SPN FIC - Up On the Roof
jdsgirlbev -- I hope you enjoy this little ficlet for your birthday! I was re-watching SHADOW and thought a little bit of a coda might be in order for one of John's chief cheerleaders. :)
CHARACTERS: John
GENRE: Gen
SPOILERS: None
RATING: PG, for language
LENGTH: 1085 words
UP ON THE ROOF
By Carol Davis
He didn’t leave town.
The boys did; he made sure of that. Looped around the block and followed them for a couple of miles until it was plain that the old Impala was pointed in the right direction. Toward what, or whom, John didn’t know and suspected the boys didn’t either. The other half of the equation was easier to solve: they were headed away from him.
He didn’t put much stock in the idea of being connected to somebody, being able to tell when they were close by, or in trouble, or hurt. Some folks could do that, sure - Missouri Mosely could, for sure - but he wasn’t one of them. Still, he felt the increasing distance between him and the boys tug at him like a cord being stretched as taut as it could get without snapping. Would’ve been a gift beyond price if he’d been able to spend a little more time with them, a couple of hours, or day, a little time to hear their voices, see them smile.
Would’ve been worth just about anything.
Except what it would have cost.
When he was sure they were gone, that he’d given them enough of a chance to reach the city limits, he turned around and headed back to where they’d parted.
It was nearby.
Of course the son of a bitch wasn’t going to step out into the middle of the street and wave howdy. Wasn’t going to make its presence known in any useful way, wasn’t going to turn this into the night the two of them finally went mano a mano. As much as he’d tracked it all these years, he knew it’d been watching him, sometimes from a distance, sometimes from up close, tossing out crumbs, waiting for the right time to turn around and say Hello, John. And this wasn’t that time.
Almost, but not quite.
He’d had no sleep in better than twenty-four hours; he’d hauled ass into town after he got Dean’s voicemail, and all those hours were wearing on him now. He needed sleep, needed a chance to shut down for a little while, regroup, figure out his next move, and Chicago was as good a place to do that as any.
Because it won’t be tonight.
Nobody dies tonight.
The daevas wouldn’t have killed him. The girl might have been their puppetmaster, and she might have let them do some serious damage, enough to land the three of them in a hospital, maybe, but it would have gone no further than that. You want me all to yourself, don’t you? Wouldn’t let some little girl take me down.
Nothing answered him, not even a twinge of what the boys, long ago, would have called his Spidey Sense.
Nothing answered.
But he wasn’t alone.
Then, like turning a corner, he was.
He found a hotel, one not much different from the one the boys had been staying at, a rung or two lower down on the ladder of respectability. The clerk didn’t blink at the blood on John’s face, on his coat, in his hair, didn’t pay him much attention at all. John slid cash across the counter and got a key in exchange. No name asked for, none offered, and the man didn’t bother watching as John climbed the stairs to the second floor, duffel slung from his shoulder, the weight of it pressing bruised ribs hard enough to make him frown as he walked.
He spent a little time in the room, grateful for the hot water in the shower and lights that were bright enough to let him examine his wounds without making too much of a show of them. Then he pulled on clean clothes, tamped his hair mostly dry with the only towel, and sat down on the end of the bed, hands folded between his knees.
They’d be maybe fifty miles away by now.
His boys.
Pulled by something he was too tired to identify, he returned to the staircase and followed it up, and around, and up. The door at the top was locked, but picking the lock didn’t take much effort. The hinges creaked as he pressed the door open, and he was greeted by wind cold enough to make him shudder beneath the thick shroud of his blood-stained coat. Windy city, he thought absently, and found a spot in the center of the roof to stand and let the wind press against him, leaning into it, then away, as if he were on the deck of a ship on a choppy sea, looking to find his footing.
He looked in the direction they’d taken. His boys.
Maybe they’d go to Jim’s. Rest a while.
The roof wasn’t high enough to grand him much of a view, not in a forest of skyscrapers. The vista straight up was unimpeded, though, and he craned his head back to look, to take in what he could see of the stars, a sprinkling of pale pinpoints in a dome hazed by smog and the nighttime glow of the city. The moon was up and he spent some time looking at it, marveling at it like a child, remembered lying on a blanket on the ground in some forgotten place, making up names to appease Dean’s curiosity, to distract him from the fact that they were far from home, far from anything familiar, unlikely to find something familiar to latch on to any time soon. The Big Dipper - that one he knew. Orion, yes, he knew that name too but not which stars it signified.
Dean didn’t much care. John had suspected then, and did again now, that he could have named them Elmer Fudd and Zippy the Clown and Dean would not have called his bluff.
They’d had all the time in the world together, back then.
He and his boys.
When sunrise came he was sitting on the low parapet at the edge of the roof, legs stretched out long in front of him. He watched the pale glow consume a wider and wider arc of the sky and slide across the dirty, trash-strewn plain of the roof, and when it finally came to lay warm against his face, he smiled.
New day, yes.
New day. One step closer to what he’d been striding and crawling and stumbling and running toward for better than twenty years.
But a better day than he’d approached in quite a while.
Because he’d had that little bit of time.
He’d seen his boys.
* * * * *
CHARACTERS: John
GENRE: Gen
SPOILERS: None
RATING: PG, for language
LENGTH: 1085 words
UP ON THE ROOF
By Carol Davis
He didn’t leave town.
The boys did; he made sure of that. Looped around the block and followed them for a couple of miles until it was plain that the old Impala was pointed in the right direction. Toward what, or whom, John didn’t know and suspected the boys didn’t either. The other half of the equation was easier to solve: they were headed away from him.
He didn’t put much stock in the idea of being connected to somebody, being able to tell when they were close by, or in trouble, or hurt. Some folks could do that, sure - Missouri Mosely could, for sure - but he wasn’t one of them. Still, he felt the increasing distance between him and the boys tug at him like a cord being stretched as taut as it could get without snapping. Would’ve been a gift beyond price if he’d been able to spend a little more time with them, a couple of hours, or day, a little time to hear their voices, see them smile.
Would’ve been worth just about anything.
Except what it would have cost.
When he was sure they were gone, that he’d given them enough of a chance to reach the city limits, he turned around and headed back to where they’d parted.
It was nearby.
Of course the son of a bitch wasn’t going to step out into the middle of the street and wave howdy. Wasn’t going to make its presence known in any useful way, wasn’t going to turn this into the night the two of them finally went mano a mano. As much as he’d tracked it all these years, he knew it’d been watching him, sometimes from a distance, sometimes from up close, tossing out crumbs, waiting for the right time to turn around and say Hello, John. And this wasn’t that time.
Almost, but not quite.
He’d had no sleep in better than twenty-four hours; he’d hauled ass into town after he got Dean’s voicemail, and all those hours were wearing on him now. He needed sleep, needed a chance to shut down for a little while, regroup, figure out his next move, and Chicago was as good a place to do that as any.
Because it won’t be tonight.
Nobody dies tonight.
The daevas wouldn’t have killed him. The girl might have been their puppetmaster, and she might have let them do some serious damage, enough to land the three of them in a hospital, maybe, but it would have gone no further than that. You want me all to yourself, don’t you? Wouldn’t let some little girl take me down.
Nothing answered him, not even a twinge of what the boys, long ago, would have called his Spidey Sense.
Nothing answered.
But he wasn’t alone.
Then, like turning a corner, he was.
He found a hotel, one not much different from the one the boys had been staying at, a rung or two lower down on the ladder of respectability. The clerk didn’t blink at the blood on John’s face, on his coat, in his hair, didn’t pay him much attention at all. John slid cash across the counter and got a key in exchange. No name asked for, none offered, and the man didn’t bother watching as John climbed the stairs to the second floor, duffel slung from his shoulder, the weight of it pressing bruised ribs hard enough to make him frown as he walked.
He spent a little time in the room, grateful for the hot water in the shower and lights that were bright enough to let him examine his wounds without making too much of a show of them. Then he pulled on clean clothes, tamped his hair mostly dry with the only towel, and sat down on the end of the bed, hands folded between his knees.
They’d be maybe fifty miles away by now.
His boys.
Pulled by something he was too tired to identify, he returned to the staircase and followed it up, and around, and up. The door at the top was locked, but picking the lock didn’t take much effort. The hinges creaked as he pressed the door open, and he was greeted by wind cold enough to make him shudder beneath the thick shroud of his blood-stained coat. Windy city, he thought absently, and found a spot in the center of the roof to stand and let the wind press against him, leaning into it, then away, as if he were on the deck of a ship on a choppy sea, looking to find his footing.
He looked in the direction they’d taken. His boys.
Maybe they’d go to Jim’s. Rest a while.
The roof wasn’t high enough to grand him much of a view, not in a forest of skyscrapers. The vista straight up was unimpeded, though, and he craned his head back to look, to take in what he could see of the stars, a sprinkling of pale pinpoints in a dome hazed by smog and the nighttime glow of the city. The moon was up and he spent some time looking at it, marveling at it like a child, remembered lying on a blanket on the ground in some forgotten place, making up names to appease Dean’s curiosity, to distract him from the fact that they were far from home, far from anything familiar, unlikely to find something familiar to latch on to any time soon. The Big Dipper - that one he knew. Orion, yes, he knew that name too but not which stars it signified.
Dean didn’t much care. John had suspected then, and did again now, that he could have named them Elmer Fudd and Zippy the Clown and Dean would not have called his bluff.
They’d had all the time in the world together, back then.
He and his boys.
When sunrise came he was sitting on the low parapet at the edge of the roof, legs stretched out long in front of him. He watched the pale glow consume a wider and wider arc of the sky and slide across the dirty, trash-strewn plain of the roof, and when it finally came to lay warm against his face, he smiled.
New day, yes.
New day. One step closer to what he’d been striding and crawling and stumbling and running toward for better than twenty years.
But a better day than he’d approached in quite a while.
Because he’d had that little bit of time.
He’d seen his boys.
* * * * *