Hard Drive Dump 3: Fic
I’m still attempting to do hard drive housekeeping. As with most things of late, it’s sporadic, unpredictable and sort of manic. *waves the white flag of surrender at life* Ugh.
Title: The Pieces You Carry
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1450
Warnings: Language
Summary: The summer after Sam is gone, Dean drives. Pre-S6.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any part of the Supernatural universe.
A/N: The result of a flash prompt from hugemind. I finally got around to capping off the end. I hope you enjoy the rest, sweets!
Dean hears them every morning. The bells ring clear and long. Part of the charm of small-town nowhere, USA where everyone knows everyone and safety can be found within an arm’s reach of the neighbors. Dean knows why Lisa chose this place. It’s exactly why Dean never would have.
Dean eats, sleeps, uses power tools and crow bars to not kill things and pretends to fill his life with the things that he’s supposed to want, the things that he knew once upon a time Sam wanted (normal, safe). He thinks it’s royally fucked up, how he’s got everything his brother could and would never have, how he, Dean, never dared to dream about life outside of Dad-Sam-family-hunting, and now here he is, living the American Dream complete with blue clapboard house and a lawnmower in the garage. Dean thinks God-wherever he is ignoring everyone and everything-is one messed-in-the-head douche sack.
So it’s no surprise Dean’s lost and angry about everything. Twenty-odd years on the road and living out of a bloodstained duffle with two keys in his pocket (one for his baby and one for his baby’s trunk) can’t be undone in six weeks. And if it he didn’t promise Sam, if it hadn’t been the last thing Sam asked of him, if loyalty and following family orders weren’t seared into his brainstem along with sleep-eat-beer-hunt-sex, Dean would’ve blown out of town 5 months and 5 days ago. But he was never good at quitting. And before he stepped onto Lisa’s porch, Dean decided he was going to live his life if it killed him, if not for Sam but to prove to himself that he’s still capable of being a hero because Dean Winchester doesn’t let his family down even if they’re not around to give a damn.
Only then he didn’t realize what exactly living an apple pie life would entail. Now, Dean realizes blearily, his home has no wheels, his laundry comes folded in a plastic laundry basket without holes or lint in its corners, and suddenly his keychain-a grenade-sized lump in his pocket-bears the weight of his responsibility and permanence. Dean thinks becoming domesticated feels a lot like slow suffocation.
All Dean needs, besides Sam, is space. Four spinning tires eating up the asphalt, the familiar bump and roll of the shocks, cutting through the country from one end to the other like a dart with the rest of the world passing beyond the glass in a blur, his dreams are so vivid he wakes and swears he can hear the air rushing past and smell the greasy burger wrappers in the backseat.
Now Dean knows he’s part of that smudged world beyond the glass, and in the dark moments teetering between severely buzzed and slightly drunk, he wonders if he’d paid more attention to the mundane details of everyday civilian life, then maybe it wouldn’t be so disorienting. But Dean knows it wasn’t necessarily that it the outside world was unimportant, it was what was on the other side of the glass-what (who) was inside the Impala-was all he needed. And Dean, being a creature of efficiency, never felt it necessary to pay attention to anything else.
So once a month or so when four permanent walls and the same bed every night becomes unbearable, Dean leaves, and Lisa-not needing Dean to be her irreplaceable appendage and understanding that he needs time alone to realize he’s wanted-rolls with it. He gets in the beat-up pickup he can’t seem to find the space in his heart to wax and buff, backs out of the flower-lined driveway and drives. It doesn’t matter where or for how long, only that the windows are down and he’s moving, on the way to a nameless destination even if it’s only temporary.
One too-bright morning, Dean stumbles into a tiny ass-end of a truck stop diner off of Route 746 in the middle of the endless grassy plane called Iowa (the Corn Place, Sammy!). He’s riding on the back draft of too many whiskeys and an aimless night that ended with him face down on the vinyl of the truck’s bench seat and Dean barely notices anything but the smell of coffee. He pauses at the door and scans the diner, then presses himself into the cracked booth nearest the door. Dean lets his arms rest heavy on the stained table and stares at the black of his eyelids as he listens for the brisk rustling of the waitress.
He remembers Sam squirming on the seat, propped up on his knees, his skinny shoulder bumping into Dean’s as they jockeyed for the last plastic container of grape jelly. Sam’s eyes, large and eager under his bangs, still held their little brother reverence.
Dean’s fingers slide across table and drop off the edge. He clenches them into a fist on his thigh before dragging them across the vinyl seat until they rest against the wall in the dark, private space between the seat and the table.
It was the fall when Sam carried that stupid pocketknife around with him everywhere, proud that Dad had let him have it and wanting to show it to everybody before Dean had to tell him to keep it hidden unless he wanted Dad to go to jail or somewhere equally as irreversible sounding. So Sam had taken to carting it around with him and clandestinely taking it out and showing Dean as if to prove how stealthy he was.
Dean feels the negative impression of the lines against his fingers, cool and solid. Their permanence feels exhilarating and devastating at the same time, and Dean can’t help that his lips twitch into a smile even as his heart stutters.
There was a boney elbow kneading into his ribs. Dean looked down to find Sam all dimples and proud smiles holding his knife under the table.
“Watch,” was all Sam said as he carefully dug the tip into the soft wood.
“You cut yourself, pissface, and Dad’ll take it back.”
Sam-stubborn and defiant even back then-just dug the knife deeper, his face screwed up in concentration. “You won’t tell,” was all he said, knowing, of course, Dean wasn’t a tattletale.
Dean presses his palm flat, feels the scrape of the uneven surface against his skin and the all too familiar ache begins to crawl through his gut. Damnit, Sam. He digs his fingernails into the greasy wood and clenches his jaw.
Dean was always good at deflection and redirection, burying his crap under a pile of other peoples’ crap and then pointing and yelling about their issues. But now there’s nothing to bury his crap in. There’s nothing left to bury period, he thinks. And somehow it seems fitting that Sam’s under a cemetery in Lawrence but there’s no body there. Nothing to anchor a grave or even a place marker, not even anything left to burn a mark into the ground. It’s as if Sam never existed.
The sharp pinch of a splinter jabs through Dean’s skin.
Almost.
As Dean sits, staring unseeingly at ancient coffee stains and tacky ketchup splatter, he empties his head. If he were more touchy feely (more like Sam) he’d probably think about how he and Sam left pieces of themselves scattered around the country, how even though they never owned a house or stayed in a place longer than a couple of months they were always home, how they made a difference, how the world was changed in their wake. How, like tiny etchings in some crappy diner wall in the middle of a cornfield, what they did mattered even if they were the only ones who knew it.
But Dean’s not that guy (he’s not Sam). Instead he drinks three cups of coffee (black), chows down a pork sandwich, and leaves a grease-stained napkin crumpled on the table along with a twenty before disappearing out of the door. He doesn’t look back. And he doesn’t think, not once, about how the world will carry pieces of him and Sam even after they’re both gone.
Instead Dean thinks about how easy it would be to just keep going, to disappear. He thinks about hunting, how good it would feel to hack up a vampire or a leprechaun (creepy little bastards) and lose himself, end things bloody, the way he always thought it would end. But Dean doesn’t quit and Dean doesn’t just leave-that isn’t who he is. So like every month for the last 5 months and 5 days, Dean gets into the pickup and retraces his steps back to Lisa and Ben, unconsciously listening for the bells as he gets closer to a place that’s less temporary than home.
