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Morning comes, and with it, the latest edition of the Tribune, which John snatches from the bleary-eyed desk clerk along with three stale cups of coffee and a new distaste for watercolors and seahorse statuary.
After all, there's only so much a man can be expected to deal with after a shadow demon attack and unexpected family reunion pop up all in the same night.
When he checks the paper, John's not surprised that the weather reports have leveled out, that there are no fresh reports of cattle deaths or freak lightning strikes. There's no way Yellow Eye's second-in-command would have stuck around after they slipped its trap last night.
His luck's not that good.
It's back to square one, John reflects grimly as he makes his way back to the room. More sleepless nights combing through papers, hoping that this sign, this omen is the one that pans out, the one that finally leads him to Yellow Eyes, to answers and justice and ending this thing, once and for all.
To peace, for him and the boys.
God, his boys…
He expected that anger from Sam. The rage and betrayal that had been poured out into his voicemail time and time again. He even half-expected the violence, for Sam to throw words aside and let his fists do the talking, like they had with John so many times before, but Dean… Dean who was always there between them, keeping things from going too far? Keeping the fights, as best he could, to just words? Making sure Sam and John didn't do anything they regretted too much?
He hadn't stepped in. Not right away. Not like he used to.
And when he had, tugging Sammy aside and quieting him, talking him down from that hot, wordless fury in an instant, without even looking at John… Not even meeting his father's eye when he made his report about the warehouse…
That wasn't the Dean he knew. Wasn't the soldier he raised, or the son he sent to New Orleans.
And then there's the scars...
John knew about Dean's tangle with the vamp back in Louisiana. He knew Sam had found him in a bad way. But there's a bad way, and then there's the story Dean' s bites told, the angry, arcing half-moons that tore up and down his wrists, his neck, that marred the creases of his elbows, so thick in some places that they swallowed his son's tanned, freckled skin completely, the Dean he knew buried beneath warped, silvery scars and eight months of radio silence.
John has fuck-all for hands on experience with vampires. He'll admit to that in a second, but there's no way in hell a body just pulls through that kind of attack. Not the way Dean did.
Hell, John still remembers getting that voicemail from Dean a couple of days after Sam found him. He'd seen his boy's number pop up and prepared himself for the worst, for another furious message from Sam, for bad news on top of bad news. Then he'd had to sit down hard and fast on the bed of the shitty hotel room he'd found himself in for the night when he heard Dean's voice, clear and healthy as ever, checking in like nothing'd ever happened at all.
John had almost called him back. Had, in that moment, needed so fiercely to hear from his boy that it almost hurt.
But it wouldn't have been safe. Not for him, not for the boys.
He's regretting not making that call now. Now that eight months have passed, there's no way of knowing if this change between the boys, this new, strange closeness, is something old but new to John, some side effect of their hunting together for so long, or something else entirely…
Because after those bites? After being eaten on that hard for that long?
John knows field medicine. He's got more than twenty years hard experience of what a body can and can't take and after a hurt like that, Dean shouldn't be alive.
He shouldn't, and he is.
And it's that and a hundred other little things that are nagging at John, that just don't seem to gel with his definition of Sam and Dean, of the sons who weren't even speaking eight months ago but are now close, too close, closer than they ever were, even as kids, and it's worrying and worth watching and all happening at the wrong damn time, because goddammit if he can't forget what that pissant lackey screamed right before John sent him to hell in a funnel of black smoke
It's all about the blood.
When John reaches the room, the boys are still sprawled across the bed furthest from the door, blankets rumpled and limbs sticking out every which way. Dean's got a fist clenched under the pillow, hand curled around his bowie knife, and Sam's glaring blearily at John, one arm slanting across his brother's chest, like he expects…
Well, John doesn't know what Sammy expects from him. Something not good. Something so far from the truth that it has John's gut clenching and teeth grinding, because Sam should understand. He should know.
Especially now. Especially after what happened in Palo Alto.
But John doesn't say any of that. Doesn't do anything but set his shoulders and put the coffee on the battered table near the door.
"Get your brother up," he tells Sam over his shoulder as he digs out his phone. "We're burnin' daylight."
If Sam has any problems with John giving him orders, he doesn't say anything, just shoots John a particularly vicious look and nudges Dean awake as he sits up and scrubs a hand across his eyes.
John ignores the insubordination as best he can, instead focusing on dialing his contact in the National Weather Service, the sound of the boys getting up fading into the background along with the dial tone in his ear.
"You get any sleep last night?" his oldest mumbles, yawning blearily as he prods the dressing on his face.
"Dean, don't poke your stitches like that," Sam clucks, batting his brother's hand away.
"That's a 'no', then. You know you can't keep this up, Sammy," Dean persists, only for Sam to ignore good advice and keep fussing at the gauze on Dean's forehead.
"Hold still. That bandage needs changing."
"Ignoring me. That's mature," Dean grumbles, dodging Sam's try at grabbing the dressing on his head to slide out of bed and stumble blindly towards coffee.
"Mornin'," he mumbles to John, who shoots him a nod as his contact finally picks up.
John frowns into his coffee as he's told exactly that he was expecting to hear. No freak lightning storms, no temperature fluctuations, no cyclones. Nothing that even remotely resembles any kind of omen, anywhere, for the last ten hours, at least.
John follows up with the local farms and gets the exact same. No crop failures. No cattle deaths.
Nothing.
He was expecting it. After all, with a busted trap and no luck finding their prey, why would Yellow Eyes' grunts stick around? Their leaving is predictable. It makes sense. It fits their pattern. It's exactly what happened all the other times they tried and failed to make a move on John when he got within reach.
Doesn't mean it doesn't piss him off.
He was so close.
"What's the plan?" Sam grumbles when John hangs up, wincing as he tastes the coffee Dean hands him. Kid always would girly up a good cup of joe, given half the chance.
"Head back to the truck, go from there," John answers, taking a drink of his coffee, which tastes just fine to him.
"Awesome. Dibs on the shower," Dean chimes in, tossing his empty styrofoam cup in the vicinity of the bedside table and making for the bathroom.
"Dean!" Sam complains, digging the cup from where it's fallen between the bed and nightstand and making a face when he gets cold dregs on his hand.
John snorts into his own coffee as Sam mutters under his breath and strides to the trashcan near the door.
"I swear, it's like living with a giant six year old," he whines, dropping the cup into the trash. "One who likes beer and porn and IS A TOTAL PIG."
"I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?" Dean calls from the bathroom.
John chuckles and looks up, but whatever smart remark he was about to make dies when he sees Sam's right arm, bare in front of John for the first time.
Because where before there was only smooth, tanned skin, there's something else now. Something new.
New and, from the looks of it, dating from around the time John left Sam in Louisiana.
Just before Sam got Dean back.
John can practically feel his blood run cold as he stares at the long, crooked scar stretching from Sam's wrist up the length of his arm, nearly to the elbow.
A scar from something big. Something violent.
Something supernatural.
"What did you do?!" he demands, up from the chair in a heartbeat and snatching up his son's wrist, jerking his arm closer. Seeing, not believing, not wanting to believe, because the scar is too long, to thick, too perfect to be from just any injury, just any hunt, and Dean would have called, would have told him if Sam's gun hand had been hurt this bad.
Unless...
"Ow!" Sam snaps when John's hand clenches. "What the hell, Dad?!"
"What. Happened," he grinds out, the possibilities stampeding through his head as he glares at Sam, trying to see something, anything...
"What do you think happened?" Sam challenges, eyes narrowing as his jaw sets, as his entire face clenches into furious, stubborn lines. The lines that harden and freeze his son's face, transform it from Mary's baby, her Sammy, to someone, something else.
John doesn't want to know.
He doesn't, but he has to, because something has been different. Something has been different and wrong between them all ever since he first saw them yesterday, and the possibilities keep racing through John's head, keep giving him awful, horrible explanations for the scar, for their behavior, for how Dean survived after all those bites…
"What. Did. You. Do," he demands again through gritted teeth because this isn't happening. This can't be happening. This can't be happening, but it is, and there's evidence, bad, awful damning evidence as to what that something could be, right under his fingertips, a long, crooked line down his youngest son's arm.
This is happening. This is happening, and he has to do something.
"What did I do?" Sam repeats furiously as he snatches his arm back, too loud and too angry and all that's in John's head, all that he can hear, is that fucking demon, screaming and laughing and taunting him, over and over again.
It's all about the blood.
It's all about the blood.
It's all about the blood.
"I did what I had to do!" Sam is shouting, clenching his fists and getting in John's face. "I did what needed to be done, Dad! I did what I had to do to save Dean! To protect Dean! Because I was there! I was there for him, and you weren't! You never were!"
"Hey! Hey!" Dean shouts, bursting out of the bathroom with a towel clenched around his waist, shouldering between them, suds dripping as he glares between his father and brother. "What, I can't leave you two alone for ten goddamn minutes now?"
This can't be happening.
It can't be true. There has to be another explanation.
Any other explanation.
"Dean—" Sam protests, but Dean cuts him off.
"Go pack. Now," he orders, and Sam rolls his eyes, stomping off to throw things in his bag with his mouth pinched as Dean turns to John.
"Wh—" John begins, but Dean cuts him off, too, his face tight and shuttered.
"We're going out to breakfast," Dean announces, still not entirely meeting John's eye. "Let everyone cool down before we head out."
"Check-out's at nine," John mutters shortly, refusing to feel like he's disappointed Dean.
Dean, who spent the first two years Sam was at college not-so-subtly trying to get he and John to reconcile. Dean, who gets that rigid, hollow look in his face whenever John fights with Sam.
Dean, who might…
But John can't think about that right now. He has to focus.
Has to figure this out.
"We know what time check-out is. We're not stupid," snaps Sam as he strides past the two of them and out the door, slamming it shut behind him.
"We'll swing back by, pick you up," Dean offers, rifling through his duffle for a fresh pair of jeans.
"Don't bother," John dismisses, his mind going through the timeline, the possibilities as he gathers his notes and cellphone from the table, shoves them into his jacket. "I've got to look into something. Meet you two later."
John can see the doubt cross Dean's face, see his mouth twist, see him wanting to ask if later means a few hours or another eight months from now.
He doesn't. Doesn't cross that line into insubordination. But the thought is there.
John logs it away, files it with everything else, and walks out on his son. Sons.
And honestly, he doesn't know if he'll be back.