Glory to the Spoons!

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.