Work Text:
John is still off by himself looking for intel on yellow eyes. The boys have just done a string of back to back to back hunts, staying up most all of each night hitting the books and they’ve finally reached a break in the clouds and have a night off. Sam passes out around 6PM and Dean.. unsurprisingly can’t sleep– he’s restless, he’s bored and alone with his thoughts and decides what the hell when’s the last time I had a free night I’m gonna go try and catch a movie. So he grabs the keys and his jacket (he doesn’t have to grab his shoes because he never took them off in the first place) and is half way out the motel-room door when he remembers Sam, and that Sam’ll probably freak out a bit if he wakes up to an empty motel room. So Dean scrawls a quick note, leaves it where Sam will see it, and heads into town.
Dean reaches the movie theater and sees what’s playing and when. Half of the narrow selection has already started playing but that’s okay because hey there’s a cowboy movie and it hasn’t started playing yet so it's an easy choice. He skips the snack counter because he’ll be damned if he’s gonna pay that much for snacks and the inside pockets of his jacket are perfect for smuggling snacks anyway. He finds the right theater and takes his usual seat in the back corner of the room, his back protected by the wall, where no one can sneak up on him and from where he can make a quick and unseen exit if needed.
The movie plays and Dean is having a nice enough time, the movie is a little slow to start but it’s nice to just sort of relax for once and let the movie wash over him as he gets the landscape of the characters and the world.
The longer the movie plays the more Dean can feel a familiar hollow in his bones, a knot in his gut and a fist wrapped around his heart, a lump in his throat. He’s transfixed, rooted to his seat but at the same time wants to bolt. Maybe he does, maybe another version of him can’t handle what the movie stirs inside him and he has to leave, only to come back another day to try again because he has to know how the rest of the movie goes. But he doesn’t leave, he can’t leave this beautiful story and these beautiful men with their story half-told.
When the movie is over and the credits have rolled all the way down, much like the tears that made it all the way down to his shirt collar, he wipes a hand across his face once, twice, using the front then the back of his hand and he stumbles dazedly out of the theater and to the car. He sits for a minute in silence before pulling out of the parking lot.
He’s on the dark, small town backroads, half way to the motel when he pulls over. He turns off the car. His eyes glaze over and it’s a moment before the tears come. He tries to stop them, looks around to make sure the roads are really as abandoned as he needs them to be right now. He manages to choke the tears back once, twice, and then the levee breaks and he is flooded. Dean sits there wracked with aching sobs as weeks, months, years of pushing down and pushing forward breaks forth and demands to be felt. His hands slip from the wheel and into his lap, where they sit unused, open as if in supplication until he cannot bear to have his horrid, tear-stained face naked in the open and he brings his hands to his face and he cries that much harder now that he is hidden. The heat of his tears rips through his body and he can’t breathe. He claws his way out of his jacket, out of his flannel until it’s just him and his t-shirt and the midwest December chill. He takes in shaky air and as the tide of his tears rolls out he can breathe again. Dean sits, breathing. It’s a hollow breath but it’s cleaner, too. He doesn’t know how long he has sat there, breathing, but judging by how cold he is it’s been a while now. He starts the car.
He gets back to the motel room and Sam is exactly how Dean left him. Dean reverently hangs his jacket on the wall, gently takes off his shoes. He sees the note he left for Sam. Crumples it up and sticks it in his pocket. For once he falls asleep nearly as soon as he gets settled. His last thought as he drifts to sleep is a mournful prayer- that if he finds a love he doesn’t deserve, that he might be brave enough not to let it slip through his fingers. That he might be brave enough to speak his truth before it’s too late. That he might be left with more than a jacket and a photo, more than a memory.
The next morning Sam asks what time he passed out.
Dean tells him.
Sam asks what Dean did with his evening.
Dean doesn’t tell him.