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theshopislocal · 4 years

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corinth rains

New and improved Heaven may well be the Happiest Place (not) on Earth. But Dean, it turns out, is still Dean.

(also on AO3)

chapter twelve

Rough bark digs into Dean’s back where it’s pressed against the gnarled oak tree.

He’s part way up the knoll, a little ways away from the picnic proper. From this vantage point, he can still see everyone - Mary and John on the big blanket, Ellen and Bill at the grill, Jo and her beau du jour swimming lazy circles out in the lake. Eileen sits next to Karen, both engaged in a lively discussion with Bobby, judging by the frenetic hand movements.

The grass is wet and gleaming - dew, Dean thinks - and while the sun shines bright overhead, Dean’s comfortable in the shade of the oak tree, away from the crowd.

A twig cracks underfoot, and Dean looks toward the sound.

Sam approaches with two beers in hand, sure-footed on the grassy slope. He plops himself down next to Dean, sidling closer until their shoulders press together. He gives Dean a vague half-smile and hands him a beer. It’s an uncapped green bottle with a white label and red logo. Stella Artois.

Dean frowns and raises an eyebrow, but Sam only shrugs and takes a long swig of his own.

Dean follows suit. As the lager touches his tongue, he’s tempted to make a face - just on principle - but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. The flavor is mild, the bubbles fine and buoyant, and it cools his throat against the warm spring air.

They sit in silence for a while, and Dean’s nearly halfway through his beer before Sam speaks.

“What’s goin’ on with you?”

Dean glances at him sidelong, but Sam is looking down toward the picnic. It’s a vague sort of question - deliberately so, Dean thinks, based on the cautious tone.

Dean shakes his head and stares down at his boots. “Nothin’ much,” he grumbles, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Just...” he breathes out a short sigh. “I dunno. Tired, I guess.”

That much is certainly true. Not two minutes after he’d left the barn yesterday, it had occurred to him that his car was still parked outside his bunker in the marsh. He’d grumbled a bit, but started walking anyway, humming Whitesnake lyrics under his breath. The gravel path had slowly turned to blacktop, mirages dancing in the stinging sunlight. Here I go again on my own.

He’d eventually stumbled upon his soggy marsh, his legs cramping, back stiff, and a headache pounding at his temples. In hindsight, Dean supposes he could’ve called for a lift - Sam or Charlie would’ve come for him, surely. Or he could’ve just wished his way home - the divine magic of Heaven, and all that.

Thing is, once he’d started walking, it hadn’t occurred to him to do anything else. Going down the only road I’ve ever known.

Dean wets his lips, chewing the bottom one. “Can I ask you somethin’?”

Sam turns toward him, eyebrows raised. He gives a circumspect nod and sets his beer on a protruding tree root. “‘Course.”

Dean brings his knees to his chest, folding his arms across them. “Why...” he trails off for second, the weight of Sam’s stare pressing the words back down his throat. He harrumphs, cutting his gaze across the pasture to the shoreside picnic, and tries again.

“Why’d you quit huntin’?” he says in a rush. “I mean, after I...”

Sam lets him hang for a few seconds before smirking. “After you... bit it?”

Dean rolls his eyes and bumps his shoulder against Sam’s. “Yeah. That.”

Sam huffs a mild laugh and follows Dean’s eyes out to the lake. He’s quiet for half a minute, and Dean waits.

“I didn’t really,” he says eventually. “Quit, I mean. Eileen and I, we—” he tips his head side to side, “we slowed down, I guess, when we found out about Junior.” He heaves a short chuckle and hunches forward. “Those first couple years after he was born were...” He pauses for a moment, combing his fingers through his hair with a fond smile. “He was more than enough monster for both of us.”

Dean smiles, though something is pinching in his chest. His nephew - his namesake - is still down there, crawling across the earth. Dean knows he’ll meet him one day, but there’s an ache near his heart for all the years he’s already missed.

Dean nods sharply and wrestles a smirk onto his mouth. “Gets that from his uncle,” he grunts and takes a long gulp of his beer.

Sam turns to him with a raised eyebrow. “Being a monster?”

Dean hums and nods. “And a, uh, ruggedly handsome ladykiller,” he adds, pointing a forefinger toward his own face.

Sam tips his head back in a laugh. “Right,” he huffs out. “Except that he’s the spitting image of Eileen. And he’s gay.”

Dean’s head pops up at that, and he feels his eyes narrow into a squint.

Dean Winchester, Jr is gay.

In hindsight, Dean probably should have known that already. Sam had mentioned Junior’s ‘partner’ Alex before - but frankly, Dean had figured that was just Sam being precious about it. He’d assumed Alex was an Alexandria, or maybe an Alexis.

Dean frowns at himself, wondering why Alexander hadn’t even occurred to him.

He glances back up at Sam to find his expression has gone pensive. There’s a wariness in the straight set of his mouth, belied by a shrewd sort of softness in his eyes.

Something hot clenches in Dean’s stomach - an old forgotten shame he hadn’t felt since he’d made Lee climb bare-assed out the motel window just as Sam came through the door.

Sam hadn’t spoken a word - just raised an eyebrow at Lee’s boxers and undershirt strewn across the floor, and handed Dean a Mars Bar he’d lifted from the Gas ‘n Sip. Precocious little shit.

Dean hunches forward, pressing his chest against his knees. “My point stands,” he grumbles and takes another swig.

Sam smiles at that and shakes his head. “Right, well,” he goes on. “Eileen and I took a few years off, til Junior was old enough to...” he shakes his head again, shrugging his shoulders. “We didn’t want to lie to him, ya know?”

Dean nods; he does know. John and Mary had lied to them both - and to each other - and it hadn’t gotten them anywhere but six feet under.

“So,” Sam continues. “Once he was old enough to understand what we we were doing, where we were going, why it’s important—” he tips his head to the side, lips pursing, “—we, sorta got back into it. But...”

Sam goes silent, staring down at his hands wringing together in his lap.

Dean frowns at him. “What?” he prompts.

Sam sighs deep and scratches at the back of his head, mussing his hair. “I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Wasn’t the same. It was just... bumps and bruises, spilling salt all over the dash, and...” He chews on his lip for a second before glancing over at Dean. “It just made me miss you.”

Dean feels his frown deepen, etching itself into his brow.

Of the two of them, Dean had always known that Sam was the one who could survive on his own. He’d done it before, after all; he’d packed up, given Dean and John a bitter ‘good riddance,’ and fucked off to Stanford for years.

Dean hadn’t called him while he was away, though he’d held his phone in his hands nearly every night, staring at Sam’s number with his thumb hovering over the button.

He glances up at Sam - at the downturned mouth and the shining eyes - and thinks, for the first time, that Sam might’ve done the same.

Forty years is a long time.

Sam sniffs and shakes himself. “Anyway,” he says, and his voice is level, but thick. “It - hunting - it just, uh. It didn’t make me happy.” He turns toward the distant water, the revelers at the little picnic on the shore. “Eileen made me happy,” he intones with a growing smile. “Junior made me—” he shakes his head, eyes going bright, “—so happy.”

Sam pauses briefly, and Dean follows his eyes as they climb to the faraway mountains, silhouetted in the afternoon sun.

“I never gave it up entirely,” Sam murmurs. “If someone needed help, I’d-. I’d figure something out. But...” He hunches forward, settling his elbows on his knees. “I realized one day that... happiness isn’t given. It’s taken.” He shakes his head again and looks back toward the picnic. His face goes soft and smiley, and Dean knows he’s staring at Eileen. “If you want it, you gotta... you gotta grab it. Hold onto it.”

Grab it. Hold onto it.

...If you’re looking for rain...

...You taught yourself not to want it...

...Fish doesn’t know it’s in the water.

Something cracks in Dean’s chest, and he’s talking before he can trap the words behind his teeth. “I’m not sure I-.”

He cuts himself off, biting down hard on his tongue, but the damage is already done. Even so, he waits for Sam to ask, unsure if he can say the words unprompted - if he can even say them at all.

Sam doesn’t disappoint, and his tone is light and mild, curious when he murmurs, “What?”

Dean picks at the label on his bottle, eyes fluttering shut. “M’not sure I’d know it if I saw it,” he grits out, voice pitched just above a whisper. “Happiness.”

Dean feels Sam’s eyes on him, feels the weight of his stare pressing him down into the wet grass beneath him - but Sam only sighs.

Dean looks up, querying him with a frown.

Sam gives him a tiny, crooked smile. “You wanna know what I think?”

From nearly anyone else, it might be a snarky question, but there’s a sincerity in Sam’s tone - a gravity - that gives Dean pause.

He could say no, and they could carry on as ever, as always. They’d stare down at the picnic a while, til Sam got up to go join them. Dean would head home to sit alone on the ratty couch in his bunker, or sit alone at his little inlet, never catching any fish, or sit alone in his car parked outside the forest in the field - unable to enter, unable to turn away.

Dean could say no, but he thinks he has enough regrets.

He swallows hard. “‘Yeah,” he grunts and clears his throat. “‘Course.”

Sam’s smile widens for a moment, before his face goes somber. “There are things that make you happy, Dean,” he says sotto voce. “You just don’t trust them. You...” He gives Dean a look, all subdued melancholy and straight-mouthed empathy. “You have no faith in them.”

An old abandoned barn appears in Dean’s head - the twin of the one just beyond the mountains. A man with limpid blue eyes set in a wide, stark face stands in the wake of high winds and dancing sparks.

This is your problem, Cas had said in the tumult of rolling thunder, beneath the shadow of arching wings. You have no faith.

“And I get it, ya know,” Sam continues, cutting through the reverie. “You...” he sighs and peers at Dean, mouth pursing. “You lost a lot of the things that made you happy. I know that.” He shakes his head. “But...”

Dean stares at Sam’s profile. He’s got Mom’s nose and Dad’s chin, Mom’s straight spine and Dad’s weathered hands; but mostly, he’s just himself - a man of his own. Dean’s always wondered how he managed that.

Dean harrumphs into his shoulder, chewing on his tongue. “But?”

Sam gives him an opaque look, then turns toward the cookout. Eileen and Jo are dragging a grumbling Ellen toward the water. Mary’s sprawled out on the grass with her feet in John’s lap, laughing up at the sky.

“We’re in Heaven, Dean,” Sam murmurs, and there’s a startled sort of wonder in his voice. “Real Heaven. Destroyed and rebuilt til they- til they got it right. This is...” He breathes out a little sound that might be a laugh. “This is happiness bedrock, Dean.”

Happiness bedrock, Dean repeats in his head. Happiness bedrock.

He’d known the moment he arrived - felt it in his bones - that this was it. End of the line. The thought had sobered him, at first, calmed him in the wake of his death. But the longer he lingers here, the more miles he puts on Baby, the more sunny days he wastes away on his bench at the end of the pier - the heavier his head seems to grow.

He doesn’t miss the earth - not really. He’d never say as much out loud, but he’d lived far longer than he’d ever wanted to - ever meant to. He was tired when he asked Sam to stay with him, to finally let him go, and even here, on the other side of the pearly gates, that weariness hasn’t faded.

Dean had spent most of his life digging his own grave - and digging some more, and digging some more. Finding bedrock should be a victory, should feel like a reward, and yet—

Sam’s shoulder bumps Dean’s as he hoists himself to his feet. Dean glances up at him, eyes squinted against the spots of light shining through the leaves overhead.

“I’m safe, Dean,” Sam says simply. “And happy. Everyone - all of our family, our friends. We’re safe. And happy. I just...”

Sam breathes out a short sigh, plucking Dean’s empty bottle from his loose fingers. He glances down at the picnic, then out to the mountain pass. Dean watches him squint at the valley between the peaks and gets the sense that Sam isn’t looking at the mountains at all, but beyond them.

Sam hangs his head, hair fluttering into his face, and he looks so much like the kid Dean raised that his eyes go a little misty.

“I just wish you were happy, too,” Sam murmurs, and sets off back down the hill.

chapter eleven | chapter thirteen

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#corinth rains #destiel #deancas #fanfiction #post-canon #slow burn #dean-centric #tw: mentions of John Winchester #chapter wc: ~2.1k

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