John looked out the window at the setting sun as Dean pulled the curtains roughly shut. Sam had left a few minutes before, leaving the hunter and the hunted together in the room, two pieces of rope the only things separating them. "Don't want people to see, huh?"
Dean turned around, truly looking at him for the first time that day. The familiarity of that gaze made John's heart ache, made him remember his son the way he used to be: human. "Do you want to see?" Dean asked, his voice sincere, curious.
John blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Do you want to see? I mean, I usually lock myself in the bathroom 'cause my clothes would end up ruined or I'd end up embarrassed if I didn't, but if you want to watch…"
John narrowed his eyes. "Sammy says you have trouble when you first change."
"You talked to Sam about it?"
The older man nodded. "We had a conversation."
Dean smiled, moving from the window to sit down at the foot of his father's bed, noting that the hunter didn't pull away. "Just between you and me, I've gotten better at it. It's not an issue anymore. I didn't want to tell Sam because he'd turn it into a big thing. It still doesn't change the fact that it's better in private. Saves my perfect wardrobe."
John grinned, something else that was noted by the werewolf and locked away in his mind, increasing his hopes that his father would learn to accept him as his brother had. "Has Sammy seen?"
"Once."
"What do you want to do?"
Dean smirked, glancing over his clothes before looking back up at his dad. "I promised I wouldn't take my eyes off you. Besides, the freaks come out at night. All of them. The minute that sun goes down, our sucky little friend's gonna be back out. I'm not leaving you alone."
"Don't have much of a choice, then, do I?"
The younger man shrugged. "You could close your eyes."
John sighed and looked at his son, taking in everything and realizing how much he'd missed. When had Dean grown up? He'd been gone so often during his son's childhood that he really had no idea. He'd just walked through the door one day to find a man where a kid had once stood, still waiting for him, telling him everything would be all right. And then one day he'd stumbled through the door and found a broken man, one who had yelled at him for pushing Sam out of their lives, one that had never been the same after that.
And now he was looking at a monster.
"It's not all bad," Dean said softly, looking down at his hands and pulling John from his thoughts, "there are things… things I can do now that I couldn't before. Things that actually help with what we do."
"Hunting?"
Dean nodded. "Yeah. I guess that makes sense, though, huh?"
"What kind of things?"
"Standard super-human abilities," the younger man said, smiling sadly and refusing to meet his father's eyes, "strength, speed, agility, that kind of thing. I can see in the dark. My hearing's better. Smell, too. Knew you were at that last motel before you'd even gotten outta the truck."
John nodded slightly. "Anything else?"
"Healing." He said it so softly that John had to strain to hear. "I heal fast. It's pretty cool, really." Dean looked back up at him with eyes pleading for understanding and sympathy and love.
John looked away. "What time's the moon up?"
Dean glanced over at the clock that sat on a little table between the beds. "'Bout now," he muttered, standing up and stumbling across the room to lean against the far wall. He rested his head against the gaudy wallpaper, breathing deeply, his arm wrapping itself around his stomach.
"You alright?" John asked, concern in his voice.
Dean looked over at him with wide, surprised eyes, eyes that seemed to glow in the light of the room's flickering bulbs. He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, wrapping his other arm around his stomach and sinking to his knees by the wall.
John tried to scoot farther up on the bed, his paternal instincts temporarily overriding his hunter's judgment. He wanted to know what was happening to his son, needed to find out what was causing him pain and stop it before things got worse.
And then he remembered what Sam had said, remembered that he was the one who'd sent his emotionally fragile son into a dark forest in search of a werewolf, that it was all his fault, that if he'd stayed, this wouldn't have happened.
Dean moaned, a noise that bubbled out from deep in the back of his throat, a guttural sound that nearly resembled a growl. It brought John out of his guilt and back to the present, back to the scene that was unfolding before him.
Course, sandy fur was rippling across his son's body, tearing down his face and neck and arms, poking through the holes in his jeans. The seams of his shirt and pants stretched and ripped as already well-toned muscles grew larger, stronger, better. Dean reared up and ripped off the remnants of his shirt, tossing them to the floor. He set his hands on his knees, still breathing deeply, and John watched as long, sharp claws wormed out from his fingernails, cutting little holes in the strong denim of his jeans.
John thought about turning away, about leaving his son to his misery, letting him undergo something obviously painful alone. But he couldn't look away. He had to watch. It was his duty as a father and as the man that had caused the pain. He had to watch.
Dean's socks split open as his feet changed and claws ripped through the soft cotton. He staggered a little, nearly toppling over, but managed to gain his feet. He looked over at John with those same, sad eyes, eyes that never really seemed to change, that always betrayed what he'd hidden away in his soul. The hunter saw shame buried there, shame at what he'd become, shame that he was giving into the pain and whimpering softly, shame that his father had to see him like that.
"It's ok, son" John whispered despite himself, feeling the heat prickling behind his eyes, knowing that he was bound to betray himself, that he would show emotion. What kind of father would he be if he didn't?
The werewolf moaned again, but this time the sound was softer, giving away his exhaustion. The sound intensified, turning into a muffled howl of pain as Dean's ears grew to points and slid slowly up to the top of his head, where one promptly flopped over, giving him a look of innocence that didn't really fit.
Dean groaned, leaning back up against the wall and pointing his nose to the ceiling. John watched with horror as his son's mouth and nose bulged out, elongating to form a canine snout.
The wolf stumbled a bit, letting out a sharp bark of pain as his knees snapped backward, reversing to make the change complete. He reached down and tore the remnants of his pants from his body, exposing a long, powerful tail that swished back and forth behind him.
Figuring it was over, John let himself relax, leaning back onto the mattress and pillows, releasing tension he hadn't even realized was there. Dean looked up at him with those same sad eyes, eyes searching for compassion.
"That was…" John began, not quite sure how to finish the statement. It had been different, actually watching what some people had to go through one week out of the month. "Are you ok?"
Dean grinned, an expression that looked oddly out of place on the hulking mass of monster, and nodded.
"Can you talk?"
The werewolf shook his head, still looking at John. The hunter smiled, a shaky expression, but a genuine one. Dean cocked his head to one side, which elicited a laugh from his father at the comical scene it created.
"You just gonna stand there all night, or what?" he asked. As Dean moved away from the wall and toward the beds, his father finally saw what Sam had meant when he'd said the tail gave it away.
o0o0o0o0o0o
The first thing John noticed as he was pulled from a light slumber was that he had fallen asleep. He'd let his guard down, even though he was tied to a bed and locked in a room with a werewolf.
It had been pretty easy to relax, he recalled, with Dean sitting on the edge of the room's other bed, remote held slack in one paw-like hand, watching TV. It had provided a sense of security, a sense of familiarity, a sense that nothing had changed. Staring at the television, the younger hunter hadn't even looked like a werewolf.
So John had fallen asleep. Now that he was awake again, though, he saw that Dean looked very much like a werewolf.
Dean was sitting on his bed, crouched down, muscles bunched and tensed, readying for something. His ears were plastered to his skull and his eyes held a malicious spark that couldn't have belonged to anything human. The fur on his neck and back was sticking up straight, his tail whipping back and forth in anticipation, claws kneading into the sheets of the old bed. His lips were pulled back in a snarl to reveal, long, sharp teeth that were dripping with saliva. He was staring at his father.
John felt his own muscles tense, every nerve in his body jumping to life as he scolded himself for dropping his guard. It had all been a trick, just a ruse designed to make him feel safe, and, therefore, vulnerable. A monster was a monster, no matter the face it wore in the daylight.
He stared at the thing that had once been his son, watching it with a hunter's intensity, waiting for it to strike.
And then the window broke.
Evil cliffie of DOOM!!!!!!