SPN SummerGen: Freeport, Illinois
Title: Freeport, Illinois
Creator: borgmama1of5
Recipient: ammcj062
Rating: PG for language
Word Count: 9300
Warnings: none
Beta: sandymg
Summary: June, 1998. John has left Sam and Dean in a small Illinois town while he is working. Two teenage boys, not much money, and time to kill…
Author's Notes at end
AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16109837
Freeport, Illinois
Sam shut his book and tightened his lips in disapproval as he heard the key in the motel door. It was after two a.m. again, and Dean was just getting back for the third night in a row.
Of course Dean didn’t look anything near repentant when he opened the door.
“You didn’t have to wait up for me, Sammy,” he smirked.
“If Dad were here you would be so busted.”
“Well, he’s not. So you can glare all you want but be careful or your face is gonna freeze like that.” As Dean sauntered past Sam toward the bathroom, Sam wrinkled his nose at the smell. “You reek.”
“Yeah, ’cause you smell like such a flower, little brother.”
Dean pitched a wadded white cloth in the direction of his duffle, then slammed the bathroom door behind him. Sam huffed and rolled over on his bed. This was going to be another sucky summer. Dad had deposited them at a crappy motel in Freeport, Illinois, eight days ago, then continued to Chicago in pursuit of ‘information.’ Dean had futilely argued that there was no reason why he and Sam couldn’t come with him, but, as always, Dad ignored the reasonableness of Dean’s or Sam’s position and did what he wanted.
Sam woke to Dean sorting crumpled bills into piles while sitting cross-legged on his unmade bed. Seeing Sam was awake, Dean said, without pausing in his counting, “Dad called last night-“
“Your cellphone?” Sam figured he deserved that ‘duh’ look, but continued anyway. “When?”
“Around ten. Said he’s going to be in Chicago another week. We’re gonna need another two hundred dollars to pay for the room. I’ve got a hundred and sixty-seven dollars, and thirty dollars left from Dad, but-“
“Where’d you get a hundred sixty-seven dollars?”
“Where d’you think?” Dean didn’t look up from the money. “We’re gonna need some of this for food, so I think we better just pay for three more nights right now…” He handed over a stack of small bills. “You go pay the manager. I’m gonna do the laundry and hit the grocery store. Think you can handle making yourself some mac’n’cheese tonight, Sammy?”
Sam wasn’t sure whether to express disapproval over whatever Dean had been doing the last three nights to get money-hustling pool was the most savory of the options Dean was likely to try-or to be astonished that his brother was voluntarily heading to a laundromat, so he ended up sputtering, “Why are you doing laundry and where’d you get that money?”
“I’ve worn all my underwear all four ways and none of your business,” and Dean was out the door. Sam jumped out of bed and hollered after him, “Hey! What about my laundry?” but Dean had already turned the corner of the building and was out of sight. “Jerk.” Sam muttered.
After paying the motel manager with grimy bills, most of them fives and singles, Sam decided he would use the remaining four dollars to get himself a decent breakfast and headed to the twenty-four hour diner that was a short walk away. It might be the last splurge on a decent meal for a while, given that their food and housing budget was totally dependent on what scam Dean was working. His thoughts segued into all the ways John Winchester was a crappy dad, leaving them high and dry and dependent on Dean’s ability to scare up more cash, and he had the diner door half open when the sign in the window registered.
DISHWASHER NEEDED.
No experience necessary
Breakfast forgotten, Sam walked up to the cashier. “I’m here about the job as a dishwasher.”
The blonde woman-mid-forties, Sam guessed, glanced at him with no expression. “Ever been a dishwasher?”
“No-but I’m a hard worker and I learn fast.” And how hard can it be to wash dishes, he mentally added.
“Hang on.” She gestured to one of the waitresses. “Tell Lou someone’s here about the dishwasher job.” She looked back to Sam. “He’ll be out in a minute.”
A short, stocky man in a black polo shirt came up to the register.
"My name's Sam Winchester." Sam couldn't interpret the odd look the older man gave him.
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen, sir. I-“ Ready to pitch his skimpy qualifications, Sam was thrown for a loop when Lou interrupted him.
“Four dollars an hour, you get paid cash at the end of each shift, can you start right now?”
“I, uh…Sure.”
“Follow me.” Entering the kitchen behind Lou, Sam was startled by the bustling movement and noise that filled the kitchen: the teeth-on-edge grating sound of a spatula being scraped along the five-foot grill on the far wall, piles of hash browns sizzling in a puddle of oil, silverware clattering, plates being scraped into a giant trash can, all the while multiple voices were hollering what sounded like gibberish: “Four sets of easies all day!” “Four easies all day, heard!” “I need hands!” “Down the line!”
“Behind you!” Lou hollered, ducking bodies as he headed toward a massive three-tub sink where a slender, dark-haired boy was shifting dishes from soapsuds to clear water.
“Ricky, this is the new dishwasher, Sam,” Lou yelled over the clatter.
Ricky nodded without stopping his movements. A waitress came over with a loaded tub of dirty dishes, dropped it on the counter, and slipped back out.
“Take ten minutes and show Sam how to handle the dishwashing station and then I want you working the grill with Carl.” With those instructions, Lou left.
“Ever done this before?” Sam was mesmerized by the non-stop movement of Ricky’s hands.
“Uh, no…”
“Roll up your sleeves, lose the watch, and wash your hands over there.” Ricky pointed with his chin to the small sink next to the counter full of dirty dishes. “You’ll be washing your hands a lot. Whenever you handle something dirty you wash your hands before you touch something clean. First rule of the kitchen.”
“Okay.” Sam quickly followed directions. By the time he turned around, Ricky’d emptied the counter of over half of the waiting cups and plates.
“Some of the servers and bussers will scrape the dishes, the prima donnas won’t, and sometimes they’re too busy out front to do it. So scrape and stack and then use this,” Ricky pulled a hose dangling over the sink with the plates he’d just cleaned off and blasted the dishes with the spray attachment. “Then it’s soapy water, thorough scrub, rinse water, sanitizer rinse, rack ‘em to dry. Pots and pans and serving dishes go on those shelves-“ again he gestured with his head, “And silverware goes there.
“When the water gets cold or gross, drain the sinks, use this dishwashing liquid for the first sink and this sanitizer solution for the third one. And you have to clean the crud out of the drains. Got it?”
“Sure,” Sam tried to answer confidently, but Ricky looked like he knew Sam was thinking he’d made a big mistake.
“Just remember, if you don’t keep up with the dishes, then there’s no plates to put the food on for the customers, and no pots for the cooks to make the food, so don’t waste time. It’s all yours.”
With a deep breath, Sam grabbed a rubber spatula and scraped a gob of food off the next plate. He could do this, he told himself. It couldn’t be any harder than scrubbing monster goo off their weapons for Dad's inspection. Once he had a pile in the dry sink he reached for the sprayer…and promptly got a faceful of water and food particles as the powerful spray ricocheted off its target.
“Shit!” It was just as disgusting as getting showered with monster guts, and he’d drenched the whole front of his shirt, too. He wiped his face with his sleeve, watched a bus boy set another tub of dishes on the counter, and took the hose again, this time semi-successfully angling the water away from himself.
Realizing he needed to copy Ricky’s non-stop rhythm, Sam moved the load of dishes through the three sinks as quickly as he could, arranged them in the drying rack, and headed back to the counter where now there were not only two more tubs of dirty dishes but also a pile of pans. He grabbed the handle of a five-gallon pot and swore as he jerked his burned hand back. He stuck it in the soapy water just as a bus boy came through the door yelling, “Coffee cups! We need fucking coffee cups!”
“Uh…” Sam went back to the tubs and pulled out all the cups he could, only to see the bus boy grab an entire rack of cups that had been drying on a cart at the far end of the dishwashing station. He forced himself to tune out the racket around him and focus on moving the dishes as efficiently as he could, ignoring the smarting of his hand-he’d had worse.
“¿Dónde está la jodida sartén? ¡Necesito una sartén limpia ahora!” Sam jerked the spray hose at the scream in his ear sending water in the wrong direction and he jumped back at the resulting shower. One of the cooks was standing next to him, waving his hands furiously.
“Miguel needs frying pans!” someone else yelled. Three fry pans were stacked on the to-be-washed counter. In his haste to clean the one he grabbed, Sam misjudged the dish hose again and soaked himself and the agitated cook who screeched at him even louder.
“Sorry, sorry!” Of course, with the cook hovering, it took forever to get a single pan washed. As soon as Sam pulled the first one from the sanitizer rinse, the cook snatched it away, still shouting what Sam was pretty sure were curses at his dishwashing ineptitude.
Sam lost track of time, but scraping what must have been the thousandth plate, it registered that the stuff he was pushing into the garbage had morphed from leftover bits of egg and pancake and syrup to bits of hamburger and fries. Which reminded his stomach that he hadn’t had any breakfast.
“Hey, Sam, take five, I can cover for a few.” Ricky was at his shoulder. Sam wondered if the job included a meal, but didn’t want to ask. “Before you go, though, tie up the trash and take it out to the dumpster. Andy’s out back, he can show you where.”
Sam wrestled the heavy bag out the rear door. The bus boy who’d yelled about the coffee cups was leaning against the back wall, inhaling a cigarette.
“Dumpster?”
The bus boy pointed. “Want a hand with that?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Sam carried the bag around the fence hiding the dumpster from view, and the two of them hoisted it in and slammed the lid shut.
“Your first day?” From his acne-marked face and gangly limbs, Sam figured the kid wasn’t much older than he was.
“Yeah, I came in and asked about the dishwasher sign in the window and got hired on the spot.”
“Jerry never showed up for work this morning. Lou was pissed.”
“I’m Sam. Does working in the kitchen mean I can have something to eat on my break?”
“I’m Andy. Don’t ask the cooks to make you something, but keep an eye out for something that one of the cooks messed up or when something gets sent back ‘cause the order got screwed up. They leave those plates by the stove and anyone can grab one.”
Andy stubbed out his cigarette and dropped it, and Sam followed him back inside where Ricky had nearly emptied the dirty dishes counter.
“Thanks,” Sam said with chagrin. Ricky’d done more in five minutes than Sam had done in the last hour.
“You’ll get the hang of it. Just pay attention to the pots, if you see two of the same size piled up, make sure you get one of them done right away so you don’t end up with Miguel freaking at you again.”
Sam was consciously ignoring his hunger pangs, finally feeling like he was getting a glimmer of how to set his pace, when hearing his name broke his concentration. Lou was standing behind him, a scowling long-haired teenager next to him.
“Henry’s here to take over.” Sam’s stomach gurgled loudly just then and Lou snorted. “Ricky can make you a burger before you leave.” Lou handed Sam a pile of singles. “Twenty dollars for five hours today. You start tomorrow at six a.m. and work till two. Okay?”
“Yessir.”
Sam fished his watch out of his soggy pocket-the front side of him was as wet as if he’d showered with his clothes on-and suddenly Sam realized he’d never let Dean know where he was. Guilt mixed with the knowledge that Dean was going to kill him once Dean knew he was safe. He had the number to Dean’s new cellphone, but he could be back at the motel in fifteen minutes-better to call and let Dean go from freaking out to really pissed by the time Sam got there, or just show up at the room and deal with the mixed consequences all at once? Without knowing how long Dean had been at the laundromat, Sam didn’t know how long he’d been ‘missing,’ but that would certainly affect how badly Dean would want to murder him…
“Sam! Your burger!” Ricky called from the grill.
“Thanks.” Looking at the juicy burger, Sam decided he would eat his last meal here before facing Dean. “Say, do you know if there’s a phone I can use?”
“Hey, Henry! Can Sam use your phone?”
Henry stopped his movement at the dishwashing station to glare at Ricky who grinned back. “Come on, you know you like to show it off.”
Still frowning, Henry wiped one hand on his jeans, pulled the phone from his back pocket, and held it out.
“Thanks, really appreciate it.” Sam stepped to the corner and punched in Dean’s number.
“Who’s this?” Sam could hear how upset his brother was.
“It’s me, Sam-“
“Where the hell’ve you been?”
“I’m at the Golden Flame, just having lunch…I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“What the hell! You weren’t here when I got back, didn’t leave a note, I’ve been all over for the last two hours looking for you!”
“Yeah, I’m sorry-“
“Not as sorry as you’re gonna be!”
“You done?” Henry interrupted.
“I gotta go, Dean. I’ll be there shortly.” Sam hung up before Dean could get out another angry sentence, snapped the phone closed, and put it by Henry on the shelf above the sink-“Thanks again” -then grabbed his burger and took it out back to eat in the last moments of peace Sam figured he was going to get.
However, Dean was not at the motel when Sam returned, only a note on his bed: Back late. Your ass stays in this room!!!!! which was a relief, and Sam immediately jumped in the shower to get the crud and the smell off him. Then, even though it was only three o’clock, Sam laid down on his bed and passed out for a few hours.
When Dean came back it was long past midnight, and Sam was back in bed. He kept his eyes closed, hoping his brother would be fooled that Sam was asleep. He concentrated on breathing slowly as he heard Dean walk over and stare for several long moments before turning away. Sam had already written the note he was going to leave when he left for the diner at five-thirty, which would tell Dean that he was going for a run-Dad would like that he was keeping up his training-and then he’d be spending the day at the library. He justified lying as fair since Dean wasn’t being honest about where he was spending his nights, and Sam wanted to keep the fact that he had a job and was earning money a secret until he had something substantial to show for it.
Sam experienced a little thrill when he walked into the Golden Flame kitchen in the morning, feeling like he belonged as Ricky and one of the waitresses acknowledged him, even though he’d only been there one day. The cacophony of voices and kitchen sounds didn’t seem quite so overwhelming. There was yet another dishwasher at the station, an older man, and Sam noted the black trash bag with head and arm holes that this man was wearing over his clothes. He immediately decided to copy that. Moderately protected from another soaking, he set out to find his rhythm for the day.
Sam scored a rejected omelet mid-morning when he got his break, and by noon he began to see the pattern in the ebb and flow of the kitchen work. He was impressed with the teamwork of the cooks, Miguel moving from the stove to the grill when Ricky had five orders of eggs at once, the guy from the fryer grabbing clean pots from Sam’s shelf to put by the stove before Miguel ran out, all the while calls of “Down the line” and “Behind you” kept everyone aware of who was moving into their space. He noticed which of the waitresses and bus boys made a point of scraping the dirty dishes and chatting with the kitchen staff. A couple of them even made an effort to welcome ‘the new guy.’
Thirty-two dollars in his pocket-enough for another night at the motel-Sam opened the motel room door and was instantly pinned against the wall by a livid Dean. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“I left a note-“ Sam huffed out.
“I went to the library! You weren’t there!”
“I’m not a little kid that you need to babysit anymore!” Until that moment, Sam had been ready to share his accomplishment, had been pleased that he was able to contribute to their shaky situation-but now Sam refused to capitulate to his brother’s unreasonable over-protectiveness.
Anger spiking like a geyser he turned on Dean, “You can be gone all night and I’m not supposed to worry about where you are or what you’re doing? You know what, screw you! I’m not gonna spend twenty-four hours a day stuck in this crappy room while you get to do whatever you want!” Sam shoved Dean’s forearm away while hooking his foot between Dean’s legs, causing Dean to lose his balance and half-fall against the closest bed, and then ducked away when Dean tried to grab him again. Fists raised, Sam prepared to throw a punch, but Dean just swore while he grabbed a bag from the floor.
“I don’t have time for this!” he glared and slammed the door as he stormed out. “I am gonna kick your ass tomorrow!”
“Fuck you!” Sam yelled at the door. Dean had gone to the library checking up on him? Treating him like a baby? While Dean could do whatever he wanted? That was so blatantly unfair…Sam felt the money in his pocket again. Screw his brother, Sam had earned that money and no way was he giving it to Dean for expenses now. It was his money and he was going to spend it on himself.
Sam made sure he was in bed well before he expected Dean to return, satisfactorily stuffed with a veggie-laden pizza, mozzarella sticks, and an order of wings, with a plan tomorrow to hit the Borders Books he’d noticed on the drive into Freeport as soon as his shift was over. He was asleep before Dean came in.
Sam moved as stealthily as on a hunt to get out at five-thirty in the morning without waking Dean, knowing that if Dean woke up Sam could kiss his job good-bye. His one concession was to leave a note that simply said ‘Back before dark’ on the bathroom sink where Dean would see it. Having dressed by the light edging through the thin drapes, Sam was about to open the door when he noticed the taut string angling off the doorknob and followed it with his eyes to see that it was tied to a knife sitting on the edge of Dean’s mattress, so that opening the door would cause it to clatter to the floor. It was just a moment’s work to carefully slice the string with his pocketknife while keeping it from falling. Dean’s booby-trap short-circuited, Sam headed out for his third day of work.
He greeted Marci, the cashier he’d met on his first day, and headed into the kitchen where there were already several egg, bacon, and pancake orders on the grill. Sam frowned at the backlog of pans and dishes waiting for him, quickly drained and refilled the sinks, and set to scraping and washing with vigor.
Scrubbing a stubbornly scorched stock pot, Sam heard a cook call “hot pan,” turned to see where he was heading, and ended up with a perfect view as disaster unfolded: carrying four flats of eggs, Ricky walked out of the cooler just as the pan-carrying cook crossed in front of the door, his shoulder hitting Ricky’s arm, and a hundred and twenty eggs went flying along with cries of “Shit!” “Damn!” and “Fuck!”
All movement in the kitchen stopped as everyone took in the sight of raw eggs splattered across Ricky, the other cook, the wall, and the floor. At Ricky’s bellow for “Fuckin’ towels!” Sam grabbed a stack, handed some over, and began wiping the slime from the floor. He couldn’t help comparing it to the rawhead guts that had exploded over Dean last month in Missouri, though that goo had been orange and smelled worse than skunk…this was mild in comparison. As soon as the immediate floor was cleaned up enough to walk on without tracking the mess further, Ricky went back to the cooler for more eggs.
The waitresses and bus boys had come into the kitchen to gawk at the disaster, but vanished back to the dining room when Lou irately barreled through the door. Sam shoved the pile of disgusting towels into the linen bag, washed his hands, and returned to the dish sink as Lou grabbed the closest bus boy and told him to mop the floor.
The kitchen energy was ramped up to cover the disruption of service until the after-breakfast lull allowed a few moments to chill. Sam was halfway through a plate of extra hash browns when Lou reappeared and headed directly toward him.
“Henry’s not coming in this afternoon-his girlfriend’s having a baby. Can you do a double shift?”
“I guess…sure.”
They were slammed by the lunch crowd, and Sam’s world narrowed to scraping, hosing, washing, rinsing, and sanitizing, ignoring the sting of hot pans, the smell of the garbage, the sweat trickling down his face, and his hunger pangs. He jumped when he was tapped on the shoulder.
“Take a break, Sam,” Ricky ordered. Sam looked at the one tub of dishes still waiting, and Ricky shook his head. “You’re as close to caught up as you’re gonna get, and if you don’t chill now you’ll never make it to ten o’clock, believe me.”
Outside, Sam leaned his back against the warm brick and slid down to sit in the weedy patch of gravel by the back door. Now that he was stationary, he felt the ache in his back from hunching over the sinks for eight hours, and wished he wasn’t going back for another eight, but he’d agreed…
“Suck it up, buttercup,” he said to himself in a tone that sounded uncomfortably like Dean’s as he stood back up. He hoped there’d be something he could eat before he went back to work.
He had just finished washing his hands when there was a crash and a yell from the dining room. “Jesus Christ! Now what?!” one of the cooks yelled. Peering through the door, Sam saw Dawn, one of the younger waitresses, on the floor surrounded by burgers and broken plates. He grabbed the broom and dustpan and joined the crowd as someone helped Dawn get up. She was holding her arm and crying while trying to apologize to the unfortunate customers whose meal was strewn all over. In a few moments most of the mess had been cleaned up, Dawn was tucked in a corner of the kitchen with a bag of ice on her wrist, and Lou was muttering about a full moon, which gave Sam a moment’s pause as his mind jumped to werewolf; then he laughed at his conditioned response and went back to his station.
Absorbed in his work, Sam didn’t know how long the voice had been mixed in the background restaurant noise but the raucous laugh filtering into the kitchen he would know anywhere. What was Dean?...As if summoned by his name, Dean stepped through the doorway carrying a tub of dirty dishes, then froze as they locked eyes.
“Sam?”
“Dean?”
"What the hell..."
"What are you...?" Sam noted Dean was wearing a white button-down shirt and black pants, what all the Golden Flame bus boys wore. "Are you...Do you work here?" his voice rose sharply at the end of the question.
In spite of obviously being taken aback at seeing Sam, Dean didn’t pause in his work. “What time do you get off?” he asked as he moved past Sam to grab a rack of clean coffee mugs and take them back to the serving station.
“Ten,” Sam answered.
“I’ll take my break then,” and Dean left through the swinging door.
Knowing now that Dean was out there, Sam tried to hear the noise of the dining room over the clatter of the kitchen. Every time the kitchen door opened, he took a fast look to try catching a glimpse of his brother, all the while piecing together in hindsight the clues that he felt dense for missing. Dean was wearing the one dress shirt he owned, which is why he’d done his laundry. Sam now recognized the smell around Dean when he’d come in late as the same restaurant aroma that permeated his own clothes and skin after eight hours.
“So Dean’s your brother?” Liz asked as she set down her dish tub and grabbed the spatula to push leftovers from the plates into the trash. Liz was both the chattiest waitress and the one who always took time to help the kitchen out.
“Yeah…” It would sound pretty dumb for Sam to admit he hadn’t known that Dean worked here until just now, so he didn’t elaborate.
“He’s a nice guy. Works hard…guess it runs in the family.” She smiled at him. “All the girls give him a little extra from the tips ‘cause he takes good care of everyone’s tables, not just the ones in his section.” She washed her hands, then grabbed a container of clean silverware. “Cute, too,” she winked as she left.
Each time Dean came back to the kitchen, he gave Sam an odd look, though he joked comfortably with the rest of the crew. “Need to ketchup with these, we’re running low on moose-turd,” he said, grabbing clean condiment bottles from a rack.
“Oh, that would leave everyone in a real pickle,” someone responded.
“Ah, I’ll have those tables dilled up in no time,” Dean answered. Sam rolled his eyes, even if Dean’d only been here a few days, everyone should know they would never win a pun war with him. Sam never had.
“I bet you just relish the thought of playing with squirty things.”
“Guys, you’re just encurryagin g him!” Sam interjected, hiding a grin.
An older man with impressively tattooed arms was covering the grill for the dinner shift. As he flipped a row of chicken breasts he commented, “This whole conversation is an a-salt on my ears.”
“Romaine calm everyone!” Dean called as he exited.
“I need more thyme to think of a comeback…” someone else muttered, and everyone groaned.
At seven Lou came back to see him. “Ann will have your pay at the register,” he said without preamble. “Can you do a double tomorrow? I don’t think we’ll be seeing Henry.”
Sam did some quick math-one hundred twenty-eight dollars for two days? “Sure,” he answered. Wouldn’t be the first time he only got four hours’ sleep.
“Great.”
Only sheer stubbornness kept Sam on his feet for the last three hours, though. As intense as the breakfast/lunch shift had been, dinner was crazier. Not only were there dishes and pans in double the quantity, Sam now had to wash the storage containers as the cooks emptied the plastic and metal canisters at a relentless pace. He made the mistake of hosing off a deep bin with its label ‘chicken boobies’ still affixed and discovered that the water effectively super-glued the tape. He spent fifteen minutes picking it off with his jagged fingernails while dishes from the dining room and pans from the cooks piled up in an unholy mountain, until he gave up, shoved the container to the side and struggled through the backlog.
It was still sitting there when Dean moseyed over and said, “It’s ten o’clock and time for you to turn into a pumpkin.” He surveyed Sam’s soggy, exhausted state. “More like a prune, actually. And not turn into one…you already are.” He pried the dish from Sam’s hands.
“I gotta finish,” Sam protested.
“You’re done. You’ve been here since what, six a.m.? Grab some food,” Dean shoved a plateful of congealed fries at him, “and go home.”
“I gotta get that label off.”
Dean picked the big square up and looked at the ragged tape. “Chicken boobies? Seen the one labeled ‘thunder thighs?’ Or the ‘Motley Crue-tons?’” He snickered as he pulled out his pocket knife and scraped the label off with a flick of his wrist. Sam should have thought of that…he really was too tired to think straight. But when he went to take it from Dean and finish washing it, Dean held it away and shook his head. “I mean it, Sam, home. Bed. Now. Nobody’s gonna die if you don’t finish this job tonight.” He locked eyes with Sam until Sam surrendered.
“Okay. Can I get my money first?”
“Sure. I’ll even escort you to the register.”
This late, one of the servers doubled as cashier, so Sam had wait for Ann while she was taking a table’s order. With final instructions for Sam to go right to bed, Dean went back to work, and Sam watched as his brother efficiently cleared away the dishes from a group of noisy twenty-somethings, stacking plates along his arm like he’d been doing it for years, the diners laughing at whatever joke he was telling. Then he was bringing coffee to the table Ann had just been at, balancing a tray full of water glasses in his other hand while stepping smoothly around a couple whose chairs were protruding in the aisle. Dean was clearly enjoying his interactions with the customers-Dean was relaxed, Sam realized, not vigilantly watching for danger the way Sam was used to seeing him. He was distracted from puzzling over that dissonance when Ann came back to the register. Noticing Sam’s focus, she nodded. “Not too often we get someone that everybody seems to like, from the regulars to the kids and the guys in the kitchen. And he’s not a slacker like some of the bussers. Shame he’s only here temporary.” She gave Sam a motherly smile. “I heard you’re a hard worker too. We’ll need you tomorrow, don’t think Henry’ll be back for a few days. Here you go.” She handed Sam an envelope.
Sam nodded and didn’t even bother to count the money, just stuck it in his jeans and trudged back to the motel. Following Dean’s orders seemed unusually reasonable, and Sam was asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.
Dean moving around the room woke Sam, and he assumed Dean was getting ready for bed until he rolled over and saw that he had less than five minutes to get out the door for work.
“Shit!” Sam threw back the sheet. He had been too tired to shower last night and he stank. But before he managed to stand up, Dean had a hand on his shoulder.
“Go back to bed.”
“I…”
“I’ve got the start of your shift covered. You come in at nine and I’ll come back and take a nap or something.”
“It’s my job…”
“Lou has you doing a double today which means sixteen hours, but he only has me working ten. I can’t have my baby brother working more hours than me! If I work three of your hours, we’re even.”
Sam really wanted to argue, but his eyes were shutting on their own, which of course Dean noticed, and he gave Sam another shove which toppled him back to his pillow.
“I’m still royally pissed at you, though, for you going off without telling me,” Dean added. “But since Dad’s not gonna be back for another two weeks at least, now, if we’re both working we’ll be able to pay for the room and still eat, so nice work snagging a job.” Sam relished the unexpected praise until Dean added, as he walked out the door, “’Course you probably got the job ‘cause Lou realized you were my brother…”
“Jerk!” Sam mumbled before falling back to sleep.
Apparently Dean was as good at dishwashing as he was at bussing tables. When Sam walked in the kitchen there were only a few glasses and one pan waiting to be washed. Sam grinned to himself when he realized that Dean was humming Highway to Hell as his washing tempo.
“Heya, Sammy. All yours.” Dean stepped away from the sinks and Sam was gratified to see that Dean was as soaked as he had been on his first day. Either no one had clued Dean in to using a trash bag as an apron, or he’d deemed that he didn’t need it. Probably the latter, Sam thought.
“You can have this job,” Dean said. “I’d rather pour coffee and check out the waitresses and clean up the floor after rugrats.” Sam snorted as Dean continued, “See you this afternoon. Don’t have too much fun!”
There was a definite satisfaction in being able to keep up with the work flow after just a couple days. Nice to know if he ever needed to support himself he had one marketable skill for his resume, since ‘skilled at researching and dispatching monsters’ wasn’t likely to net him a job interview.
At two o’clock, the “Hi, Dean,” from Marci heralded his brother’s return to the restaurant, and it was just a short while till Dean carried in a tub of dirty dishes, scraped them, and grabbed a rack of silverware to take back out. They happened to end up outside on break at the same time, and Sam mentioned that Dean seemed to be bringing tubs into the kitchen twice as often as the other busser, Andy.
“Quicker the table’s cleared and reset, the quicker someone else gets seated, and more customers means more tips,” Dean explained. “The bus boys get a cut of the tips the waitresses make. The easier I make their job, well…most of the girls have been slipping me a couple bucks extra…and not just ‘cause I’m good-looking, though that don’t hurt.”
Sam rolled his eyes, but he had to admit that Dean could be a hard worker. Sam was used to seeing Dean’s focus on hunting…and there had been a few classes in school where Dean exerted himself because the subject was interesting, or he felt the teacher deserved the effort…Sam just had never had the chance to see Dean working a normal job. He grinned at the thought that Dean had something for his resume now, too…but immediately frowned because he couldn’t see Dean ever needing one.
Dean responded to Sam’s scowl with a light tap to the head. “Hey, don’t get all pissy just ‘cause I’m the one with the looks…there’s gotta be some girl likes hanging out with the guy with pruny fingers.” Sam gave a desultory slap back. “You don’t get it,” he mumbled under his breath as he went back inside.
Lou came in the kitchen just before Sam was getting ready to leave. Henry would be coming back the day after tomorrow and do two shifts, so Sam would do a double again and then he’d get a day off.
When it turned out that they were going to have the same day off, Dean proclaimed they had earned the right to spend some of their hard-earned money on something fun.
“The X-Files movie opens tomorrow, dude! It’s at the Cherryvale theater in Rockford!”
“But how are we going to get to Rockford, Dean?”
Sam didn’t trust the self-satisfied look Dean gave him. “Already got that covered.” As Sam continued to stare at him, Dean smugly revealed his plan: Marci had been complaining that her neighbor was on vacation for a month and he’d left his car parked blocking part of her driveway. “I’m just gonna be a good Samaritan, Sam, and move it for her. ‘Course it might take all day to repark it…”
Dean relocated the battered 1988 Toyota Corolla after his shift ended so it was outside the motel door in the morning. When Sam questioned why they were leaving so early when the movie wasn’t until the afternoon, Dean merely said, “Trust me, Sammy,” and turned on the radio, grimacing as My Heart Will Go On warbled from the speakers and quickly turning the dial. They loaded up with an unprecedented amount of junk food at Qwik Mart and snacked their way along Route 20 on Red Vines, M&Ms, and cans of Nerve Damage and Mello Yello.
Just before ten, Dean pointed to an orange, brown, and blue sign proclaiming Volcano Falls Adventure Park. “We got a couple hours to kill, Sam, and look what all they have here: go-carts, miniature golf, batting cages, and an arcade!”
It had been a long while since Sam had seen such kid-like enthusiasm on his brother’s face, and Dean’s gleefulness was infectious. “Can we do the go-carts?” he asked eagerly.
It was early enough that there weren’t long lines, but still a number of mostly teenage boys were waiting to take their turns. Sam had only driven the Impala a handful of times, and only under Dean’s critical instruction, so he was vibrating with excitement at the chance to see what racing would be like. “Look at the tires when you pick your car,” Dean coached. “Try and get one where the tires look a little newer. And when you’re going around the curve, brake before you go into it, never in the middle or you’ll lose control.”
Sam nodded without listening, darting through the gate when it opened to hop into the blue car that had won the previous race. The row of miniature vehicles pulled into a line and the light turned green. Sam pressed on the gas and shot forward, but his rear wheels shimmied and he had to jiggle the steering wheel to stay in control while the other cars shot past him.
Lips pursed in fierce concentration, he tried to remember what Dean had said about braking, while paying attention to how close the other cars were. Each time he reached a turn he manipulated the brake and gas differently. By the fourth go-round he thought he had the hang of it, and started to catch up to the cars closest to him.
Accelerating out of a turn, suddenly the car directly ahead spun sideways. Swearing wildly, Sam yanked the wheel to the right, managed to squeak past the careening car, but then had to fight to keep from spinning out himself.
“The winner is car nine,” the loudspeaker announced, and Sam drove with deliberation to the finish line where Dean was joking with the guy who’d won.
“Another run?” he asked as Sam approached.
“Can we?”
“We earned this money, Sam, we get to have a little fun with it!”
They ended up going around two more times. Dean won the second race, and Sam felt his third-place finish in the last one was respectable.
They grabbed a couple hot dogs, then Dean had them get their hands stamped for readmission to the park before they left for the mall theater. Settling into the last row of seats with a family-size popcorn, a pack of licorice, and the largest size drinks, Dean sighed contentedly as the previews started. “This is the life, Sammy.”
Unfortunately, once the movie started, Dean’s nonstop critique made Sam shrink into his seat as the people around them glared irritatedly. “Glad we’re not spending summer in Texas…Black eyes, what a lame special effect, next thing they’ll be coughing up black smoke…Like neither Mulder or Scully saw that plot twist coming? They forget everything they ever learned in the TV series?...Just kiss her already! Oh Jesus! A fucking bee?...So the double-crosser is pulling another double cross? Hey Sammy, does that make it a triple-cross or a quadruple-cross?...Doesn’t that look like a giant-size bank drive-up tube? They should make a carnival ride with tubes like that, shoot you through ‘em at high speeds…Even more glad we’re not spending the summer in Antarctica, right, Sam? Y’know, if aliens really were hiding here, Antarctica really would be a good place to hide…Why do people in movies always stop to look back? Don’t they know that just gives whatever’s after you time to catch up? It’s like the villains always monologuing…Wonder how long one of those things would last against a werewolf or something?...Dude! I knew they couldn’t leave the Cigarette-Smoking Man out of the whole movie!”
Standing in the line for the mens’ room afterward, Dean poked Sam, who was still trying to pretend he wasn’t with Dean. “Check out what’s playing in theater three-isn’t that the guy who plays Indiana Jones?” Sam looked at the poster-Six Days, Seven Nights. “Yeah, it is…so?”
Dean lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Let’s just go in there when we get out of the john. We already paid once.”
Sam looked to make sure no one was listening. The idea of getting an extra movie felt delightfully delinquent. “Okay. We should split up, though, just to be less conspicuous.”
Dean nodded. “I’ll get more snacks, you grab seats.”
Sam was grateful that there were a lot more empty seats this time, so he and Dean were by themselves in the rear. Dean’s commentary this round centered on being impressed with Harrison Ford’s ability to hold his own in a fight and get the hot young chick, considering how old he was. “He can’t be that much older than Dad,” Sam argued when they were back in the lobby. “And you’ve seen waitresses look at Dad like they might…”
“You can stop now, Sam, we are not going there,” Dean cut Sam off. “Hey, check that out.”
Theater one was showing what looked like a comedy, Can’t Hardly Wait. “That’s the girl from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Your turn to get the popcorn.”
Sam was almost up to the counter when he noticed an usher stopping Dean at the theater door. From the way Dean was gesturing and smirking, Sam knew Dean was trying to convince the usher that he’d just lost his ticket. Unfortunately, perhaps because the usher was an unsmiling gray-haired man, Dean’s usual ability to charm his way out of trouble failed, and Dean ended up being escorted to the exit.
Sam changed his order to a smaller popcorn that he could carry one-handed and a box of Sno-Caps that he could stuff in his pocket, and then, waiting till he was unobserved, he slipped over to the door Dean had been kicked out of and pushed it ajar. As expected, Dean was waiting on the other side, and they snuck into their third movie.
Missing the first fifteen minutes didn’t hamper following the typical teen comedy plot. Sam could certainly predict the behavior of the various stereotypes. When they did the flash-forward at the end of the movie to show where everyone ended up, Sam surprised himself by feeling a little sorry for Mike, even if he’d been a jerk for most of the movie. Sam would never admit that to Dean, though. On the other hand, nerdy William’s success felt more gratifying than it probably should have…
Mulan was the fourth picture at the theater, and even though Sam knew Dean would mock him for suggesting it, he was about to say, as long as they were there why not see it too, when the usher that had caught Dean earlier strode toward them with a security guard at his back.
“Time to am-scray,” Dean said under his breath, and they ducked out the exit, laughing.
“I think I ate more popcorn today than I have all year!” Sam chortled.
“And did you see that usher’s face? He wanted to throw us out personally,” Dean grinned.
“Ugh! Your teeth are black!”
Dean stuck out his tongue. “The joy of black licorice, Sam.”
“Yuck.”
“Want to go back to the adventure park and play a round of miniature golf?”
“Why not?”
Of course the game turned cutthroat from the moment Dean stuck Sam with a hot pink golf ball. Pretty evenly matched in eye-hand coordination, they messed with each other’s concentration instead. Dean belched loudly to startle Sam as he was about to make his putt, Sam hit his ball to knock Dean’s into a water hazard, and it degenerated into waving their fingers in each other’s face with every stroke. Dean drew little dicks instead of numbers to record Sam’s score; Sam retaliated by giving Dean fifty strokes on every hole. As much as Sam wanted to be pissed at his brother, he was having too much fun to actually be mad. By hole eighteen they had no idea who really was ahead, and since each insisted on being the leader, they decided whoever did better on the last hole would be the winner.
The straightway to the final hole was interrupted by a foot-wide ditch of gravel, requiring the ball be stroked hard enough to fly across it but not so hard that it would fly past the hole and out of bounds. Dean’s first try did just that as Sam yelled “Booyah!” just before Dean’s putter tapped his ball.
“Fuck you!” Dean responded with a semi-serious shove. Sam stuck out his tongue and then braced himself for the harassment he knew was coming. Sure enough, Dean bumped Sam’s elbow and his brilliant pink ball landed in the gravel. They each retrieved their golf ball and returned to the start. This time Sam ‘accidentally’ hip-checked Dean, who instinctively reacted by elbowing Sam in the stomach. Sam stomped on Dean’s foot, Dean put Sam in a headlock, and suddenly park employees were surrounding them.
For a moment it looked like Dean would escalate the horsing around into a real fight with them, but Sam caught his eye and nodded at the family with little kids waiting their turn on the hole, and Dean just gave Sam a half-hearted smack to the back of his head and handed his putter over to the closest guard.
“We’re going,” he muttered. Security followed them all the way to the gate, ignoring Dean’s request to at least let them get a couple burgers before they were thrown out.
“Guess it was a tie,” Sam ribbed when they got in the car.
“Bullshit. I won.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Dean.”
Dean hotwired the car again, and they bickered comfortably on the ride home about the golf game “You totally cheated on that shot with the windmill!,” the movies “I don’t know, Sam, I think the chick that Harrison Ford laid was hotter-women with experience, y’know…,” and the music on the radio “How can anybody listen to that Hanson crap?” until they reached a street of modest split-level houses and Dean carefully parked a foot clear of a driveway with a blue station wagon.
“Marci ought to be able to get that monster out her driveway now.”
Sam conscientiously collected all the food wrappers and cans, discovering one unopened can of Nerve Damage had rolled under the front seat, which he held it out to Dean.
“Sweet!” Dean popped it open and guzzled it down.
“I don’t know how you can drink that stuff…half a can makes me jittery and hyper.”
Dean wiped his mouth with his sleeve and tossed the can in a perfect arc into the trash can where Sam had deposited their garbage.
“’S’not for children.”
Sam glared.
“But now I’m ready for the walk home from here,” Dean continued.
They set a relaxed pace in the dark. It had been the perfect temperature all day, and Sam was barely breaking a sweat as they walked along the residential streets. They had hit a stretch where all the houses had big front yards with fancy landscaping, when Dean grabbed Sam’s arm to make him stop.
“Check that yard out.”
Sam saw instantly what had made Dean snicker-there had to be at least twenty garden gnomes displayed among the flower bed.
“Come on!” Dean hopped over the decorative wooden fence and grabbed the closest two statues. Grinning maniacally, he shoved the face of one gnome into the crotch of the other, put them back in the garden, and grabbed another pair. Seeing what his brother was doing, Sam grinned crazily and picked up two more, stuck them together, and set them in the middle of the walkway to the house.
“Oh, this one’s asking for it!” Dean held up a mooning gnome exuberantly.
It was only a few moments’ work to put all the lawn figures into compromising positions and both of them were laughing so hard they had to stop and sit on the curb when they got a block away. “Wish I could have taken a picture!” Dean wheezed. “Did you see what I did with the last three?”
“I’d love to see the faces of the people who live there when they come outside in the morning!”
Inspired, they looked for more yards with gnomes, leaving a trail of inappropriately arranged statues all the way back to the motel.
Falling on his bed, Sam thought he hadn’t had a fun day just hanging with Dean in a very long time. Maybe they could do it again if they got the same day off work next week.
He was startled by the ringing sound coming from the front pocket of Dean’s jeans, discarded on the floor when Dean had called first dibs on the shower. Sam jumped to get the cellphone out of the pocket and quickly flipped it open.
“Hello? Dad?” It had to be their father, Sam didn’t think Dean would have given his number to anyone else.
“Sam? I’m thirty minutes away. I need you and your brother to pack up everything and be ready to get in the car when I get there.”
“Now? But-but I thought you were gonna be in Chicago for two weeks?”
“Put Dean on the phone.” Of course Sam’s question wasn’t worth answering.
“He’s in the shower. How come you’re coming back early?”
“That’s not your concern, Sam. You boys be ready when I get there.”
Sam’s initial reaction to his dad hanging up was to throw the phone across the room, but knowing both Dean and his dad would kill him if he broke it, Sam just dropped it on the bed. Thirty minutes. He looked around. There really wasn’t that much to pack, just their clothes, and he had a couple books. They hadn’t done anything with the weapons, so those were ready. He dispiritedly set their duffles on the bed and opened them up.
Dean’s neatly folded white shirt was sitting at the top of his.
Sam dropped to the bed. Their jobs. His stomach twisted. Who would cover the dishwashing during breakfast tomorrow?
Dean came out of the bathroom while Sam was still sitting with his head bowed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked as he rubbed a towel over his hair.
“Dad called.” Sam gestured at the phone on the bed. “He’ll be here in less than a half hour and we’re supposed to be ready to go as soon as he pulls up.”
Dean straightened his shoulders and Sam watched the light-heartedness of the day slide off him. “He must have found something,” Dean said, more to himself than Sam, giving the room a once-over. He pulled some clothes from his duffel and slipped into them quickly. If he noticed the white dress shirt, he didn’t say anything. “I’ll pack our clothes, you get the stuff from the bathroom.”
“What about the restaurant?”
“What about it?” Dean’s look said don’t make problems, but Sam persisted.
“They’re expecting me in the morning to wash dishes, and you in the afternoon, and it’s a really shitty thing to just disappear on them!”
“What’d you want to do? ‘Hey, Dad, we can’t leave till tomorrow after I finish washing dishes’ isn’t gonna cut it with Dad, and you know it.”
“What about you? They’re gonna miss you, too!”
“Naw, not really. Andy’ll just have to work for a change instead of just hanging around the servers’ station.”
Sam didn’t believe his brother’s casual tone for a minute when he saw just how hard Dean was shoving things in his duffle. He thought quickly.
“Dean…there’s enough time, can I at least run over to the Flame and tell someone…tell them…that we had a family emergency and are leaving town, and at least that way they have a little time to find somebody?”
Dean’s hands stopped moving as he considered it, then he looked directly at Sam. “Be quick, I’ll keep packing. We don’t want Dad to have to wait.”
“I’ll run!” And Sam was out the door.
Ann was cashiering, and slightly out of breath, Sam waited till she’d finished with the customer in front of him. She looked at him puzzled. “Sam? Something wrong?”
How many times had the Winchesters used this lie? “We, uh, Dean and I, there’s a family emergency and we’re leaving town. Right now. Tonight. So we won’t be here tomorrow. Neither of us.” He dropped his eyes so he wouldn’t see her reaction. “Could you tell Lou, please? And tell him we’re really sorry, I know it leaves him in the lurch and we’d never do it if we didn’t have to…” he trailed off.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Sam. I hope everything works out okay for you and your brother. I’ll call Lou now, so he can try to get someone to cover your shift…morning one, right? And Dean busses from three to midnight tomorrow?” Still not wanting to see the expression on Ann’s face, Sam nodded and rushed out the door.
He just reached the motel room when the distinctive growl of the Impala rumbled over the parking lot. As if in response to its pull, Dean opened the door and stepped out before Sam could knock and handed over one bag.
Meeting his brother’s gaze Sam nodded once. There wasn’t really anything else to say.
Bags tossed in the trunk, Sam curtly opened the rear door but couldn’t slam it behind himself because Dean was in the way. Dean ducked his head down to catch Sam’s attention, whispered, “Just think of all the gnome orgies they’re gonna find in the morning.”
Sam couldn’t help smiling despite himself as Dean opened the passenger door and greeted their dad.
***
Author’s Notes: First of all, thank you to my stalwart beta, sandymg, for the encouragement when I was stuck and for the swift turnaround when I finally finished; to my daughter Adrienne, who, even though I bugged her with restaurant protocol questions nonstop for days, still kept taking my calls; to Tedra, for looking over Dean’s riff on the X-Files movie; to the SummerGen mods, for their efforts in coordinating the challenge I look forward to reading every summer (and this year took the leap into doing it;) and to ammcj062 for the excellent prompts: Sam and Dean working together at the same summer job and Sam and Dean running feral through the summer months in a rough neighborhood while John is on a hunt, which, while I didn’t really write, did inspire the boys’ shenanigans.
Creator: borgmama1of5
Recipient: ammcj062
Rating: PG for language
Word Count: 9300
Warnings: none
Beta: sandymg
Summary: June, 1998. John has left Sam and Dean in a small Illinois town while he is working. Two teenage boys, not much money, and time to kill…
Author's Notes at end
AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16109837
Freeport, Illinois
Sam shut his book and tightened his lips in disapproval as he heard the key in the motel door. It was after two a.m. again, and Dean was just getting back for the third night in a row.
Of course Dean didn’t look anything near repentant when he opened the door.
“You didn’t have to wait up for me, Sammy,” he smirked.
“If Dad were here you would be so busted.”
“Well, he’s not. So you can glare all you want but be careful or your face is gonna freeze like that.” As Dean sauntered past Sam toward the bathroom, Sam wrinkled his nose at the smell. “You reek.”
“Yeah, ’cause you smell like such a flower, little brother.”
Dean pitched a wadded white cloth in the direction of his duffle, then slammed the bathroom door behind him. Sam huffed and rolled over on his bed. This was going to be another sucky summer. Dad had deposited them at a crappy motel in Freeport, Illinois, eight days ago, then continued to Chicago in pursuit of ‘information.’ Dean had futilely argued that there was no reason why he and Sam couldn’t come with him, but, as always, Dad ignored the reasonableness of Dean’s or Sam’s position and did what he wanted.
Sam woke to Dean sorting crumpled bills into piles while sitting cross-legged on his unmade bed. Seeing Sam was awake, Dean said, without pausing in his counting, “Dad called last night-“
“Your cellphone?” Sam figured he deserved that ‘duh’ look, but continued anyway. “When?”
“Around ten. Said he’s going to be in Chicago another week. We’re gonna need another two hundred dollars to pay for the room. I’ve got a hundred and sixty-seven dollars, and thirty dollars left from Dad, but-“
“Where’d you get a hundred sixty-seven dollars?”
“Where d’you think?” Dean didn’t look up from the money. “We’re gonna need some of this for food, so I think we better just pay for three more nights right now…” He handed over a stack of small bills. “You go pay the manager. I’m gonna do the laundry and hit the grocery store. Think you can handle making yourself some mac’n’cheese tonight, Sammy?”
Sam wasn’t sure whether to express disapproval over whatever Dean had been doing the last three nights to get money-hustling pool was the most savory of the options Dean was likely to try-or to be astonished that his brother was voluntarily heading to a laundromat, so he ended up sputtering, “Why are you doing laundry and where’d you get that money?”
“I’ve worn all my underwear all four ways and none of your business,” and Dean was out the door. Sam jumped out of bed and hollered after him, “Hey! What about my laundry?” but Dean had already turned the corner of the building and was out of sight. “Jerk.” Sam muttered.
After paying the motel manager with grimy bills, most of them fives and singles, Sam decided he would use the remaining four dollars to get himself a decent breakfast and headed to the twenty-four hour diner that was a short walk away. It might be the last splurge on a decent meal for a while, given that their food and housing budget was totally dependent on what scam Dean was working. His thoughts segued into all the ways John Winchester was a crappy dad, leaving them high and dry and dependent on Dean’s ability to scare up more cash, and he had the diner door half open when the sign in the window registered.
DISHWASHER NEEDED.
No experience necessary
Breakfast forgotten, Sam walked up to the cashier. “I’m here about the job as a dishwasher.”
The blonde woman-mid-forties, Sam guessed, glanced at him with no expression. “Ever been a dishwasher?”
“No-but I’m a hard worker and I learn fast.” And how hard can it be to wash dishes, he mentally added.
“Hang on.” She gestured to one of the waitresses. “Tell Lou someone’s here about the dishwasher job.” She looked back to Sam. “He’ll be out in a minute.”
A short, stocky man in a black polo shirt came up to the register.
"My name's Sam Winchester." Sam couldn't interpret the odd look the older man gave him.
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen, sir. I-“ Ready to pitch his skimpy qualifications, Sam was thrown for a loop when Lou interrupted him.
“Four dollars an hour, you get paid cash at the end of each shift, can you start right now?”
“I, uh…Sure.”
“Follow me.” Entering the kitchen behind Lou, Sam was startled by the bustling movement and noise that filled the kitchen: the teeth-on-edge grating sound of a spatula being scraped along the five-foot grill on the far wall, piles of hash browns sizzling in a puddle of oil, silverware clattering, plates being scraped into a giant trash can, all the while multiple voices were hollering what sounded like gibberish: “Four sets of easies all day!” “Four easies all day, heard!” “I need hands!” “Down the line!”
“Behind you!” Lou hollered, ducking bodies as he headed toward a massive three-tub sink where a slender, dark-haired boy was shifting dishes from soapsuds to clear water.
“Ricky, this is the new dishwasher, Sam,” Lou yelled over the clatter.
Ricky nodded without stopping his movements. A waitress came over with a loaded tub of dirty dishes, dropped it on the counter, and slipped back out.
“Take ten minutes and show Sam how to handle the dishwashing station and then I want you working the grill with Carl.” With those instructions, Lou left.
“Ever done this before?” Sam was mesmerized by the non-stop movement of Ricky’s hands.
“Uh, no…”
“Roll up your sleeves, lose the watch, and wash your hands over there.” Ricky pointed with his chin to the small sink next to the counter full of dirty dishes. “You’ll be washing your hands a lot. Whenever you handle something dirty you wash your hands before you touch something clean. First rule of the kitchen.”
“Okay.” Sam quickly followed directions. By the time he turned around, Ricky’d emptied the counter of over half of the waiting cups and plates.
“Some of the servers and bussers will scrape the dishes, the prima donnas won’t, and sometimes they’re too busy out front to do it. So scrape and stack and then use this,” Ricky pulled a hose dangling over the sink with the plates he’d just cleaned off and blasted the dishes with the spray attachment. “Then it’s soapy water, thorough scrub, rinse water, sanitizer rinse, rack ‘em to dry. Pots and pans and serving dishes go on those shelves-“ again he gestured with his head, “And silverware goes there.
“When the water gets cold or gross, drain the sinks, use this dishwashing liquid for the first sink and this sanitizer solution for the third one. And you have to clean the crud out of the drains. Got it?”
“Sure,” Sam tried to answer confidently, but Ricky looked like he knew Sam was thinking he’d made a big mistake.
“Just remember, if you don’t keep up with the dishes, then there’s no plates to put the food on for the customers, and no pots for the cooks to make the food, so don’t waste time. It’s all yours.”
With a deep breath, Sam grabbed a rubber spatula and scraped a gob of food off the next plate. He could do this, he told himself. It couldn’t be any harder than scrubbing monster goo off their weapons for Dad's inspection. Once he had a pile in the dry sink he reached for the sprayer…and promptly got a faceful of water and food particles as the powerful spray ricocheted off its target.
“Shit!” It was just as disgusting as getting showered with monster guts, and he’d drenched the whole front of his shirt, too. He wiped his face with his sleeve, watched a bus boy set another tub of dishes on the counter, and took the hose again, this time semi-successfully angling the water away from himself.
Realizing he needed to copy Ricky’s non-stop rhythm, Sam moved the load of dishes through the three sinks as quickly as he could, arranged them in the drying rack, and headed back to the counter where now there were not only two more tubs of dirty dishes but also a pile of pans. He grabbed the handle of a five-gallon pot and swore as he jerked his burned hand back. He stuck it in the soapy water just as a bus boy came through the door yelling, “Coffee cups! We need fucking coffee cups!”
“Uh…” Sam went back to the tubs and pulled out all the cups he could, only to see the bus boy grab an entire rack of cups that had been drying on a cart at the far end of the dishwashing station. He forced himself to tune out the racket around him and focus on moving the dishes as efficiently as he could, ignoring the smarting of his hand-he’d had worse.
“¿Dónde está la jodida sartén? ¡Necesito una sartén limpia ahora!” Sam jerked the spray hose at the scream in his ear sending water in the wrong direction and he jumped back at the resulting shower. One of the cooks was standing next to him, waving his hands furiously.
“Miguel needs frying pans!” someone else yelled. Three fry pans were stacked on the to-be-washed counter. In his haste to clean the one he grabbed, Sam misjudged the dish hose again and soaked himself and the agitated cook who screeched at him even louder.
“Sorry, sorry!” Of course, with the cook hovering, it took forever to get a single pan washed. As soon as Sam pulled the first one from the sanitizer rinse, the cook snatched it away, still shouting what Sam was pretty sure were curses at his dishwashing ineptitude.
Sam lost track of time, but scraping what must have been the thousandth plate, it registered that the stuff he was pushing into the garbage had morphed from leftover bits of egg and pancake and syrup to bits of hamburger and fries. Which reminded his stomach that he hadn’t had any breakfast.
“Hey, Sam, take five, I can cover for a few.” Ricky was at his shoulder. Sam wondered if the job included a meal, but didn’t want to ask. “Before you go, though, tie up the trash and take it out to the dumpster. Andy’s out back, he can show you where.”
Sam wrestled the heavy bag out the rear door. The bus boy who’d yelled about the coffee cups was leaning against the back wall, inhaling a cigarette.
“Dumpster?”
The bus boy pointed. “Want a hand with that?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Sam carried the bag around the fence hiding the dumpster from view, and the two of them hoisted it in and slammed the lid shut.
“Your first day?” From his acne-marked face and gangly limbs, Sam figured the kid wasn’t much older than he was.
“Yeah, I came in and asked about the dishwasher sign in the window and got hired on the spot.”
“Jerry never showed up for work this morning. Lou was pissed.”
“I’m Sam. Does working in the kitchen mean I can have something to eat on my break?”
“I’m Andy. Don’t ask the cooks to make you something, but keep an eye out for something that one of the cooks messed up or when something gets sent back ‘cause the order got screwed up. They leave those plates by the stove and anyone can grab one.”
Andy stubbed out his cigarette and dropped it, and Sam followed him back inside where Ricky had nearly emptied the dirty dishes counter.
“Thanks,” Sam said with chagrin. Ricky’d done more in five minutes than Sam had done in the last hour.
“You’ll get the hang of it. Just pay attention to the pots, if you see two of the same size piled up, make sure you get one of them done right away so you don’t end up with Miguel freaking at you again.”
Sam was consciously ignoring his hunger pangs, finally feeling like he was getting a glimmer of how to set his pace, when hearing his name broke his concentration. Lou was standing behind him, a scowling long-haired teenager next to him.
“Henry’s here to take over.” Sam’s stomach gurgled loudly just then and Lou snorted. “Ricky can make you a burger before you leave.” Lou handed Sam a pile of singles. “Twenty dollars for five hours today. You start tomorrow at six a.m. and work till two. Okay?”
“Yessir.”
Sam fished his watch out of his soggy pocket-the front side of him was as wet as if he’d showered with his clothes on-and suddenly Sam realized he’d never let Dean know where he was. Guilt mixed with the knowledge that Dean was going to kill him once Dean knew he was safe. He had the number to Dean’s new cellphone, but he could be back at the motel in fifteen minutes-better to call and let Dean go from freaking out to really pissed by the time Sam got there, or just show up at the room and deal with the mixed consequences all at once? Without knowing how long Dean had been at the laundromat, Sam didn’t know how long he’d been ‘missing,’ but that would certainly affect how badly Dean would want to murder him…
“Sam! Your burger!” Ricky called from the grill.
“Thanks.” Looking at the juicy burger, Sam decided he would eat his last meal here before facing Dean. “Say, do you know if there’s a phone I can use?”
“Hey, Henry! Can Sam use your phone?”
Henry stopped his movement at the dishwashing station to glare at Ricky who grinned back. “Come on, you know you like to show it off.”
Still frowning, Henry wiped one hand on his jeans, pulled the phone from his back pocket, and held it out.
“Thanks, really appreciate it.” Sam stepped to the corner and punched in Dean’s number.
“Who’s this?” Sam could hear how upset his brother was.
“It’s me, Sam-“
“Where the hell’ve you been?”
“I’m at the Golden Flame, just having lunch…I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“What the hell! You weren’t here when I got back, didn’t leave a note, I’ve been all over for the last two hours looking for you!”
“Yeah, I’m sorry-“
“Not as sorry as you’re gonna be!”
“You done?” Henry interrupted.
“I gotta go, Dean. I’ll be there shortly.” Sam hung up before Dean could get out another angry sentence, snapped the phone closed, and put it by Henry on the shelf above the sink-“Thanks again” -then grabbed his burger and took it out back to eat in the last moments of peace Sam figured he was going to get.
However, Dean was not at the motel when Sam returned, only a note on his bed: Back late. Your ass stays in this room!!!!! which was a relief, and Sam immediately jumped in the shower to get the crud and the smell off him. Then, even though it was only three o’clock, Sam laid down on his bed and passed out for a few hours.
When Dean came back it was long past midnight, and Sam was back in bed. He kept his eyes closed, hoping his brother would be fooled that Sam was asleep. He concentrated on breathing slowly as he heard Dean walk over and stare for several long moments before turning away. Sam had already written the note he was going to leave when he left for the diner at five-thirty, which would tell Dean that he was going for a run-Dad would like that he was keeping up his training-and then he’d be spending the day at the library. He justified lying as fair since Dean wasn’t being honest about where he was spending his nights, and Sam wanted to keep the fact that he had a job and was earning money a secret until he had something substantial to show for it.
Sam experienced a little thrill when he walked into the Golden Flame kitchen in the morning, feeling like he belonged as Ricky and one of the waitresses acknowledged him, even though he’d only been there one day. The cacophony of voices and kitchen sounds didn’t seem quite so overwhelming. There was yet another dishwasher at the station, an older man, and Sam noted the black trash bag with head and arm holes that this man was wearing over his clothes. He immediately decided to copy that. Moderately protected from another soaking, he set out to find his rhythm for the day.
Sam scored a rejected omelet mid-morning when he got his break, and by noon he began to see the pattern in the ebb and flow of the kitchen work. He was impressed with the teamwork of the cooks, Miguel moving from the stove to the grill when Ricky had five orders of eggs at once, the guy from the fryer grabbing clean pots from Sam’s shelf to put by the stove before Miguel ran out, all the while calls of “Down the line” and “Behind you” kept everyone aware of who was moving into their space. He noticed which of the waitresses and bus boys made a point of scraping the dirty dishes and chatting with the kitchen staff. A couple of them even made an effort to welcome ‘the new guy.’
Thirty-two dollars in his pocket-enough for another night at the motel-Sam opened the motel room door and was instantly pinned against the wall by a livid Dean. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“I left a note-“ Sam huffed out.
“I went to the library! You weren’t there!”
“I’m not a little kid that you need to babysit anymore!” Until that moment, Sam had been ready to share his accomplishment, had been pleased that he was able to contribute to their shaky situation-but now Sam refused to capitulate to his brother’s unreasonable over-protectiveness.
Anger spiking like a geyser he turned on Dean, “You can be gone all night and I’m not supposed to worry about where you are or what you’re doing? You know what, screw you! I’m not gonna spend twenty-four hours a day stuck in this crappy room while you get to do whatever you want!” Sam shoved Dean’s forearm away while hooking his foot between Dean’s legs, causing Dean to lose his balance and half-fall against the closest bed, and then ducked away when Dean tried to grab him again. Fists raised, Sam prepared to throw a punch, but Dean just swore while he grabbed a bag from the floor.
“I don’t have time for this!” he glared and slammed the door as he stormed out. “I am gonna kick your ass tomorrow!”
“Fuck you!” Sam yelled at the door. Dean had gone to the library checking up on him? Treating him like a baby? While Dean could do whatever he wanted? That was so blatantly unfair…Sam felt the money in his pocket again. Screw his brother, Sam had earned that money and no way was he giving it to Dean for expenses now. It was his money and he was going to spend it on himself.
Sam made sure he was in bed well before he expected Dean to return, satisfactorily stuffed with a veggie-laden pizza, mozzarella sticks, and an order of wings, with a plan tomorrow to hit the Borders Books he’d noticed on the drive into Freeport as soon as his shift was over. He was asleep before Dean came in.
Sam moved as stealthily as on a hunt to get out at five-thirty in the morning without waking Dean, knowing that if Dean woke up Sam could kiss his job good-bye. His one concession was to leave a note that simply said ‘Back before dark’ on the bathroom sink where Dean would see it. Having dressed by the light edging through the thin drapes, Sam was about to open the door when he noticed the taut string angling off the doorknob and followed it with his eyes to see that it was tied to a knife sitting on the edge of Dean’s mattress, so that opening the door would cause it to clatter to the floor. It was just a moment’s work to carefully slice the string with his pocketknife while keeping it from falling. Dean’s booby-trap short-circuited, Sam headed out for his third day of work.
He greeted Marci, the cashier he’d met on his first day, and headed into the kitchen where there were already several egg, bacon, and pancake orders on the grill. Sam frowned at the backlog of pans and dishes waiting for him, quickly drained and refilled the sinks, and set to scraping and washing with vigor.
Scrubbing a stubbornly scorched stock pot, Sam heard a cook call “hot pan,” turned to see where he was heading, and ended up with a perfect view as disaster unfolded: carrying four flats of eggs, Ricky walked out of the cooler just as the pan-carrying cook crossed in front of the door, his shoulder hitting Ricky’s arm, and a hundred and twenty eggs went flying along with cries of “Shit!” “Damn!” and “Fuck!”
All movement in the kitchen stopped as everyone took in the sight of raw eggs splattered across Ricky, the other cook, the wall, and the floor. At Ricky’s bellow for “Fuckin’ towels!” Sam grabbed a stack, handed some over, and began wiping the slime from the floor. He couldn’t help comparing it to the rawhead guts that had exploded over Dean last month in Missouri, though that goo had been orange and smelled worse than skunk…this was mild in comparison. As soon as the immediate floor was cleaned up enough to walk on without tracking the mess further, Ricky went back to the cooler for more eggs.
The waitresses and bus boys had come into the kitchen to gawk at the disaster, but vanished back to the dining room when Lou irately barreled through the door. Sam shoved the pile of disgusting towels into the linen bag, washed his hands, and returned to the dish sink as Lou grabbed the closest bus boy and told him to mop the floor.
The kitchen energy was ramped up to cover the disruption of service until the after-breakfast lull allowed a few moments to chill. Sam was halfway through a plate of extra hash browns when Lou reappeared and headed directly toward him.
“Henry’s not coming in this afternoon-his girlfriend’s having a baby. Can you do a double shift?”
“I guess…sure.”
They were slammed by the lunch crowd, and Sam’s world narrowed to scraping, hosing, washing, rinsing, and sanitizing, ignoring the sting of hot pans, the smell of the garbage, the sweat trickling down his face, and his hunger pangs. He jumped when he was tapped on the shoulder.
“Take a break, Sam,” Ricky ordered. Sam looked at the one tub of dishes still waiting, and Ricky shook his head. “You’re as close to caught up as you’re gonna get, and if you don’t chill now you’ll never make it to ten o’clock, believe me.”
Outside, Sam leaned his back against the warm brick and slid down to sit in the weedy patch of gravel by the back door. Now that he was stationary, he felt the ache in his back from hunching over the sinks for eight hours, and wished he wasn’t going back for another eight, but he’d agreed…
“Suck it up, buttercup,” he said to himself in a tone that sounded uncomfortably like Dean’s as he stood back up. He hoped there’d be something he could eat before he went back to work.
He had just finished washing his hands when there was a crash and a yell from the dining room. “Jesus Christ! Now what?!” one of the cooks yelled. Peering through the door, Sam saw Dawn, one of the younger waitresses, on the floor surrounded by burgers and broken plates. He grabbed the broom and dustpan and joined the crowd as someone helped Dawn get up. She was holding her arm and crying while trying to apologize to the unfortunate customers whose meal was strewn all over. In a few moments most of the mess had been cleaned up, Dawn was tucked in a corner of the kitchen with a bag of ice on her wrist, and Lou was muttering about a full moon, which gave Sam a moment’s pause as his mind jumped to werewolf; then he laughed at his conditioned response and went back to his station.
Absorbed in his work, Sam didn’t know how long the voice had been mixed in the background restaurant noise but the raucous laugh filtering into the kitchen he would know anywhere. What was Dean?...As if summoned by his name, Dean stepped through the doorway carrying a tub of dirty dishes, then froze as they locked eyes.
“Sam?”
“Dean?”
"What the hell..."
"What are you...?" Sam noted Dean was wearing a white button-down shirt and black pants, what all the Golden Flame bus boys wore. "Are you...Do you work here?" his voice rose sharply at the end of the question.
In spite of obviously being taken aback at seeing Sam, Dean didn’t pause in his work. “What time do you get off?” he asked as he moved past Sam to grab a rack of clean coffee mugs and take them back to the serving station.
“Ten,” Sam answered.
“I’ll take my break then,” and Dean left through the swinging door.
Knowing now that Dean was out there, Sam tried to hear the noise of the dining room over the clatter of the kitchen. Every time the kitchen door opened, he took a fast look to try catching a glimpse of his brother, all the while piecing together in hindsight the clues that he felt dense for missing. Dean was wearing the one dress shirt he owned, which is why he’d done his laundry. Sam now recognized the smell around Dean when he’d come in late as the same restaurant aroma that permeated his own clothes and skin after eight hours.
“So Dean’s your brother?” Liz asked as she set down her dish tub and grabbed the spatula to push leftovers from the plates into the trash. Liz was both the chattiest waitress and the one who always took time to help the kitchen out.
“Yeah…” It would sound pretty dumb for Sam to admit he hadn’t known that Dean worked here until just now, so he didn’t elaborate.
“He’s a nice guy. Works hard…guess it runs in the family.” She smiled at him. “All the girls give him a little extra from the tips ‘cause he takes good care of everyone’s tables, not just the ones in his section.” She washed her hands, then grabbed a container of clean silverware. “Cute, too,” she winked as she left.
Each time Dean came back to the kitchen, he gave Sam an odd look, though he joked comfortably with the rest of the crew. “Need to ketchup with these, we’re running low on moose-turd,” he said, grabbing clean condiment bottles from a rack.
“Oh, that would leave everyone in a real pickle,” someone responded.
“Ah, I’ll have those tables dilled up in no time,” Dean answered. Sam rolled his eyes, even if Dean’d only been here a few days, everyone should know they would never win a pun war with him. Sam never had.
“I bet you just relish the thought of playing with squirty things.”
“Guys, you’re just encurryagin g him!” Sam interjected, hiding a grin.
An older man with impressively tattooed arms was covering the grill for the dinner shift. As he flipped a row of chicken breasts he commented, “This whole conversation is an a-salt on my ears.”
“Romaine calm everyone!” Dean called as he exited.
“I need more thyme to think of a comeback…” someone else muttered, and everyone groaned.
At seven Lou came back to see him. “Ann will have your pay at the register,” he said without preamble. “Can you do a double tomorrow? I don’t think we’ll be seeing Henry.”
Sam did some quick math-one hundred twenty-eight dollars for two days? “Sure,” he answered. Wouldn’t be the first time he only got four hours’ sleep.
“Great.”
Only sheer stubbornness kept Sam on his feet for the last three hours, though. As intense as the breakfast/lunch shift had been, dinner was crazier. Not only were there dishes and pans in double the quantity, Sam now had to wash the storage containers as the cooks emptied the plastic and metal canisters at a relentless pace. He made the mistake of hosing off a deep bin with its label ‘chicken boobies’ still affixed and discovered that the water effectively super-glued the tape. He spent fifteen minutes picking it off with his jagged fingernails while dishes from the dining room and pans from the cooks piled up in an unholy mountain, until he gave up, shoved the container to the side and struggled through the backlog.
It was still sitting there when Dean moseyed over and said, “It’s ten o’clock and time for you to turn into a pumpkin.” He surveyed Sam’s soggy, exhausted state. “More like a prune, actually. And not turn into one…you already are.” He pried the dish from Sam’s hands.
“I gotta finish,” Sam protested.
“You’re done. You’ve been here since what, six a.m.? Grab some food,” Dean shoved a plateful of congealed fries at him, “and go home.”
“I gotta get that label off.”
Dean picked the big square up and looked at the ragged tape. “Chicken boobies? Seen the one labeled ‘thunder thighs?’ Or the ‘Motley Crue-tons?’” He snickered as he pulled out his pocket knife and scraped the label off with a flick of his wrist. Sam should have thought of that…he really was too tired to think straight. But when he went to take it from Dean and finish washing it, Dean held it away and shook his head. “I mean it, Sam, home. Bed. Now. Nobody’s gonna die if you don’t finish this job tonight.” He locked eyes with Sam until Sam surrendered.
“Okay. Can I get my money first?”
“Sure. I’ll even escort you to the register.”
This late, one of the servers doubled as cashier, so Sam had wait for Ann while she was taking a table’s order. With final instructions for Sam to go right to bed, Dean went back to work, and Sam watched as his brother efficiently cleared away the dishes from a group of noisy twenty-somethings, stacking plates along his arm like he’d been doing it for years, the diners laughing at whatever joke he was telling. Then he was bringing coffee to the table Ann had just been at, balancing a tray full of water glasses in his other hand while stepping smoothly around a couple whose chairs were protruding in the aisle. Dean was clearly enjoying his interactions with the customers-Dean was relaxed, Sam realized, not vigilantly watching for danger the way Sam was used to seeing him. He was distracted from puzzling over that dissonance when Ann came back to the register. Noticing Sam’s focus, she nodded. “Not too often we get someone that everybody seems to like, from the regulars to the kids and the guys in the kitchen. And he’s not a slacker like some of the bussers. Shame he’s only here temporary.” She gave Sam a motherly smile. “I heard you’re a hard worker too. We’ll need you tomorrow, don’t think Henry’ll be back for a few days. Here you go.” She handed Sam an envelope.
Sam nodded and didn’t even bother to count the money, just stuck it in his jeans and trudged back to the motel. Following Dean’s orders seemed unusually reasonable, and Sam was asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.
Dean moving around the room woke Sam, and he assumed Dean was getting ready for bed until he rolled over and saw that he had less than five minutes to get out the door for work.
“Shit!” Sam threw back the sheet. He had been too tired to shower last night and he stank. But before he managed to stand up, Dean had a hand on his shoulder.
“Go back to bed.”
“I…”
“I’ve got the start of your shift covered. You come in at nine and I’ll come back and take a nap or something.”
“It’s my job…”
“Lou has you doing a double today which means sixteen hours, but he only has me working ten. I can’t have my baby brother working more hours than me! If I work three of your hours, we’re even.”
Sam really wanted to argue, but his eyes were shutting on their own, which of course Dean noticed, and he gave Sam another shove which toppled him back to his pillow.
“I’m still royally pissed at you, though, for you going off without telling me,” Dean added. “But since Dad’s not gonna be back for another two weeks at least, now, if we’re both working we’ll be able to pay for the room and still eat, so nice work snagging a job.” Sam relished the unexpected praise until Dean added, as he walked out the door, “’Course you probably got the job ‘cause Lou realized you were my brother…”
“Jerk!” Sam mumbled before falling back to sleep.
Apparently Dean was as good at dishwashing as he was at bussing tables. When Sam walked in the kitchen there were only a few glasses and one pan waiting to be washed. Sam grinned to himself when he realized that Dean was humming Highway to Hell as his washing tempo.
“Heya, Sammy. All yours.” Dean stepped away from the sinks and Sam was gratified to see that Dean was as soaked as he had been on his first day. Either no one had clued Dean in to using a trash bag as an apron, or he’d deemed that he didn’t need it. Probably the latter, Sam thought.
“You can have this job,” Dean said. “I’d rather pour coffee and check out the waitresses and clean up the floor after rugrats.” Sam snorted as Dean continued, “See you this afternoon. Don’t have too much fun!”
There was a definite satisfaction in being able to keep up with the work flow after just a couple days. Nice to know if he ever needed to support himself he had one marketable skill for his resume, since ‘skilled at researching and dispatching monsters’ wasn’t likely to net him a job interview.
At two o’clock, the “Hi, Dean,” from Marci heralded his brother’s return to the restaurant, and it was just a short while till Dean carried in a tub of dirty dishes, scraped them, and grabbed a rack of silverware to take back out. They happened to end up outside on break at the same time, and Sam mentioned that Dean seemed to be bringing tubs into the kitchen twice as often as the other busser, Andy.
“Quicker the table’s cleared and reset, the quicker someone else gets seated, and more customers means more tips,” Dean explained. “The bus boys get a cut of the tips the waitresses make. The easier I make their job, well…most of the girls have been slipping me a couple bucks extra…and not just ‘cause I’m good-looking, though that don’t hurt.”
Sam rolled his eyes, but he had to admit that Dean could be a hard worker. Sam was used to seeing Dean’s focus on hunting…and there had been a few classes in school where Dean exerted himself because the subject was interesting, or he felt the teacher deserved the effort…Sam just had never had the chance to see Dean working a normal job. He grinned at the thought that Dean had something for his resume now, too…but immediately frowned because he couldn’t see Dean ever needing one.
Dean responded to Sam’s scowl with a light tap to the head. “Hey, don’t get all pissy just ‘cause I’m the one with the looks…there’s gotta be some girl likes hanging out with the guy with pruny fingers.” Sam gave a desultory slap back. “You don’t get it,” he mumbled under his breath as he went back inside.
Lou came in the kitchen just before Sam was getting ready to leave. Henry would be coming back the day after tomorrow and do two shifts, so Sam would do a double again and then he’d get a day off.
When it turned out that they were going to have the same day off, Dean proclaimed they had earned the right to spend some of their hard-earned money on something fun.
“The X-Files movie opens tomorrow, dude! It’s at the Cherryvale theater in Rockford!”
“But how are we going to get to Rockford, Dean?”
Sam didn’t trust the self-satisfied look Dean gave him. “Already got that covered.” As Sam continued to stare at him, Dean smugly revealed his plan: Marci had been complaining that her neighbor was on vacation for a month and he’d left his car parked blocking part of her driveway. “I’m just gonna be a good Samaritan, Sam, and move it for her. ‘Course it might take all day to repark it…”
Dean relocated the battered 1988 Toyota Corolla after his shift ended so it was outside the motel door in the morning. When Sam questioned why they were leaving so early when the movie wasn’t until the afternoon, Dean merely said, “Trust me, Sammy,” and turned on the radio, grimacing as My Heart Will Go On warbled from the speakers and quickly turning the dial. They loaded up with an unprecedented amount of junk food at Qwik Mart and snacked their way along Route 20 on Red Vines, M&Ms, and cans of Nerve Damage and Mello Yello.
Just before ten, Dean pointed to an orange, brown, and blue sign proclaiming Volcano Falls Adventure Park. “We got a couple hours to kill, Sam, and look what all they have here: go-carts, miniature golf, batting cages, and an arcade!”
It had been a long while since Sam had seen such kid-like enthusiasm on his brother’s face, and Dean’s gleefulness was infectious. “Can we do the go-carts?” he asked eagerly.
It was early enough that there weren’t long lines, but still a number of mostly teenage boys were waiting to take their turns. Sam had only driven the Impala a handful of times, and only under Dean’s critical instruction, so he was vibrating with excitement at the chance to see what racing would be like. “Look at the tires when you pick your car,” Dean coached. “Try and get one where the tires look a little newer. And when you’re going around the curve, brake before you go into it, never in the middle or you’ll lose control.”
Sam nodded without listening, darting through the gate when it opened to hop into the blue car that had won the previous race. The row of miniature vehicles pulled into a line and the light turned green. Sam pressed on the gas and shot forward, but his rear wheels shimmied and he had to jiggle the steering wheel to stay in control while the other cars shot past him.
Lips pursed in fierce concentration, he tried to remember what Dean had said about braking, while paying attention to how close the other cars were. Each time he reached a turn he manipulated the brake and gas differently. By the fourth go-round he thought he had the hang of it, and started to catch up to the cars closest to him.
Accelerating out of a turn, suddenly the car directly ahead spun sideways. Swearing wildly, Sam yanked the wheel to the right, managed to squeak past the careening car, but then had to fight to keep from spinning out himself.
“The winner is car nine,” the loudspeaker announced, and Sam drove with deliberation to the finish line where Dean was joking with the guy who’d won.
“Another run?” he asked as Sam approached.
“Can we?”
“We earned this money, Sam, we get to have a little fun with it!”
They ended up going around two more times. Dean won the second race, and Sam felt his third-place finish in the last one was respectable.
They grabbed a couple hot dogs, then Dean had them get their hands stamped for readmission to the park before they left for the mall theater. Settling into the last row of seats with a family-size popcorn, a pack of licorice, and the largest size drinks, Dean sighed contentedly as the previews started. “This is the life, Sammy.”
Unfortunately, once the movie started, Dean’s nonstop critique made Sam shrink into his seat as the people around them glared irritatedly. “Glad we’re not spending summer in Texas…Black eyes, what a lame special effect, next thing they’ll be coughing up black smoke…Like neither Mulder or Scully saw that plot twist coming? They forget everything they ever learned in the TV series?...Just kiss her already! Oh Jesus! A fucking bee?...So the double-crosser is pulling another double cross? Hey Sammy, does that make it a triple-cross or a quadruple-cross?...Doesn’t that look like a giant-size bank drive-up tube? They should make a carnival ride with tubes like that, shoot you through ‘em at high speeds…Even more glad we’re not spending the summer in Antarctica, right, Sam? Y’know, if aliens really were hiding here, Antarctica really would be a good place to hide…Why do people in movies always stop to look back? Don’t they know that just gives whatever’s after you time to catch up? It’s like the villains always monologuing…Wonder how long one of those things would last against a werewolf or something?...Dude! I knew they couldn’t leave the Cigarette-Smoking Man out of the whole movie!”
Standing in the line for the mens’ room afterward, Dean poked Sam, who was still trying to pretend he wasn’t with Dean. “Check out what’s playing in theater three-isn’t that the guy who plays Indiana Jones?” Sam looked at the poster-Six Days, Seven Nights. “Yeah, it is…so?”
Dean lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Let’s just go in there when we get out of the john. We already paid once.”
Sam looked to make sure no one was listening. The idea of getting an extra movie felt delightfully delinquent. “Okay. We should split up, though, just to be less conspicuous.”
Dean nodded. “I’ll get more snacks, you grab seats.”
Sam was grateful that there were a lot more empty seats this time, so he and Dean were by themselves in the rear. Dean’s commentary this round centered on being impressed with Harrison Ford’s ability to hold his own in a fight and get the hot young chick, considering how old he was. “He can’t be that much older than Dad,” Sam argued when they were back in the lobby. “And you’ve seen waitresses look at Dad like they might…”
“You can stop now, Sam, we are not going there,” Dean cut Sam off. “Hey, check that out.”
Theater one was showing what looked like a comedy, Can’t Hardly Wait. “That’s the girl from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Your turn to get the popcorn.”
Sam was almost up to the counter when he noticed an usher stopping Dean at the theater door. From the way Dean was gesturing and smirking, Sam knew Dean was trying to convince the usher that he’d just lost his ticket. Unfortunately, perhaps because the usher was an unsmiling gray-haired man, Dean’s usual ability to charm his way out of trouble failed, and Dean ended up being escorted to the exit.
Sam changed his order to a smaller popcorn that he could carry one-handed and a box of Sno-Caps that he could stuff in his pocket, and then, waiting till he was unobserved, he slipped over to the door Dean had been kicked out of and pushed it ajar. As expected, Dean was waiting on the other side, and they snuck into their third movie.
Missing the first fifteen minutes didn’t hamper following the typical teen comedy plot. Sam could certainly predict the behavior of the various stereotypes. When they did the flash-forward at the end of the movie to show where everyone ended up, Sam surprised himself by feeling a little sorry for Mike, even if he’d been a jerk for most of the movie. Sam would never admit that to Dean, though. On the other hand, nerdy William’s success felt more gratifying than it probably should have…
Mulan was the fourth picture at the theater, and even though Sam knew Dean would mock him for suggesting it, he was about to say, as long as they were there why not see it too, when the usher that had caught Dean earlier strode toward them with a security guard at his back.
“Time to am-scray,” Dean said under his breath, and they ducked out the exit, laughing.
“I think I ate more popcorn today than I have all year!” Sam chortled.
“And did you see that usher’s face? He wanted to throw us out personally,” Dean grinned.
“Ugh! Your teeth are black!”
Dean stuck out his tongue. “The joy of black licorice, Sam.”
“Yuck.”
“Want to go back to the adventure park and play a round of miniature golf?”
“Why not?”
Of course the game turned cutthroat from the moment Dean stuck Sam with a hot pink golf ball. Pretty evenly matched in eye-hand coordination, they messed with each other’s concentration instead. Dean belched loudly to startle Sam as he was about to make his putt, Sam hit his ball to knock Dean’s into a water hazard, and it degenerated into waving their fingers in each other’s face with every stroke. Dean drew little dicks instead of numbers to record Sam’s score; Sam retaliated by giving Dean fifty strokes on every hole. As much as Sam wanted to be pissed at his brother, he was having too much fun to actually be mad. By hole eighteen they had no idea who really was ahead, and since each insisted on being the leader, they decided whoever did better on the last hole would be the winner.
The straightway to the final hole was interrupted by a foot-wide ditch of gravel, requiring the ball be stroked hard enough to fly across it but not so hard that it would fly past the hole and out of bounds. Dean’s first try did just that as Sam yelled “Booyah!” just before Dean’s putter tapped his ball.
“Fuck you!” Dean responded with a semi-serious shove. Sam stuck out his tongue and then braced himself for the harassment he knew was coming. Sure enough, Dean bumped Sam’s elbow and his brilliant pink ball landed in the gravel. They each retrieved their golf ball and returned to the start. This time Sam ‘accidentally’ hip-checked Dean, who instinctively reacted by elbowing Sam in the stomach. Sam stomped on Dean’s foot, Dean put Sam in a headlock, and suddenly park employees were surrounding them.
For a moment it looked like Dean would escalate the horsing around into a real fight with them, but Sam caught his eye and nodded at the family with little kids waiting their turn on the hole, and Dean just gave Sam a half-hearted smack to the back of his head and handed his putter over to the closest guard.
“We’re going,” he muttered. Security followed them all the way to the gate, ignoring Dean’s request to at least let them get a couple burgers before they were thrown out.
“Guess it was a tie,” Sam ribbed when they got in the car.
“Bullshit. I won.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Dean.”
Dean hotwired the car again, and they bickered comfortably on the ride home about the golf game “You totally cheated on that shot with the windmill!,” the movies “I don’t know, Sam, I think the chick that Harrison Ford laid was hotter-women with experience, y’know…,” and the music on the radio “How can anybody listen to that Hanson crap?” until they reached a street of modest split-level houses and Dean carefully parked a foot clear of a driveway with a blue station wagon.
“Marci ought to be able to get that monster out her driveway now.”
Sam conscientiously collected all the food wrappers and cans, discovering one unopened can of Nerve Damage had rolled under the front seat, which he held it out to Dean.
“Sweet!” Dean popped it open and guzzled it down.
“I don’t know how you can drink that stuff…half a can makes me jittery and hyper.”
Dean wiped his mouth with his sleeve and tossed the can in a perfect arc into the trash can where Sam had deposited their garbage.
“’S’not for children.”
Sam glared.
“But now I’m ready for the walk home from here,” Dean continued.
They set a relaxed pace in the dark. It had been the perfect temperature all day, and Sam was barely breaking a sweat as they walked along the residential streets. They had hit a stretch where all the houses had big front yards with fancy landscaping, when Dean grabbed Sam’s arm to make him stop.
“Check that yard out.”
Sam saw instantly what had made Dean snicker-there had to be at least twenty garden gnomes displayed among the flower bed.
“Come on!” Dean hopped over the decorative wooden fence and grabbed the closest two statues. Grinning maniacally, he shoved the face of one gnome into the crotch of the other, put them back in the garden, and grabbed another pair. Seeing what his brother was doing, Sam grinned crazily and picked up two more, stuck them together, and set them in the middle of the walkway to the house.
“Oh, this one’s asking for it!” Dean held up a mooning gnome exuberantly.
It was only a few moments’ work to put all the lawn figures into compromising positions and both of them were laughing so hard they had to stop and sit on the curb when they got a block away. “Wish I could have taken a picture!” Dean wheezed. “Did you see what I did with the last three?”
“I’d love to see the faces of the people who live there when they come outside in the morning!”
Inspired, they looked for more yards with gnomes, leaving a trail of inappropriately arranged statues all the way back to the motel.
Falling on his bed, Sam thought he hadn’t had a fun day just hanging with Dean in a very long time. Maybe they could do it again if they got the same day off work next week.
He was startled by the ringing sound coming from the front pocket of Dean’s jeans, discarded on the floor when Dean had called first dibs on the shower. Sam jumped to get the cellphone out of the pocket and quickly flipped it open.
“Hello? Dad?” It had to be their father, Sam didn’t think Dean would have given his number to anyone else.
“Sam? I’m thirty minutes away. I need you and your brother to pack up everything and be ready to get in the car when I get there.”
“Now? But-but I thought you were gonna be in Chicago for two weeks?”
“Put Dean on the phone.” Of course Sam’s question wasn’t worth answering.
“He’s in the shower. How come you’re coming back early?”
“That’s not your concern, Sam. You boys be ready when I get there.”
Sam’s initial reaction to his dad hanging up was to throw the phone across the room, but knowing both Dean and his dad would kill him if he broke it, Sam just dropped it on the bed. Thirty minutes. He looked around. There really wasn’t that much to pack, just their clothes, and he had a couple books. They hadn’t done anything with the weapons, so those were ready. He dispiritedly set their duffles on the bed and opened them up.
Dean’s neatly folded white shirt was sitting at the top of his.
Sam dropped to the bed. Their jobs. His stomach twisted. Who would cover the dishwashing during breakfast tomorrow?
Dean came out of the bathroom while Sam was still sitting with his head bowed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked as he rubbed a towel over his hair.
“Dad called.” Sam gestured at the phone on the bed. “He’ll be here in less than a half hour and we’re supposed to be ready to go as soon as he pulls up.”
Dean straightened his shoulders and Sam watched the light-heartedness of the day slide off him. “He must have found something,” Dean said, more to himself than Sam, giving the room a once-over. He pulled some clothes from his duffel and slipped into them quickly. If he noticed the white dress shirt, he didn’t say anything. “I’ll pack our clothes, you get the stuff from the bathroom.”
“What about the restaurant?”
“What about it?” Dean’s look said don’t make problems, but Sam persisted.
“They’re expecting me in the morning to wash dishes, and you in the afternoon, and it’s a really shitty thing to just disappear on them!”
“What’d you want to do? ‘Hey, Dad, we can’t leave till tomorrow after I finish washing dishes’ isn’t gonna cut it with Dad, and you know it.”
“What about you? They’re gonna miss you, too!”
“Naw, not really. Andy’ll just have to work for a change instead of just hanging around the servers’ station.”
Sam didn’t believe his brother’s casual tone for a minute when he saw just how hard Dean was shoving things in his duffle. He thought quickly.
“Dean…there’s enough time, can I at least run over to the Flame and tell someone…tell them…that we had a family emergency and are leaving town, and at least that way they have a little time to find somebody?”
Dean’s hands stopped moving as he considered it, then he looked directly at Sam. “Be quick, I’ll keep packing. We don’t want Dad to have to wait.”
“I’ll run!” And Sam was out the door.
Ann was cashiering, and slightly out of breath, Sam waited till she’d finished with the customer in front of him. She looked at him puzzled. “Sam? Something wrong?”
How many times had the Winchesters used this lie? “We, uh, Dean and I, there’s a family emergency and we’re leaving town. Right now. Tonight. So we won’t be here tomorrow. Neither of us.” He dropped his eyes so he wouldn’t see her reaction. “Could you tell Lou, please? And tell him we’re really sorry, I know it leaves him in the lurch and we’d never do it if we didn’t have to…” he trailed off.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Sam. I hope everything works out okay for you and your brother. I’ll call Lou now, so he can try to get someone to cover your shift…morning one, right? And Dean busses from three to midnight tomorrow?” Still not wanting to see the expression on Ann’s face, Sam nodded and rushed out the door.
He just reached the motel room when the distinctive growl of the Impala rumbled over the parking lot. As if in response to its pull, Dean opened the door and stepped out before Sam could knock and handed over one bag.
Meeting his brother’s gaze Sam nodded once. There wasn’t really anything else to say.
Bags tossed in the trunk, Sam curtly opened the rear door but couldn’t slam it behind himself because Dean was in the way. Dean ducked his head down to catch Sam’s attention, whispered, “Just think of all the gnome orgies they’re gonna find in the morning.”
Sam couldn’t help smiling despite himself as Dean opened the passenger door and greeted their dad.
***
Author’s Notes: First of all, thank you to my stalwart beta, sandymg, for the encouragement when I was stuck and for the swift turnaround when I finally finished; to my daughter Adrienne, who, even though I bugged her with restaurant protocol questions nonstop for days, still kept taking my calls; to Tedra, for looking over Dean’s riff on the X-Files movie; to the SummerGen mods, for their efforts in coordinating the challenge I look forward to reading every summer (and this year took the leap into doing it;) and to ammcj062 for the excellent prompts: Sam and Dean working together at the same summer job and Sam and Dean running feral through the summer months in a rough neighborhood while John is on a hunt, which, while I didn’t really write, did inspire the boys’ shenanigans.