(no subject)
Sieves for Dust
by whereupon
Dean/ofc, Sam/Dean, pre-series, R, 2,929 words.
He does not look over his shoulder when he goes after his brother.
Cloud-tattered sky, ragged-edged white scattered like shroud-scraps or torn lace, clouds like rivulets, tracks across that sky, itself only a shade lighter than charcoal, like marks cut deep by dragging claws, and beneath that ravaged grey, these endless saffron-smudged fields lined with ditches sedge-choked and thick with rainwater runoff. In the backseat, Sam, who has been sulking since noon, turns another page in a textbook stolen only because they left town in a hurry, no time to go back, hardly even time enough to shove it into a bag before John started the engine; the theft might have been inadvertent but it's theft all the same, and his eyes had burned with shame and anger, his mouth pressed sullen and cold, when they passed the school on their way out of town. John's hands are relaxed around the steering wheel even as he sees at once the road ahead, this unnamed backroad identified only by a number, and the road on which they have been travelling for almost as long as Dean can remember, one end of which is rooted in fire and death while the other dead-ends in a gunshot that sounds like justice. Sam kicks the back of Dean's seat, deliberate and angry because Dean took their father's side in the argument, and John's ring glints when the car angles for a moment and cold light slices unexpectedly through the windshield; Dean rests his head against the shotgun window and closes his eyes against that haunted, hypnagogic sky and the hangover snarling tight behind his temples.
He tries to recall the girl of the night before, the girl with eyes like fall-felled leaves, who swore her father would kill them both if he found out, but it seems that already her face is receding, as is her name, as he imagines he will from her own memory; her life will continue on here, perhaps she will get married and grow old without ever leaving that town and perhaps he will have crossed the country a dozen times more by then, perhaps his bones will already rest bare beneath the earth or perhaps he will be as his father is now, determined, a nightmare-eyed man, ghost-ridden and all the more courageous for it.
Valerie, he thinks, an epiphany that seems as superstitious as salt tossed backwards or a dream of crows; her name was Valerie and she had kissed him soft and gentle, the porch light behind her like a plea against the night, bidding her home, and he'd shoved his hands into his pockets, against weakness and vulnerability and a longing to which he would never admit aloud, and turned away. There had been the bar, then, his wallet no less empty when he left than when he entered, for he'd learned early and learned well the tricks of hustling in any frame of mind, and the wrecked stumble home to where his brother lay sleeping, his face so young though he was already taller than Dean himself, and where John would arrive some number of hours later, salt-burned and victorious, his mind turned already to the next hunt, the next town, the next sulfur-etched step, almost undoubtedly too late but they would hurry all the same. No other family would be broken the way his had been, if John had his way.
Dean drifts, half-asleep or less, and becomes aware only gradually that they are no longer moving, that the car has stopped. He jolts awake when the driver's side door slams closed, but he is still blinking muzzily when Sam leans over the seat and grabs his shoulder. "Dean," Sam says, annoyed and urgent, as though it's not the first time he's said it; his rough-cut hair hangs shaggy over his eyes and his fingers grip tightly as though to claim or bruise.
"Yeah, sitting right here," Dean says. He does not try to pull away, though he believes that he could, if he wanted to; his brother does not have such a hold on him that he couldn't escape. "You can let go any time, dude."
Sam's eyes narrow; his glare is sharp, but he lets go all the same, and he gets out of the car. Dean is left wondering if there was something he missed, something Sam had said that had gone unheard, or if this is simply another one of his brother's moods, phases of darkness that strike lightning-quick and are sometimes gone just as fast. Dean watches the stride of Sam's long legs across the dirt lot, two edges of which form one half-of the crossroads at which they are stopped. The other cars in the lot are old, not one of them new; their windshields glint dully beneath the accumulated dust of weary travel and Sam walks between their ragged rows with his head bowed. He opens the door of what Dean sees now is a diner, small brown building with dirty glass windows that look out upon the crossroads and the scrabbling fields. Anyone come to sell their soul would be fair game, a show for those on their way to elsewhere, if they cared to lift their heads from their eggs over-easy to watch. But they have their own souls, and their own deals, their own journeys to mind; they do not care to burden themselves with another's tragedy, for there's only so much one can carry before the weight begins to slow them down.
Dean does not look over his shoulder when he goes after his brother; he does not look back at the crossroads as he retraces the steps of his brother and father before him. He's not sure what's going on with his brother these days; he doesn't ever remember being so angry, so stubborn, but he thinks that perhaps Sam was born like this and it's merely becoming more evident as he gets older, the clashes between him and their father both angrier and more inevitable with each passing day, every day dragging Sam further and further away. Their fights leave Dean unsettled, shipwrecked; they're building up to something, a terrible climax, a rending, and most days Dean can pretend not to notice, pretend not to notice that they cannot keep doing this forever, but even on those days, he keeps his eyes closed as much as he can, tries to keep out of it or to make peace, when he can. That's easier said than done; most of the time it leaves both of them still angry at each other, and angry at him.
He understands even more on those days why Sam wants to leave, why Sam will leave, just as he understands why he himself will never be able to, why their father raised them like this, how important it is not to turn from this work, even as it threatens to consume them, even as it consumes more of their father with every failed hunt, every lead that goes nowhere, every wife and mother stolen in a house fire, no matter the origins of the spark.
Their father, now, who sits across from Sam in a booth that does not look out upon the crossroads but that has an excellent view of the door, and Dean makes for them, slides in next to Sam and reaches for a menu without saying anything to either of them.
He reads the menu; his stomach roils. Sam shifts his weight and manages to elbow Dean in the process; John rubs his hands across his eyes as though to awaken himself, to push away sleep. "Order me the number three," Dean says, and the men's room is down a small hall, across from the kitchen. He pauses outside of the door, but he does not go in; he breathes easier already, out of their sight, and he keeps walking. Though the smeared glass of the back door, the door at the end of the hall, he can see fields and sharp sky; he goes towards them, his boots tripping down the few steps so that he can stand, chest heaving, in the shadow of the building, next to a dumpster that is thankfully closed and a stack of grey-worn wooden pallets, splintered with age.
He closes his eyes for balance, suddenly too small, untethered beneath that vast sky; the air smells of rain, and then there is a noise, the scuffing of shoes across dirt, footsteps, and he opens his eyes once more.
A girl stands beside him, her dress the black uniform of the waitresses in the diner, though he did not hear the door open, did not hear her come after him. "You're not meant to be here," she says. Her braided hair is closer to ash than blond, twisted in a pattern he does not recognize and would not be able to recreate; her eyes are green as harvest, as the last glimpse of the sun-filtered sea closing overhead.
"Sorry," he says. "I, uh, I needed some air."
She tilts her head, regarding him. "Are you okay?" she asks, and she steps in front of him, breaking the horizon. The fields are a tangled sprawl a few feet behind her, and she reaches to take his hand. Her palm is surprisingly rough, but her grip is gentle, the press of bones like twigs against his skin.
"Yeah, thanks," Dean says. Her thumb brushes the soft skin of his wrist. "I, uh. I should go back in," he says. "Sorry for trespassing."
She shrugs. "I don't mind you being here. It's their rule, I didn't make it."
Dean's mouth quirks crookedly, not a grin but close enough. "Okay, then."
She hardly has to lean up to kiss him, to brush her mouth against his, and Dean reaches automatically to cup her cheek; her kiss is unexpectedly sweet, honey as gesture, as touch.
"It's all right," she says, close to his ear, and he swallows. He looks down; he sees that her dress is not that of a waitress, but something simpler, a dark shift, not even black, and of course she has no nametag, but she does not need one. She lifts his hand, which she has not yet released, to the side of her neck, where her pulse beats steady and eternal. He swallows, and his fingers slip across the short strands of hair at the nape of her neck, pieces too short to be caught and braid-woven; he closes his eyes and he thinks of the diner behind them, of the hunt to which they are driving, of his father's face turned perpetually towards the road and Sam, oh, always Sam, copper-bright, spun coin-careless into air and falling away, forever away.
Her mouth opens beneath his and she sighs, her breath a susurrus like wind through leaves, unsoothed as wind rustling through fields of unreaped corn, stalks turning brittle at the first curve of winter, and he lowers his head, rests his forehead against her shoulder and breathes out. Her fingers work at the buckle of his belt and he shivers, mouths at the smooth skin left bare by the wide collar of her dress, and when she raises her hand to his face, her palm against the unshaven edge of his jaw, he lifts his head and lets himself be kissed once more, born back, further into the cooler shadows, as his own hands slip across the front of her dress, the swell of her breasts.
He tilts his head back against the wall, fevered, half-lost to the world; he drags her mouth to his as she lifts her dress, and lifts him into her. She grips his shoulders as he holds her hips, working into her, fierce and fervent; the sound she makes is the cry of birds, harbinger's beck, the shriek of summer's first raven, and he bites his tongue, tastes blood as he shudders and shivers and spills.
He comes back to himself slowly, her chthonic scent deep and familiar, and he loosens his grip on her; she brushes her fingers across her mouth and then trails them across his own lips, a gesture of goodbye, perhaps, a kiss when the press of mouths is no longer necessary, or when it would carry an unwanted significance, and then she looks down, steps away from him and straightens her dress.
He does not see her go, nor does he see how she does. When Sam bangs through the door a moment later, clattering down the steps, Dean has redone his jeans, his belt, but he stares still at the fields, unseeing, his eyes clouded with autumn-smoke; he is unable to will himself to move, unsure of what he has just done, even as on some deeper level, myth-marrow, there is no question about that for which he bartered.
"Dean," Sam says. "Hey, man, what're you doing out here?" and his hand on Dean's arm is anchoring, grounding; Dean blinks and looks up at him.
"I needed some air," he says, and the words have the familiarity and weight of those spoken in a dream, only their echoes remembered upon waking. He remembers the way her hair had tangled sweat-damp around his fingers, and he shivers. "I just, uh. There was a girl."
Sam's forehead creases. "A girl?"
"Yeah, she, uh," Dean says. "Nothing. It's not," and Sam's eyes are for a moment that color, spring-promise; only a trick of the light, but Dean sighs all the same, sighs without meaning to, leans for a moment towards him, and Sam's eyes, once more the hazel of Dean's witch-eyed brother, widen.
"I didn't think," Sam says, stunned, wondrous, his gaze a cast wager, "I thought, I thought it was just me, I thought you didn't," and his fingers on Dean's wrist turn Dean towards him; his kiss is like a brand, searing, entirely new, and Dean, reeling, does not pull away. He thinks of Sam's moods, Sam's sudden anger, Sam's fingers tight around his shoulder; he thinks of the girl's green-gold eyes and the many ways in which a bargain might be twisted, of coincidence and confluence; he thinks of the gambler's myriad ways in which wishes might be granted, all of which echo the same heartsick devastation in the end.
But he has paid, and this is his; he kisses Sam back, at first because to Sam he always responds, to Sam he would give anything, and then he lets himself kiss Sam back, because Sam is angry, Sam is trapped, caged, raging, and this is how Dean will make it up to him, how Dean will make it all right. This is what Dean will do because he loves his brother, and this is what Dean gets to do because he loves his brother more than anything; this, offered, is his to take and to keep, the way Sam is looking at him now as though Dean has just given him everything he's ever wanted, here in the shadows behind some nameless diner, next to the dumpster, the crossroads behind them and the fields before; this is the world. Sam's thumb slips possessive beneath Dean's chin in a way that a girl's would not, a way that is his brother's, his brother's alone. Sam pushes close, pushes in; Dean has one leg worked between Sam's own as they grapple and kiss and curse, heedless and reckless besides.
Their faces are flushed, they are both breathing hard, when finally Sam says, "Dad sent me to find you." There's a smear of red across his lips, Dean's blood, and Dean rests his forehead against his brother's, uses his thumb to wipe the blood away; when Sam licks his lips a moment later, Dean has to look away, undone already by even that smallest of gestures. It might kill him to sit besides Sam in the diner once more, as though nothing has happened, when his brother's fingers have marked the bones of his hips and he's tasted the span of his brother's mouth. Later they will sneak out of the motel room while their father is sleeping and the night air will smell of stale chlorine and Dean will push him against the vending machine near the pool; three thousand miles away and later still, in an otherwise forgettable restaurant, in a bathroom, the lock on the door of which is broken, Sam will go to his knees for his brother, but right now they can only go back inside, where their father is waiting. There are miles to go, and it's only spring; they will have all of summer, Dean thinks, this ash-colored summer, this thing that was not his to take but that is his, now, this thing he has wrought, this thing for which he has paid. All of summer, at least.
The diner is louder than Dean had remembered. He heads for their booth, Sam trailing behind.
"How'd you feel about driving the rest'a the way?" John asks, when they are seated; he takes a sip of coffee and says, "I could use the sleep."
Dean swallows, and he has just fucked around with his brother, and Sam is beside him, looking out the window with this secret small smile, this smile for Dean alone, and their father holds out the keys, and it is not betrayal when Dean takes them. "Sounds good," he says, and already the clouds are knitting together, already the storm is gathering; they will drive out beneath rain, the pulse of water, of earth, this deal he has made turning dirt to mud at the crossroads they leave behind.
--
end
by whereupon
Dean/ofc, Sam/Dean, pre-series, R, 2,929 words.
He does not look over his shoulder when he goes after his brother.
Cloud-tattered sky, ragged-edged white scattered like shroud-scraps or torn lace, clouds like rivulets, tracks across that sky, itself only a shade lighter than charcoal, like marks cut deep by dragging claws, and beneath that ravaged grey, these endless saffron-smudged fields lined with ditches sedge-choked and thick with rainwater runoff. In the backseat, Sam, who has been sulking since noon, turns another page in a textbook stolen only because they left town in a hurry, no time to go back, hardly even time enough to shove it into a bag before John started the engine; the theft might have been inadvertent but it's theft all the same, and his eyes had burned with shame and anger, his mouth pressed sullen and cold, when they passed the school on their way out of town. John's hands are relaxed around the steering wheel even as he sees at once the road ahead, this unnamed backroad identified only by a number, and the road on which they have been travelling for almost as long as Dean can remember, one end of which is rooted in fire and death while the other dead-ends in a gunshot that sounds like justice. Sam kicks the back of Dean's seat, deliberate and angry because Dean took their father's side in the argument, and John's ring glints when the car angles for a moment and cold light slices unexpectedly through the windshield; Dean rests his head against the shotgun window and closes his eyes against that haunted, hypnagogic sky and the hangover snarling tight behind his temples.
He tries to recall the girl of the night before, the girl with eyes like fall-felled leaves, who swore her father would kill them both if he found out, but it seems that already her face is receding, as is her name, as he imagines he will from her own memory; her life will continue on here, perhaps she will get married and grow old without ever leaving that town and perhaps he will have crossed the country a dozen times more by then, perhaps his bones will already rest bare beneath the earth or perhaps he will be as his father is now, determined, a nightmare-eyed man, ghost-ridden and all the more courageous for it.
Valerie, he thinks, an epiphany that seems as superstitious as salt tossed backwards or a dream of crows; her name was Valerie and she had kissed him soft and gentle, the porch light behind her like a plea against the night, bidding her home, and he'd shoved his hands into his pockets, against weakness and vulnerability and a longing to which he would never admit aloud, and turned away. There had been the bar, then, his wallet no less empty when he left than when he entered, for he'd learned early and learned well the tricks of hustling in any frame of mind, and the wrecked stumble home to where his brother lay sleeping, his face so young though he was already taller than Dean himself, and where John would arrive some number of hours later, salt-burned and victorious, his mind turned already to the next hunt, the next town, the next sulfur-etched step, almost undoubtedly too late but they would hurry all the same. No other family would be broken the way his had been, if John had his way.
Dean drifts, half-asleep or less, and becomes aware only gradually that they are no longer moving, that the car has stopped. He jolts awake when the driver's side door slams closed, but he is still blinking muzzily when Sam leans over the seat and grabs his shoulder. "Dean," Sam says, annoyed and urgent, as though it's not the first time he's said it; his rough-cut hair hangs shaggy over his eyes and his fingers grip tightly as though to claim or bruise.
"Yeah, sitting right here," Dean says. He does not try to pull away, though he believes that he could, if he wanted to; his brother does not have such a hold on him that he couldn't escape. "You can let go any time, dude."
Sam's eyes narrow; his glare is sharp, but he lets go all the same, and he gets out of the car. Dean is left wondering if there was something he missed, something Sam had said that had gone unheard, or if this is simply another one of his brother's moods, phases of darkness that strike lightning-quick and are sometimes gone just as fast. Dean watches the stride of Sam's long legs across the dirt lot, two edges of which form one half-of the crossroads at which they are stopped. The other cars in the lot are old, not one of them new; their windshields glint dully beneath the accumulated dust of weary travel and Sam walks between their ragged rows with his head bowed. He opens the door of what Dean sees now is a diner, small brown building with dirty glass windows that look out upon the crossroads and the scrabbling fields. Anyone come to sell their soul would be fair game, a show for those on their way to elsewhere, if they cared to lift their heads from their eggs over-easy to watch. But they have their own souls, and their own deals, their own journeys to mind; they do not care to burden themselves with another's tragedy, for there's only so much one can carry before the weight begins to slow them down.
Dean does not look over his shoulder when he goes after his brother; he does not look back at the crossroads as he retraces the steps of his brother and father before him. He's not sure what's going on with his brother these days; he doesn't ever remember being so angry, so stubborn, but he thinks that perhaps Sam was born like this and it's merely becoming more evident as he gets older, the clashes between him and their father both angrier and more inevitable with each passing day, every day dragging Sam further and further away. Their fights leave Dean unsettled, shipwrecked; they're building up to something, a terrible climax, a rending, and most days Dean can pretend not to notice, pretend not to notice that they cannot keep doing this forever, but even on those days, he keeps his eyes closed as much as he can, tries to keep out of it or to make peace, when he can. That's easier said than done; most of the time it leaves both of them still angry at each other, and angry at him.
He understands even more on those days why Sam wants to leave, why Sam will leave, just as he understands why he himself will never be able to, why their father raised them like this, how important it is not to turn from this work, even as it threatens to consume them, even as it consumes more of their father with every failed hunt, every lead that goes nowhere, every wife and mother stolen in a house fire, no matter the origins of the spark.
Their father, now, who sits across from Sam in a booth that does not look out upon the crossroads but that has an excellent view of the door, and Dean makes for them, slides in next to Sam and reaches for a menu without saying anything to either of them.
He reads the menu; his stomach roils. Sam shifts his weight and manages to elbow Dean in the process; John rubs his hands across his eyes as though to awaken himself, to push away sleep. "Order me the number three," Dean says, and the men's room is down a small hall, across from the kitchen. He pauses outside of the door, but he does not go in; he breathes easier already, out of their sight, and he keeps walking. Though the smeared glass of the back door, the door at the end of the hall, he can see fields and sharp sky; he goes towards them, his boots tripping down the few steps so that he can stand, chest heaving, in the shadow of the building, next to a dumpster that is thankfully closed and a stack of grey-worn wooden pallets, splintered with age.
He closes his eyes for balance, suddenly too small, untethered beneath that vast sky; the air smells of rain, and then there is a noise, the scuffing of shoes across dirt, footsteps, and he opens his eyes once more.
A girl stands beside him, her dress the black uniform of the waitresses in the diner, though he did not hear the door open, did not hear her come after him. "You're not meant to be here," she says. Her braided hair is closer to ash than blond, twisted in a pattern he does not recognize and would not be able to recreate; her eyes are green as harvest, as the last glimpse of the sun-filtered sea closing overhead.
"Sorry," he says. "I, uh, I needed some air."
She tilts her head, regarding him. "Are you okay?" she asks, and she steps in front of him, breaking the horizon. The fields are a tangled sprawl a few feet behind her, and she reaches to take his hand. Her palm is surprisingly rough, but her grip is gentle, the press of bones like twigs against his skin.
"Yeah, thanks," Dean says. Her thumb brushes the soft skin of his wrist. "I, uh. I should go back in," he says. "Sorry for trespassing."
She shrugs. "I don't mind you being here. It's their rule, I didn't make it."
Dean's mouth quirks crookedly, not a grin but close enough. "Okay, then."
She hardly has to lean up to kiss him, to brush her mouth against his, and Dean reaches automatically to cup her cheek; her kiss is unexpectedly sweet, honey as gesture, as touch.
"It's all right," she says, close to his ear, and he swallows. He looks down; he sees that her dress is not that of a waitress, but something simpler, a dark shift, not even black, and of course she has no nametag, but she does not need one. She lifts his hand, which she has not yet released, to the side of her neck, where her pulse beats steady and eternal. He swallows, and his fingers slip across the short strands of hair at the nape of her neck, pieces too short to be caught and braid-woven; he closes his eyes and he thinks of the diner behind them, of the hunt to which they are driving, of his father's face turned perpetually towards the road and Sam, oh, always Sam, copper-bright, spun coin-careless into air and falling away, forever away.
Her mouth opens beneath his and she sighs, her breath a susurrus like wind through leaves, unsoothed as wind rustling through fields of unreaped corn, stalks turning brittle at the first curve of winter, and he lowers his head, rests his forehead against her shoulder and breathes out. Her fingers work at the buckle of his belt and he shivers, mouths at the smooth skin left bare by the wide collar of her dress, and when she raises her hand to his face, her palm against the unshaven edge of his jaw, he lifts his head and lets himself be kissed once more, born back, further into the cooler shadows, as his own hands slip across the front of her dress, the swell of her breasts.
He tilts his head back against the wall, fevered, half-lost to the world; he drags her mouth to his as she lifts her dress, and lifts him into her. She grips his shoulders as he holds her hips, working into her, fierce and fervent; the sound she makes is the cry of birds, harbinger's beck, the shriek of summer's first raven, and he bites his tongue, tastes blood as he shudders and shivers and spills.
He comes back to himself slowly, her chthonic scent deep and familiar, and he loosens his grip on her; she brushes her fingers across her mouth and then trails them across his own lips, a gesture of goodbye, perhaps, a kiss when the press of mouths is no longer necessary, or when it would carry an unwanted significance, and then she looks down, steps away from him and straightens her dress.
He does not see her go, nor does he see how she does. When Sam bangs through the door a moment later, clattering down the steps, Dean has redone his jeans, his belt, but he stares still at the fields, unseeing, his eyes clouded with autumn-smoke; he is unable to will himself to move, unsure of what he has just done, even as on some deeper level, myth-marrow, there is no question about that for which he bartered.
"Dean," Sam says. "Hey, man, what're you doing out here?" and his hand on Dean's arm is anchoring, grounding; Dean blinks and looks up at him.
"I needed some air," he says, and the words have the familiarity and weight of those spoken in a dream, only their echoes remembered upon waking. He remembers the way her hair had tangled sweat-damp around his fingers, and he shivers. "I just, uh. There was a girl."
Sam's forehead creases. "A girl?"
"Yeah, she, uh," Dean says. "Nothing. It's not," and Sam's eyes are for a moment that color, spring-promise; only a trick of the light, but Dean sighs all the same, sighs without meaning to, leans for a moment towards him, and Sam's eyes, once more the hazel of Dean's witch-eyed brother, widen.
"I didn't think," Sam says, stunned, wondrous, his gaze a cast wager, "I thought, I thought it was just me, I thought you didn't," and his fingers on Dean's wrist turn Dean towards him; his kiss is like a brand, searing, entirely new, and Dean, reeling, does not pull away. He thinks of Sam's moods, Sam's sudden anger, Sam's fingers tight around his shoulder; he thinks of the girl's green-gold eyes and the many ways in which a bargain might be twisted, of coincidence and confluence; he thinks of the gambler's myriad ways in which wishes might be granted, all of which echo the same heartsick devastation in the end.
But he has paid, and this is his; he kisses Sam back, at first because to Sam he always responds, to Sam he would give anything, and then he lets himself kiss Sam back, because Sam is angry, Sam is trapped, caged, raging, and this is how Dean will make it up to him, how Dean will make it all right. This is what Dean will do because he loves his brother, and this is what Dean gets to do because he loves his brother more than anything; this, offered, is his to take and to keep, the way Sam is looking at him now as though Dean has just given him everything he's ever wanted, here in the shadows behind some nameless diner, next to the dumpster, the crossroads behind them and the fields before; this is the world. Sam's thumb slips possessive beneath Dean's chin in a way that a girl's would not, a way that is his brother's, his brother's alone. Sam pushes close, pushes in; Dean has one leg worked between Sam's own as they grapple and kiss and curse, heedless and reckless besides.
Their faces are flushed, they are both breathing hard, when finally Sam says, "Dad sent me to find you." There's a smear of red across his lips, Dean's blood, and Dean rests his forehead against his brother's, uses his thumb to wipe the blood away; when Sam licks his lips a moment later, Dean has to look away, undone already by even that smallest of gestures. It might kill him to sit besides Sam in the diner once more, as though nothing has happened, when his brother's fingers have marked the bones of his hips and he's tasted the span of his brother's mouth. Later they will sneak out of the motel room while their father is sleeping and the night air will smell of stale chlorine and Dean will push him against the vending machine near the pool; three thousand miles away and later still, in an otherwise forgettable restaurant, in a bathroom, the lock on the door of which is broken, Sam will go to his knees for his brother, but right now they can only go back inside, where their father is waiting. There are miles to go, and it's only spring; they will have all of summer, Dean thinks, this ash-colored summer, this thing that was not his to take but that is his, now, this thing he has wrought, this thing for which he has paid. All of summer, at least.
The diner is louder than Dean had remembered. He heads for their booth, Sam trailing behind.
"How'd you feel about driving the rest'a the way?" John asks, when they are seated; he takes a sip of coffee and says, "I could use the sleep."
Dean swallows, and he has just fucked around with his brother, and Sam is beside him, looking out the window with this secret small smile, this smile for Dean alone, and their father holds out the keys, and it is not betrayal when Dean takes them. "Sounds good," he says, and already the clouds are knitting together, already the storm is gathering; they will drive out beneath rain, the pulse of water, of earth, this deal he has made turning dirt to mud at the crossroads they leave behind.
--
end