SPN FIC - Mean To Dean
Yeah, this took long enough, didn't it? Time to look at Home.
They’re taller now, John’s boys, but in most other ways they haven’t changed. Dean’s still walking on eggshells. Still has that wall built up around himself, that thing that keeps him from being hurt again.
Characters: Missouri Mosley, Dean, Sam
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG, for a bit of language
Spoilers: Home
Length: 1893 words
MEAN TO DEAN
By Carol Davis
Her client keeps talking, and by rights she ought to listen to him, ought to give him her full attention - after all, he’s paying for her attention, her help, her advice. He wants to know if his suspicions are true, if his wife is cheating on him.
Fillmore, his name is. Or Fillion. Something like that.
Missouri tries, fixes her gaze on him and does her best to listen to what he’s saying. He’s had a bad feeling for weeks now, he says, ever since his wife started fixing herself up. New hairdo, new clothes. He watches a lot of talk shows, he says, and he knows it might be partly his fault, so he’s tried fussing over her. Doing extra chores around the house. Telling her she looks nice. Taking a little more time when they…
Poor bastard, she thinks.
But it’s a fleeting thought, because someone else has come in through the front door. Two someones, she realizes, and they’re waiting out in the foyer. They’re nervous about being here, like most people when they first walk in. They’re skeptical, and it wouldn’t take much to turn them around and make them walk back out. They won’t walk out, though, not unless something monumental happens in the next couple of minutes. They need her, the same way Fillmore/Fillion does, but multiplied a hundredfold. The poor man with the cheating wife - yes, she’s been parading her fancy self in front of someone else for weeks now - just wants to save his marriage.
The boys out front want to save someone’s life.
She’s kept those boys in the back of her mind for a lot of years now, ever since the last time John Winchester walked out her front door with Sam in his arms and Dean walking close alongside. They were sweet boys then, so much more somber than they should have been, but that was understandable, given that they’d lost their mama in such a terrible way. As Fillmore/Fillion goes on talking, she remembers John’s boys the way they were, sitting on a blanket on the front room floor, Dean trying to get Sam interested in the toys they’d brought in from the car.
He was so sad, that little boy. Bone-deep sad, and being anywhere near him broke her heart. Five years old, and he’d lost everything that meant something to him - everything but his daddy and his brother.
It’s been twenty years. No, a little more than that.
Twenty years, and Dean Winchester is still that sad little boy.
He didn’t want to come here, she understands as Fillmore/Fillion goes on talking. Somebody pushed him into it - Sam, more than likely, because he’ll give in to Sam when he’d tell anyone else to leave him be - so he’s here, putting on a brave face, when down in his soul he’s wanted to keep a wall around this place for the rest of his days.
He’s trying to quiet himself, she understands. Trying to do that, for Sam.
But inside him, he wants to die.
Back then, twenty years ago, she gave him cookies and milk, and smiled at him in the best way she could put together. He didn’t want her getting too close, for all that his daddy wanted him to open up a little, start talking again, be the happy, laughing child he’d been a couple of months back. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, didn’t want her fussing over him; more like, he was trying to be something he thought his daddy expected of him.
Good soldier, he’d thought.
Brave.
So he was polite, that little boy. He murmured thank you when she sat him down in front of a plate of supper, and was careful not to break anything, disturb anything. He seemed to think that the smallest ripple coming out of him would tear things apart, would start the horror happening again, take his daddy and his brother from him. He walked on eggshells, one eye always on his daddy, the other always on Sam. If she tried to comfort him, she understood, she would push him further down the road he shouldn’t have found himself on in the first place, so she let him be. All she gave him was a nudge: If you eat your supper, if you get some sleep, you can take better care of Sammy.
That was his job, it seemed like: the one he’d assigned to himself. Take care of Sammy. It was something he could focus on, devote his attention to, something to keep him in the here and now. Something to keep him away from remembering.
And he’s still doing it.
He’s still taking care of Sammy.
Sammy’s here with him now, out in the foyer. He’s harder to read than Dean, but that doesn’t surprise her; Dean was an open book back then, Sam half-hidden behind curtains and veils, his self tucked a little deeper inside, and none of that’s changed. They’re both stubborn, they’re both John’s boys and it’s God’s honest truth that John Winchester turned stubborn into a fine art, but there’s a difference between them. Sam’s stubborn for its own sake, seems like. Stubborn so he can have his own way.
Dean’s stubborn to protect himself from going under.
Missouri reaches out to them, says hello, and waits to see what happens.
They don’t remember her.
They’re not sure why they’re here.
That makes her sigh, but it’s no surprise. It was a long time ago, that last time John walked out the door with them in tow. John’s been back since then, a time or two, but he left them somewhere else. Maybe he understands that Dean couldn’t bear to come back and maybe he doesn’t. Either way, John’s not here now.
John’s not here, for good or ill.
John’s not here, and his boy is out front, out there in her foyer, trying his best to do this for Sam.
Fillmore/Fillion keeps right on talking. She turns to him and gestures with one hand, a comforting movement, meant to say It’s all right. It’s not all right, it’s not anywhere near all right, and he’ll find that out soon enough. But for now, he’ll accept what she says because he wants to accept it, wants to know that his world is still whole, that the woman he loves more than any other still belongs to him. Maybe he believes in Missouri’s abilities and maybe he doesn’t. He paid his money, and it’s up to him whether he believes she knows something or whether she’s just blowing smoke up his behind. He frowns a little as she gets up from her chair, then he gets up too. Missouri smiles at him, tells him a lie the way women have been lying to men since time immemorial, and guides him toward the door. He’s buoyant as he goes out, with a little bit of spring to his step.
He buys what she’s telling him, and that’s both a relief and a damn crime.
Either way, he’s gone.
The door closes behind him and she’s left there in the foyer with John Winchester’s boys.
They don’t know her. That’s plain on their faces. How exactly they got here, she isn’t sure, though she thinks it’s some innocuous reason, an accident, mostly. Or maybe something, somebody, nudged them here.
Back to where their daddy came for help all those years ago.
Dean looks at her, looks straight into her eyes, and for an instant she thinks he does remember, that there’s a memory deep down that’s fighting its way to the surface, but in the end all that’s there is Can you help me?
Oh, sweet boy, she thinks.
She wanted to hold him, back then. Wanted to gather him into her lap and rock him and stroke his hair and croon to him. But telling him It’s all right would have been the worst kind of lie back then, back when he was a little boy who didn’t understand why his mama had been stolen away from him and why his daddy was still around but hopelessly lost at the same time. It would have been one thing if the police and the fire department had been right, if that fire had sprung from something as simple as bad wiring somewhere in the ceiling, if there’d just been a wrinkle in the world, no reason, no one to blame. God, maybe, but she stopped blaming God for things a long time ago, years before John Winchester stepped foot in this house.
It wasn’t God’s fault, that fire. Something - someone - caused it, and it wasn’t God.
Something.
And it’s come back.
Dean called his daddy, she understands as she stands there looking at him. Called him, and cried.
He doesn’t do that much: let himself break. He’s still trying to be the good soldier. Take care of everyone but himself.
She’d take care of him now, the way she tried to back then, in small steps, with cookies and milk and a blanket on the floor, with affection offered freely from one heart to another, all of it silent, the only way he’d accept it. She’d offer both of them, him and Sammy, a place to stay, sanctuary for as long as they need it - even if that’s forever. Someone to talk to, who knows what they’ve been through, what lies ahead of them.
But maybe that would only make things worse.
They’re taller now, John’s boys, but in most other ways they haven’t changed. Dean’s still walking on eggshells. Still has that wall built up around himself, that thing that keeps him from being hurt again.
It’s one sorry-ass wall, Missouri thinks. Doesn’t work worth a damn.
There’s only one way she can help him now. Well, two. She can guide him and Sam the way she guided John all those years ago - help them understand what was in that house, what’s come back to haunt it again.
And she can give him some solid ground to walk on.
Hugging won’t do. Affection won’t do. He’s scared of it - terrified, really. Scared of having someone care, because having that means losing it. All he wants, all he needs right now is to be able to do his job: the one his daddy trained him to do, and the one he assigned to himself. He needs to fix things, and then he needs to go somewhere far away from Lawrence, Kansas. If he falls apart before that’s done, he’ll never forgive himself. It’ll be one more thing to add to the list of things he can’t forgive himself for.
So, as she did a few minutes ago with Fillmore, or Fillion, or whatever the hell the man’s name is, she needs to lie.
She’s good at lying.
“You boys grew up handsome,” she says cheerfully, then raises an eyebrow at Dean. “And you were one goofy-lookin’ kid, too.”
He flinches. And frowns.
When she reaches out to him, to the part of him that’s guarded behind that wall, what she finds is Thank you.
It’s all right, baby, she thinks. We’ll do what you need.
We can do that.
And she guides John’s boys into the other room, so they can talk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
They’re taller now, John’s boys, but in most other ways they haven’t changed. Dean’s still walking on eggshells. Still has that wall built up around himself, that thing that keeps him from being hurt again.
Characters: Missouri Mosley, Dean, Sam
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG, for a bit of language
Spoilers: Home
Length: 1893 words
MEAN TO DEAN
By Carol Davis
Her client keeps talking, and by rights she ought to listen to him, ought to give him her full attention - after all, he’s paying for her attention, her help, her advice. He wants to know if his suspicions are true, if his wife is cheating on him.
Fillmore, his name is. Or Fillion. Something like that.
Missouri tries, fixes her gaze on him and does her best to listen to what he’s saying. He’s had a bad feeling for weeks now, he says, ever since his wife started fixing herself up. New hairdo, new clothes. He watches a lot of talk shows, he says, and he knows it might be partly his fault, so he’s tried fussing over her. Doing extra chores around the house. Telling her she looks nice. Taking a little more time when they…
Poor bastard, she thinks.
But it’s a fleeting thought, because someone else has come in through the front door. Two someones, she realizes, and they’re waiting out in the foyer. They’re nervous about being here, like most people when they first walk in. They’re skeptical, and it wouldn’t take much to turn them around and make them walk back out. They won’t walk out, though, not unless something monumental happens in the next couple of minutes. They need her, the same way Fillmore/Fillion does, but multiplied a hundredfold. The poor man with the cheating wife - yes, she’s been parading her fancy self in front of someone else for weeks now - just wants to save his marriage.
The boys out front want to save someone’s life.
She’s kept those boys in the back of her mind for a lot of years now, ever since the last time John Winchester walked out her front door with Sam in his arms and Dean walking close alongside. They were sweet boys then, so much more somber than they should have been, but that was understandable, given that they’d lost their mama in such a terrible way. As Fillmore/Fillion goes on talking, she remembers John’s boys the way they were, sitting on a blanket on the front room floor, Dean trying to get Sam interested in the toys they’d brought in from the car.
He was so sad, that little boy. Bone-deep sad, and being anywhere near him broke her heart. Five years old, and he’d lost everything that meant something to him - everything but his daddy and his brother.
It’s been twenty years. No, a little more than that.
Twenty years, and Dean Winchester is still that sad little boy.
He didn’t want to come here, she understands as Fillmore/Fillion goes on talking. Somebody pushed him into it - Sam, more than likely, because he’ll give in to Sam when he’d tell anyone else to leave him be - so he’s here, putting on a brave face, when down in his soul he’s wanted to keep a wall around this place for the rest of his days.
He’s trying to quiet himself, she understands. Trying to do that, for Sam.
But inside him, he wants to die.
Back then, twenty years ago, she gave him cookies and milk, and smiled at him in the best way she could put together. He didn’t want her getting too close, for all that his daddy wanted him to open up a little, start talking again, be the happy, laughing child he’d been a couple of months back. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, didn’t want her fussing over him; more like, he was trying to be something he thought his daddy expected of him.
Good soldier, he’d thought.
Brave.
So he was polite, that little boy. He murmured thank you when she sat him down in front of a plate of supper, and was careful not to break anything, disturb anything. He seemed to think that the smallest ripple coming out of him would tear things apart, would start the horror happening again, take his daddy and his brother from him. He walked on eggshells, one eye always on his daddy, the other always on Sam. If she tried to comfort him, she understood, she would push him further down the road he shouldn’t have found himself on in the first place, so she let him be. All she gave him was a nudge: If you eat your supper, if you get some sleep, you can take better care of Sammy.
That was his job, it seemed like: the one he’d assigned to himself. Take care of Sammy. It was something he could focus on, devote his attention to, something to keep him in the here and now. Something to keep him away from remembering.
And he’s still doing it.
He’s still taking care of Sammy.
Sammy’s here with him now, out in the foyer. He’s harder to read than Dean, but that doesn’t surprise her; Dean was an open book back then, Sam half-hidden behind curtains and veils, his self tucked a little deeper inside, and none of that’s changed. They’re both stubborn, they’re both John’s boys and it’s God’s honest truth that John Winchester turned stubborn into a fine art, but there’s a difference between them. Sam’s stubborn for its own sake, seems like. Stubborn so he can have his own way.
Dean’s stubborn to protect himself from going under.
Missouri reaches out to them, says hello, and waits to see what happens.
They don’t remember her.
They’re not sure why they’re here.
That makes her sigh, but it’s no surprise. It was a long time ago, that last time John walked out the door with them in tow. John’s been back since then, a time or two, but he left them somewhere else. Maybe he understands that Dean couldn’t bear to come back and maybe he doesn’t. Either way, John’s not here now.
John’s not here, for good or ill.
John’s not here, and his boy is out front, out there in her foyer, trying his best to do this for Sam.
Fillmore/Fillion keeps right on talking. She turns to him and gestures with one hand, a comforting movement, meant to say It’s all right. It’s not all right, it’s not anywhere near all right, and he’ll find that out soon enough. But for now, he’ll accept what she says because he wants to accept it, wants to know that his world is still whole, that the woman he loves more than any other still belongs to him. Maybe he believes in Missouri’s abilities and maybe he doesn’t. He paid his money, and it’s up to him whether he believes she knows something or whether she’s just blowing smoke up his behind. He frowns a little as she gets up from her chair, then he gets up too. Missouri smiles at him, tells him a lie the way women have been lying to men since time immemorial, and guides him toward the door. He’s buoyant as he goes out, with a little bit of spring to his step.
He buys what she’s telling him, and that’s both a relief and a damn crime.
Either way, he’s gone.
The door closes behind him and she’s left there in the foyer with John Winchester’s boys.
They don’t know her. That’s plain on their faces. How exactly they got here, she isn’t sure, though she thinks it’s some innocuous reason, an accident, mostly. Or maybe something, somebody, nudged them here.
Back to where their daddy came for help all those years ago.
Dean looks at her, looks straight into her eyes, and for an instant she thinks he does remember, that there’s a memory deep down that’s fighting its way to the surface, but in the end all that’s there is Can you help me?
Oh, sweet boy, she thinks.
She wanted to hold him, back then. Wanted to gather him into her lap and rock him and stroke his hair and croon to him. But telling him It’s all right would have been the worst kind of lie back then, back when he was a little boy who didn’t understand why his mama had been stolen away from him and why his daddy was still around but hopelessly lost at the same time. It would have been one thing if the police and the fire department had been right, if that fire had sprung from something as simple as bad wiring somewhere in the ceiling, if there’d just been a wrinkle in the world, no reason, no one to blame. God, maybe, but she stopped blaming God for things a long time ago, years before John Winchester stepped foot in this house.
It wasn’t God’s fault, that fire. Something - someone - caused it, and it wasn’t God.
Something.
And it’s come back.
Dean called his daddy, she understands as she stands there looking at him. Called him, and cried.
He doesn’t do that much: let himself break. He’s still trying to be the good soldier. Take care of everyone but himself.
She’d take care of him now, the way she tried to back then, in small steps, with cookies and milk and a blanket on the floor, with affection offered freely from one heart to another, all of it silent, the only way he’d accept it. She’d offer both of them, him and Sammy, a place to stay, sanctuary for as long as they need it - even if that’s forever. Someone to talk to, who knows what they’ve been through, what lies ahead of them.
But maybe that would only make things worse.
They’re taller now, John’s boys, but in most other ways they haven’t changed. Dean’s still walking on eggshells. Still has that wall built up around himself, that thing that keeps him from being hurt again.
It’s one sorry-ass wall, Missouri thinks. Doesn’t work worth a damn.
There’s only one way she can help him now. Well, two. She can guide him and Sam the way she guided John all those years ago - help them understand what was in that house, what’s come back to haunt it again.
And she can give him some solid ground to walk on.
Hugging won’t do. Affection won’t do. He’s scared of it - terrified, really. Scared of having someone care, because having that means losing it. All he wants, all he needs right now is to be able to do his job: the one his daddy trained him to do, and the one he assigned to himself. He needs to fix things, and then he needs to go somewhere far away from Lawrence, Kansas. If he falls apart before that’s done, he’ll never forgive himself. It’ll be one more thing to add to the list of things he can’t forgive himself for.
So, as she did a few minutes ago with Fillmore, or Fillion, or whatever the hell the man’s name is, she needs to lie.
She’s good at lying.
“You boys grew up handsome,” she says cheerfully, then raises an eyebrow at Dean. “And you were one goofy-lookin’ kid, too.”
He flinches. And frowns.
When she reaches out to him, to the part of him that’s guarded behind that wall, what she finds is Thank you.
It’s all right, baby, she thinks. We’ll do what you need.
We can do that.
And she guides John’s boys into the other room, so they can talk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~