a man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he's still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he's still left with his hands.
slight fondness curls around dean’s small features, the heavy scent of petrichor clinging to the air as he digs his hands into his pockets and tries to fight back a small shiver. he supposes the rain was a good thing. a metaphor, perhaps, for new beginnings and idle conversation as the darkness around the edges slowly fades away into something more. he glances back into the windshield of the impala, malachite eyes searching for the broad shoulders of a sibling that could brighten his day even more.
a metaphor, he thinks, for the ability to renew a withering connection between shattered hearts and dreams — rain supposedly meant cleanliness and purity, and if there was one thing any son of winchester needed, it was a good metaphor.
❝Rise and shine, Sammy—❞
calls he, loud enough to be heard through the window slightly cracked on the driver’s side. whether sam was actually asleep or not, he doesn’t know. dean just likes to be partially irritating.
nights spent in the impala are both sam’s salvation and the bane of his existence. he clings to the feeling of freedom, the memories, the scent of worn leather. sometimes dean will park near a lake or a forest and sam will crack his window just a bit more and let the scent of calm and peace wind its way around that of gunpowder and sweat, cleansing him of his sins.
but sam is tall and the impala is small, so he wakes with a stiff neck, joints cracking and groaning like his late father’s. today, though, he finds only b l e s s i n g in the numbness of his tailbone, sees only s a l v a t i o n in the ridged imprints the leather has carved into his cheek. they’re signs, sam thinks —- markers of the start to his long journey of penance and redemption. dean has not cast him out like a pariah. dean t r u s t s him; dean believes in him. the hope swells in his chest, so childlike and innocent that he has to keep his eyes screwed shut against the onslaught of relief that builds and builds in his chest until it feels like he will burst open at the seams.
still, he puts on a show, groaning and scrubbing at his eyelids with the heel of his hand. it takes more effort than usual to scrounge up an irritated glare in dean’s direction, because although s a m m y is young and childish and girly, ‘sammy’ is something that has not passed dean’s lips for far too long.
