Disclaimer: Winchesters not mine. Blah, blah, blah.
A/N: For jules1013, who wanted semi-retired Sam/Dean. This is the gen version? Oh, and the Centralia mine fire is real.
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It's a combination of things that brings their wanderings to an end. Dean's continuous bitching every time the weather hits that magic combination of fifty degrees and raining. Sam getting smacked around a little too hard by a poltergeist in Tulsa and spending over a month in the hospital recovering from massive internal injuries. Bela falling prey to the Uktena, the two of them too dazzled by the blazing diamond in the center of its forehead to save her. It's time for them to stop, they both realize, almost simultaneously.
They're in a gas station in Pennsylvania: Dean at the pump while Sam goes into the tiny convenience store for coffee and newspapers. It's starting to rain again, and the wind is enough to make Sam wish he hadn't left his flannel shirt in the car. He grabs a couple of one-dose packs of Ibuprofen from the box next to the cash register for Dean. If it's not his left knee, it's his right, and if it's not his right knee, then it's his shoulder/elbow/wrists.
"Here you go, old man," he says a few minutes later, shoving one of the packets across the roof of the Impala.
Dean grunts and swallows them with gulps of too-hot coffee. "Where to now, Sammy?"
"Centralia—the town's been on fire for over fifty years."
"You shitting me?"
"Nope. An abandoned coal mine caught fire in 1962 and has been burning underneath the town ever since. The last census put the local population at two, both over the age of sixty-five."
"And you're thinking this might be somehow demon-related?"
"I don't know what I'm thinking." Sam leans his head against the passenger window and watches the white line fly by. Centralia's close, and it should be quiet. That's all he really wants these days—quiet. The telepathy comes and goes, same as the visions, but when it's active, it's all he can do not to scream. Traveling with someone else would be unbearable, except it's Dean. He knows what his brother is thinking before Dean does, even when he can't hear his thoughts.
Centralia's population drops to one (and two visitors) within hours of their arrival. They pick their way along the buckling pavement, conscious of the heat seeping through the soles of their boots. They could be treading over hellfire, Sam thinks as they make their way to the cemetery on the hill. Everything about this empty town is slightly off-kilter. Mr. Galloway's shriveled body feels like a sack of cement by the time they reach the top of the hill and lay him down in a spot clear of headstones and tell-tale bumps in the earth.
There's smoke rising from the ground in places. Dean pulls an EMF meter from his pocket, plays with it for a few minutes as they rest. "Nothing conclusive. This place gives me the creeps."
"It doesn't bother me so much," Sam admits, lying back on the scorched grass. And that's not a lie.
A few minutes later Mrs. Eleanor Parsons, Centralia's lone remaining resident, finally huffs her way up the hill. "You gonna bury him, or you just gonna lay there all day?" she wheezes as she leans on her cane. She had, she tells Sam later, a bet going with Mr. Galloway over who was going to croak first. As the winner, she got fifty bucks and all the canned goods from his cellar.
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They end up moving into Galloway's old house. It sits (leans really, since the ground buckled at some point in the '80s and tipped the house rather dramatically to the left) next to Mrs. Parsons'. She comes over every afternoon and does her baking in their oven. Shoves her dentures around her mouth with her tongue and claims it's 'cause she can con Sam into gathering wood for the stove, but he suspects she gets lonely.
Dean's made a project of mapping the mine fire. "There's something down there besides seams of unmined coal," he says with a shrug when Sam asks.
"Yeah, flames." But he leaves his brother to it. Dean has aches Ibuprofen won't touch.
Maybe he will find something underneath the ruined town; maybe he won't. For now, Sam's contented to just wait and watch and enjoy the peace.