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"I said I can handle it."
"For three months, Dean?"
The car sped up, again. Dean said Dad's anger was directly connected to his accelerator foot.
"You sayin' I can't?" Dean's voice was right on that edge where all the hair stood up on Sam's neck. Sam shivered. He'd heard that voice a lot when Dean was talking to other people, but hardly ever at Dad. It made him want to tell Dean to be careful.
He closed his eyes and hummed low through the quiet, able to see it all without even looking. The stony look on Dad's face, the stony look on Dean's, the stare-down, the big oozy nothing, broken by Dad's low and careful, "You wanna have this talk now, son?" and the jerk of Dad's head toward the backseat. Dean said that "son" was Dad's way of warning you to shut up. That's what it sounded like, too.
Sam sunk down and kicked the back of Dean's seat, counting to two between each one. If Dean was yelling at him to stop, maybe the subject could change, and Sam wouldn't have to think about where the argument went from here: Nowhere. Dean would get quiet and still, and disappear to some black, angry place in his head, where all his words came out one at a time like he was spitting, and it would take days to even get him to smirk.
Bad enough that Sam had to go to a new place, and they'd be there long enough to go to school, new school, for three whole --
Three months. Sam stopped kicking and looked out the window, perking up a little. Dean, who'd ignored the kicking, glanced sideways at him for just a second when it stopped.
It was a school month, and even better, it was when most schools were starting up. Sam might be starting 4th grade with everyone else. Dean wouldn't be going, probably. Dean should've been four years ahead, but instead he was only two. Sam wasn't sure why, and no way was Sam going to ask a second time.
Sam did wonder where they were going to stay, and for how long. Whatever trip Dad was going on, all of Dad's friends were going, too. To help him out, Dean said. Caleb, Bobby, Pastor Jim, all of the people Dad usually had look after them on a long work trip.
After a few more miles, Dad gave a long, tired groan, even though neither of them had said anything at all. Under his breath, he mumbled something about Dean being just like Mom. It made Dean shift all his attention back on Dad in a way that Sam didn't like. Sam knew better. He knew he couldn't just spit out something about Mom. Well, maybe Dad could.
"Fine, if you think you can pull it off, pull it off. Maybe I should just let you out here, let you walk the rest of the way and see how you like it."
Dean wasn't listening to any of that, though. He was sitting up straight now, not mad anymore, just waiting.
"I was gonna make some calls to get someone here to keep an eye on you, but --" Dad tapped the steering wheel, like he didn't even want to finish saying it.
"It's gonna be fine, Dad," Dean said, like he meant it, and the air in the car felt light again, just like that.
"I'm gonna give you some numbers, and if anything -- and I mean anything --" (There was another head tilt to the backseat; Sam almost missed it, it was so fast.)
"I know, Dad."
"You call the numbers until someone picks up, or until someone they know picks up."
Dean was staring out the window, nodding. Sam could tell by the back of the head that he was smiling (Dean told him he was dumb when he said that, but Sam really could), and he was looking at the trees and houses and signs that blurred by as if he'd never seen anything like them.
"Dean?" That warning voice again. "You'll call if --"
"Yes, sir."
Sam looked out the window too, chewing on the collar of his t-shirt, which still smelled like a messy cherry popsicle he'd eaten at the last pit stop. Suddenly he noticed things he hadn't before, like the song playing on the radio, one of the few Sam really liked, about climbing higher and higher (Dean said it was by a band called Van Hagar and teased him for liking it). He noticed how Dad seemed skinnier than he had before, and the hand wrapped tight around the steering wheel looked like hard, knobby bones under skin as thin as one of Dean's favorite t-shirts. How Dean's hair was just getting out of the bristly stage from his last "summer haircut" (just Dad using the clippers on him, took less than a minute), so it looked blondish in the sun, like it did when Sam was little. How the air outside smelled damp and green, like a broken twig.
Dean put his arm out the car window and tried to hold his fingers flat against the wind, as if he was pushing something away as hard as he could. The sun shone through his fingers and Sam saw the veins under his skin. Sam did the same, but couldn't see veins. He tried to close his fingers around the rushing air, like he was holding a ball.
He saw Dean's smile reflected in the side mirror. "You okay back there, Sammy?"
Sam sat up a little straighter. "Mmm-hm, just thinking."
Just him and Dean, and 4th grade, with a brand new school, in a brand new place? Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad, after all.