To the Metal: Chapter Two
Master Post
AN: So in this chapter, my apologies, we'll be fleshing out the last of Jo and Dean's thing. But we'll also be-much more subtly-edging into Sam and Dean. I hope you enjoy it.
I should mention that from here on, there will be no more explicit description of Dean having sex with girls. Cause that's not why you came here. Can't promise it won't be mentioned or alluded to, but further description isn't in the scope of this story. So now, moving steadily along…to the chapter!
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Dean woke up early the next morning, intent on getting some general upkeep done on the Impala during his day off. At some point during the day, Ash would be receiving the completed intel from the casing of the Aston Martin Vanquish, the Roadhouse crew's next target, but that was of little concern to Dean. Let Ash work out the kinks, Dean would happily just follow orders like a good little soldier. Tomorrow, he and Sam would be headed towards Aspen, Colorado, and the next target.
One good thing about having a copilot again: Dean no longer had to fly. When it was just him, he had no way to retrieve his car on long-distance heists, so he had to leave his baby behind and suck it up to travel by air. It wasn't so much that Dean was scared of flying…
No, okay, Dean was scared shitless of flying.
With a second body in the car, though, they could park the Impala about an hour out, outside of what Dean thought of as the danger zone of the heist-the points where they were most likely to run into interference from the police or, in more unfortunate instances, the owners of the car they were stealing. Then, on the way back, they could retrieve the Impala.
Back in the day, Dean would take the Impala back and Jo would drive the lifted car. Now, Dean was faced with a sinking realization that he was caught between a rock and a hard place. He didn't trust Sam with his baby, but the kid was too new to be trusted to keep his cool, to know what to do, hell, to even be trusted to realize what was happening if he was made. So Dean couldn't trust him to drive the stolen car back either. Fuck.
He pushed it from his mind as he got started on changing the oil. There was something therapeutic about the systematic, concrete process of working on a car. It was comfortable, practiced, but still required just enough attention no matter how many times Dean went through the motions to keep his mind occupied. Which is probably why he didn't hear Sam come out of the Roadhouse and take a seat on the front steps, didn't hear him open the cooler that Dean had placed there, out of range of the oil and grime of the car and the parking lot, didn't hear him take out a beer and open it. But after a few minutes, the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up as his hard-trained instincts began to alert him that he was being watched.
Finished draining the oil, he slid out from under the car quickly, eyes casting wildly about until they found the source of the unnerving feeling.
"Jeez, Sammy, make a noise why don't you." Dean stood up, schooling his pulse back down to normal.
"It's Sam." The younger man took a drink of his beer. "And I wasn't exactly sneaking around. Don't have the grace for that."
Dean sighed. "Yeah; gonna have to work on that."
Sam didn't appear to hear him. Dean leaned over the engine and started on replacing the oil filter and pouring in new oil. He leaned over the frame, his shirt riding up, and heard a sharp intake of breath. He spun around, searching for whatever had startled Sam, only to find him staring at the waistband of Dean's pants. Which yeah, was a little unnerving and…well, maybe flattering. Was it flattering if a guy checked him out? Part of him was a little weirded out by it but then again, it was always nice to know someone was into you, right? That is, until they got just creepy about it the way Sam was now.
Abruptly it clicked that Sam wasn't staring at his ass or his junk, but at the butt of the Colt that was tucked into the back of Dean's jeans. He was relieved. Of course he was. Why wouldn't he be?
"You don't actually use that thing, do you?" The look in Sam's eyes when he asked the question was so nerve-wracked that Dean almost felt pity for the kid. Another part of him also sort of wanted to laugh, because the question would have been twenty times funnier if he hadn't realized that Sam was staring at the gun. Dean didn't answer, just went back to work under the hood. "Is it…I mean, is it really loaded?" Sam was hoping it was for shock value, as a threat.
Dean kind of hated to disappoint him, but well… "I steal millions of dollars worth of cars for a living, Sammy." His tone was harsh, clipped, answering the question clearly without spelling it out.
"Sam," the younger man corrected automatically. He chewed his lip, turning the answer over in his head for a moment before speaking again. "Have you ever used it?" Have you ever shot someone, he meant, and he and Dean both knew it.
Dean finally lost it. He slammed the hood of the Impala down with a harsh bang. "Not talking about that. That's one of those questions you don't just ask a guy." He wiped his grease-covered hands on an old rag, taking a few calming breaths before turning around to face him. "What exactly did you think we were doing here? What was going through your head when you decided to sign up for this? You think this is some sort of sunshine and rainbows summer camp? We'll have some fun, you'll learn a snazzy new skill, make best friends for life? Wake up, Sammy! We're all felons. Just a matter of time."
Sam looked surprised by Dean's outburst and the older man gritted his teeth. How the fuck could that be surprising to the kid?
"The car we're stealing day after tomorrow," Dean continued, locking eyes with Sam, "it's worth nearly three hundred thousand dollars. You know who has the kind of money for a car like that? Powerful people. And powerful people have powerful security. If you can't bring yourself to pull the trigger, I guarantee you you'll find yourself with a bullet in your pretty little head before the year's up."
It wasn't something that Dean liked to think about, the times he had pulled the trigger. Sure, he'd never aimed for the head, or even center-of-mass. This wasn't an action movie. Real life, you wing a guy or tear a bit of flesh from the back of his leg, that guy's not going anywhere. To disable, that was all Dean shot for. But Sam needed to understand the gravity of what he had gotten himself into.
Not that he could get out now. The kid was in it deep; knew too many big players, could name too many names. So really, it was just a matter of Sam coming to terms with what he needed to to survive.
The silence between them was heavy, the anxiety radiating off of Sam so potent that Dean could almost swear he could taste it.
Dean furrowed his brow. "Why're you here, kid?"
Sam looked up, startled, but didn't seem to know how to answer.
"Seriously. Ash said you got a full ride to some Ivy League college?" Dean sat down opposite Sam, reached into the cooler for another beer. "Why the fuck would you choose this?"
"Why did you?" Sam countered.
A muscle in Dean's jaw twitched, his eyes boring into Sam's. It was a moment before he could release enough tension from his jaw to open his mouth.
"None of your goddamned business, Sammy. That's why."
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"Aww…" Jo cooed when Dean slammed the door behind him, leaving Sam sitting stunned on the porch. She didn't look up from the lemon she was slicing. "What's the matter, Dean. Having trouble playing nice with the new boy?"
"Jo, shut the fuck up for a minute." There was no fight in Dean's voice. He said it matter-of-factly.
The blonde woman rolled her eyes and finished slicing the lemon before whipping the knife around in her palm and stabbing it into the cutting board. As she scooped the slices into a container to store in the beer cooler, she continued. "Suck it up, Dean. The job's more important than your feelings about being saddled with a greenie."
"Yeah? Funny, I don't see Becky around anymore." It was a low blow and Dean half-wished he could take it back. Only half, though, because fuck it was true and Jo was being a hypocrite.
Okay, so Dean was baiting her. Didn't make it any less true. Becky was a girl who…well, who was a little hard to describe. Pamela had sent her to them, impressed by her sheer enthusiasm. Or, that's what Dean had to figure, because the girl hardly had two brain cells floating around in her head. She had been obsessed with the idea of organized crime-the glamorous mafia film type. Which wasn't really the gritty reality they had been dealing with. Jo had hated her immediately, and seemed to take it as a personal insult when Dean had fucked Becky after a heist. To Dean, she was a warm body in the right place at the right time. To Jo, she was a personal affront that Dean had put on equal ground with her. It was the closest he thought Jo had ever been to being jealous when she was with Dean, and it wasn't even jealousy, per se. Needless to say, Becky hadn't lasted long at the Roadhouse. Dean had heard that she was working the circuit with a crew out in California, but he couldn't be absolutely sure. It wasn't like he had kept in touch with her, after all.
Jo pulled the knife from the cutting board and whipped it around to point at Dean; not as though she would stab him, but to punctuate a point. "You keep her whore name out of this establishment, Winchester."
"Hey, Jo, you wanna just hate-fuck it out like old times or do you wanna shut the fuck up?"
"Sure, you mind Ash joining? Developing a little thing for him? It's the mullet, right?" Jo's voice was taunting, laced with venom.
They had been like this since they were kids. Best friends, sure, but ready to fight it out at the drop of a hat if one of them needed it.
Dean slumped onto the bar stool across from her. She rolled her eyes and handed him a lemon slice. It was one of those weird things you learned about people when you lived with them, spent every waking moment with them, shared something as deep as the systematic robbery of high-dollar assets; but yeah, Dean loved lemons. Just about the only fruit that he would eat without it being in a pie. Although of course if it was in a pie, all the better.
"Kid's driving me crazy, Jo," he muttered once the sharp taste had subsided. She set a rocks glass and a bottle of Jack in front of him and he sloshed some into the glass. "Can't even come to terms with pulling a trigger; how am I supposed to trust him on a job?"
"It's hard the first time." When Dean snorted, she raised her eyebrow. "What, was it that easy for you?"
"Yeah." And it had been. It had been easy as breathing, because the fucker he shot had been leveling his own aim at Jo. They both knew this, and as the memory resurfaced for Jo it hung thick in the air between them.
"Well," she finally said, a small smile playing at her lips. "When it's important, it'll be easy for him too."
Dean scoffed. But he hoped she was right.
"I'll tell you one thing, though." Jo went back to storing the lemon slices, her long hair falling in a curtain around her face. "If it were me, and you threw that attitude at me when we first met? I'd've let your ass get shot."
Dean laughed. "I did throw this attitude at you when we first met."
Jo shrugged. "Yeah, but it was a few years before anyone tried to shoot you in front of me. Small miracles."
Dean finished his drink while Jo busied herself prepping the bar for the night's business, humming CCR under her breath.
Moments like that baffled him; cause really, Jo was everything he should want. If he were to make a list in his head, build the woman he was looking for, it was Jo, through and through. But they didn't work like that. He couldn't feel like that about her. He tried, God he had tried like hell. So why couldn't he?
He told himself she simply wasn't his. She was meant for Ash, and it was okay because that was how it was supposed to be. Dean was comfortable letting her go, uncomfortable taking more of her, because she wasn't supposed to be his. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, in depths he hadn't allowed himself near in years, he knew that wasn't the whole truth. But it was still true, and that was enough.
"Guess I should go talk to him." He stood up, shoving his hands in his pockets and preparing to head back outside. Jo made a fair point; if he didn't give the kid some reason to want to cover his ass, he probably wouldn't. While Dean accepted that he was probably going to die doing this one day, he wasn't exactly trying to rush into doing it that week.
He opened the door and stepped out as Jo's clear voice filtered out after him, singing along with John Fogerty.
"Got myself arrested, wound me up in jail… Richmond 'bout to blow up, communication failed… If you see the answer, now's the time to say." Her voice was strong and sweet, and if Dean ever needed one last thing to finally break with her, to finally let go of the what ifs of him and Jo, it was that she had never sounded like that before Ash. Never with him. "All I want, all I want is to get you down to pray."
If Dean had been a poetic guy, the door that swung shut and cut off her voice, leaving him alone with Sam, would have seemed like a metaphor.
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The first ten minutes out on the porch were long ones, and dead quiet. Dean wasn't much of a guy for words; witty and charming until the situation got serious and he became quiet and snappy. It was Sam, much to Dean's surprise, who spoke first.
"Her name was Marin."
Dean cocked an eyebrow and Sam sighed, standing up and leaning against the porch's support beam as he stared out over the parking lot, avoiding Dean's gaze.
"The reason I left school. Why I'm here now. Her name was Marin." And there was something in his voice, in the slight heaviness on the word was, that told Dean what he needed to know about the current status of Marin.
Dean sighed, leaning back against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets, his posture and the direction of his gaze a perfect copy of Sam's. They stared out over the dusty highway, waiting on…something. Dean wasn't sure what Sam was waiting for.
"Girlfriend?" he finally prompted.
Sam shook his shaggy head. "Sister. There were three of us."
Was. Were. There was a lot of past tense in the younger man's life.
"Adam was older than me. He'd be…twenty-two now. But he died back when we were in high school, me and Marin. She was a year younger than me, so we were closer in age, you know. But she was always closer to Adam, and she took it really hard." Sam paused again, swallowing hard. "I'd hear her, you know, in her room, and she'd be talking to him. After he died, I mean. I should've said something but…normal people see lost loved ones all the time in different ways, right? I figured she was just grieving, trying to feel like she was still close to him…"
"You don't have to-" Dean started but Sam shook his head hard.
"If you're going to have to…mentor me, or whatever, I guess you should know what I'm coming from." He scrubbed his hand over his face, over his jaw, his eyes wide as though to stave off tears and then he sighed. "I went off to college, and for awhile everything was okay, I guess or…it seemed okay. But I guess she just got worse. I got the call, sitting in an English lecture, and I almost didn't answer it but I always answer calls from my hometown, always since Adam, in case it's an emergency, you know? And it was." He looked like he was searching for the words to explain what he had been told, the way people do in times of tragedy, when they want to protect the reputations of the dead, when that's all they have left to offer to the memories of their loved ones. But like most, he came up short, because how else do you say it, and his next words were blunt. "Marin started a fire. And she and my parents all burned to death."
Dean sighed, his brow furrowing. His stomach had sunk unpleasantly to his knees, guilt for his harsh assessment of Sam flowing through him, but he was still puzzled. Still didn't understand what it had to do with Sam being at the Roadhouse. "I'm sorry, Sammy."
"Sam." The correction was short, sharp. "Only Marin ever got to call me Sammy." He dragged in a slow breath. "So I left Stanford. Couldn't do it anymore. If I hadn't gone in the first place, maybe they'd still be… Anyway, gotta pay the bills, right? And my roommate, Garth, he was a wheelman for Pamela, on a few jobs. Would stay out for a few days, wouldn't see hide or hair of him, and he'd turn back up, yammering about a job and hot tubs after a long days work and the guy always had money, despite never seeming to care about a schedule or a boss or whatever. So he introduced me to Pamela and…well, here I am, I guess." He finished the story lamely, with a shrug.
Dean was quiet as he turned this information over in his head for a moment. Finally he spoke, slowly as though afraid of sending Sam running. "If you had been there, you would've done anything to protect them?"
Sam didn't seem like he could speak. He just nodded. Dean was already bracing himself for the possibility that Sam would swing on him. Hell, he'd swing on someone if they asked him the question he was about to ask.
"If it would've saved your parents…if it would've somehow saved Marin… Would you have shot her? If it came to it, would you pull the trigger?"
Sam's eyes snapped to his, narrowing. "Fuck you, Dean."
"I'm serious, Sam-" He stopped himself before the full utterance of Sammy could slip past his lips. Why did his mind want to call him Sammy so badly?
There was tense silence as Sam glared at him, his muscles taut and his fists balled up at his sides.
Dean sighed. "You can swing if you want, man, but if you're going to ride with me, I need to know. And I need you to tell me the truth."
Sam swallowed hard. "Yes."
"You would?" Dean raised an eyebrow. "You sure about that? You'd shoot your little sister to stop her from torching the place?"
"Not to kill…but yeah." Dean nodded.
"All I needed to know, Sammy."
And then Sam did punch him.
X
"Fuck…" Dean was dazed. He leaned over and spit, blood and saliva splattering the dirt beside the porch steps. "I can't believe the kid fucking punched me."
Jo let out an exasperated noise. "Of course he punched you, dumbass."
She forced his head back again and Dean nearly gagged as blood began to trickle down the back of his throat from his nose. Jo stuffed something up his nose and on reflex he reached up to pull it out, peering at it blearily for a second before his eyes went wide and he flung it to the ground.
"Gross, Jo!" He stared from the tampon to Jo and then back again a few times, only to find her digging in the first aid kit and opening another one.
"It looks stupid as shit, I know, but it works. Trust me, you're not going to turn into a girl from having a tampon in your nose, settle down." She tilted his head back again, gentler this time. "Anyway, I'd think this is a good thing."
"A good thing?" Dean scoffed, sounding like he had a mild cold as a result of the obstruction in his nose.
Jo shrugged and set to work cleaning up his face and neck. "Well, you know he'll do what he needs to do now. And that hurting someone isn't a hard limit for him."
Dean chuckled. "Who taught you the phrase 'hard limit'?"
She rolled her eyes. "Shut up." Finished with fixing him up as well as she could, she checked his nose one last time and, satisfied that it wasn't broken, started to pack up the first aid kit. "Anyway, you're not going to be charming your way anywhere near that car looking like a run-of-the-mill street brawler, so you need to be nice to him. He might be your only shot at the Vanquish now."
Dean glowered, reaching into the cooler for a beer. Great. So now he had to depend on Sam even more. Fucking fantastic. He just hoped the day of the heist, less than forty hours away now, wasn't going to be his last one on earth. And hell, at least the kid could pack a punch when he wanted to.
Apparently, Sammy-Sam-was just full of surprises.
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AN: So…this wasn't the way I originally planned for the chapter to end but it just sort of flowed out organically and I wound up pretty pleased with it.
Next chapter: an awkward car drive, a high-octane heist, and an intense getaway. I have a plan I think you guys are gonna like. ;)
I'd love to hear from you guys! I swear I don't bite.
Until next time!
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Continue to Chapter Two
(link will become active when chapter is available)