The Only Gift

He's drunk, and it's not the first time.

He remembers when he'd go straight home and not stop at a bar, not swing by a liquor store to pick up a six-pack; not bring home a new best friend named Jack.

He remembers when he had a home. A true home. And he remembers Mary waiting, and Dean; and, eventually, the tiny human they named Sam after Grandfather Campbell. Dean was after Mary's mother; Sam after her father. No Henrys in his boys; Grandfather Winchester walked out of the house one night and was never seen again.

He remembers resolving to be a better father than his was, no matter what. Remembers playing catch with Dean, the small hand swallowed by glove, weighted down so much that sometimes the boy has to use two hands to keep it in the air so the soft-lobbed baseball is sucked into old leather, trapped in the webbing.

He remembers so much of Mary. Of his boys. Of that night.

Now? Now he's still got two sons. But Mary's gone, and so is the home. Now it's just a car, two boys, and a string of cheap motel rooms, a rental house now and again, so the boys can get some schooling. It's not the life he ever dreamed of. It's not the life Mary would have countenanced.

He's drunk. And he hears Mary's voice as he always does, even though she never said the words to him because in those days he didn't go to his sons with booze in his system and more in the paper bag.

John, you know better.

Yes. He does. But he also knows more. More than anyone, other than those in the life.

And now his sons are in it, too, because he dragged them into it.

John, you know better.

He does. But he can't stop. Not now. Now he knows.

He's losing Sam, he's pretty sure. And he doesn't know how to stop it, how to hold back the cornice of snow perched atop the mountain, crouching at the edge, needing only a shout, or a gunshot, to come roaring down the flanks, swallowing everything in its way. That avalanche will smother Dean, he knows. Because Dean feels so very much, and he loves Sam more than his own life. Probably more than his father's.

Dean is strong in ways that defy John's understanding. Probably he himself had something to do with that, but he regrets that he had to take the clay of his eldest and shape it the way he did, to fire it so that the exterior is so terribly hard even as the very interior, the soul of the work, is still the 4-year-old into whose arms he placed a baby, a brother, asking forever after that the eldest protect the youngest.

He knows he's a stubborn son of a bitch; but he knows, too, that the odds aren't good. The yellow-eyed bastard is the toughest thing John's ever tracked. But it's more than revenge, though he knows three men believe that's the motivating factor. Bobby. Jim. Caleb. Hell yes, find and kill the demon that killed your wife. God knows law enforcement won't. But there's far more to it than that.

There's Sam.

Missouri understands.

He's got to stop the yellow-eyed bastard because the demon won't give up. Sam is in his sights.

It's enough to drive a man to drink.

And so it has. Smiling wryly, John parks the Impala, removes the key, hugs the bag to his chest and climbs out, thinking absently it's time he takes oil to the door hinges. All those years of Kansas winters and road salt has left the car with a voice of its own, and it—she—complains whenever they open or close the doors. Dean says he likes it, that it's part of her personality; Sam once likened the noise to a drunken screech owl, which resulted in big brother planting a hard-thrown punch to little brother's shoulder. Sam has not, for some time, made a peep about the car.

John doesn't think it's because the noise annoys Sam less, but that Sam is thinking of leaving and creaking car doors won't factor in his life anymore.

He can't lose his boys. Not either of them.

That thing is out there.

He does the shave-and-a-haircut knock against the door, then inserts the key. As he swings the door open, he finds them as expected: Sam at the table with books strewn across it, barely raising an eyebrow as his father enters; Dean's put down a dropcloth across the second bed and is cleaning weapons. Guns, machetes, knives.

Sam glances at the paper bag held against John's chest. The faintest disapproving twitch of his mouth states quiet opposition. Dean, on the other hand, nods—he's old enough, at 22, not that it stopped him before—and John sets down the bag with its weight of alcohol, tracks down two glasses, pours whiskey.

Because it's just easier than trying to talk.

John, you know better.

Yeah. Once he did. But that was then.

Now, he just wants to keep his boys alive. If that means Sam hates him, so be it. If that means Dean loves him, well, one is better than none.

He wants to tell them. He wants to explain.

He wants to say he loves them.

He just doesn't know how.

Dean smiles a little as he raises the glass to his mouth. Sam resolutely stares at the same page he's stared at since John opened the door.

That old baseball mitt is boxed away in a storage locker. The only thing Dean catches these days is a tossed gun, a container of salt, a tarnished Zippo lighter. And Sam's too big to be carried, to be placed in a brother's arms, though Dean would certainly try.

John, drinking whiskey, sits at the table across from his youngest, who avoids his eyes, and wonders when he lost the ability to talk to his sons.

He wishes it were otherwise.

He wishes Mary were here.

He wishes they were all of them there, in Lawrence.

But maybe keeping his boys alive is the only gift he can give them.

~ end ~