Chapter title is from song by Fall Out Boy.
33
Sugar, We're Goin' Down – Fall Out Boy
"Are you KIDDING ME?"
She grabbed Toby's hand and pulled him along at a full run, and her complaint was a yelp. It was undignified. In her whole entire life, she had never yelped. But they were being chased by a freakin' sasquatch.
It wasn't Sam.
It was a full head taller than Sam. It was a she. She was very interested in Sam, actually. Now that Zee thought about it, there seemed to be a theme there. Who was the monster magnet now? Anyhow, they were running through the woods, with Sam at the head of the line, away from an overly amorous Sasquatch in full pursuit of her desired mate.
She had a stitch in her side from the running. This forest path had been Sam's idea. A compromise, to keep Toby's mind off his knife throwing obsession. Sam had pointed out, reasonably, as only Sam could do, that if Toby wanted to get within throwing distance of anything, he had to learn to sneak first. They had stopped at a deserted campground high in the Monongahela, closed for the winter.
It was peaceful. Quiet.
Sasquatch were a myth.
Toby slowed down a little, panting.
Dean swept by at a full lope, solving the problem by simply picking Toby up without breaking stride, carrying the boy as if he weighed nothing.
"Better hurry up, sweetheart. Gigantor's mate's closing on you."
The creature behind them made a kind of cooing howl. It wasn't exactly a come-hither, but one got the idea.
Sam ran even faster, peeling off to the left and taking his new girlfriend with him.
"I TOLD YOU TO GET A HAIRCUT!" Dean yelled after his fleeing brother as he came to a halt.
It was utter chaos. She stopped to catch her breath.
"Is he going to be alright?"
Dean looked in the direction Sam went.
"Yeah. He'll circle around back to the cars in a sec. We should get there." He set Toby down, eyes brimming with mirth. "He runs a couple miles a day, so it shouldn't be a problem for him to lose her."
Sam was a little out of breath when he slammed into the car, all limbs and panic, closing the door rapidly behind him.
"GO! GO! GO!"
Dean obligingly put on the gas as he watched the SUV do the same, pulling out of the empty parking lot with a synchronized squeal of tires. It was really difficult to keep his facial muscles from twitching up into a smirk as Sam turned to him, still red in the face from running. Sammy glared at him, his hair flopping around every which way. Sam puffed out his cheeks, and puffed again, raising one finger prohibitively and enunciating clearly for emphasis, as if that was going to stop him.
"NOT. ONE. WORD. NOT ONE."
Dean's lips quirked. He might have made a sound.
Sam rounded on him in his seat, all flustered and fierce, the one finger pointing threateningly.
Dean tried to swallow the thing that was a laugh. He was having trouble. He shouldn't tease.
For now.
They picked up the northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, snow dusted ridge tops stretching wave after wave to the horizon like an earthen ocean. Dean kept his eyes on the road, on the Durango in front of him, winding their way through the last of the high thaw.
He knew what Sam was doing. And he wanted to tell him it wouldn't work. He couldn't just take the girl and the kid and shove them down his throat, willy nilly, like they were a replacement for Lisa and Ben. It didn't work that way.
He could read Sam like a book. Like back the time when Sam had made him promise to go find Lisa after, all those ideas Sam had in his head about what was good for him. Trying to save him. Trying to give him what Sam thought he wanted.
Well, it wasn't this.
Every day the kid was around them was a day he learned more about the life he knew too much about already. Every day was an added chance things would go south, sour the whole deal, because shit always happened. You just tried your damnedest not to be under the fan when it went sailing.
Sam wanted the truth. Well, the truth was the life sucked, even when he thought Dad was a superhero out saving the world. The truth was crappy motel rooms and trying to decide if you would rather have clean clothes or the Snickers bar in the vending machine. The truth was the days at Pastor Jim's and Bobby's never lasted long enough, that he had wanted to stay, set down the burden of being responsible for just a few more days. But he'd always manned up, because he knew Dad needed him. Needed to hear that it was okay to keep doing what he was doing, that Dean had got it, picked up the loose pieces he left behind. Because what he saw in Dad's eyes—pride and regret, deluding himself into thinking he could count on a nine year old to handle things, the driving need to protect his sons from the thing that had killed his wife, the bare edge of panic hidden beneath it all; the fear of losing them too, lacing through everything Dad had done.
He got that now.
He'd tried, as best he could, to even things out for Sam. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tracking chocolate Easter Bunny leavings in the woods, that one Christmas he tried to sell Sam that an air freshener tree was as good as a real one. And this, all this was Sam's way of trying to give it back. That year he'd had with Lisa and Ben, backyard barbeques and movie nights, the normal that Sam saw through the windows of other people's lives—Thanksgiving dinners and birthday picnics, Sam's hoping against hope it'd be enough to save him.
He skewed a glance at Sam, sitting next to him gazing out the window over the smoky blue haze above the mountains. He turned away, staring at the taillights of the Durango in front of him. He didn't want the kid in the SUV ahead to know any more than he already did, and as for the rest of what he wanted, it didn't matter, it had never mattered. He needed to get it through Sam's hard head that this was just a job until they could figure out what was tossing monsters their way night after night. But he couldn't open his mouth, because he knew where Sam would run with it. Just saying something meant there was something he was denying, when there was nothing.
Nothing at all.