A/N: My first complete fanfic with over 21k words! I'm very proud. Of the length, not the quality, which (according to me) is suspect. So angst. Much indulgent. W o w.

He woke up with a sense of impending doom. Or something. Maybe, he reflected as he showered, dressed, and added a generous helping of blueberries to his oatmeal, maybe it was just indigestion. Or a bug. Or allergies. It was getting to be that time of year again. So by the time he left for work, Dean Barrow had mostly buried the odd feeling that hovered coldly in the pit of his stomach.

Jason was already at the garage by the time he got there, with the radio tuned to some stupid electro-pop music. He figured the lanky teen had changed it just to pull his chain, a hypothesis confirmed by an almost-hidden smirk as he clicked it back to his favorite classic rock station. "Ancient history," Jason complained, head bobbing to AC/DC nevertheless.

"You just don't know good music when you hear it," Dean shot back, wiping down his tools. "Hey, you wanna clean up your mess over there? Margaret's coming over with her Bug later, remember?" He grinned, watching Jason scramble to straighten up his station. Margaret, as dark-skinned as Jason was never-sees-the-sun pale, was also seventeen and, Dean suspected, as smitten with Jason as Jason was with her. Both were terrible flirts, though, and one of these days Dean was pretty sure he was going to have to step in and help both of them.

Margaret came in with her Bug a half hour early, weakly protesting that she was sure Jason had said 9, not 9:30. Dean all but shoved Jason at her and looked up from sorting out a crate of spare parts to see them standing just a little too close to each other. He grinned again and pretended not to notice when Margaret stole a kiss.

A stranger pulled in after lunch, needing a new tire. He leaned over the hood as Dean filled out the paperwork and said, "Cute little place you got here." His tone said 'I didn't know Arizona had backwater towns,' and not in a charmed way. "What's the population? 400?"

"401," Dean said lightly, adding $10 to the total. "Mayor just had a baby. There you go. Sign there."

"Do you take credit card?"

Dean wished he'd added $20. "You're in the back country, not back in time. Over here by the cash register."

The rest of the afternoon passed without incident, though he found himself at loose ends. The feeling in his gut resurfaced, that cold warning that something was on the horizon, something bad. At one point he came to himself to realize he'd been staring down the road for at least five minutes. The two-pump gas station/convenience store was the only inhabited shop between him and the edge of town, and he could follow the two-lane highway past it for a couple miles before it twisted out of sight.

He let Jason go home at 4 when no one else came and decided against going home in favor of tinkering with his truck. It was too quiet at home, and Heather was out of town. He shied away from thinking about her homecoming very much: they'd had a Talk before she left, about commitments and individual effort in making a relationship work. He'd thought they were dating; she didn't. He didn't know whether to press his point or hold what he had.

The uneven growl and rattle of a car in bad shape being poorly driven woke him from his unpleasant thoughts. He walked over to the open garage door just in time to see a sleek, black mid-60s Chevy Impala swerve back onto the right side of the road before veering toward the garage. He backed up quickly as the Impala screeched to a cockeyed halt halfway through the doorway. There was a moment of almost-silence, the engine ticking and his pounding heart the only things he could hear. Then his anger took over and he marched toward the driver's door. "What the hell, man, are you drunk?" he demanded loudly.

The door opened and the driver grabbed the top of it to lever himself out of the car. He swayed once upright, all 6'something of him, then turned to look at Dean.

Dean's heart stopped for a long moment.

The left side of the guy's face was partially obscured by almost shoulder-length brown hair and the sheet of blood it was stuck in. His breath came in ragged huffs and he stared at Dean for several seconds without really seeing him. His white dress shirt was spattered with blood all over, and the left leg of his black dress pants gleamed and clung wetly. Finally his eyes focused on Dean, and his lips parted a little bit more while his eyes widened, as if he recognized him. He laughed once, loudly and incredulously, before his eyes rolled back and he dropped.

Dean caught him before he hit the concrete floor. After a moment of stunned realization of what had just happened, he laid the stranger onto the floor carefully and then ran for the phone.

It didn't occur to him until after he'd hung up that he didn't have the sense of foreboding anymore.

Dr. Janna McCall came back out of the examination room and pulled up short when saw the number of people crowded into the tiny waiting room. "Okay, uh, can we clear the room a little? How about, um, Louis, Abby, George, and Dean." There were groans, mostly good-natured; between the sheriff, Louis, and the town's news reporter, George, not to mention gossip, most of the gawkers figured they'd know most of the story by the next morning at the latest.

Mayor Abigail Hanson accepted Dean's hand up. "Thanks, dear," she huffed, hand on her stomach. At the doctor's narrowing eyes, she raised her other hand in surrender. "I've been laying down, Janna. But you can't expect me to stay home when a bloody stranger drives into town to collapse in my favorite mechanic's garage."

"How injured?" Louis asked.

Janna hesitated, then said, "Through-and-through gunshot in his left shoulder, significant laceration to the face, and a severe concussion. There are other minor cuts, scrapes, contusions- Looks like he was in a hell of a fight. He's lost a lot of blood, obviously, but that will be the easiest thing to fix."

"He awake?"

"No. With a concussion that severe, he may be out for a while. Even if he does wake up, there may be amnesia or other brain damage. It's impossible to tell at this point." She anticipated Louis' next question and pulled a clear plastic bag from the pocket of her white coat. "Here's his wallet. According to his driver's license his name's Sam Parker. Address is in Dallas, Texas."

George whistled. "Long way from home."

"No photos," Janna continued, sounding a bit sad. "No credit cards, some cash, but no business cards or anything to say who he works for. No wedding ring. No phone, either."

Louis shuffled the few bagged items thoughtfully. "I'll make some calls, see if we can figure out who he works for and what he's doing here with a bullet hole in him."

"Here we are," Dean said, feeling a little bit self-conscious. Why, he couldn't quite nail down: sure, the guy had shown up in a suit, but right now he was in a large hoodie and jeans that had been in the duffel in the back seat of his car, both of which were a little too big for him.

Right now he stared at Dean's one-storey green-sided house with a level of interest that Dean thought it might not deserve. "Nice." His voice still had a rasp to it, a roughness that made Dean wince whenever he heard it: it sounded painful.

Everything this dude did looked painful; he seemed to think being shot in the shoulder, seventeen stitches in his scalp, a concussion, and amnesia were nothing, really, and acted accordingly. Maybe a line appeared between his eyes, or the side of his mouth quirked, but for the most part everything seemed to just bounce off his mild yet implacable mien. He'd been politely impatient to leave the clinic, politely insistent that he didn't remember anything, and politely uncomfortable with the idea of staying with Dean Barrow until the doctor cleared him to drive.

"Uh, is there a motel or somewhere…?" he'd tried.

"It's Dean or me," Janna had told him flatly, and that was the end of it.

Dean still wasn't really sure why he'd volunteered. "He could stay with me," he'd heard himself say. Janna and Louis had looked at him in surprise. "Jason can run the garage, I have the room, Heather's out of town for the next two weeks…" Or maybe he did. "I know it's weird, but, well, I know what it's like."

The first thing Dean remembered was walking down the side of the highway just before dawn, head aching but not bleeding, in jeans and a green t-shirt and no wallet, no ID, no clue who he was. Later, when he took off his shirt for Janna to examine him, they found numerous odd scars, a strange pentagram-esque tattoo over his heart, and DEAN BARROW written on the inside back collar of the t-shirt in a bleeding black pen. "What am I, six?" Dean had muttered, a little unnerved.

A name search had come up with a Brazilian prime minister and no missing persons report. After about a week of trying things he realized he knew how to fix cars. The owner of the town's garage had been hovering on the edge of retirement for the past ten years, so when he saw Dean's care and experience with engines, he promptly gave Dean the job of manager and started working on the rock garden he'd planned.

The garage was practically Dean's now, with tools and tool benches set up the way he wanted them, one of the hydraulic lifts fixed, the outside repainted a professional greyish-blue, and the paperwork in the office completely reorganized.

The garage brought in enough work to pay for his tiny one bedroom, one bathroom house. The generosity of neighbors, coupled with some careful spending, meant the place was pretty well furnished now. Nice TV, queen-sized bed, and a fairly comfortable couch that he would be sleeping on.

"It's home," Dean said with a shrug.

Sam swallowed roughly, then started to open his door.

"Holy shit, dude." Dean clambered out of the truck and hurried over to the other side. "I swear to God if you jump down-"

Sam pressed his lips together but waited until Dean came around to lean on the offered arm. "I'm fine."

"Yeah, sure you are." Dean pulled the duffel bag out of the back and the plastic bag containing Sam's medication and what was almost a book of instructions, then led the way to the front porch. "Watch that step, it kind of wobbles."

"Thanks."

Dean dropped his keys onto the ceramic cat-shaped bowl his neighbor had given him for that purpose (she was too sweet and came over too often for it to… disappear) and tossed the duffel bag onto the couch. "Kitchen's to the left, bathroom's at the end of the hall, and the bedroom is the other door down there."

Sam looked around slowly, an unreadable expression on his face. "Cozy."

He shrugged, not sure if he should be offended. "You don't happen to remember any favorite foods, do you? Or, uh, food allergies?"

Sam pulled a chair away from the small table that divided the kitchen from the living room and settled into it heavily. "Uh, nothing comes to mind. Sorry." He rubbed a hand over his face and grimaced at the stubble. "You got a razor?"

"You're going to work tomorrow, right?" Sam mumbled, only half-watching the baseball game.

"Uh, I'm pretty sure the doctor-"

Sam sighed, and stood slowly. "I'm going to bed. You should go to work tomorrow."

Dean stood too, watching to see if he needed any help. "You hit your head pretty hard-"

"So check on me at noon." Sam smiled weakly. "Dude, I'm just gonna be sleeping. Wake me up at noon, make sure I took my pain pills, make sure I know where I am, let me sleep again."

"That should be all right," Janna said a little doubtfully the next morning. "Rest is very important for recovery, but he should be okay until noon."

"Okay, thanks Janna."

"He hasn't remembered anything, has he?"

"Not that he's told me."

Janna sighed heavily. "Damn. One of these days I'm going to pull you in to get a picture of that tattoo. I want to know what it means."

"What does my tattoo have to do with-?"

"Sam has the same tattoo."

Dean blinked. "He does, huh?"