It's the kind of town where he and Dean stick out like sore thumbs, with their scarred-up hands and their clothes that won't get clean and their tendency to case a room when they walk through the door.

The high school is even worse. When Dean pulls over into the bus zone, they both grimace at the wholesome game of Frisbee going on out front, the girls sitting on the steps killing time by braiding each other's hair. It's like something out of a Norman Rockwell.

"Wow," Dean chuckles, drawing the word out long and slow. He slaps a hand down on Sam's thigh. "Have fun, Sammy."

[The Panabaker 'joke' is distracting, but otherwise it's near perfect - hot and awkward and real. Slightly underage Sam.]

Like I'm gonna let you go by yourself, all college-soft and easy picking for fuckin' anything, he said later, skin and jacket freshly stitched, sunset slanting red and vibrant through the window. Sam smacked him and he winced, held it just long enough for Sam to almost worry, and then grinned.

[early season one, folktale inspired]

Sam and Dean lay low in Montana. Sam gets a girl. Dean gets a fryolater. The walls are thin and the power goes out a lot.

“I’m goin’ for a run,” he swears at you, seething like it’s your fault, and slams the back door after himself hard enough that your african violet falls off the window sill, spills its dirt everywhere.

In the end, it doesn’t take centuries. Just fifty-three years.

In the bushes by the steep bank that leads down the river, she tries to tell herself that it’s not wrong, not immoral to kneel in the soft dirt watching Sam undress.

They’re chasing rumors of a ghost ship on the Great Lakes, about as far North as they can get and still be in Michigan, when Dean disappears. He just steps out for coffee one morning and doesn’t come back.

Sometimes, when she stops to think about it, she realizes that her mind tells the story backwards.

Sometimes he wonders if she knows he exists at all.

The first time Sam saw the ocean was a blinding, burning day in July, somewhere in California. Seven going on too damn old, but still naïve enough to be awed, enchanted.

"I'm gonna give you an education," Dean said. "Sit back and watch." He came back to the sofa and sat down on the edge of the cushion, grabbing for the remote.

Sam doesn’t own a cell anymore. He threw his last one into the river when it wouldn’t stop ringing. It was two days after he’d left Dean. He remembers watching it fall, counting the beats until it hit the water.

Is this...is this okay? He whispers, and you want to say a million times yes but you just nod. Feeling stupid and your skin is itchy all over.

He'll never have to look at the back of Dad's head again. He's moving forward with his eyes open.