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In the middle there was a train station. Before that, there was a plane. The train arrived late and forced him to buy a new pack of Marlboro's, considering he had just emptied the pack he had on him. The train took hours to get to his only point B, and once it had, there was an old metal bus waiting. Travelers looking to be elsewhere carrying luggage and loved ones from various parts of the country shuffled into the bus, filling every one of its available seats. As the journey went on, the sounds of a travel-tested engine grew louder as each stop decreased the passenger count. By the time it hit the last stop, he was the only passenger left to get off. Grabbing hold of his lightweight backpack, he marched forward and exited the bus after stating a politically correct thank you to the impolite driver – watching as the massive metal transport turned on its axle and roared back down the road it had come from. The empty road ahead spelled a lot of walking, but soon his outstretched thumb managed to halt a small pickup truck. The older man popped open the passenger side door and gestured for the hitchhiker to jump in. He obliged and took a seat. The drive was silent and rather extended, going on long enough to turn what had been dawn into a full-blown late afternoon. After what seemed like hours themed only by the sounds of wind and engine noise, a small town cut in the center by the lonely road came into view outside a dirty windshield. Atop a rotten wood post sat a sign of a town named solely after its mile marker. At the mouth of the town, they passed the St. John's Lutheran Church – an old wood building that had founded long before people started populating this lonely area. A few meters later, the pickup drove by a large building he instantly recognized long before reading the sign posted at the hilt of its driveway – Town 66 Junior and High School. Miles went under the tires of the white pickup before more buildings came into sight. The heart of the town clustered together like penguins in the Antarctic, with the local bank sitting close to the local funeral home which neighbored the local clinic. Further in, the streets were decorated with the ever-present American flag as they passed by cook houses, junkyard auto shops, bars with the old townspeople sitting stony-faced on the outside, the general store where the housewives bartered what they couldn't buy, an antique shop, and the once gem of Town 66, Reagan's movie theater (now nothing more than a boarded up old building that had over-stayed its welcome here). The pickup came to a stop at the entrance of a small coffee shop/diner to let its passenger out. The driver tipped his hat as the exiting passenger bid a thank you and goodbye. Once the truck had driven off past the town limits and vanished down the long stretch of dead road, the stillness of the small town settled rather comfortably into his sphere. Distant birds sung away as chimes hanging behind him at the diner's entrance jingled loudly to the lost bit of wind that had blown in alongside him.

After a deep breath, he marched across the tar road and stopped in front of the face of a large, brick building. The steel door stated back at him with no regard for his own nervousness. Another deep sigh occurred as he gathered up what fleeting courage had brought him here. Instinctually, he looked down and spotted a rock to the left of the door. A small smile seeped on to his face as he bent down and picked it up. After a moment, he flipped it over and opened the bottom with a quick twist. A gold key looked back up at him.

Nine years have passed, and still everything here is the same. Even this fake rock with the key stationed at the door hadn't lost its place – a novelty that made him truly believe that maybe the same could be said for him. With key in hand, and rock placed back to the ground, he carefully twisted the lock only to find it unopened. A sudden shock overcame him as he tried in many ways to outsmart the logical part of his brain that was ever so rapidly telling him in a rather mocking tone, 'See? I told you he wouldn't be here'. As soon as the thought surfaced, he put it down by ramming the key drastically into the lock and twisting frantically only to arrive less close to where he wanted to be.

The seemingly faraway sounds of the mostly deadness of nature mixed in with the sing-song alarms of the nearby chimes, hummed by his ears without ever truly being recognized, or taken into some account. The key hurt his fingers the tighter he held on to to, and his eyes looked at the door with heart-break clearly glazing them over. He began to realize that maybe he had lived in his own selfish delusion for far too long. After all, nine years wasn't just the average feat. Nine years were a true test of will that no one participating in could have ever hoped to endure. He hadn't fared so well, never really coped with the regret and the loneliness, and yet here he was holding a key that no longer had the power to open these doors – having traveled back here in the belief that this place and its occupant would have done far better than he had.

Looking around as he did, the town – small and seemingly disconnected from the very meaning of its category – never truly shed its exterior. Rather, if he could print his memory of it and put that next to a photograph of what his eyes now witnessed, the pictures would look identical. However, beneath the aged facade that could barely stay hidden beneath the fresh coats of paint, he could feel the change of this town pulsating all around him. It was like he was standing in the belly of a giant beast, or in the heart of something very close to death. As a long sigh encompassed him, he felt the weight of the key as it hung suspended in his loosening grip, felt the air wrap around him like a fickle blanket not intended on keeping him warm, and caught fluttering whiffs of what he could easily recognize as a scent from his past mixed in together with odors of a change he never saw.

'You're a fool.' Logic spoke callously to his psyche forcing into him a very comfortable depression. He inhaled the scent of the world he had once turned his back on, and opened his eyes after breathing had occurred. The diner was still there. The theater was still there. The streets were still small and two lane. People were aimlessly ambling around like they used to as though the concept of time was a lost art to them. Upon getting this second look at the immediate area around him, nostalgia infected his being once more, and convinced him against his better judgments not to leave. 'Stay' his mind seemed to say as it tried to keep his cowardly feet from kicking forward and running back to where they had always escaped to.

"Dean?" The heavy voice sent chills immediately down his spine. Nothing had changed in his immediate line of sight, but behind him something had become quite different in a rather familiar way. "Dean is that you?"

He didn't want to turn around. Everything he called 'senses' truly did not want to turn his blue eyes to what his back now faced. Being here and feeling cold and clammy and afraid was not what Dean Ambrose wanted.

But—

"You still leave the key in the same stupid rock." One foot turned slowly followed by the other – allowing his body to pivot a full 180 until his thin smile and carefree blue eyes faced the man in the doorway. "I thought I warned you about thieves."

The dark-haired man looked on at Dean with eyes furrowed in a permanent frown. "I changed the door locks." He glanced down for a moment, catching the glimpse of the key in Dean's hand, "That key's no good here."

Dean scoffed lightly as he forced himself to stand firm on the ground beneath his feet – amidst its desire to wildly kick him out of his equilibrium. "You should have thrown it away then." He felt his face crack to the strain of the heavy smile, but gave way to no faltering – knowing the consequence had he gone and done just that. "It's misleading."

"I don't need to get rid of it." With a raised hand, the larger man quickly pulled back the long strands of dark hair that trickled down luxuriously over his broad shoulders and upper chest. "You're the only one who knows it's there."

"I guess." Blue eyes caught on to the patches of black ink that stained the muscular arm of the man stood ahead of him. "You finally got that tattoo finished." The older man looked to his arm with boorish eyes. "And your hair." Dean smiled as the large man flung his eyes back to him, "You grew it out."

"It's a pain to get a haircut. Plus you're in no shape to talk looking like a Wildman." A long sigh emitted from his lips as his eyes went south towards the concrete beneath their feet. "Why… are you here Dean?" He spoke from the gutters of his deep voice.

It wasn't as if he was naïve. Naivety wasn't his cup of tea, nor did it come with the package that was him, so he expected the question and he expected it to hurt. However, what came as the true surprise was his inability to speak the truth that he had convinced himself of for nearly a decade. This scenario had more or less terrorized his very thought process, so much so that it had become a routine as subconscious as breathing, and yet he was unable to say what he had recited in his very dreams. For a few lingering seconds, Dean found the reason behind his paralyzed vocal cords to be the very same reason he did not want to accept the fact that the key he held in his hand no longer opened the door of what he thought was always and forever his place. Nine years ago when he stood in this very same spot staring into the eyes of this very same man, he had foolishly put a childish curse on everything within reach. A curse that would keep it all as it was no matter where he was and they all weren't. Hopeful in the hold he had on his life back then, Dean truly believed his amateur magic would work, but somewhere along the line his adult mind morphed into overbearing logic that knew only one truth. When you leave a place behind, don't expect it to be there when you return. The world changes even if you remain the same.

"I was just passing through." The larger man looked at him with a slight shock embedded in his winter-blue eyes. "I'm spending the night here and then I'm heading back." His smile increased the longer he stared at the cold expression sitting on the larger man's face. Dark eyes that could see through him then still felt as though they could see through him now – even though the him of now stood encased in impenetrable steel armor. "I thought I'd just check around on everyone before I left again."

"Passing through, huh." The dark-haired man scoffed dryly as he folded his muscular arms across his chest. "Well, you sure picked the best time to do that." Noting Dean's confusion, the large man continued on, "Summer vacation's over and school's back up and running. People are out in the city trying to make ends meet. The only people in town around this time are those who run the family businesses."

"Ha, ha." He chuckled stiffly, "I guess I'm too late then."

"Yeah." The larger man looked on with a harsh stare, "You're too late."

His smile slowly dwindled as his eyes began to drift towards his shoes. They were worn –badly so – but still held the overall shape of a good sneaker. The ends of his jean pants were lightly frayed and dirtied by months of simple traveling. His shirt had a stain at its hem, and he really didn't know what it was or where it came from. His back and shoulders held up a small backpack filled with everything he had accumulated over these past nine years – and the weight of it all was not as existent as he once believed it to be.

Simply put, Dean had nothing. Nothing in his backpack, nothing his pocket. He had nothing except this small, barely there town with its fledgling businesses, this place, and this useless key in his hand that would never again open this door. And it was all because he was too late. Like always, his timing never did him any good because he was never any good to begin with.

Quietly, he picked up the fake rock and placed the key back in its place. "It was good to see you again Roman." He put the rock back down before standing straight and looking at the larger man, "Take care."

Roman looked on brazenly at the slender man, before letting out a heavy sigh. With one arm outstretched, he quickly hooked around the man's shoulders and brought him face first into his broad shoulder.

"Your poker face still sucks." Beneath his fingertips he felt the softness of Dean's lightly curled blonde hair, and immediately had to commit himself to a stationary position so as to resist the urge to tousle it lightly and rest his face in it. "Looks like that key wasn't so useless after all."

A light breeze slipped through the area and startled some of the pieces of unhinged brick, and wood that had yet to give in to their rotten status. The two men at the doorway spent a while simply standing in time and refusing to move to its ebb and flow. Rather, they took the moment to recall all that needed to be said, and decide within each other to put the need aside and let what occurred occur.

And time itself had no choice but to stand still.