Fic: Thirty-Two Flavors (Supernatural)
Mar. 18th, 2006 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosTitle: Thirty-Two Flavors
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,254 words
Pairing: None
Spoilers for: "Shadows"
Warnings: Bad language, sexual references
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: Thirty-two things that make Dean Winchester the man he is.
Author's note: This is me getting a little experimental, so yeah, it's supposed to flow from one section to another like that. Just read. :)
*****
Thirty-Two Flavors
*****
Sometimes Dean isn't sure he ever had a normal life.
The fire blocks out all of his earlier memories in this haze, thick and shimmering like glassy waves of heat off summer pavement. He remembers smoke and the stench of burning flesh and the weight of Sam's body in his small arms, and the combination of the three cloud his mind in this milky curtain. It's like everything from before it's been doused in vasoline.
Maybe that's why he couldn't ever bring himself to stop hunting, he reasons sometimes. Because he's been there and done that, and there's --
*****
-- this girl walking across the quad, thin and dark and gorgeous, striding through the crowd with this indignant sort of purpose like she owns the whole goddamn campus. And he ain't ever been picky about his choice in women before, but there's something about this one that makes him turn and head in her direction.
Somewhere on the other side of campus, Dad's waiting for him to show up with the research on the current job and all he can think about is soft brown curls amd this fire in her eyes that flicks and teases at him from the center of a crowd like she's --
*****
-- interviewing Tom fucking Cruise again, that spastic little monkey. He starts jumping around on that couch again, and Dean's getting in the Impala with his shotgun and driving to Chicago so fast, heads will spin.
Preferably Tom's off that shrimp neck of his, that ass ---
*****
-- in those jeans is driving him wild, swaying hips that move to the music like she was born for it. And she isn't the only one, just the prettiest brunette in the crowd, but there's half a dozen others dancing to the music in taunting rhythms like dark plumes of smoke on the dance floor.
Half of them train their eyes of him like he's a fucking piece of meat, like prime grade-A steak circling the dance floor, and it isn't like he doesn't know he's pretty, that's for damn sure. But one of these women is a succubus, luring these girls to her side to drain as much power as possible from the men in this town, siphoning it like gasoline --
*****
-- goes into the Impala, because she's got seven hundred thousand miles on her, she's been to Hell and back and that's practically literal, and for all the shit she's got to put up with riding at his side, she deserves the best. It's like passing off carrots and apples to a warhorse, is what it is, like slipping her snacks and rubbing her velvet-soft nose until she whickers happily.
Dad teases him when he croons to her when some evil bastard breaks her, when he waxes her in the middle of some motel parking lot just 'cause and gets that contented smile on his face when she roars to life. An old girl, no doubt about it, but there's a fight in her and it wants to come out with Dean in the driver's seat.
And never let it be said that he's ever denied a girl anything --
*****
-- he wanted in the seventies, because he was a fucking force of nature. Oh, sure, now his movies suck ass, and Dean's pretty sure he's going to have to disown the son of a bitch if he's in anything with Adam Sandler ever again.
The Shining, for fuck's sake. Chinatown. Hell, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'll forgive a lot of sins, that Adam Sandler shit included.
There's just a lot of worship there, is what Dean's saying, because Jack might have made a lot of mistakes in his career, but you just can't bring down a guy who's played the devil --
*****
-- is in the details, right? Sure, you can call yourself Malcolm Young the FBI agent, but you've got to back it up with confidence. Real fucking confidence, the kind that gets authorities believing you instead of arresting you.
Dad's got a different kind of confidence than he does, which is the reason he's never needed the goddamn costumes. He walks right onto a crime scene and approaches the head detective and starts up a conversation like it's nothing, like that rumbling steady voice of his will get anyone to do anything. And it does, in this way that comforts Dean like a five-year-old pair of jeans worn through and through, something you can slip into and relax.
Dad in the lead makes things easier, evens things out and takes away all of the tension.
But Sam at his side is a hindrance, the main reason they've got dozens of uniform rentals under their belt. Because Sam can't lie to save his life but he can sure as hell act out a part, which leaves all of the lying --
*****
-- on that basement floor, cold and wet and Jesus, that fucking hurt.
He's out of it and he knows something's not right, knows there's this cold painful spot in his chest where there wasn't one before. And yeah, he's not awake, but everything hurts so much he's positive a stiff breeze across his skin would kill him. Sam's voice hovers at the edge of consciousness, and if worry were a sound his voice would sync up perfectly with it.
Where his heart should be is a dark empty --
*****
-- bed next to his, like if he stares at it long enough Sam will magically disappear off the bus to California and reappear here. He can even picture it if he squints, Sam's long legs squeezed onto the twin bed they just hadn't bothered to replace when they'd moved into this dump, the extra-length quilt Pastor Jim's wife made him falling all the way to the floor on one end and tugged up to Sam's chin on the other.
Dean just can't stop staring at the empty spot where there used to be a little brother, and downstairs Dad's slamming cabinet doors in the kitchen and Dean's positive at least one of them is the cabinet where he stores the bottles --
*****
-- of beer lined up on the motel room floor, and Sam's got a case of the giggles that won't go away like this is the funniest thing he's ever seen. And maybe it is, because who else on the planet gets drinking lessons from their father, for crying out loud?
"We keep building up your tolerance, your marks will think you're more drunk than you really are," Dad says with an odd smile, like he's got to force it. But Dean doesn't really care, because he's fifteen and his dad bought him beer, which is a level of cool that goes beyond anything any of his friends at school can claim.
The worst part of it all is that he can't even brag about it, but he swirls his beer bottle around in the air before slumping back against the bed, and then Sam keels over with laughter and that's enough --
*****
-- mojo into an object, and it's set for life. Dean was positive the amulet worked, see, so when he's in that hospital bed staring at the damn thing, of course he hesitates. You can lose faith in a lot, but people can get superstitious about the stupidest little things and when the best medicine man this side of the Mississippi blesses a protection amulet and puts it over your neck with his own wrinkled hands, you don't give up on it so easily.
Not even when it fails. Not even when it lets your heart fail.
So yeah, he stares at it for a while, looks back and forth between it and the garbage can like he's actually going to throw it away. But the whole time, he's itching to put it back on, the familiar weight of it around his neck leaving him feeling positively naked. And that's saying a lot, considering he's wearing a hospital gown --
*****
-- is beautiful and simple and amazing, like a Grace Kelly movie transformed by a wave of some wizard's wand into a dress. Dean remembers boosting the photo from Dad's journal sometimes, staring at his father's bright eyes and Mom's brilliant smile as if they were alternate dimension versions of themselves, alien copies that still existed somewhere out there.
He used to trace his small fingers over the lines of the wedding gown like touching it enough times would make the picture's surface feel like silk and lace, but it never --
*****
-- broke, which is a goddamn miracle considering the stuff he goes through on a regular basis. When Sam wasn't around, Dean would come back to whatever rattrap they'd rented out for the night after a job to scrub away the blood and dirt and whatever else he was covered in, and the black leather cord would still be wrapped around his wrist in tight, pristine loops. And he tugged at them every time, kept expecting them to fall apart with one persistent snap if he really tried, but they never did.
And call him girly and you'd never get him to admit it anyway, but maybe he was hoping that somewhere on the West Coast, the man wearing the bracelet's twin had gotten the urge to test the strength of his as well, and found it just as strong --
*****
-- enough to defy bullets, is what he's thinking when he picks it off the rack at some Salvation Army in the middle of Detroit. He wouldn't doubt it, because the leather's worn but thick and the personality of the jacket's damn near palpable. He keeps waiting for the jacket to say it out loud, for some phantom voice to say, "Yeah, you want to make something of it?" in a cocky voice that's just begging for a fight.
He slips it on and it fits like it was made for him, the collar flipping upwards even though he hasn't gotten to touch it just yet.
Jesus, if it breaks out in a little Metallica, he's going to have to name --
*****
-- is easy to remember, all right? That's all it is, really, and he can get into this argument with Dad and Sam a dozen times and still make a decent amount of sense considering.
It's just ... well, hell, he's going to be memorable anyway, isn't he? Asking questions about mysterious deaths and handsome as he is to boot, people are going to remember him whether he's Joe Smith or Jimmy Page. And at least the names make some of them smile, weed out the geeks and gives him an in with the ones who've got something vageuly resembling good taste in music. "You mean like the drummer in Van Halen? Must get a lot of cracks about that, huh?"
It gets conversations started with some people whether Dad and Sam like it or not, and besides which it's really fucking funny --
*****
-- and laugh about it all he wants, but until Sam can build an EMF meter out of the TV remote, he can just shut it. Because honestly, the kid might be better at picking locks to the point where he really should make a career out of it, but making all the toys they need to do their damn job is where Dean gets to shine.
Okay, so maybe he gets a little MacGuyver about the whole thing. Ten minutes alone with an iPod and it's a stun gun, fifteen minutes with a cell phone and it squeals and screeches at the slightest hint of spectral activity within a twenty-foot radius. The Winchester boys might have gotten the same training on making do with what they've got, but it's Dean who turns it into an art --
*****
-- project run amok, like some crazed sculptor going at a mannequin with the slash of a razor and the flicker of a cigarette lighter.
He's got favorites, too, like the prizes of his collection. The faint shadows on his skin that the electricity left behind after passing through it. The three bullet wounds grown to varying degrees of faintness with age. The circular burn on his upper chest that's lighter than it would be on anyone else's flesh.
And Dean wonders about it sometimes, if it's genetic how their scars always fade so much, if it's some innate toughness or just some inverse reaction to the scars inside lasting that much longer --
*****
-- if you take care of them, if you clean your weapons every chance you get and memorize the weight and feel of them to the point where you could know exactly which one is on the table in front of you in a dark room just by passing your hand through the air over it.
That's the kind of faith Dean can hold onto, the cool press of a gun against his hip and the blade tucked into his boot, the things that really keep you safe when you're still begging for God to do --
*****
-- that thing Dean does with his hips, that flickering roll and thrust that girls go wild over. The taste of their skin when they're so turned on they can barely think straight. The way they grab at him all the time, like they're trying to make sure he's real, like they're positive the guy who saved them from the boogeyman's about to walk out the door and leave them high and not all that dry.
Dude, he's got a million of them. He ought to make a list one day, maybe give it to Sam and let the geek get a few pointers or notice a few more of the little things that make sex just that much more fucking addictive.
But seriously, the way their inner arms curve into the slope of their breasts at the shoulders, that dip of their hipbones that he could spend an eternity --
*****
-- won't be long enough to digest a bag of Cheetos, if you ask Sammy. If Dean has to sit through one more lecture on the evils of junk food and soda, he's going to throttle the little bastard in his sleep, brother or not.
He doesn't think Sam gets it sometimes, the free ride they're allowed because of the things they do. Because death really is around the corner, see, and these days it's beginning to look more and more like that's not just a goddamn metaphor. So if he wants to drink a beer or two every night, if he wants to fuck every pretty girl from New York to Seattle and back again, if he wants to commit a little bit (or a lot) of credit card fraud, he's earned it the way he figures it.
So yeah, if he wants to have a bag of nachos and a Big Gulp for lunch while they're driving to the next job, Sam can take his complaints and shove --
*****
-- them backwards, because they never see it coming. They always think he'll be a cocky pretty boy they can just beat the shit out of, shake down, and run away from before the cops arrive, but ain't a one of them ever expects a real fight out of him.
Maybe a weak imitation of one, fratboy punches that never land and a few snotty wisecracks past a pair of lips that won't say nothing once they're busted open, but never a real fight.
Dean's stopped counting the number of barroom brawls he's gotten into, pool cues and broken bottles within reach that he refuses to touch. Too easy, he always thinks, too much like saying I can't take these sons of bitches down without help. He's flying on an adrenaline high and his skin tingles from head to toe, and he's already counting the number of broken bones he's going to shatter --
*****
-- some kind of personal fucking record, one only Dad might be able to touch at this rate. It's possible, Dean figures, because it has to be, because the country is finite and there's only so many places he can go, when you get right down to it.
When people ask, when people who don't know he's not a far-too-young Homeland Security agent or a private detective care to question him on it, he's always tempted to tell them he's from Lawrence and never does. Lawrence hasn't been home since the fire scorched away the place he lived and left a dark scar on the landscape there, but when you bounce from one motel to another with the Impala the only factor that ties them all together, you've got to stick to some place eventually.
One day somebody will ask him where he's from and he'll point to the car without a second thought, and he really doesn't want to think --
*****
-- like Sam does, connecting dots across books and journals like some kind of savant. Not like Dean can't do it, not with Dad's training set down in his brain like furniture nailed to the floors on a cruise ship, but Sam's friggin' perfect, finding links where Dean had skipped blindly past them only a minute ago.
Obituaries and newspaper articles are another thing entirely, an exercise in searching for patterns he's done a million times over. His pen circles phrases like "died at home" and "blood loss," notes cities and family names with the detailed eye of a practiced researcher.
And yeah, he can do it, but he'd rather be the one who handles the weapons --
*****
-- Dad ever taught him to wield, starting with Go Fish.
"When you get bigger, I'll teach you how to do this," Dad said, and fanned the deck before shuffling the cards a dozen different ways, making five-year-old Dean's eyes widen.
Now he does it without a thought but always sees the art in it, the flutter of kings and aces under his fingertips, the dance of the deck under the skilled hands of the right dealer. He can shuffle the chips without even paying attention but doesn't, too much of a tell that he's a goddamn master at this.
Sam can do it, too, the con that comes with a deck of cards and a few lousy bucks in his pocket practically ingrained in his DNA like it is with Dean. But the difference is that Sam hates doing it, hates shaking down someone too stupid to step away from the poker table before they get their ass handed to them.
Dean's always been the one to pull up a chair, to keep them in petty cash and enjoy the hell --
*****
-- he could ever have a normal life anyway. Somewhere out there is a death certificate with his name on it, and he's more useful dead than alive if you really think about it.
Sam can make all the cracks he wants about what he's going to do after they kill the bastard who ruined their lives but Dean wouldn't even want that option if he had it, because normal doesn't mean a damn thing when you're legally dead --
*****
-- tired of all of the sarcastic little comments about his music, all right?
Look, he knows he should probably invest in a few CDs, since the fact that those tapes have lasted a good decade and a half by now doesn't mean they're not going to get eaten by demon mucus or something tomorrow. But he's a little attached, okay? He falls a little bit in love with AC/DC and Metallica and Rush and makes a box full of tapes as a kid, and they're still around, still going strong even through he's played them over and over again more times than he cares to estimate.
It's like listening to a real record, like putting a needle to the vinyl and savoring the scratches, except this time it's Black Sabbath and that weird tug to Ozzy's voice at the beginning of "Iron Man" because the edges of the tape have rippled with time --
*****
-- it takes to bring a man down with his bare hands in a matter of seconds, and Dean revels in the way everyone always seems so fucking surprised by it, like he's not considered a threat until he's brought someone to their goddamn knees.
But it's sparring with Sam that's the real thrill, because they've been doing this dance since Sam was old enough to throw a punch. And the steps may have shifted since Sam gained those extra four inches but the music's still the same, Sam clenching his jaw with annoyance every time Dean makes some snarky remark, the air crackling with energy like they're a pair of lightning bolts --
*****
-- like they always do, grumbling under his breath as he heads off in the opposite direction while Dean stands and counts all the money the stupid bastard lost at the pool table.
But he's asking for it, really, because that first game is a joke and Dean knows this whole thing is going to be a cakewalk the second his mark fumbles his shot at the six-ball, goes wide and knocks in the fourteen. Kid can't play half as well as he's been bragging about, it turns out, barely planning out his first shot when Dean's got the angles of the rest of the game mapped out in his mind as if they've been sketched out on the felt.
Fucking cakewalk is an understatement with the way this kid's playing --
*****
-- his cards right, and he might actually get Dad to listen to what he has to say this time.
Not that Dad doesn't, because he might be a stubborn bastard but he's also open for any suggestions even if he's about to shoot Dean's ideas down in great blistering flames. There is a part of Dean whose gun will always been Dad's to command, who's never anything but willing to rush headlong into disaster on Dad's orders, and if that part of him happens to be this dopey little kid begging for Daddy's attention at the same time, there isn't anything more embarrassing than admitting --
*****
-- Dad won't answer his fucking phone. Again.
Dean stares at his own cell phone like glaring at it will make it connect to anything other than Dad's voicemail, but that sure as hell doesn't work.
So when Sam looks hopefully across the room at him like he's expecting Dad's voice to ring out, Dean shakes his head and opens his mouth to leave --
*****
-- town so fast there's probably a dust cloud in the shape of the Impala in the parking lot of the motel, the weapons tossed into the trunk and the cops politely looking in the opposite direction.
They don't do that a lot, because usually they're on his ass making damn sure he's out of town before he even gets a chance to finish the job. That's just the sort of social fucking butterfly he is when it comes to the authorities. But every once in a while he hits it just right, plays all the perfect notes and leaves with the cops knowing damn well why he was in town and trying to ignore the cons and the crimes until he's past the state lines.
And that's how every job ends, one way or another, and not even a goodbye kiss --
*****
-- on Sammy's forehead, because that's what Mommy did when she put him to sleep every night.
If Daddy's too sad to do it, it doesn't matter if Sammy's just a baby and doesn't know any better. Mommy put him to sleep every night and then she and Dean both gave him a kiss to make him tired and keep the monsters away.
Mommy's not here anymore and Dean doesn't know which kiss his was, the sleepy kiss or the monster one, so Dean does it twice just in case.
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,254 words
Pairing: None
Spoilers for: "Shadows"
Warnings: Bad language, sexual references
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: Thirty-two things that make Dean Winchester the man he is.
Author's note: This is me getting a little experimental, so yeah, it's supposed to flow from one section to another like that. Just read. :)
Thirty-Two Flavors
*****
Sometimes Dean isn't sure he ever had a normal life.
The fire blocks out all of his earlier memories in this haze, thick and shimmering like glassy waves of heat off summer pavement. He remembers smoke and the stench of burning flesh and the weight of Sam's body in his small arms, and the combination of the three cloud his mind in this milky curtain. It's like everything from before it's been doused in vasoline.
Maybe that's why he couldn't ever bring himself to stop hunting, he reasons sometimes. Because he's been there and done that, and there's --
-- this girl walking across the quad, thin and dark and gorgeous, striding through the crowd with this indignant sort of purpose like she owns the whole goddamn campus. And he ain't ever been picky about his choice in women before, but there's something about this one that makes him turn and head in her direction.
Somewhere on the other side of campus, Dad's waiting for him to show up with the research on the current job and all he can think about is soft brown curls amd this fire in her eyes that flicks and teases at him from the center of a crowd like she's --
-- interviewing Tom fucking Cruise again, that spastic little monkey. He starts jumping around on that couch again, and Dean's getting in the Impala with his shotgun and driving to Chicago so fast, heads will spin.
Preferably Tom's off that shrimp neck of his, that ass ---
-- in those jeans is driving him wild, swaying hips that move to the music like she was born for it. And she isn't the only one, just the prettiest brunette in the crowd, but there's half a dozen others dancing to the music in taunting rhythms like dark plumes of smoke on the dance floor.
Half of them train their eyes of him like he's a fucking piece of meat, like prime grade-A steak circling the dance floor, and it isn't like he doesn't know he's pretty, that's for damn sure. But one of these women is a succubus, luring these girls to her side to drain as much power as possible from the men in this town, siphoning it like gasoline --
-- goes into the Impala, because she's got seven hundred thousand miles on her, she's been to Hell and back and that's practically literal, and for all the shit she's got to put up with riding at his side, she deserves the best. It's like passing off carrots and apples to a warhorse, is what it is, like slipping her snacks and rubbing her velvet-soft nose until she whickers happily.
Dad teases him when he croons to her when some evil bastard breaks her, when he waxes her in the middle of some motel parking lot just 'cause and gets that contented smile on his face when she roars to life. An old girl, no doubt about it, but there's a fight in her and it wants to come out with Dean in the driver's seat.
And never let it be said that he's ever denied a girl anything --
-- he wanted in the seventies, because he was a fucking force of nature. Oh, sure, now his movies suck ass, and Dean's pretty sure he's going to have to disown the son of a bitch if he's in anything with Adam Sandler ever again.
The Shining, for fuck's sake. Chinatown. Hell, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'll forgive a lot of sins, that Adam Sandler shit included.
There's just a lot of worship there, is what Dean's saying, because Jack might have made a lot of mistakes in his career, but you just can't bring down a guy who's played the devil --
-- is in the details, right? Sure, you can call yourself Malcolm Young the FBI agent, but you've got to back it up with confidence. Real fucking confidence, the kind that gets authorities believing you instead of arresting you.
Dad's got a different kind of confidence than he does, which is the reason he's never needed the goddamn costumes. He walks right onto a crime scene and approaches the head detective and starts up a conversation like it's nothing, like that rumbling steady voice of his will get anyone to do anything. And it does, in this way that comforts Dean like a five-year-old pair of jeans worn through and through, something you can slip into and relax.
Dad in the lead makes things easier, evens things out and takes away all of the tension.
But Sam at his side is a hindrance, the main reason they've got dozens of uniform rentals under their belt. Because Sam can't lie to save his life but he can sure as hell act out a part, which leaves all of the lying --
-- on that basement floor, cold and wet and Jesus, that fucking hurt.
He's out of it and he knows something's not right, knows there's this cold painful spot in his chest where there wasn't one before. And yeah, he's not awake, but everything hurts so much he's positive a stiff breeze across his skin would kill him. Sam's voice hovers at the edge of consciousness, and if worry were a sound his voice would sync up perfectly with it.
Where his heart should be is a dark empty --
-- bed next to his, like if he stares at it long enough Sam will magically disappear off the bus to California and reappear here. He can even picture it if he squints, Sam's long legs squeezed onto the twin bed they just hadn't bothered to replace when they'd moved into this dump, the extra-length quilt Pastor Jim's wife made him falling all the way to the floor on one end and tugged up to Sam's chin on the other.
Dean just can't stop staring at the empty spot where there used to be a little brother, and downstairs Dad's slamming cabinet doors in the kitchen and Dean's positive at least one of them is the cabinet where he stores the bottles --
-- of beer lined up on the motel room floor, and Sam's got a case of the giggles that won't go away like this is the funniest thing he's ever seen. And maybe it is, because who else on the planet gets drinking lessons from their father, for crying out loud?
"We keep building up your tolerance, your marks will think you're more drunk than you really are," Dad says with an odd smile, like he's got to force it. But Dean doesn't really care, because he's fifteen and his dad bought him beer, which is a level of cool that goes beyond anything any of his friends at school can claim.
The worst part of it all is that he can't even brag about it, but he swirls his beer bottle around in the air before slumping back against the bed, and then Sam keels over with laughter and that's enough --
-- mojo into an object, and it's set for life. Dean was positive the amulet worked, see, so when he's in that hospital bed staring at the damn thing, of course he hesitates. You can lose faith in a lot, but people can get superstitious about the stupidest little things and when the best medicine man this side of the Mississippi blesses a protection amulet and puts it over your neck with his own wrinkled hands, you don't give up on it so easily.
Not even when it fails. Not even when it lets your heart fail.
So yeah, he stares at it for a while, looks back and forth between it and the garbage can like he's actually going to throw it away. But the whole time, he's itching to put it back on, the familiar weight of it around his neck leaving him feeling positively naked. And that's saying a lot, considering he's wearing a hospital gown --
-- is beautiful and simple and amazing, like a Grace Kelly movie transformed by a wave of some wizard's wand into a dress. Dean remembers boosting the photo from Dad's journal sometimes, staring at his father's bright eyes and Mom's brilliant smile as if they were alternate dimension versions of themselves, alien copies that still existed somewhere out there.
He used to trace his small fingers over the lines of the wedding gown like touching it enough times would make the picture's surface feel like silk and lace, but it never --
-- broke, which is a goddamn miracle considering the stuff he goes through on a regular basis. When Sam wasn't around, Dean would come back to whatever rattrap they'd rented out for the night after a job to scrub away the blood and dirt and whatever else he was covered in, and the black leather cord would still be wrapped around his wrist in tight, pristine loops. And he tugged at them every time, kept expecting them to fall apart with one persistent snap if he really tried, but they never did.
And call him girly and you'd never get him to admit it anyway, but maybe he was hoping that somewhere on the West Coast, the man wearing the bracelet's twin had gotten the urge to test the strength of his as well, and found it just as strong --
-- enough to defy bullets, is what he's thinking when he picks it off the rack at some Salvation Army in the middle of Detroit. He wouldn't doubt it, because the leather's worn but thick and the personality of the jacket's damn near palpable. He keeps waiting for the jacket to say it out loud, for some phantom voice to say, "Yeah, you want to make something of it?" in a cocky voice that's just begging for a fight.
He slips it on and it fits like it was made for him, the collar flipping upwards even though he hasn't gotten to touch it just yet.
Jesus, if it breaks out in a little Metallica, he's going to have to name --
-- is easy to remember, all right? That's all it is, really, and he can get into this argument with Dad and Sam a dozen times and still make a decent amount of sense considering.
It's just ... well, hell, he's going to be memorable anyway, isn't he? Asking questions about mysterious deaths and handsome as he is to boot, people are going to remember him whether he's Joe Smith or Jimmy Page. And at least the names make some of them smile, weed out the geeks and gives him an in with the ones who've got something vageuly resembling good taste in music. "You mean like the drummer in Van Halen? Must get a lot of cracks about that, huh?"
It gets conversations started with some people whether Dad and Sam like it or not, and besides which it's really fucking funny --
-- and laugh about it all he wants, but until Sam can build an EMF meter out of the TV remote, he can just shut it. Because honestly, the kid might be better at picking locks to the point where he really should make a career out of it, but making all the toys they need to do their damn job is where Dean gets to shine.
Okay, so maybe he gets a little MacGuyver about the whole thing. Ten minutes alone with an iPod and it's a stun gun, fifteen minutes with a cell phone and it squeals and screeches at the slightest hint of spectral activity within a twenty-foot radius. The Winchester boys might have gotten the same training on making do with what they've got, but it's Dean who turns it into an art --
-- project run amok, like some crazed sculptor going at a mannequin with the slash of a razor and the flicker of a cigarette lighter.
He's got favorites, too, like the prizes of his collection. The faint shadows on his skin that the electricity left behind after passing through it. The three bullet wounds grown to varying degrees of faintness with age. The circular burn on his upper chest that's lighter than it would be on anyone else's flesh.
And Dean wonders about it sometimes, if it's genetic how their scars always fade so much, if it's some innate toughness or just some inverse reaction to the scars inside lasting that much longer --
-- if you take care of them, if you clean your weapons every chance you get and memorize the weight and feel of them to the point where you could know exactly which one is on the table in front of you in a dark room just by passing your hand through the air over it.
That's the kind of faith Dean can hold onto, the cool press of a gun against his hip and the blade tucked into his boot, the things that really keep you safe when you're still begging for God to do --
-- that thing Dean does with his hips, that flickering roll and thrust that girls go wild over. The taste of their skin when they're so turned on they can barely think straight. The way they grab at him all the time, like they're trying to make sure he's real, like they're positive the guy who saved them from the boogeyman's about to walk out the door and leave them high and not all that dry.
Dude, he's got a million of them. He ought to make a list one day, maybe give it to Sam and let the geek get a few pointers or notice a few more of the little things that make sex just that much more fucking addictive.
But seriously, the way their inner arms curve into the slope of their breasts at the shoulders, that dip of their hipbones that he could spend an eternity --
-- won't be long enough to digest a bag of Cheetos, if you ask Sammy. If Dean has to sit through one more lecture on the evils of junk food and soda, he's going to throttle the little bastard in his sleep, brother or not.
He doesn't think Sam gets it sometimes, the free ride they're allowed because of the things they do. Because death really is around the corner, see, and these days it's beginning to look more and more like that's not just a goddamn metaphor. So if he wants to drink a beer or two every night, if he wants to fuck every pretty girl from New York to Seattle and back again, if he wants to commit a little bit (or a lot) of credit card fraud, he's earned it the way he figures it.
So yeah, if he wants to have a bag of nachos and a Big Gulp for lunch while they're driving to the next job, Sam can take his complaints and shove --
-- them backwards, because they never see it coming. They always think he'll be a cocky pretty boy they can just beat the shit out of, shake down, and run away from before the cops arrive, but ain't a one of them ever expects a real fight out of him.
Maybe a weak imitation of one, fratboy punches that never land and a few snotty wisecracks past a pair of lips that won't say nothing once they're busted open, but never a real fight.
Dean's stopped counting the number of barroom brawls he's gotten into, pool cues and broken bottles within reach that he refuses to touch. Too easy, he always thinks, too much like saying I can't take these sons of bitches down without help. He's flying on an adrenaline high and his skin tingles from head to toe, and he's already counting the number of broken bones he's going to shatter --
-- some kind of personal fucking record, one only Dad might be able to touch at this rate. It's possible, Dean figures, because it has to be, because the country is finite and there's only so many places he can go, when you get right down to it.
When people ask, when people who don't know he's not a far-too-young Homeland Security agent or a private detective care to question him on it, he's always tempted to tell them he's from Lawrence and never does. Lawrence hasn't been home since the fire scorched away the place he lived and left a dark scar on the landscape there, but when you bounce from one motel to another with the Impala the only factor that ties them all together, you've got to stick to some place eventually.
One day somebody will ask him where he's from and he'll point to the car without a second thought, and he really doesn't want to think --
-- like Sam does, connecting dots across books and journals like some kind of savant. Not like Dean can't do it, not with Dad's training set down in his brain like furniture nailed to the floors on a cruise ship, but Sam's friggin' perfect, finding links where Dean had skipped blindly past them only a minute ago.
Obituaries and newspaper articles are another thing entirely, an exercise in searching for patterns he's done a million times over. His pen circles phrases like "died at home" and "blood loss," notes cities and family names with the detailed eye of a practiced researcher.
And yeah, he can do it, but he'd rather be the one who handles the weapons --
-- Dad ever taught him to wield, starting with Go Fish.
"When you get bigger, I'll teach you how to do this," Dad said, and fanned the deck before shuffling the cards a dozen different ways, making five-year-old Dean's eyes widen.
Now he does it without a thought but always sees the art in it, the flutter of kings and aces under his fingertips, the dance of the deck under the skilled hands of the right dealer. He can shuffle the chips without even paying attention but doesn't, too much of a tell that he's a goddamn master at this.
Sam can do it, too, the con that comes with a deck of cards and a few lousy bucks in his pocket practically ingrained in his DNA like it is with Dean. But the difference is that Sam hates doing it, hates shaking down someone too stupid to step away from the poker table before they get their ass handed to them.
Dean's always been the one to pull up a chair, to keep them in petty cash and enjoy the hell --
-- he could ever have a normal life anyway. Somewhere out there is a death certificate with his name on it, and he's more useful dead than alive if you really think about it.
Sam can make all the cracks he wants about what he's going to do after they kill the bastard who ruined their lives but Dean wouldn't even want that option if he had it, because normal doesn't mean a damn thing when you're legally dead --
-- tired of all of the sarcastic little comments about his music, all right?
Look, he knows he should probably invest in a few CDs, since the fact that those tapes have lasted a good decade and a half by now doesn't mean they're not going to get eaten by demon mucus or something tomorrow. But he's a little attached, okay? He falls a little bit in love with AC/DC and Metallica and Rush and makes a box full of tapes as a kid, and they're still around, still going strong even through he's played them over and over again more times than he cares to estimate.
It's like listening to a real record, like putting a needle to the vinyl and savoring the scratches, except this time it's Black Sabbath and that weird tug to Ozzy's voice at the beginning of "Iron Man" because the edges of the tape have rippled with time --
-- it takes to bring a man down with his bare hands in a matter of seconds, and Dean revels in the way everyone always seems so fucking surprised by it, like he's not considered a threat until he's brought someone to their goddamn knees.
But it's sparring with Sam that's the real thrill, because they've been doing this dance since Sam was old enough to throw a punch. And the steps may have shifted since Sam gained those extra four inches but the music's still the same, Sam clenching his jaw with annoyance every time Dean makes some snarky remark, the air crackling with energy like they're a pair of lightning bolts --
-- like they always do, grumbling under his breath as he heads off in the opposite direction while Dean stands and counts all the money the stupid bastard lost at the pool table.
But he's asking for it, really, because that first game is a joke and Dean knows this whole thing is going to be a cakewalk the second his mark fumbles his shot at the six-ball, goes wide and knocks in the fourteen. Kid can't play half as well as he's been bragging about, it turns out, barely planning out his first shot when Dean's got the angles of the rest of the game mapped out in his mind as if they've been sketched out on the felt.
Fucking cakewalk is an understatement with the way this kid's playing --
-- his cards right, and he might actually get Dad to listen to what he has to say this time.
Not that Dad doesn't, because he might be a stubborn bastard but he's also open for any suggestions even if he's about to shoot Dean's ideas down in great blistering flames. There is a part of Dean whose gun will always been Dad's to command, who's never anything but willing to rush headlong into disaster on Dad's orders, and if that part of him happens to be this dopey little kid begging for Daddy's attention at the same time, there isn't anything more embarrassing than admitting --
-- Dad won't answer his fucking phone. Again.
Dean stares at his own cell phone like glaring at it will make it connect to anything other than Dad's voicemail, but that sure as hell doesn't work.
So when Sam looks hopefully across the room at him like he's expecting Dad's voice to ring out, Dean shakes his head and opens his mouth to leave --
-- town so fast there's probably a dust cloud in the shape of the Impala in the parking lot of the motel, the weapons tossed into the trunk and the cops politely looking in the opposite direction.
They don't do that a lot, because usually they're on his ass making damn sure he's out of town before he even gets a chance to finish the job. That's just the sort of social fucking butterfly he is when it comes to the authorities. But every once in a while he hits it just right, plays all the perfect notes and leaves with the cops knowing damn well why he was in town and trying to ignore the cons and the crimes until he's past the state lines.
And that's how every job ends, one way or another, and not even a goodbye kiss --
-- on Sammy's forehead, because that's what Mommy did when she put him to sleep every night.
If Daddy's too sad to do it, it doesn't matter if Sammy's just a baby and doesn't know any better. Mommy put him to sleep every night and then she and Dean both gave him a kiss to make him tired and keep the monsters away.
Mommy's not here anymore and Dean doesn't know which kiss his was, the sleepy kiss or the monster one, so Dean does it twice just in case.
