A/N: This is just a random drabble. Thanks so much to ImpalaLove and moira4eku for reviewing!
Spoilers: None
Unknown, Oklahoma
July, 1999
There's dust from the road in his nose, and in his eyes.
He looks up, trying to see the sky, trying to see…
If it's dark or light.
It's light, for now, the sun swollen and orange, like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked from the horizon. It's bleeding a trail of pink and purple as it sinks, heavy, falling, making room for its shier sister, the moon.
The dust stings. He tries to wipe it away with the back of his hand, but the pain only intensifies. His eyes grow watery and he wipes harder, makes it even worse.
His hand comes away dirty, streaked.
He could move out of the road, he supposes, but where's the point in that?
Right now, this road is the only path in his life, and the vision of it stretching onwards is the only thing promising him a future.
He walks dead-center, kicking up gravel and that damned, wafting powder. He can feel it now in all his pores, like it's claiming him.
Are you crazy, Sammy? Walkin' in the middle of the road? You're gonna get yourself killed, some small voice nags.
He shakes his head; there are no cars, and if there were he has faith they wouldn't hit him. He's hard to miss.
He must be quite the sight, really. Picturesque. A runaway teen treading confidently into the sunset, backpack slung over his shoulder and nothing but a couple of crumpled dollar-bills shoved into his denim pockets.
He's sure someone'll come after him at some point, once Dad gets his head out of his ass and Dean gets his head out of Susie Parson's-
No. Gross.
That's such a Dean thing to think, he worries. Maybe he'll never be rid of them, not even now. Maybe they'll speak to him through his own, seditious brain cells.
He snorts to himself. Figures. He can't even enjoy this moment of solitude without the echo of his brother's ridiculous, forcedly-gruff voice filling his head, a doing an imitation of their dad he'll never fully understand.
He tries to focus on another sound, any other sound, but his thoughts always make him go deaf.
So he decides to blight another one of his senses; he looks again at the sun, its vanishing-act unfolding right before his very eyes. The light only burns half as much as the dust.
When it becomes unbearable, he turns his speckled gaze away, in the direction of some graffiti on a '25 MPH' road marker. Red on white. As his eyesight struggles to normalize, the words come into focus:
Where are you going, Sam?
Sam looks at the moon.