DEAN! (hunting_things) wrote in helladjacent, @ 2017-07-03 07:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | !jumps: ten years gone, character: claire novak, character: dean winchester |
Who: Dean and Claire
What: Discovering the age difference
When: Day Two, before/during Claire's day two net post
Where: Claire's room mostly
Warnings: Mild for language
Status: Complete
Before Dean opened his eyes on the second day, he felt the change. He didn't know how he changed precisely, just that moving in bed was going to be a giant pain in the ass. That in itself was bad news. He groaned and slowly wiggled his fingers and toes. So far so good, he counted twenty. Everything felt a little more creaky and a little less cooperative. Not like that time he was turned into a 70 year old man, but close enough.
“What is it this time?” he grumbled. Opening his eyes he pulled out his PDA. Blinking, the buttons and letters were on the screen were just a little less comfortable to make out. Dean held the device a little further from his face until it came into focus. Nothing on the PDAs yet. Maybe he was just lucky. Maybe his antics had pissed off the hotel.
Sitting up, he rubbed his hands over his face and decided to drag himself into the bathroom to survey the damage.
“Balls,” he said, not meaning to imitate Bobby. The lines around his eyes were more prominent, and there was silver at his temples and in the couple days of growth on his face that had not been there yesterday.
He looked a lot more like his dad. Which, was weird enough without the presence of another certain guest in the hotel. He pressed a button to talk on the PDA. Check in on Claire and Cas first, then Sam.
“Yo, Claire Bear? You okay?” Damn. Even his voice had gotten more grizzled. It's gone from charmingly boyish in his twenties, to harsher in his thirties, and rougher now in his… mid to late forties? He did not want to hear a recording of his voice played back to him. Looking at himself in the mirror was weird enough so he left the bathroom to get dressed.
Claire was still asleep when her PDA pinged loud and right in her ear; she jerked awake, blinking at the thing through the sleep-mussed curtain of blond hair. Dean’s voice sounded...off. It was definitely him, but with a side of exhaust smoke and maybe a cold. The fact that he asked her if she was okay right out of the gate was also a big clue.
She shoved her hair out of her face and grabbed the thing off the bedstand, looking for Cas across the room as she hit the button and responded.
“Besides half-asleep?” Claire answered, then cleared her own throat. It sounded different, but not in a way she recognized consciously. “Cas is… somewhere else,” she added, pulling herself up to the edge of the bed. “You sound weird.”
“Just the hotel messing with me again,” Dean grunted back. “Trying to make sure it's just a me thing. If you're okay I'm gunna message Sam and make sure the hotel decided not to screw with him, too. Try not to laugh too hard when you see me.”
At least his clothes still fit. Everyone kept making weight jokes over the way Dean ate but, if anything he looked like he lost a little weight. Dean covered himself with a t-shirt and buried the thought.
“I do that every time I see you,” Claire snarked; far as she was concerned, now they were even for him waking her up. Moving on, she got to her feet and headed for the bathroom. “Just out of curiosity’s sake, why- what happened?”
“I might have aged a little overnight,” Dean said. He tried not to make it too big of a deal. If this was all the hotel was throwing at him, it could have been worse, though he suspected the hotel could easily make it worse.
After a pause, he added, “Like maybe ten years. Did I ever tell you about the job Sammy and I took where I was turned into a seventy year old man? Like I said, it's not awful. Plus I age like Clint Eastwood, minus the crazy talking to an empty chair routine, so we’re good. The hotel and I will just hug it out.”
As Claire listened, trying to figure out why the hell the name ‘Clint Eastwood’ sounded familiar and wondering if Dean was being metaphorical or not, she flipped on the light in the bathroom-
-and saw herself in the mirror.
“-HO-ly FUCK!” The clattering Dean heard on the other end was the PDA being dropped in the sink, though the talk-button apparently kept itself pressed.
Dean cursed before making a move for the door. “Claire? Hang in there, kid. I'm on my way.”
Given the way she shouted, he wondered if the hotel had made her middle aged as well. Or perhaps it had done something else to poke at whatever insecurities people had. Dean’s brain went to a few ugly places before he shut it off and focused on the stairs in front of him. At least rushing down a couple flights was easier than running up.
By the time he made it to her room, his fist banged on the door. “Claire? It's Dean. Open up.” Because if it was bad, he knew she wouldn't want to. Dean sure as hell wasn't going to leave her on her own, so he wasn't about to give her a choice.
It hadn’t been a yell of fright or horror, though the two often sounded remarkably similar, especially when embellished with swear words. Dean couldn’t know that it was more shock than despair that kept her eyes glued to her own reflexion; her hair was longer, and just a hair darker at the roots, her frame had filled out in certain places and hardened in others- her face had lost the last of its baby fat.
After a few seconds of staring, then passive examination of things like her hands, her torso, and her eyes, she realized Dean had been being literal. He had aged, because apparently so had she.
The fact that she didn’t really know what to think about it was also evident in her gaze when she pulled open the door- course, it was quickly joined by something more complicated when she actually saw what he was talking about.
“Damn,” Dean said when he saw her. He was momentarily stupefied. He hadn’t meant to sound grim, but that might have also been better if it was interpreted that way instead of… perverted old uncle. Damn. Claire had never been unattractive, but apparently the next ten years were good to her.
“So it’s not just me,” he said, deciding to clarify that small outburst. He was also trying, and failing, not to stare. He had eyes. “Did you do something yesterday to piss off the hotel?” He held up a hand to pause her from being annoyed at him for asking. “Because this is either a hotel is messing with everyone, it’s getting back at the people from the seance, or someone in our group did something new yesterday it’s taking issue with.”
He pulled out his PDA and squinted at it. “I’ll message Sam.”
For Claire’s part, she was equally dumbfounded, still processing the fact that Dean looked more like Negan than she was anywhere near prepared for- not that she was prepared for it to begin with. She said nothing about it, though- not yet- but the shock was still ringing like her ears after a too-close gunshot.
“Seems kinda delayed for it to be a revenge...uh.. Aging.” What even was her life anymore.
“So ...if it is everyone, what do we do about it?” Claire huffed and closed the door behind him. Now she was thinking about whatever Sam’s reaction would be, considering it had been full of a similar stare when she met him in the Library last week. Now she was actually his age. Or something near it.
“Don’t know if there’s much to do. Ten years isn’t the worst. Next week we’ll all go back to normal, right? If it does get worse, we’ll--” Dean needed to pull his eyes away from her for a moment. He turned and scratched the back of his head. At least his hair was still short. “--I dunno. Try and organize talking to the hotel again. See if we can convince it to stop or rewind or something.”
He hoped this wasn’t the new normal. That would have been weird for the hotel, right? Everything he read on the PDA said it would be.
Claire noticed the way he kept turning away, and couldn’t pinpoint the why- she was leaning toward some weird form of self-consciousness, though not one she could readily understand. She hadn’t laughed at him- that hadn’t even been in her head. They pretty much stared at each other like they sprouted tails for a good three seconds when that door opened.
“...so should we warn people?” she asked, cocking both brows at him, though it wasn’t that effective since it was at the back of his head. “I almost pissed myself when I saw the mirror.”
“Heh.” At least Dean still had a winning smile, but it did look quite a bit closer to Negan’s smile now. Turning around he couldn't quite wipe away the immature smirk. It distracted him from composing his message to Sam.
“Yeah, I guess a heads up would be nice. You’ve been here longer and more people know you. I vote you break the news. Unless we’re just lucky enough for it to be just us.”
His eyes were tired and the PDA made him annoyed. Dean pocketed the device and decided to just go speak to Sam in person. He was up on the next floor anyway.
“You know it's not even the first time the hotel has threatened me with the weird age thing? The first week I got here it gave me a glimpse of myself in the mirror looking like a teenager. Honestly I'm not sure which one would be worse,” he said.
Claire couldn’t help the way her nose wrinkled.
“Having been a teenager really recently, that would be worse,” she said, definitively. Aside from the fact that regressing in age would be a much bigger mind-fuck thanks to her wanting nothing more than to be done with those years, the fewer teenage boys she had to deal with, the better.
Though the vision Dean described seemed disturbing enough on its own. Claire gave him one last look before heading back to the bathroom to grab her PDA- she was hammering out a message when she returned.
“I was …” Dean thought about the start of that statement before finishing. “...kind of a dick. Yeah, Old Man Me is probably less of a pain in the ass.”
Claire flicked a look at him over her PDA that was sarcastic enough on its own, even without the dry-as-Nevada “No shit-” afterwards. “You mean to tell me puberty and a tidal wave of testosterone didn’t make you a polite little angel? You?!”
Dean snorted. “Yeah, yeah. How old is Negan? He's the oldest one here, right?”
Claire made another face- something between a shrug and remnants of sarcasm before- then stuffed the PDA in her back pocket and started for the door, expecting Dean to follow. They may be years older, but they still needed to eat.
“Guessing you mean oldest human,” she clarified. “And no idea. Fifty-somethin’?”
Dean shrugged, “Maybe keep an eye on him if things get any more screwed.” Claire was kind of friends with him, wasn't she? Dean wasn’t precisely worried, but having been seventy before, he knew how much getting up there sucked and didn’t think Negan would appreciate help from him.
Dean pulled out the PDA again and looked over Claire’s post and some of the responses trickling in. Reading some of them with a squint, he frowned, “I thought I was the only one who called you Claire-Bear.” Dean grumbled a bit at that.
Claire didn’t say it, but she figured Negan’s reaction to someone checking on him solely due to his...sudden aging… wouldn’t exactly be appreciative. She kept it in mind, but it wasn’t near the front; dude had his daughter at the hotel anyway.
As for Dean’s last statement, she just snorted.
“It’s a thing-” she remarked flatly, still tapping out replies to the post. “Usually from people who lived through the whole Care Bear phase that was before my time.”
“Now I have to figure out a new obnoxious nickname,” Dean complained. “Something that will make your eyes roll even harder.”
It was his duty as her pseudo older brother figure. The only thing that came to mind immediately was Jailbait, and even he knew better not to touch that with a ten foot poll.
“Totally random question, have you had any weird dreams in the last week or so? Not like nightmares just like… like hyper real dreams? Like feels like its own reality even after you wake up? Like The Matrix?”
Claire looked up from the PDA at that question, setting the device down on her jeans. Her nose wrinkled in thought, but her answer didn’t exactly require much.
“Not beyond the usual fucked-up,” she told him, a thread of knowing beneath her honest deadpan. “Guessing you are?”
“Yeah,” Dean frowned. “Just like, one recurring one.” He shrugged it off. “Forget I mentioned it for now. If it becomes a thing, I’ll let you know. Let’s not even bother Sam or Cas with it yet.”
It was typical, for Dean to keep things from his closest friends and family, even after lecturing Castiel for doing the same. And yet, at least he had confided in someone.
Claire still eyed him warily.
“Okay so… what’s it about?”
“Just a hunting dream,” Dean shrugged. “Only it never happened. Sam never left law school and I partnered up with someone else.”