Lie Back and Think of Heaven 3/12
Lie Back and Think of Heaven 3/12
Title: Lie Back and Think of Heaven, 3/12
Rating: R
Warnings: language, sex, sex without Castiel
Spoilers: none, slightly AU
Disclaimer: I have no control over Eric Kripke, else SPN would resemble a deliciously gay soap opera. Oh wait.
Summary: John dies in Dean's senior year, and Dean's left to raise Sammy on his own. Or he would be, if a mysterious stranger didn't keep popping up to help...
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Chapter 1 Chapter 2
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Chapter 3
Dean wakes up Saturday morning feeling refreshed, the emotions that had clutched at his heart gone with the darkness of the night before. After grabbing breakfast, he picks Sam up, and together they find a place of their own. It’s not much at two rooms, a bath and a kitchen, but it’s enough. The walls are nicer at least, even if it’s only because there’s no wallpaper in the first place. As soon as they negotiate rent with their new landlord, they speed back to the motel, pack their things and throw them into the back of the Impala; Dean slaps the money onto the manager’s counter and almost kisses her goodbye.
By Sunday evening, they’re collapsing onto one of the worn mattresses they had bought, among other things, from the local Salvation Army.
“I don’t think I’ve actually owned a bed before,” Sam marvels, fingering a hole in the stuffing with something like wonder.
“You do now,” Dean grins.
They stare at each other ecstatically. Unable to contain his excitement, Sammy unleashes his brotherly gratitude… and slams a pillow into Dean’s face.
“Argh, you little runt!” Dean squawks, shoving it out of the way and launching himself over the smaller boy. They roll off the bed and onto the floor, Sammy shrieking helplessly as Dean mercilessly tickles his sides. Their first day with an address is filled with happiness, laughter, giddy hope, and the yells of a crotchety old neighbor to shut up.
On Monday, Dean drives to the restaurant bright and early, twenty minutes before his very first shift’s supposed to start. Anna smiles as he enters, handing him a uniform from under her counter. It’s not bad, just a black shirt and a white half-apron, both with her logos printed on them, and he puts them on quickly in the employee changing room.
Work at Anna’s Angels isn’t new or very hard; it’s the usual crap he’s had to do at all the other food places, except now he pours his soul into it, leaving no customer uncharmed and every table spotless and sparkling like a preteen’s wet dream of a vampire. He tries his hardest to impress Anna and his new co-workers, a new energy running through his veins.
And Anna is impressed; she even says so during his lunch break. “I might cave in to that raise faster than I thought, if you keep this up,” she laughs.
His co-workers are a little harder to please, though, for some reason. Most of the other waiters treat him all right, but the cook, Mitch, refuses to look him in the eyes and shoves plates into his hands as quickly as possible before busying himself with the next order. The waitress Anna introduces as Char doesn’t speak to him, and though Anna assures him that she doesn’t usually speak at all, Char skirts around him every time they have cross each other, eyes skittering away as she otherwise pretends he doesn’t exist.
The worst is a middle-aged yet striking woman that sits behind the bar with her feet propped near the alcohol, nursing a bottle of whiskey. Every time Dean passes by the bar and glances at her she’s glaring right back at him, eyebrows deeply furrowed and her upper lip almost pulled back into a snarl. Her open hostility bothers him but he ignores it, and she doesn’t do anything until he’s back in his own clothes and almost out the door. Dean’s reaching for the brass handle when he’s pulled by the back of his collar so viciously he stumbles to the ground.
“Hey!” he yells indignantly, and finds her towering over him like a wrathful goddess over a nonbeliever.
“This isn’t any place for you,” she growls; Dean recoils from the stench of alcohol pouring from her mouth. Almost instantly, Anna’s behind his shoulder.
“Cassidy,” she warns sharply. The other woman’s eyes smolder angrily into Dean’s for a loud heartbeat longer before she storms back behind the counter and drains the second half of her bottle. Dean finds himself reluctantly impressed.
“I’m so sorry about her, Cassidy… doesn’t do well with new people.”
Dean returns his attention to Anna, who’s giving him an apologetic expression.
“What’s she do, anyway?” he asks skeptically.
Anna purses her lips. “She’s the bartender,” she replies. “She’s works the night shift too. That whiskey’s still coming out of her pay, though. Again.”
Aside from the little incident with Cassidy, though, the next two weeks pass by uneventfully. Once or twice Man-From-Last-Thursday pops into Dean’s head, but he doesn’t show up at the restaurant or the one night Dean goes back to the bar. Once, Dean casually brings him up with Anna. She seemed honestly surprised that he bothered, replying that she thought Dean knew him already. He changed the subject before it could get too awkward.
In any case, Dean’s too busy finding the best goddamn present a bitchy fourteen-year-old nerd could ever want. He finally sees it in a catalogue on the eve of Sam’s birthday, an electronic typewriter that Sammy’s sure to cream his pants for, God knows why. It’s a little pricey, but what the hell. Dean has eight hundred dollars.
It’s far too late for Dean to have it shipped in time for Sammy’s birthday, so once Sammy goes to bed he carefully rips out the page with the typewriter and folds it into a neat square. Then he puts it into a tiny cardboard box, which he buries in a gift bag filled with bright pink crepe paper and glitter, because he’s a big jerk and Sam’s a big girl. He hides the present in the trunk of the Impala, behind the last few remaining guns and shovels.
Surveying the tools, he pauses, memories of wild hunts and adrenaline flashing briefly through his veins. He shakes them off and slams the trunk shut.
The sun hasn’t even peeked up from the horizon when Dean wakes up and sneaks to the kitchen to attempt making Sammy’s favorite breakfast of eggs and bacon. The eggs end up looking a little weird, but Dean figures that it’s the thought that counts.
He tiptoes to the bedroom and leans on the doorframe, watching Sammy fondly. With his soft brown hair strewn every which way and the muscles in his face relaxed from their usual frown, he looks boyish… like the fourteen years he was supposed to be. It was a peaceful sight - it would be almost a shame to wake him up.
Dean turns on the radio at full blast anyway. Sam falls out of bed, exclaiming in an incoherent manner that somewhat had to do with his half-asleep state but more to do with the spoon Dean had placed in his mouth. The ensuing pillow fight is glorious; Sammy wins, standing on Dean’s ass as he swings a pillow triumphantly over his head, though only because Dean lets him. After bringing Sammy to school he goes to work, ignoring Mitch’s brusqueness and Char’s evasiveness and smiling brightly in the face of Cassidy’s scowl. He even flirts lightly with Anna, who takes it with good humor.
His shift ends early that day, and he rushes out of the building and drives to the post office to mail typewriter’s mail-order form. Getting back into the car, he transfers the gift bag from the trunk to the passenger’s seat. He can already imagine Sam’s grimace as he sees the horridly pink paper, then his incredulity and delight as he reads the page inside.
The parking lot’s dead with inactivity when Dean arrives half and hour early; Dean shifts in his seat, content to take a nap and wait.
His phone rings.
---
Dean bursts into the office, the visibly startling everyone within the vicinity as the double doors bang simultaneously onto the walls.
“Sam!” Dean barks, spotting his little brother immediately, striding over. He eyes him critically, checking for superficial injuries. His knuckles are bruised and his lip is bleeding slightly, but aside from those and his stony expression he seems fine. Dean allows himself to relax marginally.
“What happened?” he asks gruffly.
The principal standing beside Sam’s chair, a heavyset but dignified woman in a tracksuit, speaks. “Ah, the elder Winchester, you grace our hallways again. Samuel here attacked a boy during the passing period between fifth and sixth.”
“He provoked me,” Sam exclaims.
“You broke his arm,” she counters severely.
Sam remains silent, glaring at his hands.
“He’s in the hospital’s ER right now,” she continues. “It’s far from life-threatening, but his parents are very distraught… understandably. Can you contact your parents, legal guardians?”
“Dad’s not in town,” Dean answers curtly.
“Your mother, then?”
“Dead.”
Her assessing gaze bores into his eyes; Dean doesn’t blink, doesn’t give an inch. The ring of a telephone breaks the deadlock, and the principal sighs before picking up the phone.
“Seth Bullock High School, Mrs. Eastwood speaking. Oh, Mister Everett, how is Chad doing? Ah, no, but his older brother is here. Please calm down, sir. Yes, I will put him on the line.”
She hands the phone to Dean. “It’s the father. I advise you to speak cautiously; he has a considerable amount of influence here.”
Dean nods brusquely and cradles the phone gingerly by his ear. “Winchester speaking.”
A male, angry voice explodes from the other line. “Winchester? Like the gun? That’s an irony, because your brat’s a damn loaded pistol! My son won’t be able to play football this season because of that menace!”
Dean would laugh if he weren’t so pissed. “Hey buddy, my brother ain’t exactly in pristine condition either,” he growls. “You can stick your football up your ass because you wouldn’t know irony if it shot you in the face.” The principle clears her throat meaningfully, but Dean ignores her.
“In the- how dare you! I don’t think you’re from around here Winchester, or you’d know I can do things to you that’ll make you wish you were never born!”
Dean snorts derisively. “Look, I know Sammy could’ve broken a whole lot more than one measly arm. But he didn’t. And he won’t. Right, Sammy? He says yes,” he continues without waiting for Sam to answer. “So just take a chill pill and let it go. And teach your kid how to put up a fight while you’re at it.”
“I-!”
He cuts off abruptly. There’s a long pause before the dad speaks again, ominously conciliatory. “Alright, Mister Winchester, I’ll tell you what. If you pay the hospital bill, I suppose I can let it go. It only stacks up to about, oh… nine thousand dollars.”
Dean blinks. “Come again?”
“I said, the bill comes up to nine thousand dollars,” he repeats, and Dean can just hear the nasty glee in his tone. “Well, it’s less if you have good health insurance. You do have that, don’t you? Health insurance.”
They don’t. The room sways a little, and Dean grips a desk with his other hand to support himself. Distantly he hears Sammy asking him something worriedly.
“-Dean? Are you alright? Dean.”
“Sam, you can wait in the car,” he says faintly.
“Dean-”
“I said wait in the car.”
Several threads of Dean’s calm are fraying. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Sammy’s face twist in shock. “Please,” he bites out. Sam hesitates, but after a moment he takes the keys from his tense grip and leaves. The principal watches him go, wearing a troubled expression, but otherwise doesn’t stop him from exiting the room.
As soon as the door swings shut, Dean speaks, his voice low and icy and outraged.
“You listen to me, you son of a bitch-”
“No, you listen to me,” Everett interrupts, equally cold. “Your boy messed with my son. My son. So you’re paying that bill, or you’re going to pay a hell of a lot more in court. Your choice, Winchester.”
He hears a click, and the buzzing end tone flows ominously in his ear. He lowers he handset from his ear and stares blankly at it. Mrs. Northwood inches carefully towards him.
“Mister Winchester-”
Dean slams the phone down so hard it cracks. “FUCK!” he screams, once more startling the busy murmur of the office into silence.
He collapses into a chair, breathing hard. Nine thousand dollars for a broken arm? He could fix that shit up with a splint and sports tape, and he has! But out of all the people for Sammy, the Ghandi-loving-pacifist of the family, to beat up, it had to be a rich kid with a bastard of a father.
Dean clenches his fists. And he just couldn’t keep his stupid mouth shut.
“…Mister Winchester. Are you alright?” the principal asks warily.
“Fine.” He could never get a break, could he? “Just swell.”
---
A/N: Yeah, I'm sorry that it was only Dean n' Sam this chapter, but that's how the story flowed. The next chapter will be different, though!
On another note, I know jack squat about hospital bills and health insurance, but someone without insurance once got an $11,000 bill after going to the ER for a few simple tests. And I figure Daddy Douchebag would crank the bill up for all its worth, or something. I NEED PLOT DEVICES, OKAY? D,:
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Chapter 4
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Title: Lie Back and Think of Heaven, 3/12
Rating: R
Warnings: language, sex, sex without Castiel
Spoilers: none, slightly AU
Disclaimer: I have no control over Eric Kripke, else SPN would resemble a deliciously gay soap opera. Oh wait.
Summary: John dies in Dean's senior year, and Dean's left to raise Sammy on his own. Or he would be, if a mysterious stranger didn't keep popping up to help...
---
Chapter 1 Chapter 2
---
Chapter 3
Dean wakes up Saturday morning feeling refreshed, the emotions that had clutched at his heart gone with the darkness of the night before. After grabbing breakfast, he picks Sam up, and together they find a place of their own. It’s not much at two rooms, a bath and a kitchen, but it’s enough. The walls are nicer at least, even if it’s only because there’s no wallpaper in the first place. As soon as they negotiate rent with their new landlord, they speed back to the motel, pack their things and throw them into the back of the Impala; Dean slaps the money onto the manager’s counter and almost kisses her goodbye.
By Sunday evening, they’re collapsing onto one of the worn mattresses they had bought, among other things, from the local Salvation Army.
“I don’t think I’ve actually owned a bed before,” Sam marvels, fingering a hole in the stuffing with something like wonder.
“You do now,” Dean grins.
They stare at each other ecstatically. Unable to contain his excitement, Sammy unleashes his brotherly gratitude… and slams a pillow into Dean’s face.
“Argh, you little runt!” Dean squawks, shoving it out of the way and launching himself over the smaller boy. They roll off the bed and onto the floor, Sammy shrieking helplessly as Dean mercilessly tickles his sides. Their first day with an address is filled with happiness, laughter, giddy hope, and the yells of a crotchety old neighbor to shut up.
On Monday, Dean drives to the restaurant bright and early, twenty minutes before his very first shift’s supposed to start. Anna smiles as he enters, handing him a uniform from under her counter. It’s not bad, just a black shirt and a white half-apron, both with her logos printed on them, and he puts them on quickly in the employee changing room.
Work at Anna’s Angels isn’t new or very hard; it’s the usual crap he’s had to do at all the other food places, except now he pours his soul into it, leaving no customer uncharmed and every table spotless and sparkling like a preteen’s wet dream of a vampire. He tries his hardest to impress Anna and his new co-workers, a new energy running through his veins.
And Anna is impressed; she even says so during his lunch break. “I might cave in to that raise faster than I thought, if you keep this up,” she laughs.
His co-workers are a little harder to please, though, for some reason. Most of the other waiters treat him all right, but the cook, Mitch, refuses to look him in the eyes and shoves plates into his hands as quickly as possible before busying himself with the next order. The waitress Anna introduces as Char doesn’t speak to him, and though Anna assures him that she doesn’t usually speak at all, Char skirts around him every time they have cross each other, eyes skittering away as she otherwise pretends he doesn’t exist.
The worst is a middle-aged yet striking woman that sits behind the bar with her feet propped near the alcohol, nursing a bottle of whiskey. Every time Dean passes by the bar and glances at her she’s glaring right back at him, eyebrows deeply furrowed and her upper lip almost pulled back into a snarl. Her open hostility bothers him but he ignores it, and she doesn’t do anything until he’s back in his own clothes and almost out the door. Dean’s reaching for the brass handle when he’s pulled by the back of his collar so viciously he stumbles to the ground.
“Hey!” he yells indignantly, and finds her towering over him like a wrathful goddess over a nonbeliever.
“This isn’t any place for you,” she growls; Dean recoils from the stench of alcohol pouring from her mouth. Almost instantly, Anna’s behind his shoulder.
“Cassidy,” she warns sharply. The other woman’s eyes smolder angrily into Dean’s for a loud heartbeat longer before she storms back behind the counter and drains the second half of her bottle. Dean finds himself reluctantly impressed.
“I’m so sorry about her, Cassidy… doesn’t do well with new people.”
Dean returns his attention to Anna, who’s giving him an apologetic expression.
“What’s she do, anyway?” he asks skeptically.
Anna purses her lips. “She’s the bartender,” she replies. “She’s works the night shift too. That whiskey’s still coming out of her pay, though. Again.”
Aside from the little incident with Cassidy, though, the next two weeks pass by uneventfully. Once or twice Man-From-Last-Thursday pops into Dean’s head, but he doesn’t show up at the restaurant or the one night Dean goes back to the bar. Once, Dean casually brings him up with Anna. She seemed honestly surprised that he bothered, replying that she thought Dean knew him already. He changed the subject before it could get too awkward.
In any case, Dean’s too busy finding the best goddamn present a bitchy fourteen-year-old nerd could ever want. He finally sees it in a catalogue on the eve of Sam’s birthday, an electronic typewriter that Sammy’s sure to cream his pants for, God knows why. It’s a little pricey, but what the hell. Dean has eight hundred dollars.
It’s far too late for Dean to have it shipped in time for Sammy’s birthday, so once Sammy goes to bed he carefully rips out the page with the typewriter and folds it into a neat square. Then he puts it into a tiny cardboard box, which he buries in a gift bag filled with bright pink crepe paper and glitter, because he’s a big jerk and Sam’s a big girl. He hides the present in the trunk of the Impala, behind the last few remaining guns and shovels.
Surveying the tools, he pauses, memories of wild hunts and adrenaline flashing briefly through his veins. He shakes them off and slams the trunk shut.
The sun hasn’t even peeked up from the horizon when Dean wakes up and sneaks to the kitchen to attempt making Sammy’s favorite breakfast of eggs and bacon. The eggs end up looking a little weird, but Dean figures that it’s the thought that counts.
He tiptoes to the bedroom and leans on the doorframe, watching Sammy fondly. With his soft brown hair strewn every which way and the muscles in his face relaxed from their usual frown, he looks boyish… like the fourteen years he was supposed to be. It was a peaceful sight - it would be almost a shame to wake him up.
Dean turns on the radio at full blast anyway. Sam falls out of bed, exclaiming in an incoherent manner that somewhat had to do with his half-asleep state but more to do with the spoon Dean had placed in his mouth. The ensuing pillow fight is glorious; Sammy wins, standing on Dean’s ass as he swings a pillow triumphantly over his head, though only because Dean lets him. After bringing Sammy to school he goes to work, ignoring Mitch’s brusqueness and Char’s evasiveness and smiling brightly in the face of Cassidy’s scowl. He even flirts lightly with Anna, who takes it with good humor.
His shift ends early that day, and he rushes out of the building and drives to the post office to mail typewriter’s mail-order form. Getting back into the car, he transfers the gift bag from the trunk to the passenger’s seat. He can already imagine Sam’s grimace as he sees the horridly pink paper, then his incredulity and delight as he reads the page inside.
The parking lot’s dead with inactivity when Dean arrives half and hour early; Dean shifts in his seat, content to take a nap and wait.
His phone rings.
---
Dean bursts into the office, the visibly startling everyone within the vicinity as the double doors bang simultaneously onto the walls.
“Sam!” Dean barks, spotting his little brother immediately, striding over. He eyes him critically, checking for superficial injuries. His knuckles are bruised and his lip is bleeding slightly, but aside from those and his stony expression he seems fine. Dean allows himself to relax marginally.
“What happened?” he asks gruffly.
The principal standing beside Sam’s chair, a heavyset but dignified woman in a tracksuit, speaks. “Ah, the elder Winchester, you grace our hallways again. Samuel here attacked a boy during the passing period between fifth and sixth.”
“He provoked me,” Sam exclaims.
“You broke his arm,” she counters severely.
Sam remains silent, glaring at his hands.
“He’s in the hospital’s ER right now,” she continues. “It’s far from life-threatening, but his parents are very distraught… understandably. Can you contact your parents, legal guardians?”
“Dad’s not in town,” Dean answers curtly.
“Your mother, then?”
“Dead.”
Her assessing gaze bores into his eyes; Dean doesn’t blink, doesn’t give an inch. The ring of a telephone breaks the deadlock, and the principal sighs before picking up the phone.
“Seth Bullock High School, Mrs. Eastwood speaking. Oh, Mister Everett, how is Chad doing? Ah, no, but his older brother is here. Please calm down, sir. Yes, I will put him on the line.”
She hands the phone to Dean. “It’s the father. I advise you to speak cautiously; he has a considerable amount of influence here.”
Dean nods brusquely and cradles the phone gingerly by his ear. “Winchester speaking.”
A male, angry voice explodes from the other line. “Winchester? Like the gun? That’s an irony, because your brat’s a damn loaded pistol! My son won’t be able to play football this season because of that menace!”
Dean would laugh if he weren’t so pissed. “Hey buddy, my brother ain’t exactly in pristine condition either,” he growls. “You can stick your football up your ass because you wouldn’t know irony if it shot you in the face.” The principle clears her throat meaningfully, but Dean ignores her.
“In the- how dare you! I don’t think you’re from around here Winchester, or you’d know I can do things to you that’ll make you wish you were never born!”
Dean snorts derisively. “Look, I know Sammy could’ve broken a whole lot more than one measly arm. But he didn’t. And he won’t. Right, Sammy? He says yes,” he continues without waiting for Sam to answer. “So just take a chill pill and let it go. And teach your kid how to put up a fight while you’re at it.”
“I-!”
He cuts off abruptly. There’s a long pause before the dad speaks again, ominously conciliatory. “Alright, Mister Winchester, I’ll tell you what. If you pay the hospital bill, I suppose I can let it go. It only stacks up to about, oh… nine thousand dollars.”
Dean blinks. “Come again?”
“I said, the bill comes up to nine thousand dollars,” he repeats, and Dean can just hear the nasty glee in his tone. “Well, it’s less if you have good health insurance. You do have that, don’t you? Health insurance.”
They don’t. The room sways a little, and Dean grips a desk with his other hand to support himself. Distantly he hears Sammy asking him something worriedly.
“-Dean? Are you alright? Dean.”
“Sam, you can wait in the car,” he says faintly.
“Dean-”
“I said wait in the car.”
Several threads of Dean’s calm are fraying. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Sammy’s face twist in shock. “Please,” he bites out. Sam hesitates, but after a moment he takes the keys from his tense grip and leaves. The principal watches him go, wearing a troubled expression, but otherwise doesn’t stop him from exiting the room.
As soon as the door swings shut, Dean speaks, his voice low and icy and outraged.
“You listen to me, you son of a bitch-”
“No, you listen to me,” Everett interrupts, equally cold. “Your boy messed with my son. My son. So you’re paying that bill, or you’re going to pay a hell of a lot more in court. Your choice, Winchester.”
He hears a click, and the buzzing end tone flows ominously in his ear. He lowers he handset from his ear and stares blankly at it. Mrs. Northwood inches carefully towards him.
“Mister Winchester-”
Dean slams the phone down so hard it cracks. “FUCK!” he screams, once more startling the busy murmur of the office into silence.
He collapses into a chair, breathing hard. Nine thousand dollars for a broken arm? He could fix that shit up with a splint and sports tape, and he has! But out of all the people for Sammy, the Ghandi-loving-pacifist of the family, to beat up, it had to be a rich kid with a bastard of a father.
Dean clenches his fists. And he just couldn’t keep his stupid mouth shut.
“…Mister Winchester. Are you alright?” the principal asks warily.
“Fine.” He could never get a break, could he? “Just swell.”
---
A/N: Yeah, I'm sorry that it was only Dean n' Sam this chapter, but that's how the story flowed. The next chapter will be different, though!
On another note, I know jack squat about hospital bills and health insurance, but someone without insurance once got an $11,000 bill after going to the ER for a few simple tests. And I figure Daddy Douchebag would crank the bill up for all its worth, or something. I NEED PLOT DEVICES, OKAY? D,:
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Chapter 4
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