fic: Neighbor [Supernatural]
Title: Neighbor
Fandoms: Supernatural
Characters: Dean Winchester, people of Cicero
He shows up one day, out of the blue, slips into the Braeden household, easy as you please as far as the neighbors can tell. One day he's just there, knocking on Lisa's door, and two hours later his car (lovely old thing, black and sleek and shiny) is parked in the garage instead of the street and two duffle bags' worth of his belongings are lugged through the front door. The week after that, he starts showing up to Ben's baseball games.
Of course everyone had to talk about him. People just don't slip into neighbors' lives easy as that, no furniture or much of anything attached. It's strange, an aberration, and the town of Cicero has already learned their lesson about the strange and impossible, years before Dean moved in (though no-one will mention blank-faced children and gnawing little teeth in the night).
I hear he's a felon, some say. I hear he's a war veteran, others rejoin. Hero ducking media attention, someone else counters. Everyone has their pet theory. Cop killer. Witness in hiding. Mobster. Bodyguard. An old flame, Lisa calls him, who needed a place to stay. Nobody really knows what he did before settling down in Cicero.
What they do know is this: he wears heavy boots and leather jackets as he looks closely at the clothes men his age are wearing, and then slowly transitions his wardrobe to fit in. He rarely voices an opinion before listening to what others have to say about the issue first. He'll occasionally stop in the middle of things, pausing to stare blankly in the middle distance at something (giant, gaping hole, wind tearing him closer to it) only he can see, and then jerk back to himself with a self-deprecating smile at whoever stopped to tap his shoulder concernedly - Thousand-yard stare, one of the men in the neighborhood says knowingly to another as they discuss the enigma of Dean Winchester. Boy's seen somebody murdered, that's for sure. Bet it was gruesome. He won't set foot in Church, even when Ben and Lisa go to Mass on major holidays.
Some ask Dean directly about his history; they quickly learn he's a master at redirection and non-answers.
They have tried to piece together what they know with what they suspect, but somehow the picture always comes out a bit misshapen, lumpy and flawed. Any answer will always be disproved by another hard-won shred of evidence contradicting it, and those who wonder are back at square one. They have to be missing something, but Lisa's not talking and for all Ben won't shut up about him he hasn't let slip anything important yet. The people of Cicero content themselves to speculation and hearsay whilst they carefully gather facts about this mystery man, waiting for a day it will all make sense.
What they learn includes this: he's got charm and confidence when he chooses to use them, enough to talk his way in or out of anything. He's handy with cars, great with kids - the Dean? they ask Ben, though none of the few adults who overhear can figure out why - and is always willing to lend a helping hand. He loves Ben like his own, and he makes Lisa smile. He can fix most anything.
(He's also good with guns and rock salt, but those parts of his life are over now, gathering dust as the Impala sits lonely in the garage beneath its tarp and rusts into memory.)