Prodigal Son 1/? - R (AWV #11)
Title: Prodigal Son
Author: Jinni (jinni.tth@gmail.com)
Rated: R
Disclaimer: All things Dark Angel belong to James Cameron, et al. All things SPN belong to Eric Kripke, et al.
Notes: The eleventh story in the AWV, following “Tears of a Clown”.
Summary: Alec returns to Seattle with Dean & Sam in tow. Will this be the end of their happy family?
CHAPTER ONE
Alec had to hand it to his brother; for someone with just plain old human reflexes and speed, Dean sure as hell could pull a gun quick as a lightning strike when he thought that the situation called for it. And apparently that kind of situation was happening right here, right now. In the middle of the street, where anyone could see them, with the sun making things brighter and brighter by the second. Before Alec could get out a single word to make it clear that Joshua wasn’t a threat, Dean had his gun out and up, pointed at Joshua with no hesitation or flinching. Perfectly calm, unwavering. Fully prepared to take the big guy down if he was dangerous. That was laughable. Joshua? Dangerous? Only to himself.
Joshua came to a halt so sudden that he stumbled another step forward before he caught himself, eyes wide.
To his credit, Sam was only a handful of seconds behind Dean. Shit. What the fuck was he thinking not giving them a heads up before they got here?
“Sam, Dean - guns down!” The look they gave him was ‘are you nuts’ with a side of ‘the fuck’ mixed in for good measure. “It’s okay,” he said, seriously. A part of him just wanted to laugh, though. Man, he hadn’t expected things to get crazy quite this soon. He really should’ve known better.
Dean cut a glance at him from the corner of his eye. “Excuse me? You wanna repeat that? ‘Cause I could’ve sworn you just said that it’s okay when we’ve got the grownup version of the dog-faced boy right here in front of us.”
“Alec?” Joshua asked, confused. He’d frozen the second he saw the guns. Good thing, too. Alec didn’t have anything against Joshua. Getting the big guy killed just because he’d had a moment of extreme stupidity and forgot to educate his brothers on the many different flavors of transgenics was something Alec was pretty damn sure he’d feel bad about. Now Joshua was looking back and forth between him and Dean, like he was trying to get a bead one what the hell was going on. Yeah, well, that was another thing Alec should have thought about, right? Explaining to everyone around here who the fuck Dean was and why they looked so much alike.
“It’s okay,” Alec repeated, firmer this time, for both his brothers’ benefit and Joshua’s. “Guys, this is Joshua.”
“The guy that called to tell you that your friend was in trouble? So,” Sam murmured, slowly lowering his gun. He flicked his gaze between Alec and Joshua. It was a fucked up world where the sight of something like Joshua coming at them didn’t ruffle either of them in the least, just made them go on the defensive. Sam licked his lips and shoved the gun back in the waist of his pants, pulling his t-shirt down over it, looking Joshua over from head to foot. “Not a demon, then?”
“Demon?” Joshua asked. “No, not demon. Joshua.”
“Right, got that,” Sam said. Alec could tell that he still wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but he was willing to play along until he got an answer.
It took another second or three before Dean nodded once and relaxed minutely. Alec sighed when Dean clicked the safety of the gun on and lowered it one-handed until it pointed at the ground. He didn’t put it back away completely, of course. That would have been expecting too much, Alec supposed. Keeping one eye on Joshua, Dean shot a glare at Alec that was hot enough to melt through solid steel.
“You didn’t think to mention this?” Dean asked harshly.
Alec’s mouth snapped shut so fast and hard his teeth rattled, cheek twitching as his jaw clenched together. The anger he saw burning in Dean’s eyes was unexpected and had felt like a punch to the gut. This was how it was going to start, right? Judging by Dean’s reaction to his omission about Joshua, the rest of Alec’s secrets were going to be met with the kind of loathing hostility that Alec had already expected. No surprise there, right?
“It’s no big deal, Dean,” Sam said smoothly. “I mean, sure it would have been nice to have some kind of warning so that we didn’t pull a gun on the guy, but it’s not like we shot him or anything. No harm, no foul, man.”
A spot of warmth tickled in Alec’s chest at Sam’s defense. He started to tell Dean that he honestly had just forgotten - that he was so used to fucked up shit that he didn’t even think about having to warn anyone because Joshua didn’t even register as anything other than normal in his screwed up life - but snapped his mouth shut as he realized where they were. Standing in the middle of the street, all of them. When people could start getting up and moving around at any moment. The last thing they needed was for anyone to see Joshua and start a fricking panic.
“Let’s get our stuff and go inside,” Alec suggested, though it sounded more like an order, even to his own ears. He gave a meaningful tilt of his head in Joshua’s direction when Sam and Dean frowned at the change of subject. The look in Dean’s eyes said he wasn’t going to just let things drop, either, as he turned to grab their gear from the trunk.
Joshua led the way into the house when they had their stuff, then stood back and watched with quiet, bristling curiosity. Alec didn’t even have to look at him to know that he was mostly watching him and Dean. Not Sam, of course. Sam was an outsider to this, but he wasn’t something so new and unique that Joshua couldn’t wrap his head around it. He was guessing that Joshua wasn’t aware that there’d been another guy wearing his face at some point, running around playing good little psychopath. Or, if he had, maybe he just wasn’t connecting those dots to get to that kind of - false - assumption.
“Alec?” he asked finally. “What’s going on?”
Sighing, Alec dropped onto the dilapidated old couch. They needed to be talking about Max and whatever shit storm she’d kicked up to get herself kidnapped like she had. The self-righteous idiot was usually better at keeping herself out of situations like that. But it didn’t look like he was going to get a chance to ask about Max until he’d explained Dean. And Sam, too, by default.
Brothers. They’re my brothers. He tried the words out in his head. Dean and Sam had claimed him in front of Ellen. All matter of fact and assured, no doubt in their minds, ready to go to bat to defend that inherent truth if she so much as put up a fuss about it. Him, though? He hadn’t said those words to anyone. Hadn’t laid his claim on the two of them. And now that he had the chance, he found himself wondering how much harder it was going to be to do this and then lose both of them when they figured out he wasn’t worth keeping around.
“Well,” Alec drawled, infusing as much lighthearted could-give-a-fuck in his tone as possible. “Guess Manticore decided they needed a handsome son-of-a-bitch in their ranks and, well, they chose his face.” Alec cocked a thumb in Dean’s direction. “Mix in a few special surprises, and here I am. One clone.”
“Or, you could just call him our brother,” Sam said. Again, like it went without saying.
Dean snorted. “Little brother.”
“Brothers?” Joshua repeated, wrapping his mind around the word. Damn, Alec could almost see the gears clunk-clunking along in that big, thick, canine skull of his. Then Joshua’s eyes lit up. “Brothers! Brothers to Alec!”
“That’s right,” Alec agreed, still not trusting himself to say the words himself. This was close enough, right? “That’s Dean and the freakishly tall one is Sam.” Of course, Joshua probably didn’t see him as freakishly tall, all things considered. Huh. Imagine that.
Joshua was all smiles then, crossing to the Winchesters like they hadn’t pulled guns on him not even thirty minutes ago. Dumbass really did forgive and forget too easily. Alec saw Dean stiffen for just a second and then relax again. If Max had been here, she would have taken offense on Joshua’s behalf. Gone into some big, long spiel about how he was a great guy, didn’t deserve how Manticore had made him, that he wasn’t going to hurt them and would they please stop being so fucking nervous around him.
But Max wasn’t here, and Alec wasn’t about to get up in arms over this. His brothers would get used to Joshua just like they got used to everything else in this big, wide, freakish world.
Sam shook Joshua’s hand, and Dean gave a little nod, tilting his head to the side. “So - um - a dog, huh?” He flicked his gaze over to Alec, inquisition in his eyes. “That what you got in you, too?”
Alec cocked an eyebrow at his double. “Do I look like a dog to you?”
Choking on a laugh, Sam coughed. “Well, you do flirt with anything that moves, man.” He grinned in a flash of blinding teeth, the picture of innocence. “Oh, that’s not the kind of dog you meant.”
It felt good to laugh, even if it was just a chuckle. Even Dean was half-smiling. For one moment, everything felt like it was back to normal. Like Dad wasn’t dead and they weren’t sitting in the last place in the world that Alec really wanted to be.
“X5’s have cat in their cocktail,” Joshua offered, breaking the moment as quick as it had come.
“X5’s?”
Questions. Questions. Questions. All with answers could possibly lead to were more fucking questions that Alec really didn’t want to deal with. Especially not right now. Or… ever.
Thank God for excuses. “I’ll explain later. Right now, I need you to tell me what happened to Maxie, Joshua. What trouble did she make for herself now?”
~*~
The basement was just as it had been the last time Alec had been in Joshua’s house. Nothing had really changed or been moved. The piano still sat right where it always had been, like it was incapable of moving.
Alec took a seat at the keys, his feet seeking out the pedals beneath automatically, fingers falling into familiar patterns and melodies without conscious thought to guide them, as his mind wandered in other directions.
Max really hadn’t done anything. At least, that was what Joshua had said. If she’d been doing something to bring attention to herself, the big guy didn’t know what the hell it was. Alec wasn’t so sure. More like she’d been up to something that Joshua hadn’t known about. Which meant that tomorrow he’d be paying a visit to her star-crossed boyfriend himself and that chick she’d hung out with at Jam Pony. If they agreed that Max hadn’t been working something, then maybe he’d believe it.
Maybe.
What he did know was that Max had been taken right in front of Joshua. Well, almost. She’d fought them off long enough for Joshua to get away. Killed at least one of them, from what Joshua had found out afterwards. From the descriptions he’d given, these were definitely White’s guys. Alec grimaced, the song weaving beneath his hands never faltering.
No one knew where White and his crew were based out of, though. Logan would be his best chance of figuring it out if he wasn’t already hot on the trail himself. Anything to save his special little girlfriend. Alec’s stomach did a little flip of nausea. He was the reason the two of them couldn’t be together. Him and that damned mission he’d done for Manticore. His last mission for Manticore, as it turned out. Still, he didn’t feel any guilt over it. Even a blind man could see that those two weren’t meant to be together. There was love, and then there was love. They hadn’t had either, in his opinion.
If he was smart, he’d get up right now and go upstairs and at least tell Sam and Dean about that since they’d be meeting with the man himself tomorrow and fuck only knew if it would get brought up. Probably some off the cuff remark from Logan to Dean, “Are you going to try to kill me, too?”
Disaster. Waiting to happen. And he could head it all off or, at the very least, just get it over with, if he would just get up and go tell them.
Alec kept playing.
When he came out of it, hands still poised over the keys, Alec knew that he was no longer alone. He also knew, without a doubt, that it was Dean that had come down to find him, the same way he just knew where Dean was sometimes when they were in a fight or walking together. Some sort of indefinable something that linked the two of them together. Nothing so sci-fi as telepathy. This was just instinct. Genetic hardwiring. He knew Dean like he knew himself, and vice versa.
Alec turned on the stool, sliding one leg up, knee bent, the other foot still planted on the floor, and waited for him to say something. To ask something. He didn’t want to talk about Rachel with Dean or Sam. Not yet and maybe not ever.
Dean spoke softly when he finally finished sorting through whatever thoughts were in his head. “You play piano.”
Snorting, Alec said, “And Sam says you’re not smart.”
“Bitch,” Dean shot back without venom. The pseudo-insult rolled off of Alec, feeling sort of like what he remembered a hug to feel like. This was affection. The kind that brothers, or family in general, shared.
Okay, so maybe other families didn’t trade insults as a matter of standard operating procedure, but no one was ever going to accuse the Winchesters of being a model for family interaction.
“I just,” Dean began. He shook his head and gave a rueful quirk of the lips. “I didn’t know you played.”
The crux of everything, right there. Alec felt his heart turn cool, the warmth of their moment of brotherly jibing fleeing before it could be frozen out. He turned back to the keys and shut his eyes, starting to play again.
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
He didn’t even hear Dean leave above the piano’s heavy chords.
END CHAPTER
Author: Jinni (jinni.tth@gmail.com)
Rated: R
Disclaimer: All things Dark Angel belong to James Cameron, et al. All things SPN belong to Eric Kripke, et al.
Notes: The eleventh story in the AWV, following “Tears of a Clown”.
Summary: Alec returns to Seattle with Dean & Sam in tow. Will this be the end of their happy family?
CHAPTER ONE
Alec had to hand it to his brother; for someone with just plain old human reflexes and speed, Dean sure as hell could pull a gun quick as a lightning strike when he thought that the situation called for it. And apparently that kind of situation was happening right here, right now. In the middle of the street, where anyone could see them, with the sun making things brighter and brighter by the second. Before Alec could get out a single word to make it clear that Joshua wasn’t a threat, Dean had his gun out and up, pointed at Joshua with no hesitation or flinching. Perfectly calm, unwavering. Fully prepared to take the big guy down if he was dangerous. That was laughable. Joshua? Dangerous? Only to himself.
Joshua came to a halt so sudden that he stumbled another step forward before he caught himself, eyes wide.
To his credit, Sam was only a handful of seconds behind Dean. Shit. What the fuck was he thinking not giving them a heads up before they got here?
“Sam, Dean - guns down!” The look they gave him was ‘are you nuts’ with a side of ‘the fuck’ mixed in for good measure. “It’s okay,” he said, seriously. A part of him just wanted to laugh, though. Man, he hadn’t expected things to get crazy quite this soon. He really should’ve known better.
Dean cut a glance at him from the corner of his eye. “Excuse me? You wanna repeat that? ‘Cause I could’ve sworn you just said that it’s okay when we’ve got the grownup version of the dog-faced boy right here in front of us.”
“Alec?” Joshua asked, confused. He’d frozen the second he saw the guns. Good thing, too. Alec didn’t have anything against Joshua. Getting the big guy killed just because he’d had a moment of extreme stupidity and forgot to educate his brothers on the many different flavors of transgenics was something Alec was pretty damn sure he’d feel bad about. Now Joshua was looking back and forth between him and Dean, like he was trying to get a bead one what the hell was going on. Yeah, well, that was another thing Alec should have thought about, right? Explaining to everyone around here who the fuck Dean was and why they looked so much alike.
“It’s okay,” Alec repeated, firmer this time, for both his brothers’ benefit and Joshua’s. “Guys, this is Joshua.”
“The guy that called to tell you that your friend was in trouble? So,” Sam murmured, slowly lowering his gun. He flicked his gaze between Alec and Joshua. It was a fucked up world where the sight of something like Joshua coming at them didn’t ruffle either of them in the least, just made them go on the defensive. Sam licked his lips and shoved the gun back in the waist of his pants, pulling his t-shirt down over it, looking Joshua over from head to foot. “Not a demon, then?”
“Demon?” Joshua asked. “No, not demon. Joshua.”
“Right, got that,” Sam said. Alec could tell that he still wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but he was willing to play along until he got an answer.
It took another second or three before Dean nodded once and relaxed minutely. Alec sighed when Dean clicked the safety of the gun on and lowered it one-handed until it pointed at the ground. He didn’t put it back away completely, of course. That would have been expecting too much, Alec supposed. Keeping one eye on Joshua, Dean shot a glare at Alec that was hot enough to melt through solid steel.
“You didn’t think to mention this?” Dean asked harshly.
Alec’s mouth snapped shut so fast and hard his teeth rattled, cheek twitching as his jaw clenched together. The anger he saw burning in Dean’s eyes was unexpected and had felt like a punch to the gut. This was how it was going to start, right? Judging by Dean’s reaction to his omission about Joshua, the rest of Alec’s secrets were going to be met with the kind of loathing hostility that Alec had already expected. No surprise there, right?
“It’s no big deal, Dean,” Sam said smoothly. “I mean, sure it would have been nice to have some kind of warning so that we didn’t pull a gun on the guy, but it’s not like we shot him or anything. No harm, no foul, man.”
A spot of warmth tickled in Alec’s chest at Sam’s defense. He started to tell Dean that he honestly had just forgotten - that he was so used to fucked up shit that he didn’t even think about having to warn anyone because Joshua didn’t even register as anything other than normal in his screwed up life - but snapped his mouth shut as he realized where they were. Standing in the middle of the street, all of them. When people could start getting up and moving around at any moment. The last thing they needed was for anyone to see Joshua and start a fricking panic.
“Let’s get our stuff and go inside,” Alec suggested, though it sounded more like an order, even to his own ears. He gave a meaningful tilt of his head in Joshua’s direction when Sam and Dean frowned at the change of subject. The look in Dean’s eyes said he wasn’t going to just let things drop, either, as he turned to grab their gear from the trunk.
Joshua led the way into the house when they had their stuff, then stood back and watched with quiet, bristling curiosity. Alec didn’t even have to look at him to know that he was mostly watching him and Dean. Not Sam, of course. Sam was an outsider to this, but he wasn’t something so new and unique that Joshua couldn’t wrap his head around it. He was guessing that Joshua wasn’t aware that there’d been another guy wearing his face at some point, running around playing good little psychopath. Or, if he had, maybe he just wasn’t connecting those dots to get to that kind of - false - assumption.
“Alec?” he asked finally. “What’s going on?”
Sighing, Alec dropped onto the dilapidated old couch. They needed to be talking about Max and whatever shit storm she’d kicked up to get herself kidnapped like she had. The self-righteous idiot was usually better at keeping herself out of situations like that. But it didn’t look like he was going to get a chance to ask about Max until he’d explained Dean. And Sam, too, by default.
Brothers. They’re my brothers. He tried the words out in his head. Dean and Sam had claimed him in front of Ellen. All matter of fact and assured, no doubt in their minds, ready to go to bat to defend that inherent truth if she so much as put up a fuss about it. Him, though? He hadn’t said those words to anyone. Hadn’t laid his claim on the two of them. And now that he had the chance, he found himself wondering how much harder it was going to be to do this and then lose both of them when they figured out he wasn’t worth keeping around.
“Well,” Alec drawled, infusing as much lighthearted could-give-a-fuck in his tone as possible. “Guess Manticore decided they needed a handsome son-of-a-bitch in their ranks and, well, they chose his face.” Alec cocked a thumb in Dean’s direction. “Mix in a few special surprises, and here I am. One clone.”
“Or, you could just call him our brother,” Sam said. Again, like it went without saying.
Dean snorted. “Little brother.”
“Brothers?” Joshua repeated, wrapping his mind around the word. Damn, Alec could almost see the gears clunk-clunking along in that big, thick, canine skull of his. Then Joshua’s eyes lit up. “Brothers! Brothers to Alec!”
“That’s right,” Alec agreed, still not trusting himself to say the words himself. This was close enough, right? “That’s Dean and the freakishly tall one is Sam.” Of course, Joshua probably didn’t see him as freakishly tall, all things considered. Huh. Imagine that.
Joshua was all smiles then, crossing to the Winchesters like they hadn’t pulled guns on him not even thirty minutes ago. Dumbass really did forgive and forget too easily. Alec saw Dean stiffen for just a second and then relax again. If Max had been here, she would have taken offense on Joshua’s behalf. Gone into some big, long spiel about how he was a great guy, didn’t deserve how Manticore had made him, that he wasn’t going to hurt them and would they please stop being so fucking nervous around him.
But Max wasn’t here, and Alec wasn’t about to get up in arms over this. His brothers would get used to Joshua just like they got used to everything else in this big, wide, freakish world.
Sam shook Joshua’s hand, and Dean gave a little nod, tilting his head to the side. “So - um - a dog, huh?” He flicked his gaze over to Alec, inquisition in his eyes. “That what you got in you, too?”
Alec cocked an eyebrow at his double. “Do I look like a dog to you?”
Choking on a laugh, Sam coughed. “Well, you do flirt with anything that moves, man.” He grinned in a flash of blinding teeth, the picture of innocence. “Oh, that’s not the kind of dog you meant.”
It felt good to laugh, even if it was just a chuckle. Even Dean was half-smiling. For one moment, everything felt like it was back to normal. Like Dad wasn’t dead and they weren’t sitting in the last place in the world that Alec really wanted to be.
“X5’s have cat in their cocktail,” Joshua offered, breaking the moment as quick as it had come.
“X5’s?”
Questions. Questions. Questions. All with answers could possibly lead to were more fucking questions that Alec really didn’t want to deal with. Especially not right now. Or… ever.
Thank God for excuses. “I’ll explain later. Right now, I need you to tell me what happened to Maxie, Joshua. What trouble did she make for herself now?”
~*~
The basement was just as it had been the last time Alec had been in Joshua’s house. Nothing had really changed or been moved. The piano still sat right where it always had been, like it was incapable of moving.
Alec took a seat at the keys, his feet seeking out the pedals beneath automatically, fingers falling into familiar patterns and melodies without conscious thought to guide them, as his mind wandered in other directions.
Max really hadn’t done anything. At least, that was what Joshua had said. If she’d been doing something to bring attention to herself, the big guy didn’t know what the hell it was. Alec wasn’t so sure. More like she’d been up to something that Joshua hadn’t known about. Which meant that tomorrow he’d be paying a visit to her star-crossed boyfriend himself and that chick she’d hung out with at Jam Pony. If they agreed that Max hadn’t been working something, then maybe he’d believe it.
Maybe.
What he did know was that Max had been taken right in front of Joshua. Well, almost. She’d fought them off long enough for Joshua to get away. Killed at least one of them, from what Joshua had found out afterwards. From the descriptions he’d given, these were definitely White’s guys. Alec grimaced, the song weaving beneath his hands never faltering.
No one knew where White and his crew were based out of, though. Logan would be his best chance of figuring it out if he wasn’t already hot on the trail himself. Anything to save his special little girlfriend. Alec’s stomach did a little flip of nausea. He was the reason the two of them couldn’t be together. Him and that damned mission he’d done for Manticore. His last mission for Manticore, as it turned out. Still, he didn’t feel any guilt over it. Even a blind man could see that those two weren’t meant to be together. There was love, and then there was love. They hadn’t had either, in his opinion.
If he was smart, he’d get up right now and go upstairs and at least tell Sam and Dean about that since they’d be meeting with the man himself tomorrow and fuck only knew if it would get brought up. Probably some off the cuff remark from Logan to Dean, “Are you going to try to kill me, too?”
Disaster. Waiting to happen. And he could head it all off or, at the very least, just get it over with, if he would just get up and go tell them.
Alec kept playing.
When he came out of it, hands still poised over the keys, Alec knew that he was no longer alone. He also knew, without a doubt, that it was Dean that had come down to find him, the same way he just knew where Dean was sometimes when they were in a fight or walking together. Some sort of indefinable something that linked the two of them together. Nothing so sci-fi as telepathy. This was just instinct. Genetic hardwiring. He knew Dean like he knew himself, and vice versa.
Alec turned on the stool, sliding one leg up, knee bent, the other foot still planted on the floor, and waited for him to say something. To ask something. He didn’t want to talk about Rachel with Dean or Sam. Not yet and maybe not ever.
Dean spoke softly when he finally finished sorting through whatever thoughts were in his head. “You play piano.”
Snorting, Alec said, “And Sam says you’re not smart.”
“Bitch,” Dean shot back without venom. The pseudo-insult rolled off of Alec, feeling sort of like what he remembered a hug to feel like. This was affection. The kind that brothers, or family in general, shared.
Okay, so maybe other families didn’t trade insults as a matter of standard operating procedure, but no one was ever going to accuse the Winchesters of being a model for family interaction.
“I just,” Dean began. He shook his head and gave a rueful quirk of the lips. “I didn’t know you played.”
The crux of everything, right there. Alec felt his heart turn cool, the warmth of their moment of brotherly jibing fleeing before it could be frozen out. He turned back to the keys and shut his eyes, starting to play again.
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
He didn’t even hear Dean leave above the piano’s heavy chords.
END CHAPTER