SPN Fanfic--On My Knees: Epilogue (Dean/Sam)
Epilogue
He’s up to his elbows in slick engine grease when he hears the car pull up in front of the house. The door opens, releasing a wave of female laughter that would make any sane person nervous. A second later, the door’s slamming shut again, and Dean wriggles out from under the Impala in time to wave his thanks as Mrs. Kowoski drives off.
At the base of the drive, Ryan takes a second to twist her blond hair back into a ponytail before hefting her backpack again. She strolls up and leans against the side of the car. Even after spending all day working on cars at the garage, it still feels good to have the Impala’s grease under his nails.
“Well?” Ryan says when Dean does nothing but arch a brow at her.
“Well, what?” Dean asks.
“Aren't you gonna ask how my first day of high school was?”
Dean mops his forehead with the back of his wrist, then reaches for the can of root beer sweating circles on the pavement.
“Uh uh,” he says, swigs long and deep.
“Why not?” she demands, and he has to duck his head, feign interest in a speck of grease under his thumbnail to hide his smirk.
“Because my kid just had her first day of high school and I feel old enough already, okay? I'm not gonna be the parent who's all, ‘How was school today?’ on top of it.”
Ryan grins, and Dean’s struck by how, well, pretty she is. Something turns over in his stomach.
“School was fine. Do you wanna hear about my classes?”
He smirks and reaches into the cooler for another root beer, pops the top and hands it over.
“Okay, but I didn't ask,” he says just to be clear, before lowering himself to the curb at the edge of the yard. His knee never used to creak when he did that, but he figures, all the abuse his and Sam’s bodies have taken over the years, it’s a wonder anything still works the way it was meant to.
Ryan smothers her own grin with a sip of soda and sits on the curb beside him.
“Later, okay? Can I talk to you about something first?”
“Oh, Christ. Are you in trouble? Do I gotta go for a parent-teacher conference or something?”
“When have I ever gotten in trouble at school?”
He taps his fist gently against her shoulder.
“Tom Watts ringing any bells there, slugger?”
“Tom Watts was a racist and a homophobe. And I was nine. Anyway, he totally deserved to get punched.”
“No argument here.”
“When have I gotten in trouble since then?”
“Never. But I keep hopin’ you’re gonna live up to my family name. Do the Winchesters proud.”
Ryan blinks and before she can stop it a tiny frown wrinkles her forehead.
Dean reaches out to flick her on the arm.
“I’m kidding.”
“I know,” she says with just a hint of smartass, and Dean hides a smirk. She may not be a Winchester by birth, but that tone is all Sam.
“I thought you wanted to talk to me about something,” he reminds her.
“I did.” She raises her face and offers Dean her most innocent-seeming smile. “So there's a party Friday night, and I really want to go.”
“I knew it.”
He snaps his fingers.
“Knew what?” she demands.
“Just outta curiosity, are there gonna be boys at this party of yours?”
“No, Dean. It’s a lesbian party.”
He stares a good few seconds until she rolls her eyes.
“Yes, there will be boys. But they’re all really sweet and totally respectful-” She breaks off to glare. “Stop laughing at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you, Ry. Just-teenage boys definitely aren’t sweet. And sometimes they’re not even respectful.”
She sighs long-sufferingly, another Sam-erism. “Will you think about it?”
“Yeah, I'm thinking. And, yeah, uh, no.”
“State your objections,” she says, arms folding.
“Okay, Sam. Let’s see. How ‘bout we start with the part where you’re fourteen years old with long blond hair? Oh yeah, and you own a miniskirt.”
“That's sexist.”
“I knew you were gonna say that,” he grumbles. “I'll talk it over with Sam, okay?”
She nods like it’s settled but tugs her lower lip between her teeth, a sure indicator that something’s still bugging her.
“Speaking of Sam, where is he? Do you think he’ll be home soon?”
“What's wrong, you need help with your homework? Geometry trouble?”
“No, and I wouldn't ask Sam for help with geometry anyway. Even you're better at math than he is.”
“Thanks for that.” He leans back, legs stretching out before him. “Was there something else you wanted to talk about?” he asks casually.
He doesn’t quite look at her when he says it.
“Yeah.”
“You wanna wait for Sam?”
“It's okay,” she shrugs. “I'd rather talk to you guys separately.”
Dean hides a smile with his soda can.
“You're not supposed to tell us your divide and conquer plans. It works better when you go behind our backs.”
“Do you wanna sit down?” she blurts out.
Dean raises a brow, gestures at the curb beneath them.
“Oh, right.” She blushes. “I may have rehearsed this a little.”
He watches her hunch forward, stretching her hands to touch her toes. She still pushes her face into his shoulder when they watch scary movies. He wonders how many years of that he’s got left.
“So my body's been going through some changes lately.”
Dean feels his face heat on top of all the sun he’s gotten that day. He opens his mouth, then lets it snap shut again.
“I thought the, uh, change, happened a year ago.”
“It did. This is . . . I don't know, residual, I guess. I've been remembering things from when I was a kid.”
“Oh?” His voice comes out rougher than he intends, a cold, greasy ball of fear just starting to rotate in his belly. “What kind of things?”
He follows her gaze across the street. The Barragers’ beagle is yapping like crazy as the four-year old chases it around the yard.
“Things I haven’t thought about in a long time. Since I’ve been with you and Sam. I remember my mom making spaghetti sauce from scratch. Chopping garlic and rolling ground beef into meatballs. I remember my dad had a beard, and that once he took me swimming in a river and it was cold, the water was so cold.”
Dean wages a brief internal debate, and he isn’t sure if he won or lost when he casually slings an arm over her shoulders, squeezes a little. With something like relief, he feels her sink into him.
“Do you remember what happened to them?” he asks hesitantly. “Your parents.”
She shakes her head jerkily.
“I tried but . . . there’s just this big white blur around that night. I can’t remember anything.”
Dean feels gratitude toward someone he isn’t even sure he believes in roll over him in cool waves. If he could ask for anything, it would be that she go the rest of her life without remembering that particular truth.
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” he ventures. “Ask me, I bet your mom and dad would want you to remember the good times-spaghetti sauce and swimming in the river-and not the night they died.”
“I guess. I remember being with her, too. The demon that took me. Just snippets,” she added, answering his unspoken question. “Like, having to sit very still while she walked around me. Talking in a language I didn’t understand. And I remember her saying she was my mother and telling me to drink something that tasted really bad. Crying because I didn’t want to. I remember being in this room that felt big and open. I remember being scared.”
She doesn’t say anything for a while, and Dean doesn’t push. After a few minutes, she pulls away, turning to meet his eye.
“I also started to remember those first few weeks after you and Sam found me.”
His face is hot, sweat dripping down from the ends of his hair, camping out in his pores. He turns his gaze back to the Barragers’ yard where Mavis the Beagle is now chasing the four-year old.
“Snippets again?” he asks dully.
“I know you're brothers,” she says, her voice soft but clear enough; he has to ask anyway.
“What did you say?” His voice doesn’t waver, but it takes all his effort to keep it steady.
“You and Sam. I know.”
“I dunno what you think you remember, Ryan, but-”
“Dean, just cut the shit, okay?”
“Don’t say ‘shit’,” he says, and that’s stupid, so stupid lecturing her for cussing when he . . . when he and Sam-
“I’m not angry, okay? Yeah, it was weird at first, but I’m not even that freaked out anymore. I know you haven’t told me everything about your lives pre the awesomeness that is me, but I get it. Things were bad. Sometimes really bad.”
“Ryan,” he croaks, can’t go on.
“I’m mostly just upset that you guys lied to me. But I guess I understand why you did, at least at first. Still, I’m fourteen now, I’m starting my freshman year of high school. I’m old enough that you guys could have told me.”
“When, Ryan?” Now that he’s found his voice, he wants to yell or at the very least be indignant. “When exactly should we have told you? When you were ten? Twelve? When’s the right time to find out your two gay guardians also happen to be brothers?”
“I was hoping you trusted me more than that,” she says, pulling a hurt face that always scores her points.
Dean’s not buying it.
“It’s illegal, Ryan. In, oh yeah, every country ever.”
“And we never do illegal things in this family.”
Sarcasm. Great. Where the hell is Sam?
“We do illegal things ‘cause it lets us help people. Mostly. But this, what Sam and I . . . this ain’t about helping people. Half the time, I can’t even be sure we’re not hurting anyone, least of all you.”
“I think I turned out okay. You and Sam forget that I’m a freak too.” She reaches under her collar and tugs out the amulet she still wears on a chain, even though Sam is pretty sure she no longer needs it, hasn’t for awhile. “I’d probably be in a mental institution if it wasn’t for you guys. But you didn’t have to keep me. You could have dropped me off at the closest police station and bailed.
“Yeah, well, we thought you’d be better at math. Figured we could take you to Vegas or something.”
“You didn’t have to keep me,” she says again, her voice soft like she’s not really joking around anymore.
“Yeah, well, we got kind of attached.”
“Me too.”
“Ryan. Jesus.” He stands on shaking knees, scrubbing his face with both hands.
Ryan gets to her feet too, smoothing curb-dust from the seat of her pants. She grabs his arms at the wrists and tugs them down by his sides.
“Nothing has to change, okay? I’m going to talk to Sam, too, because I want him to know I know, and that I’m not gonna freak. But I won’t tell another soul. I promise.” She stares at him, and her eyes are the same wide innocent brown as they were when she was seven.
“Do you think we should hug now?” she asks, mouth serious but eyes lighting with humor.
Dean tells her to go do her damn homework.
---
He waits for Sam on the back porch-just a slab of concrete overlooking a square of underwatered lawn that separates their house from the Freemans’. It isn’t much-two bedrooms and a bath, living room and kitchen-but it represents three years of hard work (some of it honest) and a lot of creative legal finagling. It means something to be able to give Ryan this-a real home-even if it took till she was ten to do it. They’ve been here four years now, four good years, and Dean hasn’t taken a single damn day for granted.
Dean’s still hoping that they’ll have that sun porch one day, a place in the woods. He likes the idea of being so deep into Nowhere that no one can find them. So far out that, if he wants, he can lay Sam down on a blanket in the backyard; make him scream so hard he’d wake the neighbors, if they had any. Of course those things may have to wait until Ryan is in college, which is so far away it’s not even worth thinking about. Dean doesn’t think about it very often.
He hears the creak of the screen door opening at his back, the soft snick of it closing again. He feels Sam’s presence before his brother joins him on the step. If Dean were turned blind and deaf-and there had been that one curse a few years back-he’s pretty sure he could recognize Sam by smell alone: laundry soap and Sam’s office, coconut shampoo and the Oreos he and Ryan ate by the package.
Without looking over, Dean reaches for the second glass he brought out here with him, passes it to Sam.
“Whiskey? What for?”
Now Dean does turn to look, meets Sam’s slightly bemused gaze.
“She didn’t talk to you?” Dean asks, brow arching.
Sam nods knowingly.
“No, she did. Just . . . I’ve known for a while. Knew that she knew, I mean.”
“How exactly did you . . .?” He lets the question trail off, realizing the answer. “So you two are still joined at the psychic, I take it.”
“Nah, not really. It’s not like I know what she’s doing at every moment.”
“That’s too bad,” Dean says, and at Sam’s questioning gaze, “Woulda been useful in a couple years when she starts dating.”
Sam laughs, and leans over to bump Dean’s shoulder with his. Through an open window, Dean can hear Ryan chattering away on her cell phone, the words merging into a happy indistinct drone.
“I don’t know about you, man, but I don’t wanna know what she’s doing every second.” Sam reaches around Dean to sit his half-drunk glass on the porch. Seconds later, Dean feels a hand, warm and Sam-big, ruck up his shirt, rub gentle circles over his lower back.
In this moment, Dean’s biggest complaints are the mosquitoes drinking at his ankles and a teenage girl running up his cell phone bill. He’s disgustingly lucky, and he refuses to let himself forget it, ever.
“So how’d you know, then?” Dean says when he could focus enough to recall the thread of conversation.
“I could just tell,” Sam says shrugging. “We may not be psychically joined anymore, but she and I still have a lot in common.”
“Like Lilith for example?”
“More than Lilith.”
Sam’s hand stills and Dean waits a beat, makes a coughing sound in the back of his throat. Sam laughs and resumes rubbing out knots.
Dean’s reaching around to lift the rest of Sam’s drink when he heard the creak of the door opening again. The instinct to yank Sam’s hand from under his shirt is still there but fainter now, like a paling memory. They both turn.
“Are you guys being gross?” Ryan demands, then flushes pink under the porch light. “Not that-I mean, I do think it’s gross, but only because you’re like my parents. Ew. But this girl at school-Madeline? She’s captain of the JV soccer team. She thinks you’re both really cute and wants to sleep over next weekend. Can she?”
Sam laughs and pulls his hand out from under Dean’s shirt.
“It’s still this week, Ry. Ask us again closer to the fact.”
“Okay.” She turns a severe gaze to Dean. “Did you talk to him about the party?”
“What? Oh, right. Yeah, no.” He wonders if he’s old enough for memory loss to start kicking in. At least his hair is still totally awesome, he thinks, running a hand over his head.
“No you didn’t talk to him, or no I can’t go?” she asks, hopping from foot to foot. Barefoot and wearing Hello, Kitty shorts, one of his old t-shirts with a rip in the hem, she looks almost like a kid again. Not, Jesus, like the young woman she’s becoming.
“What party?” Sam asks, and Dean stretches his arms behind his back while Ryan explains about somebody’s birthday or bat mitzvah or coronation; he was starting to fade.
“What do you think?” Sam asks, elbowing Dean in the ribs and flashing a look that means, It’s okay with me. Dean has the feeling that Ry is smart enough to pick up on their nonverbal cues by now, but she’s also wise enough not to let on that she can.
“No eloping to Vegas, that’s just tacky,” Dean orders around a yawn. “And don’t drink anything anybody else pours you.”
“Dean,” Sam coughs, giving him another look entirely.
“And no drinking,” Dean add quickly.
“Thank you, thank you, you guys are the best!” she says all in one breath.
She goes back inside, the screen door clattering closed behind her.
“We’re gonna have to really talk to her about drinking soon,” Sam says with a sigh. “And other stuff.”
“Yeah, lemme know how that goes,” Dean jokes, raising his hand to stifle another yawn.
“It’s like nine thirty,” Sam says, shaking his head in mock disgust. “How old are you?”
“Bitch, I been up since six.”
Sam grins.
“Wanna go inside? See if I can find some way of keeping you awake for the next hour or so?”
Dean smirks, and shifts around on the step so theirs shoulders touch once again.
“In a minute. ‘S kinda nice here. Let’s enjoy it.”
END