#salsipuedes

Moving in and out of the shadows It’s no easy mission Holding onto how I picture you

It’s an abandoned cabin they’re squatting in, this time. John pulls the Impala up slow along the long dirt driveway, the moonlight splashing random light through the overhanging trees. The car’s loud in the empty woods but that’s why he chose this place—far from anything, from people or danger. When he kills the engine it’s only the calls of the night birds and the trickle of the creek behind the cabin he can hear, and he sits there in the dark for a few minutes, hands loose on the wheel. He’s tired, and now he’s home—at what passes for home—he can let himself relax into feeling it. Just for a little spell.

He pushes the door open and the salt line smears into a fan under the creak of it, but Dean laid it thick enough it’ll hold. He lays his weapon bag easy on the rough floorboards so the metal won’t clank and moves quiet through the tiny living area, stepping around furniture and a random spill of magazines and books he can’t see the covers of in the half-dark. The bedroom door’s open and he pauses there, lets his eyes adjust to the deeper dark in here, and it’s a minute before he can see the shape of the single bed, the double-lump of two bodies under the cheap sheet. Both there, and safe. He lets out a breath, and then there’s the unmistakable sound of a pistol’s hammer cocking. John moves to one side of the doorway and lets some of the barely-there light in and there’s Dean, his arm around Sammy’s back, his other hand pointing a gun right at John’s chest.

“No way to welcome your old man,” he says, quiet, and Dean lowers the pistol immediately.

“Dad,” he breathes out, and John can’t see his expression but he can hear the relief in Dean’s whispery voice. “Didn’t know you were coming back tonight.”

“Killed it easier than I expected,” John says. He goes back out into the main room, moves over to the little space they’re using as a kitchen, and there’s still water in the bucket, thank god. He hasn’t washed off the fight with the werewolf, yet. He strips off his jacket, his shirts, then kneels down and starts swabbing at his face, his throat. The blood had sprayed bad, this time.

There’s a scuff on the floorboards, a thump of cloth. He holds out a hand and a thin towel’s pressed into it, and he scrubs roughly at his face, his hair, mops down over his chest. When he opens his eyes again Dean’s sitting an arm’s length away, knees drawn up against his bare chest with his arms tight around them. The lantern’s not on and there’s no sense using the battery, anyway, so all John can see of him is pale skin, the soft sleep-ruffled shock of his hair, the still-young slimness of his bare legs and arms. “Report,” he says, after a second, and Dean shifts to sit cross-legged while John finishes swabbing up the sweat and dirt and blood of the hunt, tells him about running drills with Sam, about target practice, about uneventful days and no contact with the outside world.

“Good,” John says, wringing out the towel. The water in the bucket’s turned to something dark. Dean’ll need to go out to the creek again in the morning. “Anything I missed?”

Dean shifts, on the bare floor, draws one knee up to his chest again. “Not really,” he says, but he hesitates over it, and Dean doesn’t need to be able to see John’s expression in the dark to know what John levels at him. There’s a hiss of breath through teeth, and then Dean says, soft, “I just was wondering if you brought anything for Sammy’s birthday.”

John pauses. “It’s the second already?” he says, and then, no, of course, it’s the tenth, because he caught the wolf a few days before the moon was full and that means his son’s turned twelve without him noticing.

There’s a sigh, so soft he probably wouldn’t have caught it on a night less still. “You need me to do anything?” Dean says, after a moment, and his voice isn’t any different. “There’s still trail mix and jerky, think we’ve got some cereal or something, if you need to eat.”

John shakes his head. “Not now. In the morning we’ll need to do a full weapons check and get out to do a supply run. And I want to see how you’re coming along with the bowhunting.”

Dean laughs, quiet, and John doesn’t know why, really, but before he can ask there’s a Dean? from the bedroom, in Sam’s high soft voice, and Dean’s immediately up in a half-crouch, calling back, “Just taking a leak, Sammy. Go back to sleep.”

There’s a creak of bedsprings as Sam presumably flops back over in bed. John stands up and Dean follows, and now that he’s upright John can actually see his face in the pale light from the windows—pillow-crease seaming his cheek, eyes sleep-heavy, a little knot of a frown between his brows. John puts a still-damp hand to Dean’s jaw and there’s a faint prickle of stubble there. His boys, growing up right under his nose. “Go on,” he says, and claps Dean gently on the shoulder. “Get some sleep. Early start tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean murmurs, and disappears into the dark of the bedroom. There’s another creak as his weight hits the bed, and John stands very still with the bloody towel between his hands, listens to the faint murmur of sleepy questions and soothing answers, the whispering of cloth and skin as they settle back together.

How the time trickles away, he thinks. He doesn’t know how he could’ve forgotten. But—no. There’s no sense in regretting. There was the hunt, and that’s what’s most important, always. He’ll make it up to Sam soon. He tosses the wet towel into an empty corner of the room and drops into the lone ratty armchair that serves as the cabin’s furniture, pulling his jacket over his bare chest to serve as a blanket. He closes his eyes and hopes that he’ll sleep. He’s tired, and in the morning there’s work that needs doing. There always is.