One Day Your Ship Will Come Home (Supernatural)
Title: One Day Your Ship Will Come Home
Fandom: Supernatural
Prompt: Dedicating a song on the radio
Medium: Fanfiction
Size/length: 694
Summary: No letter, no call. Bill was supposed to be home a week ago.
Rating: G
Pairing: Ellen/Bill Harvelle
Content Notes: None.
AO3
The ancient truck catches every bump and pothole on the road. Ellen always drove carefully, most of the backroads didn’t have streetlights and she couldn’t see the ditches on either side, but she knew they were there. When she’s got baby Jo with her she goes slow and swerves to avoid the potholes. Never wake the baby, the first lesson of parenthood.
Baby Jo isn’t here right now. She’s sleeping in the back of the Roadhouse, by herself. Ellen doesn’t leave her for very long if she can help it. But sometimes she can’t. She’s practically a single mother and running the bar takes all of her available time.
She would have put this trip off if she could. Usually she waits until Bill comes home and he takes his nice new truck out and returns with the flatbed full of beer kegs, six-packs and bottles of whiskey and rum wrapped and packaged carefully. It couldn’t wait this time. She hadn’t heard from him in a week and she’d started tapping the last keg yesterday.
So as soon as Jo had gone to sleep she was off. The brewery was farish, close enough to go on a regular basis, but further than she liked when Jo was home alone.
Ellen smacked the dashboard, opening to jar the radio into working. She needed a new truck. This one was held together with duct tape and prayer. But she insisted on outfitting Bill. After all, he was the one out in the field. He was the one saving people and driving across the country every week. So he got a new truck, new boots and as much of the money as they could afford and she was left with the truck he’d had when they’d first met and it hadn’t been new then.
She hit a pothole particularly hard and it jarred something inside the car. The radio came on, the volume screaming inside the cab. It took her a minute of ear shattering noise to turn it down and another to adjust it to the only decent channel they got. She wasn’t wasting her car rides listening to NPR.
The DJ’s voice was soothing and she let the music and chatter carry her away. She still had almost an hour on the backroads. She almost didn’t notice it when the sound changed, got all staticy and someone was calling in.
They were doing some sort of call in songs for the next thirty minutes, the DJ announced and he put on Stevie Wonder’s sappy love song. Ellen growled and turned the music down. She had liked this station, they played good music.
The song tapers off and the DJ’s talking again.
“Our next caller is Bill, from Nebraska.”
Ellen turned the sound up a little, just enough to make out the words through the static.
“This song’s for my wife. Because I wasn’t home when she needed me.”
The static cut out. “Thank you Bill, this song’s for his wife, and here it is, You Can’t Hide From Love.” The DJ stops talking and the first strings of the song come through her tinny speakers.
Ellen put her foot down and sped the rest of the way home. There’s never any cops or other cars around. The parking lot is empty, she closed before she left. There piles of stuff to unload so she carefully backed up around the building to the kitchen entrance.
His truck is there. There’s a tarp over one of the windows and it looks like one of his tires has been replaced with the spare, but it’s his truck and he sent her a message.
Ellen left the stuff in the truck and hurried in. The door’s unlocked and the light is on. Jo’s making her soft happy noises, she’s talks a little now, says maybe ten different words, this is just happy baby cooing.
“Hey.” Bill on the piece of crap couch. There’s a bandage wrapped around his head and his arm is in a cast. “I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
Ellen collapsed on the couch next to her and burrows into his embrace. “I’m glad you’re back now.”