Fic: Sunny Days (Jeff/Dean) ch 5/?
Mar. 23rd, 2009 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyjanellyI have no idea where I"m going with this. Just so y'all know.
It’s just weird, being in Jeff’s house when Jeff and the dog are up in freakin’ Wyoming. The quiet is heavy despite the local classic rock station he keeps on the radio twenty-four-seven and he keeps waiting for the crash of thunder to break the silence. He ends up watching home and garden TV and reading the Porches and Patios magazines that Jeff left. He’s got a list of projects and he kind of thinks he should have told Jeff he’d never done anything more complicated construction-wise than painting a fence.
Still, he said he’d work for his keep and he’s not afraid of work. He takes Jeff’s sketch and credit card and his own notes to the home improvement store and comes back with a truckload of bricks and sand and this roller-thing that they rent there.
Working up a sweat feels good. Since he ended up here, since Sam sent him away, he’s been getting back strength and endurance but seeing the changes he’s made on this world at the end of the day gives him a different feeling of accomplishment.
He buys beer because beer was part of the deal but he doesn’t get around to drinking much of it.
Jeff calls a few times a week just to check in. He sounds tired on the phone but happy. Talks about filming and his character and the people he works with.
He sounds nothing like John Winchester and Dean doesn’t know what to make of that. Doesn’t know if he’s glad of the fact or not. Doesn’t know if he would be able to take it, hearing his father’s tone when his father is dead.
Two weeks in, Dean puts the pilot disk of The Show in the DVD player and hits play. He makes it through eleven minutes before he has to either shut it off or break Jeff’s TV. He feels like he should kill somebody for this. For taking his family’s fucked up reality and making a god damn television show about it.
He starts it again the next night, feeling like a pain junkie. It hurts but fuck it hurts so good and he holds out for three minutes longer this time. Whispering words he never said to his family to the TV and just glad nobody’s there to see him.
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The first time had been a fluke. Back when he ran away from Jeff with twenty borrowed dollars and a tub of soup. He’d been looking for a game to get him back on his feet. Pool or poker would have been fine. He’d been on the rougher side of town. The side some freakin’ actor wouldn’t be likely to follow him to. The working girls had been acting funny. Paired up or staying in groups. Turning away tricks that wanted to go further than the alley or the motel on the corner.
After the game Dean picked up a pair of them. Took them back to that hotel and got them talking. Four girls in three weeks, missing. Dark haired and dark eyes. That explained all the blonde wigs Dean had seen on the street.
He thought it was a job. Some vengeful spirit or a selective vamp or something else he could quiet the ache in his soul by toasting.
He researched and didn’t find anything so he turned to watching. He knew the predator the minute he saw him. Something in the eyes. Not a glint of silver or flash of yellow but a vicious hunger that only blood and pain would satisfy.
He was too slow to stop the guy from sweet-talking a girl into his car but Dean managed to catch a cab before he could get out of sight. Followed him to a cookie-cutter house in a neighborhood of look-alike brick houses. Snuck around into the back yard past plastic lawn furniture and a charcoal grill. He broke the glass in the back door with his elbow and cursed the noise. Tape. Next time he’d bring tape for that.
Once he was inside he could hear it. The muffled screams and a man’s low pleased moans. He followed the sounds to the basement. To a room that smelled of blood and death. To the cage and the table full of instruments and the son of a bitch torturing the girl with a cattle-prod.
Dean hit him hard. Not knowing what he was up against and not having the gear he was used to he figured he’d better take whatever it was out quick.
The guy crumpled like he was dead and that more than anything made Dean stop before he killed him. And he wanted to. God he wanted to spill that fucker’s life there on the cement floor and watch him cough out his last breaths.
But the guy was human. May not have deserved to be called that after what he’d done but Dean couldn’t kill a person. Not after all the death he’d seen, all the pain and destruction. Couldn’t become a monster himself.
He handcuffed the guy instead. Used the bastard’s own cuffs and broke a matchstick he found on the table off in the keyhole just in case there was a spare key hidden somewhere.
It took almost half an hour to talk the girl out of the cage and then he wrapped her in a sheet and took her upstairs. The guy was starting to come to when Dean got back to the basement and if he took a couple hard shots to the kidneys to keep him quiet for a little longer, Dean felt no guilt about that at all.
The call he made to 911 was short. “I need an ambulance and some cops to this address,” he said over the operator’s questions. “There’s a girl hurt in the living room and the guy who did it’s in the basement.”
He left the phone off the hook and started walking. Collar up and head down. Nobody. Not important. He waited down the street until the flashing lights got to the right house. He felt kind of bad for the girl--leaving her to explain what little she knew. Somebody had to though. Had to make sure the cops didn’t think the sadistic monster was just a poor guy with a kink fetish who got rolled in his own house. Somebody had to make sure they looked until they found the bodies.
==========
The second time isn’t an accident. Dean’s out on a walk. Getting comfortable with Jeff’s neighborhood (and totally not checking out what other people have done with their side yards) and he sees the fliers, a little boy’s round face looking out of the black and white image on every telephone pole and the back of every stop sign.
“Have you seen our son?” the words above ask and Dean thinks “No, but if he’s alive, I will.”
It takes him less than an hour to get geared up and if there’s one thing to be said about hunting humans instead of the supernatural, it’s that it’s easier to figure out what he’ll need. Almost everything comes from the local big-box store. Gloves, tape, a good pocket knife. Some nice strong nylon rope. He buys a little .22 from a guy he’d met at that poker game a few weeks back. He doesn’t know if he’ll use it on a person but it feels good in his pocket. Heavy.
He hits the library. Runs the “reporter investigating local crimes against children” lines and his most winning smile on the research librarian and she helps him for most of the day, looking up public police records and newspaper articles and local sex-offender registries.
He smudges mud on the plates of Jeff’s truck and knocks on doors until well past sundown. It’s depressing how many doors, since he’s only hitting the houses of accused or convicted child molesters. He figures the cops have already done this but that’s okay. He’s not a cop. He looks into the men’s eyes and sees annoyance or anger or resignation. In a very few he sees some sort of sorrow.
He knocks on doors until he’s waking people up more often than not. Catching them off-guard as he stands there on their porches with that black and white flier in his hands. He knocks on the last door and the guy inside looks at the flier and his eyes fill with guilt-fear-anger-desperation and Dean comes in on him. Slamming the man’s own door into his face and keeping him reeling until Dean has the gloves on.
A man who preys on children doesn’t stand up well against a full-grown, well-trained, pissed-off adult and he leads Dean to a door with a deadbolt lock on the outside of it without putting up any fight at all.
The room inside is a creepy tribute to childhood boyishness. Train-car wall-paper and a race-car bed and piles and piles of toys. The missing kid is cowering up against the corner and he doesn’t look hurt but Dean knows that not all hurts show. He throws the guy in the closet and wedges it shut before he turns to the kid.
“It’s okay,” he says all soft and gentle. “I’ll take you to your mommy and daddy.” And the little boy rushes up and tackles into Dean’s arms and holds on like a damn python.
Dean takes the kidnapper’s phone on his way out to the truck with the kid. He can’t (won’t) leave the boy there in that house for a minute more than he has to so he drives to the nearest IHOP. He orders a coffee for himself and a funny-face pancake for the boy and then calls the number on the flier on the stolen cell phone.
“I found your son,” he tells the sleepy woman on the other end of the line. She starts crying and asking questions and Dean doesn’t want to tell her something that turns out to be a lie so he says “He’s alive,” and “He looks like he’s in good shape.” In the end he gives her the location of the restaurant and hangs up. Wipes his fingerprints from the phone and table and stands to go.
He sort of counted on having a minute or three to leave the scene while she called the cops and passed on the message. When the parking lot fills with flashing lights and boys in blue he realizes that maybe her phone was under surveillance the whole time they were talking and his three minutes were up half a conversation ago.
“Son of a bitch,” he says as he puts his hands behind his head well before any of the cops can get too twitchy with their guns around a traumatized kid.
This kind of shit never happened in his world.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 03:42 am (UTC)I think Dean should be a private investigator. That should make his live more meaning. You know, now that he feels alone without his family. And he really should do this legally, should earn some money from this. Let people come to him for help. And do some initiative investigation too, whenever he wants.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 05:14 pm (UTC)I have no idea where I"m going with this. Just so y'all know.
Just the fact that it's going makes me very happy :-)
no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 05:36 pm (UTC)Maybe he has a uncommon way to adapt, but at least he does. He's not nearly as lost as when he met Jeff the first time.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 05:56 pm (UTC)And now he's some sort of vigilante ... I hope the police give him a medal... I know, I know. Wishful thinking - but they're going to think he's Jensen anyway, right?
no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 06:38 pm (UTC)*\o/*
no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 07:00 pm (UTC)This is going places I never considered from the first episode. Very, very cool.
Yay! I hope you keep going.
I love what a great researcher Dean is, and how he just perseveres and keeps going with his instinct until he gets the job done. Awesome!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-31 10:57 pm (UTC)But you know what! I just realized that your Jensen bot story was the very first story I ever commented on with my LJ!!! because you were like, Dude! Get an LJ!!!!!
So without Jensenbot, I maybe STILL wouldn't have an LJ.
Isn't that hilarious! :)
no subject
Date: 2009-03-31 11:27 pm (UTC)I was thrilled at that fic. i was so happy to find light!happy jen-bot fic.
Baby is taking a lot of time/energy but I am writing a little bit here and there now, which is cool.
Heh. You were commenting all the time. You needed an LJ. Seriously. That's awesome.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 08:47 pm (UTC)Ken-
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Date: 2009-03-23 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 10:08 pm (UTC)Dean.
I love this Dean so much. His bewildered, bitter, and seething rage at the tv show - his intense desire to see it again.
I hate that Sam is alone - probably dead - and didn't think to come with him, or tell him, or give him a choice but....
Now he's doing something, now he's working in a way that will make up for his loneliness and sorrow.
*sniffle*
I know - i have way too much invested in this Dean and his story and this Jeff but i can't help myself.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-23 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 01:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 03:15 am (UTC)Love Dean trying to hunt in the non-supernatural world. humm.... Wonder if he'd consider going legit - private detective maybe?
no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-28 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-02 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-03 12:34 pm (UTC)Need I say I love that, having struck out on monsters or magic of any kind Dean is hunting human monsters.
And I like the situation you left him in-no, he wouldn't be thinking that way, not used to dealing with that part of the underworld.
Please don't leave him too long!
no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-24 05:57 pm (UTC)I just loooove this `verse)))
would it be too rude to ask wheather you are going to continue writing it???
*pada!puppy!eyes*
no subject
Date: 2009-12-30 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-17 11:31 pm (UTC)This Story Is Absolutely PERFECT! Please add more. I would love a time-stamp. What Dean & Jeff are up to now!