Title: Identity Theft Solutions
Author: Ivy
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: G
Genre: gen
Summary: All those credit cards Sam and Dean use? They must come from somewhere.
A/N: This is a little bit of crack that I probably spent more time formatting than writing. Blame
trakkie for goading me into writing it. Also - the names of the stores? They're real.
~*~
Edward Dunn flipped through his mail, walking back up his front driveway. He tossed the Bank of America envelope straight into the trash as he kicked the door shut. He didn't have an account with them.
~*~
He must have chucked three or four more Bank of America envelopes before one stopped him in his daily trek: PAYMENT PAST DUE. That he opened on his way to the study. Then dropped all the other mail all over the foyer when he saw the bill.
~*~
"Twenty thousand dollars?! How could I possibly have spent twenty thousand dollars in under a month?" Edward yelled at the customer service agent who had picked up the phone when he dialed the number on the bill. "You're damn right I'm not paying for it! It's not going on my credit rating either! I'm in the middle of buying a new house-you have to fix this now before it fucks my credit rating and I can't get a mortgage!"
Later on, when the yelling had subsided into a general sense of panic and the customer service rep had referred him to his manager who assured Edward that Bank of America had company policies to deal with identity theft and this would all be cleared up, Edward succumbed to a morbid curiosity to figure out who this free-loading wastrel who'd filled out a credit card application in his name could have been.
He unfolded the bill, a small stack of pages, thicker than any credit card bill he'd ever gotten, and looked down the list of charges.
SHOPRITE PEDRICKTOWN, NJ $62.13
EXXON PENNS GROVE, NJ $44.20
SHELL BALTIMORE, MD $38.56
GREENBRIER MOTEL LUMBERPORT, WV $35.00
Edward concluded two things from this: the jerk had a gas-guzzling tank of a car and no taste in motels. There were a bunch more charges tooling around West Virginia - gas stations, Wal-Mart's, grocery stores, motels with rates lower than anything you'd find on Orbitz.
Top of page two, though, the charges got more interesting:
JACK'S GUN AND BOW MARIANNA, WV $210.98
followed a half an hour later by:
MORRIS LIQUOR BECKLEY, WV $30.42
and then twelve hours after that:
VINTAGE AUTO JOHNSON CITY, TN $809.15
Oh, Edward thought. That's a bad combination. Whoever had stolen his card must've been a real nutjob. He could picture some tattooed guy in a cut-off leather vest with biceps like steel girders, flying through West Virginia in a Hummer, throwing back Johnny Walker, spinning a sawed-off shotgun like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2.
There were a few more gas stations and supermarkets and a lot of generic names that could be bars. But Edward's eyes kept stopping at the charges spread out every couple of lines:
COAL CREEK ARMORY, INC. KNOXVILLE, TN $75.80
ERNIE'S GUNS AND AMMO GREENEVILLE, TN $126.10
ACADEMY OF SELF PROTECTION JOELTON, TN $53.70
SECOND AMENDMENT FIREARMS FORT SMITH, AR $738.48
HUNTERS CHOICE INC. CONWAY, AR $320.04
What was this whacko doing with over a thousand dollars worth of weaponry? Starting World War III in the Ozarks?
He followed the locations of the charges on a map over the next few pages of the bill: the asshole went from Arkansas up through Missouri where he stuck around for a few days in some place called Chula, then over to Peoria, Illinois and right back across Missouri to Nebraska. What was he doing - recruiting for the cause? There didn't seem to be a pattern, just ping-ponging around America's breadbasket.
The last charge, though, was the highest. And the one that just made Edward's curiosity bubble over.
GRT PLAINS REGL MED CENT NORTH PLATTE, NE $14,891.90
Edward had never stayed in a hospital, knock on wood, and he was gainfully employed with full medical, so he had no idea what a hospital bill should look like. But it looked like the bastard had met a sticky end. Served him right. And what hospital took credit card, anyway?
~*~
A few days later, Edward pulled out the bill again. He just kept looking at that last charge. Had the dude bit the dust? Some kind of cosmic retribution? Maybe he'd been shot in a showdown with the FBI. Or wrecked that gas-guzzling Hummer.
He looked up the number for the Great Plains Regional Medical Center on google. "Hi," he said when it rang through to the receptionist. He'd never done anything like this before. His palms were sweating, his heart racing, and he felt a thrill at doing something he wasn't supposed to. "My name is, uh, Theodore Dunn. I think my … son … Edward was sent to your hospital a few weeks ago?" He thought that might be a bit weak, so he rushed on. "We're estranged-after his mother died, I just hit the bottle and he took off. I gave him some money and a credit card but I haven't heard from him in a few years." He thought suddenly that maybe she'd wonder how he knew about the hospital, then, if they hadn't spoken. Better to clarify. "I just get the bills. And I, uh, noticed a charge to you, and was just wondering…if he's alright?" He tried to make the last bit sound pathetic, but he thought have just sounded nervous.
"Well," the receptionist drawled out in a broad mid-Western accent. "I'm not really supposed to talk about these things without verification, but don't you worry none. Your boys are just fine. Your son Sam was mauled by a bear, but we fixed him up real nice. Such sweet boys."
Edward was a little stunned. "Boys?"
"Yeah, Edward and Sam. You know, I don't know what kind of water under the bridge you guys have got, but you should call them up. They looked like boys that need their Daddy."
"OK," Edward said, a little unsure. "I'll, um, thanks, I guess."
"No problem, honey. You just take care of your boys."
Edward hung up and looked at his phone. The picture of the Hell's Angel with a droopy handlebar mustache and a meaty paw clutched around Edward's credit card dissolved into a picture of two scrawny teenagers running scared. He didn't know what they were running from, or what the hell they needed with a small battalion of armaments, but he guessed it was OK that they used his credit to patch Sam up. Yeah, he thought. That was OK.
Read on AO3.