It's the End of the World (As Dean Knows It)

A/N: This was just a little something I drummed up for the sake of the show. I've always been curious as to how Dean came to drive the Impala, so I guess I paved the way for my own answer. Dean is eighteen and Sam is fourteen, for any misconceptions while reading. Please review if you can. Each review is like a warm slice of apple pie: it may not keep the doctor away, but damn does it satisfy my taste palette.

Why R.E.M.? Because "Losing My Religion" is one of my all-time favorite songs and I don't need any further justification for a band that rocks on all occasions.

As always, for my counterpart, Benny. My cup runneth cover. (The Def Leppard mention is for you.)

There was something itching at Dean Winchester, and it certainly wasn't that he wasn't going to make it into NASCAR any time soon. Okay, maybe that was exactly what he was itching at.

He just couldn't understand it. He went into the DMV, studied the manual front to back—which said a lot in itself because Dean Winchester hasn't studied anything in his life, if you don't count that waitress's sweet rack at Hooters—and took the freaking test. It took him a third time to pass the driving part, and even that was a miracle. (The cones are too freaking small!) Luckily he wasn't in any rush to obtain his license. He only went a few months before Sammy's twelfth because John insisted that he get one in case of an emergency—which, typically, boiled down to nothing more than usual hunts. He supposed it was time took responsibility, anyway; however, there might be a different opinion if you asked the owner of the 87' Buick whose side door was now permanently dented.

His dad couldn't afford a separate car but Dean already knew everything about John's prized Impala through various oil changes and tire replacements. John was wary of Dean driving his baby (his father wasn't aware that his son was in a slight collision because Dean managed to patch up most of the chipped paint on the driver's side) but eventually gave up his worries and traded him for his keys. Dean didn't do as bad as he suspected during his first few months of driving, minus the Buick incident. (It was a stupid looking car, anyway.) His next accidents didn't come until a year after the first. He hadn't intended on telling John until a police officer got called to the scene. The guy gave the unfortunate choice to his dad to make the decision if he should be driving after not two, but three accidents, and thus ended Dean's driving experience.

But that was back in July.

Six months later, his eighteenth birthday came with the privilege—John had made himself a little too keen on that word—of getting his license back. Dean couldn't have been more thrilled to be out on the road again, taste the sweet asphalt of freedom underneath his tires. Nothing could possibly ruin this momentous day.

That is, until John informed them of a hunt.

Their dad was down in Norfolk hunting a nest when he caught whiff of strange activity in Lawrence. (Just because their dad was temporarily out of their lives for a few days didn't mean that he wasn't utilizing an archive from these great tracking devices called computers.) There was some alleged spirit activity in Wichita and specifically entailed the help of two boys with less than a penny to each of their names. It was strange that he enlisted in the help of Dean's younger brother, especially since Dad was more concerned with Sam's safety than anything, possibly even over Dean's own. Sam was a bright student, showed real potential for a scholarship in the next couple of years, and Dean would be damned if he let him hop along on a hunt. There was only one thing prohibiting him from doing so: John wanted Sam to be the escort to the case.

Don't take him for an idiot, he knew how smart Sam was for fourteen and didn't doubt his driving skills—hell, the kid knew how to parallel park before Dean knew the meaning of the word hebetudinous—but the thought of having his little brother behind the wheel scared him. Since he got out of potty-training, Dean's sole job was to protect Sam from the dangers of the world. A demon he could handle, a rabies-infected squirrel, no problem, even an axe serial murderer he could take down, but on the road, he couldn't protect him from hundreds of crazy lunatics and he couldn't exactly hold his hand when he's supposed to be gripping the steering wheel till he's white in the knuckles.

"Dean, c'mon, I'm fine," Sam said over the soft hum of the stereo. "Dad's taken me down this road a gazillion times. I think I can manage."

Dean never thought he would turn down R.E.M. until "It's the End of the World as We Know It" was blaring down a medium-congested I-335. "That's the same thing I said before I got into my first accident. I was cocky, just like you are; thought I'd never lose."

"Dean, I'm not cocky."

"That's just what a cocky person would say."

The latter brother scoffed. "At least my 'cocky' attitude doesn't come with a side of jerkface."

"'Jerkface', really Sam, that's the best you can do?" Dean said, scoffing, too. "All I'm trying to say is that driving isn't something that should be taken lightly."

Sam laughed, tossing his head back against the headrest. "Yeah, says the guy who got in three car accidents in less than a year. Thanks, Dad, but I think I got it from here."

I love you, too, bro.

Luckily, the drive to Wichita was only a little over two hours, so it didn't take much sweat off of Dean's chest. That is until one finger on the audio button later and the car went swerving off into a cornfield, flipping and turning in every direction, leaving the two passengers face down in the middle of nowhere to the soft hymn of R.E.M.

Dean awoke to the sun shining even brighter through the cracked windshield. He averted his weary eyes from the light and immediately began shifting to the left of his seat. Sam was hunched over the steering wheel, causing the sound of the horn to release a steady screech into the otherwise quiet nature surrounding him. He leaned forward to inspect further, only to bump his own head on the thing. Nimbly, he pressed his hand to the side of his head to signify pain only to find blood swirling around his fingertips. That would explain the throbbing head.

He ignored his own abrasions and focused instead on his brother's when he flipped him over. He had a pool of blood encompassing around his temporal lobe and a thick, rubicund gash from the bottom of his left eye to the start of his lip. A few more inches and whatever scratched him could have taken his eye with it. He also had a few bruises around his forearms—which Dean figured in his hazy state either had to be from the bottom of the steering wheel or the lasso of a space cowboy—but nothing too bad. Only, Sam wasn't awake.

"Sam," Dean said quietly. His voice was raspy. Something must have pressed up against his throat in the collision. He tried to lend out his left arm to shake his shoulder but it wouldn't budge. "Sammy! Wake up, little man!" Dear God, he sounded like Stevie Nicks, but he didn't care. Sam had to wake up. He just had to.

When Sam remained unresponsive to Dean's rendition of "Wild Heart", Dean used what was left of his back muscles to inch closer to him. He used his right arm to hover over the boy propped against the window, pressing his cheek against his mouth. (The only reason he knew that this was a way to check for a pulse was because he may have accidently faked drowning at a recreational pool to get the hot lifeguard to perform mouth-to-mouth—which, by the way, worked perfectly.) He was still breathing.

Suddenly, he felt a rumble against his throat and words that weren't his were spilling out into the quiet: "If you wanted to kiss me, you could have just asked, jerk."

The son of a bitch couldn't move but he could somehow manage forty-three muscles to flash a stupid grin at him. Dean bit back a sarcastic response. His brother was alive—and certainly wasn't suffering from any major memory loss—and that's what mattered.

This gave him a little more motivation to reach into his side pocket, remembering his in-case-of-emergency phone. He punched in a number he committed to memory, even in times like these when he could barely remember his own name.

"Hey, uh—Bobby, I'm going to need to ask you a huge favor."

After a while, Dean got used to the rantings of a bitter middle-aged drunk because they were always short of inevitable. ("What in the hell were you thinking?" "Make sure your brother's okay, you jackass." "Do you have your thumbs wedged so far back in your ears that this idea sounded like a walk in the park?") He didn't even want to correct him that this wasn't one of Dean's brilliant ideas. But it was the guy sitting in the passenger seat of the classic Mustang's.

Dean wanted to rant at Bobby for going against what he specifically asked him not to do. The eldest knew he was in deep enough shit with his belated uncle, but it wouldn't be anything compared to the wrath of his father. Imagine Khan from Star Trek running around with the Boolean gun to attack the Klingon soldiers. Yeah, John wasn't anything like that. John would break the weapon in half with his bare hands and use your head as batting practice with it.

"How did this happen?" he said gruffly, after a long period of silence. His back was to the two boys in the backseat, but his voice was unwavering and caused shivers down Dean's spine nonetheless.

Sam was laying perpendicular, shoulders pressing up against Dean's thigh as he dressed his wound. He didn't want him to lie down completely in case he had a serious concussion, but he didn't want him to just sit there going boneless every five seconds while he tried to patch him up. Instinctively, he applied more pressure to Sam's bleeding temple. Even though the gauze was doing an okay job at that, there was never such thing as being too careful. Just like when he stopped the airbag from hitting Sam. He was still alive, wasn't he?

The younger Winchester tried speaking but was cut off curtly by Dean, "It was my fault. I know you told me not to drive, but I did anyway."

"That I can believe," he replied quietly. "Sammy would never get himself in this situation. He's too smart for his own damn good."

Dean shook his head. Thankfully, his headache had dissipated. He wished he could say the same about poor Sammy, who was about five minutes away from falling asleep on his stomach. Despite recent events, he smiled slightly as he looked down at Sam and threaded a hand through his thick hair.

"No, he wouldn't, Sammy's a great kid," he mused, "I just wished I could have given him the benefit of a doubt—"

"IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU."

Bobby inclined his head sharply at his friend. "John," he said brusquely, "he's just a kid, too. So what he got a little carried away, so long as he's not hurt. For God sake's he's your son—"

"So is Sam! And what does Dean do, he completely goes out of his way to disrespect me in my own goddamn car. He doesn't deserve to be breathing. Hell, he doesn't even deserve to be in this car. And don't tell me how to raise my son, you son of a—"

"Hey, hey: my car, my rules. Just because you have beef with your son doesn't give you the right to raise your voice. You love Sam so much? Well maybe you should tone down on the volume, the boy's recovery ain't going to get any quicker if you keep yammerin'."

This muted John (minus muttering something about how it'll keep him awake anyway) until the next mile marker. Then he said, as unobtrusively as he could, "Sam, you're lucky you're still alive."

If only he could see the look on Sam's face just before his eyes began to flutter again. If Sam wasn't halfway to comatose, he would have probably had some not-so-very-nice-things to say to his father. Dean kept combing his fingers through his hair to both soothe and keep him awake, and mostly to keep his mind from lingering too long on his dad's harsh words.

Best birthday ever.

"Dean, can I come in?"

The other brother was lying on his bed, propped up against an otherwise useless body pillow. He had his headphones plugged into his Walkman, blasting a compilation tape proudly labeled The Best of Mullet Rock. Luckily, Def Leppard's "Hysteria" was just ending when he heard the knock on his door.

"Yeah, sure," he called, not doing anything more than resting his over-ears around his neck, shifting to sit up and faced his little brother. "What's up?"

With all things considered, he looked well. After rushing Sam into urgent care and five excruciating hours of waiting time—which was all Dean when he carried his limp body, literally no thanks to his dad—the doctor came out and deduced that Sam was just suffering a minor concussion and should be up and about within the next week or two. It was only week one following Dean's time spent by his brother's bedside at Lawrence Memorial Hospital and Sam had already shown tremendous signs of improvement. He was able to get out of bed without being overcome with vertigo or upchucking yesterday's dinner (or if Dean was lucky, sometimes both). He was able to get from point A to point B without leaning on his brother's weight for support, and his face wasn't as ghostly pale as the night of the crash.

Sam was leaning against the doorframe now. He's not quite inside Dean's room, but he's still out of the way of corridor traffic. "Can I ask you something?"

"That depends; did you come all the way up here to ask if you could ask me something?" Dean said, lips hinting at a smile.

Sam scoffed lightly. "Alright, smart ass. Why did you take the fall for me?"

"I don't know what you're talking about—"

"Dean, please don't lie to me." Sam's puppy dog eyes were kicking in inadvertently and damn, if any man had enough courage to look away from those brown orbs. "And don't give me that 'we're family, I'll always come for you' crap. I already told Dad that I did it."

Dean shrugged. "The airbag was gonna hit you, so I threw out my arm. It's just natural instinct—"

"Dean."

The eldest sighed, averting his gaze to his bed sheet and folded his not-broken arm over his chest like Sam had done. "Look, you're Dad's favorite, alright? I didn't want to screw that up."

"But it wasn't your fault! Besides, Dad likes you, too. He always takes you on hunts."

Dean began to reach for his headphones around his shoulders. "You should be getting some rest."

Sam walked over his older brother, sitting on the edge of his bed. Dean still couldn't look at his brother. It was one thing to be pissed off about something and sulk off to his room without a single coherent word, but this was different. He wasn't angry, and he wasn't exactly gleaming with pride that he did what he did. Lying ran as thick as thieves through his blood. It usually got him in trouble, but right now, it just got him a pair of sad eyes staring through his thick skull, which as a thousand times worse. But he never lied to Sam, and he couldn't now.

After a long, steady stream of silence Sam spoke up, albeit quietly. "Look, I know you're not one for chick-flick moments, so I'm going to try and get through this as painlessly as I can. You've always been my older brother. You know, my partner-in-crime, the Bonny to my Clyde? I'm sorry if I don't see the way Dad treats you, but he's a jackass for not seeing how incredible you are. You busted your chops for me yet again, and that's more than I can ask from anyone."

"Really, Sam? An Arthur Penn reference?" Dean chided, laughing under his breath. "I would have taken you for an X-Files geek. As long as I get to be Duchovny, you can be my Skully."

The latter turned to look incredulously at Dean. "Dude, Skully's a girl, and she's like double our age."

"And she's totally hot!" the eldest exclaimed. "Bro, I'm practically handing you a MILF."

Sam shook his head, dispelling the (actually somewhat okay) thought of having sex with Gillian Anderson. "Whatever, jerk."

"Bitch," Dean muttered, but couldn't help but flash a winning smile at him.

Sam laughed along in spite of his stoic self and shifted to lie on the unoccupied side of Dean's bed. The first-born settled back into his music shortly after he felt Sam get comfortable. He couldn't recall how long they lay next to each other, but frankly, he didn't care. As long as it took just forty-three muscles to smile and Sam wasn't going to drive the Impala until his lady parts grew hair, the world was hanging in the balance of two moronic brothers with less than a penny to each of their names.