mari4212 | Ficpost, Wheels

Okay, if I was this prolific in any of my other fandoms, I'd be over the moon. The boys have taken over my brain.

Title: Wheels
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG
Characters: Dean, John, Sam, Metallicar
Words: 1500ish
Disclaimer: Supernatural and all characters are Kripke's, not mine.
Summary: Dean's fallen in love with the same car, three times over.

Dean first fell in love with the Impala when he was fourteen.

That was the year Dad decided that Sam was okay to spend a few hours a night alone in a salt-circled motel room, and started taking Dean out on nights between hunts, showing him how to drive.

Hours and miles sped away under the wheels of the car, as they traversed the maze of county roads surrounding whichever dot on the map they were living at this month. Dad’s voice was quiet and calm in a way it never was during daylight hours, orders, advice, and suggestions pouring out as Dean learned how to speed up, slow down, turn, and keep the car out of the ditches on either side of the narrow span of pavement marking the road. Mixed in with the driving instructions were other bits of advice, how to fix most simple problems with the engine, when and how you changed the oil, how you could tell by ear when the brakes were going on any car.

As the nights passed, and Dean grew more comfortable within the car’s skin of sheet metal, the words changed. Dad went from teaching the rules of the road, of the car, to telling him stories. Hunts, good and bad, myths and legends, ways to fight off the countless evil things that his father had either encountered or heard about from his network. Why salt and silver worked on most things, how to tell if they weren’t going to work before you got yourself cornered.

After a while, even those stories faded out, and Dad started talking about the past. His own youth, going to fight in ‘Nam, adjusting back to the States when it was all over. Mom, hundreds of stories about what she was like, her favorite flowers, foods, the way she’d laugh at both of them when Dean was just a baby, the way her face glowed when she smiled, the way she changed utterly when she was angry about something. Dad seemed like a different person whenever he talked about those early days, younger, happier. His face would light up as he talked about the woman he loved more than anyone else in his life.
The stories always stopped whenever they would get to the year Sammy was born. Her death was what motivated them, it was the reason to do all of this, any of it. But talking about it was too painful. It cut too deep at both of them.

About six months after the late night drives started, they stopped, as abruptly as they’d begun. Dad retreated back into himself, focused on the hunt again, and Dean was once again left back at the motel with Sammy most nights. But sometimes, Dad would tell him to get in the car and they’d head out together on the hunt. And he was standing by his father’s side, his backup and support.

Before those drives, the Impala was just the car. It was the constant in their lives, the place where he and Sammy had grown up, the site of countless fights and fast-food lunches, where Sam had fallen asleep on him during the longer drives, as familiar and unexciting as a pair of worn-in shoes.

Afterwards, it was different, more than any old car. It was the miles speeding past, night dark and close against the windows, and his father’s voice soft in his ear. It was the trust and the love his father showed in his words and actions. It felt more like home than anyplace he’d ever been after Mom’s death.

***

The second time Dean fell in love with the Impala, he had just turned eighteen. Dad had been quieter than normal for the past month and a half, shooting him speculative glances, ending phone calls when he’d walk in the door after school got out.

Dad had taught him to be observant. It didn’t take him any time at all to figure out that something was up. Dad was making a decision about him. And he didn’t have a clue what that decision was going to be, or what it all was about. With their lives though, he wasn’t leaning towards it being anything good. It never was. So he watched himself, went out of the way to obey his father’s orders, did all the drills without complaint, was sharper and more alert on all the hunts.

The week after his birthday, Dad left to go on a solo hunt, something he hadn’t done for months. Something was definitely up, and Dean wasn’t sure he liked the few hints he’d gotten. He tried to bury his worry, coaching Sam through his freshman Algebra class, teasing him about the girl he had a crush on, forcing him to eat his veggies and do the full set of hunting drills rather than skimp out on them like his little brother would have preferred. For his part, Sam seemed to have noticed that something was up as well, and only put up token protests before doing what Dean asked.

Dean was cleaning and oiling the weapons Dad had left them with when he heard the throaty growl of the Impala pull up. He forced himself to finish the knife he was working on before he would go out. Sam was under no such compunction and ran out the door the second he heard the car parking. It was his shout that had Dean heading out the door before he’d planned.

Dad was out there, yeah, but standing beside a large dark truck, not the car. Bobby was in the Impala, messing with a few things before he unbuckled and got out. And once he had, he tossed the keys to Dean, not to Dad.

Dean figured he must have looked like someone had hit him upside the head with a two-by-four, because Dad laughed for a minute, then spoke up. “She’s all yours, Dean. Happy belated birthday.”

Dad had given him the car. Out of everything that had happened so far this year, this was the one he hadn’t seen coming at all. The Impala was his. The thought skittered around his head, not sinking in at first. “Dad?” all the questions he could ask wrapped into one word.

Sam was jumping around like he was five years old and they’d given him too much sugar, babbling excitedly about everything and nothing, happy for his brother in a way Dean didn’t know how to be yet. Dad just gave him a look, smiled briefly, and nodded. “I mean it, she’s yours, Dean. Take care of her.”

***

The third and final time Dean fell in love with the Impala, it was slow and painful. It was taking her apart, bit by bit, salvaging what he could, fixing everything he could fix, replacing the rest. It was the grease and oil, the sharp and jagged pieces of metal that cut at his hands, tore up the calluses that he’d built up over the years of hunting. It was the glare of sunlight in his eyes, reflecting off segments of the new parts as he eased them into place.

It was Bobby’s rough voice catching on his name as he called him in for food and sleep, and Sam’s mournful gaze that was just too much to deal with for once, asking him for things he couldn’t give.

It was sitting in the front seat after he’d fixed the frame, and hearing ghosts of his father’s voice. The murmurs of earlier days, half a lifetime ago, when they’d sat together and he’d thought that their life on the road would never end, never change. And the more recent whisper, harsh and painful in his ear, the one that destroyed him every time he thought of it, the painful secret and demand, the first one his father had given him that he wasn’t willing to obey.

He poured himself into the car, poured his pain and his loss and his anger into her engines, her bodywork, the feel of her under his hands, gradually moving from a torn-up accumulation of dead parts into something alive and vibrant again, strong engine under warm black skin.

He fixed her and she fixed him, let him get past the first rush of agony. Let him see his brother again, as something other than a further reminder of what they’d lost. Let him remember why they did fight, did hunt. And he fell in love again, remembered all that this car had given him throughout the years, all the moments of life and his family that her seats and sheeting held.

He knew he loved her again when he started the engine and she purred to life, loved her when he and Sam headed out again, in their proper places, the whispers of Dad’s voice lost in the rumble of the engines and the music pouring out from the speakers. It was as close to a home as he was likely to ever get.

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