Chapter Text
The Impala’s low-fuel light clicks on just as Dean’s head begins to spin a bit with low blood-sugar. He and his baby must be on some kind of schedule, the two of them. To his right, Sam scans through yet another edition of the *San Antonio Express*, hands spread wide with the thing fully open, wingspan taking up most of the front seat. Sam’s arm encroaches into Dean’s space, the newspaper blocking his view of the passenger-side mirror. Dean would usually bitch at him to fold up the paper — god forbid Dean check his blind-spots. But today, he is tired and he is hungry, and bouncing south on I-35 toward tiny Artesia Wells is the last thing he wants.
Dean glances to his right, then back to the road. He glimpses Sam’s screwed-up brow, hunting for any detail in the article that may point them to the chupacabra sucking the life out South Texas steers. A red Ford truck to his left speeds past him, veering into his lane. Dean curses, swerves a bit so he isn’t side-swiped. The scrubby, bush-like trees speed past them.
They’re coming up on civilization, now, which means he can gas up the car, grab food. As the yellowed grass and barbed wire begins to shift to cookie-cutter neighborhoods, Dean scans his surroundings for signage, or, even better, a fucking gas station.
It’s a few minutes before a black billboard with bold, white text and a — cartoon beaver? interrupts his sight-line: RESTROOMS SO CLEAN, YOU CAN SEE YOURSELF. Huh.
Sam finally begins to fold up the newspaper. Another billboard, same beaver. EAT HERE. GET GAS. That’s promising. EXIT NOW.
In the baking July heat, it may be a mirage. Dean gets dizzier with hunger, and the road shimmers before him, asphalt turning to liquid. The billboard gas station may as well be an oasis, a siren calling to him in the desert. After all, a little further west, that’s exactly where they would be. Dean’s not gonna tie himself to the ship mast, though. He exits anyway, the Impala veering to the right off of the interstate.
Sam has the paper folded in his lap, now. He frowns. “Is this really our exit? We haven’t even passed San Antonio yet.”
Dean, head pounding, grinds out, “Grub run.” He’s been this hungry before. His entire childhood, actually. But as the years between him and thirty run out, his tolerance is going with it.
Here comes bitchface four. “Really? We’ve only got two hours left until Artesia Wells. Let’s just get there.”
“Need gas.”
Sam nods, fair enough. The Impala lurches left — three miles left on her tank. Dean searches for what the billboards were advertising — a beaver? And then he sees it. Can’t miss it, really.
It’s a fucking Walmart — the size of one, anyway. The beaver’s face looms large on the storefront, and as Sam and Dean crawl forward into the parking lot, Dean glances right, losing count of gas pumps, so many they almost fade into the horizon. Holy shit.
“What the fuck is this?” Great question. Dean just shakes his head, Sam sounding far away. He pulls into a gas pump near the far end, going through the motions. Thanks, Wayne Grayson, for the credit card. Open the tank, burn hands on hot metal, insert and lock the pump. Wait. A familiar ritual. The machine spits out his receipt, the total much lower than it was on their last gas run just north of Dallas. Dean smiles to himself, gets back in the car.
The Impala roars back to life, fuel needle flying up to full. As Dean lurches out of the space, he tosses the receipt to Sam. “Check out the total.”
Sam catches it. He pauses, scanning it, before raising his eyebrows to the stratosphere. “No fucking way.”
“Way. I got no idea what this place is, but I sure as hell wanna know what kind of food situation she’s got going on.”
Bitchface six. “She, Dean really? She?”
Well, he is bitchy when he’s hungry. Dean rolls his eyes, finding a parking spot and turning off the car. They head inside.
Automatic doors, a rush of very necessary air conditioning, and there it is. Dean flits his eyes around, taking it all in, awkwardly stopped right beyond the doors. The store is divided into sections, some if it even beyond his field of vision. On his left, there is a barbecue station, workers in red polos and cowboy hats chopping brisket and pork. “Brisket on the board!” The call rings loud through the entire store.
In front of him stands a wide hallway leading to what seem to be the oh so very clean restrooms the billboards advertised. There are racks and racks and racks of various snacks, some of them wrapped in paper and looking like they were made right there, in the store. A soda fountain, easily twice the size of anything he’s seen in the thousands of gas stations he’s been in, and coffee off to the side.
He looks to his right. Aisles and aisles of what would normally crowd an entire gas station — chips, candy, bottled drinks, beer. There are probably seventy people roaming the store, but something large at the edge of his periphery catches his eye. Sam is already staring.
It’s the beaver — the costume-mascot version of him, anyway. In costume, he’s easily six and a half foot tall, outgunning even Sam. There’s a little girl at his side, and her dad snaps a photo of the two of them on his Kodak. “Say Bucc-ee!”
Sam scrunches up his nose. “Bucky?”
Dean shrugs. “I guess that’s his name?”
A larger group of teenagers, maybe from a high school field trip, saunter in behind them. There’s probably a hundred of them, easy. One of them shoves past Dean so hard he skids a bit into Sam.
Dean claps his hands together, giddy. “Well, that’s enough staring for me.”
Sam rolls his eyes, follows.
They explore the store more closely after taking pees in what may be the greatest bathroom Dean has ever had the pleasure of using, clean as a whistle and big enough for the entire field trip group at once. Bucc-ee’s, Dean thinks, may be the closest thing to heaven he can get his hands on.
He takes in everything. Candied pecans, walnuts, cashews. Brisket sandwiches. Cheesesteak burritos. Fudge samplers. An entire bakery. Dean picks up a pulled-pork sandwich, two tacos, a case of beer, and the largest hot coffee he’s ever seen. It doesn’t even smell burnt.
Sam went off on his own, but given his sasquatch frame, it doesn’t take much to find him. With his armful of provisions stacked up to his chin, Dean saunters over to his brother, who is meandering somewhere between a refrigerated section and the bakery.
As he gets closer, Dean is disappointed, but not surprised: Sam seems to be struggling to choose between a fruit salad and a yogurt parfait.
“Sammy.”
Sam doesn’t even look up. “It’s Sam.”
“Whatever. Just get both! I just hustled a hundred bucks, and we got that brand new card too.”
Sam twists his mouth a bit, still preferring to do “honest work” or whatever, but relents at the possibility of getting both snacks.
“Now come on,” Dean urges, “there’s iced coffee, too.” Sam seems to perk up at that.
Five minutes and forty-five fake-credit-card-dollars later, they’re walking back in the car.
Dean plops heavy in the driver’s seat. Sam, for all of his earlier bitching, wears a small smile as he spoons a blueberry along with his vanilla yogurt, the nerd. Dean, though, is too high in heaven to care, unwrapping his sandwich. Who said Texas couldn’t do pork? For all of Dean’s hustling for shitty white bread and peanut butter, for all of his five-finger discounts and stays in boys’ homes for Sam’s funyuns and pasta — to have a place that can nurture not just him, but Sam *and* his baby? A place so big, he can walk away from Sam and make his own decisions?
Sam, Dean, and the Impala are all full and satiated, and the remaining travel to the chupacabra hunt — what once felt endless — now feels comfortably close, well within Dean’s reach, with the tacos for later, too.
Sam puts down his empty yogurt cup in between his thighs, sipping from his iced latte. “Are we entirely sure this isn’t… our kinda thing? Seems too good to be true. Is it, like, a mass hallucination or something?”
“And the monster, what, Sam, maintains bathrooms cleaner than the Vatican only to chomp down on some guy that just wanted a pee and some pecan brittle? There are easier ways.”
“Well, whatever it is, they’d better have more locations. I can’t really go back after this.”