Fic: Like a Couple of Kids Just Trying to Save Each Other
Title: Like a Couple of Kids Just Trying to Save Each Other
Author: mummyluvr314
Rating: PG
Pairings: Dean/Nick pre-slash, mentions of Nick/Sarah
Summary: A picture’s worth a thousand words, and Dean’s got a box full of photos from Nick’s old house. They do say that sharing is caring.
Warnings: Season five spoilers, as always
A/N: Written for my schmoop_bingo prompt “memories - scrapbook/photo album.” The title’s from “In Color” by Jamey Johnson.
Disclaimer: I don’t own the show or the characters. Sorry.
Previous Chapters: Wounded, Jaded, Loved, and Hated || Waiting for that Second Chance || The Future Ahead and the Past Behind
Dean wasn’t sure how to tell Nick he’d gone back to the house, wasn’t sure how to introduce him to the box of pictures the new owner had handed over. He wasn’t good at this type of thing, wasn’t sure if it would make things better or worse. He desperately wanted to keep the tentative whatever they had built over the nearly three weeks they’d been together. He didn’t want Nick to find out he’d been hiding anything, either.
So he brought the box in with breakfast. He set in on the floor by the chair and met Nick’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Dean said. He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, but he knew it was important. “I went back. She gave me this.”
Nick stared at him for a long moment before climbing out of bed and kneeling beside the box. He pulled out one of the photo albums and backed up, sitting down when his knees his the side of the bed.
Dean stood by the table and their cooling breakfast, watching as Nick flipped through the pages before deciding to join the older man on the bed. Nick scooted over to make room and tilted the book so that Dean had a better view.
The only photo on the page was faded and torn, held in the album with peeling tape. It showed two kids - a boy and a girl - standing in what looked like a forest, covered in mud and what might have been blood. The boy was holding a knife and grinning from ear to ear. The girl was scowling with her arms crossed over her chest. Beside him, Nick smiled.
“I think this is the only picture I have left of my sister,” he said, pointing at the girl. “Man, she hated the life.”
“What life?” Dean asked, looking up from the washed-out photo.
“You never asked,” Nick explained with a shrug, “so I never told you. My family - grandparents, parents, my sister and me - we were hunters. Like you. Man, I used to love the job. She, on the other hand,” he said, tapping the young blonde girl on the page, “hated it. We used to fight about it all the time.”
It probably should have been a shock, the man who said yes to Satan formerly being someone who would have fought beside Sam and Dean to take the Devil down. It should have been surprising, but Dean was hardly surprised by anything any more. It took too much energy. “What happened to her?” he asked.
Nick frowned. “I’m not sure. I left home when I was fifteen, joined up with some of my dad’s old hunting buddies before going solo. Got a call a few years later that mom and dad were gone. That was the last I heard from her. She didn’t even tell me what did it. She kinda dropped off the map after that.”
“Harsh,” Dean commented.
“I like to think she finally got the life she wanted,” Nick said. “House and dog and kids. All that.” He turned the page. The three photos that stared back up at them were of a middle-aged Nick and a dark-haired woman smiling in front of a green house.
“You must have wanted it, too,” Dean said. “You look pretty happy.”
“I was fine hunting. It was exciting, it was fun, it was fulfilling.”
“So why’d you stop?”
The older man smiled. “I met Sarah.” He ran a finger over the image of the woman in one of the pictures.
“How you meet?” Dean prompted when Nick lapsed into silence.
“Shapeshifter case in northern Maine. I’d just finished this guy off and was pulling the knife out of his heart when I hear this scream behind me. I turned around and there was another one, eyes bulging out, blood running out of the knife wound in her chest. The body fell, and there was Sarah, covered in sweat and dirt, panting like she’d just run a mile. I took her back to my room, she cleaned up, and we started talking about the case.”
“She was a hunter,” Dean guessed. “One with perfect timing.”
Nick set the book aside and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Do you know what makes a shifter, a shifter? It’s a genetic anomaly. A mutated gene somewhere that makes them capable of shedding their skin and reforming their bodies to look like anyone. It’s evolution at its finest.
“The insanity isn’t in the genes, though. The bloodlust. That’s built up. That’s manmade.” He ran a hand over the back of his neck, rough fingers rubbing over soft and healing skin. “They shed for the first time when they’re four. That’s when the civvies freak out, call them monsters, shun them. That’s what makes them snap. It’s got nothing to do with what they are and everything to do with how they’re treated.”
“Never thought of it that way,” Dean said. “How’d you find that out?”
Nick smiled. “Imagine if two shifters get together. They fall in love, have a child, and live in a den underneath the city. They steal and kill to get what they want and what they need, but the main difference between them and the baby they made is that the child isn’t shunned. It’s accepted. It grows up without ever having to be ashamed of what it is, but it’s trapped in the sewers. It wants out.”
“She wasn’t a hunter, was she? She was one of them.”
“She hated what her parents did. The theft, the murder.” He leaned back and picked up the book again, flipping through pages of happy memories. “She asked to come with me. We hunted together for a few years, killed a lot of evil things, before deciding to settle down in Pine Creek.” He turned to the last page of the album, to a single picture of a happy family - husband, wife, and baby. “His name was Jack.”
Dean looked down at the picture, unable to draw his eyes away even as a drop of something wet and private fell to the page. It explained everything. After the deaths in the house, seeing a vibrant toddler rolling around the yard must have been a punch to the gut, too much to take.
The hunter reached out and laid a hand on the other man’s arm, hoping he wouldn’t be pushed away. “What happened?”
“Hunters,” Nick said, voice more broken than it had been when he’d finally woken up a few weeks back. “A couple of guys named Roy and Walt. I’d worked with them a few times back in the day. They found us. Found her. Found Jack. They waited until I went for groceries and they broke in and killed them both. I recognized their car. It was pulling out of the driveway when I got back.” He sighed and closed the book, setting it on the bedside table before shaking off Dean’s arm and burying his head in his hands. “He didn’t even look for them,” Nick whispered. “No justice.”
He didn’t need to ask to know who the he was. It made sense. Dean had done some crazy things in his time for vengeance, for family.
He felt useless, sitting there next to the silently shaking man. He shouldn’t have brought the box back. He should have just burned it. Or put it away somewhere. Saved it, but kept it out of sight. Kind of like he had with his own little box of memories from Lawrence.
And that gave him an idea.
The hunter stood and crossed the room to his duffle bag. A few seconds of digging produced his dad’s old journal and the few family photos Dean had stuffed inside. He took the pictures and went back to the bed, sitting down and nudging Nick lightly with his shoulder to get the other man’s attention.
“My brother and I went back to our old house in Lawrence to deal with a poltergeist,” he explained. “The new owner had a trunk of our old stuff in the basement. We put it in a storage locker so we didn’t have to lug it around with us. I kept these.” He handed the photos over, watching as Nick flipped through them.
“This your mom?” he asked, stopping on the picture of the happy and whole Winchester family in front of their house.
“Yeah.”
“She’s beautiful.”
Dean smiled. “Yeah. She was.” He pointed. “That’s me. My brother. My dad. I think this was about a month before the fire.”
Nick looked up from the photo and met Dean’s eyes. “Fire?”
“When my mom was younger, a demon killed her parents and my dad. He offered to bring dad back if she made a deal with him.”
“She sold her soul?”
Dean shook his head. “He asked to come into our home. He promised he wouldn’t take anything, and nothing would happen as long as he wasn’t interrupted. She took it. Ten years later, she interrupted him dosing Sam with demon blood. He killed her.
“Dad started hunting after that, looking for answers. He trained me, and Sammy, too, when he was old enough.” He grinned. “I took to it fast. Sammy, not so much. He wanted to be normal, like our mom. He tried so hard. He just couldn’t get away from it.”
Nick nodded. “Know how that feels.” He kept flipping through the pictures - snapshots from a perfect life built on lies and blood and deals - asking the occasional question and listening intently as Dean relayed memories from his past.
When the handful of photos was exhausted, Nick set them on top of his own photo album and sighed, throwing a sideways glance at Dean. “Thanks for that.”
“For what?” Dean asked.
“Just feels good to get all that out there.”
Dean nodded. It kind of did. It felt like letting go, like starting over.
“Hey, where’s your phone?”
The hunter dug in his pocket and handed it over. “Why?”
Nick flipped the phone open and started pushing buttons. “I want to remember this.” He wrapped an arm around Dean’s shoulders and pulled the younger man close, until they were practically on top of each other sitting on the bed. He held the phone up in front of them. “Smile,” Nick instructed.
Dean did.
Author: mummyluvr314
Rating: PG
Pairings: Dean/Nick pre-slash, mentions of Nick/Sarah
Summary: A picture’s worth a thousand words, and Dean’s got a box full of photos from Nick’s old house. They do say that sharing is caring.
Warnings: Season five spoilers, as always
A/N: Written for my schmoop_bingo prompt “memories - scrapbook/photo album.” The title’s from “In Color” by Jamey Johnson.
Disclaimer: I don’t own the show or the characters. Sorry.
Previous Chapters: Wounded, Jaded, Loved, and Hated || Waiting for that Second Chance || The Future Ahead and the Past Behind
Dean wasn’t sure how to tell Nick he’d gone back to the house, wasn’t sure how to introduce him to the box of pictures the new owner had handed over. He wasn’t good at this type of thing, wasn’t sure if it would make things better or worse. He desperately wanted to keep the tentative whatever they had built over the nearly three weeks they’d been together. He didn’t want Nick to find out he’d been hiding anything, either.
So he brought the box in with breakfast. He set in on the floor by the chair and met Nick’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Dean said. He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, but he knew it was important. “I went back. She gave me this.”
Nick stared at him for a long moment before climbing out of bed and kneeling beside the box. He pulled out one of the photo albums and backed up, sitting down when his knees his the side of the bed.
Dean stood by the table and their cooling breakfast, watching as Nick flipped through the pages before deciding to join the older man on the bed. Nick scooted over to make room and tilted the book so that Dean had a better view.
The only photo on the page was faded and torn, held in the album with peeling tape. It showed two kids - a boy and a girl - standing in what looked like a forest, covered in mud and what might have been blood. The boy was holding a knife and grinning from ear to ear. The girl was scowling with her arms crossed over her chest. Beside him, Nick smiled.
“I think this is the only picture I have left of my sister,” he said, pointing at the girl. “Man, she hated the life.”
“What life?” Dean asked, looking up from the washed-out photo.
“You never asked,” Nick explained with a shrug, “so I never told you. My family - grandparents, parents, my sister and me - we were hunters. Like you. Man, I used to love the job. She, on the other hand,” he said, tapping the young blonde girl on the page, “hated it. We used to fight about it all the time.”
It probably should have been a shock, the man who said yes to Satan formerly being someone who would have fought beside Sam and Dean to take the Devil down. It should have been surprising, but Dean was hardly surprised by anything any more. It took too much energy. “What happened to her?” he asked.
Nick frowned. “I’m not sure. I left home when I was fifteen, joined up with some of my dad’s old hunting buddies before going solo. Got a call a few years later that mom and dad were gone. That was the last I heard from her. She didn’t even tell me what did it. She kinda dropped off the map after that.”
“Harsh,” Dean commented.
“I like to think she finally got the life she wanted,” Nick said. “House and dog and kids. All that.” He turned the page. The three photos that stared back up at them were of a middle-aged Nick and a dark-haired woman smiling in front of a green house.
“You must have wanted it, too,” Dean said. “You look pretty happy.”
“I was fine hunting. It was exciting, it was fun, it was fulfilling.”
“So why’d you stop?”
The older man smiled. “I met Sarah.” He ran a finger over the image of the woman in one of the pictures.
“How you meet?” Dean prompted when Nick lapsed into silence.
“Shapeshifter case in northern Maine. I’d just finished this guy off and was pulling the knife out of his heart when I hear this scream behind me. I turned around and there was another one, eyes bulging out, blood running out of the knife wound in her chest. The body fell, and there was Sarah, covered in sweat and dirt, panting like she’d just run a mile. I took her back to my room, she cleaned up, and we started talking about the case.”
“She was a hunter,” Dean guessed. “One with perfect timing.”
Nick set the book aside and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Do you know what makes a shifter, a shifter? It’s a genetic anomaly. A mutated gene somewhere that makes them capable of shedding their skin and reforming their bodies to look like anyone. It’s evolution at its finest.
“The insanity isn’t in the genes, though. The bloodlust. That’s built up. That’s manmade.” He ran a hand over the back of his neck, rough fingers rubbing over soft and healing skin. “They shed for the first time when they’re four. That’s when the civvies freak out, call them monsters, shun them. That’s what makes them snap. It’s got nothing to do with what they are and everything to do with how they’re treated.”
“Never thought of it that way,” Dean said. “How’d you find that out?”
Nick smiled. “Imagine if two shifters get together. They fall in love, have a child, and live in a den underneath the city. They steal and kill to get what they want and what they need, but the main difference between them and the baby they made is that the child isn’t shunned. It’s accepted. It grows up without ever having to be ashamed of what it is, but it’s trapped in the sewers. It wants out.”
“She wasn’t a hunter, was she? She was one of them.”
“She hated what her parents did. The theft, the murder.” He leaned back and picked up the book again, flipping through pages of happy memories. “She asked to come with me. We hunted together for a few years, killed a lot of evil things, before deciding to settle down in Pine Creek.” He turned to the last page of the album, to a single picture of a happy family - husband, wife, and baby. “His name was Jack.”
Dean looked down at the picture, unable to draw his eyes away even as a drop of something wet and private fell to the page. It explained everything. After the deaths in the house, seeing a vibrant toddler rolling around the yard must have been a punch to the gut, too much to take.
The hunter reached out and laid a hand on the other man’s arm, hoping he wouldn’t be pushed away. “What happened?”
“Hunters,” Nick said, voice more broken than it had been when he’d finally woken up a few weeks back. “A couple of guys named Roy and Walt. I’d worked with them a few times back in the day. They found us. Found her. Found Jack. They waited until I went for groceries and they broke in and killed them both. I recognized their car. It was pulling out of the driveway when I got back.” He sighed and closed the book, setting it on the bedside table before shaking off Dean’s arm and burying his head in his hands. “He didn’t even look for them,” Nick whispered. “No justice.”
He didn’t need to ask to know who the he was. It made sense. Dean had done some crazy things in his time for vengeance, for family.
He felt useless, sitting there next to the silently shaking man. He shouldn’t have brought the box back. He should have just burned it. Or put it away somewhere. Saved it, but kept it out of sight. Kind of like he had with his own little box of memories from Lawrence.
And that gave him an idea.
The hunter stood and crossed the room to his duffle bag. A few seconds of digging produced his dad’s old journal and the few family photos Dean had stuffed inside. He took the pictures and went back to the bed, sitting down and nudging Nick lightly with his shoulder to get the other man’s attention.
“My brother and I went back to our old house in Lawrence to deal with a poltergeist,” he explained. “The new owner had a trunk of our old stuff in the basement. We put it in a storage locker so we didn’t have to lug it around with us. I kept these.” He handed the photos over, watching as Nick flipped through them.
“This your mom?” he asked, stopping on the picture of the happy and whole Winchester family in front of their house.
“Yeah.”
“She’s beautiful.”
Dean smiled. “Yeah. She was.” He pointed. “That’s me. My brother. My dad. I think this was about a month before the fire.”
Nick looked up from the photo and met Dean’s eyes. “Fire?”
“When my mom was younger, a demon killed her parents and my dad. He offered to bring dad back if she made a deal with him.”
“She sold her soul?”
Dean shook his head. “He asked to come into our home. He promised he wouldn’t take anything, and nothing would happen as long as he wasn’t interrupted. She took it. Ten years later, she interrupted him dosing Sam with demon blood. He killed her.
“Dad started hunting after that, looking for answers. He trained me, and Sammy, too, when he was old enough.” He grinned. “I took to it fast. Sammy, not so much. He wanted to be normal, like our mom. He tried so hard. He just couldn’t get away from it.”
Nick nodded. “Know how that feels.” He kept flipping through the pictures - snapshots from a perfect life built on lies and blood and deals - asking the occasional question and listening intently as Dean relayed memories from his past.
When the handful of photos was exhausted, Nick set them on top of his own photo album and sighed, throwing a sideways glance at Dean. “Thanks for that.”
“For what?” Dean asked.
“Just feels good to get all that out there.”
Dean nodded. It kind of did. It felt like letting go, like starting over.
“Hey, where’s your phone?”
The hunter dug in his pocket and handed it over. “Why?”
Nick flipped the phone open and started pushing buttons. “I want to remember this.” He wrapped an arm around Dean’s shoulders and pulled the younger man close, until they were practically on top of each other sitting on the bed. He held the phone up in front of them. “Smile,” Nick instructed.
Dean did.