![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwendolyngraceTitle: Five Times…Dean Didn’t Get There in the Impala
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gwendolyngrace
Genre: Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam, John, Bobby, OFC, Impala (by proxy)
Rating: PG
Summary: 1989; 1991; 1994; 2006; 2008.
Wordcount: 3,306
Warnings: There is a tiny reference to the final scene of 3x07, which could be considered a spoiler.
Disclaimer: If Kripke kills him for real? I shall cry. Buckets. If they really were mine, I wouldn’t need LJ.
Author’s Notes: I’ve had 1, 2, and 4 in my head for a while. Five sort of…happened. If there were a 6th, it would be the happiness of Sam bundling Dean onto a cruise ship to go to England for Led Zeppelin’s reunion concert. Heh. And I swear, I had Dean hyperventilating about being without the car before RSAM aired. However, I’m aware that it only counts as being Kripke’d if you’ve posted before it appears onscreen. Dangit. Anyway, I’ve been ready to post this for a bit, but when I heard about the supernatural.tv Impala challenge, I decided to brush it up and go for it. I’m aware that this is a little bit different, but I think the absence of the Impala in these vignettes goes a long way to demonstrating her presence in the Winchesters’ lives.
1.
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“Sammy, there’s no such thing.”
“Is too!”
“Is not!”
“Okay,” John spoke up from the front, causing both boys to fall silent. The Impala slowed as John angled the car to the shoulder. The car rolled to a stop. John threw it into Park and looked back at both of them. “Sign we just passed says rest area is two miles up the road. You’ve just earned a two mile hike.” He turned back to look up ahead as if he could picture the way-station. “I’ll see you there in 45 minutes.”
Dean shoved Sammy’s arm, pushing him toward the rear passenger door. “You heard Dad: Get moving, squirt.”
Sammy didn’t budge. “I didn’t start it!” he said to John.
John looked at him in the mirror. “Don’t really care who started it,” he said calmly. “Point is, you’ve been at it for half an hour. Time to get in a little workout.”
Dean reached across his brother and pushed the door open. “Out, Sammy!” he ordered timorously. Lately, Dean had been including himself on anything “grown-up” and constantly had to be reminded that he was still a child—a responsible kid, but a kid nonetheless. John wondered if this new-found assumption of maturity was common to all ten-year-olds, or if it was just that his eldest had decided that acting like a grown-up meant throwing his weight around ineffectually. John was none too happy with the result, either way.
Sammy glowered at his father and at Dean, but when Dean raised his hands to shove him again, he slid out and stood at the roadside. Dean sat back in his seat. “Peace and quiet, huh, Dad?” he sighed.
John cleared his throat, one eyebrow rising. “For me, maybe, but not for you. Start running, kiddo.”
Dean’s eyes widened. “Come on, Dad—Sammy needs it; I don’t.”
“First off, he’s too young to jog along a busy road alone and you know it. Second, like I said, you’ve earned it. Both of you. I gotta say it again?”
Dean gritted his teeth, but slid across the rear bench and out. John beckoned him to the open passenger window where he pointed to a water bottle. “Wear your hats,” he told them. “It’s sunny. Don’t push too hard.” When they had put on their ball caps and Dean was holding the water bottle, John nodded. “See you in forty-five,” he repeated. Then he put the car in gear and carefully pulled away.
Dean and Sam watched the tail of the Impala disappear around the next curve. That car, Dean knew, was their lifeline. Now they had no choice; sooner or later, they’d have to catch up to it. They looked at each other.
“Is too,” Sammy said.
2.
Dean woke up to the sound of an unfamiliar phone ringing somewhere in the house and Adlai barking outside. The ringing stopped and a moment later so did Adlai. He heard a low-pitched and sleepy-sounding murmur. Dean looked at Sammy, asleep in bed next to him. For a change, his brother’s limbs weren’t all entangled around him, as if Dean were just a large, heat-producing teddy bear for Sam’s benefit. So he didn’t have to worm his way out from Sam’s seeking arms to get out of bed, making it less likely he would wake up his brother. He edged a foot out from the bed, hit cold floor, and slid the rest of his body off the mattress, disturbing the covers as little as possible. After a moment spent making sure Sammy’s breathing was still deep and even, Dean slipped out the bedroom door.
He tiptoed down the hall. Bobby’s bedroom door was ajar; a light inside spilled in a widening splotch along the runner—a butt-ugly thing of scratchy, brown shag. “Yeah,” Bobby said in a gruff rumble as Dean crept closer. “Say again? ...Yeah.” The bedsprings creaked. Dean took a step and stopped; the hall floor had a squeaky board and he didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping.
Dean stood there waiting for some noise to cover his approach. Eventually Bobby said, “Want me to ask—Okay. Okay, John.”
Dean took another step under the cover of Bobby’s own voice, but pulled up short at his father’s name.
“Hang on,” Bobby said. More creaking springs. “Wait a sec….” Bobby said into the phone sharply. Dean held his breath. “No,” Bobby concluded, easing back onto the bed. “It’s nothin’… Yes, I’m listening, you irritating son of a bitch. Thought I heard something on my end. Now. What do you want me to tell Calvin and Hobbes?”
Dean squeezed his eyes shut against an unexpected hot, wet prickling there. He was certain his father was calling because he was hurt. How bad? What had happened? He bit his lip, berating himself for not being there to watch his dad’s back.
“Okay,” Bobby was saying. “Shouldn’t be a problem. What’s the model number? … Okay. We’ll head out first—No, John, listen to me, goddammit. I’m not waking them up in the middle of—Jesus, you’re a pain in the ass!” Bobby was hissing into the phone, and Dean could tell that if it hadn’t been 2:00 AM, he’d have been shouting into it. He’d heard Bobby shout once. It hadn’t been directed at him—or Dad or Sammy—but he never wanted to hear him do it again.
Bobby had stopped whispering angrily into the receiver and was listening again. “Okay, John. Okay…. Yeah, I’ll tell him. But if he asks—I’m not gonna lie to him, either.” Dean stood transfixed, wondering what the magic question could be that would unlock his father’s secret. Bobby seemed to want an excuse to tell him. “Well, I’ll tell him his father’s a goddamn horse’s persqueeter, that’s what!” Bobby said testily. He slammed the receiver down so hard that the ringer jangled and made Dean twitch. The floorboard creaked underneath him. The loudness of it made him take in a sharp breath. Before he could retreat, Bobby appeared in the doorway, wearing an old pair of cut off sweatpants and a wifebeater. His knees looked a lot thinner than the rest of him.
“I suppose you heard that?” Bobby asked, but didn’t appear angry or like he expected an answer. He ran a hand through his receding hair and sighed. “He’s not a complete horse’s persqueeter, Dean,” he said solemnly.
“No, sir, reckon not,” Dean breathed.
Bobby smiled tightly. “Well, might as well wake up your brother, if you’re up,” he said. “Your daddy wants me to bring you to him.”
“Is he okay?” Dean asked. His throat felt tight and he willed himself to stay cool.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” Bobby answered, which Dean recognized was not quite the same thing. He took it to mean that he wasn’t exactly okay, but that nothing permanent or too serious had occurred. “He’s just…a little stuck. Needs me to get his butt out of the sling for him. And line up some spare parts for him, in a right damn hurry.”
“Spare parts?” Dean echoed. What kind of spare parts? Like a kidney in a bathtub kind of spare part?
“For the car, son,” Bobby explained, correctly reading Dean’s horrified expression. “The alternator blew, that’s all. We’ll get her and your Dad fixed up in a jiffy.”
That wasn’t the whole truth, either, but Dean figured he could wait to see his dad—and the car—with his own eyes, and find out for himself, once Bobby drove them out there. His body was already in motion, already itching to close the distance between him and his father. If there was any “fixing” to be done, Dean determined immediately that he would be part of it. Already he could drive the car, change her oil, even replace the spark plugs, once Dad had shown him how. Maybe he couldn’t do anything about his dad, but he could certainly help with the car. He had to get them both back. He couldn’t imagine life without either.
3.
“Hop on,” Chelsea Granger says, handing him her spare helmet. Her nails are painted dark blue, there’s a streak of red in her dyed black hair, visible where it sticks out from her helmet, and her eyes are darkened with some kind of purple-black liner that makes her face look even more shadowed by the clear visor.
As for the motorcycle, it’s black and slim and slick, kind of like her tight pleather jeans. Its seat is low-slung, the pillion seat higher up on its gently curving gas tank. A large, gleaming chrome exhaust fan juts out from the right side, matching the elegant triangle of chrome in which the suspension rests. The bike’s rear wheel has an intricate double hubcap on the gears, and the tires aren’t shining with polish, but look well-worn and promise a smooth ride. Its pistons and the engine block look like a woman’s pelvis…at least, like the pictures he’s seen in the purloined Playboys he’s squirreled under the mattress, next to his .45. And sitting on top of all that motor is Chelsea Granger, smiling with approval at his lust…for her bike.
It can’t be as comfortable as the Impala, he reasons, covering up his initial naked desire with a more discerning assessment. It’s sleek, sure, and it must be freeing to feel the wind all around. But it’s completely impractical. Where would he keep a bike? What about the rain? His weapons? His clothes? He just can’t see himself touring the country the way they do, even with one of the roadsters from Easy Rider. What would he do, follow Dad and Sammy? Nah.
He longs to try the bike out, anyway, just to indulge the fantasy. It feels a tiny bit like cheating on a girlfriend must feel. Not that he’s ever done that. Still, he promises himself he’ll wash and wax the old girl if she’ll just let him enjoy this one, tiny exploration of a different kind of sexiness on wheels. And there’s no denying that at the moment, the Impala lacks just one thing that this baby has: Chelsea, inviting him to sit behind her.
Dean cocks a leg over the pillion seat. The bike rumbles underneath him with a roar not unlike his father’s car—his car one day, maybe, if they keep treating her right. He hooks the heels of his boots up on the foot rests and slides his hands around Chelsea’s waist. He’s grateful that Sam’s got some after-school thing—debate team or chess club or mock trial, who knows—that leaves him free to hang out for at least two hours before Sam will be home.
Chelsea twists the throttle and the bike’s responding thrum vibrates all the way up his spine. It’s more immediate than the feel of the Impala’s engine through her seats, less diffused by distance from the engine and layers of stuffing in the cushions. He’s not prepared for the way it goes right to his dick, straight up through his groin. But he feels Chelsea lean into him and she moves his hands down over the fly of her really, really tight, really warm jeans.
It’s not at all uncool, Dean decides, to ride behind a girl, especially this girl, on this bike. Oh, yeah, Chelsea can take him wherever she wants to go.
4.
He hates flying, Sam thinks, then realizes how absurd that thought is at a time like this. Dean’s strapped to a backboard which is strapped to a gurney, and Sam can’t see where they’re taking him. No one will answer his frantic questions, and they’ve put his neck in a brace and keep pushing him down on his own gurney, so he can’t look around. But he can hear the deafening whip of the chopper blades nearby and he is sure that Dean’s going on MercyFlight, and all he can think is, Dean’s scared to fly.
Sam supposes it’s just as well that Dean was already mostly unconscious, because he won’t add freaking out in midair to his list of complications. But in his next breath, Sam curses himself for even considering it “lucky” that his brother is so far out of it—so seriously hurt, that he won’t even be awake to know he’d been airlifted.
“Is my brother alive?” he demands again when the head of a paramedic floats above him.
Though he’s asked some variant of this question about a thousand times, every minute since the ambulances arrived on the scene, he expects he’ll get the same infuriating noncommittal answer. He can’t stop asking anyway. Surprisingly, this paramedic takes pity on him. “Listen, your brother, your dad—they’re worse off than you. We’re taking you all to Saint Anthony’s.”
“How bad are they hurt?” Sam asks.
The paramedic is quiet for too long for it to be anything good. “They’re in good hands,” he says finally, after Sam already fears the worst. “Let’s take care of you for now, and then you can worry about them.”
Too late, Sam thinks. But then, they don’t know that a demon is targeting the Winchester men. The paramedics load him into the ambulance and Sam lets them work.
He imagines Dean’s fury when he finds out how bad the car got busted up, even before the demon pulled the door off. It wasn’t really his fault, the crash, but he doesn’t see it that way and neither will Dean. To Dean, the Impala is more than just a car. Dean thinks of the car as a woman, and if that’s so, Sam realizes, then she’s the only woman to whom Dean’s ever been faithful. Faithful as a bloodhound. Sam feels a bubble of completely inappropriate laughter at the idea. Dean’s steady girlfriend, for all these years.
But the car is more than his best girl. She’s his baby, too. He even calls it that sometimes, “Baby,” under his breath like he thinks Sam can’t hear it. Well, if Sam’s lucky, Dean will live to give him no end of shit about “that time he got broadsided and messed up Dean’s baby.” At that moment, Sam knows that there were four victims in this accident, not three. And no matter what, he has to make it up to Dean…. “I have to call Bobby.”
“We can call anyone you want us to call, son, but later,” the paramedic says to him. He hadn’t even realized he’d spoken aloud.
But he will call Bobby, he knows. As soon as he can—he won’t forget. Aside from the issue of what’s in the trunk, there’s the car itself. He has to save her, as surely as the doctors have to save Dean. They just have to. He can’t imagine life without his brother, and Dean wouldn’t want to live without his precious, beautiful, faithful lady in black.
He promises himself and anyone else who’ll listen that if Dean makes it through this, he’ll take any abuse his brother wants to dish out for wrecking her.
5.
There’s a crappy selection in the parking lot, but Dean chooses a dark blue Pontiac Grand Prix that at least looks decently maintained. He slides his wire jimmy into the window, pops the locks, and has the wires out under the dash inside of three minutes. Yeah, he’s slower than the pros, but hey, he tells himself, it’s not like he has to do this often. He can count on hands and toes the number of times he’s had to do this since he graduated high school and Dad had given him the Impala for his own, as a reward "for sticking it out,” as Dad had put it.
Sparks light briefly when he scrapes the wires together and the Grand Prix’s engine hums in response. It’s not like his baby—nothing will ever purr the way his girl does in his hands—but he frowns appreciatively at its quiet murmur nonetheless. The needle in the gas gauge climbs above half a tank. Dean approves; that should be more than enough to get him well away. He shifts into reverse, finding it a bit disconcerting to reach between the bucket seats, instead of forward on the steering column. He backs out slowly and aims for the open road.
He’d thought leaving the Impala sitting outside their room would be the hardest thing he’d ever have to do. But it had felt right to place the keys on the night table next to Sam’s head. In addition to the lessons he’d recently started giving Sam, he had written everything he could think of about the car’s preferences, her maintenance schedule, how often to wax her and how to undercoat her by hand to keep her free from rust as long as possible. He knows Sam will most likely just go through Bobby for the big stuff, but even Bobby won’t be around forever.
Still, he’s fairly sure Sam will take care of her. And it is hard to leave her, not knowing, only trusting, that Sam will treat her right. He understands why Dad occasionally shot off a few choice words at him about her care and feeding—because it was much harder to see her in someone else’s hands than his own. Even Dean’s. Dean feels the same about bequeathing her to Sam, and it’s only been a few minutes since he left.
He points the Pontiac away from the rising sun, thinking about the road ahead, not the one not taken. See, Sam, I remember a little poetry, he thinks, but then pushes that urge to speak to him away. He’s even left his cell phone sohe can’t wuss out and call Sam can’t track him. He figures he can get in at least two solid hours, a hundred and fifty miles or so, before Sam wakes up and finds the keys, the phone, and the envelope that holds what passes for Dean’s last will and testament. He’ll throw in a couple of switchbacks and erratic turns so Sam can’t stumble onto him in a straight line. He’s sure his brother will try to follow. Dean’s determined that Sam won’t be able to catch him. Not this time.
Because leaving the Impala to Sam isn’t the hardest thing he’s ever done. Driving away in someone else’s car, facing the end without the comfort of her stitched cushions, without the rumble of her engine vibrating through his right foot and his fingers on the wheel, without the cantankerous fan that makes too much noise in the summer and pumps out too little heat in the winter, without her wide mirrors and her sticking rear passenger window, without all that to fall back on for a last-minute getaway—that’s unbelievably difficult.
He doesn’t want to leave—he doesn’t!—but he doesn’t see any options left. Even shielding himself from Sam’s efforts, he knows his brother has exhausted the possibilities, would have tried some stupid plan or other by now if there’d been any hope. And he’s scared. Here, alone on the road, without even his best girl to bolster his confidence, he can admit it. So alone is the only way he can do this.
He pulls onto the shoulder, breathing heavily, wondering if he’ll have to get out and heave, even though he hasn’t even risked a cup of coffee, his stomach has been so flip-floppy. Sam would have put his hands on his shoulders, would have murmured soothingly, but even without him, Dean hears him in his head, telling him to breathe. After about thirty seconds of self-help yoga crap, he trusts himself to drive the unfamiliar car again. He settles himself on the plush bucket seat and steps down on the gas to head for his final destination.
He has a bargain to keep.
Author:
gwendolyngraceGenre: Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam, John, Bobby, OFC, Impala (by proxy)
Rating: PG
Summary: 1989; 1991; 1994; 2006; 2008.
Wordcount: 3,306
Warnings: There is a tiny reference to the final scene of 3x07, which could be considered a spoiler.
Disclaimer: If Kripke kills him for real? I shall cry. Buckets. If they really were mine, I wouldn’t need LJ.
Author’s Notes: I’ve had 1, 2, and 4 in my head for a while. Five sort of…happened. If there were a 6th, it would be the happiness of Sam bundling Dean onto a cruise ship to go to England for Led Zeppelin’s reunion concert. Heh. And I swear, I had Dean hyperventilating about being without the car before RSAM aired. However, I’m aware that it only counts as being Kripke’d if you’ve posted before it appears onscreen. Dangit. Anyway, I’ve been ready to post this for a bit, but when I heard about the supernatural.tv Impala challenge, I decided to brush it up and go for it. I’m aware that this is a little bit different, but I think the absence of the Impala in these vignettes goes a long way to demonstrating her presence in the Winchesters’ lives.
1.
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“Sammy, there’s no such thing.”
“Is too!”
“Is not!”
“Okay,” John spoke up from the front, causing both boys to fall silent. The Impala slowed as John angled the car to the shoulder. The car rolled to a stop. John threw it into Park and looked back at both of them. “Sign we just passed says rest area is two miles up the road. You’ve just earned a two mile hike.” He turned back to look up ahead as if he could picture the way-station. “I’ll see you there in 45 minutes.”
Dean shoved Sammy’s arm, pushing him toward the rear passenger door. “You heard Dad: Get moving, squirt.”
Sammy didn’t budge. “I didn’t start it!” he said to John.
John looked at him in the mirror. “Don’t really care who started it,” he said calmly. “Point is, you’ve been at it for half an hour. Time to get in a little workout.”
Dean reached across his brother and pushed the door open. “Out, Sammy!” he ordered timorously. Lately, Dean had been including himself on anything “grown-up” and constantly had to be reminded that he was still a child—a responsible kid, but a kid nonetheless. John wondered if this new-found assumption of maturity was common to all ten-year-olds, or if it was just that his eldest had decided that acting like a grown-up meant throwing his weight around ineffectually. John was none too happy with the result, either way.
Sammy glowered at his father and at Dean, but when Dean raised his hands to shove him again, he slid out and stood at the roadside. Dean sat back in his seat. “Peace and quiet, huh, Dad?” he sighed.
John cleared his throat, one eyebrow rising. “For me, maybe, but not for you. Start running, kiddo.”
Dean’s eyes widened. “Come on, Dad—Sammy needs it; I don’t.”
“First off, he’s too young to jog along a busy road alone and you know it. Second, like I said, you’ve earned it. Both of you. I gotta say it again?”
Dean gritted his teeth, but slid across the rear bench and out. John beckoned him to the open passenger window where he pointed to a water bottle. “Wear your hats,” he told them. “It’s sunny. Don’t push too hard.” When they had put on their ball caps and Dean was holding the water bottle, John nodded. “See you in forty-five,” he repeated. Then he put the car in gear and carefully pulled away.
Dean and Sam watched the tail of the Impala disappear around the next curve. That car, Dean knew, was their lifeline. Now they had no choice; sooner or later, they’d have to catch up to it. They looked at each other.
“Is too,” Sammy said.
2.
Dean woke up to the sound of an unfamiliar phone ringing somewhere in the house and Adlai barking outside. The ringing stopped and a moment later so did Adlai. He heard a low-pitched and sleepy-sounding murmur. Dean looked at Sammy, asleep in bed next to him. For a change, his brother’s limbs weren’t all entangled around him, as if Dean were just a large, heat-producing teddy bear for Sam’s benefit. So he didn’t have to worm his way out from Sam’s seeking arms to get out of bed, making it less likely he would wake up his brother. He edged a foot out from the bed, hit cold floor, and slid the rest of his body off the mattress, disturbing the covers as little as possible. After a moment spent making sure Sammy’s breathing was still deep and even, Dean slipped out the bedroom door.
He tiptoed down the hall. Bobby’s bedroom door was ajar; a light inside spilled in a widening splotch along the runner—a butt-ugly thing of scratchy, brown shag. “Yeah,” Bobby said in a gruff rumble as Dean crept closer. “Say again? ...Yeah.” The bedsprings creaked. Dean took a step and stopped; the hall floor had a squeaky board and he didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping.
Dean stood there waiting for some noise to cover his approach. Eventually Bobby said, “Want me to ask—Okay. Okay, John.”
Dean took another step under the cover of Bobby’s own voice, but pulled up short at his father’s name.
“Hang on,” Bobby said. More creaking springs. “Wait a sec….” Bobby said into the phone sharply. Dean held his breath. “No,” Bobby concluded, easing back onto the bed. “It’s nothin’… Yes, I’m listening, you irritating son of a bitch. Thought I heard something on my end. Now. What do you want me to tell Calvin and Hobbes?”
Dean squeezed his eyes shut against an unexpected hot, wet prickling there. He was certain his father was calling because he was hurt. How bad? What had happened? He bit his lip, berating himself for not being there to watch his dad’s back.
“Okay,” Bobby was saying. “Shouldn’t be a problem. What’s the model number? … Okay. We’ll head out first—No, John, listen to me, goddammit. I’m not waking them up in the middle of—Jesus, you’re a pain in the ass!” Bobby was hissing into the phone, and Dean could tell that if it hadn’t been 2:00 AM, he’d have been shouting into it. He’d heard Bobby shout once. It hadn’t been directed at him—or Dad or Sammy—but he never wanted to hear him do it again.
Bobby had stopped whispering angrily into the receiver and was listening again. “Okay, John. Okay…. Yeah, I’ll tell him. But if he asks—I’m not gonna lie to him, either.” Dean stood transfixed, wondering what the magic question could be that would unlock his father’s secret. Bobby seemed to want an excuse to tell him. “Well, I’ll tell him his father’s a goddamn horse’s persqueeter, that’s what!” Bobby said testily. He slammed the receiver down so hard that the ringer jangled and made Dean twitch. The floorboard creaked underneath him. The loudness of it made him take in a sharp breath. Before he could retreat, Bobby appeared in the doorway, wearing an old pair of cut off sweatpants and a wifebeater. His knees looked a lot thinner than the rest of him.
“I suppose you heard that?” Bobby asked, but didn’t appear angry or like he expected an answer. He ran a hand through his receding hair and sighed. “He’s not a complete horse’s persqueeter, Dean,” he said solemnly.
“No, sir, reckon not,” Dean breathed.
Bobby smiled tightly. “Well, might as well wake up your brother, if you’re up,” he said. “Your daddy wants me to bring you to him.”
“Is he okay?” Dean asked. His throat felt tight and he willed himself to stay cool.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” Bobby answered, which Dean recognized was not quite the same thing. He took it to mean that he wasn’t exactly okay, but that nothing permanent or too serious had occurred. “He’s just…a little stuck. Needs me to get his butt out of the sling for him. And line up some spare parts for him, in a right damn hurry.”
“Spare parts?” Dean echoed. What kind of spare parts? Like a kidney in a bathtub kind of spare part?
“For the car, son,” Bobby explained, correctly reading Dean’s horrified expression. “The alternator blew, that’s all. We’ll get her and your Dad fixed up in a jiffy.”
That wasn’t the whole truth, either, but Dean figured he could wait to see his dad—and the car—with his own eyes, and find out for himself, once Bobby drove them out there. His body was already in motion, already itching to close the distance between him and his father. If there was any “fixing” to be done, Dean determined immediately that he would be part of it. Already he could drive the car, change her oil, even replace the spark plugs, once Dad had shown him how. Maybe he couldn’t do anything about his dad, but he could certainly help with the car. He had to get them both back. He couldn’t imagine life without either.
3.
“Hop on,” Chelsea Granger says, handing him her spare helmet. Her nails are painted dark blue, there’s a streak of red in her dyed black hair, visible where it sticks out from her helmet, and her eyes are darkened with some kind of purple-black liner that makes her face look even more shadowed by the clear visor.
As for the motorcycle, it’s black and slim and slick, kind of like her tight pleather jeans. Its seat is low-slung, the pillion seat higher up on its gently curving gas tank. A large, gleaming chrome exhaust fan juts out from the right side, matching the elegant triangle of chrome in which the suspension rests. The bike’s rear wheel has an intricate double hubcap on the gears, and the tires aren’t shining with polish, but look well-worn and promise a smooth ride. Its pistons and the engine block look like a woman’s pelvis…at least, like the pictures he’s seen in the purloined Playboys he’s squirreled under the mattress, next to his .45. And sitting on top of all that motor is Chelsea Granger, smiling with approval at his lust…for her bike.
It can’t be as comfortable as the Impala, he reasons, covering up his initial naked desire with a more discerning assessment. It’s sleek, sure, and it must be freeing to feel the wind all around. But it’s completely impractical. Where would he keep a bike? What about the rain? His weapons? His clothes? He just can’t see himself touring the country the way they do, even with one of the roadsters from Easy Rider. What would he do, follow Dad and Sammy? Nah.
He longs to try the bike out, anyway, just to indulge the fantasy. It feels a tiny bit like cheating on a girlfriend must feel. Not that he’s ever done that. Still, he promises himself he’ll wash and wax the old girl if she’ll just let him enjoy this one, tiny exploration of a different kind of sexiness on wheels. And there’s no denying that at the moment, the Impala lacks just one thing that this baby has: Chelsea, inviting him to sit behind her.
Dean cocks a leg over the pillion seat. The bike rumbles underneath him with a roar not unlike his father’s car—his car one day, maybe, if they keep treating her right. He hooks the heels of his boots up on the foot rests and slides his hands around Chelsea’s waist. He’s grateful that Sam’s got some after-school thing—debate team or chess club or mock trial, who knows—that leaves him free to hang out for at least two hours before Sam will be home.
Chelsea twists the throttle and the bike’s responding thrum vibrates all the way up his spine. It’s more immediate than the feel of the Impala’s engine through her seats, less diffused by distance from the engine and layers of stuffing in the cushions. He’s not prepared for the way it goes right to his dick, straight up through his groin. But he feels Chelsea lean into him and she moves his hands down over the fly of her really, really tight, really warm jeans.
It’s not at all uncool, Dean decides, to ride behind a girl, especially this girl, on this bike. Oh, yeah, Chelsea can take him wherever she wants to go.
4.
He hates flying, Sam thinks, then realizes how absurd that thought is at a time like this. Dean’s strapped to a backboard which is strapped to a gurney, and Sam can’t see where they’re taking him. No one will answer his frantic questions, and they’ve put his neck in a brace and keep pushing him down on his own gurney, so he can’t look around. But he can hear the deafening whip of the chopper blades nearby and he is sure that Dean’s going on MercyFlight, and all he can think is, Dean’s scared to fly.
Sam supposes it’s just as well that Dean was already mostly unconscious, because he won’t add freaking out in midair to his list of complications. But in his next breath, Sam curses himself for even considering it “lucky” that his brother is so far out of it—so seriously hurt, that he won’t even be awake to know he’d been airlifted.
“Is my brother alive?” he demands again when the head of a paramedic floats above him.
Though he’s asked some variant of this question about a thousand times, every minute since the ambulances arrived on the scene, he expects he’ll get the same infuriating noncommittal answer. He can’t stop asking anyway. Surprisingly, this paramedic takes pity on him. “Listen, your brother, your dad—they’re worse off than you. We’re taking you all to Saint Anthony’s.”
“How bad are they hurt?” Sam asks.
The paramedic is quiet for too long for it to be anything good. “They’re in good hands,” he says finally, after Sam already fears the worst. “Let’s take care of you for now, and then you can worry about them.”
Too late, Sam thinks. But then, they don’t know that a demon is targeting the Winchester men. The paramedics load him into the ambulance and Sam lets them work.
He imagines Dean’s fury when he finds out how bad the car got busted up, even before the demon pulled the door off. It wasn’t really his fault, the crash, but he doesn’t see it that way and neither will Dean. To Dean, the Impala is more than just a car. Dean thinks of the car as a woman, and if that’s so, Sam realizes, then she’s the only woman to whom Dean’s ever been faithful. Faithful as a bloodhound. Sam feels a bubble of completely inappropriate laughter at the idea. Dean’s steady girlfriend, for all these years.
But the car is more than his best girl. She’s his baby, too. He even calls it that sometimes, “Baby,” under his breath like he thinks Sam can’t hear it. Well, if Sam’s lucky, Dean will live to give him no end of shit about “that time he got broadsided and messed up Dean’s baby.” At that moment, Sam knows that there were four victims in this accident, not three. And no matter what, he has to make it up to Dean…. “I have to call Bobby.”
“We can call anyone you want us to call, son, but later,” the paramedic says to him. He hadn’t even realized he’d spoken aloud.
But he will call Bobby, he knows. As soon as he can—he won’t forget. Aside from the issue of what’s in the trunk, there’s the car itself. He has to save her, as surely as the doctors have to save Dean. They just have to. He can’t imagine life without his brother, and Dean wouldn’t want to live without his precious, beautiful, faithful lady in black.
He promises himself and anyone else who’ll listen that if Dean makes it through this, he’ll take any abuse his brother wants to dish out for wrecking her.
5.
There’s a crappy selection in the parking lot, but Dean chooses a dark blue Pontiac Grand Prix that at least looks decently maintained. He slides his wire jimmy into the window, pops the locks, and has the wires out under the dash inside of three minutes. Yeah, he’s slower than the pros, but hey, he tells himself, it’s not like he has to do this often. He can count on hands and toes the number of times he’s had to do this since he graduated high school and Dad had given him the Impala for his own, as a reward "for sticking it out,” as Dad had put it.
Sparks light briefly when he scrapes the wires together and the Grand Prix’s engine hums in response. It’s not like his baby—nothing will ever purr the way his girl does in his hands—but he frowns appreciatively at its quiet murmur nonetheless. The needle in the gas gauge climbs above half a tank. Dean approves; that should be more than enough to get him well away. He shifts into reverse, finding it a bit disconcerting to reach between the bucket seats, instead of forward on the steering column. He backs out slowly and aims for the open road.
He’d thought leaving the Impala sitting outside their room would be the hardest thing he’d ever have to do. But it had felt right to place the keys on the night table next to Sam’s head. In addition to the lessons he’d recently started giving Sam, he had written everything he could think of about the car’s preferences, her maintenance schedule, how often to wax her and how to undercoat her by hand to keep her free from rust as long as possible. He knows Sam will most likely just go through Bobby for the big stuff, but even Bobby won’t be around forever.
Still, he’s fairly sure Sam will take care of her. And it is hard to leave her, not knowing, only trusting, that Sam will treat her right. He understands why Dad occasionally shot off a few choice words at him about her care and feeding—because it was much harder to see her in someone else’s hands than his own. Even Dean’s. Dean feels the same about bequeathing her to Sam, and it’s only been a few minutes since he left.
He points the Pontiac away from the rising sun, thinking about the road ahead, not the one not taken. See, Sam, I remember a little poetry, he thinks, but then pushes that urge to speak to him away. He’s even left his cell phone so
Because leaving the Impala to Sam isn’t the hardest thing he’s ever done. Driving away in someone else’s car, facing the end without the comfort of her stitched cushions, without the rumble of her engine vibrating through his right foot and his fingers on the wheel, without the cantankerous fan that makes too much noise in the summer and pumps out too little heat in the winter, without her wide mirrors and her sticking rear passenger window, without all that to fall back on for a last-minute getaway—that’s unbelievably difficult.
He doesn’t want to leave—he doesn’t!—but he doesn’t see any options left. Even shielding himself from Sam’s efforts, he knows his brother has exhausted the possibilities, would have tried some stupid plan or other by now if there’d been any hope. And he’s scared. Here, alone on the road, without even his best girl to bolster his confidence, he can admit it. So alone is the only way he can do this.
He pulls onto the shoulder, breathing heavily, wondering if he’ll have to get out and heave, even though he hasn’t even risked a cup of coffee, his stomach has been so flip-floppy. Sam would have put his hands on his shoulders, would have murmured soothingly, but even without him, Dean hears him in his head, telling him to breathe. After about thirty seconds of self-help yoga crap, he trusts himself to drive the unfamiliar car again. He settles himself on the plush bucket seat and steps down on the gas to head for his final destination.
He has a bargain to keep.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 02:17 am (UTC)Meanwhile, thanks, I'll have to do some snooping around in your fan fic!
Cheers ~
Erin
P.S.
Your icon is adorable! *G*
no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 02:39 am (UTC)