Whenever a spell needed blood or a body part, do you think John ever sourced it from Dean which is why Dean knows what roofies look like since John sneaked them into his food just he can get whatever he needed.
The '81 GMC Sierra turned off beaten asphalt and onto a dirt road, tires crunching over the new terrain. As much as John Winchester loved his '67 Impala, sometimes the truck just made more sense. Rumbling his way toward a remote cabin in the woods was one of those times. The buzz and ring of his other other cell pushed heavy brows together, and a sigh was pushed through his nose at the caller ID, but he flipped it open and pressed it to his ear regardless.
"Pope."
"You better be on the other side of the fucking country, Winchester."
John's jaw set, eyes fixed on the road ahead. "... I can't ignore the signs of an obvious haunting. Two families and three maintenance workers have been run out of this cabin since the plans to tear it down were finalized. You know it needs salted and burned, there's no two ways around it."
"No-no-no, this is not an ITEM on your TO-DO list, you've got no fuckin' business being the one to put that woman and her children to rest, and you know it. So how about, just for ONCE—" John could hear the creak of plastic, maybe from Pope's grip on the phone itself, or him leaning forward in his chair. "you turn around, and you find a new case, and you don't be the raging ASSHOLE we all know you to be."
There was a pause, but for John, it spoke volumes. "... He can't do it."
"You don't know that."
"He's green." John's voice hardened, and maybe his foot eased off the gas. Just a bit. "This would rock someone with twice his experience. Look, I know, better than anyone, what Tom Mason went through, but he's not ready. He'll never be ready."
"He doesn't need a fucking Winchester stamp of approval to do what's best for his own family. Would you have torched Bobby's wife? Would you barbecue Bill Harvelle, and send Ellen a postcard about it? Oh wait, I forgot, YOU DID. Have you ever stopped to wonder why you don't have any fuckin' FRIENDS, JOHN!?"
John never would have counted Pope as a friend, but it was rich, getting this lecture from him. "... A haunting's a haunting. The longer we wait, the worse it'll be."
"If you take Tom's family away from him a second time..." The line went quiet for a moment. "... Don't you ever. Ever. Darken my fuckin' doorstep again. If my phone rings, it better be for your boys, because I'm sure as shit not pulling up for you."
The veteran's mouth opened as the truck made the final turn, and the cabin loomed into view. "... Shit." John snapped the phone shut and tossed it back into the glovebox, brown eyes locked dead ahead as the truck rolled to a stop and parked.
Planted in front of the wooden steps, shotgun in hand, was Tom.
The professor's eyes were ringed with red, but they were set like stone. Tom was leaner, but stronger than the last time he'd set eyes on the dark-haired man climbing out of an old GMC. John didn't make a show of bringing a gun of his own, but Tom didn't think for a minute he didn't have one. Or that he would have the quicker draw. John had been hunting since the 80s, and in Vietnam before that. The only thing that gave Tom any sort of edge was the fact he had nothing left to lose.
"... Let's talk about this, Tom."
"There's nothing to talk about."
His voice was rough. Wrecked. But, he stood his ground, shotgun still lowered as John took a few cautious steps closer with his hands half raised. "Listen to me. They're going to turn on you. Okay, maybe not today." Another step, and John's eyes dropped to the way his hands tightened over the gun. "Maybe not this month, but they will. And whoever tries to tear down this cabin is going to die, and leave another hole in someone else's family, and I know you do not want that."
"That's close enough."
John halted, but his face was hard to read. "You can't keep them here. It's hurting them, it's hurting you, and it's going to hurt other people if that cabin isn't salted and burned."
"It's not your call." Tom's voice was strained, but those reddened brown eyes were hard as steel. "It's my family. Not yours. Your boys are still alive, and what did you do with that, huh? Put them through Hell?!"
"You leave my boys out of it." John's voice lowered with warning. "Why?" One of Tom's hands left the gun to snap in John's direction. "My family's on the table, why not yours? I would kill to be you, John! To see my kids grow up! And I would have bent over backwards to give them a life worth living!"
"You would still be hunting her killers."
"And I'd be doing it ALONE!"
John surged closer, but the shotgun snapped up, braced against the professor's shoulder and aimed at center mass. The veteran's face clouded with anger, and he pulled up short. "What, you're going to shoot me? Are you gonna SHOOT ME, TOM?"
"IF I HAVE TO!"
John's eyes shifted from his face to up past his shoulder and widened before his head tilted with an analyzing stare.
"... Tom?"
The feminine voice crumpled Tom's face, lips trembling as silent tears streamed anew. "... It's okay, Rebecca." His voice shook as much as his whitened hands against the gun. "Go back inside, honey. It's going to be okay."
John couldn't seem to tear his gaze from her, but Tom didn't dare turn his back to look. He was still staring, face unreadable, hands still raised as he closed some distance in spite of the shifted grip on the gun. "You are not. Going to be able to do what needs to be done."
"Get out of here, John. This has nothing to do with you. Just go."
The hunter's gaze shifted back to Rebecca again, and his eyes slid shut with a shake of his head. "Fine. But I'll be back by the end of the week. To salt and burn them, and whatever's left of you." Tom's head tilted, eyes narrowed, but he said nothing as John turned and stalked back to his truck. "At least tell Pope goodbye," he called over his shoulder, tugging the driver door open and planting a foot to climb in. "You owe him that much, for throwing your life away."
Familiar hands smoothed over Tom's back, but he didn't move an inch until the GMC reversed over the dry earth, and drove away.
— — —
"Is the bad man gone?"
Tom pulled the door shut and sagged against the wall beside it, his face dissolving as he slid down the wood to a seat on the floor. The shotgun clattered beside him, sobs wracking every inch of his body as tiny Hal pressed in on one side and Rebecca on the other. Cold, and not quite solid. Like hugging someone in a dream, it was never the same. Regardless, he still pulled Hal into his lap, arms circled tight around his son while he leaned into Rebecca.
"... We can't stay here, can we?"
He would have given anything to lie to his son, but it was Rebecca who spoke. "No, honey, we can't. We have to find Matt and Ben."
"I'm sorry." It felt like the thousandth time Tom had said the words, and it would never be enough. "I'm so sorry. I should have been here—I should have-!"
Rebecca shushed him softly, and pressed her lips to his hair. "If you stayed, you would be stuck here, too. Trapped and angry. I think Matt was too young to be angry... and if Ben's dead, too," Tom's heart ached at the hitch in her voice, "he didn't die here."
It felt like Tom might crack into a thousand pieces. All over again. It was not so long ago he was right here, with their empty shells, wondering how in the hell he was going to survive it all. "I love you both so much," he choked, wishing their arms had more weight around him. "I love you, too, dad." Hal murmured. "Did you ever find the skitters?"
"The skitters..." He'd never given the creatures a name, and he shook his head. "No. But I'm still looking. I'm going to find them, and I'm going to find Ben. I promise." That seemed to appease Hal, but his shoulders still shook in his father's arms. "I'm glad we wanted pizza. I'm glad you got away."
Tom's head tossed under the tsunami wave that threatened to crush him, and Rebecca's hands found his face. He leaned into them like a lifeline. "I love you, Tom Mason." Her lips trembled as she smiled, blue eyes ringed with red as she leaned in, auburn hair cascading onto his shoulder as they kissed through salt and tears. "... But I can't spend another minute in this cabin. It's time."
— — —
It was slow, painstaking work. Salting the cracks in the floorboards where the blood dripped into the foundation. With enough lighter fluid, it wouldn't matter if he got a grain into every last dried drop, it would all burn. When everything was set, the back door was left open for an easy escape, and the match was lit over the patch in the living room. The three filed into the bedroom at the back of the cabin, and Tom laid down on the bed to hold his family as long as he could.
"I know you're going somewhere better," Tom murmured against Rebecca's hair, and then let their foreheads rest together. "I wish I'd known to salt and burn then, you two wouldn't have been stuck here so long."
"It's okay," Hal buried his small face into Tom's chest. "You didn't know." The crackle of the flames was growing louder, and smoke was starting to fill the air. Rebecca's eyes snapped open, and her outline flickered as she looked toward the open bedroom door. "... It's not fair."
The shift in tone was enough for Tom to try to sit up. "Rebecca?" He recoiled as her head turned like it had been set on a spring, swift and unnatural. Smoke was starting to drift off her skin, of Hal's skin, and the boy pushed himself away from his father's hold. "It's not fair," Rebecca stated again, voice harder. "I had dreams. My boys had dreams. We had lives. We had love. We had everything, and it was taken from us."
Tom watched her flicker again, the smoke rising more from her pallid skin as she seemed to size him up. "... You're not going to be taken from us, too. Come with us."
"Rebecca, I can't." The smoke was thicker now, and Tom found himself coughing through it. "I have to go." He tried to sit up, but a hand seized his shoulder like a vice, and shoved him back into the mattress. "... Hal, help me hold him down."
The coughing worsened, a heavy haze of smoke had filled the room, and the heat was swelling, but Rebecca pinned him down onto the bed by one arm he couldn't push off. It was like she was made of lead weights, and tugging at her wrist with both hands did nothing but raise his panic.
"It's alright, Tom," she murmured, smiling in a way that made his blood run cold. "Just breathe. Breathe it in. Soon, you'll fall asleep, and we'll all be together."
Tom's eyes stung, he shook his head against the pillow, coughing as the smoke filled his lungs and burned his throat. Darkness was encroaching at the edges of his vision, but he couldn't speak to protest. Brown eyes pleaded unflinching blue while he struggled against her iron grip and coughed. "It's alright, Tom," Rebecca watched his weakening attempts to free himself as her skin grew redder, and the smoke seemed to pour off her body to join the rest. "It's going to be alright. Just breathe."
He felt heavy and numb. The coughing lessened with his fading consciousness. Tom couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, and the world was so dark. A flash and a distant crack was the last thing he knew before it all drifted away.
— — —
John burst into the bedroom with a bandana wrapped over his nose and mouth, and a shotgun blast of salt dissipated the two ghosts pressed over Tom in an instant. The fact that he wasn't coughing through the thick smoke meant he was already unconscious, and John resisted the urge to swear as he hooked his arms under the professor's, and proceeded to drag the man's limp body off the bed. Flames were threatening in the doorway, and John had to fight down the memory of running back into his own burning house in Lawrence, determined to save Mary.
Tom's long, dead weight made even the short trip to the back door damn near unreachable, and John's teeth bared under the bandana as he dragged him. A tiny figured appeared at Tom's feet, and John almost went for the shotgun until he realized the dark, smoky mass seemed to be pushing his boots forward, toward the hunter and the door. A pallid hand snapped out of the smoke at eye level, reaching for John's face before it burned away with a curdling scream.
With a heave, John managed to drag Tom outside.
His boots thudded off the back steps and across dirt and gravel until John felt far enough away to lower the professor to the ground. He'd been in the game long enough to know Tom wasn't breathing.
"Come on, you son of a bitch," John started chest compressions, harsh enough to rock his whole body with every push. "Come on!" Air was forced into Tom's lungs once, twice, and then he resumed compressions. This scenario had played through John's head a thousand times, maybe a hundred thousand times. Everything he would have done if he'd been able to pull Mary out of their burning home. "BREATHE, DAMMIT!"
Tom didn't care to be a stand-in. Even flat-lined, he refused to give John that fabricated closure. He felt a rib snap under his hands and kept going. Kept pushing. Kept cursing the fires, the broken homes, the wives they couldn't save. "TOM!"
The professor's jaw unhinged with a ragged inhale, sucking in half the world's air before dissolving into a coughing fit. Relief caved John's shoulders, and he just held on, letting him cough and sputter and breathe. Weak hands pawed at his arms and wrists while he held the man steady, and looked up to find a pair of eyes staring back.
A little boy with curly blonde hair, no older than two. The same height as the figure that had tried to help push Tom to safety. He stood in the doorway, watching John hold his dad with tears running down his face while the cabin was all but consumed with smoke and flames behind him. That moment of time seemed to stretch for infinity—John holding onto a struggling Tom, staring at a little boy that almost looked like Dean, silhouetted against the burning cabin. The boy didn't move, didn't make a sound, just watched his father breathe. A cascade of flames stole up his tiny body, and he dissolved from the doorway like he'd never been there at all.
One of the walls gave way, and the cabin crumbled with a great belch of fire. In the distance, sirens began to scream through the spring air.
Years of hunting had taught him that attention was dangerous. Attention got people hurt. Attention made questions happen, and questions were the last thing the Winchesters needed.
Unfortunately, Y/N noticed everything.
It started with small things.
The fact that Dean only seemed to own two jackets.
The fact that Sam always claimed he wasn't hungry before eventually stealing half of Dean's fries.
The fact that neither brother ever talked about their mother.
Or their hometown.
Or why they transferred in the middle of the semester.
Most people would have pushed.
Y/N didn't.
She simply accepted that some stories took time.
Which somehow made Dean trust her more.
Not that he'd ever admit that.
Especially not to Sam.
Unfortunately, Sam had eyes.
"You like her."
Dean nearly drove his pencil through his notebook.
"What?"
Sam looked entirely too pleased with himself.
"You like her."
"No, I don't."
"You absolutely do."
Dean rolled his eyes.
"I've known her for like three weeks."
"And?"
"And that's not enough time."
Sam laughed.
Dean hated when Sam laughed like that.
Like he'd already won.
Like he'd figured something out.
"Whatever."
Sam grinned.
"Sure."
Dean kicked the leg of his chair.
Hard.
Sam's grin only got bigger.
⸻
The following Friday, Dean walked into the cafeteria and immediately knew something was wrong.
Y/N wasn't sitting at her usual table.
For some reason, that bothered him.
He tried telling himself he didn't care.
He lasted approximately seven minutes.
Then he spotted her sitting alone near one of the windows.
Dean grabbed his tray and headed over.
"You're missing the rich kid meeting."
She looked up.
For a second her face brightened.
Then it faded.
"Something like that."
Dean sat across from her.
"You okay?"
"Fine."
"Liar."
A small laugh escaped her.
"You're one to talk."
Fair.
Dean leaned back in his chair.
"What happened?"
Y/N poked at her food.
"My friends are mad at me."
"Why?"
"They wanted me to help spread rumors about somebody."
Dean frowned.
"And you said no."
"Yeah."
Dean shrugged.
"Sounds like they're idiots."
That earned a genuine smile.
"There it is."
"What?"
"The Dean Winchester solution."
"What solution?"
"Everyone's an idiot."
Dean pointed at her.
"To be fair, most people are."
She laughed.
And suddenly the bad mood seemed a little smaller.
Dean found himself smiling too.
Which was becoming a problem.
A very attractive problem.
A problem with nice eyes.
And a smile.
And a tendency to make him forget himself.
Definitely a problem.
⸻
A week later, the first snow of the season arrived.
The temperature dropped overnight.
Students rushed across campus bundled in thick coats and scarves.
Dean stepped out of the motel wearing his usual leather jacket.
The zipper had been broken for months.
The lining was falling apart.
But it was all he had.
By lunch his hands were freezing.
He didn't complain.
Hunters didn't complain.
Besides, he'd survived worse.
Much worse.
That afternoon, Dean opened his locker.
A brand-new winter coat hung inside.
He froze.
The coat looked expensive.
Really expensive.
There was no note.
No name.
Nothing.
Just the coat.
Dean immediately knew who was responsible.
And he was irritated.
Mostly because he couldn't stop smiling.
He found Y/N after school.
She was standing near the football field talking with a few friends.
The second she saw him coming, she knew.
"Oh no."
Dean held up the coat.
"What is this?"
She tried—and failed—not to laugh.
"A coat."
"I know it's a coat."
"Then why are you asking?"
Dean stared at her.
She stared back.
The battle lasted approximately four seconds.
Then she burst out laughing.
Dean groaned.
"You can't just buy me stuff."
"Why not?"
"Because."
"That's not an answer."
Dean opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Still nothing.
Y/N smiled softly.
"You were freezing."
"I would've been fine."
"You were literally shivering."
Dean looked away.
Which, unfortunately, was confirmation.
Her smile softened further.
"Hopefully I got Sam's locker number right or some rich kid is going to have yet another expensive jacket."
She spoke softly
And for a moment neither of them spoke.
The winter air drifted around them.
Students walked past in the background.
The world kept moving.
But somehow everything felt still.
Then Y/N gently tugged on the sleeve of the coat.
"You deserve to be warm, Dean."
The words hit harder than they should have.
Because nobody had ever said something like that to him.
Not really.
Not since his mom.
Dean swallowed.
Suddenly unable to find a joke.
Or a comeback.
Or anything at all.
"Thanks," he said quietly.
The smile she gave him nearly stopped his heart.
⸻
That night, Dean couldn't sleep.
The motel room was dark.
Sam was already snoring.
John hadn't returned yet.
Dean stared at the ceiling.
Thinking.
Which was dangerous.
Because every road led back to the same girl.
The girl who noticed things.
The girl who never asked for anything.
The girl who somehow saw right through him.
He knew better.
People like him didn't get attached.
Attachment ended badly.
Always.
Hunters lost people.
Hunters left people behind.
Hunters didn't get happy endings.
Dean knew that better than anyone.
So why couldn't he stop thinking about her?
Why couldn't he stop replaying every smile?
Every conversation?
Every moment?
Dean rolled over and groaned into his pillow.
This was stupid.
Completely stupid.
And somehow that made it worse.
Because deep down, he already knew he was in trouble.
For the first time in years, Dean Winchester wanted something he couldn't punch, shoot, or drive away.
And he had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
Across town, Y/N sat at her bedroom window looking down at the snowy streets below.
A small smile rested on her face.
Because for the first time in a long time, she was looking forward to Monday.
Looking forward to seeing two brothers who had wandered into her life unexpectedly.
Especially one stubborn, sarcastic, impossible brother who didn't yet realize he was becoming her favorite person.
And neither of them knew that somewhere out in the dark, a new hunt was already beginning.
