Title: Paint it Black, 2/9
Pairing: UnrequitedJohn/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2640
Disclaimer: If only John and Dean were mine... *sigh*
Warning: Drug abuse, Sexual abuse, Violence

Summary: Dean's been keeping secrets. His family's not sure how to deal with that.

A/N: This is a brand new verse that I've been working on for a while. Hope you enjoy! Warning! This chapter has not been beta'd. I make an inordinate amount of mistakes when unsupervised so let me know if I did anything really stupid. LOL...

Chapter Two

One Week Ago…

"Dad?"

"Hi Sam. I wasn't sure you'd answer."

Fear and stress tightened in Sam's stomach. John was calling for Dean, not to make amends, not because he missed him. He knew that, but still. John was calling. "I… the fight was stupid, okay? I shouldn't have said all that shit. Of course I'll answer your calls."

John chuckled. "Yeah. There was plenty of stupid to go around that day, son. Sammy, I… I didn't mean it when I said you couldn't come back. I could never mean that. I was…" his voice trailed off in a heavy sigh. "I let my temper get the best of me. I shouldn't've said it."

It felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He'd told himself a dozen times a day that it didn't matter, that what his father had said didn't hurt. But it had. He did his father and himself a favor and accepted what he said at face value. "It's all water under the bridge, now. Right?"

"Yeah, Sammy. Water under the bridge."

"What happened to Dean?"

There was dead silence on the other line for a heartbeat. "Is he there?" His father's voice was raw and desperate. He'd never hear the man sound like that before. "Please tell me he's there right now and he's in one piece, Sammy."

"You don't know?"

"We… we were on different hunts and he just… fell off the radar. I drove twenty-eight hours straight to get to him but he was already gone. Left the car, his phone, his wallet, his clothes. Everything. I… I've been lookin' for days. I just called you hopin' maybe he came lookin' for a safe place."

A safe place. The phrase rang all kinds of alarms. "Why the hell were you letting him hunt alone? He showed up here beat to shit, Dad! He's… somethin' bad happened to him. He won't tell me what. Everytime I try to find out he either shuts me down or changes the subject."

"Sam… it was supposed to be an easy salt n' burn. You're bother is twenty five! He can do a salt 'n' burn in his sleep with one hand tied behind his back and just for your information, you're brother's one hell of a damn good hunter."

"But he got hurt, Dad."

"Yeah. Yeah… I know. I thought… Where is he now?"

"He's asleep. He doesn't do that much." Sam didn't want to have to flatly refuse to wake Dean up, but he would if John didn't get the hint. Dean was so exhausted that Sam was afraid he'd drop in the middle of the street one day if he didn't finally get sleep. He would swear that his older brother didn't sleep at all for the first three days after he arrived. This was the first night he hadn't already awakened screaming in the past four.

"Okay. When he… can you have him call me when he wakes up? I just… I need to hear his voice. Can you please tell him that for me?"

"Yeah. Okay."

"And Sammy? It's real good to hear yours too, son. Maybe we can make this a habit."

He smiled. "Sure. As long as it's not 4 am next time."

John laughed. "Yeah. Sorry about that."

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

Seven Years Ago…

"Why Dean?"

It had to be the hundredth time he'd asked. He'd long since stopped expecting an answer. In fact, he was half convinced that his Dean-radar was completely busted and the kid was really still knocked out rather than pretending. Hell, most of the times he'd asked the question as he sat by his boy's bedside through the night he'd known for certain that Dean was dead to the world. He'd come back to check on the boy in between dumping every drug they had except for aspirin and Excedrin. If one of them got hurt, they'd just have to tough it out. He also dumped all the alcohol. Then he had a long talk with Pastor Jim, who told him a lot of shit he didn't want to hear.

"It's the only time I feel happy anymore." Dean's voice was barely loud enough for him to hear.

John's entire world tilted off its axis. He'd known Sam was unhappy with the way they lived, but he'd always had one firm belief: he'd rather have them unhappy now if it meant they survived later, then allowing them to be happy as clams and die young. But what if he'd made them so unhappy that they found ways to kill themselves?

"Is it the hunting?"

"No… I love the hunting."

"The moving?"

"No. It's none of that. It's not you or Sam. It's me."

John almost laughed. The boy sounded like he was trying to break up with a girl and let her down easy. "You?" he repeated incredulously.

"Somethin's wrong with me, Dad. And I tried to be different, I swear I did, but I can't."

"What is it, Dean? Tried to be different how?"

The boy's face heated and he seemed to decide that the edge of the blanket was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen. "I can't tell you."

"Dean, son, you gotta. Keepin' it in is the problem. We don't gotta braid each other's hair and have a slumber party. You can just spit it out and we'll pretend you never said it later if you want."

"I already made a big enough fool of myself as it is."

"You gonna call me an asshole again if I push?"

Dean winced. "Shit… I did say that, didn't I?"

"Yeah."

Dean sat up slowly and slide backwards until his back was pressed against the headboard. "'M sorry. I didn't mean it."

"Yes you did."

The boy looked horrified. "Dad, I was under the influence… you can't believe I meant that."

John sighed. "Yeah… I know that's the only reason you actually said it… but I do believe you meant it. No, it's okay. You're 18. You're allowed to think you're old man's an asshole every once in a while."

"As long as I don't call you one again?"

"Exactly."

Dean swallowed. "So… what now?"

"Now… we figure out where we go from here."

"Are you gonna… let me leave?"

"I don't want to. I looked up some shit about addiction while you were out. I can't make you stay and I can't make you stop using. You'll find away if you don't wanna stop. I'll get you whatever help you need, I'll find a way, I swear it. I'll do whatever it takes for as long as it takes. But…" His throat closed up. This was the part that made him want to curse out his oldest friend in the world.

"But?"

"If you're not serious about stopping, if you're not gonna give it everything you got… I can't watch you kill yourself, Dean. I can't. And I can't let Sammy watch it either. I'd like to think I can just order you stop and you will. Or that I can just keep you here and make you safe from the whole damn world and from yourself." John blinked at tears. "But I can't."

"So you're givin' up on me?"

"No… I could never…" John drew in a sharp breath. "I'm just sayin' that it's up to you. If you say that you wanna beat this thing, that you'll fight it, I will back your play one hundred and ten percent. No matter what you do, I will never, ever give up on you. But you can't give up on yourself."

"So it's you or the drugs?"

He'd argued with Jim about this for over an hour, but in the end he knew the man was right. He took a deep breath and said the only thing he could to save his son's life. "Yes."

Dean blinked at him with big green eyes. "Hurts to stop."

"Yeah. I figured as much. That's cause it's poison, Dean. It's killin' you a piece at a damn time. But I meant what I said. I'm not goin' anywhere."

The boy nodded. "Are you gonna tell Sammy?"

"The only thing I can promise is that he won't find out about it unless he has to know." Sam worshiped Dean. John didn't want the boy to feel betrayed the way he did once he realized what was going on with his son.

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

Sam was clearly surprised to see John picking him up with no Dean in sight for the second time in nearly as many weeks. "Hey, Dad."

"Hey son. We need to talk."

"Is it Dean? Did somethin' happen to him?"

"It is Dean… but he's not hurt. Not the way you think." John rubbed his hand over his face. How do you tell a kid that his big brother, the guy he idolizes, is a drug addict? He sighed out a breath. He couldn't do that. Maybe he was a coward and this was the easy way out. He didn't know. He just knew that he couldn't saddle Sammie with that. He didn't need to know yet and he'd given Dean his word. "He's sick."

"Sick?" Sam narrowed his eyes at John. "Dean's never sick."

"Dean never admits to being sick," John corrected. "But he's too sick to fake it right now. I'm gonna take you to Uncle Bobby's while I take care of him, get him back on his feet."

"I can help."

"That wasn't a question, son."

"But-"

"I'm not in the mood for arguments, Sam. I'm takin' you to Bobby's, where you're gonna behave yourself, so I can focus on Dean." He was trying to spread Sam out among his friends to make sure he didn't wear out his welcome any time soon. He had no idea how long it was going to take to get Dean detoxed enough to keep Sam from launching into a barrage of questions and looking shit up.

Sam folded his arms and burrowed into the front seat as deeply as he could. "Since when have you ever done that?"

John grit his teeth. "I know you love your brother and I know you just wanna help him, so I'm gonna let that slid. But do not push me today, son. This has been a bad fucking week. I told you how it's gonna be and that's how it's gonna be."

They drove in sullen silence for nearly twenty minutes before Sam looked up at him through his bangs, looking young and unsure. "Dean's not… he's gonna be okay, right?"

"Yeah. He'll be okay. It's just gonna be kinda rough gettin' him there is all."

"He's my brother. I just wanna help."

"I know. But you're brother's proud. It's gonna be hard enough for him to accept help from me. If you're there, he'll just try to pretend that nothin's wrong. He'll never get better if he does that."

"It's not fair."

John snorted. "What about life made you think it would be fair, kiddo?"

He didn't feel particularly guilty about not telling Sammy the whole truth. He'd kept things from his boys before. Sometimes to protect them, others in a foolish bid to safeguard some remnant of their innocence that hadn't been ripped away yet.

He needed Sam away, not just so he wouldn't have to learn why his brother was shaking and sweating and vomiting up just about everything John managed to get into him. But he needed the boy out of the house just in case he could get Dean to tell him what he thought was so wrong with him. It bothered him that Dean had something going on in his head that he felt so guilty about that he had to use drugs in order to escape it, that he was too ashamed to tell John.

He knew that the boy hated weakness in himself, knew that it was a trait he'd inherited honestly. John couldn't abide his own weaknesses and sometimes it killed him to see his son take after him in that way. In some ways it was good because it kept him safer… but it could also cause a lot more problems than it solved. Like using drugs to try to forget that you're not perfect. He grit his teeth, had to force himself to loosen his jaw. He stopped at the store after dropping Sam off and brought several cans of broth, a box of crackers and some bottles of Gatorade.

Once he was back home, he found Dean laying on the couch watching TV. "You eat?"

Dean looked up at him, but didn't quite meet his eyes. The boy hadn't met his eyes since being caught with the Oxy. "No, sir. Not hungry."

"You feelin' sick already?" John asked as he put a hand on the boy's forehead to feel for a fever and found no signs of it. The boy was a little on the cold, clammy side though.

"Not really. I mean, not as bad as it's gonna get."

"If I made you soup, you think you could hold it down?"

"I said I wasn't hungry, Dad."

"Not what I asked."

Dean sighed. "Yeah. I can hold it down."

"Good. One hot bowl of soup coming up. And you're gonna eat as much of it as you can. Meaning you're going to eat it until you feel like you'll toss it if you keep goin'. Understood?"

"Yes sir."

"I know this is hard, kiddo. But you're gonna need the energy for when your body starts to really kick your ass for abusin' it. It ain't gonna be pretty, and you may not get another chance to eat much for a while."

Dean nodded, but still didn't look at him. He wanted to shake the kid. Instead he went to the kitchen and nuked his son a bowl of chicken noodle soup, hoping he'd be able to keep it down long enough to get something out of it.

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

"You ever wish you didn't have us?" His son was looking at him with fever bright eyes and he had no doubt the question would never have been asked if he'd been in his right mind. Just like he had no doubt that the kid had thought about it before and he wasn't in his right mind at the moment. The question still hurt, though. There was nothing he'd rather have more than his boys. Not even Mary. They were the reason for every breath he'd drawn since the fire.

"No."

"Never?" Dean asked, sounding almost manic. The kid hadn't slept in four days, which meant John hadn't slept in four days either. And he would have practically killed someone for a drink. Or a couple of hours of shut eye. He wasn't sure which he wanted more at this point. The boy's leg was jiggling and John wasn't sure if it was the withdrawal causing it. Dean's legs seemed to shake, jiggle and bounce a lot over the past four days. It was worse whenever the boy nearly fell asleep. Which was often. The shaking would get so bad then that John almost called an ambulance twice. It was torture for John. It had to be worse for Dean. "You don't think that it would be easier if you didn't have us to drag around with you?"

"Easier don't mean better, kiddo." He gently pushed Dean's hand away from his arm. The kid kept nervously picking at the IV John ran to keep him hydrated. If he kept that up, he was going to get an infection.

"You swear?" It was the closest the kid would probably ever get to asking John if he loved him. Unless he got a hell of a lot more feverish, or was still awake for another few days.

"I swear. You're my family, son. You and your brother. You're all the family I got and all the family I need."