(no subject)
Title: Two Sharks Learning How to Swim
Author: essenceofmeanin
Rating: Mature (Thematically dark, some sexuality.)
Word Count: 4,000
A/N: For roque_clasique -- I bet you thought you'd never get this. Dean with permanent mobility issues, GEDs, and Stanford. Oh -- and Sammy, too.
The details of the case never mattered, Sam decides later. Like how or who you lost your virginity to never matters. Just because you’ll remember it for the rest of your life doesn’t mean it means anything.
Sam never knew them anyway. Sam is thirteen years old when it happens, home safe eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and reading Watership Down by candle because some summer storm blew in and knocked their electricity clean out. Dad’s notes are scattered everywhere -- accident reports, seventy year old black and whites of railway men looking like they’re doing nothing much but staring at the body on the ground. Eight Found Dead in Passenger Train.
It’s just a chill down his spine, a breath on the back of his neck but Sam knows, swears to Dad later that he knew the second Dean got hurt.
Sam falls asleep with his cheek on the windowsill right around the time the birds start singing. Sometime after that, Dad comes home. Shakes Sam awake, says “Get your coat.” He’s quiet the whole ride, swallowing over and over and Sam wants to tell him to quit it, Dad, but doesn’t want to be the first to talk. At the hospital, the lady at the desk says, “Hello, Sam. It’ll be just a minute and then you can see your brother.”
They take him to Dean’s room. Dad grabs Sam’s shoulder when they pass the threshold like one or both of them might fall over, fingers digging into his skin. Sam doesn’t want to look so he looks at Dad instead, waits. “It pushed him,” Dad starts. Sam sees a nothing where Dean’s right foot should be, an even bigger nothing under his left knee. Right elbow splinted. IVs swarming around him. But it’s the white sheet that always sticks with him.
***
Sam isn’t there when Dean wakes up. Dad tells him later that Dean doesn’t take it well.
When Sam comes to see his brother he’s worried that Dean’ll still be mad at him. He and Sam, they fought over whose turn it was to wash the dishes right before they left for the hunt, and Dean had just rolled his eyes at Sam as he walked out the door. Sam had glared into his book as the Impala rumbled away.
He wants Dean to still be mad at him. Wants Dean to crack a joke, who’s got two thumbs and no feet? but when Sam walks in Dean doesn’t say a word. Just looks at Sam with flared nostrils and eyes sharp enough to cut somebody.
Sam sits down next to Dean on the bed like he’s trying to sneak up on him, slower than he’s ever moved in his life. He curls himself up against the arm without a cast, close enough to feel the way Dean’s shaking. Little tremors, like he’s cold.
***
The look on Dean’s face every time he’s in the wheelchair.
They bankrupt Donny Henderson with therapy, and later, prosthetics. Dad works two jobs in town to make enough money to run that well dry, pay the minimum balance and keep up appearances. Hunting derailed. Sam stays Sam Winchester< when school starts in the fall. He’d been looking forward to high school, too.
Now. Dean fights Dad for the first time in forever, Sam the good son. Dad doesn’t understand why Dean won’t go back --
“-- Because I don’t want to, Dad --”
-- but Sam does. The look on Dean’s face every time they had to go to a new school. The way he squared his shoulders, put his chest out before walking in those doors. Never liked having to prove himself, wasn’t ever very good at it. Stuck out like a sore thumb even back when he could still wear Dad’s beat up steel toes.
Sam drags Dad with him to school. Explains most of what happened to their academic advisers. Dad a fuming, defeated presence next to him, there to sign the paperwork and let Sam do the talking. Doesn’t understand, never graduated either. When Sam brings Dean the GED packet, the study guides, there’s a flicker of surprise in Dean’s eyes. He smiles, the first Sam’s seen since before.
Dean aces the test. His cast comes off. The first thing he does to celebrate is clean every single gun they own.
***
It takes Dean a long time to learn how to walk.
He hates physical therapy. Misses half his sessions but Sam knows he’s doing the exercises by himself. Dad says to leave him be, so Sam stops counting the times he’s found Dean fallen.
Dean sits on the toilet, Sam on the ground with the wash cloth, the hydrogen peroxide. The floor under his butt is cold through thin cotton pajamas. Dean hisses when Sam swabs at the raw red flesh at the end of his legs, says, “Hey, maybe I should take up tap dancing.” He doesn’t laugh. Sam doesn’t see why not -- Peg Leg Bates was on the Ed Sullivan show twenty one times. Dean just grimaces at that one. He shoves Sam away when Sam tries to help him into the wheelchair and tells him he’s gotta keep off the prosthetics for a little while.
“Y’know what, I changed your diapers and shit, Sammy, don’t tell me what to do.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Dude, you were like five when I still needed diapers.” Dean snorts. The bathroom’s too narrow for Dean to storm off. Sam keeps his eyes to the ceiling as Dean three-point turns out of there. He goes to get the ice packs, but Dean’s locked his door again.
***
Dean walks like he’s drunk. To be fair, for a while, he is.
It starts with him and Dad, out on the porch. Under the car. Shooting beer cans out in the fields. Sam doesn’t know what they talk about, all the hours they’re out there, but sometimes when Dad’s making dinner he sets the plates down hard enough to rattle the table. Case reports start showing up. Fatal Shooting in Suburban Home, obituaries. Sam throws them away, furious, thinks they’re Dad’s until he comes home from school to find Dean pouring over birth records from before the Civil War. Whiskey by his elbow. Eyes glassy, one brow raised when Sam walks in. A dare, maybe.
Not for Sam, though. Dean gets a job in town at the shop where Dad works, lack of legs no matter when you’re under a car. Dad starts taking off on weekends. Sam corners Dad on his way out the door, duffel swung over his shoulder and leather jacket on.
“I thought we were done.”
“Job’s never done,” Dad says, lips just a thin line.
“But Dean --”
“I’m doing this for your brother, Sam,” Dad says, leaves without looking back.
Dean’s stacking dishes in the kitchen. “Go do your homework,” he says.
***
Sam starts running. Literally, at first.
It’s a dirty secret, because he still can. He walks away from the house for as long as he’s able, then he opens throttle and runs. Wants to think about nothing, just the rasp of his breath in his ears and the slap of his sneakers on dirt. Runs until he’s dizzy, knees shaking, wants to puke.
Sam turns sixteen. He starts staying away. They live on the outskirts of town, their cabin an island of light before the forest begins. Strange not to have moved in years and Sam knows they’re all itching for it. Dean buys a motorcycle, outfits it with Klicktronic handlebar gear-shifters and brake mods. Dad talked about hand controls for the Impala but Dean wanted none of it. Barely goes near that car. Far as Sam knows all three of them scatter every chance they get.
Sam builds a lean-to. A camp. Stocks it with textbooks, novels. Lord of the Flies, The Odyssey. Spends days out there the rain pattering on tarp his only company. Biology: Earth Science. Introduction to Geology. Every one of them dotted with mold after a few weeks, pages bloated and warped under the water weight. Sam drinks river water, heedless of the parasites he learns about. He drinks a bottle of whiskey he’d stolen from his family. He lives on peanut butter and bread, chewing pine needles for vitamin C.
Dean, suspicious, when he comes home. “Where the fuck you go all the time?” he asks, knows full well he can’t ever follow Sam again.
***
Sam gets a girlfriend. He brings her home one weekend when he’s sure nobody’ll be around. He even cleans up a little bit first -- takes down the map scrawled over with red x’s marking the spots of suspicious house fires, does some dishes. Puts all the empty beer bottles into a bag and tosses them out by the wood shed. He fixes up the busted antennae and they make out and watch some schlocky B-movie about space aliens. She jerks him off laying there on the couch and when he comes all over her fingers there’s not a thought in his head; feels so grateful he wants to cry.
He runs his palms down her shoulders, over her back and down her ass, hauls her in close. Waits for his heart to stop beating so hard. She looks at the wheelchair folded up in the corner and asks him, “Does your grandpa live with you?”
***
Sam has a perfect attendance record since Dean’s accident. He dozes during classes but almost every test and assignment comes back stamped with that red A. He likes the tedium of the textbooks, not the drone of the teacher’s voice.
It’s a bit of a surprise when his AP Chem teacher asks him to stay after last bell. Dean wants him home ASAP, always gets testy when summer starts to roll around, and that’s what he’s thinking about when Mr. Welsh starts handing him scholarship application papers instead of telling him off for sleeping again. He’s even got a speech prepared, You’re a bright young man, Sam, and I’d hate to see that potential wasted kind of thing. I know your family situation is difficult but there’s a network of support available for you.
Sam wants to laugh. College. It’d never come up before.
The walk home feels like a dream; spring sunshine warm on his face and the birds singing from the branches of green trees. Unreal, like some kind of movie.
Real is Dean standing in the kitchen making Sam a sandwich, still awkward and sideways on the prosthetics even after all these years. He and Sam take their plate of turkey’n’cheese and a beer apiece and go sit on the back porch overlooking the creek. Dean throws rocks in the water, never mind the crawdads. Dinner’s a pile of crumbs on the plate before they say a word.
“Sammy,” Dean says. He pulls out his pack of Luckies, packs one against a fingernail taptaptap before lighting it, takes a drag. Sam waits. He says, “You ever think about hunting?”
“No,” Sam says. “Thinking about college.”
Dean snorts. “That so,” he says.
***
Sam is cold. It’s rained during the night, the chill seeped into the tent and his ancient sleeping bag thin as paper against the wet earth. He crawls out on hands and knees. The forest floor is full of webs white as puddles against the underbrush, dewy and abandoned. There’s a plastic bag in the rough middle of his camp, double knotted to keep the water out. Inside it is a banana, a clean pair of socks, and a note that says come home already.
Sam eats the banana on the hike back to the cabin, wonders if his dad always knew where he was. The temperature rises with the sun until Sam is wiping the sweat off his face. He smells like mold, damp from the woods.
Dean’s smoking on the porch when Sam slumps down the driveway, boots on but pants rolled up to the knee in the heat. Sometimes it still jars Sam, to see that gleam of metal. Dean lights the next cigarette off the first, says, “Hey Sammy,” as Sam climbs the stairs.
Dad’s inside, papers spread out around him and it startles Sam to see his name on a few when usually it’s the walking dead that concern his dad. When he looks they’re scholarship papers, application essay outlines. Financial aid pamphlets. Dad is barefoot in a grease stained wife-beater, a cold glass of water in front of him leaving wet rings on papers that might be important. Sam picks up the glass, drains it in a swallow.
Dad says, “You gonna help me fill all these out or what?”
***
A long summer and a longer fall pass, and each of them celebrate bleak anniversaries in their own way. Dean’s nearly intolerable, grim and prone to throwing punches. Sam drags him out to go fishing, tells Dean jokes he heard at school. Sometimes it works. Sam takes the PSAT, and the SAT. Gets his drivers license. Gets accepted to Stanford. Dean takes off for a week, kicks up a cloud of dust under his bike when he peels out. He nearly gets fired for it. Dad breaks out the good stuff to celebrate though, first college kid in the family and all.
That’s about when it starts. It takes Sam a while to notice it because it’s not like they talk to each other anyway, the Winchester language being mainly composed of long silences. Dean and Dad though, they don’t need to talk.
Dad starts making preparations even though there’s months to go before Sam leaves. Slowly all the stuff they’d accumulated over the past -- has it been four years already? -- four years starts to disappear until they’re down to just a few plates and cups and Dad says those are going to California for Sam’s first apartment. Dad’s moving on too, walks every day like more weight’s off his shoulders.
***
Sam’s waiting for Dean and Dad to get off work. He sits outside under the shop’s awning, hiding from the rain. They’ve been arguing over a stubborn carburetor long enough that everybody else has gone home, long enough that they’d forgotten about Sam if they knew he was there in the first place. Sam’s lost in Geek Love, doesn’t even hear the raindrops pinging off the roof until --
“No, Dad --”
-- his senses fine tuned as ever to the sound of his family’s raised voices. He puts the book carefully away into his backpack.
“Dean, we’ve talked this near to death --”
“-- and you’re not getting it, you just think --”
Sam can hear the whistle of Dad’s sigh through his old busted nose. “You know this is what’s best for you and Sammy both and that’s final.”
There’s the crash of a thrown wrench. The slap of a hand against the peeling hood.
“Don’t you think I sacrificed enough for this family?” Dean hisses, voice clotted in his throat. “My whole goddamn life, Dad, my --”
Sam hears his Dad’s boots scrape against the ground, maybe standing, maybe coming next to Dean, a heavy hand on his shoulder when he says, “I’d take you with me, Dean -- ”
Sam’s glad he can’t see the look on Dean’s face when Dean says, “Fuck you,” straight to their father, just listens to the uneven clump of his gait as he sways away. Hears nothing but the rain.
Sam walks home, stomach heavy. Takes the long way. Dean and Dad, they beat him there by probably hours. By the time Sam gets home they’re stalemated, watching the game with a cold one cracked. Dad twisting the antenna trying to get a signal. Dean eyeballs Sam when he comes in, the line of his brow furrowed, unreadable. Sam feels stupid for not noticing before, but even the boxes with Dean’s name on them are marked California.
***
Sam wants to run. Wants to go hide up in his tent until registration, orientation, midterms and finals are all past. Wants to roll down to the highway and just stick out his thumb with a sign that says Anywhere.
He stays, underfoot, getting in Dean’s way until they’re tripping over each other and Dean has to reinstate the three-feet-away rule from when he was relearning how to walk. Sam helps him cook dinner, grabs the remote for him; Dean rolls his eyes at Sam and shoves him halfheartedly away or ruffles his hair. Sam feels selfish, feels like the baby of the family for the first time in a long time. Remembers how he used to hate that, and when he would’ve given anything to get it back.
Sam pours over apartment listings in Palo Alto. Never thought about it, never wanted to think about what Dean would do if Sam left him, alone with Dad.
Dad. He bulls through the next few months like they’re trying to escape from him, either dumb to the look on Dean’s face or just pretending he is. He talks about California like it’s gonna be some great adventure instead of Sam going to class, and then coming home. Doesn’t talk about his own plans. Sam starts to hate him.
Until. Rainy day, cooped up inside. Dean’s laying on the couch bouncing a tennis ball off the wall, hollars, “Bring me a sandwich!” Sam rolls his eyes. Out of habit he makes a plate for his Dad but Dad’s nowhere to be found. Sam looks upstairs, on the front porch, back porch, and is just starting to think fuck it when he clatters down the stairs to check the basement.
Sam freezes, plate in hand. Dad’s down there, his hands full of pictures that spill from a rusty old tool box. He’s sitting on the cold concrete, back braced against the wall, lost in whatever world exists in those photos. Sam’s never seen them. He holds his breath, watches his Dad swipe a hand roughly down his face.
The stair creaks under his foot. Dad looks up, eyebrows raised, and smiles to see him. “C’mere, Sammy,” he says. “Got a present for you.”
Sam goes slowly, like Dad’s gonna jump up and pop him one right in the gut. Sets the plate down and Dad soft-pitches something small at him, something that chimes when it hits his outstretched palm. Keys. Sam just looks at them, at his Dad. Dad’s eyes are puffy like he hasn’t slept, like he does know what his boys are thinking. “You’re gonna need a good car in California,” Dad says, “Something you can pick up a girl with on a Friday night.”
“What about you?” Sam asks, brow furrowed.
Dad shrugs. “Pickin’ up this truck tomorrow, real beast. You take good care of that car, Sam, otherwise Dean’ll kick your ass.” His smile’s sad when he says Dean’s name, barely a twitch of the lips.
Sam wants to say Dean hates that car, but he can’t do anything but shut his mouth and nod, a lump in his throat so thick it’s like to choke him. He wishes Dad would’ve just asked Dean.
***
No matter what the day outside looks like it’s always cold in the guts of the garage where Dad and Dean work. Sam’s sitting on a paint-spattered moving blanket trying to read about Reganomics while Dean cusses at the 69 Camaro he’s buried elbow-deep in. Sam’s being as still as he can -- Dean’s got a smile on his face for the first time in weeks, his voice pitched low like he’s singing the damn thing a love song every time he calls it a fucking crap-asshole piece of shit.
They both startle when a voice rings through the empty garage: “Hello?” and “Hey, anybody here?”
It’s a girl, long dark hair and jeans like they’re painted on and Dean throws a glance at Sam; Sam raises an eyebrow, grins. Dean clears his throat, straightens up. “Over here, Jenny,” he says.
Sam can’t see much from the floor; can tell she’s smiling in the way she says, “Hi,” hips tilted towards Dean. “Just came to see how my car was doing.” Dean leans back against the Camaro, wipes the grease off his fingers.
“Well,” he says, “Not gonna lie, you screwed that clutch up pretty good. But for you? I’ll have her ready by tomorrow night.” Sam can just see the quirk of Dean’s grin he throws her way. “Maybe we can take her out for a spin.”
“I’d love that,” she laughs.
Dean’s blushing when she leaves, freckles dark against his cheeks. He throws the greasy towel at the smirk on Sam’s face, claps him a good one upside the head. Mutters, “Aw, shut up, Sammy.”
***
Sam sits in the drivers seat, hands at the two and ten. Flexes his fingers around black leather. Remembers being six years old on Dad’s lap, vroom vroom vroom! little fingers on the steering wheel under Dad’s hands and the rush of the highway roaring by out the window.
The door creaks as it opens, sighs as it shuts. Sam runs his hands over the gleaming black steel, tracing the curves of fender and fin. He still sees Dean behind the wheel, driving for years already when he hit sixteen. The way he used to jump into the car and crank the stereo, feet tapping impatiently at the way his family trailed behind him. Dean’s motorcycle always seemed wrong to Sam: no Led Zeppelin, no toy soldier stuck in the backseat ashtray. Just the roar of the engine.
Sam feels unaccountably guilty. He looks for Dean, needs him even though as always Sam’s got nothing to say. The house is almost empty, boxes in neat rows where a bookshelf used to be. Faded patches on the walls, maps and autopsy reports folded neatly and put away. Already nobody lives here.
Sam follows Dean outside, down the creek, the shuffle of his gait clear enough in the dry leaves under the full moon. A can of beer thrown to the side of the trail. Sam tracks him more than a mile before he finds Dean’s legs abandoned helter-skelter among the rocks that line the shore. He stoops to grab them, catches himself before he does something stupid like hug them to his chest. Heart beating double time, how far could Dean have gotten without them? Deepest part of the creek, turns into a wide river when the winter rains hit them. Deep enough to drown in even now with summer courting fall, counting down its final days. Dean’s shirt and pants lie crumpled at the water’s edge, one sleeve waving in the current.
There’s a shoal a hundred yards down where he used to sit in the summer and it’s there Sam finds Dean. Dean with hands braced behind him looking up at the sky, water up to his chest. Sam splashes halfway there before he thinks to take his shoes off and throw them, soaked, to the shore. River rocks sharp under his feet.
Dean watches Sam fight the current out, his face slack. Dean’s been out there long enough that he’s shivering, goose pimples down his arms and nipples pebbled against the night air. Shoulders drawn in on himself.
“You okay?” Sam says finally, winded, inadequate. Dean snorts a laugh, sighs to himself. Looks down at the creek winding away through the trees. He’s got his knee up, just a ripple under the water, and if Sam didn’t know. He wouldn’t.
“What,” Dean says, one eyebrow arched. “I don’t look okay?”
Author: essenceofmeanin
Rating: Mature (Thematically dark, some sexuality.)
Word Count: 4,000
A/N: For roque_clasique -- I bet you thought you'd never get this. Dean with permanent mobility issues, GEDs, and Stanford. Oh -- and Sammy, too.
The details of the case never mattered, Sam decides later. Like how or who you lost your virginity to never matters. Just because you’ll remember it for the rest of your life doesn’t mean it means anything.
Sam never knew them anyway. Sam is thirteen years old when it happens, home safe eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and reading Watership Down by candle because some summer storm blew in and knocked their electricity clean out. Dad’s notes are scattered everywhere -- accident reports, seventy year old black and whites of railway men looking like they’re doing nothing much but staring at the body on the ground. Eight Found Dead in Passenger Train.
It’s just a chill down his spine, a breath on the back of his neck but Sam knows, swears to Dad later that he knew the second Dean got hurt.
Sam falls asleep with his cheek on the windowsill right around the time the birds start singing. Sometime after that, Dad comes home. Shakes Sam awake, says “Get your coat.” He’s quiet the whole ride, swallowing over and over and Sam wants to tell him to quit it, Dad, but doesn’t want to be the first to talk. At the hospital, the lady at the desk says, “Hello, Sam. It’ll be just a minute and then you can see your brother.”
They take him to Dean’s room. Dad grabs Sam’s shoulder when they pass the threshold like one or both of them might fall over, fingers digging into his skin. Sam doesn’t want to look so he looks at Dad instead, waits. “It pushed him,” Dad starts. Sam sees a nothing where Dean’s right foot should be, an even bigger nothing under his left knee. Right elbow splinted. IVs swarming around him. But it’s the white sheet that always sticks with him.
***
Sam isn’t there when Dean wakes up. Dad tells him later that Dean doesn’t take it well.
When Sam comes to see his brother he’s worried that Dean’ll still be mad at him. He and Sam, they fought over whose turn it was to wash the dishes right before they left for the hunt, and Dean had just rolled his eyes at Sam as he walked out the door. Sam had glared into his book as the Impala rumbled away.
He wants Dean to still be mad at him. Wants Dean to crack a joke, who’s got two thumbs and no feet? but when Sam walks in Dean doesn’t say a word. Just looks at Sam with flared nostrils and eyes sharp enough to cut somebody.
Sam sits down next to Dean on the bed like he’s trying to sneak up on him, slower than he’s ever moved in his life. He curls himself up against the arm without a cast, close enough to feel the way Dean’s shaking. Little tremors, like he’s cold.
***
The look on Dean’s face every time he’s in the wheelchair.
They bankrupt Donny Henderson with therapy, and later, prosthetics. Dad works two jobs in town to make enough money to run that well dry, pay the minimum balance and keep up appearances. Hunting derailed. Sam stays Sam Winchester< when school starts in the fall. He’d been looking forward to high school, too.
Now. Dean fights Dad for the first time in forever, Sam the good son. Dad doesn’t understand why Dean won’t go back --
“-- Because I don’t want to, Dad --”
-- but Sam does. The look on Dean’s face every time they had to go to a new school. The way he squared his shoulders, put his chest out before walking in those doors. Never liked having to prove himself, wasn’t ever very good at it. Stuck out like a sore thumb even back when he could still wear Dad’s beat up steel toes.
Sam drags Dad with him to school. Explains most of what happened to their academic advisers. Dad a fuming, defeated presence next to him, there to sign the paperwork and let Sam do the talking. Doesn’t understand, never graduated either. When Sam brings Dean the GED packet, the study guides, there’s a flicker of surprise in Dean’s eyes. He smiles, the first Sam’s seen since before.
Dean aces the test. His cast comes off. The first thing he does to celebrate is clean every single gun they own.
***
It takes Dean a long time to learn how to walk.
He hates physical therapy. Misses half his sessions but Sam knows he’s doing the exercises by himself. Dad says to leave him be, so Sam stops counting the times he’s found Dean fallen.
Dean sits on the toilet, Sam on the ground with the wash cloth, the hydrogen peroxide. The floor under his butt is cold through thin cotton pajamas. Dean hisses when Sam swabs at the raw red flesh at the end of his legs, says, “Hey, maybe I should take up tap dancing.” He doesn’t laugh. Sam doesn’t see why not -- Peg Leg Bates was on the Ed Sullivan show twenty one times. Dean just grimaces at that one. He shoves Sam away when Sam tries to help him into the wheelchair and tells him he’s gotta keep off the prosthetics for a little while.
“Y’know what, I changed your diapers and shit, Sammy, don’t tell me what to do.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Dude, you were like five when I still needed diapers.” Dean snorts. The bathroom’s too narrow for Dean to storm off. Sam keeps his eyes to the ceiling as Dean three-point turns out of there. He goes to get the ice packs, but Dean’s locked his door again.
***
Dean walks like he’s drunk. To be fair, for a while, he is.
It starts with him and Dad, out on the porch. Under the car. Shooting beer cans out in the fields. Sam doesn’t know what they talk about, all the hours they’re out there, but sometimes when Dad’s making dinner he sets the plates down hard enough to rattle the table. Case reports start showing up. Fatal Shooting in Suburban Home, obituaries. Sam throws them away, furious, thinks they’re Dad’s until he comes home from school to find Dean pouring over birth records from before the Civil War. Whiskey by his elbow. Eyes glassy, one brow raised when Sam walks in. A dare, maybe.
Not for Sam, though. Dean gets a job in town at the shop where Dad works, lack of legs no matter when you’re under a car. Dad starts taking off on weekends. Sam corners Dad on his way out the door, duffel swung over his shoulder and leather jacket on.
“I thought we were done.”
“Job’s never done,” Dad says, lips just a thin line.
“But Dean --”
“I’m doing this for your brother, Sam,” Dad says, leaves without looking back.
Dean’s stacking dishes in the kitchen. “Go do your homework,” he says.
***
Sam starts running. Literally, at first.
It’s a dirty secret, because he still can. He walks away from the house for as long as he’s able, then he opens throttle and runs. Wants to think about nothing, just the rasp of his breath in his ears and the slap of his sneakers on dirt. Runs until he’s dizzy, knees shaking, wants to puke.
Sam turns sixteen. He starts staying away. They live on the outskirts of town, their cabin an island of light before the forest begins. Strange not to have moved in years and Sam knows they’re all itching for it. Dean buys a motorcycle, outfits it with Klicktronic handlebar gear-shifters and brake mods. Dad talked about hand controls for the Impala but Dean wanted none of it. Barely goes near that car. Far as Sam knows all three of them scatter every chance they get.
Sam builds a lean-to. A camp. Stocks it with textbooks, novels. Lord of the Flies, The Odyssey. Spends days out there the rain pattering on tarp his only company. Biology: Earth Science. Introduction to Geology. Every one of them dotted with mold after a few weeks, pages bloated and warped under the water weight. Sam drinks river water, heedless of the parasites he learns about. He drinks a bottle of whiskey he’d stolen from his family. He lives on peanut butter and bread, chewing pine needles for vitamin C.
Dean, suspicious, when he comes home. “Where the fuck you go all the time?” he asks, knows full well he can’t ever follow Sam again.
***
Sam gets a girlfriend. He brings her home one weekend when he’s sure nobody’ll be around. He even cleans up a little bit first -- takes down the map scrawled over with red x’s marking the spots of suspicious house fires, does some dishes. Puts all the empty beer bottles into a bag and tosses them out by the wood shed. He fixes up the busted antennae and they make out and watch some schlocky B-movie about space aliens. She jerks him off laying there on the couch and when he comes all over her fingers there’s not a thought in his head; feels so grateful he wants to cry.
He runs his palms down her shoulders, over her back and down her ass, hauls her in close. Waits for his heart to stop beating so hard. She looks at the wheelchair folded up in the corner and asks him, “Does your grandpa live with you?”
***
Sam has a perfect attendance record since Dean’s accident. He dozes during classes but almost every test and assignment comes back stamped with that red A. He likes the tedium of the textbooks, not the drone of the teacher’s voice.
It’s a bit of a surprise when his AP Chem teacher asks him to stay after last bell. Dean wants him home ASAP, always gets testy when summer starts to roll around, and that’s what he’s thinking about when Mr. Welsh starts handing him scholarship application papers instead of telling him off for sleeping again. He’s even got a speech prepared, You’re a bright young man, Sam, and I’d hate to see that potential wasted kind of thing. I know your family situation is difficult but there’s a network of support available for you.
Sam wants to laugh. College. It’d never come up before.
The walk home feels like a dream; spring sunshine warm on his face and the birds singing from the branches of green trees. Unreal, like some kind of movie.
Real is Dean standing in the kitchen making Sam a sandwich, still awkward and sideways on the prosthetics even after all these years. He and Sam take their plate of turkey’n’cheese and a beer apiece and go sit on the back porch overlooking the creek. Dean throws rocks in the water, never mind the crawdads. Dinner’s a pile of crumbs on the plate before they say a word.
“Sammy,” Dean says. He pulls out his pack of Luckies, packs one against a fingernail taptaptap before lighting it, takes a drag. Sam waits. He says, “You ever think about hunting?”
“No,” Sam says. “Thinking about college.”
Dean snorts. “That so,” he says.
***
Sam is cold. It’s rained during the night, the chill seeped into the tent and his ancient sleeping bag thin as paper against the wet earth. He crawls out on hands and knees. The forest floor is full of webs white as puddles against the underbrush, dewy and abandoned. There’s a plastic bag in the rough middle of his camp, double knotted to keep the water out. Inside it is a banana, a clean pair of socks, and a note that says come home already.
Sam eats the banana on the hike back to the cabin, wonders if his dad always knew where he was. The temperature rises with the sun until Sam is wiping the sweat off his face. He smells like mold, damp from the woods.
Dean’s smoking on the porch when Sam slumps down the driveway, boots on but pants rolled up to the knee in the heat. Sometimes it still jars Sam, to see that gleam of metal. Dean lights the next cigarette off the first, says, “Hey Sammy,” as Sam climbs the stairs.
Dad’s inside, papers spread out around him and it startles Sam to see his name on a few when usually it’s the walking dead that concern his dad. When he looks they’re scholarship papers, application essay outlines. Financial aid pamphlets. Dad is barefoot in a grease stained wife-beater, a cold glass of water in front of him leaving wet rings on papers that might be important. Sam picks up the glass, drains it in a swallow.
Dad says, “You gonna help me fill all these out or what?”
***
A long summer and a longer fall pass, and each of them celebrate bleak anniversaries in their own way. Dean’s nearly intolerable, grim and prone to throwing punches. Sam drags him out to go fishing, tells Dean jokes he heard at school. Sometimes it works. Sam takes the PSAT, and the SAT. Gets his drivers license. Gets accepted to Stanford. Dean takes off for a week, kicks up a cloud of dust under his bike when he peels out. He nearly gets fired for it. Dad breaks out the good stuff to celebrate though, first college kid in the family and all.
That’s about when it starts. It takes Sam a while to notice it because it’s not like they talk to each other anyway, the Winchester language being mainly composed of long silences. Dean and Dad though, they don’t need to talk.
Dad starts making preparations even though there’s months to go before Sam leaves. Slowly all the stuff they’d accumulated over the past -- has it been four years already? -- four years starts to disappear until they’re down to just a few plates and cups and Dad says those are going to California for Sam’s first apartment. Dad’s moving on too, walks every day like more weight’s off his shoulders.
***
Sam’s waiting for Dean and Dad to get off work. He sits outside under the shop’s awning, hiding from the rain. They’ve been arguing over a stubborn carburetor long enough that everybody else has gone home, long enough that they’d forgotten about Sam if they knew he was there in the first place. Sam’s lost in Geek Love, doesn’t even hear the raindrops pinging off the roof until --
“No, Dad --”
-- his senses fine tuned as ever to the sound of his family’s raised voices. He puts the book carefully away into his backpack.
“Dean, we’ve talked this near to death --”
“-- and you’re not getting it, you just think --”
Sam can hear the whistle of Dad’s sigh through his old busted nose. “You know this is what’s best for you and Sammy both and that’s final.”
There’s the crash of a thrown wrench. The slap of a hand against the peeling hood.
“Don’t you think I sacrificed enough for this family?” Dean hisses, voice clotted in his throat. “My whole goddamn life, Dad, my --”
Sam hears his Dad’s boots scrape against the ground, maybe standing, maybe coming next to Dean, a heavy hand on his shoulder when he says, “I’d take you with me, Dean -- ”
Sam’s glad he can’t see the look on Dean’s face when Dean says, “Fuck you,” straight to their father, just listens to the uneven clump of his gait as he sways away. Hears nothing but the rain.
Sam walks home, stomach heavy. Takes the long way. Dean and Dad, they beat him there by probably hours. By the time Sam gets home they’re stalemated, watching the game with a cold one cracked. Dad twisting the antenna trying to get a signal. Dean eyeballs Sam when he comes in, the line of his brow furrowed, unreadable. Sam feels stupid for not noticing before, but even the boxes with Dean’s name on them are marked California.
***
Sam wants to run. Wants to go hide up in his tent until registration, orientation, midterms and finals are all past. Wants to roll down to the highway and just stick out his thumb with a sign that says Anywhere.
He stays, underfoot, getting in Dean’s way until they’re tripping over each other and Dean has to reinstate the three-feet-away rule from when he was relearning how to walk. Sam helps him cook dinner, grabs the remote for him; Dean rolls his eyes at Sam and shoves him halfheartedly away or ruffles his hair. Sam feels selfish, feels like the baby of the family for the first time in a long time. Remembers how he used to hate that, and when he would’ve given anything to get it back.
Sam pours over apartment listings in Palo Alto. Never thought about it, never wanted to think about what Dean would do if Sam left him, alone with Dad.
Dad. He bulls through the next few months like they’re trying to escape from him, either dumb to the look on Dean’s face or just pretending he is. He talks about California like it’s gonna be some great adventure instead of Sam going to class, and then coming home. Doesn’t talk about his own plans. Sam starts to hate him.
Until. Rainy day, cooped up inside. Dean’s laying on the couch bouncing a tennis ball off the wall, hollars, “Bring me a sandwich!” Sam rolls his eyes. Out of habit he makes a plate for his Dad but Dad’s nowhere to be found. Sam looks upstairs, on the front porch, back porch, and is just starting to think fuck it when he clatters down the stairs to check the basement.
Sam freezes, plate in hand. Dad’s down there, his hands full of pictures that spill from a rusty old tool box. He’s sitting on the cold concrete, back braced against the wall, lost in whatever world exists in those photos. Sam’s never seen them. He holds his breath, watches his Dad swipe a hand roughly down his face.
The stair creaks under his foot. Dad looks up, eyebrows raised, and smiles to see him. “C’mere, Sammy,” he says. “Got a present for you.”
Sam goes slowly, like Dad’s gonna jump up and pop him one right in the gut. Sets the plate down and Dad soft-pitches something small at him, something that chimes when it hits his outstretched palm. Keys. Sam just looks at them, at his Dad. Dad’s eyes are puffy like he hasn’t slept, like he does know what his boys are thinking. “You’re gonna need a good car in California,” Dad says, “Something you can pick up a girl with on a Friday night.”
“What about you?” Sam asks, brow furrowed.
Dad shrugs. “Pickin’ up this truck tomorrow, real beast. You take good care of that car, Sam, otherwise Dean’ll kick your ass.” His smile’s sad when he says Dean’s name, barely a twitch of the lips.
Sam wants to say Dean hates that car, but he can’t do anything but shut his mouth and nod, a lump in his throat so thick it’s like to choke him. He wishes Dad would’ve just asked Dean.
***
No matter what the day outside looks like it’s always cold in the guts of the garage where Dad and Dean work. Sam’s sitting on a paint-spattered moving blanket trying to read about Reganomics while Dean cusses at the 69 Camaro he’s buried elbow-deep in. Sam’s being as still as he can -- Dean’s got a smile on his face for the first time in weeks, his voice pitched low like he’s singing the damn thing a love song every time he calls it a fucking crap-asshole piece of shit.
They both startle when a voice rings through the empty garage: “Hello?” and “Hey, anybody here?”
It’s a girl, long dark hair and jeans like they’re painted on and Dean throws a glance at Sam; Sam raises an eyebrow, grins. Dean clears his throat, straightens up. “Over here, Jenny,” he says.
Sam can’t see much from the floor; can tell she’s smiling in the way she says, “Hi,” hips tilted towards Dean. “Just came to see how my car was doing.” Dean leans back against the Camaro, wipes the grease off his fingers.
“Well,” he says, “Not gonna lie, you screwed that clutch up pretty good. But for you? I’ll have her ready by tomorrow night.” Sam can just see the quirk of Dean’s grin he throws her way. “Maybe we can take her out for a spin.”
“I’d love that,” she laughs.
Dean’s blushing when she leaves, freckles dark against his cheeks. He throws the greasy towel at the smirk on Sam’s face, claps him a good one upside the head. Mutters, “Aw, shut up, Sammy.”
***
Sam sits in the drivers seat, hands at the two and ten. Flexes his fingers around black leather. Remembers being six years old on Dad’s lap, vroom vroom vroom! little fingers on the steering wheel under Dad’s hands and the rush of the highway roaring by out the window.
The door creaks as it opens, sighs as it shuts. Sam runs his hands over the gleaming black steel, tracing the curves of fender and fin. He still sees Dean behind the wheel, driving for years already when he hit sixteen. The way he used to jump into the car and crank the stereo, feet tapping impatiently at the way his family trailed behind him. Dean’s motorcycle always seemed wrong to Sam: no Led Zeppelin, no toy soldier stuck in the backseat ashtray. Just the roar of the engine.
Sam feels unaccountably guilty. He looks for Dean, needs him even though as always Sam’s got nothing to say. The house is almost empty, boxes in neat rows where a bookshelf used to be. Faded patches on the walls, maps and autopsy reports folded neatly and put away. Already nobody lives here.
Sam follows Dean outside, down the creek, the shuffle of his gait clear enough in the dry leaves under the full moon. A can of beer thrown to the side of the trail. Sam tracks him more than a mile before he finds Dean’s legs abandoned helter-skelter among the rocks that line the shore. He stoops to grab them, catches himself before he does something stupid like hug them to his chest. Heart beating double time, how far could Dean have gotten without them? Deepest part of the creek, turns into a wide river when the winter rains hit them. Deep enough to drown in even now with summer courting fall, counting down its final days. Dean’s shirt and pants lie crumpled at the water’s edge, one sleeve waving in the current.
There’s a shoal a hundred yards down where he used to sit in the summer and it’s there Sam finds Dean. Dean with hands braced behind him looking up at the sky, water up to his chest. Sam splashes halfway there before he thinks to take his shoes off and throw them, soaked, to the shore. River rocks sharp under his feet.
Dean watches Sam fight the current out, his face slack. Dean’s been out there long enough that he’s shivering, goose pimples down his arms and nipples pebbled against the night air. Shoulders drawn in on himself.
“You okay?” Sam says finally, winded, inadequate. Dean snorts a laugh, sighs to himself. Looks down at the creek winding away through the trees. He’s got his knee up, just a ripple under the water, and if Sam didn’t know. He wouldn’t.
“What,” Dean says, one eyebrow arched. “I don’t look okay?”