[FIC] Father's Gun (78/?)
Title: Father's Gun
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: Mature
Warnings: minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.
Previous Chapter | Master Post
Iowa falls away under the wheels of the Impala, scrubland and fields and sparse, concrete knuckles of fill ups and strips malls, broken every now and again by skirting, stretching spits of suburb and twisting, tangling knots of city, tripping and falling through the Hawkeye State to catch on the border of Illinois and Missouri, following the Mighty Mississippi down as the sun falls and fades, dips beneath the horizon in fiery ruin a few hours before they reach a spit of scrub and cracked highway that a faded, falling sign on the side of the road says is Jackson, but Sam is pretty sure is nothing more than another faint, forgettable fold on the map.
“Pull off for some grub?” Dean shoots a glance across the seat at Sam, thumbing down Caulfield's love of digression in favor of his own as he breaks two states worth of silence.
“I'm not hungry,” Sam mumbles, running his thumb along a seam in the armrest instead of looking up, choosing dusty stitches and black upholstery in favor of facing the fact that pulling off means stopping, stopping and eating and talking and setting in for the night and two queen beds in some anonymous motel in this forgotten fold of highway, two beds and one choice and Dean, keeping secrets and hating him no matter what he decides and knowing it has to happen and wanting it fight over it are two completely different things, and Dean's-
He's been some shade of mad at Sam all day now. Sam can't help but wish they could just keep driving, the twisting ribbon of asphalt playing out before them, the quiet, the humming exhale of the engine, and the constant, clicking heartbeat of the tape deck eating up the silence, the strain, and letting Sam pretend, just for a little, that he has a brother again.
“Not hungry? Yeah, no,” Dean dismisses. “You left breakfast splattered across Bobby's counter, picked at lunch, and you know what? Fine. I get it.”
He whips the Impala onto the Jackson exit and glares across the wheel at Sam.
“You wanna be pie and picket fences normal? Ride your Leave It To Beaver kick straight on to ditching out on me again?” Dean snaps, giving Sam the first taste of what's been wheeling through his brother's head since Iowa. “But hell if I'm gonna sit back and let you man-pain-orexia your way into an early goddamn grave.”
And he's got it all wrong, missing the point by a mile as he fumes in the driver's seat, but it's the most Dean's given him in hours, this first, bitter-cold blast of his brother's resentment. It's something, something better than stubborn denial or sullen, searing silence, so Sam'll take it, buckle down and bear through and just- just swallow the pill, no matter how wrong and raw and razor-edged it may be.
Because it might be awful, might be awful and painful and torture, sitting here on the other side of this wall he's shored up between he and Dean, all the things he wants but can't have taunting him from the other side, miles apart for all that they're inches away, but it's necessary, the imaginary bricks and boards the only thing standing between Sam and the monster he would do anything to keep from becoming.
To keep from letting them become.
So he's glad Dean's snapping at him from the driver's seat. Glad he's growling his way through some shade of the same old mother bear routine as always,s because it's progress, the first step towards Dean accepting this, this distance that has to - absolutely has to - become their new normal.
Sam'll swallow Dean's anger, the rage and resentment and anything else Dean has to throw at him. Anything else he thinks Sam deserves.
No matter what it is, he wouldn't be wrong.
“You wanna be normal civvies with this awkward, interpersonal crap?” Dean continues, railing as they truck down the abandoned backroads bleeding into Jackson. “Fine. We can meet up later at the goddamn health club, take a fricken yoga class and get some soy goddamn lattes. Discuss, I don't know, mortgages and tofurkey or some shit, but before all that, you're gonna stop looking like it's goddamn torture to sit next to me, you're gonna park your overgrown goddamn ass down in whatever dive's still dishin' out at this hour, and you're having a real goddamn meal if I have cram it down your throat myself. Got it?”
“Dean…” Sam starts, because of course. Of course he couldn't be so goddamn lucky as to have Dean just sulk his way into acceptance. Of course he had luck out and get the only sibling on the planet who would consider it a personal insult to take a few steps back after waking up to being sexually assaulted by your hellspawn younger brother.
“I don't-” Dean interrupts, then breaks off. “You know what? No. I do. I do want to goddamn talk about this, but not now. Now while I'm tired and hungry and goddamn pissed.”
Dean gestures violently to the space between them,
“We're talking about this, Sam. We are definitely fucking talking about this, but you wanna ratchet this up from unpleasant to total fucking nightmare by doing it while I'm starved, achy, and armed? Be my guest, Sammy. Be my guest.”
“I wasn't gonna say that,” Sam snaps as Dean snorts in the driver's seat.
“Sure you weren't.” Dean nods, face saying he clearly doesn't believe Sam louder than words ever could.
“Dean,” Sam persists, because he has to and Dean's not listening and Sam's not wrong on this.
He's not wrong, and he's not backing down. Dean might be fighting tooth and nail on relinquishing control of the Denial Train as he rockets the right towards Repeat of This Morning Station, but this is one fight he's not gonna win.
“Tractors,” Dean interrupts him.
He whips the Impala into a parking spot on High Street in front of a dingy, red and green awninged restaurant, white lettering on the windowed storefront clarifying that this is, more specifically, ‘Tractors Classic American Grill.’ No apostrophe.
“Perfect,” his brother nods, killing the engine and pocketing the keys.
Sam sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face as he tips his head back against the seat, because Dean's in an awful goddamn mood, and this is before they fight about this morning and today and tonight and everything, and god, Sam is just so tired.
“Give up on it, Sammy,” Dean says, getting out of the car and looking down at him expectantly. “We're doing this? Having girly boundaries argument part two? We're both eating first. You especially.”
“Great,” Sam grumbles, giving in and getting out and following Dean into the restaurant, less because he actually wants to and more because he just doesn't feel like fighting anymore. “Another fun-filled meal of you being pissed at me and roadkill someone slapped on a bun.”
“This is a classy joint, Sammy.” Dean grins as they walk through the door. “Bet they could toss a salad together for you.”
And if Dean even realizes the absolutely galling pun he just made, Sam doesn't notice, because they have walked into what it is is the most... enthusiastically tractor-themed establishment Sam has ever, or likely will ever, encountered.
It's just... Wow.
There are tractor parts hung on the walls. Little toy tractors scattered behind the bar. Tractor schematics framed behind glass and lovingly grouped photos of tractors hung up above the tables against on wall, handwritten names scrawled in the corners or tacked to the bottom of the frame which could either be identifying the owner or the machinery in question, but with no indication as to which.
There's even, lest one forget exactly where one is and what that place is single-mindedly about, ‘TRACTORS’ painted in giant, glaring white capitals along the length and breadth of the wall opposite the bar which, just, who wakes up one day and says, “You know what restaurants could use a little more of? Tractors.”
“This place is awesome,” Dean laughs, striding through the nearly-empty dive to grab them a booth against the far wall.
Well, okay, but who else?
“Salads.” Dean smirks, tossing Sam a menu and waving his own illustratively as Sam sits down. “Told ya.”
“Yeah, right between the Massive Ferguson with Tractor Sauce and the Tractor's Dirt Clod Brownie,” Sam notes, laughing a little to himself despite everything, because how do they even find these places?
It even has wi-fi, he notes, flipping through the menu and half-wishing he'd brought his laptop in. Seriously, does Dean actually have a chip?
“Hey, that Ferguson Burger looks pretty good,” Dean tosses back. “Whatd'ya think, Sammy? Half a pound of beef, lettuce, tomatoes, Tractor Sauce, and all the cheese you could want?”
“I think if you wanted to keel over at thirty from a heart attack,” Sam mutters, “just downing straight Crisco'd be easier. And less messy.”
He wrinkles his nose at a diner a few table over setting into what he's guessing is a Ferguson, very nearly alive and in the flesh.
It's... drippy.
“Got a point,” Dean admits, watching the guy try and fail to maneuver that much sauce and burger without a few additional hands and maybe a forklift. “Hey, they got a bison burger. Bison's healthy, right?”
“Not when you're eating a third a pound of it on a butter-soaked bun slathered in mayo.” Sam snorts despite himself, loving and hating how simple it is, how easy they can just slip back into quips and comebacks, long, lazy conversations about nothing as they ramble across the country, slipping in and out of diners and dives and why can't it just be like this? Why does Dean have to fight him on every goddamn thing? Why won't he just let them fix things so they can have them like this all the time?
“It's low fat mayo,” Dean defends as Sam's mood slips and sours all over again.
“Low fat is just code for high sugar, Dean,” Sam tosses back, signaling a waitress shortly.
“You're... code for high sugar,” Dean grumbles, but it falls flat. Sam doesn’t taking the opening to rib Dean, who just settles for kicking at Sam under the table, pasted-on half grin souring when Sam immediately untangles their feet, straightens in the booth when their waitress makes her way over.
“Ya'll ready to order?” she chirps brightly. The tractor-shaped name tag pinned to her navy blue Tractors tee lists her name as ‘Tina.’
“Yeah,” Dean picks up, shrugging off ‘Sulking at Sam’ in favor of ‘Smirky and Smiling’ for all that Tina can't be a day over sixteen. “Couple of whatever you've got on draft, a Red Belly, and what's it gonna be for you, Sammy?”
“Just the soup and salad, please,” he tells Tina. “Low-fat dressing, if you've got it.”
“Thought low fat just meant high sugar, Sammy,” Dean grins from across the table as she flits back to the kitchen.
“Like you've got any room to talk, Red Belly,” Sam can't help but toss back, play the game, even though it's only gonna end up with them fighting-but-not-fighting again, running along just fine, just like they always have, right up until they run head-first into everything that's been tied up and tangled between them since they woke up this morning.
“It's open faced,” Dean grins. “Less bread, 'cause bread makes you fat.”
“No, half-pound burgers topped with chili and cheese make you fat,” Sam contradicts, focuses on Dean, tossing words in the air like firecrackers, tugged off from red paper clusters and touched to his lighter and thrown on the fly, filling the air with light and sound for one blink-and-you'll-miss-it second of Fourth of July, of being dragged away from the dim, dirty was and will be around them for one hot, heady flick of here-and-now.
“Nah, that doesn't sound right,” Dean dismisses with grin, lining up a sugar packet like a paper football and flicking it at Sam's head. “Where's the science, Sammy?”
“It's the First Law of Thermodynamics, Dean!” Sam half-laughs, batting the sugar packet away to plunk against the framed lithograph touting ‘PLOWS’ in sprawling, swirling curlicued letters over his shoulder. “Burgers in, belly out.”
“Just more to love, right, Sammy?” Dean jokes, his grin falling off when Sam meets it with a glare. “What, I can't even-? Seriously?”
They stare at each other for a tight, silent moment.
“You're full of shit, you know that?” Dean demands, and apparently this is happening now. This is as long as this fight'll wait.
“Why is that, Dean?” Sam asks, slow and careful, ready for the ax to fall, the lash to strike, willing to accept his brother's anger, his frustration, his resentment, everything.
Anything but hurting him again.
“Because you're going on and on about normal?” Dean challenges. “Realigning our whole damn lives to accommodate the fallout from your latest little freak out, when you don't know shit about what the hell normal even is.”
“Excuse me? I-”
“Never had any brother but me,” Dean interrupts. “Never lived any life but this one. Never known anything but what we got right here. Now, you wanna step back 'cause you don't want something like this morning to happen again? Fine. ‘S your choice to make. But don't bullshit me about normal and regular and average when that's the last damn thing we have any fucking experience with, and don't pretend you're doing this for anyone else but goddamn you.”
“I am not, Dean,” Sam forces out, because like hell this is for him. Like hell this is anything close to what he likes or wants and that's- that's the problem. That's what's making this like pulling teeth, the fact that he wants the exact opposite thing of what he should have and what he should do, and the fact that the things he wants and the things he can have are miles apart and mutually exclusive to boot and-
“Bull,” Dean cuts in. “Only two of us here, Sam, and I think this is a hell of a lot of stupid.”
“Well, the other one of us, the one of us not ass-deep in denial,” Sam throws back, “knows that it's not, and if-”
“Red Belly and a soup and salad combo?” Tina chirps, sliding plates in front of them and setting down beers with a bright smile and sunny, studiously-not-curious grin that says she was listening to, if not their whole damn conversation, at least the last part of it.
To be fair, Sam had gotten a bit... vehement with that last part.
Especially the ass-deep bits.
“Y'all need anything else?” she asks brightly.
“We're good, thanks,” Sam answers, feeling the flush creep up his neck as he gets rid of Tractor Tina and shoots Dean, already digging into his Red Belly with fervor, a sharp ‘We'll talk about this in the car’ glare.
Dean, for his part, just answers with a smirk and an assholish quirk of his eyebrows, equal parts ‘Looking forward to it’ and ‘Fuck you, buddy.’
Chapter 79
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: Mature
Warnings: minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.
Previous Chapter | Master Post
Iowa falls away under the wheels of the Impala, scrubland and fields and sparse, concrete knuckles of fill ups and strips malls, broken every now and again by skirting, stretching spits of suburb and twisting, tangling knots of city, tripping and falling through the Hawkeye State to catch on the border of Illinois and Missouri, following the Mighty Mississippi down as the sun falls and fades, dips beneath the horizon in fiery ruin a few hours before they reach a spit of scrub and cracked highway that a faded, falling sign on the side of the road says is Jackson, but Sam is pretty sure is nothing more than another faint, forgettable fold on the map.
“Pull off for some grub?” Dean shoots a glance across the seat at Sam, thumbing down Caulfield's love of digression in favor of his own as he breaks two states worth of silence.
“I'm not hungry,” Sam mumbles, running his thumb along a seam in the armrest instead of looking up, choosing dusty stitches and black upholstery in favor of facing the fact that pulling off means stopping, stopping and eating and talking and setting in for the night and two queen beds in some anonymous motel in this forgotten fold of highway, two beds and one choice and Dean, keeping secrets and hating him no matter what he decides and knowing it has to happen and wanting it fight over it are two completely different things, and Dean's-
He's been some shade of mad at Sam all day now. Sam can't help but wish they could just keep driving, the twisting ribbon of asphalt playing out before them, the quiet, the humming exhale of the engine, and the constant, clicking heartbeat of the tape deck eating up the silence, the strain, and letting Sam pretend, just for a little, that he has a brother again.
“Not hungry? Yeah, no,” Dean dismisses. “You left breakfast splattered across Bobby's counter, picked at lunch, and you know what? Fine. I get it.”
He whips the Impala onto the Jackson exit and glares across the wheel at Sam.
“You wanna be pie and picket fences normal? Ride your Leave It To Beaver kick straight on to ditching out on me again?” Dean snaps, giving Sam the first taste of what's been wheeling through his brother's head since Iowa. “But hell if I'm gonna sit back and let you man-pain-orexia your way into an early goddamn grave.”
And he's got it all wrong, missing the point by a mile as he fumes in the driver's seat, but it's the most Dean's given him in hours, this first, bitter-cold blast of his brother's resentment. It's something, something better than stubborn denial or sullen, searing silence, so Sam'll take it, buckle down and bear through and just- just swallow the pill, no matter how wrong and raw and razor-edged it may be.
Because it might be awful, might be awful and painful and torture, sitting here on the other side of this wall he's shored up between he and Dean, all the things he wants but can't have taunting him from the other side, miles apart for all that they're inches away, but it's necessary, the imaginary bricks and boards the only thing standing between Sam and the monster he would do anything to keep from becoming.
To keep from letting them become.
So he's glad Dean's snapping at him from the driver's seat. Glad he's growling his way through some shade of the same old mother bear routine as always,s because it's progress, the first step towards Dean accepting this, this distance that has to - absolutely has to - become their new normal.
Sam'll swallow Dean's anger, the rage and resentment and anything else Dean has to throw at him. Anything else he thinks Sam deserves.
No matter what it is, he wouldn't be wrong.
“You wanna be normal civvies with this awkward, interpersonal crap?” Dean continues, railing as they truck down the abandoned backroads bleeding into Jackson. “Fine. We can meet up later at the goddamn health club, take a fricken yoga class and get some soy goddamn lattes. Discuss, I don't know, mortgages and tofurkey or some shit, but before all that, you're gonna stop looking like it's goddamn torture to sit next to me, you're gonna park your overgrown goddamn ass down in whatever dive's still dishin' out at this hour, and you're having a real goddamn meal if I have cram it down your throat myself. Got it?”
“Dean…” Sam starts, because of course. Of course he couldn't be so goddamn lucky as to have Dean just sulk his way into acceptance. Of course he had luck out and get the only sibling on the planet who would consider it a personal insult to take a few steps back after waking up to being sexually assaulted by your hellspawn younger brother.
“I don't-” Dean interrupts, then breaks off. “You know what? No. I do. I do want to goddamn talk about this, but not now. Now while I'm tired and hungry and goddamn pissed.”
Dean gestures violently to the space between them,
“We're talking about this, Sam. We are definitely fucking talking about this, but you wanna ratchet this up from unpleasant to total fucking nightmare by doing it while I'm starved, achy, and armed? Be my guest, Sammy. Be my guest.”
“I wasn't gonna say that,” Sam snaps as Dean snorts in the driver's seat.
“Sure you weren't.” Dean nods, face saying he clearly doesn't believe Sam louder than words ever could.
“Dean,” Sam persists, because he has to and Dean's not listening and Sam's not wrong on this.
He's not wrong, and he's not backing down. Dean might be fighting tooth and nail on relinquishing control of the Denial Train as he rockets the right towards Repeat of This Morning Station, but this is one fight he's not gonna win.
“Tractors,” Dean interrupts him.
He whips the Impala into a parking spot on High Street in front of a dingy, red and green awninged restaurant, white lettering on the windowed storefront clarifying that this is, more specifically, ‘Tractors Classic American Grill.’ No apostrophe.
“Perfect,” his brother nods, killing the engine and pocketing the keys.
Sam sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face as he tips his head back against the seat, because Dean's in an awful goddamn mood, and this is before they fight about this morning and today and tonight and everything, and god, Sam is just so tired.
“Give up on it, Sammy,” Dean says, getting out of the car and looking down at him expectantly. “We're doing this? Having girly boundaries argument part two? We're both eating first. You especially.”
“Great,” Sam grumbles, giving in and getting out and following Dean into the restaurant, less because he actually wants to and more because he just doesn't feel like fighting anymore. “Another fun-filled meal of you being pissed at me and roadkill someone slapped on a bun.”
“This is a classy joint, Sammy.” Dean grins as they walk through the door. “Bet they could toss a salad together for you.”
And if Dean even realizes the absolutely galling pun he just made, Sam doesn't notice, because they have walked into what it is is the most... enthusiastically tractor-themed establishment Sam has ever, or likely will ever, encountered.
It's just... Wow.
There are tractor parts hung on the walls. Little toy tractors scattered behind the bar. Tractor schematics framed behind glass and lovingly grouped photos of tractors hung up above the tables against on wall, handwritten names scrawled in the corners or tacked to the bottom of the frame which could either be identifying the owner or the machinery in question, but with no indication as to which.
There's even, lest one forget exactly where one is and what that place is single-mindedly about, ‘TRACTORS’ painted in giant, glaring white capitals along the length and breadth of the wall opposite the bar which, just, who wakes up one day and says, “You know what restaurants could use a little more of? Tractors.”
“This place is awesome,” Dean laughs, striding through the nearly-empty dive to grab them a booth against the far wall.
Well, okay, but who else?
“Salads.” Dean smirks, tossing Sam a menu and waving his own illustratively as Sam sits down. “Told ya.”
“Yeah, right between the Massive Ferguson with Tractor Sauce and the Tractor's Dirt Clod Brownie,” Sam notes, laughing a little to himself despite everything, because how do they even find these places?
It even has wi-fi, he notes, flipping through the menu and half-wishing he'd brought his laptop in. Seriously, does Dean actually have a chip?
“Hey, that Ferguson Burger looks pretty good,” Dean tosses back. “Whatd'ya think, Sammy? Half a pound of beef, lettuce, tomatoes, Tractor Sauce, and all the cheese you could want?”
“I think if you wanted to keel over at thirty from a heart attack,” Sam mutters, “just downing straight Crisco'd be easier. And less messy.”
He wrinkles his nose at a diner a few table over setting into what he's guessing is a Ferguson, very nearly alive and in the flesh.
It's... drippy.
“Got a point,” Dean admits, watching the guy try and fail to maneuver that much sauce and burger without a few additional hands and maybe a forklift. “Hey, they got a bison burger. Bison's healthy, right?”
“Not when you're eating a third a pound of it on a butter-soaked bun slathered in mayo.” Sam snorts despite himself, loving and hating how simple it is, how easy they can just slip back into quips and comebacks, long, lazy conversations about nothing as they ramble across the country, slipping in and out of diners and dives and why can't it just be like this? Why does Dean have to fight him on every goddamn thing? Why won't he just let them fix things so they can have them like this all the time?
“It's low fat mayo,” Dean defends as Sam's mood slips and sours all over again.
“Low fat is just code for high sugar, Dean,” Sam tosses back, signaling a waitress shortly.
“You're... code for high sugar,” Dean grumbles, but it falls flat. Sam doesn’t taking the opening to rib Dean, who just settles for kicking at Sam under the table, pasted-on half grin souring when Sam immediately untangles their feet, straightens in the booth when their waitress makes her way over.
“Ya'll ready to order?” she chirps brightly. The tractor-shaped name tag pinned to her navy blue Tractors tee lists her name as ‘Tina.’
“Yeah,” Dean picks up, shrugging off ‘Sulking at Sam’ in favor of ‘Smirky and Smiling’ for all that Tina can't be a day over sixteen. “Couple of whatever you've got on draft, a Red Belly, and what's it gonna be for you, Sammy?”
“Just the soup and salad, please,” he tells Tina. “Low-fat dressing, if you've got it.”
“Thought low fat just meant high sugar, Sammy,” Dean grins from across the table as she flits back to the kitchen.
“Like you've got any room to talk, Red Belly,” Sam can't help but toss back, play the game, even though it's only gonna end up with them fighting-but-not-fighting again, running along just fine, just like they always have, right up until they run head-first into everything that's been tied up and tangled between them since they woke up this morning.
“It's open faced,” Dean grins. “Less bread, 'cause bread makes you fat.”
“No, half-pound burgers topped with chili and cheese make you fat,” Sam contradicts, focuses on Dean, tossing words in the air like firecrackers, tugged off from red paper clusters and touched to his lighter and thrown on the fly, filling the air with light and sound for one blink-and-you'll-miss-it second of Fourth of July, of being dragged away from the dim, dirty was and will be around them for one hot, heady flick of here-and-now.
“Nah, that doesn't sound right,” Dean dismisses with grin, lining up a sugar packet like a paper football and flicking it at Sam's head. “Where's the science, Sammy?”
“It's the First Law of Thermodynamics, Dean!” Sam half-laughs, batting the sugar packet away to plunk against the framed lithograph touting ‘PLOWS’ in sprawling, swirling curlicued letters over his shoulder. “Burgers in, belly out.”
“Just more to love, right, Sammy?” Dean jokes, his grin falling off when Sam meets it with a glare. “What, I can't even-? Seriously?”
They stare at each other for a tight, silent moment.
“You're full of shit, you know that?” Dean demands, and apparently this is happening now. This is as long as this fight'll wait.
“Why is that, Dean?” Sam asks, slow and careful, ready for the ax to fall, the lash to strike, willing to accept his brother's anger, his frustration, his resentment, everything.
Anything but hurting him again.
“Because you're going on and on about normal?” Dean challenges. “Realigning our whole damn lives to accommodate the fallout from your latest little freak out, when you don't know shit about what the hell normal even is.”
“Excuse me? I-”
“Never had any brother but me,” Dean interrupts. “Never lived any life but this one. Never known anything but what we got right here. Now, you wanna step back 'cause you don't want something like this morning to happen again? Fine. ‘S your choice to make. But don't bullshit me about normal and regular and average when that's the last damn thing we have any fucking experience with, and don't pretend you're doing this for anyone else but goddamn you.”
“I am not, Dean,” Sam forces out, because like hell this is for him. Like hell this is anything close to what he likes or wants and that's- that's the problem. That's what's making this like pulling teeth, the fact that he wants the exact opposite thing of what he should have and what he should do, and the fact that the things he wants and the things he can have are miles apart and mutually exclusive to boot and-
“Bull,” Dean cuts in. “Only two of us here, Sam, and I think this is a hell of a lot of stupid.”
“Well, the other one of us, the one of us not ass-deep in denial,” Sam throws back, “knows that it's not, and if-”
“Red Belly and a soup and salad combo?” Tina chirps, sliding plates in front of them and setting down beers with a bright smile and sunny, studiously-not-curious grin that says she was listening to, if not their whole damn conversation, at least the last part of it.
To be fair, Sam had gotten a bit... vehement with that last part.
Especially the ass-deep bits.
“Y'all need anything else?” she asks brightly.
“We're good, thanks,” Sam answers, feeling the flush creep up his neck as he gets rid of Tractor Tina and shoots Dean, already digging into his Red Belly with fervor, a sharp ‘We'll talk about this in the car’ glare.
Dean, for his part, just answers with a smirk and an assholish quirk of his eyebrows, equal parts ‘Looking forward to it’ and ‘Fuck you, buddy.’
Chapter 79