Down From Your Fences

Title: Down From Your Fences
Pairings: None
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Through 'Jump the Shark'
Summary: John's made a lot of mistakes, he knows, and he's not sure whether this is redemption or his final damnation. Pre-series.

"He seems like a good kid."

Kate's mouth twists into something that isn't quite a smile. She was pretty when they met and the intervening years have been kind enough to her; with a decade and change tacked on, she's a perfectly fine-looking woman in her own right instead of being a poor shadow of his Mary. "He is a good kid," she says, and John guesses that's not the kind of thing he's supposed to say about his son.

Christ, his son.

"I don't--" He turns the coffee cup around in his hands, staring out through the kitchen window at the neatly kept yard and the schoolbus pulling away from the curb. Adam's home. John promised to play a few games of catch with him before he has to head out tonight.

Dean's on the tail of a skinwalker down in Iowa, and he could use some backup. John's gonna have to be out of here in about an hour if he wants to get there by dark, and that's already cutting it close. "Kate, I don't know how to do this."

"John..." She sighs. "He wants to know you. I'm not asking you to pull up roots and move to Minnesota, just...be a part of his life, okay?"

He doesn't know how to tell her what a bad idea that is. He has two sons already, two boys he loves more than life itself, and he's failed them in almost every way a man can fail his children. He doesn't know what to think about the gangly almost-teenager practically bouncing up the sidewalk. Adam has floppy blond-ish hair and Kate's eyes, a ready smile and an easy trust that's almost entirely alien to John after twenty years spent in the company of hunters.

When Dean was twelve, he could break down and reassemble an assault rifle as fast as any of the Marines John served with in 'Nam. When Sam was twelve, he could recite the Rite of Exorcism in flawless Latin.

John taught them to fight and shoot and survive, but he never took them outside to toss around a baseball. He can do better with Adam. He has to.

"I'll do my best," he tells Kate, and means it.

The door bursts open, and Adam sails inside on a gust of autumn wind. "Dad!" he says, breaking into a huge, dimpled grin that makes him look unexpectedly like Sam. "You're still here!"

"Said I would be, didn't I?" John says gruffly, setting his coffee down. "I'll be heading out soon, so why don't we try to get in a couple games of catch before it gets dark?"

Behind him, he thinks he hears Kate sigh, but he lets the sound slide over him as he helps this puppy-dog of a kid who is somehow--inexplicably--his youngest son shrug out of his backpack and scrounge up a baseball and a couple of gloves.

***

Adam slips the baseball into the pocket of John's bag before he leaves. "So you won't forget me," he says seriously, and John can see Kate wince out of the corner of his eye. He tousles Adam's hair roughly, pulls a smile onto his face with the ease of long practice.

"I won't forget about you, kiddo," he says. "I promise."

***

He checks his voicemail while he's merging onto the highway. There's one message there, from Dean, and John curses under his breath.

"Dad, it's Dean. Uh, I know you told me to wait for you to get down here but--" A rustle, the connection breaking up for a second, then, "...really bad, Dad. It can't wait. I'll call--"

It cuts out again, this time for good.

"God damn it," John hisses, dialing Dean's number by feel with one eye on the darkening highway.

The call goes straight to voicemail, and John swears again and punches the gas.

***

The Red End is the first motel over the state border, and John's pretty sure he doesn't actually start breathing again until he pulls into the parking lot to find the Impala parked crookedly next to a garish pink brick wall. At the front desk, it takes him a minute to remember Dean's current alias.

"Erik Weisz," he manages finally.

The desk clerk--barely nineteen, pimply, and from the look of him more than a little high, smirks. "That crazy fucker came in just about half an hour ago. Looked like somebody stuck him through a meat-grinder."

John grits his teeth. "What. Room."

"You his sugar-daddy?"

That's it. John takes a short step forward, grabs the kid by the collar, and pulls him up to his toes across the desk. "I'm not going to ask again."

"Two-twenty," the kid gasps, and John shoves him away. "Jesus. Fuckhead."

"Watch your mouth," John snaps, but he's already turning on his heel toward the stairs.

The door opens when he tries it, and he steps carefully over the salt-line, swinging his duffle bag around to leave his gun arm free. It smells like blood and whiskey in here, all overlaid with the burnt-coffee scent of all the the cheap motel rooms he's brought his boys up in. Nothing like Kate's clean, bright little house, which smells like laundry detergent and lemon floor polish.

"Dean?"

"Yeah," Dean says roughly from the bedroom, and John breathes out a sigh, sets down his bag against the wall. Adam's baseball makes a distinct lump against the outer pocket.

"You need to answer the phone when I call you, boy." Relief makes his voice harsh.

Dean's sitting on the edge of the desk in a muddy t-shirt and boxers. His jeans are crumpled in a bloody heap at his feet and he's methodically stitching up a long slash in his thigh with neat, careful sutures. Looks like a clean slice, which is probably why he didn't bother to go to the hospital; he started stitching John up when he was in middle school and by now he can do as neat a suture as any ER doc. There's another cut on his forehead, held closed with two butterfly bandages, and blood dried all down the right side of his face. He's got a spectacular black eye, but his pupils seem to be dilating properly in the dim lamplight. He pauses, swigs from the bottle of bourbon on the desk beside him, and looks up to meet John's eyes with a rueful grin. "Sorry, sir. Phone got smashed."

Adam didn't call him sir. Neither does Sam (neither did Sam, in those last few angry years before he left), but John knows that was a deliberate rebellion. Dean does it reflexively.

"Did you get the 'walker?"

"Yeah. There were two of them. Could have used somebody on my six." That's as close as Dean will ever come to a reproach.

"Why the hell didn't you wait for me?" John asks, choking down a sting of guilt. This is nothing to what it could have been. Dean will be back to fighting trim in a week or so.

But still.

"Sorry," Dean says again, grimacing as he pulls another stitch tight. "It nabbed a couple of kids at the bus stop. Had to move quick."

There's an open bottle of Tylenol with codeine sitting on the desk next to the whiskey bottle. That's a habit Dean picked up from John when he was in high school. Kate won't let Adam take cold medicine without reading the warnings, and she took him to the ER when he sprained his ankle sliding into third base last spring. Adam has health insurance and regular check-ups and has never broken a bone. Adam will never stitch up his own injuries in a motel room that rents out by the hour.

"Did you get the kids out?" John asks.

"Yeah," Dean says. A brief grin lights his face, eyes open and satisfied under the blood and bruising. "They're fine. I had to do some fancy footwork, though. Went through a plate-glass window. Hence the broken cell phone."

"Good," John says. His voice sounds quiet and strange to his own ears. "You did good, son."

Dean's grin brightens a few more degrees before turning into a wince as he hooks the curved needle into the bloody edges of his own skin. "Fuck. Ow. Thanks, sir."

John crosses the room in two long strides and takes the needle gently away. "Let me finish that up."

Dean stills under his hand. "Dad? Everything okay?"

"Hold still," John murmurs, tying off the stitch neatly without looking up into his oldest son's eyes, and Dean shrugs good-naturedly and does as he's told.

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tifaching.livejournal.com

Baseball and guilt with Adam, stitches and guilt with Dean. Oh, John. There are no second chances when you're a Winchester. Great story, thanks for sharing!

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Down From Your Fences

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