SPN FIC - Morning, On the Way to Somewhere
Another one of those quiet interludes, in between cases. Nothing chasing them, for the moment -- except the shadows of things they've left behind.
CHARACTERS: Dean and Sam
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1670 words
MORNING, ON THE WAY TO SOMEWHERE
By Carol Davis
Dean woke to a dim, quiet room, the other bed empty, covers flipped aside in a way that said Sam had gotten up at a leisurely pace, unworried, with nothing to investigate, nothing causing him any concern. Something in Dean's head told him he'd heard Sam get up, shower, get dressed, then leave. He might have muttered something in Sam's direction, might have gotten a reply.
Whether that had actually happened or not didn't seem to matter.
Stuffy.
He couldn't remember whether they'd turned the AC on last night, whether the unit had seemed functional - or whether, like the HVAC in most of the motels they patronized, the thing had made so much noise that leaving it off seemed like the best option. Either way, the air in the room was damp, heavy.
There was…
Huh.
He'd been dreaming about something. Someone. Apparently, someone he liked, because the bed's three pillows (the two that had originally been there, and one swiped from Sam) had been shifted and battered into a somewhat body-like configuration. His arms and legs were wrapped securely around them.
And.
Well.
Dressed, but unwashed, he found Sam outside, lounging in one of the five-dollar molded plastic chairs the motel offered as an amenity for those patrons wishing to enjoy the fresh air and ambience of the parking lot. The sidewalk in front of each room sported two of them, all of them grimy and scarred and sitting at varying degrees of a drunken tilt. The one Sam had picked canted noticeably to starboard, as if Sam were at sea, riding out some rough surf.
"Hell you doin' out here?" Dean muttered, shoving splayed fingers through his hair.
"It's a nice morning."
Dean peered around blearily. Not raining was the best he could say about it.
A lazy grin slid across Sam's face. "And… you and your pillows needed some privacy."
"Dude."
"What? I left."
"You coulda woke me up."
"Uh… no," Sam said.
Grumbling, Dean seized one of the disastrous chairs, shook it to test its durability, then sank down onto the seat, fully expecting it to give way underneath him and mildly surprised when it didn't. Sam went back to gazing idly off into the distance, at a view composed of nothing but cars and utility poles and the Wendy's across the road. With Dean watching him, frowning, Sam stretched his legs out in front of him, admired his sneakers for a minute, then folded his hands on his belly and shut his eyes.
"Dude," Dean said. "Seriously."
Sam didn't answer him for an annoying length of time. Then he said, "I can ride in the back if you want. If you want your pillows to ride shotgun. But if the pillows head in your direction, you're gonna need to pull over."
"Could you maybe bite me about the damn pillows?"
"Just saying."
"Like you don't do weird shit with your pillows."
"Generally, I use them to pillow my head." As if that might be unclear, Sam rapped his temple with the tips of his fingers. "The big head."
"Bite me," Dean muttered.
"I thought the pillows had that covered."
"Could you…JESUS. I need coffee."
Sam reached down alongside his chair and picked up a paper bag he'd stowed down there. Considered it for a moment, then passed it over to Dean. "Coffee. Large. Black. Two cherry danish. You're welcome."
"Is it hot?"
Sam's lips moved. Began to shape a response.
"Don't even," Dean told him. "Do not start with me. It's too fucking early."
"Almost eight."
Dean groaned. Part of him wanted to ditch the bag. But God. Coffee. Cherry danish. Pointedly not looking at his brother, he worked the bag open, pulled out a tall insulated cup still warm to the touch, popped the lid and gulped down half its contents. At the edge of his field of vision, Sam had taken to smiling a little bit, like he was pleased with himself. Dean let him sit there and contemplate the Wendy's and a bunch of power poles while he finished off the coffee and powered through half a danish.
Fruits and vegetables? Screw that shit. Sugar and caffeine, that's your major food groups, right there.
"I miss it too," Sam said after a while.
"Miss what?" Dean complained.
"Snuggling."
"I was asleep, asshat. Are you ever gonna let this drop?"
Sam's grin widened a little.
"I TOLD you -"
Sam lifted his hands off his belly, made the classic "time out" sign, then laid his hands down again, one flat on top of the other. "I'm just saying," he sighed, as Dean began to scowl his way through the rest of the danish. "Somebody there, early in the morning. When it's warm and muggy like this. You have a window open, and you can hear the birds. The world's kind of half asleep…"
"You aren't gonna start singing, are you?"
"I miss that. That's all I'm saying."
Don't say it. Don't ask me. Son of a bitch, don't go there. It's over, and it's gonna stay over, so don't…
"I'm sorry, man," Sam said.
Dean grunted at him. Didn't allow it to get close to being a word.
But you could open Pandora's box without knowing it. Without knowing there was even a box sitting there, waiting to be opened, or not opened.
Warm morning with the window open, birdsong in the air. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to be, not for a while.
Someone close by. Soft hands, soft voice.
As much as he'd never felt he belonged in that world, as much as he could never see it evolving into something entirely genuine, entirely real, there'd always been that: those warm, still mornings with a little bit of muggy breeze drifting in past the curtains. Someone accommodating and generous and affectionate and kind, there alongside him, waiting to be held close. Waiting to hold him.
A smile. A whisper. Hey, you.
Gone, now.
For a moment he wished the coffee cup were still full, so he could throw it against the door of the motel room. Find some satisfaction in watching it explode, watching the liquid slide down a dirty, painted-gray surface toward the ground. The second danish was still in the bag, still available to throw, but hurling that at the door would provide nothing more than a splat and a plop.
Eight o'clock in the goddamn morning.
Mom gone. And with her, the lap he'd always been welcome to climb into, even when half of it was full of the big belly that would become his baby brother.
Then, Sammy gone - the small, fat Sammy who'd been his security blanket, the warm bundle he'd shared a PortaCrib with, the two of them jammed together, halves of a whole.
Now, Lisa gone.
But that was never gonna be anything. It was just…
"A place to hide," Sam said, and when Dean looked at him, Sam was still staring out across the road, at nothing, at a bunch of power poles and a fast-food restaurant with a red-haired cartoon girl on its sign.
"What?" Dean asked him.
Sam turned his head. When he smiled at Dean, this time, it was full of regret. Kind of weary. Sad.
"Nothing," Sam said. "You want to go? There's nothing going on here. Go grab a shower and we'll get out of here."
"Where -?"
"Does it matter? Let's go."
Sam was moving then, climbing up out of the chair, looming over Dean for a moment, then reaching for the doorknob, shoving the door open, disappearing inside. It took Dean a minute to work up the ambition to follow him. By the time he got there, Sam had dropped his duffel onto the bed and was stuffing back into it everything he'd pulled out the evening before.
"Kinda funny," Dean said quietly.
Sam glanced at him, then went back to his packing.
"You and me. It's like… we're supposed to keep it all equal. You know? Go through all the same shit. Different times, with some of it, but -"
"Yeah," Sam said to his duffel.
"You're still one up on me, though. With that whole college thing."
That nudged Sam into stopping. He fussed with the duffel a little bit, then let go of it and released a soft huff of air. "Someday," he told Dean. "You can be one of those old guys who shows up to get a degree. So you can cross it off your bucket list."
"They do that? At Stanford?"
"Well. Maybe you should aim a little lower. Like… community college."
"Like so much shit, community college. You did it, I can do it. How hard could it be?"
Sam snorted at that, then said, "I don't know, man. If anybody could ever find a way to scam their way through Stanford, it'd be you."
"Law school."
"No way, man."
"Hell, yes, way. You go back. We'll graduate at the same freakin' time. Start our own law firm."
"Alias Smith and Jones."
"Damn straight. Name on the door. But I get to hire all the secretaries."
"Why do you get to hire the secretaries?"
"Ain't it obvious?" Dean asked, then caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the low dresser. Bed hair, unshaven, wearing the same rumpled clothes he'd tugged off before he crawled in under the covers, not all that many hours ago. "Well," he conceded. "Point taken. But I clean up awesome."
"We'll do it together."
It was a miracle he'd been able to sleep in this room, Dean thought; there wasn't a breath of air in the whole place. No wonder Sam had bailed for the outdoors the minute he woke up.
No wonder Sam was anxious to get out now.
"Yeah," Dean told him. "We'll do it together."
"Damn straight."
They were halfway out the door when Sam nodded back over his shoulder and asked, "Aren't you forgetting something? Your" - he smirked - "girlfriend?"
"Asshat," Dean complained.
"And Jones," Sam replied.
* * * * *
CHARACTERS: Dean and Sam
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1670 words
MORNING, ON THE WAY TO SOMEWHERE
By Carol Davis
Dean woke to a dim, quiet room, the other bed empty, covers flipped aside in a way that said Sam had gotten up at a leisurely pace, unworried, with nothing to investigate, nothing causing him any concern. Something in Dean's head told him he'd heard Sam get up, shower, get dressed, then leave. He might have muttered something in Sam's direction, might have gotten a reply.
Whether that had actually happened or not didn't seem to matter.
Stuffy.
He couldn't remember whether they'd turned the AC on last night, whether the unit had seemed functional - or whether, like the HVAC in most of the motels they patronized, the thing had made so much noise that leaving it off seemed like the best option. Either way, the air in the room was damp, heavy.
There was…
Huh.
He'd been dreaming about something. Someone. Apparently, someone he liked, because the bed's three pillows (the two that had originally been there, and one swiped from Sam) had been shifted and battered into a somewhat body-like configuration. His arms and legs were wrapped securely around them.
And.
Well.
Dressed, but unwashed, he found Sam outside, lounging in one of the five-dollar molded plastic chairs the motel offered as an amenity for those patrons wishing to enjoy the fresh air and ambience of the parking lot. The sidewalk in front of each room sported two of them, all of them grimy and scarred and sitting at varying degrees of a drunken tilt. The one Sam had picked canted noticeably to starboard, as if Sam were at sea, riding out some rough surf.
"Hell you doin' out here?" Dean muttered, shoving splayed fingers through his hair.
"It's a nice morning."
Dean peered around blearily. Not raining was the best he could say about it.
A lazy grin slid across Sam's face. "And… you and your pillows needed some privacy."
"Dude."
"What? I left."
"You coulda woke me up."
"Uh… no," Sam said.
Grumbling, Dean seized one of the disastrous chairs, shook it to test its durability, then sank down onto the seat, fully expecting it to give way underneath him and mildly surprised when it didn't. Sam went back to gazing idly off into the distance, at a view composed of nothing but cars and utility poles and the Wendy's across the road. With Dean watching him, frowning, Sam stretched his legs out in front of him, admired his sneakers for a minute, then folded his hands on his belly and shut his eyes.
"Dude," Dean said. "Seriously."
Sam didn't answer him for an annoying length of time. Then he said, "I can ride in the back if you want. If you want your pillows to ride shotgun. But if the pillows head in your direction, you're gonna need to pull over."
"Could you maybe bite me about the damn pillows?"
"Just saying."
"Like you don't do weird shit with your pillows."
"Generally, I use them to pillow my head." As if that might be unclear, Sam rapped his temple with the tips of his fingers. "The big head."
"Bite me," Dean muttered.
"I thought the pillows had that covered."
"Could you…JESUS. I need coffee."
Sam reached down alongside his chair and picked up a paper bag he'd stowed down there. Considered it for a moment, then passed it over to Dean. "Coffee. Large. Black. Two cherry danish. You're welcome."
"Is it hot?"
Sam's lips moved. Began to shape a response.
"Don't even," Dean told him. "Do not start with me. It's too fucking early."
"Almost eight."
Dean groaned. Part of him wanted to ditch the bag. But God. Coffee. Cherry danish. Pointedly not looking at his brother, he worked the bag open, pulled out a tall insulated cup still warm to the touch, popped the lid and gulped down half its contents. At the edge of his field of vision, Sam had taken to smiling a little bit, like he was pleased with himself. Dean let him sit there and contemplate the Wendy's and a bunch of power poles while he finished off the coffee and powered through half a danish.
Fruits and vegetables? Screw that shit. Sugar and caffeine, that's your major food groups, right there.
"I miss it too," Sam said after a while.
"Miss what?" Dean complained.
"Snuggling."
"I was asleep, asshat. Are you ever gonna let this drop?"
Sam's grin widened a little.
"I TOLD you -"
Sam lifted his hands off his belly, made the classic "time out" sign, then laid his hands down again, one flat on top of the other. "I'm just saying," he sighed, as Dean began to scowl his way through the rest of the danish. "Somebody there, early in the morning. When it's warm and muggy like this. You have a window open, and you can hear the birds. The world's kind of half asleep…"
"You aren't gonna start singing, are you?"
"I miss that. That's all I'm saying."
Don't say it. Don't ask me. Son of a bitch, don't go there. It's over, and it's gonna stay over, so don't…
"I'm sorry, man," Sam said.
Dean grunted at him. Didn't allow it to get close to being a word.
But you could open Pandora's box without knowing it. Without knowing there was even a box sitting there, waiting to be opened, or not opened.
Warm morning with the window open, birdsong in the air. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to be, not for a while.
Someone close by. Soft hands, soft voice.
As much as he'd never felt he belonged in that world, as much as he could never see it evolving into something entirely genuine, entirely real, there'd always been that: those warm, still mornings with a little bit of muggy breeze drifting in past the curtains. Someone accommodating and generous and affectionate and kind, there alongside him, waiting to be held close. Waiting to hold him.
A smile. A whisper. Hey, you.
Gone, now.
For a moment he wished the coffee cup were still full, so he could throw it against the door of the motel room. Find some satisfaction in watching it explode, watching the liquid slide down a dirty, painted-gray surface toward the ground. The second danish was still in the bag, still available to throw, but hurling that at the door would provide nothing more than a splat and a plop.
Eight o'clock in the goddamn morning.
Mom gone. And with her, the lap he'd always been welcome to climb into, even when half of it was full of the big belly that would become his baby brother.
Then, Sammy gone - the small, fat Sammy who'd been his security blanket, the warm bundle he'd shared a PortaCrib with, the two of them jammed together, halves of a whole.
Now, Lisa gone.
But that was never gonna be anything. It was just…
"A place to hide," Sam said, and when Dean looked at him, Sam was still staring out across the road, at nothing, at a bunch of power poles and a fast-food restaurant with a red-haired cartoon girl on its sign.
"What?" Dean asked him.
Sam turned his head. When he smiled at Dean, this time, it was full of regret. Kind of weary. Sad.
"Nothing," Sam said. "You want to go? There's nothing going on here. Go grab a shower and we'll get out of here."
"Where -?"
"Does it matter? Let's go."
Sam was moving then, climbing up out of the chair, looming over Dean for a moment, then reaching for the doorknob, shoving the door open, disappearing inside. It took Dean a minute to work up the ambition to follow him. By the time he got there, Sam had dropped his duffel onto the bed and was stuffing back into it everything he'd pulled out the evening before.
"Kinda funny," Dean said quietly.
Sam glanced at him, then went back to his packing.
"You and me. It's like… we're supposed to keep it all equal. You know? Go through all the same shit. Different times, with some of it, but -"
"Yeah," Sam said to his duffel.
"You're still one up on me, though. With that whole college thing."
That nudged Sam into stopping. He fussed with the duffel a little bit, then let go of it and released a soft huff of air. "Someday," he told Dean. "You can be one of those old guys who shows up to get a degree. So you can cross it off your bucket list."
"They do that? At Stanford?"
"Well. Maybe you should aim a little lower. Like… community college."
"Like so much shit, community college. You did it, I can do it. How hard could it be?"
Sam snorted at that, then said, "I don't know, man. If anybody could ever find a way to scam their way through Stanford, it'd be you."
"Law school."
"No way, man."
"Hell, yes, way. You go back. We'll graduate at the same freakin' time. Start our own law firm."
"Alias Smith and Jones."
"Damn straight. Name on the door. But I get to hire all the secretaries."
"Why do you get to hire the secretaries?"
"Ain't it obvious?" Dean asked, then caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the low dresser. Bed hair, unshaven, wearing the same rumpled clothes he'd tugged off before he crawled in under the covers, not all that many hours ago. "Well," he conceded. "Point taken. But I clean up awesome."
"We'll do it together."
It was a miracle he'd been able to sleep in this room, Dean thought; there wasn't a breath of air in the whole place. No wonder Sam had bailed for the outdoors the minute he woke up.
No wonder Sam was anxious to get out now.
"Yeah," Dean told him. "We'll do it together."
"Damn straight."
They were halfway out the door when Sam nodded back over his shoulder and asked, "Aren't you forgetting something? Your" - he smirked - "girlfriend?"
"Asshat," Dean complained.
"And Jones," Sam replied.
* * * * *