Cars
By Mariner
"Yo, Sam, check this out."
"What now?" Sam looked up just long enough to give his idiot brother an exasperated glare before returning his attention to his algebra book. Dean met the glare with a grin and tapped the chewed end of his pen against the newspaper in front of him.
"1982 Corvette Stingray, red with silver trim, 90,000 miles, engine in good condition, needs some body work and interior repairs. Eighteen grand."
"Yeah," Sam snorted. "Keep dreaming."
"What? I bet Dad and I could talk it down to fifteen."
"We don't have fifteen grand. And if we did, Dad still wouldn't use it to buy you a Corvette."
"He said I could pick the car."
"Not if you pick like a total moron."
They were in the kitchen, which was the only room in the house big enough for two people to sit comfortably around a table. Sam was doing his homework, and Dean was supposed to be doing his, but he was apparently more interested in reading the classifieds and being a nuisance. Sam didn't actually mind the distraction all that much -- of all the subjects he had in school, algebra was by far the most boring and pointless -- but he wasn't about to say so. Dean, in Sam's opinion, did not need any more encouragement.
"How about this one? 1991 Pontiac Firebird."
"Get real."
"Yeah, you're right, a 'vette would be way cooler."
"Why do you even want a Corvette, Dean?"
"Girls dig sports cars."
"It's too small. There's no trunk space. Where are you going to put the shotguns?"
"On the roof."
"You're going to put a gun rack on the roof of a Corvette? Yeah, girls'll really dig that."
"Asshole." Dean aimed a half-hearted swing at Sam's head, which Sam automatically ducked. "What do you know about girls? Or cars. You're eleven."
"I'm twelve."
"Well, you act like you're eleven."
"You act like you're five."
It was a game. They'd been having different versions of the same conversation for nearly six months now, ever since Dad had said that Dean could have a car once he got his license, provided he paid for the gas and insurance himself. Since then, Dean spent his afternoons pumping gas at a service station near the high school, his weekends helping out at the garage where Dad worked, and his remaining shreds of free time combing through the classifieds, finding an endless supply of impractical cars for Sam to shoot down. Sam wasn't quite sure what the point was -- Dean knew perfectly well he wasn't going to get a sports car, and Sam suspected he didn't really want one anyway -- but Dean never seemed to tire of the routine.
"Hm, 1994 Mustang GT convertible, only three grand. Wonder what's wrong with it."
"You don't want a convertible. It rains half the year around here."
"We won't be here forever."
"We'll be here awhile."
"Only until I finish high school."
"At least another ten years, then."
"That's it, you're dead meat." Dean lunged out of his seat and made a grab for Sam, who didn't dodge quite fast enough. Dean caught the back of his shirt and toppled him over, sending them both to the floor along with Sam's chair.
Sam was getting pretty good at hand-to-hand, but Dean was still better, not to mention stronger and heavier, so it wasn't long before Sam was on his back, pinned to the floor under Dean's weight.
"Say 'uncle,'" Dean demanded.
"Fuckhead," Sam wheezed, and kicked out with his legs the way Dad had taught him a few days before, trying to throw Dean off. He wasn't really expecting it to work, and it didn't, but it did unbalance Dean for a moment or two. He swayed to one side and bumped the table leg with his shoulder before recovering. There was a sudden crash as the glass of Coke Sam had been drinking smashed to the floor.
"Fuck." Dean froze, ignoring Sam's continued attempts to wriggle out from under him. "Watch it, Sammy, there's--"
"What's going on here?"
"Fuck," Dean said again, more quietly this time, and scrambled to his feet. Sam followed a little more slowly, and both boys turned to face their father, who was glowering at them from the doorway.
"What do you two think you're doing," Dad growled, "rolling around on the floor when there's broken glass everywhere? Dean, is this how you take care of your brother?"
"Sorry, sir." Dean's face went red and he stared at his feet.
"It just fell," Sam said. "The glass, I mean. We weren't--"
"I'm not interested in excuses." Dad crossed his arms over his chest and glared at them both. "You both know better, and you sure as hell know the rules about not fighting in the house. Come out here and give me fifty."
Dean was already in the hallway and dropping to the floor before Dad finished the sentence. Sam rolled his eyes.
"Come on…"
"I could make it an even hundred."
Sam remained where he was just long enough to make sure his protest registered, and trotted out into the hallway to join his brother for push-ups.
"There," Dad said when they were done, "hopefully that worked off some of that excess energy. Sam, clean up that mess and finish your homework. I'll want to look at it later. Dean, since you're in such an aggressive mood today, why don't you grab your sparring gear and join me in the back yard?"
Dean groaned theatrically and headed for his room. Sam returned to the kitchen, fetched a mop, broom and dustpan from the closet in the back. He cleaned up the soda spill, carefully going over the floor twice to make sure all the glass was gone, then reluctantly sat back down to tackle the algebra. By the time Dad and Dean staggered back in, reeking of sweat, rubbing at fresh bruises and grinning like idiots, he had finished the last word problem with time to spare. Enough time to look at Dean's abandoned newspaper and confirm that for all his talk of Corvettes and Firebirds, the only ads his brother had actually marked were for pickup trucks and four-by-fours.
Sometimes Sam thought he was never going to understand his family.
Dean took the driving test on his birthday. Dad actually let him skip a day of school, and they went to the DMV together, returning in the afternoon with an ecstatic Dean behind the wheel of the Impala. That Saturday all three of them drove out together, armed with a copy of the latest classifieds, and Sam spent what felt like years fidgeting in the back seat, being bored silly while Dad and Dean pored over one used car after another. It was nearly dinner time by the time they got home, towing a battered red GMC pickup behind the Impala.
Sam thought the truck was a junk heap -- they couldn't even get it started, for fuck's sake -- but Dean smacked him upside the head when he said so. And Dad said there was nothing wrong with that engine that a half-way competent mechanic couldn't fix in a few days and that the guy who'd sold it to them was an idiot and thank God for idiots, because they sold cheap. Then he and Dean started talking about carburetors and brake pads, and Sam was bored silly again.
It took nearly three weeks to get the truck running, mostly because Dean did the actual fixing, with Dad coming by every couple of days to check on the progress and offer advice. After the second day, Sam started hanging around, handing over this wrench or that screwdriver when Dean asked. It was confusing at first, because Sam didn't know one wrench or screwdriver from another, and he spent a few hours going, "Huh?" and "Which one's that?" until Dean sat him down with the tool box, named every item in it and explained what it did. A few days later Dean named all the parts in the engine for him, too, and demonstrated how to change a spark plug.
Sam still thought car engines were stupid and boring, but he liked working with Dean on something that had nothing to do with hunting, something they were just doing because Dean thought it was cool. It was the sort of thing normal people did. It made him think of the vaguely remembered times when he was still too small to train, and hanging around with his brother involved things like Monopoly or tossing a football around instead of sparring or cleaning the guns. He wondered if Dean was thinking of it too, if that was why he was so patient even when Sam dropped things or handed over the wrong size screws. Of course you never said stuff like that to Dean, not unless you wanted to end up head down in the trash can or something, so Sam kept his mouth shut and did his best to be useful.
In the end, Sam had to admit that the truck looked pretty good with a fresh coat of paint and all the dented parts replaced or hammered out. And he couldn't help but smile when Dean turned on the engine for the first time, pumped his fist in the air and yelled, "Whoo! Hear that baby purr!"
"Wanna go for a drive?" Dean asked, and Sam said he did, so they made the 20-minute drive to downtown Fremont, where Dean parallel parked perfectly in front of the burger place Sam liked. They stuffed themselves with greasy cheese fries and fake-tasting milkshakes before heading back home to be bitched out by Dad for spoiling their dinner. It was the most fun Sam remembered having with his brother in ages.
"Dude, either call or fold, I can't sit here all day."
"Don't backtalk me, young man. I taught you how to play this game."
"Yeah, and now I'm going to teach you how to play it right. Call or fold."
Dad and Dean were scowling at each other across the table, with two cards face down in front of each of them and four more face up in the middle. Sam had to squeeze sideways between Dean's chair and the counter to get to the fridge.
"I thought you guys were doing pool this month." He poured himself a glass of orange juice and peered over Dean's shoulder at the board as he drank. An eight, a queen and two tens.
"This is a special case." Dad tossed two chips toward Dean. "I call your twenty, and raise you another ten."
"Call," Dean said promptly. "Let's see them."
"Full house." Dad flipped his hole cards over. "Queens over tens." He gave a broad, smug grin that slowly faded as Dean turned over the two remaining tens.
"Yessss!" Dean leaped out of his chair and did a little victory dance around the kitchen. Sam ducked out of the way of a flailing arm and edged toward the window, where there was a little more space. Dad stared at the cards and muttered something under his breath that probably would've been worth twenty push-ups if Sam had said it.
Sam wasn't quite sure what the excitement was about. Poker, like pool, was just another survival skill, only for a different kind of survival. In times when they moved around too often for Dad to get steady work -- which used to be most times, until Dad decided they needed to stay in one place long enough for Dean to finish high school -- Dad would go out two or three nights a week and come back smelling of beer and smoke, bearing wads of crumpled bills. Not everything in life could be paid for with fake credit cards, after all. Sam and Dean had learned to count cards and reckon odds the same way they'd learned to throw a punch or fire a gun. It was the only time Sam had ever found math even slightly interesting. But while beating Dad in a sparring match was a huge deal, something Dean had only done once or twice, something Sam couldn't even begin to imagine, winning a hand of poker seemed like a pretty minor achievement.
Or at least it did, until Dad dug the keys to the Impala from his back pocket, slapped them into Dean outstretched hand and accepted the truck keys in return.
"You put a scratch on it," he warned, "and you're grounded till you're forty."
Sam gaped at them. "Did you guys just switch cars?"
"Only for a month," Dad growled. "After that, rematch."
"Right," Dean said. "And then I get to kick your ass again."
"Overconfidence," Dad said, "will come back to bite you in the ass every time." He tucked his new set of keys into his pocket. "Tell me the truth, Dean -- you cheated, didn't you? That second ten should never have been on the board."
Dean smirked. "You'll never know."
For a moment, Dad stood there and stared. Then he gave a soft, approving chuckle and mussed Dean's hair before walking out of the kitchen.
Sometimes Sam thought he was never going to understand his family.