"Do Winchesters Dream Of Electric Impalas?"
Title: Do Winchesters Dream Of Electric Impalas? (Part 2/3)
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG (Language)
Fandom: SPN
By: kellifer_fic
Words: 2,550
Category: Gen AU
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Summary: Dean was made to be a Big Brother.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
Sam came awake somewhere outside of Minnesota.
There was nothing but open road ahead, the length of it disappearing where the Impala’s headlights didn’t reach. Dean was tapping out Back In Black on the steering wheel and Sam knew he’d been in the car too long if he was recognising the song just from the drumming of Dean’s fingers.
“Can we stop somewhere?” Sam asked, rubbing a hand over his face and Dean’s eyes slanted sideways and then away. He took the next exit he could without a word and they found themselves in the middle of what looked like a one-traffic light town as asleep as its denizens. When they stopped at the Honeydew Inn, Dean had to bang long and loud on the manager’s office to rouse someone, Sam watching through the windscreen.
Sam didn’t feel tired so much as just plain weary. He’d never really understood the expression stretched too thin but now he was feeling it. Dean did a funny little hop as he came out of the office with a key and Sam couldn’t even raise the stamina to smile.
They moved their duffels into the room, still in silence and Sam was about to fall face first into bed when Dean finally decided to speak.
“When do you stop grieving?”
Sam turned slowly, eyebrows raised. There were times when Dean asked questions like that because he was being goofy. Sam’s general response was don’t be such a robot and they would both laugh. This, however, wasn’t one of them. Dean was genuinely asking a question because he was curious and he honestly didn’t know the answer.
Sam couldn’t help it though, saying “Don’t be stupid,” without any real heat in it. He did drop onto the bed then, curling sideways so his back was to Dean but he could still feel his gaze on him. Dean hadn’t even set down his bag yet. Sam rolled onto his back finally and kicked off his sneakers. “What?”
“Should I not ask you that?”
“Dean,” Sam sighed, stretching up onto his elbows so he could see that Dean was still by the door. He had actually lowered his bag but hadn’t dropped it to the floor, instead toying with the straps in his hands. “It’s not really something I know the answer to.”
Sometimes it was easy to forget that his… brother, who outwardly looked like any other twenty-six year old man, could still be as innocent as a child. It probably hadn’t helped that he was raised by John Winchester, not the most socially adept of men by any stretch of the imagination. Dean should have been socialised normally but he’d instead been yanked from one town to the next, learning somewhat unsavoury behaviour until he was coarse and almost crass.
“This isn’t going to be one of those times where you tell me everyone is different, is it?” Dean asked incredulously. He crossed the room, slinging their bags in one corner and setting himself on the end of Sam’s bed.
“Everyone is different,” Sam said with a small snort, smacking a hand over his eyes.
“Yeah, well, but this is you. How long do you grieve?”
“And I’m saying I can’t really tell you for sure,” Sam snapped, not meaning to get angry. Getting angry with Dean was like getting angry at a puppy. It would understand your tone but not really why it had pissed you off so much.
“It’s just… Jess has been gone for two months now and you’re still sad. Is there… I mean, can I do anything?”
And there it was. Dean would drive you up the wall one second and be almost impossibly sweet the next.
“No, Dean,” Sam said, feeling more exhausted than he ever had in his entire life, and with John Winchester for a drill sergeant, that was saying something.
“There’s nothing you can do.”
000
“I can’t believe you still do that.”
Dean raised an eyebrow as he wiped chocolate sauce from the corner of his mouth with a thumb. He dug back into his fries and then grinned at Sam, letting one of the chocolate covered potato slivers drop from his mouth with a wet splot to the table. “What?” he said around his mouthful.
“You don’t have to be disgusting,” Sam complained, moving his laptop so it was between his eye line and Dean’s lunch. His brother certainly needed a lot more food than the average person and a lot more sugar than the Surgeon General would recommend, but he also seemed determined to take a certain amount of glee about doing it in a public place.
Most people looked at him like he was a heart attack waiting to happen, which would have been true for anyone else.
Sam supposed they were lucky that the D model of Imitant wasn’t ever that popular. You didn’t really see them anymore. People had decided they liked their robots to look like… well, robots. Most these days were shiny, smooth-faced drones who carried out manual labor but had no personalities to speak of.
The time of the Imitant being created in man’s own image had well and truly passed.
Sam only remembered meeting one in his entire lifetime, and that was Dean.
“Don’t knock it till you try it,” Dean said, waving a sausage drenched in maple syrup over the top of Sam’s monitor and managing to drop some on the letters U, H, J and N. Sam made a squeak of protest and grabbed up his napkin, blotting delicately and wondering if he was making matters worse.
“Why do you carry that thing around?” Sam asked when he finally gave up, knowing he was doomed to forever have a sticky keyboard. He jutted his chin in the direction of their dad’s journal, set by Dean’s elbow. Dean had been flipping through it when Sam had returned from the bathroom, pen in his mouth and open obits in his other hand.
“Why not?” Dean asked, forsaking his food to return to the obits.
“I mean, you know it all, right? It’s all in there?” Sam leaned across the table and knocked his knuckle against Dean’s temple. Dean merely rolled his eyes and stuck his pen behind his ear.
“Sure, and here,” Dean said, tapping his shoulder, “and here,” he added smacking his left pectoral, “and a teeny bit here,” he finally raised his arm and clapped his armpit.
Sam knew that he would come off second best trying to kick Dean in the shins but he still felt the urge to do it.
Dean sighed, probably reading Sam’s mind and picked up the journal, holding it between his hands and squeezing the leather until it creaked. “I dunno, okay? I just… like how it feels.”
“How it feels?” Sam asked.
“Yeah. It just… feels like Dad is all,” Dean finally got out, although he sounded half-strangled when he finished and then he narrowed his eyes. “Remember the fact that I can bench press you without breaking a sweat when you feel compelled to tell all your college buddies that I’m sentimental.”
“No,” Sam said, putting a hand over his heart and making his eyes wide. “I would never even dream of betraying your secret.”
“I wasn’t the one still sleeping with his Babaa until he was fifteen.”
“Low blow man,” Sam protested.
“And you only stopped because you threw up on it when you had the flu. Then Dad put it in the wash and it disintegrated.”
“Don’t talk about Babaa,” Sam said, sounding choked and ducked his head down. When Dean laid a gentle hand on his forearm, Sam looked up with a grin. “Oh man, you are so easy.”
“Oh screw you,” Dean snapped. “If I weren’t programmed to care for your ass you would’ve been dead twenty seven times over.”
“You keep count?” Sam exclaimed, sitting back in the booth.
“I can’t help it,” Dean said, the tips of his ears turning pink which always happened when he was embarrassed. It was eternally fascinating to Sam considering Dean didn’t actually have blood as such to rush to anywhere to indicate any such thing.
“You find anything?” Sam asked, taking pity on his brother and changing the subject.
“Maybe in Maine,” Dean said, looking relieved. “Woman in white or cursed bride I think.”
000
“It’s amazing, the things we can do,” Jim said, hunkered down in front of Dean and smiling. When he rose he passed a hand over Dean’s head and it was so reminiscent of Mary the first time she’d torn into John’s garage with Dean in tow that John had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop from making a noise.
Dean, sensing he’d been dismissed in that indefinable way he had, made his way deeper into the church, apparently fascinated. When he reached the lectern at the front and the large handcrafted bible that was Jim’s pride and joy he stilled and then looked back at both men.
“Go on, you can have a look,” Jim prompted, still looking amused and charmed which threw John a little. Of all the people he had expected to be dismissive of Dean, Jim would be chief amongst them. He was a man of God and had to have some very firm opinions about man’s own attempt at creation. “Look any more sour and your face will turn completely inside out.”
John cut his gaze back to Jim and grimaced. He’d known the man for going on six months and it was the first time he’d brought the… boys around. He’d had a few people who were still willing to put him and the kids up but they were dropping by the wayside now, casualties of his lifestyle and their fear that he was perhaps slowly going crazy. More than one had non-too-gently suggested that he should give Sammy up if he was determined to criss-cross the countryside with no apparent agenda or end in sight.
He’d known a man named Abe Garret for most of his adult life and a good chunk of his adolescence but had still punched him square in the jaw with no hesitation when Abe had dared bring up foster care.
John was fast realising that what he knew separated him from the person he was, and the people he’d once trusted.
“I thought he might bother you,” John said, waving a hand in Dean’s direction. Sam was in a portable carrier he was getting much too big for set on one of the pews halfway down and had been dead to the world for the better part of three hours. Despite this John noticed the way Dean would, no matter how seemingly distracted, would still have his gaze drawn to Sammy every time he made a peep.
“You’re always welcome to bring Sammy here,” Jim said immediately and John grunted and shook his head.
“No. Him,” he clarified, jutting his chin in Dean’s direction.
“Why?”
“I dunno,” John sighed, rubbing a hand over the back of his head. “He bothers me.”
“And again I ask, why?”
“I don’t know that either,” John admitted. Dean was over by the candles, putting a hand out towards the dozen or so that were lit. “Hey, watch yourself, that’s hot,” John snapped automatically and Dean snatched his hand away.
“Do I feel a confession coming on?” Jim asked with a wry grin and John snorted.
“Hell no,” he said and it was Jim’s turn to laugh. “He was Mary’s idea and I don’t… taking him away from Sammy now would be like taking away… I just have to put up with him until Sammy’s old enough not to need an eye on him every minute of the day.”
“You seem to have it all worked out.”
“I do,” John agreed, nodding firmly. “I guess I just never thought I’d see something like this in my lifetime. He eats, he laughs, he grows. He’s going to look like a… like a man someday.”
“Is that really what bothers you?”
“Maybe it’s… I kinda feel like I bought a turtle for a pet because it would be easy to take care of and only then found out that the fuckers live for fifty-odd years.”
Jim looked at John for a few moments before he let out a sigh of his own.
“The things we can do.”
000
“What are you watching?”
“Terminator.”
“Dude, that’s… I can’t believe you like that movie,” Sam snorted, flopping belly-first on the bed Dean was propped up against. Dean had a lot of quirks and one of them was loving every single movie ever made that had a robot in it of some description.
Except for Blade Runner.
Sam leaned forward and over Dean’s shoulder, snagging some of the fries Dean was devouring, thankfully for once devoid of any syrupy condiment. Sam should’ve known better though when he stuffed a large handful in his mouth and then nearly choked. The liberal dusting of white crystals he had assumed was salt turned out to be sugar.
Dean turned his head enough to treat Sam to a lopsided grin but not enough that his eyes would have to leave the screen.
Sam scooched back only far enough that he could set his forehead on Dean’s shoulder and pressed his mouth and nose into the hopefully clean coverlet on the bed. After a moment he felt Dean’s hand land on the back of his head and pat a few times. “What’s up, kiddo?”
“What are we doing?” Sam asked, voice muffled by bedding.
“I’m watching Terminator and you’re disturbing me.”
“Not right this… I mean what are we doing in general?”
“We’re on a long-ass road trip in a classic car and every time we stop we kill bad guys and rescue damsels. We’re living the dream my man.”
“We’re looking for dad, right?”
“Yeah, ‘course,” Dean agreed.
“Can’t you just…” Sam finally looked up and Dean was staring fixedly at the screen in front of them, something working in his jaw.
“I’m not a bloodhound, Sammy,” Dean said.
“I know that, but you could always find me. Dad said he left you behind in a motel room once and when he went back to pick you up, you were walking on the road and you were going in the right direction.”
“He told you that?”
“What?”
“That he left me behind?”
“Yeah he… wait, he said he just , I don’t know, forgot for a second. He went right back.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Dean,” Sam said slowly and when Dean refused to look at him, Sam reached over his shoulder again, but this time he curled his arm around, flat palm on Dean’s cheek and forced his head back so he finally had Dean’s eyes. “He was drunk when he said it. He didn’t really mean to..?”
“Like you said, he forgot,” Dean said, but he’d never been able to lie to Sam. He’d been able to pick up all kinds of idiosyncrasies and quirks that were uniquely Dean but when he lied he always sounded flat, emotionless.
Like a robot.
“Dean, tell me what actually happened.”
“Sam, don’t-”
“Dean!”
“Look, you’re mad at him about enough, okay?” Dean snapped, standing and pacing to the other side of the room.
Part Three
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG (Language)
Fandom: SPN
By: kellifer_fic
Words: 2,550
Category: Gen AU
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Summary: Dean was made to be a Big Brother.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
Sam came awake somewhere outside of Minnesota.
There was nothing but open road ahead, the length of it disappearing where the Impala’s headlights didn’t reach. Dean was tapping out Back In Black on the steering wheel and Sam knew he’d been in the car too long if he was recognising the song just from the drumming of Dean’s fingers.
“Can we stop somewhere?” Sam asked, rubbing a hand over his face and Dean’s eyes slanted sideways and then away. He took the next exit he could without a word and they found themselves in the middle of what looked like a one-traffic light town as asleep as its denizens. When they stopped at the Honeydew Inn, Dean had to bang long and loud on the manager’s office to rouse someone, Sam watching through the windscreen.
Sam didn’t feel tired so much as just plain weary. He’d never really understood the expression stretched too thin but now he was feeling it. Dean did a funny little hop as he came out of the office with a key and Sam couldn’t even raise the stamina to smile.
They moved their duffels into the room, still in silence and Sam was about to fall face first into bed when Dean finally decided to speak.
“When do you stop grieving?”
Sam turned slowly, eyebrows raised. There were times when Dean asked questions like that because he was being goofy. Sam’s general response was don’t be such a robot and they would both laugh. This, however, wasn’t one of them. Dean was genuinely asking a question because he was curious and he honestly didn’t know the answer.
Sam couldn’t help it though, saying “Don’t be stupid,” without any real heat in it. He did drop onto the bed then, curling sideways so his back was to Dean but he could still feel his gaze on him. Dean hadn’t even set down his bag yet. Sam rolled onto his back finally and kicked off his sneakers. “What?”
“Should I not ask you that?”
“Dean,” Sam sighed, stretching up onto his elbows so he could see that Dean was still by the door. He had actually lowered his bag but hadn’t dropped it to the floor, instead toying with the straps in his hands. “It’s not really something I know the answer to.”
Sometimes it was easy to forget that his… brother, who outwardly looked like any other twenty-six year old man, could still be as innocent as a child. It probably hadn’t helped that he was raised by John Winchester, not the most socially adept of men by any stretch of the imagination. Dean should have been socialised normally but he’d instead been yanked from one town to the next, learning somewhat unsavoury behaviour until he was coarse and almost crass.
“This isn’t going to be one of those times where you tell me everyone is different, is it?” Dean asked incredulously. He crossed the room, slinging their bags in one corner and setting himself on the end of Sam’s bed.
“Everyone is different,” Sam said with a small snort, smacking a hand over his eyes.
“Yeah, well, but this is you. How long do you grieve?”
“And I’m saying I can’t really tell you for sure,” Sam snapped, not meaning to get angry. Getting angry with Dean was like getting angry at a puppy. It would understand your tone but not really why it had pissed you off so much.
“It’s just… Jess has been gone for two months now and you’re still sad. Is there… I mean, can I do anything?”
And there it was. Dean would drive you up the wall one second and be almost impossibly sweet the next.
“No, Dean,” Sam said, feeling more exhausted than he ever had in his entire life, and with John Winchester for a drill sergeant, that was saying something.
“There’s nothing you can do.”
000
“I can’t believe you still do that.”
Dean raised an eyebrow as he wiped chocolate sauce from the corner of his mouth with a thumb. He dug back into his fries and then grinned at Sam, letting one of the chocolate covered potato slivers drop from his mouth with a wet splot to the table. “What?” he said around his mouthful.
“You don’t have to be disgusting,” Sam complained, moving his laptop so it was between his eye line and Dean’s lunch. His brother certainly needed a lot more food than the average person and a lot more sugar than the Surgeon General would recommend, but he also seemed determined to take a certain amount of glee about doing it in a public place.
Most people looked at him like he was a heart attack waiting to happen, which would have been true for anyone else.
Sam supposed they were lucky that the D model of Imitant wasn’t ever that popular. You didn’t really see them anymore. People had decided they liked their robots to look like… well, robots. Most these days were shiny, smooth-faced drones who carried out manual labor but had no personalities to speak of.
The time of the Imitant being created in man’s own image had well and truly passed.
Sam only remembered meeting one in his entire lifetime, and that was Dean.
“Don’t knock it till you try it,” Dean said, waving a sausage drenched in maple syrup over the top of Sam’s monitor and managing to drop some on the letters U, H, J and N. Sam made a squeak of protest and grabbed up his napkin, blotting delicately and wondering if he was making matters worse.
“Why do you carry that thing around?” Sam asked when he finally gave up, knowing he was doomed to forever have a sticky keyboard. He jutted his chin in the direction of their dad’s journal, set by Dean’s elbow. Dean had been flipping through it when Sam had returned from the bathroom, pen in his mouth and open obits in his other hand.
“Why not?” Dean asked, forsaking his food to return to the obits.
“I mean, you know it all, right? It’s all in there?” Sam leaned across the table and knocked his knuckle against Dean’s temple. Dean merely rolled his eyes and stuck his pen behind his ear.
“Sure, and here,” Dean said, tapping his shoulder, “and here,” he added smacking his left pectoral, “and a teeny bit here,” he finally raised his arm and clapped his armpit.
Sam knew that he would come off second best trying to kick Dean in the shins but he still felt the urge to do it.
Dean sighed, probably reading Sam’s mind and picked up the journal, holding it between his hands and squeezing the leather until it creaked. “I dunno, okay? I just… like how it feels.”
“How it feels?” Sam asked.
“Yeah. It just… feels like Dad is all,” Dean finally got out, although he sounded half-strangled when he finished and then he narrowed his eyes. “Remember the fact that I can bench press you without breaking a sweat when you feel compelled to tell all your college buddies that I’m sentimental.”
“No,” Sam said, putting a hand over his heart and making his eyes wide. “I would never even dream of betraying your secret.”
“I wasn’t the one still sleeping with his Babaa until he was fifteen.”
“Low blow man,” Sam protested.
“And you only stopped because you threw up on it when you had the flu. Then Dad put it in the wash and it disintegrated.”
“Don’t talk about Babaa,” Sam said, sounding choked and ducked his head down. When Dean laid a gentle hand on his forearm, Sam looked up with a grin. “Oh man, you are so easy.”
“Oh screw you,” Dean snapped. “If I weren’t programmed to care for your ass you would’ve been dead twenty seven times over.”
“You keep count?” Sam exclaimed, sitting back in the booth.
“I can’t help it,” Dean said, the tips of his ears turning pink which always happened when he was embarrassed. It was eternally fascinating to Sam considering Dean didn’t actually have blood as such to rush to anywhere to indicate any such thing.
“You find anything?” Sam asked, taking pity on his brother and changing the subject.
“Maybe in Maine,” Dean said, looking relieved. “Woman in white or cursed bride I think.”
000
“It’s amazing, the things we can do,” Jim said, hunkered down in front of Dean and smiling. When he rose he passed a hand over Dean’s head and it was so reminiscent of Mary the first time she’d torn into John’s garage with Dean in tow that John had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop from making a noise.
Dean, sensing he’d been dismissed in that indefinable way he had, made his way deeper into the church, apparently fascinated. When he reached the lectern at the front and the large handcrafted bible that was Jim’s pride and joy he stilled and then looked back at both men.
“Go on, you can have a look,” Jim prompted, still looking amused and charmed which threw John a little. Of all the people he had expected to be dismissive of Dean, Jim would be chief amongst them. He was a man of God and had to have some very firm opinions about man’s own attempt at creation. “Look any more sour and your face will turn completely inside out.”
John cut his gaze back to Jim and grimaced. He’d known the man for going on six months and it was the first time he’d brought the… boys around. He’d had a few people who were still willing to put him and the kids up but they were dropping by the wayside now, casualties of his lifestyle and their fear that he was perhaps slowly going crazy. More than one had non-too-gently suggested that he should give Sammy up if he was determined to criss-cross the countryside with no apparent agenda or end in sight.
He’d known a man named Abe Garret for most of his adult life and a good chunk of his adolescence but had still punched him square in the jaw with no hesitation when Abe had dared bring up foster care.
John was fast realising that what he knew separated him from the person he was, and the people he’d once trusted.
“I thought he might bother you,” John said, waving a hand in Dean’s direction. Sam was in a portable carrier he was getting much too big for set on one of the pews halfway down and had been dead to the world for the better part of three hours. Despite this John noticed the way Dean would, no matter how seemingly distracted, would still have his gaze drawn to Sammy every time he made a peep.
“You’re always welcome to bring Sammy here,” Jim said immediately and John grunted and shook his head.
“No. Him,” he clarified, jutting his chin in Dean’s direction.
“Why?”
“I dunno,” John sighed, rubbing a hand over the back of his head. “He bothers me.”
“And again I ask, why?”
“I don’t know that either,” John admitted. Dean was over by the candles, putting a hand out towards the dozen or so that were lit. “Hey, watch yourself, that’s hot,” John snapped automatically and Dean snatched his hand away.
“Do I feel a confession coming on?” Jim asked with a wry grin and John snorted.
“Hell no,” he said and it was Jim’s turn to laugh. “He was Mary’s idea and I don’t… taking him away from Sammy now would be like taking away… I just have to put up with him until Sammy’s old enough not to need an eye on him every minute of the day.”
“You seem to have it all worked out.”
“I do,” John agreed, nodding firmly. “I guess I just never thought I’d see something like this in my lifetime. He eats, he laughs, he grows. He’s going to look like a… like a man someday.”
“Is that really what bothers you?”
“Maybe it’s… I kinda feel like I bought a turtle for a pet because it would be easy to take care of and only then found out that the fuckers live for fifty-odd years.”
Jim looked at John for a few moments before he let out a sigh of his own.
“The things we can do.”
000
“What are you watching?”
“Terminator.”
“Dude, that’s… I can’t believe you like that movie,” Sam snorted, flopping belly-first on the bed Dean was propped up against. Dean had a lot of quirks and one of them was loving every single movie ever made that had a robot in it of some description.
Except for Blade Runner.
Sam leaned forward and over Dean’s shoulder, snagging some of the fries Dean was devouring, thankfully for once devoid of any syrupy condiment. Sam should’ve known better though when he stuffed a large handful in his mouth and then nearly choked. The liberal dusting of white crystals he had assumed was salt turned out to be sugar.
Dean turned his head enough to treat Sam to a lopsided grin but not enough that his eyes would have to leave the screen.
Sam scooched back only far enough that he could set his forehead on Dean’s shoulder and pressed his mouth and nose into the hopefully clean coverlet on the bed. After a moment he felt Dean’s hand land on the back of his head and pat a few times. “What’s up, kiddo?”
“What are we doing?” Sam asked, voice muffled by bedding.
“I’m watching Terminator and you’re disturbing me.”
“Not right this… I mean what are we doing in general?”
“We’re on a long-ass road trip in a classic car and every time we stop we kill bad guys and rescue damsels. We’re living the dream my man.”
“We’re looking for dad, right?”
“Yeah, ‘course,” Dean agreed.
“Can’t you just…” Sam finally looked up and Dean was staring fixedly at the screen in front of them, something working in his jaw.
“I’m not a bloodhound, Sammy,” Dean said.
“I know that, but you could always find me. Dad said he left you behind in a motel room once and when he went back to pick you up, you were walking on the road and you were going in the right direction.”
“He told you that?”
“What?”
“That he left me behind?”
“Yeah he… wait, he said he just , I don’t know, forgot for a second. He went right back.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Dean,” Sam said slowly and when Dean refused to look at him, Sam reached over his shoulder again, but this time he curled his arm around, flat palm on Dean’s cheek and forced his head back so he finally had Dean’s eyes. “He was drunk when he said it. He didn’t really mean to..?”
“Like you said, he forgot,” Dean said, but he’d never been able to lie to Sam. He’d been able to pick up all kinds of idiosyncrasies and quirks that were uniquely Dean but when he lied he always sounded flat, emotionless.
Like a robot.
“Dean, tell me what actually happened.”
“Sam, don’t-”
“Dean!”
“Look, you’re mad at him about enough, okay?” Dean snapped, standing and pacing to the other side of the room.
Part Three