Their car is darker than anything, maybe even them. Darker than the humble viper road.
Does this look like a target to you, he says and jabs a finger at his face. His eyebrows climb up real high and his mouth cracks down in the corners.
His eyes are wide and the other one, his body goes on for miles, tries too hard not to laugh but can't. The air in the car shakes along with his chest, the car might have swerved just a little bit but they can't be sure.
It does, actually, the tall one says and flicks another fry in his direction and misses by a longshot.
There should be some kind of soundtrack that plays when they're night driving like revenge. There are some old cassettes in the glovebox but every song already plays on an 8-track in their heads, memorized until they've burned into rut dry canyons. Listening over and over, one man out of love, the other because of it and classic rock makes the night seem hotter and more spangled anyways. They need a soundtrack because blue dark on the dirt the world needs to know they're coming, it needs a warning.
It's just them and the road and the car and it's their basic space.
Once there was a holy being with strange blue eyes and a smile that could crack earth, a blinding man who lived behind a heavy red scar. But they drove away.
Once there was an old man who breathed in pentagrams and books and alcohol. They loved him right back, but now the old man might is gone and really it would be scarier if he wasn't all the way dead, they are afraid for him.
Dean pulls out a silver flask and takes a long, slow drink, and it pulls at Sam's heart. Just a little bit.
I'm hungry, Dean complains as they pull up the gravel path. The house in front is one of hundreds or maybe thousands they've seen before in Texas, Washington, South Dakota, Arkansas. Sam lost track of all the rotten front stoops a few years back, Dean was never counting.
Dean, Sam says, when are you not, Christ we just ate you jerk.
How 'bout some lemon meringue.
Not now.
Bitch, Dean says and slits his eyes but in a good way.
And then they're armed to the teeth, down their red throats, because Baby's trunk is a goldmine and they can dig her just right. They don't have a lick of fear to share between the both of them, stupid maybe but it's the truth, and the door doesn't even have any hinges because they've smashed it down.
There are poltergeists, and they are children. They hang at the end of the hall in their little white dresses, and it kind of makes Sam want to scream because it doesn't matter what they wear, so why are they trying so hard. Killing little girls doesn't scare them, not really. Dean's killed children. Sam's killed children. There isn't a mask the demons haven't worn or a black sick fetish they haven't twisted into the ground that the Winchesters can't decapitate. Not even their own faces, pulsing slick pink and opened by iron, could make them cringe which opens up a whole new can of worms that Sam doesn't want to think about. So he draws his knife instead.
Dean breathes and they both know what is going to happen, more than they know that the sun is going to rise in the morning, more than they knew their father (but that isn't saying much, so). Their velvet smooth guns and knives are better then their own brittle limbs, even though Dean can kill a man with one punch and Sam can snap bones in two and they can dig a grave faster than anyone, but these aren't men.
Not by a long shot.
The tiny pale feet are fast, but they are faster because this is just a badly exposed photograph, one burning night smeared into another and another and another they're so blind they can hardly see the difference anymore.
The Colt jumps to life in Dean's hands, the ultimate mouth of revenge, and keens after one of the little ghost girls. Sam's got the other and it might be close combat but it's fine, she hardly comes up to his waist, he could brain her with the bottom of his boot if he wanted.
Sam surges forward and the demon's not so certain now, Sam's a lot of human to handle at once. But his foot finds a stringy floorboard and goes right through it, the house is old and he's stupid, the odds are uneven now. Its claws are renting him in an instant and the long red lines are cold, God they're cold, but Sam just plunges his hungry blade into its thin white shoulder to the hilt.
He predicts the rough bang of the Colt, the less than silence between, then a sharp high gasp of the bullet piecing the demons head. The tarry cloud explodes upwards and as her little body falls to the ground and he sees twenty others just like her, mirrored behind her shadow.
He knows Dean's witty line before he hears it. Dean's built out of witty lines.
The Impala is blacker and shinier and more holy than scripture, she roars and it's pink and blue dawn. Sam's hurting but it's only a flesh wound, a little crimson, nothing can ever really make him itch anymore because once your soul's been flayed there's just nothing like it.
How's the leg, Dean asks, looking out the window.
It's. It's fine. Sam says, except.
His bones are falling apart, Dean has X-ray vision. Dean is Superman and Sam's four years old and his big brother's the only hero he's even known.
Oh god Sam's bones are falling apart at this moment in the Impala on the road somewhere in Kansas, he keeps seeing the little demon girls dying for ten thousand Sundays under his hand.
Now he knows, a revelation, that they are going to live and live and live and live, they don't deserve it at realizes, his organs are being crushed concave, they aren't afraid of Death or God or Hell anything at all because they've been there and back again too many times they're just can't fear.
Sam curls up in the passenger seat, head pounding. Now it's just him and his big brother, who can hardly open his eyes in the morning he's so terrified of himself, Sam has to limp along for the both of them. They've become creatures of sick white habit because that's the only thing they have. Guns and salt and fire into oblivion.
Hey, we should stop in Clinton, bet we could get some nice ass over there? Dean's voice lilts up at the end in a question as he turns and looks at Sam, Dean's eyes are greener than envy.
Sam just looks at him,
You're such a fucking coward.