Work Text:
The truck stop is deserted at this time of night, so there’s no one to complain when the three of them adjourn to the picnic tables with a pack of smokes and a crate of beer, all to share. It’s not often John has the chance to talk with people who aren’t hunters, and he’s buoyant with the carefree relief of just shooting the shit with a couple of guys; no watching his words, no keeping his cards close to the vest. He’s never going to see these men again, he can tell them everything or absolutely nothing and it won’t matter at all. The muggy summer night is ripe with possibility. John straddles the wooden bench, taking one side of the table for himself, and peels open the pack of Marlboro Reds with eager anticipation. It’s been some time, Dean doesn’t like it when he smokes.
Out of concern for John’s health, or so he says, but John has caught him making faces when they kiss on days John indulges, and that bothers him a whole of a lot more than the lung cancer he won’t live long enough to develop.
The tallest of the two truck drivers, Mike, hands him a lighter. “Been a while, uh, drifter?”
John lights up, takes a sharp pull around a smirk and tosses him the pack back, lighter stuck inside the clear plastic. “I got someone back home who isn’t a fan. And the name is John.”
Mike gives him a searching look from beneath his dirty baseball hat. “I’m gonna keep calling you drifter. John sounds too much like a fake name.”
“I know. It’s come in handy more than once.”
That gets a laugh from his buddy, Rich, he said he was called, a rangy guy with long dirty blond hair down to his shoulders. “Oh, you’re a drifter alright. You looking for trouble out on them back roads?”
“More or less. I don’t have to look hard, trouble comes to me.” It’s only a half a lie, John has combed through more newspapers than most people will ever read in their entire life for his trouble. But trouble is everywhere, he just needs to know where to point himself at.
The air is so hot and heavy that the smoke gathers around their heads in a cloud. A cloying miasma that John takes greedy lungfuls of. He always breathes a little easier in poisoned air, sleeps better in a bed of wire than any soft mattress. Dean has nothing to worry when it comes to John’s health, there’s no hostile environment he doesn’t thrive in.
He’ll go through spells of time where he’ll hate himself for what he became and put his boys through – especially Dean, always Dean – but then, as sudden as it comes in, the hatred vanishes and John is left hollow and new, desperate to fill himself up with everything he shouldn’t. He can tell he’s on the come down again, jonesing bad for booze, for smokes, but most of all for Dean. Always the worst and most damning of his addictions.
The two truckers share a flame to light both their cigarettes, and John realises with a spark of clarity that they’re lovers. The closeness of their heads and the angle of their bodies gives them away. John wonders if he’s so obvious. If anyone who’s ever watched him place a hand on the back of Dean’s neck, or brush his shoulders when they walk side-by-side could tell at a glance what was going on.
Rich cracks a beer bottle open on the edge of the picnic table and slides it across to John, who catches it just in time to avoid a spill. “Cheers,” he raises the bottle in a salute, and drains half of it in a single swallow.
“The missus don’t like beer either, or were you just thirsty?”
John drains the rest of the bottle before answering him. “Not a missus.”
Mike whistles, but he’s grinning ear to ear, elbows on the table now, leaning forward openly. “That so? He a drifter like you?”
John hums affirmatively around the cigarette’s filter, flicking ash onto the dried up grass. Maybe it could catch, words alone are incendiary.
“He didn’t want to come along on the drive?” Rich asks, he’s also curious, but less obvious about it. John wonders if the two of them have to hide a lot when they meet other truckers. And if something about John broadcasts that he’s in no position to judge anyone. He hopes they don't think that makes him safe, sure sign of bad instincts.
“He’s at home with my kid.” He almost said ‘our’ kid, but that would have been crazy. Sam is eighteen so only a kid because John can’t think of him as anything else, no matter how tall he gets. He’s two years older than Dean was when he first climbed into bed with John, full bottom lip trapped between his teeth, saying “I really want to”, while John said “We shouldn’t,” as if that absolved him of everything that had happened before. But Dean at sixteen was never as young as Sam is at eighteen. Not that he’d be able to explain it to these strangers in any way they would ever understand.
“That’s nice, having a family to return to,” Rich says, smiling fondly.
John ashes out the cigarette on the table, and reaches for the pack to get a new one. “Best thing in the world,” he says, blinding himself for a second with the lighter's sudden flame.
He wonders why is it he always thinks of Sam as a kid, but he’s stopped calling Dean that a long time ago, even in the privacy of his own mind. Dean is his son, but he’s no kid, maybe never was, he always lacked that carefree quality that defines childhood. Something else the demon took from him, along with a mother. John could have done more to give it back, but they had Sam to consider, and he couldn’t have done it all on his own. No chance.
When they’re in public John calls Dean ‘dude’ and ‘buddy’, when it’s just the two of them it’s ‘baby’ and ‘my boy’. ‘Kid’ is something reserved for Sam, when John’s trying to remind him that all the books in the world won’t make him an expert on what John and his brother have first-hand experience in.
He misses them, both of them. He was thinking of sleeping in the car and making his way back to the cabin they’re renting in the morning, but now he’s considering driving through the night. Maybe he’ll be on his way as soon as the beer and cigarettes run out.
“What about the two of you?” John asks, to distract himself from thoughts of his family. “How long have you been together?”
They look at each other with a start, surprised that John clocked them. They lower their heads with bashful chuckles. Rich shoves a hand against Mike’s shoulder. “Man, it would have happened a lot sooner if this guy didn’t waste time pining after some kid who was never going to give him the time of day.”
John sits up straighter, and fixes Mike with a pointed look. “Oh, yeah? Sounds like there’s a story there.”
Mike takes off his beat-up baseball hat and rubs his forearm over his sweaty forehead, stalling. “Nothing to tell,” he chuckles self-deprecatingly, “Whenever I was home from my routes I always went to the same spot next to my place, but one day this college kid was tending bar, and we struck up a conversation, and the rest, well… I wanted something serious, he wanted to work through his daddy issues.”
Rich lights a cigarette with a scoff. “I told you, I told you but you didn’t wanna listen.”
John motions for one of the guys to pass him another beer but says nothing.
It’s Mike who hands him the beer, frowning, his gaze turned inwards. “But honestly, it’s my fault. You see what you want to see. He was lonely, on his own in a strange place. Anyway, he started dating some other college kid. Thanks for the memories and all that.” He pulls a beer from the crate for himself and smirks, just a tiny hitch at the corner of his lips. “I wonder if he calls him ‘daddy’ too.”
Rich laughs, he bumps into Mike’s shoulder again and the two share a smile. Just like that the awkwardness dissolves, they’re back to sharing familiar banter. But John never quite gets back his laid-back mood.
He checks his phone. No new texts flickering on the tiny green screen. No missed calls either. Dean is probably sleeping.
They keep talking, time passes. John chains cigarettes to be done with them faster. He wasn’t in a rush to get home, but he is now. It’s been three weeks since he last saw Dean. He’s trying to remember what they talked about on their previous calls. Nothing out of the ordinary, Dean telling him everything was fine and asking when he was coming back, John telling him that he was busy still. Had Dean’s voice wavered with disappointment? There was a lake near the cabin, Dean said something about dragging Sam away from his books and going for a swim.
All of a sudden, John can’t think of a single reason why it took him so long to handle an average salt-and-burn. He can get obsessive, he knows that about himself, he lives his life like he’s got nothing to lose, but that’s not true. Not thinking about it doesn’t make it less real, these purges he forces himself to go through don’t put as much distance between him and what haunts him as he’d like. They don’t keep the boys safe and they don’t make him less responsible for all he has done. The distance only makes him lonely.
They run out of smokes before they run out of beer, but John keeps drinking to have something to do. He’s checked out of the conversation, and he knows when he says goodbye the guys are glad to see the back of him. He’s not good company when he’s drunk, he becomes irritable and short, all his words clipped and mean.
He gets behind the Impala’s wheel and peels away at speed. If he drives through the night he’ll be home by morning. He winds all the windows down, but not even the speed cools the muggy night air. His eyes sting but he keeps them open with thoughts of Dean, of slipping quietly into the cabin, catching him still asleep, kissing him carefully as to not wake Sam, sliding one hand under the covers and feeling his warm chest and strong, beating heart.
It takes him longer than he’d like, it’s around 10 am when he parks out in the shade some fifty feet out of view from the cabin, which they got at bargain rates because there was a problem with the pipes and management told them they had to use the outhouse. He climbs out of the car with a grateful sigh, his heart is racing as if he had ran the entire way back.
Usually, Dean would have heard him drive in and would already be waiting by the open doorway with a giddy smile, but there’s no one rushing to meet him. John lets himself into the cabin quietly, alert, on account of the noise coming in from the living room, a rustling of fabric on fabric.
Sam’s got Dean pinned under him on the sofa, they’re both in their underwear, and tussling. That’s all; he can tell from the backwards strain of Dean’s neck and the way his right hand is curled tightly around the remote that this is just another of their dumb fights. But when did Sam get so tall? He’s much taller than Dean now, than John too. He shouldn’t be able to overcome his brother so easily.
John clears his throat. “Hi, boys.”
Dean’s eyes go wide at the sound of his voice. He cranes his head towards the door and meets John’s gaze with a pleased smile that spreads across his lips like a lazy sunrise. “Hi, Dad, didn’t know you were coming back today.”
Dean stays put right where he is, but Sam springs away from him as if scalded. He smooths a hand down his shaggy hair and clears his throat. “Welcome back, Dad.”
John takes note of the ruddy flush on Sam’s cheeks, the stiff set of his shoulders. He and Sam were always too alike to get along easy. That this might be something else they have in common makes the back of John’s teeth hurt.
“Dean, get dressed, we need to go into town to buy food.”
“Yes, sir,” Dean says, jumping up off the sofa and disappearing through the bedroom door.
Sam shuffles awkwardly in place, still avoiding John’s eyes. John scratches at his stubbled cheeks. It didn’t use to be this hard to find something to say to Sam, but for the past two years or so, it’s like there’s nothing between them besides terse silences and shouted accusations unless Dean is there to mediate and clear the air with jokes and prompt changes of subject.
“Everything alright while I was gone?”
Sam nods, mirroring John and scratching his own smooth cheeks. “Nothing happened. We had fun.”
“Fun, uh?”
Sam’s eyebrows furrow above his stormy eyes. “Yes. Fun. We’re allowed, it’s summer.” No matter how tall he gets, Sam still speaks with a childish petulance that grates on John’s nerves.
“I’m just making conversation, son.”
He never gets to hear whatever smart retort Sam was about to spit out because Dean comes out of the bedroom ready to go. He ruffles his brother’s hair on his way past him. “Later, bitch.” Sam flinches, throwing a halfhearted “Jerk,” at the back of Dean’s head.
John watches Sam watching Dean, and closes the door between them with a quiet thud. As they make their way to the car he turns around to chase the source of the tingling at his nape and finds Sam watching the two of them from the window, his expression unreadable. He scowls at being discovered and disappears behind the checkered curtains. It disturbs John to find himself at the receiving end of all that disdain. They haven’t always been discreet, and Sam is not a child, “it’s just the wind, buddy, go back to bed,” is not going to cut it any longer.
Dean slips inside the car when John pops open the passenger door for him, but in the time it takes him to walk around to the driver’s side and get in, a frown has replaced his sunny smile.
“It smells like a distillery in here,” he says, glaring at John from under the fan of those long lashes, which always ruin his attempts at intimidation. “Were you drinking and driving?”
John sighs. “No I drank and then drove, but don’t worry I sweated it all out. You have any idea how hot-”
Dean interrupts him. “That was reckless.”
“Everything we do is reckless.”
“Stupid reckless.”
Dean only manages to talk back when he’s moved by worry, all his anger wrapped in it. It makes it hard for John to smart at the disrespect, although he knows he should. He reaches for the back of Dean’s neck and rubs his thumb in soothing circles over the protruding vertebra. “The streets were deserted, you know how it is.”
The tension drains slowly out of Dean’s shoulders, he relaxes into John’s touch, going pliant like a cat. “I missed you,” John says, his voice steady despite the warm bloom of emotion in his chest. He wishes sometimes that he was better at voicing his feelings, better at showing them too. He knows he makes Dean guess, makes him anxious with worry about what’s going on in his mind when he withdraws.
But John would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy all the ways Dean tries to draw him back out. All that unrelenting focus turned on him, his attention laser-sharp. For someone who has always felt like a blackhole, there’s something irresistible about Dean seeking him out like a sunflower does the sun.
Dean turns on the seat until John’s hand is cupping the side of his face and then nuzzles into his palm. He goes still and pulls away with a frown. “And you were smoking too?”
John sighs and climbs over the centre console, trapping Dean against the window. “Yeah,” he says, “do you wanna guess the brand?”
Dean rolls his eyes at him, but the smile returns. He pecks John on the lips. “It’s always Marlboros.”
Another kiss, this one deeper. “What color?”
Dean licks his lips, eyelids fluttering. “Red.”
“Good boy,” John says, and cups the back of Dean’s neck to hold him in place for a proper welcome back kiss. He watches Dean’s eyes flicker closed, but keeps his own open for a second longer to drink in the sight of him melting under his hands, easy for the taking, eager for the plundering. John kisses him greedily, as he does everything else, eager to drink from Dean’s mouth and quench a thirst even the finest liquor couldn’t be a match for.
He starts working his hands beneath Dean’s shirt, feeling his stomach jump under his palms, the warm skin heating up further. Dean keens into the kiss, his hips raising to meet John’s, but there’s a whine tucked into the need, he pulls away from John’s lips to gasp. “Dad, we can’t, Sam…”
“Sam can’t see us from the cabin,” John says, and kisses Dean to silence any further arguments.
He knows he should care, there’s nothing stopping Sam from wondering why he didn’t hear the car start and drive away and go investigate. But something tells John he wouldn’t. If he doesn’t know but suspects, proof is the last thing he’d want. If he already knows, well…
But Dean’s demurring doesn’t last, he returns John’s kisses and lets his hands wander across his back pulling the sweaty t-shirt over John’s shoulders as he goes. John breaks away from Dean’s slick lips only long enough for them both to get rid of their clothes. They adjourn to the backseat, where there’s more room for Dean to climb on John’s lap and wrap a dry palm around both their cocks.
They’ve gotten off like this plenty, but John has spent a long, sweaty, drive fantasizing about burying himself in his son to the hilt, and nothing else will do.
He laves his tongue over Dean’s right nipple for the pleasure of hearing his startled hiss. “Get the lube,” he says, and bites down, worrying the stiff peak between his teeth.
Dean clings to the back of John’s head, pushing his tits into his face. He has sensitive nipples, something John enjoys playfully teasing him about because the blush brings out his freckles. It amuses him, how much Dean can squirm bashfully but without ever telling him to stop. As far back as he can recall Dean has never said no to anything John did to him. The thought burns through him, the shame is sickly sweet.
“Come on, boy, we don’t have all morning.” He slaps Dean’s ass to get him moving.
“Yessir.”
It’s quite the view, watching Dean navigate the console and the gearshift to reach the glove compartment. John’s gaze lingers on the swell of his ass, cock twitching, he gives into the impulse and bites him where thigh meets ass. Deans yelps and squirms in surprise but John holds him in place by the hip, using his other hand to thumb him open and get his tongue on his hole.
Dean keens like John shot him, high and wounded, going tight all over. This is one thing he loves but never knows how to ask for. John is happy to indulge him – and himself – he likes it too; the exquisite vulnerability of it, the intensity of the shameful pleasure it draws out of Dean. He loves to make him come like that, eyes squeezed shut, tears streaming down his face, so overwhelmed it’s always a few minutes before he can speak in full sentences.
Giving Dean pleasure is the least he can do, and so John is diligent about it; won’t come until Dean has, and always gives him two orgasms for each of his own. It’s a pointless equation, because it never evens out, it might take weeks or months, but the guilt wins out and John will run again. Too ashamed to look his son in the eye, but not ashamed enough to put a stop to it.
Those thoughts seem distant now, they’re always far away when he returns, when Dean’s skin sizzles at the touch and his smile is brightest and his pleasure sharpest. Dean is always so happy to see him...John tells himself he’ll stop reaching for him on the day he comes back and Dean’s lips no longer split into a grin at the sight of him. The day Dean starts looking at John the same way Sam does is the day he’ll go back to being just John’s son.
“Dad, dad, dad,” Dean whines, hips stuttering. John tightens his grip, laves his tongue in broad swipes, leaves him dripping spit.
The sounds Dean makes get to John’s head like top-shelf whiskey, leave him woozy and reckless, and just as mean. If his mouth weren’t busy he’d be whispering filth into Dean’s ears, telling him how good he is like this, out of his mind, so good for John, so tight and warm inside, a perfect fit, made just for him, made by him. His little boy, his good boy. John’s a dirty old man but Dean never gave him a chance, what was John supposed to do, when everyone else started looking too?
Dean makes an injured sound in the back of his throat and wraps one hand around his bobbing cock. “I’m—”, he starts, but John stops eating him out, so the warning is pointless.
“Pass the lube.” Dean hands it to him with shaking hands, and John makes short work of coating his cock and the two fingers that he bullies into Dean to slick him up with perfunctory ease.
He wants it face-to-face, with Dean on his lap, within kissing distance. Dean knows what John wants from him, he reaches behind himself to hold John’s cock in place and lowers himself down on it. John watches the muscle jump in his jaw and pets his flank, gentling him through the initial resistance of penetration.
It’s a struggle to hold still when all he wants to do is give into the desire to pin Dean in place and hilt himself up those suffocating final inches. They both sigh in relief when he bottoms out, Dean’s arms going around his neck, breath warm against his skin. “D-dad.” He rolls his hips experimentally, gasps, and smears his lips on John’s mouth.
John loops one arm around Dean’s waist and spreads his legs, giving Dean room to ride. Dean never calls him daddy, never except for that first time. John wonders if it’s something only people who aren’t having sex with their fathers do. He tries to decide how he feels about it but then Dean balances himself backward on his knees, shoulders back and chest out, thighs tense with the strain of lifting himself up and down. John drinks in the sight, could come just from it, no mention of the tight clench of Dean’s hole, squeezing sweetly on the upswing.
“Feeling good, baby?”
Dean nods, bottom lip caught between his teeth, John thrusts up into him, sudden and mean, and Dean’s mouth falls open, spilling out startled moans, his cock slaps against his abdomen with the movement, coating it in more slick. John knows one good pull and he would be coming like a rocket, it’s tempting, but Dean can get there on his own and John wants a show. It isn’t a frequent occurrence, but he’s always extra sensitive when they haven’t fucked in a while.
“You’ve been a good boy?” John asks, nudging his hips in slow, teasing increments. Dean nods frantically, his hands flexing on John’s knees, eyes blown black with lust. “My good boy?”
“Yours, dad.” He chokes on the words, speeding up the roll of his hips. He sounds on the verge of tears, John loves how pleasure flushes him all over, makes his freckles stark. John loves him so much, enough to kill them both.
“You’re gonna come on daddy’s cock? That’s what good boys do.”
Dean curses a stream of expletives, chasing orgasm frantically. John’s fingers tighten on his waist, he pulls him down against his chest and thrusts up into him, nailing him where it matters, feeling his hole spasm tightly with each stab.
Their eyes meet, they share open-mouthed gasps, short on oxygen inside the fogged up car. John doesn’t relent, if Dean’s been good he’ll be coming any second now, going deliciously tight around John’s cock and milking an orgasm out of him too. If not, then he’ll know Dean hasn’t missed him all that much.
John doesn’t know how that will make him feel. Relieved? Disappointed? Most damning, jealous?
He doesn’t get to find out because Dean’s breath hitches and then he goes quiet, tightening around John’s cock like a vice, before gasping thirstily and shooting ropes of cum up between their sweaty abdomens. John rides out the contractions of his channel, snapping his hips artlessly, holding Dean in place by the back of the neck like a skittish animal, shushing his overstimulated whimpering until he finally comes with a gasp of his own.
They catch their breath in silence, they can almost never get away with making noise so being quiet is second nature. John presses a kiss to Dean’s sweaty temple, he wishes he could give him better than furtive backseat fucks. Dean turns his head to meet John’s lips, eyes closed, he kisses him leisurely. John goes soft inside him. Dean makes a face at the sensation of cum trickling out of him. He’s fussy about the car’s upholstery and fishes his boxers out of the pile of his clothes, puts them back on before plastering himself to John’s chest again.
“We do really need to get groceries,” he says, playing with John’s chest hair. “You said you’d be gone a week tops.”
“You know what the job is like,” John says, killing the conversation. He smooths his hands down Dean’s back to soothe the sting of his words.
“You could have called. Could have taken my calls, at least.” Dean’s pretty frown wrenches a reluctant chuckle from John.
“I called. I can’t be calling every day. I knew you boys were safe.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know you were.”
“I’ll always come back for you, Dean,” he says, drawing the high arch of Dean’s cheekbone with his thumb. “For you and Sammy.”
He wonders, though, for how long Dean will keep waiting. All that give is bound to go taut at some point. John worries that Dean will snap without warning. John likes to think he would let him go, but he doesn’t know. He loves him so much, it makes him sick.
“Sammy’s been really pissy lately. I think it’s because he’s done with school, doesn’t know what to do with himself now that he doesn’t have book reports to write.” Despite his words, his gaze softens when he talks about Sam.
And therein lies the problem. “We’ve been too easy on him. Lore work is fine, but he needs to get more involved in the job. You were going on hunts with me when you were half his age.”
Dean shrugs, his chin digging into John’s chest. “You know how Sammy gets. He has all these ideas about how things should be done—”
“And you indulge him.”
“Dad, come on, antagonizing him will only make things worse.”
There’s a long distance between antagonizing and coddling, but Dean never wants to meet in the middle when it comes to Sammy. John isn’t in the mood to get into an argument, still too slow and syrupy from orgasm to get into it. He kisses Dean on the cheek. “You’re the reason I have more grey hairs every day, baby. You and your brother, both.”
Dean tugs on one such hair on John’s chest. “Looks good.” He lowers his eyes bashfully, suddenly shy. John’s heart constricts painfully, it’s love, it has to be love.
“Let’s get dressed, your brother will wonder what took us so long.”
---
It does take them a long time, and Sam is furious when they get back. He starts on something and then switches tracks to another grievance when he feels like the argument is losing steam. Dean mediates between the two of them, like he always does, but it’s halfhearted, he’s tired, he wants to shower and to eat something. John lets his mouth run, he doesn’t know where Sam got the attitude, but there’s plenty of time for John to fix it for him.
And then Sam brings up the Stanford acceptance letter. At that point the plot is well and truly lost, Dean tries to get back in the game but it’s too late. John and Sam are shouting at each other, Dean holds John back be the shoulder like he fears they might come to blows. John doesn’t know that they wont.
Sam says he’s leaving and John laughs in his face. He doesn’t expect Sam to actually go through with it and start packing his bags.
At some point Dean starts begging Sam to stay, John can’t make out his words, just sees the desperation in his eyes, hears the pleading in his tone.
“You don’t have to stay, Dean. You can come with me.”
John goes very still, the breath freezes inside his lungs, his gaze drifts to Dean. Their eyes meet, Dean’s gaze is heavy, weighted down. He shakes his head.
“I’m not leaving, Sammy. Please don’t go.”
Something flashes in Sam’s eyes, he opens his mouth and John wonders if he’s going to damn them all with the truth before leaving, but it snaps closed a moment later. He doesn’t even say goodbye, just grabs a backpack and slams the door on his way out.
The cabin is eerily quiet in the wake of his departure.
The worst of John’s fears didn’t come to pass, but John feels subdued, as if submerged under water. That night, he and Dean sleep in the same bed for the first time in years, but there’s no sweetness to it. Dean clings to him, but when he thinks John has fallen asleep he turns on his side and cries quietly into the pillow.
John doesn’t know what to do. This is his fault, one of his sons is gone and the other is crying because his brother left, and John is numb.
He looks up at the dark ceiling trying to will himself into falling asleep. Dean stayed, but why? Is it love or duty that keeps him at John’s side?
The dark wooden ceiling doesn’t offer any answers, but John tells himself it’s love. It has to be love. Why else would they be doing this to each other?