Fic: Runaway (1/1)
Title: Runaway
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Word Count: 5,409
Summary: They’re driving, always driving; and the roads, Sam’s learned, only ever end at the sea. (( When he left for Stanford, Sam stole his brother’s copy of ...And Justice for All; shoved it down in his duffel beneath his worn Levi’s and his res life paperwork. He doesn’t even like Metallica. )) For missy_useless, who requested Dean/Sam for my help_chile Auction. General Spoilers Through Season Three.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: To the lovely missy_useless: of course you know that I’m dreadfully sorry that your auction fics have taken me so long, but I just want to say that again: I am SO SORRY that your auction fics have taken so long. But, aside from all of that: this wasn’t the fic I intended for you, or the one I started for your fill, but now that it’s done, I think it’s more tailored to your tastes, really, so I hope that you enjoy it <3
More thanks than I can possibly convey to blcwriter, skyblue_reverie, and weepingnaiad, for hand-holding and cheerleading and beta-ing like the utter wonders that they are <3
Runaway
The asphalt stretches out, like always: tick-marked in the middle with flaking yellow, faded white, and he almost makes himself dizzy, following the lines of tar, zig-zagged and gleaming where they fill in breaks, cover holes -- they don’t end, the markings, the glue that holds the ground together, keeps the cracks from opening, swallowing; crumbling, the worn parts -- they’re everywhere, they never end.
The roads, Sam’s learned, only ever end at the sea.
~
(( Sam remembers -- he couldn’t have been more than four, but he remembers -- being scared of the cracks in the pavement. Afraid he’d fall into them, afraid that if he stepped on them, he’d wake up whatever lived underneath. Used to be afraid of breaking someone’s back, until Dean talked him out of it. His brother was never keen on holding his hand, said it was girly -- only ever did it when they crossed the road, when Sam’s welfare depended on it -- but Dean always made an exception when there were cracks involved; held tight around Sam’s wrist until the beat in his blood fluttered close to the bone, and squeezed, led his brother to safety while Sam screwed his eyes shut and refused to look, to watch, blind but for the trust, the touch of Dean’s hand. ))
~
Sam hates the driving through the Northeast. Always has. It’s the green, he thinks; there’s just too much of it.
(( It’s not the green, and it never has been. It’s the way that green so often fades, decays into yellow; and yellow’s the color of nightmares and fear and the things he can’t put words to, can’t say, won’t mention or tell -- the things read in eyes and breaths and sleepless night, instead of in words. ))
They’ve been on I-90 long enough for him to have lost feeling in his legs, long enough to have made it through Stiff Upper Lip three times already when Dean finally popped in The Ozzman Cometh, which had to have been on its fifth play before they stopped for gas and Sam managed to slip Garage Inc. into the tape deck as a half-assed sort of compromise. Dean scowls -- Sam remembers him buying the album when it dropped, the mixed emotions all the covers and B-sides had spurred, they way he’d bitched over having to pay for the fucking $5.98 E.P. again, but Sam likes it best of their catalogue. Figures.
(( When Sam left for Stanford, he stole his brother’s copy of ...And Justice for All; shoved it down in his duffel beneath his worn Levi’s and his res life paperwork. He doesn’t even like Metallica, he just can’t shake the way that ‘One’ had always calmed him, always set him straight -- the sound of the intro humming, interrupted by the breaths his brother would draw between -- harsh little stops that made the song different, new.
Every time.
He plays the song his first night in the dorms, but it’s not the same.
He never gets the disc out again; never gives it back, either. ))
He tries to occupy himself, tries to ignore the heavy glare Dean sends his way when he taps his fingers against the door, out of sync with the beat, matched to a different rhythm. He leans his head back over the seat and doesn’t bother to stifle a groan -- it’s too short, but it still feels right.
From his vantage point -- head cocked wrong against the sky -- he can watch the clouds, let himself get dizzy with the way they move too fast, with their soft curls and brushstroke-patterns across the washed-out blue; little lashes like an angel’s, leaving butterfly-kisses across the sky.
(( He never knew her, but angels remind him of his mother; mostly, because they remind Dean of their mother.
Thinking of their mother makes Dean sad, always has. Sam tries not to think about angels too much. ))
He lets his eyes settle on the mud-flaps of the cars ahead of them, next to them as Dean passes without signaling, pushing the Impala a good twenty-five miles over the speed limit. He can’t help but grin when Dean chuckles and points out a sign for the way out to Coxsackie; he rolls his eyes and turns before the smile takes hold, but there it is, and he knows Dean could see it in the reflection, in the side-mirror if he were to look just so.
He won’t look, of course.
(( But he could. ))
Sam reaches for the bag of Corn Nuts that Dean picked up at the Mobil at the last service plaza, only a sight more nutritious than the Barbeque Lays shoved in between the seats; shakes the salty kernels around his palm before tossing a handful toward the back of his mouth and crunching, half-aware that he almost matches the rhythm of the song with every chew.
(( There was this one time, Sam couldn’t have been more than five; it was Thanksgiving, and he wanted corn muffins to go with the cheap K-Mart fried chicken that Dean’d managed to scrounge up in their father’s absence. Neither one of them had had a clue what the hell they were doing, but with a bag of ranch Corn Nuts -- because they both agreed: corn was corn -- and a long-expired box of blueberry muffin mix Dean managed to lift from the corner store down the block, they’d come out with a muffin-and-a-half that wasn’t burnt to a fucking crisp.
The muffins had tasted like ass when they were done, but Sam still remembers baking with his brother as one of the highlights of his youth. ))
~
Dean doesn’t like to talk much on a good day, when they’re sitting in a motel because they’re flat-out tired, in a place they’ve stopped because they can, not because they have to.
Dean likes to talk even less when he drives.
Reading anything too involved in the car gives Sam a headache, has done since he was a kid, so he shoves the few spell books and holy texts he’d picked up at Bobby’s behind Dean, shuffles around for something a little less heavy; sticks a wary hand underneath Dean’s seat and extracts a well-loved copy of Busty Asian Beauties from ’99.
Between random beaver shots and a bigger set of nipples than Sam’s ever seen (in fact, Sam’s pretty damn sure he’s seen tits smaller than these nipples), the exit for Chittenango catches his eye: like mangos and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which he only remembers at all because of some VHS porn Dean had shoved under their bed one time called Titty Titty Bang Bang; he moves his lips silently over the syllables, around the consonants, lets his tongue trace his teeth against the vowels and he smiles a little, because as a word, it’s solid; it’s a good kind of name.
(( It was a strange thing, but when Sam was little, his first word was mama; when he said it, his father disappeared for a week. A few more days of babbling, and he’d stumbled across the letter d; but instead of dada, he’d pointed to his brother and tried out a different vowel: dee.
Sam only knows any of this because Pastor Jim’s told him the story; only bothers to remember because, apparently, Dean’s name coming from his tiny little mouth had prompted the first real smile his brother had shown since the night Mary died. ))
The sun catches in the corner of his eye, sears against his retina, and he shakes his head, closes the skin mag so the centerfold’s nipples meet on either side of the crease; he tosses it back where he found it, though the cross-breeze from the open windows plasters it against the back door -- it’s enough to prompt more words from his brother than he’s managed for a good three hours, by now:
“Treat that thing with respect, man, it’s a fucking antique.”
Dean’s humming, drumming his fingers in a sticky cadence, the pads of his fingers tacky on the steering wheel as they pull and drum and pull, as he mumbles the nonsense lyrics in the middle of ‘Whiskey In The Jar’; and fuck if it doesn’t say more, make more sense than half the shit Dean says sometimes.
But then, that’s half the point of being brothers, Sam suspects -- not making sense isn’t a deal-breaker.
He blinks -- a hard, fast rhythm of lashes and lids -- like stop motion as he catches the rocks, the stiff grooves in the landscape, the Fallen Rock Zone warnings that still make him feel short and scared, in spite of everything else in the world he could be afraid of.
Is afraid of.
(( Soon as Sam learned how to read, he picked up the hobby of cataloguing road signs. He learned about semis as a result of engine break restrictions and weigh stations ahead, learned basic addition via mile markers and speed limits, and cultivated a distinct dislike of driving into Pennsylvania from Ohio, because the route signs there weren’t drawn in the shape of the state like they were in Buckeye Country.
The first time he stared up a sheer line of cut rock, stretching to the sky, and read “Fallen Rock Zone” and the base of the ledge, just shy of the flimsy guardrail, he nearly had a panic attack.
His father, of course, had assured him that those signs were old -- though they didn’t look it -- and that no rocks would be falling on them here -- even though Sam could see plenty of rocks on the edge of cliffs above them, ready to topple, he was sure of it -- and that there was absolutely nothing to worry about -- except there was, obviously, because rocks were falling.
But when John Winchester told him not to worry, Sam was smart enough to understand that, more than comfort, his father wanted silence. So, white-knuckled and wide eyed, with his teeth dug far enough into his bottom lip to split the skin and stain his teeth, Sam let the matter slide.
Until the next sign, some ten miles farther down the thruway.
Before he could say anything, though, before he could gasp or cry or hyperventilate -- or all three -- a steady hand splayed itself against his shoulder: a touch, warm and sure and familiar, like home.
‘Don’t worry,’ Dean murmured conspiratorially, but somehow it was soothing at the very same time, and Sam leaned into his big brother’s arm, the near half of his chest; matched his breathing to the steady rise and fall beneath him. ‘Won’t let any rocks crush you on my watch.’
And that, Sam could believe. ))
The colors of the sunset are deeper, surer where they reflect at the foot of the hills; the water there placid, touched by nothing.
Sam settles further into his seat; dozes, and dreams of steady streams, dark and deep.
~
He’s only half-awake when Dean swerves, hits into the ridges carved in the shoulder of the slow lane and rumbles hard enough to snap them both to rights. Dean swears, louder than the roar of the strip as he rights his baby between the lines, and Sam’s pulse takes a minute to level out -- they almost miss the sign that tells them they’ve just missed the last service stop for the next seventy-three miles.
They both see the grade warnings, and maybe they both think the same thing when they notice the runaway truck ramp sloping up to their right.
Either way, before Sam can finish the thinking, Dean’s already on to the doing -- he’s swinging them sharp and shifting hard up the climb to no man’s land, just off the last stretch of the highway before the Massachusetts borderlands.
The path is overgrown, the gravel scattered and only just visible beneath the weeds, and it slaps harsh against the body of the car, catching at the underbelly; and there was a time -- not too long ago, but long enough -- when Sam would have protested, would have asked if this were legal, would have put up a fight.
Wouldn’t have sighed, almost in relief, when Dean pulled the keys from the ignition; wouldn’t have breathed deep of the cool as he stepped out, slowly straightened, let the chill smack hard against his joints as they popped, his bones as they creaked.
It’s lonely at the heights, and calm, and where life is rushing just past the sloping ramp back down -- here, it stands still.
For the barest moment, they stand still.
Dean breaks it -- always does -- his heavy footfalls swallowed by the beats and their echoes, his weight against the ground in the silence; he walks around the front of the car and leans for a moment, calves against the grill before he throws his head back to stare up, lets his limbs ease him down, sprawled aimlessly across the hood. He shifts up, lets the curve of his ass settle in between the wiper blades as he moans, a little too deep, lines his spine against the windshield and drops his head against the roof, the surface already cooling, slick with promises, threats of rain.
“S’no Magic Fingers,” he murmurs, eyes closed as he slides his arms up under his head, closes his eyes and grins at whatever he sees in the dark; “but she’ll do.”
It’s funny --
(( or maybe just sad, because Sam was his own man -- is his own man -- and has been for long enough now to stand on his own two feet; to be and do and think for himself, goddamnit ))
-- but Sam takes his cues from Dean, now.
(( And fuck, but it’s nothing new. When Dean nicked a leather jacket from the Goodwill in Coshocton, Sam started wearing his boots in all weather, rain or shine, just because they were the only leather things he owned. When Dean started refusing to eat anything green for dinner, because it was pansy food, Sam gave up on broccoli, even though it was his favorite. When Dean decided he wasn’t going to college, wasn’t even going to bother finishing high school, Sam’s grades plummeted for a solid quarter before he pulled his head out of his ass.
It’s why he’d left; Dean had always called the shots and Sam had followed -- not quite a good little soldier, but devoted nonetheless. Distance was the last defense he had, the last weapon he knew that might break the cycle, that’d put him in command, in control.
Thinking on it now, he should have known better. ))
So when Dean breathes, sighs low so that the air turns grey above his lips, puffs of steam from his lungs, Sam shuffles his feet through grass and gravel, knocks his shins against the bumper and slides up on top of the trunk. He folds his legs until the soles of his shoes leave dusty tread-prints on the paint, shoves up along the rear window until his shoulder blades settle awkwardly against the cut of the roof, until his head lolls back just to the right of Dean’s. He blinks once, stares at his brother while Dean stares at the sky, before he breathes out and turns his attention up, toward the stars.
(( Dean has a line of freckles, just below his ear, that resembles the constellation Vulpecula. Sam found it in his senior year of high school, while he was sitting in bed working on homework and Dean was snoring on the pillow next to him. ))
Lying like this on the Impala, sprawled from either end, Sam can almost pretend the world away -- almost rewrite history and fix all the wrinkled parts; flatten them out and make them whole in his head; and if he sucks in the air, breathes too deep or too fast, he can just brush against it, just feel the way the stray ends of his hair tease against Dean’s jaw -- it catches sharp in his windpipe, reminds him there’s no going back.
Not even if he wanted to.
(( The first time Dean let his little brother tag along on a solo hunt, Sam had spent the whole drive strung out on nerves in the passenger seat of a beat up F-250, his sweaty palms slipping on the barrel of his shotgun.
They’d stopped for food, and Sam could barely stomach his burger -- same one Dean nearly inhaled upon arrival; ended up hurling what he had eaten in the parking lot. His cheeks had burned when Dean took a few cheap shots regarding delicate-fucking-constitutions and barf bags, but he wiped his mouth on the cuff of his sweatshirt and climbed back into the truck with as much dignity as he could manage.
Dean didn’t say another word about it, just passed him a Starlite Peppermint and asked, all nonchalance so that it wouldn’t settle heavy in Sam’s already queasy stomach, if they should go back. Couched it in John’s wrath at their absence, if he ever found out; suggested a trip to Bobby’s for supplies, more ammo, and Sam had wanted to say yes; told him no.
They took out a whole Waheela pack that night; with Dean at his back as they wasted the bastards, Sam barely even flinched. ))
The points of light above them are subtle, faint; Sam squints, tries to see -- can’t make out anything worthwhile, and so lets his eyes slide closed and tries to feel. He focuses in on the steady sound of crickets, white noise against the black, and it grounds him, keeps him from getting too caught up, from lending too much credence to the careful swell of something hot, something hopeful buried deep in his gut, his chest.
(( He’s felt it before: not when Jenna Macintosh kissed him on the cheek after junior prom; maybe, when he lost his virginity to Lucy Strosaker in the back of her daddy’s Mustang; but definitely when Dean would make him tomato soup with half-water, half-milk, would buy a half-gallon of 2% just to make sure it tasted right. ))
And it’s something more -- something aside from the purr of midnight and the distant moon, the rush of wind and water and momentum closing in around them, below them, from everywhere; more than the way he breathes in exhaust and dew and the air from Dean’s lips, Dean’s lungs -- the way the heat that’s pushing, pulling him in, rises up from a depth his eyes are useless to plumb, from a chest sprawled long and lean beyond him, splayed on glass and rising with a rhythm Sam knows, but can’t place.
It’s something more that turns his head, brushes the tip of his nose against Dean’s in the dark and catches his heart in his throat as he stills, frozen in an instant -- it’s more than shadows and impressions amidst the black.
And maybe; maybe it’s that same nameless something that slips Dean’s lips against Sam’s own -- catches the seam of his mouth against the wet trace of Dean’s upper lip like an accident, or a mistake that shirks regret; that holds them there for the longest moment Sam’s ever felt, ever lived through -- one heartbeat and another and another, too many before it snaps and they both slant forward, instinct dictating their angles, the way they fit.
(( First time he fired a gun, he asked Dean how he would know when to shoot. Dean slapped at his shoulders, hit firm against his biceps with an open palm; told him to feel for it, said that he’d know.
So Sam closed his eyes, listened to the sound of his breath, of his pulse; felt something steadfast and sure just beyond him, just behind; opened his eyes and pulled the trigger. ))
Sam loses count of the moments and the beats as soon as Dean’s teeth drag across the swell of his pout, catch slow; almost curious, but not uncertain. Sam doesn’t even mean to sigh into Dean’s mouth, doesn’t mean to break the boundaries and throw open the gates; and by the lazy way that Dean’s tongue slides half the way, thrusts the rest into the waiting warmth beyond -- and Sam swallows the way Dean feels, tastes, all buttery crusts and raw meat and musk and tang and Dean, and fuck, but it’s a craving Sam never even knew before, never even dreamed.
Time and rest and faint glimpses of fatigue dot the backs of Sam’s eyelids, light through the mist, but his heart’s hammering like it’ll never stop, never die; he can hear it just above the little smacks of skin, the little breathy sounds that come between them, owned by neither party, belonging to them both. There’s a train across the roadway, he can hear the rush of it, the clack of it on the tracks as he bites down on the pillow of Dean’s bottom lip, firm yet yielding as he tastes iron and heat, measures a frantic cadence beneath the pressure of his front teeth; and he waits there, doesn’t let up -- lets his eyes flutter shut so he can savor it, can fall apart and never see it when he pulls back, just to lick across the parted halves of his mouth and get lost again in the gap between.
And they don’t reach out, don’t touch -- they don’t move into one another or take it further, make it more or less than what it is, what they are and can be here and now -- sweat kissed with morning dew, the droplets pushed across the skin with every panted gasp, every wasted, shattered breath -- and it feels wonderful, terrible, soft and hard and wrong: and yet, so far gone along the scale that wrong starts to look brighter, starts to stand closer to something right.
Their lips close, pursed against each other, keeping secrets again that they both remember, that they don’t have to see to know anymore; don’t have to taste to keep close.
Sam blinks, sluggish; it takes a second to focus, but then he sees it, like the last, the only safe place left: all that green.
(( It’s one of those things that Sam remembers, but won’t admit: when he was little, he knew that blue was like the sky, and black was like the road, and red was like blood when his daddy was clumsy, and green, well -- green wasn’t like the grass or the trees or even like his favorite stuffed lizard with the purple polkadots on its back; no -- green was like his brother’s eyes. ))
And he barely breathes, just stares; lets Dean stare back, and asks for nothing, gives nothing in return: just is, and it’s enough.
It’s enough.
They taper, linger; suck each other in with a breath, and sometimes -- at random intervals that trace the night -- he cracks his eyes open to find Dean at sigh’s-length, close enough to feel it when he blinks, for the drag, the gentle brush of his lashes along Sam’s cheekbones. His throat’s sore for the cool of the air, the damp; he swallows, opens his mouth to say something anything -- one thing to snap the tension and cut through the constant rush of blood in his ears, the heavy hum of a bass-line in his chest -- and he wants to give this thing, this moment a voice; he wants to say sun’s rising, and see the hints of a smile, the quirk of those lips in the growing glow of day, but he doesn’t.
Words have never served to say anything between them that they didn’t already know.
The early morning fog rises slowly, fades into view like an apparition, a thick haze that’s hard to see through, hard to breathe through -- gets caught in the heavy fist of his heart in his throat, chokes a little before it disperses, leaves the pounding behind to seem too real, too much. His chest burns as he tries to catch his breath, tries to calm; he’s dizzy for exhaustion, for want and need and the watercolor lines of the horizon as it pales, chalked in pastels now instead of heavy oils bleeding into dusk.
Sam rests his hand on his chest -- pretends in a little corner of his mind that he doesn’t acknowledge, doesn’t trust that the touch belongs to another, isn’t his own -- and presses down until he can feel the thumping, the catches and the rubs, until he can almost hold it, and all it means, against his palm and trap it, tame it; except that he can’t.
He feels, more than anything else, when Dean slides from the car and sets his feet on the ground again, drops and falls from the slope of the roof.
When he looks, turns his head and braves the gentle halo of the rising sun, he can see Dean’s handprint, the outline of his fingers slipping slow into his palm, etched wet on the dew-slicked roof; and there’s a storm on the air, so he breathes it in, sucks until it stings in his lungs, pulls too tight against his ribs.
He licks his lips, knows it’s only a figment of the mind that he can still taste the last traces of blackberry pie and New York strip grilled rare and something sharper, something like the rain putting out a fire, destruction and renewal and smoke and the burn; braces the heels of his hands on the slippery window and hauls himself down, lowers himself back down to earth.
~
Dean reaches, doesn’t take his eyes off the road as he scrambles around for the toll pack; Sam leans and grabs for the tag where he stashed it at the last booth and hands it to Dean to hold for the scan -- courtesy of one Fernando Delaharris, they’ve been able to cut a good half-hour off of their travel time in the E-ZPass lanes, and have saved enough quarters in the process to indulge Dean’s sick motel-bed habits for a good couple of weeks, at least. Win-win, in a vaguely-disturbing sort of way.
Soon as they’re back on the road proper, Dean runs his fingers across their cassette collection, categorizes them beneath his fingers like he can read the chipping letters pressed into the plastic, can see without the looking what the black-marker scrawl on the case-spines say.
(( Dean’s always had shitty handwriting. Sam knows this less because he’d ever noticed it himself, and more because his teachers had forever berated his own penmanship, and Dean’s the one who taught him how to write. ))
Dean flips a minivan off when it swerves too close in front of him to make the exit, sends the two of them lurching forward just a little too sharp; after taking a moment to scowl as the Grand Caravan breaks down the ramp, Sam notices less by watching and more by the weight of the box Dean shoves into his lap, the grunt, low in his brother’s throat, that slips between the clack of the tapes against each other.
Sam swallows, hard; he’s riding shotgun -- he never gets to pick the music.
(( When Dean sleeps in the passenger seat, Sam doesn’t change the music -- just keeps Black Sabbath playing for the hour or two of shuteye Dean grudgingly manages before the sun squints, breaks; and if he always makes sure to prop the scratched plastic of a Joy Division tape -- bought mostly for show -- just so against the Steve Madden box, pressed into the warped fold of the cardboard before Dean startles back to waking; well, it’s habit now, more than anything, and whatever else it started out as has long since been forgotten. ))
He fights a smile that threatens at the corners of his lips, because it doesn’t fit, doesn’t do justice to the tightness in his chest, the fire in his gut. Letting the box settle on his thighs for just a moment, undisturbed, he stares ahead: watches the shadows melt, watches the cracks in the pavement catch in the dawn -- the freckles on his brother’s face stand out against the sun; leans into the window, lets his cheek rest against the glass -- still cool, fogged against the cloud of his breath -- as he squints into the distance, the half-lit horizon painted up in colors and shades.
If he looks hard enough, he can make out the moon; if he breathes deep enough, he can almost find the stars.
~
Turns out there’s not much to do in terms of prep, once they get to where they’re going -- Mrs. Adelaide Foster was the classic case of the women scorned: after finding out her husband was having an affair, she’d gone to confront him in the act, but was killed in a car accident on the way. She’d since taken to attacking his progeny from his second wife.
Made sense.
She’d been buried -- a simple plot in a backwater cemetery at the edge of town -- and with only about a hundred graves, it’s no trouble at all finding hers; they have time to kill before sundown, so Sam catches the keys slung at him across the hood and drives them down to the Cape just in time to catch dusk settling along the coast.
There’s the scent of cool, of salt and breeze and life and clouds and brine -- the arches of his feet fit against the crags in the rocks, the shore, and Sam revels in it, relishes the pinch, the pain of stone digging at his feet; wonders if Dean feels it too.
His eyes search out his brother, dart to where he can hear Dean’s footsteps, pick out the cadence of his breaths against the soft shift of the wind. He walks close, lets the swell of his frame slip just a bit, just enough into his brother’s sphere of being, into the space that is Dean and Dean alone -- he occupies it in tandem for the sparest of moments, vague and reeling, before Dean steps away; doesn’t speak, doesn’t flinch, but leaves, the shuffle of his boots too sharp to bear. And Sam doesn’t follow; drowns a little instead in the dive that plummets hard in his gut, tastes black on his tongue, in the long stretch of the Atlantic glimmering against the sun.
The roads, Sam’s learned, only ever end at the sea.
But roads, well; they’re not the only ones.
~
(( That night, after a routine salt and burn outside of Brockton -- one that leaves his muscles sore and his lips slicked with sweat -- Sam dreams of black eyes and sour blood for the first time, the last time; every time at once.
He moans in his sleep, and he never wakes, never knows it for sure -- but when his brother reaches for him from the driver’s seat, curls his fingers over Sam’s where his hand is clenched tight in the meat of his thigh; when Dean follows the sleek line of Sam’s body up the side, the chest, the arm, lets his palm rest and rub at the crook of Sam’s neck, easing the tension away -- Sam doesn’t know it, but Dean brushes away the dream, the hard staccato of his heart; lets Sam sleep until sunrise -- tires burning asphalt, spinning underfoot. ))
~
When there’s nothing left for them, they turn tail and head west; the endless stretch toward another coast, another sea.
Sam sighs, stretches in his seat; figures it’s better than nothing.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Word Count: 5,409
Summary: They’re driving, always driving; and the roads, Sam’s learned, only ever end at the sea. (( When he left for Stanford, Sam stole his brother’s copy of ...And Justice for All; shoved it down in his duffel beneath his worn Levi’s and his res life paperwork. He doesn’t even like Metallica. )) For missy_useless, who requested Dean/Sam for my help_chile Auction. General Spoilers Through Season Three.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: To the lovely missy_useless: of course you know that I’m dreadfully sorry that your auction fics have taken me so long, but I just want to say that again: I am SO SORRY that your auction fics have taken so long. But, aside from all of that: this wasn’t the fic I intended for you, or the one I started for your fill, but now that it’s done, I think it’s more tailored to your tastes, really, so I hope that you enjoy it <3
More thanks than I can possibly convey to blcwriter, skyblue_reverie, and weepingnaiad, for hand-holding and cheerleading and beta-ing like the utter wonders that they are <3
Runaway
The asphalt stretches out, like always: tick-marked in the middle with flaking yellow, faded white, and he almost makes himself dizzy, following the lines of tar, zig-zagged and gleaming where they fill in breaks, cover holes -- they don’t end, the markings, the glue that holds the ground together, keeps the cracks from opening, swallowing; crumbling, the worn parts -- they’re everywhere, they never end.
The roads, Sam’s learned, only ever end at the sea.
~
(( Sam remembers -- he couldn’t have been more than four, but he remembers -- being scared of the cracks in the pavement. Afraid he’d fall into them, afraid that if he stepped on them, he’d wake up whatever lived underneath. Used to be afraid of breaking someone’s back, until Dean talked him out of it. His brother was never keen on holding his hand, said it was girly -- only ever did it when they crossed the road, when Sam’s welfare depended on it -- but Dean always made an exception when there were cracks involved; held tight around Sam’s wrist until the beat in his blood fluttered close to the bone, and squeezed, led his brother to safety while Sam screwed his eyes shut and refused to look, to watch, blind but for the trust, the touch of Dean’s hand. ))
~
Sam hates the driving through the Northeast. Always has. It’s the green, he thinks; there’s just too much of it.
(( It’s not the green, and it never has been. It’s the way that green so often fades, decays into yellow; and yellow’s the color of nightmares and fear and the things he can’t put words to, can’t say, won’t mention or tell -- the things read in eyes and breaths and sleepless night, instead of in words. ))
They’ve been on I-90 long enough for him to have lost feeling in his legs, long enough to have made it through Stiff Upper Lip three times already when Dean finally popped in The Ozzman Cometh, which had to have been on its fifth play before they stopped for gas and Sam managed to slip Garage Inc. into the tape deck as a half-assed sort of compromise. Dean scowls -- Sam remembers him buying the album when it dropped, the mixed emotions all the covers and B-sides had spurred, they way he’d bitched over having to pay for the fucking $5.98 E.P. again, but Sam likes it best of their catalogue. Figures.
(( When Sam left for Stanford, he stole his brother’s copy of ...And Justice for All; shoved it down in his duffel beneath his worn Levi’s and his res life paperwork. He doesn’t even like Metallica, he just can’t shake the way that ‘One’ had always calmed him, always set him straight -- the sound of the intro humming, interrupted by the breaths his brother would draw between -- harsh little stops that made the song different, new.
Every time.
He plays the song his first night in the dorms, but it’s not the same.
He never gets the disc out again; never gives it back, either. ))
He tries to occupy himself, tries to ignore the heavy glare Dean sends his way when he taps his fingers against the door, out of sync with the beat, matched to a different rhythm. He leans his head back over the seat and doesn’t bother to stifle a groan -- it’s too short, but it still feels right.
From his vantage point -- head cocked wrong against the sky -- he can watch the clouds, let himself get dizzy with the way they move too fast, with their soft curls and brushstroke-patterns across the washed-out blue; little lashes like an angel’s, leaving butterfly-kisses across the sky.
(( He never knew her, but angels remind him of his mother; mostly, because they remind Dean of their mother.
Thinking of their mother makes Dean sad, always has. Sam tries not to think about angels too much. ))
He lets his eyes settle on the mud-flaps of the cars ahead of them, next to them as Dean passes without signaling, pushing the Impala a good twenty-five miles over the speed limit. He can’t help but grin when Dean chuckles and points out a sign for the way out to Coxsackie; he rolls his eyes and turns before the smile takes hold, but there it is, and he knows Dean could see it in the reflection, in the side-mirror if he were to look just so.
He won’t look, of course.
(( But he could. ))
Sam reaches for the bag of Corn Nuts that Dean picked up at the Mobil at the last service plaza, only a sight more nutritious than the Barbeque Lays shoved in between the seats; shakes the salty kernels around his palm before tossing a handful toward the back of his mouth and crunching, half-aware that he almost matches the rhythm of the song with every chew.
(( There was this one time, Sam couldn’t have been more than five; it was Thanksgiving, and he wanted corn muffins to go with the cheap K-Mart fried chicken that Dean’d managed to scrounge up in their father’s absence. Neither one of them had had a clue what the hell they were doing, but with a bag of ranch Corn Nuts -- because they both agreed: corn was corn -- and a long-expired box of blueberry muffin mix Dean managed to lift from the corner store down the block, they’d come out with a muffin-and-a-half that wasn’t burnt to a fucking crisp.
The muffins had tasted like ass when they were done, but Sam still remembers baking with his brother as one of the highlights of his youth. ))
~
Dean doesn’t like to talk much on a good day, when they’re sitting in a motel because they’re flat-out tired, in a place they’ve stopped because they can, not because they have to.
Dean likes to talk even less when he drives.
Reading anything too involved in the car gives Sam a headache, has done since he was a kid, so he shoves the few spell books and holy texts he’d picked up at Bobby’s behind Dean, shuffles around for something a little less heavy; sticks a wary hand underneath Dean’s seat and extracts a well-loved copy of Busty Asian Beauties from ’99.
Between random beaver shots and a bigger set of nipples than Sam’s ever seen (in fact, Sam’s pretty damn sure he’s seen tits smaller than these nipples), the exit for Chittenango catches his eye: like mangos and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which he only remembers at all because of some VHS porn Dean had shoved under their bed one time called Titty Titty Bang Bang; he moves his lips silently over the syllables, around the consonants, lets his tongue trace his teeth against the vowels and he smiles a little, because as a word, it’s solid; it’s a good kind of name.
(( It was a strange thing, but when Sam was little, his first word was mama; when he said it, his father disappeared for a week. A few more days of babbling, and he’d stumbled across the letter d; but instead of dada, he’d pointed to his brother and tried out a different vowel: dee.
Sam only knows any of this because Pastor Jim’s told him the story; only bothers to remember because, apparently, Dean’s name coming from his tiny little mouth had prompted the first real smile his brother had shown since the night Mary died. ))
The sun catches in the corner of his eye, sears against his retina, and he shakes his head, closes the skin mag so the centerfold’s nipples meet on either side of the crease; he tosses it back where he found it, though the cross-breeze from the open windows plasters it against the back door -- it’s enough to prompt more words from his brother than he’s managed for a good three hours, by now:
“Treat that thing with respect, man, it’s a fucking antique.”
Dean’s humming, drumming his fingers in a sticky cadence, the pads of his fingers tacky on the steering wheel as they pull and drum and pull, as he mumbles the nonsense lyrics in the middle of ‘Whiskey In The Jar’; and fuck if it doesn’t say more, make more sense than half the shit Dean says sometimes.
But then, that’s half the point of being brothers, Sam suspects -- not making sense isn’t a deal-breaker.
He blinks -- a hard, fast rhythm of lashes and lids -- like stop motion as he catches the rocks, the stiff grooves in the landscape, the Fallen Rock Zone warnings that still make him feel short and scared, in spite of everything else in the world he could be afraid of.
Is afraid of.
(( Soon as Sam learned how to read, he picked up the hobby of cataloguing road signs. He learned about semis as a result of engine break restrictions and weigh stations ahead, learned basic addition via mile markers and speed limits, and cultivated a distinct dislike of driving into Pennsylvania from Ohio, because the route signs there weren’t drawn in the shape of the state like they were in Buckeye Country.
The first time he stared up a sheer line of cut rock, stretching to the sky, and read “Fallen Rock Zone” and the base of the ledge, just shy of the flimsy guardrail, he nearly had a panic attack.
His father, of course, had assured him that those signs were old -- though they didn’t look it -- and that no rocks would be falling on them here -- even though Sam could see plenty of rocks on the edge of cliffs above them, ready to topple, he was sure of it -- and that there was absolutely nothing to worry about -- except there was, obviously, because rocks were falling.
But when John Winchester told him not to worry, Sam was smart enough to understand that, more than comfort, his father wanted silence. So, white-knuckled and wide eyed, with his teeth dug far enough into his bottom lip to split the skin and stain his teeth, Sam let the matter slide.
Until the next sign, some ten miles farther down the thruway.
Before he could say anything, though, before he could gasp or cry or hyperventilate -- or all three -- a steady hand splayed itself against his shoulder: a touch, warm and sure and familiar, like home.
‘Don’t worry,’ Dean murmured conspiratorially, but somehow it was soothing at the very same time, and Sam leaned into his big brother’s arm, the near half of his chest; matched his breathing to the steady rise and fall beneath him. ‘Won’t let any rocks crush you on my watch.’
And that, Sam could believe. ))
The colors of the sunset are deeper, surer where they reflect at the foot of the hills; the water there placid, touched by nothing.
Sam settles further into his seat; dozes, and dreams of steady streams, dark and deep.
~
He’s only half-awake when Dean swerves, hits into the ridges carved in the shoulder of the slow lane and rumbles hard enough to snap them both to rights. Dean swears, louder than the roar of the strip as he rights his baby between the lines, and Sam’s pulse takes a minute to level out -- they almost miss the sign that tells them they’ve just missed the last service stop for the next seventy-three miles.
They both see the grade warnings, and maybe they both think the same thing when they notice the runaway truck ramp sloping up to their right.
Either way, before Sam can finish the thinking, Dean’s already on to the doing -- he’s swinging them sharp and shifting hard up the climb to no man’s land, just off the last stretch of the highway before the Massachusetts borderlands.
The path is overgrown, the gravel scattered and only just visible beneath the weeds, and it slaps harsh against the body of the car, catching at the underbelly; and there was a time -- not too long ago, but long enough -- when Sam would have protested, would have asked if this were legal, would have put up a fight.
Wouldn’t have sighed, almost in relief, when Dean pulled the keys from the ignition; wouldn’t have breathed deep of the cool as he stepped out, slowly straightened, let the chill smack hard against his joints as they popped, his bones as they creaked.
It’s lonely at the heights, and calm, and where life is rushing just past the sloping ramp back down -- here, it stands still.
For the barest moment, they stand still.
Dean breaks it -- always does -- his heavy footfalls swallowed by the beats and their echoes, his weight against the ground in the silence; he walks around the front of the car and leans for a moment, calves against the grill before he throws his head back to stare up, lets his limbs ease him down, sprawled aimlessly across the hood. He shifts up, lets the curve of his ass settle in between the wiper blades as he moans, a little too deep, lines his spine against the windshield and drops his head against the roof, the surface already cooling, slick with promises, threats of rain.
“S’no Magic Fingers,” he murmurs, eyes closed as he slides his arms up under his head, closes his eyes and grins at whatever he sees in the dark; “but she’ll do.”
It’s funny --
(( or maybe just sad, because Sam was his own man -- is his own man -- and has been for long enough now to stand on his own two feet; to be and do and think for himself, goddamnit ))
-- but Sam takes his cues from Dean, now.
(( And fuck, but it’s nothing new. When Dean nicked a leather jacket from the Goodwill in Coshocton, Sam started wearing his boots in all weather, rain or shine, just because they were the only leather things he owned. When Dean started refusing to eat anything green for dinner, because it was pansy food, Sam gave up on broccoli, even though it was his favorite. When Dean decided he wasn’t going to college, wasn’t even going to bother finishing high school, Sam’s grades plummeted for a solid quarter before he pulled his head out of his ass.
It’s why he’d left; Dean had always called the shots and Sam had followed -- not quite a good little soldier, but devoted nonetheless. Distance was the last defense he had, the last weapon he knew that might break the cycle, that’d put him in command, in control.
Thinking on it now, he should have known better. ))
So when Dean breathes, sighs low so that the air turns grey above his lips, puffs of steam from his lungs, Sam shuffles his feet through grass and gravel, knocks his shins against the bumper and slides up on top of the trunk. He folds his legs until the soles of his shoes leave dusty tread-prints on the paint, shoves up along the rear window until his shoulder blades settle awkwardly against the cut of the roof, until his head lolls back just to the right of Dean’s. He blinks once, stares at his brother while Dean stares at the sky, before he breathes out and turns his attention up, toward the stars.
(( Dean has a line of freckles, just below his ear, that resembles the constellation Vulpecula. Sam found it in his senior year of high school, while he was sitting in bed working on homework and Dean was snoring on the pillow next to him. ))
Lying like this on the Impala, sprawled from either end, Sam can almost pretend the world away -- almost rewrite history and fix all the wrinkled parts; flatten them out and make them whole in his head; and if he sucks in the air, breathes too deep or too fast, he can just brush against it, just feel the way the stray ends of his hair tease against Dean’s jaw -- it catches sharp in his windpipe, reminds him there’s no going back.
Not even if he wanted to.
(( The first time Dean let his little brother tag along on a solo hunt, Sam had spent the whole drive strung out on nerves in the passenger seat of a beat up F-250, his sweaty palms slipping on the barrel of his shotgun.
They’d stopped for food, and Sam could barely stomach his burger -- same one Dean nearly inhaled upon arrival; ended up hurling what he had eaten in the parking lot. His cheeks had burned when Dean took a few cheap shots regarding delicate-fucking-constitutions and barf bags, but he wiped his mouth on the cuff of his sweatshirt and climbed back into the truck with as much dignity as he could manage.
Dean didn’t say another word about it, just passed him a Starlite Peppermint and asked, all nonchalance so that it wouldn’t settle heavy in Sam’s already queasy stomach, if they should go back. Couched it in John’s wrath at their absence, if he ever found out; suggested a trip to Bobby’s for supplies, more ammo, and Sam had wanted to say yes; told him no.
They took out a whole Waheela pack that night; with Dean at his back as they wasted the bastards, Sam barely even flinched. ))
The points of light above them are subtle, faint; Sam squints, tries to see -- can’t make out anything worthwhile, and so lets his eyes slide closed and tries to feel. He focuses in on the steady sound of crickets, white noise against the black, and it grounds him, keeps him from getting too caught up, from lending too much credence to the careful swell of something hot, something hopeful buried deep in his gut, his chest.
(( He’s felt it before: not when Jenna Macintosh kissed him on the cheek after junior prom; maybe, when he lost his virginity to Lucy Strosaker in the back of her daddy’s Mustang; but definitely when Dean would make him tomato soup with half-water, half-milk, would buy a half-gallon of 2% just to make sure it tasted right. ))
And it’s something more -- something aside from the purr of midnight and the distant moon, the rush of wind and water and momentum closing in around them, below them, from everywhere; more than the way he breathes in exhaust and dew and the air from Dean’s lips, Dean’s lungs -- the way the heat that’s pushing, pulling him in, rises up from a depth his eyes are useless to plumb, from a chest sprawled long and lean beyond him, splayed on glass and rising with a rhythm Sam knows, but can’t place.
It’s something more that turns his head, brushes the tip of his nose against Dean’s in the dark and catches his heart in his throat as he stills, frozen in an instant -- it’s more than shadows and impressions amidst the black.
And maybe; maybe it’s that same nameless something that slips Dean’s lips against Sam’s own -- catches the seam of his mouth against the wet trace of Dean’s upper lip like an accident, or a mistake that shirks regret; that holds them there for the longest moment Sam’s ever felt, ever lived through -- one heartbeat and another and another, too many before it snaps and they both slant forward, instinct dictating their angles, the way they fit.
(( First time he fired a gun, he asked Dean how he would know when to shoot. Dean slapped at his shoulders, hit firm against his biceps with an open palm; told him to feel for it, said that he’d know.
So Sam closed his eyes, listened to the sound of his breath, of his pulse; felt something steadfast and sure just beyond him, just behind; opened his eyes and pulled the trigger. ))
Sam loses count of the moments and the beats as soon as Dean’s teeth drag across the swell of his pout, catch slow; almost curious, but not uncertain. Sam doesn’t even mean to sigh into Dean’s mouth, doesn’t mean to break the boundaries and throw open the gates; and by the lazy way that Dean’s tongue slides half the way, thrusts the rest into the waiting warmth beyond -- and Sam swallows the way Dean feels, tastes, all buttery crusts and raw meat and musk and tang and Dean, and fuck, but it’s a craving Sam never even knew before, never even dreamed.
Time and rest and faint glimpses of fatigue dot the backs of Sam’s eyelids, light through the mist, but his heart’s hammering like it’ll never stop, never die; he can hear it just above the little smacks of skin, the little breathy sounds that come between them, owned by neither party, belonging to them both. There’s a train across the roadway, he can hear the rush of it, the clack of it on the tracks as he bites down on the pillow of Dean’s bottom lip, firm yet yielding as he tastes iron and heat, measures a frantic cadence beneath the pressure of his front teeth; and he waits there, doesn’t let up -- lets his eyes flutter shut so he can savor it, can fall apart and never see it when he pulls back, just to lick across the parted halves of his mouth and get lost again in the gap between.
And they don’t reach out, don’t touch -- they don’t move into one another or take it further, make it more or less than what it is, what they are and can be here and now -- sweat kissed with morning dew, the droplets pushed across the skin with every panted gasp, every wasted, shattered breath -- and it feels wonderful, terrible, soft and hard and wrong: and yet, so far gone along the scale that wrong starts to look brighter, starts to stand closer to something right.
Their lips close, pursed against each other, keeping secrets again that they both remember, that they don’t have to see to know anymore; don’t have to taste to keep close.
Sam blinks, sluggish; it takes a second to focus, but then he sees it, like the last, the only safe place left: all that green.
(( It’s one of those things that Sam remembers, but won’t admit: when he was little, he knew that blue was like the sky, and black was like the road, and red was like blood when his daddy was clumsy, and green, well -- green wasn’t like the grass or the trees or even like his favorite stuffed lizard with the purple polkadots on its back; no -- green was like his brother’s eyes. ))
And he barely breathes, just stares; lets Dean stare back, and asks for nothing, gives nothing in return: just is, and it’s enough.
It’s enough.
They taper, linger; suck each other in with a breath, and sometimes -- at random intervals that trace the night -- he cracks his eyes open to find Dean at sigh’s-length, close enough to feel it when he blinks, for the drag, the gentle brush of his lashes along Sam’s cheekbones. His throat’s sore for the cool of the air, the damp; he swallows, opens his mouth to say something anything -- one thing to snap the tension and cut through the constant rush of blood in his ears, the heavy hum of a bass-line in his chest -- and he wants to give this thing, this moment a voice; he wants to say sun’s rising, and see the hints of a smile, the quirk of those lips in the growing glow of day, but he doesn’t.
Words have never served to say anything between them that they didn’t already know.
The early morning fog rises slowly, fades into view like an apparition, a thick haze that’s hard to see through, hard to breathe through -- gets caught in the heavy fist of his heart in his throat, chokes a little before it disperses, leaves the pounding behind to seem too real, too much. His chest burns as he tries to catch his breath, tries to calm; he’s dizzy for exhaustion, for want and need and the watercolor lines of the horizon as it pales, chalked in pastels now instead of heavy oils bleeding into dusk.
Sam rests his hand on his chest -- pretends in a little corner of his mind that he doesn’t acknowledge, doesn’t trust that the touch belongs to another, isn’t his own -- and presses down until he can feel the thumping, the catches and the rubs, until he can almost hold it, and all it means, against his palm and trap it, tame it; except that he can’t.
He feels, more than anything else, when Dean slides from the car and sets his feet on the ground again, drops and falls from the slope of the roof.
When he looks, turns his head and braves the gentle halo of the rising sun, he can see Dean’s handprint, the outline of his fingers slipping slow into his palm, etched wet on the dew-slicked roof; and there’s a storm on the air, so he breathes it in, sucks until it stings in his lungs, pulls too tight against his ribs.
He licks his lips, knows it’s only a figment of the mind that he can still taste the last traces of blackberry pie and New York strip grilled rare and something sharper, something like the rain putting out a fire, destruction and renewal and smoke and the burn; braces the heels of his hands on the slippery window and hauls himself down, lowers himself back down to earth.
~
Dean reaches, doesn’t take his eyes off the road as he scrambles around for the toll pack; Sam leans and grabs for the tag where he stashed it at the last booth and hands it to Dean to hold for the scan -- courtesy of one Fernando Delaharris, they’ve been able to cut a good half-hour off of their travel time in the E-ZPass lanes, and have saved enough quarters in the process to indulge Dean’s sick motel-bed habits for a good couple of weeks, at least. Win-win, in a vaguely-disturbing sort of way.
Soon as they’re back on the road proper, Dean runs his fingers across their cassette collection, categorizes them beneath his fingers like he can read the chipping letters pressed into the plastic, can see without the looking what the black-marker scrawl on the case-spines say.
(( Dean’s always had shitty handwriting. Sam knows this less because he’d ever noticed it himself, and more because his teachers had forever berated his own penmanship, and Dean’s the one who taught him how to write. ))
Dean flips a minivan off when it swerves too close in front of him to make the exit, sends the two of them lurching forward just a little too sharp; after taking a moment to scowl as the Grand Caravan breaks down the ramp, Sam notices less by watching and more by the weight of the box Dean shoves into his lap, the grunt, low in his brother’s throat, that slips between the clack of the tapes against each other.
Sam swallows, hard; he’s riding shotgun -- he never gets to pick the music.
(( When Dean sleeps in the passenger seat, Sam doesn’t change the music -- just keeps Black Sabbath playing for the hour or two of shuteye Dean grudgingly manages before the sun squints, breaks; and if he always makes sure to prop the scratched plastic of a Joy Division tape -- bought mostly for show -- just so against the Steve Madden box, pressed into the warped fold of the cardboard before Dean startles back to waking; well, it’s habit now, more than anything, and whatever else it started out as has long since been forgotten. ))
He fights a smile that threatens at the corners of his lips, because it doesn’t fit, doesn’t do justice to the tightness in his chest, the fire in his gut. Letting the box settle on his thighs for just a moment, undisturbed, he stares ahead: watches the shadows melt, watches the cracks in the pavement catch in the dawn -- the freckles on his brother’s face stand out against the sun; leans into the window, lets his cheek rest against the glass -- still cool, fogged against the cloud of his breath -- as he squints into the distance, the half-lit horizon painted up in colors and shades.
If he looks hard enough, he can make out the moon; if he breathes deep enough, he can almost find the stars.
~
Turns out there’s not much to do in terms of prep, once they get to where they’re going -- Mrs. Adelaide Foster was the classic case of the women scorned: after finding out her husband was having an affair, she’d gone to confront him in the act, but was killed in a car accident on the way. She’d since taken to attacking his progeny from his second wife.
Made sense.
She’d been buried -- a simple plot in a backwater cemetery at the edge of town -- and with only about a hundred graves, it’s no trouble at all finding hers; they have time to kill before sundown, so Sam catches the keys slung at him across the hood and drives them down to the Cape just in time to catch dusk settling along the coast.
There’s the scent of cool, of salt and breeze and life and clouds and brine -- the arches of his feet fit against the crags in the rocks, the shore, and Sam revels in it, relishes the pinch, the pain of stone digging at his feet; wonders if Dean feels it too.
His eyes search out his brother, dart to where he can hear Dean’s footsteps, pick out the cadence of his breaths against the soft shift of the wind. He walks close, lets the swell of his frame slip just a bit, just enough into his brother’s sphere of being, into the space that is Dean and Dean alone -- he occupies it in tandem for the sparest of moments, vague and reeling, before Dean steps away; doesn’t speak, doesn’t flinch, but leaves, the shuffle of his boots too sharp to bear. And Sam doesn’t follow; drowns a little instead in the dive that plummets hard in his gut, tastes black on his tongue, in the long stretch of the Atlantic glimmering against the sun.
The roads, Sam’s learned, only ever end at the sea.
But roads, well; they’re not the only ones.
~
(( That night, after a routine salt and burn outside of Brockton -- one that leaves his muscles sore and his lips slicked with sweat -- Sam dreams of black eyes and sour blood for the first time, the last time; every time at once.
He moans in his sleep, and he never wakes, never knows it for sure -- but when his brother reaches for him from the driver’s seat, curls his fingers over Sam’s where his hand is clenched tight in the meat of his thigh; when Dean follows the sleek line of Sam’s body up the side, the chest, the arm, lets his palm rest and rub at the crook of Sam’s neck, easing the tension away -- Sam doesn’t know it, but Dean brushes away the dream, the hard staccato of his heart; lets Sam sleep until sunrise -- tires burning asphalt, spinning underfoot. ))
~
When there’s nothing left for them, they turn tail and head west; the endless stretch toward another coast, another sea.
Sam sighs, stretches in his seat; figures it’s better than nothing.