"So, skee ball?" Sam asks Metatron as Dean struts up to the bar to grab another round of tequila shooters. Sam is still shell-shocked, Lilith was never going to come for them again, Ruby was d-e-a-d dead, and the seals were restored. Sam has thousands of questions and the only thing he can really wrap his head around is this one. "God likes to play skee ball?"
"Likes to play?" Metatron huffs out an exasperated sigh, "She positively loves it, says its simple, one of the things you folks have gotten right, you know, a perfect example of Grace in action."
Metatron's eyes sparkle in the low tell-me-no-lies lighting of Manny's Roadhouse. After issuing the official, "you're off the hook" proclamation and intimating that Zachariah and Urielle were going to be stationed in the heavenly equivalent of Siberia for the next few millennia Metatron insisted they come across the street for a drinks and the Winchester boys were never ones to turn down a celebration or free liquor. Manny's bar is one of the drop-ceiling, peanut shelled dives that caters to locals and the passer-through brave enough to breach the gray steel door. Tonight only a few folks are out curled into the dark corners dousing old hurts in bourbon and greasy fried onions.
"A boardwalk game a metaphor for Grace? Come on, man, I don't see it."
"Obviously it's been awhile since you've been to Jersey?"
Metatron snaps his fingers and Sam finds himself standing in a bright arcade, seagulls shrieking, dipping out of the sky and on to the beach to comb for discarded bits of hot dogs and funnel cake. Warm salt air and the scent of fresh kettle corn tease at Sam's childhood memories.
Their dad was hunting a poltergeist in Atlantic City and didn't need the boys because the job was simple and he was dead-sick of having them underfoot. Sam had been ten and Dean 14 and Dad had forbid them from leaving the pay-by-the-week rattrap they were holed up in. It was summer vacation, so there was no school and John didn't have the excuse of classes to keep the boys occupied. Sam remembered that John was so eager to get to the poltergeist that he had almost knocked Sam into next week for begging to stop at the library.
No books meant that after two days, Sam was sick of playing hearts and watching reruns of Night Court on the crap-ass hotel TV and begged Dean to take him to see the ocean. Dean relented when Sam had turned his thousand-watt puppy dog stare in Dean's direction and they had snuck out to the boardwalk. The money they had was for food and had to stretch for a week, so they had nothing to play the games but that didn't quell Sam's fascination with the spectacle of glitz and flash. They skipped rocks at the ocean's edge and then sauntered along the boardwalk listening to kids their own age twitter about who liked who at school and beg their parents for money to ride the Ferris wheel or play Shark Hunter. Sam had watched a middle-aged soccer mom press a five dollar bill into her daughter's hand and smile like a beauty queen as her daughter skipped off to giggle with a group of girls in front of the fortune teller's booth. His gut wrenched remembering the look in Dean's eyes, hungry and betrayed, straining, at the same time, toward that mother with a yearning that even Sam, at the age of ten, recognized as beat-down and broken hearted.
John had come back to the room to check up on them and grab a few winks and found the boys missing. He whipped Dean bloody with a strap for the transgression. That night a seedling of defiance and resentment had rooted in Sam's belly as he listened to Dean whimper, the stiff hotel sheets rustling as Dean attempted to locate a comfortable position where his boxers and the bed linens wouldn't stick to the wounds on his back side. Sam had crawled out of bed and in a rare moment of role-reversal, brought Dean a cool washcloth, pulled his boxers down, wincing at the crimson welts, and laid the cool cloth across Dean's rump. He had stroked Dean's hair until he fell asleep, offering up a silent prayer, begging for forgiveness, not able to find words for the ache and emptiness in his chest, wishing, as tears fell unbidden and unnoticed that his father had chastised him with the belt instead of Dean.
"She heard that, you know."
Sam looks up, tears threatening to overflow. "I…" He holds out his hands, palms up, an act of supplication, of prayer, and questioning. Why? If God knew, then why did Dean have to sleep on his stomach for a week? How insignificant must they have been that God never turned the rivers of fire and blood that twisted and wrecked their lives? Sam feels Dean's blood wash over his wrists again, relives the terror of seeing the one person he would die for shredded and lifeless.
"Why us?" Sam feels the solid weight of a wooden ball drop into his outstretched hand and he looks into Metatron's face the angel's features awash in boundless compassion; an ancient and perfect love reflected in the well of his eternal eyes.
"Bowl."
"What?"
"Bowl." Metatron points and to the skee ball lane in front of Sam and despite the unanswered questions, he stoops, winds up, he flicks his risk at the last moment before the release. He feels a smile twitch at the corners of his mouth at the hollow rumble and stutter of the ball rolling up the ramp, jumping the lip and landing in scuffed 30-point tube. Sam hears the metallic whir and three red boardwalk tickets appear from a slot to the left of the lane. Sam reaches for the next ball and continues to bowl, turn after turn, for the sheer joy of the sound and motion.