She always knew she'd see him again; the kind of irrefutable, indescribable knowing that makes it easy to fall asleep at night because you're going to wake up in the morning.
This kind of knowing excited and frightened her all at once, like he was always just around the corner, and she imagined Dean showing back up one day, imagined the three of them trying to have a life together. He'd give up hunting monsters and get a job in town, something that filled the void but left him home nights with them. He'd man the grill while she tossed a salad in the kitchen. She'd forget the cupcakes for Ben's class and Dean would drop them off at the school for her. Ben would ask for a pet and they'd argue, because cats are easy but dogs are fun and he'd come home late from work one night with a Golden Retriever puppy named Max. They'd fight, laugh, make love and watch movies under a blanket with a bowl of popcorn.
Silly, girlish daydreaming, because she didn't even KNOW him, and he'd already told her that wasn't his life. They have a history, and a connection, but not enough between them for him to try to see what it means. They'd slept together when she was still a teenager, when she was an undergrad earning money teaching yoga on the weekends at the YMCA and trying to stick it to her dad by screwing anyone who bought her a movie ticket or a bottle of Boone's Farm, and their weekend together didn't involve much talking or getting to know one another. She was just one in a line of easy women and he didn't want to leave an impression, but he did, the kind that kept her one-upping her girlfriends' stories of old one-night-stands years later. And he saved her kid, and that was something that was going to need repaying one day.
They moved, and she changed jobs. She went on dates but only introduced one guy to Ben and nothing lasted more than a couple of months. Took some night classes during Ben's afterschool practices to make up for what she left unfinished when she found out she was pregnant, and they soldiered on.
A couple of times over the years Ben would catch her stopped in the middle of the living room and staring listlessly out the window at the street outside.
"What's wrong, Mom?"
She'd snap out of it, shake her head and tousle his hair, continue upstairs with the laundry basket. "Nothing, kiddo." Halfway up the staircase she'd realize she'd been listening for the rumble of the classic engine she'd heard more times in her daydreams than in real life.
Then the knock in the middle of the afternoon and there was no question as to who it was; she saw the car before she opened the door. Something about what he said, the way he looked at her that day made her start to believe that things she'd imagined had actually happened. They DID have something, and he DID care about her and her son. He wanted to be happy and needed them to do it.
He left her with that same exhilarating mix of fear and excitement he always had, since he first held open the door of the Impala. Told her goodbye and to take care of herself like those were the last words he'd ever speak but still she knew that wasn't it, knew she'd see him again.
She makes Ben stay home from school for a couple of days after Dean's visit, chews her thumbnails down to unattractive stubs while flipping back and forth between local and national news on the television. They're close enough to Chicago that she starts to lose her shit when those reports air, but then everything seems to blow over, and the sky doesn't fall. She's still worried about Dean and his cryptic warnings but decides Ben can go back to school, but not on the bus and she has him take her cell phone.
The landline is ringing when she returns home from dropping him off, and she scoops it up as her purse drops to the table. "Hello?"
"Lisa Braeden?"
"Yes," she replies hesitantly, and pulls the receiver away from her ear long enough to confirm she doesn't recognize the number, or even the area code. She mentally runs immediately through the latest utility and credit card statements, reaffirming herself that she'd paid everything on time. The male voice on the other end of the line is no-nonsense but not in a professional way, and in the time it takes him to speak again, she's eliminated the possibility of a bill collector but not of bad news. Telemarketer, maybe, but then there's a sigh of relief.
It's unexpected, and the man's exhausted tone of voice is a mystery. "Thank God, I've been calling every Lisa Braeden in the damn – he with you?"
She frowns, heart skipping a beat as she downshifts into Worried Mother gear. "Ben is at school…"
"No. Dean. Is that jackass with you?"
She rocks back on her heels, caught off-guard by the abruptness of the question and the mention of his name. "No," she stammers. "I mean, I saw him a couple of weeks ago. He came by and said…but, no, he isn't here now." And then, lastly but not necessarily as an afterthought, "Is he okay?"
"If he's not there now, he will be soon enough. He left my place a few days ago and he ain't answerin' my calls. Ain't picking up for anybody, the way I hear it. I figure you're about the only stop he's liable to make."
"Who is this?"
"Bobby Singer. You got caller ID, Lisa?"
She glances instinctively again at the handset's screen. "Yeah."
"When he shows up, can you call me at this number?"
"Yes, of course, but how do you know – "
"The boy idolizes you, and he's lost his…he's just lost right now. Don't tell him when you do it, but you call me when he gets there. And then you take care of him."
It's not until Lisa hangs up the phone that she realizes he never answered her question.
She whips open the door and the crisp, evening spring air outside hangs heavy with an immediate, acrid scent of body odor and the tang of sweet, sweated alcohol. "Dean."
It's the first time she's been frightened without also being excited to see him. There's something wrecked and REAL about the situation this time and this isn't the reunion of her daydreams. The warning call was never part of her daydreams. There are no rosy, hazy edges about the scene unfolding outside of her home.
He does little more than fall into her, and she barely gets her arms up in time to catch what little weight of him her body will support. She staggers back, thanking those years of yoga and Pilates for staying upright.
"It's okay," she says, because she's a mother and that's what you say. This is more than a skinned knee, though, and whatever he's been through will need more than a Band-Aid.
He's been driving for a while, wherever he's coming from, if he did come from that guy Bobby Singer's. Beyond his hunched shoulders she can see his muscle car at the curb, the same car he'd had when he picked her up in that bar over ten years ago.
Just got it from my dad, he'd boasted, cool and cocky and knowing he was the kind of guy who got what he was after. Wanna see how she rides? She'd not only gone for that ride, but returned the favor.
He doesn't seem sure of himself now, for maybe the first time, and might be drunk already even as he asks if he can still take her up on that beer. He's hesitant to do so, doesn't want to invite himself in and has made a statement to that effect by parking the car at the curb, not in the driveway.
It's touching, the small gesture that means, I'm doing this right. "And then you take care of him," she hears in her head, reminds herself what she owes him, and pulls gently at the sleeve of his faded leather jacket. "Come inside."
It's late enough and Ben's in bed. She gets him that drink, a pathetic offering of pomegranate-flavored vodka because she doesn't actually have any beer in the fridge.
"That's okay," he says. He tries to smile but his face isn't up to it. "Thanks."
He sits in the kitchen for hours because that's how long it takes him to get the story out, staring out into the yard with red-rimmed eyes and a plate of pepperoni pizza rolls she nukes in the microwave because he looks like it's been days since he's eaten.
After a while he stops talking, just sits there and she doesn't know if his awful story is over or if he just can't go on speaking about it any longer. There's a faraway look in his eyes, like he's somewhere else entirely and she keeps her distance, afraid if she comes up behind him he'll pop up swinging.
He doesn't have to ask to stay; she'd told him he could, but that was more than two years ago, and she'd been at one of the low points on the axis of peaks and valleys of loneliness. She sinks into the chair across the table and waits for him to look up.
His eyes meet hers, and he hasn't tried to touch her or kiss her but there's only one question there. She frowns, can't give him the answer he wants no matter how badly she might want to. "I'll make up the couch."
He laughs, a hollow choked sound, embarrassed, even. He looks immediately to the bottle of vodka but he'd run it dry over an hour ago.
She swallows. "Look, I don't want to give you the wrong impression of what this is." Knows she has already, leaving that door open in the first place and then letting him cross the threshold. If he came to her under any other circumstances, if he'd stayed with her last time, or the time before, but not like this. Not when he's drunk and she's the last thing he has left and she's not even something he really has.
He stares at the empty glass in his hand. "I don't have any kind of impression of what this is," he lies in a low, utterly beaten voice.
"Good. I'm here for you, and I owe you more than I can ever repay, but I have to think about Ben. My son is the most important thing to me, and I can't have you..."
"I get that." Because he's broken right now, because he's lost the most important thing to him.
She softens, reaches over and squeezes his hand in a truly affectionate way. "I know you do. I'll get some blankets for the couch."
She had every intention of asking him to be gone before Ben got up for school, of asking him to come back in the afternoon so she could figure out what she was going to tell her son, but that wasn't going to happen. It was practically dawn before Dean drifted off into a restless slumber on the couch, and she wasn't going to wake him after only two hours, not with the state he was in. It's never a great idea to have your pre-teen son walk in on a strange man snoring in your living room, though, so she calls Ben into her bedroom as soon as he wakes for school.
She quietly closes the door and wraps her thin robe tightly around herself, head pounding from adrenaline and too little sleep, herself. "Sweetie, do you remember Dean?"
"The guy with the awesome car? Yeah."
The guy with the awesome car. Isn't that just how she'd described him to her friends? "Well, he's having a rough time right now and he's gonna stay with us, while he gets things figured out."
"Why are you telling me right now?"
"He's sleeping downstairs. He's only staying here as a friend," she adds, making sure everyone in the house is on the same page.
"A sex friend," Ben mumbles, and her cheeks flush.
"Benjamin."
"Where's Sam?"
"Sam…had an accident."
"Is he dead?"
She supposes it's better he gets these questions out of the way now, with her, and not later with Dean. "Yeah, he is."
Dean sleeps until one in the afternoon and when he wakes she forces him into the shower. In the otherwise silent house, she pads downstairs and pushes buttons on the handset, goes through the caller ID until she finds the number.
"'Lo?"
"Mr. Singer?"
"Lisa?"
"Yeah. Dean's here. He showed up last night, just like you said."
"How is he? He talking about doing anything stupid?"
"No," she says quietly, stepping further away from the staircase. "He's…he's fine."
Another rough sigh of relief from this man to whom Dean seems to mean so much. "That changes, you call me before anyone else, got it?"
"Yeah. Got it."
The first time she thinks she may be in over her head.
It's not like they fall right into anything. She doesn't want to be that kind of girl ever again, not even for him. They share something, obviously, and Lisa feels that, but she doesn't know what it means. She's said some things she can't take back, and made some promises she has to keep. She's on the owing side here, not the owed.
It's a fairy tale in her head and he's a prince on her porch, but a couple of days in she's realizing how off the mark her fantasizing has been. He's not riding a white stallion but a black car, big and loud and aggressive, and those are all words to describe Dean, himself, and she didn't think he'd be dragging himself back to her on the worst day of his life.
He sleeps, mostly, and doesn't talk much those first few days. His cell phone rings a lot, and she remembers Bobby Singer saying he wasn't picking up for anyone. She wonders if he's told anyone he's here with them, knows the answer, and there's something inside of her that's flattered he's taken off from everything and everyone to hole up with them. He never answers the phone but can't seem to bring himself to just shut the damn thing off. Puts in a cabinet, leaves it in the garage, lets the battery run out but charges it up just to let it go unanswered all over again. Like he's waiting for someone specific to call and Lisa is terrified that it's Sam he's waiting for. Sam, the only person who could somehow make everything better and worse all at the same time.
She cashes in the vacation days she was planning to use to take Ben to Cedar Point this summer, and on the third day he gives her what is either a genuine smile or a really good show of one and says, "I'm okay, really. I'll be fine if you leave me alone for a few hours." Like she's got him on suicide watch, and maybe she does. She has a habit of getting him back just in time to lose him. When she leaves he kisses her on the forehead, and she closes her eyes as she leans into it. "Thanks," he whispers.
She was worried at first about the cost of feeding three people over two, but that's a moot point because while she puts dinner on the table every night he won't eat anything, won't even push food around his plate. There're always brown paper bags and empty pints in the garbage can outside, and she knows it should bother her, that he's going through the trouble of hiding how much he's drinking, but then she has the presence of mind to remind herself that they're practically strangers.
He's starting to look gaunt and pale, and everything she used to be attracted to is gone, including his sense of humor and confidence. She tells herself over and over, that's not what this was supposed to be about.
Then the young girl inside of her who remembers years of daydreams tells her, that's exactly what this was supposed to be about.
"You okay?"
"Yeah. I'm good." He's staring out the window, finally sips the glass of whiskey he's been holding for ten minutes. She's gotten used to having hard liquor in the house that isn't for mixing with Sprite, and he's not hiding it anymore. Something comfortable is growing between them, like they aren't strangers anymore and never really were.
Lisa follows his gaze and sees the streetlight at the end of the road winking in and out, nothing out of the ordinary, but she's not the one who sees ghosts at every street corner. She drops into the chair next to him and spoons up a serving of potatoes for Ben, drops it onto his plate while bringing up as casually as she can, "They're hiring at the body shop on Wiley Street. I saw a sign in the window."
He coughs on the mouthful of whiskey, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Nah, that's okay. I don't think cars are really my thing anymore."
They eat, even Dean, who is still mostly quiet but not so ghostly, in a tense silence until Ben gets the picture, wolfs down his last few bites and waits for his mother to notice. "Why don't you go work on your homework?" she prods with a meaningful look.
Lisa takes a big gulp from the glass of wine by her hand and rubs the knot in her neck that seems to be a permanent fixture now, waiting for the sound of Ben's bedroom door closing upstairs. "You said you were going to find a job."
"I am."
"Well, you've shot down every suggestion I've had all week. I'm running out of ideas. I don't mean to be a bitch here, Dean, but it's not like you've got a lot of options."
Something about that causes him to laugh, a long low chuckle that makes him sound older. "No, I don't, do I?"
This was supposed to be fun, and wonderful. She didn't want a project.
She kicks him out once, two weeks in. He still hasn't found a job but things are going pretty well until he starts to venture out into town, gets shitfaced in a bar, picks a fight and comes home in handcuffs in the back of a police car.
Take him in, she almost tells the officer. You've got a drunk tank, right? Let him sleep it off.
"And then you take care of him." She hears the order in her mind, and instead she tells him it's okay. No, he doesn't have the wrong the house, and yes, she can take it from here.
"This is not what we talked about," she tells Dean, ignoring the black eye and pouring more wine and pacing in the kitchen and wanting to yell but Ben is asleep upstairs.
"'M'thorry, Leeth," he mumbles, still stumbling-drunk and through a split lip.
She shakes her head, flattens a palm on the countertop. She hasn't made it this far as single mom by giving into every "sorry" that's thrown her way, and for a moment she thinks, Fuck it, to the orders of a stranger. "I want – I need you out of here." It doesn't look like she's going to get what she wants, so she's switching to need.
He doesn't fight, and she lets him sleep it off on the couch. He never graduated to an upstairs sleeping arrangement, and he's gone when she wakes up, a simple note that repeats "I'M SORRY, LISA" on a stack of folded blankets.
He calls before she's decided what she's going to tell Ben, and she's happy he does.
"I fucked up," he tells her, in a sober, honest, and stripped-bare way she'd love to believe he only has with her. "I'll get it together. That won't happen again."
He tells her he found a job with a construction crew, the strip mall they're putting up on Third Street. "I need to make this work."
His need and her need don't go hand-in-hand and in the harsh light of day she can see her future. Her parents waited to divorce until she was just old enough to understand what was going on. Just old enough to study the different things threats and promises can get a person. She learned how to win an argument, a fight, how to get the response she wants and keep someone from walking out and what to finally say to force them to go.
He needs her, and she cares about him in a way she's yet to define, and while they figure out what everything between them means, she could really use the money.
The construction gig turns out to be a real job, something he'd never tried his hand at but does well. He buys a truck off the neighbors with his first two paychecks and throws a tarp over the Chevy. His father's car, she remembers, watching him box up everything that came before her and Ben. He stands in the garage staring at the bulky blue shape and she walks up behind him, puts her arms around him because it's what feels right. He leans into her, pulls her around and kisses her with feeling, and there's no more sleeping on the couch.
It was such an odd way to start a relationship. The only things they really have to offer each other are half-assed ideas of safety and sameness.
He promised to give up his hunting but can't stop protecting them. He's haunted by the things he's seen and the worse things he imagines. The shotgun Lisa can understand. Her father was a cop and she's no stranger to guns in the house, but she balks at the jar of holy water under the bed. There's something too far off the map about that one.
"It's for protection. You don't understand what's out there."
"There was a creature living in my house, impersonating my son and trying to slowly suck the life out of me. I think I have a good idea about what's out there."
He wipes a hand over his face, and the scratch of his rough palm over three days' beard growth is audible in the otherwise silent room. "That's just one thing, Lise."
He must have been having nightmares all along, but she doesn't notice until he's lying next to her, until she wakes in the middle of every night to his shouts and pleas and warnings. The screaming and sobbing. She wakes him, calms him down, then puts him back to sleep the only way she knows how.
The other moms from Ben's baseball team think she's lucky, disgustingly so. They tell her all the time in a bitchy tone played off as joking: their husbands are losing interest and not trying anymore and it's just not fair that she had Dean show up one day, looking like he does and carrying chairs for them and mowing the lawn and winking as they drive past. They never forget to add that last part, and of course he's charming with her friends; that's the kind of guy he was and is and always will be and there's no switch for something like that.
There are days it's almost normal, almost everything her mother told her she'd thrown away when she'd refused to shack up with Ben's father. Dean always comes home from work on time and she always has dinner on the table and Ben stays in the kitchen doing math homework while she washes up and Dean meets the neighbor for a beer. They make love and watch movies under a blanket with a bowl of popcorn, and it's almost perfect and easy and just like she'd imagined, and Lisa sometimes forgets how they got here.
He can't go a day without a drink, and that's how she remembers.
There's a voice in her head, always reminding her that she isn't really what he wants. He was lonely and lost and she's just the slut who opened the door and offered her bed. Still just as stupid and easy as she was in high school. There's no switch for something like that.
She'd been lucky enough to get knocked up by someone who hit a rough patch but ended up with a good job, put them in a nice house in a safe neighborhood and Ben in a good school better than she'd ever have been able to do on her own, but those support checks only went so far, and the paychecks Dean brings home help out.
She feels like a horrible person when she has those thoughts, but can't stop the unwanted feeling that no matter how hard they try, Dean is temporary, and her son is forever. On those days she feels like no more than a lonely, desperate person who opened her door to another lonely, desperate person on her doorstep. Took in a stray that happened to promise to help put food on the table for her kid, and wasn't bad in the sack. It's not like guys are knocking down your door when you've got an eleven-year-old.
Some days it seems like he means it, all of it, and it doesn't feel like their entire life together is a lie.
Then Sam comes back, and she knows it's over.
If she's really honest with herself, she always knew it wouldn't last. He was just a place holder, and walking him back from the edge and giving him something to believe in was something she could do to feel good about herself.
Dad left a hole when he died but Sammy left a crater. A canyon.
In hindsight it seems like he'd have crammed anyone in the crater just to feel whole again, and she didn't deserve everything he brought over the threshold with him. Not all monsters have claws and horns.
It doesn't matter what Sammy's last wish for him was; his first clue that this was a horrible idea was when she said "I've got to get to work" and he didn't know what that meant. Where work was for her. Dental hygienist, she tells him, pretending not to be annoyed. She went back to school after the ordeal with the changlings.
"I'm not saying don't be close to Sam. I'm close to my sister. But if she got killed, I wouldn't bring her back from the dead!" she'll say eventually, and God, how many times did they have this fight?
Dean, glassy-eyed and ten steps past SAD into DISTRAUGHT and he only has one play when he gets that far. Digging through old IDs for a photo rip off, with a beer, a glass whiskey, a shot of vodka, telling her he's done it before and he could do it again. Lisa, trying to cover disgust and unhappiness with support and affection, pulling him back from the brink because she didn't want to go down with him and her son with the both of them.
Ben caught him in Lisa's bedroom the first time, and then the kid stayed at friends' houses at lot in the following weeks, prompting phone calls from parents and even more arguments. Dean did what he could for Ben, took care of him like he was his own but he never really knew what that meant, has spent the last few years dissecting his relationship with his own father and the experiment of it was hit or miss. Some days they really hit it off, they'd work on the truck or throw a ball in the park. Some days Ben would snap and scream and tell Dean he wished he'd never come back. And sure, Dean could understand all of it.
As for Lisa, well, their relationship was never really that, was a lie from the jump, toxic and tainted with Dean's self-destructive need to be needed and his even more unhealthy need to protect SOMEONE and his ever-present conscience telling him to DO WHATEVER SAMMY NEEDS YOU TO DO. Something they had in common, as she seemed to be operating under the same driving force.
"I know what I signed up for." She kicked him out once but that was her rote response to everything that happened after. After he put his fist through a wall. After he spazzed out with her friends over for dinner. Defending herself for sticking around as long as she did, because no one else was. It was duty that kept her from kicking him out again, nothing more. God knows he gave her one reason after another. People stared and her friends pitied her, and she swallowed it all like a trooper and lied for him, told the neighbors he'd been deployed and just got home and that turned the disgusted looks into sympathetic ones, but he doesn't deserve it. He didn't deserve any of it.
It wasn't love between them; neither those words nor feelings were ever really exchanged. There was attraction, and familiarity, and they enjoyed pockets of time where they felt content and like a couple, but Dean was always itching for a fight. He'd lock up for the night, and part of him hesitated, welcomed the idea of an intruder. Break a window, motherfucker, see how far you get. He WANTED it. Weapons case gathering dust in the garage but always with a loaded shotgun under the bed. Just in case.
He knew it wouldn't last.
He doesn't know how alive he'd truly feel if it did.
Author Notes: Think this doesn't sound like me? Join the club! I'm the President of What the Hell are You Writing Now, Chrissie? This one is completely on NaNoWriMo, because this started as 600 words in the middle of another story and became this because I made myself sit down and write all day. A writing exercise, if you'd like.