Warning: language, some slightly graphic descriptions of mauling injuries, death of a teenager
What Could Be Lost
He was only a year older than Dean.
That seemed to be the only difference between the two. Dirty blonde hair only a few shades darker, a smirk as cocky as they come and a grin as blindingly charming as it could be, sharp green eyes that were alert and aware and beautifully striking. Made John pause at how similar they looked to his own elder son's.
He had the same devil-may-care attitude and the same smarts (got all that knack for science subjects, came through his grades in school for the three courses, especially Physics and Chemistry. Dean's ingenuity came through in his own inventions, in how he used all that knowledge to come up with some damn good ideas in hunting). Most of all, he had the same pure and altruistic heart that his own boy did.
Jason Ross, another hunter's kid. A friend named Richard that he was teaming up with against a black dog.
And that was the mistake right there, to think that there was only one.
Usually, there were tells about these kinds of things. Killings double that of the usual by one creature in the same amount of time, for instance. Injuries far more gruesome and extreme on the victims, ripped apart viciously by two pairs of claws and two jaws. Reports of two strange, gigantic animals rather than one by witnesses.
John wasn't sure what really went wrong here, whether it was something they themselves missed or if these particular monsters were of higher intelligence than others of their kind. He didn't really know. He never saw it coming, never figured it out. None of them did.
The sorrow and regret was there all the same after it was all over.
These things happened in their line of work. It wasn't the first time that he lost friends or friends of friends to the monsters in the dark, wasn't the first time he had to listen to their screams or watch them get horrifically killed in front of him or find their dead bodies after. It always fucked him up, but he had to move on, had to let it go if he wanted to keep going, keep focusing.
The convulsive jolts of deep, utter horror were there all the same when it all happened.
They had split up in search of their prey, covering more ground that way. It seemed a better idea to Richard rather than sticking close and probably taking far too long to find it, as well as for them all to be in one place, making it easier for the monster to attack them all at once. If any of them got in trouble, the other could ambush the black dog. It sounded right to him too, so he went east of the woods, and they went south. Father and son, and him alone.
John heard his screams first.
Raw, hard screams of excruciating agony in the midst of guttural growls. Jason. Jason who looked and talked and walked too much like Dean. Jason who loved black Thunderbird cars and crispy chicken and Physics and still somehow laughed easy and free like life was a brighter and better thing than it really was.
Jason who looked and talked and walked too much like Dean.
Jason who was screaming and screaming and screaming, being shredded apart brutally by claws and jaws right in front of his father. The sounds Richard was making, though, could not be called screams, but rather howls of rippling, unrestrained, raw grief.
And John was running as fast and hard as he can, but it felt like he wasn't even moving, the way it felt so long and far. In the middle of it all, he could sense it in the back of his mind, that logical part of him, telling him there was no way he could make it. The part that was at the forefront of his mind was begging his body to finally get there, so that he could shoot the sons of bitches down and take the kid to the hospital and just fucking get him out alive.
Even as the screams were weakening, were dying out, because Jason was running out of oxygen and blood and he was still fucking running and running and running even though it's been so long and far already, even though his legs and ankles ached with how hard they'd been hitting the ground.
Richard's agonized screams followed too after a while, before being cut off abruptly.
By the time he had finally gotten there, jerking to a halt as his boots skidded against the dirt and leaves, all of the screams had stopped altogether.
The sight that met him almost made him throw up everything he had in his stomach.
The two black dogs were still feasting on their bodies, the father and son's eyes' unseeing and splattered with specks of blood. Richard's leg was caught in a bear trap, and he was not as mauled and mutilated as the boy, but rather had a few slashes across his body, three killing cuts across his throat.
He couldn't have even recognized Jason at all if he didn't already know it was him.
It led John to think that these monsters may have been a bit more monstrous than others. Less primal and more cruel.
Before they could even raise their heads and become aware of his presence, John lifted his shotgun, hands quivering just the slightest bit, and fired them both in the head, explosions ringing out. The one over Richard's body first, dropped dead with a thud that sounded like an earthquake in the mostly quiet, and only a split second later, turned it on the one over Jason's corpse.
He didn't stop shooting until he ran out of bullets.
…
He fiddled with his motel room key for a damn good time before he finally managed to get it in, twist it, and click it open. He pushed open the door and stumbled into the dark motel room, so drunk he could barely see straight. The world was spinning and he wanted it to fucking stop.
He wanted this horrible fucking hollowness and pain in his chest and the perpetual sickness in his stomach to stop, the images in his head of all the blood and sorrow, the way his hands and body shook when he put the boy into the ground, when he imagined the pain that Richard had felt in his last moments, not of the monster's claws dragging across his flesh, but that unthinkable despair and terror and wretched mourn of watching his son get ripped apart and being shackled down by a fucking bear trap of all things, not being able to do a damn fucking thing about it.
John thought that was what would have killed him way before the monster would have, if that was Dean instead of Jason and him instead of Richard. He would have died before his heart even stopped beating if his boy got viciously murdered in front of him like that.
Jason. Jason was too close to Dean in everything he said and did, and that was the worst fucking part.
The images hazed by in his head no matter how hard he tried to shake them away, not just of the gruesome scene, but of the simplest memories of the boy, the boy and his father, his friend. Their mingling laughters, Jason's eyes twinkling when he saw a pretty girl, the way Richard never held back on showing the bone-deep love he felt for his kid (unlike John himself). They went straight to his heart, and it felt like a knife.
"Dad?"
That was Dean's voice, rough and groggy with slumber, and he felt like the shittiest person in the world for the swell of relief and conflicted joy he felt, because it hadn't been his boy, even if that boy had resembled him strikingly.
Sam shifted on the other bed too, but, through the vertigo as he leaned against the wall sideways, he could see the shadowed silhouette of Dean, in the dimmest moonlight, quickly rush to his brother's side, gently soothing him back to sleep.
"It's okay, Sammy. Everything's fine," he was murmuring, could slightly see his arm move and knew that he was stroking his fingers through Sam's unruly mop of hair. Damn that boy needed a haircut. Told him that countless of times, but he never listened.
John tried to stagger towards the couch, since both beds were occupied. His body felt heavy and his knees felt weak and light, and all he wanted was to sleep and not dream, to just forget that the world and his life and he existed, forget that the sickening things he saw today really did happen even when it felt so far from him right now (and it was better that way, but it wasn't enough), like it was just something he had seen on a movie screen a couple of hours ago.
He knew when he would wake up tomorrow morning, he would feel everything all over again.
When he swayed a little too forward and almost fell on his face, he felt hands clutch him around the chest and back, supporting him on his feet. And it was the same person's hands holding him up as it had always been, every single time he came home after a bad hunt, too broken and drunk to see or talk straight.
"Alright, let's get you to the bed," Dean's voice, muttering softly. He looked at him, could barely make out his face through the blur and dizziness and the dark, but his eyes prickled at the sight of him nonetheless.
This was his boy. One of the greatest gifts Mary had given him, right along with Sammy. This was his boy, his kid (too much like his mother) and he was the one always taking care of him, of this family. Hell knows what would become of John if he ever had to lose him (Jason's body flashed across his mind, and he tried not to puke from the alcohol and the ripple of horrible anguish that memory still gave him. It was beginning to feel too close again).
"D'n…" he slurred. Dean didn't respond, so maybe he didn't hear.
He found himself being pushed down on something that dented with his weight. Took him a couple of seconds to recognize it as a mattress. Dean removed his arm from around the back of his neck.
"B'ddy…"
"Yeah, dad?" Dean said lightly, patiently, and he wanted to tell him about everything that had happened, and he wanted to promise him that he wouldn't ever let that be them, and he wanted him to know what he meant to him (fucking everything, him and Sam. They were all he kept going for sometimes, when everything started seeming hopeless).
But his head was too scattered and hazy and he couldn't get his brain to connect to his mouth enough to tell him all these things. It all felt too complicated and difficult to say right now, but maybe he would have found it hard to tell them to him anyway, so instead he said, "C'me 'ere." And then he grasped Dean's elbow and pulled him down beside him.
Dean followed his tugging, lowering compliant and easy. As soon as he landed down on the bed, John had him hauled into his arms in less than a second, arms strong and tight around his lean body, his chin on his shoulder and his own head leaning against his, Dean's hands pressing uncertainly onto the hard mattress.
"You wanna tell me what the hell happened on the hunt?" Dean asked. John said nothing, just settled his hand on the back of his head and held him tighter when the bloody images rushed through his head again.
After a while, it seemed that Dean gave up on waiting for any kind of verbal answer from his drunk-as-fuck father, and raised his own arms to reciprocate his embrace. Said what he always did to comfort him after a bad one, "It's okay, Dad. It's okay."
Some part of him ached, because Dean should never have to say this to him. Should be the other way around.
The rest of him needed it, so he soaked in the words, reminded himself of that fact, and said nothing.
There were so many things he wanted to say, things he never could. Things that were so easily exchanged between the father and son whose memories would haunt his mind for months to come.
"Don' ev'r m'ke me b'ry 'ou," was all he could manage, slurred and incoherent and muffled into the boy's shirt, words running into each other. "Don', you 'ear me?"
Either it took Dean a while to decrypt his words or he was just really confused as to what brought it on, but he didn't say anything to it for a while.
And then he said softly, still confused and unsure, "Yeah, you know I won't. I'm always careful."
"You an' S'm… all I 'ave."
"I know." He let out a huff of a nervous laugh. "Fuck, Dad. You're kinda scarin' me here."
"Don' be sc'red, b'ddy," he whispered, leaned a little more heavily against Dean as his eyes grew heavier too. "Won' let anythin' h'ppen t'any 'f us."
He thought Dean might have said something. Something about tomorrow morning and the hunt. Before he could even think about what it might have been, his mind fell into a whiskey-induced darkness, dreamless and welcoming and sweet.
Author's Note: Something to clear the rust off, and hopefully get me back into the flow of writing.
I made these black dogs smarter. I don't know if that's unlikely, but let's just go with it. :P
I hope you enjoyed this! If you have a moment, let me know your thoughts! I'd love to hear them. Constructive criticism is welcome, as long as it's polite and respectful. If you've gotten to the end, thank you so much for giving my story a chance, for reading it! It really means a lot. :D