A/N: Always wanted to write a fic about this. Hope it turned out OK.
Reviews are blessings! :)
Disclaimer: Seriously? I want what I can't have. They're not mine.
He had planned everything- the registration and the packing and the budget and hell, he'd even had a thought or two about how the fight with Dad would go (not that it had gone that way, not at all). But somehow, he hadn't even begun to imagine what the bus stop would be like...what this would be like.
Yet here he is.
They'd gotten here early, not on account of any particular scruple, but because after the whole beat-down with Dad, there really wasn't any point hanging around and Dean had grabbed the keys and Sam had followed him out.
Somehow, the fact that the silence in the car hadn't been an angry one had hurt more than anything.
It was still drizzling while they drove, but it's stopped raining now, and so they stand in the parking lot for what feels like an eternity but what is, in fact, not enough time.
And Sam knows that he's supposed to be the brave one, with a set jaw and a wise brow, casting aside the unpleasant vestiges of everything that's happened in the last hour. He's supposed to shoulder his duffel with world-weary acceptance of his family's folly, and then march towards new horizons without a glance back.
He's supposed- but he takes one ill-advised glance at Dean's face, sharp-featured and looking very thin and young in the fading light, and then Sam feels about five years old.
"I'm sorry," he starts to say, but Dean cuts him off.
"Don't. Just- don't."
Sam scuffs the toe of his worn-out sneakers against the pavement. They squeak faintly against the wet asphalt, which glimmers under the streetlights.
He's giddy, and miserable, and afraid- and this is it, the great moment, but it wasn't supposed to be this way.
He waits for Dean to speak, because dammit, it's not like he can't do things himself...but Dean's his big brother (still) and that counts for something (always) and so Dean gets to decide where this (last) conversation goes.
Of course, with Dean, it could take a while.
Sam watches the yellow glow of the lights, how they set the Impala in a relief of gleams and shadows. He's not going to see the Impala for a long time, and at least that's something to be glad about. He's spent far too many hours cramped in the backseat.
No, he won't miss it at all. He won't. Won't.
More silence. Around him, within him. He won't let his thoughts traverse the paths he fears they'll run.
It's broken when Dean fumbles in the pocket of his flannel shirt, then holds something out. Sam takes it. It's a roll of hundreds- five or six, he's not sure.
Sam feels the warm, thick, worn paper press between his fingers. It takes him a few seconds to register, to respond. "Dean- I'm not taking this. You need this." He knows what it is- Dean's pool winnings. Likely stretching back six months.
"Sam, I'm not asking you to take it, I'm telling you. It's not gonna take me very long to get it back."
That hurts, perhaps more than it should. But it makes Sam think that of course Dean will win it back, because Dean's life stretches out in terrible predictability, of blood and bones, of down-at-the-heel motels and disreputable bars, long hours of driving and long days of loneliness. He'll make the money back as sure as breathing, probably faster this time, because he'll stay out all night. Nothing to come home to. Nobody to come home to. Unless you count Dad, who Sam doesn't, at the moment.
"Fine," he says at last, and tucks the money in his billfold.
"Think of it as my contribution to your trust-fund, college boy," Dean says, with a quick, crooked smile that makes Sam feel like he's the one who's broken something. (Maybe he has).
There's the thrum of a motor in the distance, and on this abandoned road, at this crossroads of destiny, odds are it's the bus. "Dean, you know I'll call."
Sam knows they're both afraid he won't.
Dean jams his hands in his pockets, chin tilted down, like he always does when he can't find the right words. Sam's got him memorized. Sam wonders if you can forget that kind of thing, and prays that he doesn't.
"You happy?" Dean asks, eyes flicking up- eerily greener than ever, in the uneven, artificial light. "Is this what you want?"
"Yes," Sam says, and he won't even decide for himself which one of those questions he's really answering.
But Dean looks satisfied. He opens his mouth to say something, but the roar of the bus pulling up cuts them both off. Sam feels something drop within him. Here goes. The beginning of anything, the end of everything.
"Guess you'd better go," Dean says. His tone is light enough to remind Sam how heavy the words are.
The bus is idling. Waiting. Waiting for him.
His throat clenches up, and he doesn't care if this makes him a child eternally, but he can't- he can't-
"Dean..." he says, and his voice sounds smaller than it's ever been... "Dean, c-can I go?"
And he'll hate himself forever for asking that...almost as much as he would have hated himself if he hadn't.
But if Dean says, "No, stay", Sam thinks that he might throw it all away, right there, and it's damn pathetic that he can't stick to his guns the one time it matters most, but he doesn't care, because if Dean says-
But Dean doesn't say anything. He just punches Sam on the shoulder one second, pulls him into a rib-cracking hug the next, and then pushes him away, hard enough to make him stumble.
Sam doesn't look back. Because if he looks back, Dean won't need to say anything. Stay will be written all over his face.
He boards and pays and finds his seat in a haze, feeling the rush of motion only peripherally.
He strains his ears for the sound of the Impala's engine starting over the rumble of the bus, but of course he can't hear it. So in the end, it's left for him to imagine if Dean drives to a bar and gets absolutely smashed, or if he sits in the deserted parking lot all the night through, with his head in his hands and a thousand memories racing through his mind that he tries hard to forget but doesn't really want to.
That's what Sam does, anyway.