Hey, everyone! Thanks so much for the feedback and follows! We're really getting into the meat of the story now, so let me know what you think! By the way, we'll be updating on Wednesdays from now on, so check back then for more! And to the couple of people who asked how long it's going to be until we find out what happened to Dean... you guys might want to strap in. This is gonna be a long ride.
The first and last case John and Sam every worked together without Dean had been in Orlando. Sam had been about sixteen, shooting up like a weed and just starting to hit that stage where he'd wanted to pick at John's every move. John would catch him looking at him sometimes with accusing eyes, like he was cataloguing perceived insults and criticisms for future use; maybe just waiting to pick a fight. It was growing pains, John knew, and Sam was going to have to get over them sooner or later anyway, so he'd sent Dean off with the Impala for five days on his own while John tested out Sammy's abilities as a hunting partner.
Sam was a decent enough hunter. That wasn't the problem. The problem was Sam's damn lip and his ability to get under John's skin with the absolute minimum of effort. By the end of the week, it felt like John had spent more time and effort fighting Sam than he had fighting the banshee.
They'd made it through the case, salted and burned the thing's corpse, tied it all up enough that John had started to feel like they'd somehow, miraculously made it through without doing too much damage to each other, when it had all blown up in his face. One second they were sniping at each other in a diner parking lot and, the next second, Sam was laying into him for everything from John's music to his over-reliance on Sam's research to their whole damn lives and John was giving it right back to him. Hell, John had never pretended he didn't have a temper, and Sam had been working on his nerves for nearly five days straight.
Sam had said something – John doesn't even remember what it was, just one toe too far over the line – and John had snapped and popped him right in the mouth.
It was the first time he'd laid a hand on Sam like that – not because he was training him or as a punishment meant to teach Sam a lesson but just because he was angry. Still, it hadn't been a hard hit, not compared to the blows he'd seen his son take on hunts, and Sam had been practically begging for it. John's daddy had been a Marine, too, and Lord knows, he'd done a lot worse than that for a hell of a lot less.
Sam had retreated to the library, shoulders still stiff with anger and, in spite of the split lip and purpling cheek Sam was sporting, John was still left with the feeling that he was the one who'd lost.
Dean had come back that night. John could hear him whistling all the way from the parking lot, and he'd breezed in the door looking about four years younger and ten pounds lighter, really happy in a way John hadn't seen him in much too long of a time, and John had hated himself for the way that had all fallen away the second Dean took in the sight of him hunched over his third slug of Jack, the fight with Sam written all over him.
"Where's Sammy?" he'd asked warily, dropping his duffle onto the bed furthest away from the door.
"Library," John had said shortly, and Dean had just nodded and gone after his brother, falling back into his role like he'd never left at all.
John had cleared out before Dean came back, left a note that he'd gone chasing a possible werewolf in Palm Beach. He'd told himself that he was moving onto the next case, just like always. That he was just giving himself some time to cool off.
Told himself that it wasn't because he didn't want to know what Dean was going to do when he saw what John had done to Sam.
As it turned out, Dean didn't do anything. He never even mentioned it. But sometimes John thought he looked at him different after that, like he didn't quite trust him – didn't trust him with Sam – and that was maybe worse.
After the gas station, they spend the next hundred miles in dense, vicious silence.
The black, grudge-holding part of Sam that has kept his tongue still and thoughts violent for the last hour and a half is content to let John stew in the silence, to just sit there and let the accusations eat John alive until he has no choice but to speak up, to tell Sam exactly what he'd sent Dean into that Sam's brother couldn't come out of.
But then Sam sees a guy in his twenties come out of the Seven Eleven on the corner in a beat up leather jacket, tearing into a Ding Dong like it's manna from heaven, and his hands are reaching for his computer before his head even knows what's going on. The questions that were too hard and heavy to ask in Palo Alto are suddenly falling out of his mouth, just another step in finding Dean.
Or whatever's left of him, the hopeless corner of his mind whispers sharply, cutting into the fragile focus Sam has only just been able to muster. He flinches at the thought, pushes it quickly from his mind.
"Where was Dean when you heard from him last?" Sam stares at the boot screen on his laptop, refusing to flick his eyes to the left and see John's reaction to his breaking the silence. Whatever it is, satisfaction, anger, resentment, will only set them off again.
The pulsing progress bar of the loading screen becomes his only focus in life. It's that, or look over at John as he clears his throat.
"New Orleans." John gravels. "There was a string of deaths, smelled like voodoo."
The brittle shield of purpose Sam has drawn around himself shatters like glass, fractures into news clips and death tolls and a fetid soup of death and debris where a city stood two months ago.
"Where?" Sam bites out, clipped and cold and disbelieving, because no one, no one, in their right mind would just walk into New Orleans now, less than two months after Hurricane Katrina tore through the city.
And then he finally cuts his eyes to the left, and sees the grim set to his dad's shoulders, jaw clenched, white-knuckling the steering wheel so hard that the leather creaks in the heavy silence of the cab.
His dad would. If there was a hunt, if people were dying, John would go. It's part of his crusade, to go on every hunt, to kill every shadowy, evil thing out there. But he was on a job already, so he sent the next best thing.
His gun hand.
Dean.
Dean, who has disappeared into the heart of the biggest disaster zone in a decade, who has done the completely insane, who has just waltzed in, because Dad told him to. Because people were dying and orders were orders and there was something that needed to be hunted.
"You're unbelievable," Sam spits out, rage and disgust curling his lip and narrowing his eyes.
"Son," John begins, but Sam doesn't let him get far.
"NO," he shouts, louder than the cramped cab demands because someone has to. Someone has to say 'no' to John Winchester, and it sure as hell isn't gonna be Dean.
Dean's gone.
So Sam says 'no' for him, rejects the idea that sending your son into the devastated, festering shell of New Orleans, to pick and dig at whatever was left of the city's shadow players looking for one monster, one among thousands, for any reason could be right.
"You're not going to 'son' me dad," Sam persists. "Not until you go back to the part where you sent Dean into NEW ORLEANS. What, there wasn't a case in an active war zone, so you had to send him right into the middle of the biggest disaster area in the continental US? Hell, Dad, half the city is still evacuated!"
"He's got a Marshal's badge." John gravels, voice just close enough to dismissive to make Sam's hands clench around the computer still in his lap, his arms itch to slam it against his father's head until he either stops being a soulless bastard (which would, undoubtedly, take a while) or the stupid too-small truck he's driving crashes.
Sam keeps his arms still and John unconcussed by reminding himself that it would be hard to explain to California State Troopers how laptop giblets and several near-perfect impressions of the Dell logo became inexplicably, accidentally embedded in his father's skull in the course of the crash.
"That's not the point!" he continues, still burning with anger at John's indifference, his own father's nonchalance at sending Dean into the wake of disaster to chase a rumor. "They're keeping people out for a reason, Dad! There's no power, no food, no clean water! I mean, the place is still flooded, for Christ's sake!"
"Your brother didn't seem to have a problem with it," John remarks obdurately, eyes never leaving the highway.
"Of course he didn't!" Sam, sick of ramming his head against the brick wall that was John Winchester's will, erupts. "This is Dean we're talking about! He would jump off a bridge if you told him to!"
His mind leaps to every reckless mission, every half-cocked plan, every time he and Dean had gone charging in on a hunt half ready and underprepared simply because John had said "go."
"You know he would follow any order you gave him, no matter how stupid or suicidal, and you took advantage of that!" Sam goes on, beyond furious.
"People were dying, Sam," John shoots back, voice raised a half-tone below shouting, but far from civil, far from calm or cool or collected.
Pressing his advantage, shoving the anger and frustration and hatred and a deep, crippling fear that he will never see Dean alive again into his next words, Sam snarls, "If he dies from this, if he's gone already, you killed him! Not this thing, not the hurricane, YOU!"
"YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW THAT?" His father shouts back, anger finally breaking the dam and bursting through to the surface, eyes finally leaving the road and finally meeting Sam's, cold and dark with fury. Sam gets a lightning quick hit of satisfaction before laying into his father anew, intent on stringing him up for his every crime against Dean, whose only sin was loyalty.
"I THINK YOU DON'T CARE!" Sam roars, rough and hateful. "Anywhere else, ANYWHERE would have been safer! But no, your stupid crusade calls and you send Dean to answer, just like always!"
"Oh, and what would you have me do, Sammy?" John challenges. "Stick my head in the sand and just let people die?"
"You could be a father for once in your life and protect your son!" Sam charges at the top of his lungs, and before he can follow up on that, John's backhands him so hard that Sam sees stars. He isn't as out of practice as his father seems to believe, though, because before John can retract his fist, Sam has his father in a rough arm bar, wrenching back and down to torture every joint he can before John jerks savagely toward the driver's side of the cab, using muscle and weight and his iron grip on the steering column to send Sam's shoulder crashing into the center console.
Then, in an instant, the world shrinks down to blaring horns and squealing rubber and John swearing violently as Sam does his best to just hold on, hoping to God and anyone else that is listening that his father knows this truck well enough to get it through this without flipping.
It's only after they straighten out, a very pissed off commuter in their rearview and the smell of burnt rubber filling the cab, that Sam realizes his father's hand had been fisted in the jacket over his shoulder, holding him safe and steady through the swerve.
Sam calls Jess at the next fill up station. It's ten o'clock. Sam knows for a fact that she has class. He isn't surprised when she picks up anyway.
"Sam, is everything okay?" she asks, worried.
There is only one answer to that question.
"No," he says, and it's supposed to be flat, or matter of fact, or wry or something, but it comes out weak and cracked and broken because Dean isn't just not calling him because of a stupid fight or because he's out on a hunt, he's missing, has been for a week, and in the world's worst place.
Dean's gone, and the last thing Sam said to him was how he never wanted to see his face again.
"Sam, what's wrong?" Jess seems to catch herself on the other end of the line, realizes that there are a myriad of answers to that question, most of which will only draw more broken, half-sobbed words from Sam. "Where are you? I'm leaving Stanford now."
"No," Sam cuts in, this time strongly, with no weakness or room to break. He can barely handle a world where Dean is missing, maybe dead. He can't handle the thought of Jess finding out what his life really is, of losing her and Dean all in the same day. He just can't. Better she be safe at Stanford than exposed to the salt and iron of the Winchester family business.
Better she be frustrated by secrets than horrified by the truth.
"Sam," Jess says on the other end of the line; there's a tone of pleading in her voice.
"I'm sorry," Sam says, and he's not sure if he means he's sorry for shutting her out or sorry for calling or just sorry for being Sam Winchester. "I should go."
"Sam," Jess says again. "I just want to help. Let me help you."
"You're helping more than enough," Sam tells her, and he means it.
It really hits him sometimes, just how much he loves Jess. Maybe she smiles at him all crinkle-eyed over dinner like she did on their first date; maybe she shows up at the library at 4:00am with a cup of coffee and a muffin; maybe she's just lying on their couch, her pretty face all stuffed up against a throw pillow and snoring lightly – and Sam gets hit with that sucker punch of I love you I love you so much please don't ever leave me.
Jess is everything a life as a hunter wouldn't let him have. Jess is everything kind and normal and safe. Jess is the life he and Dean could have had – should have had – if the thing that killed their mother and John Winchester hadn't taken it all away from them.
And when (when, not if, he has to keep telling himself) Sam finds Dean, he's going to go back to her, back to the only person and place that's ever truly belonged to him.
It helps, thinking like that. Maybe even more than it should.
"I'll talk to you soon," he tells Jess, and he hopes she knows everything he isn't saying, and maybe she does, because Jess understands him, more than almost anyone, and he loves her so much for that sometimes it hurts a little.
When Sam nods off while the truck is rocketing down I-10, he dreams of Jess burning on the ceiling.