The night John finds out he's got a third son, he drives all night to get to him.
It's September, which means Sam will have just started up at Stanford for the new semester a few weeks ago. It's not like Sam ever really leaves John's mind, but he's on it more during times like now, times when John knows something particular must be happening: new semesters, finals, holidays. It was all he could really think about for all of this past April leading into May, when he knew Sam's scholarship didn't cover summer housing and was half expecting Sam to reach out for want of anywhere else to go. In retrospect, John should have known better than to think Sam wouldn't figure something out for himself. John may not have known how to teach Sam anything about being a normal kid, but if there was one thing he did teach him, it was how to improvise—how to game the system.
Even at Adam's age, Sam was already thinking about college—talking to guidance counselors and sneaking off to the library after school, taking notes on the universities he researched in spiral notebooks he thought John didn't notice. John noticed. John always notices. It's just—easier sometimes to act like he doesn't.
It won't be like that with Adam, he tells himself firmly. He may be Adam's father, but he'll never be his dad, which means there will be no reason for John to step into his life and interfere in it. Adam will never even hear of hunting, and it won't matter if he wants to grow up to be a nine-to-five middle manager or a nuclear physicist or a goddamn theatre freak: either way, John will ask and listen and be good with it. There's nothing tying Adam to the life—not because of a demon, like Sam will have to face someday, or even because of the same blind family loyalty that drives Dean. Protecting people like Adam from ever learning about things that go bump in the night is the whole point of why John does what he does, and John will never fail him, not like he failed Sam and Dean.
As he peers through the rain spattering his windshield, he can see a whole life with Adam playing out before his eyes: birthdays, graduation, college, maybe even marriage and grandkids. It's not that John wants a do-over, not exactly—but with Sam at Stanford and Dean working alone, seeing Adam, even if it's just a few times a year, could give John something to look forward to, a little of the companionship he never seemed to be able to draw out of his older kids.
The thing about Sam and Dean is that they never needed John, even if, each in his own way, they thought they did. Adam doesn't need John, either, but it's early enough that John can at least imagine a future where John can be more for him than he ever was for Sam or Dean.
Another kid—a healthy, normal kid. An opportunity not to futz it all up. John doesn't know if he's ever felt less—or, in other ways, more—lonely.
