SPN FIC - Notorious
Feel like Season 1? How's that sound? JDub is hoping it sounds good, or he's likely to kick your ass. Just on general principles. :)
The news hadn't gone far beyond St. Louis, hadn't interested much of anybody outside a couple-hundred-mile radius, because there were worse things going on. Things going on closer to home. But Bobby, Caleb, Joshua - they spent a good part of their lives combing newspapers, websites, radio reports, anything that would tell them something peculiar was happening. Distance didn't matter. They'd all seen the picture, the artist's sketch that was Dean to a T, couldn't be anybody but Dean, the way they saw everything else that fell outside the borderline of Normal.
CHARACTERS: John (with much talk about Dean)
TIMELINE: Post-Skin
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1400 words
NOTORIOUS
By Carol Davis
Who the hell he thought that would be on the other end of the phone, he couldn't have said. He hadn't answered a call for months; his voicemail message said If you need help, call my son Dean, which meant in plain English Leave me the fuck alone, and the few people who knew his number knew him well enough to follow his instructions, knew not to harass him by leaving a message of their own. There were a few who persisted - Bobby Singer, Ellen, Jim Murphy - but most of the time, when he looked for a message after the phone had stopped ringing (whether he looked a minute later, or a week) there was none.
That had changed, yesterday.
Yesterday, they started leaving messages. All of them. Bobby, Jim, Caleb, Joshua, Ellen. The hell's he done? they all said. John? You seen the news?
He had.
John. You want me to go get the boy?
He didn't call back. Didn't answer any of them. What they meant was, You gonna go get the boy? And if your answer's 'no,' then why the motherloving hell NOT?
Like it was his duty to fix this. To go rescue his son, the way he'd done ten or twelve years ago, the handful of times Dean had gotten grabbed by local law for some dumbassed teenage mistake, speeding, or running a stop sign, or letting his mouth off the leash. Ten or twelve years ago, John had gone. Paid somebody to calm down, or took the three of them out of the reach of whoever it was Dean had pissed off. Apologized, sometimes, even when it stuck hard in his craw to do that.
He'd stopped being good at apologizing a long way back down the road. Stopped wanting to be good at it.
And this wasn't some dumbassed teenage mistake.
The news hadn't gone far beyond St. Louis, hadn't interested much of anybody outside a couple-hundred-mile radius, because there were worse things going on. Things going on closer to home. But Bobby, Caleb, Joshua - they spent a good part of their lives combing newspapers, websites, radio reports, anything that would tell them something peculiar was happening. Distance didn't matter. They'd all seen the picture, the artist's sketch that was Dean to a T, couldn't be anybody but Dean, the way they saw everything else that fell outside the borderline of Normal.
John? they said. Do you want…
He didn't answer the calls. Didn't respond to the messages. He listened to them only once, then erased them.
JOHN.
There'd been a lull, for a few hours. Half a day, maybe. Then the calls started coming again, with the same urgency, the same frequency, but the messages were more hushed, hesitant, aiming for gentle and pretty much getting there. This time the messages said, John? Do you… I… They say he's dead, John. They say the police killed him.
A few months back, as part of the last conversation they had, his son had told him, "I can do it." It: handle the job on his own. No partner, no backup. He had Sam with him now, but there was no telling how good at it Sam was, whether Sam's pigheadedness and his desire to turn his back on the life they'd led together was making him a liability Dean couldn't finesse. The few reports John had gotten second or third hand said the boys were managing pretty well - but if a basketload of shit had hit the fan, maybe neither one of them was slippery enough to get out from under. Maybe neither one of them had been in the game long enough to know when to retreat, even if it meant leaving someone else in an iffy position; when it was wiser to live to fight another day.
But he'd told Dean long ago: Take care of Sammy.
Had given him a goddamned prime directive.
They say he's dead, John.
In the rancid darkness of a worn-down motel room eight hundred-odd miles from St. Louis, John sat looking at the cell phone, the little gadget that meant he was never out of touch, no matter where he happened to be or what he happened to be doing. He might not answer the call, might not respond to a message - but he listened to them. Listened to a collection of voices tell him things had gone from shitty to pitch-black and wanted to know what he was going to do about it.
None of those voices was Sam's.
When the phone started to ring again, started to buzz and vibrate in the palm of his hand, his fingers moved against it, prowling its lines and curves. His thumb came close to the Talk button, then strayed away.
He had never told Dean what it was that he was supposed to be protecting Sam from, or how close the danger might be at any given moment. All he'd ever said was, Take care of your brother. He'd let it go at that, let his boys look after each other while he expanded his own boundaries to allow for protecting pieces of the rest of the world. Early on he had no plan for Dean to watch, listen, learn - but Dean had been doing that from the beginning, from the time when I want to be like you, Daddy had involved tinkering with engines and changing oil and fixing flats. The circumstances had changed, but Dean had not. To John's deeply mixed pride and regret, Dean had not.
A few months back, Dean had told him, "I can do it." And the thing was - that was the truth. He'd been christened in fire and blood much the way John himself had, and had never flinched from it, never balked at it the way Sam had. What he needed the day John sent him away, the one last thing he needed to prove himself as a hunter, was the chance to stand at the head of the pack. To lead. That he was capable of that, John had no doubt. That he understood Take care of Sammy ought to be expanded to Take care of them all was never in question. The only thing John had wondered about was whether Dean understood that all of them included himself, that that third thing was necessary in order to go on fulfilling the first two.
He had his answer now.
Had it, because he watched the news reports, read the articles on the newspaper websites, and knew how to read between the lines.
Remembered how many times he had reinvented himself: student, soldier, husband, father, warrior. And how Dean had watched him do it.
I want to be like you, Daddy.
Who in hell the police had killed, he wasn't sure. But it wasn't Dean. And that was the perfect solution: close the book. Force them to stop looking for him. Go so far underground that he - and Sam - would be safe. That they'd called him guilty in the first place was a misstep John might have (would have) berated him for, if Dean had been here, or John had been in St. Louis, but there was no changing that now. There was nothing to be done now but move forward.
And slide under the radar.
It was, in the words of the poet, an elegant solution. Not a perfect one, but they'd left "perfect" behind back in Lawrence, in a nest of ashes and ruined furniture, clothes and toys.
They'd let "perfect" belong to other people.
Oh, John, I'm so sorry, Ellen had murmured, her voice thick and choked with grief on his behalf. But there was no need for that.
No need.
He stood up from the bed and walked to the window, pressed the curtain away from the glass with his free hand and looked out into the night. He was eight hundred-and-some miles from St. Louis, and there was no telling where his boys were, right now.
Their lives could be better, cleaner, simpler, yes - but Sam had not called. Whoever was dead, it wasn't Dean.
Without looking at the phone, he thumbed the Talk button.
"He's all right," a voice said into his ear.
He saw the reflection of a smile in the glass. Thought it made him look like someone Mary might have recognized.
"I know," he replied.
* * * * *
The news hadn't gone far beyond St. Louis, hadn't interested much of anybody outside a couple-hundred-mile radius, because there were worse things going on. Things going on closer to home. But Bobby, Caleb, Joshua - they spent a good part of their lives combing newspapers, websites, radio reports, anything that would tell them something peculiar was happening. Distance didn't matter. They'd all seen the picture, the artist's sketch that was Dean to a T, couldn't be anybody but Dean, the way they saw everything else that fell outside the borderline of Normal.
CHARACTERS: John (with much talk about Dean)
TIMELINE: Post-Skin
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1400 words
NOTORIOUS
By Carol Davis
Who the hell he thought that would be on the other end of the phone, he couldn't have said. He hadn't answered a call for months; his voicemail message said If you need help, call my son Dean, which meant in plain English Leave me the fuck alone, and the few people who knew his number knew him well enough to follow his instructions, knew not to harass him by leaving a message of their own. There were a few who persisted - Bobby Singer, Ellen, Jim Murphy - but most of the time, when he looked for a message after the phone had stopped ringing (whether he looked a minute later, or a week) there was none.
That had changed, yesterday.
Yesterday, they started leaving messages. All of them. Bobby, Jim, Caleb, Joshua, Ellen. The hell's he done? they all said. John? You seen the news?
He had.
John. You want me to go get the boy?
He didn't call back. Didn't answer any of them. What they meant was, You gonna go get the boy? And if your answer's 'no,' then why the motherloving hell NOT?
Like it was his duty to fix this. To go rescue his son, the way he'd done ten or twelve years ago, the handful of times Dean had gotten grabbed by local law for some dumbassed teenage mistake, speeding, or running a stop sign, or letting his mouth off the leash. Ten or twelve years ago, John had gone. Paid somebody to calm down, or took the three of them out of the reach of whoever it was Dean had pissed off. Apologized, sometimes, even when it stuck hard in his craw to do that.
He'd stopped being good at apologizing a long way back down the road. Stopped wanting to be good at it.
And this wasn't some dumbassed teenage mistake.
The news hadn't gone far beyond St. Louis, hadn't interested much of anybody outside a couple-hundred-mile radius, because there were worse things going on. Things going on closer to home. But Bobby, Caleb, Joshua - they spent a good part of their lives combing newspapers, websites, radio reports, anything that would tell them something peculiar was happening. Distance didn't matter. They'd all seen the picture, the artist's sketch that was Dean to a T, couldn't be anybody but Dean, the way they saw everything else that fell outside the borderline of Normal.
John? they said. Do you want…
He didn't answer the calls. Didn't respond to the messages. He listened to them only once, then erased them.
JOHN.
There'd been a lull, for a few hours. Half a day, maybe. Then the calls started coming again, with the same urgency, the same frequency, but the messages were more hushed, hesitant, aiming for gentle and pretty much getting there. This time the messages said, John? Do you… I… They say he's dead, John. They say the police killed him.
A few months back, as part of the last conversation they had, his son had told him, "I can do it." It: handle the job on his own. No partner, no backup. He had Sam with him now, but there was no telling how good at it Sam was, whether Sam's pigheadedness and his desire to turn his back on the life they'd led together was making him a liability Dean couldn't finesse. The few reports John had gotten second or third hand said the boys were managing pretty well - but if a basketload of shit had hit the fan, maybe neither one of them was slippery enough to get out from under. Maybe neither one of them had been in the game long enough to know when to retreat, even if it meant leaving someone else in an iffy position; when it was wiser to live to fight another day.
But he'd told Dean long ago: Take care of Sammy.
Had given him a goddamned prime directive.
They say he's dead, John.
In the rancid darkness of a worn-down motel room eight hundred-odd miles from St. Louis, John sat looking at the cell phone, the little gadget that meant he was never out of touch, no matter where he happened to be or what he happened to be doing. He might not answer the call, might not respond to a message - but he listened to them. Listened to a collection of voices tell him things had gone from shitty to pitch-black and wanted to know what he was going to do about it.
None of those voices was Sam's.
When the phone started to ring again, started to buzz and vibrate in the palm of his hand, his fingers moved against it, prowling its lines and curves. His thumb came close to the Talk button, then strayed away.
He had never told Dean what it was that he was supposed to be protecting Sam from, or how close the danger might be at any given moment. All he'd ever said was, Take care of your brother. He'd let it go at that, let his boys look after each other while he expanded his own boundaries to allow for protecting pieces of the rest of the world. Early on he had no plan for Dean to watch, listen, learn - but Dean had been doing that from the beginning, from the time when I want to be like you, Daddy had involved tinkering with engines and changing oil and fixing flats. The circumstances had changed, but Dean had not. To John's deeply mixed pride and regret, Dean had not.
A few months back, Dean had told him, "I can do it." And the thing was - that was the truth. He'd been christened in fire and blood much the way John himself had, and had never flinched from it, never balked at it the way Sam had. What he needed the day John sent him away, the one last thing he needed to prove himself as a hunter, was the chance to stand at the head of the pack. To lead. That he was capable of that, John had no doubt. That he understood Take care of Sammy ought to be expanded to Take care of them all was never in question. The only thing John had wondered about was whether Dean understood that all of them included himself, that that third thing was necessary in order to go on fulfilling the first two.
He had his answer now.
Had it, because he watched the news reports, read the articles on the newspaper websites, and knew how to read between the lines.
Remembered how many times he had reinvented himself: student, soldier, husband, father, warrior. And how Dean had watched him do it.
I want to be like you, Daddy.
Who in hell the police had killed, he wasn't sure. But it wasn't Dean. And that was the perfect solution: close the book. Force them to stop looking for him. Go so far underground that he - and Sam - would be safe. That they'd called him guilty in the first place was a misstep John might have (would have) berated him for, if Dean had been here, or John had been in St. Louis, but there was no changing that now. There was nothing to be done now but move forward.
And slide under the radar.
It was, in the words of the poet, an elegant solution. Not a perfect one, but they'd left "perfect" behind back in Lawrence, in a nest of ashes and ruined furniture, clothes and toys.
They'd let "perfect" belong to other people.
Oh, John, I'm so sorry, Ellen had murmured, her voice thick and choked with grief on his behalf. But there was no need for that.
No need.
He stood up from the bed and walked to the window, pressed the curtain away from the glass with his free hand and looked out into the night. He was eight hundred-and-some miles from St. Louis, and there was no telling where his boys were, right now.
Their lives could be better, cleaner, simpler, yes - but Sam had not called. Whoever was dead, it wasn't Dean.
Without looking at the phone, he thumbed the Talk button.
"He's all right," a voice said into his ear.
He saw the reflection of a smile in the glass. Thought it made him look like someone Mary might have recognized.
"I know," he replied.
* * * * *