SPN FIC - Your One True Love
The Muse has done it again! I figure on doing one thing (the Home fic) and she says, "Nope, we're doing this." I don't figure you guys will mind too much.
He feels her now, watching him, the way she'd watch on those summer days when he'd pull out the hose and soak the car down. They'd all get wet on those hot days, the three of them, Mary and him and Dean.
Characters: John (and Dean's best girl)
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Spoilers: none
Length: 1746 words
YOUR ONE TRUE LOVE
By Carol Davis
This one thing would have been the same, if there had been no fire. All of it: the need to do what he's doing on the sly, during the hours when the boys are in school. Dean doesn't like surprises -- he likes to know what's coming, so he can plan and prepare, make sure all the T's are crossed and the I's dotted, make sure all of them are safe. It's what John taught him to do; it's how Dean's mind works. Which isn't to say Dean can't think on his feet. He's a smart, creative kid. A little rash sometimes, yeah. But he's a kid, still. Entitled to test his boundaries once in a while.
Dean doesn't like surprises, but John has tried his best to turn this into one. Every time Dean has broached the subject, John has put him off. Told him he's not ready, that it's a big responsibility.
Maybe Dean doesn't believe that. Maybe Dean can read him like a book.
But maybe not.
John leans into his work, rubbing wax against smooth black metal until the car gleams almost showroom-new. It wasn't new when he bought it, and he's put a lot of rough miles on it since then, but he's tried his best to keep it in good shape. He put together the money to buy the truck a few months back, and with some effort they could probably find a way to replace the Impala with something newer. Thing is, she's reliable.
She, he thinks. Dean calls it "she," like people do with boats.
Dean loves this car. He learned to care for it -- her -- not just as a way to share something with John, though that was certainly part of it. Any shrink you could name would have a field day picking apart Dean's feelings for the car, which go a lot farther than thinking of it -- her -- as transportation.
She's home. The one thing they've got left from before.
Dean remembers, surely, going places in this car: the three of them, four after Sammy came. Of course he remembers going to the store, to the drive-in movies, to church. Going for ice cream on summer nights. And of course he remembers sitting in between his parents on the front seat, and with Sammy in the back. It's home on wheels, something they took with them when they said goodbye to Lawrence.
It's the only part of home they've got left.
It's a "muscle car" these days, something that other men nod at with admiration in their eyes. A serious car, not one of those compact foreign jobs that are a dog and a half to repair because you can't get your hands into the engine like you can with these big old Motor City babies. But back when it -- she -- was built, it was a family car. Big enough to load a bunch of kids into, big enough to handle everything you'd need for a couple weeks of vacation.
They didn't take a vacation, that last summer in Lawrence. Things got busy at the garage, and Sammy was too small to be hauling around the countryside. They spent the summer at home, eating Popsicles out in the yard, watching Dean run through the sprinklers, laughing.
More than anything, he wishes he could hear Dean laugh like that again.
He's done everything he can to spruce up the car: new plugs, new belts, fresh oil, new wipers. The tires are only a year old and the brakes are in good shape. She's got a lot of miles on her, but with luck (and some decent care) she's good for a lot more.
She, he thinks. Not it. Dean calls the car "she."
Maybe there's a reason for that -- not just that boats and ships and other forms of transporation are automatically "she." Maybe it takes the place of the "she" he doesn't have. His mother. A girlfriend. A "she" that would belong to him, that he could care for, lavish his attention on.
John's tried to think of a way, all these years -- a way to stay in one place, any place, somewhere the boys could have a home and make some friends and know that more than likely, a few years down the road, they'd still have the same roof over their heads. But there's no way. He can't put down roots, build up a business like Bobby Singer did, like Bill Harvelle did, be a strong part of the community like Jim Murphy is. He calls himself "hunter" like they do, but he's more of a tracker, he thinks, and he's going to track that white whale of his until he finds it. That's not fair to the boys, not fair at all. That's been pointed out to him until it pretty much makes his head bleed, but it is what it is. There are things you can forget, things you can forgive, and the list of those things might be longer for some people than it is for John Winchester -- but whether the list has ten things on it, or a thousand, there's one thing he won't let go of, no matter who it's not fair to. That son of a bitch, whatever it is, took Mary, and it's not so much that it took her from him, though that's certainly a big part of the situation. It made her suffer. It took her away from her boys, her babies.
From Dean.
He's heard people say obsessive and crazy, sometimes when they think he can't hear and sometimes when they know he can. There are times when he'd buy himself a t-shirt that says AHAB on it -- times when he knows he's over the line, so far over it that when he turns and looks, he can't even see the damn thing. There are times when he's pretty sure he won't come out of this thing in one piece, that he won't get to be old and white-haired, won't get to see his grandchildren. That spins up a ball of pain deep in his gut, and there are times when he thinks I can stop. For them. I can stop.
But he can't.
All he can do, really, all he can make sure of is that his boys are as safe as he can make them. That they understand what's out there, what it can do to them, to others. That if they've made sacrifices, it's for a reason. For the greater good.
That's what holds him back, those times when he could leave "normal" so far behind that there'd be no hope of ever glimpsing it again. He's heard of hunters who are so obsessed that even other hunters shun them, and he knows he sometimes comes pretty close to that territory. If he were alone, no doubt he would have vanished in-country there a long time ago.
For him, "home" isn't a car. It's those boys. Mary's boys.
Their boys.
He's gone back and forth a thousand times, in his mind. Would she understand what he's doing. Would she agree. Maybe not; maybe she'd want her boys settled somewhere, with that same roof over their heads every night. But she was no shy little flower, his Mary. She was tough and stubborn and when the occasion called for it, she had a mouth on her that was a match for his own. If the specifics had been different, he thinks, she'd be a lot like Ellen Harvelle. She'd be able to hold her own in this world.
This world. The one he lives in now.
She'd understand, he thinks, because he is who he is and she knew that.
He can feel her sometimes, watching him. He talks to her sometimes, tells her what's going on, as if he's dictating a letter, and he wishes like hell that he could mail it. Sometimes -- and he wants to believe it's not just his imagination -- he feels her nearby, feels the brush of her hand against his cheek.
He feels her now, watching him, the way she'd watch on those summer days when he'd pull out the hose and soak the car down. They'd all get wet on those hot days, the three of them, Mary and him and Dean.
He remembers Dean helping, a big yellow sponge in his small hand, barefoot, his shirt and shorts and hair dripping with hose water. Remembers that face peering up at him, grinning, freckles dark against pale skin, a flush of sunburn on the back of his neck and the tip of his nose.
Dean loves this car, and everything it stands for.
This time, Dean didn't help clean her up. John did it all on his own, this one time.
For Dean.
It's winter now, cold and gray and brown, though there hasn't been much snow. Taking the car through the auto-wash hasn't gotten it -- her -- quite as spotless as John would like, but it's winter, and sometimes you have to make concessions. He's detailed her as best he can, given attention to every nook and cranny, the grooves where the upholstery is seamed, the carpet under the seats. Her gas tank is full, the other fluids all topped off. He steps back and looks, chamois in his hand, the smell of wax rich and ripe on the car and the rag and his clothes. She's gleaming in the thin January sunlight. Looks as good as the day he bought her.
The day they bought her.
His right hand slides into the pocket of his jeans and he fingers the keys on their leather-fobbed keyring.
Mary's standing nearby, he thinks: arms folded, head tilted a little. "Think I'm done," he says quietly, and she nods.
Yes, he's done. The paperwork is filled out. There's nothing else that remains to be done.
It's a Friday, in January. His son, his boy, Mary's boy, is eighteen today. He bought a steak to cook for supper, and cake for after.
After that, he will slide those two keys on their leather-fobbed keyring across the table and say, "Happy birthday, son."
He will say, "Take care of her." Not "it," because to Dean, the Impala is she.
It's all he has to give to his son, really; all that's left of home.
It's the best way he knows to say I love you.
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