Chapter Text
Authors Note: This is the sixth installment in the Sam, Dean and Theo stories, if you are new to this a little background info is in order. Basically Theo is an angel on parole and his parole officers are Sam and Dean, they are also his penance. He is to work with them for a period of 10 years; this story takes place 7 years after the initial pairing. If you’re curious now about how this came about go back and read “Tremors”, “My Mechanic is an angel.”, and “All Day Suckers.” By the way my most special thanks to “Writing_in_secret” for the idea of Bobby giving the couple a trailer in the back of his lot. An d giving me permission to play with that story tool. By the way again for those who haven’t read my earlier work, I do have God himself popping in from time to time, the near apocalypse basically warned him that he’d been a bit lax in keeping an eye on the worlds smaller frame of people. And to get a mental image of God, I usually describe him a nattily dressed, spiked haired young man, someone who would fit in a crowd; actually he would stand out because I picture him as the Doctor in Dr. Who with David Tennant as the Doctor. ;^) Hope you enjoy.
Story:
In one part of the state Bert Tillman was driving home from work, passively listening to an all night talk show radio host, trying to keep him mind on his driving while at the same time rehashing that damned meeting again and again in his mind. It had gone terribly, the projector was fouled up so that meant delaying the meeting by about 10 minutes while photocopies of the material could be prepared, in the interim he filled in the team with the latest progress reports he knew from memory, the copies finally came in and he passed the collated and stapled copies around the table. They then got down to the meeting in earnest, going over projections, figures, and graphs that was showing the absolute and approximated gestation of the microbe for their purpose.
In another part of the state a mother was reading some Mother Goose tales to her child, tonight was Mary and her little lambs and Humpty Dumpty. The lambs went off good, the three year old helping her along with some of the phrasing, then Humpty Dumpty was a success with the little one practically reciting that herself. “All the King’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
Ironically at that moment in time spread out by several hundred miles, while Humpty Dumpty was suffering a cracked personality, Bert was twisting and writhing at the wheel of his car. He was already impacted into a guard rail, then just as suddenly Bert burst in a shower of blood and bits in the car.
… couldn’t put Humpty together again….
This was occurring in the state of California, while across the way in South Dakota, Sam Winchester sent a book flying in frustration. Dean his brother, ducked his head narrowly missing it as he came into the bedroom.
“Going for a goal?” Dean asked.
“No, sorry, just trying to make sense of the code in that book and it’d half assed written for a left handed, biopic, chimpanzee with a case of hives.” Sam said disgustedly.
Dean bent down and picked up the book, “HACKERS”, “So what are we learning now? How to crack the CIA databases?”
“Not quite, actually I was trying to code in a program in there that would generate progressive statistics based on given data in a specific time reference. Sounds simple enough right?”
“If you say so.” Dean shrugged noncommittally.
Sam scowled. “Actually it is a simple program, but one of the compilations is so screwed up that it makes no sense whatsoever.” Sam shut his laptop and swung his legs off the bed. They’d been in this time a total of two days and while they weren’t getting on each other’s nerves, they were still suffering the effects of the Arizona heat that they’d been subjected to for the better part of 10 days while trying to break a ring of excruciatingly manipulative Satanists in Phoenix, it was also July, and the temperature down there was 110* in most areas, 118* in the area they had to stake out. They were living on cases of bottled water. Some of it drank some of it poured over their heads to try and stay cool.
The door to the trailer banged open and then closed, no sounds except for hideously hard footfalls. Then a door slamming shut.
“Teenage angst?” Dean asked.
“In someone nearly 1600 years old I don’t think so.” Sam motioned as he rose, “Come on.”
The walked out of their room through the living room and into the opposite hall and tapped on the bedroom door. “Uh Theo?” Sam said.
“Doors open.” Came the reply.
They opened the door to see their angel parolee lying on his bed in what appeared to be a classic funk.
“Ok who yanked yer chain?” Dean asked.
“It’s not important.” Theo said working hard to master his emotions.
“Obviously it is to get you this pissed off.” Dean said.
“How you figure?” Theo asked almost sarcastically.
Dean enumerated on two fingers. “One you don’t get angry that easily and if you do it’s for a damn good reason, and two you don’t do sarcasm well, three you’re in here on what is supposed to be your bed but we both know where you bed down at night.”
Theo had the good grace to look abashed, handsomely abashed but abashed. “Sorry, I was in Part’s City down the road, I was going to get a new set of floor mats and some other stuff for the car. I had an armload, when the dude standing next to me in line shoved a pack of lug nuts at me and asked me to hold them for him a minute that he had to go get something else. He runs off then while I’m standing there I go ahead and put my stuff on the counter, sitting the lug nuts way to the side. Then while I was being rung up he comes back up in line and grabs the set and holds them beside himself for a minute.”
“I got a bad feeling about where this is going.” Sam said.
“You too?” Dean offered.
“Well I thought that was all when the guy asked me and what about that set of lug nuts sticking out of my pocket. I looked down and sure enough they were sticking just out of the pocket. I yanked them out and told him that these were the guy next to me. Who looked at me like I’d grown two heads and said that he didn’t know what I was talking about. The manager took all the stuff I was going to buy and stuck it on the opposite side of the register and then asked me to follow him, grabbing my arm for direction. I didn’t want to make a scene and followed him to a back office where he started grilling me about what else did I take? He was accusing me of being a shoplifter. I just looked at him and told him that I didn’t know what he was talking about then he said “we’ll see.” So he sits there and runs a video of the counter exchange back and notes where the guy next to me in line palms the set of lugs and shifts them into my pocket. Then he say’s “Oh so you two are in cahoots.” He called up to the front register but the guy was gone. He then accused me further and told me to get out that my business was no longer welcome.”
Dean looked amused for all of two seconds then his face turned hard. “Wait a minute, this the one down on B Street and Central?”
“Yeah the one we usually go to.”
“Come on.” Dean turned to Sam, “You finish coding, I’m going to chew some ass in a big way.”
It took them about 10 minutes with traffic to reach the store but they did shortly. Dean wasted no movement of grace and genteel attitude but banged the door to the store open and then walked straight up to the counter. “Get me Otis!” He ordered the hapless clerk recognizing one of their frequent customers. A few minutes later “Otis” was coming up following the store clerk.
“Oh hey Dean what can I…wait a minute while I take care of some business here.” He walked over to the door where Theo was standing and looked him square in the eye. “You’ve got exactly 5 seconds for me to see the back of your Levis or I’m calling the cops.”
“Before you do that you might want to talk with my brother.” Theo smirked pointing to Dean. Dean stood at the counter now drumming his fingers.
Otis was confused now. “But I’ve never seen you two together in here.”
“That’s because I’m usually the one making the parts run, sometimes he used to come in on his own.” Dean said caustically.
“Look Dean, I’m sorry as I can be about this, but if you saw the tape.”
“Show me.” Dean demanded and Otis took him quickly back to the office and keyed up the spot on the tape, “No run it back a couple of minutes. I want to see everything surrounding this.” The manager did and he noticed the young man in line lay the lugs on top of the stack that Theo was holding, then he noticed Theo move them to the far end of the counter, the another moment and the boy was back up at the counter and it was immediately visible how the young man palmed the lugs and slipped them into his pocket.”
“You didn’t feel that?” Dean asked Theo.
“Little difficult to when I’m juggling the amount of stuff I had.” Theo shot back.
Then the video showed the transaction that Theo wanted to complete, the finding of the lugs, the taking off of Theo and Otis. The manager reached over to shut off the tape when Dean stopped him.
“Wait for it.” Dean warned.
They watched the new sale and the manager looked close at the boy in line. Then ran the tape back and looked at him again, then back up to where they left off. Dean sat back scowling at Otis. It was now obvious that the lug nuts were a diversion while the boy went back into the store and filled his pockets and grabbing up a case of oil waited for the diversion to use the case of oil to hide his stuffed pockets. He paid and left the store.
“Roll that back a minute to a fairly clear shot of the dudes face.” Dean asked. Otis did, Dean and Theo looked at the guy and shook their heads. “Can’t place him.” Dean said.
“Looks like I owe you an apology son.” Otis said turning to Theo.
Theo in his best surly teenager mode looked back at Otis and said, “Yes you do, and you ain’t my daddy and I ain’t your son.”
“Theo!” Dean barked, Theo looked downcast for a moment.
“You’ll want to save that tape and turn it over to the cops at least if they get a good image off the tape of the real thief, you might have a chance of stopping him from hitting you again.” Dean said standing.
“Dean I am real sorry about all this.”
“Next time learn to recognize a real con instead of an honest customer caught in the middle.”
Dean got up and strode out of the office with Theo in tow. Otis got up from his desk and charged out after them. He was basically speechless as they left the store.
In the parking lot Dean turned and looked at Theo who was relaxing substantially. “You have no idea how it is keeping up a surly teenager mode but he really pissed me off earlier.” Theo told Dean.
“Try me I got pretty good at all emotional strata during my teen years.” Then he looked around and walked over to another car in the lot still looking and opened the door fiddled a moment and then locked and shut the door.
“What did you just do?” Theo asked.
“Paid back lard ass for not doing his job, you didn’t notice his car keys that were on his desk go missing at one point?”
Theo looked incredulous, “You didn’t!”
“I play this trick on him all the time and you’d think he’d catch on by now.” Dean said shaking his head.