Most of what follows is true.

[theladyscribe]

Title: Most of what follows is true.
Author: theladyscribe 
Movie Adapted: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Genre: SPN gen with het leanings
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Jo, Sam, Agent Henrickson, Gordon Walker, mention of others (Sam/Jo, some implied Dean/Jo and Dean/Jo/Sam)
Rating: PG-13 for language and an ambiguous ending
Word Count: 2716
Summary: They’re small-time crooks, running credit card scams and desecrating graves. Petty thieves, stealing what they can’t scam. But sometimes small-time crooks get bored with their lives and start looking for trouble.
Betas: Many, many thanks to killmotion, who reminded me that Robert Redford was hot back in the day and told me to go for my crazy past/present narrative. This story would not have been half so good without the additional aid and support of neetha, terraneanblues, and peaceolgy, all of whom read over the fic for me. Also, thanks to balrogthane, who assured me the rating was right and that the characters sounded real, even though he didn’t know who any of them were. Without these people, this fic would be like Butch without Sundance – which is to say, incomplete.
Notes/Credits: Decidedly AU. You can generally assume that any episodes not directly referenced didn’t happen. Further notes at the end of the fic. Written for the reel_spn challenge.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended; fair use only. Not created for profit.



Most of what follows is true.

There’s these two brothers by the name of Winchester. They’re small-time crooks, running credit card scams and desecrating graves. Petty thieves, stealing what they can’t scam. The older of the two hustles pool and routinely fucks women – one in every town across the forty-eight continental states. The younger one is quieter, but just as dangerous (maybe more dangerous for his silence). He could have been something, was going to be a lawyer when his brother showed up and his girlfriend died and he fell off the map, disappearing into the old highways of America alongside his brother. Mostly they run their scams and desecrate their graves and fight and fuck and live just below the radar, and no one really notices because there’ve been others like them before and there will be others like them after.

But sometimes small-time crooks get bored with their lives and start looking for trouble.

“I’ve been thinking,” Dean said out of the blue.

“You? Thinking? That’s amazing.”

“Shut it, Geekboy,” he laughed. “Anyway, I was thinking that maybe what we should do is join the Marines.”

“What?”

“We should join the Marines. I mean, we’d be awesome at it, Sammy – we’re practically Marines anyway, with the way Dad trained us.” He shrugged. “I bet we could even get promoted almost immediately – we might not even have to go through basic.”

Sam blinked at him. “Dean, you do realize that neither one of us can ever join the military. We’ve got criminal records, and I know you never registered for voting or selective service.”

“Hmph.” He paused and then said, “I know! We can turn ourselves in.”

“What?”

“We should go to them and say, ‘We’ll join the Marines if you erase our criminal records.’ I mean, it’d be a win-win situation, right? We’d get our names cleared, and they’d get two of the best soldiers in the country fighting for them.” He grinned.

“Dean, you’re crazy. It’d never work. They’d laugh in our faces and lock us both up for the rest of our lives.”

Dean shook his head. “Sammy, Sammy, always gotta be the doubting Thomas. I’m telling ya, man, I got vision, and the rest of the world – including you – still wears bifocals.”

The older one – Dean, they call him, like James Dean – he’s already a suspect in the death of his brother’s girlfriend, and when the brothers appear in St. Louis at the same time that girls are being murdered, he’s directly involved. He dies there, supposedly, and the Feds forget about the Winchester brothers for a little while, because the older one’s dead and the younger one could have been something once upon a time.

But it’s only for a little while, because not even a full year later, the police find Dean in the home of a Baltimore judge, the judge’s wife dead at his feet and blood on his hands. He claims it was a ghost that killed her, not him, and his defense attorney begins to put together an insanity plea. It doesn’t matter, though, because his brother, the younger one – Sam, like Sam Jackson – breaks him out of jail and the boys take off in their hulking black car that should be far more visible than it is.

It was dark when they pulled onto the road that would take them to the Roadhouse, to the one place that was starting to become something like home. Dean’s eyes were wide, blood-shot from being awake and on the road for most of the day, and Sam stared out the window at the stars that dotted the sky. The song on the radio was low, the bass more soothing than grating, like a steady heartbeat against a lover’s ear.

“You know,” Dean said, more to keep himself awake than to start a conversation, “every time I see the Roadhouse, it’s like seeing it new and fresh all over again. And every time I see it, I ask myself why the hell we keep coming back to it.”

Sam laughed a little. “You only ask yourself that because you’re scared of Ellen.”

Dean huffed. “I am not scared of Ellen. I respect her. And you should, too. You’re the one banging her daughter.”

They lay low for several months and the younger one meets a girl. Her name’s Jo, short for Joanna or maybe Josephine, and she’s sort of like them – a small-time crook in her own way, though she’s far more subtle than the two boys in their black car. She takes up with them, running alongside them, helping them with their hustling and their scamming and their desecrating. She and Sam fuck at night, and since they live their lives in debauchery, sometimes Dean might join them, or he might take a girl in the other bed.

Jo came out of the trailer behind the Roadhouse where she and Sam had been sleeping to find Dean lying on his back on the hood of his car. He glanced at her and smiled, patting the hood beside him in invitation. She climbed up and nestled into the crook of his shoulder, looking up at the stars.

“Dean?” she said quietly after they had lain there for a long while.

“Yeah?”

“D’you ever think that maybe, if things had turned out differently, it’d be me and you together instead of me and Sam?”

He brushed a hand along her waist, rubbing her hip lightly with his fingers. “You know in some countries, sitting on the hood of a car with a guy is practically the same as marriage.”

She rose up on an elbow and looked down at him with a slight smile. “Is that so?”

“Yes it is,” he answered, straight-faced, before laughing and kissing her temple.

“What are you doing?” called Sam, coming out of the trailer, his hair disheveled and his eyes still half-shut.

“I’m stealing your woman,” Dean told him. “Go back to bed.”

Sam turned back toward the trailer slowly, one hand sweeping across his eyes, the other waving his brother away. “Yeah, yeah, you can have her,” he yawned and closed the door behind him.

They live quietly, but even small-time crooks with blood on their hands get itchy and start looking for trouble again.

They run into the law a second time in Wisconsin, with a bank robbery that went sour. It’s just the boys on this one – Jo stays home this time – and they barely slip through the fingers of Agent Henrickson, the man who has vowed to capture them dead or alive.

They lay low again, shacking up with Jo, who hides them in her home whenever the police come calling.

“Thank God you’re alright,” Jo breathed, wrapping her arms around Sam. “I saw the news,” she explained. “I was so afraid they’d get you both.”

Sam held her tightly for a moment, drawing comfort from her warm body. “We’re here, we’re safe,” he whispered. He pulled away a little and looked her in the eye. “It is safe here, yeah?”

She nodded. “Ash hacked into their system – he’s keeping tabs on both your files. They’ve not connected me to you. Yet.” Her last word lingered in the air like a bad smell. Yet. It meant every moment they stayed with Jo was another moment she risked everything – her record, her safety, her life.

“We won’t stay long,” Sam assured her.

“I know,” she said with a sad sigh.

They say the third time’s the charm, but it isn’t for the Winchesters. They’re arrested in Arkansas for breaking and entering – stealing museum property, hoping to sell it to the highest bidder, no doubt. It’s the first time they wear gloves to a crime scene, and Henrickson later says that should have tipped him off, because the boys escape prison in the night, running far and fast back to where Jo awaits them.

They don’t rest for long because word comes to them that Gordon Walker, a man they have crossed before, has made a deal with Agent Henrickson. He’s released from jail with the promise that he will find the Winchesters for the government. This time Jo goes with them.

Sam pulled her aside the night after they found out that Gordon had been released. “Listen, Jo. Dean and I, we’re thinking about taking off. We’re thinking about heading to Canada – where Gordon and Henrickson can’t get to us. Anyway, what I’m saying is you can come with us – they won’t expect us to have a third person with us, and a girl would be good cover – and we won’t stop you, but the moment you start bitching about the hours or the food or the hunting, we will leave your ass on the side of the road.”

“Gee, don’t sugar-coat it for her, Sam,” Dean said from the doorway.

Jo pursed her lips and said quietly, “I’m twenty-three years old and a bartender, and that’s pretty much the bottom of the pit. You two are the only real excitement I’ve ever known. So I’ll go with you to Canada, and I won’t complain. I’ll patch your clothes and clean your weapons and sew your wounds. There’s only one thing I ask.” She glanced at Dean and then looked Sam in the eye. “All I ask is that you two don’t make me watch you die. I’d like to skip that scene if you don’t mind.”

Gordon and his posse chase them all across the country, from Arizona to Maine, down the coast to Georgia and up through Tennessee and across the Great Plains again. They cross into Canada somewhere in either Montana or North Dakota – how they evade border control is anyone’s guess. For the time being, they are safe from both Gordon and Henrickson, neither of whom can do anything to them as long as they are across the border.

But even former small-time crooks with blood on their hands get bored with going straight, and before long the Winchesters and their little lady are back to hustling and scamming and desecrating graves in Canada.

Canada turned out to be little different from the States, except that the bars aired hockey games instead of football and every other sentence ended with “eh.” Dean took to it immediately, easily weaving his way into the Canadian bar scene, gaining drinking buddies and poker buddies and still managing to keep himself out of the limelight.

And then one night, some bozo accused him of cheating. The man – Mason, he’d said his name was – cocked his head. “You’re one helluva card player,” he said. “And I know, because I’m one helluva card player. Thing is, I can’t catch how you’re cheating.”

“I don’t cheat,” he said simply and began raking together the pile of cash in front of him.

Mason began to rise from his seat. “Leave the money there, boy.”

Dean clenched his jaw and Sam and Jo eyed each other; they could both see the tell-tale signs that he was readying for a fight.

“Come on, Dean,” Jo said, sidling up to him and putting a hand on his shoulder. “The money’s not important.”

Mason glanced at her and then turned back to Dean. “You oughta listen to your girl, bud. Get out.”

“I wasn’t cheating,” Dean insisted.

“I know you weren’t,” Jo said softly in his ear. “But let’s get out of here before a brawl starts, okay? Please?”

“No.” Dean dug in his heels.

Mason’s hands began to twitch, and then Jo caught the glimmer of a blade sliding out of a wrist sheath. “Dean,” she pleaded.

“No. If he asks us to stay, then we’ll go.”

Jo sighed. “Dean Martin Winchester,” she hissed, “we do not have time for your ridiculous sense of dignity. Let’s get out of here.”

He shook his head. “He’s gotta invite us to stay.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed as if he were about to draw on them anyway, and then he seemed to have an epiphany when Sam finally moved toward the group, looming menacingly behind his brother. “What would you think about maybe asking us to stick around?” Sam said with a quiet voice. “You can keep the money, and we’ll never come here again – just ask us to stay, alright?”

“Wouldn’t you like to stick around for another game?” he asked softly.

Dean grinned up at him. “No thanks, we’ve got places to be.” He stood swiftly and headed for the door.

Henrickson is in contact with the Canadian agents who are assigned to the Winchester case; he tells them about the way their crimes escalate from scams and petty thievery to robbery and hijacking and murder. They agree that the three are dangerous and invite him along on the sting. They’ve cornered the Winchesters – they know exactly where the three are headed.

Jo kept in touch with her mother through postcards even while they were on the run. She’d pick up a couple in gas stations when they stopped and send them to the Roadhouse.

“You could call her,” Dean said one night.

“Why would I want to do that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Just a thought.”

So one night Jo found a pay-phone and made the call.

“Harvelle’s Roadhouse,” said a familiar smoky voice.

“Mom?”

“Joanna Beth, is that you?”

“Yeah.”

“Been getting your postcards. You’re in Canada?”

Jo smiled to herself. “Yeah. For now.” She lowered her voice. “Sam’s getting skittish, though, says he thinks trouble’s coming up fast. I think – I think he wants me to leave.”

“Now why the hell would he want that?”

“He’s been saying it’s not safe anymore.” She paused. “I’m starting to think he’s right.”

“Jo, honey, you know you’re always welcome back home.”

It’s nighttime when they arrive, and there is no mistaking the two flashlight beams shining in the windows of the abandoned house. The task force surrounds the old homestead. The superior officer raises the megaphone to his lips. “You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up.”

There is no answer from inside the house, and then suddenly, there is a high-pitched scream that is cut off just as quickly as it began. The police have no choice but to take them down.

The banshee’s scream stopped as suddenly as it started. And then the gunfire began. The boys hit the ground, a rain of bullets and glass showering over them.

“This why you sent Jo home?” Dean asked when there was a lull in the shooting. Sam only nodded curtly. “You been hit?”

Sam shook his head. “You?”

“Nah.”

“We have regular bullets, don’t we?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He unloaded the shells filled with rocksalt and held out his hand for the regular bullets. Dean hesitated only for a moment before handing them over.

“You got a plan?” he asked.

“Take out as many of them as we can,” Sam answered.

“There a reason we don’t just surrender?”

He looked at Dean. “We’re fugitives. They’re already shooting at us, they’re not gonna let us off easy. Jo’s gone, and there’s no way we’d ever get back across the border even if we tried to get back to the Roadhouse. The only thing we have to look forward to is life in a maximum security prison, and even that’s only if we’re lucky enough to stay off death row.” He paused. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

“We could always ask them to surrender.”

Sam snorted derisively.

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Dean let out a breath that was almost a chuckle. “Well, let’s give them a helluva fight.” He finished loading his gun and rose just enough to have a shot out the window. He took aim and fired. “How many bullets we got, Sammy?”

Sam shrugged. “Enough to shoot ‘em each once.”

“Great,” Dean said, and then all of a sudden, he began to laugh as he leaned against the wall of the old house, reloading his shotgun.

“What’s so funny?” asked Sam. He had his hands on his knees, a revolver next to him, ready for use.

“Dude, I’ve seen this before,” he answered. Sam frowned, and Dean rolled his eyes. “Come on, Sam – it’s like Butch and Sundance all over again.”

Sam blinked at him and then suddenly let out a barking laugh that mirrored Dean’s. Of course. Bolivia.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: I’ve had the image of Sam and Dean as Butch and Sundance in my head for quite a while now – in fact, part of the last section is paraphrased from a drabble I wrote last December – so when reel_spn issued its challenge, I jumped at the chance to do this story.

I’ve tried to make the story more Dean and Sam and Jo than Butch and Sundance and Etta, and I hope I’ve succeeded in doing so. For those of you who know the movie, you will probably recognize much of the dialogue – I quoted a few things directly (like the “stealing your woman” line) and most of the rest is paraphrased (like Jo’s monologue).