SPN Fic: Sweet Child O' Mine 1/1
Title: Sweet Child O' Mine
Author: ErinRua
Rating: Gen / PG-13 (some language)
Length: @ 4000 words
Characters: John, Sam, Dean, OMC's
Notes/Disclaimers/Summary: Not every danger the Winchesters face is supernatural. - (Story title nicked from Guns 'n Roses.)
This is for hugemind in thanks for uploading an awesome collection of classic rock for me. She asked for the story behind the monogrammed money clip we see Sam carrying (and Dean swiping from him) in S2 "Tall Tales". I'm not sure this is what she imagined, LOL, but it's what the muses delivered - a little angst, a little shmoop, a little oh-crap-this-sucks. Thanks for the tunes, Sofy! Special thanks to Celebsul, my excellent nit-picker beta and friend. :-)
SWEET CHILD O' MINE
by ErinRua
There's no such thing as a routine job, and no plan survives first contact. That's a rule I've known since Vietnam. It goes right along with, 'anything that can go wrong will go wrong'. But sometimes you do a thing enough times, you start to think maybe there's no big deal. I guess that's what happened when we were going after that poltergeist north of Moscow, Idaho.
Both the boys were with me, then. Sam's a junior in high school and Dean almost old enough to drink. Over the Christmas break, I got wind of this thing and I figured, 'why not?' Not as if we're the Bradys with lights on the tree and a pony in the yard, and after three days of Sam and Dean careening around the house like a pair of Saint Bernard pups, I figured the exercise would do us all good. Boys have that much energy, might as well put it to use.
So, I spent a couple days gathering intel and put a plan together. It looked good. Looked like a slam-dunk. The next morning, I briefed 'em on the job and told them to saddle up. Now, Dean never asks questions beyond where, how many, and what do we need. Sam, though, bless him, I don't know where he gets it, but he just can't stop at knowing enough.
"Dad, have you figured out the origins of this thing?" he asked. "Who or what it originally was?"
"I'll tell you when we get there," I replied.
I mean, come on, we were standing in the apartment parking lot and it was cold and trying to snow, and it wouldn't do any good to explain it before we were out there to recon the ground. But I saw that pissy look pinching his face, and here it comes.
"No, Dad, I'm not buyin' that."
"You are if I say you are."
"We have a right to know before we go in." He flung those gangly arms out wide, as if inviting the world to see what he thought self-evident. "What if we do something that pisses it off or makes it go violent?"
"Sam, you'll know what you need to know when you need to know it. Now get in the car."
Dean's already at the Impala, keys in his hand and eyes going back and forth between us like we're a damned tennis match. Sam won't have any of it, though: kid wouldn't have lasted five minutes in boot camp.
"That's bull, Dad," and there's his volume going up, pulling my blood pressure right with it. "You can't shut us up with that 'need to know' crap. What if we get separated out there? What if you're hurt before the job is done?"
"You'll deal with it."
"Yeah, we will, but that's not the point."
"What is the point?" I asked, and my fillings were getting a real workout by now.
He shuffled a step closer; only nowadays, he's got a way of doing it that feels a lot like crowding. When the hell did he start getting so damn tall, anyhow?
"Dad, you know better than I do that not all poltergeists are alike. We deserve to know exactly what we're dealing with"
Now it's snowing. It's really snowing big wet flakes and he wants to play twenty questions.
"People in hell deserve ice water. Looks like you're both out of luck."
"Dammit, Dad -."
"Get in the damned car. And watch your mouth."
With that, I turned my back and stomped off to my truck. Hard for him to fight with me if I'm driving away, right? As I climbed behind the wheel, Sam stood out there with his face pinched into that bitchy look I swear he'd better grow out of soon, or someone's gonna wipe it off for him. But Dean must have said something because Sam went around to his side of the car. Yeah, I guess I could have got back out and kicked the kid in the ass, but I'm such a wuss, I just turned the key and put the truck in gear.
Anyhow, off we went to hunt. Poltergeists are completely kill-able, or at least banish-able, and all three of us know how to do the job. But it's the little things that get you. Like almost running out of gas, because I was too tired the night before to watch the gauge.
We hit the outskirts of Boise about the time the snow stopped, and at the first mini-mart we saw, I signaled to turn. The boys followed and Dean pulled in to top off at the pump behind me. It was a dumpy sort of place, where most of the clientele wear barbed wire tattoos and their britches hang off their asses, but beggars can't always be choosers. Besides, between the two vehicles, we've got as much firepower as a squad of Marines.
Right?
That was the problem. I thought we'd done a thing enough to know. But I got out of the truck with nothing but gasoline and hurry on my mind, and evidently, Dean did the same. He finished pumping before I did and went inside for some of that crap he likes to eat, and I found him standing in line when I got there.
"Ever consider trying real food?" I asked him.
He just grinned at me over a double handful of Little Debbie snack cakes, Slim Jim pepperoni sticks, and something that looked like a Gatorade bottle full of antifreeze.
"Hey, it won't spoil in the car and has a shelf life of a thousand years," he said.
"Stuff could outlast nuclear holocaust," I grumbled, but at his age, I wasn't going to nag him about his sweet tooth.
The clerk and the guy ahead of us seemed to be having trouble activating one of those prepaid calling cards or something, and Dean took the time to snag a couple bags of chips. Two of everything, him and Sam. Those boys might bicker like old women but they took care of each other. Out the window past the Super Gulp poster, I could see Sam slouched in the Impala refusing to look my way. Or maybe he just had a book in his lap. I sighed, and wondered how I'd raised such a knot-headed kid. Couldn't be that he took after his old man.
See? Totally off my game. Let my mind wander. While the clerk and that other guy futzed around, I wondered when the hell they started selling Rice Krispies treats, because everybody knows they should home made. You know, all warm and sticky on waxed paper. The front door jingled and two guys in baggy britches came in. They shuffled off towards the coffee station, and I still didn't get it.
Got smart real fast, though, when those guys busted out from behind the paper towels.
"FREEZE!" they shouted. "NOBODY MOVE! NOBODY FREAKIN' MOVE!"
Yeah. I'm staring at the business end of a couple Saturday night specials in the hands of two wild-eyed crackheads.
"Gimme all you got!" the pimply redheaded one screamed, and stabbed his revolver towards the cashier. "Open it, open it! Foo', I'm'a bust a cap on yo' ass!"
Wonderful: white boy wanna-be gang bangers who wouldn't make a pimple on a real gangster's ass. However, the cashier knocked the breath mint display over, so I took the distraction to look a question at Dean. He made a grimace that said he didn't have a gun on him, either, and I knew we were screwed. I could see the Impala outside at the pump, but that stupid poster hung between Sam and us.
"YOU!" screeched the other guy, a scrawny, twitchy looking bastard. He stuck his pistol at us and the calling card guy. "Move yo' punk ass over there. Move! Move!"
"Hey, go easy, dude," said Dean, flashing a too-bright smile over his armful of tooth decay. "We're not lookin' for any trouble."
Twitchy sneered and slouched and turned his pistol sideways, like there's not a reason they put the damned sights on top, and he took a step closer.
"I said, back off, sucka, or I'll blow your brains all over the Hostess cupcakes."
His pupils were huge and his gun hand trembled slightly: just what we needed, a jittery hype with a gun. Arms still full of junk food, Dean edged himself between the gunman and the calling card guy, who looked like he was about to fill his shorts. I could sympathize.
"No problem," I said quietly, and suited movement to the words, easing Dean and the calling card guy back with me. "Just take it easy."
"Hurry it up!" yelled Pimples and stabbed his gun towards the frantic cashier. "Sumbitch, open the freakin' drawer or I'm gonna waste yo' punk ass!"
The poor kid jabbed buttons but the drawer seemed jammed, and he kept making these strangled little mewling noises, like someone stepping on a puppy. Crap. I just knew that would set these two freaks off and we were going to see a bloodbath.
"C'mon, homes!" whined Twitchy and peered towards his buddy. "What's takin' so long?"
"Dickhead can't open a freakin' drawer," snarled Pimples.
He vaulted over the counter and the cash register crashed to the floor on the other side.
"This can't be good," muttered Dean.
The cashier shrieked and I saw the hype swing his gun up and down - hard, three times. I stepped backwards, mashing Dean behind me against the shelves of motor oil and brake fluid. After that, I couldn't see the cashier but I could hear him sobbing somewhere down on the floor.
Seconds later, Pimples cried, "What the -!" and I heard a heavy, a-rhythmic smashing of metal: him trying to kick the cash register to pieces. "Where's the freakin' rest? Bitch, where the hell is it?"
"What the hell?" Twitchy screeched, his gun hand getting even wobblier as his eyes nearly rolled in his head.
"Seventy freakin' bucks!" yelled Pimples, brandishing a wad of bills past the sunglasses display. "Son of a bitch! Just seventy freakin' lousy bucks!"
Twitchy's face contorted into this bughouse-crazed look, and when his eyes met mine, there just wasn't anybody home.
"These sons a bitches gotta have somethin'," he growled, and I liked his screeching better. "Let's get 'em in the back."
In the back. Where the cops would come later and find our bodies heaped in a big sticky pool of blood. I reached behind me, grabbed a fistful of Dean to keep him there, and together with the calling card guy we retreated from the advance of Twitchy's gun. I heard a final thud from behind the counter and Pimples reappeared - without the cashier, which did not bode well.
I just needed a break, a second when somebody's attention wandered. I could grab a can of pork-n-beans and bounce it off Twitchy's face, get the jump on him and get that gun away. But the two of them moved in like a pair of pit bulls, Twitchy with his sideways gun wagging in our faces, Pimples' smirking as he followed, pistol dangling in one hand.
As we got back to the aisle with the cold drinks and ice scrapers, I could smell disinfectant nearby. What a helluva thing, to die in a public bathroom.
"Don't move."
A quiet command, but it stopped Pimples and Twitchy, and damned near stopped my heart, because there stood Sam not twenty feet away. That long, tall beanpole of a kid stood between the bread and the Cheerios, aiming Dean's pearl-handled Colt 1911 at our two crackheads. All I could think was, 'Oh, my God, not Sammy. '
"Who the hell are you?" snarled Pimples.
Behind me, Dean softly moaned, "Ah, no".
"Put your weapons down," Sam said.
Kid's got a perfect stance, just like I taught him, head tilted to look over the sights. I've raised my boys to be strong, raised them to be fighters, but oh, God, not to fight people - not human monsters who are ten times more volatile than any supernatural thing they've ever met.
"You a fool, man," said Twitchy. "We gonna waste yo' punk ass, man. We gonna put you down, homes."
"Unlikely." Eyes dark and no expression but for a slight flaring of Sam's nostrils. "Put the guns down."
He didn't even look at Dean or me. Right then I sent out an APB prayer to any deity that would listen.
Sam shifted forward half a step, the semi-auto rock steady before him, his whole body taut as piano wire. Twitchy trembled so hard his pants legs vibrated, the urge to move battling with some spark of self-preservation, but he'd been caught with his gun pointed off at the root beer.
"We gonna mess you up, ma-a-an," he drawled, the syllables edging towards the brink of hysteria. "We gonna one-eighty-seven yo' punk ass. You little pussy bitch, who the hell you think you are?"
Yeah, I guess a skinny sixteen year old with a loaded .45 didn't look very impressive. So, Sam fixed his sights on Twitchy's ugly face.
"Okay." Sam sucked a breath through his teeth, the long line of his jaw tightening. "Then I'll shoot you first. Tell your 'home boy' to drop his gun."
"Son of a bitch! " squawked Twitchy.
Pimples laughed, a short, hard sound with no humor in it. "Man, you got some balls, kid."
"Dad! " Dean hissed in my ear, but I slung an elbow in his ribs. Twitchy yelped, "Damn, dawg!", and Pimples began to bend, empty hand going up, palm forward.
"All right, it's cool, man," said Pimples, and continued down until his pistol clicked on the linoleum. "It's cool."
"Kick it over here."
The pistol spun across the dirty floor to stop by Sam's foot. He ignored it, his attention all on Twitchy.
"What's up wit' you, man?" Twitchy's squeak might have been funny any other time. "You some kinda baby five-oh?"
One corner of Sam's mouth twitched, and damned if he wasn't almost smiling. "Do I look like a cop?"
Then I realized what I saw in Sam's eyes was not humor. It was bright and glittery and a little bit crazed, and it scared me all to hell.
"Put ... the gun ... down," he said.
I could feel something building like the big, awful quiet just before an ambush sprung, just before the jungle blew up in fire and dying.
"You crazy, man," said Twitchy. "You -."
"DEAN!"
Sam bellowed and kicked and Pimples' gun skidded towards us, and Dean dived like he was sliding for home base. A gunshot slammed my ears and I hooked a long-handled ice scraper off the rack and swung -. Damn things bust all to pieces when you wrap 'em around someone's skull, but that's all I needed to take that son of a bitch down. Hard linoleum, bones and elbows, Twitchy's bucking like a wildcat in a sack, but I had him, both of us kicking and thrashing and knocking stuff off the shelves, and somewhere over us, Dean was shouting his lungs out.
I'd hit the guy in the kidneys for the fourth or fifth time, when I realized Dean was yelling, "Dad, I got him, I got him!"
Looked up, and my boy's standing over us with Pimples' pistol aimed at Twitchy's head, and maybe I ought to get out of his line of fire. So I shoved Twitchy off, rolled away, and staggered to my feet. Sam had Pimples' face-down on the floor, froze in position with one size thirteen planted on the punk's neck and the 1911 pointed at the back of his head. That shot must have been Twitchy's and clearly, thank God, he'd missed.
"Get some zip ties," Dean said to someone aside, and I'd completely forgotten about the calling card guy.
The guy nodded like a dashboard dog and skittered off towards the back of the store.
"Sam, you got him?" asked Dean.
Sam never looked up, breathing hard now and his face drawn tight as a drumhead. "Yeah."
"That's ...." Adrenaline sort of scrambled my ability to talk. "That's good work, boys."
My boys. I hadn't been thinking beyond committing bloody screaming murder, but they'd improvised and overcome like true soldiers. As the shakes started setting in, I could only look from one to the other, and wish I knew what the hell a man should say.
Anyhow, we tidied things up in about sixty seconds flat, because I wanted us back on the road.
"But, Dad ..." Sam looked troubled as he glanced around the store, where the two hypes laid amongst Dean's scattered junk food, zip-tied tight as Christmas roasts, and the cashier held an ice pack to his head. "Shouldn't we wait for the cops? Give our statements or something?"
"You want to explain a minor with an unregistered firearm?" I asked. "Besides, these places have cameras and they'll have all the evidence they need on tape. Now, saddle up!"
The kid looked briefly mutinous but Dean slung an arm around his neck and steered him towards the car. I threw some money on the counter to cover gas and whatever, and out the door, we went. After all, we still had a poltergeist to handle.
The job went off like planned, no unpleasant surprises. Sam held down his end without a hitch, though something seemed a little off. He got quiet, you know? Missed a couple good chances to argue with his old man. Hard to say, moody as teenagers are, and I figured we'd be okay once we got home and he went back to school.
But it just sort of ... niggled. Stayed in the back of my mind. My son. Mary's baby. Facing a pair of crackheads in a genuine Mexican standoff. I felt sick in my stomach every time I thought about it.
So a week later I'm in this pawnshop, browsing mostly, but a guy never knows when he'll find a good deal on a knife or weapons accoutrements. And in the jewelry case with the watches, rings, and gold lockets is this money clip. It's a simple thing, stainless steel and looks like new, but what caught my eye was the engraving on it. The letters "S. W." in fancy, swirly script.
S. W. Sam Winchester. Call me a sucker, but I just ... had to get it. Okay, it wasn't much and I sort of felt like an idiot when I got home. If I'd have gotten him a Nintendo game, or whatever teenagers like these days, he might actually be impressed.
But anyway. Dean picked him up from school and that evening after supper, I dug the thing out. Didn't have any nice wrapper, so it was just in plain white tissue paper, but I carried it out into the living room anyway.
"Sam."
Sammy glanced up from where he and Dean sprawled on the couch watching TV, and he muted the volume.
"Yes, sir?"
"Got something for you."
Yeah, I felt like a jerk. His forehead crinkled in that funny 'what the hell?' look he gets, but he pushed himself off the couch and came to me. I felt Dean watching us, probably trying to decide if he should fetch his referee shirt.
"What is it?" Sam asked.
"Well, it's not ... it's nothing much." I dropped the paper-wrapped wad in his hand and stuffed my fists in my pockets. "Just a thing I found. Thought you might use it."
"Oh." He carefully unwrapped it and then he frowned, looking at me with a tentative grin. "Okay. A money clip. And?"
"Turn it over, genius."
Light winked on the smooth metal, the initials graven on its face.
"Hey." His smile grew wider, and man, I wish I saw that more often. "You had this done for me?"
"Well ..." Come on, floor, just swallow me now. "No. I sort of found it in a pawn shop."
A sudden laugh burst from him and his eyes shone, teasing me. "Huh. I guess we've moved so much Santa's given up trying to find us."
A groan came from the couch: "Geez, Sam..."
I shrugged. "Maybe. Anyhow, I just ... you did good. In Boise. That deserved something."
Sam's face sobered, shadows passing behind his eyes and stealing that two hundred watt smile. I saw him swallow and look down, saw thoughts playing across his face but going unspoken.
"That was a bad spot," I said. "You showed good presence of mind and acted decisively. You and your brother, both."
"Yes, sir," he replied.
Damn it, that was not what I wanted from him. But what did I want?
I reached out, touched the money clip still shining in his hand. Found a knot swelling up in my throat.
"Son, you scared me. More than I've been scared in a long time. But you did good. You did real good."
"Yes, sir."
This time it came out as a whisper, Mary's son looking at me with his heart in his eyes, and words just weren't going to cut it. So I took a step towards him, knowing he's sixteen and independent as a hog on ice, but maybe he'd let me give him a pat on the back.
What I got was both arms full of my almost-grown boy, and he hugged so tight I could hardly breathe. He smelled like Irish Spring soap and he still felt steamy-warm from his shower, and I held him as close to my heart as I could get.
When finally he eased away, he looked at me with his face scrunched up somewhere between embarrassment and honest feeling.
"You scared me, too, Dad," he said. "They had you and Dean, and -."
His voiced started to tilt off its wheels so he quit talking, shook his head. Then he cleared his throat and tossed a smile from under those shaggy bangs.
"Anyhow, thanks, Dad."
He waggled the money clip at me before stuffing it in his pocket, and he went back to the couch to squabble with Dean over the remote. Well, we'd had our little moment, and tomorrow we'd go back to butting heads like a pair of billy goats. But maybe I'd got something right with Sam. Maybe this one time.
~ THE END ~
Sofy's pic of the money clip:
A/N: Saturday night special is slang for any cheap pistol used for criminal acts. "One-eighty-seven" is 187, police code for 'murder', a phrase adopted by gangs.
X-posted to spn_gen and supernaturalfic
Author: ErinRua
Rating: Gen / PG-13 (some language)
Length: @ 4000 words
Characters: John, Sam, Dean, OMC's
Notes/Disclaimers/Summary: Not every danger the Winchesters face is supernatural. - (Story title nicked from Guns 'n Roses.)
This is for hugemind in thanks for uploading an awesome collection of classic rock for me. She asked for the story behind the monogrammed money clip we see Sam carrying (and Dean swiping from him) in S2 "Tall Tales". I'm not sure this is what she imagined, LOL, but it's what the muses delivered - a little angst, a little shmoop, a little oh-crap-this-sucks. Thanks for the tunes, Sofy! Special thanks to Celebsul, my excellent nit-picker beta and friend. :-)
SWEET CHILD O' MINE
by ErinRua
There's no such thing as a routine job, and no plan survives first contact. That's a rule I've known since Vietnam. It goes right along with, 'anything that can go wrong will go wrong'. But sometimes you do a thing enough times, you start to think maybe there's no big deal. I guess that's what happened when we were going after that poltergeist north of Moscow, Idaho.
Both the boys were with me, then. Sam's a junior in high school and Dean almost old enough to drink. Over the Christmas break, I got wind of this thing and I figured, 'why not?' Not as if we're the Bradys with lights on the tree and a pony in the yard, and after three days of Sam and Dean careening around the house like a pair of Saint Bernard pups, I figured the exercise would do us all good. Boys have that much energy, might as well put it to use.
So, I spent a couple days gathering intel and put a plan together. It looked good. Looked like a slam-dunk. The next morning, I briefed 'em on the job and told them to saddle up. Now, Dean never asks questions beyond where, how many, and what do we need. Sam, though, bless him, I don't know where he gets it, but he just can't stop at knowing enough.
"Dad, have you figured out the origins of this thing?" he asked. "Who or what it originally was?"
"I'll tell you when we get there," I replied.
I mean, come on, we were standing in the apartment parking lot and it was cold and trying to snow, and it wouldn't do any good to explain it before we were out there to recon the ground. But I saw that pissy look pinching his face, and here it comes.
"No, Dad, I'm not buyin' that."
"You are if I say you are."
"We have a right to know before we go in." He flung those gangly arms out wide, as if inviting the world to see what he thought self-evident. "What if we do something that pisses it off or makes it go violent?"
"Sam, you'll know what you need to know when you need to know it. Now get in the car."
Dean's already at the Impala, keys in his hand and eyes going back and forth between us like we're a damned tennis match. Sam won't have any of it, though: kid wouldn't have lasted five minutes in boot camp.
"That's bull, Dad," and there's his volume going up, pulling my blood pressure right with it. "You can't shut us up with that 'need to know' crap. What if we get separated out there? What if you're hurt before the job is done?"
"You'll deal with it."
"Yeah, we will, but that's not the point."
"What is the point?" I asked, and my fillings were getting a real workout by now.
He shuffled a step closer; only nowadays, he's got a way of doing it that feels a lot like crowding. When the hell did he start getting so damn tall, anyhow?
"Dad, you know better than I do that not all poltergeists are alike. We deserve to know exactly what we're dealing with"
Now it's snowing. It's really snowing big wet flakes and he wants to play twenty questions.
"People in hell deserve ice water. Looks like you're both out of luck."
"Dammit, Dad -."
"Get in the damned car. And watch your mouth."
With that, I turned my back and stomped off to my truck. Hard for him to fight with me if I'm driving away, right? As I climbed behind the wheel, Sam stood out there with his face pinched into that bitchy look I swear he'd better grow out of soon, or someone's gonna wipe it off for him. But Dean must have said something because Sam went around to his side of the car. Yeah, I guess I could have got back out and kicked the kid in the ass, but I'm such a wuss, I just turned the key and put the truck in gear.
Anyhow, off we went to hunt. Poltergeists are completely kill-able, or at least banish-able, and all three of us know how to do the job. But it's the little things that get you. Like almost running out of gas, because I was too tired the night before to watch the gauge.
We hit the outskirts of Boise about the time the snow stopped, and at the first mini-mart we saw, I signaled to turn. The boys followed and Dean pulled in to top off at the pump behind me. It was a dumpy sort of place, where most of the clientele wear barbed wire tattoos and their britches hang off their asses, but beggars can't always be choosers. Besides, between the two vehicles, we've got as much firepower as a squad of Marines.
Right?
That was the problem. I thought we'd done a thing enough to know. But I got out of the truck with nothing but gasoline and hurry on my mind, and evidently, Dean did the same. He finished pumping before I did and went inside for some of that crap he likes to eat, and I found him standing in line when I got there.
"Ever consider trying real food?" I asked him.
He just grinned at me over a double handful of Little Debbie snack cakes, Slim Jim pepperoni sticks, and something that looked like a Gatorade bottle full of antifreeze.
"Hey, it won't spoil in the car and has a shelf life of a thousand years," he said.
"Stuff could outlast nuclear holocaust," I grumbled, but at his age, I wasn't going to nag him about his sweet tooth.
The clerk and the guy ahead of us seemed to be having trouble activating one of those prepaid calling cards or something, and Dean took the time to snag a couple bags of chips. Two of everything, him and Sam. Those boys might bicker like old women but they took care of each other. Out the window past the Super Gulp poster, I could see Sam slouched in the Impala refusing to look my way. Or maybe he just had a book in his lap. I sighed, and wondered how I'd raised such a knot-headed kid. Couldn't be that he took after his old man.
See? Totally off my game. Let my mind wander. While the clerk and that other guy futzed around, I wondered when the hell they started selling Rice Krispies treats, because everybody knows they should home made. You know, all warm and sticky on waxed paper. The front door jingled and two guys in baggy britches came in. They shuffled off towards the coffee station, and I still didn't get it.
Got smart real fast, though, when those guys busted out from behind the paper towels.
"FREEZE!" they shouted. "NOBODY MOVE! NOBODY FREAKIN' MOVE!"
Yeah. I'm staring at the business end of a couple Saturday night specials in the hands of two wild-eyed crackheads.
"Gimme all you got!" the pimply redheaded one screamed, and stabbed his revolver towards the cashier. "Open it, open it! Foo', I'm'a bust a cap on yo' ass!"
Wonderful: white boy wanna-be gang bangers who wouldn't make a pimple on a real gangster's ass. However, the cashier knocked the breath mint display over, so I took the distraction to look a question at Dean. He made a grimace that said he didn't have a gun on him, either, and I knew we were screwed. I could see the Impala outside at the pump, but that stupid poster hung between Sam and us.
"YOU!" screeched the other guy, a scrawny, twitchy looking bastard. He stuck his pistol at us and the calling card guy. "Move yo' punk ass over there. Move! Move!"
"Hey, go easy, dude," said Dean, flashing a too-bright smile over his armful of tooth decay. "We're not lookin' for any trouble."
Twitchy sneered and slouched and turned his pistol sideways, like there's not a reason they put the damned sights on top, and he took a step closer.
"I said, back off, sucka, or I'll blow your brains all over the Hostess cupcakes."
His pupils were huge and his gun hand trembled slightly: just what we needed, a jittery hype with a gun. Arms still full of junk food, Dean edged himself between the gunman and the calling card guy, who looked like he was about to fill his shorts. I could sympathize.
"No problem," I said quietly, and suited movement to the words, easing Dean and the calling card guy back with me. "Just take it easy."
"Hurry it up!" yelled Pimples and stabbed his gun towards the frantic cashier. "Sumbitch, open the freakin' drawer or I'm gonna waste yo' punk ass!"
The poor kid jabbed buttons but the drawer seemed jammed, and he kept making these strangled little mewling noises, like someone stepping on a puppy. Crap. I just knew that would set these two freaks off and we were going to see a bloodbath.
"C'mon, homes!" whined Twitchy and peered towards his buddy. "What's takin' so long?"
"Dickhead can't open a freakin' drawer," snarled Pimples.
He vaulted over the counter and the cash register crashed to the floor on the other side.
"This can't be good," muttered Dean.
The cashier shrieked and I saw the hype swing his gun up and down - hard, three times. I stepped backwards, mashing Dean behind me against the shelves of motor oil and brake fluid. After that, I couldn't see the cashier but I could hear him sobbing somewhere down on the floor.
Seconds later, Pimples cried, "What the -!" and I heard a heavy, a-rhythmic smashing of metal: him trying to kick the cash register to pieces. "Where's the freakin' rest? Bitch, where the hell is it?"
"What the hell?" Twitchy screeched, his gun hand getting even wobblier as his eyes nearly rolled in his head.
"Seventy freakin' bucks!" yelled Pimples, brandishing a wad of bills past the sunglasses display. "Son of a bitch! Just seventy freakin' lousy bucks!"
Twitchy's face contorted into this bughouse-crazed look, and when his eyes met mine, there just wasn't anybody home.
"These sons a bitches gotta have somethin'," he growled, and I liked his screeching better. "Let's get 'em in the back."
In the back. Where the cops would come later and find our bodies heaped in a big sticky pool of blood. I reached behind me, grabbed a fistful of Dean to keep him there, and together with the calling card guy we retreated from the advance of Twitchy's gun. I heard a final thud from behind the counter and Pimples reappeared - without the cashier, which did not bode well.
I just needed a break, a second when somebody's attention wandered. I could grab a can of pork-n-beans and bounce it off Twitchy's face, get the jump on him and get that gun away. But the two of them moved in like a pair of pit bulls, Twitchy with his sideways gun wagging in our faces, Pimples' smirking as he followed, pistol dangling in one hand.
As we got back to the aisle with the cold drinks and ice scrapers, I could smell disinfectant nearby. What a helluva thing, to die in a public bathroom.
"Don't move."
A quiet command, but it stopped Pimples and Twitchy, and damned near stopped my heart, because there stood Sam not twenty feet away. That long, tall beanpole of a kid stood between the bread and the Cheerios, aiming Dean's pearl-handled Colt 1911 at our two crackheads. All I could think was, 'Oh, my God, not Sammy. '
"Who the hell are you?" snarled Pimples.
Behind me, Dean softly moaned, "Ah, no".
"Put your weapons down," Sam said.
Kid's got a perfect stance, just like I taught him, head tilted to look over the sights. I've raised my boys to be strong, raised them to be fighters, but oh, God, not to fight people - not human monsters who are ten times more volatile than any supernatural thing they've ever met.
"You a fool, man," said Twitchy. "We gonna waste yo' punk ass, man. We gonna put you down, homes."
"Unlikely." Eyes dark and no expression but for a slight flaring of Sam's nostrils. "Put the guns down."
He didn't even look at Dean or me. Right then I sent out an APB prayer to any deity that would listen.
Sam shifted forward half a step, the semi-auto rock steady before him, his whole body taut as piano wire. Twitchy trembled so hard his pants legs vibrated, the urge to move battling with some spark of self-preservation, but he'd been caught with his gun pointed off at the root beer.
"We gonna mess you up, ma-a-an," he drawled, the syllables edging towards the brink of hysteria. "We gonna one-eighty-seven yo' punk ass. You little pussy bitch, who the hell you think you are?"
Yeah, I guess a skinny sixteen year old with a loaded .45 didn't look very impressive. So, Sam fixed his sights on Twitchy's ugly face.
"Okay." Sam sucked a breath through his teeth, the long line of his jaw tightening. "Then I'll shoot you first. Tell your 'home boy' to drop his gun."
"Son of a bitch! " squawked Twitchy.
Pimples laughed, a short, hard sound with no humor in it. "Man, you got some balls, kid."
"Dad! " Dean hissed in my ear, but I slung an elbow in his ribs. Twitchy yelped, "Damn, dawg!", and Pimples began to bend, empty hand going up, palm forward.
"All right, it's cool, man," said Pimples, and continued down until his pistol clicked on the linoleum. "It's cool."
"Kick it over here."
The pistol spun across the dirty floor to stop by Sam's foot. He ignored it, his attention all on Twitchy.
"What's up wit' you, man?" Twitchy's squeak might have been funny any other time. "You some kinda baby five-oh?"
One corner of Sam's mouth twitched, and damned if he wasn't almost smiling. "Do I look like a cop?"
Then I realized what I saw in Sam's eyes was not humor. It was bright and glittery and a little bit crazed, and it scared me all to hell.
"Put ... the gun ... down," he said.
I could feel something building like the big, awful quiet just before an ambush sprung, just before the jungle blew up in fire and dying.
"You crazy, man," said Twitchy. "You -."
"DEAN!"
Sam bellowed and kicked and Pimples' gun skidded towards us, and Dean dived like he was sliding for home base. A gunshot slammed my ears and I hooked a long-handled ice scraper off the rack and swung -. Damn things bust all to pieces when you wrap 'em around someone's skull, but that's all I needed to take that son of a bitch down. Hard linoleum, bones and elbows, Twitchy's bucking like a wildcat in a sack, but I had him, both of us kicking and thrashing and knocking stuff off the shelves, and somewhere over us, Dean was shouting his lungs out.
I'd hit the guy in the kidneys for the fourth or fifth time, when I realized Dean was yelling, "Dad, I got him, I got him!"
Looked up, and my boy's standing over us with Pimples' pistol aimed at Twitchy's head, and maybe I ought to get out of his line of fire. So I shoved Twitchy off, rolled away, and staggered to my feet. Sam had Pimples' face-down on the floor, froze in position with one size thirteen planted on the punk's neck and the 1911 pointed at the back of his head. That shot must have been Twitchy's and clearly, thank God, he'd missed.
"Get some zip ties," Dean said to someone aside, and I'd completely forgotten about the calling card guy.
The guy nodded like a dashboard dog and skittered off towards the back of the store.
"Sam, you got him?" asked Dean.
Sam never looked up, breathing hard now and his face drawn tight as a drumhead. "Yeah."
"That's ...." Adrenaline sort of scrambled my ability to talk. "That's good work, boys."
My boys. I hadn't been thinking beyond committing bloody screaming murder, but they'd improvised and overcome like true soldiers. As the shakes started setting in, I could only look from one to the other, and wish I knew what the hell a man should say.
Anyhow, we tidied things up in about sixty seconds flat, because I wanted us back on the road.
"But, Dad ..." Sam looked troubled as he glanced around the store, where the two hypes laid amongst Dean's scattered junk food, zip-tied tight as Christmas roasts, and the cashier held an ice pack to his head. "Shouldn't we wait for the cops? Give our statements or something?"
"You want to explain a minor with an unregistered firearm?" I asked. "Besides, these places have cameras and they'll have all the evidence they need on tape. Now, saddle up!"
The kid looked briefly mutinous but Dean slung an arm around his neck and steered him towards the car. I threw some money on the counter to cover gas and whatever, and out the door, we went. After all, we still had a poltergeist to handle.
The job went off like planned, no unpleasant surprises. Sam held down his end without a hitch, though something seemed a little off. He got quiet, you know? Missed a couple good chances to argue with his old man. Hard to say, moody as teenagers are, and I figured we'd be okay once we got home and he went back to school.
But it just sort of ... niggled. Stayed in the back of my mind. My son. Mary's baby. Facing a pair of crackheads in a genuine Mexican standoff. I felt sick in my stomach every time I thought about it.
So a week later I'm in this pawnshop, browsing mostly, but a guy never knows when he'll find a good deal on a knife or weapons accoutrements. And in the jewelry case with the watches, rings, and gold lockets is this money clip. It's a simple thing, stainless steel and looks like new, but what caught my eye was the engraving on it. The letters "S. W." in fancy, swirly script.
S. W. Sam Winchester. Call me a sucker, but I just ... had to get it. Okay, it wasn't much and I sort of felt like an idiot when I got home. If I'd have gotten him a Nintendo game, or whatever teenagers like these days, he might actually be impressed.
But anyway. Dean picked him up from school and that evening after supper, I dug the thing out. Didn't have any nice wrapper, so it was just in plain white tissue paper, but I carried it out into the living room anyway.
"Sam."
Sammy glanced up from where he and Dean sprawled on the couch watching TV, and he muted the volume.
"Yes, sir?"
"Got something for you."
Yeah, I felt like a jerk. His forehead crinkled in that funny 'what the hell?' look he gets, but he pushed himself off the couch and came to me. I felt Dean watching us, probably trying to decide if he should fetch his referee shirt.
"What is it?" Sam asked.
"Well, it's not ... it's nothing much." I dropped the paper-wrapped wad in his hand and stuffed my fists in my pockets. "Just a thing I found. Thought you might use it."
"Oh." He carefully unwrapped it and then he frowned, looking at me with a tentative grin. "Okay. A money clip. And?"
"Turn it over, genius."
Light winked on the smooth metal, the initials graven on its face.
"Hey." His smile grew wider, and man, I wish I saw that more often. "You had this done for me?"
"Well ..." Come on, floor, just swallow me now. "No. I sort of found it in a pawn shop."
A sudden laugh burst from him and his eyes shone, teasing me. "Huh. I guess we've moved so much Santa's given up trying to find us."
A groan came from the couch: "Geez, Sam..."
I shrugged. "Maybe. Anyhow, I just ... you did good. In Boise. That deserved something."
Sam's face sobered, shadows passing behind his eyes and stealing that two hundred watt smile. I saw him swallow and look down, saw thoughts playing across his face but going unspoken.
"That was a bad spot," I said. "You showed good presence of mind and acted decisively. You and your brother, both."
"Yes, sir," he replied.
Damn it, that was not what I wanted from him. But what did I want?
I reached out, touched the money clip still shining in his hand. Found a knot swelling up in my throat.
"Son, you scared me. More than I've been scared in a long time. But you did good. You did real good."
"Yes, sir."
This time it came out as a whisper, Mary's son looking at me with his heart in his eyes, and words just weren't going to cut it. So I took a step towards him, knowing he's sixteen and independent as a hog on ice, but maybe he'd let me give him a pat on the back.
What I got was both arms full of my almost-grown boy, and he hugged so tight I could hardly breathe. He smelled like Irish Spring soap and he still felt steamy-warm from his shower, and I held him as close to my heart as I could get.
When finally he eased away, he looked at me with his face scrunched up somewhere between embarrassment and honest feeling.
"You scared me, too, Dad," he said. "They had you and Dean, and -."
His voiced started to tilt off its wheels so he quit talking, shook his head. Then he cleared his throat and tossed a smile from under those shaggy bangs.
"Anyhow, thanks, Dad."
He waggled the money clip at me before stuffing it in his pocket, and he went back to the couch to squabble with Dean over the remote. Well, we'd had our little moment, and tomorrow we'd go back to butting heads like a pair of billy goats. But maybe I'd got something right with Sam. Maybe this one time.
~ THE END ~
Sofy's pic of the money clip:
A/N: Saturday night special is slang for any cheap pistol used for criminal acts. "One-eighty-seven" is 187, police code for 'murder', a phrase adopted by gangs.
X-posted to spn_gen and supernaturalfic