Chapter Text
The Impala was for sale.
Sam leaned heavily against his borrowed car and fought his gorge from rising. He couldn't puke here, couldn't lose control right now.
It had taken Sam ten hours to get to Battlecreek from Bobby's, his foot pressed to the floor as he rolled across highways and byways for seven hundred plus miles; he didn't dare stop because an ominous feeling pressed behind his breastbone that spoke of Sam's greatest fear. He would be too late and Dean would be gone.
Not gone like years past when Dean would leave for a hunt, a bar, a girl, but gone like Mom. A vague shape outlined by loss and raging grief. No, Sam never had known the flesh and blood woman who'd given birth; instead, he'd held the hand of an older brother who never let go.
It was Sam who'd let go, toddled away from a hovering Dean, eyes, legs, and heart towards the distant horizon. Well, that distant horizon now taunted him as he realized that for all the silences of the last two years, Sam had never truly thought Dean would leave him behind. Content in the knowledge he was first and foremost in his brother's heart, Sam knew if he picked up the phone, Dean would always answer. Maybe not right away, but eventually.
Except this time he hadn't. The silence burned down the lines, leading Sam to this exact moment in time where his illusions were stripped away by the soap script desecrating the Impala's back window with an offer to sell.
The long sleek car looked out of place parked in the driveway of a small house with a goddamn white picket fence. The neighborhood was a cliche straight from Norman Rockwell paintings and the Impala stuck out like a sore thumb; a caged beast pacing behind its bars.
The address hadn't immediately struck Sam as strange, if only because even the wandering Winchesters sometimes needed a home base for hunts, but seeing the detritus of a so-called "apple-pie" life - a lawn mower propped against the garage and some toys scattered across the neatly trimmed lawn - pinged in Sam's consciousness. Dean was suspicious of Middle America, openly scoffed at the values and beliefs of the norms who didn't know what hid in the shadows. The Winchester boys were true vagabonds, he'd always boasted, and the only home they needed had four wheels and a midnight black roof.
Well, their home was for sale and Sam could only conclude his brother was dead. The minute their father flipped the keys to him, on Dean's sixteenth birthday, he'd babied and loved the car nearly as much as he had his younger brother. It - even now Sam couldn't refer to the Impala as "she" - was the only thing Dean owned outright and he jealously guarded it with the ferocity of a feral dog.
Sam drew in a deep shaky breath and creakily adjusted himself to his full height. He was creased and worn like a cheap suit, but he couldn't be bothered to try and slip into a new identity. While he did have a moral objection to the seedier side of a hunter's life, in this case Sam was too heartsick to even try. he would find out what happened to Dean and then take the Impala back. There was no way he'd let it languish in this suburbia hell.
Just as Sam had focused himself enough to talk to the house's owner, an older model Ford came rattling down the tree-lined street, country music blaring through rolled down windows. Sam wrinkled his nose a little at the sound, and stopped in surprise when the rust red truck rolled to a stop at the curb across from where Sam was parked.
The rattle of the closing door seemed overly loud to Sam as he stared at the man stepping from the truck. The military short golden hair, broad shoulders tapering to a slim waist, and bowed legs were as familiar to him as his own lean rangy body.
"Dean." A whisper. "Dean." A demand. "Dean." A shout.
The man stopped and turned to Sam, his eyes squinting against the bright afternoon sun.
"Yeah?"
Sam's face felt cracked as his cheeks bulged around his impossibly wide grin. His jerk of a brother stood a few yards away and Sam's arms itched to stretch around his shoulders. Long before he'd left for Stanford, he'd banned Dean from touching him, hating how useless and young his brother could make him feel with just one crushing hug or noogie to the head. Despite outgrowing Dean by the time Sam turned fifteen, his growth hadn't come with the pounds of muscle or memory to use them, and he rarely out wrestled his older brother.
Now, his whole body tingled at the thought of Dean wrapping himself around Sam like a snake, and he eagerly approached the older man.
"Man, I'm so glad to see you! I came a damn long way to find you. Why the hell didn't you answer your phone when I called?"
Dean's face wrinkled in thought before a polite smile broke through his bewilderment.
"Oh, sorry man. I forgot my cell this morning. You could've called the house phone though and left a message. I'm sorry if you came all this way for the Impala. Did you wait long?"'
Sam slowed. Stopped a few feet away. Stared.
This was Dean, no doubt in Sam's mind. He recognized the slight cant of his nose from the time he got slammed into the wall during a werewolf hunt and broke it. The faint scar bisecting Dean's left eyebrow was from an attempt to impress a girl by climbing a tree, only to have the branch break beneath him and his forehead sliced open.
Yet his eyes.
His changeable green eyes.
Sam recognized Dean.
But Dean didn't recognize Sam.