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They went north, crossing the South Dakota state line just as it started to get dark. Gusts of wind rocked the car on the narrow blacktop, and before long it was snowing sideways, fierce streams of white that whirled before the headlights and drifted across the road. Sam lightened up on the gas and adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.
"Twenty miles," Dean said.
Sam jumped, startled by his voice. "Twenty miles to what?"
"Next town. What's-its-name. Saw a sign."
Dean hunched down in the seat and crossed his arms over his chest. Sam glanced at him, then reached out to crank up the heat.
"That's good," he said, yawning. "Driving in this sucks."
"April showers bring May flowers, dude."
"This is an April blizzard."
"So it brings really fucking tough May flowers. May flowers with teeth." Dean paused, then added thoughtfully, "And blowtorches."
Sam laughed. "Well, I hope there's a motel in What's-its-name-ville, because this really sucks." He braced the steering wheel again as another violent gust battered the car.
"You want me to drive?"
"No. I'm fine."
As soon as he said it, Sam knew he had spoken too sharply. He heard the slight sigh, saw the way Dean sat up straighter and stared straight ahead. He could practically hear the wheels turning in his brother's head.
"Look, man, I'm not sick any--"
Sam interrupted quickly, "It's only twenty miles. Less, now. I'm fine."
"Okay. Whatever. You put this car in a ditch and I'm going to k--" Dean stopped and cleared his throat. "I'm going to kick your ass." Then he slid down in the seat again and turned away from Sam, facing the window.
They made it to the town without any ditch incidents. There was a motel, a single-story joint across the highway from a brightly-lit truck stop. The neon red "Vacancy" light glowed through the snowstorm, and the lot was empty except for a single battered pickup. As soon as Sam stopped the car Dean jumped out, turning his collar up against the wind, and jogged over to the office door. Through the window Sam watched him lean on the counter and ring the bell, looking around the tiny, wood-paneled room with bored disinterest. A tiny gray-haired woman emerged from a doorway moments later. She was surprised -- and no wonder -- but Dean smiled, she smiled, cash was exchanged for a key, and moments later Dean was in the car again, saying, "Number four. Just pull over a few spaces."
The room was ice-cold when they opened the door. Dean made a beeline for the thermostat and turned it up, then paced around the room restlessly as the heater clanked to life.
Sam sat on the edge of one of the beds and rubbed his hand over his face. Two beds, two lamps, two forgettable pictures on the wall, television, narrow door leading to the bathroom, carpet that last saw the light of day in 1972: home, sweet home, at least for the night.
"I'm hungry," Dean said abruptly. He held out his hand; Sam passed him the keys. "I'm going across the street to get dinner. What d'ya want?"
Sam shrugged. "Anything. Whatever."
"You want to come?"
"Nah, go ahead. I'm going to shower."
Dean left without another word. Sam waited until he heard the door of the car slam and the engine start, then reached into his jacket pocket for his phone. He scrolled down to his father's number.
When the voice mail picked up, Sam closed his eyes and sighed.
"Dad, it's me again. Um...about that last message, I don't know if you got it, but Dean's okay now...There was this thing and we...Anyway. He's not -- not sick anymore. We're in South Dakota. Thought maybe you'd want to know. Or maybe not."
He hung up and tossed the phone aside on the bed. The television had no remote, so he slid down to the end of the bed and leaned across the narrow gap to switch it on. The volume was turned up ridiculously high, exploding from the ancient set in a manically cheerful commercial jingle before Sam found the right pin -- the knob was broken off and all the labels worn away -- and turned it down.
He flipped through the channels mindlessly, glancing through the shear curtains on the window every few seconds. Commercials, commercials, sitcoms, news: winter storm warning in effect until midnight, traffic accidents on cold alert. Outside, the wind howled in agreement. The lights of the truck stop across the road glowed through the storm, close enough to walk if the night wasn't so cold. On a local access cable channel a man in a suit and a handlebar mustache said something about Jesus; Sam skipped over that one quickly and finally stopped on Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon roaring across the desert in their old Thunderbird. He kicked off his shoes and leaned against the headboard of the bed, smiling slightly when he heard the engine of the Impala rumbling outside the door. It would be worth it just to have Dean tease him about watching a chick flick.
Dean brought the winter in again. "Fucking fuck, that wind is cold. Fucking South Dakota. They didn't have much, just hot dogs and chips." As he passed the food over, he glanced at the phone, and Sam silently cursed himself for not putting it away. "Thought you were going to shower," he said slowly.
"Not yet," Sam replied, shrugging. He began to eat. The hot dogs were already lukewarm, and his appetite vanished, but he kept eating, pointedly staring at the television and not at his brother or the phone on the bed.
Dean, of course, didn't say anything. He just sat down with his own food and began paging through a few skinny local newspapers. They knew where they were going; one of their father's friends who Sam had called in his frantic search a week earlier hadn't known anything about healing but had mentioned a wheat field up near the North Dakota border that was, it seemed, eating people. For breakfast, which Dean claimed was "really fucking weird." Sam hadn't yet asked if it would be less weird if the field were eating people for dinner, or perhaps a light late-night snack.
But even with a destination marked on the map and a half-formed plan in mind, Dean read the newspapers obsessively, skipping over the front pages and scanning the sidebars, the little stories that no one else read, the ones that barely merited a headline. Sam figured that if he asked, Dean would never be able to name the Secretary of State or the President of France or more than three countries in Africa, but he could easily rattle off the names of ten different farmers in ten different Iowa counties who died in mysterious farm equipment accidents in the last ten years.
"I can't believe they did that."
Sam startled, spilling potato chip crumbs on the bedspread. "Did what?"
"You're jumpy tonight." Dean gestured at the television; the credits were rolling. "That. I can't believe they that."
"Drove off a cliff?" Sam looked over at his brother, frowning. "I think they thought they didn't have any choice."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Dean waved his hand dismissively. "But that car -- can you imagine what that did to that car? The Grand Canyon?"
Sam stared for a few seconds, then burst out laughing.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Really, what?"
"Really, nothing." Sam crumpled the trash from his dinner and stood up. "I'm going to shower now."
The water was barely warm and he kept bumping his elbows on the walls of the tiny stall, but he felt better afterwards. The Nebraska mud, the smell of damp wool in a damp canvas tent, dust from an unused library and still, still the lingering scent of hospital antiseptic, all of it was scrubbed away and washed down the drain. When he emerged from the bathroom, Dean was already in bed, lying on his stomach and reading yet another newspaper, chewing absently on the cap of his pen. It was early, just after eight, but neither of them had slept the night before, or much the nights before that, and they had a long drive tomorrow. Sam crawled into his own bed and rolled onto his side.
Dean folded the paper noisily, set it on the nightstand, and turned off the light. With the lights of the truck stop across the road, the room was still reassuringly bright.
Dean's voice broke the silence. "I mean, it's not just the car."
Sam waited. Some things, he was beginning to understand, never changed, and his brother's penchant for picking up a dropped conversation without warning minutes or even hours later was one of those things.
"It's just -- they went out without a fight. That's just wrong."
Sam didn't answer. He thought about his sociology professor at Stanford and the field day she'd have deconstructing that particular commentary on the feminist theory of Thelma and Louise. He thought about the knife under Dean's pillow and the unused medications they'd added to their first aid kit. He thought about You're not going to let me die in peace, are you and wondering if it was possible to fucking shake a damaged heart back to health, because that was what he'd spent a week thinking he ought to try.
And he smiled in the darkness. Some things never changed, even when it seemed like they did.
Sam closed his eyes and went to sleep to the sound of his brother's steady breathing beside him and the prairie wind howling outside.