Fic: Threw Away the sun 1/6 SPN AU Sam/Dean
Title: Threw Away the Sun
Author: Ladyjanelly
Warnings: Wincest, violence,
Characters/pairings: Jess, Sam/Dean
Rated: NC-17 sex and violence
Summary: AU. Six months after John Winchester goes missing on a hunt, Dean Goes to Palo Alto to find a psychic.
Notes: OMG. Okay. Special thanks to jellicle and nova_berry and all the other people who have read this since I started it. I began this fic between seasons one and two of SPN and just now have it ready to publish. I'm sure I've forgotten someone who read it there in the middle and I'm so sorry and I remember appreciating you, just not which of you wonderful people it was.
It’s been six months since Dean has seen his dad or even heard from him. He plays his tapes loud and drives until he’s exhausted every night. He hates that feeling, when he walks into an empty motel room, that silent moment before he can find the remote and get some background noise going. It reminds him too much of those early days, before he was old enough to join in the hunts, waiting with nothing but the television for company for hours or days for his father to come home.
He used to wonder, when he was little, what it would have been like if his brother had stayed with them instead of being taken away for the state to raise, how things would have been different if dad had been able to find him and get him back. He hasn’t thought of that baby in years and feels stupid for thinking of it now. What is he, twelve? Can’t handle a solo mission without the thought of some sort of family to comfort him?
The Impala turns off the highway, away from the city streets, and down a residential road. The car is like some prehistoric black shark, threading between the bright colored Beetles, Hondas and Neons. There’s a college around here, Missouri had mentioned. He re-reads the address and pulls up to the curb.
“It doesn’t work that way, boy,” her voice had been scolding but sad. “I can’t see the future or throw a dart at a map to find where your father is.”
“There has to be something,” Dean had protested. “He’s never been gone this long. There’s something wrong. He needs me.”
Missouri’s sigh had been resigned. “There’s another psychic I can send you to, somebody better at seeing the future than I am, but I fear he’ll bring you more pain than peace.”
Dean smoothes the wrinkles from the bit of paper in his hand. There’s nothing on it but an address and the words “Ring J. Moore. Ask for Sam Cole.”
Dean looks over the row of buttons by the apartment house door and presses the correct one. He counts the seconds, to give J. plenty of time to answer before he makes an ass out of himself and rings again.
When she answers, her voice is rough with sleep.
“Ms. Moore? My name is Dean Winchester; I’m here to see Sam Cole.”
“It’s late,” and it could be his imagination but she sounds more awake. “He’s asleep. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
“Please,” he cuts in quick before she can turn off the intercom and go back to bed. “I’ve driven all the way from Kansas. My father’s missing. I think something bad has happened to him.”
The woman sighs. “Wait,” she says.
Dean’s on second number three hundred sixteen when her voice comes back. “He’ll see you. Come on up.” The door buzzes and the lock clicks and Dean heads up to 2B. He knocks and the door opens to the extent of the security chain.
Normally he’d think of the blonde on the other side as cute or pretty or fuckable, there in her Smurfs t-shirt and thigh-length robe. Right now though, all he sees is suspicion and an obstacle to finding his dad. He gives her his least-threatening smile, but she doesn’t seem to care. Her blue eyes glance down at the medallion on his chest and wariness fades to annoyance.
She closes the door for just long enough to remove the chain then steps inside. There’s a cordless phone in her left hand, 911 probably already dialed, just waiting for the talk-button to be hit. A baseball bat leans against the table in the foyer and something about that strikes Dean as funny to see in a house with a man around.
“Wait in the living room,” she says and heads back to what’s probably a bedroom. “He’ll be out in a minute.”
So Dean parks his ass on the couch and waits. The room is sparsely furnished-a couch, two chairs, a bookshelf full of textbooks and binders. The stereo is pretty expensive looking for students, but there’s no television. There’s something off about the room too, something in the negative space of it that Dean can’t quite figure out.
Voices drift through; the walls are thin and the building is old. “Relax, Sam, just let him wait.” The man’s voice is lower, doesn’t carry as well, so Dean can only understand the woman. “Here, arm,” she continued. “He woke us up at four AM. I don’t think he’ll run off in the time it takes to fix your hair.”
Dean hears a soft masculine laugh. “Am I presentable now?” The guy asks.
The woman’s voice is almost inaudible. Dean shifts down the couch so he can catch what she says. “I don’t like this, Sam. I don’t trust him. I don’t…” Whatever else she was saying is muffled. Dean hears soft murmuring from both of them. Footsteps echo through the hardwood of the floors and Dean shifts over before he’s busted eavesdropping. Yeah, textbooks. Interesting.
The door to the bedroom opens. Dean looks up and startles halfway to his feet. Whatever he was expecting from the oracle that Missouri sent him to, this isn’t it. The guy’s tall, probably six-four if he stood straight, if he wasn’t so slouched in on himself. He moves with slow creeping motions, feeling his way along the walls and furniture. Big hands, bony wrists, doesn’t this chick ever feed him?
Dean looks him in the face and is met with a brilliant crooked smile. Shaggy brown hair flops over his forehead down to the upper edge of a pair of large opaque glasses. A soft melt of scar tissue flows out from under the black plastic on the left side, following the outside curve of his cheekbone. Maybe it’s the blindness, but it’s hard to place the man’s age. The smile belongs on a sixteen year old; the guarded posture is that of an old man.
“Dean,” the man says, making a flickering effort to control his grin. “Mister Winchester. Please, have a seat. I apologize for not being more prepared; you were much more likely to come here next week.”
“Missouri call you?” Dean asks, unwilling to trust some strange psychic with his money or his hope without some proof.
Sam’s smile becomes more subdued, almost sad. Jess wanders off and the sounds and scents of coffee being made drift in from the kitchen.
“Your father’s missing,” Sam says softly and they both know that’s not a newsflash. “He’s been gone for longer than ever before and you’re scared. You think something’s taken him-a demon. The demon.” Sam moves forward and the smile is gone. “You’ve been to the priest, the junkman and the arms dealer and none of them could help you. You think this is stupid and that I’m probably a charlatan, but you’re here anyway, because you’re out of options.” He sighs and hunches his shoulders up tight, like he’s feeling a sharp wind.
“I can help you, Dean.” His voice is so soft, so sure, that Dean has to fight to keep his skepticism. “It won’t be easy and this isn’t an exact science, but the odds of finding your father are a lot higher with my help than without.”
Dean finds himself frowning. “Odds? What the hell does that mean?”
If the blind man takes offense, he doesn’t show it. “Odds. I don’t see the future, I see the futures, plural. I see the ghosts of worlds that can no longer happen and all the possibilities that are still open. I see you leaving this room with your brother beside you and I see you leaving without my help. I see worlds where your father comes looking for you instead. Sometimes there’s a woman, and she’s hunting the demon who took her little boy and burned her husband on the ceiling.
If this guy really can do what he says, Dean knows he’s choosing his words for the most impact; the details are cutting Dean to the bone. “Okay,” he says, to make the words stop, to not have to think about mom alive and his baby brother with him because he can’t have that; it’s gone. “Okay, I believe you. So where’s my dad?”
“I don’t know where he is,” Sam sighs like he’d hoped Dean would be smarter than this. “But I can tell you where he’s most likely to be, two weeks from now.”
Dean’s starting to lose a little of his patience. “So tell me already. What, is this about money?”
Jess comes back out of the kitchen, coffee mugs in hand. She offers one to Dean and he takes it. She nudges the ceramic just a little as he takes it, not enough to spill it on him but he knows a threat when he sees one.
“Sam,” her voice is so sweet and innocent. He holds out his hands and she places the mug in them, waiting until his fingers are wrapped around it before she lets go.
Dean expects her to leave then, but she settles on the arm of Sam’s chair. Apparently Dean’s no longer trusted to be civil with the handicapped.
“It’s not about money,” Sam says like Jess wasn’t there. “I need to know you're one hundred percent committed to this. If you’re willing to do whatever it takes, follow it wherever it goes. In all the worlds where I ask you that, you never ever lie to me.”
Dean’s not used to this level of freakin’ honesty. “I want my dad back,” he growls. “He’s the only family I have left and goddamn it, he’s all that matters to me right now. So yeah, I’m in. Whatever it takes, as long as I’m seein’ some results.”
Sam smiles, tired but honestly glad. Jess frowns like Dean got his lines wrong, like she’s not pleased at all by his answer. “Great,” says Sam, “You’re driving.”
“What?” Dean blurts. Beyond the blind-guy joke of it, the statement is just ridiculous. “You’re not coming with me.”
Sam’s lips quirk into a frown. “Look. My chances of directing you to your father from here are much slimmer. I need to use the odds of when I’ll meet him to reinforce when you will see him, to find the strongest, soonest point. It’s necessary.” He turns his face away from Dean like the conversation is over, and Dean thinks that yeah, maybe it is.
“Jess? Can you get my bag and the notes you made?”
“Fine,” Jess snaps, sounding as frustrated as Dean feels. “Of all the things you’ve ever seen, Sam, you’d better be right about this one.”
“I can’t slow down for you,” Dean warns while Jess is out of the room.
“You’re going to have to,” Sam says, “But not when it matters. Not when it would endanger your or your father. I wouldn’t want you to.”
“Fine. When are we leaving?”
“Now,” Sam says as Jess comes back with the blue duffle bag and a red notebook. “I can work while we’re on the road. Even though there’s a better chance of meeting John in the desert in two weeks, there’s a small chance of finding him in the mountains in just a few days if we can narrow down the exact location.”
Sam climbs to his feet, and feels along the furniture until Jess brings him a worn leather satchel. Sam hangs it across his body, from left shoulder to the opposite hip, like it’s something so precious he doesn’t want to risk losing it.
“So how much is this gonna cost me?” Dean asks, because in his experience, professional help doesn’t come at low, low prices. The way down the stairs is slow. Sam clings to the rail with one hand and Jess with the other. He feels the edge of every step with his foot before he steps down. Dean can already see that the slow pace is gonna drive him nuts.
“I’ve got reasons of my own,” Sam says. “Out of one hundred futures where I tell you now what they are, in twenty nine, you don’t believe me. In forty three, it changes the way you react to certain things and you die. In eighteen it changes the way your father reacts and he dies instead. In seven you are so shocked you leave without me. In three, everybody lives and nobody is hurt. When the odds change on that, I might tell you then, but not now.”
Goddamn psychics, Dean thinks. Even if it’s true, it only makes him want to know more than he did before. Stupid mumbo-jumbo logic.
They step out into the warm spring air and Dean trots ahead to open the passenger-side door. Jess gets Sam settled in the seat and hugs her goodbyes to him while Dean’s getting the luggage stored. When she’s done, the blonde takes Dean’s hands and puts the notebook into them.
“Everything he’s seen of your father so far is in here, and everything you need to know about taking care of him.” Her eyes are glistening with unshed tears, and whatever she is to Sam, Dean can see how much this parting hurts and frightens her, like she expects to never see the man again. “My number is on the first page. Call it anytime, if he needs anything. If you can’t cut it, being around him, please, please give me time to get there; don’t just leave him alone in a strange place somewhere.”
That stings. Seriously, now. “I’m not a complete asshole.”
“I know,” she says. “I just worry that sometimes he doesn’t watch out for himself as well as he should, that he doesn’t keep himself safe.
She gives Dean a trembling smile. “But he has people who care about him, people who love him. And if you hurt him, we’ll find you. Count on it.”
“I’ll take good care of him,” Dean promises. “And I’ll make sure he gets home safe if I can’t.”
“You better,” she says and hugs him suddenly. Before Dean can react she turns and runs back towards the door, one hand pressed to her lips.
Dean gets in the car and starts the engine. Sam turns towards the window, closes in on himself.
“That’s one hell of a girl you’re leaving behind,” Dean says after forty miles without a word. That gets a smile from his passenger, soft and melancholy.
“She really is,” he agrees. “In a couple of worlds, she was even in love with me.”
“But not this one?”
“No. She’s just my friend. In every possibility where we were together, she died.”
Dean keeps the questions professional after that. It’s gonna be a long drive.