WHO: Claire Bennet (future), Dean Winchester WHERE: the garage Ralph owns WHEN: Monday, March 20, 2006; afternoon [backdated] WHAT: A normal day at the garage brings up a bit of someone's past. RATING: PG STATUS: log; COMPLETED
"Claire!"
Blowing out a bit of air in a faint growl, Claire moved through the office door into the garage, then made a sharp right to head toward the back. "I'm coming, Joey, geez," she muttered, pulling out the paperwork from the envelope the part-time kid who'd towed it in had left for her on the newest accident victim to be brought to the garage.
Familiar with all of it by now, as well as the usual messy scrawl of most of the guys who worked for the garage, Claire glanced over all the important facts, but found herself returning to the make, model and year - an '06 Nissan Rogue. Of course, in the year they were currently in, this was brand new, but the year Claire herself had owned, very briefly, this same car, wasn't that far off.
Quickening her steps, the heels of her shoes making a familiarly heard click on the concrete floor, Claire moved around two tall toolchests to find the vehicle sitting there, where Joey was cataloging the various damage points. To Claire's still mostly untrained eye, it looked like the standard, but usually costly, damage from people who drove too fast on LA streets.
Reaching out as she stopped next to it, she lightly touched an undamaged part of the vehicle. The paint was black, not the purpley color that long ago Rogue had been, but in the garage lights, it could still almost have been that vehicle.
Dean scowled at his latest project. To be fair, it wasn't really the Nissan's fault. He had just finished helping one of his favorite customers diagnose the small rattle that was keeping his classic corvette from purring like a kitten a few hours, and after working on a car like that, he always was in a less than charitable mood for the new little foreign cars. Slowly he circled the thing, his mind cataloging all of the seemingly minor damage that would equal hours of work.
Give me an old classic with some personality and without all of this computer crap, and I'll be a happy man. I swear to God, when I open my own garage, I'm not going not work on anything made after the 70's. It was a familiar threat in Dean's head when he was having 'one of those days,' but one he'd never actually carry out. When he really did open a garage, he'd likely have to work on everything, but it would be worth it, because it would be his.
Dean made a low whistle and shook his head. "Ugh, stupid Nissan Versa, this is going to be a pain in the ass."
"It's a Rogue, not a Versa - small SUV, not a car," Claire corrected. It wasn't sharp or hostile, more soft, distanced, as Claire was a little distracted with remembering.
Days shy of a year from this date, in her timeline, Noah Bennet would pass this vehicle on to his daughter as a month-early birthday present. Maybe he'd done the same in other timelines as well. What differed in Claire's timeline was that she hadn't owned the car long at all before she lost it, not to an accident or theft, but because she and the rest of her family had been forced to abandon anything tied to them and run from Costa Verde, where they had just moved, because Noah thought they'd put themselves at risk of exposure. It would become a familiar situation in the years between then and the point Claire had come from, abrupt departures. It was why after that vehicle, Claire had never owned another.
That Rogue had been hers, really hers, and it was one of the first things that was 'really hers' that she had lost because of who she was.
"It's a damn sad day when the brains behind the paperwork knows the cars better than you, Campbell," Joey piped up from underneath the vehicle.
Dean kicked Joey's foot with practiced ease. One thing he did like about the garage was the easy camaraderie that they had. "Shut up, Joey. I'm the Brain around here and the one who knows about cars. Pinky over here just got lucky."
His focus, however, was on Claire. She looked...thoughtful, and though she was picking up quickly on the ins and outs of cars, most of the time Dean clearly knew more about cars than she did. Something was up. Unsure of what it was, Dean leaned against the car and watched Claire for a minute. "Nice guess, Bennet."
"Not a guess, I knew," Claire said, tracing the line of the vehicle a moment longer before looking up to catch Dean watching her, which prompted a hasty addition to her statement. "Because it's on the paperwork."
Feeling a bit caught in her decidedly uncheerful remembering, she stepped away from the Rogue. "I have invoices to deal with," she said, then stooped to slide the packet of paperwork on the small shelf under the rolling bench Joey was laying on. "Here, get this done and back to me before three thirty. And, you know, how about trying to bring the paperwork back without oil all over it this time? I'm tired of having to redo them all."
Standing again, she tossed Dean a 'cheerleader' smile - all flash, with or without the substance to back it up - then walked back toward the front of the garage.
"You could stay and do the writing for me, a real team effort," Joey called from under the vehicle, but Claire didn't look back to acknowledge she had heard him.
Oh yeah, something's definitely up with Supergirl. Dean knew she was half telling the truth--it hadn't been a guess, but he also knew Claire well enough to know from the way she had corrected him that this wasn't just another car. It meant something to her.
"I'm going on break, Joey." Before Joey could protest Dean running off to the office, he hastily added. "And I'll talk her into doing the paperwork for this piece before I come back..." Dean didn't even wait to see what Joey say before he walked toward the office. He was careful to keep his steps quiet, and to ease the door open, so that he could get a chance to see what Claire was really up to. Just as he had thought, she was just sitting there, looking thoughtfully at her hands instead of doing paperwork. Dean cleared his throat, and Claire jumped slightly, grabbing at the folder, but her cover was blown.
"So which way's it going to be." Dean said, trying for a funny tone as he swaggered into the office and shut the door. "Are you going to tell me the story, Supergirl, or am I going to have to drag it out of you? Because I have to tell you, I think the next time I'm trying to get information out of someone, I'm going to threaten them with Sam's smelly socks."
Having thought Dean would still be out with the vehicle, or at least thought her smile had been somewhat effective, Claire hadn't rushed to the invoices. Instead, she'd sat down, feeling that old pang of frustrated loss, which was ridiculous, because she hadn't lost anything anew. But seeing that vehicle brought the memory of the feeling back.
However, the second she realized she was not alone, she had jumped for the folder for cover, the realization that it wouldn't work taking as long as was necessary for her brain to pin a name to the sound of the throat clearing and look up. He was getting too good at reading her, he really was.
"It's not like it's a state secret or something and it's not a big deal," she said with a dismissive half-shrug, kicking off one shoe and tucking that leg beneath her in her chair before spinning on it to reach a stack of parts catalogues on one of the several short filing cabinets that served to make her desk into a makeshift "L".
"Doesn't matter." Dean said firmly. He took a few steps closer so that he could spin her chair back around to face him, and he pulled up another chair for himself to sit in. "Did you really think you could start keeping secrets from Batman? Tell me what's the deal with the car. Did some asshole you know here drive one of those things? Did you get cut off in traffic by one of them? Just tell me what's going on."
Though he liked playing the role of the ass so much that Claire had adopted it as an unofficial nickname for him, Dean Winchester could be pretty damn perceptive and caring when he needed to be, and now he was worried about her. She was trying too hard to hide this, and brush it off, which meant that it was important to her.
In mid-stretch for the catalogues, Claire pulled her arm in sharply when he spun the chair, to keep from smacking him unintentionally, and then put her hands in her lap when he pulled another chair close, fussing with her skirt hem. That didn't last long, initially, as she looked up with a furrowed brow at his guesses.
"No, it's not anything like that. I just used to have one."
With the statement came another one of those dismissive half-shrugs, as though even the truth - the very undetailed truth - was no big deal. Really, it was almost five years ago now that she'd gained and lost it, whining about it now would be lame. It wasn't like Dean with the Impala, a legacy gift with years of his love and care invested, the only thing that had ever been constant in his life. It had just been something she hadn't even had a whole month.
"You had one?" Dean asked quietly, more than a little suprised. He of all people could understand the loyalty that came with owning a car. After all, the Impala was what Dean called his 'baby,' and he had loved her for his entire life. It made sense that a car she had once owned could inspire those thoughtful kinds of looks for Claire.
"So what happened?" he asked casually. "Did you trade it in? Wreck it like this poor son of a bitch?" What happened to her Rogue would determine how Dean was going to deal with this. It was funny how he could think he knew everything there was to know about Claire Bennet and yet she still could surprise him with stuff.
"No, not that," Claire said, shaking her head. she knew he'd find a way to coax it out of her, and really, it wasn't a huge secret. She was being more closely-guarded about it due to how she was feeling again, not because of the vehicle itself.
"After I left New York, we ended up in Costa Verde," she said, nodding slightly to one side, in the vague southern direction of Costa Verde from Los Angeles. "It was supposed to be a shot at still having a 'normal' life - as normal as Dad could make it. Just before my birthday, Dad gave me our Rogue. It wasn't brand new, but it was the first big thing that had ever been mine. I think he was trying to find ways to say sorry that I would have to hide from now on, but I loved it, so I didn't let it be a 'sorry' gift.
She looked down at her skirt hem, fussing with it again. "It was supposed to be where I was going to finish high school, but we weren't even there that long when we had to leave. No warning, no time to pack the whole house and change the plates on all the cars, just a rental moving truck and everything that meant the most to us. Dad thought people were on to me still being out there, that our cover had been blown, so we had to go deeper, hide more."
She'd had so many fake names, first just last names, then first names too, going from a family of four in hiding to just herself, her mom and Lyle gone when Sandra couldn't take the like anymore, her dad staying away to keep her cover better. And in the end, it wasn't about being emotionally attached in a huge way to the Rogue itself, it was about the whole thing, about losing something that had been all hers, about that being the first of many times when she'd have to leave everythign behind, a life of abandoned belongings, living in places with only the minimum furnishings thrown together because it had reached a point where it was pointless to keep rebuilding any kind of 'home' - a life of disenfranchisement.
It was stupid to dwell on that when she had so much now, here, in LA.
"See, not a huge secret, not a big deal," she said, with the third shrug of the same quality as before. "It's been almost five years since then and it wasn't the last thing I had to leave behind."
Except it was a big deal. Five years later, and she was still resorting to diversion tactics. She was emphasizing the fact that it wasn't a big secret, or a huge deal, and yet she had avoided the subject. Dean wasn't used to playing Oprah, but this situation didn't require much deep emotional thought. Claire was still clearly upset, even if she wasn't showing it.
It wasn't an entirely foreign subject to Dean. He was just four when everything changed and he went from being a kid with a regular 'job' in T-ball to being on the road all the time with his Dad and Sam. Through it all, the Impala was the one constant...well, that and the grungy hotels and greasy food. Still, maybe that was the easier way. Claire had nearly her whole life of being normal when everything changed and she had to start moving and changing who she was. At least Dean grew up that way.
He wanted to help her, but he wasn't sure of how to do that yet. He didn't want to make any promises he couldn't keep, but Dean told himself he'd do some checking into the car in the garage, and if that didn't pan out, at neighboring salvage yards and used car lots. It was amazing what you could do when you had a little bit of time and determination, and a pretty good knowledge of cars. Realizing that he had been quiet for a while, thinking about his plans, Dean cleared his throat.
"Still sucks," Dean said somewhat dismissively, because he didn't want to talk much more about the subject before he knew what he could do. "Your first car's kind of a big deal."
With a wave of her hand, Claire shifted to poke at the computer, pulling up the computerized files for the garage inventory.
"What, it's no '67 Chevy Impala," she said lightly. "Now that's the kind of car you make a big deal about."
She wasn't going to compare the two, at all, as it wasn't even in the same ballpark in her estimation. Dean's feelings for the Impala, both the outward show and the inward reasons, had nurtured Claire's own affection for the car. The Rogue from her past wasn't anything like that because she hadn't had it long enough to get even close to that attached.
Swinging her still-shod foot out, she bumped his shin with the toe of her shoe. "Don't you have a vehicle to be working on?" she said, more than actually asked, with a nod to the door.
Though he knew the Rogue was no '67 Chevy, Dean was pretty sure that, given a little time, she'd have come to love it the same way he loved the Impala. Thinking about being forced to leave his car in any city and just abandon her made Dean feel miserable, and more determined to fix this for her at once.
Claire bumped his shin, and Dean made a grab at her shoe, but he intentionally missed it. "Ok, Boss Woman, I'm going." He went to the mini fridge and pulled out one of Claire's bottles of water, drinking half of it before recapping it and taking the rest with him. "My break's over anyway...Ralph owes you a medal or something."
Even if she hadn't wanted to make a big deal of it, the fact that Dean had caught her out to talk now did meant a great deal to Claire. She'd find a way later to let him know that, one of those subtle, off-handed ways that he'd understand but wouldn't be some blow to his image.
"This was your break? Oh, Batman you need to do so much better with your time than hanging around talking about unimportant stuff," she said, then picked up a small, well-used eraser and tossed it at him, grinning when it bounced of the garage logo on the left chest of his work clothes. "Also, water thief."
Dean watched the eraser as it flew toward him, and allowed it to bounce off if his chest. He could have easily caught it, but instead just watched it, and then gave Claire a challenging look. "So that's the way it's gonna be, huh?" he stooped, picking up the eraser and tucking it into one of his pockets.
"Looks like I got you fooled. You thought the break was about having an Oprah moment, but it was really about coming to the office to steal stuff." He slowly unscrewed the bottle, taking a long sip out of it before pulling his arm back, as though to splash her with the water. "If you want it back, though, I can give you your water."
Putting her elbow on the desk, Claire propped her hand in her chin and watched him drink from the bottle, eyes locked on the way his throat moved as he swallowed the water. She pulled herself from the moment's worth of lacking self-control to wave her hand again.
"No, keep it," she said calmly, as though unafraid of ending up at all wet. "If water and erasers are your thing, take all you want."
Dean finished the bottle of water, then went back to the mini fridge, and got two more. He walked back toward the door to the garage, acting like he was going to steal both of them for a minute, but turned back toward Claire instead. No one was in the office, and no one had caught them kissing yet, but as far as Dean was concerned, if a guy at work saw him kissing Claire, it wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing. Sometimes he didn't like the way some of them looked at her, and kissing her would send a message even the most dense of Ralph's employees would get.
"You'd better have some too," he said quietly, sitting one of the bottles on her desk. He leaned in and kissed her slowly. "Now get back to work, woman."
Smirking that he had gotten the last word in, Dean headed back to the garage.
Woman. The toes of Claire's shoeless foot showed visible curling at the word and kiss, mirroring the same act of her still shod foot. There was just something about the way he said it that, despite hearing john use it before with Mary, it somehow still made it Dean's own in those moments. It should be against the law for one word to leave her feeling a heightened awareness mixed with an excited tingle.
"At four fifteen I'm working on the supplies closet, pass along that everyone better stay out of my hair," she called after him. He might have gone off thinking he'd had the last word, but she'd just won the whole exchange with that parting remark. He wasn't the only one who could initiate these kinds of things and her money was on Dean showing up with some excuse at 4:15 on the nose.
Dean paused, listening to Claire. He didn't turn around, because if he did it would be more than apparent how much he was looking forward to 4:15, but even with his back to her Dean was pretty sure Claire knew what she did to him. He cleared his throat, trying to come up with something smooth to say, but the ticking second hand of his watch bringing him closer and closer to a quarter after four took all of his witty skills away. Dean walked out the door to the garage.
Don't worry, Supergirl, I'll be there at four fifteen, and I'll even make the water stealing up to you then too.
Tossing the still full bottle of water into the air and catching it easily, Dean got back to work.