SPN Fic: Stay (3/4, Gen, R, Pre-Series)
Ah, damnit! I almost made it in three instead of four. Shoot. Okay, this one is going to run short so I can keep the stuff I want together in the last one all in the same post.
Title: Stay (3/4)
Author: Dodger Winslow
Genre: Gen, pre-series
Rating: R
Word Count: 31,000
Warnings/Spoilers: Violence, language, mature themes
Disclaimers: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.
Summary: When breakfast on the road takes a deadly turn, Dean is the only one who can save his father's life. He's ten, he's alone, and the only way he makes it is if she stays.
Author's Note: This is a companion piece for Ten Going on Thirteen. While it can stand on it's own, there's significantly more resonance to the story if you read Ten Going on Thirteen first simply because this is an outsider perspective on what happens in that story. Which isn't, as you might expect, what you might think happened. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.
(Part 3)
He peeled the dressing back quick, like he was pulling off a Band-Aid. The agony of saturated cotton separating from skin, pulling out of the wound itself, hauled John out of his semi-conscious stupor like a fish dragged out of its hidey-hole.
He came up fighting, lashing out, grabbing at the pain to try and stop it before his mind could catch up with why it even existed. One hand knocked Dean away. The other hit Kelly’s wrist, and she almost lost the shell casings cupped between her hands.
Sitting off to one side, Normal Guy and Shitty Tipper watched like spectators at a sporting event. Neither of them made any move to help when John started flailing, started cursing like a man set on fire. She half expected them to cheer his rally, they were that damn stupid in the way they just sat there and watched things happen.
"Hold on to him, damnit!" Dean bellowed as he launched himself back into the fray.
It was only then they seemed to realize this wasn’t a televised event, or a fucking video game. Jolted from their spectator status, they jumped in and grabbed John, held him still enough for Dean to finish what he started.
Twisting desperately as his son pulled the napkins away from the wound and threw them off to one side, John jacked his commitment to the curse kitty up until it rivaled national debt proportions: enough for six cars and three airplanes, with perhaps a bit left over for African Aid and We Are the World donations. By the time the wound was exposed again, he was gasping, coughing, choking; and Dean was breathing almost as hard, his whole body shaking with the adrenaline flush of fighting his dad to a standstill.
John relaxed slowly, settling back to the floor as the pain faded from a full-on sear to the slow broil of stirred embers. He was fully, painfully conscious now. His eyes were sharp, focused on every move his son made.
Dean waved Shitty Tipper and Normal Guy off, sending them back to the apathy of the sidelines. Ignoring his father’s scrutiny like he didn’t even notice it, Dean took one shell after another out of Kelly’s hands, pouring their contents in and around the perimeter of the wound. He was careful, meticulous, his whole body hunched up with how hard he was concentrating on every detail of what he was doing.
Kelly got it suddenly, realized what he was going to do with such a sense of debilitating dread that it struck her like a cold, wet fish to the face. "Oh, Jesus, Doll," she whispered. She’d seen this in a movie once. It made her vaguely sick then. It made her seriously sick now.
Dean ignored her horror as fiercely as he ignored his father’s focussed attention.
John was staying with them, his eyes awake now, alive. Bulbs burn brightest, Kelly thought, then hated herself for thinking it.
He watched his son, oblivious to anything or anyone else in the room. The only thing he could see was Dean, and the way he saw him was the way a father sees a child taking his first steps, saying his first words, going on his first date. She couldn’t tell whether the calm overtaking John’s expression was an acceptance of the inevitable or simple faith in the child who was trying so hard to save him in such a horrific, fucked up manner; but either way, it made her want to cry. It made her want to get up, walk into the kitchen, sit down beside Crappy Dresser, put her head on her knees and just fucking cry.
John waited until Dean was finished, then whispered in a voice so coarse it barely cleared his lips, "Dean. Come here."
Dean looked up, then looked away again. "No time, Dad." He picked up the tin of matches. "It’s now or never."
"Make time." John hissed, choking with the effort it took to speak. Dean’s resolve cracked. He leaned in to hear what his dad wanted to say; and for just a moment, a ten-year-old child showed through the fractured shell of a determined, ten-year-old Marine.
John struggled to get one hand on the back of his son’s neck. He latched on, his fingers turning white with the effort of forging a connection by virtue of nothing more than a father’s touch. "Right choices," he whispered, his eyes boring into Dean’s, trying to tell him things he didn’t have the strength to put to words. "Smart," he added after a hard, painful breath. "Doesn’t work, not your fault."
Dean trembled harder. "We don’t have time for this, Dad," he said.
"Love you," John finished. "Proud of you."
Dean nodded. "I know that."
Sammy was right beside her. Kelly realized it suddenly, like realizing you have feet. He’d wriggled between she and Dean and was pressed against her side, seeking comfort, seeking stability, seeking contact. He was staring at John with those Sweet Face eyes, desperate to hold his dad’s hand even as he knew Dean wouldn’t let him.
She couldn’t tell whether or not he understood what was coming, and she didn’t want to know. She reached over, picked him up. Twisting in her arms as she pulled him close, he kept his eyes locked on John; but even as he did so, he was melting against her like a candy bar left too long in the sun. As brittle as Dean had gone since their father was shot, little Sammy had gone spoiled-fruit soft. There were horrors of damage hiding just below his skin. She could feel them in the way he settled against her, feel how much the only thing holding him together now was skin. Beneath it, he was nothing more than pulp and little boy pain.
She prayed Dean wouldn’t split his little brother open by igniting their father right in front of his eyes.
John’s hand released Dean, fell away from his neck. "Do it," he breathed.
"Your daddy wants you to look away, Sweet Face," Kelly whispered into Sammy’s ear. He nodded, obeying without question, turning his head to put his face in the hollow of her shoulder as he reached up and wrapped his arms around her neck like she was his mother, or at least someone he’d known for more than twenty minutes.
"Stay, Daddy," she felt, more than heard, him whisper against her. "Please stay."
Dean pulled a match out of the tin, struck it to the sharp stench of sulfur and fire. His hands were shaking. His voice wasn’t. "Look away, Sammy," he said.
Kelly closed her eyes as Dean dropped the match to his father’s side.
The smell was hell. The sound was worse. Sammy flinched in her arms like someone hit him. His arms tightened around her neck; his little hands clenched into her hair.
For a moment, Kelly couldn’t force herself to look, but when she heard Dean moving, she opened her eyes, found him hovering over the smoking wound. He was studying it without touching it, his expression blank again. Freaky still. Detached like it no longer belonged to his face, like it was no longer connected to anything that reflected what he was feeling.
And yet, somehow, he looked as if, somewhere deep inside his head, he was screaming.
Kelly shifted her attention to John. He wasn’t moving. His skin was as white as chalk any place it wasn’t smeared a deep, gory red or charred to a powdery dark. His features were lax; his expression, completely slack. The arm clenched defensively against his side had fallen away, exposing the inside of his elbow. It seemed like a surrender of sorts, like there was no more fight left in him, no more capacity to hold himself together for the sake of a child trying so hard to save him. No more capacity to hold himself quiet, to keep from breaking his son by letting himself break.
By letting himself die.
Sammy pulled his face out of her neck and turned his head to stare at John’s motionless body. "Is he dead?" he whispered.
Dean looked up, met his little brother’s eyes. "He’s not going to die, Sammy." His voice was stark, shaking now despite its intention not to. "I promised, right? He’s not going to die."
"Okay," Sammy said. Then he put his face back in Kelly’s neck.
Dean took his dad’s wrist, felt for a pulse. John was either out like a light or dead as a doornail. Kelly couldn’t tell which, but she whispered a prayer about which option it had to be.
She hadn’t prayed this much since she was five years old and still had parents who took her to Sunday school every week to learn golden crowns and other riches were the rewards for sucking up to God in the right tone of prayer. She hadn’t prayed this much since she was five-and-a-half years old and didn’t have parents any more; didn’t have anybody but an Aunt Sophie who told her God had better things to do than listen to some poor orphan go on and on and on about every damn thing wrong with her life because she was too lazy to get up and do something about it her own damn self.
Sophie wasn’t much for self pity. She was a big believer in God helping those who helped themselves. Kelly took those words to heart because Sophie didn’t say things in a way that really ever gave her the impression taking what Sophie said to heart was optional.
"Dean?" Kelly called, her voice soft, her tone terrified she’d hear something she couldn’t bear to hear.
He looked up, met her eyes. She’d never seen a little boy look so much like a grown man about to burst into tears like a little boy. "I need something to keep him warm," he said, his voice off kilter like his lips were numb, or like maybe his whole head had lost feeling altogether.
"I’ve got a blanket in my trunk," Shitty Tipper offered helpfully.
Dean didn’t respond. He didn’t look at Shitty Tipper, didn’t even acknowledge the man had spoken. Instead, he looked at Kelly - stared at Kelly - like she was in charge now, like it was her responsibility to figure everything else out because he’d done as much as he could do. He’d used up everything he had, burned off his whole store of ten-year-old Marine by dropping a single match to gunpowder and blood. All he had left was still, and he was living in that still now, wrapping himself up in it and hiding there in hopes that the world would change and everything could somehow magically just be okay.
"Go get it," Kelly told Shitty Tipper. Then, because she’d learned something from Dean about not assuming adults had a single brain in their head just because they were adults, she added, "And shake it out before you bring it in here. Get all of the dirt out of it, make sure it’s clean enough to put over an open wound."
Shitty Tipper nodded, then headed toward the door the parking lot beyond.
"We should move him," Normal Guy announced decisively.
Kelly just looked at him. It was as powerful an argument against spontaneous thought as she’d ever dreamed possible. Doll lit his dad on fire to stop the man from bleeding to death, and now this jackass wanted to move John around, jiggle him up and down, maybe drop him on his head or throw him in a fucking corner just for the hell of it. She stared at Normal Guy for several seconds before she asked, just in case he did have a reason she was too tired to see for herself, "Why would you want to do that?"
"Um … so he’s not lying in all that blood?"
"No," she said. "I don’t think so. Why don’t you go find Crying Girl and sit with her for a while?"
"Crying Girl?" Normal Guy repeated, his tone a question mark that tagged him a fucking idiot almost as effectively as his suggestion about moving John.
"Yeah," Kelly repeated. "Crying Girl. There are two girls, jackass; and I’m one of them. Am I crying?"
He looked a little offended. "No."
"Then figure it out and go sit with her," she said.
Normal Guy took that as a mission, and he was off.
Kelly tried not to lower her expectations for the entire species as she turned her attention back to Dean. He was lying on the floor in his father’s blood now, curled up on his side, facing John with his head pillowed on his own arm as he counted how long passed between the fall and rise of John’s chest. His pale lips were ticking off seconds like he was measuring the distance of a storm by clocking lightning versus thunder.
She glanced at John’s wound, wincing at the blackened skin, surprised by how fake it looked, disturbed by how much the char appeared to have been applied with black magic marker instead of burned there by gunpowder and a match. The stench of burned flesh was making a liar out of every cannibal joke she’d ever heard. Humans couldn’t possibly taste like chicken if they smelled this way when you cooked them.
"Hey, Sweet Face," she whispered against the side of Sammy’s head. "Why don’t you run and get me a couple more handfuls of those napkins, okay?"
Sammy nodded. Without a word, he let go of her neck, crawled off her lap and headed for the kitchen.
John’s lips were tinged with blue, and his skin was ghastly. She’d bet all the money she didn’t have he was cold as ice, too; but she could see he was breathing now, and the tension of unendurable pain had finally fallen out of his features. He looked more like he had when she first noticed his lady-killer sex eyes, ordering scrambled eggs for his sweet faced boy and chuckling at her Pig Latin in a way that pissed his ten-year-old twit off to the very core. Only he was whiter, now. And he had bluer lips. And he kind of looked like maybe he’d been shot and lit on fire between now and then.
Sammy returned with the napkins before Shitty Tipper made it back inside with his blanket. Kelly took them, laid several over John’s blackened skin. She was careful not to jostle him, meticulous in making sure nothing actually applied pressure to the wound itself. She just wanted to cover it, just wanted to protect it.
"What are you doing?" Dean asked, his voice dull.
"Just cleaning up, Doll. You did the hard part. All I’m doing is washing the dishes."
"Be careful," Dean said without looking at her.
She smiled. She couldn’t really fault him too much for telling her something like that rather than just expecting her to do it, especially not with frick, frack and fricker standing on the sidelines, watching from the peanut gallery, fetching blankets from the parking lot or sitting in the kitchen, crying.
"Sure, Doll. I’ll be careful, I promise."
When she finished with the napkins, she turned her attention to Dean. She didn’t like how pale he was, didn’t like how quiet he’d gone and how still he was lying, staring at his father and watching him breathe.
"Why don’t you scoot in a little closer to your dad?" she suggested. "If we put the blanket over both of you, that should keep him warmer than if we just put it over him."
"Because of body heat," Dean said.
"Right. Good ole body heat."
"We need to keep him warm," Dean added.
"Exactly."
"Because if we don’t keep him warm, he could go into shock and die." He wasn’t looking at her - he was still staring at John, still counting off the seconds as he watched his father breathe - but she could see tears form in his eyes, see them starting to leak out onto his face.
Kelly laid a hand on his dirty, blood-smeared cheek. "He’s not going to die, Doll," she said quietly.
"But he could," Dean said. "He still could."
"Nah." She nudged him gently. "Not your dad. Your dad is Batman." Shitty Tipper walked up, holding out his blanket. She took it, spread it across both Dean and his unconscious father. "And even better than that, you’re Dean." She tucked the blanket under his chin. "He wouldn’t dare die on you. You’d kick his ass into next Sunday."
"You’re going to stay, aren’t you?" he asked when she started to move away.
"Sure. I’m not going anywhere."
"Because if I need help again …" He let the sentiment trail off to silence.
"I’m not going anywhere, Doll," she assured him. "I promise."
"Okay," he said without taking his eyes off John. "How much longer?"
"Until the paramedics get here?"
"They’re coming, aren’t they?"
"You bet they are. Sirens and everything. It won’t much long now. They should be here any minute." She was talking out her ass. She had no idea how long had even passed since the shooting started. On one hand, it felt like an eternity. On the other, she wasn’t sure it had been much more than ten or twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.
Or maybe seven days.
Time was relative like that. It got all fucked up in the passing when you were spending every second on the stakes of life and death. They didn’t make watches to measure time that way. Because if they did, no one would buy them because who has time to look at a watch at a time like that?
"I wish they’d hurry," Dean said.
"Any minute now," she assured him. "Any second even."
"You called them, right?" he asked. "You know they’re coming?"
"I know they’re coming," she told him.
"Okay," he whispered, willing to take her word for it.
Sammy was standing beside her. He was silent, still, watching. "Hey, Sweet Face," she said. "My lap’s getting cold. Know anybody who can do something about that?"
He didn’t answer, he just crawled back into her lap and wrapped both arms around her neck again, put his head back down on her shoulder.
"When can I hold his hand again?" he asked.
"Dad’s going to be okay, Sammy," Dean said without taking his eyes off John. He reached up with one hand, wiped any evidence of tears off his face. "Everything’s going to be fine now. I promise, okay?"
"Okay," Sweet Face said.
Kelly rocked him as they waited. The diner went quiet, almost peaceful. It stayed that way until the cops showed up.
Part 4