Part Eight

The bathroom door opened, spilling cool light across the foot of the bed.

A pained demand for information followed.

"What the hell? Jesus, Dean, what the hell's going on?"

Dean's head swiveled and he pushed himself to sit up. Unless he was deep in some confusing dream or abrupt alternate reality - either of which was entirely freakin' possible - his brother was standing right in front of him with one towel around his neck and another round his waist.

"I wasn't expecting you to be awake."

Sam's gaze dropped, traveled along the floor to the trail of pills and pieces of glass, and then bounced back up.

Dean did attempt a mealy-mouthed justification for his wild swat at the nightstand, but no sound came out. It was taking him way too long to process the information that Sam had been in the bathroom. Had not been absent. Even seeing him, even breathing in the warm scent of shampoo, shaving foam and damp skin, didn't seem to be enough to convince Dean that he was not looking at an apparition. The inside of his head buzzed, the insistent whirr of an electric hedge-trimmer hard at work on his cerebral cortex.

"Well you look like shit," Sam said.

Dean knew that had to be true. His brother, on the other hand, was bright-eyed.

Super.

Dean wondered how it was possible that life was raking over his meager bones like some pitiless demonic vulture, while Sam still looked pumped and sleek with health. A bit pale perhaps, but chipper enough to piss Dean the hell off. And now getting that suspicious, defensive look on his face.

"What?" Sam moved the towel across the back of his head. "You thought I wasn't here, didn't you?" He dropped the towel, sat on the side of the bed. "You thought ... crap, Dean, where would I be if not here? You're sick, I'm not going to walk out on you." The back of his hand reached towards Dean's face and Dean drew back so fast he nearly got whiplash.

"I'm not sick." Pavlovian reaction.

"Oh really? Hundred and three most of the last four hours, dude."

Dean shifted in the bed, threw aside the damp sheets. He was more or less convinced this was a flesh-and-blood Sam now, but he sure as hell wasn't going to be fondled and fussed over by him and his big, annoying hands. Because he wasn't sure that standing up was going to go so well, he crawled as far down the bed as he could.

"Rain," he said.

"Hell yeah."

"Gotta get the car to a mechanic."

"First things first, dude. Fluid, breakfast, then car."

Dean knew he was going to be putting all his strength into staying upright and coherent today, leaving nothing for challenging Sam's confident leadership style. He took some water when Sam offered it, but not too much.

"How's the hand?"

"Good."

"Let me see."

"Sam, it's good."

"Great, so let me see."

Dean wondered if it was worth a fight. He thought he was going to have to find something to get control over, however small. Not this maybe.

He held up the strange paw. The binding was dry and in place. Sam pinched the ends of Dean's fingers lightly in his own.

"Feel that?"

"Sorta."

Sam leaned a little, stared him straight in the eyes. "Okay, I think we're good. Go get dressed."

Dean laughed. He couldn't help it. He laughed too long and too hard, even though nothing at all was funny, until everything hurt and the hedge-trimmer kicked up a gear. He stood up, snatched his hand from Sam's. Then he went and locked himself in the bathroom for some protection. He showered without much conviction, was left with a faintly tender sensation all over his skin. Everything was just below the surface, he could feel it.

Fever, the shakes, Ruby, Alastair and the Pit.

Sounded like a summer festival lineup.

He came back into the room in his jeans and a t-shirt, dizzy after the struggle to get them on. Sam stood by the table, spreading flat what looked like a white pillowcase. Dean didn't come too near, stayed outside the bathroom door wondering how in hell he was going to get his socks on and what the hell Sam was doing with the scissors.

"Immobilization," Sam said when Dean cleared his throat by way of asking a question.

Dean sucked in a breath. Okay, so he was going to be wearing the pillowcase?

"Just fucking bite me."

Sam didn't miss a beat. "Whatever, I am so doing this. You're not driving, Dean, you're not holding a weapon. We're going to strap you up and you'll have to live with it. Any doctor would do the same thing, if they even let you stay on your feet."

"So I was a huge dick. So I burned myself on a fucking car engine because I was a huge dick, but I didn't lose a limb, Sam. Fine, I won't drive, but you're not putting that on me."

"Watch me."

"I'll put your freakin' ass in a sling first."

"You are not going to be putting any asses into any slings anytime soon." Sam was smooth, unmoved. And so clearly on the money that Dean felt sick. Actually felt acid in the base his throat, had to swallow it hard.

"If there's demon shit going on out there, Sam, then it's just gonna make me a freakin' liability."

"I'll have your back."

Dean felt his face burn. Suddenly the bathroom looked a good option again. He was shocked to have so much poison, so many accusations of betrayal and treachery, backed up in his heart, if indeed that was his heart he felt, sitting like canker in his chest. Since the two right hooks he'd dispensed in the Willow Tree Motel had done no more than slightly rock Sam off his axis, and Dean had never been a confident southpaw, he figured smacking his brother in the mouth right now wouldn't help any either.

The fight was already lost. This one and every other one. It hurt more than Dean thought he could handle.

"You'll have my back," he repeated finally, swallowing down all the other words he could have said. "And that's supposed to make me feel better?"

Sam indicated the chair next to the table. "We don't have any of the good stuff," he said, as if he actually couldn't hear Dean speaking at all. "You know, those slings with straps and thumb hooks."

Dean slunk into the chair, mainly because upright was beginning to be a problem again. He watched Sam folding the thin white cotton into a triangle. A memory, smelling of blood and childhood, tickled his brain.

An oddly painful smile tugged one side of his mouth.

"Remember Wisconsin?"

Dad had been busted up and out of it. Dean had torn a triangular bandage out of the first thing he could get his hands on and John had woken with his arm slung in half of one of his favorite shirts. He'd gone postal, never been more ungrateful in his life. Sam's stiff back of efficiency softened a bit. He slid one end of his triangle under Dean's arm and flipped the other over his shoulder. "I remember."

Dean helped him a little, made sure his forearm fit the cradle Sam offered, angled his neck so Sam could tie the ends off at the back.

"I'm going to pin this tight, else you'll be pulling it out."

"I won't be pulling it out."

"Yeah," said Sam, "Yeah you will."

"We gonna pay for this fuckin' pillowcase?"

There was nobody in the office anyway.

The rain was sheeting down and most of the outside lights were off. Dean stayed in the doorway of the room, hunched under his jacket, while Sam jogged up the walkway, banged on the shut door, then turned and jogged back.

"All locked up," he said.

Now they were outside they could hear more sirens, the sounds chased by a gusting wind that seemed strong enough to have overturned a picket fence across the road and tossed part of it into the motel parking lot. There was a diner next to the bar where they'd eaten the night before, and they started for that, heads down.

They sat in a booth by the window, their presence upping the customer count by fifty per cent. Dean concentrated on the dripping glass to their left, squinting through the panes into the empty, too-dark street outside. Sam, uneasy, kept an eye on the quiet kitchen at the back of the diner, visible through an open door.

A sleepy-looking guy gave them coffee and took their order for scrambled eggs and toast. Sam managed about half his plateful while Dean struggled, mostly because using a fork with his left hand seemed to be too much of a problem and he kept abandoning the food to take deep gulps from a coffee cup containing nearly as much sugar as coffee.

As the other two customers left and the diner door opened, a police vehicle drove past at high speed, no siren, no lights. The sound of tires hissing on the wet asphalt made Dean screw his right eye shut again. The volume of noise had vibrated right through his bad hand.

Sam swallowed his last mouthful, watching as Dean's cup clattered in its saucer.

"The car," said Dean.

"I'm not sure."

"I need to get her fixed, Sam, and I don't give a crap about anything else."

Again, Sam seemed to ignore him. "Hey!" he called across the diner. The sleepy guy came out of the kitchen. "Is there something going on we should know about?" He jerked his head to the diner door swinging in the wind. "You know, apart from unseasonal weather conditions?"

The guy came over, blinked at them.

"You don't watch the news?"

"Not today."

"Sheesh," said the guy, "The Church on Wilmington burned down overnight."

Dean felt his eyebrows hike. Burning churches. That sounded right up their alley, if they had a freakin' alley anymore. If they had one, and if they could get it together to get up it.

Sam didn't look as if the news surprised him at all.

"Was there a lightning strike? How does something burn down in the pouring rain?"

"Do I look like the Fire Chief?"

"That's not all, is it?"

"All? I guess not, if ya looking for weird. Medical Center razed to the ground. Still smoking, I heard."

Unpleasant sensations he couldn't put a name to poked Dean in the midriff. He followed Sam's lead in getting to his feet, let his brother fish for notes. Although he couldn't fix on exactly where he was supposed to be headed, he got to the door first and pulled it open. A sharp gust of wind and rain blew in, sweeping menus off tables and splattering on the floor. Dean reared back but Sam came up behind him, pushing him out and down the steps.

"I'm sure she's fine!" he said in Dean's ear.

"What?"

"Gina ... I'm sure she's fine."

Right. So they were going to the Medical Center. Not the church. Forget the church. Dean rounded his shoulders, shrank down into his jacket against the rain. He felt off balance, unable to walk properly with his hand pinned against his upper chest, furious with Sam for having strapped and pinned the whole thing so fucking efficiently. Never mind unseasonal weather conditions. More like a freakin' tornado.

"My car!" he bellowed suddenly.

"Forget it, we can walk!" Sam bawled back at him.

Dean seriously doubted that. Sam was leading the way, striding out against the forces of nature like a colossus, while he was finding each step a torture.

There was a police cordon around the Medical Center, a line of police, ambulance and fire department vehicles and a local news crew gamely battling against the elements while their satellite truck rocked and shuddered in the wind.

Dean let his brother go ask questions. He couldn't think of the right things to ask, and in any case he was mesmerized by the steaming pile of destruction before him, the smell of wet and cinders, the tang of sulfur and the odd combination of smoke and rain blowing in his face. It looked like fucking ground zero. And there were ambulances. Fuck this shit. There were ambulances.

Thing is, he told himself. Gina wouldn't have been there in the middle of the night. She'd still have been sleeping off the effects of a virtual stranger having a psychotic break in her living room. Gina didn't go to work in the middle of the night. That wasn't her job.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when a voice said, "Did you do this?" right next to his ear and a finger jabbed him in the ribs from behind. He half turned, blinded by the rain and the fact that his eyes had scrunched shut against the pain that a simple finger-jab touched off in his hand.

Gina was shrouded in a yellow rain slicker, and Dean wondered when he'd missed the vital information that she was actually a deep-sea fisherman. Her eyes turned distraught as she took in his facial expression.

"Oh crap, I'm sorry ... oh shit, Dean, I'm sorry. Your hand. You ... shit, Dean."

Then she was drawing him away from the cordon, across the road at their backs and under the relative shelter of a storefront with a jutting roof.

"What are you doing out?" she babbled. "What are you even doing up? After last night ... I mean, crap, Dean, you shouldn't be ... " She dragged her wild gaze off him and back over the street. He could see now that she was pale, wore no makeup and looked completely freaked. "Did you do this?" she repeated.

Dean hated the inarticulate gurgling sound he made. He had no idea why this woman wanted to talk to him anymore, why she was staring at him so intently, why she was so genuinely hopeful to hear him speak actual words that made sense.

"Why would you think that?"

"Because it's fucking weird, that's why. I mean, you know ... you, and weird, it ... fuck, that's my workplace over there, it just up and spontaneously combusted in the middle of the night. Something completely weird and ... buildings don't just do that, Dean. They don't just do that."

"Listen, no, you're right. Buildings don't just do that. I'm not really sure I can explain it to you because it's ...." He squinted over at the cordon, swept his eyes from one end to another, searching for Sam.

Then he saw him.

Not deep in conversation with the fire department guy in the head honcho's helmet, like he'd been a few minutes ago. Not weaving his way among the rapt but sodden onlookers who'd gathered at the far corner of the street. He was practically nose to nose with a woman who wasn't wearing what the hell she ought to be wearing, given the gale force wind that was whipping her black hair up around her face.

"Dean? What now? You gonna be sick?"

Dean snapped his mouth shut.

"Gina," he said. "Would you help me?"

She scrubbed a sleeve across the drop at the end of her nose. "Shit, Dean, it's what I've been doing since I first fucking met you. Think I'm about to stop now?"

-----

By the time Sam discovered that Dean was no longer anywhere in the vicinity of the smoldering Medical Center, his head was full of unpleasant facts.

Like, the fire department had no clue how either of the fires had started. Just that it was exceptional, inexplicable. The whole thing seemed to have got them so rattled that it didn't take Sam long to get the a-word out of them. There were no hints forthcoming about who might have done it, though, or even what they might have used. As for why --

Ruby was back.

Slinking out of the trees looking like the thundercloud that had caused all this. And not staying long by the look of it. Their conversation lasted long enough to make it clear she was pissed with him for rejecting her and had only stuck around to point out that this was what had come of it.

"Where is Dean, anyway?"

Funny how it was Ruby who noticed that he'd disappeared.

Sam knew at once where he would have gone, supposing he hadn't decided to pass out on the sidewalk or something. One of the journalists prowling the area, who was just beginning to get suspicious of Sam, directed him to Mac's Auto Repair. He practically ran all the way, thought it was closed when he found it. After a while, he found a woman on duty in the office, eyes glued to the TV screen located high up on a wall bracket, and a lone mechanic in overalls leaning on the edge of her desk.

"Has a guy come in needing a new fan belt?"

"About once every three weeks," said the guy in overalls, not looking away from the screen.

"No, but today, like, this morning? Black, held together by pantyhose?"

"The guy?"

Sam ground his teeth. "The car. Black Chevy Impala. Needs a new fan belt."

Finally he looked over. "Oh sure. It's in the workshop."

"And the guy?"

"He and his wife are waiting in the waiting-room." He indicated another door near the entrance to the workshop. "I said I could do it right away. Because, you know, no-one else is comin' in today." He nodded at the screen. "They're too busy buildin' the fuckin' ark."

Sam followed his pointing finger.

"His wife?"

The guy in overalls looked closely at him. "Yeah. His wife. Girlfriend. Whatever." His face split into a shifty grin. "That's uh ... not your wife is it?"

"No. Not."

Sam left the office, strode towards the not-real-busy workshop and pushed open the battered door of the waiting-room.

The room was square and dingy, smelling strongly of engine oil. There was a contraption in one corner blasting out radiant heat. Dean was practically sitting on top of it, hunched in a plastic chair. His hair was plastered to his head, his jacket was drenched and he was shivering.

"Dean? Where did you get to? I was worried, man."

Dean looked up slowly, his jaw tight.

"Hey, Sam." Gina, sitting next to Dean with her cell in her hand, acknowledged him with a half-hearted twitch of a smile.

"Hey, Gina, glad to see you're all right." He twitched a smile back, not able to get out of his mind that the guy in overalls thought she was Dean's wife. Then he turned his attention back to his brother. "Sorry I took so long. It's crazy out there."

"I'm dealing with the car. Go do what you're doing."

"What do you mean, go do what I'm doing? I didn't think I was flying solo here."

"Oh you're definitely not flying solo, Sam. What'd you do with your co-pilot, huh? She still out there fucking this place the fuck up?"

Sam felt himself reeling as Dean's voice increased in volume, nearly cracking on the final syllable. Gina touched Dean's arm and then took it away as if she suddenly realized she was out of line.

"I can explain," Sam said.

"You can't explain Ruby, Sam. You can't fucking explain her to me, all right?"

"Yes I can. Not here, maybe." Sam's eyes glided back to Gina. Even on a really good day, when Dean wasn't wasted and feverish, Sam had often wondered why women would give his brother so much leeway to crap on them. He had Gina sticking up for him like a devoted girlfriend in spite of how he'd just seriously gone off like a madman in front of her kid. Now she pressed her lips together hard and looked him over, as if she was thinking it was Sam not Dean who was the big bad in this two-dude crew.

Suddenly he resented the hell out of her.

"Gina," he said, "could you maybe ...? I mean, would you mind giving us a ...?"

Dean interrupted. "Forget it, Sam, we're not having the Ruby conversation here."

"Jesus, Dean, would you at least let me try and tell you what's going on?"

Dean had opened his mouth to reply, almost certainly in the negative, when the door open and the guy in overalls walked in.

"Hey," he said, "you mind coming to explain something to me about this car of yours?"

Dean seemed to take a long time to switch from one conversation to another. Sam was alarmed at the blankness that flitted across his face, like a memory lapse had occurred. His good hand came up to sweep distractedly down one side of his face. For a few seconds Sam really didn't know what Dean was going to do.

"Yeah," he said eventually. "Sure."

He stood up and there was a split second when Sam thought he was going to reach toward him looking for an anchor. Gina put up her own hand behind his back as if to make sure he wasn't going to topple, or to guide him to standing with the force of her own encouragement.

"Later," he said to Sam as he passed him.

The guy in overalls looked between Sam and Gina with a smirk and followed Dean out.

Gina rose to her feet, the slicker squeaking. "Looks like he's escaped seeing a doctor, huh?"

"Looks like."

"And you guys, you know what's going on, right? This is part of, I dunno, whatever it is that you do. Whatever the hell it is you're into."

"Listen, Gina. I really need to talk to Dean. We'll catch up with you later, okay? Why don't you go home and we'll call you."

She just looked at him. "That would be a lousy line coming from your brother, Sam. It's even worse coming from you."

"It's all I got."

"Ruby your girlfriend?"

"I think you should go home."

"And are you two going to have some kind of smack-down? I mean, I can totally see you laying into each other if I leave you alone."

Frustration at her surged through Sam. Since when had people - ordinary people - gotten so freaking difficult to manage?

All his emotions, good and bad, were beginning to register in the very flow of blood through his veins. It was an odd, almost exhilerating sensation.

Something about his expression must have bothered Gina, because she suddenly widened her eyes a little, seemed to lose her confidence.

"Hey," she began, when the door swung open and Dean came back in.

Sam recognized the look on his face. It was both resigned and uncomprehending, the way he always looked just before stepping in to stop a fight.

"Okay," Dean said. "My car's fucked. My hand's fucked. Two ghosts burned a house down around my fucking ears. Two buildings incinerate in the night. And now that demon fucking bitch is here!"

Gina shrank a little inside her slicker as he turned her attention to her.

"Gina, you need to go."

"I thought you wanted me to help you."

"You have. You have helped me. Now you need to go."

"I was just trying to tell her that," Sam slipped in.

"Hey," Gina said, "my job's smoking on the sidewalk, I want to stick around and see what's going to happen."

"No, you don't. You want to go get your car, go pick up Chester from school, and then leave."

"I don't understand."

"You need to leave North Silverbridge. Take some stuff and get the hell out, Gina. It's not safe."

Gina's eyes strayed towards Sam, like he could maybe interpret for her whether Dean was speaking anything resembling sense, whether he was delirious or just plain, out-of-his-mind crazy.

The woman from the office palmed open the door.

"Anybody live the other side of the park?"

Gina dragged her eyes from Sam with difficulty. "No," she said.

"Okay, cool. TV says they're evacuating that side of town. Worried about a landslide."

"Shit," Gina said. "School. Chester's school."

Dean waved at the door. "Go get your car, get your stuff. We'll pick up Ches, see you there."

When she raised her eyebrows at him, Dean made another irritated gesture with his good hand towards the workshop. "Ten minutes," he said.

"We need to stay here," Sam said as soon as she was gone.

Dean suppressed another shiver. He was going downhill rapidly, which Sam supposed he shouldn't be surprised about.

"Sam, whatever's happening here, and maybe it's something to do with Ruby or Lilith or whothehellever ... ." He paused, and that odd blankness crept over his face again, like his train of thought had just up and left the station. "I can't deal with it."

Cold tendrils of dread curled around Sam's heart. Hearing Dean say it was even worse than hearing him deny it.

"All I want ... all I can do, is get Gina out of here. It's the thing I can do."

What Ruby had said to him under the dripping trees bubbled like blood in Sam's ears.

Demons close to Lilith. If they're here, she'll be here. She'll be here. She may be here already.

"Hey, I get it. I get that she matters, man, but we need to stay. We've got a dress rehearsal for the damn apocalypse going on, Dean."

"Ruby tell you that?"

Sam kept his composure, barreled past the hole in the road. "You said it yourself. Burning ghost house, Dean. Burning buildings in the night."

"Fine. You stay. I'm going to make sure they get the hell away." Dean finally began to do what Sam had been expecting all morning. He began to pick at the pins and tape that held his hand immobile against his shoulder.

"Oh crap," Sam said. "Uh-uh. No you don't." Dean dropped his good hand, raised his head sluggishly. He looked like he was about to take a dive. The rainwater had dried from his face but now it was clammy and he was expressing all the pain of his injured hand in that goddamn eye scrunch.

Inevitability didn't so much hit Sam as wave tauntingly from the other side of the room.

Not Lilith. Not today.

Because Dean can't deal with it.

"Okay," he said. "Let's get the damn car."

It was still raining.

------

And it really didn't take Gina long to pack.

By the time they got to the apartment building with a still-babbling Chester in the back-seat, she was out on the sidewalk with the trunk of the Mazda open and bags ready.

"Jesus I'm so happy," she said when they came to a halt alongside. "Getting out of this shithole at last. Hey, Ches, say goodbye to Principal Moron?"

"He was busy," Chester said as Dean let him out.

Dean pushed the seat back with difficulty and moved a few paces along the sidewalk, keeping his eyes off the bags. This kind of thing. This goodbye and packing up and leaving kind of thing. He fucking hated it.

"God, Dean." Gina paused in her haphazard arrangement of luggage to look at him, her face so pretty and compassionate he couldn't stand it. "You really need looking after."

Sam tutted.

"Ha!" she said. "Same goes double for you, mister."

"What's happening?" Chester asked. "Is anyone going to tell me?"

"We're leaving, honey. Hitting the road. On to pastures new. Someone else can go up and open that fucking gas station. Maybe I'll drop the keys and shit off with Sara. Or Kristen. What do you think?" Dean was not quite sure if her sparkiness was real or bravado, but either way, it made Chester grin.

"I think no one will care."

She looked to Dean again. "You want to stop doing your weird shit and run a gas station?"

Dean couldn't breathe. For a few seconds, he actually couldn't breathe. Then he coughed.

"Sam liked the view and all that crap, but the whole mountain thing ... I thought it kind of sucked."

"Well if you're sure."

She glanced at the closed apartment door, patted her jeans pocket, and then slammed the trunk shut.

"I don't really do goodbyes," she said. "Just so you know."

"Me neither."

"But I can hug you, right?"

"I can do hugs," Dean said warily. "On occasion."

"Fuck that." Gina smiled a sudden brilliant smile, swung in and kissed him hard on the lips so he nearly staggered. "A hug wouldn't cut it," she explained. "And it's best all around this way. Because, because it would really never work would it? I mean, you with your issues and all. You'd make me unhappy and I'd just hate you in the end."

"That's right."

"And Ches ..."

"Crap, I wouldn't want to, you know, make him unhappy too."

"Yeah, like he doesn't already have enough problems."

"Yeah."

"Shame. You might've made a pretty cool stepdad."

"Awesome. Seriously."

"Bye then, Dean."

"'Bye, Gina."

"Sam."

"'Bye, Gina."

The doors thunked. The locks went down. Gina jammed some sunglasses on her face while the rain pattered steadily down on the windshield. The Mazda revved hard, which made Chester laugh.

Then they drove away.

-----

Sam got a look at the larches in the rear-view mirror as they looped back over the mountain.

Now they really were past them, things didn't seem better. They could have been classified as worse really, because Dean kept nodding into a twitchy sleep and jumping out of it again, making a sound sometimes that was really just a quieter version of hand meets engine.

Sam flirted with the idea of finding an alternative to the larches. As the last of the daylight faded and the road signs flashed by in their never-ending parade, he toyed with a couple of things. Past the state line, past the end of next week, past Lilith ...

The radio hummed and crackled right out of the mountains.

They listened to bulletins for the first three hours.

Chester's school was buried by a huge landslide, but it happened after the evacuation and not before. Buildings had burned and half a mountain fell down but no one had died in North Silverbridge. Inhabitants and commentators alike were just counting it as the baddest luck and freakiest weather ever.

Sam wanted to commemorate that victory of weird human optimism somehow.

Dean was cold but he wouldn't say anything about it. Sam twiddled the heating control, threw another jacket over him when they stopped for food. Dean bitched but kept it pulled up when they hit the road again. He slumped against the car door, good arm wrapped around the bad. The burned hand was clean and dry. There would be scarring, no doubt about it. Sam knew it was still hurting like a sonofabitch because Dean submitted to a fancy sling with a thumb hook when they got to a pharmacy that sold the right stuff.

Now he was drugged up, heading for another night of fevered dreams and already beginning to talk nonsense. Sam seriously felt he might cry if he had to listen to that tonight.

"You need to stop?"

Dean had just shivered so hard that his head rattled the window.

"Not raining is it?"

Sam frowned. "No."

"You'll tell me when Ruby comes back, huh?"

Sam's throat tightened. "What do you mean? Ruby's not coming."

"She fucking sat on my bed, Sam."

Sam let the car decelerate a little, didn't do a full brake. "Just a dream, man."

"Sure?" Dean raised his head, turned it to peer at Sam through the dappling shadow and light inside the car.

"Sure."

They slowed up at an intersection. Sam pulled the handbrake, glancing at the empty road behind. Dean was wary immediately.

"Don't start with that forehead shit," he warned.

"Jesus, Dean, I don't need to feel your forehead, I can tell by looking at you. Crap, and listening to you. Next place, okay? We stop."

Dean shuffled under the jacket. He tried to raise his head to focus on the sign telling them what direction they were headed, but didn't manage it.

"I need a drink," he said.

"Like hell."

"Really, really need a drink, Sam."

Sam sighed. "Dean, if you need a drink, I mean if you really, really need a drink then it's time to go back to Bobby's."

There was a short silence.

"Apocalypse," Dean said. "'s'gonna be crap."

Ahead there was nothing but a suddenly straight road disappearing into the void.

"But after the apocalypse," Sam said quietly. He reached over and laid his hand across Dean's burning forehead.

"Sammy ..." The voice was slurred and unguarded, made Sam's chest hurt.

"After the apocalypse, dude," he said. "That's when things'll get better."

He didn't take his hand away until he felt Dean's head bump gently on to the window. Then he coaxed the Impala forward into the dark.

-ends-