Generations Lost In Space (1/?)
Title: Generations Lost In Space
Rating: PG
Characters: Dean, John, Sam (more later)
Spoilers: None
Word Count: ~2500 this chapter
Summary: Before 1965, there wasn't much more to Dean Winchester than apple pie life in Lawrence. Until his dad's funeral, when things started to change hard and fast, starting with an awfully uninviting postcard from his good old Uncle Sam.
Disclaimer: Usin these characters, usin them for my own personal creative gain! Trouble is, they don't belong to me, they belong to the guys down at the CW.
At 10 AM, on February 15 1965, John Lennon finally passed his driving test in his home town of Weybridge. He was a notoriously bad driver, and actually got behind the wheel rarely, even after getting his license. Later that day, the nation of Canada officially announced it’s retire of the Union Jack in Ottawa ceremonies, adopting the red-and-white maple leaf design used to symbolize its true independence from the British. And even later that day, so late that the line between February 15 and 16 was blurred by midnight prowls and sleepless nights, Nat King Cole died of lung cancer, a regular smoker on grounds that it improved his singing voice. But before Nat King Cole, before Canada, and before John Lennon, Dean Winchester got to have the most important moment of his life, the most important moment of many people’s lives-and not because of death or life or change-but because of a single piece of paper in the mail on a bitter February morning in Kansas.
Dean Winchester had turned 18 long ago, filled his draft information long ago. It was a proud moment for him (at the time). His father told him it was the right thing to do, that it made him a man. His father would know; his father was a good man (a great man). John Winchester raised Dean Winchester and his brother after their mother died, even despite his active military position; that didn’t make growing up in every town, military base and Bumfuck County in the United States any easier, not on him or his brother or his dad. John Winchester would never have admitted to a drinking problem, but he certainly did have one. He never hit Dean or his brother, but he wasn’t the nicest dad in the US Army either. Dean tried not to think about it, because when he did, he figured he wasn’t too different and that terrified him more than he’d let on. John Winchester raised Dean Winchester and his brother after their mother died, raised them as best he could for a military man. Dean Winchester would like to think that he turned out alright. But seeing his father’s coffin-sans one father-just two years ago was a lot for Dean to handle, maybe even too much to handle if he was being candid with himself.
The sound of silence hung heavy in the air, creating an impermeable barrier between the Rest of the World and the Winchesters. As a rule, they’d never made friends with the neighbors they found during their father’s mish-mash of army life and child rearing. It was a hard environment to grow up in, but nobody had to say anything about it-all their lives, they’d known that was true. At his funeral, Captain Singer showed up, an old time friend of John’s. He seemed to be a good man, he had wrinkles around his eyes, from smiling or screaming Dean couldn’t tell. Dean smiled and shook his hand like a good boy, years of emotional masking paying their dues today. The day his father’s coffin - sans his father-was buried in the ground.
Nobody knew if John Winchester was alive or dead for sure; only the Vietcong could tell Dean that. He wasn’t keen on asking, though, and hoped he never got close enough to find out. But John Winchester had been missing in action for more than six months, and a family of hopefuls the Winchesters were not. The military wouldn’t call him dead, and his mother wasn’t there to arrange the service. Dean did it all himself, took the journal they found in a Vietnam foxhole and called up all the people inside. He didn’t feel right handling his father’s journal, a collection of all his friends, enemies and memories in coffee-stained pages that smelled like his dad (and gunpowder).
Dean hated the Army after that. His dad’s career had gotten in the way of him and Dean, of raising a son, of letting him live like the rest of the Nuclear Generation-it had gotten in the way of his father and taken his father away from him when he needed him most, sent him to the asscrack of Asia and left him to die, where he did just that. Following orders like a good soldier, Dean figured. Dean hated the Army on the day his father’s coffin - sans his father - was six feet under.
The service was nice, for a service about God and heaven above. Dean didn’t think those things were around. He didn’t have much faith in a God that would let the world turn out the way this one had. Kennedy was dead, students were screaming in the streets, decent homegrown Americans were dying in Vietnam and his dad - his dad’s coffin minus one dad - was dead, buried, under foot. Dean Winchester didn’t want to believe in a God if God could only make something like this. He was exiting the cemetery-not Arlington, because John Winchester didn’t want to be buried with those Serviceable Men-when it happened. Dean Winchester didn’t want to cry. He was twenty nine years old; he did not need to cry. Crying was for the people who had someone to comfort them. He leaned against his father’s 1957 Chevy (no, Dean’s 1957 Chevy, a voice told him in the back of his mind) and bawled like he was ten and dad was sending him home after breaking another model aircraft carrier in his private office, like there was someone there to tell him it was okay. Nobody came for Dean Winchester that day.
The Car was Dean’s favorite memory of his father. It was black, sleek and slender like a Kansas City girl and built powerful like a Chicago woman. She was a 1957 Chevy Bel Air, bought used and fixed up new. For Dean, she was everything he needed. He treated her well, let her roar on the new, big streets and held her back for admiration on country roads. Through thick and thin, there was always Dean and the Bel Air. Dean was no family man, but he had his baby, and his baby had him. The Car was Dean’s best friend, his wife and lover, his sole trust and agent of sincerity; it was his favorite memory of his father. Dean loved his car. He stood against her for what seemed like ages that day, bright sun and oak trees seemingly taunting him-but not the Chevy. She stood black and imposing like a visage of the Grim Reaper himself against the bright spring day. Dean was grateful. Finally, with a final sigh of half-hearted stability and a clearing of his weary throat, Dean Winchester climbed inside his father’s-no, just his 1957 Chevy Bel Air and knew what he was going to do next for the first time in what seemed like eternity.
The next morning was a difficult one. Sunshine, still so bright and aggressive to Dean’s sour mood, scorched into his eyelids as he slowly blinked himself into the physical world of 1965. Dean had a headache, his eyes were bleary and his nose was thick with swelling. Dean wasn’t hung-over, he had stayed dry in respects for dear old dad (which was probably ironic, but Dean Winchester didn’t know what irony was with a high school diploma and not much else). Dean Winchester would never cry again, he decided with an adamant groan of displeasure. He didn’t feel better, and his father was still dead. None of his big “feelings” problems were solved, and now he felt like he’d downed a bottle of Jack Daniels during flu season. Outside, chatty Midwesterners smiled at one another like the world hadn’t changed immeasurably as of yesterday, like everything was still okay. Dean lived in Lawrence. Here, he worked as a mechanic, which was satisfactory. Nothing special, but nobody ever expected him to be that. Dean wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t giving the gun in his closet hungry eyes either. He lived in a small duplex, which was cheap enough that he didn’t practice noose tying every month, but it was decidedly suburban in a way Dean couldn’t stand. He was restless, and he didn’t realize it until yesterday. Dean missed escapades through Leavenworth; he missed watching his father polish guns in motel rooms. At the same time, though, he felt safe. Dean didn’t feel safe when he was young; he felt alone and lost in a world full of swift swimming self-confident suburbanites. So he became a suburbanite, and learned how much he hated being so close to the same people every day. Dean didn’t want neighbors. He just wanted to belong.
With a sluggish backwash of the day’s events through his mind, Dean realized that today was special. Today, Dean Winchester knew what he was going to do for the first time in eternity. He was going to deal with his own problems like his father would have wanted. He eyed the driveway as if warning the car nestled comfortably on the cement to get ready for something important. Padding into the kitchen, he winced at the cold linoleum on his feet. Linoleum was the devil’s material, it was cold and sticky and plastic like everything else in his oh-so-perfect kitchen with its microwave oven and refrigerator, new necessities of the everyday life. It was disgustingly dependant. Dean growled at his refrigerator, glowering at plastic wrapped American cheese and bottles of cheap beer. He pulled the cheese out and shoved it in-between two slices of bread; the cheese sandwich was a true classic. Eating was simultaneously unbearable and apathy-soaked. He tasted very little, and what he did taste was disgusting in new and creative ways. Gnawing on what he may have called a sandwich, Dean put coffee on to brew, the bitter smell slicing the dull air in a painfully distinct way. He grimaced, but swallowed dutifully, knowing that a man had to be well fed for the first day of something so important, something like what he was going to do. He sniffed, cleared his throat, and spit into the sink. He didn’t rinse it out. It was a good way to start the rest of his life, or as good as he could make it, he figured.
Three hours into a drive to California, Dean wished he’d brewed more coffee than one pot. He was tired, lethargic from years of laziness. He wasn’t used to road trips, not anymore. He had given that shtick up when his brother gave their dad the middle finger and paved his own path made of good intentions to the same destination they were all headed. Now, as Dean drove down Eisenhower’s God-given gift to the American people, he couldn’t help but feel somewhat regretful. He felt guilty for not returning his brother’s letters, for not inviting him to Dad’s funeral. As Dean slid down the hot asphalt and remembered the way he had screamed himself hoarse that night in dad’s name, he let the guilt pull off him like tacky glue and stick to the road behind him. There was no time for that, he reasoned. Not when Dean had already come so far. The road’s quiet hum sang siren songs to him, sweetly soothing him into the cradle of the highway, the breast of Americana. Dean curled up, took it in stride, and drove for seven hours without stopping, without knowing how long it had been until he pulled to a gas station in Denver and saw the local time.
He’d driven so far, and the black lick of tar on the landscape still slithered on, a snake of modern innovation that signaled either the unification of the world or the end of travel as an enterprise (even Dean wasn’t sure which). When he stopped at the rest stop, he didn’t spend too much time. He felt groggy, like he had been shook awake instead of awake all day. The sun was deep in the sky, drooping like the clouds and like Dean’s consciousness. Hot, heavy air smoldered around him as he stepped outside the Bel Air and drug himself inside the small convenience store. It was rusty, dusty and caked with old dirt in the corners. The man behind the counter was bald, slouched and staring at Dean with lackluster vigilance. Dean didn’t worry, had no reason to. He just bought more coffee and something to eat and settled back into the nest of industrial infantry he had become so accustomed to in such a relatively short time. It would take two days to get to California, he had guessed from the maps and from previous experience.
Two days on the road wasn’t long enough, as far as Dean was concerned. He inhaled deeply, sinking his lungs into the heavy aroma of gasoline and cigarettes. From behind him, he heard a grizzly older man clear his throat and hack half his blackened lung up from his chest. A woman in her sixties wearing a too short too tight dress stomped across the parking lot, click-clacking in dirty red high heels, a metronome to the soundtrack of grunge and filth that these rest stops and highway circus tents embraced so thoroughly. If the Chevy was his wife, the road was the father he should have had, and the man who would raise him from here on out, Dean decided (maybe not forthright, but subconsciously) to treat him with the same reverent respect he gave John. People told him that even after you die, you live on in the world around you. If that was true, Dean thought that John would live in the wide open road, in the routes and interstates and Chevy Bel Airs, his thick skin turned to thick roads, sad eyes turned to sad skies. He sat in the soft seats of the Chevy, let the smell infiltrate his body, and knew that this was where he belonged. This was where his home was now. And he wasn’t even in California, yet.