Season 3 AUish-Probably takes place sometime after Long Distance Call but I've changed the story from there. This isn't so much an AU as it is a 'reimagining' of sorts. I'm not sure why, because I've already thrown out a few stories regarding season 3 and Dean's deal, but this one just wouldn't let me go until I got it all out. So here you go. It'll be divided into several chapters, so look for updates every few days or so!
Sam's POV.
Classic Rock and Stardust
The sky is the clearest I've seen it in a long time. The air was a little too cold for my taste earlier this morning, the last dregs of February still making themselves known despite the fact that it's mid-March by now. But as the stars claim the sky, they seem to be projecting some of their own warmth, enough that I'm now content to hang my arm out the open window of the Impala as we cruise down the empty road, going just a little too fast, as usual. Dean sits beside me, his left arm mirroring mine, dangling out the window. His fingers dance in the breeze, catching air in the spaces between them, his arm drifting up and down, up and down, like he's riding some invisible ocean wave.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the passenger seat, letting out a small sigh. For once it's not just exhaustion, but also a little satisfaction that has the air whistling out of me. Dean tilts his head in my direction and smiles: he can tell the difference.
It's been a long couple of weeks, but they've brought some much-needed success. We're currently heading back from a poltergeist hunt on the outskirts of Pocatello, but before that had been a vampire nest in Deadwood, South Dakota (appropriately named, in Dean's opinion), a skinwalker back in Kansas, several demons in need of exorcising, and a particularly enraged water spirit in Colorado that had left us both more than a little waterlogged, not to mention freezing. I'd been worried about losing a few toes to frostbite on that one. We'd stopped by Bobby's for a comfortable night's sleep after the vampires had been dispatched, but besides that, we've been running nonstop. Ever since Dean admitted to making that deal, he's been a jumbled ball of energy and adrenaline that can't be quelled. He's had us moving from one hunt to the next, and I have no idea how he finds them so fast. If I wasn't so busy killing things lately, I might have the sense to worry about it.
Maybe that's the idea.
But obviously, there's no way I've forgotten about any of it. The imminent threat of Dean's death hangs over me like a brewing storm, dark and ever-present. It's been inching closer, and I've been working nonstop to get him out of it; spending any spare minute I have making calls, delving into lore books, and searching for a spell, a ritual, a cursed object- anything that might save Dean's life. I'm always thinking about it.
But right now, at this exact moment, things are good. We're both right where we're supposed to be: asphalt beneath the tires of the Impala, some Bob Seger on the radio, and a cloudless night sky.
Dean pulls over less than ten minutes later and kills the engine. I turn to face him, eyebrows raised, waiting. He sits there for a moment longer, hands resting on the steering wheel before he turns to look at me.
"What?" I ask, his expression unreadable and somewhere far away.
"I don't know," he says, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "You think it's warm enough to sit for a bit?"
I smile and nod, immediately understanding. "Yeah it's kind of perfect tonight, actually." I slide out of the passenger seat and make my way over to sit on the hood of the car. Dean joins me a second later, scooting himself next to me and dropping a six-pack between us. It's been a long time since we've done this, just sat for a while and looked up at the stars, but it's something we've been doing since the time we were little. Every once in a while, Dad used to get this look in his eyes, like the one Dean has now, and he'd pull over on the side of the road somewhere and he'd turn to us and he'd say: "Stars are out."
That was always our cue. The three of us would clamber out of the car and sit on the hood for a while and just look. Just be for a minute.
"You see that?" John Winchester would say, leaning back against the windshield, his eyes twinkling. "That's something, innit boys? That's really something."
At the time, I hadn't really understood the ritual, had often complained that it was too cold to be sitting outside for that long, that I was bored, but Dean always shut me up. And as the years went on, I began to appreciate it more. There was something about sitting there, the three of barely saying anything. It was special, private- therapeutic even. There was nothing but us. My favorite part about it was that for those few moments, Dad was just Dad. And then even after he died, the tradition never lost its appeal. If anything, it became even more meaningful.
"Little dipper!" Dean exclaims suddenly, pulling me back to the present. He's jabbing a finger up at the sparkling expanse above us, positioning it carefully so I find what he's looking at.
"Yep, I see it," I say when I locate the familiar formation of seven stars. It's usually hard to see all seven, but we're far from any city lights, so they glint like crystals set against the black. I crack my beer open. Dean's already halfway done with his. We sit for a while longer, just watching the night roll by. It's good to finally stop moving, and I'm relieved Dean's restlessness has settled a little, at least for tonight.
Ooooooooooo00000000oooooooooooooooO
"You ever hear that thing people say, about how we're all made of stardust?" I ask after a long time. It's the first words either of us have spoken in a while, and I'm not really sure where they come from. I'd been thinking about it for a little while now, probably because I'd read something in the paper recently while skimming for yet another case. There'd been this little opinion piece that had caught my eye because of the headline: "Heaven or Hell-bound?" It described people as 'cocktails created by the grains of an infinite universe,' or something like that. I'd been intrigued by it for some reason; the idea that we are all never-ending, that we exist inside a universe that reshapes and reforms, but never erases. It sounds silly now, when I say it out loud, so I'm surprised when Dean doesn't laugh. It's exactly the kind of fuel he usually jumps all over in his attempts to fulfill his role as annoying older brother. But tonight, he doesn't say anything. I turn to watch his expression, but his face is mostly shadowed and he's staring straight ahead, watching the skyline.
"It's a nice thought, Sammy," Dean says finally.
"You don't believe it?"
He shrugs. "I don't know. Like I said, it's a nice thought, but in reality, we're all just skin and bone and muscle. So I guess we are all made of the same things, if you wanna think about it that way. But those things are…" Dean stops talking, his eyes still on the place where trees meet sky, directly in front of us.
"Are what, Dean?" I ask.
My big brother smiles, but it's tinged with a sadness he rarely lets me see. Suddenly, I know he's been thinking about Dad tonight, same as I have. It's impossible not to. Dean takes one last swig of his third beer and slides easily off of the hood, tossing the empty bottle over my head and into the tall grass that surrounds us, smirking slightly when I flinch at how close it comes to hitting the side of my head. I narrow my eyes at him. He ignores me, puts a hand on the driver's side of the Impala and twists his torso back and forth, working out the kinks from sitting for so long. He's still got that faraway look in his eyes.
"Breakable," Dean says simply.
I watch him climb back into the car, the door singing its familiar tune as he slams it shut behind him, and he immediately begins drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. He's ready to be moving again. I sigh heavily and make my way back to my side of the Impala, tossing my one remaining beer into the backseat. Dean makes a face but doesn't say anything about it.
"Motel?" he asks instead. "We're not far from the next town."
"Okay," I agree, sliding my own door shut as Dean peels the Impala back onto the road.
The stars still gleam above us, but they don't seem quite as enchanting anymore.
The quote about the universe that Sam talks about here (and a big part in inspiring this story) is by a columnist named Caitlin Moran. It's a little long to post the entirety of it here, but if you google the words "At 19, I read a sentence that re-terraformed my head: 'The level of matter in the universe has been constant since the big bang.' In all the aeons we have lost nothing, we have gained nothing- not a speck, not a grain, not a breath," you should be able to find it. The rest of it is just as gorgeous.
Thanks for reading and let me know what you thought if you have time!