VBF

VBF

A Supernatural story by Jennie @DeanIsntFine
Featuring Dean Winchester @DWImpala67

This is the first of my VBF stories, featuring my best fictional friend. It is set in Season 14, right after "Unhuman Nature." To read the others, click:
Part 2: "Welcome to Rocky's"
Part 3: "Last Call"
Part 4: "Nourished"

As I climb into bed, I reach out over the edge, extending my hand into the empty darkness.

As a child, I never had an “under the bed.” My dad built all the beds in my house, all with flat boards as a base and storage drawers underneath. Nowhere for monsters to hide. So I’d never had to fear them.

My best friend kills monsters. Where he lives, they’re real. 

When I reach out into the dark, sometimes I can feel his hand grasp mine. Sometimes…

***

“Dean…” I call out to him with my mind. As I close my eyes for sleep, I can see the bunker’s tile hallways take shape out of the darkness. My bare feet feel cold on the floor as I pad quietly down the corridor. 

He rounds the corner, a fretful look on his face.

“Jennie. You’re here. Is everything OK?” He peers around and behind me, as if expecting I’d be pursued by… something. Even here, in this well-warded fortress he now calls home, he never feels completely safe. 

“Everything’s… fine…” I say, reluctantly. That’s immediately met with a skeptical look from Dean. Of all people, me? Using the four-letter F word?

“No, really,” I insist. “I just needed to come and check on you. And to talk…”

It’s my turn to eye him warily. I have the benefit of being able to see into his world, yes, but I can’t see everything. What I do see leaves me concerned -- pretty much perpetually concerned -- and this time is no different. 

He’s satisfied now that nothing has followed me into the bunker. I don’t know why he’s worried… where I come from, the threats are scary, but much more mundane. 

“Check on me?” he asks. “You know you’re always welcome, but I’m f--” He stops himself before the word crosses his lips. “Good. I’m good. Anyway, it’s Jack we have to worry about.”

I’ve seen his face -- that beautiful face -- arrange itself in grief, in pain, many times, as it does now. It’s never easy.

“Well, come on… Since you’re here, you might as well say goodbye.” He takes my hand and leads me down the hall, toward the infirmary.

***

“Since when do you even have an infirmary?” I ask, trying to distract him from the horrors at hand. 

It’s pretty much all I’ve wanted to do since I first saw him. The fact that we actually have become friends, defying every rule of my reality, is a gift. He’s not the easiest man in the world to comfort, but I get to try -- and it means everything to me.

“When Bobby’s people came over from Apocalypse World, some folks were banged up,” Dean says. “They’d already gotten pretty good at battlefield triage and first aid… so they set something up off the war room.” 

As he speaks, we step into that cavernous space. The map table glows, but the rest of the room is dim. I look around, and all is quiet. Even Dean’s voice becomes hushed. Already, there’s a funereal air about the place, and my stomach sinks. 

“I never thought we’d need it…” he mutters as he cracks open the infirmary door and we cross the threshold. “Not for this.”

***

Castiel sits at the nephilim’s bedside, Jack’s right hand clasped in both of his own. I know the angel doesn’t sleep, but he’s hunched over, and fatigue and pain are plain on his face. 

Other than Cas, and the boy in the bed, the room is empty.

Suddenly, looking down on the sad scene, I feel sure I’m intruding. I shouldn’t have come, certainly not now. This is a family, and they’re grieving. There’s no place here for me.

I reach out to stop Dean before he can head down the steps. “Dean, I--”

I feel lightheaded, and stumble slightly, and he grabs me by the shoulders. He’s my best friend, and I can’t even meet his gaze. 

“This is family business,” I say, shaking my head. “I shouldn’t even be here.” I open the infirmary door and head back to the war room.

***

I’m seated at the map table with my head in my hands, eyes closed, when I feel him sit down beside me.

“Talk to me,” he says. “What’s going on with you?”

It takes all the strength I can muster to finally look him in the eye. I can barely breathe when I see the depth of the concern there. Concern for me.

I look away, and try one more time to distract him. “Where’s Sam?”

I can see Dean’s not going to let me off the hook, but he answers: “Sack time. He needs it. He’s been up for days straight.”

“He’ll find a way,” I say. “You all will. It’s what you do.”

“OK, OK,” he says, and turns me to face him. “Enough with the Winchester pep talk. What’s going on?”

I take a deep breath. When I look up at the ceiling, the room spins a little. 

“Dizzy,” I say. “I’ve been dizzy, with bouts of blurry vision. Sounds get all echoey, and I lose my balance a bit. 

“Any of this ringing a bell, Dean?”

He eyes me carefully, then scrubs at the scruff on his jaw with one hand. “I keep forgetting that you can see… everything,” he says.

“Not everything. Enough, though. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw you having the same symptoms. And hiding them, as usual.”

“Yeah, well,” he says sadly. “We don’t have time to worry about me right now. Not with what’s happening to Jack.”

He gets up and starts pacing, suddenly restless. “He could have only days left, hours maybe.” His gaze travels over to the translucent glass wall that separates the war room from the infirmary. 

He sits back down beside me. “I guess you saw… I took him on a little road trip. We went fishing.” He smiles, incredulous. “I even let him drive Baby.” He tilts back in his chair, then looks up at the ceiling. “He’s so… calm about it all. Like, zen. Wise. I guess he’s growing up.”

He looks over at me, and in the dim, I can see the tears glittering in his green eyes. Again, I think: I hate seeing him like this. So many times. It doesn't get easier.

Dean looks down at his empty hands, as if wondering what to do with them. 

Usually, I know, those hands would be wrapped around a beer for solace, or a bacon cheeseburger. But all he has for solace right now is me, a woman from another world. 

The one he’s dubbed his Vice Best Friend.

So connected to him that she feels what he feels -- and can apparently conjure up his symptoms for herself. 

For a moment, I watch him, and those hands. I see them cradling his brother. Gripping Baby’s wheel. Firing a gun. Wielding a blade. Crushing a throat. Smashing a mirror. Picking up a razor. 

Now, I take his hands in my own, and I squeeze with all I’ve got. 

I need him to feel it. I need him to hear me.

“You gave him a good day,” I say. “I know you were trying make up for how rough it was -- you were -- in the beginning.”

He looks up at me, a flash of hurt in his eyes.

“Hey,” I say, hands up in surrender. “Dishing out the hard truths, remember? That’s what VBFs are for.” 

Dean sighs and nods. “I shouldn’t have been so hard on him,” he says, regret scrawled in bold strokes across his face. “He was just a kid.”

“You’d lost everything,” I say. “You lost your faith, lost your way, lost touch with who you are. When Lucifer took your mom, and Cas, you had no one left to blame. You took it out on Jack.”

“That doesn’t make it right,” Dean insists.

“No, it doesn’t,” I say. “We’ll just add it to the list of things you’ve got to forgive yourself for.”

His mouth twists into a wry grin.

“Plus,” I say, trying to coax out a true smile, “he was pretty scary, at first.”

That earns me a chuckle, and I’m glad to have it. 

Dean raps his knuckles on the war room table, lit softly from beneath. It’s a subtle signal that I’ve seen from him before: Message received. Right now, it’s the most I can ask for. 

I rise from my chair with an exaggerated stretch. “Well, I should probably get back,” I say. I reach a hand down for one of his. “Walk a girl home?”

He looks up at me, the glow from the table playing across the contours of his face. That face. It breaks my heart -- yet again -- but I force a small smile. Not for the first time, I wonder if he’s learning to see through me as easily as I can see through him.

“Of course,” he says, with a chivalrous bow of the head. He takes my hand and leads me out of the room, down the steps, and back into the corridor. 

***

We reach the end of a shadowed hallway. It’s time to say goodbye. For now.

“So,” I say, “I guess we’ll talk next time about those dizzy spells of yours.”

I can tell he’s concerned, and trying not to show it. “Whatever that is,” Dean says, “I’ll deal with it. And don’t you go whipping up any more of my symptoms.” 

His chiding makes me smile. The consummate caretaker. 

“I can’t make any promises,” I say. “Like it or not, we seem to be in this together.”

His gaze holds mine for a long moment. “We seem to be,” he agrees. “Nice pajamas, by the way.”

I look down at the squirrels and moose (mooses? meese?) cavorting across my shirt and pants. I narrow my eyes at Dean. “You know you want ’em,” I say.

He cocks his head, looks me up and down, then nods in approval. I’ve seen his novelty socks. He can’t argue.

I squeeze his hand again, then head deeper into the shadows. “I’ll see you soon,” he calls after me.

“And Jennie?”

I turn back to face him. His outline is already fading in the gloom.

“You are family,” he says.