Entry tags:

fic: spn, receiver, spnbigbang2008

SPN fic: Receiver (Gen, PG-13) 4/4
Title: Receiver
Author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG-13, slightly AU
W/C: 21,700
Disclaimer: The OC's are mine. The Winchesters belong to Eric Kripke and The CW.



"Here's how it lays out," Dean said. "There are a couple of rules."

He paced back and forth in front of Bill, Tommy, and Cal, who sat side by side on the couch, eyes tracking him. Cal's face was blotchy, like she'd been crying, but her ponytail was redone into neat smoothness. Tommy sat with his back shotgun straight and Dean thought it was wrong. They shouldn't have to be that steely, they were too young, but it was nothing new, he'd seen it in plenty of kids. Michael, Sari, Lucas, and (he thought with a odd, hollow ache) Ben. And he and Sam hadn't been any different. Maybe no kid ever really escaped it -- people underestimated them all the time, but kids, Dean decided, were the fiercest fighters against scary things. It was the adults who usually fell apart.

"Rule number one, me 'n Sam are in charge. Rule number two, Cal, you stay downstairs, you do not come up no matter what you hear. Got it?"

Cal turned and looked at her father, mouth opening with rebellion but Bill said, "Do what he says, honey." He'd tried to convince Cal to go to a friend's house for an overnight and Cal had dug in, refused to go.

She slumped back, glaring daggers at Dean.

"Got it?" He said, stopping in front of her. Cal met his stare.

"It'll make it easier for us to protect Tommy if you're safe out of the way." Sam, standing over by the armchair, offered her an apologetic smile.

"Cal," Dean said. "It sucks, I know. Just..." he groped for the words that would make it okay for her, being told she couldn't be there to protect her brother, and failed to find them. "Rule three," Dean went on, turning away. "When the neighbors ask later what all the craziness was about, lie. Work out your story ahead of time."

"A stray rabid dog got into the house." Bill shrugged. "We haven't worked out the rest yet. Not sure how I'll explain the shotgun noise."

"Car backfiring," Tommy said. He leaned against his father, expression serious and calm. "On the road out back.

"Oh. Hey. Right," said Bill.

"Nice," said Dean. Kid was sharp. "When you put Tommy to bed at the usual time, me and Sam will be waiting across the hall --"

"Wait, hold on. And me." Bill pointed to his chest.

"You know how to handle a shotgun? Or a handgun?"

"Well, no. But it's my kid. I'm not staying away."

"He's my brother," Cal put in. "You get to be upstairs, so do I."

"Yes, but you're a lot tinier than me!" Bill said, gesturing. "Daddies get priority in being on guard duty ahead of big sisters. It's in the Daddy Handbook, paragraph nine, subsection b. Right after paragraph eight that states that children shall obey their fathers, who are much older and smarter than them. You stay at the foot of the stairs. I'll be waiting for that monster with a baseball bat." He glanced at Dean. "Think of me as back-up."

"There's no guarantee the monster will show tonight," Dean said. "If it doesn't, we'll try again tomorrow night, and the next, until we get the fu--the thing."

Tommy clenched his hands in his lap, then moved to tuck them under his legs instead, hiding the fear. Dean saw him shiver once and remembered how Sam had looked, only a few years older than Tommy, when Dad had handed him a gun for the first time.

---

Their gear was in Bill's office where they'd left it, since it made a logical base of ops, with Cal and Tommy under strict instructions not to go in.

They went to work loading the shotguns and filling a bag with extra ammo, two hunting knives, a jar, and a brush. The room was half-dark, the only light from a green-shaded banker's lamp. Dean watched Sam tuck the Glock into the waistband of his jeans so it nestled at the base of his back, his movements self-assured. Then he stopped and spent too long staring at nothing. Dean thought of how Sam had frozen last night, that terrifying moment when his eyes had gone vacant. Shotgun aimed, but like he was a thousand miles and sixteen years away.

"Sam, are you..." Okay wasn't how Dean wanted to end that sentence. Of course Sam wasn't okay. But not less okay than usual, that's what Dean wanted to know.

"I keep thinking about it." Sam eyes moved from a far-off gaze at the window, to Dean, and he smiled with a bitter helplessness. "Shooting that thing when I was nine. Shooting Madison. Jake. Beheading Gordon. The way the priest and that girl looked when I killed them." He turned away, picked up the last box of ammo shells, and put it in the duffel bag.

Dean's throat went dry; he couldn't swallow. Finally, he found his voice, with the vague, desperate sense that he needed to drag Sam back, before he got lost. "I lied to you."

Sam's head snapped around. "What? When?"

"When you asked me if I remembered all my kills. I lied. I remember them." Dean zipped the bag closed. "I remember every one. But especially I remember the ones with human faces." He grabbed the canvas handle of the duffel and rose to his feet with it. "The rest of what I said is true. You can't let it eat you alive, Sammy."

Shit, what he'd give to erase the heaviness from Sam's eyes, but he had nothing left to barter or trade. He'd found a way around death but he couldn't find a way around the rest, and it was unfair, just fucking unfair.

"C'mon, Haley Joel." Dean put his palm against the back of Sam's neck, and Sam lowered his head, even leaned into the touch a little. "Let's go show that monster how we do things downtown."

---

A small circle of light in the corner of the room kept winking on and off in the darkness, revealing the pink glow of a hand cupped over a flashlight. That was Cal, sitting in a canvas sling chair. Dean wondered if she was bored, or turning the light on and off to comfort herself.

Bill sat next to Dean on the floor, a baseball bat in his lap, while Sam faced them sitting on the bed holding his shotgun. The guest room door and Tommy's door across the hall were open a few inches. Dean had the baby monitor on the rug next to him. The aluminum can trap was set, and beyond the door, Tommy was lying in bed with the blanket tucked all the way up to his chin, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

"For the record, guys," Bill whispered, leaning forward with hands gripping the wood of his Louisville Slugger, "my ex is a terrific person. She loves Cal and Tommy, and because of that, she would try to take them away from me if she thought I'd gone out of my ever lovin' mind."

"Dude, you don't have to explain." Dean leaned his head back against the wall, feeling the familiar curve of the shotgun stock beneath his fingers.

"I know. Guess I feel guilty for not calling her -- Cal and Tommy are in danger and she doesn't know. It's not right."

"Sometimes it's better not to know," Sam said, as Cal's flashlight blinked on and off again.

"Only way she wouldn't think you were out of your ever lovin' mind," Dean said, "would be if she actually saw the monster. And we don't have time for show-and-tell."

They waited, not talking anymore. The wail of a fire truck siren sounded far off. It faded.

Into the fresh quiet the jangle of aluminum cans knocking together sounded over the monitor and from across the hall.

Sam was through the door before Dean could get to his feet -- and he was lightning quick, but Sam was quicker. They bolted across the hall, Sam kicking Tommy's door so it banged open, striking the wall.

Near the closet, a shape moved. On the bed, Dean made out Tommy's form, hunched up against the headboard.

That was how he'd found Sam, all those years ago.

As Dean stepped up to join Sam at the foot of Tommy's bed, Bill smacked the switch on the wall, filling the room with light. Dean cursed and blinked, raising his shotgun to his shoulder as he waited for his eyes to adjust so he could fire.

When they did, Dean saw there was more than one monster.

Crap.

Three more, behind the first, slinking out of the closet like dark ink that had fur and claws and eyes, stinking up the place. Four of them, total, advancing towards the bed where Tommy looked like he'd crawl up the wall if he could to get away from them.

Shit, shit, shit. Dean fired, hitting the first one, while the other three surged past it. Sam got the next one, leaving two. Tommy screamed.

Things happened in a jumble that Dean had a hard time sorting out in his head later. Bill ran forward, bat raised, a yell scarier than any battle cry Dean had ever heard in the movies bursting from him. The bat came down on the third monster. Dean saw two more melt from the shadows among Tommy's clothes. Reinforcements, they'd brought fucking reinforcements. What, did the monsters have a friggin' meeting? We have a problem, Winchesters have been sighted in our territory, better call special ops... Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick.

Sam leapt up on the bed, standing over Tommy, protecting him, and fired. Then Cal was suddenly in the room too, wielding a baseball bat of her own. She got under Dean's feet, throwing him off balance for a moment. He grabbed for her, intending to push her back out into the relative safety of the hallway, but she got past him, launched herself at one of the monsters.

For a pitcher, she had an awfully good swinging arm. He heard monster bones crunch.

"Bill," Dean shouted, and Bill looked behind him and saw his daughter. He grabbed her arm, yanking her behind him, out of reach of a swiping claw, then hit the monster in the face with the bat.

Sam fired again, but one of them got too close, Dean let it get too close, and Sam missed. The creature leapt at Sam and they fell together off the far side of the bed, slamming against the wall. Feeling like he'd never be able to make a sound ever again for the rest of his pathetically short life, Dean shot the monster and was two steps into running around the bed to help Sam when he remembered no, protect Tommy.

One had grabbed the kid. Not to kill, not to shred. It hooked its lanky, hairy arm around Tommy, tucking him under with movements almost ape-like, and started for the closet with its prize.

Oh, I don't think so... but he couldn't shoot with Tommy held in the thing's arms. He saw Sam getting to his feet, tugging on the Darth Maul sheets to pull himself up, looking dazed with a bit of blood on the side of his face.

This was Dean's fault, completely his fault, for not anticipating, for assuming they had this under control...why? Because they'd dealt with one when they were kids? It was the fuckin' shtriga all over again.

Dean darted after the monster that had Tommy, and found two more in his way. He barely felt it as claws tore into him, ripping through denim into his calf, as Bill turned, and saw his son. Bill gripped Cal's arm, unable to leave her, while Dean fought off the monsters, to get past them and after Tommy.

It was like one of those nightmares Dean'd had all his life, where he was running as hard as he could but hardly moving -- a few times he was being chased by something big and dark and frightening. In most of the dreams, he'd also been running after Sam, to keep him from a harm he could never remember afterwards.

Moving along the outer wall, Sam leapt past them and tackled the monster that had Tommy, bringing it down. The thing's companions turned from Dean, going after Sam. Dean kicked the nearest monster in the jaw. The beast let out a yelp, tumbling backwards into the dresser, sending legos and action figures and erector set pieces to the floor. Before it could get up again, Dean shot it, then clubbed the other one with the butt of his shotgun, hard enough to knock the thing against the wall. That cleared their way, and before Dean could move, Bill let go of Cal and ran forward.

He grabbed hold of Tommy's leg, pulling while Sam wrapped his arm around the monster's neck, trying to strangle it. As Cal darted in, Dean put out a hand to stop her, but she ducked. The eyes of the one holding Tommy were closing, its long shaggy arms going limp. Cal kicked it in the ribs, and then Bill wrenched Tommy free.

Sam uncurled his arm from around the creature's neck, got to his feet, pushed the shotgun against the monster's head, and pulled the trigger. Blood spattered over the aluminum cans. The erector set construction was destroyed, pieces lying all over, mixed with legos and socks, all stained with monster blood.

Lying on his back with Tommy held in his arms, Bill struggled to sit up, and Cal hurried over, helping him.

"I thought I told you to stay away," Bill gasped out.

"I couldn't." Cal's face crumpled, a sob wrenching from her as her father pulled her into a one-armed hug.

He held her tightly to him, Tommy tucked close under his other arm. "I know," he said. "I know."

"Sam?" The blood was trickling in a thin line down his brother's face. Dean grabbed his shoulder, took Sam's chin in his hand, checking the damage.

"I'm okay." He stepped back and held his sleeve against the cut on his face. "Dean. Shit. Your leg." Dean looked down and saw the blood staining the denim. Felt like a hundred hot knives had jumped to life down there. Funny, how he hadn't felt it at all until now.

"Doesn't hurt," Dean said.

"Liar."

"You can keep them from coming back, right?" Bill said, voice gone hoarse as he held his children. "You can do that, right, you said you can do that."

"We can do that," Dean said, looking at the monster corpses lying on the floor among the toys.

Sam bent and grabbed what looked like a relatively clean cotton shirt from the floor. "Sit," he said to Dean.

Reluctantly, Dean sat on the edge of Tommy's bed, propped his leg on the mattress, and rolled up the cuff of his jeans. At Sam's sharply indrawn breath, Dean shrugged. "Hey, it's not that bad."

"Shut up," said Sam, wrapping the shirt around Dean's leg. "We'll have to get antiseptic on that, maybe holy water."

"What if the sigils fade?" Bill asked.

"Even if you paint over the sigils, they'll be there, underneath," Dean said. "Only way to get rid of them is to tear the house down, and if you do that, the portal's destroyed anyway."

"Oh." Bill looked from Tommy to Cal.

"Forever?" Tommy asked.

"We don't know for sure," Sam said, tying the shirt around Dean's calf. The white fabric was already staining with circles of blood. At least the cut on Sam's head looked like it wasn't bleeding badly. "A long time, though."

"Good," said Tommy.

---

It was going to be one big pain in the ass clean-up job.

Six monster corpses lay on the floor of Tommy's room.

"Could do an old fashioned dig-and-dump." Dean nudged one of them with the toe of his boot, and the monster's limbs flopped limply.

"Or take them to the city dump," Sam said, mouth turned down. The creatures reeked, even more in death. "They're small enough we can stuff them on the back seat."

"You want to put those smelly, bloody things in the back seat of my baby? Wait a sec--"

"We'll put them in garbage bags." Sam wrinkled his nose.

"They won't all fit in one trip." He spied a stuff animal, lying forlorn and blood-spattered next to the bed, a stuffed tiger that had seen better days. "Dig-and-dump in the back yard," Dean said.

Without knowing why, he picked up the stuffed tiger and put it on the chair. He was guessing Bill would wash it for his son rather than throw it away, monster blood or no monster blood.

Wouldn't this be a fun story for Bill to tell the grandkids. Rumors would probably get around the neighborhood, guess what I heard is buried in Andrews' back yard?

There had already been one frantic phone call for Bill to field. Yes, Mrs. Derkins, freaked my kids out. Big truck backfiring on Eastman Road....I nearly had a heart attack myself...oh, they should definitely maintain those things better.

"First things first." Sam got a hunting knife out of the duffel bag and crouched by the nearest corpse. He waited, looking up at Dean.

Dean had kind of assumed he'd be doing the blood-letting but Sam showed no hesitation. He seemed alert, sure of himself. So Dean got the empty glass jar they had ready, and knelt, his leg stinging in the fresh layer of gauze and bandage Sam had applied. Sam slit the monster's throat, and Dean pressed the lip of the jar against the fur, catching the blood that trickled out.

All it took was the blood of one.

"You want to?" Sam said, getting to his feet. The blood, darker and thicker than a human's, stained the blade of the knife; Sam dug a rag out of the bag and cleaned it off.

Then he put the knife away.

Dean handed Sam the jar and a paint brush. "Nope. This one's yours."

Sitting on the edge of Tommy's bed, Dean watched as Sam tugged the chain to turn on the closet light, put the jar on the floor at his feet, and stood with Dad's journal open in one hand, the blood-soaked paint brush in the other.

He worked with careful concentration, glancing down at the journal periodically, his back hunched a little. Slowly, the sigils appeared, circles, dots, curved lines and letters in languages long dead, the blood shining lurid under the bare bulb. The night Sam shot his monster, Dad had showed Dean how to slit the creature's throat, how to clean the knife after. Then Dean had watched as Dad painted the signs on the wall that would seal off the portal.

He wasn't sure how Sam knew how to do this, since as far as Dean knew, Sam had been tucked safely away in Dad's bedroom while they did the work. Yet Sam did the task the same way as Dad, same intense focus and sense of quietness, the line of his shoulder and incline of his head a clear message not to disturb until the job was finished.

---

Cal and Tommy were asleep in the family room when they came downstairs. As he followed Sam towards the kitchen, Dean paused to look in on them. This time, the kids were nestled up together on the couch, Cal's body curved around her brother, her back facing the room, an indomitable shape against all threats or intruders. Dean felt a small smile tugging at his mouth. All was right with the world.

In the kitchen, Sam was explaining to Bill what they wanted to do to his back yard. Bill gave them both a look that was more god, no one would believe this shit than horror or shock. This guy knew how to roll with the punches.

"Okay." Bill took a few bottles of water out of the fridge, tossed them to Sam and Dean.

"What're you doing?" Sam asked.

"Helping you. The work will be faster with three of us digging."

"You don't have to..."

Bill weighed the third water bottle in his hand like it was a free weight. "You think I was born a lawyer? I put myself through school doing handy work." He flashed a grin, and then his face went somber again. "Besides. My kids you saved. My house. My mess. And you--" he gestured from Sam to Dean, "--are both injured. I've got at least one shovel in the garage."

"We have our own." Sam nodded. "We'll meet you out back in ten."

They started the work around one a.m. The ground was still soft enough for digging, not yet hardened with winter, the feel of the shovel and the rhythmic sound of the blade crunching into soil solid and true. Bill's presence threw off the familiarity; it'd been Dean and Sam for a few years now, and for a while before that, only him and Dad. It made him think of the years when Sam's legs and arms had gotten too ridiculously long for his body, when he sulked and complained more than dug. The three of them in some cemetery in the middle of the night while Dad's temper worked itself up to a rolling boil, steeped in sweat and dirt, and Dean made as many smart remarks as he could to diffuse the tension.

This was easier, Bill making jokes, Sam chuckling, grinning at Dean. They'd won this one, Dean realized with a jolt of triumph. He laughed too, meeting Sam's grin. The ache in his leg made him slower, the pain growing more intense as the hours wore on but the work felt good.

It wasn't until they stopped that he really felt the burn in his calf.

"Dean?" Sam asked, forehead creasing.

"Fine." Dean took a few deep gulps of the bottled water, his head aching almost as much as his leg. "I'm fine."

And he was, at least for that night, for that moment, he really was, although he knew Sam wouldn't believe it and he hardly believed it himself. It wasn't that he thought some magical hoodoo force would make the deal null and void, just because he'd done a good deed. His life had never worked that way, he didn't expect it to. But he felt peaceful in a way he hadn't for a while, not since the high of those first few hours after they'd killed the yellow eyed bastard.

During a five minute break, Dean sat the back step, pulled out his cell and called the number he'd looked up online earlier. He left a message how the automated voice said he should, and hung up.

"What are you doing?" Sam said.

"Nothing. Just, y'know. There's an anonymous tip line to report unsafe construction sites." He finished off his water and chucked the bottle it into the big plastic bin.

"Oh. Good," Sam said softly. He sat down, bumped his knee again Dean's. "I mean...it could maybe help."

Dean flapped a hand, wondering if it really would. He felt disgustingly respectable, but his limbs ached too much for him to really think about it too hard.

They put the monsters in big garbage bags, and Dean thought how deeply screwed Bill would be if any sleepless neighbor happened to see the three of them wrestling what looked like dead bodies out into the yard, dumping them into a pit.

But the night was still, wind creaking softly through the trees. A wooden wind chime on the back porch of the next house over knocked a faint rhythm that set Dean off humming AC/DC.

---

He woke the next morning with sun hitting him in the face.

Dean's head felt foggy; it took him a moment to remember where he was, in Bill's guest room, on the fold-out couch that didn't bother his back. Oh, yeah.

After a quick shower, he'd changed the dressing on his leg himself before falling into bed, aches in every limb, feeling too warm.

A shadow fell over his face, a large shape blocking the light, and a large hand touched his forehead.

"You're not hot anymore," Sam said, peering down at him.

"I can find a hundred girls, right now, who will swear otherwise."

Sam didn't even roll his eyes at that, only tugged the blanket that Dean now realized had fallen halfway to the floor more securely over Dean. "You seemed a little feverish last night, but I think you're okay now. How's your leg?" Sam sat on the edge of the bed. He was already dressed, t-shirt and jeans and shoes, his hair tangled over the small bandage on his forehead. "And if you lie to me, I will kick your ass."

"You and what army?" He thought of lying, then looked at Sam. "Still hurts a little. But it's a dull throb, more than a burning pain." Dean pushed himself up on his elbows, his throat dry, and looked up at Sam. "You have any more flashback dreams, or weird dreams of any kind, or any more visions, you tell me right away, got it?"

"Sure, Dean, look, it's never happened before, just this one time and I think..."

"Promise me." His fingers closed tight around Sam's wrist as his brother tried to stand.

"Yeah. I promise." Sam said, and Dean held on longer than he'd intended, holding Sam's wrist too hard, wondering what else Sam was keeping from him, before he let go.

"We should hit the road today." Dean sat up, put his bare feet on the floorboards. Jesus, he wanted water even more than he wanted coffee.

He felt a tug in his chest that he hadn't expected, the sharp realization that, like all the others, he'd likely never set eyes on Cal or Tommy again.

---

Bill shook their hand, before Sam handed him a folded piece of paper.

"If there's any more trouble," he said. "Call us."

The front door was open to the afternoon, their duffel bags ready to go. Sam reached down for his, and staggered, completely unprepared when Tommy suddenly launched himself at Sam, flinging his arms around his torso.

"Hey." Sam chuckled in surprise and knelt down to return the hug. "Hey."

When Tommy stepped back, Cal more cautiously went up to Sam, who was still kneeling, and gave him a hug.

Dean was even less prepared than Sam had been when Tommy ran over and hugged him, hard enough that Dean found it a little hard to breathe. Then it was Cal's turn. She whispered "thank you" before she let go.

He didn't think he'd had that many hugs in such a short span of time since he'd been old enough to learn what all the dirtiest curse words meant.

As they headed down the front walk towards the street, Dean said, "Not one word, Sam. Not. One. Word."

They walked towards the car, Dean struck with how damn peaceful the neighborhood looked, as if six monsters had never touched it. That was often the way; Dean had learned not to trust the ordinary. That little house on the corner, with the old pine trees and the lawn gnome in the yard, could hide a dark thing in the basement, waiting to shred a life.

When they reached the car, Sam stopped abruptly. "Dean," Sam said, a desperate, sharp note in his voice, as Dean popped the trunk.

He stopped, watching Sam, bracing himself.

"If you can't read my fear anymore..." Sam shifted beneath the weight of his duffel bag. "It's not because I don't need--" He swallowed, then for a second, looked like that scared nine-year-old again. "I just..."

Six months to go, and then Dean'd be gone, and Sam would be on his own.

Dean dropped his duffel into the trunk, roughly, then reached out to take Sam's bag from him.

"Yeah." Dean slammed the trunk shut. "I know."

~end







+The amazingly talented dun created such beautiful artwork for this. Wow. *flails*
+A second nod to the awesome marinarusalka, smilla02 and luzdeestrellas for their suggestions, tweaking, and hand-holding. Any errors are my fault, not theirs.
+Also cake and scones for pheebs1, and to batyatoon and innie_darling who each listened patiently as I practically acted out one particular sequence with great enthusiasm -- and it never made it into the story.
+kimonkey_7 found the link about the insides of electronic devices and gnatkip reminded me about researchgrrrl's excellent post on EMF.
+As always, I relied on killabeez's series timeline.
+Excerpts are from The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss, published by Random House.
+I really love Monsters, Inc and hate that the Andrews can't ever watch it again.
+Also, as you might have already noticed, there's a running shout-out in here to a certain comic strip.
+This story (and my first SPN fic, Recoil) wouldn't have happened if a certain deleted scene had been aired in the Pilot instead of shown as an extra later on. Because it made no sense to me Dean could get back to Sam's apartment building that fast, I created a reason why.

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