Thanks for reading everyone! Just to let you know, next week we will be posting the last chapter of this fic. BUT we've already begun talking about a plot for the sequel, which we think is going to be even better than this one! There are some very exciting ideas on the table. I'll have more to share about that next time. For now, enjoy!
Sam knows the second he rounds the corner and sees the Impala missing. He knows, but he still picks up his pace, takes the stairs two at a time, and bursts, panting, into the apartment.
The unmade mattress is still laid out in the living room and Dean's beer is still sitting half-drunk on the coffee table, but his duffle bag is gone and Sam's brother is nowhere in sight.
He can hear Jess in the bedroom, and he hurries in, hoping there's some other explanation, anything, that isn't his brother slipping - again - through Sam's fingers and out of his life.
"Where's Dean?" he demands around lungfuls of air.
Jess stares at him, her eyes wide, paintbrush suspended in the air.
"He's in the shower..." she answers in a bewildered voice.
And sure enough, Sam can hear the sound of it going. He tries the bathroom door and, finding it locked, rears back and kicks it in, ignoring Jess' horrified "Sam!"
A cloud of steam rolls out of the room, bathroom filled with the sound of water hitting empty tiles.
Dean isn't there.
Of course he isn't.
Sam presses a hand over his mouth, breathes hard for a second, and collects himself. Jess is saying something, but Sam doesn't hear, his mind a mess of maps and facts and numbers.
He's only been gone for a half hour, meaning Dean has maybe twenty minutes on him now. Sam knows where he's going, can figure out what route Dean's most likely to take. The last time they'd been in the Impala, the tank had been running low; Dean stopping for gas will buy Sam a little time. He can catch up to his brother, intercept him. Worst case scenario, Sam can follow him all the way to Black Water Ridge.
"I'm going to find him," Sam tells Jess, pushing past her into the bedroom. "Where're your keys?"
"I left the car at Luis' place after the party," she answers, still sounding baffled. "I haven't taken the time to walk over there, yet."
Sam swears.
"Okay," he says, pulling on a hoodie in his rush to get to the front door. "I'll figure something out."
"But Sam—" Jess protests frantically. "Sam, what about the interview?"
"I don't know," Sam tells her, snagging his wallet from the kitchen counter. "I'll deal with it later."
Right now, he really couldn't care less.
He jogs down the stairs and only pauses for a second to survey the cars parked behind his apartment building. He settles on a blue Honda Civic that looks to be four or five years old – nice, low profile, good MPG. Not gonna match the Impala for speed, but speed's not worth much when you're stopping for gas every hour.
Sam lets himself into the car and bends under the dash to hotwire it. Jess hasn't followed him out of the apartment, but he tries not to think about the fact that she could very well be watching Sam boost one of their neighbors' cars from an upstairs window.
The car cranks to life, and Sam puts her into gear, peeling out of the parking lot with a squeal of rubber on asphalt.
The fastest way to get to Lost Creek would be to take I-80, but that route goes through more major cities and would force Dean to go through a toll. Sam heads in the opposite direction, towards I-5. Back roads and winding, dusty highways.
Much more Dean's style.
As he rockets around the corner onto University Avenue, Sam gropes for his pocket, swearing again when his fingers find only the slick, smooth material of his exercise pants. His phone is still in the pocket of his jeans, on the floor of the apartment. So much for trying to call Dean, then.
He punches the gas pedal harder, pushes up and over the speed limit, and prays to God that Dean isn't doing the same.
Dean's a little under two hours into the drive, rambling down the long, dusty stretch of West Side Freeway, when he sees headlights coming up on him at top speed. He rolls his eyes. Not like he has a lot of respect for highway law, but hell, he's already going twenty over and this dickcheese is tailgating him?
There's having a healthy appreciation for the wind your hair and the purr of your baby as she stretches her legs on the empty blacktop, and then there's just being an asshole.
Dean slows the Impala down to a crawl just to fuck with the guy. The rest of the highway's empty. It's so goddamn important? Let him pass.
The car veers sharply into the other lane, revs ahead of the Impala, and then scares the living hell outta Dean by whipping right across his lane, screeching to a halt and blocking his way. He breaks hard, hearing his tires wail in protest.
"Shit!" Dean swears, holding his baby steady as she skids to a stop. "What the fuck?!"
The driver's side door on the car in front of him slams open, and the asshole bursts out, stalks towards the Impala.
Aw, hell. It's Sam. And he looks pissed.
Dean thumbs the key in the ignition, shifting her into park, and opens his own door.
"Boostin' cars, Sammy?" he drawls. "Pretty serious."
He's about to say something else, some joke about Sam's law degree and apple pie aspirations not exactly going hand-in-hand with grand theft auto, but he doesn't get the chance because Sam rears back and punches him square in the mouth.
He doesn't pull it either, that's for goddamn sure, and Dean stumbles backward, has to brace himself on his baby to keep from eating pavement. Sam darts in and winds a fist into Dean's shirt, slamming him up against the side of the Impala with violent, vicious force.
"What the hell is your problem?!" he demands through clenched teeth, hazel eyes hard in a face that's pure anger, pure outrage, though Dean can't for the life of him figure out why.
"Christ," Dean chokes out, feeling blood trickling down his chin as he tries to catch his breath, does a quick count to make sure baby brother didn't short him a few teeth with that haymaker. "Pretty sure that's my line, Sammy. What are you doing here?"
Sam's eyes narrow.
"That is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say," he snaps. "I'm here to stop you from getting yourself mauled. You just ran off in the middle of the night, asshole! What did you think I was going to do?"
Not this, that's for sure, Dean thinks, and it must show on his face, because Sam's mouth twists furiously and his grip tightens on Dean's jacket, pins him that much harder against his baby's side.
"You really thought I was just going to let you leave, didn't you?" Sam demands, voice rising. "After everything that's happened in the last two weeks, you still think you can drop me off at Stanford and fuck off for another couple of years, and I'll, what? Just let it happen?!"
"You did before," Dean points out, quick like a jab between the ribs.
He might be pinned and he might be bleeding and Sam might have gotten a little crazy with that last cup of coffee, but hell if Dean is letting his little brother ream him out for doing his goddamn job, for backing a decision that Sam made himself, even if it is a couple years late.
"I'm not the one who wanted you out of my life," Dean presses, punches out through the pounding at the corner of his mouth, the sting of blood trickling from his split lip, the hot, furious wall of pissed off baby brother pinning him to his own car. "That was your choice—"
"And this is yours!" Sam interrupts sharply.
No, it's not, Dean thinks. He doesn't have a choice here. Not really.
"I mean, Christ, Dean!" Sam rants. "I didn't ask you to drop the case! All I wanted you to do was rest up a few days! Hell, you could've waited less than twenty-four hours, and I would have gone with you!"
Yeah, Dean had pretty much known that's where this was heading, but even knowing, he still has to suppress an unwanted rush of pleasure at hearing the words come out of his brother's mouth, has to swallow down a shudder at the confirmation that Sam would have had his back, would have come back to the life for him, would have kissed college and normal and safe goodbye in a heartbeat if Dean had ever just worked up the guts to ask.
"But no," Sam continues, "the second you can get your hands on the keys, you're making a run for it. Out the goddamn bathroom window, Dean! Do you really hate being with me that much?!"
Dean's stomach drops.
"What? No, that's not—!"
He breaks off with a frustrated sound, groping for the words. He hates fighting with Sam. Kid like this? It always feels like bringing a knife to a gun fight.
"I don't hate being with you," he says lamely.
"Really?" Sam challenges, sharp disbelief in his voice. "I have to physically force you to be around me! I thought things were actually going good, but I took my eye off you for half an hour, and you were out of there!"
"That wasn't because of you!" Dean protests.
At least, not the way you're thinking.
"So what then?" Sam demands relentlessly. "Was it Jess? You don't like her?"
"No!"
"Then what? There's got to be some reason you couldn't just wait for me to go with you! Or are you really that suicidal?"
"Maybe I just don't want you to come with me," Dean bursts out, breaking Sam's grip. "Did you think of that?"
Sam looks stricken.
"What?" he asks weakly, uncomprehending, taking a shaking, stumbling step back. "But— that's what you've always wanted. That's why you got so pissed at me for going to college, because you wanted us to hunt together, be a family."
"Well, I was wrong," Dean says, and the words feel like nails in this throat, scrape and scream and fight as they come out, salt in a wound and acid on burns as Dean forces them through gritted teeth, shoves away family and Sam and the only shape happiness has ever taken for him. "You belong at Stanford. You're not a hunter, Sam."
And Jesus, the look on Sammy's face... Dean might as well have hauled off and punched the kid. It's scraped knees and boogeymen in the closet, "We have to leave town" and "Monsters are real" all rolled into one and worse, so much worse, because Dean wants it. He does.
He wants, more than he's ever wanted anything, to drive off into the sunset and hunt monsters with Sammy, but they can't.
He can't.
Can't let Sam walk away from the life – the normal, safe life – he's built in Palo Alto. Can't watch Sam kill himself with worry for Dean. Can't live with the image of Sammy tearing and slicing and carving away at his skin and his strength and his sanity, all in the name of helping Dean, of keeping him alive.
"This is because of Louisiana," Sam says in a miserable, trembling voice. "You don't want me anymore because I screwed up."
"No," Dean says gruffly, and hell, if they're going to be parading their feelings around like chicks anyway, he might as well go all out. "It's because I screwed up."
Sam opens his mouth to protest, but Dean soldiers on.
"I saw you fight that vamp, Sam. It was a goddamn mess. You could have died!"
Dean swallows with a click, shoves down the quick, sharp flash of that bastard with his fangs buried in Sammy's neck, of cold skin and dead, empty hazel eyes, of Sammy still, stiff, gone.
"And I couldn't protect you," he continues, voice horse. "Hell, my fuck-up put you there in the first place."
Sam shakes his head, eyebrows digging furrows in his forehead beneath tangled, floppy bangs.
"You didn't put me there," he argues. "That was my decision. I'm an adult, Dean."
Not to me, you're not, is the thought that flashes through Dean's mind; he keeps his mouth shut.
"And in case you missed it," Sam continues, "I won that fight. I didn't need to you to protect me!"
"Sam, you were halfway to Crazy Town by the time you found me," Dean says. "The things you did to save me? Man, I don't even wanna think about what you would've done if you'd found me dead."
Sam's takes a shuddering breath, hands tightening to fists at his sides.
"This? Hunting?" Dean gestures between them. "It's just gonna be you pushing yourself to the brink over and over again until you break."
Sam looks away, his expression hidden in the shadows. An eighteen wheeler whizzes by, honking its horns at the two morons having it out in the right-side lane of the goddamn highway. Dean reaches out on instinct and tugs Sam closer, away from the truck's path, by the sleeve of his hoodie. Sam shrugs him off.
"This life makes you crazy, Sam," Dean presses. "Being around me makes you crazy. It's been days, and you're still wrecked."
"Are you serious?" Sam spits out, turning to give Dean an incredulous look. "You're my brother, and you almost died! Excuse me if I'm not instantly okay! And what, if I show that I'm upset at all by what happened on a hunt, I'm not fit to go on one ever again? That's not fair, Dean. Just give me some time, and I'll get over it!"
"You're not listening to me," Dean starts, but Sam just cuts him off.
"No, I'm listening," he spits out. "I'm just not agreeing 'cause you're full of shit."
Seriously: Knife. To. A. Gunfight.
"Sam, I'm telling you that you don't have to deal with it," Dean sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. "I'm giving you the out, dude. This is my blessing or whatever: Go do your law school thing. I'll take care of the hunts. I can handle it. C'mon, trust me."
Sam shakes his head, stubborn as ever.
"No," he refuses. "I'm not leaving you alone out there. I won't do that."
He looks down, a heartbeat away from scuffing the toe of his sneaker on the asphalt like the little kid he keeps saying he's not before looking back up at Dean, those damn puppy dog eyes of his going at full force.
"Don't ask me to do that, Dean," he says softly. "Please."
"Come on, Sammy, don't fight me on this," Dean sighs and hopes Sam doesn't hear it as the plea it is. "We both know you never wanted to be a part of this."
And I did know that, Dean thinks. I knew it all along, but I still let Dad push you into it, because I wanted you there and I thought I could make it good for you. I thought I could keep you safe. But now, I know. I can't. I'm not enough.
"Listen," he rasps out. "If having a normal life – being Joe College, getting a house in the 'burbs with your girl – Sammy, if that makes you happy, don't give it up for me. I'm not worth it."
Sam glares at him, eyes glittery in the glow of the headlights.
"Shut up," he chokes out, chin crumpling as he swallows hard. "Don't say that. Don't you dare say that. You have no idea what you're worth to me."
They're quiet for a long time after that. A couple more cars whiz by: an old man hauling furniture in the back of his rusty Ford and a family of four with Spongebob playing in the backseat.
Finally, Sam breaks the silence.
"Okay, I get what this is now," he nods, mouth tight, determined. "'Look out for Sammy,' right?"
Dean lifts his chin, squares his jaw.
"Yeah, I get it. You think you're doing this for me. But you know what? It's crap, Dean."
This time, it's Dean who opens his mouth to protest. Sam raises a hand to silence him.
"Look, don't… Just don't, okay? You want to do something for me? Don't make yourself miserable for me. Don't die for me. I don't need a martyr; I need a brother. And I am telling you, I want to be with you. I want to help you. You've been taking care of me my whole life. Let me take care of you for a change."
"That's not your job," Dean argues.
"Well, it should be someone's," Sam tells him seriously.
"Come on, Sam. Law School," Dean tries. "Jessica and fucking apple pie and a dog. A normal life—"
"Is not what I want if you're not in it," Sam interrupts firmly. "I mean it."
The color drains from Dean's face then rushes back in to prick his cheeks at hearing Sam say that, out loud, for the first time.
"I'm not saying I'm going to drop out of Stanford," Sam presses, steady and sure now. Determined. "I still want those things. I want somewhere to go home to. I want a career that's not chopping off heads and scamming bikers. I'm saying… why can't we compromise?"
Dean blinks.
"What are you talking about?"
"Think about it, Dean. Why do we have to live out of cheap motels and travel cross country and earn half our money with credit card scams?"
"Because that's what hunters do," Dean answers automatically, no idea where Sammy is going with this.
"Bobby doesn't," Sam counters, and it's his "Let Us Go or Press Charges" voice. His confidant voice. The voice he uses when he's found a lead he just knows is gonna crack the case wide open. "Pastor Jim doesn't. Neither does Caleb. That's Dad's way, Dean! It doesn't have to be ours."
Dean scoffs, shaking his head and scrubbing a hand over his mouth, because it's ridiculous, can't possibly be that easy.
Can't have been right in front of their faces the whole time.
"You're saying, what, set up camp in Palo Alto?" he challenges with a skeptical glare. "Let you be law student by day, hunter by night? That could never work!"
"Why not?" Sam demands.
His eyes are bright now, like they used to get when he was solving a particularly tough equation, numbers crunching and whirring in his head as possibilities, problems, solutions spin through the supercomputer the kid calls a brain.
"My lease is up soon. I've got cash saved up," he presses. "We can use it to get a bigger apartment, one with room for you and me and Jess. Between the two of us, I bet we could turn it into Fort Knox for spirits and monsters!"
"Sure." Hell, a call to Bobby would sort that out. "But—"
"We'll do what Caleb does: Just look for hunts within a few hours of where we live!" Sam goes on, talking faster as the possibilities spread, expand to take shape and form, become something Dean can see, could actually imagine happening. " I'll take classes and do research during the week, and we'll hunt on the weekends."
"Monsters don't exactly wait for Fridays, Sammy," Dean shakes his head.
Even if it could happen, there're still too many problems, still too many ways it could go wrong. There's always a catch, and if Sammy's too caught up, too swept away in this crazy as hell idea, then it's Dean's job to find it, to keep his eyes open and his feet on the ground, to find the flaw here before Sam gets too attached to the idea that they – of all the goddamn people out there – could have it all.
"So, if it's urgent, you can take care of it," Sam waves the problem away, shrugs Dean hunting alone like it's suddenly nothing in the face of all these possibilities, in the face of this brave new world. "If it's too much to handle or you don't check in on schedule, I'll blow off classes and come after you, no questions asked. You'd be close enough that I could get there in no time."
"You could flunk out that way," Dean points out, head still spinning as he tries to take in how fucking feasible that sounds – how this might actually could happen, could work – all while trying to figure out when the hell a life with him in it became more important to Sam than lawyering and cardigans and freedom from the constant coin flip of kill or be killed.
When did Dean become so important that Sammy'd be willing to tear everything up, to rebuild his life from the ground up just to keep Dean in it?
Could Sammy really wants this? Really want Dean, loud and annoying and up to his elbows in engine grease and rock salt? Drinking too much and singing too loud and never, ever having to choose between taking care of business and taking care of Sammy, between his job and his life?
God, if this could work… If they could pull it off…
"Maybe," Sam shrugs. "Maybe not. We won't know if we don't try."
"Dad'd still send me hunts," Dean tells him. "No way he'll be willing to stick to just California."
He's trying desperately to find the fucking flaw in this plan before he buys in, before he drinks the Kool-Aid and believes, just for a second, that they could actually build something together, no sacrifices, no painful-ass goodbyes, just him and Sam and home.
"So, we'll kick 'em to Bobby," Sam shrugs. "He's got plenty of hunters in his network who'd be just as qualified to take care of whatever it is as we are."
Dean can see it, that little twitch at the corner of Sam's mouth, the shine in his eyes that's always been his tell, that's always tipped Dean off when Sam knows, just knows he's gonna win.
"Man, Dad would not be happy about this," Dean scrubs a hand over his face, forgetting for what must be the fourth time to-goddamn-night that he has a spilt goddamn lip and that fucking hurts.
"I honestly don't care what he thinks, Dean," Sam laughs. "Do you?"
"Yeah," Dean says automatically. "I mean…" Kind of.
Sam's practically vibrating with excitement now, can't hold back the grin on his face or the glimmer in his eyes, the buzzing, vibrating, explosive energy of possibility.
Of hope.
"Dean," he breathes, sounding as stunned as Dean feels. "This could work."
Could it really?
Dean turns it over in his head, but he just can't find the fucking flaw, which can't be right.
No, there's got to be something wrong with this. It sounds too good. Works out too well for them.
Good things don't happen to the Winchesters. There's some glaring problem that Dean's just not seeing, because being in Sam's life in a way that wouldn't make his brother miserable? Having a life and a home and still being able to hunt? To help people? To bite back at the bastards that have taken so much from him, but still have Christmas and Thanksgivings and birthdays with Sam? To see him grow up, get off his ass and propose to Jess, to graduate and be a lawyer and help people, save them in one way while Dean saves them in another?
It's shit Dean gave up hoping for when he was four.
The idea that he could have it again – have it with Sam – and still save people? Still make his mom proud?
It's stupid. It's totally impossible.
Then again, some small part of Dean whispers, he's seen a lot of impossible things in his life. Is it too much to think that, just once, something good could happen? That, just this once, the universe would cut them a break?
"Dean, give it a shot," Sam urges, soft and close and tempting, so tempting. "We can make this work. For once, I'm asking you to trust me."
Dean's eyes find Sam's in the dusk.
His brother's face is half-hidden in the gloom, but it's still bright with purpose, his green eyes gleaming with excitement that spills out and over to light him up like a Christmas tree. Sam may say he's an adult, may be all about shouting his maturity from the rooftops, but right now he looks all of six. This is Sammy, pitching Dean a little boy's crazy dream and asking him to trust that it can happen – to just believe.
Dean would give anything to trust that this is possible, to believe in it with the same absolute faith that's spilling out of Sam's every pore, but he knows can't.
Maybe he's been too many places. Maybe he's seen too many things. Maybe he's just a cynical bastard, but he just can't put the same trust in this – this awesome, impossible dream- that Sam can. They're Winchesters, and their luck always runs out in the end.
"Come on, Dean," Sam whispers. "Trust me."
He reaches out, presses his palm against the fist Dean has clenched at his side and squeezes gently. Dean looks down at the place where they're connected, at the bandage wound around Sam's forearm, glowing stark white in the headlights, then back to his brother's hopeful face.
Dean's fist slackens without his consent, and with it, Dean can feel all of his well-founded doubts slipping right out of his grasp. And he shouldn't. He shouldn't, has every ounce of common sense in his head screaming against it, but there, on that lonely stretch of California blacktop, Dean lets himself believe, just a little, in Sam's dream.
Because this is his kid brother, and if there's one thing – one single thing in this whole screwed up universe – that Dean will always believe in, it's Sam.