"Hey, princess." Dean is tossing Peanut M&M's at Sam's head from the passenger seat. They've been driving for seven hours, without stopping, and Sam's got that glazed over look that means he's a lot more than just tired from the trip. Dean throws another M&M and it hits Sam gracefully on the side of his head, almost entering his ear. Dean sniggers. Sam sighs. He's annoyed. And exhausted. "You dreamin' over there?" Dean asks. He throws another M&M, a red one this time, and Sam catches it and pegs it back at Dean.
"Clearly," Sam grunts, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. "Would you leave me alone?"
"I just don't want you to ruin my car," Dean insists, folding up the bag of M&M's, and tossing them in the backseat. "Or, you know, me."
Sam grunts in response. "I'm fine, Dean," he says, after almost a full minute. "How many times to I have to tell you?"
Sam is, by all accounts not fine. It has been eleven days since Jessica died, and Sam hasn't slept more than two hours at a time. He's gunning for a fight –with Dean, with that guide, with Wendigo's and monsters, and even that nice waitress at the last rest stop they stopped at. Dean expects that once they find Dad, Sam will try to fight him too, but that's nothing new and a problem for another time.
"Until I believe it I guess," Dean shrugs. "Next pull-off, we're switching." He says it like it's final, because it is.
At the next pull-off, Sam pulls over, and they switch places. It's been eleven days since Jessica died, and Sam hasn't slept more than two hours at a time. He's still raw from Jessica's death. Sometimes, Dean catches him crying coming out of the shower.
He falls asleep as soon as he closes the passenger seat door behind him. Dean chuckles, turns on a soft rock station, rolls down his window. He drives away with his hand hanging out the window, and the sun beaming into the car, with his little brother asleep next to him. It sucks that Jessica's dead and that Dad is missing, but Dean can't help but feel a little giddy. They saved that girl's brother, and they killed a Wendigo, and soon, Dean would be reunited with his Dad and his brother, and then, finally, after twenty years, they would get the closure they all deserved. No more running or hiding. Just Sam, Dean, and Dad, doing what they did best.
They would find Dad, and they would kill the thing that got Mom and Jessica. Sam would see. It would all work out okay.
Sam jolts awake so fast he almost bangs his head against the top of the Impala. He rubs his eyes, and stares out the window, pretending he can't feel Dean's eyes boring a hole into the back of his head. They drive for a couple more miles, until Dean can't hold in what he has to say any longer.
"Are they corporeal?" Dean asks suddenly, so suddenly Sam almost bangs his head against the top of the Impala a second time. Sam can almost hear Dean's grin through his words.
Sam whips around to look at him, and sure enough, Dean is smirking at the windshield. "What?" Sam asks.
Dean glances at him and his smirk deepens. He looks back at the road. "Nothing," Dean insists. "I just…I wanted to know if your dreams are corporeal?"
"They're dreams, Dean," Sam says, but something inside of him freezes. It's not just the memory of a dream where Jessica's hand reached around his arm, pulled him under the freshly dug earth. The constant image of Jessica, above him, burning, would never leave him. How could Dean know? It's only been eleven days since Jessica died. Eleven days ago, Sam didn't even know. "What do you think?"
"Exactly," Dean says. Sam sighs, relieved. Dean doesn't know about his dreams. He's just being a smartass. He's just trying to make a point. "They're just dreams, Sammy. They can't hurt you."
"We both know better," Sam mutters under his breath, but Dean ignores him. Sam sighs and opens the glove compartment to retrieve a map. At the same time, he reaches to change the radio station, but Dean slaps his hand away, as if Dean liked listening to Matchbox Twenty. Sam shrugs, and opens the map. "Where are we even going?" he asks.
"To a motel," Dean answers, without looking at Sam or the map. "So you can sleep in a bed." Sam snorted. It was unlikely that Sam was going to sleep, probably ever again. At least not until they found Dad. "So you can try for more than just a couple of hours." Sam snorts louder, but Dean keeps ignoring him.
There's silence for a while, except for the hum of a radio station neither of them particularly liked, and then Sam says, "What if my dreams weren't just…in my head?"
Dean shakes his head. "They're just dreams, Sammy," he insists. "Hell, even I have bad dreams," he admits. Sam laughs at Dean's brash confession. "But I beat the crap outta them, don't forget it."
Sam rolls his eyes. Without even trying, Dean got him to forget about Jessica and Dad and his dreams. "You can't beat up your dreams, man. What are you talking about?"
"You can if they're corporeal."
"I don't think you know what that word means."
"Oh yeah?" Dean challenges. "What does it mean, professor?"
"It means it has a body," Sam says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "You would think that a man who works in Latin for a living would know derivatives from the word corpus."
Dean groans and laughs. But he still shouts out with triumph when Sam announces the definition. "See!" he shouts, banging his hands on the steering wheel victoriously. "I do know what it means!"
Sam shakes his head. "No you don't, dreams can't be corporeal," he says, taking Dean's brief moment of success as an opportunity to change the station. He turns it to something electronic and percussive, and Dean groans, but he lets it go.
"Well then how did I beat the crap outta it, huh?" Dean asks, wagging his eyebrows at him. "I couldn't do that if they were…incorporeal, could I?" Dean reaches into the back seat. "And," he announces, as he fishes his half-empty bag of Peanut M&M's from the back. He takes a handful, throws one at Sam (the car swerves almost imperceptibly when he takes both hands off the wheel) and tosses the rest in his lap to eat later. "It's like Dad says…"
"If it bleeds –you can kill it," Sam finishes, taking the bag of M&M's. He eats a blue one.
Dean nods, approvingly. "So let's hope that this son of a bitch who killed Mom and Jessica can bleed like a motherfucker," Dean says. "Because I can't wait to kill that." He looks at Sam. "And then, maybe you'll sleep a little so I don't have to drive all the time without fearing for my life."
A/N: So season 11 just finished, and I've decided that I'm done. Thank you Supernatural for all the fun and brothers, but I'm just not interested in the story anymore. BUT what I am interested in is the stories they've already told, so this summer, about one a week, I'll be finishing writing a short fic, probably all under 1500 words for each episode that I haven't done. I will probably only do up the end of season eight, and I'll be skipping any episodes I have already covered. That's still over 100 episodes and 100 fics, so we'll see how many I get done this summer.
Anyway, even though I haven't written anything for Supernatural for two years, I want to thank anyone who has ever read or reviewed any of my Supernatural fic. It's been wild guys, and I know I've got a long road ahead of me still, even though I won't be around for season 12, but I don't regret it.