The risk they took was too much. Dean wondered, breathless, if their lives could have gone differently. If there was a version of their dark existence where they could have been an apple pie family with tailgate parties, and softball, a family dog. His eyes watered with the pain in his ears from the ring of gunshots as Sam_his innocent baby brother!_exchanged fire with the hot red car. A truck slammed into the Impala's body on the right-hand side. A truck with John Winchester behind the wheel.
Dean shrieked and slapped his hand on the wheel.
Sam looked his way, swinging his bangs out of his eyes. His eyes went soft and sad when he saw their Dad lift a pistol and aim across Dean's chest, cussing and spitting that his "human" son was in the way of the "animal" one.
Dean slammed the brakes, throwing the whole thing off balance. He threw the car in reverse and made a moon-shaped arc around both the truck and El Camino.
"Dude, what the Hell?" Sam's lips were purple he was so motion sick by the time the gravel dust settled. They barely made it out of the gravel park.
"Did you think all those peanut butter and banana sammiches you ate when you were little put themselves on the table, huh? I was a trick car driver, Sammy, it's how we got by when Dad used to ditch us." Dean was grinning as he now left his irresponsible father in his tracks.
Sam looked like he would be sick as Dean kicked the gas and they sped away again. He slammed against the door of the cab as Dean took a quick side street, backed into a suburb, pulled up to an empty house for sale, backed into its back garage, cut the motor, and killed the lights. The night was coming on now.
"Dean?" Sam's nostrils flared with his effort to breathe.
Dean held up a finger. The truck John was in and the El Camino went whizzing by in succession. Dean closed his eyes counting the minutes.
"They'll swing back by. And Dad taught me the move of pulling into a for-sale sign yard, so he'll be back in a New York Minute_we've got to go and I mean like back in 1999." Dean ripped out of there as if the car was on fire, and swung back toward the rock quarry, did a donut spin, and headed for the middle of town. John wouldn't fire where civilians were at.
"Dean...Dad and the guy in the red El Camino are working together to hunt us..."Sam said at length.
Dean had realized it, but he was hellbent not to be the first one to say it.
"Mm, yeah Sammy, I saw." Dean looked back over his shoulder. He saw where both cars followed them and then diverted when they ran across civilians.
"He'll try to bottleneck us at the highway, we're gonna have to do a few more little inventive numbers, bud. Hang tough." Dean put a hand on Sam's chest to hold him against his seat while he threw it in reverse again, going backward down a tiny alley behind a laundromat, heading in the opposite direction of what his Dad had anticipated him to do.
"I used to give Dad the slip like this when I was a punk teen and I would go out and blow my share of the winnings on the spoils of Teenage Wasteland..."Dean smirked.
Sam sighed.
"I love it how you call yourself a "punk" in the past tense as if you've changed at all." Sam's lip curled in a half-smirk smile. Dean burst into sing-song laughter as they headed for a highway that took them in the opposite direction John and Mystery Car had gone.
Silence fell. They were on the highway again and it was growing dark.
"Dude, are we ever gonna talk about it?" Sam looked at Dean in earnest.
"Talk about what?" Dean hummed through his nose. Did they have to do this now? His heart was still pounding.
"You know what..." Sam frowned.
"Sam...I don't know what you want me to say. That it bothers me he's tag-teaming now to bring us down? That he aimed a gun at your fricken head? Yes, it bothers me...Do we have to do the whole touchy-feely thing?" Dean slapped the steering wheel, annoyed beyond belief.
Sam drew a heavy breath.
"No, Dean, are we gonna talk about the fact that he didn't have a fricken problem with shooting at me while you were in the way?" Sam held up a hand in frustration.
"Listen to me. I'm only gonna say this once. He will have to put a bullet in me if he wants to get to you, alright! Listen to me, dammit...He's not killing you, you're not getting dead, I don't care what happens to me_I'd rather die!" Dean looked sidelong at Sam who had shut up, eyes twisted in their sadness.
Dean shook his head, frustrated.
"Sam...you're my brother, monster or not. Get that in your freaky head, or I will beat it in there...Alright?" Dean swallowed hard.
"Yeah, okay...but...But Dean...You have to stay alive, okay?" Sam was staring at him.
Dean smiled.
"Right back at ya..."Dean hit the gas again, feeling anxious all at once.