Coffee Break

Named for the time of my work schedule when I got to write it. ;)

They had to get away. It wasn't too much to ask their wayward mother to look out for Jack if she couldn't be there for them, was it? No, Dean ruled, it wasn't. So Mary stayed with Jack and Cas went on a recon run and Sam and Dean hunted because that's what they did when nothing else made sense. When they were as lonely as bones in the desert, the open road was there. Their car was their nanny the road their cradle and they went rocking down it to battle and death and the darkness they knew so well...

A long dark highway led them to nowhere but a roadhouse. And it looked so familiar like something from an old movie, or so they thought. Unbeknownst to them, cast in black and white, the movie they remembered was the film reel of their own sad days.

They pressed in bones cold, shoulders bumping. Streetcars cast up sleet and snow stuck to them. Sam's eyes cast up the dust of the 5 o'clock shadow that was dancing down his chin again. Dean sighed within. He didn't like his brother's returning beard because it was the waves of youth receding into the ocean of time. It had to be. He'd let it be tonight. He'd need to let it all just be.

So, he breathed in.

"Wow…"Sam had said it under his breath. Dean hadn't noticed it. Not yet. But the smell of cedar decks splashed with PBR and the sound of rock songs as old as the vinyl they were recorded on called it all back. This place and everything and everyone in it was clipped straight from the Rolling Stones of their rock star lives. This was a portrait of a roadhouse that they went to frequently a long, long time ago. When they were different people and a different sun stood in the sky.

A blonde spun around behind the counter, mixing drinks for people. Dean visibly brightened for a moment forgetting the time, the place and everything in that split second of blissful forgetting. Sam barely noticed it so transfixed was he by a guy with a mullet in the corner who was playing with a fancy Apple gadget and reminded him of a computer hacker that was his friend once upon a time.

"Hey. Hey, Jo!" Dean waved at the bartender. She turned. And the eyes were blue. As blue as the wound across Dean's soul when he realized that the Irish coffee eyes of Jo Harvelle were not looking back at him.

"Sorry, you're in Seattle. It's called leaded here." The blonde tapped the lid of a French press and leaned on the counter. With a flip of her hair, she had swept Dean under the waves of siren regret. This was not his Jo. Not the girl lost in the fire.

"Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry...Yeah, I'll take that leaded Irish then." Dean smiled. And then he felt it. Sam's eyes. As warm and sad as the memories of brandy moving over his face along with the shadows in the room.

"I thought...I thought she was…."Dean tapped the bar as he sat on the stool. Sam sat beside him, folding his hands as if to pray.

"I thought they all were...Everyone here...Everything about our lives now, man. So familiar and so wrong." Dean continued. Sam sighed. Steam from the kitchen sinks and smoke from the poker table rolled over him like a halo. Dean watched him out of the corner of his eye. Anything to avoid being crushed by the press of that long blonde hair. So much of his life gone into the crucible. So much of his and his brother's lives melted down and crushed in the crucible of a blonde's golden hair, gnashed between the teeth of a fool's wish for treasure that was buried 6-feet-under now.

Except that Jo hadn't been buried. Dean gasped as a coffee was pressed in his hand with a searing heat that reminded him of another blazing fire. Oh, for God's sakes, why was it always the burning of blondes that broke these boys?

Sam ordered the same thing. Smiled at the waitress. She reminded him of another cheerful girl from someone else's white picket fenced yard. One who had the same ghostly blue eyes ...

"Thank you...Good service here. We'll have to come back, huh? What's your name, sweetheart?" Sam tried to make lighthearted conversation with Bright Eyes who was the spitting image of his one time better half- to-be and also almost half his age.

"Jess." The girl smiled.

"Jess...Mm, I knew you reminded me of somebody, Jess. Have a good night." Sam smiled, holding on to the girl's hand for a second as he tucked her tip into her palm. Her eyes flashed in surprise at this "old skeezer" casting smiles at her not understanding that those sad smiles were torn from the faded co-ed scrapbook photos of a paper shredded life.

"Why is it always the blondes?" Dean asked, voicing at last his heartache as the girl skipped away to the arms of a hopeless frat boy with the same shaggy brown hair of another Jess' long lost love.

Sam was watching her and the boy with eyes filling up with smoke and a smile that made a rag doll's frown look happy. Dean discreetly took his brother's hand and slipped it under the table, pressing it palm downward against his knee cap. Who cared if someone saw them or what they thought? So much pain for so long.

"Dunno. Every woman we ever cried for had the same golden hair surprise…"Sam let a soft sigh pass through his nostrils as he sipped the coffee. He set the demon slaying knife on the counter, watching his ruined reflection in the blood.

"You asked me once if I ever wanted something more…"Dean shook his head. Sam looked his way now. Dean looked back. The bar reflected in Sam's eyes, with dry whiskey casting up savor along with a thousand years where rain had never come. They both were once so different before the flames of Hell. Now they were ghosts and this town was just another ghost town they were haunting through.

"Yeah, I know…I know, but now you can't."

"No, I sure as Hell can't. Because if I could have had more, with someone in the life…"Dean looked back at the girl...And he saw someone else. Another girl from another life. His Jo.

Sam smiled.

"Let's hope she never finds out about that. Or she'll kick your ass from the other side." Sam smirked. Dean laughed again as he let the coffee and the whiskey mix like her blonde hair and brown eyes in his soul.

Over the radio, the phantom song rose again. REO?

Damn right REO.

"Can't fight this feeling anymore...Now it don't matter what I started fighting for…"Dean sang along as the lights in the bar dimmed and lovers danced. He brought Sam's fist back to the table locked in his hand feeling his brother humming along to the same old tune. Oh, status be damned. He wasn't letting go of his brother until this freaking song went the way that she'd gone. The way that hope and dreams had gone. The road that led to nowhere.

Dean held tighter. He may be a hopeless vagabond but at least he was not a hopeless vagabond alone. Another sad heart sat beside him, singing for a blonde mother and a blonde girl who would never love him like he needed to be loved ever again.