Title: Tales of Brave Ulysses
Author: Wynn
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Supernatural. They are owned by Eric Kripke, the CW, etc. and are used for non-profit, entertainment purposes only
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The baby looked funny. Its head was too big, almost as big as its body, and its face was all smushed together, and pink, too. Dean hated pink.
He leaned forward. Daddy's hand tightened around his waist as he pressed his face to the glass for a better look. It wriggled in its bed and one fat little hand popped out from beneath its blanket. The blanket was blue. Dean had a blue blanket at home, too.
"So what do you think Dean-o?"
Dean shrugged. "I don't know. Does it like chocolate milk?"
"Him, Dean. Does he like chocolate milk. And I don't know. Sammy's never had chocolate milk before."
Dean turned away from it- him- and looked at Daddy. "Nuh-huh." Dean loved chocolate milk. Sometimes Mommy let him have chocolate milk with his breakfast. She let him pour it on his cereal instead of the normal kind. He liked that better.
Daddy smiled. "He's never had hot dogs before either. Or ice cream. Or peanut butter and jelly."
Never had peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter and jelly was Dean's second favorite. His first favorite was chicken nuggets. Chicken nuggets and french fries and applesauce. Sometimes Mommy made green beans instead of french fries. Green beans were all right. Not as good as french fries. The only thing better than french fries was chocolate milk.
Dean looked at him. He probably never had french fries before either.
"Daddy?"
"Yeah, kiddo?"
He opened his eyes and blinked a couple times. Then he yawned real big and went back to sleep.
No.
Not him.
Sammy.
His brother.
"Sammy can have some of my fries if he wants."
Daddy kissed the top of his head and hugged him, too. Dean wondered if Daddy kissed Sammy on the top of his head. Maybe Mommy did. Someone should. Kisses were nice unless they came from old people and then they were wet and smelled funny. But Dean wasn't old so maybe he could do it if no one else did. He and Sammy could have french fries and chocolate milk every day and maybe ice cream, too, and then Mommy could read them a story when they went to sleep and Daddy could tuck them in and then Dean would kiss Sammy on the top of his head and they would go to sleep and wake up and do it all again the next day.
Dean smiled.
He liked the sound of that.
…………
everything else
Dad stayed with Sammy the whole night. He put his gun down by the bed and wrapped Sammy up in his blankets again and then he pulled a chair close and sat down.
Dean watched him watch Sam. He dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes and then he leaned back in his chair and sighed, and he never looked at Dean, not once.
Dean sat in the chair by the TV and tried to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw that thing, that thing that came into their room and hurt Sammy because Dean had forgot what Dad had said and left.
No.
Dean hadn't forgot.
He remembered exactly what Dad had said and left anyway. He hated the room and he hated spaghettios and he hated the shotgun that Dad had gave him to use and he hated always having to watch Thundercats because Sammy liked Thundercats.
Sometimes he wanted- Dean didn't know what. He didn't know what he wanted. He just wanted something. Something else. Dean thought that was why he left, but he didn't know. All he knew was that he had to get out of the room or he was going to scream and that would've woken Sammy and then Sammy would have been cranky the next day for not getting enough sleep and then Dad would've been mad at Dean for waking Sammy and making him cranky and that would have sucked, so.
Dean had left.
And Sammy almost died.
They left the motel the next morning. Dad checked them out as Dean walked Sammy out to the car, their bag and two pillows in his hands. Sammy shuffled along ahead of him and Dean didn't know if he should look at Sammy or at everything else.
He tried to do both and tripped on the curb.
Sammy stopped next to the car. He waited for Dean to unlock the door so he could climb inside and go back to sleep. Dean handed him the pillows and pulled Dad's keys from his pocket. Then he unlocked the front door and said, "Get in."
Sammy blinked up at him. Dad still wouldn't look at him. Sammy looked at the car and then he looked at Dean and then he said, "But you sit up front."
"Well, now you do, so get in."
Sammy's eyes got big and he looked at the car again. "Really?"
"Yeah. Now come on. Get in."
Sammy smiled, the big one that he saved for times at the playground and chocolate chip cookies, and Dean had to look at everything else. He waited for Sammy to climb inside and then he shut the door. Sammy frowned at him through the window. He twisted around in his seat as Dean opened the back door and threw their bag inside.
"What're you doing?"
"Sitting."
"But…" Sammy looked at the backseat like he'd never seen it before, like he sometimes did to gas station bathrooms, the gross ones.
"But what?" The words came out more hard than Dean had planned. Sammy looked away and Dean wished he could have a do over for this day. "Sammy—"
"But you're in the back," Sammy said and he looked at Dean again. He held his chin in the air, his hand in a fist where it rested on the seat.
"Yeah, I'm in the back. And you're up front."
"Why?"
"Because."
"Because why?"
"Because, Sammy."
"Because why, Dean?"
"Just—" Dean looked up, ready to snap, again, but stopped. Dad stood a few feet away and looked at Dean. He looked right at Dean.
Dean looked away.
"Just because," he said and got into the car. He shut the door and Sammy looked at him and Dad looked at him but Dean still looked at everything else. Then Sammy pushed open his door and jumped out.
Dean reached for him and Dad reached for him, but Sammy shut the door and turned to the back. He stared at Dean through the window and Dean stared back. Then he sighed. He reached for the door and pulled it open and Dean leaned over to help. Sammy scrambled through the gap as soon as he could. He climbed up next to Dean, buckled his seatbelt and just sat there.
He just sat there.
"Dude, what—"
"I want to ride back here, too."
Dad still looked at him.
"Why? You always want to ride up front."
Sammy shrugged and peered up at him. He looked small even though his eyes were still big, and Dean had left and Sammy had died, almost, but still, and Dad never looked at him, not once, not all night, and Sammy reached over and shut the door and he just sat there as he looked at Dean, looked right at Dean, and said, "Because."
…………
of cows and zen
The squirrel stared down at Dean with wide beady eyes. An acorn shook in its hands and its tail twitched. It blinked a couple times and then it spun around and shot up into the tree as fast and as far as it possibly could.
Dean sucked in a breath and looked at Sammy. His hands shook on the steering wheel and he blinked wide, dazed eyes up at the tree. Dean wanted to laugh. All he needed was an acorn and a tail and he would be a perfect mirror image of the just departed squirrel. Instead he said, "Well. At least you didn't hit the cow."
They looked back at the still standing cow. The cow looked back at them from its perch in the middle of the road, unfazed by the previous thirty seconds of near cowicide by a Sammy driven Impala. It ambled over to the shoulder and rooted around in the dirt and rocks for a minute before chowing down on a thick patch of grass.
Dean was sure a metaphor was here somewhere with the cow and the squirrel and his thirteen year old geek of a brother. But before he could determine the cosmic symmetry, Sammy turned back around and groaned.
"Oh my god. Dad's gonna kill me."
Dean followed his gaze. The front end of the Impala hugged the tree about a foot off the ground. Dean figured a headlight busted upon impact, maybe both, and the paint on the hood was all scratched to hell, and yeah, okay, the weird tilt of the bumper was probably something to worry about, but there was nothing worthy of murder. A decade long grounding maybe, but not murder.
"You're overreacting," he said.
Sammy shook his head. "I am not."
"You are, too."
"I am not."
"Sammy—"
"Dean—"
"Seriously—"
"I am not overreacting. Dad- He loves this car. You know how much he loves this car. He's had it longer than we've been alive, Dean."
"It's… just a few scratches."
"Just a—" Sammy stopped his horrified staring long enough to gape at Dean. "Did you forget how much he yelled at me for spilling a Coke in the backseat?"
"Dude, you spilled it on his journal."
"I spilled it on the backseat. A couple drops hit the journal. That's all."
A couple drops. More like half the can. But whatever. Sammy would remember what he wanted to remember. And besides, "He wouldn't have started yelling if you hadn't used his shirt to clean it up."
"There was nothing else."
"You could have—"
"Whatever. You don't know." Sammy crossed his arms over his chest and turned away. He glared at the tree and Dean tried hard not to lean over there and smack him on the back of the head for being a brat. So he hit a tree. Big deal. Dean had crushed the entire right side paneling last year. Of course, he had been with Dad and they were being chased by a nasty pack of hellhounds, but still. A scratched hood and some busted headlights versus a demolished passenger door, a cracked axel, and a torn off side mirror.
No contest.
"Sammy—"
"Can we go now? The cow's creeping me out and I have homework to do."
Dean looked back at the cow. No creep factor that he could see. The cow looked chill. He had grass; he had Zen. Dean needed Zen. Or maybe Sammy needed Zen. If Sammy had Zen, then Dean wouldn't need it.
Dean looked over at Sammy. Maybe Dean should tell him to be more like the cow and less like the squirrel.
Sammy huffed out a sigh and kicked the brake pedal.
Okay, maybe not.
"It's not like you meant to hit the tree."
Sammy rolled his eyes. "Like that's gonna matter."
"It is and you know it."
"It didn't matter that I made straight A's this six weeks. It didn't matter that I made the soccer team and no other freshman did. All that mattered was that I stopped weapons training and couldn't help you and Dad on weekend hunts."
"Sammy, come on—"
"What matters, Dean, is that I wrecked Dad's car and made it conspicuous. That's it. That's all. The end. See you next lifetime."
Sammy shoved open his door then and jumped out without another word. Dean sighed as he stomped away. All he had wanted was to let Sammy drive. Sammy always wanted to drive. And what better place than a deserted little country road in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. No nasty curves or crowded roads. Just them and the road and the cow from hell apparently.
Dean pushed open his own door and dropped to the ground. The cow looked up from its dinner of grass and weeds and gave him a slow blink. Dean glared back, but the cow just swallowed and turned away, about as intimidated by Dean as a rhino to a fly.
Stupid cow.
Dean circled the Impala and found Sammy sitting on the other side of the tree. He tossed acorns at a dirty Coke can, a scowl etched on his face like the broken bumper, crooked and scratched. He ignored Dean as Dean approached and he continued to ignore Dean as Dean sat down beside him.
Guess Sammy could be like the cow after all.
"We could tell him it was a mutated cow," Dean said as he watched Sammy toss another acorn. "Like a hell hound, you know. But a cow."
Sammy rolled his eyes, but he smiled, too. A faint one, but still a smile. "A hell cow?"
"You never know. The spirit of some walking hamburger might come back and seek vengeance on all us evil carnivores. Force feed us cud until we blow chunks or something."
Sammy shook his head and tossed his last acorn at Dean. "You are truly sick, you know that?"
Dean grinned and stretched back against the tree. "What can I say? It's a gift."
"Yeah. A gift from Satan and his evil minions."
"Hey. Never look a gift demon in the mouth."
Sammy stared at him a moment and then raised a brow. "Was that supposed to make some kind of sense? Because, you know, it didn't. At all."
"It will someday. When you're older."
"Yeah, when I'm old and wrinkly and senile because my brain stopped functioning twenty years ago. You know, like you."
"So my brain stopped functioning three years before I was born, math whiz?"
Sammy grinned and stretched out alongside him. "What can I say? It's your gift. Or did you forget about that, old man?"
"Old? Old? I can still kick your ass. Or did you forget about the last time we sparred?"
Sammy shot up and whined out a righteous breath. "Dude, I almost had you and you know it."
"If by had you mean you tripped and fell and knocked me into a wall, then yeah, you almost had me."
"I did not trip."
"You did. You so did. I—"
"Whatever. I don't care. You're Dean, god of sparring, practically perfect in every way." Sammy scrambled to his feet and stalked away. He spun around after a couple steps to glare at Dean, and Dean waited for him to do whatever it was he was going to do: bitch, run away, bitch then run away. But Sammy just glared. He took a step forward and then he took a step back. He shot another glare at Dean, spun back around, fisted his hands, and then punted the Coke can halfway to China.
The can sailed through the air and disappeared into the outlying corn field, a crumpled missile of teen angst and rage. Dean listened to it crash through the stalks and waited for Sammy to leave again. He hated the leaving, hated the door slams and the final glare before Sammy disappeared somewhere to brood for a few hours or five.
But Sammy stayed. He glared at Dean some more, eyes narrowed and hard, probably trying to use his ginormous brain to calculate his chance of success if he tried to kick Dean like he kicked the Coke can.
"You know," Dean said as he stood, "all I was going to say was that until you tripped you were doing pretty good."
Sammy blinked. The glare faded from his face like the squirrel up the tree. "Oh."
"Yeah. Oh." Dean brushed bits of dirt and grass from his jeans. Then he turned toward the car. Sammy stared at him all wide-eyed through his too long hair. Dean looked away and wondered when Sammy had started to hate him, too.
"We should go," he said.
"I- Okay."
"And don't worry about Dad. I'll tell him I was driving.
"Dean, no—"
"This isn't up for discussion. I wrecked the car. I was driving too fast and I swerved to miss the cow. Got it?"
"Dean—"
"Got it?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I got it."
"Good." Dean wrenched open the driver's door and slid into the car. Sammy peered at him from around the tree. The cow still stood by the side of the road, grass dripping from its mouth as it chewed and chewed, and Dean still knew a metaphor was here somewhere with the cow and the squirrel and his thirteen year old geek of a brother.
He just didn't care what.
…………
your moon illusion
Twenty-six dollars and a hunter's moon. That was all Dean had. That, and Sam.
Sam shifted beside him. He laid his legs out flat on the ground and took another pull from his beer. Dean had emptied his own two swallows ago and now the bottle sweated in the grass, catching dew as it cooled from the tips of weeds.
They leaned against the Impala and watched the stars and the fireflies, watched the pale moon shine from their spots on the ground. Crickets chirped and frogs croaked, the wind moaned over the field and between the trees, a midnight Southern melody.
They needed the last of their money for food and gas, sustenance for both the body and the Impala soul. Or enough, at least, to make it to the next town. Nothing waited for them there, the next blip on the map, nothing special anyway, but nothing was something so they kept driving, kept riding, kept searching 'til they found it, found nothing.
It got them by, for a while. A few days. A week. Maybe two, maybe more. Long enough to pause. Long enough to breathe. Never long enough to stay, but Sam never asked anymore and Dean never offered so staying lurked somewhere with father and normal on the far West coast, silent and alone.
Sam stood and stretched. Shadows stained the skin beneath his eyes, remnants of the dreams that howled through his night. Visions of the devils that chased them, sometimes caught them, always killed them, or killed Dean, never Sam, their chosen one.
Those days after those nights Sam stayed close. He hovered and fussed, and Dean let him. He let Sam drive, let him choose the way. Dean leaned his head back and closed his eyes, and he felt the miles rumble past, in his toes, in his chest. He wondered about the visions, their origin and their purpose. Were they God given or permitted, a blessing or a curse?
Sam suffered either way. The rest only mattered to God and John.
"I'm gonna turn in now," Sam said. He swallowed the last of his beer and glanced at Dean. "You want the front or the back?"
Dean shrugged. "Whichever. I put the blanket in the back, but you can sleep up front if you want."
"We should get another one, you know."
"I don't need a blanket."
"Yeah, but you will. It'll get cold soon. Especially if we head north."
Dean looked up. Sam stared at the stars, at the Milky Way curve hazy in the sky. He seemed thin in his layers, a year on the run taking its toll. Never frail but almost small. Too young for this life at any rate.
But maybe someday.
Maybe one day.
"We can try to find one tomorrow," he said.
Sam looked at him. "But what about—"
"There's enough."
A beat and then, "No, there isn't." But there was no fight in Sam's voice. Just the facts, cold and sharp.
Dean met his gaze. "No. There isn't. But there should be a bar in the next town."
Should be but might not. They would find out when they got there. If they got there. They would get there.
Somehow.
Sam nodded and sighed and turned toward the car. He opened the back door and slid inside. Dean heard him rustle around, heard him drop his bottle into the plastic bag with the rest. Recycling, hustling, sometimes pawning or pick pocketing. Giving blood when they could, day jobs when they couldn't. No begging. No borrowing. They got by.
Dean pushed up off the ground to follow. His back protested in a dull ache halfway up his spine. He felt the miles, all the miles, in knots twisted high in his shoulders. Maybe someday. Maybe one day.
He scanned the tree line one last time. No towns for miles, no people to use, only crickets and squirrels and little yellow frogs clinging to the aerial. As safe as safe could be while chasing the storm, or while the storm chased them. Still, one bullet left called for caution, a check and a recheck and then another check again, so Dean checked again.
Sam moved in the backseat, pulled up his blanket and then shoved it down again. Scratched blue wool from a motel five states back. Sam hated it but he needed it, always sleeping cold even in the summer. Now winter loomed large like the sky overhead, bleak and black, but they would get by. They always did.
Somehow.
…………