Fic: Or where you go, or where you’ve been -- SPN

[amonitrate]

So I've been having this long stretch of writer's block, and I've also been pecking at this fic for months, and I'm just gonna post it unbeta'ed because I fear otherwise nothing will ever see the light of day. EVER AGAIN. Writing brings out my emo side, what can I say.

It's taking me forever to write anything fictional in this fandom. Five months in and I've only really produced the Jo/Twin Peaks story. I can guess why this is, but that's probably a post for another day. Or never. Part of it is the show actually delivers in canon the kind of thing I normally noodle around in with fic, so. Shakes fist at show.

I tossed pieces of this at dafnap and gabby_silang so thanks ladies. Also the title is stolen from a song by Mirah (Bones & Skin) that dafnap pointed me towards. She supplies me with my Dean Winchester soundtrack.

SPN, gen, spans season one between "Dead in the Water" and "Faith."

Summary: No one talked about any of this stuff, period, but Sam seems to think Dean and their dad had secret heart-to-hearts when he wasn't around or something.

Or where you go, or where you've been

"How come I never knew you'd stopped talking after the fire?"

They're on the road between no-where and no-place, Andrea Barr's carefully cling-wrapped plate of sandwiches demolished two states ago. Sparrows had pecked at the crumbs at the rest stop where he and Sam had snagged a picnic table under a big oak. They'd hung there for a good hour, stretching out cramped legs and shooting the shit.

So of course Sam decided to wait until Dean's been squinting at the road all day, Andrea and her kid already half-forgotten, to bring up something he's obviously been turning over in his head since they left Lake Manitoc.

Dean shrugs. "Forgot about it, I guess."

Sam pokes at the idea like it's a remote control that will make Dean play back everything Sam missed when he was too young to understand what was going on. "How do you forget about something like that? How come Dad never mentioned it?"

"Sammy--"

"Come on, Dean, this is kind of a big thing. How long did it last?"

Dean shrugs again, keeping his eyes on the horizon line. "Dunno."

"Why'd you start again?"

"Sam, I don't know. I don't remember. It was a long time ago."

Sam lets it go for maybe twenty miles, and then he turns in his seat again. "What do you remember?"

"About what?" Dean hears the mulish tone of his own voice and sighs. Sam's like a fucking terrier with this stuff. Nosing around, sinking his teeth in. Shaking everything to pieces and not even knowing why half the time. Like it's reflex.

"The fire. What happened after mom died."

"Those are two separate things," Dean says.

Sam blinks at him.

Sometimes Dean forgets he and Sammy are from different continents.

The next morning Sam is quiet until Dean's had coffee and is halfway through an overstuffed omelet, cheddar and diced bits of pink ham spilling out onto his plate. Then all at once the weight of Sam's gaze is heavy on the top of Dean's head, but Dean's good at accidentally not meeting Sam's eyes when he wants to be. Sam toys with his hash browns and Dean can hear the thoughts firing off in his brother's brain. Too loud for seven a.m.

"What?" he asks finally.

"I never thought about it like that," Sam says immediately, like they're continuing on some earlier conversation. Sam does that, and usually Dean can pick up the thread, but it's early and all he wants to think about is eggs.

"Thought about what like what?"

Sam lifts a shoulder. Sets his fork down, stops pretending to eat.

"You said they were two separate things. The fire and after."

Dean thinks of Sam in his car seat, barely remembered little feet waving in the air like he could make the car go faster. He kept kicking off his socks, or pulling them off himself, waving them like flags and losing them into the wells of the Impala's backseat.

"Sam, I was four years old. You remember much from when you were four?"

Sam cocks his head, eyes going a little vague. "I remember camping," he says. "In the desert."

Dean chokes a little on his coffee. "Camping. Dude, that was..." He shakes his head. "You were more like three, then."

"Oh," Sam says. "Where was it?"

"Mexico," Dean says, and laughs at the surprise on Sam's face.

"I thought we lived in Texas when I was real little." Sam toys with his own coffee cup, nose scrunched like he doesn't appreciate his childhood time line changing around on him while he wasn't looking.

"We did," And as a result they both carry Texas in their voices like bedrock underneath everywhere else.  "But we spent a year in Mexico when I was about six, and then we went back a couple of summers."

"Doing what?"

Twenty years later, what had seemed at the time like some sort of extended summer camp sharpens into something else, and Dean stares over Sam's shoulder for a long minute.

"Well," he drawls. "You learned how to sweet talk every hardcase for twenty miles out of any bit of sugar they had lying around. And Dad picked up tips from some survivalist types a Marine buddy of his knew."

Sam's eyes widen. "Survivalists?" He whistles. "Yeah, I don't remember that."

Dean just grins. There's a lot Sam doesn't remember. Since Sam found out what their dad did, he's always been John Winchester, Monster Hunter, like he'd sprung from their previous life in Lawrence fully formed.

"Lemme guess," Sam's teeth flash when he smiles. He leans forward, teasing. "You learned a little Spanish to use on the senoritas?"

Dean shakes his head. "We kept mostly to ourselves. Never did pick up much Spanish."

"Then what'd you learn in Mexico, Dean?" Still teasing.

Dean flexes his right hand, the half-forgotten ache lingering as he picks up his fork and spears a big hunk of egg and cheese.

"I learned to shoot," Dean says, and then shoves the fork into his mouth.

Dean's handing in the keys to their latest motel room when Sam figures out that Dean had distracted him, and Dean's beginning to see why his brother was hell bent on law school. Wouldn't want his talent for nosing into other people's business to be wasted.

"Seriously, dude, let it go," Dean says as they head back to the Impala. It comes out more as a snap, and that only eggs Sam on.

"Did he take you to a doctor, at least?"

"Who?"

"Dad."

"I guess."

"And they didn't find anything?

Nod if you understand me, Dean. "No."

"Did he take you to a child psychologist?"

Dean shoots him a look.

Sam's face screws up into a frown. "You stopped talking after our mom died in a fire. Normally that's a big deal, Dean. Parents usually try to get their kids help for that kind of thing."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't make this about dumping on Dad, Sam."

Sam tosses his bag into the back seat and leans on the roof of the car, but when he opens his mouth again he takes a different approach. "How long did we stay in Lawrence, after?"

"Is this twenty questions? Jesus."

"Comeon, man, I was just a baby. And nobody ever talked about any of this stuff around me."

No one talked about any of this stuff, period, but Sam seems to think Dean and their dad had secret heart-to-hearts when he wasn't around or something.

"How long?"

"A couple of months. I don't really remember."

"And had you started talking again by the time we left?"

Dean opens the driver's side door with more force than he intended, then pats the frame in apology. Drops into his seat and lets the familiarity of the cushion against his back smooth over what he wants to say to Sam.

"No," he says instead. The key slides into the ignition and he leaves his hand there, waiting for Sam to settle in. He turns the key and the engine roars to life and Sam waits until they're back on the road to open his mouth again.

"Did it ever happen again?" Sam prods.

Dean gestures at the glove box, where the maps live. "You navigating or what?"

Sam doesn't put on his interrogator's hat again until Lawrence is far in their rearview. Too busy picking over why mom had apologized to him, maybe. Too busy picking over his freaky superpowers. Dean's perfectly okay with his brother's distraction but knows it won't last. And it doesn't.

"You remember Lucas?" Sam asks outta nowhere, as Dean guides the Impala through a tollbooth outside of Gary.

"No, Sam, I've totally forgotten the creepy underaged homicidal lake ghost."

"You told him you saw something that night."

Dean opens his mouth, shuts it. Doesn't ask what night he means. "I did?"

"Dean."

That's Sam's long-suffering tone, the one that stretches his name into about three syllables, but Dean doesn't remember what he'd told Lucas, really. He'd just talked and hoped something stuck, hoped something would convince the boy to open up a little and help them.

"I didn't know you heard that," he says finally. He'd forgotten about the not talking thing entirely until Lucas. He thinks maybe he said things to the kid he's never said even to himself, and he's sure he wouldn't have said them to anyone else. Not even to Sam.  And he hadn't thought about Sam, listening, while he said those things out loud.

"I was right there, dude."

"What did I say?" He doesn't really want Sam to tell him but it's too late to take it back.

Sam's eyes flicker over him, like he's looking at Dean for the first time that day. Maybe for the first time in a long time, and it's making Dean's skin crawl a little.

"You were pretty vague," Sam said.

It sounds like an accusation, and Dean slams the ashtray back into the dashboard with a bang, the spare change they keep in it for tolls jingling and then settling back down. "Kid was like six years old. What'd you want me to tell him, Sam?"

"Did you? See something that night?"

"Why?" Dean asks, and he doesn't know exactly what he means. Why now? Why do you want to know? Why do you keep asking these things? Why do you have to make everything so difficult?

Sam must have picked one, because he doesn't ask Dean to clarify. "Because... it doesn't match up, Dean."

And he honestly has no idea what Sam's even talking about anymore. Maybe he never does. Sam doesn't wait for him to say anything, just keeps talking. "When I asked you about it after we left Lawrence, you said Dad gave me to you in the hallway, told you to take me and run. And I remember him, that one time he... on the anniversary. He kept saying he was so glad he got you out, that at least you hadn't seen..." he trails off. "But you told Lucas you saw something. That you saw something bad happen to Mom."

Dean just stares at him.  Lets the silence hang a moment too long.

"I don't remember," he insists, and it's not a lie, not really, because he doesn't know what he remembers half the time. Sometimes he only knows the story the way his father tells it. And sometimes he catches it out of the corner of his eye. Flames twined in her hair.

Sam stares back, and then throws a hand out. "Jesus Christ, watch the fucking road."

A teenager on a motorbike zooms by, tossing Dean the finger as she goes.

"Never mind," Sam says, clutching at the door handle, over-dramatic as ever. "Forget it."

"Does Dad know?" Sam asks, and he's lasted longer than Dean expected. Nearly a week blissfully free of questions. They've put down two poltergeists with nary a chat about how it makes them feel. How it makes Dean feel anyway, because Sam never seems to have the urge to spill his own guts. Which is fine and dandy with Dean. It's hard enough listening to his nightmares.

"Does Dad know what?"

And Dean's pretty sure Sam's picked this location on purpose for its isolation. Driver gets to make the dining plans (that shotgun shuts his cakehole goes without saying), and Sam's pulled them over to a roadside drive-in, the kind where even twenty years ago the waitresses would have worn roller skates. Now they're the only customers and the entire place is manned by one bored looking teenager with a shaved head and a pierced lip who carries their tray out and props it on the rolled-down window of the Impala with two clamps.

Hotdogs and a rootbeer float for Sam, flattened burgers and freezer burned fries and a mountain of tiny packets of ketchup for Dean. The food is terrible but the place is perched at the side one of those tiny midwestern lakes the glaciers left behind, so at least the view is something. The leaves up here have already started to turn, and the surface of the lake ripples with orange and red and gold reflections.

"That you saw what happened to Mom."

Dean takes a bite of his burger and it tastes like deep fried corrugated cardboard. His jaw aches and he's so tired that chewing and swallowing take effort.

"What gives you that impression?" His mouth is working on autopilot at this point. Has been for awhile, he thinks. Since Rockville. Maybe before that.

Sam scrubs at his eyes. "That dad knows or that you saw?"

"Pick one." His fries are floppy and the ketchup has a metallic aftertaste that absolutely does not remind Dean of blood.

Sam's ice cream float has melted into a sugary mud brown sludge. He stabs at it with his scoop-ended straw and doesn't drink it.

"I don't understand why you won't just admit what happened." He sounds disappointed, like Dean's keeping it from him just to be a dick.

Dean stubs a fry into his pool of ketchup like it's a cigarette, then leaves it there, the end smashed in a mess of white potato and something that was probably related to tomatoes at some point.

"Tell me what you want me to say, Sam, and I'll say it."  He never knows what Sam wants from him, with all these questions. What Sam is looking for that Dean can't seem to give.

"That's not what I want," Sam says, like he's listening in on Dean's thoughts. "I just want you to talk to me."

Dean glances at him, sidelong, and maybe his confusion has made it to his face, because Sam sighs.  Stares out the windshield at the lake and sets his jaw

He's so tired. He wants to drive, wants to feel the thrum of the engine through the wheel, borrow some of that strength, but he knows that if he asks, Sam might let him, and he knows that if he does he'll more than likely wrap the Impala around a tree. So mostly he sleeps against the passenger door, wrapped in a wool blanket Sam dug out of the trunk before they left for Nebraska.

Sam had whipped up a fake tag that allows them to park in handicapped spots without getting towed, but even so the walk from the Impala into the latest truckstop diner goes on a lot longer than it should. Dean shakes off the hand at his elbow and feels the static buzz of Sam hovering at his back all the same. He hunches into the hoodie, knowing full well it just makes him look sicker than he is, or maybe just as sick as he feels, he can't tell anymore, but he can't get warm either and so he's given up the pretense that he's not a dead man walking and wears as many layers as he can manage.

By the time Sam leads him to an empty booth all Dean wants is to sleep again. It's all he ever wants to do anymore. He lets himself close his eyes while the waitress chats up Sam and when he opens them again she's gone and Sam is just watching him where he's leaning against the wall of the booth, like he tipped over while he wasn't paying attention.

Turns out Sam ordered for him. Chicken and rice soup. He manages about half the bowl before setting down his spoon. Sam is picking at a tuna melt and hasn't eaten any of his side of potato wedges, so Dean steals a couple and Sam doesn't bat his hand away.

"What do you want to know?" Dean asks.

Sam cocks his head. "About what?"

Dean shrugs. "You haven't asked me anything in awhile. About... about mom. And what happened."

"Is there anything left to tell?" There's a challenge there that Dean can't quite unravel.

"I dunno, Sam. It's just. First you were constantly badgering me about it, and now you're not, and I just... want you to have the chance. To ask. You know. If you want."

The now-permanent tremor in his hands is suddenly embarrassing, so Dean shoves them into the pocket of the hoodie and waits for Sam's face to cycle through about ten expressions before going opaque.

"You don't need to do this," Sam says, his jaw set.

"Yeah, I do, Sammy."

"No." Sam studies the speckled Formica surface of the table like it's engraved with meaning. "We're going to Nebraska and there will be plenty of time--"

"Maybe," Dean interrupts. "But we've got hours to kill in the car on the way. So if there's something you want to ask. I'll try. I'll try to answer best I can."

Sam doesn't look at him at all. Stands up from the table and walks away.

Sam doesn't ask, but Dean's bored with sitting in the passenger seat waiting for his heart to stop, so he starts talking anyway. It's not like he's forgotten any of Sam's questions.

"I'm pretty sure I used to dream about her," he says, and it's harder than he thought it would be, saying this stuff out loud to Sam. "And then after awhile her face got fuzzy and I forgot what her voice sounded like."

Sam's eyes slide to him sidelong and he doesn't say anything for a long time. "Until Lawrence," he grates out, attention back on the road as he changes lanes, passing a slow little late model Escort, and Dean nods.

"Yeah. I don't... I don't know if I saw her that night, Sam. I really don't. Mostly I remember how heavy you were. It's not like... it's just fragments."
Sam nods, just a jerk of his chin, and maybe he's finally hearing what Dean's trying to tell him. I didn't keep her from you. Not on purpose.

Talking is more work than it used to be. His jaw aches and he leans back against the cool window just for a moment and it must turn into more than a moment because he opens his eyes to dusk and the low hum of the radio and Sam's face gone soft and young in the oncoming  headlights.

Dean sits up and Sam flicks on the turn signal and veers off the highway and Dean doesn't ask where they are, where they're going. He thinks maybe this should bother him, this not knowing. Before he can decide if it does, Sam finds one of the motels that cling to state highways like barnacles and Dean waits in the car while Sam gets them a room.

"Tomorrow," Sam says when he settles back into the driver's seat. He says it like the word is a talisman. "We're only about a hundred miles out from the place Joshua told me about."

Dean nods, and doesn't say anything more about their mom.