[fic] snickfic: Respite
[ Rarepair FPF ]
Title: Respite
Writer: snickfic
Alternate links: On Livejournal
Status of work: Complete
Characters and/or pairings: Dean/Ellen
Rating: R
Warnings, kinks & contents: [Click to read]None
Length: 7258
Summary: Before Dean leaves this life for good, he finds someone to come home to for a while. Set in S3.
Reccer's notes: I have to admit here that Dean/Ellen is my wish-it'd-been-canon pairing, more than anything else ever, since all the way back in early 07 when I first caught up on the show and got hooked. So, I'm primed to love this. But it's also just a damned fine story, in which Dean and Ellen make a bit of peace together for a while in the spaces between the big stuff. There's the once, which is something good, and sweet; and then there's the again, and the more, and then it's a relationship that's fallen into place in a way that makes sense, even when Dean's not entirely sure how to be in it. There's comfort and sadness and the characterisations are great - it left me full of feelings for early-season Dean and Sam, as well as Ellen herself.
[Short excerpt]
From the middle of the first scene:
They sit for a few moments, quiet, Dean thinking about the charred, acrid heap of the Roadhouse, with Ash and God knows who else buried in it.
Then, because it’s the next thing he can think of, he says, “Jo around?”
“Still hunting. Calls me now, though. Every week, Monday night, or she knows I’ll send Bobby to go looking for her remains.” Ellen’s smile turns grim before she wipes it away. “And Sam?”
“He’s fine.” In the sense that he’s falling apart at the seams, that Dean’s beginning to suspect he was all wrong about Sam being strong enough to live without his brother. But he’s in one piece still, and that’s the only question Winchesters answer, really. “We’re still hunting.”
She snorts. “The both of you’ll be hunting until you fall down dead.” He sees it in her eyes the moment her words catch up with her.
Maybe it’s that, a moment’s faltering by a woman who’s always been as certain as steel, that makes him say what he says next. Or maybe it’s just that he’s dying and she’s a friend and he likes her, goddamnit; likes that, given her way, she’d face down a hell full of demons or a saloon full of drunks before she’d let either get a hand on her daughter.
Or it could be the booze.
Regardless, what he says is, “So how about we slip into someplace more comfortable?”
She blinks. There’s a pause long enough for him to consider how coming on to Ellen Harvelle ranks as one of the stupider things he’s ever done, right up there with trusting Bela and telling Cassie Robinson the truth.
Then she says, “Come on, then.”