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Home
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The day they cut down the bastard with the yellow eyes its sunny, and the light is shining mellow on his back, sweat trickling down his spine in rivulets of heat and relief.
"Hey," Sam said, put his hand on his where it was still clasped on the gun, shaking. He looked up at him, blinking. "Hey. Let's go home?"
---
They didn't really have a home of course, but they had the highway and they had Kansas, and Kansas had Missouri so they went there. Hopped on the state route and drove through eight miles of sunlight and dust and silence and it's over, and didn't stop until they were pulling up outside her house and out of the car.
"Boys," she said, when Sam knocked and he stood there, feeling blank and like the biggest anti-climax of the century. She didn't look surprised. "Come on in. Dean! Wipe your goddamn feet, it's not a farm!"
And he felt kind of awake again, but only enough to smirk slightly and kick his boots off.
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She made fried chicken and fresh green beans and mashed potato for dinner, so good he wolfed it down with his fork and hands in turns, licking them clean while Sam covered his eyes and Missouri bitched at him and he just wished he didn't have to chew.
She pushed them upstairs into the guest rooms and told them they'd bloody well better have a shower before they got between her clean sheets, or she'd kick their asses. He didn't protest more than necessary to keep face; just stripped and climbed in after Sam had finished, soaked under water that came out of plumbing that didn't scream at him, or run out of heat after a minute and a half of frantic scrubbing.
Stood there under the spray and wondered what now? before climbing back out and falling onto the bed naked. He had a second to hope that Missouri wouldn't find it crucial to wake him up herself in person in the morning, and to bliss out over the discovery that not all beds sagged in the middle and had that funny musty smell before he passed out.
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He didn't wake up until the sun was sinking back behind Lawrence's houses again, the air dull and heavy with afternoon's lingering warmth. His back was cold, and his bare ass was still on display, so he grabbed the towel where it lay abandoned on the floor and went looking for his duffel.
Sam had found it in him to bring both bags inside, so he didn't have to stroll out to the car with his extremities waving in the wind. Just hauled his bag back with him up the stairs, clutching his towel around his waist while Missouri yelled at him without stopping from stirring something that smelled really fucking good on the stove, and Sam yelled at him and threw a cushion, which made Missouri yell at Sam. The TV was playing some sport with sweaty guys and a ball, though, so Sam's focus had trained back on that when he was half way up the stairs. He decided to hurry, because Missouri looked at least three quarters of the way done and he didn't want Sam to have a head start.
Missouri made them set the table for dinner, and when he made to make comments, just waved her dripping wooden spoon at him – and it really did smell ridiculously good, so he just gave in and put down three sets of knives and forks and plates and glasses.
She'd made beef casserole with mini potatoes and an overpowering amount of vegetables. He scraped most of them to the side of his plate, but Missouri wouldn't let him have seconds – or thirds, or fourths, or fifths – so what, he was hungry, he hadn't eaten all day – before he ate them all. She'd made trifle with homemade whipped cream for dessert though, so his arguments didn't really carry any weight.
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He'd been awake for an hour on the third day before Sam started getting fidgety and made them labour around the house 'for their keep'. He didn't mind too much, he'd always liked working with his hands, the tangible evidence of a job well done and the feel of a hammer in his hand, wood thrumming with a tapping rhythm. Prying splinters out with Missouri's sewing needles.
Sam cleaned the gutters and he fixed the hen coop – yeah, Missouri owned chickens, for chrissakes, who the hell owned chickens anymore, and he thought this wasn't supposed to be a farm. She did a thousand loads of laundry – theirs, he saw when she hung his rattiest pair of boxers on the line, and he ignored his blush – and made fresh lemonade and baked chocolate chip cookies. He thought they were possibly the best thing he'd ever tasted in his life, and told her so while she called him boy and cuffed him over the head to stop sweet talkin' me and get back to work. Sam mowed the front lawn and he mowed the back, saying howdy to the neighbours when they waved and smiled at him over Missouri's fence.
The huge bruise on his spine where he'd been thrown into a tombstone was fading, and he had sunburn across his nose before Sam woke him up from under Missouri's lemon tree and told him dinner was ready.
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He woke up gasping and shuddering, the sheets clasped around his body sweat soaked and clammy. The image of yellow eyes and Sam collapsing and bloody wasn't getting out of his head, and then Sam there, was in the room, telling him it's alright, he was here, it's over, it's over.
But it wasn't, it wouldn't ever be. He told Sam he was fine, Goddamnit, and to get back to bed, and that he didn't fucking need to be petted like a horse. Sam called him an asshole, and he just laughed, sounding almost normal, and pretended to go back to sleep.
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Missouri had to get groceries the next day, and told them that if they messed up the house, they wouldn't be getting any of her chilli or peach cobbler tonight, which was enough of a threat to send them outside and onto the porch.
They both had beers and the sun wasn't too warm, with this little breeze blowing back and forth like it couldn't make up its mind whether it was coming or going. Sam had that intense look on his face like he was thinking something really important over, though, so he just sat there and sipped his beer and waited.
"We did it," Sam said finally, and he just said yeah, looking over at the lemon tree and took another swallow. "Dean, we did it. It's over. I – what do we do now?"
He didn't know, but he knew it wasn't over, even if he wasn't saying. It'd never be over. He felt aimless too, like he was stuck in stasis, or maybe that fucking djinn had claws in him again, except this time it was getting it half way right. He shrugged and smirked and offered to drive Sam back over to wussy state with his heart in his mouth. He drowned it with more beer, and closed his eyes.
"No," Sam said, and that was it, he just leant back and rocked them on the porch swing with his one giant foot on the ground, and he felt the sun on his face, nose stinging a little.
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Sam drove them into town the next day, and he sat there in his car, sunglasses smothering most of his face and wondering what they were doing. They were seeing a movie in the oven of a theatre Lawrence had, a seat between them filled up with popcorn and Hershey's and skittles and watered down soda, snorting weak coke out of his nose and choking when Tom Cruise waved his gun around and did his billion dollar blank-face for all he was worth.
"Paramount fired him," Sam whispered over the seat.
"Yeah?" he said, and stuffed more popcorn in his mouth, wondering why that felt significant.
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They had coffee after, in a little neighbourhood café, Sam ordering his frou-frou crap with out shame, sprinkles and all. He wouldn't go so far as to let Sam order for him, but he relented when Sam said he just had to try one shot, come on Dean, live a little. That made his brain blank like Tom Cruise's face, but he just pasted on a smile and rolled his eyes. He wasn't much for letting painful things drag on, and Sam's whining was one of them. So were the un-thought-out comments that suddenly had Sam freezing, eyes widening at him all sorry, oh god, I didn't mean it, why did you do this, Dean, why?
He wanted to try everything he hadn't yet, anyway. New things. That's what terminal cases were told to do, wasn't it?
So when his coffee came back with milk and some sweetened flavour in it that wasn't half bad – Irish cream shot, Sam told him with a fragile smirk – he just smiled and tapped his thigh under the table, restless.
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"I really do want to go to the Grand Canyon," he said on the drive back, "Before." Sam glanced at him, and said nothing. He put his sunglasses back on, hands easy on the steering wheel, and they drove by the old house on the way home, but don't stop.
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Missouri waved them off a week later, standing on her front porch with an apron on, and flour smudged on her cheeks. They had a still-warm apple pie on the back seat, making the whole car smell like Missouri's house. She'd given them both a hug before they'd gone, holding onto him a little longer than Sam and patting his back when he leant down to kiss her cheek. She smelled like pastry and sun and lemon, and she didn't say see you again soon, but she did say take care of your dumb asses, boys, which was good enough for him.
They were back on the road and Sam was making eyes at the pie, even though he'd had three helping of pancakes and eggs and bacon. He didn't know where they were going yet, or at all, and Sam hadn't made noises about direction, just saying we should get going soon, yesterday,so they had. They had about two hundred hell scum to kill in less than a year now, so he wasn't going to be arguing.
"So," Sam said, two hours out.
"So," he replied, staring hard out the windscreen. He wondered if Sam was going to say something stupid, like I'm glad I'm not dead, or I love you, man, which would be something even ear-popping Oasis wouldn't cover up.
But Sam just said, "So," again, and passed him a yellow bag of M&Ms from out of his jacket pocket. They tasted kind of like life, and when he swallowed the first chewed up mutated red one he smiled, and didn't stop until they were in Nebraska and Sam was asleep, blinking white sun making his eyelashes flutter while he drooled on the window.
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Season 2 AU? Finale. Well, AU time when the Finale was set, like!! Maybe it was daytime instead of night!! YEAH! WOULDN'T THAT BE TOTALLY UN-HORROR-LIKE?! Dean pov. Missouri.
Song Inspired By: Acquiesce by Oasis.