#2 - Parent.
The motel room was dark and eerily silent, save for the dripping of the faucet and the occasional clink of John's glass. Dean had retired to bed hours ago, too many sleepless nights finally catching up with him; Sam had, on a return trip from the bathroom, peeked around the doorway and found him sprawled on his stomach breathing deeply. Sam knew that underneath his pillow, his hand would be clenched around his knife, but the fact that he'd slept through Sam's presence was proof enough that he was sleeping deeply.
Sam probably should have been in bed hours ago, but he was fourteen and restless, more content curled up in the single armchair on the far side of the cabin, reading from a battered copy of an Edgar Allan Poe collection than sleeping. Their father hated him carting books around with them, but this singular book had lasted him almost two years – tucked into the bottom of his duffel when he wasn't reading it, in the hope that his father might forget he had it.
He was almost positive that his father had forgotten him, sat on the far side of the rickety kitchen table, notes spread across it and half a bottle of jack resting in his stomach. One hand played idly with the bottle's lid, as if needing the reassurance of its presence, while the other made harried notes and slowly pieced the hunt together. Sam wondered if his father would stumble into bed that night, or spend another bent awkwardly over the table and drooling onto his papers – if the last week was anything to go by, it would probably be the latter.
Sam found himself observing the older man more than reading his book, which was gradually slipping further down his knees, his bandaged arm failing to prop it up properly whilst his concentration was somewhere else.
When John's head jerked up to face him suddenly, it was almost enough to make him jump; the sensation of those hunter's eyes locking onto him with such intensity sending a shiver through his body.
"Sam." His father said, as if the word was more than a name. An unidentifiable emotion crossed his face and he leant back in his chair, the hand wrapped around the bottle dropping to bring his glass to his lips and drain the last of the amber liquid. "You should be sleeping."
"Probably." Sam admitted with a shrug. "But I start school again next week and the syllabus says that we're doing Poe. I wanted to read through it one last time."
He didn't mention that he knew most of the book off by heart, knew that by bringing school up at all he was already walking a thin line. John wasn't a patient man, and had made his thoughts on the subject clear enough that when he'd mentioned signing the two of them up for the next term, Dean had hesitated before telling him that he didn't think he was going to go back. It seemed ludicrous to Sam, so fond of books and words and learning, that his brother had attended half of his senior year and decided to drop out a few months shy of attaining his diploma; certainly not something his brother would have considered, if not for their father's subtle hints.
"You've read it enough," John said dismissively, waving an unsteady hand. "But suit yourself."
He turned back to his notes, finger trailing the words that he'd already written before he picked up his pen and began to write once more, going back to ignoring Sam's presence.
Sam could feel his shoulders slump; had been certain for a long moment there that his father might send him to bed. Might point out that he was only fourteen, and that being awake at four in the morning was hardly necessary when he would be expected to be out of bed by nine at the latest.
Sometimes, he ached for his father to tell him off for not handing in his homework on time; to ground him for talking back to a teacher, to send him to bed when he was awake in the middle of the night. It seemed that over the years, John had laid more and more responsibility for taking care of Sam on the shoulders of his eldest – depriving Dean of a childhood by making him watch over his kid brother when he should have been out at parties or going on dates with girls.
Dean had never said anything to him, would never make him feel like he resented having to take care of him or blamed him for it, but sometimes Sam felt like a burden nonetheless.
"I don't know why it always surprises me." He found himself blurting, blushing crimson in the same moment that his father raised his head, looking confused.
"What?"
Sam considered backing down. Knew that if he didn't answer, his father would have forgotten the casual comment as if Sam had never said it; he also knew that this was a rare opportunity, a chance for him to talk to his father when his guards were down.
"I said, I don't know why it always surprises me." He repeated, squaring his shoulders a little even as he sank further into his seat. "When you never say the things that you should."
John frowned, sitting back in his seat once more. "And what was I supposed to say?"
"Send me to bed, maybe. It is four in the morning." He shrugged, surprised that his father seemed more puzzled by the comment than angry. It was unusual for him to be so even-tempered, although the alcohol may have had something to do with that. It was a careful balance with their dad - a little was enough to make him irritable, and too much made him down-right volatile - but when he consumed just enough he seemed almost peaceful.
"You're fourteen," Their dad pointed out. "You're old enough to make your own decisions – hell; you've been helping on hunts for the better part of two years, now. If you want to stay up, who am I to tell you to do otherwise?"
"My father?" Sam replied, a little more shortly than usual. "You think that normal dads let their kids stay up half of the night? Normal kids have bed times."
John sighed.
"A bed time would be counterintuitive, don't you think? What's the point of telling you that you have to be in bed by eleven if we're going to be out in graveyards half of the night, digging up graves and burning the bones? You're not normal, Sam, so 'normal kid rules' don't apply."
Sam sighed, a mirror of his father's and closed his eyes, tipping his head back to rest against the high back of the chair, feeling suddenly world weary and tired.
"Sometimes I wish I could be normal," He confessed quietly, running his fingers of the embossed leather cover of his book, fingering the bandages on his arm that covered up three nasty wounds from the claws of a black dog. "More than anything."
There was a long silence, and Sam silently expected that his father had grown tired of the conversation and turned back to his notes, but didn't have the energy to open his eyes and see for sure, or even to be angry at the dismissal.
His father's voice was almost melancholic, when it broke the stillness of the cabin.
"Sometimes I wish you could be normal, too, Sam." He said gently. "More than anything, I wish you could have the future that Mary would have wanted for you – to be a happy, normal kid who just had to worry about soccer trials or a bad grade. I wish that you'd never had to shoot a gun or see half of the things that you've seen. I wish that your only trips to the hospital had been because you fell off your bike or your skateboard, not because your arm had been gashed open by a black dog."
He fell silent for a long moment, and then continued.
"Sometimes I wish that I'd died in that fire instead of Mary; that she'd raised you, because she sure as hell would have done a better job than I have. I can't give up the hunt, Sam, and maybe that's selfish, maybe it makes me a bad parent, but I can't bring myself to stop and risk one of you waking up to something going bump in the dark and not knowing how to protect yourselves. I can't bring myself to stop, and risk one of you dying like your mother."
"Mostly, I wish that I could see a future for you and your brother that didn't involve armouries in the trunk of your cars and spending half of your lives tracking down the creatures that the rest of the world likes to pretend don't exist, but I can't."
Sam kept his eyes closed, heard the clink of his father pouring himself another shot of jack and imagined brightly coloured college brochures and days spent playing Frisbee on the courtyard and meeting girls for coffee dates in coffee shops, spending his nights in a dorm room and attending lectures.
He saw everything that his father couldn't, and he wished.
"Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime." – J.G. Ballard.