Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: see Chapter 1
LIVING LA VIDA LOCA
Chapter 7
There was an eternal pause as reality exploded into shards and then reformed itself in a single eye-blink that lasted forever.
John's face was blank and bewildered as he stared at the teenager, but then he spoke softly, hesitantly, like a man vacationing abroad trying to buy a loaf of bread for the first time in unfamiliar, unused Holiday Spanish, "Dylan?"
The word seemed to make the boy, impossibly, angrier. "I suppose I should be grateful you remember that much. Yes, dad, it's Dylan. Cameron as I'm sure you've remembered."
"Clarksville." Dean suddenly said the word over his father's sad whisper. "You had a thing going with a bank clerk there for a couple of years…"
"Wow, brains as well as brawn," Dylan mocked, "you're not just an ugly face!"
For several seconds John continued to look dazed as though he was coming round from dental anaesthetic or something, but he finally seemed to focus on Dylan; his face became a mixture of yearning and hunger. "Dylan..."
"We've established that pops, try to keep with the program," Dylan sneered. "I gotta say when you reach sweet sixteen and your mom drops dead of a massive brain aneurysm it kinda does for your interest in scholastic achievement. Since CPS were only interested in dumping me in a foster home for two years until I was legally someone else's problem I declined their invitation to be institutionalised and came looking for my run-out of a deadbeat dad. In a way I'm glad we're finally at this point because two years of sleeping in a car does no good for your spine." He lowered his voice into a mock-conspiratorial hiss, "All those teenagers who do normal things like lose their virginity on the back seat of a car must be Olympic contortionists!"
John shook his head as if to clear it. "Two years…Dylan, I'm sorry it took so long to find me…"
Dylan laughed – a too loud, barking sound devoid of real amusement. But Sam missed his opening words because he couldn't hear over the sudden buzzing in his own ears. He remembered Clarksville only too well, for it had been the happiest period of his own life; John Winchester had used the little Midwest town as a base for several years – Sam had been 14 months old when they'd arrived and had been heartbroken when dad had uprooted them and left for good when he was 5 years old.
But Dylan had been looking for John Winchester since he was 16, two years ago, which meant…he was now 18-years-old. Dean was 26, Sam was 22 – but 22 minus 18 left you with…4. Dylan Cameron was not an unexpected surprise, nor had been even just a suspicious tummy bump when John Winchester bodily carried a loudly protesting Sam and deposited him in the back seat of that old rust-bucket clunker…Dylan Cameron had been one-year-old when John Winchester left Clarksville forever.
Sam's hearing cut back in, unsurprising since he was at the centre of things, unfortunately literally, as Dylan spat out, "Don't flatter yourself, old man, I've been on your ass for the past ten weeks, the only reason I didn't find you straightaway is because I made the mistake of looking for you in all the sensible places."
Sam flicked a glance at Dean; his brother's face was empty…calm and unmoved as a chiselled stone angel, his eyes flat, incredibly as if a new brother was of no interest to him. Dad…was clearly floundering. Sam knew from experience that John Winchester did not articulate his real feelings well – he should know, he was the same, which was probably why his childhood with the man had been one long fight.
Okay – Hostage Negotiation 101, attempt to achieve a rapport with the whack-job holding the gun… "What do you mean sensible places?" He risked precious air on the question via his constricted windpipe and snapped his teeth together as the gun ground warningly deeper into his temple.
But the kid answered with another bark of sound masquerading as a laugh. "I knew about you, pops, every schoolyard bully was happy to fill in the bastard kid; not only was my dad a loser but he was nuts. He ditched the mongrel to go hunting boggits and bogeymen with his real two sons; the perfect ones born to Mary Winchester."
"Boggits are dangerous. Their claws are poisoned. One scratch and it's sayonara," commented Dean as if this were some upper-class Mothers' Union Tea Circle discussion on the merits of begonias versus azaleas.
Sam choked as Dylan's arm tightened convulsively round his throat and he bent all his telepathic abilities towards mentally urging Dean to shut up.
"So I didn't think I had a problem," Dylan taunted John Winchester. "The reason it took me so long to pick up your trail is because I spent the first three months checking every psycho ward and loony asylum in North America…I seriously expected to find you in every one I visited. I even ended up wasting a trip to New York on your scent."
"I've never been to New York," John replied automatically, looking at the boy in confusion as if it were finally dawning on him that they might have a problem here.
"Duh, I know that now," Dylan retorted, "and by the way, you owe me $187 airfare plus tax for that waste of time. But at the time I thought it was a hot lead – you're famous, dude," he drawled with false excitement. "This hotshot New York psychiatrist wrote a New York Times bestseller on the four stages of grief – shock, anger, denial and acceptance – and how people can get 'stuck' in one of the first three. You should read it; it's worth…at least half of the cover price at any rate."
"Dylan, I…" John blinked rapidly as he tried to make sense of the snarled words.
The kid glared at him, "You really have no idea…You're the primary case study for Section 3 on Denial, pops." Dylan smirked at the older man's obvious confusion. "Professor Redwall went on for a dozen pages explaining how your inability to accept that your wife's death was a meaningless but tragic accident led to you creating an elaborate fantasy world populated by fantastical monsters, demons and gods in the eternal war of good and evil."
"What?" muttered John in shock, showing the first signs of getting a grip.
"I read that book in Chicago at breakfast and I was on the plane to New York in the evening. I thought Professor Redwall was the man…I pretended to be a psych student agog at meeting the great man. I let him waffle forever then asked him what it was about his treatment of John Winchester's delusions that made the doc choose him as his case study over similar patients…that's when he became a little less verbose and co-operative." Dylan snorted, "So I did a little B & E on his office after dark and it turns out the good doctor never met you. He stumbled across that crazy website exposé on you and your two sons here; all he did then was get hold of the newspaper articles from Lawrence covering your wife's death and made the whole thing up as he went along, the naughty boy."
Sam struggled to keep the tension from his own body as Dylan loosened his hold slightly; not that that was necessarily a good thing. He wasn't holding Sam as viciously but his agitation was increasing. Sam could feel the tremors from the kid's body as Dylan held him; the boy was running on rage and while that was powerful fuel, it befuddled the mind and left you exhausted and prone to doing extremely stupid things – just like the last time Sam had been stuck in this situation, with his own alter ego Max Miller in Dylan's place.
"I suppose there's some cosmic irony in that on the day I decide to call it quits, I look up out of the window of the diner I'm to keep out of the rain, and who do I see walking across the street to a battered old rust bucket but my father. I spent $100 on that taxi to follow you to your motel and you never spotted me your rear-view mirror."
"Dylan you could have come…I'm happy that you found me…" John tried to speak.
"How could I have!" Dylan yelled for the first time, "I spent three days working myself up to walking up to that motel room door and trying to see if I could connect with my out-where-the-buses-don't-run father, and what happened? One night you go out to this house and some freak thing with tentacles straight out of the Alien franchise tries to make you into calamari! I'd spent years bracing myself for a deadbeat drifter with serious reality issues who was more Jack in The Shining than John Walton, and instead I find 'crazy John Winchester' is living La Vida Loca, because there really are monsters under the bed and something you do not want to know about living in your closet."
"Dylan, I wanted you and your mom to be safe –" John said earnestly, raking a step forward, only to freeze as Dylan forced Sam's head back cruelly.
Sam looked straight at Dean. He wasn't relaxed, but he wasn't terrified either. Sam did not expect Dean to be able to save him regardless of any odds, but he did have absolute faith in that Dean would always do everything within his power to protect him. Dean locked his eyes with his brother, seeing the acknowledgement of his own silent order to be ready.
"No you didn't!" Sam winced as Dylan yelled an inch from his ear. "What you didn't want was the son who wasn't the kid of perfect Mary. You took her sons everywhere with you on your Jack Kerouac tribute; you barely let them out of your sight, while all I got was a good view of that old sedan's rusted trunk disappearing down the blacktop for good."
"Dylan –" John winced the embittered denunciation – truth he was unable to deny.
Dylan was uninterested in reasons or excuses, only punishment, wilfully ignoring the lines on his father's weary face. He pressed the gun muzzle hard against Sam's temple as he taunted, "Tragic isn't it, pops? Twenty years ago you saved him but now you can't –" he smiled as John's face went grey with anguished fear as he curled his finger round the trigger.
"No he didn't." Dean contradicted as calmly as if talking about some trite irrelevance such as whether it had rained yesterday.
"What?" Dylan snapped out; his eyes flicked to the 'other one', the one he'd dismissed as little more than the 'smart-mouthed muscle' sidekick to John Winchester's 'special', favoured son.
"Dad didn't save Sammy from the fire," he reiterated, "I did."
And the shot echoed around the parking lot.
Continued in Chapter 8…
© 2006, C. D. Stewart