The night Sam leaves for Stanford, John doesn't lose one son. He loses two.
While he sits in the house, ashen face hidden behind callused hands, he hears Dean run out into the pouring rain. Hears him ordering Sam back inside. Like Sam is somehow their little soldier, like he's anything more than a person at the end of the rope. Sam yells something back—something horrible and heartbreaking, disowning Dean. Telling him they're not family anymore.
A single strike of lightning, one long groan of thunder. And in absence of that, there's just silence. So John goes to investigate.
It's hours later. Dean is kneeling in the middle of the road and refuses to get up. John's tried everything. Asking. Ordering. Pleading. Threatening. And finally, he brings out a blanket and wraps it around Dean's soaking shoulders. Dean looks like he's five again, five and small and scared, wondering where his momma is, wondering why there was a fire and why Sammy wakes up in the middle of the night crying out at some phantom thing and why daddy is so broken and hopeless and why he's so alone.
Dean looks up at the soft touch of the blanket. His eyes—pitiful, helpless eyes, he's twenty-two and there's still so much, so much he doesn't understand about the world and why things hurt and break and bleed the way they do—lift, come up to John's face.
"He's gonna come back." Dean says, and it's just a whisper, just a breath. "He'll come back. Right, dad?" Dean's voice breaks. Breaks the way the rest of Dean never does. Never did until his baby brother walked out that door.
"Of course he'll be back, son." John rests a comforting hand on Dean's shoulder. "He'll be back before sunrise, you'll see."
But Sam doesn't come back. Not that night. Not ever. Eventually the hunts bring Dean up off his knees, off the road where he waited for three days like an abused, sad, neglected dog who's so sure its master is coming home. Doesn't understand: it's unwanted. It's been abandoned. The person it loved has moved on to better things and new horizons.
He finally eats. Gets his head back in the game.
John goes driving to find Sam, and never picks up a trace. Knows Sam's at Stanford. Pretends to sleep through the late-night phone calls, Dean begging his brother to come home, promising they can all work something out, be a family again. Pretends he doesn't hear the sobs catch in Dean's throat. John may be Dean's father, but Sam is Dean's whole world. And it's left him. Left them both.
Dean never gets a warm body on the phone. Just voicemail.
It's all the little things. The smell of Sam's musk attached to the duffle he would always carry for them. Sam's hoodie, that stupid worn-out thing he left in the dryer. The necklace Dean wears tucked between his shirt and his chest, where it can feel his heartbeat and he thinks John can't see. Sam's favorite foods, Sam's favorite songs, Sam's initials carved under the upholstery in the car.
It's the parts that aren't there, too. It's the absence of his laugh. It's the sound of just two heartbeats in a dead-quiet car. It's the way Dean doesn't have to make the food different, or clean up the sink when he's done shaving, or put the cap on the toothpaste. It's in the way there's no one to hold them together when they come home wrecked and falling apart, bandaging their wounds and bringing them back from the edge.
All these bits and pieces of Sam like phantom taunts and memories, and John watches Dean watch them, and watches his oldest son fall to pieces. And then start to rebuild. A hard shell.
The smell of Sam fades from the dash. His voice, fading from their memories. His face preserved in a picture in John's wallet, burned on behind Dean's eyes. They don't talk about him. Ever. Not even to each other. Dean sleeps at night now. No more phone calls. No more family.
One night John wakes up in a motel room. Alone. And it's just like the night Sam left, because Dean is also gone. John is out of bed, out the door before he realizes what he's looking for.
It's raining again. Just like that night. And Dean is standing, shirtless, barefoot, soaked in the middle of the street. Amulet on. Hair plastered to his forehead. He's been sick with a fever for a week, poisoned by the last monster they hunted. Circles like smoky shadows under his eyes. He's never looked sicker. And medicine can only do so much.
He's screaming. Hoarse, bloody murder, breaking for the first time in months, the first time in a year: "Sam! Sam!"
John catches Dean under his arms as he crumbles, too weak to stand, lays his son gently against his chest. It's been two years. Two years since Sam walked out the door. Two years since Dean knelt in the rain and begged his brother not to go.
John pulls out his phone, dials. He broke the unspoken rule, he kept Sam's number. And Dean must have broken it too, it's there, in his mind, behind his eyes when he blinks. Numbers, the ticking heartbeat in his too-hot, sweat-clammy chest.
"Hullo." Flat, dull voice. Trying to be emotionless. Why he picked up tonight, of all nights. Doesn't really matter. He's there, he must be okay.
"Sammy." John says softly. "It's bad out here, kid."
Bored, unaffected, trying not to care: "What is it?"
"It's Dean. He's real sick. Looking for you."
John can hear the turmoil, the conflict stretching across the miles as he kneels in the motel parking lot in the icy, painful rain.
"Put him on." Sam says.
"Dean." John jostles Dean slightly, upsetting the bristly-haired head on his shoulder. He holds out the phone. "Here. Talk to your brother."
Dean looks bewildered and uncertain, taking the phone, tucking it against the groove of his wasted cheek. "S-Sammy?"
"Hey, Dean." Sam's voice, tender. None of the affection lost. Pieces that life can never pull apart. His boys. His sons. "How're you doing, man?"
Dean's eyes close. For the first time in months, he relaxes. First time in two years, his guard is completely down. "Been better."
"Yeah?" Sam's voice, pitched higher now with worry. "Something took you down on a hunt? Losing your touch, big brother."
For the first time, John wonders how many nights Sam stared at his phone as it rang, Dean's number on the caller ID. How Sam must have felt the night the calls stopped. For good.
"Cram it, Sammy. I could still kick your ass." Dean says weakly. "How's life? College boy."
John hears Sam launch into something, some stupid explanation about nothing, about school and friends and safety and a life Dean could never have. But for the first time, there's no resentment. In fact, as John holds his oldest son, shielding him from the rain, he sees Dean's first real smile since the night Sam left. Dean never talks. Just listens. He's nine years old and listening to baby brother chatter about his day. And it's the best sound, John can see it in Dean's face, it's the best sound in the world to him. It's Sam, and it's alive, and it's all he needs, right here. His whole world wrapping him up tight and it won't ever let him go.
Eventually, the phone slides out of Dean's hand. John catches it, feeling Dean's steady, sleeping breaths against his neck. He adjusts his hold and brings the phone back to his own ear.
"Is he okay?" Sam asks, tears in his voice.
"Asleep." John answers gruffly. "Been trying to get him to do that for days. I owe you one."
He feels Sam nodding. "This doesn't change anything."
"I know it doesn't. Take care of yourself, Sam."
"Take care of him."
John intends to do just that.