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Rain pelts through the air, a seemingly endless deluge of water, puncturing the cigarette smoke as it wafts from tired breaths.
He knows he shouldn't be doing it, that it's the kiss of death for someone that has only the state of his body between life and death, but it's better than the alternative, doesn't cloud his thoughts or steal him away for any longer than the time it sits in his mouth.
Freshly turned earth is beginning to dissolve to mud where he piled it back into place. His boots sink into displaced chunks of turf where he stands, and a shovel hangs loose in his fingers. The canisters of salt he'd dropped to the ground are probably being ruined, the shotgun rusting; he doesn't notice. His face is slack; he stares at nothing.
Water cascades through his hair, down his neck, inside the back of his jacket. His feet are lodged in place, can't bring himself to do anything but stand there, as though prolonging this moment will freeze everyone else in stasis, too. The light is grey-blue, day fading. The ember is a bright speck of orange against it.
He shouldn't have gone on this hunt. He shouldn't. He'd overheard Jim's phone conversation, an easy ghost with injuries in place of casualties, slipped away before anyone could stop him. The shame piles on doubly, arrests him to the spot even more.
It doesn't matter that they're staying at Jim's. It doesn't matter that it was a short salt and burn, slated to last less than a day. His sons need him right now. Dean needs him.
He's silent, again. And this time it's impenetrable, a solid wall of air around him that sends every voice and every touch glancing away. John didn't think it was possible to be more afraid for his son after he'd found him than he was when he was missing. Even the physical problems weren't things he could just wash, bandage up, solve and file away in a matter of minutes, hours, or days, even weeks. The inability to reach out, to do anything to make a visible difference, just to sit there and wait clogs his veins, fills his lungs, jams his throat, makes him choke.
He wanted to stay, he had to stay, he'd done fine cleaning him up, tending his wounds, holding on tight the first two days. But all of a sudden the levee had to break, and now whenever he looked at Dean, still so thin and sick, unnaturally so, he— he kept seeing— Couldn't bare to think about—
He didn't tell anyone else what he saw in the basement.
It feels like a betrayal of trust, not that Dean was in any mind to give it. But he knows Dean. He also knows that everyone thinks he's the one to come down hard, to tolerate such things the least out of anyone in the business, but this is different. This is Dean. This is his son. He feels, irrationally, that the others would react badly. He is aware that keeping secrets to fester is bad, especially ones like this, but...
What else can he give Dean, really?
He knew he couldn't go on a bender. He knew he couldn't dare just sweep it all under a haze of Jack, didn't want to, but... In the end he still couldn't fight off the urge to get away. Even when his life was easy and simple and rose-tinted with Mary he was too weak to stick around when emotions got high. What streak of stupidity made him think he could do it now, when it's all so much worse?
His face is numb, his fingers cold, his limbs starting to shake. Everything else is draining out of him. He wonders when he'll move, slink back to the house like a drowned rat.
Probably when this cigarette puffs out. He suddenly doesn't have the stomach for another.