John is road weary. Kansas to North Carolina is no easy jaunt. But the miles aren't the only thing adding to the weight on his shoulders. Kansas is always hard, he thinks as he glances in the rear view mirror to the back seat. He flicks his itchy, bloodshot, half-closed eyes back to the narrow rural highway. He considers those sleeping boys in the backseat, tangled up in growing arms and legs and, in Sammy's case, hair. He recognizes their mother in the way Dean sleeps with his mouth slightly open, in how Sam manages to be sprawled in every direction at once. He sees Mary in them. He always does, but . . . Kansas is always hard. Because he sees her in everything there.
John is road wary, as well. It takes a hell of a case to bring him this far south. He will only brave humidity so high that you can see it for cases he thinks no one else can solve. Makes him a little self-important, he acknowledges with an unseen smirk. Doesn't make it less true. This particular case sparked his interest and his concern. It's not every day a man hears of the asphalt attacking the vehicles traveling over it. For a Hunter, whose life is spent on the road, it is a particularly pertinent occurrence. The road is the only home his boys know, and he's damn well going to keep it safe no matter where it happens to be.
Driving through the oasis shimmer between the blacktop and the horizon, John feels like the Impala is already being attacked. Summer sun in the South is a violent companion. Why people choose to live like this is beyond him.
Until he drives past a small stretch of riverbank. And he gets it.
The river is large enough to have a sandy beach that he can see through his windshield as he slows down. Pretty young women in cut off shorts, sunburned kids carefully watched by their mothers who no doubt, not so long ago, were the cut off shorts girls of their day. And the dads, dudes, and gangly teen boys gathered around the grills; some with beer in their hands, some with beer in their sights. A family cook out from the looks of it. Just a fun gathering on the banks of the river that gives this tiny little town its name and its life's blood.
How normal and mundane and hot and uncomfortable and wonderful it looks to John.
"Looks fun," he hears Dean rasp. The sleep still thick in his changed voice. His oldest boy is sixteen now. Already seen so much. Already done too much. John knows that the weight on his own shoulders is no comparison to what weighs his boy down. He feels a deep guilt about which he has no understanding of how to deal with.
"Yeah, it does, huh," he drawls back quietly to his boy. Best not wake Sammy if they can help it. Too late.
"Maybe we can stop, Dad?" Sam suggests with a forced optimism that guts John.
"Well, Sammy, I think they're a family. Don't want to crash their party."
"Yeah, I guess," comes his twelve year old's muffled reply. Sam has turned backward to hang on as long as he can to the quickly fading glimpse of what a happy Sunday afternoon looks like.
"Anyway, Sammy, you forgot your bikini," Dean teases to bring him back to this world, their world.
"Not a girl, Dean."
"Cut your hair, Sam."
"Boys," John cuts in. No need to let this evolve into one of the ever-increasing arguments the boys have perfected over the last year or so. Sam fights back more often than not these days, and Dean isn't sure how to handle it. So he fights attitude with snark. Never a fun time while trapped in the car. It takes not another word from their father to quiet them. They're good boys, he muses. Good soldiers.
Good soldiers. John allows the thought to get to him, as it does from time to time. It's not a thought he allows often because he knows this is what they need to survive. They need the training, the hardness, the vigilance to get through this day and every other. But today, just this once, John wishes he could give them that happiness he saw on the riverbank. But he drives on because there's a monster out there. There always is.
Six hours later, John is face to face with this one. The blacktop rises quickly, resembling a monster from a Scooby Doo cartoon. An unformed blob at first then a fully formed man, though made of tar and gravel. The Winchesters are not caught unaware; they are, after all, the best at what they do even given the tender ages of the boys.
They figured the location from the weathered cross on the side of this backwoods road. The blunted, broken trees across the road give testament to an awful moment that ended a life and spawned an angry spirit. As John peels the Impala away from the angry remnant of a dead young man, the creature bursts into flame. Not far from this place that glows with a foul smelling fire, Dean and Sammy have ignited the bones of of this twenty-one year old boy. A boy who never saw what his life should have been. A boy whose spirit is so angry that it took the lives of others.
John thinks of his own boys, moving both too fast and too slow toward adulthood. He makes a decision and goes to pick them up. No more graveyards, no more death, no more monsters this trip. He finds a cheap motel, settles the boys, and goes out hunting. But not for monsters.
"Zoinks," Dean deadpans when John describes the tar monster, as Sammy is calling it. The boys crumble into laughter and their Dad joins them. A bit unexpected.
"You're in a great mood," Sammy tells him, a little shocked.
"I guess I am. I have a surprize for you boys." His sons look at him with mouths open, completely unprepared for that unusual response.
"Really? Another case?" Dean asks from the passenger seat.
"Yeah." Their faces fall, but John chuckles. "A case of beer!"
John pulls the car into a partially hidden turnout on the side of the road. The soft but already hot sun glitters off the water of the river now in front of them and reveals a picnic table and rusty old grill. The boys are still in their confusion, so John gets out of the car, opens the trunk, and removes the green cooler.
"I got beer and burgers here. Dean, want to start that grill?"
John watches all morning and into the afternoon as his children splash each other in the cool water, walk quietly on its banks. He watches Dean take a beer from the cooler and doesn't stop him. He watches Dean give Sammy his first sip and lets him do it instead of himself because Dean has earned that right. He watches them make a complete mess of themselves while eating the double-bacon-double-cheese-no-lettuce-you're-doing-it-wrong-double-burger that brings a ketchupy smile to Dean's face, and watches them get sticky with the fresh fruit and half-melted ice cream John got just for Sammy. He watches them jump back in the water to wash it all off. He watches the freckles appear on Dean's nose and the highlights surface in Sammy's hair. He watches the surrounding woods to be sure that nothing comes out of them. Because even on this beautiful no-monsters day, they all know the no-monsters part is just an illusion. It is an illusion John could not have happier to give them.
"Any burgers left?"
There are, and they gather at the picnic table together once more.