Supernatural: House of Cards 7/?
Title: House of Cards
Author: Ada
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG
Spoilers: AU where anything's game.
Characters: Sam/Jess, Dean, John, and more
Disclaimer: I don't own 'Supernatural' or Dean or Sam... too bad.
Note: My Marty Guenther is modeled after 'Mr. Guenther' who co-owned the garage with John and was shown in the episode 'Home'. This story was partially inspired by the cut scene with the longer conversation between the boys and Mr. Guenther.
Summary: AU. John had been declared mentally incompetent by the state, his boys split up and raised by two different families. Now, 20 years later, John sends Dean to his naive little brother, to tell him that the demon is coming for him.
One misstep and everything they'd built could collapse like a house of cards.
Chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six
House of Cards
Chapter 7
Marty watched John storm out of the house, the screen door crashing behind him and he deflated slightly, not needing to keep up the pretense of strength and intimidation. None of that mattered now, because in a way, John was right. Marty had taken an action that night, made the phone call, started everything. He never thought it would snowball, he never imagined that he wouldn’t see John Winchester in his living room for another twenty years.
But he had started the process that created this mess, and as much as he wanted to protect Dean, to keep him for himself, he couldn’t begrudge John access to his own flesh and blood. Besides that, Dean was old enough to make his own decisions and they were all going to have to live with what he wanted.
But no matter what, the important thing was that John Winchester was most certainly on his way to California. Something was happening, and it didn’t sit right with Marty to just let it go on while he remained oblivious. He hoped taking action wouldn’t just push Dean further into John’s world, but he wouldn’t let his son slip through his fingers without doing anything either.
---------------------------------------------------
The next morning Sam and Jess rose early and went out to meet some of their friends for breakfast. Everyone was returning to Palo Alto in preparation for the new semester, and Jess and Sam had stayed the summer and so were anxious to reconnect with their friends for their final year of college.
“Jess,” Sam said slowly as they walked towards the diner they were meeting their friends at.
“Yeah?” she responded looking up at him. She had worn her simplest sundress, white with little red flowers, and once again Sam was stunned by her sheer beauty.
“Can we uh… can we keep this Dean thing between you and me?” he asked hesitantly. The last thing he wanted was for everyone to start grilling him on his mysterious brother’s appearance in his life.
“Sure sweetie,” Jess answered with a smile. “I can you’re nervous just thinking about him,” she added.
“Well you know Dean’s just… and Dave and Karen don’t even know I’m adopted so…”
“You just want to keep this a secret, got it,” Jess said with a knowing smirk, cutting off Sam’s stunted excuses. “Are you two going out again tonight?” she asked.
“Yeah… Dean likes bars and pool halls so it’s not hard to find a place to go at least,” Sam replied. Jess reached up and smoothed the collar on Sam’s polo shirt unconsciously, as if she had done it a thousand times, nodding as he spoke.
As he was finishing they reached the door of the cheery little diner and Sam pushed it open, motioning for Jess to enter in front of him. “Bout time!” a voice called from the corner. Sam looked over to spot Dave, Jess’ friend from the psychology department waving from a back booth. Dave was the sort of guy who always left just enough facial hair when shaving to achieve that rugged look some girls found sexy, and wore his muscle tanks just a little tighter than necessary to showcase his muscular frame.
“Hey Dave,” Jess smiled, sliding into the booth next to him, Sam did the same, and was met with greetings from Pete, Sam’s freshman year roommate, and Karen, a fellow pre-law student who spent countless library hours with Sam during midterms and finals, drinking coffee and trying not to go crazy from the stress.
She was currently eyeing Dave in a very predatory way, slowly raising a cup to her lips though seeming uninterested in the actual action of drinking.
They were chatting as they waited for their food, discussing classes they were taking and the events of senior year that they needed to think about. Karen shared her fears over the LSATS - a test that had Sam’s stomach churning uncomfortably, and then Dave changed the conversation to some new TV show he had been watching reruns of over the summer.
“The show’s about this writer dude who comes across a bunch of ghosts and has to protect himself against them. And can you believe what he uses - salt! Hah, it’s so ridiculous.”
“Well you know, salt is supposed to be purifying. You even see it in sumo matches…” Karen began to explain, but Sam’s mind was somewhere else, lost in a memory he had long ago forgotten.
“Dean, check all the salt lines, make sure there are no breaks. We don’t want anything getting in here…”
“Yes sir.” A blonde boy jumped off a bed with a green blanket and wandered around it, staring intently at the ground where a circle of salt had been poured.
“Sam?” Jess asked, poking him in the ribs. He shook his head suddenly, losing grip of the memory and turned to Jess. “You okay? You went off to la-la-land for a minute there.”
“Yeah, just, you know, tired…”
“Tired already? The semester hasn’t even started! And we’re going to be so busy with exams and preparing for law school,” Karen pointed out.
“Do you have to remind me?” he asked with a grimace. “I’ve already been doing practices in those LSAT prep books.”
“That’s right, today is not about reminding me how little I’m going to see of Sam once the semester starts,” Jess said firmly.
“It’s always about you, isn’t it Jessy?” Dave asked with a smirk.
“That’s right. Topic change, please.” The waitress arrived and there was a lull in conversation as she laid the plates of food out.
“So… my little sister is pregnant,” Pete announced unhappily.
“What? When did that happen?”
“She’s about three months along,” Pete sighed. “The father’s this public-school assface she met at that godawful coffee shop all of the kids hang out at. Of course he disappeared as soon as the test came back positive.”
“Oh wow. What’s she going to do?” Karen questioned, furrowing her brown eyebrows as she surveyed Pete.
“Well she’s asked Princeton to put off her enrollment for a semester, and she’s thinking about adoption.” Pete’s eyes swung to Sam who tried his best not to look like the term ‘adoption’ appealed to him for any personal reason.
Pete had found out about Sam’s family situation during their second semester when he met Patty and Dan and offhandedly remarked that they looked nothing alike. For reasons that eluded Sam, Patty liked to talk about how she adopted Sam and how great it all was, while Sam really preferred to keep that to himself. Of course that particular decision might now be coming back to bite him in the ass if anyone found out about Dean.
“Adoption?” Karen said, and she made it sound dirty. “Has she thought about abortion?”
“You’d prefer she kill the baby rather than give it away?” Jessica asked, disgusted. She wasn’t against abortion, but didn’t like to see it used as a late birth control method for reckless couples.
“Well I’m just saying… I mean how does she know what kind of people she’d be just giving her kid away to?”
“There are plenty of wonderful couples out there looking to adopt. Not every adoption is like an episode of “Judging Amy,” Karen,” Jessica sneered. Dave stared at her, surprised at the vehemence with which she was defending adoption. Jessica rarely got riled about any social issue, choosing to see both sides, but on this she seemed firm.
“Well how many good families are out there versus how many bad families?”
“This isn’t the foster care system, if she’s going to put the kid up for adoption it’s adoption,” Pete pointed out. “I just… I’m worried about the effect on the kid, you know? Like, growing up with people who don’t look like you, and not knowing what diseases run in your family and having to explain that you’ve been adopted. Not to mention - how would the kid feel if it eventually tracked her down and met a bunch of half-siblings who got to grow up with her while it was given up.” He cast another glance at Sam, whose mind was running with his first impression of Dean, standing on the other side of the door, announcing he was his brother. “Sam - what do you think?” Pete said plainly, clearly tired of hinting to Sam that he wanted his input.
“Well it’s her decision isn’t it?” Sam responded evasively, taking a bite of his pancakes as he did.
“I guess,” Pete said with disappointment, he wished Sam would have given him a straight answer.
“Would your parents be willing to raise the baby?” Jess asked, taking Pete’s attention off of Sam.
“I don’t know, they haven’t really said anything. But I doubt they’d want to, you know? Carey - my older sister - she’s considering taking in the kid though, but I don’t know, something tells me that Sharon just wants to be done with the kid.”
“Well if that’s her attitude maybe adoption really is the best course,” Jess sighed. “But I don’t envy her having to make a decision like that,” she sighed. “And see, the guy doesn’t even have to deal with it, that’s what I hate about the whole thing. It’s always the woman who’s stuck with the difficult decisions.
“Okay, no offense Pete, but this is just a way too serious discussion for breakfast,” Dave smirked. “So, in the interest of lightness, let me tell you all about my new plasma TV…”
-------------------------------------
“So what do you and Dean talk about exactly?” Jess asked. Sam was changing his shirt, not feeling like wearing a Polo to go drinking, and Jess had put on jeans and a T-shirt as she was going to her parent’s house for dinner and didn’t feel like looking too done up.
“I don’t know… stuff… We’re basically trying to get to know each other. He wants us to be immediate best friends you know, but it’s going to take me a little while to get there…”
“He seemed nice though. To come all the way out here just to see you?”
“I know but… there’s just something… I think he’s hiding something from me. Sometimes it seems like he’s just about to tell me why he’s really here and then he shuts down and keeps it to himself. I mean really, who knows, maybe all this ‘brotherly bonding’ is just because he needs a kidney or something…”
“Well I don’t know what to tell you Sam, except that you’ll just have to find out. Besides, you don’t really know Dean well enough yet to know if he’s lying to you, or here for some sort of selfish interest,” she pointed out.
“He was… that first day he came over… he told me about how my parents found out about me…” Sam began hesitantly.
Jess looked up abruptly at Sam from where she sat on the bed. This was certainly news to her. “What’d he say?”
“Apparently our first foster home wasn’t that great… Dean said the ‘parents’ would shut the younger kids up behind a wall while the older ones were in school.”
Jess looked positively horrified. “But that didn’t… to you…”
“If he’s telling the truth then yeah, it did happen to me. He said he didn’t find out about it until we’d been there a while, and then he confronted the foster parents and they hit him and then hit me. I guess Dean grabbed me then and just took off. He was worried about me though and went to the ER, and Dad was working that night, so…”
“Wow…” Jess breathed, looking away, not really sure what to say. Blonde hair swishing she turned to look at Sam again, who seemed to find the opposite wall incredibly interesting at the moment. She stood, approaching him from behind and putting her arms around him, pressing her body against hers. He relaxed to her touch and stood there in silence for a moment before breaking the embrace and facing her.
“It’s just… he felt really guilty about it, like it was his fault we got split up or something. And when he says stuff like that I don’t know what to do. Because… if I agree with him then it’s like saying that I don’t like the way my life turned out when I really do. Who knows where I would be if I ended up staying in Kansas?”
“I’m sure Dean understands that, Sam,” Jess said simply. “I mean he sounds like he was a good big brother, and if that’s true, then he must have wanted what was best for you. Maybe it’s going to take him a little while to realize that what was best for you was exactly what happened.”
“I guess…” Sam seemed hesitant to accept this theory.
“But you have to cut him some slack too. You don’t remember the separation but he does. It must’ve been really hard on him; having you taken away from him like that.”
“Yeah but I still can’t shake this feeling that… that him coming just set something into motion… I can’t help but think that something bad is going to happen…”
Author: Ada
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG
Spoilers: AU where anything's game.
Characters: Sam/Jess, Dean, John, and more
Disclaimer: I don't own 'Supernatural' or Dean or Sam... too bad.
Note: My Marty Guenther is modeled after 'Mr. Guenther' who co-owned the garage with John and was shown in the episode 'Home'. This story was partially inspired by the cut scene with the longer conversation between the boys and Mr. Guenther.
Summary: AU. John had been declared mentally incompetent by the state, his boys split up and raised by two different families. Now, 20 years later, John sends Dean to his naive little brother, to tell him that the demon is coming for him.
One misstep and everything they'd built could collapse like a house of cards.
Chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six
House of Cards
Chapter 7
Marty watched John storm out of the house, the screen door crashing behind him and he deflated slightly, not needing to keep up the pretense of strength and intimidation. None of that mattered now, because in a way, John was right. Marty had taken an action that night, made the phone call, started everything. He never thought it would snowball, he never imagined that he wouldn’t see John Winchester in his living room for another twenty years.
But he had started the process that created this mess, and as much as he wanted to protect Dean, to keep him for himself, he couldn’t begrudge John access to his own flesh and blood. Besides that, Dean was old enough to make his own decisions and they were all going to have to live with what he wanted.
But no matter what, the important thing was that John Winchester was most certainly on his way to California. Something was happening, and it didn’t sit right with Marty to just let it go on while he remained oblivious. He hoped taking action wouldn’t just push Dean further into John’s world, but he wouldn’t let his son slip through his fingers without doing anything either.
---------------------------------------------------
The next morning Sam and Jess rose early and went out to meet some of their friends for breakfast. Everyone was returning to Palo Alto in preparation for the new semester, and Jess and Sam had stayed the summer and so were anxious to reconnect with their friends for their final year of college.
“Jess,” Sam said slowly as they walked towards the diner they were meeting their friends at.
“Yeah?” she responded looking up at him. She had worn her simplest sundress, white with little red flowers, and once again Sam was stunned by her sheer beauty.
“Can we uh… can we keep this Dean thing between you and me?” he asked hesitantly. The last thing he wanted was for everyone to start grilling him on his mysterious brother’s appearance in his life.
“Sure sweetie,” Jess answered with a smile. “I can you’re nervous just thinking about him,” she added.
“Well you know Dean’s just… and Dave and Karen don’t even know I’m adopted so…”
“You just want to keep this a secret, got it,” Jess said with a knowing smirk, cutting off Sam’s stunted excuses. “Are you two going out again tonight?” she asked.
“Yeah… Dean likes bars and pool halls so it’s not hard to find a place to go at least,” Sam replied. Jess reached up and smoothed the collar on Sam’s polo shirt unconsciously, as if she had done it a thousand times, nodding as he spoke.
As he was finishing they reached the door of the cheery little diner and Sam pushed it open, motioning for Jess to enter in front of him. “Bout time!” a voice called from the corner. Sam looked over to spot Dave, Jess’ friend from the psychology department waving from a back booth. Dave was the sort of guy who always left just enough facial hair when shaving to achieve that rugged look some girls found sexy, and wore his muscle tanks just a little tighter than necessary to showcase his muscular frame.
“Hey Dave,” Jess smiled, sliding into the booth next to him, Sam did the same, and was met with greetings from Pete, Sam’s freshman year roommate, and Karen, a fellow pre-law student who spent countless library hours with Sam during midterms and finals, drinking coffee and trying not to go crazy from the stress.
She was currently eyeing Dave in a very predatory way, slowly raising a cup to her lips though seeming uninterested in the actual action of drinking.
They were chatting as they waited for their food, discussing classes they were taking and the events of senior year that they needed to think about. Karen shared her fears over the LSATS - a test that had Sam’s stomach churning uncomfortably, and then Dave changed the conversation to some new TV show he had been watching reruns of over the summer.
“The show’s about this writer dude who comes across a bunch of ghosts and has to protect himself against them. And can you believe what he uses - salt! Hah, it’s so ridiculous.”
“Well you know, salt is supposed to be purifying. You even see it in sumo matches…” Karen began to explain, but Sam’s mind was somewhere else, lost in a memory he had long ago forgotten.
“Dean, check all the salt lines, make sure there are no breaks. We don’t want anything getting in here…”
“Yes sir.” A blonde boy jumped off a bed with a green blanket and wandered around it, staring intently at the ground where a circle of salt had been poured.
“Sam?” Jess asked, poking him in the ribs. He shook his head suddenly, losing grip of the memory and turned to Jess. “You okay? You went off to la-la-land for a minute there.”
“Yeah, just, you know, tired…”
“Tired already? The semester hasn’t even started! And we’re going to be so busy with exams and preparing for law school,” Karen pointed out.
“Do you have to remind me?” he asked with a grimace. “I’ve already been doing practices in those LSAT prep books.”
“That’s right, today is not about reminding me how little I’m going to see of Sam once the semester starts,” Jess said firmly.
“It’s always about you, isn’t it Jessy?” Dave asked with a smirk.
“That’s right. Topic change, please.” The waitress arrived and there was a lull in conversation as she laid the plates of food out.
“So… my little sister is pregnant,” Pete announced unhappily.
“What? When did that happen?”
“She’s about three months along,” Pete sighed. “The father’s this public-school assface she met at that godawful coffee shop all of the kids hang out at. Of course he disappeared as soon as the test came back positive.”
“Oh wow. What’s she going to do?” Karen questioned, furrowing her brown eyebrows as she surveyed Pete.
“Well she’s asked Princeton to put off her enrollment for a semester, and she’s thinking about adoption.” Pete’s eyes swung to Sam who tried his best not to look like the term ‘adoption’ appealed to him for any personal reason.
Pete had found out about Sam’s family situation during their second semester when he met Patty and Dan and offhandedly remarked that they looked nothing alike. For reasons that eluded Sam, Patty liked to talk about how she adopted Sam and how great it all was, while Sam really preferred to keep that to himself. Of course that particular decision might now be coming back to bite him in the ass if anyone found out about Dean.
“Adoption?” Karen said, and she made it sound dirty. “Has she thought about abortion?”
“You’d prefer she kill the baby rather than give it away?” Jessica asked, disgusted. She wasn’t against abortion, but didn’t like to see it used as a late birth control method for reckless couples.
“Well I’m just saying… I mean how does she know what kind of people she’d be just giving her kid away to?”
“There are plenty of wonderful couples out there looking to adopt. Not every adoption is like an episode of “Judging Amy,” Karen,” Jessica sneered. Dave stared at her, surprised at the vehemence with which she was defending adoption. Jessica rarely got riled about any social issue, choosing to see both sides, but on this she seemed firm.
“Well how many good families are out there versus how many bad families?”
“This isn’t the foster care system, if she’s going to put the kid up for adoption it’s adoption,” Pete pointed out. “I just… I’m worried about the effect on the kid, you know? Like, growing up with people who don’t look like you, and not knowing what diseases run in your family and having to explain that you’ve been adopted. Not to mention - how would the kid feel if it eventually tracked her down and met a bunch of half-siblings who got to grow up with her while it was given up.” He cast another glance at Sam, whose mind was running with his first impression of Dean, standing on the other side of the door, announcing he was his brother. “Sam - what do you think?” Pete said plainly, clearly tired of hinting to Sam that he wanted his input.
“Well it’s her decision isn’t it?” Sam responded evasively, taking a bite of his pancakes as he did.
“I guess,” Pete said with disappointment, he wished Sam would have given him a straight answer.
“Would your parents be willing to raise the baby?” Jess asked, taking Pete’s attention off of Sam.
“I don’t know, they haven’t really said anything. But I doubt they’d want to, you know? Carey - my older sister - she’s considering taking in the kid though, but I don’t know, something tells me that Sharon just wants to be done with the kid.”
“Well if that’s her attitude maybe adoption really is the best course,” Jess sighed. “But I don’t envy her having to make a decision like that,” she sighed. “And see, the guy doesn’t even have to deal with it, that’s what I hate about the whole thing. It’s always the woman who’s stuck with the difficult decisions.
“Okay, no offense Pete, but this is just a way too serious discussion for breakfast,” Dave smirked. “So, in the interest of lightness, let me tell you all about my new plasma TV…”
-------------------------------------
“So what do you and Dean talk about exactly?” Jess asked. Sam was changing his shirt, not feeling like wearing a Polo to go drinking, and Jess had put on jeans and a T-shirt as she was going to her parent’s house for dinner and didn’t feel like looking too done up.
“I don’t know… stuff… We’re basically trying to get to know each other. He wants us to be immediate best friends you know, but it’s going to take me a little while to get there…”
“He seemed nice though. To come all the way out here just to see you?”
“I know but… there’s just something… I think he’s hiding something from me. Sometimes it seems like he’s just about to tell me why he’s really here and then he shuts down and keeps it to himself. I mean really, who knows, maybe all this ‘brotherly bonding’ is just because he needs a kidney or something…”
“Well I don’t know what to tell you Sam, except that you’ll just have to find out. Besides, you don’t really know Dean well enough yet to know if he’s lying to you, or here for some sort of selfish interest,” she pointed out.
“He was… that first day he came over… he told me about how my parents found out about me…” Sam began hesitantly.
Jess looked up abruptly at Sam from where she sat on the bed. This was certainly news to her. “What’d he say?”
“Apparently our first foster home wasn’t that great… Dean said the ‘parents’ would shut the younger kids up behind a wall while the older ones were in school.”
Jess looked positively horrified. “But that didn’t… to you…”
“If he’s telling the truth then yeah, it did happen to me. He said he didn’t find out about it until we’d been there a while, and then he confronted the foster parents and they hit him and then hit me. I guess Dean grabbed me then and just took off. He was worried about me though and went to the ER, and Dad was working that night, so…”
“Wow…” Jess breathed, looking away, not really sure what to say. Blonde hair swishing she turned to look at Sam again, who seemed to find the opposite wall incredibly interesting at the moment. She stood, approaching him from behind and putting her arms around him, pressing her body against hers. He relaxed to her touch and stood there in silence for a moment before breaking the embrace and facing her.
“It’s just… he felt really guilty about it, like it was his fault we got split up or something. And when he says stuff like that I don’t know what to do. Because… if I agree with him then it’s like saying that I don’t like the way my life turned out when I really do. Who knows where I would be if I ended up staying in Kansas?”
“I’m sure Dean understands that, Sam,” Jess said simply. “I mean he sounds like he was a good big brother, and if that’s true, then he must have wanted what was best for you. Maybe it’s going to take him a little while to realize that what was best for you was exactly what happened.”
“I guess…” Sam seemed hesitant to accept this theory.
“But you have to cut him some slack too. You don’t remember the separation but he does. It must’ve been really hard on him; having you taken away from him like that.”
“Yeah but I still can’t shake this feeling that… that him coming just set something into motion… I can’t help but think that something bad is going to happen…”