John woke up with a pounding headache and an upset stomach. Damn booze, he thought, groaning as he stumbled to the bathroom so he could empty his stomach into the toilet. Yup, he'd definitely gotten way too drunk last night. Someone pounded on the door, each strike sending an explosion through his head.

"Dad! Get the hell up! We have a case to work!" Dean's voice called from the other side. He must've shown up while John was blackout drunk. He heaved again, but nothing came up this time. His stomach, apparently happy with the pain it'd caused, quickly settled.

When he opened the door, the first thing he noticed was how royally pissed his son looked. Dean wasn't normally an angry man, but you'd think someone had groped his girlfriend by the way he was glaring at his father. John snorted a little at the thought of Dean with a girlfriend. The glare intensified.

"What?" John asked uncomfortably.

Dean wasn't having it, "You can explain the case at breakfast."

As they headed to their cars, he noticed the girl sitting in the backseat of the Impala. She was pretty, maybe a year or two younger than Dean, and she was most definitely not a hunter. So what the hell was she doing here?

"Son, I need to talk to you," he said quietly, ignoring Dean's flinch. "Privately."

Dean's shoulders rose with tension, but he set his jaw and followed his father away from the car.

"What do you want?"

"I want to know why there's a fucking civilian in your car," John snarled. Dean flinched again, knowing from experience where this was going, but he didn't back down.

"She's my girlfriend," he said simply. His father recoiled in shock.

"What?" Dean repeated his previous statement.

"You can't have a girlfriend," John growled. He'd explained this to his son before. "You gotta focus on the job. There's no damn time for a girl."

"Why can't I take a break?" Dean demanded. "Why can't I do something that makes me happy for once?"

He knew the instant the words came out that he'd made a mistake. John clocked him in the face hard enough to split his lip, flooding his mouth with blood and knocking him on his ass.

"You wanna take time to fuck around with some skank? Or do you wanna find the thing that killed your mother?" he demanded.

"I can do both," Dean spat, spraying blood onto the sidewalk. He stood up, only to be punched again in the cheek. This time, he nearly blacked out from the force of it. Someone slapped his father, hard, the sound echoing through the parking lot. Dean's eyes snapped up to see Rhia standing beside John with her right hand balled into a fist. She punched him in the nose and Dean heard it crack.

"You stupid bitch!" he shouted. It looked like he was about to hit Rhia, but he settled for a glare. "Don't get involved in family affairs."

The attempt at intimidating her didn't work, and Rhia planted herself between John and his bleeding son, bracing herself for retaliation. John realized after a few minutes that she wasn't going to back down and retreated back to his room.

Rhia knelt down beside Dean and pulled a tissue out of her purse, pressing it gently against the cut on his mouth. He took it from her and spat a little more blood onto the ground.

"You okay?" she asked carefully, rubbing his knee. He nodded.

"I'm fine. Let's go get some breakfast."

Breakfast at the little diner was more awkward than Rhia ever could've imagined it. Dean was trying to pretend like he was fine, despite the pain every bite caused the cut on the inside of his lip. Rhia was seething beside him.

"I can't believe he would do that to you," she huffed around her bite of eggs. Dean looked up.

"Rhia, it's no big deal. I've had much, much worse."

"Do you even know how much worse that makes it?"

Dean sighed. She had him beat there. It did sound worse now, but his dad really wasn't a bad guy. He just had a hell of a temper. Rhia stabbed a potato hard enough to scratch the plate.

She leaned forward and let her voice drop to a whisper, "I will stay here for this hunt. I will work with him, and I will be cordial. But if he hurts you again, so help me God, I will shoot him."

He believed it. Hell, he was kinda scared by this new side of Rhia that was emerging. She was more focused, and more dangerous, than he'd previously thought.

With perfect timing, John Winchester walked through the front door and made his way over to their booth. He settled into the spot beside his son, who flinched away from him a little. John didn't notice; he was too focused on the glare Rhia was shooting him from the other side of the table.

"What exactly is your problem?" he asked politely. Rhia scoffed.

"My problem is that you got all handsy with me last night, despite my saying to back off, and today I caught you beating up your son," she explained with mock patience. "That's usually a sign that you're a dick."

"Rhia, please," Dean warned. "There's no reason to pick a fight."

It was too late. John was already pissed off, "Listen to me, you little slut. You have no idea what the hell you're getting yourself into."

He was whispering, but the venom in his voice was still drawing attention from the other patrons in the diner. But Rhia wasn't about to let herself get pushed around.

"First of all, I'm not a slut. Even if I was, you wouldn't really have room to judge because I'm sure you've enjoyed the company of more than your fair share of bar skanks. Second of all, I'm a hell of a lot stronger than you seem to think I am."

Dean scrubbed a hand down his face as his father turned to him, "This is what you're throwing your freedom away for? I mean, she's pretty, but really Dean?"

Rhia hadn't really expected him to say anything, but Dean's silence still stung. She stood up and tossed fifteen bucks on the table. "This ought to cover my meal," she spat. Walking away, she could feel the eyes on her, but she didn't dare look to see.

Dean came out a couple minutes later and found Rhia sitting on the Impala's trunk.

"I'm sorry about my dad. He can be a real dick sometimes," he offered. She shook her head.

"I'm not upset about what he said to me; I can handle that. It's the way he's walking all over you that bothers me," she leaned forward and rested her forehead on his shoulder.

"He's not-" Rhia silenced him with a look. She was right and Dean knew it. His father was definitely an asshole at times, but always looked out for him when it mattered. There were so many times that he could think of when his father had been the only thing standing between him and a bullet in the brain, sometimes literally.

Rhia sighed, "Look, Dean, this road ends badly. Whether that ending is sooner or later, relationships like the one you have with your dad end with pain. I don't wanna see that happen to you."

Dean scoffed, "Yeah, you and me both."

Okay guys, this chapter's ending is pretty much crap, and I realize that. The only problem: I've been working on the same chapter since about two days after I posted the last one and I really need to stop working on Chapter 11. It probably won't be too too long before I put up number 12, but for now I'm so exhausted from school and this that I can barely see what I'm typing so I'm gonna take a bit of a break if that's okay.

This was definitely the hardest chapter of anything I've written so far, mostly because I'm not used to writing for John Winchester at all, so trying to make dialogue sound like it may actually be coming out of his mouth was really not easy for me. I'm rambling. Sorry.

Anyway, don't forget to favourite, follow and review! Reviews make me very very happy!