SPN FIC - Guardian
I can't get back to work on THE BOX until I get home, but I needed something to occupy some time today, so here ya go: another glimpse into the future. Fall 2029, not long after Lizzie and Liam's wedding.
What's all that got to do with the cheap-ass lock on the front door of Liz's condo, you might ask. And the answer would be "nothing." Except that every time he mentions that things could be a little more secure, that Lizzie and Liam could live someplace just a tad safer, it turns into a discussion of him believing there's all manner of weird, homicidal shit stacked up outside, just waiting for Liz to let down her guard. They end up shouting a lot of the time. There's some door slamming involved. Once, Morgan threw an egg at him.
CHARACTERS: Dean and various OCs (Morgan, Lizzie, Liam)
GENRE: Het
RATING: PG for language
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1907 words
GUARDIAN
By Carol Davis
When Dean stops fussing with the lock and turns around, figuring on poking around in the kitchen until he finds a screwdriver, Morgan's standing there looking at him.
Arms folded. No expression on her face. Just looking.
Seriously? She could save her breath.
She could save her breath every damn time she stands there looking at him like that, because he knows what she's going to say long before she gets around to saying it. Old Rose, Dean. Old Rose. Yeah, that Old Rose: the old lady in Titanic who died warm in her bed because Leo DiCaprio told her she ought to. People die old, Dean, Morgan freakin' loves to tell him, and if Sam's around he'll chime right in, turn the whole thing into a damn Mormon Tabernacle Choir of self-righteous bullshit. They die of old age. It happens all the time. If Morgan's really cranked up she'll show him the obits in the paper, whole collections of people who died in their 70s and 80s and 90s.
I know it, he tells her when she does that. I knew it the last fifty times you told me.
And it gets worse, sometimes. If she's got enough time on her hands or enough of a head of steam built up, she'll tell him that cops get old and retire. Firemen get old and retire, and the only reason hunters don't tend to get old and retire is that the job tends to attract a lot of self-destructive fucktards. Which he is definitely not.
One of those.
Not lately, anyway.
What's all that got to do with the cheap-ass lock on the front door of Liz's condo, you might ask. And the answer would be nothing. Except that every time he mentions that things could be a little more secure, that Lizzie and Liam could live someplace just a tad safer, it turns into a discussion of him believing there's all manner of weird, homicidal shit stacked up outside, just waiting for Liz to let down her guard. They end up shouting a lot of the time. There's some door slamming involved. Once, Morgan threw an egg at him.
Threw a freakin' egg at him, because he wants his kid to be safe.
"Gonna go to Home Depot," he says stubbornly. "Get 'em a better lock."
"Did you ask if they want a better lock?"
"Morgan. They need a better fuckin' lock."
Yeah. There's gonna be yelling. Which could be embarrassing, because Liz is in the bedroom grabbing a sweater and Liam's in the spare bedroom they use for an office, printing out a news article on Stanford he thought Sam might want to read. They're less than twenty feet away, and this is their home. Not the best place for Dean and Morgan to have a screaming match.
Either way, before they can really kick off the festivities, Liam comes out of the spare bedroom with the Stanford article in his hand. He's smiling, and nothing in his expression says he heard what Dean and Morgan were saying. He heard, though. He'd have to be deaf as a post not to.
"That's a cheap-ass lock," Dean says, and points.
"Yeah, no kidding," Liam nods. "Tell me what they didn't low-ball in this place."
The stupid condo cost those two kids almost a quarter mil. Which, to Dean's mind, is idiotic right there, even if you don't consider the loosey-goosey sliding doors to the balcony and the ugly tile in the kitchen and the complete lack of trim around the doors and windows. They picked it out on their own, said out of a half-dozen possibilities it was the closest to being what they wanted, and damn, if this collection of half-assed workmanship is anybody's idea of a dream home…
"You know anything about locks, Dad?" Liam asks.
Does he know anything about locks.
Well. He knows how to pick them. This one right here? Wouldn't keep him busy for ten seconds. But Liam doesn't know anything about Dean's misspent youth. About his merry life of crime. The B&E and credit card fraud and the shoplifting and car theft and most definitely not the grave desecrations and… You know. The people who died. Liam thinks Dean's a mechanic, and so far there hasn't been a reason to tell him otherwise. Other than his being Liz's first line of defense, a position for which you'd think it would be helpful to be fully informed.
But there's that Old Rose thing.
The idea that Liz is actually her own first line of defense, for which she's extremely well-trained, and statistically speaking she's got a fine chance of dying real old, in her own bed.
Still.
That lock, right there, sucks ass.
"Home Depot -" Dean begins.
"Dad?"
That's Liz, with her sweater on, standing in the bedroom doorway smiling at him. She's gonna tell him everything's aces here. That it's freakin' Pleasantville.
And sure enough, she says, "Some of the neighbors leave their door open."
His lips form the word "Noooooooo."
"It's one of the reasons we picked this place. It's like a little community. Everybody keeps an eye out for everybody else."
"That's -" Dean sputters, and before he can stop himself, he adds, "Creepy."
People know him in Thompson Lake, yeah - a lot more people than anyplace else he's ever lived, except maybe Lawrence, and he was too little then to be aware of who knew him and who didn't. But they think he's a mechanic, they mostly talk to him about the weather and the price of gas, and he sure as hell doesn't leave his door open.
Well, he kind of does. Being that he lives in a bed-and-breakfast.
But still.
"Mrs. Hartley, across the hall," Liz goes on, gathering up her purse and her jacket and looking around for no reason Dean can figure out. "She's really sweet. We've been watering her plants while she's away. She said she'd do the same for us."
"You gave her a key?" Dean frowns.
"Not yet."
"We'll check with the FBI first," Liam says with a little, lopsided smile.
Wait'll you have kids, smartass, Dean thinks.
"And Jimmy," Liz says. "Down the hall. So nice. Isn't he, Lee?"
Liam nods. "Helped me get the bookcase up here."
They're all talking at once then, Lizzie and Liam and Morgan. This is a deliberate maneuver, Dean thinks sometimes: if they make enough noise and create enough of a distraction, he'll forget the point he was trying to make. That annoys him for a minute, as it always does - and then he tries to understand where they're all coming from. This is Binghamton, after all, not Beirut. Shit does happen here, but it's mostly accidental. There's some deliberate crime now and then, yeah, but Liz is well-trained. Her mom and her aunt Lily taught her a bunch of self-defense stuff, not that girly self-awareness nonsense, but some serious takedown maneuvers. Really, Dean could feel sorry for anybody dumb enough to try to lay a hand on his kid without her permission.
He could. Ought to, really. She's no dummy. Neither is Liam, even though the kid works behind a desk and has never had to walk around with a gun stuck in the waistband of his jeans.
They start moving out the door, Liam first, then the two women.
"Dad," Liz says.
He shrugs, a little sheepishly, and damn, he hates when that happens.
"It's safe here," she says. "Really."
She waits for him, and when he reaches the door she wraps him in a hug and rests her head on his shoulder.
"Worry about you," he mutters.
"I know. But I'm fine. We're fine."
With her fingers twined in his, she leads him out into the hallway and moves him aside so Liam can close and lock the door. From where he's standing he can see that yes, three or four of the doors nearby are standing open. It's not a long hall; it's no more than fifty feet from end to end, and the kids' door is near the middle.
"Mrs. Hartley is here," Liz says, gesturing. "And that one, that's Terry and Dale. They have the cutest dogs. Down there -"
A guy in khakis and a polo shirt is watching them from the doorway at the far end of the hall. "Jim," Liam says, beckoning the guy to come closer. "Hey. This is Liz's mom and dad."
The guy's smile is bright and warm as he approaches. But it's not that that captures Dean's attention; it's the piercing blue of his eyes.
Eyes that seem to know…everything.
He greets Morgan first, shakes her hand, touches Lizzie and Liam lightly in lieu of a hello. Then he turns to Dean. Grasps Dean's hand. Looks into Dean's eyes with that electric blue gaze.
It's gonna be fine floods into Dean's mind. He's not sure why. It's loopy to think that something as simple as shaking hands with a mostly-gray-haired guy in khakis, a guy he's never met before (Has he?), would calm his fears. Make him start to believe that his fears are unfounded, that the cheap-ass lock on Lizzie and Liam's door doesn't matter. The lack of salt lines, wards and charms to protect the apartment doesn't matter.
But there's something…
"Do we know each other?" Dean asks, frowning.
Jimmy doesn't answer the question. Instead, he makes small talk with Morgan and Liz and Liam, until Liam points out that they need to go or they'll be late for their dinner reservation. Dean's attention is stuck on Jimmy the whole time, and when he begins to step away, clearing the path to the elevator, Dean asks again, "Do I -"
"It's possible," Jimmy says, and shrugs, as if to say I get around.
Dean walks with his family to the elevator, brow furrowed, and as Liam presses the call button Dean turns to look down the hall toward Jimmy's open doorway.
"What's -" he begins.
"Novak," Jimmy says. "My name is Jimmy Novak."
That name ought to mean something, Dean thinks. He's sure it ought to mean something. But hell - he's met a million people over the years. Maybe this is somebody he and Sammy helped. Maybe Dad helped the guy.
The elevator chimes and the door slides open. Dean shifts his attention there and watches his family board the car, then follows them in and presses the button marked L.
Jimmy Novak? he thinks.
Who…
"He's nice, huh?" Lizzie says.
"Yeah," Dean replies. "I guess."
The carpet in the lobby's kind of cheesy; so are the chairs and the upholstered bench that form a little seating area at the end opposite the glass-walled entrance to the building. But the lobby's flooded with late-afternoon sunlight, a warm amber glow that makes Dean think maybe the place isn't all that bad. It's clean. And the front entrance stays locked; you can't get in without a key.
And this is Binghamton. Not Beirut.
Maybe his kid is safe here. She's well-trained, after all. And she's got people looking out for her.
She's got a... he thinks, but the rest of the thought evaporates, and even though he tries, he can't retrieve it.
"We can hit Home Depot on the way back," Liam suggests.
"Yeah," Dean says. "Yeah. Okay."
But he's starting to think - for no reason he can explain, no reason at all - that they don't need to.
* * * * *
What's all that got to do with the cheap-ass lock on the front door of Liz's condo, you might ask. And the answer would be "nothing." Except that every time he mentions that things could be a little more secure, that Lizzie and Liam could live someplace just a tad safer, it turns into a discussion of him believing there's all manner of weird, homicidal shit stacked up outside, just waiting for Liz to let down her guard. They end up shouting a lot of the time. There's some door slamming involved. Once, Morgan threw an egg at him.
CHARACTERS: Dean and various OCs (Morgan, Lizzie, Liam)
GENRE: Het
RATING: PG for language
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1907 words
GUARDIAN
By Carol Davis
When Dean stops fussing with the lock and turns around, figuring on poking around in the kitchen until he finds a screwdriver, Morgan's standing there looking at him.
Arms folded. No expression on her face. Just looking.
Seriously? She could save her breath.
She could save her breath every damn time she stands there looking at him like that, because he knows what she's going to say long before she gets around to saying it. Old Rose, Dean. Old Rose. Yeah, that Old Rose: the old lady in Titanic who died warm in her bed because Leo DiCaprio told her she ought to. People die old, Dean, Morgan freakin' loves to tell him, and if Sam's around he'll chime right in, turn the whole thing into a damn Mormon Tabernacle Choir of self-righteous bullshit. They die of old age. It happens all the time. If Morgan's really cranked up she'll show him the obits in the paper, whole collections of people who died in their 70s and 80s and 90s.
I know it, he tells her when she does that. I knew it the last fifty times you told me.
And it gets worse, sometimes. If she's got enough time on her hands or enough of a head of steam built up, she'll tell him that cops get old and retire. Firemen get old and retire, and the only reason hunters don't tend to get old and retire is that the job tends to attract a lot of self-destructive fucktards. Which he is definitely not.
One of those.
Not lately, anyway.
What's all that got to do with the cheap-ass lock on the front door of Liz's condo, you might ask. And the answer would be nothing. Except that every time he mentions that things could be a little more secure, that Lizzie and Liam could live someplace just a tad safer, it turns into a discussion of him believing there's all manner of weird, homicidal shit stacked up outside, just waiting for Liz to let down her guard. They end up shouting a lot of the time. There's some door slamming involved. Once, Morgan threw an egg at him.
Threw a freakin' egg at him, because he wants his kid to be safe.
"Gonna go to Home Depot," he says stubbornly. "Get 'em a better lock."
"Did you ask if they want a better lock?"
"Morgan. They need a better fuckin' lock."
Yeah. There's gonna be yelling. Which could be embarrassing, because Liz is in the bedroom grabbing a sweater and Liam's in the spare bedroom they use for an office, printing out a news article on Stanford he thought Sam might want to read. They're less than twenty feet away, and this is their home. Not the best place for Dean and Morgan to have a screaming match.
Either way, before they can really kick off the festivities, Liam comes out of the spare bedroom with the Stanford article in his hand. He's smiling, and nothing in his expression says he heard what Dean and Morgan were saying. He heard, though. He'd have to be deaf as a post not to.
"That's a cheap-ass lock," Dean says, and points.
"Yeah, no kidding," Liam nods. "Tell me what they didn't low-ball in this place."
The stupid condo cost those two kids almost a quarter mil. Which, to Dean's mind, is idiotic right there, even if you don't consider the loosey-goosey sliding doors to the balcony and the ugly tile in the kitchen and the complete lack of trim around the doors and windows. They picked it out on their own, said out of a half-dozen possibilities it was the closest to being what they wanted, and damn, if this collection of half-assed workmanship is anybody's idea of a dream home…
"You know anything about locks, Dad?" Liam asks.
Does he know anything about locks.
Well. He knows how to pick them. This one right here? Wouldn't keep him busy for ten seconds. But Liam doesn't know anything about Dean's misspent youth. About his merry life of crime. The B&E and credit card fraud and the shoplifting and car theft and most definitely not the grave desecrations and… You know. The people who died. Liam thinks Dean's a mechanic, and so far there hasn't been a reason to tell him otherwise. Other than his being Liz's first line of defense, a position for which you'd think it would be helpful to be fully informed.
But there's that Old Rose thing.
The idea that Liz is actually her own first line of defense, for which she's extremely well-trained, and statistically speaking she's got a fine chance of dying real old, in her own bed.
Still.
That lock, right there, sucks ass.
"Home Depot -" Dean begins.
"Dad?"
That's Liz, with her sweater on, standing in the bedroom doorway smiling at him. She's gonna tell him everything's aces here. That it's freakin' Pleasantville.
And sure enough, she says, "Some of the neighbors leave their door open."
His lips form the word "Noooooooo."
"It's one of the reasons we picked this place. It's like a little community. Everybody keeps an eye out for everybody else."
"That's -" Dean sputters, and before he can stop himself, he adds, "Creepy."
People know him in Thompson Lake, yeah - a lot more people than anyplace else he's ever lived, except maybe Lawrence, and he was too little then to be aware of who knew him and who didn't. But they think he's a mechanic, they mostly talk to him about the weather and the price of gas, and he sure as hell doesn't leave his door open.
Well, he kind of does. Being that he lives in a bed-and-breakfast.
But still.
"Mrs. Hartley, across the hall," Liz goes on, gathering up her purse and her jacket and looking around for no reason Dean can figure out. "She's really sweet. We've been watering her plants while she's away. She said she'd do the same for us."
"You gave her a key?" Dean frowns.
"Not yet."
"We'll check with the FBI first," Liam says with a little, lopsided smile.
Wait'll you have kids, smartass, Dean thinks.
"And Jimmy," Liz says. "Down the hall. So nice. Isn't he, Lee?"
Liam nods. "Helped me get the bookcase up here."
They're all talking at once then, Lizzie and Liam and Morgan. This is a deliberate maneuver, Dean thinks sometimes: if they make enough noise and create enough of a distraction, he'll forget the point he was trying to make. That annoys him for a minute, as it always does - and then he tries to understand where they're all coming from. This is Binghamton, after all, not Beirut. Shit does happen here, but it's mostly accidental. There's some deliberate crime now and then, yeah, but Liz is well-trained. Her mom and her aunt Lily taught her a bunch of self-defense stuff, not that girly self-awareness nonsense, but some serious takedown maneuvers. Really, Dean could feel sorry for anybody dumb enough to try to lay a hand on his kid without her permission.
He could. Ought to, really. She's no dummy. Neither is Liam, even though the kid works behind a desk and has never had to walk around with a gun stuck in the waistband of his jeans.
They start moving out the door, Liam first, then the two women.
"Dad," Liz says.
He shrugs, a little sheepishly, and damn, he hates when that happens.
"It's safe here," she says. "Really."
She waits for him, and when he reaches the door she wraps him in a hug and rests her head on his shoulder.
"Worry about you," he mutters.
"I know. But I'm fine. We're fine."
With her fingers twined in his, she leads him out into the hallway and moves him aside so Liam can close and lock the door. From where he's standing he can see that yes, three or four of the doors nearby are standing open. It's not a long hall; it's no more than fifty feet from end to end, and the kids' door is near the middle.
"Mrs. Hartley is here," Liz says, gesturing. "And that one, that's Terry and Dale. They have the cutest dogs. Down there -"
A guy in khakis and a polo shirt is watching them from the doorway at the far end of the hall. "Jim," Liam says, beckoning the guy to come closer. "Hey. This is Liz's mom and dad."
The guy's smile is bright and warm as he approaches. But it's not that that captures Dean's attention; it's the piercing blue of his eyes.
Eyes that seem to know…everything.
He greets Morgan first, shakes her hand, touches Lizzie and Liam lightly in lieu of a hello. Then he turns to Dean. Grasps Dean's hand. Looks into Dean's eyes with that electric blue gaze.
It's gonna be fine floods into Dean's mind. He's not sure why. It's loopy to think that something as simple as shaking hands with a mostly-gray-haired guy in khakis, a guy he's never met before (Has he?), would calm his fears. Make him start to believe that his fears are unfounded, that the cheap-ass lock on Lizzie and Liam's door doesn't matter. The lack of salt lines, wards and charms to protect the apartment doesn't matter.
But there's something…
"Do we know each other?" Dean asks, frowning.
Jimmy doesn't answer the question. Instead, he makes small talk with Morgan and Liz and Liam, until Liam points out that they need to go or they'll be late for their dinner reservation. Dean's attention is stuck on Jimmy the whole time, and when he begins to step away, clearing the path to the elevator, Dean asks again, "Do I -"
"It's possible," Jimmy says, and shrugs, as if to say I get around.
Dean walks with his family to the elevator, brow furrowed, and as Liam presses the call button Dean turns to look down the hall toward Jimmy's open doorway.
"What's -" he begins.
"Novak," Jimmy says. "My name is Jimmy Novak."
That name ought to mean something, Dean thinks. He's sure it ought to mean something. But hell - he's met a million people over the years. Maybe this is somebody he and Sammy helped. Maybe Dad helped the guy.
The elevator chimes and the door slides open. Dean shifts his attention there and watches his family board the car, then follows them in and presses the button marked L.
Jimmy Novak? he thinks.
Who…
"He's nice, huh?" Lizzie says.
"Yeah," Dean replies. "I guess."
The carpet in the lobby's kind of cheesy; so are the chairs and the upholstered bench that form a little seating area at the end opposite the glass-walled entrance to the building. But the lobby's flooded with late-afternoon sunlight, a warm amber glow that makes Dean think maybe the place isn't all that bad. It's clean. And the front entrance stays locked; you can't get in without a key.
And this is Binghamton. Not Beirut.
Maybe his kid is safe here. She's well-trained, after all. And she's got people looking out for her.
She's got a... he thinks, but the rest of the thought evaporates, and even though he tries, he can't retrieve it.
"We can hit Home Depot on the way back," Liam suggests.
"Yeah," Dean says. "Yeah. Okay."
But he's starting to think - for no reason he can explain, no reason at all - that they don't need to.
* * * * *