sn:/this and more
Dec. 2nd, 2006 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eighth_horizonSalvation AU, the day after I Can't Tell You, But You Know and a good while before Disinterment. G, 1880 words, gen, happy-fic with a touch of angst (only the Winchesters know how to pull that off). John comes to visit.
This and More
(c)2006 b stearns
___________
“Don’t you guys start the shop talk,” Dean said again.
They were in Sam’s home office just off the living room with the door halfway open. Family dinner night, one day early that week because John would be coming. And brunch instead of dinner, because he had promised to come early and go to what the girls referred to as the Shooting House. Dean already had Charlie that week but he’d invited Danielle to come over. He’d almost been sincere, too.
You know you want to.
I have extra work to do -
He’s not that scary.
I’m not afraid of your father, Dean.
Afraid of falling for me again, hot stuff?
Okay, he hadn’t really wanted her to come. John and Sam had a penchant for making references to critter-related things sooner or later that the kids wouldn’t understand, and he damn well wasn’t interested in explaining anything. A little mocking and leering often drove Danielle off without pissing her off, since she was used to it anyway. She just didn’t have to put up with it daily. So long as Charlie didn’t witness any of the sniping, Dean didn’t pass up a chance to mess with Dani. She was so funny when she got aggravated.
So was Sam.
“Quit acting like I’ve gone all gung-ho,” Sam said, feet propped on his own desk. “Jesus, serves you right after all the times we talked about nothing but when I was a kid. All you and dad ever talked about was guns and charms and how to recognize the signs of possession.”
Dean shrugged. He was lounging in the corner in the extra chair, tipping it back until he was leaning against the wall. From that angle he could see into the living room and hear chatter in the kitchen. Christo had his head on his paws near the legs of Dean’s chair, snoozing. “Just don’t see the point in keeping track of everybody,” Dean said. “Keep track of patterns of activity, yeah, but dad’s all about the network these days. Half these folks, I don’t want ‘em knowing anything about us.”
Dean was not a fan of hunters being aware of each other beyond an occasional helping hand. Contacts, fine. He wanted - and he wanted Sam - to remain just a surface reputation, an idea, a whisper down the line. The less anybody really knew since the death of the demon that had made them not just Winchesters but Winchesters, the better.
They were all, in their own ways, pretty damn paranormal and Dean had no interest in gaining attention. Their lives were fairly quiet. He was determined to keep things that way.
“Strength in numbers,” Sam said, purposely catching Dean’s gaze.
Dean glanced up at him and twisted his mouth into something he meant to be dismissive, but it gave away a trace of worry. No need to bring it up. They didn’t talk about it, but they were vigilant for any sign of Azazel’s family, demons or the forms they took and possibly even whatever lay in between. Any of the 'higher' echelon that believed they were above simple humans.
Dean ignored the itch between his shoulderblades.
A long space of demon-free time didn’t mean they were free. Demons had all the time eternity afforded to push small things into place to make a larger mosaic of destruction. Maybe they’d moved on; maybe they hadn’t. Dean still pondered a Hatfield-McCoy feud lasting generations, still waited for someone with too-dark eyes to start whispering to their kids. It was a matter of when, not if. Sam still felt it was if all these years later, was convinced they could defend themselves ahead of time.
Demons didn’t poke their heads out often anymore. But when they did, he and Sam ran them down and exterminated them. With extreme prejudice.
Winchesters did, after all, specialize in demons, whether they wanted to or not. They could not allow it to become a case again where demons specialized back.
Dean still remembered the conversation he’d had with Sarah the night they’d dropped Sam off at the library to study and then gone drinking, so many years earlier. It had been the last time he’d spoken to anyone besides Sam about what he suspected. He wanted his family to be unimportant in the greater scheme of things, but he didn’t count on it.
There was whispering near the stairs, and then a hush. Dean craned his neck further to watch for movement. He watched Allie take the stairs two at a time and then vanish. Christo lifted his head, sensing something was up.
“What are they doing?” Sam said.
“Recon, I think,” Dean said.
Allie reappeared a moment later and vaulted the railing from about ten stairs up, a completely forbidden act, but struck the floor softly enough that Dean wouldn’t have known what it was had he not been watching.
Kid had some good moves.
Christo rose to go look, but Dean said, “Down,” and Christo sat down near the door, forepaws across the threshold.
There was more whispering, and then all four girls came across the living room in an attempt at stealth. Allie opened the front door by about a foot and flattened herself against the wall next to it. Mary, Leigh and Charlie angled themselves behind the door and waited.
“Dad’s here,” Dean said, grinning. “Watch, he’s gonna get ambushed.”
Christo whuffed and Dean reached out for his collar. The dog didn’t see John often enough to be trusted not to try and protect the girls from him. Sam got up and they closed the dog in the office and waited by the closed door. They saw Sarah smirking and shaking her head by the stairs.
John came to the door and raised an eyebrow at finding it open just a little. He had a mixed bouquet in one hand, wrapped in tangerine-colored paper. He hesitated for only a moment before ringing the bell. Christo began to bark in earnest at the sound.
When nothing else happened, Dean watched his father’s face change a little, not suspicion or confusion but memory. This was not John’s first ambush at the hands of little girls. There was a quirk of a smile, and he put the flowers down with care on the patio and then stepped in as he swung the door open with one hand and reached in around the wall lightning-quick with the other to catch Allie around the midsection.
The look of startled giddiness in her face made her look four again for an instant as she grabbed her grandfather’s arm. The look of pleased surprise on John’s face as the other three girls whipped the door open the rest of the way and piled on him en force was picture-perfect. His laugh as he tried to pick them all up at once like he used to was worth anything and Mary’s shriek as they accidentally bore him to the floor was music.
Sam got there first and lifted Leigh and Mary off John, who just laid there and laughed with Charlie perched on his chest. “Don’t break him yet,” Sam said. “He just got here.”
Allie, head propped up on one hand as she lay on the floor next to him, said, “Papa, are you broken?”
“I’m fine,” John said, remaining on the floor.
“He’s fine,” Charlie said. “But is he ticklish?”
Dean swung her up one-handed and offered John the other before she could hook her hands into tickle-fingers and find out.
“Were you surprised?” Mary said from the circle of one of Sam’s arms.
“Totally caught off guard,” John said with a grin.
He retrieved the flowers for Sarah, who roped him into a big hug and a kiss on each cheek and reminded the girls to talk one at a time, not all at once, youngest kids first so they didn’t explode. There was a lot of I got an A and I hit the ball and Papa stay overnight, you can have my room. Sam finally let Christo out, and after a thorough once-over that John held his hands out and down for, the dog wiggled around the room to each of his humans to see if anything had changed or maybe if there would be a snack.
Dean made coffee while Sam found a vase for the flowers, and Sarah and Allie put the finishing touches on brunch. Mary regaled her grandfather with tales of her growing prowess with a compound bow. John asked to see her arrows and she took off for the garage while Leigh made up an elaborate fib from John’s lap of how Mary once shot an apple right off her head. Allie leaned over the couch from behind John and draped herself over him to hug him, and Charlie sat next to him with one foot resting on his knee.
“He’s not a jungle-gym,” Sarah said to the girls.
“Yet, in my little-girl armor, I’m invincible,” John said.
“I’ve got a water bottle you can squirt them with if they get too out of hand,” Sarah said. “C’mon, you guys, breakfast.”
Mary returned with a sample arrow sporting a field point and followed John to the table with it, launching into the specs of it, the variety of available points, the average velocity it could reach based on her draw weight and why single-cam graphite bows were often superior to fiberglass. Sam took the arrow and left it in the kitchen after telling her again that she was a good student.
The longer John sat there, the less aged he felt.
This was everything he’d fought for, one way or another. He’d occasionally wondered if he’d almost made it more difficult to obtain by fighting so hard to get there that it fell apart under the strain.
“Shooting House!” Charlie said around a mouthful of toast.
“He just got here,” Allie said. “Let him hang out for awhile before we make him drive around.”
No hunting talk in Sam’s office, just how’s the practice going and hey, Dean, saw that thing you were involved in, in the paper. John could email or call anytime over the leads he followed. But for once it was good to see his boys and just talk to them about everyday things.
And those girls. All these grandkids. How the hell had it all turned out like this, with what was in the rearview?
He met Sam’s eyes across the table and smiled.
Felt like home.
Later, over the demise of a few dozen cans balanced on a dilapidated fence courtesy of bullets and arrows, he watched Sam make the girls douse their hands with bottled water because of the lead, watched Dean and Mary pound the bushes for arrows that had made it past the backdrop.
An arm looped around his waist. He glanced down to find Sarah smiling up at him with something slightly coy and knowing. “This is yours too, you know.”
John smiled.
He still carried a ring that represented something he could never have, relegated to memory and a pocket. His older son did the same, but it was for something he’d never had to begin with.
After everything, they still had each other and so much more.
-|-
This and More
(c)2006 b stearns
___________
“Don’t you guys start the shop talk,” Dean said again.
They were in Sam’s home office just off the living room with the door halfway open. Family dinner night, one day early that week because John would be coming. And brunch instead of dinner, because he had promised to come early and go to what the girls referred to as the Shooting House. Dean already had Charlie that week but he’d invited Danielle to come over. He’d almost been sincere, too.
You know you want to.
I have extra work to do -
He’s not that scary.
I’m not afraid of your father, Dean.
Afraid of falling for me again, hot stuff?
Okay, he hadn’t really wanted her to come. John and Sam had a penchant for making references to critter-related things sooner or later that the kids wouldn’t understand, and he damn well wasn’t interested in explaining anything. A little mocking and leering often drove Danielle off without pissing her off, since she was used to it anyway. She just didn’t have to put up with it daily. So long as Charlie didn’t witness any of the sniping, Dean didn’t pass up a chance to mess with Dani. She was so funny when she got aggravated.
So was Sam.
“Quit acting like I’ve gone all gung-ho,” Sam said, feet propped on his own desk. “Jesus, serves you right after all the times we talked about nothing but when I was a kid. All you and dad ever talked about was guns and charms and how to recognize the signs of possession.”
Dean shrugged. He was lounging in the corner in the extra chair, tipping it back until he was leaning against the wall. From that angle he could see into the living room and hear chatter in the kitchen. Christo had his head on his paws near the legs of Dean’s chair, snoozing. “Just don’t see the point in keeping track of everybody,” Dean said. “Keep track of patterns of activity, yeah, but dad’s all about the network these days. Half these folks, I don’t want ‘em knowing anything about us.”
Dean was not a fan of hunters being aware of each other beyond an occasional helping hand. Contacts, fine. He wanted - and he wanted Sam - to remain just a surface reputation, an idea, a whisper down the line. The less anybody really knew since the death of the demon that had made them not just Winchesters but Winchesters, the better.
They were all, in their own ways, pretty damn paranormal and Dean had no interest in gaining attention. Their lives were fairly quiet. He was determined to keep things that way.
“Strength in numbers,” Sam said, purposely catching Dean’s gaze.
Dean glanced up at him and twisted his mouth into something he meant to be dismissive, but it gave away a trace of worry. No need to bring it up. They didn’t talk about it, but they were vigilant for any sign of Azazel’s family, demons or the forms they took and possibly even whatever lay in between. Any of the 'higher' echelon that believed they were above simple humans.
Dean ignored the itch between his shoulderblades.
A long space of demon-free time didn’t mean they were free. Demons had all the time eternity afforded to push small things into place to make a larger mosaic of destruction. Maybe they’d moved on; maybe they hadn’t. Dean still pondered a Hatfield-McCoy feud lasting generations, still waited for someone with too-dark eyes to start whispering to their kids. It was a matter of when, not if. Sam still felt it was if all these years later, was convinced they could defend themselves ahead of time.
Demons didn’t poke their heads out often anymore. But when they did, he and Sam ran them down and exterminated them. With extreme prejudice.
Winchesters did, after all, specialize in demons, whether they wanted to or not. They could not allow it to become a case again where demons specialized back.
Dean still remembered the conversation he’d had with Sarah the night they’d dropped Sam off at the library to study and then gone drinking, so many years earlier. It had been the last time he’d spoken to anyone besides Sam about what he suspected. He wanted his family to be unimportant in the greater scheme of things, but he didn’t count on it.
There was whispering near the stairs, and then a hush. Dean craned his neck further to watch for movement. He watched Allie take the stairs two at a time and then vanish. Christo lifted his head, sensing something was up.
“What are they doing?” Sam said.
“Recon, I think,” Dean said.
Allie reappeared a moment later and vaulted the railing from about ten stairs up, a completely forbidden act, but struck the floor softly enough that Dean wouldn’t have known what it was had he not been watching.
Kid had some good moves.
Christo rose to go look, but Dean said, “Down,” and Christo sat down near the door, forepaws across the threshold.
There was more whispering, and then all four girls came across the living room in an attempt at stealth. Allie opened the front door by about a foot and flattened herself against the wall next to it. Mary, Leigh and Charlie angled themselves behind the door and waited.
“Dad’s here,” Dean said, grinning. “Watch, he’s gonna get ambushed.”
Christo whuffed and Dean reached out for his collar. The dog didn’t see John often enough to be trusted not to try and protect the girls from him. Sam got up and they closed the dog in the office and waited by the closed door. They saw Sarah smirking and shaking her head by the stairs.
John came to the door and raised an eyebrow at finding it open just a little. He had a mixed bouquet in one hand, wrapped in tangerine-colored paper. He hesitated for only a moment before ringing the bell. Christo began to bark in earnest at the sound.
When nothing else happened, Dean watched his father’s face change a little, not suspicion or confusion but memory. This was not John’s first ambush at the hands of little girls. There was a quirk of a smile, and he put the flowers down with care on the patio and then stepped in as he swung the door open with one hand and reached in around the wall lightning-quick with the other to catch Allie around the midsection.
The look of startled giddiness in her face made her look four again for an instant as she grabbed her grandfather’s arm. The look of pleased surprise on John’s face as the other three girls whipped the door open the rest of the way and piled on him en force was picture-perfect. His laugh as he tried to pick them all up at once like he used to was worth anything and Mary’s shriek as they accidentally bore him to the floor was music.
Sam got there first and lifted Leigh and Mary off John, who just laid there and laughed with Charlie perched on his chest. “Don’t break him yet,” Sam said. “He just got here.”
Allie, head propped up on one hand as she lay on the floor next to him, said, “Papa, are you broken?”
“I’m fine,” John said, remaining on the floor.
“He’s fine,” Charlie said. “But is he ticklish?”
Dean swung her up one-handed and offered John the other before she could hook her hands into tickle-fingers and find out.
“Were you surprised?” Mary said from the circle of one of Sam’s arms.
“Totally caught off guard,” John said with a grin.
He retrieved the flowers for Sarah, who roped him into a big hug and a kiss on each cheek and reminded the girls to talk one at a time, not all at once, youngest kids first so they didn’t explode. There was a lot of I got an A and I hit the ball and Papa stay overnight, you can have my room. Sam finally let Christo out, and after a thorough once-over that John held his hands out and down for, the dog wiggled around the room to each of his humans to see if anything had changed or maybe if there would be a snack.
Dean made coffee while Sam found a vase for the flowers, and Sarah and Allie put the finishing touches on brunch. Mary regaled her grandfather with tales of her growing prowess with a compound bow. John asked to see her arrows and she took off for the garage while Leigh made up an elaborate fib from John’s lap of how Mary once shot an apple right off her head. Allie leaned over the couch from behind John and draped herself over him to hug him, and Charlie sat next to him with one foot resting on his knee.
“He’s not a jungle-gym,” Sarah said to the girls.
“Yet, in my little-girl armor, I’m invincible,” John said.
“I’ve got a water bottle you can squirt them with if they get too out of hand,” Sarah said. “C’mon, you guys, breakfast.”
Mary returned with a sample arrow sporting a field point and followed John to the table with it, launching into the specs of it, the variety of available points, the average velocity it could reach based on her draw weight and why single-cam graphite bows were often superior to fiberglass. Sam took the arrow and left it in the kitchen after telling her again that she was a good student.
The longer John sat there, the less aged he felt.
This was everything he’d fought for, one way or another. He’d occasionally wondered if he’d almost made it more difficult to obtain by fighting so hard to get there that it fell apart under the strain.
“Shooting House!” Charlie said around a mouthful of toast.
“He just got here,” Allie said. “Let him hang out for awhile before we make him drive around.”
No hunting talk in Sam’s office, just how’s the practice going and hey, Dean, saw that thing you were involved in, in the paper. John could email or call anytime over the leads he followed. But for once it was good to see his boys and just talk to them about everyday things.
And those girls. All these grandkids. How the hell had it all turned out like this, with what was in the rearview?
He met Sam’s eyes across the table and smiled.
Felt like home.
Later, over the demise of a few dozen cans balanced on a dilapidated fence courtesy of bullets and arrows, he watched Sam make the girls douse their hands with bottled water because of the lead, watched Dean and Mary pound the bushes for arrows that had made it past the backdrop.
An arm looped around his waist. He glanced down to find Sarah smiling up at him with something slightly coy and knowing. “This is yours too, you know.”
John smiled.
He still carried a ring that represented something he could never have, relegated to memory and a pocket. His older son did the same, but it was for something he’d never had to begin with.
After everything, they still had each other and so much more.
-|-
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 08:01 pm (UTC)Jungle-gym John. Love it! *laughs*
Also? Best icon ever! *giggles*
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 08:16 pm (UTC)oh I love
lovely descriptions about how the kids are all excited and ambushing "Papa" which is also the cutest thing ever :D and how the Winchesters are Winchesters
freaking ADORE these AU's
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 08:17 pm (UTC)“Yet, in my little-girl armor, I’m invincible,”
*snicker*
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 08:49 pm (UTC):)
*snuggles*
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 09:45 pm (UTC)And for John to have all that too, as Sarah says...*sighs v.v. happily*
Thank you :D
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 09:58 pm (UTC)REally, if it was a smile you were aiming for, you got it, and you also got joy and the beauty.
Great piece. Love this 'verse so much!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 11:11 pm (UTC)Wonderful piece - I adore revisiting this family!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 02:05 am (UTC)Nice job, as always, capturing the hearts and souls of this family, and showing their closeness.
Favorite lines:
He wanted - and he wanted Sam - to remain just a surface reputation, an idea, a whisper down the line. The less anybody really knew since the death of the demon that had made them not just Winchesters but Winchesters, the better.
Yeah, that sounds like Dean, all right. *g*
He had a mixed bouquet in one hand, wrapped in tangerine-colored paper.
Love the detail about what color the paper is.
Mary returned with a sample arrow sporting a field point and followed John to the table with it, launching into the specs of it, the variety of available points, the average velocity it could reach based on her draw weight and why single-cam graphite bows were often superior to fiberglass.
*g* Sam Jr.
He glanced down to find Sarah smiling up at him with something slightly coy and knowing. “This is yours too, you know.”
Aww. *hugs Sarah*
After everything, they still had each other and so much more.
Lovely ending line.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 03:07 am (UTC)This 'verse is perfection.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 04:43 am (UTC)And stories like this just kill me.
Because this is what John deserves to have had.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 08:08 am (UTC)Hope you don't mind..
Date: 2006-12-05 06:25 pm (UTC)I love the way you write! And this AU... awe-some!
This one had me grinning ear to ear.
Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-17 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 09:21 pm (UTC)