New SPN fic - "Generation Landslide" See! Fic!!
I know i know - not Spander! But the Spander is coming. Two Spander charity fics!! So just be patient.
Sometimes? Things just won't get out of your head until you write them. Like this story. There are tons of 'character x becomes a father' fic, and most of them involve precociously pwecious little babies or two-year-olds and lots of schmaltz. I didn't go there. I went someplace else.
:)
*bounce*
The title is from an Alice Cooper song of the same name. Some lines from another song - Public Animal #9 - are also quoted. darkhavens did me a lovely beta and sweptawaybayou did her usual. :)
When he was fifteen years old, Dean Winchester lost his virginity to a kitsune girl with hair like blackcurrant wine and cat-almond eyes. Her grandmother had come to the States in 1946 - war bride with a baby already in her belly, and three more to come.
The kitsune girl was older - ageless. As giddy as a child and as wise as a crone. She taught Dean a lot, and when the Winchesters left Oregon, he gave her his silver ID bracelet. Dean etched into it, sharp and deep.
Fifteen years later, on the day Dean turned thirty, his kitsune girl came back. She looked exactly the same and oh, so different, and she had a boy with her. A boy with hair like blackcurrant wine and cat-almond eyes of Dean Winchester green. Dean Winchester's full-lipped, pouting mouth and a sullen scowl of epic proportion.
"Fifteen years is enough," the kitsune girl said, slinging a ratty duffle at Dean's feet and pressing a fold of cash into the boy's hand. Touching his cheek for one moment, biting her lip when he shrugged away. "I'm going home," she added - turned and was gone, flick of white-tipped tail fading to nothing in the gold-peach dawn.
"What?" Dean said.
"I don't care if you are my dad," the boy said, "I'm not staying." He glared up through wind-roughened bangs, silver at his ear lobe and wrist.
"What?" Dean said.
"Oh, for fuck's sake." Sam pushed open the room's screen door, scowling as hard as the boy. "Come in here and have some pancakes first."
"What?"
"Yeah, okay." The boy shouldered past them both and went inside and Sam grabbed a handful of Dean's t-shirt and shook him.
"Don't say what."
"Wha -? Uh. Fuck."
"Probably what started this whole mess. D'you want four or six?"
"Six. Jesus Christ, Sammy. I'm a dad."
"Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy."
The boy could eat pancakes, that was for sure. He had a stack of six, too, and then four and then three and then finished off the last mouthful of his second glass of orange juice and leaned back in his chair.
"Jesus, orange juice. If that's not proof..." Sam muttered, and Dean kicked him under edge of the rickety hotel table. It creaked warningly when Sam jerked away and bumped the leg.
Dean drank down his own juice and wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. "Shut up, Sam. So, uh...what's your name?"
The boy looked at Dean through his bangs, his eyes narrow and glittering and Dean was forcibly reminded of Sam, age something-teen, about to launch into another sarcastic diatribe about God knows what. He lifted his hand. "Don't. Just - tell me your name."
"Inoue Hisoka," the boy said, and Dean blinked.
"What?"
"My...name...is...Inoue...Hisoka. Want me to spell it?"
"Maybe that would help -" Dean cast around for a pencil and paper while the boy and Sam both rolled their eyes.
"Jeez. Just - everybody calls me Jamie, okay? Only my Mom calls me - called me -" Jamie's mouth snapped shut and he pushed back from the table, sending the chair skittering across the worn-out beige linoleum. He stalked to the door and tried to work the chain and shoulder his duffle at the same time. His hands shook.
Dean and Sam exchanged looks and then Dean got up and went over to him, putting a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Hey, c'mon, you don't really want to leave."
"I really do," Jamie snarled, twitching his shoulder out of Dean's grasp and finally getting the chain out of the groove. He pulled the door open.
Dean slapped it shut. "You really don't. How about you just sit down and -"
"How about you just fuck off!"
"You watch your mouth, kid."
"Dean -" Sam said, his voice full of weary resignation.
"I'm not a kid, and you're not my dad, so fuck. Off!" Jamie shoved as hard as his fifteen-year-old body could shove.
Dean rocked back on his heels a little, taken by surprise. His expression went from astonished to pissed off in about .5 seconds and he grabbed a fistful of worn-out 'Insane Clown Posse' t-shirt and jerked Jamie up onto his toes. "I don't care if I'm your fucking dad or not. Watch your damn mouth!"
"Let go!" Jamie dropped his duffle, grappling with Dean - kicking out with his sneakered feet and aiming wild swings as close to Dean's head as he could get. Which wasn't too close, but close enough to clip Dean in the ear and then the collarbone.
"Hey! Jesus, you little -"
"Dean! Maybe you wanna just calm down?"
"I'm freakin' calm, Sam!" Dean growled. He dodged another kick and then swung Jamie around and slammed him into the cheap pressboard of the door. The door rattled on its hinges and Jamie gulped and then hung there, his hands locked around Dean's forearms, his eyes huge. And wet.
"Shit, kid - Jamie - listen, I -"
"Lemme go!" Jamie gave an almighty wrench of his whole body and Dean let him go. Watched him slide down the door and huddle there, long legs knotted up against his chest and his arms wrapped tight around his legs. Head tucked down and face hidden behind the fall of silky-black hair. Not crying. Not yet.
Dean sighed - dropped into an easy crouch. He rubbed his hand across his face and then sighed again. "Hey, man, look... I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have shoved you like that."
"Fuck you," Jamie said, but it was a whisper, a little hoarse and a lot shaky.
Dean looked over his shoulder at Sam, who was biting his fingernail. Sam shrugged a little and Dean made a face - looked back at Jamie. "Yeah, okay. I deserve that." Dean scrubbed his fingers through his hair, thinking. "Hey, um - you can take a swing at me, if you want. Just - pop me one. I won't hit you back or anything."
"Jesus, is that your answer to everything -?"
"Really not helping, Sam!"
Jamie rubbed the back of his hand hard over his eyes and shook his hair back. He was flushed and a little tear-damp and just...
"Fuck, you look just like her," Dean said.
"She said I looked just like you. I don't want to look like either one of you." Jamie pushed himself to his feet and stomped across the room to the bathroom. He slammed the door so hard that the pair of chintzy cabinets in the kitchen corner rattled ominously against the wall.
"Way to go, cool guy," Sam muttered, standing up and stacking plates.
"Not my fault the kid's a spoiled brat." Dean stopped crumpling up paper napkins and stared at Sam. "I raised you better."
"Being raised by you was like being raised by a chimpanzee," Sam said, but he grinned and Dean grinned back.
"I hate my life!" Jamie shouted from the bathroom.
"Sam, this plan really sucks."
"You got a better one?" Sam twisted sideways in the car seat, glaring at Dean. "We're not leaving him all alone at that motel. Probably get shot or something."
"It wasn't that bad. I mean - we stayed at worse when we were -"
"That's exactly why we're not leaving him there. You there," Sam amended, turning to look at Jamie who was slouched in a sullen lump in the back seat. He was swimming in Dean's canvas coat, the checked flannel collar turned up around his ears.
"I'm not a kid. I can stay at a motel by myself for a fucking hour!"
"Watch your mouth," Dean snapped, and then rubbed his hand over his face, exasperated. "Christ, I sound just like Dad. Listen, Jamie. You just stay right here, you got me? Don't get out of the car, don't talk to anybody, don't do anything. Don't mess with my car."
"You said all this already. Like - ten times," Jamie said, crossing his arms and kicking at the back of Dean's seat.
"Yeah, but did you hear me? And keep your dirty shoes off the leather. Jesus."
"Dean -"
"Sam, we've got a job to do. This won't take more than - ten minutes." Dean looked out the window at the house, which loomed dramatically over its lot full of leafless shrubs and bare trees. There was still snow against the lee side, shining whitely in the moon light. "Well, maybe twenty."
Sam sighed and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. "Jamie, you have a phone?"
"Yeah." Jamie reluctantly pulled his own phone out, flipping it open. It was red.
"Tell me the number. I'm gonna call you so you've got mine, okay?"
"Sure, whatever." Jamie reeled off his number and Sam dialed and hit 'send'. They all listened as the opening notes of 'School's Out' rolled out of Jamie's phone.
"Okay, so, you've got my number now so just - call me if anything happens or if, you know..." Sam shot a look at Dean. "Or if you see anything weird."
"His mom's a fox, Sam, for fuck's sake."
"That's different!"
"I'll be fine, would you two just - go, already? God."
"Fine. We're going."
"Go, then!"
"We're going!"
"Will you two stop doing 'Wayne's World'?" Sam snapped, hauling his knapsack up out of the foot well. "Swear to God -"
Dean shot a fast grin over his shoulder at Jamie, who mostly successfully hid his own grin. He carefully didn't watch Sam and Dean go up the crooked walk and disappear into the house.
"Well, we got no class...And we got no principals...And we got no innocence...We can't even think of a word that rhymes..."
"Dean, what are you singing?"
Dean stopped in mid-stalk and looked over at Sam, a look of sorrow on his face. "Sam, Sam, Sammy. Where did I go wrong? Alice? Cooper?"
"I knew it. He is so your kid."
"I didn't say he wasn't," Dean growled.
"You like him!" Sam cautiously pulled open a closet door and they both spun in, flashlights and shotguns at the ready. Except for some wire hangers and a husk of dry-cleaning plastic, it was empty.
"No I don't! So what if I do?"
"We can't keep him, Dean."
Dean stopped dead again, this time something closer to fury on his face. "What, you think I should just abandon him? Like his mom did?"
"What if he gets hurt? What if -"
"He won't" Dean stomped down the hallway and into the kitchen, looking around. The beam of his flashlight showed cabinets with their doors all hanging askew, hinges rusted and drawer pulls missing. The wallpaper was peeling off in strips and the linoleum looked like a lion had used it for a scratching pad. "I won't let him hunt. He can... He can apprentice to you, geek-boy."
"Oh, yeah, that'll work. You know you'll have him shooting targets and digging up graves in no time."
"No I won't! Besides, it didn't hurt us any. He's too skinny - shifting a hundred cubic feet or so of dirt once a week'll build him up."
"Or get him thrown in a home. Dean -"
"He's my son, Sam!" Dean stopped poking around in the burnt-out looking oven and straightened, giving Sam a look of mingled frustration and awe. "I mean, I can't just...leave him. He's...he's family, Sammy. Our family."
Sam sighed - rubbed at the bridge of his nose for a moment. "Yeah, I know. Somebody has to be the - voice of reason, you know?"
"Yeah, right. Reason." Dean rolled his eyes - kicked a broken tea cup with his boot. "So, you think its gonna show, or what? Awfully quiet."
"Yeah... Maybe we should -"
"Sam, duck!"
Sam ducked, narrowly avoiding the sudden batch of airborne crockery that hurtled across the kitchen. "Guess it showed!"
"Damnit!"
"Stop being such a baby." Sam plucked a last splinter from Dean's cheek and sat back, surveying the damage. Dean had the beginnings of a black eye and a peppering of puncture wounds all down the left side of his face from the exploding coat-rack. He was sitting a little crooked, too, favoring the leg that had gotten half-crushed by a whirling-dervish couch. Sam played the light over Dean's face and then away when he accidentally got it right in Dean's eyes. "Sorry. I got 'em all."
"Swell." Dean rubbed his eyes and blinked owlishly. "Christ. You're still bleeding, Sam."
"Yeah." Sam pressed Dean's bandana back onto the cut across his forehead, wincing a little.
Dean levered himself to his feet and cocked his head, listening. The house was ominously silent. "Think it's safe?"
"It's either safe or every knife in the house is floating right outside that door."
"You're just Mr. Sunshine, aren't you?"
"Somebody's got to be." Sam pushed himself upright as well, batting irritably at the shroud of plastic that was emblazoned with 'Da-zee Fresh Dri-Cleaning!' The little happy-face daisies were staring at him. He hitched his knapsack higher onto his shoulder, wincing when the full can of lighter fluid thumped into his bruised back. They were supposed to be doing a banishing, but it never hurt to come prepared.
"Damnit, you little jerk, answer the phone!" Dean glared down at Sam's cell and then shoved it blindly toward his brother, who nearly dropped it. "Fuck it. You ready, Sam? We're gonna make a run for it."
"Christ. Hang on." Sam wiped at his face and then stuffed the bandana into a pocket - lifted his shotgun. "Okay - let's go."
Dean lifted his own gun - turned the knob on the closet door and shoved. The door swung open and thumped hollowly into the wall behind it. The hallway was still, silent, and devoid of floating cutlery. "Maybe it's our lucky day," Dean breathed, and eased out of the closet, covering left while Sam covered right. They crept down the hall toward the door, sticking close to the walls to minimize any noise from creaky floorboards.
"No way it just left," Sam whispered, and Dean shook his head, baffled. Then he froze, one hand going up in a fist, then to his ear. That was 'freeze' and 'listen' and Sam did both. After a moment it was clear what Dean was hearing. A voice, talking in the easy rise and fall of a conversation. A fairly familiar voice, even after only one day.
"Fuck. Me." Dean shot Sam a look of pure rage and stalked toward the voice, shotgun raised. It was coming from what used to be the family room. Moonlight poured in through the curtain-less windows, illuminating mold-spotted carpet and the couch. Stuffing hung out of several rents in the upholstery. A picture frame hung crookedly on one wall and there was a crack in the ceiling, the plaster bulging down, coming away in chunks.
Sitting in the middle of the room was a girl. She was nine years old, dressed in jeans and a too-large sweatshirt. Her pale hair was parted neatly and braided into two long braids and she had a notebook and pen clutched in one pale hand. Her softly glowing, moon-pale hand. Her eyes, when they glanced up to take in Sam and Dean, were black, empty pits.
"Shit, shit, shit," Dean whispered. "I'm going to wring his fucking neck."
Jamie glanced around, his face carefully neutral. He was sitting cross-legged opposite the girl, practically touching her. He made a face at Dean, then turned back to the girl. "Yeah, okay, I get that," he said, soft. Reasonable and calm, mouth curving in a sympathetic smile. "But - you don't wanna stay here forever, do you? Alone? I mean - wouldn't you rather go where your sisters and brother are? And your m-mom?"
The girl said something - seemed to say something. It was hard to tell. Jamie nodded. "Okay. So - what happens when you try to leave?"
Something else, and now the spirit-girl was starting to flicker, wavering and jumping like a bad video display and Dean felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck. The whole room suddenly shimmered as frost bloomed across the walls - raced over the picture window like a spill of thin milk.
"Jamie - for fuck's sake, get over here!" Dean barked in a hoarse half-whisper, his breath puffing out in a chilly white cloud. The metal parts of his shotgun went opaque, little feathers of frost creeping across the blued steel.
Jamie turned his head again, looking at Dean. He looked a little freaked out - a little sad. A lot stubborn. "She's just scared, and mad. Every time she tries to leave, something pulls her back. It hurts her," Jamie whispered back. He put his hand out to the girl's and she took it, making him flinch the tiniest bit. Dean could see that Jamie's hand was shaking - that his skin was dead-white and his lips too pale.
"He's gonna get hypothermia," Sam hissed and Dean nodded, his brain running along as frantically as his heart, rabbit-fast and darting.
"If she - fuck, didn't they say they found some blood in jars? That he was doing some kind of ritual?"
Sam's eyes went wide. "Yeah. Okay, so - maybe whatever he did with the blood, it's keeping her here."
"Okay, okay... Jamie?"
"I promise, we just want to help you get home," Jamie said to the girl. She was flickering violently now, her appearance snapping between jeans-and-pigtails all American girl and... Something tattered and twisted - something that screamed silently with a too-wide mouth. Jamie turned his head to look at Dean again and there was frost on the tips of his hair. His teeth were chattering. "Yeah? Wh-what?"
"We think we know how to help her. Just stay right there, okay? We'll be right back."
"Oh-okay. H-hurry," Jamie said, and Dean spun on his heel and headed for the basement, Sam right behind.
"This is where he killed her," Sam said, flashlight beam flicking from wall to wall to wall. Half the basement was finished with cracked drywall, cheap nylon carpet fraying under their feet. The other half was dirt-floored and stone walled, dank and musty. The police reports had said they'd found the guy in the middle of what looked like some kind of 'black magic ritual'.
The memory of that made Dean snarl in silent frustration. Like the cops would know a ritual from a hole in the ground. "God fucking save me from cops and amateur magic-users," Dean muttered.
"According to the police, he was over here," Sam said, crossing the floor and stopping at the edge of the finished floor. "And he'd painted some kind of symbol on the ceiling..." Both their flashlight beams darted upward and they studied the remains of a binding key painted on the rough underside of the floor boards. "Whatever he was trying to do, he was finished when they got here. They said he was just - sitting there."
"Yeah." Dean stood at the crumbly edge of the concrete floor, looking down at the dirt. It was a little churned up - dark and dry-looking. "What did he paint the key with?"
"It said a mixture of his own blood and herbs, special oils - they didn't really know."
Dean snorted. "Figures." He crouched down, studying the dirt. He could see footprints - the depression where the man had knelt down. Spills of candle wax in lumpy puddles and....there. "Sam, look -" Dean played his flashlight beam sideways over the dirt and you could just see it. Lines cut into the earth, stained darker with something. Another key - the same key.
"As above, so below," Sam said softly, crouching next to Dean. He reached out and picked up a clump of dirt from within the lines - crumbled it a little in his fingers. It left rusty-colored particles behind that he showed to Dean. "I'll bet he used her blood to make this one. Her blood in the earth..."
"What the fuck for?" Dean murmured, and Sam blew the dirt and dried blood off his hands - scuffed his fingertips together until no particles remained.
"They said he was going to kill himself." Sam looked up at the overhead key - looked down again. "Maybe he was going to...bind them both here, to this place?"
"To each other. Jesus."
"Yeah. We have to destroy the blood."
Dean laughed, sharp bark of frustration. "Okay, but how?" There was a thump from overhead and the faint tinkle of breaking glass and Dean was standing up before he'd even consciously thought about it. "Fuck - Sam - figure this out, I gotta get back up there."
"Yeah...yeah, I..." Sam suddenly started digging in the knapsack. "Go, Dean I've got an idea."
"Knew you would," Dean said and then he turned and ran, thundering up the stairs. Sam pulled out the lighter fluid and popped the top open - stood up stepped onto the dirt. Carefully, he started tracing the lines of the key, making sure the dirt was saturated. Wincing only a little when he heard another crash from upstairs, and Dean's voice, yelling something.
"Jamie, get down, now!" Dean yelled, leaping over a shattered side table, shotgun aimed and ready. Jamie shot him a look of pure terror and flattened himself to the floor. Dean squeezed the trigger and the girl's spirit - looking particularly gruesome - shredded under the assault of airborne rock salt. Dean went down, knees and then belly, curling over Jamie. Rolling them both until he could get his feet under him, one arm hooked around the boy's thin ribs. Crab-crawling backwards until his back hit the wall.
"D-d-d -" Jamie was like a block of ice in Dean's arms, his borrowed coat missing and his shirt torn - his clothes and hair crackling with ice.
Fleetingly, Dean wondered if the boy was trying to say 'Dean' or...'Dad'. "It's okay, buddy, I've got you, you're okay. Sam's gonna fix her, we just have to stay put..." Dean's gaze scanned the room over and over, looking for anything. Any sign, any wavering of the air - any sound. A breeze was fanning across the room, picking up steadily. Spinning debris up and around, faster and faster until Dean and Jamie were caught in the dangerous outer ring of whirling trash and bits of wall - cutlery and broken glass and slivers of wood.
"Shit. Sammy! Hurry up!" Dean pushed himself to his knees, hauling Jamie up - shoving him into the nearest corner. "Here - Jamie, here..." Dean stripped off his leather coat and shoved it at the boy. "Cover up, cover your face!"
"What about you?"
"I'm fine! Do it!" Jamie curled into a ball, pulling the coat over his head and Dean whirled around in a crouch, gun up and ready. Eyes squinted against the wind and the Arctic cold of the air. Frost was inches thick on the walls and windows and ice slicked the floor, growing up and out in razor-sharp crystals. A butter knife whirled by, bouncing off Dean's raised, flannel-clad arm. A fork, a ragged piece of table-top and Dean dodged them all - fended off a larger chunk of trash with the barrel of the gun and then ducked and winced, hissing, as a tumbling shard of glass sliced across his knuckles. "God damnit!"
"What? What is it? Are you okay?" Jamie's voice was muffled - a little panicky but not bad and Dean grinned fiercely.
"I'm good, dude! Just got nicked, is all. I've had worse." At the center of the maelstrom was a pillar of white that gradually resolved into the girl. Stretched tall and thin, ragged on the edges - mouth open on a scream that was more like pressure than actual sound. She spun with the tornado of garbage, her image flickering and jerky - twisting into something even less human and then back again, warping and unwarping on fast-forward. "C'mon Sammy, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, hurry up."
Faintly, Dean could smell burning - the thick, sweetish stink of lighter fluid and he grinned. The girl's form twisted harder - faster - her face engulfed by her wide-open, needle-edged mouth and then, just like that, she was gone. Winking out in a fountain of sparks and blue-white flame. The storm of objects whirled apart and Dean ducked down and turned, curling over Jamie and hiding his own face as bits and pieces smacked into the walls and his back. Then it was over and Dean cautiously untucked, looking around. The frost and ice was melting as fast as it had grown, running down the walls in rivulets.
"What happened?" Jamie pushed the coat down, his eyes peering over the scuffed collar, his hair wet and dripping, stuck to his cheeks.
"Your geeky uncle figured it out, that's what happened," Dean said. He let himself topple back into the wall - slid down and sat with a little wheeze of expelled air. His thigh hurt like a bitch. He reached over and tugged the coat down lower, seeing a bruise on Jamie's jaw and scraped skin under the torn collar of his t-shirt. "Hey, are you okay? Are you hurt? Lemme see -"
"I'm okay. I'm all w-wet. God." Jamie huddled deeper into the coat, his eyes darting over the room. "Is she - is she gone? Is it over?"
"Yup, she's gone. And dude - what the fuck? What in hell were you thinking?"
"I wanted to... I was just trying to talk to her. Find out - why."
"Vengeful spirits are vengeful. That's the only why you need to know. They can fool you for a while but they're your basic obsessive-compulsive and they're dangerous, even if they've got a good reason."
"She was talking to me," Jamie said, sullen curl to his lip and Dean wanted to smack him.
"Yeah, she was. She probably talked to everybody she killed. They're not...people, Jamie!"
"Then what are they?" Jamie snapped, and they both jerked around, startled, when Sam answered the question from the living-room door.
"They're memories, Jamie. Memories and desire, most of them pretty ugly. You guys ready to go?" Sam looked tired. There were smudges of dirt on his knees and a streak of soot across one cheek - dried blood from the cut that was up under his bangs.
"Hell yes." Dean pushed himself up along the wall, grimacing. "You did good, Sam."
"I still don't see why -"
"Just drop it, kid." Dean held his hand out and Jamie stared at it for a moment - reached out and reluctantly took it, and let Dean haul him upright. He started to hand back the coat but Dean shook his head. "Just put it on - you'll freeze in those wet clothes."
"Yeah, okay." Jamie shrugged the coat on, looking absurdly small and Dean saw his brother there for a moment. Ten-year-old Sam drowning in Dad's big field coat, tired and scared and just wanting to go home.
"You still got your phone?" Dean asked, herding Jamie toward Sam - toward the door.
"She, uh... I tried to call you guys and she smashed it."
"Well, fuck."
"We'll get you a new one," Sam promised. He stepped out of the doorway, walking ahead of them, his shotgun propped on his shoulder. He smelled of earth and lighter fluid, comforting and familiar to Dean.
"I got the SIM card," Jamie offered, looking up doubtfully at Dean and Dean smiled tiredly.
"Cool. At least you got all your numbers. Jesus, kid..."
"I know," Jamie muttered, and Dean couldn't resist reaching out and ruffling his fingers through Jamie's wet, tangled hair.
"You'll learn," Dean said, totally ignoring the snort of pure exasperation from Sam.
Dean woke with a little start, making himself be still and not move, not really breathe. Just listening - taking in the ambient and trying to figure out what had woken him. Beside him, the long, warm hulk that was Sam stirred slightly, foot and then leg moving spastically under the sheet and blanket for a moment and then going still.
Wan, yellow-tinted light was coming in around the curtains. Dean wasn't sure if it was sunlight or a streetlight, but it did give him enough to see that the other bed - Jamie's bed - was empty. Dean lifted his head slightly, taking in the rest of the room. The bathroom door was open - light off. Everything was exactly... Wrong. Jamie's duffle was gone. Dean was up and out of the bed in a heartbeat, snatching up jeans and jerking them on - shoving his feet into boots. The chain on the hotel door was swaying slightly, and Dean knew that that was what had woken him - the soft thump and click of the door being pulled shut.
"Jesus fucking...Christ. God damn kid. What the fuck is it about Winchesters that they're always fucking leaving?"
"Mmm? Wha's wrong?" Sam mumbled.
"Nothin', Sammy, I got it. Go back to sleep."
"Mrrmm," Sam murmured, burrowing deeper into the covers. Dean grabbed his coat off the back of a chair and was out the door before he even remembered to get the room key. As the door closed behind him, Dean took a long breath, stifling his frustration. It was windy and cold - cold enough to make his breath steam, and Dean shrugged his coat on, scanning the parking lot. The sun was just over the horizon, small and pale-yellow behind a thin scrim of clouds.
Dean blinked against the chill, zipping his coat up, searching. "C'mon, c'mon," he muttered. There, nearly to the highway - short, dark figure with his duffle on his shoulder and his thumb out. "God damn idiot," Dean muttered. He strode across the parking lot, a curious mixture of fury and fear in his belly. And something else, something he'd felt years ago, watching Sam walk backwards, away from Dean and toward a waiting Greyhound. "Jamie, what the hell, man?" he barked, and Jamie spun around, shock on his face.
Shock that went to something like sorrow and then to near-perfect blankness. "I thought I was quieter than that," he said, and Dean scowled at him.
"I'm a hunter, man. There's no way for you to be quieter than that. Not yet."
"Yeah, well..." Jamie turned around and started walking again, and Dean stepped it up, four or five fast strides and he was catching Jamie by the arm - pulling him half around.
"C'mon, man - what're you doing? You can't just - run off."
"Yeah I can." Jamie pushed his hand back through his hair, pushing it off his face for a minute and Dean could see the dark smudges under his eyes - the redness. The tip of his nose was pink, and Dean knew he'd been crying.
"No, you really can't. There's all kinds of weirdoes out there, man, people who are -"
"Half fox? People who can talk to ghosts?" Jamie hunched a little into his layers of long-sleeved tee, flannel and hoodie. "I'm the weirdo, here. Just some kind of...of freak -"
"Preachin' to the choir, man." Jamie shot Dean a look and Dean sighed - motioned toward the stained concrete barrier that edged the end of the parking lot. "Dude, sit down a minute and listen to me, okay?"
Jamie sighed - a sigh of epic and Sam-like proportions - but he walked over and sat down, letting his duffle slip off his shoulder, propping it between his knees. "Okay - what?"
"Okay - how about a little less attitude?" Another look and Dean shoved his hands into his pockets, the concrete cold through the seat of his jeans. "I'm sorry. I'm just not... I'm new to this whole - dad thing, okay?"
"Yeah, well, so am I." Jamie fiddled with something under the edge of the sleeves around his left wrist. Concentrating on that so he wouldn't have to look at Dean. "She told me she knew who you were but she wasn't going to tell me. She said... She said you were probably too busy to want to see me and... She said you knew she was kitsune."
Dean gaped at Jamie for a moment and then looked away - out across the scrubby median where plastic bags and fast-food cups had drifted amongst the tufts of winter-pale grass and ratty bushes. "Wow, okay... Um, yeah, I knew - what she was. I mean...I've spent most of my life learning about the supernatural, you know?"
"And killing it," Jamie said, and Dean cracked a crooked little smile.
"Yeah, killing it. Some of it. The bad ones. Some of 'em... Some of 'em we leave alone, Jamie. Your mom was one we left alone. I found out what she was when we were... I mean, right in the middle of -" Dean snapped his mouth shut at the look of horrified amusement on Jamie's face. "Ah, c'mon, man - help me out, here!"
"She's only told me the 'how you were conceived' story about a thousand times."
Now it was Dean's turn to look horrified. "Jesus...Christ. Are you kidding me? She told you -?"
Jamie grinned, sniffing hard. "Oh man, your face! Dude, I blocked it all out."
"Thank God. You little jerk," Dean added, and kicked Jamie's sneakered foot.
"Yeah, well. She told me that sometimes a kitsune slips up and the people they're with find out. And she said your family knew stuff, so... You knew."
"Yeah. I did. But I didn't know she got pregnant. We moved about two weeks after - uh -" Dean scrunched his fists down a little further into his pockets and waved his elbows, and Jamie snickered. "So I didn't know. I gave her my address, though. I mean - one of 'em. We've got five or six P.O. boxes we use all the time."
"I know." Jamie dug down into the pocket on the side of his duffle and pulled out his wallet - extracted a limp, fuzzy-edged piece of paper from the inner fold. "She gave me this. I was...I was gonna write you some time."
Dean took the offered paper and carefully unfolded it. Plain notebook paper, coming apart at the folds. Inside, his fifteen-year-old handwriting in faded ballpoint pen. And the little heart he'd tacked on, the sight of which made him flush to the tips of his ears. "Huh. Look at that." Dean touched the heart - looked up and away, huffing a little. "Surprised she kept it."
"She kept this, too." Jamie held out his left arm, tugging his sleeves up. There was a silver I.D. bracelet around Jamie's thin, tanned wrist and Dean reached out and turned the name-plate over. Rubbed his thumb over the worn lettering engraved there. He could feel Jamie's heart beat against his fingertips and after a moment he let go - offered the paper back and watched Jamie tuck it and his wallet away.
"Look, Jamie..." Dean leaned his elbows on his knees, hands laced together. Watching a paper-dry leaf scrape erratically across the pavement by his boots. "I'm sorry I wasn't around. I don't... I can't say I'd have been the best dad ever 'cause - I was just a kid, you know? And things were kinda...crazy. Hell, they still are." Dean glanced up at the boy - watched Jamie fiddle with the I.D. bracelet for a moment and then shove it back under his sleeves. "And I can't promise I'll be a great dad, you know? I mean - I pretty much raised Sammy but...well, you saw how he turned out."
Jamie snorted, raising a faint grin - glancing over at Dean for a moment before looking down again. "He's not so bad."
"You think?" Dean grinned - pushed his hand back through his hair, straightening up. "I guess what I'm trying to say is... I want you to stay, okay? I just... I want to get to know you. You're...family. My family. You're my son and... I want that."
Jamie kicked at a piece of gravel - took a deep breath and straightened up himself, shaking his hair back out of his eyes. "You don't just...feel sorry for me?"
"Hell, no! What's to feel sorry for? You've got my good looks goin' for ya, and an even chance of having Sam's brains. I'd say you're one lucky bastard."
Jamie actually laughed that time - shaky laugh that Dean joined him in. He finally turned and looked Dean right in the eye, his expression hopeful, almost...yearning. "So you'll teach me - everything? Take me with you?"
"Leave no man behind - that's the Winchester way."
"Winchester. James Winchester." Jamie seemed to be tasting the name on his tongue - listening to how the two fit together. "I like that."
"Me, too." Dean was smiling and he stood up abruptly, clearing his throat. Lifting his hand to rub it once, briskly, over his face and blinking hard. Not all teary-eyed and lump-in-the-throat. Not at all. "C'mon, let's go get some breakfast. I'm starving."
"Yeah, okay. Dad." Jamie stood up and picked up his duffle - didn't miss the blinding grin that flashed across Dean's face. "You're gonna change first, though, right? 'Cause those jeans -"
"What?" Dean looked down, puzzled, and then he started laughing. A slightly hysterical laugh, and who could blame him? He'd gained a son and become a dad in twenty-four hours. "I guess I grabbed Sam's by mistake." Dean lifted a foot and wiggled it, snorting at the way the extra inches of denim sagged under the heel of his boot.
"You're getting the hems all dirty," Jamie observed, and Dean slung an arm around the boy's shoulders, giving them a little squeeze.
"It's his turn to do laundry, anyway. I vote Waffle House - what'cha think?"
"Waffle House is good."
"All right. Sam hates Waffle House, but it's two to one - he can't argue with that."
"I'll bet he can, actually," Jamie mused, and Dean had to agree.
Timestamp: Billion Dollar Babies.
Sometimes? Things just won't get out of your head until you write them. Like this story. There are tons of 'character x becomes a father' fic, and most of them involve precociously pwecious little babies or two-year-olds and lots of schmaltz. I didn't go there. I went someplace else.
:)
*bounce*
The title is from an Alice Cooper song of the same name. Some lines from another song - Public Animal #9 - are also quoted. darkhavens did me a lovely beta and sweptawaybayou did her usual. :)
When he was fifteen years old, Dean Winchester lost his virginity to a kitsune girl with hair like blackcurrant wine and cat-almond eyes. Her grandmother had come to the States in 1946 - war bride with a baby already in her belly, and three more to come.
The kitsune girl was older - ageless. As giddy as a child and as wise as a crone. She taught Dean a lot, and when the Winchesters left Oregon, he gave her his silver ID bracelet. Dean etched into it, sharp and deep.
Fifteen years later, on the day Dean turned thirty, his kitsune girl came back. She looked exactly the same and oh, so different, and she had a boy with her. A boy with hair like blackcurrant wine and cat-almond eyes of Dean Winchester green. Dean Winchester's full-lipped, pouting mouth and a sullen scowl of epic proportion.
"Fifteen years is enough," the kitsune girl said, slinging a ratty duffle at Dean's feet and pressing a fold of cash into the boy's hand. Touching his cheek for one moment, biting her lip when he shrugged away. "I'm going home," she added - turned and was gone, flick of white-tipped tail fading to nothing in the gold-peach dawn.
"What?" Dean said.
"I don't care if you are my dad," the boy said, "I'm not staying." He glared up through wind-roughened bangs, silver at his ear lobe and wrist.
"What?" Dean said.
"Oh, for fuck's sake." Sam pushed open the room's screen door, scowling as hard as the boy. "Come in here and have some pancakes first."
"What?"
"Yeah, okay." The boy shouldered past them both and went inside and Sam grabbed a handful of Dean's t-shirt and shook him.
"Don't say what."
"Wha -? Uh. Fuck."
"Probably what started this whole mess. D'you want four or six?"
"Six. Jesus Christ, Sammy. I'm a dad."
"Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy."
The boy could eat pancakes, that was for sure. He had a stack of six, too, and then four and then three and then finished off the last mouthful of his second glass of orange juice and leaned back in his chair.
"Jesus, orange juice. If that's not proof..." Sam muttered, and Dean kicked him under edge of the rickety hotel table. It creaked warningly when Sam jerked away and bumped the leg.
Dean drank down his own juice and wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. "Shut up, Sam. So, uh...what's your name?"
The boy looked at Dean through his bangs, his eyes narrow and glittering and Dean was forcibly reminded of Sam, age something-teen, about to launch into another sarcastic diatribe about God knows what. He lifted his hand. "Don't. Just - tell me your name."
"Inoue Hisoka," the boy said, and Dean blinked.
"What?"
"My...name...is...Inoue...Hisoka. Want me to spell it?"
"Maybe that would help -" Dean cast around for a pencil and paper while the boy and Sam both rolled their eyes.
"Jeez. Just - everybody calls me Jamie, okay? Only my Mom calls me - called me -" Jamie's mouth snapped shut and he pushed back from the table, sending the chair skittering across the worn-out beige linoleum. He stalked to the door and tried to work the chain and shoulder his duffle at the same time. His hands shook.
Dean and Sam exchanged looks and then Dean got up and went over to him, putting a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Hey, c'mon, you don't really want to leave."
"I really do," Jamie snarled, twitching his shoulder out of Dean's grasp and finally getting the chain out of the groove. He pulled the door open.
Dean slapped it shut. "You really don't. How about you just sit down and -"
"How about you just fuck off!"
"You watch your mouth, kid."
"Dean -" Sam said, his voice full of weary resignation.
"I'm not a kid, and you're not my dad, so fuck. Off!" Jamie shoved as hard as his fifteen-year-old body could shove.
Dean rocked back on his heels a little, taken by surprise. His expression went from astonished to pissed off in about .5 seconds and he grabbed a fistful of worn-out 'Insane Clown Posse' t-shirt and jerked Jamie up onto his toes. "I don't care if I'm your fucking dad or not. Watch your damn mouth!"
"Let go!" Jamie dropped his duffle, grappling with Dean - kicking out with his sneakered feet and aiming wild swings as close to Dean's head as he could get. Which wasn't too close, but close enough to clip Dean in the ear and then the collarbone.
"Hey! Jesus, you little -"
"Dean! Maybe you wanna just calm down?"
"I'm freakin' calm, Sam!" Dean growled. He dodged another kick and then swung Jamie around and slammed him into the cheap pressboard of the door. The door rattled on its hinges and Jamie gulped and then hung there, his hands locked around Dean's forearms, his eyes huge. And wet.
"Shit, kid - Jamie - listen, I -"
"Lemme go!" Jamie gave an almighty wrench of his whole body and Dean let him go. Watched him slide down the door and huddle there, long legs knotted up against his chest and his arms wrapped tight around his legs. Head tucked down and face hidden behind the fall of silky-black hair. Not crying. Not yet.
Dean sighed - dropped into an easy crouch. He rubbed his hand across his face and then sighed again. "Hey, man, look... I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have shoved you like that."
"Fuck you," Jamie said, but it was a whisper, a little hoarse and a lot shaky.
Dean looked over his shoulder at Sam, who was biting his fingernail. Sam shrugged a little and Dean made a face - looked back at Jamie. "Yeah, okay. I deserve that." Dean scrubbed his fingers through his hair, thinking. "Hey, um - you can take a swing at me, if you want. Just - pop me one. I won't hit you back or anything."
"Jesus, is that your answer to everything -?"
"Really not helping, Sam!"
Jamie rubbed the back of his hand hard over his eyes and shook his hair back. He was flushed and a little tear-damp and just...
"Fuck, you look just like her," Dean said.
"She said I looked just like you. I don't want to look like either one of you." Jamie pushed himself to his feet and stomped across the room to the bathroom. He slammed the door so hard that the pair of chintzy cabinets in the kitchen corner rattled ominously against the wall.
"Way to go, cool guy," Sam muttered, standing up and stacking plates.
"Not my fault the kid's a spoiled brat." Dean stopped crumpling up paper napkins and stared at Sam. "I raised you better."
"Being raised by you was like being raised by a chimpanzee," Sam said, but he grinned and Dean grinned back.
"I hate my life!" Jamie shouted from the bathroom.
"Sam, this plan really sucks."
"You got a better one?" Sam twisted sideways in the car seat, glaring at Dean. "We're not leaving him all alone at that motel. Probably get shot or something."
"It wasn't that bad. I mean - we stayed at worse when we were -"
"That's exactly why we're not leaving him there. You there," Sam amended, turning to look at Jamie who was slouched in a sullen lump in the back seat. He was swimming in Dean's canvas coat, the checked flannel collar turned up around his ears.
"I'm not a kid. I can stay at a motel by myself for a fucking hour!"
"Watch your mouth," Dean snapped, and then rubbed his hand over his face, exasperated. "Christ, I sound just like Dad. Listen, Jamie. You just stay right here, you got me? Don't get out of the car, don't talk to anybody, don't do anything. Don't mess with my car."
"You said all this already. Like - ten times," Jamie said, crossing his arms and kicking at the back of Dean's seat.
"Yeah, but did you hear me? And keep your dirty shoes off the leather. Jesus."
"Dean -"
"Sam, we've got a job to do. This won't take more than - ten minutes." Dean looked out the window at the house, which loomed dramatically over its lot full of leafless shrubs and bare trees. There was still snow against the lee side, shining whitely in the moon light. "Well, maybe twenty."
Sam sighed and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. "Jamie, you have a phone?"
"Yeah." Jamie reluctantly pulled his own phone out, flipping it open. It was red.
"Tell me the number. I'm gonna call you so you've got mine, okay?"
"Sure, whatever." Jamie reeled off his number and Sam dialed and hit 'send'. They all listened as the opening notes of 'School's Out' rolled out of Jamie's phone.
"Okay, so, you've got my number now so just - call me if anything happens or if, you know..." Sam shot a look at Dean. "Or if you see anything weird."
"His mom's a fox, Sam, for fuck's sake."
"That's different!"
"I'll be fine, would you two just - go, already? God."
"Fine. We're going."
"Go, then!"
"We're going!"
"Will you two stop doing 'Wayne's World'?" Sam snapped, hauling his knapsack up out of the foot well. "Swear to God -"
Dean shot a fast grin over his shoulder at Jamie, who mostly successfully hid his own grin. He carefully didn't watch Sam and Dean go up the crooked walk and disappear into the house.
"Well, we got no class...And we got no principals...And we got no innocence...We can't even think of a word that rhymes..."
"Dean, what are you singing?"
Dean stopped in mid-stalk and looked over at Sam, a look of sorrow on his face. "Sam, Sam, Sammy. Where did I go wrong? Alice? Cooper?"
"I knew it. He is so your kid."
"I didn't say he wasn't," Dean growled.
"You like him!" Sam cautiously pulled open a closet door and they both spun in, flashlights and shotguns at the ready. Except for some wire hangers and a husk of dry-cleaning plastic, it was empty.
"No I don't! So what if I do?"
"We can't keep him, Dean."
Dean stopped dead again, this time something closer to fury on his face. "What, you think I should just abandon him? Like his mom did?"
"What if he gets hurt? What if -"
"He won't" Dean stomped down the hallway and into the kitchen, looking around. The beam of his flashlight showed cabinets with their doors all hanging askew, hinges rusted and drawer pulls missing. The wallpaper was peeling off in strips and the linoleum looked like a lion had used it for a scratching pad. "I won't let him hunt. He can... He can apprentice to you, geek-boy."
"Oh, yeah, that'll work. You know you'll have him shooting targets and digging up graves in no time."
"No I won't! Besides, it didn't hurt us any. He's too skinny - shifting a hundred cubic feet or so of dirt once a week'll build him up."
"Or get him thrown in a home. Dean -"
"He's my son, Sam!" Dean stopped poking around in the burnt-out looking oven and straightened, giving Sam a look of mingled frustration and awe. "I mean, I can't just...leave him. He's...he's family, Sammy. Our family."
Sam sighed - rubbed at the bridge of his nose for a moment. "Yeah, I know. Somebody has to be the - voice of reason, you know?"
"Yeah, right. Reason." Dean rolled his eyes - kicked a broken tea cup with his boot. "So, you think its gonna show, or what? Awfully quiet."
"Yeah... Maybe we should -"
"Sam, duck!"
Sam ducked, narrowly avoiding the sudden batch of airborne crockery that hurtled across the kitchen. "Guess it showed!"
"Damnit!"
"Stop being such a baby." Sam plucked a last splinter from Dean's cheek and sat back, surveying the damage. Dean had the beginnings of a black eye and a peppering of puncture wounds all down the left side of his face from the exploding coat-rack. He was sitting a little crooked, too, favoring the leg that had gotten half-crushed by a whirling-dervish couch. Sam played the light over Dean's face and then away when he accidentally got it right in Dean's eyes. "Sorry. I got 'em all."
"Swell." Dean rubbed his eyes and blinked owlishly. "Christ. You're still bleeding, Sam."
"Yeah." Sam pressed Dean's bandana back onto the cut across his forehead, wincing a little.
Dean levered himself to his feet and cocked his head, listening. The house was ominously silent. "Think it's safe?"
"It's either safe or every knife in the house is floating right outside that door."
"You're just Mr. Sunshine, aren't you?"
"Somebody's got to be." Sam pushed himself upright as well, batting irritably at the shroud of plastic that was emblazoned with 'Da-zee Fresh Dri-Cleaning!' The little happy-face daisies were staring at him. He hitched his knapsack higher onto his shoulder, wincing when the full can of lighter fluid thumped into his bruised back. They were supposed to be doing a banishing, but it never hurt to come prepared.
"Damnit, you little jerk, answer the phone!" Dean glared down at Sam's cell and then shoved it blindly toward his brother, who nearly dropped it. "Fuck it. You ready, Sam? We're gonna make a run for it."
"Christ. Hang on." Sam wiped at his face and then stuffed the bandana into a pocket - lifted his shotgun. "Okay - let's go."
Dean lifted his own gun - turned the knob on the closet door and shoved. The door swung open and thumped hollowly into the wall behind it. The hallway was still, silent, and devoid of floating cutlery. "Maybe it's our lucky day," Dean breathed, and eased out of the closet, covering left while Sam covered right. They crept down the hall toward the door, sticking close to the walls to minimize any noise from creaky floorboards.
"No way it just left," Sam whispered, and Dean shook his head, baffled. Then he froze, one hand going up in a fist, then to his ear. That was 'freeze' and 'listen' and Sam did both. After a moment it was clear what Dean was hearing. A voice, talking in the easy rise and fall of a conversation. A fairly familiar voice, even after only one day.
"Fuck. Me." Dean shot Sam a look of pure rage and stalked toward the voice, shotgun raised. It was coming from what used to be the family room. Moonlight poured in through the curtain-less windows, illuminating mold-spotted carpet and the couch. Stuffing hung out of several rents in the upholstery. A picture frame hung crookedly on one wall and there was a crack in the ceiling, the plaster bulging down, coming away in chunks.
Sitting in the middle of the room was a girl. She was nine years old, dressed in jeans and a too-large sweatshirt. Her pale hair was parted neatly and braided into two long braids and she had a notebook and pen clutched in one pale hand. Her softly glowing, moon-pale hand. Her eyes, when they glanced up to take in Sam and Dean, were black, empty pits.
"Shit, shit, shit," Dean whispered. "I'm going to wring his fucking neck."
Jamie glanced around, his face carefully neutral. He was sitting cross-legged opposite the girl, practically touching her. He made a face at Dean, then turned back to the girl. "Yeah, okay, I get that," he said, soft. Reasonable and calm, mouth curving in a sympathetic smile. "But - you don't wanna stay here forever, do you? Alone? I mean - wouldn't you rather go where your sisters and brother are? And your m-mom?"
The girl said something - seemed to say something. It was hard to tell. Jamie nodded. "Okay. So - what happens when you try to leave?"
Something else, and now the spirit-girl was starting to flicker, wavering and jumping like a bad video display and Dean felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck. The whole room suddenly shimmered as frost bloomed across the walls - raced over the picture window like a spill of thin milk.
"Jamie - for fuck's sake, get over here!" Dean barked in a hoarse half-whisper, his breath puffing out in a chilly white cloud. The metal parts of his shotgun went opaque, little feathers of frost creeping across the blued steel.
Jamie turned his head again, looking at Dean. He looked a little freaked out - a little sad. A lot stubborn. "She's just scared, and mad. Every time she tries to leave, something pulls her back. It hurts her," Jamie whispered back. He put his hand out to the girl's and she took it, making him flinch the tiniest bit. Dean could see that Jamie's hand was shaking - that his skin was dead-white and his lips too pale.
"He's gonna get hypothermia," Sam hissed and Dean nodded, his brain running along as frantically as his heart, rabbit-fast and darting.
"If she - fuck, didn't they say they found some blood in jars? That he was doing some kind of ritual?"
Sam's eyes went wide. "Yeah. Okay, so - maybe whatever he did with the blood, it's keeping her here."
"Okay, okay... Jamie?"
"I promise, we just want to help you get home," Jamie said to the girl. She was flickering violently now, her appearance snapping between jeans-and-pigtails all American girl and... Something tattered and twisted - something that screamed silently with a too-wide mouth. Jamie turned his head to look at Dean again and there was frost on the tips of his hair. His teeth were chattering. "Yeah? Wh-what?"
"We think we know how to help her. Just stay right there, okay? We'll be right back."
"Oh-okay. H-hurry," Jamie said, and Dean spun on his heel and headed for the basement, Sam right behind.
"This is where he killed her," Sam said, flashlight beam flicking from wall to wall to wall. Half the basement was finished with cracked drywall, cheap nylon carpet fraying under their feet. The other half was dirt-floored and stone walled, dank and musty. The police reports had said they'd found the guy in the middle of what looked like some kind of 'black magic ritual'.
The memory of that made Dean snarl in silent frustration. Like the cops would know a ritual from a hole in the ground. "God fucking save me from cops and amateur magic-users," Dean muttered.
"According to the police, he was over here," Sam said, crossing the floor and stopping at the edge of the finished floor. "And he'd painted some kind of symbol on the ceiling..." Both their flashlight beams darted upward and they studied the remains of a binding key painted on the rough underside of the floor boards. "Whatever he was trying to do, he was finished when they got here. They said he was just - sitting there."
"Yeah." Dean stood at the crumbly edge of the concrete floor, looking down at the dirt. It was a little churned up - dark and dry-looking. "What did he paint the key with?"
"It said a mixture of his own blood and herbs, special oils - they didn't really know."
Dean snorted. "Figures." He crouched down, studying the dirt. He could see footprints - the depression where the man had knelt down. Spills of candle wax in lumpy puddles and....there. "Sam, look -" Dean played his flashlight beam sideways over the dirt and you could just see it. Lines cut into the earth, stained darker with something. Another key - the same key.
"As above, so below," Sam said softly, crouching next to Dean. He reached out and picked up a clump of dirt from within the lines - crumbled it a little in his fingers. It left rusty-colored particles behind that he showed to Dean. "I'll bet he used her blood to make this one. Her blood in the earth..."
"What the fuck for?" Dean murmured, and Sam blew the dirt and dried blood off his hands - scuffed his fingertips together until no particles remained.
"They said he was going to kill himself." Sam looked up at the overhead key - looked down again. "Maybe he was going to...bind them both here, to this place?"
"To each other. Jesus."
"Yeah. We have to destroy the blood."
Dean laughed, sharp bark of frustration. "Okay, but how?" There was a thump from overhead and the faint tinkle of breaking glass and Dean was standing up before he'd even consciously thought about it. "Fuck - Sam - figure this out, I gotta get back up there."
"Yeah...yeah, I..." Sam suddenly started digging in the knapsack. "Go, Dean I've got an idea."
"Knew you would," Dean said and then he turned and ran, thundering up the stairs. Sam pulled out the lighter fluid and popped the top open - stood up stepped onto the dirt. Carefully, he started tracing the lines of the key, making sure the dirt was saturated. Wincing only a little when he heard another crash from upstairs, and Dean's voice, yelling something.
"Jamie, get down, now!" Dean yelled, leaping over a shattered side table, shotgun aimed and ready. Jamie shot him a look of pure terror and flattened himself to the floor. Dean squeezed the trigger and the girl's spirit - looking particularly gruesome - shredded under the assault of airborne rock salt. Dean went down, knees and then belly, curling over Jamie. Rolling them both until he could get his feet under him, one arm hooked around the boy's thin ribs. Crab-crawling backwards until his back hit the wall.
"D-d-d -" Jamie was like a block of ice in Dean's arms, his borrowed coat missing and his shirt torn - his clothes and hair crackling with ice.
Fleetingly, Dean wondered if the boy was trying to say 'Dean' or...'Dad'. "It's okay, buddy, I've got you, you're okay. Sam's gonna fix her, we just have to stay put..." Dean's gaze scanned the room over and over, looking for anything. Any sign, any wavering of the air - any sound. A breeze was fanning across the room, picking up steadily. Spinning debris up and around, faster and faster until Dean and Jamie were caught in the dangerous outer ring of whirling trash and bits of wall - cutlery and broken glass and slivers of wood.
"Shit. Sammy! Hurry up!" Dean pushed himself to his knees, hauling Jamie up - shoving him into the nearest corner. "Here - Jamie, here..." Dean stripped off his leather coat and shoved it at the boy. "Cover up, cover your face!"
"What about you?"
"I'm fine! Do it!" Jamie curled into a ball, pulling the coat over his head and Dean whirled around in a crouch, gun up and ready. Eyes squinted against the wind and the Arctic cold of the air. Frost was inches thick on the walls and windows and ice slicked the floor, growing up and out in razor-sharp crystals. A butter knife whirled by, bouncing off Dean's raised, flannel-clad arm. A fork, a ragged piece of table-top and Dean dodged them all - fended off a larger chunk of trash with the barrel of the gun and then ducked and winced, hissing, as a tumbling shard of glass sliced across his knuckles. "God damnit!"
"What? What is it? Are you okay?" Jamie's voice was muffled - a little panicky but not bad and Dean grinned fiercely.
"I'm good, dude! Just got nicked, is all. I've had worse." At the center of the maelstrom was a pillar of white that gradually resolved into the girl. Stretched tall and thin, ragged on the edges - mouth open on a scream that was more like pressure than actual sound. She spun with the tornado of garbage, her image flickering and jerky - twisting into something even less human and then back again, warping and unwarping on fast-forward. "C'mon Sammy, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, hurry up."
Faintly, Dean could smell burning - the thick, sweetish stink of lighter fluid and he grinned. The girl's form twisted harder - faster - her face engulfed by her wide-open, needle-edged mouth and then, just like that, she was gone. Winking out in a fountain of sparks and blue-white flame. The storm of objects whirled apart and Dean ducked down and turned, curling over Jamie and hiding his own face as bits and pieces smacked into the walls and his back. Then it was over and Dean cautiously untucked, looking around. The frost and ice was melting as fast as it had grown, running down the walls in rivulets.
"What happened?" Jamie pushed the coat down, his eyes peering over the scuffed collar, his hair wet and dripping, stuck to his cheeks.
"Your geeky uncle figured it out, that's what happened," Dean said. He let himself topple back into the wall - slid down and sat with a little wheeze of expelled air. His thigh hurt like a bitch. He reached over and tugged the coat down lower, seeing a bruise on Jamie's jaw and scraped skin under the torn collar of his t-shirt. "Hey, are you okay? Are you hurt? Lemme see -"
"I'm okay. I'm all w-wet. God." Jamie huddled deeper into the coat, his eyes darting over the room. "Is she - is she gone? Is it over?"
"Yup, she's gone. And dude - what the fuck? What in hell were you thinking?"
"I wanted to... I was just trying to talk to her. Find out - why."
"Vengeful spirits are vengeful. That's the only why you need to know. They can fool you for a while but they're your basic obsessive-compulsive and they're dangerous, even if they've got a good reason."
"She was talking to me," Jamie said, sullen curl to his lip and Dean wanted to smack him.
"Yeah, she was. She probably talked to everybody she killed. They're not...people, Jamie!"
"Then what are they?" Jamie snapped, and they both jerked around, startled, when Sam answered the question from the living-room door.
"They're memories, Jamie. Memories and desire, most of them pretty ugly. You guys ready to go?" Sam looked tired. There were smudges of dirt on his knees and a streak of soot across one cheek - dried blood from the cut that was up under his bangs.
"Hell yes." Dean pushed himself up along the wall, grimacing. "You did good, Sam."
"I still don't see why -"
"Just drop it, kid." Dean held his hand out and Jamie stared at it for a moment - reached out and reluctantly took it, and let Dean haul him upright. He started to hand back the coat but Dean shook his head. "Just put it on - you'll freeze in those wet clothes."
"Yeah, okay." Jamie shrugged the coat on, looking absurdly small and Dean saw his brother there for a moment. Ten-year-old Sam drowning in Dad's big field coat, tired and scared and just wanting to go home.
"You still got your phone?" Dean asked, herding Jamie toward Sam - toward the door.
"She, uh... I tried to call you guys and she smashed it."
"Well, fuck."
"We'll get you a new one," Sam promised. He stepped out of the doorway, walking ahead of them, his shotgun propped on his shoulder. He smelled of earth and lighter fluid, comforting and familiar to Dean.
"I got the SIM card," Jamie offered, looking up doubtfully at Dean and Dean smiled tiredly.
"Cool. At least you got all your numbers. Jesus, kid..."
"I know," Jamie muttered, and Dean couldn't resist reaching out and ruffling his fingers through Jamie's wet, tangled hair.
"You'll learn," Dean said, totally ignoring the snort of pure exasperation from Sam.
Dean woke with a little start, making himself be still and not move, not really breathe. Just listening - taking in the ambient and trying to figure out what had woken him. Beside him, the long, warm hulk that was Sam stirred slightly, foot and then leg moving spastically under the sheet and blanket for a moment and then going still.
Wan, yellow-tinted light was coming in around the curtains. Dean wasn't sure if it was sunlight or a streetlight, but it did give him enough to see that the other bed - Jamie's bed - was empty. Dean lifted his head slightly, taking in the rest of the room. The bathroom door was open - light off. Everything was exactly... Wrong. Jamie's duffle was gone. Dean was up and out of the bed in a heartbeat, snatching up jeans and jerking them on - shoving his feet into boots. The chain on the hotel door was swaying slightly, and Dean knew that that was what had woken him - the soft thump and click of the door being pulled shut.
"Jesus fucking...Christ. God damn kid. What the fuck is it about Winchesters that they're always fucking leaving?"
"Mmm? Wha's wrong?" Sam mumbled.
"Nothin', Sammy, I got it. Go back to sleep."
"Mrrmm," Sam murmured, burrowing deeper into the covers. Dean grabbed his coat off the back of a chair and was out the door before he even remembered to get the room key. As the door closed behind him, Dean took a long breath, stifling his frustration. It was windy and cold - cold enough to make his breath steam, and Dean shrugged his coat on, scanning the parking lot. The sun was just over the horizon, small and pale-yellow behind a thin scrim of clouds.
Dean blinked against the chill, zipping his coat up, searching. "C'mon, c'mon," he muttered. There, nearly to the highway - short, dark figure with his duffle on his shoulder and his thumb out. "God damn idiot," Dean muttered. He strode across the parking lot, a curious mixture of fury and fear in his belly. And something else, something he'd felt years ago, watching Sam walk backwards, away from Dean and toward a waiting Greyhound. "Jamie, what the hell, man?" he barked, and Jamie spun around, shock on his face.
Shock that went to something like sorrow and then to near-perfect blankness. "I thought I was quieter than that," he said, and Dean scowled at him.
"I'm a hunter, man. There's no way for you to be quieter than that. Not yet."
"Yeah, well..." Jamie turned around and started walking again, and Dean stepped it up, four or five fast strides and he was catching Jamie by the arm - pulling him half around.
"C'mon, man - what're you doing? You can't just - run off."
"Yeah I can." Jamie pushed his hand back through his hair, pushing it off his face for a minute and Dean could see the dark smudges under his eyes - the redness. The tip of his nose was pink, and Dean knew he'd been crying.
"No, you really can't. There's all kinds of weirdoes out there, man, people who are -"
"Half fox? People who can talk to ghosts?" Jamie hunched a little into his layers of long-sleeved tee, flannel and hoodie. "I'm the weirdo, here. Just some kind of...of freak -"
"Preachin' to the choir, man." Jamie shot Dean a look and Dean sighed - motioned toward the stained concrete barrier that edged the end of the parking lot. "Dude, sit down a minute and listen to me, okay?"
Jamie sighed - a sigh of epic and Sam-like proportions - but he walked over and sat down, letting his duffle slip off his shoulder, propping it between his knees. "Okay - what?"
"Okay - how about a little less attitude?" Another look and Dean shoved his hands into his pockets, the concrete cold through the seat of his jeans. "I'm sorry. I'm just not... I'm new to this whole - dad thing, okay?"
"Yeah, well, so am I." Jamie fiddled with something under the edge of the sleeves around his left wrist. Concentrating on that so he wouldn't have to look at Dean. "She told me she knew who you were but she wasn't going to tell me. She said... She said you were probably too busy to want to see me and... She said you knew she was kitsune."
Dean gaped at Jamie for a moment and then looked away - out across the scrubby median where plastic bags and fast-food cups had drifted amongst the tufts of winter-pale grass and ratty bushes. "Wow, okay... Um, yeah, I knew - what she was. I mean...I've spent most of my life learning about the supernatural, you know?"
"And killing it," Jamie said, and Dean cracked a crooked little smile.
"Yeah, killing it. Some of it. The bad ones. Some of 'em... Some of 'em we leave alone, Jamie. Your mom was one we left alone. I found out what she was when we were... I mean, right in the middle of -" Dean snapped his mouth shut at the look of horrified amusement on Jamie's face. "Ah, c'mon, man - help me out, here!"
"She's only told me the 'how you were conceived' story about a thousand times."
Now it was Dean's turn to look horrified. "Jesus...Christ. Are you kidding me? She told you -?"
Jamie grinned, sniffing hard. "Oh man, your face! Dude, I blocked it all out."
"Thank God. You little jerk," Dean added, and kicked Jamie's sneakered foot.
"Yeah, well. She told me that sometimes a kitsune slips up and the people they're with find out. And she said your family knew stuff, so... You knew."
"Yeah. I did. But I didn't know she got pregnant. We moved about two weeks after - uh -" Dean scrunched his fists down a little further into his pockets and waved his elbows, and Jamie snickered. "So I didn't know. I gave her my address, though. I mean - one of 'em. We've got five or six P.O. boxes we use all the time."
"I know." Jamie dug down into the pocket on the side of his duffle and pulled out his wallet - extracted a limp, fuzzy-edged piece of paper from the inner fold. "She gave me this. I was...I was gonna write you some time."
Dean took the offered paper and carefully unfolded it. Plain notebook paper, coming apart at the folds. Inside, his fifteen-year-old handwriting in faded ballpoint pen. And the little heart he'd tacked on, the sight of which made him flush to the tips of his ears. "Huh. Look at that." Dean touched the heart - looked up and away, huffing a little. "Surprised she kept it."
"She kept this, too." Jamie held out his left arm, tugging his sleeves up. There was a silver I.D. bracelet around Jamie's thin, tanned wrist and Dean reached out and turned the name-plate over. Rubbed his thumb over the worn lettering engraved there. He could feel Jamie's heart beat against his fingertips and after a moment he let go - offered the paper back and watched Jamie tuck it and his wallet away.
"Look, Jamie..." Dean leaned his elbows on his knees, hands laced together. Watching a paper-dry leaf scrape erratically across the pavement by his boots. "I'm sorry I wasn't around. I don't... I can't say I'd have been the best dad ever 'cause - I was just a kid, you know? And things were kinda...crazy. Hell, they still are." Dean glanced up at the boy - watched Jamie fiddle with the I.D. bracelet for a moment and then shove it back under his sleeves. "And I can't promise I'll be a great dad, you know? I mean - I pretty much raised Sammy but...well, you saw how he turned out."
Jamie snorted, raising a faint grin - glancing over at Dean for a moment before looking down again. "He's not so bad."
"You think?" Dean grinned - pushed his hand back through his hair, straightening up. "I guess what I'm trying to say is... I want you to stay, okay? I just... I want to get to know you. You're...family. My family. You're my son and... I want that."
Jamie kicked at a piece of gravel - took a deep breath and straightened up himself, shaking his hair back out of his eyes. "You don't just...feel sorry for me?"
"Hell, no! What's to feel sorry for? You've got my good looks goin' for ya, and an even chance of having Sam's brains. I'd say you're one lucky bastard."
Jamie actually laughed that time - shaky laugh that Dean joined him in. He finally turned and looked Dean right in the eye, his expression hopeful, almost...yearning. "So you'll teach me - everything? Take me with you?"
"Leave no man behind - that's the Winchester way."
"Winchester. James Winchester." Jamie seemed to be tasting the name on his tongue - listening to how the two fit together. "I like that."
"Me, too." Dean was smiling and he stood up abruptly, clearing his throat. Lifting his hand to rub it once, briskly, over his face and blinking hard. Not all teary-eyed and lump-in-the-throat. Not at all. "C'mon, let's go get some breakfast. I'm starving."
"Yeah, okay. Dad." Jamie stood up and picked up his duffle - didn't miss the blinding grin that flashed across Dean's face. "You're gonna change first, though, right? 'Cause those jeans -"
"What?" Dean looked down, puzzled, and then he started laughing. A slightly hysterical laugh, and who could blame him? He'd gained a son and become a dad in twenty-four hours. "I guess I grabbed Sam's by mistake." Dean lifted a foot and wiggled it, snorting at the way the extra inches of denim sagged under the heel of his boot.
"You're getting the hems all dirty," Jamie observed, and Dean slung an arm around the boy's shoulders, giving them a little squeeze.
"It's his turn to do laundry, anyway. I vote Waffle House - what'cha think?"
"Waffle House is good."
"All right. Sam hates Waffle House, but it's two to one - he can't argue with that."
"I'll bet he can, actually," Jamie mused, and Dean had to agree.
Timestamp: Billion Dollar Babies.