Fic: Border Run
Border Run
Sam was driving. He mostly let Dean drive. Let Dean pick the radio station, pick the music CDs, pick the motels, pick where they eat. He wore sunglasses from the moment the sun came up until it went down unless they were interviewing someone and he had to be a human being. Then he was whatever kind of human being he needed to be.
They spent a week in Palo Alto after Jess died trying to find anything about the Yellow Eyed Demon then drove back to Colorado to the coordinates that Dad had given them.
Dean took all his accrued leave.
They hunted a Wendigo. With flare guns. At one point it took Sam and when Dean found him hung like half a side of beef, 6’4” not counting arms stretched over his head, boot toes just skimming the ground, he thought his little brother had just committed suicide by hunt. But Sam had acted like getting taken by a Wendigo was some sort of hunter version of speed dating and casually lit the sucker up with a flare.
Then he’d said he had to make a run to Mexico and offered to leave Dean in Greeley.
Dean had patched him up. “You’re driving to Mexico?” he asked. “What for?”
“Need some cash,” Sam said.
“Dad used to play poker and stuff,” Dean said.
“I’m not John,” Sam said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Earn a thousand dollars.” And that’s all he would say.
Dean wasn’t stupid. He knew what kinds of things people did to earn a thousand dollars by going to Mexico. He didn’t think his little brother was smuggling illegal immigrants so he assumed it was drugs.
Later afternoon, Sam rented a car in Boulder, a Nissan Versa. It was ugly and embarrassing. Dean could see why crossing the border in the Impala might be drawing unwanted attention to them but he was surprised that the car was a rental. Wouldn’t they use some kind of car provided by whoever was running the drugs? Wouldn’t the drugs be in the door panels or something?
The car was white. Sam walked around it, checking for dents and scratches. Which seemed strange to worry about but hey, Sam’s gig. Then Sam moved the driver’s seat as far back as it would go and contorted his way into the little car. They headed down I87.
Sam took off his sunglasses about the time they crossed over into New Mexico when the sky was mostly deep blue. They were in mountains by then, crossing through Indian reservations, passing billboards for gas stations and cheap cigarettes. Sleeping in the passenger seat of a Nissan was nowhere near as comfortable as sleeping in the Impala.
“Any particular music you want?” Dean asked. Radio stations were rare and as soon as he’d find something, they’d drive thirty minutes or an hour through the mountains and the station would blur into static. Once he’d picked up a reservation station, a voice in a throat thick language taking requests, smatters of English names and song titles breaking up the sounds.
“Whatever you want,” Sam said.
Dean remembered when Sam had slapped a CD in the player when he was pissed at Dean on their hunt in California. He found it. Chris Isaac.
The world was on fire and no one could save me but you.
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you.
And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you.
No, I don't want to fall in love (this girl is only gonna break your heart)
Sam reached out and slapped the eject button. “Not that one,” he said and his voice cracked. It was the first opinion he’d voiced in days. Not the first ultimatum. Just the first opinion.
Dean pulled the CD before it had even completely ejected. “Sure.”
He looked at Sam’s CD collection.
So many goddamned sad songs.
“Mind if I roll down my window a bit?” Dean said.
“Not at all,” Sam said. They were back to Terminator Sam.
The high desert was cold and dry and the air felt clean. They wound down towards Santa Fe, sometimes the only car on the road.
#
They found a hotel in Truth or Consequences in the morning. Dean figured they were heading to Juarez. He’d never been to Mexico and if he could pick a place he didn’t want to go in Mexico, Juarez would be it. He slept fitfully. He was afraid to ask Sam if he knew what he was doing. Afraid to ask Sam much of anything at all.
While they were in Palo Alto, Sam had driven him to Cupertino to a gun range and had him do some shooting. At fourteen, Dean had been a crack shot. Of course, at fourteen, Dean had already started hunting with his dad. The experience had been mildly embarrassing. Sam had been patient, in a cold sort of way. Squeeze don’t pull. Like he was seven. It had started to come back and by the end he’d put a decent cluster up.
Sam had also started him sparring. When he’d left, he’d been sparring with ten-year-old Sammy, pulling punches, letting the kid try to get him. Now Sam stood in front of him those long arms outstretched and had him practice trying to hit. Sam never seemed to really work to block, barely moving his arms but it was just impossible to get to him. Dean punched, feinted, swept. Sam never changed, easy and open palmed, nodding, saying, “Good,” very cool.
Dean started giving him lip. “You like having the upper hand, Sam? Like getting back for all those years when I was training you? Huh?”
Sam didn’t seem to hear, face mostly blank, palms open.
“All those years of Dad with a stopwatch, all those years of falls and split lips?” Dean tried a combination. He thought it was a good combination but Sam barely moved and he wasn’t there. “You remember the rules? If one of us really hit the other, if one of us failed to pull a punch, the other one got a free punch?”
Dean tried to see if there was anything in Sam’s eyes. Any spark at all. Any fondness? Any memory?
“Remember when I knocked your tooth out by accident?” Sam had come forward unexpectedly and Dean had connected when he didn’t mean to. It wasn’t a permanent tooth, they had just started sparring. Was one of the first times and Sam had no idea what he was doing. Dean had felt horrible and Sam had tried so hard not to cry. That was when Dad had instituted the one free hit rule. Dean had put his hands at his side and a sobbing Sammy had lined up to punch him in the stomach. But he had just touched him and sobbed harder.
“You’d never really take that free strike, would you Sammy-”
Dean had no idea how he was on his back. He remembered the leg sweep only in retrospect. Sam looked down at him. “It’s ‘Sam’,” he said. He held out his hand and helped Dean up and went back to his stance, hands open. “Drop your shoulder a little,” he said, as if nothing had happened, patient and cool. “Don’t be so tense.”
They didn’t go to Juarez. Instead they turned west at Hatch and crossed down through Deming to a little border town called Palomas.
They parked on the US side at about four in the afternoon and Sam looked at Dean and said, “Showtime.”
He flicked out his passport. It was his real passport. ‘Winchester, Samuel Campbell.’ Dean had brought his own because he figured that there wasn’t enough time to fake one. The photo in Sam’s caught him. In it, Sam looked boyish, maybe seventeen, caught still young, his hair shorter and curling at the ends, no sideburns. He looked like a kid.
They walked into border control and Sam switched it on and suddenly he was a lot more like that kid. “No tequila over in Mexico,” he said, his voice pitched to carry a little. “We can bring a bottle back but I’m not drinking over there.”
“Why not?” Dean said, genuinely confused.
“Because I’m gonna wake up in a bathtub full of ice with no kidney!” Sam said, eyes big. He looked like someone who was joking but not really entirely sure he was joking.
There were two people sitting at the passport desk, an older guy and a middle-aged woman. The older guy had the look of someone who was just putting in time. The middle-aged woman looked amused. “IDs please,” she said.
Sam clapped his pockets, almost dropped his passport, and smiled sheepishly at her.
Dean handed his to her. It was easy to look exasperated, hard to believe it was an act.
“Wait until you see The Pink Store,” Sam said quietly.
The woman looked up. “Shopping for someone?”
“His girlfriend,” Sam said. “He’s my brother.”
“The last names are a dead giveaway,” Dean agreed.
“The Pink Store is good for bargains,” the woman agreed. “Have a good time, boys. And your kidneys are safe in Palomas, it’s a small town.”
Sam looked consternated.
Outside Sam stowed his passport. “Need any dental work?” he asked sounding like himself again.
Conversational whiplash. “Uh, no.”
“Palomas is where all the snowbirds come to get their dental work done cheap,” Sam said. “We’ve got hours to kill.”
“I’ve got a dental plan in a country where dentistry is regulated,” Dean said.
“Throw away your money,” Sam said.
Dean thought at least it was a quip. It was better than Terminator Sam.
They went to The Pink Store and Sam bought a straw cowboy hat for each of them, some shot glasses, a bottle of tequila and a Mexican blanket that smelled funky. Dean picked out a turquoise bracelet for Roni and Sam bought it, too. Then they found a bar and sat outside and drank beer. He was wearing his cowboy hat and his sunglasses. With his sideburns he kind of looked like he belonged here.
Palomas was mostly weeds and scrub. Most of the roads were dirt except for right by the border crossing. The houses were low. There were a few two stories, fenced with low walls.
“What do people do here?” Dean asked.
“Live off Americans,” Sam said.
“What do Americans do here?”
“Get their teeth fixed. Buy drugs at the pharmacy for Mexican prices or buy vicodin without a prescription. Act like tourists.”
“There’s not much to do here for a tourist.”
Sam shook his head. “No. But it has a reputation as safe.”
“Is it?”
Sam nodded. “La Eme makes sure.”
“Who is La Eme?”
“The Mexican Mafia.” Sam watched a skinny cat crouched at the end of the patio. Sam had gotten a quesadilla with chicken. Dean had gotten tacos. Sam tossed a piece of chicken at the cat. When he was a kid, Sam had always been crazy about animals, drawn to strays. “I have to meet a man tonight called Poppa Aranda. He runs the plaza.”
“I hate dealing with humans,” Dean said.
Sam’s smile was a flash of white teeth in the early evening. He picked Dean’s hat up off the table and plunked it on Dean’s head. “Just another kind of monster,” he said.
It was dark and Sam’s sunglasses were hanging off the neck of his t-shirt when they started walking west down one of the dirt roads. There were lights on in the houses, but no streetlights and the lights inside seemed different than lights across the border. They were yellow and outside seemed darker.
Dean reminded himself he had spent a portion of his childhood digging up graves. He hated being unarmed. In Truth or Consequences, Sam had explained that nobody cared if they walked into Palomas armed to the teeth and carrying grocery bags full of illegal drugs but the U.S. was not so kind coming the other way. He hadn’t explained anything else. Dean had recognized that this was all some kind of game, some kind of test of his nerves or something. Half the time he was with Sam he felt unstrung, ready to scream at him.
They passed three young men at one corner. Boys really, in long boots with low heels and white shirts that were so clean they almost glowed in the dark. Dean saw the glow of a cigarette ember, smelled pot. The boys watched them. Sam didn’t look at the boys.
Sam led them to a trailer, knocked hard on the door. There were a people in the darkness, watching, even though Dean couldn’t see them. The door opened and light spilled down the steps. A man said, “Shorty! Como estas?”
“Bien, gracias,” Sam said quietly. He glanced back at Dean. “Es mi hermano.”
There was a long pause.
Sam handed the bag of souvenirs to the guy. He held his arms out to the side and the guy patted him down, very thoroughly.
Then Dean climbed the steps. The guy was older than Dean had expected, with deep creases lining his mouth. He didn’t smile or ask how Dean was. He ran his hands all over, up Dean’s legs, around his groin, up under his arms. He lifted the cowboy hat off of Dean’s head and checked, then handed it to him. Then he nodded and Dean followed his little brother.
The temperature had fallen as night came on and outside had been a little brisk but inside the trailer was warm and smelled of cigarettes. Another man sat on a couch watching television. He was shirtless. The trailer didn’t have much furniture in it besides the TV the couch and a chair.
The first man, the hard one, jerked his head to indicate they should go back.
There were two bedrooms but only one door was open. A short, middle-aged guy built like an ottoman was sitting at one. His hair was going almost white. Sam was huge in the room. Sam took off his hat. “Poppa,” he said.
The man nodded and said something quietly in Spanish.
“El es mi hermano,” Sam said again.
Poppa looked him up and down.
“Es un problema?” Sam asked, although he didn’t sound like he thought it was a problem.
The man pursed his lips and looked at Sam. Dean thought Sam’s tone might be a problem. The hair on Dean’s neck was standing up. None of this was good. None of it felt right. To get out they’d have to get past the two guys watching TV and they were unarmed.
Poppa shook his head. “Buenas noches,” he said.
Sam said to Dean, “Let’s go.”
Back out in the main room, the hard man handed Sam his bag of souvenirs and the other guy never stopped watching TV.
He wondered what kind of drugs they were.
The boys were still standing in the road as they walked back.
The walk was longer back to the border than it had seemed going out. The one thing that was nice was that without streetlights there were more stars in the sky than you could see in any town in the US. The Milky Way was a wash of watercolor light behind some of them.
“Ursa Minor,” Sam said.
Dean looked at him. Sam was pointing. Dean looked for a moment and picked out the Little Dipper.
“Most people don’t do the constellations in Latin, geek boy,” Dean said.
Sam smiled a tiny bit, Dean thought, although it was hard to tell in the dark. “”Orion is up. Not as high as it will be in January. See the three stars in the belt?”
The Hunter, Orion.
“You showed me that,” Sam said. “We were sitting on the hood of the Impala.”
“We were in Ohio,” Dean said.
“Were we?”
“Yeah, Ohio is like the capital of ghost activity.”
“I thought that was New England.”
“Nope. Fucking Ohio.”
“I thought if Dad knew we were sitting on the hood he would kill us but you said he had done it with you and it was okay.”
Dean nodded.
They walked on.
At the border, Sam gave him a quick glance that said, ‘Ready?’
He wasn’t but when would he be.
The lights in the US side were way too bright. Hard white. There were two Homeland Security guys at the table again, both men this time. Sam was still wearing his hat and his shoulders were slumped like he was tired.
“Hey,” said one of the Homeland Security guys. He was balding. His face was tight. “Bag.” He pointed to the table.
“Sorry,” Sam mumbled. He put the bag there.
“Step back,” the guy barked.
Sam looked a little wide-eyed. College kid confused. It was amazing how he slipped into character that way.
The guy pulled out the Mexican blanket and then a stuffed burro that they hadn’t bought, the bottle of tequila, the shot glasses, and the box with the turquoise bracelet. “Anything to declare?” he snapped. The other border patrol guy watched without must interest.
“Do we need to declare the tequila?” Sam asked.
He was opening the box with the bracelet.
“That’s for my girlfriend,” Dean said.
“You don’t have to declare a fifth,” the bored guy said.
The stuffed burro practically screamed, ‘I am stuffed with illegal drugs.’ Why would two guys be buying a stuffed animal?
The balding guy came around the table and ran a metal detector wand over them. Their belt buckles and the change in their pockets set it off. They dumped everything out of their pockets.
He patted them down, not nearly as efficiently as the guy at the trailer, which was fine by Dean. Dean tried to keep his eyes off the stuffed burro.
“ID,” tight ass said.
They presented passports.
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
“Um, we’ve got a motel room in Truth or Consequences,” Sam said.
“T or C,” is a drive,” the guy said. “You sure you’re sober.”
Sam shook his head nervously. “No sir. But my brother is.”
The guy looked at Dean.
“I’m a firefighter in Greeley, Colorado,” Dean growled. “I scrape enough drunks out of car accidents. I’m fine.”
“Okay,” he finally said.
Sam put all the stuff back in the bag and they walked back into the US and into the parking lot.
#
They got a room in the same motel they’d stayed in on the way down. The room was in the back on the second floor. The doors each had a light over them and were painted yellow.
Inside the room smelled like window air conditioning and some floral air freshener scent that was so strong it gave Dean a headache. Sam sat down on the bed (it had a print of a roadrunner framed over it, the other had a print of some kind of owl) and slit open the stuffed burro and pulled out a quart sized freezer bag filled with blue pills.
“What is that?” Dean asked.
“Adderall, 10 milligrams,” Sam said. “Brady supplies a guy who sells it to students at Stanford.” Sam fished some more and pulled out a small bag. “Xanax.” He took a single Xanax out of bag. “Want one?”
“No,” Dean said.
Sam shrugged and put the one pill on the bedside table the rest of the Xanax in his duffel. He counted out 100 Adderall on the southwest patterned bedspread and poured them into a pill bottle and tucked that into his duffle. Then he put the rest of the pills in there, too. “I’ll Fed Ex them in the morning.”
“You take Adderall?” Dean asked.
“It’s great for researching,” Sam said.
“And you take Xanax.”
Sam just looked at him, stone faced.
“What the fuck,” Dean said. “You buy Xanax from a Mexican drug cartel?”
“I don’t like Ambien,” Sam said. “It fucks me up. So once in awhile I take a Xanax to sleep. Why am I justifying myself to you?”
“That stuff is nasty. Benzos fuck people up,” Dean said. “Fast track to addiction.”
Sam smiled. “Don’t worry, I usually chase them with alcohol. I like to distribute my addictions pretty equally.”
“So when you OD on alcohol and pills, I get to decide when to shut off the vent and donate your organs?”
“You or John,” Sam said. He got up, grabbed his tooth brush and tooth paste and a plastic cup, ran water in the bathroom and tossed back the pill. Dean looked at the duffle. He could throw out the Xanax. He wondered what Sam would do. He listened to Sam brush his teeth and did not move.
Sam came back out, pulled off his shirt and his jeans, stripped down to his boxers, and pulled the covers back. “I’m going to shower in the morning,” he said. “You just going to stand there?”
Dean rubbed his face hard.
Sam sat down on the bed and sighed. “Dean,” he said. “Sit down.”
Dean sat down on the edge of his bed.
“We’re going go back to Greeley. You’re going to go back to work. You’ve got my number. Any time there’s a job nearby I’ll stop by and say hello,” Sam said. “Okay?”
Sam looked…concerned. Reasonable. Another sudden switch. Like the college kid act. It was oh so tempting to agree.
“You hate this,” Sam pushed. Dean liked poker. He felt the push. His brother was pushing this. He could see something jumping in Sam’s jaw.
Dean looked at his little brother. His very tall little brother. “What are you doing, Sam?”
“Nothing. I’m just pointing out the obvious.” Sam was looking at him in that…in that overly sincere way that he did when he was trying to put something over on him. At least it felt like it. Like when Sam was a kid. He felt like something was off about all this.
“Is that why you wouldn’t tell me what we were doing? Are you trying to freak me out?”
Sam shook his head. “No, it’s just, you don’t need to be in this life. You’ve got a life.”
This guy was a hardass, he knew. He’d seen it. Seen him put down a couple of monsters. But he’d also seen him watching a stray cat in Mexico, seen him toss the cat a piece of his dinner. Someone was in there. “What have you got?” Dean asked. Sam tried to meet his eyes but Sam’s gaze slide away, over his shoulder. “Who have you got? Some guy at Stanford you mule drugs for?” He’d been dancing to Sam’s tune for days. “John Winchester? A dead girlfriend?”
“Don’t,” Sam said. It was a crack, the first real thing Sam had said since California.
“Xanax? Bourbon?” Dean knew it was cruel but he didn’t care.
“Shut up,” Sam whispered.
“You can’t sleep because if you lay down and close your eyes you remember the room on fire and Jess on the ceiling-”
“SHUT UP!” Sam shouted. He stood up and took a step towards the door.
“You gonna leave in your underwear? I didn’t pull you out of that room in Palo Alto to abandon you now,” Dean said. “You can wear your fucking sunglasses and play your fucking games and not talk to me all you want but I’m here to stay.”
“Fuck you,” Sam breathed out.
It sounded like a prayer.
“You gonna swing at me?” Dean said. He could see it in Sam, that he might. “At least I’d know it was real. Sammy.”
Sam just stood there and turned his head away so Dean couldn’t see his face. “You…” he said.
“What?” Dean said. “What is this all about?”
“You can’t die,” Sam said.
“I’m not gonna die.”
“She died, Dean.”
Dean tried to think of what to do. It was like picking a lock, being in the blind, using only his fingertips. He was feeling his way through this and he wasn’t good at that. He wanted to say something like ‘It’ll be all right’ but it wasn’t. So he said the only thing he knew was true. “I’m not leaving, little brother.”
The sound that Sam made was a strange animal sound.
“I’m not leaving,” Dean said again.
Sam was driving. He mostly let Dean drive. Let Dean pick the radio station, pick the music CDs, pick the motels, pick where they eat. He wore sunglasses from the moment the sun came up until it went down unless they were interviewing someone and he had to be a human being. Then he was whatever kind of human being he needed to be.
They spent a week in Palo Alto after Jess died trying to find anything about the Yellow Eyed Demon then drove back to Colorado to the coordinates that Dad had given them.
Dean took all his accrued leave.
They hunted a Wendigo. With flare guns. At one point it took Sam and when Dean found him hung like half a side of beef, 6’4” not counting arms stretched over his head, boot toes just skimming the ground, he thought his little brother had just committed suicide by hunt. But Sam had acted like getting taken by a Wendigo was some sort of hunter version of speed dating and casually lit the sucker up with a flare.
Then he’d said he had to make a run to Mexico and offered to leave Dean in Greeley.
Dean had patched him up. “You’re driving to Mexico?” he asked. “What for?”
“Need some cash,” Sam said.
“Dad used to play poker and stuff,” Dean said.
“I’m not John,” Sam said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Earn a thousand dollars.” And that’s all he would say.
Dean wasn’t stupid. He knew what kinds of things people did to earn a thousand dollars by going to Mexico. He didn’t think his little brother was smuggling illegal immigrants so he assumed it was drugs.
Later afternoon, Sam rented a car in Boulder, a Nissan Versa. It was ugly and embarrassing. Dean could see why crossing the border in the Impala might be drawing unwanted attention to them but he was surprised that the car was a rental. Wouldn’t they use some kind of car provided by whoever was running the drugs? Wouldn’t the drugs be in the door panels or something?
The car was white. Sam walked around it, checking for dents and scratches. Which seemed strange to worry about but hey, Sam’s gig. Then Sam moved the driver’s seat as far back as it would go and contorted his way into the little car. They headed down I87.
Sam took off his sunglasses about the time they crossed over into New Mexico when the sky was mostly deep blue. They were in mountains by then, crossing through Indian reservations, passing billboards for gas stations and cheap cigarettes. Sleeping in the passenger seat of a Nissan was nowhere near as comfortable as sleeping in the Impala.
“Any particular music you want?” Dean asked. Radio stations were rare and as soon as he’d find something, they’d drive thirty minutes or an hour through the mountains and the station would blur into static. Once he’d picked up a reservation station, a voice in a throat thick language taking requests, smatters of English names and song titles breaking up the sounds.
“Whatever you want,” Sam said.
Dean remembered when Sam had slapped a CD in the player when he was pissed at Dean on their hunt in California. He found it. Chris Isaac.
The world was on fire and no one could save me but you.
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you.
And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you.
No, I don't want to fall in love (this girl is only gonna break your heart)
Sam reached out and slapped the eject button. “Not that one,” he said and his voice cracked. It was the first opinion he’d voiced in days. Not the first ultimatum. Just the first opinion.
Dean pulled the CD before it had even completely ejected. “Sure.”
He looked at Sam’s CD collection.
So many goddamned sad songs.
“Mind if I roll down my window a bit?” Dean said.
“Not at all,” Sam said. They were back to Terminator Sam.
The high desert was cold and dry and the air felt clean. They wound down towards Santa Fe, sometimes the only car on the road.
#
They found a hotel in Truth or Consequences in the morning. Dean figured they were heading to Juarez. He’d never been to Mexico and if he could pick a place he didn’t want to go in Mexico, Juarez would be it. He slept fitfully. He was afraid to ask Sam if he knew what he was doing. Afraid to ask Sam much of anything at all.
While they were in Palo Alto, Sam had driven him to Cupertino to a gun range and had him do some shooting. At fourteen, Dean had been a crack shot. Of course, at fourteen, Dean had already started hunting with his dad. The experience had been mildly embarrassing. Sam had been patient, in a cold sort of way. Squeeze don’t pull. Like he was seven. It had started to come back and by the end he’d put a decent cluster up.
Sam had also started him sparring. When he’d left, he’d been sparring with ten-year-old Sammy, pulling punches, letting the kid try to get him. Now Sam stood in front of him those long arms outstretched and had him practice trying to hit. Sam never seemed to really work to block, barely moving his arms but it was just impossible to get to him. Dean punched, feinted, swept. Sam never changed, easy and open palmed, nodding, saying, “Good,” very cool.
Dean started giving him lip. “You like having the upper hand, Sam? Like getting back for all those years when I was training you? Huh?”
Sam didn’t seem to hear, face mostly blank, palms open.
“All those years of Dad with a stopwatch, all those years of falls and split lips?” Dean tried a combination. He thought it was a good combination but Sam barely moved and he wasn’t there. “You remember the rules? If one of us really hit the other, if one of us failed to pull a punch, the other one got a free punch?”
Dean tried to see if there was anything in Sam’s eyes. Any spark at all. Any fondness? Any memory?
“Remember when I knocked your tooth out by accident?” Sam had come forward unexpectedly and Dean had connected when he didn’t mean to. It wasn’t a permanent tooth, they had just started sparring. Was one of the first times and Sam had no idea what he was doing. Dean had felt horrible and Sam had tried so hard not to cry. That was when Dad had instituted the one free hit rule. Dean had put his hands at his side and a sobbing Sammy had lined up to punch him in the stomach. But he had just touched him and sobbed harder.
“You’d never really take that free strike, would you Sammy-”
Dean had no idea how he was on his back. He remembered the leg sweep only in retrospect. Sam looked down at him. “It’s ‘Sam’,” he said. He held out his hand and helped Dean up and went back to his stance, hands open. “Drop your shoulder a little,” he said, as if nothing had happened, patient and cool. “Don’t be so tense.”
They didn’t go to Juarez. Instead they turned west at Hatch and crossed down through Deming to a little border town called Palomas.
They parked on the US side at about four in the afternoon and Sam looked at Dean and said, “Showtime.”
He flicked out his passport. It was his real passport. ‘Winchester, Samuel Campbell.’ Dean had brought his own because he figured that there wasn’t enough time to fake one. The photo in Sam’s caught him. In it, Sam looked boyish, maybe seventeen, caught still young, his hair shorter and curling at the ends, no sideburns. He looked like a kid.
They walked into border control and Sam switched it on and suddenly he was a lot more like that kid. “No tequila over in Mexico,” he said, his voice pitched to carry a little. “We can bring a bottle back but I’m not drinking over there.”
“Why not?” Dean said, genuinely confused.
“Because I’m gonna wake up in a bathtub full of ice with no kidney!” Sam said, eyes big. He looked like someone who was joking but not really entirely sure he was joking.
There were two people sitting at the passport desk, an older guy and a middle-aged woman. The older guy had the look of someone who was just putting in time. The middle-aged woman looked amused. “IDs please,” she said.
Sam clapped his pockets, almost dropped his passport, and smiled sheepishly at her.
Dean handed his to her. It was easy to look exasperated, hard to believe it was an act.
“Wait until you see The Pink Store,” Sam said quietly.
The woman looked up. “Shopping for someone?”
“His girlfriend,” Sam said. “He’s my brother.”
“The last names are a dead giveaway,” Dean agreed.
“The Pink Store is good for bargains,” the woman agreed. “Have a good time, boys. And your kidneys are safe in Palomas, it’s a small town.”
Sam looked consternated.
Outside Sam stowed his passport. “Need any dental work?” he asked sounding like himself again.
Conversational whiplash. “Uh, no.”
“Palomas is where all the snowbirds come to get their dental work done cheap,” Sam said. “We’ve got hours to kill.”
“I’ve got a dental plan in a country where dentistry is regulated,” Dean said.
“Throw away your money,” Sam said.
Dean thought at least it was a quip. It was better than Terminator Sam.
They went to The Pink Store and Sam bought a straw cowboy hat for each of them, some shot glasses, a bottle of tequila and a Mexican blanket that smelled funky. Dean picked out a turquoise bracelet for Roni and Sam bought it, too. Then they found a bar and sat outside and drank beer. He was wearing his cowboy hat and his sunglasses. With his sideburns he kind of looked like he belonged here.
Palomas was mostly weeds and scrub. Most of the roads were dirt except for right by the border crossing. The houses were low. There were a few two stories, fenced with low walls.
“What do people do here?” Dean asked.
“Live off Americans,” Sam said.
“What do Americans do here?”
“Get their teeth fixed. Buy drugs at the pharmacy for Mexican prices or buy vicodin without a prescription. Act like tourists.”
“There’s not much to do here for a tourist.”
Sam shook his head. “No. But it has a reputation as safe.”
“Is it?”
Sam nodded. “La Eme makes sure.”
“Who is La Eme?”
“The Mexican Mafia.” Sam watched a skinny cat crouched at the end of the patio. Sam had gotten a quesadilla with chicken. Dean had gotten tacos. Sam tossed a piece of chicken at the cat. When he was a kid, Sam had always been crazy about animals, drawn to strays. “I have to meet a man tonight called Poppa Aranda. He runs the plaza.”
“I hate dealing with humans,” Dean said.
Sam’s smile was a flash of white teeth in the early evening. He picked Dean’s hat up off the table and plunked it on Dean’s head. “Just another kind of monster,” he said.
It was dark and Sam’s sunglasses were hanging off the neck of his t-shirt when they started walking west down one of the dirt roads. There were lights on in the houses, but no streetlights and the lights inside seemed different than lights across the border. They were yellow and outside seemed darker.
Dean reminded himself he had spent a portion of his childhood digging up graves. He hated being unarmed. In Truth or Consequences, Sam had explained that nobody cared if they walked into Palomas armed to the teeth and carrying grocery bags full of illegal drugs but the U.S. was not so kind coming the other way. He hadn’t explained anything else. Dean had recognized that this was all some kind of game, some kind of test of his nerves or something. Half the time he was with Sam he felt unstrung, ready to scream at him.
They passed three young men at one corner. Boys really, in long boots with low heels and white shirts that were so clean they almost glowed in the dark. Dean saw the glow of a cigarette ember, smelled pot. The boys watched them. Sam didn’t look at the boys.
Sam led them to a trailer, knocked hard on the door. There were a people in the darkness, watching, even though Dean couldn’t see them. The door opened and light spilled down the steps. A man said, “Shorty! Como estas?”
“Bien, gracias,” Sam said quietly. He glanced back at Dean. “Es mi hermano.”
There was a long pause.
Sam handed the bag of souvenirs to the guy. He held his arms out to the side and the guy patted him down, very thoroughly.
Then Dean climbed the steps. The guy was older than Dean had expected, with deep creases lining his mouth. He didn’t smile or ask how Dean was. He ran his hands all over, up Dean’s legs, around his groin, up under his arms. He lifted the cowboy hat off of Dean’s head and checked, then handed it to him. Then he nodded and Dean followed his little brother.
The temperature had fallen as night came on and outside had been a little brisk but inside the trailer was warm and smelled of cigarettes. Another man sat on a couch watching television. He was shirtless. The trailer didn’t have much furniture in it besides the TV the couch and a chair.
The first man, the hard one, jerked his head to indicate they should go back.
There were two bedrooms but only one door was open. A short, middle-aged guy built like an ottoman was sitting at one. His hair was going almost white. Sam was huge in the room. Sam took off his hat. “Poppa,” he said.
The man nodded and said something quietly in Spanish.
“El es mi hermano,” Sam said again.
Poppa looked him up and down.
“Es un problema?” Sam asked, although he didn’t sound like he thought it was a problem.
The man pursed his lips and looked at Sam. Dean thought Sam’s tone might be a problem. The hair on Dean’s neck was standing up. None of this was good. None of it felt right. To get out they’d have to get past the two guys watching TV and they were unarmed.
Poppa shook his head. “Buenas noches,” he said.
Sam said to Dean, “Let’s go.”
Back out in the main room, the hard man handed Sam his bag of souvenirs and the other guy never stopped watching TV.
He wondered what kind of drugs they were.
The boys were still standing in the road as they walked back.
The walk was longer back to the border than it had seemed going out. The one thing that was nice was that without streetlights there were more stars in the sky than you could see in any town in the US. The Milky Way was a wash of watercolor light behind some of them.
“Ursa Minor,” Sam said.
Dean looked at him. Sam was pointing. Dean looked for a moment and picked out the Little Dipper.
“Most people don’t do the constellations in Latin, geek boy,” Dean said.
Sam smiled a tiny bit, Dean thought, although it was hard to tell in the dark. “”Orion is up. Not as high as it will be in January. See the three stars in the belt?”
The Hunter, Orion.
“You showed me that,” Sam said. “We were sitting on the hood of the Impala.”
“We were in Ohio,” Dean said.
“Were we?”
“Yeah, Ohio is like the capital of ghost activity.”
“I thought that was New England.”
“Nope. Fucking Ohio.”
“I thought if Dad knew we were sitting on the hood he would kill us but you said he had done it with you and it was okay.”
Dean nodded.
They walked on.
At the border, Sam gave him a quick glance that said, ‘Ready?’
He wasn’t but when would he be.
The lights in the US side were way too bright. Hard white. There were two Homeland Security guys at the table again, both men this time. Sam was still wearing his hat and his shoulders were slumped like he was tired.
“Hey,” said one of the Homeland Security guys. He was balding. His face was tight. “Bag.” He pointed to the table.
“Sorry,” Sam mumbled. He put the bag there.
“Step back,” the guy barked.
Sam looked a little wide-eyed. College kid confused. It was amazing how he slipped into character that way.
The guy pulled out the Mexican blanket and then a stuffed burro that they hadn’t bought, the bottle of tequila, the shot glasses, and the box with the turquoise bracelet. “Anything to declare?” he snapped. The other border patrol guy watched without must interest.
“Do we need to declare the tequila?” Sam asked.
He was opening the box with the bracelet.
“That’s for my girlfriend,” Dean said.
“You don’t have to declare a fifth,” the bored guy said.
The stuffed burro practically screamed, ‘I am stuffed with illegal drugs.’ Why would two guys be buying a stuffed animal?
The balding guy came around the table and ran a metal detector wand over them. Their belt buckles and the change in their pockets set it off. They dumped everything out of their pockets.
He patted them down, not nearly as efficiently as the guy at the trailer, which was fine by Dean. Dean tried to keep his eyes off the stuffed burro.
“ID,” tight ass said.
They presented passports.
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
“Um, we’ve got a motel room in Truth or Consequences,” Sam said.
“T or C,” is a drive,” the guy said. “You sure you’re sober.”
Sam shook his head nervously. “No sir. But my brother is.”
The guy looked at Dean.
“I’m a firefighter in Greeley, Colorado,” Dean growled. “I scrape enough drunks out of car accidents. I’m fine.”
“Okay,” he finally said.
Sam put all the stuff back in the bag and they walked back into the US and into the parking lot.
#
They got a room in the same motel they’d stayed in on the way down. The room was in the back on the second floor. The doors each had a light over them and were painted yellow.
Inside the room smelled like window air conditioning and some floral air freshener scent that was so strong it gave Dean a headache. Sam sat down on the bed (it had a print of a roadrunner framed over it, the other had a print of some kind of owl) and slit open the stuffed burro and pulled out a quart sized freezer bag filled with blue pills.
“What is that?” Dean asked.
“Adderall, 10 milligrams,” Sam said. “Brady supplies a guy who sells it to students at Stanford.” Sam fished some more and pulled out a small bag. “Xanax.” He took a single Xanax out of bag. “Want one?”
“No,” Dean said.
Sam shrugged and put the one pill on the bedside table the rest of the Xanax in his duffel. He counted out 100 Adderall on the southwest patterned bedspread and poured them into a pill bottle and tucked that into his duffle. Then he put the rest of the pills in there, too. “I’ll Fed Ex them in the morning.”
“You take Adderall?” Dean asked.
“It’s great for researching,” Sam said.
“And you take Xanax.”
Sam just looked at him, stone faced.
“What the fuck,” Dean said. “You buy Xanax from a Mexican drug cartel?”
“I don’t like Ambien,” Sam said. “It fucks me up. So once in awhile I take a Xanax to sleep. Why am I justifying myself to you?”
“That stuff is nasty. Benzos fuck people up,” Dean said. “Fast track to addiction.”
Sam smiled. “Don’t worry, I usually chase them with alcohol. I like to distribute my addictions pretty equally.”
“So when you OD on alcohol and pills, I get to decide when to shut off the vent and donate your organs?”
“You or John,” Sam said. He got up, grabbed his tooth brush and tooth paste and a plastic cup, ran water in the bathroom and tossed back the pill. Dean looked at the duffle. He could throw out the Xanax. He wondered what Sam would do. He listened to Sam brush his teeth and did not move.
Sam came back out, pulled off his shirt and his jeans, stripped down to his boxers, and pulled the covers back. “I’m going to shower in the morning,” he said. “You just going to stand there?”
Dean rubbed his face hard.
Sam sat down on the bed and sighed. “Dean,” he said. “Sit down.”
Dean sat down on the edge of his bed.
“We’re going go back to Greeley. You’re going to go back to work. You’ve got my number. Any time there’s a job nearby I’ll stop by and say hello,” Sam said. “Okay?”
Sam looked…concerned. Reasonable. Another sudden switch. Like the college kid act. It was oh so tempting to agree.
“You hate this,” Sam pushed. Dean liked poker. He felt the push. His brother was pushing this. He could see something jumping in Sam’s jaw.
Dean looked at his little brother. His very tall little brother. “What are you doing, Sam?”
“Nothing. I’m just pointing out the obvious.” Sam was looking at him in that…in that overly sincere way that he did when he was trying to put something over on him. At least it felt like it. Like when Sam was a kid. He felt like something was off about all this.
“Is that why you wouldn’t tell me what we were doing? Are you trying to freak me out?”
Sam shook his head. “No, it’s just, you don’t need to be in this life. You’ve got a life.”
This guy was a hardass, he knew. He’d seen it. Seen him put down a couple of monsters. But he’d also seen him watching a stray cat in Mexico, seen him toss the cat a piece of his dinner. Someone was in there. “What have you got?” Dean asked. Sam tried to meet his eyes but Sam’s gaze slide away, over his shoulder. “Who have you got? Some guy at Stanford you mule drugs for?” He’d been dancing to Sam’s tune for days. “John Winchester? A dead girlfriend?”
“Don’t,” Sam said. It was a crack, the first real thing Sam had said since California.
“Xanax? Bourbon?” Dean knew it was cruel but he didn’t care.
“Shut up,” Sam whispered.
“You can’t sleep because if you lay down and close your eyes you remember the room on fire and Jess on the ceiling-”
“SHUT UP!” Sam shouted. He stood up and took a step towards the door.
“You gonna leave in your underwear? I didn’t pull you out of that room in Palo Alto to abandon you now,” Dean said. “You can wear your fucking sunglasses and play your fucking games and not talk to me all you want but I’m here to stay.”
“Fuck you,” Sam breathed out.
It sounded like a prayer.
“You gonna swing at me?” Dean said. He could see it in Sam, that he might. “At least I’d know it was real. Sammy.”
Sam just stood there and turned his head away so Dean couldn’t see his face. “You…” he said.
“What?” Dean said. “What is this all about?”
“You can’t die,” Sam said.
“I’m not gonna die.”
“She died, Dean.”
Dean tried to think of what to do. It was like picking a lock, being in the blind, using only his fingertips. He was feeling his way through this and he wasn’t good at that. He wanted to say something like ‘It’ll be all right’ but it wasn’t. So he said the only thing he knew was true. “I’m not leaving, little brother.”
The sound that Sam made was a strange animal sound.
“I’m not leaving,” Dean said again.