Work Text:
Title: Made in Taiwan/Welcome to Oregon
Author: gretazreta
Rating: G, really. Oh wait, there's a cuss word if you squint.
Length: about 1400 words
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously.
A/N: 1. Written for spn_flashfic souvenir prompt. This is partly inspired by a poem by Michael Ondaatje.
Four years and not a word.
Dean doesn't write, doesn't phone, and at first Sam supposes that his brother's made some sort of deal with himself, to give Sam the best shot at this. Sam wanted "normal" and Dean's always given him everything he wanted. Sam wasn't counting on the fact that Dean seems to think that "normal" can't include him.
He shouldn't feel so surprised, or so injured: Dean's always lived according to his own set of rules; he's doing what he thinks is right for Sam. For himself. For them both. It's not the first time his brother's integrity has had the power to hurt; Sam's pretty certain it won't be the last.
The first parcel arrives a couple of months after Sam's resigned himself to the likelihood that Dean's never going to call, isn't going to drop in, isn't going to write. Sam's on his own, and if that feels cold and lonely after eighteen years of living in each other's pockets, if he wakes up and listens for Dean's breathing, if he thinks of half a hundred things in the first week alone that he thinks Dean would dig, or hate, or just laugh himself sick over, if there's an ache in him that just won't quit, then that's too damn bad. There's a lot to like about college, even if it's just the possibility to witness how ordinary people live, close-up, for the first time. Sometimes it's kind of refreshing being surrounded by people whose worst problems are dating and calculus and the best hangover cure and the boringness of Prof. Evans-Smythe's lit lectures and why they're never going to sleep with Jaimie Turlington again.
It's everything he's always wanted. He hates it.
Sometimes Sam misses Dean so much he thinks he's going to die from it. Lie down where he's standing and just stop breathing. But that's just over-dramatic; he doesn't die, he just puts his head down and gets straight As. And he shares Dean's hangover remedy with the guy down the hall (it spreads like wildfire across campus and earns Sam a small amount of celebrity and the moniker "that Hangover guy"), and helps some girl in the common room with her calculus, and lets another girl cry on his shoulder when her boyfriend dumps her before mid-terms, and suddenly he's got friends, and it's not so bad.
The parcel comes wrapped in creased brown paper that smells faintly of gunpowder and glue, and Sam hides it in the pocket of his hoodie, locks his door behind him and just looks at it, like he doesn't dare to touch it. Like it's not real. His hands are shaking as he unwraps the paper, slowly, gently, as if he's gonna disturb the idol in that Indiana Jones movie and get buried alive as his room shakes itself apart.
Nothing happens, it's just a parcel, after all. A parcel, a lifeline. Nothing. Everything.
He scrambles through the paper in search of a note, a card, anything, but all there is a grotesque little plastic tree ornament with googly eyes. It makes no sense at all: a small gilt sticker on the base tells Sam that it's "Made in Taiwan," and on its little plastic trunk, the words "Welcome to Oregon." At first he wonders if it's charmed, somehow, but in the end he has to admit that it's ugly and pointless and Sam keeps it in the left pocket of his jacket; he sits in classes taking notes and runs the flat of his thumb over the plastic spikes of the leaves.
Then there's nothing, for a hell of a long time. It's November before the second parcel arrives, a glass paperweight this time, with a picture of the Babcock Gristmill, and Sam's pretty sure that Dean sent it because of some kind of juvenile appreciation of the word "Babcock." He can picture Dean smirking like a twelve year old as he wraps it in bubble wrap. The first two rows of bubbles have already been popped, and Sam can picture Dean doing that as well, Dean's all about simple pleasures, and Sam can imagine the act of will that it took to stop with enough air left in there to protect the Babcock Gristmill all the way across the country and into Sam's careful hands.
He keeps that on his desk, but after a few more parcels arrive, he starts a collection on the windowsill above. There's no pattern to when the things arrive, nothing for months then three within a week. Never a card or letter. Never a return address. Sam keeps everything, paper pressed flat, each stamp scrutinised, pored over. Sam's always been good at synthesizing data, sensing patterns of information that are as useful in writing history papers as they ever were in tracking down things creepy and dangerous. But there's no pattern. He can't track down Dean, but then Dean's always had a special talent for evasion. And even though Sam's the one who left, Dean's the one moving further and further away.
Time passes, the collection gets bigger, Sam gets more As. The horrifying strangeness of "normal" fades. The calculus help becomes a regular thing, and morphs, unforced and easy, into dating. The next year they move into their own place, off-campus, and Jess never asks why a guy with so few personal possessions keeps a collection of some of the most tasteless souvenirs known to man.
Sam's not so lonely now, he's happy, even, most days, but he still obsessively tracks the postmarks of the packages as they arrive, trying to find some sort of rhyme or reason, as if, if he concentrates hard enough, he'll be able to solve it. Solve Dean.
There's meaning there, if only Sam knew the key. Each strange object is a message from his brother, from a life that seems increasingly far away.
Sam sits at his desk and tries to remember Dean's face, to conjure the sound of his laughter, the smell of him. Sometimes he fancies he can read what Dean's trying to tell him, but most times he can't.
But somehow, he knows, or he thinks that he knows that:
A snow-globe from Detroit means "bad weather".
A flamingo key-ring from Key West means "the girls are hot."
A cuckoo-clock fridge magnet from Fair Haven means "I'm still mad."
An engraved shot-glass from Sigma, Iowa means "I'm drinking too much."
A vial of syrup in a maple-leaf shaped bottle from Chicopee, Massachusetts means "we kicked demon ass."
By his fourth year, he only can only recall what Dean really looks like in his dreams.
One night in mid-March, Sam dreams of Dean going into some truck-stop on the interstate in Alabama, dreams it technicolor and vivid and photo-sharp, from the dust motes turning in the air to the slightly embarrassed look on Dean's face as he pays for a small postcard-size framed print. In the dream, Sam can't see the picture, and wakes up confused and lost and aching.
When it arrives in the mail a week later, it turns out to be a black-and-white print of a photograph of Harper Lee.
Sam's freaked out, especially given some of the dreams he's been having lately, but he argues himself into the "coincidence" explanation, even as he thinks: Harper Lee means "I forgive you."
The little pig made of coal from Charleston is a surprise, and that's more of a relief than anything. But the moulded-wire cowboy Dean bought at a flea market in Wyoming, bargaining the cute girl in red down to half-price and the promise of a beer later, is not.
Sam pushes his unease to the side, and waits. The cowboy means "I'm on my way."
Sam's so used to reading the messages, so used to hoping, so used to making something out of nothing, so used to believing, that when he finds Dean standing in his living room at three in the morning a little over a month later, there's absolutely no doubt whatsoever in his mind that Dean is saying is "I love you, come home."
FIN - June 2007