kin & keeper; part 15.
Kilgore, Texas
For an instant, he wondered if he had made a terrible mistake-Sam went rigid up against him, standing un-anchored in the middle of the floor, his arms still down at his sides, and Dean pulled back a split second later, still only inches from his brother's face and his wide wet eyes and his mouth open just enough to let a shocked breath out.
He froze, afraid to move, feeling the warmth of Sam's lips fading rapidly from his own, and Sam's cheek in the palm of his hand, fitted perfectly there, still-
“What are you doing?” Sam said, though it came out mostly breath, and Dean felt something like heat and shame down low in his spine-and his instinct was to shut up, back up, get out-
But he'd been doing that for three years and more. He was sick to death and tired of it.
“I thought you didn't-” Sam said, fixated on his face, but his body was loosening up and his shoulders were relaxing and he reached up, slowly, to let his fingertips brush against his own lips, trembling.
“I know,” Dean said, swallowing hard, “I know, you thought-”
Sam laughed, a weird, short, panicked noise. “I gave up-”
“I'm sorry,” Dean said, wretched-it felt as if something had given way at the back of his throat, as if some long-held dam had come down. “I know. I'm sorry. You told me-you told me, and I didn't know what to do, so I didn't-but I thought about it-I thought about it for years-and you're my brother, Sammy, and I would die for you and I would do anything for you, you know that, you know that, I would-I would do this if you want it-I want it-”
I love you more than anyone or anything on this godforsaken Earth and I have since you were still learning to walk with your hand in mine and I will love you any way you want, and he didn't have those words yet, not quite yet, but it didn't matter-they were close enough that he thought that maybe Sam could hear it shuttering behind his eyes-
“God-can I-” Dean said, choking a little on it, wanting more than anything just to press himself against Sam's mouth again, and Sam nodded furiously, and he did-dragging a hand up into Sam's hair, gripping it, feeling Sam's fingers curl around the fabric of his shirt and pull him into it, pulling them both back against the wall where Sam's head knocked a picture frame out of place but it didn't matter-nothing mattered except the way this felt like letting out a breath he'd been holding all his life.
He kissed him and kissed him, rough and slipshod, and their teeth knocked together and Sam's head hit the wall more than once and his hands were against Dean's throat, thumbs stroking aimlessly where his jaw met his skull, and the drywall rough and pinching under Dean's bracing hand, he kissed him and kissed him-until Sam pushed him away a little, abruptly, and everything stopped, and he looked at him.
“I'm leaving,” he said, voice all cracked, as if he were just figuring it out. “I'm leaving. I'm leaving tomorrow.”
Dean felt his heart go still.
“Sam,” he said, desperate, but Sam pushed him off and away, moving sideways and back, scrubbing at his mouth with his hand.
There was stillness-Sam stopping in the dimness near the closed-up window where the lamp didn't reach, and Dean, still half-leaning against the wall.
His heart slipped out of his throat and into his gut like a stone.
Sam was shivering, standing over there, his mouth kiss-pink, staring at him. It was dark in here, but Dean could see the wetness on his face.
“I thought this was what you wanted,” Dean said, softly.
Sam let out a long breath, lips opening up, his face the saddest he had ever seen.
“I'm going,” he said, mouth trembling as if it broke his heart to say it. “I have to. I have to get out. Nothing's gonna keep me here, Dean. Not even you.”
They were back again, now, in the silence, in the wordlessness, and Dean stared at him, blank on the inside, sick to his stomach.
What was he supposed to do now?
Out of the corner of his eye he could see the alarm clock on the nightstand by the bed. Little red numbers flickering over and over. Minutes going by. If anyone passed the room right now, he thought, absently, they'd think it was empty for all their stillness, and all the darkness beneath the door.
“Tomorrow,” he said, eventually. The only word that managed to find its way to his tongue.
Sam nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“Just like that. Tomorrow.” He sank into the armchair at his left, watched Sam turn his face away from him, look down at the place where the carpet met the wall, his fist clenching and unclenching at his side. “And I'm never gonna see you again.”
“Don't be stupid,” Sam said, barely even a whisper. He looked an instant from crumpling to the floor.
“College is-four years,” Dean said-he heard the words coming from his mouth but it didn't feel as if he were the one speaking them. They were cold and dead and he was-well, he didn't know what he was, not anymore, not right now. “And then you'll-buy a house, I guess, get married-”
“Dean.”
“Two-point-five kids-just like that.”
“I will die,” Sam said, “if I stay here.”
“I thought-I mean, maybe I'm just naïve, but-man.” Dean pushed his head down into his hands, shutting up his eyes in the dark. It was easier. “I really thought-”
“I wanted you, I still do,” Sam said, somewhere in that blackness, “but I can't pretend you're the end-all be-all, Dean-”
“I want you,” Dean said, dropping his hands. “You are my end-all be-all.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Sam snapped, suddenly, throwing his arms open. “Tell me what I'm supposed to do, then, because I don't see how this all works out-”
“I don't know.”
“I don't, either.”
“One night?”
Sam stopped, arms falling back to his sides, swallowing hard.
“What?”
“One night. Just tonight.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just-come with me,” Dean said, getting to his feet, his eyes stinging. “Just tonight. Get a drink, drive around, just-don't leave like this, man, don't just walk out without a goodbye. Give me that much.”
Sam was right. There was no solution. There was no compromise here in which they both left happy. And right now-right now, in this moment, what he wanted was to be able to pretend that everything was okay, just for a few more hours, before his whole world walked away from him when the sun rose, because he knew he couldn't stop him.
“Please,” he said, and Sam looked at him and closed his eyes and nodded.
Duncan Lake wasn't much to look at, especially not now in the late summer when it was still leaching back from its shores in the grasp of the eternal Texas drought, but it was quiet out there on the spit of land that pushed into it, away from the surrounding neighbourhoods and waterfront properties, just far enough away to still feel the city lights at their backs but escape the noise, the traffic, the population.
If he could have, Dean thought, following the precarious dirt road towards the water, he'd have driven another direction, driven and driven with Sam at his side until everything else fell away and they were free of things. But he couldn't.
Sam's hand rested on the seat between them, inches from Dean's leg, the whole way. He didn't say much. He just looked out the window, watching the sky go full dark. There was a six-pack rattling around in the footwell next to him and Dean couldn't help but think that it all felt forced to an extent, driving out here to watch the stars and get drunk like lovesick teenagers, but he knew neither of them wanted to stay in that room at the hotel and there was nowhere else to go that wouldn't make them both sick to their stomachs.
The air coming off the lake was cool when Dean parked a little ways up from the shore, the Impala tilted ominously with one front wheel against a rock he hadn't been able to avoid. They were probably trespassing on somebody's land, but as soon as the headlights dimmed out he had the feeling that nobody would bother with them here.
They sat there a while, in the settling silence.
Eventually Sam was the one who moved, popping the door and angling himself out, reaching back in for the beer and then bracing himself against the door-frame to peer back inside at Dean.
“You coming out?” he said, and at the very least, Dean thought, he didn't sound like he didn't want to be here, like he felt forced. That was something.
Stargazing was never something they planned on doing, and they'd done it more than once, and Dean could remember every individual time with distinct clarity if he chose to-somehow in the last few years there had just been moments where they'd felt the urge to pull off the road into someone's wheat field or a long empty stretch of the desert and lie back on the car's hood and just look up, for a while, and feel their own smallness, and their closeness, and they'd never spoken of it afterward. And Duncan Lake was a terrible place for stargazing; there were too many trees and too much light pollution to open up the sky; but that almost felt alright, on a night like tonight. If anything went too perfectly, just when nothing was going right, it would feel like some last cosmic laugh.
So they sat on the hood and watched the lake instead, and didn't talk-there was nothing to talk about that would do either of them good. Watched the lights of the marina across the water ripple and reform, watched the windows in the houses on the opposite side go dark. When Dean looked down at Sam's bare arm, resting across his thigh, there was gooseflesh on it, and the wind that came in off the lake was cold for an August night.
There were night bugs singing in the trees, and the warm metal smell of the day cooling off the world, and the barest sliver of the moon just overhead, and Dean sat there with him-looking more at the angle of Sam's body against the Impala's windshield than the water, trying to memorise the way his throat moved when he drank, and this time, here, when Sam caught him looking, and looked back, Dean didn't try to pretend he hadn't been. As sad as he felt, as hurt and upset as he felt, they'd kissed not an hour ago, and it was liberating-he could look, now, and not feel the shame that had always come with it before.
Besides, whispered a little voice in the back of his head, this wasn't going to last much longer. It was all going to fall apart again when the night was over and then-
“I'm sorry,” Sam said, abruptly, cutting through his thoughts, and Dean blinked, pulling his eyes up from the folds of Sam's shirt against his chest to his face. His profile was blue and black out here in the dark. He swallowed. “I'm sorry I-sprang all this on you like I did. I should have thought it through.”
“It's okay,” Dean said, and it was. Maybe it wouldn't be, when he thought about it more, but for now he didn't want to feel angry.
“You have to know-you're not the problem, Dean, and I'm not-I'm not running away from you.”
“Well-I mean, you are,” Dean said, flatly, looking down into his bottle. “Maybe you're not meaning to, but you are.”
“But you're not the reason. You know?” He could feel Sam's eyes on his face, the edge of Sam's hand against his thigh, where it hadn't been a moment before. “Don't-just don't go thinking you're the reason. That's all.”
“So-I'm not the reason you're going, but I ain't reason enough to stay behind.”
Sam pulled his hand away, locked it safely around his bottle where it dangled between his pulled-up knees.
“I just don't get it,” Dean said, tipping his head back against the Impala's roof. “I get why you wanna leave, and I get that you never liked the way we lived, but I just-I dunno, man. I guess I just never really thought you'd have it in you to walk away.”
Sam didn't say anything.
“Maybe it's-I dunno. The one thing that I knew above everything else growing up was that family-you never, ever walked away from family. Family was all you had, family was the only thing that stuck, and I lived by that. And I guess you just-you just don't see it that way.”
The trees hushed and tossed in the wind and then fell back again.
“I don't know how to make you understand,” Sam said, very quietly.
The light went out again. The whole world back to sleep.
Sam's hands were rubbing anxiously over his knees, long-fingered. The scar on his knuckle from four years back. Dean wanted to touch them.
“Would you even consider-” Dean said, but then he stopped.
Sam didn't move, didn't nod or shake his head, just sat there looking out.
They left when the beer ran out, when there were no more lights to look at on the water, and drove back to the America's Best Value Inn in silence, just the way they'd gone; but Sam let his hand rest on Dean's thigh, biting his lip the whole way, squeezing it a little every now and then, pushing dangerously close against the inside, and halfway there Dean reached down to put his own hand over it, and tried to let the passing streetlamps blur out across his eyes.
By the time the door of Room 53 closed and latched behind them there was no question of it anymore.
Sam reached out from where he came in behind him and took hold of his forearm and that-that was it. That was the last spark Dean needed in his belly where a heat had been coiling all night ever since his lips had touched Sam's for the first time and before he was really aware of making the decision to do so he turned, took Sam's pretty thin-boned face in his hands and kissed him, hard, and Sam reached up between his arms to hold his face, too, and it was dead, dead silent in this room, as if it had been waiting for them to come back, silent as the grave and maybe it was that, for some part of them, but Dean kissed him, both of them stumbling backwards a little, losing their way in the absolute darkness, and Sam pulled back only for an instant, breath hot against Dean's mouth, to whisper, “Do you really-”
“Well, I mean-do you?” Dean asked, because right now there was nothing he wanted more in the world than to get his hands on Sam, on every part of him he'd ever seen but been unable to touch, and Sam laughed, as if it were the most ludicrous question he'd ever been asked, and he nodded, whispered, “Yes,” hands clinging desperately to Dean's shirt-front, and they almost ran into the stupid partition between the couch and the bed and crashed to the floor, Sam laughing low in his throat, legs tangled up with Dean's, and they sat there on the floor in the dark with their faces inches from one another, Sam's back pushing the coffee table out of whack-
There was a split second where Dean looked at what little of Sam's face he could see in the thin sliver of outside light and he thought-this was Sam-this was his little brother-and he'd been waiting years for something like this; he had pined and made distance and hatched all these plans to get away from what he'd known could never have possibly been his-but now here they were, and mostly Dean was trying to understand why he hadn't kissed Sam years ago, the minute he turned eighteen, because Sam wasn't soft like girls and he wasn't rough like boys-he was Sam; he was everything-and in that instant Dean loved him so much he thought he might burst.
He dropped his hands down to the hem of Sam's shirt and rucked it up and Sam shifted, lifted his arms to pull it over his head, and the shadows fell so gracefully in the hollows of his collarbone and throat and Dean couldn't help but kiss them, and kiss them again, pulling gently at the skin with his teeth until Sam gave a little whimper and set his own hands to work on the buttons of Dean's plaid and then it was occurring to Dean how cold it was in here because his chest was bare and Sam's hands were flat against it, and he was looking down wonderingly at it, at the tiny glint of the amulet against Dean's sternum, and trailing the palms of his hands down Dean's skin as if he'd never seen it before-and he hadn't, really; not like this; not when his own skin was bare to push against it-and he did, pushing Dean back up the partition, warm and solid up against him, ducking his head down to kiss him like some ferocious little insatiable beast-
It was like catching movement in a strobe light, trying to find one another like that, fumbling in the meagre blue parking lot glow for each other, hints and glimpses of eyes and wet lips and the cool round edges of shoulders, and Dean felt, as Sam pushed against him again the better to crush their lips together, how hard Sam was already against his leg, and shit-if he wasn't about to fuck his baby brother right here on this hotel floor-
In the confusion they happened to topple sideways away from the wall and then Sam was on his back and shit-shit-this was really happening-
“Fuck,” Dean said, freezing suddenly, halfway between Sam's spread legs. “Shit, man, I don't have-”
“May,” Sam gasped, “or may not have lube in my duffel-”
Dean wheezed a shocked sort of laugh and rolled off him, scrambling up towards the bed and unzipping the bag so hard it nearly broke. “Dude.”
“Scout's Motto,” Sam said, grinning, his teeth bright in the dark.
Dean found it and stumbled back, kneeling down between Sam's thighs-he was shaking, they both were, and Dean wasn't sure why, but he paused for an instant, looking down at him in whatever neon was coming in beneath the curtains.
“Shit,” he breathed, letting a hand trail up over Sam's thigh, still a thin layer of denim between him and flesh. “Shit, Sammy.” He was laid out like every dream Dean had tried so hard to convince himself he'd never had, chest and stomach dotted with little dark moles, breathing hard, hips rolling upward slowly every so often looking for friction, hair all scattered in his eyes.
Sam reached up, gripped his shoulders, pulled him down, kissed him again-all the frenzy shaken out of him now, just slowness-and Dean let their foreheads rest together, tasting the hazy reminder of alcohol on Sam's breath, ran a slow hand down his brother's side, thumb flicking over Sam's nipple, and that made Sam groan and arch his back and that sent shudders rippling down Dean's spine and straight to his dick.
Sam's hands slid south, fumbled for the button and fly of his jeans, and Dean let him work them undone, let him slip his fingers into the waistline and push them down the curve of Dean's ass, and when Sam saw his cock bobbing up against his stomach he let out a shaky sort of moan.
“You sure you're okay?” Dean rasped, concerned and out of breath already, and Sam nodded so hard his head bounced off the floor, pushed up his hips to undo his own jeans with his fluttery hands.
“Shit,” Sam breathed, shoving off his clothes like he had somewhere to be, and Dean rocked to the side to let him kick off his jeans and when he rocked back he looked down between them and very nearly moaned himself.
“Damn, brother,” he said, more shakily than he'd have liked to admit, because Sam was hard as hell, precome smearing against his stomach, and without really thinking about it Dean shifted down and hesitated, hovering there, just above the head.
Sam groaned, biting down hard on his lower lip, looking like it was taking all his strength not to push his hips right up into Dean's face, and hell if it wasn't the prettiest thing Dean had ever seen-
He kissed the base of Sam's cock and a shiver hurtled through Sam's body and he curled up enough to clutch at Dean's shoulders so Dean kissed a little higher, and a little more, and licked a line right up to the head and Sam gave a desperate, reedy noise, and it had been a year or more since Dean had sucked cock but oh there was nothing that sounded better in the world-
But Sam stopped him before he could, grabbed his face up and kissed him, whimpered “Not tonight,” against his mouth and maybe Dean's head was just full of his own rushing blood but it sounded almost like a next time and maybe something a little like hope rose further in his chest than it had all day and so he nodded, and Sam lay back down, pulled his knees up, reached between them to push one finger in a lazy circle around the rim of his hole and ground his lip between his teeth and looked at Dean, looked into him with those crazy fox-fire eyes and if Dean Winchester had ever been stricken dumb in his life, now was the moment.
It took a good few fingers to open Sam up and by the time he was ready he was absolutely wrecked, clutching desperately at the amulet still dangling around Dean's neck, legs hooked up beneath Dean's arms and tears in his eyes from the pain but every time Dean paused to ask if he was alright he hissed “Yes, yes, please-” And Dean was terrified that he was hurting him, hadn't thought to ask if Sam had ever done this before, but Sam pushed himself down on Dean's fingers as if he would die without them and he looked as if he was going to come the moment Dean's cock touched his body and so Dean kept going, sucking kisses onto Sam's collarbone to soothe him, his head on fire with how insane, how absolutely insane this was-
But for whatever reason-stars aligning, luck, the way Dean knew Sam's body almost as well as he knew his own-they were moving together like a well-oiled machine and Dean had had a lot of sex in his life but never quite as right as this-if fucking his little brother on a motel room floor at one in the morning could be right at all-
He reached up, pushed his fingers through Sam's against the carpet before he pushed the head of his cock inside and Sam froze as soon as he did, his whole body tightening up, and his mouth fell open but no sound came out, and his fingers were gripping Dean's so tightly that even in the darkness his knuckles stood out white as snow.
And then it was slow-then it was slow, somehow, and Dean eased his way inside, as gently as he could, feeling Sam clench around him, and out again, watching his face go wide and blank and his eyes roll back when he hit that sweet spot inside him, and abruptly all Dean knew how to do was roll his hips again and again and feel completely the way Sam was coming undone all around him, muscles trembling in his thighs and his stomach, pink mouth open, begging to be kissed, clutching Dean's hand so hard Dean thought his bones might break in his grip.
The only sound that existed in the world was the sound of their skin sliding against one another's skin and the sound of Sam's breathing and the rush of Dean's blood in his ears and the rasp of the carpet beneath Sam's body in endless rising repetitive motion and it wasn't perfect, it was too much too fast but it was what they needed now and the only thing that Dean could see was the curve of Sam's ribcage upwards toward him and how easy it was to kiss and how many places there were to let his lips rest and for a split second he suddenly remembered that this was over, that this would never, ever last, that Sam was still going to leave him, and it seemed like the most cruel ridiculous thing in the world, to think about that right now-
“Dean,” Sam whimpered, lifting his head up suddenly, “Dean-Dean-”
He came without warning, with a shocked little sound, without Dean even touching his cock, and slammed his hands down on Dean's shoulders, spine curling up, shuddering through it, and Dean hurled all those thoughts from his mind and kissed him hard, trying to lose everything but this, Sam gasping into his mouth, toes curling at the small of Dean's back, and when he opened his eyes and looked right into Dean's it was done, and Dean pulled out and came between Sam's legs and gave a shuddering gasp and let his head drop against Sam's shoulder.
For a minute they sat there, Sam half-upright, breathing hard and hoarse, as if they'd stunned themselves into silence; and then Sam made a kind of terrified noise and grabbed up at Dean's back, clutching him close to him, chin against Dean's neck, and he held him like that, as if he knew somehow that Dean needed to be held, as if he had nothing else in the world, as if he were going to fall apart unless he clung to something now.
Sam turned on a lamp, eventually. He was sitting naked on the bed with a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker on the counter-top when Dean came out of the shower.
“Coffee? Three in the morning?” Dean said, cocking an eyebrow, kicking aimlessly at their discarded clothes on the floor until his boxers appeared and pulling them on.
Sam shrugged, put the cup down.
Dean dropped down on the bed beside him, flat on top the coverlet, looking up at the ceiling.
“When I came looking for you,” he said, stretching his arms up above his head, “this is not what I was expecting.”
Sam laughed, a private sort of sound, in the back of his mouth. Dean could feel his eyes roving over his body.
“Dad's gonna kill you,” he said softly.
“I know.”
They lay there for a while, together, in some mode of peace, the air conditioner going on and off every once in a while, the occasional slash of traffic on the streets outside.
Dean turned his head towards the clock on the nightstand-it was edging on 3:20 AM, and he had no hope of getting back to the house on the county road tonight, not exhausted as he was.
And maybe, he thought, swallowing hard, feeling that indomitable little flicker of hope inside him again, maybe-if he lay here long enough, if they both fell asleep like this, maybe everything would be okay; they would have lasted the night, passed the test, and he could drive out of here in the cool August morning, sun still grey on the empty highway, early rainclouds on the edge of the sky, and he could take Sam with him, and they could pick up doughnuts in some little shop somewhere and breathe the air before it was filled with exhaust and birdsong-it didn't feel too impossible, right now, in the quiet, with Sam's warm breathing body next to his, and all there to touch if he wanted to, his to love and hold after so many years of goddamn waiting for no reason at all.
If they could just sleep until morning everything would be fine. He knew it.
“I'm exhausted, man,” he said, letting out a long breath, still looking at the clock.
“Dean.”
“Yeah.”
Sam hesitated. Dean could hear him picking at the stitching on the coverlet. The clock slipped over into 3:27.
“Will you drive me to the bus station tomorrow?”
His voice was tenuous and horrible.
Just like that.
Dean sat up, slowly, and looked at him, unsure, exactly, why he was so surprised, why he felt so cold.
“What?”
Sam wouldn't look at him. His cheek was pressed against his folded-up knee and his long fingers were pulling the thread from the fabric, slowly, surely.
“We just-” Dean began, very nearly lost for words, but Sam cut him off.
“You knew I was leaving when we did,” he said, voice strained.
Dean laughed in disbelief. His head felt like it was full of flies, buzzing, crashing around in there. “Even after all of that,” he said, pitch rising, “after all of that, you've got the gall to ask me-”
“Don't.”
“You can't-I thought-”
“What?” Sam said, snapping his head around, his face so full of anger that it nearly struck Dean dumb. “You only fucked me to get me to stay?”
Silence.
It was a little like watching buildings crumble from a long, long way away, Dean thought, in the part of his mind that wasn't filling up with hurt. All the dust clouding up in great plumes and no sound at all except the very distant boom, somewhere underneath the sound of one's heartbeat, so faint, so woven into the noise of the world that it hardly existed at all.
“How could you think that?” Dean said, though it hardly made it past his teeth with the tightness of his jaw, the heat coming up into his face. “Don't you think that. Don't you dare.”
“That's all you wanted when you came here,” Sam said, calm and awful as death, stare unwavering. “Yeah? Do whatever it took to drag me back home again.”
“Don't you dare.”
“Tell me that's not it,” Sam said. “Tell me that's not the smallest bit of why you stuck your dick in me-”
“I want you to come home,” Dean said, or snapped, he wasn't sure, “but that-”
But he fell silent, then.
Sam's eyes were full of tears and his mouth was a hard angry line and Dean knew, then, even if it didn't register completely past the blood roaring in his ears. Sam knew it was bullshit. He knew very well that there had been nothing ulterior on that floor between their bodies but he had to say it, he had to push, he had to snap everything in half or else he wouldn't be able to pull himself out of Dean's hands any more than Dean would be able to let him go.
It was terrible, and sick, and wrong, and for an instant he hated him-hated him for letting even that smallest bit of hope flare up in Dean's chest, for owning his right to be selfish, and it was enough.
“Yeah,” he said, flat, quietly, voice shaking, lip curling. “I'll drive you to the bus station in the morning.”
Sam nodded, almost imperceptibly, and turned his body away into the lamplight, and ducked his head down between his shoulders, and was still.
They were like that, still, when the sun rose.
And they didn't say a word to one another while they dressed, pulling on the clothes they'd left on the floor, jeans and boxers still smelling of sex, and Dean didn't say a word when Sam closed the passenger seat door, Greyhound bus ticket clutched tight in his hands. And they didn't say a word as they pulled out of the America's Best Value Inn in the grey morning light, easing onto the frontage roads as six AM rolled over, only a few early morning commuters to break up the drive. And they didn't say a word when Dean found the Greyhound station on East South Street and pulled up the curb.
He said nothing when Sam hesitated in the passenger seat, his mouth crumpling like discarded paper, and when he covered his face with his hands for a moment, shoulders shuddering quietly, panicky awful little-boy tears. He didn't say anything when Sam dropped them and took a deep sucking breath and opened the door and hauled his duffel bag over his shoulder and closed the door again and walked towards the signpost against the street.
He didn't make a sound when the bus arrived and Sam stepped onto it and the doors closed behind him.
He hardly even blinked when Sam, at the last possible moment before the Impala slid out of his line of sight from the seat he had taken at the back of the bus, turned his head to look, and was gone a moment later-face obliterated by the sun against the flat of the tempered glass, and the bus groaned away, and he was left alone in the idling car on the side of the road with no stirring living thing for miles.
Just like that.
He drove back, obeying the speed limit, the radio off. He drove back to the house on the county road and he parked around back by Dad's truck and he went in the screen door.
Dad was sitting at the table where they'd been cleaning guns the night before, and he looked up when Dean came in, and he didn't say anything, either. Just looked at him, and Dean stood there in the doorway and looked right back for a moment, and then he kept walking in-walked into the back room, and sat down on his cot, and stared out into the hole in the wall, at the darkness of the trees back there, the darkness of the big yawning gaping world stretching ahead of him without his brother, and he didn't make a sound when he began to cry, either.
Not a single sound.