SPN Fic: The Sign (Gen, Pre-series, R)
Here something that's been knocking at my brain, so before I go insane, I hold my pillow to my head, and spring up in my bed, screaming out those words I dread ...
OMG, I'm having a Keith Partridge moment.
*eyes roll back, head begins to turn a full 180 degrees, split pea soup*
Okay, I'm better now. This is for my paranormal chart challenge. Or more accurately, it's just cause I wanted to write Jim and Dean and Jim and John again. And that seemed like as good an excuse as any.
Title: The Sign
Author: dodger_winslow
Challenge: Paranormal 25 Chart
My Prompt: #24, Writer's Choice: Omen
Genre: Gen, pre-series
Word Count: 8,200
Rating: R (for language, just to be safe)
Pairings: None
Spoilers: Up to In My Time of Dying
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.
Summary: Jim was awake suddenly. Coldly, frighteningly awake. He opened his eyes, sat up in bed. "Dean? What is it? Is your dad okay?"
The Sign
The phone woke him, ringing, the insistent jangle of it jarring his bones in the dark as it pulled him out of a deep, dreamless sleep and threw him back into the world. Jim groaned. He rolled over, tried to ignore it.
But the damned thing wouldn’t quit ringing.
Fuck.
He reached out with one hand, fumbling through the collection of crap on his bedside table until he found the receiver. He dropped it twice before he finally got it to his ear.
"What?"
It was a grunt as much as it was an actual word, but he was too damned tired to care how as much might sound to one of his faithful parishioners, or to some drunk jackass who couldn’t muster the manual dexterity required to hit the right buttons in the right sequence to reach whatever phone number he was trying to dial. There was a part of him - the part that was still more ex-Marine than devoted servant of God - that almost hoped whoever it was would take umbrage to the overt antagonism of his tone and just hang the fuck up.
No such luck.
"Pastor Jim?" a tentative voice inquired.
Jim was awake suddenly. Coldly, frighteningly awake. He opened his eyes, sat up in bed. "Dean? What is it? Is your dad okay?"
"Yeah. He’s fine. Were you asleep?"
The knot in Jim’s neck relaxed in a long, slow exhale as he glanced over to the bedside clock. Two thirty seven am. "No," he lied, scrubbing one hand across his eyes. "I was working on my sermon for next Sunday. What’s up?"
"Nothing."
Jim swung both legs over the side of the bed. The floor was chill against the bottoms of his bare feet. "Nothing, huh? Pretty odd time of the night to call for nothing. Don’t you have school tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
Jim blinked repeatedly, forcing his eyes to a quicker adjustment in the texture of the dark. He stretched his back, then his shoulders; popped his neck to the left, then the right.
"It’s okay I called this late, isn’t it?" Dean asked after a beat.
"Sure," Jim said. "You can call me anytime. You know that."
"Yeah. I figured."
Jim waited for Dean to offer a subject for discussion. When he didn’t, Jim asked, "So … anything in particular you’d like to talk about?"
"No. Not really."
"Good. You can be my guinea pig, then. I was looking for someone to try my sermon out on. Always best to make a dry run just to see how it flies."
"What’s it about?" Dean asked.
Jim frowned. Well, he didn’t expect that. The guinea pig threat usually worked on anyone under twenty. Hell, it worked on most people over twenty, too. But then again, he reminded himself, Dean wasn’t most people any more than his dad was.
"I was thinking lust would be a good topic," Jim said. "What do you think? Will it hold their attention?"
"Would probably hold mine," Dean said.
"Figured it would. You’re getting to be about that age."
Jim could hear the grin in Dean’s voice when he said, "I’m kind of past that age, Pastor Jim."
"Really? Thirteen seems a little young to be past the age of caring about lust; but okay, if you say so."
Dean laughed. It was a good sound. "Past the age of needing to be preached to about it," he clarified.
"Aaaaah." Jim pushed to his feet, stretched again. "Okay. I see how it is. So is that why you called? To talk about lust?"
"Sure. Why not. Got any good stories?"
This time it was Jim who laughed. The kid was quick. He was so damned quick sometimes it was scary. "I’ve got some great stories," Jim assured him. "But if I told you, then I’d have to kill you."
"Sounds fair. Lay one on me."
"Only if you promise not to tell your dad where you heard it."
"Ha," Dean said. "You must have me confused with Sammy."
Jim smiled. Sam couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it. Quite to the opposite end of the scale, Dean could keep a secret forever, from anyone. Anyone except his dad or Sammy.
"What?" Jim asked. "You telling me Sammy narcs you out to the old man? I find that hard to believe."
"Not narcing so much as just blabbing. You know him. He talks before he thinks sometimes."
"Yeah. Don’t know where he might have gotten that from."
Dean hesitated. "I don’t do that, do I?"
"I wasn’t talking about you, Dean. I was talking about your dad."
"Oh." Dean’s tone changed marginally, shifting from hesitant to a little defensive. "Yeah. I guess."
Jim sighed, scratched at the back of his neck. John Winchester was the poster child of opening his mouth and shoving his foot half way down his throat by saying whatever the hell he wanted to say without ever considering who might take offense. Or maybe the more accurate assessment was without ever giving a damn who might take offense.
But even so - even knowing that about John as well as Jim did - Dean didn’t like hearing it. He didn’t like hearing anything he perceived as negative on the subject of his dad. He’d take any criticism Jim offered to heart if it was about him. Or even about Sammy. But if it was about John, forget it. He got defensive every damn time.
"Okay, good story, huh? I ever tell you the one about that bar in Wisconsin?" Jim asked.
"Yup."
"I did? All right … the diner in Tuscaloosa, then."
"Heard it."
"Huh. Well shit. Let’s see …
"There’s the one in South Dakota," Dean suggested.
"Which one? Deadwood or Sioux City?"
"Both."
"Let me guess … you’ve heard them."
"Yup. The Deadwood one’s good though. I wouldn’t mind hearing it again."
"Nah, let’s find one you haven’t heard. I know: Brazil. I’ll bet you’ve never heard the one about Brazil. Rio de Janeiro. Great city. You’ll love this one."
"Dad’s never been to Brazil," Dean said.
That put Jim back a step. Of all the stories he’d mentioned, Rio was the only place John actually had been. Or at least, the only one he’d been to with Jim. He’d spent some time in South Dakota with Bobby, but knowing Bobby, whatever stories might have come out of that trip had more to do with drinking than they did with lust. "Sure he has," Jim said after a beat. "I was there. I remember it distinctly."
"No, he hasn’t," Dean insisted. "Sammy was doing a report on South America last week, and he asked Dad if he’d ever been to Brazil. Dad said no, but he heard it was hot as hel-heck, and the women didn’t wear many clothes, if that helped. Which it didn’t as far as Sammy was concerned because he was looking for their major export, not a weather report. But I remember it because of the not many clothes part."
Jim chuckled. "I’ll bet you do," he agreed mildly.
"What … are you saying he was lying?" Dean asked.
"Your father never lies," Jim lied.
"Ha ha. But he doesn’t lie without a reason. What reason would he have to lie to Sammy about being in Brazil?"
Jim could think of three really good reasons right off the top of his head, and that didn’t include anything classified. "I have no idea," he said. "You’re probably right, it must have been some other John Winchester I was thinking about."
"What about Hawaii? He’s been to Hawaii a couple of times. Didn’t you guys go on leave there or something?"
"I don’t know any good stories about Hawaii," Jim lied.
He and John were on leave in Hawaii for over a week almost twenty years ago, but there were some things you didn’t tell a friend’s son until that son was much older and much more experienced on the subject at hand. And his dad was dead. Or at least close enough to the old folks home he wasn’t inclined to kicking ass any longer. Jim was willing to risk Rio. He wasn’t willing to risk Hawaii.
"Why don’t you tell me one about you instead of Dad then?" Dean suggested.
Jim laughed at that. "How stupid do you think I am, boy?" he asked.
"I had a dream," Dean answered.
Jim nodded. Dean was like that. He never gave you much of a warning shot across the bow before he pulled out the big guns. He liked to play misdirect until he was ready to go in for the kill, and then he’d go for the gutshot every time. "About what?" Jim asked as he made his way across the dark room, heading for the small kitchenette that, along with the bed, was pretty much the sum total of the church’s on-site living quarters.
He really should get his own place, but there were some very specific advantages to spending ninety-nine percent of his time on holy ground. Most of them had to do with demons. A few of them had to do with the part of him that was still more ex-Marine than devoted servant of God.
"About It," Dean said quietly.
"It, lust?" Jim asked as he filled a glass with water.
Dean snorted. "Yeah. Right. That’s why I called, Pastor Jim. Because I had a wet dream and wanted to tell you about it."
"Wet dream, huh? Sounds like maybe you’ve got a story or two to share."
"Like I’d tell you if I did," Dean said.
Jim smiled. "How long has it been since your last confession, my son?" he quipped before downing the water in one long draw and setting the empty glass aside.
"You’re not a priest," Dean reminded him.
"Oh yeah. I keep forgetting that." Jim headed for the only chair on this side of the "private" sign on his door. "That whole God thing confuses me sometimes. Reverend, priest, pastor … it’s all very complica- fuck!"
One chair and one table in the whole damn kitchen, and he can’t manage to miss them with his toes.
But it made Dean laugh again. "Whoa, dude," he said. "Mouth."
Hobbling the rest of the way to the chair, Jim groused, "Mouth this, boy. I think I just broke a fucking toe. So tell me about your dream."
The laugh drained from Dean’s tone. "It was bad," he said.
"Sammy? Or your dad?"
"Dad."
Jim nodded. He’d figured as much. It was usually about John when it involved the Demon. When Dean dreamed about Sammy, it almost always involved fire. "Okay. What happened?"
Dean didn’t answer him. Jim waited. When the silence between them went stale, Jim said, "So I was thinking about starting off with the story about that diner, Sunday. Just to grab their interest, you know? Start off hot so I can make my point once I have ’em by the short hairs."
"You don’t set a very good example for young, impressionable minds," Dean said.
"Don’t I? Damn. Gonna have to work on that I guess." So he wasn’t quite ready to talk about it yet. Ready to bring it up, just not ready to talk about it. So they’d talk about something else for a while. "So what do you think about the story? Should I leave out the syrup thing, or is that kind of the whole point if the subject of lecture is lust?"
"Dad said that never really happened," Dean noted.
"How’s he know you know if you didn’t tell him I told you?" Jim returned.
"Sammy must have blabbed," Dean said easily.
"Who told Sammy?"
"I’m going to guess you."
Jim shook his head, grinning. The damn kid was so much like his father sometimes it made Jim fear for the moral virtue of the female population of the contiguous forty-eight states. And Hawaii, too.
"He said you didn’t even know him when he was eighteen," Dean added.
"Details, details. I’m sure something like that happened to your dad at some point in his life."
Actually, the story was based on truth; but instead of syrup, it had been coconut milk. And it hadn’t taken place in Tuscaloosa, or when either one of them was eighteen. And Dean hadn’t heard even half of the details John recounted while they waited out the night in the middle of the desert, damned near freezing their asses off in a way that kept Jim from bleeding out almost as much as John’s hands half inside his gut had. Maybe not even a third of those details. Not even a third of the details Jim remembered, most of which were probably bald-faced lies he realized later.
John was a hell of a liar. Very prolific, and very convincing when he wanted to be.
"I don’t know," Dean said. "He’s not very adventurous on things like that. I’ll bet he never even did it with anybody but Mom."
Jim laughed. "Boy, do you know your dad? Have you ever even met him?"
"He told me once he and Mom never even had sex."
"Really. Then how’d he explain you and Sammy?"
"He tried to sell the whole stork thing. Said it might sound like a load of crap, but there were stranger things in the world, and he’d seen most of them so I should just take him at his word on this one."
"How old were you?"
"I don’t know. Seven. Eight maybe."
"You asked your dad about sex when you were seven?"
"It took his soul," Dean said. "It put him in hell so he’d never see Mom again."
Talking to Dean could be a little bit like being jerked to a dead stop at the end of a leash when you were running as fast and as hard as you could. Jim picked at an imperfection in the tabletop, trying to absorb the change in momentum without showing the disconnect it created as he said, "Okay. What else?"
"Can It do that?" Dean asked.
"Do what? Take his soul?"
"Yeah."
Jim considered his answer before saying anything. With most kids, you could be blindly reassuring. He knew better than to try that with Dean. "Depends, I suppose," he said finally. "Did your dad offer his soul?"
"Yes."
The answer was a whisper. Jim closed his eyes.
"Doesn’t really sound like something John would do," he said after a beat. "Your old man’s reckless, but he’s not stupid. Or at least, not stupid about things like that."
"He made a deal with It," Dean said.
Jim leaned into the table, put his face in his hand. He tried not to sound anything other than casual when he asked, "A deal for what?"
"For me."
"Were you in hell, too?"
Dean didn’t answer.
Jim waited.
"I was dead I think," Dean said finally.
"In your dream?" Jim asked just to remind Dean they weren’t talking about the world in which he lived, but rather the world in which his fears lived.
"Yeah. In my dream. I think the deal was to bring me back from being dead."
"What killed you?"
"I don’t know."
"You should probably know something like that, shouldn’t you?" Jim asked. "I mean, if you’re dead in a dream, and your dad’s going to trade his soul to bring you back to life, you should probably know what killed you, shouldn’t you?"
It wasn’t the kind of reasoning anyone but Dean would follow, but Jim had been counseling this boy long enough on the subject of his father to know the way he thought and the kind of things he’d listen to. He knew what would make sense to Dean, even if it didn’t make sense to anyone else on the planet.
"Yeah," Dean said after a long beat. "I guess."
"So what killed you?"
"Can It do that?" Dean asked rather than answering Jim’s question. "Can It put him in hell where he’d never see Mom again?"
"No," Jim said.
That stopped Dean cold. He said nothing for almost two minutes. Jim let the silence stand uncontested.
"It can’t?" he asked finally.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because it’s just a dream."
Dean considered that. "Okay, but if it wasn’t a dream? If he really made a deal like that, could It put him in hell where he’d never see Mom again?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because it’s just a dream, Dean."
"If it wasn’t a dream, though."
"But it was a dream," Jim said gently. "Wasn’t it?"
Dean hesitated. "Yeah. I guess."
"Then what are you really asking me?"
"I don’t know."
"Are you asking me if your dad would do that?"
"I don’t know," Dean said again.
"Do you want to ask me that?"
"I don’t know."
Jim let thirty seconds pass before he said, "So, stork, huh? And you bought that?"
"No." Dean’s voice was so quiet Jim could barely hear him. "I knew he was lying, I just pretended that I didn’t."
"How’d you know?"
"He wouldn’t, right?"
"Wouldn’t lie to you?"
"Wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t trade. He wouldn’t, right?"
"No, Dean," Jim lied. "He wouldn’t."
"Yes, he would," Dean said almost before the words had finished leaving Jim’s mouth. His voice was hard and inflexible. He sounded twice his age, sounded like a full grown man telling a peer he was full of shit and they both knew it. "If he thought it was the only way, he would."
Jim didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all.
"Right?" Dean prompted after a couple of seconds.
"No," Jim lied again. "I really don’t think he would."
"Do you know my dad? Have you ever even met him?"
Jim held tighter to the phone in his hand, worked harder to keep his voice level when he spoke. "He loves you, Dean. I don’t think he’d do that to you."
"But he’d do that for me, wouldn’t he?"
"He wouldn’t do it to you." Jim lied again.
And this time, Dean believed him. He believed him because Jim was almost as good a liar as his father was. Dean’s voice shifted, became thirteen again. "He wouldn’t?" He was looking for reassurance now rather than verification.
"No. He wouldn’t."
"Because he loves me?"
"Right."
"Because he’d know I wouldn’t want that, right?" Dean’s voice broke. It cracked to small fractures of little boy as he said, "Because I wouldn’t. That would kill me, Pastor Jim. It would kill me."
"He knows that," Jim said.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, Dean. I’m sure."
"Could you tell him anyway?"
"Tell him …?" Jim left the question dangling.
"Tell him I don’t want it. Tell him it would kill me, so he shouldn’t do it, even if he thinks he should." Dean sounded five. He sounded like he did the first time he spoke to Jim after Mary’s murder, looking up at him and saying, "I hate God. I hate Him, and Daddy hates Him, too."
"I can tell him that if you want me to," Jim said.
"I do. If you tell him, maybe he’ll listen."
"You don’t want to tell him yourself?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don’t know. I just don’t."
"You don’t think he’d listen to you?"
"He’d lie to me," Dean said. "He’d say he wouldn’t do it, but he’d be lying. He’d say it, but he wouldn’t mean it. He always does that; says what he thinks I want to hear, then does what he’s going to do anyway. He doesn’t do that to you, does he?"
"Yeah," Jim said quietly. "Sometimes he does."
"Not as much," Dean said. "Not as much as he does it to me." Then, after a long moment, he added, "Right?"
"Does he know you’re having dreams like this?"
"No. Don’t tell him that part, okay? Just tell him not to ever make a deal like that. Tell him not to do it like you tell me things."
"What way is that, Dean?"
"Like you know things," Dean said.
"I do know things," Jim said.
"God things," Dean clarified.
"Oh. God things. Okay."
"You know what I mean."
"No, I’m not sure I do."
"You could tell him you had the dream," Dean said like he already had it all planned out. "You could say it was your dream, and you just want to make sure he wouldn’t do anything that stupid."
"I could do that," Jim agreed. "It would be lying, but I could do it."
"Lying’s okay if you do it for the right reason," Dean told him.
Jim smiled a little. "Really. Who told you that?"
"You did."
"I did? I don’t remember that one."
"You said I could lie with my mouth as long as I didn’t lie with my heart," Dean reminded him.
"When did I tell you that?" Jim asked even though he knew exactly when he’d told Dean that.
"Way back when I said I hated God. You said I could lie like that with my mouth, but I shouldn’t ever say that with my heart."
"I don’t remember you saying that," Jim lied.
"Sure you do. And see? You’re lying right now, so you can lie to Dad. You can tell him it was your dream, instead of mine."
"And that’s what you want me to do?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Now."
"Right now? In the middle of the night?"
"Yeah. You know where he is, don’t you?"
"Yes."
"Then yeah. Call him right now, okay?"
"Why now?"
"In case that’s what he’s doing. In case he’s doing it right now."
The way Dean said it was off. There was an inflection to his voice that cut Jim to the bone, that put a chill in his spine worse than the one in his feet. "In case he’s doing what right now, Dean?" he asked. "Making a deal with the Demon?"
"Yeah. He could be doing it right now. That could be why I dreamed it, couldn’t it?"
"Why would he be making a deal with the Demon right now?" Jim reasoned. "You’re not dead, right? So he wouldn’t have any reason to make a deal like that."
Dean didn’t answer.
"Right?" Jim prompted him.
"He could be doing it right now for later," Dean said. There was an edge of panic to his tone. It was taking on the urgency of a thirteen year old still scarred by the fears of a five year old. "He could be thinking ahead, planning for the future. He does that. You know he does."
Dean was right. That was exactly the kind of thing John was capable of doing. Jim’s belly cramped. He felt sick, his head aching with the pressure of how well this child knew his father. "He’s in Salina, isn’t he? Working on a Lady in White?"
"I don’t know."
"Isn’t that what he told you?"
"Yeah. That’s what he said, but he lies. He lies all the time, Pastor Jim." Dean was breathing hard over the phone line now, almost hyperventilating. "And Salina’s not that far from Lawrence. It’s only like two hours or something. So maybe he didn’t go to Salina. Maybe he went to Lawrence instead, and maybe he found It." The urgency of his tone was edging closer to panic with every word. "Maybe that’s why he went there. Maybe he went there to find It, and he’s with It right now, making a deal. He could be doing that and just not have told us because you’re a Pastor and I’m-"
"Dean," Jim interrupted, using John’s tone on him. "Stop it. Just relax. Calm down." He heard himself talking to John’s son like the boy was a Marine instead of a terrified child torn out of sleep by a terror he couldn’t put down with salt or Latin. A terror that started with the seed of a bad dream and grew into a two am call for help from the only person he knew to call when his dad wasn’t there, and he needed something he couldn’t do for himself. "Just calm down," Jim said again, trying to make it sound less like an order and more like a firm suggestion.
"I am calm," Dean said. But he wasn’t. He so wasn’t. "I just want you to call him, okay? Can you call him please? Call him and tell him not to do something like that, just in case he is, okay?"
Jim wished he was closer. He wished he was close enough to get in his car and drive there, close enough to go sit with Dean for a while, just to give him a physical presence to stave off the panic instead of nothing more than a voice that could mimic his father’s over a phone line when it had to. But he wasn’t, and wishing he was didn’t make it so.
"You’re letting your imagination run away with you," Jim said. "You can’t let it do that, Dean. You can’t let a dream panic you."
"Maybe it wasn’t just a dream," Dean said.
"But it was just a dream," Jim reminded him. "That’s what you said, right? You said you had a bad dream."
"Maybe it was something else," Dean said. "Maybe it was a warning or something. Maybe it was Mom trying to warn me."
The ice in Jim’s spine spread to his body. He felt his skin prickle with it, felt the hair on the back of his neck standing straight on end. "Why do you say that?" he asked.
"Maybe it was. It could have been, couldn’t it have? So maybe it was."
"Was your mother in your dream?" Jim asked.
Dean ignored the question. "Maybe she was trying to warn me," he said in lieu of an answer. "Maybe she was trying to tell me something. Maybe she was trying to tell me he was going to trade his soul to the Demon so I could stop him from doing that, so I could stop him from ending up in hell. Maybe it was that. That can happen, can’t it? Maybe it was that."
The silence that fell to the phone line when Dean stopped talking was so intense it echoed. For a second, Jim couldn’t force himself to say anything to break it.
"Maybe it was that," Dean said again, his voice growing more panicky.
"Was you mother in your dream, Dean?" Jim asked a second time.
"Maybe it was that."
"Dean." He was using John’s voice again. He didn’t want to, but he was. "Was she in your dream?"
"Maybe," Dean whispered.
"What do you mean, maybe?"
"I think it was her." He sounded almost desperate, like there was something he wasn’t saying, something he was afraid to say.
"What aren’t you telling me?" Jim asked.
"Maybe it wasn’t a dream," Dean said again. "Maybe it was her. That can happen, can’t it? Could it maybe have been her, Pastor Jim?"
Jim pushed to his feet, his heart pounding, his chest tight. "Did you put your salt lines down, Dean?" he demanded.
"It wasn’t a demon," Dean said. "I would have known if it was a demon."
"Your salt lines," Jim insisted, clenching the phone so tight his hand began to ache.
"Yeah. I always put down my salt lines. But it wasn’t a demon. Maybe it was her. Could it have been her?"
"What did you see, Dean? What exactly did you see?"
"I saw her. I think it was her. I think I saw her."
"Did she talk to you?"
"She said he was in hell," Dean said. It came out in a gasp, like someone had reached inside his body and torn the words directly out of his lungs. And once the wound was made, the rest of it came flooding out of him like blood in the desert as the night passed in an eternity of minutes while John Winchester lied himself hoarse to keep his best friend from dying right there in the thick, red sand.
"She said he was in hell, and it was my fault. She said it was my fault, Pastor Jim. She said he did it for me, and that makes it my fault, doesn’t it? She said that’s why he did it. She said he did it for me and that’s why he was in hell. Can that happen? Can she come here and tell me something? How can she cross the salt lines? If it was really her, she couldn’t cross the salt lines, could she? Can that happen, Pastor Jim? Can that happen?"
Jim closed his eyes, tried to concentrate. He could feel himself praying even as he asked, "Were you asleep, Dean? Were you asleep when you saw her?"
"I think I was. Maybe. I don’t know. I was watching TV, and I fell asleep. I think I fell asleep."
"When did this happen?"
"Right before I called you."
"Have you seen anything since?"
"No."
"Where’s Sammy?"
"He’s okay. I checked on him. The first thing I did was check on Sammy."
"Where is he right now?"
"In his room."
"Where are you?"
"I’m right outside his room. But there’s nothing here. I checked for EMF, and there’s nothing here. But I saw her, Pastor Jim. I think I saw her because I could smell her."
"You could smell her?"
"Yeah. I could smell her. And then she started on fire. And I could smell that, too."
"You smelled fire? Have you checked for sulfur?"
"She was on the ceiling," Dean said, his voice choking. "I woke up, and she was on the ceiling."
"Sulfur, Dean!" Jim snapped. "Did you check for sulfur?"
"Yeah. I checked everywhere and there isn’t any. Not any sulfur or any EMF either. And all the salt lines are still there, so it had to be a dream, didn’t it? Didn’t it?"
Jim started to answer, but Dean interrupted, saying, "Wait. I hear something."
"What do you hear?" Jim demanded.
"Hang on a minute."
"Don’t you hang up this phone, boy," Jim ordered, his voice harsh with strain.
"I won’t. I think it’s Dad. Hang on a minute."
The sixty seconds of silence on the other end of the line seemed like an eternity. Jim didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until it exploded out of him with the sound of Dean’s voice saying, "Dad’s home. I’ll call you back."
And then the phone went dead. The silence from the other end of the line was like being killed, it was that sudden, that absolute, that devastatingly complete.
"Son of a bitch," Jim hissed, hitting the disconnect button so he could dial back a number he knew by heart.
The phone rang forty six times before John picked it up. "Jim?" he said.
Jim almost fell, he was that relieved. "Oh, thank God," he said, sinking back into his chair, letting his head fall back into his hand.
"Yeah," John said dryly. "Good to hear your voice, too. Listen, let me call you back. Ten minutes, okay?"
"Is Dean okay?"
"Yeah. I think it was just a dream, but let me make sure."
"Ten minutes," Jim agreed. "Any longer than that and I’m sending avenging angels your direction with lightning bolts to shove up your ass."
"Good to know," John said, and the phone line clicked dead again.
Twenty three minutes later, the phone finally rang.
"I waited for the angels but they never came," John’s voice said when Jim picked up the receiver.
"They will," Jim assured him. "When you least expect them. So what happened?"
"He just had a dream. Bad one, I guess. Spooked him pretty good."
"Dean doesn’t even twitch at things that would scare the hell out of me," Jim countered. "How does ‘just a dream’ spook him?"
"Not sure," John admitted. "But that’s what it was. There’s nothing here, no sign of anything supernatural at all."
"Nothing?"
"No. Not a thing. I’ve swept twice, and done a couple of cleansing rituals just to make sure. House didn’t even hiccup. And there’s enough salt in the place to kill a man. He triple salted Sammy’s window, and circled up the bed without even waking him. Drew protection sigils on all four walls in permanent marker, too. Forgot about the floor and the ceiling, but I’ve got the foundation and the roof marked up out the ass anyway, so nothing’s coming in from either up or down unless it can circumvent everything I know, which I can’t remember whether or not I told him that, but it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is he covered his bases and then covered them again, just to be sure. Which is exactly what I taught him to do. He did exactly what I taught him to."
"So what happened, then? What was it?" Jim asked.
"I don’t know. He was watching a movie and fell asleep. Thought he woke up to Mary burning."
Something tingled in Jim’s belly, in the tips of his fingers and the tips of his toes. "What movie?" he asked.
John hesitated. "The same one," he said after a long beat.
Skin that had finally started to warm up when cold again. "And you don’t think that’s a sign of something?"
"I think it’s a sign he knows what movie I was watching that night, so it put him to thinking about his mother and fire," John returned. "Probably why he had the dream in the first place. Probably why it was as bad as it was."
"He said he could smell her."
"I smell her in my dreams all the time, Jim."
Jim considered that for several seconds before saying, "So you think it was just a dream then?"
"Yeah. I do. If it was anything else, there’d be something left I could track. Some kind of EMF signature. Char on the ceiling, sulfur in the sofa, something."
"Where is he?"
"In my room. So is Sammy. They’re both sleeping with me tonight, just to be safe."
"Did you get the Lady in White?" Jim asked.
John’s hesitation betrayed him.
"He was right then," Jim said. "You were after the Demon."
"Who was right?"
"Dean. He said you were after the Demon. And he was right."
John swore softly. "I wasn’t after It," he said, his voice grim, defensive. "I was just doing some research. I stopped in to see Missouri, followed up on a couple of things I’d heard."
"Why didn’t you tell him that?"
"For the same reason I didn’t tell you."
Jim found himself staring at a crucifix on the wall. For some reason, the sight of it gave him no comfort at all. "Did you find anything?"
"No. Monumental waste of time. Listen, I’m going to go. Dean’s still pretty raw, and I want to give him a chance to talk a little more if he wants to."
"Did he tell you what the dream was about?" Jim asked.
"Yeah. He told me. Said he watched her burn again. Told me she was pinned to the ceiling and …" John’s voice failed him, so he stopped for a moment, then finished, "… and the whole damned thing. Fucking Demon. Every time I think I hate It as much as I possibly can, something like this happens, and I realize I’ve actually got a little more hate in me left to give. I thought him not seeing it the first time was a mercy, but I’m not so sure any more. If he’d actually seen it, maybe his mind wouldn’t be so determined to fill in the gaps every time he lets his guard down."
"Did he tell you about the deal, John?"
John didn’t answer for a moment. "Deal?" he repeated finally. "No. He didn’t mention anything about a deal."
Jim nodded. "All right. You and I need to talk, then; but we don’t need to do it right now."
"What deal?" John pressed.
"I’ll tell you later. Right now, go talk to Dean. Tell him I said there’ll be a spot saved for him in the front pew if he decides to show up for my sermon on Sunday."
"Your sermon? What are you lecturing on this week? Dreams?"
"Lust," Jim said. "And it’s not a lecture, it’s spiritual guidance."
"Yeah. Right. That’s God Speak for lecture. What the hell made you decide to pick lust for a subject? Is this sweeps week or something?"
"It was going to be standard fire and brimstone," Jim answered, "but your son inspired me to a different way of thinking, so I’m going to juggle the schedule a bit, push the fire and brimstone back and give lust center stage. Think I’m going to make posters and everything. Maybe take out an ad on local TV."
"My thirteen year old inspired you to lecture your congregation on lust?" John snorted, a sound that was half way between a laugh and an audible eyeroll. "Oh, for the love of Christ, do not elaborate on that because I do not want to know."
"He thinks you’ve never had sex with anyone but Mary," Jim noted. "Or as he put it, you never ‘did it’ with anyone but Mary."
John snorted again. "No idea where he got that idea from. I’m pretty sure I told him Mary and I never even had sex." Then, like it had only just occurred to him, he asked, "You haven’t been telling tales out of school have you? Because if I hear any random chatter about recreational activities he’s not cleared to know about, that collar of yours is not going to protect you from a serious ass kicking, Jim. Especially if it has anything to do with that week in Hawaii."
"You can go to hell for threatening a lamb of the Lord," Jim said mildly.
"Yeah, well if I ever threaten one of those lambs, I’ll start to worry. In the mean time, keep in mind what I said about kicking your ass if you start sharing state secrets with the wrong damn set of ears. I’ll call you tomorrow, after the boys are at school. Way after, like around three in the afternoon or something."
"Sloth is one of the sweeps week seven, too," Jim said. "I’m going to cover it Sunday after next if you want to reserve your pew now."
"Sloth this, bitch," John returned. Then, a little more seriously, he added, "But in case I didn’t mention it, thanks for talking him down off the ledge tonight. It’s good he has someone to talk to. Someone who isn’t me. And who he can call at two o’clock in the morning if he’s got something caught in his head he can’t get out. I appreciate you being that, appreciate you not making him feel like a punk for doing it."
"Eh, sleep’s over-rated anyway. I get six hours a week, and I’m good to go."
"Six hours? You slothful bastard. Go do some jumping jacks or something while I go talk to my kid."
"He’s a good boy, John," Jim said quietly. "Go a little easy on him tonight, will you?"
"Nah, I thought I’d smack him around a little. Maybe run over him a couple of times with the Impala just to toughen him up."
"You know what I’m saying," Jim said.
"Yes, I do. And you know you don’t need to say it. His eyes were spinning counterclockwise in his head when he came out the front door; damned near busted a rib when he hugged me. I may be a jackass at times; but I’m not going to dog my boy about not thinking three dimensionally when he’s been dreaming about his mother getting torched. Or even mention it to him for that matter. I know when to shut the fuck up and just hold on to the kid, Jim. I may have forgotten a lot of the things Mary tried to teach me, but that isn’t one of them - that isn’t ever going to be one of them - and fuck you for even implying it is."
"I wasn’t implying that," Jim lied.
"The fuck you weren’t. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go hang out with my kid for a while; try and convince him it doesn’t make him a girl to sleep in the same bed as his old man every now and again. The boy’s getting to an age where that’s a hard sell these days. If it were up to me, I’d still have him stashed away in a crib in the corner, but he seems to think he’s almost a man, and he wants to be treated that way, midnight calls to handy preachers non withstanding."
"The first thing he did was check on Sammy," Jim said. "And he’d already verified his salt lines and run an EMF sweep before even he called."
"He knows his protocols."
"If half the Marines we served with were half as dependable as Dean is, we’d both be able to get through an airport without setting off every damn metal detector in the joint."
John didn’t say anything for a long moment. "You just getting chatty in your old age, preacher? Or you trying to tell me something?"
"I’m just being chatty," Jim said.
"He was sitting outside Sammy’s door with the 410," John said. "My kid had a dream like the kind of dreams that used to drag my ass into a Jim Beam bottle those first two or three years, and he responded by standing guard over his little brother’s bedroom with a load of rock salt, just in case. You know me better than to think I didn’t notice that. That I don’t value it."
"It wouldn’t hurt you to tell him that once in a while."
"I do tell him that."
"In so many words, John. Or at least in some words, preferably spoken out loud."
"Yeah, yeah," John grunted. "And I’ll give him a kiss on the forehead, too. And maybe a pair of ballerina slippers to match that tutu you’d have him wearing if I let you. Be sure to butch up that lust sermon of yours, preacher. Wouldn’t want your congregation to think you’re condemning cuddling as one of the seven deadly sins."
John hung up before Jim had a chance to respond.
And Jim had to give it to him: that was a pretty good way to end a conversation. At least, it was if you were John Winchester, and if you were trying to thank a friend for being there for a son who needed something you weren’t very good at giving.
When it came to sitting in the desert, lying your ass off while your hands went numb inside another man’s body from pinching off a bleeder that would have drained him to a corpse before the choppers had a chance to find them, had a chance to retrieve them; there was no better man on the planet than the one who kept Jim Murphy alive for five hours with very detailed descriptions of what a woman’s body looked like and tasted like and felt like when it was drenched in coconut milk, among other things. But when it came to letting go of the death grip you had on the idea if you could only teach your sons the right things in the right way, you could somehow save them from the abomination that slaughtered their mother because you didn’t know the right things to do, or the right way to do them to stop what you never could have stopped from happening no matter what you knew, or how you knew to do it; John wasn’t very good at being anything other than what he was.
A father so afraid of losing his children he’d trade his soul to save one of them if it ever came to that.
And it would. Jim could see from where he was sitting that it would.
Staring at the crucifix on the far wall, he struggled to divine some way to change the future a thirteen year old saw in a vision of his dead mother. As much as John could - as much as John would - discount tonight as nothing more than a dream, nothing more than a manifestation of his son’s fears as put to the voice of his son’s greatest pain, it wasn’t.
Jim could feel it wasn’t.
It was more. It was a divine omen; a portend of things to come.
Some hunters relied on weapons, on evidence, on tracks they could follow and signs they could measure in electromagnetic fluctuations and sulfur dust left in the wind. John was such a hunter.
And Jim had been one, too, twenty years ago, though not so much of evil as of other men who represented evil in the eyes of his government. Since that time, Jim had learned weapons fail. Evidence is wrong. Tracks lead astray, and signs don’t always mean what they seem to mean.
He’d learned as much lying in thick red sand, listening to his best friend talk, dying even as John Winchester willed him to live. Jim had his own vision that night. It wasn’t the vision of a mother put to fire on the ceiling of his brother’s nursery. Rather, it was the vision of a man he considered a brother put to the fires of eternal damnation for making a trade an Angel told Jim would be the end of everything that man had ever loved.
The angel in his vision was a woman in white, someone he’d never seen before who smiled at him with grace and forgiveness, telling him to live, to change this, to talk to his brother and make him listen. She said she’d send him a sign. She said he’d know when to tell John a deal with the Devil was the road to hell for his sons, as well as himself.
Jim recognized her, or the woman who looked like her, when John introduced them, asking Jim to be his best man because hell, that’s what friends were for, right?
That’s what friends were for.
He’d thought Mary was his sign. He’d thought seeing her, recognizing her, knowing her meant it was time to tell John what the Angel whispered in one ear while John rattled endless sex lies in the other in a desperate bid to keep Jim conscious, keep him alive. But it wasn’t, and he didn’t. And sometimes it haunted Jim that if he had, maybe Mary would still be alive.
But she wouldn’t be. He knew that now. The Angel didn’t show itself to warn him about the Demon. It showed itself to warn him about John. About the power of love, and how that power could be turned against a man. How it could betray him.
How it could betray his sons.
Jim bowed his head, muttered a series of incantations the church wouldn’t have sanctioned if they’d known he was using them. Invoking powers far in excess of what church doctrine even suspected might exist, Jim called to higher levels of being, called the name of God and prayed to his God that someOne would answer.
Would tell him what to do, tell him how to save them.
Save John. Save Dean. Save Sammy.
Jim prayed until dawn broke over the horizon; and he heard, in his memories, the sound of rotors cutting the desert sky. He remembered those five hours so clearly they were never more than a heartbeat away from his soul. And in remembering them, he knew the power of John Winchester’s will. Of what John could do, would do, to save someone he needed to save.
Jim lifted his eyes, looking for a sign. She was there, in the room with him, burning against the ceiling with the smell of hell and brimstone and destiny. "Tell him," she said. "Tell him now."
Jim picked up the phone, dialed John’s number.
When John answered, his voice was still heavy with sleep. "Yeah. What?"
"We need to talk," Jim said.
"Jim?"
"Get up, go in the other room, and close the door behind you."
"Fuck that. I’ll call you later, when the boys are in school."
"No, John. Now. I need to talk to you now."
John’s voice changed. It came awake, clear and sharp as he demanded so quietly his words could have passed for a whisper, "Why? What’s wrong? Are you okay?"
"I’m fine, John. It’s just time."
"Time for what?"
"Time to tell you a secret I’ve been waiting almost twenty years to tell you."
"What secret?"
"Get up, go in the other room, and close the door behind you," Jim said again.
"Is this about Dean?" John asked.
Jim could hear him crawling out of bed; hear him walking across the room, closing the door behind him as he left his sons to listen to what his best friend had to say.
"No, John," Jim said. "It’s not about Dean. It’s about Sammy."
-finis-