FIC: A Good Man is Hard to Find (1/21)
Title: A Good Man is Hard to Find
Author:
kimonkey7
Rating: R for language and voilence-y stuff
Characters: Dean and Sam (Gen)
Spoilers: mid-late season one
Disclaimer: Not mine. Damn it.
Summary: Dean keeps his word, and ramifications scatter like salt shot. Secrets, liquor, and bad things. Whump, angst, and banter. Title borrowed from Flannery O'Connor.
CHAPTER ONE
“Look,” she says, and sticks the cigarette between her lips. She pats down the pockets of her cargo shorts and, feeling the object of her desire, reaches in and retrieves the lighter. She snaps the Zippo open with a flick of her thumb and forefinger, rolls the wheel across the flint a few times, and lights her cigarette. The smell of the tobacco and the delicate tang of lighter fluid fill the air between them. Exhaling a plume of bluish smoke, she looks up. “You don’t have to do this.”
He nods, not really meeting her eyes. “I know.”
She leans her back against the wall and brings her knees up to her chest. Her forearms fall across her knees, delicate fingers holding the slim cancer stick, a trail from the orange glowing tip rising like a grey wraith toward the ceiling.
All he can think is: How did we never FUCK? Not really a sexual thought as much as it is wonderment. Dean Winchester has never known a girl as long or as well as he has Betsy and not got in her pants. Hell, he’s never even TRIED with her. Not that she isn’t attractive, because - hello, look at those LEGS - and then hates himself because that’s not what this is.
She scoots her legs out straight in front of her and bounces her knees, shooting tiny breaths of dust from beneath.
Dean sees the bruises now, and the dirt and scrapes; thinks about how often his own body has looked like this. Running condition. That’s hard won damage. He follows the legs down to her feet and smiles a skoshe at her hiking boots.
They’re falling apart and beat to hell, and not because they’re cheap. New, they’d probably set her back $300 and that was four or five years ago from the looks. But that’s what you do when you’re on the hunt, when you’re constantly moving and never in one place long enough to call any place home. Shit, you BETTER have a good pair of shoes if you’re gonna stay alive. And a good pair of shoes is your only home; you know how hard you can kick in ‘em, know what they’ll slip in and when they’ll grip, you know the noises they make and exactly how they’ll sound on virtually any surface. Sure, they stink, but when you find a safe place to slip your foot, you hang on to it.
Betsy exhales a deep inhale of smoke and pulls her legs from Dean’s field of vision. His eyes stay stuck to the spot where they’d been, streaks in the dirt there like phantom limbs.
“You sure about this?”
He looks up at her face. “I wouldn’t have come if I wasn’t.”
She nods - double time and too many times - like she’s confirming something for both of them.
“You don’t owe me anything. I don’t wanna owe you anything.”
“Nope.”
“We clear on that?”
“Crys - tal.”
She nods again and Dean watches her eyes dance around the empty room.
He wonders if he looks like this; because Betsy looks older than their twenty-six years. It’s not that’s she’s not pretty - goddamn she really is pretty - or looks worn out. She just knows too much. Has SEEN too much. He hates that he suddenly knows he has that look about him, too. That Sam will have it some day.
She takes one last drag and snuffs out her cigarette on the floor beside her. Dean sees there are five or six butts there with the new one.
“You’ll watch your back?”
“I always do.”
“I appreciate this, Dean.”
“Not a problem.”
Betsy’s eyes dip closed and she leans her head back until it rests against the wall.
The gun twitches at Dean’s side just once and then he brings it up level to Betsy’s forehead. As soon as the angle is right, he squeezes hard against the trigger. He doesn’t let his eyes slam shut - not before or during or after - because that would be wrong.
Her head concusses hard against the wall, bounces once, and falls forward. Behind her is a mess of blood, brain, and bone. He makes himself look at it, even as his stomach attempts to disagree with the decision.
That’s what this is about.
**************************************************************
In the Impala, Sam has slammed his way through all of Dean’s cassettes without finding a single thing to which he’s willing to listen. It’s been nearly a half hour he’s been sitting here like a kid left in the car while his mom grabs some groceries. So he is plenty pissed when Dean finally stalks out of the dark building and throws himself into the driver’s seat, clacking closed the Impala’s door.
There’s no talk from his older brother as the Chevy kicks up grit across the abandoned lot on its way back to the highway. Nothing comes out once they are on the blacktop, either.
Sam fumes a little longer, ticking off a kind of time by the dashed yellow line at the edge of the headlight pool on the road. He counts to over a thousand and then breaks the silence: “You gonna tell me what that was back there?”
He watches Dean’s hands tighten on the wheel just a bit and wonders if his brother will answer before he’s made to ask again.
“I already told you,” says Dean after an aggravated sigh, “I was doing a favor for some one.”
“A favor that involves walking into some deserted building in the middle of the night for half an hour?”
“Yeah, Sam,” says Dean, and then shoots him the look that says ‘back the fuck OFF’.
But Sam doesn’t, because he’s a little pissed and annoyed that Dean is leaving him out of the loop he’s maneuvering. He doesn’t like that Dean has been quiet most of the day until he announced they needed to head south. After he got the phone call. “I know this person?”
“Sam.”
“What, Dean? You act all cryptic, we drive to some abandoned building in the middle of nowhere - about a hundred miles off our path, mind you - you disappear inside for half an hour, and I’m not supposed to ask anything?”
“Now you’re gettin’ it.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Sam continues to bitch but Dean tunes him out. He shifts painfully away from where the pistol is digging into his lower back. He wants to pull it from his waistband, toss it in the back seat - in the fucking TRUNK - but not in front of his younger brother. Sam doesn’t need a gun thrown into the mix right now.
Things have been kind of tense the past week and Dean knows that means one of two things; pretty shortly there’s either going to be an emotional confrontation that ends in Sam needing to hug, or an emotional confrontation that ends with Sam talking about taking off again. Dean doesn’t think he can handle either one.
“…I mean, ‘Stay in the CAR, Sam’? What am I? Twelve years old?”
“Thanks for staying in the car, dude.”
He winces because he doesn’t mean for it to come out the way it does; sarcastic and pandering. And he knows that’s it - the boil’s come to a head. He can actually HEAR Sam’s teeth grinding.
He tightens his grip on the steering wheel and pulls himself forward. The gun shifts in his waistband and by the time he leans back, it’s slipped enough to be really jamming his spine now, and that’s no good because he can see Sam cycling up-
“I’m sick of you treating me like a little kid. I’ve got the same training you do, and I’m right there on the front lines with you. If there’s something going on, I need to know about it. We can’t be keeping secrets from each other-“
And - oh, yeah, no - Dean is not going to let that one go because how many things are they not telling each other and there’s no reason to bullshit about that because they BOTH know. And it’s all conveyed with a little tilt of his head while he half pivots his face in Sam’s direction. I can clench my teeth, too, Sammy…
“Okay, but not when it’s about a HUNT. Come on, Dean. You owe me at least that.”
And the Impala fishtails in the gravel and weeds of the berm as Dean stomps on the brakes because; that’s a line, and Sam knows better than to cross it.
“I don’t owe you anything.” There is an unbearable dichotomy of fire and ice in the way the words tumble out of Dean’s mouth and linger and spark within the confines of the car. “Say it, Sam.”
It’s one of those superstitions to which they hold. Have to. Sometimes the superstition is the only thing that lets you remember it’s all real.
“Say it,” Dean barks again.
When you live the kind of life that can end at any time, by your fault or some one else’s, you can’t ever hold anything against anyone. Not when you know dead doesn’t mean over. You save my ass, I don’t owe you. I got your back for free. Not gonna ask for a payback later on. Dean and Sam learned early on how hard it is to go through life with human debt. It’s no way to keep on keepin’ on.
“Sam.”
And Sam knows he has crossed the line but he’s too angry with himself to admit it right now. And not with that scowl growing over Dean’s mouth. Because he was scared, damn it. He was scared in the car while Dean was inside doing whatever the fuck he was doing, and that makes him angry. He doesn’t want to be scared for his brother or for himself. He doesn’t want all that concern for some one else again, because doesn’t it just FUCK YOU UP when that person ends up gone? And then what do you do with all that emotion? But he can’t tell Dean any of that.
“I’m not fucking kidding, Sam. Say it right now.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Sam minces through his teeth, almost all breath.
Dean doesn’t respond verbally, just throws the Impala back into first and tire-spins them back out onto the two-lane asphalt. The Chevy shimmies to center a little as Dean drops his right hand behind him and pulls the pistol from his waist. He drops it into the back seat and stares straight ahead.
He doesn’t need to turn to see Sam, mouth a capital ‘O’, jack-knife over the bench seat and confirm the flash of moonlight off the silver. To his little brother’s credit, his lip only snarls once before his voice is under control.
“You gonna tell me NOW what’s going on?”
**************************************************************
“Hey, Dean. It’s Betsy. I’m kinda in some trouble.”
Dean scooted himself out of the vinyl booth and gave a nod to his brother: It’s your turn to pick up the check, I’ll meet you outside.
“What’s goin’ on?”
“I pissed off somethin’ serious.”
“Why does that not surprise me?”
He hadn’t heard form her in a year and a half, at least. But she didn’t ever call just to catch up, so he played it casual as he walked over the cracked parking lot of the diner, wishing he had a cigarette.
“I think I’m to that point, Dean.”
He didn’t respond for a second. He couldn’t. There was no breath left in him to say a word. Every muscle in his chest had seized down on his organs and he only realized it because, after a few strangled heartbeats, the muscles painfully released.
“You there?”
“Yeah. I’m right here.”
“It’s been about six months, now. I’m-“
Her voice cut off and Dean knew it had nothing to do with bad connections or dropped signals; didn’t even matter that he didn’t know where she was, that she could have been in the middle of AssGrab, Tennessee: she didn’t know how to ask or explain it well enough. She didn’t want to have to. She doesn’t need to. She doesn’t owe you anything.
“You sure about this?”
“I wouldn’t have called if I wasn’t.”
And he knew that. He mentally cuffed himself across the back of the head because he KNEW that. She wouldn’t call if she wasn’t sure. And he knew that because he had always known with Betsy. Since the moment they’d met. The summer he’d turned five. The last summer Dad had still been trying to pretend they were a family of men instead of a tribe. The summer they’d spent in one place for virtually all of the hottest months.
“Where are you?”
Sam came out of the diner, squinting at the sun that was just coming up, toting a Styrofoam pod of leftovers in one hand, and double-stacked take-out coffee in the other. Dean altered his course away from the Impala and toward a tar-covered telephone pole at the perimeter of the parking lot and the adjacent field. He waved his booted foot like a scythe over the Queen Ann’s Lace that was growing there.
“Harrisville, Indiana. Where are you?”
“About 60 miles north of Chicago. Can you give me maybe eight, ten hours?”
“I can do that, I think, yeah.”
Suddenly there was a horrible sense of relief in her voice. Dean didn’t want to hear it, but it was there. His chest tightened up again and that time he felt it, and that time it wouldn’t loosen so quickly or easily.
“Text me the coordinates.”
“Soon as we hang up.”
“Okay.”
The silence strained between them like a body against a garroting.
“Thanks, Dean.”
“Not a problem,” said Dean, and pulled the cell from his ear, punching disconnect before he could hear anymore quiet.
Sam watched Dean track back from the far end of the half-empty lot and wondered if it was the fresh light or something new that made his brother look sort of pale and small inside his leather jacket.
He’d got them both coffees to go and had the waitress box up the remains of Dean’s picked-over breakfast. His older brother hadn’t been eating well the past couple of days, just doing a lot of culinary rerouting and architecture that gave the appearance of consumption. He hadn’t even touched his bacon, and how could that be a good sign?
Dean eased himself inside the car and took the warm paper cup of coffee from Sam’s hand without the aid of visual contact. He wanted to be able to tell Sam what had just gone down. Explain to him the guilty relief he felt at understanding why his world had been so much shit the past few days. But there was too much built-in hurt at the core of it, and more hurt if he tried to explain to his own brother how some girl Sam probably didn’t even remember had had a psychic lasso around Dean’s chest for the past twenty years.
He’d thought before to use the metaphor of Zan and Jayna - those telepathic Wonder Twins who, with their power of transmogrification, kept troubled teens and the League of Justice out of harm’s way. But Sammy’d been too little to be a Hanna-Barbera fan before they’d got in the habit of gypsy-traveling and motel TVs with limited reception. And Dean didn’t want to explain how he’d come to identify with a guy in a lavender Lycra jumpsuit who could turn himself into an igloo and had a pet space monkey named Gleek.
But ever since they’d met, that’s who Dean and Betsy had been. If you believed, even a little, in superstition, hand would follow glove you believed in coincidence. Karma, even. A universal sense of balance. There had been a reason their Dad had chosen that particular Colorado motel that summer, and it hadn’t been the six inches of green sludge in the otherwise cracked and empty swimming pool. And there had been a reason they’d stayed on for weeks and weeks of nothing at all happening. And part of Dean had always thought it was because his Dad got whatever connection jumped and sparked between his son and the tomboy daughter of the motel’s live-in manager.
“Important phone call?” Sam asked, knowing if Dean was going to tell him anything it would have already come out.
“Just an old friend.”
“Anything I should know about?”
Yeah, he should tell him, because this had potential to really fuck up the works, but he just didn’t know where to begin. It seemed like he and his brother were always getting their wires crossed. He and Sammy didn’t share that unspoken communication like he had with Betsy. Communication that would have told his little brother to leave well enough alone and then take two more steps back.
“We need to head south for a while.”
**************************************************************
Sam says he wants to know. Is DEMANDING to know what, exactly, the fuck is going on. But Dean knows better. His little brother just thinks he wants to know. He really doesn’t. Even Dean doesn’t want to think, know, remember, BELIEVE what he’s just done.
He keeps both hands on the wheel, knuckles white at ten and two in the dash’s light. He’s thinking of a hundred different images and conversations he’s had with Betsy, all of them to crush out and destroy this last one. Oh, God…Oh, no…
Sam is staring poison-tipped daggers at him from the passenger’s seat. Dean doesn’t have to look to know his little brother’s jaw is clenched, muscles twitching. That his lips are pursed and his nostrils, flared. His brow is knit crazily beneath the bangs that obliterate it, Dean knows this, too.
“Not now, Sam.” And it’s said like a lid tamped down tight on a box; a suggestion in the tone that requires an end to the questions.
There’s an edge in the three words that causes the younger man a great deal of conflict - I KNEW I heard a gunshot. What the fuck was he - but his brother is dangerous when he’s like this. Deadly to mess with, perilous to himself. Sam blows a few heavy breaths out his nostrils before turning in the seat and facing the windshield proper. This is how Dean wants him to take it. And things have been rough and tumble between them for a few days now, so Sam lets it drop.
But half an hour later and no words from either of them, he’s pretty much through being patient. If his big brother’s gonna blow; FINE. Let him. “You can cut the Marcel Marceau act any time now, you know.”
Dean’s answer comes quick. Through all the quiet he’s been waiting for Sam to start in again. “So, we’re playing the obscure mime reference game?”
“Hey. I’m serious.”
“I already told you. I was doing a friend a favor.”
“I heard a gunshot, Dean.”
“Yeah. Guns go bang. Glad you got that one down, Sammy.”
“What happened back in that building?”
“I was keeping a promise.”
“Jesus Christ, Dean! Would you stop being so fucking secretive and just tell me what the hell is going on?”
“You remember Toledo, Sam? Bloody Mary? It’s kinda like that. Only this time I’m the one with the secret and you’re the one left twisting in the wind.”
Anger, surprise, guilt; they surge through the younger man in a flash. His emotions trip wildly for a second more and land finally on indignation. “This is some kind of petty payback?”
“No, Sam. This is me telling you to back the fuck off. I needed to take care of some business, I took care of it. It’s done. Over.”
“What ‘business’?”
He cracks his neck in one quick jerk, the pop audible to both of them. “You’re like a broken record, dude-“
“Dean-“
“It doesn’t concern you, okay?”
The ferocity of the reply cuts into Sam like a knife and for a little while, he’s unable to think straight, feel right, do ANYTHING but let his eyes dance a saccade around the Impala’s interior.
They’re backtracking highway, and Dean has a good memory for roads and landmarks. He’s pretty positive there’s a bar in the general vicinity. Four things his eyes always catch; bars, churches, cheap motels, and cemeteries. So he’s looking around every corner for a soft neon glow in the inky darkness the night’s become. Because he could really use a fucking drink right about now. A couple shots and a beer. Or six. Maybe a quick game of pool on a rough table. Maybe a fight. He wouldn’t mind pounding the shit out of something.
“I’m trying really hard to understand what’s going on here, Dean.” Sam can see his brother tensing, angering, but the words keep raining from his lips. “Something happened back there, and the fact that you’re not tellin’ me? Freaks me out even more.”
“Winchesters don’t get freaked, Sam.” He says it like their Dad; matter-of-fact and a little with his cock out. And maybe it’s to shut little brother up, but it might be a slice at himself, too. Cold-hearted much, man? He can’t get clear on which purpose the jibe best serves, because any processing is drowned out by the heavy bass line repeating in his head the last mile: Come on. Gimme a bar, gimme a drink, Want to forget, just…please. Want to forget.
The younger man turns on him fully, now; one long leg up on the bench seat and an arm across the back. He shakes his head, and his brow and nose scrunch to meet in the middle.
Dean’s response is an audible exhale of breath through his nostrils, and Sam knows he’s pressing his luck. But something’s wrong, something’s REALLY wrong, and he doesn’t want to start a new gig when his big brother is so obviously preoccupied.
“If it concerns you, it concerns me, Dean. We’re a team-“
“Yeah. Fuckin’ Timmy and Lassie,” and Dean is sighing because - yes, fuckingthankyou, YES - as they round the next curve there’s a match-belly orange glow and he can make out the words ‘BEER ON TAP’.
As he takes the turn off the highway into the muddy dirt parking lot of Mike’s Bar, Dean’s lips curl back from his teeth and he hisses out the ground rules: “There’s a motor lodge about two miles up the road. I remember passing it. I’m gonna go in here and get drunk. And maybe play some pool. And I’m not gonna talk to you.”
He drops the Impala into neutral, pulls the keys out of the ignition and turns to Sam. “You can stay in the car or you can come in. I really don’t give a shit. You can walk down and get us a room at the motel or you can take the fucking car and I’ll walk down. But I’m not gonna be in driving condition when I come out.”
It’s brutally honest and hits Sam like a blow to the chest because now he knows. Not what’s happened; he’s pretty sure at this point he’s NEVER going to know. And he doesn’t like that. But what he hates worse is the feeling it’s going to take more than a one-night drunk to get this out of Dean’s system. And he’s really not looking forward to it. At all.
Not to mention he’s scared shitless.
Before he can say anything, Dean drops the keys in his hand and is creaking open the door, climbing out in a rush and soaking his pant leg halfway up when he fails to notice he’s parked over a puddle the size of Lake Michigan. There’s a quiet ‘Fuckin’ perfect…’ Sam hears before the door slams closed and then he’s scrambling out of the Chevy after his brother like a crab.
**************************************************************
To Chapter Two...