Corner of Your Eye (11/14)
Fandom: Supernatural/Stargate SG-1
Title: Corner of Your Eye
Author: Maychorian
Characters: Jack O'Neill, Dean Winchester
Category: Action/Adventure, Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Crossover, Angst
Rating: T/PG-13
Spoilers: Pilot for SPN, up to Season 9 for SG-1
Summary: Jack O'Neill is not very good at being retired. Dean Winchester is not very good at staying out of trouble. And there's something lurking in these here woods….
Word Count: 1708
Disclaimer: As soon as I own them, you'll know. Oh yes, yes, the day is coming.
Author’s Note: Hee! I used the F-word in a fic! Another first for me. ::twirls:: Yeah, just warning you, in case it matters.
Complete chapter list: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
The story is also available in one document on my website: Corner of Your Eye
11
The Maple Creek Township Library was a two-story brick and stone affair in the middle of a residential neighborhood, one of those rounded turret-like things on the side of the building, a tiny gravel parking lot in front. It looked like it had been a house once, renovated to hold nothing but books. Tall trees stood all around like sleepy sentinels, listing, crouching over the parking lot, shading the homey, shuttered windows with branches exploding in a riot of new spring green.
Dean pulled into the parking lot, then just sat there, letting the current Metallica song run its course, bobbing his head to the beat and tapping on the steering wheel. Occasionally he glanced over to smirk at Jack or raise an eyebrow, like he was winning some kind of competition. Jack just stared at him blankly and waited for it to be over. It took awhile. These songs were long.
At last the tape clicked into the hissing static between songs, and Dean turned the key back, then flopped back in the seat with a sigh of contentment. “So?”
“So what?”
“Did I tell ya or did I tell ya? Metallica rules!”
“Yeah, you told me.” Jack turned sideways slightly, facing the kid head-on to deliver his speech. “Actually, I kind of liked it. It was very…operatic. Not too different at all from the stuff I listen to voluntarily.”
Dean did a hilarious little double-take, eyes flying wide, mouth dropping open. “O…operatic?” he choked out. “It was operatic? As in, like an opera?”
“Yeah, definitely. So huge, so epic.” Jack spread his hands in illustration. “The repeating themes, the soaring melodies, the complex instrumentals, the freaking length of the songs. Not to mention the emotions expressed so very clearly and repetitively. Just like an aria.”
“An…an aria?”
“Yes, an aria. You know, the sections of an opera that are sung just in solo or duet, the main characters pouring their souls out to the audience. It’s usually all about how much love stinks, or politics are screwing them over, or how they’re ready to die. Exactly like Metallica.”
Dean had the blank look of a computer struggling valiantly to process conflicting information. The wheel was spinning but nothing was happening. “Metallica. Is exactly like an opera.”
“Sure is. Well, Metallica has more percussion. And it’s in English.” Jack blinked thoughtfully. “And I’m having trouble figuring out what the plot is. I’m sure it’s a tragedy, though, just like most operas.”
“You’re messing with me.” Dean sounded completely certain, having found an explanation that fit everything to his satisfaction.
“Nope. Utterly serious.” Jack kept his face straight, and Dean’s expression went slack again in uncertainty, floundering around in an attempt to compute. Jack added a little nod, grave and slow.
Even he wasn’t sure quite where the line was, though. He was laying it on thick, definitely, but he was also pretty sure most of that was true. And he thought that maybe he was starting to get a tiny bit fond of classic rock, but surely that was ridiculous. He hadn’t cared for it much when it wasn’t classic, but brand new.
But hey, a guy’s tastes could change. He used to think that all scientists were useless geeks. A select few had proven that broad assumption wrong, though he was sure that it was still mostly accurate.
Dean meanwhile, stared helplessly out the windshield, blinking. Jack clapped his shoulder and got out of the car. “C’mon, let’s go do this research thing.”
The young man followed him slowly to the building and stumbled up the steps, expression still fixed in contemplation mode. Jack opened the door, sleigh bells ringing at the motion, and held it for his companion, arm extended in courtly invitation. Dean gave him a glare, but stepped inside with an abrupt air of confidence.
The librarian’s desk was only a scant few feet from the door, every other inch of space in the building taken up with shelves and tables and computer desks, aisles barely wide enough for one person to walk down, as long as that person was fairly skinny. The woman sitting at the desk was relatively young, short dark hair, thin-rimmed glasses, a pretty, though not beautiful, face, and a nametag that said her name was Marcy, Reference Librarian.
Jack watched Dean switch gears, smooth and sweet as a finely tuned stock car, from irritation to beaming charisma without a step between. “Hey, there, you look like the lady with the answers.”
That sideways little grin, a green-eyed wink, and the librarian was gone, solid gone. So completely and quickly melted in the sun of Dean’s smile that Jack firmly expected there to be nothing left of her but a sticky puddle on the desk by the time they left. The other patrons would just have to fend for themselves, because they weren’t going to be getting any help from her in the foreseeable future.
Jack sighed. It was not entirely dissimilar from going on missions with one Dr. Daniel Jackson, triple PhD and all-around cutie-pie.
X
“All right, let’s try this one,” Marcy the Reference Librarian said cheerfully, emerging from deep in the stacks with yet another humongous book already falling apart at the seams. This one had a gray cover, though, so that automatically set it apart from the five books already on the table between Dean and Jack, open to various chapters that did not contain information about Susanna Milner.
Dean pushed the books around to make some room, and Jack pretended to be interested. “Ah, that looks great, Marcy,” Dean said. “What’s that one about?”
“It’s a memoir by Vince Emerson, covering his life here during the mid-nineteenth century. This is the only copy in existence that we know of-it’s handwritten.”
“Oh, goody.” Dean accepted the heavy tome from her hands and set it carefully on the table in front of him, eyeing it as if afraid that it might explode. He looked up at Jack and smiled grimly. “That means we get to have lots of fun decoding an old man’s handwriting.”
“It’s not too bad, really,” Marcy said. “The real problem is the rambling. It’s not exactly what you might call coherent. He’ll talk about incidents from his old age and his youth in the same paragraph, and sometimes forgets to finish the stories. Even the interesting ones.”
“You’ve read it, huh?” Dean gave her a sympathetic look.
“Only pages here and there.” Marcy shrugged. “It can get pretty dull out here when no one needs a reference librarian. But if he knew Susanna Milner, he probably mentioned her somewhere in there.”
“Excellent. I’ll give it a shot. Thanks, Marcy.”
She blushed and smiled, moving back toward the circulation desk to take care of the line of people waiting impatiently for their books to be checked out. “I’ll keep thinking about where there might be more information. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Will do.”
Dean opened the book to a random page, letting the two halves thump down on the table in a small cloud of dust. Jack leaned over the table to look at it upside-down. The handwriting was in cursive, but at least it wasn’t too faded, and looked pretty consistent. Once Dean figured out whether this loop or that was supposed to be an I or E or A, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to read.
“This is boring,” Jack said in a low voice, as if confiding a great secret. “Is research always this boring?”
Dean sighed. It was like working with a frickin’ six-year-old. “Yes, Jack. It’s always this boring. But we have to do it if we’re going to find out where the body’s buried. Or if we’re even looking at the right person.”
The older man was aghast at the idea. “You mean we might have to start this all over from the beginning?”
“Yeah. That’s how it works, man.” At the thought, Dean felt just as depressed as Jack looked.
Jack sat back and fidgeted for a bit. Dean bent to the memoir of Vince Emerson. He was peripherally aware of Jack flipping disconsolately through some of the other books, looking around the library as if in search of something interesting, and then there was an odd movement that forced Dean to look up in order to discover what it was.
Jack was playing with a yo-yo.
“For fuck’s sake, Jack,” Dean said, too appalled to pay any attention to the disgusted gasp from the older lady at the computer just three steps from their table. “Do you always bring a yo-yo on your trips to the library?”
Jack gave him a bland stare. “I take a yo-yo everywhere I go. There’s always a reason to have one along.”
“My God. How old are you? Ten? You’re going to get us thrown out!”
“Um, no, that would be you. Getting a little loud, kid.” Jack flicked his eyes from one side to the other, indicating the small-town folks who were glaring at him with narrowed eyes. One of them was a young mother in line at the desk, holding her hands clamped over her young son’s ears and staring at Dean with eyes that promised a swift and painful death.
“Oh, for… Just go outside and play with your yo-yo.” Frickin’ six years old. Dean was sure of it.
Jack looked back at him with large, soulful brown eyes. Dean rolled his own eyes and crouched back over his book. C’mon, Vince. Gimme something good, here.
But Jack didn’t go outside. After a few moments, Dean was aware of him going back to the other books, pulling one of them closer, and then sitting still for awhile. A few minutes later Dean glanced up and saw Jack reading quietly, actually taking time, eyes moving carefully back and forth, a hand already on the next page ready to flip it.
A soft quiet fell as Dean turned back to the memoir, still scanning down each page for Susanna Milner’s name. Neither of them was good at this research thing, but they could do it. This was going to work.
As long as one of them didn’t drive the other one insane first.
Part 12
Title: Corner of Your Eye
Author: Maychorian
Characters: Jack O'Neill, Dean Winchester
Category: Action/Adventure, Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Crossover, Angst
Rating: T/PG-13
Spoilers: Pilot for SPN, up to Season 9 for SG-1
Summary: Jack O'Neill is not very good at being retired. Dean Winchester is not very good at staying out of trouble. And there's something lurking in these here woods….
Word Count: 1708
Disclaimer: As soon as I own them, you'll know. Oh yes, yes, the day is coming.
Author’s Note: Hee! I used the F-word in a fic! Another first for me. ::twirls:: Yeah, just warning you, in case it matters.
Complete chapter list: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
The story is also available in one document on my website: Corner of Your Eye
11
The Maple Creek Township Library was a two-story brick and stone affair in the middle of a residential neighborhood, one of those rounded turret-like things on the side of the building, a tiny gravel parking lot in front. It looked like it had been a house once, renovated to hold nothing but books. Tall trees stood all around like sleepy sentinels, listing, crouching over the parking lot, shading the homey, shuttered windows with branches exploding in a riot of new spring green.
Dean pulled into the parking lot, then just sat there, letting the current Metallica song run its course, bobbing his head to the beat and tapping on the steering wheel. Occasionally he glanced over to smirk at Jack or raise an eyebrow, like he was winning some kind of competition. Jack just stared at him blankly and waited for it to be over. It took awhile. These songs were long.
At last the tape clicked into the hissing static between songs, and Dean turned the key back, then flopped back in the seat with a sigh of contentment. “So?”
“So what?”
“Did I tell ya or did I tell ya? Metallica rules!”
“Yeah, you told me.” Jack turned sideways slightly, facing the kid head-on to deliver his speech. “Actually, I kind of liked it. It was very…operatic. Not too different at all from the stuff I listen to voluntarily.”
Dean did a hilarious little double-take, eyes flying wide, mouth dropping open. “O…operatic?” he choked out. “It was operatic? As in, like an opera?”
“Yeah, definitely. So huge, so epic.” Jack spread his hands in illustration. “The repeating themes, the soaring melodies, the complex instrumentals, the freaking length of the songs. Not to mention the emotions expressed so very clearly and repetitively. Just like an aria.”
“An…an aria?”
“Yes, an aria. You know, the sections of an opera that are sung just in solo or duet, the main characters pouring their souls out to the audience. It’s usually all about how much love stinks, or politics are screwing them over, or how they’re ready to die. Exactly like Metallica.”
Dean had the blank look of a computer struggling valiantly to process conflicting information. The wheel was spinning but nothing was happening. “Metallica. Is exactly like an opera.”
“Sure is. Well, Metallica has more percussion. And it’s in English.” Jack blinked thoughtfully. “And I’m having trouble figuring out what the plot is. I’m sure it’s a tragedy, though, just like most operas.”
“You’re messing with me.” Dean sounded completely certain, having found an explanation that fit everything to his satisfaction.
“Nope. Utterly serious.” Jack kept his face straight, and Dean’s expression went slack again in uncertainty, floundering around in an attempt to compute. Jack added a little nod, grave and slow.
Even he wasn’t sure quite where the line was, though. He was laying it on thick, definitely, but he was also pretty sure most of that was true. And he thought that maybe he was starting to get a tiny bit fond of classic rock, but surely that was ridiculous. He hadn’t cared for it much when it wasn’t classic, but brand new.
But hey, a guy’s tastes could change. He used to think that all scientists were useless geeks. A select few had proven that broad assumption wrong, though he was sure that it was still mostly accurate.
Dean meanwhile, stared helplessly out the windshield, blinking. Jack clapped his shoulder and got out of the car. “C’mon, let’s go do this research thing.”
The young man followed him slowly to the building and stumbled up the steps, expression still fixed in contemplation mode. Jack opened the door, sleigh bells ringing at the motion, and held it for his companion, arm extended in courtly invitation. Dean gave him a glare, but stepped inside with an abrupt air of confidence.
The librarian’s desk was only a scant few feet from the door, every other inch of space in the building taken up with shelves and tables and computer desks, aisles barely wide enough for one person to walk down, as long as that person was fairly skinny. The woman sitting at the desk was relatively young, short dark hair, thin-rimmed glasses, a pretty, though not beautiful, face, and a nametag that said her name was Marcy, Reference Librarian.
Jack watched Dean switch gears, smooth and sweet as a finely tuned stock car, from irritation to beaming charisma without a step between. “Hey, there, you look like the lady with the answers.”
That sideways little grin, a green-eyed wink, and the librarian was gone, solid gone. So completely and quickly melted in the sun of Dean’s smile that Jack firmly expected there to be nothing left of her but a sticky puddle on the desk by the time they left. The other patrons would just have to fend for themselves, because they weren’t going to be getting any help from her in the foreseeable future.
Jack sighed. It was not entirely dissimilar from going on missions with one Dr. Daniel Jackson, triple PhD and all-around cutie-pie.
X
“All right, let’s try this one,” Marcy the Reference Librarian said cheerfully, emerging from deep in the stacks with yet another humongous book already falling apart at the seams. This one had a gray cover, though, so that automatically set it apart from the five books already on the table between Dean and Jack, open to various chapters that did not contain information about Susanna Milner.
Dean pushed the books around to make some room, and Jack pretended to be interested. “Ah, that looks great, Marcy,” Dean said. “What’s that one about?”
“It’s a memoir by Vince Emerson, covering his life here during the mid-nineteenth century. This is the only copy in existence that we know of-it’s handwritten.”
“Oh, goody.” Dean accepted the heavy tome from her hands and set it carefully on the table in front of him, eyeing it as if afraid that it might explode. He looked up at Jack and smiled grimly. “That means we get to have lots of fun decoding an old man’s handwriting.”
“It’s not too bad, really,” Marcy said. “The real problem is the rambling. It’s not exactly what you might call coherent. He’ll talk about incidents from his old age and his youth in the same paragraph, and sometimes forgets to finish the stories. Even the interesting ones.”
“You’ve read it, huh?” Dean gave her a sympathetic look.
“Only pages here and there.” Marcy shrugged. “It can get pretty dull out here when no one needs a reference librarian. But if he knew Susanna Milner, he probably mentioned her somewhere in there.”
“Excellent. I’ll give it a shot. Thanks, Marcy.”
She blushed and smiled, moving back toward the circulation desk to take care of the line of people waiting impatiently for their books to be checked out. “I’ll keep thinking about where there might be more information. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Will do.”
Dean opened the book to a random page, letting the two halves thump down on the table in a small cloud of dust. Jack leaned over the table to look at it upside-down. The handwriting was in cursive, but at least it wasn’t too faded, and looked pretty consistent. Once Dean figured out whether this loop or that was supposed to be an I or E or A, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to read.
“This is boring,” Jack said in a low voice, as if confiding a great secret. “Is research always this boring?”
Dean sighed. It was like working with a frickin’ six-year-old. “Yes, Jack. It’s always this boring. But we have to do it if we’re going to find out where the body’s buried. Or if we’re even looking at the right person.”
The older man was aghast at the idea. “You mean we might have to start this all over from the beginning?”
“Yeah. That’s how it works, man.” At the thought, Dean felt just as depressed as Jack looked.
Jack sat back and fidgeted for a bit. Dean bent to the memoir of Vince Emerson. He was peripherally aware of Jack flipping disconsolately through some of the other books, looking around the library as if in search of something interesting, and then there was an odd movement that forced Dean to look up in order to discover what it was.
Jack was playing with a yo-yo.
“For fuck’s sake, Jack,” Dean said, too appalled to pay any attention to the disgusted gasp from the older lady at the computer just three steps from their table. “Do you always bring a yo-yo on your trips to the library?”
Jack gave him a bland stare. “I take a yo-yo everywhere I go. There’s always a reason to have one along.”
“My God. How old are you? Ten? You’re going to get us thrown out!”
“Um, no, that would be you. Getting a little loud, kid.” Jack flicked his eyes from one side to the other, indicating the small-town folks who were glaring at him with narrowed eyes. One of them was a young mother in line at the desk, holding her hands clamped over her young son’s ears and staring at Dean with eyes that promised a swift and painful death.
“Oh, for… Just go outside and play with your yo-yo.” Frickin’ six years old. Dean was sure of it.
Jack looked back at him with large, soulful brown eyes. Dean rolled his own eyes and crouched back over his book. C’mon, Vince. Gimme something good, here.
But Jack didn’t go outside. After a few moments, Dean was aware of him going back to the other books, pulling one of them closer, and then sitting still for awhile. A few minutes later Dean glanced up and saw Jack reading quietly, actually taking time, eyes moving carefully back and forth, a hand already on the next page ready to flip it.
A soft quiet fell as Dean turned back to the memoir, still scanning down each page for Susanna Milner’s name. Neither of them was good at this research thing, but they could do it. This was going to work.
As long as one of them didn’t drive the other one insane first.
Part 12