Chapter Text
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Oakland, Iowa, 2005
“So get this, Dean. Turns out every source I’ve looked at says you need a copper blade for a Mimic.”
Sam’s voice rings out from the passenger seat where he’s spent the last hour or so with his head in various books, flashlight in hand with a glare on his face.
“So get this, Samantha . I cut its head into four bits. I don’t think anything survives that.”
Dean glances over to see Sam’s scowl deepen.
“And anyway, we don’t have a copper blade, we have a bronze blade. I’m working with the tools I’ve got here.”
“But bronze is twelve percent tin, Dean. What if we meet something that needs pure copper?”
“Then we’ll do twelve percent more cutting. Big deal.”
“Dean…”
“Look, I know you’ve been out of the game for a few years now, living it up in Apple Pie Valley. But I’ve been here, boots on the ground, learning the trade.”
Dean sighs.
“A copper blade is on my list to get hold of. But it’ll take a while and more money than we have right now. We had bronze, so I worked with what we had. I’m sorry it wasn’t book perfect, but the thing is dead. So can we leave it now?”
Sam nods and turns away. He closes the book on his lap and switches off the flashlight. They haven’t been back on the road long and Stanford is still sitting uneasy in the rearview mirror. It isn’t that he doesn’t expect Dean to fight him about doing things by the book versus winging them, but he wasn’t expecting college to be thrown in his face while they were still fleeing town.
As the person who was always on research duty when they were kids, sticking to the lore is imprinted on his mind. Getting something wrong could have cost Dad and Dean their lives, especially when he was going off snippets of information barked down phone lines; he checked and triple-checked his information before passing it on. Pre-law had only reinforced that in him. If it wasn’t written down, it didn’t happen. And if it didn’t happen, you couldn’t prove it. And if you couldn’t prove it, you couldn’t use it.
But Dean was right, he’d been hunting on his own for a while now and had clearly picked up some tricks when time was a factor. Sam coming in and thinking he could lay down the law about the lore was absurd.
And money was a factor, too…
Sam had never been loaded in college, but between his scholarships and whatever part-time jobs he could pick up, he’d done okay. He wasn’t buying ribeye, but he wasn’t living on instant ramen either.
Coming back on the road with Dean… it was a shock. He’d known they were poor growing up, but it didn’t hit him how much they still were until he saw Dean counting out coins for coffee one morning.
“All right, I’m beat. Think we’re far enough away to be safe now. Let’s stop for the night.”
Dean pulls off into a rest stop.
“Wait, what? Why are you stopping here? We just passed a motel, like, ten minutes ago.”
Dean coughs awkwardly.
“Well, Baby needed oil and… I had to buy the good stuff, Sammy! And I don’t have enough left for a room tonight.”
“Are you kidding me right now? You spent our motel money on the damn car?”
“She needed oil!”
“It’s a car, Dean!”
“Don’t listen to him, Baby.”
“No, it can listen to me breaking my back all night because you forced us to sleep in the fucking car!”
“You want the front or the back?”
Sam gets out without another word, dumping his books in the trunk before climbing into the back seat. He kicks his boots off into the footwell and tries to fold his body to fit on the bench seat. In the front, he can hear Dean doing the same. The car rocks back and forth for a few minutes until they both find tolerable positions.
“Night, Sammy.”
Dean’s voice is quiet, almost shy.
“Night, Dean.”
He hears Dean’s soft sigh of relief, followed by a quiet curse as he hits his knees on the steering wheel. Sam sits up and wrestles off his hoodie before throwing it in the front seat and lying back quickly.
“Sam?”
“Put it over the steering wheel so you don’t hurt your legs.”
More shuffling as Dean does as he suggests and then lies back down.
“Thanks.”
“Goodnight.”
“Night.”