John Winchester was not having a good morning.

His head immediately started hurting as he was slowly drawn out of the comforting grip of sleep by a muffled pounding sound. As he came more fully to his senses, the waves of throbbing radiating dully throughout his brain began to align with what he now recognized as the sound of someone knocking. His eyes crept open and settled on boxy alarm clock on the night table by his bed, displaying glaring red numbers that told him it was 10:48 AM.

"It's past 10 o'clock buddy." A scratchy women's voice was softly audible from the other side of the door. "You promised me you'd be out by 10. I don't need no more trouble from you."

Still more than a little disoriented, John threw off the flimsy blanket tangled up across his legs and rose to go answer the door. His conscience did a quick summersault as he glimpsed some fresh red stains in the corner of the room adding to the mosaic of discolorations printed across the carpet from years of use and abuse. Beside the stains laid a dully painted picture of a bouquet of flowers that had been knocked from the wall and a small table lamp that he remembered had been previously resting by the television. In the wall below where the painting had been, there was a body sized indentation in the cheap paneling with tiny cracks in the paint radiating outward from the point of impact. Guilt started to seep across his brain, covering everything like a blanket, as the memories of last night began to creep back. Oh, God. What a mess. With that thought, he cracked the door open slightly to reveal a middle-aged woman with bleach blonde hair and long, hot pink nails looking at him with a mixture of frustration and disgust. Her impatient demeanor made John think that she may have been knocking awhile.

"You're lucky I didn't throw your ass out a' here last night." She glared at his disheveled appearance and wincing eyes and scoffed. She knew the signs of a hangover when she saw one. "You 'bout woke up the whole damn motel with your yellin' and shoutin' last night. I woke up to 4 missed phone calls, complaining about the crazy man throwing shit in Apt. 7 and a kid bleedin' outside on the steps. You're lucky the folks 'round here like their privacy, or they woulda called the cops on ya'. Now, I need you outta this room so I can rent it to some decent folk."

"Okay, okay…"John mumbled as he slowly closed the door, avoiding eye contact with the angry woman. He felt exhausted as he sat down heavily on the bed, resting his throbbing head between his hands as he tried to remember everything that had happened last night. God, his head hurt. John had spent all of yesterday at Bobby's house, drinking beer and sharing his insights on a case that Bobby was working somewhere uptown. Bobby had welcomed him without question when he had shown up at his doorstep asking if he could stay the night. Hunters were usually like that, everyone kind of tried to have each other's backs in a world that seemed to be designed to shove a knife in theirs. But Bobby was more than that, he was almost family to the Winchesters. John had relied on him throughout the years as a safe haven for his boys when he needed to go hunt a case on his own – some hunts would've been too much for them to handle when they were young. Bobby had actually grown pretty close to his boys throughout the years, so when John had shown up at his house alone, it was only natural for Bobby to immediately ask where Sam and Dean were. John rattled off part of the truth…that they were staying at a place in town and he was giving them some space for the night. At this, Bobby had raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything as he opened the door for John to come into the house. John didn't need to tell Bobby about his falling out with Sam – after all, that was family business. In fact, Bobby and he frequently butted heads about his parenting style, so he tried to avoid bringing up his boys at all. He was glad to have a person like Bobby Singer in the Winchester corner, but he didn't need to be told how to raise his kids by a guy that had never had any of his own.

He had dragged out his visit to Bobby's for the majority of the day; he was already dreading what he could only assume was going to be a massive blowout with Sam when he got back. He knew he had been a little harsh with him in the Impala the other day, but he needed to get it through Sam's thick, stubborn skull that he couldn't go to Stanford. Point blank and period. With all that John had seen, there was no way that he was going to let his youngest go running off to some isolated school at the edge of the country to go get himself killed by a monster before John even knew what was happening. As the sun began to set, he finally said his goodbyes to Bobby and started to make his way back into town. God, he was not looking forward to this. He loved the kid, but everything Sam did had to be so damn aggravating. John swore that half the time they were fighting it was just because Sam wanted to disagree with him on something, like he got enjoyment out of playing the devil's advocate.

A couple streets out from the motel, he had caught sight of a dumpy, little bar and had decided to go there to mellow out before his altercation with Sam. What was supposed to be a few drinks kept turning into just a couple more as he continued putting off going back to the motel. It was only when he got up to go the restroom and had to catch himself on the chair that he realized how drunk he really was. After leaving the bar his memory of the night had become less clear, blending into a series of muddled emotions and third person snapshots where he saw himself sitting in the drive-through of a small burger place and pulling his Impala into the gravel driveway of the Huggy Bear motel, his bright headlights casting a warm glow over a couple lowlife drug dealers hanging out on the side of the building, their eyes shooting daggers at the audacity of the man disrupting their business. Someone had yelled something at him as he had struggled to get out of his car, slamming the door a little too hard, and found his way to the room Dean had rented. He wasn't exactly sure how the conversation between him and Dean had gone down or when he had realized that Sam had left for Stanford, but he remembered being pissed off enough to start a fight with Dean.

His eyes drifted over to the blood stains on the carpet as memories of their fight started to swim into his memory. Did I really do that? The ice-cold feeling of guilt began to slowly clench like a vice around his heart. It wasn't that he necessarily felt bad for attacking Dean; John had made it glaringly clear that keeping an eye on Sam was Dean's number one priority. Growing up, John had been forced to remind Dean of that with a little heavy-handed parenting more than he would like to admit. No, that wasn't the part that he felt guilty about. They were hunters after all– a hard people. And Dean was a hunter through and through. In their line of work, John needed absolute obedience from his sons, especially his eldest, in order to ensure their safety both at home and out on the job. Dean had always seemed to understand the necessity of consequences in response to disobedience, he had never once complained or tried to fight back when John was forced to discipline him. No, the part of the previous night that was really bothering John, the part that was springing forth a bubbling pool of guilt that threatened to envelop his chest, was that this was the first time John felt as though he had lost control. I mean….Christ. He could barely even remember their fight. He knew that he had thrown some punches, but looking at the disarray of the room and blood stains on the floor, John had the sneaking suspicion that he may have inflicted more damage than he had intended. Normally when he and Dean got into it, John was able to keep his temper in check enough to gauge when Dean had had enough. John vaguely remembered throwing Dean up against the wall, but he had no recollection of following him to the ground or really doing anything other than throwing a punch or two. He didn't even remember how he had ended up in bed.

An exhausted sigh threatened to double over his already slouched frame as he slowly drew his hands down his face, trying to remember more details of the previous night to no avail. When he stared down at the hands now in his lap, he heaved out a surprised guttural sound as he realized that his knuckles were stained red with the remnants of someone's blood. Not someone's blood. He mentally corrected himself. Dean's blood…Fuck. Another wave of guilt washed over his body, and coupled with a splitting headache, began to make him feel nauseous. Unable to contain himself any longer, John softly called out, "Dean?" but the question was absorbed by silence and trailed off into nothingness. John heaved himself up off the bed and went to go look in the only other place that Dean could possibly be in the room, the bathroom. He held his breath as he knocked lightly on the closed door and again called out, "Dean?" His voice sounded shaky and foreign. No reply. Mentally preparing himself, John took a breath and pushed open the door to the bathroom, half expecting to see his eldest crumpled up on the floor lying in a puddle of blood that he had caused. He couldn't help but exhale a sigh of relief as the door swung open to reveal an empty, white room containing no sign of his son.

He entered the room and started to wash the blood off the back of his hands, purposely casting his eyes downwards to avoid looking at himself in the mirror – he wasn't ready for that yet. The water swirled down the drain with a pink tint as it washed away to some new and foreign place where there would undoubtedly be less violence. John wished he could go with it. Head hanging down and eyes closed, he tightly gripped the sides of the sink with both hands, trying to reconcile the pounding throb ringing through his skull and the guilt eating away at his stomach into a manageable ache. After a couple minutes, he slowly lifted his eyes to the mirror to examine the man pathetically hunched over the sink, clinging to it as if it were his last lifeline. The man's eyes were bloodshot and his skin looked sallow and worn. His white t-shirt was speckled with blood like it had been flung there purposefully by a paintbrush and some red paint. Worse, there was a substantial rip on the right sleeve of his shirt like someone had made the effort to yank him off really hard. His chest began to tighten at the realization that Dean must have tried to fight him off last night. Dean, the perfect soldier, who had never once raised a hand in self-defense, had finally felt the need to protect himself. John must have really taken it too far.

He needed to find Dean.

With a little more determination in his step, John changed his clothes, straightened up the room and started to pack up his belongings. It was only when everything was set by the door, ready to be loaded into the Impala that John realized that the cheap flip phone he had picked up a while back was not in the customary pocket of his jacket. After a thorough search of the tiny rental room, John was able to locate it far underneath Dean's bed, kicked to the corner. A quick glance at the home page of his phone showed 10 missed calls from Bobby Singer. John's breath caught in his throat as a memory of last night began to slowly swim back into his consciousness. He had been lying in bed –he remembered that much at least– when he had heard someone pounding and yelling through the door. It was a man's voice and it had sounded angry….as in really angry. He remembered thinking in his semi-conscious state, that whoever it was, sounded kind of like Bobby. But at the time he didn't understand why someone was pounding on the door so early in the god damn morning or why on earth they were so angry, so had flipped over in bed, buried his head deep underneath a pillow and fallen back asleep.

John closed his eyes and collapsed back down onto the bed as he realized the shit storm that he was about to encounter. Bobby had directed some clipped comments John's way before in response to his rather "hands-on" approach to discipline with his eldest. Bobby had made it clear that he didn't appreciate this method of parenting; he had even thrown a couple threats John's way after Dean had spent some time at his house and he had seen the remnants of a particularly heated fight between them a few nights previous. Although he made his opinions clear, Bobby had remained such a good family friend through all these years because he had had the good sense never to make a too big of a deal out of it before. But now, John knew that Bobby wasn't going to let this one go lightly. As if to verify his suspicions, John pressed play on one of the numerous voicemails that Bobby had left for him. "…of all the idjit, dumbass things you have ever done John, this has to be the worst." Bobby's voice came roaring out of the phone. "If you ever take one step towards your boys like this again, I will skin you alive. You hear me? I just can't believe…." John clicked off the phone.

Exiting the motel room, John could see splatters of blood left on the pavement from where Dean must have waited for Bobby last night. He returned the keys to the lady at the desk, ignored the dirty looks that he was receiving from the renters loitering outside their rooms and threw his bags into the back of the Impala. His head throbbing and his chest tightened from guilt and anxiety, he slowly backed out the Impala from the gravel driveway of the Huggy Bear Motel and started down the road to Bobby's house.