SPN/DA Fic: The Wellspring (3/?)
Title: The Wellspring
Author:scourgeofeurope
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rating: Ah, fuck. I just said fuck. I say fuck a lot. Is that considered an R or a PG-13 these days? One of those.
Summary: Sam and Dean find a tiny smartass in a barn in Montana. What are they to do?
Previous chapters and more info can be found here.
__________________________
Chapter Three: Water & Toast
__________________________
Plastic bags litter the floor of the car. Alec is lying down in the back, his face behind the driver’s seat, and he counts ten packages, yellow and empty, on this side alone. The pillow under his head is flat from years of use, but the blanket covering his tiny frame is warm and soft.
“You ready to answer yet, kid?” Dean asks.
It’s been an hour since they left the hospital and Alec hasn’t said a word. He keeps waiting for Dean to pull over and drop him off on the side of the road, but Dean doesn’t and Sam doesn’t tell him to. Alec doesn’t understand these guys. He really doesn’t.
“Guess not,” Dean mutters.
Alec feels Sam’s eyes on him, but he keeps his own gaze aimed determinedly on the back of Dean’s seat. He’s not going to give in to a look. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk - he does. Alec often got himself in trouble at Manticore for being garrulous. Sometimes he would talk just to hear himself talk.
You’re impudent, 494.
Impudent. Alec remembers looking the word up in the dictionary. Of, pertaining to, or characterized by impertinence or effrontery.
You’re a smart aleck, Ben had whispered late into the night, the moon shining through the barred windows of the dormitory. We don’t go by our designations in my unit. We have names. I’ll call you Alec from now on.
“Alec?” Sam asks. “Alec, you hungry?”
“Hey, that’s a plan,” Dean says brightly. “Kid, we’ll feed you if you talk.”
Alec hears rather than sees the smack Sam lands upside his brother’s head.
“We’re not starving a nine-year-old, Dean.”
“It was just an idea...”
“Yeah. A terrible idea.”
“I’m not hungry.” The words leave Alec’s mouth before he can stop them, but it’s true. He isn’t hungry. His stomach is still sore and near-reeling and this little argument between Sam and Dean isn’t helping all that much.
And they’re not talking anymore. Alec feels slightly proud of himself for catching them off-guard.
“You should at least have some dry toast or something,” Sam finally says. “Dean, next time you see a place-“
“You got money?”
“No, but you do. He’s a sick, dehydrated kid. We need to get something in his stomach that’s not gonna make him hurl.”
“Why is it always-“
“You’re always saying you’re the oldest.”
Dean responds with high pitched mimicking sounds. Alec can’t help himself. He laughs.
Sam snaps his head back, glare firmly in place. “Okay…he’s the one who wants to starve you.”
“But he’s funny,” Alec insists.
“He is not-“
“Stop arguing with the kid, Sammy. He’s sick.”
“Yeah, I’m sick.”
Sam huffs. Alec smirks to himself. He likes Sam. Sam’s a good guy.
“Alec?” Dean actually uses his name, and this time, he’s not acting or stating it like ‘Alec’ is some kind of a ruse. “Who put that barcode on you, dude?”
Alec doesn’t respond.
“We’re not going to hurt you. If we were gonna do that, we would’ve done it a long time ago.”
Alec fidgets. The leather squeaks under him.
“Fact is, you look like me. Just like me, actually, and I don’t think that’s your fault, but you gotta admit, man, it’s kinda weird. Aren’t you a little freaked out by it?”
Alec throws the blanket over his head.
“It freaks me out. You’re a kid with my face and you have a barcode on the back of your neck. You’re a kid. You’re not merchandise. And I know…you’re some kind of freak. You’re all strong and shit- ow! Dude, Sam, did you just pinch me?”
“He’s nine years old, Dean.”
“He said he might be ten.”
“He’s a little kid. You don’t swear around little kids!”
“Fine. Where was I?” Alec counts ten seconds as Dean gets his thoughts together. “I know you’re all strong and…stuff. And that’s cool. It’s good to be strong even if it is weird as hell when you’re like four feet tall.”
“M’four foot two,” Alec grumbles.
“Yeah? Tall guy, aren’t you?” Alec resists the urge to get up and hit Dean. “Anyway, you know. It’s okay to be a freak. Sam and I are freaks, too. More so Sam, but you know…” Dean trails off. Alec waits for him to continue, but he never does.
Alec takes the blanket off his head, settles into a more relaxed position. He’s never met people like Sam and Dean before - people who inflict violence upon each other without any true intention to do harm. And Dean…Alec does look exactly like Dean. Like Ben.
We’re brothers, Ben had told him. We’re brothers by blood. We come from the same genetic makeup. I don’t know if that means anything to you…but it means something to me.
_____________________
Sam asks Dean to stop by a Goodwill before they head into a diner. Alec is still in his hospital gown and Dean agrees readily.
“Kid needs pants,” the elder Winchester grunts. He pops open the driver side door. “Be back in a jiff.”
Sam is left in the car with Alec, who is curled up in the backseat, looking small and pale.
“Alec? How’re you feeling, buddy?”
“Okay.”
“Yeah? That’s good.” But the kid really doesn’t look okay. He looks like Dean when Dean is sick and Sam just can’t take that. So he does something he’s never able to do when Dean is sick. “Hey, uh, I’m just gonna reach back and feel your head, okay? I just want to see if you have a fever.”
The kid is warm, and it only takes a second for Alec to get irritated and swipe at Sam’s hand.
“You’re warm.”
“Am not.”
“You are-“ Sam stops himself, sighs. It’s not worth it right now. He has a hard enough time when trying to convince adult Dean of something.
“Why are you doing this?”
Sam doesn’t know what to tell him. He could say that they’d do it for anyone, but that would be a lie. They’ve never picked anyone up before, not a single person.
“You’re just a kid,” Sam offers after a moment too long. Alec’s just a kid with Dean’s face.
“Just a kid who knocked you unconscious and stole all your money,” Alec retorts.
“You’re pretty spry for being so small,” Sam agrees.
Alec sits up. Probably too fast, Sam notes, because the kid looks damn queasy.
“Why would you do this for someone who knocked you unconscious and stole all your money?”
“You look like Dean.”
“But I’m not Dean.”
“But you look like him.”
The boy casts his eyes downwards, chews his bottom lip. Sam is hit with the sudden memory of his father and the rules he used to drill into them, and the expression on Dean’s face when he was contemplating breaking one of those rules.
“Why do you think I look like him?” Alec finally asks.
“Who was your mother?” Sam replies.
“He didn’t father me, if that’s what you’re thinking…”
“Who was your mother?” Sam persists.
“I didn’t have a mother. I had an oven.”
“What does that-“
Dean interrupts the inquiry by opening the car door and throwing a bag of clothes back at Alec. Sam doesn’t take his eyes from the boy, who is looking conflicted and scared and confused.
“Get dressed, kid. We won’t look.”
Alec starts rifling through the plastic bag, pulls out a pair of jeans. Dean hits Sam in the shoulder.
“Stop being a perv, Sam.”
Sam glares at his brother, but turns around in his seat. He looks out the window, ready to point out the first eatery they come by.
“They promised me they were clean,” Dean says.
“You said you weren’t going to look,” Alec replies. Sam raises his eyebrow at the matter-of-fact tone - Alec doesn’t sound at all like he cares that Dean looked.
“I wouldn’t have if you had been getting dressed. You’re not getting dressed.”
“I’d be getting dressed if you hadn’t bought me some other kid’s underwear…with this freaky pattern on it.”
Sam turns around and grins at the pair of Bob the Builder underwear Alec is holding up.
“Tough. You’re gonna have to deal with it for now,” Dean says. “You can pick out your own next time.”
Alec’s eyes go wide at that statement. He mouths the words. Next time. Sam suddenly feels like he’s invading a private moment and turns around. Dean stares at the road, unaware of what he just said. Sam looks out the window again, keeping his eyes pinned for non-foreclosed food services, listening to the soft sounds of fabric and the squeaking of leather from the backseat as Alec changes.
“What’s A-C-D-C?” Alec stumbles over the letters.
Dean almost swerves off the road, he’s so surprised. Sam looks back again, feels both surprised and unsurprised at the fact that Alec is now sporting a tiny AC/DC tee and a pair of jeans. An oversized black hoodie and the discarded hospital gown lay off to his side.
“Dean. He already looks like you. Do you really have to…” Sam trails off when his brother’s hand raises to stop him. Dean looks like he’s trying to catch his breath.
“Kid,” the words finally come, sounding both firm and kind. “I have so much to teach you.”
_________________________
Alec is warm weight in Dean’s arms. He mumbles that he’s too big to be carried, but Dean ignores him. Kid got hit with vertigo the second he stood on his own two feet, swayed unsteadily with the onset of nausea. And Dean had picked him up without thinking.
“I’m ten, damn it.”
“You said you might be nine. That’s still in the single digits.” Dean is defensive. He’s not given to sudden displays of affection. Kid’s got him all twisted up. “Who the hell doesn’t know their own birthday, anyway?”
“They didn’t tell us stuff like that.”
“Who didn’t?”
“I want toast.”
Dean snorts. It’s pretty bad as far as verbal evasion goes, but it’s cute. So cute, in fact, that Dean is willing to let the question go. For now.
“What happened to starving him until he told us the truth?” Sam asks, trailing them into the diner.
“I want toast, too,” Dean says. “You want some toast, Sammy?”
They eat toast. Dean and Sam watch as Alec takes small bites. Alec tells them to stop looking at him, and they do. For about thirty seconds.
“Drink more water,” Sam suggests, watching Alec play with his straw.
“I don’t want-“
“Drink more water,” Dean orders.
Alec drinks more water. Dean watches him. He knows the kid probably feels uncomfortable with the way he isn’t getting any privacy, but Dean can’t really get over it. Every inch of this kid is him.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
Alec drinks more water.
Sam swallows a piece of toast, answers with nonchalance, “Alec didn’t have a mother. He had an oven.”
Dean narrows his eyes at his little brother. “I see you’ve already asked this question…and what in the fuck does that mean?”
“I don’t know. And don’t use that word around him.”
Alec blows bubbles into his water with his straw. “Fuck is a bad word,” he tells Dean.
Dean smirks. “I know.”
“I know you know,” Alec says. “Fuck and shit are bad words. Damn isn’t a bad word, really, but it becomes blasphemous when you say ‘god’ in front of it. Bitches and bastards are the appointed words for things and people that exist, but have come to be used crudely over time.”
Sam and Dean stare at him. Alec blows more bubbles into his water.
“So…you’re like an encyclopedia or something?” Dean asks.
“No, but I’ve read one before.”
Dean looks at Sam. Sam looks at Dean. They both look at Alec. Alec’s gaze shifts steadily between them, though he’s chewing his bottom lip and tapping his plastic cup with his fingers.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“Did you ever do something about ten years ago…take a test or something? Maybe went to a doctor for a physical. You might have gotten paid for it…”
Dean thinks. Ten years ago, he was twenty years old. When he was twenty years old, he hunted with Dad and watched Sammy. Why in the hell would he ever take a test or have a physical? And who pays for someone to take a test or have a physical, anyway?
“You gave me money that year to go on a field trip,” Sam says. “You never told me where it came from.”
“Field trip?” Dean is confused. How does Sam remember a field trip from ten years ago?
“You remember. The NASA field trip? It was like two hundred dollars and Dad wouldn’t put out the money…”
Oh. Yeah. Sam, the geek who liked space. Dean remembers now. The research clinic. The drug trial. Healthy participants eighteen to forty years of age to try some crap protein pill.
“Did they take blood?” Alec asks, swirling his straw around. The ice is noisy as it clashes with the sides of the cup.
They took blood. They had him run on a treadmill.
“How about a skin biopsy?” Alec prods.
Okay, yeah. The skin biopsy had been weird, but Dean had three hundred dollars cash in hand that day - a nice split of two hundred for Sam’s field trip and another hundred to coerce Francine Harris out of her skirt.
“What are you talking about?” Sam asks. “Dean, what is he talking about?”
“I did a drug trial.”
“Figures,” Alec says.
“No, you didn’t. Dad wouldn’t have let you.”
“You think Dad knew?”
Dad hadn’t known. The drug trial was one of the few things Dad hadn’t known about Dean.
“Dude, they cloned you.” Sam sounds horrified and amazed.
Dean blinks. “What do you mean they…” He trails off, his eyes slanting towards Alec. The boy is looking out the window, not willing to look at them now. “You’re my…” Clone. Alec is Dean’s clone. Not his son. Dean didn’t knock up some girl and leave her to a life of poverty and single parenthood. “You know, I have to say. This is a relief.”
“What?” Sam obviously can’t believe his ears.
Alec peers up at him. “It…is?”
“Yeah…you know. I can, like, harvest you for organs and stuff now.”
“Dean.”
But Alec laughs. Hysterically, in fact. And Dean grins, because the kid is laughing and not looking out the window like some forlorn Oliver Twist whose days of wealth and happiness are numbered.
“Alec, are you okay?” Sam looks concerned. Alec is still laughing. “Dean, he had a fever before…”
Alec’s eyes are tearing up, but he manages to sober himself a little. “Harvesting organs is an amusing practice.” Then he laughs again before upchucking all over Dean.
The Winchester table is awhirl with activity. Alec is apologizing and trying to keep the next round of vomit down. Dean is cursing at Sam for suggesting they get the kid something to eat. Sam is trying to assure Alec that everything is okay, that this isn’t his fault, that Dean has more shirts. The waitress bustles over with a pitcher of water and a rag. She expresses an overt amount of worry about the “poor little boy.”
Dean tries to assure her its okay as he slides himself out of the booth and reaches for Alec. He stops when his phone rings in his pants.
“Sam…take him to the bathroom?”
Sam nods, leads Alec away with a gentle hand. Dean answers his call.
“Mr. Winchester?”
“Uh…yeah?”
“This is Marsha Stark at St. Francis Medical Center in Butte, Montana.”
“Oh, hey again, Marsha. How can I help you?”
“You’re going to have to bring Alec back in.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re going to have to bring Alec back in.”
“Yeah, Marsha…that ‘excuse me’? Less of a ‘what’ and more of a ‘why’.”
The voice on the other end of the line is crisp and cold. “A couple answered the missing persons report we put out on Alec shortly after you left. They say that Alec is theirs.” Dean wonders what the diner put in that toast - it’s feeling really heavy in his stomach about now. “Mr. Winchester?”
“Speaking,” Dean snaps. “What makes you think they’re telling the truth?”
“They provided documentation. Now, you’re going to have to bring Alec back in or the police are going to be after you.”
Dean curses and snaps the phone shut. Sam exits the bathroom, a pale Alec in his arms.
“Take him to the car,” Dean tells his brother. Sam throws him a prissy look, but takes Alec to the car. Dean pays for their meal, looks out the window at his brother settling his clone into the backseat of his baby.
“Is your son going to be okay?” The woman at the counter cares. She really does.
“He will be. Food poisoning, you know?”
“It’s hard eating safe these days.”
“It is,” Dean agrees. He tips the waitress as he walks out the door. She smiles coyly at him, but he doesn’t notice. His ears are still ringing with the words “your son.”
He gets into the car. Sam is half out of the passenger seat, arranging the blanket over Alec. Alec is shivering and moaning.
“I know you’re sick, kid, but you have to tell us everything.”
“Dean, I don’t think now-“
“There’s people at the hospital, Sam. They have documentation saying that he’s theirs.”
Alec is up in a flash and going at the doors like a wild animal. For the first time in twenty years, Dean is glad that his father put those childproof locks in.
“Calm down, Alec.”
“Alec, calm down.”
It takes about thirty minutes of slow driving and dry heaving, but Alec calms down.
He tells them everything.
Next
Author:scourgeofeurope
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rating: Ah, fuck. I just said fuck. I say fuck a lot. Is that considered an R or a PG-13 these days? One of those.
Summary: Sam and Dean find a tiny smartass in a barn in Montana. What are they to do?
Previous chapters and more info can be found here.
__________________________
Chapter Three: Water & Toast
__________________________
Plastic bags litter the floor of the car. Alec is lying down in the back, his face behind the driver’s seat, and he counts ten packages, yellow and empty, on this side alone. The pillow under his head is flat from years of use, but the blanket covering his tiny frame is warm and soft.
“You ready to answer yet, kid?” Dean asks.
It’s been an hour since they left the hospital and Alec hasn’t said a word. He keeps waiting for Dean to pull over and drop him off on the side of the road, but Dean doesn’t and Sam doesn’t tell him to. Alec doesn’t understand these guys. He really doesn’t.
“Guess not,” Dean mutters.
Alec feels Sam’s eyes on him, but he keeps his own gaze aimed determinedly on the back of Dean’s seat. He’s not going to give in to a look. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk - he does. Alec often got himself in trouble at Manticore for being garrulous. Sometimes he would talk just to hear himself talk.
You’re impudent, 494.
Impudent. Alec remembers looking the word up in the dictionary. Of, pertaining to, or characterized by impertinence or effrontery.
You’re a smart aleck, Ben had whispered late into the night, the moon shining through the barred windows of the dormitory. We don’t go by our designations in my unit. We have names. I’ll call you Alec from now on.
“Alec?” Sam asks. “Alec, you hungry?”
“Hey, that’s a plan,” Dean says brightly. “Kid, we’ll feed you if you talk.”
Alec hears rather than sees the smack Sam lands upside his brother’s head.
“We’re not starving a nine-year-old, Dean.”
“It was just an idea...”
“Yeah. A terrible idea.”
“I’m not hungry.” The words leave Alec’s mouth before he can stop them, but it’s true. He isn’t hungry. His stomach is still sore and near-reeling and this little argument between Sam and Dean isn’t helping all that much.
And they’re not talking anymore. Alec feels slightly proud of himself for catching them off-guard.
“You should at least have some dry toast or something,” Sam finally says. “Dean, next time you see a place-“
“You got money?”
“No, but you do. He’s a sick, dehydrated kid. We need to get something in his stomach that’s not gonna make him hurl.”
“Why is it always-“
“You’re always saying you’re the oldest.”
Dean responds with high pitched mimicking sounds. Alec can’t help himself. He laughs.
Sam snaps his head back, glare firmly in place. “Okay…he’s the one who wants to starve you.”
“But he’s funny,” Alec insists.
“He is not-“
“Stop arguing with the kid, Sammy. He’s sick.”
“Yeah, I’m sick.”
Sam huffs. Alec smirks to himself. He likes Sam. Sam’s a good guy.
“Alec?” Dean actually uses his name, and this time, he’s not acting or stating it like ‘Alec’ is some kind of a ruse. “Who put that barcode on you, dude?”
Alec doesn’t respond.
“We’re not going to hurt you. If we were gonna do that, we would’ve done it a long time ago.”
Alec fidgets. The leather squeaks under him.
“Fact is, you look like me. Just like me, actually, and I don’t think that’s your fault, but you gotta admit, man, it’s kinda weird. Aren’t you a little freaked out by it?”
Alec throws the blanket over his head.
“It freaks me out. You’re a kid with my face and you have a barcode on the back of your neck. You’re a kid. You’re not merchandise. And I know…you’re some kind of freak. You’re all strong and shit- ow! Dude, Sam, did you just pinch me?”
“He’s nine years old, Dean.”
“He said he might be ten.”
“He’s a little kid. You don’t swear around little kids!”
“Fine. Where was I?” Alec counts ten seconds as Dean gets his thoughts together. “I know you’re all strong and…stuff. And that’s cool. It’s good to be strong even if it is weird as hell when you’re like four feet tall.”
“M’four foot two,” Alec grumbles.
“Yeah? Tall guy, aren’t you?” Alec resists the urge to get up and hit Dean. “Anyway, you know. It’s okay to be a freak. Sam and I are freaks, too. More so Sam, but you know…” Dean trails off. Alec waits for him to continue, but he never does.
Alec takes the blanket off his head, settles into a more relaxed position. He’s never met people like Sam and Dean before - people who inflict violence upon each other without any true intention to do harm. And Dean…Alec does look exactly like Dean. Like Ben.
We’re brothers, Ben had told him. We’re brothers by blood. We come from the same genetic makeup. I don’t know if that means anything to you…but it means something to me.
_____________________
Sam asks Dean to stop by a Goodwill before they head into a diner. Alec is still in his hospital gown and Dean agrees readily.
“Kid needs pants,” the elder Winchester grunts. He pops open the driver side door. “Be back in a jiff.”
Sam is left in the car with Alec, who is curled up in the backseat, looking small and pale.
“Alec? How’re you feeling, buddy?”
“Okay.”
“Yeah? That’s good.” But the kid really doesn’t look okay. He looks like Dean when Dean is sick and Sam just can’t take that. So he does something he’s never able to do when Dean is sick. “Hey, uh, I’m just gonna reach back and feel your head, okay? I just want to see if you have a fever.”
The kid is warm, and it only takes a second for Alec to get irritated and swipe at Sam’s hand.
“You’re warm.”
“Am not.”
“You are-“ Sam stops himself, sighs. It’s not worth it right now. He has a hard enough time when trying to convince adult Dean of something.
“Why are you doing this?”
Sam doesn’t know what to tell him. He could say that they’d do it for anyone, but that would be a lie. They’ve never picked anyone up before, not a single person.
“You’re just a kid,” Sam offers after a moment too long. Alec’s just a kid with Dean’s face.
“Just a kid who knocked you unconscious and stole all your money,” Alec retorts.
“You’re pretty spry for being so small,” Sam agrees.
Alec sits up. Probably too fast, Sam notes, because the kid looks damn queasy.
“Why would you do this for someone who knocked you unconscious and stole all your money?”
“You look like Dean.”
“But I’m not Dean.”
“But you look like him.”
The boy casts his eyes downwards, chews his bottom lip. Sam is hit with the sudden memory of his father and the rules he used to drill into them, and the expression on Dean’s face when he was contemplating breaking one of those rules.
“Why do you think I look like him?” Alec finally asks.
“Who was your mother?” Sam replies.
“He didn’t father me, if that’s what you’re thinking…”
“Who was your mother?” Sam persists.
“I didn’t have a mother. I had an oven.”
“What does that-“
Dean interrupts the inquiry by opening the car door and throwing a bag of clothes back at Alec. Sam doesn’t take his eyes from the boy, who is looking conflicted and scared and confused.
“Get dressed, kid. We won’t look.”
Alec starts rifling through the plastic bag, pulls out a pair of jeans. Dean hits Sam in the shoulder.
“Stop being a perv, Sam.”
Sam glares at his brother, but turns around in his seat. He looks out the window, ready to point out the first eatery they come by.
“They promised me they were clean,” Dean says.
“You said you weren’t going to look,” Alec replies. Sam raises his eyebrow at the matter-of-fact tone - Alec doesn’t sound at all like he cares that Dean looked.
“I wouldn’t have if you had been getting dressed. You’re not getting dressed.”
“I’d be getting dressed if you hadn’t bought me some other kid’s underwear…with this freaky pattern on it.”
Sam turns around and grins at the pair of Bob the Builder underwear Alec is holding up.
“Tough. You’re gonna have to deal with it for now,” Dean says. “You can pick out your own next time.”
Alec’s eyes go wide at that statement. He mouths the words. Next time. Sam suddenly feels like he’s invading a private moment and turns around. Dean stares at the road, unaware of what he just said. Sam looks out the window again, keeping his eyes pinned for non-foreclosed food services, listening to the soft sounds of fabric and the squeaking of leather from the backseat as Alec changes.
“What’s A-C-D-C?” Alec stumbles over the letters.
Dean almost swerves off the road, he’s so surprised. Sam looks back again, feels both surprised and unsurprised at the fact that Alec is now sporting a tiny AC/DC tee and a pair of jeans. An oversized black hoodie and the discarded hospital gown lay off to his side.
“Dean. He already looks like you. Do you really have to…” Sam trails off when his brother’s hand raises to stop him. Dean looks like he’s trying to catch his breath.
“Kid,” the words finally come, sounding both firm and kind. “I have so much to teach you.”
_________________________
Alec is warm weight in Dean’s arms. He mumbles that he’s too big to be carried, but Dean ignores him. Kid got hit with vertigo the second he stood on his own two feet, swayed unsteadily with the onset of nausea. And Dean had picked him up without thinking.
“I’m ten, damn it.”
“You said you might be nine. That’s still in the single digits.” Dean is defensive. He’s not given to sudden displays of affection. Kid’s got him all twisted up. “Who the hell doesn’t know their own birthday, anyway?”
“They didn’t tell us stuff like that.”
“Who didn’t?”
“I want toast.”
Dean snorts. It’s pretty bad as far as verbal evasion goes, but it’s cute. So cute, in fact, that Dean is willing to let the question go. For now.
“What happened to starving him until he told us the truth?” Sam asks, trailing them into the diner.
“I want toast, too,” Dean says. “You want some toast, Sammy?”
They eat toast. Dean and Sam watch as Alec takes small bites. Alec tells them to stop looking at him, and they do. For about thirty seconds.
“Drink more water,” Sam suggests, watching Alec play with his straw.
“I don’t want-“
“Drink more water,” Dean orders.
Alec drinks more water. Dean watches him. He knows the kid probably feels uncomfortable with the way he isn’t getting any privacy, but Dean can’t really get over it. Every inch of this kid is him.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
Alec drinks more water.
Sam swallows a piece of toast, answers with nonchalance, “Alec didn’t have a mother. He had an oven.”
Dean narrows his eyes at his little brother. “I see you’ve already asked this question…and what in the fuck does that mean?”
“I don’t know. And don’t use that word around him.”
Alec blows bubbles into his water with his straw. “Fuck is a bad word,” he tells Dean.
Dean smirks. “I know.”
“I know you know,” Alec says. “Fuck and shit are bad words. Damn isn’t a bad word, really, but it becomes blasphemous when you say ‘god’ in front of it. Bitches and bastards are the appointed words for things and people that exist, but have come to be used crudely over time.”
Sam and Dean stare at him. Alec blows more bubbles into his water.
“So…you’re like an encyclopedia or something?” Dean asks.
“No, but I’ve read one before.”
Dean looks at Sam. Sam looks at Dean. They both look at Alec. Alec’s gaze shifts steadily between them, though he’s chewing his bottom lip and tapping his plastic cup with his fingers.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“Did you ever do something about ten years ago…take a test or something? Maybe went to a doctor for a physical. You might have gotten paid for it…”
Dean thinks. Ten years ago, he was twenty years old. When he was twenty years old, he hunted with Dad and watched Sammy. Why in the hell would he ever take a test or have a physical? And who pays for someone to take a test or have a physical, anyway?
“You gave me money that year to go on a field trip,” Sam says. “You never told me where it came from.”
“Field trip?” Dean is confused. How does Sam remember a field trip from ten years ago?
“You remember. The NASA field trip? It was like two hundred dollars and Dad wouldn’t put out the money…”
Oh. Yeah. Sam, the geek who liked space. Dean remembers now. The research clinic. The drug trial. Healthy participants eighteen to forty years of age to try some crap protein pill.
“Did they take blood?” Alec asks, swirling his straw around. The ice is noisy as it clashes with the sides of the cup.
They took blood. They had him run on a treadmill.
“How about a skin biopsy?” Alec prods.
Okay, yeah. The skin biopsy had been weird, but Dean had three hundred dollars cash in hand that day - a nice split of two hundred for Sam’s field trip and another hundred to coerce Francine Harris out of her skirt.
“What are you talking about?” Sam asks. “Dean, what is he talking about?”
“I did a drug trial.”
“Figures,” Alec says.
“No, you didn’t. Dad wouldn’t have let you.”
“You think Dad knew?”
Dad hadn’t known. The drug trial was one of the few things Dad hadn’t known about Dean.
“Dude, they cloned you.” Sam sounds horrified and amazed.
Dean blinks. “What do you mean they…” He trails off, his eyes slanting towards Alec. The boy is looking out the window, not willing to look at them now. “You’re my…” Clone. Alec is Dean’s clone. Not his son. Dean didn’t knock up some girl and leave her to a life of poverty and single parenthood. “You know, I have to say. This is a relief.”
“What?” Sam obviously can’t believe his ears.
Alec peers up at him. “It…is?”
“Yeah…you know. I can, like, harvest you for organs and stuff now.”
“Dean.”
But Alec laughs. Hysterically, in fact. And Dean grins, because the kid is laughing and not looking out the window like some forlorn Oliver Twist whose days of wealth and happiness are numbered.
“Alec, are you okay?” Sam looks concerned. Alec is still laughing. “Dean, he had a fever before…”
Alec’s eyes are tearing up, but he manages to sober himself a little. “Harvesting organs is an amusing practice.” Then he laughs again before upchucking all over Dean.
The Winchester table is awhirl with activity. Alec is apologizing and trying to keep the next round of vomit down. Dean is cursing at Sam for suggesting they get the kid something to eat. Sam is trying to assure Alec that everything is okay, that this isn’t his fault, that Dean has more shirts. The waitress bustles over with a pitcher of water and a rag. She expresses an overt amount of worry about the “poor little boy.”
Dean tries to assure her its okay as he slides himself out of the booth and reaches for Alec. He stops when his phone rings in his pants.
“Sam…take him to the bathroom?”
Sam nods, leads Alec away with a gentle hand. Dean answers his call.
“Mr. Winchester?”
“Uh…yeah?”
“This is Marsha Stark at St. Francis Medical Center in Butte, Montana.”
“Oh, hey again, Marsha. How can I help you?”
“You’re going to have to bring Alec back in.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re going to have to bring Alec back in.”
“Yeah, Marsha…that ‘excuse me’? Less of a ‘what’ and more of a ‘why’.”
The voice on the other end of the line is crisp and cold. “A couple answered the missing persons report we put out on Alec shortly after you left. They say that Alec is theirs.” Dean wonders what the diner put in that toast - it’s feeling really heavy in his stomach about now. “Mr. Winchester?”
“Speaking,” Dean snaps. “What makes you think they’re telling the truth?”
“They provided documentation. Now, you’re going to have to bring Alec back in or the police are going to be after you.”
Dean curses and snaps the phone shut. Sam exits the bathroom, a pale Alec in his arms.
“Take him to the car,” Dean tells his brother. Sam throws him a prissy look, but takes Alec to the car. Dean pays for their meal, looks out the window at his brother settling his clone into the backseat of his baby.
“Is your son going to be okay?” The woman at the counter cares. She really does.
“He will be. Food poisoning, you know?”
“It’s hard eating safe these days.”
“It is,” Dean agrees. He tips the waitress as he walks out the door. She smiles coyly at him, but he doesn’t notice. His ears are still ringing with the words “your son.”
He gets into the car. Sam is half out of the passenger seat, arranging the blanket over Alec. Alec is shivering and moaning.
“I know you’re sick, kid, but you have to tell us everything.”
“Dean, I don’t think now-“
“There’s people at the hospital, Sam. They have documentation saying that he’s theirs.”
Alec is up in a flash and going at the doors like a wild animal. For the first time in twenty years, Dean is glad that his father put those childproof locks in.
“Calm down, Alec.”
“Alec, calm down.”
It takes about thirty minutes of slow driving and dry heaving, but Alec calms down.
He tells them everything.
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