The Fall

Part 2

Dean:

The next morning, he rolled out of his bed half awake after a night of vivid nightmares that seemed further every moment he spent awake. It was just the same as every other night. The difference between those mornings, though, and this one was one thing. Today he and Sammy had school. He wasn’t all that keen on going to school on any day, and to be honest, he was a lot more acquainted with school broom closets than with the classrooms, if you know what I mean. No, school really wasn’t his thing, but he still had to drive Sammy. Now, it looked like he’d be bringing Gabriel’s kid brother along too. Great.

Cas seemed kind of weird, truthfully, but in an endearing way. He seemed like more puzzle than person, there were so many stories behind his hard blue yes, Dean could tell. He knew the look; he saw it in the mirror every day. As the expression went, it takes one to know one. Cas looked to be about a year younger than him, which made him three older than Sammy, and three younger than his older brother.

Dean had known Gabe, for a couple weeks now, at least as long as he and Sammy had been staying at the crappy-ass motel. Gabriel seemed like a pretty good guy to be honest. He was a little bit of an oddball, but who was Dean to judge. Sam liked him a lot, though. That made Dean happy.

 Sam was kind of a dork, so he didn’t have many friends to speak of. Really, that wasn’t so much of him being a bit on the nerdy side as it was the fact that him and Dean never stayed in one place for much more than a week or two. This town seemed to be good for him, though. He’d made a couple of friends already, a girl named Jessica (whom he had a massive crush on, and Dean didn’t blame him, she was way out of his league) along with some scrawny kid named Garth who wore a lot of tasteless sweater vests.

Dean wished that he could stay here for a while, but he figured that his Dad would be back before long, and then they’d be off again. He hated that he had to live like this, but that was just the way that things were. He’d learned to suck it up and deal years ago, but he never liked it.

He glanced over at the plastic alarm clock. It was six fourty three. He still had two minutes before he had to wake up Sam for school He took a deep breath, and checked his phone nervously. No new calls, not a single one.

Damn.

Dean knew that his Dad’s job was a demanding one, but one call to his kids wouldn’t kill him. He knew that Sammy was getting worried, and so was he, to be perfectly honest. The food money had run out a week ago, and Dean was running on his own savings and stolen peanut butter from the convenience store a block down. He didn’t like stealing, but if worst came to worst, it was pretty much his only option.

He didn’t want to leave this town though. His uncle Bobby (not by blood, but God knows that doesn’t matter) only lived a couple miles away. Maybe he could go and see him. He wouldn’t be against sparing a little food, but asking might be more trouble than it was worth. Dean would have already gone to see him had it not been for a falling out he and their father had a couple of years ago.

That was a time in which the boys had gone to stay with Bobby (Sammy couldn’t have been more than five) and their father hadn’t shown up for a little bit longer than expected. Yeah, a little bit. That’s how Dean had put it, but in actuality it had been almost a month. After a week past the planned date, Bobby had begun to come to terms with the fact that he might not be coming back. After three weeks, he’d had to tell the boys that their father might be dead.

Dean didn’t cry, at least not when anyone could see. If his father had taught him anything, it was that weakness is a trait found only on the losing side. Sammy cried though, but only a little. After that he just clammed up, wouldn’t say a word. Poor kid had already lost his mother, and he was only five years old.