Blue Skies From Rain Part 6 - Chapter 26

[lovesrain44]

When Sam woke up, he felt comfortable, stretched out on a bed that was almost long enough, a dim light coming through the window, light so muted that for a second he thought he was still in the hospital, still in the narrow room with the bathroom with no door. He opened his eyes, wiping the sleep from them with a fist. No, this place had a bathroom door, half closed, as it had been last night, the light on because Sam hadn’t been able to fall asleep in the relative darkness. He’d gotten used to the gleam of light from somewhere, and so Dean, typically, had fixed it for him so he could sleep.

He half sat up in the bed, resting back on his elbows, blinking as he looked around the room. The air still smelled stale, the carpet was still worn, and though the other bed looked rumpled, it hadn’t been slept in, because, of course, Dean had slept with him. And yet there was no Dean. For a second, Sam thought that Dean was in the bathroom, shaving or brushing his teeth, but as he listened, he realized that the only person in the room was him.

Maybe Dean had gone out for coffee or something. It seemed like the kind of thing he would do.

Sam sat all the way up and swung the blankets out of the way as he settled his feet to the floor. It was odd to have carpet instead of slick linoleum, and to wake up without the chime, but it was nice too, nice but strange. And to be alone, all alone for the first time that he could remember. He got up to poke a finger through the blinds, which showed him the parking lot, and the fact that the car, Dean’s shiny black car, and the car of Sam’s memories, was still parked right in front of their door. Which meant that wherever Dean had gone, he’d walked. Which meant that he would probably be back soon.

With a wide, spine-cracking stretch, Sam scratched his ribs and thought about a shower, thought about showering with Dean, thought about pancakes and oatmeal thinned with milk and wondered when Dean would get back so they could go eat. Even if it was with stolen credit cards.

Then on the table by the curtained window, he spotted a piece of paper where he was pretty sure a piece of paper hadn’t been the night before. It was folded and set at an angle, white against the dull, fake wood of the table. Sam reached for it, realizing it would tell him where Dean had gone. He smiled as he thought of Dean sitting there before Sam had gotten up, quietly taking a piece of paper and a pen and writing out a private message meant only for Sam.

Just before he opened it, his eyes scanned the room, still listening for Dean. Then he read the note.

Dear Sam,

I had to go.

Dean

On the back of the paper was more writing.

Call Bobby, it read. He knows you. And then a phone number.

His heart landed in his stomach with a thud. Something hollow settled in his stomach and as he looked around the room, he realized that things were missing. Not many, but they were all Dean’s things. One of the backpacks, the pearl-handled gun Dean had showed him last night. Dean’s jacket. Dean.

Sam looked at the note and read it again, thinking if he went a little slower this time, the words would tell him when and where and why. But the words remained the same, twelve words, all of them saying goodbye.

It was so typical of Dean to be this cryptic as to why, though not really his style to slink off in the night.

A wave of cold air washed over Sam, and then a hot one, then the cold, till Sam was shivering as hard as he ever had back in the hospital, or in the rain walking across the backcountry of Illinois. Or when he’d stood outside the warehouse on the edges of Joliet, arguing with Dean about what to do with the remains of the djinn’s victims. Everything, every word, every gesture, every thought from the past weeks came careening toward him from some far off horizon where it’d been waiting without any patience whatsoever, and slammed into his memories of his whole life with the force of a juggernaut so hard that his teeth clicked together and he staggered, the note slipping from his fingers as it fluttered to the floor.

Sam moved away from the note, the table, the spot where Dean’s backpack had been the night before. And sank down on the bed, his knees giving way, the sweat all over him going cold. It was then he noticed that the keys to the Impala were on the nightstand, tucked by the phone.

They’d been placed where Sam wouldn’t be able to miss them when he did the room check. Which would happen when they checked out, like it always did. Counterclockwise one time, and then clockwise the next, while the other brother got the car or turned in the key or whatever. A pattern established when they were kids, long before Dad started leaving them on their own, and long after that act had ceased to be unusual.

Dean had left him.

The muted feeling of the hospital snapped away, leaving Sam shaking, looking at the keys, remembering the hospital, not like some faraway dream that he was glad to be out of, but like the hard, brittle reality that it was. The Sam he’d been there, the Sam he’d been even just last night, danced in front of him like a glassy, thin pantomime. It was startling enough to realize how accepting he’d been of the hospital, their attitudes towards him, the stigma of amnesia, and their old fashioned approach to keeping a patient calm.

He had believed that they would get him well, only now it made him sick to think of being that trusting, that wide-eyed and believing, wanting to stay and not go with that guy named Dean because he needed to get well. But the worst part of it-the worst thing of all-had been Dean. And him, looking for whatever Dean was handing out with all the finesse of a rabbity scared fifteen year old. Will you hold me, Dean? I’m scared, Dean. Why is Randy mean to me? Where are we going, Dean? Can I kiss you? Will you touch me? Yes, touch me like that-

With a low moan, he was on his feet, a sudden headache blazing behind his eyes, not sure if he wanted to throw up or scream or-

It was like getting hit in the face, over and over, solid, slamming punches, pushing everything up in his brain, slamming with the force of concrete slabs, till his head was thick with it. All of his memories came back, old and new. Solid with the images of Dean, his eyes glinting in the slanted light of their room, his hands on Sam’s hips, curving through Sam’s hair, biting his lip as though considering his options as he looked at Sam, wanted him. Bent down, pulled their bodies close.

Dean had kissed him, and held him, and petted him, and let Sam fuck him, and lied to him-

Sam went to the door and flung it open, letting in the light and the air, staring at the parking lot as if he half expected Dean to come striding across it, with a cardboard tray of coffee in one hand and a bag of donuts in the other. Like he had a million times, whistling, smiling, his eyes lighting up as he saw Sam. But there was no Dean. Only the blacktop, starting to smell like tar as the sun hit it and the dew of the morning was seared away.

My Sam, Dean had called him. He had whispered it in Sam’s ear, tucked in close, lips brushing Sam’s skin soft enough to feel like silk, warm enough to be tender. My Sam. My Sammy. Sam-I-Am. Looking at him with eyes that had seemed too green to be real, and whether that was the meds or the contrast of them to the hospital walls, Sam didn’t know. But Dean had always been watching him and reaching out for him. And when Sam had wanted Dean, Dean had wanted him right back.

Sam slammed the door shut hard enough to make the walls shudder. He didn’t want to throw up now. He wanted to kill something. Preferably Dean.

He looked at the bed, at the creases in the sheets, and the slashes of stains from last night. He’d pulled Dean to him, he recalled now, excited about the prospect of so much hot water and privacy, and he’d made Dean take off his clothes, and then they’d showered. And then they’d tumbled to the bed, limbs hot, and he remembered his mouth being open, tasting Dean with his tongue, pressing his fingers into Dean’s shoulder blades to pull Dean close. Dean who had been strangely still, like it was some trick to make Sam want him even harder and it had worked.

His knees couldn’t hold him. Sam sat back on the bed, scrubbing his face with his hands, thinking if he could just get hold of the whirling circle in his stomach, he could grab it and kill it and he wouldn’t feel like this anymore. The memory of that Sam and that Dean-but they were still the same Dean, his brother Dean. Dean had said that his memory had come almost all the way back early on. So he’d always know, really, who he was, and who Sam was. When Sam had asked why Dean didn’t leave, Dean had said that he was sticking around to take care of Sam, like Dr. Logan wanted. In Dr. Logan’s experiment of selfless care and altruistic behavior and letting Dean have all day all night access to the little brother he should not have been touching. Because Dean had lied. All along.

Sam collapsed back on the pillow, pulling his legs up off the ground, feeling numb and then more numb till even the whirling in his stomach went away. His eyes were open and he stared at the ceiling and counted the splotches. It was easier to do that than to think of Dean’s mouth on his, or Dean’s hand between his legs, or the twitch of Dean’s cock when Sam would blow warm air across it, his eyes flicking up to catch Dean’s. To make sure that that was what Dean wanted. Turned out what Dean had wanted was him.

Spit built up in his mouth. Yeah. He thought he might be able to throw up now. Lumbering to his feet, he barely made it to the toilet in time. But at least it was something, he was doing something. Not just lying there with thoughts of Dean in his head.

*

Dean drew a line in his mind as to which way he was going; it was diagonal, southwest across the state of Missouri. Through Columbia, and then Jefferson City, where the 18-wheeler he climbed up into took him, covering the miles in about half a day. Then it let him off, the trucker grunting at him and Dean grunted back. No hard luck stories exchanged, no emo conversations, just a lift to somewhere else and a thanks very much, mister. And that was okay.

But being on the road without the Impala was like walking on two broken legs. Only he was too doped up to feel the pain, hitching, walking backwards with his thumb stuck out. Headed west, always heading west. Always checking over his shoulder for Sam. He might want Sam to find him, but then he knew that would be a bad idea. Sam was better off without him.

He wanted to be miles away when Sam remembered, but his heart hurt, missing Sam, feeling like he was being pierced with spikes, something tearing him up inside, each breath shot through with a hard sear, his hands numb, his gut tumbling with rocks. So bad, it was so bad, missing Sam.

But he kept walking down highway 50 towards the sunset, feeling the strain in his thighs from walking in heavy boots, that itchy unsettled feeling that he should be moving faster than he was. He had fifty bucks in his wallet and that was it. He’d left the rest in Sam’s wallet, and all the credit cars in the cigar box. The cell phone too. If, when, Sam got his memory back, he’d be able to trace Dean with those things, and Dean didn’t want that. He wanted to be long gone and for Sam to leave him that way.

It wasn’t going to rain, but it looked like it wanted to, and Dean knew he needed to get something to eat, to get some shelter for the night. Or maybe he should just not eat and keep walking, even in the rain. Shivering and miserable, into the night, without anything to guide him. It certainly wouldn’t be anything he didn’t deserve.

*

Sam’s thoughts of Dean would not leave him. He tried sleeping, tried counting spots on the ceiling. He took three showers that he could remember, and still there was Dean, right behind his eyes when he closed them and when he opened them, everywhere in the room that he looked. In the bathroom, by the table, bending to put his backpack on the floor, and in the bed. Especially in the bed, his body a long shadow on the sheets, beautiful, eyes glinting, watching Sam.

He tried to leave the room several times, opening it up to stare at the Impala and the parking lot and the sky. Which although was no longer too big, felt very empty. It wasn’t agoraphobia, like what he’d had in the hospital, but the lack of knowing where he would go if he were to leave. Without Dean there was no point-

He stopped himself from thinking this because it didn’t make any sense. Dean had been fully aware of who he was and who Sam was and still he’d done what he’d done. It had been wrong, all of it.

Finally Sam realized he needed to eat, so he took another shower and made his way across the street to the diner he and Dean had eaten at, and stood at the cashier’s until someone spotted him. It was the waitress from before, still in the same jeans and apron, her hair in a ponytail, the same grease stain on her shirt.

“You want a table?” the waitress asked. “For one?”

“Yes,” said Sam, his voice coming out a little louder than he’d planned.

“Wait,” she said. “Weren’t you here the other night?”

Sam nodded. His throat felt thick.

“You’re like a different guy,” she said. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“Uh,” said Sam. He didn’t know what to make of that as she led him to a table. It wasn’t that he was Deanless, he’d eaten in plenty of places without Dean without it attracting any interest at all.

He sat down in the booth she showed him, and drank the water she brought him and looked at the menu. And tried not to get angry at Dean. Or himself, come to that. It hadn’t been helping, it wasn’t going to help. He needed to figure out what to do.

When she came back, he ordered a coke and the chicken fried steak, which she assured him was excellent. She brought it less than five minutes later, while Sam was still staring at the table, trying to figure out what she meant about being a different guy. So he asked her.

“Well,” she said, adjusting her order pad in her apron pocket. “You were just different. I don’t know. The way you stood there. The way you looked at me.” She shrugged. “Straighter. More focused. Yeah? I don’t know how to explain it any way than that.” She didn’t even mention Dean, and it was as if, for a second, Dean was a phantom in Sam’s imagination.

Then she left Sam sitting there, numb, blinking at his icy cold drink and his steaming plate of food that in the hospital would have been cold and coagulated long before he took a knife and fork to it. He ate it as fast as he could before the steam had even died down, his stomach gurgling and churning at the same time. It wasn’t used to eating like this, he wasn’t used to enjoying what he ate. He made himself slow down, and finished what was on his plate without getting any desert. No, not even pie. He wiped his mouth and paid the bill from the cash in his wallet, and walked out without saying thank you.

Back in the room, he laid down on the bed, not taking his shoes off, and waited for his stomach to settle while he stared at the ceiling with hot eyes. It was whacked that he didn’t know how to focus without Dean. He didn’t need Dean. Dean had left him in the hospital for weeks and weeks and weeks, all the while knowing who Sam was. Why had he done that?

Sam sat up, clutching his stomach. Dean could have gotten them out at any time. He could have called Bobby, or someone else, and spared them both a lot of hassle. They could have avoided multiple Treatments, the horrible food, and Randy, and Dr. Logan, and that fucking art therapist and her stupid chalk. Dean had quickly figured out where they were, about the broken window, they could have fucking walked out of there, and not had the run in with Henriksen, who had been-

Henriksen had been scary. Sam hadn’t known who he was at the time, but he’d still been scary. Dean had known, of course, and it must have made him lose his mind to have the two of them trapped in that place and Henriksen standing at the door with the keys to his hand, and there’d been no way around him. Dean had been white as a sheet, and still he’d leaped up at Henriksen, telling him to shut the fuck up and why?

Because Henriksen had said they were brothers, and of course Dean had not wanted anyone to find out. But why? Oh, yes, that was why. Because he’d been screwing around with his brother, and that wasn’t supposed to happen, only Dean made it happen. Made it keep happening. Stopped anything that got in his way of it happening. Sick. That’s what it was. Sam didn’t know which was worse, Dean doing it, or Sam begging him to. If Dean had just said they were brothers, Sam wouldn’t have. He knew that.

Only. Yeah, at the time, when anyone dared say Dean was his brother, even Dean himself, Sam had gone ballistic because his brother was dead. He’d attacked Dean, even, that first time, and after that, Dean had never even so much as hinted at it, walking on eggshells to keep even the thought of it from Sam. But for his own gain? Maybe not.

And how had this all come about, them being in the hospital in the first place? Sam remembered obsessing about the blue man with lightning hands, and talking about it non-stop until the hospital decided enough was enough and slapped him into isolation and signed him up for multiple Treatments. The blue man was probably the djinn, who had cast some sort of weird nightmare spell as he died, determined to get the last big of revenge against the Winchesters, who’d taken away his dream factory. Dean had known this too, yet he’d never clued Sam in about the truth. Yet one more secret.

Sam rolled on his side and curled his knees up, burrowing his head in the pillow. He didn’t know whether he wanted to throw up or shower again or pace. Maybe he could sleep again, let his food digest. Maybe in his dreams he could be back there, back to the hospital, in that room with Dean, not knowing who he was, moving towards Dean, expectant. Wanting Dean to touch him, being lulled into sleep. It had been peaceful and safe, the not knowing, and Dean had been there.

*

It took a week before Sam was tired of the walls of the motel. Tired of the food at the diner, of the waitress and her perky ponytail who never seemed to not be working. Of the dull haze of the sky that wanted to either turn to rain or heat up and burn off into blue, but that had somehow forgotten how to do either. When he pulled out the maps from the trunk of the Impala and spread them on the table, he looked at them and realized why. Quincy was right on the river, and though the town itself might be on the high cliffs above the river, the damp air kept rising and rising, spreading itself like a thin frosting. So rain or shine, Quincy was soaked with water. Which is why the room smelled so strongly of mold.

He stared with unfocused eyes through the open door that he’d forgotten to close and then realized he was looking at the Impala. It had been sitting there long enough and still enough to have gathered some dust, and any fingerprints or handprints showed thickly. That was his handprint, he knew, by the passenger door. And beside it, another handprint. Dean’s. A little smaller, the marks of his fingers overlapping with the marks of Sam’s fingers.

Standing, Sam went to the open door and looked at the car, at the rime of dust, the handprints. How the back tire on the passenger side needed a little air. How the car probably needed an oil change after having been sitting all that time. Dean certainly would have thought of it had he been there. Would probably have gotten the supplies and done it in the parking lot. If there was anything in the world he loved, it was that car.

But then, Henriksen had said Sam’s the only thing he loves in this world and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for his brother. Nothing. So which did Dean love more, him or the car? Then he realized it was neither, because Dean had left both of them. Had to go, the note had said. And that was it.

Making that decision, just like he’d left him and Sam in the hospital, not even asking Sam-

But then, he had asked Sam. Several times. If I left, would you come with me? If I wanted to go, would you go too? Blowing a wish on a dandelion, looking up at Sam and smiling. And when Sam had balked or shook his head or freaked out, Dean had settled back down and not asked for a while. Distracted him with other ideas, and then asked again a different way.

Here’s the secret, here’s the broken window. You can keep a secret, can’t you, Sam? You can trust me, Sam. Here. Let’s work on this puzzle, like we used to when we were kids, and our families were close, don’t you remember?

Dean had never really asked him if he remembered as if he’d wanted an answer, he’d just kept the truth from Sam, and skirted around everything else. Like he did, like he always did with anything that smacked of being emotionally deep or significant. Shrugging it off with a joke or humor, pushing it away with smiles and shrugs. Leaving Sam to worry about that sort of stuff, because Dean just didn’t care.

Sam turned away from the open door, rubbing his arms with his hands, feeling itchy and raw all over. Like he should be going somewhere instead of just standing there. Like he should be doing something instead of moping in a motel room that smelled like it could use a good soaking down with bleach. The greasy carpet underfoot. The splotches on the ceiling that he knew by heart now.

He shut the door and sat at the table with the map open in front of him. It was gloomy enough so that he reached over and rolled the knob on the chain that stretched from the overhead lamp, which was probably supposed to be a rustic chandelier. The light spread across the map, showing Sam the thin red lines and the wide blue ones, the darker purple for state borders. Splotches of sky blue for water, and the thick orange for towns. He knew maps, had been looking at them all his life. Understood that a hundred miles along a dark, wide blue line would take you just over an hour, if you were going fast. But that along a thin red one, especially one that bent and squiggled across the paper, might take you more than two hours.

His fingertip traced the line along the Mississippi river where it barely bent to accommodate the outlines of Quincy, then on down to St. Louis, where it made a full half circle. Roads were funny things. Some of them took you through country so flat you could drive with one finger on the wheel. Others took you across rivers on bridges so wide you couldn’t even see the water. And some red lines, although it looked like they were surrounded by plain old white on paper, actually took you through some of the prettiest places you’d ever want to see.

As he looked at the map, he thought about those places. And wondered which ones Dean was headed to. And then Sam wondered why he cared. Dean had messed him up, and let him wait in that hospital not knowing who he was. Had threatened to leave him there, and then turned around and let Sam fuck him. Had dragged him here to the middle of nowhere, lying the whole time. And then he’d left him high and dry. Had to go.

Folding his arms across the map of Missouri, Sam tucked his head in his arms and cried.

*

The sign at the edge of town said Bentonville, AK, population 33, 744. Underneath it, it read Headquarters of Wal-Mart! That’s when Dean knew the devil resided there. Only he couldn’t hitch a ride to save his life, so when sunset came and it started to rain, he headed into the first bar he spotted.

It wasn’t just to get out of the rain, but to stave off the feeling that he’d headed smack into middle America, so proud of itself he hated everything about it, from the shiny fountain to the billboard signs announcing the coming of a new minor league hockey team. The bar would have beer and then he could drink that and not think about the whole normal feel of it that Sam would have liked. At least before. Were Sam there, at that moment, the only thing he would probably think about would be either fucking Dean or killing him. And that was dependant on whether he’d gotten his memory back. Dean didn’t want to deal with either.

The bar was perfect. The floor was made of plywood, and the mirror behind the bar was streaked and spotty with age. It wasn’t a tourist trap bar; Wal-Mart hadn’t been able to absorb it and make it bright and shiny. There were a few guys at the bar, and a pair of couples drinking in a booth, eating what looked, even from this distance, like cheese fries. Perfect. Dean made his way to the bar, and, shifting his jacket back on his shoulders, sat on a stool at the end of it. The bartender came over.

“Yeah?”

“I’ll have a beer,” said Dean. “Whatever’s on tap. And some cheese fries.”

The bartender nodded and went back to the kitchen where he snapped out the order and someone grumbled back. It felt like home.

The beer and the cheese fries came together, and Dean ate and drank and let his legs relax, and thought about which way he was going next. Not that it mattered, but it was always good to have a plan. He didn’t know if Sam was following him, though, so the plan ought to involve some unpredictability. Which was already built in, really. When you hitched, you didn’t know where your ride was taking you. That would help. So would keeping a low profile. Dean thought he could do that.

Next to him, a few stools down, two guys ordered more beer, hunched over the counter as though they were drafting battle plans they didn’t want anyone to overhear.

“My wife’s not crazy, you know,” said one man. “She’s not.”

“I’m not saying she is, Len, but she’s grieving pretty hard, and you know-”

“Don’t tell me she is, I know she is. I watch her every single fucking day.”

It sounded like a fairly emotional conversation for two men in a bar to be having. Dean considered picking up the remains of his cheese fries and beer to move to one of the booths along the wall. He was just about to lift his chin to signal to the bartender his intent when Len slammed the countertop with the flat of his hand. He turned a little way towards Dean, his eyes scanning Dean and then dropping as he saw that Dean was looking at him.

Then he turned back to his friend. “She says he’s still here, he’s a ghost, wandering through our house, looking at his toys, and I believe her. God damn it, Brian, I believe her. She would never lie to me about something like that.”

“At his toys?” asked Brian. Dean could almost imagine Brian’s eyebrows going up.

“Yeah,” said Len. His voice quivered. “He was only six when he-only six.”

Suddenly Dean realized what they were talking about. A little boy had died and he was sticking around, probably because he didn’t realize he was dead. He missed his toys. Loved his mom.

Taking a large swallow of his beer, Dean contemplated what he was on the verge of doing. If it wasn’t a straight out salt and burn, then it was ghost whisperer stuff, you just talked to the ghost and told him to move on. Told him there’d be toys in heaven or something. The hardest part would be watching the mom cry when she realized her little boy was gone for good.

Dean stood up and left some money under his plate. He looked at the two men, with their flannel shirts and heavy boots and realized that the hardest part might actually be trying to convince them that he could help them. After all, he wasn’t Melinda Gordon in anyone’s book.

“Hey, guys,” he said, standing close but not too close. They both turned to look at him with their working men’s faces, their necks tanned above their white t-shirts, no doubt bought at Wal-Mart, since they lived in a part of the country where spending an afternoon walking the shelves was high entertainment. “Uh, I think I can help you.” If he didn’t get punched in the mouth first, though at least that would keep him too busy to think about Sam.

*

In the morning, Sam packed up the room and shoved everything in the back seat of the Impala. He paid the bill, and turned in the key, and ignored the diner across the street. He didn’t want to eat there again, he wanted to be on the road, he wanted to be going. To where, he didn’t know. But he did. The restless feeling kept pushing through him, making him want to move on.

As he drove through town, the engine rumbling beneath him, he realized he needed to make a stop. So after he went over the wide, slanted bridge across the Mississippi from Illinois into Missouri, he started looking for a garage. It had to be the right kind of garage, a Grease Monkey or anything like that wouldn’t do. Not for Dean’s car, not even if Dean wasn’t around to see it and bitch about it.

He spotted one along the right side of the street just as he was about to take a left in Taylor to head south. It was a two-bay garage, independent of any chain, and the lot was tidy and the paint was new, even if the building looked like it had been built in the fifties. Sam pulled in, parking the car in front of one of the empty bays. The other one had a truck of some kind up on jacks. As Sam got out, the mechanic, Ralph, according to the greasy nametag sewn into his shirt, came over, wiping his hands.

Ralph looked at the Impala, not saying anything, though his mouth pursed together like he wanted to whistle at it. If Dean had been there, the two of them would have mooned over the chrome and drooled over the engine, and Dean would have bragged about how many miles were on it, and how he’d fixed the tranny once, all by himself the summer he had been seventeen. Sam had ignored him then, had ignored him later when Dean had tried to tell him the story about how cool it had been.

But right now, he could have used Dean to help him tell Ralph what needed to be done. He had no idea. Fluids. Air. Something like that.

“So,” said Ralph, looking at Sam now instead of the car, his eyes scanning the dust. “You been on the road a while.”

Ralph was about to say something else, or ask another question, something detailed and mechanical, because of course anyone driving this car would know it by heart, inside and out. And that would leave Sam standing there with his mouth open, like a fool.

“It’s my brother’s car,” he said. So far, all true. “He was in the hospital for a while, and now he’s getting out.” Still true, except that Dean was out, only Sam didn’t know where he was. “The car’s been sitting, and I need-”

“Oh,” said Ralph. “I see.” And he did see, right away, that Sam wasn’t a car guy. He knew how to drive, how to fill it up with gas, and maybe he could feel if something was wrong with the engine, if it didn’t pick up speed the way it was supposed to, even if he didn’t know why. But he knew enough to bring it in.

And now he felt so lost because even if Ralph did see, Sam didn’t. Why should he give a damn? The car was his; Dean had left it to him. He could sell it to this guy for whatever it was worth, Ralph would know, and buy himself something else. Something new. Nondescript. Why the hell he and Dean drove around in something that was so fucking recognizable was beyond him.

“Oil change,” said Ralph, walking around the car, leaving Sam to stand by the driver’s side door. “She sounded like she was tuned up pretty good, so fluids check and fill. Check belts. Check tire pressure. New wipers.”

He came back to Sam. “That’ll cost you around fifty bucks. I’ll even rinse her down for you, no extra.”

When Sam opened his mouth to protest, Ralph said, “Touchless, I swear. Just a few suds. The paint job’ll never even know I was there.”

It took Sam a minute to realize that what Ralph wanted was to simply be with the car. Like Dean would. He was a car guy and that’s what they liked. Sam could never understand it, but he nodded his head anyway, and took the keys out of his pocket to unlock the back door so he could pull out the map.

He went over to Ralph and handed him the keys. Ralph smiled so wide Sam thought his face would crack. “I’ll just go have coffee. About an hour, you think?”

“Two,” said Ralph, and Sam could swear he was about to start begging.

As he walked off, Sam shook his head. Car guys were just weird.

Weirder still was why he’d gotten the map out before he headed to the cafe. Why he was going to look at it while he drank some coffee? Was he going to look for Dean? Why? Why the hell would he do that? Maybe he’d get some waffles while he thought it over.

Chapter 26 cont.

Blue Skies From Rain Master Fic Post