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It's too hot to sleep. The fold-out bed is barely big enough for two men, and definitely not big enough on one of Sam's restless nights. Dean pretends to sleep, not reacting to Sam's tossing and turning, not opening his eyes when Sam finally gives up and climbs over him out of the bed. Sam shuffles around for a bit, then Dean hears the clink of coins, the creak of the screen door opening and gentle tap of it closing, soft footsteps walking away.
Of course. It's the middle of the fucking night. Perfect time to do laundry.
Dean rolls over, stretching, flinching a little at the sting of the cuts on his back. His feet hang off the end of the thin mattress, and he can touch his fingers to one wall and his toes to the other.
It's a regular palace, this joint: four plywood walls nailed together, rusty tin roof, particle board bed, mosquito net stapled over the window. The campground calls it a cabin -- probably because "rickety shack" wouldn't bring in many tourists -- but it's only twelve bucks a night and the girl at the desk didn't call the cops when they pulled in dirty and blood-stained earlier that afternoon. She'd been about to, he was sure of it, but Dean cracked a joke and Sam fed her some bullshit story about a bear and finally she just shook her head and smiled, giving them a key to the padlock on cabin thirteen ("Lucky," Dean said with a wink, earning another smile) and directions to the showers and the laundry room.
The showers were ice-cold and it took a good forty minutes of shivering under the weak dribble of water to wash all the swamp monster gunk and blood out of his hair and ears and fingernails and a whole lot of other places he'd rather not think about. The critter was dead, they were alive, and the evening was spent bitching just for fun while Sam and his misplaced guilt played nursemaid to the claw-marks on Dean's back, eating a greasy dinner from the burger place down the road, cleaning the guns and knives by the rosy evening sunlight, chatting about where to go tomorrow and agreeing that Virginia in July is too goddamned hot, and then, finally, wordlessly lying down between Sam and the door.
Just another day on the job.
Neither of them even picked up a phone, much less made a call.
With a sigh, Dean sits up and swings his feet to the floor. Too goddamned hot. He feels around in the darkness for his last clean t-shirt and a knife -- don't leave home without it -- and stands up.
It's not any cooler outside. The campground is dark, lit only by the fluorescent glow from the bathrooms and a single streetlamp down by the entrance. Dean pauses on the cabin's single cinderblock step, peering into the darkness. He can't hear anything over the hum of RV generators and the songs of crickets and cicadas in the woods. He shrugs and steps down, begins picking his way barefoot along the worn path toward the laundry room.
It's barely a room at all, just a covered porch that looks like it was tacked onto the bathrooms as an afterthought, half-heartedly whitewashed years ago and left to the mildew and mold ever since. A pair of bare light bulbs hang from wires over the machines, moths bumping and fluttering all around. Sam is standing by one of the washers, holding a blood-stained t-shirt up to the light and muttering to himself. His hair is hanging over his eyes in a shaggy mess, and for a second, just a second, Dean remembers him gangly and awkward and all of fifteen years old.
"That'll never come out," Sam says, scolding the t-shirt sternly.
"You know, talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity."
Sam jumps a little and looks up, an embarrassed grin flashing over his face. "Didn't mean to wake you," he says.
"Nah, you didn't. It's too fucking hot to sleep."
There's a wooden bench attached to the wall along the length of the room, cluttered with old magazines and discarded paperbacks and lost socks, the collected debris of long-gone vacationers. Dean shoves a few ancient issues of Good Housekeeping aside and sits down, setting the knife on the wooden plank beside him. He sees Sam glance at the knife then glance away quickly, and even without hearing the words Dean kind of agrees, yeah, it's pretty dumb to be walking around a campground in the middle of the night wearing nothing but boxers and a t-shirt and carrying a six-inch Bowie knife. People might get the wrong idea.
Sam slams the washer shut and cranks the dial. It rumbles to life; somewhere underfoot water pipes creak grumpily.
"Yeah," Sam says after a moment, jumping up to sit on one of the dryers. "I hate this humidity."
Dean lays down on the bench and yawns. "Go west, young man," he says, pointing vaguely. "We got that tip about a Bigfoot up in Montana -- we could go there next."
"As long as there're no swamps," Sam says. "I still have grit in my...um, my everywhere, really."
Dean snorts. "Thanks, Sammy, that's a bit of info I really needed. Just don't ask me to help you bathe. I stopped doing that when you were five."
"Trust me, I won't."
They fall quiet, lulled by the chug of the washer and the racket of insects all around. Dean shifts a bit on the bench, trying to find a position that doesn't aggravate the new cuts on his back. He watches the moths bumping around and imagines a map sketched on the cracked white ceiling boards. Eastern Virginia to western Montana, that's a long haul. Day and a half, if they don't stop. It's a long way to go from one job to another, especially since there are enough ghosts and ghouls in this part of the country to keep them occupied for a long time. But they never meant to stray this far east, this far from the last area code of the last phone call, and now that they're here, it's too hot, too muggy, too close; there isn't enough sky.
Dean thinks about crossing the great plains until the mountains rise up to meet them, racing through miles and miles of I-90 while Sam sleeps in the seat beside him. He thinks about squinting into the sunset, about cool, clear nights with stars overhead, about watching the prairie change color as the sun rises, pumping gas in forgettable towns and flirting with waitresses in truck-stop diners.
There are worse ways to spend a couple of days.
"Do you remember--" Sam's voice interrupts his thoughts.
Dean turns his head warily. That sounds like the start of a conversation he isn't going to like. "Remember what?"
"Nothing," Sam says much too quickly. "No big deal."
Okay, that's not fair. "What?"
"Never mind. I was just--"
"C'mon. What?"
"Do you remember the first time Dad left us alone to go on a hunt?"
Dean blinks in surprise. "Yeah, I remember." Summer, Abilene, poltergeist. "Why?"
"No reason. I was just thinking..."
"Okay," Dean says slowly. Then he smirks a little. "There was that thunderstorm. Man, you were scared shitless, hiding under the blankets and everything."
"I was, what, three, four? Shut up. Of course I was scared." But Sam laughs and shakes his head. "And then you built that blanket fort--"
"--just to get you to stop your whining." The blankets kept sliding off the chairs so he used a couple of his father's guns and the Gideons Bible to hold them in place, and Sammy made him pile up the pillows just right so he couldn't see the lightning flashes. "Jeez, you made me read that stupid book over and over again, like fifty times. God."
"Where the Wild Things Are." Sam is grinning widely, staring out into the darkness, almost like he actually likes the memories he sees there.
Dean looks away quickly and clears his throat. "I still have that fucking book memorized, thanks to you."
"Hey, what can I say, it's a great work of literature."
"Pastor Jim's wife never did figure out why you were so happy when she threatened to send you to bed without supper."
"It never worked," Sam says, his smile fading. "Never did get to have a monster party."
Dean doesn't answer. He remembers crawling out of the blanket fort after the thunderstorm passed, making a dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the two of them, standing in the bathroom doorway while Sammy brushed his teeth. Sammy asked who brought Max his hot supper at the end, and Dean recalls the blank disinterest on Sam's face when he explained that it was Max's mom.
And he remembers waking up with a start, cold and scared, with Sammy curled up beside him, hugging that stupid floppy blue elephant they got off the free toy table at Goodwill. Dad wasn't back yet, even though the clock said it was after midnight. He listened to every car that drove by, to tires slicing through the puddles and rain draining through the gutters, to the voices of the people and televisions filtering through the walls, the rhythmic creaking of the bed next door he hadn't understood until a few years later when he finally figured out why some motels rented rooms by the hour. He remembers thinking he could read some of Dad's books, so maybe next time he could help instead of getting left behind, but the book he picked had gruesome drawings of demons and monsters and men with their guts hanging out, and even after he shut the book and hid it away in Dad's duffel bag, he couldn't turn off the light and go back to sleep. There were too many hours between midnight and dawn.
Dad didn't get back to the motel until sunrise. When he stumbled in, holding his hand close to his chest, Dean jumped up and started babbling with relief, but Dad just pushed by him and went into the bathroom, sat down heavily on the closed toilet and said, "Stop crying, Dean. I need your help. Bring me the first aid kit."
So Dean wiped his eyes, sniffed, and went into the bathroom to help his father.
And that was that. The end of the first night.
"Yeah," he says quietly, mostly to himself. "I remember."
He remembers that first night, and all the ones that came after. Motels and campgrounds and strangers' houses, salt on the window sills and guns on the nightstands. He remembers his father ruffling his hair with pride at the shooting range; he remembers sounding out Latin words by candlelight; he remembers Sammy confidently telling their new neighbor that his big brother isn't afraid of anything in the world.
Dean smiles crookedly. For a geek with such a gigantic brain, Sam sure did have some idiot moments in his childhood.
The washer changes cycles, gurgling at a slightly different speed. Dean watches a fat daddy-long-legs make its way across the ceiling. He feels tired all of a sudden, the long day of tramping through that fucking swamp finally catching up to him, but it's still too hot to sleep, and he knows Sam won't even try.
"Can I ask you something?"
Dean closes his eyes briefly. "Dude, this is a laundry room, not a sharing room." Sam doesn't respond, and Dean feels a pang of guilt. He takes a deep breath. "What?"
"Never mind."
"Really, what?"
"Never mind. It's noth--"
"Oh, god, not this again. What do you want?" It's too late for this fucking game.
"The night -- the night Jessica died..."
Dean looks over at his brother.
"Why did you come back, after you drove off?"
Oh.
Dean swallows and doesn't say anything at first. He sits up, hissing slightly as his t-shirt brushes over the claw marks on his back, and rests his elbows on his knees.
"I mean--" Sam gives a one-shouldered shrug, looking down at the floor. "I meant to ask you, I should have asked ages ago, but..." It almost sounds like an apology.
"Um." Dean clears his throat. "It was the day, you know, the same day Mom died...and, um, the same time, I noticed on the clock, and..."
And there is no good explanation. No omens in the night, no signs from heaven, no mysterious voices calling him back. They spend their whole fucking lives living and breathing explanations for things nobody else can explain, and he can't answer one simple question.
"It didn't feel right," he says finally.
Worst answer ever. Dean runs a hand through his hair and looks up, expecting to see Sam's patented "yeah, right" expression of disbelief. He thinks about adding something about killer instincts or bad feelings or the psychic friends network or some other shit, but Sam is looking at him thoughtfully, not doubtfully, and Dean keeps his mouth shut.
After a second Sam nods, as if agreeing to something.
"Thanks," Sam says.
"Uh...you're welcome?"
"For saving my life, moron."
"Oh. Yeah. Well, you know, anytime you need somebody to drag your ass out of a burning building, I'm your man."
And that's probably the worst joke ever -- even for Dean, who knows he makes more than his fair share of terrible jokes -- but Sam smiles a little bit, sad but genuine, swinging his feet and kicking the front of the dryer like a little kid. It's stupid anyway, Dean thinks, stretching his legs out and leaning gingerly against the wall. They can't go around thanking each other all the time, else they would never shut the hell up.
"So, Montana?" Sam says suddenly, forced brightness in his voice.
"Absaroka Range, man. Sasquatch is bothering hikers again."
"Dumb ape. Why does he always do that?"
"'Cause he's a dumb ape."
"Right. Kind of like most people."
"Oh, that's nice, college boy. Just because not everybody has a huge pulsing brain like you do. Besides, how do you know Bigfoot can't read? He's probably bothering the backpackers to steal their books."
Another groan-worthy joke, but Sam's smile is bigger now. Dean decides that a "god, my brother is such a dork" smile is definitely better than a "thinking about people who die horrible fiery deaths" smile, and that means his work is just about done for the night.
Dean stands up and yawns. "Hitting the sack now. Got a lot of driving tomorrow." He picks up the sheathed knife and sets it on the dryer beside Sam. "Make sure you get all those stains out. I'm tired of you ruining my shirts."
Sam reaches out and punches him on the shoulder. "Whatever, dude. Next time, do your own fucking laundry."
"But, Sammy, you're such a good little washerwoman."
"Shut up."
Dean laughs as he jumps down the two steps outside the laundry room. "Good night, honey."
"Good night, fuckhead."
Still grinning, Dean walks back through the dark campground to cabin thirteen. He stops once to glance over his shoulder; Sam is still sitting on the dryer, paging through a magazine, moths fluttering all around his head.
Twelve fucking hours tracking a swamp monster. Three raw claw marks on his back. Two t-shirts and two pairs of socks ruined beyond all hope. Sleepless nights and ugly dreams, fresh bruises and clumsy stitches, and maybe a routine they're finally getting used to. Thirty-six hours on the road to look forward to, nine months on the road looking back.
Not bad, Dean thinks, turning away from the light. The matted grass and patches of dirt are cool on his bare feet, and he suspects there might even be a breeze, just a little stir in the stifling night air.
Not a bad life, not really. It could be worse.