stairs, fingers white and trembling around the neck of a whiskey bottle, a twisted smile creeping onto his face as John's shattered sobs saturated the living room.
When he woke the next morning, after stumbling down stairs with a thousand drums beating into his skull and swearing like only a hunter can, he grinned at the fresh pot of coffee and Advil carefully placed next to the day's newspaper: the headlines spouting theories about the veterinary clinic's recent break in, partially obscured by a cold vial and even chillier syringe.
" Idjits."