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The bear didn’t understand John’s occasional need for oblivion, but it struck him anyway. Whenever the hunt was going poorly. Whenever that damned date came around again.
The bear’s confusion made John himself slightly uncertain of his motives, but when the stars aligned and the demonic bastard that had killed his wife slipped through his hands yet again on November 2nd, murdering Sam’s girlfriend in the process, his date with Jack was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
He tossed back another shot—his sixth in just under an hour—and the bear rumbled in protest. It hated this muzzy, hazed feeling. Felt uncomfortably defenseless.
We’re in a fucking bar, he told it. We’re fine.
Notsafe, the bear huffed. Should be hunting.
Where? Bastard slipped through our fingers and vanished. It’ll take months to even come close again.
Should be protecting our cubs, then, the bear shot back staunchly.
In his mind, John saw his hand clenched around Dean’s amulet. Saw Dean’s wide, panicked eyes staring up at him. His chest tightened painfully. “I am,” he muttered into his shot glass. He was protecting them the best way he knew how.
Two-as-one better, the bear grumbled. You know. You see.
Yeah, John knew. But Dean didn’t want this. And if he didn’t want it, then John couldn’t chose it for him. Even if the need to have his son at his side—to have both of his sons at his side—was so strong it burned, that didn’t mean he had to give in to it. He was stronger than that, damn it.
“Hey, handsome,” a sultry voice purred in his ear. “You here on your own?”
John turned his head slowly and regarded the buxom brunette who had plopped down on the neighboring barstool. He hadn’t been all that interested in female company of the sort that she was offering since Mary—had, in fact, been celibate as a monk—and his disinterest had only increased since he’d merged with the bear. He already had a mate, and she might be dead, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to be unfaithful to her. Not ever.
“Not interested,” he grunted.
Undeterred, the woman leaned closer. “You sure? I can be real nice company.”
Anger, fanned by his own frustration at losing the demon and the bear’s unease at his inebriated state, flared through John like wildfire: like the fire that had devoured his MaryLoveWifeAngelFriendLoverMate. He was up and on the woman before he knew what he was doing. Shoving her into the bar, he ground the bones in her wrist together with one hand and snarled, “I’m taken.”
She was squirming and crying out for help, telling him to let her up, and when some good old boys came to her assistance, John lit into them eagerly. The bear surged to the front and skin split and bones broke under their (paws) hands.
Five minutes later, the men were on the floor and John stood over them, his vision filmed with crimson. They were broken and bruised and bleeding, but not dead. Deaths would call too much attention, and he needed to move below the radar.
The bear took John out of the bar and prodded him aware enough to drive them back to the motel. Once they were inside, it wrapped around him: a warm and comforting weight. He let it hold him as he wept with his head in his hands and the name of an angel stuttering on his lips.