SPN FIC - Five Days
You could have guessed this was coming, right? Of course it was. How could I *not* write something about Jump the Shark?
CHARACTERS: John, Kate Milligan, Adam Milligan
GENRE: Het
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: Jump the Shark
LENGTH: 2500 words (5 sections, 500 words each)
FIVE DAYS
By Carol Davis
"I thought your friend was coming," Kate said.
He tried to slide away from her, to pretend he didn't see her, didn't hear her voice. Tried to make himself one with the cement column holding up the portico roof. He needed to be sitting down, but two days' worth of knowing John Winchester told her he was going to stand until his body told him face-planting in the hospital driveway was a much better plan, thank you very much, no dissenting votes allowed.
"John," she chided.
"He's late," John said with a small shift of the shoulder that hadn't been dislocated.
"I suppose you intend to drive."
"I'll be fine."
"You're not fine. You look like hell on toast." Hands tucked deep into the pockets of her coat, she took a couple of tentative steps toward him, smooth and cautious, although she didn't really think he'd spook. Or strike out. Both those things had happened to her, recently enough that the memory made her wince.
There was a Yellow Cab out at the traffic light, ready to turn into the hospital lot, and she knew without asking that he'd called for it.
"John," she said. "AMA's not a good idea."
A lot of AMAs would be cussing her out. Telling her to mind her own expletive-seasoned business. She'd known John Winchester for almost forty-eight hours, and had seen him tell the doc on call (three of them, in fact) to keep his good intentions shoved up his ass. Had seen him jerk his arm away from an orderly who was trying to help him get to the bathroom. Had seen him shift himself around in bed almost white with pain. So it would have been no surprise if he'd responded to her approach with a little Screw you, lady. Or worse.
What was a surprise was the nod he gave her. The silent acknowledgment of her concern.
And the weary sadness in his eyes.
"Where does your friend live?" she asked.
"Blue Earth," he said after a moment. "It's -"
"I know where it is."
Willpower alone - with the silent help of the portico column - was keeping John Winchester on his feet. What he needed was another day upstairs in bed, more meds, more monitoring. What he didn't need was a cab ride to wherever his car was, followed by an hour's drive to Blue Earth.
"Look -" she said.
He did. With those eyes. Windows to the soul, indeed.
"Let me -" she began, then took a deep breath, the kind you take before you plunge into deep, cold water.
John Winchester was deep, cold water. She would have bet on that.
"Come home with me," she offered. "I'll make you some dinner, and you can get some sleep. We'll find out what's going on with your friend. And if he shows up in the morning, maybe I'll think about letting him take you."
His lips moved. Made a small show of protesting.
"John," she said.
And he nodded.
* * * * *
"Mom?"
Long day, she thought. Long, long day. Not the kind of day that would welcome the solemn face Adam was wearing.
He was a curious kid - had always been that. Loved to ask questions, dig into things that puzzled or intrigued him. Loved Discovery Channel, the newspaper, poking around in the reference section of the library, quizzing strangers. Loved meeting people and gathering them into his life as if The more, the merrier was tattooed on his heart. Kate did her best to encourage his curiosity, to answer him honestly and to point him in the right direction if she couldn't provide the answer herself. She did her best to help him want to learn.
Which wasn't to say that being hammered with questions was her favorite way to spend an evening if she'd come off a double shift of pain-in-the-assery at the hospital. Wasn't to say that silence wouldn't have been her first choice, now and then.
But she never said, "Go away, Adam."
Never said, "Leave me alone, Adam."
Wouldn't say it now.
Not even if the look on his face said this thing, this problem he needed a solution for, was going to be a whopper.
"What is it?" she asked, throwing wild and hoping to hit somewhere close to concerned.
"Am I adopted?"
"Are you -" she stammered. "No. Of course not. Why would you think you were adopted?"
"Jimmy Flaherty said you got me out of the hospital."
"Well…I did. You were born in the hospital."
"No," he groaned. "Not like that. Jimmy said you got me in the hospital. Like that lady in the paper who stole the baby. Out of the hospital."
Jimmy Flaherty needs a smack upside the head, Kate thought. "I didn't steal you, sport."
"But to have me, you need a dad."
"That's true."
"Do I have a dad?"
This is okay, Lord. I don't mind being up for forty-eight hours. Or seventy-two, if this is going to go the way I think it will. He's got a grip on this, oh yes he does. With a small smile she hoped didn't look too much like a grimace, Kate lowered herself into a seat at the end of the couch and held out both hands to her son. "You do," she said. "Everyone has a dad. That's the way it works. But sometimes…the dad is only around for a little while."
"Were you married to my dad?"
"No. No, sweetie, I wasn't."
Adam's lower lip disappeared between his teeth. He was in full-thought mode, complete with foot-shuffling.
"He did something very special," Kate said. "He gave me you."
"Oh."
"Is that okay with you?"
He didn't answer for a long couple of minutes. He took a slow look around the living room, as if his surroundings had changed somehow, under the influence of this new information. Finally, still somber-faced, he said, "I guess."
Then he asked, "What's his name?"
"John," Kate told him. "His name is John."
* * * * *
She didn't expect this. Didn't expect this at all. Oh, sure, she entertained the hope that John would actually show up in Windom at some point within a reasonable span of time after she called him. Within a couple of weeks, maybe. Or a month. Or six months. For Adam's sake, she hoped for that, so her boy could get a look at his father.
Maybe she should have hoped for something completely different.
Maybe she should have hoped that John would blow this whole thing off. She wouldn't blame him for that. She'd blindsided him, after all, twelve years - almost thirteen - after that night they spent together. Being told "You're a father" could not have been anywhere on his radar.
Being told "You're a father" by her, anyway.
So it would have been no surprise if he didn't show up. If he didn't call, didn't write, didn't send a check or a birthday card or a Christmas gift or…anything. It would have been no surprise if he decided to go on with his life the way it'd been before she called, the life in which he had two sons by a wife he had cherished.
She would not have been surprised by that at all.
Instead, she was surprised by the sight of him standing at the nurses' desk. Waiting for her.
"I thought I should come here first," he said quietly. "In case there's something I should know."
"Other than -"
"I don't want to hurt him. Disappoint him."
"He'll want you to stay."
"I figured that," John said, and raked a hand through his hair. "I'll work on it. Figure out something to tell him."
"He's stubborn."
"Well. Comes by it honest, then."
They fell into silence, awkward partly because of where they were standing. The gossip was already starting - she could see that by the tilt of heads, the small smiles, the nods. But that was nothing new; she'd dealt with twelve years of, "What a handsome boy. What does his father do?"
"I'm gonna get a room," John said. "Take a shower, change my clothes. You get off work when?"
"Two hours."
"That's enough time. We can - does that work for you?"
"You drove straight here."
"Yes."
"That's -"
"Is this all right with you, Kate?"
She had to walk down the corridor, around the corner into a waiting area that was blessedly empty. John followed her, a couple of paces back, and gave her a minute alone before he said, "I'm not going to force myself into your lives. This is up to you. Obviously you didn't want me to -"
"I did. I would have. But -"
"I'm sorry, Kate."
"There's nothing to be sorry for. He's a good kid. A great kid."
"Then I'd like to know him," John said. "I'd like him to know me. If that's all right. If it's not all right - I'll call you in two hours. You can say no."
"No," Kate told him. "I can't."
* * * * *
"It's cool," was Adam's decision, born of a level of pragmatism that would be hard to find in someone twice his age. "Christmas is once a year. My birthday is once a year. It's completely cool."
John came once a year, to share a few days of Adam's summer, a living performance of that movie - Same Time Next Year. Once a year, for a few days, Kate and Adam were his family. Occupied a hundred percent of his attention.
For Adam, that was good enough.
"It's just in a parking lot, Mom," he said when John pulled the old Impala up in front of the house.
"That's a big car," she told him.
"Yeah," he beamed. "I love it."
Guy stuff, he announced, and she couldn't argue the appeal of that - guy stuff taught to him not by a friend or an uncle or a friend's dad, but by his dad. Poker and fishing and driving, and of course, the mastery of the musical fart. Old cars and old movies and new movies with CGI explosions and body counts that made her cringe.
"You tell me," John murmured as he passed by on his way to the door. "If I'm crossing the line."
He may have, but it was because of what he was, not what he taught.
"Where do you live?" Adam asked him one night.
John shut his eyes for a second. "Here and there. I move around a lot."
"Because of your job?"
"That's right."
"That's kind of a crappy job, then."
Maybe it was the reminder of that other life - the one he led when he wasn't in Windom. Maybe it was something else. Either way, John got up from the table, went out the back door and stood in the yard by himself. If he'd been a smoker, Kate thought, he probably would have lit a cigarette and let it burn down until it scorched his fingers.
"He's just curious," she told him.
"I know that."
"Maybe if you told him -"
"No," he said sharply. "He's got no part in that. I told you, Kate. Not a word to him about any of that. That's the deal."
"I know."
Explanations weren't his strong suit. The trouble was, Adam was a curious kid, part of the Google generation. He'd nosed his way into online porn a couple of times. She'd managed to convince him to steer clear of that, to wait a while - and beyond that, it was something she could lock him away from. But tracking down John Winchester? She couldn't lock him away from that.
Not when she'd done it herself.
"Maybe you can tell him something," she persisted. "Just to satisfy his curiosity."
"You want me to lie to him?"
"No," Adam said from the doorway, where he'd been watching, listening, silently. "I don't want anybody to lie. Okay?"
And that was the whole truth of it: that Adam wanted to preserve the myth of John Winchester even more than John did.
* * * * *
"Did he - did you hear from him?"
"No," Kate said. "Nothing."
"He always calls by now."
"I know, sweetheart."
Adam walked away then and sought refuge in his room, headphones on, music turned up loud. Kate let him be for a while, let him stay up there rather than coming to the table for dinner. After she'd finished her own meal she fixed him a plate and carried it up. When she appeared in his doorway he turned away, choosing to look at his closet door rather than her. Not until she sat beside him on the bed did he surrender to turning toward her.
"It's okay," he mumbled.
Kate lifted the 'phones away from his ears. "I'm sorry, Adam."
"Not your fault."
Maybe it was no one's fault. And maybe it was a three-way situation, because all three of them had added bricks to the fantasy they'd constructed. All three of them, by their own choice.
"Do you think…maybe he got married again, or something?"
"I don't know."
"He has a whole other life."
"Yes. He does."
"But he likes coming here. Doesn't he? He said -"
He was almost sixteen then. Had known his father for three years. Had spent less than a month's worth of days with John in all that time.
"I can call him," Kate offered when the silence between them became too complicated to endure.
Shaking his head, Adam got up and went to stand by the window, looking out into the backyard. He'd gotten tall this last year, Kate thought. Was beginning to be more a man than a boy.
"It was all kind of crazy anyway," he said after a minute.
"No -"
"It was. Him coming here like that."
It was. She couldn't argue that. Yet, crazy as it might have been, there'd been something valuable about it. Something of worth in letting Adam have those few days with John, to answer that question he'd posed to her half his life ago.
In letting him have a dad.
"He won't be back," Adam said. "Will he?"
"I don't know."
He tried to come up with a smile, kept trying to shape his face into something that would show he was okay, satisfied, happy. The tears slipping down his cheeks ruined the effect. "No lies, okay, Mom?" he rasped.
"Of course not."
"Then - do you think he loves me?"
Kate looked past him, to the framed photo on his dresser. Adam and John, on the day they'd gone to the ballgame, the two of them beaming, sunburned, content, arms slung around each other. Then she looked at her son, at the echoes of John she could see in his face, his eyes, his mannerisms.
At the young man John had helped shape, a little bit.
Just a little bit.
"Yes," she said. "I think he does."
Finally, Adam's face settled into a smile. Slight and wistful, but still a smile. "Thanks, Mom," he whispered.
She could think of nothing to say in reply.
* * * * *