glorious_spoon | Turn the Page

Title: Turn the Page
Pairing: Gen with background Dean/Lisa
Warnings: General S6 spoilers.
Rating: PG
Summary: The Winchester brothers reunite.

Sam finds out that Dean left about two weeks after the fact, and that's only because he drives by the house in Indiana to check up on him. Say hello. Have coffee. Let Dean punch him in the face. Whatever it is they need to do to clear the air between them.

The garage door is open, and there's Lisa with a bandanna tied around her hair, rooting through some old boxes. The old truck that Dean was driving is parked next to Lisa's little economy car; the Impala is nowhere in sight.

He could have just taken it out for a spin. Be a shame to let such a nice car sit in the back of some garage somewhere, except that Sam's passed the point where he was that dense a good two years back. If the Impala is gone, Dean is too. For good. Without telling Sam.

Lisa doesn't look surprised to see him. She stands, wiping her hands on her jeans, as he walks up the driveway. "Sam."

"Where's Dean?"

She smiles, but there's steel in it. Figures. For all he runs his mouth, Dean's not really the type to fall for a delicate flower. "Why don't you come inside? I'll make coffee."

"I'm not really--"

"Come inside," she says again. "We'll talk there."

She turns and starts walking toward the house, and after a moment, Sam follows her.

***

There are photos of Dean all over the place. Dean and Lisa, Dean and Ben, the three of them together. Family picnics, baseball games. It's surreal.

Lisa sets the coffee down, follows his gaze to a photo that's stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a baseball bat. Dean in a hardhat, sawdust on his shirt, standing in front of that old truck and grinning. Construction work, looks like. He never did ask what Dean was doing for a living, here on the legitimate side of life.

"That was right after he bought the truck," she says. He might be imagining the judgment in her tone. He's probably imagining it.

"So, you and Dean."

"He said you told him to come to me afterward." Lisa pours coffee out of a glass carafe into the mug in front of Sam.

"Yeah," Sam says, lifting his cup to his lips. It's really good coffee. Expensive. "Sorry about that."

"Dean's the best thing that happened to me," Lisa says calmly. She doesn't look like a woman with a broken heart, but it's not like Sam knows her well enough to tell. "To me and Ben."

"He left."

She smiles. "He'll be back."

"Do you know where--?"

"Wherever the job takes him," and now her smile is smaller, private, like she's remembering some kind of inside joke. Dean never used to have inside jokes with anybody but Sam. Sam and maybe Bobby.

He sets his cup down. "Thanks for the coffee. I have to go."

Lisa's expression could rival the Mona Lisa's, and she doesn't get up to show him out.

***

Bobby hasn't heard from Dean either. Sam wishes he could be surprised.

***

It takes another couple of weeks to track him down. Dean's not making any real effort to cover his tracks and there are only so many '67 Impalas riding up and down these roads, but he moves fast. Like they did in the old days, footloose and fancy free, taking cases wherever the road happened to lead them. Him. It's like he thinks he's Dad, or something. Like he thinks he can manage on his own.

Sam catches up to him in a diner in Alabama. The Impala is parked next to a dumpster in the back, and Sam blocks it in and lets the air out of the tires for good measure before he circles the building to go inside. Just in case.

Dean is in a booth in the back, papers spread across the table in front of him, the demolished remains of a breakfast platter next to his elbow. Sam hovers by the entrance for a long moment, just watching. It's so familiar, down to the pen Dean is chewing absently as he scans headlines and the grin he gives the waitress as she leans over to give him a refill on the coffee. He doesn't ogle her ass as she walks away, and that's just about the only thing that has changed.

He doesn't look up when Sam crosses to stand in front of his table, but he does take his feet off the chair opposite him and kick it out enough that Sam can sit down. "Took you long enough. What happened, that tin can you're driving break down?"

"You're hunting again."

"Nah," Dean says. He takes the pen out of his mouth to make a quick note next to a pixelated photo of a middle-aged man. Time was, Sam could have read his chicken-scratch handwriting at a glance, but now Dean's hand is covering it before he can make out the words. It's almost casual. "I just like the eggs here."

"In Alabama?"

"Yep. Why, you got a problem with that?"

"You didn't tell me."

"Hey, I'll buy you a plate too, if you want. No need to get so touchy."

"Dean--"

"And hell, I even earned this money. Fair and square and legal as all get out, can you believe that?" He lifts a hand to wave the waitress over, smiles up at her. She's a pretty little teenage thing, all pink cheeks and dimples. Stars in her eyes when she looks at Dean. "Sweetheart, can you get my brother here one of the same? And another cup of coffee, too, if you don't mind."

Sam waits until she leaves to try again. "So, uh. What are you hunting?"

Dean sips his coffee, grimaces. "You know, I never really appreciated how goddamn terrible most diner coffee is. Lisa has this thing--a French, I don't know--"

"A French press?"

"Yeah, that's it. Freaking amazing coffee, let me tell you."

"I know," Sam says tightly. The never-very-distant limits of his patience are approaching fast, and Dean still hasn't looked at him. "I stopped by the house. Dean, why the hell didn't you tell me you were leaving?"

"Must've slipped my mind," Dean says. "I think it's the old age. Anyway, like I was saying--"

"Diner coffee," Sam interrupts. "I got it. It sucks."

"Uh huh. You know what else sucks? Spending a whole year trying to pickle your brain to forget that your brother's in Hell when it turns out he's actually been wandering around topside for months and didn't bother telling you." Dean looks up, finally. His voice is even and his expression is the kind of perfect blank that he gets at his most unpredictable; the kind of expression that might easily end in him throwing a punch right here in the middle of the diner. "That really sucks, too. So excuse me if I didn't notify my fucking parole officer that I was leaving the state."

Sam sighs. He should have known Dean wouldn't just let it go. Dean doesn't know how to just let things go. "Look, can we--"

"Yeah," Dean says before he can even finish the sentence. Back in the old days, he would have interrupted because he already knew what Sam was going to say. Now, Sam thinks he just doesn't want to hear it. He lifts his hand from the newspaper, slides it across the table along with a page of scribbled notes on what looks like motel stationary. "Sure. So, looks like there's a vampire nest right outside of Birmingham. Probably moved in not too long ago. Just a couple of deaths."

"That's kind of small fry, don't you think?" Sam says before he really thinks about it.

Dean just looks at him for a minute, then his expression slides sideways into a smile that Sam can't read. "Yeah, I guess. I'm rusty, man. Got to start small, get back in the game, you know?"

"Yeah," Sam says, pulling the newspaper toward him. "Probably a good plan."

Dean snorts, reaches for his mug. The diner smells like grease and burnt coffee, and he's got a case on his hands, his brother across the table, Dad's old car parked out back. Flannel shirt on his back and the familiar ache of bruises that haven't quite healed.

This should feel right.

***

A/N: Yeah, still not on the Sammy boat this season. I'm trying, though.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

tifaching.livejournal.com

I would have liked Dean to throw a punch right in the middle of the diner. Especially after the small fry crack. That Sam didn't really thing about, before OR after he said it.

I'm not on the Sam train either, but I can't wait to see the fall out! Excellent story!

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