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Round and round night-empty blocks. Baby cries and cries and cries, broken thing that won't be fixed. John grips wheel; Mary rocks Baby and sings along to radio. Sway soft in self-made wind, sway in time with Mary's body. I fell for you like a child oh but the fire went wild. Baby drizzles down to soft, slow, bubbling breaths. Hushed peace inside curtains of rain.
Days are different. Day drives are to and from. Baby is awake, bright-eyed and reaching, babbling bird-sound. Soon Baby crawls, spits, speaks. Ah, Baby says. Ah ma ma mama dada ca ca. R is hard for Baby. Vroom! Mary says, holding Baby up by arms, nuzzling Baby's chest. Vroom! Baby says. Vroom! Baby smacks dashboard. Dude, John says, Dean-o. Dean, says Mary. Baby Dude Dean-o Dean crows, thumps soft grabby hands against window, John's cheek, Mary's breast. Mary laughs.
Baby can say Rs by time next baby comes. Sam, Mary says. Sammy. Dean holds Sammy in lap. Mary holds Dean in lap. Car holds Mary in lap. All held, careful, fragile as eggs in brown bags in back seat. Deliver Mary Sammy Dean John Home.
Night, not like other nights; noise and fire, no rain. John sits on hood. John holds Sammy. Dean presses into John's side. John Sammy Dean won't come inside where it's safe, won't drive singing baby Sammy to sleep. Mary never comes back.
Dean doesn't speak. Engine purrs soft; carriage rides smooth over bumps and breaks. John fiddles with radio, plays lullabies: a sleeping city sidewalk and Sunday morning come down. Rock whole body in time to music, rhythm of Mary's rocking. Baby Sammy cries and gurgles and smiles. Dean sits next to baby Sammy, big eyes dark and staring at darkness.
Cold night, driving nowhere to nowhere. John stubbled, red-eyed, coughing, Sammy wailing in blanket cocoon between John and Dean. Radio staticky flickers. Drowns out new sound at first, high thin. Their faces gaunt their eyes were blurred their shirts all soaked with sweat. Dean bends over Sammy, careful hand on baby chest, singing lullaby. John only looks at them sideways, corner of eyes, image in rear-view mirror. Wipes wetness from eyes. Sings rough and unsteady along. If you want to save your soul from Hell a-riding on our range.
Radio fades out: just loud enough to sing to.
*
Boys smell of powdered sugar and breakfast milk, squint against hard morning sun. Dean holds the book across both laps, tracing out the letters so Sammy can see.
"B is for Bat." He turns the page. "C is for Cat. D is for Dean."
Sammy frowns, pointing at the page. "Doggie!"
"Doggie, too," Dean says. "D can stand for more than one thing."
Sammy screws up his mouth, dubious. Dean flips forward, smooths pages flat. "Look, S is for Stork. But also for Sammy. Ssstork. Ssssammy."
"Sammy!" Sammy bounces gleefully. The car hits a road bump and John curses under his breath; Sammy laughs.
S is for Sammy. S is for ... Salem, Oregon, where they're heading. S is for more than one thing. The car tucks the knowledge away.
*
Lazy weekend afternoon, doors open wide to let the music out. Sammy lying on his belly on the back seat, moving his lips as he reads. I do not like green eggs and ham I do not like them Sam I am. "Sam I am," he mutters, barely aloud.
The hood is propped open like another door. John lifts Dean up onto the fender and holds him steady by an arm around the waist as they both bend over the engine. He names the parts one by one, like Dean naming letters for Sammy. "That's the valve cover, it covers the heads. Over there's the intake manifold and that's the carburetor, it controls the mix of fuel and air." Dean repeats the names, stumbling a little on "carburetor."
"Good boy," John rumbles into Dean's hair. Dean smiles at the engine, dazzling in hood shadow. The radio soars. And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away.
*
John, outside, beyond reach, yells, "Go, Dean, now!"
Ten-year-old legs don't stretch far enough: Dean has to stand up to hit the pedals. He hits the gas and the car jerks with a roar, gearshift gearshift, and either he hears or he's thinking the same thing, because his hand flails, gropes, jerks the gearshift two clicks, Reverse, Drive, and then he says words he's not supposed to know. "Dad!" he wails in terror, peering through the windshield. "Dad!" He jerks the wheel right in a panic and the wheels spin in place; the car helps and they pass John by a hair, plowing through the hodag with a loud squelching bump.
Dean nearly falls over as he tries to toe at the brakes with both feet at once. the car lurches to a stop. He pulls the emergency brake back with both hands, then slumps back in the seat. He pats the wheel with sweaty, trembling hands as weak as a baby's fists. "Good girl," he whispers. "Good girl."
Good boy, the car says back, knowing he can't hear.
*
They shimmy under her, both of them on their backs, even though Dean is skinny enough to crawl beneath on hands and knees and roll over; he did it yesterday, chasing Sammy. John raps her with his knuckles. "Oil pan. We're gonna unscrew the plug, catch the oil in the bucket, then clean off any parts with oil on 'em. Be real careful not to get oil on the ground, or in your eyes, or on your skin if you can help it. You do it regular, every three thousand miles, whether you think she needs it or not."
"You take care of your tools and they'll take care of you," Dean recites along with his father.
"Don't be a smartass." John hands him the socket wrench.
Dean has to use both hands to turn the wrench where John would use one, but his grip is just as sure as his father's and his attention is even more concentrated. John focuses like there's nothing in the world but him and her. Dean focuses like she is the whole world.
"Put your shoulder into it," John says. "Good boy." He re-positions the bucket beneath the oil pan and pulls the plug. Dean gags at the smell, then hitches himself up on an elbow to peer at the bright arc of the liquid.
"Thought oil was s'posed to be black."
"The oil they make gasoline from, yeah," John says. "This stuff's synthetic. You wipe up the oil plug, now."
"Like getting in behind Sammy's ears," Dean grumbles, grabbing a rag.
John laughs. "Karma, dude. I used to have to clean behind yours."
Dean makes a disbelieving sound, as if he can't remember being that small.
*
"Dad," Sammy says from the back seat, high and panicked. "Dad."
"Keep the pressure up, Sammy," John barks. "That's an order."
"Yes, sir," Sammy says automatically. Dean's breathing hard and fast, with a little not-quite-yelp at the ends of some breaths, like sometimes he forgets he's trying not to scream. Sammy's staring down at his hands, at the blood welling up into the bunched shirt he's pressing into Dean's side, his eyes as big as headlights. Dean's eyes are little slits, like windows cracked barely open; he's not looking at Sam's hands. His head's rolled back so he can see the rear-view mirror upfront, so he can see his father's eyes. John meets his gaze and the hard line of his mouth doesn't soften. "Stay awake, Dean. That's an order, too."
Dean's lips move. If she can't hear the Yes, sir, John can't, either, but he nods abruptly and returns his gaze to the road. His knuckles on the wheel are bone-white and she can feel the shake in his forearms and thighs. She grips the road and runs. Past where Sammy's pressing or can see, the blood is oozing over the curve of Dean's ribs, dripping down his back, pearling on her leather. The iron of it is thick in the air.
Stay awake, she says to Dean. Stay awake, hear me, STAY AWAKE. Her wanting could to tear bolt from beam, metal from leather, fire from spark. She bumps off the dirt turn-off onto highway and stretches out to race. Stay awake. Hold on.
*
Ah-ah child the way you shake that thing, the tape deck sings. The girl clutches Dean's back with her arms, his hips with her knees, her bare ass sliding sweat-slick against the Impala's leather; she makes little pained gasps against Dean's shoulder as he presses into her. He braces himself above her, fingernails digging into the seat so his sweaty palm doesn't slip off the edge, hanging his head down in the awkward space between the girl's shoulder and the back of the seat, his panting breath hot and wet on the leather, his face screwed up with the kind of intense concentration the Impala's only ever seen him give before to hunts or her engine. The leather clings to his bare sweaty skin, slips off, clings; the girl's too.
"Oh, God," he says, like he's praying, like the girl is the God he's praying to, "oh, God, oh God, oh God. It's--you're--can I move? Please, please, please …"
He's never sounded like that with anyone but her before, begging her to go faster, Dad's hurt, Sammy's hurt, please. No one's hurt now, despite the broken quiver in Dean's voice. The girl swallows hard and nods, her cheek brushing his hair, her hair brushing the Impala seat, silky-soft, light as insect feet. "Yes," she whispers.
They shake the car's entire frame for a few seconds. Hey baby oh baby pretty baby move the way you're movin' now. It's over much faster than it was with John and Mary, and Dean and the girl made much less noise, especially the girl.
Dean pushes himself up and kisses the girl with an awkward clack of teeth, then shifts his head: the kiss sounds wetter, smoother. He nuzzles her cheek, kissing the underside of her chin, and the girl begins to lose her strained, unhappy look. Dean beams.
The next time, two nights later, Dean slithers down between the girl's legs first, pushes her skirt up and pulls her panties down. He presses his open mouth against the girl like he's eating, but he doesn't bite down. "Oh!" she says in surprise, then louder, "Oh." Wetness drips down on the leather, the girl's slickness, Dean's spit; his cheeks and lips are smeared with damp before he figures out he should use his tongue and lips instead of his whole mouth.
It's the same tape till three towns later, when one girl leans her hip up against her and says, "So I hear you can't get it up without Zeppelin IV," and Dean proves her wrong over the hood. The girl scratches up her paint. Dean whispers horrified apologies after, and paints over the scratches before John gets home.
They exude heat, Dean and the girls, fever-heat, fire-heat; their bodies pump like pistons in an engine, driving forward. They rock her to their rhythm. They rock and roll. She wants to rock and roll, too.
*
John and Dean lounge against her, familiar weight in an unfamiliar place, chugging beer and watching the stars come out. Sam-not-Sammy-I'm-not-twelve sits on the stoop reading by flashlight and pretending not to sneak envious glances at the beer. John says he's too young, though sometimes when he's gone Dean'll let him have half a can, can't have a Winchester be a lightweight, don't get in over your head, Sammy-okay-okay-Sam.
John sets his bottle down on the ground, real careful-like. Fishes in his jacket for an envelope, the rattle of her keys.
"You wanna go somewhere?" Dean says, surprised, taking the envelope automatically; they're not wasted but they're not exactly sober. He slides the papers out of the envelope and stares. Sam catches the silence right away and straightens up, one hand keeping his place in his book.
"Happy birthday, son," John says quietly. "You take good care of her, hear?"
Dean's eyes shine wet. If her engine were on, it'd purr. "But--you--what about you, Dad?"
John gives a half-shrug, snatches his bottle off the ground. "Figure it's about time I moved on to a truck."
Dean shakes his head in disbelief. Turns around, papers and keys half-crushed in one hand and runs the other along her hood, real light, no finger grease on her paint job, he's always careful like that. She preens in the moonlight. She knows she's gorgeous.
Sammy learns to drive that year, but he doesn't get much of a chance to practice for a while.
*
Sam takes her out more often his senior year of high school, driving places Dean and John don't go, leaving her parked for hours and disappearing with one stack of books and reappearing with another. Dean bitches about having to reposition the seat every time; Sam never remembers to put it back. But once, roundabout March, Dean just pulls the seat forward and then sits still except for his thumbs stroking the wheel, like he's trying to calm her down, her or himself.
"It's good, baby," he says at last, real quiet. "Sometimes Sam needs alone time, too." He looks far-off, far back, almost sad. "He just ... It's his last year. And you know he likes that school shit, he's gonna miss it. He doesn't want to give up--well, he doesn't want to give up stuff, that's all. So we can give him a little time."
She can tell he's lying, but not what the lie is.
*
When Sammy goes away, it's like he takes Dean and John with him. For a month she rusts her ass in long-term parking while Dean and John go off hunting in John's damn huge truck. When they come back, they might as well still be gone, for all the talking they do. She doesn't understand why they don't just go get Sammy back from wherever he went. He's not gone wherever Mary went, the place she can't go; they don't talk about it the same way. He's not dead.
Once John says, "Don't know if we need two cars, after all. Maintenance--"
Once, and he stops there, like he can't bear Dean's betrayed look any better than she can. He coughs, then says, "It'll come in useful, I guess."
Dean forgives him right away. She takes longer.
*
John sends them off after a pack of black dogs in Alabama while he cleans up a haunting in a Nevada mine. Dean starts talking to her again the second day, nonstop talking, you and me baby sleek as sharks, we're gonna clean up this town, bright and loud except when he forgets what he's saying in the middle of a sentence. They clean up the dogs in a jiff and then do seven ghosts in five states, just for fun, on the way back to John. After the first ghost, Dean starts singing along to the radio again; after the second, he starts picking up girls again, girls and a guy or two: blow jobs at rest stops, sex at motels and bars. They ride along and she blasts the music loud enough to drown out the wind past her open windows and she thinks everything's better until he fucks one of his pick-ups in her back seat, and it's not like it used to be, not at all. Dean grins wide and bright the entire time, and it's as empty as the grin of a skull.
*
It's like Christmas and New Year's and Dean's birthday all rolled into one when Sam comes back. She doesn't even mind when Dean shoots out the window and Sam scratches up her paint. She gives them both a smooth ride everywhere they want to go.
*
She fights Sam the entire way to the cabin, wheels squealing, steering pulling hard against him, radio shrieking warnings, but it does no good: he doesn't know her well enough to tell anything's wrong, and Dean's in the back, patching up the demon in his father's body. Either human noses can't pick out the tiny notes of sulfur and charcoal from the smells of sweat and blood or else they think it's just the stink of the demons who held him.
They leave her, go into the cabin where she can't follow. Careful! she screams after them. Careful! But they aren't. They aren't. When Sammy comes out again, he's holding Dean in his arms, not even holding him up, holding all of Dean in his arms like a baby or a grocery bag, so she can tell he's broken bad. Sammy deposits him gently in her back seat. Dean slumps loose as discarded trash.
Stay, she urges him with every gun of the engine, every turn of the wheels, every whip crack of wind past her windows. Stay with me, stay with me, and she never sees disaster coming until it's too late.
*
They don't fix him right. He comes back broken. She's learned since Sam left, and she can tell right away, even when he's putting her back together, even before he smashes up her new trunk. He drops the tire iron and pants a while, sun beating down, and then he goes off into the yard, away from her, away from the house, away from Sam. He can't hurt her and she can't help him. She figures that means they come out even.
John is gone, Sammy says, and his voice is awful, patient sometimes, and other times so small, like he's still that baby spitting up on her leather, crying because of hurts he can feel but not describe. John is gone where Mary is, except they drive to where Mary is supposed to be and there's nothing there but grass and stone. The break in Dean reaches the surface, splits his skin open, leaks out some tears, and when he gets up to walk away from her, she is scared he's just going to walk off, go into the nowhere where John and Mary went, and never come back to her. Except Sammy is just sitting there, quiet, watching Dean's back and wiping at his own eyes a little, and even though his mouth is twisted sad, for the first time in weeks he looks like he's going to be okay. And Dean stops a few feet away from them, staring hard at the autumn-dry grass and the tall weeds, the dirt and the sky, his shoulders as straight as the distant pines. She waits, and Sammy waits, and Dean comes back to them.
*
Bobby drives, cautious as an old man. The back seat holds Dean, who holds Sam, who is still and cold. Blood smears Sam's clothes, Dean's hands, the leather of the seat: like Sam is a broken egg leaking yolk. Dean grips Sam's arms so hard his knuckles are bone-white; he barely breathes any deeper than he did when Sam carried him broken out of the cabin, and his breath isn't warm enough to cloud the air.
She presses hard against Bobby's restraint, itching to go go go for help.
*
She knows it's a mistake, but she hits sixty in 2.6 seconds and she doesn't swerve until they reach the crossroads. Sammy's dead, gone away and cold body left behind, and Dean is dying, she knows he is. There's no mistake she won't make to stop it.
*
Dean and Sam argue all the time now, shouting even when they're not speaking, fury and fear in each turned shoulder and twitching mouth. Dean runs after girls, runs away from Sammy, fucks more girls in the back seat than he has since he turned twenty, his laughter too loud and his grin too frenzied. He cleans up after, opens the windows to air her out, but half the time Sam wrinkles his nose when he gets back anyway. Other times it's Dean in motels and Sammy in the front seat with a flashlight, poring over old books, calling every contact in his phone.
Hell, Sammy keeps saying. Dean is going to Hell. She knows what Hell means now. Hell means Dean will go someplace she can't drive to and Sam can't walk to, and people there will hurt him and keep on hurting him forever. Sometimes she wants to keep her doors closed, solid steel between Dean and the hurtful, dangerous world. Sometimes he sits in her with his body too stiff and his face too still, as if he'd be willing to stay there. And sometimes he races down the highway like he's got no cops or demons to fear, the music blasting and his arm hanging out the window and Sammy bitching about the wind blowing his hair in his eyes, and maybe Dean's as scared as she is but she can't see it in his grin, not right now. Right now he's grinning like if he had the whole world to pick from, he'd still want to be right here.
*
The world up-ends like she's run off a cliff. She spins wheels, grabs for traction--
She doesn't have wheels.
She wobbles to her--feet? Wavers like a tree, too tall and too thin, too weak and too slow; beneath her hands the comfort of steel, except she has hands, except she's feeling the steel from the wrong side out, except she's feeling the steel. She hangs her head down, dizzy. There's a pulse in her head she thinks might be pain, and colors and shapes have shifted in some way she can't define, wrong somehow, different.
Sounds are different, too, but she still recognizes Dean's voice, the first right thing in the world.
"Sammy?" Dean skids to a stop next to her, grabs her arm. "Sammy, you okay?"
She blinks down at her reflection in the shiny black surface of her own hood. Sam's reflection.
Huh.
*
Food is awesome.
*
Dean requires routine maintenance. She pours the oil in her cupped hand, then rubs her palms together to warm it because humans are extremely sensitive to small changes in surface temperature. She smooths the oil gently over the bunched muscles of Dean's back: she doesn't want to hurt him, and humans are made weird, with their skeletal structures buried beneath the meat and skin, all their softest, most vulnerable parts exposed to cold weather and rough roads. It is not a very sensible design. No wonder they need cars.
Dean shrugs irritably under her hands. "Jesus, Sammy, put some beef into it, will ya?"
She presses down and he rewards her with a sigh and the loosening of muscles. "Harder," he mumbles into his forearm, and she complies. He groans, a familiar sound, and she expects the familiar response, only the wanting is a physical thrill, rushing through her veins: she flushes bright red, her dick goes almost painfully hard, the hairs on her skin prickle as if even her smallest particles are stretching out to get closer to him. She rises up on her knees so she can dig the base of her palms on either side of his spine, and the smell of him dizzies her, the sweat and the scent of his skin and the tang of rosemary in the oil.
Maybe there's something to be said for human design, after all.
*
Food is awesome, but sex is even better.
*
The second time around, she recognizes the shift with a thrill. Dean? But it's Sammy there next to her, crowding her with questions, his forehead creased with familiar worry. She pats his arm absently and ducks into the driver's seat.
"Dean!" She bounces up and down. "It happened again."
Dean winks the turn signals at her. She drums a tattoo on the dashboard, crashing air drumsticks into air cymbals over the steering wheel. "This is gonna be great."
*
She presses her hands over Sam's heart; his engine chugs against her palm, radiating warmth through his skin. I'm glad you're alive, she wants to tell him. I hated it when you were still and cold. I'm glad you're warm again, even though--even though.
Sam lifts her face up and kisses her, warm and wet and wonderful, and she wants to say, I see, I see why Dean does this not to think, but that would mean removing her mouth from Sam's and she doesn't want to, oh she doesn't, and then she's not thinking, either.
*
Sam likes fucking her and she likes being fucked. When she throws all the force of Dean's body against him, he can still hold her down. It's exotic. She makes him fuck her facing the mirror so she can see what it looks like when Dean is being sucked off, when Dean is being fucked in the ass, when Dean is coming his brains out. She's seen all this before, of course, but not with human eyes, not with so much room, not with this exact view. Sometimes she closes her eyes so she can imagine it better, Sammy fucking Dean and Dean--Dean watching her with his mouth wet and his eyes shining with hunger. No. Better than watching: with her spread out before him, the kind of girl he likes best, strong and brown and soft-skinned, big tits with nipples standing out hard with desire, and his head dipping down between her thighs so he can lick her till she screams.
Or she could fuck him. She wishes they'd had the time to try that, now that she's had the chance to browse the Internet and look at his porn. (Sam bitched at her, something about viruses, though she thinks any machine that can get human sicknesses is a freaking loser.) Not enough time. There's not enough time. She can feel it ticking down like a cooling engine, like a truck bearing down on her for a crash. She and Sam barely do anything but fuck and cast spells. Every day Sam holds her tighter, fucks her harder, bruises her more: like every mark he leaves is another spell binding Dean to them both.
*
Worry-wart Sam hovers, but she makes him leave them alone. "Just five minutes," she says, "go double-check the formation of the past progressive in the original Sumerian or something," and he quits badgering her long enough to go lean against the wall of the motel a few feet away, pretending to read a book, but glancing up every other second to make sure she and Dean are still there. She closes the car door and smooths her hands over the wheel. Her breath is a cold cloud in the air, but she doesn't turn the engine on. Sam is afraid that will make the bonds easier to break, something about the elemental properties of fire, so they've been driving as little as possible.
"If," she begins, then stops, frustrated. She can't say If this doesn't work; Dean's not allowed to know what this is. And Dean already knows she'll take care of Sammy if that's the way it rolls. But the desire to speak aches in her throat, weighs down her tongue. She always thought it wasn't like this, when you could speak. That the wanting wouldn't be as hard to bear.
She rests her cheek on the steering wheel, cold cheek on cold leather, cold hands clutching tight on unresponsive hardness. "You always took care of me," she says. "Of me, of Sam, of your Dad." She rubs her hand along the dash, wishing she knew whether he could hear her. "I guess I see why you wished I'd talked to you more, huh. But, Dean, there wasn't anything more to say. You already did everything I'd ever want to ask you for. You already did everything I like." She takes a deep breath, because that's what Dean always does before saying the truest things. "I'm so glad I can take care of you like you always took care of me."
She runs her fingers along the dashboard, the sensitive fingertips against the rough plastic casing. Opens the door and swings her legs out and stands there, leaning against Dean's side a while, looking away from Sam so he can't see how she's blinking against the wind. Soldier up, girl. She squares Dean's shoulders and straightens the collar of Dean's leather jacket and trudges across the age-cracked parking lot back to Sam's side.
She's got work to do.