New SPN fic: Fire in the Hole, Chapter 1
Title: Fire in the Hole

Summary: After Sam leaves for Stanford, Dean falls hard and John doesn’t catch him. Their long bloody year comes to an abrupt end in the silver mining district of western Nevada, where both father and son must face their worst fears.

Rating: PG-13. Loads of violence and swearing; whiff of sexual content. Genuinely gen. Loopy narrative structure bounces all over the place; put your thinking caps on, gentle readers. Asks the existential question: How much Dean whumpage is too much? WIP, will be 9 chapters.

Various warnings:
The CW owns the cookies and the jar; I help myself from time to time.
John Girls: if you like a warm, compassionate Papa Winchester serving up brownies and taking the boys to Disneyland, this isn’t the fic for you. This is the same John as in Dazzleland and DNR, so he’s pretty dark and relentless and flawed. Sam Girls: the Tall One, god love him, has gone away, so he’s not in this one much. I miss him almost as much as Dean does. Everyone: this fic follows directly from Dazzleland, which is part of the Red ‘verse, but you can read this one without having read the others.

Beta Love: lemmypie generates energy like an unstable nuclear plant; jmm0001 constantly challenges me to be a better writer. If I succeed even in a small way, it’s due to them. smilla02 has done amazing icon work when she hasn’t even read the fic yet. She’s magic.

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Chapter One, Kick in the Teeth

--

Hey. Yeah, it’s me. So, yeah. Long time, I guess. Been a while. You didn’t…yeah, well. We’re doing okay. Dad and me. You know, okay. Just…just doing our thing, right.

Hey, you remember the pecan stands you used to like so much? Fill yourself up and then all the shells in the backseat and it always got ugly when Dad figured out you’d made a mess. Yeah, so we were down on the Natchez Trace, all that Civil War stuff you thought was so goofy.

You used to think the Civil War was cool, though. When you were like seven or something. Used to have those little soldiers that you’d line up on the back of the car, musta reenacted the Vicksburg siege about fifteen hundred times. My rubber bands taking out your…what’d you call them? Your earthworks, man. Sugar cubes, remember?

But yeah, the pecans, it’s not really the season now, right? But you can still see the signs and…right. Like that matters. Just letting you know that we’re alive. Hope…you know, hope that things are going okay for you. We’re fine, just…well, this isn’t awkward, is it? Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, leaving you a message outta the blue like this. I don’t want to fuck up your flow. But I’ve been thinking about you, and hoping…well, yeah. Just hoping that things are going good for you. You have my number, right? You know, just in case. You need anything, you call. You call, Sam.

--

Oh my fucking god, obvious he wasn’t going to walk five feet, let alone five blocks. Obvious to me, anyway. But it wasn’t as though this area of Vegas was on a bus route, not at this time of night, and they weren’t going to catch a cab, either. No way Dad was going to carry his sorry ass, so Dean needed to suck it back and just get the job done, because Dad’s fancy black truck had just become a liability. That fucking truck was going to get them caught.

At least Dad saw the sense in that. Maybe. Hard to say. Dean couldn’t read minds, after all. But the garage was right there like a winning lottery ticket slapped down triumphantly on a 7-11 countertop. They could hide the wanted vehicle behind the paint shed for now, they could take off the plates and throw a tarp over it. Come back for it when the police weren’t so hot for them. The garage owner, the guy Dad knew – Tim? Tom? Whatever, some old hunter so beat up he couldn’t walk straight – would take care of it, John said, voice confident.

Don’t think about it, Dean told himself. Don’t think about any of it. We can just get in the Impala, just get in and drive and put all this behind us.

Dean felt his father’s eyes on him, and so he tried to straighten, tried to be okay, just tried to will himself to be okay. Shit, he could hardly keep his feet. Five blocks through industrial wasteland to the motel. Five blocks wasn’t that far, was it?

“You stay here, Dean,” John said, everything an order now, “I’ll get the Impala and come back, pick you up. We’ll head north, get the hell out of town. Once I’m sure the cops aren’t following us, we’ll pull over for the night. I can patch you up then.”

“Sir, I can walk,” Dean found himself saying, wondering where the fuck those words had come from because no way in god’s green earth was he going to make it five blocks. He’d almost fallen on his ass when he’d gotten out of the truck was even now leaning against the hood, trying to look like his insides weren’t trying to get the hell outside.

“You stay here,” John repeated, taking guns from the truck, readying a bag. “You look like you’ve been bear-wrestling. Anyone spotting you stumbling around’s gonna call the cops and we don’t need that, do we?”

Well, okay, that sounded reasonable. Wasn’t like his dad to give him an out, so Dean assumed he must look like a car wreck, would be a burden. I have blood all over me. And he really didn’t want to think about why.

“Stay here,” John said for a third time and Dean wasn’t too sure what the fuck he meant by it, he had ears, didn’t he? But John steered him by his good arm to an abandoned bench seat salvaged from car or truck unknown, propped against a stack of tires. The garage parking lot was lit, but not well. Dean was in shadows and he hoped his dad wouldn’t feel how hard Dean gripped his arm as John slowly lowered him onto the seat. “I’ll be ten minutes.” His voice changed, and Dean knew his dad was smiling. The grim smile, the one that he put on when he was trying to talk Dean into something he didn’t want to do. “Hang in there.”

Yeah, right. Like he was going anywhere.

But John was gone by then, and Dean leaned his head back on the seat, trying not to think. To not think about anything. It was relatively easy: not only did he have lots of practice, thinking about nothing, but his body was in rebellion, was doing its own thing quite separate from any rational thought. He didn’t know what the hell was wrong – well, apart from the dislocated shoulder, hard to miss that – but he’d gotten up and walked away, hadn’t he, so it couldn’t be as bad as all that.

The shoulder was distraction enough, was red-hot agony. Awful, just having it hanging there by nothing but skin and tendons, and Dean reached round with his right hand, laid his left forearm across his chest, held the left arm tight to his body, breath hissing between clenched teeth, holding onto the cuff of his ruined jean jacket as he slid down to his side, trying to take some of the weight off the wrecked shoulder.

John took longer than ten minutes. Maybe Dean had been wrong about the distance, maybe it was more than five blocks. He didn’t think so. Maybe he was misjudging the time. More likely. Fuck it, maybe John had been picked up by the cops. Oh, shit. Dean tried to sit up when he thought that, but nothing was cooperating, so he took his right hand, the one that worked, and fumbled in his coat pocket for his phone. Opened it, feeling desert cold, the creeping night getting into his bones now that the wind was up and the adrenaline gone. He wiped the back of his hand across his face. Sweating, despite the cold.

Phone Dad? That was dumb. If he was in police custody, that would just tip them off. Fuck. Think it through, Winchester.

It was dark, and Dean shut the phone again, the light from the screen imprinted on his retina for a few seconds, so he blinked a block of glowing green against the darkness, amused himself with that. Supported his left arm again, feeling more sick than anything else. Cars passed on the nearby street, though Dean couldn’t recall the name of the road. Damn. In Vegas for a week and he hadn’t even seen the inside of a casino. Sam would have found it funny.

Dean held very, very still then, thought and body and injury all coming together in a way that actually meant coming apart.

Cars still passed, though, a honk of a horn, then headlights sweeping across the lot, picking up car parts and empty oil drums and a scatter of smashed glass. The familiar rumble of the Impala like an old friend, encompassing as a blanket, and Dad didn’t even shut off the engine or the lights, he got out and came at a slow trot, the unhurried fast forward that John Winchester could do for miles and miles without tiring.

Dean’s vision was like a film that kept losing its thread, jumping ahead with motion and dialog, because one minute his dad was beside the car, and then John was crouched in front of him, one hand touching Dean’s face before falling on his right shoulder. Even that made Dean wince.

John helped him to sit, had a safety pin that he stuck in Dean’s left sleeve, pinned the arm to Dean’s chest, taking off some of the weight. What was he? A fucking Boy Scout? MacGyver? “Here,” John said, opening Dean’s clenched right hand, pushing something hard into it. “Take these. It’ll still be a few miles before we can stop. You lay down in the back.” The smile again and Dean lifted the pills unquestioningly to his lips, but his mouth was dry. He moved his tongue around, trying to work up spit enough to swallow. Damn, he was thirsty.

And drifting, because next thing he knew, the film had jumped again and his father was back and Dean hadn’t even seen him leave, was back with a Thermos of coffee from the day before maybe, cold and black, viscous as used engine oil, but better than non-existent spit for getting down meds.

John was clearing out the truck, throwing stuff into the Impala’s trunk, grousing mildly about the mess Dean had made of the car. Finally, he was back and Dean knew from the look on his face -- caught in silver from the car lights, drawn with lines as dark as a medieval German woodcut, the kind that usually described the Apocalypse – that John wasn’t looking forward to the next bit.

“Can you stand?” John asked, but it was no question, because he was already gripping Dean under the armpit, hauling him up and for the life of him, Dean couldn’t stop the shout of pain that caused. Wasn’t as bad as the whimper – fuck, a whimper, me – that followed. Half-dragged to the car, jump cut and now he was laying in the back, bad arm and shoulder braced against the backseat.

The next thing he saw were highway lights sweeping rhythmically across the Impala’s interior roof, slow strobe lights in a bad nightclub. John had the radio on, some country station, and Dean thought maybe he was going to melt into the upholstery. Wondered if he was getting blood everywhere, but couldn’t actually move to check.

Some chick wailing about Jesus, and John was silent and the road was pretty smooth. Windows up and the heater on, the low hum it made and the smell of stale potato chips acting like a poppy field in Oz. The lights stopped eventually and then it was open highway and they were heading north out of Las Vegas, into the desert, and Dean didn’t think about much of anything for a while.

--

Where the fuck does he find these places? Because the Confederate flag was one thing, was almost a given this being where they were, but John drew the line at a fucking cannon pointed right at their goddamn room. That was asking for it, was just unlucky in so many different ways.

He didn’t have a key, of course, and it was late, unreasonably, childishly late. Purposefully late, because he was going to have to bang on the door, wake the little shit up. Probably had choked down an entire bucket of KFC, left the bones around to attract the sort of things that lived in the walls of motels like this.

John couldn’t decide if Dean was punishing him, or if he was punishing Dean.

Made a fist, raised it, and the door swung open before he made contact, Dean standing there, shirt untucked, not really as bleary-eyed as John had expected. Worried. John stared, and Dean lowered his eyes, stepped aside silently.

“Get your gear on,” John said, not moving, not coming into the room.

Dean was dressed, but barefoot. He scratched his head, swallowed. Winced. “Okay,” he said slowly, cracker-drawl and John wasn’t fooled for a second.

“You got a problem with doing a job?” he asked, not expecting insolence. But wanting it, somehow. Give me something to push against, boy.

“No problem,” Dean shrugged, dragging on his boots, darting a quick glance to John. “Am I driving?”

“What’s your question?” Hot-headed, that’s what he was, had always known it. Years in the Corps had made John careful with his mouth, and Mary had taken off the sharpest edges, but the gasoline was always there, ready for a match.

“Just wanted to know if you’d like me to drive.” Bald statement, lay flat as the carpet, and Dean still wasn’t meeting his eyes. “Sir.”

Had he been drinking was the question and John knew it. Like that mattered. “Listen,” John drew close to Dean, who was still staring at anything that wasn’t John’s face, nose sunburned and turned to the ground. “You have a question, you ask it.”

“No question, sir,” Dean answered softly.

Which was the right answer, for all that it disappointed John. “Good,” and the anger left him abruptly, flowed out like sand departing the upper chamber of an hourglass, leaving him hollow.

Because he hadn’t been drinking, he was on the job, and he didn’t need judgment from this one; he’d had quite enough judgment from the other. They were walking, anyway, going to spend the remainder of this night in a small rowboat the casino manager had given him, gratefully, happy that a call about ghosts had been taken seriously. No matter that it wasn’t a ghost. Some kind of Jenny Greenteeth, one that liked gamblers and that lured ships onto the low sand bars. The manager had just been happy that someone was there to save them. Couldn’t see his way to paying them, of course.

Wasn’t that a kick in the teeth?

John led his son down to the riverbank where he’d tied up the aluminum boat, Dean with a flashlight and a bag. They climbed in, and Dean rowed out into the river, where they bobbed back and forth between Louisiana and Mississippi, about to break state laws no matter which side they were on. ‘Up the Yazoo’ Dean said with a laugh, attempting humor, the casinos bright neon monstrosities on the shoreline, Dean pulling against the current, then letting them drift down, the river lazy in June.

Vicksburg high above, and John wondered what Ulysses S. Grant had seen, if he’d dug in his heels and prayed for the best, knowing it was going to be a long fucking haul. That there would be no cooperation, that his reputation would shine or fail, depending on what happened here.

Silent hours went by, the moon passing above them, almost daylight, but they weren’t getting a single bite. If Dean was tired, he didn’t show it, didn’t yawn once, or complain about the tedium, or the mosquitoes. Once in a while slapped them away, but otherwise didn’t move. They had salt and a large silver hook. John’s handgun was loaded with silver bullets.

“Maybe we should play cards,” and those were the first words Dean had said in about three hours.

“What?” John asked.

“You know,” he turned back from staring out into the silver water, the bridge high above them as they drifted down the Yazoo River, just before it joined the Mississippi. Cross waters, unpredictable. “Gamble a little. You said she has a thing for gamblers.”

“You bring cards?” John grunted, not wanting to acknowledge that Dean had a point.

Dean shifted in his seat. The sky was dark gray above, moon gone. “Five bucks says I can hit shore with this.” He’d found a bottle cap on the bottom of the boat, held it up between thumb and forefinger.

John smiled in spite of himself. “You’re on.”

Dean flicked it and it spun over the water, landed with a splash just short of the shore. John watched as Dean turned, took out his wallet and counted out five one-dollar bills. “Double or nothing,” he said, hand outstretched. John snatched the money, then nodded.

Dean found another bottle cap. Was down twenty dollars before they ran out of caps.

John’s eyes scanned the water, looking for unnatural movement, the gleam of cat’s eyes. “Twenty bucks says you can’t name five ways to kill a Merrow.”

Dean shrugged, won twenty dollars in under ten seconds. Too easy. They exchanged the same twenty dollars a few times, their knowledge of monsters too specific and practiced to get one over on the other. Supernatural Jeopardy. I’ll take Hellhounds for five hundred, Alex.

John looked out over the water again, but saw nothing. Quiet enough to hear the breath Dean took, though, brace himself.

“I didn’t plan it,” Dean said.

John didn’t move, didn’t look back at Dean. Not ready. I’m not ready to hear whatever the fuck you’ve got to say about this.

“We should just call him, let him know it’s okay. He just wanted to-”

“Shut up, Dean,” John murmured, because he didn’t want this conversation, couldn’t show his son any sympathy, couldn’t bend his own steadfast rules, because without that armor, he was nothing. Just a man, scared shitless. And Dean depended on those rules at least as much as John did.

“Ten bucks you can’t row this thing level with the Ameristar in ten minutes.” And John pressed a little button, made the dial on his watch glow. It limned Dean’s features, which were closed, resigned.

A moment passed, counted in the lapping water against the boat’s metal shell, like the river had a heartbeat.

“That casino there?” Dean looked over the water to the glowing fiasco that sat permanently moored at the river’s edge. “Piece of cake.” Tipped the oars out of the boat with a rattle. John’s eyes drifted back to the water, looking for any anomalies.

There, a quick curve that looked like skull, surfacing, then gone. A ripple of backbone as she turned, dove down. Okay, come on now, sweetheart, John thought. But then was jerked back, because Dean was taking him seriously and was now rowing like a Harvard sculler, the boat skimming along at a furious pace. Wanted the ten bucks, obviously. Was angry, too, which was better than feeling sorry for himself, making excuses.

Again, a few yards off Dean’s right shoulder, the gleam of skull above glowing green eyes in the depths of sockets, reflecting casino light. The competitiveness, the thrill of the hunt. She’s attracted to it.

Too soon to tell Dean; he’d just stop rowing and she’d be gone. Pull her in, let her get close.

John checked his watch again, made a show of it, and Dean pulled harder, sweat now picking up the starlight, breath coming sharp. “Not going to make it,” John said loudly, knowing that would make Dean go that much harder.

She was fast, too, keeping up with them.

Level with the casino, and Dean dropped the oars, smiling bitterly, staring at him, head cocked to one side. John put his hand inside his pocket, fingered the gun. “Well?” Dean asked, breath coming in pants. He held out his hand for the money. Had maybe earned it.

Was about to earn it, certainly.

The boat lurched to the side and something reed thin and reeking of riverweed reaching over and in like it was made of articulated rebar, skeletal green hand grabbing Dean’s wrist with a hiss. Dean turned, but she was strong and so fast. They were gone before John had time to get the gun out in the clear, a shout and a splash and the boat rocked from side to side like it was possessed.

John leaned over the side, saw the churn of water, a burst of bubbles that had last been in his son’s lungs, and waited. Patient.

Ten seconds that felt like forever, and then Dean’s head broke the surface, one hand gripping the gunwale and the small boat tipped sideways. Dean gasped, taking in air, and was dragged under again, but he kept his hand on the gunwale and John noticed how white the knuckles were. John came to his feet, estimated where Dean’s body likely was, anticipated where the Jenny would be. He fired to the left of where he reckoned his son’s back was, into the water.

The silver bullet ripped into the river with a whistle like steam coming from a kettle, glowing phosphor, and Dean’s head was back topside, Dean shouting something that John couldn’t make out, but the boat suddenly righted itself, awash with river, Dean’s hand still clutching the side, knuckles bloodless.

Dean’s hacking cough echoed the gun’s report.

And a huge glowing green blossomed under the water like a nuclear bomb, cast wide brightness as though someone had a klieg light under there, and there was no sound for a moment as both waited, knowing there was something to be waited upon.

Then a screeching, inhuman yowl and the river gushed up like a geyser, spraying them both with a glutinous jelly that smelled of mud and burned like hot wax. Without a word, John pulled his son over the edge of the boat, where he lay in the bottom, wet to the bone, wheezing and retching, ragged and sore.

Dean looked up finally, dragged himself to his knees, stared at John as though his father had slapped him. He’d been bait, without permission. John had done that. Dean’s mouth opened, then shut and he shook his head, but not before John read what was in those fucking expressive eyes.

Betrayal.

--

The Desert Rose Roadside Inn was convenient, but that’s all it had going for it. By the side of the highway, a ‘vacancy’ sign on and a befuddled little man woken from a dead sleep who wasn’t asking any questions at all once John slipped him a hundred dollars, cash. Not even what he was driving, or how long he was staying, or if he wanted a wake up call. No registry and that was just fine.

John did ask for a ground-level room facing away from the dark highway and since there were only three cars in the lot, he got exactly what he asked for. No neighbors on either side of room 14, which was also good, for various reasons.

Not the least of which was that John was fairly sure they were going to be noisy, if only for a little while. He prepped the room before getting Dean from the back of the car.

“Dean,” he opened the Impala’s rear door and his son looked blearily around in the wan dome light. Three hours maybe, since the injury. Long enough for shock to set in, or any number of secondary emergencies. “Dean, you need to get up.”

“Okay,” Dean agreed, but didn’t move.

Didn’t ask for help, either.

So John buried his fists into the shoulder fabric of Dean’s denim jacket, pulled him half out of the car. He got his shoulder under Dean’s and together they made it into the room without sounding like they were throwing chickens into an incinerator. Dean had been so quiet for so long – for months now, it seemed – John had forgotten he’d been a noisy goddamn kid.

He’d stripped the bed down to the basics, and while Dean was still nominally upright, John took off his son’s jacket, threw it to the chair and dumped him on the bed. Would make you kinda queasy, looking at that shoulder for long. He went into the bathroom, got some washcloths and towels to supplement the huge first aid box he’d already brought in.

Turned on every light and tried to remember how many pills he’d already given Dean. No point in putting it off.

“Hey, kiddo,” he tried, but it came out scratchy. Now that the jacket was off, John noticed a big wet bloodstain on Dean’s left arm, and he removed Dean’s blood caked watch, and cut the shirt all the way off from arm and shoulder, could see the gaping wound right down to bone on the elbow. Shit. The chain link must have done that. Saved his life, yes, but at a price. Dean was lying very still, looking at him from beneath heavy lids, gaze swimming.

“Hey.” Slurred, almost sleepy. “Bad?”

John shrugged, scratched his unshaven face. “Well, I don’t think you’re gonna die, not tonight anyway. But I’m gonna need to put that shoulder right. And sew up your arm.”

“Uh-huh. Thought so. Couldn’t take a rain check, could I?” A little smile, but too forced. Not scared, but not looking forward to it, either.

John was rolling up the towel as Dean talked, placing it as gently as he could under Dean’s left armpit. “Here,” he said, retrieving a piece of leather that had once been a bookmark Dean had brought home in sixth grade. “You’ll need this.” A bookmark that now lived in the first aid kit. Such were their lives, but it didn’t really bear thinking about too much.

Dean took it into his mouth without complaint – shit, when had this kid ever complained about anything? – and John kicked off his shoes, brought one socked foot up and got a good grip on Dean’s left wrist. Shoulder first, then stitches. Dean’s back muscles would probably be locked tight from trying to support that arm, from moving around. Some muscle relaxers, more pain killers. Get that shoulder back into place, deal with the elbow, bind it all tight.

One moment, a break in a relentless rainstorm, sudden clarity, when it wasn’t just a set of injuries on an anonymous body, a puzzle, Friday night triage. This was his son. And most of the blood on him hadn’t come from the elbow, and John tried to stop the vivid memory of what had caused it, but couldn’t. God, he wanted a drink. Badly.

Thought that, braced his foot against the towel balled up under Dean’s armpit and pulled his son’s arm slowly, surely, waiting for things to fall back into place.

--

He only got his own voice, telling him that he wasn’t available.

Hmm, that’s ironic, he thought, snapping his new phone shut and looking around the restaurant. Sammy probably hasn’t figured out that he still has my phone.

Or he’s smashed it against a wall, or thrown it in the garbage.

He knew, though, in a broad sense, where Sam was, and he ought to be relieved in some way that Sam was doing what he needed to, was safe in a way that Dean suspected he was not going to be. Sam was probably in San Francisco by now, the cross-country trip wouldn’t take a week, no matter how stupid bus schedules were.

And him? On his way to hunt a riverboat spirit that liked gamblers, under the broad shadow of a Civil War siege town. A town that had resisted, that had persevered through mortar and cannon and starvation, the sheer weight of sacrifice looming over the river worn ragged by a single man’s tenacity.

This will blow over, he told himself, finishing up the grits, even though they were cold now. Because John fucking Winchester is known for rolling with punches and for not holding grudges and for being fair.

The truck was long gone by the time he’d come out into the parking lot, and the inside of the Impala was the same temperature as a restaurant pizza oven on a busy night. Dean eased it out of the lot, followed the lush highway across history, down to the Mississippi where riverboats plied the water and the sun was low to the horizon when he coasted along beside the wide river, window down, arm hanging lazily out, not thinking about anything other than the fact that he’d lost his sunglasses somewhere and damn if that wasn’t a big-ass sun.

John hadn’t called by the time Dean started seeing signs for ‘Scenic Vicksburg’. Dean reached over for his phone, called the number. The voicemail picked up after five rings and Dean sighed. “Dad,” cleared his throat trying to find his usual register, “Dad, you gonna tell me where we’re staying? Where we are? I’m just coming into Vicksburg now. You want me to find us a room?”

Maybe John had been so anxious to get into hunting he’d gone straight for the casino. Shit. Dean didn’t feel like going to a casino, didn’t feel like crouching with his father in weeds and mud along the Mississippi all night, especially when it was evident that John was pissed at him. Still, didn’t much matter what he wanted and his dad had every right in the world to be angry at him.

He deserved it.

It was usually pretty easy to find the low-rent part of town, especially southern towns, especially Vicksburg, which was a little down on its luck even at the best of times. Still, the I-20 was about to cross the Mississippi River into Louisiana when Dean realized he’d gone too far, and there were the casinos on the smaller Yazoo River to his right, so he took the offramp and drove down beside the river, the bluff high above him, the smell of river rot and diesel like a living thing in his nostrils.

Shit, like finding a needle in a haystack. He wasn’t hungry, the grits and greasy scrapple sitting in his stomach like the Union cannonballs they still dug out the side of stone bridges and the walls of plantation mansions. He was now in what he presumed was downtown Vicksburg and he circled round, past McRaven House, which had a sign outside claiming it the ‘most haunted house in Mississippi’, which his dad had once just raised his eyebrows to, but hadn’t refuted the claim.

Dean didn’t know a soul in the city, and it was now officially night, so he cruised back down riverside, past the flash and blare of the riverboats, the raucous noise of bars and expensive hotels crammed side by side with those a little seedier, ones for those unlucky enough to need to be there.

Like him.

The Dixiana Inn seemed likely with its stupid Confederate flag and a row of actual cannons sitting on the grass. Dad will get a kick out of those. Maybe we can use them on the Jenny. He got a room on the end of the single-story row, little numbers stuck on with rapidly-failing adhesive, the carpet worn to threads by the doorway, the bathroom indescribable.

“Dad?” he tried again, got the recording. “We’re in room 103 at the Dixiana, down on Washington, near the casinos. I’ll hang tight here until you call.”

He wouldn’t just take off, would he? He wasn’t that pissed? Dean didn’t trust the water from the tap, so he wandered across the lot to a corner store, bought himself a Coke, returned to the humid little room.

And waited.

--

Bobby Singer wasn’t in the habit of letting a lack of technology put a crimp in his research. The State Archives in Carson City was no great shakes even at the best of times, but the whole computer system was down this morning. Luckily they hadn’t entirely replaced librarians with monitors and keyboards. And if Singer had lost his ability to charm a librarian, he’d eat his Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology cap whole.

He looked at his notebook, information arranged chronologically, tabbed with sticky notes and bent corners. Beyond it, research strewn across the broad oak table: topographical maps annotated with his neat draftsman’s hand; a photocopy of the State Tax List from 1869, all Comstock area mines, some ticked off, some not; a bad reproduction of the weights and measures processed by the Yellow Jacket Mine’s stamp mills, circa April of the same year. Just a list, work through it, tick off what you found out, move down the map. Get a feel for the area, for the time. Then, and only then, could you start to see patterns, see what emerged from the negative spaces.

Singer rubbed his eyes. Early still. The days inside, the days spent over the books and maps and ledgers and microfiche machines, were precious in their own way and he didn’t want to burn himself out. Pace yourself.

Luck had nothing to do with research: tenacity did. Ameriminco thought they were going to block his access to records; they’d find out different. Research was a bit of an obsession, he’d be the first to admit it.

He’d already visited Ameriminco’s Carson City office at the crack of dawn, before anyone important was in, just an office clerk who hadn’t yet had enough coffee, hadn’t even turned on the computers. A quick photocopy of the 1861 land registry, and then he was down to the State Archives to make sure nothing had slipped in the intervening years. The whole Comstock area had been a bit of a free-for-all in the early 1860s, sure enough, but that plot in Gold Hill was documented, both then and now.

It was inconvenient, coming down out of the hills, especially when the prospecting – if that’s what you’d call it – had been going well, but he was getting a little annoyed with the big corporation. Wasn’t as though he was looking to jump their claim, all he wanted was a little information about what had been pulled from the rock over the years.

The cap helped; he’d never actually worked for the NBMG, but Ameriminco didn’t have to know that. Besides, he’d broken it in just right. Only taken him five years.

He sighed, gathered together the papers. He wanted a coffee in the worst way, but needed the April 1869 Territorial Enterprise more. Talk about burnout; he’d happily put a bullet in the microfiche reader. Still, the librarian at the special collections desk should have pulled the right box of film by now. Time to hang around the counter looking hopeful. Then coffee.

The hopeful was damn hard to manage without the coffee; he soon got distracted by the day’s newspaper, lying open on the desk beside the retrieval counter.

“Sir?” It took Singer a good moment to tear his eyes from an account of a high-speed chase through downtown Vegas – what idiot would drive through the Strip at those speeds? – and focus on the rather pretty clerk behind the counter. She was trying to get his attention. “Sir?” she repeated and Singer stepped closer, smiling in that baffled way he’d perfected over the years and that Cathy had always said made him look like a confused groundhog.

But there was no white box on the counter, no spool of grainy film ready to be wrestled into the microfiche reader. Shit, they hadn’t misplaced it, had they?

“Is that your phone?”

What? Then he heard it, the slight burr that was somewhat akin to a Dremel sander working on a piece of wood. His phone. Goddamn thing, always forgot about it, was usually halfway through cursing a payphone for eating a quarter before he remembered that Cathy had given it to him, probably just to annoy him. She wasn’t a vindictive woman, Cathy, but her gifts were always double-edged. Still, in the department of ex-wives, a man could do worse.

He wondered how long it’d been ringing.

The phone was in his battered leather sidebag, the kind WWII motorcyclists delivered messages in. Right now, the bag was stuffed with his notebook and papers and chunks of rock. The phone was retrieved and by the time Singer figured out how to get it open, it had stopped ringing. Cathy had said that she could program it so he’d have voice mail, but who the hell paid for something like that? If someone wanted to get hold of him, they could damn well try again.

So he was only momentarily puzzled by the sound an hour later as he sat studying his photocopies at a coffee shop in downtown Carson City. This time, he correctly identified the sound, found the phone, and figured out how to open it by the fifth ring.

“Yes?” he said, unsure how loud to make his voice, felt like everyone in the restaurant was turning around, wondering what the old guy was doing with one of these contraptions.

“This Bobby? Bobby Singer?”

And Singer knew that voice, would know it anywhere. “That you, John?” Singer’s day was about to get more interesting. Not as though he’d been bored, exactly, but John Winchester turning up never heralded a meditation retreat.

“Where are you? Cathy said-”

Oh, so he’d been talking to her, had he? “Up in the hills. You know. Spring’s here.”

“That’s what I was hoping to hear.”

Uh-oh, Singer thought, trying to catch the waitress’s eye, get another cup of coffee.

--

Too much pain for anything approaching a decent sleep. The air conditioner suddenly rattled and crapped out with an unholy clatter, like a handful of cutlery thrown to the floor. Not that it seemed to be making any kind of headway with the growing heat of the desert anyway, and Dean was glad for the respite from the noise.

He tried to roll over, but that hurt too, so he just stared at the ceiling until he could make out old water stains from the room above lacing the cheap gyprock, the noise of traffic outside, the room muffled in curtains that would have made Blitz-era Londoners proud. Thirsty. God, I’m thirsty.

His whole left arm and shoulder were agony, so Dean looked around, saw a bottle of pain killers – good ones – on the bedside table beside a clock that couldn’t possibly be right. A glass of water. His phone. The remote control for the TV.

No Dad, though. No note. Dean rubbed his eyelids with the tips of his fingers, tried to figure things out. All this would have been really, really thoughtful and convenient if he didn’t have to piss like a racehorse. Damn.

After taking care of that, he needed the pills, and the water, but he wished for coffee. He didn’t feel all that good, upright, hurt in a weird way from the top of his head in an amazing flash all the way to his heels, the shoulder the worst of it. Dad had somehow wrestled him into a clean, loose shirt, and his arm was bound tightly to his torso, immobilizing shoulder and elbow, the latter huge with bandage. Dean didn’t even remember hurting the elbow and he wondered what he’d done to it.

He flipped through channels, found nothing but Bonanza and some Jack Russell-perky woman selling something that chopped every piece of food in her kitchen into tiny bits.

An hour passed. Two.

Dean stared at the phone. Finally called, fearful, gut-bitter. Three rings. Dad, a coupla sheets to the wind? An entire armada to the wind? It’d been a rough night, all right. Mid-morning though. Mid-morning and they should be on their way, shouldn’t they? He couldn’t be the reason the cops caught up with them. Just couldn’t.

He felt it then, a clawing desperate fear that had nothing to do with last night’s high-speed car chase through downtown Las Vegas, nothing to do with fucking his shoulder up. He wanted to run, go fast enough to leave it behind.

“Hey, Dad?” he mumbled, mouth cottony with drugs, unsure that the bark on the other end was his father. It sounded like that cartoon bulldog that always got the better of Foghorn Leghorn. “Where are you? You need me to pick you up?” But he was squinting out the curtain into desert sunlight and he couldn’t see the Impala anyway.

“Nah,” John said, and Dean could hear tinny music, and voices, someone shouting over the clash of pans and cutlery. “I’m getting us some coffees at the diner down the highway a bit. You up for a drive today?”

Careful what you wish for, Winchester. “Am I driving?” he asked, then got caught in the surprised silence. No, that wasn’t what Dad was suggesting. Idiot. “Oh, you mean sitting in a car. Yeah, sure,” he said. “Sure, I’ll get our…” and looked around. Nothing to get. Might as well be a ghost, no duffle bags, no first aid kit. Just some bloody towels on the bathroom floor, soiled clothing in a plastic bag that had once contained cans of Michelob from a convenience store.

“Stay put. I’m picking up a few supplies.”

“Where we going?” he asked, drugs making him sloppy with questions. You didn’t ask questions. But, supplies? When did they ever need supplies beyond bullets and holy water?

“I phoned an old friend in the Sierras. Figure we should get lost in the mountains for a while.”

An old friend? What old friend? John Winchester didn’t have old friends. And if he did, Dean didn’t want to meet them, fucked up as he was. Great. Probably would involve a lot of talk about the Marines and drinking all night. Dad getting angry. A fight. More drinking. And Dean wasn’t really in the mood for it.

“Okay,” was all he said. “Okay.”

“Half an hour. Be ready to go.” And hung up.

Dean stared at the phone, lay back on the bed, fingers running over the keypad absently.

Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe that it was sunny and getting hotter and he hurt all over. Maybe that he had nothing to look forward to but hauling John’s drunk ass out of some ‘friendship’ gone wrong. Maybe all of these things, and maybe none of them. Maybe something else.

Last night. What had happened. What they’d done.

--

“Cat got your tongue?” with a sliver grin, but the eyes were hard and Dean found he couldn’t look at his father. He slapped a pat of butter on his grits, reached for the pepper.

“No sir,” he forced out, but his throat still wasn’t right, even close to a week after Sam had slammed his elbow into it. Wasn’t the only thing not right. So he winced, changed his mind about the pepper, took a sip of coffee instead.

“You need to check our salt supply before we get to Vicksburg. We’ll stay down on the river this time, avoid the tourists, such as they are.”

After days of glaring, of grunts, of one-word commands, now he wanted to talk?

“Dad,” he started, surprised how hot the coffee was. Scalded his tongue, leaving a flat metallic taste. “Dad. What are we doing? Here? Why aren’t we-”

“Two paddle wheelers have run aground in the middle of broad daylight, their captains presumed overboard. Never found any bodies. Both of ‘em in hock bad to the casinos, but no foul play suspected: worth more alive than dead. Add that to five card sharps missing in the last ten years alone, right from the decks of riverboat casinos.” John dumped sugar into his coffee, let the grains run from the glass jar in an uninterrupted stream. “Jenny Greenteeth, probably, one with a thing for gamblers. We have work to do.”

No point really, to saying anything, but this was the longest thing his father had said to him in days. “This is stupid,” Dean blurted out, and Christ his throat felt like it had been shaved with a vegetable peeler. “I can call him, this’ll blow over, he just wants-” tried to get out as much as he could, because he had the feeling once he stopped, his father wouldn’t let him start again, “-to go to school. With his grades, it -”

“How long?” John snapped like a cat o’ nine-tails and that stopped Dean cold, hand wrapped around his coffee mug in a suburb of Jackson, Mississippi.

“Pardon?” Automatic, and he knew his dad hated having to explain himself, but fuck it if Dean knew what he was asking.

“How long?” John repeated after a long moment, voice low, somewhere in the neighborhood of hell. “How long did you two plan this?”

Dean blinked once, not understanding. Not getting what it was that his father was asking. Was insinuating. Not able to understand that particular tone, because he’d never heard it before. “Dad,” he whispered. “He…I…”

But John was shaking his head, the sweet coffee cradled near his chin, and Dean remembered his voice when he’d asked him to bring Sam back, and how he hadn’t done it, and there were reasons for that, ones that made sense, ones he’d never be able to explain to his father in a million years.

“You never asked him to stay, did you?” Not a question at all. John’s eyebrows lifted and Dean couldn’t move, not for anything. “We’ve got work to do.” And he threw a handful of bills onto the table even though Dean wasn’t finished his meal, wasn’t finished much of anything – thought, argument, protest.

John turned as Dean stood, the restaurant hot with southern mid-afternoon, the sun like an anvil outside, the purported air conditioning not making a dent in the furnace. “Don’t let good food go to waste. I’ll meet you on ahead. Phone you from Vicksburg, tell you where I’ve found us room.”

He left Dean standing, his hands held loosely by his side, all the blood rushing to his face, flushed and shaking.

--

Read Chapter 2, Rearview Mirror



ETA: I still, obviously, am stuck on 'pouring' vs. 'poring'. I'm at work so I can't phone my usual arbiter of all things grammatical, my FIL, the retired English professor. Discuss.
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