A/N Thank you to the readers that have left reviews and have messaged me by PM on latest chapters. Big thank yous to the guest reviewers that I can't contact directly. Writers thrive on feedback! Especially when you've been away from the keyboard as long as I've been and are sorely out of practice.

Another quick author's note at the end.

Stage 5: Acceptance

John Winchester wasn't normally the honky-tonk type.

He liked the music well enough. The rollicking ballads of love and loss that could give you a soul deep ache with the gut wrenching emotions they dragged out of the poor bastards behind the microphones. Sung in passionately melodic voices that made you want to either line dance on the bar with joyous wild abandon or crawl under your truck and die from the depths of your despair.

It wasn't even the atmosphere of mostly lively jovial people, knocking back hastily poured shots of well liquor and swilling pitchers of foamy beer before stumbling out to the sticky slippery dance floor to bump and grind body parts. A sweaty and frenzied life affirmation of tight jeans and short skirts in a mating ritual that inevitably led to morning after walks of shame and the exchange of fake phone numbers.

John was just a man that didn't like crowds when he could avoid them.

Crowds were a hindrance when you were trying to watch your six. They were camouflage for the dangers you didn't see until they were already hotly breathing down your neck and sticking a hidden knife in your back. They were a living jungle gym obstacle you had to breach to get to someone you wanted to protect when they were more than arms length away.

Crowds were things that got between him and his kid when Dean was off acting a fool while blowing off some steam after a particularly nasty hunt.

To be fair this hunt had been a bad one at the top of a long list of a whole lotta bad crap in their world, and if his son was indulging a little more heavily than normal then John couldn't rightfully blame him.

The Winchesters had been tandem driving their way to Lincoln to meet up with Caleb and refresh some of their collective arsenals when the call came in. Although they were still working cases together John was slowly coming to grips with the fact that he had raised a capable hunter who could be doing more good in the world if they split up occasionally.

It wasn't what he wanted.

Honestly, John would be more than happy to have his boy by his side all the time, comfortable in the knowledge that he at least would know where one of his kids was at any given moment.

Maybe if life had gone on they way he had hoped it would when he held Dean in his arms for the first time, when life wasn't necessarily easy but it was simple, his son would now be working his way up to taking over the family auto garage and John wouldn't be constantly worried over his safety in an unforgiving job that usually had an inevitably short life expectancy.

Unless a car falls you, a profession as a mechanic isn't necessarily fraught with mortal peril.

But that wasn't their life. Not until they finally got the thing that had taken Mary.

John felt deep seated guilt for dragging his boys into his quest, he did, but his sons were in jeopardy whether they hunted with him or not. At least as hunters they could also do a little good along the way.

It was too late with Sammy.

His mule stubborn youngest had made his choice, and as angry as John was about it he could almost be proud of the boy for standing his ground.

Almost

John couldn't condone the blatantly disrespectful way that Sammy had thrown everything he had ever tried to teach his younger son right in his father's face.

Every. Single. Thing

No matter how hard John had tried to stress upon him how important their jobs were. Just walked away without once looking back, and there was nothing John could do about that anymore.

Other than fret and try to protect him from afar as best as he could manage whether the kid knew it or not or even wanted it or not, because he was still John's boy, damn it. No matter how deep the wounds between them now ran.

Fortunately though he still had Dean, and if Dean was safer in the long run because John did his damnedest to make sure he was highly trained to protect himself then all the better.

The Impala had always had her well stocked hidden compartment filled with the tools of the trade, but once John had turned her keys over to his firstborn, a proud smile on his face that he could still manage to do meaningful things for his son, it had become necessary to split the guns and ammo and all of the other specialty items between her and John's new-to-him truck.

With John taking the lion's share of the collection more or less.

Because it was going to be him out there the majority of the time if he could help it, and also because there was a little niggling thought in the back of his mind that kept saying that leaving the Impala trunk stocked would be a flashing red reminder that his son would be carrying on in John's broken footsteps whether he wanted Dean in them or not.

So eventually they had left just enough of the basics and a few items that Dean had a personal attachment to.

Like that damn grenade launcher that made Dean's big child-like eyes pop with lust when Caleb first brought it out.

All to insure that his boys were protected in John's absence while they were playing house in South Dakota.

But with Sammy now gone and Dean jumping feet first into the full time life of a hunter it was time to make sure that his eldest boy had everything he needed to make his way in a very scary world.

Because there was a bigger issue at stake that John didn't speak about with his son. Dean, who held his family at the center of everything in his life, wouldn't want to acknowledge that the time was rapidly approaching when John would finally meet his nemesis.

John himself wasn't sure when or where or how. He just knew that a storm was coming, whether it was coming on its own or if it would come because he would bring it.

It's like that old poem said. The Devil whispered in my ear, "You're not strong enough to withstand the storm." And John would whisper back to all the devils and all the demons and filth in the world "I am the storm."

And John would be.

He would do whatever he had to do to rain down fire and brimstone and lightening to get his justice against the evil that had taken almost everything from him. Even if he had to march into Hell itself and kill all those sons of bitches with his bare hands.

But war has casualties, and John had long ago given up on the idea that he wouldn't be one of them by the time all the dust settled. If there was a merciful God that John was pretty sure he didn't believe in, although you never really knew, John would live long enough to finish his quest, and his sons would survive it no matter what John himself had to do to achieve that.

And when John fell. When that happened as it surely would, his Dean would be alone.

Vulnerable.

Unless John pushed aside his own feelings and the blanket of paternal protection that he would rather wrap his son up in like a child again. Dean needed to be strong. He needed to be fit. He needed to be ready to push forward after the last smoking cinders of John's funeral pyre had long gone cold.

So John needed to let him stretch his wings. Find his way on his own.

A little.

For now it would be enough to add to both arsenals just in case, even if they would be sticking together for the foreseeable future.

Because while John wasn't ready to let go just yet, the time would be coming soon.

They were almost to Lincoln when John's primary cellphone buzzed with an unfamiliar number. Which in itself wasn't unusual considering that he often got referrals from other hunters when a case was especially bad. The hunting community may not particularly like John Winchester but no one could deny that he was one of the best in the business.

There was no time for petty feelings when lives were at stake.

John had been surprised to find his old buddy Martin Creaser on the other line, a quick explanation of a bad fight during a hunt costing him his usual phone. Martin had sounded more rattled than John would have thought possible which only deepened his resolve to assist his friend. Creaser was a strong hunter and it took a lot to unnerve him. Certainly more than John expected the man to handle on his own if things were as bad as he suspected.

So even though he and Dean were both playing wounded and in desperate need of some serious rack time after a couple of very long weeks, John promised Martin that they would rendezvous with him in Albuquerque ASAP.

The interior of the honky-tonk was growing significantly warmer around him as the crowd surged in size and the masses of perspiring bodies congregated in larger groups around the ridiculously small high top tables. Up on the stage the singer fronting the half country/half metal hybrid band was wailing out a song of love turned to violence that the younger crowd seemed to be more than casually familiar with if the shouts of appreciation and rhythmic undulations were any indication.

John looked up from his beer long enough to check on his son unsteadily perching on a rickety bar stool a few tables away. Far enough to not feel like he was being chaperoned but still close enough to give his father a peace of mind that John hadn't asked for.

His father's interest in tagging along tonight more than enough to signal to the young man that the hunt had gotten to his old man too.

At the table with Dean was a young hunter named Lee Webb that the Winchesters had just met. Lee wasn't much older than his Dean and the two young men had instantly gotten on like a house on fire when Martin introduced them.

John's blood had gone cold with fury when Martin had told him that the hunt he was doing was almost certainly an Ew'ah, because John was a father and he took special exception to anything that fucked with children.

This evil spirit of Cherokee legend was feeding off the dreams of a bunch of kids that lived in a group housing facility in Albuquerque, and because the boys that lived there were ones with a whole host of personal and criminal problems on their records no one was taking their fear very seriously. Proving once again that humans could be as bad as monsters sometimes.

It reminded John too much of what had happened with Dean when he was sixteen and how much damage he had done to his relationship with his son when he just left Dean in Hurleyville those two months. Although his firstborn had never said a word of recrimination to his father, John knew his boy well enough to know that he didn't often express vocally what he was feeling inside and there was little doubt that Dean had been deeply hurt.

This was a bad hunt.

Lee's father had been a hunter that John had heard about in the community but never met. Unsurprisingly the elder Webb never made it to retirement age and now his son hunted in his stead. Another example of families other than the Winchesters getting caught up The Life, one cursed generation after another.

More importantly for this case the young man himself had enough Cherokee blood in him to have a tribal elder as a maternal grandfather.

When Martin called him Lee had hauled ass from Oklahoma at break neck speed after his grandfather entrusted him with a very rare and sacred Wampus mask that had been passed down through the tribe. It being the only thing of legend known to have the capability to exorcise an Ew'ah.

It took everything John and Martin had physically and mentally to entrap the spirit and banish it, with Dean and Lee protecting the children from the blood thirsty staff members who had gone crazy from close encountering the Ew'ah in all its depraved glory.

A cruel and potent little side effect from the spirit to those that got in its path and and were forced to see it's horrific visage.

There weren't a lot of survivors among the adults.

After that it wasn't so surprising when Dean and Leo had decided that a drink or ninety was in order. With Martin begging off to head back to the motel to rest, that left John to stalk the young men to the bar next to the motel because his comfort level about letting his own child out of sight at the current moment was bordering on zilch.

John was nursing his own beer, tiredly jotting notes down in his journal. Determined that if Dean ever needed it in the future it was going to be left for him as complete as humanly possible.

He glanced up at his son's table and saw that one of the barmaids was delivering what was by John's count the third bottle of Jaegermeister to the young men who had now been joined by three very pretty young ladies. Sisters, maybe even triplets by the look of them, given the cutesy identical outfits and wild manes of blonde hair that they tossed back and forth while making goo goo eyes at the handsome hunters.

And wasn't that just every young man's wet dream.

He allowed himself a small smile as he took in the look of pleasure on Dean's face, an arm each wrapped around two of the girls and grinning like Christmas had come early while Lee was shamelessly pressed up against the third who was giggling drunkenly at the hand grabbing her ass. All of them seemed to be having a good time, and that was okay.

More than okay.

John would keep watch so his boy could let his guard down for a little while.

It's not as if John didn't know that Dean was more upset over the loss of that pretty little thing from Ohio than he would share. It was in the way that any attempt to mention the time he had spent there with her was casually brushed off as if it was less than nothing. The way that Dean had thrown himself into flirting again with anything and everything that moved. Somehow overcompensating for whatever hurt he might be suppressing deep down.

That was Dean's fallback position on just about everything. Show no weakness.

Just like his father had taught him.

By the time John was finishing with the details of the hunt, his own eyes growing heavy from fatigue but unwilling to abandon his post just yet, Dean was obviously more than feeling comfortably numb. It was probably the reason that Lee had somehow managed to drag his son up to the stage, and where he was now whispering in the bassist's ear and shoving a wad of cash in his direction.

Lee was insistently pushing Dean up behind the very recently abandoned microphone, the younger Winchester nudging back at his new acquaintance with the barest of half hearted resistance while the band began playing the intro to a song that sounded familiar to John but he couldn't immediately place.

It wasn't until the opening guitar line began that John realized that it was a Metallica song called The Unforgiven, and by the looks of things his son had been successfully cajoled into singing it.

John had heard Dean warbling in not so dulcet tones on a hundred occasions over the years. His boy had a lot of talents to be sure but singing had never been one of them.

Simply put, Dean couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.

How many times had he made Sam crazy enough to commit fratricide by bellowing out metal songs at the top of his lungs in the shower first thing in the morning?

The sound was bad enough to make Singer's dogs whine.

If John had more energy, or more concern for his son's dignity in front of a room full of strangers, he might have made the effort to pull Dean off the stage and taken the opportunity to get his kid back to the motel and into bed to sleep it off.

Especially since he had more than a slight suspicion that Martin had gotten closer to the Ew'ah than he admitted and might be suffering some effects from that. John was anxious to check on him.

But the simple fact was that John couldn't give a fat rat's ass what the people in the bar thought of him or his kid, and if Dean wanted to deal with a bad day by primal screaming into a mic for a few minutes then John was going to sit on his ass and let him. Martin could wait a few minutes more.

Dean seemed to have a moment of shyness, just about ready to pull away from the spotlight that now shone down on him, but another insistent push from Lee kept him in place.

And when he opened his mouth to sing, John's shock almost made him knock his beer over.

To say that Dean had a powerful voice was the understatement of the century.

From the first words that he let rip, his melody strong and true, the audience that had been more than a little wary of the stranger that somehow bumped the singer they liked away from his place at the mic immediately started to pay rapt attention to the young man on the stage.

So did John.

Dean sang the lyrics by heart, a passionate fierceness in his tone. He gripped the mic with both hands, his eyes closed and his hips gently thrusting in time to the beat. He was beauty and pain under the harsh house lights and there wasn't a person in the bar that wasn't enthralled by the sight of him.

John remembered the first time he had heard this song. Years ago, probably close to a decade, when Dean had all but begged for the cassette tape when they happened to be driving by a Tower Records outside of Austin, Texas.

John had only recently returned from a hunt after a four day long absence. Longer than he liked leaving the boys alone at that age. Sammy had been pouting and difficult since he got back and John wasn't fool enough to not know what his little brother had been putting Dean through during that time.

So he bought his son a treat with a little of the money he picked up in a card game and then allowed the boy to play it nearly nonstop all the way to Blue Earth where the family was going fora brief respite.

He must have heard the lyrics a thousand times. Not really paying attention to them, because it wasn't quite his preferred genre. But now as he watched his son pour his heart out in a dive bar in the middle of the desert, John was listening intently.

Especially when he realized that his boy's grass green eyes were now open and brightly shimmering wet in the spotlight as he sang.

An uneasy chill snaked it's way through John as he had the uncomfortable thought that this song might have been written with his secretly introverted son in mind. It was clear in Dean's body language that the boy was putting real emotion into his performance.

With time, the child draws in

This whipping boy done wrong

Deprived of all his thoughts

The young man struggles on and on

And Dean was struggling. He may not be showing it in words or deeds but John was a man who knew how to read people as a matter of survival and no one escaped his notice, especially his eldest son.

What I've felt

What I've known

Never shined through in what I've shown

Never be

Never see

Won't see what might have been

Words hitting John hard as he sat in rapt fascination of his child saying in song what he would never dare say out loud to his demanding father's face. Feelings that Dean would never allow himself to consciously show in the presence of the man that had never really given his boy a choice in anything he did.

They dedicate their lives

To running all of his

He tries to please them all

This bitter man he is

If that wasn't an uncomfortably accurate description of what John and Sam had done to Dean over the years, then he didn't know what was. Never a day went by that Dean didn't bust his ass trying to make his father and brother happy. And they all knew it, even if they didn't acknowledge it.

And Dean would become bitter one day if John didn't loosen the grip he had on his boy.

Because that's what John would have done himself at that age if someone had tried to dictate his life to him. What Sammy had felt the need to abandon his family for. Because John's youngest was more like himself than he ever wanted to admit, whereas Dean would always give everything for them and never think about taking anything for himself until life had the potential to ultimately destroy him.

Throughout his life the same

He's battled constantly

This fight he cannot win

A tired man they see

No longer cares

The old man then prepares

To die regretfully

That old man here is me

Maybe it was the exhaustion from the hunt, or the slight buzz from the handful of beer bottles littering his small table. Maybe it was his own guilty conscience that had John reading more into song lyrics than he probably should.

It could just be that this was one of his son's favorite songs. A song that Dean obviously sang well and must have practiced on more than one occasion in private given how well he was delivering it.

Or maybe it was just John's fear that his child would spend his life doing his father's bidding. Unable to carve out a life or an identity of his own. Never having a family of his own to cherish which would be a crime because if anyone was a family man it was Dean.

Never free

Never me

So I dub thee Unforgiven

As the last notes of the song faded away, the audience who didn't seem to mind giving their attention to a performance that wasn't either fast enough or slow enough to dance to roared their appreciation, clearly not paying enough attention to notice the single tear wending its way down Dean's face as he slowly came back to himself, modestly waving away the raucous applause as Lee enthusiastically slapped him on the back.

But John noticed.

Just as clearly as he understood and accepted that as far as his sons were concerned John would undoubtedly be the Unforgiven.

/

"Don't you ever do anything for fun?"

Sam looked up from his pile of books that lay on the library counter waiting to be scanned into the system. "What?"

Behind the counter the pretty brunette chuckled and took Sam's offered Student ID card and swiped it through her machine before handing it back to the distracted student. "You're always here," she pointed out. "When do you have fun?"

Sam gave her a little smile as he blushed and ran the fingers of his right hand through his short hair out of habit. "Finals are next week. I don't have time for fun."

She smirked at him as she processed his books, creating a huge and heavy stack that was going to be hard for him to haul back to his dorm room. "I'd bet you could take those exams tomorrow and still ace them. You've been ahead in all your classes since the first day you walked in here."

He didn't disagree with her as he began to load his backpack. The seams stretching and threatening to pop under the weight. It would hold, Sam knew. He'd had lots of experience trudging around like a pack mule over the years.

"I need to make sure I do ace them," he protested quietly, gathering up the last few in his arms. "Us lowly scholarship students don't get second chances."

Her forehead wrinkled in concern as she placed a gentle hand on his arm. "Hey. You're going to do great."

Sam smiled up at her, his dimples peeking out for just a quick second. "Thanks Gwen. I can always count on you for an ego boost."

He gave her a nod in farewell and hefted his load into a more comfortable position as he began the trek back to his room. Gwen smiled sadly at her secret cousin. Genuinely fond of the kid that she had been tasked to watch over these last few months. The more she got to know Sam, the less use she had for John Winchester.

Sam was glad he had managed to grab his warmer winter coat when he had hastily packed his belongings before walking out of the house in Sioux Falls for the last time. It was close to a fifteen minute walk back to Adams House from the library and the wind was blowing cold enough to redden his cheeks as he trudged along the sidewalk.

He liked Gwen. She had been a really good friend to him since he arrived on campus and spent his first few minutes staring around the library in awe of his surroundings. Not much older than Sam was himself, she had been very self deprecating from Day One as she bluntly shared her humble background as a graduate of the City College of San Francisco where she had received a two year degree in Library Sciences.

Gwen would often joke with Sam about her lack of fitness to be a Stanford student herself. With neither the grades nor the financial resources to formally study alongside the young men and women that traipsed through the library where she toiled everyday. She just had a love of the books and Sam had always felt a huge amount of respect for her for that.

She had also been responsible for Sam finding his job at Antonio's. Sitting in the library and dazed by his abrupt need to secure a job after failing to find a vacancy at the library itself, she steered him the direction of people she knew looking for hard workers. Sam wasn't exactly sure what her connection to his employers were, having never seen her come into the restaurant, but he was certainly grateful that she had helped him manage to keep solvent.

Gwen was pretty enough and absolutely smart enough to garner Sam's personal interest. She reminded him a little of Alex in some ways that he found attractive. If it wasn't for the fact that she also just had a certain something about her that for some odd reason was too close to how his own family behaved, he might have made a move to see her outside the library as well.

But that something about her unnerved Sam for reasons that he couldn't quite put his finger on, and since he really didn't have time for a personal life anyway, it was just as well that they stayed friends only. Between his studies and his job, Sam already had a very full plate.

Brady was holed up in his half of the room deep in his own books by the time Sam made it back with his load of research materials. Gwen hadn't been wrong when she pointed out that Sam was almost surely already prepped and ready for his exams, but that didn't mean that he wasn't going to keep at it until he had every facet of all his classes committed to absolute memory.

After the disastrous Thanksgiving with his roommate, Sam had politely declined the offers of accompanying his other dorm mates home for the Christmas break after finals were over. Besides the fact that Sam had an already paid for motel room for the duration that had been painful to secure, he not only had his job at the restaurant to maintain but also his voluntary indentured servitude to the motel owner to fulfill.

There was also the exceptionally small, ridiculously teeny tiny sliver of hope that he was quietly hanging onto that maybe his brother might have finally forgiven him enough to swing by, and Sam didn't want to be out of the area if that somehow miraculously happened.

Sam had no doubt in his mind that Dean would know exactly where Sam's dorm room was if he bothered to come to the campus, and although Sam himself would not be there the brothers had a long established secret code between them. He would be able to leave the nearly invisible instructions behind in Adams House that would direct his big brother to the motel very easily.

It was probably a fool's wish, because Dean had already had months to call Sam's cellphone and give his little brother the opportunity to offer his profuse apologies over the manner of their parting. Someone had been paying for the phone service every month since Sam left South Dakota after all. Every time he got the text message confirming that another month of service had been paid, a tiny little seed of hope blossomed in Sam's heart that someday he would see Dean again.

But then he would convince himself that, pissed off or not, Dean would continue to ensure that Sam had a working phone. If for no other reason than to contact his family in a dire emergency or to have the means to beg forgiveness from their father.

Neither of which Sam expected to occur any time soon.

Out of habit, Sam shoved his recent acquisitions off to the side of his desk and booted up his laptop. Chewing on his pinky nail as the operating system went through the normal checks until he was able to click on the links that he only allowed himself to use sparingly.

It would probably surprise his father and brother to know that Sam hadn't been able to help himself from scanning the national news of the weird in an effort to track his family around the country.

Not that it was an exact science by any means. At any given time there could be up to half a dozen potential cases that would have attracted John and Dean's notice. There was no real way of knowing where the older Winchester's might have chosen to go.

It didn't mean that Sam wasn't going to make an effort to keep tabs on them just in case something so awful cropped up that he wouldn't be able to stop himself from going to them if it meant that an extra pair of hands might keep them alive long enough to mend fences.

Of course he could have just checked in with Uncle Bobby who would surely know exactly where his family was at any given moment. Dad might not be conscientious enough to share their ever changing locations with the salvage man, but Dean would.

But then Sam would have second thoughts, headlined by the certainty that Uncle Bobby probably wasn't of a mind to actually be Sam's Uncle Bobby anymore. It had never been a secret to anyone that Dean was the older man's favorite between the two brothers.

And Sam had never really minded because he had always been comfortable in the knowledge that he was his brother's first, second and last priority.

After what Sam had done to his brother, he was pretty sure that Bobby would just as soon let his phone go to voicemail as pick it up and give Sam any information on the whereabouts of the family that he discarded like a used tissue.

Engrossed in thought, he pulled a sandwich out of the mini fridge and spent thirty minutes that should really have been used on his Introduction to American Law class web searching for anything that might catch his father or brother's attention.

Over the past few weeks he had gotten better at making sure that he was eating regularly. It was still hard to make it to the dining hall for dinner most nights, but he was at least taking time out of the day to grab a couple of sandwiches to have on hand in the dorm during his study hours.

A handful of bizarre deaths in Homa Hills, WY north of Casper seemed a likely hot spot, especially since Dad preferred to stay in the roughly general area of the Midwest or bordering states.

Something that Sam half suspected was because of John's subconscious need to be in reasonable driving distance of Kansas when he could.

Well, reasonable driving distance for a Winchester anyway.

After giving the available information a thorough look, or as thorough as Sam could manage from his room a thousand miles away, he came to the conclusion that it was mostly likely something his family could handle with minimal fuss. Comforting him with the knowledge that They would not be in a more significant degree of danger than usual.

And they certainly wouldn't want their black sheep returning to the flock to help with a case they could take care of on their own.

With a sigh of resignation, he balled up the wrapping of his demolished sandwich, threw it in the garbage can under his desk and pulled his reading material back towards him.

/

The diner was half empty when the young man walked inside, the tinkling of the bell hanging over the door jamb giving the room a festive air of the approaching holiday. He spotted the person he was meeting almost immediately and made his way over to the booth, choosing not to comment on the obviously strategic choice of it's positioning in the space around them.

Sliding into the vacant seat, he accepted the cup of coffee that the solicitous waitress immediately offered to pour and then grabbed a handful of sugar packets to doctor it to his taste.

"Any news?"

Taking a sip of his hot beverage, he rolled his eyes at the bluntness of the question. His companion wasn't exactly the chatty type, preferring to employ the fifty words or less method of updating each other at their weekly meetings.

"We're gonna have him working pretty much full time while classes are out for the break," he responded, taking a quick glance at the proferred menu. "I can't do much about what he does when he heads back to that roach infested shit hole he's going to be living in though."

The waitress was back before the other man could speak. The two of them each ordered a slice of the daily pie with ice cream that would probably not get eaten, but neither was interested in stiffing a hard working lady out of a decent tip for taking up one of her tables.

"We'll take care of the motel room once he's moved in there."

The strains of The Waitresses singing Christmas Wrapping was filtering through the room as he absently rubbed at his facial scar. Out of habit he took a moment to scan the faces of a couple of new arrivals. Across the booth his companion had grabbed a toothpick from the small glass dispenser hidden behind the ketchup bottle and began to suck on it.

"He's a good kid, Christian," he said finally, his dark eyebrows furrowing in frustration. "Something comes to mess with him, you call me. I want in."

Christian's eyes widened in surprised and he dropped his soggy mangled toothpick onto his napkin and pushed it inside. "Well I never expected to hear you say that again."

Milo gave a slight shrug and stirred his newly refreshed coffee. "Just because I'm outta the game, don't mean I can't still play."

The plates of pie were delivered with a smile and both young men nodded their thanks. It actually looked pretty decent and Christian grabbed up his fork to take a sloppy bite. He chewed appreciatively for a minute and followed it with another slurp of coffee.

"You know, if what Uncle Robert says is true, Sammy-boy is perfectly capable of taking care of himself."

"Yeah," Milo countered. "If he's even half as good as his big brother, he probably can. Don't mean I'm not invested. Did you hear about that succubus in Canarsie? Dean-o did that job practically solo. The boys made him take Richie with him and neither one of them got dead."

"Well that's impressive," Christian laughed as he scooped another bite of pie. "That dumbass is an accident just waiting to happen. What's your Nonna say about you not coming home for Midnight Mass this year?"

Milo's eyes went wide and he clapped his hands together in a prayerful supplication, sending a beleaguered expression up to the pressed tin ceiling. "O Madonna, that woman!" he bit out fondly. "My ears are still bleeding from that conversation. She told Maria to make me say the rosary every night before my shift starts for the good of my soul."

The two of them shared a quick chuckle together before getting back to business.

"I'm heading back to Lansing for a couple of days once the boy wonder is all snug and cozy at the No Tell Motel," Christian said as he pulled money from his wallet to cover the bill. "My girl is going to have my nuts in a vise as it is, but I'll be back before the New Year. Mark and Gwen are going to be taking watch while I'm gone."

"It's too bad I didn't get out here until after the kid booked the room," Milo replied as he threw a few bucks of his own on the table. "I woulda had him come to my place and we could've avoided all this extra nonsense."

Christian stood and put on his heavy wool coat and handed the money to the waitress as she went whizzing by. "Kid's lucky you were able to make it here at all. When we talked to Maria about the possibility of keeping an extra pair of eyes on him, we didn't know he was going to need a job. It's actually worked out better than we hoped."

"Yeah well he doesn't know that I owe his pop for saving the rest of my face," Milo countered as he also got up to leave. "It's been so many years that I bet Winchester himself doesn't even remember me. But I pay my debts. And like I said, he's a good kid."

"Yeah," Christian said skeptically, the corner of his mouth pulling up into a grimace. "People keep saying that."

/

Dean was still buzzing from the adrenaline high of lopping off heads as he loaded some of his newly acquired weapons in the Impala's trunk. In the back seat he could hear the clinking of bottles as Lee extracted two celebratory beers from the old green cooler for them to share. The squeak of the door as it shut reminded Dean that at some point he really should oil them.

Lee handed him a bottle that he opened with his ring with a quick pop before toasting each other and taking a large swallow.

Damn he felt good!

It had been almost three weeks since he and Webb had been hunting together. A little strange at first because Dean didn't innately trust anyone he didn't share DNA with. But Dad had been impressed with Lee's fighting skills when they had taken on a revenant a week after that shit show in Albuquerque. Impressed enough that his father had trusted the other hunter enough to have Dean's back when they agreed to look into what was happening up in Homa Hills.

John Winchester didn't give his stamp of approval to just anybody, especially when the safety of one of his kids was on the line. So it hadn't been too much of a challenge for Dean to follow his gut instincts about the other young man and take the opportunity to be the lead on a case for a change. It helped that his father seemed hesitant about taking off on him. Enough that Dean wasn't feeling necessarily abandoned just yet.

Although that might change later after a few drinks if he let himself think about it.

No one was going to take Sammy's place in the passenger seat of the Impala, no matter how good they were, but Dean would be lying to himself if he didn't admit that it was nice to have a companion once again. Dad had stayed with them long enough to wrap up three hunts before he told them that he needed to head out on his own for a week or so.

With Christmas approaching quickly and John's general direction being California it didn't take a genius to figure out where he was headed.

Dean wasn't particularly happy about that, especially since his acceptance of his father's pathological secretiveness was getting pretty damn old these days. He wasn't an idiot. John had something big on his mind that he didn't seem to be in an all fired hurry to share with his son, and he was apparently worried enough to check on his younger son's safety in person.

But he had left Dean with orders to head on to Wyoming without him and Dean always obeyed his father's orders without question whether he liked it or not. Lee was becoming a good buddy and there were worse ways to spend his time besides fighting and fucking his way north.

After a few months on the road, Dean had decided that it was time to head home.

The only problem with having Webb along for the ride was the competition for the ladies they encountered. Dean was learning that he was going to have to share the bounty on occasion. A problem that hadn't cropped up with Sammy who had always been too young and too prudish to lure away a potential Miss Right Now.

He did enjoy the fact that he and Lee shared a love of the same music. Freed from Sammy's bitch face over just how high he cranked the Impala's stereo, the two young men whiled the miles away singing at the tops of their lungs. Hitting every karaoke night they could find along with way and filling every motel bed with tonight's lucky contestants.

It was almost enough to take Dean's mind off of his missing sibling.

There was snow a half foot deep clogging the streets as Dean drove into Sioux Falls for the first time since late August. Baby wasn't necessarily the best vehicle to have in inclement weather, but she carried him safely to Bobby's place like he knew she would. For the first time in the entire trip the inside of the car was quiet. As if Lee knew how hard it was for Dean to make this homecoming.

Bobby was going to host the young hunter as his place for the next week or so. Lee had expressed more than a passing interest in looking at some of the salvage man's rarer books that weren't readily available to most of the hunting community. Dean's surrogate uncle must have understood how hard it would have been for him to have anyone crashing in either John's or Sam's bed, even for a few short days.

As they drove up the dogs started barking and Dean found himself smiling at the familiar surroundings. The time away had been beneficial, but there was only just so long he could be away without missing the few constants in his life he had grown accustomed to having during the last year or so. Skidding to a stop in the driveway, he turned the car off and got out to make introductions when he saw the ever present ball cap appear on the porch.

Lee might have been a bit taken aback by Bobby's method of greeting a guest. If Dean hadn't been subjected to the same inspection, he might have even taken it personally. But when Bobby replaced the shots of holy water with whiskey and told him to drag his stuff upstairs because "this ain't the Holiday Inn boy and I ain't your freakin' bellhop", he started to like the old curmudgeon.

It was close to supper time when they arrived and Bobby had prepared a beer can chicken in his decrepit oven for them to share. It was the first home cooked meal Dean had had in a while and he tried not to think about the marinated steaks he left behind at Cassie's place when her tears had him packing his bags like a Hell Hound was chasing him.

All that was in the past now.

After dinner Bobby pulled out a few dusty volumes on Native American lore that he thought would be of interest to his guest. Dean didn't say anything to either of them as he pulled his jacket on and went out to kick a pathway through the snow to the enclosed bay across the yard. Opening the access door was a little difficult at first, the lock partially frozen over, but he finally managed it. He flipped on the overhead light and brought his hands up to his mouth to blow some warmth on them before opening a drawer in the workbench and extracting a set of keys that looked a lot like his own.

It took a few minutes of quiet contemplation before he moved forward to tug the tarp off the car in front of him. He smiled, a bitter sad smile, because even though it pained him to see her like this, she was still a thing of beauty. A sharp tug pulled open the driver's side door and he slipped into the leather racing seat, taking a moment to greet his beloved mother's photo where she sat on the dash patiently awaiting the return of her youngest son.

Dean slid the key into the Camaro's ignition and she started right up, just like the good girl she was. Awash with too many emotions to catalog, he simply sat behind the wheel and let her throaty purr soothe some of the hurt in his chest.

The both of them clinging to the hope that one day their boy would come home to them again.

Bobby tried to get him to stay the night, but Dean needed some space. He also needed to face his empty house and the memories that lurked there. Being gone for so long was a cowardly move and his father didn't raise him to be a coward.

The Impala sledded through the icy streets like she knew exactly where she was going. Before Dean even realized where he was, he was pulling into the dark driveway of the little two story house where he had known real happiness for so many months. It was late at night, almost too late for his neighbors to be awake, but there were still many houses illuminated with painfully cheerful Christmas lights that emphasized just how dark and depressing the Winchester house was.

It was probably a bad idea to pick a holiday for his overdue return.

Someone, probably Bobby... Obviously Bobby, had been shoveling the driveway and stairs to the house, keeping up the impression that someone still cared about the old place. Moving mechanically, Dean opened up the trunk and retrieved his bags, slowly making his way to the front door as he fumbled in his leather jacket pocket for the keys.

It was warmer inside than he expected. Which was probably silly because he knew how much he had been paying to keep the heat on high enough to stop the pipes from freezing for the past two months. The comforting scent of citrus that had clung to the interior of their home was long gone now and the rooms were veiled in shadow. Illuminated only by the street lights until he took a deep breath and flipped on the lamp next to the sofa.

The photos so carefully placed in frames that hung on the walls pained him, but he racked his shoulders back and pushed his feelings way way down into his gut where they couldn't hurt him. Because as hard as it was to be here, he still felt the budding happiness of finally being home.

/

Christmas morning dawned in Palo Alto as Sam turned over on his lumpy motel mattress and threw a hand over his eyes to block out the unwanted sunlight. His head ached from a hangover he had no business having, but the legal drinking age didn't seem to mean much at Antonio and Maria's house during their Christmas Eve party. He licked his dry lips and got up to wash out the foul taste of the dead animal that seemed to be taking up residence in his mouth.

Even the slight slush of water sputtering out his ancient faucet seemed hellbent on making his head split, so he turned it off in favor of slowly scrubbing his tongue with his toothbrush. It would be a long long time before he could look at a bottle of Galliano again in this lifetime.

Sam was grateful for his kind employers who had insisted that he join them for a little festive fun. Drop dead exhausted from his finals and the whirl of holiday party bookings at the restaurant, he had needed some relaxation. Especially since checking his bank account two days ago and finding a five hundred dollar deposit that he certainly didn't make in it.

That was when he knew that his brother wouldn't be coming to California to see him. When his heart broke just a little more over how badly damaged their relationship really was and how thoroughly his hopes for a holiday reconciliation were immediately dashed.

Dean still felt responsible enough for Sam's well being to give him a little cash, but if he wanted to actually see his little brother he certainly would have showed up in person to give it to him.

It was the beginning of the end of Sam's hope that a reunion was anytime soon in his future. Tonight Sam would bring up Dean's name on his phone and thank his phantom brother for the gift and try to apologize once more for bailing on him when Dean needed him the most.

God.

He missed his brother.

He missed the little house in Sioux Falls, with the first room he had ever had to himself. He missed the warm, happy kitchen with the big long farmhouse table where he and his brother hosted Sam's friends and he missed the soft squashy couch where he and Dean would watch movies together with big bowls of popcorn.

He even missed his father, and the warm twinkle in John's brown eyes when he handed Sam the keys to the Camaro a year ago today, and he missed his dad's strong arms around him that always let him know that he was loved even after they had been at each other's throats.

But Dean was safer without Sam around, and the longer he stayed in California, the more sure he became that this was the right thing to do. It didn't matter how miserable he was, as long as his brother didn't have to keep giving up his safety and happiness to ensure Sam's.

That was the only gift he could give his brother now.

Merry Christmas Dean

/

Bobby's kitchen was full of the pleasant aroma of the pot roast that Dean had prepped and put in to cook low and slow for the afternoon. Out in the back hall he could hear the sound of Lee's conversation as he called home to wish his mother and aunt a Merry Christmas. Upstairs, Bobby was moving boxes around in an effort to find a particular book that he had promised to lend Lee before he headed back to Oklahoma in a few days.

Dad had called earlier to wish his firstborn a Merry Christmas as well. He didn't answer Dean's question about his whereabouts and that was all the answer that he had needed. They still didn't mention Sam's name around each other very often.

There were beers and popcorn on the coffee table in front of the old television that was getting ready to broadcast all the pregame shows before the Lakers took on the Forty-Niners.

Dean was feeling quiet and contemplative as he dealt with the pain of being far away from both of his family members. At least Dad would make sure that Sammy was safe today if nothing else. Dean had already done what he could, stopping by the local branch of the bank where both Winchester brothers had their accounts to refill his own with months worth of hustling money and a few hundred bucks so Sam could buy himself something nice.

It was the only gift he could give his brother now.

Merry Christmas Sammy

/

When John first found out about the campus policy that closed the dorms during the Christmas holiday, he could have guessed that his boy would wind up in the same dive that he found him in last summer.

He hadn't planned on driving all the way out here at first. A stop at the Roadhouse and a wad of cash thrown in Ash's direction was already covering Sam's financial shortfall for the spring semester this time.

But somehow, John's truck just kept heading west until he found himself nearing the city limits for Palo Alto.

Sam would know his truck anywhere, of course. John already knew where he planned on stashing it for a few days. After making his peace with Sammy's decision, he had rented a storage unit on the outskirts of town. Slowly building an arsenal of his own in case what he feared became reality. Caleb had already arranged a loaner car for him through a friend in the area.

John's back twinged in anticipation of the upcoming hours spent crunched up inside this micro machine that the Californians were classifying as cars these days as his eyes swept the area around the motel for any potential threats.

He made a quick call to Dean, happy at least in the knowledge that his firstborn wasn't alone today. He couldn't say the same for his baby boy. Sammy had stumbled into his motel room late last night alone and didn't appear to be leaving it any time today.

That was okay. John could sit here and keep watch over his child all day.

It was the only gift his could give his son now.

Merry Christmas Sammy

A/N Pt 2 Confession time. I have never been a fan of stories that add in song lyrics. Nothing personal against them, it's just not my thing. I couldn't help it here. Music is such a part of Dean's life, and after watching the episode with Christian Kane I just felt a need to explore the time the two of them spent together hunting. Since they clearly have had practice singing together, it needed to be written! So if you don't like the addition of lyrics either, I apologize, but Dean does not lol.