They were going to see Sam. The idea terrified John as much as it excited him. Once upon a time, he'd've thought his and Dean's relationship was rock solid. John had never trusted, or needed, anyone in his life so much as he had Dean, for a time. Not even Mary. But-as the raw memory of Dean's knuckles cracking against his jaw continued to remind him-coming back to Dean had been far harder than he'd ever imagined it could be. Coming back to Sam, who had never been so close, nor so forgiving... he could feel his heart pounding at the thought of it.
"Let's go to Texas," John said.
"Very well," Cas reached out with both hands to place two fingers against John's and Dean's foreheads.
And then the scenery changed.
"Whoa!" John said without meaning to, reaching out to grab at something—anything—to steady himself but finding nothing. They were in the parking lot of a nondescript motel, everything illuminated by the glow of floodlights and the flickering neon of a VACANCY sign. It was the first artificial light John had seen in a hundred years and he felt naked, abruptly aware he was dirty and scarred and hadn't shaved in far too long. (What would Sam think of him?) The place looked like a hundred other crappy motels he'd brought the boys to over the years, from the cracked siding, the fading paint, the stained plastic chairs sitting outside each door…but something about the familiarity was utterly overwhelming and for a little while John could only stare.
"You know which room is his?" Dean asked Cas easily. John felt an odd surge of jealously that Dean had taken the transition so well.
"No," Cas answered. "I returned to you as soon as I found the Impala."
Together, John and Dean followed his gaze to the car, the back end barely visible behind a large SUV parked in front of a nearer door.
Dean beelined to it.
"Oh, baby," he murmured, looking it over, peering in the window, stroking it a little. It was more affection that John had seen Dean have for anything in a long time and under different circumstances it might've made him smile. Instead he only followed cautiously, trailed by Cas, and folded his arms.
"Looks like Sam's been taking good care of her," John remarked. "No rust."
"Yeah, and no iPod thing," Dean agreed, seeming to forget his anger for a moment before setting his jaw again. John set his own jaw and tried not to show how much the rejection stung.
Cas's eyes narrowed, and John could practically see him working through the significance of "no iPod thing."
He turned his attention to the motel window nearest the Impala. The lot was far from full so he figured it was Sam's. "Gotta be this one, right?" He stepped up to peer into the darkness as well as he could past the drawn curtain, though it was too dark in the room to make anything out. Dean joined him a moment later to do the same.
"I should go in first," Dean decided, still squinting into the darkness.
John fixed him with a suspicious stare. "Why?"
"I been missing six months. You been dead six years," Dean said with a shrug. "Someone should explain this to him, otherwise, hell, he'll probably start firing."
John thought a moment. Meeting Dean in Purgatory had been shocking, certainly, but in Purgatory it had been easy to grow immune to the shock of…anything really. Here, in the mundane world of a motel with lights and cars and people, he knew his presence made less sense. And he could only imagine how he might've reacted to the sight of a long-dead family member showing up at his doorstep in the middle of the night in his hunting days.
"Fair enough," he said after a moment, squinting at Dean in the pale light. It was reasonable…and yet he had a feeling that that wasn't quite the full reason Dean didn't want him there. "I'll wait out here. But not longer than I have to, hear?"
"Yes, sir," Dean said, his voice thick with irony. Then his tone softened. "I'll come get you as soon as he calms down."
Feeling vaguely queasy, John stepped back to wait with Cas against the side of the Impala. The strength of it behind him was familiar and comforting and brought back memories of better days and he let himself get lost in them for a short time. Driving Mary outside of the town limits for picnics. The morning they drove Dean home from the hospital, a fragile little bundle of potential. Strapping the kids into car seats, hearing their little voices laughing or bickering in the backseat. Dean bribing Sammy with sweets to pretend he was as excited as Dean about picking up the hood and learning how she worked. Finally handing the keys to Dean on his 18th birthday and watching him light up like all his dreams had come true at once.
Feeling slightly more grounded, John watched as Dean inspected the door for a moment, raised his hand as if considering knocking, then pulled a battered lock-picking kit out of his jacket pocket and started on the door. A few seconds later there was an audible snick and the cracked open. Dean went in, closing it behind him.
John was expecting the surprised, masculine yell followed by the muffled sound of a quick scuffle. What he wasn't expecting to hear was the high-pitched scream of surprise that accompanied it, nor the frenzied flurry of talk that followed. He leaned in, trying to make out words though the door, but all he could tell was that Dean was talking, and Sam was talking, and the woman kept talking as well.
"Sam is not alone," Cas observed.
"No shit." John gave him a quick glance before turning his attention fully back to the motel room door. He didn't like being marooned out here.
Cas tilted his head slightly, narrowing his eyes at the continued noise coming from the room. "This is unusual."
"Is it now," John said, chewing the inside of his cheek. It couldn't have been more than a minute or two since Dean had gone in, but the voices had quieted slightly. He could barely remember why he'd agreed to wait out here, when his boy, his Sammy, was on the other side of that door. Did it really matter what Dean wanted?
"Yes," Cas answered. "Sam rarely seeks out female companionship." He shrugged, slightly. "Perhaps things have changed since Dean has been gone."
John snorted softly. "Sure as hell've changed since I've been gone."
The door opened.
John was propelling himself away from the car in an instant, toward Dean and the tall near-stranger behind him.
"Sam?"
His little Sammy filled the entire doorway, his face now angular and long, hair hanging nearly down to his shoulders. But his expression, flickering between confusion and disbelief and joy—that was all Sam. Without thinking John strode forward past Dean and gripped Sam by the biceps, drawing him into a hug when he received no resistance. He was vaguely aware of Dean watching them with a betrayed expression, and realized that despite everything he hadn't yet pulled his eldest into a similar embrace…but here in the normality of a Texas motel parking lot he felt stripped of too many defenses to care. He let go of Sam to lean back and look at him again.
Sam was blinking at him in disbelief. "Dad?"
"Yeah, it's me," John said, wanting to smile and cry at the same time. "Were you always this damn tall?"
"It's Dad," Sam said to Dean over John's shoulder. "You were…it's really him."
"Near as we can figure," Dean said easily. He'd folded his arms and was pointedly not looking at John.
John ignored the stab of regret in his gut and refocused his attention on Sam. "It's good to see you, son."
"You really just showed up in…Purgatory, of all places, and you don't know how?"
John shrugged. "Pretty much."
"He appears to be human. He may still be a form of evil I can't detect," Cas added from back near the car. Sam gave him a little wave, still clearly dumbfounded.
"Of, of course," Sam said, looking back and forth between all of them. "Well. I guess we, uh, we have some catching up to do."
Sam took one of the chairs the motel provided along with the little table, while Dean perched on the edge of the bed looking as tense as humanly possible, and John stood with his arms folded. Cas was also standing, his arms at his sides, but he seemed removed somehow from the human drama in a way John found himself envying. The girl—Amelia—had gone back to her own room with a promise from Sam that he would explain all this...later. Though how he was going to manage explaining any of this to someone with no knowledge of the life when John couldn't understand it himself, he couldn't fathom.
"So let me get this straight," Sam said, quietly. "Dean, you went to Purgatory. Dad, you were already in Purgatory. And you met and then you found Cas and now you're here."
"…More or less," Dean said. He hadn't brought up Benny yet, it seemed, and John was happy to leave it that way.
"I got a lot of questions, dude."
"Yeah, well, so do we," Dean said sharply. He'd set his blade down on the bed beside him and glanced at it before addressing Sam again. "Six months I been gone. You've been, what? Banging that girl?" He gave Sam a disgusted look. "You didn't look for me. You haven't even been trying."
Sam sighed, running a hand through his long hair. "I told you. I didn't know where to start." He made a helpless movement. "I didn't know you were in Purgatory and it wasn't like there was anyone I could call."
"So?" Dean said.
John frowned as he processed what had happened. It had been one thing when Dean's angel had stayed away to keep him safe. But hearing this from Sam, of all people, simply rankled. "Dean's right. That's no excuse."
Sam's eyebrows went up while Dean's furrowed, but neither looked happy with him.
"I'm sorry?" Sam said.
John drew himself up taller. "Not knowing is no excuse," he repeated. "After Mary died, I didn't know about any of this. Forget demons—I didn't know anything went bump in the night. Didn't stop me from doing what I had to to find out. You should've looked for your brother."
"I thought he was dead," Sam pointed out. "I thought I knew what'd killed him and that thing was dead too. There was no reason for me to have looked."
"There wasn't a body," Dean pointed out.
"No. There wasn't," Sam said. "But it's not like there has to be. I just...I wanted to grieve, and move on."
"You wanted to move on?" John echoed. A faraway part of him recognized that he was doing exactly what he always did, responding with undeserved anger to the stress and uncertainty of a new situation-and that his anxiety about reuniting with Sam was the very thing that was making him lash out. But on the other hand, Sam had failed to do the one thing he'd preached to his boys their entire lives: look out for your brother.
"Yeah," Sam said curtly. "And I did."
"What about Kevin?" Dean asked.
"Crowley took him," Sam said quietly. "That's all I know."
"Not good enough," Dean said.
"No," John agreed, though Dean looked less than thrilled about having John's support. "It's not good enough at all."