Dead Zone Fic: Another Man's Son

Title: Another Man's Son
Author: Ne’ichan
Email: neichan22@gmail.com
Fandom(s): Dead Zone
Genre (general, hetero or slash): Slash
Pairing/Characters: Johnny/Walt, Johnny/Bruce, Walt/Sara off screen, Walt/multiple, off screen.
Rating: FRAO
Notes: My First Dead Zone fic. Kind comments treasured.

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JJ is John's son. John found this truth out very early on, almost immediately after he woke up and Sara came to see him. The shock of seeing the boy in her memories when John embraced her was disorienting. Sara had known him since they were children. He thought for an instant that she was thinking of him, recalling him as he sometimes did her, when they were both children still, from way back when. Only, JJ wasn't John. Close, but no cigar.

It wasn't easy for Sara to visit. She felt guilty for not waiting for him to wake up. Guilty for not immediately telling him about JJ, for not knowing how. Of course she had been told he wouldn't wake, that it would be a miracle, and miracles didn't happen every day. She'd prayed. Hoped. Held his hand. Then she'd had to move on.

She'd done what any sane woman would, she made a life for herself and for the child she was carrying at the time of his accident. She had given JJ a life, a good one, and that was more important to John than the loss of his chance to be a father. JJ's life and happiness, with Walt as his father meant more to John than his own pain.

Sara still loved John, he knew it, saw it, felt it when they touched, heard it in her voice, and yet she had a husband now who she also loved. A husband and a son. A family that didn't include John. Though John's genes had made it possible, gave her part of that family. Knowing that she loved him made it hard for him to touch her.

Once, a long time ago, they had been each other's future, family present and future, waiting to be married. With a family, a child on the way that John never knew about. Now they weren't.

John felt like it had all hit him rudely in the face, which, it had. One day kissing his fiancée, leaving to get a movie, looking forward to a romantic night, then…the coma. The next moment his life was completely different. Changed. And not in a way he liked. He had been part of a couple, now he was alone. More than alone, he was apart, different. He had visions. No one else knew what that was like, what it did to him.

Six years was a hell of a long time to wait. John told himself he wasn't surprised she hadn't waited. That it wasn't fair to want her to. But it was hard, because to him...no time had passed at all. He had slept...and woken, it was no different to him than the sleep of a single night. At least mentally it wasn't. He wrestled with reality. It seemed so strange.

Physically there were differences and problems. He had his silver topped cane after the agonizing trial of learning to walk again. His muscles had atrophied, stiffened and weakened despite all the physical therapy he had and his balance wasn’t so good. Still he wasn’t in as bad shape as he could have been, the nursing home he'd been in had been a good one, the staff at the center took care of him, did what therapy they could. So his muscles weren't as wasted as they might have been if he'd been anywhere else.

But it still felt like it had only been days since he and Sara were engaged, ready to marry, on the brink of a commitment that would last forever. Nothing but potential, nothing but the positive. Crazy happy. Now, that was gone. Well, not gone, but shoved down hard, away, out of sight. Not to be talked about. And not to be remembered when he had the strength to prevent it.

No matter how John's heart cried out to talk about what was now the past, he had to find a way to accept that it was the past. Gone. Hard when he wanted to remember, to be held and to be the one who was kissed and loved in her arms. She had a husband now. And no matter how much she loved John she also loved Walt.

Sara was Walt's wife. JJ was Walt's son. If John had let himself he might have hated Walt. Walt who had taken John's life and made it his own.

Walter Bannerman, the local Sheriff. And wasn't that something. She'd done well. In fact John, in his coma, had been instrumental in their meeting. Sara and Walt, her future husband, met while Sara was visiting John. Pregnant and grieving. Walt had been there for her. John felt betrayed by that in an oddly twisted way, used badly by the world. Being an inadvertent matchmaker for Sara and Walt as he lay unaware, unable to protest, to call out and beg her not to leave him. Betrayed not so much by Sara, but by the fickle fates that let it happen.

Losing Sara in what seemed to him overnight was hard. Meeting the lucky man who she turned to was harder. Liking him went against every fiber of his being. But there it was. Reality would not be denied.

Walt was a good man. They shook hands and John was about knocked over by the visions that overwhelmed him. Visions of Sara and Walt, from the most casual of moments to the most intimate, Johnny was there. That is what is on Walt's mind at the time, that and fear that he is going to lose his wife to her first and longest love, John Smith.

Walt knows that Sara still loves John. He knows it deep down; John will always be her first love, her longest love, a man she still loves. He'd been there from her earliest childhood. Their souls had joined into one, been that way for the longest time. In a way, they were just as joined today as back then. Walt couldn't have that, it was still John's. But nor could John have what was Walt's.

Meeting JJ just about breaks John’s heart. His son looks like him, even more so than he did in the vision. Looks like all the pictures his mother took of John as a child. The only difference, one easy to overlook, is his eyes. JJ's eyes have more of Sara in them than John. Their expression is purely JJ's own; he is getting old enough now to be strongly individual. And John is glad of it. But everything else physical about the boy is pure Johnny.

JJ is half his. Half of the reason JJ is here on Earth, breathing, laughing, playing and growing up is locked inside John's every cell. His DNA combined with Sara's made this perfectly beautiful child. And John can't even hug him. Reach out and hold him. Because JJ doesn't know. And John can't tell him. And having strangers hug you when you are a kid is just weird. Scary.

How the hell is that fair? What did he do in his life as a teacher, as a man, as a friend or a lover that God took away his life, the life he'd loved, and left him like this? John wants to cry, so large is the ache in his chest, the band around his heart that is squeezing, hurting.

So, what would he give to go back? Everything. He'd give up the house, the visions, the cane, and the money...no...he wouldn't give up everything. He sighed. Funny John, he thought. Really funny. Face it. He wouldn't give up his son being here, the son who didn't know him. All John Smith had lost was worth it to know he had this child formed of his flesh and Sara's. Worth every loss he'd suffered, every moment he did without.

That didn't mean he couldn't wish or dream he was the husband she came home to. Or that he was the one JJ ran to and told the adventures of his six year old's day to. But it wasn't his life. It was Walt's life. And John couldn't even despise the man.

Far from it, John liked Walt. After the first erotic vision of Sara and Walt together he thought he'd learn to hate him, but it didn't happen like that. He wanted to touch Walt. Wanted it because it was the only way to get close to her that way, the way he once had her. In his arms, skin to skin, and closer than that. Inside each other. Now he could get that only one way. Touching Walt. Sara didn't have visions of her husband and sex when she touched Johnny. John didn't let himself ask why, didn't let himself grow false hope because of it.

The visions, another horrible benefit of his six-year coma, kept him from wanting to touch many people. He had once been an affectionate man who bestowed a warm hug to his friends, an encouraging pat to his students, and shook hands with everyone and all of that. Now he couldn't deal with the consequences of touch. Even as he withered inside from the lack of touch.

Touching Sara, he hugged her, braced himself and did it because he couldn't not touch her. It would be too much like cutting off his own hand to be around her and keep an artificial distance between them. But he couldn't have what he wanted from her, not all of it. So, he always had to be on his guard, to be sure he didn't over step. She made it his responsibility, not her own. It was very Sara to do that. To trust him even as he was in agony wanting her, wanting it all to be the way it had been.

Bruce was great. Bruce he could touch. Bruce...for some reason visions rarely were kicked up and rarely kicked him in the head when he touched Bruce. It was one reason he ended up in bed with the other man. Not for sex, but just to be close. Bruce understood. He dealt with disabled people all the time. People who no one wanted to touch, or felt uncomfortable touching. Bruce had none of the usual barriers. Not that Bruce was sleeping with any of his patients, only John who by now was far more of a friend than a patient. Bruce was...a gift from god. John held on to him with grateful hands.

John looked forward to those times when Bruce would come to the door bearing his overnight bag if he was going to stay. All John had to do was look down to know. Bruce was his best friend. They'd hit it off right away. Bruce's hands familiar even before John was aware of them in a conscious way, his body knew their touch. Bruce had taken care of him for several of the years he'd spent in a coma. Bruce was one big reason he could walk today. Bruce, who never gave up on him, not then and not now.

John owed Bruce. Owed him big time. But Bruce looked past all of it, and once John snapped out if it, Bruce became the person closest to him. The one he shared the most with. The one he slept with from time to time.

No one knew of course. Bruce told no one, making it clear it was no one's business but his and Johnny's. Coming right out and saying it when John was in an agony of pain and feeling the failure of his life weighing on him, after the first few times they slept together, John in Bruce's sheltering, friendly arms, trying to find some way to ask Bruce not to tell. To keep it a secret. Bruce, being Bruce, understood. And John had to admit as messed up as his life was he was truly blessed to have both JJ and Bruce.

Sara, the love he'd lost was not the most important person in his life suddenly. In a distant way, JJ was. In a close up every day way Bruce was. Sara represented longing. Unrequited desire. Emotional pain. Walt....Walt was everything he wanted to be. At least what he wanted to be now. His past...well, his past was just that. In the past. No, Sara was no longer the most important person in his life. In fact when he thought about it, she was probably the fourth on his new list. Behind JJ, Bruce and even Walt. Walt who he wanted to touch, whose life he snuck into without the other man suspecting how far.

John and Sara talked daily. Sometimes more than once. They saw each other. She was a good friend, and from her view point, he was her best friend. He couldn't say that about her anymore, but he liked hearing her say it to him. He cared about and loved her. But she wasn't the one who got him through the day.

Walt coming over more and more was strange when John looked at it objectively. One day he didn't know the man existed. Six months later, Walt was one of his good friends, a man he saw pretty close to every day. A man who he had lunch with, cooked dinner for, who he worked with. A man he relied on. A man he stole visions from. The visions being the only sexual outlet John Smith had most of the time.

He found it to hard to cope with touching others and getting through the visions that blindsided him of them recalling strangers before he tried to have sex. He considered trying a call girl for about 30 seconds before he realized what kinds of horrific visions touching one of those unhappy women would gift him with. He tried to date, but the women...well the two he'd tried to date, had left thinking he was crazy when he told them about his visions.

So, Walt was what he had. Sex was boiled down to remembering the visions he got from touching the sheriff, and re-conjuring them at a later time when he was alone and had the privacy to masturbate. If Walt suspected he'd probably kill him. Or at least beat him bloody. Walt was far more macho than John, in a nice-guy sort of way. But Walt had a past too, one that wasn't as nice as his life today.

In a strange way John's mind started to put Walt into a whole new category. A nice, shiny new box that John did everything in his power not to look to closely at. Best not to analyze it, best not to read that particular label. John Smith wasn't a fool, he looked the other way, found something else to keep him busy when he started to get maudlin and analytical. It was that or give up his pathetic sex life all together.

Of course, there was Bruce. But Bruce was very straight, he just wasn't afraid of touching other men, of sharing a bed with them. He wasn't interested in sex with John or any other man he'd met in his life. Hand jobs or blow jobs were not on Bruce's list of things to experience with other men. He wasn't even curious; his brain and body didn’t go there. John knew because his visions had showed him. They had also showed him that Bruce liked sleeping with John in a companionable way. Bruce liked the closeness as much as John did. John counted himself damn lucky and took care not to cross the boundaries that were left.

John missed kissing. He really missed it. He missed it enough that he thought about kissing everyone at one time or another. He thought about kissing Sara of course, kissing her like a lover, not merely on the cheek like a sister. He knew he couldn't. Knew it would be a disaster. Would she have an affair with him? Probably, but she would feel guilty, and he would, too. He would feel like he was stealing, soiling something that was good and clean and pure.

Which was strange, because John wasn't all that straight-laced. He didn't condemn out of hand men or women who were weak enough; needy enough to reach out to others no matter how inappropriate the choice; men or women who’d had affairs. He had never had to look at himself in that context before. He had always had Sara, and always knew that he would never need more than her in his love life, in his bed. Everything had always stemmed from her.

And didn't that turn out to be a lie. He needed her. She was his friend, yet she couldn't be more, or it would destroy her, Walt, and JJ. Even John wouldn't be happy to have her at that price. Best not to think of it, not to wish for it, not to hope anymore. Hope for what he couldn’t have.

And that was how he lived, day to day. Sleeping with Bruce. Friends with Sara. Touching Walt.

Until JJ started looking sick. Until John touched his son, and realized it was serious, not just the flu, not a cold that was lingering. He touched JJ and saw nothing. No future.

John got them all to a hospital, fast. Trying not to scare Sara or JJ, he didn’t want them to be as frightened as he was. Walt, well, he didn't really think about Walt for a while, the need to touch him was gone. It seemed to help him not to touch Walt. For a while, until all the tests came back. Until the diagnosis crashed down on him, on all of them. Then he had to touch Walt again. He had to; once again the only thing keeping John Smith sane was the man who had everything he wanted and was about to lose it all.

Sara came to him, crying; JJ had leukemia. John held her, cried with her. Knew he couldn’t cope with the idea of losing JJ. Walt’s son. Sara’s son. His son. The doctors were trying medications, but they had said the words bone marrow more than once. Of course John got tested. Everyone in town did, or nearly everyone. There were whispers of course; talk of JJ's resemblance to John, but now John didn't care. If his bone marrow could save JJ, the doctors could take it all, every drop, they could suck him dry.

Walt was the one who approached him a few months later, when it became clear that no one was a good match to JJ. JJ was white like most of the donors, but even so, no match. Ethnicity's had a big effect on compatibility. Asians were more likely to find an Asian donor who was compatible, Jews more likely to match with Jews, and so on. The vast majority of donors were white. And yet, JJ wasn't a lucky boy.

John was close, but not good enough, the doctors wanted someone better. How much better? Just better, they said. And when he asked them how soon…they shook their heads and said, “As soon as possible.”

Walt, who had sat down with JJ's doctors, who had asked the questions all over again, knocked on John's door. John knew it was Walt, felt his head leaning against the door, felt his despair. John opened the door. He'd never seen Walt cry before. He was crying now.

"JJ...?" John almost failed to get the words out past the constriction of terror that seized his throat. He felt the blood drain from his head, he slumped, panting, nearly falling to the floor.

"No..." Walt's hands grabbed him, held him up, got him to the couch, sat him down. "At least not yet. But it isn't looking good. My son..." He stopped, raised his eyes to John's, both men stricken, and he changed the words, "...our son, he's not responding all that well to treatment. The doctors hoped there would be a donor found. But...well, you know how that is going."

John managed to nod his head. He did know. He clasped his hands in his lap, watched them shake.

"The doctors said if JJ had siblings, they would be his best chance of a match. If Sara and you had another child. Not me and Sara. There would be a 25% chance of a match." Walt had no anger in his voice, no accusation, no resentment, just desperation. The same desperation that echoed in John's chest.

John nodded. "Anything. Anything. Whatever he needs. Whatever JJ needs." He said, and he meant it.

"Sara has been taking fertility drugs since last month. She talked to the doctors, JJ's pediatric oncologist, she sent her to a specialist. The medications are going to make her have more than one egg ripen. They are going to harvest them, as many as they can and..." Walt looked up, took John's wrist. "...if you will give a sample, they can fertilize her eggs."

"Why..." John was confused. "Why not the usual way?" He asked, kicking himself, but needing to know.

Walt's eyes drifted off to one side. "I made a mistake a few years ago. I...had an affair. I caught Chlamydia. It isn't always easy to tell. It was months before I found out, and Sara had it by then. It scarred her tubes." Walt's shame rolled off of him. John stared, dumbfounded. Walt...who had everything John wanted...had wanted more. He shook his head to get that thought, and the anger that rode with it, out of his head.

Confessions. John wasn't interested in confessions now. He wanted JJ well. Whatever he had to do to see that through, he would do. Yelling at Walt wasn't going to help. Nor was more information. John raised his hand and covered the other man's mouth, held on, leaned against him, refusing to look into the pained eyes as long as he could. But eventually he had to meet Walt’s eyes.

Keep it inside. No more, his eyes said when Walt’s eyes met his. He nodded once, not moving his hand until he knew Walt understood that the talking was over.

It was almost as if it had nothing to do with Sara at all. It didn't. John was alone with a cup. Behind a locked door with a stack of magazines he couldn't touch. A chair he couldn't sit in. To do either brought visions of other men, men who were seeking to have children, more and more of them flooding in on John, the failures and the fewer successes. He just couldn't. Not here. His dick stayed limp, the cup stayed empty. Walt was waiting in the room outside. John couldn't drive here. He couldn't drive at all. He could have taken a cab. But Walt had offered.

John just... He sighed. He walked to the door, touched it. There was no one but Walt waiting outside. He opened the door. Walt's head snapped up and he saw John, then he got to his feet as if he was going to go find the nurse. John shook his head violently, then urgently beckoned the other man.

If it wasn't JJ's life on the line John would never have the courage to do it. When Walt was close enough, he dragged him into the room.

"John," Walt hissed into his face, his thick, uniform jacket bulky against John's shirt. John pulled at it, shoving it down his arms. "What the hell...?" John ignored him, pushing the cloth off the muscular arms of the other man. Until Walt struggled, stopped him, tried to pull his shirt back on.

"I can't. I can't." John said, his face flaming red, and Walt stopped getting redressed, listening to John, watching him. "The books, the magazines, the...all of it, I keep getting visions...and I can't." He looked at Walt, who stopped trying to fight John's hands off, let John pull at his shirt again. "I need...Sara...give her to me. I can see her when I touch you."

Walt, bless him never flinched after that. He compressed his mouth into a flat line, but he didn't say no. He took the jacket off, and unbuttoned his shirt, unzipped his pants. "How much do you need?" He asked. A father sacrificing for his son, doing what he had to. John hated himself. But he was doing this for JJ, too. And he just couldn't....no one else, not Bruce, not Sara...not even the lovely Dana. Only Walt, strangely, was close enough for him to ask this.

Walt took his shirt off next, and his uniform pants, making damn sure the door was locked as he did. John stood in his boxers, head hanging, waiting, until Walt turned towards him and, meeting his gaze, held out his arms, and not waiting, took John in them.

He wasn't hard, neither of them were. Until John touched Walt, touched his bare skin. Until then.... Visions rode him. Hot visions. Visions of more than Sara and Walt, visions of Walt's other lovers, past lovers and one...one who wasn't past. One who he'd turned to far too recently for solace when Sara and he split. Dana. John tried not to see, not to understand, to think of it as a fantasy, not truth. His fingers curled in the hair at the nape of Walt’s neck.

"I'll hold the cup." Walt said against the side of John's throat. His breath took all of John's thoughts of betrayal away as it curled over his skin, up under his ear. Lips brushed his skin. It was enough.

Walt wasn't perfect. It made all of this so much easier, somehow. John wanted him. Not Sara, not Dana, he suddenly wanted Walt with a burning intensity that shocked him. He turned his face. Walt didn't ask, he kissed John. Mouths coming together, softly at first, then hungry, hard, wet. John hadn't been kissed like that in almost seven years. And never as good as Walt was kissing him now.

Sara had been love and tenderness and sweet, gentle passion. Walt was power and heat and a love that was lust. John Smith wasn't ready, wasn't prepared, was caught by surprise, need riding him like a wave. He groaned from deep in his chest. Walt's tongue pierced his mouth, licked his tongue, his teeth, the roof of his mouth.

Walt was pressed up against him, John was caught between the wall and the hard body that pushed at his own. Walt was no longer unmoved; he was a rigid line against John's hip. A big erection, bigger than John, thicker, longer. John shook. He was hard, urgently hard.

He barely remembered in time that the seed he was about to loose all over Walt's belly was needed for something else. John grabbed Walt's hand and shoved it to the place he needed it. He deposited what he had to in the cup.

They dressed in silence. It wasn't until they were both in their clothes that Walt said anything more. "It won't be just Sara. She has two friends who want to help. They have agreed to try and carry the embryos."

John was floored. Three more children if they all took, if all the women became pregnant. He was dizzy. Walt grabbed him again. Held him. "She didn't tell you. I thought she wouldn't. She should have." John trembled. Clung to Walt, rested his head on the other man’s shoulder, concentrated on breathing. What were the odds, there was no way...he was going to be a father again. Would he ever have a child of his own the way every other man did? Would it ever be simple? A man, a woman, loving sex, and a child?

"Who..." John swallowed. Walt looked uncomfortable, thinking John was asking who the women were, wanting Sara to be the one to tell John. Wishing she had. But that wasn't what John asked. "Who is going to raise them?" He asked when he could speak.

"You?" Walt asked in surprise, picking up what John was trying to say. "Of course. You want to. I...we just assumed it would be us, Sara and I. But..."

"But you aren't even living together," John finished for him. Walt flushed. And John knew he was thinking about the recent lover he’d taken in his loneliness, about Dana.

"We might get back together." Walt said wistfully. John shook his head.

"No." He said. And knew it to be true; Walt and Sara weren’t going to get back together. Whatever happened to JJ, Walt and Sara...they were through. They still loved each other, but love was never enough.

"So." Walt ventured, his voice tight, pained. "You and Sara...?" John wondered why Walt didn’t sound mad. Then it hit him, what Walt meant.

John's head snapped up, he stared at the shorter man. Not shorter by much, an inch, no more, and definitely more muscular, harder, a hell of a lot stronger. Masculine. He shook his head "No."

"Why not? I thought you loved her." Walt said quietly.

"I do. But. Too much has happened. I can't..." John wished he could be more articulate.

Walt looked sad. "I thought you'd be there to take care of her if I wasn't. If she won't let me."

"We will be, you and me, Walt." John said, utterly serious. "We are going to take care of her and JJ and the other children. You and me." He let his hand rest on Walt’s arm, squeezed gently.

"Are you saying what I think you are? You and me, like we are together, like we are a couple?" Walt was staring again. But John knew what he'd seen, what he'd felt.

"Yeah, weird isn't it?" Was what he answered at last.

"More than weird. Impossible. I'm not that way. Present circumstances to the contrary. This was for my son." He added the last with an odd little wry grin, waggling his finger back and forth between their bodies. "Not to say it wasn't…uh...it was fine. It was good. But, I've never even thought of being that way. Never crossed my mind. Not even when I was in the service overseas and there weren't any women."

John nodded. He reached over, calmly and screwed the top onto the plastic cup. "Let's get out of here. Hopefully with out being seen coming out of the room together." He didn't have to say more. Walt paled.

John put his hand up, pressed it flat to the door, waited. He didn't know if anyone actually worked here, the room beyond was empty and since coming into the clinic he’d seen only the one nurse. They stole out of the private room like thieves in the night. John went looking for the nurse, Walt stayed in the waiting room, firmly in his chair, thumbing through a magazine.

They were out of the clinic and in Walt's patrol car before either man spoke again.

"Probably not many men have male friends wait for them." Walt said as if it were an after thought. John almost grinned. Walt was thinking.

"You mean not many men would take other men to the clinic and hang around while their friend masturbated into a cup in the next room?" John had to smile at the expression on Walt’s face. "I would agree with that."

"But you can't drive. The seizures, the visions..." Walt began defensively.

"The workers at the clinic don't know that." John said, mildly. Walt was thinking about what John had said, and for now that was enough.

"Now hold on, they might. They have your medical records." Walt said desperately, grasping at straws. Cleaves Mills was small, everyone knew everyone. John thought it wouldn’t be more than a week before rumors started making the rounds.

"They might.” John agreed. “But it’s far juicier to think there is another reason. Since everyone knows you and Sara have separated. They thought it was because of me. Now, if the rumor gets around that you were here with me, not Sara...well I wouldn't be surprised what they think."

"Shit. Damn it." Walt growled, face flushed red. "God damned gossips."

"Dana will hear it." John said and Walt almost swerved off the road. Dana always heard everything. Her connections were legion.

"Dana? Why should that..." His eyes narrowed, his jaw jumping. "You saw. A vision. When we...in the room? Aw, fuck.”

"Yeah," John confirmed. Fuck was right.

"And you still think me and you..." Walt let out a bark of laughter. "You’ve seen some weird things John, but this takes the cake. I am sorry, but it does."

"I know. But like you always say, the visions are never wrong." Which wasn’t exactly true, the visions could be changed, if Johnny tried hard enough. The problem was, they didn’t always change for the better.

"Maybe you just aren't seeing them right." Walt offered as he turned onto John's street, pulled up in his driveway. The whining undertone told John how much Walt hoped that was true.

This time, though, Johnny had nothing to say that Walt wanted to hear.


end