SPN Fic: "Cover Your Plans In Sand" (Gen)
I promised myself I'd make cookies if I got this posted at a decent hour (i.e. before the SPN rerun comes on tonight), so, here it is.
Cover Your Plans In Sand
By Port (desertport)
Thanks once again to carina84 for handholding and the beta. She’s a lifesaver.
Supernatural, Gen, starring Dean and Sam, some John
Warning: deathfic
Words: 3,500
Comments: Good and bad adored equally.
Notes: (1) Written for the SPN Gen Brothers Ficathon, for phantom_scribe, who requested some angsty scenarios. I hope this will do! (2) Title is from Yehuda Amichai’s poem "Don’t Prepare For Tomorrow," English translation by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav.
Dean woke in time to the wash of the tide against his feet. He had sand in his mouth, scraping his teeth. In fact, sand clung to him all over, from his soaked jeans and leather jacket to his neck and face, to his trembling hands.
Fucking cold ocean.
He clutched the beer bottle tighter in his left hand to hold back more shivering. The smooth glass under his fingers was warm because he had held onto it even after passing out. It was the only warm thing for miles.
Eventually, the surf got deeper as it lapped over him, and Dean crawled farther up the beach. He rolled to sit and hug his knees and waited to see if he would throw up.
Above him, the black sky slowly turned to a heavy shade of blue. For that, though, the stars shone brighter and even seemed to twinkle. Too soon for dawn, the ocean stayed as it had been all night, a roaring, pounding India-ink black. When Dean lifted his head (after deciding he could), the sea was only distinguishable from the sky by a fine difference in tint at the far horizon.
He blinked out at that line, slack-jawed and dazed from the cold, feeling only numb. That had been the point, but as he sobered, the feeling of wrongness seeped back into him, and he wished he had stayed asleep.
Finally, Dean staggered off in search of the Impala. He’d change into something dry, or maybe strip off and lie on the hood to wait for the sunrise to warm him.
Or maybe he’d just die there.
The thought of warmth brought him back a little bit and reminded him of the Corona bottle in his hand, which in turn brought back a memory of last night, when he had hurled empties into the Pacific one after another, with a methodical calm that surprised him both now and at the time. Before, he would have imagined yelling bordering on hysterics, crazy gesticulations accompanying each throw. But all he did was finish the twelve pack he’d started that afternoon, stagger forward in the darkness and pitch each bottle into the tide.
Dean didn’t know which was more embarrassing, his fantasy tantrum or the lack of energy that had accompanied him on the drive down from Palo Alto. It seemed like he should feel everything more vehemently.
Maybe that was why he’d come here. He didn’t need an audience, and that was the last thing he’d find on this wide, featureless stretch of sand.
Well, the second to last thing he’d find here.
When he started down the coast from Stanford, he had thought to go to Santa Barbara and lose himself in the crush of college students the way Sam had meant to lose himself. Okay, not the same way. Dean had in mind the stoned kids who partied through the streets at night, loud music, girls, free beer at a dozen house parties. Then he could continue to Santa Monica and be solitary with a hundred other vagrants along Ocean Boulevard. He could hide a bottle of hard stuff in a paper bag and watch men and boys fish off the side of the pier. (He and Dad had fished off the rocks on the Maine coast one time when they had to choose between food and gas on their way to a job in Portland. It had not been a hardship, especially when Dean caught the bigger fish. He kept his dad smiling all night by bragging and teasing and filling in the silent spaces where Sammy used to fit.)
Anyway, he had been halfway down the 1 in Big Sur and sleepy enough to go over the rail nose-first into the scenic vista when he realized that distance wouldn’t help, that nothing would help. Even if he made it as far as TJ in the next two days, there would come that awful moment when his cell phone rang.
On realizing that, he pulled over into a turnout, rubbed his eyes and fell asleep in front of the steering wheel barely moments after turning off the engine. Waking two hours later, he felt (if possible) worse than before, sunburned and sweaty and unrested. Instead of leaning back to catch more sleep, he got out and stretched and put his hand on his forehead and closed his eyes.
A while later, he was on the road again, unsure of where to go because he didn’t feel like hitting Santa Barbara anymore. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a gesture Sam would have approved of. But then, Sammy had always been surprisingly conservative. Dean could almost see the look on Sam’s face and hear the lecture.
"You’re going to do what? Dude, that is so wrong. Call Dad. Normal people inform their relatives, man."
The only thing to do was find a convenience store and buy a shitload of beer. Up in the mountains, the beer was as overpriced as the gas, but he didn’t know where he’d stop, and he wanted to be prepared when he did.
In the store, he stood in front of the refrigerators and listened to them hum for so long that the clerk came over and asked if he was okay. Dean was. He just didn’t know which brand to choose. He had this idea of drinking something Sam would have liked. Silly and sentimental, but that was what he wanted, and no one was here to see him anyway. Problem was, he didn’t remember what Sam liked. Sam had always drunk what Dean supplied him with.
~~
As soon as he turned twenty-one, Dean came into Sam’s room with a six-pack in hand. It was his first legally obtained beer. Sam looked up from his homework and grinned, delighted and admiring in the way only a seventeen-year-old kid brother can be. They’d shared the beers over the next two hours while Sam told Dean about school and Dean described girls he had met on the road with Dad.
Those last two years before Sam went to college, Dad made a point of keeping the same residence so that Sam could finish high school without having to worry about moving around. Dean and Dad took hunting trips all over the country, or sometimes just Dad went, but Sam mostly stayed home and tried to fit in with his classmates. That could be funny to watch, especially when it led Sam to the drama club his junior year, but it also made Dean angry and sad to see his brother so vulnerable. For all his enthusiasm, Sam had gritted his teeth at having to play a ghost in the final scene of the play, "Our Town," discomfited by the role in a way he could never express to his drama-geek friends. Dean and Dad came to opening night. They had no problem, ghosts and all; they agreed Sammy was going through a phase and the best solution was to ride it out and wait for him to come around to their way of thinking, to their way of life.
But Dean would never forget the way Sam had looked when they met him behind the curtain, the odd mixture of dread and embarrassment on his face, and the hesitant way he approached them. Dean stepped forward to josh him out of it, to let him know everything was cool-hey, at least he hadn’t played that creepy Stage Manager guy-when a group of cheering teenagers swarmed around the corner and enveloped Sam and the other actors. And Sam wasn’t sorry anymore. He was glowing with tentative delight, as if he couldn’t quite trust this attention, as much as he wanted to.
Dean saw that night how it would be. So when he turned twenty-one, he bought six packs often and listened to his brother go on about school, and pretty soon, Sam started talking about college applications and Dean knew he had been right, and he bought beer and junk food more frequently, because he had a bad feeling.
One morning, he and Dad had to leave for a hunting trip a few days away, while Sam stayed home for finals.
"Keep up the good work," Dad had said to Sam on his way out of the house. Sam nodded with a shy smile, and Dean wondered if Dad knew how much he encouraged Sam and what Sam was thinking with his dreams of college that he still hadn’t mentioned to their father. At the time, Dad had been as proud of Sam’s straight A’s as of Dean’s expertise in world mythologies. That changed later, when Sam got into Stanford. But on that day, Dad went out to start the car and Dean waved Sammy into the kitchen.
"What is it?" Sam asked.
"The cat’s away," Dean said, grinning. "So I figured I’d leave you something to play with." He opened the fridge and dug behind the condiments on the bottom shelf.
"You got me Corona?" Sam said, unbelieving. To be fair, the novelty of alcohol had begun to wear off for Sam. But it was all Dean knew to give, besides charms and prayer books Sam didn’t want. He handed over the six-pack and mussed Sammy’s hair, ignoring the way he ducked away from his hand.
"Studying while sober can be hazardous to your health," he intoned.
"How would you know?" Sam asked, Mr. Innocent.
Dean pretended to think about that as he grabbed his coat and opened the door, making Sam laugh. He winked at Sam and left.
They returned five days later, tired and bruised, to find Sam chipper for having done well on finals. Rummaging in the fridge that night, Dean noticed the longnecks poking up from behind the ketchup, all six of them. He didn’t know what to make of the uncustomary sense of embarrassment that welled up into his cheeks.
"Corona not your thing?" he asked Sammy later, going for nonchalant. No need to make a federal case out of it. Sam didn’t have to like beer just to please Dean.
"Hm?" Sam asked, oblivious, focused more on a history book. "Oh, no, it’s great. I was waiting for you to get home. Thought we could celebrate."
Dean stared down at Sam, who was highlighting a paragraph in hot pink marker. He opened his mouth, closed it, then gathered himself up and said, "Okay, then."
~~
Dean figured he had a day and a half before Dad called to check in. It wouldn’t be enough time to gather the words to explain what had happened. In the meantime, it would be okay to let Dad think he was with Sam in Palo Alto, crashing on his couch and hanging with him between classes, and maybe hinting at how much they needed him on the hunt, but not pushing, because the more you pushed Sam the farther away he went.
Out of sight.
Dean tripped twice when he tried to strip off his jacket and pants while walking across the sand toward where he thought the Impala was. The second time, he landed on his knees and stayed there for a long time. When he looked up again, a mist had become visible in the gray dawn and left condensation on his exposed skin.
What am I doing? he wondered.
He was working off a hangover. You do this sort of thing when you’re drunk. You feel this way when you’re wasted.
Still gripping the empty Corona bottle, Dean lay down in the cold, dry sand and closed his eyes.
~~
Two years since Sam had left for Stanford, and Dean still thought about him more than he probably should. Unlike Sam, Dean had avoided making friends in school. Well, casual friends always seemed to surround him since before he could remember, but Dean didn’t fuckin‘ write to them after he and Dad and Sam had moved on. He teased Sam about that the first few times he caught him hunched over an unfinished letter, chewing on his eraser. Once or twice, he even came home to find a letter addressed to Sam in the mailbox. Only later did he realize how seldom those letters arrived, no matter how often Sammy asked Dean for stamp money. And Sam asked often.
He wanted to kick Sam’s ass for being naïve, but all he did was hand over his loose change.
Maybe if he had kept in touch with one or two acquaintances over the years, he would have known how to deal with Sammy while he was away. Dean didn’t do letters, though he enjoyed postcards. He’d find unusual ones at rest stops and diners, scrawl hasty notes on the backs and send them to his brother.
Banshee in Illinois turned out to be rabid owl. Should have seen Dad’s face.
Checked out the Alcatraz ghosts yet? You know you wanna.
Plans for summer break?
Sam, though, was all about letters. For the first few months after Sam left, Dad would bring thickly stuffed envelopes from their post-office box, always handing them to Dean unopened. "It’s addressed to you," Dad would say, and Dean would sigh.
They communicated in a secret, angry language. Dean’s flippant notes really meant, "Come back," and nothing he did, no alternate wording, could change that. Sam told him all about classes and people he’d met and how great it was to be on his own, and Dean knew it wasn’t all true because Sam never wrote about the inevitable downs. You didn’t go two, three, four months without a problem or conflict. Sam wanted to make a point: "I’m not leaving school. Get a life."
Maybe Dean imagined the "Get a life" part, but how could he help it? Sam waxed poetical about book-list novels and fascinating professors, and told amusing stories about campus life. Dean read those letters in cheap motel rooms that he’d grown used to years and years ago, or when he went on a taco run by himself late at night, or while waiting for his clothes to dry at the Laundromat. Places he used to go with Sammy that had suddenly become dull and cold. What was he supposed to write back? If Sam wanted him to compete with a college campus, to hell with him. He kept sending postcards with inane messages.
Eventually, Sam’s letters grew shorter. Six months ago, they stopped coming, and Dean could never bring himself to call, nor to stop sending those stupid postcards.
~~
The bottle had grown hot under Dean’s hand. He shifted, but kept hold of it while he woke up. The sun had finally come out. Another few hours of ignorant bliss for his father, gone. Dean wondered where he had put his pants.
He shielded his eyes from the sun and the glare off the white beach and groped around, only to find his leather jacket, which he didn’t remember taking off. A few minutes later, he found his jeans a hundred feet away. Instead of going to the Impala (there had to be fresh water in the trunk), he sat down on his coat and watched the waves roll in. They crested high and came down like Titans, roaring and powerful. The evenness of their rhythm lulled him, and he wondered if he wasn’t still a little out of it from his binge.
Or maybe this was how you were supposed to feel on the day after the worst day of your life. Sammy would know; he was the expert on normality. College Boy would know everything about the average grieving process, and he would probably want Dean to do it right.
"You haven’t even called Dad yet," Sam would say. "What is wrong with you?"
Dean rested his head on his knees. "Sam."
Normal people didn’t sleep for twelve hours straight after hearing really bad news. They didn’t become narcoleptics on the road, and they didn’t keep bad news to themselves. "So much for normal, kiddo."
~~
"Ever been to Alcatraz?" Dean asked his dad last week.
They sat in a booth at Denny’s doing research. His father looked up from his newspaper and nodded thoughtfully. "Hard to do a proper exorcism there, between tourists and security. Ghosts acting up?"
"Nah. Thought I’d visit anyway, see what it’s like. You know, for research."
Dad mulled it over while sipping his coffee. "Might be a good idea."
The next morning, Dean left Iowa in the Impala, promising to call after he’d visited Sammy. He took his time driving, reluctant to get there only because he needed to so badly. It had been two years since Sam had left, and Dean still didn’t know what to do about it. He wanted Sam to be happy, but buying beer for his dad wasn’t the same, and besides, Dad preferred Schlitz to Corona. He had no idea how to get along with this new Sam, even doubted he could. But he had to try. Dean had been trying since Sam realized how different their family really was.
Sam’s last known address was a dorm that Dean found with relative ease. The campus had a manicured look that set Dean’s teeth on edge and spoke of Old Money, reinforced by the looks of approval the Impala got from the kids sitting on the lawn outside the building. Most people looked impressed at seeing a classic Chevy in mint condition (okay, near-mint), but these people saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Dean pushed aside a sudden hankering for Middle America and approached a girl who had just left the dorm. She carried some books in hand and wore designer sunglasses. Not too bad-looking, and Dean wondered if his brother knew her. He could do worse.
"Hey there. I’m looking for my brother, Sam Winchester. He lived in this building last year and…."
The girl had pushed up her glasses to stare at him. That’s when he noticed conversation cut off all around them.
~~
The rest, he didn’t quite remember after all the sleeping he did. It involved a hushed conversation with the girl, Jessica-something, who led him up to her dorm room to show him clippings from the student and local newspapers. Clippings with headings such as SOPHOMORE KILLED IN CAR CRASH and POLICE UNABLE TO FIND VICTIM’S NEXT OF KIN and FRIENDS RAISE MONEY FOR STUDENT’S BURIAL.
The articles were real. So were the girl’s tears. Sam had died instantly six months ago when a drunk driver veered onto the sidewalk and struck him from behind.
How very normal of him, Dean thought in vague, wordless terms. He took his car for a spin, driving randomly until the feeling of elevation and disconnection wore off, leaving him drop-dead tired. It was dark by then, and he pulled over on one of those wide California streets, locked his doors and closed his eyes.
Twelve hours later, a sharp rap on the driver’s window woke him up. He had curled over to rest partially on the passenger seat and had trouble catching his breath, but he had to because a police patrolman wanted to know what the hell he was doing there.
"Sorry, I’ll move on," he said, swiping his sleeve across his eyes. The man’s face softened, and he nodded, and Dean gunned the engine. He found the highway south and thought about visiting Santa Barbara.
~~
Dean thought maybe he’d die if he stayed outside much longer. Between the sun baking him from the outside and the beer that had dried up his insides, and the pain that didn’t begin in any one place but managed to be everywhere, he had no doubt that soon he would be dead, like his brother.
He had always had this crazy idea, though, of dying in the Impala. Like a cowboy with his boots on.
Where was the car anyway? He lurched up and took a good look around the beach. It went on forever in every direction, and he had wandered a bit last night, carrying the twelve-pack. His car could be anywhere.
Might as well find it.
As he trudged northward, he wondered about Sam, if he had been happy those last….
Okay, it didn’t bear thinking about. He resolutely tried not to think at all as he walked, though by the time he found the Impala parked on a sandy shoulder of the back road that had led him to this place, he could hardly breathe from trying to hold it all in.
As he approached, the cell in the front seat started to ring. Twice, three times, then Dean had it in his hand. He answered without thinking.
"Dad!"
In years to follow, Dean would ask himself what he had expected from the trip to Stanford, what he had wanted from Sam so badly, when he knew that even when they stood face to face, Sam was gone, out of sight.
Dean told himself he didn’t know. It would have been enough just to buy the kid a beer.
Cover Your Plans In Sand
By Port (desertport)
Thanks once again to carina84 for handholding and the beta. She’s a lifesaver.
Supernatural, Gen, starring Dean and Sam, some John
Warning: deathfic
Words: 3,500
Comments: Good and bad adored equally.
Notes: (1) Written for the SPN Gen Brothers Ficathon, for phantom_scribe, who requested some angsty scenarios. I hope this will do! (2) Title is from Yehuda Amichai’s poem "Don’t Prepare For Tomorrow," English translation by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav.
Dean woke in time to the wash of the tide against his feet. He had sand in his mouth, scraping his teeth. In fact, sand clung to him all over, from his soaked jeans and leather jacket to his neck and face, to his trembling hands.
Fucking cold ocean.
He clutched the beer bottle tighter in his left hand to hold back more shivering. The smooth glass under his fingers was warm because he had held onto it even after passing out. It was the only warm thing for miles.
Eventually, the surf got deeper as it lapped over him, and Dean crawled farther up the beach. He rolled to sit and hug his knees and waited to see if he would throw up.
Above him, the black sky slowly turned to a heavy shade of blue. For that, though, the stars shone brighter and even seemed to twinkle. Too soon for dawn, the ocean stayed as it had been all night, a roaring, pounding India-ink black. When Dean lifted his head (after deciding he could), the sea was only distinguishable from the sky by a fine difference in tint at the far horizon.
He blinked out at that line, slack-jawed and dazed from the cold, feeling only numb. That had been the point, but as he sobered, the feeling of wrongness seeped back into him, and he wished he had stayed asleep.
Finally, Dean staggered off in search of the Impala. He’d change into something dry, or maybe strip off and lie on the hood to wait for the sunrise to warm him.
Or maybe he’d just die there.
The thought of warmth brought him back a little bit and reminded him of the Corona bottle in his hand, which in turn brought back a memory of last night, when he had hurled empties into the Pacific one after another, with a methodical calm that surprised him both now and at the time. Before, he would have imagined yelling bordering on hysterics, crazy gesticulations accompanying each throw. But all he did was finish the twelve pack he’d started that afternoon, stagger forward in the darkness and pitch each bottle into the tide.
Dean didn’t know which was more embarrassing, his fantasy tantrum or the lack of energy that had accompanied him on the drive down from Palo Alto. It seemed like he should feel everything more vehemently.
Maybe that was why he’d come here. He didn’t need an audience, and that was the last thing he’d find on this wide, featureless stretch of sand.
Well, the second to last thing he’d find here.
When he started down the coast from Stanford, he had thought to go to Santa Barbara and lose himself in the crush of college students the way Sam had meant to lose himself. Okay, not the same way. Dean had in mind the stoned kids who partied through the streets at night, loud music, girls, free beer at a dozen house parties. Then he could continue to Santa Monica and be solitary with a hundred other vagrants along Ocean Boulevard. He could hide a bottle of hard stuff in a paper bag and watch men and boys fish off the side of the pier. (He and Dad had fished off the rocks on the Maine coast one time when they had to choose between food and gas on their way to a job in Portland. It had not been a hardship, especially when Dean caught the bigger fish. He kept his dad smiling all night by bragging and teasing and filling in the silent spaces where Sammy used to fit.)
Anyway, he had been halfway down the 1 in Big Sur and sleepy enough to go over the rail nose-first into the scenic vista when he realized that distance wouldn’t help, that nothing would help. Even if he made it as far as TJ in the next two days, there would come that awful moment when his cell phone rang.
On realizing that, he pulled over into a turnout, rubbed his eyes and fell asleep in front of the steering wheel barely moments after turning off the engine. Waking two hours later, he felt (if possible) worse than before, sunburned and sweaty and unrested. Instead of leaning back to catch more sleep, he got out and stretched and put his hand on his forehead and closed his eyes.
A while later, he was on the road again, unsure of where to go because he didn’t feel like hitting Santa Barbara anymore. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a gesture Sam would have approved of. But then, Sammy had always been surprisingly conservative. Dean could almost see the look on Sam’s face and hear the lecture.
"You’re going to do what? Dude, that is so wrong. Call Dad. Normal people inform their relatives, man."
The only thing to do was find a convenience store and buy a shitload of beer. Up in the mountains, the beer was as overpriced as the gas, but he didn’t know where he’d stop, and he wanted to be prepared when he did.
In the store, he stood in front of the refrigerators and listened to them hum for so long that the clerk came over and asked if he was okay. Dean was. He just didn’t know which brand to choose. He had this idea of drinking something Sam would have liked. Silly and sentimental, but that was what he wanted, and no one was here to see him anyway. Problem was, he didn’t remember what Sam liked. Sam had always drunk what Dean supplied him with.
~~
As soon as he turned twenty-one, Dean came into Sam’s room with a six-pack in hand. It was his first legally obtained beer. Sam looked up from his homework and grinned, delighted and admiring in the way only a seventeen-year-old kid brother can be. They’d shared the beers over the next two hours while Sam told Dean about school and Dean described girls he had met on the road with Dad.
Those last two years before Sam went to college, Dad made a point of keeping the same residence so that Sam could finish high school without having to worry about moving around. Dean and Dad took hunting trips all over the country, or sometimes just Dad went, but Sam mostly stayed home and tried to fit in with his classmates. That could be funny to watch, especially when it led Sam to the drama club his junior year, but it also made Dean angry and sad to see his brother so vulnerable. For all his enthusiasm, Sam had gritted his teeth at having to play a ghost in the final scene of the play, "Our Town," discomfited by the role in a way he could never express to his drama-geek friends. Dean and Dad came to opening night. They had no problem, ghosts and all; they agreed Sammy was going through a phase and the best solution was to ride it out and wait for him to come around to their way of thinking, to their way of life.
But Dean would never forget the way Sam had looked when they met him behind the curtain, the odd mixture of dread and embarrassment on his face, and the hesitant way he approached them. Dean stepped forward to josh him out of it, to let him know everything was cool-hey, at least he hadn’t played that creepy Stage Manager guy-when a group of cheering teenagers swarmed around the corner and enveloped Sam and the other actors. And Sam wasn’t sorry anymore. He was glowing with tentative delight, as if he couldn’t quite trust this attention, as much as he wanted to.
Dean saw that night how it would be. So when he turned twenty-one, he bought six packs often and listened to his brother go on about school, and pretty soon, Sam started talking about college applications and Dean knew he had been right, and he bought beer and junk food more frequently, because he had a bad feeling.
One morning, he and Dad had to leave for a hunting trip a few days away, while Sam stayed home for finals.
"Keep up the good work," Dad had said to Sam on his way out of the house. Sam nodded with a shy smile, and Dean wondered if Dad knew how much he encouraged Sam and what Sam was thinking with his dreams of college that he still hadn’t mentioned to their father. At the time, Dad had been as proud of Sam’s straight A’s as of Dean’s expertise in world mythologies. That changed later, when Sam got into Stanford. But on that day, Dad went out to start the car and Dean waved Sammy into the kitchen.
"What is it?" Sam asked.
"The cat’s away," Dean said, grinning. "So I figured I’d leave you something to play with." He opened the fridge and dug behind the condiments on the bottom shelf.
"You got me Corona?" Sam said, unbelieving. To be fair, the novelty of alcohol had begun to wear off for Sam. But it was all Dean knew to give, besides charms and prayer books Sam didn’t want. He handed over the six-pack and mussed Sammy’s hair, ignoring the way he ducked away from his hand.
"Studying while sober can be hazardous to your health," he intoned.
"How would you know?" Sam asked, Mr. Innocent.
Dean pretended to think about that as he grabbed his coat and opened the door, making Sam laugh. He winked at Sam and left.
They returned five days later, tired and bruised, to find Sam chipper for having done well on finals. Rummaging in the fridge that night, Dean noticed the longnecks poking up from behind the ketchup, all six of them. He didn’t know what to make of the uncustomary sense of embarrassment that welled up into his cheeks.
"Corona not your thing?" he asked Sammy later, going for nonchalant. No need to make a federal case out of it. Sam didn’t have to like beer just to please Dean.
"Hm?" Sam asked, oblivious, focused more on a history book. "Oh, no, it’s great. I was waiting for you to get home. Thought we could celebrate."
Dean stared down at Sam, who was highlighting a paragraph in hot pink marker. He opened his mouth, closed it, then gathered himself up and said, "Okay, then."
~~
Dean figured he had a day and a half before Dad called to check in. It wouldn’t be enough time to gather the words to explain what had happened. In the meantime, it would be okay to let Dad think he was with Sam in Palo Alto, crashing on his couch and hanging with him between classes, and maybe hinting at how much they needed him on the hunt, but not pushing, because the more you pushed Sam the farther away he went.
Out of sight.
Dean tripped twice when he tried to strip off his jacket and pants while walking across the sand toward where he thought the Impala was. The second time, he landed on his knees and stayed there for a long time. When he looked up again, a mist had become visible in the gray dawn and left condensation on his exposed skin.
What am I doing? he wondered.
He was working off a hangover. You do this sort of thing when you’re drunk. You feel this way when you’re wasted.
Still gripping the empty Corona bottle, Dean lay down in the cold, dry sand and closed his eyes.
~~
Two years since Sam had left for Stanford, and Dean still thought about him more than he probably should. Unlike Sam, Dean had avoided making friends in school. Well, casual friends always seemed to surround him since before he could remember, but Dean didn’t fuckin‘ write to them after he and Dad and Sam had moved on. He teased Sam about that the first few times he caught him hunched over an unfinished letter, chewing on his eraser. Once or twice, he even came home to find a letter addressed to Sam in the mailbox. Only later did he realize how seldom those letters arrived, no matter how often Sammy asked Dean for stamp money. And Sam asked often.
He wanted to kick Sam’s ass for being naïve, but all he did was hand over his loose change.
Maybe if he had kept in touch with one or two acquaintances over the years, he would have known how to deal with Sammy while he was away. Dean didn’t do letters, though he enjoyed postcards. He’d find unusual ones at rest stops and diners, scrawl hasty notes on the backs and send them to his brother.
Banshee in Illinois turned out to be rabid owl. Should have seen Dad’s face.
Checked out the Alcatraz ghosts yet? You know you wanna.
Plans for summer break?
Sam, though, was all about letters. For the first few months after Sam left, Dad would bring thickly stuffed envelopes from their post-office box, always handing them to Dean unopened. "It’s addressed to you," Dad would say, and Dean would sigh.
They communicated in a secret, angry language. Dean’s flippant notes really meant, "Come back," and nothing he did, no alternate wording, could change that. Sam told him all about classes and people he’d met and how great it was to be on his own, and Dean knew it wasn’t all true because Sam never wrote about the inevitable downs. You didn’t go two, three, four months without a problem or conflict. Sam wanted to make a point: "I’m not leaving school. Get a life."
Maybe Dean imagined the "Get a life" part, but how could he help it? Sam waxed poetical about book-list novels and fascinating professors, and told amusing stories about campus life. Dean read those letters in cheap motel rooms that he’d grown used to years and years ago, or when he went on a taco run by himself late at night, or while waiting for his clothes to dry at the Laundromat. Places he used to go with Sammy that had suddenly become dull and cold. What was he supposed to write back? If Sam wanted him to compete with a college campus, to hell with him. He kept sending postcards with inane messages.
Eventually, Sam’s letters grew shorter. Six months ago, they stopped coming, and Dean could never bring himself to call, nor to stop sending those stupid postcards.
~~
The bottle had grown hot under Dean’s hand. He shifted, but kept hold of it while he woke up. The sun had finally come out. Another few hours of ignorant bliss for his father, gone. Dean wondered where he had put his pants.
He shielded his eyes from the sun and the glare off the white beach and groped around, only to find his leather jacket, which he didn’t remember taking off. A few minutes later, he found his jeans a hundred feet away. Instead of going to the Impala (there had to be fresh water in the trunk), he sat down on his coat and watched the waves roll in. They crested high and came down like Titans, roaring and powerful. The evenness of their rhythm lulled him, and he wondered if he wasn’t still a little out of it from his binge.
Or maybe this was how you were supposed to feel on the day after the worst day of your life. Sammy would know; he was the expert on normality. College Boy would know everything about the average grieving process, and he would probably want Dean to do it right.
"You haven’t even called Dad yet," Sam would say. "What is wrong with you?"
Dean rested his head on his knees. "Sam."
Normal people didn’t sleep for twelve hours straight after hearing really bad news. They didn’t become narcoleptics on the road, and they didn’t keep bad news to themselves. "So much for normal, kiddo."
~~
"Ever been to Alcatraz?" Dean asked his dad last week.
They sat in a booth at Denny’s doing research. His father looked up from his newspaper and nodded thoughtfully. "Hard to do a proper exorcism there, between tourists and security. Ghosts acting up?"
"Nah. Thought I’d visit anyway, see what it’s like. You know, for research."
Dad mulled it over while sipping his coffee. "Might be a good idea."
The next morning, Dean left Iowa in the Impala, promising to call after he’d visited Sammy. He took his time driving, reluctant to get there only because he needed to so badly. It had been two years since Sam had left, and Dean still didn’t know what to do about it. He wanted Sam to be happy, but buying beer for his dad wasn’t the same, and besides, Dad preferred Schlitz to Corona. He had no idea how to get along with this new Sam, even doubted he could. But he had to try. Dean had been trying since Sam realized how different their family really was.
Sam’s last known address was a dorm that Dean found with relative ease. The campus had a manicured look that set Dean’s teeth on edge and spoke of Old Money, reinforced by the looks of approval the Impala got from the kids sitting on the lawn outside the building. Most people looked impressed at seeing a classic Chevy in mint condition (okay, near-mint), but these people saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Dean pushed aside a sudden hankering for Middle America and approached a girl who had just left the dorm. She carried some books in hand and wore designer sunglasses. Not too bad-looking, and Dean wondered if his brother knew her. He could do worse.
"Hey there. I’m looking for my brother, Sam Winchester. He lived in this building last year and…."
The girl had pushed up her glasses to stare at him. That’s when he noticed conversation cut off all around them.
~~
The rest, he didn’t quite remember after all the sleeping he did. It involved a hushed conversation with the girl, Jessica-something, who led him up to her dorm room to show him clippings from the student and local newspapers. Clippings with headings such as SOPHOMORE KILLED IN CAR CRASH and POLICE UNABLE TO FIND VICTIM’S NEXT OF KIN and FRIENDS RAISE MONEY FOR STUDENT’S BURIAL.
The articles were real. So were the girl’s tears. Sam had died instantly six months ago when a drunk driver veered onto the sidewalk and struck him from behind.
How very normal of him, Dean thought in vague, wordless terms. He took his car for a spin, driving randomly until the feeling of elevation and disconnection wore off, leaving him drop-dead tired. It was dark by then, and he pulled over on one of those wide California streets, locked his doors and closed his eyes.
Twelve hours later, a sharp rap on the driver’s window woke him up. He had curled over to rest partially on the passenger seat and had trouble catching his breath, but he had to because a police patrolman wanted to know what the hell he was doing there.
"Sorry, I’ll move on," he said, swiping his sleeve across his eyes. The man’s face softened, and he nodded, and Dean gunned the engine. He found the highway south and thought about visiting Santa Barbara.
~~
Dean thought maybe he’d die if he stayed outside much longer. Between the sun baking him from the outside and the beer that had dried up his insides, and the pain that didn’t begin in any one place but managed to be everywhere, he had no doubt that soon he would be dead, like his brother.
He had always had this crazy idea, though, of dying in the Impala. Like a cowboy with his boots on.
Where was the car anyway? He lurched up and took a good look around the beach. It went on forever in every direction, and he had wandered a bit last night, carrying the twelve-pack. His car could be anywhere.
Might as well find it.
As he trudged northward, he wondered about Sam, if he had been happy those last….
Okay, it didn’t bear thinking about. He resolutely tried not to think at all as he walked, though by the time he found the Impala parked on a sandy shoulder of the back road that had led him to this place, he could hardly breathe from trying to hold it all in.
As he approached, the cell in the front seat started to ring. Twice, three times, then Dean had it in his hand. He answered without thinking.
"Dad!"
In years to follow, Dean would ask himself what he had expected from the trip to Stanford, what he had wanted from Sam so badly, when he knew that even when they stood face to face, Sam was gone, out of sight.
Dean told himself he didn’t know. It would have been enough just to buy the kid a beer.