SPN FIC - Three Days Out (part 3 of 3)
Part 1: http://ficwriter1966.livejournal.com/21422.html#cutid1
Part 2: http://ficwriter1966.livejournal.com/21621.html#cutid1
Here's the conclusion.
Three Days Out
By Carol Davis (conclusion)
1:06 p.m.
Route 93, in the Nevada desert
He could count on his fingers the number of times he had left a job unfinished. Regretted every one of them. Sometimes it couldn’t be helped; sometimes the case simply couldn’t be solved. The body couldn’t be located. The pieces of the puzzle simply didn’t fit together no matter how many permutations he tried.
A couple of times, he’d been told to leave by someone there was just no arguing with.
Jericho would have to remain unfinished until Dean found his way there and could pick up the pieces. If he found the motel room John had been holed up in, he’d have all the information he needed. The room was paid for for another week or so; the motel’s owners would leave his stuff alone at least until that money ran out, whether he showed up back there or not. That was plenty of time for Dean to find the motel, find the research John had left behind. Plenty of time for him to find Constance Welch’s grave.
If he’d stay in Jericho, and not bypass it in favor of finding his father.
Do the right thing, Dean. Stay where you’re needed. Do what needs to be done.
John had spent more than half his life learning how to hide. Sometimes in plain sight, sometimes not. Dean wouldn’t be able to find him, not as long as he chose not to be found.
You can’t fiiiiiind me…
A burst of giggles told him Dean was only a few steps away. Told him, too, that Mary had ratted him out and was pointing to the chair he was hiding behind, the index finger of her other hand pressed to her lips.
I found you, Daddy! I found you!
He remembered the warmth of that small body, the faint scent of baby shampoo in Dean’s soft blondish hair.
“I found you, Daddy.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I win the game.”
“You do? You win the game?” He had swept his son up through the air, into the safe circle of his arms, only to attack him with tickles to the sensitive spots on his sides. Dean squealed helplessly, loving it, wanting more.
Wanting his Daddy.
Dad? I’m gettin’ kinda worried. Could you call me?
Not this time, son. You can’t help me this time.
Dean’s green eyes had searched John’s face that night in Lawrence - three days short of twenty-two years ago. Wide awake, confused, needing an explanation. He could see the fire, certainly; it was engulfing the nursery even as they stood there in the hallway for those few seconds.
He was only a little boy. Barely more than a baby. No one should have asked him to step up to the plate.
Twenty-two years ago. Eventually, Dean was going to give up waiting for the frigging relief pitcher.
Cell phone signal strength was crap out here. John put the truck back in gear and drove another two miles down the road before the phone suggested it might work.
Out of the truck, feeling the desert heat on his back, he punched in Dean’s number.
Got no answer.
Voicemail. Well, that served him right.
“Dean,” he said quietly. “Something’s starting to happen. It’s serious, son. It’s - I need to try to find this thing. You be careful, okay? Take care of yourself. I heard from some people - you did a good job in New Orleans. I’m proud of you.”
He said it again, softly. “I’m proud of you, son.”
Then he hit “End.”
1:30 p.m.
Palo Alto, California
“You’re still thinking about it, aren’t you?”
He was. Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help drifting over several times to look at the old picture of his parents, the only family photograph he had on display in the apartment. “It’s -“
“Huge,” Jess said.
“Very huge.”
“But you want to, right? Have kids.”
“I do.”
“You sound like there’s a ‘but.’”
“There is. I want -“ Sam had to cut himself off. “After. We. Get -“
Jess’s blonde head bobbed up and down. “Definitely, after. You have no idea how much flak I’d catch from my family if I tried to do it the other way around. My grandparents don’t even know we live together.”
Sam took his hand away from the picture frame. “So…you mean my telling your grandmother that I really like making love to you early in the morning was maybe not the best choice I could have made?”
“Sam,” Jess shrieked.
“Kidding.”
“Soooo not funny.”
Mom. Dad. House. Home. He didn’t remember any of that. Had a very vague sense memory of fire surrounding him, but that could have come from something else. From his imagination, maybe. He was six months old the night of the fire. How early did memories start forming? By four, certainly, because Dean could remember the fire. Remember Mom.
“I want everything with you,” he told Jess.
“Me too,” she said.
“Everything. Every single thing.”
“Mortgage? Stopped-up toilets? The terrible twos?”
“All of it.”
“I love you, Sam.” She brushed a kiss against his cheek, then scooted away so she could finish cramming all the stuff he’d left on the table back into her bag. She had a mid-afternoon class on Fridays; he didn’t. He’d be in the apartment alone for a while. “You’ll go get the stuff for dinner?”
“Said I would.”
“Get that good bread, okay?”
She swooped in again, bag slung over her shoulder, kissed him, stepped back. He caught hold of her and held on, pulling her close. “Jess?”
“Hmm?”
“Go. You’ll be late.”
“Love you.”
“Me too.”
A moment later she was gone.
1:58 p.m.
Hanks Bend, Idaho
“Dean WINCHESTER.”
His head came up, then went back down, hitting the thinly carpeted floor with a thunk. “Wha - what?”
Rae Ann. This time she looked like the freaking Terminator. Denny behind her, and where she’d found him might as well have been tattooed on his forehead. She’d bailed him out of jail, and she’d have to take half a dozen Valium to calm back down to pissed.
“Time is it?” Dean muttered.
“What difference does it make what time it is? It’s two o’clock. You fell asleep?”
Had he been vertical, and awake, he would have offered her some snark with a side order of Winchester charm. On the other hand, maybe not., being that he was very fond of his balls. He did take time for a glance at the baby, who was sound asleep where Dean had left her: in the middle of her playpen. So why falling asleep himself was a punishable offense was…well, unclear.
“We need hamburger. And buns. If you want dinner.”
Which implied that he was paying for the hamburger, and the buns. And that he was going to the market to get them.
The market. Six miles away.
“Going right now,” Dean said, and fled.
He could keep fleeing, he thought as he swung the Impala into the parking lot of the Food Festival. Because this? Was crazy. Sleeping on somebody’s couch waiting for Dad to call him back. Nah, it made a lot more sense to hit the road, go looking for Dad instead of calling people. Even if he turned up more dead ends, it was better than sitting around. Better than freaking babysitting for that drooling troll child.
He’d left a few odds and ends at Rae Ann’s, but it was nothing he couldn’t live without. The good stuff - his leather coat, his tapes, and of course all the weapons - was in the car. So, yeah, the hell with Rae Ann and Denny and their munchkin. They’d put him up for a few days, but he could send ‘em a thank-you note.
Yeah, the hell with that.
Didn’t have anyplace to go, but maybe Pastor Jim’s was a start. Dad might show up there eventually.
He snaked his phone out of his pocket and keyed it on.
Okay, Dad, listen - got no idea where you are, but I guess you’re okay. I’m gonna…
There was a message.
Frowning, he held the phone to his ear and listened. Through a storm of static and feedback he heard only, “Dean…starting…to happen…serious…I need to try…you…careful…”
Dad?
“Starting to happen”? What the hell…?
He sat there for a few minutes, watching people come and go through the automatic double doors of the Food Festival.
Starting…?
Dad? What the hell did you get yourself into?
Three weeks of nothing, and now this. “Starting to happen”? Where? Jericho? He’d looked it up on a map: Jericho was a little noplace town in central California. Why the hell would anything happen there?
Denny kept most of his dad’s junk in a trailer out back of the house. The old man had been big-time into hauntings, spent half his life driving back and forth across the country checking out spooks, and reports of spooks, and ghostbusting phony spooks. Could tell you everything there was to know about orbs and cold spots and water that starting running out of taps on its own.
Owned a bitchin’ honey of a Goldwave setup.
Dean parked the Impala down the road a ways and came at the trailer from behind, wary of the ass-chewing Rae Ann would do if she found out he’d come back without the hamburger buns. The trailer was unlocked, as always, because nobody in town gave a flying hoo-ha about Denny’s dad’s collection of old crap.
Dumping Dad’s message onto a tape and cleaning it up took a little while. What that produced surprised him. Not the rest of Dad’s message; that just plain wasn’t there. What was there was a woman’s voice. Angry. Off-the-charts angry.
Never go home, it hissed.
He leaned back in the chair, frowning when it creaked. Never go home…?
Serious. Careful.
“What the…” Dean murmured. “Dad, what the hell.”
The Impala was a couple hundred yards away. He’d have his coat, his cassettes, his weapons. A first-aid kit, a couple changes of clothes.
Everything he needed. Except for one thing.
One person.
The person who had slammed the door on him three-years-and-change ago. Told him to fuck off when he followed. Then stopped, waited, looked at him steadily. Not demanding, not inviting; somewhere in between. Wanting.
“I can’t, Sammy,” Dean had told him softly. “I can’t.”
“Because of Dad?”
“He needs me. Needs us. Can you not do this?”
“No. Dean. I can’t. I’m going.”
Three years and change. Almost two years of silence.
Silence was getting to be too goddamn much.
And, dammit, it was his turn to want.
Dean picked up the mini-cassette he’d generated, switched off Denny’s dad’s equipment, and left the trailer.
Careful…
He dropped the Impala into gear, skidded from the shoulder of the road up onto the blacktop, and headed south, toward Palo Alto.
Part 2: http://ficwriter1966.livejournal.com/21621.html#cutid1
Here's the conclusion.
Three Days Out
By Carol Davis (conclusion)
1:06 p.m.
Route 93, in the Nevada desert
He could count on his fingers the number of times he had left a job unfinished. Regretted every one of them. Sometimes it couldn’t be helped; sometimes the case simply couldn’t be solved. The body couldn’t be located. The pieces of the puzzle simply didn’t fit together no matter how many permutations he tried.
A couple of times, he’d been told to leave by someone there was just no arguing with.
Jericho would have to remain unfinished until Dean found his way there and could pick up the pieces. If he found the motel room John had been holed up in, he’d have all the information he needed. The room was paid for for another week or so; the motel’s owners would leave his stuff alone at least until that money ran out, whether he showed up back there or not. That was plenty of time for Dean to find the motel, find the research John had left behind. Plenty of time for him to find Constance Welch’s grave.
If he’d stay in Jericho, and not bypass it in favor of finding his father.
Do the right thing, Dean. Stay where you’re needed. Do what needs to be done.
John had spent more than half his life learning how to hide. Sometimes in plain sight, sometimes not. Dean wouldn’t be able to find him, not as long as he chose not to be found.
You can’t fiiiiiind me…
A burst of giggles told him Dean was only a few steps away. Told him, too, that Mary had ratted him out and was pointing to the chair he was hiding behind, the index finger of her other hand pressed to her lips.
I found you, Daddy! I found you!
He remembered the warmth of that small body, the faint scent of baby shampoo in Dean’s soft blondish hair.
“I found you, Daddy.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I win the game.”
“You do? You win the game?” He had swept his son up through the air, into the safe circle of his arms, only to attack him with tickles to the sensitive spots on his sides. Dean squealed helplessly, loving it, wanting more.
Wanting his Daddy.
Dad? I’m gettin’ kinda worried. Could you call me?
Not this time, son. You can’t help me this time.
Dean’s green eyes had searched John’s face that night in Lawrence - three days short of twenty-two years ago. Wide awake, confused, needing an explanation. He could see the fire, certainly; it was engulfing the nursery even as they stood there in the hallway for those few seconds.
He was only a little boy. Barely more than a baby. No one should have asked him to step up to the plate.
Twenty-two years ago. Eventually, Dean was going to give up waiting for the frigging relief pitcher.
Cell phone signal strength was crap out here. John put the truck back in gear and drove another two miles down the road before the phone suggested it might work.
Out of the truck, feeling the desert heat on his back, he punched in Dean’s number.
Got no answer.
Voicemail. Well, that served him right.
“Dean,” he said quietly. “Something’s starting to happen. It’s serious, son. It’s - I need to try to find this thing. You be careful, okay? Take care of yourself. I heard from some people - you did a good job in New Orleans. I’m proud of you.”
He said it again, softly. “I’m proud of you, son.”
Then he hit “End.”
1:30 p.m.
Palo Alto, California
“You’re still thinking about it, aren’t you?”
He was. Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help drifting over several times to look at the old picture of his parents, the only family photograph he had on display in the apartment. “It’s -“
“Huge,” Jess said.
“Very huge.”
“But you want to, right? Have kids.”
“I do.”
“You sound like there’s a ‘but.’”
“There is. I want -“ Sam had to cut himself off. “After. We. Get -“
Jess’s blonde head bobbed up and down. “Definitely, after. You have no idea how much flak I’d catch from my family if I tried to do it the other way around. My grandparents don’t even know we live together.”
Sam took his hand away from the picture frame. “So…you mean my telling your grandmother that I really like making love to you early in the morning was maybe not the best choice I could have made?”
“Sam,” Jess shrieked.
“Kidding.”
“Soooo not funny.”
Mom. Dad. House. Home. He didn’t remember any of that. Had a very vague sense memory of fire surrounding him, but that could have come from something else. From his imagination, maybe. He was six months old the night of the fire. How early did memories start forming? By four, certainly, because Dean could remember the fire. Remember Mom.
“I want everything with you,” he told Jess.
“Me too,” she said.
“Everything. Every single thing.”
“Mortgage? Stopped-up toilets? The terrible twos?”
“All of it.”
“I love you, Sam.” She brushed a kiss against his cheek, then scooted away so she could finish cramming all the stuff he’d left on the table back into her bag. She had a mid-afternoon class on Fridays; he didn’t. He’d be in the apartment alone for a while. “You’ll go get the stuff for dinner?”
“Said I would.”
“Get that good bread, okay?”
She swooped in again, bag slung over her shoulder, kissed him, stepped back. He caught hold of her and held on, pulling her close. “Jess?”
“Hmm?”
“Go. You’ll be late.”
“Love you.”
“Me too.”
A moment later she was gone.
1:58 p.m.
Hanks Bend, Idaho
“Dean WINCHESTER.”
His head came up, then went back down, hitting the thinly carpeted floor with a thunk. “Wha - what?”
Rae Ann. This time she looked like the freaking Terminator. Denny behind her, and where she’d found him might as well have been tattooed on his forehead. She’d bailed him out of jail, and she’d have to take half a dozen Valium to calm back down to pissed.
“Time is it?” Dean muttered.
“What difference does it make what time it is? It’s two o’clock. You fell asleep?”
Had he been vertical, and awake, he would have offered her some snark with a side order of Winchester charm. On the other hand, maybe not., being that he was very fond of his balls. He did take time for a glance at the baby, who was sound asleep where Dean had left her: in the middle of her playpen. So why falling asleep himself was a punishable offense was…well, unclear.
“We need hamburger. And buns. If you want dinner.”
Which implied that he was paying for the hamburger, and the buns. And that he was going to the market to get them.
The market. Six miles away.
“Going right now,” Dean said, and fled.
He could keep fleeing, he thought as he swung the Impala into the parking lot of the Food Festival. Because this? Was crazy. Sleeping on somebody’s couch waiting for Dad to call him back. Nah, it made a lot more sense to hit the road, go looking for Dad instead of calling people. Even if he turned up more dead ends, it was better than sitting around. Better than freaking babysitting for that drooling troll child.
He’d left a few odds and ends at Rae Ann’s, but it was nothing he couldn’t live without. The good stuff - his leather coat, his tapes, and of course all the weapons - was in the car. So, yeah, the hell with Rae Ann and Denny and their munchkin. They’d put him up for a few days, but he could send ‘em a thank-you note.
Yeah, the hell with that.
Didn’t have anyplace to go, but maybe Pastor Jim’s was a start. Dad might show up there eventually.
He snaked his phone out of his pocket and keyed it on.
Okay, Dad, listen - got no idea where you are, but I guess you’re okay. I’m gonna…
There was a message.
Frowning, he held the phone to his ear and listened. Through a storm of static and feedback he heard only, “Dean…starting…to happen…serious…I need to try…you…careful…”
Dad?
“Starting to happen”? What the hell…?
He sat there for a few minutes, watching people come and go through the automatic double doors of the Food Festival.
Starting…?
Dad? What the hell did you get yourself into?
Three weeks of nothing, and now this. “Starting to happen”? Where? Jericho? He’d looked it up on a map: Jericho was a little noplace town in central California. Why the hell would anything happen there?
Denny kept most of his dad’s junk in a trailer out back of the house. The old man had been big-time into hauntings, spent half his life driving back and forth across the country checking out spooks, and reports of spooks, and ghostbusting phony spooks. Could tell you everything there was to know about orbs and cold spots and water that starting running out of taps on its own.
Owned a bitchin’ honey of a Goldwave setup.
Dean parked the Impala down the road a ways and came at the trailer from behind, wary of the ass-chewing Rae Ann would do if she found out he’d come back without the hamburger buns. The trailer was unlocked, as always, because nobody in town gave a flying hoo-ha about Denny’s dad’s collection of old crap.
Dumping Dad’s message onto a tape and cleaning it up took a little while. What that produced surprised him. Not the rest of Dad’s message; that just plain wasn’t there. What was there was a woman’s voice. Angry. Off-the-charts angry.
Never go home, it hissed.
He leaned back in the chair, frowning when it creaked. Never go home…?
Serious. Careful.
“What the…” Dean murmured. “Dad, what the hell.”
The Impala was a couple hundred yards away. He’d have his coat, his cassettes, his weapons. A first-aid kit, a couple changes of clothes.
Everything he needed. Except for one thing.
One person.
The person who had slammed the door on him three-years-and-change ago. Told him to fuck off when he followed. Then stopped, waited, looked at him steadily. Not demanding, not inviting; somewhere in between. Wanting.
“I can’t, Sammy,” Dean had told him softly. “I can’t.”
“Because of Dad?”
“He needs me. Needs us. Can you not do this?”
“No. Dean. I can’t. I’m going.”
Three years and change. Almost two years of silence.
Silence was getting to be too goddamn much.
And, dammit, it was his turn to want.
Dean picked up the mini-cassette he’d generated, switched off Denny’s dad’s equipment, and left the trailer.
Careful…
He dropped the Impala into gear, skidded from the shoulder of the road up onto the blacktop, and headed south, toward Palo Alto.