Blood and Water - Part 3
For summary/disclaimer see masterpost.
Part Two
By the time the sun had set and the Roadhouse was as packed as it was going to get for the night, Dean had not only been introduced to Ellen's daughter, Jo (under Ellen's watchful eye and Dean didn't miss the "touch her and lose your dick" glare that was directed his way when he started flirting with her), but also to Ash, and wasn't that just a weird meeting! Despite the oddness of the ex-MIT student, Dean found Ash ok to shoot the shit with whilst he kept an eye out for hunters who might have the kind of knowledge that he was after.
At least the man knows what proper music is, Dean thought to himself when the two of them discussed the awesomeness of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin and other rock bands after Dean had remarked that Ash looked like a Skynyrd roadie.
When people started leaving, presumably for their motel rooms, Dean was started to think that he'd have to come back another night, but was saved from that when the front door opened and a newcomer entered. She was dressed in the female version of 'hunter generic', jeans that had the odd questionable stain at the hem, a tank top that had seen better days and a heavy duty leather jacket with creases and stains from everyday use and not from a fashion designer that she was currently taking off and sliding onto the stool to her right. All in all she looked just as much a part of the Roadhouse as all the rest of the patrons, if you just looked at her clothes. If you saw her face clearly and looked long enough to imagine her in fancy clothes and make up, you'd be mistaken for thinking she was an actress researching a role, but the way she held herself and the ease with which she carried her gun, any competent hunter would know that she was the real deal.
Dean overheard someone say "Hey Zoe, been a while since you've been 'round these parts" and her say something in recognition as she walked passed them, and watched her order a beer and slide onto a barstool at the opposite end of the bar from Dean. When she'd had half her beer and hadn't yet got anything out that looked like it was to do with a hunt she was working, Dean ordered two more beers from Jo, patted Ash on the shoulder and mumbled something about seeing him later, and went over to Zoe, hoping she was who Bobby had mentioned earlier.
"Hey, I couldn't help but hear someone call you Zoe, now you wouldn't happen to be Zoe Sinclair would you?" Dean asked as he slid a beer over to Zoe with a friendly smile.
"It depends on who's asking." She replied smoothly, an eyebrow raised at the free beer. "Don't go thinking this'll buy your way into my panties now, cowboy."
At that Dean barked out a short laugh.
"Playing hard to get, huh?" Dean said, mock-flirting with her as he could tell straight off that whilst the sex would be awesome, it wouldn't be worth the hassle and if he was honest with himself, he was already feeling antsy being away from the baby dragon for so long.
"My name's Dean. I've gotta say that I've been called a lotta things but cowboy's not usually one of them." Dean replied.
The rest of the night they got to know each other over a few more beers, doing their best to outdo each other with the weird hunts and normal hunts that had weird things happen in them. When she heard some of the exploits the two young hunters at her bar said they'd done Ellen shook her head and smiled a little to herself. In between the boasting and one upping each other, Dean managed to slide in enough half questions and comments that by the time Ellen told them to beat it or help sweep up, Dean was pretty certain that he had managed to glean as much information about dragons from Zoe as was possible without outright asking her to spill the beans on a supposedly extinct species.
~+~ Two days later ~+~
"Tomas, it's Dean, I'm a couple of hours out from your town, do I need to slow down and take in the sights or is it ok to come straight to you?" Dean asked the man on the other end of the phone call.
"Sure, come straight here man, unless you want to take in the sights, that is." Tomas replied in a friendly and slightly teasing tone.
"Cool, should be there about two then." Dean said before flipping his cell phone shut and dropping it onto his lap.
The road was straight, wide and empty for the next dozen miles or so, so Dean had no compunctions about looking away from the road for a few seconds to check on the baby dragon, the baby dragon whose head was swaying in time to Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir' as it poked its head up high enough to look out of the passenger side window.
"So long as he doesn't do that when we get into town, it's ok." Dean mumbled to himself and looked back at the road, turning the tape deck up a little higher.
One hour and forty eight minutes later saw Dean standing on the doorstep of a house that had seen better days but was in better shape than it could be judging by its neighbours. As he rang the bell, Dean hurriedly checked that no one could see Angus who was carefully wrapped up in Dean's leather jacket and that he wasn't getting squished.
The front door opened to reveal a multi-racial man about the same height as him, strong, and broad shouldered with a friendly smile.
"You must be Dean, I'm Tom. Come on in."
As Dean was led into a well used den that was obviously far more used than most of the rest of the house and he and Tomas exchanged pleasantries, Dean noticed that Tomas never once came closer than an arms length away from him. Guessing that it was something to do with being what Bobby had termed 'sensitive', Dean tried to think nothing of it.
"Coffee?" Tom asked as Dean sat down on the couch.
"Please. Uh black, no sugar." Dean added when Tom stayed looking his way and raised an eyebrow at him.
"Sure. I'll be back in a minute."
As sure as his word, Tom was back with two steaming mugs of coffee in just a few minutes.
"So what really brought me to your attention and you all the way out to my humble little palace?" Tom asked the friendly smile from earlier still evident at the edges of his mouth and in his eyes.
"Well you know the … incident just under a week ago that I mentioned on the phone? Well, it's kinda more complicated than I maybe let on." Taking a deep breath and looking Tom straight in the eyes, Dean continued. "What do you know about dragons?"
At that, Tom's left eyebrow rose considerably and he took a large mouthful of coffee before putting his mug down on the table in between the two sofas that they occupied.
"As I understand it, they were hunted to extinction around about five hundred years or so ago, give or take a handful of decades depending on whose accounts you read and how well you trust translations." Tom replied. "But as that's what everyone knows, I'm not sure where you're going with this."
"What would you say if I could not only tell you that I'd seen and touched real dragons, but that one thought I was, well," at this point, Dean's head dropped a little in embarrassment and he rubbed at the back of his neck, "if one thought that I was its parent?"
"If I couldn't sense your sincerity and the truth of your words from the moment you started speaking, I'd say you had one too many hits from the bong and should go and sleep it off, but seeing as I know you're telling the truth, or what you believe to be the truth, I… don't know what to say really."
"If I showed you a living, breathing dragon, then would you really believe me?" Dean asked.
"I suppose I'd have to."
With Tom's words running through Dean's head, Dean turned to the carefully placed lump that was his jacket and its concealed content, Dean began to gently unfold the jacket and pick up the baby dragon. When it was sitting in his lap, practically purring at the attention it was getting, scratches behind its eye ridges, stroking down its flanks, Dean turned to face Tom and burst out laughing at the look of complete astonishment on Tom's face.
"Is that …" Tom trailed off, not really believing his eyes at the sight of a baby dragon on the lap of a hunter, in his living room.
"Yup, this here is a baby dragon, and it thinks I'm its parent. Unfortunately, as dragons are supposed to be extinct, I can't exactly go and drop this baby here off at the nearest dragon reserve and let someone else or another dragon look after it now, can I?" Dean said, still amused at the look on Tom's face, but worried that Tom wouldn't be able to help him.
"Reserve … or an area that only a few know about. Yes. Of course!" With that random outburst, Tom stood and pulled a notebook off of the top of a pile of CDs, put it on the table and then went off to another room. Moments later he came back with a small map and a rather worn out book.
"If you can read any of this book, it might help, but I haven't been able to read more than a sentence or two in it since I got it, just never quite got around to getting rid of it. It's supposed to be a firsthand account of an encounter with a dragon in the mid nineteen forties." Tom said as he put the battered looking book on the arm of the couch next to Dean. "The map's a rough outline of the general area the person was in when they were supposed to have had this encounter." Tom put the map on top of the worn out book.
"Thanks, and the notebook?" Dean asked.
Tom flipped through the notebook until he found a page decorated with dream catchers of different sizes and designs with a name and number in the middle of it.
"This woman, Rebecca Pike, might know more, though I think her last name's different now. I heard she got married two or three years back. She told me that her Grandma always told her that her family was friendly with, and had protected, a creature of great power for many generations. Who knows, it could be a dragon." Tom told Dean as he copied out the name and number on to a fresh piece of paper for Dean.
"That's great dude, thanks. Let's hope this chick knows what to do with a baby dragon." Dean said.
As Dean shifted to pick up the battered book and map, the baby dragon pitched a fit, screeching and clawing Dean through his t-shirt.
"Ow! What the - oh." Dean exclaimed. He soon realised that his shifting had accidentally squished the very tip of the baby dragon's tail, causing him to lash out.
"Sorry." Dean said to the baby dragon.
Dean had finished the 'feed, clean, then put down to sleep' routine with the baby dragon for what felt like the millionth time; and was now helping Bobby with a car, pulling apart and flushing the fuel injection system for a beat up old Camero before putting it back in working order.
"Did Tomas manage to dig up anything useful?" Bobby asked as he fiddled around with something under the hood of a truck that'd seen better days.
"Sort of. He said that there's a chick; I think he said her names was Rebecca, something ... Anyway, she’s up in Cougar, Washington. He said she might know a bit more about dragons, and that her info would probably be more up to date. Or at least more recent than what your books say; and something that Zoe mentioned at the Roadhouse fits with that." Dean replied, his whole demeanour showing that right now, at this moment in time, he was completely at ease with the world.
"You got a number for this woman?" Bobby enquired.
"Yeah. Tom gave me her address as well and I think this is the kinda thing that would be best done face to face; even if she does try to run me outta town and kill Angus." Dean answered.
"Angus?" Bobby questioned with a look of confusion on his face.
"Yeah, after the singer from AC/DC. Figured the little guy needed a name, seeing as he's been around so long, and women love naming things. And I'm not gonna give this Rebecca chick a chance to try and name him anything froofy." Dean said, a disgusted look on his face at the imagined 'froofy' names that some faceless woman might try and force on to his baby dragon.
"Right, Angus." Bobby replied, shaking his head a little at Dean's reasoning.
"So I figured that I'd finish up here, and go into town to pick up some supplies; y'know, some meat, maybe some more meat and perhaps a little meat. Then tomorrow morning me and Angus'll make our way up to Cougar, see if this Rebecca can help out." Dean said, focussing his attention on making the cars parts obey his will.
"Makes sense. I mean, I know you actually care about … Angus, but it'd be best for him if you could find his own kind to look after him and it's not like you can live your life properly with him around. In fact, you're doing what not only any decent person should do, but what a decent parent should, and making sure that your 'kid' gets just what he needs. Not necessarily gonna be what he wants, mind, but he needs to be with other dragons. Assuming of course he isn't the last of a supposedly extinct race." Bobby said, closing the hood of the truck with a sigh and walking over to Dean.
"I'm gonna go and do that translation work for ol' Doug Granger but if anyone comes in, feel free to do their job yourself. It's not like you've got any money to buy those supplies you were talking about getting, anyway." With that, Bobby wiped his hands on a rag that was tucked into his belt loop and walked off back to his house.
With a couple of people having come by for new tires, fan belts and oil changes the previous day, Dean had had enough money to stock up on meat for Angus and Bobby had lent him a cooler so the meat wouldn't spoil on the journey. Dean's bag was packed up and Angus was happily chirruping away to himself on the armchair when Dean called up the stairs to Bobby.
"Bobby, I'm all packed up so we're gonna head out. I'll call and let you know how it all goes down."
"You bet your ass you will. And don't even think that you're gonna get away with leaving it another eight or nine years with complete radio silence before you drop by again." Came Bobby's reply, filtering down the stairs from wherever Bobby was rooting out yet another artefact or book that was needed for such and such a job that so and so needed help on.
"Nah, not that long. I'll be seeing ya." And with that Dean picked Angus and his bag up and walked off to the Impala. Moments later you could clearly hear "Wherever I May Roam" blasting out of the Impala's open windows.
Late evening saw Dean and Angus staying somewhere slightly less skeezy than normal. The motel boasted a "mini fridge in every room" which Dean thought was highly useful, considering the amount of meat that he was lugging around. He was currently hoping it hadn't already spoiled in the trunk of the Impala as they travelled all day.
After the last feed and clean of the day (before the ones at the ungodly hours of the night and morning came along anyway), Dean found himself wondering whether calling Rebecca before turning up on her doorstep would have been a better idea than just appearing unannounced on her doorstep tomorrow. Figuring that if he called ahead and she thought he was crazy, there was a likelihood that she'd make sure that she was out or have the police in to take him away; but if he just turned up, there'd be no chance of the police option and he could wait until he could see that she was alone and show her Angus to make her believe him.
He just hoped she didn't believe in violence.
Dean pulled up at the address that Tom had given him and carefully covered the snoozing form of Angus with his jacket, feeling rather glad that today was very sunny so it would seem perfectly normal to leave his jacket behind in the car. Likening the action of asking this unknown woman for help to the removal of a band aid, Dean got out of the Impala and strode over to the front door of 1763 Johnston Drive, and knocked on the door, hoping like hell that Rebecca Chase was in and that her car was just in the garage to the side of the house.
"Can I help you?" A woman on average height and obvious Native American hereditary asked Dean.
"I hope so. My name's Dean and my friend Tomas Heath said that a Rebecca Pike lived here and that she'd be able to help me out." Dean said, projecting calmness and sincerity with a carefully charming grin.
"Well I haven't been Rebecca Pike for a good few years, it's Chase now, and I haven't spoken to Tomas in a long time, I'm not sure what I'll be able to do to help you. What is it you need help on?" She asked.
"It's, well, I'm not sure how to say it. It's not exactly your normal type of problem. He said you might have learned a few things from your Grandma that'd be relevant, stuff about the local area and its … alternative past." Dean replied, hoping she'd get the hint that it's not exactly the sort of thing you discuss on the doorstep, and invite him in so he didn't draw the neighbour's attention and make this any more awkward than it already was.
Dean could see when she put his hints together and realised what he was on about from the way that her eyes widened and she quickly glanced around to check if anyone was close enough to listen in.
"Oh, right. Sure, come in. I should have some of Grandma Rain's old journals and maps. They might be useful. I'll do my best to answer what I can of your questions, but I'm afraid she didn't tell me all that much before she passed." Rebecca said, standing to the side of the door to let Dean pass her.
"All the information I need is probably in those journals you mentioned, so I wouldn't worry if I were you." Dean replied, upping the charm just a little to ease Rebecca's mind.
"Rebecca, who's at the door?" A male voice called out from further into the house.
"Just a guy asking after Grandma Rain's old journals, you know the ones." Rebecca called back.
"And he couldn't call ahead? What if we were busy." The male voice now filled with muted anger.
Rebecca guided Dean into a study slash office type room, gesturing at a chair for Dean to sit in whilst she went to close the only window in the room. As she got a couple of boxes from the bottom of a cupboard, a man with long brown hair, piercing blue eyes and a 'don't fuck with me or my family' attitude walked in. Dean guessed that the man was a good four or five inches shorter than him and a handful of years older, but he wouldn't want to chance getting into a fight with him as he looked like the muscle that he had was because he could and would fight, not from pumping iron in a gym somewhere.
"Hi, my name's Dean. I'm sorry for barging in like this but I was told that Rebecca's Grandma Rain's old journals are just what I need to finish up a job I'm working up here. As soon as I've got all the info I need I'll be outta here and outta your hair, no need to worry about me." Dean said, doing his level best to reassure the guy in the doorway that he was no threat to him or his family.
"You be sure to do that now." Came the tersely polite response from the husband.
"That was my husband, Daniel. You don't need to worry about him, he's like that with most people he doesn't know, it's not personal or anything." Rebecca said when Daniel had left the room, presumably to go back to their child as Dean could hear the high pitched giggling of a young child come from the back of the house a few moments later.
"Sounds like he's good with your kid, even if he is kind of an ass to adults." Dean said with a smile to take the sting out of the insult. Rebecca laughed and grinned as she replied.
"Yeah, he's amazing with Leanne. He's the only one she has to have read to her at night. Someone else can do it and then she'll just holler for her Daddy until he comes in, tells her a story, tucks her in and kisses her forehead."
"A Daddy's girl then."
The next few minutes were quiet and only punctuated by the sounds of Rebecca checking the cupboards for more boxes and Dean flicking through the journals and sheets of paper in the boxes, trying to work out what order they were in, if they were even in any sort of order at all. When Rebecca had pulled out everything that she could remember as having gone with her Grandma Rain's notebooks she stood up and walked out of the room, stopping in the doorway to speak to Dean again.
"I've got some housework that I need to get on with, so I'll be around if you need anything, just shout for me if you do, ok?"
"That's fine, I don't want to intrude on you anymore than I have done. If I'm in your way I could just take these with me to the library and bring them back in a day or two?"
"You're no problem, Grandma passed her knowledge on thinking that someone would want it someday so I'm happy to let you use them for whatever job it is that you're working on, but they're some of the few things of hers that I was allowed to keep when she passed, so if it's not an inconvenience to you, I'd rather that they stayed here. You can copy out whatever you want, but I'd really prefer the original books to stay in the house." Rebecca said, biting her lip at the last part.
"Of course, they're your heirlooms. I'll do my best to be as quick as I can and take up as little of your time as possible." Dean replied, charm turned on and up rather high.
With a smile Rebecca nodded and walked out of the room only to return seconds later.
"I meant to ask if I can get you anything. Coffee, water, juice?"
"Coffee would be great, thanks." This was accompanied by a friendly smile.
"Sure." With that Rebecca finally managed to make her way to the kitchen and pacified Daniel's worries about having a stranger in the house with them.
Dean spent all day reading and cross referencing the journals and the book that Tom had given him, and all he had to show at the end of the day was one extra sentence deciphered in Tom's book, a head full of random facts about the area courtesy of Grandma Rain that he wasn't sure would ever be of use, and a very cranky baby dragon. Angus wasn't amused at having been left alone for most of the day, even if Dean had snuck out every couple of hours to feed and change him. By the time Dean got back to his motel room, Angus was in a real state, part angry at having been 'abandoned' and part scared that he wasn't good enough to keep his parent around.
"What am I gonna do with you, huh?" Dean said, more to himself than anything, but Angus warbled and chirruped as if he was following the conversation and trying to give Dean some sound advice.
Dean was still wondering what to do with Angus when he got to Rebecca's the next day, and ended up smuggling him in wrapped up in the leather jacket again with the admonishment to stay quiet. Dean just hoped that Angus really did understand him as well as he'd seemed to last night. Luckily when Rebecca let him in, she told him that Daniel was out with Leanne and that she wasn't expected to go and pick them up late afternoon.
Operation 'Keep Angus Out Of Sight' was going well until Rebecca came into the study and helped Dean out for a while, inadvertently nudging the leather jacket when she pulled a chair out to sit on. Angus wailed in pain and shock, Rebecca gave a small cry in shock and Dean fell out of his chair to the ground and started muttering nonsense to Angus who was now whimpering and trying to get out of the jacket so that he could be petted properly by Dean.
"What in heaven's name have you got in there, Dean?" Rebecca asked, her voice all high pitched and breathy as she struggled to keep her composure. Dean continued muttering nonsense to Angus, calming him down and opening the jacket up a little more.
"Dean, tell me what you've got hidden in there. Tell me what you brought in to my house, the house that my daughter lives in." The longer Dean didn't answer, the louder and angrier Rebecca got. Just as it looked like Rebecca was going to drag Dean out of the house by his ear if she had to, Dean scooped up the jacket and it's contents and sat back on the chair, gesturing at Rebecca to do the same.
"It's complicated and you probably won't believe me, not that I'd blame you, the freaky side of nature doesn't lend itself to people believing that it's true." Dean said, rubbing a hand over his eyes as he tried to think of a way to explain Angus' existence to her and coming up with bupkiss. Even though Rebecca was part of a family who had guarded land that hopefully contained an adult dragon, she didn't seem to believe anything that Grandma Rain had told her or had noted down in any of her many journals. Then again, if she knew Tomas and from what Dean had seen, had at one point been on very friendly terms with him, then maybe she would understand what Dean had to tell her?
"Try me."
"Don't say I didn't warn you that this might be a bit hard to believe." At that, Rebecca raised an eyebrow, crossed her arms in front of her chest and gave Dean her best 'you can't faze me' look.
"Try not to interrupt me and this might all get done quicker than I hope, 'k?" Rebecca nodded curtly and Dean continued. "So, I don't know about all of the stuff mentioned in your Grandma's notebooks, haven't read all of them yet anyway, but the area that your family's supposed to protect and the creature that's supposed to be living there? Well I believe that part of it all to be true and that the creature's a surviving dragon."
"A dragon?! They all died out hundreds of years ago, they were hunted to extinction like the Dodo."
"I thought we agreed on no interruptions? That's what all of our history books tell us, but who writes them, Rebecca? The winners of the war or the ones who ended up in power, that's who. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about now anyway. There are… creatures and other shit out there that people think are legends or don't exist, but they do, trust me on that, it's kinda my job to hunt down anything that hurts people, and I'm pretty certain that somehow, a bunch of the dragons managed to hide themselves away when they were being hunted way back when and they've survived, probably because some of them had families like yours who helped to protect them. Along with all of the things that go bump in the night, dragons exist."
Before Rebecca could say anything, Angus crawled out of the jacket, onto Dean's lap and chirruped up at him as if asking Dean what he'd done wrong to be kept under the jacket now that the pretty lady knew he existed.
"Dean, how, why is there what looks like a baby dragon on your lap?" Rebecca asked with that calm tone that you use when you're seconds away from having a nervous breakdown.
"Uh, this is Angus, he kinda thinks that I'm his parent."
At Dean's announcement Rebecca's eyes widened so much that Dean thought they might just fall out of her head, and then she leant forward so that her elbows rested on her knees, rested her head in her hands and breathed deeply. For the next few moments, all that could be heard in the study was the combined breathing of its three occupants. After a few minutes passed and Rebecca didn't look like she was about to surface from whatever exercises she was doing to calm herself, Dean started to read a journal that he'd only got part way through the day before, putting it down to take notes occasionally, all the while keeping up a soothing rhythm of petting to keep Angus calm.
By the time that Rebecca had not-freaked out enough to rejoin civilisation, Dean had finished reading the first journal he had picked up and was a handful of pages in to the next one.
"He's real?" Rebecca asked in a small voice, trying to hide the childlike wonder that she felt at seeing what she really hoped was an honest to god dragon in her study.
"Yeah, come here, you can stroke him. He doesn't bite, well, he hasn't yet and I don't see why he would bite you."
Rebecca reached out a hand hesitantly and very gently stroked a finger down Angus' left forearm, silently gasping when Angus leaned into the touch and seemed to give a draconic smile at the extra attention.
"So, you think that the reason that Grandma Rain was so insistent that her information about the area around Mount St. Helen's got written down properly was because there's a dragon living there?" She asked as she kept the main focus of her attention on Angus and slowly started stroking him more, smiling like a child who's got the new puppy to like them.
"That's about the size of it. I'm kinda counting on it being true in fact. As much as Angus is awesome and I don’t' want to get rid of him, I don't think I'm the best person to have as a parent, no matter what species the child is." As Dean spoke he realised just how deep his feelings for Angus were, and they weren't just because of the dragon's blood that had mixed with him. The part of him that was more father than brother to Sam had taken Angus on board wholeheartedly and was telling him that it didn't matter what he wanted, all that mattered was that Angus was alright; that it didn't matter that his heart was going to shatter leaving Angus behind with a stranger, even if that stranger was more family to Angus than Dean could ever, truly, be.
Rebecca blinked and looked up at Dean and then back to Angus, almost said something, stopped and gathered herself together again so she was once again a fully functioning adult.
"Huh. Ok, so what've you found out so far?" She asked, and for a moment Dean could have sworn that he saw Sam by his side, asking him what the next hunt was so he knew what to look up 'to stop you’re asses being handed to you', but Sam wasn't there, he was in Stanford a good couple of states away and it was just that the matter of fact tone in which Rebecca asked that was so similar to Sam's and as such, familiar.
For the next few hours they talked over what Dean had already found, what Rebecca could remember her Grandma telling her and calling out odd bits that might or might not be useful from the journal they were currently reading. When Angus started getting testy and needed to be fed, Dean went and got the cool box of meat and fed him by hand, making sure to not drop anything on the carpet and to keep it to the area that Rebecca had kindly covered with old newspapers, and the next time Angus needed feeding Rebecca carefully fed him, marvelling at how much such a small creature could eat.
"You would have thought I'd have got used to it, what with having Leanne and feeding her every couple of hours."
Somewhere along the line they grabbed a bite to eat for lunch, but other than that, neither of them left the room for anything other than bathroom breaks. There was a bunch of pages that they wanted to photocopy and a couple of drawings that they wanted to blow up to see the details properly and they got placed in a pile by the door so that they could be taken to the public library later when Rebecca went to pick up Daniel and Leanne.
"How do you plan on carrying Angus around with you whilst we're traipsing through a forest?" Rebecca asked the next morning as they were plotting points on photocopies of hand-drawn maps and cross referencing those points with the small amount of translated information that they had managed to glean from the book that Tomas had given Dean.
"Oh shit. I, hadn't thought of that." Dean said, biting his lip and pulling his mouth into a parody of a grin as he realised that whilst he may have thought ahead enough to realise that leaving Angus behind, even if it would be with his own kind, would hurt, badly, he hadn't thought ahead about the details of doing so.
Dammit, I'm usually better than that. This whole situation has fucked with my baseline. Dean thought to himself as he ran ideas through his head.
Rebecca took pity on him and voiced her idea.
"I used to carry Leanne around in those baby carriers when she was very little and I should still have at least one tucked away somewhere. I was thinking that with a little modification, a hole for his tail for instance, that it might be the easiest way to carry Angus. You'd have your hands free and both you and he would know where each other were all the time."
"That, is a freakin' wonderful idea." Dean said, his smile lighting up his whole face and for a moment Rebecca wondered what it would be like if they'd met and she wasn't married.
Part Two || Part Four
Part Two
By the time the sun had set and the Roadhouse was as packed as it was going to get for the night, Dean had not only been introduced to Ellen's daughter, Jo (under Ellen's watchful eye and Dean didn't miss the "touch her and lose your dick" glare that was directed his way when he started flirting with her), but also to Ash, and wasn't that just a weird meeting! Despite the oddness of the ex-MIT student, Dean found Ash ok to shoot the shit with whilst he kept an eye out for hunters who might have the kind of knowledge that he was after.
At least the man knows what proper music is, Dean thought to himself when the two of them discussed the awesomeness of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin and other rock bands after Dean had remarked that Ash looked like a Skynyrd roadie.
When people started leaving, presumably for their motel rooms, Dean was started to think that he'd have to come back another night, but was saved from that when the front door opened and a newcomer entered. She was dressed in the female version of 'hunter generic', jeans that had the odd questionable stain at the hem, a tank top that had seen better days and a heavy duty leather jacket with creases and stains from everyday use and not from a fashion designer that she was currently taking off and sliding onto the stool to her right. All in all she looked just as much a part of the Roadhouse as all the rest of the patrons, if you just looked at her clothes. If you saw her face clearly and looked long enough to imagine her in fancy clothes and make up, you'd be mistaken for thinking she was an actress researching a role, but the way she held herself and the ease with which she carried her gun, any competent hunter would know that she was the real deal.
Dean overheard someone say "Hey Zoe, been a while since you've been 'round these parts" and her say something in recognition as she walked passed them, and watched her order a beer and slide onto a barstool at the opposite end of the bar from Dean. When she'd had half her beer and hadn't yet got anything out that looked like it was to do with a hunt she was working, Dean ordered two more beers from Jo, patted Ash on the shoulder and mumbled something about seeing him later, and went over to Zoe, hoping she was who Bobby had mentioned earlier.
"Hey, I couldn't help but hear someone call you Zoe, now you wouldn't happen to be Zoe Sinclair would you?" Dean asked as he slid a beer over to Zoe with a friendly smile.
"It depends on who's asking." She replied smoothly, an eyebrow raised at the free beer. "Don't go thinking this'll buy your way into my panties now, cowboy."
At that Dean barked out a short laugh.
"Playing hard to get, huh?" Dean said, mock-flirting with her as he could tell straight off that whilst the sex would be awesome, it wouldn't be worth the hassle and if he was honest with himself, he was already feeling antsy being away from the baby dragon for so long.
"My name's Dean. I've gotta say that I've been called a lotta things but cowboy's not usually one of them." Dean replied.
The rest of the night they got to know each other over a few more beers, doing their best to outdo each other with the weird hunts and normal hunts that had weird things happen in them. When she heard some of the exploits the two young hunters at her bar said they'd done Ellen shook her head and smiled a little to herself. In between the boasting and one upping each other, Dean managed to slide in enough half questions and comments that by the time Ellen told them to beat it or help sweep up, Dean was pretty certain that he had managed to glean as much information about dragons from Zoe as was possible without outright asking her to spill the beans on a supposedly extinct species.
~+~ Two days later ~+~
"Tomas, it's Dean, I'm a couple of hours out from your town, do I need to slow down and take in the sights or is it ok to come straight to you?" Dean asked the man on the other end of the phone call.
"Sure, come straight here man, unless you want to take in the sights, that is." Tomas replied in a friendly and slightly teasing tone.
"Cool, should be there about two then." Dean said before flipping his cell phone shut and dropping it onto his lap.
The road was straight, wide and empty for the next dozen miles or so, so Dean had no compunctions about looking away from the road for a few seconds to check on the baby dragon, the baby dragon whose head was swaying in time to Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir' as it poked its head up high enough to look out of the passenger side window.
"So long as he doesn't do that when we get into town, it's ok." Dean mumbled to himself and looked back at the road, turning the tape deck up a little higher.
One hour and forty eight minutes later saw Dean standing on the doorstep of a house that had seen better days but was in better shape than it could be judging by its neighbours. As he rang the bell, Dean hurriedly checked that no one could see Angus who was carefully wrapped up in Dean's leather jacket and that he wasn't getting squished.
The front door opened to reveal a multi-racial man about the same height as him, strong, and broad shouldered with a friendly smile.
"You must be Dean, I'm Tom. Come on in."
As Dean was led into a well used den that was obviously far more used than most of the rest of the house and he and Tomas exchanged pleasantries, Dean noticed that Tomas never once came closer than an arms length away from him. Guessing that it was something to do with being what Bobby had termed 'sensitive', Dean tried to think nothing of it.
"Coffee?" Tom asked as Dean sat down on the couch.
"Please. Uh black, no sugar." Dean added when Tom stayed looking his way and raised an eyebrow at him.
"Sure. I'll be back in a minute."
As sure as his word, Tom was back with two steaming mugs of coffee in just a few minutes.
"So what really brought me to your attention and you all the way out to my humble little palace?" Tom asked the friendly smile from earlier still evident at the edges of his mouth and in his eyes.
"Well you know the … incident just under a week ago that I mentioned on the phone? Well, it's kinda more complicated than I maybe let on." Taking a deep breath and looking Tom straight in the eyes, Dean continued. "What do you know about dragons?"
At that, Tom's left eyebrow rose considerably and he took a large mouthful of coffee before putting his mug down on the table in between the two sofas that they occupied.
"As I understand it, they were hunted to extinction around about five hundred years or so ago, give or take a handful of decades depending on whose accounts you read and how well you trust translations." Tom replied. "But as that's what everyone knows, I'm not sure where you're going with this."
"What would you say if I could not only tell you that I'd seen and touched real dragons, but that one thought I was, well," at this point, Dean's head dropped a little in embarrassment and he rubbed at the back of his neck, "if one thought that I was its parent?"
"If I couldn't sense your sincerity and the truth of your words from the moment you started speaking, I'd say you had one too many hits from the bong and should go and sleep it off, but seeing as I know you're telling the truth, or what you believe to be the truth, I… don't know what to say really."
"If I showed you a living, breathing dragon, then would you really believe me?" Dean asked.
"I suppose I'd have to."
With Tom's words running through Dean's head, Dean turned to the carefully placed lump that was his jacket and its concealed content, Dean began to gently unfold the jacket and pick up the baby dragon. When it was sitting in his lap, practically purring at the attention it was getting, scratches behind its eye ridges, stroking down its flanks, Dean turned to face Tom and burst out laughing at the look of complete astonishment on Tom's face.
"Is that …" Tom trailed off, not really believing his eyes at the sight of a baby dragon on the lap of a hunter, in his living room.
"Yup, this here is a baby dragon, and it thinks I'm its parent. Unfortunately, as dragons are supposed to be extinct, I can't exactly go and drop this baby here off at the nearest dragon reserve and let someone else or another dragon look after it now, can I?" Dean said, still amused at the look on Tom's face, but worried that Tom wouldn't be able to help him.
"Reserve … or an area that only a few know about. Yes. Of course!" With that random outburst, Tom stood and pulled a notebook off of the top of a pile of CDs, put it on the table and then went off to another room. Moments later he came back with a small map and a rather worn out book.
"If you can read any of this book, it might help, but I haven't been able to read more than a sentence or two in it since I got it, just never quite got around to getting rid of it. It's supposed to be a firsthand account of an encounter with a dragon in the mid nineteen forties." Tom said as he put the battered looking book on the arm of the couch next to Dean. "The map's a rough outline of the general area the person was in when they were supposed to have had this encounter." Tom put the map on top of the worn out book.
"Thanks, and the notebook?" Dean asked.
Tom flipped through the notebook until he found a page decorated with dream catchers of different sizes and designs with a name and number in the middle of it.
"This woman, Rebecca Pike, might know more, though I think her last name's different now. I heard she got married two or three years back. She told me that her Grandma always told her that her family was friendly with, and had protected, a creature of great power for many generations. Who knows, it could be a dragon." Tom told Dean as he copied out the name and number on to a fresh piece of paper for Dean.
"That's great dude, thanks. Let's hope this chick knows what to do with a baby dragon." Dean said.
As Dean shifted to pick up the battered book and map, the baby dragon pitched a fit, screeching and clawing Dean through his t-shirt.
"Ow! What the - oh." Dean exclaimed. He soon realised that his shifting had accidentally squished the very tip of the baby dragon's tail, causing him to lash out.
"Sorry." Dean said to the baby dragon.
Dean had finished the 'feed, clean, then put down to sleep' routine with the baby dragon for what felt like the millionth time; and was now helping Bobby with a car, pulling apart and flushing the fuel injection system for a beat up old Camero before putting it back in working order.
"Did Tomas manage to dig up anything useful?" Bobby asked as he fiddled around with something under the hood of a truck that'd seen better days.
"Sort of. He said that there's a chick; I think he said her names was Rebecca, something ... Anyway, she’s up in Cougar, Washington. He said she might know a bit more about dragons, and that her info would probably be more up to date. Or at least more recent than what your books say; and something that Zoe mentioned at the Roadhouse fits with that." Dean replied, his whole demeanour showing that right now, at this moment in time, he was completely at ease with the world.
"You got a number for this woman?" Bobby enquired.
"Yeah. Tom gave me her address as well and I think this is the kinda thing that would be best done face to face; even if she does try to run me outta town and kill Angus." Dean answered.
"Angus?" Bobby questioned with a look of confusion on his face.
"Yeah, after the singer from AC/DC. Figured the little guy needed a name, seeing as he's been around so long, and women love naming things. And I'm not gonna give this Rebecca chick a chance to try and name him anything froofy." Dean said, a disgusted look on his face at the imagined 'froofy' names that some faceless woman might try and force on to his baby dragon.
"Right, Angus." Bobby replied, shaking his head a little at Dean's reasoning.
"So I figured that I'd finish up here, and go into town to pick up some supplies; y'know, some meat, maybe some more meat and perhaps a little meat. Then tomorrow morning me and Angus'll make our way up to Cougar, see if this Rebecca can help out." Dean said, focussing his attention on making the cars parts obey his will.
"Makes sense. I mean, I know you actually care about … Angus, but it'd be best for him if you could find his own kind to look after him and it's not like you can live your life properly with him around. In fact, you're doing what not only any decent person should do, but what a decent parent should, and making sure that your 'kid' gets just what he needs. Not necessarily gonna be what he wants, mind, but he needs to be with other dragons. Assuming of course he isn't the last of a supposedly extinct race." Bobby said, closing the hood of the truck with a sigh and walking over to Dean.
"I'm gonna go and do that translation work for ol' Doug Granger but if anyone comes in, feel free to do their job yourself. It's not like you've got any money to buy those supplies you were talking about getting, anyway." With that, Bobby wiped his hands on a rag that was tucked into his belt loop and walked off back to his house.
With a couple of people having come by for new tires, fan belts and oil changes the previous day, Dean had had enough money to stock up on meat for Angus and Bobby had lent him a cooler so the meat wouldn't spoil on the journey. Dean's bag was packed up and Angus was happily chirruping away to himself on the armchair when Dean called up the stairs to Bobby.
"Bobby, I'm all packed up so we're gonna head out. I'll call and let you know how it all goes down."
"You bet your ass you will. And don't even think that you're gonna get away with leaving it another eight or nine years with complete radio silence before you drop by again." Came Bobby's reply, filtering down the stairs from wherever Bobby was rooting out yet another artefact or book that was needed for such and such a job that so and so needed help on.
"Nah, not that long. I'll be seeing ya." And with that Dean picked Angus and his bag up and walked off to the Impala. Moments later you could clearly hear "Wherever I May Roam" blasting out of the Impala's open windows.
Late evening saw Dean and Angus staying somewhere slightly less skeezy than normal. The motel boasted a "mini fridge in every room" which Dean thought was highly useful, considering the amount of meat that he was lugging around. He was currently hoping it hadn't already spoiled in the trunk of the Impala as they travelled all day.
After the last feed and clean of the day (before the ones at the ungodly hours of the night and morning came along anyway), Dean found himself wondering whether calling Rebecca before turning up on her doorstep would have been a better idea than just appearing unannounced on her doorstep tomorrow. Figuring that if he called ahead and she thought he was crazy, there was a likelihood that she'd make sure that she was out or have the police in to take him away; but if he just turned up, there'd be no chance of the police option and he could wait until he could see that she was alone and show her Angus to make her believe him.
He just hoped she didn't believe in violence.
Dean pulled up at the address that Tom had given him and carefully covered the snoozing form of Angus with his jacket, feeling rather glad that today was very sunny so it would seem perfectly normal to leave his jacket behind in the car. Likening the action of asking this unknown woman for help to the removal of a band aid, Dean got out of the Impala and strode over to the front door of 1763 Johnston Drive, and knocked on the door, hoping like hell that Rebecca Chase was in and that her car was just in the garage to the side of the house.
"Can I help you?" A woman on average height and obvious Native American hereditary asked Dean.
"I hope so. My name's Dean and my friend Tomas Heath said that a Rebecca Pike lived here and that she'd be able to help me out." Dean said, projecting calmness and sincerity with a carefully charming grin.
"Well I haven't been Rebecca Pike for a good few years, it's Chase now, and I haven't spoken to Tomas in a long time, I'm not sure what I'll be able to do to help you. What is it you need help on?" She asked.
"It's, well, I'm not sure how to say it. It's not exactly your normal type of problem. He said you might have learned a few things from your Grandma that'd be relevant, stuff about the local area and its … alternative past." Dean replied, hoping she'd get the hint that it's not exactly the sort of thing you discuss on the doorstep, and invite him in so he didn't draw the neighbour's attention and make this any more awkward than it already was.
Dean could see when she put his hints together and realised what he was on about from the way that her eyes widened and she quickly glanced around to check if anyone was close enough to listen in.
"Oh, right. Sure, come in. I should have some of Grandma Rain's old journals and maps. They might be useful. I'll do my best to answer what I can of your questions, but I'm afraid she didn't tell me all that much before she passed." Rebecca said, standing to the side of the door to let Dean pass her.
"All the information I need is probably in those journals you mentioned, so I wouldn't worry if I were you." Dean replied, upping the charm just a little to ease Rebecca's mind.
"Rebecca, who's at the door?" A male voice called out from further into the house.
"Just a guy asking after Grandma Rain's old journals, you know the ones." Rebecca called back.
"And he couldn't call ahead? What if we were busy." The male voice now filled with muted anger.
Rebecca guided Dean into a study slash office type room, gesturing at a chair for Dean to sit in whilst she went to close the only window in the room. As she got a couple of boxes from the bottom of a cupboard, a man with long brown hair, piercing blue eyes and a 'don't fuck with me or my family' attitude walked in. Dean guessed that the man was a good four or five inches shorter than him and a handful of years older, but he wouldn't want to chance getting into a fight with him as he looked like the muscle that he had was because he could and would fight, not from pumping iron in a gym somewhere.
"Hi, my name's Dean. I'm sorry for barging in like this but I was told that Rebecca's Grandma Rain's old journals are just what I need to finish up a job I'm working up here. As soon as I've got all the info I need I'll be outta here and outta your hair, no need to worry about me." Dean said, doing his level best to reassure the guy in the doorway that he was no threat to him or his family.
"You be sure to do that now." Came the tersely polite response from the husband.
"That was my husband, Daniel. You don't need to worry about him, he's like that with most people he doesn't know, it's not personal or anything." Rebecca said when Daniel had left the room, presumably to go back to their child as Dean could hear the high pitched giggling of a young child come from the back of the house a few moments later.
"Sounds like he's good with your kid, even if he is kind of an ass to adults." Dean said with a smile to take the sting out of the insult. Rebecca laughed and grinned as she replied.
"Yeah, he's amazing with Leanne. He's the only one she has to have read to her at night. Someone else can do it and then she'll just holler for her Daddy until he comes in, tells her a story, tucks her in and kisses her forehead."
"A Daddy's girl then."
The next few minutes were quiet and only punctuated by the sounds of Rebecca checking the cupboards for more boxes and Dean flicking through the journals and sheets of paper in the boxes, trying to work out what order they were in, if they were even in any sort of order at all. When Rebecca had pulled out everything that she could remember as having gone with her Grandma Rain's notebooks she stood up and walked out of the room, stopping in the doorway to speak to Dean again.
"I've got some housework that I need to get on with, so I'll be around if you need anything, just shout for me if you do, ok?"
"That's fine, I don't want to intrude on you anymore than I have done. If I'm in your way I could just take these with me to the library and bring them back in a day or two?"
"You're no problem, Grandma passed her knowledge on thinking that someone would want it someday so I'm happy to let you use them for whatever job it is that you're working on, but they're some of the few things of hers that I was allowed to keep when she passed, so if it's not an inconvenience to you, I'd rather that they stayed here. You can copy out whatever you want, but I'd really prefer the original books to stay in the house." Rebecca said, biting her lip at the last part.
"Of course, they're your heirlooms. I'll do my best to be as quick as I can and take up as little of your time as possible." Dean replied, charm turned on and up rather high.
With a smile Rebecca nodded and walked out of the room only to return seconds later.
"I meant to ask if I can get you anything. Coffee, water, juice?"
"Coffee would be great, thanks." This was accompanied by a friendly smile.
"Sure." With that Rebecca finally managed to make her way to the kitchen and pacified Daniel's worries about having a stranger in the house with them.
Dean spent all day reading and cross referencing the journals and the book that Tom had given him, and all he had to show at the end of the day was one extra sentence deciphered in Tom's book, a head full of random facts about the area courtesy of Grandma Rain that he wasn't sure would ever be of use, and a very cranky baby dragon. Angus wasn't amused at having been left alone for most of the day, even if Dean had snuck out every couple of hours to feed and change him. By the time Dean got back to his motel room, Angus was in a real state, part angry at having been 'abandoned' and part scared that he wasn't good enough to keep his parent around.
"What am I gonna do with you, huh?" Dean said, more to himself than anything, but Angus warbled and chirruped as if he was following the conversation and trying to give Dean some sound advice.
Dean was still wondering what to do with Angus when he got to Rebecca's the next day, and ended up smuggling him in wrapped up in the leather jacket again with the admonishment to stay quiet. Dean just hoped that Angus really did understand him as well as he'd seemed to last night. Luckily when Rebecca let him in, she told him that Daniel was out with Leanne and that she wasn't expected to go and pick them up late afternoon.
Operation 'Keep Angus Out Of Sight' was going well until Rebecca came into the study and helped Dean out for a while, inadvertently nudging the leather jacket when she pulled a chair out to sit on. Angus wailed in pain and shock, Rebecca gave a small cry in shock and Dean fell out of his chair to the ground and started muttering nonsense to Angus who was now whimpering and trying to get out of the jacket so that he could be petted properly by Dean.
"What in heaven's name have you got in there, Dean?" Rebecca asked, her voice all high pitched and breathy as she struggled to keep her composure. Dean continued muttering nonsense to Angus, calming him down and opening the jacket up a little more.
"Dean, tell me what you've got hidden in there. Tell me what you brought in to my house, the house that my daughter lives in." The longer Dean didn't answer, the louder and angrier Rebecca got. Just as it looked like Rebecca was going to drag Dean out of the house by his ear if she had to, Dean scooped up the jacket and it's contents and sat back on the chair, gesturing at Rebecca to do the same.
"It's complicated and you probably won't believe me, not that I'd blame you, the freaky side of nature doesn't lend itself to people believing that it's true." Dean said, rubbing a hand over his eyes as he tried to think of a way to explain Angus' existence to her and coming up with bupkiss. Even though Rebecca was part of a family who had guarded land that hopefully contained an adult dragon, she didn't seem to believe anything that Grandma Rain had told her or had noted down in any of her many journals. Then again, if she knew Tomas and from what Dean had seen, had at one point been on very friendly terms with him, then maybe she would understand what Dean had to tell her?
"Try me."
"Don't say I didn't warn you that this might be a bit hard to believe." At that, Rebecca raised an eyebrow, crossed her arms in front of her chest and gave Dean her best 'you can't faze me' look.
"Try not to interrupt me and this might all get done quicker than I hope, 'k?" Rebecca nodded curtly and Dean continued. "So, I don't know about all of the stuff mentioned in your Grandma's notebooks, haven't read all of them yet anyway, but the area that your family's supposed to protect and the creature that's supposed to be living there? Well I believe that part of it all to be true and that the creature's a surviving dragon."
"A dragon?! They all died out hundreds of years ago, they were hunted to extinction like the Dodo."
"I thought we agreed on no interruptions? That's what all of our history books tell us, but who writes them, Rebecca? The winners of the war or the ones who ended up in power, that's who. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about now anyway. There are… creatures and other shit out there that people think are legends or don't exist, but they do, trust me on that, it's kinda my job to hunt down anything that hurts people, and I'm pretty certain that somehow, a bunch of the dragons managed to hide themselves away when they were being hunted way back when and they've survived, probably because some of them had families like yours who helped to protect them. Along with all of the things that go bump in the night, dragons exist."
Before Rebecca could say anything, Angus crawled out of the jacket, onto Dean's lap and chirruped up at him as if asking Dean what he'd done wrong to be kept under the jacket now that the pretty lady knew he existed.
"Dean, how, why is there what looks like a baby dragon on your lap?" Rebecca asked with that calm tone that you use when you're seconds away from having a nervous breakdown.
"Uh, this is Angus, he kinda thinks that I'm his parent."
At Dean's announcement Rebecca's eyes widened so much that Dean thought they might just fall out of her head, and then she leant forward so that her elbows rested on her knees, rested her head in her hands and breathed deeply. For the next few moments, all that could be heard in the study was the combined breathing of its three occupants. After a few minutes passed and Rebecca didn't look like she was about to surface from whatever exercises she was doing to calm herself, Dean started to read a journal that he'd only got part way through the day before, putting it down to take notes occasionally, all the while keeping up a soothing rhythm of petting to keep Angus calm.
By the time that Rebecca had not-freaked out enough to rejoin civilisation, Dean had finished reading the first journal he had picked up and was a handful of pages in to the next one.
"He's real?" Rebecca asked in a small voice, trying to hide the childlike wonder that she felt at seeing what she really hoped was an honest to god dragon in her study.
"Yeah, come here, you can stroke him. He doesn't bite, well, he hasn't yet and I don't see why he would bite you."
Rebecca reached out a hand hesitantly and very gently stroked a finger down Angus' left forearm, silently gasping when Angus leaned into the touch and seemed to give a draconic smile at the extra attention.
"So, you think that the reason that Grandma Rain was so insistent that her information about the area around Mount St. Helen's got written down properly was because there's a dragon living there?" She asked as she kept the main focus of her attention on Angus and slowly started stroking him more, smiling like a child who's got the new puppy to like them.
"That's about the size of it. I'm kinda counting on it being true in fact. As much as Angus is awesome and I don’t' want to get rid of him, I don't think I'm the best person to have as a parent, no matter what species the child is." As Dean spoke he realised just how deep his feelings for Angus were, and they weren't just because of the dragon's blood that had mixed with him. The part of him that was more father than brother to Sam had taken Angus on board wholeheartedly and was telling him that it didn't matter what he wanted, all that mattered was that Angus was alright; that it didn't matter that his heart was going to shatter leaving Angus behind with a stranger, even if that stranger was more family to Angus than Dean could ever, truly, be.
Rebecca blinked and looked up at Dean and then back to Angus, almost said something, stopped and gathered herself together again so she was once again a fully functioning adult.
"Huh. Ok, so what've you found out so far?" She asked, and for a moment Dean could have sworn that he saw Sam by his side, asking him what the next hunt was so he knew what to look up 'to stop you’re asses being handed to you', but Sam wasn't there, he was in Stanford a good couple of states away and it was just that the matter of fact tone in which Rebecca asked that was so similar to Sam's and as such, familiar.
For the next few hours they talked over what Dean had already found, what Rebecca could remember her Grandma telling her and calling out odd bits that might or might not be useful from the journal they were currently reading. When Angus started getting testy and needed to be fed, Dean went and got the cool box of meat and fed him by hand, making sure to not drop anything on the carpet and to keep it to the area that Rebecca had kindly covered with old newspapers, and the next time Angus needed feeding Rebecca carefully fed him, marvelling at how much such a small creature could eat.
"You would have thought I'd have got used to it, what with having Leanne and feeding her every couple of hours."
Somewhere along the line they grabbed a bite to eat for lunch, but other than that, neither of them left the room for anything other than bathroom breaks. There was a bunch of pages that they wanted to photocopy and a couple of drawings that they wanted to blow up to see the details properly and they got placed in a pile by the door so that they could be taken to the public library later when Rebecca went to pick up Daniel and Leanne.
"How do you plan on carrying Angus around with you whilst we're traipsing through a forest?" Rebecca asked the next morning as they were plotting points on photocopies of hand-drawn maps and cross referencing those points with the small amount of translated information that they had managed to glean from the book that Tomas had given Dean.
"Oh shit. I, hadn't thought of that." Dean said, biting his lip and pulling his mouth into a parody of a grin as he realised that whilst he may have thought ahead enough to realise that leaving Angus behind, even if it would be with his own kind, would hurt, badly, he hadn't thought ahead about the details of doing so.
Dammit, I'm usually better than that. This whole situation has fucked with my baseline. Dean thought to himself as he ran ideas through his head.
Rebecca took pity on him and voiced her idea.
"I used to carry Leanne around in those baby carriers when she was very little and I should still have at least one tucked away somewhere. I was thinking that with a little modification, a hole for his tail for instance, that it might be the easiest way to carry Angus. You'd have your hands free and both you and he would know where each other were all the time."
"That, is a freakin' wonderful idea." Dean said, his smile lighting up his whole face and for a moment Rebecca wondered what it would be like if they'd met and she wasn't married.
Part Two || Part Four