Highway

by onewithroses

Samuel Winchester climbed out of Hell a year and six weeks ago. AU, Gen, One shot.

10

Title: One Shot: Highway

Rating: Adult

Genre: Dark/Emotional. AU

Characters: Sam, Dean

Warning: Insanity, not show compliant, odd

Prompt: Prompt given by: mimblexwimble Sam, Dean (Gen): If your sister or your brother were stumbling on their last mile
In a self-inflicted exile... ~ Dar Williams, Mercy of the Fallen

Summary: Samuel Winchester climbed out of Hell a year and six weeks ago.

Note: All errors are caused by my soup-for-brains, html gremlins, and my inability to find time to watch past the first few episodes of season three.

Sometimes, Sam thinks someone is coming for him. Some days he feels a chill like someone is standing in his shadow and breathing down his neck. Sam shrinks from the feeling, ducking his head further between the bony curve of his shoulders and pulling his dull brown hair over his sunburned eyes—as though that will keep people from noticing him.

Sam is too tall, too lank, and too memorable no matter what his intentions. If someone wants to find him, they will. They'll drive right up behind him as he drags his broken down tennis shoes one in front of the other down by the side of some long forgotten highway.

Sam imagines the experience sometimes. Someone drives past him while he's on the road. They stop with squealing tires as they catch sight of him, then swerve and stop until he shuffle-steps up to the car—his face dirty and dumb with roadside dust and exhaustion. It's always a black Impala in these dreams and he can't quite own up to why. The people he waits for are faceless. They are shorter than he is with dirty-blond hair and a crooked smile under the blank spaces where they should have eyes. Sam holds his breath as they collect him like he's part of the local lost-and-found. They wash him up and take him home.

Sam feels (is) so lost.

Sam blames dehydration for the fantasies.

It's been a year and two days and he can't quite remember what he's doing anymore but he just knows no one is following him by now. There's something about Hell in the corner of his mind and he tastes sulfur all the time now. That might be the reason why. He thinks that he must have gone to Hell. There are burning rings in his pupils that stare back at him from chipped motel mirrors saying, yes.

Sam can't remember what happened. He can't remember why. He just knows that Dean is okay now and he is not.

He is not and that was why he had to leave.

No one is coming for Sam but he still sees them out of the corner of his eyes sometimes. Sometimes it's Dean; other times it's Bobby, or Ellen. Maybe they're in the gas station he's buying cheap bottled water at. He'll peruse the rack of ready-made snacks and they'll be staring at him like he's a monster from beside the cigarette display case. Maybe he catches sight of a pretty little blond swinging her hips to the jukebox music behind a bar and for just a moment, imagines Jo.

He is never quite sure why this happens. It's just a moment, half a second at most, and then he can't catch his breath for an hour. Most times Sam ends up locking himself up in some dingy bathroom until he feels like he can walk on to the next town, the next motel, the next gas station with cheap food and cheaper air conditioning. He has to keep moving.

Sam knows with a certain fuzzy certainty that Ellen and Bobby, Jo and Dean, have no business haunting his waking moments. He left for them, so their memories should stay under his singed motel bed sheets. At least there Sam can swallow them back down come morning and forget again instead of hastily gulping them down in trashy bathrooms.

He doesn't think he should have any room for regret. This was his choice. He knew what he was doing at the time—it's just that he can't remember the reasons he had anymore.

Dean catches up with him at some no name town with no one in it. Sam spots him when he leaves his scummy red lacquered motel room for the nearby five-and-dime store. He needed water—always water—and some cheap food. He hasn't eaten in a while so even the overcooked hotdogs and boxes of stale cracker-jacks should look good. (You want the prize, Dean? )

He spots Dean in the parking lot between the motel and the store. He's sitting on the hood of the impala, head bobbing to a bassline that Sam can't hear from the sidewalk. Dean isn't looking at him and Sam honestly thinks he's a mirage at first. Sam stops for one second. Two. Dean looks up; he smiles.

Then Dean is coming at him like a bat out of Hell—all clean cut and leather jacket swinging in the late summer breeze. "Sam—Hey-Hey—Sammy!"

Dean skids on the asphalt with his arms out in a gesture that people use on spooked animals. He's unarmed. He's safe. Not going to harm him. Sam takes off anyway before he even knows what he's doing.

Sam hits the store ten feet ahead of Dean. He bursts through the swing door and causes the roped bell to jingle so hard it falls off with a clatter. He pays it no mind, just hotfoots it to the bathroom breathing hard. He slams the door shut behind him and holds it closed with his whole body while his hands fumble blindly behind him for the lock. His eyes are wide, head bowed, and there's sweat trickling down his brow. He's not sure if he wants Dean to really be here or for this to be another hallucination. His heart pounds one second. Two. Three.

No one pounds on the door.

Sam's hair clings to his flushed face as his eyes dart around the corners of the tiny unisex bathroom. Dean must not have been real, couldn't have been real. Sam lets out a shaky breath.

No one's here but Sam still can't move. Panic holds him tight so he studies the room instead with old, flat eyes.

There's white paint peeling in one corner and beads of it are scattered over the old dirty gray tile. Water is dripping in the sink to his right and he eyes it, still half listening for Dean on the other side of the door. He thinks it's a half-dream at best and it's easier to block the idea than of giving into any sense of hope or foreboding. He watches small beads of clear yellowish liquid slip around the rusted rim of the faucet before making the plunge into the stained porcelain sink. It takes him more than a minute of heavy breathing and slumped shoulders to finally leave the door.

The door isn't much protection anyway, Sam rationalizes. It's rickety enough to be made out of cardboard and couldn't have protected him from the past anymore than it could have withstood a particularly hard push.

Sam shoves this out of mind and squeezes the faucet handles until the drip becomes a mostly clear rush. He scoops handfuls of water and throws it onto his face, drenching the stained wife beater he picked up somewhere a hundred miles back. The water leaves clean streaks in his muddy face and the dirty water drips on his shirt and shoes. It puddles on the floor, cold and slick. Sam drinks what little slides between his lips and breaths out a mist as he sighs into the cracked mirror.

"You've lost it." He leans forward and breathes a shadow of hot air onto the glass. He pulls up a wet hand to write in it and then hesitates. He wants to write Sammy is here, but thinks it might be breaking some rule he can't remember. "No more staring you down. They're running after you."

Sam chuckles his depreciation of himself at his reflection and smiles recognition at the bloodshot eyes and the road grime that has cloaked his face for so long he can't quite remember what he looks like under it. He almost doesn't recognize his own voice, rough and heavy. It sounds like he took up smoking twenty years back and never quit.

Dean looked no older than the last time Sam saw him. He was clean-shaven, cleanly dressed, and the only thing out of place is the scar that carves its way down the right side of his lips. It starts just under his nose, then curves its way all the way down to his chin. Sam thinks he should have recognized the scar but he doesn't, didn't, wouldn't.

Smears of brownish red cover Sam's ratty jeans and barely there tank top. When he rubs a hand to the side of his face his hand comes away with mud and red clay like he's made of earth and blood. The image causes him to start—staring in abject horror at his hand for two heartbeats.

Red, red, red. Sam can't get away from it—it stares out at him from his eyes and covers his hands. He wants to blind himself, but plunges his hands back under the still running water instead. Sam never turned off the faucet.

He scrubs his hands white with soft blunt nails. He flings more water at his face and then drags the pads of his fingertips over his eyes, his nose, his mouth wanting the dirt off. The mud slides, it moves, and clumps around his hairline before dripping off his chin. Castoff water hits the tiles and forms dark puddles at his feet.

Someone will come drag him out of the bathroom soon. Washing up in bathrooms isn't acceptable. Sam's been forced out before—clothes dripping and eyes wide. That day the sun burned his eyes worse than usual and the person who hauled him out screamed and screamed and screamed.

Sam tasted sulfur for weeks after and never tried washing up in the sinks of convenience stores again.

Sam shakes his head and breathes out again before putting his hand on the door. He is drenched, but not clean. It'll feel good, he reminds himself, when he's walking again under the hot, hot sun. It'll feel good to feel anything at all.

Dean is waiting for him when he leaves the bathroom. Sam doesn't notice at first. He counts the trail of reddish-brown footprints he leaves on the convenience store's gray tiles instead of looking up.

Dean doesn't touch him at first. He simply stands back, five feet away, by the slushy machine and sunflower seed display. He lets Sam slide step, leaving muddy wet prints all over the ground, to the pre-made food display. He waits.

The clerk at the front desk waits too. Sam doesn't pay him any more attention than he does Dean. He shuffles passed them both, listening to the clerks impatient foot tapping and wondering why the kid hasn't tried to throw him out yet.

Five minutes later Dean still hasn't said anything and Sam is watching the hotdogs go round and round. The kid up front makes a sort of miffed sound at the back of his throat and opens the till to rearrange the rolls of change by coin type.

Dean puts a hand on his shoulder. "Sam."

Sammy flinches back, takes in a heavy breath, and then flicks his eyes to the side. He catches Dean's shadow. Dean. It's Dean again. Sam knows Dean shouldn't be here. He shouldn't have found him and he shouldn't have been looking.

Sam chokes on the words he wants to say, his throat working on nonsense sounds—all clicks and guttural gasps. The hand on his shoulder tightens, as though Dean's expecting him to run again. Sam would if he could.

He's waiting for Dean's hand to burn with the crisp smell of sulfur.

It doesn't.

"God, Sammy, you've really made a mess of yourself." Dean's voice is low murmur in his ear and Sam closes his eyes for a moment. He opens them again, all dull hazel and flaming pupils, and watches Dean's reflection in the cooker glass.

Dean looks pained, Sam realizes. He is hurting and that doesn't seem real. Dean is standing there, hand on Sam's muddy shoulder like Sammy's worth something. Like Sam is more than just a ghost and old smoky clothes.

Dean doesn't pull him. He doesn't push. He doesn't brush Sam's still sopping bangs from his eyes.

Sam turns his attention back to the hotdogs that have been over cooked to bursting. He swallows again. Dean is looking at him, searching his profile, and seeing nothing Sam thinks is there.

Sam thinks that if Dean saw his eyes, really saw them and the flames inside, he'd leave. Dean has to be thinking that things have changed. Or, maybe, he doesn't remember what happened at all. Dean is not looking at Sam like he understands that Sammy is nothing but an empty house with the top half gutted by fire.

Dean doesn't understand that the fire still burns and sometimes, sometimes, it leaks out.

Sam isn't sure about the when's or how's, but Dean gets him into the Impala and eventually guides him with careful leading hands into a new motel room. Its about ten miles from the nearest highway exit ramp and if Sam were thinking of anything by this time he would realize that that's it's probably a precaution. Dean thinks he can catch him again if Sam has to walk that far to get back on the veins of America.

Dean is probably right.

"Dean." The word comes out with a sort of biting sound and Sam reaches with one hand for the edge of Dean's jacket when his brother steps back. He has placed Sam on the motel bed that is all tan and rough wool. Sam curls his left hand into the fibers and grabs with his right. The feeling is disorienting. "What…" Sam clears his throat, trying to pull scratchy words up from inside himself. "What are you doing--"

"Picking your scrawny ass off the highway." Dean doesn't pull himself from Sam's grasp. He shucks off his jacket and leaves Sam with a whole lot of leather and memories as he goes to the motel sink with a cup. He comes back a moment later, not saying a thing about how Sam cradles the coat to his face or how he smears it with dirt, and places the cup in Sam's empty left hand.

Sam stares at the glass and the water. There are ripples on the top from the way his hand shakes. He squashes his desire to stare at Dean because Dean will see his eyes if he looks up. This will be over if he looks up. Sam lifts the glass with indifference and sips.

It tastes like heaven.

"Sam."

"I'm going to leave." Sam swallows and lifts the glass to sip from it again, as though that will douse the flames that sap his skin and heart dry. "Soon."

"No," Dean speaks in simple measured words as though he's afraid that Sam won't understand otherwise. "You're not."

Sam turns his attention to the scar on Dean's lip. He watches it move from beyond his bangs. It's stark and unchanging. It barely moves with Dean's mouth and doesn't grow as Sam suspected it would. It doesn't break back open to show old blood and pain. It's a line painted on, irremovable and unchanging. "I have to."

"Why?"

Sam thinks the fire is visible. Dean should see the red glow at the back of his throat. The invisible blisters on his lips and tongue. He should smell the sulfur on Sam's nervous sweat and hear the snap, crackle, pop of old words in high heat. Sam opens his mouth and sighs out invisible air with no smoke and no heat.

Dean should see the fire, hear it, and know—danger.

If Dean does he doesn't show it. He just looks at Sam, brows drawn and face pinched like he isn't quite sure why Sam is rejecting him still. Little boy hurt on an older man's face.

Finding him doesn't change anything. Sam knows this and his hand stills against the comforter. He curls his fingers together with a slow, stuttering resignation.

The look on Dean's face when he lashes out is almost enough to make him stop. He doesn't, though. Sam reaches out with two bony hands to grab and hit. Sam pushes Dean back.

Dean's eyes are wide open with surprised disbelief so Sam hits him.

Two minutes later there is blood on Sam's tongue and he's not sure if its Dean's or his own. It burns where the water had cooled him. He and Dean pull their punches and scuffle along the twelve feet width of the bedroom. They grab with sluggish, half-hearted hands, and push then pull. Dean has shuttered his surprise behind his eyes. They reflect with dull certainty the wild, grasping panic that shakes Sam's bony limbs from their previous lethargy.

But he won't hurt Dean, not really. Sam can't stand to see another scar next to the first if Dean finds him again.

Dean always finds him.

Sam's fist connects to Dean's cheek with a sharp crack once—almost twice—and then Dean is holding his wrists between his hands.

Sam bucks, kicking back as his eyes open wide with suffocating fear. Dean his holding him back. Dean is touching his skin.

Dean pushes him back towards the bed, forcing his legs to bend over the side as he presses Sam down, down, down.

"Sammy, it's okay." Sam is sinking into Dean's eyes. He is falling through the scratchy motel comforter. For a moment Sam thinks Dean is sinking with him and he struggles again, arms pushing back against Dean's clean hands. "It's okay."

There is a cool light in Dean's eyes and Sam lets out a breath with the low whine of someone who is trapped.

There are tears on Dean's face but his eyes are dry and old. They are paper and Sam's are fire. This is a recipe for disaster. But Sam can't make himself get up and go.

Later that day Sam sits on the bed eating cheap fried food out of small paper packets. There are fries and ketchup and a small fruit cup. Sam sucks on the oranges and his fingertips when the juice drops form his lips. He likes the oranges and the peaches the best. He leaves the pealed grapes at the bottom of the cup and shuffles them around with his index finger when he's done.

Dean watches him from two feet away. He picks at his sandwich and fiddles with a bottle of soda. He looks like he would like something stronger but is too afraid that Sam would take any show of weakness as a chance to escape.

Sam can't say he wouldn't so he doesn't mention it. He simply glances up again, then over to the side where there's a clock on the wall. "How did you find me?"

Dean cleans his throat, "I got lucky."

"You didn't know I was going to be here?" This surprises Sam for some reason. He sort of thought that Dean was always looking for him, that everyone was. If that were the case, the images of everyone would make sense.

Somewhat.

"I got lucky." Dean intones gruffly. He eyes are frank and earnest. He is so much the opposite of Sam that it makes his stomach twist until he sinks off the bed and onto the scratchy motel floor.

Everything's brown here. The color of earth and was the color of Sam's skin until Dean folded him into the shower two hours ago. The fruit cup tumbles onto the floor and rolls to Dean's feet and Sam bows his head into his shoulders. Earth colors, solid colors—Sam preferred the motel he had stayed at. It was all plastic and red like fire and blood.

Dean watches, and then lurches forward to put his hands through Sam's tangled hair. He pulls his head back gently his mouth inches from Sam's ear, "Sam?"

Past the heavy burlap curtains a storm is brewing with thick wind and bright, clattering lightening. Rain strikes the glass with a low tap, tap, tap that sounds more befitting of ice.

Sam pushes Dean's hands away. He wants to lean back against the carpet. He's lanky and dirty, and nothing but broken down tennis shoes and old clothes that have been baptized by fire. He doesn't believe in coincidences anymore, but he can't be amenable to this folly.

Sam's arms reek of sulfur and Dean walks around him so that he can kneel in front of his face, hold him up by the shoulders and embrace him. Sam is not sure if he should be begging for forgiveness or screaming at him to leave. There are bags under Dean's eyes and scuffs on his shoes. Dean has been traveling for a long time and Sam never noticed, never knew, couldn't dream.

Sam wants to go home but he doesn't know if he can.

Years ago Dean had fallen. Fallen down, down, down—all the way down to Hell.

(All I see is the light at the end of the tunnel. ) Sam found him later. He took chalk and water and went down, down, down and stole him back from the nautilus weave of Hell. He baptized his brother in fire, purged him of imperfection, and then hauled him into the light.

There was light and shadow and then Sam fell back down, down, down. His bones clatter with the sound of laughing furies and his eyes reflect the burning. (That's Hellfire, Dean.)

Sam is sitting on the floor still, facing Dean's back so that he can trace the circles of Hell on the back of Dean's shirt. He has memorized them all. They spiral down, lead from one to the other, until there's nothing left but dizzy fear and pain. Sam hasn't been back in over a year but Hell still burns under his skin and bleeds out his eyes. Thinking about it makes his brain is fevered and afraid.

Dean turns around after a long moment, sighing heavily and standing. Sam watches him and looks straight up when Dean reaches down to pull him up again by his shoulders. Sam's lost so much weight that he's easy to manhandle, to push, and pull. His elbows knock into Dean's sides like a stilted marionette. He hangs on Dean's hands limply, and watches his shadow shift on the carpet.

"Sam." Dean tries again, and pulls him back onto the motel bed. He pushes him back under the covers that smell of sweat and old cigarettes.

Sam wonders again how long Dean's been here, how long he's been searching, but can't ask. He reaches for Dean's jacket again and presses it to his face. If he can feel this, then he won't wake up with Dean being nothing but a memory. He breathes in the leather and counts his own heart beats one, two, three. "Can I be saved?"

"I don't know." Dean says it like a promise, all hushed and heavy near the back of his throat. Dean already promised that Sam will never fall again. Sam has already promised that'd he make the world burn and burn and burn if he hears that Dean Winchester is gone.

Sam sleeps that night with his back to the door and Dean's jacket over his face. He dreams of motor oil and flames, he dreams of the Ave Marias he's never sung. He dreams of walking down and down and down with heavy boots that stick to the blood red stairs.

The next morning Dean drives while Sam leans against the car door and looks out the window. His pupils burn yellow fire in the glass reflection and steam slips up from between his lips. The smoke obscures his view, though Dean doesn't seem to notice, and Sam stares with wide eyes at strangers that burn from the inside out. They pass them in the car. One. Two.

Sam watches the cars turn into fire and rust on the road. He sees the black pits of the demons inside and how the cars and the people put themselves back together before anyone else notices. Sam turns his face from the glass and bends slightly towards Dean. His pulls the too-short sleeves of his brother's jacket down, trying to hide his hands that are no longer covered in red mud and dirt. Dean puts a tape in the tape deck and hits play.

The highway stretches out in front of them, miles of dry dirt and hot sun that Sam has walked before. Dean watches the road, but glances at Sam every three heartbeats. One. Two. Three. Sam holds his breath. Dean's gaze is filled with the same longing Sam felt when he walked alone.

Samuel Winchester climbed out of Hell a year and six weeks ago. He started walking along the side of the road with a handful of change and no water a year and three days ago. He is still burning, even under his brother's calm cool gaze.

Sam turns back to the window. He blows a shadow on the glass and writes, Sam is here in tiny letters with the tip of his index finger. Dean watches out of the corner of his eye and says nothing. He thinks, we are home.