SPN FIC - Driftwood
As promised.
Six years ago this morning, I was at Cape Cod with my parents. My dad and I went out early for groceries, and on the way back we stopped at a roadside stand for corn on the cob. The guy running in spotted my dad's plates and said, "You're from New York -- did you hear about the World Trade Center?"
We sat in the car listening to the radio reports of first one plane...then another...then another. By the time we got back to the cottage, I thought for sure someone was about to call, "Game's up." That there was a war, and we wouldn't be coming out of it in one piece.
The weather there was gray, cloudy, damp. The power did indeed go out every couple of days thanks to the crappy wiring and the squirrels. And there was a red fox scrounging around for food.
That September, I'd been living in L.A. for over ten years. A few months later I moved back home.
This is in quiet remembrance of those we lost on 9/11, and a reminder to treasure those we still have with us.
Characters: Dean, Sam, John, OFC
Pairings: none
Length: 3320 words
Rating: PG, for language and disturbing images
Spoilers: none
Driftwood
By Carol Davis
It’s late when Dean finally crawls out of bed. Comparatively, anyway; Sammy got up almost five hours ago. Twenty after ten is still pretty damn early, but Sam would tell him he ought to drag his stupid carcass out of bed way before this. Do something useful.
Useful. Yeah.
Like what? Laundry? They don’t have a washer or a dryer here. If he’s going to do laundry, he’s got to haul it all the way into town to the laundromat. And that’s always a blast, sitting around with a bunch of other losers who don’t own washing machines, waiting for the spin cycle to be over.
At least nobody argues there.
He wanders into the kitchen and finds half an inch of stagnant coffee in the pot.
Like it would fucking kill Sam to dump that out and start another pot before he left for school. But Sam’s not focused on anything but Sam these days. He’s a senior now, and in SamWorld his shit doesn’t stink. He picks on everything - every single freaking thing that doesn’t suit him, which is just about every last…
Power outages.
Last night he freaked out about power outages, and how was he supposed to get his homework done if they didn’t have any damn lights. The power goes out all the time here; the wires are old and corroded by the salt and dampness that’s always in the air. Not to mention the squirrels chewing on them. At least twice a week there’s a BANG! like a firecracker, the lights go out, and there’s some Kentucky Fried Squirrel lying all smoky and limp on the ground. It happened last night while Sam was in the middle of his stuff. The lights went DOINK for about the eight hundredth time since they moved into the cottage a month ago, and Sam went ballistic. Because, of course, the power outage - like everything else on planet Earth - was Dad’s fault.
And if Dean has to listen to one more argument, one more set of accusations, look one more time at the pointing finger of You Did This, he’s going to…
Nothing.
He’s going to do nothing, because that’s what he always does. Sam looks at him all red-faced and freaked-out, wanting Dean to back him up, and there’s no way Dean can do that. There’s just no way. Not and keep living here. This is Dad’s roof they’re under, so Dad’s rules apply. They have to apply.
The power’s on this morning, so Dean puts a fresh filter in the holder and dumps a packet of coffee into it. While he waits for the eleven-buck coffeemaker he bought at the dollar store in town to do its thing - the cottage didn’t come with much in the way of amenities; they’re lucky it has a stove - he pours cereal into a bowl, tops it with milk that doesn’t smell too iffy, and sits down at the chrome-legged kitchen table to eat.
Milk spoilage is probably Dad’s fault too.
There’s got to be an answer to all this. Got to be, because if Sam keeps this crap up, Dad’s going to eventually come to the end of the line and either throw Sam the hell out or haul off and paste him one. Which might result in Sam walking out.
Dean would like to walk out.
Just…out.
Go somewhere quiet, where people don’t fight about bullshit like sketchy milk. For all he knows, half the families in America fight about nothing, but when he walks up and down the narrow roads that surround the cottage, he never hears any fighting going on inside the houses. Voices sometimes, or music, or the TV, but no fighting.
Maybe they’re in there playing Scrabble or something.
When the coffee stops dripping he’s sitting there staring into the bowl of soggy cereal. He looks over at the pot and all of a sudden he feels worn right the hell out. His shoulders hurt, and his head hurts, and walking as far as the bathroom seems like something he’d have to struggle to accomplish. Behind him, the wall clock (another dollar store purchase, and he’d felt good about finding all that stuff so cheap until the clerk asked him if he was furnishing a dorm room) clicks off seconds in the otherwise silent house.
Dad’s not here. Dad could be pretty much anywhere, but he’s probably off looking for the old guy who’s supposed to have some info on the ghost that keeps waltzing out in front of people’s cars a couple miles from here.
He could have taken Dean with him, but he didn’t. These days he doesn’t seem to want much to do with either one of his kids. He’s worn down, and there’s no way to blame him for that. No way for Dean to blame him for it, anyway.
Without paying much attention to what he’s doing, he puts the cereal bowl in the sink with Sam’s abandoned breakfast dishes. Sam wouldn’t do his own dishes if you threatened to blow his head off with a bazooka - it’s Not Important in his world view, and besides, they have Dean to do the chores. God knows, Dean’s not useful for anything else.
Dean can’t take sides in this. He can’t. This is his family, for God’s sake.
In jeans and t-shirt, barefoot, he pushes open the screen door and steps out onto the falling-apart, gray-painted stoop.
Mom might like this place.
He wouldn’t want her to have to stay in a house this beat up and dirty, but in his imagination she’d think it was an adventure. She’d put on old jeans and a shirt and tie her hair up, and they’d scrub and vacuum (stupid place doesn’t have a vacuum cleaner, of course, but this is his imagination so they’ll have one) and put up new curtains and cook something that fills the whole place with a good, warm smell. In the evening they’ll build a fire in the fireplace that the cottage also doesn’t have and they’ll all sit around, all four of them, and talk. When it’s time to call it a day she’ll kiss him and stroke his cheek with the back of her hand and say, “Good night, sweetie. Sleep tight.”
In the morning they’ll walk up and down the beach and collect shells and she’ll arrange them on the mantel of the non-existent fireplace. She liked shells - he’s sure he remembers a basket of seashells in their house in Lawrence, but since Lawrence isn’t anywhere near an ocean, she probably bought them in some gift store. Or maybe she went to the ocean once.
She’d like it here, even when the power’s out.
Sam asked him once if Dad would feel better if he got married again. Maybe; Dean’s pondered that possibility more than a few times. But it won’t happen. Not until they get the thing that killed Mom, and maybe not even then.
It’s killing Dad, all this searching and finding nothing. His shoulders sag when he thinks nobody’s looking, and the expression he comes up with that’s supposed to be a smile is really closer to being a grimace.
If only he could find the thing.
If only…
There’s a flicker of movement outside, on the far side of the road. It’s the fox again: the red fox that’s been scouting around the neighborhood looking for food. The Winchesters have seen it half a dozen times since they got here. It’s a little on the thin side, but sleek and beautiful; its coat is a bright contrast against the greens and browns of the underbrush and the gray of the road. The fox stands where it is for a moment, looking pensively around at the collection of cottages. When it finally spots Dean it streaks off into the brush.
The weather’s gray today, like the road. Thick clouds and the kind of damp breeze that says summer’s really over.
On a day like this, at this time of the morning, it’s no surprise to see no one around. The vacationers have pretty much all gone home; the people who are still here own the houses they’re staying in, for the most part, and a lot of them have jobs. The retirees, and the few people who like to vacation off-season, are probably inside reading or watching TV.
There’s just one figure standing on the beach, about a hundred feet from where Dean is, close enough for him to tell it’s Nancy Blanchard. She lives across the road with her husband, in a house that’s a million times nicer than the cottage Dad’s paying too much for (and which should have been torn down twenty years ago). Some people might be inclined to turn their noses up at the Winchesters simply because they’re living in that wreck of a cottage, but Nancy and Gary have been nothing but kind. They’ve brought over extra tomatoes from their garden, and Gary’s come knocking a couple of times to ask questions about the Impala: how’s she run, is it tough to find parts. They’re good people, nice people. In their early thirties, Dean figures.
He pushes himself up off the stoop, takes a couple of steps toward the road, careful of the gravel underfoot, and watches Nancy for a couple of minutes.
It took him a while to find out her name, because Gary calls her a dozen different things: pumpkin, sweetie, hon. Nanny-nonny. Niblet. Peg, for some reason. If the number of nonsense names you call someone is an indicator of how much you love them, then Gary is out-of-his-head crazy about his wife.
Gary’s not around today, Dean remembers: he had to drive to Boston in the wee hours this morning to catch a plane to L.A. for business. He’ll be back Thursday afternoon, but in the meantime Nanny-nonny is on her own.
She’s sure doing some big-time pondering of the ocean.
But that’s cool. Dean’s clocked some time himself sitting on the beach watching the surf roll in, or walking along the water line. It intimidates him a little bit, taking in how immense the ocean is.
He’s thinking about walking down to meet her, seeing if maybe she wants to hitch a ride into town with him, when he hears footfalls on the road. Somebody in boots - something with leather soles, anyway - coming toward him pretty fast. When he turns around, it’s Sam, and the look on Sam’s face sends daggers into Dean’s heart.
Dad. Something’s happened to Dad.
Sam comes pounding up, pale and red-faced at the same time. He had to have run all the way down from the bus stop on the main road, and that’s almost two miles. He’s got his backpack hanging off one shoulder, like he didn’t bother to adjust it the right way.
“Dean” is all he can get out.
His eyes are red, too. He’s been crying, and his jaw is trembling.
“Dad?” Dean whispers. “Is it Dad?”
Sam gapes at him. “Don’t you know?”
“Know what?” Something clutches at Dean, wants him to panic. “Where’s Dad?”
Rather than answer, Sam grabs Dean by the arm and drags him into the cottage. He drops his backpack onto the floor, then reaches for the battered, knobless portable TV and works the On/Off stem until the set makes a crackling noise and comes on. As it warms up, Sam wraps his hand around the rabbit ears, the only way they can get decent reception on the thing.
The image on the screen, when it finally clarifies (at least as much as it’s going to clarify), is a bunch of tall buildings surrounded by some sort of heavy gray cloud.
The words World Trade Center and Live are at the bottom.
“What -?“ Dean mutters.
There are people talking, but what they’re saying doesn’t make any sense. Something about “terrorists” and “collapse” and…
“Planes,” Sam chokes out. “Somebody flew two planes into the World Trade Center.”
Dean blinks at him, still confused. “What, you mean like private planes?”
“Jets.”
That doesn’t compute at all. “How the fuck do you -“
“They closed the school and sent us home. Dean,” Sam says firmly, building up some speed now. “Somebody flew two airliners into the World Trade Center. Another one hit the Pentagon. Two planes, out of Boston, headed for L.A. They flew them into the -“
Boston, Dean thinks.
“- World Trade Center. Both the buildings collapsed. See? That’s what that cloud is. It’s all that’s left.”
There are tears rolling down Sam’s face.
“People died?” Dean ventures. He can’t look at Sam. His eyes keep going back to the TV. People are wandering across the screen, most of them covered in what looks like a heavy coat of ash. They look stunned, like all this doesn’t compute for them either. Then the camera shifts to a long-range view, probably from an upper floor in a building a ways away. That cloud is huge. Looks like it’s swallowed up everything for blocks. Finally Dean shifts his weight a little and stares at Sam. “How the fuck do you fly a jet into a building?”
Sam swipes at his nose with his fist. “Where’s Dad, Dean?”
“I don’t know. I - I don’t know.”
He’s not in New York City. Dean knows that much.
But…
It comes to him then. That’s why she’s on the beach. Gary was going to L.A. on business. From Boston.
On a plane. From Boston.
“Fuck,” he says, and his voice breaks.
“Dean?” Sam says shrilly. “Where’s Dad?”
Dean looks around, as if he thinks Dad’s going to appear all of a sudden. His mind feels like soup.
“Is there a war?” Sam squeaks.
Changing channels on the TV is a job and a half; it’s tough to pinch the stem that would hold the missing knob tightly enough to turn it. The freaking TV’s got to be older than Sam. Grimacing, Dean manages to grip the stem and turns it enough to find another channel. It’s showing the same thing as the first one: that hazy gray cloud. Buildings sticking up out of the haze. People wandering around holding their faces between their hands.
How the hell did those buildings fall down? He’s seen them a couple of times, from across the water in New Jersey. They’re huge.
And now they’re gone?
What the fucking fuck.
“No,” he mutters at Sam. “There’s no war.”
“But what if there is?”
“There isn’t, Sammy.” No one on the TV is saying anything about war. “Attack,” yeah, and “terrorists” and “alert” and whatever. That isn’t to say there won’t be a war, but for now things look like…
Like there’s a war, he thinks.
Shaking at his head at nothing he could name, he pushes open the screen door, steps down onto the broken stoop and walks out to the road. He hears the screen door bang shut as Sam follows him. It’s only a hundred feet to the beach. His bare feet dig into the sand as he walks toward Nancy, circles around her so she can see him, peers into her face.
She’s wearing pajamas, and a green sweater Dean knows belongs to Gary. Her feet are bare, like his, and she’s trembling. Not crying, though; her face is dry.
He can’t say her name. He just looks at her.
“Nancy?” Sam says from behind her.
She turns around and looks at Sam, and her mouth quivers a little. She’s trying to smile, to say hello, something.
Her hand dips into the pocket of Gary’s sweater and comes back out curled around a phone. She frowns at it for a second, then pushes some buttons and holds it out to Dean. She’s smiling bigger now, and it makes her look like she busted out of the psych ward without taking her meds. Because she wants him to, Dean takes the phone and listens to the voicemail message she’s keyed up. It’s Gary, speaking softly.
“I love you, honey,” he says. “I love you. I’ll…see you again.”
Sweet fucking Jesus, Dean thinks.
He gives the phone back and she closes both hands around it. “I was… Shower? Was taking a shower. Didn’t hear the phone.” Her eyes get very bright then and tears start cascading down her cheeks. She’s not going to be able to stay on her feet much longer, so Dean tucks an arm around her waist and carefully walks her back up the road to her house. By the time they get there, with Sam bringing up the rear, an older woman who lives a few houses away is standing at the gate. She knows what’s going on; Nancy and Gary told pretty much the whole neighborhood that Gary was flying out to L.A. The look on the older woman’s face says she knows Gary’s not coming back.
With a nod to Dean and Sam, she takes Nancy into her arms and leads her inside. “Thank you, boys,” she says over her shoulder before she closes the door.
Then they’re standing out there alone. Him and Sam.
“I don’t see…how this happened,” Sam says.
Dean shrugs. Shakes his head. Yesterday, he thought he understood the world. His life. Their lives.
Yesterday he knew there are things in the dark that can get you.
Now the daylight’s not safe either.
Sam gropes in the pocket of his jeans and produces his phone. He has to press the buttons carefully, and the scrunched-up grimace on his face reminds Dean of when Sam was little and put everything he had into tying his shoes. He holds the phone to his ear, silent for a moment, then says painfully, “Come back. No…come back here now. Dad? We…we need you, Dad. Come now. Please. That other stuff…it’ll wait. Please.”
Dad’s there twenty minutes later, pulling his truck crookedly into the empty space beside the Impala. Sam, standing close to the stoop, has his hand jammed up against his mouth like that’ll hold something inside that he doesn’t want to come out.
“Sammy?” Dad says.
“What happened, Dad?” Sam asks him, looking him straight in the eye. “Why - I don’t -“
Sam hasn’t looked this rattled in years. A lot of years. Dad stands looking at him for a moment, then crosses the gravel and slings an arm around Sam, tugging him in close. Sam buries his face in Dad’s shoulder and shakes like his whole body is crying.
Dean is sitting on the stoop. There’s not enough strength in him to let him get up.
“Dad?” he mumbles.
Dad stretches out a hand. When Dean takes it, he hoists Dean to his feet and pulls him in. He says nothing, just stands there holding on to his boys for a minute.
No, it’s more than a minute.
When Dad finally lets go, Dean steps back and smudges at his face with the back of his hand. “I don’t get it, Dad,” he says softly.
Dad looks at him steadily for a second. His mouth moves, but it’s not a smile. He’s still got a good grip on Sam, who’s crying like a little kid into the crook between Dad’s shoulder and his neck. Dad’s hand drifts up, curls around the back of Sam’s neck. “People fucked up,” he says, but who that’s supposed to be an indictment of, Dean isn’t sure. His eyes meet Dean’s again and he nods toward the door.
Open it? Close the inside door? Dean isn’t sure about that either.
Then he is.
It’s what they’ve got right now: walls and a roof and a floor. A couple of beds and a couch and a mostly-broken TV that gets three channels, none of them well.
It’s what they’ve got.
Besides each other.
“Yeah,” he says to Dad, and it’s not much more than a whisper.