AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG
A/N: Preseries. Dean is a newly-minted fifteen-year-old and Sam is a little more than half past ten. Neither of them is mine, although I'd adopt the poor darlings in a heartbeat. The title is from a beautiful song called "February" by Dar Williams. Yes – I know it would have made more sense to wait until February to post this fic. But I am newly-divorced and I need this song NOW.
"Every day turned solitary.
So we came to February."
-Dar Williams, "February"
To the older boy, the month of February is nothing but a dearth of school vacations, and an unwanted opportunity to freeze off various body parts - which he would name specifically, except his little brother would parrot them to the pastor when next they see him, and ask whether saying each of them is a sin. Not as a tattletale, mind. Only worried about his big brother's soul. Still. Damn annoying, that habit the kid is developing of clearing every little thing with God.
To the younger boy, February is still something fun. Snow and hot cocoa – one of which is provided by the aforementioned God, and the other by the aforementioned big brother. And a dearth of school vacations – which is just how the younger boy likes it – and sometimes hills steep enough for sledding, once the day's lessons are done.
To their father, February is a quarter-year past hell. It was long about February he decided, that first year, to pack up the boys and split town and chase the creature and freaking end this.
Ten years on, it hasn't ended.
So, ten years on, he is still loading up the car in February. But this time he's leaving his boys behind.
He doesn't say "be careful" or "stay safe," because those things aren't specific. He says, "check the salt," and "lock the door," and "don't answer the phone unless it rings once first." He says, "watch out for your brother," and this is specific because he means it literally. Watch your brother. Every minute.
The older boy nods and watches the car drive away. He wishes he were riding shotgun, his kid brother in the back seat, off to kill something bad and save somebody good.
But it's February and there is a dearth of school vacations. He and Sammy are stuck here.
It's a quiet town, and not in some quaint, peaceful way. Sammy is starry-eyed with snow and the fact that Dad has rented a single-family dwelling instead of a motel room. Never mind the single-family dwelling is one of the dinged-up, dented tin cans gracing a trailer park that doesn't even have the decency to be on the outskirts of town – it is smack dab in the center. There's more metal than wood in this town anyway. Train tracks cut through every patch of trees. Roads duck under the rails, or just cut right across like there's no danger. Mean-looking dogs at the ends of their chains wear circles in the snow, and the windows that aren't boarded up are tacked over with plastic and bed sheets.
Sam talks about how he'd maybe like a dog one day.
Nothing in this town is clean. The snow itself is crusted over with grit and filth. Sam bathes every night, but goes to school the next day and comes home just as grimy as everything else. Dean is tempted not to bother, but there are still girls here. He keeps himself clean. He's glad his dad has taken the car. They'd have to wash her every day or risk damaging the paint.
They are three days into February when the pipes freeze. Then burst, and there is ice on the floor of the trailer. Dean tries to melt it with towels. He tries to keep Sam clean by melting snow over the range and making him spot-bathe. But it's cold in the kitchen. It's cold everywhere. The furnace is aging and smells like fire and you can't feel it at all unless you're sitting on a vent. Which Sam always is. He's constantly got lines pressed into his shins, where he's knelt on the metal vent cover too long. Sometimes Dean sits on the opposite vent. Usually he's too busy melting snow for bathing or cooking or flushing the toilet. Snow that reaches the top of a bucket barely fills it an inch once it's water. The job is never finished.
They are five days into February when the snow stops.
Fog comes instead. Heavy, quiet gray fog that makes everything damp, but that cannot be scooped into buckets and melted over a range. Dean isn't sure what to do. He starts sneaking him and Sam into the bathroom at the gas station, so they can get scrubbed up in the sink, and brush their teeth. He washes clothes in the sink, too, and carries them home to lay across the vents until they're mostly dry.
The phone rings once on February seventh. Then stops. Then it rings again and Dean snatches it up, feeling rushed and breathless and frozen.
"Dad?"
"Dean." The connection is terrible. Fuzzy and crackling. "Dean, I might be away a little longer than I'd planned."
No Hello. No How are you? No How's Sam? Only, I might be away a little longer than I'd planned. Dean feels the frozen trailer floor shift underneath him.
"This thing," Dad says. "It's hard to pin down. It got somebody else last night. I -" there's crackling on the line and Dean can't understand and when he can hear his dad again, John's saying, "- don't feel right leaving. This town's lost enough."
"We could maybe help ..." Dean tries. He looks at Sam, curled up on the vent, reading a textbook bigger than his head. "You know Sam, with the research. We could come and help."
"Nah, son, you stay there. Go to school. I don't want you boys anywhere near this thing, not till I get a better picture what I'm dealing with. Anyway …" A smile creeps into John's voice. "Sammy would go postal, we try to take him out of school before his midterms. And don't you have some sort of dance?"
Dean pictures himself in the school's gymnasium with the lights dimmed, the shining wooden floor reflecting strobes and spotlights back up into the rafters. Girls dance in long dresses and boys in polos and khakis. And there is Dean along the wall, in filthy jeans and a damp T-shirt, smudges of dirt on his face, smelling like dirty clothes and backed-up sewage. He closes his eyes against the image and has to breathe hard for a second.
"Yes, sir," he says into the phone.
Only now does his father ask, "Is everything all right there?"
He wants to say no. He wants to call his father home, and he knows if he told his dad about the plumbing, and the heat, and washing up in the gas station bathroom, his dad would come back. But his dad is a Marine. Is a Marine who now hunts the supernatural. His dad is pinning something down, saving somebody's life, saving a town. A town that's being threatened with death and heartache. Dean's only being threatened with filth and cold and public humiliation.
"Everything's fine," Dean says. "Except Sam's decided he wants a dog."
John chuckles softly, sounding, through the phone, so far away from Dean. "Lord help us," he laughs. "I hope you can talk him out of that one before I come home."
Sam's eyes have strayed from his textbook and he's staring out the window. Not in the direction of the dogs on their chains, but toward the gas station, where their only flush toilet and their sink baths await. He looks cold. "I'll see what I can do."
"That's my boy," John says, and then the line goes quiet, like the rest of February.
It is February eighth when the town goes dark.
To be continued …