Fic: Dwellers in Silence [Supernatural, Gen]
Title: Dwellers in Silence
Characters: Sam, Dean
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Kindly beta'd by gestaltrose. Constructive criticism welcome.
After Sam kills the crossroads demon, they drive back to their motel room and bolt the door behind them. Sam sits on the bed farthest from the door, and Dean checks the salt lines before sitting down next to him, not trusting himself to say anything. His hands are sweating against the polyester bedspread. His lungs can't expand far enough to get the air he needs. Every time he gets his breathing almost to normal, his brain serves up another image of Sam, yellow-eyed, standing like the only solid thing in the universe as reality tore and screamed and twisted around him.
The night outside is pitch black, and the weak lamp he'd switched on when they got in barely reaches the corners of the room. The single window shows a crisp, opaque reflection of the room itself, and behind it nothing but darkness. Dean has the horrible, irrational feeling that there is nothing outside -- that the sun will never come up again, that he and Sam will stay, trapped, in their box of a motel room in their little circle of dim light forever.
In a fit of claustrophobia, he gets up to go to the door -- get a coke from the vending machine, a newspaper from the front desk, anything to prove that the world is still there -- but Sam grabs onto his arm.
"Don't go."
"I'm not going anywhere, okay? I'm just going to get some food from the machine outside --"
"Don't." Sam tugs at his arm, looking panicked. "You can't leave me."
"All right, I'll stay, it's okay." Dean sits back down slowly, no sudden movements, and Sam immediately lapses back into trancelike silence. Together, they stare out at the blackness.
After a while, though -- Dean can't say how long -- the sky begins to lighten. The window shifts from black to dark blue to grey, and as the morning fog lifts Dean can see vague patches of color solidifying into buildings and objects: the donut shop across the road, two cars in the parking lot, an occasional truck speeding by on the highway. When the last of the fog has burned away and a few people have started to walk past, Sam finally speaks.
"I had to do it. Nothing else would have worked. If you thought I wasn't going to get my hands dirty to save your life--"
"I know." And he does, really. His head is pounding and his stomach is still threatening to revolt, but he understands. If it had been Sam in danger, he'd have destroyed the world without a second thought to save him.
"Don't freak out, okay?" Sam turns and scrunches up his forehead, like one of those woeful-looking dogs with the long ears, and Dean finds he's calm enough to notice that it looks ridiculous on a 6'4 adult man with two days of stubble growth. He bumps Sam's shoulder with his own. Sam still feels human, warm and uncomfortably bony, and he smells overpoweringly of rancid sweat. "I'm done freaking out."
Sam sighs. "I'm, ah, I think I'm done too, now. We can leave if you want."
Dean does want.
They walk across the road together, Sam never more than a foot behind Dean. When they push through the door of the coffee shop, a small bell rings, and an irritated-looking blonde girl looks up from her copy of People to take their order. Dean takes their tray, and sets it down at a booth by the window. The table is cleared, though covered in a slight film of grease. The napkin dispenser is empty. Dean closes his eyes for a moment, teetering on the edge of hysterical laughter.
"So," he says, when he has himself under control again, "I figure we should call Bobby and let him know I'm not kibble yet."
"Um," Sam says, and swallows a bite of stale danish. "He kind of knows."
Dean's so distracted by the sight of Sam eating -- Christ, there's no way Dean could keep food down right now -- that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. "That so?"
Sam has the decency to look guilty, though not enough decency to explain. His fingers skitter nervously against the tabletop. "Yeah. Look, the truth is that this was . . . a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be. And I seem to be having a hard time with people right now. I don't think I can deal with Bobby just yet."
Now that Sam mentions it, Dean's noticed the way Sam's shoulders tensed up when they walked in, and the distracted way he keeps checking on the counter girl and the old man eating his muffin in the back booth. And the fact that Sam's afraid of meeting up with Bobby probably means that Dean doesn't have to track the man down and beat him to death for helping his brother do something so profoundly stupid.
"All right," Dean says, "we lay low for a while? Put the hunting on hold?"
Sam relaxes and smiles, revealing a smudge of cherry jam on his left front tooth. "You remember you said you wanted to see the Grand Canyon?"
* * *
When Sam was eight, he had an ancient picture book called Natural Wonders of the United States. Like all their books, it was stolen from a public library, and it had a giant, heavy cover that was thicker than the book itself and was wrapped in two layers of scratched and pitted plastic and at least an entire roll of Scotch tape. It was published in the late sixties, and the slightly grainy, over-saturated photographs showed an America even bigger and emptier than the one Dean saw outside the window of the Impala. Sam spent so much time staring at the photo of the Grand Canyon that the spine of the book finally cracked and split the picture in half, and Sam had to press the pages together with his fingers to get it to meet in the center.
Dean figures that the Grand Canyon will have changed, just like the rest of the US: more tourists, more hotels and gift shops, more pollution masking the view. When they get there, though, it's exactly like that photograph, even down to the brick red earth and the dizzily intense blue of the sky.
Sam announces that he's reserved them a room in some swank hotel right on the edge of the canyon. "We deserve it," he says. Dean isn't going to disagree, although he isn't sure how the hotel clerk will react to meeting someone from America's Most Wanted, or, for that matter, to the new, clingier Sam Winchester.
Since That Night, as Dean has begun to think of it, Sam has refused to let Dean out of his sight, and keeps touching him surreptitiously -- a hand on his shoulder, elbows brushing as they walk -- as though trying to reassure himself that Dean is still there. At least after the first few days he had stopped following Dean into the bathroom, although Dean can tell by the way his jaw muscles clench that he still wants to.
That worries Dean a little, but Sam's looking happier, healthier, slowly losing that tired look he gets when they spend too much time around other people, and his eyes have stayed a perfectly normal muddy green. Nor has he shown any interest in spilling the blood of the innocent, or in anything besides chattering incessantly about the natural history of the American southwest and staying within three feet of Dean at all times. He's even stopped trying to sneak his godawful Europop tapes into the rotation and allowed Dean uncontested control of the car's stereo, which Dean considers ironclad proof of Sam's inherent wisdom and virtue. As for the separation anxiety, Dean can relate, and it's not as if he minds having Sam safe where Dean can see him. Letting Sam brush against him 'accidentally' every thirty seconds is a small price to pay for peace of mind.
Fortunately, the hotel, like the park, is practically deserted -- off season, maybe? -- and the clerk doesn't blink at Jonathan Matsumoto's Visa card, or at Mr. Matsumoto's striking resemblance to Fox News' very own Dean Winchester. It's 6 o'clock by the time they find their room and bring their things in. After laying down salt lines and doing a quick check of the room, Dean wanders out onto the balcony to sit and take in the view. Sam waits almost two full minutes before following, which is a new record, and then sits down in the chair next to Dean, leaning back so that his left knee presses against Dean's right. He hands over a leather binder that turns out to be a room service menu.
"I thought we could order in," Sam says.
"Sure," Dean says. He puts the binder in his lap without opening it. They sit silently for a few minutes, staring out at a sunset so vivid Dean's sure it can't be real.
"We can do some hiking tomorrow," Sam says, letting his inner travel agent shine through. "And there are burro rides down to the bottom. We can get up early and watch the sunrise if you want."
"Yeah." Dean closes his eyes and leans back, enjoying the warmth of the sun's last rays on his face. When he opens them again, Sam is staring at him, forehead scrunch in full effect.
"This is okay, right? This is good. I mean, this is what you wanted. Right?"
"Yeah," Dean says, "it is. It's great. What's the problem?"
"I just want to make sure you're having a good time. I mean, if there's anything you want, just tell me. We don't have to stay here for dinner either, there's a Mexican place down the road --"
"Dude, you hate Mexican. You don't have to make this the best vacation ever. It's not like I have an expiration date anymore." Dean feels his relaxed mood slipping away, and when Sam shifts uncomfortably Dean is hit by a truly awful thought. "Sammy," he says, trying to keep his voice even, "you going somewhere?"
"No," Sam says, looking horrified, "Jesus, no, nothing like that."
"Well, what the hell is it, then, because something's going on, and you're not telling me about it."
"What, because I'm trying to be nice to you? God, you're paranoid."
"Okay, there's nice, and then there's two-months-to-live nice--"
"You're unbelievable, I go to all this trouble--"
"Sam." Sam shuts his mouth, red-faced. "I know something's up. Just tell me."
"I'm not-- I'm not leaving. And you can't leave me now, I mean, I couldn't, I'd--" Sam breaks off, inhales, exhales. "I made a choice. And I chose you, okay? I chose you over everything. I'm not leaving. I can't leave. I just -- I want it to be worth it. I want you to be happy."
Dean isn't sure what he's feeling is happiness; it's too intense for him to identify. But he presses his knee to Sam's anyway, and smiles.
"Stop worrying. I am, okay? I am."
* * *
After that, Sam starts to act a little more normal. He doesn't back off physically, but he does start harassing Dean about his dirty socks again, and he claims the right to pick their next destination: the second-largest ball of twine in the US, located in Darwin, Minnesota. Dean goes along cheerfully, although he does point out that the second-largest ball of twine has to be the lamest idea for a roadside attraction ever. What about Fridgehenge, which is right there in New Mexico? What, for that matter, is wrong with the actual largest ball of twine in the US? Sam won't say. Nor will he agree to take a detour to visit the world's largest pile of burlap bags two counties over, which Dean saw while Sam was at Stanford and which he found strangely moving, not that he's about to tell Sam that. Still, seriously, twine?
It's a long drive, and after spending god-knows-how-many straight weeks within touching distance of each other they're both a little on edge. After moving through politics (they've always agreed on everything, which is both surprising and inconvenient), sex (Sam covers his ears and sings "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt" for two hours), and religion (Dean's head aches), they eventually settle into arguing about the tape selection in the car, as they always do when they have the luxury of being annoyed by each other.
"The Rolling Stones?" Dean asks, after Sam yanks yet another cassette out of the player. "What problem could you possibly have with the Rolling Stones?"
"Mick Jagger's creepy."
"Yes? And?"
"The lyrics for these songs are really disturbing, okay? Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good, just like a black girl should? Tell me that's not gross."
"It's rock and roll, it's not about the lyrics. If you don't like the lyrics, don't listen to them. You can barely tell what he's saying anyway."
"I can't just ignore it. The human brain is specifically programmed --"
"Oh, good Christ, here we go again --"
"The human brain is specifically programmed to tune into the frequency range of human voices before decoding any other noise. You can't turn it off, it's hard-coded into your DNA --"
The laugh rises crazy and unstoppable out of Dean's chest, and he has to yank the car to the side of the road and hit the brake. Sam glares at him, then looks confused, and that just makes Dean laugh harder. He gulps down air, tears running down his cheeks. Sam unbuckles his seatbelt and leans over, now looking freaked out. "Dean? Dean? It's okay, really, if you want to listen to Mick Jagger we can listen to Mick Jagger, it's not like it matters anymore, just -- Jesus, Dean, tell me what's going on."
Dean wants to tell Sam that he's laughing because his little brother's shitty taste in music is the single worst thing in his life right now, and because that's wonderful, it's unbelievable. He doesn't think Sam will take it in the spirit in which it's intended, though. Instead, he says, between shaky breaths, "I'm good, Sam. It's all good. It's great."
Sam looks unconvinced, but he smiles and pats Dean's thigh, much as one might reassure an elderly relative in the final stages of dementia. Dean catches his breath, wipes his eyes, shifts into first and pulls the car back onto the road, and a giant ball of twine appears over the top of the hill like a sunrise.
The ball of twine, to Dean's surprise, turns out to be kind of cool in a second-tier roadside attraction sort of way. Sam insinuates himself into a group of retirees, and comes back a few minutes later towing a guy who looks like a composite photo of every RV owner Dean has ever met.
"This is George," Sam says. "He says he'll take a picture for us."
They stand with their arms around each other's shoulders next to the sign that reads, "World's Largest Ball of Twine, Made by Francis A. Johnson, Completed 1973," and George snaps a picture with a Polaroid camera the size of a microwave oven.
They eat lunch at a diner in town. These days Sam sits next to Dean in the booth, not across from him, and always so that their legs press together underneath the table. None of the other patrons seem to notice. Sam, for his part, seems more relaxed among the crowd than he has in a long time.
"When we got arrested in Baltimore," Sam says, "you remember that cop?"
"Ballard," Dean says.
"I told her we were on a road trip together, that we went to see the world's second largest ball of twine. I had this whole fantasy word worked out in my head where we were just two guys, out to see America. So I thought, why not make it real? I guess you think it was kind of a weird idea."
"No," Dean says, "I'm glad we came." He looks at the picture face up on the table. The plaque and the ball of twine are fuzzy, but he and Sam are in clear focus, with matching idiotic grins on their faces.
After lunch, they wander down the street back to their car. Dean's lost track of the days and weeks since That Night, but from the gold in the trees and that perfect slight chill in the air he figures it for the beginning of October. It feels like it's always been autumn, and always will be.
* * *
They go to Chicago next. It's Sam's idea. Dean wants to know if Sam's sure, but Sam says he is, and Dean has to admit that Sam's been doing great lately, working his way up to bigger towns and busier streets with almost no strain now. They turn the car east on route 12.
Dean doesn't like cities, as a rule, but he's always loved Chicago. He likes the food, the grandiose architecture, the broad, open streets you can actually drive on. When he was a kid he really liked the giant T. Rex skeleton in the lobby of the Field Museum, but most of their jobs are out in the suburbs and what with work and family crises he hasn't been back since Sam was nine. He doesn't want to suggest it -- Sam's better with crowds now, but he's not sure how much better, and it's not like he can leave Sam and go alone -- but Sam suggests it for him. "I remember the anthropology section was cool," he says. "Besides, it's a weekday, there won't be too many people."
Dean assumes the T. Rex won't be as impressive as he remembers, but in fact it's even more incredible. Its thigh bones are bigger than Sam, and the giant skull looks as though it could crush the Impala. It's awesome, in the true sense of the word. When Dean turns around, though, Sam's not looking at the T. Rex. He's looking at Dean, grinning, like he's watching Dean unwrap a present Sam just gave him. Which, Dean realizes, he is.
They wander through the Hall of African Mammals, Sam's arm brushing against his, and spend a minute staring at the giant fiberglass whale suspended from the ceiling in the atrium. Sam's still got the same jaw-breaking grin, but even a quiet day at the museum means more people than they've been around in months, and Dean can read stress in the muscles around Sam's eyes. When Dean claims he's tired and suggests they go back to the hotel, Sam rolls his eyes but doesn't put up a fight.
By the time they get back to their hotel room it's three o'clock, a heavy fog has rolled in off the lake, and Sam's mouth is a tight line and his left eyelid is twitching. The hotel's some fancy place Sam's picked out, near Wacker Drive -- and that name will never stop being funny -- so at least the beds are made and the sheets are clean. "Lie down," Dean says. "Rest a little. We don't have to go anywhere this afternoon."
"I'm twenty-four, I don't need naptime, you fucker," Sam says, but he lies down on top of the sheets anyway, and within minutes his breathing's evened out and he's drooling on the white card underneath the pillow mint.
Dean carefully rescues mint and card, and sits on his own bed, popping the mint into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. He's not tired, and he's got a lot on his mind. He needs to walk a little, clear his head, spend a few minutes alone for the first time in however-many-months. Sam's out like a light and probably won't wake up until five or six. Dean leaves a note anyway.
What they need, Dean thinks as the elevator carries him down, is a new plan. He lost track of the days and months almost as soon as his sentence was over, but he knows it's been a long time, and neither of them has said anything about finding a job yet. Sam's not ready to go back to hunting; despite his recent improvements, he may never be. And Dean's tired. He's sick of motel rooms and gas station food and watching Sam get his windpipe crushed.
The elevator dings and lets him out into the lobby, which is empty. Dean's not surprised; it's three thirty on a thursday afternoon, and there was no one but the desk clerk when he came in. A smaller town, he decides, would be better: something in southern Illinois or Ohio, something central that could serve as a home base if they want to stay on the road. He'll have to figure out how to pitch it to Sam.
He pushes through the revolving doors, wondering if he can retrace his steps to the coffee shop they passed this morning. The street is deserted, no moving cars or pedestrians. He turns north, thinking he'll take the route by the river he walked down with Sam that morning. Springfield, maybe, he thinks: big enough for anonymity, but not so big that it'll give Sam a nervous breakdown.
He turns east on Wacker Drive, and stops. The street is empty. No cars, no people, no lights, nothing moving. Ahead of him, where he should see the Chicago River open up into Lake Michigan, the buildings fade into a great wall of grey fog. The hairs stand up on the back of his neck, and he realizes that the world around him is completely silent, the kind of silence he's never heard before: no traffic, no wind.
He begins to walk forward, digging his fingernails into sweaty palms, trying to remember what he knows about mist creatures, water spirits, weather gods. The fog doesn't recede the way fog's supposed to; instead it grows thicker, colder, clinging to Dean's skin and clothes. The outlines of buildings waver and shimmer where they fade into grey, light refracting off of thousands of water droplets, but the movement of light is wrong, somehow.
Dean can barely see the sides of the street, now. The mist looms ahead of him, white shading to grey shading to something darker beyond. As he steps forward, he feels his limbs tense up, his muscles automatically tightening. It's the feeling he gets when a dark passageway opens up around him, the feeling he gets when he's swimming and the sea floor drops away and leaves nothing but a bottomless pit beneath him. In that moment, he knows.
If he walks forward, there will be no weather spirit waiting on the other side. There will be nothing but blackness and emptiness and infinite silence, stretching on forever in all directions. He is standing at the edge of their small circle of existence, and beyond it is nothing where the whole world used to be, before --
Before.
Sam.
Dean turns and runs back down the street, racing out of the fog, past the corner where the noises of the city rise back up around him. He crashes through the door into the hotel lobby, slams the up button on the elevator, and when the doors don't open immediately he dashes for the fire exit and takes the stairs two at a time. When he reaches the 15th floor he races down the hall and throws his body against the door. It opens without resistance.
Sam is sitting on the bed, Dean's note crumpled in his hand, with all the blankets wrapped around him. His eyes are wide and red-rimmed, and when he speaks, his voice is hoarse.
"I broke it. That night. I had to, it was the only way to save you, but once it was broken I wasn't strong enough to put it back together, not for real, I could only -- I didn't want you to know. I tried so hard. I didn't want you to know."
Dean stares at this destroyer of worlds, this thing that his brother has become, and it stares back at him with wide, frightened eyes.
Dean closes the door behind him, walks to the edge of the bed, and climbs in, taking the blanket from Sam's hands and pulling it around them both. He wraps his arms around his brother and Sam pulls him in tight and buries his face in Dean's neck. They cling to each other, shaking, their backs facing outwards against the darkness.
Author's Notes: This is my first piece of SPN fanfic, and my second piece of posted fanfic ever, so... be ruthless. I need good criticism.
Sam's imaginary Field Museum is the museum equivalent of the Library of Babel, just because that's what happens to your memory if you visit enough museums as a kid. The Hall of African Mammals is actually at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the giant blue whale is at the Smithsonian Institute. Sue, the world's most complete Tyrannosaur skeleton, is at the Field museum, but her thighbones are definitely not bigger than Sam. They were, however, probably bigger than Sam when he was nine.
"Dwellers in Silence" is the original title of the short story that later appeared in Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles as "The Long Years."
Characters: Sam, Dean
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Kindly beta'd by gestaltrose. Constructive criticism welcome.
After Sam kills the crossroads demon, they drive back to their motel room and bolt the door behind them. Sam sits on the bed farthest from the door, and Dean checks the salt lines before sitting down next to him, not trusting himself to say anything. His hands are sweating against the polyester bedspread. His lungs can't expand far enough to get the air he needs. Every time he gets his breathing almost to normal, his brain serves up another image of Sam, yellow-eyed, standing like the only solid thing in the universe as reality tore and screamed and twisted around him.
The night outside is pitch black, and the weak lamp he'd switched on when they got in barely reaches the corners of the room. The single window shows a crisp, opaque reflection of the room itself, and behind it nothing but darkness. Dean has the horrible, irrational feeling that there is nothing outside -- that the sun will never come up again, that he and Sam will stay, trapped, in their box of a motel room in their little circle of dim light forever.
In a fit of claustrophobia, he gets up to go to the door -- get a coke from the vending machine, a newspaper from the front desk, anything to prove that the world is still there -- but Sam grabs onto his arm.
"Don't go."
"I'm not going anywhere, okay? I'm just going to get some food from the machine outside --"
"Don't." Sam tugs at his arm, looking panicked. "You can't leave me."
"All right, I'll stay, it's okay." Dean sits back down slowly, no sudden movements, and Sam immediately lapses back into trancelike silence. Together, they stare out at the blackness.
After a while, though -- Dean can't say how long -- the sky begins to lighten. The window shifts from black to dark blue to grey, and as the morning fog lifts Dean can see vague patches of color solidifying into buildings and objects: the donut shop across the road, two cars in the parking lot, an occasional truck speeding by on the highway. When the last of the fog has burned away and a few people have started to walk past, Sam finally speaks.
"I had to do it. Nothing else would have worked. If you thought I wasn't going to get my hands dirty to save your life--"
"I know." And he does, really. His head is pounding and his stomach is still threatening to revolt, but he understands. If it had been Sam in danger, he'd have destroyed the world without a second thought to save him.
"Don't freak out, okay?" Sam turns and scrunches up his forehead, like one of those woeful-looking dogs with the long ears, and Dean finds he's calm enough to notice that it looks ridiculous on a 6'4 adult man with two days of stubble growth. He bumps Sam's shoulder with his own. Sam still feels human, warm and uncomfortably bony, and he smells overpoweringly of rancid sweat. "I'm done freaking out."
Sam sighs. "I'm, ah, I think I'm done too, now. We can leave if you want."
Dean does want.
They walk across the road together, Sam never more than a foot behind Dean. When they push through the door of the coffee shop, a small bell rings, and an irritated-looking blonde girl looks up from her copy of People to take their order. Dean takes their tray, and sets it down at a booth by the window. The table is cleared, though covered in a slight film of grease. The napkin dispenser is empty. Dean closes his eyes for a moment, teetering on the edge of hysterical laughter.
"So," he says, when he has himself under control again, "I figure we should call Bobby and let him know I'm not kibble yet."
"Um," Sam says, and swallows a bite of stale danish. "He kind of knows."
Dean's so distracted by the sight of Sam eating -- Christ, there's no way Dean could keep food down right now -- that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. "That so?"
Sam has the decency to look guilty, though not enough decency to explain. His fingers skitter nervously against the tabletop. "Yeah. Look, the truth is that this was . . . a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be. And I seem to be having a hard time with people right now. I don't think I can deal with Bobby just yet."
Now that Sam mentions it, Dean's noticed the way Sam's shoulders tensed up when they walked in, and the distracted way he keeps checking on the counter girl and the old man eating his muffin in the back booth. And the fact that Sam's afraid of meeting up with Bobby probably means that Dean doesn't have to track the man down and beat him to death for helping his brother do something so profoundly stupid.
"All right," Dean says, "we lay low for a while? Put the hunting on hold?"
Sam relaxes and smiles, revealing a smudge of cherry jam on his left front tooth. "You remember you said you wanted to see the Grand Canyon?"
* * *
When Sam was eight, he had an ancient picture book called Natural Wonders of the United States. Like all their books, it was stolen from a public library, and it had a giant, heavy cover that was thicker than the book itself and was wrapped in two layers of scratched and pitted plastic and at least an entire roll of Scotch tape. It was published in the late sixties, and the slightly grainy, over-saturated photographs showed an America even bigger and emptier than the one Dean saw outside the window of the Impala. Sam spent so much time staring at the photo of the Grand Canyon that the spine of the book finally cracked and split the picture in half, and Sam had to press the pages together with his fingers to get it to meet in the center.
Dean figures that the Grand Canyon will have changed, just like the rest of the US: more tourists, more hotels and gift shops, more pollution masking the view. When they get there, though, it's exactly like that photograph, even down to the brick red earth and the dizzily intense blue of the sky.
Sam announces that he's reserved them a room in some swank hotel right on the edge of the canyon. "We deserve it," he says. Dean isn't going to disagree, although he isn't sure how the hotel clerk will react to meeting someone from America's Most Wanted, or, for that matter, to the new, clingier Sam Winchester.
Since That Night, as Dean has begun to think of it, Sam has refused to let Dean out of his sight, and keeps touching him surreptitiously -- a hand on his shoulder, elbows brushing as they walk -- as though trying to reassure himself that Dean is still there. At least after the first few days he had stopped following Dean into the bathroom, although Dean can tell by the way his jaw muscles clench that he still wants to.
That worries Dean a little, but Sam's looking happier, healthier, slowly losing that tired look he gets when they spend too much time around other people, and his eyes have stayed a perfectly normal muddy green. Nor has he shown any interest in spilling the blood of the innocent, or in anything besides chattering incessantly about the natural history of the American southwest and staying within three feet of Dean at all times. He's even stopped trying to sneak his godawful Europop tapes into the rotation and allowed Dean uncontested control of the car's stereo, which Dean considers ironclad proof of Sam's inherent wisdom and virtue. As for the separation anxiety, Dean can relate, and it's not as if he minds having Sam safe where Dean can see him. Letting Sam brush against him 'accidentally' every thirty seconds is a small price to pay for peace of mind.
Fortunately, the hotel, like the park, is practically deserted -- off season, maybe? -- and the clerk doesn't blink at Jonathan Matsumoto's Visa card, or at Mr. Matsumoto's striking resemblance to Fox News' very own Dean Winchester. It's 6 o'clock by the time they find their room and bring their things in. After laying down salt lines and doing a quick check of the room, Dean wanders out onto the balcony to sit and take in the view. Sam waits almost two full minutes before following, which is a new record, and then sits down in the chair next to Dean, leaning back so that his left knee presses against Dean's right. He hands over a leather binder that turns out to be a room service menu.
"I thought we could order in," Sam says.
"Sure," Dean says. He puts the binder in his lap without opening it. They sit silently for a few minutes, staring out at a sunset so vivid Dean's sure it can't be real.
"We can do some hiking tomorrow," Sam says, letting his inner travel agent shine through. "And there are burro rides down to the bottom. We can get up early and watch the sunrise if you want."
"Yeah." Dean closes his eyes and leans back, enjoying the warmth of the sun's last rays on his face. When he opens them again, Sam is staring at him, forehead scrunch in full effect.
"This is okay, right? This is good. I mean, this is what you wanted. Right?"
"Yeah," Dean says, "it is. It's great. What's the problem?"
"I just want to make sure you're having a good time. I mean, if there's anything you want, just tell me. We don't have to stay here for dinner either, there's a Mexican place down the road --"
"Dude, you hate Mexican. You don't have to make this the best vacation ever. It's not like I have an expiration date anymore." Dean feels his relaxed mood slipping away, and when Sam shifts uncomfortably Dean is hit by a truly awful thought. "Sammy," he says, trying to keep his voice even, "you going somewhere?"
"No," Sam says, looking horrified, "Jesus, no, nothing like that."
"Well, what the hell is it, then, because something's going on, and you're not telling me about it."
"What, because I'm trying to be nice to you? God, you're paranoid."
"Okay, there's nice, and then there's two-months-to-live nice--"
"You're unbelievable, I go to all this trouble--"
"Sam." Sam shuts his mouth, red-faced. "I know something's up. Just tell me."
"I'm not-- I'm not leaving. And you can't leave me now, I mean, I couldn't, I'd--" Sam breaks off, inhales, exhales. "I made a choice. And I chose you, okay? I chose you over everything. I'm not leaving. I can't leave. I just -- I want it to be worth it. I want you to be happy."
Dean isn't sure what he's feeling is happiness; it's too intense for him to identify. But he presses his knee to Sam's anyway, and smiles.
"Stop worrying. I am, okay? I am."
* * *
After that, Sam starts to act a little more normal. He doesn't back off physically, but he does start harassing Dean about his dirty socks again, and he claims the right to pick their next destination: the second-largest ball of twine in the US, located in Darwin, Minnesota. Dean goes along cheerfully, although he does point out that the second-largest ball of twine has to be the lamest idea for a roadside attraction ever. What about Fridgehenge, which is right there in New Mexico? What, for that matter, is wrong with the actual largest ball of twine in the US? Sam won't say. Nor will he agree to take a detour to visit the world's largest pile of burlap bags two counties over, which Dean saw while Sam was at Stanford and which he found strangely moving, not that he's about to tell Sam that. Still, seriously, twine?
It's a long drive, and after spending god-knows-how-many straight weeks within touching distance of each other they're both a little on edge. After moving through politics (they've always agreed on everything, which is both surprising and inconvenient), sex (Sam covers his ears and sings "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt" for two hours), and religion (Dean's head aches), they eventually settle into arguing about the tape selection in the car, as they always do when they have the luxury of being annoyed by each other.
"The Rolling Stones?" Dean asks, after Sam yanks yet another cassette out of the player. "What problem could you possibly have with the Rolling Stones?"
"Mick Jagger's creepy."
"Yes? And?"
"The lyrics for these songs are really disturbing, okay? Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good, just like a black girl should? Tell me that's not gross."
"It's rock and roll, it's not about the lyrics. If you don't like the lyrics, don't listen to them. You can barely tell what he's saying anyway."
"I can't just ignore it. The human brain is specifically programmed --"
"Oh, good Christ, here we go again --"
"The human brain is specifically programmed to tune into the frequency range of human voices before decoding any other noise. You can't turn it off, it's hard-coded into your DNA --"
The laugh rises crazy and unstoppable out of Dean's chest, and he has to yank the car to the side of the road and hit the brake. Sam glares at him, then looks confused, and that just makes Dean laugh harder. He gulps down air, tears running down his cheeks. Sam unbuckles his seatbelt and leans over, now looking freaked out. "Dean? Dean? It's okay, really, if you want to listen to Mick Jagger we can listen to Mick Jagger, it's not like it matters anymore, just -- Jesus, Dean, tell me what's going on."
Dean wants to tell Sam that he's laughing because his little brother's shitty taste in music is the single worst thing in his life right now, and because that's wonderful, it's unbelievable. He doesn't think Sam will take it in the spirit in which it's intended, though. Instead, he says, between shaky breaths, "I'm good, Sam. It's all good. It's great."
Sam looks unconvinced, but he smiles and pats Dean's thigh, much as one might reassure an elderly relative in the final stages of dementia. Dean catches his breath, wipes his eyes, shifts into first and pulls the car back onto the road, and a giant ball of twine appears over the top of the hill like a sunrise.
The ball of twine, to Dean's surprise, turns out to be kind of cool in a second-tier roadside attraction sort of way. Sam insinuates himself into a group of retirees, and comes back a few minutes later towing a guy who looks like a composite photo of every RV owner Dean has ever met.
"This is George," Sam says. "He says he'll take a picture for us."
They stand with their arms around each other's shoulders next to the sign that reads, "World's Largest Ball of Twine, Made by Francis A. Johnson, Completed 1973," and George snaps a picture with a Polaroid camera the size of a microwave oven.
They eat lunch at a diner in town. These days Sam sits next to Dean in the booth, not across from him, and always so that their legs press together underneath the table. None of the other patrons seem to notice. Sam, for his part, seems more relaxed among the crowd than he has in a long time.
"When we got arrested in Baltimore," Sam says, "you remember that cop?"
"Ballard," Dean says.
"I told her we were on a road trip together, that we went to see the world's second largest ball of twine. I had this whole fantasy word worked out in my head where we were just two guys, out to see America. So I thought, why not make it real? I guess you think it was kind of a weird idea."
"No," Dean says, "I'm glad we came." He looks at the picture face up on the table. The plaque and the ball of twine are fuzzy, but he and Sam are in clear focus, with matching idiotic grins on their faces.
After lunch, they wander down the street back to their car. Dean's lost track of the days and weeks since That Night, but from the gold in the trees and that perfect slight chill in the air he figures it for the beginning of October. It feels like it's always been autumn, and always will be.
* * *
They go to Chicago next. It's Sam's idea. Dean wants to know if Sam's sure, but Sam says he is, and Dean has to admit that Sam's been doing great lately, working his way up to bigger towns and busier streets with almost no strain now. They turn the car east on route 12.
Dean doesn't like cities, as a rule, but he's always loved Chicago. He likes the food, the grandiose architecture, the broad, open streets you can actually drive on. When he was a kid he really liked the giant T. Rex skeleton in the lobby of the Field Museum, but most of their jobs are out in the suburbs and what with work and family crises he hasn't been back since Sam was nine. He doesn't want to suggest it -- Sam's better with crowds now, but he's not sure how much better, and it's not like he can leave Sam and go alone -- but Sam suggests it for him. "I remember the anthropology section was cool," he says. "Besides, it's a weekday, there won't be too many people."
Dean assumes the T. Rex won't be as impressive as he remembers, but in fact it's even more incredible. Its thigh bones are bigger than Sam, and the giant skull looks as though it could crush the Impala. It's awesome, in the true sense of the word. When Dean turns around, though, Sam's not looking at the T. Rex. He's looking at Dean, grinning, like he's watching Dean unwrap a present Sam just gave him. Which, Dean realizes, he is.
They wander through the Hall of African Mammals, Sam's arm brushing against his, and spend a minute staring at the giant fiberglass whale suspended from the ceiling in the atrium. Sam's still got the same jaw-breaking grin, but even a quiet day at the museum means more people than they've been around in months, and Dean can read stress in the muscles around Sam's eyes. When Dean claims he's tired and suggests they go back to the hotel, Sam rolls his eyes but doesn't put up a fight.
By the time they get back to their hotel room it's three o'clock, a heavy fog has rolled in off the lake, and Sam's mouth is a tight line and his left eyelid is twitching. The hotel's some fancy place Sam's picked out, near Wacker Drive -- and that name will never stop being funny -- so at least the beds are made and the sheets are clean. "Lie down," Dean says. "Rest a little. We don't have to go anywhere this afternoon."
"I'm twenty-four, I don't need naptime, you fucker," Sam says, but he lies down on top of the sheets anyway, and within minutes his breathing's evened out and he's drooling on the white card underneath the pillow mint.
Dean carefully rescues mint and card, and sits on his own bed, popping the mint into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. He's not tired, and he's got a lot on his mind. He needs to walk a little, clear his head, spend a few minutes alone for the first time in however-many-months. Sam's out like a light and probably won't wake up until five or six. Dean leaves a note anyway.
What they need, Dean thinks as the elevator carries him down, is a new plan. He lost track of the days and months almost as soon as his sentence was over, but he knows it's been a long time, and neither of them has said anything about finding a job yet. Sam's not ready to go back to hunting; despite his recent improvements, he may never be. And Dean's tired. He's sick of motel rooms and gas station food and watching Sam get his windpipe crushed.
The elevator dings and lets him out into the lobby, which is empty. Dean's not surprised; it's three thirty on a thursday afternoon, and there was no one but the desk clerk when he came in. A smaller town, he decides, would be better: something in southern Illinois or Ohio, something central that could serve as a home base if they want to stay on the road. He'll have to figure out how to pitch it to Sam.
He pushes through the revolving doors, wondering if he can retrace his steps to the coffee shop they passed this morning. The street is deserted, no moving cars or pedestrians. He turns north, thinking he'll take the route by the river he walked down with Sam that morning. Springfield, maybe, he thinks: big enough for anonymity, but not so big that it'll give Sam a nervous breakdown.
He turns east on Wacker Drive, and stops. The street is empty. No cars, no people, no lights, nothing moving. Ahead of him, where he should see the Chicago River open up into Lake Michigan, the buildings fade into a great wall of grey fog. The hairs stand up on the back of his neck, and he realizes that the world around him is completely silent, the kind of silence he's never heard before: no traffic, no wind.
He begins to walk forward, digging his fingernails into sweaty palms, trying to remember what he knows about mist creatures, water spirits, weather gods. The fog doesn't recede the way fog's supposed to; instead it grows thicker, colder, clinging to Dean's skin and clothes. The outlines of buildings waver and shimmer where they fade into grey, light refracting off of thousands of water droplets, but the movement of light is wrong, somehow.
Dean can barely see the sides of the street, now. The mist looms ahead of him, white shading to grey shading to something darker beyond. As he steps forward, he feels his limbs tense up, his muscles automatically tightening. It's the feeling he gets when a dark passageway opens up around him, the feeling he gets when he's swimming and the sea floor drops away and leaves nothing but a bottomless pit beneath him. In that moment, he knows.
If he walks forward, there will be no weather spirit waiting on the other side. There will be nothing but blackness and emptiness and infinite silence, stretching on forever in all directions. He is standing at the edge of their small circle of existence, and beyond it is nothing where the whole world used to be, before --
Before.
Sam.
Dean turns and runs back down the street, racing out of the fog, past the corner where the noises of the city rise back up around him. He crashes through the door into the hotel lobby, slams the up button on the elevator, and when the doors don't open immediately he dashes for the fire exit and takes the stairs two at a time. When he reaches the 15th floor he races down the hall and throws his body against the door. It opens without resistance.
Sam is sitting on the bed, Dean's note crumpled in his hand, with all the blankets wrapped around him. His eyes are wide and red-rimmed, and when he speaks, his voice is hoarse.
"I broke it. That night. I had to, it was the only way to save you, but once it was broken I wasn't strong enough to put it back together, not for real, I could only -- I didn't want you to know. I tried so hard. I didn't want you to know."
Dean stares at this destroyer of worlds, this thing that his brother has become, and it stares back at him with wide, frightened eyes.
Dean closes the door behind him, walks to the edge of the bed, and climbs in, taking the blanket from Sam's hands and pulling it around them both. He wraps his arms around his brother and Sam pulls him in tight and buries his face in Dean's neck. They cling to each other, shaking, their backs facing outwards against the darkness.
Author's Notes: This is my first piece of SPN fanfic, and my second piece of posted fanfic ever, so... be ruthless. I need good criticism.
Sam's imaginary Field Museum is the museum equivalent of the Library of Babel, just because that's what happens to your memory if you visit enough museums as a kid. The Hall of African Mammals is actually at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the giant blue whale is at the Smithsonian Institute. Sue, the world's most complete Tyrannosaur skeleton, is at the Field museum, but her thighbones are definitely not bigger than Sam. They were, however, probably bigger than Sam when he was nine.
"Dwellers in Silence" is the original title of the short story that later appeared in Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles as "The Long Years."