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The drive to pick Sammy up was always more stress than Dean felt he could cope with. Getting anywhere near the school’s parking lot was impossible most days, and only a week after they had arrived in the town and enrolled, they were fed up of the excruciatingly slow process of the end of the school day. The brothers had taken to meeting somewhere down the road from the campus, wherever the Impala happened to be in the row cars when Sam got out, and on a good day, they’d be through the queue and back on the road to the motel within the hour.
Today was not a good day.
In fact, it was so much the opposite to a good day that Dean had turned off the engine where he currently sat, completely stationary, and stuck one of his favourite cassettes on at full volume and slouched back in his seat, scowling. He didn’t care for the angry glares from parents in the surrounding cars; it was music to his ears, and seeing Sammy grinning at his situation as he meandered over lightened his mood a little.
As Sam pulled the car door open and climbed in, allowing the heavy music to flow out into the street, passers-by looked towards them in disgust – some even covered their ears – and Dean allowed himself a small derisory smile at the musical insolence of the rest of the world.
“Good day?” he asked his little brother, who by now had settled into the passenger seat with his bag tossed in the footwell and books sprawled across his lap.
“Better than yours by the look of it.” Sam had that smirk on as he looked Dean up and down, that one with a hint of smugness mixed in with the amusement. Dean cast his brother a glare that warned him not to go there, but it only made Sam’s grin widen.
The older brother turned his glare back to the traffic, which hadn’t moved an inch for nearly 10 minutes now. “Oh, come on!” he yelled pointlessly at the cars ahead, most of which were loading students into their cars. Dean took his frustration out on the horn before slumping back into his seat. A moment later the restlessness returned and he said, “You know what, fuck this,” before sitting up and revving the engine back into life, turning the steering wheel hard and driving up onto the pavement.
“Dean, what the hell are you doing?!”
Sam’s moral objections were drowned out by the music as the older boy slammed up the volume and started to sing along, a satisfied grin finally finding a place on his lips. Sam soon smiled back in resignation, shaking his head and trying to hide his face from the passing students who scattered before them, yelling complaints.
Once they were back alongside moving traffic, Dean steered back onto the road – to a medley of inharmonious horns – and gave a deeply content sigh.
“You enjoyed that way too much, man,” Sam half-laughed.
Dean only smiled.
The drove quietly for a while, appreciating the musical genius of Sabbath (or at least Dean was – Sam had learnt to shut his cakehole when it came to music) before Sam said, “Hey, weren’t we meant to turn left back there? The motel’s back that way.”
“Who said we were going to the motel?”
Sam looked mildly sceptical but decided not to question his brother’s line of thinking. Whatever he was planning, Sam could do with a change of the schedule of school work and takeaways anyway.
Half an hour later, the Impala rumbled into a car park and the engine sputtered to a stop. Sam glanced around – all he could see was a tree-bordered field sparsely strewn with dog-walkers and a little café at the other end of the car park. Dean cast him a grin before surging out of the car and moving to retrieve something from the trunk. Sam, still confused, slowly got out of the car and slammed the door closed behind him, turning to his brother. By then, Dean had closed the trunk and was holding up an American football with a smug look on his face.
Sam grinned back. All the stresses of schoolwork melted from his mind as he followed his brother into the park. They set about their casual game and fell into play with routine ease, running this way and that, chucking the ball between one another, laughing when other fell over – it made him feel like a child again. Sam could count on his fingers the number of times Dad had done this with them, but they were some of Sam’s best memories. Out here he didn’t need to worry about the things that go bump in the night, he didn’t feel different to everyone else; he felt normal. And that simple feeling made him happier than he’d been in a long while.
Dean lost track of how long they played for; hours, he guessed, as the park grew dim around them. He helped his brother up from the murky grass that he’d tackled him down onto and brushed the dirt from his back. As he caught his breath, he turned towards the little café that sat by the car park. “Dinner?”
They made their way over, the ball tucked into the crook of Sam’s mud-caked elbow. When they stepped inside, they were overwhelmed with the delicious smell of freshly-baked yumminess – and directly in front of them was a stand of gorgeous, golden-crusted pies.
Dean had spotted them at the same time as Sam and turned to his little brother, quickly saying, before he could get a word in, “Why don’t you grab a seat, I’ll get the food.” He flashed Sam an innocent smile and proceeded without waiting for an answer. Sam sighed and resigned himself to table choice.
Soon the older boy was on his way over with a tray laden with food. He plonked it down in the middle of the table before taking his seat and waving a hand broadly as though presenting their feast. “Dig in, Sammy,” he said before he set about selecting his first bite.
“Dean…”
Dean looked up from the food to his brother, who was scanning their platter. “What?”
Sam took a moment to look more carefully and even resorted to looking under the napkins before he asked, perplexed, “Where’s the pie?”
Dean had bought two bowls of delicious-looking (to Sam, at least) salad and a few slices of what looked like the healthiest bread Sam had ever seen. Condiments, snacks and sauces surrounded their meal, but there was no pie to be seen.
It was a moment before his brother responded. “A little bit of healthy stuff can’t hurt, right?” he eventually responded, sounding a little abashed. Sam only stared. “What I mean is,” Dean stumbled, avoiding Sam’s gaze as though it embarrassed him to have done something nice, “it can’t be that bad if you like it so much.”
Sam couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. He was touched by this effort, wanted to thank Dean over and over for being the best brother ever, for spending this afternoon with him being like regular guys and now trying a salad because that’s what he likes. If he was in a TV show, this would be one of those big emotional moments where they hug and cry and swear never to say anything against each other again because family is family etc. etc.. But he wasn’t, and it was enough just to say a genuine, “Thanks, Dean.”
His brother met his eyes and gave one of those nods where they both knew that they understood what the other was thinking without having to say anything more.
So they dug into their dinner, and Sam had been right – the salad was delicious, fresh and crisp with a gorgeous dressing and—
“Oh my God that is disgusting,” he heard across the table, and looked up to see Dean trying to rid his mouth of the greenery he’d just attempted to ingest.
Sam supressed the laugh that welled up within him, but its smile crept through.
“Man, how do you eat this stuff every day?” Dean asked, incredulous, before cracking open the beer he’d bought himself and washing his mouth of the taste of nature.
“You gonna need one of those pies then?” Sam suggested, grinning, taking the rest of his brother’s salad and tipping it into his bowl.
“God yes,” Dean muttered, reaching into his pocket and drawing out a neatly wrapped object. He placed it on the table before him and undid the wrappings, revealing a steaming, wonderfully aromatic steak and ale pie.
Sam made a noise of disbelief at his brother’s typicality, but he couldn’t resist the affectionate smile that shaped his mouth as he shook his head and turned back to his own food.
Dean looked at him as though he was being ridiculous by having expected anything less. “What? I was gonna save it for later…”