After the Day is Saved - PG
Title: After the Day is Saved
Fandom: Doctor Who, Supernatural
Rating: PG
Summary: Dean meets someone he wasn't expecting to see again.
Notes: A sequel to Vodka Confessions, for the Choose Your Own Companion Crossover Ficathon. Set w-a-y post-series Supernatural. Vague spoilers for the end of Season One. After that it's all made up.
Warnings: AU for Supernatural after end of series one. Brief mention of That One Spoiler from Doctor Who.
It had all seemed so simple at first. Chase the monster, like he usually did, down a back alley. That in itself wasn’t strange.
What was strange was arriving in the empty lot that the alley led onto, hearing the words,
“Get Down!”
Screamed at him, and then being tackled to the floor as a huge explosion rocked the ground beneath him, followed by various ‘splat’ noises. He tried to twist his head to see what had happened, but whoever was pinning him down was good, managing to keep him immobilised, and totally sheltered from the blast.
There was silence for a moment.
“Well,” came a pleasant voice with a clear English accent, “that was a little messier than anticipated.”
“It’s always messier than you anticipate,” the person above Dean said, in a strangely familiar voice. He shifted and pulled back. “You okay there?”
Dean shifted, rolling onto his back and squinting up at the guy crouched over him.
“Jack?”
Jack blinked down at him, hardly changed from when they’d met in that seedy bar about a year ago. Was it only a year? So much had happened since then, and to be honest at times he’d wondered if he’d just dreamt the entire thing. Bars were normal for Dean. Going to bars and ending the evening with sex was normal for Dean. What wasn’t normal was going to a bar, confessing everything to some strange guy, who turned out to have an even weirder life than him, and then having sex on the hood of the Impala with the aforementioned strange guy.
At the thought of the Impala, he suppressed a wince. Jack was staring at him with a huge grin.
“If it isn’t Dean Winchester!” Jack stood, pulling Dean to his feet and giving him an enthusiastic kiss before he could properly get his balance. “How’s it going? How’s that gorgeous car?”
“Not…Not around any more,” Dean said, clearing his throat slightly, and glancing over at the other man, who was surveying them curiously, hands in the pockets of his brown pinstriped suit. “Who’s your friend? Had sex on his car yet?”
“Yeah.” Jack turned to face the other man, grinning. “But Bessie wasn’t anywhere near as hot as yours.”
“You’d better be saying nice things about my car!” the other man called.
“She just doesn’t do it for me, Doc,” Jack said, wandering over to join him, Dean trailing behind him. “I think it’s the colour.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the colour,” he huffed.
“No, sure, bright yellow’s really sexy.” Jack glanced at Dean. “Doctor, this is Dean Winchester. Dean, the Doctor.”
Dean shook the Doctor’s hand and studied him for a moment, before something clicked.
“Wait, isn’t this the guy you were looking for last time?”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow at Jack.
“You told him about me?”
“Only nice things, Doc,” Jack said. “He’s a demon hunter. Figured it couldn’t hurt.”
“Ah, humans. For all the alien interference, you lot do some pretty good creepy yourselves.”
Dean wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or not by that.
“Hey, weren’t you looking for a girl too? Rose, or something?”
As soon as he’d said it, Dean knew it was a mistake. The Doctor’s face closed off and Jack looked down.
“I’ll see you later,” the Doctor said, and turned, his long brown coat flapping out behind him as he strode off.
“What happened?” Dean asked after a pause.
“Rose…Left,” Jack said, and before Dean could ask any further, he draped his arm over Dean’s shoulders and steered him along the alley. “Let me buy you a drink. You can tell me what happened to the car.”
Dean eyed him suspiciously.
“Is this gonna end in sex again?”
“Maybe.” Jack grinned at him. “If you ask nicely.”
-----
“Sammy’s at Law School now. Law School!” Dean let out a bitter laugh, knocking back the drink - vodka again, as before. “Helping people the ‘normal’ way. Sometimes he’s so deluded it’s almost sweet.”
“Can’t all save the world in the same way,” Jack pointed out, swigging from the bottle, “otherwise there’d be no-one to stop it from going to Hell in a different way.”
“That what you and the Doctor were doing earlier?” Dean took the bottle from Jack and filled his glass again. “Saving the world in a different way?”
“Pretty much.”
Dean watched him for a moment, then laughed again and scrubbed a hand over his face, then around to rub the back of his head.
“Christ,” he muttered. “As if demons weren’t bad enough, I’ve got aliens as well.”
It was weird because it wasn’t weird. Aliens, sure, what the hell. Time travel, he’d seen stranger things.
He hadn’t ever thought he’d meet Jack again, but if he had, he would’ve expected it to be awkward. The few times he’d thought back to that night - more recently, when the loneliness was almost crushing - he’d been torn. He wasn’t gay. He knew it. Aside from Jack he’d felt no desire for men. But back in that disgusting little bar in that disgusting little town, for a moment Dean hadn’t cared. Another person who knew about travelling, who knew about fighting and loss. Who wasn’t secretly pining for the white picket fence and the dog and the kids and “Hi Honey, I’m home”.
“It’s not about the demons, is it?” Jack said. “And if it’d been about revenge, you’d have stopped after it all.”
“You want to know what it’s about?” Dean waved his shot glass around vaguely, then set it down on the table with a determined ‘click’. “It’s about making sure that no-one else gets killed. It’s about everyone who’s too stupid, too happy to see what’s in the dark from finding out about it.”
“It’s about saving the day,” Jack finished, watching him with a strange look in his eye. He glanced at the bottle of vodka in his hand, and then held it up in a mock toast. “To saving the day!”
Dean echoed him, clinking his shot glass against the bottle and downing it.
“And after the day is saved?” he asked tiredly. “What then?”
“Then,” Jack said, standing with a funny little grin, “then you talk to the Doctor.”
-----
It was a box that wasn’t a box. Outside blue and box-shaped. Inside it was cavernous, huge, with walls that curved over and around like some kind of giant, architectural embrace. The room hummed with life, even though there were only three people in it.
Until he met Jack, Dean would’ve said magic. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Jack and the Doctor were on the other side of the room, by the far door, while he loitered by the entrance, hands shoved deep into his pockets, shoulders hunched against a cold that was entirely metaphorical, generated by the glances the Doctor was sending towards him while Jack spoke earnestly.
He remembered the first time he and Jack met. Jack had fallen for this guy, and it was clear now in their movements. Touching, eye-contact that lasted longer than seconds, no such thing as personal space. He wouldn’t blame this Doctor guy if he was jealous. They meet some strange - admittedly attractive - guy in the street, Jack kisses him and disappears off for hours. When they get back, Jack’s begging that they take him along. Something would’ve been a little skewed here if the Doctor’d just accepted him.
Finally, the Doctor inclined his head slightly, and Jack beamed, squeezing the Doctor’s shoulder and patting his ass as he slipped through the far door and disappeared. For a moment Dean felt nervous, as suddenly the Doctor turned and met his eyes, fully focussed on him as he moved across the room.
“So,” the Doctor said, leaning back against the console on the walkway above him. “Dean Winchester,” he said the name as if he were tasting it, exploring the contours in his mouth, “Jack seems to think I should trust you.”
Dean raised his eyebrows in response, venturing a few steps closer.
“More than that,” the Doctor continued, “he seems to think I should let you come with us.”
“Hey, dude, if you’re worried I’m gonna make a move on your man…”
To his surprise, the Doctor smiled, slow and amused, almost predatory.
“Oh I’ve long since gotten used to that with Jack,” he said, “although I appreciate the sentiment.”
Dean stepped up onto the walkway, eyeing the Doctor suspiciously.
“Then…about what I said earlier? About…Rose?”
A brief shadow passed over the Doctor’s face, but then he was smiling again, brighter than before, ringing slightly more false.
“Not about that either,” he said cheerfully. “Can’t hold my mistakes against you now, can I?”
His mistakes? Dean studied the Doctor more carefully. For all his easy-going, charming appearance, he knew from the way the Doctor was looking at him, from the shadows in his eyes that this was another man who knew loss. Who knew what it was to cause death, to be unable to prevent it, to watch it.
“What, then?”
“Why do you want to come?” the Doctor asked, his face suddenly serious - his mercurial moods as alien as Jack had described them. “What are you running from?”
What was he running from? The death of his mother at the hands of a demon that ruined his life forever? The deaths of all those people he hadn’t been quick enough, smart enough, strong enough to save? The death of his father, after everything was said and done, to a heart attack - caused by excessive stress, ha! - and the simple tombstone that marked an empty grave, his ashes scattered to the wind? The stabbing betrayal he’d felt when Sam had abandoned him for Law School, for normality? Or even the tiny, feeble part of him that still wanted to be a fireman when he grew up?
“I’m not running from anything,” Dean said, and he was surprised to find it was the truth.
The Doctor stared at him for an impossibly long moment, then smiled again. This one calmer, warmer - less teeth, but more honest - and he pulled the lever beside him down. The whole room juddered, and the light in the central pillar began to move.
“Right answer, Dean Winchester,” he said. “Welcome to the TARDIS.”
-----
Fandom: Doctor Who, Supernatural
Rating: PG
Summary: Dean meets someone he wasn't expecting to see again.
Notes: A sequel to Vodka Confessions, for the Choose Your Own Companion Crossover Ficathon. Set w-a-y post-series Supernatural. Vague spoilers for the end of Season One. After that it's all made up.
Warnings: AU for Supernatural after end of series one. Brief mention of That One Spoiler from Doctor Who.
It had all seemed so simple at first. Chase the monster, like he usually did, down a back alley. That in itself wasn’t strange.
What was strange was arriving in the empty lot that the alley led onto, hearing the words,
“Get Down!”
Screamed at him, and then being tackled to the floor as a huge explosion rocked the ground beneath him, followed by various ‘splat’ noises. He tried to twist his head to see what had happened, but whoever was pinning him down was good, managing to keep him immobilised, and totally sheltered from the blast.
There was silence for a moment.
“Well,” came a pleasant voice with a clear English accent, “that was a little messier than anticipated.”
“It’s always messier than you anticipate,” the person above Dean said, in a strangely familiar voice. He shifted and pulled back. “You okay there?”
Dean shifted, rolling onto his back and squinting up at the guy crouched over him.
“Jack?”
Jack blinked down at him, hardly changed from when they’d met in that seedy bar about a year ago. Was it only a year? So much had happened since then, and to be honest at times he’d wondered if he’d just dreamt the entire thing. Bars were normal for Dean. Going to bars and ending the evening with sex was normal for Dean. What wasn’t normal was going to a bar, confessing everything to some strange guy, who turned out to have an even weirder life than him, and then having sex on the hood of the Impala with the aforementioned strange guy.
At the thought of the Impala, he suppressed a wince. Jack was staring at him with a huge grin.
“If it isn’t Dean Winchester!” Jack stood, pulling Dean to his feet and giving him an enthusiastic kiss before he could properly get his balance. “How’s it going? How’s that gorgeous car?”
“Not…Not around any more,” Dean said, clearing his throat slightly, and glancing over at the other man, who was surveying them curiously, hands in the pockets of his brown pinstriped suit. “Who’s your friend? Had sex on his car yet?”
“Yeah.” Jack turned to face the other man, grinning. “But Bessie wasn’t anywhere near as hot as yours.”
“You’d better be saying nice things about my car!” the other man called.
“She just doesn’t do it for me, Doc,” Jack said, wandering over to join him, Dean trailing behind him. “I think it’s the colour.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the colour,” he huffed.
“No, sure, bright yellow’s really sexy.” Jack glanced at Dean. “Doctor, this is Dean Winchester. Dean, the Doctor.”
Dean shook the Doctor’s hand and studied him for a moment, before something clicked.
“Wait, isn’t this the guy you were looking for last time?”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow at Jack.
“You told him about me?”
“Only nice things, Doc,” Jack said. “He’s a demon hunter. Figured it couldn’t hurt.”
“Ah, humans. For all the alien interference, you lot do some pretty good creepy yourselves.”
Dean wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or not by that.
“Hey, weren’t you looking for a girl too? Rose, or something?”
As soon as he’d said it, Dean knew it was a mistake. The Doctor’s face closed off and Jack looked down.
“I’ll see you later,” the Doctor said, and turned, his long brown coat flapping out behind him as he strode off.
“What happened?” Dean asked after a pause.
“Rose…Left,” Jack said, and before Dean could ask any further, he draped his arm over Dean’s shoulders and steered him along the alley. “Let me buy you a drink. You can tell me what happened to the car.”
Dean eyed him suspiciously.
“Is this gonna end in sex again?”
“Maybe.” Jack grinned at him. “If you ask nicely.”
-----
“Sammy’s at Law School now. Law School!” Dean let out a bitter laugh, knocking back the drink - vodka again, as before. “Helping people the ‘normal’ way. Sometimes he’s so deluded it’s almost sweet.”
“Can’t all save the world in the same way,” Jack pointed out, swigging from the bottle, “otherwise there’d be no-one to stop it from going to Hell in a different way.”
“That what you and the Doctor were doing earlier?” Dean took the bottle from Jack and filled his glass again. “Saving the world in a different way?”
“Pretty much.”
Dean watched him for a moment, then laughed again and scrubbed a hand over his face, then around to rub the back of his head.
“Christ,” he muttered. “As if demons weren’t bad enough, I’ve got aliens as well.”
It was weird because it wasn’t weird. Aliens, sure, what the hell. Time travel, he’d seen stranger things.
He hadn’t ever thought he’d meet Jack again, but if he had, he would’ve expected it to be awkward. The few times he’d thought back to that night - more recently, when the loneliness was almost crushing - he’d been torn. He wasn’t gay. He knew it. Aside from Jack he’d felt no desire for men. But back in that disgusting little bar in that disgusting little town, for a moment Dean hadn’t cared. Another person who knew about travelling, who knew about fighting and loss. Who wasn’t secretly pining for the white picket fence and the dog and the kids and “Hi Honey, I’m home”.
“It’s not about the demons, is it?” Jack said. “And if it’d been about revenge, you’d have stopped after it all.”
“You want to know what it’s about?” Dean waved his shot glass around vaguely, then set it down on the table with a determined ‘click’. “It’s about making sure that no-one else gets killed. It’s about everyone who’s too stupid, too happy to see what’s in the dark from finding out about it.”
“It’s about saving the day,” Jack finished, watching him with a strange look in his eye. He glanced at the bottle of vodka in his hand, and then held it up in a mock toast. “To saving the day!”
Dean echoed him, clinking his shot glass against the bottle and downing it.
“And after the day is saved?” he asked tiredly. “What then?”
“Then,” Jack said, standing with a funny little grin, “then you talk to the Doctor.”
-----
It was a box that wasn’t a box. Outside blue and box-shaped. Inside it was cavernous, huge, with walls that curved over and around like some kind of giant, architectural embrace. The room hummed with life, even though there were only three people in it.
Until he met Jack, Dean would’ve said magic. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Jack and the Doctor were on the other side of the room, by the far door, while he loitered by the entrance, hands shoved deep into his pockets, shoulders hunched against a cold that was entirely metaphorical, generated by the glances the Doctor was sending towards him while Jack spoke earnestly.
He remembered the first time he and Jack met. Jack had fallen for this guy, and it was clear now in their movements. Touching, eye-contact that lasted longer than seconds, no such thing as personal space. He wouldn’t blame this Doctor guy if he was jealous. They meet some strange - admittedly attractive - guy in the street, Jack kisses him and disappears off for hours. When they get back, Jack’s begging that they take him along. Something would’ve been a little skewed here if the Doctor’d just accepted him.
Finally, the Doctor inclined his head slightly, and Jack beamed, squeezing the Doctor’s shoulder and patting his ass as he slipped through the far door and disappeared. For a moment Dean felt nervous, as suddenly the Doctor turned and met his eyes, fully focussed on him as he moved across the room.
“So,” the Doctor said, leaning back against the console on the walkway above him. “Dean Winchester,” he said the name as if he were tasting it, exploring the contours in his mouth, “Jack seems to think I should trust you.”
Dean raised his eyebrows in response, venturing a few steps closer.
“More than that,” the Doctor continued, “he seems to think I should let you come with us.”
“Hey, dude, if you’re worried I’m gonna make a move on your man…”
To his surprise, the Doctor smiled, slow and amused, almost predatory.
“Oh I’ve long since gotten used to that with Jack,” he said, “although I appreciate the sentiment.”
Dean stepped up onto the walkway, eyeing the Doctor suspiciously.
“Then…about what I said earlier? About…Rose?”
A brief shadow passed over the Doctor’s face, but then he was smiling again, brighter than before, ringing slightly more false.
“Not about that either,” he said cheerfully. “Can’t hold my mistakes against you now, can I?”
His mistakes? Dean studied the Doctor more carefully. For all his easy-going, charming appearance, he knew from the way the Doctor was looking at him, from the shadows in his eyes that this was another man who knew loss. Who knew what it was to cause death, to be unable to prevent it, to watch it.
“What, then?”
“Why do you want to come?” the Doctor asked, his face suddenly serious - his mercurial moods as alien as Jack had described them. “What are you running from?”
What was he running from? The death of his mother at the hands of a demon that ruined his life forever? The deaths of all those people he hadn’t been quick enough, smart enough, strong enough to save? The death of his father, after everything was said and done, to a heart attack - caused by excessive stress, ha! - and the simple tombstone that marked an empty grave, his ashes scattered to the wind? The stabbing betrayal he’d felt when Sam had abandoned him for Law School, for normality? Or even the tiny, feeble part of him that still wanted to be a fireman when he grew up?
“I’m not running from anything,” Dean said, and he was surprised to find it was the truth.
The Doctor stared at him for an impossibly long moment, then smiled again. This one calmer, warmer - less teeth, but more honest - and he pulled the lever beside him down. The whole room juddered, and the light in the central pillar began to move.
“Right answer, Dean Winchester,” he said. “Welcome to the TARDIS.”
-----