Straying From the Beaten Path, for lullaby_gg (gen, PG)
Title: Straying From the Beaten Path
Author: angstslashhope / Freddie Mercury
Recipient: lullaby_gg
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: 4500 words.
Summary: John takes the boys on a camping trip that doesn’t quite go to plan.
~
The heat makes Dean sleepy, cranked up so the air in the car is bristly with it. It's hot enough that Sammy's kicked his boots off, and on occasion (would be more often but for Dean's ignoring it) one of Sammy's mismatched socks creeps to his shoulder. The toes of them are deformed; oversized, drooping off Sammy's feet.
Every so often Dad glances back over his shoulder to where Sammy lounges in the back seat. Mainly, though, he sticks to staring at the road ahead, guiding the car through the thick avenue of trees. The tarmac under their wheels a smooth ribbon stained dark by the damp climate.
"Dad?" Sam's voice pipes from the back seat. Dean can tell just from the sound of it that Sammy's not sitting up, not leaning forward; has probably slid right down to pillow his head on Dad's jacket, staring upside-down at the sky. He's got too big to fit in the space behind the seat back any more. For a while it'd been his hidey-hole, his nook no one else could crawl into. Surprising he managed to hold on to that one for longer than five minutes, really; first time Dad had looked over into the back seat to discover no Sammy in sight, Dean had thought they'd keep careening on down the shoulder with the speed Dad pulled over.
"Yeah, Sammy." Dad's tone is bland, but provides the acknowledgement Sammy requires.
"Did you kill a man in Reno just to watch him die?"
Dad's hand twitches, though not enough for anyone but Dean to notice, as if it's about to reach for the stereo without his explicit permission. "No, Sammy."
Cash bellows his blues on out through the speakers. Hot air blasts out the vents. Dean nudges his own shoes off, pulls his legs up and plants his feet on the seat, hides his face from the airflow against his knees. Something tickles his ear and Dean's pretty certain that it's the demented toe of Sammy's sock.
When Dad stops the car again the cold outside is a sudden shock; sends Sammy stomping and chattering in circuits around the steaming car, rubber boots on the wrong feet. Dean huffs and rubs his hands together but he can't see his breath; it's not as cold as it was this morning when they first set off.
Dad emerges from where he'd ducked into the back with an armful of the threadbare blankets Sammy had been nesting in on the four-hour drive. He knees the door shut with a creak and heavy slam, and his gaze pans to follow Sammy's progress for a moment before resting on Dean. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder as Dad opens the trunk;, both stare silently at the gear inside. Dad hauls out one of the packs, and Dean shoulders it before holding out his hands for another. Dad ignores him, hitches on his own, grunting a little at the weight of the dismantled metal skeleton of their tent. He holds the last smaller pack dangling, looks around again.
"Sammy!" Dad calls, voice sudden and sharp and Sam shouts wordlessly from the other side of the car, clomping footsteps abruptly coming to a halt but still no visual sign of him.
"I can take it, Dad."
Dad scowls. "He's not made of glass, Dean," he says, and Dean shuts up, looks down to the trunk again.
Sammy comes on second call, puffing and dragging his feet and drooping his shoulders as Dad holds the pack out.
Dad reaches to shut the trunk. "But--" Dean says, confused; waiting for the second lot of baggage from the second level of trunk. Dad had brought them with him, so it's not like Dean was thinking it was for a hunt or anything. To come this far out and away from everything and everyone else, though, not to get in some under-the-radar target practice, at the very least...?
Dad slams the trunk, looks at Dean hard for a moment and then down and away. He's grimacing a little as he turns, shrugs one shoulder as if to gesture Dean to follow. "That's not what this is about."
* * *
Dean's not sullen but he doesn't seem that eager, either. The walk to the site John had picked isn't as long as some of the hikes they've been on, and the incline's steady and gradual rather than scrambling. Sammy gets tired when there's only a pinky-width of map left to traverse, but remains good natured enough to simply grip one of John's hands, haul himself along with it. Dean brings up the rear.
The campsite's clearly marked but infrequently used. The grass is thick but not wild, ground bare of tree or shrub in a broad, uneven circle; it'd be a poor misinterpretation to call it a fairy-ring, for all it seems random in the overgrown woods. Sammy sinks down where he stops, propped up in a sitting recline with the bulk of his pack still strapped to his shoulders. Dean dumps his own pack nearby, wanders a few feet away to kick at some charred stones almost submersed by the grass: campfire circle.
"Y'hungry?" John inquires, and both boys nod. John shoulders his own pack off, then crouches to dig through Dean's, pulling out a bag of squashed hot dog buns and a slab of previously-sliced cheese, individually pre-wrapped. He pulls the soft bread apart with his hands and shoves the slices in; Dean continues to wander around the site aimlessly as he munches on his while Sam peels the plastic film away from his own cheese, pokes the pale, rubbery slices into his mouth. Sustained enough, he then struggles out of the pack straps to follow after Dean, picking out the soft white bread centre of his bun.
John takes a swig of water from his battered canteen. At the sound of the liquid sloshing against the aluminum Sammy diverts from his path, walks back to John. Allows John to hold and tip the canteen as he takes his own drink, apparently in a rare silent mood and needy, as if informed by Dean's lack of usual repartee.
John sighs, rubs his hands over the tops of his thighs. He rises. "Dean," he says, and Dean turns to him with the same impassive expression he'd had while walking. "You gather some wood for a fire." He holds his hands out in the air, giving approximations of length and breadth. "About this size."
No response of I know, Dad, for the thousand times Dean's undertaken that task in his lifetime already, let alone a Duh under his breath or rolled eyes. Dean turns about immediately, starts a less listless pace at the tree line, gaze cast afoot.
John presses his lips together. Sullenness would almost be better than this. Or even obnoxiousness, he'd know what to do with. At least then ordering the kid about wouldn't come with that faint stab of guilt. And that guilt half at the gratefulness he feels at Dean's readiness to receive orders. Hell, Dean's been a teenager for less than two months and John's still feeling like it's a bomb about to go off, but even so with nothing more than the damn calendar to give him count-down.
He'd almost begrudged Mary when the second boy came along; some half-imagined idea he'd had since he first thought about what'd be like to have kids of his own - the awkward burden of responsibility of leading your kids through puberty to adulthood without damaging them too much beyond repair. Or damaging your own dignity.
John grimaces. "Sammy," he says. "Gimme a hand here." He crouches again by the edge of the sooty stone circle, grabs a clump of grass in his fist and tugs it out. "Help me clear some space around here."
Sam sighs out a Yes, sir and kneels on the opposite side of the circle, begins pulling up the grass in his fists.
Sam burns himself on a hot dog. He'd let it dip too far on its skewer into the flames of the campfire, tried to put it out like a too-fat wick with his fingers. He's quiet about it, face not scrunched up but mouth down-turned hard, eyes gleaming. His shoulders tense and shake, and he hisses when John dabs the antiseptic on. The skin's not even broken, but the cream is soothing, and Sammy clenches his fist with thumb still thrust up, like a perpetual hitchhiker.
Would have been a time when John would have lightly kissed a hurt like that better, but Dean was always demanding of equal treatment when it came to rewards, and Dean's getting too old for that kind of thing, now. Would only make the kid embarrassed anyway, whether it was the gesture or just the expectation of it.
Sam rejects the comfort, anyway. "I've had worse," he states the phrase like rote, another of John's. His chin juts out, jaw defiant, and he squirms out from under the arm John's slung over his shoulders. John half expects him to go to Dean, then, but instead Sam completes the triangle of them around the fire with a third point, staring into the flames and eating the hotdog Dean hands him, almost as an afterthought.
* * *
His thumb hurts. And his finger a little, too, though it doesn't even look red or anything, just really tender when he touches it, even carefully. Sammy's sick of hot dog buns. He knows they have to eat them fast, though: they go all dry and tough and stale once Dad's opened the bag. The hot dog Dean gave him tastes a bit burnt, but good, though his tongue flinches a little from the heat.
It gets darker. Sammy remembers a little from when they'd been camping before, but it wasn't anything like this.
He has two kinds of remembering. One is the kind Dean (and sometimes Dad, too,) helps him with, where they sit in the car and Dean says, "hey, you remember that time where Sammy climbed into the trunk and tried to tunnel to China?" and tells the memory like a story.
The other kind Sammy doesn't really talk about, except sometimes sneakily from sideways. He doesn't want to turn this kind of remembering into a story, doesn't want to say, "hey, remember that time we were camping and when we woke up it was snowing?", instead just remembers in his own body the sleepy dark, the prickly of Dad's almost-beard against his temple and the way his arm went to sleep cramped up against his side. Dean's breath had smelled kinda sweet still from the last of the candy they'd melted near the fire the night before, and Sammy remembers the sudden but soft shhhhfft sound, and looking up to the light shining pink through the red tent and the pattering shape of the snow shadowing the outside.
Dean and Dad did most of the pitching of their old red tent, this time, Sammy helping with hammering in the metal pegs using one of the rocks by the fireplace as a hammer. The soot made his hands black, left black handprints on Dean's gray shirt. On Dean’s back, where Dean couldn't see them.
Sammy knows the story of the sleeping bags and the tent, Dean had helped him with that memory. Two faded brown bags with quilted yellow lining: Mom and Dad's, rescued along with the tent and even a couple of the packs from Lawrence, in the garage where the fire had barely touched. Dad used to zip the bags together for the three of them to sleep warmer together (when Sammy was small enough to fit almost in Dad's pocket, Dad would usually add at that point of Dean's memory). Soft snow sounds, Sammy remembers. Remembers sideways. Sounds of Dean and Daddy sleeping, so close and so warm.
Dad got a new sleeping bag for this trip; this is the first time Sammy's seen it since the cart at Wal-Mart two days ago. One, two, three bags now. One a forest green, dark but more brilliant than the dull brown.
Dad tells Dean and Sammy to get into their bags while he does a final check of the edges of the camping ground. They duck into the tent. Sammy barely has to dip - just to get in through the door, really - but Dean has to hunch inside it, now, head bent and shoulders curved. Sammy looks at the sleeping bags. Brown, brown, green.
"Let's make a cavern," Sammy says. Shhhfft as he drags the two brown bags together across the slippery nylon floor of the tent, starts to unzip them. Dean just looks at him for a moment, then kneels to help him.
Sammy has a yellow flashlight with plastic casing that fits into his hand and pocket both, and when they're both inside the zipped-together bags he turns it on. The yellow quilting inside the bags is soft, bright like oily melted butter in the light, and it musses up Dean's hair where his head tents it up.
Dean grabs the flashlight, holds it under his chin. It casts shadows from his cheekbones into his eyes, from his eyebrows over his forehead. He sucks his upper lip under his bottom row of teeth and grunts like a zombie.
"Don't," Sam says, and snatches the flashlight back. He turns around, starts to wriggle toward the bottom of the bags until his fingers reach the hard metal seam of the zipper.
"What're you doing?"
"'M tunneling to China."
Dean laughs softly, and Sam's pajamas ride up at the back when Dean grabs his ankles, half-pulls him back up, and crawls down himself until they're surrounded entirely by cocoon of sleeping bag yellow, no metal seam and no gaps for cool air. They crouch very close. Sammy's breath is hot. Dean's breath is hot. Sam holds the flashlight so it's shining directly up, light hitting the quilting above them and glowing back down softly. They don't talk.
The pad of Sammy's thumb still gleams a little, oily from the ointment. Dean wraps his fingers around the joint, draws the thumb closer to examine the inflamed pad. His breath feels cold on the hot skin.
Sammy watches. "Does it hurt?" he asks softly.
Dean scoffs, lets go to cuff Sam's hair. "Doofus, you're the one who's burned, not me."
Sammy draws his hand back, holds it against his chest, and Dean's fingers creep over the gleaming eye of the flashlight, until they turn pink and can be seen right through.
There's the tinkle of a zipper tags from outside the sleeping bags and then the sharp, indignant sound of Dad closing the tent door. Dean and Sammy stare at each other, listen to the sounds of Dad. "Go to sleep, boys," he says at last, voice gruff.
Sammy wakes up in the night and it’s cold. It’s pretty dark inside the tent; he can see the tufty shadow of Dean’s hair sticking out of the end of the bag next to him, and the dark hump of Dad’s sleeping bag not too far away. The darkness dulls all the color out of the tent and sleeping bags, just makes it all a dim, oily gray-and-black. Sammy’s breath steams dusty pale in front of his face when he huffs out a breath, and he wriggles down until the edge of the sleeping bag comes up over his nose. His toes discover new, icy territory further south.
It’s too cold to go back to sleep, and he’s awake now, anyway. In the shadows, the shapes of Dean and Dad inside the bags look wrong, monstrous, so Sammy just watches the roof of the tent, the woven lines of its skin becoming clearer and clearer. It’s getting lighter. Everything is pale gray now. Sammy needs to pee.
“Dean,” he whispers, barely a noise at all. Dad hates being woken up when he’s trying to sleep in, and Sammy’s pretty sure that that’s one of these times. He squirms a little closer to Dean, striking newer, colder territory in the sleeping bag. “Dean.”
Dean jerks sluggishly and Sammy holds his breath, squeezes his knees together and waits for Dean to finish waking up so he can come with Sammy outside. Instead, Dean just huffs out a choked sigh and wriggles around a bit, the edge of the sleeping bag lipping up over the top of Dean’s head and swallowing him whole. He’s rolled further away, pressed against the far fold of the bag, away from Sammy.
Sammy swallows, frowns. He carefully rolls over, wary of the hissing of his pajamas against the fabric of the sleeping bag; the bag against the mat, the floor of the tent. Dad still hasn’t moved. Sam really needs to pee.
It’s lighter than he expected outside when he unzips the door to the tent, and colder, too. Before he even steps both feet out he ducks back in again. Their stuff is in a row against a low-ceilinged corner of the tent and Sam pulls yesterday’s socks out of his rubber boots, rolls them on and jams his feet into the boots. Dad’s jacket’s laying on top of their packs so Sammy pulls that up, too, crouches down to slide his arms into it, trying to stop the zippers jingling. It’s heavy with the things in the pockets, but comes down right to Sammy’s knees and over his hands and wraps around his chest again, so it’s not so bad. He steps outside.
* * *
Dean startles awake with his heart pounding double-time, dream immediately dropped behind and out of sight but for the sound that dragged him to wakefulness; the awful screaming of car brakes, going on far too long. It takes long moments for his mind to wake up enough to interpret the carry-over of that sound; a screeching chorus of birds in the forest outside the tent, unmelodious and wild, harsh in his ears. It’s just past dawn.
Dean’s freezing. He pulls his knees up to his chest, squirms around until he’s lying on top of them, then turns his head. Sammy’s not in the bag with him.
Dean flops the rest of the way over until he’s sitting up, cold air hitting his uncovered neck and face like a splash of icy water. Sammy’s not anywhere else in the tent either, not that there’s much of it left after the sleeping bags, and there’s no way he could be fitting in the green sleeping bag with Dad. The zippered door to the tent is closed, but Sammy’s boots are missing. Everything inside the tent is tinged pink from the light coming through the red fabric.
He doesn’t want to make Dad worry but he’s already anxious himself. Sammy wouldn’t go outside without him. Wouldn’t go exploring, no way. Heck, if he’s being completely honest, Sammy’s practically glued to his heels, something that’s becoming kind of annoying more often than not, lately, and that thought’s enough to make Dean feel abruptly sick to his stomach.
He leans over for his sneakers, pulls them on and shrugs on his jacket over his pajamas. It’s hazy outside, and the colors look icy cool, greens and blues and grays, after the warm pink of the tent. The air seems to be washed white. Last night’s campfire is steaming faintly in the cool morning, but otherwise the campsite is still. Dean does a rapid circuit of it anyway, sneakers going rapidly dark and damp from the dew clinging heavily to the grass underfoot.
He knows he can’t call for Sammy without waking Dad up anyway, so he crawls back into the tent and shakes the tense mass that he thinks is Dad’s shoulder under the shiny green fabric. “Dad.”
Dad wakes immediately, rolling over and his head popping out of the top of the bag, hair a mess. His squint draws his face into a frown, and Dean takes a shaky breath. “Sammy,” he says.
* * *
John finds the dew-crushed prints of rubber boots where Sammy left the grassy circle, but the sun’s rising too quickly and it’s early enough in spring that what’s underfoot around the trees is just dead matter, dirt and decay too bland to record any recent footsteps clearly enough.
They wander in a widening radar blip from Sammy’s point of exit for about half an hour before John calls Dean to silence, quiets himself with Sammy’s name still raw in his own throat.
“Back to camp,” he says when Dean comes up on his heels. “Pack up.”
Dean works silently, and John finds himself kicking over the ashes of the campfire with more violence than strictly necessary. Nothing dragged Sammy off, that much is clear. At least not from their tent, from the campsite. Sammy went off of his own accord.
The fragile, ash-sculpted chunks of wood crush effortlessly under John’s boot heels. Sammy had been quieter, clingier than usual, out of character from the precocious, biting intelligence he was growing into. Dean hadn’t even noticed him wandering off.
The bulkiest of their food’s been eaten already, so Sammy’s smaller pack is easily emptied, folded up into Dean’s. He and John trek silently through the forest, a steady diagonal back-and-forth across the slope. It makes sense that Sammy would have gone downhill.
“Should’ve noticed,” John says, grating into the silence. He pauses until Dean draws abreast of him, then continues to step down ahead. “Should’ve been watching him.”
Dean remains silent for a long moment, footsteps almost noiseless as John crashes heavily through the underbrush, fear and anger removing whatever small measure of carefulness he’s usually in possession of. “Yes, sir,” Dean says, barely any inflection in his tone.
John turns. “I get it, Dean,” he says, vehement all of a sudden. “I get that you’re going through all kinds of shit, that’s normal.” Dean’s frozen to the spot, staring at him. “But that doesn’t mean you get to let crap like this happen.”
Dean’s gone pale. His freckles, usually faintest before the summer, stand out over the bridge of his nose. His mouth is pressed closed tight.
“Things are changing, you’re changing, I get it, but this?” John jabs his finger toward the ground between them, pointing out the space or the absence of its usual inhabitant, he’s not sure. “This never changes.”
Dean doesn’t speak at first; the kid looks like he’s working out how to open his mouth without puking. John doesn’t feel guilty, feels no remorse. He’s been waiting for this moment, and he’s ready for it; if Dean’s growing into bigger boots then John’s gonna damn well be there to make sure they’re still marching in step.
“Nothing’s changed, Dad,” Dean says at last. He swallows; John can see his throat working and mouth twisting. His voice is soft. “You’re the one who’s been acting all weird.”
John stares at him. This is it. What he’s been waiting for. Dean hasn’t even raised his voice. He watches John for a while longer then turns his eyes down to the ground at his feet. His hair falls over his eyes, the angle hiding the new angular shade to his face, foreshortening the growing leanness. When John doesn’t speak again, no reprimand or apology, he walks on.
Dean keeps ahead of him but John determines the path; they don’t speak again but Dean adjusts his direction for every step John alters it, no sound in the forest but the occasional bird or squirrel rustle and their pounding footsteps. John herds them towards the car, where his battered EMF meter waits in the trunk, more supplies and maps of the area.
Ahead of him on the last slope leading down to the car, Dean stops and stoops for a moment, examining something on the ground. He’s only dipped down for a moment when he jerks upright again, starts pelting down the slope like he’s falling, heading toward the car.
* * *
He didn’t mean to get lost. First he just had to find a good tree to pee on, one that looked like it was thirsty. Then he saw a squirrel run up the one he picked, and he thought it was probably kinda rude to pee on a squirrel’s house, so he had to look for another tree.
Then he was lost. The birds were loud. He remembered Dad hauling him up the last stretch of hill to the camp circle, but not much other than that; he’d been tired and his pack was heavy. He tried walking back uphill again, but then he got so far that the ground started to go downward the other way again, so he turned around.
The birds were quieter and Dad’s jacket was getting hot when he found somewhere that looked familiar again. The path with the rocks scattered on the side; fungus growing on the trees just above them. He remembered them when they just started yesterday, when everything around him was still interesting, before his pack got too heavy.
Dad always said if they got lost to go to the most familiar place and wait there for him, so Sammy steps on to the path and heads downward, towards the car.
It makes his chest jump when he sees it, like he’s gonna cry, though before then he’d been fine, not worried at all. He runs the last stretch towards it, making Dad’s pockets jingle and whack against his knees, then he can’t stop soon enough and just runs smack into the side of it. The black metal is warm from the sun, though is still fogs with Sammy’s panting breath.
The doors are locked. He almost cries again then, but somehow it’s easier not to when Dean and Dad aren’t there to ruffle his hair or squeeze his shoulders or just tell him to buck up. He cups his hands around his eyes against the window, sees the half-full bottle of Pepsi on the floor in the back seat that he’d got at the gas station on the way, sees his other jacket, the blue one that used to be Dean’s, with the sleeves that come half-way to Sammy’s elbows, now.
There are lots of things in Dad’s pockets. In one on the inside, pressing sharp against Sammy’s belly when he wraps his arms around himself, is Dad’s magic key set. Sammy pulls out the pins and needles of them and pokes and wiggles them in the lock on the driver’s side door until the lock pops up above the window and Sammy hisses a victorious “Yes!”
It’s warmer in the car. Sam crawls over the front seat and into the back, slithering down into his hidey-hole and crouching in there, folding in with his knees squeezed to his chest. The Pepsi is flat, warm when he drinks it, and after he pushes the empty bottle under the passenger seat then lets his hand stroke around there a bit longer, feeling the treasures. Soft-cornered Batman comics, an empty tobacco tin with one corner dented in. An oily woolen hat that had been Dad’s, that Sammy had worn all winter. He pulls the hand-me-down jacket over his head and it makes his breathing louder, makes the light cooler.
He closes his eyes and waits for the door to open behind him.
Author: angstslashhope / Freddie Mercury
Recipient: lullaby_gg
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: 4500 words.
Summary: John takes the boys on a camping trip that doesn’t quite go to plan.
~
The heat makes Dean sleepy, cranked up so the air in the car is bristly with it. It's hot enough that Sammy's kicked his boots off, and on occasion (would be more often but for Dean's ignoring it) one of Sammy's mismatched socks creeps to his shoulder. The toes of them are deformed; oversized, drooping off Sammy's feet.
Every so often Dad glances back over his shoulder to where Sammy lounges in the back seat. Mainly, though, he sticks to staring at the road ahead, guiding the car through the thick avenue of trees. The tarmac under their wheels a smooth ribbon stained dark by the damp climate.
"Dad?" Sam's voice pipes from the back seat. Dean can tell just from the sound of it that Sammy's not sitting up, not leaning forward; has probably slid right down to pillow his head on Dad's jacket, staring upside-down at the sky. He's got too big to fit in the space behind the seat back any more. For a while it'd been his hidey-hole, his nook no one else could crawl into. Surprising he managed to hold on to that one for longer than five minutes, really; first time Dad had looked over into the back seat to discover no Sammy in sight, Dean had thought they'd keep careening on down the shoulder with the speed Dad pulled over.
"Yeah, Sammy." Dad's tone is bland, but provides the acknowledgement Sammy requires.
"Did you kill a man in Reno just to watch him die?"
Dad's hand twitches, though not enough for anyone but Dean to notice, as if it's about to reach for the stereo without his explicit permission. "No, Sammy."
Cash bellows his blues on out through the speakers. Hot air blasts out the vents. Dean nudges his own shoes off, pulls his legs up and plants his feet on the seat, hides his face from the airflow against his knees. Something tickles his ear and Dean's pretty certain that it's the demented toe of Sammy's sock.
When Dad stops the car again the cold outside is a sudden shock; sends Sammy stomping and chattering in circuits around the steaming car, rubber boots on the wrong feet. Dean huffs and rubs his hands together but he can't see his breath; it's not as cold as it was this morning when they first set off.
Dad emerges from where he'd ducked into the back with an armful of the threadbare blankets Sammy had been nesting in on the four-hour drive. He knees the door shut with a creak and heavy slam, and his gaze pans to follow Sammy's progress for a moment before resting on Dean. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder as Dad opens the trunk;, both stare silently at the gear inside. Dad hauls out one of the packs, and Dean shoulders it before holding out his hands for another. Dad ignores him, hitches on his own, grunting a little at the weight of the dismantled metal skeleton of their tent. He holds the last smaller pack dangling, looks around again.
"Sammy!" Dad calls, voice sudden and sharp and Sam shouts wordlessly from the other side of the car, clomping footsteps abruptly coming to a halt but still no visual sign of him.
"I can take it, Dad."
Dad scowls. "He's not made of glass, Dean," he says, and Dean shuts up, looks down to the trunk again.
Sammy comes on second call, puffing and dragging his feet and drooping his shoulders as Dad holds the pack out.
Dad reaches to shut the trunk. "But--" Dean says, confused; waiting for the second lot of baggage from the second level of trunk. Dad had brought them with him, so it's not like Dean was thinking it was for a hunt or anything. To come this far out and away from everything and everyone else, though, not to get in some under-the-radar target practice, at the very least...?
Dad slams the trunk, looks at Dean hard for a moment and then down and away. He's grimacing a little as he turns, shrugs one shoulder as if to gesture Dean to follow. "That's not what this is about."
* * *
Dean's not sullen but he doesn't seem that eager, either. The walk to the site John had picked isn't as long as some of the hikes they've been on, and the incline's steady and gradual rather than scrambling. Sammy gets tired when there's only a pinky-width of map left to traverse, but remains good natured enough to simply grip one of John's hands, haul himself along with it. Dean brings up the rear.
The campsite's clearly marked but infrequently used. The grass is thick but not wild, ground bare of tree or shrub in a broad, uneven circle; it'd be a poor misinterpretation to call it a fairy-ring, for all it seems random in the overgrown woods. Sammy sinks down where he stops, propped up in a sitting recline with the bulk of his pack still strapped to his shoulders. Dean dumps his own pack nearby, wanders a few feet away to kick at some charred stones almost submersed by the grass: campfire circle.
"Y'hungry?" John inquires, and both boys nod. John shoulders his own pack off, then crouches to dig through Dean's, pulling out a bag of squashed hot dog buns and a slab of previously-sliced cheese, individually pre-wrapped. He pulls the soft bread apart with his hands and shoves the slices in; Dean continues to wander around the site aimlessly as he munches on his while Sam peels the plastic film away from his own cheese, pokes the pale, rubbery slices into his mouth. Sustained enough, he then struggles out of the pack straps to follow after Dean, picking out the soft white bread centre of his bun.
John takes a swig of water from his battered canteen. At the sound of the liquid sloshing against the aluminum Sammy diverts from his path, walks back to John. Allows John to hold and tip the canteen as he takes his own drink, apparently in a rare silent mood and needy, as if informed by Dean's lack of usual repartee.
John sighs, rubs his hands over the tops of his thighs. He rises. "Dean," he says, and Dean turns to him with the same impassive expression he'd had while walking. "You gather some wood for a fire." He holds his hands out in the air, giving approximations of length and breadth. "About this size."
No response of I know, Dad, for the thousand times Dean's undertaken that task in his lifetime already, let alone a Duh under his breath or rolled eyes. Dean turns about immediately, starts a less listless pace at the tree line, gaze cast afoot.
John presses his lips together. Sullenness would almost be better than this. Or even obnoxiousness, he'd know what to do with. At least then ordering the kid about wouldn't come with that faint stab of guilt. And that guilt half at the gratefulness he feels at Dean's readiness to receive orders. Hell, Dean's been a teenager for less than two months and John's still feeling like it's a bomb about to go off, but even so with nothing more than the damn calendar to give him count-down.
He'd almost begrudged Mary when the second boy came along; some half-imagined idea he'd had since he first thought about what'd be like to have kids of his own - the awkward burden of responsibility of leading your kids through puberty to adulthood without damaging them too much beyond repair. Or damaging your own dignity.
John grimaces. "Sammy," he says. "Gimme a hand here." He crouches again by the edge of the sooty stone circle, grabs a clump of grass in his fist and tugs it out. "Help me clear some space around here."
Sam sighs out a Yes, sir and kneels on the opposite side of the circle, begins pulling up the grass in his fists.
Sam burns himself on a hot dog. He'd let it dip too far on its skewer into the flames of the campfire, tried to put it out like a too-fat wick with his fingers. He's quiet about it, face not scrunched up but mouth down-turned hard, eyes gleaming. His shoulders tense and shake, and he hisses when John dabs the antiseptic on. The skin's not even broken, but the cream is soothing, and Sammy clenches his fist with thumb still thrust up, like a perpetual hitchhiker.
Would have been a time when John would have lightly kissed a hurt like that better, but Dean was always demanding of equal treatment when it came to rewards, and Dean's getting too old for that kind of thing, now. Would only make the kid embarrassed anyway, whether it was the gesture or just the expectation of it.
Sam rejects the comfort, anyway. "I've had worse," he states the phrase like rote, another of John's. His chin juts out, jaw defiant, and he squirms out from under the arm John's slung over his shoulders. John half expects him to go to Dean, then, but instead Sam completes the triangle of them around the fire with a third point, staring into the flames and eating the hotdog Dean hands him, almost as an afterthought.
* * *
His thumb hurts. And his finger a little, too, though it doesn't even look red or anything, just really tender when he touches it, even carefully. Sammy's sick of hot dog buns. He knows they have to eat them fast, though: they go all dry and tough and stale once Dad's opened the bag. The hot dog Dean gave him tastes a bit burnt, but good, though his tongue flinches a little from the heat.
It gets darker. Sammy remembers a little from when they'd been camping before, but it wasn't anything like this.
He has two kinds of remembering. One is the kind Dean (and sometimes Dad, too,) helps him with, where they sit in the car and Dean says, "hey, you remember that time where Sammy climbed into the trunk and tried to tunnel to China?" and tells the memory like a story.
The other kind Sammy doesn't really talk about, except sometimes sneakily from sideways. He doesn't want to turn this kind of remembering into a story, doesn't want to say, "hey, remember that time we were camping and when we woke up it was snowing?", instead just remembers in his own body the sleepy dark, the prickly of Dad's almost-beard against his temple and the way his arm went to sleep cramped up against his side. Dean's breath had smelled kinda sweet still from the last of the candy they'd melted near the fire the night before, and Sammy remembers the sudden but soft shhhhfft sound, and looking up to the light shining pink through the red tent and the pattering shape of the snow shadowing the outside.
Dean and Dad did most of the pitching of their old red tent, this time, Sammy helping with hammering in the metal pegs using one of the rocks by the fireplace as a hammer. The soot made his hands black, left black handprints on Dean's gray shirt. On Dean’s back, where Dean couldn't see them.
Sammy knows the story of the sleeping bags and the tent, Dean had helped him with that memory. Two faded brown bags with quilted yellow lining: Mom and Dad's, rescued along with the tent and even a couple of the packs from Lawrence, in the garage where the fire had barely touched. Dad used to zip the bags together for the three of them to sleep warmer together (when Sammy was small enough to fit almost in Dad's pocket, Dad would usually add at that point of Dean's memory). Soft snow sounds, Sammy remembers. Remembers sideways. Sounds of Dean and Daddy sleeping, so close and so warm.
Dad got a new sleeping bag for this trip; this is the first time Sammy's seen it since the cart at Wal-Mart two days ago. One, two, three bags now. One a forest green, dark but more brilliant than the dull brown.
Dad tells Dean and Sammy to get into their bags while he does a final check of the edges of the camping ground. They duck into the tent. Sammy barely has to dip - just to get in through the door, really - but Dean has to hunch inside it, now, head bent and shoulders curved. Sammy looks at the sleeping bags. Brown, brown, green.
"Let's make a cavern," Sammy says. Shhhfft as he drags the two brown bags together across the slippery nylon floor of the tent, starts to unzip them. Dean just looks at him for a moment, then kneels to help him.
Sammy has a yellow flashlight with plastic casing that fits into his hand and pocket both, and when they're both inside the zipped-together bags he turns it on. The yellow quilting inside the bags is soft, bright like oily melted butter in the light, and it musses up Dean's hair where his head tents it up.
Dean grabs the flashlight, holds it under his chin. It casts shadows from his cheekbones into his eyes, from his eyebrows over his forehead. He sucks his upper lip under his bottom row of teeth and grunts like a zombie.
"Don't," Sam says, and snatches the flashlight back. He turns around, starts to wriggle toward the bottom of the bags until his fingers reach the hard metal seam of the zipper.
"What're you doing?"
"'M tunneling to China."
Dean laughs softly, and Sam's pajamas ride up at the back when Dean grabs his ankles, half-pulls him back up, and crawls down himself until they're surrounded entirely by cocoon of sleeping bag yellow, no metal seam and no gaps for cool air. They crouch very close. Sammy's breath is hot. Dean's breath is hot. Sam holds the flashlight so it's shining directly up, light hitting the quilting above them and glowing back down softly. They don't talk.
The pad of Sammy's thumb still gleams a little, oily from the ointment. Dean wraps his fingers around the joint, draws the thumb closer to examine the inflamed pad. His breath feels cold on the hot skin.
Sammy watches. "Does it hurt?" he asks softly.
Dean scoffs, lets go to cuff Sam's hair. "Doofus, you're the one who's burned, not me."
Sammy draws his hand back, holds it against his chest, and Dean's fingers creep over the gleaming eye of the flashlight, until they turn pink and can be seen right through.
There's the tinkle of a zipper tags from outside the sleeping bags and then the sharp, indignant sound of Dad closing the tent door. Dean and Sammy stare at each other, listen to the sounds of Dad. "Go to sleep, boys," he says at last, voice gruff.
Sammy wakes up in the night and it’s cold. It’s pretty dark inside the tent; he can see the tufty shadow of Dean’s hair sticking out of the end of the bag next to him, and the dark hump of Dad’s sleeping bag not too far away. The darkness dulls all the color out of the tent and sleeping bags, just makes it all a dim, oily gray-and-black. Sammy’s breath steams dusty pale in front of his face when he huffs out a breath, and he wriggles down until the edge of the sleeping bag comes up over his nose. His toes discover new, icy territory further south.
It’s too cold to go back to sleep, and he’s awake now, anyway. In the shadows, the shapes of Dean and Dad inside the bags look wrong, monstrous, so Sammy just watches the roof of the tent, the woven lines of its skin becoming clearer and clearer. It’s getting lighter. Everything is pale gray now. Sammy needs to pee.
“Dean,” he whispers, barely a noise at all. Dad hates being woken up when he’s trying to sleep in, and Sammy’s pretty sure that that’s one of these times. He squirms a little closer to Dean, striking newer, colder territory in the sleeping bag. “Dean.”
Dean jerks sluggishly and Sammy holds his breath, squeezes his knees together and waits for Dean to finish waking up so he can come with Sammy outside. Instead, Dean just huffs out a choked sigh and wriggles around a bit, the edge of the sleeping bag lipping up over the top of Dean’s head and swallowing him whole. He’s rolled further away, pressed against the far fold of the bag, away from Sammy.
Sammy swallows, frowns. He carefully rolls over, wary of the hissing of his pajamas against the fabric of the sleeping bag; the bag against the mat, the floor of the tent. Dad still hasn’t moved. Sam really needs to pee.
It’s lighter than he expected outside when he unzips the door to the tent, and colder, too. Before he even steps both feet out he ducks back in again. Their stuff is in a row against a low-ceilinged corner of the tent and Sam pulls yesterday’s socks out of his rubber boots, rolls them on and jams his feet into the boots. Dad’s jacket’s laying on top of their packs so Sammy pulls that up, too, crouches down to slide his arms into it, trying to stop the zippers jingling. It’s heavy with the things in the pockets, but comes down right to Sammy’s knees and over his hands and wraps around his chest again, so it’s not so bad. He steps outside.
* * *
Dean startles awake with his heart pounding double-time, dream immediately dropped behind and out of sight but for the sound that dragged him to wakefulness; the awful screaming of car brakes, going on far too long. It takes long moments for his mind to wake up enough to interpret the carry-over of that sound; a screeching chorus of birds in the forest outside the tent, unmelodious and wild, harsh in his ears. It’s just past dawn.
Dean’s freezing. He pulls his knees up to his chest, squirms around until he’s lying on top of them, then turns his head. Sammy’s not in the bag with him.
Dean flops the rest of the way over until he’s sitting up, cold air hitting his uncovered neck and face like a splash of icy water. Sammy’s not anywhere else in the tent either, not that there’s much of it left after the sleeping bags, and there’s no way he could be fitting in the green sleeping bag with Dad. The zippered door to the tent is closed, but Sammy’s boots are missing. Everything inside the tent is tinged pink from the light coming through the red fabric.
He doesn’t want to make Dad worry but he’s already anxious himself. Sammy wouldn’t go outside without him. Wouldn’t go exploring, no way. Heck, if he’s being completely honest, Sammy’s practically glued to his heels, something that’s becoming kind of annoying more often than not, lately, and that thought’s enough to make Dean feel abruptly sick to his stomach.
He leans over for his sneakers, pulls them on and shrugs on his jacket over his pajamas. It’s hazy outside, and the colors look icy cool, greens and blues and grays, after the warm pink of the tent. The air seems to be washed white. Last night’s campfire is steaming faintly in the cool morning, but otherwise the campsite is still. Dean does a rapid circuit of it anyway, sneakers going rapidly dark and damp from the dew clinging heavily to the grass underfoot.
He knows he can’t call for Sammy without waking Dad up anyway, so he crawls back into the tent and shakes the tense mass that he thinks is Dad’s shoulder under the shiny green fabric. “Dad.”
Dad wakes immediately, rolling over and his head popping out of the top of the bag, hair a mess. His squint draws his face into a frown, and Dean takes a shaky breath. “Sammy,” he says.
* * *
John finds the dew-crushed prints of rubber boots where Sammy left the grassy circle, but the sun’s rising too quickly and it’s early enough in spring that what’s underfoot around the trees is just dead matter, dirt and decay too bland to record any recent footsteps clearly enough.
They wander in a widening radar blip from Sammy’s point of exit for about half an hour before John calls Dean to silence, quiets himself with Sammy’s name still raw in his own throat.
“Back to camp,” he says when Dean comes up on his heels. “Pack up.”
Dean works silently, and John finds himself kicking over the ashes of the campfire with more violence than strictly necessary. Nothing dragged Sammy off, that much is clear. At least not from their tent, from the campsite. Sammy went off of his own accord.
The fragile, ash-sculpted chunks of wood crush effortlessly under John’s boot heels. Sammy had been quieter, clingier than usual, out of character from the precocious, biting intelligence he was growing into. Dean hadn’t even noticed him wandering off.
The bulkiest of their food’s been eaten already, so Sammy’s smaller pack is easily emptied, folded up into Dean’s. He and John trek silently through the forest, a steady diagonal back-and-forth across the slope. It makes sense that Sammy would have gone downhill.
“Should’ve noticed,” John says, grating into the silence. He pauses until Dean draws abreast of him, then continues to step down ahead. “Should’ve been watching him.”
Dean remains silent for a long moment, footsteps almost noiseless as John crashes heavily through the underbrush, fear and anger removing whatever small measure of carefulness he’s usually in possession of. “Yes, sir,” Dean says, barely any inflection in his tone.
John turns. “I get it, Dean,” he says, vehement all of a sudden. “I get that you’re going through all kinds of shit, that’s normal.” Dean’s frozen to the spot, staring at him. “But that doesn’t mean you get to let crap like this happen.”
Dean’s gone pale. His freckles, usually faintest before the summer, stand out over the bridge of his nose. His mouth is pressed closed tight.
“Things are changing, you’re changing, I get it, but this?” John jabs his finger toward the ground between them, pointing out the space or the absence of its usual inhabitant, he’s not sure. “This never changes.”
Dean doesn’t speak at first; the kid looks like he’s working out how to open his mouth without puking. John doesn’t feel guilty, feels no remorse. He’s been waiting for this moment, and he’s ready for it; if Dean’s growing into bigger boots then John’s gonna damn well be there to make sure they’re still marching in step.
“Nothing’s changed, Dad,” Dean says at last. He swallows; John can see his throat working and mouth twisting. His voice is soft. “You’re the one who’s been acting all weird.”
John stares at him. This is it. What he’s been waiting for. Dean hasn’t even raised his voice. He watches John for a while longer then turns his eyes down to the ground at his feet. His hair falls over his eyes, the angle hiding the new angular shade to his face, foreshortening the growing leanness. When John doesn’t speak again, no reprimand or apology, he walks on.
Dean keeps ahead of him but John determines the path; they don’t speak again but Dean adjusts his direction for every step John alters it, no sound in the forest but the occasional bird or squirrel rustle and their pounding footsteps. John herds them towards the car, where his battered EMF meter waits in the trunk, more supplies and maps of the area.
Ahead of him on the last slope leading down to the car, Dean stops and stoops for a moment, examining something on the ground. He’s only dipped down for a moment when he jerks upright again, starts pelting down the slope like he’s falling, heading toward the car.
* * *
He didn’t mean to get lost. First he just had to find a good tree to pee on, one that looked like it was thirsty. Then he saw a squirrel run up the one he picked, and he thought it was probably kinda rude to pee on a squirrel’s house, so he had to look for another tree.
Then he was lost. The birds were loud. He remembered Dad hauling him up the last stretch of hill to the camp circle, but not much other than that; he’d been tired and his pack was heavy. He tried walking back uphill again, but then he got so far that the ground started to go downward the other way again, so he turned around.
The birds were quieter and Dad’s jacket was getting hot when he found somewhere that looked familiar again. The path with the rocks scattered on the side; fungus growing on the trees just above them. He remembered them when they just started yesterday, when everything around him was still interesting, before his pack got too heavy.
Dad always said if they got lost to go to the most familiar place and wait there for him, so Sammy steps on to the path and heads downward, towards the car.
It makes his chest jump when he sees it, like he’s gonna cry, though before then he’d been fine, not worried at all. He runs the last stretch towards it, making Dad’s pockets jingle and whack against his knees, then he can’t stop soon enough and just runs smack into the side of it. The black metal is warm from the sun, though is still fogs with Sammy’s panting breath.
The doors are locked. He almost cries again then, but somehow it’s easier not to when Dean and Dad aren’t there to ruffle his hair or squeeze his shoulders or just tell him to buck up. He cups his hands around his eyes against the window, sees the half-full bottle of Pepsi on the floor in the back seat that he’d got at the gas station on the way, sees his other jacket, the blue one that used to be Dean’s, with the sleeves that come half-way to Sammy’s elbows, now.
There are lots of things in Dad’s pockets. In one on the inside, pressing sharp against Sammy’s belly when he wraps his arms around himself, is Dad’s magic key set. Sammy pulls out the pins and needles of them and pokes and wiggles them in the lock on the driver’s side door until the lock pops up above the window and Sammy hisses a victorious “Yes!”
It’s warmer in the car. Sam crawls over the front seat and into the back, slithering down into his hidey-hole and crouching in there, folding in with his knees squeezed to his chest. The Pepsi is flat, warm when he drinks it, and after he pushes the empty bottle under the passenger seat then lets his hand stroke around there a bit longer, feeling the treasures. Soft-cornered Batman comics, an empty tobacco tin with one corner dented in. An oily woolen hat that had been Dad’s, that Sammy had worn all winter. He pulls the hand-me-down jacket over his head and it makes his breathing louder, makes the light cooler.
He closes his eyes and waits for the door to open behind him.