Fairy Lights - Part Two (2 of 3)

[lovesrain44]

Sam seemed to take this in, take it for what it was and probably realized there was more too it, though he didn’t say anything. He looked over the crowd of people which grew and shrank even as they watched and nodded.

“Well,” he said. “I think this is the last point we can get into without taking the bus.”

Dean hated taking busses and both of them knew it.

“So, we could go check into our motel, have some dinner, and take in the sunset.”

“You’re a regular tour guide, you know that?” He slapped Sam on the back and moved back from the viewing area. He was partially in the shade now, and knew that Sam couldn’t easily read the expression in his eyes. The heat was getting to him, this was true, he was thirsty, and he missed the open road. The canyon was big and grand and amazing, but there was an edge to it. Step off it and everything ended. He didn’t want things to end.

“Let’s go,” he said. “I’m starving.”

That decided it. They moved across the parking lot, got back in the car, and drove through the park, almost glad to not stop anymore, almost glad to not be looking at the view.

“It’s almost too much, isn’t it?” asked Sam as Dean turned along several one lane roads to get to the highway heading out of the park. Just as they turned left, Sam almost yelped.

“Look!”

Dean stopped the car.

“Holy crap, it’s them!”

Dean saw the mules through the trees, all lined up at a rail only a second later.

“It’s freaking Brighty of the Grand Canyon,” said Sam.

“Who?”

“It’s a book,” said Sam, and he opened his mouth to explain it. Then he shut his mouth. “Never mind. Just a kid’s book, about a donkey or something, in the Grand Canyon.”

“Okey dokey,” said Dean, letting himself smile. So sentimental, sometimes, was Sam. The mules were just mules, fat and sassy, tied to a hitching post and looking at each other with quizzical long ears. Then he turned left, onto the road out of the park, and the mules were hid from view.

Sam consulted his map again. “Just a mile along,” he said. “It’ll be on the right.”

Dean drove through the rows of spicy-scented pines, along the tidy black road as directed, content to be driving again, content to be on flat ground that did not suddenly drop away at his feet. The motel showed up as promised, though the only thing cool about it was the ancient neon sign in the shape of an Indian’s head. The rest of the motel was as ordinary as any they’d ever seen.

“This is it,” said Sam, as Dean turned in.

Parking the car and getting the duffels and cases out and checking in was an old habit. Dean let Sam take care of the signing in, just in case Dean’s name was too close to the top of any official list. Then they carried their gear up a flight of stairs to their room, which was the first left in the hallway.

“That’s close,” said Dean, as he watched Sam use the card key. “Close is good.”

He meant, close to the parking lot, in case a quick exit was called for.

Neither could remark on the room, which was, as all other motel rooms were, decorated to be bland, with white sheets, and had a bank full of lights scattered all over the place.

“Do you want the window, Dean?” asked Sam.

Dean looked at him standing there with his leather lap top case in one hand, and his leather duffle in the other. He knew what Sam was saying. Either bed was as safe or unsafe as the other bed, because it didn’t matter. The demon would wait out her time, and in the meanwhile, Sam knew that Dean liked to sleep with the windows wide open.

“Yeah, okay,” he said, turning to toss his duffle on the bed furthest from the door. He didn’t look at Sam while he did this; didn’t want to see the expression that would either be surprise or sympathy. He wasn’t up to either one.

But when he turned around, Sam was on his phone, checking their reservations, asking about what time sunset was. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Table 58 sounds good.” He shut his phone with a click. “If we go pretty soon, we can eat and then be outside in time to watch the sunset.”

“Not from the restaurant?” asked Dean.

“No, the guy at the desk, Al, said you can’t see the canyon from the restaurant, no matter what all the travel writers have said.”

“Okay,” said Dean, “sounds good to me.”

When they got to table 58, however, they found that Al was wrong, at least partly. Their table was right by the window and indeed, they could see miles and miles of canyon through the trees.

“Still,” said Sam, “we’ll go outside for the sunset, right?”

“Yeah,” said Dean, nodding. He wanted to focus on the menu, and hang the fact that the prices were through the roof. He saw elk steak, and roast duck, and garlic mashed potatoes, and things cooked in cream and wine. He could not decide, and his stomach wanted an answer. Which came in the form of hot bread and soft butter. Cool water with slices of lemon. Mushroom soup. Drinks. All that Sam ordered without consulting Dean. It was perfect, in a way. He was out of his depth at a place like that where the waiter tried to put his napkin in his lap, and where a cute girl in a fancy apron came by every few minutes to take away empty dishes and scrape crumbs off their table.

“I’ll take the elk steak,” he said, when forced to choose.

“Rare, sir?” asked the waiter.

Dean looked at Sam and shrugged with his eyebrows. Sam shrugged back. “Sure.”

Which turned out to be the best way to eat it. He’d never tasted anything so soft and buttery and bloody, and he inhaled the entire thing. Sam’s dinner as well, garlic-seared salmon went just about as fast. As did all the bread, all the soup, and the bottle of wine. Dean was stuffed. And then the waiter brought out the dessert tray.

“Chocolate, chocolate, and chocolate,” said Sam, and Dean could hear that his mouth was watering. Then he asked the waiter, “Do we have time before sunset”

“Certainly, sir,” said the waiter. “I’ll put a rush on it for you, just to make sure.” 

The rush was perfectly timed. He was able to shovel in the apple tart with ice cream as fast as he wanted, refused the coffee, and hustled Sam to finish his death by chocolate desert so they wouldn’t miss it. They paid with Robert Johnson’s credit card, and then rushed out.

The sunset.

 

In all his born days, Dean had never seen anything like it. The canyon had layers of stone upon stone, each layer taking the slanting sun in a different way, sending the light up to hit the back of his brain like nothing else had before. The sky above had its own layers from light blue to bruise purple, the edges hazed with smoke from the controlled burn and the spear points of rock temples catching the light and spinning it as it slowly got darker. A wind kicked up, pulling the voices of the people around them into a million tatters and casting them high until they disappeared. It didn’t matter that the crowd grew around them, it didn’t matter that they weren’t alone. The sense of miracle came upon him again, and while he tried to shove it away, he knew for a fact that this sunset came a far second to the miracle of his brother standing beside him to share it.

He clamped his jaw and shoved his hands in his pockets. He had to stop. He was not going to make it if every step of the way he got down on his knees to thank the nothingness around him. But looking at Sam, and the gold and blue reflection from the canyon in his eyes, Dean knew that he would do that, if it was called for. Sam would go on, and that was as it should be.

“Quit staring at me, Dean,” said Sam. “Watch the sunset.”

“’m not staring at you, jerk,” said Dean turning back to look at the canyon, smiling.

The sunset was brilliant.

As was driving out of the park in the dark and getting back to their motel to hit the hay. White sheets had never been so cool, so welcoming. He listened to Sam take a shower, and didn’t worry about towels or hot water or looking for porn. Instead, he stripped down to his boxers and opened the windows as wide as he could. Wind sloughed through the pines at the edge of the parking lot, and there was a faint, blue smell of chlorine from the hotel pool that mixed with the cedar and balsam. Then he closed the curtains to cut the light from the streetlights, and climbed into bed. Tossed the extra pillow over to Sam’s bed, and let his head sink back. Let his back ease out, let the tightness in his chest flex away.

Presently, he heard Sam come out of the shower. “Aren’t you going to brush your teeth?” he asked.

Dean could only grunt. He was half asleep. In a year, teeth wouldn’t matter anyhow.

*

The morning, come early at six o’clock, brought a small snag that wrinkled Sam’s perfect little surprise.

“A bus?” asked Dean, eyebrows rising. “We have to take a bus to go on this river trip?” He spread his hands wide, but kept his voice low as they stood in the lobby where the bus driver was checking her list. The bus was going to take them all to the bottom of the Glen Canyon dam, where the float trip was to start.

Sam sighed and in his eyes, Dean could see that he’d known about the bus all along, but had hoping that Dean would be okay with it. That he was not, and never would be, was casting Sam's happy-as-shit smile into a downward curve. Well, Dean could fix that. All he had to do was shut up and get on the bus.

“Hey, alright,” he said, “let’s go.”

There came the smile back again, eyes sparking beneath dark bangs, and that dipping motion of Sam’s chin by way of thank you. Besides, how bad could it be?

Bad enough.

The bus driver’s name was Cozette, Cozy for short, and she loaded them up with smart professionalism, announced that she had been driving for over twenty years, and had managed to accumulate awards for the most difficult and complicated driving tests ever devised for bus drivers. “I have, basically, a black belt in driving,” she announced, starting the engine. And off they raced on the road at the canyon’s edge.

Dean didn’t mind the speed. What he minded was the fact that there were no hands on the wheel. Cozy held a microphone in one hand and pointed at everything with the other. And she had the uncanny ability to know exactly how to stop right next to the brick wall that separated the road from the mile long drop. Dean had chosen the driver’s side to avoid such a view, but Cozy insisted on stopping, with that side out, each and every time things got particularly breathtaking. How the bus got down the winding road from the park’s entrance must have been due to the fact that the bus knew the way, because although Cozy certainly did, she never looked at the road to make sure. Dean felt the sweat popping on his brow the second they hit the flat part of the desert.

 

“You okay?” asked Sam.

Of course he wasn’t and never would be. Not on a bus, not on a plane, and especially not with anyone else but Sam or Dad behind the wheel. He’d been driving too long with them to be used to a stranger at the helm. This was a quirk he’d never managed to bring himself to fully explain, but which, obviously, showed. He made himself smile and nod and looked out the window at what was supposed to be the painted desert, but with the way the sun was angled, it was just miles and miles of washed-out brown.

“How many more hours?” he asked Sam.

“Two,” said Cozy, having heard him. “So just sit back and relax and let me take care of the driving!”

Dean made himself sit back, and wished that he was anywhere else. The road they were on made it feel like the bus was at sea, swerving to miss motorcyclists, oozing up and down with the rise and fall of the asphalt, and generally jerking from side to side every time she passed someone. Which she did often. But he kept quiet. Let Sam sleep, focused on the brown desert sliding past his window. And thought about lunch.

By the time they reached the checkpoint they needed to pass to get to the bottom of the dam, he was wiped from the ride. On top of which, both he and Sam had dressed as they normally did for a hunt because they owned no other clothes. They were the only ones wearing long jeans and sneakers. The only ones who had not brought little bags full of gear, sunscreen, hats, cameras and the like. So with empty hands and sweating armpits, they got off Cozy’s bus, and onto Ralph’s bus. Ralph’s bus would take them down the long corridor in the stone that surrounded the dam, right to the dam’s base.

“But I’ll be there at the Ferry to pick you up!” announced Cozy, her voice bright with promise.

Dean shuddered. Maybe they’d drown first.

The bus, fully loaded, entered the tunnel leading down at such an angle, it felt like the bus was going to tip over forward.

“I do not like it, Sam-I-am,” he muttered to himself.

“What?” asked Sam, fascinated by the churchly light coming in from the boreholes.

“Nothin’” said Dean. They were almost there, and it would be okay. He had made it here in once piece, and Cozy might be able to tip the bus, but he’d make sure he landed on top of Sam instead of the other way around, so that was okay.

Ralph was a calmer driver than Cozy, but then, in the darkness, there was nothing to point at. As well, he kept both hands on the wheel at all times, and was smooth and quiet as he turned the bus around in the little parking lot at the bottom of the tunnel. When all the passengers got out of the bus, Dean could see their necks were craning up to look at something. Dean got out and looked up too. They were, by golly, at the bottom, the very bottom of the massive concrete structure that was the Glen Canyon dam.

“Dude,” said Sam.

“Seriously,” agreed Dean.

Someone with a construction helmet led them down the catwalk to the waiting pontoons. That’s when it started getting cool, both physically and mentally. The temperature, which had been hovering near one hundred at the top of the dam, settled itself down to a delicious and watery seventy-five. Plus, the view of the river stretching out in front of them, framed by the brick red of the rising canyon walls was pretty outta site as well.

“Pick a pontoon, please,” said their guide. The pontoons were low-level watercraft with two huge air filled blades on either side. One small wave would toss them, but Sam assured him that on this part of the river, there were no waves.

 

Sam hopped in the first one they got to, and Dean followed suit. He figure that Sam would sit in the middle, which he did, so Dean parked himself right beside Sam, and stretched out his legs too. Plus, there was a small backrest and behind that two coolers. Everyone else had to sit up, while Sam and Dean could kick back and relax.

“Hope you don’t mind being the drink servers,” said someone from behind them.

Dean turned to see a very tanned woman wearing green shorts and t-shirt and no shoes. She had a hat and sunglasses, but he got the feeling she spent a lot of time in the sun.

“No, we don’t mind,” said Sam. Of course.

“I’m Kelly,” she said to one and all, “and I’ll be your guide for the day.”

She went over the rules, their route, and what they might expect to see. Dean listened with half an ear, watched Sam be fully attentive, and wondered if he might take his shoes off, as everyone else seemed to be doing. Like they’d taken this trip a hundred times before. Kelly started the engine, and the pontoon began to move, with almost no wake, with the current of the river. Within five minutes, Sam had taken his sneakers off and was content to tap his long toes in the cool water that had already puddled at the bottom of the pontoon. His shoes, with the socks tucked inside, were damp quite soon after.

 

“They’re wet,” said Sam, looking at Dean sideways. “And cool.”

Dean sighed. “Alright, alright, alright.” Then he took his shoes off too. The water was cold and completely distracted him from any other thoughts.

As the pontoon glided, Kelly talked on and off about the depth and size of the canyon, how it was formed, who discovered it, what it was used for, and other stuff that Sam listened to with full on attention. Dean let his mind wander. It was a bit like school, so it was easy to shut out. Besides if there was something he needed to know, Sammy would tell him. She pointed out birds, and rock formations, talked about movies that had been made there, and what sort of pass you might need for fishing or camping. But she didn’t talk all the time, and for that, Dean was grateful. Grateful to let his eye be drawn up the red sides of the canyon, to take in the blue sheen that looked like polished glass but was, according to Kelly, some sort of mold that took thousands of years to grow and was a testament to the age of the canyon. The water, as well, looked like glass from time to time, and when the breeze kicked up and ruffled it, looked as if a bird had brushed its wing across the surface.

 

Overhead, the sun was hard gold, cutting through the almost neon blue of the sky. The contrast of the top edge against the sky was striking, and Dean found his gaze drawn upward over and over again. The canyon walls rose higher as they floated down river, and it was almost as if the river was swallowing them into a throat, from which they could not return. Dean shook his head. Rivers of no return, whether or not they were named Styx, was not where his thoughts should be today. He would not let them. Sitting up, he gave Sam a hard smack on the thigh.

“Soda,” he said.

“Got it,” said Sam, reaching without thinking to snap that Dean should get his own soda. But he’d been serving cold cans of the stuff since they started, reaching behind him into the cooler when requested. He handed Dean a coke, and pulled an orange soda out for himself. They popped the lids at the same time, smiled at each other, and Dean sank his drink back with an almost obscene pleasure. It was sometimes disgusting how good a soda could be. The only way it might be better was if it had been a beer, and there’d been some hot babe to wipe his brow.

Sam, as well, seemed very content, what with all the teachery, classroom lecture stuff being thrown at him. For that reason alone, Dean told himself to keep quiet. Quiet and watchful and at peace. For Sam’s sake.

 

The canyon, as well, helped with this. When Kelly wasn’t talking, and she’d cut the engine, they floated along as if under a bell of silence. It would have been spooky if it had not also been so very pleasant. Not as pleasant as, say, getting blown by Pamela Anderson, but good, in its own way. Sun, silence, water, blue sky overhead and Sam at his side. That was enough. Each day with Sam would be enough.

He did not let himself do any math to figure out how many he had left.

By the time his stomach was screaming, the pontoon stopped for lunch. Everyone got out at the beach where they tied up, and there, waiting, was another pontoon, this one with a canopy overhead, ladened with food. Two nice ladies helped everyone make sandwiches, get chips and fruit and cookies and more soda. Dean made himself two sandwiches, one roast beef, and one turkey, with extra mayo on both and plenty of cheese. With chips piled on top, he had no room for anything else, but the woman assured him there would be plenty for seconds or thirds. Sam followed suit, both his sandwiches were ham, and they found themselves on one of the tarps in the shade of the river willows. Around them sat families with children, couples with out, all taking off hats and talking and eating. It was so normal, so very, very normal, that for a moment, Dean felt out of place.

Except for Sam.

It was hotter now, too, even in the shade, because they were off the river. The heat from the canyon walls bore down on them as if they’d been in an oven. There was almost no breeze, and ants started joining them. Dean began to sweat.

“Not a picnic without ‘em,” said Sam, flicking one off his toe.

“Nope,” agreed Dean, thinking of the many meals they’d eaten in places far nastier and more bug infested than this. Like the one motel in Arkansas, where the gnats had been swarming even before they’d opened the loaf of bread and the can of quick heat chili. Somewhere in that kitchenette, something had turned to mold and had drawn the gnats. None of them had been able to find it, so for three days, they slept, ate, and rested with gnats around their heads.

“Remember Arkansas?” asked Sam. He turned his head towards Dean, his mouth full of ham sandwich, and Dean had to swallow and look away, pretending that something had caught his attention.

Yeah, he remembered Arkansas. For one brief second he knew he remembered every motel they’d ever stayed at. Every hunt they’d ever shared. Every meal they’d ever taken. Every moment of every day shared with Sam. Just like this one, just as brief, and just as gilded with silver, and platinum, and gold and every other precious thing on the planet.

“Hey,” he said, hopping up, “I’m gonna get some cookies, you want any?” 

If Sam was startled by this, he did not indicate, but as Dean looked down at the top of his brother’s head, he willed Sam not to look up. Sam did not, but only answered, mouth still full, “Get me a ton of chip, chip, chipperoos, would you?”

Sam had ever been a chocolate chip cookie fiend; Dean preferred Oreos himself. Luckily, there were both, and as Dean got a new plate and heaped it full of Sam’s favorite and his own, the lady behind the counter, smiled at him. He smiled back, and walked back to Sam, fixing his game face on good and tight.

“It’s getting hot,” said Sam, taking the plate from him so he could sit down.

“Yeah,” said Dean, sitting cross-legged on the tarp. He took the plate back and stuffed two Oreos in his mouth as fast as he could. They really did need milk to dunk them into, but the soda would do just fine to wash them down. Besides, his main goal was keeping his mouth full so Sam wouldn’t be able to ask him any questions. Or if he did ask, it would be forever before Dean could answer. And by that time, maybe Sam would have forgotten what he’d asked. Heck. It could happen. As it was, Sam was content to munch away on store baked chocolate chips, his eyes half closed as if they tasted like ambrosia. They were pretty good, but Dean had it on even better authority, Sam when drunk, to be exact, that Jessica had made chocolate chip cookies that melted, just fucking melted, on your tongue. Dean believed it. That girl had looked like she could cook.

Once the majority had finished lunch, some of the kids, their parents watching closely, went to the river’s edge and started to stick their toes in. This led to whole feet going in, and then legs, and then the splashing began. Someone asked Kelly if it was alright to do this, or maybe even swim a little, and she nodded and waved and told them the river bottom was sandy and the current so slow where they were that it was quite safe. Cold, though, but the warning was lost on the kids who took the opportunity, before parents could say no, to dive right in. Head dunking, splashing, and shouting sounds bounced off the canyon walls, making it seem that there was another party, just as loud and just as boisterous right around the next bend. But it was only them, them in the silence, their laughter and shouts the only sound.

Sam was watching them.

“Wanna go in?” asked Dean. Which was a dumb question with an obvious answer. Sam loved to swim, it was part of the reason the college he’d picked had been near the ocean. If there was a salty breeze to be had, some cooling sea wind to be in, Sam was there. With Dean right behind him, truth be told.

Sam’s answer was a silent nod, and Dean began to look around for the trashcan. Which was, of course, placed right by the pontoon that served the food. He took their trash, and hustled back to Sam, trying to ignore the families all around. People who had brought the right gear and worn the right, light cotton clothes. Jeans would be heavy when wet, but he hardly imagined that the mothers and fathers present would enjoy watching him strip to his trunks. Sam stood up as he came back, and then he shrugged, telling Dean, that yeah, Sam’s thoughts were his own.

“We’ll dry,” said Sam. “Especially in this heat.”

And so they would.

They forwent the usual rock, paper, scissors to determine who would go in first and tell the other how it was. Instead, at Sam’s nod, they raced in, feet churning the sand to spray, the water coming up to their waists as cold as if it had been from the artic, and when Dean’s head went under, he felt his heart want to stop. It was cold. Colder than anything, and clean, and somehow sharp, going right to his brain. Making him gasp as he surfaced, looking for Sam and finding him, watching the dark head whip back to get the hair out of Sam’s eyes. It wasn’t really deep, but as he floated, most of him was underwater, his t-shirt floating around his chest and back like seaweed, his jeans pulling him under with their weight.

As he looked up at the sky, the blue of it hit him, coming down like an anvil right between the eyes.

 

Sam floated beside him, splashing a little to keep himself steady. “Who knew?” he asked, almost to himself.

“Not me,” said Dean.

“I thought it was just desert out here, you know?”

“Yeah,” said Dean. “Guess not.”

Nope, not desert, not by half. It was all sky and canyon and water, and, as he sunk his head below the surface of the water, it was silence. It was good for a moment, and then, as he could hear the blood pounding in his ears, it got bad. He didn’t want to hear his heart going, didn’t want to imagine it ending. Didn’t want to think of Sam all alone. His head snapped up, and he bent his knees, and pushed himself to standing, feet grinding in the sand.

“I’m done,” he said. “I’m going to go dry off.”

He went to one of the rocks on the shore, and sat there with his arms curled around his knees, dripping. Water slid down his neck and his back and his ankles, and his clothes clung to him like paint. It was almost cold, but it was good to watch Sam goofing around in the water like a seal, catching a ball one of the kids had tossed, and throwing it back, overhand, to land squarely at the kid’s feet. Laughing, mouth opened, the sun catching his eyes, the white of his teeth.

Dean reminded himself to attend to his game face. He figured he’d have a lot of practice in the coming year, but it was important to start right away.

With lunch finished up, and the kids, and Sam, tiring of the water, everything and everyone was loaded back on the pontoon, and they began to float again down river. The lunch pontoon was soon left far behind. The sun was hot overhead, and quite fast, everyone was as dry as if they’d never gone in the water. Sam downed another orange drink while Dean longed for a beer. The red canyon walls continued to rise, got redder, and it got hotter, even though they were on the water. Out came hats and sunscreen. One woman even had a tiny umbrella. Dean and Sam sweated in the sun.

“Dude,” said Sam. “Sunburn.”

“You too,” said Dean.

Someone handed them a tube of sunscreen, and Dean thought about it for a moment, and then put some on. He handed the tube to Sam, and nodded at him to make him do the same. The unwritten rule about not taking handouts could be foregone in the light of the risks of a sunburn.

“Thanks, mister,” Sam said, handing the sunscreen back.

“No problem,” said the man. “You boys not spend a lot of time in the desert, then?”

“Is it that obvious?” asked Sam, with an open mouthed smile. Dean watched him kick into his I-am-friendly mode and leaned back to let him.

“Yeah,” said the man also smiling. “A little.”

“We’re from,” here Sam paused, as if thinking of regions and accents and where no one on the boat was likely to be from. “We’re from Michigan, and, well, the sun there isn’t like it is here.”

“I’ll say,” said Kelly from above them. “Been there once, and never again. Thought I was going to shrivel and die from the lack of sunlight.”

The man who’d shared his sunscreen with them responded about the Great Lakes. Sam looked at Dean and smiled, then sat back as well. The conversation was off and running without him, and his job was done.

Although the trip was not. About half an hour later, the pontoon docked on a sandy beach, and everyone got out. Then Kelly began to tell them the difference between pictographs and petroglyphs, the latter of which was etched into the canyon walls, just up the path. After a brief five-minute walk, there would be a park ranger to tell them about the history of the petroglyphs and the canyon that surrounded them.

Sam was on fire, Dean could see it in his eyes how much he wanted to go see this thing. Dean had heard about petro-whatsits, of course, but they were basically 5,000 year old graffiti and so what? Besides, his jeans were drying in hard creases along his legs and the sunburn on the back of his neck was not stopping. The air under the willows along the bank was cool, the sand under his feet damp from the water. The heat waves banking off the top of the path through the trees was another matter.

 

“You go, Sam,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

Sam looked at him, hands hanging at his sides. With one corner of his eyes he was watching the contents of their pontoon trekking up the path. With the other corner, he was looking at Dean, and just about to say, okay, Dean, because what does  it matter after all? I've never seen a petroglyph before, and I can  certainly live the rest of my life without ever seeing one, and—it was too much.

“Okay, Sam,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Shiny. That’s what Sam’s eyes were at that moment. Shiny. Happy. Shoulders settling as he turned and led the way up the path, which was steep and dusty and got hotter as they went up it.

“I can’t believe I’m walking all this way in bare feet,” he said to Sam’s back. He reached up to keep a willow branch from whapping him in the eyes, and ducked under a spider hanging down.

“Me either,” said Sam, with a contentment in his voice that told Dean that his baby brother was, in his mind, reliving history. Indians had walked where they were now walking. For thousands of years and maybe they were even stepping on the same dirt! He could almost see the text and the footnotes and the charts popping out of Sam. Well, okay. It was pretty cool. He looked down at his toes as he stepped up on a huge rock that was acting as a natural stair. He never went barefoot, yet here he was, tromping down on top of 5,000 fucking years of history. For Sam, anything.

At the top of the path up from the bank, the temperature zoomed up towards the hundred mark. It had to be. Sweat popped out along his back and his forehead, and he kept his mouth shut as he followed Sam. The now-level path meandered along the wall of the canyon as it rose to his left, rose and sand and buff colored, with streaks of hard, glassy blue where the mold was growing. Along the way they met people coming back from the petroglyphs, looking hot and serious, as if what the park ranger had told them was almost too much to bear.

Dean watched the sweat trickle out from behind Sam’s ears, and kept his pace slow, letting Sam absorb all the damn history he wanted. Looking at cactus spines, and willow shrubs growing out of the sand, out of nothing, and getting a small, unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach. Heat was not his thing.

When they reached the park ranger, he was standing there, just like in the books, dressed for summer’s heat, but wearing the buff and green of park rangers everywhere. He was a weedy little man, as if he followed a perfect non-fat, no fun diet, but he seemed able enough to withstand the heat, and in fact stood there with nary a sweat stain. Leading Dean to wonder where he’d come from. He’d certainly not been on any of the pontoons and there was no other way to get to this particular beach.

But he was talking now and pointing to the scratches on the wall, and Dean made himself pay attention to that, made himself leave behind the mystery of the appearing park ranger. Besides, Sam was already oogling the petroglyphs as up close as he could get. There was a little circle of small stones that showed you how close you could get, and it seemed strange to Dean that they wouldn’t allow people any closer than they did, when the whole weathering thing was in play, here. Sun, rain, more sun, heat. Day in and day out, yet the petroglyphs looked like they’d been scratched in yesterday.

 

“5,000 years ago,” the park ranger was saying, “Indians lived in these canyons.”

Sam was a goner. Mouth hanging open a little, taking in every word while Dean let the yadda yadda yadda float around him. Until one snotty kid spoke up.

“Those are fake,” he said.

“They are not,” said Sam, breaking rule number 58: never talk to snotty kids.

“They are,” insisted the kid.

Then the park ranger asked, “Why do you think so, son?”

“Because it’s just a scam that the government is doing. They’re faking us out over the importance of this canyon so they can make money off it.”

“But these petroglyphs are 5,000 years old,” said Sam. The kid was definitely peeing on Sam’s parade, and Sam never liked that. Dean hid his smile. “They’ve done tests!”

“The tests are faked,” insisted the kid.

Dean looked around for the kid’s parents but no one seemed to be owning up to having sired him.

“The tests aren’t faked,” said the park ranger equably. “In fact, there’s mold growing inside of several of the pictographs, and that takes 5,000 years to form at least. There’s no way to fake the mold.”

Before the kid could start in again, the park ranger nodded his head to indicate that he was finished. He turned to go, to where, Dean was not able to figure, but he and Sam let everyone from their pontoon go before them, and waited. Dean knew what was up. Sam wanted to touch one of the pictographs.

“I shouldn’t,” he said to Dean when they were alone on the little path, the half circle ring of stones at their bare feet. The heat was now well over a hundred, felt more like a hundred and ten, and the scratchy sounds of some weed bug, all around them by the thousands, was starting to ring in his ears. The sun blared down on them.

“Aw, c’mon, Sammy,” he said. “It’s not like you’re going to deface the thing. Just touch it.”

“But if I touch it and everyone else who saw it touched it, then it would be worn away. Then no one will get to see it.”

“They’ve got tons of pictures of it,” said Dean now, giving Sam a little shove in the petroglyph's direction. “Besides, all out in the weather like it is, in another few thousand years, they’ll be worn away to nothing anyhow.”

Sam hesitated, his fingers curling and uncurling into his palms.

“Go ahead,” said Dean. “You know you want to. Leave your mark. Leave a thumbprint. Leave some skin oil that will give them something new to analyze.”

Yeah, Sam was going to do it. Was doing it. Was standing on the far side of Dean from the path and was leaning forward.

Dean gave him another small shove. “Just put your feet inside the stones. It’s not going to make any damn difference. I’ll whistle if someone comes.”

Sam was undone. He stepped inside the guardian ring of small stones, and crouched down. Put both his hands on the scratches in the rock that looked more like a row of walking ducks than anything else, and closed his eyes. He had the same expression on his face that he’d had when Dean had caught him feeling up Tabitha Clarke the day before school let out in Iowa Falls. Sam had been in the ninth grade, as Dean recalled, and had become fascinated by boobs. Or breasts, as he put it, enunciating the plural with as much care as he must be intending to kiss the real thing.

Sam was putting his face very close to the canyon wall now, sweat curling his hair to his face, not to kiss the petroglyphs, because he wasn’t puckering up, but to absorb them. The heat of the rock, the smell of it, and all the while his hands upon it, soaking up the texture of it, and leaving behind enough oil from his skin that DNA tests could be done on it, if the FBI were quick enough.

Dean let him. Waited there while this private little quirky thing that Sam wanted to do was done. Tilted his head back to ease the heat from his skin, and looked up at the top of the canyon walls, which cut across the blue like a blade. Yeah, thousands of years from now, Sam’s oil would be washed away, the pictographs would still be there, albeit a little fainter, and he, personally, would be just so much dust beneath someone’s feet. And not Sam’s.

The queasy feeling in his stomach came back and he wondered if he’d shoved too many Oreos into his gut far too fast. With soda, which was never a good combo. Milk was better. But there was no milk to be had, no shade, no easing of the scurry-scurry sound of desert grass rubbing against each other by the thousands, no masking of the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.

Sam was done, thankfully, standing up, rubbing his hands slowly against each other, not to rub the dust off, but more, to push the dust into his skin. His face, as he looked at Dean, was dappled with sweat, his pupils huge, his smile small, but real. Satisfied. That’s what he was, and Dean figured that any heat stroke he was to suffer on account of it would be well worth it.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Did anyone see me?”

“No a soul,” said Dean shaking his head. “Unless you count those little lizards I’ve seen running around.”

“They might tell,” said Sam, pretending to be worried. “They’ll report back to the park ranger, sure as anything.”

“I’m telling you they won’t,” said Dean, joining in. “They didn’t look like, you know, upstanding lizards. They looked like the sort to wanna stick it to the man.”

“Oh,” said Sam, tipping back his head and laughing, silently.

“They had tattoos an’ everything.”

Now Sam laughed with sound, deep and hard, like he didn’t have to force it at all. It was a good sound. One that Dean would miss when he was in hell.

Turning to go, he found himself being overwhelmed by a feeling of weight coming down on top of him. It must be the heat, it must be, for it could not be anything else. His heart, pounding now, seemed to want to leap out of him, whole and hard, and the wide whiteness of the path beneath his feet became blinding. Like he’d just been bashed in the head.

“Dean?” he heard Sam ask.

“Just a little hot,” he heard himself saying, thinking that he saw one of those river willows growing in tall, spindly lines right out of the foot of the canyon walls. Danged stubborn little buggers, growing like that, pushing out from under the thousands of feet of sheer rock as if to say, can’t keep me down, you fucking bastard.

 

Dean reached out with his hands to pull himself towards that willow, barely feeling Sam’s hands on his arm, barely feeling the spiky desert grass beneath his feet as he stepped off of the path. He had to get out of the sun, he had to, or he would implode.

“Dean, what’s the matter with you?”

He could barely hear that, but he could feel the pebbly-smooth texture of the canyon wall beneath his two hands. Two hands against it, like he was doing pushups, and then he unlocked his elbows and let himself down against the canyon wall, pressing himself against it with his full body. With his face, smack against the stone, just as Sam’s had almost been only moments before. He was in the shade now, but even so, it was still too hot. Hot like hell. Like the air itself, so still and dry, like an oven, an oven stoked by dark little imps who pushed human flesh towards the flames with their goddamned cartoon pitchforks.

“Dean,” said Sam, now, loud in his ear, both hands on him, turning him around so that Dean’s back was flat against the wall.

Dean squinted against the glare of the day, poking its way through the slender and mostly leafless branches. Squinted at Sam, at the expression on his brother’s face that had shifted from delight to worry in about three seconds tops. If he lived another day, let alone another year, he did not want to see that expression on Sam’s face. Ever.

“M’okay,” he said, feeling like a thousand rivers couldn’t quench the dryness in his throat. “M’just hot, Sam. Just hot.”

“Yeah, it’s hot,” said Sam, not sounding like he was convinced.

Dean pressed his palms flat against the rock, felt the heat soak up into him as if he were pressing them into a frying pan. “Just hot, is all. Damn bus ride,” he added, thinking it would distract Sam.

“We’ll get you out of here,” said Sam. “No more bus, I promise.” He grabbed hold of Dean’s elbow, his long fingers almost cool against the curve of Dean’s skin, but it was not enough.

“Dean,” said Sam again, his voice rising. “We need to get you down to the river so you can cool off.”

Dean opened his eyes as wide as he could and looked up. Into Sam’s face, into those dark eyes, sparking with concern, at the mouth, drawn down into a frown. At the sweat on Sam’s skin, at the flush of his cheeks. Sam was hot too, but it was not that.

“It’s too deep,” said Dean, finally, the words not making sense, but all that his brain could wrap itself around. “It’s too old, and it’s too deep.”

“What?” asked Sam, his voice rising to a pitch. “What are you talking about?”

“The canyon,” he said in response. “The canyon. Too old. Too deep. Wanna go home.” His voice cracked on this last, his mouth flexed over the words, quivering like he was five and about to cry because he didn’t want to die.

“Shit,” said Sam. “For fuck’s sake, Dean.” He pulled Dean to him, as if to place him back on the path and hurry him down to where the river flowed cool and slow, into the shade of the scrub willow. Into the land of where there were people and straight out of the hellish heat of a spot so old it had brought Sam to the point of rapture. But first, his hands on Dean, still and calm, he pulled Dean to him and pressed his forehead to Dean’s forehead and looked him straight in the eye. “You’ll go home,” he said, his voice telling Dean that he somehow knew what Dean meant. “You’ll go home, and I’ll take you there. I promise. No matter what.”

Of course, home was not a place, it was an idea. An idea of being, of him and Sam, on the road or off it, the Impala nearby or around them, the country ahead wide and inviting, and all roads led to small diners with terrific coffee and never-ending slices of pie. Just an idea, but one he was always driving towards. Someplace safe. Just for one damn day.

Dean made himself take a breath and nodded, his forehead bumping Sam’s. Looking into those dark eyes, so close he could see the flick of sweat beneath each eyelash, see the flecks of mica in the green of Sam’s eyes. Sam was almost shaking against him, and that was not how this day was supposed to go. Lord alone knows how much the excursion had cost Sam, but Dean could bet it hadn’t been cheap. Because who knows how much it cost to shelter and feed a park ranger so that he could be available for ten minute lectures on pictographs day in and day out? He heard himself laugh, and then he placed his hands on Sam’s hands, Sam’s cool skin beneath his fingers.

“Get off me, I’m fine,” he said, not pushing very hard. “I’m fine.”

Sam was still for a minute, not letting him go, not allowing himself to be pushed off.

“Dean,” he said, his voice almost a question. Those eyelashes, oh so close, blinked.

“Sam,” said Dean, putting some weight behind it. In a second, it would become rather joke-worthy, him and Sam standing toe-to-toe, forehead-to-forehead, his hands curling around Sam’s forearms, sweat forming between them. But for a moment, it was what was needed. His skin to Sam’s, heat pooling up as fast as if they were in a sauna, which, they were, actually. Connecting them as though they might be connected this way forever. “I think, that is, that you—” Dean stopped. Then he nodded, feeling Sam’s hair against his cheek. “I’m good. Okay? I’m good. Just had a moment there, is all.”

“Home,” said Sam. Meaning it. “I’m taking you home.”

“Yeah,” said Dean, leaning back, taking his body away from Sam’s, giving that last final push. “Well, good luck with that.” It was dismissal and thank you all at once, because Sam knew, knew how Dean felt about him mucking about with Dean’s deal. Any welching and Sam would drop dead, so no fucking around. End of story. But the sentiment was nice. Sam. And him. And home. Home was wherever Sam was now, and the year he had to live it in. Which should not be spent sweating his balls out against a dry, red rock that would still be there years after he was gone to dust.

He gave one last push, and Sam let himself be pushed, pulling on Dean as he stepped out of the shade and back onto the path, where the whiteness of the heat sliced through skin and bone all at once and made Dean want to stagger back into the shade. Instead, he followed Sam and staggered down the path, his feet raw from the stones and the dust, and ever so grateful to plant themselves into the shady, damp sand at the river’s edge.

“About to go,” said Kelly. “Was going to send a search party for you boys. Enjoy the petroglyphs, then?”

 

Part One 

Part Two 

Part Three