SPN fic -- Seen and Unseen 1/?
Dec. 30th, 2006 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vanillafluffyTitle: Seen and Unseen 1/?
Authored by:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vanillafluffy
Pairing: None
Rating/Work-safeness: Safe
Approximate word count: 2000
Disclaimer: All rights belong to Eric Kripke and The Doors. Nancy McGill is mine.
Summary: Bobby Singer has a visitor who wants to buy John's truck.
Seen and Unseen
Seen -- Bobby Singer
It's early enough that the mist hasn't burned off yet. Bobby Singer knocks back a half-pot of coffee before he goes outside to start parting out that old Pontiac and sees her sitting on a stack of balding Michelins. She's huddled into an old jacket, a duffle bag at her feet, shivering in the early morning chill. She appears harmless enough; a mousy blonde, not exactly his idea of centerfold material. He glances around the yard---no vehicle in sight, and he's a half-mile from the main road----eight from town. "Can I help you, ma'am?" He's got two knives and a .22 pistol on him, so if she tries anything funny, the joke will be on her.
"I was hoping I could buy that truck from you." She nods her head toward the gleaming ride that John Winchester's boys asked him to sell for them, and if Bobby was wary before, now he's sure there's something going on. He's mentioned the truck to a couple folks on the hunter's grapevine, but she doesn't look like any hunter he's ever seen.
No real hunter would ever let themselves be seen as vulnerable, but this woman is a poster child for having her defenses down. There are plum-hued circles under her light-green eyes---it looks like she hasn't slept in days---and she holds herself with an effort, hurting, or maybe just exhausted. No weapons that he can see; she's suspiciously harmless.
"Sure, let me just go get the keys, get her started and show you you're getting your money's worth." At her nod, he saunters back into the house. When he returns, he has the keys---plus a full carton of salt and an old squeeze bottle full of holy water. She rolls her eyes at the sight of the paraphernalia in his hands, and doesn't try to pretend she doesn't know what he has in mind. She's more resigned than offended.
"Here?" she asks, standing away from the truck and the tires, giving him plenty of room to pour the circle around her. "Spiritus malignos," she begins her voice hoarse, "qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo---"
"I don't need any help from the likes of you!" Bobby Singer snaps. Little Miss Smarty-Pants thinks she's gonna teach him how to cast out demons? Up close, she's older than he first thought, forty-something, but he's been hunting since she was still playing with dolls. She shrugs, tucks her hands into her armpits, and waits politely until he concludes the exorcism. Nothing happens; there's no manifestation, no fireworks, no excuse to squirt her with Father Sullivan's Best Blessing Sauce....
They get down to business: the truck. He's got some latitude as far as the price goes; he'd just as soon get it out of here, because seeing it makes him think of John, and reminds him that no one lasts forever, even the ones who should, and one of these days, it'll be his turn to go. Then, too, sooner or later, Dean and Sam will come back through here, and they aren't gonna want to see it, either. They'll need money---hunters always need money---and he won't turn down any halfway reasonable offer, even if he doesn't much care for the source.
Her counter-offer, when he names a price, isn't quite reasonable enough to suit him, although the word "cash" does emerge from her lips. Finally, she sighs, and says, "Maybe you'd consider taking part of it in services?"
"You're not my type," he guffaws. "Or maybe you do windows? Gonna vacuum my house in a little French maid outfit?"
"I can locate something for you. Maybe you've lost or misplaced an item of value...?" She glances toward the house. "I'll find it for you."
Lost or misplaced...there's something Bobby hasn't seen in quite a while, and it's small enough to be like looking for a you-know-what you-know-where. If Little Miss Smarty-Pants can find it, he'll give her the keys to the truck, the keys to the city, and maybe even the key to his heart. "Okay, I'll bite. I'm missing a crucifix on a gold chain. It's about so big," He holds his thumb and forefinger an inch and a half apart, "and the chain is---or was---twenty inches long."
Her eyes are pale, almost colorless with faint green tinge like an old-fashioned glass Coke bottle. "From your momma's rosary," she replies, nodding. "You've got something else of hers I can hold? It would help."
How in the world did she know that? She's absolutely right, and he treasures that little cross, not because it's pure gold, but it's one of very few material things that Bobby has to remember his mother by. He shakes on the deal and takes her inside, finds an old gravy boat that's been stuck up in a kitchen cabinet for four decades---Momma died when he was overseas, and he and Daddy never did try to recreate her four-course Sunday dinners. Then he watches as she cradles it in her hands, stroking it like it was Aladdin's lamp instead of a cheap piece of Jewel-T china. She wanders around the kitchen for a few minutes, shakes her head, goes into what used to be the dining room.
"Rosary," she says aloud as she progresses into the living room. "Hmm. Ave Maria---" and she begins praying in a soft voice as she threads her way through stacks of books. So the exorcism wasn't necessary, he thinks, hearing the quiet litany. Better safe than sorry. Propped against the door frame, he tracks her halting progress. His visitor bends over, and from where she's standing, she's over near his recliner, probably rummaging through his old National Geographics. She straightens up briefly, and something glitters under the 60-watt light. He catches it automatically, and there's his gold chain. The jump ring is bent into a C-shape; that's how it came off.
"Amen!" she exclaims, a note of triumph in her voice, and makes her way over to where he waits. The sight of the little crucifix in her hand brings a lump to his throat. Bobby has others, but this one makes him feel safer than any of the rest, because it was touched by his mother's unwavering faith. The whole search only took the woman about forty minutes, and he's been fretting about that crucifix since spring, at least.
Her right nostril is bleeding, a fat crimson worm creeping toward her upper lip. She blots it with the paper towel he offers her, and pulls a bottle of generic aspirin from one of many pockets. Bobby's not sure he's ever seen anyone that pale who wasn't undead, but it's daylight now---a glance out the kitchen window shows the mist is lifting---and the undead don't bleed like that. Plus, he saw her breath fogging the air while he was performing the exorcism. She isn't undead, she isn't possessed, and she's just given him back something he values, but he doesn't take to the woman, doesn't want her around for longer than she has to be.
"That's how come I don't do this much," she tells him, eyes closed, rubbing her forehead between her eyebrows. "The nosebleeds aren't that bad, but the headaches are killers. Now then---" She reaches into another pocket, pulls out a roll of green and tosses it onto the kitchen table. "Count that."
It's all in hundreds, worn, not crispy, not sequential. She may have robbed a bank, but she's not a counterfeiter. He hands over the keys and the pink slip. "It's yours."
"Much obliged." She heads outside and slings her duffle into the truckbed with a brief wave in his direction.
Bobby observes her struggle to get up into the cab. John had long legs---he was five or six inches taller than Our Lady of the Rosary, who makes it into the driver's seat, then promptly leans over and pukes out the door. She sits there for a little while afterward, and Bobby doesn't go over to her, doesn't offer help, because really, he wants her creepy little spoon-bending ass out of his dooryard. He's relieved when she starts up the big truck and eases it toward the driveway. That's one thing he won't have to worry about any more. He's got a decent wad of cash for John's boys, and now maybe he can get some work done.
-------------
Unseen -- Musical Kharma
Her head is going to implode. At moments like this, Nancy McGill wishes it would pop like a balloon and get it over with. Except that wouldn't really solve her problems, would it?---just create a whole new set. Upchucking the aspirin ten minutes after she'd taken them didn't help, either.
Sound carries a long way, so she keeps going until she's back to the two-lane highway, then gives it another couple of miles for good measure, because the engine in this thing has a rumble to it that can probably be heard from that far off. This is the closest thing to a new vehicle she's ever had; one thing you could say about Big John, he had fine taste in automobiles.
When she finally pulls to the side of the road and cuts the engine, it's a few minutes before she has enough energy to investigate. There's nothing up under the visors---she didn't expect anything, but you never know---the cab is immaculate; only a few dusty footprints on the floormats mar its pristine interior. The glovebox---which if you think about it, is a damn silly thing to call it---nobody's used gloves for motoring since the days the conveyance was called a horseless carriage---holds a couple of correctly-folded roadmaps, a grease pencil, a cube of blue chalk, a handful of restaurant salt packets and a matchbook from a place called Harvelle's Roadhouse.
The seat-pocket on the passenger side has a Road Atlas of America---this year's---a mostly-used can of WD-40, and a bootleg CD labeled "Greatest Hits". No clue as to whose hits...she'll get to that later.
Reluctantly, Nancy slides out of the cab and clambers up into the bed. There's a compartment behind the cab, running from side to side, painted the same glossy black as the rest of the truck. There's no lock through the hasp; either Singer or John's kids have been through it already...but she lifts the lid anyway. There's a beat-up old sleeping bag stuffed in there, something blue and green---she snatches it up and clutches it with suddenly trembling hands. She recognizes the ragged flannel shirt---she stitched up that rip right there one evening while John was telling her about the knife that wasn't a samurai sword...she almost dumps her duffle into the space and starts out for Harvelle's Roadhouse right then, but she has a methodical streak, and when she digs a little deeper, it pays off.
It's what's left of a tee shirt. Judging by the stains surrounding the parallel rips, something clawed John pretty good. Nancy holds the shredded cotton jersey up and knows John must've had a couple new scars on the left side of his ribcage. Because it is John's shirt, she knows, definitely his blood, and that's a better yield from the truck than she hoped for. That cast-off piece of clothing is worth every nickel she spent on the truck, worth the nosebleed and the headache, which is still a ball-buster. At least now she's got wheels to replace her station wagon, which died the day before yesterday on the outskirts of a town whose name she's already forgotten.
Getting back on the road, she slides the CD into the player on the dash, then smiles despite her headache. The Doors....
Yeah, keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Yeah, we're goin' to the Roadhouse
We're gonna have a real
Good time ---
-------------
Previously in the John-Nancy 'verse....
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/135447.html
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/138894.html
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/140653.html
Feedback is love.
Authored by:
vanillafluffy Pairing: None
Rating/Work-safeness: Safe
Approximate word count: 2000
Disclaimer: All rights belong to Eric Kripke and The Doors. Nancy McGill is mine.
Summary: Bobby Singer has a visitor who wants to buy John's truck.
Seen -- Bobby Singer
It's early enough that the mist hasn't burned off yet. Bobby Singer knocks back a half-pot of coffee before he goes outside to start parting out that old Pontiac and sees her sitting on a stack of balding Michelins. She's huddled into an old jacket, a duffle bag at her feet, shivering in the early morning chill. She appears harmless enough; a mousy blonde, not exactly his idea of centerfold material. He glances around the yard---no vehicle in sight, and he's a half-mile from the main road----eight from town. "Can I help you, ma'am?" He's got two knives and a .22 pistol on him, so if she tries anything funny, the joke will be on her.
"I was hoping I could buy that truck from you." She nods her head toward the gleaming ride that John Winchester's boys asked him to sell for them, and if Bobby was wary before, now he's sure there's something going on. He's mentioned the truck to a couple folks on the hunter's grapevine, but she doesn't look like any hunter he's ever seen.
No real hunter would ever let themselves be seen as vulnerable, but this woman is a poster child for having her defenses down. There are plum-hued circles under her light-green eyes---it looks like she hasn't slept in days---and she holds herself with an effort, hurting, or maybe just exhausted. No weapons that he can see; she's suspiciously harmless.
"Sure, let me just go get the keys, get her started and show you you're getting your money's worth." At her nod, he saunters back into the house. When he returns, he has the keys---plus a full carton of salt and an old squeeze bottle full of holy water. She rolls her eyes at the sight of the paraphernalia in his hands, and doesn't try to pretend she doesn't know what he has in mind. She's more resigned than offended.
"Here?" she asks, standing away from the truck and the tires, giving him plenty of room to pour the circle around her. "Spiritus malignos," she begins her voice hoarse, "qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo---"
"I don't need any help from the likes of you!" Bobby Singer snaps. Little Miss Smarty-Pants thinks she's gonna teach him how to cast out demons? Up close, she's older than he first thought, forty-something, but he's been hunting since she was still playing with dolls. She shrugs, tucks her hands into her armpits, and waits politely until he concludes the exorcism. Nothing happens; there's no manifestation, no fireworks, no excuse to squirt her with Father Sullivan's Best Blessing Sauce....
They get down to business: the truck. He's got some latitude as far as the price goes; he'd just as soon get it out of here, because seeing it makes him think of John, and reminds him that no one lasts forever, even the ones who should, and one of these days, it'll be his turn to go. Then, too, sooner or later, Dean and Sam will come back through here, and they aren't gonna want to see it, either. They'll need money---hunters always need money---and he won't turn down any halfway reasonable offer, even if he doesn't much care for the source.
Her counter-offer, when he names a price, isn't quite reasonable enough to suit him, although the word "cash" does emerge from her lips. Finally, she sighs, and says, "Maybe you'd consider taking part of it in services?"
"You're not my type," he guffaws. "Or maybe you do windows? Gonna vacuum my house in a little French maid outfit?"
"I can locate something for you. Maybe you've lost or misplaced an item of value...?" She glances toward the house. "I'll find it for you."
Lost or misplaced...there's something Bobby hasn't seen in quite a while, and it's small enough to be like looking for a you-know-what you-know-where. If Little Miss Smarty-Pants can find it, he'll give her the keys to the truck, the keys to the city, and maybe even the key to his heart. "Okay, I'll bite. I'm missing a crucifix on a gold chain. It's about so big," He holds his thumb and forefinger an inch and a half apart, "and the chain is---or was---twenty inches long."
Her eyes are pale, almost colorless with faint green tinge like an old-fashioned glass Coke bottle. "From your momma's rosary," she replies, nodding. "You've got something else of hers I can hold? It would help."
How in the world did she know that? She's absolutely right, and he treasures that little cross, not because it's pure gold, but it's one of very few material things that Bobby has to remember his mother by. He shakes on the deal and takes her inside, finds an old gravy boat that's been stuck up in a kitchen cabinet for four decades---Momma died when he was overseas, and he and Daddy never did try to recreate her four-course Sunday dinners. Then he watches as she cradles it in her hands, stroking it like it was Aladdin's lamp instead of a cheap piece of Jewel-T china. She wanders around the kitchen for a few minutes, shakes her head, goes into what used to be the dining room.
"Rosary," she says aloud as she progresses into the living room. "Hmm. Ave Maria---" and she begins praying in a soft voice as she threads her way through stacks of books. So the exorcism wasn't necessary, he thinks, hearing the quiet litany. Better safe than sorry. Propped against the door frame, he tracks her halting progress. His visitor bends over, and from where she's standing, she's over near his recliner, probably rummaging through his old National Geographics. She straightens up briefly, and something glitters under the 60-watt light. He catches it automatically, and there's his gold chain. The jump ring is bent into a C-shape; that's how it came off.
"Amen!" she exclaims, a note of triumph in her voice, and makes her way over to where he waits. The sight of the little crucifix in her hand brings a lump to his throat. Bobby has others, but this one makes him feel safer than any of the rest, because it was touched by his mother's unwavering faith. The whole search only took the woman about forty minutes, and he's been fretting about that crucifix since spring, at least.
Her right nostril is bleeding, a fat crimson worm creeping toward her upper lip. She blots it with the paper towel he offers her, and pulls a bottle of generic aspirin from one of many pockets. Bobby's not sure he's ever seen anyone that pale who wasn't undead, but it's daylight now---a glance out the kitchen window shows the mist is lifting---and the undead don't bleed like that. Plus, he saw her breath fogging the air while he was performing the exorcism. She isn't undead, she isn't possessed, and she's just given him back something he values, but he doesn't take to the woman, doesn't want her around for longer than she has to be.
"That's how come I don't do this much," she tells him, eyes closed, rubbing her forehead between her eyebrows. "The nosebleeds aren't that bad, but the headaches are killers. Now then---" She reaches into another pocket, pulls out a roll of green and tosses it onto the kitchen table. "Count that."
It's all in hundreds, worn, not crispy, not sequential. She may have robbed a bank, but she's not a counterfeiter. He hands over the keys and the pink slip. "It's yours."
"Much obliged." She heads outside and slings her duffle into the truckbed with a brief wave in his direction.
Bobby observes her struggle to get up into the cab. John had long legs---he was five or six inches taller than Our Lady of the Rosary, who makes it into the driver's seat, then promptly leans over and pukes out the door. She sits there for a little while afterward, and Bobby doesn't go over to her, doesn't offer help, because really, he wants her creepy little spoon-bending ass out of his dooryard. He's relieved when she starts up the big truck and eases it toward the driveway. That's one thing he won't have to worry about any more. He's got a decent wad of cash for John's boys, and now maybe he can get some work done.
-------------
Unseen -- Musical Kharma
Her head is going to implode. At moments like this, Nancy McGill wishes it would pop like a balloon and get it over with. Except that wouldn't really solve her problems, would it?---just create a whole new set. Upchucking the aspirin ten minutes after she'd taken them didn't help, either.
Sound carries a long way, so she keeps going until she's back to the two-lane highway, then gives it another couple of miles for good measure, because the engine in this thing has a rumble to it that can probably be heard from that far off. This is the closest thing to a new vehicle she's ever had; one thing you could say about Big John, he had fine taste in automobiles.
When she finally pulls to the side of the road and cuts the engine, it's a few minutes before she has enough energy to investigate. There's nothing up under the visors---she didn't expect anything, but you never know---the cab is immaculate; only a few dusty footprints on the floormats mar its pristine interior. The glovebox---which if you think about it, is a damn silly thing to call it---nobody's used gloves for motoring since the days the conveyance was called a horseless carriage---holds a couple of correctly-folded roadmaps, a grease pencil, a cube of blue chalk, a handful of restaurant salt packets and a matchbook from a place called Harvelle's Roadhouse.
The seat-pocket on the passenger side has a Road Atlas of America---this year's---a mostly-used can of WD-40, and a bootleg CD labeled "Greatest Hits". No clue as to whose hits...she'll get to that later.
Reluctantly, Nancy slides out of the cab and clambers up into the bed. There's a compartment behind the cab, running from side to side, painted the same glossy black as the rest of the truck. There's no lock through the hasp; either Singer or John's kids have been through it already...but she lifts the lid anyway. There's a beat-up old sleeping bag stuffed in there, something blue and green---she snatches it up and clutches it with suddenly trembling hands. She recognizes the ragged flannel shirt---she stitched up that rip right there one evening while John was telling her about the knife that wasn't a samurai sword...she almost dumps her duffle into the space and starts out for Harvelle's Roadhouse right then, but she has a methodical streak, and when she digs a little deeper, it pays off.
It's what's left of a tee shirt. Judging by the stains surrounding the parallel rips, something clawed John pretty good. Nancy holds the shredded cotton jersey up and knows John must've had a couple new scars on the left side of his ribcage. Because it is John's shirt, she knows, definitely his blood, and that's a better yield from the truck than she hoped for. That cast-off piece of clothing is worth every nickel she spent on the truck, worth the nosebleed and the headache, which is still a ball-buster. At least now she's got wheels to replace her station wagon, which died the day before yesterday on the outskirts of a town whose name she's already forgotten.
Getting back on the road, she slides the CD into the player on the dash, then smiles despite her headache. The Doors....
Yeah, keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Yeah, we're goin' to the Roadhouse
We're gonna have a real
Good time ---
-------------
Previously in the John-Nancy 'verse....
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/135447.html
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/138894.html
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/140653.html
Feedback is love.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 09:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 05:37 am (UTC)