Title: Breaking From Abeyance
Pairing: Rachel/Dean
Category: Action/Adventure/Angst
Summary: On a dangerous hunt, Rachel finally meets John Winchester and helps Dean come to a realization about his own complicated relationship with his father and his future with Rachel as the three Winchesters team up together to defeat an enemy with links to their pasts.
Timeline: This story is written loosely around the events surrounding the last few episodes of Supernatural Season One. Assume One Tree Hill seasons 1-3 occurred the way they normally did. This story roughly follows the events of "Reflections Road" and is in the same canon 'verse.
Disclaimer: Eric Kripke owns Dean and Sam from Supernatural, Mark Schwann owns Rachel from One Tree Hill. I obviously don't own anything, so please don't come file litigations.
Dedication: This chapter goes out to Kara, who's been looking for an update for a while. :) I hope you keep writing "Someone to save you", which is one of my favorite R/D fics!
*
Rachel turns around to look as a middle-aged man suddenly opens the door and climbs into the backseat besides her. He has a grizzled and bearded face and the look of someone who hasn't been able to sleep that well in the past few days. She's heard Dean call him "Dad", but she doesn't find Dean's defined good looks in this stranger's face, nor does she find Sam's kind eyes and expression.
"Who are you?" The stranger turns to look at her in confusion. This question catches Rachel off guard since she's still processing the fact that she's meeting Dean's dad, so she quickly composes herself and manages to say with a bit of poise,
"I'm Rachel."
"What are you doing here?" The next question comes more rapidly, and Dean steps in.
"Dad, Rachel is my girlfriend." Their eyes meet in the rearview mirror for a moment, and Rachel is reassured by how firm and sure Dean sounds.
"Dean," John starts but then decides to let it go. The father and son exchange what seems to be an indecipherable look to Rachel for a moment, and Rachel sees a hint of disappointment in Dean's expression momentarily, and then it's gone.
"Dad, what're you doing here?" Sam finally breaks the slightly awkward silence in the car.
"Daniel Elkins was a friend of mine. He was a good man." John Winchester says briefly by way of explanation, before turning back to Dean in a businesslike manner. "Dean, did you find anything in that postal box?"
Dean wordlessly hands over the envelope they've collected, and Rachel glimpses briefly that this exchange and interaction must be so familiar to both John and Dean, probably a result of years of hunting and working together. John opens the letter and begins to read aloud,
"If you're reading this, I'm already dead..." He reads the rest of the letter in silence, his face growing in concern as he finishes through the letter. After what seems like an eternity, John directs another question to Dean.
"When you were searching his house, did you find Elkins' gun? Did you see an antique gun anywhere? A colt revolver?"
"Sammy saw the case, Dad." Dean replies and John's face seems even grimmer than before.
"If the gun's missing, they must already have it. We've got to pick up the trail." John muttered.
"They?" Sam asked. John gives a swift glance to Sam, as if to say, 'you should know this by now', and simply replies,
"Vampires. Most of the mythology is wrong about them. They aren't scared of garlic but they're fierce creatures and they still need fresh human blood to survive. You won't know it's a vampire until it's too late."
Dean nods as if this makes complete sense to him but Rachel still feels like she's catching up. When she, Dean, and Sam went hunting together, Dean took the time out to train her and to also explain things to her, and Rachel had learned to appreciate that, even if it meant facing a steep learning curve and an occasional overload of information. But now, Rachel just felt like a spectator, seeing as John had basically sidelined her from the conversation. She knew that Dean loved and worshiped his father, but Rachel was beginning to feel a little left out of things. It didn't help that John had a way of barking out brief questions and the entire interaction had more of a military feel than the bantering and collegial feel that she, Dean, and Sam had developed. Seeing as she was still quite out of her depth, Rachel decided to keep quiet and keep observing- for now.
"Wait, I thought they were extinct," Sam stops. John shakes his head to indicate no, and he and Dean seem to have this unspoken agreement. Dean moves his hands towards the keys, but Rachel is just as lost as Sam seems to be. One thing Rachel Gatina has always learned growing up though, was to fake it until you made it, and in this moment, she can keep her cards close to her chest until she can figure out exactly what is going on without showing any outward signs of anxiety or scepticism, unlike Sam.
"It's getting late," John announces gruffly. "Why don't we find a motel and you boys can get some rest. We're going to be hunting vampires and they're a lot tougher than the movies would have you think."
Dean wordlessly starts up the Impala again, and Sam has an unsettled and unhappy expression on his face, but it's subtle. John gives some further directions about where they'll meet up at the motel since he's brought his own truck, and Rachel feels like they've all been dismissed from a class by a teacher. Dean doesn't say anything to her for now; he just has a thoughtful expression on his face. As they drive towards the motel John's mentioned she stares out into the dark night, but she can't help but feel apprehensive and she wishes that Dean wasn't so far away from her, both physically and emotionally at the moment, even if she rarely admitted to needing him like that.
*
Rachel is woken up by a terse exchange by John and Sam. Stirring slightly, she felt Dean's warm arm immediately withdraw from her waist as he gets up from the bed that they've been sharing and Rachel remembers that the three of them had been getting some sleep while John had been sitting intensely at the desk and listening to the radio band.
"We have to go now," John was saying, already putting on his shoes and jacket. Dean shrugs on his jacket like he's done this a thousand times, but he waits for her while she puts her jacket on and double checks that she's got everything she needs. Instead of checking to make sure she has her cell phone and her credit card and her lip stick like she would back in Tree Hill, she's checking to make sure she's got her Swiss Army knife tucked into her belt, the tiny gun in its holster that almost seemed like a toy which was a present from Dean a few months back for completing a difficult hunt, and her cell phone and wallet in her bag, along with a bottle of holy water and her lip gloss, since not all of the old Rachel had been left behind.
John and Sam are still talking about the police call that John's been able to pick up on his radio band, and how it could be the work of vampires. John gives Rachel another undecipherable look, as if trying to observe the dynamics for her and Dean, but Rachel refuses to be intimidated by his stoicism. She had seen John raise his eyebrows slightly when he had seen she and Dean immediately take the same bed (out of habit), and Rachel wondered if he had been even more surprised by how she and Dean were used to snuggling together when sleeping. It was like John was seeing another side of his son that he had never seen before. Rachel snaps back to attention when John asks,
"So we're all ready to go?"
"Yes, sir," Dean replies and Rachel's surprised to hear that. She's never heard Dean be so agreeable to any kind of authority but Rachel supposes that there's a lot of things about her boyfriend's relationship with his father that she doesn't know about. She dutifully follows them out the door, and she can't help but notice that a lot of the tricks in hunting that Dean's picked up are probably from John. She's heard snatches of conversation between Sam and John and Dean about a possible car accident out on a lonely stretch of the highway, an abandoned vehicle, and two missing people. Sam seems doubtful, almost sceptical, and his voice holds a bit more of an edge than usual. Sam is usually the calm one in the group, the one moderating Dean's desire for action and occasional recklessness, and certainly her own impulsiveness and willing to dive into situations, so to see him be the doubtful one certainly throws off the balance of the hunt for Rachel.
An hour or so later, right before the break of dawn, they manage to track down the site. John's off investigating the site of the incident, while the three of them are standing by Dean's Impala. Usually they're all quite hands-on about investigating the scene of a hunt, but they're waiting here on John's instructions. Sam is shaking his head like he can't believe the situation, and Dean is quiet and dutiful, something that Rachel isn't quite used to seeing. She can't read the expression on his face right now- it's as if he's taken the effort to carefully school his features, and this is unusual for Rachel, given that Dean's handsome face is usually so expressive and Dean opens up to her in ways that he's never opened up to anyone. Rachel's shivering slightly in the cold air, drawing her jacket closer around her, and Dean wordlessly moves over closer to her to let her share in his body heat, and her fingers find his and they very quietly hold hands. Rachel wants to talk to him and ask him about why Sam is acting this way, but she gets the sense that Dean isn't really up for talking about it right now, so there isn't much she can do. John's barely said anything to her since they've met up with him, and Dean hasn't been his boisterous and outgoing self since this whole thing started.
"I still don't see why we can't go over there with him," Sam says, eyeing John out of the corner of his eye.
Dean gives an exasperated sigh. "Sam, don't start."
Rachel wants to jump in and say that she agrees with Sam, but she knows Dean well enough by now that this isn't the best time to start an argument with him.
"So, what've you got?" Dean asks John, who's coming back up. He's forgotten that they're still holding hands, so when he swings around to face his father, he's inadvertently displaying their intertwined fingers and John's gaze flicks down again for a moment, and not a second more.
"It was definitely the vampires. We've got to head back west and head around that detour."
"How can you be so sure?" Sam challenges, his normally kind chestnut eyes holding a bit more spark and fire than Rachel's used to seeing.
"Sam," Dean says that one word like a father who's sick of explaining everything, and Rachel hardly ever sees this behaviour from him.
"I just want to know we're going in the right direction," Sam defends himself.
John hands over what looks like a molar over to Dean, who releases his hand from hers to look at the tooth closely. Immediately she feels colder, but she mentally scolds herself and tells herself to concentrate on the hunt and task at hand.
"It looks like a fang," Dean remarks.
"It's just a tooth. The second set descends when they attack," John responds automatically as he's heading towards his truck. "Anymore questions?"
Before John closes the door, he throws one more remark back to Dean.
"Dean, why don't you touch up your car so it doesn't get rust? I wouldn't have given you the damn thing if I'd known you could ruin it."
Now she sees the eye roll on Dean's part. Dean didn't let anybody talk about his Impala that way, and sometimes Rachel even jokingly wondered if he loved the car more than he loved her. After John drives off, there is quite a visible tension between the three of them left standing there.
Sam's driving the Impala this time, and Rachel's relegated to the back seat as Dean is reading aloud the habits of vampires.
"I guess that's what Dad's thinking," Sam shrugs. Rachel's eyes meet his in the rearview mirror, but Sam looks away.
"Of course that's what he's thinking- that's what Dad told us," Dean's voice is slightly snippy. "So it is starting?"
"What?" Sam's reply is terse.
"Sam, we've been looking for Dad for a whole year and now we've been with him for a couple of hours and there's static already?" Dean replies back. Rachel really doesn't want to be in the middle of a Winchester argument right now so she decides to stay out of it. Of course, since John's joined them, she's felt like she's been pushed out of this as far as possible, and Rachel doesn't like feeling unwanted. It just reminds her of how far behind in hunting she is compared to Dean, and how much harder she has to work just to stay by his side and stay helpful and relevant to him, because deep down inside, she's still afraid that one day he'll realize that he doesn't need her and it's probably more dangerous for him to worry about an amateur and he'll leave her, and that thought breaks Rachel's heart. Every time that kind of thinking enters her mind, she immediately shoves it aside since it's still too painful to deal with- she loves Dean with an intensity and passion that she's never had for anyone, and Rachel knows she would fall apart without him.
She snaps back to attention when she hears her name when Dean and Sam are now talking about John's methods and they're in disagreement.
"He barks orders at us, Dean, and he expects us to follow them without question. He keeps us on some crap need-to-know basis and don't tell me you haven't noticed how he sidelines Rachel? Rachel's never been so quiet in the entire time I've known her and you're just letting Dad sideline her without saying a word." Sam throws back. Dean gives his brother the "don't go there" look. It's been an unspoken rule that the two brothers never put Rachel in the uncomfortable middle and use her as an argument chip ever since Rachel's joined them on the road, and up until now, the rule's never been broken.
"He does what he does for a reason." Dean satisfies himself with that answer, but Rachel suddenly feels hurt. It's bad enough that she's sidelined by John, but Rachel notices how Dean evades the question about her, and that hurts her more than anything.
"What reason?"
"Our job- there's no to argue, alright? There's no margin for error. It's just the way the old man runs his business." Dean defends John, his eyes gazing up in annoyance at Sam.
"We're not kids anymore, Dean, not after everything we've been through. Are you telling me that you're okay with just falling in line and letting him run the whole show?" Sam asks Dean, and Dean's quiet for a moment looking at Sam, before finally responding in a voice that's hesitating between reluctant and sure,
"If that's what it takes."
Several moments later, Dean's gaze meets hers in the rearview mirror, slightly apologetic and ashamed, but Rachel tears her gaze away because she can't bear to look at him right now. Instead, she looks out at the woods outside of her window, trying to blink away the beginning of a tear that's beginning to form.
*