Author Notes: This is going to be a collection featuring a short inspired in some way by each of the fifty states, and I want to work in as many urban legends as possible. Anything from the series is fair game, so the upcoming shorts, or in the case, chapters, will run the gamut from pre-series through the current season, with no particular chronological or alphabetical order. I would classify the genres (knowing me, as I do) to skew H/C and humor, with bits of angst. This collection will be posted WIP.

First up: Kansas. S5. Booze, bucket lists and basketball. Getting Sammy to the basketball game he's always wanted takes a darker turn.

Atlas

Kansas: Halfway to Everywhere

Dean is swaying on his stool like a pendulum.

Not enough to be concerning, and not due to anything more than that last round, the one that Sam knew was going to be the tipping point even as Dean was ordering it. He's flushed and glassy-eyed, but doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger of going all the way to the floor, and Sam wouldn't normally feel uneasy, but his brother's got a worrisome look on his face; the one that usually precedes him saying something either insanely stupid or truly terrifying.

Sam is, perhaps strangely, given the options, hoping against stupid but finds the odds stacked against him as he surveys the loud, smoky bar. There are a handful of threatening-looking guys in the corner leering dangerously at a couple of girls who are laughing quietly and nervously as they dance in a tight circle close to the bar top. The men look nasty, and the girls look like they had to have gotten past the bouncer by the virtue of their fake IDs or pretty faces. Dean's not necessarily a white knight, but this is exactly the kind of situation he's known to interject his attitude and fists into, and with the way things have been going lately, Sam figures his brother's going to jump at the chance to take a swing at someone who even halfway deserves it.

Even so, Sam doesn't feel like watching Dean throw a half-assed attempt at cleaning split knuckles tonight, and fully intends on cutting him off at the pass. He watches his brother's jaw clench as one of the assholes moves toward the bar. "Dean." Softly, a warning, because these guys are huge, and Dean is clearly sloppy.

Dean doesn't seem to hear him, lost in thought, eyes shifting between the gang of galoots and the cluster of young girls. His hand moves mechanically to grasp his empty glass, but he doesn't bring it to his lips, just rolls the tumbler between his fingers, its thick base scraping along the polished wood of the tabletop.

"Dean."

"Heard you the first time."

"Then what's with the silent treatment?"

"I'm thinkin.'"

Sam nods. No shit. "About starting a fight or about robbing the cradle?"

"What?" Dean glances back at the girls, eyes widening appreciatively, like he's noticing them and their short denim skirts for the first time. "Neither. Mind outta the gutter, Sammy."

Huh. Sam's honestly surprised to know he may have misread the entire situation in front of him. "Then spill, Jack Handy."

"Hmm?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "What's with the deep thoughts?"

Dean looks into in the bottom of his empty glass, decides that's just not going to cut it, and motions for the waitress. "I dunno…just, what are some of the things you've always wanted to do, but haven't gotten around to? Or, you know, haven't had a chance to do?"

What the hell now? Dean's never been one for segues, but this is coming from so far out in left field that Sam thinks he very well might need another beer just to understand what the hell he's talking about. "What?"

Dean throws a hand up in the air. "It's the apocalypse, Sammy. End of days. Bucket list, let's hear it."

Sam ducks his head, speaks quietly yet firmly. "Yeah, Dean, I'm not getting into any sort of bucket list type of conversation with you."

"What? Why not?"

"Because you're upset. And you're drunk."

"What?" Dean repeats, too loudly. People are starting to stare.

Sam rolls his eyes and takes their drinks from the wide-eyed waitress with a nod of thanks. "Yeah, we're all a little surprised, trust me."

"Whatever, Sam. Just…come on. Humor me. What's on your bucket list?"

Sam sighs and takes a long pull from his beer. "I don't know, Dean." He claps his hands on his thighs, plays ball and underhands a few. "To finish school. Settle down somewhere, I guess. I always wanted a dog."

Dean scoffs and drains his glass. "Those are boring," he says, calling Sam on his bull. "You're so vanilla."

"Okay," Sam concedes. "I've always wanted to see a game at Allen Fieldhouse."

"Basketball?" Dean slaps his palm on the table and Sam jumps. "I'll take it."

"What? Dean, what are you talking about?"

"Let's go get you a basketball game, mark somethin' off that list."

Sam leans across the table. "Okay, Dean, what is this about, really?"

Dean doesn't respond, is busy thumbing down the browser on his cell phone. Sam didn't even know he knew how to use the damned thing for more than calls and texts. "Looks like we got a game at Allen tomorrow night." He looks up at Sam with a lopsided grin. "When's the last time we did something like this, huh?"

Sam sits back, runs a hand through his hair. "Uh, never. We've never done anything like this."

"'Bout damn time, wouldn't you say?"

"Let's set aside the fact you're acting crazy, for just a second." Sam sips another mouthful of cold beer while he contemplates his words. "Dean, this would mean going back to Lawrence."

"Yeah, so?"

"So we haven't been back there since…I mean, YOU haven't been back there since…"

Dean looks up from the screen of his phone and his eyes are wide, but focused. "Since the djinn. Sam, it happened. You can say it. Besides, we've got a – a frickin' boatload of bigger fish to fry."

"Dean, we're also, like, twelve hours out of Lawrence." Sam gestures vaguely to the collection of empties on the tabletop. "And you're…you know…"

"I'm what? Come on, you know I'm an awesome drunk driver." Dean leans back, reaching out a hand to grip the edge of the table as he nearly, finally, just about tips his stool far enough to send himself to the peanut shell-littered floor.

Sam doesn't feel like he should need to point out that this is the exact wrong place to be making such declarations. He knows his expression is the pinched one that as good as antagonizes his brother, and Dean rolls his eyes just as expected, beckoning the waitress back with a whistle.

"Hey, sweetheart. Can I get your largest coffee, black, to go?"

He's got that thousand-watt smile going for him, so despite the whistle, despite the sweetheart, she grins and nods before turning her attention to Sam. "Anything for you?"

"Oh, yeah," Dean, encouraged, cuts in before Sam can speak. "My brother would love a glass of warm milk, if you can swing it." And then he even winks at her.

Sam smiles tightly around his sudden nausea. "I'm okay, thanks." The waitress saunters away and he turns back to his brother. "Speaking of bigger fish to fry, don't you think we should be focusing on, oh, I don't know, the damn apocalypse?"

"Screw the apocalypse, Sam. A couple of days ain't gonna change anything. We're doing this."

"You don't even like basketball." Sam frowns and snaps his fingers as Dean pulls his wallet and keys from his coat pocket.

Dean forks over the key ring without a fight and shrugs, digging out a couple of wrinkled bills from the pocket of his wallet. "No, but you do."

Sam only drives as far as it takes Dean to get the coffee down, which is rather impressive, and then his brother insists on taking over.

He crumbles the paper to-go cup and tosses it to the floor mat, then crams a pointy elbow into Sam's ribcage. "Come on, Grandma. We're never gonna make it in time with you behind the wheel."

So they switch spots on the bench, and then Dean's thumbs sporadically tap out an off-tempo beat against the steering wheel between the next set of state lines, before Sam finally snaps off the radio.

Dean's head whips over, eyes wide and caffeinated. "What's up, buzzkill?"

"What are we doing, Dean?"

"We're going to a basketball game, Sammy."

"We're driving all night across the country for a basketball game?" Sam sighs and adjusts on the seat. He doesn't know why he ever even attempts to draw an honest answer from Dean. "Okay," he says, because they're trapped in the car together and not getting out anytime soon.

"Okay." Dean reaches out to turn the radio on again, eyes sliding toward his brother. "Why don't you just relax and get a little shut-eye, and we'll be there before you know it."

There's a part of Sam that's hard-wired to resisting anything he's told to do by anyone, particularly by Dean, but drowsiness tugs at him as soon as his eyes drop closed, and before he knows it he's being shaken awake to a yellowish haze of afternoon sunshine as they rumble past the sign welcoming them to Kansas.

On the way out of the Fieldhouse, Sam slings a new soft gray tee over his shoulder and grins. "You totally hated that, didn't you?"

Dean screws up his nose, draws his shoulders in as a couple of incredibly drunk, whooping college students shove past him. "It's just a hell of a lot of people, Sam. Really loud people, and really bright lights."

"Well, thanks." Sam gives his brother a light bump with his elbow to make sure he has Dean's attention. "Really. It means a lot. You doin' this."

"Yeah, whatever." The novelty of the situation seems to have completely worn off, a more familiar and situationally appropriate air of gravity and exhaustion replacing the previous night's maverick-y gleam in his brother's eyes.

They walk the rest of the way to the car in silence, and when they arrive at the Impala Sam leans against the frame. "You know what else we should do while we're here?"

"Hmm?" Tentatively, like he's terrified Sam's going to suggest they do a drive-by on the old house.

He wouldn't ever, because that house wasn't ever HOME to Sam, and doesn't like to twist that knife that's always stuck in his brother's heart. "There's a local urban legend we should totally check out. A topical one, too, now that I'm thinking about it."

Dean raises his eyebrows, predictably interested in anything that smells like a hunt and potential violence. "Talk to me."

"Well, there's this old cemetery nearby." Sam squints, thinking. "Uh, Stull Cemetery. Supposedly, it's one of seven gateways to Hell."

"What, like the devil's gate in Wyoming?"

"Yeah, according to legend, but as far as I know nothing's ever come of it. It's gotta be totally bogus, right? I mean, if there's anywhere Dad thought a doorway to Hell might actually be, don't you think he'd have come back here and done something about it?"

Dean's fidgeting with the car keys, squints across the roof of the car. "How do you know he didn't?"

"Because I know Dad's journal by heart, and you know it better than me. There's absolutely nothing in there about Stull."

"Then why even bother?"

Sam shrugs, jerking open the car door. "Because it's interesting. And creepy."

"You are such a geek," Dean says, shaking his head. "Anyway, creepy pretty much finds us twenty-four seven. It's just no fun if you go looking for it." He opens his own door, letting the creak of the old girl punctuate his statement.

But after he drops onto the bench, Sam's intrigued by Dean's hesitance. "What happened to the bucket list?"

Dean gestures between them with the keys in his hand. "This is a bucket list thing?"

Sam shrugs and exhales. "I don't know. It's interesting and we're here. I mean, why not?"

"Yeah, sure. Why not."

Even Sam knows that Sam always wins, especially whenever they resort to a quick shoot of Rock, Paper, Scissors to make a decision.

They grab a room for the night at a nearby motel, which Sam argues was necessary even if they weren't going to roll by the cemetery in the morning, because Dean just drove about ten hours straight on the heels of a fair amount of stress and whiskey with a zero sleep chaser.

The copious amount of sunshine that welcomes them in the morning becomes eclipsed by cloud cover as they drive, and a chill drops over the flat landscape. The trees on either side of the road are bare, typical of late autumn, and dried, fallen leaves swirl and brush ominously across the blacktop.

Sam had looked up directions the night before, and has to point out all of the turns, some of them coming up so quickly he thinks Dean might be driving at speeds high enough to intentionally miss them altogether.

But eventually they pull up to tall, rusty iron gates standing open at the end of the long drive – originally, perhaps ironically, named Devil's Lane – and they creak like the Impala's doors as they sway in the wind. Dean shuts off the ignition but doesn't make a move to get out of the car.

Sam swallows. Not only the hunter, but also the curious boy in him is itching to inspect the graveyard, but there's no denying the odd feeling that has settled in the car. "There's a little church on the grounds. There's no roof, but apparently rain doesn't fall inside."

"I'm not waitin' around for it to rain, Sammy." Dean's playing it off well enough, but something about the place has clearly got him spooked.

"Let's just check it out real quick. You know, put the legend to rest for good."

Dean nods tightly, and Sam exits the car. He swings the door shut and realizes Dean hasn't even lifted his hands from the steering wheel. He stoops to peer through the open window and sees that his brother is also chalk-white, staring at the gates, and maybe not playing it off so well, after all. "What's up?"

Dean's fingers tighten around the wheel. "Sammy, get back in the car."

"Dean, come on – "

"Get in the car, Sam." Dean's tone is low, even. Scared, in a way that would be entirely unfamiliar if not for what happened with that Frank O'Brien case last year.

This level of fear and uneasiness is a rarity, and it draws Sam back to the Impala like he's on a bungee. He sits softly on the seat and stares at his brother. "Dean, really. There's nothing to be worried about here."

"I don't like it." Dean shakes his head, and every muscle he's got seems tensed to pop. "I don't want you going out there."

"Okay," Sam relents, head bobbing. "Okay. We won't check it out."

Jaw clenched, Dean nods. Without a word he wrenches the key in the ignition and brings his baby back to life with a growl.

Sam lets a certain yet unquantifiable number of miles fall behind them before he lets the words out. "What was up with you back there?"

"Just didn't like the vibe I was gettin' from that place. Can't that be it?"

"Yeah, it can. If it is."

"Well, it is."

"Okay." Sam settles on the seat, sets his gaze out the window. "So what about you?"

Dean readjusts his grip on the steering wheel and jerks his head, eliciting a deep pop from his neck or shoulder blades. "What about me?"

"You're the one that started talking bucket lists." Sam rubs his palms along his thighs. "What's yours look like?"

Dean purses his lips, makes it look like he's considering Sam's words, but Sam's smart enough to know otherwise. "Don't have one."

"What about Lisa?"

"No, Sammy." Dean shakes his head. "I don't dream like that anymore." He cracks his neck again and jerks the radio dial, setting the volume at a level to let Sam know this is exactly where he needs to drop this train of thought.

Dean might say he doesn't dream like that anymore, but Sam's smart enough to know otherwise.

Six months later…

Dean's hanging on by a thread, no two ways about it. "Did you see where the title fight goes down?"

Chuck is frustratingly elusive, as always, even with the safety of space between them. "The angels are keeping it top secret. Very hush-hush."

Dean drops his head, which is suddenly feeling so, so heavy. "Aw, crap."

Chuck speaks quickly. "But - I saw it anyway. Perks of being a prophet. It's tomorrow, high noon. Place called Stull Cemetery."

"Stull Ceme – " Dean's head comes up, and a chill travels down his spine. "Wait, I know that. That's – that's an old boneyard outside of Lawrence. Why Lawrence?"

"I don't know. It all has to end where it started, I guess."

Dean swallows the lump in his throat. Yeah, I guess.

7