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The summer night is close and slick. Window's open, but there's no breeze, and sweat makes streams against their skin. The crickets are calling, and the owls, too. Dogs in the distance howl at the quarter moon. The night is rich with sound, swallowing the car.
Dean sits there, sprawled loose and low, his head against the rest. Beside him, Sam is sleeping, maybe, or maybe not. His breathing is a touch too careful, his shoulders slightly tense. But he's resting, at least, his head propped on arms folded over the wheel. Dean can't see his face for his hair. Sam has been quiet, not a word in a while.
Dean is tired, too, but he still awake. His head throbs from the wound that had laid him flat on his back during their last gig twelve hours ago. He stares across the road to the pasture on the other side, at fireflies melting in and out, cattle huddled snug under the shelter of trees, and the stars embossing the southern sky.
They're well over sixty miles from Bremen now. Hadn't stopped until they'd crossed the state line into Alabama. They sit parked on the shoulder near the scraggy neck of old AL-35. It's another fifty miles to US-72 W and the road to Gurley, where their next case waited.
I saw my mother last night, the caller had said: John's voicemail gone to Dean. A young voice. A woman, tautly controlled. Dad said you put her to rest, that she went to heaven. But I saw her last night. She was in the house.
The bullhead amulet is cool in Dean's hand. He fingers it absently.
Something brushes against his skin, feather-light and warm, like a woman's hair falling against his face, like her hand on his brow. It's the summer breeze stirring, but the trees outside are calm. Their leaves are silent and dense. Even the dogs have fallen quiet now.
He can see her, as clear as she had been just weeks ago. Their mother, white against the night's deep black. Hazy and frail, caught in his mind like the trail of a plane, fading fast into a formless mist. He had lost her face once before, in all the years gone past without her, then Lawrence had brought it back. She's fading again in his mind as quickly as a dream, and the photographs they'd found in Lawrence couldn't fill the hollow inside of himself where she had once lived as vividly as in life.
His hand stills, and his eyes close. He switches everything off but her, praying the hand of time to slow. But there is no sound now, and no warmth. He waits, and wills himself to dream. But Lawrence remains a time past, and she does not reappear. A thousand echoes fade in the beat of his careful breaths.
He gives it a few minutes, then reopens his eyes. They're burning dry, and his head's swimming with vertigo. He blinks hard and rubs his hand over his face, breathes in deep over the pressing weight. He glances over at his brother to find Sam awake and looking his way. There is a curious expression in his eyes, something Dean cannot define, an exhausted sort of peace hovering over the melancholy on his face. As if Sam's seen the anchor pass him by and marked its name. As if he knows it will stop one day and wait for him.
There is something alive in the air between them. It's beating delicately against the tempered rocks of Dean's shore.
Dean's lips move stiffly, with a trembling twist. Not a smile, not really, but close enough.
Sam breaks the silence.
"All right?" His soft voice is hoarse but calm.
Dean offers a nod of sorts, jerky and strange. It feels too much like a tremble.
Sam is quiet, meeting Dean's eyes. At length, his lips twitch a little, and he clears his throat, looking down and away at his hands on the steering wheel. He's smiling, fragile and messy. Just as Dean begins to open his mouth to speak, Sam releases the wheel with a sigh and leans back against the seat. Shifting his body around for comfort as if he might ever hope to fit behind the Impala's wheel. His eyes are half-open for a moment longer, staring down as if he studies the pattern of the seat between them. Then his eyes close, and he breathes out slowly, surrendering himself to sleep.
Unannounced and gentle, the summer breeze stirs once more. It passes over them, soft and balmy, with just enough strength to nudge the hair out of Sam's eyes. Hair that's too long and looks greasy, besides. It's been unwashed, like Dean's, for several days, and falls across Sam's forehead in ragged clumps, curling out wildly over his ears. He almost looks twelve, but for the lines of grief.
Ahead of them, the road stretches out for a tapered mile towards the foot of a hill. It's shadowed, hollow through yet oppressively close. A gauntlet, the forest on either side like a bulwark against them.
Dean's weary, still, but wide awake. His eyes stay open, unfocused. Waiting for movement, for a light in the woods or a call in the air, for the world to hunt them down where they sleep.
The night's rustling. Crickets with their steady hum. The dogs start up again, plaintively, echoing a lone siren call from miles away. An emergency somewhere, but not theirs tonight.
His headache's a dim throb at his temple. Sweat's gathering at the small of his back; he can see it glinting as it slides down Sam's neck. There are hours to go before the dawn. The world too wide and dark around them. The Impala is hard, but she's solid. An engine in sync with him. Old leather molded to his frame. She's sleek and honest, and she's swift. She is swept like driftwood, like a ship, in the slender black current of the road half-lit by moon. There's no anchor, but the walls are strong.
Dean settles at rest inside her but does not sleep. He gazes upward at the night sky with his hand on the bullhead and stares through memories of the fire, trying to find his mother's face, trying to dream awake.