SPN FIC: The Many Deaths of the Winchester Brothers
Title: The Many Deaths of the Winchester Brothers
Characters: Dean, Lisa, Sam (mentioned)
Word count: 3,500
Summary: Coda to 5.22. Dean is having a rough time adjusting to civilian life. I know, I'm late to the party.
Warnings: Angst. Dean!POV, drunk!Dean!POV
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox.
Notes: So, I work in Battle Creek, MI and this seriously jumped into my head on the first day of work and wouldn't leave even though I begged it to. Also, despite my crazy love for the novel and my firm belief that a crossover between it and SPN is just begging to be written, this is not a crossover with The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers though I definitely stole the title. And in conclusion, a round of thanks must be given to nwspaprtaxis for her help in brainstorming and keeping Dean in character through all the drunken blackouts.
Those you’ve pained
May carry that still with them
All the same
They whisper: “All forgiven.”
Still your heart says
The shadows bring the starlight
And everything you’ve ever been is still there in the dark night
It’s mid-summer and Sam has been dead for just over three months. Dean didn’t move off of the sofa for a week after Lisa put an end to the pool-hustling and the poker-games and the stumbling-in-at-four-AM-reeking-of-whiskey-and-cigar-smoke.
Most of the emergency cash is gone. Dean sold two knives from the arsenal at a pawn shop. They weren’t important. Dean doesn’t remember where they got them, doesn’t remember the last time they were used. They aren’t silver, they’re just sharp. He gets a decent price for them. Dean won’t use any of the credit cards. He doesn’t think they’re good anymore. The last set, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty (fuck you, Sam) are tucked in the pocket of Sam’s duffel where Dean knows he won’t go searching for them.
He spends Monday standing with a dozen guys at the public works office on McCamry, next to the skating rink. He waits until lunch and goes to McDonald’s with a guy named Phil who was laid off twice last year. Dean sticks to the dollar menu and when they get back to the works building, the line looks like it doubled. Phil shrugs and makes himself comfortable against the brick wall, bums a Camel from a tall chick with purple hair and a lip ring. Dean finds a bar two blocks over and decides to empty his wallet.
It’s late now, well after Lisa should be home from work. Dean’s phone rings steadily until he finally thumbs it off. He wonders how many shots of courage it will take for him to unlock the Impala’s trunk and go digging for Dean Moriarty’s Amex card. He thinks there’s enough cash left in his wallet for a tank of gas. If he fills up, he can be in Chicago in just under three hours. He can disappear into the crowd and maybe it won’t be heroic, maybe it won’t save the world, but maybe it’s just…better.
Dean can’t find a real job. Maybe he was never meant to have one.
Dean pulls a few more bills out of his wallet. It’s stiff and new, creaks when he opens it and he isn’t sure if he likes it or not. Lisa surprised him with it after their first date thing. They went to the Denny’s near the Sturgis on-ramp. They had pancakes and Dean couldn’t bring himself to swallow the bacon on his plate. It felt like that first time in a diner with Sam after he clawed his way out of the earth and the way the bacon smelled reminded him too much of the way muscle and tendon simmer in sulfur and he threw up in the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and made up some shit about having a fussy stomach. He pulled out his wallet to pay for the half-eaten meal and Lisa said, “Wow, how old is that wallet, Dean? You have it since you were thirteen?”
Dean said, “Sixteen,” and didn’t elaborate about how Sam jacked it from a Menard’s when Dean passed his driver’s test the first time around, using his real name and his real social security number, while they were hunkered down in Kansas for a week in February. Dean didn’t tell Dad that he did it. He skipped school and took a bus to the testing center. A few weeks later they were in Michigan and Sam flung it at him with a shit-eating grin on his face, the wallet, later, in the hotel, when Dad went out with Jack and Jose. He said he lifted it from the display case while he and Dad were loading up on rock salt. He said Dean needed a place to put his license now. His real one. Dean told him not to be a fucking girl, but nice job on the shoplifting, and Sam grinned because he was twelve and short and a little chubby and Dean was sixteen and banging college girls (ok, more like girl, singular, and she was a freshman at Kent State and a little homely, but it totally counted and when Dean told the story, she was an Ohio State cheerleader) and so cool.
He got the wallet in Oshtemo.
Oshtemo. Lake monster. 1995.
They aren’t far from Oshtemo. It’s on the west side of Kalamazoo. It’s the last cluster of shops and shit before the rolling apple orchards, the berry farms, then the sandy coastline of Lake Michigan. Sam was pissed because Dad said they could spend the day at the beach after they ganked the lake monster, but then there was a phone call from Uncle Bobby and a coven of witches in Mayfield, Kentucky and Dad went to some bar and said to be ready to go in the morning. Dean waggled his real ID in Sam’s face and told him to get in the fucking car if he wanted to go to the beach. He used his fake ID (the Delaware one) to buy a six-pack at the Meijer up the highway and they rolled into South Haven just after midnight, sat on the lighthouse pier and chucked their empties into the lake. Sam fell asleep in shotgun, drooling on the front seat, small enough to curl up on the bench then. He had one beer. Dean had two and threw the other three into the water below, full and all, because he wasn’t about to let John have them.
There’s a piano bar in Kalamazoo that Lisa keeps saying she wants to go to, but Dean only wants to go if he can smile and laugh and foot the bill and he looked the place up online and it looks pricey for Michigan. Pricey for a Winchester.
And he doesn’t really smile anymore. He’s too aware of the way his skin stretches, and even though it’s not unpleasant, not really, he thinks about Alastair and the clamps and the knives and the way his lips flopped after Alastair cut the corners of his mouth, said he didn’t smile enough, and he had such a pretty smile.
When he thinks about the corners of his lips, he thinks about the corners of Sam’s and how Sam used to hoard jars of Carmex in his coat pockets when they went north because he was prone to cold sores and he couldn’t stand when the corners of his lips swelled up and hurt and went raw in the cold air.
He remembers that Alastair was trained by Lucifer. “I pressed myself against the cage and listened to His words,” Alastair purred into his ear, all hot breath and pressure and something wicked this way coming-Dean almost vomits on the glossy surface of the counter.
Lisa bought the new wallet and it’s nicer than the one Sam stole from Menard’s, even when it was new. Dean keeps the old one in the top drawer of the nightstand and the only flaw in his plan to run away to Chicago is that he’ll have to leave the duct-taped wallet behind. He rationalizes that he can come back for it later, when he gets his shit together. He can break in when Lisa is at the studio and Ben is at school and he can grab it and leave and go back to doing whatever he’s doing at that point in his life, later, when he has his shit together, yeah, when he knows how to navigate around the hole in his soul.
“Fuck you, Sam.” Dean shakes a ten at the bartender. She’s hot, but he’s not, not tonight, and she gives him one of those looks that Dean knows is usually saved for the creepy middle-management professional, balding at thirty, desperate for someone to suck his dick, but just sad enough, just polite enough, to avoid being turned over to the bouncer.
She brings him a fresh glass, slams it down on the counter and pours the cheapest booze the place has. She quips, “I really shouldn’t be serving you anymore. This is it, okay?”
“Whatever.”
Maybe Chicago is out. Dean is fairly certain he can’t drive. Of course, that also means he can’t go back to Lisa’s either. Not without calling in for backup. He fingers the edge of his cell phone, considers calling Lisa, but he can’t do this. He can’t do this tonight and he won’t be able to do it tomorrow. It’s been three months and he’s a broke drunk at a shitty bar in the middle of Battle Creek, Michigan.
“What’d you think was gonna happen, Sam?” Dean mutters to his glass and decides that he doesn’t care about promises because fuck you, Sam. And fuck you, Dad, while we’re at it because what the hell is up with his dying relatives forcing him into stupid promises anyway?
A small voice in the back of his head, one that sounds suspiciously like his dead brother (and that’s just greeeeeaaaat) takes offence to the comparison of himself and one John Winchester. “Well, fuck you, Sam. You always did take after him.”
“Dean?”
Dean blinks hard and looks over his shoulder, groaning, because of course Lisa found him, of course she did, and now dying in a fiery wreck along Rt. 94, well on his way to Chicago, is out. She’s standing there in yoga pants and a faded Pink Floyd t-shirt that, surprisingly enough, was never Dean’s and was always hers. Dean swears and Lisa says, “Hey,” smiling awkwardly.
“M’sorry.”
“I would have appreciated a phone call or something.” She slides onto the stool next to Dean. “How’d the job hunt go?”
Dean shrugs into his glass.
Lisa bites her bottom lip and says, “You’ll find something. It’s okay, Dean. Tomorrow’s another day.”
"I haven't had a real job since I was seventeen."
Lisa looks a little bit startled, but she catches herself. She nods, says, "It's going to be okay.”
Dean shakes his head, won't look at her. She sighs and orders her own whiskey. When Dean tilts his head, she smiles and teases, "Oh c'mon, the whiskey thing is what got you to talk to me in the first place, remember?"
Despite himself, Dean smiles, just a little bit, just long enough to Lisa to catch it, "No, tha's what kept me talking to you. It definitely wasn' what started it."
"Okay." Lisa grins, "Okay. You finish that and then we're going home."
"Back to your place?"
"Home." Lisa is gently forceful, "Home, Dean."
Dean nods into his glass and Lisa sips from her own drink. She raises a hand to softly palm the back of Dean's head. He shudders and looks away, "M'miss Sam."
Lisa's hand moves to Dean's shoulders, solid and soft at the same time, "I know. You're allowed to. You're allowed to miss him, Dean."
Dean shakes his head, struggles not to go there because if he can't do this then he certainly can't do that either. "Fuck you, Sam."
Lisa bites her lip. The hot bartender gives them a dirty look that she coolly reciprocates. Dean clings to the dregs of his drink as though the glass itself is a life preserver. He says, "I promised Sam I wouldn't do this."
"What? Miss him? Dean--"
"No. No, I mean, yeah, prolly, the way his stupid head work--" Dean isn't sure if he should say "works" or "worked." He thinks his brain worked for awhile when he first got to the Pit....but it definitely wasn't by the time the angel dragged him out. He remembers fighting Castiel the whole way up, ripping out clumps of bloody wings, fists colliding with gold armor.
It's mid-summer and Sam has been dead for three months. This is almost the point where Dean stepped off of the rack himself. This is when he damned them all. He wonders if Sam has picked up the knife yet. He wonders if that's even an option in the Cage.
He hopes it is. He hopes it is and he hopes it damns them all again because they deserve it.
"It doesn't hurt 'til they bring you back."
And nobody’s bringing Sam back. That fact has been made abundantly clear.
Lisa brow crinkles like Sam's did/does. "What?"
"I promised him I would find you and be happy."
Lisa is quiet and pensive and Dean knows he said the wrong thing because he's a jobless fuck-up. He knows what Lisa's thinking because even though he's a fuck-up, he's not an idiot. He says, quickly, "S'not you."
"You sure about that?"
"S'not you. S'me." Dean pauses, "That doesn't sound much better does it?"
Lisa shakes her head, "It's okay, Dean. C'mon. Let's get out of here." She wraps both arms around one of Deans, grunts beneath his weight when he stumbles, but doesn't let him fall. He digs in his pocket, throwing them both off balance as they burst through the door and onto the muggy summer sidewalk. He holds a small, gleaming set of keys out.
"Please, I dun'wanna leave her here alone."
"You want me to drive?"
"Be careful."
"Are you sure?"
"Stop askin' me tha."
"Dean--"
"I truss you." He wraps her fingers around the warm metal.
Lisa sighs and asks, "Where'd you park?"
It takes them a few minutes to find the Impala because Dean doesn't remember where he left her, not at first, and the way his face screws up when he makes that realization almost has Lisa in tears too. She unlocks the driver's side door and Dean crawls across the bench seat, curling against the passenger door and pressing his face against the glass. He grins sloppily when Lisa starts the engine, sighs, "Hey, baby."
"You're talking to your car, right?"
Dean says, "M'sorry 'bout tonight."
"Stop apologizing."
They're stuck at a redlight on Dickman when Dean paws the glove compartment open, dumps a tin of identification cards all over the seat. Lisa wants to ask him what he's doing, but one look at his face makes it clear that at this point, he really doesn't know himself.
"Should prolly burn all these fakes, huh?"
Lisa spots two FBI badges, a Homeland Security badge, at least seven different state IDs. She tentatively reaches for Dean Bonjovi's New Jersey driver's license, holds it up to the light.
"These are really impressive, Dean. Maybe you could get a job making fakes for Ben's friends."
Dean perks slightly.
"That was a joke. But seriously, what about...security, law enforcement. You could go back to school..."The look Dean shoots her could wither roses.
"Okay. Forget I said anything." Lisa holds both hands up in a half-hearted mea culpa.
Dean paws at her wrists, "Both hans on th'wheel."
Lisa snorts and picks through the IDs scattered on the seat. She holds up Samuel Winchester's Stanford University student ID. She says, "When did you guys have to impersonate college students?"
Dean almost says, "All the fuckin' time," until he sees what she's holding and pales. Instead, he swallows, says, "Tha's not a fake." His face scrunches up and he grabs for the ID. "Tha's not a fake."
Dean doesn't know why Sam's real ID is nestled in with the fakes. When he gets existential about it, it makes his breath hitch. He palms the ID and let's his head fall to rest against the glass, fingers stroking absently over the glossy surface of the badge. Lisa is quiet until the Impala rumbles up their street. She lets it idle in the drive until Dean raises his head slightly. She says, "Dean, I know this is hard. I can't even begin to imagine--"
"Don't--"
"Let me finish, Dean." Dean nods slightly and Lisa continues, "I know you miss Sam. I know that Ben and I can't replace him...but I'm worried that you don't know that. This is okay, what happened today. But it's not always going to be okay. And if you stay here and you want to build a life and be here....I'll support that, Dean. I want that. But you have to want it too. You have to want it for yourself. You can't just go through the motions. You can’t be happy because you promised Sam you would. You have to make it happen and you have to want it for yourself. Do you understand, Dean?"
Dean doesn’t answer. He doesn’t remember tripping on the porch steps. He doesn’t remember Ben asking, “What’s wrong with him?” when Lisa guides him through the door, up the steps, pausing just long enough to tell Ben to turn the TV off and go up to his room.
In the morning, there is a bottle of Advil and a bottle of water waiting on the nightstand. For a minute, Dean closes his eyes and pretends that Sam is on a breakfast run, that the sheets smell so good because it's one of those rare occasions where they splurge on someplace nice-- like that time in Atlantic City with the pillowtop mattresses that had them both making the most obscene noises when they crawled into bed. They maxed out one credit card to stay an extra day after torching that pissed off mobster's bones.
The phone rings and Dean ignores it. The answering machine kicks on, Lisa carefully enunciating, “You’ve reached Lisa, Ben, and Dean--.” Dean considers ripping the chord out of the wall but settles for smashing a pillow over his head. It smells like lavender and vanilla. It doesn’t help.
When he’s certain that the phone is done intruding on his carefully constructed illusion, Dean groans and pulls himself up. He fumbles for the Advil, sees that he’s in his boxers, the heap of clothes from yesterday are a pile of stink on the floor. His wallet and cell phone are next to the water. Placed carefully, almost reverently, on top of his wallet is Sam’s ID. He vaguely remembers Lisa prying it out of his hand, gently imploring, “Dean, you’re gonna lose it, I’ll put it right here. I promise.”
Dean rubs the sleep from his eyes and takes the ID in his hands. His breath catches. Sam looks impossibly young in the tiny photograph. Dean tries to reconcile that Sam with the one that jumped into Hell and he can’t. He thinks, not for the first time, but for the first time in a while, that that Sam died a long time ago.
Dean digs in the drawer of the nightstand, wraps his hand around the tattered Menard’s wallet that an even younger, far longer gone Sam jacked in 1995 to impress his delinquent brother. It practically flops open in his palms, mostly empty save for a few fakes, a few creased and stained napkins with phone numbers scrawled in blue and purple and pink ink, and behind Dean Van Halen’s and Dean Page’s and Dean Ramone’s licenses is nestled Dean Winchester’s, age 16, of Lawrence, Kansas. It expired in 1999 and Dean never bothered renewing it. Bright-eyed and blond, swimming in thrift store leather: that Dean’s been gone a long time too.
Those boys deserved better.
Dean slides the license back into the plastic liner, gives Sam’s Stanford ID one more glance before slipping it behind Dean Winchester, age 16, of Lawrence, Kansas; snug and tight and safe from harm. He has a smug grin on his face, like he’s trying to seduce the camera, or, more likely, the attractive DMV photographer. Dean doesn’t think he knows how to make that facial expression anymore. But maybe he could relearn it.
The thing is, Dean remembers what Lisa said in the car last night, about being happy for himself, and that’s a real nice thought. It makes something in him swell up all warm and tingly, the way stolen wallets and gift wrapped motor oil and pie on his birthday, discretely left on his bed when he’s in the shower, no candles or presents because “that’s fucking lame, Sam,” but a thought as big as any ribbon, bow, or Hallmark card could ever hope to convey.
Dean rolls out of bed and showers and plows through this hangover. He makes chicken parmesan for dinner and hopes that Ben and Lisa see it for the “I’m sorry” he means it to be. Tomorrow, he’ll buy three newspapers and obsess over the job postings long enough to have them memorized. Next week he’ll settle for a dishwashing gig at the Denny’s by the on-ramp and work the (haha) graveyard shift, Monday through Thursday and Saturday nights until he lands the construction job a month later.
In a little while, Dean will find that he doesn’t always think of himself as miserable and sometimes, occasionally, he’ll even admit to being something that must be happy. Dean will treasure these fleeting moments because they are almost certainly followed by a bout of sadness and a persistent fatigue, as though he’s carrying the weight of a dozen men to this goal, this constantly shifting, always evolving goal.
And maybe in a way, he is.
Now they’ll walk on my arm through the distant night
And I won’t let them stray from my heart
Through the wind, through the dark, through the winter light
I will read all their dreams to the stars
--”Those You’ve Known”, Spring Awakening
Characters: Dean, Lisa, Sam (mentioned)
Word count: 3,500
Summary: Coda to 5.22. Dean is having a rough time adjusting to civilian life. I know, I'm late to the party.
Warnings: Angst. Dean!POV, drunk!Dean!POV
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox.
Notes: So, I work in Battle Creek, MI and this seriously jumped into my head on the first day of work and wouldn't leave even though I begged it to. Also, despite my crazy love for the novel and my firm belief that a crossover between it and SPN is just begging to be written, this is not a crossover with The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers though I definitely stole the title. And in conclusion, a round of thanks must be given to nwspaprtaxis for her help in brainstorming and keeping Dean in character through all the drunken blackouts.
Those you’ve pained
May carry that still with them
All the same
They whisper: “All forgiven.”
Still your heart says
The shadows bring the starlight
And everything you’ve ever been is still there in the dark night
It’s mid-summer and Sam has been dead for just over three months. Dean didn’t move off of the sofa for a week after Lisa put an end to the pool-hustling and the poker-games and the stumbling-in-at-four-AM-reeking-of-whiskey-and-cigar-smoke.
Most of the emergency cash is gone. Dean sold two knives from the arsenal at a pawn shop. They weren’t important. Dean doesn’t remember where they got them, doesn’t remember the last time they were used. They aren’t silver, they’re just sharp. He gets a decent price for them. Dean won’t use any of the credit cards. He doesn’t think they’re good anymore. The last set, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty (fuck you, Sam) are tucked in the pocket of Sam’s duffel where Dean knows he won’t go searching for them.
He spends Monday standing with a dozen guys at the public works office on McCamry, next to the skating rink. He waits until lunch and goes to McDonald’s with a guy named Phil who was laid off twice last year. Dean sticks to the dollar menu and when they get back to the works building, the line looks like it doubled. Phil shrugs and makes himself comfortable against the brick wall, bums a Camel from a tall chick with purple hair and a lip ring. Dean finds a bar two blocks over and decides to empty his wallet.
It’s late now, well after Lisa should be home from work. Dean’s phone rings steadily until he finally thumbs it off. He wonders how many shots of courage it will take for him to unlock the Impala’s trunk and go digging for Dean Moriarty’s Amex card. He thinks there’s enough cash left in his wallet for a tank of gas. If he fills up, he can be in Chicago in just under three hours. He can disappear into the crowd and maybe it won’t be heroic, maybe it won’t save the world, but maybe it’s just…better.
Dean can’t find a real job. Maybe he was never meant to have one.
Dean pulls a few more bills out of his wallet. It’s stiff and new, creaks when he opens it and he isn’t sure if he likes it or not. Lisa surprised him with it after their first date thing. They went to the Denny’s near the Sturgis on-ramp. They had pancakes and Dean couldn’t bring himself to swallow the bacon on his plate. It felt like that first time in a diner with Sam after he clawed his way out of the earth and the way the bacon smelled reminded him too much of the way muscle and tendon simmer in sulfur and he threw up in the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and made up some shit about having a fussy stomach. He pulled out his wallet to pay for the half-eaten meal and Lisa said, “Wow, how old is that wallet, Dean? You have it since you were thirteen?”
Dean said, “Sixteen,” and didn’t elaborate about how Sam jacked it from a Menard’s when Dean passed his driver’s test the first time around, using his real name and his real social security number, while they were hunkered down in Kansas for a week in February. Dean didn’t tell Dad that he did it. He skipped school and took a bus to the testing center. A few weeks later they were in Michigan and Sam flung it at him with a shit-eating grin on his face, the wallet, later, in the hotel, when Dad went out with Jack and Jose. He said he lifted it from the display case while he and Dad were loading up on rock salt. He said Dean needed a place to put his license now. His real one. Dean told him not to be a fucking girl, but nice job on the shoplifting, and Sam grinned because he was twelve and short and a little chubby and Dean was sixteen and banging college girls (ok, more like girl, singular, and she was a freshman at Kent State and a little homely, but it totally counted and when Dean told the story, she was an Ohio State cheerleader) and so cool.
He got the wallet in Oshtemo.
Oshtemo. Lake monster. 1995.
They aren’t far from Oshtemo. It’s on the west side of Kalamazoo. It’s the last cluster of shops and shit before the rolling apple orchards, the berry farms, then the sandy coastline of Lake Michigan. Sam was pissed because Dad said they could spend the day at the beach after they ganked the lake monster, but then there was a phone call from Uncle Bobby and a coven of witches in Mayfield, Kentucky and Dad went to some bar and said to be ready to go in the morning. Dean waggled his real ID in Sam’s face and told him to get in the fucking car if he wanted to go to the beach. He used his fake ID (the Delaware one) to buy a six-pack at the Meijer up the highway and they rolled into South Haven just after midnight, sat on the lighthouse pier and chucked their empties into the lake. Sam fell asleep in shotgun, drooling on the front seat, small enough to curl up on the bench then. He had one beer. Dean had two and threw the other three into the water below, full and all, because he wasn’t about to let John have them.
There’s a piano bar in Kalamazoo that Lisa keeps saying she wants to go to, but Dean only wants to go if he can smile and laugh and foot the bill and he looked the place up online and it looks pricey for Michigan. Pricey for a Winchester.
And he doesn’t really smile anymore. He’s too aware of the way his skin stretches, and even though it’s not unpleasant, not really, he thinks about Alastair and the clamps and the knives and the way his lips flopped after Alastair cut the corners of his mouth, said he didn’t smile enough, and he had such a pretty smile.
When he thinks about the corners of his lips, he thinks about the corners of Sam’s and how Sam used to hoard jars of Carmex in his coat pockets when they went north because he was prone to cold sores and he couldn’t stand when the corners of his lips swelled up and hurt and went raw in the cold air.
He remembers that Alastair was trained by Lucifer. “I pressed myself against the cage and listened to His words,” Alastair purred into his ear, all hot breath and pressure and something wicked this way coming-Dean almost vomits on the glossy surface of the counter.
Lisa bought the new wallet and it’s nicer than the one Sam stole from Menard’s, even when it was new. Dean keeps the old one in the top drawer of the nightstand and the only flaw in his plan to run away to Chicago is that he’ll have to leave the duct-taped wallet behind. He rationalizes that he can come back for it later, when he gets his shit together. He can break in when Lisa is at the studio and Ben is at school and he can grab it and leave and go back to doing whatever he’s doing at that point in his life, later, when he has his shit together, yeah, when he knows how to navigate around the hole in his soul.
“Fuck you, Sam.” Dean shakes a ten at the bartender. She’s hot, but he’s not, not tonight, and she gives him one of those looks that Dean knows is usually saved for the creepy middle-management professional, balding at thirty, desperate for someone to suck his dick, but just sad enough, just polite enough, to avoid being turned over to the bouncer.
She brings him a fresh glass, slams it down on the counter and pours the cheapest booze the place has. She quips, “I really shouldn’t be serving you anymore. This is it, okay?”
“Whatever.”
Maybe Chicago is out. Dean is fairly certain he can’t drive. Of course, that also means he can’t go back to Lisa’s either. Not without calling in for backup. He fingers the edge of his cell phone, considers calling Lisa, but he can’t do this. He can’t do this tonight and he won’t be able to do it tomorrow. It’s been three months and he’s a broke drunk at a shitty bar in the middle of Battle Creek, Michigan.
“What’d you think was gonna happen, Sam?” Dean mutters to his glass and decides that he doesn’t care about promises because fuck you, Sam. And fuck you, Dad, while we’re at it because what the hell is up with his dying relatives forcing him into stupid promises anyway?
A small voice in the back of his head, one that sounds suspiciously like his dead brother (and that’s just greeeeeaaaat) takes offence to the comparison of himself and one John Winchester. “Well, fuck you, Sam. You always did take after him.”
“Dean?”
Dean blinks hard and looks over his shoulder, groaning, because of course Lisa found him, of course she did, and now dying in a fiery wreck along Rt. 94, well on his way to Chicago, is out. She’s standing there in yoga pants and a faded Pink Floyd t-shirt that, surprisingly enough, was never Dean’s and was always hers. Dean swears and Lisa says, “Hey,” smiling awkwardly.
“M’sorry.”
“I would have appreciated a phone call or something.” She slides onto the stool next to Dean. “How’d the job hunt go?”
Dean shrugs into his glass.
Lisa bites her bottom lip and says, “You’ll find something. It’s okay, Dean. Tomorrow’s another day.”
"I haven't had a real job since I was seventeen."
Lisa looks a little bit startled, but she catches herself. She nods, says, "It's going to be okay.”
Dean shakes his head, won't look at her. She sighs and orders her own whiskey. When Dean tilts his head, she smiles and teases, "Oh c'mon, the whiskey thing is what got you to talk to me in the first place, remember?"
Despite himself, Dean smiles, just a little bit, just long enough to Lisa to catch it, "No, tha's what kept me talking to you. It definitely wasn' what started it."
"Okay." Lisa grins, "Okay. You finish that and then we're going home."
"Back to your place?"
"Home." Lisa is gently forceful, "Home, Dean."
Dean nods into his glass and Lisa sips from her own drink. She raises a hand to softly palm the back of Dean's head. He shudders and looks away, "M'miss Sam."
Lisa's hand moves to Dean's shoulders, solid and soft at the same time, "I know. You're allowed to. You're allowed to miss him, Dean."
Dean shakes his head, struggles not to go there because if he can't do this then he certainly can't do that either. "Fuck you, Sam."
Lisa bites her lip. The hot bartender gives them a dirty look that she coolly reciprocates. Dean clings to the dregs of his drink as though the glass itself is a life preserver. He says, "I promised Sam I wouldn't do this."
"What? Miss him? Dean--"
"No. No, I mean, yeah, prolly, the way his stupid head work--" Dean isn't sure if he should say "works" or "worked." He thinks his brain worked for awhile when he first got to the Pit....but it definitely wasn't by the time the angel dragged him out. He remembers fighting Castiel the whole way up, ripping out clumps of bloody wings, fists colliding with gold armor.
It's mid-summer and Sam has been dead for three months. This is almost the point where Dean stepped off of the rack himself. This is when he damned them all. He wonders if Sam has picked up the knife yet. He wonders if that's even an option in the Cage.
He hopes it is. He hopes it is and he hopes it damns them all again because they deserve it.
"It doesn't hurt 'til they bring you back."
And nobody’s bringing Sam back. That fact has been made abundantly clear.
Lisa brow crinkles like Sam's did/does. "What?"
"I promised him I would find you and be happy."
Lisa is quiet and pensive and Dean knows he said the wrong thing because he's a jobless fuck-up. He knows what Lisa's thinking because even though he's a fuck-up, he's not an idiot. He says, quickly, "S'not you."
"You sure about that?"
"S'not you. S'me." Dean pauses, "That doesn't sound much better does it?"
Lisa shakes her head, "It's okay, Dean. C'mon. Let's get out of here." She wraps both arms around one of Deans, grunts beneath his weight when he stumbles, but doesn't let him fall. He digs in his pocket, throwing them both off balance as they burst through the door and onto the muggy summer sidewalk. He holds a small, gleaming set of keys out.
"Please, I dun'wanna leave her here alone."
"You want me to drive?"
"Be careful."
"Are you sure?"
"Stop askin' me tha."
"Dean--"
"I truss you." He wraps her fingers around the warm metal.
Lisa sighs and asks, "Where'd you park?"
It takes them a few minutes to find the Impala because Dean doesn't remember where he left her, not at first, and the way his face screws up when he makes that realization almost has Lisa in tears too. She unlocks the driver's side door and Dean crawls across the bench seat, curling against the passenger door and pressing his face against the glass. He grins sloppily when Lisa starts the engine, sighs, "Hey, baby."
"You're talking to your car, right?"
Dean says, "M'sorry 'bout tonight."
"Stop apologizing."
They're stuck at a redlight on Dickman when Dean paws the glove compartment open, dumps a tin of identification cards all over the seat. Lisa wants to ask him what he's doing, but one look at his face makes it clear that at this point, he really doesn't know himself.
"Should prolly burn all these fakes, huh?"
Lisa spots two FBI badges, a Homeland Security badge, at least seven different state IDs. She tentatively reaches for Dean Bonjovi's New Jersey driver's license, holds it up to the light.
"These are really impressive, Dean. Maybe you could get a job making fakes for Ben's friends."
Dean perks slightly.
"That was a joke. But seriously, what about...security, law enforcement. You could go back to school..."The look Dean shoots her could wither roses.
"Okay. Forget I said anything." Lisa holds both hands up in a half-hearted mea culpa.
Dean paws at her wrists, "Both hans on th'wheel."
Lisa snorts and picks through the IDs scattered on the seat. She holds up Samuel Winchester's Stanford University student ID. She says, "When did you guys have to impersonate college students?"
Dean almost says, "All the fuckin' time," until he sees what she's holding and pales. Instead, he swallows, says, "Tha's not a fake." His face scrunches up and he grabs for the ID. "Tha's not a fake."
Dean doesn't know why Sam's real ID is nestled in with the fakes. When he gets existential about it, it makes his breath hitch. He palms the ID and let's his head fall to rest against the glass, fingers stroking absently over the glossy surface of the badge. Lisa is quiet until the Impala rumbles up their street. She lets it idle in the drive until Dean raises his head slightly. She says, "Dean, I know this is hard. I can't even begin to imagine--"
"Don't--"
"Let me finish, Dean." Dean nods slightly and Lisa continues, "I know you miss Sam. I know that Ben and I can't replace him...but I'm worried that you don't know that. This is okay, what happened today. But it's not always going to be okay. And if you stay here and you want to build a life and be here....I'll support that, Dean. I want that. But you have to want it too. You have to want it for yourself. You can't just go through the motions. You can’t be happy because you promised Sam you would. You have to make it happen and you have to want it for yourself. Do you understand, Dean?"
Dean doesn’t answer. He doesn’t remember tripping on the porch steps. He doesn’t remember Ben asking, “What’s wrong with him?” when Lisa guides him through the door, up the steps, pausing just long enough to tell Ben to turn the TV off and go up to his room.
In the morning, there is a bottle of Advil and a bottle of water waiting on the nightstand. For a minute, Dean closes his eyes and pretends that Sam is on a breakfast run, that the sheets smell so good because it's one of those rare occasions where they splurge on someplace nice-- like that time in Atlantic City with the pillowtop mattresses that had them both making the most obscene noises when they crawled into bed. They maxed out one credit card to stay an extra day after torching that pissed off mobster's bones.
The phone rings and Dean ignores it. The answering machine kicks on, Lisa carefully enunciating, “You’ve reached Lisa, Ben, and Dean--.” Dean considers ripping the chord out of the wall but settles for smashing a pillow over his head. It smells like lavender and vanilla. It doesn’t help.
When he’s certain that the phone is done intruding on his carefully constructed illusion, Dean groans and pulls himself up. He fumbles for the Advil, sees that he’s in his boxers, the heap of clothes from yesterday are a pile of stink on the floor. His wallet and cell phone are next to the water. Placed carefully, almost reverently, on top of his wallet is Sam’s ID. He vaguely remembers Lisa prying it out of his hand, gently imploring, “Dean, you’re gonna lose it, I’ll put it right here. I promise.”
Dean rubs the sleep from his eyes and takes the ID in his hands. His breath catches. Sam looks impossibly young in the tiny photograph. Dean tries to reconcile that Sam with the one that jumped into Hell and he can’t. He thinks, not for the first time, but for the first time in a while, that that Sam died a long time ago.
Dean digs in the drawer of the nightstand, wraps his hand around the tattered Menard’s wallet that an even younger, far longer gone Sam jacked in 1995 to impress his delinquent brother. It practically flops open in his palms, mostly empty save for a few fakes, a few creased and stained napkins with phone numbers scrawled in blue and purple and pink ink, and behind Dean Van Halen’s and Dean Page’s and Dean Ramone’s licenses is nestled Dean Winchester’s, age 16, of Lawrence, Kansas. It expired in 1999 and Dean never bothered renewing it. Bright-eyed and blond, swimming in thrift store leather: that Dean’s been gone a long time too.
Those boys deserved better.
Dean slides the license back into the plastic liner, gives Sam’s Stanford ID one more glance before slipping it behind Dean Winchester, age 16, of Lawrence, Kansas; snug and tight and safe from harm. He has a smug grin on his face, like he’s trying to seduce the camera, or, more likely, the attractive DMV photographer. Dean doesn’t think he knows how to make that facial expression anymore. But maybe he could relearn it.
The thing is, Dean remembers what Lisa said in the car last night, about being happy for himself, and that’s a real nice thought. It makes something in him swell up all warm and tingly, the way stolen wallets and gift wrapped motor oil and pie on his birthday, discretely left on his bed when he’s in the shower, no candles or presents because “that’s fucking lame, Sam,” but a thought as big as any ribbon, bow, or Hallmark card could ever hope to convey.
Dean rolls out of bed and showers and plows through this hangover. He makes chicken parmesan for dinner and hopes that Ben and Lisa see it for the “I’m sorry” he means it to be. Tomorrow, he’ll buy three newspapers and obsess over the job postings long enough to have them memorized. Next week he’ll settle for a dishwashing gig at the Denny’s by the on-ramp and work the (haha) graveyard shift, Monday through Thursday and Saturday nights until he lands the construction job a month later.
In a little while, Dean will find that he doesn’t always think of himself as miserable and sometimes, occasionally, he’ll even admit to being something that must be happy. Dean will treasure these fleeting moments because they are almost certainly followed by a bout of sadness and a persistent fatigue, as though he’s carrying the weight of a dozen men to this goal, this constantly shifting, always evolving goal.
And maybe in a way, he is.
Now they’ll walk on my arm through the distant night
And I won’t let them stray from my heart
Through the wind, through the dark, through the winter light
I will read all their dreams to the stars
--”Those You’ve Known”, Spring Awakening