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ht_murrayTitle:Generic, Last First Times 'verse
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
tru_faith_lost and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
3rd_leg
Genre: Gen fic, no pairings, mentions of Dean/OFCs, but what episode doesn't?
Rating: PG-13 for language
Previous Chapters: My Site
Warnings: As usual for language.
Summary: Instead of connecting with each other, the only family they have left, Dean’s chasing tail, and Sam’s tucking his. Hi-diddly-ho neighbor, that just takes all the cake.
Ackowledgment: This fic was inspired by the comment left by dean’sdreamingangel. We discussed it, posted a poll on LJ, and decided it’s entirely possible for this to be true. At any rate, it made us think, so this one’s for you, darlin’.
Disclaimer: If they were ours, they’d growl a lot more.
Generic
Eighteen Years Ago
“Geez, Sammy. You’re old enough for a two-wheeler now. Don’t you think you’re a little big for this?”
Sam turns his pudgy, six-year-old face up and grins at Dean from beneath the wrinkles his chin is pressing in the front of Dean’s t-shirt—the one that says Hell’s Bells and smells like Pastor Jim’s sanctuary.
“You’re never too big for hugsth, Dean,” Sammy lisps through the gap in his face where his teeth used to be.
Dean pries Sam’s hands loose of the vice-like grip he’s got around Dean’s waist and tosses an arm carelessly over his shoulders,(‘cept Sammy’s six and sees things for what they are, knows it’s not careless at all) uses the leverage to turn them both in a direction where they can more easily check out Sam’s birthday present.
“Nope. Not too big. Just too cool.” He says it with a grin that splits his face in two. Sam doesn’t know why Dean’s so happy. Sam’s the one with the new bike.
“I’m cool? Like you?”
“Sure,” Dean says. “Just look at these wheels. You’re the coolest kid in the county.”
Dean’s right. It’s the coolest bike Sam’s ever seen, black and shiny with silver reflector tubes on every spoke. There’s even a Dodge Superbee decal on each of the front forks. (Because the only thing Chevy forgot when it made the Impala was a supercool mascot to go with it.)
Sure, the training wheels are still on the bike, but the hubs are painted chrome. Sam knows, now, why Dean had spent every afternoon at Pastor Jim’s and come home every night smelling like Murphy’s Oil Soap and Pledge.
“You’ll teach me to ride it, too, wontcha?” Sammy can barely keep the squeal out of his voice, but he tries. Dean hates when he squeals, says it makes him sound like a girl. Sam doesn’t know. Maybe it does.
Dean pats him on the shoulder. “Sure, squirt. Dad would have my a…head if I gave you the thing and then let you get thrashed on it.”
Sam gives up trying to control the noises he makes. Dean’s the bestest big brother ever.
“You can ride it, too,” Sam offers. His face hurts from grinning so hard, and ants in his pants doesn’t even begin to explain the excited little dance his feet are doing.
Dean shoves his hands in his pockets, twists back and forth a few times, chin in his chest. “Naw. It’s too small. I’d bang my knees on the handle bars. Besides,” he adds, nudging Sam with an elbow, “the car’s gonna be mine someday, and I’m not gonna let anyone else drive it, ever.”
Sam sticks out his tongue and punches Dean in the arm. “Jerk!”
“Brat!” Dean retorts, but he says it with a smile.
Present Day--Pardeeville, Wisconsin
No smile even threatens to crack Sam’s stoic expression as he sighs upward through his long bangs, relishing the long, slow release like the final exhale off the last good drag on a cigarette. Someday that demon bitch is gonna get hers for being the one who made it possible for him to sit in a smoky bar and not cough up a lung.
His research, tonight as most any night, has pretty much consisted of staring at the ‘Jake loves Chrissy’, carved into the back of his chair while slow-loading web pages appear on his screen, one pixel at a freaking time. He should be thanking his lucky stars the bar owner sprang for the wireless internet service to go with the cable sports package he supplies for the patrons, but no, he’s not thankful, not tonight, and yeah, it sucks out loud.
Sucks out loud. Now that’s eloquent.
Sam doesn’t consider himself eloquent anymore, certainly not of that caliber that’s prepared for closing arguments or, god forbid, eulogies. That’s probably why Dean seems to be winning their debates way more than he used to. Eloquent is one of those words Sam has very little cause to use these days, except when describing all the ways in which he and Dean are not.
He spends most of his time talking to Dean (or at him, given Dean’s propensity for not talking about anything that matters), and a good deal of the rest of his conversations involve people in the ‘fire bad, tree pretty’ stages of post-traumatic stress. What’s left for stunning, intellectual conversation is spent in dives like The Green Frog in Pardeeville, Wisconsin.
Yeah, Pardeeville, home of the Bulldogs and a whole lot of drunk, oppressed farmers… and farmers’ daughters, as Dean had been so quick to point out before heading out back with a prime example.
Sam really doesn’t want to speculate about what Dean and the dairy princess are doing out there, but he thinks he heard talk of a boat house, and really, is there any question?
Downstairs brain, meet farmer’s daughter. And brother? What brother? You mean that dude with the bitch face in the corner? Real buzzkill, that kid.
Sam rolls his bottom lip between a thumb and forefinger, elbow on the table, and thunderclouds over his head. He wonders how Dean’s idea of living it up seems to involve dragging Sam down in dumps like these.
A dude in a Dekalb corn cap, ringed black with sweat from hours on the back forty, knocks into his table on the way to the bathroom, and that’s all she wrote for Sam’s one open beer.
“Shit!” – one syllable word. Eloquent.
Farmer McStinky doesn’t stop long enough for Sam to find out just what the dude’s in such a hurry to do. (Though he does think maybe he’s been watching too much Grey’s Anatomy) Sam would lay money it’s another one syllable word, probably starting with ‘p’, and if the hand gesture he uses to say goodbye is any indicator, it ain’t pray.
Sam jumps off his backward-turned chair and accidentally kicks it over with an embarrassing crash as he lifts his laptop. He just manages to rescue the computer in time to avoid the advancing flood of beer rolling toward it, and for reasons he’s afraid to delve into, he growls.
Seriously, he growls, and no one’s more surprised than Sam.
His eyebrows join in the valley forming over the bridge of his nose, and his chin wrinkles with distaste as he shakes the beer from his fingertips, juggling his last saving grace in this hick town one-handed as he bats at the trickle that has landed in his lap before it can soak in. He’s looking around for the idiot making that noise when he realizes…he’s the idiot.
Isn’t that just peachy? It’s finally happened. He’s assimilated the native customs.
And the natives are puking drunk.
Sure, he can intellectualize and say the noise rumbling over his tongue and through his clenched teeth, punctuated by the dark squint around his eyes, is really just every four-letter-word he knows strung together into some ϋber-syllabic curse that would make Webster proud.
But no. It’s just a growl.
Sam Winchester did not spend hours and hours memorizing a thousand archaic ways to say, ‘I’m pissed off,’ on his SATs to turn around and lobby for the effectiveness of the common grunt and growl as forms of communication. He knows he has words for just how friggin’ perfect it is that it’s his beer that falls over and nearly ruins his computer. Plenty of words for the fact that it’s his only beer, the same one he’s been nursing all night, while Dean’s half dozen empties rattle against each other on the table without even teetering.
He has words for how frustrated he is the hours spent researching the stuff Dean’s not allowed to research have yielded nothing but the growing certainty that some dude named Jake got pretty damned lucky one night after sitting in this chair. He’d like to think this whole leaking hourglass motivation has given him a new attitude, a ‘live in the moment and worry about the moment when it’s past’ kind of zeal. The growl in his throat, however, suggests perhaps feral is a better descriptor. He’s not sure if he’s okay with that, but hey, whatever gets the job done.
Not that he’s gonna waste time angsting over the whys of his sudden literary devolution. He can deal. When in Rome, right? He’s just not sure whether he’s the gladiator here or the beast sent in to kill him. Some of both, he thinks.
But that’s beside the point, and a tad too eloquent or his current state of mind.
Sam casts a glance at Dean’s empties on the table with what he plans to be a glare, but there’s no mistaking the tug of longing in his gut, a stretch of empty and lost created by shifts in paradigms he’s not ready to push. But since when does life wait until you’re ready?
He could use a few beers himself, but that’s not how it works. They can’t both let down their guard, not at the same time, and Sam’s got work to do, work that Dean can’t do himself. So he does it, alone, night after night, while Dean gets wasted and heads out back with the likes of Miss Columbia County 4-H Hostess 2001, and the only part of Sam still pissed about that is the one clinging to the intellectual irony that Dean, deal, and dead only differ by one letter.
Sam’s pretty sure his stunning intellect, with all its bells, whistles, and four syllable words, is not going to save Dean, and he doesn’t care if saving Dean might mean losing that part of himself. You win some, you lose some, and in the end, hope death finds you at least one ahead.
But that doesn’t explain why Sam’s angry, acerbic, acrimonious, wrathful, and yeah, pissed off at the moment. His head may be checking out, to some degree, but his heart’s checking in, and it doesn’t care about logical. Sam figures he owes that to the demon blood pumping through it, or to Dean.
Sam brushes at the beer-soaked crotch of his jeans, computer suspended in one hand over the table, like the Statue of Liberty’s torch, and looks around for a waitress or a discarded dishtowel.
The 4-H queen comes in the back door just then, dark hair hanging down her back and wet at the ends, having lost whatever gaudy plastic accessory had been holding it up when she and Dean snuck out an hour ago. She’s got her fingers in one of Dean’s belt loops and leads him behind her like a puppy, a well-trained puppy at that. Glitter polish sparkles on her cheap, acrylic nails, and Dean rests a hand at the hip of her vinyl skirt.
Everything about the girl screams generic, off-brand, and cheap, just like every other girl Dean’s ever picked up in one of these places. Hell, just like everything Dean’s ever had.
Sam nods a thanks to the waitress who’s finally showed up to wipe off his table as she carries off Dean’s bottles. He notes even the friggin’ beer is some off-brand local variety on special that night.
So not good enough. None of it is. It’s not like he doesn’t want Dean to have his cake and eat it, too-- new girl every night, different cake, same frosting. He just wishes Dean would realize there’s more than cake.
Sam watches Dean say his goodbyes to the Midwest farmer’s daughter, seemingly unaware that she’s not a California girl. A soft kiss and slow pull back, brush of eyelash across cheek bone, and a smile.
Dean’s smiling. Really smiling.
Not one of those, eyebrows raised to the hairline, sarcastic, ‘in your face college boy’ grins.
Not an, eyebrows at half mast, head-tilted plaintively, ‘c’mon, Sammy, let’s don’t do this, little brother’ smile.
It’s an, eyes crinkling at the corners, dimples pitting in his cheeks, ‘I really had a nice time tonight’ smile.
He never smiles at Sam like that.
Okay, so that doesn’t sound quite right. Because, really, Dean should not look at Sam the way he looks at one of his one night stands; they’re brothers for chrissakes, but Sam knows the look on Dean’s face right then is not just some sated version of the horndog brother he gets to see between conquests. It has nothing to do with sex. It’s…and his mind is stuck again on that mental thesaurus which randomly tosses out…blissful ignorance? Joyful indifference? Resolution?…Glee.
But Dean doesn’t do glee. Not Sam’s Dean. Dean also doesn’t do midnight walks in the tall, wet grass, but the girl he’s with is carrying her sandals in her hand, and the cuffs of Dean’s designer jeans by St. Vincent de Paul are damp all the way to the knee.
Sam’s indisposed, vexed, averse, and incensed all over. If Dean wasn’t close enough to hear, Sam thinks he’d probably growl again. At this point, he really has no words. No words for how freaking unfair it is that Sam’s spending all his time and energy scraping over open wounds on a daily and nightly basis in the waning hope of breaking an unbreakable deal, (yes, dreaming the impossible dream, thank you very much, Don Quixote), and Sancho Panda’s only happy in the company of some random Dulcinea. Why is that?
The girl answers for him. She sees Dean’s smile and raises him one of her own, smiles back like someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someday someone’s wife and mother, and Dean doesn’t seem surprised that all that comes in a store brand box.
Sam’s jaw aches like it hasn’t been unclenched for months, and she smiles back.
The mental growl that never completely shushed in his mind yelps like a kicked puppy and skitters under the nearest bed. The throb in his neck and temples is enough to tell him, no, he doesn’t smile back. Who has the time between worry, dread, frantic, desperate, and, oh yeah, pissed off?
But this is not the time for justification. It’s time for change.
Instead of connecting with each other, the only family they have left, Dean’s chasing tail, and Sam’s tucking his. Hi-diddly-ho neighbor, that just takes all the cake.
If what you give is what you get, then Sam figures his own smiles of late must have all the grace and purpose of a suncatcher glued to a wall. If it really is an unbreakable deal, a scowl of determination won’t make a very fond memory for Dean to carry into Hell with him.
Sam slouches back into his chair, turns his back on Dean and the girl at the bar. He wants to postpone the inevitable smirk and eyebrow waggle Dean is sure to send his way once he realizes Sam is watching; needs to remember a little while longer why this, even this pathetic, broken little life that drags them into backwoods bars on nearly deserted strips of farm roads, is worth saving.
He needs to remember what Dean looks like when he’s happy, because he’s not sure when he’ll ever see it again. Seems like the last time he noticed was forever ago.
Sam bites his lip and straightens in his chair. His attempt to capture the moment and bask in the afterglow of epiphany fails miserably in all of thirty seconds.
They’re screwed up. Point taken. Doesn’t mean he has to just accept it. His hackles are on end, now, and no, Sam doesn’t do tail tucked between his legs.
This Sam’s a friggin’ pit bull. He’s hot on the trail of the bull, follows the trail of BS Dean passes off as conversation. Sam knows his brother better than anyone. He knows all of Dean’s buttons, and he knows how to push them. One of those buttons is bound to wipe the shit-eating grin off Dean’s face and replace it with a genuine smile.
Dean may settle for generic, but Sam doesn’t. He won’t. Dean deserves name brand.
Sam has an idea, reaches into his pocket, pulls out his phone. Dean’s a hunter, and Sam’s got just the hunt in mind.
“Yeah, is this Backwoods Bob’s All-Terrain…” If Sam had a tail, it’d so be wagging.
xXx
“What’re you grinnin’ about?” Dean taps the back of Sam’s head with just enough force to knock his bangs over his eyes. Sam, in turn, rolls them in his sockets but doesn’t stop grinning. “Don’t tell me you’re looking at porn when there’s probably ten girls in here who’d show you the real deal.” Dean leans down, close enough to Sam’s ear that Sam can actually hear his eyebrows waggling. “And let me tell you, they don’t call it Party-ville for nothin’.”
Sam shakes his head. “Shut up and drink your beer. I’m buying.”
Dean quirks a glance in Sam’s direction but picks up the beer with a shrug. “Sam, if you wanna drive, all you gotta do is ask.”
Sam’s not the only one who knows his brother’s buttons. He holds up his hand, as much to say, ‘you caught me’ as to ask for the keys, and Dean obliges, tossing the keyring through the air with surprising accuracy considering the number of beers he’s already had.
“Thanks. Now shut up and drink your beer.”
Dean winks and raises the long neck to his lips, pauses just before taking a swallow. “If you’re trying to get me drunk, it’s too late. Not that I ever turn down a free beer.”
Sam knows and buys another for good measure.
xXx
“You have got to be kidding me.” Dean’s voice is rough like the rest of his face under the dark glasses pressed over his eyes. It’s the first confirmation Sam has that his brother’s awake, though he’s suspected as much since Dean’s head conveniently lolled toward the window as they passed a blonde in a convertible fifty miles back. The grumbled statement doesn’t actually qualify as glee, but it is pretty much what Sam’s been anticipating. After all, that was the whole point of getting Dean passed-out drunk in the first place.
Sam lets the car idle up to the sign at the corner of the lot, chuckling to himself at the picture of the dude in camo biking shorts painted on the front of it, and turns off the engine. “C’mon, man. It’ll be fun.” Sam pats the door decisively before reaching for the handle, doesn’t bother trying to hide the smirk pulling at the corner of his lips.
“It’s our job,” Dean mumbles. “Not s’posed to be fun.”
“It’s a paying gig,” Sam retorts. He snickers at the set cross of Dean’s arms across his chest and shoves the door open. “I told the guy we’d stop by when we were in the area, and we’re here now, so deal.”
Sam stops with one leg outside the car, a hand on the steering wheel and one on the door, notices Dean isn’t making a move to follow. Instead, he’s tucking his chin down into his collar and frowning with way more effort than Sam figures is necessary to camouflage the pout of his lips. Dean really hates surprises.
Tough. Sam’s still got the keys and no intentions of leaving.
Sam takes another long look at the sign. Dean’s disdain has got to be the after-effects of the alcohol. It can’t possibly have anything to do with ‘Backwoods Bob’s All-Terrain Bike Tours and Dirt Tracks.’ After all, according to Bob himself, it’s ‘the best way to enjoy the land of ten thousand lakes without getting wet.’ What’s not to love?
“And what exactly is Bob’s major malfunction?” Dean asks dryly. “Ichabod Crane turn in his horse for a two-wheeler?”
Sam pulls his leg back inside the car and turns, bites his thumb nail reluctantly. “Well, it’s a…Thing,” he explains, not exactly sure what to call the reason that the half of the sign advertising guided mountain bike tours into the north woods had been boarded over.
“Yeah, good to know that Stanford education’s finally paying off,” Dean grouses into his chest. “Hope you got a good ghost writer lined up to write your memoirs.”
Eloquent yet again, Sam knows. “Seriously, Dean, that’s what the locals call it—the Thing. Big, ugly, wolf or wolf-dog of some sort. Supposedly, there have been reports of strange screams in the forest for years now, but people have caught glimpses of some…thing in the area since spring. Really hurting the outdoor excursion business.”
Dean shifts stiffly in his seat. “Sounds like a job for the Forestry Service, Parks and Wildlife, or Department of Natural Resources, not us.”
“Except there are no ranches this far back in the sticks, and the shooting of wolves is only justifiable in cases of livestock loss.”
“So, basically, even guys whose job it is to hunt this thing—note the part where that’s not us,” Dean adds, waving a still-drunken finger in the air before pointing it into his chest with a thunk, “realize that this…Thing is not a threat, and Bob’s loss of backwoods business is just a case of mass paralysis.”
“It’s paranoia, Dean.”
“No, paralysis. Cuz what better way to weasel your way out of getting off the couch for the weekend than saying the forest is haunted or whatever?”
Sam grins and ducks his head. “Maybe, but it’s still a paying gig, and, if it is a wolf, or a genetic throwback, mutant, X-Wolf or something, it’ll be the easiest money we ever earned.”
Sam notices the little snigger, even though Dean turns his head toward the window. “X-Wolf? Can we call it Logan? Cuz I’d rather meet Jane Grey. That’s a chick with some seriously supernatural assets.”
“See?” Sam catches the moment of distraction and capitalizes on it. “We’re hunters, they got something that needs hunting; it’s all good.” Sam moves to get out of the car again, hopes Dean is still too hung over to question his logic.
“Except, while we’re wasting our time going after Logan, rogue X-Wolf, and saving the rest of Backwoods Bob’s tourist season, actual demons are out there, somewhere not here, hurting actual people who are not freaks in camo bike shorts.”
Sam halts again, door swaying between farther open and closed with his fingers latched on the armrest. “Bikers are people, too, Dean.”
“Yeah, same road, same rights, same rules, my ass,” Dean grumbles. “Tell me that the next time I see one driving down the center line on one of those twisty back roads with no slow moving vehicle sign on his padded shorts. And explain that…” He points to the office window and a display of touristy bumper stickers.
“The Bike Liberation Front,” he reads and turns to Sam. One eyebrow is overly visible above the dark glasses, and one side of his mouth twists wryly. “You were saying, college boy?” A dude in desert fatigues with a gas mask on his face and riding a bicycle apparently meets Dean’s criteria for ‘freak’. Good to know Dean’s a discriminating sort when it comes to freaks.
Sam straightens his shoulders, rubs his free hand over his now, obviously-stubbled chin with a huff. When all else fails, play the little brother card.
“Fine,” Sam says with a careful pout. “You know what? I just thought a quick, easy, paying job might be nice for a change. Thought maybe we’d seen enough of Hell for awhile and might like to check out the gateway to God’s country for once. I thought wrong.” He swings his leg in and heaves the door shut with the familiar metallic whine, punctuated with the overly-forceful slam against the frame. “The missing baby was probably just a coincidence anyway.”
Dean’s hand catches Sam’s wrist as it makes a slow, calculated reach for the ignition.
“What baby?”
Sam’s inner puppy wags its tail as he bites his lip to keep from grinning. Atta boy. Good dog.
xXx
Dean’s right where Sam left him, arms folded across his chest and leaning against the door of the Impala, when Sam returns from his meeting with their benefactor. The dark glasses conceal most of Dean’s distaste for their current predicament, but Sam thinks he looks a little green around the gills, and he hasn’t even seen Sam’s surprise yet.
Most people would enjoy watching children ride their bicycles in the empty lot, but the giggling kids reflect off the mirror lenses in a way that gives him Dean all the charisma of a skanky pedophile as he ‘protects the car from ankle-biters’. He’s determined to stay stuck in the mud and blame it on the beers Sam bought him. Typical.
The kids make a wide berth around Dean as he plays Secret Service to the Impala. Sam doesn’t have the option of avoidance. Yesterday, this had seemed like a good idea, and now Sam feels like his universe is a giant, pink bubble, and there’s no way to break it to Dean without getting gum in his hair.
He wishes he’d asked for a bike with a horn on it.
“What? No training wheels, little boy?” Only Dean’s eyebrows and one cynical corner of his mouth rise. His arms stay crossed as Sam wheels into sight.
“Nope. Don’t need ‘em,” Sam quips. “My big brother taught me how to ride without ‘em.”
Maybe the other side of Dean’s mouth makes a small effort to join the first, still not glee, but Sam will take it.
“Must be some big brother.”
“The best,” Sam snickers. He looks down as he does, because, yeah…terms of endearment? Definitely, not on the A-list at Club Winchester. He doesn’t expect Dean to return the sentiment, but he really doesn’t think the watered-down chick flick moment deserves the glare he actually gets.
Bob, the proprietor, wheels a second bike up beside him, gear wheels clicking under the chain, and it’s not the only thing back-pedaling. Dean doesn’t look surprised, doesn’t look like ‘Happy Birthday,’ or ‘Merry Christmas.’ Dean looks like he just found out Sam dropped his toothbrush in the toilet, while he’s brushing with it.
“What’s that?” Dean asks. The laugh he forces into his voice sounds more like a cough. His arms and ankles come unfolded, and he stands straight up, making the transition from patronizing and abrasive to fight or flight quicker than a bird rips the wings off a moth it snatches from the air.
Sam follows Dean’s gaze and sees Bob wheeling the second bike up behind him. “It’s a bike?” He’s going for sarcasm, but it comes out a question. Surely it can’t just be a bike if Dean’s looking at it like it’s an evil Decepticon.
“You’re kidding.”
Sam purses his lips, feels his eyebrows draw into the center of his forehead. Seriously, it’s a bike, so he’s not really sure what the implied joke is.
“N-nno, I’m pretty sure it’s a bike. Kinda what people do here. Says so right on the sign.”
Dean’s face jumps in a way that Sam just knows he’s rolling his eyes behind the glasses.
“What I mean is we came up here to work, remember? Save the tourists, not become them.”
“That’s the thing, this…” he gestures to the bike with his head, “is the only way to get where we’re going, unless you wanna spend a whole day walking and spend the night camping out in X-Wolf country.”
“No.”
“What?”
Dean shrugs and walks off, stops to take the keys out of the ignition and starts to open the trunk. Sam watches in silence until Dean’s camping gear lands on the ground at his feet.
“Dean?”
“I said, no, Sam. We’re hunters, not tourists, and it’s not safe. What if we get ambushed? Unless you’ve figured out how to hold a gun in your teeth and pull the trigger with your tongue…” He pauses with a thoughtful pout. “Come to think of it, I know a few chicks that might just be able to teach you…”
“Dean, we’re not walking ten miles into the woods and camping out in mosquito Grand Central Station when we’ve got perfectly good transportation, and it’s free.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have, say, a free four-wheeler…” He directs it at Bob like Sam’s not even part of the conversation.
“’Fraid not,” Bob says. “I don’t allow ‘em . They tear up the bike trails.”
“Right,” Dean sniggers. “’Cuz we wouldn’t want the bike Nazi’s to fall on their padded shorts.”
And that’s just it!
“Dean!”
“I said, no, Sam.”
Sam’s not hearing it. He makes a show of throwing an arm over Dean’s shoulder, tightens his hand into a claw so Dean can’t duck away, and steers him over to the far side of the car. Once they’re there, he tosses his best, ‘somebody woke up on the wrong side of his playpen’ grin over the Impala at Bob. “Thanks, Bob. I’ve got it from here. You can just leave the other bike.”
Dean jerks his leather jacket free of Sam’s grip and shrugs it back into place. Sam lets him, but waits until Bob closes the office door to continue.
“Excuse me? Do you have to be completely contrary about everything?”
Dean scowls. “No, not everything, just the stupid shit. Seriously, Sam? Mountain bikes? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking it might be kinda fun. You know, the kind of thing normal brothers might actually do together.” He stops and runs a hand roughly through his hair. Whatever they are right now, it’s definitely not together, and maybe shouting in each other’s faces isn’t the best way to remedy that. Especially not in public. It’s just not civilized.
Dean resumes his position against the car, arms and ankles crossed, and Sam has the overwhelming desire to kick him in the shins. He doesn’t, though, because, yeah, immature much?
“Look, I screwed up. I get it,” Sam concedes. “I should’ve asked before I dragged you out here. “ A beat. “It’s just…well, lately we seem more like business partners than brothers. We get the job done, and then retreat to our cubicles.” He pauses, waits for the smirk on Dean’s face that says he’s just conjugated cubicles into pubicles, but it never comes. “I just thought it would be a good way…”
“Oh, God, we are not having a male bonding discussion, are we? ‘Cuz, if you wanna sit around watching sports and burping, you just kinda do it, ya know? Talking about it is just weird.”
“Well, we wouldn’t have to talk about it, if you didn’t shut me down every time I try to be subtle.” Sam leans back against the car beside his brother, their combined weight compressing the shocks on that side with a slow creak like sunlight rolling over a tin roof at dawn. “We’re here. We’re getting paid. Bob even set us up in a cabin around back so we can start first thing in the morning. Couldn’t you humor me, just this once? I mean, it’s not like you can’t ride a bike.”
Dean’s skin tones change from hangover hues to bright red behind his shades, and his head sinks lower between his shoulder blades.
Sam wants to believe the tremble in Dean’s chin is a snarky comeback searching for a punch line, but he knows, hears the unspoken words the way a wolf hears a bleating lamb.
“Dean…?
But Dean doesn’t answer, just smacks both his hands flat against the car door and walks away.
Way to kick the puppy, Sam.
xXx
“What’s the matter, Winchester? Someone kicked your puppy?”
Sam doesn’t look up. He keeps his eyes fixed on the ground and the shining silver spokes of his bike wheels going round and round as Cory Standish pedals circles around him and Dean on his bike, his shiny, new bike…without training wheels.
Dean’s arm tightens protectively over Sam’s shoulders, and Sam’s fingers flex around the handle bars. He’d insisted on riding his bike to school, just like all the other kids, but he’s walking it home, because only babies ride bikes with training wheels.
Dean doesn’t say anything on the whole walk home, and Sam just knows he’s thinking, ‘I told ya so.’ He has every right to think it. He did tell Sam so, gave him the same look he’d given him when Sam had insisted on eating Chex Party Mix for breakfast…in a bowl, with milk and sugar. But Sam had been stubborn, tired of moving off the sidewalk on his walk to school so all of his classmates could pedal past.
He should’ve listened to Dean.
Dean pats Sam on the shoulder, and he looks up, just realizing they’ve made it all the way home, and Cory’s still circling around them like some neurotic border collie. “Go on and get ready for dinner,” Dean says. “I’ll put your bike away.”
Sam nods and runs up the stairs. The slamming of a screen door never sounded so good.
Later, as they take the training wheels off the bike, Sam pretends not to notice that Dean’s knuckles are skinned and raw-looking. But even though they must hurt, Dean spends all weekend holding onto the back of Sam’s bike seat and running until finally, finally, he lets go.
When Sam rides to school that Monday, without his training wheels, he definitely notices that Cory’s got a black eye, and his shiny, new bike’s not quite so shiny anymore.
Yeah, Dean’s the bestest big brother ever.
xXx
Sam watches the fizz bubble out of his beer as he sits back on his bed in the cabin. He picks at the label and watches the beverage go flat when he’d really like to down the bottle in his hand and a few more behind that.
He can’t, though. He’s pretty sure that’s exactly what Dean’s up to just then, and well, besides the fact that he figures Dean deserves to get blitzed more than he does, the two of them getting sloshed together is just not something they allow themselves to do. It’s just a bad, careless idea, and Sam’s had enough of those in the last twenty-four hours to last a month.
Dean can’t ride a bike. Sam didn’t know. How could Sam not know? How sheltered does a kid have to be not to know something that basic about his own brother? Kinda makes him wonder what else he doesn’t know.
Color of his eyes? Check. Color of his hair? Well, that’s open for debate. Shoe size? Check. (And jean size, including inseam, in case anyone wants to know if there actually is a correlation between that and the shoes.)
Hell, Sam’s got tons of things catalogued in his Dean archive that probably fall under the heading of too much information: why he absolutely should never wear boots without a good dousing of Gold Bond powder; why he never, ever goes commando, no matter how convenient that may seem; where he keeps his condoms; even how often he goes to the bathroom, what he does in there, and consequently, when the runs to the drug store are not to buy condoms or first aid supplies even though Dean swears they are.
Sam knows Dean. Not in the biblical sense (despite the numerous knowing smirks of people who really don’t), but certainly as well as any one heterosexual male can know another. At least, he’s really been making an effort. That’s gotta count for something. Right?
But it doesn’t change the fact that somehow Dean missed out on something most people take for granted that all American kids learn, and his own brother didn’t even know. Sam’s a poor excuse for a brother, generic, and Dean deserves designer brand.
Sam looks up as the door opens and Dean walks in. Huh, he’s not drunk.
Dean nods toward the open laptop on the table. “You learn anything?”
“Nothing I didn’t already know.”
Dean raises his arms out to the side. “Yeah? You wanna fill me in?”
“You first.” Sam tries not to say it with accusation. It’s not Dean’s fault Sam didn’t know, except for the part where Dean knew and never mentioned it, that is. Sam’s face feels heavy like it’s been stretched out from riding with his head out the window and is just hanging with no muscle tone left in it at all. He thinks if he looks down at his beer bottle again, his cheeks will fold down over his nose and eyes, and he’ll just smother in the angst. He wonders if that will qualify as suicide.
“It’s no big deal, Sam. Let it go.”
“I can’t.” And ain’t that the truth? That’s like telling Achilles to chop off his leg so he can be truly invincible.
Dean shakes his head with a sigh and falls back on his bed, arms splayed. “There’s nothing to tell,” he says to the ceiling. “I never had a bike. Dad never had time to teach me to ride, and I had my hands full watching you. I never even thought about it ‘til you got it in your head that you wanted a bike. And hell, by the time you’re old enough to drive, bikes are for geeks, anyway.”
Sam shakes his head and crosses his arms. “You mean you never wanted to ride a bike? Ever?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m not surprised, now can we please talk about this case so we can collect our paycheck and get out of this Hell?”
Dean’s choice of words is just poor enough to make Sam switch mental gears. He sets his beer down on the night stand with a slosh and rolls around to set his feet on the floor.
“Well, I think it’s just some kind of mutant dog, like the species that turned up in Texas everyone was calling a chupacabra.”
Instead of sitting up on the bed, Dean just looks down his nose at Sam, and when he can’t appear to see over his own lips, elongates his entire face from chin to eyebrows so his mouth gapes open. “And what about the missing baby?”
Sam ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck. “Actually, I’m not sure that has anything to do with this. The Koppel family was camping back in the woods ten years ago. They brought their three-month-old baby boy with them.”
“Throwing Daniel to the lion’s den…” Dean stares up at the ceiling, obviously thinking out loud. “Something that small’s sure to attract predators.”
Sam nods. “Yeah, baby Tommy disappeared from the tent in the middle of the night. Parents said they saw wolves in the area…”
“Ahh, dingoes got me bubby, classic alibi.”
“Dean, these people lost their baby.”
“Or just came back without it. Who brings a baby that young on a camping trip, anyway?”
“So you think maybe a myling, the spirit of a baby abandoned to the elements?”
Dean folds his hands behind his neck and raises his head and shoulders off the bed to face Sam. “No. No one’s actually been attacked, but I wouldn’t rule anything out. Besides, I hope not. Those things are damned near impossible to do a salt and burn on. Teeny tiny bones scatter like something out of a Kansas song.”
They both fall silent, solemnly contemplating the possibility that a parent could just abandon a child.
“Anyway, it’s just a thought,” Dean says, a might too dismissively for Sam’s liking. “Guess we should call it a night, get an early start in the morning.”
Sam casts a skeptical glance at the clock radio that’s only just moved past ten o’clock. “Yeah. I guess.”
Doesn’t take a bloodhound to know Dean’s up to something.
xXx
Sam knows Dean thinks he’s asleep when he creeps out of the room at 2:00 a.m. He should be, but of course, he’s preoccupied feeling like the world’s worst brother, despite Dean’s assurance that it doesn’t matter. One thing Sam’s still pretty sure he knows about his brother—when he says it’s fine, it isn’t.
Sam also knows Dean doesn’t want him to try to fix it, and since he has no idea what he could possibly do, anyway, he keeps his eyes shut and stays still in his bed until the door clicks shut and the dead bolt snaps into place.
He waits another ten minutes for the sound of the Impala starting, ears straining for any clue as to what Dean’s doing out there.
When his curiosity gets too much, he glides out from under his sheets and over to the window. He moves the curtain aside, glad it’s a nearly full moon and a clear sky so the moonlight reflecting off the window pane keeps him hidden like Dean’s eyes behind his sunglasses. For some reason, that reminds him of an old Corey Hart song, and he almost laughs off some of the brood until he sees what he’s been looking for.
A shadow moves in the parking lot on the other side of the Impala. For a second, Dean’s head and shoulders are the only things visible over the roof of the car, but Sam can’t account for the way he’s bent forward, tongue poking out between his lips in deep concentration until the front wheel of the bike comes into view.
Sam ducks back behind the curtain, suddenly feeling like he’s walked into someone else’s bedroom by mistake and caught them in the act. He doesn’t want to look. There’s a reason Dean snuck out in the middle of the night to do it, but he can’t look away.
It’s the first time Dean’s ridden a bike. It’s not the Grand Canyon, but moonlight washing across the parking lot in shimmering trails that tremble and quiver with the wind through the treetops is almost as stunning, especially when it reflects off the spokes of the bike, the glint of determination in Dean’s eyes.
Dean tries. Sam has to give him credit. He’s got the right idea. He straddle-walks the bike forward until he maneuvers one pedal up, then puts a foot on it and tries to balance in the seat while the next pedal comes up.
Once or twice, he actually manages to pedal a couple of times with each foot before the handle bars start to jerk, he looks up to see where he’s going, and loses his balance.
Sam watches for nearly half an hour mentally cringing every time Dean tips and has to right himself. He just can’t seem to get his feet on the pedals to get himself going without looking down, and by the time he looks up again, he’s usually on some path of destruction, about to meet destiny head on in the form of a sign post, the side of the building, or God forbid, the side of the car.
Sam’s not sure when he makes up his mind to go out and help his brother for chrissakes, but somehow he gets his pants on, slips on some shoes, and is already standing outside the door the next time Dean comes by.
Dean doesn’t see him at first, but Sam gets a good look at him as he coasts closer. Dean’s got his tongue poking out the right side of his mouth, eyebrows lifted nearly to his hairline as though he can will himself forward by opening his eyes as far as they will go and grunting.
As cute as it is, Sam knows Dean will kick his ass if he catches him smirking, so Sam covers his mouth with his hand and dry coughs with his head turned to give Dean a chance to compose himself before glancing back up.
The shadow that crawls over Dean’s face when he meets Sam’s eyes is more than just the darkness before dawn. Sam wouldn’t blame him if he gave the bike a fling and stormed back into the room. Sam brought his own key out, just in case.
Instead, Dean meets his gaze and snickers, balances his bike with one hand, and rubs at his chin with the other. “You’re out a little late, aren’t you, little boy?”
Sam has no idea why, but he shrugs and hooks his thumbs in his pockets. “I think maybe I am. Do me a favor and don’t tell my big brother. He’s a little overprotective.”
“So, he wouldn’t want you to be hanging out in a dark parking lot with a big, bad biker like me.”
“He’d probably kick my ass for sneaking out of the room.”
Dean laughs and ducks his gaze. “Yeah, he probably would.”
Sam bites his lip nervously, lets the façade fall away. “So, you gonna let me help you, or am I gonna have to go back in there and tear myself up about our fucked up childhood some more?”
Dean sighs. “So, I guess letting this go is not an option.”
“Nope.” He doesn’t say they might never get another chance.
“Well, then what kind of big brother would I be if I said no?”
Sam shrugs but doesn’t answer. He’s got no problem criticizing Dean for any number of things, but he’ll never be able to call him a bad brother.
“’K, then, get your ass over and give me a shove off,” Dean says, straddle-walking the bike into position for another go.
“Don’t look at the pedals.”
“How else am I supposed to find the damned things? They’re so small, and my boots ain’t exactly thin-soled.”
“Not to mention you’re bow-legged as a toilet seat,” Sam teases. “Just don’t worry about the pedals. I don’t know. Kinda hold your legs out to the side and try to keep your balance while I push you. Think about...sliding down a banister.”
Dean looks skeptical but gives it a try. He sits in the seat, then stands back up again with a grimace.
Sam raises one eyebrow. “Problem?”
Dean chuckles. “Just wondering where I can get a pair of those padded shorts.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“Boating accident,” Dean smirks. It takes Sam a second to remember the girl from the night before and the boathouse on the lake behind the bar. “An accident named Millicent.” He rubs his ass through his jeans. “Chick had some wicked long fingernails. And the things she could do with ‘em…” Dean purses his lips in a classic ‘ooh’ of appreciation.
Again with the too much information. Sam chooses to ignore it, grabs the seat of the bike, and starts to push.
“Whoa there, Trigger,” Dean says, scrambling, but a few seconds later, the tongue’s back poking out the corner of his mouth.
“I said, don’t look down.”
“Hmm? Oh. “ Dean makes a pointed attempt to look where he’s going, but Sam notices the flutter of eyelashes as Dean keeps glancing down. He uses the distraction and speeds up so that Dean rocks back into a more balanced position, legs splayed like the sides of a wooden clothespin on a line. Sam speeds up as Dean straightens the handlebars. They reach the end of the parking lot and make a smooth, sweeping turn, start down the other side. It’s the first time Dean’s made a turn without wobbling or stopping, and the grin on Dean’s face right then? Worth all the angst.
Sam’s pretty sure that’s glee.
xXx
Sam bites his lip as he weaves drunkenly down the sidewalk on his way to school. He keeps his chin tucked with determination, but it’s hard to keep his balance and still go slow enough for Dean to walk beside him. The other kids whiz by on their bikes, laughing and chasing after each other.
“C’mon Sam,” Chrissy Jones squeals as she pedals by up. “I’ll race you.” Sam shakes his head and looks back at Dean, then down as Chrissy pedals off.
“You’re not gonna let a girl beat you, are ya?”
Sam looks up just long enough to see Dean jerk his chin in the direction of the speeding bike. “Go on…”
And Sam does.
xXx
The fifth trip around the parking lot, Sam draws to a halt, breathing hard, and Dean coasts ahead. Just when Sam thinks he’ll lose momentum and slide to a stop, he shouts, “Go on…”
Dean’s feet find the pedals, and he goes.
Sam’s sure the second time Dean laps him in the parking lot under his own power, that glee is definitely the best word to describe the look on Dean’s face, and an incidental look at his own reflection in the Impala’s rear window, reminds him that brotherhood is mutual.
xXx
It’s only a moment in time, one grain of sand in the still-leaking hourglass, and the next morning they’re back on the job…or they will be, as soon as they figure out how to get their gear strapped onto the bikes and Sam gets directions from Bob on the least difficult trail to where they’re going. But it’s the first time Sam’s looked forward to a hunt in a long time, feels more like it’s a challenge, an opportunity rather than a duty.
He changes his mind in record time when he rounds the corner of the office and finds Dean sprawled in the parking lot, the front spokes of his bike bent at odd angles and a very angry looking dude in padded bike shorts glaring down at him. The man’s cussing and examining his bike closely while Sam rushes to Dean’s side and offers him a hand to his feet. Dean’s red with embarrassment and looks like he’s ready to slink off into the woods and die like a dog hit by a car.
“I was trying to get a feel for the way it handled with the gear tied on,” Dean confesses. “I didn’t see him.”
The neon t-shirt suggests the pissed dude is part of the park –sponsored racing team. He finds one bent spoke on his back wheel and flies off the handle. “Fucking moron! You weren’t even looking where the hell you were going. Do you have any idea how much that bike is worth?” He’s in Dean’s face, but Dean ducks his gaze.
“Look,” Sam tries to reason. “I’m sure my brother’s sorry. He didn’t mean it.”
“You brother rides like he needs training wheels. He’s got no business sharing the park with professionals,” the man shouts, getting in Sam’s face this time.
Sam’s could choose that moment to be eloquent. He’s got a hundred choice words that would describe how arrogant, haughty, insolent and supercilious the bastard is, and a thousand reasonable statements that might ameliorate (how’s that for eloquent) the situation.
Instead, Sam growls and punches the guy out.
They don’t talk about it the entire ten mile hike out into the woods with their tails tucked between their legs.
xXx
When they come back two days later with the news that what they found in the woods is not the thing that ate little Tommy Koppel but little Tommy Koppel in all his living, walking on all fours, feral glory, they think it might have been worth all their trouble. It’s worth it, if they can be the benefactors of a happy reunion for once instead of the bearers of bad news and worse luck.
Instead, the Koppels go to jail for child abandonment. As it turns out, Tommy’s the myling that never was, and the lone man among wolves whose eyes had glistened in the full moon like the highway off the hood of the Impala becomes the lone wolf among men, in the custody of child protective services, at least until he’s eighteen.
Sam’s read enough about feral children to know he’ll never appreciate three meals a day he didn’t hunt himself, or understand how a bed to himself is better for sleeping than a warm hole surrounded with family.
That night Sam and Dean do something they’ve never done before. They get drunk together, and to hell with the things that go bump in the night. Lately, the things that go bump in the day are a helluva lot scarier.
They’re both in their beds, a beer in one hand and an arm tossed casually over their respective eyes when Sam says, “I shouldn’t have hit that guy, Dean. I’m no better than him.”
“Trust me on this, Sam. You’re better than him. Somebody raised you right.”
“But I actually felt good breaking his nose. What does that make me?”
“The bestest little brother ever.”
“What would you say if I said I’m kinda trying to figure out a way to spring that kid outta the county facility and take him back home?”
“I’d say, that’s my boy.”
“Huh…”
It ain’t eloquent, cultured, refined, or civilized. Kinda generic, as responses go.
It’s enough.
The End
Authors:
tru_faith_lost and 3rd_legGenre: Gen fic, no pairings, mentions of Dean/OFCs, but what episode doesn't?
Rating: PG-13 for language
Previous Chapters: My Site
Warnings: As usual for language.
Summary: Instead of connecting with each other, the only family they have left, Dean’s chasing tail, and Sam’s tucking his. Hi-diddly-ho neighbor, that just takes all the cake.
Ackowledgment: This fic was inspired by the comment left by dean’sdreamingangel. We discussed it, posted a poll on LJ, and decided it’s entirely possible for this to be true. At any rate, it made us think, so this one’s for you, darlin’.
Disclaimer: If they were ours, they’d growl a lot more.
Generic
Eighteen Years Ago
“Geez, Sammy. You’re old enough for a two-wheeler now. Don’t you think you’re a little big for this?”
Sam turns his pudgy, six-year-old face up and grins at Dean from beneath the wrinkles his chin is pressing in the front of Dean’s t-shirt—the one that says Hell’s Bells and smells like Pastor Jim’s sanctuary.
“You’re never too big for hugsth, Dean,” Sammy lisps through the gap in his face where his teeth used to be.
Dean pries Sam’s hands loose of the vice-like grip he’s got around Dean’s waist and tosses an arm carelessly over his shoulders,(‘cept Sammy’s six and sees things for what they are, knows it’s not careless at all) uses the leverage to turn them both in a direction where they can more easily check out Sam’s birthday present.
“Nope. Not too big. Just too cool.” He says it with a grin that splits his face in two. Sam doesn’t know why Dean’s so happy. Sam’s the one with the new bike.
“I’m cool? Like you?”
“Sure,” Dean says. “Just look at these wheels. You’re the coolest kid in the county.”
Dean’s right. It’s the coolest bike Sam’s ever seen, black and shiny with silver reflector tubes on every spoke. There’s even a Dodge Superbee decal on each of the front forks. (Because the only thing Chevy forgot when it made the Impala was a supercool mascot to go with it.)
Sure, the training wheels are still on the bike, but the hubs are painted chrome. Sam knows, now, why Dean had spent every afternoon at Pastor Jim’s and come home every night smelling like Murphy’s Oil Soap and Pledge.
“You’ll teach me to ride it, too, wontcha?” Sammy can barely keep the squeal out of his voice, but he tries. Dean hates when he squeals, says it makes him sound like a girl. Sam doesn’t know. Maybe it does.
Dean pats him on the shoulder. “Sure, squirt. Dad would have my a…head if I gave you the thing and then let you get thrashed on it.”
Sam gives up trying to control the noises he makes. Dean’s the bestest big brother ever.
“You can ride it, too,” Sam offers. His face hurts from grinning so hard, and ants in his pants doesn’t even begin to explain the excited little dance his feet are doing.
Dean shoves his hands in his pockets, twists back and forth a few times, chin in his chest. “Naw. It’s too small. I’d bang my knees on the handle bars. Besides,” he adds, nudging Sam with an elbow, “the car’s gonna be mine someday, and I’m not gonna let anyone else drive it, ever.”
Sam sticks out his tongue and punches Dean in the arm. “Jerk!”
“Brat!” Dean retorts, but he says it with a smile.
Present Day--Pardeeville, Wisconsin
No smile even threatens to crack Sam’s stoic expression as he sighs upward through his long bangs, relishing the long, slow release like the final exhale off the last good drag on a cigarette. Someday that demon bitch is gonna get hers for being the one who made it possible for him to sit in a smoky bar and not cough up a lung.
His research, tonight as most any night, has pretty much consisted of staring at the ‘Jake loves Chrissy’, carved into the back of his chair while slow-loading web pages appear on his screen, one pixel at a freaking time. He should be thanking his lucky stars the bar owner sprang for the wireless internet service to go with the cable sports package he supplies for the patrons, but no, he’s not thankful, not tonight, and yeah, it sucks out loud.
Sucks out loud. Now that’s eloquent.
Sam doesn’t consider himself eloquent anymore, certainly not of that caliber that’s prepared for closing arguments or, god forbid, eulogies. That’s probably why Dean seems to be winning their debates way more than he used to. Eloquent is one of those words Sam has very little cause to use these days, except when describing all the ways in which he and Dean are not.
He spends most of his time talking to Dean (or at him, given Dean’s propensity for not talking about anything that matters), and a good deal of the rest of his conversations involve people in the ‘fire bad, tree pretty’ stages of post-traumatic stress. What’s left for stunning, intellectual conversation is spent in dives like The Green Frog in Pardeeville, Wisconsin.
Yeah, Pardeeville, home of the Bulldogs and a whole lot of drunk, oppressed farmers… and farmers’ daughters, as Dean had been so quick to point out before heading out back with a prime example.
Sam really doesn’t want to speculate about what Dean and the dairy princess are doing out there, but he thinks he heard talk of a boat house, and really, is there any question?
Downstairs brain, meet farmer’s daughter. And brother? What brother? You mean that dude with the bitch face in the corner? Real buzzkill, that kid.
Sam rolls his bottom lip between a thumb and forefinger, elbow on the table, and thunderclouds over his head. He wonders how Dean’s idea of living it up seems to involve dragging Sam down in dumps like these.
A dude in a Dekalb corn cap, ringed black with sweat from hours on the back forty, knocks into his table on the way to the bathroom, and that’s all she wrote for Sam’s one open beer.
“Shit!” – one syllable word. Eloquent.
Farmer McStinky doesn’t stop long enough for Sam to find out just what the dude’s in such a hurry to do. (Though he does think maybe he’s been watching too much Grey’s Anatomy) Sam would lay money it’s another one syllable word, probably starting with ‘p’, and if the hand gesture he uses to say goodbye is any indicator, it ain’t pray.
Sam jumps off his backward-turned chair and accidentally kicks it over with an embarrassing crash as he lifts his laptop. He just manages to rescue the computer in time to avoid the advancing flood of beer rolling toward it, and for reasons he’s afraid to delve into, he growls.
Seriously, he growls, and no one’s more surprised than Sam.
His eyebrows join in the valley forming over the bridge of his nose, and his chin wrinkles with distaste as he shakes the beer from his fingertips, juggling his last saving grace in this hick town one-handed as he bats at the trickle that has landed in his lap before it can soak in. He’s looking around for the idiot making that noise when he realizes…he’s the idiot.
Isn’t that just peachy? It’s finally happened. He’s assimilated the native customs.
And the natives are puking drunk.
Sure, he can intellectualize and say the noise rumbling over his tongue and through his clenched teeth, punctuated by the dark squint around his eyes, is really just every four-letter-word he knows strung together into some ϋber-syllabic curse that would make Webster proud.
But no. It’s just a growl.
Sam Winchester did not spend hours and hours memorizing a thousand archaic ways to say, ‘I’m pissed off,’ on his SATs to turn around and lobby for the effectiveness of the common grunt and growl as forms of communication. He knows he has words for just how friggin’ perfect it is that it’s his beer that falls over and nearly ruins his computer. Plenty of words for the fact that it’s his only beer, the same one he’s been nursing all night, while Dean’s half dozen empties rattle against each other on the table without even teetering.
He has words for how frustrated he is the hours spent researching the stuff Dean’s not allowed to research have yielded nothing but the growing certainty that some dude named Jake got pretty damned lucky one night after sitting in this chair. He’d like to think this whole leaking hourglass motivation has given him a new attitude, a ‘live in the moment and worry about the moment when it’s past’ kind of zeal. The growl in his throat, however, suggests perhaps feral is a better descriptor. He’s not sure if he’s okay with that, but hey, whatever gets the job done.
Not that he’s gonna waste time angsting over the whys of his sudden literary devolution. He can deal. When in Rome, right? He’s just not sure whether he’s the gladiator here or the beast sent in to kill him. Some of both, he thinks.
But that’s beside the point, and a tad too eloquent or his current state of mind.
Sam casts a glance at Dean’s empties on the table with what he plans to be a glare, but there’s no mistaking the tug of longing in his gut, a stretch of empty and lost created by shifts in paradigms he’s not ready to push. But since when does life wait until you’re ready?
He could use a few beers himself, but that’s not how it works. They can’t both let down their guard, not at the same time, and Sam’s got work to do, work that Dean can’t do himself. So he does it, alone, night after night, while Dean gets wasted and heads out back with the likes of Miss Columbia County 4-H Hostess 2001, and the only part of Sam still pissed about that is the one clinging to the intellectual irony that Dean, deal, and dead only differ by one letter.
Sam’s pretty sure his stunning intellect, with all its bells, whistles, and four syllable words, is not going to save Dean, and he doesn’t care if saving Dean might mean losing that part of himself. You win some, you lose some, and in the end, hope death finds you at least one ahead.
But that doesn’t explain why Sam’s angry, acerbic, acrimonious, wrathful, and yeah, pissed off at the moment. His head may be checking out, to some degree, but his heart’s checking in, and it doesn’t care about logical. Sam figures he owes that to the demon blood pumping through it, or to Dean.
Sam brushes at the beer-soaked crotch of his jeans, computer suspended in one hand over the table, like the Statue of Liberty’s torch, and looks around for a waitress or a discarded dishtowel.
The 4-H queen comes in the back door just then, dark hair hanging down her back and wet at the ends, having lost whatever gaudy plastic accessory had been holding it up when she and Dean snuck out an hour ago. She’s got her fingers in one of Dean’s belt loops and leads him behind her like a puppy, a well-trained puppy at that. Glitter polish sparkles on her cheap, acrylic nails, and Dean rests a hand at the hip of her vinyl skirt.
Everything about the girl screams generic, off-brand, and cheap, just like every other girl Dean’s ever picked up in one of these places. Hell, just like everything Dean’s ever had.
Sam nods a thanks to the waitress who’s finally showed up to wipe off his table as she carries off Dean’s bottles. He notes even the friggin’ beer is some off-brand local variety on special that night.
So not good enough. None of it is. It’s not like he doesn’t want Dean to have his cake and eat it, too-- new girl every night, different cake, same frosting. He just wishes Dean would realize there’s more than cake.
Sam watches Dean say his goodbyes to the Midwest farmer’s daughter, seemingly unaware that she’s not a California girl. A soft kiss and slow pull back, brush of eyelash across cheek bone, and a smile.
Dean’s smiling. Really smiling.
Not one of those, eyebrows raised to the hairline, sarcastic, ‘in your face college boy’ grins.
Not an, eyebrows at half mast, head-tilted plaintively, ‘c’mon, Sammy, let’s don’t do this, little brother’ smile.
It’s an, eyes crinkling at the corners, dimples pitting in his cheeks, ‘I really had a nice time tonight’ smile.
He never smiles at Sam like that.
Okay, so that doesn’t sound quite right. Because, really, Dean should not look at Sam the way he looks at one of his one night stands; they’re brothers for chrissakes, but Sam knows the look on Dean’s face right then is not just some sated version of the horndog brother he gets to see between conquests. It has nothing to do with sex. It’s…and his mind is stuck again on that mental thesaurus which randomly tosses out…blissful ignorance? Joyful indifference? Resolution?…Glee.
But Dean doesn’t do glee. Not Sam’s Dean. Dean also doesn’t do midnight walks in the tall, wet grass, but the girl he’s with is carrying her sandals in her hand, and the cuffs of Dean’s designer jeans by St. Vincent de Paul are damp all the way to the knee.
Sam’s indisposed, vexed, averse, and incensed all over. If Dean wasn’t close enough to hear, Sam thinks he’d probably growl again. At this point, he really has no words. No words for how freaking unfair it is that Sam’s spending all his time and energy scraping over open wounds on a daily and nightly basis in the waning hope of breaking an unbreakable deal, (yes, dreaming the impossible dream, thank you very much, Don Quixote), and Sancho Panda’s only happy in the company of some random Dulcinea. Why is that?
The girl answers for him. She sees Dean’s smile and raises him one of her own, smiles back like someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someday someone’s wife and mother, and Dean doesn’t seem surprised that all that comes in a store brand box.
Sam’s jaw aches like it hasn’t been unclenched for months, and she smiles back.
The mental growl that never completely shushed in his mind yelps like a kicked puppy and skitters under the nearest bed. The throb in his neck and temples is enough to tell him, no, he doesn’t smile back. Who has the time between worry, dread, frantic, desperate, and, oh yeah, pissed off?
But this is not the time for justification. It’s time for change.
Instead of connecting with each other, the only family they have left, Dean’s chasing tail, and Sam’s tucking his. Hi-diddly-ho neighbor, that just takes all the cake.
If what you give is what you get, then Sam figures his own smiles of late must have all the grace and purpose of a suncatcher glued to a wall. If it really is an unbreakable deal, a scowl of determination won’t make a very fond memory for Dean to carry into Hell with him.
Sam slouches back into his chair, turns his back on Dean and the girl at the bar. He wants to postpone the inevitable smirk and eyebrow waggle Dean is sure to send his way once he realizes Sam is watching; needs to remember a little while longer why this, even this pathetic, broken little life that drags them into backwoods bars on nearly deserted strips of farm roads, is worth saving.
He needs to remember what Dean looks like when he’s happy, because he’s not sure when he’ll ever see it again. Seems like the last time he noticed was forever ago.
Sam bites his lip and straightens in his chair. His attempt to capture the moment and bask in the afterglow of epiphany fails miserably in all of thirty seconds.
They’re screwed up. Point taken. Doesn’t mean he has to just accept it. His hackles are on end, now, and no, Sam doesn’t do tail tucked between his legs.
This Sam’s a friggin’ pit bull. He’s hot on the trail of the bull, follows the trail of BS Dean passes off as conversation. Sam knows his brother better than anyone. He knows all of Dean’s buttons, and he knows how to push them. One of those buttons is bound to wipe the shit-eating grin off Dean’s face and replace it with a genuine smile.
Dean may settle for generic, but Sam doesn’t. He won’t. Dean deserves name brand.
Sam has an idea, reaches into his pocket, pulls out his phone. Dean’s a hunter, and Sam’s got just the hunt in mind.
“Yeah, is this Backwoods Bob’s All-Terrain…” If Sam had a tail, it’d so be wagging.
xXx
“What’re you grinnin’ about?” Dean taps the back of Sam’s head with just enough force to knock his bangs over his eyes. Sam, in turn, rolls them in his sockets but doesn’t stop grinning. “Don’t tell me you’re looking at porn when there’s probably ten girls in here who’d show you the real deal.” Dean leans down, close enough to Sam’s ear that Sam can actually hear his eyebrows waggling. “And let me tell you, they don’t call it Party-ville for nothin’.”
Sam shakes his head. “Shut up and drink your beer. I’m buying.”
Dean quirks a glance in Sam’s direction but picks up the beer with a shrug. “Sam, if you wanna drive, all you gotta do is ask.”
Sam’s not the only one who knows his brother’s buttons. He holds up his hand, as much to say, ‘you caught me’ as to ask for the keys, and Dean obliges, tossing the keyring through the air with surprising accuracy considering the number of beers he’s already had.
“Thanks. Now shut up and drink your beer.”
Dean winks and raises the long neck to his lips, pauses just before taking a swallow. “If you’re trying to get me drunk, it’s too late. Not that I ever turn down a free beer.”
Sam knows and buys another for good measure.
xXx
“You have got to be kidding me.” Dean’s voice is rough like the rest of his face under the dark glasses pressed over his eyes. It’s the first confirmation Sam has that his brother’s awake, though he’s suspected as much since Dean’s head conveniently lolled toward the window as they passed a blonde in a convertible fifty miles back. The grumbled statement doesn’t actually qualify as glee, but it is pretty much what Sam’s been anticipating. After all, that was the whole point of getting Dean passed-out drunk in the first place.
Sam lets the car idle up to the sign at the corner of the lot, chuckling to himself at the picture of the dude in camo biking shorts painted on the front of it, and turns off the engine. “C’mon, man. It’ll be fun.” Sam pats the door decisively before reaching for the handle, doesn’t bother trying to hide the smirk pulling at the corner of his lips.
“It’s our job,” Dean mumbles. “Not s’posed to be fun.”
“It’s a paying gig,” Sam retorts. He snickers at the set cross of Dean’s arms across his chest and shoves the door open. “I told the guy we’d stop by when we were in the area, and we’re here now, so deal.”
Sam stops with one leg outside the car, a hand on the steering wheel and one on the door, notices Dean isn’t making a move to follow. Instead, he’s tucking his chin down into his collar and frowning with way more effort than Sam figures is necessary to camouflage the pout of his lips. Dean really hates surprises.
Tough. Sam’s still got the keys and no intentions of leaving.
Sam takes another long look at the sign. Dean’s disdain has got to be the after-effects of the alcohol. It can’t possibly have anything to do with ‘Backwoods Bob’s All-Terrain Bike Tours and Dirt Tracks.’ After all, according to Bob himself, it’s ‘the best way to enjoy the land of ten thousand lakes without getting wet.’ What’s not to love?
“And what exactly is Bob’s major malfunction?” Dean asks dryly. “Ichabod Crane turn in his horse for a two-wheeler?”
Sam pulls his leg back inside the car and turns, bites his thumb nail reluctantly. “Well, it’s a…Thing,” he explains, not exactly sure what to call the reason that the half of the sign advertising guided mountain bike tours into the north woods had been boarded over.
“Yeah, good to know that Stanford education’s finally paying off,” Dean grouses into his chest. “Hope you got a good ghost writer lined up to write your memoirs.”
Eloquent yet again, Sam knows. “Seriously, Dean, that’s what the locals call it—the Thing. Big, ugly, wolf or wolf-dog of some sort. Supposedly, there have been reports of strange screams in the forest for years now, but people have caught glimpses of some…thing in the area since spring. Really hurting the outdoor excursion business.”
Dean shifts stiffly in his seat. “Sounds like a job for the Forestry Service, Parks and Wildlife, or Department of Natural Resources, not us.”
“Except there are no ranches this far back in the sticks, and the shooting of wolves is only justifiable in cases of livestock loss.”
“So, basically, even guys whose job it is to hunt this thing—note the part where that’s not us,” Dean adds, waving a still-drunken finger in the air before pointing it into his chest with a thunk, “realize that this…Thing is not a threat, and Bob’s loss of backwoods business is just a case of mass paralysis.”
“It’s paranoia, Dean.”
“No, paralysis. Cuz what better way to weasel your way out of getting off the couch for the weekend than saying the forest is haunted or whatever?”
Sam grins and ducks his head. “Maybe, but it’s still a paying gig, and, if it is a wolf, or a genetic throwback, mutant, X-Wolf or something, it’ll be the easiest money we ever earned.”
Sam notices the little snigger, even though Dean turns his head toward the window. “X-Wolf? Can we call it Logan? Cuz I’d rather meet Jane Grey. That’s a chick with some seriously supernatural assets.”
“See?” Sam catches the moment of distraction and capitalizes on it. “We’re hunters, they got something that needs hunting; it’s all good.” Sam moves to get out of the car again, hopes Dean is still too hung over to question his logic.
“Except, while we’re wasting our time going after Logan, rogue X-Wolf, and saving the rest of Backwoods Bob’s tourist season, actual demons are out there, somewhere not here, hurting actual people who are not freaks in camo bike shorts.”
Sam halts again, door swaying between farther open and closed with his fingers latched on the armrest. “Bikers are people, too, Dean.”
“Yeah, same road, same rights, same rules, my ass,” Dean grumbles. “Tell me that the next time I see one driving down the center line on one of those twisty back roads with no slow moving vehicle sign on his padded shorts. And explain that…” He points to the office window and a display of touristy bumper stickers.
“The Bike Liberation Front,” he reads and turns to Sam. One eyebrow is overly visible above the dark glasses, and one side of his mouth twists wryly. “You were saying, college boy?” A dude in desert fatigues with a gas mask on his face and riding a bicycle apparently meets Dean’s criteria for ‘freak’. Good to know Dean’s a discriminating sort when it comes to freaks.
Sam straightens his shoulders, rubs his free hand over his now, obviously-stubbled chin with a huff. When all else fails, play the little brother card.
“Fine,” Sam says with a careful pout. “You know what? I just thought a quick, easy, paying job might be nice for a change. Thought maybe we’d seen enough of Hell for awhile and might like to check out the gateway to God’s country for once. I thought wrong.” He swings his leg in and heaves the door shut with the familiar metallic whine, punctuated with the overly-forceful slam against the frame. “The missing baby was probably just a coincidence anyway.”
Dean’s hand catches Sam’s wrist as it makes a slow, calculated reach for the ignition.
“What baby?”
Sam’s inner puppy wags its tail as he bites his lip to keep from grinning. Atta boy. Good dog.
xXx
Dean’s right where Sam left him, arms folded across his chest and leaning against the door of the Impala, when Sam returns from his meeting with their benefactor. The dark glasses conceal most of Dean’s distaste for their current predicament, but Sam thinks he looks a little green around the gills, and he hasn’t even seen Sam’s surprise yet.
Most people would enjoy watching children ride their bicycles in the empty lot, but the giggling kids reflect off the mirror lenses in a way that gives him Dean all the charisma of a skanky pedophile as he ‘protects the car from ankle-biters’. He’s determined to stay stuck in the mud and blame it on the beers Sam bought him. Typical.
The kids make a wide berth around Dean as he plays Secret Service to the Impala. Sam doesn’t have the option of avoidance. Yesterday, this had seemed like a good idea, and now Sam feels like his universe is a giant, pink bubble, and there’s no way to break it to Dean without getting gum in his hair.
He wishes he’d asked for a bike with a horn on it.
“What? No training wheels, little boy?” Only Dean’s eyebrows and one cynical corner of his mouth rise. His arms stay crossed as Sam wheels into sight.
“Nope. Don’t need ‘em,” Sam quips. “My big brother taught me how to ride without ‘em.”
Maybe the other side of Dean’s mouth makes a small effort to join the first, still not glee, but Sam will take it.
“Must be some big brother.”
“The best,” Sam snickers. He looks down as he does, because, yeah…terms of endearment? Definitely, not on the A-list at Club Winchester. He doesn’t expect Dean to return the sentiment, but he really doesn’t think the watered-down chick flick moment deserves the glare he actually gets.
Bob, the proprietor, wheels a second bike up beside him, gear wheels clicking under the chain, and it’s not the only thing back-pedaling. Dean doesn’t look surprised, doesn’t look like ‘Happy Birthday,’ or ‘Merry Christmas.’ Dean looks like he just found out Sam dropped his toothbrush in the toilet, while he’s brushing with it.
“What’s that?” Dean asks. The laugh he forces into his voice sounds more like a cough. His arms and ankles come unfolded, and he stands straight up, making the transition from patronizing and abrasive to fight or flight quicker than a bird rips the wings off a moth it snatches from the air.
Sam follows Dean’s gaze and sees Bob wheeling the second bike up behind him. “It’s a bike?” He’s going for sarcasm, but it comes out a question. Surely it can’t just be a bike if Dean’s looking at it like it’s an evil Decepticon.
“You’re kidding.”
Sam purses his lips, feels his eyebrows draw into the center of his forehead. Seriously, it’s a bike, so he’s not really sure what the implied joke is.
“N-nno, I’m pretty sure it’s a bike. Kinda what people do here. Says so right on the sign.”
Dean’s face jumps in a way that Sam just knows he’s rolling his eyes behind the glasses.
“What I mean is we came up here to work, remember? Save the tourists, not become them.”
“That’s the thing, this…” he gestures to the bike with his head, “is the only way to get where we’re going, unless you wanna spend a whole day walking and spend the night camping out in X-Wolf country.”
“No.”
“What?”
Dean shrugs and walks off, stops to take the keys out of the ignition and starts to open the trunk. Sam watches in silence until Dean’s camping gear lands on the ground at his feet.
“Dean?”
“I said, no, Sam. We’re hunters, not tourists, and it’s not safe. What if we get ambushed? Unless you’ve figured out how to hold a gun in your teeth and pull the trigger with your tongue…” He pauses with a thoughtful pout. “Come to think of it, I know a few chicks that might just be able to teach you…”
“Dean, we’re not walking ten miles into the woods and camping out in mosquito Grand Central Station when we’ve got perfectly good transportation, and it’s free.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have, say, a free four-wheeler…” He directs it at Bob like Sam’s not even part of the conversation.
“’Fraid not,” Bob says. “I don’t allow ‘em . They tear up the bike trails.”
“Right,” Dean sniggers. “’Cuz we wouldn’t want the bike Nazi’s to fall on their padded shorts.”
And that’s just it!
“Dean!”
“I said, no, Sam.”
Sam’s not hearing it. He makes a show of throwing an arm over Dean’s shoulder, tightens his hand into a claw so Dean can’t duck away, and steers him over to the far side of the car. Once they’re there, he tosses his best, ‘somebody woke up on the wrong side of his playpen’ grin over the Impala at Bob. “Thanks, Bob. I’ve got it from here. You can just leave the other bike.”
Dean jerks his leather jacket free of Sam’s grip and shrugs it back into place. Sam lets him, but waits until Bob closes the office door to continue.
“Excuse me? Do you have to be completely contrary about everything?”
Dean scowls. “No, not everything, just the stupid shit. Seriously, Sam? Mountain bikes? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking it might be kinda fun. You know, the kind of thing normal brothers might actually do together.” He stops and runs a hand roughly through his hair. Whatever they are right now, it’s definitely not together, and maybe shouting in each other’s faces isn’t the best way to remedy that. Especially not in public. It’s just not civilized.
Dean resumes his position against the car, arms and ankles crossed, and Sam has the overwhelming desire to kick him in the shins. He doesn’t, though, because, yeah, immature much?
“Look, I screwed up. I get it,” Sam concedes. “I should’ve asked before I dragged you out here. “ A beat. “It’s just…well, lately we seem more like business partners than brothers. We get the job done, and then retreat to our cubicles.” He pauses, waits for the smirk on Dean’s face that says he’s just conjugated cubicles into pubicles, but it never comes. “I just thought it would be a good way…”
“Oh, God, we are not having a male bonding discussion, are we? ‘Cuz, if you wanna sit around watching sports and burping, you just kinda do it, ya know? Talking about it is just weird.”
“Well, we wouldn’t have to talk about it, if you didn’t shut me down every time I try to be subtle.” Sam leans back against the car beside his brother, their combined weight compressing the shocks on that side with a slow creak like sunlight rolling over a tin roof at dawn. “We’re here. We’re getting paid. Bob even set us up in a cabin around back so we can start first thing in the morning. Couldn’t you humor me, just this once? I mean, it’s not like you can’t ride a bike.”
Dean’s skin tones change from hangover hues to bright red behind his shades, and his head sinks lower between his shoulder blades.
Sam wants to believe the tremble in Dean’s chin is a snarky comeback searching for a punch line, but he knows, hears the unspoken words the way a wolf hears a bleating lamb.
“Dean…?
But Dean doesn’t answer, just smacks both his hands flat against the car door and walks away.
Way to kick the puppy, Sam.
xXx
“What’s the matter, Winchester? Someone kicked your puppy?”
Sam doesn’t look up. He keeps his eyes fixed on the ground and the shining silver spokes of his bike wheels going round and round as Cory Standish pedals circles around him and Dean on his bike, his shiny, new bike…without training wheels.
Dean’s arm tightens protectively over Sam’s shoulders, and Sam’s fingers flex around the handle bars. He’d insisted on riding his bike to school, just like all the other kids, but he’s walking it home, because only babies ride bikes with training wheels.
Dean doesn’t say anything on the whole walk home, and Sam just knows he’s thinking, ‘I told ya so.’ He has every right to think it. He did tell Sam so, gave him the same look he’d given him when Sam had insisted on eating Chex Party Mix for breakfast…in a bowl, with milk and sugar. But Sam had been stubborn, tired of moving off the sidewalk on his walk to school so all of his classmates could pedal past.
He should’ve listened to Dean.
Dean pats Sam on the shoulder, and he looks up, just realizing they’ve made it all the way home, and Cory’s still circling around them like some neurotic border collie. “Go on and get ready for dinner,” Dean says. “I’ll put your bike away.”
Sam nods and runs up the stairs. The slamming of a screen door never sounded so good.
Later, as they take the training wheels off the bike, Sam pretends not to notice that Dean’s knuckles are skinned and raw-looking. But even though they must hurt, Dean spends all weekend holding onto the back of Sam’s bike seat and running until finally, finally, he lets go.
When Sam rides to school that Monday, without his training wheels, he definitely notices that Cory’s got a black eye, and his shiny, new bike’s not quite so shiny anymore.
Yeah, Dean’s the bestest big brother ever.
xXx
Sam watches the fizz bubble out of his beer as he sits back on his bed in the cabin. He picks at the label and watches the beverage go flat when he’d really like to down the bottle in his hand and a few more behind that.
He can’t, though. He’s pretty sure that’s exactly what Dean’s up to just then, and well, besides the fact that he figures Dean deserves to get blitzed more than he does, the two of them getting sloshed together is just not something they allow themselves to do. It’s just a bad, careless idea, and Sam’s had enough of those in the last twenty-four hours to last a month.
Dean can’t ride a bike. Sam didn’t know. How could Sam not know? How sheltered does a kid have to be not to know something that basic about his own brother? Kinda makes him wonder what else he doesn’t know.
Color of his eyes? Check. Color of his hair? Well, that’s open for debate. Shoe size? Check. (And jean size, including inseam, in case anyone wants to know if there actually is a correlation between that and the shoes.)
Hell, Sam’s got tons of things catalogued in his Dean archive that probably fall under the heading of too much information: why he absolutely should never wear boots without a good dousing of Gold Bond powder; why he never, ever goes commando, no matter how convenient that may seem; where he keeps his condoms; even how often he goes to the bathroom, what he does in there, and consequently, when the runs to the drug store are not to buy condoms or first aid supplies even though Dean swears they are.
Sam knows Dean. Not in the biblical sense (despite the numerous knowing smirks of people who really don’t), but certainly as well as any one heterosexual male can know another. At least, he’s really been making an effort. That’s gotta count for something. Right?
But it doesn’t change the fact that somehow Dean missed out on something most people take for granted that all American kids learn, and his own brother didn’t even know. Sam’s a poor excuse for a brother, generic, and Dean deserves designer brand.
Sam looks up as the door opens and Dean walks in. Huh, he’s not drunk.
Dean nods toward the open laptop on the table. “You learn anything?”
“Nothing I didn’t already know.”
Dean raises his arms out to the side. “Yeah? You wanna fill me in?”
“You first.” Sam tries not to say it with accusation. It’s not Dean’s fault Sam didn’t know, except for the part where Dean knew and never mentioned it, that is. Sam’s face feels heavy like it’s been stretched out from riding with his head out the window and is just hanging with no muscle tone left in it at all. He thinks if he looks down at his beer bottle again, his cheeks will fold down over his nose and eyes, and he’ll just smother in the angst. He wonders if that will qualify as suicide.
“It’s no big deal, Sam. Let it go.”
“I can’t.” And ain’t that the truth? That’s like telling Achilles to chop off his leg so he can be truly invincible.
Dean shakes his head with a sigh and falls back on his bed, arms splayed. “There’s nothing to tell,” he says to the ceiling. “I never had a bike. Dad never had time to teach me to ride, and I had my hands full watching you. I never even thought about it ‘til you got it in your head that you wanted a bike. And hell, by the time you’re old enough to drive, bikes are for geeks, anyway.”
Sam shakes his head and crosses his arms. “You mean you never wanted to ride a bike? Ever?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m not surprised, now can we please talk about this case so we can collect our paycheck and get out of this Hell?”
Dean’s choice of words is just poor enough to make Sam switch mental gears. He sets his beer down on the night stand with a slosh and rolls around to set his feet on the floor.
“Well, I think it’s just some kind of mutant dog, like the species that turned up in Texas everyone was calling a chupacabra.”
Instead of sitting up on the bed, Dean just looks down his nose at Sam, and when he can’t appear to see over his own lips, elongates his entire face from chin to eyebrows so his mouth gapes open. “And what about the missing baby?”
Sam ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck. “Actually, I’m not sure that has anything to do with this. The Koppel family was camping back in the woods ten years ago. They brought their three-month-old baby boy with them.”
“Throwing Daniel to the lion’s den…” Dean stares up at the ceiling, obviously thinking out loud. “Something that small’s sure to attract predators.”
Sam nods. “Yeah, baby Tommy disappeared from the tent in the middle of the night. Parents said they saw wolves in the area…”
“Ahh, dingoes got me bubby, classic alibi.”
“Dean, these people lost their baby.”
“Or just came back without it. Who brings a baby that young on a camping trip, anyway?”
“So you think maybe a myling, the spirit of a baby abandoned to the elements?”
Dean folds his hands behind his neck and raises his head and shoulders off the bed to face Sam. “No. No one’s actually been attacked, but I wouldn’t rule anything out. Besides, I hope not. Those things are damned near impossible to do a salt and burn on. Teeny tiny bones scatter like something out of a Kansas song.”
They both fall silent, solemnly contemplating the possibility that a parent could just abandon a child.
“Anyway, it’s just a thought,” Dean says, a might too dismissively for Sam’s liking. “Guess we should call it a night, get an early start in the morning.”
Sam casts a skeptical glance at the clock radio that’s only just moved past ten o’clock. “Yeah. I guess.”
Doesn’t take a bloodhound to know Dean’s up to something.
xXx
Sam knows Dean thinks he’s asleep when he creeps out of the room at 2:00 a.m. He should be, but of course, he’s preoccupied feeling like the world’s worst brother, despite Dean’s assurance that it doesn’t matter. One thing Sam’s still pretty sure he knows about his brother—when he says it’s fine, it isn’t.
Sam also knows Dean doesn’t want him to try to fix it, and since he has no idea what he could possibly do, anyway, he keeps his eyes shut and stays still in his bed until the door clicks shut and the dead bolt snaps into place.
He waits another ten minutes for the sound of the Impala starting, ears straining for any clue as to what Dean’s doing out there.
When his curiosity gets too much, he glides out from under his sheets and over to the window. He moves the curtain aside, glad it’s a nearly full moon and a clear sky so the moonlight reflecting off the window pane keeps him hidden like Dean’s eyes behind his sunglasses. For some reason, that reminds him of an old Corey Hart song, and he almost laughs off some of the brood until he sees what he’s been looking for.
A shadow moves in the parking lot on the other side of the Impala. For a second, Dean’s head and shoulders are the only things visible over the roof of the car, but Sam can’t account for the way he’s bent forward, tongue poking out between his lips in deep concentration until the front wheel of the bike comes into view.
Sam ducks back behind the curtain, suddenly feeling like he’s walked into someone else’s bedroom by mistake and caught them in the act. He doesn’t want to look. There’s a reason Dean snuck out in the middle of the night to do it, but he can’t look away.
It’s the first time Dean’s ridden a bike. It’s not the Grand Canyon, but moonlight washing across the parking lot in shimmering trails that tremble and quiver with the wind through the treetops is almost as stunning, especially when it reflects off the spokes of the bike, the glint of determination in Dean’s eyes.
Dean tries. Sam has to give him credit. He’s got the right idea. He straddle-walks the bike forward until he maneuvers one pedal up, then puts a foot on it and tries to balance in the seat while the next pedal comes up.
Once or twice, he actually manages to pedal a couple of times with each foot before the handle bars start to jerk, he looks up to see where he’s going, and loses his balance.
Sam watches for nearly half an hour mentally cringing every time Dean tips and has to right himself. He just can’t seem to get his feet on the pedals to get himself going without looking down, and by the time he looks up again, he’s usually on some path of destruction, about to meet destiny head on in the form of a sign post, the side of the building, or God forbid, the side of the car.
Sam’s not sure when he makes up his mind to go out and help his brother for chrissakes, but somehow he gets his pants on, slips on some shoes, and is already standing outside the door the next time Dean comes by.
Dean doesn’t see him at first, but Sam gets a good look at him as he coasts closer. Dean’s got his tongue poking out the right side of his mouth, eyebrows lifted nearly to his hairline as though he can will himself forward by opening his eyes as far as they will go and grunting.
As cute as it is, Sam knows Dean will kick his ass if he catches him smirking, so Sam covers his mouth with his hand and dry coughs with his head turned to give Dean a chance to compose himself before glancing back up.
The shadow that crawls over Dean’s face when he meets Sam’s eyes is more than just the darkness before dawn. Sam wouldn’t blame him if he gave the bike a fling and stormed back into the room. Sam brought his own key out, just in case.
Instead, Dean meets his gaze and snickers, balances his bike with one hand, and rubs at his chin with the other. “You’re out a little late, aren’t you, little boy?”
Sam has no idea why, but he shrugs and hooks his thumbs in his pockets. “I think maybe I am. Do me a favor and don’t tell my big brother. He’s a little overprotective.”
“So, he wouldn’t want you to be hanging out in a dark parking lot with a big, bad biker like me.”
“He’d probably kick my ass for sneaking out of the room.”
Dean laughs and ducks his gaze. “Yeah, he probably would.”
Sam bites his lip nervously, lets the façade fall away. “So, you gonna let me help you, or am I gonna have to go back in there and tear myself up about our fucked up childhood some more?”
Dean sighs. “So, I guess letting this go is not an option.”
“Nope.” He doesn’t say they might never get another chance.
“Well, then what kind of big brother would I be if I said no?”
Sam shrugs but doesn’t answer. He’s got no problem criticizing Dean for any number of things, but he’ll never be able to call him a bad brother.
“’K, then, get your ass over and give me a shove off,” Dean says, straddle-walking the bike into position for another go.
“Don’t look at the pedals.”
“How else am I supposed to find the damned things? They’re so small, and my boots ain’t exactly thin-soled.”
“Not to mention you’re bow-legged as a toilet seat,” Sam teases. “Just don’t worry about the pedals. I don’t know. Kinda hold your legs out to the side and try to keep your balance while I push you. Think about...sliding down a banister.”
Dean looks skeptical but gives it a try. He sits in the seat, then stands back up again with a grimace.
Sam raises one eyebrow. “Problem?”
Dean chuckles. “Just wondering where I can get a pair of those padded shorts.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“Boating accident,” Dean smirks. It takes Sam a second to remember the girl from the night before and the boathouse on the lake behind the bar. “An accident named Millicent.” He rubs his ass through his jeans. “Chick had some wicked long fingernails. And the things she could do with ‘em…” Dean purses his lips in a classic ‘ooh’ of appreciation.
Again with the too much information. Sam chooses to ignore it, grabs the seat of the bike, and starts to push.
“Whoa there, Trigger,” Dean says, scrambling, but a few seconds later, the tongue’s back poking out the corner of his mouth.
“I said, don’t look down.”
“Hmm? Oh. “ Dean makes a pointed attempt to look where he’s going, but Sam notices the flutter of eyelashes as Dean keeps glancing down. He uses the distraction and speeds up so that Dean rocks back into a more balanced position, legs splayed like the sides of a wooden clothespin on a line. Sam speeds up as Dean straightens the handlebars. They reach the end of the parking lot and make a smooth, sweeping turn, start down the other side. It’s the first time Dean’s made a turn without wobbling or stopping, and the grin on Dean’s face right then? Worth all the angst.
Sam’s pretty sure that’s glee.
xXx
Sam bites his lip as he weaves drunkenly down the sidewalk on his way to school. He keeps his chin tucked with determination, but it’s hard to keep his balance and still go slow enough for Dean to walk beside him. The other kids whiz by on their bikes, laughing and chasing after each other.
“C’mon Sam,” Chrissy Jones squeals as she pedals by up. “I’ll race you.” Sam shakes his head and looks back at Dean, then down as Chrissy pedals off.
“You’re not gonna let a girl beat you, are ya?”
Sam looks up just long enough to see Dean jerk his chin in the direction of the speeding bike. “Go on…”
And Sam does.
xXx
The fifth trip around the parking lot, Sam draws to a halt, breathing hard, and Dean coasts ahead. Just when Sam thinks he’ll lose momentum and slide to a stop, he shouts, “Go on…”
Dean’s feet find the pedals, and he goes.
Sam’s sure the second time Dean laps him in the parking lot under his own power, that glee is definitely the best word to describe the look on Dean’s face, and an incidental look at his own reflection in the Impala’s rear window, reminds him that brotherhood is mutual.
xXx
It’s only a moment in time, one grain of sand in the still-leaking hourglass, and the next morning they’re back on the job…or they will be, as soon as they figure out how to get their gear strapped onto the bikes and Sam gets directions from Bob on the least difficult trail to where they’re going. But it’s the first time Sam’s looked forward to a hunt in a long time, feels more like it’s a challenge, an opportunity rather than a duty.
He changes his mind in record time when he rounds the corner of the office and finds Dean sprawled in the parking lot, the front spokes of his bike bent at odd angles and a very angry looking dude in padded bike shorts glaring down at him. The man’s cussing and examining his bike closely while Sam rushes to Dean’s side and offers him a hand to his feet. Dean’s red with embarrassment and looks like he’s ready to slink off into the woods and die like a dog hit by a car.
“I was trying to get a feel for the way it handled with the gear tied on,” Dean confesses. “I didn’t see him.”
The neon t-shirt suggests the pissed dude is part of the park –sponsored racing team. He finds one bent spoke on his back wheel and flies off the handle. “Fucking moron! You weren’t even looking where the hell you were going. Do you have any idea how much that bike is worth?” He’s in Dean’s face, but Dean ducks his gaze.
“Look,” Sam tries to reason. “I’m sure my brother’s sorry. He didn’t mean it.”
“You brother rides like he needs training wheels. He’s got no business sharing the park with professionals,” the man shouts, getting in Sam’s face this time.
Sam’s could choose that moment to be eloquent. He’s got a hundred choice words that would describe how arrogant, haughty, insolent and supercilious the bastard is, and a thousand reasonable statements that might ameliorate (how’s that for eloquent) the situation.
Instead, Sam growls and punches the guy out.
They don’t talk about it the entire ten mile hike out into the woods with their tails tucked between their legs.
xXx
When they come back two days later with the news that what they found in the woods is not the thing that ate little Tommy Koppel but little Tommy Koppel in all his living, walking on all fours, feral glory, they think it might have been worth all their trouble. It’s worth it, if they can be the benefactors of a happy reunion for once instead of the bearers of bad news and worse luck.
Instead, the Koppels go to jail for child abandonment. As it turns out, Tommy’s the myling that never was, and the lone man among wolves whose eyes had glistened in the full moon like the highway off the hood of the Impala becomes the lone wolf among men, in the custody of child protective services, at least until he’s eighteen.
Sam’s read enough about feral children to know he’ll never appreciate three meals a day he didn’t hunt himself, or understand how a bed to himself is better for sleeping than a warm hole surrounded with family.
That night Sam and Dean do something they’ve never done before. They get drunk together, and to hell with the things that go bump in the night. Lately, the things that go bump in the day are a helluva lot scarier.
They’re both in their beds, a beer in one hand and an arm tossed casually over their respective eyes when Sam says, “I shouldn’t have hit that guy, Dean. I’m no better than him.”
“Trust me on this, Sam. You’re better than him. Somebody raised you right.”
“But I actually felt good breaking his nose. What does that make me?”
“The bestest little brother ever.”
“What would you say if I said I’m kinda trying to figure out a way to spring that kid outta the county facility and take him back home?”
“I’d say, that’s my boy.”
“Huh…”
It ain’t eloquent, cultured, refined, or civilized. Kinda generic, as responses go.
It’s enough.
The End
A/N: So no threat of violence or chronic diarrhea this time. At the current time, tracer has a new job. Congrats, my chica! I’ve got several challenge fics and nanowrimo coming up, so I’m not sure when we’re going to get back to this, definitely after the start of season three. I’m moving all my fics to my website, which you can find on my profile page.
