-1John never touched Dean anymore.

Even Sam noticed. It'd be impossible not to. The Winchesters were not big on talking, not unless forced, but they'd always made up for it, always reached out to one another.

Sam didn't know why John had stopped, though.

Dean did, but he'd never tell Sam. He'd never stop being Sam's big brother, and some things, Sam didn't need to know.

He'd known almost from the beginning. The first time Dean dreamt of being back in that little shack, of feeling the heat of that body burning down the front of him, the weight of that golden gaze pinning him, the brush of words almost shaped against his lips, he'd known.

John had been sitting across the room, awake and watching him when Dean sat up in bed. All Dean had to do was look in his father's eyes -- familiar eyes, no gold in them -- to know that it wasn't just a dream, what he'd felt. He couldn't say what the demon would've done to him if he hadn't pissed it off when he did, but he could guess. And John knew.

John's body the demon wore; John's heat, John's eyes, John's mouth.

"Your dad says hi, by the way."

Dean had told him straight off he didn't blame him for any of it. Hadn't been John's fault so there was nothing to forgive. But it wasn't the memory of Dean bleeding out and begging him to stop that kept John up at night, watching, never touching.

It was that dream, and the next step that had never been taken, but that John couldn't ever forget.

"That was m'boy."

The demon's words. John's pain.

He never touched him.