SPN Fic!
Okay, I've had this written now for something like a thousand years and I keep forgetting to post it. A while ago I wanted to try writing six or seven ficlets all linked by a common theme, and this is what came of it. Izh reminded me the other day that I still had it lying around, and today is as good a day as any for new fic, so:
Title: a little bit of fly right down
Author: kalquessa
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, angst, character study
Word Count: 3,364
Characters: Dean, Sam, a smidge of Bobby
Season/Spoilers: Starts pre-season and spans at least the first three seasons. The only specific spoiler is something for S2's "Roadkill."
Rating: G
Warnings: It's possible I'm the only person who thinks the idea of "linked ficlets on a theme" is a cool one. Also, self-indulgent lyricism.
Thanks: sarcasticval bugged me for more ficlets, cheered me on, and fixed my iffy grammar. *beta hugs*
1.
They both occasionally dream of flying.
Sam's flying dreams are the heady, effortless kind that come with wings. Even in the dreams he knows the wings are ridiculous: even if hollow bones could somehow support a body of his size, he'd need wings that could hide small houses to get himself airborne, and the wings in his dreams are only about as long as he is tall. That's not even to mention the fact that wings would require monster pecs and a massive keel bone sticking out of his chest to accommodate them. In the dreams, he doesn't have any of these things, or need them in order to fly. So the wings are impossible and ridiculous, but he accepts them and welcomes them because dreaming about them means not dreaming about something else, and impossible wings are one of the few benign dream motifs left to him these days. Plus, the dreams always leave him feeling slightly better than he did the night before, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
In Dean's dreams, he's just as scared of flying as he is when he's awake. Only he's never actually been afraid of flying. He's afraid of falling, and that doesn't change when he goes to sleep. Whenever Dean flies in dreams, it's out of desperation: he's being chased, and flying is the only way to escape his pursuer, or he has to get somewhere now, and the only way to make it in time is to fly. He doesn't have the advantage of wings, either; in Dean's dreamworld, flying is a struggle, an all-out straining of mind and body to drag himself into the air. And the fight doesn't end once he's aloft: every moment in the air is spent laboring to stay there, to keep from slipping back to earth and the crunch of bones breaking against the ground. Regardless of whether he falls or not, he wakes up exhausted.
***
2.
Dean hates working with Shep and Mayumi Owens but when he runs into them outside of St. Tammany, they're casing a very-haunted house that is undeniably a job for as many people as possible. When Shep asks if he would mind lending a hand, Dean can't, in good conscience, refuse. Doesn't mean he has to like it.
It's not that the Owenses aren't capable hunters; Shep is an ex-Navy SEAL, speaks five languages, knows exorcisms in fifteen more, and is an all-around nice guy to boot. Mayumi may be half her husband's size, but she's the best shot with a 9 mm that Dean has ever seen, and she's absolutely masterful at getting into small spaces and getting out again, fast. They both know their stuff. Dean still hates working with them.
For one thing, May is kind of a shrew and tends to start speaking Japanese when she's pissed (which, as far as Dean can tell, is most of the time). If Dean is going to have insults and orders shouted at him while he dodges flying furniture, he'd prefer them to at least be in a language he understands.
For another thing, seeing them work together, the way they move in perfect, complimentary patterns, makes something tighten in Dean's chest. Whether they're stripping their shotguns or fighting back-to-back, they each move as if the other person were an extension of themselves, too close to need orders or signals. Dean hates how envious the sight makes him.
While the three of them wait for night to fall, they get an early supper at a run-down roadside diner. Dean watches the way they make the meal into a sort of dance: May pours cream in both their coffees, Shep puts the pickle wedge from his plate onto hers, they take precise turns with the ketchup bottle. Dean wonders if his mom and dad ever had this comfortable almost-telepathy, and he misses Sam.
Later, after the old house is one hundred percent spook-free, and they're back in the Owenses' motel room, Dean stitches up a wound on a barely-conscious Shep's back while May hovers. Dean hates having her watch him work, eyes narrowed and lips compressed in silent disapproval, no doubt thinking that she could do a much better job if her hands weren't covered in first-degree burns.
He finishes as quickly as he can, tying his stitch off just under the motto inked across Shep's shoulder blades ("The only easy day was yesterday"). May scrutinizes his work for a long minute, then nods, looking slightly less likely to bite his head off at any moment. Dean helps Shep roll onto his side and his eye is caught by a tattoo on the man's shoulder of feathers and script that looks vaguely like Latin.
May sees him notice it and reaches to touch her husband's shoulder with one bandaged hand. "From one of his books," she says in her clipped accent. "Greek. 'We are angels with one wing, and must embrace each other to fly.'" She pulls back her jacket to show him the same device on her own shoulder.
Shep stirs groggily and says, "It's Italian, and that's not how it goes."
"It is not much different," May replies. "Go to sleep." Her voice is curt, but her eyes are gentle.
Dean leaves without much more ado, glad to get away, and sits in his car for twenty minutes, staring at Sam's number on his cell and debating whether or not to hit the "call" button before closing the phone and starting the engine.
***
3.
Sam will never admit it to Dean, but he hates flying almost as much as his brother does. Not because he's afraid of crashing; Sam's reasons to dislike airplanes are both more numerous and more trivial than Dean's. Sam hates the recycled air, the way his ears pop, the way he always catches a cold from being crammed in with so many other people, the the fact that the legroom allocated to a coach passenger is based on the assumption that everyone is four-and-a-half feet tall.
He does love the view, though. The first time he took a plane anywhere, he was twenty-one years old and going home with Jess for spring break. He was fascinated by the orderly patchwork of farmland, the ancient, sinuous lines of rivers and mountain ranges, the dainty charm of huge cities reduced to miniature proportions by distance. Jess laughed delightedly at how he sat and stared, almost transfixed by how beautiful the world was from so far away.
When they climbed above the clouds and Sam saw for the first time the panorama of sunlit cloudscape stretching into forever outside his tiny window, he gave a little huff of involuntary laughter that made Jess chuckle at him again. He reached over and took her hand, wearing a grin that would have made Dean roll his eyes if he'd been around to see it. The whole thing had all seemed like one big, gorgeous metaphor for his escape from the gravity of his old life, from danger, darkness, and uncertainty, to this other world where he and Jess could fly through the air, holding hands and laughing.
A year later, Sam discovers that the thing about flying is that eventually you have to land. And when you do the world, which looked so pretty and tranquil from up high, turns out to be just as ugly and terrifying as you remembered.
***
4.
When she asks what she's supposed to do in order to "move on" the younger of the two brothers--Sam--replies "Just...let go?"
He says it like a question but he turns out to be exactly correct. Molly lets go, and feels it all fall away: David, Greeley, Highway 41, the sound of her car hitting the tree, and I've one foot on the platform, the other on the train. She lets go as the sun rises ahead of her and she thinks that maybe it's not that the world and her life are falling away, maybe she's rising up. And then it really does feel like flying for an instant, and then she's gone.
***
5.
The sun is just coming up by the time they finish filling in the grave, burying newly-burned bones under a heavy layer of earth. The spirit's most recent targets--a guy and his grown daughter--thank them profusely at the cemetery gates, and then depart, looking shaken but relieved, arms across each other's shoulders.
"What now?" asks Sam, closing the Impala's trunk and stretching. They packed up and checked out of their motel yesterday, and Dean can tell Sam is wishing they still had somewhere to crash for a few hours before heading off in the direction of the next hunt. Neither of them slept at all last night but Dean's not tired, and he can't help being glad that he doesn't have to wait around for Sam to take a nap before they hit the road. The morning, with the sun rising and the air still cool and sweet, would be wasted on channel-surfing while Sammy got his Zs in.
"Sun Valley, Idaho," Dean replies. "Something's attacking people who wander too close to a shut-down ski resort."
Sam just nods in reply and folds himself into the car. Dean takes one more lungful of sunrise and follows.
"Stupid motel, kicking us out," Sam grumbles.
"Hey, it's tourist season, and they did tell us the room was only free until last night." Dean shrugs and grins.
"Could really use some sleep," Sam yawns. "You okay to drive?"
"Yeah, I'm good. We'll stop for coffee later," he promises. "Go ahead and get some beauty sleep, there, Sammy."
It is a testament to how drowsy Sam is that he makes no reply, merely shrugs himself down into his sleeping-in-the-car slouch and closes his eyes. Dean keeps the music on low until Sam's breathing evens out, then slowly cranks it up to a fully-audible level as they turn onto I-90. He's thankful that Sam can sleep through a fair amount of noise, since a drive this nice deserves at least one repetition of "South Bound Suarez."
For Dean's money, you don't need wings or jet engines or any of that crap to fly. All you need is some empty interstate, a successful hunt in your rear-view mirror, some Zeppelin, a brother asleep on the seat next to you, and a '67 Chevy Impala with the windows rolled down.
***
6.
"It was sweet of you both to stop by." Elaine smiles at Sam and pulls a curtain away from her kitchen window to peer out at her backyard. Sam looks over her shoulder and sees Dean, seated on the porch steps, having an animated conversation with Elaine's eight-year-old daughter.
"We just wanted to check on the three of you again, before we left," Sam replies, returning her smile.
"We're all fine. Thanks to you and your brother." Elaine turns to the kitchen table, where her older daughter is drawing silently. She puts a hand on the teenager's hair, and the girl looks up from her sketchpad long enough to smile shyly at a point over Sam's shoulder. Elaine shakes her head. "I really don't know what we would've...what I would've...Katie and Leah..." her smile falters for a moment, but then she seems to collect herself, and says steadily, "I don't know how to thank you."
"Don't worry about it," Sam says, putting as much warmth into his voice as he knows how. "It's kind of our job. I'm glad you're all okay." He glances out the window again. Katie is holding up a Wonder Woman action figure for Dean's consideration, and Dean is laughing.
"Mom?" The teenager's voice is almost too soft to hear. She looks from her mother to Sam and back again, and Elaine's smile returns full force.
"Leah was hoping we'd see you again before you left town," she says, and there's gentle teasing in her voice, now. "She made something she wanted you to have."
Sam grins at Leah, who tears a page out of her sketchbook and holds it out to him, smiling at the the tabletop and turning faintly pink. Sam takes the sketch from her and considers it for a long moment. The likeness is actually pretty good, with a small exception.
"You've drawn us with wings," he observes, still grinning.
Leah's blush deepens and she mumbles something too softly for Sam to understand, but her mother chuckles in response.
"Apparently it was a question of compositional aesthetics." Elaine informs him with another amused chuckle. "You and your brother didn't fill out quite enough white space by yourselves, so naturally wings were called for." She sobers slightly and adds, "Not entirely inappropriate, if you ask me."
Sam laughs and tries to think of some way to respond to that. Eventually he settles on simply, "Thank you, Leah."
Leah just shrugs as the back door opens and Dean walks in, followed by Katie. Sam rolls the sketch up and slides it into his jacket pocket, not sure he wants to know how Dean would react to being depicted as an angel.
"Check out what Katie made me," Dean says, waving another drawing, this one boasting a liberal application of red and blue crayon.
"I drew it!" Katie announces. "It's you and Dean and me and Mom and Leah and that's the..." she points at a mass of black scribbles that appear to be smoking in the bottom corner of the paper, her brow wrinkling in an attempt to summon the unfamiliar word.
"Aswang," Dean supplies.
"Aswang," Katie repeats.
Sam takes the picture and attempts a serious nod.
"I see you told her about your thing for capes," he says to Dean.
"Hey, if it's good enough for Batman," Dean replies, grinning and shrugging.
"I know you can't really fly," Katie assures Sam. "But you were sort of like superheroes, a little bit."
"More than a little bit," Elaine adds, smiling again. Dean ducks his head and doesn't reply, but his grin broadens into something almost bashful.
"We're glad we could help," Sam says. "We'd better be going, though. Thank you." He smiles at Katie, then at Leah, who actually looks at him long enough to smile back.
"Thank you," replies Elaine.
When they reach the car, Dean folds his superhero drawing up and waves it at Sam.
"If we had a wall to hang stuff on, I would seriously have this framed," he says, clearly pleased.
"You could hang it in the car," Sam jokes, sliding into his seat as Dean keys the ignition. "Start a testimonial wall in here."
"You are such a dork," is Dean's only reply, but out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees his brother flip his sun visor down and slip the drawing into the collection of cards and papers clipped to the visor's underside. Sam smiles to himself and decides that he'll keep the sketch with wings for his own. Dean can have the one with capes.
***
7.
The sun is setting when Bobby gets back from town and the house is dark and quiet. The only sound as he makes his way through the kitchen is the faint, regular rattle of a socket wrench coming from the general direction of the back door. Bobby checks the fridge and finds a solitary beer keeping vigil where a whole six pack was last night. He snags the bottle and makes his way through the living room, careful not to trip over the duffel bags lumped in the middle of the floor.
Staticky classic rock chords join the sounds of the socket wrench as he reaches the back door, and he pauses in the doorway to survey the scene outside it: the Impala's been pulled up close to the porch and Dean's legs are sticking out from behind the front wheel. Sam has parked himself under the porch light, a book in one hand and a beer in the other. His lips are moving silently, and after a moment of watching him, Bobby realizes it's not words from the book that he's mouthing, it's the words to the song on the radio.
Early in the morning sunlight
Soaring on the wings of dawn
Here I'll live and die with my wings in the sky
And I won't come down no more
Bobby sips his beer silently, reluctant to announce his presence and break up the little tableau just yet. The sky is shading into darkness as the sun finishes setting, and in the circle of yellow light on the porch steps, Sam is starting to sing along under his breath.
Sail on, sail on
I will rise each day to meet the dawn
So high, so high
I've climbed the mountains of the sky...
"I told you you liked this song." Dean's voice comes from under the car, and his right heel makes an emphatic thump on the ground to replace the hand gestures that would normally accompany the words. Sam looks up from his book, blinking.
"What song?"
"This song, the song that is currently playing, Sam." Bobby can hear the eyeroll, even if he can't see it. Sam squints at his brother's feet for a moment.
"Dude, how can you even tell what song this is through all the static?"
"Same way you can tell what song it is well enough to sing along."
"I was not singing along," Sam asserts, and goes back to his book, case closed.
"Well, okay, so maybe 'singing' isn't exactly the word for what you were doing, but I was still right about you liking this song."
Higher than a bird I'm flying
Crimson skies of ice and fire
Borne on wings of steel I have so much to feel
And I won't come down no more
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Sam says without looking up.
"You know all the words."
"I know all the words to 'Enter Sandman,' that doesn't mean I like it. It just means you boggart the radio all the time."
"No one knows all the words to 'Enter Sandman,' Sammy."
"Fine," Sam concedes. "I hate Metallica. And I hate whatever band this is, too; it's like this song was swallowed by a synthesizer pretending to be a Medeival minstrel show."
"Your face was swallowed by a synthesizer," Dean replies absently, sliding out from under the car. "Hand me the--hey, Bobby," Dean catches sight of him and stands, wiping his hands on a rag that's at least as filthy as they are.
"Boys," Bobby nods. "I thought maybe you two would have been on your way by now. Sounded like you wanted to hit the road by this afternoon."
Sam says "Dean had something he wanted to replace on the car," at the same time as Dean says "Sam wanted to do laundry before we hit the road." They each glance at the other, Dean with a grin, Sam with an eyebrow arched, then Sam adds, "We're heading out tomorrow morning. Some weird deaths in Nebraska."
Bobby just nods.
"We saved you a beer," Sam informs him, tossing back the last of his own.
Bobby refrains from pointing out that it's his friggin' beer and merely tips the bottle at them before taking another swig.
"Sam was just saying how much he loves 'Wings of Steel,'" says Dean, reaching to turn up the radio. When Sam encourages him with a deeply put-upon sigh, he sweeps up the beer bottle sitting on the bottom step of the porch and sings into it. "I've found my freedom flyin' hiiigh! I've climbed the mountains of the skyyy!"
Sam hides a reluctant smile in his book. "You almost done with the car?"
"Yeah, almost." Dean takes a drink, sets his beer back on the step, and goes to slide back under the car. As Bobby steps back out of the doorway and heads toward the kitchen, he casts a glance over his shoulder. Sam's head is nodding gently in time with the song, and Bobby can just hear Dean's voice, singing softly and slightly off-key from under the car.
And I won't come down no more.
***
A/N: Title is a lyrics from "South Bound Suarez" by Led Zeppelin, which really is an awesome tune to play when one is happy and behind the wheel. The quotation that Shep and May have tattooed on their shoulders is from a work by Lucian de Creszenza, and the proper translation (or one of them, at least) is "We are, each of us, angels with one wing and we can only fly by embracing one another." "Icarus (Born on Wings of Steel)" by Kansas really does sound like it was swallowed by a synthesizer trying to be a minstrel show in places. It's still a pretty good song, despite this.
Also, for the record, this was pretty much all written before Season 4 started airing, with the exception of the last scene with Bobby. Thus I decree that I cannot be blamed for any weird ways in which this jars against the current prevalence of winged beings on the show. *nod*
Title: a little bit of fly right down
Author: kalquessa
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, angst, character study
Word Count: 3,364
Characters: Dean, Sam, a smidge of Bobby
Season/Spoilers: Starts pre-season and spans at least the first three seasons. The only specific spoiler is something for S2's "Roadkill."
Rating: G
Warnings: It's possible I'm the only person who thinks the idea of "linked ficlets on a theme" is a cool one. Also, self-indulgent lyricism.
Thanks: sarcasticval bugged me for more ficlets, cheered me on, and fixed my iffy grammar. *beta hugs*
1.
They both occasionally dream of flying.
Sam's flying dreams are the heady, effortless kind that come with wings. Even in the dreams he knows the wings are ridiculous: even if hollow bones could somehow support a body of his size, he'd need wings that could hide small houses to get himself airborne, and the wings in his dreams are only about as long as he is tall. That's not even to mention the fact that wings would require monster pecs and a massive keel bone sticking out of his chest to accommodate them. In the dreams, he doesn't have any of these things, or need them in order to fly. So the wings are impossible and ridiculous, but he accepts them and welcomes them because dreaming about them means not dreaming about something else, and impossible wings are one of the few benign dream motifs left to him these days. Plus, the dreams always leave him feeling slightly better than he did the night before, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
In Dean's dreams, he's just as scared of flying as he is when he's awake. Only he's never actually been afraid of flying. He's afraid of falling, and that doesn't change when he goes to sleep. Whenever Dean flies in dreams, it's out of desperation: he's being chased, and flying is the only way to escape his pursuer, or he has to get somewhere now, and the only way to make it in time is to fly. He doesn't have the advantage of wings, either; in Dean's dreamworld, flying is a struggle, an all-out straining of mind and body to drag himself into the air. And the fight doesn't end once he's aloft: every moment in the air is spent laboring to stay there, to keep from slipping back to earth and the crunch of bones breaking against the ground. Regardless of whether he falls or not, he wakes up exhausted.
***
2.
Dean hates working with Shep and Mayumi Owens but when he runs into them outside of St. Tammany, they're casing a very-haunted house that is undeniably a job for as many people as possible. When Shep asks if he would mind lending a hand, Dean can't, in good conscience, refuse. Doesn't mean he has to like it.
It's not that the Owenses aren't capable hunters; Shep is an ex-Navy SEAL, speaks five languages, knows exorcisms in fifteen more, and is an all-around nice guy to boot. Mayumi may be half her husband's size, but she's the best shot with a 9 mm that Dean has ever seen, and she's absolutely masterful at getting into small spaces and getting out again, fast. They both know their stuff. Dean still hates working with them.
For one thing, May is kind of a shrew and tends to start speaking Japanese when she's pissed (which, as far as Dean can tell, is most of the time). If Dean is going to have insults and orders shouted at him while he dodges flying furniture, he'd prefer them to at least be in a language he understands.
For another thing, seeing them work together, the way they move in perfect, complimentary patterns, makes something tighten in Dean's chest. Whether they're stripping their shotguns or fighting back-to-back, they each move as if the other person were an extension of themselves, too close to need orders or signals. Dean hates how envious the sight makes him.
While the three of them wait for night to fall, they get an early supper at a run-down roadside diner. Dean watches the way they make the meal into a sort of dance: May pours cream in both their coffees, Shep puts the pickle wedge from his plate onto hers, they take precise turns with the ketchup bottle. Dean wonders if his mom and dad ever had this comfortable almost-telepathy, and he misses Sam.
Later, after the old house is one hundred percent spook-free, and they're back in the Owenses' motel room, Dean stitches up a wound on a barely-conscious Shep's back while May hovers. Dean hates having her watch him work, eyes narrowed and lips compressed in silent disapproval, no doubt thinking that she could do a much better job if her hands weren't covered in first-degree burns.
He finishes as quickly as he can, tying his stitch off just under the motto inked across Shep's shoulder blades ("The only easy day was yesterday"). May scrutinizes his work for a long minute, then nods, looking slightly less likely to bite his head off at any moment. Dean helps Shep roll onto his side and his eye is caught by a tattoo on the man's shoulder of feathers and script that looks vaguely like Latin.
May sees him notice it and reaches to touch her husband's shoulder with one bandaged hand. "From one of his books," she says in her clipped accent. "Greek. 'We are angels with one wing, and must embrace each other to fly.'" She pulls back her jacket to show him the same device on her own shoulder.
Shep stirs groggily and says, "It's Italian, and that's not how it goes."
"It is not much different," May replies. "Go to sleep." Her voice is curt, but her eyes are gentle.
Dean leaves without much more ado, glad to get away, and sits in his car for twenty minutes, staring at Sam's number on his cell and debating whether or not to hit the "call" button before closing the phone and starting the engine.
***
3.
Sam will never admit it to Dean, but he hates flying almost as much as his brother does. Not because he's afraid of crashing; Sam's reasons to dislike airplanes are both more numerous and more trivial than Dean's. Sam hates the recycled air, the way his ears pop, the way he always catches a cold from being crammed in with so many other people, the the fact that the legroom allocated to a coach passenger is based on the assumption that everyone is four-and-a-half feet tall.
He does love the view, though. The first time he took a plane anywhere, he was twenty-one years old and going home with Jess for spring break. He was fascinated by the orderly patchwork of farmland, the ancient, sinuous lines of rivers and mountain ranges, the dainty charm of huge cities reduced to miniature proportions by distance. Jess laughed delightedly at how he sat and stared, almost transfixed by how beautiful the world was from so far away.
When they climbed above the clouds and Sam saw for the first time the panorama of sunlit cloudscape stretching into forever outside his tiny window, he gave a little huff of involuntary laughter that made Jess chuckle at him again. He reached over and took her hand, wearing a grin that would have made Dean roll his eyes if he'd been around to see it. The whole thing had all seemed like one big, gorgeous metaphor for his escape from the gravity of his old life, from danger, darkness, and uncertainty, to this other world where he and Jess could fly through the air, holding hands and laughing.
A year later, Sam discovers that the thing about flying is that eventually you have to land. And when you do the world, which looked so pretty and tranquil from up high, turns out to be just as ugly and terrifying as you remembered.
***
4.
When she asks what she's supposed to do in order to "move on" the younger of the two brothers--Sam--replies "Just...let go?"
He says it like a question but he turns out to be exactly correct. Molly lets go, and feels it all fall away: David, Greeley, Highway 41, the sound of her car hitting the tree, and I've one foot on the platform, the other on the train. She lets go as the sun rises ahead of her and she thinks that maybe it's not that the world and her life are falling away, maybe she's rising up. And then it really does feel like flying for an instant, and then she's gone.
***
5.
The sun is just coming up by the time they finish filling in the grave, burying newly-burned bones under a heavy layer of earth. The spirit's most recent targets--a guy and his grown daughter--thank them profusely at the cemetery gates, and then depart, looking shaken but relieved, arms across each other's shoulders.
"What now?" asks Sam, closing the Impala's trunk and stretching. They packed up and checked out of their motel yesterday, and Dean can tell Sam is wishing they still had somewhere to crash for a few hours before heading off in the direction of the next hunt. Neither of them slept at all last night but Dean's not tired, and he can't help being glad that he doesn't have to wait around for Sam to take a nap before they hit the road. The morning, with the sun rising and the air still cool and sweet, would be wasted on channel-surfing while Sammy got his Zs in.
"Sun Valley, Idaho," Dean replies. "Something's attacking people who wander too close to a shut-down ski resort."
Sam just nods in reply and folds himself into the car. Dean takes one more lungful of sunrise and follows.
"Stupid motel, kicking us out," Sam grumbles.
"Hey, it's tourist season, and they did tell us the room was only free until last night." Dean shrugs and grins.
"Could really use some sleep," Sam yawns. "You okay to drive?"
"Yeah, I'm good. We'll stop for coffee later," he promises. "Go ahead and get some beauty sleep, there, Sammy."
It is a testament to how drowsy Sam is that he makes no reply, merely shrugs himself down into his sleeping-in-the-car slouch and closes his eyes. Dean keeps the music on low until Sam's breathing evens out, then slowly cranks it up to a fully-audible level as they turn onto I-90. He's thankful that Sam can sleep through a fair amount of noise, since a drive this nice deserves at least one repetition of "South Bound Suarez."
For Dean's money, you don't need wings or jet engines or any of that crap to fly. All you need is some empty interstate, a successful hunt in your rear-view mirror, some Zeppelin, a brother asleep on the seat next to you, and a '67 Chevy Impala with the windows rolled down.
***
6.
"It was sweet of you both to stop by." Elaine smiles at Sam and pulls a curtain away from her kitchen window to peer out at her backyard. Sam looks over her shoulder and sees Dean, seated on the porch steps, having an animated conversation with Elaine's eight-year-old daughter.
"We just wanted to check on the three of you again, before we left," Sam replies, returning her smile.
"We're all fine. Thanks to you and your brother." Elaine turns to the kitchen table, where her older daughter is drawing silently. She puts a hand on the teenager's hair, and the girl looks up from her sketchpad long enough to smile shyly at a point over Sam's shoulder. Elaine shakes her head. "I really don't know what we would've...what I would've...Katie and Leah..." her smile falters for a moment, but then she seems to collect herself, and says steadily, "I don't know how to thank you."
"Don't worry about it," Sam says, putting as much warmth into his voice as he knows how. "It's kind of our job. I'm glad you're all okay." He glances out the window again. Katie is holding up a Wonder Woman action figure for Dean's consideration, and Dean is laughing.
"Mom?" The teenager's voice is almost too soft to hear. She looks from her mother to Sam and back again, and Elaine's smile returns full force.
"Leah was hoping we'd see you again before you left town," she says, and there's gentle teasing in her voice, now. "She made something she wanted you to have."
Sam grins at Leah, who tears a page out of her sketchbook and holds it out to him, smiling at the the tabletop and turning faintly pink. Sam takes the sketch from her and considers it for a long moment. The likeness is actually pretty good, with a small exception.
"You've drawn us with wings," he observes, still grinning.
Leah's blush deepens and she mumbles something too softly for Sam to understand, but her mother chuckles in response.
"Apparently it was a question of compositional aesthetics." Elaine informs him with another amused chuckle. "You and your brother didn't fill out quite enough white space by yourselves, so naturally wings were called for." She sobers slightly and adds, "Not entirely inappropriate, if you ask me."
Sam laughs and tries to think of some way to respond to that. Eventually he settles on simply, "Thank you, Leah."
Leah just shrugs as the back door opens and Dean walks in, followed by Katie. Sam rolls the sketch up and slides it into his jacket pocket, not sure he wants to know how Dean would react to being depicted as an angel.
"Check out what Katie made me," Dean says, waving another drawing, this one boasting a liberal application of red and blue crayon.
"I drew it!" Katie announces. "It's you and Dean and me and Mom and Leah and that's the..." she points at a mass of black scribbles that appear to be smoking in the bottom corner of the paper, her brow wrinkling in an attempt to summon the unfamiliar word.
"Aswang," Dean supplies.
"Aswang," Katie repeats.
Sam takes the picture and attempts a serious nod.
"I see you told her about your thing for capes," he says to Dean.
"Hey, if it's good enough for Batman," Dean replies, grinning and shrugging.
"I know you can't really fly," Katie assures Sam. "But you were sort of like superheroes, a little bit."
"More than a little bit," Elaine adds, smiling again. Dean ducks his head and doesn't reply, but his grin broadens into something almost bashful.
"We're glad we could help," Sam says. "We'd better be going, though. Thank you." He smiles at Katie, then at Leah, who actually looks at him long enough to smile back.
"Thank you," replies Elaine.
When they reach the car, Dean folds his superhero drawing up and waves it at Sam.
"If we had a wall to hang stuff on, I would seriously have this framed," he says, clearly pleased.
"You could hang it in the car," Sam jokes, sliding into his seat as Dean keys the ignition. "Start a testimonial wall in here."
"You are such a dork," is Dean's only reply, but out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees his brother flip his sun visor down and slip the drawing into the collection of cards and papers clipped to the visor's underside. Sam smiles to himself and decides that he'll keep the sketch with wings for his own. Dean can have the one with capes.
***
7.
The sun is setting when Bobby gets back from town and the house is dark and quiet. The only sound as he makes his way through the kitchen is the faint, regular rattle of a socket wrench coming from the general direction of the back door. Bobby checks the fridge and finds a solitary beer keeping vigil where a whole six pack was last night. He snags the bottle and makes his way through the living room, careful not to trip over the duffel bags lumped in the middle of the floor.
Staticky classic rock chords join the sounds of the socket wrench as he reaches the back door, and he pauses in the doorway to survey the scene outside it: the Impala's been pulled up close to the porch and Dean's legs are sticking out from behind the front wheel. Sam has parked himself under the porch light, a book in one hand and a beer in the other. His lips are moving silently, and after a moment of watching him, Bobby realizes it's not words from the book that he's mouthing, it's the words to the song on the radio.
Early in the morning sunlight
Soaring on the wings of dawn
Here I'll live and die with my wings in the sky
And I won't come down no more
Bobby sips his beer silently, reluctant to announce his presence and break up the little tableau just yet. The sky is shading into darkness as the sun finishes setting, and in the circle of yellow light on the porch steps, Sam is starting to sing along under his breath.
Sail on, sail on
I will rise each day to meet the dawn
So high, so high
I've climbed the mountains of the sky...
"I told you you liked this song." Dean's voice comes from under the car, and his right heel makes an emphatic thump on the ground to replace the hand gestures that would normally accompany the words. Sam looks up from his book, blinking.
"What song?"
"This song, the song that is currently playing, Sam." Bobby can hear the eyeroll, even if he can't see it. Sam squints at his brother's feet for a moment.
"Dude, how can you even tell what song this is through all the static?"
"Same way you can tell what song it is well enough to sing along."
"I was not singing along," Sam asserts, and goes back to his book, case closed.
"Well, okay, so maybe 'singing' isn't exactly the word for what you were doing, but I was still right about you liking this song."
Higher than a bird I'm flying
Crimson skies of ice and fire
Borne on wings of steel I have so much to feel
And I won't come down no more
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Sam says without looking up.
"You know all the words."
"I know all the words to 'Enter Sandman,' that doesn't mean I like it. It just means you boggart the radio all the time."
"No one knows all the words to 'Enter Sandman,' Sammy."
"Fine," Sam concedes. "I hate Metallica. And I hate whatever band this is, too; it's like this song was swallowed by a synthesizer pretending to be a Medeival minstrel show."
"Your face was swallowed by a synthesizer," Dean replies absently, sliding out from under the car. "Hand me the--hey, Bobby," Dean catches sight of him and stands, wiping his hands on a rag that's at least as filthy as they are.
"Boys," Bobby nods. "I thought maybe you two would have been on your way by now. Sounded like you wanted to hit the road by this afternoon."
Sam says "Dean had something he wanted to replace on the car," at the same time as Dean says "Sam wanted to do laundry before we hit the road." They each glance at the other, Dean with a grin, Sam with an eyebrow arched, then Sam adds, "We're heading out tomorrow morning. Some weird deaths in Nebraska."
Bobby just nods.
"We saved you a beer," Sam informs him, tossing back the last of his own.
Bobby refrains from pointing out that it's his friggin' beer and merely tips the bottle at them before taking another swig.
"Sam was just saying how much he loves 'Wings of Steel,'" says Dean, reaching to turn up the radio. When Sam encourages him with a deeply put-upon sigh, he sweeps up the beer bottle sitting on the bottom step of the porch and sings into it. "I've found my freedom flyin' hiiigh! I've climbed the mountains of the skyyy!"
Sam hides a reluctant smile in his book. "You almost done with the car?"
"Yeah, almost." Dean takes a drink, sets his beer back on the step, and goes to slide back under the car. As Bobby steps back out of the doorway and heads toward the kitchen, he casts a glance over his shoulder. Sam's head is nodding gently in time with the song, and Bobby can just hear Dean's voice, singing softly and slightly off-key from under the car.
And I won't come down no more.
***
A/N: Title is a lyrics from "South Bound Suarez" by Led Zeppelin, which really is an awesome tune to play when one is happy and behind the wheel. The quotation that Shep and May have tattooed on their shoulders is from a work by Lucian de Creszenza, and the proper translation (or one of them, at least) is "We are, each of us, angels with one wing and we can only fly by embracing one another." "Icarus (Born on Wings of Steel)" by Kansas really does sound like it was swallowed by a synthesizer trying to be a minstrel show in places. It's still a pretty good song, despite this.
Also, for the record, this was pretty much all written before Season 4 started airing, with the exception of the last scene with Bobby. Thus I decree that I cannot be blamed for any weird ways in which this jars against the current prevalence of winged beings on the show. *nod*