InsaneJournal

Dean wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he should be dreading this encounter with his father. At the moment, he was leaning towards should, because this was probably going to be one of those conversations he really didn’t want to have, the kind that left him with more questions than answers and made him feel like a soldier who wasn’t supposed to talk back to a commanding officer, instead of a son who could just speak frankly with his father. Last time he’d seen Dad alive, before all this, he hadn’t even realized that’s what their relationship was. It had taken not having him around to make him see that, and now...

Well, now he just wasn’t sure how to relate to his father, how to respond to him, if he could say what he thought about things without worrying about pissing John off. It wasn’t that he was afraid of him - he wasn’t, he never really had been - it was just the way they operated, and now he had spent a couple years without him, and ... it just didn’t feel right, either way.

Still, they probably really did need to do this. There were a lot of things that needed to be discussed, and he knew that, and the longer they got put off, the worse it would be. He still hadn’t had Sam fill him in on everything - apparently whatever his brother had to tell him, it was going to suck - but this whole Adam thing alone was a big enough issue that he was pretty sure it needed to be dealt with.

He couldn’t deny that he was kind of pissed about it Mostly it was about the fact that John hadn’t even told them about the kid, that he’d kept it quiet, some dirty little secret. Sure, he got why, in theory - to keep Adam safe, that made sense, because if they had connections to him, he’d have been dead before he ever hit his teenage years - but he could have said something, he should have known Dean would never have put the kid in danger.

(And then there was the petty jealous side of himself that wanted to know when, exactly, Dad had been visiting the kid. He’d never said anything, no I’m off to visit your other brother, not even off to visit friends or anything, it was always another hunt another job another lead to follow up on, and Dean hadn’t questioned him, not even once, and at least at some point, he’d been trusting in a lie, because he doubted Dad had just dropped in on the way to or from a hunt, he wasn’t like that, he’d have been careful, planned it out so nothing could follow him from either direction, made lots of stops and covered his trail, like he’d done going to Pastor Jim’s, or Bobby’s.)

None of that mattered, though. He was still going. Pulling up outside the complex, he turned the engine off and sighed as it went silent. He didn’t linger inside, because that would look like weakness (he wasn’t sure if Dad would be looking for weaknesses, looking for fear like Dean sometimes caught himself doing a wild animal waiting to pounce, or looking for flaws to drill out of him, but he didn’t want to give him any, if he was). He held himself steady, although it was probably pointless - Dad could probably see straight through him, see the anger and the unease and everything he wanted to hide, because Dad always did know what he was thinking, except for when he didn’t have a clue.