Supernatural FIC: "Mockingbird" 1/10; PG-13; het (Sam/OFC); angst
Title: Mockingbird (Chapter 1/10)
Author: hiyacynth
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, near-future fic, het; AU after "What Is and What Should Never Be"
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Sam, OCs, eventual Sam/OFC
Rating and Warnings: Story overall rated NC-17 for sex and thematic reasons. This chapter PG-13 for thematic reasons and some cursing. Spoilers: Everything's fair game until the Season 2 finale, which didn't happen in this universe.
Word count (chapter): 6,955
Disclaimer: If nothing else, this story proves to me that I do not own the Winchesters. They own me. Hard. Apparently Kripke and Warner Bros. and the CW own them. I'm making no money here.
This is a ten-part story. Chapters will be posted on Mondays and Thursdays for five weeks.
Though not written specifically for that challenge, this story is being posted first in spn_het_love as a response to their Challenge 8-the OFC-a-thon. I will love that community forever for making me realize I wasn't the only person out there who wanted to read and write het. Check it out!
Acknowledgments: I have so many people to thank here, it's not even funny. Bear with me. I promise to do the short version for future chapters, but these ladies need some serious public leg-humping from me for all they've done.
* My posse up at Fangirl Central: liptorm (she who introduced me to Supernatural and to whom I pledge my eternal fealty), baylorsr, and The baylorsr Sister. These women have been with this story since wrong-headed, never-intended-for-prime-time inception in October 2006. That babbling went into overload in January, when I arrived at FGC after a four-hour drive and said something along the lines of "Hi OMG!! I have to pee and then I have to call my voicemail and transcribe all the messages I left myself on the drive up here, and then I have to tell you about the crazy story idea I had OMG!! Somebody please bring me a sammich!" They have been suffering similar outbursts from me for seven months now, and they still appear to like me. liptorm and baylorsr have also been reading this as a WIP, encouraging me when I got downhearted, Jossed, blocked, and just plain sick-to-death of the whole thing.
*kimonkey7. Dude, seriously. If it hadn't been for Kim on the other end of my IM, I would not have made it past Chapter 2. She's been the first set of eyes on this monster since about February, and she's been getting it in chunks of however-many-words-I-can-write-on-a-particular-night, which is a really disjointed way of doing things. Not to mention, neither of us can keep track of What She Knows about the key plot points and What She Doesn't Know, so I keep saying things like "OMG, I just realized that when Event X happens, Dean's totally gonna Reaction Y," and she'll be, like, "Wait, WHAT? Event X? WTF??!!" And then just brush it off and keep reading. She rocks my world.
* iamstealthyone, who stepped up when I was starting to panic about the beta process in general, and specifically about having someone whom I hadn't already spoiled completely reading the thing. She's been amazing-catches all sorts of really stupid mistakes, kicks my passive-voice tendencies in the butt to make them active, points out POV wobbles, and asks tough characterization questions. I don't always do what she says, but she makes me think really hard about why I'm making the choice, and that thought process often ends up with me tweaking things to get my intentions across more clearly (I hope).
*cunien and likethesun2 both had incredibly busy seasons at school, and-despite the fact that they were swamped with work, living in crappy, stressful conditions with little or no privacy-they took the time to read and listen to me flail, whine, and generally grumble and grouse for months. Months, I tell you. They are made out of cells with nuclei of awesome. Special thanks to likethesun2 for pulling out the "holy crap I'm about to post, did I get everything?" beta. Did I mention teh awesome?
*Also generously endowed with the awesome gene is abyssinia4077. Though she and I do not currently share a fandom, we have learned to appreciate the object of the other's affection, and have spent the last eight or so months having lunch in various restaurants within a three-mile radius of my job, speaking in hushed tones about whatever story (or part of a story) we're working on that week, brainstorming solutions to plot problems and fretting over very important topics like "To AU or not to AU, that is the question." I love her dearly.
*ultraviolet9a, who kept saying things like "I can't wait to see this story!" when I would blather randomly about it, and then, when I sent her a sneak preview, became obsessed with a certain swimming pool. It was very satisfying. :-)
*I should also probably apologize to my employer, EvilCorps, for spending so much of my time thinking about, tinkering on, and emailing various people about this story on their time. Whatever. I've been their drone for 11 years. They owe me.
Timeline Notes: This story was started in January 2007 and takes place in the summer of 2008. It projects a future (Jossed completely by "All Hell Breaks Loose") wherein the Big Battle with the Yellow-Eyed Demon occurred during (my brain's version of) Season 3.
Summary: Dean frowned and shook his head. Even if he wanted to, how could he start to explain what Sam was these days? He wasn't sure himself. He knew what Sam had been before the war. He had a pretty good idea of what Sam'd been during. And he knew Sam wasn't either of those things anymore.
THEN
Mockingbird audio prologue: "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby - Oregon Mix" by baylorsr (MP3: right-click, save as)
Mockingbird video prologue: "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby" by liptonrm
NOW
Mockingbird
Chapter 1: A Room Full of Emptiness
Dean woke with a jerk to the unmistakable clatter of a cheap motel room's front door shutting. He hated that noise. Always had. A solid oak door, or a steel-reinforced one, smashing open under a well-placed boot or slamming shut behind him-now those were satisfying noises, those were doors. This hollow-core crap, it sounded just like what it was: a flimsy barrier between you and everything that was trying to get you, and Dean had no illusions about how much it would keep out.
Squinting through the film uneasy sleep left on his eyes, Dean saw Sam outlined against the door, and a hot, panicky burst of energy shot from somewhere deep in his ribcage, waking him up fast and fully. He sat up, wrestling back the alarm.
"I had a dream last night," Sam said, pulling the lid off the steaming paper cup he carried, oblivious to Dean's distress.
No shit, Dean thought as he rubbed his eyes clear and willed his heart rate to slow.
Sam had dreams every night. He was like clockwork these days. Three hours after he fell asleep he'd start thrashing and moaning, calling out names-some Dean knew, some he didn't-and muttering incomprehensible phrases, sometimes crying like Dean had only ever heard him cry once when he was awake. The dreams would last half an hour or so, and then Sam would wrench with the force of the terrified gasp that seized his whole body, sigh, and relax right back into the baby-deep sleep he'd slipped easily into just minutes after the lights went out. Dean had tried everything he could think of to snap him out of his nightmares, but nothing worked.
Yeah, Sam had dreams.
Dean kicked himself free of the ugly-ass comforter and stood up, stretching in what he hoped was a casual-looking way, watching his brother carefully but trying not to get caught at it. The first few weeks after Dean'd gotten Sam back, he tried to ask about the dreams, but Sam wouldn't talk about them. First he just plain wouldn't talk, which was a whole other thing. And when he did start talking again-a couple weeks in-Sam said in as few words as possible that he didn't remember the dreams, or even know that he was having them. Dean wasn't sure whether he believed it, but he didn't press the issue. Instead, he bore the waking memory of the dreams for Sam and listened for clues in the ravings, hoping to find something that might help him work out a road map of some kind, an idea of where to take Sam from here.
"What'd you dream about?" Dean tipped his head side to side, cracking his neck, as Sam sat on the room's single chair and sipped his drink. God, this was a crap motel to beat all crap motels. Slimy shower, itchy sheets, no kitchenette, no coffee maker. And though a small part of Dean was glad to see Sam doing something as normal as going out for coffee, he hated Sam wandering off on his own. And he didn't like that in the three weeks since Sam had first left him sleeping in a motel room, Sam had never once brought him back a cup of coffee.
"Nursery fire," Sam said as off handedly as if the dream had been about talking dogs.
Dean felt leftover crusts of sleep tearing free from the corners of his eyes as they widened. His mouth dropped open to ask a question, but he didn't know which one. He closed his mouth and opened it again, and finally the question stumbled out. "Any-anybody we know?"
Sam shook his head. "A baby. Girl, I think. The dad was putting her in pink PJs." Sam tilted his head, possibly interested. "Could be a boy in hand-me-downs, though. There was an older kid, too. Definitely a girl." He waved his hand vaguely, measuring out a height somewhere between knee and hip height. "She was crying, but the guy wasn't paying attention."
"And then?" Dean prompted, though he was pretty sure he knew what was coming.
"The usual. Fire. Charred corpse on the ceiling. Screaming kid. Some blood."
"Huh," Dean said. His mouth was dry, but his stomach was twitching nervously and his T-shirt was suddenly sticking to the cold dampness in his armpits.
They hadn't had sign one of anything to do with the Demon since before they'd left Bobby in New Mexico the first week of May. Dean hadn't been looking, truthfully, but he'd been checking in regularly with Bobby, Ellen, and the surviving hunters he knew and trusted. The Colt had worked, in the bitter end, and though the costs had been extreme, the war appeared to be over. He couldn't speak to seven and a half weeks in March and April, but Dean knew for damn sure Sam hadn't had a vision-at least not a migraine-inducing one-since Dean had gotten him back. It used to take Sam hours to shake off the old ones, and he looked just peachy now.
"How's your head?" Dean asked, just to make sure.
"Fine."
"You think it was a vision?"
Sam shrugged. "I think it was around here somewhere. Didn't we pass a park? Devil's something."
"Punchbowl. Back around Newport. You see a sign?" Sam hummed a confirmation as Dean rifled through his duffle for the map, neatly folded to show the Oregon coastline. Another name caught his eye, right fucking on top of where they were now-ten miles to the north, probably less. "Devil's Lake, too. Great neighborhood."
The corner of his bed sagged under him as Dean sat down and alternated between studying the map and his brother. Sam looked disinterested, his chatty mood apparently having passed. He leaned and stretched to retrieve the copy of The Oregonian Dean had picked up yesterday, flipped through the sections until he found the funnies, and contemplated them thoughtfully. Dean weighed his options.
They'd been on the road for almost six weeks, ever since Sam's arm had stopped threatening to go septic. When he'd steered Sam into the passenger seat and handed him the map, Sam, still mute then, pointed at the Pacific; Dean put the Impala in gear and headed west. They spent a hellishly hot afternoon crawling along Highway 10, through Los Angeles and its endless sprawl, until they finally hit the coast and turned right, heading north up Highway 1. No set destination, not trying to chase down a job, just driving from shit-hole motel to shit-hole motel, pausing for a few days every few days so Dean could score some cash in a pool or poker game.
Now, June half gone, Dean was about three transactions short of having James Blair's credit cut off, but was reluctant to crack into Dean Spenser's envelope full of identification and credit cards; it was the last set he had. Hustling and more shoplifting than usual were keeping them fed, housed, and gassed up for now, but Dean wasn't sure how much longer he could keep it up, and he didn't want to go to Bobby or Ellen for money-not after all they'd already given, all they'd lost. The Impala wasn't running right, either. She was hesitating, reluctant, tired, and he needed to pay her some serious attention.
Dean was exhausted, and not just because he'd been up half the night trying to work out what his brother's crazy, sleep-screamed bullshit meant.
He thought about the garage they'd eaten across from yesterday afternoon, in Lincoln City. There was a sweet '70 GTO parked by the office door, what looked like a good-sized lot behind the garage, a banner that proudly declared they could repair or rebuild any make, model, or vintage, domestic or imported, and a help-wanted sign in the window.
Throw in Sam's maybe-vision, and it was all starting to sound to Dean like they should stick around for a while.
"You hungry?" When Sam answered with an indifferent grunt, Dean decided it meant "Yes," because that answer worked best with the plan that was shaping up in his head. "I'm gonna grab a shower, and then we'll hit that diner back in town, yeah?"
Sam grunted again. Dean pulled his last clean shirt from his duffle and brought it into the bathroom, hoping that the steam would loosen the wrinkles enough to look respectable.
**********
Sam was still pushing his eggs around his plate when Dean finished wolfing down his meat-lover's hash and chugged his three-dollar glass of orange juice in four greedy swallows.
"You okay here?" he asked Sam rhetorically. As expected, he got an offhanded "Mmm" in response. "Okay. Sit tight. I gotta see about something." Dean pulled one of his last six twenties out of his wallet and tucked it under his empty coffee cup. "That should cover us and keep you in refills till I get back."
Sam hummed again and continued staring at the tape-patched Naugahyde next to Dean's left shoulder.
"Don't go anywhere," Dean reiterated. "I'll be back."
It took him five minutes to get a break he could jump the car through in the busy coastal highway that separated the diner from Bell's Garage. It would have been easier on foot, but Dean knew his girl was going to be key to his plan. He eased her into one of the empty spots at the back of the small lot outside the office, leaving plenty of room for show and tell, and took a moment to arrange his face.
The office was clean and bright against the overcast coastal morning. An electronic bell chimed as Dean stepped through the glass door, and through the open door behind the counter he heard it echo back in the bay.
"Right there!" a man's voice called from the shop.
Under the soothing rhythm of Creedence on the shop stereo Dean could hear the rattle of a creeper rolling over the cement floor. He leaned to his left so he could see through the doorway and watched a guy in blue coveralls emerge from under a '70s-era Land Rover.
"Mornin'!" Dean called with a friendly wave.
The guy pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands, tucking the red cloth back into his coveralls as he crossed through the doorway.
"Mornin'." He was a steady-looking guy five or six years older than Dean, dark-haired with a broad, pale face striped by a light sunburn across his nose and cheeks, and the tips of a pair of woven, blue-black tattoos peeking out the neck of his T-shirt. "Help you?"
"Hope so," Dean said, pushing all the cheer he could muster into his voice. His eyes flicked down to the man's chest, reading the name patch there. "Curtis? I'm Dean Spenser." He stuck his hand across the counter in greeting. The guy shot a quick look at his own grease-smudged hand before taking Dean's and shaking it firmly. When they released the handshake, Dean jerked his thumb over his shoulder and twisted toward the window. "Saw your sign. You still looking for help?"
Curtis's eyes followed the gesture, and Dean saw the moment he registered the Impala.
"We're looking," Curtis said and tipped his chin toward the parking lot. "Yours?" At Dean's proud nod of confirmation, he added, "I saw you pull into The Cove earlier. She's a beauty. How long you had her?"
"All my life. My dad… He had a shop when I was a kid, taught me everything he knew. We rebuilt her together when I was fifteen, and I…" Dean scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck. "She got totaled a couple years ago, but I brought her back."
The mechanic nodded and gave Dean a closer, more assessing look. "Looks like you did a nice job. You got a résumé?"
"Not so much," Dean said, looking the guy in the face and keeping his hands still on the counter. "But you can take a look at the Impala, see what I've done. It's good work."
Curtis's eyebrows lifted slightly, and his mouth turned up at one corner. Before he could laugh outright, Dean pushed ahead, acting on an impulse that went against his natural instincts and told him to take Sam's old direct, sincere approach-the one that used to get them into strangers' homes faster and with fewer felonies than their lock-pick kit.
"Listen, my brother and me, we're having a wicked run of bad luck lately. I'm just trying to get things together again. And what could really help with that is a week's work somewhere I can trade for shop time with my girl there. Something's off, and I haven't had the chance to chase it down."
The half smile on the mechanic's face turned into a pursed, thoughtful look that he pushed away as he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth.
"I guess I could have a look." He came around the counter and waved Dean toward the glass door. "Slow morning anyway. How 'bout you give me the tour-tell me what you think's off. We'll call it an interview."
**********
Dean sat in the car taking advantage of the rare moment alone to make some calls before launching himself back across the highway to pick up Sam.
Ellen sounded just as tired as always when she answered. Dean hated asking her for anything, but she'd insisted that he and Sam were family now, and God knew there wasn't anything that woman wouldn't do for her family.
"Don't know how this could be anything but good news, sweetie, but Ash's system's showing a big old nothing across the map, and a double serving of nothing in Oregon."
Dean rubbed his chin, considering.
"You think something's coming down?" She didn't ask whether the brothers were actually in Oregon. They'd all learned John Winchester's need-to-know rule firsthand, and hard.
"I dunno. Probably just a fluke." Dean wasn't sure he believed that-his gut told him something was going on-but he didn't want to get Ellen involved any more than he had to.
The line buzzed between them for a long moment.
"How's Sam doing?" Ellen asked.
"Good," Dean answered readily.
The tone was a lie; he didn't know whether the answer itself was. Sam was alive. His arm had healed. Sam could talk and eat and dress himself, and for the first time in his life he did what Dean told him without asking questions. All of those things were good, considering.
"Sam's good," Dean repeated. "He says hi."
Ellen's breathing hitched in a quiet chuckle. "Tell him I said hi back. You take care now, Dean. Call if you need anything."
"I will."
"Bye, sweetie."
Dean felt a familiar wave of grief and affection roll over him as he hit the "end" button, but he pushed it aside and dialed again.
"A vision, huh?" Bobby asked when Dean explained the situation.
"Only he said 'dream,' not 'vision,' and it didn't seem to hit him the way they used to. No headache, anyway. And it wasn't one of his nightmares."
"He still having them, though?"
"Same bat time, same bat channel," Dean confirmed, weariness slipping into his voice under the weak joke. He could hear Bobby scratching his beard.
"He got anything to say about them? Either kinda dream, I mean."
"Sam?" Dean's laugh caught before it could escape, and he choked on it a little, had to clear his throat. "Sam's got squat to say about anything these days, Bobby. I'm surprised he told me about the dream at all, to tell the truth."
"Uh huh. How's the burn?"
"Still just a burn. Scarring up real nice."
Like all of Dean's conversations seemed to lately, this one filled with a thick silence. Finally, Bobby blew out some air and said, "Hell if I know, son. I'll keep my ears on. But maybe… Maybe he's just starting to … you know. Dream normal again. Or normal for a Winchester, anyway."
Another silence filled Dean's phone.
"Yeah. Maybe." Dean looked out the window, across Highway 101's four lanes of traffic, to the diner. He could just see Sam's dark head through the window. "Listen, Bobby, we're gonna stay put a few days, just in case. I got a gig here-week or so of day work."
"You need money?"
"No. No, I'm good, thanks. Just… Just call if you hear anything, okay? I got a weird feeling."
"You do the same," Bobby returned, and there was one more pause before he added, "Dean? You look after yourself, too, you hear? Nothing you can do for Sam or anyone else if you wear yourself to a knob."
Dean's mouth was tight when he answered, "I'll do my best."
"All right. I'll talk to you soon."
Sam was still studying the booth benches when Dean rejoined him. The waitress-impatient to clear a table whose bill and tip wasn't getting any bigger and eyeing Sam skittishly-came over immediately and asked Dean if they were done. He ignored her pushy tone and asked for another coffee.
"Hey," he said to Sam as she stalked away. "We're gonna stick around awhile. I got work at the garage across the street starting tomorrow." Sam shrugged minutely, and Dean pressed his teeth together over a sigh. "Ellen says hi," he said, though he didn't know why he bothered. He was pretty sure Sam didn't care. "Says Ash's rig isn't showing anything weird around here. Bobby hasn't heard anything, either."
The waitress came back and clacked a fresh mug of coffee in front of Dean, and the burnt brown liquid sloshed onto the table. She made a sour, annoyed face at him, like he'd done the spilling, and reached for the rag tucked into her apron.
"I got it," Dean said, waving her off and pulling a clump of napkins out of the dispenser. Time was he'd have winked and flirted and charmed his way back into her good graces, but today he just wanted her to go away. He wadded the soggy napkins at the edge of the table and looked at Sam, who was watching her stomp off.
"She looks like Jo," Sam observed neutrally.
Dean's brow furrowed as he followed Sam's stare. He wouldn't have thought it himself-the waitress was thirtyish and pretty enough if she would wipe that snotty pucker off her face, and she had a good twenty pounds on Jo-but she had that same sleek blonde hair, and when she turned around at the counter, he could see something in her posture that was reminiscent of Jo Harvelle, and it made his throat tighten.
"I guess." Dean took a slug of his coffee, welcoming the scald against the thin tissue on the inside of his mouth. He flicked an eye up to Sam's face and was surprised to see him sporting an actual expression-one eyebrow cocked, head tipped inquisitively.
"You ever get a taste of that?"
The coffee went down too fast. "Huh?"
"Jo," Sam said, looking Dean straight in the face. "You ever-?"
"No," Dean choked. "Jesus."
Sam shook his head. "Too bad. That was a sweet slice of pie," he said casually and went back to studying the waitress.
Dean's stomach churned around his breakfast and the coffee he'd added to it. He swallowed hard and thought back to the times they'd seen Jo before everything blew up, trying to identify blocks of time in which Sam and Jo might have managed a hookup. Even if Dean put aside the logistics, stealth, and opportunity it would have taken for them to get together without him noticing, it seemed pretty unlikely given the level of angst Sam carried about Jo since the Meg-demon had made him her sock puppet.
Sam had called her a couple of days after they'd left Bobby's, after the exorcism. Dean remembered looking at him like he was crazy as he dialed-where was the point in apologizing for things that demonic bitch had used his body to do?-but Sam had insisted. By that time, Dean'd had just about enough of his brother's tale of guilt-ridden woe, so he'd left Sam groveling into his phone and gone for a beer. All Sam had said about it when Dean got back was that Jo'd made him promise not to tell Ellen what had happened.
They'd run into Jo again that summer in a bar in Bumblefuck, Montana, where she'd allowed as how she could use some backup on the hunt she'd beat them to. Sam had started making noises like he was going to fall all over himself with self-punishment again, but Jo'd cut it short before he could get anywhere. Sam had taken the hint, but Dean'd noticed that when the spirit of that fur trapper had gone after Jo with his knife, Sam had killed it extra hard with the iron-bladed axe they'd tracked down for the purpose.
After that, the couple times they'd crossed paths, things had seemed normal. Jo had reached some sort of peace with her mother, which was nice to see, and when things started heating up, she'd taken the lead in reaching out to the slippery network of hunters, gathering a core group, making new connections. The last time they'd all been together was Christmas at the Roadhouse. Dean hadn't paid much attention to Sam's whereabouts on Christmas Eve. He'd been busy losing a darts tournament to Dreah Boland with the express purpose of letting her take her winnings out of his hide. They'd rolled out late the next morning after a huge breakfast with the group of hunters that Dean would come to know so much better in the next few months. Dean hadn't seen Jo again until right before the big fight, and Sam had been long gone by then.
Now all he could do was gape at Sam and hope to God he'd gathered his information about Jo before the war had come for him.
Sam took another sip of his coffee, oblivious to Dean's distress. His mouth curled up, and he said, "What about Ellen? I bet she's a tasty piece of-"
"You shut your mouth!" Dean growled. His stomach was a solid block of ice, and his blood rushed to thaw it out, leaving him lightheaded and sick. "Or I swear, I'll-" Dean didn't know what he'd do. He shoved out of the booth, tilting the table and tipping his coffee over. "We're leaving."
Dean could hear the creak of Sam's seat as he stood up, his footsteps following him, and in his peripheral vision, he saw their waitress slap her rag against the counter in aggravation at the mess they'd left.
**********
They spent that afternoon at a skanky Laundromat, Sam watching the socks go round and round while Dean tried to shake his sense of uneasiness and foreboding back down to its usual level. The fact was that most days Dean felt like something horrible was coming-par for the course after twenty-five years of chasing down horrible things and having them return the favor. The feeling ebbed and flowed with the circumstances at hand, but he was still getting used to Sam being one of the forces that influenced those circumstances.
Sam could go days looking to anyone passing on the street like a basically normal, if withdrawn, human being. Days where Dean could look through the tangled, overgrown hair hanging over his eyes and almost see his little brother in there. And then there were the days when Sam opened his mouth and something God-awful like "a sweet slice of pie" came out, leaving Dean to wonder if there was anything of his brother left inside that Sam-shaped shell.
The next morning, Wednesday, Dean was still thrown enough to decide to bring Sam to the shop and leave him in the car with a book Dean had swiped from someone's laundry basket. It looked like some chick crap-babies on the cover and a title out of a bad '80s ballad-but Sam would either read it or spend the day watching dust collect on the dashboard, and probably not give a shit either way.
Curtis looked mildly surprised when Dean showed up in uniform. Dean had taken a couple of hours the night before to carefully slice defunct patches off the shoulders of his coveralls and sew his name tag back on, remembering how he'd given Sam a hard time about costumes that time in Chicago, ages ago. They'd come in handy, though, more often than Dean would have thought.
After spending an hour or so getting Dean oriented to the shop, Curtis set him at a Honda with Idaho plates and a rusted-out mess that used to be the center section of the exhaust pipe clinging tenaciously between the catalytic converter and the muffler.
"Tourists," Curtis explained. "They almost never want to do all of what needs doing-they'd rather have the full job done at home. So we do a patch job-a good one that'll get them home and then some-and get them on the road again, running safe." He looked at Dean to see that he'd followed.
"Okay," Dean said, sensing that he was being tested. "The muffler itself looks all right to me. So we cut what's left of the pipe back to where it's solid." He walked under the lift and looked up at the car's undercarriage, pointing. "Here and here. Weld a couple of joints and a fresh length of pipe, replace the clamps because these have got maybe a hundred more miles in 'em, and have them on the road back to Tatertown after lunch. Sound about right?"
"Yup. Right on track. You cool with a blow torch?" When Dean nodded, Curtis continued. "All right. Let's see it, then."
He hung back to let Dean work but watched closely, and Dean made sure to stop what he was doing anytime the phone or a customer called Curtis away, taking the time to hit the bathroom, clean up, explore the shop's equipment a bit more. Normally being babysat would have driven Dean to violence, but this guy was doing him an enormous favor-and with nearly no questions and even less paperwork. Dean could hardly blame Curtis for wanting to be sure he knew his shit before putting customers in his hands.
Curtis took over for the welding, and Dean watched for a few minutes before ducking out to check on Sam. He was stretched out across the front seat with his feet sticking out the open passenger window, staring up at the ceiling with the book Dean had left spread open and face down on his chest.
Dean knocked his fist against one of Sam's sneakers. "You got a sandwich there," he reminded Sam, shoving his feet aside so he could lean through the window to retrieve the bag from the convenience store down the road from their motel. He pulled his own plastic-wrapped lunch out and tossed the sack at Sam. "There's a machine inside if you want a drink, and a bathroom."
"'Kay."
"I gotta get back to work."
"'Kay," Sam repeated. Dean sighed and headed back inside to watch Curtis finish up the welds, ready to tighten up the new clamps as soon as the steel cooled.
The doorbell chimed while they were eating their lunches at the chairs behind the lobby counter, and Sam pounded through the door and stalked straight past them without remark, following the "restroom" signs.
"That your brother?" Curtis asked, taking a long sip off his Coke.
"Yeah," Dean answered, and then took a few seconds to work out how to explain Sam. He dug his wallet out of his back pocket and headed to the vending machine, where he bought two bottles of water. "He's … he's been through some stuff."
"That streak of bad luck you mentioned?" Curtis's question wasn't pushy, just conversational.
"Yeah. He runs kinda low on, uh…" Dean clicked his tongue against his teeth before choosing his words and delivering them dryly. "… the social graces these days."
"Got it. Won't take it personally."
Sam came out of the bathroom and paused when Dean called him over.
"Sam, this is Curtis Tate. He runs this place." He handed Sam one of the waters. "Curtis, my brother, Sam."
"Hey," Curtis greeted, and Dean was grateful that he didn't bother offering a hand to shake.
Sam looked from Dean to Curtis to the water bottle in his hand and then back to Dean. "My sandwich was crap."
"Okay, then." Dean wrung the cap off his water and clutched the lid so the jagged plastic edge bit into his palm. "Whyn't you go back to the car and think about what you want for dinner?" Sam was out the door before he'd finished the request.
Curtis looked up at the clock hanging over the shop door as if the exchange hadn't happened. "Mrs. Miller's due in for an oil change in five. I'll walk you through the paperwork, and then you wanna take it from there?"
"Yeah, that'd be great." Dean washed down the last of his Circle-K sandwich-which he testily admitted to himself was indeed crap-with a long, cool drink of water, and leaned in to memorize the steps Curtis went through to bring the Miller file up on the computer.
**********
Friday afternoon, as they ate their lunches-Dean had given up and gone to the grocery store for some sandwich makings to get Sam off his back-Curtis asked the question Dean had been hoping to avoid.
"So. When're you leaving town?"
Dean looked out at Sam's feet, sticking out the driver's window today, and swallowed the bite of PB&J he was working on.
"Depends, I guess," he answered, scratching at a bug bite on the inside of his wrist. "I know you got your guy back from vacation next week. If you don't need the help, I can finish up that job in there and get out of your way whenever you need. Tune up on the Impala shouldn't take me more'n a day-I was gonna ask if I could get some time in this weekend."
Curtis wiped his hand across his mouth. "No, that's not what I meant. Jeff's back, yeah, but it's just been him and me since my father-in-law retired. Summer's the busy season, and my wife's gonna have my head if I don't quit putting in seven-day weeks here. Not to mention I'm wiped, man. What I mean is, if you want to stick around awhile, I'd be glad to have you."
Dean rubbed the pad of his thumb over the callous on the side of his index finger, thinking through his options, which weren't plentiful. Lying low, staying put, holing up, not running… Any way he put it, it sounded good. He was bone tired, had been for months. Even after just three days, he was loving the calm, predictable routine of the garage. There was something so even-handed and uncomplicated about cars. There were no mysteries or secrets with them, no question about whether he could work out what was wrong and fix it.
So it cost Dean more than a little to have to turn it down.
"I appreciate the offer, man, I really do," Dean started, "but you know that bad luck?" He tipped his head toward the Impala. "It's sorta the kind that makes it tough to…"
Curtis's eyebrow came up, and Dean hurried to qualify. "It's not like that. I'm not, like, America's Most Wanted…" Anymore, he added silently. "I just can't exactly-"
"Listen, I can't take you on above the table-can't take the tax hit or offer you a dental plan. But I can pay you cash every Friday-however long you decide to stick around-until October." Curtis snapped the lid back onto the flat plastic tub that had held his homemade veggie sandwich. "I need somebody whose work I trust in the shop. Jeff and me, we know the locals, we can run the front end, but I gotta have more than just the two of us back there with the cars. And I've gotta get at least a Saturday off once in a while. I can't afford a divorce, man."
Dean leaned in the corner of the counter, frankly searching Curtis's face for some clue, some hint that he was anything but a generous guy with some sort of soft spot for hard-luck cases.
"Okay, yeah," Dean agreed when he found nothing that indicated that Curtis was capital-E for Evil. And if his instincts were wrong, Dean figured he could waste Curtis if he needed wasting, clean out the register and the customer credit-card numbers, and get the hell out of town.
Curtis's mouth widened into a full grin-the first Dean had seen on him. "Excellent," he said with a satisfied nod. He tucked his lunch bag under the counter and tossed his head toward the bay. "You done? That timing belt's not gonna replace itself."
"They almost never do," Dean observed before he downed the last quarter of his Mountain Dew in a single gulp and followed Curtis back to the bay.
They were up the CRX's skirts to their elbows when Curtis said, "We're closed Sundays. It'd be a good time to get the Impala in here, if you want. Mandy and me, we're going hiking up in Siuslaw with some friends, but I can get you a key. You'll need a set anyway."
Before Dean could agree or thank him or ask if he was sure he felt like turning over the shop keys to a near stranger with a mysterious and sketchy past, Curtis stepped away from the engine block, flipping his wrench in his hand.
"Hey," he said. "One other thing-well, two, really. Question first."
"Okay, shoot."
"Where're you staying?"
"Just outside of town. North a half a mile or so. Easy Breeze."
Curtis winced. "Total shit-hole."
"Well, yeah…" Dean shrugged in acknowledgment. "But it's fine. Cheap. Circle-K a block up. It works."
"Look, my wife, Mandy. Her dad owned this place, sold it to me when he retired, right? Her mom's side of the family ran a little motel up the coast. Mandy and me, we run it now. Mostly Mandy, with some help. It's not fancy or anything, but the rooms are clean. We've got a double with a kitchenette open if you want it. I could cut you a deal-say, a hundred bucks a week."
"No way, man." Dean's voice came out colder than he meant it to. Curtis frowned. "Sorry. I just… It's too much. You cut me a huge break here, with this gig, and I appreciate the hell out of it. But I can't take anything else."
"Okay. I hear you." Curtis nodded. "The Easy Breeze, though.... That place has possums living in its vents. They never manage to get rid of the fleas for more than a week."
The back of Dean's left knee suddenly itched, and the bite on his wrist became unbearable-he had to work hard to keep from tearing at it. He laughed. "All right. Shit. What's your regular rate for a week? Not your stray-dog rate, though. I'm talking potato farmer who's too dumb to notice his exhaust pipe's been trailing after him since Boise. Whaddaya charge that guy for a week?"
"Hundred seventy-five, plus asshat tax. You're exempt."
Dean grinned. "Okay. One seventy-five. Where's it at?"
"Otis-ten miles north on 101, then a mile east on 18-Salmon River Highway. You can't miss the sign. Leed's Lodge. "
"Sounds rustic. I'm paid up through tomorrow at the roach motel. Okay if we check in after work?"
"Sounds good. I'll tell Mandy."
Dean was reaching for his wrench again when he noticed Curtis was still looking at him like he had something to say. "Right. You said two things."
The remains of Curtis's smile slid away, though his face stayed open and earnest. "You were right about the stray-dog rate. It's a thing with me-with my wife, too. But I'm a good judge of people, and I'm not stupid. I never offer more help than I can give, and if you fuck with me, my family, or my business, I guarantee you will live to regret it." His eyes stayed clear and blue and unblinking, popping out against the red over his nose and cheeks. "We clear?"
"Crystal," Dean said evenly, though what wanted to come out was "Yessir."
"Okay. Let's get back to work, then."
**********
Curtis was right. The sign made Leed's Lodge hard to miss: a woman in an old-style bikini and swim cap dived toward the office, stretching as gracefully as a twenty-foot, wooden chick could over a huge red arrow. Flickering neon lights proclaimed "POOL" and "Vacancy." The parking lot was emptier than it should have been for a coast-adjacent motel in summer, and Dean was glad he'd insisted on paying the full rate.
He parked at the end of the lot closest to the office and got out, looking around while he waited to see if Sam would need nudging.
The motel was a pair of L-shaped buildings facing each other to make a rectangle around a central courtyard area, the long stems of the Ls running perpendicular to the highway. Through the gap between the two buildings, Dean could see the aqua sparkle of a corner of the advertised swimming pool. Faded green paint chipped off the outside wall of the office.
Dean thumped the roof of the car to get Sam's attention. "You coming?"
It was a long moment before the passenger door creaked open and Sam unfolded himself onto the parking lot.
The screen of the lobby's sliding-glass door jammed in its track when Dean tried to open it, then released with a rattling jerk. The noise brought the clerk out from the rooms behind the desk. She was cute, in that slightly granola-crunch way Dean found so common in the Pacific Northwest. Give her some makeup, clothes not made entirely of hemp, and do something with her plain brown hair other than pulling it into a ponytail at the base of her neck, and she'd be good-looking enough. She seemed too young to be Curtis's wife, and when she got to the counter, he saw she wasn't wearing a wedding ring. He couldn't see her legs behind the counter, but her tits were nice-smallish but with the pleasant side effect of her obviously not wearing a bra. Dean thought about how long it'd been since he'd gotten laid-Christ, that desk clerk from the Brisbane police department back the end of January-and smiled as pretty as he knew how.
"Checking in?" she asked.
"Yeah. Curtis might have mentioned we were coming. I've been working with him down at the shop-Dean Spenser. How're you?"
"Fine, thanks," she replied with service-industry automatic politeness. "Double?"
"That'd be great, thanks." Dean waited for her to tap her commands into the computer. When she looked up again, he handed her the cash he'd pulled out of the ATM with the last of James Blair's credit.
She counted it quickly and said, "A week, then?"
"To start, yeah."
She hit a few more keys, and the printer coughed up an agreement for him to sign. "Okay, room ten," she said, swinging around the counter.
She was barefoot and wearing cargo pants cut off a few inches above her rather knobby knees. She strode between the brothers and out the sliding door. Dean followed her, and Sam followed Dean. The girl stopped in the passageway between the office and the leg of the next building, pointing across the length of the courtyard to the base of the opposite L.
"Straight across," she said. "Ten's the end room." She turned to the right and pointed at a propped-open door leading to a darkened room. "Laundry, ice, vending-through there. Machines are a buck a wash, fifty cents a dry. Change machine's busted, but if you need quarters, come get me. We've got a stash."
"Looks great, thanks," Dean said and turned his smile on again. "I'm Dean," he repeated. "This is my brother, Sam. Nice to meet you…" He raised an inquiring eyebrow.
"Jem," she said, finally catching on and giving Dean an appraising look that soothed his nerves. She turned the look briefly on Sam, nodded an unreturned greeting, and took a backwards step toward the office.
"So, Jem," Dean tested, "where can a guy get some dinner in scenic Otis, Oregon?"
"Tony's," she answered readily, back on hostess autopilot. "Up the highway half a mile. Beer, burgers, barbeque." Her eyes flicked to Sam, who was watching the ripples and shadows on the pool, and back to Dean. "Maybe I'll see you guys there. I cover the bar on the weekend."
"Good deal," Dean said to her back as she slid the screen shut against the mosquitoes. "Hey," he turned to Sam. "I think we're gonna like it here, huh?"
"There's a pool," Sam said.
Dean slapped his brother on the back, giving him a gentle shove toward the Impala. "That there is, Sherlock. C'mon, let's get our stuff into the room. Burger and beer sounds perfect to me."
**********
Chapter 2: Wanna Do Right, but Not Right Now
AN: Yep, I have a "Mockingbird" soundtrack, and yep, my chapter titles come from it. This chapter's title is from Audioslave's "Like a Stone." Full soundtrack will be posted at the end of the story, with links and cover art because I'm a huge dork.
Author: hiyacynth
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, near-future fic, het; AU after "What Is and What Should Never Be"
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Sam, OCs, eventual Sam/OFC
Rating and Warnings: Story overall rated NC-17 for sex and thematic reasons. This chapter PG-13 for thematic reasons and some cursing. Spoilers: Everything's fair game until the Season 2 finale, which didn't happen in this universe.
Word count (chapter): 6,955
Disclaimer: If nothing else, this story proves to me that I do not own the Winchesters. They own me. Hard. Apparently Kripke and Warner Bros. and the CW own them. I'm making no money here.
This is a ten-part story. Chapters will be posted on Mondays and Thursdays for five weeks.
Though not written specifically for that challenge, this story is being posted first in spn_het_love as a response to their Challenge 8-the OFC-a-thon. I will love that community forever for making me realize I wasn't the only person out there who wanted to read and write het. Check it out!
Acknowledgments: I have so many people to thank here, it's not even funny. Bear with me. I promise to do the short version for future chapters, but these ladies need some serious public leg-humping from me for all they've done.
* My posse up at Fangirl Central: liptorm (she who introduced me to Supernatural and to whom I pledge my eternal fealty), baylorsr, and The baylorsr Sister. These women have been with this story since wrong-headed, never-intended-for-prime-time inception in October 2006. That babbling went into overload in January, when I arrived at FGC after a four-hour drive and said something along the lines of "Hi OMG!! I have to pee and then I have to call my voicemail and transcribe all the messages I left myself on the drive up here, and then I have to tell you about the crazy story idea I had OMG!! Somebody please bring me a sammich!" They have been suffering similar outbursts from me for seven months now, and they still appear to like me. liptorm and baylorsr have also been reading this as a WIP, encouraging me when I got downhearted, Jossed, blocked, and just plain sick-to-death of the whole thing.
*kimonkey7. Dude, seriously. If it hadn't been for Kim on the other end of my IM, I would not have made it past Chapter 2. She's been the first set of eyes on this monster since about February, and she's been getting it in chunks of however-many-words-I-can-write-on-a-particular-night, which is a really disjointed way of doing things. Not to mention, neither of us can keep track of What She Knows about the key plot points and What She Doesn't Know, so I keep saying things like "OMG, I just realized that when Event X happens, Dean's totally gonna Reaction Y," and she'll be, like, "Wait, WHAT? Event X? WTF??!!" And then just brush it off and keep reading. She rocks my world.
* iamstealthyone, who stepped up when I was starting to panic about the beta process in general, and specifically about having someone whom I hadn't already spoiled completely reading the thing. She's been amazing-catches all sorts of really stupid mistakes, kicks my passive-voice tendencies in the butt to make them active, points out POV wobbles, and asks tough characterization questions. I don't always do what she says, but she makes me think really hard about why I'm making the choice, and that thought process often ends up with me tweaking things to get my intentions across more clearly (I hope).
*cunien and likethesun2 both had incredibly busy seasons at school, and-despite the fact that they were swamped with work, living in crappy, stressful conditions with little or no privacy-they took the time to read and listen to me flail, whine, and generally grumble and grouse for months. Months, I tell you. They are made out of cells with nuclei of awesome. Special thanks to likethesun2 for pulling out the "holy crap I'm about to post, did I get everything?" beta. Did I mention teh awesome?
*Also generously endowed with the awesome gene is abyssinia4077. Though she and I do not currently share a fandom, we have learned to appreciate the object of the other's affection, and have spent the last eight or so months having lunch in various restaurants within a three-mile radius of my job, speaking in hushed tones about whatever story (or part of a story) we're working on that week, brainstorming solutions to plot problems and fretting over very important topics like "To AU or not to AU, that is the question." I love her dearly.
*ultraviolet9a, who kept saying things like "I can't wait to see this story!" when I would blather randomly about it, and then, when I sent her a sneak preview, became obsessed with a certain swimming pool. It was very satisfying. :-)
*I should also probably apologize to my employer, EvilCorps, for spending so much of my time thinking about, tinkering on, and emailing various people about this story on their time. Whatever. I've been their drone for 11 years. They owe me.
Timeline Notes: This story was started in January 2007 and takes place in the summer of 2008. It projects a future (Jossed completely by "All Hell Breaks Loose") wherein the Big Battle with the Yellow-Eyed Demon occurred during (my brain's version of) Season 3.
Summary: Dean frowned and shook his head. Even if he wanted to, how could he start to explain what Sam was these days? He wasn't sure himself. He knew what Sam had been before the war. He had a pretty good idea of what Sam'd been during. And he knew Sam wasn't either of those things anymore.
THEN
Mockingbird audio prologue: "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby - Oregon Mix" by baylorsr (MP3: right-click, save as)
Mockingbird video prologue: "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby" by liptonrm
NOW
Mockingbird
Chapter 1: A Room Full of Emptiness
Dean woke with a jerk to the unmistakable clatter of a cheap motel room's front door shutting. He hated that noise. Always had. A solid oak door, or a steel-reinforced one, smashing open under a well-placed boot or slamming shut behind him-now those were satisfying noises, those were doors. This hollow-core crap, it sounded just like what it was: a flimsy barrier between you and everything that was trying to get you, and Dean had no illusions about how much it would keep out.
Squinting through the film uneasy sleep left on his eyes, Dean saw Sam outlined against the door, and a hot, panicky burst of energy shot from somewhere deep in his ribcage, waking him up fast and fully. He sat up, wrestling back the alarm.
"I had a dream last night," Sam said, pulling the lid off the steaming paper cup he carried, oblivious to Dean's distress.
No shit, Dean thought as he rubbed his eyes clear and willed his heart rate to slow.
Sam had dreams every night. He was like clockwork these days. Three hours after he fell asleep he'd start thrashing and moaning, calling out names-some Dean knew, some he didn't-and muttering incomprehensible phrases, sometimes crying like Dean had only ever heard him cry once when he was awake. The dreams would last half an hour or so, and then Sam would wrench with the force of the terrified gasp that seized his whole body, sigh, and relax right back into the baby-deep sleep he'd slipped easily into just minutes after the lights went out. Dean had tried everything he could think of to snap him out of his nightmares, but nothing worked.
Yeah, Sam had dreams.
Dean kicked himself free of the ugly-ass comforter and stood up, stretching in what he hoped was a casual-looking way, watching his brother carefully but trying not to get caught at it. The first few weeks after Dean'd gotten Sam back, he tried to ask about the dreams, but Sam wouldn't talk about them. First he just plain wouldn't talk, which was a whole other thing. And when he did start talking again-a couple weeks in-Sam said in as few words as possible that he didn't remember the dreams, or even know that he was having them. Dean wasn't sure whether he believed it, but he didn't press the issue. Instead, he bore the waking memory of the dreams for Sam and listened for clues in the ravings, hoping to find something that might help him work out a road map of some kind, an idea of where to take Sam from here.
"What'd you dream about?" Dean tipped his head side to side, cracking his neck, as Sam sat on the room's single chair and sipped his drink. God, this was a crap motel to beat all crap motels. Slimy shower, itchy sheets, no kitchenette, no coffee maker. And though a small part of Dean was glad to see Sam doing something as normal as going out for coffee, he hated Sam wandering off on his own. And he didn't like that in the three weeks since Sam had first left him sleeping in a motel room, Sam had never once brought him back a cup of coffee.
"Nursery fire," Sam said as off handedly as if the dream had been about talking dogs.
Dean felt leftover crusts of sleep tearing free from the corners of his eyes as they widened. His mouth dropped open to ask a question, but he didn't know which one. He closed his mouth and opened it again, and finally the question stumbled out. "Any-anybody we know?"
Sam shook his head. "A baby. Girl, I think. The dad was putting her in pink PJs." Sam tilted his head, possibly interested. "Could be a boy in hand-me-downs, though. There was an older kid, too. Definitely a girl." He waved his hand vaguely, measuring out a height somewhere between knee and hip height. "She was crying, but the guy wasn't paying attention."
"And then?" Dean prompted, though he was pretty sure he knew what was coming.
"The usual. Fire. Charred corpse on the ceiling. Screaming kid. Some blood."
"Huh," Dean said. His mouth was dry, but his stomach was twitching nervously and his T-shirt was suddenly sticking to the cold dampness in his armpits.
They hadn't had sign one of anything to do with the Demon since before they'd left Bobby in New Mexico the first week of May. Dean hadn't been looking, truthfully, but he'd been checking in regularly with Bobby, Ellen, and the surviving hunters he knew and trusted. The Colt had worked, in the bitter end, and though the costs had been extreme, the war appeared to be over. He couldn't speak to seven and a half weeks in March and April, but Dean knew for damn sure Sam hadn't had a vision-at least not a migraine-inducing one-since Dean had gotten him back. It used to take Sam hours to shake off the old ones, and he looked just peachy now.
"How's your head?" Dean asked, just to make sure.
"Fine."
"You think it was a vision?"
Sam shrugged. "I think it was around here somewhere. Didn't we pass a park? Devil's something."
"Punchbowl. Back around Newport. You see a sign?" Sam hummed a confirmation as Dean rifled through his duffle for the map, neatly folded to show the Oregon coastline. Another name caught his eye, right fucking on top of where they were now-ten miles to the north, probably less. "Devil's Lake, too. Great neighborhood."
The corner of his bed sagged under him as Dean sat down and alternated between studying the map and his brother. Sam looked disinterested, his chatty mood apparently having passed. He leaned and stretched to retrieve the copy of The Oregonian Dean had picked up yesterday, flipped through the sections until he found the funnies, and contemplated them thoughtfully. Dean weighed his options.
They'd been on the road for almost six weeks, ever since Sam's arm had stopped threatening to go septic. When he'd steered Sam into the passenger seat and handed him the map, Sam, still mute then, pointed at the Pacific; Dean put the Impala in gear and headed west. They spent a hellishly hot afternoon crawling along Highway 10, through Los Angeles and its endless sprawl, until they finally hit the coast and turned right, heading north up Highway 1. No set destination, not trying to chase down a job, just driving from shit-hole motel to shit-hole motel, pausing for a few days every few days so Dean could score some cash in a pool or poker game.
Now, June half gone, Dean was about three transactions short of having James Blair's credit cut off, but was reluctant to crack into Dean Spenser's envelope full of identification and credit cards; it was the last set he had. Hustling and more shoplifting than usual were keeping them fed, housed, and gassed up for now, but Dean wasn't sure how much longer he could keep it up, and he didn't want to go to Bobby or Ellen for money-not after all they'd already given, all they'd lost. The Impala wasn't running right, either. She was hesitating, reluctant, tired, and he needed to pay her some serious attention.
Dean was exhausted, and not just because he'd been up half the night trying to work out what his brother's crazy, sleep-screamed bullshit meant.
He thought about the garage they'd eaten across from yesterday afternoon, in Lincoln City. There was a sweet '70 GTO parked by the office door, what looked like a good-sized lot behind the garage, a banner that proudly declared they could repair or rebuild any make, model, or vintage, domestic or imported, and a help-wanted sign in the window.
Throw in Sam's maybe-vision, and it was all starting to sound to Dean like they should stick around for a while.
"You hungry?" When Sam answered with an indifferent grunt, Dean decided it meant "Yes," because that answer worked best with the plan that was shaping up in his head. "I'm gonna grab a shower, and then we'll hit that diner back in town, yeah?"
Sam grunted again. Dean pulled his last clean shirt from his duffle and brought it into the bathroom, hoping that the steam would loosen the wrinkles enough to look respectable.
**********
Sam was still pushing his eggs around his plate when Dean finished wolfing down his meat-lover's hash and chugged his three-dollar glass of orange juice in four greedy swallows.
"You okay here?" he asked Sam rhetorically. As expected, he got an offhanded "Mmm" in response. "Okay. Sit tight. I gotta see about something." Dean pulled one of his last six twenties out of his wallet and tucked it under his empty coffee cup. "That should cover us and keep you in refills till I get back."
Sam hummed again and continued staring at the tape-patched Naugahyde next to Dean's left shoulder.
"Don't go anywhere," Dean reiterated. "I'll be back."
It took him five minutes to get a break he could jump the car through in the busy coastal highway that separated the diner from Bell's Garage. It would have been easier on foot, but Dean knew his girl was going to be key to his plan. He eased her into one of the empty spots at the back of the small lot outside the office, leaving plenty of room for show and tell, and took a moment to arrange his face.
The office was clean and bright against the overcast coastal morning. An electronic bell chimed as Dean stepped through the glass door, and through the open door behind the counter he heard it echo back in the bay.
"Right there!" a man's voice called from the shop.
Under the soothing rhythm of Creedence on the shop stereo Dean could hear the rattle of a creeper rolling over the cement floor. He leaned to his left so he could see through the doorway and watched a guy in blue coveralls emerge from under a '70s-era Land Rover.
"Mornin'!" Dean called with a friendly wave.
The guy pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands, tucking the red cloth back into his coveralls as he crossed through the doorway.
"Mornin'." He was a steady-looking guy five or six years older than Dean, dark-haired with a broad, pale face striped by a light sunburn across his nose and cheeks, and the tips of a pair of woven, blue-black tattoos peeking out the neck of his T-shirt. "Help you?"
"Hope so," Dean said, pushing all the cheer he could muster into his voice. His eyes flicked down to the man's chest, reading the name patch there. "Curtis? I'm Dean Spenser." He stuck his hand across the counter in greeting. The guy shot a quick look at his own grease-smudged hand before taking Dean's and shaking it firmly. When they released the handshake, Dean jerked his thumb over his shoulder and twisted toward the window. "Saw your sign. You still looking for help?"
Curtis's eyes followed the gesture, and Dean saw the moment he registered the Impala.
"We're looking," Curtis said and tipped his chin toward the parking lot. "Yours?" At Dean's proud nod of confirmation, he added, "I saw you pull into The Cove earlier. She's a beauty. How long you had her?"
"All my life. My dad… He had a shop when I was a kid, taught me everything he knew. We rebuilt her together when I was fifteen, and I…" Dean scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck. "She got totaled a couple years ago, but I brought her back."
The mechanic nodded and gave Dean a closer, more assessing look. "Looks like you did a nice job. You got a résumé?"
"Not so much," Dean said, looking the guy in the face and keeping his hands still on the counter. "But you can take a look at the Impala, see what I've done. It's good work."
Curtis's eyebrows lifted slightly, and his mouth turned up at one corner. Before he could laugh outright, Dean pushed ahead, acting on an impulse that went against his natural instincts and told him to take Sam's old direct, sincere approach-the one that used to get them into strangers' homes faster and with fewer felonies than their lock-pick kit.
"Listen, my brother and me, we're having a wicked run of bad luck lately. I'm just trying to get things together again. And what could really help with that is a week's work somewhere I can trade for shop time with my girl there. Something's off, and I haven't had the chance to chase it down."
The half smile on the mechanic's face turned into a pursed, thoughtful look that he pushed away as he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth.
"I guess I could have a look." He came around the counter and waved Dean toward the glass door. "Slow morning anyway. How 'bout you give me the tour-tell me what you think's off. We'll call it an interview."
**********
Dean sat in the car taking advantage of the rare moment alone to make some calls before launching himself back across the highway to pick up Sam.
Ellen sounded just as tired as always when she answered. Dean hated asking her for anything, but she'd insisted that he and Sam were family now, and God knew there wasn't anything that woman wouldn't do for her family.
"Don't know how this could be anything but good news, sweetie, but Ash's system's showing a big old nothing across the map, and a double serving of nothing in Oregon."
Dean rubbed his chin, considering.
"You think something's coming down?" She didn't ask whether the brothers were actually in Oregon. They'd all learned John Winchester's need-to-know rule firsthand, and hard.
"I dunno. Probably just a fluke." Dean wasn't sure he believed that-his gut told him something was going on-but he didn't want to get Ellen involved any more than he had to.
The line buzzed between them for a long moment.
"How's Sam doing?" Ellen asked.
"Good," Dean answered readily.
The tone was a lie; he didn't know whether the answer itself was. Sam was alive. His arm had healed. Sam could talk and eat and dress himself, and for the first time in his life he did what Dean told him without asking questions. All of those things were good, considering.
"Sam's good," Dean repeated. "He says hi."
Ellen's breathing hitched in a quiet chuckle. "Tell him I said hi back. You take care now, Dean. Call if you need anything."
"I will."
"Bye, sweetie."
Dean felt a familiar wave of grief and affection roll over him as he hit the "end" button, but he pushed it aside and dialed again.
"A vision, huh?" Bobby asked when Dean explained the situation.
"Only he said 'dream,' not 'vision,' and it didn't seem to hit him the way they used to. No headache, anyway. And it wasn't one of his nightmares."
"He still having them, though?"
"Same bat time, same bat channel," Dean confirmed, weariness slipping into his voice under the weak joke. He could hear Bobby scratching his beard.
"He got anything to say about them? Either kinda dream, I mean."
"Sam?" Dean's laugh caught before it could escape, and he choked on it a little, had to clear his throat. "Sam's got squat to say about anything these days, Bobby. I'm surprised he told me about the dream at all, to tell the truth."
"Uh huh. How's the burn?"
"Still just a burn. Scarring up real nice."
Like all of Dean's conversations seemed to lately, this one filled with a thick silence. Finally, Bobby blew out some air and said, "Hell if I know, son. I'll keep my ears on. But maybe… Maybe he's just starting to … you know. Dream normal again. Or normal for a Winchester, anyway."
Another silence filled Dean's phone.
"Yeah. Maybe." Dean looked out the window, across Highway 101's four lanes of traffic, to the diner. He could just see Sam's dark head through the window. "Listen, Bobby, we're gonna stay put a few days, just in case. I got a gig here-week or so of day work."
"You need money?"
"No. No, I'm good, thanks. Just… Just call if you hear anything, okay? I got a weird feeling."
"You do the same," Bobby returned, and there was one more pause before he added, "Dean? You look after yourself, too, you hear? Nothing you can do for Sam or anyone else if you wear yourself to a knob."
Dean's mouth was tight when he answered, "I'll do my best."
"All right. I'll talk to you soon."
Sam was still studying the booth benches when Dean rejoined him. The waitress-impatient to clear a table whose bill and tip wasn't getting any bigger and eyeing Sam skittishly-came over immediately and asked Dean if they were done. He ignored her pushy tone and asked for another coffee.
"Hey," he said to Sam as she stalked away. "We're gonna stick around awhile. I got work at the garage across the street starting tomorrow." Sam shrugged minutely, and Dean pressed his teeth together over a sigh. "Ellen says hi," he said, though he didn't know why he bothered. He was pretty sure Sam didn't care. "Says Ash's rig isn't showing anything weird around here. Bobby hasn't heard anything, either."
The waitress came back and clacked a fresh mug of coffee in front of Dean, and the burnt brown liquid sloshed onto the table. She made a sour, annoyed face at him, like he'd done the spilling, and reached for the rag tucked into her apron.
"I got it," Dean said, waving her off and pulling a clump of napkins out of the dispenser. Time was he'd have winked and flirted and charmed his way back into her good graces, but today he just wanted her to go away. He wadded the soggy napkins at the edge of the table and looked at Sam, who was watching her stomp off.
"She looks like Jo," Sam observed neutrally.
Dean's brow furrowed as he followed Sam's stare. He wouldn't have thought it himself-the waitress was thirtyish and pretty enough if she would wipe that snotty pucker off her face, and she had a good twenty pounds on Jo-but she had that same sleek blonde hair, and when she turned around at the counter, he could see something in her posture that was reminiscent of Jo Harvelle, and it made his throat tighten.
"I guess." Dean took a slug of his coffee, welcoming the scald against the thin tissue on the inside of his mouth. He flicked an eye up to Sam's face and was surprised to see him sporting an actual expression-one eyebrow cocked, head tipped inquisitively.
"You ever get a taste of that?"
The coffee went down too fast. "Huh?"
"Jo," Sam said, looking Dean straight in the face. "You ever-?"
"No," Dean choked. "Jesus."
Sam shook his head. "Too bad. That was a sweet slice of pie," he said casually and went back to studying the waitress.
Dean's stomach churned around his breakfast and the coffee he'd added to it. He swallowed hard and thought back to the times they'd seen Jo before everything blew up, trying to identify blocks of time in which Sam and Jo might have managed a hookup. Even if Dean put aside the logistics, stealth, and opportunity it would have taken for them to get together without him noticing, it seemed pretty unlikely given the level of angst Sam carried about Jo since the Meg-demon had made him her sock puppet.
Sam had called her a couple of days after they'd left Bobby's, after the exorcism. Dean remembered looking at him like he was crazy as he dialed-where was the point in apologizing for things that demonic bitch had used his body to do?-but Sam had insisted. By that time, Dean'd had just about enough of his brother's tale of guilt-ridden woe, so he'd left Sam groveling into his phone and gone for a beer. All Sam had said about it when Dean got back was that Jo'd made him promise not to tell Ellen what had happened.
They'd run into Jo again that summer in a bar in Bumblefuck, Montana, where she'd allowed as how she could use some backup on the hunt she'd beat them to. Sam had started making noises like he was going to fall all over himself with self-punishment again, but Jo'd cut it short before he could get anywhere. Sam had taken the hint, but Dean'd noticed that when the spirit of that fur trapper had gone after Jo with his knife, Sam had killed it extra hard with the iron-bladed axe they'd tracked down for the purpose.
After that, the couple times they'd crossed paths, things had seemed normal. Jo had reached some sort of peace with her mother, which was nice to see, and when things started heating up, she'd taken the lead in reaching out to the slippery network of hunters, gathering a core group, making new connections. The last time they'd all been together was Christmas at the Roadhouse. Dean hadn't paid much attention to Sam's whereabouts on Christmas Eve. He'd been busy losing a darts tournament to Dreah Boland with the express purpose of letting her take her winnings out of his hide. They'd rolled out late the next morning after a huge breakfast with the group of hunters that Dean would come to know so much better in the next few months. Dean hadn't seen Jo again until right before the big fight, and Sam had been long gone by then.
Now all he could do was gape at Sam and hope to God he'd gathered his information about Jo before the war had come for him.
Sam took another sip of his coffee, oblivious to Dean's distress. His mouth curled up, and he said, "What about Ellen? I bet she's a tasty piece of-"
"You shut your mouth!" Dean growled. His stomach was a solid block of ice, and his blood rushed to thaw it out, leaving him lightheaded and sick. "Or I swear, I'll-" Dean didn't know what he'd do. He shoved out of the booth, tilting the table and tipping his coffee over. "We're leaving."
Dean could hear the creak of Sam's seat as he stood up, his footsteps following him, and in his peripheral vision, he saw their waitress slap her rag against the counter in aggravation at the mess they'd left.
**********
They spent that afternoon at a skanky Laundromat, Sam watching the socks go round and round while Dean tried to shake his sense of uneasiness and foreboding back down to its usual level. The fact was that most days Dean felt like something horrible was coming-par for the course after twenty-five years of chasing down horrible things and having them return the favor. The feeling ebbed and flowed with the circumstances at hand, but he was still getting used to Sam being one of the forces that influenced those circumstances.
Sam could go days looking to anyone passing on the street like a basically normal, if withdrawn, human being. Days where Dean could look through the tangled, overgrown hair hanging over his eyes and almost see his little brother in there. And then there were the days when Sam opened his mouth and something God-awful like "a sweet slice of pie" came out, leaving Dean to wonder if there was anything of his brother left inside that Sam-shaped shell.
The next morning, Wednesday, Dean was still thrown enough to decide to bring Sam to the shop and leave him in the car with a book Dean had swiped from someone's laundry basket. It looked like some chick crap-babies on the cover and a title out of a bad '80s ballad-but Sam would either read it or spend the day watching dust collect on the dashboard, and probably not give a shit either way.
Curtis looked mildly surprised when Dean showed up in uniform. Dean had taken a couple of hours the night before to carefully slice defunct patches off the shoulders of his coveralls and sew his name tag back on, remembering how he'd given Sam a hard time about costumes that time in Chicago, ages ago. They'd come in handy, though, more often than Dean would have thought.
After spending an hour or so getting Dean oriented to the shop, Curtis set him at a Honda with Idaho plates and a rusted-out mess that used to be the center section of the exhaust pipe clinging tenaciously between the catalytic converter and the muffler.
"Tourists," Curtis explained. "They almost never want to do all of what needs doing-they'd rather have the full job done at home. So we do a patch job-a good one that'll get them home and then some-and get them on the road again, running safe." He looked at Dean to see that he'd followed.
"Okay," Dean said, sensing that he was being tested. "The muffler itself looks all right to me. So we cut what's left of the pipe back to where it's solid." He walked under the lift and looked up at the car's undercarriage, pointing. "Here and here. Weld a couple of joints and a fresh length of pipe, replace the clamps because these have got maybe a hundred more miles in 'em, and have them on the road back to Tatertown after lunch. Sound about right?"
"Yup. Right on track. You cool with a blow torch?" When Dean nodded, Curtis continued. "All right. Let's see it, then."
He hung back to let Dean work but watched closely, and Dean made sure to stop what he was doing anytime the phone or a customer called Curtis away, taking the time to hit the bathroom, clean up, explore the shop's equipment a bit more. Normally being babysat would have driven Dean to violence, but this guy was doing him an enormous favor-and with nearly no questions and even less paperwork. Dean could hardly blame Curtis for wanting to be sure he knew his shit before putting customers in his hands.
Curtis took over for the welding, and Dean watched for a few minutes before ducking out to check on Sam. He was stretched out across the front seat with his feet sticking out the open passenger window, staring up at the ceiling with the book Dean had left spread open and face down on his chest.
Dean knocked his fist against one of Sam's sneakers. "You got a sandwich there," he reminded Sam, shoving his feet aside so he could lean through the window to retrieve the bag from the convenience store down the road from their motel. He pulled his own plastic-wrapped lunch out and tossed the sack at Sam. "There's a machine inside if you want a drink, and a bathroom."
"'Kay."
"I gotta get back to work."
"'Kay," Sam repeated. Dean sighed and headed back inside to watch Curtis finish up the welds, ready to tighten up the new clamps as soon as the steel cooled.
The doorbell chimed while they were eating their lunches at the chairs behind the lobby counter, and Sam pounded through the door and stalked straight past them without remark, following the "restroom" signs.
"That your brother?" Curtis asked, taking a long sip off his Coke.
"Yeah," Dean answered, and then took a few seconds to work out how to explain Sam. He dug his wallet out of his back pocket and headed to the vending machine, where he bought two bottles of water. "He's … he's been through some stuff."
"That streak of bad luck you mentioned?" Curtis's question wasn't pushy, just conversational.
"Yeah. He runs kinda low on, uh…" Dean clicked his tongue against his teeth before choosing his words and delivering them dryly. "… the social graces these days."
"Got it. Won't take it personally."
Sam came out of the bathroom and paused when Dean called him over.
"Sam, this is Curtis Tate. He runs this place." He handed Sam one of the waters. "Curtis, my brother, Sam."
"Hey," Curtis greeted, and Dean was grateful that he didn't bother offering a hand to shake.
Sam looked from Dean to Curtis to the water bottle in his hand and then back to Dean. "My sandwich was crap."
"Okay, then." Dean wrung the cap off his water and clutched the lid so the jagged plastic edge bit into his palm. "Whyn't you go back to the car and think about what you want for dinner?" Sam was out the door before he'd finished the request.
Curtis looked up at the clock hanging over the shop door as if the exchange hadn't happened. "Mrs. Miller's due in for an oil change in five. I'll walk you through the paperwork, and then you wanna take it from there?"
"Yeah, that'd be great." Dean washed down the last of his Circle-K sandwich-which he testily admitted to himself was indeed crap-with a long, cool drink of water, and leaned in to memorize the steps Curtis went through to bring the Miller file up on the computer.
**********
Friday afternoon, as they ate their lunches-Dean had given up and gone to the grocery store for some sandwich makings to get Sam off his back-Curtis asked the question Dean had been hoping to avoid.
"So. When're you leaving town?"
Dean looked out at Sam's feet, sticking out the driver's window today, and swallowed the bite of PB&J he was working on.
"Depends, I guess," he answered, scratching at a bug bite on the inside of his wrist. "I know you got your guy back from vacation next week. If you don't need the help, I can finish up that job in there and get out of your way whenever you need. Tune up on the Impala shouldn't take me more'n a day-I was gonna ask if I could get some time in this weekend."
Curtis wiped his hand across his mouth. "No, that's not what I meant. Jeff's back, yeah, but it's just been him and me since my father-in-law retired. Summer's the busy season, and my wife's gonna have my head if I don't quit putting in seven-day weeks here. Not to mention I'm wiped, man. What I mean is, if you want to stick around awhile, I'd be glad to have you."
Dean rubbed the pad of his thumb over the callous on the side of his index finger, thinking through his options, which weren't plentiful. Lying low, staying put, holing up, not running… Any way he put it, it sounded good. He was bone tired, had been for months. Even after just three days, he was loving the calm, predictable routine of the garage. There was something so even-handed and uncomplicated about cars. There were no mysteries or secrets with them, no question about whether he could work out what was wrong and fix it.
So it cost Dean more than a little to have to turn it down.
"I appreciate the offer, man, I really do," Dean started, "but you know that bad luck?" He tipped his head toward the Impala. "It's sorta the kind that makes it tough to…"
Curtis's eyebrow came up, and Dean hurried to qualify. "It's not like that. I'm not, like, America's Most Wanted…" Anymore, he added silently. "I just can't exactly-"
"Listen, I can't take you on above the table-can't take the tax hit or offer you a dental plan. But I can pay you cash every Friday-however long you decide to stick around-until October." Curtis snapped the lid back onto the flat plastic tub that had held his homemade veggie sandwich. "I need somebody whose work I trust in the shop. Jeff and me, we know the locals, we can run the front end, but I gotta have more than just the two of us back there with the cars. And I've gotta get at least a Saturday off once in a while. I can't afford a divorce, man."
Dean leaned in the corner of the counter, frankly searching Curtis's face for some clue, some hint that he was anything but a generous guy with some sort of soft spot for hard-luck cases.
"Okay, yeah," Dean agreed when he found nothing that indicated that Curtis was capital-E for Evil. And if his instincts were wrong, Dean figured he could waste Curtis if he needed wasting, clean out the register and the customer credit-card numbers, and get the hell out of town.
Curtis's mouth widened into a full grin-the first Dean had seen on him. "Excellent," he said with a satisfied nod. He tucked his lunch bag under the counter and tossed his head toward the bay. "You done? That timing belt's not gonna replace itself."
"They almost never do," Dean observed before he downed the last quarter of his Mountain Dew in a single gulp and followed Curtis back to the bay.
They were up the CRX's skirts to their elbows when Curtis said, "We're closed Sundays. It'd be a good time to get the Impala in here, if you want. Mandy and me, we're going hiking up in Siuslaw with some friends, but I can get you a key. You'll need a set anyway."
Before Dean could agree or thank him or ask if he was sure he felt like turning over the shop keys to a near stranger with a mysterious and sketchy past, Curtis stepped away from the engine block, flipping his wrench in his hand.
"Hey," he said. "One other thing-well, two, really. Question first."
"Okay, shoot."
"Where're you staying?"
"Just outside of town. North a half a mile or so. Easy Breeze."
Curtis winced. "Total shit-hole."
"Well, yeah…" Dean shrugged in acknowledgment. "But it's fine. Cheap. Circle-K a block up. It works."
"Look, my wife, Mandy. Her dad owned this place, sold it to me when he retired, right? Her mom's side of the family ran a little motel up the coast. Mandy and me, we run it now. Mostly Mandy, with some help. It's not fancy or anything, but the rooms are clean. We've got a double with a kitchenette open if you want it. I could cut you a deal-say, a hundred bucks a week."
"No way, man." Dean's voice came out colder than he meant it to. Curtis frowned. "Sorry. I just… It's too much. You cut me a huge break here, with this gig, and I appreciate the hell out of it. But I can't take anything else."
"Okay. I hear you." Curtis nodded. "The Easy Breeze, though.... That place has possums living in its vents. They never manage to get rid of the fleas for more than a week."
The back of Dean's left knee suddenly itched, and the bite on his wrist became unbearable-he had to work hard to keep from tearing at it. He laughed. "All right. Shit. What's your regular rate for a week? Not your stray-dog rate, though. I'm talking potato farmer who's too dumb to notice his exhaust pipe's been trailing after him since Boise. Whaddaya charge that guy for a week?"
"Hundred seventy-five, plus asshat tax. You're exempt."
Dean grinned. "Okay. One seventy-five. Where's it at?"
"Otis-ten miles north on 101, then a mile east on 18-Salmon River Highway. You can't miss the sign. Leed's Lodge. "
"Sounds rustic. I'm paid up through tomorrow at the roach motel. Okay if we check in after work?"
"Sounds good. I'll tell Mandy."
Dean was reaching for his wrench again when he noticed Curtis was still looking at him like he had something to say. "Right. You said two things."
The remains of Curtis's smile slid away, though his face stayed open and earnest. "You were right about the stray-dog rate. It's a thing with me-with my wife, too. But I'm a good judge of people, and I'm not stupid. I never offer more help than I can give, and if you fuck with me, my family, or my business, I guarantee you will live to regret it." His eyes stayed clear and blue and unblinking, popping out against the red over his nose and cheeks. "We clear?"
"Crystal," Dean said evenly, though what wanted to come out was "Yessir."
"Okay. Let's get back to work, then."
**********
Curtis was right. The sign made Leed's Lodge hard to miss: a woman in an old-style bikini and swim cap dived toward the office, stretching as gracefully as a twenty-foot, wooden chick could over a huge red arrow. Flickering neon lights proclaimed "POOL" and "Vacancy." The parking lot was emptier than it should have been for a coast-adjacent motel in summer, and Dean was glad he'd insisted on paying the full rate.
He parked at the end of the lot closest to the office and got out, looking around while he waited to see if Sam would need nudging.
The motel was a pair of L-shaped buildings facing each other to make a rectangle around a central courtyard area, the long stems of the Ls running perpendicular to the highway. Through the gap between the two buildings, Dean could see the aqua sparkle of a corner of the advertised swimming pool. Faded green paint chipped off the outside wall of the office.
Dean thumped the roof of the car to get Sam's attention. "You coming?"
It was a long moment before the passenger door creaked open and Sam unfolded himself onto the parking lot.
The screen of the lobby's sliding-glass door jammed in its track when Dean tried to open it, then released with a rattling jerk. The noise brought the clerk out from the rooms behind the desk. She was cute, in that slightly granola-crunch way Dean found so common in the Pacific Northwest. Give her some makeup, clothes not made entirely of hemp, and do something with her plain brown hair other than pulling it into a ponytail at the base of her neck, and she'd be good-looking enough. She seemed too young to be Curtis's wife, and when she got to the counter, he saw she wasn't wearing a wedding ring. He couldn't see her legs behind the counter, but her tits were nice-smallish but with the pleasant side effect of her obviously not wearing a bra. Dean thought about how long it'd been since he'd gotten laid-Christ, that desk clerk from the Brisbane police department back the end of January-and smiled as pretty as he knew how.
"Checking in?" she asked.
"Yeah. Curtis might have mentioned we were coming. I've been working with him down at the shop-Dean Spenser. How're you?"
"Fine, thanks," she replied with service-industry automatic politeness. "Double?"
"That'd be great, thanks." Dean waited for her to tap her commands into the computer. When she looked up again, he handed her the cash he'd pulled out of the ATM with the last of James Blair's credit.
She counted it quickly and said, "A week, then?"
"To start, yeah."
She hit a few more keys, and the printer coughed up an agreement for him to sign. "Okay, room ten," she said, swinging around the counter.
She was barefoot and wearing cargo pants cut off a few inches above her rather knobby knees. She strode between the brothers and out the sliding door. Dean followed her, and Sam followed Dean. The girl stopped in the passageway between the office and the leg of the next building, pointing across the length of the courtyard to the base of the opposite L.
"Straight across," she said. "Ten's the end room." She turned to the right and pointed at a propped-open door leading to a darkened room. "Laundry, ice, vending-through there. Machines are a buck a wash, fifty cents a dry. Change machine's busted, but if you need quarters, come get me. We've got a stash."
"Looks great, thanks," Dean said and turned his smile on again. "I'm Dean," he repeated. "This is my brother, Sam. Nice to meet you…" He raised an inquiring eyebrow.
"Jem," she said, finally catching on and giving Dean an appraising look that soothed his nerves. She turned the look briefly on Sam, nodded an unreturned greeting, and took a backwards step toward the office.
"So, Jem," Dean tested, "where can a guy get some dinner in scenic Otis, Oregon?"
"Tony's," she answered readily, back on hostess autopilot. "Up the highway half a mile. Beer, burgers, barbeque." Her eyes flicked to Sam, who was watching the ripples and shadows on the pool, and back to Dean. "Maybe I'll see you guys there. I cover the bar on the weekend."
"Good deal," Dean said to her back as she slid the screen shut against the mosquitoes. "Hey," he turned to Sam. "I think we're gonna like it here, huh?"
"There's a pool," Sam said.
Dean slapped his brother on the back, giving him a gentle shove toward the Impala. "That there is, Sherlock. C'mon, let's get our stuff into the room. Burger and beer sounds perfect to me."
**********
Chapter 2: Wanna Do Right, but Not Right Now
AN: Yep, I have a "Mockingbird" soundtrack, and yep, my chapter titles come from it. This chapter's title is from Audioslave's "Like a Stone." Full soundtrack will be posted at the end of the story, with links and cover art because I'm a huge dork.