Introductio in Analysin Daemonium Infinitorum (SPN-FNL) 1/12
Title: Introductio in Analysin Daemonium Infinitorum pt 1
Fandom: SPN-FNL
Pairing: Sam/Tim (Sam/Tim/Dean in a few places)
Rating: Adult (Here there be smut!)
Length: 50k words
Author's Note: This is the cleaned up master version of a story I began writing for MiniNano back in November 2007. The plan was to finish it and post it before the end of S3 of SPN and S2 FNL -- obviously that didn't happen.
Thank you to![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
tartysuz and ixchel55 for their swift beta.
Legalese: SPN and FNL are copyright their respective copyright holders. This work is a labor of whatiffery, not a labor of lucre.
"So, I'm still looking into that -- Jesus, boy! Put that damn thing down! You do not want to be letting what's trapped in there out! Don't you know any better than to wander around picking stuff up -- especially stuff around here? Are you sure you played Tight End and not Dumb Ass?"
Sam heard some muffled snickering in the background. He'd heard from some other Hunters that Bobby had picked up two new Hunters-in-training on a trip to Texas.
"Uh, sorry 'bout that, Sam." Bobby cleared his throat. "I'm still looking into that thing. But short of putting you-know-who into a you-know-what, I don't think we're going to find a quick and easy answer to that question."
Fuck. Sam sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Um. So, is that your new Hunters? The ones I've heard about?"
"What about them?" Irritation laced the reply.
"Oooookay. That tells me a lot right there."
"Well, now, they're not bad kids, Sam, the problem is, they're both just kids. Kids who stumbled into this whole thing by accident and then bit off way more than they can chew."
"So, tell me about them. I mean, if they're working with you, Dean and I are going to meet them and I'd like to know a bit about what to expect."
A long pause followed. So long Sam thought his phone had dropped the call.
"Well ..." Bobby finally said, "you know how your dad and I didn't quite see eye to eye on how he was raising you boys?"
"Yeah, I remember." And boy did Sam ever. It had almost come to blows between his dad and Bobby on a few occasions.
"I'm now walking a mile in his shoes --"
Oh.
" -- and damned if he wasn't righter about keeping you boys in hand than I ever dreamed."
Sam felt himself smile in spite of everything as he replied, "Oh, is that so?"
"Landry, he's a good kid, bright, when he's not wandering around my workshop picking up stuff at random. Got a motormouth, too, but you only got to show him something once, maybe twice, and it's done. He likes math. Can quote the Bible, chapter and verse, too.
"The other one, Tim. He's ... Dean, only without the training. He's loyal and got a good kind of cunning, and a good heart, too, but I'll be damned if he doesn't have a real knack for just stumbling into shit up to his eyebrows. That boy chases so much skirt, I had to check to see if he wasn't an incubus. Eats like he has a hollow leg, too."
"I love you, too Bobby," Sam heard a voice with a soft Texas accent say in the background. "Even if your beer is watery."
"What?! Tim -- that's my special reserve!"
"Really? 'Cause it's pretty weak. Tastes like it's been watered down."
Sam had to clap a hand over his mouth to hold the snickers back.
"It has been. I put holy water in it."
"Wow. Does that mean it washes your sins away as you get drunk?" Pause. "What? Just thought I'd ask."
Bobby made several inarticulate sputtering noises as he struggled to find words.
"I see you've got your hands full. I'll keep in touch," Sam said as he hung up and started chortling with laughter.
"What's so funny?" Dean asked.
Sam looked at him and grinned. "I think Bobby has met his match." Pause. "That, or Dad hexed him from beyond the grave."
~oo(0)oo~
The first time Sam and Dean met Bobby's protégés, they were working on John's old truck.
An almost towheaded blond kid sat on a stool next to the tool box, a book in his lap and another on the ground, while his companion was bent over the engine compartment.
They both looked over curiously as Sam and Dean parked the Impala and walked up the drive.
"That's our dad's truck you're working on," Dean said in a weirdly flat voice.
"Yup." The guy with the do-rag tied over his hair and the socket wrench in his hand replied. "And a year or so spent sitting in an impound lot didn't do it a damn bit of good."
"So, who said you two could work on it?" Dean asked, an edge in his voice. Sam laid a warning hand on his arm, but Dean shrugged it off. Dean knew how to fight, but this guy, though about Dean's height, looked built. Not muscle bound like a bear, but sleek and powerful, like a panther. Not a guy you wanted to tangle with, untrained or not.
Do-rag shrugged. "Bobby said to get it running again."
The blond carefully set the book aside and stood up, holding out his hand, he said, "Hi, before this gets any further, I'm Landry, and this is Tim."
Sam took it. "Sam Winchester, and this is my brother, Dean."
Tim held up his oil blackened hands and said, "I'd shake, but as you can see, your dad's truck -- which is hexed up six ways from Sunday, by the way -- pissed all over me." Sam could see his eyes, hazel, but more honey colored than brown, like a cat's. They had a sort of devil-may-care gleam in them, too; this Tim didn't give a shit what Sam or Dean thought about him tinkering on Dad's truck. So yeah. Sam could see how Tim reminded Bobby of what Dean had been like at that age. He probably thought he was damn near immortal, too.
"Bobby's expecting you guys," Landry said.
Sam was on the porch when voices floated up from the drive.
"What are you waiting for, Lando, start reading."
"Which one?"
"That Chilton's manual for witches thing."
Sputtering noises. "The Malleus Malefacarum is not a Chilton's manual, Tim!"
"Whatever. Less talking, more reading."
"'Chilton's manual for witches'." Dean said, eyebrow raised, as soon as they got in the door.
Bobby actually laughed at that. "He's just saying that to get Landry's goat. Tim's actually brighter than he lets on. What can I do you for?"
"Dad's truck?" Dean asked, crossing his arms and slouching against the table.
Bobby took his cap off and ran his hand through his hair before replacing it. "Yeah. Well, it's a good truck, and I figured John would want it going to use, seeing that Tim's truck was destroyed and Landry's car -- oh, it's a doozy of a story -- and," his voice took on a hint of desperation, "I needed a project that would take awhile and keep them both occupied. You. Have. No. Idea. what those boys can get up to when left to their own devices."
"Yeah," Sam added, deciding to let Bobby off the hook, "I overheard something from some other Hunters about a Succubus."
Bobby buried his head in his hands and groaned long and loud before laughing almost hysterically. "He wore her out."
"What?!" Sam and Dean said in unison.
"Amazingly enough Tim's a real stickler for safe sex. Insisted on using a condom every time, wouldn't come in her mouth, went down on her while he was waiting for it to come up again -- she got nothing off of him."
"Except several mind-blowing orgasms," Tim said from the other side of the screen door, as he wiped his hands clean with the degreaser and a shop rag.
"Tell 'em the rest of the story, Bobby," Landry said, book tucked under his arm, "because that's never not funny."
Tim shot Landry a perturbed look.
Bobby laughed even harder and said, "Alright. Yeah, so, I caught him and her going at it in the back of the Chevelle at a motel outside of Salina, and I saw instantly what she was -- because somebody completely failed to notice the red glint in her eyes -- and broke it up, and she's got such Jello legs by then that she didn't put up much of a fight when Landry and I pitched her in the trunk. And I asked Tim how long they'd been going at it and how many times he's come and --"
"You were impressed, admit it," Tim said as he stepped through the door into the room.
Bobby shot him a dark look and continued, "Well, I came to what seemed like the logical conclusion based what I'd just been told and I looked at him and said 'Christo' and he looked right back at me and said --" Bobby opened his eyes wide and shifted to a slow drawl "-- 'Oh, no sir, anything grease or oil based will make a condom break, even I know that. Besides, she wasn't having any problems in that department.'"
Out of the corner of his eye, Sam noted that Dean was laughing even harder than he was at the story.
Tim threw his hands in the air. "So, I thought he was saying Crisco -- it's an honest mistake. I mean,really, do I look like the kind of guy who knows Latin?"
"No, no you don't." Dean shook his head and smiled as he wiped a tear from his eye.
"So," Bobby said, drawing in a deep breath, "You see some of what I've been dealing with the past few weeks."
~oo(0)oo~
That night, as he was heading down the hall to the front room -- Landry and Tim shared Bobby's spare bedroom -- Tim stepped out of the bathroom and stopped him, his voice soft, husky. "Bobby's told us a lot about your dad and what happened. Finding that truck and getting it out of impound -- it was important to him."
Sam nodded.
Tim continued, "What I'm trying to say is, Landry and I are going to fix that truck right and we're going to take good care of it, no matter what."
Sam nodded again, then said, "I don't know how long Dean and I are going to be here -- probably not long -- but Dean's going to be a bit tetchy about it. He and Dad, they were real tight."
Tim nodded solemnly.
"He might want to help you, he might not. But ..." Sam felt his mouth twitch up at the corner, "if he lets you touch his Impala, that means you've passed."
Tim gave him a strange half-smile in return. "Got it."
~oo(0)oo~
God, he's ripped, Sam thought as Tim moseyed into the kitchen, clad in a pair of boxer briefs despite the chill in the morning air, helped himself to a pile of pancakes and a heaping spoon of eggs and tucked in.
Tim didn't say much, just ate, and then he showered -- his hair still looked kind of greasy, but not sleep tangled when he came back down the hall clad in a pair of ratty overalls and a shirt, parked one of Bobby's ball caps bill backwards on his head, and headed straight for the truck.
After breakfast, Sam tried to take Bobby aside and talk about what, if anything, he had discovered in the interim, but he was an idiot and let slip that he had offed the Crossroads Demon and that just lead to another yelling match with Dean. Landry had vacated the room at some point; Dean slammed the front door behind him and roared away in the Impala when it was over, and Bobby skewered him with a look and then said he wanted to be alone to think about something for awhile. Sam sank down to the couch and tried not to give into despair.
Finally he decided that he ought to go see what Tim was doing to the truck, because talking to him might help him put his mind off the fact that in another few months he was losing Dean.
(No, it wouldn't, because that was always there, 24-7, but at least this would move it to the back burner for awhile.)
His boots crunched loudly on the dirt and gravel of the driveway. Tim's legs stuck out from under the side of the truck, and Landry sat next to the toolbox, once again reading from the Malleus Malificarum, or as Tim had called it last night as he did a set of shoulder curls, "Witches for Dummies". (Bobby was right, Tim liked to wind Landry up.)
"Hey, Lando, want to hand me that 5/8 wrench?" came Tim's slow drawl.
"I'm not Landry, but I'll hand it to you," Sam said.
Pause. "Thanks."
Sam crouched and passed the wrench into the waiting hand.
A few minutes later Tim swore and then crawled out from underneath. "The more I look at it, the more I'm certain the gasket's bad. I thought maybe things had come a little loose -- that would explain some of the leaking I'm seeing, but nope, those bolts are on there, mother tight." He scratched idly at his hair through ball cap. "And since we're going to have to pull the engine to fix it and that means stripping everything else out of the compartment down to the block, want to help me pull the radiator so we can ream the crap out of it?"
Sam smiled, "Can do."
Turns out, they made a pretty good team despite the fact that automotive repair was not Sam's strength. "So," Sam asked when they took a break on the porch about two hours later with a couple of Cokes, while the radiator, battery, and alternator rested on a worktable "how'd two kids like you get into Hunting?"
"Dumb fucking luck," Tim replied darkly. "For me, it all began with finding a watch and putting it in my pocket."
"It really begins with me," Landry said, his voice a little raspy from reading. "So, last year, on a cold, shitty, rainy night, I'm supposed to meet Tyra --"
"My ex-girlfriend," Tim interjected.
"-- And help her study for her algebra test. Only my piece of shit car wouldn't start and my parents were at the football game, so I couldn't borrow theirs. So, Tyra got tired of waiting for me, thought I had blown her off, and left the restaurant for her truck and this creep jumped her, tried to rape her. She fought him off, and," Landry drew in a deep breath. "I got there about five minutes too late. Story of my damn life.
"I made her go down to the police station and file a report. And ... nothing for about nine months. And then -- and then --" Landry's breath grew shuddery.
"He came back," Tim said, voice stony.
"Started stalking Tyra," Landry continued, somewhat calmer. "So, about two and a half months ago, Tyra called me because she's scared, thinks there's an intruder in her yard, and I came over and all I found was a skunk in the bushes, so we started watching a movie and she said she wants to go on a munchies run, so we got in my car and went.
"Her family was persona non grata at the country market we ended up at, so I went in and he jumped her in the parking lot, tried to drag her into his car; I tried to pull him off and he threw me off, and I reached back and my hand closed around something and I came up swinging with it.
"It was a piece of pipe -- cast iron, not PVC -- and I cracked him hard," Landry touched the back of his head where skull joined spine "right there."
Sam's eyes widened. Because Tim looked like the kind of guy who should be telling this story, not clean-cut brainiac Landry.
"And then we panicked and did something really stupid." Landry gave a heavy sigh. "Because that bastard died about five seconds after he hit the ground, instead of running into the store and telling them to call 911, or even driving to the hospital with his body, we drove out to the bridge on County Route 9 and pitched him into the river." Landry drew a deep, shaky breath.
"It wouldn't have made a lick of difference, Landry," Tim said. "Not for what happened later."
"It would have, Tim," Landry said, tears in his voice, "because if we had never put him in my car, you'd never have been brought into it. You'd still -- and Coach would -- the whole thing never would've --"
Tim shook his head. "Done is done, Landry. Like Billy always says, 'Wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills first.' Besides," Tim snorted bitterly, "my life in Dillon was going nowhere fast, so really, I've just stepped sideways." He paused and smiled wryly. "Though I am dying for a beer right now."
A long silence followed.
Tim spoke again. "So, like I said, for me, it began with finding a watch.
"My best friend, Jason, he broke his neck last year in the season opener, and then he got it into his head to go down to Mexico and have this experimental surgery thing with shark stem cells --"
Sam couldn't restrain a snort of laughter when he heard that.
"Yeah, I know, sounds like something out of The Twilight Zone. So, I went down with him. He needed somebody to watch his back, and I figured, a week in Mexico with Jay --"
"Only, you kinda sorta didn't bother to tell anybody where you were going or what you were up to," Landry cut in.
"They'd just've said no. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. Anyway, so we went, and I realized that Jason really meant to do this and even after it was pretty clearly a rip-off, and I called our ... friend ... Lyla --"
Landry snorted at the mention of her name.
"Shut up, Landry. Not a word about Lyla. Not a word." Tim's voice bristled with menace. He shook himself and went on, "And Lyla and I eventually ended up convincing Jason that it was stupid and we returned home. And the first thing Coach Taylor did was kick me off the team when I showed up for practice that afternoon. And, well, my brother, Billy, was wicked pissed at me, too. He'd been worried sick; I guess I didn't think he actually cared, because we'd been fighting before that on account of him ...never mind, it's not important ... so Billy kicked me out. And Jason's parents sure as hell weren't going to take me in. They somehow blamed it all on me, and I'm the one who saved Jay's fucking life." Tim guzzled at his coke and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "And I was on both of Lyla's parents' shitlists for ... well, I was on their shitlists and they weren't going to let me stay until Billy and me worked things out. Also, I spent most of the summer being a drunk asshole more or less, and Tyra was pissed at me and told me to leave as soon as I showed up on her doorstep."
"Serves you right," Landry said.
"Yeah. Yeah, it does," Tim agreed wearily. "So I went and knocked on the only other door I could think of. Coach's. And I told him and his wife, Tami, that I had nowhere else to go. They --" Tim's voice crackled with emotion, "took me in. And after I got done telling them what had really happened in Mexico, how Jay was so fucked up and even tried to kill himself at one point, Coach said I could get back on the team as soon as I got my grades right. But until then, I couldn't even show up to practice. Athletic conference rules.
"So school was over for the day and Jason and I decided, what the hell, let's go fishing off the bridge for old time's sake. We used to do it as kids and I stopped by my house, saw that Billy wasn't in, slipped in the back door, borrowed a six pack and the tackle box and off we went. And we're on the bridge, lines in the water, when Jason dropped the damn bottle opener --"
"Jason's a quadriplegic, doesn't have full use of his hands," Landry explained.
"Yeah, so, the thing is, the bottle opener was attached to my key chain, and neither of us heard it splash in the river, so unless we found it, we were going to have a hell of a long walk home. That, or I was going to learn to hotwire a car on the spot. So I started looking around and see that it's fallen through a place where the blacktop crumbled away and you can see into the underpinnings of the bridge. My keys are hung up on a bit of rebar. And next to it, and down a few inches, resting on a girder, I see a watch. So, I snagged them both and noticed that the watch had Landry's name engraved on the back, so I put it in my jeans so that I could give it to Landry the next day.
Tim took a long, shuddering breath as he looked up, eyes glistening with unshed tears. "And that is how I brought the ghost of a serial rapist into a house with three women in it."
---
Part Two
Fandom: SPN-FNL
Pairing: Sam/Tim (Sam/Tim/Dean in a few places)
Rating: Adult (Here there be smut!)
Length: 50k words
Author's Note: This is the cleaned up master version of a story I began writing for MiniNano back in November 2007. The plan was to finish it and post it before the end of S3 of SPN and S2 FNL -- obviously that didn't happen.
Thank you to
tartysuz and ixchel55 for their swift beta.Legalese: SPN and FNL are copyright their respective copyright holders. This work is a labor of whatiffery, not a labor of lucre.
"So, I'm still looking into that -- Jesus, boy! Put that damn thing down! You do not want to be letting what's trapped in there out! Don't you know any better than to wander around picking stuff up -- especially stuff around here? Are you sure you played Tight End and not Dumb Ass?"
Sam heard some muffled snickering in the background. He'd heard from some other Hunters that Bobby had picked up two new Hunters-in-training on a trip to Texas.
"Uh, sorry 'bout that, Sam." Bobby cleared his throat. "I'm still looking into that thing. But short of putting you-know-who into a you-know-what, I don't think we're going to find a quick and easy answer to that question."
Fuck. Sam sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Um. So, is that your new Hunters? The ones I've heard about?"
"What about them?" Irritation laced the reply.
"Oooookay. That tells me a lot right there."
"Well, now, they're not bad kids, Sam, the problem is, they're both just kids. Kids who stumbled into this whole thing by accident and then bit off way more than they can chew."
"So, tell me about them. I mean, if they're working with you, Dean and I are going to meet them and I'd like to know a bit about what to expect."
A long pause followed. So long Sam thought his phone had dropped the call.
"Well ..." Bobby finally said, "you know how your dad and I didn't quite see eye to eye on how he was raising you boys?"
"Yeah, I remember." And boy did Sam ever. It had almost come to blows between his dad and Bobby on a few occasions.
"I'm now walking a mile in his shoes --"
Oh.
" -- and damned if he wasn't righter about keeping you boys in hand than I ever dreamed."
Sam felt himself smile in spite of everything as he replied, "Oh, is that so?"
"Landry, he's a good kid, bright, when he's not wandering around my workshop picking up stuff at random. Got a motormouth, too, but you only got to show him something once, maybe twice, and it's done. He likes math. Can quote the Bible, chapter and verse, too.
"The other one, Tim. He's ... Dean, only without the training. He's loyal and got a good kind of cunning, and a good heart, too, but I'll be damned if he doesn't have a real knack for just stumbling into shit up to his eyebrows. That boy chases so much skirt, I had to check to see if he wasn't an incubus. Eats like he has a hollow leg, too."
"I love you, too Bobby," Sam heard a voice with a soft Texas accent say in the background. "Even if your beer is watery."
"What?! Tim -- that's my special reserve!"
"Really? 'Cause it's pretty weak. Tastes like it's been watered down."
Sam had to clap a hand over his mouth to hold the snickers back.
"It has been. I put holy water in it."
"Wow. Does that mean it washes your sins away as you get drunk?" Pause. "What? Just thought I'd ask."
Bobby made several inarticulate sputtering noises as he struggled to find words.
"I see you've got your hands full. I'll keep in touch," Sam said as he hung up and started chortling with laughter.
"What's so funny?" Dean asked.
Sam looked at him and grinned. "I think Bobby has met his match." Pause. "That, or Dad hexed him from beyond the grave."
~oo(0)oo~
The first time Sam and Dean met Bobby's protégés, they were working on John's old truck.
An almost towheaded blond kid sat on a stool next to the tool box, a book in his lap and another on the ground, while his companion was bent over the engine compartment.
They both looked over curiously as Sam and Dean parked the Impala and walked up the drive.
"That's our dad's truck you're working on," Dean said in a weirdly flat voice.
"Yup." The guy with the do-rag tied over his hair and the socket wrench in his hand replied. "And a year or so spent sitting in an impound lot didn't do it a damn bit of good."
"So, who said you two could work on it?" Dean asked, an edge in his voice. Sam laid a warning hand on his arm, but Dean shrugged it off. Dean knew how to fight, but this guy, though about Dean's height, looked built. Not muscle bound like a bear, but sleek and powerful, like a panther. Not a guy you wanted to tangle with, untrained or not.
Do-rag shrugged. "Bobby said to get it running again."
The blond carefully set the book aside and stood up, holding out his hand, he said, "Hi, before this gets any further, I'm Landry, and this is Tim."
Sam took it. "Sam Winchester, and this is my brother, Dean."
Tim held up his oil blackened hands and said, "I'd shake, but as you can see, your dad's truck -- which is hexed up six ways from Sunday, by the way -- pissed all over me." Sam could see his eyes, hazel, but more honey colored than brown, like a cat's. They had a sort of devil-may-care gleam in them, too; this Tim didn't give a shit what Sam or Dean thought about him tinkering on Dad's truck. So yeah. Sam could see how Tim reminded Bobby of what Dean had been like at that age. He probably thought he was damn near immortal, too.
"Bobby's expecting you guys," Landry said.
Sam was on the porch when voices floated up from the drive.
"What are you waiting for, Lando, start reading."
"Which one?"
"That Chilton's manual for witches thing."
Sputtering noises. "The Malleus Malefacarum is not a Chilton's manual, Tim!"
"Whatever. Less talking, more reading."
"'Chilton's manual for witches'." Dean said, eyebrow raised, as soon as they got in the door.
Bobby actually laughed at that. "He's just saying that to get Landry's goat. Tim's actually brighter than he lets on. What can I do you for?"
"Dad's truck?" Dean asked, crossing his arms and slouching against the table.
Bobby took his cap off and ran his hand through his hair before replacing it. "Yeah. Well, it's a good truck, and I figured John would want it going to use, seeing that Tim's truck was destroyed and Landry's car -- oh, it's a doozy of a story -- and," his voice took on a hint of desperation, "I needed a project that would take awhile and keep them both occupied. You. Have. No. Idea. what those boys can get up to when left to their own devices."
"Yeah," Sam added, deciding to let Bobby off the hook, "I overheard something from some other Hunters about a Succubus."
Bobby buried his head in his hands and groaned long and loud before laughing almost hysterically. "He wore her out."
"What?!" Sam and Dean said in unison.
"Amazingly enough Tim's a real stickler for safe sex. Insisted on using a condom every time, wouldn't come in her mouth, went down on her while he was waiting for it to come up again -- she got nothing off of him."
"Except several mind-blowing orgasms," Tim said from the other side of the screen door, as he wiped his hands clean with the degreaser and a shop rag.
"Tell 'em the rest of the story, Bobby," Landry said, book tucked under his arm, "because that's never not funny."
Tim shot Landry a perturbed look.
Bobby laughed even harder and said, "Alright. Yeah, so, I caught him and her going at it in the back of the Chevelle at a motel outside of Salina, and I saw instantly what she was -- because somebody completely failed to notice the red glint in her eyes -- and broke it up, and she's got such Jello legs by then that she didn't put up much of a fight when Landry and I pitched her in the trunk. And I asked Tim how long they'd been going at it and how many times he's come and --"
"You were impressed, admit it," Tim said as he stepped through the door into the room.
Bobby shot him a dark look and continued, "Well, I came to what seemed like the logical conclusion based what I'd just been told and I looked at him and said 'Christo' and he looked right back at me and said --" Bobby opened his eyes wide and shifted to a slow drawl "-- 'Oh, no sir, anything grease or oil based will make a condom break, even I know that. Besides, she wasn't having any problems in that department.'"
Out of the corner of his eye, Sam noted that Dean was laughing even harder than he was at the story.
Tim threw his hands in the air. "So, I thought he was saying Crisco -- it's an honest mistake. I mean,really, do I look like the kind of guy who knows Latin?"
"No, no you don't." Dean shook his head and smiled as he wiped a tear from his eye.
"So," Bobby said, drawing in a deep breath, "You see some of what I've been dealing with the past few weeks."
~oo(0)oo~
That night, as he was heading down the hall to the front room -- Landry and Tim shared Bobby's spare bedroom -- Tim stepped out of the bathroom and stopped him, his voice soft, husky. "Bobby's told us a lot about your dad and what happened. Finding that truck and getting it out of impound -- it was important to him."
Sam nodded.
Tim continued, "What I'm trying to say is, Landry and I are going to fix that truck right and we're going to take good care of it, no matter what."
Sam nodded again, then said, "I don't know how long Dean and I are going to be here -- probably not long -- but Dean's going to be a bit tetchy about it. He and Dad, they were real tight."
Tim nodded solemnly.
"He might want to help you, he might not. But ..." Sam felt his mouth twitch up at the corner, "if he lets you touch his Impala, that means you've passed."
Tim gave him a strange half-smile in return. "Got it."
~oo(0)oo~
God, he's ripped, Sam thought as Tim moseyed into the kitchen, clad in a pair of boxer briefs despite the chill in the morning air, helped himself to a pile of pancakes and a heaping spoon of eggs and tucked in.
Tim didn't say much, just ate, and then he showered -- his hair still looked kind of greasy, but not sleep tangled when he came back down the hall clad in a pair of ratty overalls and a shirt, parked one of Bobby's ball caps bill backwards on his head, and headed straight for the truck.
After breakfast, Sam tried to take Bobby aside and talk about what, if anything, he had discovered in the interim, but he was an idiot and let slip that he had offed the Crossroads Demon and that just lead to another yelling match with Dean. Landry had vacated the room at some point; Dean slammed the front door behind him and roared away in the Impala when it was over, and Bobby skewered him with a look and then said he wanted to be alone to think about something for awhile. Sam sank down to the couch and tried not to give into despair.
Finally he decided that he ought to go see what Tim was doing to the truck, because talking to him might help him put his mind off the fact that in another few months he was losing Dean.
(No, it wouldn't, because that was always there, 24-7, but at least this would move it to the back burner for awhile.)
His boots crunched loudly on the dirt and gravel of the driveway. Tim's legs stuck out from under the side of the truck, and Landry sat next to the toolbox, once again reading from the Malleus Malificarum, or as Tim had called it last night as he did a set of shoulder curls, "Witches for Dummies". (Bobby was right, Tim liked to wind Landry up.)
"Hey, Lando, want to hand me that 5/8 wrench?" came Tim's slow drawl.
"I'm not Landry, but I'll hand it to you," Sam said.
Pause. "Thanks."
Sam crouched and passed the wrench into the waiting hand.
A few minutes later Tim swore and then crawled out from underneath. "The more I look at it, the more I'm certain the gasket's bad. I thought maybe things had come a little loose -- that would explain some of the leaking I'm seeing, but nope, those bolts are on there, mother tight." He scratched idly at his hair through ball cap. "And since we're going to have to pull the engine to fix it and that means stripping everything else out of the compartment down to the block, want to help me pull the radiator so we can ream the crap out of it?"
Sam smiled, "Can do."
Turns out, they made a pretty good team despite the fact that automotive repair was not Sam's strength. "So," Sam asked when they took a break on the porch about two hours later with a couple of Cokes, while the radiator, battery, and alternator rested on a worktable "how'd two kids like you get into Hunting?"
"Dumb fucking luck," Tim replied darkly. "For me, it all began with finding a watch and putting it in my pocket."
"It really begins with me," Landry said, his voice a little raspy from reading. "So, last year, on a cold, shitty, rainy night, I'm supposed to meet Tyra --"
"My ex-girlfriend," Tim interjected.
"-- And help her study for her algebra test. Only my piece of shit car wouldn't start and my parents were at the football game, so I couldn't borrow theirs. So, Tyra got tired of waiting for me, thought I had blown her off, and left the restaurant for her truck and this creep jumped her, tried to rape her. She fought him off, and," Landry drew in a deep breath. "I got there about five minutes too late. Story of my damn life.
"I made her go down to the police station and file a report. And ... nothing for about nine months. And then -- and then --" Landry's breath grew shuddery.
"He came back," Tim said, voice stony.
"Started stalking Tyra," Landry continued, somewhat calmer. "So, about two and a half months ago, Tyra called me because she's scared, thinks there's an intruder in her yard, and I came over and all I found was a skunk in the bushes, so we started watching a movie and she said she wants to go on a munchies run, so we got in my car and went.
"Her family was persona non grata at the country market we ended up at, so I went in and he jumped her in the parking lot, tried to drag her into his car; I tried to pull him off and he threw me off, and I reached back and my hand closed around something and I came up swinging with it.
"It was a piece of pipe -- cast iron, not PVC -- and I cracked him hard," Landry touched the back of his head where skull joined spine "right there."
Sam's eyes widened. Because Tim looked like the kind of guy who should be telling this story, not clean-cut brainiac Landry.
"And then we panicked and did something really stupid." Landry gave a heavy sigh. "Because that bastard died about five seconds after he hit the ground, instead of running into the store and telling them to call 911, or even driving to the hospital with his body, we drove out to the bridge on County Route 9 and pitched him into the river." Landry drew a deep, shaky breath.
"It wouldn't have made a lick of difference, Landry," Tim said. "Not for what happened later."
"It would have, Tim," Landry said, tears in his voice, "because if we had never put him in my car, you'd never have been brought into it. You'd still -- and Coach would -- the whole thing never would've --"
Tim shook his head. "Done is done, Landry. Like Billy always says, 'Wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills first.' Besides," Tim snorted bitterly, "my life in Dillon was going nowhere fast, so really, I've just stepped sideways." He paused and smiled wryly. "Though I am dying for a beer right now."
A long silence followed.
Tim spoke again. "So, like I said, for me, it began with finding a watch.
"My best friend, Jason, he broke his neck last year in the season opener, and then he got it into his head to go down to Mexico and have this experimental surgery thing with shark stem cells --"
Sam couldn't restrain a snort of laughter when he heard that.
"Yeah, I know, sounds like something out of The Twilight Zone. So, I went down with him. He needed somebody to watch his back, and I figured, a week in Mexico with Jay --"
"Only, you kinda sorta didn't bother to tell anybody where you were going or what you were up to," Landry cut in.
"They'd just've said no. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. Anyway, so we went, and I realized that Jason really meant to do this and even after it was pretty clearly a rip-off, and I called our ... friend ... Lyla --"
Landry snorted at the mention of her name.
"Shut up, Landry. Not a word about Lyla. Not a word." Tim's voice bristled with menace. He shook himself and went on, "And Lyla and I eventually ended up convincing Jason that it was stupid and we returned home. And the first thing Coach Taylor did was kick me off the team when I showed up for practice that afternoon. And, well, my brother, Billy, was wicked pissed at me, too. He'd been worried sick; I guess I didn't think he actually cared, because we'd been fighting before that on account of him ...never mind, it's not important ... so Billy kicked me out. And Jason's parents sure as hell weren't going to take me in. They somehow blamed it all on me, and I'm the one who saved Jay's fucking life." Tim guzzled at his coke and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "And I was on both of Lyla's parents' shitlists for ... well, I was on their shitlists and they weren't going to let me stay until Billy and me worked things out. Also, I spent most of the summer being a drunk asshole more or less, and Tyra was pissed at me and told me to leave as soon as I showed up on her doorstep."
"Serves you right," Landry said.
"Yeah. Yeah, it does," Tim agreed wearily. "So I went and knocked on the only other door I could think of. Coach's. And I told him and his wife, Tami, that I had nowhere else to go. They --" Tim's voice crackled with emotion, "took me in. And after I got done telling them what had really happened in Mexico, how Jay was so fucked up and even tried to kill himself at one point, Coach said I could get back on the team as soon as I got my grades right. But until then, I couldn't even show up to practice. Athletic conference rules.
"So school was over for the day and Jason and I decided, what the hell, let's go fishing off the bridge for old time's sake. We used to do it as kids and I stopped by my house, saw that Billy wasn't in, slipped in the back door, borrowed a six pack and the tackle box and off we went. And we're on the bridge, lines in the water, when Jason dropped the damn bottle opener --"
"Jason's a quadriplegic, doesn't have full use of his hands," Landry explained.
"Yeah, so, the thing is, the bottle opener was attached to my key chain, and neither of us heard it splash in the river, so unless we found it, we were going to have a hell of a long walk home. That, or I was going to learn to hotwire a car on the spot. So I started looking around and see that it's fallen through a place where the blacktop crumbled away and you can see into the underpinnings of the bridge. My keys are hung up on a bit of rebar. And next to it, and down a few inches, resting on a girder, I see a watch. So, I snagged them both and noticed that the watch had Landry's name engraved on the back, so I put it in my jeans so that I could give it to Landry the next day.
Tim took a long, shuddering breath as he looked up, eyes glistening with unshed tears. "And that is how I brought the ghost of a serial rapist into a house with three women in it."
---
Part Two
Comments