On rare nights such as this, Dean would drive out on the open road and think about his father. He would wonder how long they could keep doing this before the credit card shams were traced, before someone got arrested. Some nights he prayed to God it was him. Dean would never stay out too late, though he wanted to. God, he wanted to drive until the Impala just quit or he drove over a cliff somewhere.
He might've felt less ready to be in the driver's seat if that were an option. But John needed a second driver in case something happened. As far as Dean was concerned, too many things had happened. But he'd train his eyes on the road ahead and grit his teeth and hope it never took him anywhere he didn't like being.
John's been gone for a while again and they've got five bucks to their name. Dean knows what he has to do, and he always tells John he's got a job at the convenience store. It's a play on words. It's why his eyes are red every morning and why he flops down on the bed next to Sammy and holds his fingers just above the boy's slightly parted lips, feeling the calm, innocent breaths escape his body as he sleeps on into oblivion. He knew that oblivion once, so many months ago. He'd grown out of it by way of necessity. Dean only ever complained once, and John smacked him so hard it brought tears to his eyes and showing that kind of vulnerability was a strength of Mary's John couldn't handle seeing in Dean. It was bad, it never got him anywhere he wanted to be. So he sucked it up and started dinner and the table was so quiet that night that the only noise was Sammy's crayon scratching across an old piece of notebook paper.
It wasn't all bad. On rare nights such as this, it wasn't bad at all with the windows down and the radio blaring the words of men wasted by way of drugs or age who understood everything, everything about Dean and nothing at all. He wasn't too young for this. Those were words used on children who still had a glimmer of something to save. You couldn't save this boy, he wouldn't have it. He's got responsibilities. He's practically raising two children all on his own. One asking all the wrong questions about where he's been all night and one too drunk to care. But it wasn't all bad. He had his books and five bucks in his pocket and a road that stretched far, far ahead into darkness. He had the windows down and Bon Jovi, he had this brief freedom in a growling metal cage rocketing forward at 90 on an old country road.