This is a stolen prompt from happywritingjoy 's current project (Go see! It's good). Many thanks to her for her inspiration and tireless beta-ing.
Disclaimer: If I owned them, things would be different. But I don't and they aren't.
Hysteria
It's 1.57 am on a freezing February night. The bite in the air is the kind that sets old injuries aching, fuelled by a stabbing,sullen, nagging bastard of a harsh wind ripping straight from Alaska.
The Impala's heating is all screwed up. It now pumps exhaust fumes into the space between the front seats, so the windows are open. Freezing their asses off seemed preferable to asphyxiation and crashing the car. At least, it did at the beginning of the night.
It has just started to rain, dirty and slushy. Sam winds up his window, getting a stab of satisfaction from shutting out the apparently intentionally malevolent weather. The rain increases and Dean curses as he struggles with the driver's window. The rain turns to hail.
"Roll your window down, Sam."
"Whah?" Sam always falls asleep quickly in the car. Force of habit.
"The hail. Sounds like it's going to break the glass."
"Fuh off."
A minute later Dean is proven right. Sam spends the next 40 miles combing glass out of his hair and getting soaked in icy water. Tiredness makes him stoic and as soon as he can't find any more shards he curls back up to sleep.
They're both tired. Wasted, exhausted, the crap beaten out of them by a series of spectacularly shitty days. Monsters won't die, motel rooms get robbed (for crying out loud, who steals from people this highly armed?). The car suffers a string of apparently unrelated breakdowns. Dean gets spotted by a zealous police officer and they have to leave town in a hurry, without collecting the new credit cards that they really kinda need right now. So they're barrelling through the night to the next drop off point, hoping that the other set of cards has come in by now.
Money is a gnawing worry that just puts the icing on the giant Winchester birthday cake of problems. They haven't managed a successful hunt in weeks, and what's the point of a hunt without a kill? What's the point in trying if you never win?
And now Sam's stopped shivering, which is a bad sign. First stage of hypothermia, or so Dean hazily recalls through the caffeine-numbed daydreams that are proving a poor replacement for actual sleep. All the shit he usually drowns in alcohol or activity is being replayed behind his eyes, imprinted on the inside of his eyelids like a macabre slideshow and he's not strong enough to push it out of his mind. That last hunt was vicious and they've been cruelly ripped from recuperation long before anything like a full recovery has been accomplished.
In the aseptically white and shining interior of a convenience store on the outskirts of some Nowhere industrial town, two brothers wander, trying to get warm. Bland-O-Matic synthesizer music plays tinnily over the tannoy system, soundtrack to a familiar scene. Dean looks like the walking dead under the strobing fluorescent light – ironic, really. He catches his own reflection and turns away. It's not good to resemble your prey so closely.
Sam has the compliant, spaced-out air of a recently awoken kid, too dazed to question why they're here. He starts gathering food, whatever looks good. He grabs shiny packages and bright colours, all the junk food he usually rejects in favour of 'something with chlorophyll'. Doesn't bother to get a basket, just carries it around in long aching arms, following Dean towards the checkout.
"Sam, we can't afford all that" Dean says huskily. Shades of childhood.
Sam dumps it on the nearest shelf without complaint and lopes off to the bathroom. He's past thinking. It seems as though the night has lasted forever – no past, no future, nothing beyond drifting in and out of cold sleep. Watching pulses of orange streetlight illuminate Dean's face as his brother stares into the tiny patch of the future lit by the Impala's headlights. There was never any other life.
Dean sees the hot drinks machine standing like a vertical oasis at the end of the aisle. He's got enough change for a coffee. Something hot to make the drive on a little less painful. He sleepwalks through the process - Insert coin, press button, get drink... That last step doesn't seem to be happening quite as planned. Weird clunky noises and a deep grinding sound drown out the Muzak as he leans forward to see where his coffee is.
The nozzle splutters and dispenses lukewarm cappucino foam in a jet that hits Dean right between his eyes. He falls on his ass, felled by surprise, and stares wide-eyed at the treacherous machine. Stunned at the meanness of this life that won't even give him a hot drink. Stupid fucking coffee machine.
Sam spots him at the end of the aisle, head and shoulders coated with foam and outraged eyes glaring at the drinks dispenser. It's without question the funniest thing he's ever seen. Suddenly it all makes sense, as if the punchline to a cosmic joke has been revealed.
Dean hears Sam laughing like an idiot drain over the crappy store music and watches him sink to the ground, shoulders heaving, taking great sobbing breaths of air.
"Th..Th..Christ, dude,th-hiccup- the machine-"And suddenly Dean gets it too. The sweet and perfect irony of everything. It's so fucking funny.They're both in hysterics on the floor, body-shaking laughter in their throats and tears running unnoticed down their faces.
"Oh Jesus, Dean – hiccup- I can't breathe!"
"You got hiccups!" That sets them off again, because clearly Sam getting hiccups is one of the funniest things on Earth, right up there with Dean getting beaten up by a drinks machine. Sam has to lie down so that he doesn't fall over with laughter.
The store clerk is staring at the obviously-insane duo, wondering about exactly what drugs these lunatics are on at three-a-fucking-m in Nowheresville. His expression conveys this thought, and is so hilarious they just keep going.
They stagger out to the parking lot grinning and sniggering and fall into the car seats. Sam sees Dean's foam covered face again and wails with laughter. He hasn't laughed like this for years.
It's still cold. They're still broke and still on the run. But for a while, the weight of the world lifts and things don't seem so bad. It's more than they could have hoped for. It's enough.