Big Bang 16: Begin to Begin Again (Part One)
The clock reads 6:32am. Red little sticks crafting time in a way he could never replicate. Not in this life on the road without more than a few hours of sleep, which is all it seems he’s able to get with Sam putzing around the room, making just enough noise to be annoying.
"What's up?" he asks while shifting over on the sagging mattress. Which could also be the cause of being so tired.
"Couldn't sleep," Sam replies as he sits at the tiny dinette table. It's far too small for any group of guests, not to mention people as big as Sam. "Figured I'd get some more research in while Sleeping Beauty napped."
He grumbles. "Real cute." Rolls completely off the bed and plants two feet firmly on the ground before stretching up and out. The creaking in his bones speaks of his dreary and endless life on the road. But it's a little worth it when he exits the bathroom after a steaming shower to an equally hot cup of coffee waiting for him.
Along with his brother's "so get this..."
A sharp ding wakes him, but he's alone this time. And the bed is solid beneath him, the sheets soft and cool and crisply white in a way no hotel is.
His face is half buried in an equally bright pillowcase as he smells the cleanliness of the pillows and the sheets, the room, and even himself.
A second sharp ding forces him to move. He reaches for his phone and reads the awaiting text with only one eye open.
Coming down soon? Kids still ask for unkie. 13 and Shep's still got a soft spot for ya
His hands press into the pillow top so he can get a good glance around the room and it's all familiar now. Not just this bedroom with its simple, yet sleek modern art on all four walls, streaks of blue and grey, brown and green.
This dread spilling into his gut is familiar, too, as he recognizes he's not in that life. The old life where he was well-fed, on a higher track of living, and where he formed an extraordinary friendship with the guy on the other end of that message.
His fingers fumble to answer the text without raising suspicions.
On the schedule for plannin
With that, he slides the phone beneath the stack of pillows on the empty side of the bed and buries himself under the comforters again.
He hears the dings of Jared’s replies, but chooses to ignore them for now. More sleep is on the agenda.
“Doorbell!!” The yell can be heard through the big oak door and Jensen stands a little straighter. He tries on a smile and scrapes a few fingers through his hair. Another shout rings out and he shakes his head at the image of Danneel with her hands full and JJ stuck in the corner of the cream sectional couch where she’s too pre-occupied with her phone to move.
“Gosh darn, you, I’m gonna - ” The door flings open, the draft behind it causing Danneel’s hair to fly away from her shoulders. “Your dad’s here!” she yells over her shoulder, promptly heading back to wherever she’d just appeared from.
“Nice to see you,” he mumbles, trying like hell not to hold it against her. They’re amicable after all these years but there are still days when he sees how the split weighs heavily on her.
Jensen walks comfortably through the foyer, hallway, and down a few steps into the back family room. JJ is just as he expected. Sunken into corner cushions, one leg draped over the other knee, foot winding lazy circles as her thumbs fly over the touch screen.
“Hey, darling,” he says with warmth spilling into his stomach. Even fully teenaged and complete with a growing attitude and distracted disposition, his baby girl still makes him crave the love of family.
“Hey, dad,” she replies without looking up.
“You ready?”
“Where are we going?”
“Lunch? And shopping?”
“She needs clothes for vacation!” Danneel shouts from somewhere behind him. The kitchen maybe. “If you’re going shopping then you should get her some clothes. Dang girl is already sprouting out of stuff from Christmas.”
JJ doesn’t flinch at the idea; shopping usually makes her jump and cry in joy.
Jensen makes a face. He wants to spend time with his daughter and give her all that he can - price no object - but he’d rather sit in a dark room alone than follow JJ through a mall. “Your mom says you need clothes. But you always need clothes, don’t you, girl?”
“Mmhmm,” she sounds out with her tongue tucked in the corner of her mouth.
He smiles wistfully. It’s the same thoughtful motion she made when drawing him something to put up in his trailer.
“Then maybe Disneyland?” he tries, hitting for left field and testing if she’s really paying attention. “And the beach? Alcatraz? Maybe drive down to Napa and cruise through a few dozen wineries?”
JJ blows errant golden red hair off her forehead, thumbs flying faster than before. “Mmhmm.”
“Then maybe Costa Rica?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“And France? Or Spain? I hear the rain falls there, most of the time anyway.”
“Sure, okay.”
Jensen tucks his hands deep into his pants and watches his daughter play on her phone for a full minute. Complete silence almost makes him regret their regular Saturday outings. But he figures seeing her for even these spare moments is better than not at all. He moved to Louisiana to stay close to her after all. Has let Danneel set the schedule for them all since the divorce, so he supposes he can’t complain.
Another few breaths and he turns on his heel to find Danneel in the pantry. Or what used to be the pantry and is now an empty closet with stacks of non-perishables blocking entry.
“So she’s still glued to her phone,” Jensen says to the wall of cans and boxes.
Danneel pops up to look at him over the shortest pile. “She’s fifteen. All fifteen-year-olds want their phones.”
Jensen shifts in place, winces when Danneel disappears again. “Want them more than their fathers?”
“What do you expect? It’s a Saturday and it’s ninety degrees out. She’d rather be swimming than stuck inside.”
“Then let’s go swimming.”
“Let’s?” She laughs and dumps another bulk of items that rattle one particularly tall stack of Campbell’s.
Something twists inside and his mind flashes back to another set of Campbells, long ago characters he once cared about. Jensen grabs a few cans before they fall and he stares intently at the letters that make up Tomato and Broccoli Cheese.
He might have been lost in thought for only seconds or minutes, and maybe it’s the latter because Danneel has to break him from the fog.
“Jay?”
“Hmm?” he asks even as he stares at the red and white label like the words will break up and reform, change into something else.
“Jay,” Danneel repeats firmly, “You okay? Hungry?”
Jensen drifts back to now. “Hungry? No, I’m fine. Why?”
“Because you’re staring quite intently at the soup.”
Shaking himself out of it, he puts the cans back into place then looks at Danneel. Her hair is piled messily at the top of her head, flighty wisps all over her forehead and down along her neck. Cheeks pink from exertion and the rest of her face bare of makeup, he’s caught by how beautiful she is and he shakes his head sadly, mourning what they used to be.
“You really wanna swim?” she offers with concern in her voice and eyes.
“What?”
“You mentioned swimming before. With JJ. You said maybe you should swim instead of shopping.”
He remembers that part now and laughs a little. “Well, it’d certainly be a hell of a lot cheaper than the mall.”
“You can take her to your house.” Danneel shakes her head to clear the wayward hair from her temples then blows at the troublesome pieces, just like JJ in the family room. “Wanna keep her for the night?”
“If she wants,” he says on automatic and immediately realizes he really wants it, too. “Yeah, we should. I’d like that, maybe she will, too.”
She smiles, honest and open. “Of course. And maybe if her phone goes for a dip, too, it wouldn’t be so bad. She’s married to the thing.”
“That’s on you,” he chuckles. “Seven years old and you thought she needed one.”
“To call for emergencies, or us, or whatever,” Danneel insists. “And you didn’t fight me much on that one, as I remember.”
Jensen scruffs the back of his head and turns away from the bright playfulness in Danneel’s eyes. As much as he loves it, still loves her, he thinks he doesn’t deserve to admire her anymore. She’s an attentive mother, fights hard to be a strong role model, and gives JJ comfort for the both of them on a daily basis. He knows all this, and is thankful she’s kept it up all these years for their girl … that still hasn’t moved from the couch.
“JJ!” he shouts back towards the hallway. “Let’s go!”
Her lame, “Yeah, okay,” barely makes it to him and he waits until she’s ready.
In the morning, there’s another dream. This time, Dean’s cozy behind the wheel of the Impala, seat and dash rumbling with the fire to drive every county road and the windows down with fresh air whipping both Winchesters in the face. His eyes water against the draft, but it feels good, damn good, to be heading off to nowhere with a hunt in the rear view mirror.
Sam searches the cooler in the back for a good sandwich. Not good like tasty and high-class; good like easy on the mold. And he loses half his Diet Coke when he opens it too soon after being shaken around in the half-empty green cooler, contents under pressure and all that.
Luckily Sam and Dean aren’t under any pressure in this moment.
Sam mumbles in between chewing on what is either safe egg salad or expired chicken. “But if you could pick just one, what would it be?”
Dean rolls his eyes at the impossible: one artist to listen to for the rest of his life. Only one portfolio of music to keep the Impala and him company as they crisscross the lower forty-eight. There’s no answer. Not any worth considering.
“Springsteen? Mellencamp? Seger?” Sam offers.
“All of the above.”
“I said one.”
“It’s all one,” Dean argues with flare. “It’s all Americana. One specific folder on Pandora. It’s all there.”
Sam snorts. “What do you know about Pandora?”
He knows enough, thankfully found it on his phone a few years ago to expand his musical horizons when he needed something to kill dark silences. “Something about a box.” He smirks when he catches Sam groaning and shaking his head.
“Alright, I got one,” Sam says, sitting up straighter. “Mighty Mouse or Superman?”
“Don’t Stand by Me … me,” he replies with attitude. Sam laughs and rolls his eyes, and Dean grins inside at the happiness lighting up his brother’s face.
These days, with their forties on the horizon, even five minutes of generic road time and meaningless quizzes, with a breezy smile between them … well, life can’t be much better than this.
Of course, that’s when an oncoming semi pulling two trailers veers into their lane and Dean jams both feet on the brake …
Jensen scrambles up from the mattress. His knees scatter on smooth cotton sheets as he fumbles to catch himself before falling and breaking a bone or pulling a muscle. The room is as bright as the sun was in his dream, but now he’s surrounded by four walls instead of a mirage of sand and cacti in the Southwest.
The clock reads 6:08 AM and he wants to weep with the lack of sleep he’s getting lately.
“Dad?” JJ mumbles from the doorway. “What’re you doing?”
“What?” He flips over to face her and frowns at the sad disheveled state of his daughter all but sleepwalking into the room. “Why are you up so early?”
“Why are you?”
She crawls into the empty half of his bed, curls up into a ball so tiny he barely believes she’s a teenager, and closes her eyes again. “I wasn’t up,” he insists
“Yeah you were. You were yelling. You woke me up. Why are you up?”
Slowly, Jensen settles back under the blankets and watches JJ’s eyelashes flutter as she falls back into sleep. He reaches over her for the other end of the comforter, tugs it back over to cover her, then does his best to back to sleep himself.
It never happens, and he spends the next hour staring at the ceiling, his daughter, or the black and white portrait of the Grand Canyon, blown up to fill nearly the entire wall like a living landscape.
Jared had given it to him as a show ending present, joked about the Winchesters ever seeing the place, and made Jensen pinky swear, of all things, that they’d do it themselves. The portrait found a great place in Jensen’s second-chance home, but they never found their way to Colorado.
After another hour of fitful rest, where his mind wouldn’t settle on any subject outside the world of Supernatural or Vancouver living, Jensen quietly escapes his bedroom with a change of clothes and finds himself outside. He’s steps away from the door to the garage and his fingers twitch and bend like they’re searching for the doorknob to the place. A bluebird lands on the faded grey eaves, chirps at him, and flaps its wings as if poking at him to make up his damn mind. When he finally does, the garage opens up to natural light with the side windows opening as smoothly as the day he moved in, and the double-wide motorized door rising to the ceiling.
On the far end is the boat, The Captain and Danneel, that has no place to dock right now. Hasn’t for about six years, really, since they moved over this way and Jensen let his research fall to the wayside. But that’s not what’s tripping him up here. No, the real thorn in his side is the dusty sheath covering the object that brought him out here in the first place.
With delicate fingers, he slips one corner up and feels a few tons of iron drop on his chest with the anxiety of unraveling this right now. Then another few feet are revealed, and he’s met with the gleam of still perfect black paint, glossy and dark like a southern pond at night.
He takes her all in, every square inch of Baby on display for his heart to envelope once again. His fingers streak loudly against the paint when he rounds the car and his heart beats wildly the longer he stands in her presence.
Suddenly, he’s transported to another world where there’s the deep scent of forests, dewy at dawn then growing fogging late into the night. Crickets and other bugs tweaking from their spots beneath brush or hidden in the big bark above them. Shadows streaking the ground while bright production lights pave the way for him to find his mark to slip into Dean Winchester, where to look for his Sam.
Jensen has long missed Dean, far longer than he’s ever allowed himself to consider. But beyond that, he misses Sam and how easily Jared would slide into that skin, filling Dean’s missing pieces. It was Sam and Dean on the road and keeping each other company, watching one another’s backs, sure. But there was also the comfort Jensen felt in the back of his mind when and where Sam appeared. Gave him something soft and warm to burrow into, to know that for all of Dean’s faults, he had Sam waiting just inches away to bring them both forward and keep on moving.
Jensen Ackles, he thinks, never clearly had that. Or maybe he did, but he never quite allowed himself to recognize it, or let it appear in anything more than weekends back in Austin with Danneel and JJ.
Just as his memories slide back to his little angel that came up to his waist with bright orange pigtails and sparkling smiles, Jensen is broken from the moment by his now-teenaged disinterested daughter coming out of the house.
Her clothes are wrinkled from sleep and her hair is messily piled atop her head. When she crosses her arms at her chest and strolls closer, he sees the early years of his life with Danneel and his stomach turns sour for what was and what now exists for him.
JJ winces against the warm sun in her eyes and looks annoyed to be out in the sunlight even when she spent hours in and around the pool yesterday. “What’re you doing?”
He ignores her confusion to carefully rub her bare, sunburnt shoulder. “You burn just like me.”
“Mom says that all the time.”
Despite the shortness in her tone, she leans against him and he’s overcome with nervous energy. Over the last few years, she’s grown into her next phase of high school and eyerolls, and he’s mentally burrowed down deep to hide his disappointment for how poorly retirement sat on his shoulders. Between both of them struggling to find themselves, she’s pulled back from him and he hasn’t questioned it, just lets her as comfortable as she wishes. She allows the requisite hugs in greeting and goodbye, sure, but none last as long as she now stands beside him, tucked in close.
“I haven’t seen it in forever,” she says, sounding confused and weirded out.
Jensen brings his arm around her back to hold her closer. “Me neither.”
“I used to get jealous.”
It’s a quiet admission and he’s afraid to question it too much, so he remains quiet.
“You’d call her baby,” JJ continues, growing even quieter as she speaks. “But it’s just a car. I was your baby.”
Jensen closes his eyes and kisses the top of her head. “You still are.”
“And so is she.”
He knows she’s not wrong. Can’t admit to that, though, so she hugs her with his arms wrapped around tight and her buried in his chest. “I’m sorry. It was never fair to you.”
He thinks about a whole lot of things that were never fair to her. How long he stayed away to keep working. How much he let Danneel steer her childhood without much of his input, all so he could have the brightest moments with them when he was there. How he failed to comfort her through the divorce and tended to his own wounds. How he has done fuck all to make it up to her since leaving Vancouver for good.
It’s not you, it’s me, he thinks, but knows that’s not enough for a daughter to hear.
“Is it too late?” Jensen asks instead.
“No.”
He squeezes her tight and pulls back to touch her face and smile at her. “So, where do I start?”
JJ bites her lower lip in thought then aims a cruel grin his way. “Shopping.”
“Oh, God,” he sighs then she sticks a finger in his face.
“No rolling your eyes, either!”
“Yeah, alright. Whatever my princess wants, my princess gets.”
Two weekends later, Jensen trails JJ at the mall for another round of retail therapy. This time, though, she spends time judging silly devices in Brooks Brothers or the clearance rack at Nordstrom. He finds himself enjoying the attention and chances to make her laugh, and he’s grinning when he drops her off at Danneel’s.
They struggle with a few bags into the foyer, laughing and tripping loudly enough to grab Danneel’s attention to join them.
“Well, that looks like a successful mall run,” Danneel says, smiling right at JJ then glancing warily at Jensen.
“Yeah, we found a really cool US map with raised capitals, like all the buildings there, right in place.”
“Excellent find!”
“And then Dad said I needed a good frame and picked up every globe in Macy’s. Almost broke one,” she adds with a giggle.
Jensen shrugs with modesty. “I was just keeping the sales kid on his toes.”
“But you dropped it on his toes!”
“At least he didn’t have steel-toed boots.”
“It definitely would’ve shattered then.”
Danneel keeps looking between them and pulls her shoulders up with some sense of emotion. “So you guys had a good time?”
Jensen and JJ share a look and his stomach turns at the warmth in her eyes. He combs stray ginger hair off her shoulder and nods. “Yeah, it was really great.”
Seconds later, JJ rushes in for a tight hug, hiding her face in his shoulder.
Jensen is shocked by the sudden hold that he belatedly hugs her back while Danneel stares at them. He kisses the side of her hair before she can escape, then clears his throat when JJ drags her newest haul up to her room.
Danneel is silent with one eyebrow arched up high.
He shrugs and tries to get his voice to work, but it’s buried deep with the warmth that’s curling around his insides at JJ’s sudden attachment. When he puts his hand out, ready to talk, Danneel lightly coughs through her own emotion with eyes shining.
“She’s been missing you a long time.”
“Me, too.”
Danneel gives him a long look then whispers, “Like, the real you.”
“Yeah,” he says with a nod. “Me, too.”
“Chicken,” Sam says as he sets the foil-wrapped sandwich at Dean’s hip.
Dean scrabbles to stop touching the object and ends up jerking the wheel around so the Impala’s wheels squeal.
“Dean!”
“What?”
Sam huffs. “Eyes. Road. C’mon man.”
“I meant what to the chicken. There is no way a place called Dino’s doesn’t have a bacon cheeseburger.”
“They didn’t have bacon,” he replies, idly playing with the hard plastic top of his salad, which is mutli-colored with far more vegetables than Dean thought existed in this world.
Dean shakes his head and growls, along with the stomach that had been craving lots of greasy meat to ease this hangover. “You are such a goddam liar.”
“They didn’t have bacon!” Sam insists. “What was I gonna do?”
“Wait until they get some?”
“Yeah, okay.”
Sam munches through his salad mostly in silence. The lettuce crunches with every bite and Dean can’t roll his eyes without taking the Impala off the road again. He finally brings the sandwich to his lap and fiddles with the foil until he’s assaulted by something very mushy and very green.
Gritting his teeth, Dean checks the rear then side mirrors and pulls off to the shoulder with gravel kicking up against the metal underside of the car.
Sam looks around then stares at Dean. “What?”
Dean points angrily at the mess on his thigh. “What is this?”
“What did you do?” he asks with a disgusted face.
“I did nothing. The sandwich did … whatever this is.” Dean’s anger fades into confusion and worry over the state of his lunch. “I mean, it’s like, everywhere.” When he nudges the bun, there’s an odd soppy noise and Dean whines. “It just squealed. Chicken doesn’t squeal. Bacon does, but in the tasty way.”
Sam grabs the paper bag from their order and reads the menu stapled to the front. “Looks like it’s avocado.”
Dean peeks under the bread and winces. “This is a really wet avocado.”
“And ranch.”
“Ugh, no. Hell no.” He pitches the thing out of the window and holds his breath until the smell has left the car. “Fries?”
Sam sets the bag next to Dean and gets back to his salad as if there is no more surprises in store, but Dean stares at the dark orange fry between his thumb and forefinger.
“And this?” Dean watches Sam read the menu again and snarls just as Sam cringes.
“Looks like carrot.”
He harshly chuckles. “Yeah, it definitely looks like a carrot, Francis.”
“Carrot fries dujour,” Sam reads from the paper, “a new fresh favorite.”
“Says who?”
“Dino Arrabino. The Fresh Master.”
He’s far from happy with that answer, and no happier when Sam shrugs and offers his salad in penance. Dean rolls his eyes and punches the gas to get them back on the road, reading every oasis sign until he finds something that just may serve good ol’ fashioned fried fare.
Jensen takes great care to open the driver’s side door to the Impala. He’s too nervous to sit in the seat just yet, but he yanks the hood knob and gets a look at her insides. Everything creaks, just as worn out as he remembers, and the machinery that kept her running up in Canada looks worn and dirty.
Just as promised long ago, Jared joined Jensen to bring Baby down to the states, driving her all the way to Austin. Stops were made for food and bathrooms, but little else, and they bragged for days in Texas that it only took them forty hours with Jared’s lead foot. Which Jensen had bitched about for all the hours he was awake, to take great care of his girl and Jared might throttle the girl far beyond her life.
Now he wonders how she sounds. She never purred like a kitten or vibrated like a finely tuned massage chair, but she had a strong fire in her belly that was unmistakable.
“God, not this again,” JJ whines.
Jensen spins to JJ walking up the driveway. She shakes her head as she nears him then crosses her arms as she stares at the car. He sees Danneel in her car at the end of the drive, and he waves awkwardly. Though, he quickly forgets the nerves he always gets when he recognizes their relationship is far from good now when JJ pulls a stool over from the workbench and sits.
“What’re you doing?” she asks while tapping the tops of her knees.
“Just looking.”
“Looks pretty old,” she quips.
“Hey!” he barks, “pay some respect to your elders.”
“I was talking about the car.”
After a few moments of glaring at her, JJ’s cheeks pinch up, creasing her cheeks with tiny dimples he remembers poking at when she was a toddler running through the house. Back when she giggled at everything in her sight, rather than scowl and rolled her eyes like the dreaded teenager she’s been for the last few years.
JJ playfully sighs. “I’m not interrupting your alone time, am I?”
“No, not at all.” Jensen even combs through the loose ends of her hair and smiles. “You’re always welcome here.”
“Mom was nervous we were too early.”
“Never.” He glances back down the drive to where Danneel no longer is and crooks an eyebrow. “Why was she nervous about that?”
JJ shrugs. “Like if you weren’t here. Or ready or something.”
“You could’ve called to make sure. You have my number. And I know you have a phone because you’re usually glued to it.” He winks, but he still means it. For all that JJ is opening up a little now, she still tends to whip her phone out in between sentences to check on … whatever it is fifteen-year-olds are up to on the internet these days.
“We did, but you didn’t answer. And Mom had to get off to the store to buy Tom something then finish packing.”
Jensen stares at her for a few seconds before it all clicks. Jared’s text. Tom’s birthday. A trip down to Austin that he never planned. One he knows Danneel was making with JJ for the party. He rubs the back of his neck and turns back to the Impala to distract himself, and hide any wayward emotions running over his face. “Yeah, that’s right. His fifteenth birthday.”
“Sixteenth.”
His breath catches at the loss of time. Not just the last year, but the ones since both families were tied at the hip and spent full weekends together to celebrate birthdays and good news and bright suns on warm days.
“Are you going?”
I totally forgot. It’s the only real answer aside from I didn’t think about it. He knows JJ won’t like either of those. No one in either family would.
“Did something happen?”
He turns at that, tilting his head in thought. His memories are foggy from just after the show ended and in the time since then that he’s lost time with Jared and Genevieve and their boys. Nothing happened that was beyond his control. Nothing that could be pegged on anyone but him.
JJ sucks in a deep breath and bites the corner of her mouth, gathering the will to say more. “They think something’s wrong. Like you’re not okay or they did something.”
Jensen blinks at the thought. “Who’s they?”
“Uncle Jared and Aunt Gen.”
“Oh.” He looks away. “Really?”
“They ask a lot. And they worry. Even Tom bugs me sometimes about it because he says his dad is really bummed about it. But Mom just says you’re doing your own thing. Which I didn’t really understand before but now it seems like your own thing is you just being alone.”
They’re not wrong. None of them are to be worried about him, and Danneel and JJ are right on target with their excuse. He’s just been alone. So alone that even the well-intentioned question hits him in places he’d long ago forgotten about.
“So what should I tell them this time?”
He holds his breath while he thinks it over and he’s unsure if it’s true, but he wants it to be. “Tell them I’ll be there.”
Part Two