SPN FIC - What a Difference a Day Makes
Okay, y'all -- time to get started on our look back at 60 episodes of SPN!
Characters: Dean, OMC, at the gas station outside of Jericho
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: none
Length: 696 words
What a Difference a Day Makes
By Carol Davis
The kid behind the counter paid no attention to the name on the credit card.
Then he did. Sleepily, because he obviously wasn’t one of those rise-and-shine types. “Aframian?” he muttered. “What kinda name is that?”
“Armenian,” Dean said.
“You don’t look like a Hector.”
Dean shrugged and pulled a bag of Doritos off the display to go with the soda he’d popped out of the cooler. “Family name.”
“Oh.”
Helluva job, Dean thought, being stuck behind the counter on a day like this. Sky clear and blue, temperature mild, light breeze. Great day for a drive - windows down, music pumped, the road unspooling under his wheels.
Their wheels.
“How far to Jericho from here?” he asked.
The kid blinked at him. “Hell, I dunno. A ways.”
It was a wonder he could operate the register. Dean began to think the kid wasn’t sleepy, that the stupor was his normal state of being. Maybe that was a good thing, though. If the kid been any quicker on the draw, he’d be more aware of how very much being trapped behind that counter sucked grade-A ass.
“You been working here long?” Dean asked as the kid fed Hector Aframian’s credit card through the scanner.
The kid blinked at him. “I dunno. What, like forty-five minutes?”
“Ah,” Dean said.
I could have a job like this, he thought. Be friggin’ “normal.” Eight hours a day standing at a cash register ringing up snacks and gas. Yeah, sign me up.
He hadn’t slept the night before. He’d been up for a solid twenty-four hours, with no idea when he’d have the chance to crash, catch some Z’s. Tonight, maybe; it depended on what was going down in Jericho. Whether they found any leads worth pursuing. He let the idea of tired slide through his head and decided, nope, he was firing on all cylinders.
Decided that this was a freakin’ perfect day.
“What’re you goin’ to Jericho for?” the kid asked, upper lip curling a little. “That’s like the ass end of nowhere.”
“As opposed to here?” Dean offered. “I can see that. You got it goin’ on here.”
“That supposed to be funny?”
“Only if you want it to be.”
That confused the hell out of the kid. “What?”
“Nothing, dude.”
Scowling, the kid handed back Hector Aframian’s card, then slid the credit receipt across the scarred and peeling counter so Dean could sign it. Dean autographed it with a flourish and beamed at the kid, which earned him a combination grunt and eye roll as the kid separated the copies of the receipt and thrust the customer copy at Dean.
When Dean turned away from the counter, juggling his Mountain Dew and chips in one hand as he stowed the receipt in his pocket with the other, the kid sat back down on the battered barstool he’d shoved aside when Dean came in and went back to the reading Dean had interrupted. Comic book, Dean noted.
Yeah, that was some kind of life.
Just outside the door, his baby was gleaming in the California sunshine, windows rolled down, ready to take on some more open road.
And his brother was sitting in the passenger seat.
“Goin’ to Jericho,” Dean said to the kid. “With m’ brother.”
“Whatever,” the kid said without looking up.
With a soft huff of an exhale, Dean pushed the door open and stepped out into the dusty end-of-October California sunshine. They were gonna find Dad in Jericho; he could feel it. Help Dad work the job, spend a couple days being family.
Maybe more than a couple days.
He’d made the right move, going to get Sam. Once the sun had started to come up, Sam’s mood had lifted - he was cheerful now, talkative. Asked questions about the New Orleans thing. Didn’t rag on Dad. Back in Palo Alto, he’d griped about Dean showing up at the apartment, griped about needing to go find Dad, but that had all faded away by the time the sun peeked up over the horizon.
The Winchester brothers been apart for two years - but that was over.
Damn, this was a perfect day.
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
My other Pilot fic:
Three Days Out
Libera nos a malo
You Are My Sunshine
Now, take a look at Kripke's original version of the Pilot. (It's a series of jpg's -- if you change the page number in the URL, you can run through it a page at a time.) In the original concept, Mary was killed in the car by a mysterious "something" when Dean was 13 and Sam 9. John was blamed for her death, but due to lack of proof was never charged. He left the boys in the care of an aunt and uncle and pursued the "something" (which sounds suspiciously like the thing that killed Kolchak's wife in Night Stalker) on his own, until Dean joined him at age 24. (And he's dead before page 1.) When we meet the boys, Sam is graduating (complete with cap and gown) from Stanford and has a job lined up with a judge. Dean's a heavy smoker and a ne'er do well. Oh...their last name is Harrison. They still meet Constance, but she killed her parents, not her kids. Sam blames himself for Mom's death, because he saw the thing that killed her and said nothing.
Pretty different, huh?
What did I like about the Pilot? (Yup, I watched it when it first aired -- both times.) The humor. The genuine scares. The way it seemed "smart." The movie-quality cinematography. As they say..."You had me from 'hello'." :)
What do I like about it now, almost 3 years later? The amount of story that's set up. What happened to Mary (and to Jess)? Who -- and where -- is Dad? Is Sam really going to walk away from the "normal" life he tried to set up for himself? Will the boys repair their relationship? Plus, of course, the way Jensen was already digging his way into that character. It's an awesome beginning.