SPN FIC - All the Way from Goodbye
Remember Improperly Socialized? And Just a Saturday Afternoon? Scranton, Pennsylvania, spring 1999. Sam's got a girlfriend -- but as usual, the Winchesters are getting ready to leave town. A few months ago blucasbabe asked about Sam and Connie's last date, and bless her for her patience. Last night, with the aid of a big jolt of caffiene, the Muse finally provided the setup, and RL provided a little quiet time to write it down. Is there angst? Butofcourse. The bookends are Hope Verse, sometime around 2027, at Thompson Lake, a couple years after the painful and much-lamented bailing of Sam's wife. (But reading this without giving two hoots about Hope Verse? Very do-able.) Hope you enjoy.
CHARACTERS: Sam (age 16), Dean (age 20), Connie Dulay (OFC)
GENRE: Het
RATING: PG, for a bit of language
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 3990 words
ALL THE WAY FROM GOODBYE
By Carol Davis
"Hey. Sleeping Beauty."
There's no point in ignoring Dean; he'll just start throwing things. Wadded-up pieces of paper. Paper clips. Little pads of Post-It notes. He threw a DVD case once and Sam chased him all the way out onto the dock for doing it, because it clipped him in the face and left a bruise. That part of Dean's always going to be five years old, Sam figures. Dean thinks it's funny - will never stop thinking it's funny - but it sets a bad example for the kids.
"What?" Sam mumbles from the couch, where he's been trying to drift off into a nap for the past half an hour.
"Come look."
"Later."
"No. Seriously. Come look."
"I'm trying to sleep."
"It's two o'clock in the afternoon, you sorry-ass loser. I'm telling you, you want to see this. Move your gigantic carcass over here."
"Dean…"
No, there's no point in ignoring his brother - but occasionally Dean will relent. With a grunt meant to show that he's extending himself way beyond the call of duty Dean unplugs the laptop and totes it over to the couch, crouches down and turns the screen so Sam can see it. "Look," he insists. "It's her, right?"
"What?"
He should have gone upstairs. Really. He knows better than to try to sleep with Dean anywhere nearby.
"Jesus, Sam. Come on."
Sam squints. He has to reach out to tilt the screen to get rid of the reflection from the window, but the image still isn't clear, so he surrenders and hauls himself to a sit, then takes the computer from Dean and rests it on his thighs. His muzzy brain - sleep was so close - takes another moment to tell him what he's looking at: the online version of a newspaper article. McNamara, Dulay Win Contested Seats, the headline says.
"It's her, isn't it?" Dean asks again.
Her?
Sam squints at the side-by-side pair of photos accompanying the article. One of them's a guy, so that's clearly not who Dean's concerned with. The other one…
Connie Jean Dulay, the caption says.
His heart flutters for a moment, as if he's sixteen again.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "It's her."
~~~~~~~~~~
Trusting Dean isn't the best move Connie's parents could make. If they actually knew Dean, Sam figures, they wouldn't trust him to take their daughter across the street, let alone halfway across rural Pennsylvania in search of a carnival Sam read about on the Internet. Then again, without Dean's help there'd be no going to the carnival at all, because Sam's sixteen, Connie's sixteen, and letting two sixteen-year-olds drive halfway across Pennsylvania by themselves doesn't make sense even to Dean.
"In my car?" he said when Sam broached the subject. "Surely you jest."
"I'm a good driver."
Whether Sam is or he isn't cuts no ice with anybody. Not Dean and not Dad, not even Connie herself. He didn't bother testing the idea on Connie's parents; he's not that big an idiot, Dean's protests to the contrary notwithstanding. So he's stuck with a chauffeur who's so obsequious around the Dulays it would put Eddie Haskell to shame.
Rather than seating Connie alongside his brother, or alone in the backseat, Sam ushers her into the back and climbs in beside her. Dean's already behind the wheel, grinning at the two of them in the rearview mirror. "No fooling around back there," he cautions, which makes Connie cough out a nervous giggle. Her parents like Dean, but Connie goes them one step better - she pretty much thinks he walks on water, which makes it a mystery that she never tries to flirt with him, or attract his attention in any real way. Dean flirts with her, of course, because it's beyond him not to flirt with anybody in possession of two X chromosomes, but all it makes her do is blush and inch closer to Sam.
They've got a two-hour ride ahead of them (it'd be three with anybody at the wheel but Dean), and if Dean decides to make a flirt-fest out of it, Connie's going to end up in Sam's lap.
Which… No, that wouldn't work.
That…wouldn't…
Shit, he thinks.
Still grinning, Dean keys the engine to life. He left the cassette player turned on, and it, too, springs to life, at a volume that makes Sam's eyes start to water. "Dude!" he bellows, trying to make himself heard over what Dean insists is Metallica's finest. As far as Sam's concerned, Metallica doesn't have a finest, particularly not at a level that's going to make his eardrums disintegrate. "DEAN!" he screams.
Dean dials down the noise and gives Sam a withering look over his shoulder. "Dude. Please. Got it under control."
Beside Sam, Connie is blinking rapidly. "Are you okay?" Sam asks.
"Course she's okay," Dean announces. "Aren't you, Connie-banonnie?"
"Sure," Connie squeaks.
"Okay, then!" Dean chirps, drops the car into reverse and backs them out of the Dulays' driveway in a smooth, fast arc.
Connie-banonnie? Sam thinks.
Dean is so unrelentingly chipper as they head out of Scranton that Sam can come up with only two explanations: either his brother's been possessed by Kathie Lee Gifford, or there's a hidden camera somewhere in the Impala and Dean is auditioning for his own show on the Disney Channel. He's not drunk, and he's not high. Come to think of it, Dean's not this cheerful when he is high. He's never this cheerful unless he's got an ulterior motive, and what that might be, Sam's afraid to guess.
When Dean suggests playing Farmer in the Dell, Sam asks him to stop the car.
"Farmer in the Dell?" Connie asks quietly.
It's a game Pastor Jim taught them, back when Sam was - what, three? It involves spotting animals - real ones, or pictures on billboards. It helped them pass the time on long road trips when they were little, and was something Sam could manage without help, since at three he was unable to read license plates.
"Dean," Sam says. "Pull over."
Since Dean seems disinclined to disagree with anything, he swoops the car into the parking lot of the gas station they were about to pass. They've only been on the road for 45 minutes, but he clearly thinks Sam needs to use the bathroom, because he steers around to the side of the building and nods at a battered door marked MEN.
"Haul ass, Sammy," he announces. "Time's a-wasting."
"I don't -"
"I probably could," Connie murmurs.
She seems to be okay with using a rest room that looks like it needs to be swept by a Hazmat team. Using the bushes alongside the road seems like a more sensible option, but that's tough for girls. And there's probably no way she'd try, not with Dean and Sam nearby. Maybe not even if she were alone. Sam watches her scoot off toward the door marked WOMEN, wondering if he should go stand guard outside.
"Thought you had to go," Dean comments.
"No."
"Then why'd we stop?"
"Because -" Sam hauls in a long breath. "Why are you acting like this? I keep expecting you to start singing Sesame Street songs."
Dean turns around in his seat and fixes Sam with a wounded look.
"Farmer in the Dell?" Sam says.
"Dude. You objected to my music. You got a third choice? I'm making an effort, here."
"It's awkward."
Dean heaves a sigh, then turns back around and settles into his seat. He starts to stare at something in the rearview, but whether it's himself or Sam or something else entirely isn't clear. "It's the occasion that's awkward, Sam. This whole 'goodbye' thing."
"You think I should just bail?"
"Yeah. I kind of do."
"I can't do that, Dean."
"She's gonna cry. You know that."
When Sam doesn't respond, Dean shifts to look at him again and raises a brow. It's a question that demands an answer. "Yeah, I know," Sam sighs, leaving out the fact that he might very well cry too. Dean's taken bailing on girls to a fine art, but it's not something Sam's ever been good at. It doesn't seem fair. Doesn't seem like the right thing to do.
"You didn't tell her, I take it."
"No. Not yet."
"You can't. Not now. She's gonna go through the whole day with that hangin' over her head like a freakin' anvil."
"I know."
"Wait 'til we get home."
There's something about that word that blades its way into Sam, slices right into his gut. He grimaces, turns away, stares almost unblinking out the window at the road. "Where's that?" he asks bitterly. "Do we ever get to know where that is?"
Dean doesn't answer, of course, because there is no answer, and maybe never will be. The two of them sit in uncomfortable silence until Connie comes back to the car, flapping water off her hands in a way that says no, there weren't any paper towels in the rest room. "I'm good," she says. "Thanks, Dean."
And they keep going.
The second half of the journey's a lot quieter than the first. It'd be peaceful, relaxing, except that Dean was right about that anvil. Connie knows the Winchesters are leaving soon, but Sam hasn't even hinted about when. Hasn't given her any reason to suspect it's tomorrow. It would have been Thursday - two days ago - because that was the last day of school, and it even could've been Wednesday, because Thursday was one of those stupid two-hour things where you go in, turn in your books, pick up your report card, clean out your locker. That was the original plan, to hit the road as soon as school was over, but Wednesday morning Dad said, "Sunday," and then walked out of the apartment.
Dean had something to do with that, Sam thinks.
Maybe Dean should have stayed out of it. Maybe they should have left Scranton three days ago. Maybe Sam should have followed his brother's example and disappeared, no explanation, no excuse, no goodbye, no nothing.
Then he looks at Connie and thinks No. He can't hurt her, not that way. Can't do it without at least bearing witness to the results.
Can't.
She turns to him and smiles, her eyes cast down a little bit, so she's looking at him through her lashes.
It makes him feel like crap.
They've almost reached the carnival grounds before he manages to convince himself that yes, this can be a good day. Can be what he originally planned, what he cooked up in his head when he found the advertisement on the 'Net. The weather is certainly cooperating: blue sky, not too hot or too cold, no sign of rain. He hasn't been able to do something like this, he realizes, hasn't been able to spend a whole day having fun, for a long time. The girl he likes is here. His brother (who he's trying very hard to go on liking) is here. Dad's not here, but maybe that's just as well; he and Sam have done nothing but butt heads for months. Which isn't Sam's fault, at all. All he wants to do, all he's ever wanted to do, is stay someplace for a while. Find someplace to live, like Uncle Bobby did, like Pastor Jim did, and stay there. Have a home. Have some friends.
That's all he wants.
But tomorrow, they move on. They load their stuff into the car again and head for a place Dad hasn't named. For all Sam knows, Dad hasn't even decided where they're going.
"Oh, look!" Connie cries out. "There it is!"
She's beaming and pointing, like a little kid. Sam looks up front, out past the nose of the car, and catches a glimpse of Dean in the rearview. Dean's expression is a warning. Don't screw this up.
Sam moves his lips. Okay.
He'll try, anyway.
Parking is all in an open field, on the grass. Dean slows the car down to a crawl and bumps it gently over the uneven ground until they find a spot at the end of a long row. The moment he shifts into park Connie flings open the door on her side and scrambles out like she's been in a Turkish prison for two or three years. What caused that, Sam isn't sure; either way, she's bouncing around on the balls of her feet, head tipped back so the sun falls on her face. He and Dean exchange a glance as they climb out on the other side. They didn't broach the subject before they left Scranton, but Sam's suddenly full of a need for Dean to not tag along all day, to not be his and Connie's shadow.
With a small huff of amusement Dean walks around to the back of the car and unlocks the trunk. To Sam's bewilderment he pulls out a whole collection of stuff, none of which Sam saw him load in there: a folding chaise lounge, an enormous and very battered boombox, and a red-and-white Igloo cooler.
"You kiddies go have fun," Dean announces, then, in his best E.T. voice, adds with a smirk, "I'll be right here."
"You - you're not coming?" Connie frowns.
"Got my day all planned out. Got everything I need right here. Except -" Dean turns and peers in the direction of the ticket booths. "If they got those big hot dogs in there? Get me a couple of those. With all the stuff on 'em."
"You could get your own," Sam informs him.
"Dude. Not paying seven bucks to go in there and buy hot dogs."
"We'll bring you some," Connie says.
Dean beams at her. "That's my girl."
She starts to move toward the gate, but Sam hesitates. "You're gonna lay out here on a lawn chair?"
"That would be the plan."
"That's -"
Dean raises a brow.
Yes, the vendors have foot-long hot dogs. It's only a little after ten in the morning, but Sam buys two of them and dutifully ferries them out to his brother, who's stretched out in his lawn chair, sipping a can of Mountain Dew and listening to one of his beloved tapes on the boombox. Dean accepts the hot dogs without a word, then waves Sam away, making a show of pretending Sam's no longer there. Sam walks away slowly, looking back over his shoulder every few steps.
There's a Ferris wheel, and Dean freaking loves Ferris wheels. They're an excellent platform for Dean's particular brand of idiocy.
But then, apparently, so is that lawn chair.
It's a good day. A good, long, sweet day. There are a number of rides: a merry-go-round, the octopus thing, the Ferris wheel, a chain of small cars that goes very fast backwards and upsets his and Connie's equilibrium so much that both of them take a few steps away from it, stumble, and fall to the ground, laughing. They eat hot dogs and popcorn and ice cream and drink orange soda; they go through the funhouse and the Lovers' Lane boat ride and the haunted house, and Sam stands by dutifully (but shuddering) while a tall, white-faced clown makes a balloon dachshund for Connie that pops a few minutes later. They both try their hand at the coin toss and the Wheel of Fortune and Test Your Strength, and to Sam's chagrin Connie is better at throwing darts than he is and wins herself an stuffed purple pig.
It's a good day. There's music and a lot of little kids running around shrieking and everywhere they walk, Connie holds Sam's hand.
The third time they ride the Ferris wheel, the operator stops their car at the top. That seems like a challenge. Dean would definitely see it as a challenge. Connie's got her purple pig clamped under one arm and her nose is turning pink with sunburn. She grins at him like she's half-drunk and it seems like, yeah, she's a little bit afraid of heights.
"You okay?" Sam asks.
She doesn't answer, so he kisses her, tentatively at first, then seriously when she leans in close. He makes it last until their car starts moving again. When they get back to the ground the operator grins at him, so yeah, it was definitely a challenge.
It's a good day.
The sun's still pretty high in the sky when they begin to drift toward the exit, because it's the end of June, the longest days of the year. They could stay longer; the carnival's open until eleven o'clock, but they've got that long drive back to Scranton. Two hours, even with Dean at the wheel.
Connie stops when they're still a ways short of the gate, purple pig still clamped in her armpit. It's a stupid-looking thing, Sam thinks, and he's still a little bugged that he couldn't manage to win it for her.
"I had fun," she says.
"Yeah. Me too."
Her face shifts and twitches and she looks down at the ground. She makes a small sound, a little meep, and lets go of Sam so she can press her hand to her mouth.
So she knows.
If she cries all the way back to Scranton, he thinks, he's going to want to throw himself in front of a bus.
"I -" he starts, but can't come up with anything useful to say.
"Could you -" she stammers. "Could you go out to the car? With Dean? And I'll come out in a few minutes?"
"I don't -"
"Please?"
"Sure," he says. "Okay. I guess."
She hustles away then, clutching the purple pig to her chest, heading in the direction of the PortaJohns. Sam watches until she disappears around the corner of one of the concession booths, then shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and aims for the car, trudging across the dusty, uneven ground like he's walking the Green Mile.
Dean's there in his chair, reading a copy of Guns & Ammo. He looks up when Sam approaches, and frowns. "Where's -"
"She went to the bathroom," Sam says miserably.
"You told her."
"She knew anyway."
"Shit, Sam." That sounds a little critical, a little sharp. Dean climbs up off his lawn chair and drops the magazine onto the seat. "That's - fuck it all."
Yeah, that about covers it.
Connie comes out after fifteen or twenty minutes. Her face is flushed and her hair is damp and her eyes are all puffed up. She avoids looking at both Sam and Dean as she climbs into the car and settles into the backseat with the purple pig in her lap. "You won that, huh?" Dean offers quietly as he takes hold of the car door to close it for her, and gets a nod in response.
Sam hesitates for a moment, then slides into the backseat beside her. If she shrinks away, he thinks, if she makes any response at all that says she doesn't want him to sit there, he'll go up front with Dean.
They're a half hour away from the carnival when she lays her hand on top of his.
Maybe he'll throw himself in front of that bus anyway, he thinks.
It's a long, quiet ride back to Scranton. The sun's pretty well down when Dean stops the car in front of the Dulays' house. The engine idles softly - softly, at least, for the Impala - as the three of them sit there. Then Connie leans forward, grasps Dean's shoulder, and kisses him on the cheek. "Thank you," she murmurs. She slides out of the car as if moving is painful, and a moment later Sam joins her on the sidewalk in front of the house.
Kissing her hurts more than the bus would have. Neither of them says anything. Her hand lingers in his for a second, then she runs off toward the house.
"I'm sorry, Sam," his brother says when he gets back into the car.
~~~~~~~~~~
"You believe that?" Dean says with wonder in his voice. "Ol' Connie-banonnie's a Congresswoman. That's okay to say, right? Congresswoman? Or is it 'person'? I can never keep track of that political correctness shit."
"Member of the House of Representatives," Sam says mildly.
"That's awesome, dude. Little Connie."
She looks uncomfortable in the picture. Isn't at ease with being posed, with smiling for a camera. And of course, she's not sixteen any more.
It's been almost 35 years, Sam thinks.
Thirty-five years.
Dean says things now that he never would have said back then. Maybe he never even thought them back then. But he's gotten more pragmatic as time's gone by - more willing to lay things out in the light of day. "I'm sorry, Sammy," he murmurs, still crouched alongside the sofa, and the expression on his face is much the same as it was back then, back when he'd walked side by side with Sam before they had to get in the car and leave Scranton, offering silent comfort, which was the best he could give without coming too close to betraying Dad, betraying their way of life. "You could've -"
He sighs then, and climbs to his feet. "You could've been some hot-shot power couple," he says with a note of humor in his voice that Sam knows isn't genuine; Dean doesn't think any of this is funny. "You the big-time lawyer, and her the, you know. Congressperson."
"Yeah."
"I wish -"
Sam looks up at his brother. "No. Don't wish. It is what it is, Dean. I'm not unhappy with my life."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. I have John. If things had been different -"
"Yeah," Dean says. "There is that."
Betraying Dad hasn't been an issue for a long time, but there's no changing the past. Dean seems more than a little aware of that as he offers an awkward smile, then does the little two-step that means I'm uncomfortable now, so I'm going somewhere else.
"You good?" he asks.
Sam half-nods and waves him off. A minute later he hears the screen door creak, the sign that Dean's gone outside.
She's the same, Sam thinks. You can't make any qualified judgment from one picture, especially one that's set up to illustrate something specific, and he only knew Connie Dulay for a few months, almost 35 years ago, but still - everything he sees says yes, she's the same.
She's still the girl he knew.
With a glance toward the doorway to reassure himself that he's still alone, he pulls up Google and types in her name. Finds a website with more information, more pictures, some of them casual.
Yes, she's the same.
He'd bet on that.
You never said goodbye, he thinks. That might be idiotic - after all, it's been more than three decades. But it might not be.
His heart flutters in his chest, like he's sixteen again.
It might be the wrong thing to do.
But it might not be. Dean, who knows him better than anyone else on this earth, showed him that newspaper article. Woke him up to show it to him, and it wasn't because Dean thought it was an interesting curiosity. Dean's always known what he needs, even when he doesn't know it himself. And Dean's been right here with him this past couple of years - has been here to see that alone doesn't fit Sam very well.
It's been 35 years, he thinks.
But maybe that's long enough to erase some pain.
Maybe it's long enough that Hello is the right thing to say.
He tries not to notice that his hand is trembling as he fishes his cell phone out of his pocket. Eyes still on her picture, he keys in the number that's on the website: her office. Congresswoman Dulay's office.
"Tell her it's Sam, from high school," he tells the woman who answers the phone.
"Sam?" she echoes.
"Sam," he affirms. "Ask her… Ask her if she remembers the carnival."
* * * * *
CHARACTERS: Sam (age 16), Dean (age 20), Connie Dulay (OFC)
GENRE: Het
RATING: PG, for a bit of language
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 3990 words
ALL THE WAY FROM GOODBYE
By Carol Davis
"Hey. Sleeping Beauty."
There's no point in ignoring Dean; he'll just start throwing things. Wadded-up pieces of paper. Paper clips. Little pads of Post-It notes. He threw a DVD case once and Sam chased him all the way out onto the dock for doing it, because it clipped him in the face and left a bruise. That part of Dean's always going to be five years old, Sam figures. Dean thinks it's funny - will never stop thinking it's funny - but it sets a bad example for the kids.
"What?" Sam mumbles from the couch, where he's been trying to drift off into a nap for the past half an hour.
"Come look."
"Later."
"No. Seriously. Come look."
"I'm trying to sleep."
"It's two o'clock in the afternoon, you sorry-ass loser. I'm telling you, you want to see this. Move your gigantic carcass over here."
"Dean…"
No, there's no point in ignoring his brother - but occasionally Dean will relent. With a grunt meant to show that he's extending himself way beyond the call of duty Dean unplugs the laptop and totes it over to the couch, crouches down and turns the screen so Sam can see it. "Look," he insists. "It's her, right?"
"What?"
He should have gone upstairs. Really. He knows better than to try to sleep with Dean anywhere nearby.
"Jesus, Sam. Come on."
Sam squints. He has to reach out to tilt the screen to get rid of the reflection from the window, but the image still isn't clear, so he surrenders and hauls himself to a sit, then takes the computer from Dean and rests it on his thighs. His muzzy brain - sleep was so close - takes another moment to tell him what he's looking at: the online version of a newspaper article. McNamara, Dulay Win Contested Seats, the headline says.
"It's her, isn't it?" Dean asks again.
Her?
Sam squints at the side-by-side pair of photos accompanying the article. One of them's a guy, so that's clearly not who Dean's concerned with. The other one…
Connie Jean Dulay, the caption says.
His heart flutters for a moment, as if he's sixteen again.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "It's her."
~~~~~~~~~~
Trusting Dean isn't the best move Connie's parents could make. If they actually knew Dean, Sam figures, they wouldn't trust him to take their daughter across the street, let alone halfway across rural Pennsylvania in search of a carnival Sam read about on the Internet. Then again, without Dean's help there'd be no going to the carnival at all, because Sam's sixteen, Connie's sixteen, and letting two sixteen-year-olds drive halfway across Pennsylvania by themselves doesn't make sense even to Dean.
"In my car?" he said when Sam broached the subject. "Surely you jest."
"I'm a good driver."
Whether Sam is or he isn't cuts no ice with anybody. Not Dean and not Dad, not even Connie herself. He didn't bother testing the idea on Connie's parents; he's not that big an idiot, Dean's protests to the contrary notwithstanding. So he's stuck with a chauffeur who's so obsequious around the Dulays it would put Eddie Haskell to shame.
Rather than seating Connie alongside his brother, or alone in the backseat, Sam ushers her into the back and climbs in beside her. Dean's already behind the wheel, grinning at the two of them in the rearview mirror. "No fooling around back there," he cautions, which makes Connie cough out a nervous giggle. Her parents like Dean, but Connie goes them one step better - she pretty much thinks he walks on water, which makes it a mystery that she never tries to flirt with him, or attract his attention in any real way. Dean flirts with her, of course, because it's beyond him not to flirt with anybody in possession of two X chromosomes, but all it makes her do is blush and inch closer to Sam.
They've got a two-hour ride ahead of them (it'd be three with anybody at the wheel but Dean), and if Dean decides to make a flirt-fest out of it, Connie's going to end up in Sam's lap.
Which… No, that wouldn't work.
That…wouldn't…
Shit, he thinks.
Still grinning, Dean keys the engine to life. He left the cassette player turned on, and it, too, springs to life, at a volume that makes Sam's eyes start to water. "Dude!" he bellows, trying to make himself heard over what Dean insists is Metallica's finest. As far as Sam's concerned, Metallica doesn't have a finest, particularly not at a level that's going to make his eardrums disintegrate. "DEAN!" he screams.
Dean dials down the noise and gives Sam a withering look over his shoulder. "Dude. Please. Got it under control."
Beside Sam, Connie is blinking rapidly. "Are you okay?" Sam asks.
"Course she's okay," Dean announces. "Aren't you, Connie-banonnie?"
"Sure," Connie squeaks.
"Okay, then!" Dean chirps, drops the car into reverse and backs them out of the Dulays' driveway in a smooth, fast arc.
Connie-banonnie? Sam thinks.
Dean is so unrelentingly chipper as they head out of Scranton that Sam can come up with only two explanations: either his brother's been possessed by Kathie Lee Gifford, or there's a hidden camera somewhere in the Impala and Dean is auditioning for his own show on the Disney Channel. He's not drunk, and he's not high. Come to think of it, Dean's not this cheerful when he is high. He's never this cheerful unless he's got an ulterior motive, and what that might be, Sam's afraid to guess.
When Dean suggests playing Farmer in the Dell, Sam asks him to stop the car.
"Farmer in the Dell?" Connie asks quietly.
It's a game Pastor Jim taught them, back when Sam was - what, three? It involves spotting animals - real ones, or pictures on billboards. It helped them pass the time on long road trips when they were little, and was something Sam could manage without help, since at three he was unable to read license plates.
"Dean," Sam says. "Pull over."
Since Dean seems disinclined to disagree with anything, he swoops the car into the parking lot of the gas station they were about to pass. They've only been on the road for 45 minutes, but he clearly thinks Sam needs to use the bathroom, because he steers around to the side of the building and nods at a battered door marked MEN.
"Haul ass, Sammy," he announces. "Time's a-wasting."
"I don't -"
"I probably could," Connie murmurs.
She seems to be okay with using a rest room that looks like it needs to be swept by a Hazmat team. Using the bushes alongside the road seems like a more sensible option, but that's tough for girls. And there's probably no way she'd try, not with Dean and Sam nearby. Maybe not even if she were alone. Sam watches her scoot off toward the door marked WOMEN, wondering if he should go stand guard outside.
"Thought you had to go," Dean comments.
"No."
"Then why'd we stop?"
"Because -" Sam hauls in a long breath. "Why are you acting like this? I keep expecting you to start singing Sesame Street songs."
Dean turns around in his seat and fixes Sam with a wounded look.
"Farmer in the Dell?" Sam says.
"Dude. You objected to my music. You got a third choice? I'm making an effort, here."
"It's awkward."
Dean heaves a sigh, then turns back around and settles into his seat. He starts to stare at something in the rearview, but whether it's himself or Sam or something else entirely isn't clear. "It's the occasion that's awkward, Sam. This whole 'goodbye' thing."
"You think I should just bail?"
"Yeah. I kind of do."
"I can't do that, Dean."
"She's gonna cry. You know that."
When Sam doesn't respond, Dean shifts to look at him again and raises a brow. It's a question that demands an answer. "Yeah, I know," Sam sighs, leaving out the fact that he might very well cry too. Dean's taken bailing on girls to a fine art, but it's not something Sam's ever been good at. It doesn't seem fair. Doesn't seem like the right thing to do.
"You didn't tell her, I take it."
"No. Not yet."
"You can't. Not now. She's gonna go through the whole day with that hangin' over her head like a freakin' anvil."
"I know."
"Wait 'til we get home."
There's something about that word that blades its way into Sam, slices right into his gut. He grimaces, turns away, stares almost unblinking out the window at the road. "Where's that?" he asks bitterly. "Do we ever get to know where that is?"
Dean doesn't answer, of course, because there is no answer, and maybe never will be. The two of them sit in uncomfortable silence until Connie comes back to the car, flapping water off her hands in a way that says no, there weren't any paper towels in the rest room. "I'm good," she says. "Thanks, Dean."
And they keep going.
The second half of the journey's a lot quieter than the first. It'd be peaceful, relaxing, except that Dean was right about that anvil. Connie knows the Winchesters are leaving soon, but Sam hasn't even hinted about when. Hasn't given her any reason to suspect it's tomorrow. It would have been Thursday - two days ago - because that was the last day of school, and it even could've been Wednesday, because Thursday was one of those stupid two-hour things where you go in, turn in your books, pick up your report card, clean out your locker. That was the original plan, to hit the road as soon as school was over, but Wednesday morning Dad said, "Sunday," and then walked out of the apartment.
Dean had something to do with that, Sam thinks.
Maybe Dean should have stayed out of it. Maybe they should have left Scranton three days ago. Maybe Sam should have followed his brother's example and disappeared, no explanation, no excuse, no goodbye, no nothing.
Then he looks at Connie and thinks No. He can't hurt her, not that way. Can't do it without at least bearing witness to the results.
Can't.
She turns to him and smiles, her eyes cast down a little bit, so she's looking at him through her lashes.
It makes him feel like crap.
They've almost reached the carnival grounds before he manages to convince himself that yes, this can be a good day. Can be what he originally planned, what he cooked up in his head when he found the advertisement on the 'Net. The weather is certainly cooperating: blue sky, not too hot or too cold, no sign of rain. He hasn't been able to do something like this, he realizes, hasn't been able to spend a whole day having fun, for a long time. The girl he likes is here. His brother (who he's trying very hard to go on liking) is here. Dad's not here, but maybe that's just as well; he and Sam have done nothing but butt heads for months. Which isn't Sam's fault, at all. All he wants to do, all he's ever wanted to do, is stay someplace for a while. Find someplace to live, like Uncle Bobby did, like Pastor Jim did, and stay there. Have a home. Have some friends.
That's all he wants.
But tomorrow, they move on. They load their stuff into the car again and head for a place Dad hasn't named. For all Sam knows, Dad hasn't even decided where they're going.
"Oh, look!" Connie cries out. "There it is!"
She's beaming and pointing, like a little kid. Sam looks up front, out past the nose of the car, and catches a glimpse of Dean in the rearview. Dean's expression is a warning. Don't screw this up.
Sam moves his lips. Okay.
He'll try, anyway.
Parking is all in an open field, on the grass. Dean slows the car down to a crawl and bumps it gently over the uneven ground until they find a spot at the end of a long row. The moment he shifts into park Connie flings open the door on her side and scrambles out like she's been in a Turkish prison for two or three years. What caused that, Sam isn't sure; either way, she's bouncing around on the balls of her feet, head tipped back so the sun falls on her face. He and Dean exchange a glance as they climb out on the other side. They didn't broach the subject before they left Scranton, but Sam's suddenly full of a need for Dean to not tag along all day, to not be his and Connie's shadow.
With a small huff of amusement Dean walks around to the back of the car and unlocks the trunk. To Sam's bewilderment he pulls out a whole collection of stuff, none of which Sam saw him load in there: a folding chaise lounge, an enormous and very battered boombox, and a red-and-white Igloo cooler.
"You kiddies go have fun," Dean announces, then, in his best E.T. voice, adds with a smirk, "I'll be right here."
"You - you're not coming?" Connie frowns.
"Got my day all planned out. Got everything I need right here. Except -" Dean turns and peers in the direction of the ticket booths. "If they got those big hot dogs in there? Get me a couple of those. With all the stuff on 'em."
"You could get your own," Sam informs him.
"Dude. Not paying seven bucks to go in there and buy hot dogs."
"We'll bring you some," Connie says.
Dean beams at her. "That's my girl."
She starts to move toward the gate, but Sam hesitates. "You're gonna lay out here on a lawn chair?"
"That would be the plan."
"That's -"
Dean raises a brow.
Yes, the vendors have foot-long hot dogs. It's only a little after ten in the morning, but Sam buys two of them and dutifully ferries them out to his brother, who's stretched out in his lawn chair, sipping a can of Mountain Dew and listening to one of his beloved tapes on the boombox. Dean accepts the hot dogs without a word, then waves Sam away, making a show of pretending Sam's no longer there. Sam walks away slowly, looking back over his shoulder every few steps.
There's a Ferris wheel, and Dean freaking loves Ferris wheels. They're an excellent platform for Dean's particular brand of idiocy.
But then, apparently, so is that lawn chair.
It's a good day. A good, long, sweet day. There are a number of rides: a merry-go-round, the octopus thing, the Ferris wheel, a chain of small cars that goes very fast backwards and upsets his and Connie's equilibrium so much that both of them take a few steps away from it, stumble, and fall to the ground, laughing. They eat hot dogs and popcorn and ice cream and drink orange soda; they go through the funhouse and the Lovers' Lane boat ride and the haunted house, and Sam stands by dutifully (but shuddering) while a tall, white-faced clown makes a balloon dachshund for Connie that pops a few minutes later. They both try their hand at the coin toss and the Wheel of Fortune and Test Your Strength, and to Sam's chagrin Connie is better at throwing darts than he is and wins herself an stuffed purple pig.
It's a good day. There's music and a lot of little kids running around shrieking and everywhere they walk, Connie holds Sam's hand.
The third time they ride the Ferris wheel, the operator stops their car at the top. That seems like a challenge. Dean would definitely see it as a challenge. Connie's got her purple pig clamped under one arm and her nose is turning pink with sunburn. She grins at him like she's half-drunk and it seems like, yeah, she's a little bit afraid of heights.
"You okay?" Sam asks.
She doesn't answer, so he kisses her, tentatively at first, then seriously when she leans in close. He makes it last until their car starts moving again. When they get back to the ground the operator grins at him, so yeah, it was definitely a challenge.
It's a good day.
The sun's still pretty high in the sky when they begin to drift toward the exit, because it's the end of June, the longest days of the year. They could stay longer; the carnival's open until eleven o'clock, but they've got that long drive back to Scranton. Two hours, even with Dean at the wheel.
Connie stops when they're still a ways short of the gate, purple pig still clamped in her armpit. It's a stupid-looking thing, Sam thinks, and he's still a little bugged that he couldn't manage to win it for her.
"I had fun," she says.
"Yeah. Me too."
Her face shifts and twitches and she looks down at the ground. She makes a small sound, a little meep, and lets go of Sam so she can press her hand to her mouth.
So she knows.
If she cries all the way back to Scranton, he thinks, he's going to want to throw himself in front of a bus.
"I -" he starts, but can't come up with anything useful to say.
"Could you -" she stammers. "Could you go out to the car? With Dean? And I'll come out in a few minutes?"
"I don't -"
"Please?"
"Sure," he says. "Okay. I guess."
She hustles away then, clutching the purple pig to her chest, heading in the direction of the PortaJohns. Sam watches until she disappears around the corner of one of the concession booths, then shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and aims for the car, trudging across the dusty, uneven ground like he's walking the Green Mile.
Dean's there in his chair, reading a copy of Guns & Ammo. He looks up when Sam approaches, and frowns. "Where's -"
"She went to the bathroom," Sam says miserably.
"You told her."
"She knew anyway."
"Shit, Sam." That sounds a little critical, a little sharp. Dean climbs up off his lawn chair and drops the magazine onto the seat. "That's - fuck it all."
Yeah, that about covers it.
Connie comes out after fifteen or twenty minutes. Her face is flushed and her hair is damp and her eyes are all puffed up. She avoids looking at both Sam and Dean as she climbs into the car and settles into the backseat with the purple pig in her lap. "You won that, huh?" Dean offers quietly as he takes hold of the car door to close it for her, and gets a nod in response.
Sam hesitates for a moment, then slides into the backseat beside her. If she shrinks away, he thinks, if she makes any response at all that says she doesn't want him to sit there, he'll go up front with Dean.
They're a half hour away from the carnival when she lays her hand on top of his.
Maybe he'll throw himself in front of that bus anyway, he thinks.
It's a long, quiet ride back to Scranton. The sun's pretty well down when Dean stops the car in front of the Dulays' house. The engine idles softly - softly, at least, for the Impala - as the three of them sit there. Then Connie leans forward, grasps Dean's shoulder, and kisses him on the cheek. "Thank you," she murmurs. She slides out of the car as if moving is painful, and a moment later Sam joins her on the sidewalk in front of the house.
Kissing her hurts more than the bus would have. Neither of them says anything. Her hand lingers in his for a second, then she runs off toward the house.
"I'm sorry, Sam," his brother says when he gets back into the car.
~~~~~~~~~~
"You believe that?" Dean says with wonder in his voice. "Ol' Connie-banonnie's a Congresswoman. That's okay to say, right? Congresswoman? Or is it 'person'? I can never keep track of that political correctness shit."
"Member of the House of Representatives," Sam says mildly.
"That's awesome, dude. Little Connie."
She looks uncomfortable in the picture. Isn't at ease with being posed, with smiling for a camera. And of course, she's not sixteen any more.
It's been almost 35 years, Sam thinks.
Thirty-five years.
Dean says things now that he never would have said back then. Maybe he never even thought them back then. But he's gotten more pragmatic as time's gone by - more willing to lay things out in the light of day. "I'm sorry, Sammy," he murmurs, still crouched alongside the sofa, and the expression on his face is much the same as it was back then, back when he'd walked side by side with Sam before they had to get in the car and leave Scranton, offering silent comfort, which was the best he could give without coming too close to betraying Dad, betraying their way of life. "You could've -"
He sighs then, and climbs to his feet. "You could've been some hot-shot power couple," he says with a note of humor in his voice that Sam knows isn't genuine; Dean doesn't think any of this is funny. "You the big-time lawyer, and her the, you know. Congressperson."
"Yeah."
"I wish -"
Sam looks up at his brother. "No. Don't wish. It is what it is, Dean. I'm not unhappy with my life."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. I have John. If things had been different -"
"Yeah," Dean says. "There is that."
Betraying Dad hasn't been an issue for a long time, but there's no changing the past. Dean seems more than a little aware of that as he offers an awkward smile, then does the little two-step that means I'm uncomfortable now, so I'm going somewhere else.
"You good?" he asks.
Sam half-nods and waves him off. A minute later he hears the screen door creak, the sign that Dean's gone outside.
She's the same, Sam thinks. You can't make any qualified judgment from one picture, especially one that's set up to illustrate something specific, and he only knew Connie Dulay for a few months, almost 35 years ago, but still - everything he sees says yes, she's the same.
She's still the girl he knew.
With a glance toward the doorway to reassure himself that he's still alone, he pulls up Google and types in her name. Finds a website with more information, more pictures, some of them casual.
Yes, she's the same.
He'd bet on that.
You never said goodbye, he thinks. That might be idiotic - after all, it's been more than three decades. But it might not be.
His heart flutters in his chest, like he's sixteen again.
It might be the wrong thing to do.
But it might not be. Dean, who knows him better than anyone else on this earth, showed him that newspaper article. Woke him up to show it to him, and it wasn't because Dean thought it was an interesting curiosity. Dean's always known what he needs, even when he doesn't know it himself. And Dean's been right here with him this past couple of years - has been here to see that alone doesn't fit Sam very well.
It's been 35 years, he thinks.
But maybe that's long enough to erase some pain.
Maybe it's long enough that Hello is the right thing to say.
He tries not to notice that his hand is trembling as he fishes his cell phone out of his pocket. Eyes still on her picture, he keys in the number that's on the website: her office. Congresswoman Dulay's office.
"Tell her it's Sam, from high school," he tells the woman who answers the phone.
"Sam?" she echoes.
"Sam," he affirms. "Ask her… Ask her if she remembers the carnival."
* * * * *