Supernatural Fic: When They Stop Building Roads

[xaara]

Title: When They Stop Building Roads
Author: xaara
Rating: PG
Timeline: Pre-series
Characters: Dean, Sam
Summary: You can tell a lot about a woman from the contents of her purse. You can tell a lot about your brother from the contents of his locker. Gen.
A/N: Written for spn_flashback challenge 109: Dean is cleaning out his locker at the end of the school year, or just because they're moving again. (I started this something like a month ago. And then forgot about it. Until tonight. Yeah, I'm good with deadlines. Title stolen from "Gravity" by Alison Krauss & Union Station.)

When They Stop Building Roads

So here's the thing. It's three weeks before graduation, and the rent money is almost gone. Dad's been laid off. They need to cut town before the landlord figures that out.

Sam hasn't told anyone yet. But he turned down Erica's invitation to a birthday party next week, and he skipped fifth period Algebra to retrieve what he wanted from his locker. Everything fits into his backpack, which he's owned since the third grade. One of the straps has frayed beyond repair; the other is held together with safety pins and duct tape. The bottom has been patched and re-patched, tendrils of blue ink radiate from a corner seam, and a heavy black square mars the front pocket. Only Sam and Dean know that beneath it Dean once scrawled Sammy is a geek after Sam skipped fourth grade but before they moved that time.

Okay, so he's told one person that they're going. He swears her to secrecy and she crosses her heart before giving him a copy of The Miracle Worker, which they read in class right after Christmas break. It's part of the set, but she says not to worry about it, that she'll cover for it if the principal ever notices and besides she doesn't need thirty-five copies. Miss Anderson has a nice smile, even teeth below subtle lipstick. Her eyes are dark and answer questions Sam hasn't thought to ask.

Good luck, she says. Write sometime. Tell us how you're doing.

He gives her the child's eyes that get him into funeral homes and taped-off crime scenes. He lies to her face, tells her he's excited about his dad's new job in Colorado, which is partially true but nothing near the whole story. They exchange pleasantries. When she hugs him, he forces himself not to tense.

In the bathroom, he untapes the razor blade and the crucifix from beneath the divider between the third and fourth stalls. He has to hop up a few times before he can reach the bag of herbs stashed above the projection screen in the auditorium. It's on his way to retrieve the salt packets from under the carpet in the front lobby that he hears the sound of a locker slamming open, a muttered curse. Sam stuffs the herbs and the crucifix into his pocket, drops the razor blade into a nearby trash can. Being caught with a weapon and expelled on his last day of school would, you know, kinda suck.

The lockers are cool beneath his fingers as he presses his back to them and slides along the hall. If it's another student, he's fine, unless it's Evan, in which case he's fucked, because that kid has had it in for him all semester. If it's a teacher, he can expect the talking-to at least of the week if not of the month and a lot of I'm-disappointed-in-you-Mr.-Winchesters and frowning. He edges along the uneven green metal, listening until he hears the thud of a dropped book and the crackle of crumpling paper. Another low curse, this time in a voice he recognizes.

When Sam walks around the corner, no longer bothering to conceal his presence, Dean has dropped into a crouch, his arms braced on either side of his open locker. He's dressed completely in black again, probably just because Dad hates it. He wasn't even up when Sam left for school in the morning, so he must have been late to first period. Sam had assumed Dean would just skip--no point, really, not when they were leaving in a few days.

"Hey," Sam says, leaning against locker 254. Dean shimmies shoulders-deep into 260, hauling out stacks of official-looking paper and stuffing it into a black trash bag. "Hey," Sam repeats.

Dean doesn't answer. He pauses, staring down at a folder with some symbol embossed on the cover before cramming it into the bag along with the rest.

Sam scoots closer, looks over Dean's head at the grenade blast that is his locker. Three textbooks jammed diagonally in the top cubby, a stack of what looks like paper, pens, and an MRE. A bar of soap, a bottle of water, probably from the local church. A first aid kit. Dean's baseball glove, and hanging on one of the hooks his most recent in a long series of secondhand leather jackets. On the other hook: a rosary, a chain with a pentagram charm.

"So we're headed south?" Sam asks. Engage, he thinks.

"Looks like," says Dean. He doesn't glance up.

"Get to miss out on the last few weeks of school anyway." So it's not Sam's idea of a party either, but he's not going on a ten-hour drive with a brooding father and sulking brother. He's had more fun with hungry hellhounds.

Dean bows his head over the mess still strewn over the bottom of his locker, his hands still working automatically. He's not concentrating, Sam can tell, because he's adding perfectly serviceable writing utensils to the collection of things to throw away. Sam winces when he sees the pens disappear into the bag; he'd had to beg for months before they got anything but the shitty castoffs with the logo from the garage where Dad worked. Besides, it's not like it's the end of the world or anything. They'll move to another town, enroll in another school. Sam will make new friends, Dean will fuck someone he probably shouldn't have. Status quo. So maybe Dean will graduate a semester late, but it's not like he's ever cared about school. It's not as if he's even gone to school consistently since, like, the sixth grade.

Pulling his copy of The Miracle Worker from his back pocket, Sam slides down the lockers until he's seated in the hallway. "Let me know when you're done," he says, opening it to the page he's dogeared. He sinks into the story, his focus honing itself until all he hears are the words on the page before him.

Until Dean kicks him--hard--in the leg. "Let's move," he says. He slings his backpack over one shoulder and grips the bag of trash in one hand.

"I'll take it out," Sam says. "I need to talk to someone, and it's on the way. Meet you out front?"

"Whatever," says Dean, who drops the bag and brushes past Sam on his way out the door.

Sam scrambles to his knees once he's sure Dean is out the door, drops his book on the floor beside him. He's rifling through papers and notebooks, envelopes, a condom wrapper--he recoils at that, pays closer attention--when he comes across the letter.

Congratulations, the letter proclaims, continuing on to spell out the details of the admittance to Casper College of a certain Dean Winchester. Sam sits back on his heels, holding the letter as if it might shatter. He remembers, after a minute, to breathe.

--

As it turns out, Colorado doesn't look all that different from Wyoming. Big, mostly, broad-shouldered, landscape like a finger painting done in earthtones.

They enroll in school in Alamosa. The counselor is a cool lady, doesn't ask too many questions, figures out a way to have Dean take summer school mostly as a formality so he can graduate. She takes to Sam, gets him into all the classes he wants even though he's just a sophomore and an incoming one at that. Sam notes the absence of a wedding band on her finger, her quick, desperate energy, and wonders whether she's lonely.

--

Graduation arrives halfway through August. Sam wiggles in his seat, his suit pants an inch too short, the jacket pulling across his shoulders. Afterwards, he and Dean take the car out of town, driving aimlessly in the heat of the afternoon. They roll their windows down and Dean slams the accelerator, throws his head back and howls at the sun.

Sam grabs a tape from the box at his feet, fumbles it into the deck and dials the volume as high as it'll go.

He thinks there might be something slightly ironic about singing along with "Another Brick in the Wall" the graduation day. Or it might be fitting. It might, you know, be. Right.

And Dean takes a corner going eighty and Sam's not thinking anything but oh shit followed by Dad's going to kill us if he finds out.

--

The drive back into town takes about twice as long as their frantic rush out. Dean hangs his left arm out the window, even though Dad's told him about a million times to keep two hands on the steering wheel unless he needs one to shoot with.

Sam doesn't know what possesses him to say it, but he opens his mouth and "What do you think about Stanford?" comes out.

Dean looks at him, one eyebrow quirked upward. "What?"

"I think that's where I'm going to go. You know. When I go to college."

Dean shrugs. "Cali. Hot chicks."

"It was a factor," Sam says.

"Why're you asking me, man?"

It's Sam's turn to shrug. "Dunno. Older, wiser, all graduated." He makes an expansive gesture that earns him a cuff to the back of the head. "Hey, I just called you wiser. It's all you're going to get."

"I wouldn't know anything about it," Dean says. "Ask the counselor. She likes you."

"You never thought about it?" Sam asks, and this started out as a bad idea and keeps getting worse, but he wants to hear it. Wants to hear Dean say, Dude, what the fuck is with you and slouch in the way that means he's smiling behind his eyes even if his mouth has set into a scowl.

"Nope," says Dean. "Never thought about it." He sits up straighter. Sam has just opened his mouth again when Dean heads him off. "So, fries? My treat."

"Sure." Sam directs his gaze away from Dean, pulls The Miracle Worker from his back pocket. The cover has gained a lengthwise crease from being folded into the pockets of all three pairs of jeans Sam owns over the past few months. The corners no longer bend at right angles.

"Geek," Dean mutters, but there's affection in his voice.

Sam opens to a random page, lets his eyes rest on the words without processing. He thinks of the way water runs over his hands when he hunts in the rain and imagines Helen Keller connecting it for the first time with the letters flickering across her palm. He thinks of five-subject notebooks and empty lecture halls. He imagines Dean sitting in the back of class, the seat by the door, throwing absent spitballs at the nearest girl, because for all he's older and wiser, sometimes his brother is twelve.

He thinks about Dean not-hunting and can't picture it, so he tries one more time. "We stuck together, then?" It doesn't sound like he plans, sounds instead soft around the edges, gentle.

"'Til death," says Dean. "Or until we kill everything else. Whichever comes first."

Dean's never going to get married, Sam thinks suddenly. And so he says back, "'Til death," whispers it into the grumble of the engine, the stream of the wind. Imagines his words thick like armor, careful as smoke. Spirals rising to meet the blue, blue sky.

Comments

[xaara.livejournal.com]

Thank you for commenting. You know, one of the things I find most interesting about the show is how clear a picture of the boys' childhoods it manages to paint despite the fact that the Wee!Winchesters only appear in a handful of scenes. Admittedly, some of this is done with a liberal sprinkling of anvils, but a lot of it is just authentic, comprehensive world-building. It makes it a lot easier to explore their childhoods, though, because the outline and basic truths are already in place.