SPN fic: Fire in the Hole 4/9, part one
Mea Culpa, mes amis. C’mon. We bought a house this week! End of school! NitGirl’s birthday. All that. It’s been busy. No excuse, I know. Only thing I can say…chapter four is here and it’s looooooong. In two parts because, yes, LJ loves me that much.
Fire in the Hole 4/9 Part One
Chapter Four/Ruby Slipper
Summary: After Sam leaves for Stanford, Dean falls hard and John doesn’t catch him. Their long bloody year comes to an abrupt end in the silver mining district of western Nevada, where both father and son must face their worst fears.
Rating: PG-13. Cursing and sex! Gen, WIP.
Big Love: to Sasquashme (a.k.a. jmm0001) and Lemmypie, the beautiful betas, who are, in addition to helping me with this, are also writing Sam picking up Dean’s messages in a series of shorts they’re calling Incommunicado. Look for that on their respective sites. Acknowledgments to Chaz Brenchley for his dust devil in the wonderful Outremer series, from which I borrow wholesale. Borrowing also from Kripke et al, but I had to trade my soul. Damn.
Read previous chapters
Fire in the Hole, Chapter Four/Ruby Slipper
--
You gotta change your message, dude. You should never say your name like that right off the bat. Jesus, amateur hour.
You getting’ these, I wonder? It’s like being in…in… Oz, or something, just sending them out like this. It’s easier this way, maybe. No big deal. I mean, you don’t need…I don’t expect… You know, I just…it’s all good.
Been in Kansas. They say it’s flat. And it’s not. You might not remember, I guess. But Kansas isn’t like in the Wizard of Oz, not all of it. It’s something else.
Hated those freakin’ flying monkeys. Thank god we’ve never come across those. That movie had a weird concept right from the start. Wish the house had fallen on that freak-ass good witch, goofy hat and all. Bad witches are always more fun. I speak from experience, you know.
The Wizard, he took the cake, didn’t he? Same as the rest of them, just a big fat faker. Dorothy looked like she coulda clocked him with one of those ruby fucking slippers.
--
It was unlike Bobby Singer to shout, that was the first thing that occurred to John. Bobby had a temper, sure, but in John’s experience it usually expressed itself in a few slammed doors and strategic mutters.
So to hear, “Are you insane?!” come clearly through the doorway was a bit of shock. Bobby would never say that to a doctor or a nurse. In fact, John had only heard Bobby take that tone with one other person and he was dead.
And that was just the moment when John found his anger, because that was a father’s voice and no one yelled at John Winchester’s son in that voice except his father.
“Hey!” John announced his presence almost before he was through the door. Bobby had one hand on Dean’s shoulder, but Dean was upright, struggling to get the blankets off him. He was also gray as wet cement, but with that determined line to his mouth that John would actually admit to dreading.
John got no further than ‘hey’ because Bobby had a point: three days in the hospital and Dean was trying to get out of bed?
Between them, they managed to gently push Dean into a horizontal position, the stupid hospital gown sliding all over the place, the IV drip pole in the way. Dean had probably been using it to haul himself upright. Were they going to have to strap him down? As Dean turned to get his bum shoulder out of the way, John felt Bobby freeze up beside him, go quiet.
Because the gown split and Dean’s back was like he’d been attacked by a kindergarten class with easy access to a farmer’s fruit stand - plum and cherry and blackberry. Dark latticework over a color wash. One big bruise from neck to ass.
Then Bobby started laughing, low and easy. “Dear lord, doesn’t that take the cake. We should take a picture for the grandkids.”
Then Dean joined him in the laughter and John stood at the foot of the bed, watching them like they’d grown extra heads.
“What-”
Dean shook his head, glassy eyed and John realized that his son was stoned out of his mind. “I’m not using a fucking bedpan. I can make it to the toilet.”
Bobby crossed his arms, a grin not far away. “That’s not what the neurologist said.”
“Fuck the neurologist.”
John folded his coat across the chair, sat on the side of Dean’s bed. “Dean, you have to listen to the doctors. This is serious.”
Wiped that gleam right from Dean’s eyes. His son looked away. “Dean.” And that was a warning.
A moment, then Dean’s eyes were back on him. Held. Angry maybe. Sometimes, though, you just had to be clear with Dean. “Dr. Bliss said that you gotta be still. Just a few more days, then you can start with the physio. That’s what she said. Don’t blow it, this is a damn serious injury, Dean.”
“No shit,” Dean said, too quickly. Yes, definitely angry. Doctor Bliss had come in this morning, done a thorough assessment and declared what Dean had been telling them for hours - he’d gotten some feeling back in his toes, a rapid tingling that had jumped all over his legs, muscles tightening without warning, sometimes painfully. But pain was sensation, and that was the main thing.
And when Bliss had said, in that clipped New York accent, that Dean was likely going to make a full recovery, Dean apparently hadn’t heard the caveat if you treat it with the respect it demands. Young men and their fucking superpowers.
“Not much more serious than breaking your back, is there?” Dean continued and John stared at him, but Dean had already looked away.
“Your daddy’s right,” Bobby interceded and John wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or ticked off by that calm voice. “You’re going to have to do exactly what the doctors say. Those bones have to heal, and they’re not gonna heal if you’re doing backflips off the bed.”
Dean lifted his right arm, scrubbed his hair so it stuck out in all directions, making the plastic tube taped to the inside of his elbow thrash around. By means of a little button, he was responsible for his own intake of morphine, which given that he was twenty-three years old seemed like an asinine idea to John, except his chart said that he was nearly thirty and so maybe the staff thought he was more responsible than he actually was.
“Bobby?” John asked, not looking at the man. “I know you were wanting to get back to the archives this afternoon. I can sit with Dean for a bit.”
It was an effort to be helpful, to be diplomatic, which wasn’t exactly his forte, but he needed to bunk with Bobby for a while longer than he’d originally anticipated, and didn’t want to precipitate an argument right off the bat. Bobby had driven Dean here. Bobby had seen what John hadn’t. There was the matter of the insurance. There was the matter of whose insurance it was. So it behooved John to cut some slack.
But this was his son in the hospital bed. His.
Bobby nodded, and it wouldn’t have surprised John if Bobby understood everything that John wasn’t saying. What he wouldn’t even admit to himself. Bobby Singer was kinda like that, always had been.
They made plans to meet up later, go over some stuff related to the mines over a plate of spaghetti and red sauce at the Italian place down the street, and by the time John looked around again, Dean was staring blankly at the ceiling, hallucinating flying monkeys or counting ceiling tiles, hard to know.
John was now alone with Dean for the first time since he’d come to, and he’d done it more to get Bobby away than to make conversation with Dean, because what the hell was he going to say? So he looked at his hands, turned the wedding band round and round.
Dean cleared his throat a little, unable to bear silences with equanimity. “It was an accident. I fell.” Obliquely deflecting blame, John knew, trying to anticipate where his father’s mind was at. But Dean didn’t know, couldn’t.
“You didn’t fall.” He wasn’t going to have Dean invent excuses. Not this time. “It wasn’t an accident,” he continued quietly, because Dean was a hunter and it had to make sense, what they did. Even the mistakes.
“You thought it was a poltergeist. Easy. We shoulda known.” The words were slightly slurred; his son was in enough pain that he was pushing that little button, and this was no time to be having this conversation because Dean wasn’t going to remember any of it.
Dean was looking at John through half-closed eyes and he had two broken vertebrae and was angry and trying to have it make sense and goddamn if it wasn’t all on John, all of it.
John looked away. Better that Dean stay angry for a while: it would help. Because this was a long-haul recovery and anger was better than despair, was the only thing that let you go the distance. John had cause to know that.
Dean wasn’t finished. “Wasn’t a poltergeist, though…wasn’t…” Trying to find the right words, maybe trying to find the courage for the truth.
John waited for him to say it, because Dean knew what it had been, what had been done. When he didn’t continue, John dragged his eyes up, imagined the judgment he’d see on his son’s face.
Dean was asleep.
That was the thing with morphine, made you nod out in mid-sentence. One way of avoiding the conversation.
Of avoiding me.
--
Depth perception was shit when one eye was almost swollen shut. Oh, god, but that’s not the worst of it, and Dean snapped on the tape deck loud, so loud, new speakers a vast improvement over the ones that they’d suffered through all these many years. Perceiving depth not quite his strong suit on any given day, but especially last night. Dean adjusted the bass, wanted the thump of the bottom end so booming it’d drown out his heart.
John’s truck was way ahead, enough distance that it was a black speck on the I-70 running straight west the hell out of Kansas. Give the man some distance: he was at least as sore as Dean. But keep him in sight. Keep him in sight or Dean might lose him.
One of Dad’s old mixed tapes was in the deck: Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Stevie Ray Vaughan, J.J. Cale. Keeping John close, even in this.
They kept it up for miles, retracing their steps from only a few days ago: Topeka, Junction City, Salina. A few miles outside Hays, near Ellsworth - the geodetic center of North America! - John pulled the truck in a wide turn, no signals - typical - and cruised into the parking lot of an Airstream diner so decrepit it had to be original.
Though he was hungry, Dean sat in the car for a moment or two, staring at nothing, feeling the wan sun through the windshield, now past noon. The sun was at such an angle he couldn’t tell if his father was staring back at him from the diner, but he thought he might be.
Still, facing the music was better than having no music at all. Dean had been through worse. Maybe.
Slowly, slowly, he got out the car, leaned both hands against the roof and stretched, feeling each vertebrae click into place. He twisted, cracked his neck, doing all the things that drove Sam to distraction.
In spite of himself, in spite of the cool November moving in, Dean smiled. Back-cracking as a show of solidarity, his personal version of all the yellow ribbons that had sprung up again for this new war. Hell, Dean referenced Sam a hundred times a day, knew that John saw it, marked it, all without Dean having to say a word.
Maybe that’s what had blown out last night, that particular joint soldered closed with an ineffective metal not up to the job in a high-pressure situation.
The restaurant smelled of grease, and if it had been busy at lunch hour there was no sign of it now. John was at a booth in the corner, facing the door, a triple-fold menu flat on the table. As Dean came closer, he realized that his father wasn’t looking at the menu; rather, he was looking at his hands splayed on the menu. Red knuckles, sore looking. Evidence.
John glanced up and his mouth twitched - annoyance, maybe chagrin. Quite the shiner Dean had, unmistakable, unavoidable, its own kind of proof. Dean came forward slowly, spotting the waitress, who held up the pot of coffee in her hand and Dean nodded to it with a practiced grin.
He slid in opposite John and waited in silence as the waitress came over, filled their cups, told them about the specials, remarked on the cold. They ordered without looking at each other, like they were at different tables. Something about them made the waitress ask if it was going to be separate bills and they both said ‘yes’ at the same time, the only thing in synch.
In the corner, above the counter, a TV was going, scenes of Afghanistan remarkably like nearby Monument Rocks in a weird way. You could almost imagine a dust devil between the rock formations if you stared hard enough. If one of those things had been around, though, central command would have a hard time differentiating between it and a Scud missile.
Dean lingered on the images of coalition warships and dusty fighting, the words ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ flashing across the screen and he didn’t know if he should laugh or cry.
“Don’t even think about it,” John said, distinctly.
Dean didn’t take his eyes from the TV. “Why not?” He wasn’t considering it, not really. John didn’t need to know that.
“Because-” and his voice drifted, drawing Dean’s attention. John’s bruised hand was across his mouth, but he rubbed his stubble once, dropped his hand to the coffee cup. “Because.”
Reason enough, always had been before now.
“Don’t worry,” Dean said finally, not able to draw out what he saw there. “I get enough of that crap here. Don’t have to go to some wacky-ass country looking for new shit to kill. Besides,” and he picked at a piece of dried food residue from the side of his water glass, “I don’t think I could handle having to report to fucked-up military brass.”
John’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly. “Yeah. I can see how that would stick in your throat.”
They weren’t going to talk about it. And that was okay. More than okay. This morning hadn’t been the first time Dean had picked up his dad from a police station, but it was the first time he’d purposefully left him overnight in one.
John had been drunk, so drunk. Hard to know what he would remember. But he hadn’t said a word about Dean’s eye and if he really really didn’t remember, first words out his mouth when Dean went by the police lock up would have been What the hell kind of fight did you get into?
But it had only been silence, and that was admission enough.
--
Somehow, the word ‘back’ seemed to figure into everything now, but most prominently: setback.
Doctor Bliss, dark and small like a furry irate mole, her eyes flinty, looked at him like he was a piece of meat, an ongoing project - not unlike how a lot of women looked at him, okay, but this? This wasn’t the same.
She cocked her head to the side and said, “Evan, it’s been ten days since the injury. I told you: you can’t push yourself like this and not expect setbacks.”
Worse, though: Dad was right there, looking between them, maybe wondering why he’d come into his son’s room - his nephew - only to find him back in bed, pissed off, Bliss looming in the way only small smart women can loom, shaking her head at him.
She did everything but wag her finger.
Setbacks, sure: shaking so hard he couldn’t hold himself up in the physio room, and Jennifer saying, that’s enough, no more today, and now Bliss telling him to take at least a day off. Two steps forward.
Truth. It had been five. Five good steps before his back was agony and his legs started shaking. Saying to himself, over and over: I can do this, I can do this, like that fucking little engine in that book Sam had loved.
She left with a meaningful glare and John came to his side, but wouldn’t look at him. Dean could see his jaw clench and unclench, recent shave scraping him raw. Moderately presentable, but furious.
Not the way he’d get with Sam, the full-on shouting, the accusations, the fingers jabbing the air. The other way, the way that was worse.
“To the letter,” he growled, voice low, the tone he usually reserved for demons and other evil things. Warning, threatening. Followed by a long silence Dean interpreted as angry disappointment. “I’ll be back later. But if I find-” stopped himself, and Dean could see it, and suddenly didn’t know who his father was angry at, it was so encompassing.
He left with nothing more than that, disappearing into the clear April air, looking for things to hunt maybe. Gone in any case, and Dean was back in bed, back where he had started, not even morphine to keep the shit at bay.
Holding his breath against the pain, he grabbed the remote from the bedside and turned on the television, but there was nothing but the Cartwrights and some lame movie with Nick fucking Nolte playing Thomas Jefferson. He kept switching channels, hoping for a game, but none was forthcoming. Kept coming back to the movie because that Thandie Newton was hot. He found himself strangely turned on by her nose, of all things.
Nothing but pain, never let up, couldn’t even imagine being with a woman, moving his body in that way, and he turned down the volume with a grimace of irritation. Kept his eyes on Thandie’s nose when she was onscreen, ignored Nolte the rest of the time.
He straightened his white t-shirt, flexed his feet, wanting to move, dreading the additional pain it would cause. Cautiously, not because he thought he’d actually injure himself, but because he wanted to be ready for the resulting pain, Dean sat up, reached over to the bedside table for his phone, collapsed back onto the bed with the cell in his hand.
Trembling, no strength, like a fucking baby. After a few moments, though, the shaking stopped, the spasmodic unpredictable seizing along the sciatic nerve, his muscles contracting painfully and uselessly. Controlled the pain with breathing, was weaning himself off the painkillers whether Bliss wanted him to or not.
He stared at the phone. That was the thing, of course. That he’d done it once. Fuck Dad, but he was right, always had been. A clean break hurt less because he could ignore it. He could try to ignore it. Clean break, and he started to laugh, but it sounded a bit like a crazy person, so he stopped. He stared at the phone, stared at the open door. No morphine this time, egging him on, tearing down his defenses.
Nothing but him and the phone. Again.
Quickly, heart tripping, he dialed the number. April, mid-afternoon. Dean didn’t know shit about how colleges ran, what kind of schedule Sam would be on. But he did know Sam, and he didn’t like to be disturbed when he was studying, never took calls. Pretty safe bet Dean would get the machine, which is all he wanted, all he could cope with.
Some days, Dean couldn’t remember Sam’s voice, what it sounded like. Other times, Dean could recall Sam at five, that wavery little boy sound, or at fourteen and all wonky. Or seventeen. Angry, unable to find the right register to express anything.
Hi. It’s Sam, leave a message.
Again, so quick, so fucking quick and Dean just held still for a moment, wanting it back, wanting it all back, everything. Stared at the TV, trying to get out of himself, like he could just crawl out of his own skin: Nick Nolte looks like a fucking car crash, man. No way he makes Thandie Newton. Then he suddenly realized what story he was seeing, remembered Sam talking about Jefferson like he was a god, hyped up on some elementary school propaganda.
He closed his eyes. Concentrated. Didn’t want to sound like a lunatic.
“Machine again, I guess. College life, it must agree with you. Big man on campus, right?”
Keep it even, man, keep it even. He joked about Jefferson, thinking about how hot Monticello had been, about the Impala’s keys arcing through the air towards him. About how beautiful Desirée’s skin had been under his hands, no matter what she’d been in the end. About how it felt. How it felt to feel.
Couldn’t do it, couldn’t keep it together, heard it when it broke. “Just-” and wanted to say more, say so much more, but it was impossible; it would put a burden on Sam that Dean had always avoided, because he’d let Sam go once and Dean wasn’t in the habit of putting leashes on anyone. “-letting you know we’re still alive.” Barely, if that’s what you call this. He took a deep breath, “In case you’re wondering.”
He opened his eyes and saw Bobby in the doorway, a stack of books and magazines in his arms, head tilted very slightly to the side.
He closed the phone quietly, but kept it close against his chest, not even able to be thankful that it wasn’t Dad. Bobby came slowly into the room like it was a church, placed the books on a wheeled table within easy reach.
“That him?” Bobby asked, not dodging anything, no matter how easy it would have been to ignore it.
“Who?” Dean asked, trying to get the walls back up, but he wasn’t quick today, hadn’t been real fast for a while now.
“Come on,” Bobby sat on the edge of the bed, took off his cap and threw it on the chair. “The one John won’t talk about.”
Dean swallowed, but kept his eyes on Bobby’s because that continued to be a good spot, somehow. “Sam.” Let himself say the name. “It’s Sam. My little brother.”
Bobby nodded. “What happened?”
And you know, it seemed okay. It was okay to tell Bobby what had happened in Niagara Falls, about the falling friend understanding glory, about the argument, about the way out that had been taken. Been given.
He told him everything.
Almost.
When he was done, Dean continued to look at Bobby, feeling an ache that had nothing to do with cramping muscles and fucked-up nerve paths. Bobby took it in, then asked, all quiet and respectful, “He ask you to go with him?” And just because Dean had left it out didn’t mean Bobby didn’t spot it. Still, that stare was the safest place Dean had and he wasn’t going to jeopardize it now.
So he nodded.
Bobby unfolded his hands, put them on the thighs of his scruffy jeans. “Is the problem that you didn’t go?”
Dean shook his head. “The problem-” but couldn’t finish it.
But Bobby was already nodding. Like fucking Yoda or something. “Problem was in the staying, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Because he hadn’t been able to fix a goddamn thing in the end, had he? “Thought I was doing the right thing.”
Bobby smiled, a little upturning at the mouth, hard to see beneath the beard. “Always hard to know with your daddy, whether you’re doing the right thing or not. I do know one thing, though.”
And Dean raised his eyebrows, curiosity not quite dead. “What?”
“John Winchester has always had a death wish, ever since I’ve known him. You keep him anchored here, Dean, just by being on this earth. Remember that. You don’t have to do anything more than that. Not your damn job, anyway.” He shifted, pushed the table forward, closing the conversation, maybe sensing that he was overstepping. Still. “Besides, the question should really be: Was it the right decision for you?”
And though he’d spent since Halloween wondering that very same thing, Dean still didn’t know the answer.
--
The bar wasn’t a particularly prosperous one, but it had beer, which tipped the scales in its favor as far as John was concerned. Also, and more importantly, it possessed a bottle of tequila and although John had thought at one point earlier in the week that maybe it might be a good idea to not drink tequila anymore, it seemed that all bets were now off. Today.
A jack-o-lantern made from cardboard hung over the long oak counter, right beside a big Jayhawks poster. Wouldn’t have predicted this turn of events - but here he was, just past Halloween and sitting in a Kansas tavern. And so he said he’d have a shot of gold and any resolutions went straight out the window.
“You here because of the cemetery?” The woman behind the counter - the town had a bait shop, a bar and a gas station, that was it - might have been the owner. Didn’t look like she was trying very hard to get the hell out of town. She smiled long at John, but he wasn’t in the mood.
“No ma’am,” he replied. “I’m here to drink.”
“Good, you look a little old for it anyway. All those fucking freaks,” she said, tossing another shot into the glass and pouring a bowlful of broken pretzels. She slid both towards him, rattling across the uneven bar. “Got a load of them in the county lock up from last night and night before last, little bastards. Town kids come from the university to get their Gate to Hell open.”
John laughed, long and hard, suddenly realizing where he was. Stull, Kansas. Shit, is this where he’d ended up? Circling Lawrence like a vulture, stopped here because it had a Pabst Blue Ribbon sign out side. Fucking Stull?
“Well, if you’re here for the theatrics, you’ve missed your day. Halloween is when all the kooks come out.”
“Yeah,” John agreed knowingly. Any hunter worth his salt knew about Stull. “I think hell will come and get me when the devil’s good and ready. I’m not going to go looking for it.” He shook his head, still laughing. “Stull,” he said under his breath.
An afternoon in that dark moldering place before Dean found him. John had left him to sleep in their Topeka motel room; it had been a long week, a bad week, always a bad week this one, and somehow even their destination after the dust devil hadn’t prompted more than a raised eyebrow from Dean. Just worry, plain as water, worry and fear and John wished he could do something about that.
Don’t play chess with the Devil, and don’t ask questions if you can’t handle the answer. Fuck, what a stupid moronic move that had been. Losing his touch, maybe, forgetting the basics.
And suddenly he wanted to feel again, just wanted to hear her voice, and it was so far away, all of it. He just wanted it back.
Which is where the anger came into it, otherwise it was a pit, open to the world, a shaft into the heart of darkness, a fire down below.
“Hey there,” and Dean sat on the stool beside him, looking rested. Worried, eyes clear no matter how dingy the bar. “You didn’t make it easy, did you?”
John didn’t answer, leaned both elbows on the bar, drew a circle on the counter with one finger and a puddle of condensed water. Over and over. Crossed through and dotted with messy symbols. Warding spells, knew them in his sleep.
Dean had asked his own question of the dust devil.
“Listen,” Dean waved off the barmaid, attention on John, who didn’t need it. Didn’t want it. “Listen, you shouldn’t be here. It isn’t safe.”
“Keep your mouth shut,” John barked, because the barmaid wasn’t far enough off and there were other patrons in here. And the date was what it was, and locals didn’t particularly like out-of-towners in Stull, particularly this close to Halloween.
Dean was turned, back against the bar, surveying the room. Alert. Shit, nothing much was going to happen here. And if it was, who better to handle it than them? Bring it on.
Look at him, look at my boy.
Some days, it was like catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror. Like peering sideways in a mirror and seeing what he might have been. But with Mary’s coloring, and her killer smile, and at some point there had been dreams for this child, ones that involved college and baseball games and all those things you wished for, expected dammit, before god took one big piss on you.
And goddamn it if his son wasn’t going to end up just like him.
Should I be proud of that?
“How much have you had to drink?” Dean asked, finally, eyes to the room, attention all on John despite this.
Don’t ask if you don’t want to know, son.
As though it was some kind of answer, John gestured to the blonde: set ‘em up, two please.
Dean glanced at the shot of tequila and the beer. Took the beer, but not happily. John flattened some bills on the counter, took both the tequilas. Because Dean was there, was watching him in that way he had of appearing to not actually watch him, John nursed the shots, stretched them out.
An hour later, Dean tried to order some fries, but the kitchen was closed, apparently, was told that with such wry amusement it was obvious that the kitchen hadn’t been open for quite some time.
They spoke about nothing, Dean exchanging some tepid remarks with the barmaid about the Jayhawks, some baseball banter. Dean explained how he’d found John by deduction: first stop satanic gates, second stop would have been the old house. He’d been hoping for Gates of Hell, he said lightly.
Another hour and John finally had enough of Dean’s quiet, patient presence. The judgment implicit there.
Without a word, darkness fallen, John lurched to his feet and staggered to the door, knowing somehow that Dean would follow, but not wanting him to, not needing him to. Like a fucking shadow he couldn’t knock off.
Out into the night air, cold, clear. Only served to illustrate how fucking drunk he was, the muzzy meeting of warm buzz and frigid night. I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry Mary. You deserve better than this. You do.
Footsteps behind him, light, almost catlike. “Dad, you ready to go?” Of course, behind him, right there.
“Leave me alone,” he said, not turning, not wanting to deal with Dean. He tried to get the keys from the pocket of his coat, but they fell to the pavement. Before he could react, Dean had them in his hand, a closed expression on his face.
“No way,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
“Screw that,” John replied, voice even, almost amused. Sometimes you had to smile through things. “I just want you to leave me alone.”
Dean sighed, turned half away, breath pluming out in the night air, Pabst Blue Ribbon sign behind him flashing like a mosquito light in cottage country. “I know. You really think that’s a good idea? Tonight?”
Starts in the cradle. And John felt like crying.
That tone, accusatory. “You got something to say?” John asked, back up. That was Sam’s voice. That was Sam’s question. That fucking dust devil and the question - the answer -- and suddenly what had been closed, what had been hammered shut, was pounding at the door.
Dean smiled slightly, matching John and again John was forced to think about mirrors and the future. On this day, which had always been about memory and the past. His son took two steps away, wanting nothing more than to leave him right there to whatever blowout John had planned, whatever gates he wanted opened. John was sure of it. Just as sure that Dean wasn’t going anywhere, because Dean wouldn’t leave him alone on this night. Here, where hell was closer than most places in the world.
“Nah, nothing useful,” Dean murmured. “C’mon. Get into the car. It’s a drive back to Topeka. We can get the truck in the morning.”
Orders, eh? Thought his old man didn’t have a handle on the situation?
Good judgment, depth perception, all of those things that John measured his grip on the world with, just gone. “Give me my fucking keys,” and held out his hand.
Dean stared at him, eyes dark in the night, parking lot light yellow behind him. Slowly, he shook his head. “No.” Quiet, but firm. His own voice, that one, tired as old paint, and as flat.
John grinned, laughing, circling away unsteadily. “Always looking out for me, aren’t you? Think you know what’s best.”
“It’s not that-”
But John was just getting started. “Think you know what’s best for everyone. Me. Your brother. Don’t bother consulting anyone else. Just straight ahead.” Gestured with a hand like a blade, and he looked into the night, the scent of tallgrass around them, diesel from the highway not so far away.
He heard Dean swear, didn’t know how that made him feel. Satisfied. And sick, somehow, sick in his soul.
“C’mon,” Dean at his shoulder, trying to move him, not understanding at all. Not knowing how it felt, how deep it went, how hard it was to just stay here at all. It hurts. So John pushed him away, reaching for the keys, was strong, maybe stronger than Dean still, and in practice. Not afraid to turn what was inside, out.
Dean came back at him, surprising John. Back at him, turning him to brace his body against his, manhandle him into the car if he had to. Instinct kicked in, at least that’s what John hoped it was. His elbow followed through and thudded into Dean’s solar plexus, drawing Dean up short, but it didn’t stop him. Dean threw John against a truck, a big blue one with rusting side mirrors, his forearm across John’s neck.
“Stop it!” Dean’s breath sawed roughly. “Just stop it!”
And though he was strong and young and hadn’t been drinking all afternoon, he still didn’t have the upper hand when it came to this kind of warfare, because John cheated, had a mouth and wasn’t afraid to use it.
“Stop what? Stop mourning your mother? Is that what I should do? You gonna stop mourning Sam?”
“He’s not dead!” Dean said, but his eyes were gleaming and there was no pleasure to be had from this, sick or otherwise. The pressure let up. “He’s not dead.” More quietly. “And neither are you.”
Walked away then, head down, keys dangling from his fingers.
“He might as well be dead! For all he cares about us.” That was pure playground taunt, all the afternoon’s drinking coming to the fore, and then Dean was back, back savagely in a way that John had never seen, let alone experienced.
Down on the pavement, a hard knock to the head, a blast of light and night sky, flashing lights, boot connecting with some soft part of Dean, a cry, blurt of police radio, and fist raised, fist coming down. Once, again, Dean under him, just taking it.
The next part was a little disjointed.
Cops, yes. And Dean, talking to them, reassuring them. The barmaid out having a smoke, reporting on the amount of alcohol John had consumed. No ambulance, too small a town, Dean telling them over and over that he was fine, just a mix up, just trying to offer a ride. Not looking at John, head down, deferential now when it didn’t really matter.
But the cops were jaded, kept up too many late nights recently, this roadhouse always trouble around Halloween, and John knew that it was the drunk tank for him tonight, standard operating procedure.
Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Given what he’d said, what they’d both said. Safer for Dean, nursing what was going to be a black eye.
But more importantly, safer for them, because goddamn it if John wasn’t inventing new ways to push that boy away.
--
Contrary to what Dean had assumed, when put in water, he sank like a stone. A witch! A witch! he thought, and it would have been funny, was it not for two things: one, he was pretty much drowning and that wasn’t a very pleasant sensation no matter how hilarious; and two, Jennifer was about half his size and she hauled him up spluttering like he was a wet spaniel that had slipped poolside. Embarrassing, to say the least.
More than that, really, because embarrassment you could live with, but humiliation was harder, darker. He’d had enough dark to last him a lifetime. So he brought his right arm to the side of the pool, Jennifer lithe and serious beside him, and tried to bring a grin to his face, but it just wasn’t working.
Once he finished coughing, he asked, “I thought Bliss said this’d be easier? You know, less gravity?” Because lurching across the physio room was like running across a gap at Gallipoli, minus the machine guns. God, he’d never done anything as difficult in his life. The pool was supposed to be fun.
Jennifer shrugged, dark brows furrowing slightly, brown eyes sparkling in the sunlight. Big windows in the pool area, sunlight, mountains beyond, blue blue sky and that still hurt on some level, a sky like that. “Everything’s hard at first.”
“But I know how to swim!” he complained, aware that Jennifer could haul him around like a stack of kindling, despite her relative size. All sinew and tendon. She was a rock climber when she wasn’t turning patients into pretzels and working them like a drill sergeant.
“Yeah, when all your muscles are getting the right messages from that brain of yours. When they feel like cooperating. Then this’ll be easy.” She got out from under him, got him to move the left shoulder a little, hold his arm out. Christ, that hurt too. Maybe half the range of motion he usually had. Still, half was more than a quarter, which was what it had been last week.
A couple of times he tried letting go of the side, and every time his head went under, and he thought, Jesus, surely my survival instinct ought to be kicking in at some point here, help me out a little, and every time Jennifer got a shoulder under him, lifted him to the surface, waited for the coughs to subside before telling him to try it again.
The fourth time he went under, Dean was so tired he thought maybe it would be best if Jennifer just let him drift to the bottom where he could lie against the cool blue tiles and pretend the blue of the water was the sky.
No such luck.
Up again, Jennifer warm beside him in her practical Speedo, laughing at him because he was probably more stubborn and more uncoordinated than most, just floundered like a drunken socialite fallen from a yacht. She lifted him up again, but he was further from the edge this time, so she had him lay on his back while she held him up with her strong arms, told him to kick with both feet, slow, easy.
He almost passed out.
“Okay, she whispered into his ear, drawing him closer to the edge, helping him to hook his arm on the ledge. He got one good whiff of whatever shampoo she used and that was enough, was more than enough.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t do much to hide what the smell of a pretty, athletic woman who could easily break him in half did to him physically. He was in a pool for god’s sake, with little hospital issue trunks and Jesus, just looking at a woman was usually enough for him.
“Hey,” she remarked, close against him and she could tell. And was absolutely pleased. He could see it plainly. Just not in the way he normally might want. This was exactly the same pleasure she’d taken when he’d lifted his left hand to his opposite shoulder last week, or managed fifteen unassisted steps in the physio room.
Not one to fluster easily, it was still a little…awkward. “God, I’m sorry,” he stammered, trying to move away, angle himself differently.
Jennifer shook her head, smiling. “No, really, this is good. This is really great.”
Horror filled him. “Are you…are you going to put this in your report?”
Bigger smile. “Absolutely.” Then caught his look. “Don’t worry. I’ll use lots of technical terms. It’ll sound boring.”
Dean rested his chin against the ledge, unable to really feel anything, wanting to check with his hands, knowing that he’d sink to the bottom again, which would really just be the nadir of humiliation. But realizing that this was good. This was progress. “So, it’s…normal?”
Jennifer looked at him squarely, still pleased, but not at his expense. Pleased for him. “Yeah. And normal is good, right?”
She wasn’t getting out of the pool, not touching him to assist him to the stairs by the shallow end. Was giving him time, he realized. God, this was what a hard-on came down to now: something to be written up in a medical record, to be waited out poolside. What was normal about this?
“Right.” Dean agreed quickly. Paused, felt the need for a joke. “Can’t help it if the hospital’s full of women.”
Jennifer laughed. “Yeah, but we’re all on duty.”
He shrugged, “I don’t know. Maybe I can find a nice visitor wandering around.” Was he…asking permission? Hey, am I good to go? God, sometimes his mouth just didn’t know when to quit.
An eyebrow went up. “Give yourself a little time, okay? Right now a visitor could probably outrun you.”
And he did laugh then, because she was funny.
She rested her arms against the tile, her chin on top, changed the subject. “Did you go to UNR?”
Dean was staring out the window at the mountains, wishing his body would just cooperate for once. “Huh?”
“University of Nevada, Reno? We’re the same age. Thought I knew an Evan Singer when I went there.”
Jesus. “No, I, uh. No.”
She kept talking and Dean was glad of it. “Must be another Evan Singer. The one I knew was in the Mackay School.” She glanced over. “Earth Sciences. You into mining?”
Dean shook his head. She kept on, as if knowing he was uncomfortable. “It was awhile ago now. But same name, probably around the same age. You don’t look anything like him. I’m glad you’re not the same guy. I would have felt like an idiot not recognizing you.”
Uh-huh. Okay, way to kill an erection. Excellent.
She was a good judge of these things, apparently. “You want to get out? I think you’ve earned a session with massage therapy.”
And as she helped him out, supporting most of his weight as she smiled. “See you tomorrow, Romeo.” She wheeled him down the hall and left him in the capable hands of a burly massage therapist who wasn’t going to cause Dean to lose any sleep.
Read Part B
--
Fire in the Hole 4/9 Part One
Chapter Four/Ruby Slipper
Summary: After Sam leaves for Stanford, Dean falls hard and John doesn’t catch him. Their long bloody year comes to an abrupt end in the silver mining district of western Nevada, where both father and son must face their worst fears.
Rating: PG-13. Cursing and sex! Gen, WIP.
Big Love: to Sasquashme (a.k.a. jmm0001) and Lemmypie, the beautiful betas, who are, in addition to helping me with this, are also writing Sam picking up Dean’s messages in a series of shorts they’re calling Incommunicado. Look for that on their respective sites. Acknowledgments to Chaz Brenchley for his dust devil in the wonderful Outremer series, from which I borrow wholesale. Borrowing also from Kripke et al, but I had to trade my soul. Damn.
Read previous chapters
Fire in the Hole, Chapter Four/Ruby Slipper
--
You gotta change your message, dude. You should never say your name like that right off the bat. Jesus, amateur hour.
You getting’ these, I wonder? It’s like being in…in… Oz, or something, just sending them out like this. It’s easier this way, maybe. No big deal. I mean, you don’t need…I don’t expect… You know, I just…it’s all good.
Been in Kansas. They say it’s flat. And it’s not. You might not remember, I guess. But Kansas isn’t like in the Wizard of Oz, not all of it. It’s something else.
Hated those freakin’ flying monkeys. Thank god we’ve never come across those. That movie had a weird concept right from the start. Wish the house had fallen on that freak-ass good witch, goofy hat and all. Bad witches are always more fun. I speak from experience, you know.
The Wizard, he took the cake, didn’t he? Same as the rest of them, just a big fat faker. Dorothy looked like she coulda clocked him with one of those ruby fucking slippers.
--
It was unlike Bobby Singer to shout, that was the first thing that occurred to John. Bobby had a temper, sure, but in John’s experience it usually expressed itself in a few slammed doors and strategic mutters.
So to hear, “Are you insane?!” come clearly through the doorway was a bit of shock. Bobby would never say that to a doctor or a nurse. In fact, John had only heard Bobby take that tone with one other person and he was dead.
And that was just the moment when John found his anger, because that was a father’s voice and no one yelled at John Winchester’s son in that voice except his father.
“Hey!” John announced his presence almost before he was through the door. Bobby had one hand on Dean’s shoulder, but Dean was upright, struggling to get the blankets off him. He was also gray as wet cement, but with that determined line to his mouth that John would actually admit to dreading.
John got no further than ‘hey’ because Bobby had a point: three days in the hospital and Dean was trying to get out of bed?
Between them, they managed to gently push Dean into a horizontal position, the stupid hospital gown sliding all over the place, the IV drip pole in the way. Dean had probably been using it to haul himself upright. Were they going to have to strap him down? As Dean turned to get his bum shoulder out of the way, John felt Bobby freeze up beside him, go quiet.
Because the gown split and Dean’s back was like he’d been attacked by a kindergarten class with easy access to a farmer’s fruit stand - plum and cherry and blackberry. Dark latticework over a color wash. One big bruise from neck to ass.
Then Bobby started laughing, low and easy. “Dear lord, doesn’t that take the cake. We should take a picture for the grandkids.”
Then Dean joined him in the laughter and John stood at the foot of the bed, watching them like they’d grown extra heads.
“What-”
Dean shook his head, glassy eyed and John realized that his son was stoned out of his mind. “I’m not using a fucking bedpan. I can make it to the toilet.”
Bobby crossed his arms, a grin not far away. “That’s not what the neurologist said.”
“Fuck the neurologist.”
John folded his coat across the chair, sat on the side of Dean’s bed. “Dean, you have to listen to the doctors. This is serious.”
Wiped that gleam right from Dean’s eyes. His son looked away. “Dean.” And that was a warning.
A moment, then Dean’s eyes were back on him. Held. Angry maybe. Sometimes, though, you just had to be clear with Dean. “Dr. Bliss said that you gotta be still. Just a few more days, then you can start with the physio. That’s what she said. Don’t blow it, this is a damn serious injury, Dean.”
“No shit,” Dean said, too quickly. Yes, definitely angry. Doctor Bliss had come in this morning, done a thorough assessment and declared what Dean had been telling them for hours - he’d gotten some feeling back in his toes, a rapid tingling that had jumped all over his legs, muscles tightening without warning, sometimes painfully. But pain was sensation, and that was the main thing.
And when Bliss had said, in that clipped New York accent, that Dean was likely going to make a full recovery, Dean apparently hadn’t heard the caveat if you treat it with the respect it demands. Young men and their fucking superpowers.
“Not much more serious than breaking your back, is there?” Dean continued and John stared at him, but Dean had already looked away.
“Your daddy’s right,” Bobby interceded and John wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or ticked off by that calm voice. “You’re going to have to do exactly what the doctors say. Those bones have to heal, and they’re not gonna heal if you’re doing backflips off the bed.”
Dean lifted his right arm, scrubbed his hair so it stuck out in all directions, making the plastic tube taped to the inside of his elbow thrash around. By means of a little button, he was responsible for his own intake of morphine, which given that he was twenty-three years old seemed like an asinine idea to John, except his chart said that he was nearly thirty and so maybe the staff thought he was more responsible than he actually was.
“Bobby?” John asked, not looking at the man. “I know you were wanting to get back to the archives this afternoon. I can sit with Dean for a bit.”
It was an effort to be helpful, to be diplomatic, which wasn’t exactly his forte, but he needed to bunk with Bobby for a while longer than he’d originally anticipated, and didn’t want to precipitate an argument right off the bat. Bobby had driven Dean here. Bobby had seen what John hadn’t. There was the matter of the insurance. There was the matter of whose insurance it was. So it behooved John to cut some slack.
But this was his son in the hospital bed. His.
Bobby nodded, and it wouldn’t have surprised John if Bobby understood everything that John wasn’t saying. What he wouldn’t even admit to himself. Bobby Singer was kinda like that, always had been.
They made plans to meet up later, go over some stuff related to the mines over a plate of spaghetti and red sauce at the Italian place down the street, and by the time John looked around again, Dean was staring blankly at the ceiling, hallucinating flying monkeys or counting ceiling tiles, hard to know.
John was now alone with Dean for the first time since he’d come to, and he’d done it more to get Bobby away than to make conversation with Dean, because what the hell was he going to say? So he looked at his hands, turned the wedding band round and round.
Dean cleared his throat a little, unable to bear silences with equanimity. “It was an accident. I fell.” Obliquely deflecting blame, John knew, trying to anticipate where his father’s mind was at. But Dean didn’t know, couldn’t.
“You didn’t fall.” He wasn’t going to have Dean invent excuses. Not this time. “It wasn’t an accident,” he continued quietly, because Dean was a hunter and it had to make sense, what they did. Even the mistakes.
“You thought it was a poltergeist. Easy. We shoulda known.” The words were slightly slurred; his son was in enough pain that he was pushing that little button, and this was no time to be having this conversation because Dean wasn’t going to remember any of it.
Dean was looking at John through half-closed eyes and he had two broken vertebrae and was angry and trying to have it make sense and goddamn if it wasn’t all on John, all of it.
John looked away. Better that Dean stay angry for a while: it would help. Because this was a long-haul recovery and anger was better than despair, was the only thing that let you go the distance. John had cause to know that.
Dean wasn’t finished. “Wasn’t a poltergeist, though…wasn’t…” Trying to find the right words, maybe trying to find the courage for the truth.
John waited for him to say it, because Dean knew what it had been, what had been done. When he didn’t continue, John dragged his eyes up, imagined the judgment he’d see on his son’s face.
Dean was asleep.
That was the thing with morphine, made you nod out in mid-sentence. One way of avoiding the conversation.
Of avoiding me.
--
Depth perception was shit when one eye was almost swollen shut. Oh, god, but that’s not the worst of it, and Dean snapped on the tape deck loud, so loud, new speakers a vast improvement over the ones that they’d suffered through all these many years. Perceiving depth not quite his strong suit on any given day, but especially last night. Dean adjusted the bass, wanted the thump of the bottom end so booming it’d drown out his heart.
John’s truck was way ahead, enough distance that it was a black speck on the I-70 running straight west the hell out of Kansas. Give the man some distance: he was at least as sore as Dean. But keep him in sight. Keep him in sight or Dean might lose him.
One of Dad’s old mixed tapes was in the deck: Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Stevie Ray Vaughan, J.J. Cale. Keeping John close, even in this.
They kept it up for miles, retracing their steps from only a few days ago: Topeka, Junction City, Salina. A few miles outside Hays, near Ellsworth - the geodetic center of North America! - John pulled the truck in a wide turn, no signals - typical - and cruised into the parking lot of an Airstream diner so decrepit it had to be original.
Though he was hungry, Dean sat in the car for a moment or two, staring at nothing, feeling the wan sun through the windshield, now past noon. The sun was at such an angle he couldn’t tell if his father was staring back at him from the diner, but he thought he might be.
Still, facing the music was better than having no music at all. Dean had been through worse. Maybe.
Slowly, slowly, he got out the car, leaned both hands against the roof and stretched, feeling each vertebrae click into place. He twisted, cracked his neck, doing all the things that drove Sam to distraction.
In spite of himself, in spite of the cool November moving in, Dean smiled. Back-cracking as a show of solidarity, his personal version of all the yellow ribbons that had sprung up again for this new war. Hell, Dean referenced Sam a hundred times a day, knew that John saw it, marked it, all without Dean having to say a word.
Maybe that’s what had blown out last night, that particular joint soldered closed with an ineffective metal not up to the job in a high-pressure situation.
The restaurant smelled of grease, and if it had been busy at lunch hour there was no sign of it now. John was at a booth in the corner, facing the door, a triple-fold menu flat on the table. As Dean came closer, he realized that his father wasn’t looking at the menu; rather, he was looking at his hands splayed on the menu. Red knuckles, sore looking. Evidence.
John glanced up and his mouth twitched - annoyance, maybe chagrin. Quite the shiner Dean had, unmistakable, unavoidable, its own kind of proof. Dean came forward slowly, spotting the waitress, who held up the pot of coffee in her hand and Dean nodded to it with a practiced grin.
He slid in opposite John and waited in silence as the waitress came over, filled their cups, told them about the specials, remarked on the cold. They ordered without looking at each other, like they were at different tables. Something about them made the waitress ask if it was going to be separate bills and they both said ‘yes’ at the same time, the only thing in synch.
In the corner, above the counter, a TV was going, scenes of Afghanistan remarkably like nearby Monument Rocks in a weird way. You could almost imagine a dust devil between the rock formations if you stared hard enough. If one of those things had been around, though, central command would have a hard time differentiating between it and a Scud missile.
Dean lingered on the images of coalition warships and dusty fighting, the words ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ flashing across the screen and he didn’t know if he should laugh or cry.
“Don’t even think about it,” John said, distinctly.
Dean didn’t take his eyes from the TV. “Why not?” He wasn’t considering it, not really. John didn’t need to know that.
“Because-” and his voice drifted, drawing Dean’s attention. John’s bruised hand was across his mouth, but he rubbed his stubble once, dropped his hand to the coffee cup. “Because.”
Reason enough, always had been before now.
“Don’t worry,” Dean said finally, not able to draw out what he saw there. “I get enough of that crap here. Don’t have to go to some wacky-ass country looking for new shit to kill. Besides,” and he picked at a piece of dried food residue from the side of his water glass, “I don’t think I could handle having to report to fucked-up military brass.”
John’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly. “Yeah. I can see how that would stick in your throat.”
They weren’t going to talk about it. And that was okay. More than okay. This morning hadn’t been the first time Dean had picked up his dad from a police station, but it was the first time he’d purposefully left him overnight in one.
John had been drunk, so drunk. Hard to know what he would remember. But he hadn’t said a word about Dean’s eye and if he really really didn’t remember, first words out his mouth when Dean went by the police lock up would have been What the hell kind of fight did you get into?
But it had only been silence, and that was admission enough.
--
Somehow, the word ‘back’ seemed to figure into everything now, but most prominently: setback.
Doctor Bliss, dark and small like a furry irate mole, her eyes flinty, looked at him like he was a piece of meat, an ongoing project - not unlike how a lot of women looked at him, okay, but this? This wasn’t the same.
She cocked her head to the side and said, “Evan, it’s been ten days since the injury. I told you: you can’t push yourself like this and not expect setbacks.”
Worse, though: Dad was right there, looking between them, maybe wondering why he’d come into his son’s room - his nephew - only to find him back in bed, pissed off, Bliss looming in the way only small smart women can loom, shaking her head at him.
She did everything but wag her finger.
Setbacks, sure: shaking so hard he couldn’t hold himself up in the physio room, and Jennifer saying, that’s enough, no more today, and now Bliss telling him to take at least a day off. Two steps forward.
Truth. It had been five. Five good steps before his back was agony and his legs started shaking. Saying to himself, over and over: I can do this, I can do this, like that fucking little engine in that book Sam had loved.
She left with a meaningful glare and John came to his side, but wouldn’t look at him. Dean could see his jaw clench and unclench, recent shave scraping him raw. Moderately presentable, but furious.
Not the way he’d get with Sam, the full-on shouting, the accusations, the fingers jabbing the air. The other way, the way that was worse.
“To the letter,” he growled, voice low, the tone he usually reserved for demons and other evil things. Warning, threatening. Followed by a long silence Dean interpreted as angry disappointment. “I’ll be back later. But if I find-” stopped himself, and Dean could see it, and suddenly didn’t know who his father was angry at, it was so encompassing.
He left with nothing more than that, disappearing into the clear April air, looking for things to hunt maybe. Gone in any case, and Dean was back in bed, back where he had started, not even morphine to keep the shit at bay.
Holding his breath against the pain, he grabbed the remote from the bedside and turned on the television, but there was nothing but the Cartwrights and some lame movie with Nick fucking Nolte playing Thomas Jefferson. He kept switching channels, hoping for a game, but none was forthcoming. Kept coming back to the movie because that Thandie Newton was hot. He found himself strangely turned on by her nose, of all things.
Nothing but pain, never let up, couldn’t even imagine being with a woman, moving his body in that way, and he turned down the volume with a grimace of irritation. Kept his eyes on Thandie’s nose when she was onscreen, ignored Nolte the rest of the time.
He straightened his white t-shirt, flexed his feet, wanting to move, dreading the additional pain it would cause. Cautiously, not because he thought he’d actually injure himself, but because he wanted to be ready for the resulting pain, Dean sat up, reached over to the bedside table for his phone, collapsed back onto the bed with the cell in his hand.
Trembling, no strength, like a fucking baby. After a few moments, though, the shaking stopped, the spasmodic unpredictable seizing along the sciatic nerve, his muscles contracting painfully and uselessly. Controlled the pain with breathing, was weaning himself off the painkillers whether Bliss wanted him to or not.
He stared at the phone. That was the thing, of course. That he’d done it once. Fuck Dad, but he was right, always had been. A clean break hurt less because he could ignore it. He could try to ignore it. Clean break, and he started to laugh, but it sounded a bit like a crazy person, so he stopped. He stared at the phone, stared at the open door. No morphine this time, egging him on, tearing down his defenses.
Nothing but him and the phone. Again.
Quickly, heart tripping, he dialed the number. April, mid-afternoon. Dean didn’t know shit about how colleges ran, what kind of schedule Sam would be on. But he did know Sam, and he didn’t like to be disturbed when he was studying, never took calls. Pretty safe bet Dean would get the machine, which is all he wanted, all he could cope with.
Some days, Dean couldn’t remember Sam’s voice, what it sounded like. Other times, Dean could recall Sam at five, that wavery little boy sound, or at fourteen and all wonky. Or seventeen. Angry, unable to find the right register to express anything.
Hi. It’s Sam, leave a message.
Again, so quick, so fucking quick and Dean just held still for a moment, wanting it back, wanting it all back, everything. Stared at the TV, trying to get out of himself, like he could just crawl out of his own skin: Nick Nolte looks like a fucking car crash, man. No way he makes Thandie Newton. Then he suddenly realized what story he was seeing, remembered Sam talking about Jefferson like he was a god, hyped up on some elementary school propaganda.
He closed his eyes. Concentrated. Didn’t want to sound like a lunatic.
“Machine again, I guess. College life, it must agree with you. Big man on campus, right?”
Keep it even, man, keep it even. He joked about Jefferson, thinking about how hot Monticello had been, about the Impala’s keys arcing through the air towards him. About how beautiful Desirée’s skin had been under his hands, no matter what she’d been in the end. About how it felt. How it felt to feel.
Couldn’t do it, couldn’t keep it together, heard it when it broke. “Just-” and wanted to say more, say so much more, but it was impossible; it would put a burden on Sam that Dean had always avoided, because he’d let Sam go once and Dean wasn’t in the habit of putting leashes on anyone. “-letting you know we’re still alive.” Barely, if that’s what you call this. He took a deep breath, “In case you’re wondering.”
He opened his eyes and saw Bobby in the doorway, a stack of books and magazines in his arms, head tilted very slightly to the side.
He closed the phone quietly, but kept it close against his chest, not even able to be thankful that it wasn’t Dad. Bobby came slowly into the room like it was a church, placed the books on a wheeled table within easy reach.
“That him?” Bobby asked, not dodging anything, no matter how easy it would have been to ignore it.
“Who?” Dean asked, trying to get the walls back up, but he wasn’t quick today, hadn’t been real fast for a while now.
“Come on,” Bobby sat on the edge of the bed, took off his cap and threw it on the chair. “The one John won’t talk about.”
Dean swallowed, but kept his eyes on Bobby’s because that continued to be a good spot, somehow. “Sam.” Let himself say the name. “It’s Sam. My little brother.”
Bobby nodded. “What happened?”
And you know, it seemed okay. It was okay to tell Bobby what had happened in Niagara Falls, about the falling friend understanding glory, about the argument, about the way out that had been taken. Been given.
He told him everything.
Almost.
When he was done, Dean continued to look at Bobby, feeling an ache that had nothing to do with cramping muscles and fucked-up nerve paths. Bobby took it in, then asked, all quiet and respectful, “He ask you to go with him?” And just because Dean had left it out didn’t mean Bobby didn’t spot it. Still, that stare was the safest place Dean had and he wasn’t going to jeopardize it now.
So he nodded.
Bobby unfolded his hands, put them on the thighs of his scruffy jeans. “Is the problem that you didn’t go?”
Dean shook his head. “The problem-” but couldn’t finish it.
But Bobby was already nodding. Like fucking Yoda or something. “Problem was in the staying, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Because he hadn’t been able to fix a goddamn thing in the end, had he? “Thought I was doing the right thing.”
Bobby smiled, a little upturning at the mouth, hard to see beneath the beard. “Always hard to know with your daddy, whether you’re doing the right thing or not. I do know one thing, though.”
And Dean raised his eyebrows, curiosity not quite dead. “What?”
“John Winchester has always had a death wish, ever since I’ve known him. You keep him anchored here, Dean, just by being on this earth. Remember that. You don’t have to do anything more than that. Not your damn job, anyway.” He shifted, pushed the table forward, closing the conversation, maybe sensing that he was overstepping. Still. “Besides, the question should really be: Was it the right decision for you?”
And though he’d spent since Halloween wondering that very same thing, Dean still didn’t know the answer.
--
The bar wasn’t a particularly prosperous one, but it had beer, which tipped the scales in its favor as far as John was concerned. Also, and more importantly, it possessed a bottle of tequila and although John had thought at one point earlier in the week that maybe it might be a good idea to not drink tequila anymore, it seemed that all bets were now off. Today.
A jack-o-lantern made from cardboard hung over the long oak counter, right beside a big Jayhawks poster. Wouldn’t have predicted this turn of events - but here he was, just past Halloween and sitting in a Kansas tavern. And so he said he’d have a shot of gold and any resolutions went straight out the window.
“You here because of the cemetery?” The woman behind the counter - the town had a bait shop, a bar and a gas station, that was it - might have been the owner. Didn’t look like she was trying very hard to get the hell out of town. She smiled long at John, but he wasn’t in the mood.
“No ma’am,” he replied. “I’m here to drink.”
“Good, you look a little old for it anyway. All those fucking freaks,” she said, tossing another shot into the glass and pouring a bowlful of broken pretzels. She slid both towards him, rattling across the uneven bar. “Got a load of them in the county lock up from last night and night before last, little bastards. Town kids come from the university to get their Gate to Hell open.”
John laughed, long and hard, suddenly realizing where he was. Stull, Kansas. Shit, is this where he’d ended up? Circling Lawrence like a vulture, stopped here because it had a Pabst Blue Ribbon sign out side. Fucking Stull?
“Well, if you’re here for the theatrics, you’ve missed your day. Halloween is when all the kooks come out.”
“Yeah,” John agreed knowingly. Any hunter worth his salt knew about Stull. “I think hell will come and get me when the devil’s good and ready. I’m not going to go looking for it.” He shook his head, still laughing. “Stull,” he said under his breath.
An afternoon in that dark moldering place before Dean found him. John had left him to sleep in their Topeka motel room; it had been a long week, a bad week, always a bad week this one, and somehow even their destination after the dust devil hadn’t prompted more than a raised eyebrow from Dean. Just worry, plain as water, worry and fear and John wished he could do something about that.
Don’t play chess with the Devil, and don’t ask questions if you can’t handle the answer. Fuck, what a stupid moronic move that had been. Losing his touch, maybe, forgetting the basics.
And suddenly he wanted to feel again, just wanted to hear her voice, and it was so far away, all of it. He just wanted it back.
Which is where the anger came into it, otherwise it was a pit, open to the world, a shaft into the heart of darkness, a fire down below.
“Hey there,” and Dean sat on the stool beside him, looking rested. Worried, eyes clear no matter how dingy the bar. “You didn’t make it easy, did you?”
John didn’t answer, leaned both elbows on the bar, drew a circle on the counter with one finger and a puddle of condensed water. Over and over. Crossed through and dotted with messy symbols. Warding spells, knew them in his sleep.
Dean had asked his own question of the dust devil.
“Listen,” Dean waved off the barmaid, attention on John, who didn’t need it. Didn’t want it. “Listen, you shouldn’t be here. It isn’t safe.”
“Keep your mouth shut,” John barked, because the barmaid wasn’t far enough off and there were other patrons in here. And the date was what it was, and locals didn’t particularly like out-of-towners in Stull, particularly this close to Halloween.
Dean was turned, back against the bar, surveying the room. Alert. Shit, nothing much was going to happen here. And if it was, who better to handle it than them? Bring it on.
Look at him, look at my boy.
Some days, it was like catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror. Like peering sideways in a mirror and seeing what he might have been. But with Mary’s coloring, and her killer smile, and at some point there had been dreams for this child, ones that involved college and baseball games and all those things you wished for, expected dammit, before god took one big piss on you.
And goddamn it if his son wasn’t going to end up just like him.
Should I be proud of that?
“How much have you had to drink?” Dean asked, finally, eyes to the room, attention all on John despite this.
Don’t ask if you don’t want to know, son.
As though it was some kind of answer, John gestured to the blonde: set ‘em up, two please.
Dean glanced at the shot of tequila and the beer. Took the beer, but not happily. John flattened some bills on the counter, took both the tequilas. Because Dean was there, was watching him in that way he had of appearing to not actually watch him, John nursed the shots, stretched them out.
An hour later, Dean tried to order some fries, but the kitchen was closed, apparently, was told that with such wry amusement it was obvious that the kitchen hadn’t been open for quite some time.
They spoke about nothing, Dean exchanging some tepid remarks with the barmaid about the Jayhawks, some baseball banter. Dean explained how he’d found John by deduction: first stop satanic gates, second stop would have been the old house. He’d been hoping for Gates of Hell, he said lightly.
Another hour and John finally had enough of Dean’s quiet, patient presence. The judgment implicit there.
Without a word, darkness fallen, John lurched to his feet and staggered to the door, knowing somehow that Dean would follow, but not wanting him to, not needing him to. Like a fucking shadow he couldn’t knock off.
Out into the night air, cold, clear. Only served to illustrate how fucking drunk he was, the muzzy meeting of warm buzz and frigid night. I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry Mary. You deserve better than this. You do.
Footsteps behind him, light, almost catlike. “Dad, you ready to go?” Of course, behind him, right there.
“Leave me alone,” he said, not turning, not wanting to deal with Dean. He tried to get the keys from the pocket of his coat, but they fell to the pavement. Before he could react, Dean had them in his hand, a closed expression on his face.
“No way,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
“Screw that,” John replied, voice even, almost amused. Sometimes you had to smile through things. “I just want you to leave me alone.”
Dean sighed, turned half away, breath pluming out in the night air, Pabst Blue Ribbon sign behind him flashing like a mosquito light in cottage country. “I know. You really think that’s a good idea? Tonight?”
Starts in the cradle. And John felt like crying.
That tone, accusatory. “You got something to say?” John asked, back up. That was Sam’s voice. That was Sam’s question. That fucking dust devil and the question - the answer -- and suddenly what had been closed, what had been hammered shut, was pounding at the door.
Dean smiled slightly, matching John and again John was forced to think about mirrors and the future. On this day, which had always been about memory and the past. His son took two steps away, wanting nothing more than to leave him right there to whatever blowout John had planned, whatever gates he wanted opened. John was sure of it. Just as sure that Dean wasn’t going anywhere, because Dean wouldn’t leave him alone on this night. Here, where hell was closer than most places in the world.
“Nah, nothing useful,” Dean murmured. “C’mon. Get into the car. It’s a drive back to Topeka. We can get the truck in the morning.”
Orders, eh? Thought his old man didn’t have a handle on the situation?
Good judgment, depth perception, all of those things that John measured his grip on the world with, just gone. “Give me my fucking keys,” and held out his hand.
Dean stared at him, eyes dark in the night, parking lot light yellow behind him. Slowly, he shook his head. “No.” Quiet, but firm. His own voice, that one, tired as old paint, and as flat.
John grinned, laughing, circling away unsteadily. “Always looking out for me, aren’t you? Think you know what’s best.”
“It’s not that-”
But John was just getting started. “Think you know what’s best for everyone. Me. Your brother. Don’t bother consulting anyone else. Just straight ahead.” Gestured with a hand like a blade, and he looked into the night, the scent of tallgrass around them, diesel from the highway not so far away.
He heard Dean swear, didn’t know how that made him feel. Satisfied. And sick, somehow, sick in his soul.
“C’mon,” Dean at his shoulder, trying to move him, not understanding at all. Not knowing how it felt, how deep it went, how hard it was to just stay here at all. It hurts. So John pushed him away, reaching for the keys, was strong, maybe stronger than Dean still, and in practice. Not afraid to turn what was inside, out.
Dean came back at him, surprising John. Back at him, turning him to brace his body against his, manhandle him into the car if he had to. Instinct kicked in, at least that’s what John hoped it was. His elbow followed through and thudded into Dean’s solar plexus, drawing Dean up short, but it didn’t stop him. Dean threw John against a truck, a big blue one with rusting side mirrors, his forearm across John’s neck.
“Stop it!” Dean’s breath sawed roughly. “Just stop it!”
And though he was strong and young and hadn’t been drinking all afternoon, he still didn’t have the upper hand when it came to this kind of warfare, because John cheated, had a mouth and wasn’t afraid to use it.
“Stop what? Stop mourning your mother? Is that what I should do? You gonna stop mourning Sam?”
“He’s not dead!” Dean said, but his eyes were gleaming and there was no pleasure to be had from this, sick or otherwise. The pressure let up. “He’s not dead.” More quietly. “And neither are you.”
Walked away then, head down, keys dangling from his fingers.
“He might as well be dead! For all he cares about us.” That was pure playground taunt, all the afternoon’s drinking coming to the fore, and then Dean was back, back savagely in a way that John had never seen, let alone experienced.
Down on the pavement, a hard knock to the head, a blast of light and night sky, flashing lights, boot connecting with some soft part of Dean, a cry, blurt of police radio, and fist raised, fist coming down. Once, again, Dean under him, just taking it.
The next part was a little disjointed.
Cops, yes. And Dean, talking to them, reassuring them. The barmaid out having a smoke, reporting on the amount of alcohol John had consumed. No ambulance, too small a town, Dean telling them over and over that he was fine, just a mix up, just trying to offer a ride. Not looking at John, head down, deferential now when it didn’t really matter.
But the cops were jaded, kept up too many late nights recently, this roadhouse always trouble around Halloween, and John knew that it was the drunk tank for him tonight, standard operating procedure.
Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Given what he’d said, what they’d both said. Safer for Dean, nursing what was going to be a black eye.
But more importantly, safer for them, because goddamn it if John wasn’t inventing new ways to push that boy away.
--
Contrary to what Dean had assumed, when put in water, he sank like a stone. A witch! A witch! he thought, and it would have been funny, was it not for two things: one, he was pretty much drowning and that wasn’t a very pleasant sensation no matter how hilarious; and two, Jennifer was about half his size and she hauled him up spluttering like he was a wet spaniel that had slipped poolside. Embarrassing, to say the least.
More than that, really, because embarrassment you could live with, but humiliation was harder, darker. He’d had enough dark to last him a lifetime. So he brought his right arm to the side of the pool, Jennifer lithe and serious beside him, and tried to bring a grin to his face, but it just wasn’t working.
Once he finished coughing, he asked, “I thought Bliss said this’d be easier? You know, less gravity?” Because lurching across the physio room was like running across a gap at Gallipoli, minus the machine guns. God, he’d never done anything as difficult in his life. The pool was supposed to be fun.
Jennifer shrugged, dark brows furrowing slightly, brown eyes sparkling in the sunlight. Big windows in the pool area, sunlight, mountains beyond, blue blue sky and that still hurt on some level, a sky like that. “Everything’s hard at first.”
“But I know how to swim!” he complained, aware that Jennifer could haul him around like a stack of kindling, despite her relative size. All sinew and tendon. She was a rock climber when she wasn’t turning patients into pretzels and working them like a drill sergeant.
“Yeah, when all your muscles are getting the right messages from that brain of yours. When they feel like cooperating. Then this’ll be easy.” She got out from under him, got him to move the left shoulder a little, hold his arm out. Christ, that hurt too. Maybe half the range of motion he usually had. Still, half was more than a quarter, which was what it had been last week.
A couple of times he tried letting go of the side, and every time his head went under, and he thought, Jesus, surely my survival instinct ought to be kicking in at some point here, help me out a little, and every time Jennifer got a shoulder under him, lifted him to the surface, waited for the coughs to subside before telling him to try it again.
The fourth time he went under, Dean was so tired he thought maybe it would be best if Jennifer just let him drift to the bottom where he could lie against the cool blue tiles and pretend the blue of the water was the sky.
No such luck.
Up again, Jennifer warm beside him in her practical Speedo, laughing at him because he was probably more stubborn and more uncoordinated than most, just floundered like a drunken socialite fallen from a yacht. She lifted him up again, but he was further from the edge this time, so she had him lay on his back while she held him up with her strong arms, told him to kick with both feet, slow, easy.
He almost passed out.
“Okay, she whispered into his ear, drawing him closer to the edge, helping him to hook his arm on the ledge. He got one good whiff of whatever shampoo she used and that was enough, was more than enough.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t do much to hide what the smell of a pretty, athletic woman who could easily break him in half did to him physically. He was in a pool for god’s sake, with little hospital issue trunks and Jesus, just looking at a woman was usually enough for him.
“Hey,” she remarked, close against him and she could tell. And was absolutely pleased. He could see it plainly. Just not in the way he normally might want. This was exactly the same pleasure she’d taken when he’d lifted his left hand to his opposite shoulder last week, or managed fifteen unassisted steps in the physio room.
Not one to fluster easily, it was still a little…awkward. “God, I’m sorry,” he stammered, trying to move away, angle himself differently.
Jennifer shook her head, smiling. “No, really, this is good. This is really great.”
Horror filled him. “Are you…are you going to put this in your report?”
Bigger smile. “Absolutely.” Then caught his look. “Don’t worry. I’ll use lots of technical terms. It’ll sound boring.”
Dean rested his chin against the ledge, unable to really feel anything, wanting to check with his hands, knowing that he’d sink to the bottom again, which would really just be the nadir of humiliation. But realizing that this was good. This was progress. “So, it’s…normal?”
Jennifer looked at him squarely, still pleased, but not at his expense. Pleased for him. “Yeah. And normal is good, right?”
She wasn’t getting out of the pool, not touching him to assist him to the stairs by the shallow end. Was giving him time, he realized. God, this was what a hard-on came down to now: something to be written up in a medical record, to be waited out poolside. What was normal about this?
“Right.” Dean agreed quickly. Paused, felt the need for a joke. “Can’t help it if the hospital’s full of women.”
Jennifer laughed. “Yeah, but we’re all on duty.”
He shrugged, “I don’t know. Maybe I can find a nice visitor wandering around.” Was he…asking permission? Hey, am I good to go? God, sometimes his mouth just didn’t know when to quit.
An eyebrow went up. “Give yourself a little time, okay? Right now a visitor could probably outrun you.”
And he did laugh then, because she was funny.
She rested her arms against the tile, her chin on top, changed the subject. “Did you go to UNR?”
Dean was staring out the window at the mountains, wishing his body would just cooperate for once. “Huh?”
“University of Nevada, Reno? We’re the same age. Thought I knew an Evan Singer when I went there.”
Jesus. “No, I, uh. No.”
She kept talking and Dean was glad of it. “Must be another Evan Singer. The one I knew was in the Mackay School.” She glanced over. “Earth Sciences. You into mining?”
Dean shook his head. She kept on, as if knowing he was uncomfortable. “It was awhile ago now. But same name, probably around the same age. You don’t look anything like him. I’m glad you’re not the same guy. I would have felt like an idiot not recognizing you.”
Uh-huh. Okay, way to kill an erection. Excellent.
She was a good judge of these things, apparently. “You want to get out? I think you’ve earned a session with massage therapy.”
And as she helped him out, supporting most of his weight as she smiled. “See you tomorrow, Romeo.” She wheeled him down the hall and left him in the capable hands of a burly massage therapist who wasn’t going to cause Dean to lose any sleep.
Read Part B
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