Rebecca insisted that John spend the night that night. He refused at first and only relented after she dumped a pile of pillows and blankets onto the couch. He also accepted the leftover pizza she shoved in the microwave when he admitted he hadn't eaten dinner yet.
Sam watched it all from the kitchen table, listening to Rebecca's clipped words and John's gruff responses. Sam knew there were still things he didn't know, on top of things he still didn't believe, but it was far too late and he was far too drained to worry about it.
Zach, for his part, remained mostly silent after Rebecca pulled him aside and explained the situation. Sam could tell he was uncomfortable with it, and he almost wished he could turn the clock back a couple of hours, back to when they could full-out ignore the past instead of tiptoeing around it like they were forced to do now. He also knew Zach would have been much better off without a blatant reminder of his girlfriend's death hanging over the evening.
Zach ended up going to bed after a short while and Rebecca excused herself to change into her nightwear, leaving Sam and John alone. From his position at the table, Sam could see into the living room, and he quietly watched as John arranged the blankets over the couch. "I don't know why she gave me three," John muttered. "It's freakin' June."
Sam cracked a smile, and he must have made a noise because John looked up at him. John studied him for a moment and then, straightening, decided to walk towards him. "Got a nice place here, eh Sammy?" he said with a half-smile as he approached.
"It's Sam," he replied automatically. "And yeah, I have the Warrens to thank for that. Who knows where I'd be without them." He'd given that possibility a lot of thought, and he still hadn't a clue where he would have ended up.
John nodded as he pulled out a chair. "So, life is pretty good, huh? Got a college degree, living out in Cali, bright future, hot roommate..."
Sam snorted and ducked his head. "Yeah, it's alright, I guess."
"Just alright?" the shorter man replied skeptically, leaning back in his chair. Sam merely shrugged in reply. He knew he had it pretty good, but...Well, no life was perfect, so he couldn't complain.
Sam was just about to ask about his life when Rebecca came back, now wearing pajama pants and a tank top. "I just wanted to say good night, make sure you were all set," she said softly. "Is there anything else you need?"
"Nope, I'm good," John replied. "Thanks." She looked at Sam, who nodded that he was fine, and then left them with a friendly goodnight.
John turned to Sam. "Well, I guess you're probably going to bed too."
"Nope," Sam replied. John blinked in surprise, his head cocked in a questioning manner. "You might have a concussion," Sam told him. "I'm going to stay up with you, make sure you're all right."
The injured man scoffed. "Dude, I'm fine," he said. "You don't need to do that."
"Wanna see what's on late night TV?" Sam went on, ignoring him. He smirked as he added, "I hear Leno had Wentworth Miller."
"I said I'm fine."
But Sam was already on his feet and making his way towards the living room. "Have you seen the remote? Ah, never mind, here it is."
He heard John grumbling behind him as he followed him in. Sam plopped down in the armchair, watching out of the corner of his eye as John slowly lowered himself onto the couch.
As Sam flipped through the channels, John cleared his throat. "So, um," he started. "If you know what happened in St. Louis...why aren't you mad?"
"I am mad," Sam replied. "Dude, you trashed my room."
John snorted and shook his head. "But what about..." he trailed off.
Sam shrugged. "Well, I don't remember my brother." He turned suddenly, frowning. "Did Rebecca tell you I had some type of mental breakdown? Select amnesia or repressed memories, something like that." He gave a forced half-laugh, trying to keep that announcement casual. John paused but then nodded uncomfortably. "So anyway, as far as I'm concerned, I don't know my brother. And it sounds like he's better off dead anyway. I mean, God, what he did to Rebecca and Zach..."
He felt that familiar sick feeling twist inside his stomach. "Thank God you stopped him."
John shifted, obviously uncomfortable with the praise. "Well, you know, you kinda helped."
"Yeah, right," Sam scoffed. "I just provided enough of a distraction to stall him."
John looked at him. "No, it was more than that," John argued, his eyes boring through him. "The case was closed. Everyone thought Zach had done it. Everyone except Rebecca and you. You're the one who went out to prove otherwise, and without you, he'd still be sitting in jail and that psycho would be out slaughtering people."
Sam flinched at the word "psycho" in reference to his brother, but his mind was whirring as he struggled to comprehend what John just told him. "I...Really?"
He knew he never would have believed Zach was capable of such horrible crimes, but would he really have thought he had the power to do anything? The fact that he tried...Sam sucked in a breath, enjoying the warm, pleased feeling that gave him.
"So, uh..." Sam started, trying to cover up that feeling. "Did my brother have supernatural powers or something?"
"Huh? Nope, just a normal, regular guy."
Sam cocked an eyebrow. "So then how did you get involved?"
John gave it a second of thought. "Referral," he said with a smirk, resting his head against the back of the couch.
Sam quietly nodded. He had many other questions, but his mind hid them all, too tired to define them into words. He turned his attention back to the television, flipping aimlessly through the channels. Five minutes later, he gave up and left it on a documentary about medieval England.
"Yeah, you would choose the History Channel," John muttered from the couch.
Sam turned to him, bemused. "What do you want to watch?"
"Nah, this is fine."
Sam settled back into his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. The narrator droned on about kings and battles, but even though he tried to concentrate, Sam quickly tuned his voice out. His mind had shut down so that all he could do was watch images of English landscapes and historical artifacts scroll across the screen.
It wasn't until he was seeing footage of B-52s that Sam realized he had fallen asleep. A glance at the clock told him two hours had passed. He looked over at the couch and found John asleep in a sitting position, his head lolled back.
Sam pushed himself out of the chair and went to him, crouching down on the floor. "Hey. Hey, John," he said, shaking his arm. "Wake up."
John groaned. "Stop it, Sammy."
Sam sighed. "No, you gotta wake up. C'mon, just for a second."
Finally his eyelids parted and he lifted his head. "What?"
"Just wanted to make sure you're not confused," Sam told him.
"Well, I am confused - I should be asleep right now and yet I'm not."
"Alright, alright, just tell me you know who you are."
"I know who I am," he replied irritably.
"Good. Now why don't you go ahead and lie down?" Sam suggested. "I'll wake you up in another couple of hours."
"You don't need to do that," John replied with a roll of his eyes. "I'm fine." As he spoke, he lowered himself into a lying position, pulling the covers up over his shoulders as he rested his head against the pillow. "Just go to bed," he commanded, his eyes already closing.
Sam ignored him, going back to the chair. Within moments, he was asleep again.
A few hours later he forced himself into a semi-conscious state, dimly aware that the historical documentaries had been replaced with infomercials. He half-heartedly tried to open his eyes, but they slid back shut. His limbs felt as if they had melted into the chair, and he didn't even bother to try moving them.
Without opening his eyes, he rolled his head towards the couch. "Hey. Wake up."
A grunt answered him, so he tried again. "Hey, Dean, wake up."
"Go to sleep, Sammy," a gruff, groggy voice replied.
That suggestion sounded really good – but he had to finish this first. "Just tell me your name," he said with a groan.
"Dean."
Sam sighed with relief. "All right. Night," he said drowsily, rolling his head back into a more comfortable position.
He had just reached the edge of slumber when his mind jerked him back awake. "Hey!" he said, scrambling out of his chair. "Hey, wake up again."
"What?" the older man growled as Sam shook his shoulder.
"You're confused," Sam told him. "You gave me the wrong name."
He cracked an eye open. "Huh?"
He must have had his brother on his mind when he called John the wrong name. However, there was a big difference between getting someone's name wrong and getting your own name wrong. "Your concussion—you're not thinking straight. I accidentally called you Dean, and that must have messed you up, because that's the name you gave me."
Now both eyes opened. "No, it wasn't," he protested.
"Yes, it was." Sam chewed on his lip, studying John's face in the blue glow of the TV, trying to find any sign of a concussion. "Maybe I should take you to the hospital, just in case."
"No, man, I'm fine," he said irritably. "My name is John, today is officially Saturday, and if I didn't need my beauty sleep, I would kick your ass right now."
Suppressing a smirk, Sam gave him the once over. "Alright, fine," he finally relented, holding his hand up in surrender. He was too tired to argue, and it seemed to him John was coherent, if not cranky. "If you lapse into a coma, it's not my fault."
"I'll take that chance. At least then you can't wake me up." With that, John rolled over, turning his back to Sam.
Sam sighed irritably as he stood up again. His neck and back protested simultaneously with painful cracks. He looked at the clock and saw that it was nearly morning, and in another few hours, Zach would be waking up. Sam scribbled a quick note telling him to wake John to check on him. Then he stumbled into his bedroom, where his bed promised a much more comfortable place to rest.
ooOOoo
Sam woke up slowly the next morning, gently coming into consciousness as the light brightened through the curtains and snaked up his bed. His eyes opened and closed a couple of times before he finally decided to get up, and he took his time to stretch before he tossed his sheet off and rolled out of bed.
But it wasn't until he was out of bed that he realized how weird it felt. Replaying the last few moments, it occurred to him just how unusual waking up that way was for him.
It was the first time he could remember that he woke up without a hint of panic racing through his veins.
Sam wondered if he had finally broken that habit. Since last summer, nightmares of Jessica that attacked him every night faded slowly into a weekly occurrence until now, when he dreamed of her only occasionally. But that underlying panic that woke him everyday had never faded. Not until that morning.
He hoped it would stay that way.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, Sam wandered out to the kitchen-slash-living room area. He heard water running in the second bathroom and knew Rebecca or maybe Zach was showering. In the kitchen, he found John standing by the counter. He was fumbling with the tray in the coffee maker with one hand while reading the plastic coffee canister he held in his other.
"Need some help?" Sam asked with a smirk.
John whirled around. "Oh. Heh," he said, trying but failing to hide his embarrassment. "How do you work this thing?"
"You don't know how to use a coffee maker?"
"Dude, I'm on the road all the time," he said indignantly. "All my coffee comes from gas stations and diners."
"You don't have a coffee maker at home?"
"I don't even have a home."
Sam gaped at him. "So when you say you're on the road all the time, you mean, all the time."
John spread his hands out. "I don't speak in riddles."
He stepped back as Sam strode forward and took over the coffee maker. Sam wasn't sure how to respond to that, so he didn't. As he scooped grinded beans into the filter, he glanced over his shoulder. "So how'd you sleep?"
"Not too bad," John shrugged. "That couch was more comfortable than most hotel beds. Would've been perfect if someone hadn't kept waking me up." He shot Sam a glare.
Sam chuckled. "You're welcome, by the way." John just scoffed. "So, what's next for you?" Sam asked him just as he flipped the coffee maker on.
He turned around as John considered his answer. "I drink my coffee," he said. "And then I leave."
"Already?" Sam asked, raising an eyebrow. "Where are you going?"
John shrugged. "Wherever I'm needed."
Still not satisfied, Sam pressed forward. "How do you know where that is?" he asked.
"Newspapers," John replied with an irritated snort. "I go through hundreds of newspapers until I find something that might be up my alley. You know, anything weird."
"So you're still selling the ghost thing."
"Not just ghosts. Anything that goes bump in the night."
Sam shook his head lightly with a laugh. "Wow." John scowled and looked away, sending a pang of guilt through Sam. He decided to change the subject, backtracking a little. "That must take you forever, going through all those newspapers."
John nodded, relaxing again. "Heh, you're telling me. I used to have a laptop, but now..."
As John trailed off, Sam shuffled his feet. "You know, our library has free access to a bunch of them, more than you could ever find online," he told him. "If you wanna go down there, I can help you search." He didn't know why he offered, but as soon as those words were out of his mouth, he found himself seriously hoping John would accept his help.
"You...you want to help?" John asked hesitantly, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, sure," Sam replied. "I don't have to work today, so why not?"
It was more than that, but Sam kept those thoughts to himself. He wasn't sure of the exact reasons, but he knew how to search, and for some reason, he wanted to help this man in some way. He wanted—He needed to do something that did even a little bit of good for somebody. And Sam was suddenly eager to showoff what he knew about research.
John was giving him a long look, some unidentified emotion just underneath the surface of his eyes.
"Okay, yeah," he finally accepted, his voice gruffer than normal. "Sure. Let's go to the library." Sam couldn't stop the grin the spread across his face.
ooOOoo
They didn't leave for another hour, each of them finishing a cup of coffee and then taking showers first. The timing worked out though, as the library opened later on Saturdays.
Sam knew he was crazy. He didn't even know John at all, except for that very gruesome fact that he killed Sam's own brother. A fact that refused to sink in. But the Warrens trusted him, and Sam couldn't convince himself that they were wrong to do so.
As Sam led John to the library, he was consciously aware of John's presence right next to him. A kind of static filled the air between them and left his left side buzzing. Even though it wasn't exactly a physical sensation, he could feel it, all along his skin.
He realized he was fascinated with the shorter man beside him. John exuded a quiet power, a dark intensity underneath his casual, tough guy exterior. Even though he was shorter than Sam and thinner than he'd remembered, Sam still felt this guy could kick his ass.
And there was something to him that seemed almost melancholy, a hidden sadness that Sam wouldn't know how to touch.
But maybe Sam understood it. He thought it might be loneliness. A kind that mirrored his own.
Beside him, John's step suddenly faltered for a half-second, and it wasn't until Sam caught sight of the brunette that passed them that he realized why. Sam smirked, not surprised at John's behavior. "What? She's hot," John cracked, seeing Sam's expression. "You've got a beautiful world here, Sammy."
At the library, they went straight to a row of computers and slid into side by side seats. Sam started to direct John to the archive link, but the older man seemed to know how to find it from doing it so often before. They restricted their search to the past two weeks, and John gave him some key words to search for – for example, "deaths" preceded with "mysterious" or "multiple" or "gruesome."
"Fun," Sam remarked dryly.
"Yeah, well, there'd be a whole lot more 'fun' if someone like me wasn't out there stopping it," John remarked.
"So, that's what you do? Go out there and fight the forces of evil?"
"That's the comic book version of it, yeah."
"You do this alone?"
John made some deep noises in his throat before he spoke. "Well, my dad does this too."
"Yeah?" Sam frowned, having never heard John's father mentioned during the events in St. Louis and knowing that he wasn't around when John "exorcised" Sam's room. His father may hunt as well, but they apparently don't together, at least not always. "Where is he now?" he asked curiously.
He was answered with a shrug. "He, uh, needed a break after a bad job," John said.
Sam could hear it in his voice. "You don't know where he is, do you?"
"Not really, no," John replied sharply, keeping his eyes staring at the computer screen in front of him.
"Oh." Sam knew he shouldn't ask, but he couldn't help himself. "Doesn't that get lonely?"
The rush of emotions that fell over John's face told him he had hit the target. The shorter man refused to look at him as he clamped his jaw. "You have to make choices," John told him eventually, speaking in a slow, deliberate manner. "In my line of work, some things are more important."
Sam raised his eyebrows at the implications. It occurred to him that this guy made it his mission to hunt down those that hurt others, but in the process he would have had to give up any semblance of a normal, personal life.
That is, he did if he were actually telling the truth--which Sam inexplicably found himself beginning to believe.
He couldn't comprehend, though, a life constantly on the road, a completely solitary existence. At least truckers had a home to go home to. "But still, that's..."
"Besides," John continued, interrupting him. He gave Sam a sidelong glance, the corner of his mouth pointing up into a smirk. "There are a lot of lovely ladies out there, just waiting for me to meet them."
"I'm sure there are," Sam replied with a half snort, relieved by the subject change.
They fell silent for a few moments, and then John spoke again. "Like you wouldn't believe," he went on.
"Uh-huh. I bet." Sam typed in a new search string and waited for the results.
"Incredible hotties. I mean...man. California babes, farmer's daughters, southern belles..."
Sam grinned but otherwise ignored him as he turned his attention back to the computer screen. Fortunately, the results weren't nearly as numerous as in his Winchester search. He attacked it the same way though, going down the list and skimming the article each link produced.
Teen shot by sister. Wedding crashed by food poisoning. 3 die in car accident. Lighthouse keeper disappear.
Sam stopped and turned to the other man. "Hey, lighthouses are notoriously haunted, aren't they?"
"Yeah, why?" John asked, his eyes flickering across his own computer monitor.
"A man disappeared at one up in Oregon."
John looked at him and frowned thoughtfully. "That could be something. What does it say?"
"Uh..." Sam said, scanning the article. "Caretaker Walter James disappeared while working. No body was found...No reason for him to leave. Left wife and two kids...No signs of struggle or theft."
"Alright, sounds like I've got myself a gig." John pushed himself away from the computer and stood up. "Can you print that for me?"
Sam quickly complied and handed him the sheet the printer spit out. "Great, thanks," John said. "If I hit the road right away, I could get there by dark."
Sam stood up beside him, shifting on his feet. "So...that's it, then?"
"Yeah, guess so." John stared at the printout, but if he was reading it, his eyes weren't moving.
They kept mostly quiet as they walked back towards the apartment. Sam wasn't sure what to say, and he couldn't decipher the feelings that were swirling around in his stomach.
"Hey, thanks for helping out," John said suddenly, breaking the silence.
"No problem," Sam said back.
He chewed the inside of his cheek as he tried to think of something to add. But before he knew it, they were back at the apartment, and John was gathering his things – namely a small, already-packed bag and a few stray items like a tube of toothpaste and the knives Sam had taken from him the night before. Sam stood back as he roamed the apartment, looking for anything he may have missed. The search only lasted a couple of minutes and then John was shoving his hands into his pockets, saying goodbye to Sam and the Warrens as they all gathered by the door.
"Sam, uh..." John stalled with a slight grimace. "Thank you for...you know, making sure I was okay last night. I know I was kinda an ass."
Sam nodded in reply, quietly accepting his thanks. John held out his hand, and Sam shook it firmly.
"Well, I guess..." John trailed off and glanced away. "I'll see you around," he tried again, slinging his bag over his shoulder.
Sam's mouth moved of its own accord, and the words popped out before he realized what he was asking. "Can I come with you?"
I know, I'm crazy, but I wanted to try this. Please review! Let me know if I've dug myself in too deep.
I almost didn't include the scene where Sam says Dean's name out loud, and I hope that didn't take you out of the story. I thought it would be kinda interesting to show that Sam subconsciously knows it's Dean -- but let me know if it left you thinking, "Wait, Sam calls him Dean, but he STILL doesn't get it?"
...Cause, yeah, I'm dragging this baby out.