you're watching him go
Title: you’re watching him go
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 800
Pairing: Gen. Second person POV, Dean-centric.
Warnings/spoilers: One instance of light swearing (nothing worse than the show).
Summary: You’re watching him leave and you’re going to let him think he’s alone, but he isn’t. In which Sam and Dean part ways but Dean can never really let that happen. For the hc_bingo prompt ‘Parting Ways’.
Notes: It’s Gen, but I suppose there’s Sam/Dean if you squint.
(Read in LJ's light format.)
You’re watching him go, and you’re not sure whether you’re going to be able to this time. He has his bag slung up over his shoulder and he’s walking with a purpose, but you both know he’s got nowhere to go and nowhere to be and you’ll most likely end up in the same place a week from now anyway. You always do.
You drive around the streets for a while to give him enough time to lose himself, and then you check every motel for a James Scott or David Carter that’s checked in within the last day. You finally find him on the ground floor of Eazysleep Motel but you don’t go in. Not yet.
Three days pass and you follow him as he takes a bus up towards Maine, and you don’t let him know you’re there. He’s good, he’s real good, but it’s easier to track someone you’ve been looking out for your entire life than it is trying to get away from the person who knows you better than you know yourself. You check your phone every day and you make sure it’s always charged.
By the fourth day you’re in Toledo, Ohio and you’re itching to call him and you’re dying to get drunk but you can’t afford to look away and watch him slip under the radar. At the same time you keep an eye out for any possible leads or missing persons, and you spot a hunt just outside of Double Oak, Texas. He spots it too, and you knew he would.
Just over two days later and a near-miss in Memphis where you nearly lose him - nearly, but not quite - you’re both asking witnesses and investigating the crime scene where a dead cheerleader was chomping on her friends. You spot him in a diner that’s cheap and tacky, and you enter it, pretend to be surprised when you see him sitting there sipping coffee with an untouched plate of food on the table, and slip into the seat across from him with a smile plastered on your face. He’s angry but he isn’t surprised to see you, and you carry on talking and stealing his fries and he eyes you without saying a word.
“So this chick, right? Her name was Penelope. Cute, short, blonde. Anyway, she told me that zombie Cheerleader had been missing for three weeks before she turned up, and the cops had already closed the case. Small town policing, huh?”
“Dean.”
“Nobody knows where she went after chewing off her ex’s leg and on a lead I checked out this barn just outside of town, but there was nothing, just a load of rats and some hay. I’m telling you man, rats are the creepiest sons of bitches.”
He sighs and glares at your hand as you take another fry. He’s in his Fed uniform and so are you and you must look strange sitting in a diner with sticky floors and screaming children. You must look out of a place, and you definitely feel it. Of course you do. You both do. It’s a feeling you’ve never really been able to shake off.
“Pom-pom’s friend also told me that other kids have been going missing too, way before this, but it never made the papers. Creepy, right? There’s this one guy, Todd or something, and I think we should go to his house first and-”
“Dean.”
He’s staring you down and you’re staring back and you’re trying to keep calm and appear like this isn’t bothering you but it really is. You know it’s twisted and co-dependent but you don’t know what to do when he isn’t there, when he doesn’t need you. And it’s clear he doesn’t need you, not really, but the gaping hole when he’s missing is too much to bare.
“Listen,” you say, interrupting him before he can say anything else. “You’re mad at me. I get it, okay? But we’re both here. We’re both working on the same case, so we might as well do it together.”
He’s pissed, you’re worried, but in the end he finally nods and you sit back with a smile, all cockiness and attitude. You know then that it’s going to be okay, that he’s already forgiven you and he’s just holding up being pissed because that’s how this game goes and that’s what he has to do, and you’ll carry on pushing his buttons because that’s how it always is.
You don’t need to tell him how you know he’s working the same case, and you don’t have to explain how you found him. Because that’s your job, and that’s what you’re expected to do, and that’s who you are. You walk out of the diner and he follows you and he smiles when he sees the Impala by the side of the road. When he sees you watching him the smile is gone like it was never even there, and you don’t say anything, but you know he’s missed this - you and him - as much as you have, and everything is going to be okay.