fic: contusio varians, 4 -- SPN
and now for something a little different. Namely, Dean POV. I'm not sure this will stay as part of the series, but it fits in my head right now.
this one's got a warning: strong suicidal ideation
contusio varians: a bruise which waxes and wanes according to an unknown cycle
-4-
Dean has nothing but time trapped in his own head on the drive from Sioux Falls to Cicero.
He spends the first 200 miles considering the impact the Impala would make if, say, it was to spin out of control going 90 and slam into a tree, or maybe one of those concrete overpasses. The crunch and grind and squeal of metal and glass. An overpass would be better -- he’s never quite looked at big trees the same since Anna. He has no memory of the first time the Impala was totalled and anyhow he’d been in the back seat then and they’d been T-boned, so it wouldn’t be the same. When he tries to picture it the closest he can come is the windows exploding in that shack of a convenience store in Pontiac, and when he tries to push further, to extrapolate the details, all he can see is the ragged hole beat through the steel of the Impala’s trunk in Bobby’s junkyard.
He can’t do that to her again.
Standing next to a gas pump outside of Cedar Rapids he loses track of things for awhile, hypnotized by the semis whooshing past on the interstate. He leaves the Impala safely behind, keys still in the ignition, and skids down the shallow ditch adjacent to the parking lot. Clambers back up the dry grass of the incline on the other side and stands there at the edge of the patched blacktop. Watches the unending stream of cars until he picks his moment and takes a step, just the one. And then he sees the eyes of the driver of the truck that would have hit him and his hand jerks against the gas pump nozzle, gasoline leaking over the toes of his boots when he pulls it free of the Impala.
He very carefully doesn’t think of anything at all until he stops for the night on the border between Iowa and Illinois.
Without the distraction of watching the road, of keeping the Impala between the lines, things start creeping back in. He lasts about twenty minutes alone in the shitty room with the single queen before grabbing his coat and hoofing it along the shoulder of the county road he’d found the motel on, the dirty yellow glow of the Davenport Municipal Airport haunting his peripheral vision. Walks for miles, past dark shuttered farm houses set back from the road and the scraggly tree lines between fields, past a barn in slow-motion collapse and an abandoned garage with jagged open mouths instead of windows.
Doesn’t think about what he’ll do if he doesn’t find anything more. Keep on till morning and then turn around, maybe. See how far his feet take him, see how far it’s physically possible to walk without stopping. He’s saved from the prospect by the neon glare of a Bud Light sign hanging over the gravel drive to the local watering hole.
Every eye in the place follows him from the door to the bar. It’s almost comforting how familiar this is, the predictability of it. Intruding on what’s more a communal living room than anything else. At least he won’t be tempted to get too comfortable.
He’s two beers and a shot of Jack in when someone pulls out the barstool next to him and plops themselves down, thigh brushing his. At first he ignores it, doesn’t even try to catch his unwanted companion out of the corner of his eye. Fixates on the coaster in front of him, left over from a Cinco de Mayo promotion, and watches fat drops of condensation from his bottle soak into the paperboard. A woman’s voice asks the bartender for a Sam Adams, and he knows that voice, it’s practically right there in his ear, and fucking hell.
“What do you want?” he spits out, eyes on the slightly misprinted pinata in the center of the coaster as he lifts his beer, drains it.
“Thought you were going to Indiana,” Tessa says.
This time her dark hair is tied back in a long sleek ponytail and she’s wearing a black leather bomber jacket and scuffed up jeans, like some kind of biker. She thanks the bartender for the beer and Dean turns his head just slightly, curious to see if she’ll actually drink it.
“You got a hog outside?” he pushes.
“Why, you want a ride back to your car?”
“Jesus, Tessa.” He can’t keep up the pretense. “Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone?”
Tessa puts on one of her solemn smiles, the kind that seems weighed down by a distant sort of sadness. “What do you want, Dean?”
“That’s a stupid question,” he says.
“Maybe you’re right.” She takes a pull on her beer.
Dean doesn’t have to try to catch the bartender’s eye. He gives up on beer and orders a scotch, neat.
“Thanks for all your help with the devil, by the way,” he say after the bartender retreats to the other side of the bar. “I know I said you didn’t owe us anything when we saved your ass from Alastair, but I really appreciated it.”
The bottle clicks against her teeth before she sets it down. “Sarcasm. It’s not a good look on you.”
“Find a different bar then. I was here first.” He’s just... tired. The scotch is cheap swill. Burns his throat, churns up his stomach, and oh yeah, he didn’t eat anything today.
Tessa isn’t smiling anymore. She’s got that awful compassion going on now, which he vaguely recalls from those retroactive memories of the first time they met, before -- before everything. She won’t stop looking at him and he can’t seem to break eye contact like he wants to, like he’s desperate to do.
He gives in, breaks first, like she probably knew he would. “What?”
“Where do you think reapers come from, Dean?” She says it like he should already know, like it’s an everyday kind of thing to chew the fat over in some shitty podunk bar.
Dean tosses back the rest of his scotch and starts to get up, digging in his pocket for his wad of cash.
“Dean, wait--”
He finds a couple of twenties, figures it’s gotta be enough to cover the shit he drank. When she grabs his arm he doesn’t shake her off, just ignores her while he pins the money under his empty scotch glass, and after a beat she lets go.
“You need to think about what you’re doing,” Tessa says. “Where you’re going.”
“I’m going to Indiana,” he answers, but he can’t meet her eyes anymore.
Her voice though, her voice is enough. It cuts through everything he’s refused to look at straight on since Stull, so quick and sharp he barely feels it. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I am.” Has no idea if he means it, just wants to be gone, or wants her gone. One of them out of here, before -- before he doesn’t know what. “Why are you here, Tessa?”
“I’ve been doing this a long time.” She shifts on the stool, takes another swig of beer. “Are you going to sit back down?”
“No,” Dean says.
It occurs to him that maybe he should be drawing attention by now, just standing there like a moron, arguing with a pretty girl, but no one in the place is paying them any mind. Tessa’s eyes crinkle up with the barest hint of amusement but she doesn’t comment.
“This job? I can’t quit. I can’t get fired. I’m stuck with it.” She tilts her head, studying him, back to serious, always so damn serious.
“Boo hoo,” Dean mutters. Why is he still here? The bartender has noticed the cash, at least, whisks it and the dirty glass and the bottles away. Doesn’t bother to bring back any change.
“My point,” Tessa says, with the kind of infinite patience that somehow creeps under Dean’s skin, “is that you still have a choice.”
That forces a laugh out of him, one that hurts coming up, scrapes all along his scotch-burned throat.
“I know it doesn’t feel like it now--”
Dean presses his fingers into his eye sockets hard, hoping she’ll be gone when he can see again. Not that he has that kind of luck.
“Goodnight, Tessa,” he says. This time when he moves to leave, she doesn’t try to stop him.
When he gets to the door he can’t help but glance back into the dim cavern of the bar. There’s an empty Sam Adams bottle sitting on the wood counter, but all the stools are empty. What a surprise.
It’s like he’s skipped over the buzz and gone straight to the hangover, which makes the trudge back through the dark to the motel seem twice as long as the trip out. He knows he should be hungry, but he’s not. Knows he should get some sleep but that’s not likely either. He’s got another 300 miles to go until Cicero and it feels like the other side of the world.
When he thinks about Lisa and Ben he starts to lose all nerve so he focuses on the front door of the house, what he remembers of the porch. The street address, a dot on the map. Because if he doesn’t go to Cicero he doesn’t know where he’ll end up, and somehow that feels more immediate, more overwhelming, than following the interstates and the back roads between Davenport and some little town he hardly knows in Indiana.
If there’s one thing he can do without thinking too hard, it’s drive. So that’s what he’ll do.
-5-
this one's got a warning: strong suicidal ideation
contusio varians: a bruise which waxes and wanes according to an unknown cycle
-4-
Dean has nothing but time trapped in his own head on the drive from Sioux Falls to Cicero.
He spends the first 200 miles considering the impact the Impala would make if, say, it was to spin out of control going 90 and slam into a tree, or maybe one of those concrete overpasses. The crunch and grind and squeal of metal and glass. An overpass would be better -- he’s never quite looked at big trees the same since Anna. He has no memory of the first time the Impala was totalled and anyhow he’d been in the back seat then and they’d been T-boned, so it wouldn’t be the same. When he tries to picture it the closest he can come is the windows exploding in that shack of a convenience store in Pontiac, and when he tries to push further, to extrapolate the details, all he can see is the ragged hole beat through the steel of the Impala’s trunk in Bobby’s junkyard.
He can’t do that to her again.
Standing next to a gas pump outside of Cedar Rapids he loses track of things for awhile, hypnotized by the semis whooshing past on the interstate. He leaves the Impala safely behind, keys still in the ignition, and skids down the shallow ditch adjacent to the parking lot. Clambers back up the dry grass of the incline on the other side and stands there at the edge of the patched blacktop. Watches the unending stream of cars until he picks his moment and takes a step, just the one. And then he sees the eyes of the driver of the truck that would have hit him and his hand jerks against the gas pump nozzle, gasoline leaking over the toes of his boots when he pulls it free of the Impala.
He very carefully doesn’t think of anything at all until he stops for the night on the border between Iowa and Illinois.
Without the distraction of watching the road, of keeping the Impala between the lines, things start creeping back in. He lasts about twenty minutes alone in the shitty room with the single queen before grabbing his coat and hoofing it along the shoulder of the county road he’d found the motel on, the dirty yellow glow of the Davenport Municipal Airport haunting his peripheral vision. Walks for miles, past dark shuttered farm houses set back from the road and the scraggly tree lines between fields, past a barn in slow-motion collapse and an abandoned garage with jagged open mouths instead of windows.
Doesn’t think about what he’ll do if he doesn’t find anything more. Keep on till morning and then turn around, maybe. See how far his feet take him, see how far it’s physically possible to walk without stopping. He’s saved from the prospect by the neon glare of a Bud Light sign hanging over the gravel drive to the local watering hole.
Every eye in the place follows him from the door to the bar. It’s almost comforting how familiar this is, the predictability of it. Intruding on what’s more a communal living room than anything else. At least he won’t be tempted to get too comfortable.
He’s two beers and a shot of Jack in when someone pulls out the barstool next to him and plops themselves down, thigh brushing his. At first he ignores it, doesn’t even try to catch his unwanted companion out of the corner of his eye. Fixates on the coaster in front of him, left over from a Cinco de Mayo promotion, and watches fat drops of condensation from his bottle soak into the paperboard. A woman’s voice asks the bartender for a Sam Adams, and he knows that voice, it’s practically right there in his ear, and fucking hell.
“What do you want?” he spits out, eyes on the slightly misprinted pinata in the center of the coaster as he lifts his beer, drains it.
“Thought you were going to Indiana,” Tessa says.
This time her dark hair is tied back in a long sleek ponytail and she’s wearing a black leather bomber jacket and scuffed up jeans, like some kind of biker. She thanks the bartender for the beer and Dean turns his head just slightly, curious to see if she’ll actually drink it.
“You got a hog outside?” he pushes.
“Why, you want a ride back to your car?”
“Jesus, Tessa.” He can’t keep up the pretense. “Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone?”
Tessa puts on one of her solemn smiles, the kind that seems weighed down by a distant sort of sadness. “What do you want, Dean?”
“That’s a stupid question,” he says.
“Maybe you’re right.” She takes a pull on her beer.
Dean doesn’t have to try to catch the bartender’s eye. He gives up on beer and orders a scotch, neat.
“Thanks for all your help with the devil, by the way,” he say after the bartender retreats to the other side of the bar. “I know I said you didn’t owe us anything when we saved your ass from Alastair, but I really appreciated it.”
The bottle clicks against her teeth before she sets it down. “Sarcasm. It’s not a good look on you.”
“Find a different bar then. I was here first.” He’s just... tired. The scotch is cheap swill. Burns his throat, churns up his stomach, and oh yeah, he didn’t eat anything today.
Tessa isn’t smiling anymore. She’s got that awful compassion going on now, which he vaguely recalls from those retroactive memories of the first time they met, before -- before everything. She won’t stop looking at him and he can’t seem to break eye contact like he wants to, like he’s desperate to do.
He gives in, breaks first, like she probably knew he would. “What?”
“Where do you think reapers come from, Dean?” She says it like he should already know, like it’s an everyday kind of thing to chew the fat over in some shitty podunk bar.
Dean tosses back the rest of his scotch and starts to get up, digging in his pocket for his wad of cash.
“Dean, wait--”
He finds a couple of twenties, figures it’s gotta be enough to cover the shit he drank. When she grabs his arm he doesn’t shake her off, just ignores her while he pins the money under his empty scotch glass, and after a beat she lets go.
“You need to think about what you’re doing,” Tessa says. “Where you’re going.”
“I’m going to Indiana,” he answers, but he can’t meet her eyes anymore.
Her voice though, her voice is enough. It cuts through everything he’s refused to look at straight on since Stull, so quick and sharp he barely feels it. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I am.” Has no idea if he means it, just wants to be gone, or wants her gone. One of them out of here, before -- before he doesn’t know what. “Why are you here, Tessa?”
“I’ve been doing this a long time.” She shifts on the stool, takes another swig of beer. “Are you going to sit back down?”
“No,” Dean says.
It occurs to him that maybe he should be drawing attention by now, just standing there like a moron, arguing with a pretty girl, but no one in the place is paying them any mind. Tessa’s eyes crinkle up with the barest hint of amusement but she doesn’t comment.
“This job? I can’t quit. I can’t get fired. I’m stuck with it.” She tilts her head, studying him, back to serious, always so damn serious.
“Boo hoo,” Dean mutters. Why is he still here? The bartender has noticed the cash, at least, whisks it and the dirty glass and the bottles away. Doesn’t bother to bring back any change.
“My point,” Tessa says, with the kind of infinite patience that somehow creeps under Dean’s skin, “is that you still have a choice.”
That forces a laugh out of him, one that hurts coming up, scrapes all along his scotch-burned throat.
“I know it doesn’t feel like it now--”
Dean presses his fingers into his eye sockets hard, hoping she’ll be gone when he can see again. Not that he has that kind of luck.
“Goodnight, Tessa,” he says. This time when he moves to leave, she doesn’t try to stop him.
When he gets to the door he can’t help but glance back into the dim cavern of the bar. There’s an empty Sam Adams bottle sitting on the wood counter, but all the stools are empty. What a surprise.
It’s like he’s skipped over the buzz and gone straight to the hangover, which makes the trudge back through the dark to the motel seem twice as long as the trip out. He knows he should be hungry, but he’s not. Knows he should get some sleep but that’s not likely either. He’s got another 300 miles to go until Cicero and it feels like the other side of the world.
When he thinks about Lisa and Ben he starts to lose all nerve so he focuses on the front door of the house, what he remembers of the porch. The street address, a dot on the map. Because if he doesn’t go to Cicero he doesn’t know where he’ll end up, and somehow that feels more immediate, more overwhelming, than following the interstates and the back roads between Davenport and some little town he hardly knows in Indiana.
If there’s one thing he can do without thinking too hard, it’s drive. So that’s what he’ll do.
-5-