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Lisa and Ben stood on the porch while Dean drove off, both of them with their arms crossed tightly. Lisa came down to the sidewalk as he left, and Dean tried to watch her in the rearview, but he could only do that so far. He didn't know this neighborhood like he had the last, and he needed to watch for cars parked by the curbs, and kids whose parents let them play alone outside.
The house was mostly unpacked, but there were still occasional stacks of boxes. Some of his work stuff, construction stuff, stood against the wall of the garage, and there were boxes labeled Books, DVDs in the corner of the living room, and most of his clothes were in a pair of boxes on the closet floor.
He'd made sure not to let Ben hear, when he and Lisa ran down what to do while he was away. Salt every way in or out of the house; keep silver and holy water at hand; have her phone on her all the time; check that the sigils and traps hadn't been compromised; keep in touch with him and with Bobby; always cook with salt. It wouldn't protect them from everything, but the sex ed stuff Ben brought home a few months before had talked about safer sex, minimizing risks, and Dean figured it was like that. Not perfect, but hopefully good enough.
Ben had asked to come, and it punched the breath out of Dean as efficiently as a blow to the gut. He'd tried to explain why that was never happening, but he remembered being Ben's age, when his dad had been the biggest bad-ass of all time and the only thing Dean wanted was to be big and strong enough to hunt for real. No amount of pain or danger, stitching up John or putting Sam back to bed after a nightmare, had been enough to talk Dean down. Ben had stared at the Impala with way too much desire in his eyes when Dean pulled her out, and Dean hated it.
Before he turned off the street, Dean craned his head to get one last glimpse of the house. Lisa was standing in the middle of the street, watching him, but Ben had gone back inside.
Dean closed his eyes for a moment against the pang in his chest, but that was fine. This life brought bad things, homes you were asked to leave, and bloody, early deaths. Dean would rather have Ben not like him right now than ever need to steal him back from another monster den, than ever be faced with his smashed body in a hospital bed.
He left town the same way he and Lisa came in, which were different streets than he'd gone down with Sam. He didn't know his way around here, either, but he remembered how to get to the freeway. The Impala felt familiar under his hands, and driving her was automatic, something past knowledge and closer to instinct. His truck was good for what it was, but the Impala — he knew her turning radius the way he knew the reach of his arms; he knew when to shift her like he knew when to kick it up from a jog to a sprint. He'd changed her fluids on schedule, and put the key in the ignition every other week and turned her engine over, and she was running just like always, thundering powerfully around him. Dean turned the music up and rolled the windows down.
He headed the opposite direction from the Campbell's compound, when he got on the interstate. They may have kept Sam alive for him over the past year, but they were creepy assholes, and Dean didn't want to sleep under the same roof as them. He trusted them with his baby brother about as much as he trusted them with an actual baby, even a baby monster, and anyway, Dean remembered the shit storm that was the last time Sam started working with someone other than Dean.
He'd need to call Sam soon, and hopefully get him back on the road proper, but not tonight. Dean also remembered how hard it'd been to get Sam away from Ruby, and he'd had good, solid arguments in his favor then. The Campbells weren't demons, after all. He hoped.
Dean merged into the left lane and pushed the pedal down, driving with the sun overhead but not in his eyes. He'd had dreams about this, honest to god. Sometimes they were vague, just the sun on his face and the vibration of the road in his hands. Sometimes it'd been Dad with him, talking lore and other happy bullshit in shotgun. Sometimes it was Lisa next to him and Ben in the back, the three of them road tripping the way normal people did.
But most often, it'd been Sam: Sam sprawling in the seat next to him, Sam sacked out in the back, Sam driving while Dean rested. Sam was the only other person to drive, in Dean's dreams. And sometimes it was both of them in the back seat, pressed close together, doing shit they'd never actually done. Dreams that'd driven him out of his bed and into the kitchen, heading for the cabinet where they kept the booze.
He'd hunted with Sam for real, ridden in his car, passed a child back and forth between the two of them, and Sam hadn't looked his way twice — Dean had watched for it — but Dean still wanted all those other things from his brother. He'd wanted to get home, when the job was done, but he'd wanted to stay, too, and his dreams had never been that complicated.
Traffic eased up as he got further out of town, and Dean went faster and faster. He had most of a tank, and he wouldn't need to stop for hours. He had the mile markers and the dotted white lines for company until then.