SPN FIC - See the USA In Your Chevrolet
You've all been to those restaurants, right -- the ones where they provide placemats and crayons, so the little kids can color, and not make noise?
So have the Winchesters.
"If you're setting me up for something," Sam sighed, sinking a little lower into his side of the booth, as if that would protect him from whatever Dean had planned. "Please don't."
CHARACTERS: Sam and Dean
GENRE: Gen
RATING: G
SPOILERS: None
TIMELINE: Sometime in Season 1
LENGTH: 1148 words
SEE THE USA IN YOUR CHEVROLET
By Carol Davis
The light woke him up: the glow from wide front windows, caught by the mirror on his side of the car and bounced straight into his face.
"Dude," Sam mumbled, shielding his eyes with his hands. "What -"
"You hungry?" Dean asked.
Sam turned a little in his seat and squinted at the source of the light, a diner whose name he couldn't find. Not that it mattered; it was a diner no different from the tens of thousands of other diners they'd eaten at over the years. Yes, he was hungry, a little, but maybe wouldn't be once he'd seen the menu. Dad had told them when they were kids that wherever long-haul truckers ate, the food was good - but a long-haul trucker's definition of "good" and Sam's were sometimes on opposite sides of a pretty wide chasm. Still, this was a chance to get out, stretch his legs, use the bathroom, get something to drink.
"Yeah, I guess," he told his brother quietly.
"Awesome," Dean said.
It wasn't until they were seated in one of the booths near the door that Sam got a good look at Dean's expression. Way too mellow, Sam thought, considering the last few weeks. No - not mellow. More like…tickled. Pleased with himself.
"If you're setting me up for something," Sam sighed, sinking a little lower into his side of the booth, as if that would protect him from whatever Dean had planned. "Please don't."
Frowning cut a deep groove between Dean's eyebrows. "Why would I set you up?"
"Because you're…you."
"You wound me, Sammy. I am cut to the quick."
If he'd been a little more awake, a little less sore and headachy and road-weary, Sam might have put together a comeback. As it was, all he could do was sigh again and try to focus on the menu that lay on the table between his hands. When he glanced over at his brother, Dean was studying the laminated sheet as if it held the answer to the Meaning of Life.
Dean was definitely setting him up. Sam's only hope was, whatever the joke happened to be, it'd have less of an effect if he slid quietly down and went back to sleep, either on the bench seat of the booth or on the floor. He was so close to that, so far from truly awake, that he barely noticed the arrival of the waitress.
"How're you boys doin' tonight?" he half-heard her ask.
"We're fantastic," Dean replied. "And…how's things here? In Delaware?"
"Just fine and dandy."
"Nice little state you got here. Delaware."
"We like it. Most of the time."
Dean ordered a cheeseburger and fries; Sam put together enough of an approach to consciousness to ask for a bowl of soup and a chef's salad, then closed his eyes and propped his head on his hand.
Across the table, Dean sing-songed softly, "Delaware Delaware Dellllllawaaaaaare."
Had it been anyone else, Sam would have suspected them of having suddenly lost their mind. But Dean? Whether Dean had ever had a grip on his mind in the first place was open to debate.
"Dude," Sam complained. "The hell."
The waitress returned a minute later with their drinks and a basket of bread and butter.
"You got any crayons?" Dean asked her. "You know, for the little kids?"
She chuckled softly. "I think we do."
They did. Sam peered at her as she fished them out of her apron pocket and offered them to Dean: a red, a green, and a broken blue. "Awesome," Dean chirped, and lay them on the table. As she walked away, Dean pulled something from inside his jacket and, with Sam trying to figure out what was happening (although why, he couldn't have said), unfolded and spread out on the table a frayed and battered map of the United States on which the various states had been colored in with a rainbow of crayons.
"What -" Sam murmured.
"Remember this?"
"I - yeah."
"You dragged this thing around for years. Had to keep asking people for crayons, so you could color in the states we went through."
"And you - I thought Dad threw this thing out. Like, years ago."
"Nope," Dean said. "Had it in the trunk."
"Why?"
Dean turned away, just a little, and spent a minute looking out the big window at the parking lot, where the Impala sat waiting in the pale spill of light from the diner. "Found it after you left," he said finally. "Took me a while to scout up some crayons. I filled in some of the states we went to after you gave up on this thing. Had to ask Dad about a couple of 'em."
"You colored."
"It's soothing," Dean said archly.
"Seriously. You colored. With crayons."
With a shrug, Dean pushed the three crayons closer to Sam. "Turned out, we'd been to every damn state. Except one. Well, there's Alaska and Hawaii, but it's a bitch of a job driving to Hawaii, and Alaska's too frickin' cold. And kinda not - well. I figured I'd stick to the lower forty-eight." He paused, rolling the crayons back and forth across the tabletop with the tips of his fingers. "You, me, and Dad. We got to forty-seven states."
It made sense then. Stopping here, and the sudden, quiet melancholy in Dean's expression.
"We only missed Delaware," Sam guessed.
"Yeah," Dean said. "All that time. Never got to Delaware."
"Nothing weird ever happened in Delaware."
"Not that Dad had anything to do with."
"Huh," Sam said. Then asked, "Is there something weird going on here now? Other than the food?"
"Dude," Dean chided.
The map had originally been a placemat. Had been provided, along with a cupful of broken crayons, to amuse restless children. For a moment, as he slid the paper closer, Sam remembered booths and tables and cheeseburgers and glasses of milk and his father's murmured requests for crayons. Remembered asking, "What's this place, Dad? What's this place where we are?"
"He kept this," Sam whispered.
"Yeah," Dean said. "He did."
Sam lifted his gaze. Looked at his brother.
"You gonna color it in?" Dean asked.
The paper was soft when Sam touched it. Was spotted and stained with soda and gravy and chocolate, small pieces of fingerprints in a dozen different flavors. The map had been folded in quarters, to a size that would fit into a jacket pocket, frayed along those folded edges and carefully scotch-taped in a couple of places.
Slowly, Sam picked it up, folded it, held it between his hands for a moment, then slid it into the pocket of his hoodie. When Dean raised an eyebrow in silent question, he smiled fleetingly, then reached for his soda and took a long drink.
A toast, of sorts.
"No," he said as he set the glass back down. "It's just us now. We need another map."
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