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So perhaps he wouldn’t exactly admit it out loud, but truth is that Dean is only minimally annoyed at finding himself with a face full of pie, and most of that annoyance is on behalf of the poor innocent banana cream pie that fell victim to Sam’s prank.
For one thing, Sam is laughing – eyes sparkling, corners of his mouth curved into that endearingly smug little grin, not quite as bright as it used to be but still carrying the faint echo of a 22-year-old who just won the next round of a prank war by supergluing a beer bottle to his brother’s hand – and anything that makes Sam smile like this is not something Dean is ever truly going to be mad about.
Besides, over the years Dean’s face has been covered in things far worse than pie. If given the choice, he’ll take sugar and whipped cream over ectoplasm and werewolf entrails any day.
Still, eventually the sticky mess starts to feel increasingly gross and itchy on his skin. Miracle isn’t around to lick the cream off his face, and Sam isn’t currently volunteering, so Dean decides to temporarily abandon Sam and the pie box in search of a place where he can clean up.
“Just hurry,” Sam says, his face still illuminated by the afterglow of his laughter. “If I have to wait too long, I might just eat all the pie without you.”
Dean frowns. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Only one way to find out,” Sam says lightly, and sticks his plastic fork into the rhubarb pie.
“You are going to be sick if you eat all that,” Dean points out, just in case Sam is serious about his plan.
“And it would be worth it just to see your face,” Sam grins, and his face is still so impossibly bright, content in the moment, open, affectionate, that Dean is afraid he might be blinded if he doesn’t look away.
Dean finds a restroom building with no lines in a quiet corner of the festival, feeling moderately confident that he can clean his face and get back in time before Sam decides to actually make good on his threat.
He is just walking up to the men’s side of the building when a woman pushes the door to the ladies’ room open with her elbow from the inside, navigating herself, a large tote, and a kid – maybe four or five – through the gap. Dean grabs the door for her as she ushers the boy along, but the kid stalls, staring up at Dean in fascination.
“Mom,” he says, “that guy has pie on his face.”
The woman glances up distractedly, then does a double take when she sees Dean.
“So he does,” she says, brows raised. She prods her son’s shoulder to get him to move, but he is rooted on the spot, still squinting intently. Dean resists the urge to stick out his tongue.
“Why?” the kid asks, undeterred. The mother sighs.
“Because men are like children sometimes,” she mutters under her breath, too quietly to be meant for Dean’s ears, but not quietly enough for him not to hear.
Ah, Dean thinks, his brain automatically switching into profiling mode. Divorced mom with an asshole ex. Fleetingly he considers feeling offended at being lumped in with the dude who ditched this chick and her kid, thinks of Lisa and Ben and decides that it’s probably best not to dwell on it, and instead lifts his shoulders at her with a lopsided grin.
“Can’t say that you are entirely wrong.”
The woman winces at being caught and laughs, ruefully. “Sorry.” She glances over her shoulder to make sure that she isn’t blocking anyone’s path, then gives him a critical once-over, more slowly this time.
“You want some wipes for that?” she asks, and Dean blinks.
“Wipes?”
She gestures towards him with one hand while digging through her tote with the other. “Yes, you know. Baby wipes, to clean your face.”
Triumphantly, she pulls a colorful plastic pouch out of her bag. “He’s been out of diapers for almost two years, and I still carry them everywhere. I’m telling you, once you get hooked, you don’t want to go without ever again.”
She offers the pouch to Dean with a wink. “Great for cleaning up any kind of mess, really, whether you are dealing with spilled juice or a massacre. One of those things you definitely want in your backpack in case of a zombie apocalypse.”
Dean doesn’t reach for the handgun resting against the small of his back underneath his shirt, but it’s a damn near thing. He can hear the blood pounding in his ears. They have not encountered many demons topside since Rowena took over Hell, fewer still since Jack has been in charge of Heaven, and zombies haven’t crossed their path ever since that fateful night in Harlan two years ago – but it would be just their luck to run into a messenger from down below at a freaking pie festival in Akron.
But no. He takes another look at the woman and feels his heartrate slow down. This isn’t a demon, this isn’t their past coming to haunt them, this is just someone with a crush on Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead, someone who cracks jokes about the zombie apocalypse as if it hasn’t actually happened already, because oh right, that’s something normal people do.
So he unclenches his fists, pulls a handful of wipes out of the proffered package instead of pulling a gun on her, and nods his thanks, a little awkwardly.
She puts the wipes away and smiles, more warmly now. For a brief moment, he is convinced that she is gearing up to say something flirtatious, and prepares himself, almost automatically, to say something equally flirtatious in return.
But when their eyes meet, there is nothing but friendly curiosity in her gaze. Seems like this is a woman who can make time in her life to help out a stranger but has no use for men who sometimes act like children, and perhaps he should feel a little more upset that she seems to be immune to the patented Dean Winchester charm, but instead he is overcome with a profound sense of relief.
Because there are a box full of pie and a little brother waiting for him on a bench on the other side of the festival, and he mostly just wants to get back to them and find out if Sam has left him any pie. Somehow, the idea of flirting with a stranger seems exhausting right now more than anything else.
So instead he slips into the restroom to scrub his face, figures he might as well pee while he’s there, and finally strolls back the way he came, allowing himself to soak in the sunshine and the atmosphere now that his face feels once again fresh and clean.
He is just making a mental note to put baby wipes on the shopping list for their next grocery run when he finds himself coming to a sudden stop, not ten feet away from the bench where he left Sam. Because Sam is not alone. And perhaps single moms with kindergarteners are too busy to flirt with Winchesters on this sunny Saturday afternoon, but that doesn’t seem to be true for everyone, because Dean can’t help but feel like the guy who is sitting on the bench with Sam, on the other side of Dean’s pie box, is leaning in just a little too closely, smiling a little too widely, gesturing a little too animatedly for it to be nothing but a friendly chat.
Sam is turned away from Dean, the side of his face mostly obscured by his hair, but even looking at him from behind, Dean recognizes that particular tilt of his head, intimately knows the facial expression that goes along with it, that focused, thoughtful look Sam gets when he is actively listening and seriously interested in what the other person has to say.
And, well, there it is. The moment Dean has been – not waiting for, exactly, but anticipating, ever since they finally cut the strings for good that had forced them to dance like puppets to whatever tune Chuck had played for most of their lives.
Ever since they returned to the bunker that day, just the two of them, with no one to poke them, drag them, goad them, with no one looking over their shoulder, no one expecting anything from them anymore, Dean assumed that once they recovered, once they got settled, Sam would pick himself up and start working towards that mystical, elusive normal life – the normal life that Dean had always wanted him to have.
Any day, Dean thought, Sam would get to it: go back to school, find a job, meet a girl, or reconnect with one he already knew who just happened to not be dead. And yet every day, Sam got up in the morning and went for a run, cooked breakfast, and folded himself into a chair in the library with his laptop and a cup of coffee, took the dog out for his afternoon walk, picked up the mail from their P.O. Box in town, smiled at Dean before heading to bed, and then the next day he did it all over again.
But Dean knew it was only a matter of time. And maybe he had always assumed that if Sam was to settle down, it would be with a woman who would have his dark-haired stub-nosed babies, but it’s not exactly news to him that on occasion, Sam will also look at guys like that, and anyway, it shouldn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter. Not at all.
Someone bumps into Dean from behind, pushing him forward, and he jumps in surprise, hears a muttered “Sorry” as the culprit moves past him without a second glance. But the disruption jolts him into action, and before he realizes what he is doing, he turns around and walks away, heading back the way he came, then arbitrarily veering right. He isn’t quite sure where he’s going, except that he’s putting distance between himself and Sam.
Well, no, that doesn’t sound quite right. It’s not like he is actually going anywhere. It’s not like he is leaving Sam. He is just … giving him a little space. A little time. Enough time for Sam to get the guy’s number, anyway, or maybe enough time for a quickie in a bathroom stall, although Sam probably has all sorts of hang-ups about hooking up with strangers in public restrooms at festivals full of churchgoers and small children, because he’s just enough of a prude to find that inappropriate.
Eventually, Dean steers towards a free picnic table in the shade of an old oak tree and sits, glaring in warning at anyone who looks like they might consider asking to share his space. He is not in the mood for small talk right now. He is starting to regret their decision to leave Miracle in the car, because he could use the solidarity of a friend who is not above licking Sam’s feet and rolling onto his back on the ground just to get those big hands on him, and besides, it would at least give him something to do while he waits. But half an hour should do it, Dean tells himself, idly picking at the blue-and-white plastic tablecloth with his fingernail; then he can circle back, all casually, and simply pretend that he didn’t actually see what he just saw.
It seems like a solid plan, one that he thinks he can be proud of, just the tiniest bit, especially since it’s in the service of Sam’s future happiness, which he is selflessly working to facilitate, like any decent big brother would.
He props his elbows up on the table, watches couples and families mill around him, and forces himself not to look at his phone to count the minutes, because that’s a level of pathetic he refuses to lower himself to. He thinks longingly of the covered cherry pie he left behind on the bench, very purposefully does not think of Sam whom he left on that very same bench, does most definitely not think about how delighted Sam had looked right after smushing the pie into Dean’s face – and perhaps that is why it takes him a moment to process the sound of Sam’s voice shouting his name in the distance, frantic and panicky.
He jumps up from the bench, his heart racing, fingers already itching for his gun, cursing himself for letting his guard down like this. What if the woman with the wipes was a demon after all, and Dean talked to her and let her walk, and now she is coming after Sam.
He spins in circles, trying to determine the direction Sam’s voice is coming from, but already he spots Sam weaving through the crowd, his tall figure standing out among the festivalgoers, sees the tense set of his shoulders, the look of distress on his face – and can pinpoint the exact moment when Sam recognizes him, because from one second to the next, Dean watches all the anxiety bleed out of him, watches him practically go limp with relief.
“Dean.” Sam stumbles towards him, still breathing hard. “Dean, what the hell, are you okay?”
Dean blinks, confused, opens his mouth to tell Sam that he should be the one asking this question, and then shuts it again when it suddenly hits him that Sam was actually worried about him.
“I’m fine,” he says, feeling caught out and strangely embarrassed, even though he tells himself he has no reason to be. “Just taking a little walk.”
“A walk?” Sam asks, incredulously. His chest is heaving. “You said you were going to find a restroom. Dean, I thought you ran into trouble. I wasn’t sure if –” He breaks off, drags shaking fingers through his hair.
“I wasn’t gone for that long,” Dean frowns, confused. “You couldn’t have just tried my phone?”
Sam stares at him in disbelief. “I did,” he says slowly. “Call went to voicemail.”
“Uhm,” Dean makes awkwardly, and fumbles for the phone in his pocket that he fought so hard not to check. Three messages and two calls spread out over the past twenty-five minutes … and oops, has it really been that long? Yeah, no wonder Sam started freaking out. Muting the sound on his phone had seemed like a good idea when they first hit the festival, but he regrets it now. Clearly between the two of them, he isn’t the only one who still twitches nervously at the mere mention of a zombie joke or panics over a missed call.
“Sorry about that,” he says, and means it. He clears his throat. “I was just trying to give you some space.”
“Space,” Sam says, and the way he says it makes it sound like he’s chewing on a dead bug. “Why would I – space for what?”
Dean shrugs. “Looked like you were busy making friends.” He glances away. “I figured you might, you know. Want to exchange numbers with that guy. Set up a date.”
The following silence drags on for so long that Dean is starting to wonder if maybe he’s got this all wrong and Sam is the one who got himself possessed by a demon today. Or maybe his little brother is simply working up the courage to tell Dean that he actually has plans for the night, involving that dude from the bench and the type of cream pie you can’t just buy at the grocery store.
But when he finally makes himself glance up at Sam, his brother doesn’t look like someone eager to share news of his romantic exploits. No, Sam looks angry, the kind of angry that calls up old memories of old fights Dean really doesn’t want to be reminded of, and he is beginning to think that he may be missing something crucial here.
“I can’t believe this,” Sam says finally, and oh yes, he is so furious he is downright seething with it. “I was trying to get tips for where to grab dinner. I wasn’t –” He swallows hard. “I’m here, with you. Is that not enough?”
Dean shakes his head, in a futile attempt to chase off the piercing headache he feels building up inside his skull.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Us, Dean.” Sam throws up his hands. “I’m talking about us. I thought we were finally past all this.”
“Past what?” Dean snaps, now well on his way toward genuinely annoyed himself.
“Past pretending,” Sam retorts. “Past acting like we aren’t –”
Dean stares. He is dimly aware that his hands are trembling, but he isn’t entirely sure why. “Acting like what?”
Sam rolls his eyes incredulously, like he thinks Dean is being deliberately obtuse. He opens his mouth as if to say more, but suddenly he deflates, his arms dropping to hang by his sides. He sucks in a shaky breath, then takes a step backwards, putting distance between himself and Dean.
“Never mind,” he says flatly. His face is blank. “Forget I said anything. I’m sorry I freaked out on you. Let’s just – it’s fine. It’s fine.”
He drops down heavily onto the picnic bench, and after a moment of hesitation, Dean lowers himself back into his seat as well, on the opposite side of the table. Sam is ignoring him, looking blindly into the crowd, and Dean stares at Sam’s profile, faintly hoping that he will be able to figure out what the hell just happened if only he contemplates the familiar slope of Sam’s nose for long enough.
Sam’s back looks tense enough to break a brick on, his shoulders drawn up almost all the way to his ears. He has that sullen look on his face that makes Dean think of being eighteen, coming home late from his shift because he went to smoke a cigarette with his boss’s daughter by the dumpsters and ended up making out with her in the car.
“Sam’s in a mood,” his dad warned him in the kitchen, looking equally helpless and annoyed over the disassembled gun he was taking his parental frustrations out on.
“What’s new?” Dean quipped, for his father’s sake, and barged into their bedroom, where Sam was curled up on the bed with a comic book he clearly wasn’t reading and that particular moody look on his face, his eyes hidden under too-long bangs, radiating teen angst and resentment and above all, the deep disappointment Dean took to mean that, without trying to, he had probably messed up somehow.
“What’s with you,” he said, and Sam sort of looked at him and sort of turned away from him and muttered, almost too quietly for Dean to hear: “You were going to take me to the movies today.”
Dean cringed inwardly, because he had kind of hoped that Sam would have forgotten, but of course he should have known better because Sam never forgot anything. “You could have asked Dad to drop you off,” he said, knowing that it was the wrong thing to say the moment the words came out of his mouth.
Sam glared sullenly. “I wanted to go with you,” he said, and what the hell was Dean supposed to say to that except that maybe the reason he didn’t come home on time was that Sam somehow had grown like a weed over the summer and suddenly acquired an awkward coltish charm, and that sitting in a dark movie theater with a bag of popcorn between them and Sam’s elbow digging into his side and Sam’s hair tickling Dean’s jaw with every move had become its own kind of guilt-ridden torture.
But of course that wasn’t something he could say at all, and so instead he ruffled Sam’s hair and said, “We can go tomorrow,” and Sam shrugged and hid his eyes under his bangs and was quiet for the rest of the day. And that night the hunt they were on went kind of sideways, and Dad made them load all their stuff in the car at four in the morning, and they never got around to see that movie together until they caught it as a rerun on TV in a crappy motel room years later, his soulless brother staring unflinchingly at the screen without as much as blinking the entire time.
Dean isn’t entirely sure what makes him remember that day just now, a conversation he hasn’t really thought of for so many years. Except that, if he is being honest, he knows quite well what brought that particular memory back, and it’s not just the similarly unhappy expression on Sam’s face.
It’s a suspicion, suddenly rearing its head like a mesmerizing, terrifying mythical beast, that maybe, just maybe he got this all wrong: that maybe he couldn’t hear what Sam was telling him when he said “I wanted to go with you,” that day, a lifetime ago; what Sam meant when he said “I’m here, with you,” right here, just now – that maybe he couldn’t hear what Sam was saying because he got himself so twisted up in his own shameful, guilty need that the idea of Sam wanting the exact same thing wasn’t something he had ever been able to let himself seriously consider.
Because there was always Dad. And then Dad wasn’t, but there were Azazel, and Zachariah, and Castiel, there were Lucifer and Michael, Crowley, Amara, Megatron, Mom, there was GOD, there was always someone pushing and pulling and watching – always, always watching.
And at one point it was probably the worst-kept secret in the galaxy, in the universe, in any and all other universes, that Dean Winchester’s biggest weakness was Sam, and somehow it simply seemed impossible to imagine providing Heaven and Hell with yet another way to hurt them, another thing to take away.
But none of that matters anymore. And maybe, with all of that finally out of the picture, it’s really not that complicated after all. Maybe at last, he can let himself take what Sam is saying at face value.
Maybe, deep down, he already knew.
And maybe, quite possibly, this morning he asked Sam out on a date to a pie festival, and it just took Sam putting his finger on it for him to realize that he did.
“Hey,” Dean says, and waits until Sam is looking at him, still with those shadows in his eyes and the tense set to his mouth.
“Hey, what happened to the pie?”
Sam huffs, and it’s not exactly a happy laughter, but there’s a glimpse of dark amusement in his voice, telltale sign that he’s almost ready to stop being angry, and Dean will take it for now.
“Left it on the bench when I thought your life was in danger,” Sam says dryly. “I figured when it came down to a choice between pie and you, you would not want me to pick the pie.”
“Obviously,” Dean agrees quickly, trying not to look too mournful at the thought of letting all that beautiful, delicious pie go to waste.
Clearly he isn’t entirely successful, because he can see Sam’s face grow a little tighter, the way it looks whenever Sam is tempted to pull a proper bitchface but working really hard to appear unfazed.
“We can get more if you want,” Sam says, his voice carefully neutral, and there is a tiny, terrified part of Dean that wants to jump at the peace offering, use it as an excuse to go eat pie and awkwardly fumble their way back to their normal state of mutual repression. But –
“Nah,” Dean says. He climbs off the bench, tries his best to play it cool, feels like he’s eighteen again, all false bravado and heart in his throat. “Got a better idea,” he adds. “Come on.”
Sam lifts a skeptical brow, but he follows Dean without complaint, and Dean doesn’t say anything either, but the silence does feel a little less frosty than even a mere five minutes ago.
Dean leads them across the festival, scanning his surroundings for the booth he remembers passing earlier, and exhales a sigh of relief when he finally spots it again, next to the colorful lemonade stand.
“Over there,” he says, gesturing. Sam blinks, then actually looks around himself as if he thinks there must be something else that peaked Dean’s interest before staring at him in disbelief.
“A shooting game?” he asks. “Seriously? Dean, you know those games are all rigged.”
“Exactly,” Dean smiles, because it’s easier to project confidence when he can pretend that hitting a balloon with an air gun is all that is at stake in this game. “I know it’s rigged, which means I can beat it. Come on.” He claps Sam’s shoulder. “I gotta win you a prize. When was the last time …”
Sam snorts, but at the same time he furrows his brows, already considering the question. “I think I was ten? We … ah …” He rubs his forehead. “We were in North Carolina, I think. There was a county fair. You got me that plush puppy. I named him …”
“Rolf,” Dean nods. “Yes. You dragged it around with you until it fell apart. Made Dad turn around and drive thirty miles back because you left it in the motel lobby that one time. Man, that was a long time ago.” He cracks his knuckles, grins. “So it’s about time, don’t you think?”
He wins. Which doesn’t really come as a surprise to either him or Sam – he’s handled enough crappy firearms to know how to account for the inaccuracy that throws off less experienced shooters, but even so, he does well enough that even the old grouch manning the booth looks grudgingly impressed.
“He always like this?” the guy grunts, and Sam smirks.
“A show-off?” he quips, but Dean hears the amused pride in his voice. “Oh yes.”
“So which one do you want?” Dean asks, gesturing dramatically at the atrocities covering the backwall of the booth. The prizes all still just as ugly as Dean remembers from when they were kids, but of course that is kind of the point.
“Dean,” Sam sighs. His expression shifts from amusement into mortification, and Dean watches in fascination as a faint blush creeps up his neck. “You don’t have to –“
“Fine,” Dean shrugs, unperturbed. “If you don’t want to choose, I’ll decide for you.”
He picks a yellow round thing that looks like a hamster with long pointy ears, a smile that reminds him a little of Jack, and a red plushy heart trapped between its fat little arms. Behind the counter, the old guy raises his brows at him. Dean grins conspiratorially and then hurries to catch up with Sam, who has wandered off a little to the side, probably terrified of whatever monstrosity Dean is determined to bring home with them, or maybe just embarrassed to be associated with Dean in public any longer.
“Got you something, honey,” Dean says, and thrusts the smiling hamster at Sam’s chest, keeping his eyes trained on the bright-yellow toy against the backdrop of Sam’s red plaid shirt, because that is easier than looking him in the face.
Sam lifts his arms to catch the stuffed animal out of what looks like sheer reflex and stares down at the creature, bemused.
“Dean,” he says, and his voice is vibrating with a myriad of emotions that not even Dean feels competent to untangle, all the while clutching the yellow abomination to his chest.
“What are you doing?”
Dean glances up at him then, at last. Sam looks – wary, exhausted, too sad for the occasion, and maybe Dean isn’t the only one who needs to have things spelled out for him. The thought is comforting, somehow, reassuring, a reminder that they are both in this together, like they always are, even if neither of them has any clue how to navigate this.
He clears his throat. “I don’t actually want you to exchange numbers with strangers at pie festivals,” he says. Sam grimaces, and Dean quickly lifts a hand to cut off whatever sarcastic remark his brother may be tempted to make.
“Wait, no, that came out wrong.” He takes a deep breath, tries again. “What I’m saying is …” He bites his lip. Well, here goes nothing.
“I’m ready to stop pretending, if you are.”
“Dean,” Sam’s voice sounds strained, as if he’s seriously thinking about arguing, and Dean can’t have that, can’t have Sam’s overactive brain still questioning and dissecting his motivations, not when they are so close to finally being on the same page.
He puts his hand over Sam’s on top of the plush monster, the movement slow and deliberate, his intention clear.
“You …” Sam looks down at their hands, then at Dean, and there is something fragile in his look, hovering in some paradoxical space between utter despair and tentative hope that only Sam would manage to express.
“Come on,” Dean says, almost pleadingly, “don’t make me go down on one knee. I mean, I will,” he adds, rambles, “we can hit a gumball machine later and I’ll get you a pink plastic ring and do the whole spiel, just please not in front of all these –”
He stops talking then, abruptly, because Sam is kissing him. It’s so brief that it’s over before it even really starts, more a peck than a proper kiss, absurdly chaste and ridiculously sweet, the kind of sweet that tastes like holding hands and sharing ice cream and Do you like me? Y/N notes, and perhaps Dean would feel inclined to mock Sam over it, if it wasn’t for the glint of dark heat in Sam’s eyes that sets off sparks all over Dean’s body and makes something low in his sacrum contract in delicious, agonizing want.
He throws a furtive glance around, to see if anyone has noticed the fireworks that just went off on his skin, but no one is heeding them any attention, because oh yes, apparently they are really just two guys on a date at a pie festival, not the least bit noteworthy even to the people celebrating pie in this tiny town in southern Kansas.
He licks his lips. “Right,” he says, a little hoarsely, and is horrified to feel his face grow hot, like he’s a freaking virgin who undresses in the dark. “Did you say you got recommendations for where to grab food?”
“A few,” Sam nods, and oh, there is that smile again he was so mesmerized by earlier, so goddamn open and fond and bright.
“So let me take you to dinner then,” Dean says, and Sam smile grows even wider, eyes twinkling, dimples on display.
“You know you don’t have to wine and dine me to get me to put out?” And he sounds so normal, so casual, so close to his familiar exasperated self that it takes a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in, and then Dean briefly forgets to breathe because holy fuck this is not a drill.
“Are you saying you are easy?” he finally manages to get out, his voice a lot less steady than he’d like, because apparently smooth is not a word that wants to be associated with Dean Winchester today.
Sam’s face is all fake innocence. “Not for just anyone,” he shrugs. “But no one has ever given me a yellow …” He squints down at the toy. “… alien hamster before, so you have that going for you.”
“Yeah, well,” Dean says, and he is just going to make a joke, he is definitely going to make a stupid, inappropriate, obnoxious joke, but instead his heart contracts and his gaze drops away, eyes trained on a spot somewhere behind Sam’s left ear.
“Maybe I just want to do this right.”
For a moment, Sam is silent. “Okay, Dean,” he finally says softly. “Yeah, okay.”
They head back to the car. The sun has crept further across the sky, the afternoon is morphing into evening, and Dean thinks about how just this morning, all he had planned for the day was to convince his brother to go eat a slice of pie, and how at some point during the day the Earth has shifted, and yet in some ways it’s like nothing has really changed at all.
“I’m thinking,” Dean says and unlocks the car. Miracle jumps out of the backseat excitedly, sticks his wet nose into Dean’s palm, bounces over and licks Sam’s fingers, comes back and paws at Dean’s knee.
“You know, maybe we should stick around for a few days. Check out the sights.”
“The sights?” Sam laughs quietly. “Dean, we are in Akron. Pretty sure the wheat fields look the same here as they do around Lebanon.”
“Come on,” Dean says, not even really sure why he is pushing it, except maybe that he doesn’t want this strange, magical day to end. “There must be something worth seeing in Akron.”
“Not really, I’m afraid,” a vaguely familiar voice says from behind them, making them jump.
Miracle barks and Dean quickly grabs his collar, then spins around and finds himself face-to-face with Baby Wipes Mom, reemerging from the back of a grey Ford Escape after strapping her kid into his seat.
“Hi again,” she says. From the corner of his eye, Dean sees Sam’s face shutter, and he sends a quick prayer of gratitude to Jack for the fact that this woman had no interest in being hit on today, because he dreads to think that otherwise, this resilient, fragile thing that has been hanging in the balance between them for longer than he cares to think might have shifted into a different direction, perhaps irreversibly and out of reach.
“She gave me baby wipes to clean the pie off my face,” he tells Sam. “Apparently wipes are an essential resource in the case of a zombie apocalypse.”
“Good to know,” Sam says slowly, still looking a little confused but a lot less hostile than just a moment ago.
The kid is leaning out of the open car door, precariously held back by his safety belt.
“Why do you have a Pikachu?” He is addressing Sam, staring up at him with interest, and it takes Dean a moment to process what he is talking about.
“Is that what it’s called?” Sam looks down at the alien hamster he is cradling in his right arm, then up at the kid. “Dean won it for me.”
The mother grins. “Must be true love.”
Dean glances at Sam, finds him furtively looking back. Dean clears his throat. “Something like that,” he says, and gets a private little smile in return.
“Good for you,” the woman laughs. She moves as if to close the car door, but at the last moment, she turns around.
“Oh hey,” she says. “If you are serious about sticking around and you are not in a hurry, why not cross into Oklahoma, see Salt Plains. That’s worth looking at, right, Aiden?”
“It’s pretty cool,” the kid nods earnestly from inside the car. “There are salt crystals and snakes and birds.”
“Sounds great,” Sam says seriously, and he probably means it, the dork. “Thanks for the tip.”
Dean waves goodbye, then turns towards Sam as soon as the Escape has disappeared down the street and out of sight. “So what do you say,” he asks. “Find a place for Miracle to lift his leg, grab some food, head to Oklahoma?”
Sam gives him a quizzical look. “Do you actually want to see Salt Plains?” He is not saying no though, which is a clear sign that he is secretly excited at the idea.
“Why not?” Dean shrugs. “We’ve never been, have we? That's a good reason right there.” He ushers Miracle back into the Impala, then straightens, keys in one hand, the other flat on the roof of the car.
“And if it’s boring, we’ll just hang in the hotel room, get room service and watch TV.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Sam asks dryly, and there it is again, that spark of heat that makes Dean feel positively weak in the knees.
“Tease,” Dean mutters, as if he could ever actually mind. He takes in his brother’s smile, smell of dog in his nose, sun-touched metal warm under his palm.
“Either way, I'm sure Salt Plains is fine.” He climbs into the car, waits for Sam to slide into the passenger seat, all long legs and bony elbows and ridiculous hair.
“But it’s you and me. Of course it’s gonna be good.”