Fic: Set the fire to the third bar = episode 20
Fic: Set the fire to the third bar = episode 20
Author: Seraphim Grace
Fandom = Supernatural
Pairing = Castiel x Dean (god is love in all its forms)
Rating = NC17
spoilers = yes for season 4, set between Great pumpkin and the one after that I've forgotten the name of
AUish - set in the world of american gods and sandman but also the spn universe, I just stretched it a little
prompts - Dean wonders how much is too much when you've already past that line and just how changed he is from being in hell.
suggested by keire_ke
betaed by bellajayd who deserves more praise than me for this - she's certainly doing more work
Not enough coffee in the world
In the hotel dusk
tea with thrones
The House of Five aspects
The Banshee in the Bathroom
Time is never time enough
let the bodies hit the floor
I could sleep forever
The smell of hospitals in winter
Here be dragons
The Queen of Sheba
You can't count on me
with my spear and mighty helmet
The cabin in the woods
Grace
wrapped in Grace and in sin
Set me as a seal upon thy arm
Mystery meat and unicorns
the dogs of war
Episode 20
In which Dean meets a goddess on the road
Soundtrack:
Saliva = Click Click Boom
----------------------
For the first time driving doesn’t help clear Dean’s head. It's almost as if there are two of him and each one is trying to kill the other. The bangle on his arm seems heavier than usual. The shiny white bead banging angrily against the knob of his wrist. It seems to give off a humming noise that catches in his ears like a bee.
New Sammy is snoring in the back seat, swaddled in that ugly fleece blanket that just showed up one day. Like the car. Like that damned angel.
The radio kicked out an hour ago with a burst of Emmy Lou Harris asking for the “ocean to wash her clean, to wash her clean.”
Dean’s not sure when he started singing the verse on his own. He thinks that he finally understands the song, the way it resonates and aches, and his voice is hoarse as he sings to himself, to the dog, to the cold and the anti-Impala.
“Well you really got me this time and the hardest part is knowing I’ll survive. I have come to listen for the sound of the trucks as they move down out on ninety five and pretend that it’s the ocean coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean.”
Singing eats the miles up as he drives across America’s flatlands under a sky the exact blue of Castiel’s eyes.
For the first time in his life, he hits the note.
For the first time in his life, he even tries.
Dean knows that he’s fucked, he’s sitting in an ugly white Chevy Nova, with a dog of the wild hunt snoring in the back seat, singing fucking country music. All he needs now, he thinks, is a bottle of Wild Turkey, a banjo and a rousing chorus of Patsy Cline’s Crazy to finish the image.
It’s not even worth it to stop singing.
There’s a blister on his foot large enough to have its own satellites.
The dog is snoring loud enough to wake a ghoul.
And his ass hurts.
There’s only one thing for it he decides, opening the window to let the winter in, and opens his mouth. “Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely. I’m crazy, crazy for feeling so blue.”
*************
She’s standing at the bar, a vision in sprayed on black biker leathers and stilettos you could use in a murder. She’s leaning over the jukebox with hair frothed and chains hanging around an ass like two boiled eggs in a handkerchief that Dean can’t help but appreciate. She’s like all his teenage wet dreams of rock chicks come to life: lip stick, eyeliner, lace and leather.
There’s not a trucker in the place that doesn’t appreciate her.
In fact, if she turned around and burst into a chorus of Edge of a Broken Heart he wouldn’t be surprised.
There is a sort of marble hardness to her, as if she were carved in stone and then painted in late 80’s glam metal perfection, right down to the steel studs. She leans against the jukebox as it starts to play The Chain by Fleetwood Mac.
He can’t fault her choice as she’s drinking tequila chasers without spilling a drop, swaying those perfect taut hips in time to Mick Fleetwood’s percussive drum beats.
Dean always liked this song, despite it being Fleetwood Mac, in the kind of begrudging way that sometimes Bon Jovi could be cool, not that he’d have it in the car, and unlike Richie Sambora Stevie Nicks was hot even if she always did look like she’d got dressed in the dark.
Maybe this woman at the bar got dressed in 1988 but Dean aint complaining to the shimmy of over styled hair down her leather back as she mouths along with the guitar, her hips in perfect time to that stubborn slow drum beat.
Dean has an image of his Mom, white sweater and jeans, standing at the kitchen counter cutting carrots a song coming on the radio and her turning it up and dancing along in her socks, and then putting down the knife to pick him up and dance with him.
He doesn’t know where the memory comes from, but it’s a good one that only makes the explanation Castiel tried to give him hurt more. His mother is this blonde haired white sweatered goddess dancing with her baby son in a beam of kitchen sunlight to a song Dean always begrudgingly liked.
There’s a deliberate pause in the music before the vocals cut in and Dean knows the words and so does the goddess at the bar, drumming her heel in strikes against the floor in perfect time to the music.
And Dean knows that time is relative because the song is what, four minutes long, but he could swear he spends years watching her.
The bar is quiet enough that you could hear a pin drop, truckers and others just watching her swing her hips and drum her heels, her hair shimmying like falling snow down against her jacket, and the chorus which feels orgiastic “And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again and I can still hear you saying we must never break the chain.”
Dean knows it’s odd, because this woman is smoking hot, the kind of woman he’d be all over in an instant, but he’s associating her with his mother and she’s starting to represent a form of bizarre mother-comfort he doesn’t usually recognise.
This woman at the bar, this 80’s biker rock chick, hasn’t even looked at him and in his head he’s associating her with Mom because she’s dancing to a song he can remember his mother dancing with him to.
He’s past the point where he might consider it a coincidence.
He’s not that lucky.
Coincidences might happen, but not to Dean Winchester and not when every supernatural creature with more juice than a Duracell wants to be his friend.
Then, Dean decides he’s reading too much into it and the song starts its bass line, the one that should make him cream his pants because it’s just rock perfection and it is the only reason that he even acknowledges the song with anything other disdain, because Stevie Nicks (Stevie Nicks!), but that bass line is just musical perfection, even if it is Fleetwood Mac and not anyone cool.
It’s like those moments when Bon Jovi is on the radio and you can’t help singing along although it’s Bon Jovi, or maybe just because it is.
It’s one of those things you do despite yourself like knowing all the words to Spirit in the Sky or Daydream Believer.
His dad used to listen to that crap. Fleetwood Mac and Emmy Lou Harris and Patsy Cline and Willy Nelson. Him and Sam would sit in the back of the Impala, one broken half of a pair of headphones held to the side of their heads and try to ignore the music as their Dad, arm along the edge of the door window, sang along.
Sometimes when his Dad sang along it was the only time Dean saw him happy and Dean wondered if it was because it reminded him of his wife, of the times before, or just as Castiel had worded it so carefully, because joy was in the ears that hear.
And Dr. Hook and how he and Sam always howled along, just like everyone did, to Cover of the Rolling Stone and how Dad would laugh.
That is what the woman at the bar reminds him of, of happier times in the car, on the road, hunting, and the music that scored it.
She sits down at Dean’s table, reaching across and stealing a few of his fries even dipping them in his mayo. “I suppose you’ll give me a lift,” she drawls with a voice that suggests years of hard drinking and heavy smoking, it’s all whiskey and sex.
“You could be a serial killer,” Dean replies, moving his plate out of her reach.
“Nah, kid,” she says, drinking from the beer she got with her chaser. “My bike broke down a ways back, I needed some parts, ended up with some loser dropping me here. I can fix her myself but I don’t fancy the walk.” She puts her foot on the empty chair to the left of both of them, “not in these boots.”
She calls him Kid. He has to concede the point about the boots.
“Was on my way to Vegas when the fuel line blew, never happens where there are people, always in the ass end of nowhere and I had to double back to get this.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small piece of flexed wire, the fuel line in question. Her helmet is in a rucksack at her feet.
“They’re not really practical.” Dean agrees looking at the toes that are pointed enough to use as a weapon. They are a fine pair of boots though, on a fantastic pair of legs.
“But great for getting lifts in the middle of nowhere. My usual boots are with the bike on the side of the road. These’re comfortable enough but a bit too high for a long walk.” She reaches over for his fries, “and it’s a long walk. You’re going my way, west, just wondering if you could take me back to my baby.”
Dean understands that, he misses the Impala with a sudden ache “What is she?”
“Kawasaki Ninja ZX 10R. Custom black paint job, totally modded, spent a fortune on her, and then she goes and springs her fuel line.”
“Nice,” he admits. If the bike is what she says it is, it’s truly is a sweet piece of machinery.
“When she’s working she’s a wet dream,” she agrees with a shrug of her shoulders, “when she breaks down then . . . not so much.”
Dean can appreciate that and salutes her with his soda glass. Normally he’d try to hit that because she is gorgeous, even if she is old enough to be his Mom but his ass still hurts and there are places on his skin that still smell of Castiel, at whom he’s still pissed, and it’s too soon. “I’m Dean.”
She gives him a quicksilver grin, all lip gloss and teeth, looking like she might bite him “Diana. So you going give me a ride, Dean?”
“I might. Depends on the dog. He likes you then you can ride.”
“Won’t be an issue,” Diana says leaning back in the chair which creaks under her weight. “Animals love me, and it’s not that far.”
*************
New Sammy looks at Diana briefly, before wolfing down the burger Dean got him, bun and all, and then puts his head back down on his blanket and goes back to sleep. “He’s a hunter,” Diana says, “a good companion.”
“You’ll change your mind if he breaks wind.” Dean tells her, “Well, you got the New Sammy seal of approval, guess I don’t mind giving you a ride then.”
Diana opens the door and climbs in, pushes the passenger seat all the way back then puts her rucksack in the footwell and both feet on the dash. “Let me guess, driver chooses tunes and passenger shuts her piehole.” It’s accompanied by another of those quicksilver grins and Dean thinks he might like her.
“Doesn’t matter much,” Dean tells her, “radio’s shot and the CD player eats shit. This is my make do car till I get my girl back.”
“What is she?” Diana asks surrounding generally interested as Dean pulls out of the roadhouse parking lot. She’s leaning against the window, all long soft curves in hard leather.
“Chevrolet Impala, 1967. Gorgeous, black as coffee, runs like a dream.”
“Then what’s with this POS?” she asks, “It smells like teenage boy and wet dog, and old churches.”
He doesn’t tell her it’s Castiel she’s smelling. “Borrowed her from a friend, getting parts for my girl aint easy, so when she needs something she ends up waiting and then there was a family emergency,” he shrugs, “so I ended up leaving her in South Dakota while I was in New York and then I up and inherited a dog. That’s New Sammy, though if he thinks he’s getting into my girl . . .”
Diana laughs. “He’s a good dog, loyal.” His sleeve falls back to show, the bangle with its shining bead, “I like your bracelet,” she tells him, “let me guess - one of a kind.”
“Something like that.”
“I’ve seen something like that before. It was a family heirloom, on this girl I knew, said it was protective, that it was the tokens of old gods and demons, and if she held the right stone and said the right name that they’d save her.”
“What happened?” He asks.
“Haven’t seen her in years.” Diana tells him. “Could be dead. I don’t stay in places much.”
“On the road a lot?” Dean asks knowing perfectly well what that’s like. It's strings of cheap diners and cheaper motels, and burned food and Spaghetti-O’s.
“I hunt down old stories, and the things I’ve seen,” she laughs, “you’d think I was mad. Most folks do.”
“Been on the road my whole life. You see shit. Shit people won't believe in ‘cause they aint ever seen it, and it's too fucked up to be real, but it is, and it’s just piled up, shit upon shit upon shit, and at the top, there’s this gloss, and that’s where most folks live.” He doesn't know why he’s telling her so much, only that it actually helps.
Diana nods and continues, “And you get to the point where you’re the only one in a room that knows the gloss aint real, it's the shit that's underneath that is, and that’s the stuff that’ll fuck you right up, so you either learn to roll with the punches or try to live in the gloss knowing it aint real.”
"I’ve been there.” Dean agrees, and he has.
“And all you can do is put the dog in the back seat, put Metallica on loud and drive. Drive as far and as fast as you can.”
He doesn't even think about what he’s saying as he agrees with her. “You try to put that piece of road behind you and try and forget that it's real, it's all real, and there aint nothing you can do about it.” He lets out a deep slow breath, “and that's what wakes you up in the night - when you can't breathe and you feel like there’s something sitting on your chest but you know there’s not because you took precautions, every damn precaution you could take, but it feels like it, and you wanna go mad because it's easier, but you know it's real so you aint got that option.”
“Yeah, I been there,” she agrees and shakes her lovely head.
Diana reminds Dean, and he’s not sure why, of Jo. Maybe if Jo had been born forty years earlier. But they have this same haunted look, a hunters look. Maybe all women with that look will remind him of Jo, all blonde curls- just like his Mom.
Twenty years before Diana’s favoured fashion and she would have been his Mom.
He laughs despite himself as in his head imaginary Sam, who is dressed like an old fashioned scholar, complete with thick glasses and tweed jacket, says “The recurring image of the triple goddess means blah blah blah.” Even in his head, he can’t follow what Sam’s saying.
Maiden.
Mother.
Crone.
Jo.
Mary
Diana.
Dean puts his foot on the gas hard.
“Here’s my stop, handsome,” Diana says as the black shape of a motorcycle appears like a shadow on the side of the road. “Here," she says pressing something into his hand, “for the ride and the company. It’s been real.”
“It’s all real,” he says but doesn't look at what she’s given him.
“Yeah,” she agrees, “and therein lies the rub.”
As he stops the car she pulls the boots off, showing knit socks in the most terrible shade of hot pink he's ever seen, he thinks of Magda, and stretches her toes. “Thanks, Dean. Now you take care of yourself, you hear me, soldier.”
He salutes her mockingly. “If I come this way again I’ll be sure to look out for strange ladies in bars who need rides to a truly sweet bike.” He’s not sure which is more attractive at the moment, her or the bike.
“Don't be a stranger." She agrees as she closes the door behind her.
He looks back at New Sammy who hasn't so much as snored in her presence before he opens his hand. Sitting there, shining silver in his hand like a bent piece of moonlight is a charm for his bracelet, a silver bow and arrow.
************
Driving up to the Singer Salvage Yard in the anti-Impala is a trip. New Sammy is on his back, legs in the air and pink belly showing to the winter air out of his blanket nest. Copernicus and Hypatia are lying at the gates on blankets like a pair of golden lions that barely turn their heads to his approach.
They don't even disturb New Sammy.
Sam is sitting on the front porch, Lacey is placed on his left like some kind of demented white miniature hell hound, because Dean knows she’s just waiting to take a chunk out of him first chance she gets, angelic seal of protection or not. To Sam’s right, all large eyes and freckles, with her hair in two red plaits, is a girl of about nine or ten. She’s nursing a can of coke, and Dean does a double take because he knows her.
It’s the child from the Hotel Dusk, and it’s Sam’s angelic guard dog, the one that Castiel asked to keep an eye out for him.
Sitting side by side it's a strange show, Dean thinks as he parks the car, the demonic poster boy as a handsome young man, who’s too tall and needs his hair cut - again, looking like Ichabod Crane, and this jaded little girl who really has seen Hell.
Dean climbs out of the anti-Impala and New Sammy jumps out behind him. New Sammy’s in that stance, the one that anticipates trouble and Lacey looks like she might give it to him.
“Dean," Sam says and his voice is hoarse, yelling all day kinda hoarse, “I missed you.”
Dean knows it’s true, and that just makes it hurt that little bit more.
next chapter
Author: Seraphim Grace
Fandom = Supernatural
Pairing = Castiel x Dean (god is love in all its forms)
Rating = NC17
spoilers = yes for season 4, set between Great pumpkin and the one after that I've forgotten the name of
AUish - set in the world of american gods and sandman but also the spn universe, I just stretched it a little
prompts - Dean wonders how much is too much when you've already past that line and just how changed he is from being in hell.
suggested by keire_ke
betaed by bellajayd who deserves more praise than me for this - she's certainly doing more work
Not enough coffee in the world
In the hotel dusk
tea with thrones
The House of Five aspects
The Banshee in the Bathroom
Time is never time enough
let the bodies hit the floor
I could sleep forever
The smell of hospitals in winter
Here be dragons
The Queen of Sheba
You can't count on me
with my spear and mighty helmet
The cabin in the woods
Grace
wrapped in Grace and in sin
Set me as a seal upon thy arm
Mystery meat and unicorns
the dogs of war
Episode 20
In which Dean meets a goddess on the road
Soundtrack:
Saliva = Click Click Boom
----------------------
For the first time driving doesn’t help clear Dean’s head. It's almost as if there are two of him and each one is trying to kill the other. The bangle on his arm seems heavier than usual. The shiny white bead banging angrily against the knob of his wrist. It seems to give off a humming noise that catches in his ears like a bee.
New Sammy is snoring in the back seat, swaddled in that ugly fleece blanket that just showed up one day. Like the car. Like that damned angel.
The radio kicked out an hour ago with a burst of Emmy Lou Harris asking for the “ocean to wash her clean, to wash her clean.”
Dean’s not sure when he started singing the verse on his own. He thinks that he finally understands the song, the way it resonates and aches, and his voice is hoarse as he sings to himself, to the dog, to the cold and the anti-Impala.
“Well you really got me this time and the hardest part is knowing I’ll survive. I have come to listen for the sound of the trucks as they move down out on ninety five and pretend that it’s the ocean coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean.”
Singing eats the miles up as he drives across America’s flatlands under a sky the exact blue of Castiel’s eyes.
For the first time in his life, he hits the note.
For the first time in his life, he even tries.
Dean knows that he’s fucked, he’s sitting in an ugly white Chevy Nova, with a dog of the wild hunt snoring in the back seat, singing fucking country music. All he needs now, he thinks, is a bottle of Wild Turkey, a banjo and a rousing chorus of Patsy Cline’s Crazy to finish the image.
It’s not even worth it to stop singing.
There’s a blister on his foot large enough to have its own satellites.
The dog is snoring loud enough to wake a ghoul.
And his ass hurts.
There’s only one thing for it he decides, opening the window to let the winter in, and opens his mouth. “Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely. I’m crazy, crazy for feeling so blue.”
*************
She’s standing at the bar, a vision in sprayed on black biker leathers and stilettos you could use in a murder. She’s leaning over the jukebox with hair frothed and chains hanging around an ass like two boiled eggs in a handkerchief that Dean can’t help but appreciate. She’s like all his teenage wet dreams of rock chicks come to life: lip stick, eyeliner, lace and leather.
There’s not a trucker in the place that doesn’t appreciate her.
In fact, if she turned around and burst into a chorus of Edge of a Broken Heart he wouldn’t be surprised.
There is a sort of marble hardness to her, as if she were carved in stone and then painted in late 80’s glam metal perfection, right down to the steel studs. She leans against the jukebox as it starts to play The Chain by Fleetwood Mac.
He can’t fault her choice as she’s drinking tequila chasers without spilling a drop, swaying those perfect taut hips in time to Mick Fleetwood’s percussive drum beats.
Dean always liked this song, despite it being Fleetwood Mac, in the kind of begrudging way that sometimes Bon Jovi could be cool, not that he’d have it in the car, and unlike Richie Sambora Stevie Nicks was hot even if she always did look like she’d got dressed in the dark.
Maybe this woman at the bar got dressed in 1988 but Dean aint complaining to the shimmy of over styled hair down her leather back as she mouths along with the guitar, her hips in perfect time to that stubborn slow drum beat.
Dean has an image of his Mom, white sweater and jeans, standing at the kitchen counter cutting carrots a song coming on the radio and her turning it up and dancing along in her socks, and then putting down the knife to pick him up and dance with him.
He doesn’t know where the memory comes from, but it’s a good one that only makes the explanation Castiel tried to give him hurt more. His mother is this blonde haired white sweatered goddess dancing with her baby son in a beam of kitchen sunlight to a song Dean always begrudgingly liked.
There’s a deliberate pause in the music before the vocals cut in and Dean knows the words and so does the goddess at the bar, drumming her heel in strikes against the floor in perfect time to the music.
And Dean knows that time is relative because the song is what, four minutes long, but he could swear he spends years watching her.
The bar is quiet enough that you could hear a pin drop, truckers and others just watching her swing her hips and drum her heels, her hair shimmying like falling snow down against her jacket, and the chorus which feels orgiastic “And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again and I can still hear you saying we must never break the chain.”
Dean knows it’s odd, because this woman is smoking hot, the kind of woman he’d be all over in an instant, but he’s associating her with his mother and she’s starting to represent a form of bizarre mother-comfort he doesn’t usually recognise.
This woman at the bar, this 80’s biker rock chick, hasn’t even looked at him and in his head he’s associating her with Mom because she’s dancing to a song he can remember his mother dancing with him to.
He’s past the point where he might consider it a coincidence.
He’s not that lucky.
Coincidences might happen, but not to Dean Winchester and not when every supernatural creature with more juice than a Duracell wants to be his friend.
Then, Dean decides he’s reading too much into it and the song starts its bass line, the one that should make him cream his pants because it’s just rock perfection and it is the only reason that he even acknowledges the song with anything other disdain, because Stevie Nicks (Stevie Nicks!), but that bass line is just musical perfection, even if it is Fleetwood Mac and not anyone cool.
It’s like those moments when Bon Jovi is on the radio and you can’t help singing along although it’s Bon Jovi, or maybe just because it is.
It’s one of those things you do despite yourself like knowing all the words to Spirit in the Sky or Daydream Believer.
His dad used to listen to that crap. Fleetwood Mac and Emmy Lou Harris and Patsy Cline and Willy Nelson. Him and Sam would sit in the back of the Impala, one broken half of a pair of headphones held to the side of their heads and try to ignore the music as their Dad, arm along the edge of the door window, sang along.
Sometimes when his Dad sang along it was the only time Dean saw him happy and Dean wondered if it was because it reminded him of his wife, of the times before, or just as Castiel had worded it so carefully, because joy was in the ears that hear.
And Dr. Hook and how he and Sam always howled along, just like everyone did, to Cover of the Rolling Stone and how Dad would laugh.
That is what the woman at the bar reminds him of, of happier times in the car, on the road, hunting, and the music that scored it.
She sits down at Dean’s table, reaching across and stealing a few of his fries even dipping them in his mayo. “I suppose you’ll give me a lift,” she drawls with a voice that suggests years of hard drinking and heavy smoking, it’s all whiskey and sex.
“You could be a serial killer,” Dean replies, moving his plate out of her reach.
“Nah, kid,” she says, drinking from the beer she got with her chaser. “My bike broke down a ways back, I needed some parts, ended up with some loser dropping me here. I can fix her myself but I don’t fancy the walk.” She puts her foot on the empty chair to the left of both of them, “not in these boots.”
She calls him Kid. He has to concede the point about the boots.
“Was on my way to Vegas when the fuel line blew, never happens where there are people, always in the ass end of nowhere and I had to double back to get this.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small piece of flexed wire, the fuel line in question. Her helmet is in a rucksack at her feet.
“They’re not really practical.” Dean agrees looking at the toes that are pointed enough to use as a weapon. They are a fine pair of boots though, on a fantastic pair of legs.
“But great for getting lifts in the middle of nowhere. My usual boots are with the bike on the side of the road. These’re comfortable enough but a bit too high for a long walk.” She reaches over for his fries, “and it’s a long walk. You’re going my way, west, just wondering if you could take me back to my baby.”
Dean understands that, he misses the Impala with a sudden ache “What is she?”
“Kawasaki Ninja ZX 10R. Custom black paint job, totally modded, spent a fortune on her, and then she goes and springs her fuel line.”
“Nice,” he admits. If the bike is what she says it is, it’s truly is a sweet piece of machinery.
“When she’s working she’s a wet dream,” she agrees with a shrug of her shoulders, “when she breaks down then . . . not so much.”
Dean can appreciate that and salutes her with his soda glass. Normally he’d try to hit that because she is gorgeous, even if she is old enough to be his Mom but his ass still hurts and there are places on his skin that still smell of Castiel, at whom he’s still pissed, and it’s too soon. “I’m Dean.”
She gives him a quicksilver grin, all lip gloss and teeth, looking like she might bite him “Diana. So you going give me a ride, Dean?”
“I might. Depends on the dog. He likes you then you can ride.”
“Won’t be an issue,” Diana says leaning back in the chair which creaks under her weight. “Animals love me, and it’s not that far.”
*************
New Sammy looks at Diana briefly, before wolfing down the burger Dean got him, bun and all, and then puts his head back down on his blanket and goes back to sleep. “He’s a hunter,” Diana says, “a good companion.”
“You’ll change your mind if he breaks wind.” Dean tells her, “Well, you got the New Sammy seal of approval, guess I don’t mind giving you a ride then.”
Diana opens the door and climbs in, pushes the passenger seat all the way back then puts her rucksack in the footwell and both feet on the dash. “Let me guess, driver chooses tunes and passenger shuts her piehole.” It’s accompanied by another of those quicksilver grins and Dean thinks he might like her.
“Doesn’t matter much,” Dean tells her, “radio’s shot and the CD player eats shit. This is my make do car till I get my girl back.”
“What is she?” Diana asks surrounding generally interested as Dean pulls out of the roadhouse parking lot. She’s leaning against the window, all long soft curves in hard leather.
“Chevrolet Impala, 1967. Gorgeous, black as coffee, runs like a dream.”
“Then what’s with this POS?” she asks, “It smells like teenage boy and wet dog, and old churches.”
He doesn’t tell her it’s Castiel she’s smelling. “Borrowed her from a friend, getting parts for my girl aint easy, so when she needs something she ends up waiting and then there was a family emergency,” he shrugs, “so I ended up leaving her in South Dakota while I was in New York and then I up and inherited a dog. That’s New Sammy, though if he thinks he’s getting into my girl . . .”
Diana laughs. “He’s a good dog, loyal.” His sleeve falls back to show, the bangle with its shining bead, “I like your bracelet,” she tells him, “let me guess - one of a kind.”
“Something like that.”
“I’ve seen something like that before. It was a family heirloom, on this girl I knew, said it was protective, that it was the tokens of old gods and demons, and if she held the right stone and said the right name that they’d save her.”
“What happened?” He asks.
“Haven’t seen her in years.” Diana tells him. “Could be dead. I don’t stay in places much.”
“On the road a lot?” Dean asks knowing perfectly well what that’s like. It's strings of cheap diners and cheaper motels, and burned food and Spaghetti-O’s.
“I hunt down old stories, and the things I’ve seen,” she laughs, “you’d think I was mad. Most folks do.”
“Been on the road my whole life. You see shit. Shit people won't believe in ‘cause they aint ever seen it, and it's too fucked up to be real, but it is, and it’s just piled up, shit upon shit upon shit, and at the top, there’s this gloss, and that’s where most folks live.” He doesn't know why he’s telling her so much, only that it actually helps.
Diana nods and continues, “And you get to the point where you’re the only one in a room that knows the gloss aint real, it's the shit that's underneath that is, and that’s the stuff that’ll fuck you right up, so you either learn to roll with the punches or try to live in the gloss knowing it aint real.”
"I’ve been there.” Dean agrees, and he has.
“And all you can do is put the dog in the back seat, put Metallica on loud and drive. Drive as far and as fast as you can.”
He doesn't even think about what he’s saying as he agrees with her. “You try to put that piece of road behind you and try and forget that it's real, it's all real, and there aint nothing you can do about it.” He lets out a deep slow breath, “and that's what wakes you up in the night - when you can't breathe and you feel like there’s something sitting on your chest but you know there’s not because you took precautions, every damn precaution you could take, but it feels like it, and you wanna go mad because it's easier, but you know it's real so you aint got that option.”
“Yeah, I been there,” she agrees and shakes her lovely head.
Diana reminds Dean, and he’s not sure why, of Jo. Maybe if Jo had been born forty years earlier. But they have this same haunted look, a hunters look. Maybe all women with that look will remind him of Jo, all blonde curls- just like his Mom.
Twenty years before Diana’s favoured fashion and she would have been his Mom.
He laughs despite himself as in his head imaginary Sam, who is dressed like an old fashioned scholar, complete with thick glasses and tweed jacket, says “The recurring image of the triple goddess means blah blah blah.” Even in his head, he can’t follow what Sam’s saying.
Maiden.
Mother.
Crone.
Jo.
Mary
Diana.
Dean puts his foot on the gas hard.
“Here’s my stop, handsome,” Diana says as the black shape of a motorcycle appears like a shadow on the side of the road. “Here," she says pressing something into his hand, “for the ride and the company. It’s been real.”
“It’s all real,” he says but doesn't look at what she’s given him.
“Yeah,” she agrees, “and therein lies the rub.”
As he stops the car she pulls the boots off, showing knit socks in the most terrible shade of hot pink he's ever seen, he thinks of Magda, and stretches her toes. “Thanks, Dean. Now you take care of yourself, you hear me, soldier.”
He salutes her mockingly. “If I come this way again I’ll be sure to look out for strange ladies in bars who need rides to a truly sweet bike.” He’s not sure which is more attractive at the moment, her or the bike.
“Don't be a stranger." She agrees as she closes the door behind her.
He looks back at New Sammy who hasn't so much as snored in her presence before he opens his hand. Sitting there, shining silver in his hand like a bent piece of moonlight is a charm for his bracelet, a silver bow and arrow.
************
Driving up to the Singer Salvage Yard in the anti-Impala is a trip. New Sammy is on his back, legs in the air and pink belly showing to the winter air out of his blanket nest. Copernicus and Hypatia are lying at the gates on blankets like a pair of golden lions that barely turn their heads to his approach.
They don't even disturb New Sammy.
Sam is sitting on the front porch, Lacey is placed on his left like some kind of demented white miniature hell hound, because Dean knows she’s just waiting to take a chunk out of him first chance she gets, angelic seal of protection or not. To Sam’s right, all large eyes and freckles, with her hair in two red plaits, is a girl of about nine or ten. She’s nursing a can of coke, and Dean does a double take because he knows her.
It’s the child from the Hotel Dusk, and it’s Sam’s angelic guard dog, the one that Castiel asked to keep an eye out for him.
Sitting side by side it's a strange show, Dean thinks as he parks the car, the demonic poster boy as a handsome young man, who’s too tall and needs his hair cut - again, looking like Ichabod Crane, and this jaded little girl who really has seen Hell.
Dean climbs out of the anti-Impala and New Sammy jumps out behind him. New Sammy’s in that stance, the one that anticipates trouble and Lacey looks like she might give it to him.
“Dean," Sam says and his voice is hoarse, yelling all day kinda hoarse, “I missed you.”
Dean knows it’s true, and that just makes it hurt that little bit more.
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