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Canton to Mansfield to Columbus to an old remodelled delicatessen at the bottom of German Village that had too many dead animals on the walls, but was open late and had specials and was walking distance to the Inn. Dean ate most of the edible parts of a pig and a handful of inedible ones too, still smelling smoke and accelerant on himself. Canton had been the main nest and then Mansfield had been three more hiding in a Beer N Bowl and Sam had said Wait, how flammable is this varnish? as Dean had thrown the match. It had been close but they'd passed sirens going the other way as they gunned it out of there, and Sam had said huh, keep going to Columbus with his phone open on TripAdvisor so there they were, stepping out into the fat unhappy rain, passing a girl with a cop-looking guy on her arm who turned and said Sir, hold up there. Sir, where were you earlier tonight? I'm gonna need to see some ID, and then he'd leaned in to sniff Dean. Which was how they learned there were cameras in the alley parking lot and a league of passionate bowlers in the Columbus Division of Police.
“I can't run,” Dean moaned, hand to his belly, and the cop had frowned at him. Thunder rumbled overhead.
Sam said, “Sucks to be you,” and shoved the guy fully six feet and grabbed Dean's hand and hauled him around the side of the building, his other arm flying out like a windmill and smashing into the brick and going instantly numb, but he found his feet and yanked free of Sam's grip and caught up. Shrieks and footsteps behind and he gasped out away from the river, away--
And they were in a neighbourhood of low dark houses with rain pattering the trees above, they were past a school, they were jumping rickety backyard fences from alley to alley, waking the dogs up, they were skirting a Krogers and slowing to casually cross a wide avenue, oncoming headlights smeared through the water in Dean's face. Casually hooking around the back of a CVS and jogging some more, and some more, Sam gaining on him looking like he could go all night and Dean dragged a burning gasp of air into his lungs and found he couldn't even say wait. He just gave up, found a dark corner, and collapsed against a wall.
Eventually Sam came back, walking, tall, wiping his hair from his face. He laughed when he saw Dean, quiet and amused. Dean gave him the finger and winced through his stitch, mouth open. He had his hands on his thighs and his head tipped back and he was thinking about how shitty it would be to have a heart attack here, on top of some squelching cardboard boxes, in the jewel of the cornfields, Columbus, Ohio.
Sam's chest was heaving but he seemed otherwise unaffected. He was looking at Dean. Looking, and then looking. He straightened. Somehow, his shoulders got broader.
Dean said, “You're crazy.”
Sam smiled.
“You just ate four pounds of sauerkraut.”
Sam shrugged. “Is that a problem?”
“You reek.”
“Is that a problem?”
“I ate the meat ring, Sam, I ate the whole--” Dean turned his finger in a large circle, demonstrating the circumference of the sausage links. “All of it.”
“I know, I was impressed.”
“I stepped in a puddle, back there,” Dean said, which was a understatement. It had been a pothole, and he'd gone in halfway to his knee, and it had been very sudden and his ankle was very unhappy about it. He hadn't told Sam yet. It hadn't seemed relevant. He'd been able to run, but now they were stopped, and his boot was getting tighter.
Sam tilted his head up to look at the sky, or the narrow band of it between the eaves of a Bank of America and a boarded-up sub shop, as if to say: it's raining. What's a puddle? But it wasn't rain anymore, it was gutter runoff, and it was down the back of Dean's jacket, and it was clammy and awful. His ankle throbbed.
Sam stepped in closer. He was still smiling, not wide enough for his dimples to show, but a sly kind of alive and excited smile with his hair plastered against his scalp. Dean blinked, and wiped the water from his eyelashes, and blinked again.
It was new for them. It had only happened so far in the warm and warming spaces of their beds and the library and once in a close and spectacular fashion against the kitchen island and Dean was still trying to get a handle on how much it had changed in him and how little anything had changed. Staring at his brother now it wasn't like a switch flipped because he was starting to learn that his switch was always on when it came to Sam. His switch was on and when the possibility rose in the air, even the fetid wet air of a dirty alleyway behind a closed Subthumping with a broken ankle and probably some kind of brick-related hepatitis and their pictures in the hands of the locals, Dean was there too. Even this. Even like this. It was Sam.
"Jesus Christ," he said, a little shaken, a little faint-headed.
Maybe Sam understood or maybe he didn't, but he said, "Yeah," deep and low, with a glint in his eye, and closed the distance.
::
The end.