SPN FIC - Found Object
chocca2 asked for Sam, Dean, and Missouri, something sweet. Well ... in spite of massive infusions of sugar yesterday, the Muse decided to wring out some angst. (Her default, you know.) So there's this. Call it Christmas "Now," although I suspect we'll end up calling it Christmas "Later" because it's been Kripke'd.
NB: If you're still crying "Mean to DEAN!!" about Ms. Mosely, consider this: the first time we see her, she says, "People don't want to hear the truth. They want to hear what makes them feel better." Which is exactly what she does for Dean. She's a thorn in his side, distracting him from the pain of being in the place he swore he would never go, so that he can do his job. There was nothing else she could do, and I admire her for that. ( For a closer look, "Mean to Dean" is here.)
She sighs again and gets up from the table. Busies herself watering a couple of plants, plucking off a dead leaf or two. She takes a long look out the window as if it provides a view of something other than her back yard. "Your daddy was the same way," she says, still looking out past the glass. "Acted like denying himself things was a way to pay penance. Pay off a debt he never owed. You don't need to do that. There's nobody keeping account. Saying you can't sleep in a clean bed. And if there used to be, there certainly isn't now."
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Missouri Mosely
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 3153 words
FOUND OBJECT
By Carol Davis
Nobody calls him "baby."
Yeah, there might have been some random woman or two along the road, but he can't remember their names or their faces, and chances are they used that word because they didn't know his name. But nobody uses it as a term of endearment, and if you'd asked Dean Winchester about it a while back, he would have laid odds that this particular woman wouldn't be caught dead using that word with him, not that way.
But here she is, sitting across the table from him.
And she called him "baby."
"No," he says in answer to her question. "Thank you."
She looks from him to Sam and back again, which prompts Dean to look over at his brother. They both look beat to hell - unshaven, bleary-eyed, their clothes wrinkled and stained with half a dozen things Dean would rather not think about - and the instant before Sam pressed Missouri Mosely's doorbell, Dean was sure she'd give them some serious lip about not cleaning up before they came to her house, her nice tidy house. She didn't, though. Didn't say much of anything, just slid her eyebrows halfway up her forehead and sucked in a big breath.
It's warm in here. Warm and quiet.
No way their coming here was a surprise. The transmitting/receiving range of her psychic mojo isn't that big (a couple hundred yards, Dean figures, if that much) but she knows things. Knows things, sometimes, and distance doesn't seem to matter.
"There's -" Sam says, then stops.
"You quit that right now, boy," she tells him.
"You don't have room for us. You have family coming." Sam's psychic mojo is long gone, but he looks Missouri square in the eye as if he can tell what she's thinking as much as the other way around. "There are motels. It's a college town. Lawrence has a million motels. We'll be fine."
"That why you rang my bell? 'Cause you're fine?"
"Didn't say we're fine now," Sam demurs.
Missouri snorts softly and pushes the plate of sugar cookies in their direction. That's an argument for her not having known they were coming: if she had known, there'd be a steak and some home fries and an apple pie sitting here, not snowman-shaped sugar cookies and mugs of girly-smelling tea. Dean doesn't like tea, see. He'll drink it sometimes because it's hot and there's nothing else available, but there's two or three dozen beverages above it on his Top Ten list. Hot chocolate is up near the top, for instance, and there's a box of Swiss Miss sitting right over there on the shelf.
Maybe she did know they were coming. And she gave him the tea to tweak him.
"All these years," she says, "and you're gonna think that?"
"Think what?" he frowns.
A minute ago she called him "baby" and rested her hand on top of his. Looked right down into his soul and left her hand lying warm and gentle on top of his.
It all started here, he thinks.
This house was where Dad came for answers, all those years ago.
He doesn't think he and Sam came here for answers. Doesn't think that at all. That's not why he pointed the Impala in this direction.
Not why they came to Lawrence in the first place.
"Tomorrow," she says. "I got family coming tomorrow. Right now there's nobody. No appointments. You boys are goin' to rest, and get cleaned up, and then we'll find you a place to stay that's got no population livin' in the walls."
"We make do," Dean says for no particular reason.
"You been down a long road. You could take care of yourselves once in a while."
"We do."
She sighs again and gets up from the table. Busies herself watering a couple of plants, plucking off a dead leaf or two. She takes a long look out the window as if it provides a view of something other than her back yard. "Your daddy was the same way," she says, still looking out past the glass. "Acted like denying himself things was a way to pay penance. Pay off a debt he never owed. You don't need to do that. There's nobody keeping account. Saying you can't sleep in a clean bed. And if there used to be, there certainly isn't now."
Sam peers into his half-empty mug and says, "Money."
"Those places," Dean cuts in. "They don't ask questions."
"Maybe they should have."
"Listen," he sighs, and stands up from the table. "You should get ready for your family. I'm sure you have things to do."
"You sit yourself down, Dean Winchester."
But there's no criticism in what she says. No rebuke. It's more of a Don't be silly kind of a thing. He doesn't sit, but he remains close to the table, feeling the pull of the warm mug and those dumbass snowman cookies. His legs are tired, his back is tired. Keeping his eyes open is right up there on the scale of effort with bench-pressing a bus. Shoulda gone to Bobby's, he thinks stubbornly, ignoring the fact that even Bobby's not at Bobby's, Bobby's gone to see some people in Dubuque.
Something told him to come here. Something he can't even begin to identify.
Something told him to start over.
"Look at you," Missouri says. "You're worn right to the bone. Didn't sleep last night, did you?"
"I did."
Neither of them did. They sat up watching Forbidden Planet and a chunk of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
"It sure beats me," Missouri replies, "how you could manage to fool people all these years when you're no good at all at lyin'."
"We should go."
"Yeah, you should."
"I thought you said -"
"I can change my mind. There's a place about a mile down. Lots of hot water. Clean. Gets all the channels on TV, and wireless. I'm gonna tell 'em to let you stay for a couple days, and if you try to leave, to shoot you where you stand."
"We weren't -" Sam says.
"I don't much care what you weren't."
That's the old Missouri, Dean thinks. Bossy as hell.
"And there's this," she says.
She lifts her right hand, which is balled around something. There aren't any pockets in what she's wearing, and he could swear she wasn't holding anything a second ago, which means she conjured it out of nowhere, which somehow isn't surprising. The truth of it probably is that she picked whatever it is up off the counter over by the sink, but she's all about the showmanship. The business she's in, the razzle-dazzle's what people look for. They wouldn't trust a few quiet words, the pat of her hand against theirs.
"I suppose I could've sent it," she says. "But I figured you'd come back here, sooner or later. Thought it might be better to hold on to it 'til then."
"What?" Sam asks.
"Your Daddy left it here. When you came about Jenny, and the house."
Dean and Sam exchange frowns. Sam speaks the question aloud: "Dad was here then? Why didn't he -"
"He had his reasons."
Sam's feathers ruffle, then settle back down, though not all the way. He shoves a hand through his hair, pinches his lips together.
"Didn't say they were good reasons," Missouri tells him. "To anybody but him, at least."
Dean looks at her, not at all sure he wants to know what's in her hand, if it's not a fistful of cash. That'd be helpful, a nice big wad of cash, particularly if Missouri wants them to spend the weekend at anyplace that's not Roaches 'R' Us. He had a nice run of luck with a pool cue a few weeks back, but that money's almost gone, spent on one thing or another, mostly ammo. And bribes. And gas. Friggin' gas prices have gone through the roof again, and his baby rolled off the assembly line long before anybody gave much thought to fuel economy.
What Missouri lays down on her kitchen table makes him suck air in through his teeth.
"What's -" Sam asks.
It draws Dean's attention like seeing the face of Jesus on a potato chip draws other people's. He stands looking at it, almost unblinking, feeling his stomach sway gently back and forth, like his guts are lying in a hammock that's been caught up in a strong wind.
He's seen it once before. Knows exactly what it is, and who owned it.
Sam reaches for it, but Dean grunts at him, loudly and vehemently enough to make Sam draw his hand back.
"It was Mom's," Dean says.
"Your daddy found it after the fire," Missouri explains. "When he came here to see me the first time, he brought it with him. Thought something of hers would help me connect with her. He said she hadn't worn it for a long time - not since the night her mama and daddy died - but before that, she wore it all the time. It was the only thing of hers he found in the house that wasn't half-ruined. Or all ruined. He wasn't sure why."
Dean doesn't need to wonder why, or how.
Her parents gave it to her, he thinks. As protection. Gave a young girl a silver charm bracelet bearing charms that weren't little roller skates, or dolls, or kittens. He's a betting man, sometimes, and he'll lay odds that every charm on that bracelet packs some serious weight.
The first time he saw it, back in May of 1973, it told him who she was.
Now, he can't bring himself to touch it. He circles the table a couple of times, nervously, a little more certain with each lap that this is what brought him here, what compelled him to drive all this way, back to Lawrence.
Back to the beginning.
"Did he know?" he asks quietly. "My Dad? Did he know about her?"
"Yes," Missouri murmurs.
"He told you? Why didn't you tell us?"
Dean glances at his brother then, and sees Sam trying - maybe just for old times' sake - to work up a head of steam about Dad. About Dad not having caved to Full Disclosure. About Dad treating them like…
"No," Sam says, and Dean blinks at him.
"Not 'us'," Sam says. "You." And he smiles a little. Has the same look on his face that Missouri did a few minutes ago when she called Dean "baby." Dean bridles at it, a little bit, because dammit, he's tired. All these years, all these miles, and still, nothing pisses him off worse than being manipulated. For all he knows Sam talked to Missouri on the damn phone. For all he knows, this is some massive set-up, and to get himself some payback for it he's gonna want to find the worst godforsaken fleabag Lawrence, Kansas has to offer so can he spend Christmas there with the bedbugs and the rattling pipes and the stench of other people's sweat.
But for now he's stuck here, in between his brother and Missouri Mosely, in Missouri's frou-frou kitchen with the doilies and the Pillsbury Doughboy cookie jar and the big blue mugs of tea that tastes like dog piss with cinnamon.
"He's right," Missouri says.
Dean sets his face and thinks. Loudly.
"You hush, now," she says.
There's something he hates worse than being manipulated. It's being trapped. Not by shit that goes bump in the night, because he can fight his way out of that. He can shoot and kick and stab and chant and if he ends up with something busted or bruised or ruptured for his troubles, them's the breaks. It's being trapped like this that he can't stand.
Like THIS.
"He could give you that," Missouri tells him gently. "He could let you keep your mama, the way you knew her."
It's closing in on him. This house. With the fucking doilies.
"That last time," she says, "when he came back. He came 'cause you called him. Came and watched and stayed close by. He didn't go to you because he wanted to keep you safe, but if it'd come down to it, he would've stepped out into the light. Before he left, he gave me that bracelet. Said the time'd come when you might want it. Because you'd know about her, know what came before, and you'd want it because it was hers."
She keeps her distance.
"Dean," she says. "You know what brought you here."
There are pictures of little kids stuck to the refrigerator. Maybe it's all the same kid, but he doesn't think so.
"Can't stay here," he rasps.
"'Course not. You're meant to move on. We all are."
Stupid house is full of friggin' doilies. And all Sam does is sit there.
He wants to yell. Wants to rage at his brother, ask him, What did you think we were gonna do, get a job selling tires? What he means is, What did you think I was gonna do?, because Sam could go back to school; so what if they can't use their real names, they've been using fake names their whole lives. They could dummy him up a transcript somehow and he could build himself a real life. Be a lawyer or a doctor or pretty much anything. He stepped away from the job once and he could do it again.
But Sam's looking at him like he's every bit as psychic as Missouri Mosely and Dean feels like he's suffocating, like there's no more air in this house than in that wooden box he woke up in when they yanked him back from the Pit.
He wants to run.
He would run, if he hadn't realized six months ago that there's no place to run to.
He only half-sees Missouri moving around the kitchen, opening the box of Swiss Miss to remove one of the little packets of hot chocolate mix and setting the kettle back on the stove to bring the water back to a boil. Time hiccups and hitches and burps and he wants to run, wishes he could run, wishes there was something to chase so he could get out of this house, out of this town, away from everything that lies there staring at him.
Then Missouri touches his arm, and with a kindness he almost never hears directed at him she says, "You sit back down, now."
There's a mug. A cup of hot chocolate.
He could let you keep your mama.
Sam says, "Dean," but he sounds far away. Dean looks at him, blinks at him, and something in him wants to see Sammy, wants to see the little brother he kept safe for all those years because that was what Dad wanted.
"Boy," Missouri says. "The only one you're foolin' is yourself."
He doesn't need to be guided into a chair, because dammit, he's not blind or addled or crippled, he's completely in control of himself and if that weren't true he would have put a gun to his own head a long time ago. Don't need anybody's help, he thinks obstinately, because it's true, it's absolutely fucking TRUE that he's gotten through all these years on his own. He took care of other people. Took care of Sam, took care of Dad.
Him. He did that.
He doesn't cry.
Not in front of anybody except Sam.
He doesn't.
So it's not him who's crying in this warm, fragrant kitchen with the doilies and the Pillsbury Doughboy and the snowman cookies and all those pictures of little black kids stuck to the front of the fridge. It's not him who finally turns it all loose and cries not a small stream of silent tears but great raging howls of pain and anguish and loss, not him who sinks down to sit on a floor of small black-and-white squares being rocked back and forth by a woman he barely knows but who knows him more than she has any right to, not him who mourns for what he lost in wails that come all the way up from the long-forgotten core of him, from the little boy he left behind in this place all those years ago.
When he finally stills, when the bottle of grief is finally close to empty, Sam is sitting beside him on the floor. He feels a small, brief flash of shame and embarrassment - but Sam looks relieved. Sam looks like he just got something he's been waiting for for a long time.
"Screw you," Dean mutters, chin tucked against his chest.
Sam smiles. A little. And yes, sir, he's psychic, had damn well better be psychic, because if he tries to hand Dean a tissue Dean's going to punch his frigging lights out.
They sit there for a while, the three of them.
Then Sam reaches up to the table and picks it up, the thing their father left here in Missouri's care a couple of months before he died. He holds it in his fist for a minute, and maybe he's warming the cold out of the metal or maybe he's just holding on to it. Either way, after a minute he offers it to Dean, the same way he uses to offer Dean the last cookie. Or something he made. Or a dead butterfly he found lying on the asphalt.
With love.
Offers it with love.
The silver's warm from Sam's hand when Dean accepts it, closes his fist over it so he doesn't have to look at it.
"You're gonna stay here," Missouri says. "Long as it takes."
Whether she means the kitchen, or the house, or Lawrence, she doesn't specify. Maybe it doesn't matter.
"Then," she says, "you move on."
The floor's kind of cold, he thinks. Colder than the rest of the kitchen.
There are decent motels here. In Lawrence. They drove past a few on the way here, to Missouri's house.
He snuffles a little, swipes at his nose with the back of his fist - the one that's not holding the bracelet that came from his grandparents to his mother to his father to Missouri to Sam to him - and shudders once. Just once. Because his ass cheeks are cold.
That's all. Just that reason.
"Yeah," he mumbles, and snuffles again. It takes some effort to produce a little, flickering ghost of a smile - but the kitchen is warm. It's warm here.
It's warm here.
"I guess I could do that," he says to his brother, and to the woman his father came to almost thirty years ago, looking for answers no one else in this town could provide. Looking for a way out, and a way in.
To the woman who called him "baby."
Because she knows him more than she has any right to.
"I guess I could do that now," he says.
And she nods.
* * * * *
NB: If you're still crying "Mean to DEAN!!" about Ms. Mosely, consider this: the first time we see her, she says, "People don't want to hear the truth. They want to hear what makes them feel better." Which is exactly what she does for Dean. She's a thorn in his side, distracting him from the pain of being in the place he swore he would never go, so that he can do his job. There was nothing else she could do, and I admire her for that. ( For a closer look, "Mean to Dean" is here.)
She sighs again and gets up from the table. Busies herself watering a couple of plants, plucking off a dead leaf or two. She takes a long look out the window as if it provides a view of something other than her back yard. "Your daddy was the same way," she says, still looking out past the glass. "Acted like denying himself things was a way to pay penance. Pay off a debt he never owed. You don't need to do that. There's nobody keeping account. Saying you can't sleep in a clean bed. And if there used to be, there certainly isn't now."
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Missouri Mosely
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 3153 words
FOUND OBJECT
By Carol Davis
Nobody calls him "baby."
Yeah, there might have been some random woman or two along the road, but he can't remember their names or their faces, and chances are they used that word because they didn't know his name. But nobody uses it as a term of endearment, and if you'd asked Dean Winchester about it a while back, he would have laid odds that this particular woman wouldn't be caught dead using that word with him, not that way.
But here she is, sitting across the table from him.
And she called him "baby."
"No," he says in answer to her question. "Thank you."
She looks from him to Sam and back again, which prompts Dean to look over at his brother. They both look beat to hell - unshaven, bleary-eyed, their clothes wrinkled and stained with half a dozen things Dean would rather not think about - and the instant before Sam pressed Missouri Mosely's doorbell, Dean was sure she'd give them some serious lip about not cleaning up before they came to her house, her nice tidy house. She didn't, though. Didn't say much of anything, just slid her eyebrows halfway up her forehead and sucked in a big breath.
It's warm in here. Warm and quiet.
No way their coming here was a surprise. The transmitting/receiving range of her psychic mojo isn't that big (a couple hundred yards, Dean figures, if that much) but she knows things. Knows things, sometimes, and distance doesn't seem to matter.
"There's -" Sam says, then stops.
"You quit that right now, boy," she tells him.
"You don't have room for us. You have family coming." Sam's psychic mojo is long gone, but he looks Missouri square in the eye as if he can tell what she's thinking as much as the other way around. "There are motels. It's a college town. Lawrence has a million motels. We'll be fine."
"That why you rang my bell? 'Cause you're fine?"
"Didn't say we're fine now," Sam demurs.
Missouri snorts softly and pushes the plate of sugar cookies in their direction. That's an argument for her not having known they were coming: if she had known, there'd be a steak and some home fries and an apple pie sitting here, not snowman-shaped sugar cookies and mugs of girly-smelling tea. Dean doesn't like tea, see. He'll drink it sometimes because it's hot and there's nothing else available, but there's two or three dozen beverages above it on his Top Ten list. Hot chocolate is up near the top, for instance, and there's a box of Swiss Miss sitting right over there on the shelf.
Maybe she did know they were coming. And she gave him the tea to tweak him.
"All these years," she says, "and you're gonna think that?"
"Think what?" he frowns.
A minute ago she called him "baby" and rested her hand on top of his. Looked right down into his soul and left her hand lying warm and gentle on top of his.
It all started here, he thinks.
This house was where Dad came for answers, all those years ago.
He doesn't think he and Sam came here for answers. Doesn't think that at all. That's not why he pointed the Impala in this direction.
Not why they came to Lawrence in the first place.
"Tomorrow," she says. "I got family coming tomorrow. Right now there's nobody. No appointments. You boys are goin' to rest, and get cleaned up, and then we'll find you a place to stay that's got no population livin' in the walls."
"We make do," Dean says for no particular reason.
"You been down a long road. You could take care of yourselves once in a while."
"We do."
She sighs again and gets up from the table. Busies herself watering a couple of plants, plucking off a dead leaf or two. She takes a long look out the window as if it provides a view of something other than her back yard. "Your daddy was the same way," she says, still looking out past the glass. "Acted like denying himself things was a way to pay penance. Pay off a debt he never owed. You don't need to do that. There's nobody keeping account. Saying you can't sleep in a clean bed. And if there used to be, there certainly isn't now."
Sam peers into his half-empty mug and says, "Money."
"Those places," Dean cuts in. "They don't ask questions."
"Maybe they should have."
"Listen," he sighs, and stands up from the table. "You should get ready for your family. I'm sure you have things to do."
"You sit yourself down, Dean Winchester."
But there's no criticism in what she says. No rebuke. It's more of a Don't be silly kind of a thing. He doesn't sit, but he remains close to the table, feeling the pull of the warm mug and those dumbass snowman cookies. His legs are tired, his back is tired. Keeping his eyes open is right up there on the scale of effort with bench-pressing a bus. Shoulda gone to Bobby's, he thinks stubbornly, ignoring the fact that even Bobby's not at Bobby's, Bobby's gone to see some people in Dubuque.
Something told him to come here. Something he can't even begin to identify.
Something told him to start over.
"Look at you," Missouri says. "You're worn right to the bone. Didn't sleep last night, did you?"
"I did."
Neither of them did. They sat up watching Forbidden Planet and a chunk of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
"It sure beats me," Missouri replies, "how you could manage to fool people all these years when you're no good at all at lyin'."
"We should go."
"Yeah, you should."
"I thought you said -"
"I can change my mind. There's a place about a mile down. Lots of hot water. Clean. Gets all the channels on TV, and wireless. I'm gonna tell 'em to let you stay for a couple days, and if you try to leave, to shoot you where you stand."
"We weren't -" Sam says.
"I don't much care what you weren't."
That's the old Missouri, Dean thinks. Bossy as hell.
"And there's this," she says.
She lifts her right hand, which is balled around something. There aren't any pockets in what she's wearing, and he could swear she wasn't holding anything a second ago, which means she conjured it out of nowhere, which somehow isn't surprising. The truth of it probably is that she picked whatever it is up off the counter over by the sink, but she's all about the showmanship. The business she's in, the razzle-dazzle's what people look for. They wouldn't trust a few quiet words, the pat of her hand against theirs.
"I suppose I could've sent it," she says. "But I figured you'd come back here, sooner or later. Thought it might be better to hold on to it 'til then."
"What?" Sam asks.
"Your Daddy left it here. When you came about Jenny, and the house."
Dean and Sam exchange frowns. Sam speaks the question aloud: "Dad was here then? Why didn't he -"
"He had his reasons."
Sam's feathers ruffle, then settle back down, though not all the way. He shoves a hand through his hair, pinches his lips together.
"Didn't say they were good reasons," Missouri tells him. "To anybody but him, at least."
Dean looks at her, not at all sure he wants to know what's in her hand, if it's not a fistful of cash. That'd be helpful, a nice big wad of cash, particularly if Missouri wants them to spend the weekend at anyplace that's not Roaches 'R' Us. He had a nice run of luck with a pool cue a few weeks back, but that money's almost gone, spent on one thing or another, mostly ammo. And bribes. And gas. Friggin' gas prices have gone through the roof again, and his baby rolled off the assembly line long before anybody gave much thought to fuel economy.
What Missouri lays down on her kitchen table makes him suck air in through his teeth.
"What's -" Sam asks.
It draws Dean's attention like seeing the face of Jesus on a potato chip draws other people's. He stands looking at it, almost unblinking, feeling his stomach sway gently back and forth, like his guts are lying in a hammock that's been caught up in a strong wind.
He's seen it once before. Knows exactly what it is, and who owned it.
Sam reaches for it, but Dean grunts at him, loudly and vehemently enough to make Sam draw his hand back.
"It was Mom's," Dean says.
"Your daddy found it after the fire," Missouri explains. "When he came here to see me the first time, he brought it with him. Thought something of hers would help me connect with her. He said she hadn't worn it for a long time - not since the night her mama and daddy died - but before that, she wore it all the time. It was the only thing of hers he found in the house that wasn't half-ruined. Or all ruined. He wasn't sure why."
Dean doesn't need to wonder why, or how.
Her parents gave it to her, he thinks. As protection. Gave a young girl a silver charm bracelet bearing charms that weren't little roller skates, or dolls, or kittens. He's a betting man, sometimes, and he'll lay odds that every charm on that bracelet packs some serious weight.
The first time he saw it, back in May of 1973, it told him who she was.
Now, he can't bring himself to touch it. He circles the table a couple of times, nervously, a little more certain with each lap that this is what brought him here, what compelled him to drive all this way, back to Lawrence.
Back to the beginning.
"Did he know?" he asks quietly. "My Dad? Did he know about her?"
"Yes," Missouri murmurs.
"He told you? Why didn't you tell us?"
Dean glances at his brother then, and sees Sam trying - maybe just for old times' sake - to work up a head of steam about Dad. About Dad not having caved to Full Disclosure. About Dad treating them like…
"No," Sam says, and Dean blinks at him.
"Not 'us'," Sam says. "You." And he smiles a little. Has the same look on his face that Missouri did a few minutes ago when she called Dean "baby." Dean bridles at it, a little bit, because dammit, he's tired. All these years, all these miles, and still, nothing pisses him off worse than being manipulated. For all he knows Sam talked to Missouri on the damn phone. For all he knows, this is some massive set-up, and to get himself some payback for it he's gonna want to find the worst godforsaken fleabag Lawrence, Kansas has to offer so can he spend Christmas there with the bedbugs and the rattling pipes and the stench of other people's sweat.
But for now he's stuck here, in between his brother and Missouri Mosely, in Missouri's frou-frou kitchen with the doilies and the Pillsbury Doughboy cookie jar and the big blue mugs of tea that tastes like dog piss with cinnamon.
"He's right," Missouri says.
Dean sets his face and thinks. Loudly.
"You hush, now," she says.
There's something he hates worse than being manipulated. It's being trapped. Not by shit that goes bump in the night, because he can fight his way out of that. He can shoot and kick and stab and chant and if he ends up with something busted or bruised or ruptured for his troubles, them's the breaks. It's being trapped like this that he can't stand.
Like THIS.
"He could give you that," Missouri tells him gently. "He could let you keep your mama, the way you knew her."
It's closing in on him. This house. With the fucking doilies.
"That last time," she says, "when he came back. He came 'cause you called him. Came and watched and stayed close by. He didn't go to you because he wanted to keep you safe, but if it'd come down to it, he would've stepped out into the light. Before he left, he gave me that bracelet. Said the time'd come when you might want it. Because you'd know about her, know what came before, and you'd want it because it was hers."
She keeps her distance.
"Dean," she says. "You know what brought you here."
There are pictures of little kids stuck to the refrigerator. Maybe it's all the same kid, but he doesn't think so.
"Can't stay here," he rasps.
"'Course not. You're meant to move on. We all are."
Stupid house is full of friggin' doilies. And all Sam does is sit there.
He wants to yell. Wants to rage at his brother, ask him, What did you think we were gonna do, get a job selling tires? What he means is, What did you think I was gonna do?, because Sam could go back to school; so what if they can't use their real names, they've been using fake names their whole lives. They could dummy him up a transcript somehow and he could build himself a real life. Be a lawyer or a doctor or pretty much anything. He stepped away from the job once and he could do it again.
But Sam's looking at him like he's every bit as psychic as Missouri Mosely and Dean feels like he's suffocating, like there's no more air in this house than in that wooden box he woke up in when they yanked him back from the Pit.
He wants to run.
He would run, if he hadn't realized six months ago that there's no place to run to.
He only half-sees Missouri moving around the kitchen, opening the box of Swiss Miss to remove one of the little packets of hot chocolate mix and setting the kettle back on the stove to bring the water back to a boil. Time hiccups and hitches and burps and he wants to run, wishes he could run, wishes there was something to chase so he could get out of this house, out of this town, away from everything that lies there staring at him.
Then Missouri touches his arm, and with a kindness he almost never hears directed at him she says, "You sit back down, now."
There's a mug. A cup of hot chocolate.
He could let you keep your mama.
Sam says, "Dean," but he sounds far away. Dean looks at him, blinks at him, and something in him wants to see Sammy, wants to see the little brother he kept safe for all those years because that was what Dad wanted.
"Boy," Missouri says. "The only one you're foolin' is yourself."
He doesn't need to be guided into a chair, because dammit, he's not blind or addled or crippled, he's completely in control of himself and if that weren't true he would have put a gun to his own head a long time ago. Don't need anybody's help, he thinks obstinately, because it's true, it's absolutely fucking TRUE that he's gotten through all these years on his own. He took care of other people. Took care of Sam, took care of Dad.
Him. He did that.
He doesn't cry.
Not in front of anybody except Sam.
He doesn't.
So it's not him who's crying in this warm, fragrant kitchen with the doilies and the Pillsbury Doughboy and the snowman cookies and all those pictures of little black kids stuck to the front of the fridge. It's not him who finally turns it all loose and cries not a small stream of silent tears but great raging howls of pain and anguish and loss, not him who sinks down to sit on a floor of small black-and-white squares being rocked back and forth by a woman he barely knows but who knows him more than she has any right to, not him who mourns for what he lost in wails that come all the way up from the long-forgotten core of him, from the little boy he left behind in this place all those years ago.
When he finally stills, when the bottle of grief is finally close to empty, Sam is sitting beside him on the floor. He feels a small, brief flash of shame and embarrassment - but Sam looks relieved. Sam looks like he just got something he's been waiting for for a long time.
"Screw you," Dean mutters, chin tucked against his chest.
Sam smiles. A little. And yes, sir, he's psychic, had damn well better be psychic, because if he tries to hand Dean a tissue Dean's going to punch his frigging lights out.
They sit there for a while, the three of them.
Then Sam reaches up to the table and picks it up, the thing their father left here in Missouri's care a couple of months before he died. He holds it in his fist for a minute, and maybe he's warming the cold out of the metal or maybe he's just holding on to it. Either way, after a minute he offers it to Dean, the same way he uses to offer Dean the last cookie. Or something he made. Or a dead butterfly he found lying on the asphalt.
With love.
Offers it with love.
The silver's warm from Sam's hand when Dean accepts it, closes his fist over it so he doesn't have to look at it.
"You're gonna stay here," Missouri says. "Long as it takes."
Whether she means the kitchen, or the house, or Lawrence, she doesn't specify. Maybe it doesn't matter.
"Then," she says, "you move on."
The floor's kind of cold, he thinks. Colder than the rest of the kitchen.
There are decent motels here. In Lawrence. They drove past a few on the way here, to Missouri's house.
He snuffles a little, swipes at his nose with the back of his fist - the one that's not holding the bracelet that came from his grandparents to his mother to his father to Missouri to Sam to him - and shudders once. Just once. Because his ass cheeks are cold.
That's all. Just that reason.
"Yeah," he mumbles, and snuffles again. It takes some effort to produce a little, flickering ghost of a smile - but the kitchen is warm. It's warm here.
It's warm here.
"I guess I could do that," he says to his brother, and to the woman his father came to almost thirty years ago, looking for answers no one else in this town could provide. Looking for a way out, and a way in.
To the woman who called him "baby."
Because she knows him more than she has any right to.
"I guess I could do that now," he says.
And she nods.
* * * * *