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Dean slides into the driver’s seat. Starts the engine. Closes his eyes. For some reason the thrumming of the engine reminds him of Mom, and the time he sat on the washing machine as it ran, as she unloaded the dryer. It’s the earliest thing he can remember of her. He opens his eyes and starts driving.
Three people died in the last week, inside a bookstore in Newport, Tennessee. They fell down the stairs. Dad sent him on this case, alone, while he took a shifter out west. It’s the first time he’s driven the Impala knowing it’s really his. But it doesn’t feel any different. He thought it would.
He always wanted to inherit the car, growing up. He’d always asked about it, and Dad always said he could have it when he was old enough. Of course, he never really knew what ‘old enough’ meant, because he was always old enough to shoot a gun and bury bodies.
Then he’s sixteen and kids at every school he passes through are getting their licenses, but he doesn’t have the time. He doesn’t bother asking. But he asks about the car again. When he’s old enough, got it. What else was he expecting?
Dean climbs back into the car, runs a hand over his face. He’s just finished interviewing the two sisters who run the bookstore together. They used to run it with their older brother, until he passed away about a year ago. Dean thinks maybe the brother is haunting the place. The anniversary of his death is coming up, and the store was lighting up like crazy with EMF. The Impala purrs, warming his hands.
He’s seventeen and Dad finally teaches him to drive. It’s slow. They cross several state lines in the months it takes him. Dad wants to just forge the documents, but Dean nearly begs to take the test himself. They do forge the paperwork, but the license is real. He asks about the car.
“Damn it, will you stop asking? You’ll get it, I promise.”
Dean shuts his mouth. Runs his thumb along the edge of his new license. Stares at his own photograph. It’s horrible. He puts it face-down on a clean napkin and starts in on his cheeseburger.
“You know, your mother loved that car.” When Dean looks up at Dad, he’s staring out the window at the Impala, parked in the shade. He turns that intense gaze to Dean. “She’d want you to have it. So don’t ever ding it up.”
Dean nods. “I won’t. I won’t, Dad. And I’ll stop asking. Sorry.” Dad nods, dunks a few fries into the watery ketchup.
The older brother’s life is so fucking boring. No drama, no secrets, no hardships. Died peacefully in his sleep, cremated. Sometimes this dead end in the research process would feel suspicious, like he’s missing something, but there’s nothing that feels off. Dean just got it wrong this time. It’s not the brother. Plan B, people who died in the bookstore. That shoulda been Plan A, huh? Dad would scold him for this. But he’s not here. Still, Dean feels that prickle of guilt dripping down his back. The hum of the Impala’s tires on asphalt don’t knock that feeling away, just shake it further into his skin. He should call Dad. He’ll be wondering.
He’s eighteen and he’s lost a twenty and Dad is pissed. Dean will never get anything from him again, much less the car, because he can’t even be trusted with twenty dollars. It was supposed to buy Sam’s school supplies. He doesn’t even know how he lost it. He swears on his life he’d put it in his wallet, right behind the coupon for a free scoop of ice cream.
Dad paces the floor. He gets out his wallet, and even from across the room Dean can see how pathetically flat it lies open. Dad steps closer, until he’s looming just inches from him. Dean flinches, but he doesn’t move; he keeps a stony expression even as Dad’s breath burns hot on his skin. Dad’s hand moves. Dean holds his breath.
He flaps a ten in his face. “Better not lose this one.”
It’s not enough for Sam’s stuff, he wants to say. But he knows what Dad would spit back.
So he listens to that mirage of his father, telling him to figure it out on his own. He walks into the store wearing Dad’s big leather jacket, big enough to press a couple notebooks against his side and thick enough to conceal the packs of pencils and pens in the inside pockets. He slides a pack of index cards up the sleeve and stops by the liquor aisle to stuff a couple shooters of tequila into the waistband of his jeans.
He uses the ten dollars to buy a bunch of Butterfingers and grape soda for him and Sam to share in secret later, while Dad’s in the shower. They sit on the floor, slouched against the side of the motel bed. Dean opens another can of grape soda, takes a big gulp, and pours one of the mini Jose’s into the empty space.
“Dean,” Sam says.
“Sam.” He makes himself stern. “I got you the exact pens that you wanted, man.” Black Uni-Ball, fine point. Don’t snitch.
Sam keeps quiet, nods. “I know. Thank you.” He taps the top of his can with a fingernail. “Can’t believe you got the box with twelve pens, though. It’s more expensive.”
Dean takes a barely hesitant sip of his soda. The sugar only just eases the bite. Better than beer, though, he thinks bitterly. “Don’t worry about the money. It’s fine.”
There are muffled, bouncing thuds from the shower, followed by a string of curses. Sam snickers. Dean cracks a smile, too.
“Dean, can I try some?”
He looks at Sam, who gestures at Dean’s hands, circling protectively around his can of soda. He raises an eyebrow. “You wanna try the tequila?”
“Yeah. Can I?”
God, he doesn’t want Sam to act like him. He doesn’t want him to make the same choices. Bad or good. Doesn’t matter. Staring through the hole of the can—of course he sees nothing—he finally mumbles, “Don’t get used to it, okay?”
Sam grins and takes the can from his hands, sips once, twice. He cringes. “That’s disgusting. You shouldn’t be drinking that.”
Dean, shrugging, takes his drink back. “Mind your own business. I like it.” He’s lying. He just wants to feel different for a while.
“Hey, you mind if I take one of your pens? I think they’d be good for writing the labels of my tapes.”
“If you give me the last Butterfinger.”
“Deal.” He throws the candy bar at Sam, and it hits his shoulder. The shower turns off.
Dad hangs up before Dean can say “yes, sir.” He’d called for an update on the case so far. Dean told him he knows it’s a ghost, but not who he thought it was, and he’s going to get up early the next morning to keep working.
It used to bother Dean that Dad would check in like this on his solo hunts. He thought it was a control thing. He wondered if Sam was right. But then Dean didn’t pick up his phone—it was just one time—and Dad went into this panicked fury. When he saw Dean again, he about hit him in the face, or spat at him, something.
Of course, he couldn’t say what he meant. He said everything except that he cares about Dean’s safety. But the fact he didn’t say it meant he did.
Dean grips the steering wheel, unblinking in the neon dark of 2 am outside the motel. God, why can’t Dad just ever say what he means?
He turns twenty-one. “When you’re older.” Yeah, whatever. Dad apparently doesn’t care that Dean’s been driving the car more and more often, running errands for him, picking Sam up from school (a block away, so his upperclassmen friends don’t see). He’s got his own corner of the trunk to keep his personal gun, salt rounds, back-up lighters. He keeps his own sunglasses in the glove compartment, along with a copy of Slaughterhouse Five he stole from Sam. Half the tapes in there belong to him, too. But the mirrors are all still adjusted for Dad’s eyes.
The phone rings. Dean reaches over to the passenger seat and picks it up, snapping it open. “Dean,” Dad says. He sounds almost relieved or relaxed or something.
“Hey, Dad.” He doesn’t know if Dad is waiting for him to say something, or waiting to speak.
He speaks. “Listen, I’m gonna take another day to drop by Stanford and check on Sam.”
Dean swallows. “Are you going to talk to him?” he asks. He wants his father to say yes, yes, I’ll talk to your brother, I’ll apologize, and I’ll bring him home. But he knows the answer.
“No, you know I never do.”
Dean makes a left turn, his hand tightening on the steering wheel. “That’s okay. My thing is taking longer than I thought, anyway. The ghost was a Jane Doe, so it’ll be hard to find her grave, and—"
“Why don’t you get some damn help if you need it so much?”
Dean bites his lip, blinks slow. Dad won’t send him on a solo hunt in a while after this. He’ll insist that Dean needs the help. He ignores that wave of shame. “Yeah. Yeah, I think Lee’s in the area, or close.”
Dad is silent for a bit too long. It’s suffocating. “Okay,” he finally says. “Don’t take too long, it’s just a ghost.”
“I know, Dad. I’ll finish up in the next couple days. Let me know how it goes with Sam?”
“Yeah. See you.” He hangs up.
He shouldn’t have mentioned Lee, damn it. Dean groans, tosses the phone onto the passenger seat again. He grips the steering wheel, the leather worn smooth by decades of handling. “Oh, baby,” he sighs. Without Dad breathing in his ear, he can relax. He leans back against the vinyl seats, starts playing one of his old tapes. It’s a mix he made in high school; lately he can’t listen to an album all the way through.
Only a couple of the tapes still in the compartment are Dad’s. The rest are his.
The car is all his. It’s his, it’s his, it’s his. He feels the Impala screaming the thought back at him, loud and persistent and alive. Maybe it’ll be taken from him someday, but right now it’s his. He could pack up all his belongings and run, take his whole world with him, leave the rest behind. He could.
He can’t make himself. But the car is his. It’s him and the car. Alone. And he doesn’t have to let anyone else be a part of it.
Dad finally gave the car over to Dean because they had to take separate jobs on separate ends of the country. Having his own car, a new car, would be best for himself, Dad had said. There is no momentous occasion of the car becoming his. He just adjusts the rearview mirrors. It’s entirely anticlimactic. But it’s okay. It’s always felt like his car anyway.